Sublime

However, these women, celebrated as they are, were no match for the indisputable authority of early Companions like Umar, the young, brash member of the Quraysh élite who would eventually take over the leadership of the Muslim community after Muhammad’s death. The Prophet had always admired Umar, not just for his physical prowess as a warrior, but

As was the case with all tribal Shaykhs, Muhammad’s primary function as head of the Ummah was to ensure the protection of every member in his community. This he did through the chief means at his disposal: the Law of Retribution. But while retribution was maintained as a legitimate response to injury, Muhammad urged believers toward forgiveness: “T

In response to the various charges, Zafar offered only a single, short but strikingly coherent written defence in Urdu, denying that he had any connection with the Uprising and maintaining that he had all along been the helpless prisoner of the sepoys. “I had no intelligence on the subject previous to the day of the outbreak,” read Zafar’s statemen

Umar’s misogynist tendencies were apparent from the moment he ascended to the leadership of the Muslim community. He tried (unsuccessfully) to confine women to their homes and wanted to prevent them from attending worship at the mosque.

Poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and social activist Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) would come to be known as the…

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In Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (1941–89), professor of Islamic philosophy at King Abdulaziz University, used his influence among the country’s disaffected youth to promote an uncompromisingly belligerent interpretation of jihad that, he argued, was incumbent on all Muslims. “Jihad and the rifle alone,” Dr. Azzam proclaimed to his students. “

apolitical sentiments did not spare him the ire of the government. In 1949, at the behest of Egypt’s khedive and undoubtedly with the encouragement of the colonialist leadership, al-Banna was assassinated. But while this act may have silenced the leader of the Muslim Brothers, it strengthened the Society itself, so that by the 1950s, it had become…

In 628, Muhammad unexpectedly announced that he was going to Mecca to perform the pilgrimage rites at the Ka‘ba. Considering that he was in the middle of a bloody and protracted war with the Meccans, this was an absurd decision.

Ali’s conversion was promptly followed by the conversion of Muhammad’s slave, Zayd, whom he naturally freed. Soon afterward, Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s dear friend and a wealthy Qurayshi merchant, became a follower. A deeply loyal and fervently pious man, Abu Bakr’s first act after accepting Muhammad’s message was to spend his wealth buying and freeing t