If you love criticizing Islam to a pulp, Muhammad is the gift that just keeps right on giving. And today, we’re examining yet another story that Muslims are going to wish just wasn’t written into their official materials, so they wouldn’t have to do quite so much damage control for their false prophet.

If the name Muhammad rings a bell, you might remember him from such stories as the time he accepted the Quraysh bargain, selling out his own monotheistic god by attributing three daughters to him, then when he realized the blunder he made, he claimed that Satan made him say it, not knowing the optics of a prophet being made to say Satan’s words, or the time when he poopered a nine-year-old while he was in his fifties.

That Muhammad.

But before we get into today’s story, let’s first frame it with how Islam handles homosexuality. Relevance? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

“And Lot! (Remember) when he said unto his folk: Will ye commit abomination such as no creature ever did before you? Lo! ye come with lust unto men instead of women. Nay, but ye are wanton folk.”

-Quran 7:80-81

“WHEN A MAN MOUNTS ANOTHER MAN, THE THRONE OF ALLAH SHAKES”

-Hadith

“Do you approach the males of humanity, leaving the wives Allah has created for you? But you are a people who transgress”
-Quran 26:165-66

There are various Hadith which states, in addition to these things, that if males commit sodomy, they are to be put to death, both the one who commits the act and the one who passively allowed it to be committed upon him.

Nearly every single Islamic scholar has stated, in no uncertain terms, that homosexual acts are unIslamic, and affirm the penalty of death for those who commit them.

Now, with that framing out of the way, let’s move on to Islam’s new most embarrassing story, the encounter with the men of Al-Zutt.

The following is the full account. I’ll offer a synopsis afterwards.

Ibn Mas’ūd narrated :

The Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) performed ‘Ishā, then he turned and asked for me. He took my hand and we set out until I came to the wide valley of Makkah. He drew a line for me and said to me: ‘Stay within this line, and do not cross it, for indeed there shall come some men to you, but do not speak to them for they shall not speak to you, and if you cross (the line), you will perish. ‘ So I stayed within it. So the Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) went on a little, as far as one could throw a stone or a little further.

While I was sitting within the line, some men/shapes of figures [i.e. jinn] came to me that appeared as if they were black people (i.e. dark people, like from North Africa or India), both their hair and bodies. They were not wearing any clothes but I could not see their private parts, and they were tall and they had little flesh (i.e. slim).

Then they returned towards Allāh’s Messenger (ﷺ) and began towering on top of the Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ). The Prophet of Allāh (ﷺ) began to recite the Qur’ān to them. And they started coming to me and surrounding me, and getting in my way. I was extremely scared of them, so I sat down – or words to that effect.

When dawn entered, they started to leave. Then the Messenger of Allāh came and entered into the line with me, looking heavy and in pain, or almost like he was in pain from their towering over him. He (ﷺ) said:’I find myself tired’ – or words to that effect. So the Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) placed his head on my lap to sleep. And the Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) would snore when he slept.

While I was sitting there, after a while, these men came, wearing long white garments, and Allāh knows best how handsome they were. The Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) had gone to sleep. They came towards me – I was more afraid than I was the first time – a group of them sat at the head of the Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) and a group at his feet. So some of them said to each other: This servant has been given good, his eyes are asleep, but his heart is awake.

Some of them said to one another: Come, let us give him a parable. Some of them said to one another: You coin for him a parable, and we will interpret it, or we will coin for him a parable and you will interpret it.

So some of them said to each other: His parable is that of a leader who built a fortified fort, then he placed a table-spread in it and he invites people to eat and drink. So whoever answers his invitation, he eats from his food and drinks from his drink. And whoever does not come and eat his food, or who does not answer his invitation, he will punish him with a severe punishment.

The others said: As for the leader, he is the Lord of the worlds, and as for the fort, it is Islām, and the food is Paradise, and he (the prophet) is the one who invites, so whoever follows him will be in Paradise. And whoever does not follow him will be punished.

Then the Messenger of Allāh (ﷺ) woke up and said: ‘What did you see, Oh Ibn Umm ‘Abd?’ ‘Abdullāh said: I saw such-and-such. The Prophet (ﷺ) said: ‘Nothing of what they said was hidden from me.’ The Prophet of Allāh (ﷺ) said:’ They are a group of the angels.’ Or he said:’ They are the angels.’

Musnad Ahmad 3788

Muhammad and Ibn Masud went to a remote area, just the two of them. Muhammad drew a circle around Ibn Masud, telling him to stay within to avoid death. Then, a group of black men appeared (the men of Al-Zutt). They were tall, skinny, and naked, though Ibn Masud couldn’t see their genitals. They began “towering” over Muhammad, and Muhammad began reciting the Quran. When their attention turned towards Ibn Masud, he responded by sitting down.

After the men left, Muhammad returned to Ibn Masud weary and in pain by reason of what they had done to him (their “towering” over him). Muhammad fell asleep on his lap. The men briefly appeared in white clothes again, spoke to Ibn Masud (even though Muhammad had said that they would not), then they left again.

This account does bear dissecting, as it has faced some slight attempt to revise, probably because Muslims have come to understand just how embarrassing this account is, or at least it’s potential to be interpreted in an embarrassing manner.

For one thing, you might have noticed the word “jinn” in brackets. The brackets indicate an addition to attempt to either revise or to attempt to add clarity. One way or another, it contains an assumption that the revisionist wants you to come to. The popular interpretation is that these men were actually Jinn, as the interpretation of them as humans has a high potential to be interpreted in a manner that’s very embarrassing to Islam.

