# Six Lessons on Islam

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> Six Lessons on Islam
> by Marzieh Gail
> <pi>
> 
>                            CHRONOLOGY
>                       ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
>                           MARZIEH GAIL
> 
>                  (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
> 
> <pii>
> 
>                          Six Lessons On Islam
>                            By Marzieh Gail
> 
>                 (Approved by Baha'i Reviewing Committee)
> 
>                              BIBLIOGRAPHY
> 
> Baha'i 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
> 
> <p1>
> 
>   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-Baha
> 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 Baha'i 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 Baha'i 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
> Baha'i 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 Baha'i scholars, of all the available data, in the light of
> Baha'u'llah's Teachings. The Guardian told a pilgrim that the
> Baha'is must vindicate Islam in the West; we must convert people,
> not to its institutions, now abrogated by the Bab and Baha'u'llah,
> 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 Baha'i) 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 Baha'i Teachings, we have,
> specifically established, both the laws and the successorship.
> 
> <p2>
> 
>   "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,
> and 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).
> ____________
>   1.  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.
> 
> <p3>
> 
> 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
> ____________
>   2 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).
> 
> <p4>
> 
> 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.
> ____________
>   3. "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.
> 
> <p5>
> 
>  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?"
> 
>   Baha'u'llah 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 saying: "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]
> ____________
>   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.
> 
> <p6>
>                         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 amn '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).
> 
> <p7>
> 
>   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.
> Baha'u'llah 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,
> ____________
>   1. Qur'an 41:8.
> 
> <p8>
> 
> 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]
> 
>   Baha'u'llah 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 Baha'u'llah 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." Baha'u'llah 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.
> ____________
>   2. The Christians of the period used the clapper to call to
> prayer, the Jews, trumpets, the Zoroastrians, bonfires, says
> Dermenghem, 267.
>   3. Baha'u'llah 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).
>   4. 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..."
> 
> <p9>
> 
> 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 Baha'i Qiblih is the Shrine of Baha'u'llah); 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-Baha 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
> ____________
>   5. 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."
> 
> <p10>
> 
> 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).
> Baha'is will remember the agony of the young 'Abdu'l-Baha 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 condemn 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."
> 
> <p11>
> 
>   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).
> 
> <p12>
>                              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-Baha 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
> ____________
>   1. This teaching seems to have freed the Muslims from the burden
> of conscious and unconscious guilt which weighs so heavily on many
> Christians
> 
> <p13>
> 
> 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
> ____________
>   2. 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).
> 
> <p14>
> 
> 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-Baha 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,
> 
> <p15>
> 
> 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!'n
> (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).
> 
> <p16>
> 
>   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 Baha'i 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 Baha'is 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.'n(3: 197 ff.).
> 
> <p17>
>                                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
> ____________
>   1.  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.
> 
> <p18>
> 
> 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
> Baha'i Dispensation, the spirit of God within Baha'u'llah 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]
> 
>   Baha'u'llah 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 Baha'i Revelations, constitutes the only
> Book which can be regarded as an absolutely authenticated
> Repository of the Word of God." (The Advent of Divine Justice).
> Baha'u'llah 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; Baha'u'llah
> says, "Were it beyond
> ____________
>   2.  Dermenghem, E., Life of Mahomet, 60, 61.
>   3.  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."
> 
> <p19>
> 
> 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 Baha'u'llah 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 Baha'u'llah 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 af 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
> ____________
>   4. Dispensation of Baha'u'llah.
>   5. Muir, Sir Wm, The Life of Muhammad, Edinburgh rev. ed, 1923,
> xx iv n.
>   6. Ibid., xxiii.
>   7. Ibid., xxiii n.
> 
> <p20>
> 
> 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 Baha'i 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
> Baha'is. 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.
> 
> <p21>
> 
> 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?n
> "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
> ____________
>   8. The general term for the Prophet's Companions is Ashib, their
> successors being the Tabi'un.
> 
> <p22>
> 
> 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]
> ____________
>   9. See The Sayings of Muhammad, compiled by Sir 'Abdu'llah
> Suhrawardy.
> 
> <p23>
>                            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 Baha'u'llah, 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 Baha'u'llah "God's Well-Beloved," (Shoghi
> Effendi, World Order of Baha'u'llah, 106), is at one with all the
> other Manifestations, and therefore we must know Him as well as the
> others. Baha'u'llah 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 Baha'is "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 Baha'i Faith is a new religion, entirely
> independent, one of the established religious systems of the world;
> that Baha'i's are no more Muslims than Muslims are Christians or
> Jews (Baha'i 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.
> ____________
>   1. See Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Paraclete the word
> has been translated Comforter in the Gospel, Advocate in the
> Epistle.
> 
> <p24>
> 
> When I worked on a Persian newspaper, the editor asked about my
> Baha'i 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, Baha'u'llah explains
> in the Iqan (161 ff.) that 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 Baha'i 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 Baha'u'llah, 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-Baha' 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-Baha
> 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,
> 
> <p25>
> 
> 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,
> ____________
>   2. See The Oath of Muhammad to the Followers of the Nazarene, tr.
> by Anton F. Haddad, 1902; Published by Baha'i 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...."
> 
> <p26>
> 
> '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
> Baha'i 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, 
> 
> <p27>
> 
> 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.
> ____________
>   3. The Imam 'Ali said: "The blood of the dhimmi is as the blood
> of the Muslim." Ameer-'Ali, Spirit of Islam, 268.
> 
> <p28>
> 
> 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.
> 
> <p29>
>                              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 them 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
> 
> <p30>
> 
> 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 are 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
> ____________
>   1. 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
> 
> <p31>
> 
> accounts 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-Baha teaches us, are the Beast in Revelations, that
> warred on God's two Witnesses, Muhammad and 'Ali (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-Baha, in His commentary on
> the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the Revelation
> 
> <p32>
> 
> 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, iu 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-Baha
> 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
> Baha'u'llah 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
> ____________
>   2 '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).
> 
> <p33>
> 
> 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
> 
> <p34>
> 
> 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."
> 
>   Baha'u'llah 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).
> 
> .
>
> — *Six Lessons on Islam*