The Psy­cho­log­i­cal Impact of The Fatrah Experience

In their hasty attempt to obfus­cate and attack any­thing that inval­i­dates their claims regard­ing the Prophet’s^(P) expe­ri­ences dur­ing the peri­od known as the Fatrah, the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary Sam Shamoun had released a ver­bal bar­rage of rhetor­i­cal non­sense in his (ridicu­lous­ly-)titled ​“A Chris­t­ian Per­spec­tive[!] of the Fatrah of Muhammad”. 

Need­less to men­tion, it is nei­ther ​“Chris­t­ian” nor it is bal­anced in its ​“per­spec­tive”, as the author sim­ply remains true to the form of the mis­sion­ary tra­di­tion. This is fol­lowed by the equal­ly-messy straw­man argu­ments by his cohort, ​“Silas”, in his com­ments to our expo­si­tion of the Fatrah.

We are not sur­prised that the mis­sion­ar­ies have tak­en a keen inter­est in our work, since this shows that our elu­ci­da­tion of the mat­ter must have sown a deep dis­cord amongst these pro­claimed ene­mies of the Prophet Muham­mad^(P) and Islam. Who­ev­er is the ene­my of Muham­mad^(P) is no doubt an ene­my of ours, and we aim to sti­fle their tongues once and for all by address­ing the claims that they have made, insha’allah.

Obfus­ca­tion : The Mis­sion­ary Tradition

After bawl­ing out non­sen­si­cal para­graphs of what we con­sid­er as hav­ing noth­ing to do with his alleged ​“Chris­t­ian Per­spec­tive” of the Fatrah, Sam Shamoun claims :

Does MENJ con­test Silas’ claim that Muham­mad thought he was demon-pos­sessed ? No. Does MENJ con­test the fact that Muham­mad attempt­ed sui­cide on sev­er­al occa­sions as a result of believ­ing he was demon-pos­sessed and/​or because the spir­it delayed in com­ing to him ? No.

Per­haps the mis­sion­ary had devel­oped an acute sense of trau­mat­ic para­noia when he first wrote the above state­ment. We have shown pre­vi­ous­ly that none of the rea­sons that the mis­sion­ary had high­light­ed (name­ly, that the Prophet^(P) ​“thought” he was demon-pos­sessed) is cor­rect. It is in fact stat­ed that the rea­son the Prophet^(P) had devel­oped the so-called ​“sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies” is because he was anguished that the Archangel Gabriel had not vis­it­ed him for a peri­od of time. Expe­ri­enc­ing human emo­tions of anguish does not make one ​“demon-pos­sessed”! To infer that just because we agree that the Prophet^(P) had suf­fered from this anguish and there­fore this ​“auto­mat­i­cal­ly” means that we sup­port their alle­ga­tions of the so-called ​“demon-pos­ses­sion” of the Prophet^(P), is an out­right lie and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our pur­pose in our expla­na­tion of the Fatrah experience.

That is not all. The mis­sion­ary fan­tasies get even worse as he tries to des­per­ate­ly pit our sources against us, the very same sources that a pri­ori lends sup­port to our article !

The most inter­est­ing part of all this is that MEN­J’s own sources con­firm Silas’ state­ments. For instance, MENJ cites author­i­ties regard­ing the dura­tion of Muham­mad’s Inter­mis­sion, and makes the infer­ence that this peri­od last­ed no lat­er than six months even though there is noth­ing in his sources that sug­gest this. 

Per­haps it has not been clear to the mis­sion­ary that the prob­lem with their ​“Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive” of the Fatrah is that they only wish to demean and den­i­grate any sig­nif­i­cance of this expe­ri­ence to the Prophet Muham­mad^(P). Their clos­et-mind­ed blind­ness has failed to make them look at the big­ger pic­ture of the Fatrah and the mode of Revelation. 

This will be fur­ther elu­ci­dat­ed in the next sec­tion where we dis­cuss the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of the expe­ri­ence, insha’allah.

What Do The Sources Real­ly Say ?

