In writing the previous entry, “Pummeling history into dust“, I had in my mind some idea on how I wanted to end it. Vaguely, I recalled a passage in Muhammad Asad’s splendid “The Road to Mecca“, in which he had talked about the “spirit” of Medina and surmised that it was all because of the man buried beneath the “great green dome”. Asad’s observation was the perfect finishing-touch to a post that revolved more or less round the Prophet’s Mosque.
Convinced that the words could be found online, I searched for them, and hit gold. I copied the passage from the website and pasted it into my article:
“Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at; although the spiritual awareness of Islam has been cheapened here, as in many other parts of the Muslim world: an indescribable emotional link with its great spiritual past has remained alive. Never has any city been so loved for the sake of one single personality; never has any man . . . been loved so personally, and by so many, as . . . who lies . . . beneath the great green dome.”
I thought little of the “. . .” in between the quoted text. Extraneous words, I suspected.
But there was a tiny, niggling voice inside of me that refused to shut up. Those ugly sets of three dots; what words were they supposed to cover?
As it turned out, I had a copy of Asad’s tome. So, upon reaching home, I checked. This is what I found on page 251:
“Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at; although the spiritual awareness of Islam has been cheapened here, as in many other parts of the Muslim world: an indescribable emotional link with its great spiritual past has remained alive. Never has any city been so loved for the sake of one single personality; never has any man, dead for over thirteen hundred years, been loved so personally, and by so many, as he who lies buried beneath the great green dome.”
I have underlined the words that are missing from the quotation I originally copied from the website. They don’t look very extraneous to me at all: “dead for over thirteen hundred years”, “he” and “buried”. Why exclude them from the quotation?
I have my suspicions, but like any good skeptic, it’s best to give the other side the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, and if you really want to know which website I copied the text from, simply search for “Although life in Medina today has only a formal, distant relationship with what the Prophet aimed at” in Google.
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Many people have the theological belief that the Prophet is “alive in the grave” and can actually hear your salams if you give it to him etc.
That could be the reason why they took out the dead part etc.
Salam
The Qur’an explicitly forbids referring to the martyrs as dead. Since the status of (all) the Prophets is above that of the martyrs, this would imply that muslims should not refer to them as ‘dead’ either.
See Holy Qur’an 2:154
Thought this might help.
Wassalam