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In Defense of Pre-Islamic Arabian Culture
August 2007
The
pre-Islamic epoch in Arabia has become commonly known as the age of
Jahiliyya, meaning the age of barbarism, darkness, and ignorance of
God’s guidance. The absence of reliable historical sources makes
ascertaining the truth about pre-Islamic life challenging. On the critically important evidence of pre-Islamic life, poetry, Taha Hussain, the
eminent Egyptian scholar, philosopher, historian; doyen of Arabic
Literature, contended in 1926 that the “great majority of the poetry
reputed to be pre-Islamic had been forged by Muslims of a later date
and has nothing to do with Jahiliyya. Such poetry, Professor Taha Hussein
continues, is Islamic, representing the life of the Muslims, their
predilections and inclinations more than the life of the Jahilis (On Jahilyya Poetry, 19). These poems were committed to memory, wrote Philip K. Hitti, transmitted by oral tradition from one generation to the next and finally recorded in writing during the second and third centuries after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (History of the Arabs, 1970, 92).
The ulama (Islamic scholars or men of religion) has had a vested
interest in promoting a terrible image of pre-Islamic religious
beliefs, values, and way of life. The reason is simple; contrast a
Jahili age of darkness with the enlightened age under Islam. The ulama
succeeded in depicting the pre-Islamic period as an age of polytheism,
licentiousness, adultery, polyandry, prostitution, gambling,
drunkenness, plundering, and girl-infanticide, among a long list of
other vulgarities. They also succeeded in painting their Jahiliyya
colors over not only the Prophet’s habitat in pagan Mecca but also over
the geographic entirety of the Arabian Peninsula, despite the existence
in the northern parts of Arabia at the time of the Prophetic mission of
Jewish tribes in Medina, Fadak, and Khaybar and of Christian
settlements in Najran and the southwest of the Peninsula as well as in
Byzantine Syria to the north. Even in the Prophet’s household in Mecca
Christianity appears to have been known. A cousin of the Prophet’s wife
Khadija, Waraqa Bin Nofal, an old man who had already been Christian
when Muhammad’s Prophetic mission started and who “had written from the
New Testament in Hebrew” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, "The Start of the Revelation" Book, Tradition 3). Khadija took Muhammad to Waraqa to seek his advice on her husband’s future religious mission (Ibid.).
Astronomical amounts of writings and sermons have proclaimed the
great reforms bestowed by Islam upon mankind. This article is not
concerned with these declarations. This article is concerned with
addressing a specific question: Was the pre-Islamic way of life truly
so terrible?
To answer, a comparison would be made between
what the Holy Quran tells us about certain aspects of the pre-Islamic
way of life and how the same aspects have become basically a part of
the Islamic way of life; such as: Beliefs about monotheism, the ritual
of the Mecca pilgrimage, beliefs in Jinn and angels, treatment of
women, wine drinking, and slavery.
On monotheism, although
the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs worshipped many deities, they recognized a
supreme God, “Allah.” The Quran testifies that the pre-Islamic Arabs
recognized Allah’s awesome powers:
In 29:61, if you asked
“. . . Who created the heavens and the earth and set the sun and the
moon to work, they will certainly reply, Allah.”
In 29:63,
if you asked “. . . Who sends down rain from the sky and gives life to
the earth after its death they will reply Allah.”
In 39:3:
“Those who take for protectors other than Allah say: we only serve them
in order that they may bring us nearer to Allah.”
Al-Udhri
noted that, “when Khalid Bin Sinan’s daughter heard the Prophet
reciting the Al-Ikhlas Sura (Quranic Chapter 112, composed of four
Verses), she said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, this is what my father used
to say.’ The Prophet did not contradict her and praised her father”
(Abdullah, A. Y. Al-Udhari, 1991. Jahili Poetry Before Imru Al-Qais. Ph.D. dissertation. School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, p. 73).
