Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT The Secret of the ‘Clear Victory’ h When the Prophet, along with his Companions, wanted to enter Makkah to perform the Umrah or the ‘minor pilgrimage’, he was wrongfully stopped by the leaders of the town at a place called Hudaybiya. This created a situation of conflict between the Muslims and the Makkan polytheists. The Prophet resolved this conflict by withdrawing his right to enter the town. In response, the Makkans gave him the guarantee that they would cease their war against him so that peace could prevail between the two parties. In the immediate wake of the Treaty of Hudaybiya, a chapter of the Quran (48) was revealed, in which it was declared that this treaty had been a ‘clear victory’. From this Quranic declaration one can deduce an important principle—that a dispute is always resolved through the method of ‘give and take’. The Prophet and his Companions accepted the demand of their opponents to relinquish their right to enter Makkah. In return, the Makkan opponents agreed to cease their war against the followers of Islam, thus giving the latter the opportunity of carrying on with their work peacefully. This point can be expressed in a different way: that in this world only those people can succeed who are ready to step back,