(1) He led a life of the
utmost moral purity throughout. Although he was a
handsome and a healthy man, and in the pre-Islamic
Arabian society it was customary for young men to indulge
in sex freely, he lived a life of puritanical chastity.
Even a hostile critic of Islam like the
nineteenth-century author Sir William Muir has remarked
that the Holy Prophet Muhammad's moral conduct was
exemplary and unique in its chastity.
(2) Later in life, after he was
called to prophethood, the Holy Quran threw the following
challenge about him to his enemies:
'(Say), I have lived among
you a lifetime before this. Do you not then use your
reason?' (10:16).
His opponents were thus challenged
to find a single fault in his lifetime spent with them.
Not one of them could say anything against his character
or morals.
(3) After leading an absolutely
clean and spotless life up to the age of 25, he married a
widow of 40, who was twice married before. And he was an
absolutely faithful husband to her for twenty-five years
when she died. She thought so highly of his sterling and
outstanding qualities that when he was called to
prophethood she was the first person to believe in him
and accept him as a prophet of God. The well-known adage
is that 'No man is a hero to his valet.' To that I would
add, 'much less to his wife,' for wives are the worst
critics of their husbands. Here was a wife, older than
the husband by fifteen years, who could find no fault in
him; on the other hand, she was the first to believe in
him as a prophet of God. Could there be a greater
testimony to his character and qualities?
(4) Polygamy was common in Arabia
even before Islam. Had the Holy Prophet also married a
young and beautiful virgin, even after marrying a widow,
as a man given to sex would have, his first wife would
have understood completely and been a willing partner to
the decision. But not the Holy Prophet, who denied
himself as no other person could have.
(5) It is not that the Holy Prophet
was not offered the temptation. When his opponents, who
were not only overwhelming in numbers, but were also in
authority in Makkah, could not budge him from his mission
by persecution and harassment, they tried all possible
temptations. 'If you want to be our king, we will accept
you as such,' they offered. 'If you want wealth, we will
heap piles of gold and silver before you. If you want a
beautiful woman or women, name them and we will provide
them for you,' they said. The Holy Prophet's reply is
well-known in history: 'Even if you bring down the sun to
place it in my right hand, and the moon in my left hand,
I will not give up the mission entrusted to me.' Could
this be the reply of any person given to the call of
flesh or of this world at all?
(6) If the Holy Prophet did not for
any reason take a second wife while his first wife was
alive, although polygamy was the fashion in the society
of his time, what was there to prevent him from marrying
a more attractive wife after his first wife had died? Yet
he never gave a thought to marriage, although he had two
young daughters to look after, in addition to the onerous
calls of prophethood. After three more years of
self-denial, when he was advised to marry again, he chose
another widow who was seventy years of age and far from
attractive! It should be obvious to any fair-minded
person that sex did not enter into his mind. It was
compassion and sympathy for those in distress, so
overwhelming in his nature even otherwise, that made him
select old and helpless widows as his sole wives - one at
a time - until he was fifty-five years old. In the hot
and enervating climate of the tropics one is well past
the prime of life by that age. To suspect a man who thus
sacrificed the best years of his manhood to provide
protection for old widows, one after the other, without a
thought for his natural desires, of indulging in sex, is
the height of injustice and enmity, for what else can it
be?
(7) He took more than one wife from
2 A.H. to 7 A.H. (623-628 CE). The reasons for that were
again entirely unselfish. Firstly, these were the years
of the wars imposed upon him and his followers by their
enemy (the disbelievers, out to destroy him, his
followers, and above all the religion of Islam). Hundreds
of his followers fell as martyrs. Because they died for
him, he felt an obligation to take care of their widows.
Therefore he and his surviving followers married
them.
(8) Four of his marriages during
this period were due to reasons of state (of which he was
now becoming the head - much against his wishes) and high
policy. The wives he thus married were Safiyya (daughter
of the Jewish chief of Khaibar after it fell to the
Muslims -- to placate and win over the Jews after their
defeat), Juwairiya (daughter of the chieftain of the huge
tribe of Banu Mustaliq - after the tribe's revolt and
defeat, again to placate the fallen foe), and Mary the
Copt, who was bestowed upon the Holy Prophet by Maququs,
the King of Egypt, as a gesture of goodwill and
friendship. As a great deal of misunderstanding exists
about this lady's case, a detailed discussion is
summarized below.
