Life-of-Muhammad

Life of Muhammad sa 55should injure the feelings of their Meccan brethren. Butwhen the Prophet sa insisted on more and more counsel,one of the Medinite Muslims stood up and said,"Prophet sa of God, you are having all the counsel youwant, but you continue to ask for more. Perhaps yourefer to us, the Muslims of Medina. Is that true?""Yes," said the Prophet sa ."You ask for our counsel," he said, "because youthink that when you came to us, we agreed to fight onyour side only in case you and your fellow emigrantsfrom Mecca were attacked in Medina. But now we seemto have come out of Medina, and you feel that ouragreement does not cover the conditions under which wefind ourselves today. But O Prophet sa of God, when weentered into that agreement we did not know you as wellas we do now. We know now what high spiritual stationyou hold. We care not for what we agreed to. We nowstand by you, whatever you ask us to do. We will notbehave like the followers of Moses as who said, ‘Go youand your God and fight the enemy, we remain herebehind.' If we must fight, we will and we will fight to theright of you, to the left of you, in front of you and behindyou. True, the enemy wants to get at you. But we assureyou that he will not do so, without stepping over ourdead bodies. Prophet sa of God, you invite us to fight. Weare prepared to do more. Not far from here is the sea. Ifyou command us to jump into it, we will hesitate not."(Bukhari, Kitab al-Maghazi, and Hisham).This was the spirit of devotion and sacrifice whichearly Muslims displayed, and the like of which is not tobe found in the history of the world. The example of thefollowers of Moses as has been cited above. As for thedisciples of Jesus, we know they abandoned Jesus at acritical time. One of them gave him away for a paltrysum. Another cursed him, and the remaining ten ranaway. The Muslims who joined the Prophet sa fromMedina had been in his companionship only for a yearand a half. But they had attained to such strength offaith that, had the Prophet sa but ordered, they would