Without Contraries Is No Progression

When I consider the people who vilify (whether in their words or actions) the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), I have to wonder why they find this man, fifteen centuries in the grave, so threatening.

It strikes me that these people have been seized with a mania. They labor under the influence of a mental disease.

I have no way of curing them and so I feel that I have little choice but to distance myself from them in whatever way I can.

The more they hate the Prophet--and it's not the Prophet they hate but some image of him that they have formed in their minds--the more I feel compelled to love and revere him, or an alternative image of him made available in Islamic tradition.

Every thesis deserves an antithesis. Every poison an antidote. Every act of desecration, an act of consecration.

Let us, as Norman O. Brown advised, begin to "get 'Blake and Tradition' right." Let us start with the Prophet Muhammad.