Life of Muhammad : Marriage and after years

Marriage to Khadijah

Finally, at the age of 25, Abu Talib secured for Muhammad a job, to work as a trustee for a wealthy merchant woman, a relative, named Khadijah. Khadijah was a comely forty-year-old successful merchant and a widow. Muhammad made one trip to Syria in her service, selling her merchandise and buying what she had ordered. Upon his return, Khadijah fell in love with the young Muhammad and, through a maid, proposed marriage to him.

Muhammad was a needy man, both financially and emotionally. For him the marriage with Khadijah was a blessing. In her, he could find the mother he had craved as a child, as well as the financial security that allowed him to never work again.

Khadijah was more than willing to take care of all her young husband’s needs. She found her happiness in giving, caring, and in self-sacrifice.

Muhammad was not fond of work. He preferred to withdraw from the world and retreat into his own thoughts. Even as a child, he avoided the company of other children and did not play with them. He would often spend his time alone in a pensive mood. He did not know how to be happy or have fun. He hardly laughed, and if he did, he covered his mouth. From this, and following the tradition of their prophet, Muslims do not regard laughing to be pious.

In his secluded imaginary world, Muhammad was no longer the cast-off, unwanted child that he had come to see himself as during the early years of his life, but rather loved, respected, praised, and even feared. When reality became hard to bear and his loneliness overwhelmed him, he would escape into fantasy, where he could be anyone or anything he wanted to be. He must have discovered this realm at a very young age, when he was living with his foster family, and spending lonesome long days alone in the desert. This idyllic and comforting world of fantasies was to remain his refuge for the rest of his life. It became as real to him as the real world, only more pleasant. Leaving his wife at home with nine children to care for, Muhammad would retreat to caves around Mecca and spent his days secluding himself from the world, wrapped in his own thoughts and sweet reveries.

Supernatural Experience

One day, at the age of forty, after having spent many days in a cave by himself, Muhammad had a strange experience. He started having rhythmic muscle contractions, abdominal pains, as if someone was squeezing him violently, fasciculation (muscle twitching), involuntary movement of head and lips, sweating, and rapid heartbeat. In this agitated state he heard voices and had a vision of a ghost.

He ran home terrified, shivering and sweating. “Cover me, cover me,” he pleaded with his wife. “O Khadijah, what is wrong with me?” He told her everything and said, “I fear that something may happen to me.” He thought he had become possessed by demons again. Khadijah reassured him and told him not to be afraid, that he was visited by an angel and was chosen to be a prophet.

After his encounter with the ghostly figure, identified by his wife as Gabriel, Muhammad was convinced of his prophetic rank. This suited him well as it fulfilled his desire for grandiosity. He began preaching his message.

What was his message? The message was that he had become a messenger and people had to believe in him. As the result they had to respect him, love him, obey him and even fear him. After 23 years of preaching, the core message of Muhammad remained the same. Islam’s main message is that Muhammad is a messenger and that people must obey him. Beyond that, there is no other message. Failure to recognize him as such entails punishment, both in this world and the next. Monotheism, which is now the main argument of Islam, was not originally part of the message of Muhammad.

After he taunted the Meccans for years and insulted their religion and gods, the Meccans refused all dealings with Muhammad and his followers, who at his instruction, emigrated to Abyssinia. Eventually, to appease the Meccans, Muhammad was compelled to compromise. Ibn Sa’d narrates:

One day the Prophet was in a gathering around the Ka’ba and was reading to them the sura an-Najm (sura 53). When he came to the verses 19-20 that read, ‘Have you then considered the Lat and the Uzza, and Manat, the third, the last?’ Satan placed the following two verses in the mouth of the Prophet. ‘They are pretty, and there is hope in their intercession.’24

These words pleased the Quraish and they ended their boycott and hostility. This news reached the Muslims in Abyssinia who joyously returned to Mecca.

After a while, Muhammad realized that by acknowledging the daughters of Allâh as deities he had undermined his own position as the sole intermediary between Allâh and people, making his new religion indistinguishable from pagan beliefs and therefore redundant. So he retracted and said the two verses acknowledging the daughters of Allâh were satanic verses. He then replaced them with “What! For you the males and for Him the females! This indeed is an unjust division!”25 Meaning, how dare you attribute daughters to God, when you yourselves pride in having sons? Females are deficient in intelligence and it is unbefitting for Allâh to have daughters. This division is very unfair.

