Posted by Or… God Uppercase
I just started reading Rashed Hasan’s new treatise, Removing the Middleman: Deciphering Faith Without Ritual. The book is intended to be an examination of accepting faith without being bound to ritual. Just in the foreword, he makes an assertion which I think is worth contemplating and with which I think many Muslims fail to engage:
It is important to note that some Muslims who lack knowledge or proper understanding of the essence of God or prophethood tend to elevate Prophet Muhammad to some level of divinity while vehemently opposing any notion of divinity to Prophet Jesus, who is showered with divine attributes by his followers.
I could not agree more. I was once told by an unkel that Prophet Muhammad could not make mistakes. When I asked him how this was not making equals with Allah, he replied that that the Prophet was an exception. A friend once told me that he saw no reason to even recognize the birth of Prophet Isa (Jesus) because, “we have our own Prophet”. This despite the fact that the Qur’an even recognizes the significance of the Virgin Birth, though our story of Prophet Isa’s life is vastly different.
Is it possible that in the religious arms race, Muslims have unconsciously sought to elevate ‘our’ Prophet Muhammad over Prophet Jesus and in doing so, have imbued him with status which the Qur’an itself declares cannot be accorded to a man.
Look, no one is denying Prophet Muhammad’s greatness. But yes, he was a man. He was a man who lived in the 600’s. He lived, loved, laughed, lost, made mistakes, reached greatness, aged and died. It is right that we venerate his life. Prophet Muhammad gave voice to one of the great religions of mankind and his example is a great one for many Muslims to follow. But veneration turns to zeal and zeal to idolatry, however unconscious, when we venerate the Man and not the man.
