“The glories which invest the history of Islam may be entirely derived from the valor, the virtue, the intelligence, the genius, of man.  If this be conceded, the largest measure of credit is due to him who conceived its plan, promoted its impulse, and formulated the rules which insured its success.  In any event, if the object of religion be the inculcation of morals, the diminution of evil, the promotion of human happiness, the expansion of the human intellect, if the performance of good works will avail in the great day when mankind shall be summoned to its final reckoning it is neither irreverent nor unreasonable to admit that Muhammad was indeed an Apostle of God.”[2]

“The more one reflects on the history of Muhammad and of early Islam, the more one is amazed at the vastness of his achievement.  Circumstances presented him with an opportunity such as few men have had, but the man was fully matched with the hour. Had it not been for his gifts as a seer, statesman, and administrator and, behind these, his trust in God and firm belief that God had sent him, a notable chapter in the history of mankind would have remained unwritten.”[3]

“Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas,” so said Alphonse de Lamartine a French historian, who was also Foreign Minister of France in 1848, “the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may ask, is there any man greater than he?”  He continued, “If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and outstanding results are the three criteria of human genius, who could dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms and empires only. They founded, if any at all, no more than material power which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man merged not only armies, legislation, empires, peoples and dynasties but millions of men in one third of the inhabited world, and more than that, moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls on the basis of a Book, every letter of which has become law. He created a spiritual nationality of every tongue and of every race.”[4]

“The Muslims certainly did not expect a conflict when they set out. According to the oldest source, ‘Urwah’s letter to ‘Abd al- Malik, ‘neither the Messenger of God nor his Companions heard of the expedition of Quraysh until the prophet came to Badr’. Had the Muslims known there was likely to be a battle they might have shrunk from taking part in the expedition. There is a curious story of how some of Muhammad’s party captured one of the Meccan water-carriers and questioned him; when he told them the truth about Abu Jahl’s force, they thought he was lying and punished him, but when he told them lies about Abu Sufyan they believed

him, and it was only when Muhammad himself interviewed him that the real state of affairs was discovered. Whether in this way or some other way, Muhammad appears to have had definite news of Quraysh before they had any exact information about him, and so to have had the tactical initiative. The phrase in the Qur’an (8. 7) about God ‘promising that one of the two parties (sc. the caravan or the relief force) should be yours’ would seem to imply that Muhammad knew about Abu Jahl sufficiently long before the battle for it to be uncertain with which party contact would be made. It is also said that the Ansar were pledged to defend Muhammad only within Medinan territory and that, before committing himself to a course leading to battle, Muhammad conferred with them and asked if they would support him in these circumstances. It is conceivable that when the Muslims learnt about Quraysh they were so close to them that retreat would have involved loss of face; but it is more likely that Muhammad saw an opportunity of attacking Quraysh with conditions in his favour, and managed to convince his followers of the soundness of such a course.”[5]

“The Meccans, led by Abu Jahl, responded to Abu Sufyan’s message by sending a large force, said to be about 950. Nearly all the fighting men of Mecca went, after a neighbouring chief of the B. Kinanah had given his word that, even if Mecca were denuded of defenders, it would not be attacked by the section of Kinanah which had a blood-feud with Quraysh. The size of the force shows that Abu Jahl probably intended to overawe Muhammad and his followers and any potential followers, and so to scare them from meeting him in battle and from raiding caravans in the future. Some days out from Mecca Quraysh got word that the caravan had eluded Muhammad and was safe. The only cause of war now was the blood of ‘Amr b. al-Hadrami, and ‘Utbah b. Rabi’ah of ‘Abd Shams was ready to pay blood-money to keep peace, but Abu Jahl skilfully shamed ‘Utbah into withdrawing his offer, and so forced Quraysh to advance; he was presumably hoping to get rid of Muhammad once for all.”[6]

