Muhammad the Greatest: A Comparative Study

[Al-Fatihah]

Through my comparative study, I've noticed that of all religious people within history, none shares as big of a difference in point of view in character and merit amongst people than Muhammad. While muslims see Muhammad as the prophet of islam, a honest, decent, loving messenger of God, and the greatest example for humanity on the best way to live, many non-muslims see Muhammad as not only a false prophet, but attribute some of the most degrading and immoral characteristics and behavior to Muhammad. Such a completely different view of muslims.


I've analyzed the the qur'an and sunnah of Muhammad thoroughly and have seen nothing of the point of view that non-muslims share which makes me ask the question, "where do these differences come from?" Is Muhammad the greatest example of the best way to conduct ourselves? Let's have a discussion.

[pocaracas]

The example may be very praiseworthy, but clearly the followers neglect to follow that example... at least the most visible ones:

The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis) (Danish:Muhammedkrisen)[1] began after 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. The newspaper announced that this publication was an attempt to contribute to the debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship. Muslim groups in Denmark complained and the issue eventually led to protests in many countries around the world, including some violent demonstrations and riots in some Islamic countries.

[Welsh cake]

While Muslims see Muhammad as the prophet of Islam, a honest, decent, loving messenger of God, and the greatest example for humanity on the best way to live, many non-Muslims see Muhammad as not only a false prophet, but attribute some of the most degrading and immoral characteristics and behaviour to Muhammad. Such a completely different view of Muslims.

The same is true of all religions and different world-views, not just Islam. Anyone not belonging to your particular brand of cult, whether religious or non-religious, is going to think you're either,
a) wrong or,
b) insane.

Welcome to reality.

[The Grand Nudger]

"where do these differences come from?"

An honest man doesn't pass off fairy-tales-as-reality, the "greatest example for humanity on the best way to live" is going to have to put forth a little more effort into establishing the compelling nature of his way than "godwillsit".

Should I be surprised that a muslim is enamored with stories of their favorite legendary character? I hardly think so. What would be noteworthy about that? Christians finger Jesus, others finger Buddha, personally.....I like Johnny Appleseed................

Off the top of my head, I'd say the differences come from not having swallowed the koolaid.

[Al-Fatihah]

The example may be very praiseworthy, but clearly the followers neglect to follow that example... at least the most visible ones:

The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis) (Danish:Muhammedkrisen)[1] began after 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. The newspaper announced that this publication was an attempt to contribute to the debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship. Muslim groups in Denmark complained and the issue eventually led to protests in many countries around the world, including some violent demonstrations and riots in some Islamic countries.

Response: I agree that the violent reaction to the drawing of cartoons is very much wrong and uncalled for. However, the reaction is not prescribed in the Qur'an or Sunnah, thus it has nothing to do with Muhammad's character.

[popeyespappy]

Confirmation bias anyone?

[Al-Fatihah]

"where do these differences come from?"

An honest man doesn't pass off fairy-tales-as-reality, the "greatest example for humanity on the best way to live" is going to have to put forth a little more effort into establishing the compelling nature of his way than "godwillsit".

Should I be surprised that a muslim is enamored with stories of their favorite legendary character? I hardly think so. What would be noteworthy about that? Christians finger Jesus, others finger Buddha, personally.....I like Johnny Appleseed................

Response: An honest man also does not pass of responses of alleged that something is an alleged fairy tale without a rational argument to support it.

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While Muslims see Muhammad as the prophet of Islam, a honest, decent, loving messenger of God, and the greatest example for humanity on the best way to live, many non-Muslims see Muhammad as not only a false prophet, but attribute some of the most degrading and immoral characteristics and behaviour to Muhammad. Such a completely different view of Muslims.

The same is true of all religions and different world-views, not just Islam. Anyone not belonging to your particular brand of cult, whether religious or non-religious, is going to think you're either,
a) wrong or,
b) insane.

Welcome to reality.

Response: The reality is not being questioned. It is rather why it exist that is questioned.

---

Confirmation bias anyone?

Response: Nothing wrong with being bias, as long as it does not conflict with logic.

[The Grand Nudger]

"Man goes into cave where a spirit appears and magically bestows upon him the gift of literacy and a revelation from an even more powerful spirit."

