Mustafa Umar – Islamic History 101 Lecture#6 Life of the Prophet
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AI: Transcript ©
So, we left off at marriage and family.
So,
the prophet salawasalam
had a reputation
throughout Arabia or throughout Makkah in particular of
being a very honest person. Now a woman
by the name of Khadija,
she hired him to go and trade some
of her merchandise in Syria.
So Syria is one of the main places
where the caravans would go because there's a
lot of merchandise over there. So
she
decides that she wants to go ahead and
choose him.
Why did she choose him? Because
she's a smart businesswoman,
and she says, you know what? Let me
get someone who's really, really known for his
honesty. So she hires him, and he goes
to Syria.
He trades the merchandise that, you know, she
sent him with.
And on top of that, he takes some
of that money and he buys more merchandise
and he comes back with that merchandise
and he trades it back in Makkah as
well. And he gives her all the profits.
Right? The extra profit that he didn't actually
need to give her, he gave her part
of that profit as well. Because the deal
was that he just goes to Syria and
he sells, you know, on her behalf and
that's it. The transaction is over. But he
took some of the other merchandise which was
on sale, bringing it back, selling that, and
giving her extra profit. So she's really impressed.
And she sent one of her employees
along with him. Obviously, she's not a she's
not a foolish woman.
She does not just send, you know, a
guy with all the money. So some some
person she's never tested before. So she sends
one of her employees along with him to
go and make sure that, you know, he's
handling everything.
And when that guy comes back, he starts
explaining to her. Says this man that you
hired this time, we've never seen anyone like
him. And he started describing all the details
about, you know, how the, you know, how
the prophet used to do this and he
used to do that and all of these
amazing things. And she was getting really impressed,
you know, and she was just,
wow. I didn't realize this guy is so
amazing. And she says, yes. And she hears
about all his qualities and everything.
And then she goes and she kind of
researches him, like, in the city. And she
kind of she knows about him. She's heard
things about him. But the the the intimate
stuff that, you know, she heard about, you
know, when you travel with somebody,
you get to know who they really are.
Right? When you hear something like this is
a very honest person. This is a very
nice person. It's one thing. When you go
and you meet them and you sit down
with them for a few hours, it's another
thing. When you travel with them for a
few days in the middle of the desert
when there's hardship,
maybe water is running out sometimes, maybe, you
know, the, you know it's it's not easy.
When people because traveling is a hardship especially
at that time. Even people today get annoyed
when they're traveling. Imagine traveling through the desert
at that time. When you're with somebody you
get to know what type of person they
really are. You get to know their temperament.
You get to know their behavior. When they're
involved in business,
you get to know what type of person
they really are.
Right?
So, you know, the the news comes back
to Khadija. This this is what the guy
did. This is exactly what he did. This
is his character. This is how he behaved,
and she's just really really interested. She this
is amazing. This guy is not only a
great employee to have, he would be actually
great husband to have as well. So she
proposes to marry him. K? She proposes to
marry him and
the thing is
remember this, she is
her, she is his boss. Right? She is
a wealthy woman.
He is not that wealthy. He's a he
he doesn't even have capital of his own.
He has to take other people's merchandise.
But at the same time,
he has to pay her a dower or
what they call dowry. He has to pay
her a dower because that's what the culture
is at that time. So he has to
go and approach his other family members in
order to raise some of the funds so
that he can actually accept her proposal and
get married.
Which shows you what? Which shows you that,
you know, it's it's another side lesson, you
know, for the Muslim community in this time
is that if someone doesn't have the means
to get married,
generally the family was there to support them.
But today, if you live in individualistic
society, the family says, you know what? You're
on your own. Until you graduate or until
you get a job or until you make
money, you're not getting any help from anyone
from anywhere.
It's a difficult situation.
In the tribal society at that time,
he was given help. So it's not like
even he wanted to get married, but he
has to marry a woman from a high
status, he had to bring a dowry. But
he had to get help from his uncle
and from his other family members as well
at the same time. So they were married.
Now Khadija was quite older than him.
Khadija was quite older than him, and this
is important to know. So some sources say
that she was 28. Some sources say that
she was about 40.
K? So she could have been either. It's
a big discrepancy,
but for sure she's older than him. Right?
At least by quite a few years. Maybe
there's another source that says 30 something around
there, whatever it may be. Now the thing
is this,
men in that society,
right, who are interested only in looks
and who are interested only in the sensual
desires,
what kind of women do you think they
would be wearing?
Younger women. Right? Women who are much younger
than them or women who are kinda, you
know, at their prime and all of that.
And it shows you the type of person
the fact that he's accepting
shows you the type of choice he's making.
He's making a choice that it's not just
about the woman's looks. Although she was not
a bad looking woman, she was a good
looking woman as well. But since she was
quite older, number 1. Number 2, she's been
widowed twice.
