The Early Years Of Islam

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THE EARLY YEARS OF ISLAM

(From Self-Knowledge Winter 1999)

 

Jesus, who had also passed his life in the Middle East but some 600

years before the time of Muhammad, was thirty years old before He was

baptised by John and began to preach His message to the people, and

we may assume that the earlier years of His life (about which we have

little knowledge) were a period of preparation for His great

undertaking. Muhammad was forty when the call came to him in the cave

of Hira to be the Messenger of God to his people. He was not

expecting that call but, with hindsight, it is easy to interpret the

first forty years of his life as a measured course of preparation,

both outward and inward, for his mission. According to the earliest

biographer, his first words to his wife on returning to Mecca from

the cave of Hira were: `O Khadija, the time of rest and sleep has

passed. I have been ordered to warn the people and call them to God

and His worship'. Khadija was convinced that the call to Muhammad was

genuine but, being a wise person and not relying one hundred per cent

on her own judgement, she advised him to consult her cousin, Waraqa

ibn Nawfal, a scholarly old man with a wide knowledge of the Jewish

and Christian scriptures, who had for a long time been practising

yoga in the tradition of Christian mysticism and was revered as a

hanif seeking God- Realization. According to a tradition attributed

to Muhammad himself, Waraqa said after questioning him: `This is the

namus that was revealed to Moses'. The Arabs were unfamiliar with the

word namus and identified it with the archangel Gabriel. But it seems

much more likely that Waraqa was using a dialect form of the Greek

word nomos, meaning the law or the torah which God had revealed to

Moses. In effect he was confirming to Muhammad that God had indeed

chosen him to give a fresh revelation of the spiritual truth to

mankind, not a different truth but the same truth that had been

revealed by earlier messengers such as Moses and the holy Rishis of

India in Vedic times.

 

The Koran is perhaps unique as a spiritual book of a world-teacher in

that it is not a compilation at second-hand. The Gospels, for

example, were compiled from sayings of Jesus and biographical details

remembered by his companions which were passed down and committed to

writing in narrative form some considerable time after His

crucifixion, probably between 50 and 100 a.d. The revelations of

Muhammad are the actual words dictated by him day after day and month

after month over a period of many years. Writing materials were

scarce in Arabia at that time, and Muhammad's revelations were liable

to occur at unexpected moments. They were written down, by those who

were with him, on the shoulder bones of sheep and camels, bits of

wood and stone, strips of leather, palm fronds, potsherds or odd bits

of parchment. These revelations were mostly brief and, in Muhammad's

own lifetime, they began to be grouped into suras (chapters). Each

sura was given an identifying title taken from some word or sentence

near the beginning of the chapter, but not necessarily having much to

do with the subject matter. There are 114 suras and every one except

the ninth begins with the words `In the name of Allah, the

compassionate, the merciful.' A year after Muhammad's death, Abu

Bakr, on the advice of Umar, ordered Zaid ibn Thabit (Muhammad's

secretary, not the freed man also called Zaid who was his adopted

son) to make a collection of all these suras and he did so and handed

it to Hafsa, Umar's daughter, whom Muhammad had married when she was

widowed as a girl of eighteen. However, Zaid made no attempt to try

to arrange the fragments or suras in chronological order and adopted

the scheme of putting the longer ones first and the shortest at the

end. This meant that some of the early Meccan revelations came after

some of the later Medinan ones, and it has been left to modern

scholarship to try to determine the correct chronological order of

the items. The whole collection was known as Al-Koran (The

Recitation) a name by which each individual revelation had originally

been known. This was not quite the end of the story. Editions kept on

being published throughout the growing Moslem world and variations

began to creep in. When Uthman was the third Caliph, he saw that

there was a real danger of schisms because of textual variants, so he

again got hold of Zaid ibn Thabit and three eminent scholars and had

them draw up an authorized version of the Koran from the master-copy

in Hafsa's possession. All other copies were then burnt and the edict

went forth that henceforth no word could be added to or be subtracted

from the authorized text, and it has been so to this day.

 

The Koran is much more than a prayer book and a text on spiritual

living. For instance, it narrates and comments on past history and

contains a code of laws which goes into very considerable detail.

Examples would be that it bans usury, gambling and the drinking of

alcohol, and lays down that a tree must be planted whenever one is

cut down. When an Islamic Cadi (judge) fails to find in the Koran a

law applicable to the case he is considering, he places the holy book

on his head before giving his decision. However, we will pass over

all other aspects and concentrate on its significance as a manual of

Yoga.

 

Like other spiritual teachers, Muhammad kept for the inner circle of

close companions — those who had dedicated their lives to the

practice of what we know as Yoga — his special instructions on

practical mysticism, although hints can be found scattered about here

and there in the Koran, just as they can be found in the New

Testament.

 

Those who are familiar with yogic doctrine will find Advaita (non-

duality) proclaimed in the Koran verse: `He is God alone, God the

eternal. He begets not nor is He begotten, and there is no other like

unto Him'. Another verse: `Wherever you turn, there is the face of

Allah' teaches that God or Reality is immanent in every part of His

creation. However, as in Vedanta, all names and forms are passing and

unreal; this is conveyed in the verse: `Everything is perishing

except His countenance'. Muhammad, like the holy Rishis of the

Upanishads, instructed his inner circle in the yogic doctrine that

the reality in God and in man is one and the same, and that the soul

of man has to discover this and return to the bosom of God or his

true Self. On this point, two important Hadiths ascribed to Muhammad

are `Heaven and earth contain Me not, but the heart of My believing

servant contains Me,' and `He who knows himself knows God'.

 

THE EARLY YEARS OF ISLAM

(From Self-Knowledge Winter 1999)