THE FIRST PHASE THE STATUS QUO IN MADINAH AT THE TIME
OF EMIGRATION
Emigration to Madinah could never be attributable to attempts to escape
from jeers and oppression only, but it also constituted a sort of cooperation
with the aim of erecting the pillars of a new society in a secure place.
Hence it was incumbent upon every capable Muslim to contribute to building
this new homeland, immunizing it and holding up its prop. As a leader
and spiritual guide, there was no doubt the Noble Messenger (Peace be
upon him), in whose hands exclusively all affairs would be resolved.
In Madinah, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) had to deal with three distinctively
different categories of people with different respective problems:
- His Companions, the noble and Allâh fearing elite (May Allah be pleased
with them).
- Polytheists still detached from the Islam and were purely Madinese
tribes.
- The Jews.
1. As for his Companions, the conditions of life in Madinah were totally
different from those they experienced in Makkah. There, in Makkah, they
used to strive for one corporate target, but physically, they were scattered,
overpowered and forsaken. They were helpless in terms of pursuing their
new course of orientation. Their means, socially and materially, fell
short of establishing a new Muslim community. In parallel lines, the
Makkan Chapters of the Noble Qur’ân were confined to delineating the
Islamic precepts, enacting legislations pertaining to the believers
individually and enjoining good and piety and forbidding evils and vices.
In Madinah , things were otherwise; here all the affairs of their
life rested in their hands. Now, they were at ease and could quite
confidently handle the challenges of civilization, construction, means
of living, economics, politics, government administration, war and
peace, codification of the questions of the allowed and prohibited,
worship, ethics and all the relevant issues. In a nutshell, they were
in Madinah at full liberty to erect the pillars of a new Muslim community
not only utterly different from that pre-Islamic code of life, but
also distinctive in its features in the world at large. It was a society
that could stand for the Islamic Call for whose sake the Muslims had
been put to unspeakable tortures for 10 years. No doubt, the construction
of a society that runs in line with this type of ethics cannot be
accomplished overnight, within a month or a year. It requires a long
time to build during which legislation and legalization will run gradually
in a complementary process with mind cultivation, training and education.
Allâh, the All-Knowing, of course undertook legislation and His Prophet
Muhammad (Peace be upon him), implementation and orientation:
“He it is Who sent among the unlettered ones a Messenger [Muhammad
(Peace be upon him) from among themselves, reciting to them His
Verses, purifying them (from the filth of disbelief and polytheism),
and teaching them the Book (this Qur’ân, Islamic laws and Islamic
Jurisprudence) and Al-Hikmah [As-Sunna: legal ways,
orders, acts of worship, etc. of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be
upon him)].” [62:2]
The Prophet’s Companion (May Allah be pleased with), rushed enthusiastically
to assimilate these Qur’ânic rules and fill their hearts joyfully
with them:
“And when His Verses (this Qur’ân) are recited unto them, they
(i.e. the Verses) increase their Faith.” [8:2]
With respect to the Muslims, this task constituted the greatest challenge
for the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him). In fact, this very
purpose lay at the heart of the Islamic Call and the Muhammadan mission;
it was never an incidental issue though there were the matters that
required urgent addressing.
The Muslims in Madinah consisted virtually of two parties: The first
one already settled down in their abode, land and wealth, fully at
ease, but seeds of discord amongst them were deeply seated and chronic
enmity continually evoked; they were Al-Ansar (the Helpers).
The second party were Al-Muhajirun (the Emigrants), homeless,
jobless and penniless. Their number was not small, on the contrary,
it was increasing day by day after the Prophet (Peace be upon him)
had given them the green light to leave for Madinah whose economic
structure, originally not that prosperous one, began to show signs
of imbalance aggravated by the economic boycott that the anti-Islamic
groups imposed and consequently imports diminished and living conditions
worsened.
