The Prophet Muhammad e was born in 570 A.D. in Makkah, the power centre of Arabia, and died in Madinah in 632. His father Abdullah, died prior to his birth. His mother, Amina, also died soon after his birth. There was nothing extraordinary in his external circumstances. But, from his very childhood, his personality reflected extraordinary character. On seeing him, his grandfather, Abdul Muttalib, used to remark that this grandson of his would reach a high place in life.
Chapters 93 and 94 of the Quran briefly describe the circumstances of his early years, and assert that God took special care of him. In his youth, when he went in search of truth, God gave him guidance through revelation. His livelihood was provided for when one of the wealthy ladies of Makkah, having become impressed by his extraordinary personality and character, desired to marry him. Besides, the Prophet was specially gifted with a vision that would enable him to recognise favourable opportunities, and turn every disadvantage to advantage.
The well-known German psychologist Alfred Adler, in his book, The Individual Psychology has written that, after studying human beings all his life, the greatest potential he found in them was “their power to turn a minus into a plus.”
Throughout human history, the greatest example of this human potential coupled with vision is to be found in the Prophet Muhammad. This unique quality in him has been acknowledged by historians in diverse ways. For instance, British writer, Mr. E.E. Kellet writes: “Muhammad faced adversity with the determination to wring success out of failure.”
The Prophet’s vision was on a totally different plane from that possessed by the common man. It would be true to say that such extraordinary vision has never been found in a person who is not a Prophet. The extraordinary nature of this vision is a proof in itself that it was not a human quality in the simple sense, but that he had received it, in a special sense, from the Almighty whose knowledge encompasses past, present and future.
As an illustration of this, we mention some incidents from the life of the Prophet. These events are not just proofs of his personal superiority but, in their essence, they also provide proof of the fact that the Prophet was an inspired person, who had received knowledge directly from God—a knowledge, the acquisition of which is not possible for an ordinary man.
Envisioning the future
How great was this vision of the Prophet can be judged by an incident in the early period of his prophethood in Makkah. It should first be explained that the Makkans regarded him as being so insignificant that instead of calling him Muhammad, son of Abdullah, they ridiculed him by calling him Muhammad the son of Abu Kabsha. (Abu Kabsha was a shepherd in Makkah, whose wife had been Prophet Muhammad’s e wet nurse.) In these apparently ordinary and unpropitious circumstances, his vision was nevertheless on so high a plane that, when in the early years of his prophethood, the Makkan leaders gathered at the house of Abu Talib, the Prophet’s uncle, to ask the Prophet what it was that he aspired to, he replied with complete determination: I want only one word from you, if you are willing to give that, you will come to possess the whole of Arabia and all the other parts of the world will surrender before you. (Hayat As Sahaba, 1/56)
The day the Prophet made this pronouncement, he was all alone in the world, without a single soul to support him. To those who lacked insight he had no future, yet he could visualize something which appeared inconceivable to others. Today we all know that these words uttered by him became a part of history. Within barely twenty three years of the commencement of his mission, the whole of Arabia was brought into the fold of Islam, while in the next two decades the Roman and the Sassanid empires,—the two great empires of the world,—had surrendered before his followers. These events were so astonishing that historians have called them the greatest miracle of human history. In the words of historian M.N. Roy:
Every Prophet established his pretension by the performance of miracles. By that token Muhammad must be recognized as by far the greatest of all Prophets, before or after him. The expansion of Islam is the most miraculous of all miracles. (Historical Role of Islam, p.4)
Seeing an advantage amidst disadvantages
After attaining to prophethood, the Prophet Muhammad e lived in Makkah for thirteen years. This was the most difficult period of his life: only a few of the Makkans believed in him. While the majority—especially the leaders—put up stiff opposition to his ideas. They created all kinds of hardship for him and his companions, even killing some of them; placed a total boycott on him along with his family; deprived him of tribal protection, and resolved to kill the Prophet himself, in order to wipe out Islam forever etc.
