DARK MUHAMMAD: THE RADICALIZATION OF THE “HIGHLY PRAISED”.
By R.J. Godlewski
Copyright © September, 2009 R. J. Godlewski
All Rights Reserved
No part of this document may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.” (Mt 7:15 NAB)
Let‟s step back into history. Before a time of political pandering and correctness. The world was struggling to define itself, as it always seems to do. Christianity was flourishing; it just embarked upon an age where being burned as garden torches, fed to hungry lions, and persecuted by everyone in power was a thing of the past. Arabia was a desolate world awash within Bedouin and tribal cultures and heritage, not unlike the feudal system encompassing Middle Aged Europe. Judaic civilization prayed for ownership of Jerusalem. Such a period bred opportunists.
One of these opportunists was Muhammad ibn Abdallah, known throughout history now as Muhammad the Prophet, originator of the Muslim faith. This man represents something of an enigma for history, a conflict of personalities that ranged from being “devoted to preaching, counseling, warning people about the judgment day, and exhorting them to righteousness” during his days in Mecca to a lifestyle of governing people and forcing them into his faith following his days in Medina (Dashti 1994, 70). It was a complete reversal of Saint Paul‟s conversion to Christianity where the former Saul went from crucifier to Christian. Did Muhammad‟s own faith in saving his people give way to cruelty and abuse of power? Possibly. At least his latter actions would offend all but the most tyrannical today.
Something definitely happened within Muhammad‟s life that changed him from a person attempting to unify Arabia through peaceful means and left the world with a man who became nothing more than a politician, a militant warrior, and an unabashed conquerer for his new ideas. Taken from the context of the New Testament, therefore, his actions if not his very being became the antithesis of Christ. Was Muhammad, then, the anti-Christ? I do not believe so. However, I do not believe in the “Antichrist” as many, more evangelical Christians, would define the term either. I believe that the antichrist referenced in the Bible (1 John 2:18, etc.) represents anyone who preaches against the teachings of Jesus Christ and, often, referred to a specific individual such as the emperor Nero. In that regard, we all have a little bit of this antithesis of Christ within our thoughts, our actions, and our heritage.
Because of this, I do not wish to vilify the prophet known as Muhammad as some form of diabolical evil unleashed upon the world. Of course, I do not wish to glorify him either for he was no more honorable than anyone of us alive today. Perhaps I am unusual within the world, but I always value how a person dies almost more than how they lived years into the past. In this regard, too, Muhammad did not die as the same “peaceful, compassionate” man who traveled within Mecca. The older Muhammad was a warrior as well as a judge, jury, and executioner. These, obviously, were decidedly unlike what Christ taught and how Christ died – accepting death on a cross for the world‟s sins. Also, unlike Christ, who set Peter as the rock on which He built His church (Mt 16:18 NAB), Muhammad left no successor to manage his followers upon his death (Durant 1950, 187).
I am a Roman Catholic because the faith that my parents gave to me as a gift when a small child (Sacrament of Baptism) and for which I accepted later as a teen (Sacrament of Confirmation), is simply infallible. There is nothing in Christ‟s teachings – repeat, nothing – that is against the Truth. This thought was posed by one of the FBI‟s top counterterrorism agents when he gave a guest lecture at the local library in Oklahoma when Sara and I lived there in 1995. His stepson was a friend of ours and the librarian knew of my own activities and so, naturally, I attended the discussion group. The question posed was “Would Christ be considered a terrorist today because of his radical thoughts and actions?” The premise was focused on his life as a “revolutionary” but my response was quick and truthful, “Perhaps some of his followers, but not He Himself.”
Christ never lifted a finger to harm another living soul and two of His final acts in earthly life sought forgiveness for others – that of a thief and the rest of us for placing Him upon the Cross. Compare this with the final years of Muhammad, as we shall discuss within this document. For whatever his early years may have entailed, the Prophet became directly responsible for the deaths of several horribly offensive adversaries as a mere 120-year-old man and a young female artist. Whether his actions were of the first-degree, or of Henry II-esque “involuntary manslaughter”, Muhammad the Prophet was a trend in his own mind.
