The Role of Muhammad (s)

 

HISTORY RELATES OF MEN who distinguished themselves by deeds and left permanent imprints on their societies; of prophets who delivered the message of the true God to their peoples; of statesmen who distinguished themselves in the service of their nations; of authors who left monumental additions to the literary wealth of mankind; of conquerors who led their followers to victories, wealth, and renown; and of those who by force of personality or unusual calling succeeded in transforming values or completely revamping the societies into which they were born. Muhammad , the prophet of Arabia, has fulfilled for his people a role that combines the functions - of a distinguished prophet, statesman, author, and reformer. He has earned for himself as a consequence the respect and reverence of countless people, Muslim and non-Muslim everywhere. By vocation Muhammad was a prophet in the true Biblical sense with a message for his people, a message anchored in religious belief but aiming at the realization of fundamental social, economic, and political reform. The religion he founded was hampered by no wrangling creed or barrier to man's relations with God or to his fellow man. He succeeded, both as prophet and as reformer. The fact that Muhammad's mission was accomplished in his lifetime is a living testimony "to his distinctive superiority over the prophets, sages, and philosophers of other times and countries." 1 While our knowledge of men who filled similar roles from Moses to Zoroaster to Jesus is shrouded with legend, often incomplete and frequently colored, and while the accounts of Muhammad's life and deeds contain their share of incompleteness and coloring, the fact remains that he was the first to live and preach in the full light of history. We have more information relating to his career than we have of his predecessors. His life by and large is not wrapped in mystery, and few tales have been woven around his personality.2 For the biography of Muhammad we are dependent on the work of ibn-Ishaq (d. 767) as preserved in the recension of ibn-Hisham (d. 834). Ibn-Sa'd, a historian of the ninth century, compiled an encyclopedic work on the Prophet and his followers which contains valuable information on the life and preachings of Muhammad . But no source or work can yield more dependable information on the genius of Muhammad or provide a greater insight into his personality and accomplishments than the Qur'an, the sacred book of Islam. While the Qur'an in Islamic theology - conveys strictly the word of God, it remains in respect to the message contained therein a true mirror of Muhammad's character and his accomplishments. Complementary information is obtainable also in the sayings and deeds of the Prophet that have been amassed in voluminous quantities but carefully scrutinized by scholars of the early Islamic centuries. These non-canonical texts, which contain eye-witness accounts of Muhammad , fall under the category of hadith (utterances) and sunnah (observed conduct). The life and preachings of Muhammad are in marked contrast with what Arabian society had ordained for his fellow Meccans. The established facts of his life have been subjected to much less variance of interpretation than those of preceding prophets. This is due to the circumspection of available sources. He was born about 571 A.D., the posthumous son of 'Abdullah and Aminah. On his father's side he descended from the impoverished house of Hashim, adjudged by the Quraysh the noblest of the dominant aristocracy; on his mother's, from the Najjar branch of Khazraj, a major tribe of Yathrib, his adoptive city. His grandfather, 'Abd-al-Muttalib, formerly the custodian of the Kacbah and one time the virtual head of the Meccan commonwealth, took charge of his upbringing upon the death of his mother when Muhammad was only six years old. When the grandfather died, the care of the child was entrusted to his paternal uncle Abu-Talib. Most of his youth was evidently uneventful as the lack of biographical information on Muhammad's early life suggests. The most important landmark in his youth prior to the prophetic call is his marriage to Khadijah, a