Of my seven siblings, my brother Hussein was always closest to me, not only in terms of age (I am the youngest, he was the second youngest), but also in our love for reading and writing, and our intellectual pursuits in general. From a very young age, Hussein was driven by a thirst for knowledge and a desire to accumulate as much of it as possible. He was highly intelligent, and possessed a brilliant memory. From the time when he first started writing, his style was beautiful and fluent, becoming more forceful and eloquent as he got older.

At the age of eight, Hussein embarked on writing a book on Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, whom he considered to be his role model at the time. His intention, he said, was to turn it into a three-volume masterpiece, only to find that his material had run out after the first thirty pages! This failed first attempt was followed by two historical novellas written at the age of ten, and a story, of which I still have a copy, titled The Joy of Old Age, written at the age of twelve, that I still find a delight to read. However, he was most proud of a novel he wrote soon after, titled The Punishment. My father, Ahmad Amin, wanted to encourage him to continue in his footsteps, and so he arranged for the Authorship, Translation and Publication Committee Press to print 200 copies of the book at his expense.

Hussein had a highly developed sense for beauty in literature, and would tirelessly roam the bookshops of Cairo and beyond for the next book on his reading list, and follow the news of the latest publications of authors he admired or believed to be significant.

His interests did not go unnoticed by our father, and so he asked the publisher of his books (the owner of the Al-Nahda Al-Misriyya bookshop in downtown Cairo) to allow Hussein to buy any books he wanted from the bookshop at a discount, to be deducted from my father's royalty payments. He only protested when he found that Hussein had purchased several volumes of Andre Gide's journals, a writer who my father believed to be immoral.

There is no greater indication of the impact of the Islamic Daʿwah in the hearts of the Prophet's contemporaries, and the radical changes his message brought about in concepts and values, political, social and otherwise, than the fact that even those who apostated from Islam shortly before his death and after, and refused to recognise the Medinan caliph's authority over the entire Arabian Peninsula, still saw it as necessary to give a religious tinge to their Daʿwah. Their leaders ascribed prophethood to themselves, and portrayed their insurgencies or revolutions as divinely inspired by God, even if the motives for these revolutions are known to have been purely political, social or economic.

In its original form, Islam did not distinguish between civilian and religious authorities, or between civil and religious legislation. Religious community and state were one, the latter only existing to serve the former. The Prophet had been at the helm of both, and was followed by his successor, then his successor's successor and so forth.

The foundational principle of succession (khilāfa) was to protect the Sharīʿa. The purpose of the Sharīʿa was to regulate all aspects of human life, those that related to the community and communal life, as well as those that related to individuals in their private life. The relationship between the imam and his subjects was a religious relationship, which bears no resemblance to the political or social relationships as we know them today.

One of the most prominent features of Islamic history was the fact that all revolutionary movements that started in Dār al-Islām (Abode of Islam, i.e., Muslim lands) due to social considerations, and thus became politicised, were, from the time of their inception, closely tied to some religious thought. For the followers of such movements, it would have been inconceivable to protest against the ruling power from non-religious motives, or to do so other than against a ruling power that God was not pleased with, to return the nation to the path of the true faith.

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (in Tārīkh Baghdad) and Tāj al-Dīn Al-Subkī (in Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubra) list countless examples of the reverence enjoyed by religious scholars in the Middle Ages. The latter writes that when a religious scholar visited Khorasan once, the entire population, including women and children, came out to touch his robes and collect the dust off his shoes to use it as medicine to heal themselves. Merchants brought out their goods of sweets, fruit, garments and furs, scattering them above people's heads. The Sufiwomen of that town threw their rosaries at him, hoping these would touch him and that they would therefore receive his barakāt (blessings).

Ibn al-Jawzī describes the crowd attending Aḥad Ibn Ḥanbal's funeral, saying:

A thousand thousand [i.e., a million] people gathered, the likes of which had never been seen before, neither in Jahiliyya nor in Islam. They estimated that about sixty thousand women gathered next to the wall. Some people spent the night by the tomb. There was no household untouched by grief, except the houses of evil. The day he died, twenty thousand Jews, Christians and Magi converted to Islam.

