The Critic’s Trail
As a matter of fact, a great deal of the Quran came in
answer to questions. Someone would ask Muhammad, may the mercy and
blessings of God be upon him, a question, and the revelation would come with
the answer to it. Certainly, if one is crazy and believes that an angel
put words in his ear, then when someone asks him a question, he thinks that the
angel will give him the answer. Because he is crazy, he really thinks that.
He does not tell someone to wait a short while and then run to his friends and
ask them, “Does anyone know the answer?” This type of behavior is
characteristic of one who does not believe that he is a prophet. What the
non-Muslims refuse to accept is that you cannot have it both ways. One
can be deluded, or he can be a liar. He can be either one or neither one,
but he certainly cannot be both! The emphasis is on the fact that they
are unquestionably mutually exclusive personality traits.
The following scenario is a good example of the kind of
circle that non-Muslims go around in constantly. If you ask one of them,
“What is the origin of the Quran?” He tells you that it originated from the
mind of a man who was crazy. Then you ask him, “If it came from his head,
then where did he get the information contained in it? Certainly the
Quran mentions many things with which the Arabs were not familiar.” So in order
to explain the fact which you bring him, he changes his position and says,
“Well, maybe he was not crazy. Maybe some foreigner brought him the
information. So he lied and told people that he was a prophet.” At this
point then you have to ask him, “If Muhammad was a liar, then where did he get
his confidence? Why did he behave as though he really thought he was a
prophet?” Finally backed into a corner, like a cat he quickly lashes out with
the first response that comes to his mind. Forgetting that he has already
exhausted that possibility, he claims, “Well, maybe he wasn’t a liar. He
was probably crazy and really thought that he was a prophet.” And thus he
begins the futile cycle again.
As has already been mentioned, there is much information
contained in the Quran whose source cannot be attributed to anyone other than
God. For example, who told Muhammad about embryology? When people
assemble facts such as these, if they are not willing to attribute their
existence to a divine source, they automatically resort to the assumption
someone brought Muhammad the information and that he used it to fool the people.
However, this theory can easily be disproved with one simple
question: “If Muhammad was a liar, where did he get his confidence? Why
did he tell some people out right to their face what others could never say?”
Such confidence depends completely upon being convinced that one has a true
divine revelation.
A Revelation - Abu Lahab
Prophet Muhammad had an uncle by the name of Abu
Lahab. This man hated Islam to such an extent that he used to follow the
Prophet around in order to discredit him. If Abu Lahab saw the Prophet
speaking to a stranger, he would wait until they parted and then would go to
the stranger and ask him, “What did he tell you? Did he say,
‘Black’? Well, it’s white. Did he say ‘morning’? Well, it’s
night.” He faithfully said the exact opposite of whatever he heard Muhammad and
the Muslims say. However, about ten years before Abu Lahab died, a little
chapter in the Quran (Surah al-Lahab, 111) was revealed about him. It
distinctly stated that he would go to the fire (i.e., Hell). In other
words, it affirmed that he would never become a Muslim and would therefore be
condemned forever. For ten years all Abu Lahab had to do was say, “I
heard that it has been revealed to Muhammad that I will never change - that I
will never become a Muslim and will enter the Hellfire. Well, I want to
become Muslim now. How do you like that? What do you think of your
divine revelation now?” But he never did that. And yet, that is exactly
the kind of behavior one would have expected from him since he always sought to
contradict Islam.
In essence, Muhammad said, “You hate me and you want to
finish me? Here, say these words, and I am finished. Come on, say
them!” But Abu Lahab never said them. Ten years! And in all that time he
never accepted Islam or even became sympathetic to the Islamic cause.
How could Muhammad possibly have known for sure that Abu
Lahab would fulfill the Quranic revelation if he (i.e., Muhammad) was not truly
the messenger of Allah? How could he possibly have been so confident as
to give someone 10 years to discredit his claim of prophethood? The only
answer is that he was Allah’s messenger.
The Flight
Another example of the confidence which Muhammad had in his
own prophethood and consequently in the divine protection of himself and his
message is when he left Makkah and hid in a cave with Abu Bakr, may God be
pleased with him, during their emigration to Madinah. The two clearly saw
people coming to kill them, and Abu Bakr was afraid. Certainly, if
Muhammad was a liar, a forger and one who was trying to fool the people into
believing that he was a prophet, one would have expected him to say in such a
circumstance to his friend, “Hey, Abu Bakr, see if you can find a back way out
of this cave.” Or “Squat down in that corner over there and keep quiet.” Yet,
in fact, what he said to Abu Bakr clearly illustrated his confidence. He
told him, “Do not worry, God is with us!” Now, if one knows that he is fooling
the people, where does one get this kind of attitude? In fact, such a
frame of mind is not characteristic of a liar or a forger at all.
So, as has been previously mentioned, the non-Muslims go
around and around in a circle, searching for a way out - some way to explain
the findings in the Quran without attributing them to their proper
source. On one hand, they tell you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, “The
man was a liar,” and on the other hand, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday they
tell you, “He was crazy.” What they refuse to accept is that one cannot have it
both ways; yet they need both theories, both excuses to explain the information
in the Quran.
No comments:
Post a Comment