Page:Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din - Ethics of War.djvu/16

 tions for full thirteen years. The enemies of Islam left no stone unturned in striving to nip it in the bud. One's hair would stand on end if one were to try even to imagine what was meted out to early Muslims in Arabia. What Jesus was apprehending from his enemies, when he delivered his well-known Sermon on the Mount to his people, became materialized in the days of the Prophet. Resistance to evil on such an occasion was only to invite destruction, and was tantamount to an act of suicide; but to act on homilies pronounced by Jesus in this respect—for example, to turn the other cheek to a buffeting enemy—was only to emasculate the spirit of manliness from his people. So Muhammad ordered them either to bear the persecution with patience but never reject their principles, or to leave the country and remove themselves from the scene of affliction; but never to submit to resistance in such a way as to reject their own beliefs. Some of his followers fled to Abyssinia, but the time came when the enemy's persecutions exhausted all patience. The Prophet asked his followers to leave the country. In the thirteenth year of his ministry only a few of his disciples remained with him in Makka. The enemy now conspired to kill the Prophet