24. An-Noor (The Light) |
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Maududi's Introduction |
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This Surah takes its name, An Nur, from verse 35.
The consensus of opinion is that it was sent down after the Campaign
against Bani al-Mustaliq and this is confirmed by vv. 11-20 that deal
with the incident of the "Slander", which occurred during that
Campaign. But there is a difference of opinion as to whether this
Campaign took place in 5 A. H. before the Battle of the Trench or in 6
A. H. after it. It is important to decide this issue in order to
determine whether this Surah was sent down earlier or Surah Al-
Ahzab(XXXIII), which is the only other Surah containing the
Commandments about the observance of purdah by women. Surah Al-Ahzab was
admittedly sent down on the occasion of the Battle of the Trench. Now
if this Battle occurred earlier, it would mean that the initial
instructions in connection with the Commandments of purdah were sent
down in Surah Al-Ahzab? and they were complemented later by the
Commandments revealed in this Surah. On the other hand, if the Campaign
against Bani al-Mustaliq occurred earlier, the chronological order of
the Commandments would be reversed, and it would become difficult to
understand the legal wisdom and implications of the Commandments of
purdah.
According to Ibn Sa'd, the Campaign against Bani al Mustaliq
took place in Shaban 5 A. H. and the Battle of the Trench in Zil-
Qa'dah the same year. This opinion is based on some traditions from
Hadarat Ayesha about the events connected with the "Slander" in which
she refers to a dispute between Hadrat Sa'd bin 'Ubadah and Sa'd bin
Mu'az. Hadrat Sa'd bin Mu'az, according to authentic traditions, died
during the Campaign against Bani Quraizah, which took place
immediately after the Battle of the Trench. It is, therefore, evident
that he could not be present in 6 A. H. to take part in a dispute
about the "Slander".
On the other hand, Muhammad bin Ishaq says that
the Battle of the Trench took place in Shawwal 5 A. H. and the
Campaign against Bani al-Mustaliq in Sha'ban 6 A. H. This opinion is
supported by many authentic traditions from Hadrat Ayesha and others.
According to these traditions, (1) the Commandments about purdah had
been sent down in Surah Al-Ahzab before the incident of the "Slander",
(2) the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) had married Hadrat Zainab in Zil-Qa'dah 5 A. H.
after the Battle of the Trench, (3) Hamnah, sister of Hadrat Zainab,
had taken a leading part in spreading the "Slander", just because
Hadrat Ayesha was a rival of her sister. All this evidence supports
the view of Muhammad bin Ishaq.
Now let us consider the two opinions a
little more closely. The only argument in favor of the first opinion
is the mention of the presence of Hadrat Sa'd bin Mu'az in a dispute
connected with the incident of the "Slander". But this argument is
weakened by some other traditions from Hadrat Ayesha, in which she
mentions Hadrat Usaid bin Hudair instead of Hadrat Sa'd bin Mu'az in
this dispute. It may, therefore, be assumed that there has been some
confusion regarding the two names in reporting the traditions.
Moreover, if we accept the first opinion, just because of the mention
of the name of Hadrat Sa'd bin Mu'az in some traditions, we encounter
other difficulties that cannot be resolved in any way. For, in that
case, we shall have to admit that the revelation of the Commandments
of purdah and the Prophet's (Allah's peace be upon him) marriage with Hadrat Zainab had taken
place even earlier than the Battle of the Trench. But we learn from
the Qur'an and many authentic traditions that both these events
happened after that Battle and the Campaign against Bani Quraizah.
That is why Ibn Hazm, Ibn Qayyim and some other eminent scholars have
held the opinion of Muhammad bin Ishaq as correct, and we also hold it
to be so. Thus, we conclude that Surah Al Ahzab was sent down earlier
than Surah An-Nur, which was revealed in the latter half of 6 A. H.
several months after Surah Al Ahzab.
Now let us review the circumstances existing at the time of the
revelation of this surah. It should be kept in mind that the incident
of the "Slander", which was the occasion of its revelation, was
closely connected with the conflict between Islam and the disbelievers.
