"Five Things I Learned About Mohammad"

Cross-posted from the Orange County Register

Tonight, PBS is broadcasting a 3-hour program entitled, The Life of Mohammad, hosted by Rageh Omar,
a Somali-born British journalist. Yesterday, Cathleen Falsani wrote the below article advertising the program. The article is entitled, "Five Things I learned About Mohammad". It appears in the paper's Faith and Values section. The text is below.
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Falsani: 5 things I learned about Muhammad 
 
On Tuesday evening, PBS will air “The Life of Muhammad,” an 
exceptionally fine documentary series about the life and legacy of the 
founder of Islam. 
 
Hosted by Rageh Omaar, a veteran Somali-born British journalist and 
war correspondent who is Muslim, the three-hour documentary paints a 
vivid picture not only of the Prophet Muhammad — who, according to 
prevailing Islamic custom, cannot be depicted in any fashion — but of 
the varied understandings of his life, teaching, and legacy. 
 
Journalist and author Rageh Omaar, host and narrator of the three-part 
PBS series, "The Life of Muhammad," which airs Aug. 20 nation-wide. 
 
Filmed on location in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and elsewhere, 
the documentary, which was made for the BBC where it aired in 2011, 
succeeds where predecessors have failed by incorporating sweeping 
landscapes — physical and spiritual — with a breadth of knowledge from 
Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars (more than a dozen by my count, 
including some of the preeminent names in their fields, including 
Karen Armstrong and Tariq Ramadan) whose own perspectives run the 
gamut from orthodox and mystic, to skeptic and even detractor. 
 
Divided into three parts — “The Seeker,” “Holy War,” and “Holy Peace” 
— the film opens inside Omaar’s hotel room where he is preparing for 
the haj — the pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars of 
Islam. Omaar tells us he made his first haj as a boy with his family 
30 years earlier. 
 
It is this human, personal touch from the host that helps make the 
documentary all the more compelling. 
 
“Like most Muslims, the first human name I heard was not that of my 
mother or father,” Omaar says, “but of Muhammad.” 
 
As is the Islamic custom, shortly after he was born in Somalia in 
1967, someone whispered the words of the Shahada — the Muslim 
statement of faith that says, “There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is 
his messenger” — into Omaar’s ear. 
 
“Fourteen-hundred years ago a man born here, in Mecca, in Saudi 
Arabia, changed the course of world history,” Omaar says, adding that 
he wants to explore the “many complexities” of Muhammad’s life and 
times and how they “still affect today’s world. I want to uncover the 
real Muhammad.” 
 
Robustly researched and beautifully filmed, combined with Omaar’s 
inviting demeanor and assuring gravitas, “The Life of Muhammad” is 
well worth watching. It is a vivid corrective to the fear and 
misinformation that surrounds Islam and its 1.3 billion adherents 
worldwide. 
 
Muslims are no more a monolith than Christians and Jews, and their 
understanding of their own doctrines and theology are as dynamic as 
any held by their Christian and Jewish cousins — all monotheistic 
“People of the Book,” whose stories overlap throughout history and 
continue to do so today. 
 
Most viewers will learn a lot about the Prophet and Islam. And even 
those of us who have studied Islam likely will walk away with at least 
a few new gems of information and perspective. 
 
Here are a few of mine: 
 
1. Muhammad was an orphan. 
 
His father died before he was born, and his mother (who had placed him 
with a Bedouin wet nurse as an infant and reunited with him several 
years later) died when he was about 6. He then went to live with a 
grandfather, who also died, before he finally came under the 
protection of his uncle, Abu Talib, who would be among Muhammad’s 
closest companions until his death. 
 
Interestingly, while he was an ardent supporter of his nephew, 
according to the film, and despite Muhammad’s best efforts to persuade 
him, Abu Talib never converted to Islam. “The most direct, the most 
unequivocal statement in the Qur’an, is that there is no compulsion in 
religion — no ifs, ands or buts,” scholar Merryl Wyn Davies, director 
of London’s Muslim Institute, says in the film. “Unless you make a 
free, willing choice for faith, you cannot be held accountable for 
your actions thereafter. That is the essence of what Islam is about.” 
 
2. Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah, asked him to marry her. 
 
When Muhammad was about 25, he agreed to work for Khadijah, a widow 
who was a successful merchant, accompanying some of her wares on a 
trade caravan. When he returned, she asked him to marry her. Even 
today it’s unusual for a woman to ask a man to marry her, but in 
7th-century Arabia it would have been absolutely unheard of, according 
to the film. 
 
Muhammad and Khadijah were married for nearly 25 years and together 
had four daughters. Although polygamy was the custom at the time, 
Muhammad didn’t take another wife until after Khadijah died. She was 
the love of his life, according to the film, his first convert and is 
considered the “mother of Islam.” 
 
3. There are no memorials, statues or even plaques marking Muhammad’s 
birthplace. 
 
Although historians and scholars believe they know precisely where 
Muhammad was born, in Mecca on June 6, 632 A.D., there are no markers 
celebrating the site as a sacred or even special place. According to 
the film, any signs or markers with Muhammad’s name have been removed 
over the years in an effort to ensure that Muhammad is not worshipped 
or venerated in any way. Muhammad was not the son of God or divine — 
he was just a man, a fact that he insisted be made clear in his 
lifetime and after. 
 
