Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

“ AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS MESSENGER” t 61
their eventual response. More likely they feared for their polytheism,
or perhaps the business of polytheism to which they were
attached. Muhammad’s message certainly threatened Mecca’s
eclectic shrines and the commerce that the annual pilgrimages generated.
But it is too simple to dismiss the degree of personal devotion
to the deities of polytheism, whose practices seem altogether
too magical and mechanical to those reared in a monotheistic and
highly spiritualized tradition.
The “Satanic Verses”
Muhammad may have attempted to appease his fellow Quraysh.
The account that follows is absent from the Quran as we now
possess it; the story comes rather from quranic commentary, notably
that of al-Tabari (d. 923), who has already been cited as a
historian but who was also one of the premier exegetes of medieval
Islam. In any event, the story is so unlikely to have been invented
by Muslim piety that Muslims and non-Muslims alike have been
strongly inclined to accept at face value the tale of the so-called
satanic verses.
It begins with something that is in the Quran, the quite explicit
statement in sura 22:52–53 that God has on occasion, with all the
prophets and not merely Muhammad, allowed Satan to cast verses
into the Revelation in order to test the believers, although God
subsequently removed them, to be sure. There follow the commentators’
attempts at sketching the particular occasion of revelation
of those two quite extraordinary verses. Muhammad, the story
went, was rapidly sliding into despair at the Quraysh’s invincible
resistance to his preaching; he was hoping, we are told, for a revelation
that would somehow reconcile the Quraysh to Islam. And
he apparently received it. Verses 19–20 of sura 53 were “sent
down,” as the process of revelation is usually described: “Have
you considered al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat, the third, the other?”
This was followed immediately by “They are the exalted cranes,
and their intercession is to be hoped for.” The cultic expression