 The mysteries of Islam fascinate us time and time again. This is no different from the life story of the Prophet. Who was Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa alihi wasallam? An illiterate dozen merchant who one day stumbled upon amazing Arabic rhetoric. Or was he the creation of Allah's greatest light, sent down to earth to pull man out of ignorance and bring them to the purest of truths? I, Ali Burji, am on a journey to discover the real story behind the Prophet, the real story behind our religion, the roots, the beginning, the cradle of civilization. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. So regarding the Quraysh, they gave an offer, as you've mentioned, to the Holy Prophet. Did they go to Abu Talib and give this offer? According to this narration, which is in Bihar, volume 18, page 182, they went to Abu Talib. Okay, so they went to Abu Talib, and they told him, we'll give him all the money, make him richer than us, we'll give him jurisdiction, we'll give him the authority, we'll be here under his domain, subject to him stopping, so we can carry on with our businesses, we can have all the trade coming in and everything that was attributed with idol worship. And obviously, we wouldn't expect a positive answer, obviously. Abu Talib would have taken the message to Holy Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and obviously he rejected. What happened next? He said, you know, they should give me one word, make a statement, if you like. They would be the kings of the Arabs, and even the non-Arabs would come under their domain, and they would be kings in paradise as well. So Abu Talib conveyed that, and they said, that sounds very good, you know, it's better than we expected, kings in paradise as well. We'll give them not one statement, we'll give them ten statements, we'll give him ten statements. What he wants us to say? He said, that you testify that there is no God but Allah, and that I am his messenger. I am the messenger of Allah. And they said, you want us to leave 360 gods in a way one god? So they refused, they refused to give that one statement. So they broke up, and of course they realized that they are being undermined. More and more people are going to him. And they said the thoughts that they want to, they should undermine him, ridicule him and so on, to the extent they should, at all costs, no matter what, we need to stop him. And of course it's well known that they started asking for miracles. Proofs? Proofs. Okay. But miracles that prove that, okay, to prove to us that you are a messenger of Allah. You are supported by the Divine, if you like. And in this Hotbat 7192 of Nasi Al-Balagh, Imam Ali reports that, again, when the revelation was made, it says, I heard the moan of shaitan, when wahi was first revealed on the prophet, and I said to the prophet, ya Rasulallah, what is that? Moan. He said, this shaitan is a worship. This is the shaitan, he has lost all hope of being worshipped. Basically saying that shaitan was planning to come up with all these various religions and so on, so that it would fall in the category of mankind for worshipping the shaitan instead of Allah swt. And now that this wahi has started, this revelation has started, the revelation of Islam, this really shattered, destroyed all his plans. Did it shatter it or delay it? Because we do have double worship today. We do about not the way that he wanted it. Oh, he wanted it, okay. If it wasn't for the prophet, it would have been totalitarian. Absolutely. Okay. There would be no remnants of right, and it would be complete falsehood, provident. The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, is what keeps the truth on the surface. Yes, yes. Alhamdulillah. Not only that, he established the truth, and Alhamdulillah, the religion of Islam, if you like, is the only religion which has its teachings there, solidly. The teachings of Islam, the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, and the teachings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and Ahlul Bayt, his 12 successes, if you like, are there without being distorted. And the fact that they are available to mankind today, they understood the Qur'an, and they understood the teachings of Ahlul Bayt and Islam. Apart from that, it's marvellous. Basically, they feed and they strengthen right as opposed to falsehood. They strengthen the haqq, they strengthen the truth. And for all people to see, and all people can access, this is something extremely important. Whereas this is not the case for, if you like, other religions, because they've been distorted in one way or another. I would like to continue this because the point of, we were talking about the miracles and proofs. So the shaitan was moaning, he was rather displeased, he was very annoyed. The fact that this new wahi started upon the Prophet, peace be upon him, and he knew that with this wahi, all his plans are in tatas, they've been destroyed. As you said, he may be here and there, but it's nothing prominent as he would have liked it to be. Then the Prophet says to Imam, peace be upon him, You hear what I hear. This is quite important. We should link it to the earlier one we talked about in the last episode that Imam, the Prophet appointed Imam Ali as his Khalifa, his successor, right from the word go, when he was talking to Bani Hashim, inviting them to Islam. So, you hear what I hear and you see what I see, except that you're not a prophet. But you are vice-chairman, you are, if you like, my appointed successor, and you are on the right path. So that's something important. Then Imam Ali, peace be upon him, continues. He says, I was with him, peace be upon him and his family, when some people from Quraish came to him, and they asked, you have made a huge, you have made a big claim, a claim that your fathers and forefathers have not. And that we want to see, we're going to ask you something, if you can do it, then we know that you are a messenger of God, and if you can't do it, then it will be proof, as far as we are concerned, that you are a magician, a sorcerer, and a liar. