Sublime

That Muhammad came to Yathrib as little more than the Hakam in the quarrel between the Aws and the Khazraj is certain. And yet the traditions seem to present Muhammad arriving in the oasis as the mighty prophet of a new and firmly established religion: the unchallenged leader of the whole of Yathrib.

And it was precisely this self-image that so greatly disturbed the Quraysh. For by proclaiming himself “the Messenger of God,” Muhammad was blatantly transgressing the traditional Arab process through which power was granted. This was not authority that had been given to Muhammad as “the first among equals.” Muhammad had no equals.

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the memory of Karbala was slowly transforming the Shi‘atu Ali from a political faction with the aim of restoring the leadership of the community to the family of the Prophet, into an utterly distinct religious sect in Islam: Shi‘ism, a religion founded on the ideal of the righteous believer who, following in the footsteps of the martyrs at Karbala,

Elijah’s power is limited, because traditionally a prophet cannot invoke his own authority to establish the halakhah:

He was not just the King of Mecca, he was “the Keeper of the Keys.” “His authority among his tribe of Quraysh, in his life and after his death, was like a religion which people followed,” recounts Ibn Ishaq. Qusayy’s most important innovation was the establishment of what would become the foundation of Mecca’s economy. He began by strengthening his

TRADITIONALLY, THE JAHILIYYAH has been defined by Muslims as an era of moral depravity and religious discord: a time when the sons of Ismail had obscured belief in the one true God and plunged the Arabian Peninsula into the darkness of idolatry. But then, like the rising of the dawn, the Prophet Muhammad emerged in Mecca at the beginning of the sev