The Everlasting Hatred (15 page)

The writer of Psalm 120 gives insight into the violent nature of the descendants of Kedar, “Woe to me … that I live among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. I am a man of peace; but when I speak, they are for war.”
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Both secular and Biblical sources describe the Arabs, especially the sons of Kedar, as a people who continuously fought. This certainly fulfills God's prophecy about the sons of Ishmael: “His hand shall be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him.”

The prophet Isaiah has a number of prophetic visions of judgment concerning the nations surrounding Israel who afflicted the Jewish people. These visions are called “Oracles.” The following oracle gives an insight into the character of the Arabians—particularly Kedar—in the eighth-century B.C. This oracle actually predicted the invasion of Arabia in 716 B.C. by King Sargon of Assyria. In Isaiah 21, we read:

An oracle concerning
Arabia
: You caravans of
Dedanites
, who camp in the thickets of Arabia, bring water for the thirsty; you who live in
Tema
, bring food for the fugitives. They flee from the sword, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow and from the heat of battle. This is what the Lord says to me: “Within one year, as a servant bound by contract would count it, all the
pomp of
Kedar
will come to an end. The survivors of the bowmen, the warriors of
Kedar
, will be few.” The LORD, the God of Israel, has spoken.
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As indicated above, the sons of Kedar were known for being expert archers. Kedar must have learned his skill with the bow and arrow from his father Ishmael, for it is written of him, “God was with the boy [Ishmael] as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an [expert] archer.”
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The northern Arabians fled to the south and were weakened for over a century after this invasion.

Keil and Delitzsch link the descendants of Kedar to the wealthy and powerful merchants known as the Nabateans.
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They ruled the region known by the Chaldeans and Romans as Arabia Petra. Petra, the capital, was a famous banking city that was built into a natural fortress in the mountains of Edom. During the Greco-Roman times, this kingdom covered the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula.

Petra later became known as the “Lost City” until archeologists rediscovered it in the nineteenth century A.D. The way it was constructed made it one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Ishmael and his descendants began in the desert of Shur and Havilah, which was in the northwest part of the Arabian Peninsula. From there they continued to expand southward and eastward to extend their borders to where the peninsula touched ancient Assyria and Babylon. As I said earlier, there is no doubt that the Ishmaelites absorbed other people, such as the descendants of Esau/Edom and of Abraham's sons through Keturah. But Biblical history, supported by secular history, presents the Ishmaelites as the dominant people called “the Arabs.”

Smith's Bible Dictionary
makes this observation:

The Ishmaelites appear to have entered the peninsula from the northwest. That they spread over the whole of it, and that the modern nation is predominately Ishmaelite, is asserted by the Arabs … they mixed with other Abrahamic peoples; and expanded westwards to Idumaea, where they mixed with Edomites, etc. The tribes sprung from Ishmael have always been governed by petty chiefs or heads of families (sheiks and emirs) … though they have in some instances succeeded to those of the Joktanites.
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By the first century A.D., Josephus wrote that the Arabs were “dwelling from the Euphrates to the Red Sea.”
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The climate and terrain were so difficult that no foreign invader ever totally conquered the Arabs. The only people to ever thrive in the vast desert of Arabia are Arab Bedouin. And as predicted, the Arab has prevailed in defiance of all his brothers to his west. As predicted, Ishmael has dwelt to the east.

It is impossible to understand the Muslim religion apart from an understanding of the Arabian culture out of which it was born. By the time of the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., the culture, customs, and religion of Arabia had become well established. The culture was particularly concentrated in Mecca, a key city on the great Arabian caravan route. Virtually everything Mohammad included in the Koran and the Muslim religion can be traced to the existing culture and traditions of that time and place.

The Arabians all began as nomadic tribes or clans in the deserts. They were known as Bedouins. The clan organization is the basis of the Arab Bedouin society, from its earliest days and up to modern times. The clan is led by a supreme chief called a sheik, and it is composed of many families, each of them dwelling in their own tent (or other modern-day dwelling). All members of the same clan consider each other as of one blood, submit to the authority of the sheik, and use one battle cry. Blood relationship—real or fictitious (clan kinship may be acquired by sucking a few drops of a member's blood)—furnishes the cohesive element in tribal organization.

The tent, household goods, and all personal items such as camels, horses, livestock, and weapons are individual property. But water sources, pasturage, and tillable land are the common property of the tribe.

There is a certain amount of freedom and individuality within the clan, but in all corporate clan decisions and actions, the sheik has the final word. The highest hope of a clan member is that the sheik is a “benevolent dictator.”

This is why there is such an inevitable cultural collision with the West. The Arabians have no concept of a democratic government, where leaders are elected and responsible to the will of the people. Their pattern of government has always been that of a tribal chieftain, an autocratic dictator reigning over subjects. As we will see, the Islamic fundamentalist sees democracy as a threat to Islam.

Violence has been a continual fact of life for the Arabs. This is a common thread that runs through historical accounts of their culture. Philip Hitti summarized this fact well, “The raid or
ghazw
… is raised by the economic and social conditions of desert life to the rank of a national institution.
It lies at the base of the economic structure of Bedouin pastoral society. In desert land, where the fighting mood is a chronic mental condition
, raiding is one of the few manly occupations … An early Arab poet gave expression to the guiding principle of such life in two verses: ‘Our business is to make raids on the enemy, on our neighbor and on our own brother, in case we find none to raid but a brother!'”
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How perfectly the prophecy of Genesis 16:12 about the sons of Ishmael fits this: “His hand shall be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him.” Equally fitting is God's prediction concerning the other major part of the Arab people, the sons of Edom from Esau, as we read in Genesis 27, “Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword.”
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The Edomites first lived in the mountains of Seir, but over the centuries, many were forced to flee to the desert of Arabia where there is little “richness of earth or dew from heaven.” Wherever they went, they lived by the sword. No wonder they responded so quickly to the call of Mohammad to convert to Islam.

