The best defenders of the Arabian Prophet are obliged to admit that the matter of Zainab, the wife of Zaid, and again, of Mary, the Coptic slave, are “an indelible stain” upon his memory; that “he is once or twice untrue to the kind and forgiving disposition of his best nature; that he is once or twice unrelenting in the punishment of his personal enemies; and that he is guilty even more than once of conniving at the assassination of inveterate opponents”; but they give no satisfactory explanation or apology for all this being done under the supposed sanction of God in the Qurʾān.
In forming an estimate of Muḥammad’s prophetical pretensions, it must be remembered that he did not claim to be the founder of a new religion, but merely of a new covenant. He is the last and greatest of all God’s prophets. He is sent to convert the world to the one true religion which God had before revealed to the five great law-givers—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus! The creed of Muḥammad, therefore, claims to supersede that of the Lord Jesus. And it is here that we take our stand. We give Muḥammad credit as a warrior, as a legislator, as a poet, as a man of uncommon genius raising himself amidst great opposition to the pinnacle of renown; we admit that he is, without doubt, one of the greatest heroes the world has ever seen; but when we consider his claims to supersede the mission of the divine Jesus, we strip him of his borrowed plumes, and reduce him to the condition of an impostor! For whilst he has adopted and avowed his belief in the sacred books of the Jew and the Christian, and has given them all the stamp and currency which his authority and influence could impart, he has attempted to rob Christianity of every distinctive truth which it possesses—its divine Saviour, its Heavenly Comforter, its two Sacraments, its pure code of social morals, its spirit of love and truth—and has written his own refutation and condemnation with his own hand, by professing to confirm the divine oracles which sap the very foundations of his religious system. We follow the Prophet in his self-asserted mission from the cave of Ḥirāʾ to the closing scene, when he dies in the midst of the lamentations of his ḥarīm, and the contentions of his friends—the visions of Gabriel, the period of mental depression, the contemplated suicide, the assumption of the prophetic office, his struggles with Makkan unbelief, his flight to al-Madīnah, his triumphant entry into Makkah—and whilst we wonder at the genius of the hero, we pause at every stage and inquire, “Is this the Apostle of God, whose mission is to claim universal dominion, to the suppression not merely of idolatry, but of Christianity itself?” Then it is that the divine and holy character of Jesus rises to our view, and the inquiring mind sickens at the thought of the beloved, the pure, the lowly Jesus giving place to that of the ambitious, the sensual, the time-serving hero of Arabia. In the study of Islām, the character of Muḥammad needs an apology or a defence at every stage; but in the contemplation of the Christian system, whilst we everywhere read of Jesus, and see the reflection of His image in everything we read, the heart revels in the contemplation, the inner pulsations of our spiritual life bound within us at the study of a character so divine, so pure.
We are not insensible to the beauties of the Qurʾān as a literary production (although they have, without doubt, been overrated); but as we admire its conceptions of the Divine nature, its deep and fervent trust in the power of God, its frequent deep moral earnestness, and its sententious wisdom, we would gladly rid ourselves of our recollections of the Prophet, his licentious ḥarīm, his sanguinary battle-fields, his ambitious schemes; whilst as we peruse the Christian Scriptures, we find the grand central charm in the divine character of its Founder. It is the divine character of Jesus which gives fragrance to His words; it is the divine form of Jesus which shines through all He says or does; it is the divine life of Jesus which is the great central point in Gospel history. How, then, we ask, can the creed of Muḥammad, the son of ʿAbdu ʾllāh, supersede and abrogate that of Jesus, the Son of God? And it is a remarkable coincidence that, whilst the founder of Islām died feeling that he had but imperfectly fulfilled his mission, the Founder of Christianity died in the full consciousness that His work was done—“It is finished.” It was in professing to produce a revelation which should supersede that of Jesus, that Muḥammad set the seal of his own refutation. (Hughes, Notes on Muhammadanism, p. 2.)
MUḤAMMAD (محمد). The title of the XLVIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the second verse of which the word occurs: “Believe in what hath been revealed to Muḥammad.”
The name Muḥammad occurs only in three more places in the Qurʾān:—
[Sūrah iii. 138]: “Muḥammad is but an apostle of God.”
[Sūrah xxxiii. 40]: “Muḥammad is not the father of any of your men, but the Apostle of God, and the Seal of the Prophets.”
[Sūrah xlviii. 29]: “Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.”
MUḤAMMAD, The Wives of. Arabic al-azwāju ʾl-mut̤ahharāt (الازواج المطهرات), i.e. “The pure wives.” According to the Traditions, Muḥammad took to himself eleven lawful wives, and two concubines. (See Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 528.)
(1) K͟hadījah (خديجة), a Quraish lady, the daughter of K͟huwailid ibn Asad. She was a rich widow lady, who had been twice married. She was married to Muḥammad when he was 25 years old, and she was 40 years, and remained his only wife for twenty-five years, until she died (A.D. 619), aged 65, Muḥammad being 50 years old. She bore Muḥammad two sons, al-Qāṣim and ʿAbdu ʾllāh, surnamed at̤-T̤āhir and at̤-T̤aiyib, and four daughters, Zainab, Ruqaiyah, Fāt̤imah, and Ummu Kuls̤ūm. Of these children, only Fāt̤imah (the wife of ʿAlī) survived Muḥammad.