It is still more significant.

It is still more significant. The Holy Prophet was still in Makkah. The Quraysh were not allowing him to propagate Islam. The situation was very tense. Anyhow, during the sacred months31 the Quraysh stopped harassing the Holy Prophet or at least did not harass him to the extent of inflicting any bodily injury, although even during these months they did not allow him to pursue any activity connected with the propagation of Islam.

Anyhow the Holy Prophet always took advantage of this temporary truce. He called upon various tribes who assembled at the 'Ukaz fair and at Arafat, (The pre-Islamic Arabs also performed Hajj, although they had their own style of it.) and invited them to Islam. While the Holy Prophet went round the tribes, Abu Lahab chased him, and contradicted and belied him. The head of a tribe was very shrewd.

He talked with the Holy Prophet for a little while and they said to his people: "Had this man been of my tribe, I would have devoured the Arabs with his help." What he meant was that the Holy Prophet was so multi-talented that with his help all the Arabs could be subdued.

Then that man turned to the Holy Prophet and said: "I and my people are ready to have faith in you provided you give us your word to appoint me or one of my people to be your successor." The Holy Prophet said: "It is not up to me to say who would succeed me. It is with Allah." This is an event mentioned in the books of the Sunnis. The Tradition of Ghadir and Its Continuity Another argument of the Shi'ah is the tradition of Ghadir. Khwaja Nasiruddin says that the Tradition of Ghadir is mutawatir.

Mutawatir is a technical term. A tradition may either be mutawatir (continuous) or khabar wahid (isolated). An isolated tradition does not mean that it has been reported only by one person. It is a tradition which has not been reported in a convincing way. It is immaterial whether it has been reported by one person or by ten. For example, somebody says that he has heard such and such report from the radio. You think that he is right, but you still want to see what others say.

If the report is confirmed by someone else, you are a little more convinced. When you see that many others say the same thing, you become sure that there is no chance that all of them may be telling a lie. The number of the reporters of a continuous tradition must be so large that there should be no possibility of their conspiring.