Muhammad

by Karen Armstrong

  When the hue and cry had died down, Muhammad and Abu Bakr climbed out of the cave, taking care not to disturb the rock dove, and mounted the two camels that Abu Bakr had prepared for their journey. Abu Bakr wanted to give the better camel to Muhammad, but he insisted on paying for her. This was his personal hijrah, his sacrifice to Allah, and it was important to make the whole event entirely his own. Muhammad called the camel mare Qaswa’, and she remained his favorite mount for the rest of his life. It was a dangerous trip, because while he was on the road, Muhammad did not enjoy anybody’s protection, so their guide took them by a circuitous route, and they zigzagged back and forth to throw any pursuers off the scent.

  In the meantime, the Muslims were anxiously awaiting their arrival in Medina. Several of the Emigrants from Mecca were living in Quba’, the southernmost point of the oasis, and every day after morning prayers they used to climb the volcanic rocks and scan the barren terrain outside the settlement. On the morning of September 4, 622, one of the Jews spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon and called out to the Ansar: “Sons of Qaylah! He is come! He is come!” At once men, women, and children surged out to meet the travellers and found them resting under a palm tree.

  Muhammad and Abu Bakr stayed in Quba’ for three days, but the Muslims in the “city” (as the most densely populated part of the oasis was called) were impatient to see him, so he set off to meet them and decide where he was going to live. Along the way, several people begged him to alight and make his home with them, but Muhammad courteously refused because he was anxious to remain independent of the warring groups within Medina. Instead, he gave Qaswa’ her head, and asked God to guide her. Eventually, she fell to her knees outside a mirbad, a place for drying dates, which belonged to one of the Ansar. Muhammad got down, allowed his luggage to be carried into the nearest house and then began to negotiate with the owner for the sale of the land. Once the price was agreed upon, all the Muslims got to work to build the Prophet’s residence, which would also serve as a place for prayer. This was hard for the Emigrants, because the Quraysh were not used to manual labor, and the stylish ‘Uthman found the work particularly grueling.

  The first Muslim building was not imposing but it became the model for all future mosques. It was primarily a masjid, “a place of prostration,” an open space roomy enough for the entire community to perform the salat together, and it expressed the austerity of the early Islamic ideal. The roof was supported by tree trunks, and there was no elaborate pulpit; Muhammad stood on a simple stool to address the congregation. Muhammad and his wives lived in little huts round the edge of the big courtyard in front of the mosque. This was a place for public and political meetings; the poor of Medina were also invited to congregate there for alms, food and care.

  This humble building in Medina expressed the ideal of tawhid.36 Muhammad wanted to show that the sexual, the sacred, and the domestic could—and, indeed, must—be integrated. Similarly politics, welfare, and the ordering of social life must be brought into the ambit of holiness. In housing his wives within a stone’s throw of the mosque, Muhammad was tacitly proclaiming that there must be no distinction between public and private life, and no discrimination between the sexes. Holiness in Islam was inclusive rather than exclusive. If they wished, Jews and Christians could worship in the mosque, because they too were part of God’s family.

  The building was completed in April, 623, about seven months after the hijrah. In the northern wall, a stone marked the qiblah, the direction of prayer, orienting the people towards Jerusalem. At first there was no official summons to salat, but this was obviously unsatisfactory, as everybody came at different times. Muhammad thought of using a ram’s horn, like the Jews, or a wooden clapper, like the local Christians, but one of the Emigrants had an important dream. A man, clad in a green cloak, had told him that somebody with a loud, resonant voice should announce the service, crying Allahu Akhbar (“God is greater”) as a reminder of a Muslim’s first priority. Muhammad liked the idea and Bilal, the former Abyssinian slave with the big voice, was an obvious choice. Every morning he climbed to the top of the tallest house in the vicinity of the mosque, and sat on the rooftop waiting for dawn. Then he would stretch out his arms, and before beginning the call, would pray: “O God, I praise Thee and ask Thy help for Quraysh that they may accept Thy religion.”37 The Muslims may have changed their qiblah to Jerusalem, but they had not forgotten Mecca. When Muhammad learned that many of the Emigrants were deeply homesick, he prayed: “Lord, make us love this town as much as you made us love Mecca, and even more so.”38

