In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful'If you do not help the Prophet, it does not matter: Allah did help him when the unbelievers drove him out of his town, the second of the two, while the two were in the cave and (the enemy came to the opening of the cave) he said to his companion (Abu Bakr, later the first of the rightly-guided caliphs), 'Do not worry, Allah is with us.' So Allah sent down his serenity on him and strengthened him with forces, which you cannot see, thus, He made the word of the unbelievers lowest, while words of Allah remain supreme. Allah is All- Mighty, All-Wise.' (Q9: 40)A THOUSAND, four hundred and thirty three years ago, history stood as witness to the emigration of 70 men and women from Mecca to Medina. In the morning of September 24, 622 CE, Prophet Muhammad (upon him be peace and blessing of Allah), accompanied by his bosom friend, confidant and follower, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, having slipped away under the cover of the night, having taken un-trodden paths and having escaped the inhumanity of the aristocratic powers of Makkah (his homeland) eventually arrived the safe and secure earth-land of Madina.This event is usually celebrated all over the Muslim world the same way it was celebrated by the second Caliph in Islamic history, Umar b. Khatab. It was the latter who began to date the undated in Muslim reality; it was B. Khattab who first started the usage of the date of emigration of the Muslims from Makkah to Madina in the affairs of the Islamic state. The successful arrival of the Prophet of Islam from Makkah to Madina after 13 years of persecution in the hands of the Makkan unbelievers known as Hijra has since then been commemorated on a yearly basis by the Muslim world.A question, however, becomes pertinent: since the Hijra was an event in history, a door which was opened by the migration of the Prophet from Makkah and 'closed' by his arrival to Madina, of what value is its commemoration by the Muslims' Why do we have to talk about and reengage the Hijra'The Muslim world usually celebrates the Hijra partly in its attempt to ensure the dated becomes undated in Islamic history. We mark the Hijra in order to prevent the event from being conclusive or teleological. We re-read the Hijra as a community and we endeavour to derive meaning and meaning of meaning of the event based on our conviction that such an important event should not be viewed in the past perfect but in the past present. We do this based on the realisation of the fact that we are destined and confined into that space in a world history where if we fail to read and reread the event, we might actually have failed in reading our lives through the prism of the Qur'an. An unexamined life, our teachers would counsel, is not worth living.Where and how then do we begin our inquiry into the Hijra of the prophetic era' How do we begin to read for the meaning of the meaning of the Hijra in contemporary Muslim existential reality' The starting point for this kind of exercise should probably be through the exploration of the Qur'an in the era that precedes the Hijra. We have to grapple with history as it unfolded in space, in the rigid geographical terrain of Makkah in order to make sense of and derive the meaning of meaning of Hijra in our world today. We might also have to put the Hijra in an historical-theological perspective. Let us endeavour to begin with the latter.In the world's written and unwritten histories, there have been emigrations and emigrations. For example, the touchstone of Prophet Musa (upon him be peace) was in emigration with the Jewish nation for 40 years in the geography of the unknown and one in which Divine anger orbited over the horizon of the Jews like gravity. Prophet Isa's prophetic enterprise, (upon him be peace), was his constant emigration from the recalcitrance and obduracy of the Jewish race to which he had been sent as a national prophet. Prophet Ibrahim (upon him be peace) was sui generis in this trajectory. He was an emigrant (muhajir) without a companion; he was an emigrant without a helper (nasir). He believed in Allah at a time humanity had reached a consensus to apostatize and impugn the Divine.At the onset of the modern period, the French warrior, Napoleon Bonaparte, could equally be cited as an 'emigrant'. In company of his soldiers, he, in 1798, emigrated from Paris and eventually landed in Cairo. His arrival at Cairo marked the beginning of an era in which Africans were forced to discard the robe of the enslaved so that they might be colonized. The 'hijra' of the modern period in which Europeans left the metropolis for the continents of Asia and Africa was that of individuals and corporate agencies that believed in the primordial supremacy of the 'white' race over the 'inferior' or the black and coloured races of the world.The Hijra of the Prophet Muhammad (upon him be peace) from Makkah to Madina in 622, however, has none of the above mentioned trajectories. It was based neither on racial superiority nor the realisation of pecuniary gains. But in order for us to plumb its inner portals, our entry-point should ordinarily be the Qur'an. The tutored in Islamic history is aware of the fact that for events in Muslim realities in the past to enjoy credence, in order for events, which the persona, the charisma and the vocation of the prophet catalysed to be valid, it must be told by the Qur'an itself; such events must enjoy Qur'anic certification. But in reading the Qur'an for the Hijra we run into a brick-wall. This is because the Qur'an does not effusively celebrate the Hijra.No chapter is named after it; no complete narration in the Qur'an is dedicated to it. This is despite the fact that the event of the Hijra was full of highly enchanting scenarios the like of which Ibn Hisham and other biographers of the prophet would tell with relish. To do that would probably have run contrary to the Qur'anic style: a style which gives precedence to brevity where detailed narration is expected; a style which employs stories not as an end in itself but as a means toward a glorious end; a style which concerns itself with the prophet but might even treat the prophet as a second person.Thus the story of the saga of the Hijra is told only in two verses of the Qur'an. The first reads, partly, thus: 'And we have put a barrier before them and a barrier behind them and we have covered them up such that they cannot see' (Q36:8). The second verse goes thus: 'when the unbelievers drove him out with his closest associate and he and his second were in the cave, he assured him (his second): grief not because Allah is with us and Allah caused his peace to descend into his heart and aided him with warriors unseen thus did he utterly humble the scheming of the unbelievers'' (Q9: 40).There is a chapter in the Quran titled The Cave (Qur'an 18) but it does not celebrate the cavernous as it appertains to the odyssey of the prophet of Islam and his companion inside the cave that day. There is another chapter named after the Spider, but alas! Not the Spider which hung its web at the entrance of the cave in which the prophet and Abu Bakr Siddiq hid such that the unbelievers who were hitherto in their pursuit felt discouraged from exploring its hidden 'treasures'. As far as the Qur'an is concerned it is not the events that make up the story of life that matter but what the story implies for humanity.To be continued next week.(guardianfridayworship@gmail.com)
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