The Call of the Quran
2. The Call to God and Unity
~ 43 ~
even though birds might snatch them up, beasts
might devour them and dogs might drag the feet of
the pious wives of the Prophet.
In order to underline the importance of this act,
Abu Bakr accompanied Osama as far as Juruf.
Osama went on horseback, while Abu Bakr
marched beside him to give the necessary
instructions. Despite Osama’s repeated requests,
Abu Bakr refused to ride, preferring to go on foot.
Both the Prophet of Islam and his first caliph
resorted to such actions as matters of pressing need.
The exigency in the present case was that of
providing the Muslims with a field of action outside
the land of Arabia to demonstrate their spirit of
struggle in the cause of Islam. Whenever Muslim
energies were not directed to this external target,
they were soon enticed into internal factional
conflicts, wrongly labelling such action as
jihad
in a
bid to justify their misdeeds.
THE EXTERNAL TARGET
When the Arabs entered the fold of Islam under the
influence of the movement launched by the