After the victory at Badr, the Islamic movement began to gain strength
day by day; so much so that by the time of the Battle of the Trench,
it had become so strong that the united forces of the enemy numbering
about ten thousand failed to crush it and had to raise the siege of Al
Madinah after one month. It meant this, and both the parties
understood it well, that the war of aggression which the Disbelievers
had been waging for several years, had come to an end. the Prophet (Allah's
peace be upon him) himself declared: "After this year, the Quraish will not be
able to attack you; now you will take the offensive."
When the
disbelievers realized that they could not defeat Islam on the
battlefield, they chose the moral front to carry on the conflict. It
cannot be said with certainty whether this Change of tactics was the
outcome of deliberate consultations, or it was the inevitable result
of the humiliating retreat in the Battle of the Trench, for which all
the available forces of the enemy had been concentrated:They knew it
well that the rise of Islam was nor due to the numerical strength of
the Muslims nor to their superior arms and ammunition nor to their
greater material resources; nay, the Muslims were fighting against
fearful odds on all these fronts. They owed their success to their
moral superiority. Their enemies realized that the pure and noble
qualities of the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) and his followers were capturing the
hearts of the people, and were also binding them together into a
highly disciplined community. As a result of this, they were defeating
the mushriks and the Jews both on the peace and on the war front,
because the latter lacked discipline and character.
Under the above
mentioned circumstances, the wicked designs of the disbelievers led
them to start a campaign of vilification against the Prophet (Allah's peace be
upon him) and
the Muslims in order to destroy the bulwark of morale that was helping
them to defeat their enemies. Therefore the strategy was to attain the
assistance of the hypocrites to spread slanders against the Prophet (Allah's
peace be upon him) and his followers so that the mushriks and the Jews could
exploit these to sow the seeds of discord among the Muslims and
undermine their discipline.
The first opportunity for the use of the
new strategy was afforded in Zil-Qa'dah 5 A. H. when the Prophet (Allah's peace
be upon him)
married Hadrat Zainab (daughter of Jahsh), who was the divorced wife
of his adopted son, Zaid bin Harithah. the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) had arranged
this marriage in order to put an end to the custom of ignorance, which
gave the same status to the adopted son that was the right only of the
son from one's own loins. The hypocrites, however, considered it a
golden opportunity to vilify the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) from inside the
community, and the Jews and the mushriks exploited it from outside to
ruin his high reputation by this malicious slander. For this purpose
fantastic stories were concocted and spread to this effect: "One day
Muhammad (Allah's peace be upon him) happened to see the wife of his
adopted son and fell in love with her; he maneuvered her divorce and
married her." Though this was an absurd fiction it was spread with
such skill, cunning and artfulness that it succeeded in its purpose;
so much so that some Muslim tradtionalist and commentators also have
cited some parts of it in their writings, and the orientalists have
exploited these fully to vilify the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him). As a matter of fact,
Hadrat Zainab was never a stranger to the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) that he should
see her by chance and fall in love with her at first sight. For she
was his first cousin, being the daughter of his real paternal aunt,
Umaimah, daughter of Abdul Muttalib. He had known her from her
childhood to her youth. A year before this incident, he himself had
persuaded her against her will to marry Hadarat Zaid in order to
demonstrate practically that the Quraish and the liberated slaves were
equal as human being. As she never reconciled herself to her marriage
with a liberated slave, they could not pull on together for long,
which inevitably led to her divorce. The above mentioned facts were
well known to all, yet the slanderers succeeded in their false
propaganda with the result that even today there are people who
exploit these things to defame Islam.
The second slander was made on
the honor of Hadrat Ayesha, a wife of the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him), in connection
with an incident which occurred while he was returning from the
Campaign against Bani al-Mustaliq. As this attack was even severer
than the first one and was the main background of this Surah, we shall
deal with it in greater detail.
Let us say a few words about Abdullah
bin Ubayy, who played the part of a villain in this attack. He
belonged to the clan of Khazraj and was one of the most important
chiefs of Al-Madinah. The people had even intended to make him their
king a little before the Prophet's (Allah's peace be upon him) migration there, but the
scheme had to be dropped because of the changed circumstances. Though
he had embraced Islam, he remained at heart a hypocrite and his
hypocrisy was so manifest that he was called the "Chief of the Hypocrites". He never lost any opportunity to slander Islam in order to
take his revenge.
