The religion of Islam, founded by Mohammad in his prophetic career which began in 610 and ended with his death in 632, has helped to shape the cultures and lifestyles of many nations.

In the last hundred years, numerous scholarly books have been written about Mohammad, the Qur’an, and Islamic theology, laws, sects, and mystic movements. Foreign scholars have accomplished essential tasks of gathering and analysing data. Indigenous scholars have for the most part written expositions and apologia, and with exceptions such as the Egyptian Tam Hosayn, who lived from 1889 to 1973 and was blind, have not paid much attention to difficulties.

The book Bisl O Seh Sal (Twenty Three Years) by the Iranian scholar Ali Dashti (l89~1981-2) is valuable because it discusses both values and problems which Islam presents to modern Moslems.

Born in 1896 in a village in Dashtestan, a district adjoining the port of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, Ali Dashti was the son of Shaykh Abd ol-Hosayn Dashtestani. At a young age he was taken by his father to Karbala in Iraq, which then belonged to the Ottoman empire. Karbala, where the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hosayn was martyred in 680, and Najaf(about 70 km. or 43 m. to the south), where the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law Ali was martyred in 661, are visited by Shi'ite Moslem pilgrims and have colleges (madrasas) where Shi'ite clergy Coloma) are trained and theological studies are pursued. Despite the unsettled conditions in the First World War, Ali Dashti received a full training in these madrasas and acquired a thorough knowledge of Islamic theology and history, logic, rhetoric, and Arabic and Persian grammar and classical literature.

After his return from Iraq to Iran in 1918, however, he decided against a clerical career. Having strong patriotic feelings and an awareness of world developments, he preferred to devote his fluent pen to journalism. Eventually he succeeded in establishing his own newspaper at Tehran, Shafaq-e Sorkh (Red Dawn), which lasted from 1 March 1922 unti1 18 March 1935. He was its editor until 1 March 1931, when Ma'el Tuyserkani took over. In 1919 Ali Dashti was imprisoned for a time after he had written articles criticizing the proposed Anglo-Iranian treaty of that year (which was later dropped), and in 1921 and subsequently he spent some more short spells in prison. He described his experiences and thoughts in articles which were collected in a book, Awam-e Mahbas (Prison Days). With its radical and modernizing tone, shrewd observations, pleasant humor, and fluent style, this book won immediate popularity and was several times reprinted in amplified editions. Shafaq-e Sorkh (Red Dawn) became noted for the high quality of its articles on social and literary subjects written by Ali Dashti and his then young collaborators, among whom were distinguished men such as the poet and literary historian Rashid Yasemi and the scholarly researchers Sa'id Nafisi, Abbas Eqbal, and Mohammad Mohit Tabataba'i.

During those years, Ali Dashti taught himself French and began to read widely in modern French literature and in English and Russian literature in French translations. He also read material in French on current affairs, music and painting (in which he was interested), and Islamic subjects. He was one of the few Iranians who took an interest in modern Arabic, particularly Egyptian, literature. At a time when most writers of Persian prose were still addicted to elaborate metaphors and complex sentences, he developed a fluent but elegant style which was widely admired and copied, the only adverse criticism being that he used too many borrowed French words. Not only his original writings gained popularity, but also his translations of Edmond Demolins's A quoi tient La superiorite des Anglo-Saxons and of an Arabic version of Samuel Smiles's Self-Help.

In 1927 Ali Dashti was invited to visit Russia for the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, and he took the opportunity to extend his journey and see France and other Western European countries. He was elected to the Majles (Parliament) as deputy for Bushehr in 1928 and again in the next two parliaments, and won a reputation for forceful speaking. After the expiry of the Ninth Majles (Parliament) in 1935, however, he was again detained and kept under house arrest for fourteen months. In 1939 he was re-elected to the Majles as deputy for Damavand (near Tehran), and after the Anglo-Russian occupation of Iran he won the same seat in the elections of 1941 and 1943. He was the leading figure in the Adalat (Justice) party, a group favouring moderate and practicable social reforms. As a patriot he expressed alarm at the risks taken in 1946 by the then prime minister, Qavam os-Saltana, in admitting members of the Soviet-backed Tuda party into the cabinet and in negotiating on the Soviet demand for an oil concession. His outspokenness landed him in prison in April 1946. After his release six months later, he went to France and stayed there until the end of 1948, when he was appointed ambassador to Egypt and the Lebanon. He was briefly minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet of Hosayn Ala, which held office for a fortnight before Mohammad Mosaddeq's rise to the premiership on 2 April 1951.

In 1954 he was appointed a senator (half of the members of the Senate being elected and half appointed by the Shah). He remained in the Senate until the Islamic revolution of 11 February 1979 and won further esteem for his contributions to its debates, which often carried more weight than those of the Majles (Parliament).

In the literary world, Ali Dashti was best known during the early post-war years as an essayist and novelist. In Saya (1946), a collection of reprinted articles and sketches, his tone remains modernizing, but is less radical than in his previous writings.

During and after Reza Shah's reign, the social problem which was most discussed in Iran, or at least in upper and middle class circles, was the status of women. Iranian women had been compulsorily unveiled on 7 January 1936, but after the war women of the lower classes resumed the veil and women of the upper and middle classes came under strong pressure to do likewise. Ali Dashti sympathized with the desire of educated Iranian women for freedom to use their brains and express their personalities; but he does not present a very favourable picture of them in his collections of novelettes Fetna (1943 and 1949), Jadu (1951), and Hendu (1955). His heroines engage in flirtations and intrigues with no apparent motive except cold calculation. Nevertheless these stories are very readable, and they provide a vivid, and no doubt partly accurate, record of the social life of the upper classes and the psychological problems of the educated women in Tehran at the time. Ali Dashti's literary reputation, however, rests on his work as a scholar and critic of the Persian classics. The Iranians take legitimate pride in their heritage but have shown reluctance to discuss the difficulties which the classics present to their own younger generation, let alone to foreigners.

One difficulty is the archaic language of the classics, another is their medieval atmosphere, and another is their bulk. Sa'eb, the leading poet of the Safavid period, wrote 300,000 verses, most of which were probably not intended to be more than ephemeral {lasting a very short time}. In any case, nobody can read all the classics. Modern Iranian scholars have generally taken a classical author's greatness for granted and have concentrated their research on matters such as the influence of the author's training and career, and his forerunners and patrons, on the form and content of his work, and his own influence on successors. Ali Dashti, while not neglecting such points, tried to pick out and explain the elements in the works of certain classical poets which have continuing artistic and moral value for the modern reader. He also makes candid criticisms, mentioning for instance that Sa'di gives some very immoral pieces of advice in addition to ever popular maxims of common sense, good manners, and good humor. Although there is necessarily a measure of subjectivity in Ali Dashti's appraisals, his new approach met a widely felt need and helped to revive popular interest in the classics. His books in this field, which were several times reprinted, are as follows:

Naqshi az Hafez (1936), on the poet Hafez (ca. 1319-1390).

Sayri dar Divan-e Shams, on the lyric verse of the poet Mawlavi Jalal od-Din Rumi (1207-1273).

Dar Qalamraw-o Sa'di, on the poet and prose-writer Sa'di (1208?-1292).

Sha'eri dir-ashna (1961), on Khaqani (1121?-1l99), a particularly difficult but interesting poet.

Dami ba Khayyam (1965), on the quatrain-writer and mathematician Omar Khayyam (1048?-1131); translated by Laurence P.

Elwell Sutton, In Search of Omar Khayyam, London 1971.

Negahi be-Sa'eb (1974), on the poet Sa'eb (1601-1677).

Kakh-e ebda', andishaha-ye gunagun-e Hafez, on various ideas expressed by Hafez.

In his later years Ali Dashti returned to the study of Islam, for which he was well qualified by his madrasa training and his wide reading of modern Egyptian and European works. His approach was the same as in his literary studies, namely to emphasize elements of lasting value and to discuss problems frankly. His writings in this field are as follows:

Parda-ye pendar (1974 and twice reprinted), on Sufism (Islamic mysticism).

Jabr ya ekhtiyar (anonymous and undated, contents first published in the periodical Vahid in 1971), dialogues with a Sufi about predestination and free will.

Takht-e Pulad (anonymous and undated, contents first published in the periodical Khaterat in 1971-72), dialogues in the historic Takht-e Pulad cemetery of Esfahan with a learned 'alem who sticks to the letter of the Qur’an and the Hadith.

Oqala bar khelaf-e 'aql (1975 and twice reprinted, revised versions of articles first published in the periodicals Yaghma in 1972 and 1973, Vahid in 1973, and Rahnoma-ye Ketab in 1973, with two additional articles), on logical contradictions in arguments used by theologians, particularly Mohammad ol-Ghazzali (1058-1111).

Dar diyar-e Sufiyan (1975), on Sufism, a continuation of Parda-ye pendar.

Bist O Seh Sal (anonymous and without indication of place and date of publication, but evidently not later than 1974 and according to Ali Dashti's statement printed at Beirut), a study of the prophetic career of Mohammad.

The government of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and his prime minister from 1965 to 1977, Amir Abbas Hovayda, maintained a censorship which offended many Iranian intellectuals, though it seemed to foreigners to be less oppressive than the contemporary censorships in most other Middle Eastern countries.

The Iranian censorship was tightened after the start of terrorist attacks in 1971 and directed mainly against Marxist and Islamic revolutionary writings; but it was also used to prevent the printing of any sort of potentially trouble-causing matter. Publication of criticism of orthodox or popular religion was not allowed in Iran between 1971 and 1977. Ali Dashti was therefore obliged to have Bist O Seh Sal (Twenty Three Years), his major work in this field, printed abroad (at Beirut) and to issue it anonymously.

Only oral and scanty information about Ali Dashti's experiences after the Islamic revolution is available. He was arrested, and during an interrogation he received a beating and fell and broke his thigh. To what extent he recovered is not clear. After release he was not allowed to return to his home, a pleasant, small house with a garden at Zargandeh, a northern suburb of Tehran. It is unlikely that he saw his books and papers again. A notice in the Iranian periodical Ayanda reported his death in the month of Dey of the Iranian year 1360, i.e. between 22 December 1981 and 20 January 1982.

Note on the Translation

A mutual friend introduced me to Ali Dashti when I was staying in Tehran in the spring of 1975. I well remember his upright bearing and fine physique at a ripe age and the perspicacity {quick in noticing, understanding or judging things accurately}and wit of his conversation. It seemed likely that he would have several more years of vigorous and useful life ahead.

He presented a copy of Bist O Seh Sal (Twenty Three Years) to me and requested me to translate it but not to talk about it and not to publish the translation until after his death. He repeated these requests when I met him again at Tehran in September 1977, and when he telephoned and wrote to me from London during a short journey to Paris and London which he made in June 1978. I lost touch with him after the revolution, but remained bound by my promises to fulfil his requests.

I have tried to produce a readable translation while remaining faithful to Ali Dashti's text. In some places I have abbreviated slightly, and in others I have inserted explanations. In chapter VI have changed the positions of paragraphs obviously printed in wrong order in the Persian original. I found a small number of misprinted or erroneous dates and names, and have checked and corrected them. I have incorporated Ali Dashti's few footnotes into the text and added notes of my own to provide identifications and explanations which may be helpful to non-specialist readers.

Ali Dashti quotes passages from the Qur’an in the original Arabic, which would be understood by many of his readers, and then gives Persian renderings which are more often explanatory paraphrases than literal translations. I have translated the Qur’anic passages as literally as possible into modern English after consideration of Ali Dashti's renderings and English, French, and German versions. I preferred not to quote from the widely used English versions of Arthur J. Arberry and Marmaduke Pickthall because their strict literalism and archaic English often make comprehension difficult. Systems of Qur’anic verse-numbering differ, and I have not followed Ali Dashti in this respect, but have used the system of Gustav Flügel.

Although this is a translation of a Persian book, the subject matter requires a transliteration system reproducing Arabic rather than Persian pronunciations of names and words. The chosen system dispenses with diacritical points, which have to be used for identification of Arabic consonants, but distinguishes between long and short vowels as follows: long a (as in father), short a (like the vowel of cut rather than cat), long u (as in peruse), short o (like the vowel of put rather than pot), long i (as in prestige), short e (like the vowel of sit rather than set). The diphthongs are spelt ay and aw (though sometimes the former is pronounced as in my rather than may and the latter as in now or know rather than gnaw).

The guttural is transcribed as ' and the glottal stop as '; elision is indicated by '. Unless separated by a hyphen (e.g. s-h in Es-haq), th represents the initial consonant of thing, kh the final consonant of loch, dh the initial consonant of this, sh the consonant of shoe, and gh a consonant similar to the French r grasseye. In constructs with the Arabic article, the Arabic nominative case is used (e.g. Abdollah, not Abdallah). The article when preceding the socalled "sun letters" is transliterated as it is pronounced (e.g. Abd or-Rahman, not Abd oJ-Rahman as it is spelt).

Apologies are offered to Arabists and others accustomed to spellings such as Ibn Abbas instead of Ebn Abbas. Conventional English spellings, such as Islam, Iraq, are retained. Arabic names which have the definite article (e.g. ol-Madina, ot-Ta'ef, oJ-Basra, oJ-Hasan, ol-Hosayn) are, for convenience, given without it (e.g. Madina, Hosayn). The abbreviation b. stands for the Arabic ebn or ben (son of) and bent (daughter of). Banu (sons of) means tribe or clan.

Dates are given with the hejri lunar year preceding the Gregorian solar year (e.g. 10/632).

Below are some explanations of technical terms in the text:

Sura: Chapter of the Qur’an. The chapters are divided into verses which are called aya. Both words occur in the Qur’an, where sura appears to mean scripture (e.g. in sura 2, verse 21) and aya means sign (of God's existence, power, or bounty).

Companions (sahaba): early converts and other close associates of the Prophet Mohammad.

hejra: the emigration of the Prophet Mohammad and a number of Meccan converts to Madina in September 622. The Islamic era is called the hejri era, but its starting point is 16 July 622.

Mohajerun (emigrants): the Meccan converts who accompanied or followed the Prophet Mohammad to Madina.

Ansar (supporters): the members of the Madinan Khazraj and Aws tribes whose leaders invited Mohammad to Madina and who supported him there.

Hadith (news): reports of the Prophet Mohammad's sayings and actions attributed to his companions, his wives, men who knew or saw him, and men who knew his companions. The Shi'ite Islamic . Hadith, also called Akhbar (reports), includes sayings and examples of the Emams. The Hadith supplemented the Qur’an as a source of Islamic law and theology, and was written down in the 9th and following centuries in massive compilations which are thought by modern scholars to include material absorbed from many Eastern sources.

Sanna (custom): the custom of the Prophet Mohammad, as recorded in the Hadith, and of Moslems generally in the early centuries of Islam.

Sonnites: Moslems who believe that, after the Qur’an, the sonna and the consensus of the community are authoritative in religious and legal matters.

Caliph (Khalifa): Successor of Mohammad in his role as head of the Islamic state.

Emam (Leader): head of the Islamic religious community.

Shi'ites: Moslems who believe that the Prophet Mohammad designated Ali to be the next Emam and head of the state, and that only Emams descended from Ali, and each likewise designated by his predecessor, can give authoritative guidance. Shi'ite sects differed over the line of succession of the Emams and over matters of doctrine. The Twelver Shi'ites, who are the majority in Iran and numerous in Iraq, believe that the Twelfth Emam disappeared in 939 and that since then authoritative guidance is given by the most learned and pious 'olama acting as the Emam's representatives.

'olama (plural), 'alem (singular): scholars of the Islamic religion who fulfill the function of clergy and used also to act as lawyers.

Readers wishing to pursue the study of subjects treated in this book can find bibliographical guidance in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1960- (up to Ma in 1984); the Encyclopaedia Iranica, New York, 1982- (up to Al in 1984); D. Grimwood-Jones,D. Hopwood,andJ. D. Pearson,ed.,Arabic- XVll

Islamic Bibliography, Hassocks, Sussex/Atlantic Highland, New Jersey, 1977; L. P. Elwell Sutton, ed., Bibliographical Guide to Iran, Hassocks, Sussex/Totowa, New Jersey, 1983; J. D. Pearson, ed., Index Islamicus (articles in periodicals etc. since 1906),Cambridge, 1958.

CHAPTER I

Mohammad

HIS BIRTH

I search for the way, but not the way to the Ka'ba and the temple.
For I see in the former a troop of idolaters and in the latter a band of self-worshippers.

MawlaviJalal od-Din Rumi

At Mecca in 570 Amena b. Wahb gave birth to a child named Mohammad. His father Abdollah had died before he opened his eyes, and he lost his mother when he was five years old. A little later his influential and generous grandfather Abd ol-Mottaleb b. Hashem, who had been his sole protector and sustainer, also passed away. Thereafter this child, who had several quite wealthy paternal uncles, was brought up by the poorest but bravest of them, Abu Taleb. Ahead lay an astonishing career, perhaps unique in the world's record of self-mademen who have created history.

Thousands of books have been written about this extraordinary man's life, about the events of "the twenty three years of his mission, about everything that he did and said. Scholars and researchers actually have at their disposal more information about him than about any of the great men of history before him. Yet we still lack an objective and rationally acceptable book presenting a portrait of him unclouded by preconceptions, suppositions, and fanaticisms; or if such a book has been written, I have not seen it.

Moslems, as wellas others, have disregarded the historical facts. They have continually striven to turn this man into an imaginary superhuman being, a sort of God in human clothes, and have generally ignored the ample evidence of his humanity. They have been ready to set aside the law of cause and effect, which governs real life, and to present their fantasies as miracles.

About Mohammad's life up to 610, when he reached the age of forty, nothing of any importance is recorded. In the accounts of the period, and even in the biographies of the Prophet, there are no reports of anything remarkable or out of the ordinary. Yet by the end of the 3rd/9th century the great historian and Qur’an-commentator Tabari^l in his exegesis of verse 21 of sura 2 (ol-Baqara), could insert an unsubstantiated statement about the Prophet's birth which shows how prone the people were in those days to create and repeat impossible myths, and how even a historian could not stick to history. The verse says, "If you are in doubt over what We have sent down to Our servant, bring a sura like it, and call your witnesses, other than God, if you are truthful!" The statement which Tabari adds to his explanation of the verse is as follows: "Before the Prophet's appointment, a rumor had spread in Mecca that a messenger from God with the name Mohammad would appear and that the east and the west of the world would fall under his sway. At that time forty women in Mecca were with child, and every one of them, after giving birth, named her son Mohammad in case he might be the expected messenger.”

The fatuity of this statement is too obvious for comment.

Nobody in Mecca could have heard such a rumor or foreseen the appearance of a prophet named Mohammad. Mohammad's protector and guardian Abu Taleb, who died without embracing Islam, must certainly have heard nothing and seen nothing. Mohammad himself did not know before his appointment that he was going to be a proophet, as verse 17 of sura 10 (Yunos) eloquently attests: "Had God so willed, I should not have recited it to you, and He would not have made it known to you. I dwelt among you for a lifetime before it." There were no registration statistics at Mecca to show that in the year 570 only forty women gave birth and that all without exception named their sons Mohammad. Did Mohammad in his childhood have forty playmates of the same age and name?

The historian Waqedi² tells a different sort of story about the Prophet's birth: "As soon as he came out of his mother's womb, he said 'God is great'. At one month he crawled, at two months he stood, at three months he walked, at four months he ran, and at nine months he shot arrows." It is noteworthy that Mirza Jani Kashani (d. 1268/1852) makes a similar statement about Sayyed Ali Mohammad Shirazi, the founder of Babism, in his book Noqlal ol-Kaf,³ which the Baha'is tried to suppress. According to this, as soon as Sayyed Ali was born he uttered the words "Sovereignty belongs to God."

If such extraordinary things as Waqedi relates had occurred, surely they would have become known to all the people of Mecca, and surely those people, who worshipped stone idols, would have bowed down to Mohammad instead.

This story is an example of myth-making and history fabrication by Moslems. Conversely, certain Western Christian writers were moved by religious bias to describe Mohammad as a liar, impostor, adventurer, power-seeker, and lecher. Neither group was capable of objective study of the facts.

The reason for this is that ideologies, whether political, religious, or sectarian, prevent men and women from using their brains and thinking clearly. Subjects thus become veiled by preconceived notions of good and evil. Inculcated {to fix beliefs or ideas in someone's mind, especially by repeating them often, Implant} love or hatred and fanaticism or prejudice envelop the person who is being discussed in a fog of unreal imagination.

Without question the Prophet Mohammad is an outstanding figure. Among the qualities which distinguished him from his fellow men were sharpness of mind, profoundity of thought, and impatience with the illusions and superstitions prevalent in his time. Most important of all were the extraordinary will-power and energy which carried him into single combat with evil. In fervent words he warned the people against dishonesty and immorality, reprehended wickedness, untruthfulness, and selfishness, stood up for the deprived and needy lower class, rebuked his compatriots for worshipping stone idols instead of the one great God, and ridiculed the uselessness of the idols. Naturally those who enjoyed prestige and held positions of strength in the Meccan community took no notice of his words. Acceptance would have required abandonment of customs and beliefs which had been rooted for centuries and, like all inherited ideologies, were supposed to have absolute and incontestable validity.

What most offended the Meccanchiefs was the fact that this call for overthrow of the traditional social structure came from a man of lower status than themselves. Although he was of the same tribe, the Qoraysh, he was not of the same rank, being an orphan whom an uncle had compassionately housed and reared. After a childhood spent in tending the camels of his uncle and his neighbours, he had at a quite young age entered the serviceof a wealthy woman, Khadija, and begun to gain some esteem. Such a man, seen hitherto as an ordinary Qorayshite tribesman lacking any kind of distinction, suddenly claimed authority to teach and lead on the ground that God had appointed him to be a prophet.

The attitude and mentality of the chiefs is illustrated by a reported remark of Walid b.ol-Moghiril, who was head of the Makhzum clan of the Qoraysh tribe in the early years of Mohammad's missionand died sometime before 615: "When the Qoraysh have a chief like me and the Banu Tamim one like Orwa b. Mas'ud, how can Mohammad claim to be a prophet?" There is a reference to this crude notion in verses 30 and 31 of sura 43 (oz-Zokhrof): "And they said, 'If only this Qur’an had been sent down to some great man of the two towns (i.e. Meccaand Ta'ef)!' Is it they who apportion your Lord's mercy? It is We who have apportioned their sustenance among them in the life of the lower world." The Makhzum clan had been gaining ground in Meccan affairs.

The powerful Abd Manaf clan of the Qoraysh had split into smaller clans called after Abd Manaf's sons; among these were the clan of Hashem, into which Mohammad was born, and the wealthy clan of Abd Shams and the latter's son Omayya.The clan mentality is expressed in the reported wordsof Abu Jahl⁴ the next head of the clan of Makhzum, to Akhnas b. Shariq, a head of another clan: "We were rivals with the Banu Abd Manaffor the ascendancy, and we have caught up with them. So one of them has come out with a claim to be a prophet. This is how the Banu Abd Manaf hope to regain the upper hand over us." These and other reports enable us to understand the thinking of the Qoraysh chiefs and their reaction to Mohammad's preaching.

They took a negative view because they did not believe either in the existence of one God or in the divine appointment of a man from their own people to teach and guide them. Their objection, several times quoted in the Qur’an (e.g. in suras 6; verse 8; 11, verse 15;25, verse 8) was that if a god had wished to guide them, he would not have appointed a man of their own people to do so, but would have sent an angel to them. The reply, also given in the Qur’an (sura 17, verse 97), is that if the angels lived on earth, a prophet from among their people would likewise be sent to them.

Significantly the Meccan chiefs paid no attention to the basic issue. They never listened to Mohammad's teachingwith anywillingness to ascertain its truth and assess its compatibility with reason and the good of the community.

In any community, however wicked or immoral, there are a few clear thinking and well-meaning persons ready to accept words of truth, no matter from whose mouth they may come. Among the men of influence in Meccan society, Abu Bakr must be counted the first to have acknowledged Mohammad's teachings as true. Following his example some other Qorayshite notables, such as Abd of-Rahman b. Awf, Othman b. Afffm, Zobayr b. ol-Awwam, Talha b. Obaydollah, and Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas, embraced Islam.

In any community there is also a group which has not shared in the good fortune of the wealthy group and naturally forms the poor and discontented class. At Mecca members of both groups rallied to Mohammad and joined in praise of him and his ideas. Conflict between the two groups was bound to arise in the Meccan situation.

The wealthy, who enjoyed the support of the majority of the people, were proud of their wealth and their money. The minority supporting Mohammad were convinced of the rightness of their cause, and in order to propagate it, they ascribed special faculties and merits to their leader. The tendency to do this was kept within reasonable bounds during his lifetime but continually gathered strength after his death. Popular imagination soon dehumanized him and endowed him with the qualities of a son of God, cause of creation, controller of the universe.

To show how most of these fantasies came into being and proliferated, an important example will be discussed. The evidence in this case is clear and incontrovertible. For Moslems the Qur’an is the conclusive proof. Verse 1of sura 17 (ol-Esra), which is one of the Meccan suras, was the source of the belief that the Prophet made a night journey to heaven. The words of the verse, however, are simple and rationally explicable: "Exalted is He who carried His servant by night from the Mosque of the Sanctuary to the Furthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed, so that We might show him some of Our signs. He is (all-)hearing, (all-)seeing." The words may certainly be taken to mean a spiritual journey. Other instances of spiritual journey by visionary thinkers are known.

