Jahiliyyah - Part 1

[Guest guest]

('Jahiliyyah' - traditionally translated " Time of Ignorance " , and used to apply

to the pre-Islamic period in Arabia, but in the Muslim sources its primary

meaning is violent and explosive irascibility, arrogance, tribal chauvinism.

[Muhammad Prophet For Our Time Glossary pg. 217].)

 

 

Jahiliyyah - Part 1

 

(p.53) HE BEGAN QUIETLY, speaking about his revelations to a small band of

friends and family members, who became enthusiastic and sympathetic disciples,

convinced that he was the long-awaited Arab prophet. But Mohammad realized that

most of the Quraysh would find it well-nigh impossible to accept this. The

messengers of Allah had all been towering figures, founding fathers of society.

Some had even worked miracles. How could Muhammad measure up to Moses or Jesus?

The Quraysh had watched him growing up; they saw him going about his business in

the market, eating and drinking like everybody else. They had jettisoned many

muruwah values [chivalric code of the Bedouin], but had retained its elitist,

aristocratic outlook and would expect God to choose a well-born karim [a Bedouin

ideal] from one of the more distinguished clans, rather than a minor member of

Hashim [the Meccan clan of Muhammad]. How would they react when Muhammad told

them to abandon their lofty independence in a way that violated the sunnah

[path, way of life] of their forefathers?

 

(p.54) Even at this early age, Muhammad had encountered opposition. Khadijah,

their daughters, 'Ali, and Zayd accepted his new status unconditionally, but

though his uncle Abu Talib would continue to love and support him, he was deeply

pained that Muhammad had the temerity to depart from the absolute authority of

their ancestors. He was splitting up the family. Muhammad's cousins--Ja'far ibn

Abi Talib, 'Abdullah and 'Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh, and their sister Zaynab--all

accepted the revelations, but his uncles 'Abbas and Hamzah did not, though their

wives did. Muhammad's son-in-law, Abu l-'As, who had married his daughter

Zaynab, refused even to consider the new religion. Naturally, this was

distressing to Muhammad. Family solidarity was a sacred value, and like any

Arab, he respected the elders of his tribe and clan. He expected leadership to

come from the top, but it was the younger generation who responded to his

message. The revelations had already started to push Muhammad away from the

norm. He could not help noticing that many of his followers came from the lower

classes. A significant number were women, others freedmen, servants, and slaves.

Foremost among the latter was Bilal, an Abyssinian with an extraordinarily loud

voice. When the Muslims gathered to pray together in the Haram, Muhammad found

himself surrounded by " the young men and weak people of the city. " [1] Muhammad

welcomed them warmly into his little company, but he must have wondered how a

movement of such peripheral people could succeed. Indeed, some of the Qurayshan

elders, who as yet knew nothing of the revelations, had begun to ask him why he

was consorting with such riff-raff.

 

(p.55) The " weak " people were not all down-and-outs; this technical tribal term

denoted inferior tribal status rather than poverty. Muhammad's most zealous

follower at this point was his friend 'Attiq Ibn 'Uthman, who was usually known

by his 'kunya', Abu Bakr. (*) He was a successful, wealthy merchant, but like

Muhammad he came from a " weak " clan that had fallen on hard times. Abu Bakr was

" well-liked and of easy manners, " Ibn Ishaq tells us, a kindly, approachable

man, especially skilled in the interpretation of dreams. [2] Many of the younger

generation, who were disturbed by the aggressive capitalism of Mecca, came to

him for advice. Some of the young felt an urgent sense of personal peril, a

torpor of depression from which they longed to wake, and a frightening

alienation from their parents. The son of an important financier in one of the

more powerful clans dreamed that his father was trying to push him into a pit

that was filled with fire; then he had felt two strong hands pulling him to

safety and realized, at the moment of waking, that his savior was Muhammad. [3]

Another youth, this one from the prestigious clan of 'Abd Shams, came to Abu

Bakr after dreaming that he had heard a voice crying aloud in the desert

" Sleepers, awake! " and proclaiming that a prophet had appeared in Mecca. [4]

Both these young men became Muslims, but the first kept his new faith a secret

from his father for as long as he could, and the latter's conversion greatly

displeased the elders of his clan, who were among the most influential men in

Mecca.

 

(*) After the birth of their first son, Arabs customarily take an honorary title

known as the 'kunya'. Abu Bakr means " the father of Bakr. " His wife would have

been known as Umm Bakr, " the mother of Bakr. " Muhammad was often known as Abu

al-Qasim.

