The Reality of the Looking Glass: Seeing Muhammad

Salams
A wonderful article. And first I would like to say congrats ot echoboom for contributing what the Non-Muslims have to say about our Prophet (Peace be upon him).
Other than that..all religions have their followers and everyone has a right to their opinion. If a Muslim wants to express himself than its his right..and if anyone has their comments..they have a right to express them too..but if they get out of hand..well then they show their own personality traits.


``But the point is the desire of all non-muslims to join together and dig dirt on your Prophet is provoked by the `misuse of Islam` by the muslims for political ends (among many other things) ``

Like you said Bharath- MISUSE OF ISLAM..Islam does NOT teach us all this. There hasnt been a more peaceful religion. And it is being misused..I am so glad you used the word. It means you KNOW Islam is not terrorism.
Of all the things Islam is said to be barbaric? Well what would you call someone who blows up cities with Atom Bombs? What happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was displays of affection? Or however the prisoners of Iraq and Afghanistan were treated..was that overwhelming love? It was NOT! but is anyone blaming the Christians and Jews for it? Are they saying BECAUSE they were Christians and Jews their religion taught them to act like this? No..no one is saying that.

The same with our religion..there are always good people and bad people everywhere. And please everyone try to see both sides of the story.
Thats all I got to say for now.

Jazak Allah Shariar for trying to enlighten so many others about our Prophet (Peace be upon him)

Allah Hafiz

#148 the guy you are quoting, is he british? else, shy does his view matter?

Jang
[i agree with you about many idioticities in hindu religion]

Damn, and would that include Bombay, Madras, Calcutta or only Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata........-) Silly chaps, this missionary zeal for conversions........terrible, terrible.-)

re#147

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.-
Oliver Wendell Holmes

hisexcellency,

i agree with you about many idioticities in hindu religion. my bitch is that when islam was imposed in the sub-continent, it was not as a solution to the sillilness, but as a substitution of one set of silliness with another. in india both indus and the muslims have respect for the brit, who rarely tried to impose his religion..but the illumination of his ways was glaring (ignoring minor stuff like not using the lota)..i wish ghori or aurangzeb tries to abolish sutee or thugee, but alas..the sufi charlatans were just happy to have ignorant followers.

re: #142 by HisExcellency on April 14, 2006 9:49am PT
>>>>>``Ergo, objective analysis of Muhammad`s personality is simply not possible.``<<<<<

Ok I understand your perspectives. You are saying most of these negative stories are cooked up and/or not-confirmable. RSridhar may come up with specific points and quotes to bullodoze all ur arguments (he does it very well). But the point is the desire of all non-muslims to join together and dig dirt on your Prophet is provoked by the misuse of Islam by the muslims for political ends (among many other things)

Our President Abdul Kalam describes in his autobiography that his mother told him events from the life of the Prophet as bedtime stories. He describes his father getting at 4 am every morning to say namaaz. If such a man like APJ (I am referring to his austerity, dedication, honesty, etc not to his bomb making capacities) could be made with good stories from the life of your Prophet we all should go for it. But the catch is she also told him stories from Ramayana and because of this I have read in Pak news papers and on this board that he is a fake muslim. You can not imagine our disillusionment.

>>>>Even if we manage to filter out the hate propaganda against Muhammad by Christiandom<<<<<

Tell us about hate propaganda! To this day we are ridiculed by both you people and Christians(and most of you converted just few hundred yrs ago). Hindus may have many faults but the the ultimate, MOST DEFINING characteristic is it is impossible for a Hindu to understand/ accept that there is only one way to interpret scriptures, only one story is true, and only one way to reach God, etc.

Barelvi vs Wahabi conflict in Karachi shows that most extreme version of this ONLY ONE WAY approach threatens everybody.


#141 by teshah on April 13, 2006 7:14pm PT
>>>>I think they would be happier to get rid of the Mullahs.
provided they can remarry easily. Can they?

Re: # 143

Bharath

Why should the divorcee wives of the Mullahs should find it difficult to remarry? I think there should be much demand for a Mullah trained ex-wife. My point is why we men are so eagerly presumptuous and overly feministic when talking about or with women. My Ustad Ghalib had committed the same mistake once with dire consequences as evidenced by a couplet of his:

Mein ne chahaa kih bazme naaz chaahie gher se tahi
Sun kar sitam zareef ne mujh ko uthaa dia kih yoon

I think Arab culture is more realistic in dealing with the female gender and is diametrically opposed to the Hindu culture as it has come to be romanticized by Bollywood.

re: bharath

++
Your anger was provoked by the mere suggestion to examine objectively the personality of your prophet
++

Bharath, I am contributing to this analysis, not objecting to it.
An objective analysis of Muhammad`s personality must take the following facts into consideration:

1. The Quran was written down during Muhammad`s life by his companions. But the personal quotes and events of his life were not. They were orally passed down the generations for 120 years after Muhammad`s death.

2. During early Abbasid era, Muslim scholars interviewed thousands of men to collect reports about Muhammad. None of these reports was a first-hand account. Names of places and people, dates and sequence of events were confused.

E.g. People reported that Muhammad married Ayesha some time after the death of his first wife (Khadija). But some said she was the 2nd wife. Others said she was the 3rd. Even her age at time of marriage was reported as 6 or 9 or 14 or 16 or 19 years.

3. The most authentic report (according to Sunnis) of Muhammad`s life was compiled by the Persian scholar Imam Bukhari 250 years after the Prophet`s death. Of the 600,000 reports that he analyzed, he only included 7,275 that he considered genuine in his compilation (i.e. Sahih Bukhari).

Shias consider Usool-e-Kaafi compiled by Abu Jafar al-Razi as the most authentic biography of Muhammad. This compilation was completed 320 years after Muhammad`s death and contains 16,199 reports.

