Mohammed: The Golden Calf?
Reader comment on item: Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada

Submitted by Marci (United States), Dec 3, 2007 at 11:57

One of the most curious aspects of Muslim behavior regarding their prophet Mohammed is the often times insane furor over what Muslims regard as blasphemy against him. Islam, as the third offshoot of Abrahamic revelation purports itself to be the correction of that revelation, claiming that the first two--Judaism and Christianity--corrupted God/Allah's covenants. Its complaint against Christianity is that Christians (by Jesus' own blashphemy) equate Jesus with God ("I and the Father are one"), and thus violate a tenet of Mosaic law that God cannot be anthropormorphosized or graven in any way, nor only accessable through an interlocuter ("No one comes to the Father but through me"). To wit, God/Allah cannot appear as a golden calf, and certainly not as a carpenter born of a mortal woman.

This is all well and good; however, Islam by making the Mohammed a sacred totem by which others can be harmed or killed for alleged slights against his "name," is in essence elevating Mohammed to the status of a golden calf, equating slights against Mohammed as a mortal sin. Remember, Islam recognizes that Mohammed was a mortal man. Surely, then, Mohammed cannot be thought of as a "perfect" human being, for perfection is only recognized in Allah. Therefore, Islam cannot Mosaically claim that there can be any sacred blasphemy against a mortal, imperfect man, unless they elevate that mortal man to Allah's station. If this is indeed so, then a Fourth Revelation is needed to correct Islam as well.

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