In those days the circumstances appeared to be extremely disadvantageous. It was a tribal age. It was held that the actual power of an individual lay in his male child, and since the Prophet had no son, his opponents used to call him ‘abtar’ (rootless), that is, he had no future. In these apparently desperate circumstances, the Prophet replied: “God has promised me a town which will swallow up all other towns, people call it Yathrib, but it is Madinah.” (Muwatta Imam Malik, 641)
What in essence he was saying was that God had decreed that he leave Makkah for another town, a town which would form the centre of his mission and which would then become so powerful as to “swallow up” all other towns. This was a figurative way of saying that all the nations of the world would surrender to it. This observation appeared strange, coming as it did from one who had become persona non grata in his own home town, Makkah, and who was now apparently living in the most straitened circumstances.
When the Prophet migrated from Makkah to Madinah, he did not even have a pair of shoes on his feet; hiding himself in this state from the Makkan leaders he reached Madinah. Called Yathrib in those days, was a town attached with no importance. However in that same Arabia where Makkah had become so inhospitable to him, Madinah proved to be quite the reverse. Almost all its inhabitants entered the fold of Islam, and moreover, the Muslims scattered outside the periphery began to settle within the town. In this way, Madinah became a powerful centre of Islam. Within the space of a few years, his mission flourished there, then it spread to all the other towns in Arabia. Ultimately, the whole of Arabia entered the fold of Islam.
Given the distressing nature of the circumstances in Makkah, it took great insight on the part of the Prophet to see what the future held for him in Madinah, which was situated at a distance of 300 miles from Makkah. The fact that he foresaw a great future there, is proof of his quite remarkable vision.
Apparently, the inhabitants of both the towns, Makkah and Madinah, were idolators, yet there was a basic difference between the two: in Makkah, people’s material interests were linked with idolatry, whereas for the Madinans, idolatry was only an ancestral heritage; it had no other significance.
Due to the shortage of water in Makkah, agriculture and horticulture did not exist there. Idolatry, however, provided one of the greatest sources of the townspeople’s livelihood. The Makkans had placed in the Kaaba idols numbering 360, belonging to all the Arabian tribes. These Arabian tribes used to visit Kaaba to worship their idols where they also offered devotional presents. Due to their visit in great numbers the business in Makkah prospered. By the visit of these devotees Makkans benefited in almost the same manner as countries benefit nowadays from the visit of tourists on a large scale. Furthermore, since the Makkans were the custodians of this idolatrous system, they had come to acquire the position of political leadership of the whole of Arabia. Abandoning idolatry, therefore, appeared to them to be synonymous with the collapse of their politics and economics.
Whereas the situation in Madinah was quite different. There was water and fertile soil. By means of agriculture and horticulture, its inhabitants easily managed to secure their livelihood. Therefore, they were not afraid that if they abandoned idolatry for monotheism, their economy would be ruined. That explains the difference in the response from the people belonging to the two cities. Where the Makkans vigorously opposed the call of monotheism given by the Prophet Muhammad e the Madinans, soon after their first introduction to the religion of monotheism, abandoned idol worship and accepted Islam without any hesitation.
To understand this difference between Makkah and Madinah and to judge that Madinah rather than Makkah would provide the strongest ladder to progress called for keen perception. This assessment made by the Prophet Muhammad e is a living proof of the profundity of his vision, and is literally testified to by history.
Introducing Peace as the Most Powerful Weapon
The period in which the Prophet Muhammad e was born was one of war and conflict. Throughout the world the sword was regarded as the sign of power. The Arabs had a saying: The greatest check of war is war. In this connection the Prophet observed: “God grants to non-violence what he does not grant to violence.” (AI-Tirmidhi)
In the conditions prevailing fifteen hundred years ago such observations seemed extraordinary. Such sentiments were so highly at odds with the times that words of this nature could be uttered only by one whose mind had not been moulded by his immediate circumstances, but had been inspired rather by some higher source of knowledge. Both the initial as well as the later period of Islam testify completely to the principle of inspiration.