- The purely Madinese polytheists constituted the second sector with
whom the Prophet (Peace be upon him) had to deal. Those people had no
control at all over the Muslim. Some of them nursed no grudge against
the Muslims, but were rather skeptical of their ancestors’ religious
practices, and developed tentative inclination towards Islam and before
long they embraced the new faith and were truly devoted to Allâh. However,
some others harboured evil intentions against the Prophet (Peace be
upon him) and his followers but were too cowardly to resist them publicly,
they were rather, under those Islamically favourable conditions, obliged
to fake amicability and friendliness. ‘Abdullah bin Ubai, who had almost
been given presidency over Al-Khazraj and Al-Aws tribes in the wake
of Bu‘ath War between the two tribes, came at the head of that group
of hypocrites. The Prophet’s advent and the vigorous rise of the new
spirit of Islam foiled that orientation and the idea soon went into
oblivion. He, seeing another one, Muhammad (Peace be upon him), coming
to deprive him and his agents of the prospective temporal privileges,
could not be pleased, and for overriding reasons he showed pretension
to Islam but with horrible disbelief deeply-rooted in his heart. He
also used to exploit some events and weak-hearted new converts in scheming
malevolently against the true believers.
- The Jews (the Hebrews), who had migrated to Al-Hijaz from Syria following
the Byzantine and Assyrian persecution campaigns, were the third category
existent on the demographic scene in Madinah. In their new abode they
assumed the Arabian stamp in dress, language and manner of life and
there were instances of intermarriage with the local Arabs, however
they retained their ethnic particularism and detached themselves from
amalgamation with the immediate environment. They even used to pride
in their Jewish-Israeli origin, and spurn the Arabs around designating
them as illiterate meaning brutal, naďve and backward. They desired
the wealth of their neighbours to be made lawful to them and they could
thus appropriate it the way they liked.
“… because they say: “There is no blame on us to betray and take
the properties of the illiterates (Arabs)” [3:75]
Religiously, they showed no zeal; their most obvious religious commodity
was fortunetelling, witchcraft and the secret arts (blowing on knots),
for which they used to attach to themselves advantages of science and
spiritual precedence.
They excelled at the arts of earning money and trading. They in fact
monopolized trading in cereals, dates, wine, clothes, export and import.
For the services they offered to the Arabs, the latter paid heavily. Usury
was a common practice amongst them, lending the Arab notables great sums
to be squandered on mercenary poets, and in vanity avenues, and in return
seizing their fertile land given as surety.
They were very good at corrupting and scheming. They used to sow seeds
of discord between adjacent tribes and entice each one to hatch plots
against the other with the natural corollary of continual exhaustive bloody
fighting. Whenever they felt that fire of hatred was about to subside,
they would nourish it with new means of perpetuity so that they could
always have the upper hand, and at the same time gain heavy interest rates
on loans spent on inter-tribal warfare.
Three famous tribes of Jews constituted the demographic presence in Yathrib
(now Madinah): Banu Qainuqua‘, allies of Al-Khazraj tribe, Banu An-Nadir
and Banu Quraizah who allied Al-Aws and inhabited the suburbs of Madinah.
Naturally they held the new changes with abhorrence and were terribly
hateful to them, simply because the Messenger of Allâh was of a different
race, and this point was in itself too repugnant for them to reconcile
with. Second, Islam came to brabout a spirit of rapport, to terminate
the state of enmity and hatred, and to establish a social regime based
on denunciation of the prohibited and promotion of the allowed. Adherence
to these canons of life implied paving the way for an Arab unity that
could work to the prejudice of the Jews and their interests at both the
social and economic levels; the Arab tribes would then try to restore
their wealth and land misappropriated by the Jews through usurious practices.
The Jews of course deeply considered all these things ever since they
had known that the Islamic Call would try to settle in Yathrib, and it
was no surprise to discover that they harboured the most enmity and hatred
to Islam and the Messenger (Peace be upon him) even though they did not
have the courage to uncover their feelings in the beginning.
