Islam is like Christianity in that it originated in the life and works of one well-known historical figure and is inseparable from him. The fundamental difference is the humanity of Muhammad. The most basic tenet of Islam is that Allah is the one God and that no person, creature, or thing may be associated with him or accorded divine attributes. The Koran stresses that Muhammad was a mortal, born of earthly parents, destined to die, and be judged by the Creator.
Muhammad worked no miracles and raised no one from the dead. His achievements were a manifestation of the will of God, not of any supra-mortal essence in himself. Muslims never refer to themselves a Muhammadans, because the word implies that they worship Muhammad as Christian worship Christ, which they do not. As an inspired man, the vessel of divine revelation, prophet, guide, leader, commander, exemplar, and lawgiver, Muhammad is revered, admired, and imitated, but he is not worshiped. There are many times and places where this distinction seem to be eroded by an excess of zeal among Muhammad’s followers. At the great mosque in Delhi, the attendants who display putative relics of the Prophet, including a sandal he is said to have worn, exhibit an unctuous reverence inappropriate for any mortal. The reason Handbook of Hajj advises pilgrims who visit Medina not to pray to Muhammad for any miracles or earthly benefits is precisely that Muslims have a traditional tendency to invoke the Prophet’s aid as if he in fact had supernatural powers. Edward W. Lane, in the 1836 classic Manners and Custom of the Modern Egyptians, noted that “the respect which most modern Muslims pay to their Prophet is almost idolatrous. They very frequently swear by him; and many of the most learned, as well as the ignorant, often implore his intercession”—even though the Koran teaches that no one, not even Muhammad, can intercede with God on behalf of men. Lane reported that one Imam Ahmad Ibn-Hanbal “would not even eat watermelons because, although he know that the Prophet ate them, he could not learn whether he ate them with or without the rind, or whether he broke, bit or cut them.” I never encountered any imitation of the Prophet quite so absurd, but it is certainly customary to invoke his name at any time and any occasion—even giving directions to a cab driver. (“To the university, by the Prophet!”) These, however, are pious irrelevancies, derived not from any Islamic claim of Muhammad’s divinity but from the tradition of devotion to a holy, divinely guided man.
The Prophet, whose name means “highly praised,” was born about 570 A.D. in Mecca, a trading post in the Arabian peninsula, well outside the mainstream of contemporary events in Europe and around the Mediterranean. Arabia was a violent and licentious semi-primitive corner of the world, where religion took the form of pagan worship of tribal gods and idols. Many Jews and Christians lived in what are now Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but most of the population had not adopted monotheistic beliefs. Mecca was not only the commercial but also the religious center for the tribes of the peninsula. They all had their own gods and idols, but some gods were common to all of them, and the shrine of those deities was in Mecca. That shrine was the Kaaba, from which Muhammad would soon expel all idols and images and which he would establish as the central shrine of Islam. The world beyond Arabia, at the time of Muhammad’s birth, was entering an era of violent transition. Europe was descending into Dark Ages. The Merovingian descendants of Clovis I were dividing the Frankish kingdom. The Lombards invaded Italy, meeting little resistance and establish a capital at Pavia. Rome was reduced to a minor duchy, important only as the seat of the Papacy. New ideas and cultures were rising in parts of the world untouched by the decay of the Roman Empire; the Mayan empire flourished in Mexico, and Buddhism spread through China and Japan. It is an instructive period of world history for those of us accustomed to a Ptolemaic view of civilization in which all cultures are thought to revolve around our own.
Muhammad worked no miracles and raised no one from the dead. His achievements were a manifestation of the will of God, not of any supra-mortal essence in himself. Muslims never refer to themselves a Muhammadans, because the word implies that they worship Muhammad as Christian worship Christ, which they do not. As an inspired man, the vessel of divine revelation, prophet, guide, leader, commander, exemplar, and lawgiver, Muhammad is revered, admired, and imitated, but he is not worshiped. There are many times and places where this distinction seem to be eroded by an excess of zeal among Muhammad’s followers. At the great mosque in Delhi, the attendants who display putative relics of the Prophet, including a sandal he is said to have worn, exhibit an unctuous reverence inappropriate for any mortal. The reason Handbook of Hajj advises pilgrims who visit Medina not to pray to Muhammad for any miracles or earthly benefits is precisely that Muslims have a traditional tendency to invoke the Prophet’s aid as if he in fact had supernatural powers. Edward W. Lane, in the 1836 classic Manners and Custom of the Modern Egyptians, noted that “the respect which most modern Muslims pay to their Prophet is almost idolatrous. They very frequently swear by him; and many of the most learned, as well as the ignorant, often implore his intercession”—even though the Koran teaches that no one, not even Muhammad, can intercede with God on behalf of men. Lane reported that one Imam Ahmad Ibn-Hanbal “would not even eat watermelons because, although he know that the Prophet ate them, he could not learn whether he ate them with or without the rind, or whether he broke, bit or cut them.” I never encountered any imitation of the Prophet quite so absurd, but it is certainly customary to invoke his name at any time and any occasion—even giving directions to a cab driver. (“To the university, by the Prophet!”) These, however, are pious irrelevancies, derived not from any Islamic claim of Muhammad’s divinity but from the tradition of devotion to a holy, divinely guided man.
The Prophet, whose name means “highly praised,” was born about 570 A.D. in Mecca, a trading post in the Arabian peninsula, well outside the mainstream of contemporary events in Europe and around the Mediterranean. Arabia was a violent and licentious semi-primitive corner of the world, where religion took the form of pagan worship of tribal gods and idols. Many Jews and Christians lived in what are now Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but most of the population had not adopted monotheistic beliefs. Mecca was not only the commercial but also the religious center for the tribes of the peninsula. They all had their own gods and idols, but some gods were common to all of them, and the shrine of those deities was in Mecca. That shrine was the Kaaba, from which Muhammad would soon expel all idols and images and which he would establish as the central shrine of Islam. The world beyond Arabia, at the time of Muhammad’s birth, was entering an era of violent transition. Europe was descending into Dark Ages. The Merovingian descendants of Clovis I were dividing the Frankish kingdom. The Lombards invaded Italy, meeting little resistance and establish a capital at Pavia. Rome was reduced to a minor duchy, important only as the seat of the Papacy. New ideas and cultures were rising in parts of the world untouched by the decay of the Roman Empire; the Mayan empire flourished in Mexico, and Buddhism spread through China and Japan. It is an instructive period of world history for those of us accustomed to a Ptolemaic view of civilization in which all cultures are thought to revolve around our own.
