الشرع لا العقل: Shari'a Not Reason: Allah Wants Us Stupid

IN THE CLASSIC BOOK OF DOCTRINE called the ʻUmdat al-Sālik wa-ʻUddat al-Nāsik (عمدة السالك وعدة الناسك), frequently referred to as the Reliance of the Traveller, by the Islamic medieval scholar Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 769 A.H./1368 A.D.), we find a classic presentation* of the Islamic way of thinking which puts an unfortunate wedge between revealed religion and reason, to the point that reasoning is simply given a subordinate, slavish role. For Hume, reason was but the slave of passions. For the classical Muslim, reason is but the slave of the law alleged to have been revealed by Allah through Muhammad, the shari'a. There is no question for a Muslim, such as there is for a Catholic, for faith and reason, for morals and reason. For a Muslim, it is shari'a, not reason. Reason can be used to analogize or apply the shari'a, but it cannot in any way ever claim to be its equal, and cannot be invoked to criticize shari'a. It cannot even be used as a source of determination of good and evil. For a Muslim, reason is always post-revelation, post-shari'ia. Reason and the revealed law (shari'a) are unequal partners.

Fiqh al-Imam Ash-Shafi'i

Since practical reason is banished from the moral equation in Islam, it means that natural law does not exist in Islam. You will never be able to argue to a traditional Muslim that the shari'a is unreasonable. The proposition is preposterous to the Muslim. And though their shari'a is preposterous and preposterously brutal in many particulars to anyone who uses his or her God-given reason, the traditional Muslim cannot be approached with the argument. He has blinded himself, and that is a great tragedy inherent in Islam. The invention of Muhammad, that is, the idol Allah and his alleged law, has blinded the Muslims to the use of reason.

This Allah and his self-proclaimed spokesman Muhammad were distrustful of human reason. We may view the distrust of human reason in two ways. First, distrust of reason is something inhumane, something against authentic humanism. But this distrust is also irreligious; is is something against authentic religion. Indeed, distrust of human reason may be categorized as demonic. Why would God, through the gift of revelation, compel us to act in a manner that was against the gift of reason? Surely, what God gives with one hand in nature, he does not take away with the other in supernature? The notion posits a schizophrenia in God which only the devil or stupidity could advocate.

Lest we be accused of misconstruing Islam in general or Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri in particular, we might simply quote the text as translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller.

a1.2 The question arises, Is it possible for the mind alone, unaided by Allah's messengers and revealed scriptures, to knowing rulings, such that someone not reached by a prophet's invitation would be able through his own reason to know Allah's rule concerning his actions? Or is this impossible?

a1.3 The position of the Ash'aris, the followers of Abul Hasan Ash'ari, is that the mind is unable to know the rule of Allah about the acts of those morally responsible except by means of His messengers and inspired books.**

For minds are in obvious disagreement about acts. Some minds find certain acts good, others find them bad. Moreover, one person can be of two minds about one and the same action. Caprice often wins out over the intellect, and considering something good or bad comes to be based on mere whim. So it cannot be said that an act which the mind deems good is therefore good in the eyes of Allah, its performance called for and its doer rewarded by Allah; or that whatever the mind feels to be bad is thus bad in the eyes of Allah, its nonperformance called for and its doer punished by Allah.

a1.4 The basic premise of this school of thought is that the good of the acts of those morally responsible is what the Lawgiver (syn. Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace)) has indicated is good by permitting it or asking it be done. And the bad is what the Lawgiver has indicated is bad by asking it not be done. The good is not what reason considers good, nor the bad what reason considers bad. The measure of good and bad, according to this school of thought, is the Sacred Law, not reason (الشرع لا العقل).***

Now, the orthodox Christian is not an advocate of rationalism, a hater of Faith or Revelation. Nor is the orthodox Christian an advocate of fideism, a hater of Reason. The orthodox Christian seeks to navigate the waters of life avoiding the Charybdis of fideism and irrationalism and the Scylla of rationalism and infidelity. The orthodox Christian believes that reason, for all its weaknesses in man, is a gift of God, and a sure one, especially if guided by the Teaching Church, and confirmed by Revelation.

The notion that God demands unreasonable worship, a submission to unreasonable laws, to laws against the natural moral law, is simply untenable, and it is that aspect of Islam which results in a fundamental irrationality of Allah's worshipers. It is also that quality which makes Islam fundamentally inhuman and tyrannical. Islam is not submission to God, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Isaiah, or Jesus. Islam, by its rejection of Reason, is a form of rebellion against God, and so it may be more accurate to say that it is a submission to the Devil, the great Shaytan (شيطان‎) or Iblis (إبليس) they rail against.

I beseech the Muslims to consider the words of St. Paul: "I beseech you therefore, brethren," says St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans, "by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service," τὴν λογικὴν λατρείαν, rationabile obsequium vestrum. Indeed, I beseech them in their own tongue:

فاطلب اليكم ايها الاخوة برأفة الله ان تقدموا اجسادكم ذبيحة حية مقدسة مرضية عند الله عبادتكم العقلية.

Free yourself from your slavery to unreason. Follow the natural law, which is your tutor to the true God and to his Christ. Oh Muslim brother! Law is not found between the sheaves of the Qur'an, nor in the pages of the Sunnah, nor in the life of Muhammad, nor in the fatwas of your Imams. No, law is found first in reason: God's Reason first, and man's reason next, and God's Reason, that is his Law, speaks to us through our reason, our conscience, that is, through the natural moral law. As George MacDonald† put it:

The mind of man is the product of live Law;
it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law,
it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore,
can it alone work to any result.