4. The Umayyad caliphs (before Abbasid dynasty) employed poets to make up quotes of Muhammad that would legitimize their rule... and invalidate the Shia opposition. The Shia factions compiled their own ``Muhammad quotes`` to elevate Ali and his clan.

5. Islamic scholars agree that hadith books and Muhammad`s biographies are only inspired accounts, not firsthand exact accounts of his life. The Quran remains the only authentic and unaltered scripture in the Muslim view.

Even if we manage to filter out the hate propaganda against Muhammad by Christiandom, we are unable to discuss his personal life with any certainty because even Muslim historians can`t vouch for 100% accuracy of their accounts.

Ergo, objective analysis of Muhammad`s personality is simply not possible.
But objective analysis of Muhammad`s teachings is possible (i.e. if we make the logical assumption that his teachings were compatible with Quran).

RSridhar

More recently, the Thugs that the British put down saw the looting and killing of travellers in religious light. Also, human sacrifices were made to Kali in Calcutta (this comes from the accounts of Christian Missionaries, and only Bengalis will know if any, and how much, truth is in that assertion).

Swarrier

Guilty as charged. :)

Hindus must step up to meet the challenge of murderous Tantriks, once and forever. They were the intended audience.

Muslims and Islam became partially relevant only in background, HisExcellency being gracious enough to highlight a real problem for us.

Re: # 138

Kaal
The mirror has two faces.

Killing people in Karachi and Varanasi is also a human sacrifice in the name of religion. I see no difference in that and a stupid family employing a disgusting tantrik. Ignorance and blindness is the reason for this.

Not to be too parochial I can add that killing of Palestinian children by Israeli troops, the murder of X million Anne Franks with the collusion of the church and the Nazis , the murder of Muslims by the Crusaders are all human sacrifices.

I don`t think posts by HisExcellency are gracious. It displays the same unholy glee that all of us indulge in when one side suffers a tragic loss.

That is the sad part here. People crowing over each others tragedies.


You must call a spade a spade.

re:#129 by echoboom
Most of the testimonies (from your post) were by people who lived in 18th or 19th century (barring a few like Gandhi).
Those people would be surprised today at the way Islam has evolved. Even if Islam was intolerant in the 18th and 19th century, there was nothing like a global jehad. That concept is very recent.
Sridhar

re: HP`s post
(Human sacrifice and cannibalism were rampant in Vedic Aryan society....)
You are only partly correct.
You need to go much deeper into the lives of Vedic times to know how the society evolved. We are talking about at least 5000 years ago. Society was mostly primitive.
You may read this to know more about Vedic times.
Early Vedic times did have Purushamedha sacrifice that was done at certain auspicious occasions but that does not automatically mean it was rampant.
There were many detractors. Even in the epic Ramayana, sage Viswamitra strongly objects to a king (Ambareesha)sacrificing a young boy (Sunahsepha) in a vedic ritual and saves the boy. Apparently, the concept of sacrifice to please God was a powerful one in many religions as this article from Wikepedia would argue.
(Human sacrifice has been completely absent at all times in mainstream Hinduism, and is severely condemned and seen with utmost horror by all mainstream Hindus. But the absence of any central dogma in Hinduism has allowed some unscrupulous sideline cults to exist. A few Indian tribes like Maraya and Thugs used to also practice human sacrifice. In Hindu narratives, practising human sacrifice and eating human meat was a work of the demons).
Also, some cults (like Shakt, Tantrism) practised it and probably still do but it is outlawed. Hindus have payed some prize for their tolerance in that they had to tolerate even such ``demonic`` things amidst them.
Early Vedic religion slowly evolved to get rid of practices of ritualistic sacrifices, building altars, homa etc and internalized much of the symbolism as this article reveals.
(In the last two periods of the Vedic era, the emphasis from the outer mode of offering shifted towards the internalization of the ritual. The gods and their expressions in the outer form of yajna were found to be in the human body itself. The Upanishads particularly point out that whatever manifests as Divine expression in the external world could be found in the internal world of a practitioner of yajna. Various correspondences were made in order to show that the Divine powers or expressions of divinity were present as potentialities in the human being. This approach was very much consistent with the teachings of the Upanishads.

Yajna evolved to be less ritualistic by a total mental attitude of surrender know as atmarpana, the offering of every action to Atma, the Divine. A systematic practical approach to yajna became yoga with its many forms and a good methodological approach towards the issue of freedom, the liberation in a spiritual sense.)
It would, therefore, be wrong to draw any conclusions from the ancient practices. When we talk of today, we see hinduism as encompassing all tribal, vedic, post-vedic belief system under one umbrella. Hindus do not kill each other because of religious differences. They don`t go about killing people of other religions due to religous differences.
So, my post about your prophet was to remind everyone that the seeds of hatred were sowed early on by the founder himself. To understand it is to get rid of the hatred from your midst and finally come to term with realities.
Sridhar

IMHO, there is nothing to be gained by discussing the objects of people`s faith. If the context is right, FAITH in itself, irrespective of its object, can be a useful force.

Aap Rehmat-ul-Aalmeen hain.

amid the din & cacophony of ill-wishers, here is what sounds sweet & provides solace to the heart.


aaya hai bulawa.......

HisExcellency

The spectacle of any Hindu killing an innocent child or man while invoking the name of his God is so contrary to the sense of humanity and Indian, that it has no defense. Nor will any educated Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or Jain advance any justification for this crime because he or she can find none.

Even so, denial cannot be the solution of choice for a people following a broad and dynamic spiritual tradition. Verbal legerdemain and guilt-ridden emotional theatrics cannnot be their way. They must actively work to expose, acknowledge, and put an end to any element of barbarism among their own.