RENAISSANCE DECEMBER 2020

Qur’ ā nic Exegesis 21 Monthly Renaissance December 2020 acknowledgement was made as a favour to the Muslims but was made after they were over-awed with their might. It will become evident from verse 24 that had this peace agreement not been struck and a war ensued, the victory for the Muslims was certain. The Quraysh had fully assessed this situation and thus were desirous of an agreement; however, in order to have the upper hand, they wanted the Muslims not insist on ‘umrah that year and were to come the following year. In order to please the Muslims, they tried to gratify them by offering to vacate the city for three days when they came the following year to avoid any clash. This was no small an offer from the Quraysh. Secondly, as a result of this agreement, the Quraysh accepted the Muslims as an equal political force in Arabia. They no longer regarded the Muslims as rebels and traitors which they hitherto openly proclaimed; to them Muslims were now a rival political force of equal strength. Thus they openly acknowledged the right of the Muslims that they could make any of the Arab tribes their allies if the latter were willing. Thirdly, the Quryash also acknowledged the military might of the Muslims because they themselves insisted on writing the condition in the agreement that there would be no war between the two for ten years. Fourthly, if on this occasion, the Almighty did not allow the Prophet (sws) and his companions to wage war, it was not because of any weakness of the Muslims; it was solely because there were many who had openly announced themselves as Muslims and many who were Muslim in their hearts and had yet to openly announce this and who as yet had not migrated. There was a danger that in the event of a war, they could be harmed by the Muslims themselves. In short, there were many aspects of this truce being a clear victory for the Muslims which could not have been hidden from them; however, the Quraysh displayed their bigotry that they possessed from the days of j ā hiliyyah in such a manner and some incidents like the incident of Ab ū Jandal were so inciting that a general feeling prevailed among the Muslims that they were the weaker of the two parties. In their frenzy of emotions, people could not fully reflect on the conditions of the agreement and assess what they would gain and lose as a result of it. When this s ū rah unveiled the actual situation, people realized that they had committed a mistake in understanding the implications of the agreement. When its consequences came