In order to understand Islam, we must understand its prophet, Muhammad. There were two Muhammads, with two characters. In Mecca, Muhammad preached and exhorted people to submit to Islam. In Medina, he used the threat of the sword to compel people to convert to Islam. Meccan contemporaries passed a very harsh judgment on him. They called him a crazed poet, among other things, because they felt what he kept saying didn’t cut it even as poetry, given the fact that poets have always been afforded a wide berth. Being a poet myself, I know that my poetry is often received, if not with great appreciation, with a modicum of acceptance, or at least tolerance. Muhammad may or may not have been a crazed poet, since this appellation is largely based on tastes and opinions.
Others, as of more recent times, have concluded that the man suffered from a chronic case of recurring seizures. They attribute Muhammad’s claims about receiving revelations from Allah and the numerous experiences he reportedly had with jinn as clear indications of seizure-induced hallucinations. Modern neuroscience documents the fact that a form of mental illness involves auditory and visual hallucinations that may seem very real experiences to the afflicted.
A third group claims that Muhammad was simply a fraud and a charlatan who made up all this for his own nefarious purposes.
Of course, calling people names is hardly a civil basis of discrediting them. Muhammad may or may not have been a crazed poet, a seizure-afflicted, or a charlatan. What I can say about Muhammad, based on facts, are the followings:
* He was a first-rate student of human nature.
* He was greatly skilled at gathering information from any and all sources to construct his claim. Some may call this practice of his “plagiarism,” while others consider it “eclecticism,” in the sense of selectively picking and choosing bits and pieces of material that suited him from any and all sources.
* He was also a great improviser. He had the uncanny talent of coming up with pronouncements, adjudications and answers on the spur of the moment.
* He was a great strategist, in the broadest sense of the term.
* He was a marketing genius.
Learning from failure
It is universally understood that failure is only failure if the person fails to learn from his errors, becomes disheartened, and abandons the pursuit of his objective.
Thomas Edison was reportedly asked how he felt about his failing some eleven hundred times in his attempt to make a light bulb. Failing, he replied, I learned eleven hundred ways of not making light bulbs.
In the case of Muhammad, the same is true indeed. First, he tried for thirteen long years in Mecca to peddle his religion. He was mild-mannered, spoke kindly about the Jews and even preached tolerance for other religions by statements such as lakom dinekom va leya al-deen (to you your religion and to me my religion).
What did he accomplish preaching religion and being meek? Not much at all. Not many people could get interested in his religion. He attracted only about 150 takers at a cost of huge amounts of ridicule and abuse.
He must have learned a lesson from his failure. The place was crowded with more gods and religions than he could count. Not too many people were beating the bushes in the desserts of Arabia looking for another god and another religion.
Life got to be so intolerable in Mecca that he had to beat a fast track out of town to Medina, accompanied by a small band of followers.
Meeting a Need
It is also a truism that a surefire way of succeeding in marketing a product, be it a thing or an idea, is to come up with something that people need. By contrast, trying to make people buy or accept something they don’t need or don’t want is more than likely a recipe for frustration and failure.
Let me illustrate this point. The famed American businessman Howard Johnson complained bitterly about his failure to lure the American public to the 31 ice cream flavors. Exasperated, he bemoaned that he had spent a fortune and a great deal of time creating the 31 different flavors and people, time and again, came and asked for either vanilla, or chocolate and occasionally strawberry ice creams — the three old varieties.
The moral of the story is that the best strategy for success is to find a need and fill it, rather than try to create a need. The entire multi-billion-dollar advertising industry is acutely aware of this important dictum. The advertising industry is not in the business of producing products; its task is to convince the consumers they need the product. It is not an easy sell. Hence, the industry employs innumerable tactics to promote its merchandise. One way they achieve their goal is by convincing the consumer that although he doesn’t know it, he really needs their widget. Failing that, they try to lure the consumer by convincing him that their widget is superior to the others. It is this latter strategy that is the mainstay of the advertising industry. Attractive commercials, even deceptive portrayals of the products, and numerous other subtle and not so subtle tactics are employed to achieve their goal of selling the product.
The genius of Muhammad was in the discovery of this secret of success. He learned his lesson. He abandoned his Mecca sell strategy. It was a non-starter. He astutely observed what wouldn’t sell. He abandoned the soft sell and all that stuff about “your religion for you and my religion for me” and the live-and-let-live preaching.
In modern terms, Muhammad did market research. He realized that he had to go with what people already wanted. He had to go with a new twist that capitalized on the deeply engrained belief, need, and practice of the people. It was a stroke of marketing genius.
What was the need? The Arabian Peninsula was home to dozens of widely dispersed tribes that were chronically at war with one another. A major source of livelihood for these tribes was to attack other tribes, defeat them, and take their possessions. Or to attack trading caravans, kill the proprietors and take the loot.
