Brethren , by this weekend (on Sunday precisely), the Muslim world globally will witness another anniversary of the migration (Hijrah) of Prophet Muhammad from Makkah to Madinah. This event took place a thousand four hundred and forty-five years ago.
As usual, the beginning of the new 1446 AH will be celebrated all around the world. Today being the 29th Dhul Hijjah 1445 AH, in less than 48 hours, the count for the new Hijrah year (1446) will commence.
You and I know what the word migrate means. To migrate is ‘to move from one region or habitat to another according to the seasons. In the Islamic parlance, the word hijrah refers to the migration of Prophet Muhammad together with his companions from Makkah to Madinah in defense of Islam.
Why global attention is drawn to the beginning of every new Hijrah year is the necessity for Muslims to remember the never-ending war between truth and falsehood. The hijrah is celebrated every year to remind Muslims of their glorious past which should not be seen to be past-perfect but ‘past-present’; it is meant to call their attention afresh to the sacrifices made by heroes of Islam in order that they might be partakers of the Islamic commonwealth today; it is meant to re-insert and assert the Islamic identity into the slippery terrain and politics of modernity. In the latter, the significance of hijrah, the Islamic calendar, becomes clear – that Islam and Muslims made the world in the past; that Islam and Muslims could and indeed should re-make the world once again in the present.
In the realm of the spiritual, the hijrah was all about duty and sacrifice; in the realm of the material and the human it was an adventure. The first precedes the second both in importance and sequence. The hijrah was also all about forsaking and repossessing. This is evidenced in the individual and communal lives of those who left what made them great in Makkah in order for them to become greater humans in Madinah. It was a template for the emergence of new figures in history through whose actions the world today now counts the existence of over 1.9 billion Muslims.
The hijrah, while referencing motifs of forsaking and repossessing, amplifies the secret codes for the attainment of excellence in life. It means to be deprived of the world is not the same thing as forsaking the world. Both occurred with reference to the seventy individuals who made that journey during the first hijrah, the second was relevant to those who willingly left Makkah in order to populate Madinah.
The hijrah as a motif therefore essays the world as operating on a scale: it is either you are deprived of the world or you are made to forsake the world. In both instances, the world is meant to be forsaken not coveted. But the irony lies in the fact that those who forsake the world usually have the world come to them pleading that it be possessed; those who covet the world might or might never gain it; those who excessively covet the world are more likely going to lose it and lose their souls.
Dear Sister, Muslims celebrate the beginning of the Islamic calendar every year in order to remember those who stood to defend Islam while others were sitting; those who were outstanding while others were standing. Those were the Muslims – they who shone brightest simply by virtue of the deepness of their minds and the thickness of their thoughts. Those were the Muslims – they who trekked and walked on sharp and hot pebbles on the rigid and tortuous pathways between Makkah and Madinah. They were the believers – Muslims who side-stepped illusory encampments of the world with their faith in order to rescue humanity from the abyss of self-destruction.
We celebrate the hijrah in order to remember those Muslims who were Muslims first and last; not Yoruba Muslims, not Hausa Muslims, not Igbo Muslims. We celebrate the hijrah in order to remember the emergence of a group from within the class of the oppressed, the down trodden. They were born at the centre of power to the oppressed not to the rich. They were born in the backwater of the cities, to the down-trodden, the unknown, the un-sung, in order that they may have their names and memories etched permanently in our memories. They left Makkah for Madinah in order to come back to Makkah. They departed Bakkah for Madinah as refugees in order to come back to Makkah as faithful princes and honourable servants of the Almighty, not kings.
We remember them today and always. We remember Umar b. al-Khattab. He it was, who began to date the undated in Muslim history; he it was who first started the usage of the date of emigration of Muslims from Makkah to Madinah in administering the affairs of the Islamic state. We remember that important event whose stories is told in two verses of the Qur’an. The first reads, partly, thus: “And we have put a barrier before them and a barrier behind them and we have covered them up such that they cannot see” (Q36:8). The second verse goes thus: “when the unbelievers drove him out with his closest associate and he and his second were in the cave, he assured him (his second): grief not because the Almighty is with us and He caused his peace to descend into his heart and aided him with warriors unseen thus did he utterly humble the scheming of the unbelievers…” (Q9:40).
As the new hijrah year of 1446 beckons, it is hoped that the spiritual and material lessons of what brought about the migration of the Prophet and those immaculate characters and personages whose conduct and candour eventuated that season will continue to serve as compass through which Muslims globally lead their lives now and always.