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There is no "one shared view".
The enigma of Islam: The two faces of Muhammad
American Muslims tell us that Islam is a religion of peace. Jihadist leaders abroad describe Islam as a religion of war against infidels. Who is correct? Both are correct.
If both are correct, does this mean that there are two Muhammads and two Qurans? Yes, in the sense that Muhammad was like two different persons at two different times and the Quran is like two contradictory books pasted together.
Now that you are thoroughly confused, let us turn to history and to the book Islam and the Bible: Why two faiths collide (2004), by David Goldmann, veteran missionary to Muslims in Morocco, for the solution to this riddle.
Muhammad (circa 570–632 A.D.) was born in Mecca and was a traveling merchant until age 40. From 610–622 he had a ministry in Mecca as a prophet of Allah. In 622, he fled from his enemies in Mecca and led his followers to Medina. Through tribal political alliances, Muhammad soon became the ruler of Medina. He ruled Medina until his death (622–632).
According to Mr. Goldmann, Muhammad as ruler of Medina had a strikingly different character than when he was the prophet of Mecca. The Quranic verses he penned in Mecca often contradict the verses he wrote in Medina. Let us compare the two Muhammads and the two Qurans. The following numbered examples are paraphrases of points in Goldmann's book. My commentaries on the numbered statements are in parentheses.
Mecca versus Medina
(1) In Mecca, Muhammad preached and exhorted people to submit to Islam. In Medina, he used the threat of the sword to compel people to convert to Islam.
(According to the Medina verses, Allah accepts converts who do not believe in him inwardly, but will kneel to him outwardly under threat of death. Muhammad did not have this view of Allah until he became a war lord and used force to compel people to accept his rule.)
(2) In Mecca, Muhammad led the life of a teacher and prophet and followed disciplines of prayer, fasting, and worship. In Medina, he was the political ruler and the military commander. During his ten years in Medina, he personally led 27 military attacks. Prior to his death, he conquered most of the Arabian peninsula.
(The Allah of Medina allowed his prophet to be a warlord seeking military conquest. In like manner, he encourages Muslim leaders to spread the religion of Islam by the sword--which they did on an epic scale after the death of Muhammad. The conquests continued until the Muslims met those with stronger armies, or they outran their supply lines. The Muslims eventually conquered about 50% of the Christian world--the eastern Mediterranean lands, the Middle East, and North Africa--and gradually extinguished most of the Christian testimony in those lands.)
(The Westward rush of conquest was halted exactly a century after Muhammad's death. The Muslim army in Spain attacked Gaul [France] and was defeated by Charles the Hammer at the battle of Tours [732 A.D.]. Muslims subsequently switched to expansion through proselytizing and mercantile colonies. However, when new Muslim nations arose with great armies [e.g., Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, and Moguls], they reverted to the expansion of Islam through conquest. The Ottoman Turks conquered the remains of the Christian Byzantine Empire and took Constantinople in 1453. They attacked Europe from the east in 1529 and 1683, and both times were stopped at the gates of Vienna by European armies. Three times [732, 1529 & 1683], Christian civilization in Europe came close to extinction from invading Muslim armies.)
(3) In Mecca, Muhammad had one wife. During his last ten years of his life at Medina, he married twelve more women.
(The poor family man of Mecca became the wealthy, voluptuous sheik with a harem of "wives" in Medina. Polygamy and harem culture debases women and makes men hedonistic and narcissistic. Societies that sanction polygamy, harems, and concubines have always assigned a low status to women.)
(The Medina Quran's heaven for men is a garden paradise where every male sensual pleasure is catered to by nubile nymphs--just as every sensual pleasure of Muhammad, as the voluptuous sheik of a harem, was indulged. The Medina Allah is a God for men. Goldmann says Muslim women have a hard time getting into paradise.)
(4) In Mecca, Muhammad fought against idol worship. In doing so, he exempted Christians and Jews from his proscriptions and persecutions and respected them as "people of the book." In Medina, he persecuted Christians and Jews as infidels.
(Christians and Jews in Islamic countries never know when they will be protected and respected or persecuted and reviled. The situation is often fluid so that protection can suddenly gives way to persecution. Historically, the best Christians and Jews can hope for under Muslim rule is second class citizenship and heavy taxes from which Muslims are exempt. When jihad and war lord sensibilities were in the air, Christians and Jews often faced forced conversion, banishment, slavery, sexual bondage, or death.)
Was Muhammad corrupted by power?
Was Muhammad corrupted by power in Medina? We do not know for sure, but it appears to be so. His exploitation of women by creating a harem of wives and his violent abuse of power in Medina was the very antithesis of his methods and behavior in Mecca. If the change in the Quranic verses resulted from Mohammed's changed character, then we can rule out Muhammad's claim that the contents of the Quran were dictated by the Angel Gabriel. If Muhammad lied about getting the verses from Gabriel, the changed verses were probably self-serving. Does that imply that Muhammad was a charlatan? Not necessarily. It's possible he was just self-deceived.
The hypnotic power by which Islam holds hundreds of millions of people in an enchanted thralldom is the profile of a cult, not a mere con-game. The spiritual powers of heretical cults emanate from diabolical sources. Muhammad may well have been deluded by the same dark powers as have bewitched his followers.
Unfortunately, Muhammad's changed behavior and teachings in Medina are a little too convenient and self-serving for anyone with a grain of skepticism about human nature to swallow. We are thereby compelled to face the possibility that Muhammad was corrupted in Medina by the lust for power, control, vengeance, fame, wealth, and women--and wrote the new verses of the Quran to rationalize his vices.
We can find the same venal motivations and self-serving manipulation of religion in many of the Muslim caliphs that followed Muhammad, and in the Muslim dictators of today. The corruption of Muslim officialdom in many lands seems to follow the pattern set by Mohammed when he was a corrupt war lord.
_________________ The Hawk wrote: There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.
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