Meaning, she's had 2 husbands before. She's had
children before. Both her husbands have passed away.
Now if you're a person who's looking for
sensual pleasure and all of that like people
alleged against the prophet, does it look like
you would go and marry someone who's already
been married twice before?
No. That's generally not what people in most
societies would prefer. And he was 25 years
old at the time. So he was still,
you know, in his prime. He was still
quite young at that time, and that's when
he got married. Now there have been married
and they had 6 kids
over a period of years. They had 6
kids,
2 boys and 4 girls.
What happened to the 2 boys?
They died in infancy.
Right? They died in their infancy. Okay?
But it just so happened that they were
gonna get some more boys in the family
anyways. So there was a a man by
the name of Zaidib al Haritha.
He was,
he was a slave,
and he was how did he become a
slave? He was captured during a raid on
one city that he used to be from.
And he was captured and he was taken
and somehow he ended up in, the possession
of Khadija because someone traded him and gave
him her and somehow they got that way.
What did they do with the child? They
adopted him as their own child, as their
own son. Right? So it shows you what
type of people they are. Khadija and Muhammad,
what type of people they are, what kind
of family they are, they adopted him as
a son. Even though he was taken from
another tribe and he was sold into slavery
and all of these things. His story we
will cover in detail in the 2nd year
in, Islamic history,
3. InshaAllah live, companions of the prophet. So,
now you have another boy coming into the
family. It shows you his very important,
his his characteristics and his qualities. They could
have kept the person, made him work, do
whatever. He adopted him as a son and
he even when he adopted him he said
and he's going to inherit from me and
I'm going to, you know, he's going to
inherit whatever we whatever, you know, we pass
on to him as well. So full adoption
which was not allowed in Islam later on
but at this point in time there was
there was no revelation, there was nothing.
Another thing ended up happening. There was a
famine in Makkah. So famine means short supply
of food. Things are very difficult economic hardship.
So Abu Talib was undergoing economic difficulty.
So
they realized, like his family members,
realized that he's in need of help. So
they said you know what we want to
go and we want to help you. Why
don't you give us one of, you know,
one of the children?
You know, we can take care of them.
We'll feed them and everything because he had
a lot of kids as well and that
is difficult in the family you know to
feed another person to take care of them
you have to have someone you know because
the women were working at that time they're
outside you know you know
what do you call it milking the goats
and the sheep and all of these type
of things So you have to, you know,
take care of these things. So the prophet
salaam and Khadija,
they took Ali into their household.
And Ja'far who was another child of Abu
Talib was taken into another household. And we'll
talk about Ja'far later. It's just just know
that 2 of the children were taken away
from Abu Talib just to help him in,
you know, during his time. Why is all
of this important? It's important because they were
a happy family of 8 people despite the
fact that they had lost
2 sons.
Right? Four daughters,
2 kind of sons, 1 in the household,
1 adopted,
and husband and wife.
Right? So we're talking about a family man.
Right?
When people go and they look at, you
know, presidential candidates and when they look at,
you know, who do who should we vote
for? Who should we look into? What is
one of the things that they look at?
They look at is this a family is
this a family person? Right? Does this person
because when you're just a alone
like a loan shark or a lone ranger,
you know, one of those kind of things,
you may have certain talents and certain abilities,
but people in society want to see that,
you know what? Can you handle your family?
Can you take care of your wife? Can
you take care of your kids? How are
you with them and all of that? It's
a very important thing in that society, and
it's still a very important thing in many
societies. So they were a happy family, normal
family just living, you know, doing their thing.
Not worshiping idols, but at the same time,
just living their own life and doing their
own thing. Okay? Any questions so far? Khadija
had yes. Khadija had kids before. What exactly
happened to them? We don't exactly know. You
know, maybe the, you know, family,
perhaps the tribe took them back because they
say they belong to the the the maternal
side. Sorry. The paternal side. That happens in
in many tribal societies. Maybe the kids passed
away, died in a war. We don't know
exactly what happened. How much does it convert
to in dollars? To be honest, I don't
know. But it's it's it's enough that he
couldn't afford it, and he needed help.
It's enough that he needed help. Yeah. So
and that's equivalent. It's either this or it
was it was in a certain amount of
camels that was given this equivalency. So exactly
how much it was, but just know that
it's a pretty large amount. Not an excessively
ridiculous amount that no one can afford it,
but it was it was
pretty pretty decent amount.
Alright. Okay. So someone can say, well, he
might have married her for money, and people
have made that accusation recently. Not in the
past, but recently they've made this accusation. Now
here's the thing, if you look at the
person's character.
Right? If he was interested in money
and he has the he's he has the
reputation for being the most honest and he's
getting a lot of business because he's trading
on behalf of other people. If he was
so concerned about money, he didn't know he's
gonna get this kind of opportunity. Right? You
could have taken all the merchandise, say, you
know, I'm the most honest person and everything.
