Dr. Adam’s Speech at the Concluding Ceremony

The cultural season has come to an end, and there remains the concluding ceremony, which is usually attended by the elite officials of the university, in addition to the audience.

It is customary for the lecturing professors to give an additional speech. Most of them wanted Dr. Adam to give this speech, for considerations, some of which are the fact that she was the only woman among them, and some others were the fact that her lectures had captured the interest of some media.

Dr. Adam began her speech by thanking all those she believed deserved to be thanked, and there were many of them. Then she said that she did not propose to give a summary of the lectures she had given to a distinguished elite, and she did not think the audience would have desired that she did that. There were nine lectures that included texts, statements, stories and figures. May be she did not want to do that in order for her lectures to remain appropriate for the objectives of the cultural season. However, the nature of the subject, and the keenness on clarification had imposed a certain kind of depth. This proposition has made the audience happy.

She proposed to put before the audience some impressions that she had formed and to express a feeling she had experienced after that remarkable trip in which she was accompanied by a distinguished audience, who had clearly contributed to the beautiful end of the lectures.

 She said, “I felt sad when I found that history did not provide me with information on many great figures. Then I was plunged in an overwhelming happiness, when the same history has been so generous and provided me with adequate and enough information that included minute details on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, pbuh.”

She went on to say, “It is my duty to draw the attention of all humanity to this great heritage, which Dr. Loil, the author of the book The Story of Civilization, said that it had reached ten thousand volumes. It does indeed belong to all humanity.

I do not claim that I have read anything worth mentioning of this voluminous heritage. I was merely happy to go through its beautiful gardens and plucked from its flowers enough to enable me to come up with a full conception of what I was aiming at.

The life story of Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, belongs to all humanity. This humanity was present in every thing emanating from him, or a deed he performed. It is fair to say that the life of Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, has transcended all time. It was not confined to a particular time in which it left its traces and was associated therewith, so that when time elapses it elapses with it. Neither was his life confined to a particular place and no other, or generated in a particular environment and not applicable to other environments.

The actual facts confirm that it represents human morality for all times, places and environments.

Scholars of ethics have maintained that ethics are motivated by several mundane considerations, none of which were present in the character of the Prophet, pbuh. There was but one motive and no other: it is the message of prophets that gave rise to love, which in turn gave rise to mercy, whose manifestations have encompassed all human beings and extended beyond them to all creatures. This is not surprising. His  Lord has said, “And We have not sent thee but as a mercy to all the worlds (Al-Anbiyaa, 107)

His contemporaries saw in him a human being reflecting all human feelings and emotions. His greatness is reflected in his realistic and simple behavior and conduct. He used to weep spontaneously and was truthful in contexts that cause a noble person to weep. He held a child in his arms, kissing him in the presence of dignitaries, who expected to be engaged in serious business. In the midst of serious events, in the ultimate preparation for fighting his enemy, he inspected the lines, from which two boys emerge, and he ordered them to go back home.

Then he ordered a man from his soldiers to leave and stay with his sick wife, and gave permission to another to stay by the side of his wife who was about to give birth, and asked a third to keep his sick mother company.

Dear audience, The manifestations of mercy have exhibited truthfulness, spontaneity, simplicity and realism. In every circumstance there is a message of mercy, to the leaders after him, to individuals, to wives and to mothers.

The Prophet, pbuh, lived at a time when Muslims were weak and few in number. Then he lived in Medina, where they had established a state and acquired great prestige. Their numbers had multiplied and their conditions had changed, but his statements did not change, nor did his deeds. He remained merciful, utterly merciful towards both who were close to him, and towards his enemies.

The people of Mecca had forced him to leave Mecca, after torturing and starving him. But when they themselves starved, he helped them. They had taken his possessions, but when their trade stumbled as a result of their unfair stipulations under the Hudaibiyah Truce, he intervened and rescued them.

Is not humanity in a dire need for such practices, which clearly indicate that we can invoke mercy in all our circumstances and realize what we aim at. This was the case of the Prophet, pbuh.

Why is it that leaders and notables, indeed individuals, see  mercy as incompatible with firmness, justice and controversy?

The Prophet, pbuh, has taught humanity that at a time when justice is due and must be done, he has shown in his words and deeds that mercy is also simultaneously due on equal footing and must be done.

I think that this equation has no place with many leaders and chiefs. Hence, things went wrong and the scope of problems has expanded, when the balance was missing and certain traits have dominated. But with the Prophet, pbuh, mercy came first, though he inflicted punishment on certain occasions and was severe for a while but without neglecting mercy, which caused some to consider it as the device of the weak that did not have an exclusive presence in the field, giving rise to its being misunderstood and misplaced.

