Living in a fantasy world: How Muslims cope with reality

Submitted by Dr RJP (United States), Feb 13, 2006 at 10:30

Read this link:

In doing some research on Mohammed, I found an article entitled, "Mohammed The Prophet," written in 1978 by a professor at the University of Southern California. Assuming that his favorable portrayal of Mohammed accurately reflects the views held by today's Muslims, then one will immediately understand why there is such a great divide between what history says about Mohammed and what Muslims say about him. The article is located at:

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/prophet/lifeofprophet.html

We all remember "Baghdad Bob" the Iraqi Information Minister who continued to claim that the Americans were being defeated by Iraqi soldiers even as our tanks rolled through Baghdad. Those of us who listened to Yassir Arafat spin stories about a mythical place called, Palestine," that was supposedly Canaan in the Bible, and how modern-day Palestinians are actually descendants of the Phillistines know that there is no limit to the Arabic imagination. This is especially true (and played out daily) in all the conspiracy theories about "Zionists" taking over the world, being responsible for 9/11, and more recently, the Danish cartoons, and for fabricating a fairy tale called the "Holocaust."

To put it bluntly, the article about Mohammed mentioned above ought to cause everyone in the Western World to lose their lunch. I have to believe that Muslims are being taught this fanciful version of Arabic history which, if it does find any faults in Mohammed, is that he was "too kind and merciful" to his enemies.

It is one thing to be a historical revisionist, but quite another to create a history that is totally different in every respect from what we know to be true. That is why it may make more sense to talk about a clash of realities rather than a clash of cultures.

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