Go to Syria and never come back.
If you're he could have done that. A
lot of people a lot of people will
do that, scam artists and all of that.
If he was interested in money, he could
have done that. If he was interested in
money,
he he he could have gotten money from
different means. He could have done other things.
The thing is you don't judge a person's
reputation.
Like, there's a there's a a Christian woman.
Her name was Annie Besant. She was writing
a book
for Christian missionaries and explaining to them that,
look. Before you start attacking the prophet,
why don't you why don't you, you know,
do a little justice to the man? And
she's writing and she says, you don't judge
people's lives this way. That a person who
you start attacking his reputation for being obsessed
with, you know, sensuality and all that. When
the guy doesn't exhibit
any interest in the desires of the world,
he doesn't exhibit any interest in other women,
any loose relationships, nothing like that. You don't
judge him, then all of a sudden he
takes a second wife and you say, oh,
he must be doing it only for, you
know, sensual reasons.
You don't judge people's life like that. The
same thing applies is that if you see
somebody,
great character, no immoralities, they're always honest, they're
always just, they're helping other people, they're doing
everything great. And then all of a sudden,
they go and they do one thing, they
marry someone who happens to who happens to
be wealthy. Number 1, he didn't propose. She
proposed to him. Right? A very important thing.
He didn't even go in or seek her
out. Right? He could have gone and sought
out and say, who's the wealthiest woman in
the city? Let me go and propose to
her. He didn't do that
in any sense at all. Right? So you
don't judge people's lives. That's that's basically what
it is. It's a very simple thing. You
could take anyone
and you can say, you know what? This
this happens in society.
You there's 2 ways to interpret
people's actions. You see a person's very, very
nice,
very kind, very friendly, and everything.
And then you see that he's sitting with
some children around them and you know he's
patting the kids on the back.
Right? If somebody from afar doesn't know this
person's character,
what can they accuse this guy of doing?
Child molestation.
Why are you putting your hands on that
kid? Get he can go to jail. He
can go to jail in this community. In
this society, he could go to jail if
he put his hand the wrong way and
the kid said, no. He touched me. He
moved his hand from here. He moved it
a little bit, you know, forward.
Can go to jail. But if you know
a person's character, you don't judge people like
that because the guy could either be doing
what? He could either be touching the child
out of love. So now you're not allowed
to touch children anymore. Because if you touch
them, you're gonna be accused of something like
that. We don't make judgments that way. So
it's very very important. I'm glad you asked
this question.
People can make all sorts of accusations against
anybody.
Right? If somebody goes
and you see somebody and you help you
see somebody helping another person take their groceries
out of their car and help them in,
You can make the simple accusation and say,
you know what? He probably wants something from
her. Right? The old lady, he probably wants
something from the old lady. Maybe he's hoping
that the old lady dies and leaves him
some inheritance.
Right? Yeah. You can make a story. Right?
But is there any basis to the story?
No. Because you have to have some solid
evidence for it. So if somebody makes accusation,
oh, he did it for the money. Okay.
Okay. Take that as a hypothetical
logical possibility.
Is there any other evidence that exists at
all that that would be the reason? If
he's a person who's not interested in money,
when they got married, he continued to work
for her. He didn't retire.
Right? He didn't retire. He didn't sit back
and go on vacation. Okay? He can he
moved into her household. He didn't go and
take her money. He in Arabian society, he
could have divorced her, gotten the money, and
ran away, but he didn't do that either.
So there's no basis to support it. It's
very important that we have a knowledge about
the surrounding circumstances
so that this logical possibility
doesn't start becoming like, oh, yeah. It could
be this and it could be that and
it could be that. So it's very important
the difference between
could be
and probably is. That's the way we judge
people. That's the way we judge people. Alright?
You could do that with everything, you know.
The guy comes and shakes your hand, he
shakes your hand hard, or maybe he's attracted
to me, you know.
Right?
Problem. Right? Muslim guy comes and hugs the
guy. He's probably he's probably coming on to
me.
You could say that but he said, no.
That's just his culture. He's trying to show
his love. That's not the way it works.
Right? So so we have to be careful
about these things. Any other questions on this
slide?
Okay.
Rebuilding the Kaaba. Another very important, incident happened
when he was around age of 35.
The Kaaba was damaged by flooding.
Now think about why the Kaaba would be
damaged by flooding. First of all, you're in
a desert. There's not that much rain, but
when there is rain, it can get pretty
hard.
Now Makkah is a valley.
Right? What is the definition of a valley?
Surrounded by hills. Exactly.
What happens when it rains
and the water goes down the hill and
your your happen to be here and all
the mountains are like this? The hills are
like this. The water is gonna rush down
the mountain and hit it direct impact.
