Muhammad

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.

—Michael Hart1

I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the prophet, the scrupulous regard for his pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These, and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every trouble.

—Mahatma Gandhi2

Do you consider the providing of drinking water to the pilgrims and the maintenance of Al-Masjid-al-Haram (at Makkah) as equal to the worth of those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah? They are not equal before Allah. And Allah guides not those people who are the Zalimun (polytheists and wrong-doers). Those who believed (in the Oneness of Allah – Islamic Monotheism) and emigrated and strove hard and fought in Allah’s Cause with their wealth and their lives are far higher in degree with Allah.

—Qur’an 9:19-20

Islam is defined by two sets of texts. Of the two, by far the shortest (less than a quarter of the total words) is the supposed revelation of Allah to his Prophet Muhammad given in the Qur’an. The remainder, known as the Sunna, contains the Sira, which are the accepted biographies of Muhammad (26 percent of the total), and the Hadith, which are collections of isolated sayings and deeds of Muhammad (the remaining 60 percent).3 Therefore, the overwhelming bulk of Islam’s meaning comes from the life of Muhammad. In a sense, Islam is Muhammad.

The Qur’an itself authorizes this identification of man and religion. Many dozens of times it calls the words and actions of Muhammad “the divine pattern for humanity.”4 Through the efforts of Muslims to replicate this “divine pattern,” Islam has become what might be the most enduring political system in history. For 1,400 years this pattern has regulated family life, business, education, government, and religious beliefs for millions— and now one billion—Muslims. Given the way Muhammad’s life still controls the lives of his followers, and given the content of the life he lived, it is more accurate to say his genius was not moral or religious—it was political.

ARABIC LIFE BEFORE ISLAM

Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muḥḥalib ibn Hāshim—better known as Muhammad—was born in Mecca in 570 AD. He was orphaned at age five and raised by his uncle Abu Talib after the death of his grandfather when he was eight. Abu Talib was a powerful and prestigious member of the Quraysh tribe, which oversaw the religious life in Mecca, which was an important religious center for the polytheistic Arabian tribes. Their polytheism was mostly a jumble of deities, one of whom was a moon god named ‘Allah’. Pilgrims came to Mecca to engage in worship around a shrine called the kaaba, which the tribes regarded with religious reverence.

For much of his adult life, Muhammad worked as a caravan leader for a wealthy widow named Khadijah. He was shrewd but upright in his dealings and very successful as a trader. After a particularly successful trip, Khadijah proposed marriage to the 25-year-old Muhammad, who was 15 years younger than her, and in 595 they were wed. As a member of the Quraysh tribe, Muhammad would occasionally take month- long trips into the caves near Mecca to perform various religious obligations which were expected of the prominent members of his tribe.

When Muhammad was 40, he allegedly began to hear revelations from God through the angel Gabriel. This happened during the month of Ramadan, which Muslims now observe with a daytime fast. At first, Muhammad was concerned by these experiences and told his wife, who sent him to her cousin for a second opinion; the cousin told Muhammad he was a prophet.5 Muhammad’s wife Khadija became his first convert, and over the next three years Gabriel supposedly continued to reveal parts of what became the Qur’an to him. Three years after his first religious experiences, Muhammad began to publicly preach.

THE EARLY YEARS OF ISLAM

Muhammad’s teachings immediately put him at odds with the Arabs of Mecca. He publicly denied the existence of their gods and insisted that those who believed in them would go to Hell. Locals would challenge him to perform miracles or to respond to them with convincing arguments, but his method of reply consisted mainly of damning them for challenging the messenger of Allah. As a result, Muhammad wasn’t terribly convincing to most Meccans. Moreover, his preaching was bad for business. Only the prestige of his uncle kept the townsfolk from acting against him. When his uncle died in 619, Muhammad realized it was time to get out.

Three years later, with about 150 followers, Muhammad decamped for Medina, where a political alliance with one of the powerful local tribes soon elevated him to a leadership position. Once he had acquired some authority, Muhammad drew up a covenant for law and government. The covenant included both his followers and the other groups in the city and made Muhammad the final judge on all matters.6 This was the beginning of his political domination of the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula.

