Islam’s “Prophet Muhammad was a religious pluralist,” stated Rice University sociologist Craig Considine in a video uploaded to YouTube on December 14, yet another example of his incorrigible “fantasy Islam.” To make this absurd assertion, this jihad-appeasing, former sports management student, whose confused interfaith views on Islam Muslims themselves have condemned, often distorts Muhammad’s relationship to the Najran Christians.
Consdine spoke during a virtual tour for his debunked, new book, The Humanity of Muhammad: A Christian View. This surprisingly progressive, seventh-century Arab, Considine gushes, did not want to “clamp down on people and condemn people who happened to be living a different type of life and happening to believe in a different way.” Despite numerous Quranic verses like 98:6 condemning non-Muslims, ‘it is not a requisite of Muslims to try to get other people to convert.” “Islamic values like justice, peace, tolerance, charity,” he has stated, mean that a “fundamental feature of the Islamic tradition as a whole is tolerance.”
A key exhibit in Considine’s pluralistic case for Islam is his naïve understanding of Muhammad’s relationship with non-Muslims after his precedential Islamic state consolidated itself. Muhammad’s conclusive defeat of his enemies through the 630 conquest of Mecca sealed his domination of the Arabian Peninsula. Therefore during this period he sent letters to Byzantium, Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere calling upon their rulers to accept the Islamic belief in him as God’s final prophet.
Muslim accounts of these letters are uniformly triumphalist. The empires of “tyrants” such as the Byzantine emperor Heraclius all ultimately fall to Muslim conquests due to refusals to submit to Muhammad’s mission “to convey Islam to all of mankind.” As Quran 34:28 states, he is humanity’s “warner” from God.
By contrast, Considine describes these letters in bland terms of Muhammad “calling on Christian leaders to recognize him” as merely a fellow, friendly religious believer. To various communities he was “announcing who he was, what his mission was, and what the community stood for, the ummah, the monotheists.” Thus these believers “operated in a smooth manner with each other through various points in history.”
From this period Considine highlights the Christian community of Najran, a southern Arabian region near Yemen. In 630 Muhammad sent Najran Christian leaders a “hospitable and warm invitation” to meet him in at his capital in Medina. There in his mosque the Christians had a “civil” and “interfaith dialogue,” including particularly an “interesting and dynamic and critical dialogue on Christology.”
As fellow Jihad Watch contributor Stephen Kirby has already documented, Considine’s Najran Christian narrative in his book and elsewhere grievously falsifies inherently oppressive events. The Iranian Grand Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani has noted online that Muhammad in his letter to the Najran Christians presented them with Islamic doctrine’s traditional three stark choices for nonbelievers. If “you do not accept my invitation” to become Muslim, “you must (at least) pay Jizyah (tribute) to the Islamic Government,” otherwise “you are hereby warned of dangerous consequences,” namely death.
When the Christians first appeared before Muhammad in Medina, Islamic sources recount how they were “wearing silken clothes, golden rings, and crosses round their necks.” This was a “repulsive and improper posture and that, too, in the mosque displeased the Prophet.” The Christians had to change to simpler clothes before seeing Muhammad again.
Muhammad posed pointed questions concerning issues including his dogmatic prohibition of pork to the Christians that betrayed his dismissal of their beliefs. “How do you say that you worship One Allah when you worship the cross and do not abstain from the meat of the swine and believe that Allah has son?” The Islamic sources recount that Muhammad and the Christians agreed to resolve their theological disputes by mubahilah or imprecation, whereby they would implore God to pour down his wrath on their respective opponents.
With typical propagandistic character, the Islamic sources portray the Najran Christians losing heart before Muhammad, whom they recognize as a true prophet, and accepting his rule under a covenant. In exchange for jizya and other tributes, the Christians’ “lives, property, lands, and places of worship of the people of Najran shall be under the protection of Allah and His Prophet.” The Christians also submit to the sharia prohibition against riba or interest, so “that they will immediately give up usury.” Thus other accounts of this covenant describe how Muhammad declares as a feudal overlord that the Najran Christians “have earned from me” various rights and “will be bound to the Muslims both in good and bad fortune.”
Even this subservient status did not last long following Muhammad’s death in 632 after Umar ibn al-Khattab became Muhammad’s second caliph or successor, (reigned 634-644), as Islamic sources relate. “When Umar became the Caliph it was brought to his notice that the Christians of Najran had violated the peace pact in as much as they were indulging in usury, and were also guilty of activities hostile to Islam.” Umar expelled to Iraq the Najran Christians, who “were allowed to carry their entire movable property with them. Their immovable property was acquired by the state on payment.”
