THE POLICY OF DELINKING

THE POLICY OF DELINKING Finding sure Solutions T HE British educator E.E. Kellet (1864 - 1950) writing about the Prophet Muhammad in his book, A Short History of Religions, observes, ‘He faced adversity with the determination to wring success out of failure.’ What was the method which led the Prophet to this unusual success? It was adherence to the policy of delinking two issues. An example of this policy is in 610 CE, when the Prophet Muhammad began his mission in Makkah, a town of Arabia, to propagate the ideology of monotheism—belief in the one God and worshipping Him alone. It was the first quarter of the seventh century and in those times the Arabs were mostly polytheists. Four thousand years prior to this, the Prophet Abraham had built a mosque in Makkah in which to worship the one God. It is this mosque which is called the Kaaba. But, in later periods, people belonging to various Arab tribes began to worship other deities in Kaaba until, finally, every prevailing tribe had their own deity, so that there were a total of 360 deities within the precincts of the Kaaba. From the point of view of his mission, this was the greatest issue faced by the Prophet Muhammad. Instead of taking steps which would have resulted in a violent confrontation with the custodians of the Kaaba, the Prophet analyzed the situation dispassionately and came to the conclusion that the prevailing situation there had a positive side to it. As different tribes of Arabia would come to Makkah all year round to worship their dieties, almost on a daily basis in and around the Kaaba, there would be gatherings of substantial numbers of people. The Prophet Muhammad adopted the policy of delinking two issues: the worship aspect and the gathering of people there. He decided to temporarily ignore the first issue and to avail of the gathering of visitors there as an audience for his mission. The Prophet adhered to this policy of delinking for a period of thirteen years, until finally a substantial number of Makkans became Wisdom demands that before embarking on a mission, a person should review the situation in a dispassionate way, and refrain from launching oneself on a course of action with an eye only on the problems, for this goes against nature.