CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS A PROPHET?
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) tops all
national heroes of the world in greatness, glory and grandeur.
We have heard the tales of Solomon's wisdom, which has done nothing to raise
the stature of his nation; whatever, the Jews have achieved, they have done
through their own efforts, and at a very high cost, indeed. But, so great has
been sagacity of the Prophet Muhammad that, whereas other power-seekers resorted
to coercion and bloodshed for controlling the destiny of foreign nations, he
devised a self- perpetuating form of Arab Imperialism, which requires no swords,
artillery or bombers. This majestic, marvellous and mighty Arabian instrument is
called "Islam." In theory, it means "surrender to Allah" but
in practice, it is a force of self-subjugation to the soil of Arabia and its
cultural institutions!
Is it not amazing that a modern super power like the United States of
America, despite showering billions of dollars in the world's depressed,
deprived and derided people, cannot win their gratitude, but one thousand
million Muslims of this planet, who mostly suffer from pangs of poverty, will
save every penny to perform the annual Hajj ceremony, which has been the
mainstay of the Saudi Arabian economy for centuries. This is appreciation of
what the Prophet may do for them in the next world!
Even more amazing is the fact that the genius of the Prophet has made the
Islamic Imperialism so baffling through a stunningly beautiful coat of reverence
that nobody has ever dared fathom its depth. This is what gives it the mystique
of heavenly success, splendour and superiority.
Islam has become the conqueror of hearts and minds of the depressed, the
distracted and the decimated. It is really spectacular how, through a process of
brainwashing, it acts as the tranquilliser for those, who have been ravaged by
hunger, ignorance and injustice. It provides tranquility through the hoax of
paradise, which is a place of bliss, blessedness and beatitude, where there is
no pain, toil or death. Instead, every man shall be endowed with an everlasting
age of 30 irrespective of how old he was when he died; his virility shall be
increased a hundredfold, and the Munificent Allah shall bestow upon him no fewer
than seventy-two most beautiful virgins, eager to gratify his lust. There is
only one condition for the fulfilment of this promise: people must believe in
Muhammad and the spiritual supremacy of Arabia, his motherland; they must adore
all the Arab heroes, and crave for the introduction of the Koranic Law in their
countries to demonstrate allegiance to the superiority of the Arab cultural
values.
The net result of this faith is that every non-Arab Muslim has been turned
into a moth, restless to cremate itself on the flame of Arab Imperialism.
Therefore, it is not surprising that, whereas other dominant nations require
guns, tanks and atom bombs to subdue foreign countries, the Arabs need nothing
of the sort. Islam does it all for them through a dazzling process of
brainwashing.
It may look a miracle but, in fact, it is a specimen of a rare political
skill. As Muhammad claimed to be a Prophet, people have come to believe that a
Prophet is Divine i.e. a part of Godhead, though apparently, they refer to him
as a human.
Since influence of Prophethood has become a major source of mental
retardation through its uncanny grip on its believers, it is imperative to
establish that a Prophet is just a human, though distinguished by a sense of
self-importance and sharp political skills, which he uses to bestow divinity
upon himself by creating a heroic image in people's minds. Therefore, it is
vital to ask, "What is a Prophet?"
The Koran declares:
"Perfect are the Words of thy Lord in Truth and
justice. No man can change His words. He is
All-Hearing, The All-knowing." (Cattle, VI: 116)
According to the Koran (Counsel, XLII: 10), the Bible i.e. the Old Testament and
the New Testament, or in the Islamic language, Taurat, Zabur and Anjeel are the
words of God. Therefore, they cannot be tampered with, and one can rely upon the
truthfulness of the stories that have been narrated therein.
However, it should also be pointed out that the Koran has blamed the Jews and
the Christians for interpolating their Holy Books. It is therefore, a
self-contradiction of high magnitude, which undermines authority of the Koran
itself. But when we bear in mind that the Jews and the Christians adore their
Prophets and Patriarchs, one finds no reason to disbelieve the Biblical stories,
which are an integral part of the Jewish-Christian faith and tradition. Why
should they denigrate their own religious heroes, whom they admire to the tune
of worship?
After these introductory remarks, I may add that a Prophet is considered a
Divine appointee, who serves as the sole medium of godly instructions to
humankind and thus ranks as the pillar of innocence, piety and virtue. So great
is his moral stature that he can commit no wrong. The doctrine of prophethood
holds him as the ambassador, and model of morality.
