Will the Real Muhammad Please Stand Up?
Aug. 18th, 2006 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
le_bebna_kamniI recently had the good fortune to run across the new Jack Chick tract, “Men of Peace?”1. For anyone not familiar with Jack Chick's tracts, you're in for a real treat. He's a fundamentalist Christian who uses interesting “reframings” of facts to get people to convert to Christianity (all his comics end with a prayer that can be prayed right on the spot for a person who wants to accept Jesus Christ). Now, I have no problem with people who want to give testimonials (although I find it a bit crude to leave them toilet stalls), but Jack Chick's cartoons are “special” (in the short bus kind of way)2.
This particular tract, “Men of Peace?”, talks about the origins of Islam, and essentially equates all Muslims (or at least all good ones) with terrorists. I know I shouldn't really take Jack Chick tracts seriously (especially after the great laugh I had on the D&D tract), but this one really ticked me off. I thought, “This can't be right!” and promptly went off to do research and prove the stupid thing wrong. The surprising thing is (and I'm learning this with Jack Chick tracts), is just about everything he says is true in some kind of perverted context.
Now before anyone goes off on me about how I can say that about Islam, let me just say (as a gamer geek) that just about everything in the D&D pamphlet has a grain of truth, in some twisted fashion (I mean, come on. How many of us actually wanted to try out the spells of our characters? I know I did). But I want to add the caveat that most of his statements, while shadow the truth, are far from it. Most gamers are not Wiccans, the portrayal of Wiccans is not particularly accurate, and I've known a lot of people who have lost characters in gaming sessions, and not one of them has committed suicide over the issue (although I'm sure some angsty teenager somewhere has done so, but some teenagers have also been wont to commit suicide over bad hair days. Perhaps that's a good argument for making them shave their heads? Oh, wait. Many of them do.)3.
Reading up on the history of Islam has actually given me much more of a respect for the religion. Muhammad was a very radical man – more so than Jesus, in my opinion – and I can see why a lot of people disliked him (or loved him, depending on who you were). The knowledge we have of Muhammad himself is somewhat difficult to analyze, not because Arabic people weren't literate (on the contrary, they highly valued their poets and scholars), but because far too many people recorded different stories about him. We have the Quran, which was clearly recorded when Muhammad recited it, but the Quran speaks very little of the prophet himself. Most of the hadith, the traditional sayings and actions of the prophet, and biographies were not collected together until much later. Often people would call anything “hadith” just to justify their point of view4. It also should be kept in mind that the people recording these hadith and biographies were followers of the faith, which meant that, just like the histories of the popes, the deeds of Muhammad were cleaned up a bit when they varied from the ideal.
However, there are some things that multiple sources agree on:
1) Muhammad was a good businessman with an impeccable ethic,
2) he was well respected, both because of his family connections and because of his own reliability and honesty
3) he was considered very kind, and advocated helping people less fortunate
4) he was very attractive physically, and personally charismatic.
With this in mind, let's examine Jack Chick's claims one by one.
Claim #1: Allah was just an idol
This is probably the most accurate statement made by Jack Chick, although slightly misleading. The actual word “Allah” is a contraction of the word “al-ilah”, which literally means “the god”. At the time of Muhammad, there was a great creator god who was said to have three daughters – Allat (a contraction of “the goddess”), Al-Uzza (“the mighty”), and Manat (the goddess of fate, whose name probably meant “portion” or “share”). This god, because he was one of the “big gods” -- I mean, he created the world – how big can you get? -- was called simply “the god”, much like whoever is leading the Catholic church at the time is called “the Pope” and everyone knows which pope you're talking about.
So when Muhammad started talking about the one true God, what other name was he supposed to choose? If there's only one god, then he has to be THE God. And just to make sure everyone knew that Muhammad wasn't talking about that *puny* creator deity, Sura 53 of the Quran says that God has no sons or daughters, especially not Allat, Al-Uzza, or Manat.
