Topic: Islam and Prophet Mohammad Struggles
Table of Contents
1. Inroduction
– Origin of Islam
Backgound of Prophet Muhammad
Spread of Islamic
2. The struggle of Prophet Muhammad in Mecca
– Childhood challenges
– Struggle with first Revelation
3. Jihad
– Definition
Jihad in the days of the Prophet
4. Death of the Prophet’s Family
5. Emigration to Medina (Hijra)
6. Battles of the Prophet
7. Death of Prophet Muhammad
8. Summary/Conclusion
Spread of Islam
Islam is a rich, multifaceted faith which boasts of a long and magnificent past. Islam is one of the three major monotheistic religions in the world, besides Judaism and Christianity. Islam traces its roots to 570 C.E., when Muhammad the founder of the religion, was born in the town of Mecca. The Islam religion focuses on devotion and submission to one God referred to as Allah in Arabic (Katz, 2003).
Background of Prophet Muhammad
Prophet Muhammad, whose full name was Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul Muttalib, was born in 570 CE in Mecca (Mekkah) (Khan, 2002). He was son to Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muttalib (Abdullah) and Aminah bint Wahb. His father passed on a few weeks before his birth in Yathrib (Medinah) while his mother died while his mother died when he was only six years old when on a return journey from Medinah.
According to ancient Arabic custom, Muhammad was taken charge of by his grandfather Abdul Muttalib. Long before the birth of Muhammad, ‘Abd al Muttalib had become an influential leader of ‘Quraish’ Arab tribe in Makkah besides being the caretaker of the Holy Sanctuary – the Ka’bah. After the death of his grandfather a couple of years later, young Muhammad was taken up by his uncle Abu Talib who was a merchant (Khan, 2002). Prophet Muhammad was a descendant of Ishmael, son of Abraham (Prophet Ibrahim). It is worth noting that the society in which Prophet Muhammad was born was in state of great moral, social, religious and social chaos.
In the days of Prophet Muhammad, the Middle East (including western Asia and North Africa), was characteristic of great cultural diversity. This was a central factor in the rapid rise of Islam. Islam grew rapidly from a modest Arab sect into a dominant faith from one end of the Eastern Hemisphere to the other end. Within 130 years since the founding of Islam, Arab armies and navies had taken control of much of the territory ranging from Spain to Persia. Thereafter, the religion found penetration to India, central Asia, as well as China. As such Islam found voice in land that were far from its homeland. The net effect of the spread of the new religion was dramatic reshaping of the societies found across the Afro-Eurasian zone. As it would be expected, the rapid spread of Islam was accompanied by the spread of Arab language along with culture. The initial diverse nature of the many Middle Eastern societies was effectively changed as the new Islamic-cum-Arabic identity became dominant.
Furthermore, Islam spread because of the very unique nature of Arab society and culture. The Arabs, who were a Semitic group of people, inhabited a desolate environment where scattered oases and a handful of fertile highlands sustained their lives. As such there was a strong fabric among the families, clans and tribes which came in handy for survival in sparsely populated environment. The nomadic Arabs who resided in tents and wandered about in search of oases together with grazing lands and raiding trade caravan spread the Islamic ideologies with their lifestyle. The spread of Islam was also facilitated by the Arab traders who traveled widely across the Middle East as far as Yemen in the south. In addition, the widespread of Arab poetry facilitated the rapid spread of the new Islamic religion.
The struggle of Prophet Muhammad in Mecca
By and large, it can be said that the struggle of the Prophet begun way before he was born. This owing to the fact (as mentioned earlier) that he never got the privilege of seeing his biological father as he died before he came into being. It is also clear that he lost his mother and grandfather at very tender ages. This is not to forget that he was born into a poor family itself. It is also reported that he started accompanying his guardian uncle on trade caravans whilst he only a boy. During the childhood times of Muhammad things were not so good with the families that adopted him. It was good enough that he did not starve, but there wasn’t much that his guardians could so for him considering that the fortunes of the clan of Hashim were depleted at the time (Watt, 1974). As an orphan lacking an able-bodied man to pay special attention to his needs, Prophet Muhammad was forced to start poorly in a commercial career which was the only one available to him. He lacked significant capital and thus had fewer opportunities (Walt, 1974).