In naming their children, the pre-Islamic Arabs often preceded the
name of a preferred deity by the word Abd (meaning slave, servant) as a
sign of respect, fear, or subservience. Indeed, the name of the
Prophet’s father was Abd Allah.
Therefore, in making the
first article of the Islamic faith “La ilaha illa Allah,” meaning:
“There is no God (deity) but God,” in designating Allah as the only
omnipotent God, Islam did not invent a new deity. The Prophet “Muhammad contended himself with ridding the heathen Allah of His
‘companions’ subjecting Him to a kind of dogmatic purification” [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, s.v. Arabs (Ancient)].
On rituals, Encyclopedia of Islam
(New Edition, s.v. Kaaba) states: “It is incontrovertible” that Islam
took from the pagan Arabs “an entire pre-Islamic ritual, previously
steeped in paganism.” This ritual is the veneration of and the
pilgrimage to the Kaaba at Mecca. For the pre-Islamic Arabs, “the Kaaba
was the center of worship where the Jahilis prayed and went round it
seven times. The Jahilis went on pilgrimage to the Kaaba once a year in
Dhul-Hijja for a week, and they performed the Waqfa [standing in or
stoppage at] on Mount Arafat” (Al-Udhhri, 1991, 77). In their ritual,
the Pre-Islamic pilgrims halted at Muzdalifa, stayed at Mina, made
seven runs between Safa and the Marwah hills, sacrificed animals, and
shaved their heads.They performed the lesser pilgrimage (Umrah) outside
the month of Dhul-Hijja.
Islam adopted the entire ritual.
It recognized the Kaaba as the temple of God and the center of worship,
retained the Black Stone, consecrated the Haram sanctuary, and ordered
Muslims to perform the pilgrimage, if possible, once in a lifetime on
the eighth day of the last month of the Islamic lunar year, Dhul-Hijja.
Muslims today, like their pre-Islamic ancestors, circumambulate the
Kaaba seven times, halt at Muzdalifa, stay at Mina, make seven runs
between Safa and the Marwah hills, sacrifice animals, stone the devil,
shave their heads, and wear a special simple garb. They perform the
lesser pilgrimage (Umrah) outside the month of Dhul-Hijja.
Islam has also in common with the pre-Islamic Arabs their belief in
Jinn. The pre-Islamic Arabs were “fully convinced,” in the existence of
shadowy, crafty, mischievous, even destructive beings called jinn (Watt
and Bell, Introduction to the Quran, 1977, 153). While usually
invisible, the jinn are capable of assuming forms of snakes, scorpions,
lizards, and other creeping things or mad humans (Ibid.). Sura Al-Jinn
(Quranic Chapter number 72, composed of 28 Verses), is dedicated to
these spirits. Other parts of the Quran recognize Jinn’s existence:
“They link Him with jinn by lineage” (37:158); that God created Jinn
from fire (55:15), and that Jinn’s end, like men’s, is to serve and
worship God (51:56). The Quran reveals also that God sent messengers to
Jinn and men (6:130), and teaches that Jinn may believe in God and His
Holy Book: (72:1), as well as that Jinn may be unbelievers as well
(6:130). Jinn promised that they will not “Associate in worship any
gods with our Lord” (72:2).
The Quran speaks in 41:14 as
if the conception of angels had been known and acceptedby pagans: “They
said, if our Lord had so pleased, He would certainly have sent down
angels.”
On the treatment of women, the Ulama class
succeeded in creating the perception that Islam was the liberator of
the pre-Islamic woman. To this end, the Ulama created a barbaric image
of the personal and family lives of the pre-Islamic Arabs, depicting
them as practitioners, among other dreadful things, of unlimited
polygamy and of treating women like chattel. A closer look, however,
shows that Islam allows unlimited polygamy and treats women like
chattel all the same. In allowing the Muslim male to marry four wives
simultaneously and, divorce any one of them at will without giving
cause, in giving the woman one-half the weight of the man in an Islamic
court of law as a witness and in inheritance, in instituting the Mut’a
marriage (the man "marries" the woman for a specific period of time and
pays for her companionship during the specified period), and the Misyar
marriage (the man visits his Misyar "wife" at her home without
financial obligation), Islam has sanctioned adultery, encouraged
promiscuity, and reduced the woman to a piece of property.