Claim #2: Muhammad threw out all the idols of the Ka'ba, except for Allah
The Ka'ba was a structure that had long been revered as a center of Arabic heritage. Even prior to Islam, most people in the region believed that Jews and Arabs shared a common ancestry (as in the story of Isaac and Ismael5). They believed that Adam had built the Ka'ba, Noah rebuilt it after the flood, and Abraham rediscovered it. Since at least the 2nd century B.C., many people who lived around Mecca were henotheists – they believed in one great god, but that didn't preclude the existence of other lesser deities6. Therefore, they had no problem accepting the Jewish god Yahweh as one of the gods, if not the big great god. And when Christianity entered the region, Jesus and Mary became happy additions to the idols in the temple.
When Muhammad came to Mecca to throw out the idols from the Ka'ba, he did come with an army of 10,000 as Jack Chick says (and so, at least, the traditions say). However, what he doesn't tell his readers is that Muhammad had been to Mecca the year before as part of a peaceful pilgrimage, and had won a huge number of converts. Consequently, Mecca opened its gates to Muhammad when he came back the following year.
The Ka'ba boasted of 360 idols, but the creator god Allah was not among them. The key god of that shrine was Hubal, a Syrian god of war who was also associated with the moon, not Allah.
On a side note, I don't know about anyone else, but I think the drawings of the idols from the Ka'ba that are being thrown out in the cartoon are quite cute – absurdly so. In fact, knowing just how accurate Chick's comics are, I can see why Arabic peoples didn't take their gods seriously, and were so willing to convert to a less cute and fuzzy God. However, in more recent years this trend has been reversed, as evidenced by the growing number of Cthulhu converts, thanks to ToyVault's plush idol7.
Claim #3: Muhammad received his revelations from a violent demon
It is true that Muhammad got his revelations in a disturbingly violent manner, although Gabriel didn't choke him, as the cartoon suggests. Rather, he felt an extreme crushing pressure on his chest, which certainly served the purpose of getting his attention, if not demonstrating what would happen if he didn't pay attention. Saying that Muhammad thought the angel was a devil is incorrect. What Muhammad really thought (as would anyone in his position) was that he was either going insane, or the angel had been a Jinn.
Jinn's weren't devils. Some were harmful, some were beneficial, but certainly not devils in the Christian sense of the word. At the time it was believed that a person could not communicate directly with gods. There were certain men, called Kahins that would often go into trances and receive divine revelations from the gods by way of the Jinn. It seems that Muhammad distinctly disliked the Kahins, and didn't like the possibility that he could be one of them.
As for Muhammad's wife Khadija, it's true that she was 40 and he was 25 when they married, however, I can't find any substantiation for Jack Chick's claim for her religious affiliation. First of all, I haven't read any indication that she wasn't pagan (until she converted to Islam), and religious affiliation is almost always mentioned in stories of each of his wives if they are Christian or Jewish. Secondly, “Catholics” in the modern sense didn't exist at the time. The term “catholic” simply means “universal”, and at that time all existing factions of the Christian church (Eastern Orthodox, Roman, Assyrian) considered themselves to be members of the one true “catholic” faith. You couldn't be something other than “catholic” until after Martin Luther and the Reformation. If that's Jack Chick's attempt at a low blow (since much of his fundamentalist protestant audience feels that Catholics are idolaters anyhow), it has backfired. Rather, if Khadija is Christian, it implicates Christians in general as being supportive of Islam (which many were).
Khadija was quite a progressive woman for her time. In an age where women didn't inherit property (and were generally considered property themselves), Khadija was a wealthy business owner. It was she that proposed to Muhammad, not the other way around. And the fact that Muhammad loved her was evidenced by the fact that in the 25 years that they were married he didn't take another wife (a practice very unusual for the time). Only after her death did he start taking multiple wives (and the comic is wrong. Muhammed took somewhere between 10 and 13 wives, depending on the sources).
