From Migration to Revolution: – Between Muhammad and Joshua

In the year 622 CE, the second and most significant period in the history of Islam begins. Muhammad, persecuted and ridiculed by his own people and his tribe in Mecca, migrates north to the city of Yathrib. The residents of the city, whose origins lay in the southwest, were more open to religious ideas, perhaps thanks to their contact with the local Jewish community. The teachings Muhammad preached to them seemed less strange, and they accepted him and his followers. The city was given a new status – “Al-Madina” (the city of the Prophet), and there Muhammad continued to receive revelations.

At this stage, an important shift in Muhammad’s role takes place. He is no longer just a prophet preaching about the world to come, but also a political leader, founder of a religious society, and organizer of a state. Islam here takes on, for the first time, an institutional character: social, legal, and political laws are established. If in Mecca his ideas were mainly moral and religious – general piety, fasting, prayer, and charity – in Medina a clear system of binding commandments, laws, and structures is built. For the first time, a clear boundary is drawn between the believers and the rest of the world.

Medina is, in practice, the true homeland of Islam. Here the foundations of the religious, social, and political life of the new faith were created. Throughout Muslim history, whenever scholars sought to return to the religion’s roots, they looked back to the model of Medina.

The Hijra (Muhammad’s migration to Medina) marks not only an escape from Mecca but the beginning of a determined course – the establishment of a state, the consolidation of the faith, and ultimately, military conquest. In 630, Mecca was conquered, and later the entire Arabian Peninsula. Alongside this came a profound change in Muhammad’s self-understanding: if before he saw himself as another link in the chain of prophets, now he described his mission as restoring the original religion of Abraham, which had been corrupted and falsified. The worship he established, he claimed, had been handed down to Abraham but distorted, and now he had come to return it to its original form.

At this stage, his criticism of Jews and Christians intensified. In the past, he had seen them as close to the path of truth. Now Muhammad accused them of having distorted their scriptures and hidden the prophecies about his coming as a prophet. His assertiveness was expressed not only in military campaigns but also in fierce theological polemics. All these characterize his ten years in Medina as a period of attack and defense, both by the sword and by words.

If we seek a Jewish parallel to these two stages, we will not find exact equivalents. However, Muhammad’s move from Mecca to Medina, and his transformation from a spiritual figure into a political leader and warrior, strongly resembles the period of Joshua bin Nun in the Bible. Both Joshua and Muhammad represent a stage in which religion is not only a spiritual message but becomes a political power with military authority. Joshua continues the work of Moses, but unlike Moses – Joshua enters the Land of Israel with the Israelites, and through a series of wars conquers the land permanently, combining military leadership, the distribution of land, and the setting of boundaries between the tribes. Similarly, after the migration, Muhammad embarks on military campaigns that lead to the conquest of Mecca and later the entire Arabian Peninsula.

Just as Muhammad began to legislate in Medina, Joshua’s era continues the process of transferring the Torah from theory to practice – the application of its laws to the national life of a people in its own land. Both mark a moment of transition – from spirit to matter, from promise to fulfillment, from tradition to earthly politics within defined borders.

Here, however, lies a key difference: unlike the Meccan period, Moses in the wilderness had already legislated a detailed constitution – social, national, and political. He was not only a moral preacher. His student Joshua was the executor of the constitution Moses had already given in the desert.

And there is another essential difference: Judaism is, from its inception, an ethno-religious group. Islam, on the other hand, is a universal religion. While Joshua acts in the name of the God of Israel to establish His kingdom over the land He gave to the chosen people, Muhammad acts from a universal mission to restore religion to its “original state” and to impose it across all of Arabia – and eventually, the entire world.

This does not mean Judaism lacks a universal vision. The prophets speak of a future in which the people of Israel become a “light unto the nations” – and here lies the difference: Judaism does not seek a Jewish world. It seeks a world in which Judaism stands at the top of the hierarchy. In Islam’s end-of-days vision, however, the perfected world is entirely Muslim. The Jewish ethos does not speak of a military conquest followed by the imposition of laws. Judaism first legislates, defines a goal and vision – and only then conquers.

In this sense, Muhammad encompasses within himself both Moses and Joshua – and neither of them at the same time.

To be continued…