  The immense uprooting of the hijrah meant that even though they still used the old tribal terminology, the Muslims had to create an entirely different type of community. One of the first things Muhammad did was set up a system of “brothering” whereby each Meccan was assigned an Ansar “brother” to help Muslims to bond across the lines of kinship. The political separation of Emigrants and Helpers was soon dropped: when the first of the twelve Ansari “overseers” died, Muhammad simply took over his position.39 The Muslims were gradually creating a “neo-tribe,” which interpreted the old kinship relationships differently. Those who had made the hijrah were to regard themselves as distinct from the Muslims who had remained behind in Mecca, even though they all belonged to the same blood group. Whatever their tribe or clan, Muslims must never fight one another. Emigrants and Helpers must become as solidly united as any conventional tribe.40 Like the tribe, the ummah was “one community to the exclusion of all men,” and would make “confederates” of non-Muslim allies in the usual way.41

  As chieftain of the ummah, Muhammad could now implement his moral and social reforms in a way that had been impossible in Mecca. His goal was to create a society of hilm. Those who kept the faith (mu’min) were not simply “believers.” Their faith must be expressed in practical actions: they must pray, share their wealth, and in matters that concerned the community, “consult among themselves” to preserve the unity of the ummah. If attacked, they could defend themselves, but instead of lashing out in the old, uncontrolled jahili way, they must always be prepared to forgive an injury. Automatic, vengeful retaliation—the cardinal duty of muruwah—could be a great evil. “Hence, whoever pardons [his foe] and makes peace, his reward rests with God,” the Qur’an insisted tirelessly. “If one is patient in adversity and forgives—this, behold, is indeed something to set one’s heart upon.”42

  But this transformation could not be achieved overnight, because the old spirit of jahiliyyah still lurked in Muslim hearts. Shortly after the hijrah, one of the pagan Arabs noticed a crowd of Muslims, which included members of both Aws and Khazraj, chatting together amicably as though their tribes had never been sworn enemies. He was furious. Clearly Islam was making them soft and feeble! He ordered a young Jewish man to sit near the group and recite poems that reminded them of the old bitter feuds. It was not long before the engrained tribal chauvinism flared up, and the Muslims were soon at one another’s throats. Muhammad hurried to the scene in great distress. “Are you still tempted by the call of jahiliyyah when I am here among you?” he demanded, “when God has guided you . . . honored you, and cut off thereby the bond of jahiliyyah from you, delivered you from a state of defiant ingratitude (kufr), and made you friends of each other?” Deeply ashamed, the Ansar wept and embraced.43

  Not all the Muslims of Medina were committed to change. Some had embraced Islam purely for material gain, and they were sitting on the fence, waiting to see how this new venture would turn out. The Qur’an called these people the “waverers” or the “Hypocrites,” (munafiqun) because they were not sincere and kept changing their minds.44 When they were with devout Muslims, they cried: “We believe [as you believe],” but in the company of other doubters, they assured them: “Verily, we are with you; we were only mocking!”45 Their leader was Ibn Ubayy, who had become a Muslim but remained resentful and critical of the new faith. Muhammad always behaved respectfully to him, and allowed him to address the community every week
during the Friday prayers, but from time to time his buried hostility came to the surface. “Don’t be hard on him,” one of the Helpers begged Muhammad after a particularly unpleasant incident, “for before God sent you to us we were making a diadem to crown him, and by God, he thinks you have robbed him of a kingdom.”46

