Introduction to the Study of The Holy Quran — Page 101
101 incompetent recipients for some of His revelations. Yet ideas of this kind have found their way into different religions, possibly because of the distance which now divides them from their Founders or because human intellect, until the advent of Islam, was incapable of perceiving the error of these ideas. How important and valuable it is to keep together a book and its Teacher was realised very early in Islam. One of the Prophet’s holy consorts was the young Ayesha. She was thirteen to fourteen years of age when she was married to the Prophet. For about eight years she lived in wedlock with him. When the Prophet died she was about twenty-two years of age. She was young and illiterate: Yet she knew that a teaching cannot be divorced from its teacher. Asked to describe the Prophet’s character, she answered at once that his character was the Quran. 119 What he did was what the Quran taught; what the Quran taught was nothing else than what he did. It redounds to the glory of the Prophet that an illiterate young woman was able to grasp a truth which escaped Hindu, Jewish and Christian scholars. Ayesha expressed a great and an important truth in a crisp little sentence: it is impossible for a true and honest teacher to teach one thing but practise another, or to practise one thing but teach another. The Prophet was a true and honest Teacher. This is what Ayesha evidently wanted to say. He practised what he preached and preached what he practised. To know him is to know the Quran and to know the Quran is to know him. Arabia at the Time of the Prophet’s Birth The Prophet was born in Mecca in August 570 A. D. He was given the name Muhammad which means, the Praised One. To understand his life and character we must have some idea of the conditions which obtained in Arabia at the time of his birth. When he was born the whole of Arabia, with exceptions here and there, believed in a polytheistic form of religion. The Arabs traced their descent to Abraham. They knew that Abraham was a monotheistic Teacher. In spite of this, they entertained polytheistic beliefs and were given to polytheistic practices. In defence, they said that some human beings are outstanding in their contact with God. Their intercession on behalf of others is accepted by God. God is High and Exalted. To reach Him is difficult for ordinary human beings. Only perfect human beings can reach him. Ordinary human beings, therefore, must have others to intercede on their behalf before they can reach God and attain to His pleasure and His help. With this attitude they were able to combine their reverence for Abraham, the monotheist, with their own polytheistic beliefs. Abraham, they said, was a holy man. He was able to reach God without intercession. But ordinary Meccans were not able to reach God without the intercession of other holy and righteous persons. To seek this intercession, the people of Mecca, therefore, had made idols of many holy and righteous persons, and these they worshipped and to these they made offerings in order to please God