Why Islam can never permit a critical tradition.

One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred . . . [yada, yada yada].

Apostates of Islam.

RTWT.

No wonder the mufitis, mullahs, and maestros of Islam are so hyper about any criticism of the Prophet or of themselves. Imagine if just the basics of Mohammed's life were discussed without the threat of being beheaded, having one's throat slashed, being hanged, or being stabbed. Discussion of Mohammed is limited to slavish veneration in the best tradition of servile Soviet practice under Stalin. (If you doubt this, kindly call to mind Khomeini's fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie.)

Patrick al-Kafir at Clarity and Resolve (see Blogs of Excellence on sidebar) says the options are pretty much (1) praise or (2) fawning deference. Man, only children put up with that kind of a "choice."

The implications are stupefying. Men are so feeble minded and is so perennially on the very knife edge of sexual excitability that they must be shielded from women's tresses, ankles, lips, eyes, wrists, arms, or knees. Yet these weak, fallible men are the ones who recorded the Koran and the Sunnah and there's no whisper that they might have gotten it wrong in ANY respect. Every semicolon and diacritical mark is just EXACTLY as it fell from the Prophet's lips. The passage of a century or two did not dim the memories or powers of transmission of anyone involved in the chain of evidence upon which the doctrinal body of Islam rests.

And at the pinochle of it all is human perfection itself, He and Him, dispensing judgments of unquestioned coherence, consistency, and logic. (The principle logic being, of course, that Allah always revealed whatever it was that was necessary for Mohammed to indulge himself.) The least bit of critical examination of what Mohammed actually did should be enough to make any sane person doubt that Mohammed could have an iota of moral authority.

But Islam requires absolute fidelity to the concept of the perfection of the Prophet and it is no wonder that the ummah must be kept cowed, silent, and servile for any intimation of the exercise of independent critical examination of the tenets and practices of Islam is a frightful danger to its extraordinarily rigid structure.

Thus, in essence, Islam requires servility and uncritical acceptance of the most laughable of human conceits, human perfection.