“The most important result of the battle, however, was the deepening of the faith of Muhammad himself and his closest Companions in his prophetic vocation. After years of hardship and a measure of persecution, after the weary months at Medina when nothing seemed to be going right, there came this astounding success. It was a vindication of the faith which had sustained them through disappointment. Very naturally they regarded it as

miraculous, the work of God, as the Qur’an asserted (8. 17): ‘Ye did not kill them, but God killed them, and when thou didst throw, it was not thou but God who threw. . . .’ Moreover, this disaster which had overtaken the pagans was the punishment which had been foretold in the Meccan revelations and thus Muhammad’s claim to prophethood was verified. So much is certain. It is further probable that the word furqan, at least in some passages of the Qu’ran, is to be interpreted as Richard Bell suggested In 8. 41/42 ‘the day of the furqan, the day the two parties met must be the day of Badr; and furqan, in virtue of its connexion with the Syriac word purqana, ‘salvation’, must mean something like ‘deliverance from the judgement’. This being so the furqan which was given to Moses is doubtless his deliverance when he led his people out of Egypt, and Pharaoh and his hosts were overwhelmed. Similarly, Muhammad’s furqan will be the deliverance given at Badr when the Calamity came upon the Meccans. That was the ‘sign’ which confirmed his prophethood.  Perhaps there is also a reference to the experience, analogous to the receiving of revelation, which Muhammad apparently had

during the heat of the battle, and as a result of which he became assured that the Muslims had invincible Divine assistance.”[7]

“The dream mentioned by al-Waqidi (though not by Ibn Hisham and Ibn Sa’d) may be accepted as fact in the light of the Qur’anic verse, ‘Assuredly God hath given to His messenger a true and right vision,’ (Al Quran 48:28), but the account of the contents of the dream is probably influenced by later events. It was doubtless by a dream that the idea first came to Muhammad of making the pilgrimage, and he was naturally puzzled when what he regarded as a Divine promise was not fulfilled. The idea, however, must also have commended itself to him for practical political reasons. He can hardly have hoped to conquer Mecca, for he must have known that the morale of the Meccans was still good, and his force was too small to overcome them in battle. His primary intention was no doubt simply what he said, to perform the pilgrimage; but this had certain political implications, and it was probably in these that he was chiefly interested. The performance of the pilgrimage would be a demonstration that Islam was not a foreign religion but essentially an Arabian one, and in particular that it had its centre and focus in Mecca. A demonstration of such a kind at such a time would impress upon the Meccans that Islam was not a threat to the religious importance of Mecca. It would also suggest that Muhammad was prepared to be friendly on his own terms, of course.”[9]

“The more one reflects on the history of Muhammad and of early Islam, the more one is amazed at the vastness of his achievement.  Circumstances presented him with an opportunity such as few men have had, but the man was fully matched with the hour. Had it not been for his gifts as a seer, statesman, and administrator and, behind these, his trust in God and firm belief that God had sent him, a notable chapter in the history of mankind would have remained unwritten.”[10]

“As he rode home to Medina, Muhammad must have been well satisfied with the expedition. In making a treaty with the Meccans as an equal he had received public recognition of the position that was clearly his after the failure of the siege of Medina. More important was the fact that, by ending the state of war with Mecca, he had gained a larger measure of freedom for the work of extending the influence of the religious and political organization he had formed. He doubtless realized that some of the pagan Meccans had been impressed. Yet in stopping the blockade Muhammad had made a great military and economic concession, and what he had gained in return was chiefly among the imponderabilia. The treaty of al-Hudaybiyah was only satisfactory for the Muslims in so far as one believed in Islam and its attractive power. Had Muhammad not been able to maintain and strengthen his hold on the Muslims by the sway of the religious ideas of Islam over their imaginations, and had he not been able to attract fresh converts to Islam, the treaty of al-Hudaybiyah would not have worked in his favour. Material reasons certainly played a large part in the conversion of many Arabs to Islam. But any historian who is not biased in favour of materialism must also allow as factors of supreme importance Muhammad’s belief in the message of the Qur’an, his belief in the future of Islam as a religious and political system, and his unflinching devotion to the task to which, as he believed, God had called him. These attitudes of Muhammad underlay the policy he followed at al-Hudaybiyah.

This expedition and treaty mark a new initiative on the part of Muhammad.”[11]

The Orientalists look through their special glasses with the preconceived assumption that Muhammad cannot be a prophet like the prior Jewish prophets of God and analyze him through secular lenses. Moreover, in their zeal to uphold their assumptions, according to Montgomery Watt, himself, whenever a negative or cynical interpretation of the historic information, about the Prophet, is plausible they immediately fall for it without examining the likelihood of such an interpretation.[17]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia — My comments and highlights are red in color:

Biography

Watt, whose father died when he was only 14 months old, was born in Ceres, Fife, Scotland.^[1]

Watt was a priest of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and was Arabic specialist to the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem from 1943-46.^[1] He became a member of the ecumenical Iona Community in Scotland in 1960. He was Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh from 1964-79.

