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MUHAMMAD
& ISLAM: Stories not told before.
By
Mohammad Asghar
PART
- 6
BAN IMPOSED ON THE MUSLIMS
The custodianship of the Ka'aba, which generated the
life-supporting revenues for its custodians and others affiliated with its
functions had rested in the hands of the Hashimite clan for a long period of
time. To perpetuate the practice, Abu Talib was desirous of transferring to
his own line the honors of being the custodian of the Ka'aba, thus dismaying
Abu Sofian and others interested in assuming the honors themselves. The last
measure of Abu Talib, in providing Muhammad with a safe haven for refuge, was
seized upon by Abu Sofian and his adherents as a pretext for a general ban of
their rival line. They, accordingly, issued a decree, forbidding the rest of
the tribe of Quraish from intermarrying or holding any intercourse, even
commercial deals, with the Hashimites until they delivered up their kinsman,
Muhammad, to be restrained from committing blasphemy against their ancestral
gods and religion. This decree, which took place in the seventh year of what
is called the mission of the Prophet, written on a parchment, was hung up on
the wall of Ka'aba. Muslims claim that the ban had caused great difficulty to
Muhammad and his followers. We do not know how the proclaimers of the ban
implemented the decree, for, according to the Muslim assertion, they had
failed to nab Muhammad when he walked away, before their eyes, out of his door
in front of which, they were assembled with the intention of murdering him.
The short period of Muhammad's banishment rolled into the annual season of
pilgrimage, when pilgrims flocked to Mecca from all parts of Arabia to fulfill
their religious obligations. During this sacred occasion, according to ancient
law and its usage among the Arabs, all hostilities ceased, and warring tribes
met in temporary peace to worship at the temple of Ka'aba. Utilizing the truce
that this sacred occasion provided, Muhammad and his disciples ventured out of
their shelter, and returned to Mecca.
While at large, Muhammad made full use of the opportunity that the pagan
religious immunity afforded him. He mingled freely among the pilgrims -
-preaching, praying, propounding his doctrines, and proclaiming his
revelations. In this way, he made many converts who, on their return to their
destinations, carried with them the seeds of the new faith. The Meccan pagans
did not obstruct Muhammad in his mission, as they were bound to follow the
sanctity of their religion. Muhammad, on the other hand, flaunted their
religious dedication and violated the truce they expected him, as well, to
honor. Instead, he went about unhindered, conspicuously propagating his divine
faith among the visitors, who, it seems, had remained unaware of the volatile
religious situation that was then obtaining in Mecca.
At end of the pilgrimage, Muhammad and his followers retuned to their safe
haven. The pagans are not known to have done anything either to prevent their
return, or to cause them any hardships. On the contrary, the Meccan pagans, it
seems, remained engaged with him, for a period of time, in endless arguments,
which he followed with new revelations that denounced those who opposed him
and his religion. The Quran, which contains, in Muhammad's own words, the
exaggerated details of all the events that had unfolded during twenty-three
years of his apostolic mission, does not give us any indication that he was
ever persecuted, in the real sense of the word, by his opponents. Nor, does
it, for obvious reasons, have the details of how Muhammad must have treated
his foes, especially in a situation where they were vehemently opposed to the
spread of his religion among the Arabian population.
As the history of the time we are discussing here was tailored over a period
of time after Muhammad's death, to favor the Muslims only, it is now
impossible for us to know precisely the intrinsic beliefs of the idolaters.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the crudity of their statuary did not
necessarily mean that they worshipped stones or trees, any more than the
Christians worshipped plaster figures or painted canvasses depicting the
saints. It seems probable that the pagans appreciated that the idols were
merely symbolic of spiritual beings in the same way in that Muslims now
venerate the edifice of Ka'aba as being the House of Allah, though He is
believed not to remain confined to a structure of four walls.
Three years had passed since Muhammad and some of his followers took refuge in
the safe haven provided by his uncle Abu Talib. During this period, he must
have remained the target of his opponents' opprobrious language, but in spite
of this, it seems, he continued to walk about the streets and sit, recite and
argue in the public square, without ever having had to fear for his life.
In the meantime, the parchment, which contained the ban imposed on Muslims,
was partly destroyed and nothing of the decree remained except the initial
words, "In thy name, Oh Almighty Allah," the customary ancient
formula with which the pagans began their writing. Muslims use this formula
today with a slight change brought about in it by Muhammad to fit a doctrine
of his religion.
Under the circumstances, the decree was deemed annulled, whereupon Muhammad
and his band of disciples were permitted to return to Mecca, unopposed and
unhurt.
Pious Muslims consider the mysterious destruction of the decree as another
miracle wrought by Allah to help Muhammad; unbelievers, on the contrary,
contend that the mortal hands secretly defaced the document, which had become
embarrassing to Abu Sofian due to its ineffectiveness.
