INTRODUCTION
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 AD 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.
NO ISLAMIC APOLOGY
It is only in modern times (as Islam finds itself having to compete with morally mature religions in open debate such as in this arena), 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. Unbeknown 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 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” (Surah 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.
MUHAMMAD – SLAUGHTERED HIS ENEMIES WITH KINDNESS
After the decisive Battle of the Trench had ended, (see this entry for a summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench) Muhammad had ordered every adult male captive of the captured Banu Quaraizah tribe to be killed, and he also supervised their beheadings. [1]
Muhammad even personally sent captives to specific Muslims who then beheaded those captives. [2]
But now at last we find that Muhammad had compassion even in the midst of genocide he was moved by the plight of his victims. The execution of 800 and more was a day long process and since it was a hot summer day, eventually Muhammad did feel some compassion for those waiting to be beheaded:
“The Messenger of God said, ‘Be good to your captives. Let them rest; quench their thirst until they are cool. Then, kill those who remain. Do not apply both the heat of the sun and the heat of the weapons.’ It was a summer’s day. They let them rest. They quenched their thirst and fed them. When they were cool the Messenger of God began to kill those who were left.’” [3]
So let’s not lose sight of the ability of this genocidal maniac called by Muslims “the holy prophet” to be the “mercy to mankind” they claim him to be. This is what mercy amounts to.
Yes in all I’ve ever read about him this is what his mercy meant in practice – he was so compassionate he allowed his waiting victims to eat and slake their thirsts before he executed them. What a chivalrous prophet; what charming manners he had (not).
Lest my friends think I’ve gone soft on Muhammad and Muslims think I’m exonerating him, I am of course being sarcastic.
WHY MUHAMMAD WANTED THEM DEAD
The overarching question is: why did Muhammad slaughter 800-900 Qurayza Jewish men and boys in the first place?
Muhammad had already overcome a force of 10,000 with 3000 men. He could have shown mercy and simply exiled them? Exiling them would still have left him free to plunder their homes property and enslave their women, but no it wasn’t enough.
Muhammad wanted them dead as an act of sadistic revenge and ethnic cleansing.
To make sure Muhammad is not seen to have strayed offside, Allah sends down verses to condone and celebrate this slaughter and enslavement. In Surah 33:25-27 we find:
“25 Allah turned back the unbelievers [Meccans and their allies] in a state of rage, having not won any good, and Allah spared the believers battle [q-t-l]. Allah is, indeed, Strong and Mighty. 26 And He brought those of the People of the Book [Qurayza] who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror into their hearts, some of them you slew [q-t-l] and some you took captive. 27 And he bequeathed to you their lands, their homes and their possessions, together with land you have never trodden. Allah has power over everything.”
The only “prophecy” of Muhammad which had any currency is the self serving and self fulfilling threat to bring slaughter to the Quraysh for refusing to accept him:
“They [the Quraysh] discussed Muhammad, saying, “We have never seen the kind of trouble we have endured from this fellow. He has derided our traditional values, declared our way of life foolish, abused and insulted our forefathers, reviled our religion, caused division among us, divided the community, and cursed our gods.” …. “We have endured a great deal from him.” While they were saying this, the Apostle walked up and kissed the Black Stone.
Then he performed circumambulation of the Kaaba. As he did they said some injurious things about him. I could see from the Messenger’s face that he had heard them. When he passed a second time they made similar remarks. When he passed them the third time, the Prophet stopped and said, ‘Hear me, O Quraysh. By Him who holds Muhammad’s life in his hand, I WILL BRING YOU SLAUGHTER.” (Tabari, Vol. VI, page 101)
After the victory at the Battle of the Trench and it’s subsequent genocide, its no wonder Muhammad declared he had been made victorious through terror. Bukhari (4.52.220) records the following:
Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand.”
HOW MUSLIMS SEEK TO DEFEND MUHAMMAD’S GENOCIDE: THEY APPEAL TO THE BIBLE!
Report by
The article by Kaleef K. Karim & Aliyu Musa Misau, claims to “soundly refute the so called genocide of the Banu Qurayza Jews.”
One is struck by the desperation with which the authors of this report attempt to excuse Muhammad’s savagery. Here a typical statement:
“I find it amusing for the double standards and hypocrisy of the detractors, they attack Prophet Muhammed for the judgement passed onto the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza, from their own Book. If Christians and Jews and others find this ruling from their own book abhorrent then they should tear away such verses apart from the Bible. The blame should be on the Bible for making such rulings for those who commit treachery and wage war.”
Really?
This defence turns everything on its head and misapplies the true Scriptures. This severe command was given to Moses for a specific purpose and for a specific time (c1400 B.C.) and for a specific place (the holy land). It was never intended to be followed outside of the holy land at a later, vaguer time and for self-serving purposes. Were the Qurayza Jews carrying out this ancient command of Moses in the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century A.D. so that Muhammad had to take revenge? The corollary opposite is true. Even if we grant the non-Biblical prophet Muhammad credit for understanding the Torah (and that is giving him way too much credit because the Quran is filled with confusion about the Bible), then he was misinterpreting the Law of Moses by waging war at the wrong time, the wrong place, and for self-serving reasons. He is the one who forced Arab polytheists to convert or die; he is the one who said that all Jews and Christians should be forced out of the Peninsula.
However, to imply that Muhammad was carefully following the Old Law is to assume too much. Here are some areas in the Old Testament that Muhammad disobeys: adultery, and divorce; why should we take seriously this line of defense that says Muhammad was following the Old Testament?
