Islam News @ NYTWould you like your own blog hosted at Talk Islam? Email the admin at "salaam at talk islam dot info" !
Talk Islam uses Wordpress MU and the Prologue theme by Automattic
DISCLAIMER: Please see the About Talk Islam page for fair use issues and our privacy policy.
DONATE: Talk Islam needs your support!
A muslim professor in Germany has decided that the Prophet SAW did not exist.*
I understand the need and right of academia to perform critical examination of religion, but this seems a pretty quixotic agenda. It seems like he’s more intoxicated with his own status as academic freethinker than performing any serious academic inquiry. There’s far more evidence for Mohammed’s SAW existence than there was for Jesus AS.
*astaghfirullah.
I’ve penned my thoughts on the debate over milad al nabi and the broader issue of bottom-up versus top-down legitimacy in Islamic practices.
Prophet Mohammad’s promise to the Christians.
In 628 AD, a delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery came to Prophet Muhammed and requested his protection. He responded by granting them a charter of rights, which I reproduce below in its entirety. St. Catherine’s Monastery is located at the foot of Mt. Sinai and is the world’s oldest monastery. It possesses a huge collection of Christian manuscripts, second only to the Vatican, and is a world heritage site. It also boasts the oldest collection of Christian icons. It is a treasure house of Christian history that has remained safe for 1400 years under Muslim protection.
The Promise to St. Catherine:
“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by God! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”
In honor of the Night of Ascent (laylatul Me’raj), I have a photo of the interior of Masjid al Aqsa in Jerusalem (Dome of the Rock).
You come across conversations about Islam in the strangest places.
Two years ago a group of fantasy role-playing geeks pondered the question of whether the prophet (pbuh) could be written into a role-playing Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
Some version of this question may have occurred to more people than you might think, since D&D is the best-selling, most-popular of all these games ever, with an estimate of over 20 million people having played at one time in their life or another. Many D&D campaigns are written into historical settings and then deviate in fantasy. Naturally the conversation is hyperbolic, addled and error-prone for lack of knowledge, but illuminating from a Dawah standpoint, especially since the participants are trying to do the right thing and not be offensive. I think it’s interesting that one person’s response to thin-skinned, hair-trigger outrage is to conclude that the only way to avoid trouble with Muslims is “to forget that Mohamed even exists and NEVER even utter his name.” There goes your Dawah opportunity.
Here’s the initial question:
If I set the campaign at a time when Mohammed were alive, and I gave him in game stats, would that constitute a “depiction” of him? Further, if I were to put a miniature representing him on the battlemap, would that also be a depiction of him for the purposes of someone blowing my house up?
Did you know George Bush wrote the first American biography of the Prophet SAW, and his passionate theological scholarship actually won grudging respect from Arab censors?