by Reza Aslan
As far as Muhammad understood, only the Kahin, whom he despised as reprehensible charlatans (“I could not even look at them,” he once exclaimed), received messages from the heavens. If his experience at Mt. Hira meant that he was himself becoming a Kahin, and that his colleagues in Mecca were now going to regard him as such, then he would rather be dead.
“Never shall Quraysh say this of me!” Muhammad swore. “I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest.”
Muhammad was right to worry about being compared to a Kahin. What is impossible to discern in any translation of those first few verses of the Revelation is their exquisite poetic quality. That initial recitation, and those that immediately followed, were delivered in rhyming couplets which were very much like the ecstatic utterances of the Kahin. This would not have been unusual; after all, the Arabs were used to hearing the gods speak in poetry, which elevated their language to the realm of the divine. But much later, when Muhammad’s message began to clash with the Meccan élite, his enemies would seize upon the similarities between the oracles of the Kahin and Muhammad’s recitations, asking mockingly: “Should we abandon our gods for the sake of an insane poet?” (37:36).
The fact that there are dozens of verses in the Quran refuting the accusation that Muhammad was a Kahin indicates how important the issue was for the early Muslim community. As Muhammad’s movement expanded throughout the region, the Revelation gradually became more prosaic and ceased to resemble the oracular style of the early verses. However, in the beginning, Muhammad knew exactly what would be said of him, and the thought of being considered a Kahin by his contemporaries was enough to bring him to the edge of suicide.
Eventually God relieved Muhammad’s anxiety by assuring him of his sanity. But it is safe to say that if it were not for Khadija, Muhammad might have gone through with his plan to end it all, and history would have turned out quite differently.
“By her, God lightened the burden of His prophet,” Ibn Hisham writes of the remarkable Khadija. “May God Almighty have mercy upon her!”
Still frightened and trembling from the experience in the cave, Muhammad made his way back home, where he crawled to his wife’s side, crying “Wrap me up! Wrap me up!”
Khadija immediately threw a cloak over him and held him tightly in her arms until the trembling and convulsions stopped. Once he had calmed, Muhammad wept openly as he tried to explain what had happened to him. “Khadija,” he said, “I think that I have gone mad.”
“This cannot be, my dear,” Khadija replied, stroking his hair. “God would not treat you thus since He knows your truthfulness, your great trustworthiness, your fine character, and your kindness.”
But because Muhammad remained inconsolable, Khadija gathered her garments about her and sought out the only person she knew who would understand what had happened to her husband: her Christian cousin, Waraqa, the same Waraqa who had been one of the original Hanifs before converting to Christianity. Waraqa was familiar enough with the Scriptures to recognize Muhammad’s experience for what it was.
“He is a prophet of this people,” Waraqa assured his cousin after hearing her story. “Bid him be of good heart.”
Still Muhammad was unsure, particularly about what he was supposed to do now that he had been called by God. To make matters worse, when he needed assurance the most, God turned mute. That first revelatory experience on Mt. Hira was followed by a long period of silence, so that after a while even Khadija, who never doubted the truth of Muhammad’s experience, began to question the meaning of it. “I think that your Lord must have come to hate you,” she confessed to Muhammad.
Finally, when Muhammad was at his lowest, a second verse was sent down from heaven in the same painfully violent manner as the first, this one assuring Muhammad that, whether he liked it or not, he was now the Messenger of God:
By the grace of your Lord, you are not a madman.
Yours will be an unending reward;
For you are a man of noble character.
Soon, you shall see, and they shall see, who the madman is. (68:1–5)
Now Muhammad no longer had any choice but to “arise and warn.”
