TRUTH NEEDS NO DEFENCE
Truth Prevails
FEW great men have been so maligned as the Prophet Muhammad. Christian scholars of medieval Europe painted him as an impostor, a lecher, and a man of blood. A corruption of his name, Mahound, even came to signify the devil. This picture of Muhammad and his religion still retains some influence. The English author Thomas Carlyle in 1840 was the first notable European to insist publicly that Muhammad must have been sincere, because it was ridiculous to suppose an impostor would have been the founder of a great religion. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
The argument used by Thomas Carlyle to sweep away western misconceptions about the Prophet was simply that if a tree is known by its fruit, so is a man known by his character. Whoever reads the sayings of the Prophet of Islam, whoever learns of what his daily life was like, whoever comes to understand what type of movement was born under his influence, can never believe that his life’s mission and achievements were those of an impostor. Carlyle said:
The word this man (Muhammad) spoke has been the life-guidance now of one hundred and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred years. These hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God’s creatures believe in Mahomet’s word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition.’
About the assertions prevalent in Europe that Muhammad was a false prophet and an impostor, he says:
(A) more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straightway. (On Heroes and Hero-Worship by Thomas Carlyle)
A man who makes it his mission to bring about a healthy revolution among the people, speaking from the heart, and using words which contain the finest elements of humanity, can never be a deceiver. A man who is a fraud may succeed in fraudulence, but he will never succeed in launching a divine movement.
