Page 54 - Age of Peace Goodword.indd

The Policy of Delinking

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he British educator E.E. Kellet (1864 – 1950) writing about
Tthe Prophet Muhammad in his book, A Short History of
Religions, observes,

‘He faced adversity with the determination to wring
success out of failure.’
1
What was the method which led the Prophet to this
unusual success? It was adherence to the policy of delinking
two issues. One example of this is when in 610 AD the Prophet
Muhammad began his mission in Makkah, a town of Arabia,
to propagate the ideology of monotheism – that is, believing
in the one God and worshipping Him alone. It was the first
quarter of the seventh century and in those times the Arabs
were mostly idol worshippers.

Four thousand years prior to this, the Prophet Abraham
had built a mosque in Makkah in which to worship the one
God. It is this mosque which is called the Kaaba. But, in later
periods, idol worshippers belonging to various Arab tribes
began to place their idols in the Kaaba until, finally, the total
number of idols within the precincts of the Kaaba reached no
less than 360.

From the point of view of his mission, this was the greatest
problem faced by the Prophet Muhammad. Apparently, what
he should have done was to begin his mission by purging
the Kaaba of idols, even if he had to engage in a violent
confrontation with the custodians of the Kaaba.

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