How Considine can twist the Islamic accounts of the Nujran Christians submission to Islamic power into a Woke fairy tale of religious peaceful coexistence is almost unfathomable. He seems to be a modern Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter who scandalously won a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for whitewashing Josef Stalin’s genocidal famine in the Soviet Union’s Ukraine as the rise of a socialist workers paradise. Considine’s similar fanatical faith in interfaith, multicultural Islam is also a dangerous delusion.
mortimer says
Mohammed’s last and final command bristled with intolerance: , “Turn the pagans out of the Arabian Peninsula” – Sahih al-Bukhari 4431
Mohammed also made the following intolerant statements: When the disease of Allah’s Apostle got aggravated, he . . . . would say, “. . . May Allah curse the Jews [and] Christians because they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship.” By that he warned his follower of imitating them, by doing that which they did. Bukhari 07.072.706
““After today there will no longer be two religions existing in Arabia. I descended by Allah with the sword in my hand, and my wealth will come from the shadow of my sword. And the one who will disagree with me will be humiliated and persecuted.” (Ibn Hisham, The Life of Muhammad, 3rd ed., pt. 6, vol. 3 (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar-al-Jil, 1998), p. 8, author’s translation)
Moreover, the Koran is totally intolerant: “And whoever seeks a religion other than Islâm, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers.” – Koran 3:85
Furthermore, Muslim curse Jews and Christians 17 times each day in their canonical prayer the Fatiha which says Jews are cursed and Christians are ‘astray’.
Islamic history has volumes on the intolerance of Islam towards ‘others’. The Pact of Omar is the default code of intolerance in nearly all Islamic countries.
Considine ignores everything that contradicts his fantasy version of Islam and cherrypicks (and then mischaracterizes) quotations that appear to demonstrate magnanimity to non-Muslims. Much of the supposed magnanimity turns out to be given only under the terms of absolute submission to Islamic tyranny.
Submission to Islamic totalitarian rule is very different from real ‘pluralism’.
gravenimage says
+1
SKA says
Even Nicholas of Cusa misunderstood the “my Sheila have” as a sort of “inter-faith dialog” whereas in reality it is a verbal pissing contest with both contenders screaming curses at the other. Whoever loses heart steps down and the last man standing “wins.” Of course if your are Najranis on enemy soil and outnumbered by Medinans then the outcome of such a match is a foregone conclusion.
Considine is completely out of his depth. Why anyone takes him seriously is a mystery to me.
SKA says
“Mubaheilah” – Spellcheck sabotages everything! ?
Kepha says
I also hate it.
Honest Ali says
On an interesting note, at some point Craig Considine will anger the orthodox Muslims with his heresies and blasphemies… and then things will get interesting. 🙂
Wellington says
Very likely. When being woke and stupid (pretty much the same thing) the odds are that one way or another reality is going to come back at you and bite you in the ass. And “Islamic reality” is an extra nasty reality so very often. Considine may be toast eventually but for now, seen from a Mohammedan perspective, he remains a useful idiot.
SKA says
Once they cajole him into reciting the shahada then comes the shocking jolt: “He who deviates from the Jama’ah deviates to Hell.”
Must say prayers.
No more alcohol.
No more boyfriend
Wellington says
Grimly humorous.
gravenimage says
Yes–very likely. But not yet–he is too useful an idiot now.
Wellington says
Andrew Harrod, the author of this article, makes a very apt comparison where Walter Duranty and Craig Considine are concerned. Just as Duranty misinformed New York Times’ readers about what was going on in Ukraine in the early 1930’s, so is Considine misinforming those he teaches at Rice University—and to a larger audience by way of his writings—about Islam.
Ayn Rand was adamant that those who cover up for evil are worse than evil itself, actually far worse, because it gives life to evil, allows it to continue, and finally when iniquity is confronted by the stalwart element of humanity, such stalwart element pays a much higher price to rid the world of evil than it would have had it taken it on much earlier. Think, as an example, removing Hitler in 1937-38 and not waiting until 1939 and thereafter.
I would very much like Craig Considine to address just two aspects of Islam, which every major Islamic school of theology to this day, whether Sunni or Shiite, upholds: 1) death for apostasy by a Muslim as found in Sura 4:89 and Bukhari Hadith 9.84.57; and 2) the actual sanctioning of rape as found in Suras 4, 23, 33 and 70 in the Koran, i.e., “what the right hand possesses,” sometimes translated as “captives of the right hand.” Had Considine any guts, he would address these two issues by debating with Robert Spencer. He won’t.
gravenimage says
Fine post.
tim gallagher says
This Considine character does seem like a complete bullshit artist, who is propagandising for Islam. I wonder if he really believes the bullshit, fantasy view of Muhammad and Islam that he seems to continually put forward, or whether he is paid by some Muslim mob to spew out nonsense, in order to keep people misinformed about Muhammad’s and Islam’s nature. Maybe Considine is one of these perverse characters, who, if sensible people say something is black, he will say, no, it is white, just to be constantly at odds with most people. As someone who lives in Australia, I would like to ask (a) Is Rice University considered to be a reasonably good university or is it a crappy university, and (b) is Considine a complete nobody or is he actually considered to be someone of substance in academic circles. “The Humanity of Muhammad”!! Muhammad seems to have been a vicious monster, maybe a madman imagining that god is talking to him, with no humanity at all, if he actually existed, which I doubt very much. I suspect a bunch of scumbags made him up later on. Considine seems like a deluded fool (but a sincere idiot) or a paid propagandist for Islam. As Wellington says, just up above, Considine trying to debate Robert Spencer would be like one of those fights where Considine would be knocked out within seconds.
