The First Believers

Every faith remembers its first names. In Islam they form a portrait of who this message was for: Khadijah (ra), a woman, the very first; Ali (ra), a child of ten; Zayd ibn Harithah (ra), a man who had been enslaved; and Abu Bakr (ra), a respected merchant. Woman and man, child and elder, freed and free: the door was that wide from the first week.

Abu Bakr's (ra) faith deserves its own telling. He was the Prophet's ﷺ friend long before prophethood, a man whose honesty and knowledge of lineages made him welcome in every gathering. When the Prophet ﷺ told him of the revelation, he believed on the spot, without a pause, without a request for proof. The Prophet ﷺ said of him later: I have never invited anyone to Islam who did not show some hesitation, except Abu Bakr.

And the new believer immediately went to work. Through Abu Bakr's (ra) quiet invitations came a generation of giants: Uthman ibn Affan, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Abdur-Rahman ibn Awf, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, Talhah ibn Ubaydillah (ra), young men of substance who would each carry the religion on their shoulders for decades.

For about three years the call stayed quiet. Believers met privately, prayed in the folds of the valleys, and learned the verses as they came down. The Qur'an of those years spoke little of law; it spoke of the One God, the Last Day, the cracking open of the sky, the weighing of hearts. Before a community can stand, a conviction must.