To support this Semitic tradition, its followers have devised tales which
lend the most virtuous, vivacious and vibrant character to a prophet, making him
the manifestation of God, who is held as the supreme example of righteousness.
Since the concept of prophethood has been a great barrier to free thinking and
unity of mankind owing to its supernatural and devisive character, one is
inclined to examine it with a view to sifting facts from fiction and truth from
triviality. For explaining this puzzle with fairness and an acceptable degree of
credibility, I intend to review the lives of more than one prophet so that
nobody can say that I have picked on one particular prophet to distort the
truth.
Having given my reasons for honouring the veracity of Biblical accounts, now
I may proceed to describe lives of the following prophets to show that they were
human, subject to the law of error, but their followers have made them Divine
for seeking refuge in them:
1. Noah,
2. Abraham,
3. Lot,
4. David,
5. Solomon and
6. Muhammad.
1. NOAH
Noah is considered a model of morality owing to his goodness of
conduct, greatness of piety and grandeur of virtue. The Holy Koran vouches for
Noah's character:
"God chose Adam and Noah .."
(The House of Imran: 30)
"And Noah We guided before, and of his seed David
and Solomon, Job and Joseph, Moses and Aaron .."
( Cattle: 80 )
"And We sent Noah to his people:
'I am for you a warner, and a
bearer of good tidings.'" (Hood: 25)
The Prophet Muhammad treats Noah as a model, a warner and bearer of good
tidings. This shows the moral dignity of Noah.
One should also note that there is hardly any annotation of the Koran, which
has been possible without referring to the contents of the Bible itself.
Further, the Biblical traditions have exerted a tremendous influence on the
understanding of the Koran despite all the blames of interpolation and
corruption that the Moslem scholars have forged against the Bible.
Noah is a Semitic name; it means Rest or Comfort. According to the Jewish
mythology, Adam was the ancestor of mankind but his progeny met near extinction
when Noah was about 601 years old.
What did go wrong with mankind? According to the Bible (Genesis 9: 5-6), man
became so wicked that it grieved God, who repented for having created him. So,
He decided to cause the heaviest flooding by incessant rain; its only purpose
was to destroy mankind for purging this planet of sin. In His zeal for morality,
God destroyed the bird and the beast without specifying how they might have
offended His grace. However, as a reward for Noah's piety, the Good Lord
commanded him to build an ark of gopher wood of a particular shape and size for
himself, his sons, his wife and his sons' wives along with pairs of fowl and
cattle. (Genesis 6: 14-22)
Since every living thing perished except what Noah was able to save as a
reward for his virtues, he ranks as the Hero of the Flood, the second progenitor
of mankind and saviour of the fowl and the beast.
Again, as the present race of man comes from the loins of his three sons,
namely Shem, Ham and Japheth, all of us happen to be Jews! Obviously, this is
the reward of God's moral sense. To show His pleasure for Noah's morality, God
established a covenant with him (Genesis 9: 10-17). It is a part of this
covenant that He will never again flood the earth. So great was God's resolve to
keep this stipulation that He made the rainbow as a permanent symbol of the
divine contract for reminding Him to keep it.
After this eulogy, one ought to look at the practical life of Noah to assess
his moral magnitude objectively. According to the Bible, he was a husbandman and
the inventor of the vineyard culture. He made grape wine; drank it to his
heart's content, and indulged in intoxication. One day, when he suffered from
the intensity of drunkenness, he lay naked on the floor. Ham just happened to go
into his father's room and accidentally noticed his nakedness. He told his
brothers, Shem and Japheth, about it. They respectfully covered their father
without looking at him.
Having risen from his drunken torpor, Noah realised what had happened. His
behaviour towards his own son, Ham, does not glorify his moral sense at all
because he became spiteful towards him though he (Ham) was totally innocent by
any standard of good conduct. He cursed Canaan, the son of Ham, for his father's
innocent mistake. He said that Canaan would be the servant of Shem and Japheth,
who would be blessed by the Lord God. Whereas they and their children would
prosper, the progeny of Canaan would live to serve them.
The details of this episode are to be found in chapter 19 of Genesis. Noah
lived 950 years. His curse, if believed in, does not vouch for his moral
excellence as depicted by the Bible. Fancy cursing Canaan for the
"sin" of his father. Canaanites, the modern Palestinians are the
descendants of Canaan. Thus the cause of eternal Judeo- Palestinian strife is
rooted in the moral sense of Noah, yet God chose him to be the second ancestor
of mankind!