Next, the same mis­sion­ary again bawls out irrel­e­vant mate­r­i­al which cites the ​“opin­ions” of some peo­ple who had thought the Prophet^(P) had an encounter with a ​“demon” or was ​“demon-pos­sessed”. It is no sur­prise as to why these peo­ple had thought so, as the mode of Rev­e­la­tion was vir­tu­al­ly unknown in the con­scious­ness of the pagan Arabs before the com­ing of Islam. As the pagan Arabs are not used to per­ceiv­ing the phe­nom­e­non of wahyToshi­hiku Izut­su, God And Man In The Qur’an (Islam­ic Book Trust, Kuala Lumpur, 2002), pp. 169 – 175. For a dis­cus­sion of the Qur”ac con­cept of wahy (Rev­e­la­tion) and its lin­guis­tics, see Toshi­hiku Izut­su, ibid., p. 178ff., the pre­vail­ing super­sti­tion have con­nect­ed the super­nat­ur­al expe­ri­ences of wahy with demons. Hence the mis­sion­ary attempt at mak­ing a ​“con­nec­tion” between two total­ly unre­lat­ed events is sim­ply a des­per­ate attempt at mak­ing a straw­man and then knock­ing it down.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while this mis­sion­ary was busy berat­ing our appeal to Karen Arm­strong and quot­ing a pas­sage from her work which he claims ​“defeats” our posi­tion, his very same cita­tion actu­al­ly sup­ports our above con­tention regard­ing the per­cep­tion of the pagan Arabs on wahy !

Muham­mad came to him­self in ter­ror and revul­sion, hor­ri­fied to think that he might have become a mere dis­rep­utable kahin whom peo­ple con­sult­ed if one of their camels went miss­ing. A kahin was sup­pos­ed­ly pos­sessed by a jin­ni, one of the sprites who were thought to haunt the land­scape and who could be capri­cious and lead peo­ple into error. Poets also believed that they were pos­sessed by their per­son­al jin­ni. Thus, Hasan ibn Thabit, a poet of Yathrib who lat­er became a Mus­lim, says that when he received his poet­ic voca­tion his jin­ni had appeared to him, thrust him to the ground and forced the inspired words from his mouth. This was the only form of inspi­ra­tion that was famil­iar to Muham­mad.…Karen Arm­strong, A His­to­ry of God, (Bal­lan­tine Books, NY, 1994) p. 137

It is also per­haps a good idea to define once and for all the dif­fer­ence between a Prophet and a mere poet/​shaman :

…there is also an essen­tial and absolute dif­fer­ence between a Prophet and a poet. A poet is by nature an aff ? what he says is sheer ifk, a word which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean a ​‘lie’, but some­thing which has no basis of haqq (real­i­ty) or ​‘truth’, some­thing that is not based on haqq. An aff ? is a man who utters quite irre­spon­si­bly what­ev­er he likes to say with­out stop­ping to reflect whether his own words have some real basis or not, while what a Prophet says is Truth, absolute haqq and noth­ing else. So that the A [God] -> B [Man] rela­tion of prophetism, although it bears an out­ward and for­mal bal­ance to the A [Man] -> B [Man] rela­tion of shaman­ism, has an essen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent struc­ture from the lat­ter.Toshi­hiku Izut­su, op. cit., p. 186

Fur­ther, it is also inter­est­ing to note that Arm­strong had cor­re­lat­ed the expe­ri­ence of Muhammad(P) with what the Hebrew prophets called kad­dosh, acknowl­edg­ing at the same time that the rea­son that Muham­mad^(P) was brought to ​“sui­cide” was not because he was ​“demon-pos­sessed”, but because he had no pri­or expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge of the Semit­ic tra­di­tion of Rev­e­la­tion to sup­port him :

Now, rush­ing from the cave, he resolved to fling him­self from the sum­mit to his death. But on the moun­tain­side he had anoth­er vision of a being which, lat­er, he iden­ti­fied with the angel Gabriel :

When I was mid­way on the moun­tain, I heard a voice from heav­en say­ing, ​“O Muham­mad ! Thou art the apos­tle of God and I am Gabriel”…

