The Prophet’s Example Of Racial Equality
What greater proof of [the Prophet’s] belief in the equality of races could there be than the fact that he made a black African, Bilal, the first Muezzin of Islam - the man who called Muslims five times a day to pray in the Mosque. The honour which the Prophet(pbuh) conferred on Bilal symbolised Islam’s war against slavery and racism. It proclaimed in letter and deed the Prophet’s faith in the dignity of man; it rendered into practice the Islamic concept of human rights; it was an epochal accomplishment of the Islamic Revolution led by the Prophet(pbuh).
Ebony-coloured Bilal was born in Makkah, the son of an Abyssinian slave, Rabafi, who was sold into slavery in Ethiopia and transported across the Red Sea to Arabia where a rich Makkan trader bought him. The child of a slave, Bilal, was purchased in the slave market in Makkah by an Arab merchant, Umaya. His master treated him harshly and at times tortured him brutally. Bilal’s soul glowed with a new hope when he saw Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) in Makkah and heard his inspiring words about God, the Creator of the Universe, the equality and fraternity of all mankind. These were strange but stirring words for a black slave in Makkah where slave-owners were often inhuman. Bilal was one of the very early Makkan converts to Islam.
When his pagan master, Umaya, learnt of what to him was a heresy, he flung him hand-tied into the dungeon where disobedient slaves were punished. He was savagely flogged until he became senseless. Even as the whip cracked on his bare body, Bilal thought and spoke of God and His Prophet(pbuh). It looked like a test of Bilal’s newly-found faith in God and, indeed, God did not let him down. It turned out to be the day of his spiritual and physical emancipation. A trusted companion of the Prophet(pbuh), Abu Bakr(r), bought Bilal from his cruel master and set him free. It was the wish of the Prophet(pbuh) that Bilal should be rescued from his tormentor and made a free man. In Abu Bakr’s house, the Prophet(pbuh) prayed for Bilal, the wounds caused by the florins healed soon and he was nursed back to health.
In the company of his close companions, the Prophet(pbuh) received and embraced Brial and inducted him into the fold of Islam. Bilal was now a free man, a Muslim and a faithful companion of Islam’s God-sent Prophet(pbuh). He represented Black Africa in the early clan of Islam. As a slave he could never think of rubbing shoulders with the elders of the proud and often arrogant tribe of the Quraish in Makkah. As a Muslim, he sat on terms of equality with them in the Prophet’s company. The Prophet’s religion had no place for slavery; it treated all men and women as the children of Adam and Eve it knew no barriers of race and colour. In the eternal brotherhood of Islam, preached by the Prophet(pbuh), all men and women are equal.
For twenty-two long and eventful years, Bilal was the Prophet’s devoted companion and the caller of the Faithful to prayer. The Prophet(pbuh) could have made one of his Arab companions Islam’s first Muezzin but he chose a black African for this great honour and privilege. Also assigned to Bilal was the joyful duty of waking up the Prophet(pbuh) every morning just before prayer-time in the room where he slept next to the Mosque he built in Madina.
One of the other durable links the Prophet(pbuh) had with Africa was his friendship with the Negus who ruled Abyssinia. A Godfearing Christian, the Negus had given refuse to the band of early Muslims who fled from persecution in Makkah. The Prophet(pbuh) corresponded with him about Islam. The Prophet(pbuh) treated with respect and hospitality the emissaries from the court of the Negus. The relationship of trust and cooperation established by the Prophet (pbuh) between the Islamic State of Madina and the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia in Africa furnishes Islam’s earliest practice of the philosophy of peaceful co-existence between Muslim and non-Muslim States. The hospitality and cordiality shown to the emissaries from the Negus in the Islamic State of Madina are an excellent example of the refined diplomatic procedure and practice evolved by him as the temporal and spiritual ruler of Madina.
