Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE UMMA t 129
After Mecca’s submission to Muhammad in 629, the tribes of
Arabia read the omens and decided that their future lay with the
rising new power in Medina. There was no longer any need to
pursue or to proselytize. Delegations came of their own accord to
the Prophet in Medina and announced their submission. Most of
them were Bedouin, though there may also have been representatives
of some of the Christian settlements in the Yemen. Religion
sat lightly on the Bedouin, as the Quran itself remarks (9:97), and
for some or perhaps most of them acceptance of Islam may have
meant little more than recognizing the sovereignty of Medina and
paying what is set down in Islamic law as a religious tithe (Quran
9:98), but what must surely have appeared to the camel nomads as
a tax or tribute. This conclusion is reasonably drawn from the fact
that immediately after the Prophet’s death, many of the Arab tribes
abruptly stopped paying the alms-tithe and Muhammad’s successor
had to dispatch armed troops to enforce its collection. Muslim
officials could not guarantee that everyone would say his
prayers, but they surely knew whether the zakat arrived in Medina.
A Successor to the Prophet
Muhammad no more appointed a successor than Jesus had. The
Christians’ immediate eschatological expectations made that absence
of concern seem natural, but there is little trace of such urgently
imminent End Time expectations in Islam, either before or
after the Prophet’s death. Muhammad’s illness and death in Medina
in 632, if unexpected, was by no means sudden. There was
ample opportunity to make provision for the succession, and
though some Muslims maintain that he did, the majority agree
that he did not. As the story is commonly told, at Muhammad’s
death the Migrants, those who had originally come with him from
Mecca ten years earlier, and the Helpers, the inner cadre of the
Medina converts, met separately to plan what to do next. When
they learned of the other caucus, the Migrants led by Abu Bakr
hurried to join the Medinese group, presumably to head off a preemptive
choice of successor by the men who had, after all, once