Mustafa Umar – Islamic History 101 Lecture#4 Life of the Prophet
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AI: Transcript ©
Moving on to superstitions.
What were some of the superstitions that were
prevalent,
in Arabia at the time before the advent
of the prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam?
Well, one of the superstitions among the Arabs
was that during the time of pilgrimage,
they came up with this concept that if
you lived in Makkah
and you are performing the pilgrimage during the
season, where you're supposed to come, where you're
supposed to be there,
they if they wanted to go back into
their house during one of the parts of
the pilgrimage, you're not allowed to go through
the front door.
You have to sneak in through the back
door of your house.
Why? If you if you go through the
front door, there's gonna be like bad luck
for you. You're gonna be in trouble somehow.
So they were very cautious and they were
very careful about all of these things, and
they said, you know what? They invented this
idea. How did they come up with the
idea?
Who knows? But you can imagine you can
piece together something that how people said, you
know, if you go through the front then
it's, you know, you're not allowed to, so
therefore,
if you come and sneak in through the
back then, you know, maybe the idols are
not watching or Allah is not watching or
something like that. Another superstition that they had
was that the soul of a murdered victim,
a person who's been killed unjustly,
that's that person's soul kind of roams around
the earth. Right? They didn't really believe in
afterlife, but in the terms of spirit, the
spirit of the person kind of roams around,
and it roams around in the form of
an owl. Lot of the superstition was, it's
an owl. So whenever you see an owl
you think, oh, you know what? The owl
that's like,
you know, whatever owls do, cooing or whatever
noise that the owls make at night time,
when you see them that's that's the person
who got killed making that sound. So when
you hear the owl, you think, oh, you
know, that's probably that dead guy, you know,
trying to, like, say, you know, somebody, you
know, avenge me, you know, get those people
who killed me. So they had this belief
as well.
And it's interesting because in today's society, many
people have this field belief as well. Right?
That, like, you see it in many movies,
you see it in people actually believe that,
that this a similar superstition to this.
They believed in fortune tellers.
That fortune tellers could they can go to
fortune tellers and the fortune teller will, whatever,
look at something,
and they will be able to tell the
future.
Things haven't changed today. People go and they
look in the teacup and they say, oh,
you know, you're this is gonna happen to
you, or they go and they have, like,
some kind of things that they do, whatever
it is, they play around with cards, tarot
cards or something like that, you find it
prevalent. And you think, well, this is old
thing in the past. Right?
I don't know if you've been around city
of Anaheim or city or LA, or there's
all these people. Right? They got all these
little tiny shops and everything, and it's funny
thing is it's usually the tiniest, like, most
ghetto, like, messed up shop. So they couldn't
tell the future about, like, the lottery or
something like that for themselves or the stock
market even, like, they couldn't they couldn't hit
one of the stocks correctly, that they could
at least upgrade their shop a little bit.
But anyways, you find you find people like
that, right, in the in the society. Then
they used to go to astrologers.
So what is an astrologer?
Not an astronomer,
an astrologer.
There's a big difference. An astronomer is someone
who studies, you know, the heavenly bodies and
all of that. An astrologer
is somebody who thinks that the stars
can actually determine
either events or determine the future. So when
you say, well, this happened because of the
position of the stars. So this person, you
know,
this person died because this, you know, orbit
this star was in this alignment and all
of these things. Right? Now is this common
today?
Is every single supermarket
sells,
you know, what do they call it? Horoscopes.
Right? Horoscopes, which are written so generally that
they apply to many people, but people go,
and it's a problem in in in many
Muslim societies even. Many practicing Muslim societies, they'll
go and they'll say, you know,
so, you know,
what's your,
you know, what what no. Not no. No.
Because they're more slick about it. You know?
Not what's your sign. They're like, you know,
so so if you meet one of the
people who is interest you're you're interested in
their daughter or their son or something like
that, someone will come and say, you know,
so,
you know, what,
what month were you born in around this
area? Somehow get the information out of you,
and then they'll go and they'll check these
things. Oh, well, you know, my, you know,
my son or daughter,
they don't seem to match up together in
the horoscope because their signs are just are
not compatible
according to the latest research that was just
published, you know, in the tabloid magazine in
your local, you know, grocery store. Right? So
they didn't match up, and therefore, these 2
should not be getting married. This is common
among Muslims, unfortunately, but this is exactly what
they were doing. They were doing the same
thing
during this time, very common superstition.
Another superstition they had was casting featherless arrows.
So you have an arrow without the feathers
on it, without the point that's not needed.
So you have an arrow, and it's just
used as a symbol. It's like dice. You
know, people roll dice just for for luck
to just to figure out what's going on.
Same thing, they used to take a featherless
arrow, and they would throw it or they
would, you know, take, like, you know, drawing
straws
where you hold this the you hold the
straws and, what what do they call it?
Casting lots. Casting yeah. It's called casting lots.
It's traditional terms. Casting lots. Or you hold
the straws and you come out with the
shortest one. So they would do this, but
not just randomly.
