Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Folk Islam on Prophets and Apostles (Pt. 2)
Dr. Warren Larson delivered a lecture on Folk Islam on Prophets and Apostles during a CIU course. Here, Larson presents the Folk Islamic views of the prophets and apostles, particularly other prophets outside of the Prophet Muhammad.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Warren Larson Lecture: Folk Islam on Prophets and Apostles (Pt. 2)
Moving right along here. Lecture 9 is, prophets continued, comparing the prophets. And I told you this would be could be a little bit tedious, and, we are going to prove that’s true. But, you know, it’s good to keep in mind too that other prophets are greatly revered as well. You know, other other prophets are sinless.
They’re they’re mausum, and, so even to say a you know, quote a verse like Romans 3 23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, is, you know, an indication or a suggestion that the prophets have sinned, so you can get into serious trouble, and, especially if you get explicit, specific about Mohammed’s sin. So I encourage my students not to, not to say much about Mohammed. Of course, he was a sinner. They’re all sinners. We’re all sinners, including Muhammad.
He wasn’t, maybe the worst sinner in the world, but he certainly did his part in that respect. But the less you say about him, the better. I had a friend who would, I think, rather bluntly say, he was a missionary, he would say that something like this, he would say that Moses was a murderer, David was an adulterer, Abraham was a liar, and all of those, that’s true. I mean, that’s that’s quite true. I mean, they did fail, but this is very, very offensive to Muslims because they, they think of of, prophets as sinless.
You know, they’re idealistic, and they would say, well, you know, they did maybe commit mistakes and so on, but they don’t want to admit that prophets sinned. It’s very offensive to them, but we know that God used the prophets and uses all of us, despite our sin. But you know, perhaps, that in the Quran, Mohammed is far more humble. In other words, he admits his sin, and he talks there the Quran talks about it. But despite that, today, he is lifted up beyond all reason, and I’ll I’ll end with a little story, I think, of the from the Hadith that shows that Muslims are uneasy about this.
In other words, they don’t have confidence, all of them, that Muhammad is perfect and he can intercede for them. But nevertheless nevertheless, you do have these amulets and we’re here in lecture 9, we’re still talking about the prophets and other prophets. Muslims have, these amulets, and they’re in little metal or leather cases. They’re hidden from view, but they have them and often, some kind of, you know, a good luck charm or an amulet or something like that. One of the verses that that is used quite a bit is the throne verse and this is not specifically having to do with the prophets, but, it it says that this 2 and 255 is the verse that is very popular for Amulet.
Allah, there is no god but he. Okay? The self sustaining, eternal. No slumber can seize him, nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth.
And who is there that can to proceed in his his presence except as he permitth? Well, as I’ve said before, that accept exception clause is a dangerous one, almost like, you know, a lawyer or something because they will make much use of that, and and this is exactly the loophole that is needed to, to get your foot in the door. And so, but this this verse, 2255, is just like the lord’s prayer, the throne verse, you know, God, sitting on the throne and and in control of things. Always efficacy if is promised if god wills, inshallah, if god wills. Other examples, are there are many of them, how Muslims in various parts of the Muslim world will use various verses for various conditions or various situations.
One example is the Sudan, for prosperity in the market, 54 in verse 12. The Sudan help in court, Quran 564, Mali to possess a woman, and I wanted to read that verse because, we need to read some of them. Now this is chapter 12 and verse 30, and if you know anything about the Quran, this is called Yusuf or or Joseph. And in the Quran, there’s quite a titillating story about Joseph. It’s, from the apocryphal.
It’s apocryphal, it adds a lot of titillating detail to, how Joseph was tempted by this woman, who was the wife of Aziz. In other words, Potiphar is not mentioned, but Aziz is his name. And, she failed in her attempt to seduce him. But the story goes on as, I mean, you’ll have to read it. I can’t go through it, but in verse 30 is what it said.
The ladies in the city said, the wife of the great Aziz is seeking to seduce her slave from his true self. So in other words, the women of the city, they put this accusation against, Potiphar’s wife or Aziz’s wife. And, truly hath he inspired her with violent love, we see she is evidently going astray. So, you know, she they accuse her and the story goes on and on and so this woman hears, in verse 31, she hears of the malicious talk and she prepares a banquet for them. It’s it’s ridiculous in a sense.
She gave them each a little knife, and so she had said to Joseph in ahead of time, you come out before them. And so, when the appropriate time, then she calls him in, and he is so dashing, so, handsome that they cut they begin to cut themselves. Well, a little ridiculous. I mean, who’s gonna believe that? But, that that verse, 12 and verse 30, is sometimes used in an amulet to possess a woman because, you see, you need to pull all the kind of strings, you need all the help you can get sometimes to convince a woman, and and, these kind of love amulets are used all over the Muslim world, and I’m not just the Muslim world.
