(Correspondence with a Doubter)
by
Sr. Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood.
The reason for this ‘article’ is the many letters I get from correspondents who are highly antagonistic towards Islam thanks to the garbled and often offensive notions they have received. Sometimes the letters are from those who genuinely do wish to know the truth about Islam, and other times I get swingeing broadsides from those who regard Islam as not only nonsense but evil, and are doing their best to bring it down. I do my best to try to bring some clarity to all who write to me.
The following is taken from one such correspondence on some extraordinary subjects, some of which I found astounding - if this is typical of the sort of material being put about by those who campaign against Islam! I have omitted the full content of the letters received, but have posted up the bits to which I attempted a reply.
Correspondent: ‘The evidence is that Muhammed actually suffered from a type of brain tumour called pituitary adenoma. Untreated, these tumours can have serious effects on behaviour. It would not be the first time a pituitary adenoma has led to significant historical events - one of the Roman Emperors suffered the same disease and the tumour sent him even crazier than Caligula - he was eventually murdered because of his insane cruelty.’
Me: ‘If you do have any actual evidence for this theory, or any genuine information, I would be extremely grateful to know of it. I would also like to know the symptoms, and who the Emperor was, and what his life was like, in order to make some sort of comparison. (He told me later it was Emperor Maximus). If there is anything at all in your theory, it is very important, and I should know it. At present, I have no info on that whatsoever. I know of Caligula and his character - I can see nothing whatsoever to compare that to the Blessed Prophet, who died adored by millions.’
Correspondent: ‘Remember, this is only a theory, but something worth considering. Wrongly or rightly, some descriptions of Mohammad mention the following:
His enormous hands and feet; his profuse sweating (hence his love of perfumes); his reduced ability to have children; his eyebrows were conspicuous; he suffered from intense headaches; a long fleshy nose; dough feeling palms; a great thirst and appetite. These, especially the large hands and feet, large nose, dough feeling palm and conspicuous eyebrows, are all signs of acromegaly. Acro = extremity, megaly = big.
Pituitary acromegaly is usually due to a pituitary tumour producing too much growth hormone. If the tumour develops during childhood, the patient grows to enormous height.
After chilhood, when growth no longer can occur, the excessive growth hormone causes excessive cartilage production and this leads to enlarged hands and feet, a protruding eyebrow and a large nose - check out Jaws in the James Bond films! Most acromegalics describe profuse sweating. All these physical symptoms were, as far as I know, exhbitied by Mohammad.
How about the reduced ability to have children? Well, in the majority of cases, a growth hormone secreting pituitary tumour will also make far too much prolactin. Too much prolactin reduces or abolishes fertility.
How about the headaches? Well, obviously, if Mohammad had such a tumour it could not be treated. It would keep growing inside his head and press on brain structures causing headache. How about the hunger? The pituitary is located near the hypothalamus which has the satiety centre. The tumour would grow and COULD press and disrupt this centre.
How about the thirst? Growth hormone has anti-insulin activity and thus many acromegalics show signs of diabetes (great thirst). How about the possible altered behaviour? The hypothalamus contains behaviour centres and any interference by a growing tumour could alter behaviour (great rages? belief in speaking to God? - you tell me).
Me: ‘Who on earth gave you such descriptions? You mentioned so much, and most of it entirely the opposite of what Islamic scholars would tell you.
His hands and feet were beautiful and often commented on. And not large.
Dough-like palm??? He had a firm and friendly handshake. I don’t know what dough-like means anyway. Soft and spongy? Rubbish.
His profuse sweating was indeed a symptom of the occasions when he fell into his trance-like state - after which he always reverted to normal with no problems!
He did have black eyebrows, but then so did most Arabs. They were not conspicuous.
Long fleshy nose? Never heard of that. He was considered a very handsome man, and he certainly came from very handsome parents and grandparents. Having a decent nose as opposed to a snubbed, short or broken one was and is regarded by most as handsome!
Great thirst and appetite? Never heard of these. He was an abstemious eater, his household often going very hungry during times of hardship. His favourite foods are known, mainly stews. I wonder if the comment has come from a misunderstanding of his teaching that one should always leave the table still a bit hungry? It was polite to leave a morsel, and not pig oneself. I think this must be where it came from.
He also taught that one should never drink a cupful in one go, but take several sips with breaks in between. Fastidious good manners.
