Long time ago, a tiny spot in the midst of the Arabian Peninsula, became
a focal point for all the Pagan Bedouins of the desert for the reason that it
had on its bosom the House of God, also known as the Ka'aba, along with a well,
the pagans called Zumzum, which helped them quench their killing thirst.
The pagans were a deeply religious people. They held the view that there was a
god to cover each aspect of their lives. Consequently, they believed that there
was a god who gave them life. They also believed that the same god gave them
sustenance and protected them from all hazards of their lives. They further
believed that there were other gods who rained water from the sky and made them
successful in their battles.
Capitalizing on other Bedouin tribes' religious devotions as well as their lack
of preference to a sedentary life, the members of the Quraish tribe installed
themselves in Mecca, around the House of God and the well of Zumzum, with the
aim to cater to the religious needs of their nomadic and sedentary brethren.
They had the inside and outside of the House of God staked with three hundred
and sixty idols, which all of the pagans venerated and worshipped.
Over a period of time, the spot first came to be known as Bakka (3:96) and then
Mecca. The Quraish tribe was its virtual occupants due to the fact that some of
its powerful members perpetually controlled the supervision, and the religious
rituals, of the House of God.
The members of the Quraish tribe consisted of three groups. One was the priestly
group, which controlled the House of God, and sustained itself on the income
that the House generated for it from the pilgrims. The second group consisted of
a small number of the Quraish people who engaged themselves in trade. The third
group was large, and it consisted of the people who sustained themselves by
providing water and other services to the pilgrims. This occupation of theirs
did not guarantee them a regular income; when they had a large number of
pilgrims, they earned a good living, but when the number of the pilgrims
declined, so did their income. Those people can be compared with our modern-day
day laborers; they get paid only when they are employed for active service.
Over 1,400 years ago, there lived in Mecca a man by the name of Abdullah. He
belonged to the third group of the Quraish people. His wife's name was Amina.
Because he did not have a consistent income, his household often suffered from
deprivations. Many a times, the couple had to go to bed without food. Persistent
poverty took its toll; the couple frequently fought and argued on their
financial condition as well as on what was likely to happen to them in future.
Recognizing the fact that she and her husband did not have the means to feed
another mouth, Amina always forced her man to ejaculate his semen outside her
vagina. This practice helped her to avoid pregnancy for sometime, but one night
Abdullah failed to control himself, and she ended up being a pregnant woman.
Amina was angry. She tried her best to destroy the pregnancy, but failed.
Unable to do anything else with her conception, she resigned to her fate and
decided to carry her pregnancy to its full term. Abdullah, her husband, felt for
her discomforts and sought to help by providing her with the services of a
slave-girl, named Barakat.
But as misfortune would have it, Amina's husband died when she was about six
months into her pregnancy. This tragedy increased her hatred towards the child
she was carrying in her belly. She considered it to be the harbinger of a bad
luck. She feared that many more mishaps would befall her after she delivered the
jinxed baby.
At the time of his death, Abdullah is believed to have owned five camels, a few
sheep and a female slave of Ethiopian origin, named Barakat.
Not being able to do anything else to alleviate her fear, she carried the fetus
until it was ready to take birth as a baby-boy. When the time finally arrived,
she delivered the baby without a hitch.
Amina called the baby-boy Kothan, but his grandfather changed it to Muhammad at
a later date (see R. V. C. Bodley's The Messenger, p. 6).
Contrary to the general belief, Muhammad is not a Muslim name; rather, it is an
Arabian pagan name that was in use even before the birth of Islam's founder.
Genealogically, it is claimed that Muhammad was a descendent of Ismail who, as
the Bible implies, was an illegitimate son of Abraham, born of Hagar, an
Egyptian handmaid of his wedded wife, Sarah (Genesis, 16:1-15). It was this son,
the majority of Muslims believe, whom Abraham attempted to sacrifice upon God's
command in a dream, and who, as a consequence, earned the heavenly title of
"Zabi-Ullah," i.e. "the one to be sacrificed in the name of
God" - - - not his legitimate son Isaac, as claimed by the Book of Genesis.
The actual date of Muhammad's birth is not known, nor can it be ascertained now.
The scholarly hypothesis on this issue is at some variance. Philip K. Hitti says
that he was born in or around 571 AD (History of the Arabs, p. 111). Abdullah
Yusuf Ali maintains, "The year usually given for
the Prophet's birth is 570 A.D, though the date must be taken as only
approximate, being the middle figure between 569 and 571, the extreme possible
limits."(The Holy Koran, V. 2, p. 1071).
The discrepancy in the year of Muhammad's birth notwithstanding, some Muslims
categorically maintain that he was born in the early hours of Monday, the 29th
day of August, 570 A.D (See Ghulam Mustafa, Bishva Nabi, p. 40). - - an occasion
that they observe each year with great fanfare. Contrary to this, and as is the
case with Jesus Christ, the year of Muhammad's birth cannot, in fact, be
established with reliable historical evidence. The celebrations that are held
now to celebrate Muhammad's birth, therefore, have no Islamic basis and these
are mere traditions only.
At the time of Muhammad's birth, the Arabs lived in a state of moral decadence.
Though the institution of marriage existed among the Arabs for its namesake,
they pursued extramarital sex at whim. On the subject of the Arabs' fornication,
Maxime Rodinson quotes Rabbi Wathan:
Nowhere in the world was there such a propensity
towards fornication as among the Arabs, just as nowhere was there any power like
that of Persia, or wealth like that of Rome, or magic like that of Egypt. If all
the sexual license in the world were divided into ten parts, nine of these would
be distributed among the Arabs and the tenth would be enough for all the other
races (Muhammad, p. 54, as translated by Anne Carter)
RVC Bodley tacitly concurred with Wathan, saying:
There was Amr Ibn al As, the son of a beautiful Meccan
prostitute. All the better Meccans were her friends, so that anyone, from Abu
Sofian down, might have been Amr's father. As far as anyone could be sure, he
might have called himself Amr Ibn Abu Lahab, or Ibn al Abbas or Ibn anyone else
among the Koreishite upper ten. According to Meccan standards of that time, it
did not matter who had sired him (In his book, The Messenger, p. 73).
According to historians, Muhammad was born during this period of time, and in
one of the ten upper class Quraish families of Mecca. To these people, it did
not matter who had fathered whom. All children born under this condition must
have always faced the question over the legitimacy of their mothers'
conceptions!
In spite of becoming the mother of a son, whom her society greatly valued, Amina
continued to maintain her hatred towards the newborn boy. In order to take her
vengeance out, she refused to suckle him, even when he was hungry.
Seeing the child's suffering and to help him survive,Thuwaibah, a slave-girl of the child's uncle Abu Lahab, took
upon herself the responsibility to breastfeed him for a few days (see Adil
Salahi's Muhammad: Man and Prophet, p. 23) until someone else was found to take
him into her permanent custody.
