Boreal

From Merchant to Messenger

The Prophet Muhammad's struggle for legitimacy as revealed in the Koran

For the Love of a Father?

Don’t you just feel the love of a father for his son in Revelations 33:56-57, where Allah blesses Muhammad and issues a stern warning to anyone who would harm him? Does it not remind you of another God-Son relationship?

33:56 Allah and His angels bless the Prophet. O believers, bless him and greet him graciously, too.

33:57 Those who cause Allah and His Messenger any injury, Allah has cursed them in this life and the life to come and has prepared for them a demeaning punishment.

33:58 And those who injure the believers, men and women, except for what they have incurred, have borne the burden of falsehood and manifest sin.

When you read the Koran, especially the verses where God expresses his love for Muhammad and threatens to do serious harm to anyone who would harm him or cause him distress, you can’t help thinking that Allah is the father Muhammad never had, the father he might have imagined. In his last public appearance, a short time before he died, Muhammad asked the thousands who had come to hear what would be his last sermon (see Appendix: Muhammad’s Last Sermon) if he had done a good job. The crowd shouted in unison: “We bear witness that you have conveyed the trust and discharged your ministry and looked to our welfare.” He then lifted his forefinger toward the sky and then, pointing toward the people, then to the heavens above, asked God to bear witness three times: “O Lord: Bear Thou witness unto it.”

Did Muhammad, in making the Koran known to mankind, want to please Allah the way a child wishes to ingratiate himself to his father, and in return gain the love and approbation that comes from being a good son? If you believe, then the answer is obvious.