It was not Khadija, but her male cousin Waraqa (who was Christian) who assured Muhammad that he wasn't mad. And like good supportive family members that they were, they believed him when he had subsequent visions and helped to tell others about them. That Muhammad took council from his wife (and future wives) further attested to his character. Unlike most men of the day, Muhammad believed that men and women should be at least relatively equal. While he was very close-minded by modern standards, he did things that were unthinkable for his time (and made a lot of men mad): he gave women the right to testify in court, allowed them to inherit property and keep their dowry, allowed them to divorce husbands who mistreated them, and even admonished husbands not to force their wives to have sex with them8.
Claim #4: After Khadija's death Muhammad began robbing and killing merchants
Although true, the story isn't quite as simple as that. When Muhammad lived in Mecca, he made a lot of people angry with his new revelations. Two centuries before, a man by the name of Qusayy united several clans by moving all the shrines of the region into the Ka'ba. The united tribe became known as the Quraysh, and they were the ones who maintained controlled access to the Ka'ba (and hence controlled the city). Because there was now one central place to visit the idols of the gods, the area became a minor center of economic activity, and the Quraysh were also the main beneficiaries of this.
When Muhammad started preaching that there was only one god, this wasn't a big deal to the Quraysh – after all, Jews and Christians had been saying that for a long time. But Muhammad claimed that only his god was the true god, that his god spoke directly to him, and in essence told the Quraysh that they had no right to control access to the shrine, which belonged to his one true god. He would then come in and disrupt visitors making their rounds in the Ka'ba by shouting about his “one god” -- you can see why they were mad at him.
As long as his uncle, Abu Talib, was in power as Shaykh of the tribe, Muhammad was essentially immune to people telling him where to go shove his preaching. But when his uncle died, the new Shaykh didn't particularly like Muhammad and withdrew his support. Muhammad started receiving abuse whenever he tried to preach – people would dump dirt on his head or throw sheep guts at him (you know, they kinds of stuff they do to all prophets). When Muhammad still refused to shut up, the Quraysh successfully instituted a boycott against Muhammad's tribe so that no one should sell things to or otherwise do business with his people.
So Muhammad wisely felt it was time to leave. After several refused attempts at trying to find another group to take them in, Muhammad and his followers found refuge in an area called Yathrib (the settlement would later be known as Medina9). However, they didn't leave all at once – which might be expected if one were fleeing persecution. Rather, they left a few at a time, often sneaking out of the city secretly at night, and the Quraysh became afraid that Muhammad was leaving to start an army (hmmm...I wonder what would give him that idea? He would never do that!) Feeling threatened, the Quraysh sent assassins after him, but he managed to escape.
Once out of Mecca, Muhammad turned his sights towards war. Since trade was the backbone of the region, attacking the trade routes to Mecca was a strategically sound plan, especially if you didn't yet have an army. Naturally, this made the Quraysh even angrier, and they started sending armies against Muhammad, further fortified by the families of the dead merchants who clearly wanted revenge. Later, when Muhammad had amassed more followers (although still a small number in comparison to the armies), he went about attacking cities directly.
I'm going to skip the next frame of the comic and come back to it later...but
Claim #5: Muhammad let his wife Safiyya watch while her husband was tortured to find his money, and they killed him anyhow
I'm not sure where they dug up a huge part of the story, to be honest. I e-mailed Jack Chick's website very politely about four days ago asking if they could direct me, and I haven't heard back from them. I promise to post whatever they send me if they don't shrug me off completely.
But here's what I have been able to dig up10:
It seems that Safiyyah bint Huyai bin Akhtab was acquired as booty during a battle against a small group of Jewish hamlets called Khaybar. Khaybar received advance notice of Muhammad's coming, failed to rally troops, and still chose to fight (whereas other towns in similar circumstances just surrendered). And to their credit, they held out very well. But Muhammad's forces got ahold of a siege engine from a nearby conquered hamlet and broke their defenses.
Now, Muhammad – being the generous man that he was – told them that he would let them live if they would simply surrender their valuables. But sometime during the clean-out period, some of his troops discovered a secret treasure horde that the people of Khaybar had neglected to mention. Consequently, they dragged the sheikh (who happened to be Safiyya's husband) away to be executed for lying about the existence of the cache.
