Islam’s Anti-Racist Message: In Mecca, The Prophet Muhammad Told the Muslims That All People Are Created Equal
By
Asma Afsaruddin
July 6,
2020
One day, in
Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad dropped a bombshell on his followers: He told them
that all people are created equal.
Muslims
of all backgrounds pray during the 2019 Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
Fethi Belaid/AFP via Getty Images
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“All humans
are descended from Adam and Eve,” said Muhammad in his last known public
speech. “There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab
over an Arab, and no superiority of a white person over a black person or of a
black person over a white person, except on the basis of personal piety and
righteousness.”
In this
sermon, known as the Farewell Address, Muhammad outlined the basic religious
and ethical ideals of Islam, the religion he began preaching in the early
seventh century. Racial equality was one of them. Muhammad’s words jolted a
society divided by notions of tribal and ethnic superiority.
Today, with
racial tension and violence roiling contemporary America, his message is seen
to create a special moral and ethical mandate for American Muslims to support
the country’s anti-racism protest movement.
Apart from
monotheism – worshipping just one God – belief in the equality of all human
beings in the eyes of God set early Muslims apart from many of their fellow
Arabs in Mecca.
Chapter 49,
verse 13 of Islam’s sacred scripture, the Quran, declares: “O humankind! We
have made you…into nations and tribes, so that you may get to know one another.
The noblest of you in God’s sight is the one who is most righteous.”
This verse
challenged many of the values of pre-Islamic Arab society, where inequalities
based on tribal membership, kinship and wealth were a fact of life. Kinship or
lineal descent – “Nasab” in Arabic – was the primary determinant of an
individual’s social status. Members of larger, more prominent tribes like the
aristocratic Quraysh were powerful. Those from less wealthy tribes like the
Khazraj had lower standing.
The Quran
said personal piety and deeds were the basis for merit, not tribal affiliation
– an alien and potentially destabilizing message in a society built on Nasab.
The
wealthy Quraysh tribe of ancient Arabia dominated the region for centuries.
Qantara, CC BY
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Give Me
Your Tired, Your Poor
As is often
the case with revolutionary movements, early Islam encountered fierce
opposition from many elites.
The
Quraysh, for example, who controlled trade in Mecca – a business from which
they profited greatly – had no intention of giving up the comfortable
lifestyles they’d built on the backs of others, especially their slaves brought
over from Africa.
The
Prophet’s message of egalitarianism tended to attract the “undesirables”
–people from the margins of society. Early Muslims included young men from less
influential tribes escaping that stigma and slaves who were promised
emancipation by embracing Islam.
Women,
declared to be the equal of men by the Quran, also found Muhammad’s message
appealing. However, the potential of gender equality in Islam would become
compromised by the rise of patriarchal societies.
By
Muhammad’s death, in 632, Islam had brought about a fundamental transformation
of Arab society, though it never fully erased the region’s old reverence for
kinship.
I Can’t
Breathe
Early Islam
also attracted non-Arabs, outsiders with little standing in traditional Arab
society. These included Salman the Persian, who travelled to the Arabian
Peninsula seeking religious truth, Suhayb the Greek, a trader, and an enslaved
Ethiopian named Bilal.
Bilal,
centre, found freedom in Islam. Wikimedia Commons
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All three
would rise to prominence in Islam during Muhammad’s lifetime. Bilal’s
much-improved fortunes, in particular, illustrate how the egalitarianism
preached by Islam changed Arab society.
An enslaved
servant of a Meccan aristocrat named Umayya, Bilal was persecuted by his owner
for embracing the new faith. Umayya would place a rock on Bilal’s chest, trying
to choke the air out of his body so that he would abandon Islam.
Moved by Bilal’s
suffering, Muhammad’s friend and confidant Abu Bakr, who would go on to rule
the Muslim community after the Prophet’s death, set him free.
Bilal was
exceptionally close to Muhammad, too. In 622, the Prophet appointed him the
first person to give the public call to prayer in recognition of his powerful,
pleasing voice and personal piety. Bilal would later marry an Arab woman from a
respectable tribe – unthinkable for an enslaved African in the pre-Islamic
period.
For many
modern Muslims, Bilal is the symbol of Islam’s egalitarian message, which in
its ideal application recognizes no difference among humans on the basis of
ethnicity or race but rather is more concerned with personal integrity. One of
the United States’ leading Black Muslim newspaper, published between 1975 and
1981, was called The Bilalian News.
More
recently Yasir Qadhi, dean of the Islamic Seminary of America, in Texas,
invoked Islam’s egalitarian roots. In a June 5 public address, he said American
Muslims, a population familiar with discrimination, “must fight racism, whether
it is by education or by other means.”
Many
Muslims in the U.S. are taking action, supporting the Black Lives Matter
movement and protesting police brutality and systemic racism. Their actions
reflect the revolutionary – and still unrealized – egalitarian message that
Prophet Muhammad set down over 1,400 years ago as a cornerstone of the Muslim
faith.
Asma
Afsaruddin is Professor of Islamic Studies and former Chairperson, Department
of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University
Original
Headline: Islam’s anti-racist message
from the 7th century still resonates today
Source: The Conversation
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