61
" If the two men had not been close, Muhammad would never have asked what he did. He’d never have felt he had the right to even broach the idea. So when he requested the hand of abu-Talib’s daughter Fakhita in marriage, he certainly cannot have expected to be refused. Yet he was. This was no tale of young star-crossed lovers, however. Marriage in the sixth century was a far more pragmatic arrangement. We know nothing of Fakhita aside from her name. Muhammad’s proposal was made to the father, not the daughter. In effect, he was asking abu-Talib to publicly acknowledge their closeness by declaring him not just “like a son” but a full member of the family. He would no longer be merely a poor relation who had risen in the world, but a son-in-law. Abu-Talib’s decision had nothing to do with the fact that Muhammad and Fakhita were first cousins. Gregor Mendel and the science of genetics were still eleven hundred years in the future, and marriage between cousins was as common in the sixth century, both in Arabia and elsewhere, as it had been in biblical times. It was considered a means of strengthening the internal bonds of a clan, and indeed would remain so in the marriage patterns of European royalty well into the twentieth century. So there is only one possible reason for abu-Talib’s denial of his nephew’s request: he did not consider this an advantageous marriage for his daughter. No matter how much he trusted and relied on Muhammad, the father was not about to marry his daughter to an orphan with no independent means. He intended for her to marry into the Meccan elite, and quickly made a more suitably aristocratic match for her. If Bahira had indeed foreseen a great future for Muhammad, abu-Talib had clearly not taken him seriously. And if Muhammad had imagined that he had overcome the limitations of his childhood, he was now harshly reminded that they still applied. Abu-Talib’s denial of his request carried a clear message. “This far and no further,” he was saying in effect. “Good but not good enough.” In his uncle’s mind, Muhammad was still “one of us, yet not one of us.” In time, abu-Talib would come to regret this rejection of Muhammad. The two men would eventually overcome the rift it caused between them and become closer than ever. But in a pattern that was to recur throughout Muhammad’s life, rejection would work to his long-term advantage. Abu-Talib’s denial of him as a son-in-law would turn out to be one of those ironic twists that determine history—or, if you wish to see things that way, fate. If Muhammad had married his cousin, nobody today might even know his name. Without the woman he did go on to marry, he might never have found the courage and determination to undertake the major role that waited for him. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
62
" Indeed it seemed at first that Medina’s Jews were quite open to him. The clans of the three main Jewish tribes had willingly signed on to the arbitration agreement and were part of the umma, though only as secondary members—as confederates, that is, of the dominant Aws and Khazraj tribes. The Quranic voice had appealed directly to the original “People of the Book,” instructing Muhammad to say: “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and that which was revealed to you. Our God and your God is one.”2 The believers were not to argue with Jews “except fairly and politely,”3 the Quran instructed. They should say, “People of the Book, let us come to an agreement that we will worship none but God, that we will associate no partners with him, and that none of us shall set up mortals as deities alongside God.”4 And then, since that formulation might be understood to exclude Christians, further verses expanded on it: “Believers, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, whoever believes in God and the Day of Judgment and does what is right, all shall be rewarded by God5 . . . We believe in God and in what was revealed to us, in that which was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, to Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and in that which God gave to Moses and Jesus and the prophets. We discriminate against none of them. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
65
" Seen in the light of today’s ongoing Middle East conflict, the massacre of the Qureyz in the year 627 seems to set a terrible precedent. Since faith and politics are as inextricably intertwined in today’s Middle East as they were in the seventh century, the arguments given for the massacre in the early Islamic histories are still invoked, alongside the Quran’s evident anger at Medinan Jewish rejection of Muhammad’s prophethood, to justify the ugly twin offspring of theopolitical extremism: Muslim anti-Semitism and Jewish Islamophobia. In the light of Muhammad’s political situation at the time, however, a less emotional analysis may be more to the point. The massacre of the Qureyz was indeed a demonstration of ruthlessness, but they were, in a sense, collateral damage. The real audience for this demonstration was not them but anyone else in Medina who still harbored reservations about Muhammad’s leadership. If there had been any doubt that he was dealing from a position of strength, he had now dispelled it. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
66
" It was she who proposed, quite simply because he could not. Especially after abu-Talib’s rebuff, he would not have dared take the initiative. Khadija was from the powerful Asad clan, which made her eminently marriageable. Her suitors included the wealthiest merchants in Mecca, all of them offering large gifts to her father as a way of sweetening the deal. Except that Khadija, unlike abu-Talib’s young daughter, refused to be auctioned off. She had no need for another conventional marriage; this time she would defy convention by marrying the man she chose, not the one chosen for her. So as ibn-Ishaq tells it, adding “so the story goes” in acknowledgment of the oddly stilted language, she said: “I like you, Muhammad, because of our relationship and your high reputation for trustworthiness and good character and truthfulness,” and asked him to be her husband. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
71
" If war was deception, so too, in a way, was peace. By disarming his own men, Muhammad had effectively disarmed the Meccans, forcing them into a classic zero-sum game in which compromise was the only possible solution, even as any compromise was to his advantage. Eleven centuries before Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war was the continuation of politics by other means,3 Muhammad had demonstrated quite the reverse. What war could not achieve, politics would. Unarmed confrontation had not only forced Mecca to accommodate him; it had also served as a very public demonstration to all of Arabia that he and his followers were more loyal to “the traditions of the fathers” than the Meccans themselves. Neither Gandhi nor Machiavelli could have done better. Muhammad had reversed the terms of engagement, turning apparent weakness into strength. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
72
" If Aisha was indeed married so young, however, others would certainly have remarked on it at the time. Instead, more restrained reports have her aged nine when she was betrothed and twelve when she was actually married, which makes sense since custom dictated that girls be married at puberty. But then again, to have been married at the customary age would make Aisha normal, and that was the one thing she was always determined not to be. Tart-tongued and quick-witted, she would, at least by her own account, tease Muhammad and not only get away with it but be loved for it. It was as though he had granted her license for girlish mischief. Much as a fond father might indulge a spoiled daughter, he seemed diverted by her sassiness and charm. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
74
" Other times she went further, as when Muhammad arranged to seal an alliance with a major Christian tribe in the time-honored manner by marrying its leader’s daughter, a girl renowned for her beauty. When the bride-to-be arrived in Medina, Aisha volunteered to help prepare her for the wedding and, under the guise of sisterly advice, told her that Muhammad would think all the more highly of her if she at first resisted him on the wedding night by saying, “I take refuge with God from thee.” The new bride had no idea that this was the phrase used to annul a marriage; the moment she said it, Muhammad left, and the next day she was bundled unceremoniously back to her own people. It may have been inevitable, then, that when scandal hit in the form of a lost necklace, the headstrong Aisha would be at the center of it. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
78
" He stood firm, insisting that the Quraysh leaders acknowledge no god but God and abandon all the totems and lesser gods. By way of reply, abu-Sufyan and the others simply threw their hands up in frustration and stalked out of the sickroom, leaving Muhammad alone with his dying uncle. What abu-Talib said then is still a matter of debate. In one account he whispered, “Nephew, why did you go too far with them?” But in another he said, “Nephew, you did not ask them for too much,” and it is this second version that reflects the hope of many pious Muslims that the man who had led his clan through hardship to protect Muhammad did in the end die a believer. Certainly both accounts agree that Muhammad took his uncle’s hand as the life began to fade from his eyes and urged him to say the shahada, to accept islam and testify that there was no god but God: “Say it, uncle, and then I shall be able to witness for you on the Day of Judgment. "
― Lesley Hazleton , The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
