The Truth:
Most everyone agrees that after thirteen years of preaching his new religion, Muhammad did not have very
much success and was forced to flee Mecca with his 150 followers. There he formed an army and
returned eight years later to conquer the city that rejected him.
Muslims who are not as knowledgeable about the true record left by the historians of the day believe
that Mecca was a city of extreme religious persecution and evil pagans who simply had to be conquered
because of the danger they posed. Muhammad then fully forgave the people and everyone lived in
harmony, enjoying the new age of peace and religious tolerance that Islam brought to the city.
Today's Muslims have a visceral need to believe that their religion made Mecca a better city,
because if Islam wasn't better than the paganism that came before, then it has little chance of being
better than Western religion and other alternatives that exist today.
Unfortunately, the picture painted by early Muslim historians is in stark contrast to contemporary preferences.
The truth is that, once he attained power, Muhammad showed far less tolerance than was previously shown to him. In fact, Islam transformed the highly
tolerant and religiously pluralistic population center of Mecca into one of only two cities in the
entire world where one is not allowed to set foot if they do not profess the predominant
religion. (Medina is the other).
Prior to Muhammad, Mecca was one of six cities in Arabia with a Kaaba, the cube-like building
that housed hundreds of idols and religious artifacts. The Meccans were mostly polytheists,
who worshipped their preferred gods, yet respected everyone else's.
Mecca was also the site of an annual religious pilgrimage, in which people from across the
region would visit the city over a four month period. The commerce and income generated from this annual
event was extremely important to the local economy.
People from foreign lands were allowed to store their idols at the Kaaba, including
Hindus. Room was even made for Jews and Christians, who worshipped there alongside
the others. Meccans allowed conversions between faiths and there was no record of
persecution against those who practiced any religion, as long as they did not insult others.
Muhammad's own experience is proof of the Meccan desire to live in peace and harmony. According
to Muslim historical sources, the people of Mecca did not mind Muhammad preaching
a new religion, as he began to do in 610 at the age of 40. They simply asked that he be as
tolerant of them as they were of him.
Instead of obliging, however, the self-proclaimed prophet broke with tradition and began openly
insulting the local religions as well as the ancestors of the people who practiced it.
(See Myth: Muhammad was Persecuted by the Meccans for Preaching
Islam for references). This not only caused great offense, but it was a direct threat
to the primary source of livelihood for many residents.
Even so, the people allowed Muhammad to preach in contradiction to local customs for 13 years,
which is proof positive of their tolerance. In fact, it was the Muslims who were the
first to draw blood, as they became increasingly violent toward the
skeptical mainstream of society.
To be fair, there were some Meccans who responded in kind after the Muslims became violent, but
only one death was recorded in the Sira (that of an elderly slave who died from stress) and none in the
Hadith. Muhammad's presence was tolerated - up until he joined with a foreign tribe in
an alliance of war against the very city in which he lived. At that
point he was evicted from Mecca. The year was 622.
Although his adversaries were content leaving him alone in
Medina, where he fled with his cult of friends and family, Muhammad would not let go of the bitterness
of his rejection. He constantly harassed the Meccans by raiding
their caravans and goading them into open conflict. Eventually,
he tricked them into signing a 10-year treaty which left them
defenseless before his army when he suddenly decided to take the city by surprise less than two
years later in 630.
The violent history of early Islam leaves little for Muslim apologists to make the case that Islam
is a peaceful, tolerant religion. Ironically the occupation of Mecca in the aftermath of
Muhammad's victory is usually their prime example, since it was was not followed by widespread
massacre of the residents (other than the annihilation of anyone who tried to defend his home from
foreign occupation, as a handful did).
Yet, it is fascinating to see just how low Islam's own defenders must set the bar for their
religion. It is clear from the accounts of Ibn Ishaq/Hisham and other early historians that the
residents of Mecca did not want war, did not prepare for war, and were
obviously not expecting it when Muhammad marched through the gates of their city with
an army of 10,000 soldiers. There is simply no reason to expect that these innocent people
would be slaughtered in the first place (other than the fact that the prophet of Islam
had ordered such massacres in the past).
As it was, some residents of Mecca were sentenced to death by Muhammad himself ("a
small number who were to be killed even if they were found beneath the curtains of the Ka'ba"
Ishaq/Hisham 818, Ibn Kathir v.3 p. 403 - see also
Abu Dawud 2677). These
included his former adversaries who had personally mocked and rejected him, including two slave
girls who had made up songs about him:
"He had two singing girls, Fartana and her friend, who used to sing satirical songs
about the apostle,
so he ordered that they should be killed" (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 819,
Ibn Kathir v.3 p. 403)
Their master, Ibn Khatal, an apostate from Islam, was also slain on Muhammad's order even as he tried
to take refuge in what was considered the holiest of places:
Allah's Apostle entered Mecca in the year of its Conquest wearing an Arabian helmet on his
head and when the Prophet took it off, a person came and said, "Ibn Khatal is holding
the covering of the Ka'ba (taking refuge in the Ka'ba)." The Prophet said, "Kill
him." (Bukhari 29:72,
Muslim 7:3145)
A former scribe of Muhammad's named Abdullah also made the hit list for leaving Islam after
realizing that the transmissions from Allah were arbitrary
by successfully suggesting changes to Muhammad about the wording of certain supposedly immutable "revelations."
As with some of the others, Abdullah managed to save his neck by "converting" to Islam just
before the moment of execution. Rather than mock the people who mocked him, or turn the other
cheek (as a different "prophet" named Jesus once preached), Muhammad killed those who would not repent for having rejected him (see the Answering Islam article
Muhammad and the Ten Meccans for a
full list of those were sentenced and/or executed).