Sounds legit.......

---

I take your fairy tales as seriously as they deserve to be taken, not an ounce more or less.

---

[Welsh cake]

Response: The reality is not being questioned. It is rather why it exist that is questioned.

Apparently, you don't understand satire.

I don't understand why you lot insist on having "Muhammad" as your first-name/title and then get offended if any non-Muslim correctly calls you "Muhammad". How pointless. Don't get me started on people who call themselves "Muhammad Muhammad" and then get offended when addressed. That would be the asinine equivalent of every single Christian in North America having "Jesus" as their first-name/title.

Jesus Christ that would be really dumb. >.>

[DeistPaladin]

Through my comparative study, I've noticed that of all religious people within history, none shares as big of a difference in point of view in character and merit amongst people than Muhammad. While muslims see Muhammad as the prophet of islam, a honest, decent, loving messenger of God, and the greatest example for humanity on the best way to live, many non-muslims see Muhammad as not only a false prophet, but attribute some of the most degrading and immoral characteristics and behavior to Muhammad. Such a completely different view of muslims.


I've analyzed the the qur'an and sunnah of Muhammad thoroughly and have seen nothing of the point of view that non-muslims share which makes me ask the question, "where do these differences come from?" Is Muhammad the greatest example of the best way to conduct ourselves? Let's have a discussion.

This sounds a bit like it's going in the direction of the "Trilemma" argument of the Christians. The argument is that Jesus was such a man of exceptional character that he could not be either a lair or a lunatic, so therefore he must be Lord.

There are many logical fallacies packed into this argument but mostly it underscores the pitfall of beginning with the desired conclusion in mind and then looking for reasons to believe it. In this case, the construction of this argument, contrived alternatives are then offered to the desired conclusion which are then over simplified and straw-manned.

The elimination of the alternatives relies heavily on an argument from incredulity, i.e. "I can't imagine anyone who's a liar or a lunatic uttering such words of wisdom" or "I can't imagine someone of such good character making up a false religion". Human nature is much more complex than this argument allows for and, in fact, examples of exceptions to this over-simplified thinking abound in religious and political leaders throughout history.

I'd cite Thomas Jefferson as a great example of this kind of complexity. He wrote inspiring words on the rights of humanity, the nature of liberty and ideals of what a democratic and egalitarian society should be like. And he owned slaves. How is this possible? Our incredulity that the author of such words of wisdom could also be a slave holder does not prevail against reality. It was so whether we can believe it or not. Great teachers can also be flawed human beings and just because someone wrote or taught some great things doesn't make them a perfect human being, never mind god-incarnate.

Fiction also provides us with believable characters that might lie to promote a false religion. Dreamwork's movie "The Road to El Dorado" features the story of two fast-talking thieves who, by twist of fate, wind up in the mythical city of gold being worshiped by the inhabitants. Miguel, one of the two thieves, plays along at first but his idealistic side takes over and he tries to shape what was a bloody, austere religion prior to his arrival into a faith more loving and compassionate.

Would Josh McDowell call Miguel a "demon"?

The movie helps our incredulity regarding how a man of compassion might be motivated to lie about being a god (or messenger of a god, etc.). It thereby also exposes the fallacy of "Muhammad/Jesus/Whoever was a good man = his religion must be true" as a non sequitur (the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise).

Discussions of the character of a founder of a religion are utterly irrelevant to whether or not a religion's claims are true.

While I'm on the subject, arguments like this are the perfect example of the pre-failure of apologetics. Religions have no magical artifacts that can be examined by scientists. It can produce no demonstrations like faith-healing which can be done as a repeatable experiment under medical peer-review. Neither angels nor gods ever make public appearances before crowds and recorded in broadcast media. Religion offers no hard evidence of any kind, which it certainly would if it could, to substantiate its extraordinary claims. Apologetics, whether for Christianity, Islam or any other religion, relies on philosophy. And when all the words uttered stop resonating, we're still left with no hard evidence.

I'm not suggesting philosophy, in conjunction with evidence, isn't useful to get to the truth of a matter. But given the extraordinary nature of the claims of religion, we need more than mental constructions to meet the burden of proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If all you have is philosophy without hard evidence, you have at best an untested hypothesis. This fails to meet the burden of proof.