The Keeper of the Keys 41prayed to the gods while remaining oblivious to their moral duties,
and who withheld things of common use from others (107:1–7). His
message was simple: the Day of Judgment was coming, when “the sky
will be cleft asunder and the earth shall be leveled” (84:1–3), and those
who did not “free the slave” or “feed others in times of famine” would
be engulfed in fire (90:13–20).
This was a radical message, one that had never been heard before
in Mecca. Muhammad was not yet establishing a new religion; he was
calling for sweeping social reform. He was not yet preaching mono-
theism; he was demanding economic justice. And for this revolution-
ary and profoundly innovative message, he was more or less ignored.
This was partly Muhammad’s fault. All of the traditions claim
that, at first, Muhammad confined the Revelation to his closest friends
and family members. The first person to accept his message was obvi-
ously Khadija, who from the moment she met him to the moment she
died, remained by her husband, especially during those times when he
was at his lowest. While there is a great deal of sectarian debate
among Muslims as to who the second person to accept the message
was, it is safe to assume it would have been Muhammad’s cousin, Ali,
who as Abu Talib’s son had grown up in the same household as the
Prophet and was the closest person to him after his wife.
Ali’s acceptance came as a great relief to Muhammad, for he was
not only Muhammad’s cousin, he was also his closest ally: the man
whom the Prophet repeatedly referred to as “brother.” Ali would
eventually mature into the most respected warrior in Islam. He
would marry Muhammad’s beloved daughter, Fatima, and provide the
Prophet with his legendary grandsons, Hasan and Husayn. Consid-
ered the fount of esoteric knowledge and the father of Islamic meta-
physics, Ali would one day inspire an entirely new sect in Islam.
However, at the moment when he stood up as the first among the
Banu Hashim to respond to the Prophet’s call, he was only a thirteen-
year-old boy.
Ali’s conversion was promptly followed by the conversion of
Muhammad’s slave, Zayd, whom he naturally freed. Soon afterward,
Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s dear friend and a wealthy Qurayshi mer-
chant, became a follower. A deeply loyal and fervently pious man, Abu