(9) Mary the Copt
It is commonly, but quite wrongly,
assumed about this lady that the Holy Prophet took her
into his household without marrying her, as she was (i) a
bestowed slave girl, and (ii) not a Muslim. What an awful
assumption! The facts, on the contrary, are
that:
(a) She was not a slave,
but a lady from a noble family, sent as a present by
King Maququs of Egypt as a token of his regard and
esteem for the Holy Prophet. Maulana Shibli, in his
famous Sirat-un-Nabi ('Life of the Holy
Prophet'), has quoted on pages 305-306 of the first
volume the letter which King Maququs of Egypt wrote to
the Holy Prophet in reply to the latter's invitation
to him to accept Islam. In that letter, the King,
after saying that he was expecting such a prophet to
appear, etc., goes on to say:
'I have given due
honour to your emissary, and I send you as a gift
two girls who are held in high esteem and honour
among the Copts (residents of Egypt).
Maulana Shibli goes on to say in
his footnote that the expression 'they are held in
great honour and esteem,' used for Mary the Copt and
her sister (sent to keep her company in the new
country) could never have been used for slave girls,
but only for women from a noble family. Mary's sister
was given by the Holy Prophet to one of his Companions
in marriage.
(b) The assumption that
liberties could have been taken with Mary because she
was Christian is also wrong from all points of view.
It is true that Mary was a Christian when she left
Egypt. But during the long journey by camel to Arabia,
the two sisters were much impressed by the religious
observances (such as prayers five times a day, even
Tahajjud prayers, and recitation of the Holy
Quran} of the Holy Prophet's emissary and his
companions, and their model behaviour. And the two
ladies became Muslims before reaching
Madinah.
On grounds (a) and (b) above,
Maulana Shibli concludes that Mary the Copt could not but
have been married by the Holy Prophet. But let us proceed
with other evidence on the point.
(c) There is a clear
hadith on the point that the Holy Prophet did
not on his death leave behind any slave - male or
female (Bukhari, 55: 1). Now Mary survived the
Holy Prophet for years. Had she been a female slave
she would have been mentioned as such.
(d) There is further evidence
that, on the Holy Prophet's death, the Caliphs fixed a
maintenance allowance for his wives. The allowance
given to Mary was the same as to other wives. This
would not have been so, had she not been a married
wife, but only a female slave.
(e) She took the veil like other
wives of the Holy Prophet and of other Muslims, unlike
slave girls, who did not take it when going
out.
(f) When she died in the time of
the second Caliph Hazrat Umar, he called the Muslims
and himself led the funeral prayers, an honour shown
only to the wives of the Holy Prophet
(Al-Zarqani, Vol. 3, p. 272, Egyptian
edition).
(g) Some people argue that there
is no evidence of the nikah (marriage) ceremony
of the Holy Prophet with Mary. So what? Reports of the
nikah ceremony do not exist for all the wives,
and yet they are treated as wives and not 'those whom
your right hands possess.' I will show later that
there is such evidence.
(h) In any case, no Muslim can
dare to believe that the Holy Prophet himself could
possibly have violated the injunctions of the Holy
Quran, quoted already, that no sexual relationship can
be had between man and woman except by regular
marriage (4:25). The Holy Quran testifies that the
Holy Prophet was the first to act on Divine Commands,
and that is as it should have been. That is why Hazrat
Ayesha, wife of the Holy Prophet, called him 'the
personification of the Holy Quran.'
(j) Some people say that in
verse 33:50 of the Holy Quran, talking about the wives
of the Holy Prophet being taken under Divine
dispensation, mention has been made of those 'whom
your right hands possess.' As already shown, some of
the wives of the Holy Prophet had come as prisoners of
war, and were freed and married (such as Hazrats
Safiyya, Juwairiyya and Maimuna), and the quoted
expression refers to them for the reason already given
in the last chapter under the subtitle "Concubinage".
