Islamic Passages In Time

"Muhammad was illiterate. He had twelve wives, and, let us say, a vivid sexual history", another forthright Turkish professor was saying to me. I was in another part of Ankara, another campus, Bilkent University.

Muhammad the indefatigable womanizer: that is the way the Prophet is depicted by Neguib Mahfouz in his celebrated (but banned in every Arab country) novel Children of the Alley. So I wasn't shocked, But I said, "Do you say these things out loud in Turkey?"

"Everyone knows my views", he said and shrugged. "But these are facts. Ninety percent of what I say would be disputed by orthodox Muslims." He smiled. "Or would be considered heretical."

He was Professor Talat Halman. As a former minister of culture in the Turkish government, and a scholar, writer, and director of the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent, he had considerable authority. He had also taught a course at New York University on the history of Islam. He was in his late seventies, he was shrewd and funny, with the ironic and knowing manner of a confident scholar. Over lunch he told me much that I didn't know and had never, until now, inquired about.

"What do we know about Mecca at the time of Muhammad?" I asked.

"Mecca was mainly a pagan city, but with rabbis and priests here and there. The rabbis were suspicious of this new cult of Islam. They repressed it, or at least they tried to. That's why the Koran is full of battles -- between Muslims and Jews."

"Are there any historical documents that describe this early friction between Muslims and Jews?"

Professor Halman shook his head. "Not many documents. That's the trouble."

"Why were the rabbis suspicious?"

"They were alarmed by the new ideas and the way they were mingled with the traditional stories." We were having big bowls of fragrant soup, but Professor Halman put his spoon down to explain. "There is always tension present at the origin of a new faith. This has been true throughout history. There was lots of friction in Mecca at the time of Muhammad."

"What is the significance of the Kaaba?" I asked, because the huge black cube of shining stone had always seemed to be an enigmatic symbol.

"The Kaaba in Mecca -- it's a meteorite, of course."

I hadn't known that, and said so.

"It is obviously a miraculous force of nature", Professor Halman said. "The Jews hadn't claimed it. No one had claimed it -- so Muhammad did."

I said, "I'm interested in Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, which is an American religion. Columbus and the American Revolution were foretold in The Book of Mormon, translated from golden plates by  Smith in 1827, so he claimed. When he was alive there were apparently lots of other American prophets like him, preaching and professing that God was directing them. Jesus had predecessors too. So how did Muhammad arise as a prophet?"

"There were no proto-Muhammads, as with Jesus and Joseph Smith", the professor said. "From the age of forty, Muhammad had these new ideas. He spoke. People wrote down his words. There's lots of apocrypha, too, especially the Hadith -- wise sayings of the Prophet. About a million of them exist, but" -- the professor smiled -- "who can establish their veracity? This number has been winnowed down to five thousand."

"Can you quote a Hadith?"

He did so, promptly, with an irresistible one: "The ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr."

I said, "Jews don't proselytize, but Muslims do, and they make a lot of converts. What's the attraction?"

"At the time of Muhammad the converts were oppressed peoples. Islam gave them something to fight for -- a great sense of victory."

"But I'm thinking of now."

"Even now, the traumatic experiences of colonialism and occupation, the memory of the humiliation of the Crusades. To a great extent, Islam was shaped by conquerors and colonialism."

"So Americans fighting in Iraq will only make Islam stronger?"

"Yes, and bring about more suicide bombers", Professor Halman said. "Martyrdom is important in Islam. There are lots of mentions of martyrdom in the Hadith. There is quite a lot of militarism in the Koran."

"But martyrdom is important in Christianity", I said. "That's one way of becoming a saint."

"Yes. But unlike in Christianity, in Islam it is also good to aid and abet martyrdom", he said. "And giving away money is also a form of martyrdom."

"What I don't understand", I said, "is why Muslims leave Islamic communities and emigrate to places like Germany and Britain, basically Christian countries. To live among Christians and Jews. And Muslims get fractious when they're told not to wear headscarves and so forth. Why bother to emigrate if it makes them so unhappy?"

"They emigrate because their countries are backward", the professor said with superb good sense. "Better to emigrate than to starve to death."

"Muslim boys were burning cars in Paris a few months ago."

He said, "A North African has limited choices. He can only go to a Francophone country. He ends up in France and sees it is secular, and he objects. But you see Muslims are also reacting against political oppression."

"Tell me how this applies to Iraq now."

"American experts are the problem", Professor Halman said. "They were wrong about the Soviet Union and wrong about Iraq. They are academics and bureaucrats with vested interests."

"Sinister forces?"

"Not sinister but obtuse. The ones who said the Soviet Union was strong were politically motivated, perhaps. They didn't know how weak the Soviets were."

"So the U.S. government gets the wrong advice?"

"Yes, and mainly from scholars. Scholars need to validate the status quo, or they will lose their funding."

"The last time I took this trip", I said, "the shah was in power. Everyone said he was strong and progressive, though it was clear to me that the countryside was reactionary and orthodox Muslim."

"That's a point. Advice-givers don't travel enough", he said. "Where are you going next?"

"Up to Trabzon, then Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and --" I stopped; it seemed unlucky to mention more countries.

Paul Theroux
Ghost Train To The Eastern Star
On the tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
copyright 2008