They would do this in the name of
their idol.
So it's important. They're not just they're not
just randomly luck doing it out of luck.
They're doing it either in the name of
their idol or in front of their idol,
thinking that the idol is kind of, you
know, overseeing everything, and it's gonna determine what
happens. So they would make major decisions in
terms of who to get married. So should
I marry this person or should I not
marry this person? They would go and check
with these arrows. Let's see. Okay. You know
what? It it landed correctly or it came
out correctly. Gotta marry this person or no.
Cannot marry this person. Even when it came
to war, should we, you know, should we
fight this tribe?
Right? Maybe they they heard the owl or
something like that and say, you know, this
is the tribe that, you know, killed the
guy. Let's avenge them. So they had to
decide whether or not to go to war.
They would use these things. Right? So they
would they would this is what they would
do. It became so bad that they would
even use these things to determine who a
child actually belong to. Right? So if you're
if you're if there's a marriage relationship
and,
you know, the woman cheated on the husband,
for example, and now she's pregnant, So does
the child belong to the husband or does
it belong to the boyfriend?
So you have to determine somehow. What's a
great way to determine for them? Say, well,
just go to the idol and just check
the arrows, and whichever one the arrow shows,
that means that that child belong even if
the guy comes out a different color or
completely different, different, different facial features, different, the
child is completely different, doesn't matter. The idol
has decided correctly, and we don't mess with
the idol. So that's that's some of the
superstitions,
that they had.
Okay. Moving on. So the morals.
Do not think that the Arabs were just
the most messed up people on the earth
and there was nothing good about them, they
were just, you know, just demons or something
like that. They had some good qualities and
you have to be balanced, you have to
look at what were some of the good
qualities they had. And And the reason why
we're gonna talk about some of their good
qualities is because
Allah actually chose them in a sense of
sending a prophet amongst them, and that they're
gonna be the 1st generation to carry and
spread the message of Islam. They must have
some qualities,
you know, about
why Allah decided to choose these people. He
could have chosen the Romans, he could have
chosen the Persians, he could have chosen the
Greeks, he could have chosen the Indians, he
could have chosen Chinese, he could have chosen
anyone else to be the recipient of the
last message. But he chose these people and
probably there's a lot of wisdom behind it.
We can see some of them. Some of
the wisdom is because of the great qualities
they have. What qualities did they have? 1,
they were very generous.
They were very generous people.
That's something you have to understand. Number 2,
they were very hospitable people. So you come,
you wanna, you know, you need a meal
or something like that, you're, you know, a
visitor to the city or something, they will
come and you still people say it about
the Arabs today. Most Arabs today generally, very
hospitable people. They'll come and they'll sacrifice the
entire sheep for you even though they wouldn't,
you know, they wouldn't eat this on a
normal basis. They'll go out of their way
to go and, you know, take care of
their guests.
And if you look at some societies, some
cultures like,
you know, many places in American culture,
many parts of European culture, you you can't
even man, even if you're hungry, there is
no sense of hospitality.
Right? The hospitality is just doesn't exist. If
you're a guest and everything, say that's nice.
You know, I had to make it in
this you gotta make it in this country,
or you gotta learn our language first, you
know, that racism comes out and all of
that. You know? You don't speak the same
language. Something like that. So they were very
hospitable people, and that was a good quality
that they had. They had they were very
courageous,
and that's important.
They were willing to fight when they were
convinced about the truth of an idea.
That's very, very important. Meaning, they're willing to
give their life when they believe something to
be true. When you look in a sophisticated,
very highly sophisticated society, which has a lot
of philosophy and lot of thoughts and all
of that, like the Greeks for example. Right?
You can think and you can talk and
you can express yourself in a lot of
thing, but you'll find that people who are
like philosophers who think a lot,
they're the most hesitant when it comes to
action.
Right? They'll be the ones who think a
100 times and then basically either, you know,
the the the war is over or the
battle is over, whatever needed to be done.
You know, if someone comes and points a
gun at someone else, well, you know, if
I attack him from here, then he might
do this, and if he does this, then
he might do this. The guy's gonna be
dead by that time, right, by the time
you think about that. So they were very
courageous people and that actually,
could serve
as either a good thing or a really
bad thing.
In their time, it was serving as a
really bad thing until the they became Muslim
and, you know, they carried on that that
quality. Because otherwise, you'll just go and kill
the wrong people or do something else.
They were very loyal. Their loyalty to the
family, their loyalty to tribe was something which
was very honorable
in extent. But it became extreme, but the
problem is, if you look at society today,
loyalty to family is almost like it's almost
nonexistent in many societies now. It's gone. Everything
everything is about selfish individualism.
So are you the family or doesn't fam
everyone has some fight in the family. Everyone's
you saw family members are ripping each other
off. They didn't do these kind of things
because family was very, very important to them
and the tribe was very important to them
as well.
