HE BEGAN QUIETLY, speaking about his revelations to a small band of friends and family members, who became enthusiastic and sympathetic disciples, convinced that he was the long-awaited Arab prophet. But Muhammad realized that most of the Quraysh would find it well-nigh impossible to accept this. The messengers of Allah had all been towering figures, founding fathers of society. Some had even worked miracles. How could Muhammad measure up to Moses or Jesus? The Quraysh had watched him growing up; they saw him going about his business in the market, eating and drinking like everybody else. They had jettisoned many muruwah values, but had retained its elitist, aristocratic outlook and would expect God to choose a well-born karim from one of the more distinguished clans, rather than a minor member of Hashim. How would they react when Muhammad told them to abandon their lofty independence in a way that violated the sunnah of their forefathers?
Even at this early stage, Muhammad had encountered opposition. Khadijah, their daughters, ‘Ali, and Zayd accepted his new status unconditionally, but though his uncle Abu Talib would continue to love and support him, he was deeply pained that Muhammad had the temerity to depart from the absolute authority of their ancestors. He was splitting up the family. Muhammad’s cousins—Ja‘far ibn Abi Talib, ‘Abdullah and ‘Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh, and their sister Zaynab—all accepted the revelations, but his uncles ‘Abbas and Hamzah did not, though their wives did. Muhammad’s son-in-law, Abu l-‘As, who had married his daughter Zaynab, refused even to consider the new religion. Naturally, this was distressing to Muhammad. Family solidarity was a sacred value, and like any Arab, he respected the elders of his tribe and clan. He expected leadership to come from the top, but it was the younger generation who responded to his message. The revelations had already started to push Muhammad away from the norm. He could not help noticing that many of his followers came from the lower classes. A significant number were women, others freedmen, servants, and slaves. Foremost among the latter was Bilal, an Abyssinian with an extraordinarily loud voice. When the Muslims gathered to pray together in the Haram, Muhammad found himself surrounded by “the young men and weak people of the city.”1 Muhammad welcomed them warmly into his little company, but he must have wondered how a movement of such peripheral people could succeed. Indeed, some of the Qurayshan elders, who as yet knew nothing of the revelations, had begun to ask him why he was consorting with such riff-raff.
The “weak” people were not all down-and-outs; this technical tribal term denoted inferior tribal status rather than poverty. Muhammad’s most zealous follower at this point was his friend ‘Attiq Ibn ‘Uthman, who was usually known by his kunya, Abu Bakr.* He was a successful, wealthy merchant, but like Muhammad he came from a “weak” clan that had fallen on hard times. Abu Bakr was “well-liked and of easy manners,” Ibn Ishaq tells us, a kindly, approachable man, especially skilled in the interpretation of dreams.2 Many of the younger generation, who were disturbed by the aggressive capitalism of Mecca, came to him for advice. Some of the young felt an urgent sense of personal peril, a torpor of depression from which they longed to wake, and a frightening alienation from their parents. The son of an important financier in one of the more powerful clans dreamed that his father was trying to push him into a pit that was filled with fire; then he had felt two strong hands pulling him to safety and realized, at the moment of waking, that his savior was Muhammad.3 Another youth, this one from the prestigious clan of ‘Abd Shams, came to Abu Bakr after dreaming that he had heard a voice crying aloud in the desert “Sleepers, awake!” and proclaiming that a prophet had appeared in Mecca.4 Both these young men became Muslims, but the first kept his new faith a secret from his father for as long as he could, and the latter’s conversion greatly displeased the elders of his clan, who were among the most influential men in Mecca.
The revelations had brought to light a fault line in the city. Over the years, a worrying divide had opened between young and old, rich and poor, men and women. This was dangerous. The scripture that was being revealed to Muhammad, verse by verse, surah by surah, condemned this kind of inequality; one faction would inevitably suffer at the hands of another.5 Any society that was divided against itself would be destroyed, because it was going against the very nature of things. This was a frightening period. The incessant wars between Persia and Byzantium seemed to herald the end of the old world order, and even within Arabia, tribal warfare had reached chronic proportions. During the last twenty years, the ghazu, which had traditionally been short and sharp, had escalated into long, drawn out military campaigns as a result of unprecedented drought and famine. There was an apocalyptic sense of impending catastrophe. Muhammad was convinced that unless the Quraysh reformed their attitudes and behavior, they too would fall prey to the anarchy that threatened to engulf the world.
Under the inspiration of Allah, Muhammad was feeling his way towards an entirely new solution, convinced that he was not speaking in his own name, but was simply repeating the revealed words of God. It was a painful, difficult process. He once said: “Never once did I receive a revelation without thinking that my soul had been torn away from me.”6 Sometimes the message was clear. He could almost see and hear Gabriel distinctly. The words seemed to “come down” to him, like a shower of life-giving rain. But often the divine voice was muffled and obscure: “Sometimes it comes unto me like the reverberations of a bell, and that is the hardest upon me; the reverberations abate when I am aware of their message.”7 He had to listen to the undercurrent of events, trying to discover what was really going on. He would grow pale with the effort and cover himself with his cloak, as if to shield himself from the divine impact. He would perspire heavily, even on a cold day, as he turned inwards, searching his soul for a solution to a problem, in rather the same way as a poet has to open himself to the words that he must haul from the depths of himself to the conscious level of his mind. In the Qur’an, God instructed Muhammad to listen intently to each revelation as it emerged; he must be careful not to impose a meaning on a verse prematurely, before its full significance had become entirely clear.8
In the Qur’an, therefore, God spoke directly to the people of Mecca, using Muhammad as his mouthpiece, just as he spoke through the Hebrew prophets in the Jewish scriptures. Hence the language of the Qur’an is sacred, because—Muslims believe—it records the words spoken in some way by God himself. When Muhammad’s converts listened to the divine voice, chanted first by the Prophet and later by the skilled Qur’an reciters, they felt that they had an immediate encounter with Allah. Biblical Hebrew is experienced as a holy tongue in rather the same way. Christians do not have this concept of a sacred language, because there is nothing holy about New Testament Greek; their scriptures presented Jesus as the Word spoken by God to humanity. Like any scripture, the Qur’an thus provided an encounter with transcendence, bridging the immense gulf between our frail, mortal world and the divine.