The second major struggle that Prophet Muhammad underwent whilst in Mecca has to be the first revelation to him by the archangel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic). This happened to one day when he was on his routine solo meditations in the caves of Mount Hira near Mecca. It is well documented that immediately after the revelations he was deeply depressed as he struggled with the thought that he could be possessed with demons. He is said to run home and covered himself in total awe, which perhaps represent the greatest moment of personal struggle of his life. Some accounts have it that he even contemplated committing suicide because he did not understand what had happened to him. His wife Khadija reassured him with the help of her cousin Waraqa who was an old, saintly man with knowledge on previous revelations and scriptures.
Jihad
The name jihad comes from the Arabic word ‘Jahd’ which means “struggle.” According to teachings of Prophet Muhammad, Jihad refers to an external struggle so as to establish the truth over wrongdoings. It is a “holy war” that strives to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth (Daharma). It is on this premise that Prophet Muhammad often used the word jihad in the Holy Wars against the Arab tribes so as to crush their pagan beliefs and then establish his monastic teaching in the land (Emmanuel, 2006). The town of Mecca was a well acclaimed trading post on the Arabian Peninsula. The jihad was justified because of the apparent opposition of those people of whom the Islamic ideology had threatened their main source of income. This was the case because the holy city of Mecca was a center for the ancient pagan religions which were widely practiced by most Arabs at the time. There was deliberate mounting of statues and images aimed at making every believer who visited it to feel at home (Borner, 2008). As a matter of fact, the Holy sanctuary Ka’bah was awash with some three hundred sixty idols. The original pristine message of Prophet Ibrahim had been greatly compromised and mixed with lots of superstitions and traditions of the many pilgrims and visitors from far afield used to idol worship and myths. This is what inspired Prophet Muhammad to lead the holy wars because the tenet of his teaching that held that “there is no God to be worshiped but Allah.” This effectively meant that all the other gods had no place in Mecca the holy city of Allah and thus deserved to be destroyed along with those who resisted acknowledging Allah (Emmanuel, 2006).
However, Prophet Muhammad ran into problems with the rich businessmen of Mecca who put a condition to him that he would not be allowed to preach his religion if continued to oppose the statues and images of other gods in Mecca. This was meant to attract merchants from other parts of the world to go Mecca do business in Mecca and worship their images. However, the prophet turned down the proposal of the native businessmen, something with effectively brought Prophet Muhammad and the rich businessmen at loggerheads (Emmanuel, 2006). Furthermore, the Mecca leaders perceived Muhammad as a real threat to their positions because of teachings that touched on equality and justice, wealth sharing, simple living, and enhancing a spirit of unity.
The light of enmity between the local businessmen and Qur’aish leaders on one hand and the prophet on the other grew to unprecedented levels. The Qur’aish started to prosecute Muslims such cruel acts as beating them, torture together with boycotting of their businesses. Furthermore, well-to-do Muslims were given a curfew in their homes and handed a condition that they would only be afforded freedom of movement if they recanted. Prophet Muhammad suffered the greatest humiliation and ridicule in the glare of the public including occasional throwing of filth on him in the streets of Mecca and while he was praying in the Ka’bah. In the fifth year of his mission (615 CE), the persecution of Muslims became totally unbearable forcing Prophet Muhammad to ask his followers to seek refuge in Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia). As if that was not harsh enough, the Qur’aish further made things more difficult for Prophet Muhammad by passing a total ban on contact with the his family. The indifferent rulers and businessmen of Mecca as far as devising a plot to kill Prophet Muhammad.
Death of the Prophet’s Family
The net result of the three-year ban was in the form of great personal sorrow for the Prophet as he lost his beloved wife Khadija followed by his guardian uncle Abu Talb not long after the ban was lifted.
With the loss of key members of his family, Prophet Muhammad was left in a precarious position and in total despair. In the effort to secure his safety, the Prophet first thought of fleeing to the hill town of Taif which was some forty miles from Meccas. However, it proved futile because the people of the town greatly mocked and snubbed him. Worse still, he was badly injured by children who had been incited to throw stones at the Prophet. At that point in time, Prophet Muhammad had been struggling to spread the message for roughly a decade. However, a modest number of people had embraced it, mostly the lowly. In this respect, the bulk of his followers were the rejected, the weak, the disadvantaged, the slaves including the slaves, minority tribes together with women. Therefore, it would not be misplaced that the Prophet even lacked the material support to carry forward his preaching to many other people.