But the word fay, also used in that verse, has
been taken advantage of to argue that it implies, not
a prisoner of war, but a woman received as a gift. As
will be shown in the next paragraph, she was married
by the Holy Prophet as a regular wife and not kept as
a slave girl. So the argument is baseless.
(k) And now for the clear and
conclusive evidence of the following
hadith:
'Hazrat Abdullah
Al-Zubeiri reports: The Holy Prophet (peace and
blessings of Allah be upon him) then took in
marriage Mary, daughter of Shamun (after
nikah). It is the same Mary who was bestowed
upon him by Maququs the Ruler of Egypt' (Sahih
Al-Mustadrak Hakim, Book 4, 'Information about
the Companions of the Holy Prophet: Mary the Copt,'
page 38).
The doubts and unwarranted
assumptions about this case should now be laid to rest
forever. May Allah forgive those who have held them so
far. I have discussed this case in detail as it was a
great slur on the Holy Prophet to hold the view that he
had, Allah forbid, violated the clear Divine Command in
4:25 (Holy Quran), and even many Muslims were involved in
such thinking through ignorance.
(l) Incidentally, the
following historians, in addition to Maulana Shibli,
already quoted, support the view that the Holy Prophet
had married Mary the Copt, like his other
wives:
i. Hitti's History
of the Arabs
ii. Ameer Ali's The Spirit
of Islam
iii. Haykal's The Life of
Muhammad
iv. Bahjuzi's Muhammad and
the Cause of Islam
v. Namoos-e-Rasool by
Hafiz Muhammad Sarwar of England.
(10) Another marriage forced upon
him by circumstances was with his cousin, Zainab. The
Holy Prophet, who was the greatest champion and
emancipator of slaves, had freed his slave named Zaid. He
later proposed marriage between Zaid and Zainab. This was
distasteful to Zainab and her family. But out of respect
for the wishes of the Holy Prophet, who pressed for the
match to show that he regarded slaves (emancipated or
otherwise) as equal to free men, Zainab and her family
reluctantly gave in. But the marriage failed and Zaid
divorced Zainab, in spite of the Holy Prophet's
persistent advice to him not to do so. Zainab's plight
was now hopeless and tragic. There was a shortage of men
to marry even otherwise. But Zainab was now further
handicapped by the double stigma of divorce and of having
been married to a slave, even though freed. The then
Arabs would possibly take widows as their additional
wives, but not a divorcee, as it was assumed (however
wrongly) that there must have been something seriously
wrong with her to be divorced. And as marriage to a slave
(even a free one) was considered a serious blot on the
woman concerned, nobody would think of marrying her if
she was divorced -a double stigma. So there was no hope
for Zainab. And as the Holy Prophet felt himself to be
responsible for the tragedy that befell her, he felt a
moral responsibility to marry her, which he
did.
That explains four of his ten
marriages. The rest were also to widows and divorcees,
barring Hazrat Ayesha, who was the only virgin to become
his wife. That she was chosen by God, under Whose orders
the Holy Prophet came completely after being called to
prophethood (as is clear from the Holy Quran), to play a
historic role in the Prophet's mission to humanity, will
be shown later.
(11) None of the Holy Prophet's
wives, except Hazrat Ayesha, was good-looking or
attractive, as indicated in the books of Hadith,
and admitted by the famous British historian Bosworth
Smith. So that sex or self-indulgence did not come into
these alliances at all.
(12) Then why did the Holy Prophet,
who had attained to fifty-five out of his sixty-three
years with only one wife at a time, and that, too, a
widow, take so many wives at the fag-end of his life?
Wars and the resulting widows are one reason. Divine
dispensation is another, for the Holy Prophet came under
Divine orders after being called to prophethood, as is
clear from the Holy Quran (33:50). But why did Divine
dispensation put such a heavy burden on the Holy Prophet
in his old age? The reasons are extremely important, as
will be shown below.