Muhammad’s converts eagerly awaited each new revelation; after he had recited it, they would learn it by heart, and those who were literate wrote it down. They felt moved and stirred by the exquisite language of their scripture, which, they were convinced, could only have come from God. It is difficult for a non-Arabic speaker to appreciate the beauty of the Qur’an, because this is rarely conveyed in translation. The text seems wearyingly repetitive; it has no apparent structure, no sustained argument or organizing narrative. But the Qur’an was not designed to be read sequentially. In its final form, the chapters or surahs of the Qur’an have been arranged arbitrarily, beginning with the longest and ending with the shortest, so the order is not important. Each surah contains essential teachings and it is possible to dip into the text at any point and imbibe crucial lessons.
In common with the majority of Arabs at this time, Muhammad could neither read nor write. The word qur’an means “recitation.” It was not designed for private perusal, but like most scriptures, it was meant to be read aloud, and the sound was an essential part of the sense. Poetry was important in Arabia. The poet was the spokesman, social historian, and cultural authority of his tribe, and over the years the Arabs had learned how to listen to a recitation and had developed a highly sophisticated critical ear.9 Bards chanted their odes at the annual trade fairs to excited audiences from all over the peninsula. Every year there was an important poetry contest at the fair of ‘Ukaz, just outside Mecca, and the winning poems were embroidered in gold on fine black cloth and hung on the walls of the Kabah. Muhammad’s followers would, therefore, have been able to pick up verbal signals in the text that are lost in translation. They found that themes, words, phrases, and sound patterns recurred again and again—like the variations in a piece of music, which subtly amplify the original melody, and add layer upon layer of complexity. The Qur’an was deliberately repetitive; its ideas, images, and stories were bound together by these internal echoes, which reinforced its central teaching with instructive shifts of emphasis. They linked passages that initially seemed separate, and integrated the different strands of the text, as one verse delicately qualified and supplemented others. The Qur’an was not imparting factual information that could be conveyed instantaneously. Like Muhammad, listeners had to absorb its teachings slowly; their understanding would grow more profound and mature over time, and the rich, allusive language and rhythms of the Qur’an helped them to slow down their mental processes and enter a different mode of consciousness.
The American scholar Michael Sells describes what happens when the driver of a hot, crowded bus in Egypt plays a cassette of Qur’anic recitations: “A meditative calm begins to set in. People relax. The jockeying for space ends. The voices of those who are talking grow quieter and less strained. Others are silent, lost in thought. A sense of shared community overtakes the discomfort.”10 Breath control is crucial to most of the contemplative traditions. Yogins have found that it brings a feeling of expansiveness, comparable to the effect of music, especially when played by oneself.11 Qur’anic reciters chant long phrases on a slow exhalation and, when they inhale, leave silent pauses for meditation. It is natural for the audience to adjust their breathing too and find that this has a calming, therapeutic effect, which enables them to grasp the more elusive teachings of the text.
God was not booming clear instructions from on high. The divine voice constantly changed the way it referred to itself—as “we,” “he,” “your lord,” “Allah” or “I”—shifting its relationship to both the Prophet and his audience. Nor was God distinctively male. Each recitation began with the invocation: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate (al-Rahman) and the Merciful (al-Rahim).” Allah was a masculine noun, but the divine names al-Rahman and al-Rahim are not only grammatically feminine but related etymologically to the word for womb. A partially personified female figure was central to nearly all the early revelations. We find veiled allusions to a woman conceiving a child or giving birth; the image of a woman who has lost her only child, and the poignant evocation of a baby girl, murdered by her disappointed parents.12 This strong female presence was remarkable in the aggressive patriarchy of Mecca and may explain why women were among the first to respond to the message of the Qur’an.
In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question—“Have you not heard?” “Do you consider?” “Have you not seen?” Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer.13 This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty: the Qur’an wanted people to develop a different kind of awareness.
The Christian notion of the Last Judgment was central to the early message of the Qur’an. Muhammad believed that Mecca was in crisis because the Quraysh no longer felt accountable for their actions. In the steppes, the karim may have been arrogant and egotistic, but he had felt responsible for all the members of his tribe. The Quraysh, however, were busily amassing private fortunes, without giving a thought to the plight of the “weak.” They did not seem to realize that their deeds would have long-lasting consequence. To counter this heedlessness, the Qur’an taught that individuals would have to explain their behavior to God. There would be a “day of reckoning” (yawm ad-din): the Arabic term also implies a “moment of truth.”14 At the end of their lives, human beings would have to face up to uncomfortable realities they had tried to avoid. They would experience a terrifying ontological reversal, in which everything that had seemed solid, important, and permanent would prove to be ephemeral. In staccato, lapidary verses, the early surahs tore this veil of delusion away.
When the sun is overturned
When the stars fall away
When the mountains are moved
When the ten-month pregnant camels are abandoned
When the beasts of the wild are herded together
When the seas are boiled over . . .
