THE HIJRA 29Mohammed never claimed supernatural powers. He never claimed the
ability to raise the dead, walk on water, or make the blind to see. He only
claimed to speak for God, and he didn't claim that every word out of his
mouth was God talking. Sometimes it was just Mohammed talking. How
could people tell when it was God and when it was Mohammed?
At the time, apparently, it was obvious. Today's Muslims have a special
way of vocalizing the Qur'an called qira'ut. It's a sound quite unlike any
other made by the human voice. It's musical, but it isn't singing. It's in-
cantatory, but it isn't chanting. It invokes emotion even in someone who
doesn't understand the words. Every person who performs qira'ut does so
differently, but every recitation feels like an imitation or intimation or in-
terpretation of some powerful original. When Mohammed delivered the
Qur'an, he must have done so in this penetrating and emotional voice.
When people heard the Qur'an from Mohammed, they were not just lis-
tening to words but experiencing an emotional force. Perhaps this is why
Muslims insist that no translation of the Qur'an is the Qur'an. The true
Qur' an is the whole package, indivisible: the words and their meanings,
yes, but also the very sounds, even the look of the lettering when the
Qur'an is in written form. To Muslims, it wasn't Mohammed the person
but the Qur'an coming through Mohammed that was converting people.
One other factor attracted people to the community and inspired
them to believe Mohammed's claims. In this part of the world, small-scale
warfare was endemic, as it seems to be in any area populated by many
small nomadic tribes among whom trading blends into raiding (such as
North America's eastern woodlands before Columbus arrived, or the
Great Plains shortly after). Add the Arabian tradition of blood feuds last-
ing for generations, add also the tapestry of fragile tribal alliances that
marked the peninsula at this time, and you have a world seething with
constant, ubiquitous violence.
Wherever Mohammed took over, he instructed people to live in peace
with one another, and the converts did. By no means did he tell Muslims
to eschew violence, for this community never hesitated to defend itself.
Muslims still engaged in warfare, just not against one another; they ex-
pended their aggressive energy fighting the relentless outside threat to their
survival. Those who joined the Umma immediately entered Dar al-Islam,
which means "the realm of submission (to God)" but also, by implication,