The Cave on the Mountain of Light

Just prior to his fortieth lunar year — because the Muslims, when they talk about years, are talking about lunar years, which are about eleven days short of a solar year each year, so his fortieth lunar year would probably be about thirty-nine years of age in solar terms, a little less probably — at the age just before his fortieth birthday, he began to see some dreams, in the tradition. He would go off to a mountain just outside of Mecca, which is called Jabal al-Nūr, the mountain of light. And during that time, the word that was used to describe what he was doing was taḥannuth. In Arabic, ḥinth is polytheism; taḥannuth means to avoid polytheism, to avoid idols.

So he was going out to this place, and he would meditate in this cave. There is really no description of the actual practices that he was doing, but there was a tradition amongst the Arabs called the ḥunafāʾ, or the ḥanīf. These were people who were inclined towards a type of monotheism. They did not worship the idols and they did not believe in the idols, but they did not necessarily speak out against the idols of the jāhilī Arabs, the Arabs prior to the mission of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

So he would go to this cave, and in the fortieth year, in the month of Ramadan, he had an experience.

There are many ways to look at this experience. Western Orientalists generally said wretched things about the Prophet (peace be upon him). Anyone who reads the early traditional literature coming out of Europe will find it really not very nice. They have become a lot nicer recently. Since oil was discovered in the Arabian Peninsula, there needs to be diplomacy when one talks about people's beliefs and traditions, when there are interests involved there. So the Orientalists have definitely become more polite — though that is a cynical way of looking at it, and there has perhaps been some growth as well within the academic community.

Certainly the impetus for attacking Islam prior to that was often based on an almost evangelical type of Christianity that existed, particularly within the Protestants in England, the Anglican Church and others, who really felt it their duty to Christianise the world. There was a very strong ideal that we should civilise the world, and certainly the Arabs need it just like anybody else. And then there is a long history within the Western tradition of a type of antagonism between the Islamic forces, because they were a world power for centuries, and the Christian forces in Europe. That tension was real: they were coexisting with a lot of tension, with few exceptions in different places, such as periods of time in Sicily, for instance during the time of King Roger of Sicily, where there was a lot of interpenetration going on between the Arabs and the Christians.

So, concerning the fortieth year, these Orientalists would traditionally say things almost like that he had epileptic fits — this type of thing. The more recent Orientalists, and not just Orientalists but even theologians such as Hans Küng, who wrote an interesting book called Christianity and the World Religions, have moved from that. One of the things Küng says in there is that we have to stop speaking derogatorily about the Prophet Muhammad, because whatever was taking place there, it was certainly by all accounts a sincere phenomenon. In other words, he is not willing to accept — and that is his prerogative — that this was a revelation, but he is willing to accept that the person was sincerely deluded, which is a big difference from simply saying that he was insane, or that he had mal-intention.