Why does the life of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, matter today? Fourteen centuries have passed since he was born. Millions of Muslims have lived and died since then, and many leaders have risen to lead the faithful, including descendents of the Prophet himself. Surely Islam, like other religions, has changed over 1,400 years.
Guess what?
· Muhammad did not teach “peace and tolerance.”
· Muhammad led armies and ordered assassinations of his enemies.
· Islamic tradition allows for negotiated settlements only in service of the ultimate goal of Islamic conquest.
Here’s why the life of Muhammad matters: Contrary to what many secularists would have us believe, religions are not entirely determined (or distorted) by the faithful over time. The lives and words of the founders remain central, no matter how long ago they lived. The idea that believers shape religion is derived, instead, from the fashionable 1960s philosophy of deconstructionism, which teaches that written words have no meaning other than that given to them by the reader. Equally important, it follows that if the reader alone finds meaning, there can be no truth (and certainly no religious truth); one person’s meaning is equal to another’s. Ultimately, according to deconstructionism, we all create our own set of “truths,” none better or worse than any other.
Yet for the religious man or woman on the streets of Chicago, Rome, Jerusalem, Damascus, Calcutta, and Bangkok, the words of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha mean something far greater than any individual’s reading of them. And even to the less-than-devout reader, the words of these great religious teachers are clearly not equal in their meaning.
That’s why I have placed a “Muhammad vs. Jesus” sidebar in every chapter to emphasize the fallacy of those who claim that Islam and Christianity—and all other religious traditions, for that matter—are basically equal in their ability to inspire good or evil. It is also meant to emphasize that the West, built on Christianity, is worth defending, even if we live in a so-called post-Christian era. Furthermore, through the words of Muhammad and Jesus, we can draw a distinction between the core principles that guide the faithful Muslim and Christian. These principles are important. The followers of Muhammad read his words and imitate his actions, which leads to an expression of faith quite different from Christians. One does not have to look too far to see that life in an Islamic country is different from life in the United States or Britain. The difference begins with Muhammad. In these days when so many invoke Muhammad’s words and deeds to justify actions of violence and bloodshed, it is important to become familiar with this pivotal figure.
For many in the West, Muhammad remains more mysterious than other major religious figures. Most people know, for example, that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, that Jesus died on a cross at Calvary and was raised from the dead, and maybe even that Buddha sat under a tree and received enlightenment. But less is known about Muhammad, and even that much is disputed. Hence, what follows will be taken solely from Islamic texts.
First basic fact: Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Abd al-Muttalib (570–632), the prophet of Islam, was a man of war. He taught his followers to fight for his new religion. He said that their god, Allah, had commanded them to take up arms. And Muhammad, no armchair general, fought in numerous battles. These facts are crucial to anyone who really wants to understand what caused the Crusades centuries ago or, in our own time, what has led to the rise of the global jihad movement.
In the course of these battles, Muhammad articulated numerous principles that have been followed by Muslims to this day. Therefore, it is important to record some features of Muhammad’s battles, which can provide insight into today’s newspaper headlines—insights that continue, sadly, to elude many analysts and experts.
Muhammad the raider
Muhammad already had experience as a warrior before he assumed the role of prophet. He had participated in two local wars between his Quraysh tribe and their neighboring rivals Banu Hawazin. But his unique role as prophet-warrior would come later. After receiving revelations from Allah through the angel Gabriel in 610, he began by just preaching to his tribe the worship of One God and his own position as a prophet. But he was not well received by his Quraysh brethren in Mecca, who reacted disdainfully to his prophetic call and refused to give up their gods. Muhammad’s frustration and rage became evident. When even his uncle, Abu Lahab, rejected his message, Muhammad cursed him and his wife in violent language that has been preserved in the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam: “May the hands of Abu Lahab perish! May he himself perish! Nothing shall his wealth and gains avail him. He shall be burnt in a flaming fire, and his wife, laden with faggots, shall have a rope of fibre around her neck!” (Qur’an 111:1–5).