…This was no pret­ty nat­u­ral­is­tic angel, but an over­whelm­ing ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence from which escape was impos­si­ble. Muham­mad had had that over­pow­er­ing appre­hen­sion of numi­nous real­i­ty, which the Hebrew prophets had called kad­dosh, holi­ness, the ter­ri­fy­ing oth­er­ness of God. They too had felt near to death and at a phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal extrem­i­ty when they expe­ri­enced it. But unlike Isa­iah or Jere­mi­ah, Muham­mad had none of the con­so­la­tions of an estab­lished tra­di­tion to sup­port him. The ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence seemed to have fall­en upon him out of the blue and left him in a state of pro­found shock. In his anguish, he turned instinc­tive­ly to his wife, Khadi­ja.ibid., pp. 137 – 138

This clear­ly refutes the mis­sion­ary posi­tion on mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of evi­dence. The rest of his ​“explain­ing away” regard­ing the expe­ri­ences of the Bib­li­cal Prophets, it should be not­ed, does not serve to prove his point oth­er than to reaf­firm Arm­strong’s posi­tion above. Refer to our orig­i­nal arti­cle which sum­maris­es the expe­ri­ences of the Hebrew Prophets.

The mis­sion­ary Silas presents an, even more, sil­li­er case, inclu­sive of the ad hominem.

In total­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing our arti­cle, he only lends cre­dence to the crit­i­cism in our con­clu­sion that this mis­sion­ary only :

…resort[s] to noth­ing but per­jury in order to put for­ward his claims. At best, the mis­sion­ary claim is mere­ly a devi­ous attempt at high­ly-spec­u­la­tive mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions and men­da­cious assump­tions, with the utter dis­re­gard to the deep­er sig­nif­i­cance of the Fatrah…

Basi­cal­ly, he par­rots the same filthy alle­ga­tions of Shamoun, albeit in a more vora­cious man­ner that can only be described as ​“vicious” (i.e., find­ing so-called ​“con­tra­dic­to­ry” state­ments that are actu­al­ly com­ple­men­tary to one anoth­er!), and rewords his state­ments that gen­er­al­ly reflects the same basic assump­tion that the both of them share, i.e. that the rea­son for the so-called ​“sui­cide attempt” was that the Prophet^(P) had thought that he was demon-pos­sessed. We have ear­li­er addressed above why this basic assump­tion of the mis­sion­ary is not ten­able, espe­cial­ly in light of our expo­si­tion on the matter. 

As for his appeal to the false (and unhis­tor­i­cal) tra­di­tion of ​‘Abu Afak, this has been addressed here.

It is clear that these mis­sion­ar­ies should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er get­ting them­selves admit­ted to a psy­chi­a­try ward for cur­ing their men­tal anguish and Islam­o­pho­bia. For each time the name ​“Muham­mad” is men­tioned, the hair bris­tles on their neck, their teetg start gnash­ing and they shame­less­ly assault the Prophet’s^(P) good name by appeal­ing to fatu­ous the­o­ries and false accounts of history.

The Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sig­nif­i­cance of the Fatrah

The mis­sion­ar­ies are clear­ly des­per­ate in their attempt to dis­cred­it the mode of the wahy phe­nom­e­non. They have even gone so far as to say that so-called ​“sim­i­lar­i­ties” with shaman­ism is, there­fore, evi­dence that the Prophet^(P) was mere­ly demon-possessed ! 

This clear­ly reminds us of the fol­low­ing Qur’an­ic verse which exon­er­ates him of this charge :

“And (O Peo­ple!) Your Com­pan­ion is not one pos­sessed ; and with­out doubt he saw him [Gabriel] in the clear hori­zon.” (Qur’an lxxxi 22 – 23)

Hence one can­not help but be gra­tu­itous­ly offend­ed when the filthy mis­sion­ary makes emp­ty claims such as :

I believe that this was a time in which Satan con­tin­ued to strive for dom­i­na­tion over Muham­mad’s mind and soul. This was a Satan­ic jihad. Muham­mad strug­gled with what he knew was hap­pen­ing, was con­fused, and could not cope. His con­science told him some­thing ter­ri­ble had hap­pened and he tried to address the pain through sui­cide. But Satan deceived him into think­ing that per­haps he tru­ly was a prophet. Slow­ly Satan took control.

