The Sentence That Waits

An idea does not die with the war that produced it. A command written for one battlefield can lie in a book for a thousand years, quiet and respectable, until a man with a grievance opens to the page. To understand why a religion keeps producing violence long after its wars have ended, stop looking at the killers and look at what was left lying where they could find it.

The Proclamation

In the spring of the year 631, the pilgrims of Arabia gathered as they had for centuries in the valley of Mina, outside Mecca. Many were still pagans. They had come to circle the ancient shrine and sacrifice to their gods as their fathers had done.

That year a rider arrived among them with a message. He was Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the man who now ruled most of the peninsula from the oasis of Medina. Muhammad had not come himself. He had sent Ali to read out a new revelation, and Ali stood up among the tents and recited it.

It began without the customary blessing. God and His Messenger, it announced, were released from their treaties with the idolaters. They would have four months of safety. After that, the proclamation went on, the believers were to kill them wherever they found them, seize them, besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush, unless they repented, took up the prayer, and paid the alms. No idolater would ever again approach the sanctuary.

For the men who heard it, the meaning was plain and local. A long war between Medina and the pagan tribes was ending, and this was the victor's ultimatum. Those who had kept faith with the Muslims were exempted by name. Anyone who asked for protection was to be given it and escorted to safety. It was hard, but it was no harder than what any conqueror of that age would have decreed, and within a year or two it had done its work. The tribes submitted. The war was over. The man who had issued the proclamation died.

The words did not die. They had been spoken as revelation, and so they were written into a book that the believers held to be the speech of God, valid in every place and for all time.