# Six Lessons on Islam

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Marzieh Gail, Six Lessons on Islam, Wilmette, IL: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1953, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Six Lessons on Islam
> 
> Marzieh Gail
> 
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1953
> 
> Contents
> 
> Chronology of Islamic Civilization
> 
> Bibliography
> 
> I. Muhammad
> 
> II. Muhammad (continued)
> 
> III. "An Excellent Pattern Have Ye"
> 
> IV. The Qur'an
> 
> V. What Is Islam?
> 
> VI. The Holy Imams
> 
> page i
> 
> Chronology of Islamic Civilization (From Wells' "Outline of History")
> 
> 570 A.D.........Birth of Muhammad
> 590 A.D.........Plague in Rome. Gregory The Great Greg. I ("Angles") Chosroes II reigns in Persia
> 610 A.D.........Heraclius begins his reign
> 619 A.D.........Chosroes II holds Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, and had armies on the Hellespont.
> Tang Dynasty begins in China
> 623 A.D.........Battle of Badr
> 627 A.D.........Persian defeat by Heraclius, Nineveh. Meccan confederates besiege Medina
> 628 A.D.........Muhammad addresses (all) the rulers of the earth.
> 629 A.D.........Muhammad enters Mecca
> 632 A.D.........Ascension of Muhammad. Abu Bakr elected Caliph.
> 634 A.D.........Yarmuk. Muslims take Syria. 'Umar Caliph
> 638 A.D.........'Umar takes Jerusalem
> 643 A.D.........'Uthman elected third Caliph.
> 656 A.D. .......'Uthman murdered
> 661 A.D. .......'Ali martyred
> 662 A.D.........Mu'aviyyih elected Caliph
> 732 A.D.........Charles Martel - Tours
> 
> page ii
> 
> BIBLIOGRAPHY
> 
> Bahá'í Sources:
> 
> Some Answered Questions
> Kitab-i-Iqan
> Dawn-Breakers, Introduction
> The Promised Day is Come
> 
> Other Sources:
> 
> The Preaching of Islam ... T.W. Arnold, New York, Scribner's, 1913
> Life of Mahomet . . . Emile Dermenghem, London, G.Routlege, 1930
> The Shi'ite Religion ... Dwight M. Donaldson, London, Luzac & Co., 1933
> A Literary History of Persia . . E.G. Browne (Imamate, Caliphate), London, 1902
> The Spirit of Islam . . . Syed Ameer Ali, W.H. Allen Co., London, 1891 (New ed., Christophers, 1935)
> The Sayings of Muhammad, ed. Abdullah Al-Suhrawardy, London, Archibald Constable, 1905
> Speeches and Table-Talks of the Prophet Muhammad... Stanley Lane-Poole, London, 1882
> Literary History of the Arabs . . . R.A. Nicholson, Cambridge University, 1930
> Qur'an ... Sale & Rodwell Translations
> Le Mahdi ... Darmesteter
> A Baghdad Chronicle ... Reuben Levy, Cambridge University, 1929
> Mystics and Saints of Islam .. Claud Field
> 
> page 1
> 
> I.
> 
> MUHAMMAD
> 
> A biologist has said that we are immersed in the habits of our era, like
> the glands in their fluids. We are creatures, to a great extent, of our
> environment. But there is one Being Who is not the product of His
> environment. This is the holy Personage Who appears among us as the
> Manifestation of God. He is outside of and free of custom, tradition,
> environment. It is only by following Him that we too are released from
> the ways of our ancestors and can start a new way. He is reality--truth-
> -and the truth makes us free.
> 
> The materialist says man is the product of his times. Therefore the
> materialist cannot account for the Prophet of God. All of a sudden, in
> Arabia, there rises an Arab Who is not like the Arabs. He summons the
> people to go against custom. He smashes their idols. Think of the effect
> on them: something they had been taught to worship, toppling down,
> broken in pieces. Today, we too are told to smash idols--the idols of
> men's own imaginings. 'Abdu'l-Bahá says that those other idols at least
> had a mineral existence, while mankind's present idols are but fancies,
> and not even mineral. (Some Answered Questions, 171).
> 
> Our standard for appraising Muhammad is the Bahá'í Teachings. Much
> of the material about Muhammad is written either by Muslims who have
> repeated unfounded traditions about Him, or by hostile Occidentals. We
> are still victims of centuries of propaganda against Him. Dante, for
> instance, placed Muhammad and the Imam 'Ali in the eighth circle,
> ninth pouch, of the Inferno. The Middle Ages called Him "Mahound,"
> a word influenced by the English "hound." Today--and I am sure it is in
> a measure due to fifty-five years of continuous Bahá'í teaching--the
> Protestant Church in North America is actually telling people to study
> Islam and other Faiths. A Collier's Magazine article reaching millions of
> readers, featured a clergyman talking to a veteran, and saying that all
> religions are one and that the veteran should study them all; the article
> specifically included Islam. (Collier's, December, 1947). However, I felt
> sorry for the poor veteran because, without the light of the Bahá'í
> Teachings, he would find the study of Islam--or of any previous religion-
> -a bewildering business.
> 
> To study Islam we need new books. We need a re-evaluation by future
> Bahá'í scholars, of all the available data, in the light of Bahá'u'lláh's
> Teachings. The Guardian told a pilgrim that the Bahá'ís must vindicate
> Islam in the West; we must convert people, not to its institutions, now
> abrogated by the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh, but to its truth as a further step
> in Divine Revelation, following Christianity. We can appreciate our own
> Faith better if we are familiar with Islam. The Guardian refers to Islam
> as "the source and background" of our Faith (Advent of Divine Justice);
> he says we need "a sound knowledge of the history and tenets of Islam"
> and must devote special attention to the investigation of those
> institutions and circumstances that are directly connected with the origin
> and birth of their (the Bahá'í) Faith, with the station claimed by its
> Forerunner, and with the laws revealed by its Author." (Idem). There is
> an interesting point of similarity between us and the Muslims in that
> both our sacred writings and those of Islam are authentic, while scholars
> do not accept the authenticity of all the Gospel text. It is also of note
> that the New Testament mentions Peter as the successor but gives no
> specific laws as to marriage, pilgrimage, fasting and the like; the Qur'an,
> on the other hand, contains a great body of laws but is silent as to the
> successorship; while in the Bahá'í Teachings, we have, specifically
> established, both the laws and the successorship.
> 
> page 2
> 
> "Islam" does not derive from Muhammad's name. The word, from the
> Arabic root "salima," is variously translated as surrender to God's Will,
> and as obedience, peace and salvation, A Muslim is one who follows
> Islam; who has surrendered himself to God, is obedient, has attained
> salvation.
> 
> Islam in the beginning is a story of two cities--Mecca and Yathrib, later
> called Medina. Medina was a rich oasis. It was an agricultural
> community; many of its clans were Jews and they cultivated the extensive
> palm groves. Medina suffered from malarial fever and sometimes its
> ponds and wells were henna-colored from the droppings of the herds so
> that even the camels sickened of the water. The other city was Mecca.
> It was a city of naked hills; it had regular, paved streets, fortified houses
> and a town hall. A Negro poet of the time wrote that in Mecca there was
> "not a blade of grass to rest the eye... no hunting...instead, only
> merchants..."[1] There were no trees, no gardens, only a few spiney
> bushes. It was so hot that to torture a man they had only to lay him on
> the ground. The black flagstones around the Ka'bih had to be sprinkled
> for the ritual barefoot processions and they dried at once. Even the
> waters of the ancient well of Zemzem--which tradition says bubbled up
> from the sand, under the feet of Ishmael, when Hagar his mother had
> set him down in the wilderness--were sometimes bitter. Other wells were
> distant and unsafe. Mecca was a place of "suffocating heat, deathly
> winds, clouds of flies." (Dermenenghem, op. cit., 23). In winter the town
> was flooded; or buried in silt; the waters destroyed houses, floated
> carrion around, spread epidemics. They say that once the Temple was
> so deep in water that a pious man made his circumambulation, Seven
> times around, by swimming.
> 
> The Meccans were merchants. Two great caravans left Mecca each
> year, one to Yaman, the other to Syria. Ezekiel 27 tells us, as early as ca.
> 600 B.C., how Tyre was enriched by Arab merchants. A writer
> comments: "The steppes of Central Asia and Arabia were the ocean of
> the ancients, and companies of camels their fleets." (Muir, Wm., The
> Life of Mohammad, xc). The great caravans included as many as 3,000
> camels and 200 men. The whole town might invest in them; their coming
> and leaving was the cause of wild excitement, and announced with the
> beating of drums.
> 
> A writer calls the Arabs the first exploiters of international trade;
> Mecca was a crossroads between the Orient and the Mediterranean
> world. The Byzantines found indispensable the Arab caravans of jewels,
> spices from India, silk from China, skins, metals, perfumes, gums, dates.
> (Cf. Dermenghem, op. cit., 24-25).[1a]
> 
> After their journeys, the Arabs gambled and drank and speculated.
> Streams of wine flowed in the great houses; we hear of a man who
> owned two slave-girls celebrated for their voices, whom he called his two
> cicadas. He got drunk, and gave another man a black eye; later he
> repented, and presented the man with the two singers. (Ibid., 30).
> Another Arab gambled himself away to a friend. There were constant
> tribal wars, brawls and blood-feuds. The poets enjoyed prominence as
> the journalists and historians of the time, ant held annual poetry
> competitions; famed among the Arabs were the Seven Golden Odes,
> poems written in letters of gold on Egyptian silk. A proverb says:
> "Wisdom has lighted on three things: the hand of the Chinese, the brain
> of the Frank, and the tongue of the Arab." "The Arabs prized above all
> else, eloquence; an Arab prayed, "O God, preserve me from being
> silenced in conversation." (Dozy, Reinhart, Spanish Islam, Duffield and
> Co., N.Y., 1913, 6).
> 
> Cf. Dermenghem, Emile, Life of Mahomet, 22.
> 
> [1a] In addition to
> commerce and herding, the Arabs' "national industry" was the seizing of
> booty. (Dermenghem, 175). Muhammad strictly regulated this, the bulk
> going to charity and army upkeep.
> 
> page 3
> 
> Skill at arms and horsemanship were also valued; and hospitality to the point
> of profligacy; an Arab poet comments, "Wealth cometh in the morning,
> and ere the evening it hath departed." (Ibid., 5).
> 
> In Mecca, also called Becca, the leaders lived in the central, flat part
> of the city, around the Ka'bih (i.e., in Batha); the commoners lived
> surrounding this area, in the sloping streets; foreigners, slaves, and the
> rabble lived on the outskirts. Beyond, in the desert, were the Bedawin,
> tent-dwellers and nomads.[2]
> 
> The most important thing in Mecca was the Ka'bih, or cube: the oblong
> stone House which was a center of pilgrimage for all Arabia. The Arabs
> were members of innumerable isolated clans, worshipping different
> idols, but all would come and gather at the Ka'bih. It is a structure 55
> feet long, 45 wide and something over 55 high. It has a covering of cloth,
> which is renewed annually, and did even in Muhammad's day. Abraham
> traditionally built the Ka'bih, its site being granted to Him and Ishmael
> for a place of worship that would be monotheistic and universal (Qur'an
> 22:27). The Qur'an says of it: "The first temple that was founded for
> mankind, was that in Becca, Blessed, and a guidance to human beings.
> In it are evident signs, even the standing-place of Abraham: and he who
> entereth it is safe. And the pilgrimage to the temple, is a service due to
> God from those who are able to journey thither." (Qur'an 3:90-91). The
> Black Stone (Hajaru'l-Aswad) is set in the south-east corner of the
> Ka'bih wall; it is semi-circular, about six inches in height and eight wide,
> and reddish-black in color. We read in the Dawn-Breakers how the Bab,
> having first circumambulated the Ka'bih and performed all the rites of
> worship, stood before the Black Stone and declared His mission. The
> territory around Mecca (Haram) was and still is sacred. Four months of
> the year were months of general amnesty and truce, and it was then that
> pilgrims made their journeys to Mecca and to the merchandise fairs.
> 
> In and around the Ka'bih in the time before Muhammad--the Days of
> Ignorance (Jahiliyya)--were 360 idols, equalling the days of the year.
> Their chief was Hobal, a bearded man made of red agate, with one hand
> of gold, and dressed in multi-colored clothing. People consulted him
> about marriage, where to dig a well, and other problems, using divining
> arrows. We read of a poet who wished to avenge the murder of his
> father, consulting one of the idols with three divining arrows
> symbolizing "Proceed," "Abandon," "Delay." Three times he drew
> "Abandon." He became furious, broke the arrows and threw them at the
> idol, crying "Had it been thy father who was murdered, thou wouldst not
> have forbidden me to avenge him." (Dozy, op. cit., 14. Also Lane-Poole,
> Speeches and Table Talks.... cxiii.) Sometimes they would cheat the
> idols, sacrificing a gazelle when they had promised a sheep. They did
> acknowledge a vague supreme Deity, called Allah; but they joined
> partners with Him, lesser deities called al ilahat--the goddesses;
> Muhammad's teaching was La ilaha illa'llah--There is no ilah but Allah.
> This reminds us of Acts 17:23: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
> him declare I unto you." George Sale in his "Preliminary Discourse" tells
> of one tribe who even worshipped a lump of dough, but he says they
> treated it with more respect than some Christians do theirs, because they
> would not eat it unless compelled to by famine.
> 
> Over Mecca and in charge of the Ka'bih ruled the Quraysh, a powerful
> 
> The Bedawin were scornful of both tillers of the soil and merchants.
> "Ah," wrote a Bedawin poet, "if my camel could hear the tricks of the
> trade, what a lot she could gain in Mecca by exchanging green grass for
> dried grass!" (Dermenghem, op. cit., 31).
> 
> page 4
> 
> Arab tribe forming a sort of religious hierarchy, whose members enjoyed
> such functions as distributing water and food to the pilgrims, taking
> charge of the council hall, and raising the banner in war. Muhammad
> was a member of this tribe--closely related to the oligarchy, His
> grandfather ('Abdu'l-Muttallib) being the foremost chief of Mecca, and
> His uncle and protector (Abu-Talib) a leader afterward. In tearing down
> the Ka'bih gods Muhammad was--in their view--destroying His own
> family.