James Lincoln says
Makes me wonder if Craig Considine is being paid off under the table by muslim brotherhood front groups – no hard evidence of this but it would not surprise…
somehistory says
Lying about islam and its evil is evil enough, but this lying fool brings Christianity into his foul statements. Christians would never agree that the mass-murdering, raper of children, lying sack of slug slime, son of satan was a ‘prophet’.
Christians would never agree that the slime was sent by Jehovah God.
They would not willingly agree with him and neither were they willing to pay extortion and bow down to him in obedience. Paying extortion with the threat of death looming is never a *willing* proposition.
To think, this fool has a job teaching young people…and he’s “teaching” a pack of ugly and evil, lies.
gravenimage says
Craig Considine: ‘Prophet Muhammad was a religious pluralist’
……………………
In what way? In that he persecuted Christians, Sabians, Jews, and Pagans?
somehistory says
He didn’t want to leave anyone out…just had to persecute whomever was available. He murdered moslims too, I’m told. Probably took their belongings for his own.
gravenimage says
Yes–any Musims deemed “insuficiently Islamic” are also fair game to be treated like Infidels.
tim gallagher says
Yes, gravenimage. He was a very fair-minded person. He persecuted all groups equally.He hated them all equally. Yes, what a good and fair-minded fellow he was (though I think he was also an imaginary figure, made up later on by other degenerates).
James Lincoln says
tim gallagher,
Makes me think of the character Harry Callahan in “Dirty Harry”:
In Dirty Harry, several explanations are suggested for his nickname. When his partner Chico Gonzalez asks of its origins, Frank DiGiorgio jokingly says that “that’s one thing about our Harry; doesn’t play any favorites. Harry hates everybody…
But Callahan is not a racist. After being called to talk down a jumper, Callahan states he is known as “Dirty” Harry because he is assigned to “every dirty job that comes along”…
tim gallagher says
I remember those lines from “Dirty Harry” quite well, James, especially the one about how he hates everyone. I had in mind another line, one from “Frasier”, which was a show I liked a lot and still watch re-runs of it on TV out here. Roz wanted Frasier, always quite a snob, to go on a cruise to Alaska where he would give lectures, and Frasier looks at the list of speakers who have gone on the cruises. He looks down on the speakers, but sees that Gore Vidal had gone on one of the cruises and is impressed. He says, “Gore Vidal. But he hates everything”. He goes on the cruise which turns out to hellish. As I have often said, I am a Christian, but a pretty flawed one. Many people have pissed me off over the years, it’s a long list, and no doubt I’ve pissed off many people as well, and, as a Christian we are meant to love people, but my prayer to God is to at least hate many off these people a bit less as a starting point. That’s probably why I remember the line about Dirty Harry hating everybody stayed in my mind. Islam is not something I’ll stop hating, I’m sure of that. Happy New Year to you, James.
somehistory says
When it comes to the command to “love” our neighbor, we are to do that as God does that. Jesus made it plain when he said, “You must be perfect…The Father makes the sun shine and the rain fall….on the good and the wicked.”
If we do not hold back good from others when it is in our power to do good, if we do not actively carry out evil actions, we are actually showing the ‘love’ that Jesus meant. Love based on principle of what is right.
Because we can’t possibly feel about those we know want to kill us, lie about us, and threaten us the same as we do about those who are good to us and treat us well.
Jesus also spoke about “hating” our mothers, fathers, etc. in that we ‘love them less’ than we love Him.
Words have so many different meanings and shades of meaning.
In any case, hating islam is a good thing. And it’s really pretty much impossible to separate completely a person from their actions.
Hate “lying eyes, false tongue, hands shedding innocent blood, heart thinking up evil schemes, feet running to badness, lips giving false testimony,” and that is pretty much the entire person.
Calling them out for these, as Jesus did the pharisees, is necessary; and they will take it as hate.
tim gallagher says
Thanks for the comment, somehistory. I believe I will always hate Islam the same way I hate Nazism. Both are extremely evil and murderous ideologies. Maybe one day I will, with God’s help, be able to love those people who have harmed me at different times during my life, but I’d have to say that I haven’t reached that point yet. I do believe in being honest about what I am feeling above all else, and I can say that I am definitely a long way from feeling anything approaching love for quite a few people. You are right about words having many shades of meaning.
gravenimage says
Great exchange, Somehistory, Tim, and James.
tim gallagher says
Thanks, gravenimage. Happy New Year to you. Here’s hoping it is better than 2020.
OLD GUY says
Humanity of Muhammad is like preaching the Humanity of Hitler. They both agree one one thing. If you don’t fit into their ideology they will enslave and work you to death or out right murder you. Thats about as inhuman as you can get.