There was a brief effort to reconcile the new faith with the traditional religion of Mecca. Muhammad announced that three of the Meccans’ gods could intercede to Allah on their behalf. The Meccans and Muslims were pleased with this reconciliation, but Muhammad soon recanted. Instead, he declared that he had been deceived by Satan and the accommodation was not in accord with the will of Allah. These redacted lines were later referred to as the “Satanic Verses.”7

In Medina, Muhammad’s arguments with fellow Arabs extended to the large Jewish community in the town. Muhammad also began to turn his efforts from preaching to preparing for war. He organized raids on caravans heading for Mecca, including during a sacred month of peace, in violation of ancient Arabic tribal custom.8

The key turning point was the battle of Badr. Knowing that Muhammad planned to attack one of their caravans, the Meccans sent a small army to protect it. Leading an outnumbered force of Muslims, Muhammad was victorious over the Meccan army. After the battle of Badr, Islam increasingly became an armed political force with the religious motivation of jihad. It is in the accounts of this bloody battle that we get the first Islamic incitements to offensive martyrdom in order to achieve paradise, as well as the assumption that Islam’s worth is proven through violence.9

ISLAM’S POLITICAL SPREAD

Most of the biographies of Muhammad are concerned with the spread of Islam by violent means after the battle at Badr. Tribal groups who refused to ally with him were targeted, and members of those tribes who had converted to Islam willingly participated in attacks against their own families. After the defeat of his early opponents, the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, other Arab groups began to flock to Muhammad to make alliances.

What Muhammad had found is that nothing wins converts like military success. After 13 years of public preaching he had no more than about 200 followers. After ten years of conquest and political alliances, he could field an army of no less than 10,000 Muslims.10 This would become the dominant pattern of Islam’s spread over its first millennium.

The political aspect of Muhammad’s accomplishment became even clearer after his death. Abu Bakr, the first caliph, fought what is known as the Ridda Wars when he first came to power. Although ridda means “apostasy” in Arabic, there is little question that these wars were essentially political.11 The various rebel groups argued that they had submitted to Muhammad who was the prophet of God and had no reason to follow Abu Bakr. Some rebel groups followed other men who claimed to be prophets. Abu Bakr’s response was to defeat the rebels on the battlefield and unite the peninsula under his combined political and religious authority.

Islamic religious doctrine served the purpose of cementing political ties beyond mere verbal agreements. Islam sought to remake all the social institutions of a tribe—including overriding customs where they conflicted with the aims or interests of Islam. Under the unity of Islamic religious practice, differing tribes became united into a single political entity. This quasi-theocracy would prove to be a very effective organization as Islamic influence spread beyond the Arabian Peninsula.

MUHAMMAD’S PERSONAL QUALITIES

Most of the recorded actions of Muhammad are more consistent with a warrior than with a holy man. As mentioned above, the bulk of his biographies are concerned with his military genius in his struggles against the kafirs. Thus, we learn a lot about how battle spoils are divided (Muhammad got 20 percent) and how political spoils are divided after a group signs a treaty with Muhammad or abandons its possessions. An entire section of the Qur’an is dedicated to Muhammad’s distribution of war booty.

One of the most prominent elements of the war booty were slaves. While slavery has existed throughout human history, Muhammad is the only founder of a major religious tradition who thoroughly embraced owning other human beings. While Muhammad forbids Muslims to own other Muslims, kafirs are unworthy of such protections. There are lengthy accounts of female captives and which ones became wives of Muhammad or other prominent Muslims. One famous example was a Coptic woman named Mary whom the Archbishop of Alexandria sent to Muhammad as a “present.” Over the objections of his 11 wives, Muhammad accepted Mary and kept her as a concubine until his death.

Muhammad seems to have been very interested in sex, and spent much of his time after the death of his first wife acquiring new wives and concubines. The Qur’an permits men up to four wives, but fortunately it makes an exception for prophets—who are permitted as many as 11. Coincidentally, 11 is the most wives Muhammad had at any one time. Over the course of his life he may have been married to as many as 15 different women and also had at various times four slave women to meet his sexual needs. Of the wives, his favorite was Aisha, the daughter of his friend and successor Abu Bakr. Muhammad was betrothed to Aisha when she was six, and consummated the marriage three years later (he was 52 years old at the time). Since Muhammad was the perfect man, this sort of pedophilic relationship has become more or less accepted in Islamic cultures.

During his life Muhammad regularly used marriage as a political tool to cement relationships among his followers and with new allies. Two of his wives, Aisha and Hafsa, were daughters of his most prominent followers—both men eventually served as caliph after his death. Indeed, three of the four caliphs who succeeded Muhammad in ruling the Muslim community (a group known as the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs) were connected to him by marriage. The third was Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law.

Muhammad also made regular use of assassinations and executions. From the Sunna we learn of dozens of people killed on Muhammad’s orders for various offenses. Beginning around 624, the Prophet had a Jewish man and an Arab woman assassinated for writing poetry that mocked him.12 More than two dozen others would face death for the same crime, although some were pardoned if they agreed to convert to Islam.