> 
> Mankind has always surrounded the birth of its Saviors with beautiful
> stories. We know of the shepherds and angels on the night of the
> Nativity. The Zoroastrians say that when Zoroaster was born even the
> trees and rivers rejoiced, and a divine light shone around the house. On
> the night Muhammad was born His mother (Aminih) saw light streaming
> from Him, reaching up to the stars; the idols of the Ka'bih toppled over
> and lay face downward; across the world, in all the fire temples of the
> Magians, the fire died on the altars. (Tabari, II, 234-5). The year was
> 570.[3]
> 
> Muhammad was either posthumous or soon lost His father
> ('Abdu'llah). A shepherd's wife cared for Him in the mountains until He
> was five; this was the custom. He tended sheep. At six, He lost His
> mother. His grandfather took Him in; He used to sit by the old chieftain
> on a rug spread out in the shade of the Ka'bih. At eight, He lost His
> grandfather; His uncle then cared for Him. Muhammad was poor and
> practised several trades: He tended herds, kept a little shop, went on
> caravan expeditions and to the great fairs. He became known for the
> purity of His life and they called Him al-Amin--the Trusted One.
> 
> There was a prominent and beautiful woman in Mecca, who had been
> twice widowed and was now about forty. She was a merchant, and
> Muhammad, as her agent, successfully conducted one of her caravans
> to Syria. She had refused the leaders of Mecca but now fell in love with
> her poor Kinsman, sixteen years her junior. Their marriage is one of the
> true - love stories in history; until her death twenty-three years later,
> Muhammad married no other, although polygamy was almost universally
> practised. We read that there was a great wedding: some leather bottles
> of precious grape wine; in the inner court under the torches, the bride's
> slave girls danced and sang to the tambourines; a camel was slaughtered
> on the door-step and its flesh divided among the poor...Muhammad and
> Khadijih had several children; the sons all died; then she became the
> mother of Fatimih, the holiest woman in Islam.
> 
> Muhammad was now a man of considerable means, but He did not
> enter public life. The times were lawless, and except for serving the poor
> He kept to Himself. He retired often to a high, cone-shaped mountain
> north of Mecca, and stayed in a cave there. From Mt. Hira He could
> look out east and south on other mountains, and elsewhere on bare,
> blackened hills, grey hills, and white sandy valleys (Cf. Muir, op. cit., 38).
> It was on this mountain that He first saw the Archangel, veiled in light,
> on a throne of fire, and because of this greatly troubled and in deep
> anguish, He went to Khadijih and she comforted Him. Ever since, Mt.
> Hira has been called Jabal-i-Nur, the Mount of Light.
> 
> "The Year of the Elephant." The birth took place about 55 days
> after the attack of Arabia; Caussin de Perceval calculates August 20. Cf.
> Muir, op. cit., 5.
> 
> page 5
> 
> There was a man named Salman the Persian and he had spent many
> years of his life traveling in search of a Prophet. He was born in a
> Persian village and as a boy had tended the sacred fire. Then he left
> Persia for Damascus, and went from one holy man to another--four in
> all. Each one, dying, sent him on to the next one. As the fourth one died
> he said to Salman "This is an age of Prophets. A Prophet will be sent."
> 
> In those days it was not safe to travel, because if you were caught they
> sold you into slavery. When Salman was going toward Arabia they
> caught him, and sold him to a Jew of Medina. Salman worked in the
> palm groves; it was his job to take care of the camel that turned the
> wheel which brought water up from the sub-soil for distribution into
> irrigation trenches. One day Salman was up at the top of a palm tree,
> and he heard his master speaking down below. His master was saying
> that a man had arisen in Mecca who was calling himself a Prophet.
> Salman began to tremble all over; he became so agitated that he almost
> fell on his master's head. He slid down the tree, and his owner struck
> him, saying, "What is it to you?"
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh tells us in the Iqan: "...when the hour draweth nigh on
> which the Day-star of the heaven of justice shall be made manifest, and
> the Ark of divine guidance shall sail upon the sea of glory, a star will
> appear in the heaven, heralding unto its people the advent of that most
> great light. In like manner, in the invisible heaven a star shall be made
> manifest who, unto the peoples of the earth, shall act as a harbinger of
> that true and exalted Morn (62)...Likewise, ere the beauty of
> Muhammad was unveiled, the signs of the visible heaven were made
> manifest. As to the signs of the invisible heaven, there appeared four
> men who successively announced unto the people the joyful tidings of
> the rise of that divine Luminary. Ruz-bih, later named Salman, was
> honoured by being in their service. As the end of one of these
> approached, he would send Ruz-bih unto the other, until the fourth
> who, feeling his death to be nigh, addressed Ruz-bih saving: "O Ruz-
> bih! when thou hast taken up my body and buried it, go to Hijaz for
> there the Day-star of Muhammad will arise. Happy art thou, for thou
> shalt behold His face!." (65).[4]
> 
> "... there was, immediately before the preaching of Mohammad, a
> general feeling that a change was at hand; a prophet was expected, and
> women were anxiously hoping for male children, if so be they might
> mother the Apostle of God; and the more thoughtful minds, tinged with
> traditions of Judaism, were seeking for what they called the 'religion of
> Abraham.' These men were 'Hanifs,' or 'incliners'...." Lane-Poole,
> Speeches and Table Talks of the Prophet Mohammad, xxiv-xxv.
> 
> page 6
> 
> II.
> 
> MUHAMMAD (continued)
> 
> In after years, Muhammad said of His wife Khadijih, "When I was
> poor, she enriched me; when all the world abandoned me, she
> comforted me; when they treated me as a liar, she believed in me."
> (Dermenghem, op. cit., 44). An account relates that in the early stage of
> the Revelation, when Muhammad was still in anguish at the
> phenomenon, He asked Khadijih to wrap Him in His robe, as a kind of
> protection, whereupon Gabriel appeared before Him and said, "O Thou,
> enwrapped in thy mantle! Arise and warn, and glorify Thy Lord!"
> (Qur'an 74:1-3 ).
> 
> After the surih of The Brightness, which brought Him consolation and
> told Him: "Thy Lord hath not forsaken Thee...." He felt confident of His
> prophetic mission. The Faithful Spirit taught Him to pray, perform
> ablutions, stand and kneel in worship. One day as He and Khadijih were
> praying together young 'Ali entered the room. He saw them bowing
> down before empty space. He said, "What are you doing? Before whom
> are you bowing down?" Muhammad said, "Before God, Whose Prophet
> I am." 'Ali accepted the Faith, and in future he was called "Him whose
> face was never sullied," because he was so young when he became a
> believer that he had never worshipped an idol.
> 
> When three years had passed, Muhammad was commanded to preach
> in public, and withdraw from the idolaters; the Qur'an reads: "Profess
> publicly then what Thou hast been bidden, and withdraw from those
> who join gods to God." (15:94). He invited His kinsmen, the leaders of
> Mecca, had a sheep cooked with milk, and after they had eaten He
> freely told them what had happened, ending, "Never before has an Arab
> bestowed on his people what I now bring you . . . Who will act as my
> brother and helper ? " There was icy silence. Abu Lahab, one of the
> uncles, shrugged his shoulders. Then young 'Ali cried out, "I will help
> you, Prophet of God!" And they all laughed, and the meeting broke up.
> (Cf. Dermenghem, op. cit., 73-74).
> 
> Muhammad preached, and the Meccans scoffed. They asked Him to
> perform miracles: turn the hills to gold, make a book fall from heaven,
> show them Gabriel, bring a well of pure water, prophesy the
> approaching price of goods: "Cannot your God disclose which articles
> will rise in price?" Muhammad would answer, "I am only a man like
> you." (Qur'an 18:110). "It is revealed to me that your God is one God:
> go straight then to Him, and implore His pardon. And woe to those who
> join gods with God." (Qur'an 41:5). The Qur'an tells us: "But most of
> them withdraw and hearken not: And they say, 'Our hearts are under
> shelter from Thy teachings, and in our ears is a deafness, and between
> us and Thee there is a veil." (Qur'an 41:3-4). They spoke much as the
> materialists of our own day; the Qur'an states, "And they say, 'There is
> only this our present life: we die and we live, and nought but time
> destroyeth us.' " (Qur'an 45:23). An idolater who owed money to a
> Muslim told him he would pay him back in the next world . . . And
> Muhammad warned them: "The likeness for those who take to
> themselves patrons other than God is the likeness of the spider who
> buildeth her a house: But verily, frailest of all houses surely is the house
> of the spider," (Qur'an 29:40).
> 
> page 7
> 
> Besides insisting that there was only one God, and telling them to
> follow righteousness as they would be called to account in the next
> world, Muhammad spoke to them repeatedly about the coming of "The
> Hour" and the "Meeting with God." Once He held up two fingers and
> said that He and The Hour were as close as the two fingers. The Qur'an
> states: "Aye, they have treated the coming of 'the Hour' as a lie. But a
> flaming fire have we got ready for those who treat the coming of the
> Hour as a lie." (25:12). Sometimes He called it "The Inevitable": the
> chapter of this name in the Qur'an begins: "When the day that must
> come shall have come suddenly, None shall treat that sudden coming as
> a lie: Day that shall abase! Day that shall exalt!" Sometimes He called
> it "The Blow" or "The Striking": this chapter begins: "The striking What
> is the striking? And what shall make Thee to understand how terrible
> the striking will be ? On that day men shall be like moths scattered
> abroad, and the mountains shall become like carded wool . . ." (Surihs
> 56 and 101). It was the great Day of God that He warned them of--our
> day; to understand the Qur'an here it is essential to study the Iqan. In
> the surih of The Daybreak, He told them: "and thy Lord shall come,
> and the angels rank by rank . . ." (Surih 89).
> 
> In later life, as Muhammad was entering the mosque, a disciple said,
> "Ah, Thou for Whom I would sacrifice father and mother, white hairs
> are hastening upon Thee!" And the Prophet raised up His beard with
> His hand and gazed at it; and the disciple's eyes filled with tears. "Yes,"
> said Muhammad, "(the surih of) Hud and its sisters have hastened my
> white hairs." They asked what He meant by its "sisters," and He
> replied "'The Inevitable,' and 'The Blow.'" (Rodwell, Qur'an, 225-226 n.).
> 
> The Meccans did not know what to make of Him. For a time they
> mocked Him: "Here cometh the son of 'Abdu'llah with his news from
> heaven." (Dozy, op. cit., 15). Then, as He continued to warn them, and
> to denounce their gods, and as He made some converts, they tried to
> bribe Him: "If thou wishest to acquire riches . . . we will collect a fortune
> larger than is possessed by any of us; if thou desirest honors . . . we shall
> make thee our chief . . ." (Ameer-'Ali, The Spirit of Islam, 98). He
> answered, "Do ye indeed disbelieve in Him . . . do ye assign Him peers?
> The Lord of the worlds is He!."[1] They appealed to His uncle and
> protector, the head of His clan, and this uncle begged Him to desist
> from teaching, as He was bringing ruin on Himself and His family. He
> answered, "Were the sun to come down on my right hand and the moon
> on my left, and the choice were offered me of abandoning my mission
> until God himself should reveal it, or perishing in the achievement of it,
> I would not abandon it." (T.W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, 13-14).
> The Quraysh stopped Him from praying in the Ka'bih, they pursued
> Him, they covered Him and His disciples with filth when they were
> praying, they incited children and the rabble to follow and mock them,
> a woman strewed thorns where He would walk. Bahá'u'lláh says: "How
> abundant the thorns and briars which they have strewn over His path!
> . . . Such sore accusations they brought against Him that in recounting
> them God forbiddeth the ink to flow . . . or the page to bear them . . .
> For this reason did Muhammad cry out: 'No Prophet of God hath
> suffered such harm as I have suffered.'" (Iqan, 108-109).
> 
> He sent many of His disciples to safety in Abyssinia (615), where there
> was a pious Christian king. The king asked why they had fled, and they
> answered, "O King, we were plunged . . . in ignorance and barbarism; we
> adored idols, we lived in unchastity; we ate dead bodies, and we spoke
> abominations . . . when God raised among us a man . . . he called us to
> the unity of God . . . to fly vices, and . . . abstain from evil . . . For this
> reason our people have risen against us . . ."(Ameer-'Ali, op. cit., 100)
> . To kill Muhammad would have meant a civil war, and so the Meccans
> tortured His poor disciples instead. Balal, the Ethiopian, they exposed,
> 
> Qur'an 41:8.
> 
> page 8
> 
> day after day, to the desert sun, stretched out with a rock on his breast.
> They told him he must renounce Muhammad or die, and he answered,
> "There is only one God, only one God." He lived to become the first
> muezzin.[2]
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh says of him, "Consider how Balal, the Ethiopian, unlettered
> though he was, ascended into the heaven of faith and certitude . . ."
> (Gleanings, 83).[3] Muhammad called him "the first fruits of Abyssinia,"
> just as He called another early disciple "the first fruits of Greece." It is
> important to remember that Islam is a universal religion, meant for the
> whole world--not in any sense a restricted or local faith.
> 
> The Meccans said, "Know this, O Muhammad, we shall never cease
> to stop thee from preaching till either thou or we perish." (Ameer Ali,
> op. cit., 107).
> 
> For three years (617-619) they blockaded Him and His kinsmen in a
> remote quarter of the town and forbade the other towns-people to have
> any dealings with them whatever.[4] Then Khadijih died (December 619)
> and five weeks later, Muhammad's uncle and protector. Since His own
> people refused Him, He then went to another city--Ta'if, a beautiful
> place about seventy miles distant, where fruit trees grew--but the people
> stoned Him away. It was when He returned to Mecca that He had the
> vision of the Night Journey (Mi'raj, i.e., Ascent), when He rose in spirit
> through the seven heavens to the throne of God. Surih 17 of the Qur'an
> is called the Night Journey; in the Iqan Bahá'u'lláh refers to Muhammad
> as the ''Lord of the Mi'raj" and says that the mirror of the heart must be
> purified to understand its mystery (187).