2. ABRAHAM
He was the Jewish patriarch, who came to be acknowledged as the father
of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is believed to be the prototype of the
faithful man, tested and proven by God. The Koran says:
1. Allah made Abraham, the leader of mankind.
( The Cow: 115 )
2. The best religion has he who follows the creed of
Abraham, a man of pure faith, and a FRIEND of
God. (Women: 12 )
3. The Koran tells its followers that Islam is "the
creed of your father Abraham, who named you
Muslims:" (The Pilgrimage: 75)
Abraham, the glorious prophet of God, the prototype of divine morality, was a
native of Ur in Mesopotamia. He was told by Yahwe, the Jewish God, to leave his
country and people in search of an undesignated land where he would become the
father of a new nation. This land turned out to be Canaan (between Syria and
Egypt). God promised him that his progeny destined to be a huge nation, would
inherit the land.
The Bible tells us that Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah, his
wife, ninety-nine, when she bore Isaac, their first son. History bears testimony
to the fact that, until dawn of the 20th century, the first birth carried a
message of death to a forty-year-old woman. How a ninety-nine year old woman
gave birth to her first child and yet survived, is certainly against the law of
nature. Belief in such a birth during that age, cannot be anything but wishful
thinking. Faith has got to be scientific or nearly scientific; this is the
message of human advancement and moral thinking. Chaining human mind with
superstition is an insult to the moral dignity of man.
It appears that Abraham was less concerned with morality and more with
seeking the pleasure of God. This speculation is strengthened by the event
narrated in chapter 22 of Genesis; the second verse states that God commanded
Abraham to take Isaac "into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a
burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."
He prepared an altar of wood, tied up Isaac and laid him on it. He actually
took out a knife to slay his son but a miracle saved him! Just think about the
moral aspect of this happening:
1. Murder is the most heinous thing and a detestable crime against morality.
What kind of God could have tried a man with such an abomination?
2. If it was an act of trial, God surely did not know how Abraham would
react to such a test. If He did, He was playing a furtive game, which is far
below the dignity of God, who claims to be the Creator of this most wonderful
world.
3. If God believes in morality, He must hate murder and all those who do
this act in the name of God. This event also shows Abraham's "standard of
perfection." Fancy the craze for salvation, by killing one's own son! Is
it really an act of high morality or selfishness? Moral standards require of a
father to give his own life to protect his children, and not the other way
round.
There is yet another event which gives us an insight into the morality of
Abraham. I am referring to his treatment of Ishmael, his other son, from Sarah's
maidservant, called Hagar. It is stunning to note that it was Sarah who
persuaded Abraham to have carnal relationship with Hagar. Having sexual
intercourse with one's wife is a blessing but with someone else, be it a
concubine or maidservant, is a sin and a crime. It is only the act of marriage
which sanctifies the sensual rights of the spouses. Thus, marital philosophy of
Islam, which allows physical intercourse with a concubine becomes enigmatic, and
loses its dignity. How a perfect man like Abraham could fall for it? The result
was birth of a son called Ishmael, who became the ancestor of the Arabs. The
same Sarah who wanted to be a mother through Hagar, became jealous of Hagar and
Ishmael. Her pleasure lay in turning them both out of her house and making
Abraham abandon them in a desert. Sarah was once a beautiful woman. Abraham
could not annoy her because her displeasure would have upset him. God, the
Almighty, chose to side with Sarah in this episode! He took the baby Ishmael and
Hagar into the wilderness of Beer-Sheba and left them there to die. Again, a
miracle saved them. This episode is narrated in chapter 21 of Genesis, and shows
both God's and Abraham's total indifference to morality.
There is yet another event which shows that Abraham behaved like an ordinary
human. He was as much afraid of death as anyone else. As he sojourned in Gerar,
Abimelech, the king of Gerar, took over Sarah. Because she was beautiful, he was
sure that the king would slay him to possess her. (Genesis 20: 11 ) Abraham told
them that Sarah was not his wife but sister. One should also note that at a
previous occasion (Genesis 12: 11-20) when Abraham entered Egypt, he told a
similar lie for the same reason. He was even more afraid of dying on that
occasion. Sarah had to join in the mendacity to save him.
Fancy "the friend of God," telling lies to escape death! Imagine
God saying to Abraham: "Walk before me, and be thou perfect." (Genesis
17: 1). If this is the character of the Perfect man chosen by God, what can He
expect of ordinary mortals? And can He deny them salvation when His own concept
of morality is inferior to that of what humans usually practise?
