"It’s always good to come home," Muhammad mused as the caravan plodded closer to Mecca. He was barely 20, but already he had traveled to such distant centers as Jerusalem, Damascus, and Aleppo. Ever since he was big enough to ride a camel, his uncle had taken him on the great yearly trade caravans that journeyed 1000 miles or more northward to Syria and nearly as far southward to Yemen. But Arabia was Muhammad’s home, and paganism the religion of his people.
Nothing made that more obvious than did the Ka ‘bah, Mecca’s massive stone shrine. Fifty feet high and nearly 40 feet square, it housed one idol for each day of the year. Some said it had been built by Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden. Others claimed that Abraham and Ishmael had built it.
As the sanctuary of Allah, the supreme god of the Arabs, it attracted pilgrims from all over Arabia. Theyc ame to kiss or touch the smooth black stone that glistened in the southeastern corner – a stone said to have been given to Ishmael by the angel Gabriel, and set into the building by Abraham’s own hands.
Muhammad was strongly opposed to such idolatry. Surely, he thought, there can be only one God, the Creator. How could his people, the Quraish, possibly worship male and female gods regarded as the sons and daughters of Allah? The Jews, who virtually controlled the commercial life of Mecca, worshiped one God. So did the Christians, whose communities were scattered throughout Arabia, and whose sacred places he had visited on his travels.
It did no good, though, to discuss such things with his uncle, who was also his guardian. A pagan, Abu Talib was involved in Ka ‘bah duties, including the collection of dues for the upkeep of poor pilgrims who came as "guests of Allah."
But he was kind to Muhammad and had cared for him well. Muhammad’s father, Abdulla, a descendant of Ishmael, had died shortly after marriage, leaving a small house, five camels, and a few goats as a legacy for the son who was born a few months later (about 570 A.D.). His mother, Amina, sent him to a desert family to be weaned, as was the custom.
Young Muhammad
When Muhammad was about six, Amina died, leaving him in the care of his grandfather. Abdul Muttalib was a merchant and warrior, renowned for re-discovering the well of Zamzam, said to be the source of water provided by an angel for Hagar and Ishmael when they were cast out by Abraham.
Three years later his grandfather died, and Abu Talib took Muhammad in. Under the merchant’s watchful eye, the boy grew to be a trader. Though young in years he earned a respected reputation. But the more he traveled and more exposure he had to Christianity and Judaism, the more dissatisfied he became with the idolatry of his people.
The issue of worshiping the one true God was firmly settled in his mind, but not so other things – the beliefs of Christians, the sacrifies of the Jews, sacred books, spirits, angels, prophets….the whole array of things supernatural.
When he was 25, his caravan returned to Mecca once again, and he was met with an offer that would change his life. He accepted the marriage proposal of a rich widowed merchant named Khadija, 15 years his senior. From then on he was free to spend time in the pursuit of religious ideals, retreating to the desert to meditate and pray.
The Night of Power
Muhammad’s spiritual search had been long. At the age of 40, after six months of meditation in a cave on Mount Hira, the vision came to him.
The messenger was the angel Gabriel, Muhammad claimed, and his appearance on that night in 610 A.D., the Night of Power, was his turning point. That night, he claimed, the world of God came down from the seventh heaven to the first, entrusted to Gabriel, who would dictate it to Muhammad as occasion demanded.
"Proclaim!" the voice commanded him. "Proclaim in the name of the Lord, the Creator, who created man from a clot of blood! Proclaim! Your Lord is most gracious. It is He who has taught man by the pen that which he does not know."
The Night of Power launched Muhammad on his mission, and he emerged from the cave of Hira as the prophet of Islam, through whom, his followers would claim, the final revelations of God would be given.
Muhammad the Conqueror
The people of Mecca had not been impressed by the Night of Power or by the new prophet. His condemnation of their idolartry had created bitter enmity, counter-balanced only by the unwavering support of his wife Khadija and a small band of disciples, mainly members of his own family.
But his band grew and, by the time Khadija died in 619, his influence had spread to the city of Medina (Yathrib), 250 miles north of Mecca. Persecution became so great, howver, that in 622 Muhammad and his followers fled to Medina, where they were welcomed by 200 diciples.
The year of that flight, or Hijrah, became the beginning of the Islamic calendar. (1995 A.D. – "the year of our Lord" – is the Islamic year 1415 A.H. – "year of the Hijrah.")
Then came his raids on the caravans of the Meccans and increased hostility between his followers and the Jews. There was the battle of Badr, in which his warriors soundly defeated the Meccans. There were the battles of Uhud and the Ditch, the massacre of 700 Jewish captives, and the selling of their wives and children into slavery.
Alongside these struggles had been the development of Islamic teaching. Much of this was announced after visions and trances, with Muhammad reciting to his followers the words he claimed tohear. Some of these pronouncements were memorized, some were written on animal bones, parchments, and pieces of leather. About 15 years after his death, and being compiled, these writings were authorized as Islam’s holy boo, the Quran.
He had to decide such issues as fasts, prayers, pilgrimages, sacrifices, holy days, the place given to the writings of the Old Testament prophets, and the New Testament apostles … and the holy person, Jesus.
Surely Jesus was a prophet of God. Surely He spoke the truth. But divisions and disputes wer rampant among the Chritians, whom Muhammad called "the people of the book." Some claimed that Jesus was God; others were not so sure. Two monks who greatly influenced Muhammad followed the doctrine of Nestorius, a Syrian churchman, whose teachings that there were two distinct persons in Christ had been condemned as heresy 150 years previously.
Historians would conclude dhat much of Muhammad’s misunderstanding of Christian truth was due to the doctrinal confusion and ignorance into which the church at that time had fallen.
Noththeless, his power grew. In 628 Meccans conceded the right of Muslims to make the Ka ‘bah the focal point of their pilgrimage, and in 630 his army of 10,000 captured Mecca itself.
Muhammad’s Completed Religion
Thronged by his followers, 62-year-old Muhammad led a glorious pilgrimage to the Ka ‘bah, no longer an idol shrine, but the focal point of Islamic worship.
There, in 632, he pronounced the prefecction of the new religion. "….I have completed by blessing upon you, and I have approved Islam for your religion," was the message he said he had received from God concerning this achievement. Three months later, he died.
Muhammad’s legacy spreads
By the time of his death, Muhammad had imposed Islam on most of Arabia. His successor, Abu Bakr, however, had to resujugate the area and defend Medina against rebel forces. As Caliph (khalifa, "successor"), he united the conquered tribes by promising them the spoils of foreign conquests. "When a people leave off to fight in the ways of the Lord," he told them, "the Lord casteth off that people."
In 634 Jerusalem was invaded. In 636 Syria fell. By 641, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq were conquered. Within 100 years of Muhammad’s death, Islam had spread to Spain in the west and India in the east and embraced more territory than did the Roman Empire.
Islam’s advance into Europe was halted by the forces of Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in France in 732. The Ka ‘bah still remains the focal point of the annual pilgrimage. Many pilgrims also visit Muhammad’s grave in Medina, near to which is a space reserved for the body of Jesus Christ, who, they say, did not die on the cross, but will die and be buried after He returns from heaven to establish true Islam on the earth.
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