The Islamic press have called him “the Last Orientalist“.^[3] He died in Edinburgh on 24 October 2006 at the age of 97.^[4]

Awards

Watt held visiting professorships at the University of Toronto, the Collège de France, and Georgetown University, and received the American Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal and won, as its first recipient, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies award for outstanding scholarship.^[2]

Watt’s views

Watt believed that the Qur’an was divinely inspired, though not infallibly true.^[3]

Martin Forward, a 21st century Non-Muslim Islamic scholar states:

His books have done much to emphasize the Prophet’s commitment to social justice; Watt has described him as being like an Old Testament prophet, who came to restore fair dealing and belief in one God to the Arabs, for whom these were or had become irrelevant concepts. This would not be a sufficiently high estimate of his worth for most Muslims, but it’s a start. Frankly, it’s hard for Christians to say affirmative things about a religion like Islam that postdates their own, which they are brought up to believe contains all things necessary for salvation. And it’s difficult for Muslims to face the fact that Christians aren’t persuaded by the view that Christianity is only a stop on the way to Islam, the final religion.” ^[5]

Charlotte Alfred, a reporter for the journal founded in Watt’s department at Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Middle East Report, pointed out:

His views on Islam and Christianity have at times been controversial. He rejects the infallibility of both the Bible and the Qur’ān, but regards each as divinely inspired. He has argued that the Muslim and Judaeo-Christian traditions have much to teach each other, personally commenting that his study of Islam deepened his understanding of the oneness of God.^[6]

Carole Hillenbrand, a professor of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh, states:^[2]

He was not afraid to express rather radical theological opinions – controversial ones in some Christian ecclesiastical circles. He often pondered on the question of what influence his study of Islam had exerted on him in his own Christian faith. As a direct result, he came to argue that the Islamic emphasis on the uncompromising oneness of God had caused him to reconsider the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which is vigorously attacked in the Koran as undermining true monotheism.

Influenced by Islam, with its 99 names of God, each expressing special attributes of God, Watt returned to the Latin word “persona” – which meant a “face” or “mask”, and not “individual”, as it now means in English – and he formulated the view that a true interpretation of Trinity would not signify that God comprises three individuals. For him, Trinity represents three different “faces” of the one and the same God.

Works

• The faith and practice of al-Ghazālī (1953) ISBN 978-0686186106
• Muhammad at Mecca (1953) ISBN 978-0195772784
• Muhammad at Medina (1956) ISBN 978-0195773071 (online)
• Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961) ISBN 978-0198810780, a summary of the above two major works (online)
• Islamic Philosophy and Theology (1962) ISBN 978-0202362724
• Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets (???)
• Islamic Political Thought (1968) ISBN 978-0852244036
• Islamic Surveys: The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe (1972) ISBN 978-0852244395
• The Majesty That Was Islam (1976) ISBN 978-0275518707
• What Is Islam? (1980) ISBN 978-0582783027
• Muhammad’s Mecca (1988) ISBN 978-0852245651
• Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (1991) ISBN 978-0415054119
• Early Islam (1991) ISBN 978-0748601707
• Islamic Philosophy And Theology (1987) ISBN 978-0748607495
• Islamic Creeds (1994) ISBN 978-0748605132
• History of Islamic Spain (1996) ISBN 978-0852243329
• Islamic Political Thought (1998) ISBN 978-0748610983
• Islam and the Integration of Society (1998) ISBN 978-0810102408
• Islam: A Short History (1999) ISBN 978-1851682058
• A Christian Faith For Today (2002) ISBN 0-415-27703-5

References

External links

• Professor W. Montgomery Watt by Carole Hillenbrand
• W. Montgomery Watt: Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman
• “Sirat An-Nabi and the Orientalists” Criticism of some of Watt’s works by Muhammad Mohar Ali
• Obituary by Charlotte Alfred. Edinburgh Middle East Report Online, a journal founded in Watt’s former department. Winter 2006
• Professor Watt’s paper Women in the Earliest Islam
• Interview with Professor Watt on Islam/Christian relations
• William Montgomery Watt’s picture