Mecca and the Quraysh Treaty

Description

This is the third book in the volume “A Theory of Reordering Religions and Eras,” and it raises a highly sensitive issue for contemporary Muslims: the unprecedented questioning of the Quraysh treaty and whether a global trade route truly originated from Mecca in the Hijaz. The mere questioning of the existence of this trade route, led by a Hijazi tribe known as the Quraysh, before Islam, inevitably leads us to the embarrassing question: what were the true motives for elevating the Quraysh—that is, elevating a specific race or ethnicity—to the status of “master” over other races and ethnicities, making them the sole masters of the religious site and its trade? Was there some kind of religious justification that compelled historians to portray the Quraysh, long before Islam, as the “masters of the Arabs”? Furthermore, the book raises a series of questions about the very existence of the Quraysh in the Hijaz. This question, and its ramifications, are undoubtedly taboo subjects, perhaps even beyond the bounds of acceptable inquiry. This is not about Muslims who argue about anything pertaining solely to Islam, excluding other religions; it also concerns the traditional Muslim. However, due to his fixed, traditional, and static historical position—that is, thanks to his fixed image in the popular imagination as a traditional Muslim—he will appear to us more receptive than others to hearing and reading alternative perspectives. Nevertheless, all of these people, the religious fundamentalists and the “popular religious public,” will ultimately find themselves perplexed by this question, but they will inevitably echo the same painful question: Did the Quraysh lead the trade of the ancient world to the Arabs, and when and where?