Some of Muhammad’s followers left him on this account. To justify this flip-flop and regain their confidence, he claimed that all other prophets were also fooled by Satan, who inspired them with demonic verses that deceptively seemed to come from God.

And we did not send before you any messenger or prophet, but when he desired, the Satan made a suggestion respecting his desire; but Allâh annuls that which Satan casts, then does Allâh establish His communications, and Allâh is all Knowing, Wise. So that He may make what Satan casts a trial for those in whose hearts is diseased. (Q.22:52-53)

Muhammad wrote these verses because several of his followers, realizing that he was making the Qur’an up as situation dictated, left him. What these verses essentially say, to put it even more bluntly, is that even when I, Muhammad, goof and you catch me with my pants down, it is still your fault because your heart is diseased.

Thirteen years passed, and no more than seventy or eighty people believed in him. His wife, who not only attended to his needs, but also admired, flattered and idolized him in a servile way, was his first follower. Her social standing convinced a few other average people such as Abu Bakr, Othman and Omar to join his cause. Apart from these few, the rest of Muhammad’s followers were a bunch of slaves and a few disaffected youths.

The Myth of Persecution

Muhammad’s call in Mecca was received with indifference. The Meccans, like most non-Muslims of today, were tolerant of all religions. Religious persecution in those lands was unheard of. Polytheistic societies are generally tolerant by nature. They were offended when Muhammad insulted their gods, but they did not harm him.

When Muhammad’s insults of pagan deities became unbearable, the Meccans boycotted him and his followers. They decided not to sell any goods to them and not buy from them anything. This boycott lasted, perhaps two years. It was hard on Muslims, but boycott is not the same as killing. Therefore, we cannot call this boycott, persecution. Persecution is what Muslims did to Baha’is. Thousands of innocent Baha’is were tortured and butchered with no mercy in Iran, in the previous two centuries, even though they had never insulted Islam, its author or its sacred book.

Muhammad encouraged his followers to leave Mecca. This upset those whose children or slaves had converted to Islam. Some of the slaves were caught while trying to escape and were beaten. That was not, of course, religious persecution. The Meccans were simply trying to protect what they considered to be their property. For example, when Bilal was caught, his master, Umaiyah, beat him and put him in chains. Abu Bakr paid his price and he was set free. He was being punished for trying to escape, causing a financial loss to his owner and not for his beliefs. There are also stories of Muslims being beaten by their family members for converting to Islam. A hadith narrates that Omar, prior to his own conversion, had tied up his sister forcing her to leave Islam.26 Omar was a violent and strict man, both before and after his conversion. These stories can hardly be classified as religious persecutions. In the Middle East individualism is an alien concept. What you believe and what you do is everyone’s business. Women in particular cannot make their own decisions. Even today, Muslim women can be honor-killed if they decide to marry a man of their choice without the consent of their families.

There is a story of persecution about a woman known as Summayyah. Ibn Sa’d is the only historian who says Summayyah suffered martyrdom in the hands of Abu Jahl. Al-Bayhaqi relying on Ibn Sa’d writes, “Abu Jahl stabbed her in her private parts.”27 If this martyrdom had really occurred it would have been trumpeted forth by every biographer and would have been reported in innumerable traditions. This is just an example of the kind of exaggeration that Muslims have been fond of making from the beginning.

In fact, the same biographer also claims that Bilal was the first martyr. Bilal long survived the alleged persecutions, came back to Mecca when that town was conquered by Muhammad and chanted the Azan from the roof top of Ka’ba. He died a natural death.

Some Islamic sources claim that Summayyah, her husband Yasir, and their son Ammar were persecuted in Mecca. However, Muir has shown that after Yasir died of natural causes, Summayyah married the Greek slave Azraq and had a child called Salma.28 How then are we to understand that she died under persecution? Azraq belonged to Taif, and was one of the slaves who, at the siege of that city (some fifteen years later), fled over to Muhammad’s camp.

