The Prophet’s Umrah before the Conquest of Mecca
By Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
15 July 2022
He Circumambulated the Kaaba with Idols Inside
Main Points:
1.
Eid al Adha is a
remembrance of Ibrahim’s devotion to Allah.
2.
Scholars have
understood the festival as site through which many pre-Islamic rituals became
part of the Islam.
3.
The Prophet is
considered anti-idolatry but he did not have a problem circumambulating the
House of God despite the fact that idols were kept inside them.
4.
Was this just
tactical or was the Prophet of Islam sending some other message to his
followers?
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The traditional Muslim narration of Eid al Adha (Bakrid) is
that it is a commemoration of the pact between Allah and Ibrahim/Abraham. Upon
being asked by Allah to sacrifice what was most important and dear to him,
Ibrahim decided to slaughter his eldest son Ismail. Moved by the devotion of
his ‘slave’, Allah ransoms his son with what He calls a ‘great sacrifice’ [Q37:
100-102]. The same mythology appears in the Torah, with the significant
difference that in the Jewish tradition, it is the younger son Ishaq who is
bound and taken to be sacrificed. Since Islam had to plug itself with the
Judeo-Christian worldview, it faithfully recounts the story as one of its own.
Ibrahim become a Muslim and this whole play of aborted human sacrifice occurs
in Mecca. The Hajj, we are told, is the remembrance of this blind devotion to a
Supreme God by the father-son duo. It is another matter that while much of the
Jewish world never emulated Abraham and his sacrifice, the Muslims have stuck
to it like it is their original story.
While the whole Muslim world is moved by Ibrahim’s devotion,
the terrorists are moved by the ‘ethical sacrifice’ of Ismail as without his
willingness to get killed, this whole ritual would have come to naught. It is
important to underline the difference that while Ibrahim was carrying out
Allah’s command, his son was laying down his life for the sake of his father,
another human. The historian Faisal Devji argues that this submergence of the
individual self, the possibility of self-annihilation for what is considered
the ‘greater good’ is the reason why many terror groups hail Ismail as their
hero.
No religion arises in a social or ideational vacuum. And
although Islam constantly refers itself as the perfection of Judaism and
Christianity, its social space was also informed by polytheism or what is
derisively called as paganism. Although mythologically, Islam refers to itself
as the first religion and Adam as the first Muslim, all three traditions
(Judaism, Christianity and Paganism) have influenced Islam in fundamental ways.
Scholars of Islam for example, have commented on how the Hajj pilgrimage
incorporates several pre-Islamic pagan features like kissing the black stone,
running between the hillocks of Safa and Marwah, the sacrifice of animals, etc.
However, there is one episode in traditional Islamic history which needs to be
debated more. This is incident of the Prophet and his companions performing
Umrah or the lesser pilgrimage before the conquest of Mecca.
From various Islamic sources, we know that there were idols
(some say they were 360 of them) which were kept inside the Kaaba. There are
accounts which also suggest that paintings of mother Mary and infant Jesus also
existed on the walls of the Kaaba. The tradition tells us that when Muhammad
conquered Mecca, he threw away all the idols and thereby cleansed the Kaaba of
its idolatrous past. There were other idols and Kaabas in the vicinity of Mecca
which were also destroyed on the prophet’s express orders. However, all this
happens after the conquest of Mecca in about 630. But before that, the Kaaba
housed all those idols and performing the Tawaf meant going around these
idols as well. The prophet of Islam went to the lesser pilgrimage in the year
629, one year after the treaty of Hudaybiyyah.
Al Tabari, the chronicler of early Islamic history, says
that in the year 628, the prophet, along with his companions, marched with 70
fattened camels to Mecca with the intention of doing pilgrimage. However, he
was not allowed to do so by the yet powerful Meccan Quraish. There ensued a
treaty between the factions, which allowed the prophet to come back for the
pilgrimage the next year. And that’s why the Umrah of 629 is called the
‘pilgrimage of fulfilment’ as the object was to fulfil the pledge taken in the
treaty. There is no consensus as to the exact nature of animal sacrifice in
this Umrah. According to Ibn Ishaq (in al Tabari), the prophet and his
companions did not have camels but sacrificed cattle while another source (in
Tabari) argues that they drove 60 fattened camels for this purpose.
What is not in contention though is that the prophet and his
companions conducted the tawaf around the holy Kaaba. Here is al Tabari writing
on the authority of Ibn Abbas: “When the Messenger of God entered the mosque,
he put his cloak under his right arm and threw the bottom of it over his left
shoulder, leaving his right arm uncovered. ……. He touched the stone at the
corner and set out at a quick walk, his companions going at the same pace with
him. Then when the House had hidden him from the people (Quraish) and he had
touched the southern corner, he walked until he touched the Black Stone, then
he went at a quick walk in similar fashion for three circuits. He walked the
remainder of the circuits” [The History of al Tabari, Vol 8, 134-135].
Islamic history tells us that pre-Islamic Quraish used to
paint the walls of the Kaaba with the blood of sacrificed animals. There were
idols placed outside the Kaaba too and sacrifices were made there also. There
is no mention in any of the tradition that the Prophet or his companions tried
to clean the area before conducting the pilgrimage rituals. The Meccan Quraish,
left the city for three days as part of the Treaty. They went to the hillocks
and watched the Muslim pilgrimage from there. In their eyes, the Muslim Hajj
ritual wouldn’t have seemed much different from their own ritual
practices.
Traditions recorded in Bukhari and Muslim also corroborate
that the prophet performed this Umrah in the year 629 that is before the 360
idols were removed from the Kaaba. An internet search as to why Muslims
performed this ritual before the idols were removed hardly leads to any answer.
The lone answer is from Islamweb.net which argues that the “existence of idols
inside the Kaaba or around it is not an obstacle that prevents the validity of
the Umrah especially at that time when the companions were not able to destroy
them as Makkah was under the control of disbelievers of Quraysh”. The answer
further states, “since the prophet performed Umrah and made Tawaf and Sai
(under those circumstances), then this is evidence that it is permissible and
so, it is not polite to ask why the Prophet did so”
[https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/184641/why-the-muslims-made-umrah-before-the-conquest-of-makkah].
The answer makes two assertions: firstly, that at the time
Muslims were powerless to destroy the idols hence they effected a compromise.
This makes it clear that if they were powerful, they would have first and
foremost destroyed the idols, as it happened eventually after the conquest of
Mecca. This hardly augurs well for religious co-existence or pluralism.
Secondly, it also tells Muslims not to ask too many questions regarding the
conduct of the Prophet and what possible interpretations it might contain. The
whole stress here seems to be not to raise uncomfortable questions which again
is not healthy for the intellectual growth of any society.
The obvious question that arises therefore is whether, after
the message of Islamic monotheism had been revealed, it was permissible to go
around idols and yet proclaim it as a Muslim demonstration of faith. If the
prophet did not have a problem in doing so, then why do contemporary Ulama
denounce the co-existence of polytheistic and monotheistic traditions? Also,
one may argue that so much of received Islamic history which tells us that
Islam got established the day Gabriel spoke to the prophet is in need of
revision. A more plausible scenario seems to be that Islam got established
slowly and gradually and that many layers of religious and political influences
went into making what we today recognize as Islam.
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A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is
a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-history/prophet-umrah-conquest-mecca/d/127486
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