Where Jack Chick got the idea that Safiyya's husband was tortured in front of her while she sat on Muhammad's lap is beyond me. All the records we have of these events were, for the most part, written by Muhammad's followers, and there is no way that they would show the prophet in such an unkind light.
However, it is true that Muhammad was a heartless bastard in the way that was perfectly acceptable (at least for his time): he immediately took Safiyya as his wife, and tried to bed her that night without giving her time to mourn. Early recorders of his deeds even tried to make it look like she became immediately infatuated with the prophet, but unless she hated her husband (and her father and brothers, who were also killed), that seems highly unlikely.
And finally....
Claim #6: Muhammad became a ruthless killer who maimed/killed everyone who did not convert
Oooh, now this one makes me want to bust a gut. All I want to know is, what person did Jack Chick use to model the perfect expression of horror on that man's face? But in spite of his artistic brilliance, he messed up on one particular detail: Sura 5:33 specifically mandates the hand and foot of alternate sides, not both hands. Boy, would I hate to have Jack Chick carrying out legal matters if he can't get even that simple detail straight!
But in all seriousness, I can't believe that Jack Chick actually gave the Suras. It's one thing to make vague statements and make people hunt for your mistakes; it's another to blatantly hand them the tools to prove you wrong. If he had read Sura 8:61 in his selection, he would see that Quranic law in this regard only goes for people who actively attack the people of Islam11:
Sura 4:90
This seems to be a running theme in the Quran: if they don't fight you, you don't get to fight them (although Muhammad, by his own admission, did not always follow what God wanted).
So what Jack Chick is saying when he claims that terrorists are good Muslims is that they are only fighting because Americans have waged war on them first. By calling them good Muslims who are following the Quran, he's conceding that the terrorists are perfectly justified in fighting a war of defense and retaliation (which I think most terrorists would agree, but the rest of the Islamic world would not).
Now if that's the case, I wouldn't want to call the terrorists *good* Muslims. Would you like to change your mind, Mr. Chick?
As a closer to my lengthy rant, I would like to include a little juicy tidbit I picked up in my research:
For all the guys out there who were hoping to get 72 perpetual virgins when they passed into Paradise, I'm sorry to say that this is only a myth. The Quran does not specify the number of virgins, so while it may mean that you get 203, it could also mean you're limited to only 5.
Now, many apologists I have read claimed that the Quran specifies both men and women will be awarded equally with beautiful virgin partners of the opposite sex. Hoewever, Sura 55:56 specifically says “maidens”, and many pre-modern Quranic scholars have agreed. So if women are awarded equally to men, all I can say is...there will be some great lesbian sex in paradise!
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1http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1031/1031_01.asp?wpc=1031_01.asp&wpp=a
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2For some further fun reading (especially those of the gamer geek variety), I further recommend http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp
Back
3For more fun goodness about the evils of gaming, I highly recommend the movie “Mazes and Monsters”. When I first watched that movie, I had never even heard of D&D. Rather than walking away from the movie going, “Those kinds of activities should be banned,” the movie had the opposite effect of leaving me thinking, “Wow! What was that game they were playing?”
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4No god but God, by Reza Aslan. An excellent book that shows lots of critical scholarship, and definitely a breath of fresh air from the stuffier histories I read through.
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5Genesis, chapter 21
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6The ancient Israelites also believed this, as evidenced by Psalm 82. If you can read Hebrew, note the use of “elohimim” -- gods – multiple times, and God is at the head of the council of all the gods.
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7http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html
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8Surah 4:33
(the [to having sex] is my addition to clarify the context)
Translation by Ahmed Ali, Princeton University Press, although this last verse is debated because it has multiple possible translations.
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9Literally, “the city”. Hmmm...”THE City” and “THE God”. I notice a pattern here...
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10References I used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad%27s_marriages
http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/safiyah.html
The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography, by Barnaby Rogerson (HiddenSpring Press)
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11The following verses are quoted from the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Publications. Although I like Ahmed Ali's more concise translation of the second verse: “...If they keep aloof and do not fight, and offer peace, God has left you no reason to fight them”.