wealthy Qurayshite widow who was impressed by Muhammad's personality and virtues when he served as a factor in her caravan trade with Syria. He was twenty-five at the time and she fifteen years his senior. The marriage lasted over fifteen years. During this period Muhammad would have no additional woman for a wife, an unusual disposition for the times when polygamy was widely practiced by his fellow Arabs. Yet these were the years that afforded him the happiness which escaped him, as an orphaned youth. GA_googleFillSlot("IC1.0_Articles_250.250"); GA_googleCreateDomIframe("google_ads_div_IC1.0_Articles_250.250_ad_container" ,"IC1.0_Articles_250.250"); Khadijah bore him two sons, who died in infancy, and four daughters. Two of the daughters married the future third and fourth caliphs of Islam. His daughter Fatimah married his first cousin 'Ali, the son of Abu-Talib, whom he had taken under his wing and raised as an act of gratitude when Abu-Talib, Muhammad's uncle, died. The mission of Muhammad began after a careful period of soul-searching and spiritual reassessment lasting over fifteen years. When the call to prophecy came at last, there was no turning back. He hesitated but he did not fail to respond. Muhammad was a mature man of forty when he received the first revelation. It came to him as he was contemplating in a cave on Mt. Hira', above Mecca, to which he habitually withdrew. The injustices permeating all levels of Meccan society in his days undoubtedly weighed heavily on his mind and caused him much anguish. The wealthy lorded it over the poor; the helpless were at the mercy of the strong; greed and selfishness ruled the day; infanticide was widely practiced by Bedouins who lacked adequate means of sustenance, and there were numerous other evils prevailing on all levels of Arabian society that had the effect of widening the gulf between the privileged aristocracy and the deprived multitudes of Mecca. With such considerations preying on his mind, Muhammad found himself confronted by a twofold crisis: spiritual and social. In his early life he had understood only too well what poverty accompanied by orphanage meant. Now he had time to do something about both. It is important to note here that Muhammad's preaching of monotheism and of social reform went hand in hand. Indeed, no other message is so thoroughly underscored in the revelations received from Allah with so much stress on equal treatment and social justice. To Muhammad these constituted a vital concomitant of worship. The revelations of the one and only God enjoin consistently the exercise of mercy and benevolence as the necessary adjuncts of belief in Him. This dual role of Muhammad as preacher and reformer is largely evident in his life and career. What he sought was the cohesion of Arabian society through uniform beliefs and a unified faith. He knew this could be accomplished only through the worship of the one God alone and through laws authorized by the sanctity of divine command. With such laws Muhammad would bind the hitherto scattered ends of Arabia. He preached belief in the one God, God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and the brotherhood of all Arabs in Islam, or "submission" to God. To preach such a radical message in Arabia at this time was to be truly daring and, judging by the standards of the day, it was an undertaking fraught with risks and formidable obstacles. Muhammad himself was overwhelmed when he awakened to the awesome realities of the task he was being charged with. "No incipient prophet," said Edward Gibbon, "ever passed through so severe an ordeal as Muhammad." Indeed, as the commandments of Allah became increasingly manifest in the revelations that were descending upon him, Muhammad undertook to show that the whole organization and institutional beliefs of pagan Arabia were not in conformity with the divine will. The voice of Muhammad amidst the strong chorus of opposition was indeed a lone voice. Yet he persistently challenged the moral and social norms governing Arabia, and particularly the values and institutional practices of Mecca, the hub of Arabia, under the powerful leadership of the Qurayshite oligarchy. -