> 
> You would say this was the end of the story of Muhammad: He and a
> tiny group, shut away in the sand, alone on the planet, encircled by men
> so wild they buried children alive as a point of honor, who killed
> casually, and who--because His teachings meant the destruction of the
> national religion and the loss of their own wealth and power--had for
> thirteen long years been waiting to shed His blood. An enemy of His has
> written: "We search in vain through the pages of profane history for a
> parallel to the struggle in which for thirteen years the Prophet of Arabia,
> in face of discouragement and threats, rejection and persecution,
> retained thus his faith unwavering, preached repentance . . . he met
> insults, menace, and danger with a lofty and patient trust in the future."
> (Muir, op. cit., 518).
> 
> It was now that the tide of history turned . . . The Guardian has said to
> a pilgrim that our Cause "is impelled forward through crises. The spread
> of the Cause precipitates crisis . . . and the solution of the crisis through
> the operation of the Cause facilitates the spread of the Cause."
> Bahá'u'lláh says, "I recognize, O Thou Who art my heart's desire, that
> were fire to be touched by water it would instantly be extinguished,
> whereas the Fire Thou didst kindle can never go out, though all the Seas
> of the earth be poured upon it." (Prayers and Meditations, 150). We who
> are believers are working with something unkillable .
> 
> What happened in Islam was this: Muhammad had often preached to
> other tribes, people who would come to the Ka'bih or the great fairs. On
> such occasions, His uncle, the squint-eyed Abu Lahab (he and Zayd,
> Muhammad's adopted son, are the only two contemporaries named in
> the Qur'an) would follow,
> 
> The Christians of the period used the clapper to call to prayer, the
> Jews, trumpets, the Zoroastrians, bonfires, says Dermenghem, 267.
> Bahá'u'lláh says, "The acts of his honor, Balal, the Ethiopian, were so
> acceptable in the sight of God that the 'sin' of his stuttering tongue
> excelled the 'shin' pronounced by all the world (Epistle to the Son of the
> Wolf, 76).
> 
> We should remember that, as R. L. Gulick points out in
> his Muhammad The Educator (ms. p. 21), "Tribal opinion was of
> supreme importance as a regulator of behavior. The worst punishment
> was expulsion from the tribe..."
> 
> page 9
> 
> and cry: "He is an impostor who seeks to lead you away from the faith
> of your fathers!" And the visitors would laugh, saying, "Thine own
> kindred know thee best. Wherefore do they not believe?" But there were
> some men of Medina (Yathrib) who listened to Him. They were weary
> of the fighting between rival clans in their own city, and they asked Him
> to come and be their Chief. Muhammad sent His disciples on to Medina.
> It was the fateful year 622--the year of the Hijra (Emigration) from
> which the Muslim calendar was afterward reckoned.
> 
> At this juncture the Meccans united to murder Muhammad. They
> arranged for members of all the clans to attack Him at once, so that the
> blood-guilt would not rest on any one of them. They waited outside His
> house, watching as He lay in His cloak on the bed, but when the dawn
> came, they saw it was not Muhammad there but 'Ali. Muhammad had
> escaped to Medina, which from this time on was called the City of the
> Prophet.
> 
> Muhammad entered Medina in triumph; a shaykh put his turban on
> the end of a lance for a banner, and a parasol of palm branches was
> held over the Prophet's head, while the Helpers (Ansar), the Medina
> believers, surrounded--Him, brandishing swords and spears. He
> dismounted on the outskirts, and turned toward the Point of Adoration,
> Jerusalem (later Muhammad changed the Qiblih to Mecca; the Bahá'í
> Qiblih is the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh); He prayed, with all the multitude;
> then, the accounts say, He let His camel go free into the town, and
> where it knelt, a mosque was later erected. As He entered, He greeted
> all the people, even the children.
> 
> So the Meccans were cheated of their prey. The despised outcast, the
> One they had called a crazed poet, a madman, a liar, was now the Head
> of a State. And now all Arabia rose against Medina; the Meccans rallied
> the tribes, including a "fifth column" within Medina itself. The battle was
> on, between idolatry and true worship, between Hobal and the
> Omnipotent Lord, between freedom and death.
> 
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá says in Some Answered Questions: "If Christ himself had
> been placed in such circumstances . . . culminating in flight from his
> native land--if in spite of this these lawless tribes continued to pursue
> him, to slaughter the men, to pillage their property, and to capture their
> women and children, what would have been Christ's conduct with regard
> to them? If this oppression had fallen only upon himself he would have
> forgiven them . . . but if he had seen that these cruel and bloodthirsty
> murderers wished to kill, to pillage, and to injure all these oppressed
> ones . . . it is certain that he would have protected them, and would have
> resisted the tyrants . . . To free these tribes from their bloodthirstiness
> was the greatest kindness, and to restrain them was a true mercy."
> (24-25). "The military expeditions of Muhammad . . . were always
> defensive actions . . ." (22).[5]
> 
> The Prophet of God now had ten more years to live. They were years
> of intense activity . . . At the Battle of Badr, the Meccans were put to
> flight. They rose again, 3,000 strong, and attacked Muhammad with His
> thousand men at the hill of Uhud, three miles from Medina. Muhammad
> did not love war, but He had no choice. He was so gentle and mild that
> His enemies called Him womanish. When He fell at Uhud, a disciple
> asked Him to curse the enemy; He answered, "I have not been sent as
> a curse to mankind, but as an inviter to good and as a mercy." (Maulana
> Muhammad 'Ali, Muhammad the Prophet, Ahmadiyya Anjuman-i-Isha
> `at-i-Islam, Lahore, India, 1924; 262). It was at Uhud that the idolatrous
> women marched to battle, beating their timbrels and singing: "We are
> the daughters of the morning star; soft are the carpets we
> 
> Cf. Luke 22:36: "Then he (Jesus) said unto them. But now, he that
> hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no
> sword, let him sell his garment and buy one."
> 
> page 10
> 
> tread . . . our necks are adorned with pearls, and our tresses are
> perfumed with musk. The brave who confront the foe we will clasp to
> our bosoms, but the dastards who flee we will spurn--not for them our
> embraces!" It was here that these women mutilated the dead, and that
> Hind, notorious wife of Muhammad's chief enemy, Abu Sufyan, ripped
> out the liver of a Muslim hero and devoured it. It was this battle that the
> Muslims lost, because the archers who were holding the Meccan cavalry
> in check disobeyed Muhammad and left their positions to look for booty.
> Muhammad was wounded in the mouth and on the temple, and reported
> killed. 'Ali wept in despair when he saw Him, and brought water in his
> shield, saying, "Wash the blood from Thy face, O Apostle of God, that
> Thy men may know Thee . . ." (Chronique de Abou Djafar Mohammed-
> ben-Jarir Ben Yazid Tabari, tr. by M.H. Zotenberg, Paris, 1871; III, 33).
> Then `Ali raised up the Prophet's banner and rallied the defeated
> Muslims. The idolaters' victory was costly; they dispersed for a time but
> in 627 they came again, 10,000 strong, and besieged Medina. On the
> advice of Salman the Persian, a stratagem previously unknown in Arabia
> was now used: a trench was tug around the city. The Prophet Himself
> worked with the others at digging the trench. An account Says He
> "seized a pickaxe . . . and with it he struck a flint which had defied those
> who were digging; a spark came out of it, and he--peace be with him --
> said 'In this spark I saw the cities of Chosrau (King of Persia.)' Then he
> struck another blow, and another spark came out; and he said 'In it I
> saw the cities of Caesar. Verily God will give them to my nation after
> me.'" ('Ali Tabari, The Book of Religion and Empire, tr. by A. Mingana,
> Manchester, University Press, 1922; 44). There was a fifteen day siege,
> but the trench saved Medina and a Storm put the enemy to flight. Islam
> had conquered.
> 
> After the battle, Muhammad went to His daughter, Fatimih, "and she
> began to weep and to kiss his mouth; and he said to her: 'O Fatimih,
> why art thou weeping?' And she said 'O Apostle of God, I see thee
> shabby, weary, and clothed in worn out garments.' And he said 'O
> Fatimih, God has revealed to thy father that it is He who places dignity
> or lowliness in every house, be it of clay or of hair; and He has revealed
> to me that my lowliness will be (until it reaches where night has
> reached).' " (i.e., soon over). (Idem). Bahá'ís will remember the agony
> of the young 'Abdu'l-Bahá on seeing His Father as He was brought out
> of the Black Pit (Siyah- Chal).
> 
> The old blood-tie was now replaced throughout Arabia by a new, much
> wider loyalty. For the first time, hundreds of hostile Arab tribes were
> now united under one banner--Islam. Muhammad took Mecca (630),
> making an entry so peaceful as to be unparalleled in history, and telling
> the Meccans:--"I say to you what my brother Joseph said to his brothers:
> 'No blame be on you this day. God will forgive you, for He is the most
> merciful of those who show mercy (Qur'an 12:92).' " And He struck
> down the Ka'bih gods, saying: "Truth is come and falsehood is gone.
> Verily, falsehood is a thing that perisheth." (Qur'an 17:83). The Arabs
> now came into the religion of God by troops. As each tribe accepted,
> Muhammad sent them a teacher of Islam, telling him: "Deal gently with
> the people, and be not harsh; cheer them, and contemn them not . . . the
> key to heaven is to testify to the truth of God and to do good works."
> (Ameer-`Ali, op. cit., 208). Muhammad also sent out missives and
> embassies declaring Islam to rulers of the day, the King of Persia, the
> Negus of Abyssinia, Heraclius the Greek emperor, the ruler of Egypt,
> the governor of Yaman, the chief of the Bani Hanifa. The King of
> Persia, enraged at seeing Muhammad's name before his own on the
> letter, tore it up. Muhammad said, "God will tear up his kingdom in the
> same way."
> 
> page 11
> 
> Then Muhammad fell ill. He had an intense fever. A disciple laid his
> hand on Muhammad's forehead and said, "How fierce is the fever upon
> thee!" "Yea, verily," said Muhammad, "but I have been during the night
> season repeating in praise. of the Lord seventy surihs, including the
> seven long ones." The disciple said, "Why not rest and take thine ease,
> for hath not the Lord forgiven thee?" "Nay," replied Muhammad,
> "wherefore should I not yet be a faithful servant unto Him?" (Cf. Muir,
> op. cit., 488). As He grew worse, He asked if there was any gold in the
> house; on being told there was, He insisted that His wife 'Ayishih give
> it away to the poor, and could not rest until she had done this. He said,
> "It would not have become me to meet my Lord, and this gold still in my
> hands." While He lay dying, He called for pen and ink to write His will,
> but 'Umar said, "Pain is deluding God's Messenger; we have God's
> Book, which is enough." They disputed at the bedside, whether to bring
> the pen and ink, and He sent them away. He was praying in a whisper
> when He ascended. (June 8, 632).
> 
> page 12
> III.
> 
> "AN EXCELLENT PATTERN HAVE YE"
> 
> "His morals are the Qur'an," said 'Ayishih of Muhammad. He, like the
> other Manifestations of God, is a perfect example for men to follow. The
> Qur'an says: "An excellent pattern have ye in the Apostle of God."
> (33:21).
> 
> He was stern in punishing criminals, but always forgave personal
> enemies; for example Habrar, who drove the end of his lance against
> the Prophet's daughter, as she was mounting her camel to flee from
> Mecca. She was far advanced in pregnancy; she fell to the ground, and
> later died from the injury. Habrar threw himself on Muhammad's mercy,
> and was pardoned. (Ameer-`Ali, op.cit., 178). The God of the Qur'an is
> a God of mercy; over and over, we hear of His mercy; we are told never
> to despair of it; God says, "I will answer the cry of him that crieth, when
> he crieth unto me: but let them hearken unto me, and believe in me."
> (2:182). We are told that God "hath imposed mercy upon Himself as a
> law." (6:12).[1]
> 
> He was always thankful. "When the first-fruits of the season were
> brought : to Him, He would kiss them, place them upon His eyes and
> say: 'Lord, as Thou hast shown us the first, show unto us likewise the
> last.'" (Muir, op. cit., 516). Repeatedly, we are directed in the Qur'an to
> be thankful: "forsooth is God rich without you: but He is not pleased
> with thanklessness in His servants: yet if ye be thankful He will be
> pleased with you." (39:9).
> 
> He was immaculate in His person, and loved fragrances; He would
> use musk and ambergris, and burn camphor on odoriferous wood. It is
> said that once His revelations ceased, and He remarked to some people
> who were present, "How can revelations not be interrupted when you do
> not trim your nails, nor clip your moustache...." ('Ali Tabari, The Book
> of Religion and Empire, 27). The Qur'an says, "God loveth the clean."
> (9:109).
> 
> Many of our modern courtesy customs are traceable to Muhammad.
> He said, "The duties of Muslims to each other are six...When you meet
> a Muslim, greet him, and when he inviteth you to dinner, accept; and
> when he asketh you for advice, give it him; and when he sneezeth and
> saith, 'Praise be to God,' do you say, 'May God have mercy upon thee';
> and when he is sick, visit him; and when he dieth, follow his bier." Again
> He said, "When victuals are placed before you no man must stand up till
> it be taken away; nor must one man leave off eating before the rest; and
> if he doeth, he must make an apology... It is of my ways that a man shall
> come out with his guest to the door of his house...It is not right for a
> guest to stay so long as to incommode his host." (Cf. Suhrawardy,
> Sayings). He also directed His followers not to present themselves at
> mealtime unasked, and not to interfere with the owner of the house in
> the management of his house. (Cf. Persian Dars-i-Akhlaq).
> 
> Modern societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals owe much to
> Him. He taught kindness to animals, and said that an adulteress was
> forgiven her sin because, seeing a dog suffering from thirst, she tied her
> shoe to her garment and lowered it into a well, to draw up water for the
> dog.
> 
> He was endlessly patient. ('Abdu'l-Bahá once said to my mother: Sabr
> kun; mithl-i-man bash--Be thou patient; be thou like unto Me.) The
> Qur'an enjoins patience in over seventy passages. It states: "How goodly
> the reward
> 
> This teaching seems to have freed the Muslims from the burden of
> conscious and unconscious guilt which weighs so heavily on many
> Christians.
> 
> page 13
> 
> of those who labor, Who patiently endure, and put their trust in their
> Lord!" (29:58-59); and "Verily those who endure with patience shall be
> rewarded: their reward shall not be by measure." (39:13).
