The Truth:
Verses 5:45-48 of the Quran affirm the Old
Testament rule of “an eye for an eye," but also add the Christian principle
that forgiveness is more noble than retaliation. If ever there was proof
that these words do not necessarily apply to the treatment of
non-Muslims, it is in Muhammad’s conduct toward the Jews in general and
the Qurayza tribe in particular.
Muhammad and his band of immigrants arrived in Medina in 622 completely dependent on the hospitality of the three Jewish tribes
that lived there alongside the Arabs. In less than two years, two of
the tribes that had welcomed him, the
Banu Qaynuqa and the
Banu Nadir would be evicted, losing their land
and their wealth to the Muslims as soon as their guests gained the power to
conquer and confiscate. Muhammad accomplished this by deftly exploiting
divisions.
The prophet of Islam chose the order of the
doomed tribes carefully. He knew that the other
two tribes would not come to the assistance of the first, for example, since they had been
aligned against one another in a recent conflict. He also knew that the third would
not assist the
second - due to a dispute over "blood money."
The last tribe remaining was the Banu
Qurayza. Like the others, the Qurayza were a peaceful community of farmers
and tradesmen who eventually surrendered to Muhammad without a fight.
Although the prophet of Islam had been wise enough not to order the wholesale
slaughter of the first two tribes following their defeat (which certainly would
have stiffened the resistance of the Qurayza), there was no practical reason for
Muhammad to repress his genocidal urges once the last tribe had surrendered
their wealth and power.
Some 800 surrendered men and boys (and at least one woman)
from the Qurayza tribe were beheaded by the prophet of Islam in a bloodbath that
is of acute embarrassment to today’s Muslim apologists (according to Ibn Kathir, the number ranges from 400-900 v.3 p.170). It is an episode
that is not only completely at odds with the idea that Islam is a peaceful
religion, but also refutes the claim that it is the heir to Christianity, since even
that religion’s most dedicated critics could hardly imagine Jesus and his
disciples doing such a
thing.
It is only in modern times (as Islam finds itself
having to compete with morally mature religions in open debate) that the story
of the massacre has become controversial. Some Muslims deny the episode,
largely on the basis of mere inconvenience. Others are unaware of it
altogether. But, the incident well documented in the Sira (biography of Muhammad).
Since Islam makes no apologies, particularly for
anything that Muhammad personally did, contemporary Muslims generally try to convince
themselves that the victims of Qurayza deserved their fate. They must have
turned on the Muslims in battle and inflicted many deaths, forcing Muhammad to
yield to the wishes of his people and respond in kind.
Unfortunately, the accounts of what happened, as
related to early Muslim historians by eyewitnesses, do not support this
myth. In fact, it was the Qurayza who were caught in an impossible
situation at the time, between the Muslims and their Meccan adversaries.
Shortly after arriving in Medina in 622, Muhammad
began raiding merchant caravans
traveling to and from his former home of Mecca. He would steal property and
kill anyone who defended it (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 424-425). The Jews of Qurayza had
nothing to do with this. Much like the Meccans, the Jews were also traders,
and they appreciated the value of doing business securely in a crime-free environment. They neither
encouraged Muhammad’s raids nor shared in his ill-gotten gain.
After a few years of this, the Meccans eventually realized that they would have
to try and capture Medina, since it was being used as a base of piracy operations by
Muhammad's gang. In 627, they sent an army to the outskirts of
the city and appeared poised to take it in what has been called the Battle of
the Trench (the Muslims dug a trench around the exposed northern and western parts
of the city to stop the Meccan military advance).
The Qurayza, who lived to the east of Medina,
away from the battle, were caught in a bad situation. Not responsible for Muhammad’s war, they
were nonetheless drawn into it, particularly when they were approached by an emissary (a previously evicted Jewish leader) and asked not to assist Muhammad in his defense against the siege
(to that point, the Qurayza had contributed digging tools to the Muslims, but
not fighters).
