The amount of action and the amazing stories that took place during the hijrah grabbed the attention away from the roles played by some Companions before the hijrah and away from the hijrah scene.
Introducing Islam to Tribes
I want to take you back 3 years before the hijrah. This is when the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was going around the camps for the Hajj talking to different tribes about Islam.
The Prophet asked them to believe in him, host him and support him and his message. He met the tribes that attended hajj, one tribe after another, and presented his offer to the leaders of the gathering.
While coming back from a long discussion with Bani Shaiban as mentioned in a previous article, he met six people. Those six were from a tribe called Al-Khazraj, one of two main tribes in Madinah, a city north of Makkah known then as Yathrib.
He presented Islam to them and they all accepted Islam. He did not ask them to support him or host him because they were only six ordinary people.
These six went back to Madinah and came back next year to meet the Prophet with other six of their fellows who were interested in Islam. The Prophet met them in a place called Al-Aqabah, in a meeting called, “the First Pledge of Al-Aqabah.”
They pledged to the Prophet to worship Allah and never associate partners with Him, not to steal, not to fornicate, not to kill their children, and not to disobey him had he orders them to do any good.
Yathrib: A Fresh Place for Dawah
The city of Yathrib was a fresh open place for conveying Islam and a potential host for the message. The Prophet saw the opportunity and couldn’t let it without doing his best to utilize it for the sake of dawah. He decided to send someone to the city to teach people Islam and present the message to them.
The choice was very critical to the success of this mission. The Prophet chose the beloved Companion Mus`ab ibn Umair. I came across an analysis of why the Prophet chose Mus`ab to take on this huge responsibility which I would like to share here for two main reasons:
1) to love Mus`ab, for loving him is part of our Islam, and,
2) to learn from his experience and his effort, for that is essential to attain similar success.
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