The Religion of Humanity – Part 2
Mohammad Yaqub Khan, Imam The Woking Mosque – England.
Invidious comparisons are generally odious, and much more so in the case of the Messengers of God who are, as the Holy Qur’an has rightly said, a single community. A Muslim is required to believe in the Divine origin of every great religion of the world and show equal respect and reverence to all the Prophets, without making any distinctions between them. These Holy Teachers brought Divine light from Above and illuminated the world. But it is an irony of fate that their contemporaries did not preserve full and true records of their words and deeds. Writes our learned critic: “The Christian Scriptures are forgeries of a later age and of persons who had not even seen the founder of Christianity, so that it is now virtually impossible to say what the religion of Jesus was”. Yet on the basis of such a fictitious record, he has, to enjoy a fling at the Prophet, let himself to indulge in the sharp remark: “In reading through the Gospels one may come across many childish stories and unscientific statements, but one is at least left with the impression of the sublime character of Jesus. The same is not true of the man behind the Koran.” We could show our learned correspondent the horrible picture which the Gospels have drawn of the “sublime character of Jesus,” but for the present we invite him to give thought dispassionately to what Jesus himself has said about “this man behind the Koran.” Turn over The Gospel of Barnabas (CLXII1 : 180), and read:
“O Blessed time when he shall come to the world. Believe me that I have seen him, and have done him reverence, even as every prophet hath seen and done, seeing that his Spirit God giveth to them prophets. And when I saw him, my soul was filled with consolation, saying, O Muhammad, God be with thee, and may He make me worthy to untie thy shoe latchets, for obtaining which I shall be a great prophet and Holy One of God. And having said this, Jesus rendered his thanks to God.”
With the exception of the Prophet of Islam, the lives of all the other Prophets, including Jesus the Christ, are enshrouded in such a thick mist of mystery and myth, that they can at best be considered as subjects of fiction and fairy tales. Not so in the case of the Holy Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. He is, the only Prophet who may be called historic in the true sense of the word. Writes the great scholar Marmaduke Pickthall:
“Unlike all other Prophets whose proper likeness is concealed from us in a mist of reverence, Muhammad ﷺ is a clear historic character, the numberless details of whose conduct and demeanour are recorded for us by his own contemporaries.”
From his childhood to the last day of his life on this earth, all the details of his life, private as well as public, particularly the period of his ministry as a Prophet, are on record; and is it not a wonderful thing that, with all our knowledge of him, Muhammad ﷺ commands our respect and admiration? To institute a comparison between two persons, when we know everything of one and almost nothing of the other, seems absurd on the face of it.
The learned critic has picked up another hole in the coat of Islam to fleer and gibe and laugh and flout at the Holy Prophet ﷺ viz., the Qur’anic description of Paradise. He writes: “His Paradise offers you roasted fowls, wine and beautiful well-preserved women to keep you company in pavilions of gold and silk”. It is chronic objection which has ever been urged by the opponents of Islam, and answered one thousand and one times by the followers of the Holy Qur’an. If the continuity of life, as science would also have us believe now, is a great truth, that life which is to come after the grave, must have its happy and miserable aspects also, called Heaven and Hell in the language of Religion.
Again, if the Principle of causation, that we must reap what we sow, is true, we shall have to gather the fruits of all those actions which remain unrecompensed in this earthly life. But how to impart the idea of the fruits that we shall have to reap; for the things of that world are of different substance from those on this earth. The Holy Prophet ﷺ had said: ”Allah says, I have prepared for My righteous servants what no eye has seen, and no ear has heard and what the heart of man has not conceived.”
To give us, therefore, an idea of those unknown things. the Holy Qur’an has employed the language of metaphor and allegory:
مَّثَلُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ ٱلَّتِى وُعِدَ ٱلْمُتَّقُونَ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهَا ٱلْأَنْهَـٰرُ أُكُلُهَا دَآئِمٌ
وَظِلُّهَا تِلْكَ عُقْبَى ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّقَوا۟ وَّعُقْبَى ٱلْكَـٰفِرِينَ ٱلنَّارُ
A parable of the Garden which is promised to those who keep their duty.
