🕌 A Child Born Without a Father
Muhammad was born around 570 CE in Mecca, on the Arabian Peninsula. His father died before his birth, and his mother passed away when he was six. Raised an orphan, he worked as a merchant until the age of forty, when he received his first revelation in the Cave of Hira on the outskirts of Mecca. The angel Gabriel appeared and commanded him to "Recite" — and so began the Quran.
🏜️ A World Built on Division
In the early seventh century, the Arabian Peninsula was a world fragmented by tribe. Bloodline and clan determined everything; those outside a tribe had no protection. Mecca was a commercial city, but its prosperity was concentrated among a small number of Qurayshi noble families, sustained by a polytheistic pilgrimage economy centered on the Kaaba. Women were treated as property, and the practice of burying newborn daughters alive existed. The poor fell into debt slavery, and cycles of blood vengeance between tribes stretched across generations, with no authority capable of arbitrating between them. The world Muhammad was born into ran not on solidarity, but on power.
⚡ A Revolutionary Message
His message was simple and revolutionary. He condemned idol worship, criticized the exploitation of the poor by wealthy merchants, and called for a community grounded in justice and monotheism. He declared that all human beings were equal before God, regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality — a declaration that put him on a direct collision course with the Qurayshi elite who controlled Mecca.
Persecution followed. In 622, he left Mecca with his followers and emigrated to Medina — an event known as the Hijra, which marks the first year of the Islamic calendar. In Medina, he laid the foundations of a theocratic state, and in 629, he took Mecca without bloodshed. By the time of his death on June 8, 632, he was the effective ruler of all southern Arabia.
📜 The Farewell Sermon: His Final Testament
Shortly before his death, in March 632, he completed his final pilgrimage with approximately 120,000 followers. Mount Arafat, located about 20 kilometers southeast of Mecca, is regarded in Islamic tradition as the place where Adam and Eve reunited after descending to earth — known as Jabal al-Rahmah, the Mountain of Mercy. Muhammad himself declared that "Hajj is Arafat," making the act of standing at this site the central pillar of the pilgrimage. It was here that he delivered his Farewell Sermon — his intellectual and spiritual last will. "No Arab is superior to a non-Arab, and no white is superior to a black, nor a black to a white, except through piety and good deeds," he declared. He commanded his followers to feed their enslaved people what they themselves ate, and clothe them as they themselves dressed.
On June 8, 632, he died in the quarters of his wife Aisha. He was sixty-three years old. The cause of death is believed to have been fever.
⚔️ The Fracture His Death Left Behind
His death was not a liberation — it was the beginning of chaos. The question of succession became the central issue that fractured the early Muslim community into numerous sects within the first century of Islamic history. Sunnis believed that Abu Bakr had legitimately succeeded Muhammad through community consensus. Shia Muslims held that Muhammad had designated his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, as his successor. That division endures to this day.
🔍 The Gap Between Founder and Institution
One question remains. How closely does Islam today resemble the message Muhammad sought to deliver?
The language of equality he preached was unambiguous. Yet after his death, Islam became entangled with empire. Schools of jurisprudence formed. Political struggles over the interpretation of the Hadith — the recorded sayings and deeds of Muhammad — came to overshadow theology itself. Modern movements such as Wahhabism and Salafism sparked fierce debate over the authenticity and applicability of early Islamic models. Some called for a return to Muhammad's original spirit; others found that very call weaponized to justify violence.
This is not a problem unique to Islam. The gap between a founder's words and an institutionalized religion exists in Christianity and Buddhism alike. Jesus stood with the poor, yet the papacy made alliances with emperors. The Buddha taught non-possession, yet monasteries became centers of power. Muhammad declared equality, yet the empire built in his name carried conquest and slavery in its wake.
His Farewell Sermon is still cited today, fourteen centuries later, as a message of inclusion and equality. Whether that was truly what he intended — and how much of Islam's many faces today honor that intention — is not a question for historians. It is a question that 1.8 billion Muslims carry with them, each in their own way.
No comments:
Post a Comment