The Prophet and the strategic revolution

Trying to understand the Holy Prophet is the first step of following his Sunnah. One cannot follow that Sunnah without understanding. True, it may be thought that a significant part of religion, especially its worship part, can be followed by imitation without understanding. But a path followed entirely without understanding, by imitation alone, itself produces its own meaning and gives the person a certain understanding.

Another way of saying "If you do not live as you believe, you will come to believe as you live" is that if you do not live as you understand, you begin to understand as you live. Understanding is the most basic level of human existence, regardless of whether it is judged right or wrong.

The Sunnah also carries a wisdom that, as it is lived, imposes its own understanding on the believer. When a person carries out the command of Allah, whom he trusts and to whom he submits, without regard to whether he understands it, that action imparts to him an understanding, a personality, a state of mind.

WHERE DOES THE PATH OF THE SUNNAH PASS THROUGH OUR LIVES

But the Prophet also has a Sunnah that can be understood through a deeper, more intensive historical analysis and effort of understanding. There are dimensions of the struggle he waged that need to be seen within a historical perspective. After all, he had a life, 1450 years ago, filled to the brim with preaching, debates, intense social relations, inter-tribal politics and wars. Meanwhile, as lives diversify and multiply within history and as time passes, the actors of history, social structures, languages and cultures undergo great changes. In the Prophet, almost no detail of whose life is unknown, there is without doubt a perfect exemplariness for all people who live today or will ever live. But within this change, knowing through which lanes the Prophet's Sunnah corresponds to passing requires always looking anew at the Prophet's sira, always reading it anew and more carefully.

A fine work published in recent days, the book The First Spring (Vadi Publications, 2020) by Wadah Khanfar, one of the brightest names of contemporary Arab-Islamic thought, stands out as one of these efforts at understanding. Khanfar, who served for many years as director general of Aljazeera TV, looks at the life and struggle of our Prophet from the angle of the concept of "strategy."

Indeed, when the life of the Prophet is compared perhaps with the other prophets and even with great political leaders, one of the first aspects that draws attention is a kind of "happy ending" story that, between its beginning and its end, keeps developing toward the peak and toward success even in the worldly sense.

Having started from zero and, by the end of his life, in a short time founded a state that would reach a sphere of influence with one foot in Andalusia and one foot in China, and having left behind a community loyal to him and extremely well trained, is something granted to no mortal. In a sense, he is perhaps the only leader on earth to have seen the fulfillment of his hopes, and he bequeathed a life without tragedy and a religious understanding and path.

A RELIGION THAT SAW ITS HOPES FULFILLED, WITHOUT TRAGEDY

Those who compare Islam with religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Confucianism, and with movements such as socialism, are not unjustified in distinguishing it as a religion and prophet who saw the fulfillment of his hopes. Indeed, Islam, starting from a single person in this world, passed through the most arduous paths and struggles to get its message accepted, lived the Hijra, and after establishing its own rule in Medina found the opportunity to put forth a perfect, happy model. And in doing so, moreover, it was not compelled at any stage to make concessions from the values it adopted when setting out, in order to be accepted by the masses. In this respect Islam can be considered the only religious and political understanding without tragedy.

Starting from this perfect end that was reached, asking how he arrived here is in fact the best way to determine a leader's strategic mind or politics. After all, strategic politics is measured by the accuracy of the means and paths used while marching toward a determined goal.

On the road to the great goal the Prophet reached, one can follow how accurate and how full of reason all the choices he made were in taking him to this goal. Khanfar compares the Prophet's struggle and success with some political leaders and emperors before him. Names such as Darius I, the greatest king of the Achaemenid-Persian Empire, Alexander the Great of Macedon, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great are figures who achieved great successes in history. The great successes they reached are proof that they followed very effective strategic paths. The route through which they reached these successes gives clues to this strategic mind.

THE DIFFERENCE OF THE PROPHET'S STRATEGIC REVOLUTION

While drawing attention to the fact that these four exceptional figures truly changed the strategic map of the world and the balances of power, Khanfar says they used the same method to reach this result: at the core of this method lie an element of belonging to a particular nation or empire, and an element of military enterprise that leads to the strengthening of authority and the growth of wealth.

The Prophet's global, rapid and radical strategic revolution, however, had in essence a great difference from theirs. His strategic method did not proceed from the principles of the centralization of authority and the accumulation of wealth, and the revolution he made was neither carried out from a nationalist starting point nor with imperialist ambitions.

Khanfar ties the strategically unique and original character of the Prophet's actions precisely to this dimension, and continues.

He tries to study the Prophet's strategic methodology through the strategic behaviors he carried out up to the conquest of Mecca. With the term "Strategic Behavior" he means all of the actions and words he put forth within the framework of the relations he established with different forces, tribes and individuals. In this context, Khanfar makes the connections he established, his correspondence, his treaties, his military enterprises in the form of sariyyas and ghazwas, the relations of Medina with global and local actors, and the friendly or hostile attitudes adopted toward different tribes, the subject of a new historiography.

Let us continue talking about the book later.