Back
This particular tract, “Men of Peace?”, talks about the origins of Islam, and essentially equates all Muslims (or at least all good ones) with terrorists. I know I shouldn't really take Jack Chick tracts seriously (especially after the great laugh I had on the D&D tract), but this one really ticked me off. I thought, “This can't be right!” and promptly went off to do research and prove the stupid thing wrong. The surprising thing is (and I'm learning this with Jack Chick tracts), is just about everything he says is true in some kind of perverted context.
Now before anyone goes off on me about how I can say that about Islam, let me just say (as a gamer geek) that just about everything in the D&D pamphlet has a grain of truth, in some twisted fashion (I mean, come on. How many of us actually wanted to try out the spells of our characters? I know I did). But I want to add the caveat that most of his statements, while shadow the truth, are far from it. Most gamers are not Wiccans, the portrayal of Wiccans is not particularly accurate, and I've known a lot of people who have lost characters in gaming sessions, and not one of them has committed suicide over the issue (although I'm sure some angsty teenager somewhere has done so, but some teenagers have also been wont to commit suicide over bad hair days. Perhaps that's a good argument for making them shave their heads? Oh, wait. Many of them do.)3.
Reading up on the history of Islam has actually given me much more of a respect for the religion. Muhammad was a very radical man – more so than Jesus, in my opinion – and I can see why a lot of people disliked him (or loved him, depending on who you were). The knowledge we have of Muhammad himself is somewhat difficult to analyze, not because Arabic people weren't literate (on the contrary, they highly valued their poets and scholars), but because far too many people recorded different stories about him. We have the Quran, which was clearly recorded when Muhammad recited it, but the Quran speaks very little of the prophet himself. Most of the hadith, the traditional sayings and actions of the prophet, and biographies were not collected together until much later. Often people would call anything “hadith” just to justify their point of view4. It also should be kept in mind that the people recording these hadith and biographies were followers of the faith, which meant that, just like the histories of the popes, the deeds of Muhammad were cleaned up a bit when they varied from the ideal.
However, there are some things that multiple sources agree on:
1) Muhammad was a good businessman with an impeccable ethic,
2) he was well respected, both because of his family connections and because of his own reliability and honesty
3) he was considered very kind, and advocated helping people less fortunate
4) he was very attractive physically, and personally charismatic.
With this in mind, let's examine Jack Chick's claims one by one.
Claim #1: Allah was just an idol
This is probably the most accurate statement made by Jack Chick, although slightly misleading. The actual word “Allah” is a contraction of the word “al-ilah”, which literally means “the god”. At the time of Muhammad, there was a great creator god who was said to have three daughters – Allat (a contraction of “the goddess”), Al-Uzza (“the mighty”), and Manat (the goddess of fate, whose name probably meant “portion” or “share”). This god, because he was one of the “big gods” -- I mean, he created the world – how big can you get? -- was called simply “the god”, much like whoever is leading the Catholic church at the time is called “the Pope” and everyone knows which pope you're talking about.
So when Muhammad started talking about the one true God, what other name was he supposed to choose? If there's only one god, then he has to be THE God. And just to make sure everyone knew that Muhammad wasn't talking about that *puny* creator deity, Sura 53 of the Quran says that God has no sons or daughters, especially not Allat, Al-Uzza, or Manat.
Claim #2: Muhammad threw out all the idols of the Ka'ba, except for Allah
The Ka'ba was a structure that had long been revered as a center of Arabic heritage. Even prior to Islam, most people in the region believed that Jews and Arabs shared a common ancestry (as in the story of Isaac and Ismael5). They believed that Adam had built the Ka'ba, Noah rebuilt it after the flood, and Abraham rediscovered it. Since at least the 2nd century B.C., many people who lived around Mecca were henotheists – they believed in one great god, but that didn't preclude the existence of other lesser deities6. Therefore, they had no problem accepting the Jewish god Yahweh as one of the gods, if not the big great god. And when Christianity entered the region, Jesus and Mary became happy additions to the idols in the temple.