They were simple people. Alright. You can see
this as a pro or a con, but
you could say, yeah, if I'm a good
quality, they were simple in the sense that
they were not so,
concerned with
having so many material possessions and having so
many things. They they weren't they weren't stressed
out all the time, like, you know, why
can't we move up to the higher classes,
or why can't we be like the Romans,
or something like that. They were quite content
with the simple life that they were living.
Right? So there's pros and cons to being
simple.
Some of the bad qualities, though.
Right? So some of the good qualities, when
they're out of balance, can actually turn into
bad qualities, like loyal like like courage. If
you're having courage, but you're fighting the wrong
person,
this bad turns out to be bad. If
you're,
if you're loyal
to your tribe, even though it's oppressing other
people, that can become bad. Though they also
had some major besides messing up some of
these qualities, they had some intrinsically bad qualities.
So they used to drink a lot.
Lot of alcohol, lot of prevalence of drunkenness
in this society.
They used to gamble. The gambling was quite
common
and, like, intense gambling.
Compounded interest.
Right? What's called what used to be called
usury. And later on, you know, the terms
usury and interest became separated and became different
because the Catholic church or the Christians, they
decided that we're gonna allow
small amounts of usury, so we give it
a different term. So compounded interest, basically, that's
what it is, is that when you loan
out money, right, and you expect more of
it back, you expect the return. This became
al Duaafan, mudaafa as the Quran mentioned. This
became, like, compounded over and over again, and
it just it kept on piling up. And
basically, even if you die, the dead gets
transferred over to your family.
Right? That it just continues, and it just
keeps on going. It's like,
macroeconomics
today. Right? If the World Bank or the
IMF or something like that, if they give
a loan to a country,
and that country the the leader decides to
take a bunch of loans and put the
country in debt and inflation and all of
these things, and now a new charismatic
leader who's honest and upright and just and
everything takes over,
all the debts trans all the debts forgiven
and all of a sudden they start from
scratch and now we can we can recover
our economy and everything. No. No. The debt
stays and it gets transferred over and it
continues, and that's why the countries can't develop.
No matter how great of a leader you
put in there, the system is restricting you
and keeping you there. So they had something
very similar to that. Same thing where people
would be even, you know, stuck, sold into
slavery because of interest and because of debt
compounding.
Okay?
Let's continue about their morals a little bit,
then we'll take questions after this slide. So
when it came to women,
so women for the most part,
were deemed as inferior unless they came from,
like, a high class society or something like
that. So what ends up happening is, you
know, sometimes people today, they're looking at all
of the,
amazing rights and all of the great things
that Islam has done for the women in
the past. And when you explain it to
them, there are people actually who are writing
books now to try to make an argument
that actually
before Islam, women had more rights and women
were better off and women were this. They're
actually coming out with this. I've seen several
of them, and this has been happening for
like the last 10 years. Why? Because they
know Muslims are trained,
rightfully trained, to answer and say, look at
look at how society was, look how much
Islam did for women at that time. So
now some group some groups of people have
come to try to make the argument
that, look, women actually were amazing in this
in all of this. So they pick on
like 1 or 2 and see, look, if
you have one example or 2, that's sufficient.
That's that's scientifically credible, although it's not. So
the thing is,
you can pick some women from high class
society and say, okay, they weren't treated inferior,
they were they were, you know, treated well
like Cleopatra or whatever it may be. Right?
Like in another in another society.
But the majority, the vast, vast majority overwhelmingly
were treated as inferior
treated as inferior beings.
For example, some of the examples, if a
girl was born, people would become very sad.
This is directly mentioned in the Quran. People
would become upset
that a girl came out because they didn't
know what was gonna come out, girl comes
out very upset. Now why were they upset?
Try to understand the reasoning. Why were they
upset? Some people tell you this, I just
wanted a boy, or I just wanted a
girl, or whatever. They actually had a reason.
Their their thinking was
that if you have a boy,
the boy is able to do 2 things
which are very important in that society and
needed in that society. Number 1, the boy
can earn money because at that time men
were generally the ones who were working, And
it was, of course, very few women were
trading. There were few women who traded, but
generally men were working. Why? Because also it's
dangerous. You can't you you the the Arabs
were traders for the most part. They were
going and traveling on caravans and everything. It
was dangerous for them even. Now for women
to generally be traveling is is something very
rare because it was very dangerous. And number
2, they fight.
The men would be able to fight. Right?
Not the same way that the woman could
be able to fight. So for them, this
was this was, like, for survival purposes. So
the the arrogance and the preference
became
like part of their, you know, wanting to
have, you know, security and a great tribe
and a great empire, like a great clan
and all of these things. That doesn't mean
that it's justified to prefer a guy over
a girl, but the, this is something that
they used to do commonly. And, of course,
the Quran came and condemned this behavior, and
it described this behavior that they had.
Some fathers used to bury their girls alive
Used to bury their girls alive. So when
they are born, they would go and they
would take them, and they would actually put
them into dig a ditch, put them into
the ditch, and put the dirt on top
of them. Right? Why would they do this?