Intense headaches - yes, this is true for the last year of his life. While attempting a peace meal with one of his enemies, the widow of someo e he had killed in battle poisoned the lamb-meat in their dish. His friend Bishr swallowed a mouthful, and the Prophet spat his out. Bishr died not long afterwards from the effects, and the Prophet was never fully well again after that. (I have several examples of long-term effects of poisons). His headaches got radically worse after his Farewell Pilgrimage, but people hoped he would get better - he was only 63 and a strong man. However he went down suddenly, was ill for 2 weeks, then passed away. So far as I know, all the headache mentions in hadiths refer to this final illness.
Having reduced fertility - this one made me laugh. He had at least 6 children by his first wife Khadijah, and it may have been 8 as some sources think there were two sets of twins. (There were twins in his line). His 2 known little boys died in infancy and his 4 known girls survived to adulthood; his daughter Zaynab had at least 2 children of her own, Ruqaiyyah (my namesake) had one son who died at the age of six (he was pecked in the eye by a cockerel and the wound turned septic); Umm Kulthum had none, Fatimah had six. All the girls except Fatimah died before the Prophet, and she died a few weeks later.
The Prophet had no other wife but Khadijah until she died at the age of 65. (He married her when he was 25 and she was 40 – Khadijah having been a widow twice already and having 6 existing children when he married her, one of whom was still living in her home). The Prophet was 50 when she died, and had known sexually no other woman in his entire life - he had never made love to a woman under the age of 40. Khadijah's children by him were all born before she reached the age of 52 – which was a normal age to quit childbearing, and shows her amazing fertility, anyway. Most men would be happy to have no more than six children, I guess.
After her death in 619, the Prophet was reluctant to marry again and lived as a single parent, until his friends prevailed upon him to take into his household someone who would help him look after himself and those of his children who were still at home (2 were married by then). This also included the two boys he raised as his own, Ali – who had been in his house since he was 4 years old, and Zayd ibn Harithah who had been in his house since the age of 14.
The Prophet’s friends negotiated his second marriage with Sawdah bint Zam'ah, one of the very first Muslim converts, an outstanding lady who had been known to him and his family for years. She had been one of the very early Muslims who had migrated to Abyssinia, where they had been sheltered by the Christian ruler. When she and her husband returned to Arabia her husband died, and his father would only agree to support Sawdah if she abandoned Islam, which she refused to do. The Prophet was told of her plight, and delighted to marry her. She was about 55 when they married, had children of her own (one tradition says she had 6 - the youngest of which also came to the Prophet's household), and although she and the Prophet did have a normal marriage it was more companionship than romance. At that age she did not conceive again, and a few years later gave up her nights of intimacy with him to his beloved young wife Aishah.
Aishah’s marriage, his 3rd wife, was also a match arranged by his friends, She was the daughter of his best friend Abu Bakr; the Prophet had known her since the day of her birth, had visited her every single day, and was dearly loved by the little girl. When she was 6 years old, she was already engaged to marry another of Abu Bakr’s friends, but that family pulled out of the arrangement was they had not accepted Islam. Abu Bakr did not think of approaching the Prophet as their relationship was so close that he regarded himself as the Prophet’s ‘brother’. The big age gap was not regarded as abnormal in polygamous societies - including Bible lands as well as the Arabs and Egyptians etc. It was accepted that a little wife would not have sex until she reached puberty, (if any husband attempted that he would be regarded as disgusting and cruel!), and then might not even happen should the older husband pass away before she reached that age. At that point, she would normally be free to choose her own next husband, with the advantage of having an inheritance. It was not considered wrong or abnormal, but quite a good idea. The terrible abuses pointed up by today's UNICEF etc in some places have nothing to do with Islam, and Muslim authorities are doing their best to stamp them out.
Aishah never had a child, and was always sad about it, and spent her 40 years of widowhood adopting and caring for other people's children - she raised about 8.
In the last few years of his life the Prophet did go on to have other wives - some of them were physical relationships and others were not. Most of these marriages were with older women who had been widowed, though not all. I have plenty of evidence of women having babies until the age of c55, but not past that. I married at 50 myself, and thought I got pregnant once, but it was not the case. I actually tried hard to get pregnant, but never did after that age.
I gather that men can remain fertile well into their 60s and over; the Prophet had reached 55 before he married any of them, and these marriages came at various times until he reached the age of 60.