Centuries later, Ahmad Amin wrote in his autobiography Ḥayātī (My Life) that when he sought marriage:

The writing of history and biographies has a history of its own. This is not only due to the evolution of methodologies and research methods, but also due to the predominance of particular theories, and the writers’ reflection of the spirit of their age and of certain prevalent intellectual “fashions” or trends. The impact of such trends on historical and biographical writings (interesting and revealing though it may be) would have been enough to belittle both genres and call their value into question were it not for the ignorance of the majority, or their deliberate choice to ignore such effects, as well as the philosophical acceptance on the part of the minority of the inevitable subjectivity that characterises both these branches of knowledge.

It is noticeable that the greater the amount and diversity of information available on a certain historical era, event or prominent historical figure, the more likely it is for the writing about them to be subjective and for a variety of theories to be formulated about them. The historian or biographer then has a bigger pool of data to choose from, to pick the events that agree with his inclinations or that confirm his opinion. In his book What is History?, E. H. Carr likened the position of the historian with regard to the information available to him to that of a fisherman setting out to catch a certain kind of fish, choosing certain tools and utensils and steering his boat to the place where this type of fish is known to be plentiful. He then forays into the sea until he reaches the distance that he deems appropriate. Some of the fish that come out in his net or attach to his fishing rod may be of the type he does not want, so he returns them to the sea, keeping only those he set out to catch!

The Early Muslim Historians’ Concept of History

Some have criticised the early Muslim historians who wrote the history of the Islamic world after the death of the Prophet for simply listing the events without commentary, and for producing a mere record without any preconceived perspective.

With the Prophet's death, divine communication ceased. The people – among them ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb – imagined that he would remain in his ummah to manage its affairs and be the last man standing, and then bear witness to this ummah on the Day of Resurrection. When, after Abu Bakr's sermon, they ascertained the news of his death, they became – in the words of ʿAʾisha – “like sheep on a rainy winter night at the loss of their Prophet”.

The Muslims were at once deprived of both heavenly guidance and the presence of the Prophet. However, they still had God's book, which His messenger was given. The Qur’an alone was enough to govern and regulate the conditions of the first Muslim community and its religious, social and political affairs. However, it was not long after the Prophet's death that the Arabs expanded from their desert like a giant genie released from its bottle. Within a century, they controlled territories from the Oxus River in Central Asia to the far north of Africa on the Atlantic Ocean, governing various nations with customs, morals and values, environments and civilisations very different from those of the people in the Arabian Peninsula. They founded new cities and inhabited existing cities already densely populated with their original indigenous inhabitants. All this resulted in a need for more complex and detailed laws than those that were sufficient for the simple desert community in Mecca and Medina. The rules governing the simple life of the first Muslims no longer met the needs of their grandsons, who were now living in new environments, mixing with followers of religions radically different from their own, and facing conditions that the Qur’an did not talk about, or addressed only in general terms, without elaborating on the details.

The Sunna as the Second Source of Law

Faced with this massive geographic expansion, the pressures of the new, historic and ever-changing conditions, as well as the changing times and places, the Muslims and their jurists sought guidance on how to deal with all these new circumstances.

Religion is a combination of a sacred text and the text's interpretation. The former is from God and is therefore constant and unchanging, while the latter is man-made and variable, depending on individuals, societies and eras. Since the sacred text is irreplaceable, humans often find ways of circumventing it by interpreting it to their liking, to fit their whims and inclinations.

Some ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, such as Pythagoras and Numa Pompilius, refused to leave behind any texts so as not to shackle the minds of their successors. They burnt their works before they died or recommended that their writings be buried with them. They wanted to enable every generation in the country to produce the thought that befits their time and environment. It may be argued that the Prophet of Islam did not order the collection of the Qur’an either, as evidenced by the fact that Caliph Abū Bakr hesitated when ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb suggested the idea to him, saying: “I cannot attempt to do what the Prophet did not do. He did not recommend the collection of the Qur’an before his death.” Yet the main assumption of religion – any religion – is that the teachings contained in the sacred text are valid for all, for every time and every place.

However, humans were often too weak to commit themselves to the provisions of the sacred text, too cowardly to revolt against them, and too devious to admit their inability or unwillingness. While they always needed religion for the unwavering certainty it provides and for protection from the humiliation of doubt, they saw nothing wrong, in view of their weakness, with providing interpretations that pleased them, and that deluded them that they are the loyal guardians of religion.

European civilisation developed in a mostly seamless and homogeneous manner, without major tremors cutting off one generation from the traditions of those preceding it. While there were three notable exceptions in the continent's political and social history, namely, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution, the fruits of its intellectual and scientific development followed one another calmly and methodically, each complementing the other and building on what was already there.