Because they say, you know what? We are
upset that we we wanted a boy number
1, but now this is another mouth to
feed. So this is just gonna be a
burden having another girl. We don't even wanna
deal with this, so they go ahead. It's
it's like a form of abortion.
We're not gonna get into the topic of
the abortion, but you you under you understand
the point. Right? The the whole debate about
abortion is whether or not you're killing a
child. That's the where the whole debate takes
place and how many months and whether it
should be done or all of that stuff.
So this was taking place.
Women did not receive inheritance.
K. Important thing. They did not receive any
inheritance from anyone, not from the husband, not
from the father, not from the, you know,
brother, not from the kids, no from nobody.
They don't receive anything.
Women, men could have unlimited wives. Right? So
there's there was no limit to wives and
polygamy was,
widely practiced, but there was absolutely no limit
at all. And number 2,
women cannot divorce.
Right? So women could not petition for divorce.
So now you understand
how unlimited wives plays a role. Right? So
if the women cannot petition for divorce and
the guy can have unlimited wives,
what could he simply do? He could simply
the ones he doesn't wanna deal with or
whatever, they're stuck hanging in the middle and
they can't do anything. It's very much like,
it's like Christianity without the polygamy. Because in
in traditional Christianity Catholicism in Europe,
women are not allowed to divorce. In fact,
the divorce doesn't exist. It's not allowed at
all. But here, women could not even petition
for any type of divorce. So the woman
is stuck and she's left hanging, basically. And
she has she has nothing no one else
to turn to.
Prostitution became very common.
So prostitution was very common at that time,
and unfortunately, prostitution is becoming very common today.
It's not uncommon, it's becoming normalized.
It's becoming normalized. So for example, today, Muslim
women I'll give you an example. In Germany,
one of the people, Muslim women activists,
I had met, she was in Germany coming
from the UK, and she was fighting for
Muslim women's rights
that they should be given social support by
the government
if they don't have a job,
if they can't find a job.
And working in a prostitution house does not
count as a job. And the German government
was insisting
that no prostitution is a legitimate form of
income, and if she decides not to take
that job that we're offering her, she will
not get government assistance anymore.
This is so this was, I think the
sister is still fighting. I I think she
had one victory, but I don't know if
it completely passed. So it's becoming very common
because seen as a honorable profession. So prostitution
was very, very common in this society, the
way it's starting to become even more acceptable
today. So how did it work?
There's many different ways in which it worked.
Here's one of the ways I'm just describing
that,
a prostitute would put a flag on her
house or some kind of sign on her
house to, you know, let people know that
I'm available.
Right? So guys would come and, you know,
everyone could,
you know, get,
get served for free.
Okay? They can get served for free. Any
any number of people can come. But when
she gets pregnant, this was the the the
this was the kind of contract that was
there,
you know, unwritten contract.
That if she gets pregnant,
she gets to call all the customers who
came,
and she gets to pick.
Either she can choose
who the father is by just looking at
the child and say, well, you know, he
looks kind of like you. So when he
when she chooses,
that person
has to marry her and has to take
care of her.
This was a form of marriage that was
actually practiced. This is one way to get
married in Arabian society. Another way was you
go and use the arrows, you know, casting
lots and you figure out who the child
belong to and then you end up in
a marriage and stuff like that. So all
of this was outlawed by Islam, of course,
but this was something that was quite common.
So you understand what kind of society we're
talking about here.
Very few people could read or write.
So very few people actually had the ability
to read, the ability to write.
The only type of science that they really
had was poetry. They they were masters of
poetry. So they had this one thing that
they were really good at, but the problem
with the poetry even was they could express
themselves beautifully. Beautiful words, eloquent,
but they generally ended up almost the content
of their poetry was either praising themselves, arrogance,
you know, I'm this way and I'm that
and I did this and all of that.
It was praising women,
you know, praising their bodies or praising, you
know, very vulgar stuff, or praising their own
drunkenness or like wine is so amazing when
I drink it I feel this way and
all of that. It's interesting because one of
the most powerful forms of music today is
rap music, and you find the same three,
you know, themes common in music. It's about
praising yourself, it's about praising women and their
bodies and what you're doing with them and
all of that, and it's about praising drugs
instead of drunkenness. Right? Just change to drugs,
change to I smoke, you know, joints here
and I do this and all that stuff.
Right?
There was illicit relationships. So illicit relationships were
very common. In fact, it was something that
was almost acceptable within society. An example, just
one example,
is that there was poetry
of somebody committing adultery with their own cousin
and that was hung up on the Kaaba,
it's amazing poetry. So there was something called
the Saba Mu'alakaat,
the the the the the special hung up
poems that get hung up every year during
a pilgrimage season on the Kaaba to be
displayed to all the Arabs who come from
all the different areas.
