30 DESTINY DISRUPTED
"the realm of peace." Everyone else was living out there in Dar al-Harb,
the realm of war. Those who joined the Umma didn't have to watch their
backs anymore, not with their fellow Muslims.
Converting also meant joining an inspiring social project: the con-
struction of a just community of social equals. To keep that community
alive, you had to fight, because the Umma and its project had implacable
enemies. jihad never meant "holy war" or "violence." Other words in Ara-
bic mean "fighting" more unambiguously {and are used as such in the
Qur'an). A better translation for jihad might be "struggle," with all the
same connotations the word carries in the rhetoric of social justice move-
ments familiar to the West: struggle is deemed noble when it's struggle for
a just cause and if the cause demands "armed struggle," that's okay too; it's
sanctified by the cause.
Over the next two years, tribes all across the Arabian peninsula began
accepting Mohammed's leadership, converting to Islam, and joining the
community. One night Mohammed dreamed that he had returned to
Mecca and found everyone there worshipping Allah. In the morning, he
told his followers to pack for a pilgrimage. He led fourteen hundred Mus-
lims on the two-hundred-mile trek to Mecca. They came unarmed, despite
the recent history of hostilities, but no battle broke out. The city closed its
gates to the Muslims, but Quraysh elders came out and negotiated a treaty
with Mohammed: the Muslims could not enter Mecca this year but could
come back and perform their rites of pilgrimage next year. Clearly, the
Quraysh knew the game was over.
In year 6 AH, the Muslims came back to Mecca and visited the Ka'ba
without violence. Two years later, the elders of Mecca surrendered the city
to Mohammed without a fight. As his first act, the Prophet destroyed all
the idols in the Ka'ba and declared this cube with the black cornerstone
the holiest spot in the world. A few of Mohammed's former enemies
grumbled and muttered threats, but the tide had turned. Virtually all the
tribes had united under Mohammed's banner, and all of Arabia was living
in harmony for the first time in reported memory.
In year 10 AH {632 CE), Mohammed made one more pilgrimage to
Mecca and there gave a final sermon. He told the assembled men to regard
the life and property of every Muslim as sacred, to respect the rights of all
people including slaves, to acknowledge that women had rights over men