The following incident could attest clearly to that abominable antipathy
that the Jews harboured towards the new political and religious changes
that came to stamp the life of Madinah. Ibn Ishaq, on the authority of
the Mother of believers Safiyah (May Allah be pleased her) narrated:
Safiyah, daughter of Huyayi bin Akhtab said: I was the closest child to
my father and my uncle Abi Yasir’s heart. Whenever they saw me with a
child of theirs, they should pamper me so tenderly to the exclusion of
anyone else. However, with the advent of the Messenger of Allâh (Peace
be upon him) and setting in Quba’ with Bani ‘Amr bin ‘Awf, my father,
Huyayi bin Akhtab and my uncle Abu Yasir bin Akhtab went to see him and
did not return until sunset when they came back walking lazily and fully
dejected. I, as usually, hurried to meet them smiling, but they would
not turn to me for the grief that caught them. I heard my uncle Abu Yasir
say to Ubai and Huyayi: “Is it really he [i.e. Muhammad (Peace be upon
him)]?” The former said: “It is he, I swear by Allâh!” “Did you really
recognize him?” they asked. He answered: “Yes, and my heart is burning
with enmity towards him”
An interesting story that took place on the first day, the Prophet (Peace
be upon him) stepped in Madinah, could be quoted to illustrate the mental
disturbance and deep anxiety that beset the Jews. ‘Abdullah bin Salam,
the most learned rabbi among the Jews came to see the Prophet (Peace be
upon him) when he arrived, and asked him certain questions to ascertain
his real Prophethood. No sooner did he hear the Prophet’s answers than
he embraced Islam, but added that if his people knew of his Islamization
they would advance false arguments against me. The Prophet (Peace be upon
him) sent for some Jews and asked them about ‘Abdullah bin Salam, they
testified to his scholarly aptitude and virtuous standing. Here it was
divulged to them that he had embraced Islam and on the spot, they imparted
categorically opposite testimonies and described him as the most evil
of all evils. In another narration ‘Abdullah bin Salam said, “O Jews!
Be Allâh fearing. By Allâh, the only One, you know that he is the Messenger
of Allâh sent to people with the Truth.” They replied, “You are lying.”
... That was the Prophet’s first experience with the Jews.
That was the demo-political picture within Madinah. Five hundred kilometres
away in Makkah, there still lay another source of detrimental threat,
the archenemy of Islam, Quraish. For ten years, while at the mercy of
Quraish, the Muslims were subjected to all sorts of terrorism, boycott,
harassment and starvation coupled by a large scale painstaking psychological
war and aggressive organized propaganda. When they had emigrated to Madinah,
their land, wealth and property were seized, wives detained and the socially
humble in rank brutally tortured. Quraish also schemed and made attempts
on the life of the first figure of the Call, Muhammad (Peace be upon him)
. Due to their acknowledged temporal leadership and religious supremacy
among the pagan Arabs, given the custodianship of the Sacred Sanctuary,
the Quraishites spared no effort in enticing the Arabians against Madinah
and boycotting the Madinese socially and economically. To quote Muhammad
Al-Ghazali: “A state of war virtually existed between the Makkan tyrants
and the Muslims in their abode. It is foolish to blame the Muslims for
the horrible consequences that were bound to ensue in the light of that
long-standing feud.”
The Muslims in Madinah were completely eligible then to confiscate the
wealth of those tyrants, mete out for them exemplary punishment and bring
twofold retaliation on them in order to deter them from committing any
folly against the Muslims and their sanctities.
That was a resume of the major problems that the Prophet Muhammad (Peace
be upon him) had to face, and the complicated issues he was supposed to
resolve.
In full acknowledgment, we could safely say that he quite honestly shouldered
the responsibilities of Messengership, and cleverly discharged the liabilities
of both temporal and religious leadership in Madinah. He accorded to everyone
his due portion whether of mercy or punishment, with the former usually
seasoning the latter in the overall process of establishing Islam on firm
grounds among its faithful adherents.
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