THE EARLIEST VERSES that Muhammad revealed to the Meccans can be divided into two major themes, religious and social—though the same language was employed for both. First, in stunningly beautiful verse, Muhammad sang of the power and glory of the God who “cracked open the earth and caused to grow in it corn and grapes and clover and olives and dates and orchards dense with trees” (80:19). This was not the same powerful and distant High God with whom most people in Mecca were already familiar. This was a good God who deeply loved creation. This God was ar-Rahman, “the most merciful” (55:1); al-Akram, “the most generous” (96:3). As such, this was a God worthy of gratitude and worship. “How many favors from your Lord will you deny?” Muhammad asked his kinsmen.
Noticeably absent in these early verses about the power and goodness of God is either an authoritative declaration of monotheism or a definitive critique of polytheism. In the beginning, Muhammad seemed more concerned with revealing what kind of god Allah was, not how many gods there were. Perhaps this is because, as previously mentioned, Muhammad was addressing a community that already possessed some measure of monotheistic—or at the very least, henotheistic—tendencies. The Quraysh did not need to be told there was only one god; they’d heard that message many times before from the Jews, the Christians, and the Hanifs, and they did not necessarily disagree. At this point in his ministry, Muhammad had a far more urgent message.
That message—the second theme informing the bulk of Muhammad’s earliest recitations—dealt almost exclusively with the demise of the tribal ethic in Mecca. In the strongest terms, Muhammad decried the mistreatment and exploitation of the weak and unprotected. He called for an end to false contracts and the practice of usury that had made slaves of the poor. He spoke of the rights of the underprivileged and the oppressed, and made the astonishing claim that it was the duty of the rich and powerful to take care of them. “Do not oppress the orphan,” the Quran commands, “and do not drive away the beggar” (93:9–10).
This was not friendly advice; it was a warning. God had seen the greed and wickedness of the Quraysh, and would tolerate it no longer.
Woe to every slanderer and backbiter
Who amasses wealth, hoarding it to himself.
Does he really think his wealth will make him immortal?
By no means! He will be cast into …
The fire kindled by God. (104:1–6)
More than anything else, Muhammad considered himself a warner carrying a message for those in his community who continued to abuse the orphan, who did not induce others to feed the needy, who prayed to the gods while remaining oblivious to their moral duties, and who withheld things of common use from others (107:1–7). His message was simple: the Day of Judgment was coming, when “the sky will be cleft asunder and the earth shall be leveled” (84:1–3), and those who did not “free the slave” or “feed others in times of famine” would be engulfed in fire (90:13–20).
This was a radical message, one that had never been heard before in Mecca. Muhammad was not yet establishing a new religion; he was calling for sweeping social reform. He was not yet preaching monotheism; he was demanding economic justice. And for this revolutionary and profoundly innovative message, he was more or less ignored.
This was partly Muhammad’s fault. All of the traditions claim that, at first, Muhammad confined the Revelation to his closest friends and family members. The first person to accept his message was obviously Khadija, who from the moment she met him to the moment she died, remained by her husband, especially during those times when he was at his lowest. While there is a great deal of sectarian debate among Muslims as to who the second person to accept the message was, it is safe to assume it would have been Muhammad’s cousin, Ali, who as Abu Talib’s son had grown up in the same household as the Prophet and was the cl
osest person to him after his wife.
Ali’s acceptance came as a great relief to Muhammad, for he was not only Muhammad’s cousin, he was also his closest ally: the man whom the Prophet repeatedly referred to as “brother.” Ali would eventually mature into the most respected warrior in Islam. He would marry Muhammad’s beloved daughter, Fatima, and provide the Prophet with his legendary grandsons, Hasan and Husayn. Considered the fount of esoteric knowledge and the father of Islamic metaphysics, Ali would one day inspire an entirely new sect in Islam. However, at the moment when he stood up as the first among the Banu Hashim to respond to the Prophet’s call, he was only a thirteen-year-old boy.
