Abu Talib was a gifted poet and he now wrote passionate verses denouncing the clans who had deserted Hashim in its hour of need. The clan of al-Muttalib responded by declaring their solidarity with Hashim, but this good news was followed by a fateful defection. Abu Lahab, Abu Talib’s half-brother, had opposed Muhammad and his revelations from the start, but to prevent a schism within the clan, he had betrothed two of his sons to Muhammad’s daughters, Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum. Now he forced his sons to repudiate the women. The elegant young Muslim aristocrat ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan, however, had long admired Ruqayyah, one of the most beautiful girls in Mecca, and could now ask Muhammad for her hand.
The Qurayshan elders—especially those who had lost family members to Islam—now mounted a furious offensive against Muhammad. They would ostentatiously turn their backs whenever they heard Muslims praising Allah as the “one and only divine being,” and aggressively demonstrate their joy when other deities were invoked.47 They demanded that everybody remain faithful to the traditional faith. It was the only decent thing to do! All this talk of revelation was outrageous! Muhammad had made the whole thing up. Why should he alone, of all the Quraysh, have received a divine message?48 Muhammad was mad; he had been led astray by a jinni; he was a sorcerer, who lured young people away from their fathers’ sunnah by magic arts.49 When he was asked to validate his claims by working a miracle—as Moses or Jesus had done—he admitted that he was an ordinary mortal like themselves.50
The leaders of the opposition included some of the most powerful clan chiefs in Mecca. Foremost among them were Abu l-Hakam, an irascible, ambitious man, who seemed deeply disturbed by Islam; the elderly, corpulent Ummayah ibn Khalaf; and the highly intelligent Abu Sufyan, who had been a personal friend of Muhammad, together with his father in law ‘Utbah ibn Rabi‘ah and his brother. As yet Suhayl ibn ‘Amr, chief of Amir—a devout man who, like Muhammad, made an annual retreat on Mount Hira’—had not yet made up his mind and Muhammad hoped to win him over. Some of the most able young men in Mecca were also virulently hostile to Islam: the warriors ‘Amr ibn l-‘As and Khalid ibn al-Walid, and—most zealous of all—‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the nephew of Abu l-Hakam, who was fanatically devoted to the old religion. While the other chiefs were proceeding cautiously against Muhammad, ‘Umar was ready for more extreme methods.
Muhammad had now given up hope of converting the Meccan establishment and realized that he must concentrate on the disaffected poorer people, who were eager for his message. This was an important turning point, which is recorded poignantly in the Qur’an. Muhammad had been so absorbed in a discussion with some of the Meccan grandees that he impatiently “frowned and turned away” when a blind man approached him with a question.51 God reproved Muhammad severely: a prophet must approach all members of the community with the same respect. He must move beyond the aristocratic ethos of muruwah: the Qur’an was for rich and poor alike. In brushing the blind man aside as though he did not matter, Muhammad had behaved like a kafir.