To rec­i­p­ro­cate in the same man­ner would make us stoop as low as to the lev­el of the mis­sion­ary men­tal­i­ty, there­fore we would not dance to their tune. 

Hav­ing said that, how­ev­er, it would be a good idea to dis­cuss excerpts from Malik Ben Nabi’s The Qur’an­ic Phe­nom­e­nonMalik Ben Nabi (trans­lat­ed by Abu Bilal Kirkary), The Qur’an­ic Phe­nom­e­non (Islam­ic Book Trust, 1991), which actu­al­ly analy­ses and refutes crit­i­cisms sim­i­lar to the ones alleged by the missionaries.

Dis­cussing the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of the Fatrah on the Prophet(P), Ben Nabi rhetor­i­cal­ly asks :

…towards his for­ti­eth year one finds Muham­mad with a dom­i­nant, painful pre­oc­cu­pa­tion : he doubts. He doubts not God — his belief in this respect was nev­er to be shak­en, but he doubts him­self. We might as why and how this doubt come to his mind. Why, in the course of his con­tem­pla­tion, did he finds the shad­ow of his per­son, the specter of his ​“me” stand­ing out at the far end of his reli­gious med­i­ta­tion, sud­den­ly becom­ing its cen­tral point ?ibid., p. 54

He then answers that :

With­out giv­ing us an entire expla­na­tion for Muham­mad’s doubt, the verse and bio­graph­i­cal detail cit­ed showed, nonethe­less that this doubt does not result from a tem­po­rary hope, from an ego­cen­tric insan­i­ty, or from a hyper­thro­phy of the Muham­mad ​“me”. One is oblig­ed to see it as the con­se­quence of an acci­den­tal sub­jec­tive con­di­tion in which the Prophet found him­self with the pre-knowl­edge, the fore­bod­ing of some­thing extra­or­di­nary con­cern­ing his des­tiny.ibid.

In oth­er words, one can pin­point that the rea­son for the men­tal anguish of the Prophet(P) is due to this seri­ous doubt­ing of self, hav­ing not known the rea­sons of this fore­bod­ing. This due to the fact that the phe­nom­e­non of Rev­e­la­tion was an entire­ly unknown con­cept to the nomad Arabs at the time.

Muham­mad had had that over­pow­er­ing appre­hen­sion of numi­nous real­i­ty, which the Hebrew prophets had called kadosh, holi­ness, the ter­ri­fy­ing oth­er­ness of God. They too had felt near to death and at a phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal extrem­i­ty when they expe­ri­enced it. But unlike Isa­iah or Jere­mi­ah, Muham­mad had none of the con­so­la­tions of an estab­lished tra­di­tion to sup­port him. The ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence seemed to have fall­en upon him out of the blue and left him in a state of pro­found shock. In his anguish, he turned instinc­tive­ly to his wife, Khadi­ja.Karen Arm­strong, op. cit., pp. 137 – 138

This should answer the mis­sion­ary’s boast­ful chal­lenge, name­ly that :

Come MENJ, bring forth your proof ! Can MENJ meet the chal­lenge ? Of course he can’t. None of the Bib­li­cal prophets expe­ri­enced what Muham­mad expe­ri­enced and none of them react­ed the way Muham­mad reacted.

So the rea­son why none of them had ​“react­ed” in a sim­i­lar man­ner is part­ly due to the fact that the Bib­li­cal prophets had assur­ances in their tra­di­tion, while the Prophet^(P) did not. 

Fur­ther, it is also clear that :

His shock upon receiv­ing the first rev­e­la­tion and his amaze­ment con­cern­ing the sud­den com­mis­sion which he received in the form of an order in the sec­ond rev­e­la­tion, mark for us the two psy­cho­log­i­cal states which are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing for the study of the Qur’an­ic phe­nom­e­non with rela­tion to the Muham­madan ​“me”.

One should note that the con­di­tion of this ​“me” between the two crises and the two out­comes in ques­tion was nev­er marked by a mes­sian­ic hope, but only by a search for a state of grace, seen vague­ly at the time of the first rev­e­la­tion. We should also note Muham­mad’s des­per­ate effort dur­ing this time to recov­er his men­tal self-possession.

