Portal: Muhammad's Companions and Contemporaries: Difference between revisions

The varying levels of reverence and precedential importance accorded to Muhammad, his family, his companions, their contemporaries, and each successive generations is of great importance in the Islamic tradition. The reasoning for this importance is best understood in light of the fact that the Islamic tradition is one centered on the precedence set by individual persons, rather than on the particular arguments for or consequences of any given practice or belief. This is not to say that thinkers in the Islamic tradition did not elaborate and discuss the reasons for and consequences of any given practice or belief (be it religious or legal), but that, at the end of the day, these considerations were always secondary and tertiary to the authority of the individual who first implemented them. As a result, the variety of persons responsible for instituting a practice is overwhelmingly the justification for it, although other considerations may be factored in subsequently. More important than these other considerations, however, will always be the interpretations of the given practice or belief advanced (usually by subsequent generations or groups of persons of lesser authority, although a party may in some cases explain its own reasoning). Broadly speaking, therefore, the first question is in all cases is ''who said to believe or do this?'' ('Muhammad' being the best possible answer), the second question is ''who interpreted this practice or belief?'' (here again, as always, Muhammad is the best answer, however one will almost always need to look to Muhammad's companions or successors for an explanation), and the third question is ''what can be said rationally about this practice?'' (by this point, however, the room for autonomy on the part of the jurist or theologian is usually considerably diminished if not altogether gone). At each level, one hopes for the highest authority available, but available references usually increase in descending order and one will not, of course, expect to find an explanation for the actions of Muhammad's successors from someone who preceded them, such as, say, Muhammad himself.

7th century Arabian society was, as can only be expected of any society operating in a harsh environment of scarce resources and perpetual warfare, dominated by men. The most influential of Muhammad's companions on the trajectory of Islam were, it should therefore come as no surprise, men. The four of Muhammad's companions to succeed him were also reported to have been highly influential and near to Muhammad during his own life. It is not clear, through the eyes of a historian, whether the central role of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthmaan, and Ali - in roughly order - during Muhammad's lifetime is the obvious precedent which enabled them to be chosen as his successors or whether their centrality in the narratives of the s''eerah'' (prophetic biographies) and ''hadith'' (prophetic narrations) written down long after their own demise was a product of their influence on the historical imagination of devout Muslims posthumous to Muhammad's death. In either case, however, their influence on the trajectory and history of Islam was, and perhaps inextricably remains, immense. It should also be noted that whereas the patriarchal arrangements of early Islamic society hardly deserve indictment, given their historical situation and the fact that they were in a limited sense an improvement upon pre-Islamic gender norms, the same can, perhaps, not be said about the perpetual enshrinement of those patriarchal norms - however much an improvement in 7th century Arabia - as took place in the ideas of Islamic law that later emerged.<div class="articleSummaryColumn">