Then a soul will know what it has prepared.15
Sun, moon, and stars would disappear. Even a pregnant camel, the desert Arab’s most precious possession, had no lasting value. All that really mattered was a person’s conduct:
At that time people will straggle forth
to be shown what they have done
Whoever does a mote’s weight good will see it
Whoever does a mote’s weight wrong will see it.16
Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life: “To free a slave, to feed the destitute on a day of hunger, a kinsman, orphan, or a stranger out of luck, in need.”17
Anybody who had performed these “works of justice” (salihat) would be rewarded eternally in Paradise (‘illiyyin) but those who had concentrated on the selfish acquisition of material possessions would be punished in the jahim—a strange word, usually translated “raging fire.” But the Qur’an was not preaching a crudely apocalyptic vision of hell. The passages describing the jahim are sad rather than angry. Later Muslim tradition would elaborate on the themes of Heaven, Hell, and Judgment, but the Qur’an remains reticent, its language characteristically elusive and mysterious. More crucially, it compels the listener to face up to the judgment in the immediate present. The day of reckoning was not merely a distant event; it was also a “moment of truth” here and now. The probing, intimate questioning and the use of the present tense obliged listeners to face up to the implications of their behavior on a daily basis. What would it be like to know that you had wasted your time on earth when it was too late to do anything about it? The Qur’an asks insistently: “Where are you going with your life?”18 Human beings were not inherently evil, but they were forgetful, all too eager to push these uncomfortable ideas to the back of their minds. So they needed a constant reminder (dhikr).19 “Remind them,” God urged Muhammad, “All you can do is be a reminder.”20
People must, therefore, become self-aware, conscious of what they are doing. They must cultivate the virtue of taqwa’, a word that is sometimes translated “fear” but is better rendered “mindfulness.” They must be continually on their guard against selfishness, greed, and arrogance. Instead of frightening themselves with the fear of hell, they should meditate on the signs (ayat) of God’s generosity in the natural world and imitate his benevolence:
Look at the camel
and how it is created
Look at the sky and how it is raised
Look at the mountains and how they are set
Look at the earth and how it is spread.20
The entire cosmos was a veil, which hid the presence of its Creator. The succession of day and night, sun and moon, the life-giving rains, and the marvellous construction of the human being were all signs of God’s presence. By contemplating these signs in a sustained and disciplined manner, they would become aware of the inexpressible reality behind them and be filled with gratitude.
At present the Quraysh despised the weak; they believed that failure and poverty revealed an inherent lack of nobility, so they felt no obligation towards the poor, the orphan, or the widow. But if they understood their dependence upon Allah at every moment of their lives, they would appreciate their own frailty, and their arrogance would be tempered by awe and wonder. They would lay aside their haughty self-reliance and their proudly cultivated refusal to bow to any creature, human or divine. Muhammad wanted every man, woman, and child in Mecca to develop within themselves the humble thankfulness that should characterize the human condition.
Muhammad was not content simply to work for social reform; he believed that without an interior transformation, a purely political program would be superficial. To effect this, he taught his little group the ritual actions that would enable them to cultivate this new attitude. First, they would meet for prayer (salat): their devout prostration would be a daily reminder of their true condition. Salat interrupted their ordinary business and helped them to remember that Allah was their first priority. It was very difficult for men and women schooled in the muruwah ethos to grovel like slaves, and many of the Quraysh were offended by this abject posture. But the physical routine of salat symbolized the surrender (islam) of their entire being to Allah. It taught their bodies at a level deeper than the rational to lay aside the self-regarding impulse to prance and preen arrogantly. A muslim was a man or a woman who had made this act of submission and was proud to be God’s slave.
Second, members of the Muslim community (ummah) were required to give a proportion of their income in alms to the poor. This “pure offering” (zakat) took the egotism out of the traditional Bedouin generosity; instead of exhibiting their reckless, excessive liberality, they made a regular, undramatic contribution to the weaker members of the tribe. The new karim was no longer a person who gave away his entire fortune in a single night, but one who tirelessly practiced the “works of justice.” At this stage, the new faith was called tazakka (“purification”).21 By looking after the poor and needy, freeing slaves, performing small acts of kindness on a daily, hourly basis, the Muslims learned to cloak themselves in the virtue of compassion and would gradually acquire a responsible, caring spirit, which imitated the generosity of Allah himself. If they persevered, they would purge their hearts of pride and selfishness and achieve a spiritual refinement.
For three years, Muhammad kept a low profile, preaching only to carefully selected people, but somewhat to his dismay, in 615 Allah instructed him to deliver his message to the whole clan of Hashim.22 “The task is beyond my strength,” he told ‘Ali, but he went ahead and invited forty elders to a frugal meal. The meagre fare was a message in itself; there was to be no more excessive hospitality.23 Luxury was not simply a waste of money but ingratitude, a thankless squandering of Allah’s precious bounty. When the elders arrived, they were nonplussed when ‘Ali served them a simple leg of mutton and a cup of milk. When he told the story later, ‘Ali made it sound like Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes: even though there was scarcely enough for one person, everybody ate his fill. After the meal, Muhammad rose to address the gathering, told them about his revelations, and started to expound the principles of his religion of islam, but Abu Lahab, Abu Talib’s half-brother, rudely interrupted him: “He’s put a spell on you!” he cried, and the meeting broke up in disorder. Muhammad had to invite them back the following day and this time he managed to finish his presentation: “O sons of ‘Abd al-Muttalib, I know of no Arab who has come to his people with a nobler message than mine.” He concluded, “God has ordered me to call you to Him. So which of you will cooperate with me in this venture, as my brother, my executor, and my successor?”