That "live Law" is the natural law based upon reason and found in conscience, not the dead law mouthed by an alleged prophet from a god, nay, not even a god, a sad idol of his vain and unreasonable and often self-serving imaginings.
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*By "classic" we ought to be more precise. The text is a classic in Shafi'i jurisprudence. The Shafi'i (شافعي‎) school of law (or madhab, مذهب‎), is one of four main schools of Islamic law or schools of fiqh (فقه‎) in Sunni Islam. The other schools or madahib are the Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali. The Shafi'i school is the second largest school of the Sunni branch of Islam, governing approximately 29% of Muslims. According to Wikipedia (s.v. Shafi'i): "It is also recognized as the official school of thought by the governments of Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia. In addition, the government of Indonesia uses this madhab for the Indonesian compilation of sharia law. It is the dominant school of thought of Palestinian Territories, United Arab Emirates, Chechnya, Kurdistan (East Turkey, North west Iran, North Iraq, Northern Syria), Egypt, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Maldives, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Indonesia."
**This, of course, means that we cannot know right or wrong through any natural moral law.
***This is clearly a divine positivism. Something is good because God wills it, God does not will it because it is good. That is why when the Qur'an encourages lying or dissimulation, Qur'an 3:28, or encourages the killing of apostates from Islam, e.g., Qur'an 4:89, or encourages jihad against non-believers, e.g., Qur'an 9:36, or unreasonably discriminates against women, e.g., Qur'an 2:282 (woman is worth half a man) or Qur'an 4:11 (males inherit twice that of females), or allows for sex with women slaves captured at war, e.g., Qur'an 4:24, etc. these things are considered good. They are good because Allah decreed them; Allah did not decree them because they are good (indeed, under the natural moral law, they clearly are not good).
†George MacDonald, The Heart of George MacDonald: A One-Volume Collection of His Most Important Works (Rolland Hein, ed.) (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers,1994), 424.

Muhammad and the Natural Law: Propheting in Slavery

“SLAVERY IS PART OF ISLAM," "Slavery is part of jihad." These are not the words of some Islamophobe, but the words of Shaykh Saleh Al-Fawzan, a member in very good standing of the Senior Council of Clerics in Saudi Arabia.* And Al-Fawzan is right. Not only is chattel slavery part of Islam, chattel slavery is part of Muhammad.

Shaykh Saleh Ibn 'Abdullah Ibn al-Fawzan

In Islam, Muhammad, alleged to be al-insan al-kamir, the perfect model of a human being, is someone whose life ought to be imitated. To criticize any aspect of Muhammad's life is blasphemous under Islam's law, the shari'a. And yet it is an indisputable fact that Muhammad, after acquiring power and money in Medina, owned slaves, captured slaves, accepted slaves as gifts, traded slaves, enjoyed the fruits of slave labor,** and had sex with his female slaves.*** Oh, and on occasion, manumitted slaves. Ergo, under Islamic logic is not morally wrong to own slaves, trade slaves, capture slaves, or have sex with (female) slaves. It is حلال, halal, allowed. Oh, and on occasion, manumit them.

But apologists for Muhammad insist that the founder of Islam was a reformer: he prohibited the earnings of slave girls through prostitution (along with the money made by trading a dog, or money earned by soothsaying), based upon the ahadith found in Sahih Bukhari 3.36.482, 483. But lest we get too pious about Muhammad, we may want to mention that (immediately before telling his followers that they should not laugh at a Muslim which farts since every man is susceptible to farting) he suggested to his followers that he ought not to lash his wife as he would his slave, suggesting that slave lashing is something that his followers may do (as well as wife lashing, but only less severely). Sahih Bukhari 6.60.466. Muhammad also advised that coitus interruptus with a female slave was acceptable (even if she was married before capture, as her capture nullified the marriage to a nonbeliever, and made her property of the Muslim who acquired her). By approving a Muslim's coitus interruptus ('azl [عزل]) with a slave, of course, Muhammad necessarily approved of a Muslim's coitus with his slave. Sahih Muslim, 8.3383. What happen to God's commandment (which is part of the natural moral law), "Thou shalt not commit adultery"?

In his book, Zad al-Ma'ad (زاد المعاد‎, Provisions for the Hereafter) famous Sunni jurist Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (also known as Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr) (1292-1350 A.D.), identified Muhammad's male slaves:

Yakan Abu Sharh, Aflah, 'Ubayd, Dhakwan, Tahman, Mirwan, Hunayn, Sanad, Fadala Yamamin, Anjasha al-Hadi, Mad'am, Karkara, Abu Rafi', Thawban, Ab Kabsha, Salih, Rabah, Yara Nubyan, Fadila, Waqid, Mabur, Abu Waqid, Kasam, Abu 'Ayb, Abu Muwayhiba, Zayd Ibn Haritha, and also a black slave called Mahran, who was re-named (by Muhammad) Safina (`ship').

The same source identifies Muhammad's women slaves, two of them we know were his concubines:

Salma Um Rafi', Maymuna daughter of Abu Asib, Maymuna daughter of Sa'd, Khadra, Radwa, Razina, Um Damira, Rayhana, Mary the Coptic, in addition to two other maid-slaves, one of them given to him as a present by his cousin, Zaynab, and the other one captured in a war.†

Unquestionably, Muhammad had his hands deep in slavery. His hands are stained crimson with the unfortunate who suffered from his law of capture. No, by his treatment of men as if they were possessions, Muhammad showed that he is not the khairul bashar (خیرالبشر), the "best of all mankind." Not by a long shot.

Muslim Slave Traders in Yemen
(from an Arabic manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

Now, many of our heroes are no different than Muhammad. Washington owned slaves, and Jefferson owned them and, it is alleged, slept with one and fathered a child. The West's hands are mired in slavery, and the institution was part of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and it took hundreds of years to erase it, only to see it come back again, and removed again. It is a historical blight on the history of our nation which was only overcome with much blood. It is also true that some of the Jewish patriarchs owned slaves. Even the Christian Scriptures make mention of it without its express condemnation. Only implicitly in the mustard seed of the Gospel may be found the seminal source for the understanding that chattel slavery is against the natural moral law. But none of those slave-owning men in our history are al-insan al-kamir. None of them have been perfect, or claimed perfection. All are sinners. Most have had feet of clay. None of them have disciples that claim their heroes perfect, the "best of all mankind," khairul bashar: none of them unable to be criticized; none of them must be slavishly followed.

