Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
6. The Path of the Prophet
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while the idolaters are coming there and
performing the rites of pilgrimage naked,” he
would say when the Hajj season arrived.
Some Muslims went on Hajj in the year after the
conquest of Makkah (A.H. 8), but the Prophet was
not among them. The next year in A.H. 9, the
Muslim party of pilgrims was led by Abu Bakr. It
was after this that the idolaters were banned from
making the pilgrimage. The prohibition came in this
verse of the Qur’an:
Believers, know that the idolaters are unclean.
Let them not approach the Sacred Mosque
after this year is ended.
4
The Prophet then sent his cousin ‘Ali to Makkah,
with orders that he should mingle amongst the
gathering of pilgrims, and proclaim that after this
year no idolator would be allowed to come on Hajj,
and
tawaf
(circumambulation of the House of God)
in a naked state would not be permitted. Then, in
the third year, following the gradual elimination of
polytheism, the Prophet undertook what was to be
his final pilgrimage to the Sacred Mosque.