So among them, one of the if you
if you study the poetry, one of them,
among the many others, one of them was
about this guy, how he how he slept
with his, you know, cousin, and he did
this and he did that, and everyone's looking
and saying, wow, this is, you know, amazing,
this artwork, you know. It's like today, people
go and they look at, you know, naked
art and everything, and we don't have the
same taste, but they're looking at, wow, this
is amazing, you know. The way that, like,
in Belgium, for example, one of my friends,
he took me, he said, you know, Muslim
friends, he says, you know what? When we
were non Muslim, we used to come to
the statue and we used to see that,
like, this is the most amazing work of
art. And it's just it's a statue of
a little kid and he just, like, peeing
basically into the fountain. And they're like, this
is one of the most important, like, artworks.
I I maybe maybe I'm I'm not able
to appreciate it, perhaps, but this is, like,
one of the most amazing artworks that the
little kid is just peeing into the fountain,
and it's like a it's like a national
thing. You have to go look at it
if you visit Belgium.
Right? So any questions on morals?
Because we're we are running out of time,
but we're gonna get through these slides, Insha'Allah.
Yeah. Yeah. So the Arabs were generous particularly
when it comes to hospitality,
and when it comes to giving for their
idols,
they were generous. When it comes to giving
money for their idolatry and their idols, they
would be very generous. Maybe when it came
to other people, they were exploiting them. Right?
So you would be generous in terms of
hospitality, you'll feed the guy a bunch of
stuff and all that, but when it came
to economic transactions, they became tough. They were
traders at the end of the day. So
they had,
4 sacred months. K. There were 4 sacred
months which were
actually
deemed sacred
at that time where no fighting should take
place. No wars, no battles,
no raiding of any other caravans during these
4 months.
K? And this is specifically mentioned in the
Quran, and it's most probably something that was
carried from the time of prophet Ibrahim.
So they maintained that.
And what did it allow? It allowed
them to have caravans,
caravan journeys going up
to,
up to Syria
and going down to Yemen.
Yeah. Up to Syria, down to Yemen. These
were some of the caravan routes, they would
travel other caravans as well, but these were
2 major caravans, and this is mentioned in
the Quran in Surah Quresh. Those of you
who've read the translation, it's mentioned specifically in
the Quran. That, the people who were in
control at this time were had these 2
these 2 caravan journeys
because the area of Yemen and the area
of Syria in the north and south of
of Arabia were very prosperous areas. Arabia was,
like, still desolate, kind of like a desert,
so you need stuff to come in. They
did not produce all of their own stuff.
It was it was being imported. So the
majority of their stuff that has to do
with civilization
was being imported. The majority of all their
luxuries or whatever it was, it was not
being produced in the middle of Mecca or
even in Badi, in in any of the
surrounding regions. It was being produced in somewhere
else, and it was being imported. And we're
gonna find out what was happening in Yemen,
what was happening in Syria.
They used to fight petty wars,
for years.
Right? For for something small.
Someone maybe looked at the person wrong or
did something small, their tribe would the clan
would go to war with the other clan
or tribe would go to war with another
tribe. They would do this type of things
and they had this tribalism.
So the way tribalism works is there's a
tribe, and within the tribe, there are clans.
Right? And these clans are like families, and
the tribe is 1 giant extended superfamily.
And there's tribes spread throughout Arabia.
Right? So there's no central government or anything
like that. They're spread throughout Arabia, and that's
the way tribalism works. So you would fight
with another tribe if you didn't like whatever
happened, or you'd make an alliance with another
tribe to team up against a third tribe
in order to beat them out. K? So
there was no
law except the what they call the law
of the desert. You know, people some authors
they love to call law of the desert.
I mean, this was the this was the
way that most places were in the world
unless you had an empire. And if you
had an empire,
then generally you had either some kind of
oppressive law or something like that. So whether
you have law or you don't have law,
it's it's it's it's still it's not that
amazing, right, a difference. So you had no
law, you had no government, so there was
no central government. Every tribe was independent.
And if every tribe is independent,
you believe that your tribe is always the
right one. So, basically, you either have an
alliance with another tribe or you're gonna be
at war with another tribe. And the only
way you solve the war with another tribe
is you make another alliance over here. So
it's very strategic. Right? You gotta you gotta
multiply as you gotta have as many kids
as possible. Alright? You hope that there gonna
be more boys so that they can go
and they can become soldiers and they can
be in arms,
or that they they become really smart and
they become traders and they make a lot
of money because you're you're you're potentially in
danger if someone wanted to come and, you
know, take you out.
So alliances were needed in order to survive.
Okay. Yeah. So with regards to the 4
sacred months, is it true that they moved
the months around? Yes. Absolutely. They did. They
used to move them, but they used to
play around because what ended up happening was
when they didn't when they wanted to attack
somebody,
the people who are in power, when they
wanted to attack somebody during the one of
the months, they would just say, you know
what? What we're gonna do is we're gonna
make this month up. Right? So we'll go
ahead and attack them anyways, and we're just
we're just gonna shift this month later on,
and we're, you know, we're gonna make up
for this month and it's gonna be okay.