(Excerpted from the book "Islam" - An academic analysis of the life of the Prophet of Islam by Caesar E. Farah. Prof. Farah teaches History at the University of Minnesota and earned his Ph.D from Princeton in 1956.) - See more at: http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=IV0602-2910#sthash.wWuLAaDG.dpuf


 See more at: http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=IV0602-2910#sthash.wWuLAaDG.dpuf

Thanksgiving and Muslim Heritage

 

As American Muslims, should we stand with the Pilgrims or the Indians?

Since Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War, Americans have celebrated a November Thursday as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise. Since 1970, a Native American group in New England has observed this same day as a National Day of Mourning. They are descendents of the indigenous Wampanoag Indians who encountered the Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock. Each year at Plymouth Rock itself, the group - along with hundreds of allies - mourn the theft of their lands and food by the Pilgrims, and the enslavement and subjugation of their ancestors. At the same time, they also look forward to an America filled with justice and freed of brutality.

So, should American Muslims give thanks and praise the Creator, or should we mourn on this day? We should both give thanks and remember the past. We should stand in earnest compassion with the Pilgrims and in genuine solidarity with the Indians, helping each in their needs. As the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "A person should help his brother whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed. If he is the oppressor he should prevent him from doing so, for that is his help; and if he is the oppressed he should be helped against oppression."

As Muslims, we should always be thankful and truly grateful for all that we have. Although things could be better, things could also always be much, much worse. We should be mindful of the distance we need to go — as individuals, as a community and as a country. As America marks a Day of Thanksgiving, let American Muslims also commit ourselves to both an unfailing gratitude and to the struggles for racial and economic justice and peace.

Let's make this a day of thanksgiving and remembrance of our heritage as American Muslims. Let's recount the good and the bad, so we can better understand our role in America in these remarkable times.

This Thanksgiving, let's remember the Muslims who arrived in America in the hulls of slave ships after crossing the Middle Passage. After all, Malcolm X did say, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on us!" Historians estimate that a quarter of African slaves brought to America were Muslim. When Alex Haley traced his Roots, he traced them through Kunte Kinte to a Muslim village in West Africa. Historian Sylviane Diouf has eloquently described this experience in her book "African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas". Let's give thanks for those lifted out of slavery, and for the dignity in struggle of the late Rosa Parks and her generation.

Let's remember the vision of religious pluralism of our Founding Fathers. According to James Hutson, chief of the Library of Congress' Manuscript division, the Founding Fathers - especially Thomas Jefferson & George Washington - "explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic". Thomas Jefferson was more proud of his effort to pass Virginia's landmark Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786 than he was of his presidency. (Some say a future president would be similarly more proud of his stint as the manager of baseball team in Texas.) In his Autobiography, Jefferson praised the Virginia Statute's "mantle of protection," which included "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and the Infidel." Let's give thanks for the religious freedoms we enjoy.

Let's remember the hand of friendship extended by the Sultan of Morocco, who made Morocco the first country to recognize the independence of the United States. Isn't it amazing that it is a Muslim land that has that honor? The 1787 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Morocco and the United States stands as the basis for the longest unbroken treaty relationship between the US and any foreign country in the history of the Republic. Let's give thanks for those sincere efforts at peacemaking and bridge building in our time.

Let's remember the great American landmark, the Washington Monument on the Capitol Mall in Washington, DC. It was completed in the 1880s in part with the gift of funds from the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul, who as Caliph was also the figurehead leader of all Muslims. The Sultan's subjects included the populations of today's Middle East hotspots: Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. If you go to the Washington Monument, you can see the Sultan's commemorative plaque inside the Monument, which features a specially commissioned calligraphed poem in the Arabic script for the American people. Let's give thanks for wisdom, foresight, and small kindnesses in our leaders, communities, and families.

Let's remember the first American colonial conquest and occupation in the Muslim world which occurred during the Philippines-American War in the early 20th century, a war in which about 1.4 million Filipinos died. General Pershing accomplished in 10 or so years what the Spanish couldn't in 400 years. Fresh from fighting the Sioux at Wounded Knee, Pershing helped conquer the Muslim Moro peoples of the southern Philippines. The Colt .45 Gun, which was the standard issue handgun of the US Armed Forces until 1985, was invented specifically for the conquest of the Muslim Moro peoples. In one fateful siege, the Battle of Bud Bagsak, American troops killed 2000-3000 Muslim men, women, and children. Let's give thanks for those Muslims and Christians in the Philippines and around the world who are today breaking barriers and working for a new dawn free of oppression, exploitation and hate.

Let's all remember our own shortcomings, and give thanks for the infinite mercy, forgiveness, and love of our Creator.

Let's give thanks. Let's pray and work for a future of peace, justice, and nonviolence.

Mas'ood Cajee, a board member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship, lives in San Joaquin County, California. He is currently researching the stories of Muslim rescuers during the Nazi genocide. He welcomes comments at mcajee@yahoo.com.