It is startling that the Arabic language has almost a thousand names and synonyms for the
sword
. The only other word in Arabic that can rival that for multiple names is
camel
. Both the sword and the camel were considered essential for life in the Arabian culture. It is important to note today how many Arab nations have the insignia of the sword in their national logos. This unmistakably shows us what has always been important to an Arab.

Long before the founding of Islam, in what was known as the “Days of Ignorance,” the Arabs lost their faith in the one true God, whom their forefathers Ishmael, Esau, and the sons of
Keturah certainly knew about. They degenerated into polytheism and worshipped “holy” rocks and trees. These objects were deemed sacred not because they were innately so within themselves but because the Arabs believed they were indwelt by
spirit beings
called “jinns” (later known as “genies”).

Arabs believed then (and also in the Koran and Hadith) that “jinns” are a category of spirit creatures that are halfway between angels and man. They believe that they can be good or bad, though most are considered malicious. They can possess animals and inanimate things such as rocks, trees, wells, and so on. Jinns were adopted into Muslim theology and the Koran. Legends about jinns or genies are resplendent in Arab legends—such as the genie in the bottle.

During this period, Mecca became the most important religious center. It was a major oasis on the main caravan route from earliest times, as well as the site of the sacred Zamzam well, which Arabs believe God revealed to Abraham and Ishmael.

Mecca's greatest significance came from being the site of the special religious altar known as the Ka'abah. It is a 50-foot cubic structure of gray stone and marble. Positioned so that its corners correspond with the four points of the compass, the Ka'abah contained 360 idols—one for each of the lunar calendar days.

Most importantly, the cornerstone of the Ka'abah was the sacred Black Stone. It is a meteorite of very ancient origin. It was and is believed to have the power to absorb sin from the one who kisses it. Arabs believed that the Black Stone was a god who protected their tribes.

In the Arab pantheon of gods, there were five who were most important in their hierarchy. There were Uzza, Allat, Manat,
Hubal, and Allah. The first three were female, which formed a tritheistic relationship. On the other hand, Hubal was a male held to be the Moon deity. He is believed to have originated in Babylon.

It is Hubal that is represented in the Hilal, Islam's symbol of the Crescent Moon. The star symbol is believed to represent Uzza, the Morning Star goddess. Hubal was also believed to be the guardian of the Ka'abah.

The fifth and highest of all deities was called “Allah.” He was worshipped as the supreme creator as well as the “father” of the tritheistic female goddesses.

Mecca then, with the Ka'abah, the sacred Zamzam well, and the presence of the highest deities, became the religious vortex of the Arabian Peninsula. Arabs from all over began to come on pilgrimages to Mecca—and this was long before Mohammad.

Because of the lucrative business brought by the pilgrims, possessing the guardianship of the sacred Ka'abah and Zamzam well became a prize to be sought.

From approximately 100 B.C., the Ka'abah and its sacred well were under the guardianship of the tribe known as the Beni Jurham. In about the third century A.D., the Jurham seem to have been driven out and replaced by an Ishmaelite tribe known as the Khuzaa.

Then in about A.D. 235, Fihr, the leader of another Ishmaelite tribe, the Quraysh, married the daughter of the Khuzaa tribal chief. Later, in about A.D. 420, Qusai, a descendant of Fihr, married the daughter of another Khuzaa chief of Mecca. Although he was not of the Khuzaa tribe, Qusai made himself virtually indispensable to his father-in-law, who was guardian of the Ka'abah. As a result Qusai was given the custodianship of the coveted sacred keys of the Ka'abah.

When the Khuzaa chief died, Qusai claimed custody of the Ka'abah for the Quraysh tribe. One of his first acts was to relegate the Khuzaa clan to a subordinate position. Qusai ordered the building of a semi-permanent housing around the Ka'abah. He also very shrewdly restructured the tribal social order. He instituted tribal council meetings and a hall was built near the Ka'abah for this purpose.

It was not coincidental that the Quraysh tribe from which Mohammad's family came was especially addicted to the cult of the moon god, Allah. They also witnessed the pilgrims coming to Mecca every year to worship, circling the Ka'abah seven times, kissing the Black Stone (which they considered their special tribal talisman that guaranteed their protection and blessing), and then running down to the nearby wadi to throw stones at the devil. Mohammad was destined to grow up with all of these religious traditions. So it certainly cannot be an accident that all of these religious traditions are prominent in the Muslim religion, which he supposedly got by original divine revelation.

Tribal rivalries continued through the centuries. But important to our interest, the Quraysh tribe prevailed as guardians of Mecca's holy sites by the sixth century A.D. Within the Quraysh tribe, a man named Hashim married a woman named Selma, who gave birth to a son, Abdul al-Mut-Talib. Abdul had seven sons— Harith, Talib, Lahab, Jahal, Abbas, Hamza, and Abdullah.

Abdullah married Amina, who was a descendant of Qusai's brother Zuhra. Abdullah and Amina gave birth to a son whom they named
Mohammad
. And with this event, the entire history of the Arab people was about to undergo a paradigm shift.

“But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.”

—A
POSTLE
P
AUL
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