The Personality of the Prophet of Islam

as had never hitherto presented themselves. What is Sunnah Hudaybiya? It is, to put it briefly, to ignore the problems in order to buy time in which to avail of the opportunities. God has made this world in such way that, here, according to the Quran, difficulty is always accompanied by ease (The Quran, 94:5-6). By the very system or law of nature itself, it happens that in this world there are always favourable opportunities alongside problems. By availing of these opportunities, great progress can be made. The reason for failure in life is often traceable to the fact that people become embroiled in controversy. They think that unless all obstacles and hurdles are removed, the onward journey can never he made. But the Sunnah of the Prophet of Islam is totally different. That is, one should refrain from tackling difficulties by confrontational methods. Instead we must find ways and means of availing of the existing opportunities by avoiding the problems. If necessary, this principle should be observed to the extent of our being willing to accept the unilateral conditions of the opponents, treating them as representing a temporary phase. The incident that took place in Hudaybiya is a specific instance. Apparently, it is regarded as only one of the many such incidents recorded in seerah. But, in reality, it is not just one happening like many others. In actual fact, the spirit of Hudaybiya pervades the entire life of the Prophet. It would not be wrong to say that this was a very well-considered policy of the Prophet, which he adopted throughout his life. The Hudaybiya policy, in fact, is that in any set of circumstances, problems have to be ignored and opportunities, despite all difficulties, have to be availed of. We find a number of examples of this policy in the life of the Prophet. The Prophet followed this same principle in his Makkan as well as Madinan period. The only difference between Hudaybiya and other similar incidents is that on the occasion of Hudaybiya this policy was adopted following a bilateral declaration, while at other times it was followed by a unilateral decision. The method of the Prophet was to study the prevailing sets of circumstances dispassionately and objectively and then follow that course on his own, without any external pressure. This is what we have called the Hudaybiya policy. For instance, in the early phase in Makkah, the Prophet communicated his dawah message secretly. This did not mean that the Prophet had a meeting with the idolaters of Makkah, and then as a matter of bilateral decision-making engaged not to propagate his message publicly but in secret. It was rather that by making concessions to circumstances, he on his own adopted the method of secret propagation, without waiting for any social compulsion. Similarly, when he gave the call of monotheism publicly, it did not happen that the Prophet and the idolaters of Makkah met and talked about it and then arrived at the decision that the idols placed in Kabah would not be harmed and that the Prophet would disseminate his message by following the peaceful dawah method. Rather what happened was that the Prophet himself set this limit for his dawah activity. That is he gave the verbal call to abandon the worship of anything other than God, but refrained completely from any practical confrontation with the