In our earlier discussion on the use of parchment by the Arabs, we maintained
that it was not possible for them to use it for the simple reason that it was
not available to them at the relevant time. As to its alleged use for writing
the decree of banishment, we hold the view that the pagans had not written the
decree on a parchment; instead, they might have had hung up a piece of rag on
the wall of the Ka'aba, it being symbolic of the message they wanted to convey
to all those who were supposed to implement the ban.
In any event, Muhammad returned to Mecca and it coincided with the victories
of the Persians over the Greeks, by which they conquered Syria and a part of
Egypt. The idolatrous Quraishites exulted in the defeat of the Christian
Greek, whose faith being opposed to the worship of idols; they associated it
with the new faith of Islam. Muhammad, on the other hand, was disheartened by
the Greeks' defeat but, nevertheless, he replied to the pagans' taunts and
exultation by producing the thirtieth Sura or chapter of the Quran, which
opened with the following words:
"The Roman Empire
Has been defeated -
In a land close by;
But they (even) after,
(This) defeat of theirs,
Will soon be victorious -
Within a few years.
This prediction was verified and found to be true. Muslim theologians cite
this as a proof that the Quran came down from heaven, and that Muhammad
possessed the gift of prophecy. In reality, the whole prediction was no doubt
a shrewd guess into futurity, aided by the knowledge of the actual events
taking place contemporaneously around the Arabian Peninsula. The politicians
and statesmen of our time make these kind of predictions almost on a daily
basis, hence to claim what Muhammad had predicted about the Greeks as being a
heavenly act, is nothing, but an aspersion on his political and statesman-like
astuteness.
Not long after Muhammad had returned to Mecca, his uncle Abu Talib, as a
result of his old age, was facing death. This man, though supported and
protected Muhammad from his infidel enemies, had not converted himself to the
faith of his nephew. Many a time, the Muhammad implored him to accept his
religion and to die a Muslim, but he always put him off, pleading that he
could neither give up his ancestral religion, nor could he join in the
exercise which his religion required its adherents to undertake; i.e. the act
of placing their "backside above their heads," as the old man
described the prostration, which he had seen his nephew performing three times
a day.
Muhammad approached Abu Talib once again on his deathbed and beseeched him for
the last time to accept the religion of Islam. He declined and breathed his
last as an infidel. Abu Lahab, his brother, succeeded him as the head of the
clan of Bani Hashim.
Scarcely a few days had passed from the death of the venerable Abu Talib, when
Khudeija, the dedicated and faithful wife of Muhammad, also took her leave
from this world. This happened in 619 A.D., when she was sixty-five years old.
Though Khudeija was much older than Muhammad himself and past her bloom when
women are desirable in the East, and though he was known to have an amorous
temperament, yet he is said to have remained faithful to her and avoided
taking additional wives, in spite of the fact that the Arabian laws permitted
him to do so.
Pious Muslims point to this while highlighting his virtues. But an objective
analysis of his relationship with Khudeija does not support the aforesaid
Muslim hypothesis.
It is true that so long as Khudeija had lived, Muhammad had taken no
additional wives, but it was not purely out of his love for her: it was rather
dictated by his circumstances. He was, perhaps, fearful of his wife and
apprehended her retaliation. He must have realized that if he took
another wife while Khudeija was still alive, she might react by depriving him
of his sustenance. She might even divulge the secrets that revolved around his
prophethood and divine mission, thereby destroying him along with his
ambitions. Muhammad's conduct after Khudeija's death lends credence to our
hypothesis: there is no record that tells us that he felt deeply sad at the
death of his wife and that he mourned it in the manner of an aggrieved
husband.
Soon after Khudeija's death, Muhammad sought to compensate himself by entering
into multiple wedlocks, and taking a plurality of wives. He permitted, by his
own law, four wives to each of his followers but did not limit himself to that
number, reasoning that a prophet, being gifted with enormous manly prowess and
special privileges, was not bound to restrict himself to the same laws as
those of the ordinary mortals. Of his numerous marriages and wives, we shall
speak later in a separate chapter.
VISIT TO TAIF
Muhammad soon realized the irreparable loss that he
sustained in the death of his uncle and protector, Abu Talib. After his death,
he found no one who could check and react against the hostilities of his
inveterate foes - Abu Sofian and Abu Jahl - - who are alleged to have soon
stirred up such a spirit of opposition that he deemed it unsafe to continue
living in his native town. He set out, therefore, accompanied by his freed
slave Zaid, immediately after the death of his uncle and wife, to seek refuge
in Taif, a small walled town some seventy miles from Mecca, inhabited by Arabs
of the tribe of Thakeef. It was one of the favored places of Arabia, situated
among vineyards and gardens. Here grew peaches and plums, melons and
pomegranates; figs, blue and green; and the palm trees with their clusters of
green and golden fruit. So fresh were its pastures and fruitful its fields,
contrasted with the sterility of the desserts, that the Arabs fabled it to
have originally been a part of Syria, which had broken off and floated to the
site at the time of Noah's deluge.
