Prophecy and Power. Houria Abdelouahed
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when faced with excessive conduct).
A: From a linguistic point of view, the word ‘Islam’ doesn’t refer to peace, unless we think of acquiescence, submission, obedience as peace (salām). Moreover, Islam was not founded as peace. Quite the opposite: it saw the light of day as wars and conquests. It imposed a very particular ‘peace’ by forcing non-Muslims to convert. Finally, Islam is not only a faith, but the application of the shar‘ that governs the Muslim’s political space as well as his social space, as I just said. And the vast majority of Muslims dutifully submit in their thinking and in their daily practice to this sharia. Alive or dead, Muhammad remains the guide for that majority.
H: Asking questions is a first step on the road to rescuing yourself from this voluntary submission. The texts tell this story: when Gabriel asked Muhammad to read, he replied, ‘mā aqra’?’ (what can I read?). A different version says ‘lastu bi-qāri’’(I can’t read). It’s this second version that’s the most widespread. To reinforce the prophecy, they created the image of an illiterate prophet Gabriel dictated everything to.
A: I can’t not express my amazement. How can you say, ‘I was visited by an angel and he spoke to me’?
H: When the Qurayshites asked Muhammad why he was the only one ever to see the angel and why he didn’t work miracles, Gabriel swiftly whispered this prompt in reply: ‘Yet if they see a sign they turn away, and they say “A continuous sorcery!”’41 And: ‘Even so not a Messenger came to those before them but they said, “A sorcerer, or a man possessed!”’42 And so, Muhammad’s strength resides in this counter to the lack of proof. I agree with you when you raise the political aspect and the economic aspect. Yet, the psychological aspect is undeniably powerful.
A: That’s for sure. We could say that the practice and experience of trade were extremely advantageous for Muhammad. He knew how to cultivate the art of conversation and the faculty of persuasion. And so he managed to convince people that he was a representative of God on Earth, thus going from the status of trader or caravanner to that of Messenger of God. That remains an undeniable proof of his genius. I said a moment ago that Muhammad submitted to the angel who submitted to God and so on. In fact, the prophecy was a taqwīl of Allah’s.43 God spoke according to his prophet’s desires. For a quarter of a century, God listened to what Muhammad wanted.
H: That’s what little Aïsha summed up when she said: ‘I feel that God rushes to satisfy your desires.’ That’s an extraordinary way of putting the power of Muhammad’s desire, a desire that made even Heaven bend to it.
A: In fact, instead of talking about nubuwwa (prophecy), we need to coin a different term: al-taqwīl. That is, the act of making God say what man wants. Claiming that every word he uttered came to him from God, Muhammad became immortal. The Qur’an had the role of immortalizing him, and killing off all the other prophets in the process. We could even say that the first anti-Semite was the Semite God.
H: We should also add that the illiteracy they invented for Muhammad only reinforced the notion of divine inspiration. Can a trader be illiterate?
A: If Muhammad only said what was instilled in him by God, this also means he can never have read the other books.
H: The logical consequence that follows on from that construction is that, for Muslims, the great role model is a person who knows nothing. What a catastrophe!
A: Actually, this all stems from a determination to sacralize the person of Muhammad. And every caliph repeating the words of the prophet had a hand in his immortalization.
H: ‘I am the truth that speaks.’ I don’t think we’ve really registered the importance of that idea, meaning the manufacture of a human who transcends humanity.
A: And yet, a Muslim must believe that God dictated everything to Muhammad. There is a big difference with Judaism there. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament acknowledged the biblical prophets. Islam, on the other hand, merged them into a single one. Muhammad becomes the sole and unique prophet in an Arabia that was crawling with them.
H: To sweep aside all the civilizations that came before the advent of Islam, along with all the prophets, diviners, poets … of Arabia, you’d have needed great strength and to be incredibly cultivated.
A: And yet, what was the reason Muhammad was so hesitant and troubled? Why did he think of suicide?
H: The hagiographers think the reason had to do with his visions. He was afraid of being a man possessed, a madman. That said, you’re right to put the question again. The sacredness of the person of Muhammad prevents all reflection on Muhammad. We still haven’t been able to do what Michelangelo did when he gave Moses two horns, or to tear apart the founder of Islam the way Freud did Moses, the man.
A: So, we mustn’t be daunted by the question, even if there is no answer, for the moment. Muhammad was a trader and, logically, his education didn’t encourage doubt. How did this grandiose and untouchable side come to see the light of day? What need did it fulfil?
H: He was made sacred. But in a symptomatic way his humanity came back into play on the narrative stage. We read: ‘The prophet of God wanted to defecate and asked two palm trees to come closer so as to shelter him. Aïsha also wanted to go. But when she got to the palm trees, she said, “I can’t see what you did, O Messenger of God!” And Muhammad replies, “The Earth swallows up the excreta of prophets.”’
A: It’s magic! Faeces turn to gold.
H: From a psychoanalytical point of view, the symbol of excrement is worth its weight in gold. But this tale of anality shows the other aspect of the collective imagination, which wavers between the grandiose figure and the human person. As if the ideality that makes the person of Muhammad untouchable was overtaken by the human aspect, but in an anal mode.
A: In Lisān al-‘Arab, siḥr (magic) means ‘the transformation of the reality of a thing into another’, or ‘to make believe something that is not’. You could say, then, that the world of janna (paradise) and of hell are magical.
H: Magical because they contradict the reality principle and the laws of logic and thought.
A: Except that the moment we’re dealing with the word of God, the imaginary becomes reality. Even if it contradicts reality and reason, the word of God becomes absolute truth. A Muslim must therefore believe in the existence of the houris of paradise who go back to being virgins after each deflowering. In fact, Muslims live and die lured by two kinds of magic: the magic of this Earth, full of conquests and spoils, and the magic of a heaven that’s packed with houris, ephebes, and rivers of milk and honey.
H: Everywhere, your urges are satisfied.
Notes
1 1 Adonis, Violence and Islam: Conversations with Houria Abdelouahed, Oxford, Polity, 2016.
2 2 Words of Muhammad. Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the Arabic are by Houria Abdelouahed [with translations from the French by the translator except where other published English translations exist].
3 3 ‘We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender’: (Qur’an 2:136). [The English translation cited in this book is the famous one done by classicist Arthur J. Arberry for Oxford World’s Classics in 1964. Titled The Koran, it has been reissued many times since. Arberry tends to arrange verses eccentrically in bunches, but the basis is fundamentally the same. There are more modern translations available, including one published in 2008 in the Oxford World’s Classics series by Abdel Haleem. Translator’s note.]
4 4 ‘Some of the Jews pervert words from their meanings … twisting with their tongues and traducing religion’: Qur’an 4:46.
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