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MUHAMMAD
& ISLAM: Stories not told before.
By
Mohammad Asghar
PART
- 2
Abd al Muttalib was the guardian of the temple of Ka'aba
and from it he had a good income. But because his family consisted of a large
number of people, he often found it difficult to meet all of their needs. As a
result, tension prevailed, most of the time, among his family members, even
though they always put up a smiling face while being outside their home.
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 Quran 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 Quran. Sura or chapter nineteen
of the Quran 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 Quran!
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 Quran. 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 Quran.
The aforesaid traditions, among others, are found eloquently described in the
Quran, 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
Quran 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 Quran,
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
Burraq, 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.
Part
3
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