Muhammad Series

Emergence of Wealth Disparity

The Quraysh had become rich beyond their wildest dreams in the old nomadic days. They saw wealth and capitalism as their salvation, which seemed to have rescued them from a life of poverty and danger and given them an almost godlike security. They were no longer hungry, no longer plagued by enemy tribes. Money began to acquire a quasi-religious value. But aggressive capitalism was not really compatible with the old communal tribal ethic. It encouraged a rampant greed and individualism.

Instead of sharing their wealth equally, according to the old tribal ethic, individuals were building up personal fortunes. They were exploiting the rights of orphans and widows, absorbing their inheritance into their own estates, and were not looking after the weaker, poorer members of the tribe as the old ethos had required. Their new prosperity had severed their links with traditional values and many of the less successful Quraysh felt obscurely disoriented and lost. Naturally the most successful merchants, bankers, and financiers were delighted with the new system. Only two generations away from the penury of the nomadic life, they believed that money and material goods could save them. They made a new religion of money.

The new prosperity drew people’s attention to the disparity between rich and poor. All the great religious leaders and prophets had addressed themselves to these issues and provided their own distinctive solutions. The younger generation was growing disenchanted and seemed to be searching for a new spiritual and political solution to the malaise and disquiet in the city.

Starts His Mission

When Muhammad began to preach the word in Mecca, the whole Arabia was in a state of chronic disunity. Each of the numerous Bedouin tribes of the peninsula was a law unto itself and in a state of constant warfare with other tribal groups, rooted in the violent world of attack, retaliation, and counter-attack. Muhammad had no blueprint, no clear plan of action, when he began his mission. Muhammad was very cautious when he began to spread the word. He knew that his claim was likely to be ridiculed.

In 612, at the start of his mission, Muhammad had a modest conception of his role. He was no savior or messiah; he had no universal mission – at this date he did not even feel that he should preach to the other Arabs of the peninsula. He was simply to deliver a message to Mecca and its environs, as the latest in the long line of prophets. He should have no political function. He was just the nadhir, the Warner.

The early message of the Koran is simple: it is wrong to stockpile wealth to build a personal fortune, but good to give alms and distribute the wealth of society. All that the Koran requires is that men and women strive to create a just society, where the vulnerable are treated decently.

He did not condemn wealth and possessions as Jesus did: Muslims were not commanded to give away everything that they had. Instead, they must be generous with their wealth and give a regular proportion of their income to the poor. They must look after the poor and should not swindle orphans of their inheritance when they administer their property, as so many of the Quraysh were doing.

Muhammad himself always lived a simple and frugal life. Many of his first converts were among the disadvantaged people of Mecca: slaves and women both recognized that his religion offered them a message of hope. He did attract converts from the richer clans, but most of the powerful and aristocratic Quraysh held aloof.

Birth of Islam

Eventually Muhammad’s religion was known as islam, the act of existential surrender to Allah: A muslim is ‘one who surrenders’ his or her whole being to the Creator. A muslim is not submitting to an arbitrary tyrant, but to the essential laws that govern the universe.

The Koran emphasizes that God eludes our human thoughts and that we can speak of God only in signs and symbols, which half reveal and half conceal His ineffable nature. The whole mode of the Koranic discourse is symbolic. There are no doctrines about God, defining what He is, but mere ‘signs’ of a sacramental nature where something of Him can be experienced.

The Koran urges Muslims to make the imaginative and intellectual effort to look at the world around them in a symbolic way. Muslims are urged to look upon signs in the natural world and examine them carefully, which enabled Muslims to develop an outstanding tradition of natural science and mathematics. There has never been a conflict between rational scientific inquiry and religion in the Islamic tradition.

The Koran is highly suspicious of theological speculation, which it sees as mere human projection and wish-fulfillment.