Warlords & Ideal Men

He was a a warlord. He was a conquering warlord. Muhammad was a warlord, and I I don't know what to do about that fact. Evangelical atheist Sam Harris argues that Islam is an inherently dangerous belief system and that prophet Muhammad is a fundamentally negative and destructive role model compared to Christianity and the Christian version of Jesus because Islam contains laws pertaining to things like combat and warfare, and because prophet Muhammad was a warlord. Christianity and the Christian version of Jesus, he argues, promotes pacifism and peacefulness and deemphasizes terrestrial rule and political power.

Islam and the image of prophet Muhammad he says, promotes aggression and warfare and the establishment of political authority. Right from the start, it's clear that the image of prophet Muhammad that he's talking about is not the image of prophet Muhammad as it is in the Muslim world, but it is an image of him held by Christians and Westerners. Furthermore, it's an image of him held by Christians and Westerners who know very little about him or who are so ideologically biased that they are selective about what they choose to acknowledge. His supposition is that Muslims are shaped by the fact that their archetypal good ideal man is a warlord, and that therefore Muslims will be prone to violence the moment they become devout because they're going to seek to emulate this bloody conqueror. But this image of prophet Muhammad is not the image that Muslims have of him.

It's a Christian Western misrepresentation. We do not see him the way you see him. So if you wanna talk about Muslims being influenced by Rasulullah as their role model, then you have to go by what their image is of him, not the image held of him by others. So let's talk about this idea of Rasulullah being a warlord. This is a word that has been used by not just Harris, but Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, on and on.

You're not going to find Rasulullah described with this term in any Muslim sources. You can't help but notice a conspicuous tinge of racism in the use of that term, actually. After having read Machiavelli as a teenager, I recently revisited his work, and I was struck by the similarities between sixteenth century Italy and seventh century Arabia. And that in Italy, their warlords were given a much more honorific title as you see in the title of, Machiavelli's most famous book. In Italy, a warlord was a prince.

And the same goes throughout all of Europe. Their warlords all had honorific titles, dukes, counts, princes, up to and including kings. They weren't warlords. Their counterparts were referred to as warlords if they lived in Asia, Africa, or Arabia. If Rasulullah had been European, he would have been a king.

Did the Christian Jesus command an army? No. Did he participate in combat? No. Did he establish and rule, govern a state?

Again, no. Have Christians done those things? Were they emulating Jesus when they did those things? Or has the Christian image of Jesus prevented them from doing any of those things? Did, for instance, the instruction in the gospels, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, did that prevent the Christian West from establishing and enforcing a penal system?

The president of The United States is called the commander in chief, means he's the supreme military commander. He declares war. He orders killings for the sake of national security. If Jesus, the Christian version of Jesus, is their role model, I don't know how any of this can be reconciled. Father, his followers are continuously failing to adhere to their role model, or it's a role model that has no functional utility in the real world?

I mean, are we supposed to believe that the role model they do not follow is better than the role model we do follow? Are we supposed to believe that the Christian West was profoundly and beneficially shaped by the Sermon on the Mount while consistently and demonstrably contradicting it throughout all of its history up until the present moment? Or can we just admit that the platitudes of the sermon on the mount in the real world are a recipe for extinction and that the Christian version of Jesus embodies perhaps the most impractical approach to the world that the world has ever seen. In Jordan Peterson's dominance hierarchy theory, the Christian version of Jesus would have been annihilated long ago for manifesting suicidal levels of agreeableness. So again, I wonder, how is this, this Christian version of Jesus, a useful or even a noticeably influential role model for Western society?

Look. There are things that men must do. There are things that states must do. And these are things that Christians engage in every day, but that are either in direct contradiction with the New Testament or about which the Christian version of Jesus offers no realistic or practicable guidance. Did prophet Muhammad command an army?

Yes. He did. Did he engage in combat? Yes. He did.

Did he establish and govern a state? Yes. He did. And because of that, we, the Muslims, know how all of these matters are to be regulated. Critics of prophet Muhammad blame him for engaging in activities that human beings inevitably engage in, including combat and conflict, as if this somehow detracts from rather than increases his value as a role model.

He made war? Yes. He also made peace. He conducted military campaigns? Yes.

He also contracted treaties. He punished enemies and he forgave enemies. He opted for combat and he opted for diplomacy. And we try to learn from and to emulate the guidance of his example in all such scenarios that will invariably occur throughout our lives. He provides us with a more whole human being and a more realistic role model than the role model which the West claims to follow while not adhering to a single aspect of it.

So if Sam Harris is gonna argue that Islam and the role model of prophet Muhammad are dangerous influences because they address the human reality of the inevitability of conflict, and if he wants to claim that Christianity and the Christian version of Jesus are better and more positive because they do not address the human reality of the inevitability of conflict, then Sam Harris might wanna consider how dangerous it is to have a role model whose teachings are so unrealistic and impossible to manifest that people are forced to set them aside and plunge into conflict without any ethical or moral guidance.