There must be a special place in Hell for the
bloodthirsty, false prophet known as Muhammad.
And indeed according to Dante, there is.
The Florentine poet consigned this special piece of excrement to the
Eighth Circle of Hell in his masterpiece, The Inferno. Here is an excerpt describing Muhammad’s
condition:
The Poets come to the edge of the NINTH BOLGIA and
look down at a parade of hideously mutilated souls. These are the SOWERS OF DISCORD, and just as
their sin was to rend asunder what God had meant to be united, so are they
hacked and torn through all eternity by a great demon with a bloody sword. After each mutilation the souls are compelled
to drag their broken bodies around the pit and to return to the demon, for in
the course of the circuit their wounds knit in time to be inflicted anew. Thus is the law of retribution observed, each
sinner suffering according to his degree.
Among them Dante distinguishes three classes with
varying degrees of guilt within each class.
First come the SOWERS OF RELIGIOUS DISCORD. Mahomet is chief among them, and appears
first, cleft from crotch to chin, with his organs dangling between his
legs. His son-in-law, Ali, drags on
ahead of him, cleft from topknot to chin.
These reciprocal wounds symbolize Dante’s judgment that between them,
these two sum up the total schism between Christianity and Mohammedanism. The revolting details of Mahomet’s condition
clearly imply Dante’s opinion of that doctrine.
And now an excerpt from the poem:
A wine tun when a stave or cant-bar starts
does not split open as wide as one I saw
split from his chin to the mouth with which man
farts
Between his legs all of his red guts hung
with the heart, the lungs, the liver, the gall
bladder,
and the shriveled sac that passes shit to the bung.
I stood and
stared at him from the stone shelf;
he noticed me and opening his own breast
with both hands cried: “See how I rip myself!
See how Mahomet’s mangled and split open!
Ahead of me walks Ali in his tears,
his head cleft from the top-knot to the chin.
And all the other souls that bleed and mourn
along this ditch were sowers of scandal and schism:
as they tore others apart, so are they torn.
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