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The Advent of Islam and the Life of Mohammad

My dear Gauri,

One cannot think of religions in India without considering Islam. The followers of Islam – we can call them Muslims or Mohammadans – are the single largest minority in India. In fact, after Indonesia, India has the second largest Muslim population in the world.

 The founder of Islam is the Prophet Mohammad. Among Muslims it is customary to say, whenever his name is invoked: “Peace be upon him”. Mohammad was born in A.D. 570 in the sacred city of Mecca. The people of Mecca had their own gods, as indeed all people everywhere have had theirs.

Mohammad was born in a noble family and belonged to the famous tribe of Quraish. He was a posthumous child, his father, Abdullah, having died a few months before he was born. His mother’s name was Amina.

In his childhood Mohammad was brought up by his uncle Abu Talib, his mother having died when he was barely six and his grandfather, who cared for him after his mother’s death, having died when he was nine. Mohammad knew tragedy while still a boy. By the time Abu Talib took young Mohammad in his family, his fortunes were declining and the young orphan had to work hard minding his uncle’s flocks. For all that Mohammad was received with great affection in his uncle’s household.

From his very early days Mohammad showed that there was something special about him. The angels of God, we are told, were opening out Mohammad’s heart and filling it with light. Mohammad was pure-hearted from the very beginning and his disposition was sweet and gentle. His early bereavements had made him sensitive to human suffering – something he had in common with Buddha. He was always ready to help the weak and the oppressed. And as he grew up, his sense of honour, duty and fidelity grew, too, and people would call him “The True One”, “The Upright One” and “The Trustworthy One”.

The tribes in and around Mecca were constantly fighting each other and their quarrels disgusted Mohammad. As a result, he became inward-looking and frequently fell into silence. No doubt, at that impressionable age, he was looking for heavenly guidance.

As he grew into maturity, he took up the caravan business and at the age of twenty-five entered the service of a wealthy widow named Khadija. His prudence and integrity impressed her greatly and gradually their relation deepened into affection and love. She was fifteen years his senior, but love conquered all and they were married. It was a happy marriage. Khadija stood by Mohammad through thick and thin.

Deeply spiritual, Mohammad would often go to a cave somewhere near Mecca to contemplate and it was here that he received God’s revelation: La ilaha illa Allah: There is no God but Allah.

Mohammad preached the message of God as he heard it but the time was not ripe for the people to receive his message. He was persecuted, ridiculed, humbled and made to suffer but he was not deterred. He would say: “God has not sent me to work wonders. He has sent me to preach to you”. He refused to glamourise himself. He would say: “I never said that Allah’s treasures are in my hand… that I knew the hidden things, or that I am an angel…I am only a preacher of God’s words, the bringer of God’s message to mankind.”

The people of Mecca did not like what Mohammad said. He was preaching that in the eyes of God, all men were equal. The Meccans had at that time several shrines for their Gods and made a lot of money from visiting Bedouin tribes. Mohammad said that there was only one God. This cut at the very roots of profits from these shrines. And what was even worse, Mohammad preached a strict morality to a licentious people. None of this was to make Mohammad popular in the city of his birth.

Under the circumstances, he had to leave Mecca when he was 53 years old in the year A.D. 623. His migration from Mecca to Medina is called Hijrat. It is from the year of the migration that the Islamic calendar begins.

Medina was originally known as Yathrib. The people of Yathrib had been impressed by Mohammad's teachings and invited him over. Mohammad’s journey to Yathrib was an important turning point of history. Its citizens were so pleased and felt so honoured that they changed the name of the city to Medinat un Nabi – the City of the Prophet. It later came to be known as Medina.

In Mecca Mohammad was known as only a firebrand preacher. In Medina he became the ruler of a state. A small state, it is true, but a state nevertheless and Mohammad distinguished himself as an administrator and a law-giver.

In A.D. 630 Mohammad took Mecca without so much as a fight. The Prophet entered the city without striking a blow. He overturned the idols in the Ka’bah. “Truth has come”, he proclaimed, “and error scattered”. Then he returned to Medina. In A.D. 632 Mohammad returned to Mecca with 90,000 pilgrims to perform rites that had become fixed in Islam: the wearing of the simple pilgrim dress of the ihram and the entry into a state of taboo, the seven circumambulations at two different places round the Ka’bah of Abraham, the veneration of the Black Stone, the running between the hills of al-Safa and al-Marwah in memory of Hagar and Ishmael and so on.

Mohammad himself preached from Mount Arafat and exhorted the Arabs to remain united in Islam after his death. “O Moslems” he said, “remember that all Moslems are brothers unto one another. You are one.” 

Mohammad had built a small mosque in Medina. Since then it has become the second holiest mosque for Muslims all over the world.

The spread of Islam was accompanied by bloodshed. In A.D. 627, for example, the Jewish tribe of Qurayza was raided by Mohammad and some 800 men were beheaded, and all the women and children were sold as slaves. Two years later the Jews of Khaybar were put to the sword. By A.D. 630 Islam had become well-establishes and its message accepted by Arabian tribes. In A.D. 632 Mohammad made, as stated earlier, one last pilgrimage to Mecca and then returned to Medina. Three months later he fell ill and on 8 June 632 he died. Stilled was the Voice of Allah.

In my next letter I shall write about the holy book of the Muslims, the Quran.

Your loving 

Ajja