There is one man that Christians slavishly follow, Jesus. And Jesus owned no slaves, and none can convict him of any sin (unless it would be blasphemy for claiming to be God incarnate, but this would be sin only if false). And the Gospel that he preached contained an implicit rejection of the underlying assumptions that justify slavery. Jesus undermined slavery's foundations. As an institution, slavery is inconsistent with St. Paul's credo in his letter to the Galatians: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you all are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28. The Gospel's teaching was social salt indeed. And through the tutorship of the Gospel, we--all humanity, Christian or no--have learned much about our human nature and the natural law on the matter. The truth that chattel slavery is against the natural moral law is, like the right to religious freedom, one of those moral truths that we have learned over many dead bodies and ruined lives, but at least we have learned it. We know now without any doubt that the natural law condemns chattel slavery.†† Under the natural law, which is the law of God, chattel slavery is حَرَام‎, haraam, forbidden, foreclosed to any man.

But so long as a Muslim listens to Muhammad and looks to Muhammad as the perfect man, and so long as the unchanging Shari'a occupies the Muslim's mind and the Muslim's heart and trumps the natural law of reason and of God there, the Muslim will be blinded to a fundamental moral truth: we are, on account of our humanity, all brothers and all entitled to the benefit and subject to the restrictions of the natural moral law: it matters not who may be our parents, or what may be our tribe, our race, our color, or our creed. There is a fundamental law we share because we are human, and that law is a measure against which we can measure any other law, human or purportedly divine. As Tertullian put it so eloquently, all men are brothers because they have the natural law as their mother (not to mention having God as their Father).†††

In light of the natural law's condemnation of chattel slavery, and Muhammad's participation in chattel slavery, we can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Muhammad was neither God's messenger, nor the seal of the prophets. He was but a man, his head perhaps in the clouds, but with feet of clay, and with a phallus between the legs of many a slave woman as he sought the joys, not the eternal joys of Paradise Allah had promised him, but the very temporal joys of sexual orgasm that apparently his Allah--against the natural moral law--had also allowed him. It is manifest that Muhammad's life was a lie.

But someone who is a good Muslim, whom I have no doubt Shaykh Saleh Al-Fawzan is, has become tone deaf to the universal melody of natural law. He has been taught by, and he is in thrall to, that mental slavery called Islam, a slavery that deadens the natural human sensitivity to the natural moral law. It squelches it ab initio. Islam is a system, an ideology that hides behind the skirt, or perhaps better under the burqa of the irrational when pressed by reason, and becomes stuck in a vicious circle, an infinite loop, from which there is no outage.

Muhammad, his life, and his law are best. How do we know?

They are the best because الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best.

How do we know that Allah and his messenger know best?

We know they know best because Allah and his messenger know best that they know best:

الله ورسوله أعلم لأن الله ورسوله أعلم.

And how do we know that Allah and his messenger know best that they know best?

Because Allah and his messenger know best that Allah and his messenger know best that Allah and his messenger know best:

الله ورسوله أعلم لأن الله ورسوله أعلم لأن الله ورسوله أعلم.

You see where we're going?
_______________________________
*See "Author of Saudi Curriculums Advocates Slavery," in Saudi Information Agency's web page. See http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=132&sid=2.
**From the many instances that could be cited, one might observe that he had a wooden bench or pulpit made by one. Sahih Bukhari 1.8.439. He had a slave he nicknamed "ship" because he could carry such a load. He had slaves as household servants. Sahih Bukhari 3.43.648. He had a slave that was his tailor. Sahih Bukhari 7.65.345. He had one slave named Anjashah which drove his camels. Sahih Bukhari 8.73.221. He personally took slaves captive, and gave them away as gifts. Sahih Bukhari 1.8.367 and 4.53.373. He bought and sold slaves. Muslim 10.3901. Many other examples could be cited.
***Both Muhammad and his followers were allowed to have sex with women captives, even if the women had been married before capture. This divine permission revealed in the Qur'an.
†The information can be found in Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars: Slavery. I have not been able to confirm the quote or its historical accuracy regarding the identity of slaves owned by Muhammad. But whether historically accurate or not, the ownership of slaves by Muhammad--irrespective of their names or number--is historical fact.
††We have addressed this issue in prior postings. See especially Leo XIII's In Plurimis: Natural Law and Slavery, Part 1, Leo XIII's In Plurimis: Natural Law and Slavery, Part 2, and Leo XIII's In Plurimis: Natural Law and Slavery, Part 3.
†††Tertulian, Apol., 39, 1 PL 471 ("Fratres autem vestri sumus, iure naturae matris unius . . . At quanto dignius qui unum patrem Deum agnoverunt."

Muhammad and the Natural Law: Allah's Murderers and Thieves

MUHAMMAD'S CLAIM TO BE A PROPHET, that is a messenger, a spokesman for God, the creator of heaven and earth and the source of all good, is belied by his inability to climb out of the conventions of the culture in which he found himself. As we have seen, Muhammad participated in the polygamy, concubinage, brigandage, and inter-tribal warfare so prevalent at the time. The Muslims are blind to the behavior because of their presuppositions about Muhammad. Despite his objectively vicious behavior, however, many Western moral relativists have come to Muhammad's defense.* The typical refrain is something like Montgomery Watt's conclusion that "[i]n both Meccan and Medinan periods Muhammad's contemporaries looked on him as a good and upright man, and in the eyes of history he is a moral and social reformer."** But this judgment is "considered only in relation to the moral standards of his time," (and place), but as Watt himself however concedes, "there is also another way of judging him, namely, by a universal standard." It is a judgment from which he excuses himself. Watt also acknowledges the Muslim belief that Muhammad is the perfect man, al-insan al-kamil, the hasua hasana, the epitome or paradigm for all men to follow, a perfect incarnation, as it were, of universal morality. They have put Muhammad on a pedestal, and then they prohibit any criticism of him. And yet by putting him on a pedestal as a perfect man, they invite criticism.

