The Prophet’s Umrah before the Conquest of Mecca

By Arshad Alam, New Age Islam 15 July 2022 He Circumambulated the Kaaba with Idols Inside Main Points: 1. Eid al Adha is a remembrance of Ibrahim’s devotion to Allah. 2. Scholars have understood the festival as site through which many pre-Islamic rituals became part of the Islam. 3. The Prophet is considered anti-idolatry but he did not have a problem circumambulating the House of God despite the fact that idols were kept inside them. 4. Was this just tactical or was the Prophet of Islam sending some other message to his followers? ----- The traditional Muslim narration of Eid al Adha (Bakrid) is that it is a commemoration of the pact between Allah and Ibrahim/Abraham. Upon being asked by Allah to sacrifice what was most important and dear to him, Ibrahim decided to slaughter his eldest son Ismail. Moved by the devotion of his ‘slave’, Allah ransoms his son with what He calls a ‘great sacrifice’ [Q37: 100-102]. The same mythology appears in the Torah, with the significant difference that in the Jewish tradition, it is the younger son Ishaq who is bound and taken to be sacrificed. Since Islam had to plug itself with the Judeo-Christian worldview, it faithfully recounts the story as one of its own. Ibrahim become a Muslim and this whole play of aborted human sacrifice occurs in Mecca. The Hajj, we are told, is the remembrance of this blind devotion to a Supreme God by the father-son duo. It is another matter that while much of the Jewish world never emulated Abraham and his sacrifice, the Muslims have stuck to it like it is their original story. While the whole Muslim world is moved by Ibrahim’s devotion, the terrorists are moved by the ‘ethical sacrifice’ of Ismail as without his willingness to get killed, this whole ritual would have come to naught. It is important to underline the difference that while Ibrahim was carrying out Allah’s command, his son was laying down his life for the sake of his father, another human. The historian Faisal Devji argues that this submergence of the individual self, the possibility of self-annihilation for what is considered the ‘greater good’ is the reason why many terror groups hail Ismail as their hero. No religion arises in a social or ideational vacuum. And although Islam constantly refers itself as the perfection of Judaism and Christianity, its social space was also informed by polytheism or what is derisively called as paganism. Although mythologically, Islam refers to itself as the first religion and Adam as the first Muslim, all three traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Paganism) have influenced Islam in fundamental ways. Scholars of Islam for example, have commented on how the Hajj pilgrimage incorporates several pre-Islamic pagan features like kissing the black stone, running between the hillocks of Safa and Marwah, the sacrifice of animals, etc. However, there is one episode in traditional Islamic history which needs to be debated more. This is incident of the Prophet and his companions performing Umrah or the lesser pilgrimage before the conquest of Mecca. From various Islamic sources, we know that there were idols (some say they were 360 of them) which were kept inside the Kaaba. There are accounts which also suggest that paintings of mother Mary and infant Jesus also existed on the walls of the Kaaba. The tradition tells us that when Muhammad conquered Mecca, he threw away all the idols and thereby cleansed the Kaaba of its idolatrous past. There were other idols and Kaabas in the vicinity of Mecca which were also destroyed on the prophet’s express orders. However, all this happens after the conquest of Mecca in about 630. But before that, the Kaaba housed all those idols and performing the Tawaf meant going around these idols as well. The prophet of Islam went to the lesser pilgrimage in the year 629, one year after the treaty of Hudaybiyyah. Al Tabari, the chronicler of early Islamic history, says that in the year 628, the prophet, along with his companions, marched with 70 fattened camels to Mecca with the intention of doing pilgrimage. However, he was not allowed to do so by the yet powerful Meccan Quraish. There ensued a treaty between the factions, which allowed the prophet to come back for the pilgrimage the next year. And that’s why the Umrah of 629 is called the ‘pilgrimage of fulfilment’ as the object was to fulfil the pledge taken in the treaty. There is no consensus as to the exact nature of animal sacrifice in this Umrah. According to Ibn Ishaq (in al Tabari), the prophet and his companions did not have camels but sacrificed cattle while another source (in Tabari) argues that they drove 60 fattened camels for this purpose. What is not in contention though is that the prophet and his companions conducted the tawaf around the holy Kaaba. Here is al Tabari writing on the authority of Ibn Abbas: “When the Messenger of God entered the mosque, he put his cloak under his right arm and threw the bottom of it over his left shoulder, leaving his right arm uncovered. ……. He touched the stone at the corner and set out at a quick walk, his companions going at the same pace with him. Then when the House had hidden him from the people (Quraish) and he had touched the southern corner, he walked until he touched the Black Stone, then he went at a quick walk in similar fashion for three circuits. He walked the remainder of the circuits” [The History of al Tabari, Vol 8, 134-135]. Islamic history tells us that pre-Islamic Quraish used to paint the walls of the Kaaba with the blood of sacrificed animals. There were idols placed outside the Kaaba too and sacrifices were made there also. There is no mention in any of the tradition that the Prophet or his companions tried to clean the area before conducting the pilgrimage rituals. The Meccan Quraish, left the city for three days as part of the Treaty. They went to the hillocks and watched the Muslim pilgrimage from there. In their eyes, the Muslim Hajj ritual wouldn’t have seemed much different from their own ritual practices. Traditions recorded in Bukhari and Muslim also corroborate that the prophet performed this Umrah in the year 629 that is before the 360 idols were removed from the Kaaba. An internet search as to why Muslims performed this ritual before the idols were removed hardly leads to any answer. The lone answer is from Islamweb.net which argues that the “existence of idols inside the Kaaba or around it is not an obstacle that prevents the validity of the Umrah especially at that time when the companions were not able to destroy them as Makkah was under the control of disbelievers of Quraysh”. The answer further states, “since the prophet performed Umrah and made Tawaf and Sai (under those circumstances), then this is evidence that it is permissible and so, it is not polite to ask why the Prophet did so” [https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/184641/why-the-muslims-made-umrah-before-the-conquest-of-makkah]. The answer makes two assertions: firstly, that at the time Muslims were powerless to destroy the idols hence they effected a compromise. This makes it clear that if they were powerful, they would have first and foremost destroyed the idols, as it happened eventually after the conquest of Mecca. This hardly augurs well for religious co-existence or pluralism. Secondly, it also tells Muslims not to ask too many questions regarding the conduct of the Prophet and what possible interpretations it might contain. The whole stress here seems to be not to raise uncomfortable questions which again is not healthy for the intellectual growth of any society. The obvious question that arises therefore is whether, after the message of Islamic monotheism had been revealed, it was permissible to go around idols and yet proclaim it as a Muslim demonstration of faith. If the prophet did not have a problem in doing so, then why do contemporary Ulama denounce the co-existence of polytheistic and monotheistic traditions? Also, one may argue that so much of received Islamic history which tells us that Islam got established the day Gabriel spoke to the prophet is in need of revision. A more plausible scenario seems to be that Islam got established slowly and gradually and that many layers of religious and political influences went into making what we today recognize as Islam. ---- A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia. URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-history/prophet-umrah-conquest-mecca/d/127486 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism