A more sympathetic look at Mohammed.
October 31, 2009
I realize that my prejudice against Islam not only colors but also clouds my recognition of truth, and so disqualifies me to pass judgment. I am not qualified to be on the jury.
What I need to do is to imagine a Mohammed that sought to do good, much as Abraham did and Quixote did, and seek to explain him in a newer way for me.
I think Mohammed was a compassionate realist, who saw the impossibility of Christianity to bring the Arabs into unity. It was not working, due to the disputes arising from unclear sources in the theological minds of the Christian authorities, and it certainly will not work for the Arab tribes and peoples. The only thing that can be guaranteed to at least have a chance in subduing unruly heads and hearts is fear. Man must not be lulled into acceptance of the rules of unity, for that isn’t going to work, but he must be cowed and extorted.
So Mohammed decided that he would devise a way in order to bring fear into the hearts of the Arabs. Once accomplished, he would establish a realm of law and order where there was no reason for fear (interesting contrast!), a realm of peace where the poor would be fed and so no one would worry about eating, a realm of contentment, where people would be satisfied. He would consider the very nature of man and the woman and how this works out in the absence of a plan and coordination. Men would do this individually and in groups and like so for the women. By calming human nature Mohammed would give them a good time and contentment. The whole world then would be brought into this order. So Mohammed has the goal of Islam and the means of fear.
Now as to the actual encounter between Mohammed and Gabriel-in-the-cave, there are two ways to take, it seems to me: either Mohammed met Gabriel, or else Mohammed hallucinated this Gabriel. I am going to discount the notion that Mohammed forged the Koran.* I am taking here the side of hallucinated. Another possibility, for me, is that told Gabriel to spark Mohammed in his conception, and Gabriel chose to dictate to Mohammed what Mohammed had been looking for all along.
[* See Joseph Smith below.]
If we thought a forgery then we would have to try to justify it, sort of like, perhaps, trying to justify the action of Abraham. Perhaps Mohammed (according to this hypothesis) knew that this plan would work and would bring peace to the world, wouldn’t he have a moral duty to implement it? Since it would bring peace to the world, isn’t that what Jesus’ Abba wanted (and which surely the scribes have fouled up)? What I will do, with Abraham’s certitude of faith, is simply to do this, and I now, in order to justify that, hereby call upon God to stop me and condemn my soul to hell if this is not exactly what he wants me to do. I shall proceed in this faith that I am doing the will of God, and I shall bring man to his knees and make him behave and enjoy life.
The gist that I have discerned in my investigations of Mohammed (and they are few) is that the overall idea of fear was this. God creates these incredible paradises and hells, and creates the humans (and perhaps other beings) to inhabit them, and makes the number of their souls equal to the sum of the paradises and hells. And then he decides which souls will go where and then he creates them as human beings and lets them live their life so that they then will not only inhabit their assigned paradise or hell, but will then also understand why it is that they are there, i.e., being good boys or being bad boys (good and bad to be enunciated in some detail by Mohammed, i.e., that which brings enduring happiness and that which brings unending unhappiness, e.g., not striking one’s wife except in a certain way, giving to the poor).
The effect of this idea is what might be called “grading on the curve†where the teacher decides on so many A’s and B’s, etc., and then ranks the answers according to better and worse by comparison, and then assigns the grade to the paper. It encourages the student to study harder than his neighbor, and if the grades are eternal paradises and hells, then there is an incentive to zeal and be always ahead in compliance with the rules than others.
So, as a forger, Mohammed would have exemplified the faith that Kant himself said that no man would dare, not even the greatest fanatic, in all sincerity to God he called for his own damnation if what he was planning to do was contrary to God’s intention for the humans. So, according to my thinking here, Mohammed is greater than Abraham, for Abraham knew that his own salvation was not in question, and so only Mohammed bases his salvation upon his own creation, a forgery.
This thesis is not unreasonable. Mohammed could also be an incredible genius on the ranks of Shakespeare or Goethe, and perhaps even greater. Joseph Smith performed a forgery and came up with a story of conviction and a hope of peace and pulled it off. The DNA now proves he was a forgery, but if this teenage could have done it (and really better, I think, than Mohammed, though Mohammed was the inspiration) then Mohammed could have done exactly the same thing (as well as others not mentioned).
Most of my musing about Mohammed has been to accept his innocence and have him confronting a demon who wants to get back at God by having humans do what this demon says rather than God. And in which case Gabriel is actually Allah himself tricking the humans and taking glory from God Then Mohammed is entirely a virtuous man, and no worse than a good reporter or journalist.
Consistent with this treatment we could imagine God as accepting Mohammed’s gift of a forgery for it would eliminate more suffering than it would cause and would preserve the culture until Kant’s Moral Religion would be recognized. And so, to pursue the point, God would not will the forgery, but he would accept forgery because it led to a willed state of the humans.