> 
> He taught people to love the next world; He said this world was only
> a vapor in a desert. Again He said, "Verily, the world is no otherwise
> than as a tree...when the traveler hath rested under its shade, he passeth
> on." (Cf. Muir, op. cit., 330 n.). As He was dying He told them, "God
> hath a servant to whom He hath said: Dost thou desire this world or the
> next? The servant hath chosen the next, and God hath approved his
> choice, and hath promised to call him into His presence." And one of the
> believers who was there understood, and wept. (Cf. Tabari, Chronique,
> III, 208-209).
> 
> He taught them to give alms, this being contrary to their wishes. Persia
> seemed to me a nation of alms-givers; I will never forget the grace and
> courtesy with which a friend of ours, a member of Parliament, gave alms
> to anyone who asked. Muhammad said, "Fear the Fire by giving alms,
> although it be but one half of a date." ('Ali Tabari, op. cit., 26-27). This
> Persian boasted that his father and grandfather died poor. Poverty is
> highly prized by the true Muslims, because Muhammad said "Poverty is
> My glory." He ate sitting on the ground; His pillow was His arm; He
> lived in a row of modest rooms, made of sun-dried brick, furnished with
> leather water-bags, and leather mats stuffed with palm-fibre, and cots of
> palm-fibre rope. He kindled the fire, swept the floor, patched His own
> garments and shoes, milked the goats. He said, "I am a servant, I eat and
> sleep like a servant." (A. Tabari, idem).
> 
> As to the question, what is a Muslim? Islam is a clear and
> fundamentally easy religion to obey. The Qur'an says, "We will teach
> thee to recite the Qur'an. . .And we will make easy to thee our easy
> ways." (87:8). And again, "we will lay on them our easy behests." (18:87).
> It does not confuse its adherents with a complicated theology, and its
> text is clear on the duties to be performed by them. It has no priesthood,
> no mediators between the faithful and their Lord; the 'ulama, meaning
> the learned ones--the qadis (judges), muftis (exponents of the religious
> law), mujtahids, mullas--are not a priesthood in the Christian sense, but
> expounders of the law. The Muslims do not worship Muhammad (Who
> seems indeed to have stressed the human station of the Prophet to
> compensate for the Christian worship of Jesus). We read that in His
> lifetime "The meanest slaves would take hold of his hand and drag him
> to their masters to obtain redress for ill treatment or release from
> bondage." (Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, The Ideal Prophet, Woking, 1925;
> 194). He was at everyone's disposal, "even as the river's bank to him that
> draweth water from it" (Muir, op. cit., 511); and this loving and trusting
> attitude continues, but the Qur'an forbade the Muslims to deify Him; He
> told them He was a "witness, and a herald...and a warner; And one who,
> through His permission, summoneth to God, and a light-giving torch."
> (Qur'an 33: 44-45). It is the one, universal God Who is worshipped in
> Islam; One closer to man" than his neck-vein" (50:15), and aware of all
> things: "no leaf falleth but He knoweth it." (6:59), and characterized by
> ninety-names given throughout the Qur'an, and another name, the
> Greatest Name, not made known at that time (asma'u'l-husna; Qur'an
> 7:179; 17:110; 59:24). He said, "The idols which ye invoke...can never
> create a single fly...and if the fly snatch anything from them, they cannot
> recover the same...." (Qur'an 22:72). Muhammad did not found a new
> religion, but renewed the one religion brought by successive holy
> Prophets before Him, and Who were on the same plane as Muhammad
> Himself (2:130).[2] The soul is immortal and accountable for its actions.
> The Muslims do not believe in original sin, or vicarious atonement;
> salvation is not only for Muslims but for the followers of all
> 
> The oneness of religions is unequivocally stated: "Verily We have
> revealed to Thee as We revealed to Noah and the Prophets after Him,
> and as We revealed to Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and
> the tribes, and Jesus, and Job, and Jonah, and Aaron, and Solomon; and
> to David gave We Psalms." (4:161).
> 
> page 14
> 
> previous faiths: "Verily, they who believe, and the Jews, and the
> Sabeites, and the Christians--whoever of them believeth in God and in
> the last day, and doth what is right, on them shall Come no fear, neither
> shall they be put to grief. (Qur'an 5:73). (The Qur'an states of unnamed
> Prophets, "Of other Apostles We have not told Thee." (4:162). A
> Zoroastrian wrote 'Abdu'l-Bahá to ask why Zoroaster was not
> mentioned by Muhammad; the Master referred him to Qur'an 25:40 and
> 50:12, "those who dwelt at Rass," explaining that Rass is the Araxes
> River and the reference is to Zoroaster and others. Cf. Persian Tablets,
> published text). Islam is against aggression, permitting war only in self-
> defense and under well-defined conditions: "Fight in the way of God
> against those who attack you, but begin not hostilities, for God loveth
> not the transgressors." (2:186). Islam, the religion, was not propagated
> by the sword; to the charge that Islamic aggression was infused into
> medieval Christianity, the Muslims reply: "The massacres of Justinian
> and the fearful wars of Christian Clovis in the name of religion occurred
> long before the time of Muhammad." (Ameer-Ali, op. cit., 311-314).
> They contrast the taking of Jerusalem by the Caliph 'Umar, and its
> conquest six hundred years later by the Christian Crusaders; 'Umar rode
> into the city with the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing on its antiquities;
> when the hour of prayer came, he declined to pray in the Church of the
> Resurrection, where he then happened to be, lest in future the Muslims,
> claiming a precedent, should infringe the rights of the Christians to their
> church. This was in 637. The Crusaders dashed the brains of children
> against the walls, roasted men at slow fires, ripped up others to see if
> they had swallowed gold, drove the Jews into their synagogue and burnt
> them, massacred 70,000 people.
> 
> Non-Muslims in the conquered countries were equal to the Muslims
> in all respects, paying a moderate capitation-tax (jizyah) in return for
> military exemption, and exemption from payment of the poor-rate
> (zakat), a tax of 2 - 1/2% on total annual income, compulsory for
> Muslims. We are told (in the useful introduction to the re-edition of Sir
> 'Abdu'llah Suhrawardy's Sayings of Muhammad, Wisdom of the East
> Series, E. P. Dutton, M.Y., 1941; 17-46) "When the Roman Emperor
> embraced Christianity, the population of the whole Roman Empire,
> including Egypt, was by decree forced to renounce all other religions and
> adopt Christianity; but it was not until after five hundred years of
> Muslim rule in Egypt that, as the result of peaceful conversion, the
> Muslims formed even 50 per cent. of the total population. In Northern
> India...which has been under Muslim rule for six centuries...there is a
> Hindu population of 41 millions, against the Muslim population of 7
> millions, according to the Census of 1931. The Hindus and Muslims have
> lived together as fellow-citizens for centuries..."
> 
> Muhammad said, "He who wrongs a Jew or Christian will have Me as
> his accuser." (Dermenghem, op. cit., 331). "Before the Hejira, the
> Mussulmans had endured persecution without defence; later they put
> up a legitimate resistance and when they became victors they practised
> tolerance... The idolater was not allowed to remain on Moslem soil; but
> the People of the Book both Jew and Christian, by paying tribute, had
> a right to protection, could practise their faith freely, and were
> considered a part of the community." (Idem). In Spain as elsewhere,
> Ameer-'Ali points out, Muslim rule brought great progress, order, peace
> and plenty, promotion of freedom and equality, regard of rulers for their
> subjects. Countries under Muslim rule were exempt from the disastrous
> consequences of the feudal system and the feudal code; Muslim
> legislation freed the soil and assured the rights of individuals. Spain had
> greatly suffered from barbarian hordes, and the people had been
> weighted down with feudal burdens, while vast areas were deserted;
> under the Muslims, people and land were enfranchised, cities sprang up,
> 
> page 15
> 
> order was established, Muslims and non-Muslims--Suevi, Goth, Vandal,
> Roman and Jew--were placed on equal footing, intermarriage took
> place. This author says it "would be an insult to common-sense and
> humanity" to compare the Arab rule in Spain "with that of the Normans
> in England, or of the Christians in Syria during the Crusades..." (op. cit.,
> 422 ff.). The Arabs colonized the depopulated areas, bringing in large
> industrious communities from Africa and Asia, including 50,000 Jews,
> with their families, at one time; the generous offers of the Muslims
> attracted these peoples.
> 
> The Qur'an forbids drinking, gambling, usury, all forms of vice, and is
> the first of the sacred Books to put a restriction on polygamy.
> Muhammad forbids the vengeance of blood and all blood feuds. He
> prepared the way for the abolition of slavery, encouraging the
> manumission of slaves by His own example, and greatly ameliorating
> their lot; slavery as practised in the West is unknown in Islam; slaves,
> such as the mameluke sultans of Egypt, could become kings. As for
> women, Muhammad has been called the greatest champion of women's
> rights the world has ever seen; Islam gives to women the same property
> rights as her husband; she can inherit and dispose of property, has
> various alimony and other rights, must be treated with respect. There is
> no color or race prejudice in Islam--color is "a sign of God" (30:21;
> 35:25). Islam teaches love of country (nationalism is its great
> contribution, the Guardian told Emeric Sala). The Muslims have no
> caste system, and the Hajj brings them all together, as equals. Islam
> imposes only five obligations on the faithful: They must affirm that there
> is no God but God and that Muhammad is the Apostle of God; they
> must pray five times a day; fast one month out of the year; pay the poor-
> rate annually; make one pilgrimage to Mecca in their lifetime, if they are
> able. The Muslims pray wherever they happen to be at the appointed
> hours, facing the Ka'bih; they must be in a state of cleanliness and have
> performed the ablutions.
> 
> In studying the Qur'an we should remember that no council of scholars
> has ever translated it into western languages, as was done with the King
> James and other versions of the Bible, and that the standard English
> rendering, George Sale's, is based on Maracci's Latin version, made for
> the purpose of discrediting Islam.
> 
> The Muslim Paradise and Hell are to be taken as symbols, not in the
> literal sense. The Qur'an tells of "The parable (mathal) of the Garden
> which the righteous are promised" (13:35). The descriptions are
> figurative, just as Jesus the Christ was speaking figuratively when He
> said to His disciples, "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine,
> until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
> (Matt. 26:29). Muhammad tells of "the meadows of Paradise" (42:21);
> He says Paradise has "storied pavilions beneath which...the rivers flow."
> (39:21). He speaks of the gardens of delight, and the cup that shall not
> oppress the sense, of the houris with faces fair as ostrich eggs, of the
> ever-blooming youths going round about with goblets, of lote-trees and
> acacias, of soft green cushions and delicate carpets. (Cf. 55,56, 37). He
> says of the believers in Paradise, "No vain discourse shall they hear
> therein, nor any falsehood, but only the cry, 'Peace! Peace!'" (56:24-25),
> 
> The Qur'an--the Book to be Read--is like the ocean, always new and
> always changing. It cannot be presented in brief--you cannot summarize
> the Atlantic. I have only suggested a few ripples. One further aspect of
> the Qur'an I would like to mention: its completely realistic view of
> humanity. (This fact of Omniscience being onto us is not without
> humor).
> 
> page 16
> 
> The Qur'an states that man "hath been created weak" (4:32) and
> "hasty" (70:19, 17:12); that woman is "forever contentious without
> reason." (43:17). It reminds man that he was made of a drop of "sorry
> water" (32:7) and repeatedly warns him, in the circumstances, against
> pride: "Walk not proudly in the land, for thou canst not cleave the
> earth, neither shalt thou equal the mountains in stature," (17:39). The
> true Muslims are humble, known by the dust on their foreheads--"their
> tokens are on their faces" (48:29)--from bowing down in prayer. In
> prosperity, an individual forgets God, returning quickly to Him when in
> trouble: "When We are gracious to man, he withdraweth and turneth
> him aside; but when evil toucheth him, he is a man of long prayers."
> (41:51). A believer whose custom it was to slip discreetly away from
> over-long meetings, was somewhat dismayed to come upon this: "God
> knoweth those of you who withdraw quietly from the assemblies,
> screening themselves behind others." (24: 63) .
> 
> What was He like, this Man Who, thirteen hundred years ago, said,
> "We shall hurl the truth at falsehood, and it shall smite it, and lo! it shall
> vanish." (21:18). The Imam 'Ali, who loved Muhammad, remembered
> Him as follows: "He was of the middle height, neither very tall nor very
> short. His skin was fair but ruddy, His eyes black; His beard, that
> surrounded all His face, luxuriant. The hair of His head was long and fell
> to His shoulders; it was black. His neck was white...His gait was so
> energetic you would have said He was wrenching His foot from a stone,
> yet at the same time so light He seemed to float...But He did not walk
> with pride, as the princes do. (Elsewhere we read that He sometimes
> walked very rapidly, and that He never turned, even if His mantle caught
> in a thorny bush). There was such sweetness in His face, that once you
> were in His presence you could not leave Him; if you were hungry, it fed
> you just to look at Him...When they entered His presence, the afflicted
> forgot their anguish. Whoever saw Him declared that he had never
> found, before or afterward, a man of such entrancing speech. His nose
> was aquiline, His teeth somewhat far apart. Sometimes He would let His
> hair fall free, sometimes He wore it knotted in two or four strands. At
> sixty-three...age had whitened but some fifteen of His hairs..." (Tabari,
> Chroniques, III, 202-203).
> 
> Fanny Knobloch, a distinguished early Bahá'í pioneer, once told me
> that if she ever were found worthy to enter Paradise and consort with
> the Prophets of God, she wished to be with Muhammad because she had
> fought His battles against the Christians for so many years. Undoubtedly,
> in the realms of the placeless, He knows that we Bahá'ís are trying to
> redress the wrongs that have been done Him for thirteen centuries.