Now Muslims claim that Muhammad is a model of conduct and character for all mankind. In so doing they invite world opinion to pass judgment upon him."*

If we are to judge Muhammad (and the moral teachings in his Qur'an and in the Sunnah and in his life as found in the Sirat), then we are going to need a standard other than Muhammad with which to judge him. Muslims are unable to do this, as their circular reasoning goes something like this: Muhammad is a self-acclaimed prophet. Muhammad is a self-acclaimed perfect man. No one judges Muhammad. He is the universal law. Case closed. The natural law is thus ostracized by Islam and unavailable to them to judge Muhammad.

Some of it is a vicious defense mechanism. The moment that the natural moral law, which is the law of God in the nature of man, is invoked and Muhammad contrasted to it, Muhammad fails miserably. We have seen in prior postings how Muhammad's life with respect to polygamy, concubinage, the assassination of political and religious rivals, his torture of enemies, and genocide of rival tribes falls short of what the natural moral law would require. This failure, of course, does not mean that Muhammad was not relatively good based upon the brutal conventions of his day and time. (This is disputable: for example, the Meccans with political power who were against him treated him much more civilly than he treated the Meccans once he got power over his adversaries.) But a man who abides by the primitive and brutal conventions of his time when the conventions contradict universal moral law is not a prophet with an insight to God's universal law.

In this posting we will focus on another area of Muhammad which is inconsistent with natural law, specifically, his role in encouraging and leading raids against the caravans of the Meccans after he assumed political power in the neighboring town of Yathrib (later named Medina).

It seems clear that, in fleeing Mecca to Medina, Muhammad intended to raid the caravans of his former townsmen as a means for sustaining his Muslim band. These raids are, from a moral point of view, nothing less than acts of brigandage. This aspect of Muhammad's life was so important that as Watt notes: "[t]he first attempts to collect biographical material about Muhammad were called al-maghazi [المغازي‎], that is, the 'expeditions' or 'campaigns'." Watt, 2. The early biographer of Muhammad al-Waqidi identified seventy-four such campaigns.

It is without question that these campaigns were aggressive and were a central feature of the Islam and the subject of "revelations" of the Qur'an. As is typical with Muhammad's "revelations," they seem to be rather opportune and convenient, and always seems to accord with the temporal or even sensual needs of Muhammad. As Muhammad's wife 'Aisha put it in one instance: "'O Allah's Apostle! I do not see, but, that your Lord hurries in pleasing you.'" Sahih Bukhari, 07.62.48. Sure enough, when justification was required for fighting and raiding to begin, Allah hurried to please Muhammad with a convenient "revelation" and an even more questionable "justification." It certainly gives the impression that Muhammad is both self-revealing and self-justifying:

Permission to fight is given to those (i.e. believers against disbelievers), who are fighting them, (and) because they (believers) have been wronged, and surely, Allāh is Able to give them (believers) victory.

أُذِنَ لِلَّذِينَ يُقَاتَلُونَ بِأَنَّهُمْ ظُلِمُوا وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلَى نَصْرِهِمْ لَقَدِير

Qur'an (Al-Haj) 22:39. The gracious permission to engage in brigandage was, after the the Battle of Badr, strengthened to an affirmative duty to engage in brigandage, rapine, and rape:

And fight in the Way of Allāh and know that Allāh is All-Hearer, All-Knower.

وَقَاتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ اللَّهَ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيم

Qur'an (Al-Baqarah), 2:244.

Soon, it was not only an occasional duty, but something that was positively delightful to this war-like God called Allah. Allah wants all his Muslims out of their homes and onto the highways and byways of the Hijaz, the Arabian peninsula, on from there all around the world to wage war on every human being on earth that is not under Islam's hegemony:

Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allāh with their wealth and their lives. Allāh has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home). Unto each, Allāh has promised good (Paradise), but Allāh has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward

لاَ يَسْتَوِي الْقَاعِدُونَ مِنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ غَيْرُ أُوْلِي الضَّرَرِ وَالْمُجَاهِدُونَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ بِأَمْوَالِهِمْ وَأَنفُسِهِمْ فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ الْمُجَاهِدِينَ بِأَمْوَالِهِمْ وَأَنفُسِهِمْ عَلَى الْقَاعِدِينَ دَرَجَة ً وَكُلاّ ً وَعَدَ اللَّهُ الْحُسْنَى وَفَضَّلَ اللَّهُ الْمُجَاهِدِينَ عَلَى الْقَاعِدِينَ أَجْراً عَظِيما

Qur'an (An-Nisa), 4:95.

While the first few raids were hesitant and unsuccessful, this was largely as a result of the lack of adequate opportunity, or simple caution. "The chief point to notice," Watt says, "is that the Muslims took the offensive." Watt, 2.

The first such successful raid was the seventh, which took place at Nakhla (نخلة) and was headed by Abdullah ibn Jahsh. It occurred at the express direction of Muhammad, who informed Abdullah of his goal by through the instructions in a letter which Abdullah was not to open until two days after he had left Medina. Although Muhammad probably intended the raid to occur if the Abdullah thought it opportune, he probably did not expect it to occur when it did, since the raiding party got to Nakhla and found a caravan there on the "last day of [the sacred month of] Rajab," when fighting was prohibited by well-established custom. By not informing the raiding party of its destination until it was well out of town, no one at Medina would be able to tell anyone at Mecca what the raiding party was up to.

The fruits of the Muhammadan morality of Nakhla
Christians from the town of Byie, Nigeria
slaughtered by Muslim raiders, March 17, 2010

When the raiding party got to Nakhla, it discovered a caravan manned by the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, "carrying dry raisins and leather and other merchandise of the Quraysh." That the goods belonged to other men did not bother the Muslims one bit. Though the Muslims are brutal when it comes to stealing among themselves,Qur'an 5:38, apparently the commandments "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods" did not apply to Muslims when it pertained to the non-believers, the kuffar (كفّار). There is one morality within Islam, another outside of it. One way for the dar-al-Islam, another for the dar-al-Harb. Love your friends, hate your enemies. It is an abhorrent dualism.

