Blindspot!
From Issue: 1044 [Read full issue]
Unprotected Masses
Muhammad Ibn Abdallah ibn Abd al-Muttalib came into the world the only son of a widow, in a city where widows were left without protection. He became an orphan while still a child, in a society that treated orphans as chattel to be bought and sold. Through the assistance of a kindly uncle, the young Muhammad was able to avoid this fate and to earn a meager living making trade runs north to Syria and south into Yemen. In his twenties his prospects suddenly improved when he married an older merchant named Khadija and took over the management of her successful caravan business.
Yet despite the relative wealth and comfort of his new life, Muhammad could never shake the feeling that there was something profoundly wrong with a society that had brought him so close to a life of slavery and despair—a society in which the unprotected masses could be so easily exploited by the powerful and affluent for their own gain. He became restless and dissatisfied. He began giving away his wealth and seeking solace in the mountains and glens of the Meccan valley, where he would spend his nights in prayer and meditation, beseeching the heavens for an answer to the misery and sorrow that he saw in his world.
Then, one day, the heavens responded.
According to tradition Muhammad was meditating in a cave on Mount Hira when he was seized by an invisible presence commanding him, "Recite." What followed that initial experience was twenty-two years of nearly uninterrupted prophetic revelations from a god he called Allah—revelations that would eventually be collected into what is now known as the Quran, or the Recitation.
Compiled From:
"God" - Reza Aslan, p. 150