02-07-2005, 08:07 AM
<b> Bilal
tells of Muhammad’s call </b>
What I relate now, I have by authority. I was told it by Abu Bakr, who heard it from Saeed, who heard it from Ali, who knew it from Khadija, who received it from the lips of Muhammad, who experienced it.
Moreover it is confirmed, in the second part, by God in eighteen verses of the Surah of Najm (meaning the Star). Therefore, it is a fact irrefutable and an evidence of religion.
Muhammad was alone in a cave on Mount Hira when the Angel Gabriel came to him,
<b>Gabriel said:</b> ‘Read.’
<b>Muhammad replied:</b> ‘I cannot read.’
<b>Gabriel commanded again:</b>‘Read in the name of thy Lord,
Who created man from a sensitive drop of blood,
Who teaches man what he knows not,
Read.’
<b>Still Muhammad replied:</b> ‘I cannot read.’
Then Gabriel wrestled with him, pressed him down and smothered him until he thought he would die. But in his last extremity Gabriel released him and left the cave.
Muhammad knew that a message God to man was written within him. But he did not yet know what.
He could not bear the load. He wanted to kill himself. He went scrambling up towards a steep place on the mountain from where he might jump off into oblivion. But halfway up Gabriel again appeared to him.
Now he saw Gabriel clearly in the figure of a man standing on the horizon with crossed legs. Wherever he looked, wherever he turned his head, to north, south, east or west, at every turn he saw Gabriel.
<b>Again, he heard the voice of the Angel:</b>
‘Muhammad you are the Messenger of God and I am Gabriel.’
He ran home and hid, shivering under blankets. Was it a vision from God or was he the fool and victim of a devil? Was his mind diseased? Had the moon struck him? Was he swept by a storm in his brain? He knew he was only a man.
He piled up more and more blankets. Then Khadija came running and he told her what had happened. He laid his head in her lap and told her everything.
Now there are those who still must deal in the marvellous and must colour each occasion. They say the Angel followed Muhammad home and stood where only he could see him. He pointed to the place but Khadija was not permitted to see.
Then Khadija sat Muhammad on her knees, undid her clothes and exposed herself, whereupon the Angel fled. She had proved that the Spirit was good- an evil spirit would have stayed to look, whereas a good spirit must retire in shame. But pleasing stories are not always the best truth. I leave them to the smoke of the campfire.
I edge towards what I know.
God had gifted Khadija with her own insight. She comforted her husband, subdued his fears, reasoned with his uncertainty. Above all, she comprehended the mystery, and while, he himself was writhing in humility and self-doubt, she believed.
She fortified him. She told him that if God was God, God would not deceive a truthful man. Throughout the night she held him to what the Angel had said. ‘Muhammad, you are a Messenger of God.’
They call this night Laylat Al- Qadr, the Night of Majesty. In this night God gave man his daylight. In this night God permitted Gabriel to bring down the Holy Spirit. In this night God endowed His Apostle, Muhammad, with his first knowledge. In this night, Khadija also believed and became mother of the Believers. In this night God sent His mercy to mankind.
No one knows for sure when this night is. In Ramadan, yes. Ramadan is the month of fasting, revelation and mystery. But Ramadan has thirty nights, beginning and ending with the thread of the new moon, and the Night of all Nights, the Night of Majesty, is hidden among the thirty.
Some say it is the 17th, others the 23rd, or the 25th, while others insist on the 27th. In the Qur’an it is revealed that this night is better than a thousand months- yet only God Himself knows when this night falls.
I have since climbed the mountain many times to the Prophet’s cave. The mouth is so low you must stoop to go in and inside you can only crouch. Yet this is the first room of the Message, the auditorium of Heaven.
Each time I go up, I feel my knees begin to fail me and I have to clutch something for fear of falling. But the same happens when I see great beauty- then too, I must hold myself up. Our best moments often disable us.
A man can see far from the top of a mountain, out over the heads of small concerns. From Hira you look beyond Mecca into the brown distance of the Hijaz, where tribes move, where caravans journey and shepherds have stood alone since time immemorial beside their flocks.
It is a world laid out in beauty and occupation, in harshness and adaptation. Yet it moves in silence, for no discord or human voice reaches you on the top of the mountain. Your ears are open to God.
