Message of Love and Brotherhood to Africa — Page 5
5 memory makes our hair stand on end. A Muslim bought him off and set him free. Then he became a respected and worthy member of the Muslim community life. On the day of Mecca’s fall, the Holy Prophet sa prepared a standard and named it after Bilal ra and set it aloft and told the chiefs of Mecca that if they choose to ask for quarters they would find asylum under Bilal’s ra standard—the man who was the object of their utmost contempt and hatred, once a target of their heartless cruelties. That is how he avenged the oppressed Bilal ra. It was a sweet revenge—an endearing and charming kind of revenge that did not kill and yet was exacted; this offer of quarter under the standard of Bilal ra whom they subjected to vicious treatment underlined absence of difference between man and man the Holy Prophet sa made the same Bilal ra an example to remove inequalities between man and man. When I first related this incident a wave of sweet joy swept through the assemblage— its reverberations in the atmosphere were audible to my ears. There were among the audience non-members, also clergymen. On