So they would they would play these games.
Right? They would say, you know, if we
go ahead and make up 2 months for
the 1 month, we can attack this guy
in this month, and then we'll go and
make up an extra one. So they were
doing this as the calendar became a little
bit messed up. Okay?
Alright. Moving on. Other religions. There were Jews
I'm gonna show you a a map after
this slide. So just try and picture where
imagine this is Arabia, and you're gonna see
it. Imagine this is Arabia. So there were
Jews living in Northern Arabia.
K? So there were Jews in Arabia, but
they were living in the north,
kind of the northern regions.
They
the Jews
had a presence presence in Arabia. They actually
controlled Yemen, which is in Southern Arabia on
the bottom,
until
their leader began to persecute the Christians who
were actually in that region, and they got
ousted. So what ended up happening, the the
the, Abyssinian empire, which was in line in
league with the Roman empire, they teamed up
together and they sent,
because they were Christians. Abyssinians were Christians and
the Romans were Christians.
They teamed up together and they sent an
entire army to go get rid of this
Jewish leader. Right? So they got rid of
him because he was persecuting Christians.
Okay? So he was ousted.
But that means that there were still some
Jews there, and there were a lot of
Christians there. Because when you send the army,
you leave the Christians once you take over
the land. So they were they were there.
Now the problem with Judaism at that time
and, you know, continuing
is that they had a lot of focus
on outward piety. So they became very legalistic.
Lots of laws, lots of rules. If animal
has a hoof like this and it's twisted
like that, then you're not allowed to eat
it. And if there's a fish on the
bottom or there's a little type of animal
and if it does this or does that,
then very, very legalistic in nature. That was
one issue. And the second issue was the
racial superiority.
That they thought that because they're from this
tribe, because they're from the descendants of so
and so, they're gonna be automatically saved, and
everything's just gonna be fine. So it became
like racial snobbery
over other people. So that was one of
the issues. So it's giving you a a
circum how the circumstance was at that time
in the world in terms of religions.
Christians were in Southern Arabia,
and you understand why? They were there a
little bit before, and they were there even
more
after the,
the the Abyssinian and the Roman Empire had
sent in the army to take out the
Jewish leader.
In Northern Arabia, they were also there. So
there were Christians in Northern Arabia.
Why were there Christians in Northern Arabia?
Because
of their, you know, vicinity to the Roman
Empire. Let me just show you the map
so that it becomes a little bit more
clear. Okay. This is, a map
of,
Arabia before the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
This is Arabia, this region right here.
Okay?
You wanna put the camera on it, perhaps?
It might help. Alright. So this is this
is we just lost it. Alright.
This is Arabia.
Okay? This southern area right here, this southern
area here, this is Yemen. This is called
Yemen here.
Modern day Yemen, but this is Yemen, this
area. Aksum, this is Ethiopia,
modern day Ethiopia area. This is, this Abyssinian
Empire over here.
Hijaz, this is where Mecca, Medina,
all of these places are. Okay? This is
the Sasanian Empire, meaning the Persians.
This is the Roman Empire, meaning the, the
Byzantine Empire, meaning the Romans.
They're Christian.
They're we'll talk about them. They're Christian.
They're Christian here.
And this was controlled by the Jews for
a little while. The Christians teamed up together
here, and they sent the entire group of
Christians here, Christians here to take out the
Jewish leaders. So you have a you have
a lot of presence of Christians
remaining over here because of that thing that
happened. Okay? And then you have Jews in
the northern Arabia, this this area over here,
and you have,
Christians
around these borders over here. Why? Because they're
so close to the Roman Empire that they,
you know, spread their Christianity over here, or
for political reasons, some of the Arabs became
Christian. K?
So going back to this,
so you have Christians in Southern Arabia
and Northern Arabia.
The problem with Christianity at that time was
that Jesus was worshiped now. Rather than the
teachings of Jesus being from a prophet, he's
being worshiped as God. The doctrine of salvation
says that as long as
he's being worshiped as God. The doctrine of
salvation
says that as long as you believe everything
is gonna be fine. So morality
tends to take a dip because if you're
gonna be fine anyways, what is there to
keep you in check? And then there was
the concept of the trinity, which became very
confusing and people were trying to figure it
out, and they were debating with one another.
So there were councils that were debating with
one another, the council of Nicaea, the council
of Trent, and they're trying to figure out
whether Jesus is God or whether Jesus is
divine or whether Jesus is human slash divine
or all of these things, and it caused
a lot of problems. Because you're worshiping,
you're saying you're worshiping 1 god, but you
actually have 3 distinct mental pictures in your
mind at the same time. So this became
problematic. In Persia,
where I said the the Sasanian Empire. K?
Persia. Persian Empire. They were idol they were,
fire worshipers. So they had temples actually for
fire worshiping where people would keep the fire
alive and they would be worshiping the fire,
and this would continue in that form.
The Persians,
during the advent of the prophet, peace be
upon him, when he came, the remember, the
Jews were there, the Jews were kicked out
by the Christians.