Ultimately, Muhammad would turn from violent words to violent deeds. In 622, he finally fled his native Mecca for a nearby town, Medina, where a band of tribal warriors had accepted him as a prophet and pledged loyalty to him. In Medina, these new Muslims began raiding the caravans of the Quraysh, with Muhammad personally leading many of these raids. These raids kept the nascent Muslim movement solvent and helped form Islamic theology—as in one notorious incident when a band of Muslims raided a Quraysh caravan at Nakhla, a settlement not far from Mecca. The raiders attacked the caravan during the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting was forbidden. When they returned to the Muslim camp laden with booty, Muhammad refused to share in the loot or to have anything to do with them, saying only, “I did not order you to fight in the sacred month.”1
But then a new revelation came from Allah, explaining that the Quraysh’s opposition to Muhammad was a worse transgression than the violation of the sacred month. In other words, the raid was justified. “They question thee, O Muhammad, with regard to warfare in the sacred month. Say: warfare therein is a great transgression, but to turn men from the way of Allah, and to disbelieve in Him and in the Inviolable Place of Worship, and to expel His people thence, is a greater sin with Allah; for persecution is worse than killing” (Qur’an 2:214). Whatever sin the Nakhla raiders had committed was overshadowed by the Quraysh’s rejection of Muhammad.
Just Like Today: Killing non-combatants
When Osama bin Laden killed innocent non-combatants in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and later his co-religionists captured and beheaded civilian hostages in Iraq, American Muslim spokesmen blandly asserted that this targeting of innocent people was forbidden by Islam. This was debatable, since some Islamic legal authorities allow the killing of non-combatants if they are seen as aiding the enemies of Islam in war.2 However, even if the principle were correct, it would give way to another that arose out of the Nakhla raid: “Persecution is worse than killing.” And therefore, to fight against the persecution of Muslims, by any means necessary, is the highest good.
This was a momentous revelation, for it led to an Islamic principle that has had repercussions throughout the ages. Good became identified with anything that redounded to the benefit of Muslims, regardless of whether it violated moral or other laws. The moral absolutes enshrined in the Ten Commandments, and other teachings of the great religions that preceded Islam, were swept aside in favor of an overarching principle of expediency.
The Battle of Badr
Soon after Nakhla came the first major battle the Muslims fought. Muhammad heard that a large Quraysh caravan, laden with money and goods, was coming from Syria. “This is the Quraysh caravan containing their property,” he told his followers. “Go out to attack it, perhaps God will give it as a prey.”3 He set out toward Mecca to lead the raid. But this time the Quraysh were ready for him, coming out to meet Muhammad’s three hundred men with a force nearly a thousand strong. Muhammad seems not to have expected these numbers and cried out to Allah in anxiety, “O God, if this band perish today Thou wilt be worshipped no more.”4
Despite their superior numbers, the Quraysh were routed. Some Muslim traditions say that Muhammad himself participated in the fighting, others that he exhorted his followers from the sidelines. In any event, it was an occasion for him to see years of frustration, resentment, and hatred toward his own people, who had rejected him, avenged. One of his followers later recalled a curse Muhammad had pronounced on the leaders of the Quraysh: “The Prophet said, ‘O Allah! Destroy the chiefs of Quraish, O Allah! Destroy Abu Jahl bin Hisham, ‘Utba bin Rabi’a, Shaiba bin Rabi’a, ‘Uqba bin Abi Mu’ait, ‘Umaiya bin Khalaf (or Ubai bin Kalaf).’”5
All these men were captured or killed during the battle of Badr. One Quraysh leader named in this curse, ‘Uqba, pleaded for his life, “But who will look after my children, O Muhammad?”
“Hell,” responded the Prophet of Islam, and ordered ‘Uqba killed.6
Another Quraysh chieftain, Abu Jahl (which means “Father of Ignorance,” a name given him by Muslim chroniclers; his real name was ‘Amr ibn Hisham) was beheaded. The Muslim who severed the head proudly carried his trophy to Muhammad: “I cut off his head and brought it to the apostle, saying, ‘This is the head of the enemy of God, Abu Jahl.’”