And, here again it mentions prayer beads. I didn’t show you yesterday, but these are the prayer beads. We looked at them on the screen. They’re called taspi in Pakistan. Subha is what they’re called in in Arabic, but those are used as prayer beads too and in ways by by form of folk Muslims that are not accepted by informal Islam.
Now prayers to Muhammad. Here is the, here is the sequence, and I’ll go through this in a hurry. Prayer miracles are demanded of the prophet in the Quran. You know? He has, in the beginning, his there are lots of unbelievers and they say to him, you know, we we don’t really believe you.
By the way, if you can read the Quran chronologically rather than the way it’s written, then you get a better picture of what’s happening, get a better picture of the of the history of it. And, you know, his experience in Mecca, during the first 12, 13 years of his revolutionary revolutionary career and then, then the last 12, 13 years when he was in Medina. But in the beginning, when he was in Mecca, he is confronted by quite a bit of doubt. And, they say we want a miracle, you see, over and over these verses. And Mohammed says, well, you know, Allah can do miracles.
He can send signs if he wanted to, but he obviously doesn’t want to. And Mohammed says, you know, he says, well, we’ll we’ll just wait. If if Allah chooses to do his miracle, fine. 10 and 29. Mohammed refuses to accept the challenge to perform a miracle.
They say to him, you know, show us a miracle. Show us a miracle. Show us a miracle. Well, he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t fall for it, but he does say, as we know, that the Quran is America.
Quran, that’s a miracle, and he says it’s a sign, and Muslims today would argue that the Quran is a miracle. You know, it’s it’s beautiful, written Arabic, You can’t it can’t be imitated. It can’t be no one can say anything like that. I think that’s not true, but that’s what Muslims will say. So, again, you have these verses here, you know, that you have verses in the Quran that no intercession is possible except as god wills and, of course, that leaves room wiggle room for Mohammed.
But does it really? I wanted to I said I was gonna read something from the hadith, that I ran across in Pakistan, experientially. In other words, it it wasn’t so much my experience, but there was a experience of a of a someone who worked in Pakistan. And here’s the deal. I’ve been talking to you about how, about how, Muslims are hoping that, you know, how Mohammed will intercede for them and go to bat for them and all this kind of stuff.
But if Muslims would just look at the hadith, they would would realize that this is not possible. I’ll tell you what happened. In in Pakistan, students were taking a Bible correspondence course, and, one of the reasons they were troubled was that they said there’s a story in the hadith that shows how desperate we are And here it is. It’s in, Al Bukhari, Sahi Al Bukhari, Sahi meaning the true. It’s the canonized one of the 6 canonized versions of the hadith of of the of the Sunnis, volume 6, page 277.
These students said here’s why we’re troubled and here’s the story. I can show it to you right there. You see? Could take a picture of it and put it on the screen, but copyright laws prevent that, so I’ll have to read it to you. Narrated Abu Huayra, Allah’s apostle, and, he he said, oh Quraysh people.
You see, Mohammed is Quraysh or he said a similar word, I cannot save you from Allah if you disobey him. Oh, Bani Abd Manaf. Who’s that? That’s his grandpa. I cannot save you from Allah if you disobey him.
O Abbas, that’s his uncle, the son of of Abdulmutallab, I cannot save you from Allah if you disobey him. Oh, Safia, the aunt of Allah’s apostle, I cannot save you from Allah if you disobey him. O Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, I ask what you wish for my They said, They said we are very, very troubled because the hadith makes it clear that Mohammed cannot intercede for us. So, that drew them, in fact, to take bible correspondence courses, and I might say that in our experience, we did bible correspondence courses ourselves, and our school has gone down in numbers a great deal, but it was under national leadership for many, many years even after we left. The the the most precious verse to the students taking bible correspondence courses, the Muslims, was Matthew 1128.
Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls. So you see, there really is no good evidence for Muslims to do what they do. They almost do it in in desperation. What do they do?
Well, they hang on to relics of the apostle. For instance, a hair of Mohammed, one hair of Mohammed in Kandahar, which is southern Afghanistan, a very religious place, really, fundamentalist stronghold, probably, the home of Mullah Omar, that one eyed assistant, the sidekick of Osama bin Laden, or a shirt in Kandahar. Whose shirt? The shirt of Muhammad, in other words, that he wore. Incidentally, when, Mulla Omar wanted to show his authority to Muslims, he put on that shirt and the relics in Badshahi mosque in Lahore, including his underwear.