Ali’s conversion was promptly followed by the conversion of Muhammad’s slave, Zayd, whom he naturally freed. Soon afterward, Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s dear friend and a wealthy Qurayshi merchant, became a follower. A deeply loyal and fervently pious man, Abu Bakr’s first act after accepting Muhammad’s message was to spend his wealth buying and freeing the slaves of his fellow merchants until he had almost nothing left. Through Abu Bakr, the message was dispersed throughout the city, for as Ibn Hisham testifies, he was not the sort to keep such things to himself, but “showed his faith openly and called others to God and his apostle.”
One should, at this point, pause for a moment to consider several remarkable aspects of Muhammad’s movement in Mecca. While his message had eventually reached nearly every sector of society—from the weak and unprotected whose rights he advocated, to the Meccan élite whom he preached against—the most surprising feature of his movement during those early years is that its followers consisted primarily of what Montgomery Watt has called “the most influential families in the most influential clans.” These were young men, the majority under thirty years old, who felt the same discontent with Meccan society as Muhammad did. And yet, they were not all men: a great many of Muhammad’s earliest followers were women, many of whom risked their lives in rejecting the traditions of their fathers, husbands, and brothers to join his movement.
Regardless, Muhammad’s reticence during those first few years kept this a small group of about thirty to forty people who referred to themselves as Muhammad’s Companions, for at this point, that was all they were. As far as everyone else in Mecca was concerned, Muhammad’s message and his Companions were best ignored.
Both al-Tabari and Ibn Hisham state that even after Muhammad began preaching publicly, the Quraysh “did not withdraw from him or reject him in any way.” Why would they? It was one thing to grow wealthy off the subjugation of the poor and the unprotected, but it was another matter entirely to defend such practices. Besides, there was nothing in Muhammad’s message that directly threatened their way of life either religiously or financially. As long as Muhammad’s movement did not affect the economic status quo, the Quraysh would have been happy to allow him and his Companions to continue praying in secret and meeting clandestinely to talk about their grievances.
Muhammad, however, was never one to be ignored.
IN 613, THREE years after the Revelation had begun, Muhammad’s message underwent a dramatic transformation, one that is best summed up in the twofold profession of faith, or shahadah, that would henceforth define both the mission and principles of the movement:
There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.
From this point forward in Muhammad’s ministry, the monotheism that had been implicit in the earliest recitations became the dominant theology behind what had thus far been primarily a social message. “Proclaim to them what you have been commanded,” God demands, “and turn away from the polytheists” (15:94).
While it is commonly assumed that it was this new, uncompromising monotheism that ultimately brought the wrath of the Quraysh upon Muhammad and his small band of followers (“Does he make the gods one god?” the Quraysh are supposed to have asked. “This is indeed an astounding thing”), such a view fails to appreciate the profound social and economic consequences implied by this simple statement of faith.
It is important to bear in mind that the Quraysh were quite sophisticated with regard to religion. After all, they made their living off it. Polytheism, henotheism, monotheism, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hanifism, paganism in all its varieties, the Quraysh had seen it all. It is difficult to believe they would have been shocked by Muhammad’s monotheistic claims. Not only had the Hanifs been preaching the same thing for years, but the traditions list a number of other well-known prophetic figures living throughout the Arabian Peninsula who also preached monotheism. In fact, the early Muslims revered two of these “prophets”—Suwayd and Luqman—as Muhammad’s predecessors. Luqman even has his own chapter in the Quran (31), in which he is called a man upon whom God had bestowed great wisdom. So, theologically speaking, Muhammad’s assertion that “there is no god but God” would have been neither scandalous nor, for that matter, original in Mecca.