The chief of the Qurayza did not wish even
to entertain the envoy, but he was tricked into allowing him into his home (Ishaq/Hisham
674). Once there, the envoy began making the case that the battle was going
against Muhammad and that his fall was imminent. The anguish of the Qurayza
chief over the trying circumstances of the position that he felt forced into is
noted even by Muslim historians:
When Ka'b heard of Huyayy's coming he shut the
door of his fort in his face, and when he asked permission to enter he refused
to see him, saying that he was a man of ill omen... Then Huyayy accused him of
[being inhospitable]... This so enraged Ka'b that he threw open his door. [Huyayy]
said to him, "Good heavens, Ka'b, I have brought you immortal fame and a great
army... They have made a firm agreement and promised me that they will not
depart until we have made an end of Muhammad and his men. "Ka'b said, "By God,
you have brought me immortal shame and an empty cloud while it thunders and
lightenings with nothing in it. Woe to you Huyayy, leave me as I am." (Ishaq/Hisham
674) After much “wheedling” by the Meccans, however,
the Qurayza leader finally gave in and agreed to remain neutral in the conflict.
He would neither contribute fighters to the city’s defense nor assist its impending
capture at the hands of an army with superior numbers. The Muslims would be left
on their own to deal with the conflict they had provoked with the Quraish of Mecca.
The first twenty days of the conflict passed "without fighting" (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 676) other than a few exchanges of arrows across the trench. A half-hearted effort on that day to breach the defenses proved fatal to the Meccan tribe, thus convincing their leader that they could not win unless the Qurayza joined the battle from the other side. However, the Jewish tribe refused, thus sealing their own fate (ironically)
by prompting the Meccans to abandon the siege (Ibn Kathir v.3 p.154).
A grand total of just six Muslims had been
killed at the Battle of the Trench. Each of their names were carefully
recorded (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 699) - none were killed by the Qurayza or by anything
done by the Qurayza.
With the battle over, however, Muhammad surprised
his army by turning them
against the Qurayza fortress, claiming that
the neutrality of the leader was a breach of the original covenant of
Medina which the prophet of Islam had personally drawn up for the tribes five years earlier.
The original language of this 'treaty' is not known definitively. Later renderings as to what it may have said seem suspiciously tailored.
It is unlikely, for example, that the tribes of
Medina would have given Muslims the right to slaughter them for merely speaking
out against him, yet several prominent Jewish leaders and poets had been assassinated
on Muhammad’s order prior to the Qurayza affair. At least one innocent merchant
was slain by his Muslim
business partner following Muhammad’s order in 624 for his men to “kill any Jew
who falls into your power” (al-Tabari 7:97). Muhammad had also
attacked the two other Jewish tribes
– parties to the same agreement – looting their property and then evicting them
from their land.
It is likely that the troubles Muhammad brought on Medina, through
his mistreatment of the Jews and his relentless pursuit of hostilities against
the Meccans, were part of the sales pitch made by the Meccans to the Qurayza leader to win his
neutrality - along with the implicit threat of slaughter if the city were taken
by the Meccans. From Kab's perspective, it would only be a matter
of time before Muhammad found an excuse to attack and plunder his tribe as well.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, however, the Qurayza
had
not attacked the
Muslims. In fact, had they attacked, then it surely would have been the end of Muhammad
and his band of pirates since the southern end of the city was completely
exposed to the Qurayza. In a terrible irony, it was the decision not to engage
in violence that later sealed the fate of the Jews, who were only the first in a
very long line of victims to horribly overestimate the value that
Islam places on the lives of unbelievers.
The lack of participation in battle plainly refutes the apologist argument that the Qurayza had done something to merit their fate. Obviously they did not know this, otherwise they would have fought for their lives.
According to Muhammad, it was the angel Gabriel
(seen only by himself, of course) who ordered the siege on the Qurayza. After twenty-five days
of blockade,
the Jews gave in and surrendered to the prophet of Islam. As Ibn
Ishaq/Hisham puts it,
they “submitted themselves to the Apostle’s judgment” (Ishaq/Hisham 688).
Another misconception popularized by apologists is that Muhammad did not render the death sentence against
the Qurayza and was therefore not responsible for it. There
is a partial truth in this, in that Muhammad attempted to offload responsibility onto another party.
However, from the narrative, it is clear that Muhammad approved of the
subsequent slaughter - a fact further verified both by his choice of "arbitrator"
and his reaction to the 'verdict'.
