Boreal
Remembering Uzza
If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub
Mecca Cowed and Deceived
Uzza:
On January 630, less than two years into a ten-year non-aggression pact,
Muhammad, at the head of an army numbering at least ten thousand, marches on
Mecca. There is no one to hinder the march of the believers as between them and
the holy city are tribes that have converted to Islam or are allies of the
Muslims, Khaybar having convinced many, the Bedouins in particular, that in
Muhammad they have a winner who will deliver on his promise of wealth and women
for fighting under his banner in Allah’s Cause.
Bob: So much for treaties with Muslims?
Archie: In a bar fight, if you don't finish off the other guy when he is down, you're a dead man. Allah understood this when He said not to ask for peace when you have the upper hand; finish them off.
Gerry: But Uzza told us that He also said you should not break a treaty.
Uzza: Unless you fear treachery, and Muhammad, from what we have been told, was convinced the Meccans had been supplying arms to the Banu Bakr, a tribe allied with the Meccans that had been fighting a tribe allied with the Muslims, the Banu Khuzah.
Archie: In everything this Allah says, paranoia seems to run deep, as the man said[273]. From beating your wife to beating the other guy, it's all about what's on your mind?
Bob: Not so much what's on your mind, but what you think is on the other person's mind.
Archie: That's paranoia, d’oh!
Gerry: Uzza, what were the Meccans thinking? They had to be aware of the precarious position they were in and that the worst thing they could do was give the Prophet a reason to attack?
Archie: Give it up, Gerry, it was all a pretense.
Uzza: What we know for sure is that the Meccans vigorously protested their innocence and offered to compensate Muhammad and the believers, to no avail, for any damage the Banu Bakr may have caused.
Archie: There you go...
Bob: I feel a Mecca morning coming on.
Uzza: Mecca was not Khaybar.
Bob: Because there were no Jews?
Uzza: No, that was not it. Mecca was not a community of farmers and Mecca still had powerful friends. Muhammad was no fool; he had to know a full-frontal assault like at Khaybar could prove disastrous for the believers, many of whom were leery about attacking sacred Mecca. He had to get the Meccans to surrender without a fight, and quickly.
Bob: And how would he do that?
Uzza: Muhammad was not bound by convention. He did what he needed to do to win and then made sure you were never in a position to challenge his authority again as he progressed to his next objective, always with the ultimate prize in mind. He was both brilliant in war and peace, even using a tactic of the Arabs to avoid bloodshed: the fear of death.
Bob: But the Muslims were not afraid of death?
Uzza: But their opponents were. And the believers have been using this fear to their advantage to this day.
Bob: You mean they sent suicide squads inside Mecca to kill men, women and children to spread terror?
Uzza: They did what I believe the Meccans at Medina tried to do, intimidate the believers into giving up without a fight by convincing them that they would lose if it came to that, and that they probably would lose their lives.
Gerry: Isn’t that a form of terrorism?
Uzza: The Meccan form is a promise reluctantly made in the name of self-preservation. Islamic terror is proactive and coercive; it has a violent history and an agenda and it does not care how many lives or whose life it takes and in what manner − the more horrific the better − and that is what makes it so effective.
Gerry: But at Mecca, the Prophet used the Meccan way and it worked.
Uzza: He used the Arab way in making for a show of strength then offering a compromise to avoid bloodshed. But it remained Islamic-style terrorism in that it was coercive and when he had the Meccans at his mercy, his agenda would not be denied.
Gerry: You mean Allah’s Cause?
Archie: Get over it, they’re the same!
Uzza: In front of Mecca, Muhammad initially behaved like an Arab, not a believer, offering a way out to a suitably awed disinclined foe who enjoyed the life they had in the here-and-now and were in no hurry to find out what awaited them in the Hereafter.
Archie: Like any sensible people.
Uzza: What also worked in Muhammad's favour was that the hapless Meccan leader at the Battle of the Trench still held sway. With nothing to stop him but the determination of free men to remain free, Muhammad parked his army, when he arrived at nightfall, just outside the city. Countless campfires were lit to confuse the enemy as to the size of his army.
Bob: Isn’t that what they always do?
Uzza: With everything in order, he invited the hapless Abu Sufyan for a visit. During his time among the believers, Muhammad made sure he was constantly surrounded by thousands of heavily armed holy warriors, some on parade, other executing mock attacks in the shimmering firelight making them even more menacing, spontaneously stopping whatever they were doing to shout that blood-curdling cry, Allahu Akbar, announcing an imminent slaughter in Allah's Cause, as it does today.
Gerry: Impressive.
Uzza: With a suitably cowered Abu Sufyan, Muhammad offered to spare the lives of all Meccans who laid down their arms and stayed in their homes or sought refuge in the Ka'ba while the believers occupied the city. Except for Sufyan's wife, who remained defiant, the Meccan surrendered en masse and agreed to become believers, but not before obtaining a concession from Muhammad that they could continue worshipping the goddesses al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat[274].
Gerry: And he agreed to this concession?
Uzza: Yes, after a quick consultation with Allah.
Archie: Am I missing something here? Muslims don't worship women.
Uzza: No, they do not. The next morning Muhammad said it was all the devil's doing; that the devil had intruded on his conversation with Allah and that in the morning God had set him straight[275]. Allah was particularly incensed that the Meccans would assign to Him female offspring[276].
Archie: I give up. Muslims will believe anything.
Uzza: What are referred to as The Satanic Verses[277], revelations that confirmed the existence of female goddesses who were entitled to be worshipped, were stricken from the Koran.
Bob: But that was a condition for the Meccans to become Muslims. Nobody objected?
Uzza: What could they do? The believers were in control of their city and their weapons had been confiscated.
Footnotes
[273] “Paranoia strikes deep” from What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1966. Lyrics by Stephen Stills.
[274] The Prophet's tribe, the Quraysh, used to chant, as they circumambulated the Ka'ba, "Al-Lat, and al-Uzza and Manat, the third, the other; indeed these are exalted gharaniq (cranes); let us hope for their intercession." F. E. Peters, The Hajj, p 3-41
22:52 We have not sent a Messenger or Prophet before you but when he recited the Devil would intrude into his recitation. Yet Allah annuls what the Devil had cast. Then Allah establishes His Revelations. Allah is All-Knowing and Wise.
53:19 Have you, then, seen al-Lat and al-‘Uzza?
53:20 And Manat, the third one, the other?
53:21 Do you have the male and He has the female? 53:22 That indeed is an unjust division.
53:23 These are mere names you and your fathers have named, for which Allah did not send down any authority. They only follow conjecture and what the souls desire; yet Guidance has come to them from their Lord.
53:24 Or will man have whatever he wishes?
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16:57 And they ascribe to Allah daughters [glory be to Him!], but to themselves what they desire (sons).
[277] These are the exalted cranes (al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat) Whose intercession [with Allah] is to be hoped for.