Part 2

Abd al Muttalib was the guardian of the temple of Ka'aba and from it he had a good income. But because his family consisted of a large number of people, he often found it difficult to meet all of their needs. As a result, tension prevailed, most of the time, among his family members, even though they always put up a smiling face while being outside their home.

Muhammad's inclusion in the family did not help the situation; rather, it brought about an additional load. All members of the family wanted him gone but as he was under his grandfather's protection, none dared ask him to leave. It did not mean that they had to develop a love for the child; what actually happened was exactly its opposite: They began to hate him and missed no opportunity that came to them to harass him. They might not have inflicted bodily injuries on him, but they almost certainly harmed him, beyond repairs, emotionally and psychologically.

When he suffered at the hands of his grandfather's family members, none of its female members ever came forward either to rescue him from their harassment or to console him afterwards. This attitude of theirs brought to his mind his mother's memory. He longed to be with her; wanted to be loved and hugged by her, but he could have none of them for the reason that she had abandoned him in the midst of those strange people. He started developing a hatred of his own towards his mother!

About three years after Muhammad had joined his family, Abd al Motallib found his end approaching. He, therefore, handed him over to his eldest son, Abu Taleb, in whose household he lived for several years.

 

THE CITY OF MECCA

The little town of Mecca, situated near the Red Sea coast of Arabia, had acquired great importance by the sixth century for two different reasons: It became an important center of idol worshipping, to which many of the nomadic tribes of Arabia made pilgrimages on a regular basis. In addition to its religious prestige, however, Mecca also became an active center for commerce, from where caravans departed to various destinations on their trading missions.

Mecca was then a tiny township and most of its inhabitants belonged to the Quraish tribe whose number could not have exceeded a couple of thousands. It was, and it still remains, an arid and inhospitable land incapable of producing anything to support its inhabitants' lives. Its pathways were dusty, with no civic facility worth its name existing therein. Its inhabitants knew nothing about personal health or hygiene.

Dwelling in tiny roofless homes built of clay, they survived in extreme poverty, which forced many of them to use goat and sheep skin to cover their bodies. No school of any kind existed in Mecca. In contrast to the Meccans, the Jews of Madina are believed to have run their own schools in which they instructed their children, primarily in the matters of their religious disciplines.

Because the Arabs could hardly ignite fire, both for cooking and illumination, they ate dates, locusts and lizards, and depended on camel's milk as a substitute for water. However, the Quran says that Allah had provided them with some kind of "green trees" (36:80) from which they obtained fire to meet their needs. During nights, the Arabs stayed inside their tents and homes, fearing mischief from capricious Jinns, which they believed, attacked mankind in darkness at solitary places.

Having nothing worthwhile to do either during the day or night, most of the people spent their time gossiping, drinking, gambling or narrating the fables that came down to them through generation after generation. Their other main pastime was an inordinate obsession with sex, both hetero-and homosexual, for they were reputed to have been endowed with great sexual virility. Muhammad possessed so much of virility, it is said, that he was able to satisfy all of his wives, numbering nine, during a single night.

The Arabs also practiced pederasty, an act they considered to be a normal part of their sexual conduct. Their womenfolk also led a highly licentious life, engaging themselves in sexual acts with any men they felt attracted to. Men recognized this conduct as being normal on the part of their women.

On the death of Abd al Mottalib, his son, Abu Talib succeeded to the guardianship of Ka'aba, assuming the religious functions performed by all of his predecessors. The priestly office held by him required his sacerdotal household to observe rigidly all the rites and ceremonies of the sacred House of Allah. This afforded young Muhammad the opportunity to observe them closely and to record them in his mind, enabling him later to incorporate most of them, sans the idol worshipping, in his own religion.

 

PAGAN RITES

The rites and ceremonies practiced by the pagan Arabs before the advent of Islam consisted of, among others, the following:

-The pagans observed three principal fasts within the year; one of seven, one of nine, and one of thirty days. During their fasts, they ate and drank, but refrained from conversations.
-They prayed three times each day; about sunrise, at noon, and about sunset, turning their faces in the direction of Ka'aba (Washington Irving, Mahomet and his successors, p. 31).
     -They performed a yearly pilgrimage or hajj, which required them to circumambulate the Ka'aba seven times, to run between the two hills called Safa and Marwa on each of which was installed a male and a female idol, to sacrifice animals in the name of the deities, and then to shave the heads of all male pilgrims. Female pilgrims satisfied the later commandment simply by having a few locks of their haircut off.

 

ALLAH

One of the three hundred and sixty idols the pagans worshipped was called Allah, having all the essential characteristics of a man. He was one of their principal deities. They believed that this Allah gave them life and sustained them with his mercy and kindness. This deity was known as Al-Rahman-an (the merciful) and Al-Rahim (the compassionate) to the people of Northern and Southern Arabia.

