This editorial column will focus on a comparison between the lives and teachings of Jesus and Muhammad. Identifying their advocacy of universal spiritual principles, and stressing the inclusiveness and ecological spirit in their lives, will perhaps assist readers in broadening their global awareness and serve to diminish the destructiveness of either/or, we/them (enemy)
thinking.
Historical Setting
Jesus (4 BCE - 30 CE) lived in Judea in Nazareth, a Galilean village during the reign of Antipas the son of Herod the Great. Muhammad (570 CE - 632 CE) lived in the Hejaz on the Western border of Arabia.
In Jesus's time society was divided into upper and lower classes. The upper class consisted of rulers and governors, priests, military men, bureaucrats and merchants. The lower class were mostly peasants (2/3's of whose annual crop went to support the upper classes), artisans (5% of the population) all whom emerged from the land-owning peasant class, and the lowest persons of the society- the expendables (beggars, outlaws, day laborers and slaves).
If Jesus were indeed a carpenter, he belonged to the artisan class. As 95% of the population was illiterate when Jesus lived it is reasonable to assume that Jesus was illiterate.
Muhammad had an upper class origin. He was in the Hashim clan of the most powerful tribe in Arabia, the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. His grandfather Abd-Al Muttalib was an important tribal leader and renown for rediscovering the spring of Zamzam. His grandfather was a wealthy merchant who had the misfortune of losing most of his possessions during the closing years of his life. Muhammad's father died before Muhammad's birth. It was the custom of wealthy Quraysh mothers to pay foster mothers (wet-nurses) in the desert to care for their city infants. Tradition was that infants raised in the desert were healthier and more liable to survive. A very poor desert woman took Muhammad without charging a fee as Muhammad's mother Amina was destitute. Amina died when Muhammad was 6 years old making him a full-fledged orphan. Muhammad went to live with his grandfather until his death. After that he lived with his uncle Abu Talib who was chief of the Hashim clan, but had meager possessions because of his father Abd-Al Muttalib's business losses.
We see then that Muhammad had a definite upper class origin. However the family had lost prestige with his grandfather's losses. In addition Muhammad's orphan status gave him a somewhat lower ranking in society than he might have had, were he not orphaned. We see Muhammad on the lower rungs of the wealthy Quraysh merchant class, but still of the upper class. When Muhammad was 25 years old, he married a rich widow, Khadija, who had more possessions than Abu Talib. Muhammad worked in Khadija's caravan business and became well known and very successful. Muhammad was a mild gentle man but very shrewd in business. He acquired the nickname Amin meaning the Trustworthy One.
This striking contrast, Jesus being of artisan lower class origin and Muhammad being of powerful upper class merchant origin, explains a great deal about persons they influenced following their religious experiences of revelation. Jesus' disciples were poor, lower class fishermen, sick and oppressed. Only in the fourth century with the approval not censorship
of the Roman government, did the upper classes start converting en mass to Christianity. For Judea late in the 1'st Century, the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the meek, the pure in heart, the persecuted, those in prison were the one's who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus preached a liberation theology because he was definitely of the class that needed liberation,
With Muhammad it was quite different! The first disciples were his wife Khadija, his cousin and son-in- law Ali, his close friend a powerfully connected merchant Abu Baker. For 13 years in Mecca Muhammad conducted a non-violent approach to religion. The first 3 years Muhammad discussed religion only privately with his family and very close friends. The last 10 years of his non-violent ministry was conducted in Mecca. Many of the converts to Islam were poor, oppressed, slaves, women, sick and orphaned. However some of the most powerful Quraysh citizens became Muslim. The 1'st 4 caliphs, who tradition holds as the most righteous of all the caliphs after Muhammad, were early converts and all of the powerful upper class.
Jesus had several sympathetic upper class followers (Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews and Joseph of Arimathaea) but they were only secret followers. Jesus was a healer, a favorite of the lower class masses of the House of Israel. The Kingdom of Heaven was for the poor. Turning the other cheek was absolutely essential for Jesus because he had no military or social power. Muhammad was an upper class proud Quraysh of the Hashim clan. Although then Hashimites had seen better days, they were of the distinguished upper merchant class. As such they controlled politics, the military, business, and religion (worship at the Kaaba) With this legacy it was only natural, as Muhammad gained power, he stepped into a position of power which involved all powerful institutions of government. Although for 13 years Muhammad was a pacifist, his continuing revelation forbidding violence, the last 10 years of his life in Medina, he won a series of striking military and strategic political battles sanctioned by revelation.
We have severe problems making a very close comparison. It is likely the gospels portray only the year or two of Jesus's total ministry. There were no scribes on hand to write down what Jesus taught and said. It is much different with Muhammad. We have all 22 years of continuous revelation written down verbatim by Arabs like Ali who could read and write. Muhammad, like Jesus, was illiterate, but Muhammad had scribes who preserved the Holy Quran where the words that were revealed over a 22 year period were preserved exactly as they were revealed. The words of the gospels were written 40 - 70 years after Jesus's death. In the opinion of a host of biblical scholars who have been searching for the "Historical Jesus" for 200 years this delay in writing has undoubtedly greatly altered the contents and meanings of these gospels.
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