This divine pattern for human life was not above indulging in torture, either. One particularly brutal case involves eight men from Ukl who left Islam and attempted to make off with Muhammad’s camels. According to one witness, the men were captured and brought to the Prophet:

He then ordered to cut [off] their hands and feet (and it was done), and their eyes were branded with heated pieces of iron. They were put in Al-Harra and when they asked for water, no water was given to them.13

Which other religious founders have commanded limbs to be hacked off and eyes to be gouged out with hot iron? Such treatment is even explicitly sanctioned by the Qur’an:

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land.14

In the Christian Bible, the Savior of mankind endures crucifixion; for Muhammad, it is just another punishment to be used on one’s opponents. Torture is not merely used for “religious” purposes, either; in the case of a wealthy man named Kinana ibn al-Rabi, the Sunna records that Muhammad ordered him to be tortured to reveal the location of some hidden treasure. Kinana was eventually beheaded and his wealth taken by the Muslims.15

One of Muhammad’s bloodiest accomplishments came with the Banu Qurayza, a tribe of Jews who lived in Medina. After being besieged in their stronghold by the Muslims, the tribe surrendered unconditionally. When the Prophet asked one of his followers what should be done with the tribe, he received the answer that the adult males should be killed and the rest taken as slaves. Muhammad called this judgment divine.

With the help of the Prophet himself a great trench was dug into which the massacred Jews would be thrown. In batches, the condemned were brought before Muhammad and his 12-year-old wife Aisha and their heads chopped off. The parade of butchery took hours to accomplish. Aisha later recalled that a woman lost her mind watching her family being killed in this fashion. She began to laugh uncontrollably at the horrific sight, and was then executed along with the rest. In all, between 600 and 900 men were killed. This was such a holy act that details of it are recorded both in the Qur’an, where Allah is reportedly very pleased by the “terror” this action put into the hearts of the Jews, and in the Hadith.16

Muhammad was no indiscriminate killer. He made very savvy political use of killing. After negotiating his initial return to Mecca, for example, he issued death warrants for all of those in town who had spoken ill of him.17 This is consistent with the behavior of other tyrants who sought to suppress political dissent. Muhammad also forbade others to engage in killings outside of his authority. This included forbidding the practices of blood feuds, vengeance killings, and the payment of blood money, and also forbidding anyone (other than himself) from killing anyone in Mecca.18 By establishing a monopoly over violence, Muhammad was accruing political power to himself.

RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND PARADIGMATIC INDIVIDUALS

A German philosopher named Karl Jaspers devoted one of his works to the analysis of four “paradigmatic individuals,” men whose lasting influence over thought and experience distinguishes them as foremost examples of humanity. The four individuals Jaspers chose were Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Socrates. While other men may have had comparable influence over smaller groups of people, these four are hard to match in terms of breadth of influence over a comparable period of time. Certainly most of us can agree that all four are distinguished religious—or at least humanitarian—leaders. If these four are not religious or humanitarian figures, no one is.

Using these four as touchstones, we may ask how Muhammad measures up. For Jaspers, “Muhammad… might be comparable in historical importance but not in individual depth.”19 This difference in depth arises from the fact that Muhammad did not create new thought patterns in his listeners. Instead, he created a new system to provide order to a very familiar human desire for conquest and control. If we compare Muhammad to each of the four individually, it is easy to see what separates him from them.

Compared to Jesus, Muhammad’s system of ethics is a step backwards. The Qur’an includes advice on moral topics such as the proper way to beat one’s wife,20 how to divide the spoils taken from defeated tribes,21 acceptable ways to deal with female slaves,22 and when to kill whole populations of people who do not agree with you.23 This “divine pattern” for human life keeps slaves and concubines, consummates marriage with a nine-year-old girl, and enjoys bloody vengeance wreaked upon his enemies. Jesus on the cross implores God to pardon his enemies, “for they know not what they do.”

Jesus espoused love for all and the virtue of meekness—that is, controlling one’s power or force and accepting when others overstepped their bounds. Muhammad freely and openly hated his enemies and issued proclamations for their deaths. Jesus taught that love of wealth caused one to miss out on spiritual pleasures while living an ascetic life of poverty and sexual chastity. Muhammad embraced and enjoyed the acquisition both of wealth and women.

Compared to Confucius, Muhammad embraced the destruction of all societal traditions that ran counter to his wishes, even those which contributed to social stability. Confucius emphasized that everyone in a society is in some sort of relationship with all his fellows, and that these relationships were sacred paths to knowledge and social strength. Muhammad overturned Arabic customs wherever he could, placing obedience to him above loyalty to family, tribe, or tradition. The basic relationship in Confucian society was that of teacher and student. For Muhammad, the basic relationship is that of master (Allah and his prophet) and slave (Muslim). Confucius taught that one did not become virtuous simply by memorizing rules of behavior but by acquiring broad learning and acting in ways that promote the greater good. About 60 percent of Islam (the Hadith) consists of rules of behavior covering a wide variety of situations which Muslims are expected to learn and imitate.