When Muhammad came to Mecca to throw out the idols from the Ka'ba, he did come with an army of 10,000 as Jack Chick says (and so, at least, the traditions say). However, what he doesn't tell his readers is that Muhammad had been to Mecca the year before as part of a peaceful pilgrimage, and had won a huge number of converts. Consequently, Mecca opened its gates to Muhammad when he came back the following year.
The Ka'ba boasted of 360 idols, but the creator god Allah was not among them. The key god of that shrine was Hubal, a Syrian god of war who was also associated with the moon, not Allah.
On a side note, I don't know about anyone else, but I think the drawings of the idols from the Ka'ba that are being thrown out in the cartoon are quite cute – absurdly so. In fact, knowing just how accurate Chick's comics are, I can see why Arabic peoples didn't take their gods seriously, and were so willing to convert to a less cute and fuzzy God. However, in more recent years this trend has been reversed, as evidenced by the growing number of Cthulhu converts, thanks to ToyVault's plush idol7.
Claim #3: Muhammad received his revelations from a violent demon
It is true that Muhammad got his revelations in a disturbingly violent manner, although Gabriel didn't choke him, as the cartoon suggests. Rather, he felt an extreme crushing pressure on his chest, which certainly served the purpose of getting his attention, if not demonstrating what would happen if he didn't pay attention. Saying that Muhammad thought the angel was a devil is incorrect. What Muhammad really thought (as would anyone in his position) was that he was either going insane, or the angel had been a Jinn.
Jinn's weren't devils. Some were harmful, some were beneficial, but certainly not devils in the Christian sense of the word. At the time it was believed that a person could not communicate directly with gods. There were certain men, called Kahins that would often go into trances and receive divine revelations from the gods by way of the Jinn. It seems that Muhammad distinctly disliked the Kahins, and didn't like the possibility that he could be one of them.
As for Muhammad's wife Khadija, it's true that she was 40 and he was 25 when they married, however, I can't find any substantiation for Jack Chick's claim for her religious affiliation. First of all, I haven't read any indication that she wasn't pagan (until she converted to Islam), and religious affiliation is almost always mentioned in stories of each of his wives if they are Christian or Jewish. Secondly, “Catholics” in the modern sense didn't exist at the time. The term “catholic” simply means “universal”, and at that time all existing factions of the Christian church (Eastern Orthodox, Roman, Assyrian) considered themselves to be members of the one true “catholic” faith. You couldn't be something other than “catholic” until after Martin Luther and the Reformation. If that's Jack Chick's attempt at a low blow (since much of his fundamentalist protestant audience feels that Catholics are idolaters anyhow), it has backfired. Rather, if Khadija is Christian, it implicates Christians in general as being supportive of Islam (which many were).
Khadija was quite a progressive woman for her time. In an age where women didn't inherit property (and were generally considered property themselves), Khadija was a wealthy business owner. It was she that proposed to Muhammad, not the other way around. And the fact that Muhammad loved her was evidenced by the fact that in the 25 years that they were married he didn't take another wife (a practice very unusual for the time). Only after her death did he start taking multiple wives (and the comic is wrong. Muhammed took somewhere between 10 and 13 wives, depending on the sources).
It was not Khadija, but her male cousin Waraqa (who was Christian) who assured Muhammad that he wasn't mad. And like good supportive family members that they were, they believed him when he had subsequent visions and helped to tell others about them. That Muhammad took council from his wife (and future wives) further attested to his character. Unlike most men of the day, Muhammad believed that men and women should be at least relatively equal. While he was very close-minded by modern standards, he did things that were unthinkable for his time (and made a lot of men mad): he gave women the right to testify in court, allowed them to inherit property and keep their dowry, allowed them to divorce husbands who mistreated them, and even admonished husbands not to force their wives to have sex with them8.