The above facts indi­cate the inde­pen­dent nature of the Qur’an­ic phe­nom­e­non with ref­er­ence to our sub­ject — the ​“me” of Muham­mad. One has to admit that the sec­ond rev­e­la­tion occured so long after the first that it could not have been lying mere­ly in the sub­con­scious of a man who had tried nei­ther to con­tain nor to repress this phe­nom­e­non but, on the con­trary, had strained to encour­age its man­i­fes­ta­tions with all of his will and being. These psy­cho­log­i­cal details gives us all the rea­sons nec­es­sary for Muham­mad’s accept­ing his mis­sion as a com­mis­sion com­ing from God.ibid., p. 58

Hence it can be said that such an expe­ri­ence can­not be mere­ly the prod­uct of a sub­con­scious mind. For the mis­sion­ar­ies to con­vince us that the Prophet(P) had indeed ​“suf­fered” expe­ri­ences that are not dis­sim­i­lar to shamans, poets or the ​“demon-pos­sessed”, they must show that Ibn Khal­dun’s The­o­ry of Prophe­cy can­not be gen­er­al­ly applied to the Bib­li­cal Prophets, and is hence null and void. See our appen­dix for fur­ther details.

The above expo­si­tion is suf­fi­cient to repel the ran­cour of the mis­sion­ar­ies, the stench of their rhetor­i­cal fan­tasies and the inces­sant whin­ing of their claims that Satan was respon­si­ble for the expe­ri­ences of the Prophet(P)!

On the con­trary, it is, in fact, clear that :

Muham­mad cer­tain­ly had in this col­lec­tion of per­son­al facts a sub­ject for reflec­tion — at least at the begin­ning of his mis­sion. He could not have avoid­ed con­sid­er­ing these events as con­sti­tut­ing objec­tive facts, unique to his case, though insuf­fi­cient in them­selves as a basis for a firm con­vic­tion regard­ing the nature of his mis­sion. This con­vic­tion would come only through the for­mu­la­tion of the Qur’an.Malik Ben Nabi, op. cit., pp. 77 – 78

Con­clu­sions

We believe that we have made a strong case in hav­ing exon­er­at­ed the Prophet(P) from all the charges and defama­tion by these two known fanat­i­cal char­ac­ters in the ​“Answer­ing Islam” camp by dis­cussing, in brief, the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of the Fatrah. Hence

…Muham­mad’s belief in his sin­cer­i­ty was in fact gen­uine and not a prod­uct of illu­sions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions. This is not a sim­ple under­tak­ing, because it amounts to the ver­i­fi­ca­tion and sub­stan­ti­a­tion of the entire body of doc­trines, rites and prac­tices of Islam. How­ev­er, we can make the fol­low­ing state­ment in this con­nec­tion : the strongest proof of the sin­cer­i­ty of Muham­mad’s belief in the Divine nature of his mis­sion is the Qur’an itself. Its noble lan­guage and teach­ings, its lofty moral direc­tives, the excit­ing and reveal­ing accounts which it con­veys of for­mer nations, their prophets and anti-prophets, their fates and for­tunes, the infor­ma­tion which it con­tains about things to come and the fore-knowl­edge which it con­veys about a diver­si­ty of sub­jects — these are some of the con­sid­er­a­tions which make it extreme­ly unre­al­is­tic to pro­nounce it a prod­uct an an out­come of a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry and illu­so­ry vision.Zakaria A. Bashier, The Mec­can Cru­cible (FOSIS, 1978), p. 97

We seek the pro­tec­tion of God from the mis­sion­ar­ies’ fanati­cism and big­otry, from the evils with­in their hearts and from the fit­na’ which they spread with their tongues. We also beseech Him that He may always strength­en our resolve to stiffle the tongues of those who oppose Him and His Apostle.

And only God knows best !