In the period Muhammad was born, poor Bedouins from the desert used to flock,
from time to time, to Mecca to collect alms from those few who could afford to
give it to them. Following the tradition, Haleema, a poor Saadite shepherd
woman, came and knocked at Amina's door. Being herself a poor widowed woman,
Amina had nothing to offer Haleema; instead, she wished to unload her own burden
by putting her newborn son into her lap.
Haleema was dumbfounded, for, in her judgment, no mother would ever dispose of
her baby in the manner Amina wanted hers disposed. Knowing well her own
situation, Haleema, at first, refused to accept the custody of the child, but
when she considered the fact that she would have, in due course of time, two
more hands to help her family out in its dire circumstances, she took the baby
and left for her home.
Haleema's tribe lived in one of the pastoral valleys of Northern Arabia. Though
they were poor, yet they always maintained their industrious and bold
characters. Unlike the people of the Quraish tribe, the people of the Saadite
tribe excelled in the use of sword and lances. Their dexterous use of swords and
lances always earned them triumphs in the struggles that they had to face almost
regularly, and perpetually, in order to survive in the harsh conditions and
environments of their surroundings.
The people of the Saadite tribe were also renowned for speaking the most refined
Arabic in all of Arabia. The similarity of the Koran's language with that of the
Saaditic Arabic is the indication that the writer of the Koran must have been
one of the Saadites, or that he must have lived among them during his formative
years.
The entire population of the Arabian Peninsula believed in the existence of
angels. They also believed that angels pay visits to people who were destined to
receive special favors from Allah. This deity lived in and around the Ka'aba
along with other 359 gods. Because the Arabs believed in the angels' closeness
to Allah, many of them took up their worship with the hope that once pleased,
the angels would have no difficulty in convincing Allah to grant them relief
from their endless sufferings.
Haleema's son, Masroud, was almost of Muhammad's age. She began rearing up both
the infants in her right earnest. She suckled both of them and cared for them
equally. She looked forward to the day when those two infants would grow up and
provide her with the help she always needed to make her life somewhat pleasant.
In the interlude she rarely enjoyed, Haleema, being a loving and caring mother,
often used to mull over the future of Masroud, her own son. She was the product
of the Bedouin life; she herself had been living such a life. Her long
experience convinced her that no matter how industrious and brave her son was,
the bareness of the desert and the conditions that obtained in it, would never
afford him an opportunity to live a life that could even distantly be compared
with the one that some people of Mecca lived. She, therefore, wanted her son to
go to Mecca to live there a comfortable life.
But how was she going to send her son to Mecca? she consistently asked herself.
Haleema thought and thought. Lost in it, she spent many, many nights without
sleep. Even during the day, her mind remained occupied with her only thought:
how to induct Masroud, with a secured base, into the Meccan life.
Her constant and persistent exploration of possibilities eventually paid the
dividend. It dawned on her that she could achieve her ambition easily, if she
arranged to return Muhammad to his mother in Mecca with an undetectable switch.
The switching plan required Haleema simply to have Muhammad substituted by
Masroud and plant him in Amina's house where, she knew for sure, there was none
who could ever suspect or question his identity.
Pleased with her plan, Haleema began working on its implementation. First of
all, she needed to call Muhammad Masroud, and Masroud Muhammad. At the
beginning, the infants appeared a little confused, but after a short period of
time, they got used to the change. And this change proved hugely instrumental in
turning around the destinies of two innocents infants; one of them was going to
change, undeservedly, the face of the earth; the other was going to live,
undeservedly for him, too, the life of an anonymous Bedouin.
The second step of the plan required Haleema to create a situation that would
facilitate her son's plantation in Amina's house. This step required her to
conceive a scenario that would not only fit in the pagans' age-old belief, it
would also soften Amina's attitude towards her son whom she despised from the
core of her heart. And what could be a better scenario than the following, which
she made use of in order to convince Amina that her son was really a prodigious
child.
No sooner had Muhammad stepped into the fifth year of his life, Haleema began
telling everyone she came across about the prodigious nature of her adopted son.
She took special pleasure in narrating the child's encounter with two angels
whom, she claimed, her own son Masroud, had seen with his own eyes, surrounding
Muhammad in a broad daylight.
Pressed for details, she used to tell her listeners that one day, Masroud and
Muhammad were playing in field. While they were engrossed in their play, from
nowhere, two angels appeared before Muhammad. They laid him gently on the
ground, and Gabriel, one of the two angels, opened up the boy's heart. He
cleansed it from impurity; wrung from it those black and bitter drops of the sin
that we inherited from our forefather Adam, and which lurk in the hearts of the
best of his descendents, inciting them to the commission of sin. When infant
Muhammad had been thoroughly purified, Gabriel filled his heart with faith and
knowledge and prophetic light, and then he replaced it in his bosom.
During this angelic visitation, Haleema told her listeners, the angels also
impressed between Muhammad's shoulders the seal of prophecy. To prove her claim,
she used to make Muhammad bare his body so that those people who doubted her
sanity could see with their own eyes the mark that existed between his
shoulders.
Haleema had to resort to this cunning tactic in order to hide a serious problem:
The child that was born to Amina bore no mark at the back of his body; whereas
Masroud had a distinctive birth mark between his shoulders. Now, if Haleema had
not invented the story of the angels who, she had to claim, impressed Muhammad's
body with "the seal of prophecy," her entire scheme would have been
jeopardized, and her desire to plant her son in Amina's house frustrated.
The ground thus prepared for his return to his mother, Haleema carried Muhammad
to Mecca and sought to deposit him on Amina's lap. Seeing her reluctance,
Haleema narrated to her all that that had happened to Muhammad, and also the
affixation of the seal of prophecy by the angels on his back. Considerably
mellowed down by Haleema's account of the child's supernatural expositions,
Amina took back her son.
Haleema returned to her home in the desert, with the satisfaction that she
succeeded in placing her son in a Meccan home where he would grow into a man and
then find for himself a place to lead a life, filled with relative abundance and
peace.
Muhammad remained with Amina until his sixth year, although he often missed
Haleema, his biological mother. He played with the local children; joined them
in their merrymaking games; watched pilgrims praying at the temple of Ka'aba and
welcomed and said goodbyes to the caravans that halted at the city before
departing for their trading destinations. All the activities of the city
fascinated him, for he found them to be quite different from the ones he saw and
grew up with in the land of his birth.
Despite the antagonism that Amina had harbored against him following his birth,
she treated him fairly well after his return from the desert. She fed him to the
best of her ability; clothed him to the extent it was necessary and took care of
his well being as well. She also took him around in the city and introduced him
to his near as well as distant relatives.
After a few months of his return to Mecca, Amina took Muhammad to Medina and
introduced him to her maternal relatives there. On her journey homeward, she
died and was buried at Abwa, a village that lied between Medina and Mecca.
Barakat, the slave-girl, now acted as a mother of the orphan child and delivered
him to his grandfather Abd al Mutallib in whose household he was destined to
spend three years of his life.