There was an awkward silence, and the elders looked at one another in embarrassment. They could all remember Muhammad as a little boy, living on the charity of his relatives. How dared he claim to be the prophet of Allah? Even Muhammad’s cousin Ja‘far and his adopted son Zayd were reluctant to speak, but finally ‘Ali, a gawky thirteen year old, could bear it no longer: “O prophet of God,” he cried, “I will be your helper in this matter!” Muhammad laid his hand tenderly on the boy’s neck: “This is my brother, my executor, and my successor among you,” he said. “Hearken to him and obey him.” This was too much. The spell was broken and the elders burst out laughing. “He’s ordered you to listen to your son and obey him!” they cried derisively to Abu Talib as they stormed out of the house.24
Undeterred by this humiliating failure, Muhammad continued to preach more widely in the city, but with very little success. Nobody criticized his social message. They knew that muruwah required them to share their wealth with the poorer members of the tribe; it was one thing to be selfish and greedy, but quite another to defend these attitudes. Most people objected to the day of reckoning. This, they argued, was simply an old wives’ tale. How could bodies that had rotted away in the earth come to life again? Was Muhammad seriously suggesting that their venerable ancestors would rise from their graves to “stand before the lord of all beings”?25 The Qur’an replied that nobody could prove that there was no life after death, and that if Allah could create a human being out of a tiny drop of semen, he could easily resurrect a dead body.26 It also pointed out that the people who poured scorn on the idea of a final reckoning were precisely those who had no intention of changing their oppressive, selfish behavior:27 When faced with the insistent questioning of the Qur’an about the ultimate value of their life, they took refuge in denial and levity. But despite their skepticism, most of the Quraysh were content to leave Muhammad alone. They were businessmen who had little taste for ideological debate, and they knew that a serious internal conflict would be bad for trade. In any case, this little band of slaves, angry young men, and failing merchants was no real threat and their movement would surely peter out.
Muhammad himself was anxious to avoid an open rift. He had no desire to damage Mecca, the “mother of cities.” He knew that some of the Quraysh thought that he wanted to become king—an abhorrent idea to the Arabs, who were deeply suspicious of monarchy. But Muhammad had no political ambitions. As if to reassure his critics, God told him firmly that he must not aspire to public office. He was simply a nadhir, a messenger with a warning, and should approach the Quraysh humbly, avoid provocation, and be careful not to attack their gods. This is what the great prophets had done in the past.28 A prophet had to be altruistic; he must not trumpet his own opinions egotistically or trample on the sensibilities of others, but should always put the welfare of the community first. A prophet was first and foremost a muslim, one of “those who have surrendered themselves unto [Allah].”29 In his desire to avoid a serious dispute, Muhammad did not, at this stage, emphasize the monotheistic content of his message. Like the hanifs, he was convinced that Allah was the only God, but he did not at first condemn the worship of the stone idols round the Kabah or the cult of the three gharaniq. Like most of the great religious sages, he was not much interested in orthodoxy.30 Metaphysical speculation tended to make people quarrelsome and could be divisive. It was more important to practice the “works of justice” than to insist on a theological position that would offend many of the people he was trying to win over.
But tension was growing. In 616, some of the Quraysh attacked the Muslims while they were performing their ritual prayers in one of the glens outside the city. The incident shocked everybody in Mecca, and both sides desperately tried to reach a modus vivendi. This may have led to the notorious incident of the “satanic verses.”31 The episode is recounted by only two of Muhammad’s early biographers, and some scholars believe it to be apocryphal, though it is hard to see why anybody would make it up. Both historians emphasize the desire for reconciliation in the city at this time. Ibn Sa‘d starts his account by saying that in his desire to avoid an irrevocable breach with the Quraysh, Muhammad “sat down by himself, wishing that nothing be revealed to him that would drive them away.”32
Tabari begins,
When the apostle saw that his people had turned their backs on him and he was pained by their estrangement from what he had brought them from God, he longed that there should come to him from God a message that would reconcile his people to him. Because of his love for his people, and his anxiety over them it would delight him that the obstacle that made his task so difficult could be removed; so he meditated on the project and longed for it, and it was dear to him.33
One day, Tabari continues, Muhammad was sitting beside the Kabah with some of the elders, reciting a new surah, in which Allah tried to reassure his critics: Muhammad had not intended to cause all this trouble, the divine voice insisted; he was not deluded nor inspired by a jinni; he had experienced a true vision of the divine and was simply telling his people what he had seen and heard.34 But then, to his surprise, Muhammad found himself chanting some verses about the three “daughters of God”: “Have you, then, ever considered what you are worshipping in Al-Lat and Al-Uzza, as well as Manat, the third, the other?” Immediately the Quraysh sat up and listened intently. They loved the goddesses who mediated with Allah on their behalf. “These are the exalted gharaniq,” Muhammad continued, “whose intercession is approved.”
Tabari claims that these words were put on his lips by the shaytan (“tempter”). This is a very alarming notion to Christians, who regard Satan as a figure of monstrous evil. The Qur’an is certainly familiar with the story of the fallen angel who defied God: it calls him Iblis (a contraction of the Greek diabolos: “devil”). But the shaytan who inspired this gracious compliment to the goddesses was a far less threatening creature. Shaytans were simply a species of jinn; they were “tempters” who suggested the empty, facile, and self-indulgent yearnings that deflected humans from the right path. Like all jinn, the shaytans were ubiquitous, mischievous, and dangerous, but not on a par with the devil. Muhammad had been longing for peace with the Quraysh; he knew how devoted they were to the goddesses and may have thought that if he could find a way of incorporating the gharaniq into his religion, they might look more kindly on his message. When he recited the rogue verses, it was his own desire talking—not Allah—and the endorsement of the goddesses proved to be a mistake. Like any other Arab, he naturally attributed his error to a shaytan.