Right? This what actually it happened to me
when we were in Mecca. It started flooding
one time because the water just comes down
really fast. That's the way it is because
of the valley. And at that that's before
the demolition of the hills recently.
Imagine at that time when there were even
more hills. So water is coming down, it
started to damage the Kaaba. K? It began
to damage the Kaaba. The the Kaaba, you
know, had a little bit weaker foundation. And
remember the Kaaba at that time when it
was built by prophet Ibrahim,
you know, it was smaller and less stable
and less less
sturdy. Not less sturdy, but it was smaller
than what was, you know, what existed later
on.
It was built with stones and everything, but
there was some wood that was used as
well in the Kaaba. So there was it
was damaged.
So it needed renovation. They needed to be
repaired and it needed, you know, to be
fixed up. So what happened? This is coming
back to your question about how did the
Quraysh know about immoral vice vices and immoralities
in the in the community.
They decided
that we're only going to use pure money
to rebuild the Kaaba.
So they said meaning they had a concept
of pure and impure money. What is impure
money? Impure money is money from gambling,
money from prostitution,
and money from usury, meaning interest.
They knew that there was kind of something
wrong because people were doing these kind of
things. No stolen money. None of that. They
were only gonna use clean money because this
is the Kaaba. You know? They still venerated
it. It was still a very important thing
for them.
So they proceeded
to, you know, start reconstruction
and,
what ended up happening was
all the tribes got together. Everyone's rebuilding the
Kaaba. Everything is going fine up until
there's one point where the black stone where
there is a stone in the corner of
the Kaaba needed to be put back into
its place. And this debate, you know, arose.
This dispute broke out and everyone wanted to
have the honor of placing this black stone.
Now why is the black stone so special
at this point in time? Because it's the
marker
which which indicates where you start going around
the Kaaba from.
From their perspective at this point in time,
that's the marker. That's that's where you start
from and that's where you end.
So that's
that's the only thing that's kind of distinguished
in the entire building. The entire building is
just a bunch of bricks. Right? Bunch of
stones and everything else. It's got a cover.
There's nothing else in the building that you
could fight for. So they had to fight
for something. So what did they fight for?
They said, you know what? This is the
only thing that looks kind of is important
and it's, you know, something different. Let's go
ahead and fight for the honor of this.
So they started fighting for this, and they
said, you know what? Our tribe or our
clan should have the honor of placing the
black stone. And they said, no. No. No.
It should be our clan. Everyone wanted honor.
It's about respect, and it's about honor. So
each clan started demanding this. And one clan,
they were, you know, they were really determined.
Like, other clans are kind of like, yeah.
No. No. No. We should do it. Other
clans, no. No. We should do it. One
clan just kind of we really got excited.
So no. No. No. They brought a bowl
of blood. Say, we're gonna fight you and
we we will fight till the death. We're
ready to die just to put this black
stone. That's the way they were. They were
just kind of get riled up, you know.
So they got riled up and one clan,
they bought a bowl of they brought a
bowl of blood. They dipped their hands in
it and they had another they allied with
another clan, and they dipped their hands in
it as well. They say, we're we're together.
We're both gonna do it together. We'll fight
anyone who's gonna try and take this honor
away from us. So they're ready to fight
till the death. And so war was almost
about to break out in the reconstruction of
the cow. So this is this shows you
the kind of people that they were. Right?
They were they're this is their holy building.
Right? They venerated, they respected and everything, and
now they're ready to go and have a
battle right in front there just for the
personal
selfish honor of having putting the black stone
in place. So they they mixed religion
with selfishness and with culture and with honor
and with all these things. Things which happen
in every religion and things which happen today
in many societies still. So people will mix
even what they believe to be the correct
religion
with other things that, you know, selfish desires
and interests.
So what ended up happening?
They decided on arbitration. So one of the
eldest members
of the, you know, of the Quraysh there,
he said, look.
We've had enough wars. We don't need another
battle. We don't need another war. There's no
point in shedding blood. Let's resolve this in
another
way. But every is competing. So how do
we resolve this? We need a third party.
So let's go and select. Let's go ahead
and say the next person who comes to
visit the Kaaba
will decide which one of us gets to
gets the honor. Right? So now how does
this work? So this works in in this
way.
Why would they agree on this? Because they
felt
that whoever comes to visit the Kaaba on
a regular basis
is a special person, is a person who's
who's worshiping, who's following the religion. Right? Everyone
else is at the marketplace and doing everything.
So they say, you know what? The next
guy who comes to visit, you know, he's
coming to pray. They assume for the idols.
Right? He's coming to pray at the Kaaba.
We're gonna select him. So from their mentality,
they're saying, you know, that's great. That's perfectly
fine. You know, the next guy, he's a
pious person because he's coming to the Kaaba
at this at this time of the day.