The inscription (542-3) of Abrahah dealing with the break of the Ma'rib Dam bears testimony to this historical fact. The inscription begins with the following words: "In the power and grace and mercy of the Merciful ((Rahman-an) and His messiah and of the Holy Spirit." The name Al-Rahman-an is especially significant because al-Rahman became later a prominent attribute of Allah, and one of His ninety-nine names in the Quran. Sura or chapter nineteen of the Quran is dominated by the word al-Rahman. Though used in the inscription for the Christian God, yet the word is evidently borrowed from the name of one of the older South Arabian deities.

In truth, Muhammad, at the beginning of his career as a prophet, had required his followers to worship this same statuary Allah. He changed this commandment later to suite his concept of a God who, he believed, had no form or shape, thus separating his concept from that of the pagans and other polytheists of his time.

Apart from the stated rites, the pagans had many other religious traditions, some of which they acquired in early times from the Jews. They are also said to have nurtured their devotional feelings with the books of Psalms, as well as with a book filled with moral discourses, supposedly written by Seth who, according to the biblical stories, was one of Adam's many sons. Adam was the first human being whom God created, by using his own hands, out of mud, which he made by mixing dust with water.

Muhammad's transfer to his uncle's household did not bring him any relief from what he suffered in his grandfather's house. Abu Taleb was not rich, either, but he, too, had a large family. Even though he, in addition to his sacerdotal duties of the Ka'aba, had taken to trading to supplement his income, yet he did not earn enough to provide for all the needs of his family members. Scarcity was a rule, rather than an exception for his family. As the family often passed their days in hardship, Muhammad's addition to the family became a burden not only for its head, but also for its members. Consequently, they made him feel unwelcome in their midst, and used, in his presence, languages and gestures, which were good enough to act as salt for the wounds he had already acquired from his grandfather's house.

Abu Taleb, on his part, was aware of the situation that his nephew had to endure in his house. He wanted to help, but he, too, was handicapped; had he been able to meet the needs of his immediate family members, he could have justified Muhammad's presence in his house, but that was not the case and, consequently, he could do nothing for him, but to play the role of a spectator. When he could live no more with his nephew's agonizing conditions, he found him a job of a shepherd.

His job required him to take his employers' camels into the plains for grazing. He   thus had to spend, all by himself, the major portion of his days in the grim desert outside of Mecca. Letting the camels roam about in search of a thorn or a blade of grass among the pile of stones, we can visualize how a young, sensitive and intelligent boy of the age of Muhammad, must have spent his time.

It is a rule of nature that misfortune and sufferings create bitterness in a person and these make him conscious of his situation, especially when he finds himself with nothing to distract him from his thoughts. Such a person grieves over his misfortune and tries to find out its causes. While doing so, he develops a strange internal feeling, which can be described only by a person who had undergone such an experience in his or her own life.

Since the above observation amply applied to young Muhammad, we may safely conjecture that in the midst of his frustrating loneliness, he must have asked himself why he had come into the world as a fatherless orphan, and why he had to work as a shepherd at such a lonely place at such a young age, while other children of his age were spending their time in the company of their loving parents. He must also have asked himself why his mother had to leave him at the mercy of the people he hardly knew, and why their treatment of him was different from that of their own children.

Despite the fact that he brought in some income to his uncle's family, yet they continued to treat him in the manner of the past. The continuity of their past behavior hurt him deeply; its resultant pains being the major cause for deepening his hatred towards his mother. He believed that if he had been living with her, nobody would have subjected him to the degrading insults that he suffered from at his grandfather's house, and which continued to be heaped upon on him at his uncle's house. He held his mother responsible for all of his sufferings.

His ego, sensitivity and feelings greatly hurt, Muhammad stopped playing with other children in his spare time. Instead, he felt more at home when conversing with other people who came to Mecca on pilgrimage or on trade. He enjoyed their conversations on religious matters. He also derived immense pleasure from their story-telling sessions. Very often, he prompted them into narrating the tantalizing and fascinating Arabian tales of the past. Most of the tales and fables he heard from them acted like balm for his wounds. When he got his opportunity, he narrated them eloquently to his listeners, who, in their own turn, made them an important and integral part of the Quran!

When he had no story-telling session to attend, he took immense pleasure in watching the arrival and departure of the caravans, which traded in Syria and Yemen, and thronged at Mecca before their dispersal. The thought of being in foreign lands filled young Muhammad's mind with excitement and carried his imagination to things he himself hoped one day to see in those distant countries.

Once, Muhammad saw Abu Taleb mount his camel to depart with a caravan bound for Syria. Unable to suppress his ardent desire, he begged his uncle to take him along on his journey. Abu Taleb could not deny his forceful request and gave him permission to accompany the caravan.