There are, however, two very important factors that distinguished Muhammad from the rest of his contemporaries, factors that would have enraged the Quraysh far more than his monotheistic beliefs. First, unlike Luqman and the Hanifs, Muhammad did not speak from his own authority. Nor were his recitations mediated by the Jinn, as was the case with the Kahins. On the contrary, what made Muhammad unique was his claim to be “the Messenger of God.” He even went so far as to identify himself repeatedly with the Jewish and Christian prophets and messengers who had come before him, particularly with Abraham, whom all Meccans—pagan or otherwise—regarded as a divinely inspired prophet. Put simply, the difference between Muhammad and the Hanifs was that Muhammad was not just preaching “the religion of Abraham,” Muhammad was the new Abraham (6:83–86; 21:51–93). And it was precisely this self-image that so greatly disturbed the Quraysh. For by proclaiming himself “the Messenger of God,” Muhammad was blatantly transgressing the traditional Arab process through which power was granted. This was not authority that had been given to Muhammad as “the first among equals.” Muhammad had no equals.
Second, as mentioned, the Hanif preachers may have attacked the polytheism and greed of their fellow Meccans, but they maintained a deep veneration for the Ka‘ba and those in the community who acted as Keepers of the Keys. That would explain why the Hanifs appear to have been tolerated, for the most part, in Mecca, and why they never converted in great numbers to Muhammad’s movement. But as a businessman and a merchant himself, Muhammad understood what the Hanifs could not: the only way to bring about radical social and economic reform in Mecca was to overturn the religio-economic system on which the city was built; and the only way to do that was to attack the very source of the Quraysh’s wealth and prestige—the Ka‘ba.
“There is no god but God” was, for Muhammad, far more than a profession of faith. This statement was a conscious and deliberate attack on both the Ka‘ba and the sacred right of the Quraysh to manage it. And because the religious life and economic life of Mecca were inextricably linked, any attack on one was necessarily an attack on the other.
Certainly the shahadah contained an important theological innovation, but that innovation was not monotheism. With this simple profession of faith, Muhammad was declaring to Mecca that the God of the heavens and the earth required no intermediaries whatsoever, but could be accessed by anyone. Thus, the idols in the sanctuary, and indeed the sanctuary itself, insofar as it served as a repository for the gods, were utterly useless. And if the Ka‘ba was useless, then there was no more reason for Mecca’s supremacy as either the religious or the economic center of Arabia.
This message the Quraysh could not ignore, especially with the pilgrimage season fast approaching. They tried everything to silence Muhammad and his Companions. They went to Abu Talib for help, but the Shaykh of Hashim, though he would never accept Muhammad’s message himself, refused to withdraw his protection from his nephew. They poured contempt on Muhammad and abused those of his Companions who did not have the good fortune of being protected by a Shaykh. They even offered Muhammad all the freedom
, support, power, and money he wanted to continue his movement in peace, so long as he ceased insulting their forefathers, mocking their customs, dividing their families, and, above all, cursing the other gods in the sanctuary. But Muhammad refused, and as the time came for the pilgrims to gather once again at Mecca with their prayers and their merchandise, the anxiety of the Quraysh reached new heights.
The Quraysh knew that Muhammad intended to stand at the Ka‘ba and deliver his message personally to the pilgrims gathering from all over the peninsula. And while this might not have been the first time a preacher had condemned the Quraysh and their practices, it was certainly the first time such condemnation was coming from a successful and well-known Qurayshi businessman—that is, “one of their own.” Recognizing this as a threat that could not be tolerated, the Quraysh embarked on a strategy to preempt Muhammad’s plan by sitting “on the paths which men take when they come to the fair” and warning everyone who passed that “a sorcerer, who has brought a message by which he separates a man from his father, or from his brother, or from his wife, or from his family,” awaited them at the Ka‘ba and should be ignored.
The Quraysh did not really believe that Muhammad was a sorcerer; they freely admitted that his recitations came with “no spitting and no knots,” rituals that were apparently associated with sorcery. But they were absolutely earnest in their conviction that Muhammad was dividing the families of Mecca. Recall that in pre-Islamic Arabia, a person’s social identity was derived solely from membership in the tribe, which necessarily entailed taking part in all tribal activities, especially those involving the tribal cult. However, conversion to Muhammad’s movement meant not only changing one’s faith, but also cutting oneself off from the activities of the tribe; in essence, removing oneself from the tribe.