The Muslims used tricks to overcome the defenses of the caravan. One of Abdullah's men, Ukkash ibn Mihsan, shaved his head so as to give the appearance that he was a religious devotee on pilgrimage. Moreover, it was the month of Rajab where, by convention or custom, hostilities between tribes were forbidden. The caravan therefore put its guard down, thinking the raiding party to be just a bunch of pious devotees of the local idol-goddess al-'Uzza (العزى‎).

While the Meccans were setting up camp and preparing food, the Muslims engaged in a surprise attack. The leader of the Meccan caravan, Amr ibn Hadrami, was killed. One of the Meccans escaped, and the remaining two and all the booty was taken back to Medina.

When they returned, Muhammad was upset about the violation of the customary ban on fighting. "I did not order you to fight in the sacred month," he said to Abdullah. But another convenient revelation from Allah set everyone's mind at rest. Customs, conventions (like secular laws) do not really bind the Muslim:

They ask you concerning fighting in the Sacred Months (i.e. 1st, 7th, 11th and 12th months of the Islāmic calendar). Say, "Fighting therein is a great (transgression) but a greater (transgression) with Allāh is to prevent mankind from following the Way of Allāh, to disbelieve in Him, to prevent access to Al-Masjid-al-Harām (at Makkah), and to drive out its inhabitants, and Al-Fitnah is worse than killing.

يَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ الشَّهْرِ الْحَرَامِ قِتَال ٍ فِيه ِِ قُلْ قِتَال ٌ فِيه ِِ كَبِير ٌ وَصَدٌّ عَنْ سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَكُفْر ٌ بِه ِِ وَالْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ وَإِخْرَاجُ أَهْلِه ِِ مِنْهُ أَكْبَرُ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ وَالْفِتْنَةُ أَكْبَرُ مِنَ الْقَتْلِ

Qur'an (Al-Baqarah) 2:217. The reasoning goes like this: "They [the Meccans] used to seduce the Muslim in his religion until they made him return to unbelief after believing, and that is worse than killing." So all Meccans can be killed, and if they can be killed, certainly the lesser can be done to them: their goods taken. This is the moral logic, the non-sequiturs of the Qur'an, and the thieving and murdering Allah behind it.

You count war in the holy month a grave matter,
But graver is, if one judges rightly,
Your opposition to Muhammad's teaching, and your
Unbelief in it, which God sees and witnesses,
Your driving God's people from His mosque
So that none can be seen worshipping Him there.
Though you defame us for killing him,
More dangerous to Islam is the sinner who envies.
Our lances drank of Ibn al-Hadrami's blood
In Nakhla when Waqid lit the flame of war,
'Uthman ibn Abdullah is with us,
A leather band streaming with blood restrains him.***

Not only was the booty kept, but the two prisoners were exchanged for ransom, a total of 1,600 dirhams. No blood money was paid for the man killed.

It was the Nakhla raid where Islam drew its first blood, claimed its first casualty, and stole its first gold, all three crimes against the natural moral law. If Muhammad's behavior cannot be criticized, then we are forced to conclude that assaulting men, killing them, stealing their goods is justified against anyone who opposes Muhammad or disbelieves his teaching, which is to say, the entire non-Muslim world. No natural law restrains the Muslim in this logic, only the "leather band" of convenience, a "leather band streaming with blood" restrains the Muslim from his sanguinary ethic. The Muslim terrorist simply unleashes himself from that leather band, and incurs no moral fault thereby. This is the teaching of Muhammad and the logic of his morals, manifestly against the customs and laws of men, the natural moral law, and the law of the God most high Himself. And since, under shari'a to criticize or insult Muhammad is punishable by death, the natural moral law--the law of conscience and of God--is squelched and Muhammad is freed of obedience to it or comparison with it.

If the natural moral law, the law of reason, the law of human nature, the law of God ever makes it into the Islamic lands, then we will have cause to say with with Isaiah, a real honest-to-goodness prophet:

الشعب السالك في الظلمة ابصر نورا عظيما. الجالسون في ارض ظلال الموت اشرق عليهم نور

Populus qui ambulabat in tenebris vidit lucem magnam. Habitantibus in regione umbrae mortis lux orta est eis.

The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen.

Isaiah 9:2.

Oremus. Our brothers in thrall to the teachings of Muhammad need our prayers, for God wants more for them than what Muhammad gave them.

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*Some have written unbelievably stupid things about Muhammad. An example which might be cited is Karen Armstrong's tendentious biography on Muhammad. She writes: "Muhammad eventually abjured violence and pursued a daring, inspired policy of non-violence that was worthy of Ghandi." Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (New York: Harper Collins 1992), 5. That has to be one of the falsest things ever written about Muhammad. The intellectual dishonesty in that statement is shocking. From the beginning of his assumption of power at Medina until his dying breath, Muhammad was engaged in raids, wars, murder, and genocide. Muhammad did not bring peace, but war. Muhammad even amassed a number of swords, swords which have been given names: Dhu al-Faqar, al-'Adb, Qal'i, al-Ma'thur, al-Mikhdham, al-Qadib, Hatf, al-Battar, al-Rasub. See Swords of the Prophet Muhammad.
**W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 332-33. Watt of course completely ignores the testimony of all Muhammad's opponents, who thought him an evil man to be fought against, a false prophet, a charlatan, and so forth. It also forgets that Muhammad was brutal in his treatment of opponents, so it impossible to expect grievances against him would be aired, and even if aired, preserved in written form, since most people with their heads cut off fail to preserve things in writing. Moreover, the historians that preserved what we have from early Islam were clearly writing to justify and glorify their political/religious founder, and did not write what, by today's standards we would characterize as objective history. History is written by the victors, Churchill warned, and, as an African proverb has it, don't let a lion tell a giraffe's story. Watt's judgment is hardly critical.
***A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006, 286-89.