During the life of the Prophet Muhammad e the Quraysh, who enjoyed the leadership of Arabia, turned so hostile to him that they went to the extent of waging war against him. According to the books of seerah, the Quraysh wanted to embroil him in minor or major battles on more than eighty occasions. But the Prophet did his best not to engage in hostilities by adopting a peaceful policy. For instance, on the occasion of the Ahzab encounter, the Prophet set up a buffer in the form of a trench between him and his enemies. Then on the occasion of Hudaybiyyah, when it came to making a peace treaty with the enemy, the Prophet accepted all the conditions set by them.
During the 23 year period of his prophethood, the Prophet, physically encountered his antagonists only on three occasions—at Badr, Uhud and Hunayn, where conflict had become totally unavoidable. Each of these three engagements lasted for only half a day. This means that the Prophet fought for only one and a half days throughout his life, with the total casualties amounting to not more than 130 from both sides. The winning over of such an aggressive and belligerent people with so little bloodshed had been possible only because the Prophet always used to lay stress on the power of peace.
Arabia had been conquered during the lifetime of the Prophet. The wars that took place in this process took a toll of less than one hundred and fifty people. This revolution brought about by the Prophet Muhammad e was indeed a bloodless revolution. And this bloodless revolution became possible only because he acted on his belief in the power of peace.
In the later centuries of Islam, too, this peace formula was followed. That is why Islam achieved such great successes. One prominent example of this matter is provided by an event which took place in the thirteenth century. During this period the barbaric Mongol tribes rose from Turkistan and devastated the entire Muslim empire right from Samarqand to Aleppo. The grand Abbasid caliphate vanished altogether.
In those days the Muslims’ political and military power had so greatly weakened that the saying spread among them that if you were told that the Mongols had been defeated, you should not believe it. It was in this situation that the Islamic policy of peace performed a miracle. Muslim men and Muslim women rose to the occasion, engaging themselves in peaceful dawah work. The result was miraculous; within a period of 50 years the scene was completely changed. In the words of the Quran (41:34), the enemies had been turned into close friends. The majority of the Mongols had been brought into the fold of Islam.
“The Religion of Muslims had conquered where their arms had failed.” (The Preaching of Islam, by T.W. Arnold) As another historian has put it: ‘The conquerors had accepted the religion of the conquered.’”
The Prophet Muhammad e held that the power of peace was far greater than the power of violence, and on many occasions, he and his followers successfully put this into practice. As a result this concept of peace, as opposed to violence, influenced the course of events at the time and continued to have an impact on later generations. In present times this thinking has assumed the status of a permanent social philosophy. Many prominent thinkers are its advocates. For instance, it was this principle of peaceful activism on which Mahatma Gandhi based his movement of non-violence and with this power of non-violence the freedom movement successfully achieved its target. Then it was this same principle by which the South African leader Nelson Mandela became successful in his political movement in support of the blacks against the whites.
The Prophet Muhammad e was born in the second half of the sixth century AD. It was an age of constant skirmishing. In those days people resorted to violence, regardless of the issue, for they knew of no other solution to their problems. In such an atmosphere the Prophet Muhammad e declared that the power of peace was far greater than the power of violence. This peaceful activism could have been understood only by one whose vision was so profound as to enable him to penetrate appearances in order to see reality, one of rare insight, able to penetrate the present and see the future. As we know in present times the invention and use of the latest weapons of war have only increased the destructiveness of war or violence. In no way do they herald success or victory for anyone. On the other hand, advances in modern science and technology, e.g. today’s communications systems, have to a hitherto unimaginable extent, proved strongly supportive of the peaceful method.
These extraordinary possibilities which lay hidden in the darkness of the future fifteen hundred years ago required an exceptional vision. This observation of the Prophet serves, undoubtedly, as a vital proof of this vision.
(to be continued)