Muhammad was delighted. “By God than Whom there is no other, is it?” he exclaimed, and gave thanks to Allah for the death of his enemy.7
The bodies of all those named in the curse were thrown into a pit. As an eyewitness recalled, “Later on I saw all of them killed during the battle of Badr and their bodies were thrown into a well except the body of Umaiya or Ubai, because he was a fat man, and when he was pulled, the parts of his body got separated before he was thrown into the well.”8 Then Muhammad taunted them as “people of the pit” and posed a theological question: “Have you found what God promised you is true? I have found that what my Lord promised me is true.” When asked why he was speaking to dead bodies, he replied: “You cannot hear what I say better than they, but they cannot answer me.”9
The victory at Badr was the legendary turning point for the Muslims. Muhammad even claimed that armies of angels joined with the Muslims to smite the Quraysh—and that similar help would come in the future to Muslims who remained faithful to Allah: “Allah had helped you at Badr, when ye were a contemptible little force; then fear Allah; thus may ye show your gratitude. Remember thou saidst to the Faithful: ‘Is it not enough for you that Allah should help you with three thousand angels specially sent down? Yea, if ye remain firm, and act aright, even if the enemy should rush here on you in hot haste, your Lord would help you with five thousand angels making a terrific onslaught” (Qur’an 3:123–125). Another revelation from Allah emphasized that it was piety, not military might, that brought victory at Badr: “There has already been for you a Sign in the two armies that met in combat: one was fighting in the cause of Allah, the other resisting Allah; these saw with their own eyes twice their number. But Allah doth support with His aid whom He pleaseth. In this is a warning for such as have eyes to see” (Qur’an 3:13). Another Qur’anic passage asserts that the Muslims were merely passive instruments at Badr: “It is not ye who slew them; it was Allah” (Qur’an 8:17). And Allah would grant such victories to pious Muslims even though they faced odds even more overwhelming than those they had overcome at Badr: “O Prophet! Rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the unbelievers: for these are a people without understanding” (Qur’an 8:65).
Allah rewarded those he had granted victory at Badr: There was great booty—so much, in fact, that it became a bone of contention. So divisive did this become that Allah himself spoke about it in a chapter (sura) of the Qur’an devoted entirely to reflections on the battle of Badr: the eighth chapter, titled Al-Anfal, “The Spoils of War” or “Booty.” Allah warns the Muslims not to consider booty won at Badr to belong to anyone but Muhammad: “They ask thee concerning things taken as spoils of war. Say: ‘(Such) spoils are at the disposal of Allah and the Messenger: so fear Allah, and keep straight the relations between yourselves. Obey Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe’” (Qur’an 8:1). Ultimately, Muhammad distributed the booty among the Muslims equally, keeping a fifth for himself: “And know that whatever ye take as spoils of war, lo! a fifth thereof is for Allah, and for the messenger and for the kinsman (who hath need) and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, if ye believe in Allah and that which We revealed unto Our slave on the Day of Discrimination, the day when the two armies met” (Qur’an 8:41). Allah emphasized that it was a reward for obedience to him: “Now enjoy what ye have won, as lawful and good, and keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” (Qur’an 8:69).10
From being a tiny, despised community, the Muslims were now a force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon—and they began to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Muhammad’s claim to be the last prophet of the One, True God appeared validated by a victory against enormous odds. With this victory, certain attitudes and assumptions were being planted in the minds of Muslims, which remain with many of them to this day. These include:
Allah will grant victory to his people against foes that are superior in numbers or firepower, so long as they remain faithful to his commands.
Victories entitle the Muslims to appropriate the possessions of the vanquished as booty.
Bloody vengeance against one’s enemies belongs not solely to the Lord, but also to those who submit to him on earth. That is the meaning of the word Islam: submission.
Prisoners taken in battle against the Muslims may be put to death at the discretion of Muslim leaders.
Those who reject Islam are “the vilest of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6) and thus deserve no mercy.
Anyone who insults or even opposes Muhammad or his people deserves a humiliating death—by beheading if possible. (This is in accordance with Allah’s command to “smite the necks” of the “unbelievers” (Qur’an 47:4)).
Above all, the battle of Badr was the first practical example of what came to be known as the Islamic doctrine of jihad—a doctrine that holds the key to the understanding of both the Crusades and the conflicts of today.
Assassination and deceit
Flushed with victory, Muhammad stepped up his raiding operations. He also hardened in his attitudes toward the Jewish tribes of the region, who kept their faith and rejected Muhammad as a prophet of God. With this rejection, Muhammad’s prophetic calls to Jews began to get violent, emphasizing earthly punishment. Striding into the center of the marketplace of the Banu Qaynuqa, a Jewish tribe with whom he had a truce, he announced to the crowds, “O Jews, beware lest God bring upon you the vengeance that He brought upon Quraysh and become Muslims. You know that I am a prophet who has been sent—you will find that in your scriptures and God’s covenant with you.”11 The Jews of the Banu Qaynuqa were not persuaded, frustrating the Prophet even more. He laid siege on them until they offered him unconditional surrender.
