Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 47
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 47 have formed some part of it, and, as we have seen, he even admitted at a later stage that Satan himself had managed to insert his own orders. ’ (p. 219). Rodinson has admitted that in his book he has given an appre- ciation of Muhammad(sa) on purely objective terms. But the reasons for writing the book are exposed both in the Foreword to the book and in the conclusion. In the Foreword, he gives some sort of justification for writing a book on Muhammad(sa) when so many of them had already been written, especially recently. The reason surely is that the constant and continuous onslaught against Islam has taken on a deportment of perpetuity. These attacks have to continue in one form or another and what better way than to discredit the Holy Prophet(sa) of Islam and make him out to be whatever takes their fancy, and in showing him, in not just a less than pure light, but in insolent and contemp- tuous language. Towards the end of the book, Rodinson puts his foot right in it and shows his true colours when summing up the character of Muhammad(sa). The Promised Messiah(as) had forewarned the Muslims of the bigotry of the Western scholars in his book Victory of Islam, when he said that the Christian nations of the West would use beguiling and cunning ways to lead people astray by using lies and fabrications. Mark the ambiguity in Rodinson’s language in the last two para- graphs when describing Muhammad’s life-sketch : ‘The picture is not a simple one. It is neither the satanic monster of some. . . neither the cold-blooded impostor nor the political theo- rist, nor the mystic wholly in love with God. If we have understood him rightly, Muhammad was a complex man, full of contradictions. He was fond of his pleasures, yet indulged in bouts of asceticism. He was often compassionate, yet sometimes cruel. . . . He was cool and nervous, brave and timid, a mixture of cunning and frankness, forgiving and at the same time capable of terrible vindictiveness,