Muhammad's inclusion in the family did not help the situation; rather, it
brought about an additional load. All members of the family wanted him gone but
as he was under his grandfather's protection, none dared ask him to leave. It
did not mean that they had to develop a love for the child; what actually
happened was exactly its opposite: They began to hate him and missed no
opportunity that came to them to harass him. They might not have inflicted
bodily injuries on him, but they almost certainly harmed him, beyond repairs,
emotionally and psychologically.
When he suffered at the hands of his grandfather's family members, none of its
female members ever came forward either to rescue him from their harassment or
to console him afterwards. This attitude of theirs brought to his mind his
mother's memory. He longed to be with her; wanted to be loved and hugged by her,
but he could have none of them for the reason that she had abandoned him in the
midst of those strange people. He started developing a hatred of his own towards
his mother!
About three years after Muhammad had joined his family, Abd al Motallib found
his end approaching. He, therefore, handed him over to his eldest son, Abu Taleb,
in whose household he lived for several years.
THE CITY OF MECCA
The
little town of Mecca, situated near the Red Sea coast of Arabia, had acquired
great importance by the sixth century for two different reasons: It became an
important center of idol worshipping, to which many of the nomadic tribes of
Arabia made pilgrimages on a regular basis. In addition to its religious
prestige, however, Mecca also became an active center for commerce, from where
caravans departed to various destinations on their trading missions.
Mecca was then a tiny township and most of its inhabitants belonged to the
Quraish tribe whose number could not have exceeded a couple of thousands. It
was, and it still remains, an arid and inhospitable land incapable of producing
anything to support its inhabitants' lives. Its pathways were dusty, with no
civic facility worth its name existing therein. Its inhabitants knew nothing
about personal health or hygiene.
Dwelling in tiny roofless homes built of clay, they survived in extreme poverty,
which forced many of them to use goat and sheep skin to cover their bodies. No
school of any kind existed in Mecca. In contrast to the Meccans, the Jews of
Madina are believed to have run their own schools in which they instructed their
children, primarily in the matters of their religious disciplines.
Because the Arabs could hardly ignite fire, both for cooking and illumination,
they ate dates, locusts and lizards, and depended on camel's milk as a
substitute for water. However, the Koran says that Allah had provided them with
some kind of "green trees" (36:80) from which they obtained fire to
meet their needs. During nights, the Arabs stayed inside their tents and homes,
fearing mischief from capricious Jinns, which they believed, attacked mankind in
darkness at solitary places.
Having nothing worthwhile to do either during the day or night, most of the
people spent their time gossiping, drinking, gambling or narrating the fables
that came down to them through generation after generation. Their other main
pastime was an inordinate obsession with sex, both hetero-and homosexual, for
they were reputed to have been endowed with great sexual virility. Muhammad
possessed so much of virility, it is said, that he was able to satisfy all of
his wives, numbering nine, during a single night.
The Arabs also practiced pederasty, an act they considered to be a normal part
of their sexual conduct. Their womenfolk also led a highly licentious life,
engaging themselves in sexual acts with any men they felt attracted to. Men
recognized this conduct as being normal on the part of their women.
On the death of Abd al Mottalib, his son, Abu Talib succeeded to the
guardianship of Ka'aba, assuming the religious functions performed by all of his
predecessors. The priestly office held by him required his sacerdotal household
to observe rigidly all the rites and ceremonies of the sacred House of Allah.
This afforded young Muhammad the opportunity to observe them closely and to
record them in his mind, enabling him later to incorporate most of them, sans
the idol worshipping, in his own religion.
PAGAN RITES
The
rites and ceremonies practiced by the pagan Arabs before the advent of Islam
consisted of, among others, the following:
-The pagans observed three principal fasts within the year; one of seven, one of
nine, and one of thirty days. During their fasts, they ate and drank, but
refrained from conversations.
-They prayed three times each day; about sunrise, at noon, and about sunset,
turning their faces in the direction of Ka'aba (Washington Irving, Mahomet and
his successors, p. 31).
-They performed a yearly pilgrimage or hajj, which required them to
circumambulate the Ka'aba seven times, to run between the two hills called Safa
and Marwa on each of which was installed a male and a female idol, to sacrifice
animals in the name of the deities, and then to shave the heads of all male
pilgrims. Female pilgrims satisfied the later commandment simply by having a few
locks of their haircut off.
ALLAH
One
of the three hundred and sixty idols the pagans worshipped was called Allah,
having all the essential characteristics of a man. He was one of their principal
deities. They believed that this Allah gave them life and sustained them with
his mercy and kindness. This deity was known as Al-Rahman-an (the merciful) and
Al-Rahim (the compassionate) to the people of Northern and Southern Arabia.
The inscription (542-3) of Abrahah dealing with the break of the Ma'rib Dam
bears testimony to this historical fact. The inscription begins with the
following words: "In the power and grace and mercy
of the Merciful ((Rahman-an) and His messiah and of the Holy Spirit."
The name Al-Rahman-an is especially significant because al-Rahman became later a
prominent attribute of Allah, and one of His ninety-nine names in the Koran.
Sura or chapter nineteen of the Koran is dominated by the word al-Rahman. Though
used in the inscription for the Christian God, yet the word is evidently
borrowed from the name of one of the older South Arabian deities.
In truth, Muhammad, at the beginning of his career as a prophet, had required
his followers to worship this same statuary Allah. He changed this commandment
later to suite his concept of a God who, he believed, had no form or shape, thus
separating his concept from that of the pagans and other polytheists of his
time.
Apart from the stated rites, the pagans had many other religious traditions,
some of which they acquired in early times from the Jews. They are also said to
have nurtured their devotional feelings with the books of Psalms, as well as
with a book filled with moral discourses, supposedly written by Seth who,
according to the biblical stories, was one of Adam's many sons. Adam was the
first human being whom God created, by using his own hands, out of mud, which he
made by mixing dust with water.
Muhammad's transfer to his uncle's household did not bring him any relief from
what he suffered in his grandfather's house. Abu Taleb was not rich, either, but
he, too, had a large family. Even though he, in addition to his sacerdotal
duties of the Ka'aba, had taken to trading to supplement his income, yet he did
not earn enough to provide for all the needs of his family members. Scarcity was
a rule, rather than an exception for his family. As the family often passed
their days in hardship, Muhammad's addition to the family became a burden not
only for its head, but also for its members. Consequently, they made him feel
unwelcome in their midst, and used, in his presence, languages and gestures,
which were good enough to act as salt for the wounds he had already acquired
from his grandfather's house.
Abu Taleb, on his part, was aware of the situation that his nephew had to endure
in his house. He wanted to help, but he, too, was handicapped; had he been able
to meet the needs of his immediate family members, he could have justified
Muhammad's presence in his house, but that was not the case and, consequently,
he could do nothing for him, but to play the role of a spectator. When he could
live no more with his nephew's agonizing conditions, he found him a job of a
shepherd.