It was at this point that Mecca, one of the most religiously diverse cities on earth, became one of the most
oppressive and intolerant. Muhammad's very first order of business was to destroy the idols of the very
people who allowed him to preach his religion in their city for thirteen years:
"The Prophet entered Mecca and (at that time) there were three hundred and sixty idols around
the Ka'ba. He started stabbing the idols with a stick he had in his hand and
reciting: "Truth (Islam) has come and Falsehood (disbelief) has vanished."
(Bukhari 43:658)
This was done on the "day of conquest" (Ibn Kathir v3, p.408). Afterwards, Muhammad had the Islamic call to prayer made from the top of the kabaa "to anger the polytheists" (p.412).
The prophet of Islam then sent his men out to destroy the temples of other tribes, both around Mecca
(Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 840) and as far away as Yemen (Bukhari 59:643).
With their own religion violently destroyed, most Meccans had no choice but to outwardly "embrace"
the very religion they had adamantly rejected for the twenty-one years prior to having a sword
at their throat. To say that this was heartfelt (as some contemporary apologists do) certainly exceeds credulity.
Before evicting those who would not convert, Muhammad first used the allied strength of the
local Meccans to conquer a neighboring city, al-Taif, as payback for their earlier rejection
of him (and, ironically enough, their own unwillingness to make an alliance of war with him against the Meccans).
Islam owes its success to military force, but this probably would not have been possible if
the non-Muslims of his day were vigilant instead of overly tolerant and peaceful. Only
months after conquering their city, Muhammad was in a position to break what was left of his
treaty and forcibly evict those who would not embrace Islam:
"So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find
them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then
if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to
them." (Quran 9:5)
The prayer and "poor due" mentioned in the verse are among the pillars of Islam - salat and
zakat respectively. According to Islam's holiest text, therefore, the only way for polytheists to
avoid death was to convert to Islam or flee the city. Consider the fate of an elderly man who
preferred to pray in his own way:
"The Prophet recited Suratan-Najm (103) at Mecca and prostrated while reciting it and
those who were with him did the same except an old man who took a handful of small stones
or earth and lifted it to his forehead and said, 'This is sufficient for me.' Later
on, I saw him killed as a non-believer." (Sahih Muslim 19:173) .
Needless to say, anyone who did not profess their faith in Muhammad after a four month grace period was
not allowed even to perform the pilgrimage, which had been a centuries-old tradition.
The story of Muhammad's violent expulsion of non-Muslims from their own city can also be found in
Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 920-923. Muslim apologists often claim that Muhammad only ordered the killing
of those pagans who had "broken the treaty," yet the historical context states that the
command to fight applies to "the polytheists who had broken the agreement as well as those
who had a general agreement after the four months which had been given them as a fixed
time" (Ishaq/Hisham 922). In other words, unbelievers were given four months to
vacate their homes, whether they had done anything wrong or not.
There is no real evidence that the polytheists at Mecca posed a
threat. Ibn Kathir's account (Vol IV pp 48-52) simply says that Allah/Muhammad declared
a "declaration of immunity" from prior agreements with the pagans. The Quran justifies the eviction on the basis that they are "unclean" (Quran 9:28) for worshipping idols. Neither is
there any historical account of the Meccans having become violent after having been told they were being evicted.
Those who remained in the once tolerant city of Mecca lived under a draconian theocracy, in which
an outward display of religion was required by Muhammad as a test of personal loyalty. He even threatened those
who refused to comply with Islamic rituals with being burned alive:
"The Prophet said, 'No prayer is harder for the hypocrites than the Fajr and
the 'Isha' prayers and if they knew the reward for these prayers at their respective
times, they would certainly present themselves (in the mosques) even if they had to crawl.' The Prophet added, 'Certainly I decided to order the Mu'adh-dhin (call-maker) to pronounce Iqama and order a man to lead the prayer and then take a fire flame to burn all those who had not left their houses so far for the prayer along with their houses.'" Bukhari 11:626
Jews and Christians were not spared the religious bigotry either. In fact, they were eventually
chased out of the entire Arabian peninsula based on Muhammad's final injunction from his deathbed:
I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim. (Sahih Muslim 4366)
So, Muhammad not only evicted non-Muslims from Mecca, he also banned them from approaching the Kaaba altogether. This was an extraordinary example of hypocrisy given that, according to the Quran's second chapter, preventing people from from worshipping at the Kaaba is akin to "persecution," and so important that "slaughter" is mandated by Allah in this case.
Islam thus became a system of double standards in which "might makes right" and the
morality of an action is judged only by whether or not it advances Islam or benefits Muslims. To
this day, Muslims demand the freedom to preach their faith in non-Muslim countries, yet deny the
same right to other religions where and when they have the power. They also insist that others
have the right to convert to Islam, while no Muslim has the right to leave Islam on penalty of death.
The effects of supplanting the traditional pagan system with Muhammad's legacy of intolerance are
undeniable. Fifty years after Muhammad's death, the Kaaba, which had stood for centuries
under the banner of religious tolerance and respect, lay in ruins from one of the many internal Muslim
wars that sprang up following Muhammad's death.
To this day, Muslims are still at each others throats and there is no Islamic country in the world that
truly allows other religions to preach openly and recruit converts as Muhammad was allowed to do
in Mecca. In stark contrast to its pre-Islamic history, this city now holds the honor as being
the most religiously intolerant city on earth, as non-Muslims are not even allowed to visit... and there
is not a single Muslim voice of protest.
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