In Moslem minds, however, this simple verse is overlaid with wondrous and rationally unacceptable myths. Here it will suffice to quote the relatively temperate account given in the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn, which is one of the trust worthiest Qur’an-commentaries because the learned Egyptians Jalal od-Din ol-Mahalli, who began it, and Jalal od-Din os-Soyuti (848/1445-910/1505), who finished it, were virtually free from sectarian prejudice, their only concern being to explain the meanings of the verses and in some cases the occasions of the revelations. Even so, in their exegesis {an explanation or critical interpretation of a text}of verse 1 of sura 17, they put unsubstantiated words into the Prophet Mohammad's mouth. Was their purpose to explain the meaning and the occasion of the revelation of the verse, or to summarize the stories about it circulating among Moslems? In any case, they cite no evidence that the Prophet ever said such things. The authors of the Hadith compilations took great pains to check the transmission of sayings ascribed to the Prophet, though this does not necessarily prove the reliability of the transmitters.

The authors of the Tafsir ol-Jalalayndo not mention any source at all. This suggests that perhaps they did not believe the story which they were telling. According to it, the Prophet said: "That night Gabriel came, bringing a quadruped bigger than a donkey and smaller than a mule, with outward-facing hoofs on its feet. I mounted it and rode to the House of the Sanctuary. I tied Boraq's (the animal's) bridle on the ring on which prophets usually tied it. In the Furthest Mosque I lowered my head to the ground three times in prayer. When I came out, Gabriel brought two vessels to me, one filled with milk and one filled with wine. I chose the one filled with milk, and Gabriel approved my choice. Then we flew to the first heaven. At the gate of the first heaven a guard asked, 'Who is it?' Gabriel answered, 'It is Gabriel.' The guard asked, 'Who is with you?' Gabriel answered, 'Mohammad.' The guard asked, 'Has he been summoned?' Gabriel said, 'Yes.' Then the guard opened the gate of the heaven. Adam came to meet me and said, 'You are welcome.' [In like manner Mohammad traverses the seven heavens and in each of them is greeted by a prophet]. In the seventh heaven I saw Abraham reclining in the populous abode into which seventy thousand angels go every day and out of which none ever come. Next Gabriel took me to the last lote tree⁵ whose leaves were as big as elephant's ears and whose fruits were like. . . . . . Then a revelation came ordering me to pray fifty times every day and night. On my way back, the Prophet Moses said to me, 'Fifty prayers are too many. Ask the Lord to reduce them!' So 1went back to God and asked for a reduction. The Lord granted a reduction to forty prayers. This time Moses said, 'I have tested the matter in my own community. The people cannot pray forty times every day and night. ' I went back to God again..." (P# 6} [In short, the Prophet went on haggling until God reduced the number of the daily prayers to five.]

This statement about the Prophet's night journey in the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn is pale beside the extravaganzas of Tabari's Tafsir (Qur’an-commentary) and the writings of Abu Bakr Atiq Nishapur. Islamic portrayals of the night journey turn it into fables like the adventures of the {Persian} folklore hero Amir Arslan. Even the Prophet's modern and generally rational biographer, Mohammad Hosayn Haykal ⁶while denying that the night journey was a bodily ascension, presents the mythical account in a modified form taken from a book by Emile Dermenghem ⁷.

To anyone acquainted with the Qur’an, which reflects the events and experiences of Mohammad's prophetic career, it is obvious that the Prophet did not say such things and that these childish fables are figments of the imaginations of simple-minded people who conceived of the divine order as a replica of the court of their own king or ruler. For in the same sura 17, whose first verse gave rise to the myth, the Prophet is told in verse 95 how to answer those who demanded a miracle from him: "Say 'Glory to my Lord! Am I other than a human, a messenger?'" Verse 50 of sura 42 (osh- Shawra) states clearly that "it would not be (vouchsafed) to a human that God should speak to him, except through revelation." When revelations were being sent down to the Prophet, there was no need that he should go up to the heavens. Even on the assumption of such a need, why should a winged or air-borne quadruped have been provided? Was the Furthest Mosque on the route to the heavens? Does God, who is omnipotent, have any need for prayers from His worshippers? Why had not the guards of the heavens been forewarned of the Prophet's journey? Credulous minds relate cause to effect without reference to reality. The Prophet needs a mount because he is going on a long journey; therefore the mount, while resembling a mule, has to possess some sort of wings to enable it to fly like a pigeon. God wants to dazzle Mohammad with His Majesty and therefore commands Gabriel to show Mohammad the wonders of the heavens. Like a mighty king who orders his officials to collect higher taxes to meet the state's expenses, and whose finance minister warns against impoverishment of the subjects through over-taxation, the Lord demands prayers from the worshippers and His Prophet pleads that fifty prayers are too many.

Mohammad's greatness is unquestionable. He was one of the (P# 7}most outstanding men of genius who have appeared in human history. If the social and political circumstances of his time are taken into account, he has no equal among the initiators of major historical change. Men such as Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Cyrus, Chengiz Khan, or Timur do not bear comparison with him. They all had the support of the armed forces and public opinion of their peoples, whereas Mohammad made his way into history with empty hands and in a hostile society.

Perhaps Lenin can be rated the most potent man of the present century and compared with Mohammad. For nearly twenty years (1904-1924), with tireless energy and resourcefulness and with stubborn fidelity to his principles, he thought, wrote, kept remote control over revolutionary activities, and never relaxed , until he established the first communist state in the physically and socially unfavourable environment of Russia. He certainly overcame huge internal and external obstacles. On the other hand, a revolutionary movement had been developing in Russia for half a century before him, and hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries and malcontents were ready to support him. Another striking difference is that he always lived in poverty or self-chosen austerity.

It is natural and normal that legends about great men should arise after their deaths. After a time their weak points are forgotten and only their strong points are remembered and passed on. The lives of many thinkers and artists were by no means morally irreproachable, but their works survive and are admired. We do not know how Nasir od-Din Tusi ⁸ managed to become a minister to the Mongol conqueror Hulagu Khan ⁹ but even if his expedients were immoral, his scientific writings have made him an honoured son of Iran. No wonder, then, that after the death of a great spiritual leader imaginations should get to work and endow him with a profusion of virtues and merits. The trouble is that this process does not stay within reasonable limits but becomes vulgarized, commercialized, and absurd.

The Prophet Mohammad's birth took place in the normal way and with no immediate consequences, just like the births of millions of other infants; but the craze for miracles made people invent and believe fables about it, for instance that as soon as he was born the arch at Ctesiphon ¹⁰ cracked and the fires in the fire-temples of Fars {Pars} went out. Even if such events occrured at that time, how could they be effects of the Prophet's birth and how could they be warnings from God? Reason, observation, and mathematics require effects to have causes. All the world's phenomena, whether physical, social, or political, have causes. Sometimes these seem obvious; sunshine gives warmth and light, fire burns if not obstructed, water flows downward unless it can be pumped upward. Sometimes they are not obvious and have only been discovered through long effort, such as the causes of thunder and lightning or diseases and cures.

Between the birth of a child at Mecca and the extinction of temple-fires in Iran, no relation of cause and effect is possible. If a crack appeared in the arch at Ctesiphon, it must have been due to subsidence. The miracle-mongers of a later age described these events as divine warnings, meaning that God wished to tell the inhabitants of Ctesiphon, and in particular the king of Iran, about an impending cataclysm, and to let the guardians of the fire temples of Fars {Pars} know about the advent of a man who would overthrow fire-veneration. Yet how could the Iranian king or the Zoroastrian priests have recognised the cracking of the arch and extinction of the fires as indications of the birth of a child who was only to begin his religious mission forty years later? Why should God, who is wise and understanding, have wanted the Iranians to take heed of Islam forty years before Mohammad was appointed to preach it? All that is known about the situation in pre-Islamic Arabia confirms the Qur’anic statement that Mohammad himself had no premonition of his future prophethood. If God had wished to signal the extraordinary importance of Mohammad's birth, why did He give no sign to the Meccans? In His omnipotence He could have caused the Ka'ba's roof to fall and its idols to topple, which would have been a stronger warning to the Qorayshites than the extinction of fires in faraway temples. In any case, why was not the Prophet's appointment accompanied by a miracle which would have convinced all the Qorayshites and spared God's chosen messenger from thirteen years of enmity and persecution? Why was not a light kindled in the heart of King Khosraw Parviz ¹¹ I to guide him to the true faith and dissuade him from tearing up the Prophet's letter? The Iranians would then have been guided by their king's example, and they would have become Moslems without having to suffer defeat at the battles of Qadesiya and Nehavand.

Many years ago, I read the Vie de Jesus of the great French writer Ernest Renan (1823-92), who has painted a realistic and vivid portrait of the Messiah with masterly skill. Sometime later, I came across another book, entitled Son of Man, whose painstaking German author, Emil Ludwig, claimed that it is as factual as any book on the subject can be when reliable historical documentation is so scarce.

In the present short work, I do not attempt to give a full account of twenty three of the sixty three years of the Prophet Mohammad's life. Without false modesty, I do not see myself as possessing Ernest Renan's talent and sensitivity or Emil Ludwig's patience and capacity for research, all of which qualities would be needed in plenty for adequate portrayal of a man whose spiritual and moral strength changed the course of human history.

My purpose in this short work is to sketch an outline and to dispel a phantom. The shape of the book evolved in my mind from study of the Qur’an and reflection on the genesis of Islam. To be more precise and candid, I admit that part of the impulse to write it came to me from a psychological theory or rather observation. This is that belief can blunt human reason and common sense. As we all know, ideas which have been inculcated into a person's mind in childhood remain in the background of his or her thinking. Consequently he or she will want to make facts conform with inculcated ideas which have no rational validity.

Even learned scholars, with rare exceptions, are burdened with this handicap and inhibited rrom using their common sense; or if they use it, they only do so when it corroborates their inculcated ideas. Mankind is gifted with faculties of perception and ratiocination which make solution of scientific problems possible, but in matters of religious and political beliefs ready to trample on the - evidence of reason and even of the senses.

HIS CHILDHOOD

Information about the Prophet Mohammad's childhood is scarce. He was a fatherless and motherless orphan living in the house of his paternal uncle, Abu Taleb, a man who had a kind heart but little material wealth. In order that he might be occupied and help to pay for his keep, he was given the task of taking came1Sowned by Abu Taleb and others into the plain to graze. He thus spent his days in the grim desert outside Mecca all alone.

For a sensitive and intelligent child, the experience of several years in this occupation must, in the Persian phrase, have been "as bitter as chewing terebinth twigs {a small tree of the cashew family yielding turpentine}". He would naturally ask himself why he had come into the world as a fatherless orphan and had so soon lost the young mother to whom alone he could turn for love and caresses. He would wonder too why blind fate had taken away his strong and generous grandfather and sent him for refuge to his uncle's house. His uncle was a good and kind man, but had a large family and could not afford to give him the care which his cousins and other children of the same rank received. His other uncles, such as Abbas and Abu Lahab, lived comfortably and ignored him. Thoughts such as these must have rankled in his mind during long years of sorrow and hardship.

In the monotonous solitude of the arid plain, where the camels strained their necks in search of a thorn or a blade of grass among the stones, what else was there to do but grieve and muse? Misfortune embitters a person and makes him conscious of suffering, especially when he is left to himself with nothing to distract him. It may safely be conjectured that in the course of time this child's thoughts turned to the social system and found in it some of the sources of his unhappiness. The reason why the other boys of his rank and age led pleasant lives was that their fathers had charge of the Ka'ba. They supplied water, bread, and other requisites to the pilgrims who came to Mecca for the annual ceremonies at the Ka'ba, and they made big profits by selling goods which they imported from Syria dearly and buying produce from pilgrims cheaply. These businesses were the source of their children's well being.

Why did so many tribes sustain the wealth and power of the Qoraysh by coming to the Ka'ba? The reason was that the Ka'ba housed famous idols and contained a black stone which the Arabs held sacred. They thought that walking around the Ka'ba would bring happiness and salvation and that running between the nearby hills of Safa and Marwa, on the tops of which two more idols had been placed, was necessary to make prayers effective. Each group of pilgrims had to shout its entreaties to its idol while circumambulating the Ka'ba and running from Sara to Marwa.

Mohammad's keen eye and intelligence must have prompted him, at the age of eleven or twelve, to start wondering whether any force lay concealed in the black stone and any action could proceed from the lifeless statues. His doubts may well have arisen from a personal experience. It is by no means improbable that in his sorrow and spiritual anguish he had hopefully addressed fervent pleas to the idols and obtained no result. This hypothesis is supported by verses in two suras which poured from his mouth thirty years later: "Have no more to do with the filth!" (i.e. the idols; sura 74, al-Modl£ather, verse 5), and "Did not He find you astray and guide you?" (sura 93, od-Doha,verse 7).

The Qorayshite leaders themselves could scarcely be unaware of the facts. They lived beside the temple and could see that the stone objects did not move or emit grace or grant mercy. The silence of the Qorayshites and their worship of Lat, Manat, and Ozza could only be due to self-interest: There is a Persian saying that the holiness of a saint depends on the guardian of his tomb. If the Qorayshite leaders lost the guardianship of the Ka'ba, their income from it would cease and their flourishing trade with Syria would decline because no more Bedouin pilgrims; to whom they could sell dearly and from whom they could buy cheaply, would come to Mecca.

The stirrings in Mohammad's visionary soul must have arisen during the long days which he spent in frightening solitude watching the camels search for their meagre fare in the sun scorched desert. The approach of sunset, when he would round up the camels and take them to the town, must have brought him back to reality. He had to call them, hustle them, and stop them from straying, in order to return them safe and sound to their owners for the night.

In the darkness of the night the stirrings would give way to visions, and in the morning sunshine they would recommence when he was back in the monotonous desert. Little by little they took shape in the depths of his inner mind.

An introvert personality, prone to musing and dreaming un-distracted by clatter and deprived of normal pleasures, would become more introverted with the passage of every year spent alone in the desert. Then, suddenly, a ghost might appear or a splashing of waves on an unknown sea might be heard.

After several years in the same routine, a new experience made a deep mark on Mohammad's mind. At the age of eleven he accompanied his uncle Abu Taleb on a journey to Syria. There he saw a different and brighter world with no signs of the ignorance, superstition, and rudeness prevalent among the Meccans. The people whom he met were politer, the social atmosphere was happier, and the accepted customs were of a higher order. These observations must have added to the turmoil in his inner soul. It was probably there that he first perceived how primitive and rough and superstitious his own people were; perhaps there also that he began to wish that they might have a better ordered, less superstitious, and more humane society. It is not known for certain whether he first came into contact with followers of monotheistic religions on this journey, and it would seem that he was then too young to learn anything from such contacts; but the experience must have made an impression on his perceptive and uneasy mind, and perhaps moved him to make another journey. Some of the transmitted reports state that on the second journey he was no longer too young and that he eagerly listened to religious informants.

It is not difficult to understand why so little is known about the Prophet Mohammad's childhood and youth. There was nothing important in the life of an orphan brought up under the guardianship of an uncle. Nobody took enough notice to have any recollection of him as he was at that time. Most of what has been written here is only conjecture based on the theory that the solitude and monotony of daily camel-tending in a desert would make a child introspective, imaginative, and visionary.

It is possible that many of the Qur’anic verses which at a later time were to flow from his anguished lips echo his youthful musings and impressions of nature and its creation. For instance: "Do they never consider the camels, how they were created? And the sky, how it was raised? And the mountains, how they were erected? And the earth, how it was spread out?" (sura 88, ol-Ghashiya, verses 17-20).

Study of the Meccan suras gives glimpses into the vision-filled soul of a person remote from life's material blessings and given to communion with himself and with nature. These suras also express indignation at the boasting of vain men such as Abu Lahab ¹² and Abu'I-Ashadd. ¹³ .

In later times, when the success of Mohammad's preaching had exalted his prestige, believers turned to the fertile fields of their imaginations and invented fables such as those which are found in Tabari's and Waqedi's works and were cited in the previous chapter. .

Another point which needs consideration, though it will not be discussed in detail here, is that the Moslem writers depict conditions in the Hejaz, and particularly at Mecca before the Prophet Mohammad's mission, as darker than they really were. According to most accounts, the Arabs of that time lived in an utter darkness of barbarity and idolatry, and no glimmer of higher thinking and religious belief had appeared. This exaggeration was probably motivated by desire to emphasize the change wrought by the Prophet's rise and teaching. A number of modern scholars in the Arab countries, however, such as Ali Jawad, Abdollah Samman, Taha Hosayn, ¹⁴ Mohammad Hosayn Haykal, Mohammad Ezzat Darwaza, and Professor Haddad, have concluded that the Hejaz in the sixth century possessed a measure of civilization and incipient theism by no means so negligible as is commonly supposed. From the researches of these scholars and from various indications and reports in the early sources, it may be taken for certain that a reaction against idolatry had begun in the Hejaz in the second half of the sixth century.

To some extent this reaction was due to the presence of Jewish tribes, particularly at Yathreb, and of Christians from Syria who made journeys to the Hejaz, and to some extent it was the work of thinking men known by the name hanif. The following statement is taken from the biography of the Prophet by Ebn Hesham: ¹⁵ "One day the Qorayshites assembled in a palm grove near Ta'ef to celebrate the festival of Ozza, the chief goddess of the Banu Thaqif. Four of them withdrew and said to each other, 'These people are on the wrong track. They have lost the religion of our ancestor Abraham.' Then they cried out to the people, 'Choose a different religion from this! Why do you walk around a stone which neither sees nor hears and can neither help you nor harm you?' These four men were Waraqa b. Nawfal, Qbaydollah b. Jahsh, Othman b. ol-Howayreth, and Zayd b. Amr. From then onward they called themselves hanif and came out in favour of the religion of Abraham. The last-named of the four uttered these words in prayer: 'Here I am, in truth, in truth, in worship and humility. I take refuge where Abraham took refuge. I was aloof from You. I deserve whatever may befall me.' Then he knelt and lowered his head to the ground."

While there can be no doubt that ignorance and superstition prevailed in most of Arabia and idolatry was practiced by the great majority, monotheism was not a novelty and was well understood in the Hejaz, particularly at Madina and in the north where Jewish and Christian tribes resided. Before Mohammad, poets had appeared in various parts of Arabia and warned against idolatry in their preachings; some of them are mentioned in the Qur’an, namely Hud among the people of Ad, Saleh among the people of Thamud, and Sho'ayb in Medyan. In the Arabic sources there are mentions of preachers named Hanzala b. Safwan, Khaled b. Senan, Amer b. Zareb ol.Adwani, and Abdollah ol-Qoda'i. Also mentioned is an eloquent poet and orator, Qass b. Sa'eda ol-Iyadi, who in the annual poetry recitations at the fair at Okaz near Mecca, and even at the Ka'ba, appealed to the people in fervent verses and sermons to renounce idolatry. Omayya b. Abi's-Salt, a contemporary of Mohammad and a member of the Thaqif tribe at Ta'ef, was a particularly renowned hanif and advocate of monotheism.

He made frequent journeys to Syria, where he spent much time in conversation with Christian monks and Jewish men of learning. It was there that he heard news of Mohammad's emergence. Although the two are said to have had a meeting, he did not become a Moslem. After his return to Ta'ef, he is reported to have told one of his friends, "I know more about the books and traditions of the other religions than Mohammad does. I also know the Aramaic and Hebrew languages. So I would have a better right to prophethood." According to Bokhari,¹⁶ Mohammad said that "Omayya b. Abi's-Salt came near to becoming a Moslem."

Poetry, especially the poetry of a nation in its youth, gives vivid pictures of feelings and customs. In the Arabic poetry of the pre-Islamic period, there are verses which might have been composed by a Moslem, such as these by Zohayr:¹⁷

Do not hide what is in your souls from God,

for however carefullyit may be hidden and concealed,

God will know it!

Either it will be adjourned, put into a book,

and stored for a day of reckoning, or it will come up soon and be requited.

Or these by Abdollah b. ol-Abras:

It is He whom the people long to worship,

for seekers of God will not be disappointed.

Through God all blessings are within reach;

to mention only a few of them is to urge to victory.

God has no partners, and He knows what hearts conceal.

The Prophet Mohammad is reported to have once quoted a verse by Labid: ¹⁸

Except through God,

all is vain,

all prosperity is bound to cease.

It is noteworthy that these and some other pre-Islamic poets use the word Allah for God, and that several pagan Qorayshites, including Mohammad's father, were named Abdollah which means slave of God. This indicates that the word Allah was familiar to them, even though the idols were thought to be means of approach to God - a concept which is mentioned in the Qur’an (sura 10, verse 19).

Another pre-Islamic poet, Amr b. Fadl, flatly rejected the famous idols of the Arabs:

I have forsaken Lat and Ozza altogether.

Any man who is stalwart and constant will do likewise.

No longer shall I visit Ozza and her two daughters

or the two idols of the Banu Ghanm.

Nor shall I visit Hubal when, as often happens,

fortune is adverse; for my patience is slight.

The call to reject idolatry and worship the one great God was thus not without precedent. What was new was urgent insistence. Mohammad's miracle was that he unflinchingly faced all insults, harassments, and repulses, and never shrank from any step until he had imposed Islam on Arabia and brought the different Arab tribes under one flag.

The mentality of these tribes was in general still primitive, concerned only with visible and tangible things and unfamiliar with metaphysical ideas. Their only goal was immediate gain. They had no scruples about seizing the property of others and would stop at nothing in the pursuit of power. A good example of their way of thinking is the already quoted remark of Abu Jahl to Akhnas b. Shariq to the effect that Mohammad's prophethood was a ruse of the Banu Abd Manafto regain the ascendancy. The same view reappears in the wish of the Omayyad caliph Yazid b. Mo'awiya (60/680-64/683) that the men whom Mohammad had defeated at the battle of Badr (in 2/624) might have seen how the Omayyad troops had defeated the Banu Hashem and killed Hosayn b. Ali at the battle of Karbala (in 61/680). Yazid is reported to have said, in verse:

The Hashemites gambled for power,

but no word came, no revelation was sent down.

It would be wrong to end this chapter without mentioning that the modern Arab scholars disagree about the pre-Islamic poetry. Some of them doubt whether it is all genuinely pre-Islamic. In any case, there is ample evidence that signs of disillusionment with paganism and movement toward monotheism had appeared in the Hejaz during the sixth century.

THE PROBLEM OF PROPHETHOOD

In recent times numerous scholars have made detailed studies of the rise and spread of Islam, the meaning and arrangement of the Qur’an and the occasions of the revelation of its verses, and the origins and development of the Hadith. Valuable work has been accomplished by great Western scholars such as Theodor Noldeke, Ignaz Goldziher, Alfred von Kremer, Adam Mez, Regis Blachere, and others. They have examined the problems with microscopic precision and from a purely scientific viewpoint. Their writings show no trace of fanaticism or desire to disparage Islam. In their research they have used authentic and reliable Islamic sources.

There are also European writers who have let religious fanaticism dim their vision. They have described Mohammad as an adventurer and impostor and the Qur’an as his tool for winning power. If they had similarly criticized Moses and Jesus, their views might deserve consideration (though that would be beyond the scope of this book); but they presuppose that Moses and Jesus were appointed by God and that Mohammad was not. Their statements are not supported by any kind of rationally acceptable evidence.

In reply to holders of such views, it is best to begin by discussing the question of principle. They must in logic accept the principle of prophethood because their appraisals imply acceptance in one case and rejection in another.

Some profound thinkers such as Mohammad b. Zakariya ol-Razi¹⁹ and Abul-Ala ol-Ma'arri ²⁰ rejected the principle of prophethood. They found the theological arguments for the general necessity of prophethood to be illogical and unconvincing.

While the theologians said that God in His grace appoints a person to warn His people against sin and wrongdoing, the rationalists argued that if God had been concerned about the virtue and harmony of His people, He would have created all of them sinless and good, in which case there would have been no need to send a prophet. The usual reply is that good and evil were not created by God, who is pure good, and that propensities for good and evil are inherent in human nature. We are then bound to ask who gives an individual his or her particular nature with its good and evil potentialities.

Human beings start life with natures determined by their parents at the moment of conception. Every new-born child comes into the world with certain physical characteristics and consequently with psychological and mental characteristics which depend on his or her physical constitution. Nobody can voluntarily determine his own brain power, nervous energy, and instincts any more than he can choose his eye colour, nose shape, heart pressure, stature, or bodily strengths such as eyesight. Some individuals are temperamentally calm and moderate, others are turbulent, stubborn, and prone to excess. Those with well-balanced personalities do not disturb the freedom and infringe the rights of others. Those with aggressive personalities often commit violence.

If it is said that prophets are sent to change people's natures, the question arises whether an ill-balanced personality can be transformed into a well-balanced one any more than a black skin into a white one. If this is possible, why has the history of the human race since its adoption of religion been so stained with violence, cruelty, and crime? We are bound to conclude that God's dispatch of prophets to mankind has not succeeded in making all men and women good and happy. An objective observer might remark that a safer way for God to achieve this aim would have been for Him to create all men and women good in the first place.

The theologians have a ready answer to this criticism. They say that life in the present world is a test, that good and evil must be authoritatively defined, and that the dispatch of a prophet is a sort of ultimatum notifying good-doers, who obey his commands, of future reward in heaven and wrong-doers, who disobey them, of future condign {deserved, appropriate} punishment .

The deniers of prophethood say that the notion of life as a test is crude and untenable. Why should God want to test His servants when He knows their secret thoughts better than they do themselves? Why should He want them to become aware of their wrong-doing? They do not think of themselves as wicked and do not see their actions as sins, because otherwise they would not commit them. They act in ways which conform with their natures and temperaments. If all individuals had identical natures, the fact that some obey and others disobey prophets would be inexplicable. In other words, all individuals would necessarily either obey or disobey if the good and evil propensities in their natures were uniformly distributed.

