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Think of a small community… This community is extremely stubborn and is deeply attached to their customs; these customs have become part of their personality. You are a big judge in this community. How many customs can you change in this small but stubborn community by working very hard as a judge?
Before answering this question, think of the following:
Sometimes, a father cannot change a bad manner of his daughter despite giving her so much advice.
Sometimes, a teacher cannot eliminate a bad manner of his student despite making a lot of efforts.
So many legislators cannot prevent a crime like theft despite severe penalties.
A doctor cannot make his patient give up smoking, which is a small addiction. He cannot dissuade him from smoking though he tells him he is risking his life.
So many kings could not eliminate small customs despite their power and magnificence. No matter how much they prohibited something and how severely they punished, they could not prevent it.
If you were a big judge, how many customs would you be able to eliminate in a small community that is extremely stubborn and is deeply attached to their customs? How long would it take?
Yes. A big judge cannot eliminate a small custom and a weak trait from a community that is attached to its beliefs and customs.
Suppose that you see a person who is not a judge, who has no wealth and no compelling force and a community that is very big and that is deeply attached to its beliefs and customs to such extent that these beliefs and customs have become their second character.
If this person who is not a judge and who has no compelling force changes all of the beliefs of such a community, eliminates their bad characters and replace them with high ethics in a very short time, will you doubt that this person is extraordinary?
Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) did exactly this. He eliminated a lot of big customs that had continued for centuries from a nation that was very stubborn and deeply attached to their customs in a very short time by using a small power and making a few efforts; he replaced them with such high ethics that it is impossible to see something similar in history.
We are mentioning such an age when the worst savagery was committed like an ordinary custom; girls were buried alive.
One of those methods in burial used to be carried out by the mother herself: According to the decision made during marriage contract, the woman used to give birth to the child near a trench dug in the desert. If she gave birth to a boy, she would enwrap it in swaddling clothes and take it home; if she gave birth to a girl, she would put her into the trench and fill it with soil; this deed used to be witnessed by the other women of the tribe.
The most common way was to kill the girl when she became seven years old… The father used to give the password for death by saying, “Prepare the girl. I will take her to her uncle.” The girl who was unaware of anything would put on her best clothes and walk toward the desert by holding her father’s hand with the joy of visiting a relative…
When they arrived at the trench of death, the father would bend down as if he was looking for something in the trench, the seven-year old innocent girl would also look into the trench… Then, the screams of the girl who was thrown into the trench in the desert by her father would be heard. Then, the father would fill the trench with soil. It is written in historical records that a Bedouin called Asim bin Qays did this savage deed 12 times.
Some mothers and fathers preferred to live with the shame of their daughter without killing her and their generation continued like that.
Think of it for a while: A mother and a father used to bury their daughter alive. Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) was sent as a prophet at that time, when such savagery and mercilessness were dominant. After a while, this nation became so merciful as to avoid hurting an ant. Each of them virtually became a hero of compassion. Could such a revolution of spirits, hearts and consciences have been applied by a law?
How can one reject the prophethood of the person who had such an unsurpassed achievement? If it is rejected, how can his achievement be explained?
Every word that we utter and every example that we give about the Arab community before Islam will be insufficient. However, we need to give some more examples in order to understand this savagery so that we will understand better the magnificent revolution Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) realized in this community.
The people who were captivated in wars or as a result of assaults were either sold or burnt alive for fun.
There was no concept like individual criminal responsibility. If a criminal could not caught, his relatives were punished instead of him.
Regarding the crimes like choking someone to death, both the criminal and three people from his relatives were killed. These practices naturally triggered blood feuds. Blood feuds were common throughout the nation…
If a person who was about to die vows to kill 50 people instead of him, this vow becamea a necessity for his relatives to fulfill it. And fifty people were killed for one person.
Animals used to be cut alive and their flesh used to be eaten like that. Their blood was shed and drunk like that. They sometimes boiled the blood, added some sweetening herbs and drank after that. We are talking about a nation that drank blood…
Nudity was widespread and it was not regarded as immoral… To relieve oneself in the middle of the road, to have a bath in front of people, not caring about exposing private parts were regarded as normal. Even their worshipping was aberrant. They circumambulated the Kaaba nude saying, “We cannot worship God wearing the clothes in which we commit sins.”
They were addicted to alcohol so much that there were more than 100 words to express alcoholic drinks.
As for gambling, it is definite that gambling will have an exceptional place in such social degeneration. After losing all of their wealth, some people played for themselves and became the slave of the other people when they lost gambling. Some people gambled accepting to be enslaved…
Idolatry was very common… When somebody needed to go out of Makkah, he would take a stone from the Kaaba to show his loyalty to it and left Makkah with it. Afterwards, people started to bring stones to the Kaaba from outside. The Kaaba was full of those stones…
The Arabs used to worship every stone that they liked by saying, “This is our God.” When they found a more beautiful one, they would leave the old one and accept the new one as their God. When they were in the desert without any gods, they would mix milk of the sheep with the desert sand, dry it under the sun and worship it. When they went on a long journey, they would make small statues with flour and sugar, worship them on the way and eat the gods made of flour and sugar when they ran out of food.
When they dropped their carved gods from the camel by mistake, they would be too lazy to pick it and say, “Your god fell off; find yourselves a new god.”
When they had a break on the way, they would find four big stones. They would use three of them to make a furnace and put the best one in the middle; they would circumambulate it as their god.
Every house had a different idol. When the members of the family left home, they would greet the idol as the last thing and when they returned, they would first greet it and showed respect to it. There were also common idols of the tribes. They were usually around the Kaaba in Makkah. There were more than 360 idols.
Their faith forms were also nonsensical… They tied a camel next to the grave of the dead person and kept it there until it starved to death. According to their belief, the dead person would get on that camel on the Day of Judgment.
When there was drought, they tied some bush around the tail of a cow, set it on fire and send it to the mountain; they believed that it would rain when they did so.
Our topic is not the state of Arabs at that age; so, we think these examples are enough to understand the situation at that age to some extent. All history and siyar books show us the situation of that age like that.
Now we ask: The people of that age who were merciless enough to bury their own children alive, wild enough to commit all kinds of immoral deeds and bigoted related to wrong customs underwent such a big change as a result of the instructions and education given to them by Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) that they became guides and teachers for the world and people. Is it possible for a person who was able to do so extraordinary things not to be a prophet of Allah?
It is such an event that it is evidence on its own that he was a prophet; nobody in history was able to do such a revolution. Western scientists and many philosophers agreed on this point and accepted the perfection of Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) and his extraordinary revolution. If this person who did something that nobody managed to do is not a prophet, what is he?
We cannot influence even our own children but he influenced even his enemies and made them obey him. He became the love of their hearts and the teacher of their minds. Apart from eliminating their immoral deeds, he replaced them with high ethics.
We address those who do not see the revolution Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) did in this realm and who do not accept his prophethood.
Choose one hundred philosophers among the greatest ones, go to that age and try to improve the high ethics and spirituality there. Can your philosophers do in this age of civilization and progress even one percent of the changes Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) did in those wild Bedouins in that wild age?
They can never do it because this magnificent revolution Hz. Muhammad (pbuh) did is divine and is one of his greatest miracles.