Buddha taught that the purpose of human life was to relieve the suffering of others. The primary means by which Muhammad brought his religion to others was through violence, and openly enjoyed seeing his political enemies suffer. Buddha asserted that human suffering arose from chasing after material things, which are fleeting and temporary. Islam fully embraces the pursuit of wealth and material goods because such things were absolutely essential in its spread and survival. Violence is the antithesis of a moral life for Buddha; it is a cornerstone of what it means to be a Muslim.

Socrates presented his students with the example of a life lived in constant pursuit of the truth by means of free thought. At the center of his quest was his assertion that the unexamined life was not worth living. Nothing could be further from the spirit of Islam and its founder. Anyone who questioned Muhammad the way Socrates questioned the men of Athens was despised or put to death. For the Muslim, the only life worth living is one which copies the divine pattern of Muhammad. As Socrates’ investigations show, many of the most important issues of human life are difficult to answer and require diligent and earnest questioning to uncover and resolve. Muhammad believed that God spoke to him and revealed to him everything that he, and everyone, needed to know. When condemned by Athens, Socrates willingly laid down his life, accepting that society was greater than any individual, however great. Muhammad condemned anyone who imagined himself as great as or greater than he was.

The four paradigmatic individuals were all either celibate or men of ordinary sexual behavior. Both Jesus and the Buddha renounced family life and sexual relations in the pursuit of their religious missions. Although not much is known of Socrates’ family (aside from his wife being a bit of a scold), he encouraged erotic self-restraint in his students. Confucius led a quiet family life, and the most recent genealogy established two million descendants over eighty-three generations.24

The contrast with Muhammad could not be sharper. The Prophet was a notorious sexual profligate who kept wives and concubines. He married young girls, setting a destructive pattern that his followers imitate into the present day. One of his wives, in fact, was selected from the most attractive captives after the slaughter of the Banu Qurayza tribe. None of the other four ever ordered or participated in a slaughter, much less took sexual slaves from a defeated enemy.

The four paradigmatic individuals were not generals or political leaders. Of the four, only Confucius wielded any sort of political power (as a civil servant). But he is remembered for his lofty humanitarian principles and approach to the education of rulers and civic leaders. Buddha renounced military and political power in favor of intellectual and spiritual development. The only power Socrates wielded was that of reason and dialectic. He advocated obedience to the laws of the city—an advocacy he lived up to by accepting the unjust death sentence levied against him. Jesus declared that his kingdom is “not of this world.” The authority these four men held was moral, not political.

Muhammad, on the other hand, was an absolute ruler who claimed divine sanction for his decisions. At his order, thousands were killed by assassination or execution or in battle. Others were tortured or made to suffer. He gained more converts through threats of death or suffering than he ever achieved by preaching. As the self-appointed messenger of god on earth, he demanded absolute, blind obedience. His kingdom was whatever on earth fell under the control of his followers’ swords.

Indeed, Muhammad’s true genius lay in developing a master political system. Islam encompasses every social institution by dictating to them what they must be. What the ruler must be like, what kind of laws are permitted, what kind of social habits are permitted or forbidden, the structure and practice of family life—all such questions are answered by Islam once it takes control. Take the modern example of Saudi Arabia, where the government has established Islamic sharia as the legal system. Civil law, religious law, criminal law, and family law are set by sharia. The ulema, the religious leaders of the country, regularly print textbooks covering their interpretations of what sharia declares about this or that particular issue. Saudi Arabia makes no distinction between the government and the religion or between the religion and any of its social institutions. Rather, Islam is society. Saudi Arabia is a state formed according to the dictates of Muhammad.25

Jaspers says of his four paradigmatic individuals:
The demands they make on us are never fully expressed in instructions that need merely be followed. In order to understand them, one must experience some sort of transformation, a rebirth, a new awareness of reality, an illumination.26

With all four men there is a door opened to critical thought and examination. Each of them opens the way to new possibilities of thinking, meditating, learning, and living. With Muhammad, the literal content of his message is everything. The words of Allah as revealed in the Qur’an are to be followed faithfully and without question.

