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In Muhammad, I should hold, there was a welling up of the creative imagination, and the ideas thus produced are to a great extent true and sound. It does not follow, however, that all the Qur'anic ideas are true and sound. In particular there is at least one point at which they seem to be unsound; the idea that ' revelation ' or the product of the creative imagination is superior to normal human traditions as a source of bare historical fact. There are several verses in the Qur'an (II. 5I; 3. 39; I2. I03) to the effect that ' this is one of the reports of the unseen which We reveal to thee; thou didst not know it, thou nor thy people, before this '. One could admit a claim that the creative imagination was able to give a new and truer interpretation of a historical event, but to make it a source of bare fact is an exaggeration and false.
This point is of special concern to Christians, since the Qur'an denies the bare fact of the death of Jesus on the cross, and Muslims still consider that this denial outweighs the contrary testimony of historical tradition. The primary intention of the Qur'an was to deny the Jews' interpretation of the crucifixion as a victory for themselves, but as normally explained it goes much farther. The same exaggeration of the role of ' revelation ' has also had other consequences. The Arab contribution to Islamic culture has been unduly magnified, and that of the civilized peoples of Egypt, Syria, 'Iraq and Persia, later converted to Islam, has been sadly belittled.
Too much must not be made of this slight flaw. Which of us, conscious of being called by God to perform a special task, would not have been more than a little proud ? On the whole Muhammad was remarkably free from pride. Yet this slight exaggeration of his own function has had grave consequences and cannot be ignored.
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William Montgomery Watt in Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961), p. 239

 

Holy Prophet Muhammad

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Much speculation and analysis has been devoted to an effort to discover the source of Muhammad's revelation and thus explain away his claim to Prophethood. The results have not been conclusive. Some say Muhammad had a Jewish tutor, which may be true; some think he was acquainted with, and impressed by, Syrian Christian monks, which may be true; others think the trading society in which he lived offered in itself a kaleidoscopic picture of different religions which may also be true. What is fundamental of course is that Muhammad did not lay claim to originality for his religion. Time and time again he announced that his revelation was only a confirmation of all previous revelations.

 

Holy Prophet Muhammad

 

I say that what Israel did to the Palestinian people is many times worse than what Nazism did to the Jews, and there is exaggeration, which has become obsolete, regarding the issue of the Holocaust. We do not deny the facts, but we will not give in to extortion by exaggeration.

 

Khaled Mashal

 

I always took the view — contrary to most previous scholars of Islam — that the Quran was not something that Muhammad had consciously produced. For long, however, I hesitated to speak of him as a prophet, because Muslims would have taken this to mean that everything in the Quran was finally and absolutely true, which was something I did not believe. More recently, however, I have said that Muhammad is a prophet comparable to the Old Testament prophets, though with a different task, namely, to bring the knowledge of God to people without such knowledge, whereas their task was mainly to criticize the conduct of those who already believed in God.

 

Holy Prophet Muhammad

 

Christians claimed the Antichrist was Muhammad, founder of Islam, because they consider him a false prophet who placed himself above Jesus, and whose religion conquered Jerusalem and forcibly converted Christians, Jews, and others.

 

Holy Prophet Muhammad

 

The Great Means for the Teaching, and the Blessing, and the Awakening, and the Divine Liberating of mankind (and of even all beings) Is the Adept-Realizer. The true Adept-Realizer (of any degree or kind) is One Who (by Virtue of True Divine Realization) Is Able to (and, indeed, cannot do otherwise than) Stand In and As the Divine (or Real and Inherent and One and Only) Position, and to Be (Thus and Thereby) the Divine Means (In Person) for the Divine Helping of one and all. This Great Means Is the Great Esoteric Principle of the collective historical Great Tradition of mankind. And Such Adept-Realizers Are (in their Exercise of the Great Esoteric Principle) the Great Revelation-Sources That Are at the Core and Origin of all the right and true religious and Spiritual traditions within the collective historical Great Tradition of mankind.

 

Adi Da