Striving

Now we know that when Muhammad first began to tell the people around him

that he had a Message from the One God,

and that any other gods people might pray to weren't real,

there were very few people who listened to him.

Almost everyone in Makkah and the lands around

prayed to a variety of different gods,

perhaps a god just to help their own family,

or a god who might help to do one particular thing.

And idols of these gods were all around the Ka'aba in Makkah,

and tribes would come from all over Arabia to worship them.

And they came in great crowds throughout the year,

and spent a great deal of money.

So the Makkan townspeople loved having all the gods in their town

bringing all those visitors

and making some of the townspeople very rich.

It made them feel very powerful and important.

So they really weren't happy when people started saying

that they believed in what Muhammad had to say,

that the idols around the Ka'aba were worthless

and that their gods did not exist.

If that were the case, they imagined that Makkah wouldn't be so important any more,

and then, even worse, they would lose all the money from all those visitors.

So at first they tried to get people to change their minds,

and not listen to the Messenger,

but then when that didn't work and people still said

they only believed in the One God,

they decided it might be easier to bully them.

So all the Makkan tribes

agreed to cut themselves off

from this new muslim community,

and not help them in any way.

And families would bully those members who followed the Messenger,

but slaves who believed only in Allah could be tortured by their owners,

even to death.

And the threat was so bad that

eventually the Messenger sent many of his followers far away

to Abyssinia,

where a Christian ruler protected them.

But people still listened in awe to the words that the Messenger recited,

and continued to submit their lives to the One God

And eventually the people of Yathrib,

a town a few days journey to the north,

pledged their allegiance to God and Muhammad,

and invited them to make Yathrib the first town under the authority of the Messenger.

With that, the Makkan tribes decided that

enough was enough,

and set out to destroy these new muslims by force,

and time and again they raised armies

to try to conquer the muslims

and end this religion they found so tiresome.

Now during all the trials that they suffered in Makkah,

the Messenger never let his followers fight back.

Fighting with your neighbour is frowned upon in Islam,

even when they start it.

But with the move to Yathrib, the Message made it clear

that the muslims would now have to fight if they were going to survive.

Now fighting is scary, as you can get badly hurt

and even die,

and forcing yourself to conquer your fear can be hard,

a real struggle.

But that is what the muslims had to do

to defend the Messenger and keep their community alive.

And so they called that fighting

to defend themselves,

to stay alive,

not the word for warfare

but the Arabic word for struggle,

Jihad.