His
job required him to take his employers' camels into the plains for grazing. He
thus had to spend, all by himself, the major portion of his days in the grim
desert outside of Mecca. Letting the camels roam about in search of a thorn or a
blade of grass among the pile of stones, we can visualize how a young, sensitive
and intelligent boy of the age of Muhammad, must have spent his time.
It is a rule of nature that misfortune and sufferings create bitterness in a
person and these make him conscious of his situation, especially when he finds
himself with nothing to distract him from his thoughts. Such a person grieves
over his misfortune and tries to find out its causes. While doing so, he
develops a strange internal feeling, which can be described only by a person who
had undergone such an experience in his or her own life.
Since the above observation amply applied to young Muhammad, we may safely
conjecture that in the midst of his frustrating loneliness, he must have asked
himself why he had come into the world as a fatherless orphan, and why he had to
work as a shepherd at such a lonely place at such a young age, while other
children of his age were spending their time in the company of their loving
parents. He must also have asked himself why his mother had to leave him at the
mercy of the people he hardly knew, and why their treatment of him was different
from that of their own children.
Despite the fact that he brought in some income to his uncle's family, yet they
continued to treat him in the manner of the past. The continuity of their past
behavior hurt him deeply; its resultant pains being the major cause for
deepening his hatred towards his mother. He believed that if he had been living
with her, nobody would have subjected him to the degrading insults that he
suffered from at his grandfather's house, and which continued to be heaped upon
on him at his uncle's house. He held his mother responsible for all of his
sufferings.
His ego, sensitivity and feelings greatly hurt, Muhammad stopped playing with
other children in his spare time. Instead, he felt more at home when conversing
with other people who came to Mecca on pilgrimage or on trade. He enjoyed their
conversations on religious matters. He also derived immense pleasure from their
story-telling sessions. Very often, he prompted them into narrating the
tantalizing and fascinating Arabian tales of the past. Most of the tales and
fables he heard from them acted like balm for his wounds. When he got his
opportunity, he narrated them eloquently to his listeners, who, in their own
turn, made them an important and integral part of the Koran!
When he had no story-telling session to attend, he took immense pleasure in
watching the arrival and departure of the caravans, which traded in Syria and
Yemen, and thronged at Mecca before their dispersal. The thought of being in
foreign lands filled young Muhammad's mind with excitement and carried his
imagination to things he himself hoped one day to see in those distant
countries.
Once, Muhammad saw Abu Taleb mount his camel to depart with a caravan bound for
Syria. Unable to suppress his ardent desire, he begged his uncle to take him
along on his journey. Abu Taleb could not deny his forceful request and gave him
permission to accompany the caravan.
The route to Syria, in those days, lay through regions fertile in fables and
traditions, which it was the delight of the traveling Arabs to recount during
the evening respites of their caravans. The vastness and solitude of the desert
in which the wandering Arabs passed so much of their lives was the fertile
ground that also gave birth to numerous superstitious fancies. Accordingly, they
had the deserts peopled with good and evil Jinns, and clothed them with tales of
enchantment, mingled with wonderful but dubious events, which, they believed,
had taken place in the distant past.
While traveling, the youthful Muhammad doubtless imbibed many of those
superstitions of the desert. Remaining ingrained in his retentive memory, they
later played a powerful role over his thoughts and imagination.
We may note here two ancient traditions, out of the many of the Arabian legends,
which Muhammad must have heard at this time, and which we find recounted by him
afterwards in the Koran. One of these related to the mountainous district called
Hadjar.
As caravans crossed the silent and deserted valleys, caravanners gazed at the
caves at the sides of the mountains. These caves were said to have been once
inhabited by the Bani Thamud or the Children of Thamud. These people, Arabs
believed, belonged to one of the lost tribes of Arabia.
Bani Thamud were a proud and gigantic race, existing at the time of patriarch
Abraham. When they lapsed into idolatry, God sent them a prophet from among
themselves whose name was Saleh. His task was to restore them to His righteous
path. People refused to listen to him unless he proved the divinity of his
mission through a miracle. Saleh prayed, and God caused a rock to open up from
which came out a gigantic she-camel, producing a foal and abundant milk soon
after.
Some of the Thamudites were convinced by the sight of the miracle and gave up
idolatry. The greater majority of them remained unimpressed and continued in
their disbelief.
Disappointed, Saleh left the camel among the people as a sign from God, but
warned them that a catastrophe would befall should they do her any harm. For a
time, the camel was left to feed quietly in their pastures, but when she drank
from a brook or a well, she never raised her head until she had drained the last
drop of water.
In return, it was believed, she produced milk to supply the whole tribe. As she,
however, frightened other camels out of pastures by her huge size, she became an
object of offense to the Thamudites who, to get rid of the beast, hamstrung and
then slew her.
God retaliated for the killing of the she-camel. He caused a fearful cry,
accompanied by great claps of thunder, to descend upon the Thamudites people at
night from heaven; in the morning all the offenders were found dead, lying
prostrated on their faces. Thus for avenging the death of a she-camel, God
obliterated a whole race from the face of the earth. The land of the Thamudites
still remains barren, caused by a constant curse from heaven.
This story had a powerful impact on Muhammad's mind, who, in later years,
refused to let his people encamp in the neighborhood, hurrying them away from
this accursed region.
Another tradition gathered by Muhammad during one of his journeys related to the
city of Eyla, situated near the Red Sea. This place, he was told, had been
inhabited in ancient times by a tribe of the Jews. Like the Thamudites, they had
lapsed into idolatry. Also, because the tribe had profaned the Sabbath by
fishing on that sacred day, God transformed their old men into swine, and the
young ones into monkeys.
What had happened to their womenfolk was not told, so Muhammad necessarily
remained vague while narrating this story in the Koran.
The aforesaid traditions, among others, are found eloquently described in the
Koran, thus indicating the extent of the bias to which Muhammad's youthful mind
had been subjected during his journeys.
Muslim writers have eulogized many wonderful circumstances, which are stated to
have attended Muhammad throughout all the journeys of his life. He was, they
assert, hovered over by unseen angels with their wings to protect him from the
burning sands of the desert and the scorching rays of the sun.
On another occasion, he was protected by a cloud, which hung over his head
during the noontime heat. On yet another occasion, a withered tree suddenly put
forth its leaves and blossomed in order to provide shade to the distressed
Muhammad. All those miracles did not rest on the evidence of an eyewitness;
rather these were Muhammad's own statements, or were invented, after his death,
by his zealot followers, which Muslims are required to believe without ever
asking any questions.
During his journeys, Muhammad is said to have met a number of Christian hermits.
Monk Bahira was prominent among them. On
conversing with Muhammad, Bahira was struck by the precocity of his intellect
and became entranced by his eager desire for varied information. His
inquisitiveness centered, principally, on maters of religion. The two were
believed to have held frequent conversations on the subject, in course of which,
the discourse of the monk was mainly directed against idolatry, the
practice in which the youthful Muhammad had hitherto been raised. The Nestorian
Christians, for whom Bahira was a faithful patron, were strenuous in forbidding
the worship of images. They prohibited even their casual exhibition. Indeed,
they had taken their scruples on this matter so far that even the cross, a
common emblem of Christianity, was included in this prohibition.