The Prophet’s categorical denunciation of slavery and racism was made in the historic sermon he gave on the occasion of the last Haj pilgrimage of his life. He said to the huge concourse of Muslims: 'O, the people, listen to and obey even though a mangled Abyssinian slave is your Emir (ruler) if he enforces the ordinances of the Book of Allah (the Holy Qur’an) amongst you." TheProphet (pbuh) thus threw open the highest offices in the State he founded to the non-Arabs as well. The thrust of Islam’s teaching was to outlaw slavery as an institution. But fourteen centuries ago, the economic and social system in Arabia was such that it would have been too drastic and, indeed, an impractical measure to ban it totally. Islam, therefore, prescribed it as a virtue for its followers to free slaves, and the Prophet’s devoted Companions set an example of it by buying freedom for Bilal and many other slaves. In his last Haj sermon, the Prophet (pbuh) had said: “As for your slaves, see that you feed them with such food as you eat yourself and clothe them with the clothes that you yourselves wear.”
Even before the Angel Gabriel revealed to Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) the word of God in the cave of Hira in Makkah, his deep concern for the well-being of slaves in the city of his birth was well known. He never owned a slave but his heart was touched sorely by their plight. He saw a slave boy cowering under the weight of the burden he carried on his back. The Prophet (pbuh) rushed to his help and carried on his own back most of what the boy was required to transport by his master. The Prophet (pbuh) was in mental anguish when he saw a slave girl being beaten up by her cruel master in a public square in Makkah. He pleaded mercy for the bruised girl but her owner turned a deaf ear and persisted in whipping her. Sad and agitated, the Prophet (pbuh) told his beloved wife, Khadijah, what he had seen and the shock this brutal scene had given him. A devoted wife, Khadijah bought the slavergirl the next day and set her free. The Prophet (pbuh) was immensely pleased.
Centuries before the French Revolution, the Prophet (pbuh) preached to mankind the inspiring message of human equality and fraternity and sounded the trumpet of war against racism. The Prophet(pbuh) thus commanded his followers in his last Haj sermon: “O people, verily your Lord is one and your father is one. All of you are the progeny of Adam and Adam was created out of clay. There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over an Arab; for the white over the black or the black over the white, except in piety and righteousness. Verily the noblest among you is he who is the most pious.” The Prophet (pbuh) uttered these high minded and noble words in a predominantly Arab gathering in an age when most Arabs considered themselves a superior race. By his revolutionary commandment, the Prophet (pbuh)outlawed for all time from the world of Islam any thought of racial superiority or colour bar. The religion he preached was universal and the message of God which he gave to the world was for all mankind. The colour of one’s skin had no meaning in the Islamic way of life. In the eyes of the Prophet (pbuh), the criterion for respect and honour in the Muslim community was one’s piety and obedience to the will of God as revealed in the Holy Qur’an.
Islam’s precept of human equality and brotherhood of man is as valid and worthy of emulation today as it was 1420 years ago. It was this great revolutionary doctrine which gave Islam the universal appeal it won in a few decades, enabling it to surge across the desert of Arabia and establish itself as one of the most widely-practised religions in three populous continents - Asia, Africa and Europe. In the USA, multitudes of Afro-Americans have found new hope and vigour in the fold of Islam and its tenet of human equality. They are impressed by the fact that some twelve centuries before Abraham Lincoln waged a war against slavery in the New World, the Prophet (pbuh) had commanded his followers to free slaves. Some of Islam’s renowned generals were former slaves who found freedom, honour, dignity and recognition of their worth in the Islamic fraternity.
Islam was the herald of social reforms in Arabia and the Prophet (pbuh) was its standard-bearer during his lifetime. In early Islam, the flow of reforms was massive, giving its trans-national propagation a new impetus. Ijtehad or independent reasoned thinking in the light of Islamic principles was its main instrument. The Prophet (pbuh) advised his companion, Muaz ibne Jabal, when he was sending him as Governor to Yemen, that in dealing with a problem in regard to which the Quranic commandments and the Prophetic traditions were silent, he should use his own judgement. A Western philosopher, Winwood Reade, considered as a pioneer of rationalism in Europe, wrote in his book, “The Martyrdom of Man”, that the career of the Prophet of Islam “is the best example that can be given of the influence of the individual in human history”.