Muhammad entered Taif hoping to procure some degree of protection on account
of the influence that his uncle al Abbas was supposed to have wielded by
virtue of his possessions there. But he was totally wrong in selecting Taif as
a place of refuge; for it was a stronghold of idolatry and its inhabitants
maintained in full force the worship of al Lat, they believed it to be one of
the three daughters of Allah.
He remained in Taif for about a month, seeking in vain to convert its
inhabitants to Islam. When he tried to preach his doctrines, his voice was
muffled by ribald remarks. On many an occasions, stones were thrown at him,
which the faithful Zaid warded off. So violent did the popular fury become
that he was finally driven out of the city, and even pursued for some distance
by an insulting rabble of slaves and urchins. Surprisingly, Allah had given
Muhammad no revelation prior to his arrival, forewarning the hostility that he
was destined to encounter during his futile visit to the city of Taif.
The visit to Taif may have proved disastrous for Muhammad insofar as his
mission for conversion and protection was concerned, but in actuality the
sight of the city had immensely benefited him. It enabled him to conceive the
layout of the celestial Paradise and to describe it in the Quran, filled with
all amenities he had seen in the city. He also had this Paradise peopled with
black-eyed virgin houris to be had as consorts by those men who entered it
after being judged by Allah on the Day of Resurrection, a licentious
temptation that had induced many pagans to embrace Islam, in spite of their
being opposed to it in the beginning. However, driven out so ignominiously
from the place where he hoped to obtain refuge, Muhammad dared not return to
Mecca, fearing persecution at the hands of his enemies. He, therefore, decided
to remain in the desert until Zaid found him asylum with his friends in the
city. In this extremity, he had one of those visions, which always seem to
have appeared in his lonely and agitated moments.
He had halted in a solitary place in the valley of Nakhla, which was situated
between Mecca and Taif. Here, while he was reading from his compositions to
overcome the feeling of loneliness, he was overheard by a passing group of
spirits, known forever as Jinns to the Arabs. They are the beings supposed to
have been made of fire, some good, others evil, and liable to judgment on
Dooms Day together with men. They are invisible, and maintain residences at
isolate places as well as within the proximity of human habitations. They
produce children. They also had apostles, like the ones mankind had been
having from Adam to the time of Muhammad. Pious Jinns shall be awarded
Paradise where they would enjoy felicities at par with the humans, while the
evil ones shall be consigned to hell where they shall burn for eternity. The
Jinns, made of fire, would be neutralized in order for the hell's fire to have
its burning effect on their bodies. The group of the passing Jinns paused and
listened to what Muhammad was reading. "Verily," they said at its
conclusions, "we have heard an admirable discourse, which directeth us
unto the right institution; wherefore we believe therein." Their
confession to his religion consoled Muhammad, proving that though men might
ridicule him and his doctrines, they were held in high reverence by spiritual
intelligence. At least we may infer as much from what has been mentioned about
the Jinns in the forty-sixth and seventy-second Suras of the Quran.
From that moment onward, Muhammad declared himself to be the one, sent by
Allah, for the conversion of the Jinns, as well as of the human race, to
Islam. Interestingly, science and human logic do not recognize Jinns and deny
their existence, in any form, on earth.
THE ASCENSION TO SEVENTH HEAVEN
Muhammad, through the good offices of his freed slave Zaid,
having been granted asylum by Mutim Ibn Idi, chief of the Nofal clan of the
Quraish, returned one evening to Mecca. The following day, Mutim with his sons
and nephews went fully armed to the public square of the Ka'aba and announced
that Muhammad was henceforth under their protection. Muhammad was delighted,
but it seems that at this crucial juncture of his mission, he refrained from
preaching and persuasively converting the members of the Quraish pagans to his
religion. Instead, he used his time and energy in attempting to convert those
tribesmen who visited Mecca from time to time, as well as those nomads whom he
could reach without being impeded by his enemies.
During this period when Muhammad was maintaining a low profile in Mecca, it is
said, he, for an unexplained reason, was sleeping one night of the year 620
A.D., in the house of his cousin, Umm Hani. She was a widow whose husband had
died when the couple was living in Abyssinia. In the dead of the night, angel
Gabriel came to him and "spurred him with his foot" (Martin Lings,
op. cit. p. 101). Thus awakened, he was instantly transported to Jerusalem by
means of the "winged horse with a woman's face and peacock's tail,"
called the Burraq. While there, Muhammad tied up the Burraq to a post and
thence led all the prophets of bygone days, including Adam, in a prayer at the
holy temple known as the "Dome of the Rock." Some Moslem
commentators, however, say that the temple in question remained in ruins from
the fortieth year of Christ's ascension to heaven till the time of Caliph Omar
(634-44) who had restored it to its original shape during his reign. How Omar
retrieved the original design of the edifice, however, remains to us an
unsolved enigma.