And so the ox-drawn cart made way for the horse-drawn carriage, and the latter was replaced by the steam engine, followed by the car and then the plane. These appeared at intervals without making sudden breaks with traditions or causing violent tremors that destroyed existing lifestyles. Similarly, philosophical thought evolved gradually, connecting Greek philosophers, the Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Husserl and the Existentialists. Each read the output of his predecessors, added to it, modified it or corrected their mistakes, using the same or similar terminology. Ordinary readers did not struggle or feel any shock as they moved from Plato to Sartre, or from Wittgenstein to St Augustine.

Nevertheless, and despite the fact that all the constitutional, political, social and economic institutions and systems in Europe gradually crystallised out of existing needs and circumstances, over the course of history there were always certain people who were incapable of adapting, or who rejected the new values, because they left them confused or anxious, or powerless to keep up. Some of these people found a solution to their problem either with a priest in the village, or a psychiatrist in the city, or through socialising or by finding among the multitude of political parties available one whose principles agreed with their own. Others, who could not cope with the fast pace of change, resorted to tranquillisers, alcohol, drugs or violence.

From the Camel to the Plane

If this was the case for large numbers in the West, where evolution took place at a relatively calm, naturally sequenced pace, what of Islamic societies, where we can say without much exaggeration that their members were catapulted, almost instantaneously, from riding a camel to riding in cars and planes?

Certain attitudes which are the natural product of Bedouin life imposed themselves on the urban and rural peoples of the countries conquered by the Muslim armies, despite going against the basic attitudes and natures of the agricultural communities or urban populations. This victory of Arab Bedouin ideologies was the result of two key factors:

First: Islam – after the conquests – quickly turned from just being a religion to being a culture and a way of life, a methodology and a basic attitude towards existence, which swept the Islamic state (or states) from Andalusia to the west of China. Contributing to its dissemination was the large number of inter-marriages and the movement of Muslim individuals throughout the Dār al-Islām for Ḥajj, trade or work, to visit, or to learn ḥadīth and the sciences, or to participate in the conquests and invasions. Hence, the Muslim Empire became a melting pot in which all the various elements were mingled and fused together, including the Arab Bedouins and the Bedouins of North Africa.

Second: certain factors prevailed among all Islamic nations; the most important one being the political circumstances, thus reinforcing certain attitudes which were in common with those of the Bedouins, even if the latter were not its direct source.

Take, for example, the tendency to believe in fate and destiny. It is easy to discern the roots and causes of this attitude among the Bedouins. The lives of the Bedouins were completely dependent on water and pasture – rain signified survival and drought annihilation. Yet a Bedouin had no control over either of these things. Moreover, while travelling in the desert with his camels and cattle looking for pastures, he could get lost and go around in circles or be attacked by other tribes seeking to pillage his possessions. In a matter of moments, he would go from being healthy and wealthy to losing all he owned in this world, including food and water-skins, and he would find himself nearing death and starvation.

Al-Mutanabbī writes:

From the above, we can also understand a Bedouin writing verses such as:

Some of the Ṣaḥāba (Companions) – even during the lifetime of the Prophet – were not content to simply observe the religious rituals, obey the provisions of the Qur’an and emulate the Prophet in his actions and his conduct, but wanted to enter into a spiritual relationship with God, which they claimed was closer and allowed them to free their soul from the yoke of the flesh. Hence, they overdid their acts of worship, their seclusion and contemplation. They chose asceticism, refrained from the worldly pleasures, and imposed restrictions on themselves and on their desires, which were never imposed by the religion.

The Prophet resisted and denounced this trend to his Companions. He used to say to those who were preoccupied by prayer and worship during the night, neglected the care for their families and ignored their rights that sexual intercourse with one's wife was a form of charity. To those who saw in marriage a worldly pillar, he said: “If you’re one of the Christian monks, then follow them, but if you are one of us, then marriage is of our Sunna.” And to those who emulated the monks’ way of life, he said: “There is no monasticism in Islam.” There are verses in the Qu’an that confirm this, for example, Q. 7.32: “Say: Who has prohibited the embellishment of Allah which He has brought forth for His servants and the good provisions? …”, Q. 2:172: “Oh, you who believe! eat of the good things that We have provided you with, and give thanks to Allah …”, Q. 2:185: ”… Allah desires ease for you, and He does not desire for you difficulty …”, Q. 20:2: “We have not revealed the Qur’an to you that you may be distressed “, and, finally, Q. 22:78: ”… He has chosen you and has not laid upon you a hardship in religion.”

