Bilal

[NaSra]

<b>Bilal tells of the hatred of Mecca</b>


Why did they hate us?


They were not evil men; they were out of old traditions, even out of old decencies. They followed customs of hospitality and obeyed their own rules of honour and dishonour, obligations in the give and take of a desert existence.


The hardness of their hearts was mostly the result of their lives, as those who live on the backs of donkeys are most terrible at beating them.


They did not hate us and our One God because they loved their many gods. The love of the gods was never much in paganism. Gods were exploited and anointed at the same time. It was a system of exchange, a merchant’s deal with the devil.


‘I will worship you, Hubal, and do you honour and bring you a present and continue your existence by coming to you- if you will help me find my lost camel.’


But, I, Bilal, who once worshipped pagan gods must not be too light with them now or I risk ignorance. I must tell you plainly about the strength and weakness of the gods.


We talk of gods of wood and stone, but no pagan was ever stupid enough to worship stone which he could crack or wood that he could burn.


He conceived a spirit residing in the wood or stone and worshipped that spirit.


Yet, here also, was the weakness. The gods had a residence, like the Kaa’ba, and their divinity stopped short at the next idol, the next temple, the next tribe, the next city, the next god. The god that opened the door in Mecca could not even shut it in Medina.


So much for the power of gods.


But worse. The gods were both above and below their worshippers. Even the Romans, in their pagan days, knew how gods depended on man. Gods fall out of service by not being named; when they are not worshipped they cease to exist.


Julius Caesar had his gods and Augustus Caesar had his; gods came and went in a change of togas. Men made or unmade their gods simply by giving them more or giving them less, bowing to them or walking past them, which was a very bad power to entrust to man.


Only by a blind gift from God can man remake himself.


One reason why they hated us was their incomprehension of the power of the One God. I remember how they used to fret when Muhammad preached the resurrection of the body. Once Abu Lahab, who was so fat that he had to be helped up, brought the Prophet a piece of human bone and began to crumble it between his soft fingers.


‘You say this can resurrect? This can be made man again?’ he asked and blew the powdered bone in the Prophet’s face.


Muhammad brushed off the dust and looked at the heaving, angry merchant prince.


‘God who made man in the first place,’ he said, ‘can remake him again if He wishes.’


I always feared Abu Lahab and I feared him most then. The ground around him shook with the weight of his outrage. But maybe even the devil is modest. Abu Lahab could not conceive that at least one part of his vast presence in this world, if not his importance, might be continued in another.


Yet every pagan I have ever met has suffered from too proud a logic. Unable to submit to what he cannot see, he reasons that man is all and each man is the end of himself. His afterworld is his underworld, a grave without opening.


Even mighty Julius Caesar on the day of his triumph, standing at the altar, declared: ‘Death is the end of everything.’ It was a proud mastery of fate and a contempt equal only to the omniscience of suicide.


But while man can endanger his soul, corrupt it, deform it and blacken it, he cannot kill it. There is hope only for the suicide of the body, none for the soul. Each man must answer to his own indestructibility. Yet Abu Lahab thought he could disprove God by rubbing a bone between his fingers.


But to give him credit, Abu Lahab’s anger had an eye. He attempted to dispel a mystery by digging up evidence form a grave. His friends were less perceptive and our small, ragged band was a cause for their merriment and jokes and an excuse for more wine.


They mocked us, spat at us, pelted us with dung and hatred. We might wash off their spit, which was merely their slime, but the insult to the Prophet bled within us.


How could he, beloved by Heaven and regarded by angels, be the laughing stock of dying men? We saw only light denied. Yet he bore it all with patience and mildness. Surely patience is the equipment of a prophet, a breastplate given to him by God. I was not so equipped.


They got round me one day, Ikrima and half a dozen more, and pointed their fingers at me. No one said anything: no word, no sound, just a small smile on every face. I was frightened, I suppose. Yes, damn them, I stuttered. If I turned to my right, one of them jabbed his finger into my left side until I was spinning like a top. I couldn’t hold my water.


My urine ran down my leg. I was caught in their net of fingers and smiles. They knew how to point and measure out an ex-slave.


They went away laughing.


Looking back at them now, I know that they hated us for the most of human reasons. It is an unhappy law that wherever truth raises its head you will find men rushing to cut it off, as if some monster had come into their lives.


Truth is always first seen as an enemy and run at with hatred and derision.