Claim #4: After Khadija's death Muhammad began robbing and killing merchants
Although true, the story isn't quite as simple as that. When Muhammad lived in Mecca, he made a lot of people angry with his new revelations. Two centuries before, a man by the name of Qusayy united several clans by moving all the shrines of the region into the Ka'ba. The united tribe became known as the Quraysh, and they were the ones who maintained controlled access to the Ka'ba (and hence controlled the city). Because there was now one central place to visit the idols of the gods, the area became a minor center of economic activity, and the Quraysh were also the main beneficiaries of this.
When Muhammad started preaching that there was only one god, this wasn't a big deal to the Quraysh – after all, Jews and Christians had been saying that for a long time. But Muhammad claimed that only his god was the true god, that his god spoke directly to him, and in essence told the Quraysh that they had no right to control access to the shrine, which belonged to his one true god. He would then come in and disrupt visitors making their rounds in the Ka'ba by shouting about his “one god” -- you can see why they were mad at him.
As long as his uncle, Abu Talib, was in power as Shaykh of the tribe, Muhammad was essentially immune to people telling him where to go shove his preaching. But when his uncle died, the new Shaykh didn't particularly like Muhammad and withdrew his support. Muhammad started receiving abuse whenever he tried to preach – people would dump dirt on his head or throw sheep guts at him (you know, they kinds of stuff they do to all prophets). When Muhammad still refused to shut up, the Quraysh successfully instituted a boycott against Muhammad's tribe so that no one should sell things to or otherwise do business with his people.
So Muhammad wisely felt it was time to leave. After several refused attempts at trying to find another group to take them in, Muhammad and his followers found refuge in an area called Yathrib (the settlement would later be known as Medina9). However, they didn't leave all at once – which might be expected if one were fleeing persecution. Rather, they left a few at a time, often sneaking out of the city secretly at night, and the Quraysh became afraid that Muhammad was leaving to start an army (hmmm...I wonder what would give him that idea? He would never do that!) Feeling threatened, the Quraysh sent assassins after him, but he managed to escape.
Once out of Mecca, Muhammad turned his sights towards war. Since trade was the backbone of the region, attacking the trade routes to Mecca was a strategically sound plan, especially if you didn't yet have an army. Naturally, this made the Quraysh even angrier, and they started sending armies against Muhammad, further fortified by the families of the dead merchants who clearly wanted revenge. Later, when Muhammad had amassed more followers (although still a small number in comparison to the armies), he went about attacking cities directly.
I'm going to skip the next frame of the comic and come back to it later...but
Claim #5: Muhammad let his wife Safiyya watch while her husband was tortured to find his money, and they killed him anyhow
I'm not sure where they dug up a huge part of the story, to be honest. I e-mailed Jack Chick's website very politely about four days ago asking if they could direct me, and I haven't heard back from them. I promise to post whatever they send me if they don't shrug me off completely.
But here's what I have been able to dig up10:
It seems that Safiyyah bint Huyai bin Akhtab was acquired as booty during a battle against a small group of Jewish hamlets called Khaybar. Khaybar received advance notice of Muhammad's coming, failed to rally troops, and still chose to fight (whereas other towns in similar circumstances just surrendered). And to their credit, they held out very well. But Muhammad's forces got ahold of a siege engine from a nearby conquered hamlet and broke their defenses.
Now, Muhammad – being the generous man that he was – told them that he would let them live if they would simply surrender their valuables. But sometime during the clean-out period, some of his troops discovered a secret treasure horde that the people of Khaybar had neglected to mention. Consequently, they dragged the sheikh (who happened to be Safiyya's husband) away to be executed for lying about the existence of the cache.
Where Jack Chick got the idea that Safiyya's husband was tortured in front of her while she sat on Muhammad's lap is beyond me. All the records we have of these events were, for the most part, written by Muhammad's followers, and there is no way that they would show the prophet in such an unkind light.
However, it is true that Muhammad was a heartless bastard in the way that was perfectly acceptable (at least for his time): he immediately took Safiyya as his wife, and tried to bed her that night without giving her time to mourn. Early recorders of his deeds even tried to make it look like she became immediately infatuated with the prophet, but unless she hated her husband (and her father and brothers, who were also killed), that seems highly unlikely.
