Aisha best friend of Muhammad the Messenger of God Essay Example For Students

Aisha best friend of Muhammad the Messenger of God Essay Aisha was the youngest daughter of Abu Bekr, himself the chief advisor, the first disciple, and best friend of Muhammad the Messenger of God. It was customary in those days, and still is today in Arabia, for a man of property and substance to have many wives. In offering his daughter to Muhammad, Abu Bekr was trying to solidify his ties with that great man, hoping an issue would spring forth to carry on the name of both Muhammad and Aisha. The Qoran allows a man to have up to four wives. Exceptions are made for exceptional men. All told, Muhammad had more than a dozen wives of different ages and of every type. One wife, for example, Miriyam, was given to the Prophet by a prince of Egypt. She bore him a son whom they named Abrahim, but he died as an infant. In fact all of the sons sired by Muhammad died in their youth. He was rich with daughters. And wives. Aisha was his youngest wife, a mere prepubescent child, not yet a teenager, and his favorite. The time is the early 600s AD The former caravan merchant his enemies liked to deride him as the camel driver had founded a new religion called Islam. In Arabic, Islam means submission. Submission to Allah. Muhammad destroyed the pagan gods of the Bedouins, and taught his countrymen to worship one God. In Arabic, Allah means the God. Muhammad single-handedly raised the Arabs to the religious level of the Jews and Christians, who similarly worshipped one God. After his death, Islam spread far and wide and was in its time the preserver of the highest culture, arts, and sciences in the civilized world. Are we not right in assuming that the God who spoke to Muhammad was the same as our God? Surely so. Muhammad was an imposing man. He was a mystic who went into trances, as did all the prophets in the Bible. When he came out of those trances, he would utter the most beautiful poetry anyone in Arabia had ever heard. The poetry, which is recorded in the Moslem Holy Book, The Qoran, was all the more astounding in that Muhammad was not a literary man. He was the unlettered prophet, and some say that he neither knew how to read nor write. While this is doubtful, it is certain that he did not know how to write poetry. He was not a Reciter, as they called poets in Arabia who made a living reciting their poems in the houses of noblemen, much as Homer did among the ancient Greeks. Muhammad must have been touched by divine inspiration to produce the exquisite phrases of The Qoran. He also was an active man skilled in leadership, business, politics, and even warfare. It is not difficult to see why men gave up their lives for him. He was charismatic in appearance as well. This is how he is described by one of his biographers: Slightly above middle size, his figure, though spare, was handsome and commanding; the chest broad and open; the bones and framework large, and the joints well-knit together. His neck was broad and finely molded. His head, unusually large, gave space for a broad and noble brow. The hair, thick, jet black and slightly curling, fell down over his ears. The eyebrows were arched and joined. His countenance was thin but ruddy. His large eyes, intensely black and piercing, received additional luster from long, dark eyelashes. The nose was high and slightly aquiline, but fine, and at the end attenuated. The teeth were set apart. A long, black, thick beard, reaching to the breast, added manliness and presence. His expression was pensive and contemplative. His faced beamed with intelligence. Although his recitations were recorded by his secretaries in The Qoran, most of the personal details of his life were recorded by his friends in their reminiscences and journals. We owe to Aisha some of the most crucial details of how the Messenger of God lived and prayed. It was she who told us about the first vision that came to Muhammad during his customary retreat of fasting and contemplation in a cave in the hills. There appeared unto him the vision of the Archangel Gabriel who ordered Muhammad to recite. Muhammad was most frightened. What shall I recite? he asked. I dont know how to recite. I am not a man of letters. The archangel Gabriel was unmoved. Recite, he commanded. A shaken Muhammad went home, disbelieving in what he had heard. It could have been a dream, thats all. But his first wife, Khadija, encouraged him to believe in his visions. Thereafter, Muhammad was called the Messenger of God, or the Prophet, or the Apostle. This encounter with the archangel was memorialized in the Qoran in the following passage: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate Recite: In the name of thy Lord who created created Man of a blood-clot. Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the Pen, aught Man that he knew not. Khadija, who was older than Muhammad and very rich, later died and left Muhammad all her wealth. No other woman ever competed for Muhammads devotion as she did. But she died before him, and a man must have sons as heirs. And so Muhammad later married many others. The account of this first vision comes to us not from Khadija, then, but by Aish a, who wrote: Solitude became dear to him and he would go to a cave on Mount Hira to engage in meditation there for a number of nights before returning to his family. Then he would go home for a short time to procure for another stay. Investment in Russia EssayIn some backward areas of the world, in rural Pakistan for example, if a married woman is seen so much as conversing with another man not her husband, the womans father or her brother or her husband have the right to slay both of them. It has happened, and the murderers are not punished but set free. It came to pass that Aisha was on a caravan. During the journey home, she slept late and did not notice that the caravan had decamped without her. She waited at the oasis for help to arrive, which was sure to come after the people in the caravan discovered her absence. While she was thus waiting, a young man appeared and offered to wait with her so as to give her his protection. When the search party from the caravan arrived, they found the two together talking. Aisha was taken to her camel and the young man was driven off and told to hide for his life. Rumors about the incident began to circulate as soon as the caravan reached Medina. People called for a disposition of the matter by Muhammad, upholder of the Faith. While there were no witnesses to the affair, and none could say, what actually happened save Aisha herself, the moral code demanded that a ruling be forthcoming and a punishment. Muhammads other wives cackled at the rumors. They all resented Aishas popularity with the Prophet and were jealous of her influence over him. Even one so august as the Messenger of God had to go through the formal adjudication of this case. In hindsight, it is clear that he was not about to cast off Aisha, proving once again that he was a man of unusual understanding and prescience. Before her father and mother, Muhammad called upon Aisha to confess herself if she had done wrong, for God accepted the repentance of sinners. In a flood of tears, the young girl insisted she had nothing to confess. Suddenly, Muhammad rolled his eyes and wobbled of foot. These were the unmistakable signs, as they had come to be recognized, that the Prophet was about to have a revelation from God. The roomful of people made way. Muhammad lay down and was covered with a cloak. A leather cushion was placed under his head. During the trance it is not recorded how long it was, but it must have been appropriately long, long enough to receive a message from God Muhammad sweat profusely. At last, he woke up from the trance and made the announcement which was to seal Aishas fate. Aisha herself wrote his words. Muhammad mopped the sweat running down his face and said, Good news, Aisha! God has sent down word that you are innocent. He then gave orders for the three men, who were chiefly responsible for circulating the scandal, each to be flogged with eighty lashes, one of them being the Apostles chief poet, Hassan ibn Thabit. Muhammad died of pneumonia in Mecca, where he had moved from Medina and reclaimed the city which held the House of God, holder of the Kaaba stone. This is where Moslems of all nations are enjoined to go at least once in their lives in pilgrimage to fast and perambulate the rude enclosure that houses the Kaaba stone an ancient iron meteorite which fell to earth near a well in Mecca. On his death bed, Muhammad was attended at his side by Aisha alone. She was the only one in his presence when he died. She had bore him no sons. The holy see of Islam fell into the hands of others, one of them being Muhammads son-in-law Ali, husband of Fatima, Muhammads daughter from his very first marriage. It bedevils me to no end when I consider that Muhammad left no male heirs, though he certainly had more opportunities to do so than anyone in history save perhaps the Sultans of Turkey. What ever could have possessed Allah to deny his Messenger a male heir? It would have been a small favor for God to accomplish. Whenever I try to get inside Gods mind, of course, I founder in my own paltry ignorance. As the Qoran says, and here God speaks in the first person: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate By the night enshrouding and the day in splendor and That which created the male and the female, urely your striving is to diverse ends. As for him who gives and is god fearing and confirms the reward most fair, We shall surely ease him to the Easing. But as for him who is a miser, and self-sufficient, and cries lies to the reward most fair, We shall surely ease him to the Hardship: his wealth shall not avail him when he perishes. Surely upon Us rests the guidance, and to Us bel ong the Last and the First. So I say I am a Mussulman in spirit. My attitude is one of submission, not to any man but to Allah. I submit to the power of a Higher Being, though his ways I understand not. I am reminded to rejoice even in suffering. I submit to His will and accept the things that life throws before me, good and bad alike. This is the essential message of all religions. We see it in the life of Moses, when God forbids him from crossing the River Jordan, thereby to enter the Land of Milk and Honey. We see it in the life of Jesus, who dies on the cross thinking that his Father has forsaken him. We see it in Muhammad in his lack of a son who outlives his father. We see it in small ways in our own lives. Should we not then take solace from the story of Aisha? Should we not imitate God and laugh?