Emigration to Medina (Hijra)
As a blessing in disguise, the neighboring Medina city was experiencing strife. At the time Medina city was an oasis located 250 miles north of his native city of Mecca. The prophet was popularly known in the Medina city because of his demonstrated fairness and honesty. As such the feuding factions invited him to Medina to help find a truce.
Faced with an imminent threat to his life in Mecca, the Prophet could not resist a chance to flee Mecca for Medina (Lockard, 2010). The Prophet asked his followers to secretly slip into Medina ahead of him. By the time the rest of the people of Mecca came to know of what had happened, majority of the Prophet’s supporters had already settled in Medina. However, some fleeing Muslims were captured by Pagan Quraysh and brought back to Mecca to face torturous torments along with severe punishments (Janneth, 2010). In 622 Prophet Muhammad accompanied with seventy Muslims and their respective families journeyed from Medina to Mecca, which came to be commonly known as hijra (emigration). The leaders of Qur’aish had declared a reward of one hundred camels on the Prophet, whether dead or alive, after discovering of his escape from Mecca. To many Muslim believers, 622 begun the Muslim Calendar and represents the response of humanity to God’s message. While in Medina, led by Prophet Muhammad, Muslims formed the umma or the new community of believers. An increasing number of people of Medina embraced Muhammad as God’s Prophet. There he put up his first mosque where the believers worshiped and prayed to Allah (Janeth, 2010). Soon enough, Prophet Muhammad faced the challenge of the growing needs of the emigrants who had come with him to Medina from Mecca (called the Muhajirun). There was great need for booty along with supplies in order to sustain the quickly impoverishing Muslim community. As such Meccan caravans were molested by small expeditions. The Prophet also struggled with subduing fights that arose as a result of attacks on caravans at the beginning the sacred month of Rajab II.
In addition, the growing popularity of Prophet Muhammad did not go down well with most of the native people of Medina city, the Jewish. A number of Medina Jews begun mocking his beliefs. Prophet Muhammad worked to calm storm by urging his followers not to dispute with the “People of the Book” saying God was One. He employed a strategy of tolerating differences as seen in his accommodation of the Jews because of his respect of past Jewish prophets. In the effort to hold together his umma, however, the Prophet was forced to expel a couple of Jewish tribes (Lockard, 2010). Also, his followers fought successful battles against much larger armies.
Battles of the Prophet
The first major battles in the history of Islam – the battles of Badr in 624 and Battle of Uhud in 624 – happened under able leadership of Prophet Muhammad not long after his emigration to Medina. The enemies of Islam stepped up their assault from all sides. With the backing of Jews and other Arabs, the nonbelievers attacked Prophet Muhammad and his Muslim followers. Many Muslim men died in the battles resulting in a great number of widowed Muslim women and numerous orphaned children. The early Muslim soldiers under the patronage of Prophet Muhammad were tribesmen highly accustomed to defending themselves against enemies. They were also lightly armed, besides being swift and mobile on their camels or horses (Barber & Cappon, 2005). This explains why the Prophet and his army were triumphant in most of the battles they fought. It became evident that Prophet Muhammad was a flexible, pragmatic leader who was largely willing to negotiate and reach compromises as opposed to shedding blood. His undisputed military triumphs coupled with his shrewd diplomacy raised him as the most powerful man in the Arab world (Lockard, 2010).
Thereafter, the war between Mecca and Medina broke out where the Prophet popularized the concept of Holy Wars (Jihad). This was the precipitated by the feeling of the Meccans that their trade was still being interfered with by the activities of Prophet Muhammad and his followers. Accordingly, the Meccans formed a coalition against Medina. Their large force assembled outside the town. However, the Prophet had prepared a trench beforehand a means to defend the people of Medina town from attack. This compromised the unity of the attackers were made to lay inactive for a long period of time and eventually began to wear out. The Meccans were finally dispersed by a raging storm of wind accompanied with rain. It is worth noting that Prophet Muhammad and his follower’s war with Mecca was neither a struggle for empire, wealth nor personal domination, rather it was a struggle for the survival of Allah’s word (Rogerson, 2003).