Muhammad and the Natural Law: The Abu Qurazya and Genocide

WE NOW TURN FROM INDIVIDUAL MURDERS of the political, prophetic, or poetic rivals which Muhammad directly ordered or about which he displayed delight. (There are others we could mention, but we are wearied with the sad subject.) We turn now to murder at a large scale, what today we would call genocide, but what Muhammad and his followers called divine behavior. We must recall our theme. It may be that Muhammad was acting out the rather conventional role of a Bedouin warlord, perhaps even in a relatively more humane way that his opponents. (The point is arguable either way depending on what one wants to stress as evidence, but the issue does not really matter.) The point is that if Muhammad is going to be touted as a universal moral model, al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, then his morality has to be more than relatively better than the conventions of his day. Muhammad's moral behavior would have to be perfect based upon the universal natural moral law, and so good for all times and in all places, not just in Bedouin society in the 7th century A.D. Someone who did not have the ability to overcome the limits of the conventions of his day, especially where they contravened the natural moral law, is unable to speak of universal morality, or at least with respect to those conventions he was unable to overcome. He is not a trustworthy messenger.

In this regard, Jesus and Muhammad are worlds apart. There is no point in which Jesus can be condemned for violating any sort of natural morality. The verdict is manifestly different when looking at the life of Muhammad. One cannot avoid the verdict by the facile ostrich-like head-in-the-sand response typically given by Islamist apologists: الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best, the natural law notwithstanding. The natural law will not be muffled. It is a constant witness. The natural law is the law of God, and so it serves as a canon, the rule, the normative standard by which to measure a man's message of God and the playing out of his life. The natural law stands as a measure against which even God's alleged commands can be measured. God will not order something against the natural law, since the natural law is participation in the eternal law, which is God himself, and so for God to order or reveal something contrary to the natural law would be to indict God in a contradiction, which is a blasphemous, not to mention irrational, position. It was perhaps this lesson that Abraham learned, in a particularly vivid way, when he stopped his hand in the sacrificial slaying of his own son, Isaac. God's order was a test, never one that God intended to be carried out. The purpose was to reveal something to all mankind through Abraham. That message was that God was not to be worshiped, or his will implemented, through unnatural acts, such as human sacrifice. Nor is God to be worshiped, or his alleged will implemented, through genocide. And this takes us to the Jewish tribe of Yathrib (Medina), the Banu Qurayza (بنو قريظة).

Historically, the setting of the matter is rather complex, but we need to address it as an introduction, even though we will necessarily be simplifying the situation. Muhammad lived in Mecca, largely a pagan trading town. The neighboring town of Yathrib (or Medina) was a largely agricultural town populated by Jewish tribes that were divided into three: the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu al-Nadir, and the Banu Qurayza. When Muhammad and his "tribe" of Muslims left Mecca to Medina (in the emigration known as the Hegira or Hijra), he entered into treaties with these tribes. The Muslims either concocted or suffered real grievances from the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu al-Nadir (we work with Muslim sources which display strong biases in favor of Islam, so it is hard to determine whether something the historian says is true or not) resulting in fighting between the Muslims and these tribes, with the result that the two tribes had to leave Medina. This left Medina occupied by the Muslims, their non-Jewish allies, and the Banu Qurayza.

Muhammad, of course, was not interested in settling down to the life of the farmer. He wanted money, power, influence, women, food, perfume, and revenge. Somewhere between the end of life in Mecca and the beginning of life in Medina, after the death of his protector Abu Talib and his wife Khadija, intravit autem satanas in Mahometum, and he began a policy of raiding the Meccan caravans which were the lifeblood of the economic wealth of Mecca.* Beginning inauspiciously with the first unsuccessful raid at al-Is, and second unsuccessful raid at Buwat, where Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas shot the "first arrow of Islam," Muhammad's raids got bolder and better, and eventually began spurring the Banu Quraysh at Mecca to do something about it. This confrontation between the Banu Quraysh of Mecca and their allies and Muhammad's followers is called the Battle of the Trench, the Ghazwah al-Khandaq ( غزوة الخندق), though it is also referred to as the Battle of the Confederates, Ghazwah al-Ahzab (غزوة الاحزاب).

So the Banu Quraysh at Mecca, along with a group of other tribes, some, like the Banu al-Nadir that Muhammad had thrown out of Yathrib or Medina, Jewish, planned their campaign against the raiding Muslim bandits in Medina. This, of course, presented Muhammad with a great threat, and he sought to gain the support of the last Jewish tribe remaining in Medina, the Banu Qurayza. With respect to the response of the Banu Qurayza, the sources are a little inconsistent here. Some suggest that Ka'b bin Asad, the leader of the Banu Qurayza allied himself with the attacking Banu Quraysh from Mecca. Others suggest that Ka'b bin Asad saw the Banu Qurayza between a rock and a hard place and so tried he tried to take a neutral role in between the battling Muslims led by Muhammad and the Banu Quraysh from Mecca. In either event, Ka'b bin Asad and his Banu Qurayza tribe incurred Muhammad's wrath.

Massacre of the Banu Qurayza
(Illustration from 19th Century Text by Muhammad Rafi Bazil)

After the Battle of the Trench, which essentially was a 27-day siege and resulted in a stalemate-- Muhammad's clever defensive tactic of digging trenches rendering the Meccan cavalry useless-- the Meccans departed. The threat of the Meccans gone, Muhammad turned in wrath against the Banu Quraysh. We shall let Muhammad's wife 'Aisha speak to us through the hadith in Sahih Bukhari 4.52.68.

Narrated 'Aisha:

When Allah's Apostle returned on the day (of the battle) of Al-Khandaq (i.e. Trench), he put down his arms and took a bath. Then [the angel] Gabriel whose head was covered with dust, came to him saying, "You have put down your arms! By Allah, I have not put down my arms yet." Allah's Apostle said, "Where (to go now)?" Gabriel said, "This way," pointing towards the tribe of Bani Quraiza. So Allah's Apostle went out towards them.

