Is it God who visited me, or the Devil? Did I receive divine revelation, or a trick from evil?
During the Life of Muhammad (Peace be upon him PBUH) he began to receive revelations in his latter years (40+years old). This was a grown man. He had a tendency to go up to Mount Hira to be away on spiritual retreat. One day, out of the blue, he went through something beyond his experience. He was squeezed by something he couldn’t see and he heard a voice. This marked the start of his prophethood. But he was frightened, and rightly so. There were stories of Jinn tricking or influencing people. They were supernatural beings with access to knowledge beyond humans. How could we know if this was a Jinn or really God? He ran away in fear. It was only when he was comforted by his wife who identified him as being Good and Honest and they consulted with an expert of Christian scripture, a Hanif that he began to calm down and accept his calling.
There were two ways in which they determined that what had visited Muhammad (PBUH) was not an evil being: First, Muhammad(PBUH) was a person of good moral character, God wouldn't allow him to be tricked, second, the Hanif had taken the signs from scripture and compared it to Muhammad’s experience and they lined up.
Before his calling, Muhammad was known to be honest and a giving person. He was known as good and trustworthy. His wife’s argument was that God would not allow such a person of good character to be tricked by a supernatural being. This was the first way in which he was determined to have been visited by a force of good.
The second way to tell if he was visited by an evil or benevolent being was to go to a hanif who was well versed in Christian scripture. We don't know what criteria was used to identify him as a prophet, but the hanif had, according to Karen Armstrong ( Muhammad: A Prophet For our time) the Hanif had compared his experience to Moses’s, when he encountered the burning bush and the disembodied voice.
There are huge issues in this story that, Thank God, turned out to not be an issue for Muhammad’s particular case. First, who is to say that God would not allow a person of good character to be tricked? Misfortune befalls everyone, innocent or not, good or evil. Why wouldn’t someone be tricked by a supernatural-being despite their overwhelmingly good qualities? The second issue is that we don't know what criteria is being used specifically to identify Muhammad’s (PBUH) prophethood other than the comparison to Moses. In fact, the third issue is that we don’t have a reliable reference in which to compare whether an experience like that was divine or not. Even if Muhammad was able to be compared to Moses, we don't have a way to verify if Moses himself was visited by the Divine being either. We have no experience to differentiate an evil supernatural-being to God. So how can we make a judgement call on such an experience?
This is an important question to ask. If there are beings more powerful than humans both good and evil, it is important to always question because there is no way to tell with surety which one we encounter. If there are supernatural beings, we do not know how complex that world even is. We as human beings have explored this topic in our imaginations which have manifested in our tv shows and movies. We often depict heaven as having a hierarchy of Angels. A Hierarchy would suggest that there are angels who know more than others. Which also indicates that they themselves do not have all the answers and are liable to mistakes. One of our stories about the birth of Evil involves an angel falling (Lucifer). Who is to say we are not being visited by these beings with imperfect views of the world? Just because a being has more of a view and more knowledge than a human being, doesn’t make them exempt from mistakes and limitations. It doesn’t mean they have the whole picture. A man at the top of a skyscraper has a better and farther reaching view than the man on the street, but he is still limited to as far as he can see and what is not blocking him. It’s also important to know because it may not be a supernatural being, but a civilization more technologically advanced than human beings that have tools to mess with us.