By contrast, Khadija, the Prophet’s first wife, we are told, was
the best born in Quraish, a successful businesswoman and, too, the
richest. Khadija employed young Muhammad and proposed marriage to him.
He was 25 years old. She was 40 years old and twice a widow. For their
25-year marriage, until Khadija died in 620 AD, the Prophet remained monogamous to her.
In comparison with Khadija, Aisha, probably the Prophet’s favorite
wife, whom he married after the death of Khadija, was a small child of
nine years of age, too young to have known what was happening to her,
let alone to have had a say in the marriage. According to attributions to Aisha as recorded in Sahih Al-Bukari, Sahih Muslim, and Sunan Abi Dawood, Aisha
reportedly said that the Prophet married her when she was six years old
(possibly seven years old according to some accounts), and consummated
their marriage when she was nine years old, and that she became a widow
after nine years. The Prophet was in his early fifties when he married
Aisha. She was one of nine simultaneous wives of the Prophet when he
died. For the extra five wives, beyond the four allowed, God granted
the Prophet a dispensation. In 33:50: “We have made lawful for you, O
Prophet, wives to whom you have given their dower, and God-given maids
and captives you have married . . . This is a privilege only for You
and not for the other believers.”
If
Khadija were the prototype of the pre-Islamic woman, then pre-Islamic
women had had superior basic rights to what Islam granted them. For more on this subject, see the article below: "Is Muslims' Treatment of Women Islamic?"
Pre-Islamic Arabs spoke of wine drinking, and Islam declared in
Verse 47:15 that: “The semblance of Paradise promised to the pious and
devout is that of a garden with rivers of water incorruptible . . .
rivers of wine, delectable to drink; and rivers of honey pure and
clear.” But Islam prohibited in 2:219 wine drinking on the Earth.
Islam institutionalized pre-Islamic slavery. However, the Quran
instructed that slaves should be treated humanely (2:177) and their
manumission (24:33) was made into a pious act. Saudi Arabia’s
government did not abolish slavery officially until 1962.
Muslims share with the pre-Islamic pagans the lunar calendar (Hitti, History of the Arabs, 1970, 94).
Furthermore, Islam shares in common with desert living a culture of
obedience to hierarchical authority. Survival in the burning heat of
desert days, freezing winter nights, and scarcity of food and clean
water necessitates obedience to tribal hierarchy, if the tribe’s scant
resources are not to be wasted in internal quarrels. The Prophet, being
a product of desert living, enshrined blind obedience to authority in
the Islamic Creed. God orders in 4:59: “Obey God and obey God’s
messenger and obey those of authority among you.” Similar wording
occurs dozens of times in the Quran. Also, according to Book 20,
Chapter 8 of the Hadith compilation in Sahih Muslim: the Prophet is
reported to have said: “He who obeys me obeys God; he who disobeys me,
disobeys God. He who obeys the ruler, obeys me; he who disobeys the
ruler, disobeys me.”
The belief in Monotheism could have
helped Islam’s adoption of blind obedience to authority. Monotheism
transferred in one swoop all the powers that had been the preserve of
the many gods of the pre-Islamic polytheists into the hands of the one
and only omnipotent god, Allah. As the Messenger of Allah, the Prophet
was divinely inspired. Being divinely inspired, the Prophet’s authority
became rooted in Allah’s unlimited and absolute powers.
From the above, it may be concluded that Jahili society was not the
barbaric society the Ulama made it out to be. Taha Hussein again: “No,
the Jahilis were neither ignorant nor stupid, they were not rough and
did not live primitively; rather, they were people of knowledge and
intelligence, of sensitivity, delicate emotions, refinement, and
affluent living conditions (On Jahiliyya Literature, 1927, 74).
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