Even then Muhammad’s anger was not assuaged. He found a new focus for it in a Jewish poet, K’ab bin Al-Ashraf, who, according to Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, “composed amatory verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women.”12Muhammad asked his followers, “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?”13
Ibn Warraq on Islam:
“The theory and practice of jihad was not concocted in the Pentagon…. It was taken from the Koran, the Hadith and Islamic tradition. Western liberals, especially humanists, find it hard to believe this…. It is extraordinary the amount of people who have written about the 11th of September without once mentioning Islam. We must take seriously what the Islamists say to understand their motivation, [that] it is the divinely ordained duty of all Muslims to fight in the literal sense until man-made law has been replaced by God’s law, the Sharia, and Islamic law has conquered the entire world…. For every text the liberal Muslims produce, the mullahs will use dozens of counter-examples [that are] exegetically, philosophically, historically far more legitimate.”
He found a volunteer in a young Muslim named Muhammad bin Maslama: “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” After the Prophet answered, “Yes,” Muhammad bin Maslama asked him for permission to lie in order to deceive K’ab bin Al-Ashraf into walking into an ambush.14 The Prophet granted him this permission, and Muhammad bin Maslama duly deceived and murdered K’ab.15
After the murder of K’ab, Muhammad issued a blanket command: “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” This was not a military order: The first victim was a Jewish merchant, Ibn Sunayna, who had “social and business relations” with the Muslims. The murderer, Muhayissa, was rebuked for the deed by his brother Huwayissa, who was not yet a Muslim. Muhayissa was unrepentant. He told his brother, “Had the one who ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you I would have cut your head off.”
Huwayissa was impressed: “By God, a religion which can bring you to this is marvelous!” He became a Muslim.16 The world is still witnessing such marvels to this day.
Muhammad vs. Jesus
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus (Matthew 5:44)
“Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.”
Qur’an 8:60
Revenge and pretexts
After their humiliation at Badr, the Quraysh were anxious for revenge. They assembled three thousand troops against one thousand Muslims at Uhud. Muhammad wore two coats of mail and, brandishing a sword, led the Muslims into battle. But this time they were routed. The Prophet himself had his face bloodied and a tooth knocked out; rumors even flew around the battlefield that he had been killed. When he was able to find water to wash the blood off his face, Muhammad vowed revenge: “The wrath of God is fierce against him who bloodied the face of His prophet.”17When Abu Sufyan, the Quraysh leader, taunted the Muslims, Muhammad was adamant, and emphasized the traditional sharp Islamic distinction between believers and unbelievers. He told his lieutenant ‘Umar to respond: “God is most high and most glorious. We are not equal. Our dead are in paradise; your dead in hell.”18
Just Like Today: Pretexts
Another pattern was set at Uhud that played out across the centuries: Muslims would see any aggression as a pretext for revenge, regardless of whether they provoked it. With a canny understanding of how to sway public opinion, jihadists and their PC allies on the American Left today use current events as pretexts to justify what they are doing: Time and again they portray themselves as merely reacting to grievous provocations from the enemies of Islam. By this they gain recruits and sway popular opinion.
Conventional wisdom among a surprisingly broad political spectrum today holds that the global jihad movement is a response to some provocation or other: the invasion of Iraq, the establishment of Israel, the toppling of Iran’s Mossadegh—or a more generalized offense such as “American neo-colonialism” or “the lust for oil.” Those who are particularly forgetful of history blame it on newly minted epiphenomena such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, which cast a shadow over America’s presence in Iraq in 2004. But the jihadists were fighting long before Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Israel, or American independence. Indeed, they have been fighting and imitating their warrior Prophet ever since the seventh century, casting their actions as responses to the enormities of their enemies ever since Muhammad discovered his uncle’s mutilated body.
Muhammad vowed revenge again when he found the body of his uncle Hamza. Hamza had been killed at Uhud and his body horribly mutilated by a woman, Hind bint ‘Utba, who cut off Hamza’s nose and ears and ate a part of his liver. She did this in revenge for the killing of her father, brother, uncle, and eldest son at Badr. The Prophet was not in the least moved by the fact that she had done these terrible deeds in revenge: “If God gives me victory over Quraysh in the future,” he exclaimed, “I will mutilate thirty of their men.” Touched by his grief and anger, his followers made a similar vow: “By God, if God gives us victory over them in the future we will mutilate them as no Arab has ever mutilated anyone.”19
In victory and defeat, more Islam
Defeat at Uhud, meanwhile, did nothing to shake Muslims’ faith or dull its fervor. Allah told them they would have gained another victory if they had not disobeyed him: “Allah verily made good His promise unto you when ye routed them by His leave, until (the moment) when your courage failed you, and ye disagreed about the order and ye disobeyed, after He had shown you that for which ye long” (Qur’an 3:152).