Muslim writers stress the point that Bahira had become interested in the
youthful Muhammad because he had seen the seal of prophecy on his shoulders.
This vision, they swear, gave the monk the conviction that this was the same
Prophet whose arrival had been foretold in the Christian Scriptures. The monk is
further reported to have told Abu Talib to ensure that his nephew did not fall
into the hands of the Jews, thereby forecasting with the eye of prophecy the
trouble and opposition that Muhammad was destined to encounter in future from
that religious group of people.
We doubt if the mentioned encounter had ever taken place. Supposing that it had
actually taken place, in that event, the purpose of Bahira's encounter must have
revolved around one of his own agendas. Since the monk was engaged in a mission
and predisposed toward proselytizing, he, being a sectarian preacher, needed no
miraculous sign to develop an interest in an intelligent and intense Muhammad,
and to attempt to convert him to the beliefs he was then propagating. He knew
that his subject was a receptive listener; and he was also the nephew of the
guardian of Ka'aba. He also knew that if he succeeded in implanting the seeds of
his teachings into Muhammad's tender mind, he would be spreading, through him,
the doctrines of his sect among the people of Mecca, thus advancing his mission
by a great stride. This was a good motivation for Bahira to develop an interest
in Muhammad. He did not have to see the putative seal of prophecy in order to be
convinced with his subject's potentiality and usefulness.
What the monk is reported to have told Abu Talib about Muhammad must have been a
precautionary suggestion. In the unsettled state of religious opinions then
obtaining in the Arabian Peninsula, the monk wanted to prevent his would-be
convert from being engulfed by the Jewish faith, which was then influencing the
pagans in its favor. Had it happened; the monk would have lost a good candidate
for his faith, and this would have been a great setback for the cause he was
then duty-bound to promote.
With Abu Talib, Muhammad returned to Mecca, his mind teeming with wild tales and
traditions he picked up during his journey through the desert. He remained
deeply impressed by the doctrines imparted to him by Monk Bahira in the
Nestorian monastery, which, as we will note shortly, had helped him tremendously
later in his life in shaping his own thoughts and religious doctrines.
Muhammad had also developed a mysterious reverence for Syria, believing it to
have given refuge to the patriarch Abraham when he had fled from Chaldea, taking
with him the doctrine of worshipping one true God. His veneration of this
country was so deep that he is said to have initially faced Syria (Ibn Ishaq's
Sirat Rasul Allah, as translated by A. Guillaume, p. 135), while saying his
three daily prayers.
While not traveling with a caravan, Muhammad worked as a shepherd. But when he
reached his manhood, different persons employed him as their commercial agent,
to be with their trade caravans, which traveled to Syria, the Yemen and other
destinations on commercial pursuits. The fact that he
was given charge of trade by his employers negates the Muslim claim that
Muhammad was an illiterate person and, therefore, he could not have said or
written what the Koran contains. A person unable
to read or write could not have been given the important post of a commercial
agent, especially, when other Meccans are claimed to have been able to do so.
His ability to read and write must also have helped him to get his jobs, for it
was in the best interest of his employers to hire someone who was able to keep a
written record of the trade activities he engaged himself in, particularly in a
situation where he had to travel to, and live in, distant places for a long
period of time.
During his journey through Jerusalem, Muhammad had the opportunity of seeing the
Temple of Solomon, located on the hill of Moriah. King Solomon had built it for
Yahweh, who was one among many gods of the ancient people. In the Koran, this
Temple is referred to as the Farthest Mosque (Masjid-ul-Aqsa).
His familiarity with this temple helped him later to describe it vividly when
questioned about his alleged ascension to Seventh Heaven during a night.
Muslims firmly believe that Muhammad landed here on his wonder horse, known as
Borak, and walked across the plaza - built by Herod to expand the area of the
Second Temple - and then ascended to heaven during a night to hold talks with
God. When asked to describe the temple in order to prove his claim of the
mysterious ascension, God, it said, presented its replica in his vision to
enable him to satisfy the incredulity of his Meccan tormentors. During their
rule over Jerusalem, Muslims built, near the Temple of Solomon, a mosque known
as the Dome of Rock, to commemorate the ascension. It is also called the Mosque
of Hadhrat Umar. This has become the third holiest Muslim place of worship after
the Ka'aba in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in Madina.
King Solomon was the person who had first used the oft-repeated Muslim
invocation of God's glory in a letter that he is said to have written to Queen
Bilquis of Sheba, some seventeen hundred centuries before the advent of Islam.
The invocation, reading as follows, are now used by all Muslims every day before
they do anything in their lives:
Bismillah hir Rahman nur Rahim, meaning: In the name of
Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. We suspect that the pagans used
the same invocation before their idol Allah. Muhammad lifted it from the pagan
practice and made it an essential component of his religion.
Before we proceed further with our narrative, we may pause here and discuss
briefly a psychological theory or observation. It is known that belief can blunt
human reasoning and common sense. It has been established that ideas, which have
been inculcated into a person's mind in childhood, remain in the background of
his thinking forever. Consequently, such a person will want to make facts
conform to his indoctrinated ideas, which may have no rational validity. Many
learned scholars are known to have remained handicapped by this burden, and
inhibited from using their common sense. It is not that they never used their
common sense in religious enterprises; they used it only when it corroborated
with their inculcated ideas.
Mankind's faculties of perception and rationalization have enabled them to find
solution of scientific problems, but in matters of religious and political
beliefs, the same species is willing to trample on the evidence of reason and
senses.
Contrary to the Muslim conviction that Muhammad was originally created by God as
a believer in His Oneness, he is reported to have worshipped and offered
sacrifices to Al-Uzza, an idol the pagans believed to be one of the three
daughters of God (cf. 42:52). The Quraish venerated Al-Uzza highly, believing
that her intercession on their behalf would be acceptable to God, her father.
One of his uncles was named after this idol, and he was called Abd al Uzza, the
slave of Uzza, before he was nicknamed Abu Lahab, the Father of Flame, by his
Muslim foes.
On Muhammad's pagan backgrounds, F. E. Peters wrote: According
to a famous, though much edited, tradition, it was young Muhammad who was the
pagan and Zayd ibn Amr who was the monotheist. Peters also quoted Zayd
ibn Haritha, who is said to have narrated the following story to his son:
The Prophet slaughtered a ewe for one of the idols (nusub
min al-ansab); then he roasted it and carried it with him. (Muhammad and
the Origins of Islam, p. 126). While preaching the oneness of God, Muhammad
continued, in one form or another, to venerate the idols-up to the time he
conquered Mecca-when all the idols housed inside and outside the Ka'aba he had
finally destroyed.