About a year after the Battle of Allies (628 CE), the Prophet with a fleet of fifteen hundred followers left Madina for Mecca to perform the annual pilgrimage. However, they were forbidden from approaching the city of Hubaybiyah. Negotiations were made allowing them to come the following year. Two years later, the Qur’aish violate the terms of Hudaybiyah Treaty by support a surprise attack on Bani Khuza, an ally of Prophet Muhammad. This made the prophet declare jihad by marching to Makkah with a big army of Muslims totaling ten thousand (Singh, 2003). The army entered the city of Makkah without a fight and Prophet Muhammad exalted the name of Allah at the Ka’bah for enabling their entry into the Holy City. This was followed by the cleansing of the Ka’bah and restoration of its pristine status for the worship of One True God.
Nonetheless, jihad lost its significant meaning of an internal struggle with passage of time because it became to mean the duty of every Muslim to take up a weapon against the enemy who attacks Muslims and Islam or as a means to do away with the disbelievers. The paradox that many leaders in Islam faced was the issue of having an external struggle without necessarily engaging in an internal struggle. This is what brought about the dual meaning of jihad as both a strive to become internally and externally perfect. This notion has come to be equated with the Christian belief in the words of Jesus Christ to the Pharisees that they must cleanse both the inside and the outside of the cup if they are to have a completely clean cup (Emmanuel, 2006).
Death of Prophet Muhammad
At the time of his death in 632, Prophet Muhammad had strong foundations of the world’s first Islamic state. He had done much to expand the Islamic state. The expansion of the religion resulted in spread of Islamic art, literature, architecture, law, and science throughout the empire.
Summary
At the time of Prophet Muhammad, Arabia was a world with diverse cultures and beliefs. A great number of people were Christians or Jews while a significant others worshiped a host of different gods. As such it was not a piece of cake for Prophet Muhammad to spread his revolutionary message in form of the new Islamic religion. Majority of the people found it difficult to accept the new religion. Furthermore, the Prophet faced a number of persecution and hardship in both Mecca and Medina cities. At the initial stages, Prophet Muhammad was limited in his preaching because he had to do it secretly to only a small circle of relatives and friends. He encountered oposition when he started condemning the traditional polytheism because the Meccan elite perceived it as a threat to the economically profitable cult of the Ka’bba. As it would be imagined, public opinion against the Prophet was hyped to the extent of planning to assassinate him altogether (Katz, 2003).
The unceasing mockery and persecution he endured forced him to advise his follower to seek refuge in the Christian nation of Abyssinia. By and large, Prophet Muhammad struggled against the mighty Quraysh tribe of Mecca that dominated the city. The opposition was strong as it subjected the Prophet along with his followers to 10 years of persecution and had him fight them for another decade until he finally won. In summary, Prophet Muhammad’s life was characterized by struggle – he struggle for recognition of his message and mission against the powerful ruling elite of Mecca. The prophet’s struggle in Mecca as well as Medina was a struggle wayward nature of society. At the end, therefore, Prophet Muhammad achieved his objective of spreading the message of Allah to many a people including those in distant lands despite the incredible struggle he underwent in both Mecca and Medina (Omer, 2011).
References
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Emmanuel, M. Joseph. (2006). The Holiest of the Holies (THOTH): the Last Testament. Mission of Maitreya.
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Lockard, A. Craig. (2010). Societies, Networks, and Transitions: To 1500. Connecticut, CT: Cengage Learning.
Katz, M. Samuel. (2003). Jihad: Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism. Minnesota, MT: Twenty-First Century Books.
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Rogerson, Barnaby. (2003). The Prophet Muhammad: A Biblipgraphy. New York, NY: Paulist Press.
Singh, K.N. (2003). Prophet Muhammad and His Companions. New Delhi, ND: Global Vision Publishing House.
Watt. Montgomery, William. (1974). Muḥammad: Prophet and Statesman. London, Oxford University Press.
