How was Prophet Muhammad’s Holiness created?

Muhammad himself fabricated a collection of stories and tales about his own holiness. He encouraged his followers and Islamic clergymen to exaggerate his holiness, specifically with regard to his childhood and the way in which  magicians, clergymen and priests acknowledged that this miracle boy would be the future messenger.

The stories that Muhammad fabricated included one claiming that he had had a surgical operation when he was a child, in which a devil object had been removed from his body. This story ended with the trees shading him wherever he walked.

How do Muhammad’s own fabrications compare to other accounts from that time?  Let us read what Haleema Al-Sa’diah, Muhammad’s wet nurse, said: ‘I went to Mecca with a group of women seeking livelihood by breastfeeding infants. The other women refused to breastfeed Muhammad when they knew that he was orphan. For this reason, I breastfed him; I swear that if I had found somebody else, I would not have taken him.’ 1

This raises the question of how these women were not able to recognize the sign of prophecy, as the clergymen and priests did. The surprising thing is that all the priests who recognized this sign, from Bahiri to Waraqa bin Nofal, and believed that Muhammad was the expected prophet, did not embrace Islam.

If Muhammad was the promised prophet since his childhood, why did he worship and pray at, and sacrifice a sheep to, the statue of Al-Uzza, a female pagan deity and daughter of Allah? Let us read the text written by Ibn Ishaq in Sirat Rasul2:

Muhammad said ‘I came back from Al-Taf town and met Zaid Bin Amro, a senior Hanif, at a hill not far from Mecca. I had my lunch with me, which included pieces of sheep meat that were sacrificed before our statues; I offered some of it to Zaid saying: eat some of this food, uncle’. Zaid asked Muhammad: ‘is this meat that which was sacrificed to your statues?’ Muhammad replies: ‘YES!’ Zaid answered: ‘I do not eat this meat, I do not need it.’ Zaid then started to criticize the statues and their worshippers, including Muhammad, saying these statues did not benefit or harm anyone.  The story concludes with Muhammad saying that after this incident he did not worship or sacrifice before a statue.

Muhammad promoted his allegation of being a prophet and  increased his apparent holiness among the Bedouin by fabricating these stories and wearing Kohl (eye liner) twice a day. This illusion of holiness has increased exponentially to the present day, to the extent that you can no longer question the holiness of this so-called miracle man.For the real motives behind Muhammad’s claims to prophecy, please see an extract from another chapter at the end of this book.

 

References

 

Ibn Ishaq in Sirat Rasul P 100.