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To those who lea\'e their homes in the cause of God, after suffering
oppression, we will assuredly give a goodly home in this \l.urld; but trw)'
thl' reward of the H ereafter will be greater, if they only realized lthisJ!
Those who persevere in patience, and put their trUSt in their Lord?85Exile is, then, another triaJ o f trust. All prophets have intensively expc~
ricnced this trial of the heart, as all believers have after them. How far are
they prepared to go, how much are they prepared to give of themselves
and of their lives, for the One, His tr uth and Hi~ love? Those are the eter-
n1 q ues tions o f faith, which accompany every temporal and histo rical
experience of the believing conscience, Hijrah was one of the ~·ruslim
community's answers at the dawn of its existence.
In effeCt, exile was also to re<luire that the fir st Muslims learn to remain
faithful to thc meaning of Islam's teachings in spite of the change of
place, culture, and memory. Medina mcant new customs, new types of
social relationships, a whoHy ditterent role for women (who were socially
far more present than in Mecca), and more complex intertribal relatio ns, as
weU as the influe ntial presence of the Jewish and Christian communities,
which was something new to Muslims, Very e~rly on, the community of
faith, following the Prophet'S example, had to distinguish between what
belonged to Islamic principles and what was more particularly related to
Meccan culture. They were to remain faithful to the first while learning to
adopt a flexible and critical approach to their original culture. They even
had to try to reform some of tbeir attitudes, which were more cultural than
Islamic. U mar ibn al-Khattab was to learn this to his cost when, after he
had reacted most sharply to his wife answering him back (which was
ur:thinkable in j\.·Iecca), she reton ed that he mUH bear with it and accept it
just as the Prophet clirt Thi<; wa<; a difficult. experience for him, as it was
for others, who might have been tempted to thir.k that their habits and cus-
toms were in themselves Islamic: hfjrab, exile, was to reveal tbat this was
not the case and that one must questio n every single cultural practice, both
to be faithful to Islamic principles and to open up to other cultures and
gain from their wealth. For instance, having learned that a wedding was to
take place among the bkdina J\'luslims (the Ansar), the Prophet had two
singing maids sent to them, for, he said, the A..'1sar enjoyed singing.s Not
only did he thereby recognize a culrurnl feature or taste that was nOt in
itsc=lf opposed to Islamic principles, but he integrated it as an enrichment