Murder in the Name of Allah — Page 24
Murder in the Name of Allah. Arabs mourned the birth of daughters and hid their faces in shame. . Sometimes daughters were killed at birth. If they survived, their natural charm might earn them a few years of love from husbands and lovers who would go to the ends of the earth to defend their honour. But they were no more than pieces of property. They were part of the estate of their fathers, husbands or sons and were bequeathed with other belongings. . They were also slaves, rarely friends of their fathers, husbands or brothers. . The Arab gave scant thought to life after death. He offered human sacrifice; he worshipped ‘sacred' stones. The centre of this stone worship was Mecca. In pre-Muslim days, within the Kaba, were several idols supposed to represent gods. The great god of Mecca was Hubal, an idol made of cornelian. But in the Hijaz, three goddesses - Lat, Manat and. Uzza had pride of place as the daughters of God. . Well-built and strong, the Arab could live on just a few dates and some camel's milk. From the date palm he made a wine which raised him up into poetic flights of imagination and romance. His life alternated between loving and fighting and he was quick to avenge insult and injury, not only for himself but also on his tribe's behalf. . An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was the law. Never-ending shame awaited an avenger if he could not kill his tormentor. A large part of his life was spent in tribal vendetta (Arabic tha'r). In the pre-Islamic. Arab history Ayyam ul-Arab, (Days of the Arabs), was the name applied to the battles the Arabs fought among themselves. Particular days were called, for example, Day of Buath or Days of al-Fijar. These inter-tribal hostilities generally sprang from disputes over cattle, land or springs. . One of the most famous was fought between the Banu-Bakr and their kinsmen the Banu-Taghlib over a she-camel, owned by an old woman from Bakr called Basus. A Taghlib chief had wounded the camel. . . the resulting war lasted forty years! It ended only when both tribes had exhausted each other. Another famous war was the Day of Dahis and AlGhabra, which erupted over the unfair conduct of two chieftains in a race between a horse (named Dahis) and a mare (called Al-Ghabra). War broke out soon after the Basus conflict ended and continued at invervals for several decades. . This was the social background in which Muhammad was brought up and these were the people whom God gave the first opportunity of embracing a persecuted prophet's faith. 24