Hence, he fought his enemy when he was forced to do so, but he was merciful in his fighting. Thus, throughout twenty three years, the number of those who were killed from his own followers and from his enemies was approximately only one thousand. Such numbers are killed in minutes in today’s wars.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I have discovered things whose details I had not been aware of, before these lectures, including those that are directly connected with what we called the misunderstanding of the Prophet, pbuh, by people of a different culture, most of whom live in the West.

I find that it is my pure scientific duty to contribute to the elimination of this misunderstanding, if possible, through the presentation of the true information and the elimination of what seems to be illusory barriers or prejudices. I believe this is a worthwhile endeavor that will serve humanity, beyond the limits of time and space. The Bible says “Seek and ye shall find.”

I have discovered, dear audience, that no human being, past and present, has any problem with Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, and neither has he with any. He loves human beings as such. He spent all his life spreading a morality that all people appreciate.

He loved life in all its manifestations and meanings. He practiced mercy in all its manifestations. He respected the wishes of individuals, young and old, and people love those who possess such traits.

Let me only mention that the Prophet, pbuh, has respected the wish of Jamilah bint Abu Salool, when she asked him to ask her husband Thabet bin Qais to divorce her when she discovered that he was not the husband that suits her on account of his looks and shortness. The Prophet, pbuh, responded  immediately and asked her husband Thabet to divorce her, which Thabet did. The Prophet, pbuh, did that despite his intimate relationship with Thabet.

I confirm, without any hesitation, and I am absolutely certain, though I am not so usually in my lectures, that Muhammad, pbuh, loves all humanity and that each individual reciprocates this love, even his enemies. What he hated in them was their sins; he did not hate them as human beings and God’s creatures.

The funeral of a Jew passed by him once when he was sitting with his companions, and he stood up as a sign of respect for the funeral. His companions expressed surprise and said that it was the funeral of a Jew, and he said, “Isn’t he a human soul?”[1]

This is absolute humanity, mercy in all its dimensions. The man was dead and on his way to the hereafter.  As such, respect for his humanity and mercy for him are due.

I realize that some leaders, thinkers and representatives of religion have a negative attitude towards the Prophet, pbuh, each for his own reasons and perspectives.

I am not interested in giving details of this matter; neither did I deal with this matter in detail in my lectures. I merely mentioned it in passing, in compliance with the wish of the dear audience.

The problem of such people, to whom I referred above, with the Prophet, pbuh, resides in that he advocates the openness of peoples and nations towards one another, so that they become one nation. But some of them advocate differentiation and stress particularities.

May be some thinkers and representatives of religion consider their religion as the other aspect of their nations. But such attitude I have never felt or seen in the life of the Prophet, pbuh, as he has never even insinuated that the Arab race was superior to any other race.

The Prophet, pbuh, has never ascribed the religion he preached to himself. Thus, we cannot describe Islam as Muhammadism.

The German Hegel has referred to this matter, when he talked about Islam in his illustrious book Studies in the Philosophy of History, when he said that Islam has broken all particularity.

I would like to point out in this context that the particularity that Islam has destroyed is that which engenders negative notions such as the superiority of sexes, land and races. As to other particularities, the Prophet, pbuh, has ordered that they be fully respected, such as language, clothing and customs that do not engender disputes among the various members of humanity.

It may be said that part of this negative attitude towards the Prophet, pbuh, is that we have here two orientations: the first is a call for humanity and mutual mercy, and another that calls for diversion, chauvinism and arrogance on account of race and potentials.

The Prophet, pbuh, was not satisfied to practice mercy in his words and deeds, but he bound all his followers to them and he would not tolerate the neglect of mercy in words and deeds from any of them, regardless of the reasons.

The effect of the orientation of the Prophet, pbuh, as the Quran required him to encourage Muslims to follow their Prophet: “Say, if you love God, follow me and God will love you and forgive your sins”(Al-Imran, 31), and through warning them: “So let those who would go against His bidding beware lest a bitter trial befall them or grievous suffering”(Al-Noor, 63).

This obligation of the Prophet, pbuh, has contributed to the spreading of the culture of mercy among people, and began to be transformed into a collective trait and common practice after it had been a personal matter. People gradually began to accept that mercy has a place in their interactions and in their wars, whether they were Muslims or non-Muslims.