  Some of the Jews were also becoming hostile to the newcomers. Muhammad did not expect them to convert to Islam, and their quarrel with him was not primarily religious but political and economic. The Jews’ position in the oasis had deteriorated, and if Muhammad succeeded in uniting Aws and Khazraj, they would have no chance of regaining their former supremacy. Hence three of the larger Jewish tribes thought it wiser to support Ibn Ubbay and the pagan Arabs in the oasis who remained opposed to Muhammad.47 The early Muslim historians tell us that they mounted a scholarly polemic against the theology of the Qur’an, but this probably reflected Jewish-Muslim debate during the eighth and ninth centuries.48 The Jews of seventh century Medina had only a limited knowledge of Torah and Talmud, were not strictly observant, and most were used to seeing their faith as a variant of Arabian religion.49 The idea of an Arabian prophet was not a strange idea to them: they had a prophet of their own called Ibn Sayyad, who, like Muhammad, wrapped himself in a cloak, recited inspired verses, and claimed to be the apostle of God.50

  But if there were no learned rabbinical debates, the Muslims probably encountered a good deal of populist religious chauvinism in Medina. Ibn Ishaq tells us that when they came to the mosque, some of the Jews would “laugh and scoff ” at the Qur’an.51 Many Jews were friendly and Muhammad probably learned a great deal from them, but some of the People of the Book had ideas that he found very strange indeed. The idea of an exclusive religion was alien to Muhammad; he hated sectarian quarrels,52 and was offended by the idea of a “chosen people” or the conviction that only Jews or Christians could get to Paradise.53 He was also bewildered to learn that some Christians believed that God was a trinity and that Jesus was the son of Allah.54 But he remained convinced that these peculiar notions were the heretical deviations of a deluded minority.55 The Qur’an reminded Muslims that many of the People of the Book were “upright people,” who

  recite God’s messages throughout the night and prostrate themselves [before him]. They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and vie with one another in doing God’s works; and these are among the righteous.56

  Muslims must remember that every community had its own specially revealed din, so they must not take part in these pointless squabbles; if the People of the Book attacked their faith, Muslims must behave with hilm, and courteously reply: “God knows best what you are doing.”57

  To avoid this sterile controversy, Muhammad, like the hanifs, decided to return to the “religion of Abraham,” who was neither a “Jew” nor a “Christian,” because he had lived long before either the Torah or the Gospel.58 After the hijrah, the Qur’an started to apply the words “hanif ” and “hanifiyyah” to the Muslims and Islam, but gave them a new interpretation. For Muhammad, hanifiyyah simply meant total submission to God; this had been the original, unadulterated message of the prophets, before it had been corrupted by sectarian chauvinism. Abraham, for example, had not belonged to an exclusive cult. He had simply been a muslim, “one who surrendered himself ” and a “man of pure faith” (hanif ).59

  When Abraham and Ishmael had rebuilt the Kabah together, they had not developed an exclusive theology, but had simply wanted to give their lives entirely to Allah. “O our Sustainer!” they had prayed, “Make us surrender ourselves unto Thee, and show us our ways of worship.” Muslims had been driven out of Mecca because of religious intolerance, so they must avoid all exclusivity.60 Instead of stridently insisting that they alone had the monopoly of truth, the true Muslims merely said: “Behold, my prayer, and [all] my acts of worship and my living and my dying are for God [alone], the Sustainer of all the worlds.”61 It was idolatry to take pride in belonging to a particular religious tradition rather than concentrating upon Allah himself.

  Towards the end of January 624, Muhammad received a revelation while he was leading the Friday prayers, and made the congregation turn around and pray in the direction of Mecca instead of Jerusalem. They would now face the house built by Abraham, the man of pure faith.

  We have seen thee [O Prophet] often turn thy face towards heaven [for guidance], and now We shall indeed make thee turn too in prayer in a direction which will fulfil thy desire. Turn then thy face towards the Inviolable House of Worship; and wherever you all may be, turn your faces towards it [in prayer].62

  It was a reminder that they were not following any of the established religions, but God himself. It was a declaration of independence. Muslims need no longer feel that they were following lamely in the footsteps of the older faiths. “Hold them not in awe,” God said, “but stand in awe of me and [obey me].”63 The new qiblah delighted both the Emigrants and the Helpers, and would bind them more closely together. They all loved the Kabah, which was more deeply rooted in Arab tradition than the distant city of Jerusalem. But there was a problem. The Kabah was in Mecca, and relations with the Quraysh had recently become more strained than ever before.