Now the main theme. When in Sha'ban 6 A. H. the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon
him) learned that the people of Bani al-Mustaliq were making
preparations for a war against the Muslims and were trying to muster
other clans also for this purpose, he fore- stalled and took the enemy
by surprise. After capturing the people of the clan and their
belongings, the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) made a halt near Muraisi, a spring in
their territory. One day a dispute concerning taking water from the
spring started between a servant of Hadrat Umar and an ally of the clan
of Khazraj, and developed into a quarrel between the
Muhajirs(immigrants) and the Ansar(Muslims of Madinah), but was soon
settled. This, however, did not suit the strategy of Abdullah bin
Ubayy, who also had joined the expedition with a large number of
hypocrites. So he began to incite the Ansar, saying, "You yourselves
brought these people of the quraish from Makkah and made them partners
in your wealth and property. And now they have become your rivals and
want domination over you. If even now you withdraw your support from
them, they shall be forced to leave your city." Then he swore and
declared, "As soon as we reach back Al-Madinah, the respectable people
will turn out the degraded people from the city."
When the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) came to know of this, he ordered the people to set off
immediately and march back to Al-Madinah. The forced march continued
up to noon the next day without a halt on the way so that the people
became exhausted and had no time for idle talk.
Though this wise
judgment and quick action by the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) averted the undesirable
consequences of the mischief, Abdullah bin Ubayy got another
opportunity for doing a far more serious and greater mischief, i. e.
by engineering a "Slander" against Hadrat Ayesha, for that was a
mischief which might well have involved the young Muslim Community in
a civil war, if the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) and his sincere and devoted followers
had not shown wisdom, forbearance and marvelous discipline in dealing
with it. In order to understand the events that led to the incident of
the "Slander", we cite the story in Hadrat 'Ayesha's own words. She
says :
"Whenever the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) went out on a journey, he decided by
lots as to which of his wives should accompany him. Accordingly, it
was decided that I should accompany him during the expedition to Bani
al Mustaliq. On the return journey, the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) halted for the
night at a place which was the last stage on the way back to Al-
Madinah. It was still night, when they began to make preparations for
the march. So I went outside the camp to ease myself. When I returned
and came near my halting place, I noticed that my necklace had fallen
down somewhere. I went back in search for it but in the meantime the
caravan moved off and I was left behind all alone. The four carriers
of the litter had placed it on my camel without noticing that it was
empty. This happened because of my light weight due to lack of food in
those days. I wrapped myself in my sheet and lay down in the hope that
when it would be found that I had been left behind, a search party
would come back to pick me up. In the meantime I fell asleep. In the
morning, when Safwan bin Mu'attal Sulami passed that way, he saw me
and recognized me for he had seen me several times before the
Commandment about purdah had been sent down. No sooner did he see me
than he stopped his camel and cried out spontaneously : "How sad! The
wife of the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) has been left here!" At this I woke up all of
a sudden and covered my face with my sheet. Without uttering another
word, he made his camel kneel by me and stood aside, while I climbed
on to the camel back. He led the camel by the nose-string and we
overtook the caravan at about noon, when it had just halted and nobody
had yet noticed that I had been left behind. I learnt afterwards that
this incident had been used to slander me and Abdullah bin Ubayy was
foremost among the slanderers.(According to other traditions, when
Hadrat Ayesha reached the camp on the camel, led by Safwan, and it was
known that she had been left behind, Abdullah bin Ubayy cried out, 'By
God, she could not have remained chaste. Look, there comes the wife of
your Prophet openly on the camel led by the person with whom she
passed the night.')
"When I reached Al-Madinah, I fell ill and stayed
in bed for more than a month. Though I was quite unaware of it, the
news of the "Slander" was spreading like a scandal in the city, and
had also reached the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him). Anyhow, I noticed that he did not
seem as concerned about my illness he used to be. He would come but
without addressing me directly, would inquire from others how I was
and leave the house. Therefore it troubled my mind that something had
gone wrong somewhere. So I took leave of him and went to my mother's
house for better nursing.