3. LOT
Once upon a time, c. 1900 B.C. there roamed Lot, preaching in the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which are now believed to lie under the shallow
water south of Al- Lisan, a peninsula situated close to the southern end of the
Dead Sea in Israel.
The evil habits of the inhabitants of these cities gave birth to an infamous
word i.e. sodomy, which needs no explanation. These cities enjoyed the same
reputation in wicked gaiety as some modern metropolises do for gambling and
sexual perversions. The extraordinary vice of these conurbations attracted the
wrath of the Lord with complete vehemence. The faithful believe, as the Bible
says: "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire
from out of heaven," (Genesis 19: 24-25), thus causing their total
destruction. The legendary wickedness and the fate of these gay cities has been
the subject of dramas, plays, novels and paintings over the centuries. Yet the
waters of sodomy, instead of subsiding, have been rising steadily to become the
whipping waves in modern times for assuming the form of a privileged
homosexuality under the umbrella of "humanism."
We are tolerant and keep our grudges to ourselves, but Lot lashed out against
it. The degree of disgust, displeasure and distraction is demonstrated by his
devastating stand that he took against it. What gave him the courage to preach
against sodomy was the fact that he was the appointed Prophet of God, charged
with the mission to deplore, deprecate and destroy the evil without fear of
discomfort, distress or death. According to the Koran, "God admitted Lot
into His mercy; gave him judgement and knowledge, and he was one of the
righteous" (The Prophets 70-75). He had the courage to address his people
bluntly: "Why do you come to male beings, leaving your wives that your Lord
created for you? Nay, but you are a people of transgressors" (The Poets:
165). They did not like his divine warnings of chastisement and told him that if
he did not stop preaching against sodomy, he would be expelled from the
locality.
Lot, the nephew of Abraham, though admirably daring, did not triumph in his
mission. The Good Lord himself became impatient with these people. Having
decided to annihilate them, He sent two angels for carrying out the Divine
punishment. Mistaking them for ordinary males, men of the locality tried to
seize them for lewd purposes. As they had stayed with Lot, he tried to save
their honour by offering the agitators his two virgin daughters, whom they
refused and persisted in their evil attempt.
Next morning brought the day of reckoning in the form of brimstone and fire
(Genesis 19: 24-25). It levelled completely the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The only people who survived were Lot, his wife and his two daughters. However,
his wife was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19: 26) for "looking
back" against the express command of God. So, there were really only three
survivors - Lot and his two daughters. After the total destruction, there was
only one place where they could dwell, and that was a cave.
It is at this junction that the Bible says something different about Lot, the
prophet of God, a righteous and exalted man. The event is recorded in verses
31-38 of chapter 19 of Genesis. It says that to preserve the seed of their
father, first, it was the elder daughter of Lot who had sexual intercourse with
him, and the next night came the turn of the younger daughter to seduce her
father. They both used the same method of seduction, that is, made him drunk to
the extent that in each case: "he perceived not when she lay down, nor when
she arose." The result was that they both became pregnant by their own
father. One bore Moab who grew up to become the father of the Moabites, and the
younger daughter also gave birth to a son called Ben-Ammi who fathered the tribe
which came to be known as Ammon.
Giving judgement on the moral perfection of Lot is a delicate matter but one
ought to remember two things; firstly, Lot was used to drinking like Noah.
Otherwise, he would not have accepted wine. The fact that he also received it
from his other daughter, proves his drinking habit.
Secondly, he took no action against his daughters. Instead, he raised his
sons himself. It expresses his approval of the whole affair.
One can raise several other points on the issue but it ought to be enough for
the thinking mind.
4. DAVID
Plain-speaking is one of the distinguishing features of the Bible. Many
a time, has it. revealed the psychological truths, which men infested with
vainglory and an exaggerated sense of self-piety, may like to conceal from their
fellow- beings. 1 Kings 2: 1-4, speaks openly about David and expresses a fact
about male psyche. I may state it in my own words:
As he lay on his death-bed through longevity and physical exhaustion, he
shivered with cold and uncertainty. More than his body, it was his enfeebled
spirit - once used to a tonant life of toils, tussels and tornadoes, that needed
heat to restore his tempestuous tempo of existence. In a flash of sagacious
thinking, someone thought of the rejuvinating power of feminine touch.