Ar-Ra’d (The Thunder) 13:35
The learned critic has slipped into the error of conceiving them as in their earthly form. The Muslim Paradise, it must be clearly understood is not a place of licentiousness, nor a park for the voluptuary. It is a spiritual experience of the highest type, where there will be no physical appetites, no ignoble feature nor any unworthy feeling.
There is yet another stone which our learned critic has thrown at Islam. It is aimed at the Islamic Law of Marriage. There is a Latin proverb: Fling dirt enough, and some will stick. It is alleged that Islam permits four wives simultaneously, and in addition as many slave-girls without marriage as a Muslim like. Islam, as a rule, enjoins monogamy, and permits polygamy under exceptional circumstances only. It should be remembered that polygamy was in vogue, before the inception of Islam, not only in Christendom, but also in every other religion and civilization without any reservation, so that a man could have as many wives as he liked, sometimes rising up to hundreds, under his roof at one and the same time. Jesus, since he was not a lawgiver, did not say anything on this point. It was, however, the Law of Islam that brought this unbridled practice under drastic restrictions, reducing the unlimited number to four, and permitting it under special circumstances only by way of remedy when the females happen to outnumber the males, for instance, during and after a period of war. Europe, it cannot be gainsaid, has been facing this very acute problem since after the World Wars which have left women outnumbering men to an appalling extent. And the hard fact that England had to accept and recognize “war babies” proved conclusively that she had to give countenance to polygamy although in an indirect way. The Christian in the West, perhaps our correspondent will be able to appreciate, is more polygamist than a Muslim anywhere; and that what the Muslim does, of course in very rare cases, in a legalized form, the Christian does unscrupulously, in an illegal form. Concubinage undoubtedly existed in Arabia before the advent of Islam; but the Qur’anic Law gave a clear injunction that the female slaves should be kept in a married state, and that their masters had no right to sexual enjoyment with them.
وَمَن لَّمْ يَسْتَطِعْ مِنكُمْ طَوْلًا أَن يَنكِحَ ٱلْمُحْصَنَـٰتِ ٱلْمُؤْمِنَـٰتِ فَمِن مَّا مَلَكَتْ أَيْمَـٰنُكُم مِّن فَتَيَـٰتِكُمُ ٱلْمُؤْمِنَـٰتِ وَٱللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ بِإِيمَـٰنِكُم بَعْضُكُم مِّنۢ بَعْضٍ فَٱنكِحُوهُنَّ بِإِذْنِ أَهْلِهِنَّ وَءَاتُوهُنَّ أُجُورَهُنَّ بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِ مُحْصَنَـٰتٍ غَيْرَ مُسَـٰفِحَـٰتٍ وَلَا مُتَّخِذَٰتِ أَخْدَانٍ
فَإِذَآ أُحْصِنَّ فَإِنْ أَتَيْنَ بِفَـٰحِشَةٍ فَعَلَيْهِنَّ نِصْفُ مَا عَلَى ٱلْمُحْصَنَـٰتِ مِنَ ٱلْعَذَابِ ذَٰلِكَ لِمَنْ خَشِىَ ٱلْعَنَتَ مِنكُمْ وَأَن تَصْبِرُوا۟ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ
An-Nisa (The Women) 4:25
“And whoever among you has not within his power ampleness of means to marry free believing women, he may marry of those whom your right hands, assess from among your believing maidens ; and Allah knows best your faith ; you are sprung the one from the other ; so marry them with the permission of their masters, and give them their dowries justly, being chaste, not fornicating, nor receiving paramours… This is for him among you who fears falling into evil”.
The conditions of marriage, as laid down in this case, are very much the same as those in the case of free women.
(The Lights – Saturday August 16, 1959)
