Islam comes to Madinah

Here was a golden opportunity to accept him before the Jews could do so. So, expressing their belief in the Prophet, they told him, “We have left our people behind. No nation is torn by hostility and infighting as they are. Perhaps God will unite them through you. We will return to them and tell them about our accepted religion. If our people unite on this faith, then there will be no one more powerful than you in this land.”138 After this, the people of Madinah accepted Islam in large numbers. As a result, they became known as the Ansar, or helpers, of Islam. Their selfless support of Islam enabled the Prophet’s religion to gain supremacy in Arabia. Five years before the Prophet’s emigration to Madinah, the city’s people had thought nothing of his message and rejected it. Yet just five years later, these same people accepted Islam. When they first met the Prophet, they were preoccupied with military considerations; they could think of nothing else but how to subdue their enemies. This meant that they had no time to consider spiritual matters. As a result, God and life after death appeared to them to be extraneous issues designed to divert them from their real aim. The Aws and the Khazraj poured all their resources into the war of Bu’ath. All they received in return, however, was self-destruction. The very future of the two tribes was cast into doubt: it seemed as if the Jews would set them against one another until they were annihilated.