Ecstasy / Muhammad's Bio: Warfare / Women of Worth

Good morning from Atlanta!

Today’s offerings are quite varied and, we hope, interesting:

• A podcast from Vicki, Esther: Feasting & Fasting

• A poetic selection from the 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross

• The fifth installment in the study of the Life of Muhammad—on Warfare

• An opportunity to participate in four private online sessions—and even to have your website membership extended by a year.

We hope you’re having a great week, and that our newsletter will contribute something towards making it an even better one.

PRIVATE SESSIONS WITH DOUGLAS

Would you appreciate online interaction? I don’t mean an exchange of emails, but online conversations in real time. Obviously we can’t have 3000 paid (or sponsored) website subscribers in a single discussion, but a few dozen—easily!

With this in mind, we invite you to join us in asking friends and associates to join the website. We’ll try to make it worth your while. Here’s how it works:

• Get a friend to subscribe—and you may participate in two of the following sessions: 17 May, 16 August, 11 October, 13 December. 

• Find two subscribers—and access all four of the 2025 sessions.

• Three or more—join in all the sessions and receive a free one-year extension of your own website membership.

• Note: these sessions are for you, not the new members, unless they themselves want to find new subscribers. Encourage them with the low subscription price. (Ever since the beginning of our premium plan in 2008, the membership cost has been $0.70 a week, hopefully affordable to all.)

The Battle of Badr (289)

• Names of Muslim participants, fallen Muslims, etc… (485). Names of fallen polytheists, then names of polytheist prisoners of war, then poetry celebrating the bravery and victories of the believers. This is the pattern in the sections of the Sīrat dealing with battles and raids.

• “At Badr He gave them into the power of His apostle / and an angry army that did violently. / They smote them with their trusty swords… Now they are in hell” (518).

• “When battle was joined I dealt him a blow / That drew blood—his arteries murmured aloud: / That is what I did on the day of Badr” (536).

• From my personal notes: “This feels like a celebration of warfare” (520). Many parts of the Sīrat remind me of Homer’s Iliad—esp. the graphic violence and the celebration of warfare.

The Battle of Uhud (555)

• “… That one man should accept Islam is dearer to me than the killing of a thousand unbelievers” (566).

• Muḥammad’s incisor was broken and his face scored during battle of Uhud (566). (Some claim that Muḥammad lost four teeth at the Battle of Uhud, after he was struck with a battle axe. Two were supposedly lost, one preserved at Topkapı, another retained by Mehmed II. I have seen the relics of Muḥammad at Topkapı, and an interest in relics is highly consistent with the image of Muḥammad’s followers as recorded in the Hadith.)

• A healing miracle: someone’s “eye was so injured that it lay exposed upon his cheek. ‘āsim told me that the apostle restored its place with his hand and it became his best and keenest eye afterwards” (574).

• When the prophet was older—and heavier—and wearing a double coat of mail, he needed assistance climbing a mountain (576).

• Muḥammad tells one of his followers to say “God is most high and most glorious. We are not equal. Our dead are in paradise; your dead are in hell” (582).

• “The apostle’s eyes filled with tears and he wept and said, ‘But there are no weeping women for Hamza.” [Then the women were ordered to weep for the apostle’s departed uncle.”] (586).

• When raised on day of resurrection warrior wounds will still be bleeding and there will be a smell of musk (586).

• When the apostle rejoined his family he handed his sword to his daughter Fātima, saying, “Wash the blood from this, daughter, for by God it has served me well today” (588).

• Summary statement: “The day of Uhud was a day of trial, calamity, and heart-searching on which God tested the believers and put the hypocrites on trial, those who professed faith with their tongue and his unbelief in their hearts, and a day in which God honored with martyrdom those whom he willed” (592).

• Names of martyred at Uhud, polytheists killed etc.

• “You brought Kināna in your folly (to fight) the apostle, / For God’s army was (bound to) disgrace them. / You brought them to death’s cisterns in broad daylight. / Hell was their meeting-place, killing what they met with. / You collected them, black slaves, men of no descent, / O leaders of infidels whom their insolent ones deceived” (613).

• “We thrust our swords between your shoulders / Where they drank blood again and again. / We made liquid to run from your arses / Like the ordure of camels that have eaten ‘asal” (617).

• “We conquered at Badr by piety,/ Obeying God and believing the apostles” (617).

The Battle of the Trench

• “They left the slain of Aus with hyenas hard at them and / Hungry vultures lighting on them” (630). Cp: “You will get such blows at our hands / That the hyenas will rejoice at the lumps of meat” (624).

• “Among us the apostle, a star… / A brilliant light excelling the stars. / True in his speech, just his behavior. / He who answers his call will escape perdition, / Brave in attack, purposeful, resolute” (633).

• Abū Sufyān used to say, “I have never seen a man who was so loved as Muḥammad companions loved him” (640).

Medina

• The three holiest cities in Islam are Mecca (Makkah), Medina (formerly Yathrib), and Jerusalem (Al-Quds).

• In Medina Muḥammad has trenches dug for mass graves. He has hundreds decapitated hundreds and pushed in (689).

• Note the interesting juxtaposition: “The apostle was a very sea of generosity to us.” And then, the next sentence: “The apostle had ordered that every adult… should be killed” (692).

Against the Byzantines (the Eastern Roman Empire, which outlasted the West by 1000 years)

• The prophet comes across 100,000 soldiers marching with the Roman emperor Heraclius (792). (The Eastern Roman Empire’s language was Greek—see next entry.)

• “Welcome Paradise so near / Sweet and cool to drink its cheer / Greeks will soon have much to fear / Infidels, of descent unclear / When we meet their necks I’ll shear (794).

Assorted

• One fifth of the war booty is allotted to Muḥammad (425).

• “When the apostle ordered him to be killed, ‘Uqba said, ‘But who will look after my children, O Muḥammad?’ ‘Hell,’ he said.” (458).

Next week: “No compulsion in Islam”? We will attempt to fairly examine the common claim that Islam does not rely on coercion.

Women of Worth is not only a fresh look at scores of interesting biblical characters, but also a source of inspiration for daily Christian living.

The current series focuses on Esther. The latest message is “Esther: Feasting and Fasting.” Please click HERE to access.

UNTIL NEXT WEEK…

I hope you enjoyed the poetic selection from St. John of the Cross, of which I became aware at the recent Teleios Conference on Spirituality. And thank you for your prayers for the ministry, as well as for my recovery from surgeries. All is going well.

Yours in Christ,
Douglas

For years of previous newsletters, click here. For the audiovisual version of the newsletter (YouTube, about 3 minutes, read by Chase Mackintosh), click here. This is usually available the day after the newsletter is posted. To reach our website, click here.