Sublime

In response to the various charges, Zafar offered only a single, short but strikingly coherent written defence in Urdu, denying that he had any connection with the Uprising and maintaining that he had all along been the helpless prisoner of the sepoys. “I had no intelligence on the subject previous to the day of the outbreak,” read Zafar’s statemen

This message the Quraysh could not ignore, especially with the pilgrimage season fast approaching. They tried everything to silence Muhammad and his Companions. They went to Abu Talib for help, but the Shaykh of Hashim, though he would never accept Muhammad’s message himself, refused to withdraw his protection from his nephew.

Umar’s misogynist tendencies were apparent from the moment he ascended to the leadership of the Muslim community. He tried (unsuccessfully) to confine women to their homes and wanted to prevent them from attending worship at the mosque.

Ali’s conversion was promptly followed by the conversion of Muhammad’s slave, Zayd, whom he naturally freed. Soon afterward, Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s dear friend and a wealthy Qurayshi merchant, became a follower. A deeply loyal and fervently pious man, Abu Bakr’s first act after accepting Muhammad’s message was to spend his wealth buying and freeing t

Poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and social activist Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) would come to be known as the…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

However, these women, celebrated as they are, were no match for the indisputable authority of early Companions like Umar, the young, brash member of the Quraysh élite who would eventually take over the leadership of the Muslim community after Muhammad’s death. The Prophet had always admired Umar, not just for his physical prowess as a warrior, but