We'll go ahead and say whoever it is,
we'll we'll go ahead and allow them.
Another thing in their mind was that we'll
let this person decide. Meaning,
that that person who comes, whatever tribe he's
from or whatever clan he's from, he's obviously
gonna pick his own clan.
So basically, what it means is the next
clan member to walk in gets to decide
who it's gonna be. So what do they
see? They see the prophet coming,
and he's walking. And immediately, they start shouting
Al Amin Al Amin. The trustworthy, the trustworthy.
His nickname was Al Amin,
which means the trustworthy, the one you can
trust. The one that people put their trust
in because he's so reliable, he's so honest.
So they started shouting that because they were
so happy. Why were they so happy? Because
they were hoping and they were thinking that
he's not just gonna pick his own clan.
Because they said this guy's honest. You know?
This guy, he's gonna he's gonna come up
with something good. You know? So they waited
for him. So what did he do? He
heard the situation,
and he said bring me, a cloth or
a cloak or something like that. And he
said, he placed the stone on top of
it, and he said, every single clan is
gonna pick up one side of the sheet,
and we're all they're all gonna carry it
together to the place where it's gonna be,
and I'm gonna pick it up and put
it in place myself. And they had no
problem with that because he was selected
to place it, but he allowed all of
them to participate. So everyone got the honor
of participating.
Everyone was happy. So this shows you
that he took a policy of compromise rather
than choosing his own clan or rather than
saying that this person has the right to
do it. He was supposed to decide
which one of them gets to do it,
and he had to make a judgment call
and he did it in a way that
all of them got to do it. Showing
you the importance
or the ability, his ability to unite
people
rather than divide them. So everyone was happy.
Everyone was, you know, this is great. Everything
is going great. Everyone was happy. Now
what are some of the lessons from this
incident? It's we're trying to focus on the
life of the prophet. So one of the
lessons we have is it shows you his
status in Arabia.
How does it show his status? Right? Not
only was he known to be Al Amin
beforehand,
but even at the age of 35. So
he was he was known as the trustworthy
before his marriage, before the age of 25.
This was not just a period of,
you know, popularity.
A period of, like, he had a fan
club or something like that. This lasted up
until he was 35.
That's a very long time to be maintain
yourself in that reputation
where probably people were looking at you and
just waiting for you to mess up. When
you have a reputation that high, people are
just waiting for some kind of blemish on
your reputation so that you mess up. He
didn't mess up and he still had that
reputation among society. And number 2, it shows
you his ability to overcome tribalism. It was
not about tribe.
Why is that important again? Because again, you
know, I I've been reading a lot of
this stuff that's why I keep mentioning this.
There's a lot of stuff out there who,
you know, that people are writing
that the prophet was trying to put his
tribe back into power
when he received when he came with the
revelation of the Quran and when he came
with Islam.
And, obviously, if he was doing that, he
wouldn't be doing things like this. So it
it kinda gives you a little bit perspective
of how he really was. Now here's the
problem, though. The problem was the Kaaba was
shortened
because they ran out of clean money. So
they didn't even have enough money. So they
ran out and said, you know, we all
we got left is prostitution money. We got
this other money. They didn't even have enough
clean money to build the entire thing. So
the Kaaba was shortened. So it was more
rectangular in nature and now it became more
cubic in nature. And what did they do
instead? They built a short semi circular wall
going around because they couldn't build it all
the way to the top because they ran
out. They they didn't have supplies left. So
the wall but what they did was before
they did that, they thought everything was gonna
be fine. So they actually started building the
walls higher on 3 parts. The walls were
much much higher than before.
Double if not more than double.
They raised the door. So the door to
the Kaaba originally was on the floor
and they actually raised the door. So now
it's it's in the same way it is
today. The door is higher. Why did they
raise the door? So that they could control
who's allowed inside the Kaaba and who is
not allowed.
So they wanted they wanted some control so
they they made this modification.
Number 3, they added a roof.
Right? There was no roof in the Kaaba
initially. Why did they add a roof? Because
people used to come and put treasures and
stuff inside the Kaaba.
But if it has no roof and if
it's so short, just jump over and you
steal the treasure and you jump out. Very
easy. So they wanted to deter thieves from
going and stealing stuff inside the Kaaba and
all also for like, you know, they saw
that there was a flood. Imagine it goes
inside. Water gets trapped inside. It's a problem
for the structure itself of the Kaaba. K?
Any questions on that? So the question about
the semicircular
wall was originally part of the original Kaaba.
That's why when you're standing now, if you
go inside that area, you're technically inside the
Kaaba. That's why everyone wants to pray in
there nowadays because technically you're actually are inside
the Kaaba.
The the real dimensions of the Kaaba.
