The Life of Prophet Muhammad As A Preacher of Islam (2/7)

As Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was unable to relieve his persecuted followers, he advised them to take refuge in Abyssinia, and in the fifth year of his mission (A.D. 615), eleven  men and four women crossed over to Abyssinia, where they received a kind welcome from the Christian king of the country.

Among them was a certain Mus'ab b. 'Umayr whose history is interesting as of one who had to endure that most bitter trial of the new convert the hatred of those he loves and who once loved him.

He had been led to embrace Islam through the teaching he had listened to in the house of al-Arqam, but he was afraid to let the fact of his conversion become known, because his tribe and his mother, who bore an especial love to him, were bitterly opposed to the new religion; and indeed, when they discovered the fact, seized and imprisoned him. But he succeeded in effecting his escape to Abyssinia.

The hatred of the Quraysh is said to have pursued the fugitives even to Abyssinia, and an embassy was sent to demand their extradition from the king of that country. But when he heard their story from the Muslims, he refused to withdraw from them his protection. In answer to his enquiries as to their religion, they said: "O King, we were plunged in the darkness of ignorance, worshipping idols, and eating carrion; we practised abominations, severed the ties of kinship and maltreated our neighbours; the strong among us devoured the weak; and so we remained until God sent us an apostle, from among ourselves, whose lineage we knew as well as his truth, his trustworthiness and the purity of his life.

He called upon us to worship the One God and abandon the stones and idols that our fathers had worshipped in His stead. He bade us be truthful in speech, faithful to our promises, compassionate and kind to our parents and neighbours, and to desist from crime and bloodshed.

He forbade to do evil, to lie, to rob the orphan or defame women. He enjoined on us the worship of God alone, with prayer, almsgiving and fasting. And we believed in him and followed the teachings that he brought us from God.

But our countrymen rose up against us and persecuted us to make us renounce our faith, and return to the worship of idols and the abominations of our former life. So when they cruelly entreated us, reducing us to bitter straits and came between us and the practice of our religion, we took refuge in your country; putting our trust in your justice, we hope that you will deliver us from the oppression of our enemies." Their prayer was heard and the embassy of the Quraysh returned discomfited.  Meanwhile, in Mecca, a fresh attempt was made to induce the Prophet to abandon his work of preaching by promises of wealth and honour, but in vain.

While the result of the embassy to Abyssinia was being looked for in Mecca with the greatest expectancy, there occurred the conversion of a man, who before had been one of the most bitter enemies of Muhammad, and had opposed him with the utmost persistence and fanaticism, a man whom the Muslims had every reason than to look on as their most terrible and virulent enemy, though afterwards he shines as one of the noblest figures in the early history of Islam, viz.  'Umar b. al-Khaṭṭab.

One day, in a fit of rage against the Prophet, he set out, sword in hand, to slay him.    On the way, one of his relatives met him and asked him where he was going. "I am looking for Muhammad," he answered," to kill the renegade who has brought discord among the Quraysh, called them fools, reviled their religion and defamed their gods."  "Why dost thou not rather punish those of thy own family, and set them right?" "And who are these of my own family?" answered 'Umar. "Thy brother-in-law Sa'id and thy sister Fatimah, who have become Muslims and followers of Muhammad (Peace be upon him)."  'Umar at once rushed off to the house of his sister, and found her with her husband and Khabbab, another of the followers of Muhammad, who was teaching them to recite a chapter of the Qur'an. 'Umar burst into the room: "What was that sound I heard?" "It was nothing," they replied. "Nay, but I heard you, and I have learned that you have become followers of Muhammad (Peace be upon him)."Where-upon he rushed upon Sa'id and struck him. Fatimah threw herself between them, to protect her husband, crying, " Yes, we are Muslims; we believe in God and His Prophet: slay us if you will." In the struggle his sister was wounded, and when 'Umar saw the blood on her face, he was softened and asked to see the paper they had been reading: after some hesitation she handed it to him.   It contained the 20th Surah of the Qur'an. When 'Umar read it, he exclaimed, "How beautiful, how sublime it is!"   As he read on, conviction suddenly overpowered him and he cried, "Lead me to Muhammad (Peace be upon him) that I may tell him of my conversion." 