The Prophet, knowing the extent to which some people were affected by the Christians and the lifestyle of the monks during Jahiliyya, was anxious that they would introduce innovations and force them onto the religion.

May God help me to thank you for writing what you wrote. May He show you the correct path and help you show it to others. May He make you and me able to carry the weight of knowledge and make us from among those who say the truth, live by it, preserve it and seek to deliver it to its people, preferring it above all else and suffering for its sake.

I have known you since we were young. I have studied your morals and your nature. I have assessed you and determined your worth. Your conviviality has increased my desire for your friendship, and the length of our companionship has increased my appreciation for you. Therefore, it is not surprising that I was unhappy when I sensed the anger in your recent letter concerning my articles about religion, or rather, the methodology I have used in these articles. However, I am claiming that your anger is not my fault; and that this claim is not a crime.

I know that you are the type of person who forgives mistakes and seeks to reform the person who has committed them. I also know that when you see something that is right, you comprehend it, promote and nurture it. I have heard you repeatedly quoting one of al-Shāfiʿī's sayings, may God be pleased with him, “I have never debated with anyone wishing him to be wrong. I have never spoken to anyone caring about whether God chooses to show the truth through his tongue or mine.” Therefore, I ask you to permit me to pen some lines as a reply and defence, and to explain to you a truth which I have learned through experience and trials, not by merely studying and looking into books.

I would like you to know that my defence is not the result of pride and a reluctance to acknowledge an error made. I may make mistakes while writing, just like a father might make a mistake while bringing up his son. I am not like the debaters of our time, whose faces turn red with rage when they are refuted and when the truth comes from their opponents rather than them.

Muslims always regarded the victories of the armies of Islam – even during the Prophet's life – as one of the strongest proofs of the truth of Prophet Muḥammad's message. Their remarkable political success bolstered their confidence, and filled them with a sense of superiority over followers of other faiths. There was a long and violent confrontation, lasting nearly a thousand years, between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Generally speaking, we can say that Islam emerged victorious, for even if Spain and other territories were lost by the Muslims during that confrontation, vast areas and entire countries were seized from the Christians by the Ottoman armies, who stood threatening at the gates of Vienna in the late seventeenth century.

This ebb was followed by a tide, the effects of which we still suffer from to this very day. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were brutally cruel to Islam and Muslims. The Muslim world was subjected to many attacks by European Christians and most nations fell into the clutches of Western colonialisation. These endless defeats at the hands of their religious opponents upset the Muslims: ”… and the people of Bulaq1 returned to the city weeping and wailing, bashing their faces and saying: ‘woe on us, we have become slaves after falling into the hands of the Franks!’” Their self-confidence was shaken, even though for some time they kept their dignity in the face of the colonisers, finding support in their conviction that they are the people of the true religion, and that the coloniser is, in their view, a despicable infidel worthy of contempt.

Al-Jabartī, who condemned the French for their disbelief, their propensity to drink wine, and their uncovered and immodest women, could no longer openly refer to the Franks as cattle as Prince Usama b. Munqidh did during the Crusades.

Reading Qur’an Chapter 111 (“Al-Massad”) raised a number of questions in my mind about the time and place the chapter was revealed, the use of certain tenses in the verses, the use of the kunya (epithet) instead of his given name, the meaning of certain phrases used in the verses, and, finally, why Abū Lahab in particular? This chapter attempts to answer these questions.

Meccan or Medinan? Past or Present Tense?

According to all, or most, of the Muslim exegetes and commentators, the sūra (Qur’anic chapter) was one of the first Meccan chapters revealed. It is claimed that when Q. 26.2141 was revealed, the Prophet ascended al-Ṣafā hill and shouted out until the people gathered around him, and then told them that he is a nadhīr (harbinger), foretelling them of severe suffering. Abū Lahab is said to have replied: “Damn you! Is this why you brought us together?,” and left, calling upon the others not to gather around the Prophet. If it is true that Chapter 111 was revealed shortly after this episode, then what is the reason for using the past tense in this verse (Q. 111:1) and the one following it (Q. 111:2), when at that time Abū Lahab – as is evident – was still alive and enjoying his riches?

The answer is easy with respect to the first verse. It is common practice among the Arabs to use the past tense in cases where the verb refers to the present or the future. Examples of this can be found in Q. 16.1: “Allah's commandment has come”, meaning “it will come in the future”, and in Q. 3.110: “You were the best of the nations”, meaning “you are in the present”.