Mahomet, Founder of Islam

by Gladys M. Draycott

"Mahomet has commanded me to go to Nakhla and there await the Kureisch; also he has commanded me to say unto you whoever desireth martyrdom for Islam let him follow me, and whoever will not suffer it, let him turn back. As for me, I am resolved to carry out the commands of God's Prophet"

Then one and all the eight companions assured him they would not forsake him until the quest was achieved. At dawn they resumed their march and arrived at length at Nakhla, where they encountered the Kureisch caravan laden with spice and leather. Now, it was the last day of the month of Rajab, wherein it was unlawful to fight, wherefore the Muslim took counsel, saying:

"If we fight not this day, they will elude us and escape."

But the Prophet's implied command was strong enough to induce initiative and hardihood in the small attacking party. They bore down upon the Kureisch, showering arrows in their path, so that one man was killed and several wounded. The rest forsook their merchandise and fled, leaving behind them two prisoners, whose retreat had been cut off. Abdallah was left in possession of the field, and joyfully he returned to Medina, bearing with him the first plunder captured by the Muslim.

But his return led Mahomet into a quandary from which there seemed no escape. Politically, he was bound to approve Abdallah's deed; religiously, he could neither laud it nor share the fruits of it. For days the spoils remained undivided, but Abdallah was not punished or even reprimanded. Meanwhile, the Jews and the Kureisch vied with one another in execrating Mahomet, and even his own people murmured against him. It was clearly time that an authoritative sanction should be given to the deed, and accordingly in the sura, "The Cow," we have the revelation from Allah proclaiming the greater culpability of the Infidels and of those who would stir up civil strife:

"They will ask thee concerning war in the Sacred Month. Say: To war therein is bad, but to turn aside from the cause of God, and to have no faith in Him, and in the Sacred Temple, and to drive out its people, is worse in the sight of God; civil strife is worse than bloodshed."

No possible doubt must be cast in this and similar cases upon Mahomet's sincerity. The Kuran was the vehicle of the Lord; he had used it to proclaim his unity and power and his warnings to the unrighteous. Now that Islam had recognised his august and indissoluble majesty, and had accorded the throne of Heaven and the governance of earth to him indivisibly, the world was split up into Believers and Unbelievers. The Kuran, therefore, must of necessity cease to be merely the proclamation of divine unity that it had been and become the vehicle for definite orders and regulations, the outcome of those theocratic ideas upon which Mahomet's creed was founded. The justification would not appeal to the people unless Allah's sanction supported it, and Mahomet realised with all his ardour of faith that the transgression was slight compared with the result achieved towards the progress of Islam. The Prophet therefore received, with Allah's approval, a fifth of the spoil, but the captives he released after receiving ransom.

"This," says the historian, "was the first booty that Mahomet obtained, the first captives they seized, and the first life they took." The significance of the event was vividly felt throughout Islam, and Abdallah, its hero, received at Mahomet's hands the title of "Amir-al- Momirim," Commander of the Faithful—a title which recalls inseparably the cruelty and magnificence, the glamour and rapacity, of Arabian Bagdad under Haroun-al-Raschid. The valorous enterprise had now been achieved, the Kureisch caravan was despoiled, and the Kureisch themselves wrought into fury against the Prophet's insolence; but more than all, the channel of Mahomet's policy of warfare became thereby so deeply carved that he could not have effaced it had he desired. Henceforth his creative genius limited itself to the deepening of its course and the direction of its outlet.

The Jews had not rested content with murmuring against Mahomet's rule, they sought to embarrass him by active sedition. One of their first attempts against Mahomet's regime was to stir up strife between the Refugees and Helpers. In this they would have been successful but for Mahomet's efficient system of espionage, a method upon which he relied throughout his life. Failing to foment a rebellion in secret they proceeded to open hostilities, and the Muslim, jealous for their faith, retaliated by contempt and estrangement. During the winter of 623 personal attack was made by the mob upon Mahomet. The people were hounded on by their leaders to stone the Prophet, but he was warned in time and escaped their assaults.

The popular fury was merely the reflex of a fundamental division of thought between the opposing parties. The Jewish and Muslim systems could never coalesce, for each claimed the dominance and ignored all compromise. The age-long, hallowed traditions of the Jews which supported a theocracy as unyielding as any conception of Divine sovereignty preached by Mahomet, found themselves faced with a new creative force rapidly evolving its own legends, and strong enough in its enthusiasm to overwhelm their own. The Rabbis felt that Mahomet and his warrior heroes—Ali, Omar, Othman, and the rest—would in time dislodge from their high places their own peculiar saints, just as they saw Mahomet with Abu Bekr and his personnel of administrators and informers already overriding their own councillors in the civil and military departments of their state. The old regime could not amalgamate with the new, for that would mean absorption by its more vigorous neighbour, and the Jewish spirit is exclusive in essence and separatist perforce. Mahomet took no pains to conciliate his allies; they had made a treaty with him in the days of his insecurity and he was grateful, but now his position in Medina was beyond assailment, and he was indifferent to their goodwill. As their aggression increased he deliberately withdrew his participation in their religious life, and severed his connection with their rites and ordinances.