 

(p.56) The revelations had brought to light a fault line in the city. Over the

years, a worrying divide had opened between young and old, rich and poor, men

and women. This was dangerous. The scripture that was being revealed to

Muhammad, verse by verse, surah by surah [chapter by chapter of the Qur'an],

condemned this kind of inequality; one faction would inevitably suffer at the

hands of another. [5] Any society that was divided against itself would be

destroyed, because it was going against the very nature of things. This was a

frightening period. The incessant wars between Persia and Byzantium seemed to

herald the end of the old world order, and even within Arabia, tribal warfare

had reached chronic proportions. During the last twenty years, the ghazu

[acquisition raid, essential to the Bedouin economy], which had traditionally

been short and sharp, had escalated into long, drawn out military campaigns as a

result of unprecedented drought and famine. There was an apocalyptic sense of

impending catastrophe. Muhammad was convinced that unless the Quraysh reformed

their attitudes and behavior, they too would fall prey to the anarchy that

threatened to engulf the world.

 

Under the inspiration of Allah, Muhammad was feeling his way towards an entirely

new solution, convinced that he was not speaking in his own name, but was simply

repeating the revealed words of God. It was a painful, difficult process. He

once said: " Never once did I receive a revelation without thinking that my soul

had been torn away from me. " [6] Sometimes the message was clear. He could

almost see and hear Gabriel distinctly. (p.57) The words seemed to " come down "

to him, like a shower of life-giving rain. But often the divine voice was

muffled and obscure: " Sometimes it comes unto me like the reverberations of a

bell, and that is the hardest upon me; the reverberations abate when I am aware

of their message. " [7] He had to listen to the undercurrent of events, trying to

discover what was really going on. He would grow pale with the effort and cover

himself with his cloak, as if to shield himself from the divine impact. He would

perspire heavily, even on a cold day, as he turned inwards, searching his soul

for a solution to a problem, in rather the same way as a poet has to open

himself to the words that he must haul from the depths of himself to the

conscious level of his mind. In the Qur'an, God instructed Muhammad to listen

intently to each revelation as it emerged; he must be careful not to impose a

meaning on a verse prematurely, before its full significance had become entirely

clear. [8]

 

In the Qur'an, therefore, God spoke directly to the people of Mecca, using

Muhammad as his mouthpiece, just as he spoke through the Hebrew prophets in the

Jewish scriptures. Hence the language of the Qur'an is sacred, because--Muslims

believe--it records the words spoken in some way by God himself. When Muhammad's

converts listened to the divine voice, chanted first by the Prophet and later by

the skilled Qur'an reciters, they felt that they had an immediate encounter with

Allah. Biblical Hebrew is experienced as a holy tongue in rather the same way.

Christians do not have this concept of a sacred language, because there is

nothing holy about New Testament Greek; their scriptures presented Jesus as the

Word spoken by God to humanity. (p.58) Like any scripture, the Qur'an thus

provided an encounter with transcendence, bridging the immense gulf between our

frail, mortal world and the divine.

 

Muhammad (Prophet For Our Time)

Chapter 2, 'Jahiliyyah', p.53-58

Karen Armstrong

Harper Perennial - London, New York, Toronto and Sydney

ISBN-13 978-0-00-723248-2

ISBN-10 0-00-723248-9

 

Notes:

 

[1] This was noted by the seventh century Meccan historian Ibn Shifan al-Zuhri,

who is quoted in W. Montgomery Watt, 'Muhammad at Mecca' (Oxford, 1953), 87.

 

[2] Muhammad ibn Ishaq, 'Sirat Rasul Allah', 161, in A. Guillaume, trans. and

ed., 'The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq's' Sirat Rasul Allah (London,

1955), 115.

 

[3] Muhammad ibn Sa'd, 'Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir', 4.1.68, in Martin Lings,

'Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources' (London, 1983), 47.

 

[4] Ibn Sa'd, 3.1.37, 'Kitab at-Tabaqat', in Lings, 'Muhammad', 47.

 

[5] Qur'an 27:45-46, 28:4.

 

[6] Jalal al-Din Suyuti, 'al-itqan fi'ulum al-aq'ran', quoted in Maxime

Rodinson, 'Mohammed', trans. Anne Carter (London, 1971), 74.

 

[7] Bukhari, 'Hadith' 1.3, in Lings, 'Muhammad', 44-45.

 

[8] Qur'an 20:114, 75:16-18.