> These verses, which He brought His followers, apply to us as well:
> 
> "Verily, in the creation of the Heavens and of the Earth, and in the
> succession of the night and of the day, are signs for men of
> understanding heart; Who standing, and sitting, and reclining, bear God
> in mind, and muse on the creation of the Heavens and of the Earth. 'O
> our Lord!' say they, 'Thou hast not created this in vain. No. Glory be to
> Thee! Keep us, then, from the torment of the fire...O our Lord! we have
> indeed heard the voice of one that called. He called us to the faith--
> 'Believe ye on your Lord'--and we have believed. O our Lord! forgive us
> then our sin, and hide away from us our evil deeds, and cause us to die
> with the righteous. O our Lord! and give us what Thou hast promised us
> by Thine Apostles, and put us not to shame on the day of the
> resurrection. Verily, Thou wilt not fail Thy promise.' And their Lord
> answereth them, 'I will not suffer the work of him among you that
> worketh, whether of male or female, to be lost...And they who have fled
> their country and quitted their homes and suffered in My Cause, and
> have fought and fallen, I will blot out their sins from them, and I will
> bring them into gardens beneath which the streams do flow...They shall
> abide therein forever.'"(3: 197 ff.).
> 
> page 17
> IV.
> 
> THE QUR'AN
> 
> Enemies of Islam have often said that Muhammad copied the Qur'an
> from the Christian and Jewish Scriptures. This is impossible. Muhammad
> knew only Arabic. He had never seen the Bible. "The earliest official
> Arabic translations of the Old and New Testaments were made centuries
> after Mohammed's death."[1]
> 
> If it be objected that the Prophet of God traveled to Syria in His earlier
> years, and that there, as well as in Arabia, there were both Jews and
> Christians (such as 'Abdu'llah ibn Salam--Waraqa--the Nestorian monk
> Buhayra - who understood and recognized Muhammad on the basis of
> their Scriptures) who could have relayed information to Muhammad,
> this of course is true. The Qur'an itself makes references to such
> sources--e.g., Surih 10:94: "And if thou art in doubt as to what we have
> sent down to thee, inquire at those who have read the Scriptures before
> thee." But we should explain that merely knowing of various religious
> teachings does not make one a Prophet of God.
> 
> It is important to understand that anyone could have compiled some
> former teachings in a book, but that only a Manifestation of God could
> create a living religion that swept across the world and influenced
> millions of human beings down the centuries .
> 
> Furthermore the historical material is only one aspect of the Qur'an.
> Muhammad could never have copied the laws which He inaugurated
> and the many other teachings He brought--from the Old and New
> Testaments, because they were not there.[1a]
> 
> The great miracle of Islam is that an illiterate man gave the Arabs their
> first Book.
> 
> As Muhammad approached forty, He would retire to a cave on Mt.
> Hira to be alone and meditate. Finally He was absent for a long period,
> and since He had taken very few provisions with Him, Khadijih was
> much troubled. She sent a slave to the mountain, and he stood at the
> cave and called, but only his own voice echoed back. When Muhammad
> returned, He was exhausted. An apparition had come to Him, an angel,
> saying: "Read!" Muhammad had said, "I cannot read." Again the
> presence cried, "Read!" and then a third time, and Muhammad said,
> "What shall I read ?" And the being said, "Read, in the name of thy Lord
> who created; Created man from clots of blood...Thy Lord is the most
> Beneficent, Who hath taught the use of the pen; Hath taught man that
> which he knoweth not." These are the opening lines of the first surih of
> the Qur'an according to Rodwell's arrangement. The Qur'an means the
> Reading, or the Book to be Read. A surih is a chapter of the Qur'an--
> the word is also used of a row of stones in a wall, or a rank of soldiers,
> or things in a series.
> 
> Muhammad began to fear He was possessed of a jinn, or was going
> mad. He was in despair. Sometimes measured phrases burst from, Him.
> He went to Khadijih, and she consoled Him: "...are you not the Amin
> (the Trusted One)...? How can God allow you to be deceived when you
> do not
> 
> Bodley, R V C, The Messenger, 86.
> 
> [1a] . There is only one direct
> quotation from the Bible in the entire Qur'an: Surih 21:105 quotes
> Psalms 37:29.
> 
> page 18
> 
> deceive? Are you not a pious, sober, charitable, hospitable man? Have
> you not respected your parents,. fed the hungry, clothed the naked,
> helped the traveller, protected the weak? It is not possible that you are
> the plaything of lying demons and malicious jinns."[2] She talked with
> her cousin Waraqa about this; he was a Christian, versed in the
> Scriptures, and he was overjoyed: "Holy, holy, verily this is the Namus-
> i-Akbar, who came to Moses. He will be the prophet of His people. Tell
> Him this. Bid Him be of brave heart."[3] For some time Muhammad
> continued to fear Himself the victim of a hallucination. He returned to
> the mountain, and no voice came. He was utterly despondent, and
> longed for death. Then once again Gabriel appeared, and brought Him
> great consolation--a surih of the Qur'an called The Brightness: "By the
> noon-day Brightness, And by the night when it darkeneth' Thy Lord hath
> not forsaken thee, neither hath He been displeased. And surely the
> future shall be better for thee than the past, And in the end shall thy
> Lord be bounteous to thee and thou be satisfied. Did He not find thee
> an orphan and gave thee a home ?...And found thee needy and enriched
> thee....as for the favors of thy Lord tell them abroad."
> 
> The angel Gabriel is the Holy Ghost, the intermediary between God
> and Muhammad; in Christianity it is symbolized by a dove; in the Bahá'í
> Dispensation, the spirit of God within Bahá'u'lláh is personified by a
> Maiden, as the Guardian explains in the book God Passes By (p. 118,
> 121, etc.). The Trinity according to our teachings is the unknowable
> Lord, the Perfect Man, and the Holy Spirit.
> 
> The Qur'an was not revealed to Muhammad all at one time. It came
> to Him over a period of about twenty-three years, that is, from the time
> He was forty until His ascension in Medina in 632. Sometimes the voice
> was silent. Sometimes its on-rush was so great that a vein would swell on
> Muhammad's forehead, and His sweat would pour down. Once, we read,
> He was riding on a camel when the revelation came to Him with such
> intensity that the camel was forced to its knees. These physical effects
> of the revelation upon Him account for the enemies of Islam referring
> to Muhammad as an epileptic. Modern scholarship has refuted this. No
> one in the disturbed physical condition of epilepsy could have endured
> Muhammad's thirteen years of agony in Mecca, His arduous desert
> campaigns, and His onerous and complex duties as Head of the Muslim
> State. Furthermore, then as now, inspired utterance is distinguishable
> from pathological expression--the babbling of a sick man could never
> create a Book that has attracted and inspired the most brilliant minds of
> many centuries.[3a]
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh says, "...the unfailing testimony of God to both the East and
> the West is none other than the Qur'an." (Iqan, 210). The Guardian tells
> us that the Qur'an, "apart from the sacred scriptures of the Babi and
> Bahá'í Revelations, constitutes the only Book which can be regarded as
> an absolutely authenticated Repository of the Word of God." (The
> Advent of Divine Justice). Bahá'u'lláh writes of the "mighty Qur'an"
> (Son of the Wolf, 112) and says "Hearken unto that which the Merciful
> hath revealed in the Qur'an..." (Ibid.., 82). He says that Muhammad
> "came unto them with a Book that judged between truth and falsehood
> with a justice which turned into light the darkness of the earth, and
> enraptured the hearts of such as had known Him..." (Ibid., 81). You
> must not be afraid of not being able to understand the Qur'an;
> Bahá'u'lláh says, "Were it beyond
> 
> Dermenghem, E., Life of Mahomet, 60, 61.
> 
> Ameer-`Ali, Spirit
> of Islam, 84.
> 
> [3a] . Dermenghem, op. cit., 249: "His creative ability and
> the vastness of his genius, his sense of the practical, his will, his
> prudence, his self-control and his activity--in short the life he led--make
> it impossible to take this inspired mystic for a visionary epileptic."
> 
> page 19
> 
> the comprehension of men, how could it have been declared as a
> universal testimony unto all people?" (Iqan, 210). He says, "The
> understanding of His words and the comprehension of the utterances
> of the Birds of Heaven are in no wise dependent upon human learning.
> They depend solely upon purity of heart, chastity of soul, and freedom
> of spirit." (Ibid., 211). And the Bab has said, "Should a tiny ant desire in
> this day to be possessed of such power as to be able to unravel the
> abstrusest and most bewildering passages of the Qur'an, its wish will...be
> fulfilled, inasmuch as the mystery of eternal might vibrates within the
> innermost being of all created things."[4]
> 
> The Qur'an is divided into 114 surihs, which in turn are divided into
> "verses"--the Arabic word for these is "ayih," a term signifying any
> revealed verse or other sign or miracle of the Manifestation of God.
> Muhammad had nothing to do with this division, or with the chapter
> titles, which latter are taken from the first important word, or from
> something else in the text. Every surih except the ninth is prefixed with
> the words, "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," a
> verse which Muhammad constantly used. As Bahá'u'lláh frequently says,
> God in the Qur'an is preeminently the "All-Merciful."
> 
> Some surihs are prefaced with detached letters of the alphabet--e.g., the
> surih which Muhammad is said to have called "the heart of the Qur'an,"
> and which is read to the dying in Muslim countries, is named the Ya Sin,
> because it begins with these letters. We read in God Passes By ( 140)
> that Bahá'u'lláh when in Baghdad revealed a commentary on these
> letters.
> 
> The Qur'an is from the literary standpoint most beautiful. It is the
> standard Arabic Text, and is written in the dialect of the tribe of
> Quraysh, to which Muhammad belonged. Imam 'Ali was the great
> authority on the Qur'an; he said, "There is not a verse in the Qur'an of
> which I do not know the matter, the parties to whom it refers, and the
> place and time of its revelation, whether by night or by day, whether in
> the plains or upon the mountains."[5] I read in the Persian Bayan that
> 'Ali would keep the fragments of the Qur'an in the fold of his robe. The
> verses were written down at the moment of revelation or soon after, on
> palm leaves, leather, stone, the shoulder-blades of sheep; furthermore,
> the Arabs had wonderful memories, and many learned it by heart. What
> we have today is a gathering-up of all the verses into one text; to this
> day, in spite of all the schisms in Islam, there is only one Qur'an, and
> scholars say "There is probably in the world no other work which has
> remained twelve centuries with so pure a text."[6] The oldest copies now
> extant probably belong to the third century of the Hijra, and a few may
> belong to the second.[7] Muir, certainly no friend of Islam, tells us that
> "we may upon the strongest presumption affirm that every verse in the
> Kor'an is the genuine and unaltered composition of Mohammad himself,
> and conclude with at least a close approximation to the verdict of Von
> Hammer: That we hold the Kor'an as surely Mohammad's word, as the
> Mohammadans hold it to be the word of God." (Op. cit., xxviii). (The
> few variations are mostly vowel points and diacritical signs, invented at
> a later date).
> 
> Soon after the ascension of Muhammad many reciters of the Qur'an
> were killed in battle; it was therefore thought necessary to compile the
> entire Qur'an into one; the task was given to the Prophet's amanuensis,
> Zayd ibn Thabit. Therefore, although with misgivings and doubting the
> 
> Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh.
> 
> Muir, Sir Wm, The Life of
> Muhammad, Edinburgh rev. ed, 1923, xx iv n.
> 
> Ibid., xxiii.
> 
> Ibid., xxiii n.
> 
> page 20
> 
> propriety of the work, Zayd searched out the entire Qur'an and
> compiled it, simply putting the long surihs first, regardless of chronology.
> As a matter of fact, the short surihs at the end, telling of the coming of
> the Day of God, were revealed at the beginning. (The English version
> of J.M. Rodwell attempts to restore the true chronology). Zayd's text
> continued to be standard during 'Umar's caliphate, but it was found that
> variations had crept in to many copies; the men of Syria and 'Iraq had
> different readings, and the caliph 'Uthman therefore had all the versions
> compared with Zayd's original, Zayd and three coadjutors being
> appointed to do the work. Transcripts of this recension were sent out to
> all the cities, all other copies were burnt, and what we still have is this
> recension of the third caliph's. Zayd's original compilation was made
> within two or three years of Muhammad's ascension, and there is no
> question as to its accuracy; 'Ali, the Imam, was there, and many of the
> devout who knew the Qur'an by heart, and besides the transcripts of the
> separate portions were in daily use.[7a]
> 
> There is to my knowledge no satisfactory translation of the Qur'an into
> English. Some day a Bahá'í group of scholars may perhaps make one.
> Able Christian writers have translated the Qur'an but their hostility
> always creeps in. Of the equally able Muslim translators, not one has had
> the necessary literary skill to convey the Text to us, and this also applies
> to the work of Christian converts to Islam The translators I use are Sale
> ( 1734), who is scholarly and accurate; Rodwell ( 1861), whose work is
> the most literary in quality and easy to read; Maulana Muhammad-'Ali,
> who includes both Arabic and English texts and a learned and helpful
> commentary; and a two-volume version by A. Yusuf 'Ali, also a bi-
> lingual text, mechanically the most legible and accessible of all.
> 
> In Persia the Qur'an is in constant use. It is often seen with a lacquered
> cover, and an illuminated opening page, and may be carefully wrapped
> in a hand-woven cloth. When you move to a new house, the Qur'an is
> taken there first, to bless it. When you leave on a journey, someone
> holds the Qur'an over you and you pass back and forth under it to
> ensure safety. My Muslim aunt read her Qur'an faithfully, every day. She
> longed for us to be Muslims, instead of Bahá'ís. She often thought she
> was ill, and would summon us to her deathbed. At one of her numerous
> deathbeds, she took her large Qur'an and banged me on the head with
> it, as a sort of baptism.
> 
> When you wish for guidance in Persia, you open the Qur'an and read
> wherever your eye falls. This is also done with the Odes of Hafiz. A
> friend of ours, married but romantically inclined, was once going on a
> journey. He decided to ask Hafiz if he would meet an attractive woman
> on the trip. He opened the book of Odes and his eye fell on this verse:
> "You have found your pearl; seek no more."
> 
> In addition to the Qur'an, the revealed word of God, there is a great
> body of hadith, i.e., recorded traditions of what Muhammad did and
> said; also, to the Shi'ah Muslims--that section of Islam from which the
> Bab arose--there are the recorded traditions of the holy Imams. Hadith
> means relation of something that happened; it is from the root hadatha-
> -to happen. Another word used instead of hadith is sunna--which means
> the way or custom (of the Prophet). After Muhammad's ascension, a
> new generation
> 
> [7a] . The Treaty of Versailles required Germany to restore one of these
> 'Uthman Qur'ans. Earnest Carroll Moore, The Story of Instruction, 256.
