FEBRUARY 9 Christianity and Islam

later, at the age of forty, when the Prophet was meditating in a cave called Hira, situated near Makkah, he was visited by the Angel Gabriel, who came to him with the first revelations contained in the Quran in chapter 96: “Read in the name of your Lord who created, created man from clots of congealed blood. Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful one, who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.” After this extraordinary experience, he rushed back home to his wife Khadijah, to whom he said, trembling, “Cover me with a cloak, cover me with a cloak.” Then, having recovered a little, he told her of his experience and said: “I feel my life is in danger.” She responded, “No, never! God will never bring you to grief.” Then she took him to her cousin, Waraqa ibn Naufal, who had become a Christian. Waraqa’s comments were: “The One who came to you is the same Namus (the specially appointed Divine Messenger) who came to Moses. I wish I were a young man and could live till the time when your people will expel you.” The Prophet asked, “Will my people expel me?” Waraqa replied: “Yes, no one has been before, who brought the same thing that you have brought, without the people turning hostile to him.” The third encounter took place a few years after Muhammad’s attainment of prophethood. During this period Makkah was dominated by idolaters who, rejecting monotheism, set about persecuting the Prophet and his Companions. The Prophet therefore advised his followers to leave for Abyssinia (now known as Ethiopia), a justly ruled Christian kingdom, “until God leads us to a way out of our difficulty.” About eighty Muslims then emigrated to Abyssinia, where they lived under the protection of the Negus, until after the Prophet’s emigration to Madinah. The Makkans, upset at this Muslim exodus, immediately sent a delegation to the Negus to ask for the emigrants’ extradition to Makkah. But the Negus refused to yield to their appeal until he had heard the refugees plead their own case. This was ably done by Jafar ibn Abi Talib, who briefly described the teachings of Islam. At the request of the Negus, he recited certain divine revelations. When the patriarchs heard the first part of the chapter entitled ‘Mary’, confirming the Message of the Evangel, they were pleasantly surprised and said: “These words must have sprung from the same fountainhead from which the words of our Lord Jesus Christ have sprung.” The Negus then said, “What you have just recited and that which was revealed to Moses must have both issued from the same source. Go forth into my kingdom; I shall not extradite you at all.”