01-22-2005, 05:29 AM
Asalamalaikum
I am starting this thread for all muslims to get to know BiLaL (Ra) but specially our new Brother to islam Anya. A while back I read how some people always e-mail him and tell him how Black people are mistreated in islams and so on. And how Islam is not for black people, well InshaAllah meet one of the greatest Sahabas of the Prophet. A man who was very beloved to Mohamed SaLaLahu Alaihi Wasalam. If it wasn't for the Companions of RaSuLuLah's endless effort to help raise Islam we would not have been muslim today. Islam would not have reached where it reached today. MaY Allah allow us all to meet each of those great men and women in the next life inshaAllah, ameen.
<b>BiLaL</b>
Bilal is remembered for the love people felt for him. He inhabits the heart. But, by the same token, Bilal was so loved and so present in people’s affections that few felt he need to write down much about his life. It was sufficient to say that he was there, always beside the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and loved by him. In the few paintings of this historic moment, usually backward glances in manuscript decorations, Bilal is always easy to recognise. Bilal was black.
The few facts known about Bilal can be told quickly.
He was born in Mecca, the son of an Abyssinian slave called Rabah; in a city of idol-worship, he was tortured for his belief in one God, he was bought and freed from slavery by Muhammad (pbuh)’s close friend, Abu Bakr, he was made the first muezzin, the caller to prayer in Islam; he had the responsibility for the food supplies of the first small armies of Islam; he was so close to the Prophet that he had the duty of waking him in the morning.
After Muhammad’s (pbuh) death, Bilal’s legs, in his grief, failed him. He could not climb up the steps to make the call to prayer again. He died in Syria, probably in 644, twelve years after the Prophet’s (pbuh) death.
Not much to base a life upon- although, from the day of Bilal's conversion, every event in Muhammad’s (pbuh) was an event in the life of Bilal. Moreover, the two pillars of his memory, the love he had for the Prophet (pbuh) and his nearness to the Prophet (pbuh) are enough for a writer who shares the first and is awed by the second.
Muhammad (pbuh) called Bilal ‘a man of Paradise.’
