About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.


This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.


19 Dec 2009

Misunderstanding the Hijra of the Prophet (saws)


During the Khilafah of Umar bin al-Khattab (ra) the sahaba (ra) agreed to start the Islamic calendar from when the Messenger of Allah (saws) made hijra to Medina and established the first Islamic State. As we enter the blessed month of Muharram and the year 1431 we should remind ourselves of the hijra and dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding it.

Very often when the Hijrah is discussed, we tend to limit ourselves to the details describing how the Prophet (saws) hid in a cave or who slept in his (saws) bed. This process inevitably diverts us from discussing the true substance of the event. An account of such events should serve only to remind us that Prophet (saws), while relying on the revelation as the source of the Islamic Message, had to carry the Islamic Da'wah as a human being, and through the means accessible to a human being.

The Hijrah to Medinah did not take place because the Muslims in Mecca wanted to avoid the persecution there, or because they wanted to find a safe haven for themselves, or to run away from the hardships they faced in that city. Rather, it was an event that took history in a new direction, and this can only be seen if we look at the Seerah in the correct manner.

The Seerah of the Prophet (saws) is an integral part of the Sunnah, and is just as much a part of the revelation as is the Qur'an. After a careful study of it, we can extract a very specific method for carrying out the Da'wah, and if our aim is to please Allah (swt), then it is our obligation to adhere to this method step by step, through each and every phase.

"Say (O Muhammad): If you love Allah then follow me, Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." [Surah Ali-Imran (3): Ayah 31]

"And whatever the Messenger gives you, accept it, and whatever he forbids you avoid it." [Surah Al-Hashr (59):Ayah 7]

According to the Seerah, the Hijrah marks the transition from the phase in the Da'wah known as "Seeking the Nusrah" to the phase where Islam is implemented in the form of a state. The Nusrah is the transfer of authority to a person via the material support or allegiance from the powerful elements of a society. The Hijrah is a direct result of seeking, and subsequently receiving, the Nusrah.

When Mus'ab ibn Umair (ra) was sent to Medinah to spread the Message of Islam, it took him one year of tireless work in that city before its leaders journeyed to Mecca to transfer their authority to the Prophet (saws) by giving him the Ba'yah. This Ba'yah was called Bayat-ul Harb (Allegiance of War). Although there was no war, it was called Bayat-ul Harb because it indicated the willingness of the Muslims to fight, when necessary, to protect the Da'wah and the newly established Islamic State. The Prophet (saws) had invested four years of Da'wah, towards most of the tribes in Najd (the large area between Mecca and Medinah) before he (saws) received the Nusrah.

It is important to note that until this time in the Seerah, even with all the pressure the Prophet (saws) placed upon the Kufr society of Mecca, all the persecution that the Quraysh inflicted on Prophet (saws) and the Muslims was comparatively trivial to the persecution that came after the Prophet (saws) received the Nusrah from the leaders of Medinah. From this point onward it was the plot of the Kuffar to assassinate the Prophet Muhammad (saws). Indeed, it is true that Shaitan and his followers are most afraid of the implementation of Allah's rules.

Keeping these elements in mind, whenever we discuss the Hijrah, which many people will try to reduce to a spiritual journey the Prophet (saws) took over some terrain, we should discuss the overall ideological significance of this event in terms of Islam and the Da'wah mission.

It is critical for us, the Muslims, to realize that this event not only marks the beginning of our calendar, but more importantly it commemorates the establishment of the nucleus of the first Islamic state. For hundreds of years to come this nucleus would engulf neighboring lands, subsequently liberating one oppressed people after another and bringing them the Mercy from Allah (saws) called Islam. If we want to talk about the essential nature of the Hijrah, we have to realize that it marks the time when Islam as an Ideology was transformed from idea to practice.

Hitherto, the people of Medinah accepted Muhammad (saws) only as a Prophet. However, after the transfer of power (Nusrah), when he (saws) arrived in Medinah, they were receiving him (saws) as a ruler and a Prophet. Before the Prophet (saws) made the Hijrah, he (saws) was a Prophet with the new laws revealed to him (saws) by Allah (swt). After the Hijrah, he (saws) was the one who implemented this law. Islam had gone from addressing and pointing out the problems and issues to tackling the problems and issues and providing solutions for them. It was at this point that the Prophet (saws) was able to apply the rules and systems of Islam into real life.

The Hijrah, a part of the Seerah, is something that must be studied in depth to gain a full understanding of its implications and meaning. It is not simply a series of bedtime stories to be told and remembered like fairy tales of how the Prophet (saws) took Abu Bakr (ra) with him and went on a journey, and at the end of it the people received him (saws) by singing merry melodies.

This is not to say that the small details of the Hijrah, like how the Prophet (saws) had to get 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (ra) to sleep in his bed, or how he (saws) had to hide in a cave, are not significant. These details are important because they remind us that the techniques and tactics used by the Prophet (saws) were human and not superhuman. They were not tactics which required miracles to be carried out.

We cannot claim that since he (saws) was a Prophet, and since we are not Prophets, we are unable to exactly follow his (saws) footsteps when it comes to the manner in which he (saws) carried the Da'wah. We must remember that these steps, or phases, in the Da'wah mission were meant for us to follow, and to not follow them is a disobedience to Allah (swt).

[Article written by Abdus Sami, December 2009]

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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”





[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]





"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"





[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]





"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."





[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]





"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."





[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]



"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."





[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]





“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”





[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]





"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."





[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]





"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."





[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]





“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”





[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]





"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"





[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]





"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."





[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]





"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."





[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']





"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"





[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']





"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.





[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]





"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"





[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]





"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"





[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]





“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”





[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]







“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”





[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]