Muslim Studies

...permitted; how then must this relationship have stood in those times when the call of the Meccan dreamer, followed by a few prayer-brothers in Medina, first penetrated the desert!

III.

Even more than the personality of the "Messenger of God," it was the content and direction of his teaching that was fundamentally repulsive to the Arab soul. The basic ideas of Muhammad’s preaching were, in their details, a protest against much that the Arab had previously held as valuable and noble. What the pagan Arab considered the highest ethical perfection could, in the Muhammadan sense, be regarded as the deepest moral depravity, and vice versa. Much like the Church Father Augustine Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), a foundational Christian theologian., the Muhammadan doctrine also viewed "the virtues of the pagans as splendid vices." Original Latin: splendida vitia.

If someone honestly converted to Islam Literally "submission.", they committed themselves to virtues that the Arabic mind considered lowly. No true Arab soul was willing to consent to the abandonment of its ancestral ideals of virtue. When the wife of the hero ‘Abbâs b. Mirdâs learned that her husband had joined the Prophet, she destroyed her dwelling and returned to her tribe; to her unfaithful spouse, she addressed a poem of rebuke, in which she speaks these words, among others:

By my life, if you follow the Religion Original: Dîn of Muhammad,

and abandon the faithful¹ and the benefactors,

1. Ikhwân al-ṣafâ Literally "Brothers of Sincerity.", thus not the "pure brothers," as shall be emphasized and further discussed here once more for the correction of a common error (cf. Journal of Oriental Philology 1886, p. 23, 8 from bottom). The early occurrence of this phrase, which the philosophers of Basra A group of 10th-century scholars known as the Brethren of Purity. chose as their name, can be documented by Hamasa p. 390 v. 3 (cf. Arabic Opuscula ed. Wright p. 132, note 33) and Kitab al-Aghani The Book of Songs, a major collection of poems and biographies. XVIII, p. 218, 16. Cf. from later poetry Aghani V, p. 131, 3; the expression must be understood in this same sense in the so-called Prayer of Al-Farabi A famous early Islamic philosopher. (see August Müller, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 1884 December, p. 958) and in similar applications (Yatimat al-dahr ed. Damascus II, p. 89, 11). For akhû Brother., other terms of kinship and belonging are used in this context, e.g., nadîm al-ṣafâ Companion of sincerity; Aghani XXI, p. 66, 7. ḥalîf al-ṣafâ Ally of sincerity; ibid. XIII, p. 35, 8 bottom., thus in the same sense as we find ḥalîf al-jûd Ally of generosity; V, p. 13, 23., ḥalîf al-lu'm Ally of baseness; XIV, p. 83, 3 bottom., ḥalîf al-dhull Ally of humiliation; II, p. 84, 16., ḥilf al-makârim Ally of noble deeds; XVII, p. 71, 14., or ḥalîfu-hammin Ally of sorrow., ḥilf-al-saqâm Ally of sickness; Al-Muwassha ed. Brünnow p. 161, 18, 24. or muḥâlif al-ṣayd Opponent of the hunt; Nab. App. 26: 37. Furthermore, the verb halafa To swear an oath or become an ally. III is very often used to express that someone possesses a quality, a condition, or a color, the name of which follows the verb in the accusative. Other synonyms are used in this context just like akhû and ḥalîf...