Muhammad and The Jews — Page 39
THE PEOPLE OF THE Sabifah colour, race or social status, by the doctrine of submission to one God. According to Montgomery Watt, it is "the community formed by those who accept the messenger and his message". 1 Rudi Paret has also reached a similar conclusion and says the word "always refers to ethical, linguistic or religious bodies of people who are the objects of the divine plan of salvation". 2 While the orientalists differ as regards the development of the term in the Qur""iin, some Muslim scholars assert that the term ummah describes the community of Muslims,3 but this is only partly true. It describes the de facto position. In theory the use of the term ummah during the major portion of the Apostle's career was not restricted to Muslims alone. The main difficulty in dealing with the history of ideas is that terms are more permanent than their definitions. While institutions continually change, the terms describing them remain unaltered. A precise and comprehensive definition of the ummah is, however, not required for our purpose. The term ummah, therefore, within the context of our discussion is restricted to the sense in which it has been used in the $af:zifah i. e. 'the people of the Saf:zifah. ' The Saf:zifah signed by the Muslims and the Jews, and erroneously called 'The Constitution of Medina', is a very important document for the understanding of the status of non-Muslims in a Muslim-dominated society. Scholars of all schools of thought, such as Watt, Serjeant and Hamidullah,4 agree that the document is "unquestionably authentic". 5 No later falsifier writing under the Umayyads or Abbasids, would have included non-Muslims in the ummah, would have retained the articles against the Quraysh, and would have given Mul;iammad so insignificant a place. 6 Most of the modern scholars dispute the date and unity of the document and there is no clear indication as to the number of agree- ments which constitute it. Various dates for signing these documents can only be assigned after some reasonable method is found to separate 1 W. Montgomery Watt, 'Ideal Factors in the Origin oflslam' The Islamic Quarterly, II, No. 3 (October 1955), pp. 161-174. See also his book, Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh, 1968), pp. 9-14. 2 Article 'Ummah'. in Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition. 3 Abu! Ac. la Maudiidi, Islamic Way of Life (Delhi, 1967), p. 17. 4 Muhammad Hamidullah, The First Written Constitution in the World, (Lahore, 1968), pp. 38-40. 5 R. B. Serjeant, "The Constitution of Medina", The Islamic Quarterly, VIII (January-June 1964), p. 3. 6 Watt, Muhammad at Med ina, p. 225. 39