God Arises
Affirmation of Prophethood
~ 265 ~
hardly repudiate him as a liar or a fraud, because
this would have been totally at variance with the
life he had led uptill then. His message was
regarded rather as a form of poetic exaggeration,
the result of mental disorder, or witchcraft, while
some held that an evil spirit possessed him. His
opponents gave voice to all these misgivings, but
they did not dare cast aspersions on his personal
honesty,
truthfulness
and
integrity.
How
remarkable it is that a people, provoked to the
extreme at his call, turned into his direct enemies,
expelled him from his home town, yet continued to
refer to him as being ‘honest’ and trustworthy’. In
Ibn Hisham’s
The Life of Muhammad
,
4
this is testified
to:
It happened that whenever in Makkah anyone
had to keep anything safely, he would entrust it to
the Prophet, as everyone was sure of his
truthfulness and honesty” (Vol.II. p. 298).
In the thirteenth year of his prophethood, at the
very moment when his opponents had blockaded
his house in order to assassinate him as he came
out, the Prophet was instructing Ali, his cousin, to
tarry in Makkah until he had returned all the things
