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Like Christianity, Islam relies heavily upon story as a means of teaching and, again like Christianity, stories about the founder of the religion are the central stories that define the faith. In Christianity, these stories are told in the Gospels and in Islam in the hadith . The voluminous hadith literature details the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and establishes the normative Islamic life and belief through the Prophet's perfect example. The following is a retelling of one of these great stories that took place early in the trajectory of the new faith.
* * * * *
Muhammad and his followers insisted on the worship of one God, the God of Abraham, the God worshipped by Jews and Christians, THE God, Allah , in Arabic. For this belief the first Muslims were persecuted by their pagan neighbours and, subject to increasing violence, circumstances forced them to flee Mecca. This event, the Hijra , marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
Mecca remained a spiritual center for the followers of Muhammad and even though he became the leader of the largely Jewish community of Medina, a return to Mecca was greatly desired. It was believed that the great shrine in Mecca, the Kaaba, was built by the Old Testament Patriarch Abraham and his elder son, Ishmael and was itself built upon the site of the Garden of Eden and the very first shrine of the One God, built be Adam himself. To the Muslims of Medina it was the navel or center of the world, the place where Heaven and earth touched, and so the exile from Mecca, the inability to approach and worship at the Kaaba, was intolerable.
Over the years, many battles were fought between the community of Medina and the Arab pagans and the Muslims managed to defend themselves and their beliefs from extinction. Eventually a great battle was fought for possession of Mecca; the Prophet's forces won the battle and the gates of Mecca, and the Kaaba, were finally opened to them and their pilgrimage ( Hajj ).
For many generations the religion of Abraham had been lost to the Arabs and the Kaaba had become a place of idols. As a center for trade, Mecca had allowed trading caravans to erect idols of their gods in the Kaaba precinct. Muhammad entered the sacred precinct and having paid homage to God in the way still practiced by Muslims on pilgrimage, he turned his attention to the three hundred and sixty idols arranged around the shrine and shattered them all. As Christ purified the Temple in Jerusalem, so Muhammad purified the Kaaba in Mecca. A single room lay at the center of the Kaaba – analogous to the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple – and when Muhammad entered this room he found many more images of pagan gods. He ordered that they too be destroyed. Among these pagan images on the walls was an icon of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child and one of Abraham, father of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Muhammad covered the icon of the Madonna and child with his arms, protecting it and ordered that these two images, one Christian and the other Jewish, be preserved.
Some say that the Prophet shielded the eyes of the Blessed Virgin in the icon that she be protected not just from destruction but also from bearing witness to destruction.
In this way the Kaaba was returned to the worship of the God of Abraham, the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike; and further, Muhammad demonstrated by his actions on this day the kinship between these ‘Peoples of the Book' and the respect and protection accorded to them under the rule of Islam.
Graeme Castleman