I’m reposting this (Originally posted by Achtung on 03-25-99 07:09 PM). In particular for AdbulMalick to read. Cause I don’t think he understands where I’m coming from.
Apologies for the length of the post - hope you have the patience to read…
“Since men almost always walk on paths beaten by others and proceed in their actions by imitation, unable either to stay on the paths of others altogether or to attain the virtue of those whom they imitate, a prudent man should always enter upon the paths beaten by great men, and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his own virtue does not reach that far, it is at least in the odor of it.” (Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince)
For Muslims this quality of greatness emanates itself through the practices of the Prophets, their wives and companions and most especially from the last messenger Prophet Muhammad, his wives, family and his dearest companions. The adoration and love for these individuals is insurmountable and inevitably becomes the building block for Islamic culture, values and ideas. His way of life becomes tied to the Qur’anic revelation itself. Not only is he a Prophet but also the ultimate role model for all Muslims to follow. For Muslims it is impossible to find a person with all the virtues that are combined in him. It is not easy for a person, spontaneously, to develop a personality like his. He is one of those men who are difficult to match and virtually impossible to surpass. The example of men like him contributes to the appearance of men of the same caliber. The Prophets life accompanied by the Holy Quran are the basis for Islam and in the eyes of Muslims, formulates the righteous path for humanity.
Yet Muhammad is probably the most scrutinized and misunderstood Prophet. This is perhaps due to the large amount of literature compiled by Islamic historians themselves, which provided the impedance for further study. Similar critiques of the lives of Jesus and Moses are sparse. We owe many of these misconceptions to the vast breed of orientalists who wrote extensive volumes of books dissecting Islam and its origins in an attempt to distort history and cast doubt on Islamic beliefs. Christian Europe was intolerable and unable to bear the rapid growth of a religion which it strongly believed was a heresy under the rule of an impostor claiming to be a chosen Prophet. The information they required was easy to find in the literature of early Muslims and collections of the Hadith. In the complex scientific process of collecting Hadith there were two main activities, one being the actual collection and the other being the authentication of the collection. Some opportunist orientalists used the collections rather than the authenticated volumes to create the basis for their writings and thought. They thus concocted a number of false traditions and habits which they attributed to Prophet Muhammad. These can be found in any university library under the heading of Islam. Early orientalists avoided direct critiques of the Quran, they rather based their attacks on the life of Muhammad. Muhammad’s relationships with his “wives” become the most hotly contested area of “pre-judgement”. The Hadith literature was mined by European writers and controversial and “culturally relative” traditions were plucked out and utilized to draw doubts on the validity of the messenger and indirectly the message Muslims believed was the product of The Divine. Other writers used their imagination to discredit Muhammad:
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Alvaro a Spanish writer believed the Prophet died in the year 666, the year of the beast in the Book of Revelation - a time where a ruler would rule the world, a ruler who would encompass the epitome of evil.
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In Dante’s The Divine Comedy, he writes of Muhammad suffering a particularly disgusting punishment in the Eighth Circle of Hell, in it he writes: “No cask stove in by cant or middle ever so gaped as one I saw there, from the chin down to the fart-hole split as by a cleaver. His tripes hung by his heels; the pluck and spleen showed with the liver and the sordid sack that turns to dung the food it swallows in.” Dante’s placed the Prophet’s companion in other levels of hell. (Dante Alighieri, Cantica I: Hell, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers, London 1949, Canto XXVIII,page 246.)
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Thomas Carlyle, who praised the Prophet Muhammad, yet had this to say about the Koran: ‘it is a wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite; - insupportable stupidity, in short!’
What the early orientalist writers failed to see was the tolerance and love in the life and teachings of the Prophet and in the revelation given to him. Rather they approached their research in such a way as to cast doubt on Islam and create holes in the fabric which held Islam up.