(13) The years when the Holy
Prophet had to marry so many wives, 2 A.H. to 7 A.H.,
were not only the years of wars and multiplying widows,
they were also the years when the Shari'ah
(Islamic law) was given to the Holy Prophet, and
through him to the Muslim community. A special and
startling feature of these laws was the emancipation of
women, who were not only declared to be equal to men as
human beings, but were given rights which they never
possessed before, even in a small measure - rights which
are not enjoyed even today by women in the so-called
advanced countries of the West, 'women's lib'
notwithstanding. These included grant of the right to
inherit and hold property to women, who were themselves
previously considered to be the property of men. Now the
women could inherit, and hold independently of the men,
their properties which they (the women) were to inherit
in their various capacities in life - as daughters, as
sisters, as wives, as mothers, and so on. There were
other unheard-of rights now granted to women. The Muslims
(men) bowed to the will of God and His Prophet, but to
say that there was no struggle for rights would be to
misunderstand the position. The new rights included the
right of the women to divorce their husbands or to
remarry after divorce or after the death of their
husbands. A reference to the Holy Quran will show that
the only bar which the women had to overcome was
iddat (compulsory waiting period) in case the
widow or the divorced or divorcing woman was later found
to be pregnant by her husband -in which case certain
obligations fell on the husband or a dead husband's
family. You can take it that the unhappy men and their
family who had never heard of such rights to women before
fought every inch of the ground, shaken, and slipping
away from under their feet as the erstwhile lords and
masters of their womenfolk. So the Muslim women had to
approach their champion, the Holy Prophet, who was
luckily among them, and whose word, when given, was law
to the Muslim men. As the compulsory period of waiting
(iddat) is based on the woman's menstruation, to
decide whether she has conceived or not, this, and the
linked matters, were not such that women could discuss
them freely with, or even mention them before, the Holy
Prophet. It was more discreet and respectable for these
women to discuss such affairs with the Holy Prophet's
wives as a link between them and him.
The number of women who came to the
Holy Prophet's household to claim their rights or seek
elucidation about their rights was quite large. Besides,
even generally, the Divine commandments were terse and
fundamental, and required a lot of elucidation and
explanation of details by the Holy Prophet. So resort and
recourse to him by men and women was often and
time-consuming. The women, even then, were given to long
talking and unnecessary details. And the Holy Prophet was
overburdened with other duties. So the intervention of
his wives, who acted as the link between him and the
women clamouring for, or claiming, their rights, was
absolutely essential. That the wives were groomed for
this purpose will be clear from the next
point.
(14) The Holy Prophet was declared
by God to be the last Prophet; to be an exemplar to the
whole of mankind for all time to come, i.e. till
Doomsday; to be the spiritual father of mankind as a
whole (Holy Quran 33:40 and 21). It was therefore
necessary to preserve for all time to come, for the
benefit of all nations of the world, all that he said or
did. This was a task which no one, not even a few
persons, could perform. It required hundreds, in fact
thousands, of his followers to do. And they did it so
well that everything he said in explanation of the Holy
Quran, or to give details of its commandments (which by
itself was a monumental task), and all he did to
illustrate and exemplify the teachings of the Holy Quran,
or the thousands of prophecies (or the immense knowledge
of the future or the unseen) that he uttered, is all
preserved. So that he is truly the only historical
prophet, whose life is as much before us today as it was
before his followers 1400 years ago.
In performing this Herculean task,
his wives played as important a role as his followers
from outside. If his life and sayings outside the home
required hundreds, nay thousands of men followers to
preserve, his life and sayings inside the home could not
possibly have been preserved by one woman. So that if
between the years 2 to 10 A.H., when the Shari'ah
(Muslim law) was being given, he eventually had ten
wives, that was not too large a number to preserve the
details of his sayings, explanations and amplifications
of the fundamental commandments given in the Holy Quran,
his examples set on different occasions at home, and his
amplifications of the laws or commandments, given in
reply to questioners, including women. Because it was
necessary for at least ten wives to preserve all the
details of his life (nearly half of it inside the home -
taking into account the nights, the greater part of which
he spent in praying), he was required to keep on all his
ten wives (Holy Quran 33:50), even when the ceiling of
four for polygamy was imposed by the Holy Quran. And it
was for this noble mission of preserving his life-story
in full that one or two wives had to accompany him even
on the arduous journeys by camel when he was compelled to
go on his campaigns. In the battles which followed they
served as nurses for the wounded or water-carriers for
the thirsty.