Most wars were fought between tribes, not between
clans. But this was a case where they
wanted the honor, so they were ready to,
you know, they were ready to go. And
there were some other tribes. There was not
only one tribe in Mecca as well. Was
some probably some other tribes were involved as
well here. Yes. So the question is, was
there something
else special about the black stone? So there
are some reports about the black stone being
from heaven, and there are some reports about
the black stone having sins and all of
that. The main report is that prophet Ibrahim
was looking for another stone to finish the
building, and he was not able to find
that stone. So he found this stone
specifically. So in a sense, it was sent
from it was sent by Allah
in a sense. So that's pretty much what
it is. So I know that there's a
lot of other, you know, biographies that talk
about the details of the black stone, what
it means, and since, and all of that.
But there's there's, some conflicting evidence regarding the
authenticity of that report.
Ah, okay. How does raising the door to
the Kaaba control who can come in and
out? Well, be because, you know, when the
door is open, if the door didn't have
a lock on it or the door is
open
and it's on the floor, everyone can just
kind of rush in and go in and
you can't it's very hard to control. If
the door is raised up there and you
have to kind of walk up the steps,
everyone can see that you're just kind of
walking in. So it kind of gave them
more of a sense of control. I mean,
a lock would do the same thing, but
a lock with a raised thing so that
people can't just walk in gives you a
better sense of control.
K?
Yeah. So I mean so from the time
of prophet Ismail, did the Kaaba stay until
the time of the prophet as is? There
could have been another modification as well.
It
it it it was not completely damaged and
then rebuilt. Yeah. This was not like it's
not like it's gone. It was just damaged.
They were rebuilding it, and they were making
some modifications to it. Maybe some other modifications
had taken place. I don't recall.
Throughout history afterwards, there have been more modifications.
Right? But in terms of before that, I'm
I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
So yes.
Okay. Continuing.
So now the prophet is
up until from the age of 35, we're
we're kind of around the area,
he's living a very simple life.
Okay?
There's no revolutionary
movements that he's,
you know, trying to, you know, instill in
the society. He's not trying to, you know,
get people riled up and, like, take over,
take control, or anything like that. He's not
interested in any of these things.
And he's not alone
in his worship, by the way. So he's
not the only person who's rejecting idol worship.
There are a few people.
K? Now keep in mind that the word
few
actually means
few.
Doesn't mean many. Unfortunately,
some people who are writing books today, they
think that the word few means many. So
they think they're writing actually that
if the prophet did not come
if the prophet did not come then Arabia
would have gone towards monotheism and idol worship
was already gonna go away anyways.
In fact, one of the former directors of
the CIA, he wrote a book called A
World Without Islam. Anyone read that book?
You heard about the the other book or
movie world without
what is it? Mexicans or something like that?
Latinos?
You heard of that one. Right?
Okay. So they he he wrote a book
based upon that called A World Without Islam.
And in the first chapter of the entire
argument and this is an intelligent man. I
mean, this is we're talking about CIA. We're
not talking about just a random person. But
he kind of picked up on some sources
and started arguing that no. No. No. Everyone
in Arabia was already on the way towards
monotheism. They were kind of going away from
idol worship anyways,
and that's exactly the opposite. So, actually, the
opposite was there was a few people,
a few exceptional people who actually had already
gone away from idol worship, and we're gonna
mention these few people. Okay?
Number 1, Waraka.
Waraka ibn Nawfal was one of them. He
was a Christian. He was one of the
few people in Mecca who had adopted Christianity,
and he was able to read the scriptures
as well. Meaning, he could read the the
the Jewish scriptures. He could read the Christian
scriptures. He knew Hebrew. He knew Greek.
And, obviously, he knew Arabic. He could read
and write all of these things. So Waraqa
was one of those people,
who could do it and he was known
to do that.
Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl was another one,
and he was a person who,
was searching. How did he get to where
he was? He was a person who was
searching. So what did he do? He went
to Syria. He's traveling around and he says
something is wrong with my idolatry of my
people. So he goes to Syria and he
meets a rabbi.
And he asked the rabbi a number of
questions trying to figure out, you know, what
do you believe and what are your questions
and everything. The rabbi gives him some answers
and he says, you know, I can't accept
that. You know, that just that doesn't make
sense to me. So he continues searching,
and he goes and he meets a priest.
Right? And the priest, he starts asking him
similar questions. What is your religion about? What
do you guys do? All of these things.
And the priest gives him some answers as
well. And he says, you know, that's I
can't that's weird. I can't follow this religion.
This doesn't make sense to me. Right? So
he makes a statement and this statement was
remembered by some people later on. He said,
oh Allah, I declare that I follow the
religion of prophet Ibrahim.
That's what he said. He doesn't know. Right?
