Relatives of Safwan and ‘Ikrimah begged for their lives; Muhammad promised that, if they accepted his leadership, they were free to enter Mecca. Both decided to return and ‘Ikrimah was the first to accept Islam. Muhammad greeted him affectionately and forbade anybody to vilify his father, Abu Jahl. Safwan and Suhayl both swore fealty to Muhammad but could not yet make the Muslim profession of faith—though they changed their minds a few days later.
Once Muhammad had secured the city, he had to deal with the tribes of Hawazin and Thaqif, who had mustered an army of twenty thousand men at nearby Ta’if. Muhammad managed to defeat them at the battle of Hunayn at the end of January 630 and the Hawazin joined Muhammad’s confederacy. The Muslims were not able to take Ta’if itself, but the city became so isolated through the loss of its chief Bedouin ally that it was forced to capitulate a year later. When he divided the booty after his victory at Hunayn, Muhammad gave Abu Sufyan, Suhayl, and Safwan the lion’s share. Safwan was so overcome that he instantly made his surrender. “I bear witness that no soul could have such goodness as this, if it were not the soul of the Prophet,” he cried. “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that you are his Messenger.”42 Suhayl followed his example.
Some of the Helpers were offended by this apparent favoritism. Did it mean that Muhammad would abandon them, now that he had been reunited with his own tribe? Muhammad instantly reassured them by making a moving speech, which reduced many of them to tears. He would never forget their generosity to him while he was a mere refugee, and promised that—far from settling in Mecca—he would make Medina his home for the rest of his life. “Are you not satisfied that other men should take away flocks and herds while you take back with you the apostle of God?” he asked. “If all men went one way and the Helpers another, I should take the way of the Helpers. God have mercy on the Helpers, their sons and their sons’ sons.”43
It was a strange conquest, and an impartial observer might have wondered why the Muslims and the Quraysh had fought at all.44 Muhammad kept his word and returned to Medina with the Emigrants and Helpers. He did not attempt to rule Mecca himself; nor did he replace the Qurayshan officials with his own companions; nor did he establish a purist Islamic regime. All former dignitaries kept their positions in the Haram, and the assembly and the status quo remained intact. His most hated enemies were not only reinstated but promoted and showered with gifts. When Muhammad was about to reassign the most prestigious function of the Haram—that of providing water to the pilgrims—to the notable who had just given him the keys of the Kabah, Muhammad asked him: “You can surely see now that this key is in my hand, that I can assign it to whomever I want?” The notable, thinking that the office would now go to one of the Muslims, cried in anguish: “Then, the glory and might of Quraysh is gone!” Muhammad promptly replied, as he handed back the key: “To the contrary, today it is entrenched and glorious!”45
Muhammad’s work was almost done. After his return home, the opposition in Ibn Ubayy’s camp continued. There was yet another plot to assassinate Muhammad, who tried to woo his enemies by dispatching more lucrative expeditions to the north. In October 631,he became aware that a mosque in Medina had become a center of disaffection, so he was forced to destroy it. The following morning he held an inquiry into the conduct of the people who had been plotting against him; they hastily apologized. Most offered plausible excuses and were pardoned, though three were formally shunned by the ummah for nearly two months. This seems to have finished the Muslim opposition. Not long after this capitulation, Ibn Ubayy died, and Muhammad stood beside the grave of his old adversary as a mark of respect. He had finally managed to create a viable, united society in Medina, and more and more of the Bedouin were prepared to accept his political supremacy, even though they were not committed to his religious vision. In ten short years since the hijrah, Muhammad had irrevocably changed the political and spiritual landscape of Arabia.
However, he was visibly failing, and by the beginning of 632,increasingly conscious that he was approaching the end of his life. He was immensely distressed when his baby son Ibrahim died, and he wept bitterly, though he was certain that he would soon be with him in Paradise. But when the traditional month for the hajj approached, he announced that he would lead the pilgrimage and set out at the end of February with all his wives and a huge crowd of hajjis, arriving outside Mecca in early March. He led the Muslims through the rituals that were so dear to the hearts of the Arabs, giving them a new significance. Instead of being reunited with their tribal deities, the Muslims were to gather round the “house”—the Kabah—built by their ancestors Abraham and Ishmael. When they ran seven times between Safa and Marwah, Muhammad instructed the pilgrims to remember the distress of Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, when, after Abraham had abandoned them in the wilderness, she had run frantically to and fro in search of water for her baby. God had saved them by causing the spring of Zamzam to well up from the depths of the earth. Next the pilgrims recalled their unity with the rest of humanity, when they made a standing vigil on the slopes of Mount ‘Arafat, where, it was said, God had made a covenant with Adam, the father of the entire human race. At Mina, they threw stones at the three pillars as a reminder of the constant struggle (jihad) with temptation that a godly life required. Finally, they sacrificed a sheep, in memory of the sheep Abraham sacrificed after he had offered his own son to God.
