Muslim tradition preserves evidence of Muhammad’s impulse toward religious compromise.
Evidence
For a fleeting moment, according to Ibn Hishâm, Muhammad proffered reconciliation with the idolaters, devotees of the three Meccan goddesses: “Have you thought on Allât and al-’Uzzâ, and, thirdly, on Manât? They are exalted birds and their intercession is desired indeed.” In Muhammad’s desire to reconcile Islam with his compatriots, he had compromised its monotheism. Muslim tradition tells us that the angel Gabriel came to him and told him that it was Satan who placed those words into his mouth, that these satanic verses must be removed, and the following condemnation of the three goddesses must be put in their place: “They are but names which you and your fathers have invented: God has vested no authority in them. The unbelievers follow vain conjectures and the whims of their own souls.” The story of the “Satanic verses,” from later Muslim tradition, shows Muhammad’s desire to accommodate, to save even those who will not receive his message. While the message of the Koran is harsh, the messenger sometimes tries to soften is harshness, and is reprimanded: “Are you [Muhammad], then, going to melt away your soul in sorrow for them that they do not believe in this Teaching?” (Koran 18:6). The Koran rebukes the Prophet for his soft-heartedness and his impatience; other prophets, it tells him, accepted God’s will with patience and equanimity. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 214
Categorization
- XREF: The Satanic verses prefigure Rushdie’s novel and the whole notion of abrogated revelation as contested scripture.
- SEED: Angle: the theology of accommodated revelation — how religions metabolize their founders’ moments of compromise.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing how pre-Salman Rushdie Islamic scholarship treated the Satanic verses episode before it became a global scandal.