He knows that prophet Ibrahim was not worshiping
idols. So he's one of the people who
figured it out. Right? But he said, I
wanna follow these other things, but the way
they explain their religion, they said, this this
this can't be right. This can't be the
real religion. So something is definitely wrong. So
then while,
Zaid was at the Kaaba, he used to
announce and he used to say, none of
you follows the way of Ibrahim except me.
So he's one of the people who was
making a he was a vocal critic.
He was one of the few people who
used to speak out
and say that you guys are on the
wrong path.
The prophet didn't do this but he used
to do this to some people. He used
to speak out. And another thing that he
used to do is he used to rescue
the little girls
who are about to be buried alive.
So you have, for example,
you know, we talked about how children, how
fathers when they gave birth to a child,
a young girl, they wanted to bury that
girl alive. So what did he used to
do? He used to go and he used
to go to the father and say, look.
Don't bury her. Don't kill her. If you
want, I'll take care of her. So he
would go and he would become like this
adoption agency, and he would he would adopt
all of these different these little girls, and
he would bring them up.
Now beyond that,
he would go and he would once they
got raised up a little bit older, he
would go back to the parents and say,
now you see your daughter the one that
I saved? Your daughter is she's older now.
She's she can kind of work on her
own. She could do some work in the
house. She's not just a burden on you.
Would you like her back? If you want,
you can have her back. If you want,
I can keep her and continue to raise
her. A great guy.
A very, very important guy. And this guy
actually died
before the prophet received revelation.
But the prophet said about him that he's
gonna be in paradise.
He's gonna be in paradise. Why? Because he
figured out on his own. He was searching
for a religion. He was searching for the
truth,
but he couldn't he couldn't figure out exactly
what it was. So he started worshiping Allah
in any way in any way that he
knew. And one of the things before he
died, one of the statements that he made
before he died, he said, oh, Allah, if
only I knew how to worship you,
I would have done so.
If I knew how to worship you, I
would have worshiped you, but I don't know.
I don't know. What does it tell you?
A very important lesson
is that
I know this,
the hail or something is is bothering, but
it's it's not that
amazing to be honest. Alhamdulillah. It's happening, but
it shouldn't distract you away from the crust.
Right? This this I know I've lived in
the UK and France perhaps I'm used to
this, but don't worry it's not,
it's it's you you can concentrate Insha'Allah.
This is your test of patience, of subur,
concentration.
Insha'Allah. So,
this teaches
that
before the revelation had come, there were people
who figured out that idolatry and these these
things were wrong. Number 1. Number 2, there
were a few people who were searching for
the truth.
And the fact that they were searching and
the fact that they arrived to part of
the truth,
Allah rewarded them for that
and gave them paradise because the revelation had
not come yet. It's very interesting. And in
fact, his son became one of the first
Muslims, so we're gonna talk about that later.
We'll probably talk about that in next year's
class, Islamic history 3.
So he used to rescue little girls. At
the age of 40, the prophet salallahu alaihi
wa sallam, who's not a prophet yet,
he
begins to go on retreats.
Okay? He begins to go on retreats,
spiritual retreats by himself.
Okay.
This is very important in and of itself.
Okay. You're 40 years old.
You have
7 members in your family,
wife and 6 other people at home. Right?
You are from a very important
tribe.
You're from a very important clan.
Your uncle is one of the most respected
people in the entire city.
Finances are pretty good because your wife is
quite wealthy and the trading business and everything
was going good. Okay? Now imagine
what would most people do if they were
in this circumstance.
They would either get into
politics,
try to see how they could, you know,
move up the chain of popularity within the
clan and everything. He has a good reputation.
He can start running for, you know, future
chief or whatever it may be. It's very
very common things that most people would be
doing.
And instead, what does he decide to do?
He decides to leave his family for a
while and start going in the mountains on
retreats
by himself,
and he starts worshiping Allah because he believed
in Allah. And number 2,
he's kind of reflecting upon society reflecting on
things. But it's very important to understand
that he believed in Allah like all the
other Arabs but he did not
associate, you know, partners. He did not have
idol worship.
So he's not like
some people may take him to be like
a Rene Descartes, you know, philosopher going in
the mountain thinking things out. No. He's worshiping
and he's thinking at the same time. There's
a difference between the 2 of them. So
he's doing both. Okay? He's doing both.
And,
he goes, he's worshiping, and he's reflecting on
the purpose of life by himself. What ends
up happening is he, you know, he's doing
initially, he started doing this as a side
occupation. Right?
Side kind of break. I'm gonna go
take my time out there and get some
you know, figure out what's going on, worship
Allah, and come back.
This is while he's working.
Then he starts going and becomes regular and
regular. He starts doing this more and more
often,
then he leaves. His job is over now.
He stops working, and he's only focusing on
this. He goes.