Aside from these general considerations, Moslem theologians ought not to forget the numerous Qur’anic verses which make human error and rectitude dependent on God's will. For example, "You do not guide those whom you like, but God guides those whom He wills" (sura 28, verse 56); "Those whom God leads astray have no guide" (sura 39, verse 24); "And if We had so willed, We would have given every soul its guidance" (sura 32, verse 13). The number of verses which state that guidance and error are from God alone is so large that it would be impossible to quote them all here.

These verses, and the inability of the prophets to change mankind radically, make nonsense of the efforts of the theologians to prove the general necessity of prophethood.

The basic fallacy in the reasoning of the theologians of Islam and the other religions lies in their concept of the creation. Their belief in the existence of prophets sent by the Creator and Sustainer of the universe depends on their belief in the Creator, and their belief in the Creator requires assumption that the universe is contingent and was created ex nihilo, in other words that the universe did not exist until the Creator brought it into existence. This assumption is not verifiable, How can we know that there was a time when no universe, no trace of being, existed? The hypothesis that the earth and solar system and the stars and nebulae did not always exist is tenable, but the assumption that their component elements once did not exist and then came into existence seems hardly reasonable.

It seems more reasonable to suppose the contrary, namely the pre-existence of the atoms from whose fusion the sun emerged, though we do not know for certain what factors caused the fusion and emergence. This hypothesis is supported by observations which show a continual process of stars emerging and becoming extinguished. Coming into being is accordingly not genesis of substance but change of form. In that case argument for the existence of a Creator becomes difficult.

Another problem which arises if we assume that the universe did not exist until it was created by Almighty God is the purpose of its creation. However much we exert and exalt our minds, we cannot find answers to the two questions: why did not the universe exist before, and why did God choose to create it? Pure reason is as powerless to solve these problems as it is to prove or disprove the existence of the Creator.

In this confusion, one thing seems certain to our earth-bound minds. We humans are not, or do not wish to be, in the same category as other terrestrial animals. Humans can think, and since the earliest remembered times they have supposed that there must be a person who started and controls the system and exerts favourable and unfavourable influences. This idea, whether prompted by reasoning or by pride in distinction from other animals, impelled humans to construct religions.

In all societies, from the most primitive to the most advanced, religious beliefs have arisen and remain strong. Among primitive peoples they are stained with superstition and illusion. Among advanced peoples they have acquired moral and social aspects under the influence of great thinkers, whose teachings eventually led those peoples to adopt more civilized and equitable ways of life.

These great men came forth in the roles of legislators, reformers, or philosophers, such as Hammurabi, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, and Plato. Among the Semitic peoples they always came forth as prophets, that is to say as self-proclaimed spokesmen for God.

Moses walked up Mount Sinai, brought down tablets, and enacted laws to reform the ways of the Children of Israel. Jesus, finding the Jews in the grip of vanity and false piety, arose to teach better morals. He likened God to a loving father, and either spoke of himself as son of that celestial father or was so described by his disciples; another possibility is that the four Gospels distort or inflate what he said.

Six centuries later Mohammad arose in the Hejaz and appealed for reform. How did he differ from Moses and Jesus? Simple-minded believers make miraculous action the criterion of prophethood. Islamic writers therefore ascribed hundreds, indeed thousands, of miracles to Mohammad. More remarkable than this is the attitude of a modern Christian Arab scholar named Haddad. In his learned and well researched book The Qur’an and the Bible, he quotes numerous Qur’anic passages as evidence that no miracles were ever performed by Mohammad, and then naively states' that miracles are proofs of prophethood and that the miracles of Jesus and Moses prove that they were prophets. All the cited miracles fall into the category of unverifiable imaginings or hallucinations. If Jesus had really restored life to a dead human body, no one in the contemporary Jewish community would have hesitated to bow down to him and believe in him. If God had wanted all the people to believe in one of His servants and to benefit from that person's teachings, surely it would have been simpler and wiser for God to make all the people good, or to endow that person with power over the people's minds rather than with powers to resurrect the dead, stop the flow of rivers, prevent fire from burning, and the like.

The problem of prophethood must therefore be approached from another angle. It should be seen as a sort of mental and spiritual genius peculiar to an extraordinary individual.

Among military leaders there have been individuals such as Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, Nader, and Napoleon who had a genius for planning and winning wars, though they had nothing to teach to their fellowmen. In the fields of science and art, men such as Aristotle, Ebn e Sina (Avicenna), Nasir od-Din Tusi, Edison, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Homer, Ferdowsi, Abul-Ala o1-Ma'arri, Hafez, and hundreds of others have brightened the course of civilization with discoveries, inventions, and masterpieces of art and thought. Why should not a human being possess similar genius in the spiritual field? There are no rational grounds to preclude the emergence of individuals who in the depths of their minds conceive the idea of the Absolute Being and by force of meditation gradually attain a sort of discovery or revelation which moves them to teach and guide others.

A process of this kind had begun in Mohammad's mind during his childhood and had prompted Him to meet and talk with Christian monks and priests on his Syrian journey instead of spending all his time on commercial business. On his way back, through the lands of Medyan and the Ad and Thamud, he had heard the legends of the local people. In Mecca itself he had exchanged visits with followers of the scriptural religions. He had sat for hours in Jabr's shop near the hill of Marwa, and had been in constant touch with Khadija's cousin Waraqa b. Nawfal; who is said to have translated a part of the New Testament into Arabic. All these experiences are likely to have turned the ever-present disquiet in his inner mind into turmoil.

There is a reference in the Qur’an to Mohammad's long arid frequent talks with Jabr. The Qorayshites alleged that Mohammad had learned the words of the Qur’an from Jabr, who was a foreigner. The answer is given in verse 105 of sura 16 (on"'"Nahl): "And We know that they say, 'It is only a human who is teaching him.' The speech of the person at whom they hint is outlandish, whereas this is clear Arabic speech." The biographies of the Prophet mention several other followers of the scriptures and possessors of knowledge with whom he exchanged visits before the start of his mission, e.g. A'esh, the sage of the Howayteb tribe, Salman ol-Farsi, and Belal the Abyssinian. Abu Bakr also had discussions with him at that time and agreed with him.

From the accounts of Mohammad's appointment given in the biographies and certain Hadiths, and from the evidence of certain Qur’anic verses, arty thoughtful student can penetrate to the facts. All these sources indicate that a process of inner turmoil and absorption in an idea culminated in Mohammad's seeing an apparition, which was revealed in the first five verses of sura 96 (ol-Alaq): "Recite in the name of your Lord who created, created mankind from a clot of blood! Recite! And your Lord is bounteous, He who taught by the pen, taught mankind what they did not know."

The Prophet Mohammad at the time of his appointment was forty years old, of medium stature, with a pale complexion tending to redness, black hair, and black eyes. He seldom joked and laughed; and whenever he laughed he held his hand over his mouth. He walked with a heavy and unhurried tread, and never looked to one side or the other. Although it seems probable, on the evidence of certain passages, that he had taken part in some of his community's ritual ceremonies, he had never joined in the amusements of the Qorayshite youths or in any sort of frivolity. He had won a reputation, even among his adversaries, for honesty. Since his release from pecuniary worries through. his marriage to Khadija, he had devoted much time to spiritual matters. Like most of the hanifs, he regarded Abraham as the perfect model of devotion to God, and he of course loathed his own people's idolatry. In the opinion of Taha Hosayn, the majority of the Qoraysh chiefs had really ceased to believe in the idols of the Ka'ba, but were trying to maintain a show of respect because idolatry still prevailed among the Bedouin and the cult brought them financial and social advantages.

Mohammad was careful and deliberate in his use of words. He was shy, according to one source "shier than a young virgin." His eloquence was powerful and always free from tautology and prolixity. He had long hair covering almost half of his ears and he usually wore a white headdress. He usually sprinkled perfume on his hair and beard. He was temperamentally disposed to modesty and kindness. When he shook hands with someone, he never withdrew his own hand first. He personally mended his clothes and shoes. He mixed with subordinates and once accepted an invitation from a slave, with whom he sat on the ground and ate dates. When preaching he sometimes raised his voice, particularly when condemning evil deeds, and at such times his eyes reddened and his face flushed.

Another of Mohammad's qualities was courage. During battles he leaned on a bow and heartened the Moslems to fight. At times when fear of the enemy gripped the warriors of Islam, he walked to the fore and came closer to the enemy than anyone else. Despite this, he only once killed with his own hand, and that was when he parried an assault with a fatal blow.

The following are a few of his reported sayings:

"If a person associates with a wrongdoer whom he knows to be a wrongdoer, that person is not a Moslem."
"If a person fills his stomach when there is someone hungry nearby, that person is not a Moslem."
"Good morals are one half of religion."
"The best jehad (holy war) is to say a word of truth to a wrongdoer."
"The strongest of you are those who control their anger."

HIS APPOINTMENT

Mount Hera is a rocky, arid height three miles north-east of Mecca. On its almost inaccessible slopes are some caves to which ascetic hanifs used to make their way for spells of retreat and solitary meditation.

Mohammad had been doing this for some time. A strong desire to get away from the din of life and be alone had often drawn him to the place. Sometimes he took a stock of food and did not come home until it was finished; sometimes he went in the early morning and came home in the evening.

One day, in the year 610, when Mohammad was due back in the evening, he did not come, and Khadija grew anxious and sent someone to search for him; but after a while Mohammad appeared in the doorway, trembling and looking pale. Then he said, "Wrap me up!" They did so. Later, when his strength returned and the agitation passed, he told Khadija about the experience which had brought him to this state.

The following account by A'esha {Ayesha} is quoted in the reliable Hadith collections of Bokhari, Moslem b. ol-Hajjaj, Abu Da'ud ot-Tayialesi, Ebn Abd ol-Barr, Nowayri, and Ebn Sayyed on-Nas, and in the Mosnad (Compilation) of the famous theologian Ahmad b. Hanbal (164/780-241/855):

"The start of the revelation was a holy vision as bright as daybreak which came to the Prophet. At sunset on a day which he had spent in the cave on Mount Hera, an angel appeared before him and said to him, 'Recite!' The Prophet answered, 'I cannot recite.’"²^l According to this account, Mohammad described his experience to Khadija in these words:

"He (the angel) took me and pressed me down so hard that it took away my strength. When I revived, he again said 'Recite!' and I repeated 'I cannot recite.' He again pressed me down until I became powerless, and then released me and said, for the third time, 'Recite!' Again 1 repeated, 'I cannot.' Once more he pressed me down and released me. Then he said 'Recite in the name of your Lord who created, created mankind from a clot of blood! Recite! And your Lord is bounteous, He who taught by the pen, taught mankind what they did not know.' Then the angel vanished, and I revived again and walked home." Later Mohammad told Khadija that he had been in fear for his life. How should these words be interpreted? What had caused him to become so afraid? Had he supposed that he was losing his senses, that he had been touched by sorcery or stricken by an incurable sickness? Some such cause can be inferred from Khadija's consoling reply: "The Lord would never deprive you of His care when you are so honest, so good to the poor, so hospitable, so affectionate to your family, and so helpful to the afflicted."

After this conversation and Mohammad's recovery, Khadija went out of the house in haste to tell Waraqa b. Nawfal what had happened. Always a loather of the Meccan idolatry, Waraqa had long been urging Mohammad to shun Qorayshite follies and to practice spiritual meditations. He told Khadija, "Probably this event shows that God cares for him and has appointed him to guide his people."

There is nothing of the supernatural in A'esha's account. Everything in it is reconcilable with the general findings of psychology.

A strong wish can make its object appear real and concrete. Formed in nearly thirty years of meditation, strengthened by contacts with followers of the scriptural religions, and supercharged by ascetic retreats to Mount Hera, Mohammad's wish acquired the shape of a vision or, in mystic terminology, an illumination. In personified form, a call for action rang out from the depths of his subconscious mind. Fear of taking action weighed so heavily on him as to cause prostration and fainting. No other explanation of the angel's pressing him until he became powerless is conceivable. The angel personified the aspiration long latent in the depths of his inner being.

This analysis, though hypothetical, is supported by another report, according to which Mohammad told Khadija: "While I was sleeping, he (the angel) brought to me a piece of brocade {heavy cloth with a raised design often of gold or silver threads}, in which there was a book, and said 'Recite!' I awoke, and a book seemed to have taken shape in my heart." The fatigue of a day of intense meditation sent him into a trance-like sleep in which his latent aspiration came to light, but the task daunted him.

In A'esha's account, the wording is as follows: "Then God's Apostle returned with his heart throbbing. He went to Khadija and said, 'Wrap me up!' They kept him wrapped up until the trembling ceased." His trembling had evidently been induced by extreme fear or anguish. This condition is known to occur in persons who lead a double life - an ordinary life combined with a shadowy, phantom-filled, and shoreless inner life.

After this event, Mohammad twice again went into retreat in the cave on Mount Hera; but now no vision came, no angel appeared, no voice rang out.

Was the whole experience no more than a dream and a delusion? Were the message of appointment to prophethood and the prediction ofWaraqa b. Nawfal vain talk? From then onward corrosive doubt beset Mohammad's mind and so nearly prevailed that he more than once thought of suicide, of throwing himself over a cliff; but Waraqa and Khadija were always able to calm him and give him hope.

The length of the period in which Mohammad received no message and heard no voice from the unseen (in Islamic historical terminology, the interruption of the revelation) is given in different accounts as three days, three months, or three years. It lasted until sura 74 (ol-Moddather) came down. Then the revelation again ceased.

The cause of the interruption of the revelation is not difficult to find. After the vision or illumination, the burning thirst of his questing soul subsided. The manifestation of his long cherished inner wish quenched the flames. Naturally doubt and despair set in. Further meditation was necessary to rekindle the fire. Only then could the inner Mohammad hidden under his outwardly dormant self wake and stir again.

A'esha's factual account of the Prophet's appointment has been quoted above. Not much more than a century after his death, reports of a very different type were in circulation. By that time fancy had begun to intrude upon fact, and as the years advanced myth-making and miracle-mongering became more and more widespread and extravagant. Ebn Es-haq's biography of the Prophet, which survives in the recension {a critical revision of a text} of Ebn Hesham, has already been mentioned. Ebn Es-haq died in 150/767 and wrote sometime before that date. A few lines from the work will be quoted to give objective readers food for thought:

"In the days before the appointment, whenever Mohammad walked beyond the houses of Mecca to relieve nature's demands, and as soon as the houses disappeared behind the bends in the path, a voice saying 'Peace upon you, O Apostle of God!' rang out from every rock and tree that he passed. But when the Apostle looked to one side or the other, he did not see anybody. There were only rocks and trees around him." Rocks are of course inanimate, and trees do not have vocal cords with which to utter feelings and thoughts. The story is so repugnant to reason that many later theologians and writers on the life of the Prophet disbelieved it and maintained that the voices were voices of angels. It never occurred to their brains that the voice might have been the voice of Mohammad's own soul. Years of meditation and absorption in an idea naturally tend to concretize that idea. In a totally committed mind, the idea might well resound like a voice.

In any case, these theologians who, in their anxiety not to impugn Ebn Hesham's veracity, ascribed the voices to angels, failed to discern the obvious corollary of their assertion. If angels had greeted the Prophet, surely they would have greeted him publicly. In that case, all the people would have believed in him, and God's purpose of bringing the Arabs to Islam would have been fulfilled without any trouble. ::" Admittedly theologians in that phase of history could not be expected to recognise that the voice (if genuine) was the voice of Mohammad's own soul; but they might surely have given some thought to another question. If the Prophet had heard such a voice when he was out of the town and alone, how could anyone else have known about it? He did not talk about it himself; there is no authenticated and reliable Hadith on the subject. Clearly it was a figment of the imaginations of myth-makers and miracle-mongers.

Ebn Es-haq did not tell lies in the sense of deliberately concocting untruths. He must have heard the story from someone and have accepted it unquestioningly because it accorded with his own faith and feelings. He probably never asked his informant or himself whether any other people had heard the rocks and trees greet the Prophet or whether there was any evidence that the Prophet himself ever claimed to have heard them. The only recorded words of Mohammad about his appointment are in A'esha's account, which has been quoted above.

Human beings tend to be captive to their acquired beliefs and submissive to their bodily appetites and instincts. When this is the case, their rational faculty is dimmed. Instead of thinking clearly, they ignore facts which may dent their convictions or conflict with their wishes, and grasp at straws which give semblances of reality to their suppositions and hopes. This tendency has been the root cause of the spread of superstitions and illusions.

AFTER HIS APPOINTMENT

The start of the preaching of Islam cannot be precisely dated, because the revelation was interrupted for an uncertain length of time after the notice of appointment given to Mohammad, when he was forty years old, in the first five verses of sura96. Moreover the preaching was for some time conducted in secret and among a restricted circle. The seven, or ten, suras next revealed aftrr.sura96 indicate that the preaching encountered derision and rejection and that Mohammad had moods of hesitancy and irresolution.' Unfortunately the Qur’an was badly edited and its contens were very obtusely arranged. All students of the Qur’an wonder why the editors did not use the natural and logical method of ordering by date of revelation, as in Ali b. Abi Taleb's lost copy of the text. This would have made the contents more meaningful and given future generations a better understanding of the rise of Islam and the inspirations and thoughts of its founder.

The initiative in the matter of editing the Qur’an came from Omar. He went to see Abu Bakr after the latter had become caliph, and argued that the Qur’an ought to. Be collected and arranged because too many disagreements over wordings and readings had arisen. The matter was urgent because animals had devoured copies on palm-fronds belonging to some of the Prophet's companions slain ,in battle at Yamama. Abu Bakr demurred on the ground that if editing had been necessary, the Prophet would have taken action during, his lifetime; but on Omar's insistence, Zayd b. Thabet, the last of the scribes who had written down the revelations, was summoned and instructed to collect the Qur’an. At a later date, when Omar had become caliph, Othman was put in charge of the work. He and his assistants ordered the suras according to their lengths and included many Meccan verses in Madinan suras and Madinan verses in Meccan suras. .

Study of thematic continuities, historical contexts and mentioned events has enabled Moslem and European.scholars particularly Th. Nöldeke, to attempt to rearrange the contents of the Qur’an roughly in accordance with the meanings of the verses and the dates of revelation of the suras.²²

In any case, the early Meccan suras tell a good deal about: the struggles of Islam in its first years. In sura 93 (od-Doha), after two invocations, come the words "Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor taken a dislike to you. The ending will be happier for you than the beginning. Your Lord will give to you, and you will be gladdened. Did not He find you orphaned and shelter you, find you astray and guide you, find you dependent make you self supporting?" "What had happened that God should thus console and encourage Mohammad? Did this sura, with its third verse "Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor taken a dislike to you," come down at the end of the period of interruption of the revelation? That is how it is interpreted in the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn. If the interpretation is correct, sura 93 must be chronologically the second sura of the Qur’an, though it is generally assigned to the eleventh place. The wording of sura 93 suggests that it was sent down to Mohammad to console and encourage him in the face of rejection by adversaries. Likewise in the first two verses of the immediately following sura 94 (ol-Ensherah), which is reputed to be chronologically the twelfth, God asks, "Have not We cheered your heart and relieved you of your burden?" These and the remaining verses have virtually the same import as the preceding sura, and must likewise have been sent down to dispel Mohammad's anxiety and strengthen his resolve. From the objective viewpoint of psychology, the two suras may be interpreted as expressions of the will and hope in Mohammad's own inner mind.

After preaching Islam in secret and among a small circle for some time, Mohammad received a new command from God in verse 214 of sura 26 (osh-Sho'ara): "And warn your tribe, your nearest kin!" He summoned the Qoraysh chiefs to a meeting on the hill of Sara, and when all were assembled, besought them to embrace Islam. From their midst Abu Lahab stood up and shouted angrily, "Perish you, Mohammad! Did you invite us here for this?" The answer to Abu Lahab's challenge came in verse 1 of sura III (ol-Masad), in which the same Arabic word meaning "perish" appears: "Perish Abu Lahab's hands, and may he (himself) perish!" Abu Lahab was proud of his wealth and children. God said, "His wealth will not give him security, nor will the gains that he has made. He will roast in a flaming fire" (verses 2 and 3). Nor would his wife, Omm Jomayyel, who had strewn thorns in the Prophet's path, be left unpunished: "And his wife, the carrier of the firewood sticks, will have a rope of palm fiber on her neck."

Study of the events of the thirteen years after the appointment, and above all study of the Meccan suras, brings to light the epic of a man who stood alone against his tribe and stopped at nothing in his zeal to convince and overcome them. He even sent some of his followers to Abyssinia in quest of help from that country's ruler, the Negus. He never flinched before mockery and slander. When ol-As b. Wa'el derided the Prophet (after the death of his son Qasem) for having no heir, verse 3 of sura 108 (ol-Kawthar) came down: "It is your derider who is sterile."

During the pilgrimage season, whenever Mohammad approached the chiefs of tribes visiting the Ka'ba and invited them to embrace Islam, his influential uncle Abu Lahab used to follow him and say to them before his face, "This nephew of mine is mad.So take no notice of what he says!"

Sura 52 (ol-Tur), which is one of the most vivid and melodious Meccan suras, gives glimpses of Mohammad's disputation with his compatriots: "So remind (them)! By your Lord's grace, you are not a fortune-teller and are not mad. Or if they say, 'He is a poet, we shall wait and see what the uncertainty of fate has (in store) for him,' answer, 'Wait and see! I shall be one of those waiting with you (verses 29-31). "Or if they say, 'He has invented it' …let them bring a report like it if they are truthful'" (verses 33-34). Further examples of the disputation and of Mohammad's forcefulness In speech and argument are to be found in sura 20 (Taha).

Verses 5-9 of sura 25 (ol-Forqan) make clear what sort of accusation was hurled at Mohammad: "The unbelievers have said, 'This is only a lie which he fabricated and in which other people helped him.' They have committed wrong and falsehood. And they have said, 'It is fables of the ancients which he caused to be written down. They were being dictated for him in the morning and the evening.' Answer, 'It has been sent down by Him who knows the secret in heaven and on earth, and is forgiving and merciful.' And they have said, 'What is the matter with this apostle that he eats meals and walks through the bazaars? Why has not an angel been sent down to him to be a warner with him? Why is no treasure being thrown to him, or why does not he have a garden from which to eat?' And the wrongdoers have said, 'You are only following a man who has been touched by sorcery.'"

Many passages in the Meccan suras depict the contention and the charges against Mohammad. He was said to be a madman possessed by genies, a sorcerer, and an ally of Satan. The Qor'anic verses were said to be a sorcerer's incantations and spells. Sometimes it was said that his utterances must have been prompted by others because he did not know how to read and write. Milder critics said that he was a visionary obsessed with his wild dreams, or a poet expressing his dreams and notions in rhymed prose:

Also to be found among the Meccan suras are verses which diverge from the main theme of disputation. They indicate that moods of despair beset Mohammad and sometimes weakened his resolve. It can be inferred that the idea of conciliating his opponents came to him during such a mood. Perhaps in return for an offer of friendship he might reach some sort of compromise with the polytheists. Verses 75-77 of sura 17 (ol-Esra) refer to this idea: "They nearly tempted you away from what We have revealed to you, (hoping) that you might fabricate other (ones) against Us. Then they would indeed have accepted you as a friend. And if We had not strengthened you, you might almost have inclined to them a little. In that case We would have made you taste double (punishment) in life and double (punishment) in death. You would not have found a helper against Us then."

These three verses require careful study. Was there really a time when Mohammad felt worn out by the stubborn opposition of the Qorayshites and therefore thought of compromise or at least hoped for fraternization? Perhaps... Human nature being what it is, such a reaction to difficulties and poor prospects would not be improbable. Furthermore certain Qur’an-commentators state that the occasion of the revelation of these verses was an incident - the affair of the cranes - which is reported in many of the biographies and stories of the Prophet.

According to these accounts, the Prophet one day recited sura 53 (on-Najm) to some Qorayshites at a place near the Ka'ba. This beautiful sura is a fine example of his spiritual fervour and persuasive force. While he was speaking about his mission and the truth of his claim, the messenger angel brought an inspiration down to him, and he then mentioned the famous idols of the Arabs, asking "Have you thought about Lat and Ozza? And Manat, the third one, the other one?" (sura 53, verses 19 and 20). The tone is almost contemptuous, implying that the idols are useless. After these verses came two more verses, which were excised from most of the early copies of the Qur’an because it was thought that Satan put them into the Prophet's mouth and that the Prophet regretted having uttered them: "Those are the cranes aloft. So their intercession may be hoped for." Then he knelt down. The Qorayshite listeners also knelt down after seeing Mohammad make this gesture of respect to the three goddesses and hearing him acknowledge their ability to intercede or mediate.

Believers in the Prophet's absolute infallibility deny the possibility of any occurrence inconsistent with that principle. They therefore treated the story as a fabrication and went so far as to excise the two sentences from the Qur’an. Nevertheless, the evidence given in well-attested reports and in the interpretations of certain commentators makes it likely that the incident occurred.