In his early life, Muhammad was no different than other youths of his time. He
used to "spend his nights in Mecca as young men
did" - - - (Ibn Ishaq. Op. cit, p. 81) - - - in quarters where whores
offered their bodies to youths whom they expected to defend them in times of
perils. His marriage with Khudeija might have had altered his lifestyle to a
certain degree, but it was not a good enough reason for him to abandon his
earlier habits in their entirety.
Muhammad was also a frequent attainder of fairs, which, in Arabia, were not
always the mere venues of business activities, but also occasionally scenes of
poetic contests between different individuals, where prizes were adjudged to the
victors. Such especially was the case with the fair of Oqadh; winning poems were
hung up as trophies on the walls of Ka'aba. At these fairs, also, contestants
recited the popular traditions of the Arabs. They also propagated various
religious practices that were then common in the peninsula. From oral sources of
this kind, Muhammad gradually accumulated varied information about creeds and
doctrines, which he afterwards prescribed for his own followers.
As was the wont of his tribe, Muhammad also used to retire to a cave in Mount
Hira to practice penance on the 10th of Muharram, a day sacred to the Jews as
well. Following the Jewish custom, he also fasted on this day (Philip K. Hitti,
History of the Arabs, p. 133. Also see Karen Armstrong's A History of God, p.
132).
USE OF ALCOHOL IN ISLAM
Muslims
venerate Muhammad as being abstemious in his physical life. This point of view
contradicts a natural phenomenon. He was part of a society that must have made
him susceptible to all of its practices. If he wanted to have protection of his
tribe, without which, none could have survived in the hostile Arabian societies,
he must have participated in his society's indulgences, which included drinking
of a highly stinking liquor called maghafir, as well as wine. The native Arabs
made maghafir by extracting juice of the palm-trees and then fermenting it
before consumption (16:67.Also see Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, Asmani Koran
Sharif, p. 902).
Because the Arabs were generally addicted to drinking, the Koran did not
actually describe drinking of alcohol as "Haram" or forbidden in the
strict sense of the word; what it required Muslims of was not to offer their
prayers in a state of drunkenness (4:43), and that they try to "avoid or
refrain" from drinking (5:93,94), thus corroborating in part, the
condition, which the Torah and the Bible imposed, respectively, on Jews and the
Christians (Leviticus, 10:9).
Under the circumstances described, it is to be understood that since Muhammad
himself drank maghafir and wine, he must have thought it to be a prudent
decision to remain vague on the subject of drinking. At the same time, he must
have considered it politic to ask his followers gently to moderate their intake
of alcohol, he himself having experienced, in his own life, the adverse impact
of excessive drinking.
When working for various Meccan merchants, Muhammad came to know the amounts of
profits they were making out of their businesses. He also realized how they
spent their wealth on making their and their children's lives better. The
reflections of his own childhood plights and sufferings convinced him that the
merchants of Mecca not only neglected the city's poor and needy; they were also
unkind to the orphans. This realization turned him against the merchants, and he
took a vow to force them one day to share their wealth with him and his poor
people.
He also had a feeling of ill will towards the custodians of the Ka'aba. He
accused them not only of debarring "others from the Sacred Mosque"
(8:34); he also questioned their right to be its guardians. He believed that by
misusing their authority, they avoided sharing the temple's revenues with those
to whom a part of the revenues rightfully belonged. In his judgment, only the
God-fearing and those people, who were willing to share the temple's wealth with
poor and orphans, had the right to be the Ka'aba's guardian.
The financial independence that his well-paid job brought him also gave him an
opportunity to look back and recount the treatments he had received from the
ladies of Abd al Motallib and Abu Talib's families. He also recalled his
abandonment in Mecca by his mother. The combined incidences that he had endured
made him bitter. He felt betrayed, especially by the women he expected to be
caring, kind and loving.
The reoccurrence in his mind of the past humiliations, betrayal, ill treatments
and insults rekindled in him his tribal instincts of retribution. He vowed to
avenge his sufferings in a subtle, systematic and effective manner. The
treatment of women prescribed in, and the restrictions imposed on them, through
the Koran as well as Muhammad's own treatment of his wives should be good
examples for proving our point.
With the passage of time, Muhammad became determined in his ambitions. The more
he thought about his them, the more plans came to his mind. The more he talked
to his friends, the more input he got from them on many of their common
concerns. Positive thoughts and responses prepared him to go into offensive to
realize what he set out for him to be his goals.
By the age of twenty-five, Muhammad was able to finalize all the details of his
scheme. This was also the ripe time for him to get married, but he could not
marry any eligible woman. He needed to marry a woman who was willing not only to
support him financially, but also to become his partner in the scheme he had
prepared for his future implementation. And there were not too many women in
Mecca, who could fulfill his criterions, and become his wife.
At the time Muhammad was looking for a suitable bride, there lived in Mecca a
widow named Khudeija, a daughter of Khuwalid, of the tribe of Quraish. She had
been twice married. Her last husband, a wealthy merchant, had recently died and
his widow needed to hire help to manage her vast business interests.
Khudeija had a cousin by the name of Waraqa ibn Nofal. He was a professed
monotheist and is believed to have translated portions of the Gospels into
Arabic. He wielded much influence over his sister Khudeija, she being alleged to
be a regular reader of his works (Sir John Glubb, The Life and Times of
Muhammad, p. 68). Both of them held identical views on religious matters, but in
cases where they differed, the opinion of Waraqa always prevailed.
Muhammad had become acquainted with Khuzaima, a nephew of Khudeija, during his
business trips. The latter had seen the former conducting his business in an
efficient and profitable manner, and he was impressed. After their return home,
they met frequently in and around the temple of Ka'aba, where Muhammad loved to
spend his time after carrying out, in the manner of hajj, seven circuits, around
the shrine.
One day, in course of his conversation with Khuzaima, Muhammad expressed his
desire to find a job that would pay him more than what he was being paid by his
current employer. Khuzaima told him that his aunt Khudeija was looking for a
capable agent and that he might be a perfect candidate for the job. He promised
to talk to Khudeija about him and also try to arrange an interview for him with
her.
Khuzaima kept his words, and he talked to Khudeija. She agreed to meet the
candidate at an early date.
On the appointed date and time, Muhammad presented himself before Khudeija. She
looked and found a twenty-five years old man standing before her eyes. He was of
medium stature, inclined to slimness, with a large head, broad shoulders, and an
otherwise perfectly proportioned body. His hair and beard were thick and black,
not altogether straight but slightly curled. His hair reached midway between the
lobes of his ears and his shoulders, and his beard was of a length to match. He
had a noble breadth of forehead and the ovals of his large eyes were wide, with
exceptionally long lashes and extensive brows, slightly arched and not joined.
His eyes were said to have been brown or even light brown. His nose was aquiline
and his mouth was wide and finely shaped. Although he let his beard grow, he
never allowed the hair of his moustache to protrude over his upper lips. His
skin was white but tanned by the sun (Description copied from Martin Lings'
Muhammad, p. 35).