> 
> page 21
> 
> was eager to learn all they could of Him from His old Companions (the
> Muhajirin, Emigrants, His companions from Mecca, or the Ansar,
> Helpers, His Medinite followers).[8] We hear of a conversation that
> took place in the mosque at Kufa: "didst thou really see the Prophet, and
> wert thou on terms of familiar intercourse with him?...And how wert
> thou wont to behave towards the Prophet?" "Verily, we used to labour
> hard to please him." "Well, by the Lord...if I had been but alive in his
> time, I would not have allowed him to put his blessed foot upon the
> earth, but would have borne him on my shoulders wheresoever he
> listed." (Muir, op. cit., xxx). Each hadith had its isnad--its ascription, or
> chain of guarantors leading back to its source (Cf. Alfred Guillaume,
> The Traditions of the Prophet, Oxford, 1924; 20). A basic European
> authority on hadith literature is Ignaz Goldziher. The "Sahih" of al-
> Bukhari is now available in English and French). Men called "Collectors"
> spent their whole lives traveling from city to city, looking for vestiges of
> memories of the Prophet. The earliest of the six standard Sunni
> collections were compiled under the caliphate of al-Ma'mun (813-833
> A.D.); the four canonical Shi'ah collections somewhat later. The
> collector al-Bukhari, after years of journeying, collected 600,000
> traditions, and concluded that only 4,000 of these were authentic. There
> are 1,465 collections of traditions extant. The authenticity of a tradition
> was decided on the basis of the character of the men in its chain of
> guarantors. Muslim law is to a considerable extent founded on the
> hadith; so is Muslim practice; for instance we hear of a pious man who
> would not eat watermelon--he knew watermelon was not forbidden, but
> he could not discover what the Prophet did with the seeds. Here are
> typical hadith:
> 
> "The world is sweet in the heart, and green to the eye...then look to
> your actions, and abstain from the world and its wickedness."
> 
> "To every young person who honoureth the old, on account of their
> age, may God appoint those who shall honour him in his years."
> 
> "The most excellent of alms is that of a man of small means, which
> he has earned by labour, and from which he giveth as much as he is
> able."
> 
> "He is of the most perfect Muslims, whose disposition is most liked
> by his own family."
> 
> "He who asketh the help of God in contending with the evil promptings of his own heart obtaineth it."
> 
> "Heaven lieth at the feet of mothers."
> 
> "The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr."
> 
> "Kindness is a mark of faith; and whoever hath not kindness hath not
> faith."
> 
> "Verily, God is mild, and is fond of mildness, and He giveth to the mild what He doth not give to the harsh."
> 
> "Desire not the world, and God will love you; and desire not what men have, and they
> will love you."
> 
> "The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self."
> 
> "Death is a bridge that uniteth friend with friend."
> 
> "Trust in God, but tie your camel."
> 
> "No man hath drunk a better draught than anger which he hath swallowed for God's sake."
> 
> "Paradise is nearer to you than the thongs of your sandals; and the Fire likewise."
> 
> Muhammad's prayer, after being stoned out of Ta'if was this:
> 
> "O Lord! I make my complaint unto Thee, out of my feebleness, and
> the
> 
> The general term for the Prophet's Companions is Ashib, their
> successors being the Tabi'un.
> 
> page 22
> 
> vanity of my wishes. I am insignificant in the sight of men, O Thou most
> merciful! Lord of the weak! Thou art my Lord! Forsake me not. Leave
> me not a prey to strangers, nor to mine enemies. If Thou art not
> offended, I am safe. I seek refuge in the light of Thy countenance, by
> which all darkness is dispelled, and peace cometh in the Here and the
> Hereafter. Solve Thou my difficulties as it pleaseth Thee. There is no
> power, no strength, save in Thee."[9]
> 
> See The Sayings of Muhammad, compiled by Sir 'Abdu'llah
> Suhrawardy.
> 
> page 23
> V.
> 
> WHAT IS ISLAM?
> 
> Islam is a fuller Revelation from God than any which preceded it.
> There are a number of prophecies in the Old and New Testament
> proclaiming the advent of Muhammad:
> 
> Deuteronomy 33:2: "The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir
> unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten
> thousands of saints..." Paran is a mountain in Arabia, and the Paran
> references are all to Islam; the other Manifestations in this particular
> prophecy are Moses, Jesus (Seir being a mountain in Galilee), and
> Bahá'u'lláh, the Lord of Hosts. Habakkuk 3:3 speaks of the "Holy One
> from mount Paran." Genesis 17:20 says: "And as for Ishmael...Behold,
> I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him
> exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great
> nation." Muhammad descends from Abraham through Ishmael, and the
> twelve princes are the twelve Imams. Deuteronomy, 18:18 says: "I will
> raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee
> (Moses), and will put my words in his mouth..." This could not refer to
> the Israelites because it says "brethren," not "seed." John 1:19-21 shows
> that the Jews were expecting three personages: Christ, Elias, and that
> Prophet like unto Moses: the Jews having asked John the Baptist if he
> was Christ, he said no; "And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias?
> And he saith, I am not, Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No."
> Qur'an 73:15 compares Muhammad to Moses: "Verily we have sent
> unto you an Apostle to witness against you, even as we sent an Apostle
> to Pharaoh." I John 4:1-3 says: "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every
> spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God...."
> This of course is applicable to Muhammad. Again, Qur'an 61:6 says:
> "And remember when Jesus the son of Mary said, 'O children of Israel!
> of a truth I am God's apostle to you to confirm the law which was given
> before me, and to announce an apostle that shall come after me whose
> name shall be Ahmad!'" The Muslims read the Paraclete, John 16:7,
> 14:16, 14:26, and 15:26 (also I John 2:1) as the Periclyte, or Illustrious,
> which is the meaning of Ahmad.[1] Muhammad said, in an indubitable
> hadith: "I have five names: I am Muhammad; and Ahmad; and Effacing,
> by means of which God effaces infidelity; and Gatherer, who will gather
> people; and Final, that is to say, the last of the Prophets." ('Ali Tabari,
> op. cit., 42).
> 
> Muhammad, called by Bahá'u'lláh "God's Well-Beloved," (Shoghi
> Effendi, World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, 106), is at one with all the other
> Manifestations, and therefore we must know Him as well as the others.
> Bahá'u'lláh says to the unbelievers, "If ye cherish the desire to slay
> Muhammad, seize Me and put an end to My life, for I am He, and My
> Self is His Self." (Gleanings, 101).
> 
> The Supreme Religious Court of Egypt in 1926 officially declared the
> Bahá'ís "as the believers in heresy, offensive and injurious to Islam, and
> wholly incompatible with the accepted doctrines and practice of its
> orthodox adherents." The text of their decision reads that the Bahá'í
> Faith is a new religion, entirely independent, one of the established
> religious systems of the world; that Bahá'ís are no more Muslims than
> Muslims are Christians or Jews (Bahá'í Administration, 3rd Ed., 91 and
> 111). The opinion the Muslims have of us is such that they are still killing
> us in the streets of Persia.
> 
> See Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Paraclete the word has
> been translated Comforter in the Gospel, Advocate in the Epistle.
> 
> page 24
> 
> When I worked on a Persian newspaper, the editor asked about my
> Bahá'í ring; I explained, and he said, "Was there a shortage of religions,
> that you had to choose that one ?" Today the secularized Muslims, i.e.,
> the younger, educated element, do not care about religion. All Muslims,
> however, maintain that no new religion would come after Muhammad,
> since the text of the Qur'an declares that He is the seal of the Prophets
> (33:40). However, Bahá'u'lláh explains in the Iqan (161 ff.) What all the
> Manifestations of God are First and Last, beginning and end--or, as the
> Revelation says, Alpha and Omega...It is obvious that we should expect
> no thanks for vindicating Muhammad, either from the fanatical element
> among the Muslims, who have cast us out, or from the fanatical element
> among the Christians, who condemn us as spreaders of Islam--but a long
> injustice has been done to Muhammad, and a Bahá'í will always
> champion the cause of truth, let the chips fall where they may.
> 
> The situation, as we all know, is this: All religions are inwardly one and
> eternal, but outwardly various and subject to change. The Guardian
> writes of "successive, of preliminary and progressive
> revelations...beginning with Adam and ending with the Bab..." (World
> Order of Bahá'u'lláh, 103). Today we are living in the promised time of
> all the ages, the great Day of God.
> 
> The Guardian directs the believers to "approach reverently and with a
> mind purged from pre-conceived ideas the study of the Qur'an..."
> (Advent of Divine Justice, 41); and to obtain "a sound knowledge of the
> history and tenets of Islam...the source and background of their Faith.."
> (Idem).
> 
> The Christians do not seem to understand that the Qur'an teaches
> belief in all the Prophets of God. When I went to Persia I found my
> Muslim relatives were more fanatical Christians than my Protestant
> Christian relatives. The Qur'an teaches acceptance of all the
> Manifestations up to and including Muhammad, and establishes them on
> the same plane: "Say ye: 'We believe in God, and that which hath been
> sent down to us, and that which hath been sent down to Abraham and
> Ismael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes: and that which hath been
> given to Moses and to Jesus, and that which was given to the prophets
> from their Lord. No difference do we make between any of them: and
> to God are we resigned (Muslims).'" (Qur'an 2:130; see also 3:78; 4:151;
> 5:73). The Qur'an teaches the virgin birth of Jesus; it has a complete
> Surih--the 19th--devoted to Mary. It does not hold with the notion of
> three Gods (4:169; 5:77) or that Jesus the Messiah is the son of God:
> "God is only one God! Far be it from His glory that He should have a
> son!" (Qur'an 4:169). But Muhammad insists on belief in Jesus, and
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá' shows how the Qur'an adds much information on the life
> of Jesus, not given in the Gospel story (Promulgation of Universal
> Peace, I, 196). The Qur'an also states that of all people the Christians
> are "nearest in affection" to the Muslims, "because they are free from
> pride. And when they hear that which hath been sent down to the
> Apostle, thou seest their eyes overflow with tears at the truth they
> recognize therein..." (5:85-86). 'Abdu'l-Bahá says, "Muhammad never
> fought against the Christians; on the contrary, he treated them kindly
> and gave them perfect freedom...In the edicts which he promulgated it
> is clearly stated that the lives, properties, and laws of the Christians and
> Jews are under the protection of God..." (Some Answered Questions,
> 25-26). Ameer-`Ali points out that Muhammad's Charter to the
> Christians gave them rights that they did not enjoy under their own
> sovereigns (Spirit of Islam,
> 
> page 25
> 
> 176).[2] As for His relation to the people of the Old Testament, the
> Qur'an compares Muhammad to Moses (73:15), and Muhammad says
> the Qur'an confirms the Book of Moses: "But before the Qur'an was
> the Book of Moses, a guide and a mercy; and this Book confirmeth it...."
> (46:11). Elsewhere in the Qur'an He says His is the same Faith as those
> gone before: "To you hath He prescribed the Faith which He
> commanded unto Noah, and which we have revealed to thee, and which
> we commanded unto Abraham and Moses and Jesus, saying, 'Observe
> this faith, and be not divided into sects therein."' (42: 11).
> 
> There are many unfounded charges brought against Muhammad and
> we must know how to refute them. They are generally of an emotional
> nature, centering on women and on war; the inquirer's thinking is at
> once blocked by the emotional content of the accusation, and he turns
> away.
> 
> The first thing said is that Muhammad had several wives. We should
> explain that when Muhammad came into the world He found polygamy
> generally practised. Muhammad did not invent polygamy. Parviz, a
> contemporary king of Persia, had 12,000 wives. Tabari tells how, each
> year, the king would despatch three messengers throughout the realm,
> to replenish the (already somewhat cramped) harem. These envoys did
> not, like Hollywood talent scouts, send back descriptions of the ladies
> they discovered; on the contrary, each of them set out with a description,
> and it was his job to find girls who conformed to it. (Chroniques, II, 312
> ff.).
> 
> The Jewish law set no limit to the number of wives a man might have.
> The holy Prophets of the Old Testament, such as Abraham, had more
> than one wife. As for Christianity, Jesus does not establish monogamy
> nor forbid polygamy. The early Christian clergy often had more than one
> wife at one time. W.E.H. Lecky says, "A tax called 'Culagium,' which was
> in fact a license to clergymen, to keep concubines, was during several
> centuries systematically levied by princes." (History of European Morals,
> II, 330). "An Italian bishop of the tenth century epigrammatically
> described the morals of his time, when he declared, that if he were to
> enforce the canons against unchaste people administering ecclesiastical
> rites, no one would be left in the church except the boys; and if he were
> to observe the canons against bastards, these also must be excluded."
> (Idem). Eventually, asceticism was forced on the priests, some being
> obliged to discard their legal wives. "St. Gregory the Great describes the
> virtue of a priest, who, through motives of piety, had discarded his wife.
> As he lay dying, she hastened to him to watch the bed which for forty
> years she had not been allowed to share, and, bending over what seemed
> the inanimate form of her husband, she tried to ascertain whether any
> breath still remained, when the dying saint, collecting his last energies,
> exclaimed,
> 
> See The Oath of Muhammad to the Followers of the Nazarene, tr.
> by Anton F. Haddad, 1902; Published by Bahá'í Board of Counsel, N.
> Y. Written by `Ali and signed by twenty-two leading companions of the
> Prophet this was issued to the monks of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai; for
> Arabic version, see Sunnajatu't-Tarab by Naufal Effendi Naufal: "This
> letter is directed to the embracers of Islam...as a Covenant to the
> followers of the Nazarene ..who disobeys that which is therein will be
> regarded as one who has corrupted His Testament, rejected His
> Authority, despised His Religion, and made himself deserving of His
> Curse... Whenever monks, devotees and pilgrims gather together...Verily
> we are back of them and shall protect them, and their properties..."
