Source: Dawn
Author: Nilofar Ahmed
SOME time after the migration of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and his followers to Madina, the Makkans banned the entry of the believers in Makkah, even for the purposes of Haj or umrah. The Muslims yearned to visit the Kaaba to perform the pilgrimage. After about six years, the Prophet and some 1,500 of his companions started out for Makkah on Ziqa’ad 1, 6 AH, (628 CE), with the intention of performing umrah. They put on the ihram, recited the intention and thus entered the state of consecration.
They did not carry any weapons but the Makkans came to know of their approach and decided to block their path, even if it meant having to go to war. The Prophet decided to avoid confrontation and bloodshed, and to take a very rough and circuitous route. The Muslims camped at Hudaibya, located on the border of Makkah. They decided to negotiate with the Makkans to allow them the peaceful practice of their religion.
Categories: Islam: A Religion of Peace, Law
RVC Bodley, a Christian biographer of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, brings out the diplomacy and the peaceful vision of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, as he writes about the treaty of Hudaibiyya:
“In point of fact, that treaty was Mohammed’s masterpiece of diplomacy. It was a triumph. No one, except perhaps Soheil, had thought back as had Mohammed when the Koreishite stood before him. No one, except those two, recollected the beatings, the stonings, the escape by night, the hiding in the cave. No one thought of the hazardous exile with the seventy followers. The contrast between now and then was unbelievable, miraculous. That the Quraishites were willing to treat with Mohammed at all, to recognize him as someone worthy of their attention, to admit him as the ruler of an Arab community, was beyond the bounds of all expectations. But, apart from his personal triumph over men who had vowed to capture him, alive or dead, Muhammad saw what no other Muslim did, the far reaching effects of the treaty.
He (Muhammad) was not a man to quibble over small details. … If Soheil’s limited mentality could not reconcile itself to calling someone who had been a traveling salesman by a grandiloquent title, it did not really matter. If a Muslim phrase in referring to God was upsetting to a Quraish ear, it was not important enough to break off negotiations.
What was important was to have free access to Makkah. Muhammad knew that the day he and his men could set foot in the Holy City, it would not be long before they would be there permanently. …
What, however, Muhammad chiefly saw in having this peace treaty with Makkah was the effect it would produce on the local tribes. He was right in this too. Within a few days of signing the document which had caused so much stir among his own people, chiefs from all around were coming to swear allegiance. Umar was confounded. During the space of one week there had been more converts to Islam than in the six preceding years.”
http://knol.google.com/k/zia-shah/treaty-of-hudaibiyya-by-the-holy/1qhnnhcumbuyp/256#