Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time. Karen Armstrong
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so the nomads scratched out a meagre existence by herding sheep and goats, and breeding horses and camels, living in close-knit tribal groups. Nomadic (badawah) life was a grim, relentless struggle, because there were too many people competing for too few resources. Always hungry, perpetually on the brink of starvation, the Bedouin fought endless battles with other tribes for water, pastureland, and grazing rights.
Consequently the ghazu (acquisition raid) was essential to the badawah economy. In times of scarcity, tribesmen would regularly invade the territory of their neighbors in the hope of carrying off camels, cattle, or slaves, taking great care to avoid killing anybody, since this could lead to a vendetta. Nobody considered this in any way reprehensible. The ghazu was an accepted fact of life; it was not inspired by political or personal hatred, but was a kind of national sport, conducted with skill and panache according to clearly defined rules. It was a necessity, a rough-and-ready way of redistributing wealth in a region where there was simply not enough to go around.
Even though the people of Mecca had left the nomadic life behind, they still regarded the Bedouin as the guardians of authentic Arab culture. As a child, Muhammad had been sent to live in the desert with the tribe of his wet nurse in order to be educated in the badawah ethos. It made a profound impression on him. The Bedouin were not very interested in conventional religion. They had no hope of an afterlife and little confidence in their gods, who seemed unable to make any impact on their difficult environment. The tribe, not a deity, was the supreme value, and each member had to subordinate his or her personal needs and desires to the well-being of the group, and fight to the death, if necessary, to ensure its survival. Arabs had little time for speculation about the supernatural but were focused on this world. Fantasy was useless in the steppes; they needed pragmatic, sober realism. But they had evolved a chivalric code, which, by giving meaning to their lives and preventing them from succumbing to despair in these harsh conditions, performed the essential function of religion. They called it muruwah, a complex term that is difficult to translate succinctly. Muruwah meant courage, patience, endurance; it consisted of a dedicated determination to avenge any wrong done to the group, to protect its weaker members, and defy its enemies. To preserve the honor of the tribe, each member had to be ready to leap to the defense of his kinsmen at a moment’s notice and to obey his chief without question.
Above all, a tribesman had to be generous and share his livestock and food. Life in the steppes would be impossible if people selfishly hoarded their wealth while others went hungry. A tribe that was rich today could easily become destitute tomorrow. If you had been miserly in good days, who would help you in your hour of need? Muruwah made a virtue out of this necessity, encouraging the karim (the “generous hero”) to care little for material goods so that he would not become depressed by his life of deprivation. A truly noble Bedouin would take no heed for the morrow, showing by his lavish gifts and hospitality that he valued his fellow tribesmen more than his possessions. He had to be prepared to give all his wealth—his camels, flocks, and slaves—to others, and could squander his entire fortune in a single night by putting on a superb feast for his friends and allies. But the generosity of the karim could be self-destructive and egotistic: He could reduce his family to poverty overnight, simply to demonstrate the nobility that flowed in his veins and enhance his status and reputation.
Muruwah was an inspiring ideal, but by the end of the sixth century, its weaknesses were becoming tragically apparent. Tribal solidarity (‘asibiyyah) encouraged bravery and selflessness, but only within the context of the tribe. There was no concept of universal human rights. A Bedouin felt responsible merely for his blood relatives and confederates. He had no concern for outsiders, whom he regarded as worthless and expendable. If he had to kill them to benefit his own people, he felt no moral anguish and wasted no time in philosophical abstractions or ethical considerations. Since the tribe was the most sacred value, he backed it, right or wrong. “I am of Ghazziyya,” sang one of the poets. “If she be in error, I will be in error; and if Ghazziyya be guided right, I will go with her.”2 Or, in the words of a popular maxim: “Help your brother whether he is being wronged or wronging others.”3
Each tribe had its own special brand of muruwah, which, the Arabs believed, had been inherited from the founding fathers of the tribe and was passed, like other physical and mental characteristics, from one generation to another. They called this tribal glory hasab (“ancestral honor”).4 As the source of their particular genius, tribesmen revered their forefathers as the supreme authority and this inevitably encouraged a deep and entrenched conservatism. The way of life (sunnah) that the ancients had bequeathed to their descendants was sacred and inviolable. “He belongs to a tribe whose fathers have laid down for them a sunnah,” another poet explained, “Every folk has its own traditional sunnah; every folk has its objects of imitation.”5 Any deviation—however trivial—from ancestral custom was a great evil. A practice was approved not because of its inherent decency or nobility, but simply because it had been sanctioned long ago by the fathers of the tribe.
The Bedouin could not afford to experiment. It would be criminally irresponsible to ignore the shari’ah, the path to the waterhole that had been the lifeline of your people from time immemorial. You learned to survive by following a set of rules whose value had been proven by experience. But this unquestioning acceptance of tradition could lead to rampant chauvinism: the sunnah of your people was the best and you could contemplate no other way of doing things. You could only preserve the honor of your tribe by refusing to bow to any other authority, human or divine. A karim was expected to be proud, self-regarding, self-reliant, and aggressively independent. Arrogance was not a fault but a sign of nobility, whereas humility showed that you came from defective stock and had no aristocratic blood in your veins. A base-born person was genetically destined to be a slave (‘abd); that was all he was good for. A true karim could not submit to anybody at all. “We refuse to all men submission to their leading,” sang one poet, “till we lead them ourselves, yea without reins!”6 A karim would maintain this defiant self-sufficiency even in the presence of a god, because no deity could be superior to a truly noble human being.
In the steppes, the tribe needed men who refused to be bowed by circumstance and who had the confidence to pit themselves against overwhelming odds. But this haughty self-reliance (istighna’) could easily become reckless and excessive. The Bedouin was easily moved to extremes at the smallest provocation.7 Because of his exalted sense of honor, he tended to respond violently to any perceived threat or slight. He did not simply act in self-defense; true courage lay in the preemptive strike. It is not enough for “a warrior, fierce as a lion, to strike back and chastise the enemy who has struck him with a blow,” cried the poet Zuhayr ibn ‘Abi Salma, “he should rather attack first and become an aggressor when no one wrongs him.”8 The courage praised by the tribal poets was an irresistible impulse that could not and should not be restrained. If a wrong was done to a single member of his tribe, a karim felt the duty of vengeance as a physical pain and a tormenting thirst.9 It was a tragic worldview. The Bedouin tried to glorify their struggle, but their life was grim and there was no hope of anything better. All beings, they believed, came under the sway of dahr (“time” or “fate”), which inflicted all manner of suffering on humanity; a man’s life was determined in advance. All things passed away; even the successful warrior would die and be forgotten. There was an inherent futility in this life of ceaseless struggle. The only remedy against despair was a life of pleasure—especially the oblivion of wine.
In the past, many of the Bedouin had tried to escape from the steppes and build a more secure, settled (hadarah) life, but these attempts were usually frustrated by the scarcity of water and arable land, and the frequency of drought.10 A tribe could not establish a viable settlement unless it had either accumulated a surplus of wealth—an