Yet, this interpretation is defeated by a simple observation: Jinn are supposed to be invisible. If the men were jinn, Ibn Masud should not have been able to see them. What’s more, because jinn are supposed to be demons, they should not have been able to directly interact with the natural world. From a Biblical perspective, the most that demons could do is mess with people’s minds.

And yet, not only were these men able to physically interact with Muhammad, whatever they did to him left him tired and in pain.

Now, let’s get to that. According to this translation, the men were “towering on top” of Muhammad. It was to the point that “he was in pain from their towering over him.” So, whatever it was they were doing, it involved physical contact, and was not just standing near him menacingly while being taller than him.

The “towering” comes from a word that could instead be translated “rode” or “mounted”. This is interesting, because like the latter two English equivalents, they could be interpreted to mean getting on top of someone to be carried by them, like a piggyback ride, or they could be interpreted as meaning a person attached themselves to someone else in a sexual sense.

Yeah, that could be very embarrassing for Muhammad, Islam, and many Muslims around the world.

If it weren’t already evident that the revisors are trying to hide something, the original was actually more specific than referring to the men as “black people”. They were “men of Al-Zutt”. While this phrase could refer to men of African ancestry, it was more commonly known to refer to men from North Indian and Pakistani origin.

The men of Al-Zutt were famed, not just for their dark skin, but also for their libidos. They were said to have immense sexual appetites and persistent erections. And these men were the ones who met with Muhammad. If not, then the original texts wouldn’t have told us as much. But they did, and now we see the Islamic world going into damage control.

Again.

Interestingly, when Ibn Masud felt intimidated by the men, he responded by planting his butt down on the ground.

As more and more about Muhammad comes to light, it’s becoming more and more difficult for a person to be a Muslim, because there’s more and more about Islam and Muhammad for non-Muslims to laugh at.

Muslims themselves have to start asking themselves just what it is that they’re clinging to. I mean, do they really believe this stuff?

Again, just what is it that Muslims are clinging to?

Islam has one prophet, and only one. He claimed to be the greatest and final prophet, though no Biblical prophet foretold him. He wallowed in decadence, and the violence he committed funded his lavish lifestyle. He performed no miracles. None of them. Absolutely none. Not only that, he said as much.

He made prophecies which failed to come true, including his famous Day of Doom prophecy, which was supposed to involve huge, dramatic events which would lead to the deaths of all non-Muslims. He stated that this was to occur within 500 years of his own lifetime. It’s been over 1400 years since, and Muhammad’s biggest and most important prophecy was just a big nothing burger.

He sold out his own monotheistic religion for the wealth offered by the Quraysh, then said that Satan made him accept after he realized the blunder he had made. He made claims about the beliefs of Christians and Jews, attributing these claims to his god, which Christians and Jews didn’t actually believe in. Jews don’t call Ezra the Messiah. Muhammad was dead wrong.

He claimed to receive a revelation affirming that he could be pleasured by his sex slaves if he wanted, even his his wives wanted attention, with Muslims having that detail of his life to study for ages to come. When he was in his fifties, he consummated a marriage with a girl whose age consisted of a single digit.

He didn’t know what the Scriptures said, because he couldn’t read. After someone read them to him, he repeated them back wrong. And after he was called out for it, he claimed that the Scriptures were all edited in a widespread and conspiratorial manner, including the ones he insisted were right immediately after they were read to him.

By saying that the Christian Gospels were the source of all wisdom, he inadvertently called his own Quran completely unnecessary. He claimed that if he was lying while serving in a prophetic capacity, then his aorta would be severed. Which is interesting, because he described the pain of his own death with the same language.

He failed to foresee his own poisoning by a Jewish woman, leading to his own slow, agonizing, miserable death by reason of the complications in the years to come. He attempted sorcery to try to keep himself from dying. He claimed to receive a revelation telling him that he would live, then died shortly afterwards. And because he failed to appoint a successor, the resulting infighting among those lusting for control over the empire resulted in a divide which continues to this day.

And on top of all this, Muhammad went to meet men of Al-Zutt, to be “mounted” by them to the point that he’d be exhausted and in pain. And he was a willing party to it, as evidenced by the fact that he went to that spot, suggesting that he knew what was coming.

For Muslims, this account of the men of Al-Zutt has to be like a bad memory, and a pain in the backside to explain. Because, what exactly are we supposed to come away from with this story? If we’re to accept that the men were demons, the implication that they’d have anything positive to say about the religion of Islam doesn’t make Islam or Muhammad look any better. Seriously, what kind of selling point is it that demons think your religion is great?

But if we were to take the account at face value, that Muhammad was “rode” by men famous for their sexual appetites, doesn’t that mean that Muhammad is condemned to death by his own religion?

Christians don’t have to deal with this kind of thing, because no account like this is anywhere in the Bible. So, how come it’s Islam that frequently finds itself going into damage control? After spending hours and hours researching different ways to translate and interpret different passages so they don’t look nearly as incriminating for Muhammad and Islam, one would think that Muslims would come to the conclusion that their prophet wasn’t worth believing in.

But now, here we are, with Muslims trying to explain away that their own prophet, the central prophet of their religion, might have actually willingly engaged in group sex with other men.

Score one more for those who think that the official Islamic materials were authored by hostile sources.