Muhammad had not implied that the three “daughters of God” were on the same level as Allah. They were simply intermediaries, like the angels whose intercession is approved in the same surah.35 Jews and Christians have always found such mediators compatible with their monotheism. The new verses seemed a truly propitious gesture and their effect on the Quraysh was electrifying. As soon as Muhammad had finished his recitation, he prostrated himself in prayer, and to his astonishment, the Qurayshan elders knelt down beside him, humbly pressing their foreheads to the ground. The news spread like wildfire through the city: “Muhammad has spoken of our gods in splendid fashion! He alleged in what he recited that they are the exalted gharaniq whose intercession is approved!”36 The crisis was over. The elders told Muhammad: “We know that Allah kills and gives life, creates and preserves, but these our goddesses pray to Him for us, and since you have now permitted them to share divine honors with Him, we therefore desire to unite with you.”37
But Muhammad was troubled. This was too easy. Were the Quraysh really going to amend their behavior, share their wealth with the poor, and be content to become the humble “slaves” of God? It did not seem likely. He was also disturbed by the jubilant words of the elders: he had certainly not meant to imply that the goddesses “shared divine honors” with Allah. While everybody else was celebrating, Muhammad went home, shut himself away, and meditated. That night Gabriel, the spirit of revelation, came to him: “What have you done, Muhammad?” he asked. “You have recited to those people something I did not bring you from God and have said what He did not say to you!”38 Muhammad’s wish for a compromise had distorted the divine message. He was immediately contrite, but God consoled him with a new revelation. All the previous prophets had made similar “satanic” mistakes. It was always a struggle to make sense of the revelations and all too easy to confuse the deeper current of inspiration with a more superficial idea of one’s own. But, the revelation continued, “God renders null and void whatever aspersion the shaytan might cast, and God makes his messages clear in and by themselves.”39 An important principle had been established. God could alter his scriptures at the time that they were being revealed to a particular prophet. Revelation was progressive: We might say that Muhammad sometimes saw fresh implications in his message that qualified some of his earlier insights.
Now Muhammad had to go back to the Quraysh with a new verse that amended the “satanic” ones. Once again God asked: “Have you, then, ever considered what you are worshipping in Al-Lat and Al-Uzza, as well as in Manat?” But this time his answer was scathing. Why did they attribute daughters to Allah, when they themselves preferred sons? These so-called goddesses were simply “empty names,” human projections fabricated by the Quraysh and their forefathers. Those who worship them follow “nothing but surmise and their own wishful thinking.”40 This was a slap in the face that not only eliminated the gharaniq but insulted the revered ancestors. Why did the Qur’an find it impossible to accommodate these three goddesses alongside the angels? Why ruin the chance of peace with this uncompromising rejection of an apparently harmless devotion?
After four years of Islam, Muslims could no longer take the traditional religion seriously. For most of the Quraysh, Allah was still a remote high god, who did not impinge on their daily lives. But this was no longer true for Muhammad’s converts. The beauty of the Qur’an had made Allah a vibrant, indeed overwhelming reality. When they listened to their scripture, “a chill creeps over the skins of those who fear their Lord, and after a while, their skins and hearts soften at the remembrance of God.”41 The word of God was experienced as a powerful reality that could shatter the world: “Had We bestowed this Qur’an from on high upon a mountain,” God told Muhammad, “thou wouldst see it humbling itself, breaking asunder for awe of God.”42 Allah was now completely different from the deity worshipped by the Quraysh and the “satanic verses” were wrong to suggest that Islam was the same as the old religion. It was ludicrous to imagine that the three stone idols of the gharaniq could influence the God of Islam.
The Qur’an now began to make this distinction clear. The other deities were as helpless and ineffective as dangerously weak tribal chiefs. They could not provide food for their worshippers, as Allah did, and they would not be able to intercede on behalf of their devotees on the day of reckoning.43 Nothing was on a par with Allah.
*
Shortly after the repudiation of the “satanic verses,” the Surah of Sincerity was revealed:
Say he is God, one
God forever
Not begetting, unbegotten,
and having as equal none.44
The principle of tawhid (“unity”) became the crux of Muslim spirituality. It was not simply an abstract metaphysical affirmation of the singularity of the divine, but, like all Qur’anic teaching, a call to action. Because Allah was incomparable, Muslims must not only refuse to venerate the idols, but must also ensure that other realities did not distract them from their commitment to God alone: Wealth, country, family, material prosperity, and even such noble ideals as love or patriotism must take second place. Tawhid demanded that Muslims integrate their lives. In the struggle to make God their sole priority, a Muslim would glimpse, in the properly ordered self, the unity that was God. It was perhaps at this time that new converts were first required to utter the shahadah, the declaration of faith recited by all Muslims today: “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet.”
The Quraysh would not have been shocked by monotheism per se, which was not, after all, a new idea to them. They had long found the religion of Jews and Christians compatible with their own traditions, and had not been particularly disturbed by the hanifs’ attempt to create an authentically Arabian monotheism. But Muhammad was doing something different. Most hanifs had retained a deep respect for the Haram and had made no attempt to reform the social order. But in attacking the effigies that surrounded the Kabah, Muhammad implied that the Haram, on which the Meccan economy depended, was worthless. The Bedouin tribes did not make the hajj to visit the house of Allah but to pay their respects to their own tribal gods, whose cult was now condemned by the Qur’an in the strongest terms.45 The Quraysh often invoked the “exalted gharaniq” as they circumambulated the Kabah; now this practice was dismissed as deluded and self-indulgent. Ta’if, where Al-Lat had her shrine, provided Mecca with its food; many of the Quraysh had summer homes in this fertile oasis. How could Ta’if remain on friendly terms with them if they condoned the insult to their goddess?