The royal court immediately ordered the despatch of horsemen "throughout
all the coast of Israel" to find a young virgin of exquisite beauty who
should fondle the dying David by cuddling him and lying on his chest with a view
to stirring up his benumbed desire, and thus release him from the clutches of
imminent death by giving him a new will to enjoy a vivacious, vigorous and
virile life, once his privilege, practice and priority.
It was not a futile mission because the searchers did return with a young
virgin of statuesque charm and elegance; her name as mentioned in the Bible was
Abishag, a Shunammite. Despite all this effort, the magic of her youth and
beauty failed to revive David because she arrived too late to perform the
miracle. David had lost his intellectual and physical capacities to feel her
presence.
Who was David? He was the youngest son of Jesse and grandson of Boaz and
Ruth. He was born in Bethlehem. As a warrior, he was the Jewish hero who humbled
Goliath, a soldier of gigantic proportions, when he was only a stripling. This
gallantry brought him the reward of appointment as an aid to the court of Saul,
the first king of Israel.
Of much greater stature is David's religious leadership, which has served as
the nucleus of Jewish nationhood and the secret of its survival. The ideal king,
as the Jewish tradition treats him, has become the pivot of the messianic
expectations. Being the standard-bearer of the Jewish hope, he has always loomed
as a promise of fulfilment throughout the heartbreaking fiascos, failures and
frustrations of the Jewish history. It is this lofty national stature of David,
which prompted the writers of the New Testament to treat him as the progenitor
of Jesus. The boundaries of his esteem extend far beyond the realm of Judaism,
and cover the kingdoms of Christianity and Islam.
The Koran says: ".... David the man of might, he
was penitent. With him We subjected the mountains
to give glory at evening and sunrise, and the birds,
duly mustered, every one to him reverting ......We
gave him wisdom and a sagacious speech ....."(SAD:15-25)
Stated simply, according to the Koran, David was an exalted prophet of God who
had been given command by his Lord over the mountains, birds and the phenomena
of mornings and evenings. He was appointed as viceroy by God to rule people
justly.
A prophet is supposed to be the model of innocence and moral piety. What does
the Bible say about David? It narrates his character in 2 Samuel, and the first
Book of Kings. The amazing narrative it contains, shows that a prophet is human,
and his exalted moral status is more a matter of faith than fact:
David, one late afternoon, as he "arose from off his bed" and
strolled on the roof-top of his palace, felt his gaze arrested by a beautiful
young woman, who was bathing in the privacy of her own home. The sexual
temptation that her naked body generated proved irresistable to David; every
inch of the damsel reflected the pink hues of the setting sun. David, the slayer
of Goliath, fell victim to the fascination of the bathing beauty, bubbling with
desire, devastation and dalliance.
Who was she? Her name was Bathsheba. She was the daughter of Elia, and wife
of Uriah, the Hittite, a general in David's army. David's approach towards
Bathsheba, as demonstrated by the Bible (2 Samuel 11: 4), is quite different
from that of a Western knight, who begged favour of his lady love. The humbled
monarch, though destined to be the genitor of Jesus Christ, used his eastern
privilege to get her. The lady surrendered, yet David retained his piety!
Instead of offering himself for the punishment that the Old Testament prescribes
for adultery, he felt entitled to carnal indulgence indefinitely. However, the
prophet Nathan, had the courage to address David on the subject through a
parable. The divine David, first flared up with anger, and then realising the
enormity of his sin, he repented but decided to cleanse his guilt in a novel
way. He slept with her again; she conceived for the second time and became the
mother of immortal Solomon, the Wise.
What happened to Bathsheba's first conception by David? Yahwe, the Jewish
God, in His wisdom, did not allow the child to live as a punishment to David.
But, what did the child do to deserve extinction? What an example of Divine
morality!
The faithful hold that it was a way of purifying David. However, this divine
process went a bit too far: he sent for Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, and gave him
a sealed letter and ordered him to take it to Joab, the army- commander. The
letter contained David's command to expose Uriah to the maximum danger at the
battle front. It was, in fact, a conspiracy to murder him. To be able to marry
his widow, David the prophet of God, not only caused Uriah's death through this
stratagem but many other Israelite soldiers lost their lives in its execution.
Yet God forgave David, the Prophet! Both the Bible and the Koran testify to
this fact.
5. SOLOMON
Solomon, the Wise, has been given the dignity of a prophet by the
Koran.