The conversion of 'Umar is a turning-point in the history of Islam: the Muslims were now able to take up a bolder attitude. Muhammad left the house of al-Arqam and the believers publicly performed their devotions together round the Ka'bah. The situation might thus be expected to give the aristocracy of Mecca just cause for apprehension. For they had no longer to deal with a band of oppressed and despised outcasts, struggling for a weak and miserable existence. It was rather a powerful faction, adding daily to its strength by the accession of influential citizens and endangering the stability of the existing government by an alliance with a powerful foreign prince.

The Quraysh resolved accordingly to make a determined effort to check the further growth of the new movement in their city. They put the Banu Hashim, who through ties of kindred protected the Prophet, under a ban, in accordance with which the Quraysh agreed that they would not marry their women, nor give their own in marriage to them; they would sell nothing to them, nor buy aught from them—that dealings with them of every kind should cease. For three years the Banu Hashim are said to have been confined to one quarter of the city, except during the sacred months, in which all war ceased throughout Arabia and a truce was made in order that pilgrims might visit the sacred Ka'bah, the centre of the national religion.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) used to take advantage of such times of pilgrimage to preach to the various tribes that flocked to Mecca and the adjacent fairs. But with no success, for his uncle Abu Lahab used to dog his footsteps, crying with a loud voice, "He is an impostor who wants to draw you away from the faith of your fathers to the false doctrines that he brings, wherefore separate yourselves from him and hear him not." They would taunt him with the words: "Thine own people and kindred should know thee best: wherefore do they not believe and follow thee?" But at length the privations endured by Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and his kinsmen enlisted the sympathy of a numerous section of the Quraysh and the ban was withdrawn.

In the same year the loss of Khadijah, the faithful wife who for twenty-five years had been his counsellor and support, plunged Muhammad into the utmost grief and despondency; and a little later the death of Abu Ṭalib deprived him of his constant and most powerful protector and exposed him afresh to insult and contumely.

Scorned and rejected by his own townsmen, to whom he had delivered his message with so little success for ten years, he resolved to see if there were not others who might be more ready to listen, among whom the seeds of faith might find a more receptive and fruitful soil. With this hope he set out for Ṭa'if, a city about seventy miles from Mecca. Before an assembly of the chief men of the city, he expounded his doctrine of the unity of God and of the mission he had received as the Prophet of God to proclaim this faith; at the same time he besought their protection against his persecutors in Mecca. The disproportion between his high claims (which moreover were unintelligible to the heathen people of Ṭa'if) and his helpless condition only excited their ridicule and scorn, and pitilessly stoning him with stones they drove him from their city.

On his return from Ṭa'if the prospects of the success of Muhammad (Peace be upon him) seemed more hopeless than ever, and the agony of his soul gave itself utterance in the words that he puts into the mouth of Noah: " O my Lord, verily I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry only makes them flee from me the more. And verily, so oft as I cry to them, that Thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist (in their error), and are disdainfully disdainful." (Surah Nuh, 71: 5-7.)

It was the Prophet's habit at the time of the annual pilgrimage to visit the encampments of the various Arab tribes and discourse with them upon religion. By some his words were treated with indifference, by others rejected with scorn. But consolation came to him from an unexpected quarter. He met a little group of six or seven persons whom he recognised as coming from Medina, or, as it was then called, Yathrib. "Of what tribe are you?" said he, addressing them. "We are of Khazraj," they answered. "Friends of the Jews?" "Yes." "Then will you not sit down awhile, that I may talk with you?" "Assuredly," replied they. Then they sat down with him, and he proclaimed unto them the true God and preached Islam and recited to them the Qur'an. Now so it was, in that God wrought wonderfully for Islam that there were found in their country Jews, who possessed scriptures and wisdom, while they themselves were heathen and idolaters. Now the Jews oft times suffered violence at their hands, and when strife was between them had ever said to them, "Soon will a Prophet arise and his time is at hand; him will we follow, and with him slay you with the slaughter of 'Ad and of Iram." When now the apostle of God was speaking with these men and calling on them to believe in God, they said one to another: "Know surely that this is the Prophet, of whom the Jews have warned us; come let us now make haste and be the first to join him." So they embraced Islam, and said to him, "Our countrymen have long been engaged in a most bitter and deadly feud with one another; but now perhaps God will unite them together through thee and thy teaching. Therefore we will preach to them and make known to them this religion that we have received from thee." So, full of faith, they returned to their own country.

(Continued)