W. Montgomery Watt
The Alleged Moral Failures:
Of all the worlds great men none has been so much maligned as Muhammad. We
saw above how this has come about. For centuries Islam was the great enemy
of Christendom, since Christendom was in direct contact with no other
organized states comparable in power to the Muslims. The Byzantine empire,
after losing some of its best provinces to the Arabs, was being attacked in
Asia Minor, while Western Europe was threatened through Spain and Sicily.
Even before the Crusades focused attention on the expulsion of the Saracens
from the Holy Land, medieval Europe was building up a conception of the
great enemy . At one point Muhammad was transformed into Mahound, the
prince of darkness. By the twelfth century the ideas about Islam and Muslims
current in the crusading armies were such travesties that they had a bad
effect on morale. Practical considerations thus combined with scholarly zeal
to foster the study and dissemination of more accurate information abo
Muhammad and his religion.
Since that time much has been achieved, especially durin the last two
centuries, but many of the old prejudices linge on. Yet in the modern world,
where contacts between Christians and Muslims are closer than ever before,
it is urgent that both should strive to reach an objective view of
Muhammads character. The denigration of him by European writers has too
often been followed by a romantic idealization of his figure by other
Europeans and by Muslim. Neither denigration nor idealization is an adequate
basis for the mutual relations of nearly half the human race. We are now
back at the questions with which we began. We have an outline of the facts
on which ultimate judgements mus be based. What are our ultimate judgements
to be ?
One of the common allegations against Muhammad is tha he was an impostor,
who to satisfy his ambition and his lust propagated religious teachings
which he himself knew to be false. Such insincerity makes the development of
the Islamic religion incomprehensible. This point was first vigorously made
over a hundred years ago by Thomas Carlyle in his lectures On Heroes, and it
has since been increasingly accepted by scholars. Only a profound belief in
himself and his mission explains Muhammads readiness to endure hardship and
persecution during the Meccan period when from a secular point of view there
was no prospect of success. Without sincerity how could he have won the
allegiance and even devotion of men of strong and upright character like Abu- Bakr and Umar ? For the theist there is the further question how God could
have allowed a great religion like Islam to develop on a basis of lies and
deceit. There is thus a strong case for holding that Muhammad was sincere.
If in some respects he was mistaken, his mistakes were not due to deliberate
Iying or imposture.
The other main allegations of moral defect in Muhammad are that he was
treacherous and lustful. These are supported be reference to events like the
violation of the sacred month on the expedition of Nakhlah (624) and his
marriage to Zaynab bint-Jahsh, the divorced wife of his adopted son. About
the bare facts there is no dispute, but it is not so clear that the facts
justify the allegations. Was the violation of the sacred month an act of
treachery or a justified breach with a piece of pagan religion ? Was the
marriage with Zaynab a yielding to sexual desire or a mainly political act
in which an undesirable practice of adoption belonging to a lower moral
level was ended ? Sufficient has been said above about the interpretation of
these events to show that the case against Muhammad is much weaker than is
sometimes thought.
The discussions of these allegations, however, raises a fundamental
question. How are we to judge Muhammad ? By the standards of his own time
and country ? Or by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West
today ? When the sources are closely scrutinized, it is clear that those of
Muhammads actions which are disapproved by the modern West were not the
object of the moral criticism of his contemporaries. They criticized some of
his acts, but their motives were superstitious prejudice or fear of the
consequences. If they criticized the events at Nakhlah, it was because they
feared some punishment from the offended pagan gods or the worldly vengeance
of the Meccans. If they were amazed at the mass execution of the Jews of the
clan of Qurayzah, it was at the number and danger of the blood-feuds
incurred. The marriage with Zaynab seemed incestuous, but this conception of
incest was bound up with old practices belonging to a lower, communalistic
level of familial institutions where a childs paternity was not definitely
known; and this lower level was in process being eliminated by Islam.
From the standpoint of Muhammads time, then, the allegations of
treachery
and sensuality cannot be maintained. His contemporaries did not find him
morally defective in any way. On the contrary, some of the acts criticized
by the modern Westerner show that Muhammads standards werehigher than those
of his time. In his day and generation he was a social reformer, even a
reformer in the sphere of morals. He created a new system of social security
and a new family structure, both of which were a vast improvement on what
went before. By taking what was best in the morality of the nomad and
adapting it for settled communities, he established a religious and social
framework for the life of many races of men. That is not the work of a
traitor or an old lecher.
It is sometimes asserted that Muhammads character ( declined after he went
to Medina, but there are no solid grounds for this view. It is based on too
facile a use of the principal that all power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely. The allegations of moral defects are attached to
incidents belonging to the Medinan and not the Meccan period, but according
to the interpretation of these incidentsgiven in this book they marked no
failure in Muhammad to live to his ideals and no lapse from his moral
principles. The persecuted preacher of Mecca was no less a man of his time
than the ruler of Medina. If nothing is recorded of the preacher to show us
how different his attitude was from that of nineteenth-century Europe, it
does not follow that his ideals were any loftier (by our standards) than
those of the reforming ruler. The opposite is more likely to be the case
since the preacher was nearer to the pagan background. In both Meccan and
Medinan periods Muhammads contemporaries looked on him as a good and
upright man, and in the eyes of history he is a moral and social reformer.
So much must be said in fairness to Muhammad when he is measured against the
Arabs of his time. Muslims, however, claim that he is a model of conduct and
character for all mankind. In so doing they present him for judgement
according to the standards of enlightened world opinion. Though the world is
increasingly becoming one world, it has so far paid scant attention to
Muhammad as a moral exemplar. Yet because Muslims are numerous, it will
sooner or later have to consider seriously whether from the life and
teaching of Muhammad any principles are to be learnt which will contribute
to the moral development of mankind.
To this question no final answer has yet been given. What has been said so
far by Muslims in support of their claims for Muhammad is but a preliminary
statement and has convinced few non-Muslims. It is still open to the Muslims
of today, however, to give the rest of the world a fuller and better
presentation of their case. Will they be able to sift the universal from the
particular in the life of Muhammad and so discover moral principles which
make a creative contribution to the present world situation ? Or, if this is
too much to expect, will they at least be able to show that Muhammads life
is one possible exemplification of the ideal for all humanity ? If they make
a good case, some Christians will be ready to listen to them and to learn
whatever is to be learned.
In this enterprise the difficulties confronting Muslims are immense. A
combination of sound scholarship and deep moral insight is needed, and this
combination is rare. My personal view is that Muslims are unlikely to be
successful in their attempt to influence world opinion, at least in the
sphere of morals. In the wider sphere of religion they have probably
something to contribute to the world, for they have retained emphases -- on
the reality of God, for example -- which have been neglected or forgotten in
important sections of the other monotheistic religions; and I for one gladly
acknowledge my indebtedness to the writings of men like al-Ghazali. But
towards convincing Christian Europe that Muhammad is the ideal man little,
indeed nothing, has so far been accomplished.
