The Material And Other Sides Of The Prophet’s Character(1/2)

In refuting those sceptics who have doubted the truth and sincerity of Islam, Carlyle condemns scepticism (rather too hastily it seems to me) as an indication of spiritual paralysis.

Most unquestionably he was right in denouncing the former as an idiotic and godless theory. But scepticism itself in a general sense is not necessarily an evil. On the contrary, it is a natural tendency that arises out of the instinct of curiosity. Knowledge is not an inert and passive principle, but an active and dynamic force.

Buckle in his history speaks of scepticism as stimulating curiosity. But he has put the cart before the horse. It is curiosity that excites scepticism. Curiosity is an animal instinct - the basis of all science. It exists in the lower animal creation - scepticism only in the upper human section. It is a higher or further development, a tendency that is certainly strengthened, if not acquired through education.

According to Lecky, “The first stage to toleration in England was due to the spirit of scepticism encroaching upon the doctrine of exclusive salvation”; and “the extinction of the spirit of intolerance both in Catholic and Protestant countries - due to the spirit of rationalism - was the noblest of all the conquests of civilization.” But as rationalism itself is chiefly the consequence of scepticism and the result of inquiry, it is obvious that in a deeply fundamental sense, the world is very considerably indebted to science or the spirit of scepticism. Indeed all knowledge has arisen from experience, and the desire to search into the root of things - to know what is what. Without curiosity and scepticism, human thought would have long since stagnated and the world remained sunk in ignorance. As Ghazali says, “No knowledge without assurance deserves the name of knowledge.” Seeing is not always devouring. Curiosity is not necessarily gluttony, or “scepticism, that curse of the intellect,” as Victor Hugo calls it. Gluttony is unnatural, unwholesome, and bestial. It is not so much overdoing, as a flagrant abuse and outrage of a natural appetite. It is a kicking against the pricks—a flying in the face of Providence. But curiosity as an instinct direct from Nature is healthy; therefore the use of it as also wholesome stands in need of stimulus and encouragement.

So Tennyson said of Shelley:

“There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

In this righteous sense Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was curious. As one of her own selection, Nature had specially endowed him with curiosity. He was one of her human, sensitive plants. As an observer, all his senses were developed and on the alert. He not only saw, but felt every vibration that thrilled, as it were, the very soul of the first great mother. In every flitting cloud, as in every fugitive thought, he was conscious of an unseen Power. A look-out man rather than a prophet, it was thus he groped or rather felt his way until he felt God. “I feel that there is a God,” said La Bruyere, “and I do not feel that there is none: that is enough for me; the reasoning of the world is useless to me: I conclude that God exists.” It was in much the same vein of self-argument that Muhammad (Peace be upon him) communed to himself. Having felt God, God became for him a necessity: more so even, an essential - an absolutism which banished all else from his mind. The thought that there was no God did not occur to him. But the thought that other gods could exist in the same universe with the one omnipotence was to him as monstrous as it was unthinkable. Besides Him there was no room for any other. The very thought in his estimation perished from inanition and sheer inability of conception! The trinity of Christianity was to him as impossible and unacceptable as the antediluvian or later polytheism of his own countrymen.