The two irreproachably pious authors of the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn consider it to have been the occasion of the revelation of verse 51 of sura 22 (ol-Hajj), which they interpret as a sort of divine consolation sent down to relieve the Prophet of the bitter remorse which he felt after his utterance of the two sentences. This verse reassures the Prophet as follows: "We never sent an apostle or prophet before you without Satan's casting something into his hope when he hoped. But God annuls what Satan casts. Then God confirms His signs. And God is (all-)knowing,(all-)wise." { And We did not send before you any messenger or prophet, but when he desired, the Satan made a suggestion respecting his desire; but God annuls that which the Satan casts, then does God establish His communications, and God is (all-)Knowing, (all-)Wise}

The Qur’an contains other passages with the same purport, and in several contexts makes it clear that the Prophet, was not infallible. Some of the early scholars of Islam considered the Prophet to have been infallible only in the announcement of .his prophetic mission. Given that the Prophet was not infallible, the incident, can be explained without difficulty. Mohammad, when feeling wearied by the stubbornness of the opposition, saw signs of a wish for tolerance and friendliness on the faces of his listeners and then said a few soothing words to them. They were pleased, and together with Mohammad they knelt down. Soon afterward, however, when the crowd had dispersed and the episode was over, a voice rang out in the depths of Mohammad's soul to warn him against such appeasement and to remind him that for more than thirty years he had believed in One God and deplored his people's degrading polytheism. Then verses 75-77 of sura 17 successively came down to him. Their content fully accords with this hypothetical interpretation. The only other conceivable hypothesis would be that the whole incident was staged, in other words that Mohammad wanted to give the pagan Qorayshites to understand that although he had been ready for conciliation and friendship, God had forbidden him. Since Mohammad had a reputation for truthfulness and honesty, such a hypothesis would scarcely be credible. {Dashti’s original text cites sura 17 verses 73-75 which is more appropriate, it is possible that the translator has made a mistake here: [Yusufali 17:73] And their purpose was to tempt thee away from that which We had revealed unto thee, to substitute in our name something quite different; (in that case), behold! they would certainly have made thee (their) friend! [Yusufali 17:74] And had We not given thee strength, thou wouldst nearly have inclined to them a little.[Yusufali 17:75] In that case We should have made thee taste an equal portion (of punishment) in this life, and an equal portion in death: and moreover thou wouldst have found none to help thee against Us! [Yusufali 17:76] Their purpose was to scare thee off the land, in order to expel thee; but in that case they would not have stayed (therein) after thee, except for a little while.[Yusufali 17:77] (This was Our) way with the messengers We sent before thee: thou wilt find no change in Our ways.

CHAPTER II

The Religion of Islam

THE SETTING

Religion in a meaningful sense has never taken firm root among the Bedouin Arabs, who even today show little interest in spiritual and metaphysical matters. Living in an inhospitable land, they were poor and had no stable social institutions apart from a few customs and inhibitions. In temperament they were volatile, being quickly moved, for example, to ecstasy or rage by a verse of poetry; self-centred and vain, being always eager to boast about their idiosyncrasies, including their weak points and even their crimes and cruelties; and so ignorant that they were easy prey to illusion and superstition, being ready to see a demon lurking under every stone or tree. The aridity of their land had debarred them from agriculture, which was the basis of human civilization. According to one of their sayings, a cow's tail symbolized disgrace and a horse's forehead glory. Their only aim in life was to satisfy their immediate physical needs, and their only reason for praying to idols was desire for help in the pursuit of that aim. Aggression was normal and acceptable, provided of course that the other side was not well armed or prepared for self-defence. Often an act of violence was extolled and made the subject of a heroic poem. In cases of abduction of another man's wife, the Bedouin poets lacked any sense of chivalry; they had no scruples about disclosing her secrets, describing her embarrassment, and assessing her looks.

In the minds of these people, a god was an artificial and conventional being. They did not believe in a god's objective and independent existence. To compete with a tribe possessing a famous idol, they would invent and venerate another idol for their own benefit. The Ka'ba was an important idol-temple, much visited by Bedouin tribesmen and greatly respected as a holy place.

For this reason Abd od-Dar b. Hoday b of the Johayna tribe urged his people to build an equally fine temple in the Hawra district so that the Bedouin might be drawn to it instead of the Ka'ba. When his people rejected the proposal as too ambitious and risky, they were derided in a satirical poem preserved in the Tankis ol-Asnam²³ of Hesham b. Mohammad ol-Kalbi {The Book of Idols} (ca.120/737-204/819 or 206/821), a reliable early work which vividly portrays the religious ideas of the pagan Arabs. Some stories from it are quoted below as examples of their mentality; "When Abraha (the Christian ruler of the Yemen after the Abyssinian conquest in the middle of the 6th century) had built a church called the Qelis of stone and expensive timber at San'a, he swore not to relax his grip on the Arabs until they abandoned the Ka'ba and visited this church instead. So an Arab chief sent some men one night to defile the Qelis with dirt and excrement." "The son of a murdered man wanted to avenge his father, but first went to consult an idol called Dhu'l-Khalasa. By means of divining arrows he asked whether he should track down his father's killer or not. The prognostic was negative, which meant that Dhu’l-Khalasa advised against this course. The Arab then turned his back on Dhu'l-Khalasa, saying 'If your father had been murdered like mine, you would never have forbidden me to avenge my father.' In the words of a pre-Islamic poet, 'If you had been wronged like me, O Dhu'l-Khalasa, if your old man was in the grave like mine, you would not forbid killing enemies by stealth." ²⁴ While other primitive peoples venerated the sun and moon and stars, the Bedouin Arabs were obsessed with stones and had a custom of circumambulating them. At every halt on a journey across the desert, an Arab traveller's first action was to find four stones; he would put the nicest one on the ground and walk around it, and then use the three others as supports for his cooking pot. Sacrificial slaughter of sheep, goats, and camels had to be done in front of a stone and in such a way that the blood would stain the stone red.

It has already been said that the ancient Arabs were not serious in their idolatry, but merely ignorant and credulous. In this connection another story from the Tankis ol-Asnam is worth quoting; "An Arab took his camels to an idol called Sa'd to get them blessed. The camels shied away from the stone, which was stained red with the blood of sacrificed animals. This annoyed the Arab so much that he threw a pebble at the idol's head, shouting 'May you be deprived of the blessing of the people's praise!' The incident is recalled in these verses: ²⁵

'We came to Sa'd to collect our fortunes.

But Sa'd dissipated them. So we shall have nothing to do with Sa'd.

Is not Sa'd just a stone on a rise in the ground?

He cannot be asked to lead astray or to guide aright.'”

A similar impression of the Bedouin character emerges from study of the events of the first years of the Prophet's career at Madina. The tribes of the neighbouring districts were drawn to the Moslems by fear or by hope of booty, but shied away or switched to the other side whenever the Moslems suffered a reverse such as the defeat at Mount Ohod. Mohammad was well aware of their mentality and ways. The subject frequently comes up in Qur’anic verses and above all in sura 9 (ol-Tawba), which is chronologically the last sura of the Qur’an and may be regarded as the Prophet's testament: "The Bedouin Arabs are the most stubborn in unbelief and hypocrisy, and the most likely to ignore the limits of what God has revealed to His Apostle" (verse 98). For this reason they were wishing that God "might have revealed it to some non-Arab" (sura 26, osh-Sho'ara, verse 198). At least in the greater part of Arabia, superstition was endemic and prayers were addressed to idols for help in meeting normal and casual needs.

This was not the case in the Hejaz, however, or at least not at Mecca and Yathreb (known after the heira as Madina). The inhabitants of those two towns, particularly Yathreb, had been influenced by the beliefs of Jews and Christians. The word Allah, meaning The God, was in use among them. They considered themselves to be descendants of Abraham, and were more or less acquainted with the legends of the Children of Israel and stories of the Old Testament. The story of Adam and Satan was generally known to them. They believed in the existence of angels and imagined them to be daughters - a fallacy to which the Qur’an several times alludes, e.g. sura 53 (on-Nairn), verse 21: "Do you have males (i.e. sons) and does He have females?" Furthermore these town-dwellers had adopted several Jewish practices such as circumcision, ritual ablution, avoidance of menstruating women, and observance of a rest-day, for which they chose Friday instead of Saturday. . .

Thus in the Hejaz the preaching of Islam was not wholly novel or alien to the social environment. Not only were there some clear-thinking individuals who shunned idolatry; the idolaters themselves had begun to see glimmers of light. This also is mentioned several times in the Qur’an, e.g. in sura 43 (oz'-Zokhrof), verse 87: "And if you ask them who created them, they say Allah" in sura 29 (ol-Ankabut), verse 61: "And if you ask them who created the heavens and the earth and subdued the sun and the moon, they say Allah."

The Qorayshite polytheists saw their idols as symbols of forces and as means of approach to the deity. This concept is mentioned in sura 39 (oz-Zomar), verse 4: "And those who choose friends other than Him say, 'We only worship them so that they may bring us nearer to Allah.'"

Nevertheless Islam did not prosper at Mecca. After thirteen years of the Prophet Mohammad's preaching, and after the revelation of the wonderful Meccan suras, so little success was achieved that the number of the converts in the town is generally reckoned at no more than one hundred. Mohammad's constant struggle during every day and night of those thirteen years failed to break the tenacious resistance of the Qorayshites. Among those whom he won over to Islam were a few men of substance such as Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, Hamza b. Abd ol-Mottaleb, Abd or-Rahman b. Awf, and Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas. The rest were mostly either from the lower class or not wealthy, and therefore had no prestige and influence in Meccan society.

Waraqa b. Nawfal, who did not formally become a Moslem but always supported Mohammad, advised him to win over Abu Bakr because Abu Bakr was a highly respected man whose acceptance of the faith would help to advance the cause. It was because of Abu Bakr's conversion that Othman b. Affan, Abd or-Rahman b. Awf, Talha b. Obaydollah, Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas, and Zopayrb. ol-Awwam became Moslems. .

In the preaching of Islam an essential factor was the Prophet Mohammad's perseverance, which in itself is evidence of his fidelity to his lofty aim. He was never deflected by inducements, threats, taunts, or persecutions of his un-influential followers. At the same time Mohammad was resourceful and ready to use all available means. In the fifth year of his mission he sent one of his followers to Abyssinia in the hope that the Christian king of that country would make some move to help a man who had revolted against idolatry. This alarmed the Qoraysh chiefs, who sent a delegation to the Negus in the hope of persuading him to ignore the Moslem emigrants and hand them over as undesirables and rebels.

In the early phase of the preaching of Islam, the Qorayshites probably felt little concern and were content to do no more than scoff at Mohammad and his claim. They called him a madman, a poet, a ranter, a fortune-teller, a man possessed by genies or in league with Satan. As time went on, however, Mohammad's persistence and his success in winning over some respected notables began to make them anxious. The reasons for the gradual exacerbation of Qorayshite hostility to the Prophet are clear. Quite correctly the Qoraysh chiefs reckoned that if the Prophet's cause won success, their own livelihood would be undermined. The Ka'ba was the pilgrimage centre of the Bedouin tribes, drawing thousands every year. It had made Mecca the meeting place of Arab poets and orators, and had given it an annual fair and a bazaar frequented by people from all over Arabia. The livelihood of the Meccans and the prestige of the Qoraysh chiefs depended on this coming and going. The Bedouin came to visit the Ka'ba, which was an idol-temple. If the new religion required destruction of the idols, they would not come any more.

Fifteen years later, when Islam had triumphed, the Moslems of Mecca were similarly anxious about their livelihood. Qur’anic verses, revealed to the Prophet after his conquest of the town in 8/630, expressly debarred polytheists from the Ka'ba. The anxiety was allayed by the revelation of verse 28 of sura 9 (ol-Tawba): "If you fear impoverishment, God will enrich you from His bounty," i.e. will compensate you for the loss of business.

When the Qoraysh chiefs observed Mohammad's persistence in his preaching, and above all became better aware of the danger which it posed, they proceeded to more positive steps. They first approached the now elderly Abu Taleb, whose advice would in their reckoning be likely to influence his nephew. They asked him to make Mohammad stop preaching, and promised in return to appoint Mohammad to a post at the Ka'ba. After Abu Taleb's failure to dissuade his nephew from preaching, almost all the Qoraysh chiefs decided to boycott the Banu Hashem. For some time members of the Hashemite clan suffered great hardship from {P# 37} the ban on business with them, until finally certain individuals, moved by Arab feelings of honour, helped them out of their predicament.

After this affair, and especially after Abu Taleb's death, no hope of silencing Mohammad remained. The Qoraysh chiefs then resolved on drastic action. Three possible courses lay open: to imprison him, to exile him, or to kill him. From their discussion of these alternatives they concluded that killing Mohammad would be the wisest course provided that the hands of all should be stained with his blood and that no particular clan should be exposed to Hashemite vengeance. This plan was conceived in the twelfth or thirteenth year of Mohammad's mission. It prompted his decision to leave Mecca and emigrate to Madina.

MIRACLES

Many Iranians have been reared on a diet of myth and are ready to believe that any emamzada²⁶ {local saints, usually scions of Mohammad or Ali} of however doubtful ancestry, can at every moment perform a miracle. If they were to read the Qur’an, they would be surprised to find no report of a miracle in it at all.

They would learn from twenty or more Qur’anic passages that whenever the Prophet Mohammad was asked by doubters to perform a miracle, he either stayed silent or said that he would not do so because he was a human being like any other, with no function except to communicate, to be a "bringer of good news and an admonisher." The most explicit of these passages is in sura 17 (ol-Esra), verses 92-95: "And they have said, 'We shall not believe you until you make a spring gush from the earth for us, or have a garden of palms and vines and make rivers gush from the midst of it, or cause the sky to drop on us in pieces as you claim (will happen), or bring God and the angels as a guarantee, or have a house adorned with gold, or ascend to heaven; and we shall not believe in your ascension until you bring down a written document for us to read.' Say (to them), 'Glory be to my Lord! Am I anything but a human, a messenger?' "

In the next two verses (96 and 97), surprise at the demands of these doubters is expressed: "And the only thing that stopped the people from believing, when the guidance came to them, was that they said, 'Has God sent a human as a messenger?' Say (to them), {P# 38} 'If there were angels walking safely on the earth, We would send an angel from heaven down to them as a messenger.'"

These two verses are entirely intelligible and logical. From among the people a man who could see and think more clearly had come forth and begun to show them the absurdity and folly of their superstitious beliefs and dissuade them from cruel and harmful customs. The soundness and lucidity of his advice are beyond question. The reason for the growth of opposition to him is also plain. Most of the people were strongly attached to habits of thought and behaviour, however stupid, which had been inculcated into them since childhood. The same phenomenon is all too apparent in the supposedly rational and enlightened twentieth century. All the more intelligible is the reluctance of the people in that distant age to follow a man bent on upsetting their ancestral ways. When he claimed to speak on God's behalf, it was only natural that they should demand proof, because he himself had acknowledged various miracles of past prophets, repeating statements of followers of various religions about their prophets. There is a Persian saying to the effect that praise of another's ability implies one's own inability. The Qorayshites thought that if Mohammad's turn had come, he too ought to perform a visible miracle. They were not willing to obey an equal. For this reason they were asking (sura 25, ol-Forqan, verses 8 and 9), "'What is the matter with this apostle that he eats meals and walks through the bazaars? Why has not an angel been sent down to him to be a warner with him? Why is no treasure being thrown to him, or why does not he have a garden from which to eat?' And the wrongdoers have said, 'You are only following a man who has been touched by sorcery.'"

The Prophet Mohammad did not reply to these demands and carping criticisms. In the face of all the clamour for a miracle, he remained silent. A little later there is a reference to one of the reproaches when God assures him (in verse 22 of the same sura 25), "Every apostle whom We sent before you ate meals and walked through bazaars." The theme recurs in sura 15 (ol-Hejr), verses 6 and 7: "And they said, 'O man to whom the reminder (i.e. scripture) has been sent down, you are possessed by a genie (i.e. mad)! Why do you bring us no angels, if you are speaking the truth?'" Likewise in sura 21 (ol-Anbiya), verses 3 and 5, "The wrongdoers have whispered to each other, 'Is this man anything but a human being like you? Are you going to succumb to sorcery {P# 39}with your eyes open?'" . . . "Or rather they have said, 'Odds and ends of dreams. No, he has fabricated it. He is a poet. Let him bring us a sign, like the men of old who were sent as messengers!'"

A sufficient answer was given to them by verses 7 and 8 of sura 21, in which God tells Mohammad, "Before you, We only sent men whom We were inspiring." The word used for men means humans, not angels. Then Mohammad is instructed to advise the people, "Ask the possessors of the reminder, if you do not know!" Again on the subject of previous prophets, he is informed, "We did not give them bodies that do not eat. And they were not immortal. "

Altogether more than twenty five passages in the Meccan suras refute the argument that Mohammad, if a prophet, ought to perform a miracle and ought not to be a human. Mohammad's response was either silence or assertion of his humanity. Although he received inspiration from God, he was a mortal man like any other. One clear statement of this fact comes in sura 10 (Yunos), verse 21: "And they say, 'If only a sign from his Lord had been sent down to him.' Say (to them), 'The unseen belongs to God alone. So wait! I am one of those waiting with you.'" Like the rest of the people, he had no knowledge of God's inscrutable purposes. In sura 13 (or-Ra'd), verse 8, the question about Mohammad's prophethood is answered with the statement that his only function is to transmit God's commands, while the question about the lack of a miraculous sign is not specifically answered: "The unbelievers say. 'Why has not a sign from his Lord been sent down to him?'" (God tells Mohammad), "You are only a warner, and every nation has a guide.”²⁷ The words imply, however, that performing miracles is not one of the Prophet's functions.

Another passage in answer to the same argument of the polytheists repeats that the Prophet is a warner and that God alone performs miracles, but goes on to present the revelation of the Qur'an as a miracle. In verse 49 of sura 29 (ol-'Ankabut), Mohammad is instructed to answer the question "Why have no signs (i.e. miracles) from his Lord been sent down to him?" with the words "Signs belong to God alone, and I am only a plain warner;" but in verse 50 God asks, "Is not it enough for them that We have sent the book down to you to be recited to them? In it are a mercy and a reminder to a people who believe." In sura 67 (ol-Molk), verse 25, the polytheists ask, "When will this promised (resurrection) be, if you are speaking the truth?" and the Prophet is instructed, in {P# 40} verse 26, to reply, "The knowledge belongs to God. I am only a plain warner." In sura 79 (on-Naze'at), verses 42-44, again on the subject of the resurrection day, the denial of prophetic knowledge is even more explicit: "They ask you about the hour, the time when the anchor will be dropped. What competence have you to speak of it? To your Lord belongs the final (hour) of it. You are only the warner to those who are afraid of it."

The persistence of the polytheists in demanding miracles, and their sworn promises that in the event of one they would believe, gradually engendered hopes in the minds of the Moslems and even in the depths of Mohammad's inner soul that God might send a miraculous confirmation of Mohammad's prophethood which would awe every objector into belief. The matter was resolved by the revelation of verses 109-111 of sura 6 (o/-An'am): "And they swore solemn oaths to God that if you would bring them a sign, they would believe in it. Say (to them), 'Signs are from God alone.' And how are you to know that, if any came, they would not believe?" God then tells the Prophet, "We shall confuse their hearts and eyes, as (when) they disbelieved in it in the first place, and leave them to wander blindly in their waywardness. Even if We sent angels down to them and let the dead speak to them and assembled everything against them, right in front, they would not believe unless God so willed. But most of them are ignorant." These three verses require analysis and study.

(1) The polytheists had sworn that if any of the miracles which they were demanding of the Prophet should occur, they would then believe; and God had commanded the Prophet to reply that miracles were not in his power but only in God's. This clear affirmation of the inability of any human being, even a prophet, to take supernatural action means that the laws of nature are immutable and that actions or phenomena contrary to those laws are impossible. Fire, for example, can never lose its capacity to burn.

(2) The Prophet asked himself how he was to know that, in the event of a future miracle, the polytheists would not believe? This question prompts a counter-question: can it be taken for certain that if a miracle had already occurred, the polytheists would have believed? In view of the human tendency to marvel at an abnormal deed and to admire its doer, they would of course have been likely to submit. The Qur’an-commentators, however, attribute the non-occurrence of a miracle to God's foreknowledge that the polytheists would never believe. {P# 41}

(3) God states that He would confuse (i.e. misguide) the hearts and eyes of the polytheists because they had disbelieved in signs which He had previously sent down. This statement prompts the question whether Almighty God really causes mischief by depriving people of ability to see the truth. If He does, what can be expected of mankind, and what use is there in sending prophets to mankind? It is not clear, however, what earlier signs are meant.

They might be acts of earlier prophets or acts of the Prophet Mohammad. About the earlier prophets, little is known for certain. About the Prophet Mohammad, the Qur’an attests that he always answered the demands for a miracle with the assertion that he was only a bringer of good news and a warner. Perhaps the statement that previous signs had been disbelieved refers to the verses of the Qur’an; but if so, it was not a sufficient answer, because the polytheists were refusing to believe in the divine revelation of those verses to Mohammad unless he brought a proof similar to the proofs brought by Jesus, Moses, Saleh, and other prophets whose miracles are cited in the Qur’an itself.

(4) In the last verse of the passage, God states that the polytheists would not believe even if angels were sent to them and dead men came to life and spoke to them. They had been asking Mohammad to prove his case by bringing angels from heaven to earth or by resurrecting a dead man as Jesus had done, and Mohammad had been hoping for some such occurrence. Then God told him that even so they would not believe.

(5) Such being the case, certain questions arise. If these people's future unbelief and persistence in polytheism had already been preordained, what useful purpose had been served by God's appointment of a man to preach to them and guide them aright? Can a useless action be attributed to God who is wise, omniscient, and infallible? Formalists, who reject the application of reason to religious questions, interpret the statement as an ultimatum or test intended to make humans aware that they are wicked and deserve punishment in the next life. This interpretation, however, is inconsistent with the immediately following words "unless God so willed" in the same verse 111. The inescapable conclusion is these people were not going to believe because God did not wish them to believe, and this is confirmed by the clear statement "We shall confuse their hearts and eyes" in verse 110. Earlier in the same sura 6 it is stated, in verse 107, that "If God had so willed, they would not have been polytheists." God must therefore have willed that {P# 42} they should be polytheists. Surely Almighty God's humble creatures cannot change His will. Not even Mohammad could dissuade from polytheism those whose polytheism was caused by God's will. The idolaters in question were not to blame. Why, then, were they threatened with punishment after death? If the divine will is the prerequisite of a people's religious belief, equity and logic indicate that the same divine will is concerned with the people's guidance and felicity. In that case there would be no need for appointments of prophets, demands for miracles, and apologies for absence of miracles.

From the train of thought in these and other verses it can be inferred that the Prophet's initial response to the demands of the polytheists for a miracle had been tolerant and evasive. This is certainly the impression given by sura 81 (ol-Takwir), which with its melodiously rhythmic rhymed prose is one of the most expressive and poetic of the Meccan suras and a shining example of prophetic eloquence. The Prophet manifestly avoids a direct reply to the polytheists and, instead, presents his own claim in vivid and fervent language, speaking of course on behalf of God. After eighteen invocations in the first eighteen verses, the polytheists, who had spoken of Mohammad's utterances as fabrications of a fortune-teller or illusions of an epileptic, are addressed as follows: "They are the words of an honoured messenger (the angel Gabriel) who has power, is poised beside the Lord of the Throne, must be obeyed, moreover is trustworthy. And your comrade is not possessed by a genie. He saw him (Gabriel) on the clear horizon. He does not withhold (messages from) the unseen. They are not words of a Satan who ought to be stoned" (verses 19-25).

The great majority of the Meccans wanted a miracle from Mohammad before they would think of becoming Moslems, and God referred to this fact when He said that they would not believe even if He sent down angels or let the dead speak to them: Ten or twelve years later, when the sword of Mohammad and his followers began to gleam, they professed the faith and "entered God's religion in troops" (sura 110, on-Nasr, verse 2). Abu Sofyan, one of Mohammad's most stubbornt opponents and a participant in several battles against the Moslems, embraced Islam in the year 9/631.

After Mohammad's conquest of Mecca at the head of several thousand men, Abbas b. Abd ol-Mottaleb led Abu Sofyan to the presence of the Prophet, who exclaimed, "Woe on you! Surely you now understand that there are no gods except the One {P# 43}All-knowing Provider!" "Yes," answered Abu Sofyan, "I am gradually moving toward that belief." Then the Prophet asked, "Do you still deny that Mohammad is God's apostle?" Abu Sofyan muttered, "I need to think more about that point." Abbas said to him, "You had better become a Moslem straightaway, Abu Sofyan! Otherwise the Prophet will order them to behead you here and now." So in desperation Abu Sofyan professed Islam in the midst of the encamped Moslem warriors. On the advice of Abbas b. Abd ol-Mottaleb, the Prophet reassured Abu Sofyan by ordering that his house should be a place of asylum as safe as the Ka'ba. "Whoever enters his house," the Prophet said, "shall be safe." Later in the same year, when the Moslems defeated the Hawazen tribe and captured a vast amount of booty, the Prophet conciliated Abu Sofyan and other leaders of the Qoraysh with such princely gifts that the chiefs of the Ansar (the Prophet's Madinan supporters) made loud complaints. Another instance is the conversion of Wahshi, who after killing Hamza b. Abd ol-Mottaleb at the battle of Ohod in 3/625 had mutilated his body. The Prophet had been so angered that he had vowed to avenge his beloved and courageous uncle; but when Wahshi was brought to the Prophet's presence and made a profession of Islam, the Prophet accepted it.

Manifestly the motive for such conversions was fear. Nevertheless the Prophet let them pass.

The foregoing comments on the three verses in sura 6 are not mere conjectures or hypotheses; they are substantiated by other Qur’anic passages which show that Mohammad experienced a mood of uncertainty when no sign from God came to confirm his mission. The most explicit passage is in sura 10 (Yunos), verses 94 and 95: "And if you are in doubt concerning what We have sent down to you, ask those who have been reciting the book (i.e. scripture) before you! The truth has come to you from your Lord. So do not be one of the doubters! Do not be one of those who call God's signs (i.e. revelations) lies! You would then be one of the losers." To explain these verses, there is no need to visualize a scene where they were recited for the purpose of convincing doubters or waverers by disclosing that the Prophet had felt similar doubt until God removed it. A much more likely explanation is that the two verses are the voice of Mohammad's own conscience or inner mind speaking to him at the time when he lost hope of a miracle.

