Guillaume--Life of Muhammad.pdf - Radical Truth

164 The Life of Muhammad
when Jesus, Son of Mary, was cited as an example thy people laughed
thereat'i 1 i.e. they rejected your attitude to what they say.:
Then He mentions Jesus, Son of Mary, and says, 'He was noihing but a
slave to whom We showed favour and made him an example to the children
of Israel. If We had wished We could have made from you angels to act
as vice-regents in the earth. Verily, there is knowledge of the [last] hour,
so doubt not about it but follow Me. This is an upright path,' i.e. the
signs which I gave him in raising the dead and healing the sick, therein is
sufficient proof of the knowledge of the hour. He says: 'Doubt not about
it, but follow Me. This is an upright path.'
Al-,Akhnas b. Shariq b. 'Amr b. Wahb al-Thaqafi, ally of B. Zuhra, was
one of the leaders of his people who was listened to with respect, and he
used to give the apostle much trouble and contradict him, so God sent
238 down about him: 'Do not obey every feeble oath-taker, slanderer, walking
about with evil tales" as far as the word I zanfm'. 3
He did. not say zanim in the sense of 'ignoble' to insult his ancestry,
because God does not insult anyone's ancestry, but he confirmed thereby
the epithet given to him so that he might be known. Zanim means an
adopted member of the tribe. AI-Khatim al-Tarnimi said in pagan days:
An outsider whom men invite as a supernumerary
As the legs are useless additions to the width of a pelt.
AI-Walid said: 'Does God send down revelations to Muhammad and
ignore me, the greatest chief of Quraysh, to say nothing of Abu Mas'ud
'Amr b. 'Umayr al-Thaqafi, the chief of Thaqif, we being the great ones of
Tii'if and Mecca /' So God sent down concerning him, so I am told,
'They said, ifthis Quran had been revealed to a great man ofthe two towns,'
as far as,the words, 'than what they amass'.4
Ubayy b. Khalaf b. Wahb b. J:Iudh.fa and 'Uqba b. Abu Mu'ayt were
very close friends. Now 'Uqba had sat and listened to the apostle and when
Ubayy knew of that he came to him and said, 'Do I hear that you have sat
with Muhammad and listened to him 1 I swear I will never see you or
speak to yo,! again (and he swore a great oath) if you do the sarne again,
or if you do not goand spit in his face.' 'Uqba, the enemy of God, actually
did this, God curse him. So God sent down concerning the pair of them,
1 Sura 43. 57.
:z A difficult phrase. $adda with the preposition min means 'to laugh immoderately or to
make a loud noise', With 'an it means 'to turn away from'. But these tWo prepositions are
often interchangeable. Ibn Is!;laq's explanation of the passage is that the fact that Christians
pray to Jesus is no justification for the polytheism of the Meccans, as the latter argued, for
Christians perverted the messageJesus brought. When Jesus is adduced as an example (of
one who called an evil people to God) the Meccans rejected Muhammad's attitude towards
him in what they said; but this exegesis is not sound. The Sura is perfectly consistent in
showing how prophets were sent to erring peoples and were laughed at. Cf. v. 47: The
Meccans laugh when Jesus is meptioned because his worship would seem to justify their
worshipping several gods. The citatjon which follows shows where in Muhammad's opinion
they were wrong. I.I. has adopted the reading yt1ludduna (so Nifi', I. 'Amir, andal:'Kisi'i)
instead of the commoner ytl/idduna.
3 Sura 68. 10-13. . .. Siira 43. 30.
The Life of Muhammad 16 5
'On the day that the sinner bites his hands, saying, would that I had chosen
a path With the apostle,' as far as the words 'a deserter of men'.I
, Ubayy took to the apostle an old bone, crumbling to pieces, and said,
Muhammad, do yo~ allege that God can revivify this after it has decayed I'
Then he crumbled It m, hiS hand and blew the pieces in the apostle's face.
The apostle answered: Yes, I do say that. God will raise it and you, after 239
you have become hke thiS. Then God \\ill send you to Hell.' So God
revealed co~cerning him, j He gave us a parable, and he forgot that he was
created, sa~m~, who will. revivify bones which are rotten? Say, He who
gave them hfe m the first mstance will revivify them. He who knows about
all creation, who has made for you fire from the green wood and 10 you
kindle flame from it.'2 ' ,
There met the apostle, as he was going round the Ka'ba, so I have been
told,' AI-Aswad b. al-Mugalib b. Asad b. 'Abdu'l-'Uzz. and al-Walid b.
al-Mughira and Umayya b. Khalaf and al-'As b. W.'il al-Sahmi men of
reputation among their people. They said: 'Muhammad, co~e let us
wors~ip what.yo~ worship, and you worship what we worship. You and
we Will c?mbme ~n the matter. If what you worship is better than what
we worship we Will take a share of it, and if what we worship is better than
what you worship, you can take a share of that.' So God revealed concerning
them, 'Say, 0. disbelievers, I do not worship what you worship,
and you do not worshIp what I worship, and I do not worship what you
WOrs41p, and ~ou'4d? not worship what I wors~ip; you have your religion
and I have mme, I.e. If you Will only worship God on condition that I
wo.rs.hip what y?U worship, I have no need ofyou at all. You can have your
religIOn, all of it, and I have mine.
(T. Now the apostle was anxious for the welfare of his people, wishing T. 119'
to attract them as far as he could. It has been mentioned that he longed for
a way to attract them, and the method he adopted is what Ibn Hamid told
me that Salama said M. b. Ishaq told him from Yazid b. Ziy'd 'of Medina
fro'," M. b. Ka'? al-Qur"1'i: Whe.n the apostle saw that his people turned
thelr backs on him and he was pamed by their estrangement from what he
brought them from God he longed that there should come to him from
God a message that would reconcile his people to him. Because of his
love for his people and his anxiety over them it would delight him if
the obstacle that made his task so difficult could be removed' so that
he meditated on the project and longed for it and it was dear to hi~. Then
God sent down 'By the star when it sets your comrade errs not and is not
deCeived, he speaks not from his own desire' and when he reached His
word s ' Have you thought of al-L~t and al-'Uzz' ' and Man.t the third the
other',! Satan, when he was meditating upon it, and desiring-to bri~g'it
1 S - •
ura 25· 29· . :& Sura 36. 78.
)' Ta. I1?~. I2 glve~ the authorities for this tradition as 1.1. from Safid b. Mini, a freed~
man of Abu I-Bak~tart. There are a few verbal discrepancies: the Meccans say, 'If what
you have brought 18 better than what we have ... and if what we have is better than whit
you have', &c. .. sUra 109. 5 sUr'" 53. 1-30.