These questions are important because these feelings of revelation don’t just include visits from the other side. They push people to action. Whether they be from a good or bad supernatural being, a technologically advanced civilization, or even just our changing mental landscape due to mundane bodily responses to our lives, we have the potential to do great evil and justify it with a “Holy Calling,” reinforced by the concept of faith that keeps us going despite the immediate results. We can kill a person or whole swathes of people, children and elderly alike in the name of faith towards the revelation. Humans already have a track record for doing great evil in the name of Good. How many Jewish communities were destroyed because well meaning Christians were convinced that children were being kidnapped and bled out to desecrate communion wafers? How many Christian communities were arrested and destroyed by well meaning Roman officials who thought they were having orgies and kidnapping children? How many women were burned at the stake by well meaning Christians who thought they were casting spells and kidnapping children? (If you look through history, a lot of marginalized communities were dehumanized and the accusations were often orgies at night, kidnapping children, and poisoning or bespelling people into evil. It’s really quite ridiculous how we tend to repeat history and reuse accusations). The spread of Christianity and democracy, things many Americans value as good, were used as an excuse to take lands and suppress native populations. Resistance to our country’s efforts were either from forces of Evil or the ignorance of the oppressed population of how much good we are trying to force onto them, like naughty children refusing to take their medicine. Humans also tend to name evil things good and good things evil. For example, racist policies such as segregation were considered just and right. It was weird to think that white and black people could be considered equal and able to occupy the same space. People actually thought that it was harmful to children if they were born from a mixed couple. These children were considered lesser beings and the product of unholy coupling. It was considered evil to bring such children into the world. The nonviolence policy that Jesus taught and died as our Christian example was viewed as being weak, dishonorable, corrupt and cowardly when we wanted to war against “communism.”
Humans tend to be susceptible to disinformation and bias that, when repeated enough and by enough people, become to be seen as true and/or commonsense. That can be seen throughout history and the examples above. It can also be seen in our modern day politics. How many people, good natured people, were convinced that the Democrats were part of a child sex trafficking ring that was based in a pizza parlor? Well meaning people went there believing they were going to save children and shot up the pizza parlor in December of 2016. They turned out to be horribly wrong.
Knowing how fallible and idiotic humanity can be and how harmful they can become, it is important to ask questions of the quality of our beliefs and their sources. How can we tell if we are divinely inspired or visited or tricked by malevolent forces? Jesus gives us some answers
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit…thus by their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7: 15–20).
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers!’ (Matthew 7: 21–23)
This is a good starting place for most people. But it is not enough, for we must be armed with knowledge in order to discern what is good and bad. We as a people need to put more importance on learning history and psychology.
History is important because it would have informed us that we should have been suspicious of claims that Islam is a violent religion. We would see that adherents of Islam are all human that are bound to make mistakes and misinterpret religion depending on historical context, just like Christians. In fact, history would show us that adherents of Christianity has had a track record of violence and still hold the title for most dangerous religion. None of the other religions completely destroyed two cities in a matter of moments from nuclear bombs. None of the other religions have an Adolph Hitler (but it does seem like there are people vying to surpass him in the name of good). History would have shown that claims of violence is a common accusation made by groups of people to dehumanize others to justify inhuman policies. The “think about the children!” strategy to force a social policy that oppresses people has been used not only on the LGBTQ community, but also on the issue of segregation and miscegenation with African-Americans. It has also been used to destroy Jewish communities when Christianity became the majority religion in Europe and used to destroy churches before Christianity became the Roman state religion. In fact, it’s been used to snuff out churches that disagreed with the mainstream churches in theology. We need to focus on history to stop it from repeating and call out people on disinformation.
Psychology is also important so that we can arm ourselves against the strategies that make disinformation so easy to spread. The spreading of ideas and beliefs are sneaky and subtle. It’s not big blanket statements with large gestures that change hearts and minds. It’s these big gestures coupled with a constant barrage of disinformation distribution that does it. If a person’s world is flooded with the same information and we start to see other people around us believing it, there must be something to this. Stores and companies spend a lot on researching the psychology of its customers so that we unconsciously buy certain items or increase our buying. By learning about the psychology of human beings, we arm ourselves or inoculate ourselves. It would become harder to trick us into believing harmful and wrong things.
These questions and considerations are important to ask. We need them because we need to quality check our prophets and resist the evils of personality-cults. We need to also quality check ourselves; is God really telling me to murder? Is God really sanctifying my extramarital affairs? Is God really telling me this group of people is evil and that I should fight them? We need to stop and use the minds that God gave us. There is a reason we are able to doubt. Not all doubt is bad.
