Class session: Tuesday, September 22
Guest summarizer: Sadra Bowie
Class today focused on Muhammad, the wives, the Quran, and to a lesser extent the hadith. We discussed a lot about how the Quran is a miracle, that it’s different from other religious texts because it is the direct verbatim word of God, and that masters of language at the level of the Arab tribes of Mecca were not able to write at the level of the Quran. Then we moved to a discussion of Muhammad and how important it is that Muhammad is fundamentally human, that he makes mistakes, the people around him call him out, and that he changes. There’s a tendency to fight to perceive Muhammad as either a hero or a villain, but really, maybe he’s neither, because people rarely fall fully into those boxes. It helps us to forgive ourselves when we see that he also made mistakes and fell into those human categories, and also it’s important that we see the ways that he is influenced by others around him, like the wives and the other people in his community, providing us with other people to look to as examples.
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5 thoughts on “Muhammad and the Qur’an”
Declan M Kelsey
The way Muhammad is portrayed is very different from that of other religious figures such as Christ or Buddha, who ended up being worshiped by their followers. The separation of the divine from the mortal Muhammad is actually quite striking, considering how often religious figures are deified in the centuries following their deaths.
Hassan Jaber
The point that you made about Muhammad being fundamentally human is very crucial in understanding who he was as an influencer and who he is as a Prophet. The fact that he was human means that although he was spreading the message of Islam, he also made mistakes which is very reflective of human behavior.
Aya Kanan
I think the conversation about how Muhammad may not necessarily fall into categories of hero or villain was an extremely important one to have. We often try to fit humans into either or categories, when in reality it hardly needs to be that way.
Jeremy Silverstein
I admire your suggestion that, through his own flaws and his admission of error, Muhammad set a precedent by which future Muslims would approach their own inherent fallibility.
Liora Finkel
By allowing Muhammad to simultaneously be a prophet and a flawed human, it is an example of why outside of Christianity, prophets are not necessarily the same thing as saints.