(15) That the size of the Holy
Prophet's household was by Divine dispensation, for the
important role the wives were to play, is clear from the
Holy Quran, for instance:
'O wives of the Prophet,
you are not like any other women. And remember that
which is recited in your houses of the messages of
Allah and the wisdom (of the Prophet). Surely Allah is
ever Knower of subtleties, Aware' (33:32-34).
The wives of the Holy Prophet, who
were thus made the spiritual mothers of the believers as
much as the Holy Prophet was made their spiritual father,
were required to:
(a) Remember that which
was recited in their houses of the messages of
Allah.
(b) Remember the wisdom and
knowledge of religion imparted to them by the Holy
Prophet; and
(c) Be an exemplar to women as
much as the Holy Prophet was an exemplar to men, in
the field particularly of simplicity and frugality in
matters of dress, ornaments, and the good things of
life.
When these were earlier demanded by
the wives, since they were lawful and were being enjoyed
by other women, the Holy Prophet demurred, and he was
later confirmed by Divine revelation, which came down to
say:
'O Prophet, tell thy
wives, If you desire the world's life and its
adornment, come, I will give you a provision and allow
you to depart a goodly departing. And if you desire
Allah and His Messenger, then surely Allah has
prepared for the doers of good among you a mighty
reward' (33:28-29).
The Holy Prophet's wives, one and
all, chose Allah and His Messenger and gave up the good
things of life.
This act of Divine Wisdom was
to:
(a) Forestall any
objection later, as in fact was raised by Western
orientalists, that the Holy Prophet was motivated by
the desire for the good things of life in his
campaigns (which were, in fact, for self-defence, but
were misconstrued by Christian critics to be for
plunder and booty). Hence the Holy Prophet's extremely
poor and abstemious life, as well as that of his
wives, is a complete answer to the mischievous
allegations later of the Christian writers that he was
motivated by desire for loot, plunder and booty in the
wars (which were, in fact, forced upon him).
(b) Forestall the objection of
women, who are by nature fond of clothes, ornaments
and the good things of life, that it was possible for
a man (in this case the Holy Prophet) to be simple and
frugal because a man has not got the women's natural
attraction for clothes, ornaments, etc. Here, the
wives of the Holy Prophet, not one but ten, set for
womankind for all time to come an example of
simplicity and abstemiousness, so that women should
not make the life of their husbands miserable by
making excessive demands on them for clothes,
ornaments and the good things of life, which
frequently force men to commit unlawful acts for
obtaining money.
(16) The wives of the Holy Prophet
discharged their responsibilities to perfection. Not only
did they preserve for the whole of mankind for all time
to come the sayings and example of the Holy Prophet in
all walks of life, but they really became the spiritual
mothers of the believers who flocked to them after the
Holy Prophet's death in thousands to learn religion. It
is estimated that nearly one third of the religion has
come down to us through Hazrat Ayesha, who, being young
(seventeen years old) when married to the Holy Prophet,
survived him for nearly fifty long years to teach
religion to men and women alike. Even the greatest
Companions of the Holy Prophet would later come to her to
seek understanding of some of the verses of the Holy
Quran or to seek knowledge about the Holy Prophet's
example in a particular matter.
The same role was played by the
other widows of the Holy Prophet. After 40 A.H., when the
seat of the Muslim empire was shifted from Madinah to
Damascus by Hazrat Muawiyyah, two of the Holy Prophet's
widows gave up their life-long home in Madinah and the
spiritual consolation they derived from being near to the
Holy Prophet's grave, to travel to distant Damascus and
to take up residence there to teach religion to the
Muslims - men and women - who flocked to the new capital
in thousands from the far corners of the Muslim empire,
which then spread from China to the Atlantic. These two
estimable widows of the Holy Prophet died, and are now
buried, in Damascus. I, with all my sinfulness and
unworthiness, have had the honour of visiting their
graves in the company of my wife, and of saying my humble
prayer for the souls of these two great benefactors of
mankind.