Again, as to whether Muhammad was the Antichrist, I cannot say. Certainly, several people died upon his orders and millions have died because of his followers. Great leaders cannot always be held accountable for the deeds and thoughts of their disciples, especially long after they have passed from within our midst. I can say, however, and with quite sincerity, that the Muhammad after Medina was fully the antithesis of Jesus Christ. That it set the stage for horrible atrocities within the 20th and 21st centuries has to be considered. Muhammad was a man, and nothing more. I reserve my own allegiance for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and any respect that I offer my fellow man comes from this devotion and must be earned honestly….
R.J. Godlewski
Michigan
September 12, 2009
“On the day when the Prophet gave the order to „kill every Jew
whom you have captured,‟ Mohayyesa b. Mas'ud ran out and killed the harmless shopkeeper…” (Dashti 1994)
Let there be no doubt about it, assassination has been part of the Muslim faith ever since it was established and these actions often involved the founder of this peculiar religion himself. In fact, the term itself comes from the „Assassins,‟ a ruthless group who committed murders all across the Middle East. That Muhammad the Prophet had a hand within many murders is quite evident, and includes such assassinations as:
* Ka‟b bin Ashraf
* Abu Rafi‟
* Abu Sufyan (attempted)
* al-Aswad (Dhu al-Khimar „Abhalah b. Ka‟b)
* Khalid b Sufyan
* Yusayr b. Rizam
* Chieftain of Dumah
No wonder my formal course on assassinations devoted an entire week to the study of Muhammad. The only time that Christ was mentioned was when I inadvertently deleted two weeks‟ work.
In fairness, I can understand how some people could involve themselves within such actions that I would condone their immediate deaths. Hitler would have been one as is Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Yet, what type of person could so infuriate a “man of peace” that he would order their lives to be taken?
Two slave-girls owned by Abdollah b. ol-Khatal, named Fartana and Qariba, sang satirical songs about Muhammad (Dashti 1994, 75). All three of them were put to death – obviously a great justice for human society. The Prophet had Asem b. Thabet behead Nadr b. ol-Hareth for suggesting that the Qur‟anic revelations were fables. Oh, this is definitely worthy of capital punishment – believing that stories from someone throwing a fit within a cave might be fairytales.
And what of the 120-year-old Abu‟ Afak? His capital crime was lampooning the Prophet. In 2009, such punishment is reserved solely for conservative Republicans. In Muhammad‟s day, a poetess was moved by the plight of poor old Afak and composed a few verses deemed disrespectful to Muhammad (Dashti 1994, 77). He had her assassinated too.
A full recitation of Muhammad‟s murderous crimes is beyond the scope of this document. I merely offer the above as a small sampling of what awaited those who disagreed with the Prophet or questioned his authority (as did the one sage who questioned Muhammad‟s ability to alter Allah‟s word for convenience). It is obvious that the “Prophet” wanted to silence all who stood in his way. He could not have confronted any „Judases‟ with “What you are going to do, do quickly” (Jn 13:27 NAB). What manner of religion, therefore, could be so cruel in its founder‟s actions?
“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit” (Lk 6:43 NAB)
In modern, Westernized society we tend to view religion as either archaic and therefore outside the realm of rational thought, or we consider any faith as generically a “touchy, feely” psychological sensation. We never seem to allow ourselves to consider that our contemporaries may view their faith as the reason for their existence or that such a religious persuasion might actually be grounded upon the merits of self-destruction. This naïveté is foolish, for European Christianity itself went through a civil war period in which “people burned with, and burned for, their religious faith” that witnessed at least one “furious imperial response and the slaughter of 100,000 Germans” (Donnelly 2006, 61).
That we possess the attention span of a two-year-old attests to the fact that we can remember nothing of the brutal, bloody struggle that brought about modern Christian thought. We can live with our conveniences because millions had already gone through the decidedly inconvenienced era of destroying those who sought to pervert our faith. Islam has yet – though we may well be witnessing it – to experience this “religious civil war” in which the radical are silenced permanently in favor of the Truth.
What, exactly, do Muslims believe? What they believe is primarily a mixture of Judaic and Christian thought incorporated into a “new revelation” as written within the Quran (Durant 1950, 184-186). This is necessarily an over-simplification. Their basic tenet is that there is only one god, Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet whom he has spoken through. These conversations are contained within the Quran and it is within this book that we learn of several disturbing passages revealing the militaristic stance of the faith:
* 5:33 “The punishment for those who wage war against Allah and His Prophet and make mischief in the land, is to murder them, crucify them, or cut off a hand and foot on opposite sides...their doom is dreadful. They will not escape the fire, suffering constantly.”