It is natural to conclude that Summayyah, after Yasir’s death, married Azraq and lived at Taif and the story of her persecution and martyrdom is false.

Muhammad was not against slavery. Later, when he came to power, he forced thousands of free people into slavery. However, his order to leave Mecca was disrupting the social order and causing sedition. Because of that and his constant taunting of their religion, he became a persona non grata among his people. Yet at no time were he and his followers persecuted because of their faith. Muslims make many baseless claims. Polytheists generally don’t give a hoot about what others believe. They are pluralistic by their very nature. Ka’ba housed 360 idols, each a patron of a different tribe. There were Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Sabeans (an extinct monotheistic faith) and all sorts of religions in Arabia, whose followers were freely practicing their religions. There were other prophets also preaching their faiths. Religious intolerance in Arabia began with Islam.

There is no evidence of any persecution against Muhammad and Muslims in Mecca. Nonetheless, Muslims make such claims because Muhammad has made that claim. Astonishingly, even some non-Muslim historians who are not sympathetic to Islam have fallen into that trap and have echoed this untruth. Muhammad claimed victimhood, when in reality he was the victimizer. Muslims do the same. Everywhere it is Muslims who are killing, oppressing and persecuting, and yet they are the ones who cry loudest claming to be victims and oppressed. To understand this phenomenon we must understand the psychology of Muhammad and his followers. This we shall do in the next chapter.

As the matter of fact it was Muhammad who preached intolerance even when still in Mecca. Muslims often quote Sura 109 as evidence that Muhammad preached tolerance. This Meccan sura reads:

1. Say : O ye that reject Faith!
2.  I worship not that which ye worship,
3. Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
4. And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,
5. Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
6. To you be your Way, and to me mine

Maududi, Qutb and many other Muslim scholars know better. They do not see this sura as an indication of tolerance. Maududi in his interpretation of the Quran writes:

If the Surah is read with this background in mind, one finds that it was not revealed to preach religious tolerance as some people of today seem to think, but it was revealed in order to exonerate the Muslims from the disbelievers religion, their rites of worship, and their gods, and to express their total disgust and unconcern with them and to tell them that Islam and kufr (unbelief) had nothing in common and there was no possibility of their being combined and mixed into one entity. Although it was addressed in the beginning to the disbelieving Quraish in response to their proposals of compromise, yet it is not confined to them only, but having made it a part of the Quran, Allah gave the Muslims the eternal teaching that they should exonerate themselves by word and deed from the creed of kufr wherever and in whatever form it be, and should declare without any reservation that they cannot make any compromise with the disbelievers in the matter of Faith. That is why this Surah continued to be recited when the people to whom it was addressed as a rejoinder, had died and been forgotten, and those Muslims also continued to recite it who were disbelievers at the time it was revealed, and the Muslims still recite it centuries after they have passed away, for expression of disgust with and dissociation from kufr and its rites is a perpetual demand of Faith.²⁹

Immigration to Medina

Having to care for numerous children, while having to deal with a self-absorbed husband, Khadijah neglected her business, so that by the time she died, the family was impoverished. Shortly after Khadijah’s death, Muhammad’s other supporter, his uncle and guardian Abu Talib, also died. Deprived of these two close powerful allies, and ignored by the Meccans, he decided to immigrate to Medina, where he had received pledges of allegiance by some of its inhabitants. He ordered his followers to go first. Some of them were reluctant. He told them that if they didn’t, they would “find their abode in Hell.”³⁰

 

Muhammad himself stayed behind. Then, one night, he claimed Allâh told him his enemies were about to attempt to hurt him. He then asked his loyal friend Abu Bakr to secretly accompany him to Medina. The following verse is about that intimation:

 

Remember how the Unbelievers plotted against you [Muhammad], to keep you in bonds, or slay you, or get you out (of your home). They deceive, and Allâh too deceives; but the best of deceivers (makerin) is Allâh. (Q.8:30)

 

It appears that Allâh is guessing what the Meccans were plotting and not quite sure. Doesn’t this verse reveal the fears of a paranoid Man? Muhammad lived among the Meccans for thirteen years, taunting them and insulting their religion, just as Muslims today insult the religion of everyone else, and yet they tolerated him. Except for Muhammad’s own claim, there is no historical evidence they ever tried to harm him.

