e Focus of
the endless splendors of grace--and he said that in Persia to protect
themselves from an encroaching host they would dig a moat or trench about
their lands, and that this had proved a highly efficient safeguard against
surprise attacks. Did that Wellspring of universal wisdom, that Mine of
divine knowledge say in reply that this was a custom current among
idolatrous, fire-worshiping Magians and could therefore hardly be adopted
by monotheists? Or did He rather immediately direct His followers to set
about digging a trench? He even, in His Own blessed person, took hold of
the tools and went to work beside them.

It is moreover a matter of record in the books of the various Islamic
schools and the writings of leading divines and historians, that after the
Light of the World had risen over Hijaz, flooding all mankind with Its
brilliance, and creating through the revelation of a new divine Law, new
principles and institutions, a fundamental change throughout the
world--holy laws were revealed which in some cases conformed to the
practices of the Days of Ignorance.(15) Among these, Muhammad respected
the months of religious truce,(16) retained the prohibition of swine's
flesh, continued the use of the lunar calendar and the names of the months
and so on. There is a considerable number of such laws specifically
enumerated in the texts:

"The people of the Days of Ignorance engaged in many practices which the
Law of Islam later confirmed. They would not take in marriage both a
mother and her daughter, and the most shameful of acts in their view was
to marry two sisters. They would stigmatize a man marrying the wife of his
father, derisively calling him his father's competitor. It was their
custom to go on pilgrimage to the House at Mecca, where they would perform
the ceremonies of visitation, putting on the pilgrim's dress, practicing
the circumambulation, running between the hills, pausing at all the
stopping-places, and casting the stones. It was, furthermore, their wont
to intercalate one month in every three-year period, to perform ablutions
after intercourse, to rinse out the mouth and snuff up water through the
nostrils, to part the hair, use the tooth-stick, pare the nails and pluck
the armpits. They would, likewise, cut off the right hand of a thief."

Can one, God forbid, assume that because some of the divine laws resemble
the practices of the Days of Ignorance, the customs of a people abhorred
by all na