Q.1. Some people claim that 100,000 companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) left the Middle East after the Prophet’s death and traveled throughout the world to preach Islam. Could you please shed light on this and whether they left their women and children back home? (Name and address withheld)
A. After the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Islamic state he established in Arabia faced serious challenges by the two superpowers of the time, the Persian and the Byzantine Empires. Both wanted to smash the new state, as they felt that it represented a threat to them. Therefore, the Muslim rulers who succeeded the Prophet, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, had to raise armies to fight on both fronts. The numbers that these combined armies included was well below the figure you have quoted. The Muslim army that fought the major Battle of Yarmouk in southern Syria was less than 30,000, scoring a resounding victory against a force that exceeded 200,000 of the Byzantines. This Muslim army was the largest concentration of Muslim forces at the time. Others, which were fighting in Iraq and Egypt were much smaller. Amr ibn Al-Aas led an army to Egypt which was only 4,000 men strong. Further reinforcements were sent to him doubling the forces under his command. Despite facing enemies on several fronts and having to fight battle after battle, Umar issued a general order to all commanders that no married soldier should be away from his family for more than four months without taking a home leave. Needless to say, when you join an army expecting to fight the enemy, you do not take your wife and children with you.
It took around 25 years for the situation to calm down and settle, during which large areas came under Islamic rule, including the whole of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Iran. As things settled in some areas, some of the Prophet’s companions also settled there and they taught what they learned from the Prophet. This, however, was done at the individual level. There was no mass exodus or organized plan of any missionary work. When some of the Prophet’s companions wanted to leave Madinah, immigrating to the new areas that came under Islamic rule, Umar ordered them to stay in Madinah. He needed some of them to help in the running of the state, but he did not wish others to become celebrated personalities among new Muslims in the liberated areas. As for traveling further for the purpose of spreading Islam, this was not done by the Prophet’s companions, except perhaps in very few cases. Islam does not have any such strategy.
A Practice of Ablution
Q. In my home country, people wipe their necks with their wet fingers during ablution, having learned that this is a Sunnah. Here it is classified as a deviation, or bidaah. Please comment.
N. Ahmad
A. I have explained on several occasions that differences of detail do not matter. They mostly result from the fact that the Prophet (peace be upon him) did things in different ways to indicate their permissibility. His companions who saw him doing something more than once would report that he used to do it, while others who might not have seen it may consider it as unauthentic. Wiping the neck is a Sunnah according to the Hanafi school of thought. Other schools do not share their view. Whether you do it or not your ablution is valid.
What makes something a Sunnah in one school of thought and not so in another? It is a question of the Hadith that mentions it. If the scholars of one school grade it as authentic, then the practice is classified as a Sunnah or a duty, according to the nature of the report. The same Hadith might not have been known to the other school, or one of its transmitters is graded as unreliable. All this is subject to scholarly research. Since, such matters are normally questions of detail and none is fundamental, the question will not be important.