The word kafir is often translated “unbeliever,” but this is extremely misleading.52 Muhammad had no quarrel with the beliefs of Abu l-Hakam and Abu Sufyan. In fact, much of their theology was quite correct. They believed without question, for example, that Allah was the creator of the world and the lord of the Kabah.53 The trouble was that they did not translate their beliefs into action. They were impervious to the true meaning of the signs of God’s benevolence in his creation, which required human beings to imitate him in all their dealings. Instead of despising and oppressing vulnerable people, they should behave like Allah and “spread over them the wings of tenderness.”54
Kafir derives from the root KFR (“ingratitude”), which implies a discourteous refusal of something that is offered with great kindness and generosity. When God had revealed himself to the people of Mecca, some of them had, as it were, spat contemptuously in his face. The Qur’an does not berate the kafirun for their lack of religious conviction, but for their arrogance.55 They are haughty and supercilious; they imagine that they are superior to the poorer, humbler people of Mecca, whom they consider second-class citizens and therefore worthy of contempt. Instead of realizing their utter dependence upon God, they still regard themselves as istighna’—self-reliant—and refuse to bow to Allah or anybody else. The kafirun are bursting with self-importance; they strut around haughtily, addressing others in an offensive, braying manner, and fly into a violent rage if they think that their honor has been impugned. They are so convinced that their way of life is better than anybody else’s that they are particularly incensed by any criticism of their traditional lifestyle.56 They sneer at Allah’s revelation, perversely distorting the sense of the Qur’an simply to display their cleverness.57 They were unable even to consider anything new: their hearts were “veiled,” “rusted over,” “sealed” and “locked.”58
The chief vice of the kafirun was jahiliyyah. Muslims have traditionally used this term to refer to the pre-Islamic period in Arabia and so it is usually translated “the Time of Ignorance.” But although the root JHL has some connotations of “ignorance,” its primary meaning is “irascibility”: an acute sensitivity to honor and prestige; arrogance, excess, and above all, a chronic tendency to violence and retaliation.59 Jahili people were too proud to make the surrender of Islam; why should a karim moderate his behavior and act like a slave (‘abd), praying with his nose on the ground and treating the base-born like equals? The Muslims called Abu l-Hakam, their chief enemy, “Abu Jahl” not because he was ignorant of Islam—he understood it all too well—but because he fought Islam arrogantly, with blind, fierce, and reckless passion. But the tribal ethos was so engrained that, as we shall see, Muslims continued to exhibit jahili symptoms long after they had converted to Islam. Jahiliyyah could not be eradicated overnight, and it remained a latent menace, ready to flare up destructively at any moment.
Instead of succumbing to the jahili spirit, the Qur’an urges Muslims to behave with hilm, a traditional Arab virtue. Men and women of hilm were forbearing, patient, and merciful.60 They could control their anger and remain calm in the most difficult circumstances instead of exploding with rage; they were slow to retaliate; they did not hit back when they suffered injury, but left revenge to Allah.61 Hilm also inspired positive action: if they practiced hilm, Muslims would look after the weak and disadvantaged, liberate their slaves, counsel each other to patience and compassion, and feed the destitute, even when they were hungry themselves.62 Muslims must always behave with consummate gentleness and courtesy. They were men and women of peace: “For true servants of the Most Gracious are they who walk gently on the earth, and who, whenever the jahilun address them, reply ‘Peace’ (salam!)”63
After the affair of the “satanic verses,” the conflict with the kafirun became very nasty. Abu Jahl regularly subjected any Muslims he met to vitriolic verbal abuse and slandered them with vicious lies and rumor; he threatened merchants with ruin, and simply beat up the “weaker” Muslims. The kafirun could not hurt Muslims who had strong protectors, but they could attack slaves and those who lacked adequate tribal patronage. Ummayah, chief of Jumah, used to torture Bilal, his Abyssinian slave, by tying him up and forcing him to lie exposed to the gruelling sun, with a huge boulder on his chest. Abu Bakr could not bear to watch Bilal suffering, so he bought him from Ummayah and set him free. He also liberated a Muslim slave girl, when he saw ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab flogging her. Some of the younger Muslims were locked up by their families, who even tried to starve them into submission. The situation became so serious that Muhammad sent the more vulnerable members of the ummah to Abyssinia, where the Christian governor gave them asylum. It was becoming painfully clear that, unthinkable as it might seem, there might be no future for the Muslims in Mecca.