> Exempted from all but a voluntary tax "they must not be offended, or
> disturbed, or coerced or compelled." Their judges and monks are to be
> free, no churches are to be plundered, no poll taxes are to be imposed
> on those whose occupation is worship (judges, monks) "Verily I shall
> keep their compact in the East or the West, in the North or the South,
> for they are under My protection and the testament of My safety, against
> all things which they abhor " The wealthy and able were to pay the about
> 12 dirhems a year poll tax, but none were to be obliged to carry arms,
> "for the Muslims have to fight for them " "Do not dispute or argue with
> them " No Christian woman is to marry a Muslim without her consent;
> she is not to be prevented from going to her church for prayer..." The
> Muslims must protect them and defend them against others. It is
> positively incumbent upon everyone of the Muslim nations not to
> contradict or disobey this oath until the Day of Resurrection...."
> 
> page 26
> 
> 'Woman, begone; take away the straw; there is fire yet."' (Ibid., 332).
> 
> The Qur'an teaches monogamy. The text states: "marry but two, or
> three, or four: and if ye still fear that ye shall not act equitably, then one
> only." (4:3); elsewhere the text states that such equitable action would
> be impossible: "And ye will not have it at all in your power to treat your
> wives alike, even though you fain would do so...." (4:128).
> 
> The fact that Jesus did not marry was obviously not intended as an
> example to mankind, since this would mean our extinction. The Qur'an
> states of the Christians, "...as to the monastic life, they invented it
> themselves. The desire only of pleasing God did we prescribe to them..."
> (57:27). The whole tenor of Islam is to live in the world but not of it, and
> to practise abstinence and frugality; a hadith, sums this up: A goat had
> been killed in Muhammad's Household, and He asked, "What remaineth
> of it?" His wife 'Ayishih answered, "Nothing but its shoulder remaineth;
> for we have sent the rest to the poor and neighbors." Muhammad
> answered, "The whole goat remaineth save only the shoulder...."
> 
> As for Muhammad's own marriages, He was a celibate until twenty-
> five, had lived in strict monogamy until He was past fifty; He then
> married, in some cases to provide for them, a number of His follower's
> widows, for the male Muslims were being killed in battle; in other cases,
> His marriages were political, establishing alliances with other tribes; He
> had also two Jewish wives and one Christian, thus establishing inter-
> Faith marriages. The list of those who became the Prophet's wives
> varies somewhat, but the number totals about thirteen. Muhammad was
> the Head of a State, a powerful Ruler, Whose followers would gladly
> give Him anything He asked, even life; He could easily have followed
> custom by taking any number of wives, and by living in indulgence and
> luxury like the wealthy Meccans. Instead, He was, all the days of His
> life, so frugal and abstinent, giving everything away to guests and to the
> poor, that His wives protested against the poverty of His Household;
> He then gave them their choice of continuing to share His poverty or
> going their way. This is the text of the Qur'an: "O Prophet! (The Angelic
> Presence addresses Muhammad throughout in the second person, often
> prefacing a commandment with "Say:") say to thy wives, if ye desire this
> present life and its braveries, come then, I will provide for you, and
> dismiss you with an honorable dismissal." (33:28). We read that when
> His daughter Fatimih was married to 'Ali, the only dowry that the
> Prophet could give her as "a bed woven with twisted palm-leaves, a
> pillow of skin stuffed with palm-tree fibers, an earthen pot, a waterskin,
> and a basket containing some raisins and dates." ('Ali Tabari, The Book
> of Religion and Empire, 25). Fatimih's hands were sorely hurt from the
> handle of the flour mill, when grinding the grains for flour; she asked if
> she could not have a serving woman, but the Prophet said no, "Because,
> my little daughter, I have not in my house a place to contain all the
> Muslim women of whom you are one; therefore remember and thank
> God frequently." (Idem)..To sum up, polygamy was greatly restricted as
> the result of Islam, and the basis for true monogamy, which will be one
> of the blessings of the Bahá'í world, was established.
> 
> Again, enemies of Islam say that Muhammad degraded women; but
> western scholars have known for a long time that the Qur'an grants to
> women rights which no previous religion had given them; to prove this,
> you have only to compare the texts of the various Faiths. Furthermore,
> the Qur'an gives the sexes full spiritual equality: "Verily the Muslims of
> either sex, and the true believers of either sex, and the devout men and
> the devout women, and the men of truth, and the women of truth, and
> the patient men and the patient women,
> 
> page 27
> 
> and the humble men and the humble women, and the men who give
> alms and the women who give alms, and the men who fast and the
> women who fast, and the chaste men and the chaste women, and the
> men and the women who oft remember God: for them hath God
> prepared forgiveness and a rich recompense. (33:35).
> 
> Another false charge is that Islam was spread by the sword. The
> Muslims point to the way Christianity was spread, from the Church-
> sanctioned slaughters of Charlemagne to the massacre and enslavement
> of the American Indians; Ameer-`Ali states that "The followers of the
> 'Prince of Peace' burnt and ravished, pillaged and murdered
> promiscuously old and young, male and female, without compunction,
> up to recent times..." (Spirit of Islam, 180-181). He notes that Calvin
> burned Servetus for his opinions on the Trinity, and the Protestants
> applauded. (Ibid., 302). The Qur'an says, "Let there be no compulsion
> in religion." (2:257) "What! wilt thou compel men to become believers?
> No soul can believe but by the permission of God..." (10:99-100). He
> always enjoined clemency, when He sent out expeditions against hostile
> tribes: "...molest not the harmless, spare the weakness of the female sex;
> injure not the infant...or those who are ill...Abstain from demolishing the
> dwellings of the unresisting inhabitants; destroy not the means of their
> subsistence...." (Ameer-`Ali, op.cit., 180). The conquered populations
> were given their choice of accepting Islam or paying a moderate
> capitation-tax (jizya) which incidentally released them from the military
> service compulsory for Muslims. The non-Muslim subjects were called
> dhimmis, protected persons of other faiths (ahlu'dh-dhimma);[3] the
> second caliph even refers to them in his will and testament when he
> recommends them to his successor: "I commend to his care the dhimmis,
> who enjoy the protection of God and of the Prophet; let him see to it
> that the covenant with them is kept...." (T.W. Arnold, The Preaching of
> Islam, 3rd ed., 57). The many references to leading persons of other
> faiths at the Muslim courts, and the long history of Islamic polemical
> writing, are sufficient proof that non-Muslims flourished under Muslim
> rule. T.W. Arnold, (op. cit., 143 f.) gives the following:
> 
> One of the Spanish Muhammadans who was driven out of his native
> country in the last expulsion of the Moriscoes in 1610, while protesting
> against the persecutions of the Inquisition, makes the following
> vindication of the toleration of his co-religionists:
> 'Did our victorious
> ancestors ever once attempt to extirpate Christianity out of Spain, when
> it was in their power ? Did they not suffer your forefathers to enjoy the
> free use of their rites at the same time that they wore their chains? Is
> not the absolute injunction of our Prophet, that whatever nation is
> conquered by Musaknan steel, should, upon the payment of a moderate
> annual tribute, be permitted to persevere in their own pristine
> persuasion, how absurd soever, or to embrace what other belief they
> themselves best approved of ? If there may have been some examples
> of forced conversions, they are so rare as scarce to deserve mentioning,
> and only attempted by men who had not the fear of God, and the
> Prophet, before their eyes, and who, in so doing, have acted directly and
> diametrically contrary to the holy precepts and ordinances of Islam
> which cannot, without sacrilege, be violated by any who would be held
> worthy of the honourable epithet of Musulman....You can never
> produce, among us, any bloodthirsty, formal tribunal, on account of
> different persuasions in points of faith, that anywise approaches your
> execrable Inquisition. Our arms, it is true, are ever open to receive all
> who are disposed to embrace our religion; but we are not allowed by our
> sacred Qur'an to tyrannise over consciences.
> 
> The Imam `Ali said: "The blood of the dhimmi is as the blood of the
> Muslim." Ameer-`Ali, Spirit of Islam, 268.
> 
> page 28
> 
> Our proselytes have all imaginable encouragement, and have no sooner
> professed God's Unity and His Apostle's mission but they become one
> of us, without reserve; taking to wife our daughters, and being employed
> in posts of trust, honour and profit; we contenting ourselves with only
> obliging them to wear our habit, and to seem true believers in outward
> appearance, without ever offering to examine their consciences...."
> 
> Arnold adds, "This very spirit of toleration was made one of the main
> articles in an account of the 'Apostacies and Treasons of the Moriscoes,'
> drawn up by the Archbishop of Valencia in 1602 when recommending
> their expulsion to Philip III, as follows: 'That they commended nothing
> so much as that liberty of conscience in all matters of religion, which the
> Turks, and all other Muhammadans, suffer their subjects to enjoy."
> 
> We hear a great deal these days of the Four Freedoms--freedom from
> want and fear, freedom of speech and belief; freedom of belief is not a
> modern invention--we owe it to Islam.
> 
> page 29
> VI.
> 
> THE HOLY IMAMS
> 
> As Muhammad lay dying, He called for materials to write. He said,
> "Fetch Me hither ink and paper, that I may record for you a writing
> which shall hinder you from going astray forever." But 'Umar said, "Pain
> is deluding Him. We have God's Book, which is enough." So the
> companions wrangled at the deathbed, whether to bring the materials
> and write the words, and Muhammad sent them away.
> 
> At the taking of Mecca, surih 110 of the Qur'an had been revealed;
> Muhammad regarded it as the warning of His own death; it states:
> "When the help of God and the victory arrive, And thou seest men
> entering the religion of God by troops; Then utter the praise of the
> Lord, implore His pardon; for He loveth to turn in mercy." Tradition
> says that when it was revealed He called Fatimih and said, "My
> daughter! I have received intimation of My approaching end." And
> Fatimih wept. And he said, "Why weepest thou....? Be comforted...."
> 
> The Hidden Words is the Hidden Book of Fatimih--the words which
> Gabriel brought to mitigate her anguish: for she had seen her Father's
> death, and, forty days after the Prophet had ascended, the schism in
> Islam beginning before her eyes. Those unknown words addressed to
> Fatimih were believed by Shi'ah Islam to be in the possession of the
> Promised One Who would come from the line of her descendants; and
> they were called "Hidden" because all down the centuries their content
> was unknown.
> 
> Muhammad had unmistakably appointed His successor, but nothing
> had been written down. The Qur'an, so detailed in other things, is silent
> here.
> 
> When the Prophet was returning from His Farewell Pilgrimage to
> Mecca, He had the caravan halt; He told the concourse of people to
> gather in the shade of some thorn trees, and had the ,m build a pulpit
> of saddles, near the Pool of Khumm. Then He raised 'Ali up and said,
> "Whoever hath Me as his Master, hath 'Ali as his Master...I have been
> summoned to the gate of God, and I shall soon depart...to be concealed
> from you." Then He spoke of two treasures He would leave them: "The
> greatest treasure is the Book of God...Hold fast to it and do not lose it
> and do not change it. The other treasure is the line of My descendants."
> 
> The great tragedy of Islam is that three men, one after the other, took
> over the headship of the Faith for a period of twenty-four years, and that
> all this time the Imam 'Ali was forced to stand aside. He must have
> suffered untold agonies as He watched the irreparable damage being
> done, knowing all the time in His heart that He was the intended of
> God--the Imam, the one who stands before the people, the divinely
> ordained, divinely inspired.
> 
> Muhammad was dead. The people could not accept this. They had seen
> Him in the mosque, only a little time before; His voice still echoed there.
> 'Umar came into the room and lifted the sheet which covered the
> Prophet; then he stood at the street door and proclaimed to the people
> that Muhammad had only swooned away; 'Ali simply looked at 'Umar
> and wept; Abu Bakr entered, lifted the striped sheet, and kissed the
> dead face. And he said, "Sweet Thou wert in life, sweet in death." Then
> he hurried to the mosque and remonstrated with 'Umar and said, "Let
> him then know, whosoever
> 
> page 30
> 
> worshippeth Muhammad, that Muhammad is dead; but whoso
> worshippeth God, let him know that the Lord liveth." And while 'Ali, the
> appointed Imam, was grieving over the body of His Beloved, and the
> funeral washings had not yet been made, 'Umar and Abu Bakr were
> seeing to their appointment as caliph (successor). In the mosque, the
> leaders of the various groups were proposing 'Ali and others as
> successor, when 'Umar settled the matter by swearing allegiance to Abu
> Bakr, who had himself proposed 'Umar; each seems to have been in
> collusion with the other, against 'Ali.
> 
> The Prophet was washed for burying by 'Ali, without removal of His
> garment, while some held the water vessels; then He was wrapped in
> three shrouds, two of white material and one striped, and covered with
> fragrant ointments; then the grave was dug in the same room of
> 'Ayishih's house where the deathbed had been. The people came to pray
> beside the Body, as it lay by the grave, and when all this was done, a few
> of them lowered it down: 'Ali was the last to climb up out of the grave,
> before it was filled with earth. (Cf. M. Tabari, III, 217 ff.).
> 
> For two years and three months, Abu Bakr was caliph. Before his
> death, he made them all agree to accept 'Umar as caliph, although some
> objected to him as rude and harsh. Meanwhile the Empire was forming;
> the Romans re beaten, under Heraclius; the Persians were beaten;
> Jerusalem surrendered; the people were thronging into the Faith. 'Umar
> was assassinated, put to death by a slave who had an Abyssinian sword
> with two blades, the handle being in the center, that would strike two
> ways at once; this did for the caliph, but even when he was dying from
> his wounds, he shut 'Ali out of office, by appointing a council of six, 'Ali
> being one, to deliberate as to the successorship.[1] For three days these
> deliberated in a guarded room, and then through various political
> machinations managed to appoint 'Uthman.
