Muhammad uncensored

by Letters Editor · October 27, 2011

From Fr Christopher Clohessy, Cape Town

I� am sorry that JH Goossens (October 5) thinks my article on Muhammad a politically correct avoidance of a fatwa. I have no interest in Muhammad aside from an academic one, thus negating any need to whitewash him (plenty have done that already) or, for that matter, to denigrate him (again, no shortage of texts).

Mr Goossens quotes a short passage from Ibn Hisham, but a short passage from Ibn Hisham hardly tells the full story, any more than one example proves the argument.

Abu Sufyan was one of Muhammad�s chief military and political opponents: a wealthy Meccan businessman, he saw Islam as a threat to the economy of his city and did everything in his power to destroy it�this included raising and leading armies against the Muslims in Medina and plenty of verbal abuse against Muhammad.

As the end approached, Sufyan, facing the death penalty were he to be captured, tried negotiating with Muhammad�s family, but to no avail. Muhammad, putting aside personal enmity, offered Sufyan his life should he convert to Islam and submit to Muhammad�s leadership, an offer perfectly consonant with the rather brutal life of 8th century Arabia.

This incident does not detract from the fact that forced conversions were rare�one of Muhammad�s own wives remained a Christian until the end of her days, while in the early days of Islamic expansion, conversions from Christianity and Judaism to Islam were discouraged by the Islamic authorities (admittedly for economic reasons).

Mr Goossens speaks of �a narration of Muhammad�s real uncensored life story�. I am curious to know how he judges what is censored and what is not�in order to do that, one would have to read all the earliest Arabic texts first.

Perhaps he can supply us with a list of authors and texts which present Muhammad�s real uncensored life story (though I could hazard a guess at some of them)? Hopefully he doesn�t mean Salman Rushdie, since Rushdie writes (primarily) fiction, and his most famous (or infamous) work centred on certain Qur�anic verses and makes no claim to be a biography of Muhammad. I would be keen for some names and references.