And finally....
Claim #6: Muhammad became a ruthless killer who maimed/killed everyone who did not convert
Oooh, now this one makes me want to bust a gut. All I want to know is, what person did Jack Chick use to model the perfect expression of horror on that man's face? But in spite of his artistic brilliance, he messed up on one particular detail: Sura 5:33 specifically mandates the hand and foot of alternate sides, not both hands. Boy, would I hate to have Jack Chick carrying out legal matters if he can't get even that simple detail straight!
But in all seriousness, I can't believe that Jack Chick actually gave the Suras. It's one thing to make vague statements and make people hunt for your mistakes; it's another to blatantly hand them the tools to prove you wrong. If he had read Sura 8:61 in his selection, he would see that Quranic law in this regard only goes for people who actively attack the people of Islam11:
But if the enemy
Incline toward peace,
Do thou (also) incline
Towards peace...
Sura 4:90
...Therefore if they withdraw
From you but fight you not,
And (instead) send you
(Guarantees of) peace, then Allah
Hath opened no way
For you (to war against them)
This seems to be a running theme in the Quran: if they don't fight you, you don't get to fight them (although Muhammad, by his own admission, did not always follow what God wanted).
So what Jack Chick is saying when he claims that terrorists are good Muslims is that they are only fighting because Americans have waged war on them first. By calling them good Muslims who are following the Quran, he's conceding that the terrorists are perfectly justified in fighting a war of defense and retaliation (which I think most terrorists would agree, but the rest of the Islamic world would not).
Now if that's the case, I wouldn't want to call the terrorists *good* Muslims. Would you like to change your mind, Mr. Chick?
As a closer to my lengthy rant, I would like to include a little juicy tidbit I picked up in my research:
For all the guys out there who were hoping to get 72 perpetual virgins when they passed into Paradise, I'm sorry to say that this is only a myth. The Quran does not specify the number of virgins, so while it may mean that you get 203, it could also mean you're limited to only 5.
Now, many apologists I have read claimed that the Quran specifies both men and women will be awarded equally with beautiful virgin partners of the opposite sex. Hoewever, Sura 55:56 specifically says “maidens”, and many pre-modern Quranic scholars have agreed. So if women are awarded equally to men, all I can say is...there will be some great lesbian sex in paradise!
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1http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1031/1031_01.asp?wpc=1031_01.asp&wpp=a
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2For some further fun reading (especially those of the gamer geek variety), I further recommend http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp
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3For more fun goodness about the evils of gaming, I highly recommend the movie “Mazes and Monsters”. When I first watched that movie, I had never even heard of D&D. Rather than walking away from the movie going, “Those kinds of activities should be banned,” the movie had the opposite effect of leaving me thinking, “Wow! What was that game they were playing?”
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4No god but God, by Reza Aslan. An excellent book that shows lots of critical scholarship, and definitely a breath of fresh air from the stuffier histories I read through.
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5Genesis, chapter 21
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6The ancient Israelites also believed this, as evidenced by Psalm 82. If you can read Hebrew, note the use of “elohimim” -- gods – multiple times, and God is at the head of the council of all the gods.
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7http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html
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8Surah 4:33
...As for women you feel are averse [to having sex]
talk to them suasively;
then leave them alone in bed (without molesting them)
and go to bed with them (when they are willing)
(the [to having sex] is my addition to clarify the context)
Translation by Ahmed Ali, Princeton University Press, although this last verse is debated because it has multiple possible translations.
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9Literally, “the city”. Hmmm...”THE City” and “THE God”. I notice a pattern here...
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10References I used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad%27s_marriages
http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/safiyah.html
The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography, by Barnaby Rogerson (HiddenSpring Press)
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11The following verses are quoted from the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Publications. Although I like Ahmed Ali's more concise translation of the second verse: “...If they keep aloof and do not fight, and offer peace, God has left you no reason to fight them”.
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