VII. The Prophet and his Enemies


The Prophet had also been criticized by non-Muslim authors for having treated some of his enemies harshly. These critics have forgotten that either a religion leaves the world aside, as Christ did, or integrates the world, in which case it must deal with such questions as war, retribution, justice, etc…
The Prophet exercised the utmost kindness possible and was harsh only with traitors. Now, a traitor against a newly founded religious community, which God has willed and whose existence is a mercy from Heaven to mankind, is a traitor against the Truth itself. What appears to some as the cruelty of the Prophet against some idolaters or some Jewish tribes of Medina is precisely that aspect of his function as the instrument of God for the establishment of a new world order which had to be purified from the traitors to the pacts concluded with them to insure the security of the new community in Medina. Those who were collaborating with the enemies and not honoring their promises with the Muslims had to be punished, banned or executed. Any fifth column in the world today would be dealt with in the same manner.
Otherwise, the Prophet was always the epitome of kindness and generosity. Nowhere are the nobility and generosity of the Prophet better exemplified than in his triumphant entry to Mecca, ten years after his hijrah or immigration to Medina, with his companions. There, at a moment when the very people who had caused untold hardships and trials for the Prophet, were completely subdued by him, instead of thinking of vengeance, which was certainly his due, he forgave them. One must know the almost unimaginable obstacles placed before the Prophet by the same people, of the immense suffering he and his new community had undergone because of them, over 20 years, to realize what degree of generosity this act of the Prophet implied.
What directed the life of the Prophet was his love for God, which in conformity with the general perspective of Islam, was never divorced from knowledge of Him and perfect surrender to His Will. A well-known tradition “hadith” reports one of the Prophet’s supplications to God: “O Lord, grant to me the love of Thee. Grant that I love those who love Thee. Grant that I may do the deeds that win thy love. Make Thy love dearer to me than self, family and wealth”.

VIII. The Marriages of the Prophet

The multiple marriages of the Prophet, in the tradition of the Biblical Prophets and of the customs of the region, were not signs of his lenience vis-à-vis the flesh. Let me quote the noted British author Parrinder (in Mysticism in the World’s Religions, New York, Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 161), he said: “No great religions leader has been so maligned as Muhammad. Attacked in the past as a heretic, an imposter, or a sensualist, it is still possible to find him referred to as “the false prophet”. A modern German writer accuses Muhammad of sensuality, surrounding himself with young women. This man was not married until he was twenty-five years of age. Then he and his wife (of forty years old) lived in happiness and fidelity for twenty-four years, until her death when he was forty-nine. Only between the age of fifty and his death at sixty two did Muhammad take other wives, only one of whom was a virgin, and most of them were taken for dynastic and political reasons (cited by J. Esposito, in Islam, the Straight Path, New York, Oxford University Press, 1991, p.18).
Multiple marriages, for him, were not so much enjoyments as responsibility and means of integration of the newly founded society. Besides, in Islam, the whole problem of sexuality appears in a different light from that in Christianity. Sexuality is sacred in Islam and is integrated to the equilibrium of life Islam seeks for the human being. That is why it should not be judged by Christian standards. The marriages of the Prophet symbolize his patriarchal nature and his function, not as a saint who withdraws from the world, but as one who sanctifies the very life of the world by living it and accepting it with the aim of integrating it into a higher order of reality.

IX. Conclusion

For the Muslims, the Prophet represents the human equilibrium that has become extinct in the Divine Truth. He marks the establishment of Harmony and Equilibrium between all the tendencies present in man: the sensual, social, economic, political tendencies that cannot be overcome unless the human state itself is transcended. His spiritual way means to accept the human condition that is normalized and sanctified as the foundation for the loftiest spiritual castle. The Prophet represents the spirituality of Islam, which is not the rejection of the world but the transcending of it through its integration into a center and the establishment of a harmony upon which the quest for the Absolute is based.