All active minds are sceptical. Carlyle himself—although he appears to have been unconscious of the fact - was himself a sceptic. But it was peculiarly characteristic of the antagonistic dualism of his nature on the one hand to hurl innuendoes, anathemas (and every kind of mental brickbat that he could lay hold of) at what he called scepticism or unbelief. On the other hand, to hold up belief as absolutely essential to human existence. But like all theoretical crotchets, he carried his philosophical speculations too far. In other words, he sometimes overreached himself. According to his particular dogma, in his opinion, the life of man cannot subsist on doubt or denial, it subsists only on belief. But this is altogether beside the mark. Scepticism does not necessarily imply doubt or denial. Belief itself cannot exist without it. It is out of the ashes of scepticism that the immortal Phoenix of belief arises. It is out of the doubt and denial of accepted doctrines that all creeds (including Christianity and Islam) have grown into being. The doubt engendered by scepticism is after all only an investigation or leading into, an analysis of the nature of dogmas, doctrines or creeds. It is an investigation that may or may not have a result. It is but a search for or groping after the truth, as the consequence of moral, intellectual or spiritual dissatisfaction. It is also the desire to know, to find out the pros and cons of all the sides to a question. The spirit or element of doubt is the necessary, the essential precursor of improvement and progress. Hence the immense importance and significance of Scepticism. It is the very sum and substance of all human knowledge. As the acorn is to the oak, scepticism is to knowledge - the seed from which has sprung up all we know, and ever shall know. The ever fluent channel through which all the great intellectual giants and reformers of the world have poured out the glowing flash-lights of their intellect into the normal darkness of human minds. It is the moral effluvium out of which our modern civilization has constructed itself. Without it, the dense gloom and black obscurity of ignorance would have reigned supreme. Confused, chaotic, and enigmatic as the world now is - even in the full glare of its sunlight - without it (if it were possible to imagine such a state) the world would have been an enigma, a chaos and confusion worse confounded. For scepticism is, as it were, the sun in all its glory, as compared to the black oblivion of eternal night. If neither Luther nor Muhammad (Peace be upon him) had been sceptics, there would have been no Reformation and no Islam. They did not take everything for granted. They were not satisfied with things as they were. They looked into the heart of them and found much room for improvement. They examined what they could, rejected that which was spiritually objectionable to them, but made use of what was most appropriate to their respective situations. It was only those features that best suited the exigencies of the case that they were prompt to lay hold of.

Yet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was not of vigorous intellectuality, nor in any sense an original thinker. The constant repetition of formulas and reiteration of the same ideas that occur throughout the Koran show this. It is extremely probable that his mentality was at times overshadowed either by neurasthenic tendencies, or a predisposition to melancholia, and this was more than likely heightened by a life of excessive mental concentration combined with asceticism.

But sincere as he was, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) would not have been a true Arabian, had he not been diplomatic. Thus the commencement of the fourteenth surah is a clever but obvious device on his part; a meeting of his enemies with their own weapons, a flinging back to them of their own words and objections to the truth in their own teeth. It is clear too that here, for the time being, he has resolved on a change of tactics and of front. To prove to them that he is as of old the man to be trusted, he endeavours to disarm their incredulity by his own outspokenness and candour. As the sequel showed, he clearly demonstrates his own perspicacity and knowledge of human nature.

He saw that by arguing with his countrymen, by always opposing their doubts with sophistry and argument, would be of little avail - useless, in fact. Such a course would but have encouraged and stimulated their opposition, on the ground that their beliefs, as worth refuting, were also based on truth or at least on strong evidence.


Besides, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was painfully conscious of his own disability and helplessness to convince them by the performance of anything purporting to be miraculous. That on occasions he displayed artfulness and guile - duplicity, in fact - is not to be denied. The invention, e.g., of his night journey from Mecca to heaven via Jerusalem, was one of them. When he gave out that Gabriel had revealed to him the conspiracy that had been formed against him, which through ordinary means he had discovered, was another of these pious frauds. But after all, what are these trifles compared with those that in their myriads have been perpetrated by the great Church of Christendom? What are they as compared to a long life of strenuous sincerity, great nobility and earnest effort in the cause of humanity? It is impossible to lose sight of the fact that in working for God, he was all the time raising his countrymen from a lower to a higher level. Besides, the necessity of dissimulation, which is one of the heaviest taxes on a king, and the prerogative of a priest, is one of those idiosyncrasies that human flesh being heir to, even a prophet cannot at times escape from. We are reminded of the phrase: “Qui scit dissimulare, scit regnare” - He is a ruler who can conceal his thoughts—attributed to the Emperor Sigismund by that cultured and ambitious but false and subtle Pontiff Pius II, known as Aeneas Sylvius (Pius Æneas): also the identical answer that Louis XI is said to have made to those who urged him to give his son Charles a better education, in order that the boy might in his day become a good king.