On the issue of morality, critics question the purpose of Muhammad's presence,
at dead of night, in the house of a widowed woman, who was living alone, as
well as God's decision for inviting him to heaven from the widow's house,
instead of his own.
We believe that Muhammad had invented the story of Miraj to hide his presence
in Umm Hani's house. In spite of being a polytheistic society, the Meccans
honored their dead, and refrained from doing things for some time that would
cause pain to the departed souls. Having illicit sex was one of the forbidden
things. Muhammad failed to live by that standard, and immediately after
Khudeija's death, he sought to satisfy his sexual needs by engaging himself
with Umm Hani.
The following morning, people wanted to know about his whereabouts the night
before. Not being in a position to disclose the fact that he spent the night
at his paramour's house, he told the questioners that he had been on a trip of
the celestial world. As the trip involved no other human beings, nor were any
humans expected to be existing in the celestial world, to witness his arrival
and departure, it prevented the questioners from demanding eyewitnesses to
prove his claim, thus extracting himself from a quagmire that could have
destroyed, forever, not only him, but also his apostolic career.
The prayer over, angel Gabriel opened up Muhammad's heart for the second time
and, cleansing it of all sins that had accumulated in it from the time of the
first cleansing performed when he was five years old, the angel replaced the
heart back in his chest. Thereafter, a ladder was installed, connecting the
site of the Dome with all the seven heavens in the sky. He climbed, one after
another, through all the seven heavens. In the course of his tour, Muhammad
was shown the Paradise, as well as, the Hell. He saw more women than men
burning in its fire. Al Aqsa, as the Dome is also referred to, thus became one
of the three holiest places of Islam, because, as Muslims insist, the Muhammad
had ascended to the throne of God from its vicinity.
During his celestial visit, Muhammad is said to have had an audience with God,
and held confidential parleys with him. In the course of this audience,
commentators say, God charged Muhammad and his followers with the mandate of
saying prayers fifty times a day, which was subsequently reduced to five on
Muhammad's repeated representations. These daily five prayers eventually
became a central part of the Islamic practice. The Quran, which is supposed to
contain all the essential doctrines of the faith, however, does not
specifically say that Muhammad had corporeally ascended to heavens, and spoke
to God. This is because, some say, he withheld parts of the episode from his
followers for personal reasons, thus giving the impression that the Quran, as
a whole, may be containing only as much material as Muhammad, in his
discretion, had chosen to divulge to his followers.
As far as the daily five prayers are concerned, the Quran does not explicitly
mention these prayers, nor is there hard evidence that Muhammad himself prayed
five times a day during his lifetime. Rather, what the Quran mentions, though
not clearly, are the three daily prayers: one to be said in the morning, the
second in the evening and the third during the night. Neither are the
specifics of prostration described; all that the Quran requires of the Muslims
is a simple inflection, followed by prostration in their prayers. Nor does the
Quran require them to recite anything during their prayers.
Furthermore, the Quran does not mention anything about Muslims being
circumcised; nor is it known that Muhammad had ever had this procedure done on
his person, though it is obligatory for Muslim parents to have their male
children circumcised in their childhood.
Concerning Muhammad's Miraj or Ascension to the heaven, many historians of
repute contest the commonly held doctrine of his physical ascension to the
seventh heaven. One of them is Fazlur Rahman, who says that the
"spiritual experiences of the Prophet were later woven by tradition,
especially when an 'orthodoxy' began to take shape, into the doctrine of a
single, physical, locomotive experience of the 'Ascension' of Muhammad to
Heaven, and still later were supplied all the graphic details about the animal
which was ridden by the Prophet during his ascension, about his sojourn in
each of the seven heavens, and his parleys with the Prophets of bygone ages
from Adam up to Jesus." (Rahman has not mentioned prophet Idris, who is
believed to have entered one of the seven heavens surreptitiously; and taken
residence in it by hoodwinking Gabriel, his best friend). He concludes by
saying that "the doctrine of a locomotive Miraj or Ascension developed by
the orthodox (chiefly on the pattern of the Ascension of Jesus) and backed by
Hadith is no more than a historical fiction whose materials come from various
sources."
What Rahman really implies is that Muhammad did not physically ascend to
heavens; that he did not have an audience with God and, consequently, he and
his followers were not mandated to say any prayers.
Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, a respected scholar of Islam, appears to agree
with Rahman's position. Consequently, he has not mentioned anything in his
works on the Quran (see The Meaning of the Glorious Koran) about the
mysterious Miraj; this despite the fact that Muslims consider the putative
journey to be an essential component of their faith.
Part
7
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