Differing Views of Muhammad

For the th anniversary of theSept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, CRC News has prepared a series of stories about how the Christian Reformed Church and its members have responded – and what we have learned – in the last 10 years.

Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina, tried to help his audience on the campus of Calvin College understand why nearly two billion Muslims around the world find holiness and connection to Allah by following the teachings of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Muslims revere Muhammad and follow what he taught because the prophet’s instructions, they believe, came straight from God, Allah, through the Angel Gabriel, who spoke them to Muhammad over a long period of time.

"Good Muslims follow the example of the prophet because they believe his teachings were about the truth," said Safi, who has written a biography of Muhammad.

Muslims face the normal challenges of life and they find that their faith, and especially the five times of prayer every day that Muhammad and his early followers taught, helps to sustain them, Safi said.

Muhammad taught his followers many things, he said, especially how to live an upright life of holiness and how to give to those in need and to share the teachings of Islam with others

Critics say Safi is well-meaning but wrong. He is, they say, an apologist for Islam and ignores the violent, world-dominating aspects of the religion. He portrays an Islam that does not really exist, say critics.

At another conference on the campus of Calvin College, Mark Drurie, an Anglican vicar from Australia, said people need to realize that Islamic thought teaches that Muslims have a divine destiny to guide and rule the world. He said he views Islam with skepticism and some fear.

Safi believes otherwise.

"We so easily are willing to often overlook the good in Islam and focus on the evil," Safi said. "We should hold on to this notion that people of all religions are inspired to do good things because of faith."

In his book, Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters, he describes how Muhammad grew up an orphan in sixth Century Arabia.

Even at a young age, Safi writes, Muhammad was a seeker of spirituality, praying often by himself in remote, desert places to, what he came to believe, was only one God, Allah.

At the age of 40, he heard the voice of Allah, mediated through the Angel Gabriel, calling him to pass on the Lord's messages to a troubled world, especially to the people of Arabia who did not believe in one God who ruled the universe.

He was also the prophet through whom God wanted to right the wrong interpretations of the Bible. Allah apparently told him that the Jews and Christians had corrupted their books largely through allowing them to be translated into other languages.

Only the Qur'an remained pure and unvarnished because the words presented to Muhammad remained in their original form in Arabic, writes Safi.

Muhammad’s ministry was not easy. Not many people believed what he had to say at first. "Muhammad and his small group of followers were persecuted, a few were killed, and their homes and property were confiscated, and many were exiled," Safi writes.

But Muhammad persisted, driven on by the voice of Allah. His group of followers grew, as did Muhammad's faith and insight. Especially in his early days as a prophet, he taught the need for people of different faiths to get along. Also in this early period, he taught non-violence. Later, he led an army that fought Islam’s persecutors.

Rev. Marvin Heyboer, a retired Christian Reformed pastor, wrote a self-published book about Islam. The Muhammad he learned about, in his research that took him to many countries, is not the one Safi promotes.

After the attacks ofSeptember 11, 2001, Heyboer wanted to learn more about Islam, starting off by thoroughly reading the Qur'an and the first published biography on Muhammad.

Both the Qur’an and the biography challenged any assumptions he might have had that Islam was a religion of peace, he writes in his book.

He writes that Muhammad was not a lover of peace and cooperation. During the last several years of his life, Muhammad became a warrior who led many bloody attacks against polytheistic and Jewish villages in the region around Mecca, the South Arabian city he called home.

While acknowledging that Muhammad did battle those who oppressed Islam, Safi says the prophet was not a lover of war. Safi wrote his book, he said, to give a full, well-rounded picture of Muhammad as a prophet and sincere and respected religious leader.

"For Muslims, divine self-revelation (the Qur'an) comes through Muhammad, and his very life became the first commentary on the Qur'an . . . For Muslims, if God is at the center of existence, it is Muhammad who marks the path to that center," writes Safi.