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, okay, what do you want? He said, we asked you to, and they were pointing to a tree at a distance, that that tree is uprooted along with its roots and so on, it comes and stands before you here. So they were seeking for supernatural incidents to feed their... And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said to them, Allah is able to do everything. And if Allah did that for you, will you believe in Allah and in me? And they said, yes. He said, I'll do whatever you ask, I'll show you whatever you ask, but I know that you wouldn't believe in me. And then Allah said to... I'm sorry, the Prophet, peace be upon him, addressed the tree, he faced the tree and addressed her and said, if you believe in Allah and the day of judgment and believe that I am the messenger of Allah, so I want you to be uprooted and come and stand here before me. And Imam Ali, peace be upon him, then consisted by the... by he who sent the Prophet, peace be upon him, as a messenger, the tree became uprooted and it moved and it had a loud humming sound and the leaves and they were flapping and they came and stood before the Prophet, peace be upon him. Did the tree speak? Did he say did the tree speak or just came closer to Rasulullah, peace be upon him? And here in this sermon, it doesn't say that the tree spoke and he says, when they saw that, obviously they were very shocked. So they wanted more if you like. They asked out of their arrogance and tried, they said, ask half of the tree to move back to where it was. Subhanallah, they're not satisfied, they just want more, as if they're seeing a tree getting out of its location and moving as in every day. So the Prophet asked the tree to do that and half of the tree moved back whereas the other half stayed there. Subhanallah. And yet again, they denied. And then that wasn't enough. They said, okay, ask the other half to go back and join and fuse back the way it used to be and the Prophet, peace be upon him, asked for the other half of the tree to go back and fuse to the first half. Subhanallah. And then Imam Ali says that I said, not Subhanallah but he said, La ilaha illallah. I said, there is no God but Allah. I am the first one to believe in your messenger of Allah and the tree did what it did by the command of Allah, Subhanallah, to prove and to testify to your prophethood. But despite that, the people from Qura'i said, no, he's a liar and he's a magician. There is something that Imam Ali has said that you would not believe. Unfortunately there was, and they said to him, oh, the only people who believe in you are like that boy. Imam Ali says they meant me. This stubbornness, of course, should be continued for a long time despite all the few supernatural events and miracles that they asked the Prophet to do. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, continued to invite people to Islam. So would he go on a daily basis to the Ka'bah, the holy Ka'bah and preach there? Would he organize Majalis meetings, gatherings? Yes, probably not every day to the Ka'bah. But certainly he would organize Majalis meetings in houses of those followers who are following the Prophet, peace be upon him, so he continued to do that to gain more and more supporters. But the thing is they became more Quraish, more vocal and they started harassing and punishing the followers of the Prophet, peace be upon him. Who were more keen in coming towards the religion in the beginning? Who were more open to Islam? Various people, basically whoever, those who came were if you like who they could ponder and think for themselves. Sorry, what I want to say is I remember reading that in the beginning the poor and the young were more open to Islam than obviously the rich and the elderly. Yeah, that could be the poor and the young, in fact the slaves. They started thinking about this. If you like the rich, yes, they had a lot of vested interests. They didn't want to lose their position, even though the Prophet said to them that it's not matter of losing your position, you could still be the head of Quraish and be a Muslim. Which of course eventually that's how it worked out. When it was the conquest of Mecca, which ten years later, took place. The chiefs of Quraish, if you like, they tended to be Muslims. They accepted Islam, if you like. And the main chiefs. And if you like, they became Muslims and they didn't lose any of their status or wealth or whatever. And the Prophet, we'll come into that by the Prophet, was helping them. So yes, to begin with it was the people who were thinking. One of the people who, if you like, became Muslim is Bilal al-Habashi. He was an African slave of Quraish, of one of the masters of Quraish. And he became Muslim and of course that angered Quraish. And furthermore, he refused to take orders from their masters. And this was a sign of things to come that, you know, this Muhammad, he's causing social tension, if you like. Changing the Nidam, the system. And of course, something which they didn't like. And like slaves did that. People who weren't slaves, but if you like, young, they weren't so young. But anyway, young. Abu Dhar, for example, he embraced Islam. Abu Dhar al-Ghaffari. Abu Dhar al-Ghaffari. During the first, you know, those three years in private. And we have reports that he, the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said