Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 56
56 Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi and the greatest tribute they pay to him is by using his same beguil- ing ways of sowing seeds of doubt and contempt within the struc- ture of Islam in their books; and they have tried desperately to taint the character of the Holy Prophet(sa) and his noble Companions, and they have tried to find inconsistencies in the Holy Qur’an and the traditions of Hadith. What Montgomery Watt has presented is nothing new compared to the Western scholars before him, but it is the way that he has pre- sented it - just as the Promised Messiah(as) had prophecised: ‘in ways most subtle. . . . . all directed to beguile and lead people astray. ’ (Victory of Islam, p. 3). Sir Hamilton Gibb, in the Hibbert-Journal while giving an appre- ciation of Watt’s book Muhammad at Mecca, unwittingly remarks that : ‘The book gives the impression of having been written by one who has entered imaginatively into the experience of Muhammad in Mecca to a greater degree than any previous biographer. ’ And this has been the root cause of the main problem and has been the point of contention - the orientalists, especially the Western ones, have let their ‘imaginations’ run wild and have based their arguments on hearsay and they have twisted the facts to their ad- vantage, shaping the character of Muhammad(sa) to suit their own passions, ideas and fantasies. By way of example, I will just mention a few instances. In his book Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity, Watt has even doubt- ed ‘the traditional Islamic conception of the Qur’an as the word of God’, and talks of ‘the human element in its revelation. ’ (p. 82). I am sure the reader will observe that this has been repeated so often by other Western scholars as well. Watt also talks of errors of historical fact found in the Qur’an, like the one : ‘that Mary the mother of Jesus is apparently confused with Miriam the sister of Aaron (19:28); both would be Maryam in Arabic.