  Chapter Four

  Jihad

  THE CHANGE OF QIBLAH had occurred at the end of a period of uncertainty. Muhammad and the community had been restlessly “turning this way and that,” searching for guidance in their confusion. Muhammad knew that a prophet had to make a difference to the world. He could not simply withdraw from the mainstream. He had to put God’s revealed will into practice and create a just, egalitarian society. But the hijrah had pushed the Muslims into a peripheral and anomalous position. Even though Muhammad had begun to implement his social reforms, he knew that he would make no lasting impression on Arabia as long as he was confined to and isolated in Medina. Mecca, the “mother of cities,” was crucial to the development of the peninsula. Arabia needed the commercial genius of the Quraysh. Mecca was now the center of the Muslim world. They yearned towards it in prayer several times a day, but it was coming to seem like an absent, inaccessible lover.1 Muslims could not even make the hajj, like other Arabs. Muhammad realized that Mecca was the key to his mission. The hostility of the Quraysh had eradicated the ummah from the tribal map and pushed it into a political limbo. Without Mecca, Islam was doomed to marginality. Somehow Muhammad would have to make peace with his people. But after the first shock of the hijrah, most of the Quraysh seemed to have forgotten all about the Muslims. Before Muhammad could seek reconciliation with Mecca, he had to make the Quraysh take notice of him.

  He also had to secure his position in Medina. He knew that, as far as most of the Medinese were concerned, he was still on trial. They had defied the might of the Quraysh by taking the migrants in because they expected some material advantage, and here too, Muhammad had to deliver. At the very least, he had to ensure that the Emigrants did not become a drain upon the economy. But it was difficult for them to earn a living. Most of them were merchants or bankers, but there was very little opportunity for trade in Medina, where the wealthier Arab and Jewish tribes had achieved a monopoly. The Emigrants had no experience of farming, and in any case all the available land had already been taken. They would become a burden to the Helpers, unless they found an independent source of income, and there was one obvious way to achieve this.

  Medina was well placed to attack the Meccan caravans on their way to and from Syria, and shortly after Muhammad had arrived in Medina, he had started to send bands of Emigrants on raiding expeditions.2 Their aim was not to shed blood, but to secure an income by capturing camels, merchandise, and prisoners, who could be held for ransom. Nobody would have been particularly shocked by this development. The ghazu was a normal expedient in times of hardship, though some of the Arabs would have been surprised by the Muslims’ temerity in taking on the mighty Quraysh, especially as they were clearly inexperienced warriors. During the first two
years after the hijrah, Muhammad dispatched eight of these expeditions. He did not usually go himself but commissioned people such as Hamzah and ‘Ubaydah ibn al-Harith, but it was difficult to get accurate information about the caravans’ itinerary, and none of these early raids was successful.

  The Quraysh were not a warlike people. They had left the nomadic life behind long ago and had lost both the habit and skill of the ghazu; the Qur’an shows that some of the Emigrants found the very idea of fighting distasteful.3 But Muhammad was not discouraged. Even though the Emigrants desperately needed an income, plunder was not his primary objective. The raiders may have come back empty handed, but they had at least brought the Muslims to the attention of Mecca. The Quraysh were rattled. They had to take precautions that had never been necessary before. Merchants complained that they felt more vulnerable; they had to make inconvenient detours and the flow of trade in and out of Mecca was slightly disrupted. In September 623, Muhammad himself led a ghazu against a large caravan led by Ummayah ibn Khalaf; the spoils looked so promising that a record 200 Muslims volunteered for the expedition. But yet again the caravan eluded the raiders and there was no fighting.

  In the steppes, the ghazu needed no theoretical justification; it was seen as an unavoidable necessity in time of scarcity. But Muhammad had been determined to transcend the old tribal norms. The Qur’an had instructed Muslims to say “Peace be with you!” to the kafirun, not attack them while they were going about their business. Shortly after Muhammad arrived in Medina, he received a revelation that took a more militant line.