Overnight Muhammad had become the enemy. The Qurayshan leaders sent a delegation to Abu Talib, asking him to disown his nephew. Nobody could survive in Arabia without an official protector. A man who had been expelled from his clan could be killed with impunity, without fear of vendetta. Abu Talib, who was genuinely fond of Muhammad and not himself a Muslim, was in an impossible position. He tried to temporize, but the Quraysh returned with an ultimatum. “By God, we cannot endure that our fathers should be reviled, our customs mocked, and our gods insulted!” they cried. “Until you rid us of him, we will fight the pair of you until one side perishes.” Abu Talib summoned Muhammad, begging him to stop this subversive preaching. “Spare me and yourself,” he pleaded. “Do not put upon me a burden greater than I can bear.” Convinced that Abu Talib was about to abandon him, Muhammad replied with tears in his eyes: “O my uncle, by God if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this course, until God has made it victorious, or I perish therein, I would not abandon it.” He then broke down and left the room, weeping bitterly. His uncle called him back. “Go and say what you please, for by God I will never give you up on any account.”46 For a while, Muhammad was safe. As long as Abu Talib remained his patron and could make this protection effective, nobody dared to touch him.
Abu Talib was a gifted poet and he now wrote passionate verses denouncing the clans who had deserted Hashim in its hour of need. The clan of al-Muttalib responded by declaring their solidarity with Hashim, but this good news was followed by a fateful defection. Abu Lahab, Abu Talib’s half-brother, had opposed Muhammad and his revelations from the start, but to prevent a schism within the clan, he had betrothed two of his sons to Muhammad’s daughters, Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum. Now he forced his sons to repudiate the women. The elegant young Muslim aristocrat ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan, however, had long admired Ruqayyah, one of the most beautiful girls in Mecca, and could now ask Muhammad for her hand.
The Qurayshan elders—especially those who had lost family members to Islam—now mounted a furious offensive against Muhammad. They would ostentatiously turn their backs whenever they heard Muslims praising Allah as the “one and only divine being,” and aggressively demonstrate their joy when other deities were invoked.47 They demanded that everybody remain faithful to the traditional faith. It was the only decent thing to do! All this talk of revelation was outrageous! Muhammad had made the whole thing up. Why should he alone, of all the Quraysh, have received a divine message?48 Muhammad was mad; he had been led astray by a jinni; he was a sorcerer, who lured young people away from their fathers’ sunnah by magic arts.49 When he was asked to validate his claims by working a miracle—as Moses or Jesus had done—he admitted that he was an ordinary mortal like themselves.50
The leaders of the opposition included some of the most powerful clan chiefs in Mecca. Foremost among them were Abu l-Hakam, an irascible, ambitious man, who seemed deeply disturbed by Islam; the elderly, corpulent Ummayah ibn Khalaf; and the highly intelligent Abu Sufyan, who had been a personal friend of Muhammad, together with his father in law ‘Utbah ibn Rabi‘ah and his brother. As yet Suhayl ibn ‘Amr, chief of Amir—a devout man who, like Muhammad, made an annual retreat on Mount Hira’—had not yet made up his mind and Muhammad hoped to win him over. Some of the most able young men in Mecca were also virulently hostile to Islam: the warriors ‘Amr ibn l-‘As and Khalid ibn al-Walid, and—most zealous of all—‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the nephew of Abu l-Hakam, who was fanatically devoted to the old religion. While the other chiefs were proceeding cautiously against Muhammad, ‘Umar was ready for more extreme methods.
Muhammad had now given up hope of converting the Meccan establishment and realized that he must concentrate on the disaffected poorer people, who were eager for his message. This was an important turning point, which is recorded poignantly in the Qur’an. Muhammad had been so absorbed in a discussion with some of the Meccan grandees that he impatiently “frowned and turned away” when a blind man approached him with a question.51 God reproved Muhammad severely: a prophet must approach all members of the community with the same respect. He must move beyond the aristocratic ethos of muruwah: the Qur’an was for rich and poor alike. In brushing the blind man aside as though he did not matter, Muhammad had behaved like a kafir.
The word kafir is often translated “unbeliever,” but this is extremely misleading.52 Muhammad had no quarrel with the beliefs of Abu l-Hakam and Abu Sufyan. In fact, much of their theology was quite correct. They believed without question, for example, that Allah was the creator of the world and the lord of the Kabah.53 The trouble was that they did not translate their beliefs into action. They were impervious to the true meaning of the signs of God’s benevolence in his creation, which required human beings to imitate him in all their dealings. Instead of despising and oppressing vulnerable people, they should behave like Allah and “spread over them the wings of tenderness.”54
Kafir derives from the root KFR (“ingratitude”), which implies a discourteous refusal of something that is offered with great kindness and generosity. When God had revealed himself to the people of Mecca, some of them had, as it were, spat contemptuously in his face. The Qur’an does not berate the kafirun for their lack of religious conviction, but for their arrogance.55 They are haughty and supercilious; they imagine that they are superior to the poorer, humbler people of Mecca, whom they consider second-class citizens and therefore worthy of contempt. Instead of realizing their utter dependence upon God, they still regard themselves as istighna’—self-reliant—and refuse to bow to Allah or anybody else. The kafirun are bursting with self-importance; they strut around haughtily, addressing others in an offensive, braying manner, and fly into a violent rage if they think that their honor has been impugned. They are so convinced that their way of life is better than anybody else’s that they are particularly incensed by any criticism of their traditional lifestyle.56 They sneer at Allah’s revelation, perversely distorting the sense of the Qur’an simply to display their cleverness.57 They were unable even to consider anything new: their hearts were “veiled,” “rusted over,” “sealed” and “locked.”58
The chief vice of the kafirun was jahiliyyah. Muslims have traditionally used this term to refer to the pre-Islamic period in Arabia and so it is usually translated “the Time of Ignorance.” But although the root JHL has some connotations of “ignorance,” its primary meaning is “irascibility”: an acute sensitivity to honor and prestige; arrogance, excess, and above all, a chronic tendency to violence and retaliation.59 Jahili people were too proud to make the surrender of Islam; why should a karim moderate his behavior and act like a slave (‘abd), praying with his nose on the ground and treating the base-born like equals? The Muslims called Abu l-Hakam, their chief enemy, “Abu Jahl” not because he was ignorant of Islam—he understood it all too well—but because he fought Islam arrogantly, with blind, fierce, and reckless passion. But the tribal ethos was so engrained that, as we shall see, Muslims continued to exhibit jahili symptoms long after they had converted to Islam. Jahiliyyah could not be eradicated overnight, and it remained a latent menace, ready to flare up destructively at any moment.
