The Holy Prophet (sas) in the Sight of an Enemy

Sir William Muir K. C. S. I.—a civilian resident of UP (Uttar Pradesh) who eventually rose through official ranks to become the Lieutenant Governor of the province—authored a biography of the Holy Prophet (sas), which if not the finest, is still considered one of the best works on the subject by a western scholar. The writer was a strident opponent of both Islam and its founder. However, his relations with Muslims and the eminence of his government post, precluded him from unleashing the full fury of his pen against the religion. Still his prejudice often seeps into his writings. The foul and poisonous tone with which he speaks against the Holy Prophet (sas) is hardly a cause for surprise; a vessel can only pour out that which it contains. Instead, what is extraordinary to note is how, on occasion, the beauty of the Prophet’s (sas) character lights the flame of insight and perception even in his eyes, and he too can be seen succumbing to the delightful charms [of the Holy Prophet (sas)].

This marksman of Christianity fires his arrows at the Prophet (sas) like one driven by madness. And yet the heart cannot be but moved to see him fervently prostrate towards the earth and respectfully caress the blood his arrows have spilled. At such junctures, he embodies the contradictory emotions which arise when enmity and astonishment weave in coalescence in the manner of a [thunder] cloud which nature has at once invested with fire and water. And when these moments pass, Muir again reaches for his arrows.

Many opponents of Islam allege the Holy Prophet (sas) was a product of his time. That is to say, they claim he did not impact the age of his existence, but was forged by the circumstances of his life. [According to their argument, the Prophet (sas)] came when the people of Arabia were disillusioned and increasingly drawn to Christianity. They were eager to be reformed and needed only a mould to fashion them according to its prescription—and that mould was the Holy Prophet (sas) who had been readied by the environment of his time. The hearts of the Arabs followed him and adopted a new identity and a new name for themselves by which they spread across the earth. However, [in real terms], the Holy Prophet (sas) did not impart onto the world at large a new law, nor did he initiate any sort of world reform. Muir, as per his disposition, is a firm proponent of this thesis. But at times, the breeze of the Holy Prophet’s (sas) character unsettles the sureness of his footing, and in a state of fear and trembling, he stumbles and yet thereafter his spirit soars from the earth to a new realm. At one such moment his pen flows with the words:

The fabric of Islam no more necessarily grew out of the state of Arabia, than a gorgeous texture grows from the slender meshes of silken filament; or the stately ship from unhewn timber of the forest; or the splendid palace from rude masses of quarried rock. Had Mahomet, stern to his early convictions, followed the leading of Jewish and Christian truth, and inculcated upon his fellows their simple doctrine, there would have been a ‘‘SAINT MAHOMET’’—more likely perhaps a ‘‘MAHOMET THE MARTYR’’—laying the foundation stone of the Arabian Church. But then (so far as human probabilities and analogy indicate) Arabia would not, certainly in his day, have been convulsed to its centre, or even any considerable portions of it converted. He abandoned his early convictions; for the uncompromising severity of inflexible principle, he substituted the alluring designs of expediency and compromise; and then, with consummate skill, he devised a machinery, by the plastic power and adaptive energy of which, he gradually shaped the broken and disconnected masses of the Arab race into a harmonious whole,—a body politic endowed with life and vigour. To the Christian, he was a Christian;—to the Jew he became a Jew:—to the Meccan idolator, as a reformed worshipper of the Kaaba. And thus, by unparalleled art, and a rare supremacy of mind, he persuaded the whole of Arabia, Pagan, Jew and Christian, to follow his steps with docile submission. Such a process is that of the workman shaping his material. It is not that of the material shaping its own form, much less (as some would hold) moulding the workman himself. It was Mahomet that formed Islam: it was not Islam, or any pre-existing Moslem spirit, that moulded Mahomet.1

Whether walking the earth or soaring across the heavens, Muir is who he is; his [waspish] sting is inseparable from his being. And yet the honey sucked from the flowers of the garden of Muhammad (sas) flows even from his tongue. [It is of little import] how many times he asserts that Islam was a deceit contrived by the Prophet (sas)—he is after all a foe inhabited by enmity. But the truth written by his pen cannot be reverted, no matter how hard he and his companions might try. That is, that the Holy Prophet (sas) was not a product of his circumstances, instead he was the creator of a new world, and none can see such a thing to fulfilment except [with the support of ] the angels of God. Worldly leaders are of this temporal realm; only those who come to guide humanity can give birth to a new world—for those who come from their creator are invested with the power of creation.

(Alfazl, 25 Oct 1930)