The young wives did not get pregnant, but may not have had long enough with him to do so. I have known many young brides not get pregnant although trying hard, for ages. Eventually one of his wives, his Coptic Christian wife Maryah, bore him the son Ibrahim in March 630, when the Prophet was 60. Sadly, this little boy also died in infancy, shortly before the Prophet himself died.
Most men of 60 would not regard themselves as infertile if they had produced 7 or more children, the last one in their sixtieth year!
I am now
returning to the subject of Pituitary acromegaly.
Correspondent: ‘Pituitary acromegaly is usually due to a pituitary tumour producing too much growth hormone. If the tumour develops during childhood, the patient grows to enormous height. After chilhood, when growth no longer can occur, the excessive growth hormone causes excessive cartilage production and this leads to enlarged hands and feet, a protruding eyebrow and a large nose - check out Jaws in the James Bond films! Most acromegalics describe profuse sweating. All these physical symptoms were, as far as I know, exhbitied by Mohammad. How about the reduced ability to have children? Well, in the majority of cases, a growth hormone secreting pituitary tumour will also make far too much prolactin. Too much prolactin reduces or abolishes fertility. How about the headaches? Well, obviously, if Mohammad had such a tumour it could not be treated. It would keep growing inside his head and press on brain structures causing headache. How about the hunger? The pituitary is located near the hypothalamus which has the satiety centre. The tumour would grow and COULD press and disrupt this centre. How about the thirst? Growth hormone has anti-insulin activity and thus many acromegalics show signs of diabetes (great thirst). How about the possible altered behaviour? The hypothalamus contains behaviour centres and any interference by a growing tumour could alter behaviour (great rages? belief in speaking to God? - you tell me).
Me: The Prophet was of normal height, and somewhat shorter than his friend Abu Bakr.
I would like to put to you a very well-known description of the Prophet given by someone who had entertained him in her tent, the Bedouin women Umm Mabad. The following is taken from the Life of the Prophet written by Ibn Ishaq and translated by Guillaume, p.225. (Incidentally, it also mentions the Prophet’s hunger and thirst for you!) The Prophet and Abu Bakr had just left Makkah to cross the 200 miles of desert to Madinah.
‘After a couple of days the Prophet
and his Companions had exhausted their supplies, but when they reached Qudayd
they came upon the tents of a woman of the Banu Khaza‘a, Umm Mabad bint Khalaf
b. Mabad,[1]
a woman well-known to travellers, for it was her practice to sit outside her
tent and invite them to her hospitality. The Prophet and his three Companions
pulled up just outside her camp and waited for her invitation. This time,
however, she was embarrassed for her husband was not there, and it had been a
time of drought.
‘O fellow servant of God,’ she sent
the message, ‘I am just a woman alone; you must go to our chief if you want
hospitality.’
The Prophet and Abu Bakr retreated a
polite distance and prepared for a hungry night. A little later one of her sons
arrived with his goats, and she sent him over with a young ewe and a knife.
‘My mother says you should slaughter
and eat, and feed us too,’ said the boy. The Prophet, who thought they could
make do on milk, told him to take the knife back, and fetch a bowl. ‘But this
ewe has not been with a male; there is no milk,’ the boy protested. The Prophet
urged him to fetch a bowl, and when he touched its udder and prayed the goat
stretched her legs and yielded enough to satisfy them all. (this does not
indicate a miracle, but that the herder was politely insisting on the guests eating
the meat).The Prophet passed the bowl to his companions, courteously refusing
to quench his own thirst until the others had finished.
‘The one who pours drinks last,’ he
said.
A
second version of the story (Ibn Kathir 2.171 from Bayhaqi) tells
that the Prophet (pbuh) saw a goat tied in the corner of her tent. She
explained that it had not gone out with her other animals because it was too
weak. He asked if it gave milk, and she laughed and said it was too weak for
that. Then the Prophet (pbuh) asked if he could try milking the goat himself,
and it provided enough to satisfy them all. The historian recorded that Umm
Mabad devoted this goat to very special care after this, and it gave milk every
morning and evening until the rule of Caliph Umar.
The account continues that by the
time the sheikh returned Umm Mabad’s guests had gone, but he had Umm Mabad
describe the visitors to him. This is her famous description.