Muhammad subjected the Banu Qurayza to a lengthy siege. Eventually they capitulated, surrendering to Muhammad's forces. Their possessions and their women were seized by the Muslims and divided among them, and Sa'ad ibn Mu'adh (a Muslim convert from the Jews) was appointed the arbitrator to pronounce the judgment in the "war trial" against the Banu Qurayza. It was Sa'ad's sentence to behead all the men, and enslave the women and children,** a decision confirmed by Muhammad as consonant with Allah's will. From here, we shall quote the Islamic historian Ibn Ishaq:

Then they surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of B. al-Najjar. Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches. Among them was the enemy of Allah Huyayy b. Akhtab and Ka`b b. Asad their chief. There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900. As they were being taken out in batches to the apostle they asked Ka`b what he thought would be done with them. He replied, 'Will you never understand? Don't you see that the summoner never stops and those who are taken away do not return? By Allah it is death!' This went on until the apostle made an end of them. Huyayy was brought out wearing a flowered robe in which he had made holes about the size of the finger-tips in every part so that it should not be taken from him as spoil, with his hands bound to his neck by a rope. When he saw the apostle he said, 'By God, I do not blame myself for opposing you, but he who forsakes God will be forsaken.' Then he went to the men and said, 'God's command is right. A book and a decree, and massacre have been written against the Sons of Israel.' Then he sat down and his head was struck off.

Life, 461-64.** This is confirmed in Sahih Buhkari, 5.58.148:

Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:

Some people (i.e. the Jews of Bani bin Quraiza) agreed to accept the verdict of Sad bin Muadh so the Prophet sent for him (i.e. Sad bin Muadh). He came riding a donkey, and when he approached the Mosque, the Prophet said, "Get up for the best amongst you." or said, "Get up for your chief." Then the Prophet said, "O Sad! These people have agreed to accept your verdict." Sad said, "I judge that their warriors should be killed and their children and women should be taken as captives." The Prophet said, "You have given a judgment similar to Allah's Judgment (or the King's judgment)."

A hadith in in the Sunan Abu Dawud by an eye-witness, a survivor, tells us how it was done. The boys were made to pull down their trousers, and those with pubic hair, were killed. Those without were spared. Abu Dawud, 38.4390

Narrated Atiyyah al-Qurazi:

I was among the captives of Banu Qurayzah. They (the Companions) examined us, and those who had begun to grow hair (pubes) were killed, and those who had not were not killed. I was among those who had not grown hair.

One woman was killed with the hundreds of her masculine compatriots. The poor woman had lost her mind, and was laughing uncontrollably at the horribleness of the whole thing, something the young 'Aisha, Muhammad's child wife, would never forget. So relates one hadith in the Sunan Abu Dawud 14.265:

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin:

No woman of Banu Qurayzah was killed except one. She was with me, talking and laughing on her back and belly (extremely), while the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) was killing her people with the swords. Suddenly a man called her name: Where is so-and-so? She said: I. I asked: What is the matter with you? She said: I did a new act. She said: The man took her and beheaded her. She said: I will not forget that she was laughing extremely although she knew that she would be killed.

Genocide. Pure and simple. And each young Muslim child at his madrasah, when he recites the Al-Ahzan surah in his Qur'an, recalls the glory days of the seige of the Abu Qarayza, and the beheading of the 800 or so Jews at the order of their beloved Muhammad, the hasua hasana, أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَة, the "good example," as they read in the surah Al-Ahzab, ayah 21, immediately before the Qur'anic description of this genocide of Jews in ayats 26 and 27:

And those of the people of the Scripture [the Jewish Banu Qurayza] who backed them (the disbelievers) [the Quraysh from Mecca] Allāh brought them down from their forts and cast terror into their hearts, (so that) a group (of them) you killed [the men and pubescent boys and one woman], and a group (of them) [the women and prepubescent boys] you made captives.

And He caused you to inherit their lands, and their houses, and their riches, and a land which you had not trodden (before). And Allāh is Able to do all things.

وَأَنْزَلَ الَّذِينَ ظَاهَرُوهُمْ مِنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ مِنْ صَيَاصِيهِمْ وَقَذَفَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمُ الرُّعْبَ فَرِيقا ً تَقْتُلُونَ وَتَأْسِرُونَ فَرِيقا

وَأَوْرَثَكُمْ أَرْضَهُمْ وَدِيَارَهُمْ وَأَمْوَالَهُمْ وَأَرْضا ً لَمْ تَطَئُوهَا وَكَانَ اللَّهُ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْء ٍ قَدِيرا

Qur'an (Al-Ahzab) 33:26-27. So they celebrate the beheading of around 800 Jews as a prodigy of Allah and act of human perfection by the perfect, universal man, al-insan al-kammil, Muhammad, the good example of all Muslim males.

This is not good. This is evil. The natural law is being trampled upon by the Qur'an, by the Sunnah, by Muhammad. Something is rotten in the State of Islam. And Muslims cannot cover it up with that mantra, as if it were a cover and excuse for all kind and manner of sins: الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best, the natural law notwithstanding. The natural law is being suppressed here, but we hope that it is not altogether extinguished, and there has to be a part in every Muslim that knows that something was wrong in the heart of Muhammad and in his claimed revelation.

Fight song for the Qurayza† Jonathan Ratosh Toil and blood and storm Full eye of destitute Muhammad's law is in the sword And the Lord in fire. Iron on iron cheers Iron strikes back to back, Toil and blood and storm and enemy riots head. Toil and blood and storm Fill your country Muhammad's law is in the sword And the Lord shall reign. Tel Aviv 1937

יונתן רָטוֹשׁ שִׁיר קְרָב לִבְנֵי קוֹרִיטָה עָמָל וָדָם וָסַעַר וְּמלֹא הָעַיִן רֵשׁ דִין מוּחֲמֶד בֵּסַיִף וַאֲדונָי בָּאֵשׁ. בַּרְזֶל בַּרְזֶל יָרֹעַ בַּרְזֶל יַךְ גֵּו בְּגֵו, עָמָל וָדָם וָסַעַר וְרֹאשׁ פַּרְעוֹת אוֹיֵב. עָמָל וָדָם וָסַעַר וּמְלֹא הָאָרֶץ לָךְ דִין מוּחֲמֶד בֵּסַיִף וַאֲדונָי מָלָךְ ת"א 1937

