Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A Critical Appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity), BS Murthy [microsoft ebook reader .TXT] 📗

chief of Makhzum, intervened to save Abd Allah in his youth from being sacrificed at the Kabah, i.e. to fulfill the vow of his father Abd-al-Muttalib. However, the amiable and handsome Abd Allah wasn’t destined to live long; and he died when his wife Aminah was carrying Muhammad, their only offspring.

Some weeks before Muhammad was born, his mother had a vision, and heard a voice say to her thus:

“Thou carriest in thy womb the lord of this people; and when he is born say: ‘I place him beneath the protection of the One, from the evil of every envier’; then name him Muhammad.”

Apart from this prophecy, what Muhammad had for inheritance were five camels, a small flock of sheep and goats, and one slave girl, too meagre to match the hollowed pedigree of the Quraysh.

When Muhammad was only six, he lost his mother as well, followed by his grandfather, two years later. And that virtually made him an orphan in the redoubtable clan of Quraysh. However, his uncle, Abu Talib, took him under his caring wings, and his wife Fatimah tended Muhammad more than her own children. It could be for sentimental reasons that Muhammad could have named his fourth, and the favorite, daughter as Fatimah.

In time, Abu Talib tended his nephew into trade, and thus began to take him along to Syria on his business trips. But, when in Mecca, Muhammad was wont to occupy himself with archery in which he showed great skill. It was only time before Muhammad developed acumen for trading, and thus was able to fend for himself. At length, his honesty and integrity, in spite of his modest means, earned him the respect of the prosperous Meccans, who bestowed upon him the title of Al Amin.

At length, when he saw the possibility of marriage, Muhammad approached his uncle Abu Talib for the hand of his daughter Fakhitah, nay Umm Hani, for whom he developed great affection. Supposedly by that time, there were many portents about Muhammad’s prophethood, about which Abu Talib cannot be but privy. Besides, Bahira the Monk at Bostra, in the very presence of Abu Talib, identified Muhammad, when still a boy, as the envisaged Prophet of the Scriptures. And yet, inexplicably, Abu Talib refused his daughter’s hand to his nephew, whom he otherwise loved. Be that as it may, for then at least, it would have appeared to Muhammad that marriage was beyond his means.

Nonetheless, his personal integrity, business acumen and physical beauty, providentially pushed him into the matrimonial arms of Khadijah, a rich and twice widowed Meccan woman of forty, to all his twenty-five. Devoted as he was to his wife, and siring her children, Muhammad began to spend his life amiably in relative comfort. But then, all those who might have heard of the prophecies about his prophethood would have been dismayed. And Muhammad too didn’t seem to lose his sleep over the apparent failure of Bahira’s prophecy about his prophethood.

However, given Jehovah’s disenchantment with His Chosen People by then, He seems to have had other ideas. It must have been galling for ‘the God’ to see what the Jews had meted out to Jesus, His Son and the Messiah. And by their rejection of the Gospel, the Jews didn’t help their cause either for that could have made ‘the God’ truly angry. The irony that the religion of Jesus was usurped by the Gentiles, robbing its Semitic purity in the process, would have caused no less hurt to the jealous Jehovah.

Thus, the revengeful God of the Jews, whose temper His saintly Son helped soften up through his Christian mission, would have hardened His attitude towards the humans all again. It was in such a frame of mind that Jehovah would have remembered the long forgotten progeny of Abraham and Hagar, furthered by Ishmael, whom He allowed to languish for far too long in the sandy surface of Arabia.

By then, however, the idolatrous sons of Ishmael had desecrated Abraham’s Kabah in whose precincts they installed a hundred statues for worship. And that no less offended the taste or sensitivity, and / or both of some of the Meccans, who as Hunafas, voiced their opposition to the idolatry of their brethren. In time, driven by the social appeal, or owing to his personal belief, Muhammad became a Hunafa himself.

Though the idolatrous sight of the progeny of Ishmael might have enraged Jehovah, soon He would have realized that their plight was of His own making. Why, didn’t He, by not sending a prophet to the Arabic stream of the Abrahamic progeny, fail them in the proper worship of ‘the God’? Thus, repentant at His own conduct, Jehovah might have deemed it fit to reveal the right path to the Arabs, exclusively shaped for them, albeit in the avatar of Allah. It was thus, ‘the God’ would have felt the need to have an Arab for His prophet to usher in the Quran, and would have been on the lookout for a proper candidate.

In a divine coincidence, by then, Muhammad turned forty, and his wife Khadijah, fifty-five. Though it was not uncommon for the Arabs of his era to go in for a fresh nuptial in such a ‘marital’ situation, or opt for a concubine, and / or both, Muhammad chose to remain faithful to his loyal wife. Instead, he chose to embrace solitude in a cave of Mount Hira, not far from Mecca. Of course, by then, Muhammad had successfully arbitrated the contentious issue plaguing Meccans at that time; and that pertained to which of the tribes had the right to place the Black Stone back in its place in the rebuilt Kabah.