It must have been very difficult indeed for the Muslims, brought up in the jahili spirit, to practice hilm and turn the other cheek. Even Muhammad sometimes had to struggle to maintain his composure. One of the early surahs expresses his rage against h
is uncle Abu Lahab and his wife, who used to scatter sharp thorns outside his house.64 On one occasion, Muhammad overheard some of the Qurayshan chiefs jeering at him contemptuously while he was circumambulating the Kabah. For a while he was able to keep his rising anger in check, but by the time he had completed the third circuit, his face was as black as thunder. He stopped in his tracks, faced the kafirun, and, instead of wishing them “Peace,” as the Qur’an enjoined, said grimly: “Will you listen to me, O Quraysh. By him who holds my life in His hand, I bring you slaughter!” He uttered the last word so threateningly that the chiefs were silenced. But the next day, they had recovered their nerve. They leapt on Muhammad when he arrived in the Haram, encircled him menacingly, and started to rough him up, pulling him about by his robe. This time, Muhammad did not respond aggressively, but allowed the chiefs to manhandle him, until Abu Bakr intervened, weeping: “Would you kill a man for saying Allah is my lord?”65
But this kind of behavior could sometimes be counterproductive. One day, Abu Jahl came upon Muhammad near the Safa Gate, an important site of the hajj, and was so incensed to see him calmly occupying this sacred spot that he exploded in true jahili style. Again, Muhammad refused to retaliate, but sat and listened to the string of devastating insults without uttering a word. Finally Abu Jahl ended his tirade and went to join some of the other chiefs in the Haram, while Muhammad went sadly and silently home. But that evening, his uncle Hamzah, who had been out hunting, heard what had happened and became incandescent with fury. He set off immediately to find Abu Jahl, and hit him hard with his bow. “Will you insult him when I follow his religion?” he yelled. “Hit me back if you can!” Loath to take on Hamzah, whose physical strength was legendary in Mecca, Abu Jahl hastily restrained his companions, admitting that he had grievously insulted Muhammad.66
Hamzah became a devout Muslim, but this was not exactly the way that Muhammad would have wished his uncle to enter Islam. Toward the end of 616, there was another, even more surprising conversion. ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab had decided that it was time to kill Muhammad, and strode through the streets of Mecca, sword in hand, toward a house at the foot of Mount Safa, where he heard that the Prophet was spending the afternoon. He did not know that his sister Fatimah bint al-Khattab and her husband had secretly become Muslims. Thinking that ‘Umar was safely out of the way, they had invited one of the few literate Muslims to come and recite the latest surah. But on his way to Mount Safa, ‘Umar was intercepted by another Muslim, who fearing for Muhammad’s life, informed ‘Umar that his own sister had converted to Islam. ‘Umar rushed home, and was horrified to hear the words of the Qur’an issuing from an upstairs window. “What is this balderdash!” he roared as he burst into the room. The reciter fled in terror, dropping the manuscript in his haste, while ‘Umar threw his sister to the ground. But when he saw that she was bleeding, he felt ashamed, picked up the manuscript, and began to read the surah. ‘Umar was one of the judges of the poetry competition in ‘Ukaz, and realized at once that he was looking at something unique. This was quite different from a conventional Arabic ode. “How fine and noble is this speech,” he exclaimed with wonder, and immediately the beauty of the Qur’an diffused his rage and touched a core of receptivity deeply buried within him. Yet again he grabbed his sword, and ran through the streets to the house where Muhammad was. “What has brought you, Ibn al-Khattab?” asked the Prophet. “I have come to you to believe in God and his apostle and what he has brought from God,” ‘Umar replied. Muhammad gave thanks so loudly that everybody in the house, who had dived for cover as soon as they saw ‘Umar, came out of hiding, scarcely able to believe what had happened.67
Ibn Ishaq has recorded another, less dramatic but equally significant version of ‘Umar’s conversion. He had set out to join some friends for a drink in the market one evening, but when his friends failed to turn up, decided to perform the tawaf instead. The Haram was entirely deserted, except for Muhammad, who was standing close to the Kabah, reciting the Qur’an quietly to himself. ‘Umar decided that he wanted to listen, so he crept under the damask cloth that covered the shrine and edged his way round until he was standing directly in front of Muhammad. As he said later: “There was nothing between us but the cover of the Kabah”—all his defenses but one were down. Then the power of the Qur’an did its work: “When I heard the Qur’an, my heart was softened and I wept, and Islam entered into me.”68 ‘Umar’s conversion was a bitter blow to the opposition, but because he was protected by his clan, there was nothing that they could do to hurt him.