His voice had a touch of music and the sentences he spoke were as rhythmic as
the poems of the famed Arabian poet Labid. Khudeija was highly impressed, and
she hired Muhammad to run her business.
She assigned her nephew Khuzaima and her slave girl Maisara to him so that they
could assist him during the trade missions that he was expected to lead to
Syria, the Yemen and other destinations from time to time. During all his
missions, he performed all of his duties most diligently, thus earning for
himself the admiration of his employer. She afterwards sent him to the southern
parts of Arabia on similar pursuits, in all of which he achieved successes
beyond his employer's expectation. Every opportunity Muhammad got to prove his
worth, he did his best to excel it so that he could endear himself to his
employer; every time Khudeija heard about his success; it enhanced in her not
only his esteem, but also his fondness.
While Muhammad was applying all his tools to climb the ladder of success,
Khudeija turned forty, her age having enabled her to gather the valuable
judgment and experience that was necessary to lead a successful life. She longed
for a partner who could give her all that that she had been missing ever since
her last husband had died. She considered many probable candidates, but, at the
end, her choice fell on Muhammad.
Although her heart yearned for the fresh and comely youth, yet she restrained
herself before taking steps to fulfill her desire. She had to overcome the
ancient Arab tradition that barred women of her age from getting married,
together with the objections she expected from her family members. Of particular
concern to her was the attitude of her uncle, Amr ibn Asaad, without whose
approval it would have been almost impossible for her to marry the man of her
choice. She needed to create situations that would not only make the man appear
special, but would also force her uncle to sanction her marriage with the man as
well.
Soon an opportunity presented itself for Khudeija to exploit. One day at noon,
she was with her maids outside her house, watching the arrival of the caravan
conducted by Muhammad. As it approached its termination point, an errant patch
of cloud appeared on the horizon, blocking momentarily the sun's rays from
reaching the earth. Seizing the opportunity, she shouted to her maids and
exclaimed: "Behold! It is the beloved of Allah, (i.e. the same deity of
Ka'aba the pagans called "Allah") who sent two angels to watch over
him!"
Her maids strained their eyes and looked out as far as they could see in an
effort to locate the angels, but they saw none. Having inkling of their
mistress's passionate feelings towards her heartthrob, Muhammad, they joined
hands with her, and repeated loudly what she had told them. The purpose behind
such an exercise was to boost Muhammad's image, through publicizing, what
Khudeija had made out to be a divine favor as well as to warn her uncle of the
consequences from heaven should he reject Muhammad's proposal to marry his
niece.
Thus creating a ground that going to support her cause, she wished to waste no
time and offered herself secretly in marriage to Muhammad through her trusted
slave, Maisara. Muhammad had been waiting for such a miracle to happen, and when
he got the offer, he accepted it without wasting any time. The major success
thus achieved, he, as the Arabian tradition required, needed to make a formal
proposal of marriage to Khudeija's uncle Amr ibn Assad who acted then as her
guardian, her father having been previously killed in a sacrilegious war.
The Arabian marriage traditions vastly differed from the ones observed by the
non-Arab Muslims of the present day. Under the Arab tradition practiced even
today, the groom has to propose the marriage to his would-be bride through her
parents or guardians, and if they accept the offer, the groom is required to pay
dowers to this betrothed's parents or guardians in order to enable him to marry
their daughter or ward. Arabian marriages do not involve religious sanctions.
Contrary to the Arabian tradition, the non-Arab Muslim brides are required to
pay dowers to their grooms and marriages are solemnized, with religion playing a
major part.
Following their tradition, Abu Taleb and Hamza, two of Muhammad's uncles,
accompanied their nephew to Khudeija's house, where she secretly arranged a
party. She had not, it seems, broken the news to her uncle; she intentionally
kept him unaware of the significance of the occasion. In the presence of all
men, Muhammad sought from Amr ibn Assad his niece Khudeija's hand in marriage,
hearing which the old man flew into a rage and declined the union. He explained
that everything was against such an idea: Muhammad's age, the fact that he was
in Khudeija's employment and, above all, he did not have enough money to justify
his marriage with a wealthy lady. In his mind, the marriage meant dispersing her
wealth, instead of keeping it in her family. Subsequent events proved that the
old man was right in his thinking.
Khudeija had anticipated such a situation and had prepared herself to handle it
in a favorable manner. She methodically plied her uncle with wine until he was
drunk. On cue, Abu Taleb delivered a forceful speech, laying out all the
splendid qualities that his nephew supposedly possessed. After him, Khudeija
herself made a fiery speech, describing how the angels had protected him from
heat, and also eulogizing all the deeds that Muhammad had performed for her and
the family. In the end, she exhorted her uncle to recognize Muhammad's favors,
and to accept him as his son-in-law.
Following Khudeija's speech, all present prompted Amr ibn Assad to respond to
it.
Before he knew what all was about, he made a speech approving the marriage.
Waraqa ibn Nofal promptly seconded; whereupon, Muhammad at once clothed the old
man in the robe, which according to the Arabian tradition, a son-in-law gave his
father-in-law at a wedding. Khudeija immediately had the contract of marriage
drawn and signed, signifying the conclusion of the marriage before her uncle
could realize that he was duped and declared the marriage void. This marriage is
believed to have taken place in 595 A.D., when Muhammad was twenty-five and his
bride forty years old.
The incident narrated concerning Khudeija's marriage with Muhammad deserves a
special focus, not only because it was a milestone in the life of the future
prophet of Islam, but also because it illustrates the position occupied by women
in pre-Islamic Arabia. We have noted that Khudeija was an independent woman who
ran her own business and it was she, not her future husband, who had first
proposed the marriage. Apart from her, we also know that there were other women
in pre-Islamic days who not only took part in the affairs of Mecca by the side
of their men, they also participated in business ventures without having their
men involved in them. They, moreover, often exercised considerable influence as
prophetesses or as poetesses.
At the annual fairs in the neighborhood of Mecca, particularly at the fair of
Oqhad, women are known to have entered along with men in poetic contests and
recited their price-winning poems before the public.
The above observations provide us a glimpse of the extent of freedom that the
women of Arabia enjoyed before the dawn of Islam and negate the claim of the
Muslim doctors who tell us that it was Islam, which granted them the freedom
with which they have been living their lives in our modern world. In reality,
the contrary is the fact. It is, in truth, Islam, which has snatched away much
of women's previous freedom and liberties, and made them slaves to the whims and
fancies of their men.
MUHAMMAD'S LIFE STYLE AFTER HIS MARRIAGE WITH KHUDEIJA
As
Muhammad expected, his marriage with Khudeija changed his life. It placed him
among the most wealthy and influential of his native city. He was no more a
servant; to the contrary, he became the owner of his wife's wealth and business.
People began to respect him. They also allowed him to participate in both their
casual and formal meetings, a privilege that was denied him before on account of
his circumstances.