At that time, the Christians were kicked out
by the Persians because there's 2 major empires
in the world. There's the Persians and there's
the Romans, and they're competing with one another.
So the Persians actually managed to kick out
the Christians, and they had control over Yemen.
So that means you do have fire worshiping
in Arabia in the south. So it's it's
giving you an understanding of what kind of
religions existed, what the region was like, because
this all kind of determines
how things will function, what kind of challenges,
the message of Islam will face.
Buddhism was in in India and Central Asia.
It was very prevalent. The problem with Buddhism
was that there were idle idols of Buddha
in every house. Like, today if you go
to, like, Chinatown or something like that, you
find, like, these little statues of Buddha being
sold everywhere. It was like that at that
time. There were people actually started worshiping the
statues, many, many people. So even though if
that's not what Buddha taught, that's what they
they they ended up doing.
2nd issue was people who became Buddhist were
supposed to renounce life. So you're supposed to
end up either the the highest status is
to, you know, own nothing,
become a beggar, and, you know, have no
influence over society and just focus on your
own,
ability
or, you know, hope that you're gonna reach
Nirvana in the state of tranquility and all
of that.
Hinduism
was prevalent in India. So Hinduism was something
that existed in India, and Hinduism became a
a religion where you have millions,
literally millions of idols. So there's if you
count them, there's it's literally in the millions.
And the other problem they had, see, I'm
talking about their belief 1, and 2, their
social issues. So their belief, that's one issue.
In the social issues, they had a case
system.
The case system basically
puts people into different hierarchy, different categories. So
there are the Brahmins who are, like, the
highest. They're treated as, like, gods almost. They're
like the people who are the highest,
and,
you know, you just inherit that and that
is in your blood. And then there are
the people who are on the lowest, they're
the untouchables.
Right? They are not even allowed to learn
to read. They're not allowed to, you know,
even touch any scripture that the Brahmin would
be be able to touch. If they do,
they get killed. Even if they do something
like that, their job is to be servants
forever.
And that's the way it is, and that's
the way it existed for a long time.
And that influence, unfortunately,
is still prevalent in people who are coming
from that region,
even if they're Muslim.
So basically you can see the world was
virtually in an age of ignorance.
What what they call in Arabic jahiliyah.
It was not just Arabia that was messed
up, it was the entire world that was
pretty much getting messed up. So there was
there was a major major problem in the
world, and many historians describe this period as
basically saying, you know, the world was on
basically a suicide course. They were really messed
up in their behavior, in their beliefs, in
all of these
things. They needed something to change them.
Okay? So this is again the map. You
understand
where we are. That's the Persian Empire, Roman
Empire. It's called Sasanian Empire, and it's called
Byzantine empire, the Roman empire. Okay?
Any questions on that? Yes. Okay. Very good
question. So where did the Jews come from?
Yes. So the Jews,
actually came when they were ousted from Jerusalem.
So they were ousted twice from Jerusalem, so
they were either they came the first time
they were kicked out,
or they came the second time they were
kicked out. Okay? So it could have been
either one, and then they began to kind
of spread,
their religion a little bit among the Arabs.
So they became completely Arabized.
They were complete complete Arab Jews. They spoke
Arabic and everything, but they maintained their Hebrew
as well. So they maintained their language, and
they were literate people, and they established themselves
very nicely in Arabia. See, Arabia will come
into whether or not it's the area of
Arabia or whether it's not, whether it's because
of their language or something like that,
the thing is that Arabs originated in the
south,
in the Yemen area,
then they spread up in
around this entire area.
So it's the people who lived in the
south who are actually the real Arabs,
and they kind of spread out. So now
because it was kind of spread out, it
became known in in English as Arabia or
whatever, jazeera Arab or the Arab people because
they control the entire area. Doesn't necessarily mean
the entire region or this this whole peninsula
was considered Arabia from the past. It it
just it depends who gave it a name.
Right? Whoever was there or whichever historian gave
it a different name, it could have been
a different name in the past.
So we can't really know for sure exactly
what it was.
Okay? So how did that what the question
was, how did the name Arabia come and
when did it come? So no. It's it's
it's a it's a very, very, very good,
very good question. Is that, you know, could
it be and we we find references that
many of the Jews settled there or the
Christians settled there because they knew another prophet
was coming.
Absolutely. Because the thing is this, the Jews
for example, the Jews, when they were kicked
out of Jerusalem,
they could have gone anywhere.
There's so many different places that they could
have gone and many went to different places.
Why did this group particularly go to Arabia?
It's very very,
probable,
and there's there's good evidence that at there's
solid evidence that at least some of them
came to this region
because they were waiting for the prophet. And
it could be that some of them may
have not come for that particular reason, but
there's definitely a group of people who knew
that a prophet was coming to that area.
Some Christians, some Jews, and some of them
got it wrong. See, the thing is they
knew that a prophet was coming, but maybe
they got it wrong and they didn't know
exactly they couldn't figure out exactly because they
were trying to figure it out. This specific
spot is not mentioned 100%
in in clarity.