Other verses as well as these convey similar meanings. From {P# 44} several passages in the Meccan suras it can be seen that Mohammad underwent a sort of inner spiritual crisis. In sura 11 (Hud), verse 15, a note of reproach in God's words to him is discernible: "So perhaps you are neglecting some of the things that are revealed to you, and (are feeling) heart-sore about it, because they say, 'If only a treasure had been sent down to him or an angel had come with him.' You are nothing but a warner." In other words, whatever the people might say, his sole function was to preach.

In verse 35 of sura 6, Mohammad incurs a different rebuke: "And if their recalcitrance weighs heavily on you, then, if you could search for a tunnel into the earth or a ladder up to heaven and come back to them with a sign! Whereas if God had so willed, He would have gathered them onto the right path. So do not be one of the ignorant!"

In another context, the same concern reappears in sura 4 (on-Nesa), verse 152, where the subject is the attitude of the possessors of scripture. It seems that the Jews also had demanded a miracle from Mohammad and that the verse was revealed to placate them. "The possessors of scripture ask you to bring a book down from heaven for them. They asked Moses for more than that, for they said, 'Show us God in the open!' So the thunderbolt caught them because of their wickedness. Then they turned to the calf, (even) after the proofs had come to them. We pardoned them for that, and gave Moses a clear authority."

In verse 61 of sura 17 (ol-Esra), the absence of miracles is explained as follows: "Nothing has prevented Us from sending signs except that the people of old called them lies. We gave the she-camel to (the people of) Thamud as a visible (sign), and they wronged her. Whereas (now) We only send signs to frighten." According to the comment on this verse in the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn, the prophet Saleh was sent to the ancient Arab tribe of Thamud, and they did not believe. God then performed on Saleh's behalf the miracle of causing a live she-camel to issue from a rock; but the Thamudites killed the she-camel and persisted in their disbelief, and God punished them for it by causing a thunderbolt to destroy them. If God had performed a miracle on Mohammad's behalf and the people had similarly persisted in their disbelief, they also would deserve destruction; but God wished to give them a respite pending the completion of Mohammad's task.

The next verse (sura 17, 62) is interesting and thought-provoking: "And when We told you that your Lord surrounds (i.e. {P# 45}controls) the people and devised the vision (i.e. of the night journey) which We showed to you, (it was) only as a trial for the people, and likewise the accursed tree in the Qur’an. We frighten them, but it only hardens them in great waywardness." The implication of the opening words is that since God controls the people, Mohammad should not be afraid but should speak out.

The vision was manifested to test the people, because they had scoffed at Mohammad, and a number had renounced Islam after he had told them about it. The three Qur’anic mentions of the accursed zaqqum tree (in verses 60, 43, and 52 of suras 37,44, and 56) were also intended to frighten and test the people, but had in fact made them even more wayward; the Arabs had begun to ask mockingly how a tree could grow in hell fire.

Ultimately the discourse moved away from the manifestation of miracles and passed to the threat of hell, as for example inverse 60 of the same sura 17: "There is no town that We shall not destroy before the resurrection day, or severely punish." It is certainly strange that God, who is just and merciful and declares in verse 13 of sura 32 "If We had so willed, We would have given every soul its guidance", should nevertheless threaten those whom He chose not to guide with destruction in this life and severe punishment after death. Instead of such severity, would not a miracle have been better? All the people would then have embraced Islam, and much warfare and bloodshed would have been averted.

A different explanation of the lack of a miracle is given in sura 6 (ol-An'am), verse 37: "And they have said, 'Why has no sign from His Lord been sent down to him?' Say (to them), 'God is able to send down a sign.' But most of them do not know." Do the contents of this verse have rational consistency and logical sequence? The deniers were clamouring for a miracle and were told that God is able to cause miracles. But God's ability to do so was not in question; it was because they acknowledged this ability that they were making their demand. God, being omnipotent, ought to have caused a miracle, but no miracle had occurred. According to the verse, most of them did not know.

What was it that they did not know? They must have known that God is omnipotent; otherwise they would not have demanded a miracle. The relevance of the reply to the people's demand is obscure. The explanation given in the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn is that "most demanders of miracles do not know that they will deserve destruction if a miracle occurs and they still disbelieve." {P# 46} This prompts two questions. Firstly, why should miracle demanders disbelieve after the occurrence of a miracle? Secondly, is it desirable that stupid and obstinate persons, who even after the occurrence of a miracle persist in disbelief, should be destroyed? Was the destruction of the forty eight pagan Meccans slain at the battle of Badr a loss to the world, or was it not?

THE MIRACLE OF THE QUR' AN

It was noted in the preceding section that the Prophet Mohammad's attitude to the demand for a visible miracle was negative and that his reply to the polytheists was that he only brought good news and warnings.

Altogether different was his attitude to the Qur’an. When the polytheists said that it was being invented by him or put into his mouth by other men, they were answered with a challenge (sura 11, Bud, verse 16): "Or do they say 'He has fabricated it'? Say (to them) 'Then bring ten suras like it, fabricated ones, and appeal to anyone you can, apart from God, if you are honest!'" Another allegation was that the Qur’an consisted of old fables. And when Our signs (i.e. Qur’anic verses) are recited to them, they say, 'We have already heard (such things). If we wished, we could say (things) like this. These are only fables of the ancients'" (sura 8, ai-Antal, verse 31). According to the biographers, the man who said this was Nadr b. ol-Hareth, who was later taken prisoner at the battle of Badr and beheaded on the Prophet's order by Ali b. Abi Taleb. The reply came in verse 90 of sura 17(al-Esra): "Say, 'If humans and genies were to combine to bring the like of this Qur’an, they would not bring anything like it, however much they might support each other.' "

Mohammad saw the Qur’an as the warrant of his prophethood. Moslem scholars are unanimous in regarding the Qur’an as Mohammad's miracle. There has been much debate, however, on the question whether the Qur’an is miraculous in respect of its eloquence or of its subject-matter, or of both. In general the Moslem scholars consider it to be miraculous in both respects. This opinion clearly stems from zealous faith rather than impartial study.

Non-Moslem scholars have found numerous grounds for questioning the intelligibility and eloquence of the Qur’an, and {P# 47} Moslem scholars have concurred in so far as they have found that the Qur’an needs interpretation. A chapter in Soyuti's Ketab ol-Etqan²⁸ is devoted to this subject. Not only the misarrangement of the contents in the Othmanic recension but also the language of the Qur’an presents difficulties.

Among the Moslem scholars of the early period, before bigotry and hyperbole prevailed, were some such as Ebrahim on- Nazzam²⁹ who openly acknowledged that the arrangement and syntax of the Qur’an are not miraculous and that work of equal or greater value could be produced by other God-fearing persons. He then argued that the Qur’an is miraculous because it predicted the future, not in the oracular way of the fortune-tellers but with correct prescience of events which actually occurred. These opinions, as quoted by Ebn or-Ravandi ³⁰were taken as the pretext for the condemnation of on-Nazzam by the heresiologist Abd ol-Qaher ol-Baghdadi (d. 429/1037) in his Ketab ol-farq bayna’l-feraq (book on differences between sects). According to o1- Baghdadi, the theses of on-Nazzam conflict with the clear statement in verse 90 of sura 17 that the Qur’an is forever inimitable, even by humans and genies acting in combination.

Pupils and later admirers of on-Nazzam, such an Ebn Hazm³¹ and ol-Khayyat,³² wrote in his defence, and several other leading exponents of the Mo'tazelite school shared his opinion. They saw no conflict between the theses of on-Nazzam and the statements in the Qur’an. One of their arguments is that the Qur’an is miraculous because God deprived the Prophet Mohammad's contemporaries of ability to produce the like of it; in other times and places the production of phrases resembling Qur’anic verses is possible and indeed easy.

It is widely held that the blind Syrian poet Abu'l-Ala ol-Ma'arri (368/979-450/1058) wrote his Ketab ol-fosul wa’ l-ghayat, of which a part survives, in imitation of the Qur’an.

The Qur’an contains sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible without the aid of commentaries; foreign words, unfamiliar Arabic words, and words used with other than the normal meaning; adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of the concords of gender and number; illogically and un grammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects. These and other such aberrations in the language have given scope to critics who deny the Qur’an's {P# 48} eloquence. The problem also occupied the minds of devout Moslems. It forced the commentators to search for explanations and was probably one of the causes of disagreement over readings.

For example, in the first verse of sura 74, "O you who are clad in a cloak," the accepted reading of the word for "clad in a cloak" is moddather, but there was a widespread opinion that it should be motadathther; likewise in the first verse of sura 73, "O you who are wrapped in garments," the reading mozzamel prevailed over motazammel.

In verse 160 of sura4 (on-Nesa), "But those among them who are well-grounded in knowledge, the believers. . . . . . , and the performers of the prayer, and the payers of the alms tax," the word for "performers" is in the accusative case, whereas it ought to be in the nominative case like the words for "well-grounded", "believers", and "payers". In verse 9 of sura 49 (ol-Hojorat), "If two parties of believers have started to fight each other, make peace between them", the verb meaning "have started to fight" is in the plural, whereas it ought to be in the dual like its subject "two parties" .

Verse 172 of sura 2 (ol-Baqara), which replies to Jewish protests against the change of the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, is beautifully and impressively worded but contains a lexical difficulty: "Righteousness (berr) is not that you turn your faces to the east and the west, but righteousness (berr) is he who believes in God and the Last Day. . . . . . " The explanation given in the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn is that the word berr in the second part of the sentence means "possessor of righteousness". The great early grammarian Mohammad b. Yazid ol-Mobarrad (d. ca. 285/898) had timidly suggested that the word should be read as barr, which is an acceptable variant of barr meaning "righteous (man)", but he had been accused of irreverence and reviled.

In verse 66 of sura 20 (Taka), where Pharaoh's people say of Moses and his brother Aaron "These two are sorcerers", the word for "these two" (hadhane) is in the nominative case, whereas it ought to be in the accusative case (hadhayne) because it comes after an introductory particle of emphasis. Othman and A'esha are reported to have read the word as kadhayne. The comment of a Moslem scholar illustrates the fanaticism and intellectual ossification of later times: "Since in the unanimous opinion of the Moslems the pages bound in this volume and caned the Qur’an are God's word, and since there can be no error in God's word, the {P# 49}report that Othman and A'esha read hadhayne instead of hddhane is wicked and false." The Tafsir ol-Jalalayn more temperately pretends that the dual suffix may be tine in all three cases and does not have to be ayne in the accusative and genitive. Yet the great early Qur’an scholar and philologist Abu Amr b. ol-Ala (d. ca.154/770) read hadhayne, as Othman and A'esha had done.

A humane and salutary injunction in verse 33 of sura 24 (on-Nur) shows that a cruel and immoral abuse was practiced at that time: "Do not coerce your slave-girls into fornication, when they desire chastity, so that you may gain something extra in the life in this world! And when someone coerces them, God, after their coercion, is forgiving and merciful." Obviously the verse prohibits the vile practice of slave-owners who prostituted female slaves and pocketed the proceeds, and no less obviously the words "God, after their coercion, is forgiving and merciful" mean that God pardons slave-girls for having unwillingly committed fornication.

The outward form of the words, however, is such that they can be taken to mean that God is forgiving and compassionate to men who prostitute their female slaves. The sentence is vague and does not adequately express the humane intention.

The views on the Qur’an held by Ebrahim on-Nazzam have already been mentioned, and it must be added that they were not his alone, but were also held by other scholars of the Mo'tazelite school such as Hesham b. Amr ol-Fuwati (d. ca. 218/833) and Abbad b. Solayman (d. ca. 250/864). All were devout believers. They saw no inconsistency between their views and sincere faith.

The great and penetrating Arab thinker Abu'I-AIa ol-Ma'arri considered some of his own writings to be on a par with the Qur’an.

To sum up, more than one hundred Qur’anic aberrations from the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted. Needless to say, the commentators strove to find explanations and justifications of these irregularities. Among them was the great commentator and philologist Mahmud oz-Zamakhshari (467/1075-538/1144), of whom a Moorish author wrote: "This grammar-obsessed pedant has committed a shocking error. Our task is not to make the readings conform to Arabic grammar, but to take the whole of the Qur’an as it is and make Arabic grammar conform to the Qur’an."

Up to a point this argument is justifiable. A nation's great speakers and writers respect the rules of its language in so far as they avoid modes of expression which are not generally understood {P# 50} and popularly accepted, though they may occasionally find themselves obliged to take liberties. Among the pre-Islamic Arabs, rhetoric and poetry were well developed and grammatical conventions were already established. The Qur’an, being in the belief of Moslems superior to all previous products of the rhetorical genius, must contain the fewest irregularities.

Yet the Moorish author's censure of Zamakhshari is open to criticism on the ground that it reverses the usual argument. This is that the Qur’an is God's word because it has a sublime eloquence which no human being can match, and that the man who uttered it was therefore a prophet. The Moorish author maintained that the Qur’an is faultless because it is God's word and that the problem of the grammatical errors in it must be solved by changing the rules of Arabic grammar. In other words, while most Moslems answer deniers by citing the Qur’an's eloquence as proof of Mohammad's prophethood, the Moorish author, having taken the Qur’an's divine origin and Mohammad's prophethood for granted, held all discussion of the Qur’an's wording and contents to be inadmissible.

At the same time the Qur’an is indeed unique and wonderful.

There was no precedent for it in the earlier literature of the ancient Arabs. In the Meccan suras we find fervently spiritual and movingly poetic passages, which attest Mohammad's gifts of thought and speech and give some idea of his power to persuade.

A good example is sura S3 (on-Najm), if we remove from it verse 33 which is Madinan and must for some unknown reason have been inserted into it by the caliph Othman and his editors. With a graphic eloquence reminiscent of the Song of Solomon, but without mention of joys such as dalliance with maidens of Jerusalem whose breasts are as white as the goats on Mount Gilead, this sura jubilantly asserts Mohammad's apostleship and explains the nature of his prophetic illumination and visions. Although the assonance, rhythm, and beauty of the Arabic cannot be reproduced in another language, perhaps the following translation of the first eighteen verses will give some inkling of the ardour of Mohammad's visionary soul:

"By the star when it sets,

your comrade is not lost, not astray.

and he does not speak at will.

It is nothing but revelation being revealed,

made known to him by one mighty in power,³³ {P# 51}

possessing great strength. He stood poised,

while on the highest horizon.

Then he approached and hovered,

He was the length of two bows away, or nearer,

and he revealed to his servant that which he revealed.

The heart did not falsify that which he saw.

Will you people dispute with him that which he saw?

And he saw him another time

beside the Lote tree at the far end,

near which is the garden of refuge,

when the Lote tree was covered with that which covers.

(His) eye did not shift, did not wander.

He saw some of the great signs of his Lord

Various counsels to the people follow, and in verses 30 and 31 God addresses Mohammad: "So part company with those who have ceased to remember Us and who care only for the present life! That is the range of their knowledge. Your Lord knows well who have strayed from His path and who have found the right way," There is a report that Omm Jomayyel, the wife of Mohammad's uncle Abu Lahab, went to the Prophet one day and said to him sarcastically, "We hope that your Satan has left you," This was during the interruption of the revelation, when Mohammad was so disappointed and distressed that he thought of throwing himself over a cliff. The incident is thought to have been the occasion of the revelation of the very melodious sura93 (od-Doha):

"By the morning,

and by the night when it is still,

your Lord has not forsaken you, nor taken a dislike to you.

The ending will be happier for you than the beginning.

Your Lord will give to you, and you will be gladdened.

Did He not find you orphaned and shelter you,

find you astray and guide you,

find you dependent and make you self-supporting?

So, as for orphans, do not oppress them,

as for beggars, do not spurn them,

and as for your Lord's bounty, speak about it!"

In all fairness the Qur’an is a wonder. Its short suras of the Meccan period are charged with expressive force and persuasive power. Its style has no precedent in the Arabic language, Its effusion from the tongue of an illiterate man with no education, let {P# 52} alone literary training, is a phenomenon which, in this respect, can justifiably be described as a miracle.

Some scholars have denied that the Prophet Mohammad was illiterate, arguing that the word ommi did not mean "illiterate" but meant "gentile" with reference to the pagan, non-Jewish and non-Christian Arabs. The word is used with this meaning in sura 62 (ol-Jom'a), verse 2, "It is He who appointed a prophet from among the gentiles," and in several more Qur’anic passages (2, 73; 3, 19 and 69; 7, 156 and 158). Nevertheless, on the basis of both evidence and tradition, there is general agreement that the Prophet could not write, though perhaps in later life he could read a few words. In addition to explicit reports, there are two Qur’anic references to the matter: in sura 29 (ol-Ankabut), verse 47, "Before it, you did not recite from any book or write it down with your right hand;" and more clearly in sura 25 (ol-Forqan), verse 6, "And they say, 'Fables of the ancients which he caused to be written down. They were being dictated for him in the morning and the evening.'" The words indicate awareness of the polytheists that Mohammad could not read and write.

For those who consider the Qur’an to be a miracle because of its contents, the difficulty is rather that it contains nothing new in the sense of ideas not already expressed by others. All the moral precepts of the Qur’an are self-evident and generally acknowledged.

The stories in it are taken in identical or slightly modified forms from the lore of the Jews and Christians, whose rabbis and monks Mohammad had met and consulted on his journeys to Syria, and from memories conserved by descendants of the peoples of Ad and Thamud.

This fact does not, on a balanced assessment, detract from the Prophet Mohammad's greatness. An illiterate, uneducated member of a superstitious, immoral, and vituperative community, with no law e~cept force and cruelty to hold it together, boldly arose to combat evil and idolatry and to propagate higher values through constant citation of the past experiences of other communities.

His initiative is in itself proof of his innate genius and of his spiritual strength, moral conscience, and humane feeling. Hearing the words from this illiterate man's tongue in sura 80 (Abasa) is like hearing the throb of his anxious heart. This very musical and intensely spiritual sura can no more be translated than a poem of Hafez.34 What follows is a very imperfect rendering of verses 16-33: 53}

"Let mankind perish! They are so ungrateful.

From What does He create them?

From a seed that He creates and shapes.

Then He smooths their way,

then He makes them die and be buried,

then, when He so wills, He will make them rise again.

No! They have not done what He bade them.

Let mankind look at their food!

We poured down water,

then broke up the ground,

and made grain grow on it,

and vines, and reeds,

and olive trees, and date-palms,

and lush gardens,

and fruit, and herbage,

as provision for you and your livestock.

But when the trumpet-call comes. . . "

With such beautiful and wonderfully spiritual sermons, Mohammad strove to guide his people to a better way.

In the field of moral teachings, however, the Qur’an cannot be considered miraculous. Mohammad reiterated principles which mankind had already conceived in earlier centuries and many places. Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Moses, and Jesus had said similar things.

The Qur’an also contains laws and ordinances which Mohammad, as Islam's legislator, enacted. It must always be borne in mind that most of the Qur’anic laws and ordinances were formulated in response to random incidents and petitions from aggrieved persons. That is why there are some inconsistencies in them and why there are abrogating and abrogated ordinances. Nor should it be forgotten that Islamic jurisprudence is the product of long effort by Moslem scholars and was formulated during the first three centuries of the Islamic era. The Qur’anic laws are brief and were insufficient for the needs of the huge Moslem community which came into being in the century and a half after the Prophet's lifetime.

Fasting came to Islam from Judaism through the channel of the pre- Islamic Arab practice of a fast on the tenth day of the month of Moharram, which was known as the day of Ashura and corresponded to the Jewish Yom Kippur. After the Prophet Mohammad's emigration to Madina and the change of the prayer-direction from {P# 54} Jerusalem to Mecca, the duration of the fast was lengthened from one to ten days, namely the first ten days of Moharram; and after the final breach between the Moslems and the Jews, the whole month of Ramadan was reserved for fasting.

Prayer is found in all religions, the utterance of appeals and praises to a deity being an essential component of every religious way of life. In Islam, prayer is the first duty of a Moslem and is performed in a peculiarly Islamic manner which became established through force of custom; there are no detailed instructions on the subject in the Qur’an.

During the thirteen years of the Prophet Mohammad's mission at Mecca and the first year and a half of his mission at Madina, the Moslems prayed in the same direction as the Jews, namely facing toward the "Furthest Mosque" (i.e. temple site) at Jerusalem.

Through the institution of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, several national customs of the Arabs are known to have been endorsed and perpetuated. All the ceremonies of the hajj (pilgrimage in the month of Dhu'l-Hejja) and the 'amra (supererogatory or lesser pilgrimage), such as the wearing of a seamless white robe, the kissing or touching of the black stone, the running between Sata and Marwa, the halt at Aratat, and the pebble-throwing (symbolic stoning of the Satan), had been practiced in the pre- Islamic period and were retained with only a few modifications.

The pagan Arabs, while circumambulating the Ka'ba, used to call out to Lat, Ozza, Manat, or any other idol that their tribe revered, "Here I am at your service (labbayka), O Manat!" or whichever. Under Islam, the call to an idol was replaced by the call to God (Allahomma), and the formula became labbayka Allahomma labbayka! The pagan Arabs had banned hunting in the month of the pilgrimage, but the Prophet maintained this ban only in the days of pilgrimage when the pilgrims are in the state of consecration (ehram). The pagan Arabs had sometimes circumambulated the Ka'ba in the nude; Islam forbade this and required the wearing of seamless robes. The pagan Arabs had an inhibition against eating the meat of sacrificed animals; the Prophet made this permissible.

It is known that after the conquest of Mecca and the toppling of the idols of the Qoraysh, the Moslems refrained from running between Sata and Marwa because in the old days each of those hills had been the site of a stone idol, and the motive of the pagan pilgrims in running between them had been to win good fortune {P# 55} (baraka )by kissing or touching those idols. The Prophet Mohammad, however, received a revelation (sura2, ol-Baqara, verse 153), which not only sanctioned the running between Safaand Marwa but also declared those hills to be God's waymarks.

Abu’I-Fath Mohammad Shahrestani (479/1086-548/1153) writes in his valuable book on religions and sects (ol-melal wa'nnehal) that many of the duties and rites of Islam are continuations of practices which the pagan Arabs had adopted from the Jews.

Already in pre-Islamic times, marriage to the mother, daughter, or father's wife was prohibited and marriage to two sisters was disapproved. Ablutions after defilements and after contact with a human corpse, rinsing the mouth, sniffing water up the nostrils, anointing the hair of the head, using the toothpick, washing after defecation, plucking out the hair of the armpits and shaving the pubic hair, circumcision, and amputation of the right hands of thieves were all practiced by the Arabs before Islam and had mostly come to them from the Jews.

Among the duties of Moslems are two which are peculiar to Islamic law, namely service in holy war (jehad) and payment of alms-tax (zakat). The reason why no comparable obligations are imposed in any other legal system is that other legislators did not have the same purpose as Mohammad. His purpose was to organize a state. No state can be organized and maintained without an army and without financial means.

The peculiar and unprecedented Islamic law of holy war must be regarded as a product of Mohammad's far-seeing and realistic mind. When the spiritual message of the beautiful Meccan suras proved ineffective, the only remedy that he could find was the sword.

Maintenance of a combat-ready army, in which everyman fit to fight must serve, is expensive. Booty and property seizure can be useful and may spur soldiers to fight, bUt a more secure and permanent source of income is necessary. This is provided in Islamic law by the aIms-tax.

Mohammad's constructive thinking always had the new community's circumstances and needs in view. All his steps were meant to promote its good. Among them was the prohibition of intoxicants, another peculiarly Islamic law which was enacted primarily in consideration of local social conditions. The Arabs being a hot-blooded, excitable, and undisciplined people, mischief and disorder often occurred when they indulged in alcoholic 56} drinks, which were in demand and available. The prohibition was enacted in three stages: First, by verse 216 of sura 2 (ol-Baqara): "They are asking you about strong drink and casting lots with arrows. Say, 'In them are great sin and also benefits for the people. The sin in them is greater than the benefit.'" Next, by verse 46 of sura 4 (on-Nesa), which was revealed on the occasion of a man's coming to the prayer at Madina in a drunken state: “O believers, do not come near the prayer while you are drunk!" Finally, by verses 92 and 93 of sura 5 (ol-Ma'eda), in which the prohibition is made absolute: "O believers, strong drink, casting lots with arrows, images, and divining arrows are foul things, among the works of the Satan. So keep away from them! Then, perhaps, you will become more prosperous" (verse 92).

Both in verse 216 of sura 2 and in verse 92 of sura 5, drinking of intoxicants is linked with gambling; and in the last passage erection of images and divination by means of arrows, which was thought to procure the help of the idols, are also banned. In the following verse 93, strong drink and gambling are the subject, and the reason for their prohibition, which was probably revealed after a nasty incident, is explained as follows: "The Satan only wants to sow enmity and hatred among you through strong drink and casting lots with arrows, and to distract you from remembrance of God and from prayer. So will you be abstainers?" This verse lends substance to the view that liquor-drinking and gambling often caused strife and disorder among the Arabs.

In regard to polygamy, divorce, adultery, fornication, sodomy, and many other matters, the Qur’anic commandments are either modifications of Jewish laws or reforms of previous Arab practices.

These observations do not alter the fact that the Qur’an is a miracle - not a miracle befogged by centuries of myth and only credible to feeble minds, but one that is living and meaningful.

