The Angry Warlord Verses only lasted twenty pages, so Muhammad is back to his usual drivel: warning humans and invisible fire-spirits about the imminent apocalypse.
Imagine a series of 'Doctor Who' in which the Roman poet Lucretius (who died around 55 BCE) becomes one of the Doctor's companions, and they travel to 7th century Arabia. The Doctor goes off to investigate something and leaves Lucretius to have a wander. At length, he finds Muhammad doing some of his preaching. I expect the encounter would go something like this:
MUHAMMAD: O tribes of jinn and men, were you not visited by messengers from among you, narrating to you My revelations and warning you of arriving at a Day like this? Join the company of nations that passed before you, Jinn and humans, heading for the fire!
LUCRETIUS: If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets. As it is, they have no power of resistance, because they are haunted by the fear of eternal punishment after death. They know nothing of the nature of the spirit. Many a time before now men have betrayed their country and their beloved parents in an effort to escape the halls of Hell. This dread and darkness of the mind can only dispelled by an understanding of the outward form and inner workings of nature.
MUHAMMAD: Those who call lies to our revelations or are too proud to accept them - the gates of heaven shall not open before them. Thus do we requite evildoers. In hell they shall make their beds, above them are sheets of fire. Thus do We requite wrongdoers. They who fondly embrace this present life in preference to the hereafter, these are plunged in deep error.
LUCRETIUS: The mind, which we often call the intellect, is part of a man, no less than hand or foot or eye. There is also a vital spirit in our limbs. The mind and spirit are interconnected. The mind is the seat of intellect; the rest of the vital spirit, diffused throughout the body, obeys the mind and moves under its direction and impulse. Mind and spirit are both composed of matter. We see them propelling the limbs, rousing the body from sleep, changing the expression of the face and guiding and steering the whole man - activities that all clearly involve touch, and touch in turn involves matter.
MUHAMMAD: For those who do not believe in the hereafter, We have made their deeds appear attractive in their sight, so they stumble aimlessly in error. It is they whom an evil torment awaits, who shall be the greatest losers in the hereafter.
LUCRETIUS: How can we deny their material nature? You see the mind sharing in the body's experiences and sympathising with it. The substance of the mind must be material, since it is affected by the impact of material weapons. Furthermore, as the body suffers the horrors of disease and the pangs of pain, so we see the mind stabbed with anguish, grief and fear. What more natural than that it should likewise have a share in death? Since the mind is thus invaded by the contagion of disease, you must acknowledge that it is destructible, for pain and sickness are the artificers of death.
MUHAMMAD: The angel of death, entrusted with you, shall cause you to die and then to your Lord you shall be returned. If only you could see the sinners that Day, their heads bowed before their Lord. Had We wished, We could have granted each soul its right guidance. But My decree is binding: I shall fill Hell with both jinn and humans.
LUCRETIUS: Conversely, we see that the mind, like a sick body, can be healed and directed by medicine. This too is presage that life is mortal. When you embark on an attempt to alter the mind or to direct any other natural object, it is fair to suppose that you are adding certain parts or transposing them or subtracting some trifle at any rate from their sum. But an immortal object will not let its parts be rearranged or added to, or the least bit drop off. For, if ever anything is so transformed as to overstep its own limits, this means the immediate death of what was before. By this susceptibility both to sickness and to medicine, the mind displays marks of mortality. So false reasoning is plainly confronted by true fact.
MUHAMMAD: As for those who argue about the revelations of God, no authority having come to them - there is nothing in their hearts save a pride which they can never satisfy. Seek refuge in God.
LUCRETIUS: Mind and body as a living force derive their vigour and vitality from their conjunction. Without body, the mind alone cannot perform the vital motions. Bereft of spirit, the body cannot persist and exercise its senses. As the eye uprooted and separated from the body cannot see, so we perceive that the spirit and mind by themselves are powerless. It is only because their atoms are held in by the whole body, intermingled through veins and flesh, sinews and bones, that they are kept together so as to perform the motions that generate sentience.
MUHAMMAD: A Day shall come when the enemies of God shall be herded into the Fire, all held in tight order. We shall force the blasphemers to taste a grievous torment, and shall requite them for the worst of their deeds. Such shall be the reward of God's enemies: the Fire, which to them shall be the Abode of Eternity, as a reward for repudiating Our revelations. Those who argue against Our revelations know there is no escape for them. For all that you have been granted is but a fleeting enjoyment in this present life, but what is with God is better and more lasting.
