��104 No god but God
none but God; that we make none God’s equal; and that we take no
other as lord except God” (3:64).
It is a tragedy that after fifteen hundred years, this simple compro-
mise has yet to overcome the sometimes petty yet often binding ideo-
logical differences between the three faiths of Abraham.
AFTER THE EXECUTION of the Banu Qurayza, with Medina
firmly in his control, Muhammad once again turned toward Mecca,
not as the Messenger of God but as something the Quraysh in their
role as Keepers of the Keys could not refuse: a pilgrim.
In 628, the year following the Battle of the Trench, Muhammad
unexpectedly announced that he was going to Mecca to perform the
pilgrimage rites at the Ka‘ba. Considering that he was in the middle of
a bloody and protracted war with the Meccans, this was an absurd
decision. He could not have thought the Quraysh, who had spent the
past six years trying to kill him, would simply move out of the way
while he and his followers circumambulated the sanctuary. But Mu-
hammad remained undaunted. With more than a thousand of his fol-
lowers marching behind him, he crossed the desert on his way to the
city of his birth, shouting fearlessly along the way the pilgrim’s chant:
“Here I am, O Allah! Here I am!”
The sound of Muhammad and his followers, unarmed and dressed
in pilgrim’s clothes, loudly proclaiming their presence to their ene-
mies, must have rung like a death knell in Mecca. Surely the end was
near if this man could be so audacious as to think he could walk into
the sacred city unmolested. The Quraysh, who rushed out to halt
Muhammad before he could enter Mecca, were confounded. Meeting
him just outside the city, in a place called Hudaybiyyah, they made
one last attempt to preserve their control of Mecca by offering the
Prophet a cease-fire, the conditions of which were so against Muham-
mad’s interests that it must have appeared to the Muslims to be a joke.
The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah proposed that in return for his imme-
diate withdrawal and the unconditional cessation of all caravan raids
in the vicinity of Mecca, Muhammad would be allowed to return in
the following pilgrimage season, when the sanctuary would be evacu-
ated for a brief time so that he and his followers could perform the pil-