"While I was there, one night I went out of
the city to ease myself in the company of Mistah's mother, who was a
first cousin of my mother. As she was walking along she stumbled over
something and cried out spontaneously, 'May Mistah perish!' To this I
retorted, 'What a good mother you are that you curse your own son -- the
son who took part in the Battle of Badr.' She replied, 'My dear
daughter, are you not aware of his scandal mongering?' Then she told
me everything about the campalgn of the "Slander".(Besides the
hypocrites, some true Muslims also had been involved in this campaign,
and among them who took leading part in it, were Mistah, Hassan bin
Thabit, the famous poet of Islam, and Hamnah, daughter of Jahsh and
sister of Hadrat Zainab). Hearing this horrible story, my blood
curdled, and I immediately returned home, and passed the rest of the
night in crying over it.
"During my absence the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) took
counsel with Ali and Usamah bin Zaid about this matter. Usamah said
good words about me to this effect:'O Messenger of Allah, we have
found nothing but good in your wife. All that is being spread about
her is a lie and calumny.' As regards Ali, he said, 'O Messenger of
Allah, there is no dearth of women; you may, if you like, marry an
other wife. If, how- ever, you would like to investigate into the
matter, you may send for her maid servant and enquire into it through
her.' Accordingly, the maid servant was sent for and questioned. She
replied, 'I declare on an oath by Allah, Who has sent you with the
Truth, that I have never seen any evil thing in her, except that she
falls asleep when I tell her to look after the kneaded dough in my
absence and a goat comes and eats it.'
"On that same day the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him) addressed the people from the pulpit, saying:'O Muslims, who
from among you will defend my honor against the attacker of the
person who has transgressed all bounds in doing harm to me by
slandering my wife. By God, I have made a thorough enquiry and found
nothing wrong with her nor with the man, whose name has been linked
with the "Slander". At this Usaid bin Hudair (or Sa'd bin Mauz)
according to other traditions) stood up and said, 'O Messenger of
Allah, if that person belongs to our clan, we will kill him by
ourselves, but if he belongs to the Khazraj clan, we will kill him if
you order us to do so.' Hearing this Sa'd bin 'Ubadah,2 chief of the
Khazraj clan, stood up and said, 'You lie you can never kill him. You
are saying this just because the person belongs to our clan of Khazraj.
Had he belonged to your clan, you would never have said so.' Hadrat
Usaid retorted, 'You are a hypocrite: that is why you are defending
a hypocrite.' At this, there was a general turmoil in the mosque,
which would have developed into a riot, even though the Prophet (Allah's peace
be upon him)
was present there the whole time. But he cooled down their anger and
came down from the pulpit."
The remaining details of the incident will
be cited along with our commentary on the Text, which honorably
absolved Hadrat Aishah from the blame. But here we would only want to
point out the enormity of the mischief that was engineered by Abdullah
bin Ubayy: (1) It implied an attack on the honour of the Prophet (Allah's peace
be upon him)
and Hadrat Abu Bakr Siddiq.(2) He meant to undermine the high moral
superiority which was the greatest asset of the Islamic Movement (3)
He intended to ignite civil war between the Muhajirs and the Ansar, and
between Aus and Khazraj, the two clans of the Ansar.
On the occasion of the second attack, this Surah was sent down to keep pure and strengthen the moral fiber of the Muslim society, which had been shaken by the enormity of the slander. We give below a summary of the Commandments and instructions in their chronological order so that one may understand how the Qur'an makes use of the psychological occasion to reform the Community by the adoption of legal, moral and social measures.
Above all, the most conspicuous thing about this discourse is that it is free from the bitterness which inevitably follows such shameful and absurd attacks. Instead of showing any wrath at this provocation, the discourse prescribes some laws and regulations and enjoins reformative commandments and issues wise instructions that were required at the time for the education and training of the Community. Incidentally, this teaches us how to deal with such provocative mischiefs coolly, wisely and generously. At the same time, it is a clear proof that this is not the word of Prophet Muhammad (Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) but of a Being Who is observing all human conditions and affairs from the highest level, and guiding mankind without any personal prejudices, feelings and leanings. Had this been the word of the Prophet (Allah's peace be upon him); there would have been at least some tinge of natural bitterness in spite of his great generosity and forbearance, for it is but human that a noble man naturally become enraged when his own honor is attacked in this mean manner. |
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