So some people may have got it wrong
and they went to a different region, but
they all knew they all knew that he
was
coming. So that's the important thing to understand.
Okay. The term Jahiliyah or the age of
ignorance, is that from the Quran or something?
Yes. It's from the Quran. So the term
itself is in the Quran. Okay. Okay. In
terms of Yeah. So referring to a particular
period of time, you mean in terms of
Arabia or the entire world?
Both. Okay. In terms of Arabia or the
entire world, it's it's something that's mentioned in
the Quran whether or not it's,
something that's specifically documented.
The Prophet
used to
use the terminology that
in this before the advent of Islam and
before people accepted Islam, this was Jahiliyyah, this
was the age of ignorance. Why? Because they
didn't have the revelation with them at that
time. So from that perspective it's mentioned in
hadith, It's mentioned in the statements of the
prophets, specifically,
that before Islam, that was known as the
age of ignorance because people didn't have the
revelation. And once they received the revelation and
they got it and they accepted it, now
it's the age of
opposite of ignorance. Age of Islam or enlightenment
or where you can call whatever you want,
the age of knowledge.
Right? So it's it's there's solid reference there.
Yeah. Now today, perhaps one of the reasons
maybe why you're asking, some people try to
take the term and extend it to our
today's society and everything is that. Is that
a correct extension?
It's a it's a scholarly debate whether or
not it should be extended
whether or not it should be extended to
that or not. Okay?
And move on to the next slide.
Arabia, geography. So let's look at some of
the geography. Arabia is the largest peninsula on
Earth.
The definition of a peninsula.
Yes. A body that's surrounded by water on
three sides. K? So it's the largest peninsula
on earth called Jazira Al Arab. K? Jazira
actually more refers to an island, so it's
just so big they even called themselves an
island, but it's actually a peninsula. It's about
a 1000000 square miles. It's it's a big
plot of land, but it's mostly sandy mostly
sand and very mountainous.
So the 2 most difficult,
like, you know, terrains to live on and
settle on happen to be sandy and mountainous
areas. In, like, all the places you could
choose, this is among the most difficult place
to actually inhabit.
Had very little water, so it's very hot
and it's very dry if you've been there.
Very, very hot, very, very dry, so it's
it's very difficult to actually it's a very
difficult place to live,
without modern technology.
Towns
would basically be set up wherever you find
a water source. So you find a well
somewhere, you find an oasis somewhere, people would
either stay there and camp there and just,
you know, chill out over there for a
while until they move, or they would set
up a town. Why? Because you have you
have to have a water source. There are
some areas which are a little bit greener,
like Taif, for example, but for the most
part, most of them were very,
very arid. So you would find that this
is most of Arabia with the exception of
the south. The south, by the way, Yemen
and all of that, why it's so popular?
It's because it's very fertile area. That's why
it's been colonized so many times.
Bedouin nomads,
used to move around wherever you you find
a water source. So there's a group of
people who are sedentary. They've settled down. They've
established cities. They've established towns,
like Mecca and, you know, Ta'if and, other
cities.
Then you find a group of Bedouins spread
around the entire area. They don't even have
a place. They just put pick up their
tent, they go somewhere else. Wherever you find
water, just find the place of water, and
then just keep moving. Just keep on moving.
That's what they do. So there's, there's,
they're known as the Bedouins. So when you
hear Bedouins, you understand it's a nomad, someone
who's going around, doesn't live in a city,
he's not settled down.
There were no world powers interested in most
of Arabia, which is interesting. So generally, for
the most part, except Yemen
in the south because it's fertile,
and in the north,
near the Roman Empire or near the Persian
Empire because it's just near their borders.
Outside of that, the rest of Arabia, no
one's interested in really colonizing it. So you'd
find Roman Empire, Persian Empire, other empires, India
India, China, and all of that. They were
not so interested in Arabia. Why? Because it's
not there's really nothing there for them. It's
the land is not amazing. What else do
you have to offer? You know, they had
precious metals and stuff like that, but they
they didn't know how much of the precious
metals were there and how much they could
mine and all of that.
The political situation
is, remember, up until about the 6th century,
1 century before we're talking about when the
prophet was born, right, you have the Byzantine
Empire,
which is the Roman Empire
on the west
to the west of Arabia. North and west,
but you call it the west. And you
have the Persian Empire
on
the east, north and to the east, but
it's still Arabia is kind of stuck in
between these two. Byzantine Empire had already colonized
Egypt, and they colonized Syria, and they had
relationships
between the Abyssinian Empire in Africa and Ethiopia
because of, you know, the fact that they
were Christian.
Sasan Empire
was the Persians, remember that they had controlled
Yemen, they control a bunch of other areas.
But in Arabia, they were in control
of Yemen. K. So that's pretty much any
questions.
Okay. So remember,
stick with the class.
Don't get stressed out. You know, you can
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