First, the prophet of Islam tricked the Qurayza
by getting them to agree to put their fate in the hands of "one of their own." In fact, this
was a convert to Islam, a Muslim who had fought in the Battle of the
Trench. Unbeknownst to the Qurayza, Sa’d bin Muadh had also been one of the few
Muslims fatally injured in the battle (Ishaq/Hisham 689), which one can reasonably assume to
have influenced his judgment. According to the Hadith, he was quite eager to
continue slaying "unbelievers" even as he lay dying in his tent (Bukhari
59:448).
Secondly, when Sa’d did render his decree that the men of Qurayza should be
killed and their women and children pressed into slavery, Muhammad did not
express the slightest bit of disapproval. In fact, the prophet of Islam
confirmed this barbaric sentence to be Allah’s judgment as well (Bukhari
58:148).
Consider the contrast between the historical Muhammad and the man of “peace and
forgiveness” that today’s Muslims try to assure us he was. In light of the
fact that the Qurayza had not killed anyone, wouldn’t a true man of peace have
simply sought dialogue with them to try and determine their grievance, find
common ground and then resolve the matter with dignity to both parties?
Instead, the prophet of Islam had the men bound with rope. He dug trenches and
then began beheading the captives in batches. In a scene that must have
resembled footage of Hitler’s death squads, small groups of helpless Jews,
who had done no harm to anyone, were brought out and forced to kneel, staring
down at the bodies of others before their own heads were lopped off and their
bodies pushed down into the ditch.
There is some evidence that Muhammad personally engaged in the slaughter. Not
only does the earliest narrative bluntly say that the apostle “sent for them” and “made an
end of them,” but there is also support for this in the Quran. Verse 33:26 says
of the Qurayza, “some you slew, some you took captive.” The Arabic
"you: is in the plural, but the Quran is supposed
to be Allah’s conversation with Muhammad, so it makes no sense that he
would be excluded.
In any event, there is no denying that Muhammad found pleasure in the massacre,
particularly after acquiring a pretty young Jewish girl (freshly "widowed" and
thus available to him for sexual servitude) (Ishaq/Hisham 693).
Other women were not quite as compliant.
The historians record the reaction of one woman who literally lost her mind as
her family was being killed. The
executioners apparently found her maniacal
laughter annoying and beheaded her as well. As Aisha later recounted:
“I will not forget that she was
laughing extremely although she knew that she would be killed" (Abu
Dawud 2665) (One can forgive Aisha's obtuseness. At the time
that she and her husband
sat observing the
carnage together, Muhammad's wife was only 12-years-old).
Boys as young as 13 or 14 were executed as well, provided that they had reached
puberty. The Muslims ordered the boys to drop their clothes. Those with pubic
hair then had their throats cut (Abu Dawud
4390). There was no point in
trying to determine whether or not they were actual combatants because there
were none. There had been no combat!
Muhammad parceled some of the widows and surviving children as slaves to his men
for sexual servitude and labor. The wealth accumulated by the Qurayza was also divided. Since the tribe had been
a peaceful farming and trading community, there were not enough weapons and
horses taken to suit Muhammad’s tastes, so he obtained more of these by trading
off some of the Qurayza women "for horses and weapons" in a distant slave market (Ishaq 693, Ibn Kathir v.3 p.172).
In addition to the main question as to why people
who had not killed anyone were put to death and enslaved, others
are raised as well. For example, the Quran
says that no bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another" (Quran
53:38)
yet every
member of the tribe was punished for a decision pressed on one reluctant member.
And what of the places in the Quran where violent passages are sometimes
mitigated by the occasional admonishment to cease killing those who stop
fighting? The surrendered Qurayza had never even fought in the first
place.
While Muslim apologists
usually engage in deception in dealing with the
challenges posed by this episode, the fate of the Qurayza is only the first of many such massacres that the
Religion of Peace has provided the world. Whether it be the 4,000 Jews at Granada in 1066,
the 100,000 Hindus on a single
day in 1399, or the millions of Christian Armenians in the early 1900's, untold tens of millions of innocents have perished
in mass executions at the hands of Islam's
dedicated disciples...
Yet, there has never been, nor will there ever be an apology from those who follow Muhammad, since the massacre of
infidels was the example personally set by their prophet at Qurayza.
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