Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

The Shi'ite Dynasty of Yemen 133
pilgrims who were celebrating the pagan rites around the Ka'ba.
Where would one find supporters for a message destined to revolutionize
the world if not in the huge crowd of pilgrims from everywhere
as they came together in the confines of the Ka'ba, the heart
of Mecca, the holy place where the divine has manifested itself since
time immemorial? Thus it has been since the time of the Prophet;
thus it was in the time of 'AH al-Sulayhi centuries later; and thus it
still is, as witness live-televised events such as Iranian pilgrims
battling Saudi security forces, which from time to time remind us
that in Mecca at least nothing is more political than the sacred. And
this close link between the political and the sacred in the Arab
world dates from before Islam. Al-Baghdadi (died in year 245 of
the Hejira, the ninth century), one of the rare Arab historians who
wrote about the pre-Islamic religions in his invaluable book Kitab
al-mukhabbar, reminds us that the pilgrimage to Mecca was part of
the traditions that existed in ihejahiliyya and was retained by Islam:
'They [the Arabs before Islam] made the pilgrimage; they made the
circuits around the bayt [the sanctuary of the Ka'ba] for a week;
they touched the black stone and continued their march between
Safa and Marwa.' 57 The only difference is that before Islam, during
the pagan pre-Islamic era, each group of Arabs made the circuit
around the Ka'ba while calling upon a specific god or goddess. The
idea of the Muslim Prophet was that all the pilgrims make the circuit
calling upon one single God - Allah. His dream of Arab unity
and strength was necessarily connected to religious unification: to
worship the same God and thus have the same leader. This was a
threatening revolutionary idea that resulted in his being persecuted
as a danger to polytheistic Mecca. And where was he to find allies
if not there, at the place of worship, where people gathered by the
thousands? The Prophet Muhammad took to awaiting the annual
pilgrimage in order to propose his new religion to the pilgrims, who
were usually tribal leaders from all over Arabia. It was only after
several failed attempts that he persuaded the party from Medina to
agree to sponsor his cause and invite him to come and preach his
new religion in their city. The move from Mecca to Medina is called
al-hijra (known in English as the Hejira), and this became the
beginning of the Muslim calendar, which starts in the year AD 622,
the year when the people of Medina received the Meccan Prophet
after he had been driven out of his native city by those in power. 58
The incredible success of the Prophet of Islam is in itself a lesson
in political strategy, in which everything took place around the most
eminently sacred site, the sanctuary of the Ka'ba.