* 9:29 Make war on those who have received the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) but do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day.
* 2:193 Fight them until you are no longer persecuted and the religion of Allah reigns absolute, but if they give up, then only fight the evil doers.
* 47:4 When you encounter unbelievers on the battlefield, cut off their heads until you have thoroughly defeated them and then take the prisoners and tie them up firmly.
Then there is the Sunna, the “Example of Muhammad”, which contains instructions for torture that would make waterboarding seem like part of a wedding ritual:
* Ishaq:595 “The Apostle said, „Get him away from me and cut off his tongue.”
* Ishaq:312 “Umar said to the Apostle, „Let me pull out Suhayl's two front teeth. That way his tongue will stick out and he will never be able to speak against you again.”
* Ishaq:316 "Following Badr, Muhammad sent a number of raiders with orders to capture some of the Meccans and burn them alive."
* Ishaq:387 "When Muhammad saw Hamzah he said, ‘If Allah gives me victory over the Quraysh at any time, I shall mutilate thirty of their men!' When the Muslims saw the rage of the Prophet they said, ‘By Allah, if we are victorious over them, we shall mutilate them in a way which no Arab has ever mutilated anybody."
In all, Muhammad spent about 75% of his life devoted to Jihad, conducted approximately 27 raids over a period of nine years, and participated within 38 other battles over and above the aforementioned smaller raids, assassinations, and executions.1 Such a history prompted Lt. Col. Ralph Peters to write, “I was struck … by the enduring characteristics of jihadi warfare” (Peters 2007, 38). What the good colonel was implying, was that the Muslim world held a significant history of barbaric and ruthless military actions, all in the name of Allah.
“The use of atrocities to break an enemy‟s will, the power of fanaticism and charismatic leaders, the value of surprise…were all there a thousand years ago” (Peters 2007, 38).
The above header simply means that America has had very little to do with the emergence of Arabic brutality. Muslims have been commiting 1.) atrocities, 2.) assassinations of the innocent, and 3.) surprise attacks long before the United States fought Saddam Hussein, long before our battleships shelled Lebanon, long before our government propped up the Shah of Iran, and, even, long before Christopher Columbus set forth sailing the ocean blue. No American alive today – no American ever – turned Muslims into fanatics that were not already fanaticized by their own religious beliefs.
Whatever happened to the Muhammad of Mecca, I cannot answer. The Muhammad of Medina, the “Dark Muhammad”, however, was a tyrannical politician/warrior who sought to spread his faith through force and intimidation. In this regard, we simply have the basis for today‟s radical Islamists. Yes, there are “decent” Muslims living amongst us, but these “moderates” exist in spite of their faith, not because of it. Their individual nature determines their solidarity with the rest of the world. This is the contrasting reason that I accord them their due dignity and respect – my own faith holds that I must “love my enemies and neighbors”. Except when I am required to protect innocent lives, of whatever faith or belief.
Was their Muhammad the Antichrist of fame? Probably not. I believe that God has intended for humanity to exist for thousands of years into the future yet and, well, who knows how many false religions will arise and expire by that time. I only know that my Lord‟s Church is the one true faith and through him ten centuries is as brief as a single day (2 Pt 3:8). All that I know is that Muhammad‟s life was the complete antithesis of Christ‟s, the opposite of everything that I stand for. Yes, I will remain firm against all false prophets – even if some people should find me offensive (literally or figuratively) in the process. Muhammad is no longer around to silence me.
1 Private correspondence with my assassination course instructor.
Works Cited
Dashti, Ali. "Twenty Three Years: A study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad." 1994.
Donnelly, Tom. "A Question of Faith: Conflicts Driven by Religion Can be Long and Bitter." Armed Forces Journal, October 2006: 60-62.
Durant, Will. The Age of Faith. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
Peters, Ralph. "When Muslim armies won: Lessons from yesteryears's jihadi victories." Armed Forces Journal, September 2007: 38-41,47.
(Find pdf version of this article here)
http://rjgodlewski.com/DarkMuhammadByRJGodlewski.pdf
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