The chief area of focus for many writers was the role of “women” in Islam. Women were portrayed as passive, submissive beings, void of any value other than the role of “pleasuring” their husbands. These fictitious myths were spread through both the work of orientalists and the stories arising from European travelers who interacted, on a minimal scale, with Middle Eastern societies. Stories of harems filled with virgin beauties filtered into the art work of Paris museums and postcards in European bazaars, solidifying the myths. These depictions of subjugated and exploited women encouraged and helped legitimize the foreign occupation and colonization of the Muslim world. Europeans seen themselves as the liberators of these women, hypocritically subjugating their own women back home, while in the same breath chastising what they believed to be universal “Islamically” sanctioned oppression (not to say oppression of women wasn’t present in Muslim society, quite on the contrary it was, but was savagely exaggerated by the racist rhetoric of certain European writers).
Along with the foreign occupation of Muslim land arose practices among Muslims aimed at preserving their “threatened” (threatened through psychological torment and physical violence) “cultural authenticity” and protecting the sacred from foreign “pollution.” In the process of “self-defense”, mechanisms for preserving culture, amidst tremendous pressure exerted by colonials to “Hellenize” the natives, initiated both the invention of cultural norms and unnecessary attention paid to “cultural” and “historically” specific traditions. In a sense, in order to preserve a threatened culture, Muslims created a defensary mechanism, which evolved into a distinct culture in itself. Every institution attacked by outside sources and perceived by the foreigner to be associated with “inferiority” and “backwardness” became thresholds of defense and battlefields for the preservers of culture. The primary battlefield was the “family”. With every segment of society polluted with western institutions, economic, political, social, cultural and even religious - the family was the last line of defense. An area where the oppressive forces would not be permitted to enter. Women were central to this “preservation” of family and family values.
Western intellectuals failed to see the process of change within which Islam was growing and interacting - the dynamic nature of Islam - (many Muslim scholars failed to see the environment in which Islam was evolving also) they rather identified Islam as a “homogenous, unalterable, unchanging” body of religious beliefs. They defined what “Islam” is and what a “Muslim” was and critiqued Islam on the basis of “their” definitions. Definitions aimed to at legitimizing the occupation and subjugation of Muslims - because oppressors always require a legitimizing force, their violence has to be justified in their minds. Only recently has this process of evaluating “Islam” and Muslim societies been challenged - through the works of modern writers, the likes of Edward Said, whose now classic “Orientalism” shook the foundations of understanding the Middle East and provided a doorway for new rejuvenated analysis.
The task for both Western and Muslim intellectuals now is to decode and recode the history of Muslim peoples. To re-examine the lives of strong Muslim women and record their narratives (traditionally many Muslim societies transmitted knowledge through oral narratives, with the move towards “literacy”, forced through by colonial and neo-imperial pressures, this form of communicating knowledge was lost and in the process valuable narratives regarding the lives of important Muslim women lost as well). Islamists must stop seeing “Islam” as an answer to all problems and look at the solutions offered by western intellectuals; while western intellectuals must stop addressing issues related to Muslim societies in the “interests” of their governments and start communicating with Muslims in a language acceptable to them and become sensitive to the Muslim’s sensibilities. The fact that the role of “ijtehad” is even being debated in halls of universities and Islamic journals demonstrates that change is inevitable.
You can label those who look at “Islam” and see a beautiful religion which gives its adherents the opportunity to struggle for “spiritual” peace and those who can see behind the layers of myths and inventions attributed to Muhammad and the message of God which he dutifully disseminated to humanity - rationalists, pseudo-Islamists, escapists or whatever label you choose. I give them praise for having the courage to strive in the path of Greatness. In the end for the Muslims, who hold the shahada firmly in their hearts - it is Allah’s message in which they find peace. Muhammad was one of the messengers (indistinguishable from the other messengers in his duty to disseminate the message). Muslims do not worship the messenger, they worship Allah and follow the guidelines stipulated in His message as stated in the Quran. Those who falsely attack the messenger have missed the point; the concept central to and underpinning every aspect of Islam - that concept being tawhid (the unity and Oneness of God).
Achtung 
You may right me down in history/ With your bitter twisted lies/ You may trod me down in the very dirt/ And still like the dust I’ll rise…So you may shoot me with your words/ You may cut me with your eyes/ And I’ll rise…Out of the shacks of history’s shame/ Up from a past rooted in pain/ I’ll rise/ I’ll rise
Maya Angelou - From the Poem - “And Still I Rise”