SPIRIT OF ISLAM MARCH 2O18

29 Spirit of Islam Issue 63 March 2018 In the political interpretation of Islam the whole of the religion of Islam wrongly comes to be seen as a collection of parts whose individual and collective significance cannot be understood without linking them with politics. Let us examine each one in detail. HISTORICAL EXIGENCY Since time immemorial, military commanders have been accorded positions of great eminence in the annals of history. It is a universal phenomenon that the hero is idolized even in peace time and becomes a model for the people. It is this placing of heroism in the militaristic context, which has been the greatest underlying factor in the undue stress laid on war in the latter phase of Islamic history. With the automatic accord in Muslim society of a place of honour and importance to the heroes of the battlefield, annalists’ subsequent compilations of Islamic history have tended to read like an uninterrupted series of wars and conquests. These early chronicles having set the example, subsequent writings on Islamic history have followed the same pattern of emphasis on militarism. The Prophet’s biographies were called maghazi, that is, ‘The battles fought by the Prophet’, yet the Prophet Muhammad in fact did battle only three times in his entire life, and the period of his involvement in these battles did not total more than one and a half days. He fought in self-defence, when hemmed in by aggressors, where he simply had no option. But historians—flying in the face of fact—have converted his whole life into one of confrontation and war. We must keep in mind that the Prophet Muhammad was born at a time when an atmosphere of militancy prevailed in Arab society, there being, in their view, no other path to justice. But the Prophet always opted for the avoidance of conflict. For instance, in the campaign of Ahzab , the Prophet advised his Companions to dig a trench between them and the opponents, thus preventing a head- on clash. Another well-known instance of the Prophet’s dislike for hostilities is the Hudaibiyah peace treaty in which the Prophet accepted all the conditions of the opponents. In the case of the conquest of Makkah, he avoided a battle altogether by making a rapid entry into the city with ten thousand Muslims—a number large enough to awe his opponents into submission.