During this time, he lived in a household where the resident oracle influenced
him greatly in his religious opinions. This was his wife's cousin Waraqa
ibn Nofal, a man of speculative mind and flexible faith; originally a
Jew, subsequently a Christian, at the same time, being a pretender of astrology.
After the marriage, Muhammad continued to work for his wife as before but now
with a freedom that afforded him much time to build his image among the people.
To achieve his mission, he carried himself well socially. He succeeded in
establishing himself as a role model among the people, not only by dispensing
favors but also by dealing with them even-handedly in situations that offered
him the sought after opportunities to get himself involved. Herein, we shall
describe a crisis that involved the Meccan people and which, we are told, he
helped resolve amicably thereby earning for himself the admiration of the
people.
In 605 A.D., when Muhammad was thirty-five years old, the people of Quraish
decided to roof the Ka'aba, which, it appears, had hitherto consisted of only
four walls with no covering on top. An examination of the masonry revealed that
the existing walls were too weak to support the weight of a roof, whereupon, the
Meccans decided to demolish the entire structure, and, in its place, to build a
new edifice with a roof on top of it. After building the walls, the people faced
the dilemma of finding the wooden planks and a carpenter to make the roof, for
neither of these two existed at the time in the entire land of Arabia.
During their plight, it so happened that a ship, belonging to a Greek merchant
wrecked, possibly on the coral reefs of Jeddah. This accident provided the
desperate Meccans with the ship's timbers for the roof, which an Egyptian Copt.
Carpenter, who happened to be in Mecca at the time, undertook to erect at their
behest.
The story of roofing the Ka'aba brings to light an important aspect of the
Meccan life of the time. The fact that the temple itself had no roof bolsters
the position of those who maintain that since the "House of God" had,
in all probability, consisted merely of tents surrounded by walls, the Meccans
of the time must also have lived, out of compulsion, in homes built without
roofs.
A large black stone, possibly a meteorite, had been built into the wall of the
primitive Ka'aba. The Meccans as well as the pagan pilgrims regarded it with
peculiar veneration. When the building of the walls reached the level at which
the black stone had formerly been planted, each of the clans of the Quraish
demanded the privilege of placing the stone back in its original position.
Excited and heated debate ensued, and an outbreak of violence, bordering on
bloodshed, seemed imminent.
At this juncture, Abu Umaiya of the clan of Bani Makhzoom, said to be the oldest
man of the tribe of Quraish, came up with a suggestion. He proposed that all
present should agree that the first man who entered the court of the Ka'aba from
that moment on should be asked to judge the dispute. All agreed and began to
await the arrival of such a man.
A few minutes later, they saw Muhammad entering the sacred premises. Informed of
the pact that the Meccans had agreed to, he called for a cloak, spread it on the
ground and laid the black stone upon it. He then asked one representative of
every clan to take hold of the edge of the cloak and to raise the stone together
to the required height. Once this was done, he, with his own hands, laid the
stone in position in the wall, thus resolving a deadly issue with a brilliant
presence of mind.
This episode is said to have enhanced his stature and esteem, prompting people
to refer their disputes to him for resolution.
THE CALL FROM GOD
In
the period following Muhammad's marriage with Khudeija but before the
commencement of his preaching of the oneness of God, many religiously sensitive
men in Mecca are said to have withdrawn from the idol worshipping of Ka'aba.
Prominent among them were: 1. Waraqa ibn Nofal, 2. Ubaydullah ibn Jahsh, 3.
Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith and 4. Zaid ibn Amr. Many other pagans also converted to
monotheism with the realization that their people had corrupted the religion of
their father Abraham and that the stones they circled around were of no account.
In conclusion, they wished to see a change in form and substance of their
antiquated religion. Others, having grown disillusioned with Judaism and
Christianity, went their ways in the search elsewhere in the land, seeking
Hanifiya, the pure religion of Abraham (Ibn Ishaq, op. cit. p. 99)
They were particularly interested in seeing Hanifiya introduced once again, for
the reason that they believed that when Abraham, their distant forefather, had
control over the House of God, he shared its income with all of Mecca's people,
thus helping many among them avoid hunger and destitution. The present
custodians were selfish, who not only ate up all its income, they also
maintained a constant grip on their extra religious activities. They wanted all
injustices and restrictions from the Ka'aba's custodians to end.
The manipulative and opportunistic Waraqa ibn Nofal, having observed the
Meccan's suffering and disenchantment with idol worshipping, felt confident, at
this stage, in introducing his doctrine of One God as
well as the concept of resurrection. As he could not do it himself, he
began looking for someone from among the influential tribes of Mecca to
undertake the mission on his behalf. He consulted his sister Khudeija, and both
of them found a candidate in their midst by the name of Muhammad Mustafa, who
fulfilled the criteria both of them considered necessary to accomplish the
arduous and risky task. Upon confiding in him, they found him more than willing
to oblige them with his cooperation - - - not merely for their sake but for his
own cause as well, for he himself cherished a dream to dislodge the Ka'aba's
custodians from their positions by introducing monotheism together with reining
in the Meccan trading community, whom he considered to be a selfish and greedy
bunch of despicable people.
Since his marriage with Khudeija, Muhammad had plenty of time to reflect on what
he had heard and learned during his caravan journeys and also from the people he
had the opportunity of mingling with when they came to Mecca, either on
pilgrimage or for trade. The indoctrination of the hermit Bahira also recurred
in his mind, giving him the conviction that the idolatrous pagans should be made
to worship only one true Allah, whose nemesis already lived in the form of a
statue in the Ka'aba and that this Allah should rule their hearts and minds as
well. Muhammad picked up the name Allah to represent his lone God for the reason
that the pagans were already acquainted with this God, making it thus
unnecessary for him to explain afresh his nature and attributes to them.
Thus determined, Muhammad proceeded to implement his concepts and doctrines,
most of which he borrowed from Judaism and Christianity, and haphazardly stored
in his memory. His own preparations notwithstanding, he recognized the fact that
his mission was going to present him with enormous challenges, to overcome
which, he wished to learn more about the Jewish Torah as well as about the
Christian Scriptures. He also desired to know as much as was possible about the
Talmud and Midrash traditions, then current among the Jewish groups. Waraqa
concurred, and they decided that they should begin the teaching and learning
process forthwith.
The process could not be begun form Muhammad's or Waraqa's home, lest it be
known to other people of the city. Muhammad, perhaps, influenced by those
Christian hermits whom, he had seen on his trips to Syria, living in caves,
chose one of the caves of Mount Hira for achieving their purpose. Muhammad and
Waraqa took to spending most of their time in the cave, often, joined by
Khudeija, who, as we have noted earlier, was known to have studied the Gospels
at the urging of her cousin, Waraqa. Waraqa found his student to have an
uncommonly retentive memory and a voracious appetite for learning. He poured out
all the knowledge of Midrash and Talmud that he had, knowing fully well that
Muhammad, during the propagation of his faith, would have to depend heavily on
what he taught him before the commencement of his mission.
Adapted from MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM: Stories not
told before By Mohammad Asghar
To be completed......
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