Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE PRINCE OF MEDINA t 95
longer and contain detailed regulations for the conduct of the already
converted. Little wonder. At Mecca Muhammad was chiefly
engaged in converting pagans, persuading their submission to the
One True God. At that early stage submission meant primarily
daily prayer, almsgiving and a strict commitment to worship only
Allah, a deity well known to the Meccans, who nonetheless associated
other gods, his so-called daughters, with him. Muhammad
warned his fellow Meccans that in the past God had visited terrible
punishments on those who ignored the prophets—many of the
examples are drawn, as has been noted, from Bible history—
whom God had sent to them. To no avail. Driven from Mecca to
Medina in 622, Muhammad began to gain a more favorable hearing,
and the Medina suras show him addressing a Muslim rather
than a pagan audience. Both the background of his revelations and
what is implied by submission are now spelled out in greater detail.
Muhammad, we discover, stands at the end—there will be no
other after him—of a line of prophets that began with Adam.
Three of these prophets were notably entrusted with a public revelation
in the form of sacred books—Moses the Torah, Jesus the
Gospel, and Muhammad the Quran—illustrating God’s continuing
mercy toward a wayward humanity. The present revelation is,
in a sense, the most fundamental of the three since it goes back to,
and revives, the religion of Abraham, something that had managed
to survive at Mecca in a disfigured form for centuries. That is why
Islam still venerates the Kaaba built by Abraham and Ishmael—
and toward which Muslims now pray—and must continue to
practice the ritual of the hajj begun in Abraham’s day.