TRYING TO CHANGE HISTORY'S OUTCOME — Futile and Impractical

TRYING TO CHANGE HISTORY’S OUTCOME Futile and Impractical T HE Kabah was originally constructed by the Prophet Abraham some 4000 years ago. At that time, it was rectangular in shape. Before the advent of the Prophet Muhammad, the Quraysh of Makkah had reconstructed the Kabah, and made it into a squareshaped structure. The Kabah retains this square shape even today. According to a Hadith in the Sahih al-Bukhari, the Prophet told his wife Aisha that he wanted to reconstruct the Kabah once again on its Abrahamic foundations but he abstained from this because, owing to practical reasons, this was no longer possible. This report concerning the Prophet teaches us an important principle — and that is, that the wheels of History cannot be put into reverse gear. The wheels of History cannot be put into reverse. This is no ordinary matter. This report about the Prophet indicates a very basic law of Nature — that the journey of History always proceeds from the past to the present and from the present to the future. It is not possible to reverse History; to unmake what has already happened. It is beyond human control to make History travel in the reverse direction — from the future to the present, and from the present to the past. Given this, the only sensible thing to do in this regard is to accept the present status quo as far as History is concerned and to make one’s plans accordingly, rather than seeking to deny this status quo. The History of the Kabah is an example in this regard. The Prophet accepted the above-mentioned law of Nature and did not try to reconstruct the Kabah on its earlier Abrahamic foundations. Later, after the Prophet’s demise, Abdullah ibn Zubair (d. 692 AD) destroyed the structure of the Kabah and remade it on Abrahamic foundations. But soon after Abdullah ibn Zubair’s death, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi (d. 714 AD) destroyed the structure that Abdullah ibn Zubair had built and reconstructed the Kabah on the foundations that the Quraysh had earlier built it on.