FURTHER COMMENT TO SUPPORT THE MOVEMENT OF MODERATE MUSLIMS

Submitted by MOHAMAD NOZZI (Singapore), Apr 27, 2009 at 21:44

If you have browsed through the life of Prophet Muhammad in history, you should have discovered that he spent 3 years in preaching to his wife, cousin, friend and servant for their conversions to muslims. He indeed did not start his fighting with pagans in the public. He also did not perform vandalism, riots and/or etc. to cause the destruction of the surrounding buildings. He even did not slaughter pagans even during the first three years of mission. For instance, if Allah's message is to kill pagans, he would start his fighting at the age of 40 after he met an angel to review the revelation from Allah.

As he actively involved in the sharing of the message of Allah during the first three years after receiving revelation from an angel about Allah, it implies that Allah's mission to him is to actively involve in preaching to non-muslims.

As he spent three years such a long period so as to reach his wife, a few of his friends and associates, it implies he preached to them and was patiently waiting for the repentance of these people.

From the history, we know that Prophet Muhammad only fought against the pagans when the pagans became to have hostility with him for persecution

I do not consider Prophet Muhammad is cruel. Instead, I consider him as merciful. This is due to he did not immediately start to kill pagans immediately after receiving the revelation about Allah. Instead, he was willing to preach to pagans for the first three years of his missions. The first convert was his wife and later on, friends and associates. If he was cruel to the pagans, he should have started to kill the pagans after receiving the revelation of Allah. If he is cruel, there would not be any possibilities of the conversion of his friends and associates since he would have slaughtered them one by one after receiving the message from Allah.

The fighting with non-muslims only commenced when the mecan stirred up problem to him that was followed by persecution. His fighting was in defensive role since he fought as a result of the perseuction from pagans.

The above explanations show that Prophet Muhammad indeed is a good person and he is merciful in the sense that he did not want pagans to perish during the Last Judgment Day and he spent time to share the message of Allah to the pagans.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".