Volume 8 Surah 9 - Enjoy Islam

Al-Tawbah (The Repentance) | THE BASIS OF INTER-COMMUNAL RELATIONSnot aided anyone against you. To these fulfil your obligations until their treaties haverun their term. God loves those who are righteous.” (Verse 4) 8Al-Ţabarī also quotes Mujāhid as saying:In the statement, ‘Disavowal by God and His Messenger [is hereby announced] tothose of the idolaters with whom you have made a treaty,’ the reference here ismade to the tribe of Mudlij and the Arabs bound by a treaty with theMuslims and all other peoples with similar treaties. It is reported that whenthe Prophet returned from Tabūk, he wanted to go on pilgrimage. He thenthought, ‘the Ka`bah is visited by idolaters who do the ţawāf naked. I wouldrather delay my pilgrimage until such a practice is stopped.’ He sent AbūBakr and `Alī who went to see people at Dhu’l-Majāz and other markets, aswell as their encampments in pilgrimage. They gave notice to all people whohad treaties with the Prophet that they would have four months of peace.When those four consecutive months, beginning with the twenty daysremaining of Dhu’l-Hijjah to the tenth day of Rabī` II, were over, the treatieswould come to an end. All people in Arabia would then be in a state of warwith the Muslims unless they believed in God and His Messenger. The wholeArab population of Arabia became Muslims and none continued with theirold religion. 9A number of immediate causes were naturally a factor in taking this final anddecisive step. Nevertheless they were only links in a long chain which arises from thebasic conflict between the two ways of life which cannot coexist except for shortperiods and which are bound to come to an end sooner or later.Peace or No PeaceThe late Shaikh Muĥammad Rashīd Riđā’, a leading scholar of the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, tries to identify these links in the chain right from theearly days of the Islamic message. However, he does not try to outline the basic andpermanent conflict which gives rise to the whole episode, leading eventually to thenatural result outlined in this sūrah. In his commentary, al-Manār, he writes:An indisputable fact known to all people is that God sent His Messenger,Muĥammad, the last of all prophets, with the message of Islam that providesa complete and final version of the divine faith. His greatest proof is theQur’ān, which defies human beings with a multifaceted challenge that we8 Muĥammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī, Jāmi` al-Bayān, Dār al-Fikr, Beirut, 1984, Vol. 10, pp. 62-63.9 Al-Tabarī, ibid., pp. 61-62.33