Appen­dix : Ibn Khal­dun The­o­ry of Prophecy

From shaman­ism to the poet Has­san ibn Thabit, the mis­sion­ar­ies had con­stant­ly amused us with their con­stant jump­ing from one nefar­i­ous pos­tu­la­tion to anoth­er. In his sec­tion, ​“OPEN CHALLENGE TO MENJ”, the mis­sion­ary has also attempt­ed to resort to devi­ous trick­ery by ask­ing rhetor­i­cal ques­tions which serve no oth­er pur­pose oth­er than to ridicule, hence show­ing that their actions all bor­der on insanity. 

Below is a repro­duc­tionAdapt­ed from Zakaria A. Bashier, ibid., pp. 82 – 85 of a dis­cus­sion regard­ing Ibn Khal­dun’s the­o­ry of prophe­cy that defines the expe­ri­ences of a true Prophet of God, and hence invari­ably refutes the mis­sion­ary agenda.

In his Muqad­dimah, Ibn Khal­dun gives both diag­no­sis and cri­te­ria for prophe­cy. The diag­no­sis con­sists of an inge­nious descrip­tion of the phe­nom­e­non of prophe­cy. In remark­ably ele­gant style, he dis­cuss­es the nature of the prophet­ic expe­ri­ence, giv­ing a meta­phys­i­cal expo­si­tion of its var­i­ous signs and symp­toms. The cri­te­ria, on the oth­er hand, con­sists of traits and prop­er­ties which are alleged to be use­ful in dis­tin­guish­ing between gen­uine and spu­ri­ous prophets. As the lead­ing Mus­lim soci­ol­o­gist, Ibn Khal­dun believes that prophets are both cho­sen and pre­pared for their prophet­ic role by Prov­i­dence, the essence of this role being to com­mu­ni­cate Divine guid­ance to their respec­tive peo­ples. The essence of Divine guid­ance is to acquaint man with his hap­pi­ness and bliss in the Hereafter. 

But first, let us see how Ibn Khal­dun char­ac­ter­izes the prophet­ic experience.

The Nature of Prophet­ic Experience

(i) For Ibn Khal­dun, the prophet­ic expe­ri­ence is essen­tial­ly a kind of trance, a sud­den leap, from the human lev­el of con­scious­ness to that of the Divine order. In this trance or leap the ordi­nary human cog­ni­tive pow­ers are dras­ti­cal­ly trans­formed so that the sub­ject under­go­ing the expe­ri­ence becomes able to par­take of the per­cep­tion and under­stand­ing of the Divine order.

(ii) This trans­for­ma­tion is described by him as a momen­tary exchange of the human con­scious­ness with pure angel­ic con­scious­ness, unin­hib­it­ed by the medi­a­tion of the human body. As a result of this exchange or trans­for­ma­tion, the sub­ject becomes total­ly immersed in the spir­i­tu­al medi­um of the realm of the angels. The sub­ject becomes, momen­tar­i­ly that is, part and par­cel of that high­er realm and thus becomes able to par­take in its activ­i­ties, its per­cep­tions and experience.

(iii) At the ter­mi­na­tion of the prophet­ic expe­ri­ence, which nor­mal­ly takes the form of a trance, the sub­ject returns to the ordi­nary human con­di­tion. How­ev­er, he does not lose or for­get the expe­ri­ences and the per­cep­tion which he attained whilst in the high­er realm. He retains them in an excep­tion­al­ly vivid man­ner as if engraved on his heart. This abil­i­ty to mem­o­rize things per­ceived in vision­ary trances, is achieved by the sub­ject dur­ing the train­ing which he receives in prepa­ra­tion for his immi­nent prophet­ic role.

(iv) By a process rather sim­i­lar to trans­la­tion but whose pre­cise nature is unknown, the mys­ti­cal con­tent of the expe­ri­ence is ren­dered com­pre­hen­si­ble in ordi­nary human discourse.

(v) The prophet­ic role con­sists in com­mu­ni­cat­ing the con­tent of prophet­ic expe­ri­ence to the peo­ple, ratio­nal­ly and com­plete­ly unchanged. This mate­r­i­al pro­vides Divine guid­ance to the peo­ple and the con­vey­ing of this guid­ance is the very essence of the prophet­ic role.

(vi) The actu­al trans­for­ma­tion which makes the prophet­ic sub­ject pos­si­ble is quite painful and exhaust­ing to the sub­ject­who shows vis­i­ble signs of fatigue and hardship.