Worshipping Muhammad or anyone other than Allah — the one true God — 
is considered the very worst kind of sin. 
 
In accordance with the prevailing tradition in Islam against depicting 
Muhammad or any of the prophets before him (including Abraham, Moses, 
and Jesus), the film does not include any dramatic reenactments of 
Muhammad’s life or any historical artwork that shows the prophet 
without his face covered by a veil. 
 
4. Muslims haven’t always prayed toward Mecca. 
 
Among the many mosques and houses of worship Omaar visits in the film 
is the Masjid al-Qiblatain (or “Mosque of Two Qiblas”) in Medina, 
Saudi Arabia. Qibla is the Arabic term for the direction Muslims face 
when they pray five times daily (another of the Five Pillars of 
Islam.) The Mosque of Two Qiblas is so named because it has two arched 
alcoves indicating the direction of prayer — a large one facing in the 
direction of Mecca and a second, smaller one facing toward Jerusalem. 
 
It was in this mosque that, while leading prayer, Muhammad is said to 
have received a revelation from God telling him to change the 
direction Muslims faced during prayer. According to the film, in the 
revelation, God told Muhammad to pray toward Mecca and the Kaaba — the 
large black cube that the Qur’an (the Muslim holy book) says was built 
as the first building for humans to worship Allah — rather than 
Jerusalem, as was the custom among Muhammad’s followers, as well as 
among Jews and Christians. From that day forward, no matter where they 
are in the world, Muslims face toward Mecca when they pray. 
 
5. An “Islamic state” probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. 
 
One of the most fascinating chapters in the film deals with the 
so-called “Constitution of Medina,” which is said to have been written 
by the Prophet Muhammad himself as the basis for the very first 
Islamic state in Medina. While there are varying historical and 
religious opinions about who wrote it, when and why — the film does an 
excellent job presenting various sides of the debate — the document 
was an agreement between the Muslims in Medina and the pagans, Jews, 
Christians and others who lived there at the time and made up what 
Muhammad described as the “ummah” or “community. 
 
While “ummah” is often used today to describe an exclusively Muslim 
community, the film says that’s not what Muhammad intended. In fact, 
the constitution of the first “Islamic state” defined the rights given 
to non-Muslims as explicit members of the community, including a 
statement that said the “security of God” is equal for all groups, and 
that non-Muslims were not obligated to take part in “religious wars.” 
 
One of the scholar-commentators in the film, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, 
the Pakistani-born Anglican bishop of Rochester, England and author of 
“Islam: A Christian Perspective,” has one of the best lines in the 
film. Commenting on the Medina constitution, he says, “When people 
today say to me, ‘We would like to create an Islamic state here or 
there,‘ I say to them, ‘Will it be like the first one? And if not, why 
not?” 
 
Contact the writer: cfalsani@ocregister.com 

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Comment: With all the superlative adjectives, looks like this will be one of the greatest 

cinematographic ventures since Technocolor was invented. 

I would not expect the Orange County Register to run an article criticizing Islam or 

the prophet-even in the editorial section. Yet, at the same time, this article is so 

hagiographic in nature as to be historically misleading if not downright false. The timing 

could not have been more ironic with over 60 churches in Egypt having been attacked and 

burned to the ground-to say nothing of all the other attacks against Christians and 

non-Muslim minorities across the Islamic world.

"It is a vivid corrective to the fear and misinformation that surrounds Islam and its 1.3 
billion adherents worldwide." 



Really? Tell that to the Coptic Christians in Egypt who are huddled in fear as we speak. Are they so 
misinformed?



“The most direct, the most unequivocal statement in the Qur’an, is that there is no 

compulsion in religion — no ifs, ands or buts,” scholar Merryl Wyn Davies, director 


of London’s Muslim Institute, says in the film."



True, that statement does appear in the Koran, but so do others written later that call it into 

question. In many parts of the Islamic world, forced conversions are going on even today. 




"Muhammad and Khadijah were married for nearly 25 years and together 
had four daughters. Although polygamy was the custom at the time, 
Muhammad didn’t take another wife until after Khadijah died. She was 
the love of his life, according to the film, his first convert and is 
considered the “mother of Islam.” 
Misleading?

"While “ummah” is often used today to describe an exclusively Muslim 
community, the film says that’s not what Muhammad intended. In fact, 
the constitution of the first “Islamic state” defined the rights given 
to non-Muslims as explicit members of the community, including a 



statement that said the “security of God” is equal for all groups, and 
that non-Muslims were not obligated to take part in “religious wars.”
 
Too bad the writer did not go into detail about what the conditions of dhimmitude were, which 
includes the part that they must feel subjugated to Islam.


This is quite similar to the current textbook controversy in our schools as to how Islam is 

presented to our children. Again, in the interests of harmony and the sensitivities of Muslim 

schoolchildren, I wouldn't expect schools to attack Islam or any other religion.Yet, if it is

necessary to present such a misleading narrative in this area, perhaps, it would be better to

leave the subject alone. If we want to be well-informed on this subject, it is certainly possible

to read the Islamic texts, study the complete life of Mohammad, and follow world events.