In The Age of Faith, volume IV of The Story of Civilization, Will Durant’s take on Mohammed and Islam is both instructive and amusing, sometimes hilariously so.
Long ago in college, I took a course in which we learned some history of the early days of Islam. In another class, we read the Koran, and I have read it once since then, with little impact on either occasion. After 9/11, I read several books having to do with present-day Islam, the damage done, now irreversible, to Europe by its misguided policies of immigration, the ongoing wars and chaos in Afghanistan, Syria, and other places around the world.
Long ago in college, I took a course in which we learned some history of the early days of Islam. In another class, we read the Koran, and I have read it once since then, with little impact on either occasion. After 9/11, I read several books having to do with present-day Islam, the damage done, now irreversible, to Europe by its misguided policies of immigration, the ongoing wars and chaos in Afghanistan, Syria, and other places around the world.
In reading Durant, I am once again struck by the differences between Christ and Mohammad. Christ’s most violent recorded act was in driving the money-changers from the Temple; Mohammed led armies, sacked cities, and massacred Jews and others who opposed him. He had Asma, a poet who had attacked him in verse, slain; the assassin drove his sword so fiercely into the woman’s breast that it pinned her to the couch. When another poet also attacked Mohammed and his followers in verse, writing love poetry to their wives, Mohammed asked, “Who will ease me of this man?” That evening found the poet’s severed head deposited at the Prophet’s feet.
Today’s volatile hatred of some Muslims for Jews contains one great irony. According to Durant, much of Mohammed’s teaching has its roots in Judaism. As Durant writes, “From the Creation to the Last Judgment he (Mohammed) uses Jewish ideas.” He also adopted many of their rituals of prayer, fasting, diet, and hygiene. Like Christianity, Islam is a first cousin to the faith of Abraham.
At one point, Durant describes Mohammed’s picture of heaven, quoting from the Koran. In addition to beholding Allah’s face, the saved will live in a Paradise where thee will be rivers of milk, honey, and wine, where the trees will bow down to put fruit into the hand, where each blessed male will have seventy two young women for his own.
After describing this heaven in a paragraph thick with such delights, Durant ends by asking a question: “Who could reject such a revelation?”
Well, Will, lots of people have rejected such a revelation.
And millions of them of them have ended up like the headless poet.
Today’s volatile hatred of some Muslims for Jews contains one great irony. According to Durant, much of Mohammed’s teaching has its roots in Judaism. As Durant writes, “From the Creation to the Last Judgment he (Mohammed) uses Jewish ideas.” He also adopted many of their rituals of prayer, fasting, diet, and hygiene. Like Christianity, Islam is a first cousin to the faith of Abraham.
At one point, Durant describes Mohammed’s picture of heaven, quoting from the Koran. In addition to beholding Allah’s face, the saved will live in a Paradise where thee will be rivers of milk, honey, and wine, where the trees will bow down to put fruit into the hand, where each blessed male will have seventy two young women for his own.
After describing this heaven in a paragraph thick with such delights, Durant ends by asking a question: “Who could reject such a revelation?”
Well, Will, lots of people have rejected such a revelation.
And millions of them of them have ended up like the headless poet.