One of the clearest connections between the four paradigmatic individuals lies in their treatment of the enemy or other. Jesus says to love one’s enemies, and to love one’s neighbor as one loves oneself. Socrates in Plato’s Crito insists that doing wrong in retaliation for wrong is unjust. Confucius does not go quite so far, saying one should requite kindness with kindness but enmity with justice. Buddha tells his followers to suffer ills with infinite patience and seek to do good to all living things.27 Muhammad’s love for mankind is limited only to his followers. For everyone else, Muhammad exhorted his followers:

To annihilate the kafirs, to confiscate their lands and property, to enslave their women and children … The ‘jihad’ or holy war is supposed to be waged incessantly until all the kafirs are decimated and the whole earth taken over by the followers of Islam.28

MUHAMMAD AND GENGHIS KHAN

We will find men like Muhammad not among religious and spiritual leaders but among the brutal conquerors of world history. Among these, Muhammad ranks highly indeed— though not so much for what he accomplished during his lifetime as for what his followers have done. Among the conquerors we find one quite like Muhammad in the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan.

Like Muhammad, Genghis was reportedly inspired on his mission by visions and ecstasies. Muhammad united fractious and warring Arab tribes and inspired them to jihad with promises of rich rewards. Genghis did the same with the fractious and warring Mongol tribes. Both leaders exhorted their troops to be merciless to the conquered. Both invoked divine sanction for their actions. Muhammad was a self-proclaimed prophet and executor of Allah’s will. Genghis declared himself to be an instrument of divine justice, god’s flail sent to punish the wickedness of the conquered.

One of the enduring records of Genghis Khan’s spirit is the quotation often attributed to him about happiness:

The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.

As critically-minded scholars have noted, the Qur’an expresses the same exultation over plunder taken from kafirs:

In brief, the property of the infidel—his wealth, his women, his children—all without exception, is lawful plunder for the [holy warrior]. The merit of such plunder is indeed less than that of spreading Islam and looking upon the pleasures of the other world, but the Koran gives it its due recognition.29

The difference between the Qur’an’s attitude toward plunder and Genghis’s is more of degree than of kind. There is even a passage which emphasizes the pleasures acceptable from captured women: “Also (forbidden are) women already married, except those (captives and slaves) whom your right hands possess.”30 Being possessed by the right hand is a figurative expression for women who have been taken as captives or slaves.

What Muhammad offered his followers that Genghis did not was the promise of paradise. Perhaps it is fitting that some of the Mongol hordes would later embrace Islam and continue their rampages without missing a beat. One of the most infamous examples of this was Tamerlane, a 14th century conqueror who styled himself the “Sword of Islam.” During nearly 40 years of almost constant warfare across Asia and the Middle East, he subjugated a vast territory and killed millions of people. Tamerlane doubtless would have been murderous with or without Islam—but no Muslim can deny that what he accomplished followed the divine pattern of Islam’s founder.

SANKARA: A RELIGIOUS LIFE

The inaccuracy of the label of “religious” for the founder of Islam can be seen quite clearly by comparison to the life of Sankara. Born 150 years after Muhammad’s death in what is now the state of Kerala, Sankara was a man on a mission almost from birth. Islam was already knocking on the door of his native India and Arab armies were making incursions into the land looking for plunder. The Hindu religion was in a declining state. Sankara would lead an enormous spiritual revival and create a metaphysical system of unsurpassed excellence.31

At an early age Sankara began his travels across India, propagating the revival and spread of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism. His method of conquest was verbal, not martial. On his journeys he held debates and conversations with Buddhists, Jains, and members of rival Hindu schools, overcoming each with dialectic rather than force. His philosophical tour took him on a journey—by foot, no less—of more than 3,000 miles across India. Along the way, he is also credited with founding four temples across India, which remain respected centers of learning and religious pilgrimage to this day.

Before he died at the young age of 32, Sankara had created a massive religious revival among the people. A celibate monk himself, he revived Hindu monastic practices at a time when they had fallen into disuse. He practiced vegetarianism. In his written works, Sankara expresses the ideal of achieving spiritual liberation through the pursuit of knowledge and purity of living. His teachings are founded on the belief that all the things of the world, both living and non-living, are manifestations of an underlying divine unity. We learn about this divine unity through direct intuition. Sankara believed that the purpose of life was to rediscover our connection to the divine.

Most significantly, Sankara established the preeminence of his thought through free discussions. There were no murders, no raiding parties, no massacres. Those who disagreed were free to debate with him or to walk away. There is no record of Sankara ordering one of his opponents to be killed. No one was threatened either with execution in this world or with divine retribution in the next. There are no stories of slaughter or carrying off the women and property of other people.

Islam would have us believe that Muhammad is a divine pattern for human life and that Sankara is an infidel worthy of death. Which of the two sounds more like a religious man? Which of the two lived a life worthy of Genghis Khan?