Struggling to surrender : some impressions of an American convert to Islam by Lang Jeffrey

Author:Lang, Jeffrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lang, Jeffrey, Muslim converts
Publisher: Beltsville, Md. : Amana Publications
Published: 1995-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Who Is Muhammad?

This chapter shares some ideas on the implications of this question for all Muslims and how it may be approached by new converts.

In order to emulate the qualities and behavior of another, we have to be able to identify with him to some extent. Such an identification is so tied to our personality and his, that answers to this question will depend on the believer and the stage that his/her life has reached. All answers may intersect in a common understanding, but many unique perceptions will continue to exist. Certainly my own perceptions of Muhammad are deeper and perhaps more real than they were eight years ago, although I am sure there is yet much more to understand.

Right now, I would say that if I were to describe the Prophet, my description would be close to that of Watt quoted above. My guess is that for Muhammad to have won the great respect of his followers, they must have seen him as the most perfect personification of the traditional ideal of what it meant to be an Arab leader: one who "keeps good relations with kith and kin, helps the poor and the destitute, serves his guests generously and assists the deserving calamity-afflicted ones.""*^ He must have been, as tradition reports, a man of great integrity, forbearance, and courage, for the Arabs could have accepted no less. His word must have been as hard as steel to have captured his Companions' total confidence. When he decided on a course of action he unwaveringly saw it through.

But to have been the elect of God, to have won the love of his disciples so effortlessly, to have changed society and history to the extent he did, he was surely much greater than merely the Arab ideal. He must have possessed the kind of concern, compassion, and spirituality that we can only poorly approximate in ourselves. To be sure, he was no flower child: he would dispense God's law swiftly and impartially. When some of his Companions pleaded that he make an exception in the law for a noble woman who committed theft, he responded that if his most cherished daughter Fatimah did the same, he would see to it personally that her hand were amputated."^On the other hand, when there was the smallest room for doubt or excuse, or a way open for forgiveness, he would seize it, as when he gave an adulterer three opportunities to withdraw his

""Asad, Sahih at Bukhari, 101. This is Ibn al Daghinnah's description of Abu Bakr. But Khadijah, the wife of the Prophet, comforted him in identical terms after he had received the first revelation. Apparently this was a commonly held definition in pre-Islamic times of an "upright man."

"^Sahih al Bukfiari, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, vol. 5, "The Book of Military Expeditions (59), Hadith no. 597.

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