 

In history written by Muslims themselves, there is no evidence of persecution against Muhammad. The elders of the Quraish, vexed at his insults, repaired to his aged uncle Abu Talib and said, “This Nephew of yours, has spoken opprobriously of our gods and our religion, and has abused us as fools, and given out that our forefathers were all astray. Now, avenge us yourself of our adversary (seeing that you are in the same case with ourselves), or leave him to it that we may take our satisfaction.”³¹

 

This is hardly the language and approach of persecutors. This is a plea, an ultimatum to Muhammad to stop abusing their gods. Compare that to the actions of today’s Muslims when their prophet is portrayed in a few cartoons. Muslims rioted; and, in far away places such as Nigeria and Turkey, killed nearly one hundred people who had nothing to do with those cartoons, and yet the Quraish tolerated numerous insults against their gods for thirteen years.

 

The night Muhammad escaped to Medina, in the company of his loyal friend Abu Bakr, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In Medina, he found Arabs who were less sophisticated than the Meccans. An added advantage was that they were ignorant of his background and character, to which the Meccans were privy. As a result, they were more receptive to his message.

 

Muhammad was not the first Arab prophet. Several other pretenders from other parts of Arabia were his near contemporaries. The best known was Musailama, who started his prophetic calling a few years before Muhammad, but unlike the prophet of Islam, he was successful in his own town and among his own people. Interestingly, a woman called Sijah was also a claimant to that title, and she too had a sizable following among her own people. Both of these prophets were preaching monotheism. There is convincing evidence that, prior

 

to Islam’s dominance in Arabia, women there were much more respected and had more rights than at any time since. None of these other prophets, however, resorted to violence in order to expand their religions or to rob people. They did not want to conquer territories and build empires, but rather, in the tradition of the Biblical prophets, were solely interested in preaching and in inviting people to worship God. Muhammad was the only prophet-warrior of Arabia. The above-mentioned prophets were not antagonistic with each other. They cooperated and did not fight over dominance.

 

The Medinan Arabs accepted Muhammad readily, not because of the profundity of his teachings, which basically, as stated above, consisted only in telling people to believe in him, but because of their rivalry with the Jews. Medina was essentially a Jewish town. The Jews, by virtue of their faith, considered themselves to be “chosen people.” They were also wealthier and more educated than the Arabs and, as a result, were envied by them. Most of Medina was owned by the Jews. This city was a Jewish town. Kitab al-Aghani³² traces the first settlement of the Jews in Medina back to the time of Moses. However, in the 10^th century book Futuh al-Buldan (The Conquest of The Towns), Al Baladhuri writes that, according to the Jews, a second Jewish immigration took place in 587 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, destroyed Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews throughout the world. In Medina, the Jews were merchants, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, artisans, and farmers, whereas the Arabs were laborers and mostly worked for the Jews. They came to Medina at least a thousand years after the Jews, i.e. in 450 or 451 A.D., when a great flood in Yemen forced various Arab tribes of the Saba region to migrate to other parts of Arabia. The Arabs came to Medina in the fifth century as economic refugees. Once they converted to Islam, they banished and massacred their hosts and took over their city.

 

After gaining a foothold in Yathrib, later called Medina, the Arabs started to raid and rob the Jews. Jews in return said what any oppressed people would: when their Messiah comes, he will take their revenge. When these Arabs heard Muhammad claiming to be a messenger of God and proclaiming himself to be the one foretold by Moses, they thought by accepting him and converting to Islam they would outrival the Jews.

 

Ibn Ishaq narrates: “Now Allâh had prepared the way for Islam in that they lived side by side with the Jews, who were people of the Scriptures and

knowledge, while they themselves were polytheists and idolaters. They had often raided them in their district, and whenever bad feeling arose, the Jews used to say to them, ‘A prophet will be sent soon. His day is at hand. We shall follow him and kill you by his aid;…. So when they heard the apostle’s message, they said one to another: ‘This is the very prophet of whom the Jews warned us. Don’t let them get to him before us!’”³³

 

It is ironic that Judaism and its messianic belief should become the strength of Islam and the cause of a Jewish holocaust in Arabia. Without it, Islam would have died like most cults do.

