"Muhammad was supposed to be an example for all time and all places."
Maybe he is an example for all time only in relation to his time and place.
ie. be nice to your slaves, don't beat your wife too harshly.
Quite a humanitarian when you think about it.
Thats as generous as I can get.
B
BI used to think that. That Mohammad somehow made it better for his time. I stopped believing that couple years ago. Absolutely nothing new in his sharia, even (specially) relative to his time.
Banning pork (stupid - not new). ablution before you pray (stupid - not new).
In fact. It makes it much easier to counter islam, if muhammad did some good and progressive things for his time. And perhaps, learning from Hassan, I should just continue to diplomatically maintain that muhammad was progressive for his time.
But the reality is rough. Muhammad was not progressive for his time. On the issue of honor and mainaining your word. Muhammad gave ample and ambiguous conditions to permit the arab to break his word. An unheard off concept prior to muhammad. On the issue of peace, the arabs lost the sanctity of peace during the Haram month. On the issue of mixing families, muhammad banned adoption and the beautiful habit of accepting a blood-brother.
Banning burial of daughter (Only progressive command - not new). When women complained about getting beat, didn't aisha act surprised at the harsh rulings against women? (no woman suffers as much as the believing woman).
As for the age of marriage, at best, he solidified the idea that the age difference can continue to be high (44 yrs difference). And at worst, he pushed the norms even lower, by marrying a girl that was younger than the average of his time.
As for establishing shura councils and a form of government. Mecca had a 'forum' Three generations before Muhammad. It was a roman/persian style forum, where elders met and discussed meccan matters. A governent.
The haj ritual? word for word, ritual for ritual it was taken from the existing hak ritual. The only thing he added, was he banned people from going around nude (was that a good thing?). And you can still notice how little cloth men and women wear, as they perform the hajj today.
As I fail to find a good subject in the koran, as in, as people fail to demonstrate to me a good subject in the koran. People also fail to demonstrate to me anything enlightening muhammad brought to his time.
This is the one thing I always conclude. Mohammad managed to make people less tribal and more nationalist through religion. As such, he united the arabs. Initiated the Fotouhat. And made them an empire.
Now, being useful in uniting tribes, is a far cry from the image I get about a spiritual & enlightening man, who improves & enriches the morals and ethics of his tribesman.
But then again, even if I concede that uniting arabs is a spiritual and enlightened contribution. And for the most part, it could have been. Unfortunately, I also note that the Arab ended up leading a stupid empire. A destructive empire. An empire that destroyed much more then it created. An empire that always suffered a negative population counts once it established itself (very bad).
An stupid empire, that even the arabs, suffered tremendously as islam expanded. It seemed that starting with the Abbasid, every time the arabs exported islam to someone new, that 'someone' would take islam, come back and punish the arabs with it (Mongols' muslim Timurlane, Ottoman, etc.). In modern times, imagine the West turning to islam. Who will then send aid to Pakistan during the next earthquake? or if the US and the zionist turned to islam, how much higher would the body counts be in the middle east?
Now if uniting the arabs into an empire is his only progressive contribution, in absence of all other enlightened contributions. Shouldn't this 'contribution' be measured for its value?
If uniting the Arabs into an empire, is to be touted as an enlightened contribution, wasn't the cost of building this empire too high? A cost too stupid to pay? Wouldn't the Arabs been better off waiting, few more years or couple more centuries to become a more progressive empire?
If someone builds an organization and bring people together, shouldn't we judge him based on what did this organization accomplish? For example if I unite people together to start my own russian pyramid scheme or a ponzy scheme, was I a progressive man for uniting some people together? When my action result in their bankrupt?
The Arabs did not create their armies that took over the world around them from thin air. I will suggest that the Arabs had most of the elements they needed to start their empire ready at home. Two weakened empires, on the Right and Left. Human resources were clearly available. All the Arab were missing I contend was an ideology to focus them. They had the religions, they had the prophets. Unfortunately, the ideology that was offered to them, the ideology that won at the Ridda battles of the Yamama (70,000 Arabs killed mostly civilians), was not progressive. It was not progressive at all.
EDIT: Added a pragraph 10 mins after posting plus corrected typos.
Topic: Mohammad, the Pedophile