LUCRETIUS: No one on the point of death seems to feel his spirit retiring intact right out of his body. If our mind were indeed immortal, it would not complain of extinction in the hour of death, but would feel rather that it was escaping from confinement and sloughing off its garments like a snake. From all this it follows that death is nothing to us and no concern of ours, since our tenure of the mind is mortal. When we shall be no more - when the union of body and spirit that engenders us has been disrupted - to us, who shall then be nothing, nothing by any hazard will happen any more at all.
MUHAMMAD: Those who disbelieve use false arguments in order to refute the truth. They have taken My verses, and the warnings they received, as a laughing matter. Your Lord, All-Forgiving, Abounding in mercy - were He to hold them to account for what they earned, He would hasten torment upon them!
LUCRETIUS: If the future holds travail and anguish in store, the self must be in existence, when that time comes, in order to experience it. But from this fate we are redeemed by death, which denies existence to the self that might have suffered these tribulations. Rest assured, therefore, that we have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born, when once this mortal life is ended. In sleep, when mind and body alike are at rest, no one misses himself or sighs for life. If such sleep were prolonged to eternity, no longing for ourselves would trouble us. Death, therefore, must be regarded, so far as we are concerned, as having much less existence than sleep, if anything can have less existence than what we perceive to be nothing.
MUHAMMAD: The unbelievers shall be herded into Hell, in order that God may be distinguish the depraved from the pure. He shall heap the depraved one upon the other, piling them all up, and deliver that pile to Hell. These are truly the losers.
LUCRETIUS: The old is always thrust aside to make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the wreck of another. There is no murky pit of Hell awaiting anyone. There is need of matter, so that later generations may arise; when they have lived out their span, they will follow you. Bygone generations have taken your road, and those to come will take it no less. So one thing will never cease to spring from another. To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease. Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead. Is there anything terrifying in the sight - anything depressing - anything that is not more restful than the soundest sleep?
MUHAMMAD: Fight those who do not believe in God or the Last Day, who do not hold illicit what God and His Messenger hold illicit, and who do not follow the religion of truth from among those given the Book, until they offer up tribute, by hand, in humble mien. Fight them so that there will be no discord and the whole of religion belongs to God.
LUCRETIUS: Often it is religion that is the mother of sinful and impious deeds. At Aulis, the altar of the Virgin Goddess was foully stained with the blood of an innocent girl, slaughtered so that a fleet might sail under happy auspices. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.
MUHAMMAD: You are never to pray over any of them who dies, nor stand over his grave, for they disbelieved in God and His Messenger, and died as sinners. They are indeed a pollution; their final place of rest is Hell, in recompense for what they earned. You did not slay them; it was God who slew them.
(THE DOCTOR enters)
DOCTOR: Luc, we've got to get back to the TARDIS. Some Pyroviles survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and hid away in Arabia. They've been planning something terrible, experimenting on human minds, but I don't know what. They're all wearing invisibility cloaks; we don't know where they are.
(turning to Muhammad)
Who's this guy?
LUCRETIUS: A crazy prophet going on about the end of the world, people being gathered up and burned. I was just explaining to him about the mind and spirit; what was it you called them?
DOCTOR: Brain and nervous system.
LUCRETIUS: Yeah, he didn't seem very impressed.
DOCTOR: That's it! The Pyroviles are going to burn up the planet and take whoever they can as willing slaves! Back to the TARDIS, now!
(THE DOCTOR and LUCRETIUS exit; slowly zoom in on Muhammad's face.)
MUHAMMAD: When the earth quakes - a shattering quake!
When the sky disintegrates,
When the earth is crushed, pounded, pulverised,
When the stars are strewn,
When heaven shall be opened,
When hell-fire is kindled,
When the earth is distended,
When the stars are erased,
When the mountains are obliterated
When the seas are made to erupt,
When the Trumpet is blown
When the great Cataclysm overwhelms,
To your Lord that Day is the journey's end.
On this Day the faithful are laughing at the unbelievers,
Upon couches, watching.
(cut to TO BE CONTINUED; credits roll)
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