Today the mosque of Namira stands near Mount ‘Arafat on the spot where Muhammad preached his farewell sermon to the Muslim community. He reminded them to deal justly with one another, to treat women kindly, and to abandon the blood feuds and vendettas inspired by the spirit of jahiliyyah. Muslim must never fight against Muslim. “Know that every Muslim is a Muslim’s brother, and that the Muslims are brethren. It is only lawful to take from a brother what he gives you willingly, so wrong not yourselves,” Muhammad concluded, “O God, have I not told you?” There was pathos in this last appeal. Muhammad knew that despite his repeated admonitions, not all Muslims fully understood his vision. Standing before them for what he knew would probably be the last time, he may have wondered whether all his efforts had been in vain. “O people,” he cried suddenly, “have I faithfully delivered my message to you?” There was a powerful murmur of assent from the assembled crowd: “O God, yes!” (Allahumma na‘m!) In a touchingly human plea for reassurance, Muhammad asked the same question again—and again; and each time the words “Allahumma na‘m” rumbled through the valley like thunder. Muhammad raised his forefinger to the heavens, and said: “O Allah, bear witness.”46
When he returned to Medina, Muhammad began to experience incapacitating headaches and fainting attacks, but he never retired permanently to bed. He would often wrap a cloth around his aching temples and go to the mosque to lead the prayers or to address the people. One morning, he seemed to pray for an especially long time in honor of the Muslims who had died at Uhud and added: “God has given one of his servants the choice between this world and that which is with God, and he has chosen the latter.” The only person who seems to have understood this reference to his imminent death was Abu Bakr, who began to weep bitterly. “Gently, gently, Abu Bakr,” Muhammad said tenderly.47
Eventually Muhammad collapsed in the apartment of Maymunah. His wives hung lovingly over him, and noticed that he kept asking: “Where shall I be tomorrow? Where shall I be tomorrow?” and they realized that he wanted to know when he could be with ‘A’isha. They agreed that he should be moved to her hut and nursed there. Muhammad lay quietly with his head in ‘A’isha’s lap, but people seemed to have believed that he was merely suffering from a temporary indisposition. Even though Abu Bakr repeatedly warned them that the Prophet was not long for this world, the community was in denial. When he became too ill to go to the mosque, he asked Abu Bakr to lead the prayers for him, but still he would sometimes attend salat, sitting quietly beside Abu Bakr even though he was too weak to recite the words himself.
On 12 Rabi ( June 8, 632), Abu Bakr noticed during prayer
s that the people were distracted, and knew at once that Muhammad must have entered the mosque. He looked much better. Indeed, somebody said that they had never seen him so radiant, and a wave of joy and relief swept through the congregation. Abu Bakr instantly made ready to stand down, but Muhammad put his hands on his shoulders, pushed him gently back to the head of the community and sat down next to him until the service was over. Afterwards he went back to ‘A’isha’s hut and lay peacefully in her lap. He seemed so much improved that Abu Bakr asked leave to visit his wife, who lived on the other side of Medina. During the afternoon, ‘Ali and ‘Abbas both looked in and spread the good news that Muhammad was on the mend. As evening approached, ‘A’isha felt him leaning more heavily against her than before, and he seemed to be losing consciousness. Still, she did not realize what was happening. As she said later, “It was due to my ignorance and extreme youth that the Prophet died in my arms.” She heard him murmur the words: “Nay, the most Exalted Companion in Paradise”—Gabriel had come to fetch him.48 Looking down, ‘A’isha discovered that he had gone. Carefully she laid his head on the pillow and began to beat her breast, slap her face, and cry aloud in the traditional way.
When the people heard the women lamenting the dead, they hurried ashen-faced to the mosque. The news travelled quickly through the oasis and Abu Bakr hurried back to the city. He took one look at Muhammad, kissed his face, and bade him farewell. In the mosque, he found ‘Umar addressing the crowds. ‘Umar absolutely refused to believe that the Prophet was dead: his soul had just left his body temporarily, he argued, and he would certainly return to his people. He would be the last of them all to die. The hysteria in ‘Umar’s compulsive harangue must have been evident, because Abu Bakr murmured “Gently, ‘Umar.” But ‘Umar simply could not stop talking. All that Abu Bakr could do was step forward quietly and his composure must have impressed the people, because they gradually stopped listening to ‘Umar’s tirade and clustered around him.
Abu Bakr reminded them that Muhammad had dedicated his life to the preaching of tawhid, the unity of God. How could they possibly imagine that he was immortal? That would be tantamount to saying that he was divine—a second god. Constantly, Muhammad had warned them against honoring him in the same way as Christians venerated Jesus: He was a mere mortal, no different from anybody else. To refuse to admit that Muhammad had died was, therefore, to deny his message. But as long as Muslims remained true to the belief that God alone was worthy of worship, Muhammad would live on in their minds. “O people, if anyone worships Muhammad, Muhammad is dead,” he ended firmly. “If anyone worships God, God is alive, immortal.”49 Finally, he recited the verse that had been revealed to Muhammad after the battle of Uhud, when many of the Muslims had been shocked by the false rumor of his death: “Muhammad is naught but a Messenger; Messengers have passed away before him. Why, if he should die or is slain, will you turn upon your heels? If any man should turn about upon his heels, he will not harm God in any way; and God will recompense the thankful.”50 The verses made such an impact on the people that it was as though they were hearing them for the first time. ‘Umar was completely overcome. “By God, when I heard Abu Bakr recite those words I was dumbfounded, so that my legs would not bear me and I fell to the ground knowing that the apostle was indeed dead.”51
Muhammad had been as controversial in his dying as in his living. Very few of his followers had comprehended the full significance of his prophetic career. These fissures within the community had surfaced at Hudaybiyyah, when most of the pilgrims seem to have expected something miraculous to occur. People came to Islam for very different reasons. Many were devoted to the ideal of social justice, but not to Muhammad’s ideal of nonviolence and reconciliation. The rebellious young highwaymen, who followed Abu Basir, had an entirely different agenda from the Prophet. The Bedouin tribesmen, who had not volunteered for the pilgrimage in 628, had a political rather than a religious commitment to Islam. From the very beginning, Islam was never a monolithic entity.