In the process, that he could wrest the privilege of placing the sacred stone all by himself in its Holy place, i.e. after the tribal chiefs had lifted it on a clock, only illustrates his growing stature amongst the Meccans. Whatever, surely, this episode would have soared Muhammad’s spirituality, nursed in the caves of Hira, straight to the heavens. And in that ‘the God’ could have discerned the charisma of a leader in Muhammad as well as the man-management skills so apparent in him, which needless to say, should have enhanced his credentials for the job in His eyes. With the choice thus made, the Lord God, entrusted His trusted Archangel Gabriel to recruit Muhammad for the post of the prophet for the Arabs albeit as His Messenger.

It was at that juncture in the month of Ramadan, Muhammad retreated to Mount Hira to meditate at his favorite jaunt as was his wont, and the Lord’s Archangel chose to anoint Muhammad as ‘the Messenger of the God’, a hitherto unknown title for Jehovah’s prophet. Thus, when Muhammad was alone in the cave that night, Gabriel went up to him in the form of a man. The account of Muhammad of what followed is described by Martin Lings thus:

“The Angel said to him: “Recite!” and he said: “I am not a reciter,” whereupon, as he himself told it, “the Angel took me and whelmed me in his embrace until he had reached the limit of mine endurance. Then he released me and said: “Recite!” I said: ‘I am not a reciter,’ and again he took me and whelmed me in his embrace, and again when he had reached the limit of mine endurance he released me and said: ‘Recite!’, and again I said ‘I am not a reciter.’ Then a third time he whelmed me as before, then released me and said:

 

Recite in the name of thy Lord who created!

He createth man from a clot of blood.

Recite: and thy Lord is the Most Bountiful,

He who hath taught by the pen,

Taught man what he knew not.

 

He recited these words after the Angel, who thereupon left him; and he said; “It was as though the words were written on my heart.” But he feared that this might mean he had become a jinn-inspired poet or a man possessed, So he fled from the cave, and when he was halfway down the slope of the mountain he heard a voice above him saying: “O Muhammad, thou art the Messenger of God, and I am Gabriel.”

He raised his eyes heavenwards and there was his visitant, still recognizable but now clearly an Angel, filling the whole horizon, and again he said: “O Muhammad, thou art the Messenger of God, and I am Gabriel.” The Prophet stood gazing at the Angel; then he turned away from him, but whichever way he looked the Angel was always there, astride the horizon, whether it was to the north, to the south, to the east or to the west.”

And the rest, as we know, is history. But, it should not be missed that Muhammad was unlettered, and Gabriel wanted him to ‘recite’ in the name of ‘He who hath taught by the pen’. Maybe, the Prophet’s positioning of Islam thus is indicative of Muhammad’s deprivation on that score. After all, man tends to miss his letters in spite of his social status while a man of letters holds his sway regardless of his position. Anyway, from then on, from time-to-time, ‘the God’ began to reveal to His Messenger as He die before to Moses, and prophets, so that the Arabs who took to idolatrous ways for so long could be put on to the ‘straight path’, and at any rate that’s what Muhammad said, and the Musalmans believe.

Reciting the revelations he received, Muhammad soon made bold to proclaim that ‘there is no god but God’ and that he was ‘the Messenger of God’, which expectedly scandalized the Quraysh and others in Mecca no end. But then, ‘the God’ is aware that “verily man is rebellious, that he thinketh himself independent.” What is more, ‘the God’ by then, might have realized that the regimen of material rewards for compliance, His covenant with the Jews, didn’t work as that only made them more covetous. So He seemingly thought it fit to devise a new world order for the Musalmans in the Quran

It was thus, ‘the God’ in His further revelations to Muhammad sought to deprecate the life right ‘here’ while stressing upon the rewards in the ‘Hereafter’. Some of these are excerpted in this book from Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall’s ‘The Message of the Holy Quran’, published by UBSPD, New Delhi.

“Let not the vicissitudes (of the success) of those who disbelieve, in the land, deceive thee (O Muhammad). It is but a brief comfort. And afterward their habitation

will be hell, an ill abode.”

“Even as those before you were mightier than you in strength, and more affluent than you in wealth and children. They enjoyed their lot a while, so ye enjoy your lot awhile even as those before you did enjoy their lot a while. And ye prate even as they prated. Such are they whose works have perished in the world and the Hereafter, such are they who are the losers.”

“O ye who believe! What aileth you that when it is said unto you: Go forth in the way of Allah, ye are bowed down to the ground with heaviness. Take ye pleasure in the life of the world rather than in the Hereafter? The comfort of the life of the world is but little in the Hereafter,”

“Allah enlargeth livelihood for whom he will, and straiteneth (it for whom He will); and they rejoice in the life of the world, whereas the life of the world is but brief comfort as compared with the Hereafter.”

“A similitude of the Garden which those who keep their duty (to Allah) are promised: Therein are rivers of water unpolluted, and rivers of milk whereof the flavour changeth not, and rivers of wine delicious to the drinkers, and rivers of clear-run honey; therein for them is every kind of fruit, with pardon from their Lord. (Are those who enjoy all this) like those who are immortal in the Fire and are given boiling water to drink so that it teareth their bowels?”

“Naught is the life of the