Hence, this defence is yet another example of tribalism at its worst. Because the ancient Hebrews did this 2,000 years before Muhammad lived, he is justified in doing this to the Jews in his day in Medina. All the Jews of all times meld into one species—the same tribe. But this yanks a Biblical text way out of context and anachronistically misapplies it to another era and context. It is best to analyze Muhammad in his own context and set of circumstances. Did the Qurayza Jews really fight against him? No fighting took place, not even between the coalition and the Muslims.
Finally, Muhammad suffers from the distinct disadvantage of living six hundred years after Jesus, who showed us a better way. We compare—implicitly or explicitly—the two founders, and then the two diverge widely from each other. Thus, all reasonable people sense that this wholesale slaughter and enslavement is an unjustifiable atrocity.
- FACT: Muslim polemicists who defend Muhammad’s extermination and enslavement of the Qurayza Jews overlook the – FACT that early Islam knew specifically who the enemy Jewish leaders were—by name. So did all the men and adolescent boys have to be executed and all the women and children enslaved? Could only the leaders not have been executed?
Could they not have been exiled rather than slaughtered? Ah but then of course if only the leadership had bern executed or if they had all been exiled instead of killed, Muhammad and his merry men would not have had the excuse of enslaving all the women and children right Muslims?
WHAT REAL ANGELIC POWER IS LIKE
A true angel who was acting in divine power:
“That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!”
(2 Kings 19:35 HCSB)
Or take the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in John’s End Times vision:
“So the four angels who were prepared for the hour, day, month, and year were released to kill a third of the human race.” (Revelation 9:15 HCSB)
Jesus rebuking Peter who drew his sword to prevent Jesus arrest said:
“But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?” (Matthew 26:52-54 NKJV)
However you want to define a legion it’s a very large number, and a formidable army. The number here is not important, Jesus is making the point that He had all the resources of heaven at His disposal had He wanted to resist arrest. In the event a single angel had attended to Him in response to His prayers, to strengthen Him for His ordeal (Luke 22:43).
When God acts He doesn’t require numbers on His side. One angel or four are sufficient, becayse they possess real power.
Contrast with this. How very different is the wannabe god’s vain boasting … where it takes the pledge of a 1000 angels to win a minor skirmish:
“When ye sought help of your Lord and He answered you (saying): I will help you with a thousand of the angels, rank on rank.” (Surah 8:9)
Sure, why not? Allah’s angels are so feeble it takes a thousand of them to do battle with a few hundred intoxicated merchants. And lest we forget, the future Caliph found prayer annoying. He was there for the booty. Muhammad cried out …
Bukhari:V5B59N330/Ishaq:300 “Here is Gabriel holding the rein of a horse and leading the charge. He is equipped with his weapons and ready for the battle. There is dust upon his front teeth.”
Why was Muhammad’s spirit so eager to kill? And why was he such a dirty fighter?
Bukhari:V5B59N327 “Gabriel came to the Prophet and said, ‘How do you view the warriors of Badr?’ The Prophet said, ‘I see the fighters as the best Muslims.’ On that, Gabriel said, ‘And so are the Angels who are participating in the Badr battle.’” The “best” Muslims are warriors. And Allah’s best angels are demons. Is this a great religion, or what?
Tabari VII:54 “The Prophet said when he was in his awning, ‘Allah, keep your contract and your promise.’”
The dark spirit’s contract with his prophet traded submission to him for a founder’s share in the Kaaba pilgrim gravy train. His promise was to make Muhammad rich, powerful, and amply sexed.
Bukhari:V5B59N289 “Abu Bakr took his hand and said, ‘This is enough, Prophet. You have tired your Lord with your pestering.’”
The next line distinguished Muhammad from the prophets he claimed were his peers. “Muhammad was wearing his coat of mail.” Armour was something Noah, Abraham, Jonah, Moses, and Jesus seldom wore. Nor did they say:
“They will be routed and will turn and flee. The hour of doom is their appointed tryst, and it will be more wretched and more bitter than this earthly failure.” (Surah 54:45-46)
In other words, “To hell with them.” Thus far, from a religious perspective, the battle of Badr has been a bust. But things were about to change:
Tabari VII:55 “Mihaja, the mawla [slave] of Umar [the future Caliph] was struck by an arrow and killed. He was the first Muslim to die.”
Mihaja’s death must have rattled the militants because Muhammad was forced to preach a sermon that would make him the Prophet of Doom:
Ishaq:300/Tabari VII:55 “Allah’s Messenger went out to his men and incited them to fight. He promised, ‘Every man may keep all the booty he takes.’ Then Muhammad said, ‘By Allah, if any man fights today and is killed fighting aggressively, going forward and not retreating, Allah will cause him to enter Paradise.’”
They were just words—sound waves that filtered through the air. Yet they have reverberated for 1400 years. They echo still.
Footnotes:
[1] Source: The Life of Muhammad (Sirat Rasul Allah), pp. 465-466; The Life of Muhammad: Al-Waqidi’s Kitab al-Maghazi, pp. 252-253; In Defence of the True Faith, p. 206; Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Sa’d ibn Mani’ al-Zuhri al-Basri, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, trans. S. Moinul Haq (New Delhi, India: Kitab Bhavan, 2009), Vol. 2, p. 93; Abu Ja’far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari: The Victory of Islam, Vol. VIII].
[2] Source: The Life of Muhammad: Al-Waqidi’s Kitab al-Maghazi, p. 253].
[3] Source: The Life of Muhammad: Al-Waqidi’s Kitab al-Maghazi, p. 252.]