Here again a pattern was set: When things go wrong for the Muslims, it is punishment for not being faithful to Islam. In 1948, Sayyid Qutb, the great theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the distinction of being the first modern Islamic terrorist group, declared of the Islamic world: “We only have to look in order to see that our social situation is as bad as it can be.” Yet “we continually cast aside all our own spiritual heritage, all our intellectual endowment, and all the solutions which might well be revealed by a glance at these things; we cast aside our own fundamental principles and doctrines, and we bring in those of democracy, or socialism, or communism.”20 In other words, Islam alone guarantees success, and to abandon it brings failure.
The theological connection between victory and obedience and defeat and disobedience was reinforced after the Muslim victory at the Battle of the Trench in 627. Muhammad again received a revelation that attributed the victory to Allah’s supernatural intervention: “O ye who believe! Remember Allah’s favor unto you when there came against you hosts, and We sent against them a great wind and hosts ye could not see” (Qur’an 33:9).
Just Like Today: Tsunami calls for more Islam
After a tsunami devastated the South Pacific on December 26, 2004, Australia and the United States alone pledged more than one billion dollars in aid. Oil-soaked Arab countries—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Algeria, Bahrain, and Libya—made a combined pledge of less than one-tenth this amount. One reason for this: Islamic teachers attributed the tsunami to the sins committed by infidels and Muslims in heavily Islamic Indonesia. As one Saudi cleric said, “It happened at Christmas when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion.”21
PC Myth: We can negotiate with these people
Yet another key Islamic principle was formulated by events surrounding the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. In 628, Muhammad had a vision in which he performed a pilgrimage to Mecca—a pagan custom that he wanted to make part of Islam, but had so far been unable to do because of Quraysh control of the city. He directed Muslims to prepare to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and advanced on the city with 1,500 men. The Quraysh met him outside the city, and the two sides concluded a ten-year truce (hudna), the treaty of Hudaybiyya.
The Muslims agreed to return home without making the pilgrimage, and the Quraysh would allow them to make the pilgrimage the following year. Muhammad shocked his men by agreeing further to provisions that seemed highly disadvantageous to the Muslims: Those fleeing the Quraysh and seeking refuge with the Muslims would be returned to the Quraysh, while those fleeing the Muslims and seeking refuge with the Quraysh would not be returned to the Muslims. The Quraysh negotiator, Suhayl bin ‘Amr, even compelled Muhammad not to identify himself as “Muhammad, the apostle of God.” Said Suhayl, “If I witnessed that you were God’s apostle I would not have fought you. Write your own name and the name of your father.” To the dismay of his companions, Muhammad did so.
Then, contrary to all appearances, he insisted that the Muslims had been victorious, producing a new revelation from Allah: “Verily We have granted thee a manifest victory” (Qur’an 48:1). He promised that his followers would reap much booty: “Allah was well pleased with the believers when they swore allegiance unto thee beneath the tree, and He knew what was in their hearts, and He sent down peace of reassurance on them, and hath rewarded them with a near victory; and much booty that they will capture. Allah is ever Mighty, Wise. Allah promiseth you much booty that ye will capture, and hath given you this in advance, and hath withheld men’s hands from you, that it may be a token for the believers, and that He may guide you on a right path” (Qur’an 48:18–20).
A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read
A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, Oxford University Press, 1955. An English translation of the earliest biography of Muhammad—written by a pious Muslim. Virtually every page presents a devastating refutation of the whitewashed, peaceful Muhammad of PC myth.
If any of his followers were still skeptical, their fears would soon be assuaged. A woman of the Quraysh, Umm Kulthum, joined the Muslims in Medina; her two brothers came to Muhammad, asking that she be returned, “in accordance with the agreement between him and the Quraysh at Hudaybiya.”22 Muhammad refused because Allah forbade it. He gave Muhammad a new revelation: “O ye who believe! When there come to you believing women refugees, examine and test them: Allah knows best as to their faith: if ye ascertain that they are believers, then send them not back to the unbelievers” (Qur’an 60:10).
In refusing to send Umm Kulthum back to the Quraysh, Muhammad broke the treaty. Although Muslim apologists have claimed throughout history that the Quraysh broke it first, this incident came before any treaty violations by the Quraysh. Furthermore, breaking the treaty reinforced the principle that nothing was good except what was advantageous to Islam, and nothing evil except what hindered it. Once the treaty was formally discarded, Islamic jurists enunciated the principle that, in general, truces were to be concluded for no longer than ten years and only entered into for the purpose of allowing weakened Muslim forces to gain strength.
Subsequent events would illustrate the dark implications of this principle.