It's almost comical how his revelations seem so self-serving and made up on the fly to suit situations. Just some examples:
1. When his army is weak, it is revealed to him he must live peacefully with the Meccans. A few years later when his army is stronger than the Meccans', he gets a new revelation that they should be conquered.
2. One of his wives cheats on him which causes scandal and dishonor. The fix: the angel appears to him and declares "no, it didn't happen". Now nobody can gossip about the affair without contradicting the direct Word of God.
It goes to character.
This is not to say that 'prophets' in the Judeo-Christian tradition have all been of good character. The adultery and subsequent murder of his lover's husband was egregious behavior on David's behalf. Nevertheless, note that God's response to David is not to change the Law on his behalf to save him embarrassment, but to mete punishment on David for his crimes. David for his part did not come up with a new prophecy to justify himself, but repented of his sin.
What kind of testimony is it of God who is fickle with his prophecies, saying one thing when the wind blows one way, and the opposite thing when the wind blows from the next direction?
What does it say of God who covers up the sexual peccadilloes of his prophets, lest they be scandalized by scandalous activities.
A reasoned faith would note that there is a great disconnect between believing in God who is perfectly good, and a God who blots out what he once mandates.
Muslims believe in a capricious God. Mohammed is the Prophet of a capricious God.
3. The famous Satanic Verses - In order to make nice with Mecca, he announces a revelation that three of their pagan goddesses are real, and are daughters of Allah. I can imagine what my reaction would have been: "You've been preaching hatred of paganism and we've been marauding around Arabia sacking caravans and cities and smashing pagan idols and lopping off the heads of pagans, and now all of a sudden it's revealed that we should venerate pagan goddesses?" The fix: a new revelation from the "real" Gabriel saying that that last Gabriel was really Satan in disguise.
Seems to me as false as a three dollar bill.
According to the most authentic of Islamic authorities, theirs is a Prophet who had to be convinced by people who were not there that his prophecies were not demonic. Theirs is a Prophet who did indeed prophecy for the Devil himself, according to his own confession.
Has there ever been another prophet in the whole of the biblical or Abrahamic tradition who did not know whether his prophecy was from God or the Devil, who prophecies for both?
The prophecies of Mohammed, according to Islamic sources themselves, had the tendency to be self-serving. That is the lesson to be learned of the Satanic verses.
Prominent Muslims report this, are fully conscious of this, and yet regard this as the marks of the kind of man that they aspire to be. Mohammed is purported to be the role model for all future Muslims, and this is the kind of behavior that s to be emulated. It is a very different standard of behavior that Christ, the Way, set out for us as godly and good behavior.
This goes to the type of prophet that Mohammed was. Certainly this hyper-masculine, will-to-power model will have an appeal for many people, especially hyper-masculine young men, who no doubt find the self-restraint of Christianity particularly grating.