The practice of warring was so widespread and nonstop that a sort of agreement was worked out, forbidding warring for four months a year. One month was even called Muharram, literally meaning the month of forbidden wars.
But attacking other tribes to kill the men and take their possessions, including the women and children, to be retained or sold as slaves, was a very risky business indeed. The attackers would be liable to lose limbs and even life. Or they might be taken as slaves. There had to be some serious calculations taking place before a tribe would risk attacking another. Would a few camels, goats and some women and children would be worth the risk? That’s all there was in it. Put your life and limb on the line for not in the hope of some loot. The cost-benefit thing was a very troubling factor in deciding to attack and risk for the possible gain of some things.
Muhammad solved the problem with a stroke of genius. He observed that a significant number of relatively prosperous Jews lived in Medina. They certainly seemed like a very tempting target for exploitation. At first, he tried to convert them and get his cut — 20% or khoms that he demanded from each person. The Jews said, no thank you, we are not interested. You are offering us a deal we can do without. They had a decent religion of their own and found nothing in Muhammad’s that was worth abandoning what they had and start paying him the khoms, to boot. Besides, the Jews were not in the warring business. They were basically merchants and some farmers.
Muhammad Preaching to the Choir
Figuratively speaking, Muhammad found the perfectly receptive people to his message: the Arab idolaters. Those people, as I said earlier, were already deeply in the business of warring and looting. All Muhammad had to do was to sanction their practice and further sweeten the deal for them.
It is not too farfetched to imagine the following scenario, since Muhammad was in the habit of going to any gathering of men and spontaneously addressing them. During one such gathering in Medina, Muhammad must have found the receptive ears of a few Arab chieftains to his thoroughly revised offerings. At this gathering, he told the men exactly what they longed and needed to hear.
He must have said something like this:
Look here, you men. You know all about Allah, don’t you? He is that all-powerful, the all-present, the all-vengeful, and the all-everything. The one and only god, and there is no other god beside him. He is always present. You must have experienced his presence without actually seeing him. He follows you everywhere and; shadows you closely in the wilderness and watches and knows everything you do and say. He even knows what is in your heart. I am his emissary.
Allah speaks to me. I have no choice. I am his vessel and his obedient slave. I am rasu-ul-allah (messenger of Allah). Allah says that there are two types of people in this world: those who worship other gods than him and those who are turning in adoration to him. He promises great torments for the kefir (unbeliever), both here and in the dreadful hell after they die. By contrast, he ordains for those who worship him and do his bidding great blessings in this life and gives them mansions in paradise after they die.
Do you hear me?
“Amen, amen. Speak up rasu-ul-allah. What is Allah’s paradise like? Tell us about it,” a man pipes up.
It is indescribably glorious. No words can even attempt doing justice to it. Only a hint or two should give you some inkling. It is a place where rivers of honey and milk flow, the shores densely packed with incredibly lush variety of fruits, with seventy-two houris (one of the beautiful maidens that in Muslim belief live with the blessed in paradise) for every faithful believer where he will reside forever.
The men are breathless.
Muhammad continues: “Allah wants me to share this message with all those who are willing to abide by his bidding.”
“What is the message, rasu-ul-allah? We are ready to do whatever Allah wants,” another man speaks up.
The mighty Allah at long last has lost his patience with the unrepentant kefir and wants his believers to take action on his behalf and for his cause: jaahedoo fi sabil-ul-allah (make jihad for the cause of Allah), he commands. The earth was created by him, only for his followers and needs be cleansed from all who disbelieve in him. The disbelievers have no rights to anything whatsoever. They can either become obedient slaves of Allah or the believers are free to subjugate them and make them pay.
“Subjugate them and make them pay” must have sounded like music to the already skilled plunderers-killers. It was a perfect case of finding an already existing need and filling it in a most appealing way.
This was likely the tipping point. The warring, plundering Arabs were offered a deal they couldn’t refuse. They could attack, kill, and plunder the non-believers. By so doing, they would get the goods in this world, and if they didn’t, and lost limbs and life, it would be a small price to pay for doing Allah’s bidding and getting their ticket punched to the magnificent paradise.
Ever since that time in Medina, the battle cry of the Muslims the world over has been: no matter which side gets killed, Islam and Muslims win.
According to Islam, life is but a moment on a fistful of dust earth. It is Allah’s paradise which is priceless, and the faithful khaledoon fiha abada (reside in it forever).
It is easy to see why a bunch of desperado simpletons living in the terribly inhospitable desert in abject poverty, who relied heavily in killing and plundering for their survival as it was, would be more than willing to trade their life for Allah’s promised paradise.
In Medina, the zeitgeist was perfect for Muhammad. All the pieces fell in place nicely. In no time at all, thousands and thousands flocked to him. It is likely that from day one people loved the winner. You find a winner and a winning cause, you join it. You stay away, you are likely to lose.