He comes back, gets some more food, and
he goes for another number of days. He
comes back, gets some food, goes for another
number of days. This is seclusion that he's
in. He's in seclusion, and he's going on
these things. Another thing that's happening during this
time is now that while he's worshiping and
while he's praying and while he's reflecting,
he starts having dreams.
And these dreams that he has, they start
coming true exactly the same way that he
saw the dream.
Exactly what he sees in the dream, it
happens.
What does that mean to him at this
point in time? He doesn't know.
He doesn't know. He has no idea what
it means. He has no idea what's what's
going on, but he's searching for guidance.
This is the important thing.
He is there.
He's praying to Allah. And like Zayd, who
just died and said, oh, Allah. I don't
know how to worship you. He's doing the
exact same thing. He's asking Allah, Allah, guide
me. I don't know. I don't know what
to do. I don't know what to worship.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
here. Guide me.
This is where we'll stop here, and we'll
talk about the revelation, Insha'Allah, in the next
session. Any questions
on this slide? Yeah. Alright.
Alright. So so the question is that,
there's a claim that the prophet studied with
the Christians,
right, or with some Christian scholars or something,
and that's why there's a lot of similarities
between the Quran and between the other thing.
Now they're referring to a journey
where he met a monk named Bahira when
he was 12 years old
in Syria with his uncle when he was
going on journeys with his uncle. Now if
that's true, then that means that at the
age of 12,
he mastered Christian theology,
which the church
themselves couldn't do because they were debating back
and forth about, you know, divinity of Christ
and council of Nicaea and council of this,
you know, Chalcedon and all of these councils.
And
from that period until the age of 40,
he never talked about anything.
Right? And he couldn't read and write, so
he couldn't transfer any of his thoughts anywhere.
And then all of a sudden, he comes
with all of that remembering back 28 years
prior,
coming back with all of that. The the
claim itself is extremely farfetched, number 1. Number
2, when you compare what the bible has
and you compare what the Quran has, you
find major
differences
in major things,
minor things and major things. And the fact
that there's major differences
and
the the theology is is consistent, the theologies
the stories are different, everything is different,
you find that there's no way it's you
cannot say it's a copy. Right? Because if
it's a copy, basically, most people who have
major issues with certain biblical narratives,
that's missing from the Quran. The problems and
the issues that most people have are gone.
So it would usually take, like, a professor,
someone with a PhD to kinda clean up
the entire story, to know the entire story,
to know the entire history. It's very unlikely.
Number that's that's one. And number 2,
the books of the priests and the rabbis
at that time were only in the possession
of the so if he's illiterate and he's
not in that priestly, you know, kind of,
you know, status.
He doesn't even he didn't have access to
these books. So there's a lot of different
ways to debunk this claim, but that's just
some of them. That's just some of them.
K. Any other question?
Okay. Perhaps in Mecca,
there were no bibles written in Arabic. There
is evidence that there were there were,
some scriptures of the bible in Arabic in
different parts
because the thing is remember that there was
Christianity
on the borders of the Roman Empire. So
it's very likely that some of it had
been translated into Arabic. Right? And in fact,
I forgot which date, but there is a
text which combine all four gospels together, and
it's in Arabic like language, if not Syriac
or something like that. So there was there
there was there. But in the in the
in terms of having the entire bible or
the entire gospels that other people had, not
likely to have the entire thing in Mecca
for sure. So that's definitely true. Definitely true.
Good question. So why is it that he
left his family behind and he's worshiping in
the cave? First of all, he spent how
many years with his family so far?
15 years.
Right? He's doing this at the age of,
like, 39 and 40. And in the beginning,
he's regularly going to visit them. It's not
like he's not going back and spending some
time with them. So spending time with family
is about quality time. It's not just about
quantity time. Right? So you can sit in
front of the TV with your family and
say, well, we spend all day together. That's
not quality time. Right? So he he was
a person obviously who who who spent quality
time with his family. And there were certain
times while he was gone. And when he
becomes a prophet, we're gonna find that he's
gonna be extremely busy. But it's the quality
time that he's spending with his family that
no one is complaining about it. That's the
way life was. People travel on business trips.
If he's traveling to Syria, he's not just
going for a few days and coming back.
It takes a long time to get to
Syria, long time to get to Yemen, trade
the merchandise, come back. That's the way life
was.
So so one is that he spent quality
time with his family, and 2,
families
perhaps were not so picky about, you know,
you have to be with me all the
time. You can't go for one day or
2 days or something like that.
So the question is is that Fatima was
the only daughter according to some people. No.
Fatima was the only surviving
daughter.
That's the difference.
Only surviving daughter
that outlived him.
That outlived that that out that outlived
her father.
Okay. We ask Allah to help us and
guide us to, learn the lessons from the
life of the prophet and
to be like him and to follow in
his example
and to apply what we learn.