The route to Syria, in those days, lay through regions fertile in fables and traditions, which it was the delight of the traveling Arabs to recount during the evening respites of their caravans. The vastness and solitude of the desert in which the wandering Arabs passed so much of their lives was the fertile ground that also gave birth to numerous superstitious fancies. Accordingly, they had the deserts peopled with good and evil Jinns, and clothed them with tales of enchantment, mingled with wonderful but dubious events, which, they believed, had taken place in the distant past.

While traveling, the youthful Muhammad doubtless imbibed many of those superstitions of the desert. Remaining ingrained in his retentive memory, they later played a powerful role over his thoughts and imagination.

We may note here two ancient traditions, out of the many of the Arabian legends, which Muhammad must have heard at this time, and which we find recounted by him afterwards in the Quran. One of these related to the mountainous district called Hadjar.

As caravans crossed the silent and deserted valleys, caravanners gazed at the caves at the sides of the mountains. These caves were said to have been once inhabited by the Bani Thamud or the Children of Thamud. These people, Arabs believed, belonged to one of the lost tribes of Arabia.

Bani Thamud were a proud and gigantic race, existing at the time of patriarch Abraham. When they lapsed into idolatry, God sent them a prophet from among themselves whose name was Saleh. His task was to restore them to His righteous path. People refused to listen to him unless he proved the divinity of his mission through a miracle. Saleh prayed, and God caused a rock to open up from which came out a gigantic she-camel, producing a foal and abundant milk soon after. Some of the Thamudites were convinced by the sight of the miracle and gave up idolatry. The greater majority of them remained unimpressed and continued in their disbelief.

Disappointed, Saleh left the camel among the people as a sign from God, but warned them that a catastrophe would befall should they do her any harm. For a time, the camel was left to feed quietly in their pastures, but when she drank from a brook or a well, she never raised her head until she had drained the last drop of water.

In return, it was believed, she produced milk to supply the whole tribe. As she, however, frightened other camels out of pastures by her huge size, she became an object of offense to the Thamudites who, to get rid of the beast, hamstrung and then slew her.

God retaliated for the killing of the she-camel. He caused a fearful cry, accompanied by great claps of thunder, to descend upon the Thamudites people at night from heaven; in the morning all the offenders were found dead, lying prostrated on their faces. Thus for avenging the death of a she-camel, God obliterated a whole race from the face of the earth. The land of the Thamudites still remains barren, caused by a constant curse from heaven.

This story had a powerful impact on Muhammad's mind, who, in later years, refused to let his people encamp in the neighborhood, hurrying them away from this accursed region.

Another tradition gathered by Muhammad during one of his journeys related to the city of Eyla, situated near the Red Sea. This place, he was told, had been inhabited in ancient times by a tribe of the Jews. Like the Thamudites, they had lapsed into idolatry. Also, because the tribe had profaned the Sabbath by fishing on that sacred day, God transformed their old men into swine, and the young ones into monkeys.

What had happened to their womenfolk was not told, so Muhammad necessarily remained vague while narrating this story in the Quran.

The aforesaid traditions, among others, are found eloquently described in the Quran, thus indicating the extent of the bias to which Muhammad's youthful mind had been subjected during his journeys.

Muslim writers have eulogized many wonderful circumstances, which are stated to have attended Muhammad throughout all the journeys of his life. He was, they assert, hovered over by unseen angels with their wings to protect him from the burning sands of the desert and the scorching rays of the sun.

On another occasion, he was protected by a cloud, which hung over his head during the noontime heat. On yet another occasion, a withered tree suddenly put forth its leaves and blossomed in order to provide shade to the distressed Muhammad.

All those miracles did not rest on the evidence of an eyewitness; rather these were Muhammad's own statements, or were invented, after his death, by his zealot followers, which Muslims are required to believe without ever asking any questions.

During his journeys, Muhammad is said to have met a number of Christian hermits. Monk Bahira was prominent among them. On conversing with Muhammad, Bahira was struck by the precocity of his intellect and became entranced by his eager desire for varied information. His inquisitiveness centered, principally, on maters of religion. The two were believed to have held frequent conversations on the subject, in course of which, the discourse of the monk was mainly directed against idolatry, the practice in which the youthful Muhammad had hitherto been raised. The Nestorian Christians, for whom Bahira was a faithful patron, were strenuous in forbidding the worship of images. They prohibited even their casual exhibition. Indeed, they had taken their scruples on this matter so far that even the cross, a common emblem of Christianity, was included in this prohibition.

Muslim writers stress the point that Bahira had become interested in the youthful Muhammad because he had seen the seal of prophecy on his shoulders. This vision, they swear, gave the monk the conviction that this was the same Prophet whose arrival had been foretold in the Christian Scriptures. The monk is further reported to have told Abu Talib to ensure that his nephew did not fall into the hands of the Jews, thereby forecasting with the eye of prophecy the trouble and opposition that Muhammad was destined to encounter in future from that religious group of people.

