By Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam
19 October 2017
(Co-author (Jointly with Ashfaque Ullah
Syed), Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009)
The verse 8:60 exhorts the Prophet’s
followers “to prepare against them with whatever strength and war mounts you
can muster by which you may deter the enemy of God and your enemy “But the very
succeeding verse of the Qur’an declares:
“And if they
incline to peace, then you (O Muhammad) too incline to it and rely on God.
Indeed, it is He who is the Hearing, the Knowing” (8:61)
Read together 8:60-61 make it abundantly
clear that the exhortation of 8:60 was in relation to defending against an
army. The instruction was to make all possible preparations to engage with it,
but if it offered peace, to settle for peace.
The verse 9:5 authorizes the Prophet’s
followers to “kill the pagans wherever you find them, and capture them,
surround them, and watch for them in every lookout” but the very succeeding
verse declares;
“If anyone of
the pagans seeks your protection* (O Muhammad), grant him protection, so that
he may hear the words of God; and then deliver him to a place, safe for him.
That is because they are a people without knowledge” (9:6). *[Lit., ‘seeks to
become your neighbour.’]
Yet another verse from the ninth Surah
(al-Tawbah) declares:
“Would you
not fight a people who broke their oaths and plotted to expel the Messenger
(from his hometown), and were the first to attack you (9:13)
Together 9:5/6/13 clarify that these verses
relate to an ongoing state of hostility between the Prophet (and his followers)
and the pagans, and that the instruction in 9:5 was in relation to those pagan
Arabs who had expelled the Prophet from Mecca and were determined to expel him
from Medina and repeatedly broke their oaths (9:13) and was not meant for those
who sought peace (9:6). The people who sought peace were to be given
protection, and were not to be coerced to embrace Islam.
Now if a Muslim person of this era quotes
8:60 or 9:5 or 9:13 in isolation disregarding consecutive reconciliatory verses
(8:61, 9:6) and their context specificity (9:13) to instigate a group of his
followers to commit any form of violence he is likening himself and his
followers with the Prophet of Islam and his followers who were the direct
recipients of the instructions of these verses. But such selective appropriation
of Qur’an’s message to promote violence amounts to treacherous distortion of
Qur’anic message.
The Prophet of Islam was commissioned on a
mission “to deliver humanity from the burden that lay over it from before”
(7:157) and to take humanity out of darkness into light (2:257, 5:16, 14:1,
57:9, 65:11) He had to achieve this single-handedly as the Messenger of God by
introducing a series of revolutionary changes in the social order of
Pre-Islamic Arabia as dictated by the revelation. His immediate audience
consisted of highly fractured Arab tribes that had no political identity, no
geographical boundary, no scripture or book of guidance, who roamed the barren
desert highlands since time immemorial - save for a few scattered settlements
near sources of water. The tribal system with all its traditions - blood
vendetta, female infanticide; institutionalized slavery, usury (money lending),
adultery; commercial exploitation; arbitrary punishment, and raiding the
caravans of rival tribes was deeply entrenched as the normative way of the
ancients (Sunnat al Awwalin) and there had never been any movement or
awareness for a change. Accordingly, as the Prophet began preaching (610 AD),
he was initially dismissed as an oddity, and with time encountered strong resistance
from fellow Arabs that only increased as years went by with the Prophet not
letting up on his mission. This resulted first in his self-exile from Mecca to
Medina (622) as a lone fugitive with (only one un-named companion) (9:40),and
later, when he was preaching in Medina and gaining converts, three full scale
attack on him and his followers (624, 625 and 627) that we will review
separately. In each case, the attackers were numerically and militarily far
superior to the Prophet’s company. The Qur’an counselled and consoled during
his preaching in Mecca (610-622) and guided him in Medina with military
commands to defend against the attacking army. The Prophet also faced political
resistance and conspiracies from the native Jewish tribes and a faction of the
Muslims (hypocrites), and lived under constant threat of annihilation for
almost twenty out of twenty-three years of his mission until Mecca was
integrated (630). However, by the time of his death – some 2 years later, his
mission was completed and Islam was established as an historical reality and
almost the whole of Arabia was unified as an Umma that was ready to change the
course of history. What happened in the ensuing decades is captured
allegorically as follows by Thomas Carlyle, one of the iconic figures of
Enlightenment:
“as if a
spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand;
but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to
Grenada! I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest
of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.” [1]
In one word, the Prophet accomplished a
historically impossible and unparalleled task of establishing a new faith and a
new nation that expanded into a global religion barely a few decades after his
death and heralded the greatest civilization of the era – the Golden Age of
Islam (8th to 13th century AD) out of a hoard of nomadic tribes who were living
in their ancient ways since time immemorial, and were non-entities in historical
terms and relativism.
So no human being can replay his role until
eternity as this planet does not offer such civilisational vacuum as the
Prophet’s era – that is regarded as the dark ages. Thus any Muslim attempting
to play the role of the Prophet by misappropriating its fighting verses to
promote violence in the name of the Prophet or Islam commits treason against
the faith of Islam. Likewise, any non-Muslim quoting these verses in isolation
to defame Islam does great injustice to humanity by projecting Islam – a
religion of peace and reconciliation [2] as a violent religion and supporting
the agenda of the Muslim terrorists of this era. Hence, God witnessing, there
is a pressing need for an international fatwa (such as from the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia) and United Nations ruling criminalizing selective quotation of
the fighting verses of the Qur’an to promote terrorism or defame Islam.
This Reflection which is in sequel to my
referenced technical article [2] is inspired by the following bold and categorical
declaration by Sultan Shahin, Founding Editor, New Age Islam in his
September 26 2017 UNHRC debate [3].
“War-time verses of the Prophet’s time
maybe important as a historical account of the near insurmountable difficulties
the Prophet had to face to establish Islam but do not apply to us today in the
21st century.”
Notes:
1. [http://www.scribd.com/doc/12685866/Hero-as-a-Prophet-by-Thomas-Carlyle]
Muhammad Yunus, a Chemical Engineering graduate from Indian Institute of
Technology, and a retired corporate executive has been engaged in an in-depth
study of the Qur’an since early 90’s, focusing on its core message. He has
co-authored the referred exegetic work, which received the approval of al-Azhar
al-Sharif, Cairo in 2002, and following restructuring and refinement was
endorsed and authenticated by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl of UCLA, and published by
Amana Publications, Maryland, USA, 2009.
9:30 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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