to him, you should go back to your tribe, Ghaffar, your tribe and convey the message of Islam to them so that they become Muslim, they embrace Islam. And he said to the Prophet, but I can't. I really want to sort of make this declaration openly in the mosque. So he went to the mosque and at the top of his voice he said, I testify there is no God but Allah. Mosque meaning the Kaaba, the Masjid al-Haram. Yes. Kaaba. Yes, of course, at that time that was the only mosque, the Masjid there. I testify there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And this was something, if you like, a red line as far as Quraysh was concerned. A lot of people, at least some of the people who were there from Quraysh, they gathered around him and attacked him. And beating him with the intention of killing him. But it's said that Al-Abbas or another person, Al-Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet, he said in order to discourage them from doing this, continue with their beating of Abu Dhar, he said to them, you do business with gharfar and you have links with gharfar. If you kill this man, he is one of the gharfar, then... We'll lose money basically. It will be to your detriment, not in your interest. So they stopped. At least they were convinced to stop. So they let him go. He came back another day. And by the way, when he said, I want to make this declaration, the Prophet SAW said, they will beat you and kill you. To the extent that they will kill you. They have no business to killing you. So you shouldn't do that, what he did. And then a second time, he went a second time. And he did that, and they started beating him. And again, other Abbas or someone else, he warned them about gharfar, the tribe of gharfar, the tribe of Abu Dhar. His name is Jundub, but he is known as Abu Dhar. And so he managed to persuade them to stop, which they did. The Prophet said to him, you should go back to your tribe and await when you hear the news, when I say for you to come back. And I want you to go and convince your tribe so that they become... Basically, the Prophet SAW, didn't want confrontation with Quraish. He wanted to try... Run it smoothly as much as possible. Run it smoothly, but create as large a base as possible. Okay, okay. Build the foundation. He wanted more and more people to embrace Islam. And this was his strategy throughout. So if you like non-violence, even pacifism accepting violence and absorbing it and not responding likewise, he wanted to convey the message to the people. Because he knew that this message is inert with the natural... the nature of the human being, and they will accept it. And this is what happened. There will be hardship. It was narrated that, for example, as he was passing through one day, people started hurling stones at him. And one of the companions, of course, he started bleeding all over his face because they were hitting him with hurling stones at him. Basically, they shouted at him. And then one of the companions said, Why don't you invoke Allah to punish them, curse them? He said, I haven't been sent as a cursor for these people. I haven't been sent as a mercy. So he said, he started wiping out the blood from his face. And he said, Allahumma firli qawmi, O God, forgive my people for they don't know. They don't know any better. So he certainly didn't respond likewise. He continued with his message of non-violence, if you like. And he absorbed all the violence that they showed him. And he wanted to convey his message to the people, which he did during these hard times. And also he did the same way when he migrated, inshallah we'll talk about it, when he migrated to Medina, he became the head of state. He was the ruler and people who obeyed him. He had thousands under his command. And even at that time, he continued the same manner. If there were any battles that he engaged in, it was purely in self-defense. He never ever initiated any battle, any fighting. This was his policy. Coming back home, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam stayed in Mecca during the first ten years. They suffered a lot of hardship, a lot of persecution. But he continued with his policy of trying to convey the message of Islam to the people, give them time to think about it, and hopefully gradually to embrace Islam. Which of course, this is what happened. It didn't happen at the pace in Mecca as it did in Medina. Because they could see more and more teachings of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. People became more interested and they embraced Islam in huge numbers. I will go into that in detail, inshallah. When it was in Mecca, the numbers were far less because the enemy, if you like, Quraysh was more powerful. They were proactively, not only they were spreading propaganda against the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, but they were proactively stopping people from embracing and punishing people from embracing Islam. Boycotting, basically. The terminology was quite famous today. Boycotting the Muslims, yes, but I'm talking about they were actually proactively stopping people from embracing Islam or thinking about it. So they would torture them, try to scare them, threatening them. Yeah, threatening people from going towards Islam. So because of that, the number of people embracing Islam was far less compared to Medina. It is well known that while in the valley in the valley of Al-Talib, they spent a very long time there. At night, Al-Talib was concerned that the Prophet may be harmed or even killed by assassins during the night when he was asleep. So he used to keep vigil of Al-Talib and he used to get his sons to sleep in the place of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.