Instead of succumbing to the jahili spirit, the Qur’an urges Muslims to behave with hilm, a traditional Arab virtue. Men and women of hilm were forbearing, patient, and merciful.60 They could control their anger and remain calm in the most difficult circumstances instead of exploding with rage; they were slow to retaliate; they did not hit back when they suffered injury, but left revenge to Allah.61 Hilm also inspired positive action: if they practiced hilm, Muslims would look after the weak and disadvantaged, liberate their slaves, counsel each other to patience and compassion, and feed the destitute, even when they were hungry themselves.62 Muslims must always behave with consummate gentleness and courtesy. They were men and women of peace: “For true servants of the Most Gracious are they who walk gently on the earth, and who, whenever the jahilun address them, reply ‘Peace’ (salam!)”63
After the affair of the “satanic verses,” the conflict with the kafirun became very nasty. Abu Jahl regularly subjected any Muslims he met to vitriolic verbal abuse and slandered them with vicious lies and rumor; he threatened merchants with ruin, and simply beat up the “weaker” Muslims. The kafirun could not hurt Muslims who had strong protectors, but they could attack slaves and those who lacked adequate tribal patronage. Ummayah, chief of Jumah, used to torture Bilal, his Abyssinian slave, by tying him up and forcing him to lie exposed to the gruelling sun, with a huge boulder on his chest. Abu Bakr could not bear to watch Bilal suffering, so he bought him from Ummayah and set him free. He also liberated a Muslim slave girl, when he saw ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab flogging her. Some of the younger Muslims were locked up by their families, who even tried to starve them into submission. The situation became so serious that Muhammad sent the more vulnerable members of the ummah to Abyssinia, where the Christian governor gave them asylum. It was becoming painfully clear that, unthinkable as it might seem, there might be no future for the Muslims in Mecca.
It must have been very difficult indeed for the Muslims, brought up in the jahili spirit, to practice hilm and turn the other cheek. Even Muhammad sometimes had to struggle to maintain his composure. One of the early surahs expresses his rage against his uncle Abu Lahab and his wife, who used to scatter sharp thorns outside his house.64 On one occasion, Muhammad overheard some of the Qurayshan chiefs jeering at him contemptuously while he was circumambulating the Kabah. For a while he was able to keep his rising anger in check, but by the time he had completed the third circuit, his face was as black as thunder. He stopped in his tracks, faced the kafirun, and, instead of wishing them “Peace,” as the Qur’an enjoined, said grimly: “Will you listen to me, O Quraysh. By him who holds my life in His hand, I bring you slaughter!” He uttered the last word so threateningly that the chiefs were silenced. But the next day, they had recovered their nerve. They leapt on Muhammad when he arrived in the Haram, encircled him menacingly, and started to rough him up, pulling him about by his robe. This time, Muhammad did not respond aggressively, but allowed the chiefs to manhandle him, until Abu Bakr intervened, weeping: “Would you kill a man for saying Allah is my lord?”65
But this kind of behavior could sometimes be counterproductive. One day, Abu Jahl came upon Muhammad near the Safa Gate, an important site of the hajj, and was so incensed to see him calmly occupying this sacred spot that he exploded in true jahili style. Again, Muhammad refused to retaliate, but sat and listened to the string of devastating insults without uttering a word. Finally Abu Jahl ended his tirade and went to join some of the other chiefs in the Haram, while Muhammad went sadly and silently home. But that evening, his uncle Hamzah, who had been out hunting, heard what had happened and became incandescent with fury. He set off immediately to find Abu Jahl, and hit him hard with his bow. “Will you insult him when I follow his religion?” he yelled. “Hit me back if you can!” Loath to take on Hamzah, whose physical strength was legendary in Mecca, Abu Jahl hastily restrained his companions, admitting that he had grievously insulted Muhammad.66
Hamzah became a devout Muslim, but this was not exactly the way that Muhammad would have wished his uncle to enter Islam. Toward the end of 616, there was another, even more surprising conversion. ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab had decided that it was time to kill Muhammad, and strode through the streets of Mecca, sword in hand, toward a house at the foot of Mount Safa, where he heard that the Prophet was spending the afternoon. He did not know that his sister Fatimah bint al-Khattab and her husband had secretly become Muslims. Thinking that ‘Umar was safely out of the way, they had invited one of the few literate Muslims to come and recite the latest surah. But on his way to Mount Safa, ‘Umar was intercepted by another Muslim, who fearing for Muhammad’s life, informed ‘Umar that his own sister had converted to Islam. ‘Umar rushed home, and was horrified to hear the words of the Qur’an issuing from an upstairs window. “What is this balderdash!” he roared as he burst into the room. The reciter fled in terror, dropping the manuscript in his haste, while ‘Umar threw his sister to the ground. But when he saw that she was bleeding, he felt ashamed, picked up the manuscript, and began to read the surah. ‘Umar was one of the judges of the poetry competition in ‘Ukaz, and realized at once that he was looking at something unique. This was quite different from a conventional Arabic ode. “How fine and noble is this speech,” he exclaimed with wonder, and immediately the beauty of the Qur’an diffused his rage and touched a core of receptivity deeply buried within him. Yet again he grabbed his sword, and ran through the streets to the house where Muhammad was. “What has brought you, Ibn al-Khattab?” asked the Prophet. “I have come to you to believe in God and his apostle and what he has brought from God,” ‘Umar replied. Muhammad gave thanks so loudly that everybody in the house, who had dived for cover as soon as they saw ‘Umar, came out of hiding, scarcely able to believe what had happened.67
