The Story of the Young Muhammad's Chest Being Split Open
Before long, the infant Muhammad had reached three years of age under the care of Halimah bint Abi-Dhua’ib from the Banu Sa’d. Muhammad, who had not yet become a Prophet, had another year to live in the desert, enjoying the clear and free air of the hinterland, unbound by any spiritual or material ties.
“At that time, before he reached the age of three, an event occurred that has been widely recounted by people,” wrote Husen Heikal in his book Sejarah Hidup Muhammad.
The story goes that Muhammad and his foster brother, children of the same age, were behind the house outside the supervision of their family. Suddenly, the child from the Sa’d family came running home and said to his parents, “My Quraishi brother has been taken by two men in white clothes. He was laid down, his stomach was cut open, and he was turned over,” the brother recounted, trembling.
Husen Haekal noted that another version of what happened to the young Muhammad exists, in which Halimah said of herself and her husband: “I went with his father to the place. We found him standing. His face was pale. I observed him, as did his father. We asked, ‘What is wrong with you, son?’ He replied, ‘Two men in white clothes came to me. I was laid down, and my stomach was cut open. They were looking for something inside it. I do not know what they were looking for.’”
Halimah and her husband returned home. They were very afraid that the child had been possessed. Afterwards, they took the child back to his mother in Makkah. Regarding this event, Ibn Ishaq cited a Hadith of the Prophet from after his prophethood.
However, in recounting this event, Ibn Ishaq appeared to be very cautious and stated that the reason for his return to his mother was not because of the story of the two angels, but rather—as Halimah told Aminah—when she brought him home after he was weaned, some Abyssinian Christians observed Muhammad and asked Halimah about the child. They looked at the child’s back and said, “Let us take this child to our king in our land. This child will become an important person. We are the ones who know his condition.” Halimah then quickly distanced herself from them, taking the child with her.
A similar story was also reported by Ath-Tabari, but this is still doubted, because he mentioned Muhammad at that age, then later mentioned that it happened not long before his prophethood, when he was forty years old.
Both orientalists and some Muslims themselves are not satisfied with the story of the two angels and consider the source to be very weak. The only witnesses to the two men (angels) in the accounts of the historians were children who were just over two years old. Muhammad’s age at the time was the same. However, the sources agree that Muhammad stayed with the Sa’d family until he reached the age of five. If the event had occurred when he was two and a half years old, and Halimah and her husband had returned him to his mother at that time, there would be an unacceptable contradiction in the two accounts.
Therefore, some writers believe that he returned with Halimah for the third time. In this regard, Sir William Muir did not wish to mention the story of the two men in white, and only noted that if Halimah and her husband had realised there was a disturbance affecting the child, it might have been a nervous crisis, and if it did not affect his health, it was because of his good physical constitution.
Perhaps others would say that there was no need for anyone to split open his stomach or chest, since from birth God had already prepared him to carry out His message. Dermenghem believed that this story has no basis other than what is known from the text of the verse: “Did We not expand your chest for you? And We removed from you your burden, which had weighed down your back?” (Qur’an 94: 1-3).
What the Qur’an alluded to is purely spiritual in meaning, which is to purify and cleanse the heart that would receive the Holy Message, and then convey it with complete sincerity, bearing all the burdens of that weighty Message.