We doubt if the mentioned encounter had ever taken place. Supposing that it had actually taken place, in that event, the purpose of Bahira's encounter must have revolved around one of his own agendas. Since the monk was engaged in a mission and predisposed toward proselytizing, he, being a sectarian preacher, needed no miraculous sign to develop an interest in an intelligent and intense Muhammad, and to attempt to convert him to the beliefs he was then propagating. He knew that his subject was a receptive listener; and he was also the nephew of the guardian of Ka'aba. He also knew that if he succeeded in implanting the seeds of his teachings into Muhammad's tender mind, he would be spreading, through him, the doctrines of his sect among the people of Mecca, thus advancing his mission by a great stride. This was a good motivation for Bahira to develop an interest in Muhammad. He did not have to see the putative seal of prophecy in order to be convinced with his subject's potentiality and usefulness.

What the monk is reported to have told Abu Talib about Muhammad must have been a precautionary suggestion. In the unsettled state of religious opinions then obtaining in the Arabian Peninsula, the monk wanted to prevent his would-be convert from being engulfed by the Jewish faith, which was then influencing the pagans in its favor. Had it happened; the monk would have lost a good candidate for his faith, and this would have been a great setback for the cause he was then duty-bound to promote. 

With Abu Talib, Muhammad returned to Mecca, his mind teeming with wild tales and traditions he picked up during his journey through the desert. He remained deeply impressed by the doctrines imparted to him by Monk Bahira in the Nestorian monastery, which, as we will note shortly, had helped him tremendously later in his life in shaping his own thoughts and religious doctrines.

Muhammad had also developed a mysterious reverence for Syria, believing it to have given refuge to the patriarch Abraham when he had fled from Chaldea, taking with him the doctrine of worshipping one true God. His veneration of this country was so deep that he is said to have initially faced Syria (Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, as translated by A. Guillaume, p. 135), while saying his three daily prayers.

While not traveling with a caravan, Muhammad worked as a shepherd. But when he reached his manhood, different persons employed him as their commercial agent, to be with their trade caravans, which traveled to Syria, the Yemen and other destinations on commercial pursuits. The fact that he was given charge of trade by his employers negates the Muslim claim that Muhammad was an illiterate person and, therefore, he could not have said or written what the Quran contains. A person unable to read or write could not have been given the important post of a commercial agent, especially, when other Meccans are claimed to have been able to do so. His ability to read and write must also have helped him to get his jobs, for it was in the best interest of his employers to hire someone who was able to keep a written record of the trade activities he engaged himself in, particularly in a situation where he had to travel to, and live in, distant places for a long period of time.

During his journey through Jerusalem, Muhammad had the opportunity of seeing the Temple of Solomon, located on the hill of Moriah. King Solomon had built it for Yahweh, who was one among many gods of the ancient people. In the Quran, this Temple is referred to as the Farthest Mosque (Masjid-ul-Aqsa). His familiarity with this temple helped him later to describe it vividly when questioned about his alleged ascension to Seventh Heaven during a night.

Muslims firmly believe that Muhammad landed here on his wonder horse, known as Burraq, and walked across the plaza - built by Herod to expand the area of the Second Temple - and then ascended to heaven during a night to hold talks with God. When asked to describe the temple in order to prove his claim of the mysterious ascension, God, it said, presented its replica in his vision to enable him to satisfy the incredulity of his Meccan tormentors. During their rule over Jerusalem, Muslims built, near the Temple of Solomon, a mosque known as the Dome of Rock, to commemorate the ascension. It is also called the Mosque of Hadhrat Umar. This has become the third holiest Muslim place of worship after the Ka'aba in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in Madina.

King Solomon was the person who had first used the oft-repeated Muslim invocation of God's glory in a letter that he is said to have written to Queen Bilquis of Sheba, some seventeen hundred centuries before the advent of Islam. The invocation, reading as follows, are now used by all Muslims every day before they do anything in their lives:

Bismillah hir Rahman nur Rahim, meaning: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

We suspect that the pagans used the same invocation before their idol Allah. Muhammad lifted it from the pagan practice and made it an essential component of his religion. 

Before we proceed further with our narrative, we may pause here and discuss briefly a psychological theory or observation. It is known that belief can blunt human reasoning and common sense. It has been established that ideas, which have been inculcated into a person's mind in childhood, remain in the background of his thinking forever. Consequently, such a person will want to make facts conform to his indoctrinated ideas, which may have no rational validity. Many learned scholars are known to have remained handicapped by this burden, and inhibited from using their common sense. It is not that they never used their common sense in religious enterprises; they used it only when it corroborated with their inculcated ideas.

Mankind's faculties of perception and rationalization have enabled them to find solution of scientific problems, but in matters of religious and political beliefs, the same species is willing to trample on the evidence of reason and senses.