"..So it was the freest spirits, rejecting the domination of the leading layers of Meccan society, who first turned towards Mohamed: among them, there were young people from good families who were in revolt against their elders, but also members of less influential clans, non Meccan, individuals who were outside clans, even freedmen or slaves. Moreover, the prophet took the side of the poor and the orphans, admonishing the rich Qurayshis , for whose arrogance he had contempt:
“Watch out! You do not honour the orphan! You do not encourage people to feed the poor! You greedily devour your inheritance! You love wealth with a limitless passion! ” (Koran, 89,17-20) In the principle of the revealed religions, the injunctions of the Very High are communicated to men through a prophet, whose position makes him legitimately have the ambition of being the supreme spiritual power: “How could a man with whom God spoke directly”, remarks Rodinson, “be subject to the decisions of any senate. How could the directives of the Supreme Being be discussed by the Meccan aristocracy? ” Besides, does not Mohamed develop “a critical attitude [Rodinson even says: “implicitly revolutionary”] - towards those who are rich and powerful, therefore conformists?”. So measures of repression struck the roughly forty partisans of Mohamed, in particular the most vulnerable of them: thus, the black slave Bilâl was exposed to the sun by his masters, at the hottest hours of the day, with a rock on his chest. In this heavy atmosphere, the prophet still however won some disciples, like `Omar ibn Al-Khattâb, who would later succeed him as the second caliph. Some emigrated to Abyssinia, although the majority still enjoyed the support of their clan: Mohamed was protected by the Banou Hâshim, in particular by his uncle, the very influential Abu Tâlib. It was the death of the latter, in 619, and that of his first wife, Khadîja, which broke this precarious equilibrium. In 622, while a starving Byzantium was besieged by the Persians and the Avars in an atmosphere of apocalypse, the small group of believers took the road to Medina, 350 kilometres to the north-west: it was the Hegira, that is to say the beginning of the Muslim calendar. Here, the new social organization over which Mohamed presided, encouraged by the voice of Allah, continued to defend the interests of the orphans, the beggars and the travellers. It recommended treating slaves well and if possible freeing them; slavery was even proscribed among the faithful. In 632, when the prophet in person, a few months before his death, led the first pilgrimage to Mecca (*hajj*), he insisted on the equality of all men before Allah, whether they were rich or poor, Arab or not, thus inspiring the fairly general rejection of racism by Islam." http://www.radicalsocialist.in/index.php/articles/socialist-peoples-history/236-the-green-banner-of-mohamed-and-the-expansion-of-world-trade?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+radicalsocialist+%28Radical+Socialist%29 -- You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