She said the leader was ‘a man of scrupulous cleanliness, of fine character, with attractive face, slim, his head not too small, elegant and good-looking. His eyes were large and black, with long eyelashes, his voice deep and very intelligent, his eyelids brown, his brows high and arched, his hair in plaits, his neck long and a decent beard. He gave the impression of dignity when silent and of high intelligence when he spoke. His logic made an impression; he was decisive, not trivial or trite, his ideas like pearls moving one after another on their string. He seemed a most splendid and fine-looking man from a distance, but was even better when he came close; of medium height, neither too tall nor too short - a tree-branch, as it were, between two others - but he was the finest looking of the three, the best proportioned. His Companions gave him all their attention. When he spoke they listened carefully, and if he gave an order they hurried to obey – a man well helped, well served, never morose, never put in the wrong.’ Abu Mabad guessed this must be the Quraysh fugitive whose affairs he had been told of. He vowed to declare Islam to him if he ever got the opportunity.
I
discovered that later both he and Umm Mabad went to the Prophet and declared Islam together. (Ibn Sa’d 1.267-9).
The last note I found of her was when the Prophet’s wives went on their Hajj in the last year of the caliphate
of Umar, she saw Uthman going before their howdahs and Abdu’r Rahman b. Awf
going behind, keeping the over-eager people at a respectful distance. The
howdahs were covered in green shawls. They camped at Qudayd, near that same
dwelling-place of Umm Mabad, and she went to visit them. When she saw them she
sobbed, and they asked why. ‘I remembered the Messenger of Allah,’ she said.
Then they all wept as she explained that this was where he had stopped with
her. They then recognised her and she slaughtered meat for them and provided
them with milk, in return for which each woman gave her an onion. Later, she
was allowed to go to them to receive a stipend, and each wife gave her fifty
dinars.
Hope this helps you to think things through again. I feel you have been so much misled about Islam and its Prophet.
God bless you, wasalaam, Ruqaiyyah.
Dear Brother, I went on internet and found this - it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Prophet's life, symptoms or character to me, but thought you might like to read it:
The pituitary is the master control center of hormones in the body. It sits in a crevice called the sella turcica at the base of the skull. This location puts it right under the optic chiasm, which is the crossing point of the two vision nerves (optic nerves). The normal pituitary gland produces several important hormones: adenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) stimulates the adrenal gland; thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) stimulates the thyroid gland; luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone (LH and FSH) interact with the sexual organs; growth hormone (GH) is involved with sugar metabolism and cell growth; and prolactin (PRL) affects lactation.
Pituitary adenomas are slow growing, benign tumors of the pituitary gland. They represent 10-15% of all brain tumors. Those that are small (less than 1 cm in largest diameter) are called microadenomas, while larger tumors (greater than 1 cm) are commonly called macroadenomas. Pituitary tumors can also be divided into functioning and non-functioning tumors. As the classification implies, functioning tumors produce hormones, often in large, unregulated amounts. Correspondingly, non-functioning tumors do not produce
Symptoms from pituitary adenomas can be classified as follows:
1) Overproduction of hormones: The specific symptoms experienced by a patient will depend on the type of hormone that is being overproduced. A tumor that produces large amounts of ACTH causes Cushing Disease, which leads to obesity, high blood pressure, and muscle weakness, among other symptoms. A prolactinoma is a pituitary adenoma that produces large amounts of prolactin. Symptoms of this include irregular menstruation, sexual dysfunction and breast discharge. A growth hormone producing tumor leads to acromegaly, a condition characterized by progressive enlargement of hand and foot size and an alteration of facial features.
2) Hypopituitarism: A non-functioning adenoma can still lead to hormonal problems. It does so by compressing the pituitary gland and results in a decrease or cessation of normal hormone production by this organ.
3) Visual deficit: A large tumor can grow upwards, out of the sella turcica and compress the optic nerves (optic chiasm). Frequently, this leads to a specific form of “tunnel vision” called bitemporal hemianopsia.
4) Non-specific symptoms: Sometimes a sizable pituitary adenoma can lead to headaches or a sensation of pressure or fullness behind the eyes. Rarely, bleeding into a tumor can lead to severe headache, double and blurring vision (pituitary apoplexy).
[1] Atikah bint Khalaf (or Khalid) b. Mabad b. Rabi’ah b. Asram of Banu Ka’b b. Khuza’ah. Her husband was her cousin Tamim or Akthar b. Abdu’l Uzzah b. Mabad.