Ibn Ishaq has recorded another, less dramatic but equally significant version of ‘Umar’s conversion. He had set out to join some friends for a drink in the market one evening, but when his friends failed to turn up, decided to perform the tawaf instead. The Haram was entirely deserted, except for Muhammad, who was standing close to the Kabah, reciting the Qur’an quietly to himself. ‘Umar decided that he wanted to listen, so he crept under the damask cloth that covered the shrine and edged his way round until he was standing directly in front of Muhammad. As he said later: “There was nothing between us but the cover of the Kabah”—all his defenses but one were down. Then the power of the Qur’an did its work: “When I heard the Qur’an, my heart was softened and I wept, and Islam entered into me.”68 ‘Umar’s conversion was a bitter blow to the opposition, but because he was protected by his clan, there was nothing that they could do to hurt him.
Abu Jahl now imposed a boycott on the clans of Hashim and al-Muttalib: nobody could marry into them or trade with them—they could not even sell them food. All the members of Hashim and al-Muttalib, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, moved into Abu Talib’s street, which became a little ghetto. When Muhammad’s household arrived, Abu Lahab and his family moved out and took up residence in the district of ‘Abd Shams. The purpose of the boycott was not to starve the two clans, but to bring home to them the consequence of removing themselves from the tribe. If Muhammad wanted to withdraw from the religious life of Mecca, he could not continue to benefit from the economy.69 The ban collapsed after three years. It was especially unpopular among those who had relatives in Hashim or al-Muttalib, and could not in good conscience allow them to go hungry. Muslims like Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, who did not belong to the proscribed clans, sent provisions whenever they could. One Meccan regularly loaded a camel with supplies, led it to Abu Talib’s street under cover of night, gave the beast a thwack on its hind-quarters, and sent it lumbering down the alley. On one occasion, Abu Jahl accosted one of Khadijah’s nephews, who was making his way to the ghetto with a bag of flour. There was soon a fierce argument. Another Qurayshi joined in, disgusted that Abu Jahl was preventing a man from taking food to his aunt, and gave him a huge blow with a camel’s jaw that knocked him to the ground.
During this ban, the Qur’an reminded the Muslims that other prophets—Joseph, Noah, Jonah, Moses, and Jesus—had also warned their people to reform their behavior, and when they refused, their societies had collapsed, because they were not acting in accordance with the fundamental principles of the universe.70 Unlike animals, fish, or plants, which are natural muslims since they submit instinctively to these basic laws, human beings have free will.71 When they oppress the weak and refuse to share their wealth fairly with the poor, this violation of God’s law is as unnatural as though a fish were to try to live on dry land. Disaster was inevitable. But the Qur’an continued to urge Muslims to be patient and not seize this opportunity for a personal vendetta against their enemies.
Some of the Quraysh too were anxious for peace. Shortly after the imposition of the ban, a small delegation had approached Muhammad, led by a venerable elder who was too close to death to be personally threatened by the Prophet. He suggested a compromise: the whole city could worship Allah one year and the other gods the next. But Muhammad could not accept this offer. Instead, the Surah al-Kafirun proposed peaceful coexistence:
You who reject the faith (kafirun)
I do not worship what you worship
And you do not worship what I worship
I am not a worshipper of what you worship
You are not a worshipper of what I worship.
A reckoning (din) for you and a reckoning for me.72
People worship different things; there must be “no coercion in matters of faith!” (la ikra fi’l-din!)73 Din meant “reckoning,” but also “religion,” “way of life,” or “moral law.” Each individual had his or her own din and there was no need for force or compulsion.
In the end, blood loyalty led to the end of the boycott. Four of the Qurayshan establishment, who had relatives in Hashim and al-Muttalib, solemnly requested an end to the ban, and despite the angry protests of Abu Jahl, the other chiefs agreed. There must have been great rejoicing in the Muslim community. When they heard the news, some of the emigrants came home from Abyssinia, convinced that the worst was over. But they had been too optimistic. Early in 619, Khadijah died. She was aging, and her health may have been irreparably damaged by the food shortages. She had been Muhammad’s closest companion, and nobody—not even Abu Bakr or the fervent ‘Umar—would ever be able to provide Muhammad with the same intimate support. The early biographers call 619 Muhammad’s “year of sadness.” Not long afterwards, a second death had even more far reaching implications. Abu Talib had been ruined financially, and may also have been physically weakened by the boycott. Later that year, he fell ill and died. And the new chief of Hashim was Abu Lahab.