I mentioned yesterday that mosque I talked more about the shrine right next door, that Ganj Bakhsh, that has such attraction, but the mosque in itself, Badshahi mosque, is pretty, pretty nice. And, you know, down below on the first story, everything is hunky dory. You don’t go down there, all this stuff that you expect, the simplicity and the orthodoxy of a mosque. But what happens when you climb the steps? If you ever go to Lahore and, get the chance to go to Ban Shai mosque, Better not camera carry your camera because you look like a tourist.
And if you’re a woman, put on, you know, a dupatta and and dress modestly. But if you get a chance, go in there. Go up to the 2nd floor. Behind glass window, what do you see? Relics of the prophet.
Well, all kinds of things, like his underwear. Now I doubt that it’s, in fact, his underwear. Surely the prophet I don’t think he even wore underwear, but, you know, this is the kind of thing Muslims put great value in. And in the top Kapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. This is a, we call it a museum.
600 relics. And in there, you can Google it and, look at this top copy palace. You can see pictures of it and get some detail on it, but, there are lots of boxes of hairs of Muhammad there. So you see, this is what Muslims like to put their trust in and their faith in, but, really, it’s it’s baseless and it doesn’t doesn’t really hold true. But I I get quite a bit of that stuff out of of Shimmel’s book.
Now we’re still talking about relics of the prophet. Muhammad is called the light of the world and, one Sufi in the Sindh, that’s the southern part of Pakistan. There was no creation, no angels, neither heaven nor earth. Your light was radiant before everything, Shimmel says this page 18128. Now, maybe here I should mention that, excuse me.
I gotta go back. I gotta should mention, Rabia, who was a Sufi in the she died in 185, Ah after the Hijra, or 801, in other words, 9th century. Rabia is a special Sufi saint in the history of Islam. And Rabia said that she loved God so much she really didn’t have any room for love of the prophet. This is what I mean when I say sometimes that old Sufism was purer, more noble than some of the stuff today that, gives him such glory.
That was rabiya. I mean, rabiya was something else. But, relics of the Apostle Astari said this: he was a lamp from light invisible. Any house in which you dwell does not need any lamps and on the day when proofs are brought then my proof is in your face. And Rumi, the great pro poet, said how could we commit error?
We are in the light of Ahmed, Ahmed meaning Mohammed. Anur unwater, the light of all lights. You see where, you know, this is amazing. Is it not? Again, quoting Shmuel, mystics said in poetry that from his drops of perspiration, each drop became a prophet, and that’s how you came up with a 124,000 prophets.
This is, folkish stuff. I mean, it’s, but it’s, it’s what Muslims, you know, talk about. And Muhammad is the seed of the human race. Again, to study in regards to Sufath 5313, it says when Muhammad saw God at another time when’s that? That was during that night journey.
He saw at the beginning of time, so light of Muhammad is before Adam. He that loves God must have loved me. Before Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and so Mohammed is supposedly preexistent. You see what I mean, folks? About, about the glorification of Muhammad, it’s really a paradigm for worship of saints, because that’s that’s really where it ends up, and so, it’s blasphemous, and it’s the trouble with Islam.
We could go on and on. You see, Mohammed again, I went too far too quickly. Mohammed is the goal of creation. The Indian, nax bandi, if there were not Mohammed, nobody would be, and the 2 worlds would not have existed. What worlds?
The seen and the unseen. From throne to that which is beneath the dust, everything seeks my satisfaction as I seek your satisfaction, oh, Muhammad. Who has seen me, has seen the truth. Shimmel talks about this on page 131. And, you see Mohammed is central.
Central to what? Central to Islam. 1 Urdu poets, Shimon says, how could one know the rank of our leader of the world? If you want to reach god, know Muhammad as God. I’ve already mentioned to you once that, I have a book, that’s called the 99 names of Muhammad and, of course, orthodox Muslims would say, well, that’s Sufi ish, and yet, Muslims, orthodox Muslims won’t deny it.
They will say, well, Muhammad is worthy of it. And, so we have here, really the exaltation of the prophet and it’s much, much greater than he deserves and, and it’s it’s central. In in in one sense, you can’t really separate this from folk Islam. It’s it’s 1 and the same, and that’s why I’m a little bit tentative in in dividing, you know, folk from formal and and stuff like that because this is central to Islam. He is central.
And how do Muslims explain this? Well, when Mohammed himself is quite humble, he deserves, but but, you know, it it does say that he’s he deserves to be obeyed, but, but today, Muslims have lifted him way up out of reason. Given Muhammad’s exaltation in the mosque, what are the implications for believers staying in the mosque long term? Now this is a question of contextualization, and my own view on this is that, one who comes to Christ maybe will stay in the mosque for a time, but not indefinitely because one of the main reasons is because of Muhammad. He’s lifted up in the mosque and Christ has not given any glory at all And so I think that, that’s what we have to remember.