Islam does not claim to be the religion proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad of
Arabia but the continuation of the faith that God revealed to Noah and "the
prophets after him such as Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, Job, Jonah and
Aaron and Solomon .." (Women: 160)
Obviously, Solomon was a significant prophet for being a link in the chain of
prophethood. How important was he? The Koran has endowed him with supernatural
gifts: as God had subjected mountains and birds to the will of David, He gave
Solomon command over the wind (The prophet: 80) and made him ruler of Jinns
(giants). Besides, the Good Lord gave him an extraordinary gift of understanding
the speech of birds and animals right down to ants, and thus, he could converse
with them in their own tongue.
The Bible, however, presents him differently - a sumptuous king, having ample
wisdom and deep understanding, not dimmed by the flashes of royal gaiety, which
usually restrict the vision of rulers. He was a man of tremendous sexual
appetite and, as stated by the Biblical scholars, enjoyed the novel hobby of
concubine-collecting. As a result, he came to possess a harem of three hundred
concubines and seven hundred wives, and thus required 1000 female beauties to
gratify his erotic desires.
The Bible clearly demonstrates that, when it came to choosing between God and
women, he usually opted for the latter. Chapter 11 of 1 Kings gives a clear
indication of Solomon's fallibility to the female charm. Yahwe, the Jewish God,
who is jealous and demands exclusive love and devotion for Himself, has
forbidden a Jew to marry a non-Jew; marriage with a gentile is likely to
estrange him from Yahwe. Yet Solomon "loved many strange women"
because his harem consisted of, not only Pharaoh's daughter, but also women of
the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians and Hittites.
His love of non-Jewish women made him discard God and openly rebel against
Him; "his wives turned away his heart after other gods," and he built
temples to Chemosh and Molech, the foreign deities to please his wives and
concubines. Solomon, the prophet, was in fact, a practising idolator. This truth
is well-attested by the fact that Yahwe, Himself appeared to Solomon twice (1
Kings 11: 9) and warned him that, as he had not kept His covenant and statutes,
he would be punished, though retribution would be held in abeyance during his
life-time as a mark of favour to David, his father, but it would be unleashed on
his progeny, who would lose most of the empire.
The song of Solomon gives us a glimpse of his romantic nature:
"O my dove, that are in the clefts of the rock ..."
( Chapter 1: 14 )
In verse 3 of chapter 4, he likens his beloved's lips to a scarlet thread and
her temples to a piece of pomegranate.
Again, he says: "Thy two breasts are like two young
roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies."
(Chapter 4: 5)
One may call it a mystical style of expression to give it a divine construction,
but then mystics are known for their erotic passions.
Solomon's disregard for God is revealed by his distracted disposition for
women; it arouses his desires and he admires them as if he were an inhabitant of
a dreamland dwelt in by darlings of excessive desirability. The Queen of Sheba's
story proves this point. She was enthralled by his tales of wisdom, and
"she came to prove him with hard questions" (1 Kings 10: 1). As she
was determined to discover whether Solomon's reputation was based on truth or
triviality, "she communed with him of all that was in her heart" ( 1
Kings 10: 2 ).
This is a true Biblical account of the event because history has recorded
some riddles of the Queen of Sheba to portray the joviality of the occasion. She
asked Solomon:
"What has ten holes; when one is open, nine are closed; when one closes,
nine are open."
"Man" whose navel closes at birth, is said to be the answer to
this riddle. So charmed was she with the prolific and piercing wisdom of
Solomon that she burst into an accolade:
"Happy are thy men ..who hear thy wisdom."
(1 Kings 10: 8)
To influence wisdom with the magic of worldly riches, she gave Solomon a lot of
gold, precious stones and great stores of spices. In return, "Solomon gave
unto the Queen of Sheba all her desire whatsoever she asked .."
(1 Kings 10: 13)
The amorous Queen, infatuated with Solomon's intellect and body, conceived to
celebrate the erotic hilarity of this occasion, and gave birth to a son known to
history as Menelik 2; he fathered a small African tribe of Jews known as Falasha,
whose existence remained a mystery until 1867.
6. MUHAMMAD
The character of the prophet Muhammad has been drummed up out of all
proportions by those, whose selfish interests are conveniently served by such an
exercise. So important is the issue under discussion that I shall be failing in
my duty to humankind if I gloss it over for fear of consequences. Equally,
honesty demands that my narrative must be nothing but the whole truth. In view
of the significance of the subject, I may examine it in a separate chapter.
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Preface