Dear audience,

When a fairly-minded person goes through the pages of history, he finds pictures of mercy that are apparent in the life of Muslims, in all matters of their lives. And if he finds situations in which mercy is hidden behind violence and cruelty and overstepping the limits laid down by The  Prophet, pbuh, this is due to ignorance or deliberate ignorance by a besieged group that represent only themselves.

Humanity has unfortunately suffered from what Dr. Noam Chomsky termed violence and counter-violence and paid a dear price. The result was more and more violence, killing, and loss of security.

This equation- I mean terrorism and counter-terrorism- had no existence in the life of the Prophet, pbuh. From the very first day of his preaching he avoided reciprocity, and strongly rejected the countering of terrorism with terrorism.

Ever since he began his preaching, his enemies killed women and old men from his followers. But he never did any such thing. They drove him out of his country, but when he was firmly established he never drove out any of them. They imposed on him and on his followers the policy of starvation for 3 years, but he sought more than once to lift starvation on them when it was imposed on them by the leader of Yamamah country. The Quraish unbelievers have besieged him, but he asked Abu Baseer to lift the siege on them.

The Prophet, pbuh, rejected the policy of counter-terrorism when he was in the apogee of his strength, and taught his followers the meaning of sticking to their principles and warned against changing them with the change of circumstances. This reminds me of the statement made by the English orientalist, Bodley, to whom I referred in the first or second lecture (“The circumstances of the prophet Mohammed have changed but his attitudes and principles have not”).

In this behavior, the Prophet, pbuh, provides an example to humanity, in which he emphasized that there is strength in mercy and an effective effect that may dispense with the use of violence and cruelty in solving disputes and achieving objectives.

It is an invitation by the Prophet to humanity, whom he loved for their practicing of mercy, particularly the strong among them, so that they may feel happy when they show mercy to the weak, who will also feel happy, when they taste the sweetness of mercy.

Allow me, dear audience, to say that in the practice of the Prophet, pbuh, and his success in realizing great accomplishments through it, he exposed many who make use of their strength to influence those who ignore the policy of mercy, thinking that it is associated with the weak and that it does not contribute to the realization of objectives.

Humanity had been unlucky before the advent of Prophet Mohammed, pbuh. It either had a leader who knew nothing but force and killing, such as Alexander the Great, when he was under the illusion that he would make humanity happy with this principle, but failed and hid behind the oblivion of time; or a saint who knew nothing but the practicing of virtue in himself and those around him, such as Buddha, who had a limited effect and was a failure.

Then Prophet Mohammed, pbuh, came with both mercy and force. He called for mutual mercy and practiced it, protecting it with the force that was also governed by mercy. The result was balanced complementarity, for the first time in the history of humanity, with which it became happy and successful.

Dear audience, if the understanding of the present requires invoking the past, the understanding of the past requires knowledge of the present in many occasions.

I was under the impression that humanity had, throughout its history two persons named Mohammed. One of them is he about whom hundreds of credible sources have talked for hundreds of years, representing him as a merciful man, who weeps at the grave of his mother when he was past 60 years of age, who held children and kissed them, who listened to the woman tenderly in order to realize her wish, who pardoned his enemies and had mercy on them, who prevented children from participating in wars and exposing themselves to danger, who felt pity for a bird and ordered that its chicks be returned to it, who cooperated in house work: cleaning, repairing, and preparation. He died with some of his property mortgaged with a Jew, in return for some barley for himself and for members of his family.

This is the Mohammed I knew and who is known to millions of people for hundreds of years. The other has existence except in the minds and imagination of some writers, who were his opponents and drew a picture of him that is totally different from the real facts based on reversing facts and attitudes. In doing this, they hurt themselves and humanity to whom they belong.

I wish to tell the opponents of Mohammed, pbuh, that he was gentle with his bitter opponents, as is shown by his attitude towards Abdullah bin Obai bin Sallool who was the Prophet’s first enemy. Whenever he did any harm to the Prophet and his people wanted the Prophet to punish him he would say to them, “We rather treat him gently, and keep him good company.” And when the Prophet, pbuh, defeated his first enemy in Mecca, Abu Sifian bin Harb, he treated him as a guest and conferred on him some privileges before his people. 

O, dear humanity. Search, as quickly as possible, for Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, because he has what most of your children lack. Search for him, so that they may learn from him how to love, how to treat their adversaries with mercy, how to fight with mercy, how to exchange views mercifully, how to respect others, how to be kind to women, and how to care for children.

Let us all search for him and learn from him, and we shall definitely find him in any sphere in which we wish to see him, and he will not deny us any thing because he loves all of us and feels mercy towards all of us.

Here, she was strongly moved and withdrew from the podium, followed by great applause.