> 
> When something is wrong in principle, it soon begins to show in
> practice--to become manifest in the outside world. It was with 'Uthman
> that the disobedience to Muhammad began to show flagrant
> consequences, so that the believers finally rose up in wrath against the
> caliph. 'Uthman, old and feeble, was of 'Umayyad stock, of the family
> that had for generations been opposed to the stock of Muhammad. He
> had been backed for office by Abu Sufyan, the 'Umayyad--a man
> forgiven by Muhammad, but the Prophet's arch-enemy, who led the
> Meccan armies against Him and who was the husband of Hind, the
> woman who tore out the vitals of a dead Muslim hero at Uhud. I once
> read of ancient Tibetan play, in which the believers had got ready the
> sacrifice and placed it on the altar, whereupon a raven flew down and
> stole the sacrifice. This is what happened in Islam: the raven stole the
> sacrifice...It is said that one day 'Uthman sat by a well, toying with the
> Prophet's signet ring, which had been worn by his two predecessors,
> slipping it on and off again, when it fell into the well and was never
> found again. Whether the incident is true actually or only in symbol
> makes no difference...'Uthman began to exhaust the public treasury in
> favor of his own relatives, saying it was a duty to give to the poor; 'Ali
> commented, "You could have given them one thousand or two thousand
> dirhems instead of fifty thousand." (M. Tabari, III, 592-593). He began
> to appoint throughout the Empire, his people, the 'Umayyads, to office,
> putting the power in their hands. The first two caliphs had frequently
> consulted 'Ali; "Most of the grand undertakings initiated by 'Umar for
> the welfare of the people were due to his counsel. (For he was) Ever
> ready to succour the weak and to redress the wrongs of the injured..."
> (Ameer-'Ali, A Short History of the Saracens, 53). 'Uthman did not
> consult him. The accounts
> 
> Returning from 'Umar's deathbed council, 'Ali' told 'Abbas: "This
> man has taken away the power from the Bani Hashim He has
> established a group who are linked one with the other." Tabari', III,
> 549-550.
> 
> page 31
> 
> show 'Uthman weak and whining, always doing the wrong thing
> and then appealing to the peoples' sympathies in weak self-justification,
> always vowing to reform and then continuing on as the tool of his vazir,
> Marvan, a man who had been exiled by Muhammad; that 'Uthman
> fasted and read the Qur'an continually is not impressive in view of his
> actions. Soon a Second-Advent-of-Muhammad movement sprang up in
> Egypt (35 A.H.), and one of their tenets was the rightfulness of 'Ali as
> Chief of Islam. Tabari gives the whole story. And all these years, to
> preserve unity, 'Ali stood aside; he had spent his life in teaching the
> people and in intellectual pursuits, for he was an outstanding scholar
> and writer. Now that the believers rose up to champion his cause he
> disdained to seize the office by force; he did his best to maintain order
> and did not take the believers' side against the established caliph. On
> the contrary, since 'Uthman was the duly-constituted ruler, he bolstered
> him up and told him how to regain his lost prestige, by public apology
> and reform; 'Uthman would promise to follow 'Ali's advice and then,
> shifting and vacillating, would do the opposite. Always, with these
> leading contemporaries, hatred of 'Ali's excellence seems to have been
> the hidden motive. Once 'Uthman begged 'Ali to say that a certain
> appointee of his was no worse than one of 'Umar's; 'Ali answered,
> 'Umar had his foot on his agents' necks--you give them free rein.
> Mur'aviyyih (son of Hind and Abu Sufyan, and now, by the grace of
> 'Uthman, governor of Syria) was more afraid of a slave of 'Umar's than
> of 'Umar himself--you let him do what he wants and will brook no
> complaints." (M. Tabari, III, 587 ff.). Believers from other countries
> were crowding to Medina to protest against the scandalous rule of
> 'Uthman's appointees; to give only one example of what was going on,
> the caliph's half-brother, appointed (in the best twentieth century
> tradition!) governor of Kufa, went to the mosque and led the
> congregational prayer while drunk, and only escaped being stoned by
> running back to his palace, chanting as he went, "Where wine and song
> abound, there you will find me !" (Dozy, op. cit., 30) .
> 
> 'Uthman begged 'Ali to make the protestants go away; 'Ali persuaded
> them to leave and then, when the danger was passed, 'Uthman went to
> the mosque and told the people they had gone because their complaints
> had been proved baseless. At this, all over the mosque, voices cried out,
> "Repent, 'Uthman!" In the end there was civil war; fighting in the streets,
> and around 'Uthman's house; and although 'Ali and his sons fought to
> defend the old weakling, the mob broke in and killed him. According to
> Ibn Battuta, in the 14th century, at Basra, you could still see exhibited
> a Qur'an with 'Uthman's blood splashed on the page he was reading
> when they killed him. For many days, no one would even allow him a
> bier for burial; they finally carried him to the grave on one of the ruined
> doors of his house.
> 
> Well, it was 'Uthman who gave the play to the `Umayyad caliphs, who,
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá teaches us, are the Beast in Revelations, that warred on
> God's two Witnesses, Muhammad and 'Ail (Some Answered Questions.
> 53 ff.). "The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall war
> against them, and shall overcome them and kill them,--this beast means
> the Bani-Umayya who attacked them from the pit of error, and who rose
> against the religion of Muhammad and against the reality of 'Ali--in
> other words, the love of God." (Ibid., 60).
> 
> The leaders and populace now swore allegiance to 'Ali, saying: "The
> world is without a spiritual Head, and none hath more rights to this
> office than thou." And so at last, after a quarter of a century, the rightful
> successor of Muhammad was allowed to perform his function of
> Guardianship (vilayat)--for the Imams were Guardians--but it was too
> late. 'Abdu'l-Bahá, in His commentary on the eleventh and twelfth
> chapters of the Revelation
> 
> page 32
> 
> of St. John, explains what happened to the Faith of Muhammad.
> 
> 'Ali, who would never for an instant compromise with evil, at once
> deposed the unworthy `Umayyad office holders, so that Mu'aviyyih rose
> against him with Syrian armies. Meanwhile 'Ayishih, widow of
> Muhammad, who had long hated 'Ali (and devotion to 'Ali was the test
> of faith then, just as devotion to Shoghi Effendi is the test of faith today)
> rallied her forces against him. "When Ayishih wanted something done,"
> says a modern writer, "it was carried out regardless of ethics." (Bodley,
> R.V.C., The Messenger, 349). She rode to battle against 'Ali in a red
> pavilion that was strapped to the back of camel; soon the pavilion was
> stuck through and bristling with lances and arrows, ten thousand
> Muslims had perished, and 'Ali, who had implored peace, won the day.
> But there were other battles and betrayals and finally the first Imam was
> martyred in the mosque at Kufa, in 661.
> 
> Even yet in Persia, if men have a hard job to do or a heavy load to
> carry, they band together and shout, 'Ya 'Ali!" He was the Guardian
> (Vali), and the Lion of God. Muhammad, embracing him after the
> Farewell Pilgrimage, said, "He is to Me what Aaron was to Moses....God
> be a friend to his friends and a foe to his foes; help those who help him
> and frustrate the hopes of those who betray him." (See Dwight M.
> Donaldson, The Shi'ite Religion). 'Abdu'l-Bahá says, "Muhammad was
> the root, and 'Ali the branch, like Moses and Joshua." (SAQ, 57). 'Ali
> was also called the Hand of God. He was the cousin, the adopted son,
> and the son-in-law of the Prophet. He was the first male believer, having
> accepted Islam as a child. He was the husband of the great Fatimih (the
> marriage took place in 624) whom the Muslims call Our Lady of Light,
> and they two were the parents of the next Imams, Hasan and Husayn.
> Remember that Bahá'u'lláh is to Shi'ah Islam the return of Husayn
> (God Passes By, 94), and that the Bab is of the seed of Fatimih.
> 
> He was a man broad and powerful, of the middle height, of ruddy
> complexion, of a thick and comely beard. He was utterly devoted to
> Muhammad, simple in tastes, strictly honest; when he was caliph, if he
> had business of state to perform at night, he would light a candle; then
> as soon as the work of the state was done, and he was at leisure, he
> would blow it out and sit in the darkness, rather than use the peoples'
> candle. When he prayed he was so rapt that once, an arrow having
> lodged in his foot at war, they waited till he was at prayer to withdraw
> it, knowing that then he would not feel the pain. Daring in battle, he has
> been called chivalry's beau ideal; it was he who took the Prophet's place
> when Muhammad escaped from Mecca, lying on the Prophet's couch,
> wrapped in His green cloak; He fought with Muhammad at Badr, he
> received sixteen wounds at Uhud, he engaged in single combat at the
> Battle of the Trench, he carried away the banner at Khaybar; but braver
> than all this, he stood aside for a quarter of a century from his rightful
> place, in order to protect the Faith. He was a very perfect, gentle
> knight.[2]
> 
> After 'Ali, Mu'aviyyih the Umayyad was caliph, and after him, his
> notorious son Yazid. The center of government shifted away from
> Medina to Syria. When the Medinites found Yazid drunk and
> incestuous, a lute
> 
> 'Ali was frequently appointed by Muhammad in His own place: when
> some Bedawin were wrongfully killed, it was 'Ali who was sent to make
> reparations; he wrote the Charter to the Christians of Najran; when
> Muhammad once left Medina, He left 'Ali' as khalifa, saying, "O 'Ali, art
> thou not content that thou art to Me what Aaron was to Moses?" When
> the munafiqun (hypocrites) said that 'Ali had stayed behind because he
> was afraid of combat, whereupon 'Ali rode after the Prophet and told
> Him and He said "Kadhdbabu--they lied." Then, according to Ibn
> Hisham, He said, "Wa lakinni khallaftuka lamma turikta vara'i;
> fa'rjaf'khlifni fi abli wa ahlik." It was 'Ali who was commissioned to read
> the Declaration of Discharge, forbidding the idolaters to practise their
> heathen rites at the Ka'bih. Cf. Ameer-'Ali, Spirit of Islam, 97, ff. (rev.
> ed., 1922).
> 
> page 33
> 
> player, frequenting brigands and playing with hunting dogs, never at
> prayer, they littered the mosque at Medina in their wrath, calling for his
> deposition. Then he sent an army and sacked the City of the Prophet;
> seven hundred who knew the Qur'an by heart were killed at the sack of
> Medina, and eighty aged Companions of the Prophet; horses were
> stabled in the mosque that Muhammad had built, in the space between
> the Prophet's tomb and His chair--a spot which He had called the
> Garden of Paradise. The men were killed, the children enslaved, the
> women violated by the caliph's soldiers. The Helpers, Medinite followers
> of Muhammad, escaped as they could to join the army of Africa, later
> (712) passing over to Spain. In the 13th century a traveler to Medina
> asked if any descendants of the Helpers remained; one old man and one
> old woman were pointed out. (Cf. Dozy, 60ff.). During the period of
> `Umayyad domination, the holy city was given over to packs of dogs and
> wild beasts. The 'Umayyads ruled for a hundred years with sword and
> poison, until a man called the Blood Pourer destroyed them.
> 
> The term Shi'ah began to be adopted after Mu'aviyyih seized power;
> it refers to the adherents, or party, or family, of 'Ali. The Imam of the
> Shi'ah is sacred, immaculate (ma'sum), divinely-appointed, divinely
> guided. He is a spiritual leader. The caliph of the Sunnis is a temporal
> ruler, chosen by the peoples' leaders and acclaimed by the people. 'Ali
> was the expounder of the Faith; he had the inward knowledge and the
> inward light; his assassination changed the history of Islam.
> 
> All the Imams were put to death except perhaps the last, who died as
> a child, in 260, and was succeeded for sixty-nine years by four successive
> "Gates" (abvab-i-arba'ih), who were known as his intermediaries. Then
> there was utter silence in Islam till the rise of the Bab in 1260 (the surih
> of Adoration states: "From the Heaven to the Earth He governeth all
> things: hereafter shall they come up to Him on a day whose length shall
> be a thousand of such years as ye reckon." (32:4). Hence the importance
> of the "Year Sixty.") The Muslims (Shi'ahs) claim the Twelfth Imam did
> not die, but disappeared into an underground passage at Surra-man-
> Ra'a, and now lives in one of the mysterious cities of Jabulqa or Jabulsa,
> to come forth at the time of the end and inaugurate the millennium.
> When I was in Persia I heard them chanting from the minarets, "O Lord
> of the Age (Sahibu'z-Zaman), hasten Thy coming; the world hath fallen
> away--set Thy foot in the stirrup!" They even struck silver coins in His
> name.
> 
> Dying, 'Ali appointed his son Hasan as Imam, and he was poisoned.
> Then Husayn, the third Imam, with a little band of followers, including
> women and children, was betrayed by the men of Kufa, who had sworn
> allegiance to him and asked him to come to them and be their ruler. He
> and his party were surrounded in the sand and cut off from the river so
> that they would die of thirst; singly and in bands, his men were
> butchered. Husayn's horse was felled. Weak from thirst, Husayn sat on
> the ground; soldiers came up to kill him, but none dared; his little son
> was crying, so he took it in his arms: an arrow killed it. He laid it on the
> earth, saying, "We are from God and to Him do we return." Then he
> rose, and went toward the Euphrates, and bent down to drink; an arrow
> struck him in the lips and the blood streamed out. The soldiers
> surrounded him and slowly shot him down, till from many wounds he fell
> and died. They rode their horses over his body and severed his head and
> put it up on a lance. As the enemy general reported to the caliph, "Their
> bodies were dishonored and naked, their clothes mixed with the sand,
> their faces stained with the earth, and the winds blew upon them..."
> When the head of Husayn, grandson of Muhammad, was brought in to
> Kufa, the
> 
> page 34
> 
> governor there struck the mouth with his cane; there was an old Muslim
> present and he wept, and cried out," Alas, on these lips have I seen the
> lips of the Prophet of God."
> 
> Gibbon comments on this crime that stirred up the conscience of the
> Muslim world to such a point that the Persians still, two months out of
> the year, wear mourning clothes for Husayn--"In a distant age and
> climate, the tragic scenes of the death of Husayn will awaken the
> sympathy of the coldest reader."
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh teaches us in the Iqan (129): "Should We wish to impart
> unto thee a glimmer of the mysteries of Husayn's martyrdom, and reveal
> unto thee the fruits thereof, these pages could never suffice, nor exhaust
> their meaning." And again He says: "My persecutors decapitated Me,
> and, carrying aloft My head from land to land paraded it before the gaze
> of the unbelieving multitude, and deposited it on the seats of the
> perverse and faithless." (Gleanings, 89).
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views24712 views since posted 2000; last edit 2025-08-13 15:16 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../gail_lessons_islam;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Scanned 1995 by Duane Troxel; Formatted 2000 by Jonah Winters.
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> Shortlink: bahai-library.com/219
> Citation: ris/219
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