The Personality of the Prophet of Islam

in nothing but destruction. When the individual refrains from making a controversial matter into one of prestige, this gives rise to serious thinking. This non-emotional thinking helps him to understand that if he were to walk out of the point of controversy, he would find all other paths open to him. The same was the case in Hudaybiya. The Prophet of Islam wanted to enter Makkah, but the Quraysh did not allow him to do so. Yet the Prophet did not let the obstructiveness of the Quraysh become a matter of prestige. His own positive approach enabled him to lead Muslims away from the field of war to the field of dawah, a far vaster arena for their struggle in the cause of Islam. By unilaterally accepting all the conditions of the opponents of Islam, the Prophet of Islam made a no-war pact called the Hudaybiya Peace Treaty in 6 A.H. On account of his unconditional acceptance of the enemy’s terms, some Muslims held it to be a humiliating pact (Seerah ibn Hisham, Vol. 2, p. 317). But after this treaty was finalized, the chapter in the Quran, called ‘Victory’ (Al-Fath) was revealed, in which this peace treaty was called ‘a clear victory.’ (The Quran, 48:1) The reason for this difference in assessment was that human beings looked at it from the angle of the present, while God looked at it from the angle of the future. It is this reality, which has been pointed out in the Quran in these words: God knew what you did not. (The Quran, 48:27) At its beginning, the Hudaybiya peace treaty appeared to mean nothing but surrender and humiliation. But God saw it from the point of view of its practical result in the future. That is why the Quran called it a clear victory. The well known taabii, a disciple of the companions, Ibn Shihab Az Zuhri says: Never before in Islam had there been such a great victory before Hudaybiya. Whenever Muslims and non-Muslims met one another, before Hudaybiya they came to the point of confrontation. But when peace prevailed and war was stopped under the treaty, people became safe from one another. In this peaceful atmosphere, they interacted with one another and began exchanging their thoughts. Then whoever had an occasion to hear about Islam, and had sound judgement, entered its fold. After the peace treaty, within a period of two years, as many people or even more accepted Islam as had done so before, only over a much longer period of time. (Sirah Ibn Hisahm, Vol. 2, p. 322) Ibn Hisham, the Prophet’s biographer, says that Zuhri’s observation is proved true by the fact that, according to the tradition narrated by Jabir ibn Abdullah, there were only 1400 men with the Prophet on his journey to Hudaybiya. But two years after that, when the Prophet set out for the conquest of Makkah, he was accompanied by ten thousand companions. The Hudaybiya sunnah is the sum total of the actions of the Prophet of Islam which resulted in the ‘clear victory’ as recorded in the Quran, which, led the Islamic movement to the age of revolution and ultimate ascendancy. Consequently, such opportunities were opened up for Islam