Muhammad, Islam’s founder, had many roles in life: husband, father, shepherd, merchant, hermit, exile, leader, prophet, soldier.
Think about the kinds of personal traits a person would need to succeed in all these different roles. List as many of them as you can.
The world into which Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born was chaotic. The Arabian Peninsula was an important trading centre.
The cities of Arabia acted independently. Different cities often raided trading caravans bringing goods to another city. Even within one city, different tribes carried on blood feuds.
To rise in society, a man needed the protection of a powerful tribe. Women had no rights; they were little more than possessions of their fathers and husbands.
Muhammad was a deeply moral man, who thought a great deal about ethical issues. How do you think an ethical person might have looked at the society of the day?
The life of a shepherd is often quiet and lonely. A shepherd could spend days alone with his thoughts, not seeing or talking to any other people.
As a boy and young man, Muhammad worked as a shepherd. He watched flocks of sheep in the hills outside Mecca, protecting them from attackers, both human and animal.
Later Muhammad became a successful merchant. But he was also a deeply moral man who thought about the ills of society. In his forties, Muhammad began to spend time alone in a cave in the mountains thinking. On one of his visits to the cave he had a vision. An angel appeared and told Muhammad that he was the appointed prophet of Allah, or God.
How do you think Muhammad’s early days as a shepherd contributed to his ability to spend time alone thinking?
When Islam’s founder, Muhammad, was a young man, he became a merchant. He worked for a wealthy businesswoman named Khadijah. Khadijah was impressed with Muhammad’s honesty, generosity, and gentleness. She and Muhammad were married.
Muhammad and Khadijah had four daughters and two sons. After fifteen years of marriage, Muhammad became aware that something was missing in his life, and he began to retreat to a mountain cave.
Have you ever felt something was missing in your life or felt the need to spend time alone? Describe the experience.
Muhammad believed that there was only one God, Allah. When he began preaching the message of Allah, he met with opposition.
The society in which Muhammad lived was polytheistic – that is, it believed in many gods. Mecca, where he lived, was a religious centre. There were 360 shrines to different gods in Mecca; the city received considerable income from pilgrims to these shrines.
Write of some other time when a new idea was not accepted at first. It could be an event in your own life or something from history or current events.
Muhammad, Islam’s most important prophet, became an outcast in his home city, because people in Mecca disapproved of Muhammad’s messages and religion. People in another city, Yathrib, asked Muhammad to leave Mecca and become their leader.
Knowing the opposition he faced in Mecca, Muhammad accepted their invitation. Threatened with violence in Mecca, Muhammad and his followers made their way secretly to Yathrib. This emigration is known as the Hegira. The Islamic calendar begins with the Hegira, which was July 16, 622, in the Western calendar.
In Yathrib, Muhammad became a successful politician. Yathrib became known as Medinat al-Nabi, or City of the Prophet, then simply Medina.
Within ten years of his flight to Medina, Mecca surrendered to Muhammad. By the time he died, in June 632 C.E., Muhammad had united the disparate peoples of the Arabian Peninsula into one nation.
Describe what it must be like to be forced to flee your home, like Muhammad.
After years of being harassed, Muhammad and his followers went to a town called Yathrib. According to Islam, two tribes from Yathrib, the Auws and Khazraj, approached Muhammad and invited him to govern their town, which was prone to civil war. Muhammad needed a place where his followers could live in peace, without fear of persecution, so he agreed. The city was soon called Medina. Muhammad wrote a charter for its citizens and established a peace.
What does this tell us about Muhammad?
After eleven years outside Mecca, Muhammad, Islam’s founder, experienced an Ascension, in which he journeyed to heaven.
After praying, Muhammad was approached by the angel Gabriel. They mounted a winged steed called the buraq and traveled to Jerusalem, where the spirits of many prophets appeared. Muhammad led them in prayer. Then he remounted the buraq and ascended with Gabriel to heaven.
Muhammad said that heaven was difficult to describe. He said it was a combination of lights and sounds and flowing energy.
What does the word heaven mean to you? What do you imagine heaven looks like?
During Muhammad’s Night Journey to heaven, he was led into the presence of Allah. Allah said that Muslims were to pray fifty times each day.
On Muhammad’s way back to Earth, he met with Moses, who asked, “What has Allah told your followers to do?”
Muhammad answered that Allah wanted the faithful to pray fifty times a day. Moses urged Muhammad to return to Allah and ask Him to reduce the number of prayers, as Muhammad’s followers would not be able to pray that many times.
So Muhammad went back to Allah, and Allah reduced the number of prayers to forty each day. Moses insisted that this was still too much, and sent Muhammad back to Allah.
This happened several times; each time, Allah reduced the number of prayers, until the requirement stood at five prayers a day. Moses insisted that this was still too much, as he had tried to get people to pray in the past, and they could not accomplish this.
Muhammad replied, “I have already returned to my Lord till I am ashamed. I am satisfied, and I submit.”
What do these events tell you about the prophets and their followers?
The word Islam means “surrender to the will of God.”
The word Muslim means “one who has surrendered.”
How do you think a deep sense of religious conviction can be seen as surrender?