There is nothing surprising about this lack of unity. In the gospels, Jesus’s disciples are often presented as obtuse and blind to the deeper aspect of his mission. Paradigmatic figures are usually so far ahead of their time that their contemporaries fail to understand them, and, after their deaths, the movement splinters—as Buddhism divided into Hinayana and Mahayana schools not long after the death of Siddhatta Gotama. In Islam, too, the divisions that had split the ummah during the Prophet’s lifetime became even clearer after his death. Many of the Bedouin, who had never fully comprehended the religious message of the Qur’an, believed that Islam had died with Muhammad and felt free to secede from the ummah in the same way as they would renege on any treaty with a deceased chieftain. After the Prophet’s death, the community was lead by his kalifa, his “successor.” The first four caliphs were elected by the people: Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman and ‘Ali, known as the “rightly guided” (rashidun) caliphs.They led wars of conquest outside Arabia, but at the time these had no religious significance. Like any statesmen or generals, the rashidun were responding to a political opportunity—the disintegration of the Persian and Byzantine empires—rather than a Qur’anic imperative. The terrible civil wars that resulted in the assassinations of ‘Umar, ‘Uthman, ‘Ali and Husayn, the Prophet’s grandson, were later given a religious significance but were simply a by-product of an extraordinarily accelerated transition from a peripheral, primitive polity to the status of a major world power.
Far more surprising than this political turbulence was the Muslims’ response. Their understanding of the Qur’an matured when they considered these disastrous events. Nearly every single major religious and literary development in Islam has had its origin in a desire to return to the original vision of the Prophet. Many were appalled by the lavish lifestyle of later caliphs, and tried to return to the austere vision of the early ummah. Mystics, theologians, historians, and jurists asked important questions. How could a society that killed its devout leaders claim to be guided by God? What kind of man should lead the ummah? Could rulers who lived in such luxury and condoned the poverty of the vast majority of the people be true Muslims?
These intense debates about the political leadership of the ummah played a role in Islam that was similar to the great Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries in Christianity. The ascetic spirituality of Sufism had its roots in this discontent. Sufis turned their back on the luxury of the court, and tried to live as austerely as the Prophet; they developed a mysticism modelled on his night journey and ascension to heaven. The Shi‘ah, the self-styled “party of ‘Ali”, Muhammad’s closest male relative, believed that the ummah must be led by one of ‘Ali’s direct descendants, since they alone had inherited the Prophet’s charisma. Shiis developed a piety of protest against the injustice of mainstream Muslim society and tried to return to the egalitarian spirit of the Qur’an. Yet while these and many other movements looked back to the towering figure of Muhammad, they all took the Qur’anic vision into entirely new directions, and showed that the original revelations had the flexibility to respond to unprecedented circumstances that is essential to any great world movement. From the very start, Muslims used their Prophet as a yardstick by which to challenge their politicians and to measure the spiritual health of the ummah.
This critical spirit is needed today. Some Muslim thinkers regard the jihad against Mecca as the climax of Muhammad’s career and fail to note that he eventually abjured warfare and adopted a nonviolent policy. Western critics also persist in viewing the Prophet of Islam as a man of war, and fail to see that from the very first he was opposed to the jahili arrogance and egotism that not only fuelled the aggression of his time but is much in evidence in some leaders, Western and Muslim alike, today. The Prophet, whose aim was peace and practical compassion, is becoming a symbol of division and strife—a development that is not only tragic but also dangerous to the stability on which the future of our species depends.
At the end of my first att
empt to write a biography of Muhammad, I quoted the prescient words of the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Writing in the mid-twentieth century shortly before the Suez Crisis, he observed that a healthy, functioning Islam had for centuries helped Muslims cultivate decent values which we in the West share, because they spring from a common tradition. Some Muslims have problems with Western modernity. They have turned against the cultures of the People of the Book, and have even begun to Islamize their new hatred of these sister faiths, which were so powerfully endorsed by the Qur’an. Cantwell Smith argued that if they are to meet the challenge of the day, Muslims must learn to understand our Western traditions and institutions, because they are not going to disappear. If Islamic societies did not do this, he maintained, they would fail the test of the twentieth century. But he pointed out that Western people also have a problem: “an inability to recognize that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals.”
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