Neither the Qur’an's eloquence nor its moral and legal precepts are miraculous. The €2or'an is miraculous because it enabled Mohammad, single-handedly and despite poverty and illiteracy, to overcome his people's resistance and found a lasting religion; because it moved wild men to obedience and imposed its bringer's will on them.

Mohammad expressed pride in the Qur’an, taking it to be the {P# 57} warrant of his prophethood because it was revelation from God and he was the medium of its transmission.

The Arabic word wahy, which is usually translated into English as revelation or inspiration, occurs more than sixty times in the Qur’an, in most contexts with the basic meaning of putting something into a person's mind, and in some contexts with the connotation of a fleeting hint. For this reason the Prophet was anxious, after each revelation, that a scribe should write it down forthwith. There are references to his haste in the Qur’an, for example in verse 113 of sura 20 (TaM), "Do not hurry with the Qur’an before its revelation to you is completed!", and in verses 16-19 of sura 75 (ol-Qiyama), "Do not quicken yourtongue with it to hurry with it! For Us is the collection of it and the recitation of it. When We have recited it, follow the recitation of it! Moreover for Us is the wording of it."

These mentions of the Prophet Mohammad's haste allude to the mental state which the receipt of revelation induced in him. The light which shone in his soul on these occasions was not a normal experience. According to a statement by Abu Sa'id ol-Khodri (a Madinan supporter of Mohammad and a source of many reports) quoted in the Sahih (Hadith compilation) of Moslem b. ol-Hajjaj (d. 261/875), the Prophet used to request: "Do not write down anything that I say except the Qur’an! If anyone has written down words of mine other than the text of the Qur’an, let him erase them!" The important and remarkable point is that the Prophet Mohammad fell into an abnormal state when an inspiration came to him. An intense inner exertion seems to have been required. In the Sahih of Bokhari, a statement by the Prophet's wife A'esha is quoted: "The Prophet was asked by Hareth b. Hesham, 'What are the inspirations like?' He answered, 'The strongest of them are like the sound of a bell which rings in my mind after being silent.

Sometimes an angel appears in human form and disappears as soon as I grasp the subject. ", A'esha added, "During inspirations sweat poured from his brow, even on cold days." In confirmation of A'esha's statement, Bokhari quotes Safwan b. Ba'li (whose father accepted Islam after the Moslem conquest of Mecca) as saying: "Ba'li wished to observe the Prophet during an inspiration.”

One day a man wearing a perfumed cloak inquired of the Prophet whether he would be in the state of consecration necessary for performance of the 'amra (lesser pilgrimage) if he wore that {P# 58} cloak. A state of inspiration came over the Prophet. Omar signalled to Ba'li to come in. Ba'li went in and saw the Prophet looking like someone asleep, snoring, and with his blessed complexion flushed. After a while the Prophet came out of that state and summoned the inquirer. He told him to rinse the perfume out of his cloak three times and then consecrate himself for the 'amra in the same way as for the hajj."

MOHAMMAD'S HUMANITY

The prophets were ordinary commoners. Otherwise, in Your bounty, You would have poured the elixir onto the copper of their being.

Mawlavi Jalal od-Din Rumi35

All the early scholars of Islam acknowledged that the Prophet Mohammad was an ordinary human being except in respect of his spiritual distinction. This fact is attested by verse 110 of sura 18 (ol-Kahf): "I am only a human like you. It is being revealed to me that your God is One God."

None of the Sonnite scholars considered perfect knowledge and sinlessness to be essential attributes of the Prophet Mohammad. They saw his prophethood as a special gift from God in the sense that God selects for the prophetic task a man who is gifted with human qualities such as knowledge and virtue in an extraordinarily high degree, or rather who becomes gifted with such extraordinary qualities at the time of his appointment to guide the people.

The Sunnite scholars thought that we place our faith in a person because we believe him to be the bearer of revelation. They did not argue that we know a person to be a prophet because God has set him on a higher plane of knowledge and morals. Their opinion is based on several Qur’anic verses, e.g. sura 42 (osh-Sho'wra), verse 52: "And in this way We have revealed a spirit to you through Our command. You did not know what the book (i.e. the Qur’an) and the faith are. But We have made it a light by which We guide those among Our servants whom We so will." The same point is implied in the preceding verse, and very clearly and vividly conveyed in verse 50 of sura 6 (ol-An'am), which is a reply to those who had asked the Prophet for a miracle: "Say (to them), 'I do not tell you {P# 59} that I possess God's treasures. I do not know the unseen. I do not tell you that I am an angel. I only follow what is revealed to me.'" In sura 7 (o/-A'raf), verse 188, Mohammad is instructed, "Say (to them), 'I get no profit for myself, nor loss, except what God wills. If I knew the unseen, I would have gained much advantage and would not have been touched by adversity. I am only a warner and bringer of good news to folk who believe. " This verse also is a reply to the polytheists, who had been asking why Mohammad did not engage in trade and make big profits if his claimed communications with the unseen world were true.

The Qur’anic verses on this subject are explicit and clear, and the Hadith and the contents of the reliable biographies confirm that the Prophet Mohammad never laid claim to either sinlessness or knowledge of unseen things. He was well aware of his human frailties, and he openly and frankly admitted them. According to a well attested Hadith, he had this to say about an attempt by some polytheists to fluster him with irrelevant questions: "What do these folk expect from me? I am one of God's servants. I only know what God has taught me." Mohammad's truthfulness and honesty are made admirably clear in verses I-II of sura 80 (Abasa), which are manifestly a divine rebuke to him:

"He frowned and turned away

when the blind man came to him.

How can you know? Perhaps he will become pure (in heart),

or will remember, and the remembrance will benefit him.

But the man who claims to have no need (of God's help),

to him you pay attention.

It will not be your fault if he does not become pure.

But the man who comes to you, running (with great effort)

and fearing (God),

You disregard him.

Never again! This is a reminder."

The Prophet had formed a very human ambition to convert some rich and powerful men to Islam. Perhaps it was a justifiable aim, because the polytheists had boastfully asked, "Which of the two parties has the higher standing, carries the more weight in a discussion?" (sura 19, Maryam, verse 74). In any case, Mohammad's wish to win over some notables was only natural. One day {P# 60} when he was in conversation with a member of this class and doubtless engrossed in the effort to persuade, a blind man named Abdolah b. Omm Maktum, who had embraced Islam, approached him and said, "Teach me some of what God has taught you!" The Prophet paid no heed to the blind man's request and went home. Then this noble sura was sent down to the Prophet, manifestly as a rebuke to him. Afterwards, whenever he met Abdollah b. Omm Maktum, he gave a warm welcome to the man for whose sake God had reprimanded him.

In sura 40 (ol-Ghafer, also called ol-Mo'men), verse 57, the Prophet is bidden, "Be patient! God's promise is true. Pray for forgiveness of your sin, and praise your Lord in the evening and the early morning!" This verse attributes sinfulness to Mohammad by commanding him to pray for forgiveness of his sin. The belief in the Prophet's absolute infallibility held by Moslems of later times is therefore in direct conflict with the text of the Qur’an.

The theme recurs in a variant form in the first three verses of sura 94 (ol-Ensherah): "Have not We cheered your heart and relieved you of your burden, which weighed (so heavily) on your back?" The word wezr (burden) is replaced by dhanb (sin) in the first two verses of sura 48 (ol-Fath): "We have given you a clear victory so that God may forgive your earlier and later sin, and bestow the fullness of His bounty on you, and guide you onto a right path." .

Taken together, these explicit and incontrovertible Qur’anic passages prove that the Prophet Mohammad, far from claiming the infallibility and superhuman rank later attributed to him by others, knew himself to be prone to sin. For anyone willing to study and to think, this greatly enhances Mohammad's spiritual stature.

In matters such as religious and political beliefs and social customs, which lack the certainty of mathematics and the relative demonstrability of the natural sciences, human beings are always disinclined to use their rational faculty. Instead, they first acquire a belief and then rack their brains for arguments with which to support it. The 'olama of Islam were no exception to this rule. In their zealous devotion, they began with belief in the Prophet's infallibility and then, in the hope of proving it, tried to explain away clear Qur’anic statements.

The eager sophistry of the Qur’an-commentators in this matter brings to mind a story about Sahl Tustari (a renowned early Sufi {P# 61} preacher from Shushtar in Khuzestan, d. 273/886). One of his disciples came and told him, "The people say that you can walk on water." Sahl answered, "Go and ask the muezzin! He is an honest man." The disciple went and asked the muezzin, who answered, "I do not know whether or not Saw can walk on water. But I do know that when he walked up to the pool one day to perform the ritual ablutions, he fell in and would have drowned if I had not pulled him out." One aspect of this matter, which no unbiased seeker of the truth can deny, is the abundance of the documentary evidence.

Goldziher³⁶ considered that the Hadith compilations and the early biographies of Mohammad depict the founder of Islam with a precision and clarity not to be found in the historical documentation of the other world religions, and that without exception they show him to have possessed human frailties.

In these sources, no attempt to dehumanize Mohammad is made; on the contrary, he is placed on a par with the believers and those around him. For instance, it is related that in the war of the trench at Madina in 5/627 he dug in the same way as everyone else on the Moslem side did. On the subject of life's pleasures, he is quoted as saying, "I am fond of three things in your world: scent, women, and above all prayer." Some of the Prophet's reported doings were scarcely consistent with asceticism and world renunciation.

Notwithstanding the testimonies of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the biographies, Mohammad was quickly dehumanized. The process began as soon as he passed from the scene. On the day after his death, ‘Omar (or perhaps another leading companion) threatened with drawn sword in hand to cut the throat of anyone who said that Mohammad was dead, and Abu Bakr protested, quoting the Qur’anic words "You are mortal and they are mortal" (sura 39, oz-Zomar, verse 31). How right Abu Bakr was! The greater the distance in time and space from the Prophet's death in 11/632 and from Madina, the more the Moslems let their imaginations run loose. They exaggerated and rhapsodized so much that they forgot two premises which are stated in the five daily prayers as well as in many Qur’anic verses, namely that Mohammad was God's servant and God's messenger. Instead, they turned him into the ultimate cause of the creation, saying "But for you, the universe would not have been created." One zealous writer, Shaykh Najm od-Din Daya (d. 654/1256), went so 62} far as to assert in his book Mersad al-Ebad that the omnipotent Creator, who could make all things exist by uttering the single word "be", first had to bring the light of Mohammad into existence and then, after casting a glance at the light and thereby causing the light to sweat with embarrassment, was able to create the souls of the prophets and angels from the sweat beads.

Mohammad Abdollah os-Samman, a modern Egyptian biographer of the Prophet, has written: "Mohammad, like the other prophets, was human. His birth, life, and death were like those of other human beings. His prophethood did not place him apart from mankind. Like everyone else, he could be angered, pleased, saddened, and gladdened. He was once so annoyed with Aswad b. Abd ol-Mottaleb b. Asad that he cursed him, saying 'May God blind him and make his son an orphan!'" Mohammad Ezzat Darwaza, a modern Palestinian author, has written a book on the Prophet's life in which he takes care not to express opinions of his own unless they are supported by Qur’anic evidence. His sincere devotion to the Prophet and to Islam shines in every page of this impressive two-volume work. He regretfully concludes that the Moslem exaggerators (ghalat), among whom he mentions Qastallani (851/1448-923/1517),37 went completely astray and indulged in fantasies for which he (Darwaza) could find no basis in the Qur’an or the authentic Hadiths and early reports.

These zealots believed, without any justification, that God created mankind so that Mohammad might be born into the human race, and that Mohammad was therefore the cause of mankind's creation; they even maintained that the tablet, pen, throne, and stool, and the skies, earth, genies, humans, paradise, and hell, in short all things, were brought into existence through the light of Mohammad. They forgot the clear words of verse 124 of sura 6 (al-An'am): "God knows best where to place His message." They ignored Islam's fundamental principle that God alone determines the world of being.

The same enlightened Palestinian Moslem writer also notes that in several Qur’anic passages all the prophets are stated to have been ordinary mortals whom God appointed to guide mankind. In the words of verses7 and 8of sura21 (ol-Anbiya), "Before you We only sent men whom We were inspiring. Ask the possessors of the remembrance (i.e. Jews and Christians), if you do not know! We did not give them bodies that do not eat. And they were not immortal." The same point that prophets do not differ from the {P# 63} rest of mankind except in their selection by God to convey His messages is reiterated in the following passages which Mohammad Ezzat Darwaza quotes. "Say, 'Praise be to my Lord! Am I other than a human, a messenger?' And the only thing that prevented the people from believing when the guidance came to them was that they said, 'Has God sent a human as a messenger?'" (sura 17, ol-Esra, verses 95 and 96). "And they have said, 'What is the matter with this apostle that he eats meals and walks through the bazaars?'" (sura 25, ol-Forqan, verse 8). "We shall narrate the best of stories to you in Our revelation of this Qur’an to you, even though you were formerly one of the heedless" (sura 12, Yusof, verse 3). "We did not grant immortality to any human before you. So if you will die, are they immortal?" (sura 21, ol-Anbiya, verse 35). "And Mohammad is only a messenger. Messengers have come and gone before him" (sura 3, AIEmran, verse 138). "You did not know what the Book and the faith are" (sura 42, osh-Showra, verse 52). "Say (to them), 'I am not something new among the prophets. Nor do I know what will be done to me and to you. I only follow what is revealed to me, and I am only a clear warner" (sura 46, al-Ahqaf, verse 8).

Indications of Mohammad's humanity and of his human feelings and failings can be found in all the well attested reports. For several days after the raid on the well of Ma'una, when seventy Moslems were killed, he began the morning prayer with the words "O God, trample on the Modar!" (i.e. the North Arabian tribes). After the defeat in the battle of Mount Ohod, in which his uncle Hamza b. Abd ol-Mottaleb was killed, an Abyssinian named Wahshi cut off Hamza's nose and ears, and Abu Sofyan's wife Hend ripped open Hamza's stomach and chewed his liver. The sight of Hamza's mutilated body angered the Prophet so much that he shouted vindictively, "By God, I am going to mutilate fifty Qorayshites." This event and similar incidents illustrate the cruelty and malice of the ancient Arab mind.

The social environment was one in which even an aristocratic woman would rip a dead man's stomach, take and chew the liver, and throw it away when it did not taste nice. During the battle, Hend and several other women of the Qorayshite aristocracy went into the midst of the Meccan fighters to encourage them with feminine charms and promises.

There is a report in Ebn Hesham's biography of the Prophet³⁸ that some men of the Bajila tribe who had fallen ill came to Madina {P# 64} and asked him to help them. He replied that drinking camel's milk would cure them, and sent them out of the town to his herdsman.

After drinking some camel's milk, they recovered. Then they killed the Prophet's herdsman, stuck thorns into his eyes, and made off with the camels. The Prophet was greatly angered by the news and immediately sent Korz b. Jaber in pursuit of them. After they had been caught, they were brought before the Prophet. He ordered that their hands and feet should be cut off and their eyes taken out, and this was done.

One of the Prophet's sayings quoted in Bokhari's Sahih is "I am a human, very prone to anger and sorrow, just as all people become angry." Numerous reports confirm this.

Abu Rohm ol-Ghefari, a companion of the Prophet, related that once when he was riding beside the Prophet on a raid, his mount accidentally brought him so close to the Prophet that his thick club knocked the Prophet's shin and caused him pain. The Prophet glowered and struck Abu Rohm's foot with his whip. Abu Rohm, according to Bokhari's account, was very upset because he feared that a revelation about him and his misbehaviour might come down.

The Prophet, in the last months of his life, appointed Osama b. Zayd commander of the force which was to invade Syria. Not unnaturally the choice of a twenty-year-old youth to lead an army in which senior companions such as Abu Bakr were to serve evoked murmurs of discontent and disapproval, even among the Prophet's closest associates. On learning of these murmurs, the Prophet was so annoyed that he dragged himself from his sickbed to the mosque, and after conducting the prayer, he went up onto the pulpit and asked angrily, "What are these complaints about my appointment of Osama?" During the Prophet's terminal illness, Maymuna, one of his wives, prepared a medicine of which she had gained knowledge in Abyssinia, and it was poured into his mouth while he was unconscious. He suddenly awoke and shouted angrily, "Who did that?" They answered, "Maymuna prepared the medicine and got your uncle Abbas to pour it into your mouth." The Prophet then ordered that the medicine be poured into the mouths of all those present except Abbas. So even Maymuna, who was fasting, drank some of the medicine.

The Prophet Mohammad's psychological reactions and human emotions come to light in many reported incidents of the twenty three years, and especially the ten Madinan years, of his mission: {P# 65'} for example, in the affair of the lie concerning A'esha, in his self-imposed avoidance of Mariya the Copt, and in his haste to marry Zaynab and bring her to his house as soon as the waiting period after her divorce expired.

Yet despite the existence of all these testimonies and the absence of any Qur’anic attributions of supernatural power to Mohammad, as soon as he was dead, pious Moslem miracle-mongers began to say that he had performed all sorts of impossible marvels. The greater the distance in time and space, the more the mass of fiction grew, even though many of Islam's best scholars knew it to be incredible and considered it to be unworthy. A few examples will suffice.

Qadi 'Iyad (476/1088-544/1149), an Andalusian judge (qadi), theologian, poet, and genealogist, wrote a book in praise of the Prophet entitled Kelab osh-shefa be-ta'rif hoquq Mostafa. Contrary to what might be expected, the book is not about Mohammad's spiritual and moral strength and political skill. Its contents make the reader wonder how a learned and presumably not unintelligent man could ever have thought of writing such stuff about the Prophet. For example, on the purported authority of the Prophet's servant and prominent traditionalist Anas b. Malek³⁹Qadi 'Iyad credits the Prophet with a miraculous sexual potency which enabled him to have daily intercourse with all his eleven wives and reputedly equalled the potency of thirty ordinary men. Again claiming the authority of Malek b. Anas, Qadi 'Iyad makes the Prophet say, "I have four superiorities over other men: generosity, courage, frequency of copulation, and frequency of balsh" (an Arabic word meaning to strike down an enemy). The last point conflicts with the evidence of the sources that Mohammad only once killed a man in battle. Even if the statement stemmed from Malek b. Anas, anyone with any sense would disbelieve it. The truth is that the Prophet never boasted about himself. In the Qur’an there are no mentions of his generosity and courage, but only the words "You have moral strength" in sura 68, ol-Qalam, verse 4. If Qadi 'Iyad had boasted about his own munificence and valour, there might conceivably have been some justification; but he had no right to put into another man's mouth dishonourable boasts about sexual prowess and about killing people, especially when that man was the Prophet who had never said any such things. While ignoring the facts, Qadi 'Iyad obviously voiced his own secret lusts and ambitions. In his feverish zeal {P# 66} to dehumanize Mohammad, he goes so far as to make the Prophet's urine and feces speak and to state that, in the opinion of certain 'olama, they were non-pollutant. To this he adds an idiotic story that Mohammad's maid-servant Omm Ayman drank his urine one day as a cure for dropsy, and that the Prophet then told her that in the rest of her life she would never again suffer from stomach ache. Most absurd of all is Qadi 'Iyad's assertion that when the Prophet went out of Mecca to relieve his bowels, the stones and trees walked up and formed a hedge around him so that he would not be seen. Any reader of this nonsense is bound to ask why Qadi 'Iyad's zeal to make Mohammad inhuman went no further. Would it not have been more sensible to say that the Prophet had no need to eat and excrete like other men? In that case there would have been nothing for walking stones and trees to conceal.

Such ravings are not peculiar to Qadi 'Iyad. Dozens of writers about the Prophet, such as the earlier mentioned Qastallani, have repeated hundreds of similar silly stories which can only expose Mohammad's unique personality to disparagement and ridicule. The Prophet has even been made to say, "God put me into Adam's loins when He created Adam, then into Noah's loins, and then into Abraham's loins. I remained in pure loins and wombs until I was born of my mother." This suggests that other humans suddenly came into existence from under bushes. Obviously every human has had the potentiality of existence before acquiring its reality through being conceived and born.

Again according to Qadi 'Iyad, whenever the Prophet passed a place, the stones and trees would walk up and say, "Peace be upon you, O Apostle of God!' Perhaps animals, being mobile and endowed with throat, larynx, and tongue, could have come and uttered a greeting; but how could inanimate objects, lacking brain, vision, and will, have recognised a prophet, let alone greeted him? Some will say that it was a miracle; but what answer have they to the question why no miracle occurred when the Qorayshite polytheists refused to believe without one? The sort of miracle that those Qorayshites demanded of Mohammad was relatively minor, only to make water flow from a rock or to turn a stone into gold. If stones uttered greetings to the Prophet, why did a stone strike him on the mouth and injure him at the battle of Mount Ohod? No doubt the miracle-mongers would answer that this particular stone was an infidel. {P# 67} In numerous books, by both Sonnite and Shi'ite authors, it is stated that the Prophet Mohammad had no shadow and could see behind himself as well as in front. Sha'rani⁴⁰ (d. 972/1565) goes further and writes in his book Kashf ol-ghomma: "The Prophet could see in all four directions and perceive things at night just as well as in daytime. When he walked with a tall man, he looked taller, and when he was seated, his shoulders were higher than those of the other men." The writers of such stuff were too simple-minded to be able to measure the greatness of a man like Mohammad by any but outward, physical standards, and too obtuse to know that only spiritual, intellectual, and moral strength can give a person superiority over others. Even so, it is remarkable that none of the miracle-mongers asked why no miracle to help the Prophet's cause ever occurred. Nor did they ask why the Prophet could not read and write. Instead of making the Prophet shadowless and taller by a head and shoulders than other men, would not they have done better to make him write down the Qur’an with his own blessed hand instead of hiring a Jewish scribe? Most remarkable of all is the fact that these miracle-mongers were Moslems who read the Qur’an and knew Arabic well enough to understand its meanings, but still remained captive to illusions directly conflicting with explicit Qur’anic texts and eager to present those illusions as established facts.

The Qur’anic verses which state that Mohammad was a human being with all the normal human instincts and emotions are perfectly clear and cannot be explained away. In verse 131 of the Meccan sura 20 (Taha), the Prophet is told: "Do not stretch your eyes (i.e. look enviously) at what We have given certain couples among them to enjoy - the flower of life in the lower world - so that We may test them thereby! Your Lord's provision is better and more enduring." Likewise in verse 88 of sura 15 (ol-Hejr), which is also Meccan: "Do not stretch your eyes at what We have given certain couples among them to enjoy! Do not grieve over them! And lower your wing (i.e. be meek) to the believers!" From the wording of these two verses it is obvious that some sort of envy had crept into Mohammad's soul. Perhaps he had been wishing that he might enjoy the advantages of possessing wealth and sons, as the chiefs of the Qoraysh did.

The great majority of the Prophet's opponents were wealthy men, naturally averse to change and anxious to silence any voice {P# 68} capable of upsetting their established position. It was equally natural that discontented groups should gather around Mohammad. In these circumstances the Prophet had felt depressed and had wished that he could win over some influential rich men. He had fixed his hopes for Islam on them. But God forbade him to pursue that course. This is made clear in verses 33 and 34 of sura 34 (Saba): "We have never sent a warner to a town without its wealthy men saying, 'We disbelieve in the message that you have been sent with.' They have said, 'We possess more property and more children. We are not in distress.'"

In sura 6 (ol-An'am), verse 52, the Prophet is addressed in words which cannot fail to impress the percipient reader: "Do not drive away those who appeal to their Lord in the morning and the evening, longing for His face! You are not liable for anything in their account, and they are not liable for anything in your account. If you drive them away, you will be one of the oppressors." The reproachful tone of the verse is very significant as evidence of the Prophet's human nature and human behaviour. The polytheists had been saying that they would not join Mohammad because his followers were men of no substance, and he had probably felt a temptation to appease the rich and even to despise his own poor flock. This supposition is supported by verses 27 and 28 of sura 18 (ol-Kahl): "Make yourself be more patient with those who appeal to their Lord in the morning and the evening, longing for His face! Do not avert your eyes from them, longing for adornment in worldly life! And do not obey anyone whose heart We have made neglectful of remembering Us, who pursues his own pleasures, whose way is extravagance! Say, 'The truth is from your Lord. Let those who so wish believe and those who so wish disbelieve!' We have prepared a fire for the oppressors." According to the To/sir ol-Jalalayn, the occasion of the revelation of this verse was the refusal of Oyayna b. Hesn (a tribal chief) and his men to accept Islam unless Mohammad would get rid of his impecunious {having very little or no money usually habitually} followers.

The same meaning of the Prophet's fallibility and therewith entirely normal humanity is very clearly conveyed in verses 75, 76, and 77 of sura 17 (ol-Esra). Although the accounts of the occasion of their revelation differ, all confirm the meaning of the text: "They nearly tempted you away from what We have revealed to you, (hoping) that you might fabricate other (ones) against Us.

Then they would indeed have accepted you as a friend. And if We {P# 69} had not strengthened you, you might almost have inclined to them a little. In that case We would have made you taste double (punishment) in life and double (punishment) in death. You would not have found a helper against Us then." According to some of the commentators, these verses were revealed after the Prophet's meeting with certain Qorayshites (mentioned above on p. 31) when he recited the Sural on-Najm and said the words, which he later rued, "They are the cranes aloft. So their intercession may be hoped for." {Satanic Verses} Abu Horayra⁴¹ and Qatada⁴²are reported to have said that the three verses were revealed after some negotiations between the Prophet Mohammad and the Qorayshite chiefs, who had demanded that he should recognise them as the masters, or at least cease to show disrespect for them, and had promised in return to leave him in peace, to enter into friendly relations with him, and to stop beating poor, homeless Moslems and throwing them out onto the sun-scorched rocks. Evidently the Prophet either yielded or softened to such an offer when it was first made, but changed his mind when the time for action came. Perhaps he was prompted to do so by his own inner soul, the same soul which had moved him to think about spiritual matters for so many years and then to start work on the eradication of polytheism and idolatry; for the proposed compromise would be likely to diminish or destroy the impact of his preaching. Perhaps he was told by devout, unbending believers such as Omar and by brave, militant believers such as Ali and Hamza that a compromise of whatever sort would be a blunder and a defeat. In any case, the words of these three verses prove that the Prophet Mohammad shared in the human characteristic of susceptibility to temptation.

