Make Muhammad the "smiling prophet" again

?When you smile to your brother?s face, it is charity? (Hz. Muhammad)

I once asked a Jewish diplomat friend of mine how they manage to create all those jokes about Moses, Solomon, Abraham, Jewishness and ancient tradition of Judaism and not get mad. ?One day hopefully Islam will do it as well? he said. ?It is a way of survival. We wouldn?t have been able to overcome all the horrors of the past century if we could not laugh about it?

Come to imagine for a second. Can Muslims ever create stories that begin with sentences like, ?One day, Omar and Othman and Abu Bakr were on the road to the marketplace. They came across a sahabi with a camel...?

The horrendous attack against Charlie Hebdo is a slap in the face to all Muslims. It is not about our religion, it is about what we are doing wrong. It is about the missing love and compassion in our lives and traditions. It is about mis- and dis-understanding the days of the Prophet Muhammad.

He was an orphan, grew up in very modest conditions, and lived with very few women until he got married. But he was loved deeply and so he loved back. Google the words ?Muhammad and smile? and you will find hundreds of citations on how often and easily he smiled. He would have probably smiled at some of the cartoons of Hebdo. Remember, this incredible man built this religion on winning hearts and minds.

The first novel I read about the Prophet Muhammad?s life was, ironically, in English: ?The Jewel of Medina? by Sherry Jones. It was a great fun novel to read about Aisha and her love for the prophet. He loved being surrounded by women. He enjoyed women?s company more than the military talk with Omar or politics with Abu Bakr. He was a man of simple joys and modest comforts. As a young man who...