Cri­te­ria For Rec­og­niz­ing A Gen­uine Prophet­ic Experience

(i) True prophets expe­ri­ence a trance which can be described as follows :

It is not a state of uncon­scious­ness, nor is it a fail­ure of phys­i­cal or men­tal pow­ers. The agent does not exhib­it any signs of suf­fer­ing from men­tal or phys­i­cal ill­ness. And quite def­i­nite­ly it is not any form of epilep­tic uncon­scious­ness. The agent expe­ri­enc­ing the trance becomes unaware of his sur­round­ings, like some­one asleep.

Like a sleep­ing per­son who is expe­ri­enc­ing some kind of unusu­al dream, the agent exhibits vis­i­ble signs of fatigue and hard­ship. These include (i) heavy breath­ing, (ii) sweat­ing heav­i­ly, and (iii) loud snor­ing. Accord­ing to Ibn Khal­dun, the fatigue and hard­ship is due to ​“an immer­sion in (and) encounter with the spir­i­tu­al king­dom, the result of per­cep­tion con­ge­nial to them but entire­ly for­eign to the (ordi­nary) per­cep­tion of men”.

(ii) Even before receiv­ing Divine Rev­e­la­tion the would-be prophets are rec­og­niz­able as good and inno­cent per­sons, nat­u­ral­ly averse to any rep­re­hen­si­ble or sin­ful actions. This is to say that they are immune from sin and vice. This is the well-known doc­trine of ​‘Ismah (or infal­li­bil­i­ty) with which all true prophets are endowed. Prophets, that is tru­ly inspired prophets, are by nature dis­posed to avoid and shun blame­wor­thy actions as if such actions are the nega­tion of their very nature.

(iii) True prophets are also rec­og­niz­able by the hon­est and sin­cere means which they employ to spread their mes­sages. They use Divine wor­ship and prayer, observe chasti­ty and prac­tise alms-giv­ing. They are kind and sym­pa­thet­ic to the depressed and the under­priv­i­leged and dis­pense jus­tice and equi­ty to all peo­ple and under all cir­cum­stances. They are nei­ther wealthy nor sta­tus seek­ers. Nor are they pos­sessed by any crav­ing for pow­er or influ­ence. Above all they desire and seek to impart Divine guid­ance at any cost to all mem­bers of their respec­tive peoples.

(iv) They must enjoy the sup­port of some pow­er­ful group. This sup­port is nec­es­sary because it serves as a buffer that pro­tects them against their antag­o­nists and gives them a mea­sure of secu­ri­ty which enables them to car­ry out their Divine mission.

(v) All true prophets pro­duce mir­a­cles, accom­pa­nied by some advance chal­lenge of some sort. The chal­lenge is in many cas­es made by their antag­o­nists who seek to deny, belie and upset their prophet­ic claims. The prophets then pro­duce the mir­a­cles both as answers to these chal­lenges, and fur­ther­more, as attes­ta­tions to the truth and sin­cer­i­ty of their claims.

Our Chal­lenge To The ​“Dumb and Dumb­er” Chris­t­ian Missionaries

Based on the above we now throw back the ​“chal­lenge” into the mis­sion­ar­ies’ faces and ask them to prove that

(a) Ibn Khal­dun’s The­o­ry of Prophe­cy can­not be applied to the Bib­li­cal prophets ;
(b) Can be applied to the expe­ri­ences of shamans, poets and ​“demon-pos­sessed” (includ­ing the ​“sui­ci­dal indi­vid­u­als”) that the mis­sion­ar­ies have listed.

Of course, it is obvi­ous that they can­not. The The­o­ry of Prophe­cy high­light­ed above can only be gen­er­al­ly applied to the Bib­li­cal prophets’ expe­ri­ence, and it is exact­ly what Muham­mad him­self had expe­ri­enced. To dis­cred­it the The­o­ry of Prophe­cy is to dis­cred­it the nature of Rev­e­la­tion as expe­ri­enced by their own Bib­li­cal Prophets. Hence, the mis­sion­ar­ies are hand­ed back their own challenge.