This is confirmed in other Qur’anic passages. Among them are verses 94 and 95 of sura 10 (Yunos): "And if you are in doubt concerning what We have sent down to you, ask those who have been reciting the book (i.e. scripture) before you! The truth has come to you from your Lord. So do not be one of the doubters! Do not be one of those who have called God's signs lies! You would then be one of the losers." Again in sura 5 (al-Ma'eda), verse 71: "O Apostle, transmit what has been sent down to you from your Lord! If you do not, you will not have transmitted His message.

And God will protect you from the people." How ought these verses to be interpreted by a Moslem who believes in God and acknowledges the Qur’an to be God's word? What is the meaning of these stern admonitions to the Prophet? {P# 70}

Surely the only explanation can be that human weakness and frailty had begun to get the better of the Prophet. He must have been afraid of the people until God told him not to fear because he would be protected against molestation by the people. Certain Qorayshites, particularly Walid b. ol-Moghira, As b. Wa'el, Adi b. Qays,Aswad b. Abdol-Mottaleb, and Aswad b. Abd Yaghuth, had deeply distressed the Prophet with their mockery of him and his teachings. Perhaps, in the depths of his soul, he had begun to regret his mission and even to harbor thoughts of giving it up and leaving the people to their own devices. Otherwise he would surely not have received God's command in sura 15 (oI-Hejr), verses 94 and 95: "Say out loud what you have been ordered (to say), and keep away from the polytheists! We have given you sufficient (protection) against the mockers." Three closely following sentences in the same sura spell out the matter and confirm the suggested interpretation: "We know that your heart is grieved by what they say. Proclaim the praise of your Lord! Be one of those who bow down, and serve your Lord! Then the certainty will come to you." Some commentators have taken the word yaqin (here translated as certainty) to mean the inevitable destiny of death; their presumption of Mohammad's infallibility has obviously prevented them from acknowledging his vulnerability to doubt and led them to invent this and other interpretations at variance with Qur’anic wordings. The meaning of the three verses is perfectly clear; Mohammad was suffering from severe depression which made him have doubts, even about his own authenticity, but prayer and praise to God would restore his certainty, i.e. his confidence in his mission.

In sura 33 (oI-Ahzab), verse 1, Mohammad is expressly bidden: "Fear God, and do not obey the unbelievers and the hypocrites!" The Talsir oI-JalaIayn interprets the first verb as "continue to fear." Another commentary asserts that both commands, though addressed to the Prophet, are meant to be for the. whole Moslem community. The zeal of such cmmentators is greater than their accuracy, because in verse 2 of the same sura God commands the Prophet: "Stick to what is revealed to you from your Lord!" The two verses clearly indicate that Mohammad reacted to his disappointment in a natural, human way by wondering whether to submit to the demands of his adversaries, and that God sternly forbade him to do so; in more scientific language, he was suffering from exhaustion and depression, but was restrained from surrender and brought back to his course by his inner strength of will. {P# 71}

If this explanation is ruled out, the only other possibility would be that the Prophet wanted to make a show of appeasement by pretending willingness to relent and compromise over the demands of his adversaries, but God forbade him to do so. In view of Mohammad's political astuteness, such a hypothesis might be arguable, but in view of his truthfulness, single-mindedness, and moral strength, it would scarcely be probable. Mohammad believed in what he said; he believed that he was inspired by God.

To conclude this chapter it will be fitting to quote a story from the Cambridge Tafsir⁴³ (an early Qur’an commentary in Persian) as an illustration of Moslem thinking in the first centuries of Islam and its remoteness from the facts of the time when the Qur’an was revealed. The story (on p. 295 of vol. 2 of the Tehran printed edition) is as follows: "After the revelation of the Sura on-Najm (sura 53, which opens with the words 'By the star when it sets'), Otaba b. Abi Lahab sent a message to the Prophet saying that he did not believe in the stars in the Qur’an. The Prophet took offence and cursed him, praying, 'O God, may one of Your beasts of prey overpower him!' Otaba on hearing of it, was frightened. At that time he was travelling in a caravan. When the caravan stopped at Harran, Otaba lay down and slept in the midst of his friends. God sent a lion, which took Otaba from the midst of his friends and tore all his body but did not eat any of that accursed, unclean thing. So all the people knew that the lion had not taken him to eat him but to fulfill the Prophet's prayer." It never occurred to the fabricators of this story that the Prophet, instead of cursing Otaba, could have besought God to show mercy to him and convert him to Islam. Is not Islam faith in the Lord of the Worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful?

At Madina, however, Islam was not only faith in God; it also became the basis of a new legal system and of an Arab state. Islam's rules and obligations were all laid down during Mohammad's stay at Madina in the last ten years of his prophetic career. The first step was the change of the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca.

One result of this step was that the Jews were thereafter separately taxed from the Moslems. Another was that the Arabs of Madina got rid of their inferiority complex and that the Bedouin Arabs began to acquire a sort of national fervor; for the Ka'ba, the idol-temple which the tribes had revered, was thereafter the house of Abraham and Ishmael, the ancestors of all the Arabs.

Likewise in the matter of fasting, the example of the Jews was {P# 72} discarded. First the fast was extended from the tenth day of the month of Moharram, which was the Jewish practice, to a number of days; later the whole month of Ramadan was reserved for it.

The rules on marriage, divorce, menstruation, kindred and affinity, inheritance and polygamy, on penalties for fornication, adultery and theft, on retaliation, blood-money, and other criminal matters, and on civil matters such as defilements, food prohibitions, and circumcision, stemmed with some modifications mainly from Jewish law or pre-Islamic Arab custom and were all enacted at Madina. Other rules on civil and personal matters, though coloured by Jewish and pagan Arab ideas and practices, were unquestionably measures taken for adjustment of the social and commercial order. {P# 73}

CHAPTER III

Politics

THE EMIGRATION

History always moves one, but here and there in its pages we find days which become fixed in our minds as starting points of great events or transformations. One of these is the day, recorded as the 12th of the third month { of Arabic Lunar month} (Rabi' ol-Awwal) corresponding to 24 September 662 in the Gregorian Christian calendar, on which the Prophet Mohammad arrived in the town then known as Yathreb.

The main reason why the early Moslems saw Mohammad's emigration (hejra) as marking an era was simple religious enthusiasm. The ancient Arabs did not really possess an era, though after the defeat of the Abyssinian force which threatened Mecca in the Year of the Elephant⁴⁴ (probably 570 A.D.), some of them reckoned dates from that point.

Another reason for the identification of the new era with the hejra was that it enabled individuals to boast of the earliness and courageousness of their adherence to the Prophet's cause, and members of the Aws and Khazraj tribes to stress the importance of the protection which they had given to him.

The day from which the start of the era was reckoned was in fact not the twelfth day of the month of Rabi' ol-Awwal, but the first day of the first month, namely Moharram, of the same year, corresponding to the Gregorian date 16 July 622.

It certainly did not occur to the minds of Arabs living in that year that the twelfth day of Rabi' ol-Awwal was the first link in a chain of events destined to cause unprecedented change in their way of life. Nobody in the contemporary world dreamed that a collection of desert-dwellers, who had played no significant part in the history of civilization and whose more advanced tribes had attached themselves to the Roman and Iranian empires and were {P# 74} proud of their vassalage to the Caesar and the Khosraw {Khosrow Anushirvan (Persian: “Khosrow of the Immortal Soul” , or Khosrow the Just): Persian king who ruled the Sasanian empire from 531 to 579 and was remembered as a great reformer and patron of the arts and scholarship}, would soon become the masters of a great part of the lands of old civilization.

Migration from one region to another was not abnormal among the Arabs. The outstanding example had been the migration of South Arabian tribes to the northern borderlands of the peninsula after the bursting of the dam at Ma'reb⁴⁵ in the Yaman. In comparison with this, the move of Mohammad and his companions from Mecca to Yathreb was an unimportant affair involving a small number of people - a few emigrants from oppression by Qorayshite polytheists.

Yet this seemingly unimportant affair led within a decade to a complete upheaval. Ten years later the few men who had left Mecca to join Mohammad, some clandestinely as fugitives, others openly as travellers, would be the masters of Mecca while all their opponents would be on bended knees. The idols would be smashed and the traditional cult of the Ka'ba, managed by the Qorayshites and providing the wealth and prestige of their chiefs, would be uprooted. Abu Sofyan, the successor to Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl, would surrender for fear of his life, and all the diehards would profess belief in One God.

The genesis of a great event from a chain of small events has not been uncommon in history. Good examples are the French revolution, the Russian revolution, and the Mongol invasion of Iran.

Mohammad had clashed with the chiefs of the Qoraysh ever since he began to preach. Perhaps he had not at first expected that his teachings, being basically rational and similar to those of the other two Semitic religions, would encounter such persistent opposition; perhaps he had overlooked the important point that widespread acceptance of his teachings would necessarily undermine the supremacy of the Qoraysh and the power and wealth of their chiefs. In any case their hostility was a fact, and he was obliged to start thinking of ways and means to overcome it. Already before his departure to Yathreb he had taken two steps to this end.

The first step was the dispatch of a number of Moslems to Abyssinia in two successive groups. Evidently these Moslems, who were poor and had no protectors, suffered persecution by the Qorayshites and received advice from the Prophet to go to Abyssinia; but it can be inferred from the identities of the members of the second, more numerous group, which included his cousin Ja'far b. {P# 75} Abi Taleb, and from the instructions given to them, that a political purpose underlay this move. Hope of support from the Negus must have arisen in Mohammad's searching and resourceful mind. The Negus, being a Christian ruler, would be naturally opposed to idolatry, and on being informed of the anti-polytheist revolt of a party of monotheists at Mecca and of the persecution inflicted on them, might well be ready to send a force to Mecca to protect them. This would explain the inclusion of Ja'far b. Abi Taleb, who being of a respected family had not personally suffered persecution. At the same time the Qorayshites sent Amr b. ol-As and Abdollah b. Abi Rabi'a to Abyssinia with presents for the Negus, hoping to dissuade him from any intervention which the Moslem emigrants might propose and if possible also to secure their extradition.

The second step was Mohammad's journey to Ta'ef⁴⁶ in 620 A.D. Having lost his uncle and protector Abu Taleb and then his helpmate Khadija, he was exposed to more open hostility than before. He had hopes of support from the Banu Thaqif tribe, to whom he was related on his mother's side. At Ta'ef, which was the tribe's centre, the Banu Thaqif were held in high respect. All the people of Ta'ef were envious of Mecca's privileged position and of the Qoraysh tribe's prestige among the Bedouin; they naturally wanted to make their own town the meeting place of the Arabs and to avoid submission to Qorayshite hegemony. This was not wishful thinking but proven fact, because the Prophet could remember a visit from some Thaqif chiefs who had said that the people of Ta'ef would probably become Moslems if he would make it the sanctuary and holy city of the new religion. The Banu Amer tribe, also influential at Ta'ef, had earlier made a similar proposal to him, requesting that in the event of the success of his cause and the implantation of Islam through their help, he should make them the noblest Arab tribe instead of the Qoraysh. Clearly the purpose of the Prophet's journey to Ta'ef was to explore the ground. If the Banu Thaqif were really willing to support him, it might be possible to humble the Qoraysh. This was why he travelled to Ta'ef secretly with no companion except his manumitted {to release from slavery} slave and adopted son Zayd b. Haretha. His hopes were disappointed, however, because the Thaqif chiefs decided not to support him.

Bedouin Arabs have never taken much interest in spiritual matters. Even today, nearly fourteen centuries after Mohammad's mission, they tend to view religion as a means of worldly gain. The {P# 76} Banu Thaqif were too concerned about their livelihood to think of disregarding immediate material interests for the sake of promised future salvation. Ta'ef was the summer resort of Mecca, and its people made profits from Meccan visitors and business connections. The Qorayshites were taking action against Mohammad and would be antagonized by any support for him. It would therefore not be wise to rate his unproven promises higher than the practical requirements of Ta'ef's security and prosperity. On such a calculation of profit and loss, the chiefs of Ta'ef not only refused support but also showed malice to Mohammad. They assaulted him, insulted him, and even rejected his last request to them, which was that they should refrain from disclosing his unsuccessful journey and thereby emboldening the Qorayshites. As a result, the Meccan opposition to him became much more virulent after his return. Finally a number of leading polytheists met in the hall of the assembly (dar ol-nadwa) to discuss ways and means of putting an end to Mohammad's activity, which posed such a threat to their standing and wealth. Of the three suggested alternatives of deporting, imprisoning, or killing him, they decided on the last.

Besides Ta'ef, one other town in the Hejaz rivaled Mecca in economic and social importance. This was Yathreb, known also as ol-Madina (an Aramaic word, probably introduced by the local Jews, meaning "the city")⁴⁷ Mecca, with its temple of the favourite idols of the Arabs, was certainly the religious centre most visited by the Bedouin tribes, and the Qorayshites, as custodians of the Ka'ba and purveyors of the needs of the visitors, could naturally claim to be the noblest Arab tribe; but the oasis town of Yathreb, with a flourishing agriculture, which Mecca wholly lacked, in addition to a substantial commerce, and with a relatively considerable degree of literacy in its population thanks to the presence of three Jewish tribes, had attained a higher cultural and social level. Nevertheless Yathreb was generally placed second among the Hejazi towns after Mecca.

The other element in Yathreb's population consisted of two feuding Arab tribes, the Aws and the Khazraj, each of which had friendly ties with one or two of the Jewish tribes. The Aws and Khazraj were Qahtani Arabs, i.e. of Yamani origin, and this was another source of rivalry with the Qoraysh tribe, which was Adnani, i.e. North Arabian.

On account of sloth and inexperience of agriculture and commerce, and Awsites and Khazrajites were not as prosperous as {P# 77} their Jewish neighbours, and they often worked for Jewish employers. Thus in spite of their alliances with particular Jewish tribes, they resented the economic superiority of the Jews in general, whom they saw as their masters.

News of Mohammad's emergence and preaching of Islam at Mecca, and of the Qorayshite opposition to him and the subsequent tension, had spread all over the Hejaz and been heard with interest at Madina. Reports by Yathrebi travellers to 'Mecca arid discussions held by some of them with Mohammad prompted a number of Awsite and Khazrajite chiefs to think of fishing in the troubled waters. If Mohammad and his companions could he brought to Madina and an alliance could be made with him, several difficulties might be overcome. The wall of Qorayshite solidarity would be breached, because Mohammad and his companions were themselves of the Qoraysh tribe. A joint alliance with Mohammad and his companions might help the Aws and Khazraj tribes to end the feud which had so long plagued them. Furthermore Mohammad had brought a new religion. If this religion took hold, the Jews would no longer be able to claim superiority On the ground that they possessed scriptures and were God's chosen people. Collaboration with Mohammad and his companions would therefore be likely to strengthen the Aws and the Khazraj in relation to the three Jewish tribes at Madina.

During the pilgrimage season of the year 620, six men from Yathreb met Mohammad and listened carefully to what he had to say. In the same season of 621, a twelve-man delegation met him at ol-Aqaba on the outskirts of Mecca. They found his teaching salutary and his requirements not over-exacting: the people must eschew fornication, adultery, usury, and lying, and instead of manmade idols must worship One God as the scripture-possessors did. The twelve men pledged allegiance to Mohammad, and after returning to Yathreb informed their kinsfolk that they had become Moslems and were in favour of a pact with Mohammad. Their action and their proposal met with widespread approval. In the following year 622, a large delegation consisting of seventy three men and two women went to meet Mohammad at the same place and concluded the second pact of ol-Aqaba with him.

The thought of emigration was not strange to Mohammad's mind. It is mentioned, evidently with reference to the Moslems who went to Abyssinia, in verse 13 of sura 39 (oz-Zomar): "Say, '0 worshippers who believe, fear your Lord! For those who do good {P# 78} in this world there will be a good (reward). And God's earth is wide.'" The pact of ol-Aqaba must have answered Mohammad's secret hopes. His mission at Mecca, now in its thirteenth year, had not won any shining success. There had even been some regrettable backslidings of converts who, with typical Arab fickleness, had wearied and renounced Islam when they saw that Mohammad's cause was not advancing, and above all when they found that being Moslem involved being humiliated and persecuted. They had also been prodded into desertion by rich, influential polytheists. His approach to the Banu Thaqif of Ta'ef had not only failed but had further exacerbated the Qorayshite hostility to him. Although his own clan, the Banu Hashem, continued to protect him, they only protected him against personal injury and could not be expected to join in his struggle against the Qoraysh.

The alliance with the Aws and the Khazraj would transform the prospect. With their support it would be possible to challenge the Qoraysh. While Islam had not taken firm root in Mecca, it might well do so in Yathreb, if only because of the Awsite and Khazrajite jealousy of the Qoraysh. .

A further consideration was the likelihood that at Yathreb, with its thriving trade and its agriculture, Moslem emigrants would be able to find work.

In the negotiations between the Prophet and the chiefs of the Aws and Khazraj at ol-Aqaba, Abbas b. Abdol-Mottaleb, who had apparently not yet become a Moslem but was a protector of his nephew, is reported to have been present and to have made a speech urging them to be frank about their intentions. He bluntly told the Yathrebi representatives that they and Mohammad would probably be attacked by the Qoraysh and that they ought to promise the same protection to Mohammad as they would give to their own wives and children. In any case they should not mislead him with empty promises. To this one oft he Khazrajite delegates, ol-Bara b. ol-Ma'rur, replied heatedly that they were fighting men with no fear of war and would face up to all difficulties. An experienced and prudent Awsite delegate, Abu'l-Haytham b. Tayyehan, is reported to have said to Mohammad, "We have quite close relations with the Jews, which may be broken after the conclusion of a pact with you and your companions. Perhaps your cause will advance. In that case, would you make a compromise with your own tribe and forsake us?" According to Ebn Hesham's {P# 79} biography, the Prophet smiled and answered, "On the contrary. Blood, blood, destruction, destruction! I shall be yours and you shall be mine. I shall be at war with those at war with you and at peace with those at peace with you.”

The repetition of the words "blood" and "destruction" brings to mind the statement of the famous French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat, "I want blood.".

Also noteworthy is another phrase said to have been used by the Prophet Mohammad in his answer to Abu'l-Haytham: "war with the reds and the blacks among the people." Probably this meant war with people of all races, non-Arabs as well as Arabs.

These words must have expressed the Prophet's feelings, or in other words his inner desires.

The whole tenor of the answer to Abu'l-Haytham indicates that it was a cry from the heart concealed in the outward Mohammad, an articulation of a long dormant hope. The support of the Aws and the Khazraj would open the door to a brighter future; it would enable Mohammad to press on with the propagation of Islam, to strike at the Qorayshite intransigents, and to manifest his own hidden self. From chrysalis of the Mohammad who had preached with scant effect for thirteen years, the Mohammad who was to subdue all Arabia could now emerge.

THE CHANGE IN MOHAMMAD'S

PERSONALITY

Unimportant or seemingly unimportant events have often changed the course of history. They had decisive effects, for example, on the careers of Napoleon and Hitler.

The Prophet Mohammad's emigration to Yathreb was seemingly a minor local affair, but actually the start of a great transformation of Arab fortunes and world history. The ensuing developments provide a wide field of study for scholars seeking to ascertain the causes, correlations, and latent social factors.

Of all these problems, perhaps the most interesting and certainly the most striking is the change of the personality of one of the great makers of history. In this particular case, change of personality is an unsatisfactory term; emergence of Mohammad's inner self would be a more nearly accurate description. The hejra started a great historical transformation, but also followed from {P# 80} a transformation of Mohammad's personality which requires meticulous psychological and spiritual analysis.

Mohammad was devout and free from the vices of his time. He pictured the end of the world and the day of judgement as near at hand. With his thoughts fixed on the hereafter, he implored his Meccan compatriots to revere the Lord of the Universe, and condemned violence, injustice, hedonism, and neglect of the poor. Like Jesus, he was full of compassion. After the move to Madina, however, he became a relentless warrior, intent on spreading his religion by the sword, and a scheming founder of a state. A Messiah was transformed into a David. A man who had lived for more than twenty years with one wife became inordinately fond of women.

In the view of the English novelist H. G. Wells, human beings undergo constant change, but on account of the slowness and imperceptibility of the process we persist in imagining fifty-year olds to be the same persons as they were in their twenties when in fact they have gradually but thoroughly changed. In so far as the vital faculties decline while the mental faculties are brought to their peak through experience, study, and reflection, this theory is sound. Normally the main difference between a twenty-year-old and a fifty-year-old is that the former has strong physical and emotional desires while the latter has had time to gain experience and learn to think.

Useful though this theory may be, it is not always right, and in the case of Mohammad it is wrong. After the move to Madina at the age of 53, i.e. at an age when most men's physical and emotional faculties are on the wane, a new Mohammad emerged. During his last ten years, which he spent at Madina, he was not the same man as the Mohammad who for thirteen years had been preaching humane compassion at Mecca. The Prophet bidden by God "to warn your tribe, your nearest kin" (sura 26, verse 214) reappeared in the garb of the Prophet intent on subduing his own tribe and on humbling the kinsmen who for thirteen years had mocked him. Shedding the gown of the warner to "the mother town (Le. Mecca) and the people around it" (sura 42, verse 5), he donned the armour of the warrior who was to bring all Arabia from the Yaman to Syria under his flag.

The beauty and melody of the Meccan suras, so reminiscent of the preachings of Isaiah and Jeremiah and evocative of the fervour of a visionary soul, seldom reappear in the Madinan suras, where {P# 81} the poetic and musical tone tends to be silenced and replaced by the peremptory note of rules and regulations.

At Madina orders and rules were issued on the authority of a commander who could allow no infringement or deviation. The penalties prescribed for violation or negligence were very severe.

Ignaz Goldziher⁴⁸ attributed this abrupt metamorphosis to an inner drive which Adolf Harnack had described as at once the affliction of supermen and the source of their extraordinary energy. Such a drive makes great men immune to hesitancy, fatigue, and despair, and fearless of obstacles however grave. Nothing else can explain their achievement of feats beyond the power of normal men.

The following quotations will suffice to show that Mohammad's metamorphosis after the hejra is not only attested by the record of events but is also echoed in the different tones of the Meccan and Madinan suras. In verses 10-12 of the Meccan sura 73 (ol-Mozzamel), the Prophet is bidden, "Be patient with what they say, and part from them courteously! Leave the deniers, the possessors of wealth, to Me, and give them a little respite! Fetters and hellfire are in Our hands." In the Tafsir ol-Jalalayn it is stated that this command to part from believers courteously was given before the command to fight and try to kill them; it would have been more fully true to say that the earlier command was given before the Prophet's rise to power with Awsite and Khazrajite help. Only when he could rely on the support of men of the sword was the command to fight unbelievers sent down to him in the Madinan verse 187 of sura 2 (ol-Baqara): "Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from wherever they drove you out, for persecution is worse than killing!"

In sura 6 (ol-An'am), the text of verse 108, which was revealed at Mecca, is as follows: "Do not curse those other than God to whom they pray! They will then resentfully curse God from lack of knowledge. It will be like that because We make every community's practice (seem) fair to it. Later their return to their Lord (will take place), and He will explain to them what they have been doing." It is not clear whether this advice (with its plural verb) is addressed to the Prophet or to sharp-tongued zealots among his Companions such as Omar b. ol-Khattab or Hamza b. Abd ol-Mottaleb. At Madina, however, particularly after the expansion of Moslem power, the mere cursing of the deities of the Qoraysh was no longer at issue; peaceful and affable contact with {P# 82} unbelievers was categorically forbidden. In the words of the Madinan sura 47 (Mohammad), verse 37, "So do not be weak and call for peace when you are uppermost! God is with you and will not deprive you of (the proceeds of) your deeds.”

Sometimes two contradictory commands appear in the same sura. Although sura 2 (ot-Baqara) is considered to be the first in order of revelation after the hejra, it is likely in view of its length to have been sent down in parts over a period of one or two years. In its 257th verse, which evidently dates from the beginning of the period, comes the explicit statement: "There is no compulsion in religion. Right has been distinguished from wrong. Those who reject false deities and believe in God have grasped the firmest handle, which will never break." On the other hand in the 189th verse, which perhaps came down when the Moslem community was stronger or on the occasion of some incident, use of force is enjoined: "Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's! And if they give up, let there be no enmity except to evil-doers!" - In sura 9 (ot-Tawba, also known as ol-Bara’a), which is chronologically the last sura of the Qur’an, the command to use force is unqualified and peremptory:

(1) "Fight those who do not believe in God and the last day. . .. . . !" (verse 29).

(2) "It is not for the Prophet and the believers to pray for forgiveness of the polytheists . . . . . . !" (verse 114).

(3) "O Prophet, struggle against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh with them! Their refuge is hell. What a wretched destination!" (verse 74).

(4) “O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near (kin) to you, and let them find harshness in you. . . . . . !" (verse 124).