 

Again, there is little or no evidence to support Muhammad’s claim that Meccans persecuted Muslims. This claim is unquestioningly repeated by both Muslims and some non-Muslim historians. The anger and animosity toward Muslims was reaction to Muhammad’s own behavior and nothing compared to how Muslims persecute the followers of other faiths. It was Muhammad, not the Meccans, who ordered Muslims to leave their homes. He enticingly promised:

 

To those who leave their homes in the cause of Allâh, after suffering oppression, we will assuredly give a goodly home in this world; but truly the reward of the Hereafter will be greater. If they only realized (this)! (Q.16:41)

 

The immigrants had no source of income. How was Muhammad to deliver this promise and give “goodly homes” to those who, at his behest, had forsaken their homes? They had become poor and relied on the charity of the Medinans for sustenance. Muhammad was about to lose his credibility. His followers were whispering their discontent. Some started to defect from his camp. His response to all this was another threatening verse:

 

They [the unbelievers] long that you should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that you may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allâh; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever you find them, and choose neither friend nor helper from among them. (Q.4:89)

 

How can we reconcile these friendship prohibitions and threats with the claim that the Meccans had driven Muhammad and his followers out of their homes? In this verse, Muhammad is telling his followers to kill those Muslims

who defect and want to return to Mecca. This is reminiscent of the reverend Jim Jones’ “Jonestown” compound in Guyana, where he ordered his men to shoot anyone attempting to escape. All of this was designed to isolate his followers so he could better control and indoctrinate them. When one is separated from family and friends, and joins a cult where everyone is bewitched, it becomes difficult to think or question the authority of the leader.³⁴

Reference:

24 Tabaqat Volume I, page 191

25 Qur’an, 53:19-22

26 Sahih Bukhari Volume 5, Book 58,

27 Al-Dalaa’il, 2/282

28 Sir William Muir: The Biography of Mahomet, and Rise 0f Islam. Chapter IV page 126

29  http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/maududi/mau109.html

30 Qur’an, 4:97: “When angels take the souls of those who die in sin against their souls, they say: ‘In what (plight) were ye?’ They reply: ‘Weak and oppressed were we in the earth.’ They say: ‘Was not the earth of Allâh spacious enough for you to move yourselves away?’ Such men will find their abode in Hell, – What an evil refuge!”

31 Sir William Muir, Life of Muhammad, Vol. 2, chap. 5,. p. 162.

32 A collection of poems in many volumes compiled by Abu al-Faraj Ali of Esfahan. It contains poems from the oldest epoch of Arabic literature down to the 9th cent. It is an important source of information on medieval Islamic society.

33 Sirat Ibn Ishaq, P.197

34  Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti says: “A group of people from Mecca accepted Islam and professed their belief; as a result, the companions in Mecca wrote to them requesting that they emigrate too; for if they don’t do so, they shall not be considered as those who are among the believers. In compliance, the group left, but were soon ambushed by the nonbelievers (Quraish) before reaching their destination; they were coerced into disbelief, and they professed it.” [Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti “al-Durr al-Manthoor Fi al- Tafsir al-Ma-athoor,” vol.2, p178;]

Suyuti writes that in one hadith Allâh’s Apostle said, “There is no Hijra (i.e. migration) (from Mecca to Medina) after the Conquest (of Mecca), but Jihad and good intention remain; and if you are called (by the Muslim ruler) for fighting, go forth immediately.”

This shows that prior to the conquest of Mecca, emigration from that town was one of the requisites for Muslims. This is additional evidence of the fact that Muslims were coerced by Muhammad to abandon their homes, while their families did everything they could to keep their loved ones from following this man.

Jalal al-Din al-Misri al-Suyuti al-Shafi`i al-Ash`ari, also known as Ibn al-Asyuti (849-911) was the mujtahid imam and renewer of the tenth Islamic century. He was a hadith master, jurist, Sufi, philologist, and historian. He authored works in virtually every Islamic science.