The Truth:
Only Muhammad was in danger at Mecca - and
this was after he made a treaty of war against the local residents
while living among them, thirteen years into his preaching.
After his influential uncle
(Abu Talib) died, Muhammad was exposed to the wrath of the Meccans, whom he had been
insulting free of
personal consequence for so many years. Even so, they still weren't looking to harm him, because they believed that he would stop stirring up trouble following the loss of his protector.
They were mistaken.
Muhammad eventually made an alliance with another town, Medina, that included
provisions of war against the Meccans (the Second Pledge at al-Aqaba). The parties to the treaty were
asked “Do you realize to what you are committing yourselves in pledging your
support to this man? It is to war against all and sundry” (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 299 and 305).
The
pledge to war is further confirmed by
Ibn Kathir: "The Quraysh were concerned... since they knew that he had decided
to do battle with them (Vol.2 p151 - see also p. 144: the hijra followed "when God gave permission to do battle").
Therefore, it was only after Muhammad committed himself to armed revolution
against the Meccans that the town’s leaders sought to have him either killed
or evicted. This followed a Quraish council in which:The
discussion opened with the statement that now that Muhammad
had gained adherents outside the tribe they were no longer safe against
a sudden attack and the meeting was to determine the best course to
·pursue (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 324) The historical account also flatly contradicts the
popular view that all Muslims had to flee Mecca following Muhammad’s declaration
of war. In fact, it was only Muhammad himself whom the Meccans were
interested in seizing. This is proven by the episode recounted in Ibn
Ishaq/Hisham (326-328) and Ibn Kathir (Vol.2 p153) in which Muhammad's own son-in-law, Ali, sleeps in his bed to
trick his enemies into thinking that they had cornered him on the night they
came to seize him.
Not only did the Meccans do no harm to Ali, even after finding out that he had
fooled them, but he remained in the city for several days thereafter with
Muhammad’s daughter Fatima in order to arrange the transfer of the family business to
Medina.
The story of Fatima's sister, Muhammad's oldest
daughter, is of acute embarrassment to those who insist Muslims were suffering
in Mecca. Zaynab was married to Abu al-Aas ibn al-Rabee, one of Muhammad's
arch enemies, and had no desire to leave. When Muhammad took her husband
prisoner at the Battle of Badr, Zaynab tried to ransom him, but the prophet of
Islam would not free the man until she promised to leave Mecca and live in
Medina with him instead. She was actually forced to trade her marriage for
her husband's life. It was not until Abu al-Aas agreed to "embrace" Islam
(after being taken hostage again six years later following a Muslim caravan
raid) that Muhammad allowed the two to live together.
Muslim biographers provide the names of other Muslims who continued to live in
Mecca following Muhammad’s departure and there is no record that they were
persecuted. There is even some evidence that the Muslims in Medina were
allowed to conduct pilgrimages back to Mecca during the holy months (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 424 &
Qur’an 2:196).
It is important to note that
Muhammad justified his own eviction
at the hands of the Meccans by his subsequent actions in Medina, where he began
evicting the
native Jewish tribes within just a few months of arriving. Apologists are
fond of claiming that the eviction (and outright execution) of the Jews on the
direct order of Muhammad was necessary because of their “enmity” towards him.
Unfortunately for the Jews, the Muslims were far less patient and far more
severe with them than the Meccans had been with Muhammad – but this is just one
of the many grand hypocrisies of Islam.
A supremacist ideology is always
its own justification.
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