Muhammad (7 page)

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.