Abu Jahl now imposed a boycott on the clans of Hashim and al-Muttalib: nobody could marry into them or trade with them—they could not even sell them food. All the members of Hashim and al-Muttalib, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, moved into Abu Talib’s street, which became a little ghetto. When Muhammad’s household arrived, Abu Lahab and his family moved out and took up residence in the district of ‘Abd Shams. The purpose of the boycott was not to starve the two clans, but to bring home to them the consequence of removing themselves from the tribe. If Muhammad wanted to withdraw from the religious life of Mecca, he could not continue to benefit from the economy.69 The ban collapsed after three years. It was especially unpopular among those who had relatives in Hashim or al-Muttalib, and could not in good conscience allow them to go hungry. Muslims like Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, who did not belong to the proscribed clans, sent provisions whenever they could. One Meccan regularly loaded a camel with supplies, led it to Abu Talib’s street under cover of night, gave the beast a thwack on its hind-quarters, and sent it lumbering down the alley. On one occasion, Abu Jahl accosted one of Khadijah’s nephews, who was making his way to the ghetto with a bag of flour. There was soon a fierce argument. Another Qurayshi joined in, disgusted that Abu Jahl was preventing a man from taking food to his aunt, and gave him a huge blow with a camel’s jaw that knocked him to the ground.
During this ban, the Qur’an reminded the Muslims that other prophets—Joseph, Noah, Jonah, Moses, and Jesus—had also warned their people to reform their behavior, and when they refused, their societies had collapsed, because they were not acting in accordance with the fundamental principles of the universe.70 Unlike animals, fish, or plants, which are natural muslims since they submit instinctively to these basic laws, human beings have free will.71 When they oppress the weak and refuse to share their wealth fairly with the poor, this violation of God’s law is as unnatural as though a fish were to try to live on dry land. Disaster was inevitable. But the Qur’an continued to urge Muslims to be patient and not seize this opportunity for a personal vendetta against their enemies.
Some of the Quraysh too were anxious for peace. Shortly after the imposition of the ban, a small delegation had approached Muhammad, led by a venerable elder who was too close to death to be personally threatened by the Prophet. He suggested a compromise: the whole city could worship Allah one year and the other gods the next. But Muhammad could not accept this offer. Instead, the Surah al-Kafirun proposed peaceful coexistence:
You who reject the faith (kafirun)
I do not worship what you worship
And you do not worship what I worship
I am not a worshipper of what you worship
You are not a worshipper of what I worship.
A reckoning (din) for you and a reckoning for me.72
People worship different things; there must be “no coercion in matters of faith!” (la ikra fi’l-din!)73 Din meant “reckoning,” but also “religion,” “way of life,” or “moral law.” Each individual had his or her own din and there was no need for force or compulsion.
In the end, blood loyalty led to the end of the boycott. Four of the Qurayshan establishment, who had relatives in Hashim and al-Muttalib, solemnly requested an end to the ban, and despite the angry protests of Abu Jahl, the other chiefs agreed. There must have been great rejoicing in the Muslim community. When they heard the news, some of the emigrants came home from Abyssinia, convinced that the worst was over. But they had been
too optimistic. Early in 619, Khadijah died. She was aging, and her health may have been irreparably damaged by the food shortages. She had been Muhammad’s closest companion, and nobody—not even Abu Bakr or the fervent ‘Umar—would ever be able to provide Muhammad with the same intimate support. The early biographers call 619 Muhammad’s “year of sadness.” Not long afterwards, a second death had even more far reaching implications. Abu Talib had been ruined financially, and may also have been physically weakened by the boycott. Later that year, he fell ill and died. And the new chief of Hashim was Abu Lahab.
Chapter Three
Hijrah
EVERYBODY IN MECCA was immediately aware of Muhammad’s new vulnerability. Abu Lahab did not repudiate Muhammad: a chief was expected to give all his clansmen a measure of protection and to fail in this duty at the very start of his office would have been a sign of weakness. But it was obvious that he extended his patronage very grudgingly. Muhammad’s neighbors played disgusting tricks with a sheep’s uterus, thwacking him with it while he was at prayer, and once even dropping it into the family cooking pot. One day, a young Qurayshi threw filth all over Muhammad while he was walking in the city. When his daughter Fatimah saw him in this state, she burst into tears. “Don’t cry, my little girl,” Muhammad reassured her tenderly, while she tried to clean him up. “God will protect your father.” But to himself, he added grimly: “Quraysh never treated me thus while Abu Talib was alive.”1
Muhammad Page 6