| 25 May 2010
written by Mehran Qureshi
None of you believes until he loves me more than he loves his children, his parents and all people. None of you believes until he loves me more than himself.
-Prophet Muhammad
All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self evident
-Arthur Schopenheur
In protest of the censorship of a cheap, vulgar and racially potent cartoon series called Southpark which had depicted Prophet of Islam in one of its episodes, people in the West, came out with an idea of ‘everybody draw Muhammad day’ on 20th of May. They thought that Muslim objection to depiction of Prophet of Islam is an effort to limit ‘freedom of speech/expression’.
Freedom is a much abused idea in contemporary times. Man cannot have absolute freedom, only God can. In west, after the ‘death of god’, man became the centre of all discourse. Religious metanarrative lost all meaning and significance. Man claimed divinity on his capacity to reason. But soon enough, reason too lost its position as the ultimate guarantor of truth. ‘Death of god’ was followed by ‘death of man’. Western world now finds itself in utter confusion, directionless. For them the ‘Sacred’ has ruptured. The unbridled violent nihilism drives them to committing such acts of cowardice as maligning and insulting the most respected and loved person of Muslim people in the name of ‘freedom’. A sound mind is compelled to question the motive of such an effort/act. Why this utter disregard for others sensibilities?
Today, for the western world, no values or morality serves as impedance to their nihilistic and violent outbursts. It is as if they are condemned to freedom and they don’t know what to do with it. For them, as I had elsewhere read, freedom has become less an inspiration and more a compulsion. No wonder then, their actions are unjustifiable. In fact their action is for the sake of action, meaningless action. They have long abandoned their search for truth. For them there can be no truth. Hence they no longer need to justify their actions, in this case drawing the figures of Prophet of Islam.
However, what is more infuriating is that such minds want us to tolerate all their meaningless, violent and demeaning trash under the pretext of ‘tolerance’ and uphold the values of a deceptive idea called ‘freedom of speech/ expression’. The pretentiousness is evident. What they demand in the cloak of this freedom is the ‘freedom to insult’ and for us to tolerate their insults. With all their intelligentsia backing them in this and providing futile intellectual and pseudo-ethical justifications for their acts, Muslim people are ultimately reduced to a level of intolerant fanatics. However, while indulging in such blame game and generalizations, they forget to realize and understand the real nature of Muslim Ummah. They mistake Muslims for any other people like Christians and Jews (of the western world), who have limited or minimised or simply eliminated the idea of God from their collective as well as individual lives. Blame it on their cultural history, starting with amalgamation of pure Christianity with Greco- Roman paganism right through renaissance and enlightenment to Modern and Post modern times, western world never really evolved into a Theo-centric culture in all its history. Muslims, on the other hand have always retained their belief in one God even while going through the worst of crises. In the words of Annemarie Schimmel, Muslims today are the only people in the world who take their God seriously. For us our God and our religion are as relevant today as they were 1400 years ago, in spite of heavy onslaught of Western ‘values’ through the forces of colonialism, industrialization and globalization.
The reason for determining such an outlook and attitude of Muslim people is the personality of the Prophet of Islam, the fountainhead of light and guidance. In fact Islam as a faith and a way of life is unthinkable without the figure of the Prophet, hence the Islamic declaration of faith: there is no god but God; and Muhammad is His final Messenger. What is interesting and important is that, the first part of the declaration concerns the monotheism and the second part concerns the belief in the finality of prophethood of Prophet of Islam, emphasizing the fact that faith is totally incomplete without including the Prophet in its fold. The life and character of the Prophet of Islam is always interiorised by Muslim people all along their life, at least emotionally and mentally, if not practically. The glorious 23 years of Muhammad’s prophethood, which include suffering persecution, hardships, inviting people to Faith, migration and exile, battles, herculean task of establishing Islam as a living faith, etc in his public life and personifying the virtues of simplicity, honesty, benevolence, integrity and love in his personal life, are at the heart of every Muslim household. Muslims never claim the divinity of their Prophet, as Christians do for Jesus. The greatness of Prophet lies in being human.
Every minor aspect from the Prophet’s life from his Night Journey to the highest of the Heavens, to performing his household chores, has been covered and written down with great accuracy and care by the generations of Muslim biographers of Prophet. For the Muslims, both religious and profane aspects of his life are a source of inspiration.
The biographies of Prophet of Islam are replete with incidents which move every ordinary Muslim reader to tears. From his sacrifices and his devotions to his moral impeccability, a Muslim is immediately humbled while reminded of them. From any ordinary Muslim to great Muslim scholars and intellectuals and poets, none will dare to take any minutely imaginable liberty with Prophet’s personality. At least five times a day, Muslims make it a point to invoke God’s peace and blessings on the Prophet, his companions and his household during their prayers. Even the greatest and best of the Muslim personages throughout the history have paid their respects to Prophet of Islam in every imaginable manner. Iqbal trembled with awe upon hearing anyone mention the name of the Prophet. For Rumi, the dust of Madina was sweeter than the two worlds. Jami didn’t consider it proper to compare himself even to the dogs of Prophet’s city. No scholar dared to enter the Prophets city on his ride. Devotion to the last Messenger is central to Muslim’s religious as well as profane life. Even if a Muslim is a drunkard, all his intoxication will disappear on hearing Prophet’s name.
With such special and extreme reverence for the Prophet of Islam, it is but natural for the Muslim world to rise in anger against any attempt to defame the Prophet or reduce his personality to caricatures. No lessons of tolerance and ‘freedom’ are going to pacify the Muslim rage which rises out of their love for the last Prophet. From the orientalist discourse to liberal critique of Muslim cultures, Muslim people think that western world is resorting to every trick in order to denigrate the authority of Prophet of Islam, and hence undermine the influence of religion (Islam), and they are justified in thinking so. In attacking the person of Prophet, it is actually Islam that is being attacked, as the personality of Prophet is the life-blood which keeps Islam alive. Tolerance, in such matters, is just a Statist idea which weakens the ‘Church’ and takes away its authority in social and political matters. In fact the western world, which in reality is a culture flooded by Capitalist-consumerist-hedonist nexus of values, is threatened by the values which Islam and Prophetic character uphold. The restless and unprejudiced minds of West are increasingly finding solace in Islam. Islam, in spite of getting bad media, is the fastest growing religion of the world. In coming years, Europe risks being overrun by Islam. Britain seems to be fulfilling the prophecy of Bernard Shaw: If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it would be Islam. Not that the Muslim world (geographic) will conquer the west, it’s in no position to do so, given its political and economic weakness. West itself will find its dialectical conclusion in Islam. The Prophetic model is not in need of being imposed, it is a historical imperative. Willingly or unwillingly, the world will arrive at it. The caricatures and are just the manifestation of the years of prejudice, that has always been there in the western consciousness, at the popular level.