Sublime

And while it is true that after a few years, Muhammad both changed the qiblah from Jerusalem to Mecca, and set the annual fast at Ramadan (the month in which the Quran was first revealed) instead of Yom Kippur, these decisions should not be interpreted as “a break with the Jews,” but as the maturing of Islam into its own independent religion.

They even offered Muhammad all the freedom, support, power, and money he wanted to continue his movement in peace, so long as he ceased insulting their forefathers, mocking their customs, dividing their families, and, above all, cursing the other gods in the sanctuary. But Muhammad refused, and as the time came for the pilgrims to gather once again

The third Pillar, the month-long Muslim fast (sawm in Arabic) which takes place during Ramadan, was not firmly instituted as a Muslim ritual until after the emigration to Medina. Considering that the concept of fasting was thoroughly foreign to the Bedouin experience—it would have been absurd to go voluntarily without food or water in a desert

theologically speaking, Muhammad’s assertion that “there is no god but God” would have been neither scandalous nor, for that matter, original in Mecca.

IN 613, THREE years after the Revelation had begun, Muhammad’s message underwent a dramatic transformation, one that is best summed up in the twofold profession of faith, or shahadah, that would henceforth define both the mission and principles of the movement: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.

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The Arabs of the desert are the worst in Unbelief and hypocrisy,

“There is no god but God” was, for Muhammad, far more than a profession of faith. This statement was a conscious and deliberate attack on both the Ka‘ba and the sacred right of the Quraysh to manage it.

AT THE DAWN of the eighteenth century, around the time Europe was beginning to take notice of the vast natural resources waiting to be tapped across the Mediterranean, the sacred land that had given birth to Islam and reared it in its infancy fell under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, though the Caliph allowed the Sharif of Mecca—a