The prophet of Islam was the most successful leader of men ever to have lived on planet earth. Is there any near rival? Neither Moses nor St Paul. Mohammad has micromanaged his flock for over a thousand years after his death. He gave them an unbroken historical mandate and told them when and how to eat, sleep, pray, procreate, wage war and settle peace. Judaism is of course also highly regulated in its orthodox practice, but the 613 positive and negative commandmants were made and interpereted over generations by a comittee of thousands. Mohammad was one historical man who brought his religion to bear as its singular prophet.
*And while the now archaic term "Mahammadean" is taken as an insult by many Muslims, it has to be acknowledged as fact that the religion and its prophet are inseperable. Indeed to become a Muslim one must declare faith to Allah and acknowledge his one and only prophet.
*Mohammad was a civilizer. That means he crushed his enemies and brought them into the fold of his civilization and his vision of Godliness. He did so unapologetically and his followers recorded the deeds with pride and energy.
Mohammad brought peace and justice to Arabia; a Pax Islamica and the justice of sharia, often delivered in severed heads, captured wives and in slavery and subjugation of infidels. Legally captured and maintained spoils of war. By the laws of war and the law of Islam.
*Mohammad was the original Islam and is still the paramount human template for the religion. But what matters is he is in the Western mind moving from an unknown mythical figure into a known historical figure.
*Debate will soon shift from whether Islam maens "peace" or "terror" to a more historical and realist based understanding of this clash of universalisms. Are rights inalienable or proscribed?
*The shift will be sped by the sudden influx of knowledge about Mohammad. Not slander, not invective, but history, wherein the Prophet fares as the worlds greatest conqueror.
*Mohammad will not be judged a Hitler or a Stalin. Nor will most people in the West care to make him the devil or the "Prophet of Doom." He will be in the eyes of the West a Hideyoshi, a Napoleon, a Khan; a man of extremely humble background who rose brilliantly to unimaginable power and who became a lawgiver to millions.
*But his law will be in the next few years studied, taken seriously, admired perhaps, but rejected as a viable addition to modern law. Sharia will not take hold and will exist only extra-legally in pockets, the banlieu of Paris, Berlin`s Neukoln...
*Mohammad, in sum, was too successful at shaping his religion and keeping himself at the center. Whereas the shortcoming of Moses and David and all the Hebrew prophets do not make or break Judaism, Mohammad continues to drive and define Islam.
There are by my unproven estimation two African originated contributions to Japanese culture. The first which I like somewhat is tempura. The second, which I love, is the shamisen.
As for tempura, though the etymology is in dispute --is it Portuguese for spice or a reference to Lent?-- its Iberian source is not. I will write elsewhere about how deep fried fish got to Lisbon but it goes along the lines of deep fried chicken getting to Kentucky.
Now, the shamisen, which is indeed sometimes called the "Japanese Banjo" arrived in Okinawa with the silk trade. Though the African banjo soundboard was often a gourd, it could also be what it was in Okinawa; a tortoise shell covered with snakeskin.
But I do not need maps to tell me what I can hear and feel.
The shamisen, with no frets like the original banjo, calls for slides and bends and neck-handed finger plucking.I have heard songs from Edo which are not like the blues but are the blues.
In 1212, the Poet Kamo no Chomei left the crumbling Kyoto and sequestered himself in a hut of roughly ten square feet. There he contemplated the transience of man`s civilization within nature, and the disasters inherent to both. Nearly 800 years later, our world is equally or more disaster prone.
This is to be a reflection on the clashes of civilizations and of nature written from Japan by an American.