The same command to use force comes with identical wording in the late Madinan sura 66 (ot-Tahrim), verse 9: “O Prophet, struggle against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh with them. Their refuge is hell. What a wretched destination!" Initially there had been no sanction for the use of force and harshness. Even in verse 40 of the Madinan sura 22 (ol-Hajj), in which holy war against the unbelievers was first authorized, the verb is not in the imperative mood: "Permission is given to those who fight because they have been wronged." In verse 41 the wrong {P# 83} done to the Moslems is specified: "Those who have been unjustly driven from their homes on the sole ground that they say, Our Lord is God.'" Zamakhshari commented that this first authorization of war on the polytheists came after more than seventy Qur’anic verses in which violence is forbidden.

In justification of the license to wage war, the Prophet Mohammad put to use his innate understanding of human nature. The eloquent reminder of the forced departure of the Moslems from Mecca would stir them to seek vengeance on the Qoraysh. The same cogent {convincing} rhetoric is used in another context, where the words are spoken by the Children of Israel but the lesson is for the Moslems: "Why should not we fight in God's cause when we have been driven out of our homes and away from our children?" (sura 2, part of verse 247). Although the war was for God's cause, remembrance of personal loss would stir the Moslems to fight for revenge.

There had been no question of war while the Prophet remained at Mecca. Verse 67 of sura 6 (ol-An'am) shows that the Prophet then used to meet and talk with polytheists and that they sometimes treated him discourteously and mocked him: "And when you see them launch out against Our signs (i.e. Qur’anic verses), turn away from them until they launch out on some other subject! And in case the Satan may make you forget, do not, after (this) reminder, sit with evil-doing people!"

As regards the possessors of scriptures, in verse 45 of the Meccan sura 29 (ol-Ankabut) God instructs not only the Prophet but also, since the verb is plural, the Moslems, as follows: "Argue with possessors of scriptures, other than evil-doers, only by means of (arguments) that are better! And say, 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and sent down to you. Our God is the same as your God, and we have surrendered to Him.'"

Amicable behaviour toward possessors of scriptures is recommended in several other Meccan and early Madinan verses. "Say to those who have been given scripture and to the common people⁴⁹ 'Have you surrendered (to God)?' If they have surrendered, they are rightly guided, and if they have turned away, your duty is only to convey the message" (sura 3, al- Emran, part of verse 19). "Those who believe, and those who are Jewish, Christian, and Sabaean {member of a people of South Arabia in pre-Islamic times, founders of the kingdom of Saba', the biblical Sheba}, all who believe in God and the last day and who do right, will have their reward from their Lord. They need not fear or grieve" (sura 2, ol-Baqara, verse 59, and almost identical {P# 84} words in sura 5, ol-Ma'eda, verse 73. The contexts indicate that these verses were revealed in the first or second year after the hejra.

In the course of the Madinan decade, however, and especially after the conquest of Mecca, changes occurred, and finally sura 9 (ot-Tawba) came down like a thunderbolt onto the heads of the scripture-possessors. These people, who at Mecca had on God's advice been politely answered and not threatened (any more than the common people) with future punishment for failure to embrace Islam, because the Prophet's function was solely to convey the message to them, were ordered in the year 10 A.H. to choose between the alternatives of conversion, payment of tribute and acceptance of inferior status, or condemnation to death. The edict comes in verse 29 of sura 9: "fight those who do not believe in God and the last day and do not prohibit the things which God and His apostle have prohibited! And (fight) possessors of scriptures who do not accept the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) until they pay tribute by hand, being inferior!" With the passage of the years, these scripture-possessors had become the "worst creatures" (sura 98, verse 5).

Mohammad's announcement of this edict after the elimination of the Madinan Jews, the seizure of the Jewish villages of Khaybar and Fadak, and the conquest of Mecca, indicates that with Islam in power, polite and rational discussion with dissentients was no longer deemed necessary. The language of future discourse with them was to be the language of the sword.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF

A SOUND ECONOMY

After the move to Yathreb, the Prophet Mohammad arranged covenants of brotherhood between his local supporters (Ansar) and the gradually arriving Meccan Moslem emigrants (Mohajerun), whereby the former lodged the latter in their homes as adoptive brothers. Although the Mohajerun intended to work and did in fact open shops in the bazaar and find jobs as agricultural labourers, their position was neither easy nor secure. Being committed to struggle against the Qorayshites, they needed more dependable livelihoods which would enable them to stand on their own feet. The Prophet, who did not himself take an employment but subsisted on the generosity of the Mohajerun and the Ansar, {P# 85} went through a hard time, often having to retire to bed with no supper or to assuage his hunger with no more than a few dates.

Thus the small Moslem community faced a vital problem: how to acquire a less precarious and more self-sufficient economic base. The steps taken to solve this problem are discussed below.

Among the contemporary Arab tribes, the traditional method of self-enrichment was attack on another tribe and seizure of its animals and other possessions. For the Moslems then living at Madina no alternative was discernible. They therefore took up raiding. The Arabic word ghazwa (raid) meant a sudden attack on a caravan or another tribe for the purpose of seizing property and women and thereby easing the hard task of survival in Arabia.

News reached the Prophet that a Qorayshite caravan led by Amr b. ol-Hadrami was proceeding from Syria to Mecca with a large cargo of goods. He sent a band of Mohajerun under the command of Abdollah b. Jahsh to attack the caravan. They lay in ambush near a stopping place called on-Nakhla and took the approaching caravan by surprise, killing its leader and capturing two other men before their safe return to Madina with the entire cargo in their possession. The successful venture is known in Islamic history as the Nakhla raid.

This action caused a great stir, because it was the first Moslem raid and because it took place on the first day of the month of Rajab, one of the four months (Moharram, Rajab, Dhu'l-Qa'da, and Dhu'-l-Hejja) in which fighting was forbidden by ancient Arab custom. Cries of indignation against the breach of the ban rang out from the Qoraysh and not unnaturally were echoed by other tribes. This unfavourable aspect of the matter seems to have worried the Prophet, who showed some coolness to Abdollah b. Jahsh and his men, and some uncertainty about the future course to be followed. Abdollah b. Jahsh claimed that the attack had taken place on the last day of the month of Jomada oth-Thaniya, in which case a solution might be found; but there was also the problem of the booty, which would provide needed financial resources for the Prophet's followers and therefore ought not to be relinquished in response to hollow Qorayshite protests. Probably some of his companions pointed out to him that the accomplished fact could not be undone and that any sort of disavowal would be tantamount to acknowledgement of Moslem guilt and enemy innocence. The importance of the booty for improving the situation of the Mohajerun must also have been present to their minds. {P# 86}

A definite and precedent-setting solution came to hand when verse 214 of sura 2 (ol-Baqara) was sent down: "They are asking you about the forbidden month, (about) fighting in it. Say, 'Fighting in it is a great (evil), but turning (men) away from God's path, disbelieving in Him and the Mosque of the Sanctuary, and expelling its people from it are greater (evils) in God's sight. Persecution⁵⁰ is a greater (sin) than killing. They will not stop fighting you until they estrange you from your religion, if they can."

After the Nakhla raid, further attacks on Qorayshite caravans and unfriendly tribes met with success and helped to make the financial position of the Moslems more secure. This raiding opened the way for the acquisition of power by the Prophet Mohammad and his companions and for their eventual domination of all Arabia; but the immediate step which secured the economic base and strengthened the prestige of the Moslems was their seizure of the property of the Jews of Yathreb.

Three Jewish tribes, the Banu Qaynoqa', the Banu'n-Nadir, and the Banu Qorayza, lived at Yathreb. They had prospered in both their agricultural and their commercial and craft-industrial pursuits, and thanks to their religious schooling and relative literacy had attained a higher cultural level than the two other local tribes, the Aws and the Khazraj. Many Awsites and Khazrajites were employed by Jews as agricultural labourers and as watchmen of shops and warehouses. These two tribes consequently had feelings of inferiority and jealousy toward the Jewish tribes. As already mentioned, the main reason why the Aws and Khazraj approached Mohammad and concluded the pact of ol-Aqaba with him was their desire to overcome the Jewish dominance and get rid of their own inferiority complex. The Prophet, after his arrival at Madina, at first maintained a prudent discretion. He not only avoided controversy with the Jews, who were powerful as well as rich; he also made a sort of non-aggression pact (the Ahd o1- Mowada'a) with them which further provided for mutual cooperation in certain circumstances. It laid down that individual Moslems and Jews should continue to belong to their respective religious communities; that in the event of aggression by the Qoraysh or any other tribe, the Moslems and the Jews should jointly defend Madina; and that each party should bear the cost of its own military operations against hostile tribes.

In addition to this, there was a bond of common feeling between {P# 87} the Moslems and the Jews. Both (groups) abhorred polytheism and idolatry. Both bowed their heads in the same direction when they prayed.

As long as the Moslems were weak, no incidents arose. Not until a year and a half after the hejra did the Prophet Mohammed change the direction of the Islamic prayer from the Furtherest Mosque (at Jerusalem) to the Kaba (at Mecca). This step evoked protests from the Jews, and in answer to them verse 172 of sura 2 was sent down: “Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east and the west, but the righteous man is he who believes in God and the Last Day and in angels, scripture, and prophets, and gives wealth, however cherished, to kinsfolk, and orphans, to the poor and homeless, to beggar, and for the manumission {formal emancipation from slavery} of slaves.”

For the Jew this decision was in alarm signal. The anxiety was sharpened by a succession of small raids and by the attacks on Meccan trading caravans, which culminated in the victory of Mohammad’s followers at the battle of Badr (in March 624). They faced Awsites and Khazrajites who were no longer impecunious {having very little or no money usually habitually: PENNILESS} and generally glad to work for them, but had now combined under Mohammad's flag to form a strong, united front called Islam. For this reason certain leaders of the Jews such as Ka'b b. ol-Ashraf betook themselves after the battle of Badr to Mecca, where they expressed sympathy with the defeated Qorayshites and urged them to make war against Mohammad and his followers. There is a reference to the matter in verse 54of sura 4 (on-Nesa): "Have not you seen how those who have been given a share of scripture place their trust in demons and false deities and say to the unbelievers, 'These are better guided than the believers'?" The verse is a clear rebuke to people claiming to possess scriptures which condemn polytheism and idolatry, yet willing to fraternize with polytheists and to deem them better than Mohammad's monotheistic followers.

At this juncture a trivial incident in the bazaar of Madina led to a fight with the Banu Qaynoqa' and a siege of their street. A woman of the Ansar went to the shop of a goldsmith of the Qaynoqa' tribe. He started to flirt with her, and she spurned him. In order to hit back and demean her, he surreptitiously pinned the back of her skirt to her blouse with a thorn, so that when she stood up the lower part of her body was exposed and the people burst out laughing. Her shrieks of protest about this indecent act prompted a Moslem man to go to her rescue. This man killed the goldsmith, and the Jews then rushed to the help of their coreligionists and killed the Moslem. A riot ensued, and the Moslems complained to the Prophet. With his authorization they besieged the street of the Banu Qaynoqa', blocking their access to food supplies. After fifteen days the Banu Qaynoqa' surrendered on the offered terms, which were that their lives would be spared, that they must emigrate from Yathreb, and that they must deposit all their belongings except things portable by beasts of burden at a certain place for distribution among indigent, homeless Mohajerun.

This event strengthened the economic position of the Moslems and dismayed the other Jewish tribes. The turn of the Banu'n-Nadir came next. They were in an angry mood because one of their chiefs, the already mentioned Ka'b b. ol-Ashraf, had been assassinated on Mohammad's order. When the Prophet, accompanied by some of his followers, went to the street of the Banu'n-Nadir to judge a dispute about blood money, they plotted to revolt and kill him. He gave orders to fight them, and the Moslems blockaded their street, preventing any delivery of food to them. The Banu'n-Nadir, however, were better armed than the Banu Qaynoqa', and perhaps with the latter's fate in mind had taken more precautions. They fought back stubbornly and valiantly. The siege lasted so long that the Prophet began to fear that the Moslems might succumb to the usual Arab inconstancy and wearily go back to their homes. He therefore ordered that the palm grove belonging to the Banu'n-Nadir should be burned down.

Since date palms, like camels and sheep, are a basic source of food and wealth in Arabia, the protests of the Banu'n-Nadir did not pass unheard. "How is it", they asked the Prophet Mohammad, "that when you claim to be a doer of good, an opponent of evil and destruction, you cruelly destroy a productive resource?" Nevertheless Mohammad did not flinch. In reply to the clamor and in justification of the deed, he cited verses 3, 4, and 5of sura 59 (ol-Hashr) which was sent down on this occasion: "If God had not prescribed eviction for them, He would have punished them in this lower world. And they will have the punishment of fire in the world to come. That is because they broke away from God and His Apostle, and if people break away from God, then God is stern in retribution. When you cut down some palms and left others standing on their roots, it was with God's permission and in order that He might disgrace the sinners.”

Underlying these verses is the principle that the end justifies the means. Inhumane though it is, this principle was taken for granted by the contemporary Arab tribes. The Prophet again acted on it in the war with the Banu Thaqif and siege of Ta'ef in 8 A.H./630, when he ordered the burning of their vineyard. There was thus no lack of precedent for the action of the Omayyad troops who in 61/680 cut off the supply of water, even for the women and children, in order to force the Prophet's grandson Hosayn b. Ali into surrender.

Eventually the Banu'n-Nadir surrendered after twenty days. Through the intercession of some chiefs of the Khazraj, it was agreed that they should quit Madina with a safe conduct. after depositing all their moveable property in a certain place for distribution among the Prophet's followers.

The only remaining Jewish group of any importance at Yathreb was the Qorayza tribe. After the war of the trench in 5 A.H./627, they too came to a bad end. It was alleged that they had agreed to provide help from within the town to the Qorayshite besiegers; but the Prophet had skilfully sown dissension among them, and they had not in fact helped Abu Sofyan's force. As soon as Abu Sofyan lost hope of taking Madina and abandoned the siege, the Moslems turned against the Banu Qorayza and blockaded their street for twenty five days. They then expressed readiness to accept the surrender terms which had been conceded to the two other Jewish tribes, namely cession of their, belongings and departure with a safe conduct. The Prophet, however, being deeply aggrieved with them because they had been in touch with Abu Scifyan, would not consent. He may also have thought that their destruction would enhance the awesomeness of Islam and serve as a grim warning to others.

Fearing such a decision, and remembering how the intercession of Khazraj chiefs had saved the lives of the other two Jewish tribes, the Banu Qorayza sought the help of Aws chiefs. In response to pleas by the latter on their behalf, the Prophet Mohammad undertook to appoint an Awsite arbiter and to implement whatever sentence this arbiter might pronounce. He then appointed Sa'd b. Mo'adh whom he knew to be on bad terms with the Banu Qorayza. His expectations of Sa'd were not disappointed. Sa'd ruled that all the Qorayza men should be beheaded, that the women and children should be sold as slaves, and that all their property should be divided among the Moslems.

These sentences were unjust, but could not be changed because both sides had sworn to accept Sa'd b. Mo'adh's ruling. The primary consideration, however, was the need for drastic action, however cruel it might be, in order to establish a viable state. Trenches were dug in the bazaar of Madina for disposal of the decapitated bodies of the seven hundred (or according to some sources nearly one thousand) Jewish prisoners, who had surrendered in expectation of a safe conduct to leave the town.

In contravention of Sa'd's ruling, a Jewish woman, the wife of Hasan ol-Qorazi, was also beheaded. She was friendly with A'esha, with whom she sat and talked until the time came for her to go to her death. When her name was called out, she walked smilingly and cheerfully to the execution ground. Her offence was throwing a stone during the blockade of the Banu Qorayza's street. A'esha said of her, "I have never met a more beautiful, good-tempered, and kind-hearted woman. When she rose to walk to the execution ground and I told her that they would certainly kill her, she answered with a smile that staying alive did not matter to her.”

THE ADVANCE TO POWER

The record of the first decade after the Hejra presents a picture of the genesis of a state. At Mecca the Prophet Mohammad's mission had for thirteen years been devoted to preaching, counselling, warning people about the judgement day, and exhorting them to righteousness. At Madina the prophetic mission became institutionalized and was perforce devoted mainly to governing people and making them accept the new dispensation.

To this end every sort of expedient was considered permissible, regardless of consistency with the spiritual and moral precepts which were being taught.

Among the events of the period were political assassinations, raids which were manifestly unprovoked, and attacks on tribes who had not acted aggressively but were reported by spies to be restless or unsympathetic to the Moslems. All these steps were taken for reasons of state. The raids on Qorayshite trading caravans served the purposes of injuring the Qoraysh, acquiring booty, enhancing the military prestige of the Moslems, and intimidating potential opponents.

During the same relatively short period, most of the laws of Islam were revealed and Islamic financial and governmental institutions were established.

No laws had been enacted in the course of the Prophet's mission at Mecca. This was noted by Goldziher, who wrote: "The Meccan revelations do not announce the introduction of a new religion. Most of the Meccan verses of the Qur'an are exhortations to piety, to worship and praise of the One God, to charitable concern for others, and to moderation in eating and drinking.”

Only the following five principles had been ordained at Mecca:

(1) Belief in one God and in the appointment of prophets.

(2) Prayer.

(3) Alms giving, at that time in the form of voluntary donation.

(4) Fasting, at that time in the same manner as the Jews.

(5) Pilgrimage, in the sense of visiting the Arab national shrine.

Soyuti remarked that there were no Islamic legal penalties in the Meccan period for the simple reason that no laws had yet been enacted. Ja'bari considered every sura which imposes an obligation to be unquestionably Madinan. A'esha is reported to have said:

"In the Meccan Qur’an, heaven and hell are the only subjects.

Permission and prohibition entered after the spread of Islam.”

At Madina the times were different. Laws and regulations enacted in the last decade of the Prophet's career not only gave Islam a new legal stamp but also paved the way for the formation of an Arab state.

The opening move was the change of the direction of the prayer from the Furthest Mosque (ol-Masjed ol-Aqsa) at Jerusalem to the Ka'ba at Mecca. One result was that the Jews were thereafter taxed separately from the Moslems. Another was that the Arabs of Madina cast off their inferiority complex and that the Arabs in general were stirred to a sort of national fervour; for all the tribes revered the Ka'ba, which from being an idol-temple became the house of Abraham and Ishmael, common ancestors of every Arab. Similarly in the matter of fasting, Islam's legislator ceased to follow the example of the Jews and changed the duration of the fast from the tenth day of the month of Moharram, which was their practice, to a number of days in the month of Ramadan and later to the whole of Ramadan.

Also dating entirely from the Madinan period are the rules on marriage, kindred and affinity, polygamy, divorce, menstruation, inheritance, punishment of adultery and theft, retaliation and compensation for murder and injury, and other civil and penal matters, together with the rules on matters such as defilement, circumcision, and food and drink bans. Although these rules were for the most part derived from either Jewish laws or pagan Arab customs, various changes and adaptations were made. Irrespective of their Jewish and pagan colouring, their purpose was unquestionably to establish order in the community and in the mutual relations of its members. The civilization of every community or nation is coloured by elements from the civilizations of others.

In every religion there are rites which require some sort of organization and training. The details of their content and form are generally of little intrinsic importance. No thoughtful person, however, can discern any philosophical reason for pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca and for the useless and meaningless rites which the pilgrims perform.

The Prophet Mohammad's decision to set out on a visit to the Ka'ba in 6 A.H./628 is puzzling. Did he really believe the Ka'ba to be God's abode? Or did he make this move in order to placate followers for whom Ka'ba-visitation was an ancestral tradition? Was his decision, which came unexpectedly in view of the resolve of the hostile Qorayshites to prevent Moslems from entering Mecca, and which led to the disappointing truce of Hodaybiya, a political stratagem designed to impress the Qoraysh chiefs with Moslem numerical and military strength and to draw ordinary, un-fanatical Meccans to the new religion? How could the man who had introduced the new religion and laws and had repudiated all the beliefs and superstitions of his own people now revive the main component of the old tradition in a new form? Islam's zealous founder and legislator had above all insisted on pure monotheism, telling the people that belief in the One God is the only road to happiness and proclaiming that "the noblest among you in God's sight are the most pious among you" (sura 49, verse 13). Had he now succumbed to national or racial feeling? Did he want to make veneration of Ishmael's house a symbol of Arab national identity?

However that may be, the decision was so surprising and so inconsistent with Islamic principles that many Moslems were upset. Several believers objected to the running between Safa and Marwa because it had been a pagan Arab rite; but its retention was imposed by verse 153 of sura 2, "Safa and Marwa are among God's waymarks." According to well authenticated reports, Omar b. ol-Khattab, who was one of Mohammad's greatest and wisest companions, said that he would never have kissed the black stone if he had not personally seen the Prophet kiss it. Ghazzali⁵¹ whose authority in Islamic matters deserves respect, wrote frankly that he could find no explanation of the hajj ritual but obeyed because it was an accomplished fact.

There is one verse in the Qur’an which sheds some light on the matter and is perhaps an answer to questions about it. This is verse 28 of sura 9 (ot-Tawba): “O believers, it is a fact that the polytheists are unclean. Therefore they shall not approach the Mosque of the Sanctuary (i.e. the Ka'ba) after this year of theirs. If you fear poverty, God will enrich you from His bounty." According to the Tafsir ol-Jaltilayn, this meant that God would compensate the Arabs with victories and receipts of tribute. The sura of Repentance (ot-Tawba) is chronologically the last in the Qur’an, having been sent down in 10 A.H./631, well after the Moslem conquest of Mecca. The ban on visitation of the Ka'ba by non-Moslem tribes was likely to disquiet the people of Mecca, whose livelihood and flourishing trade depended on the coming and going of Arab tribes and groups. Although the Meccans were of the same tribe as the Prophet, most of them had only become Moslem under duress. If Mecca should lose its prosperity, there might be a risk of widespread apostasy. That risk would be averted by making pilgrimage to Mecca incumbent on Moslems.

This explanation is of course a mere hypothesis; to what extent it corresponds to the reality can never be known. In any case no rational or religious justification can be found for the retention of ancient pagan practices in the ritual of the Islamic hajj. This prompted the great and universally admired philosopher-poet of the Arabs, Abu'l-Ala o1-Ma'arri⁵² to exclaim:

People come from far corners of the land
to throw pebbles (at the Satan) and to kiss the (black) stone.
How strange are the things they say!
Is all mankind becoming blind to truth?

The bans on wine-drinking and gambling, which were proclaimed at Madina and are peculiar to Islamic law, can readily be attributed to contemporary social conditions. Nor is it difficult to understand why at Madina the zaktat ceased to be voluntary alms-giving and was transformed into a system of income and property taxation appropriate for the fiscal needs of the newly founded state. At the same time, however, legal form was given to an obligation which has no parallel in other canons or statutes, namely the obligation of holy war (jehad).

At first war was only permitted; in the words of sura 22, verse 40, "Permission is given to those who fight because they have been wronged." Subsequently it was made obligatory through verbs in the imperative and emphatic moods. Many passages in suras 2 (oI-Baqara), 8 (ol-Anfal), 9 (ot-Tawba), and other Madinan revelations enjoin use of force. It is a remarkable and significant fact that the Meccan suras contain no mentions of holy war or fighting polytheists, whereas the Madinan suras are so full of verses on the subject that this obligation appears to be more heavily stressed than any other. Two comments spring to the mind in this connection. One is that the Prophet Mohammad, being aware of the difficulty of controlling unruly Arabs and forming an Islamic state and society without recourse to the sword, probably chose that method because it was rooted in Arab custom and capable of influencing the Arab mind. The other is that the method necessarily involves trampling on the most precious of human rights, namely the right to freedom of thought and belief. This has evoked widespread criticism, which is not easily answerable. Is use of the sword to force people into profession of a doctrine or a religion meritorious? Is it compatible with ideals of justice and humanity?

Obviously injustice and evil have in varying degrees permeated many communities in different times and places; but to discerning minds there is no tyranny more cruel, irrational, and pernicious than a ruler's or a ruling group's denial of the people's freedom to think and to believe. Attempts by a ruler or government to suppress opposition, though inconsistent with humane principles, may be presented as moves in the struggle for political survival; but attempts to compel all the people to think and feel in the same way as the power-holders cannot in any circumstances be excused. History shows, however, that all nations have at times experienced oppression of this type. Disregard for human rights and individual personality is a very widespread and multiform phenomenon, by no means confined to ruling groups; it is also found among the masses, who can be as opinionated as any tyrant and equally intolerant of ideas and beliefs other than their own. Such fanaticism has been the source of dark phases in the life of mankind. It has impelled men to burn, behead, hang, mutilate, and immure their fellows, and not only this, but also to perpetrate wholesale massacres. In our own age there are the examples of Nazi and communist bloodshed on a vast scale.

The fact that freedom of thought and belief has been violated in many countries around the world is not in dispute. The question requiring study is whether such violation was consistent with the duty of the spiritual guide who had made known that "there is no compulsion in religion" (sura 2, verse 257), and that God had decided that "those who perished should perish by a clear sign, and those who survived should survive by a clear sign" (sura 8, verse 44). Had not God said to His Apostle, "We sent you only as a mercy to the world's peoples" (sura 21, verse 107), and "You have moral strength" (sura 68, verse 4)?

The occasion of the revelation of the Meccan sura90 (ol-Balad) is said to have been the boastful behaviour of a man named Abu'l- Ashadd, who possessed great bodily strength as well as great wealth. According to a report which has come down, he used to stand on a carpet at the Okaz fair and offer a huge reward to anyone who could pull it from under his feet; young men. used to rush up and pull the carpet from all sides until it tore, but could never shift him from where he stood. Over against such vanity, the sura ol-Balad movingly expresses the Prophet Mohammad's faith. Unfortunately its eloquence and euphony cannot be conveyed in another language. The following translation is an attempt to give the meaning of verses 4-18:

"We created mankind in trouble (i.e. helpless). Does he think that no one is stronger than he is? He says, 'I have spent vast wealth Does he thi