The Christians as Christians have dropped their arms. Christians no longer fight for Christ. The Jews as Jews have dropped theirs. Jews no longer fight for Moses. It's time for the Muslims as Muslims to drop theirs, no longer to fight for Muhammad, and fold up the black banner of lesser Jihad, and make peace among all men the name of the natural moral law and of the one only God. Enough of toil and blood and storm, brother. That's God's will.
__________________________________
*These raids are called (s) ghazwa (الغزوة) or (pl) ghazawat (الغزوات). The word ghazwa is frequently rendered into English as razzia. These ghazwas or razzias should be distinguished from Muhammad's more elaborate expeditions or sariyahs. The raids or ghazawat played such an important role in Islamic history, that the early histories of Islam are frequently refer to them in their titles. For example, the Kitab al-Tarikh wa al-Maghazi (The Book of History and Campaigns) by the early Muslim historian al-Waqidi.
**One of the women, Rihana or Rayhana bint Zayd ibn ʿAmr (ريحانة بنت زيد بن عمرو‎) became a concubine for Muhammad rejecting his offer to convert to Islam so as to become a wife. Later, it is said she did convert to Islam, but always remained a slave and concubine, and never Muhammad's wife. Life, 466. Some sources suggest that she later was married to Muhammad, and then possibly divorced. Others that she was eventually set free.
***A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 461-464.
†From the website of the Association to Commemorate the Sho'a-Holocaust of Arabian Jews: Fight Song for the Qurayza (English) and שִׁיר קְרָב לִבְנֵי קוֹרִיטָה (Hebrew).

Muhammad and the Natural Law: Murder for Prophet-Umm Qirfa

DEATH OF ENEMIES WAS NOT SUFFICIENT to satisfy the blood-lust of Muhammad, the self-acclaimed prophet of Allah, and his Muslim followers whom he encouraged by his vicious Medinan surahs, "revelations" which got progressively more and more vicious against the كفّار, the kuffar or non-believers, and the أهل الكتاب‎, the‎ ′Ahl al-Kitab or Jews and Christians. The pandora's box of violence which Muhammad opened could not be shut, and never has been shut. The gates of ijtihad and the gates of reason may have closed in Islam; but the gates of jihad (which comes in all forms, subtle and vicious and violent as they showed themselves with Umm Qirfa who is the subject of this posting) opened by the barbaric Muhammad remain open and they threaten all civilization today.

In his life of Muhammad, the early Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq tells us of a brutal torture and murder of the leader named Umm Qirfa (or Umm Kirfa), also known as Fatima bint Rabi'a bin Badr. She was the ruler of a small town called Wad'l-Qura occupied by the tribe known as the Banu Fazara. The event would have occurred around 622 A.D., almost six years after Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina.

The Quartering of Umm Qirfa

The excerpt quoted below seems to incorporate Ibn Ishaq's version with al-Tabari's version. The Zayd mentioned by Ibn Ishaq is Muhammad's son in law, Zayd ibn Haritha.

ZAYD B. HARITHA'S RAID ON B. FAZARA AND THE DEATH OF UMM QIRFA

Zayd also raided Wadi'l-Qura, where he met B[anu] Fazara and some of this companions were killed; he himself was carried wounded from the field. Ward b. 'Amr b. Madash, one of the B[anu] Sa'd b. Hudhayl, was killed by one of B[anu] Badr (whose name was Sa'd b. Hudhaym—T. and I.H.) When Zayd came he swore that he would use no ablution until he raided B[anu] Fazara; and when he recovered from his wounds the apostle sent him against them with a force. He fought (T. He met) them in Wadi'l-Qura and killed some of them. Qays b. Al-Musahhar al-Ya'muri killed Mas'ada b. Hakama b. Malik b. Hudhayfa b. Badr, and Umm Qirfa Fatima d. Rabi'a b. Badr was taken prisoner.

She [Umm Qirfa] was a very old woman, wife of Malik. Her daughter and 'Abdullah b. Mas'ada were also taken. Zayd ordered Qays b. Al-Musahhar to kill Umm Qirfa and he killed her cruelly (T. By putting a rope to her two legs and to two camels and driving them until they rent her in two). Then they brought Umm Qirfa's daughter and Mas'ada's son to the Apostle. The daughter of Umm Qirfa belonged to Salama b. 'Amr b. Al-Akwa' who had taken her. She held a position of honour among her people, and the Arabs used to say, "Had you been more powerful than Umm Qirfa you can have done no more." Salama asked the apostle to let him have her and he gave her to him and he presented her to his uncle Hazn b. Abu Wahb and she bare him 'Abdu'l-Rahma b. Hazn.

Life, 664-65.*

While from the sources this evil cannot be placed directly upon Muhammad as if he ordered it to occur in the manner that it occurred, there certainly is no indication that he disapproved of it. Muhammad would have certainly been aware of it since he was the recipient of Umm Qirfa's daughter and apparently confirmed title of Qirfa's daughter in Salama bin 'Amr. The latter had taken Qirfa's daughter as war booty, changing her from a free woman to a slave and concubine to a Muslim's chattel slave, which he later transferred--in perfect consonance with Islam's ethical teachings--as a gift to his uncle Hazn bin Abu Wahb. We can be sure that the daughter of Umm Qirfa did not have a say in all of this, and that she wondered at this religion which justified her mother's death, her capture, her sexual enslavement, and her treatment as a commodity made to cater to the sexual appetites of barbaric men.

Is Muhammad's encouragement of this war ethic and participation in the capture and trading of women a perfection to imitated? A normal man, heeding his conscience, listening to reason, and trained in virtue, would find such behavior abhorrent, against the natural moral law. But he who has been taught that Muhammad is the perfect man, al-insan al-kamil, الإنسان الكامل, and the uswatun hasanatun, أسوة حسنة ,the "good example," will be corrupted by a positive falsehood. He will be told all his life الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best, the natural law notwithstanding. And without the light of reason or without the light of the Gospel denied him by the same shari'a which misinforms him, our poor Muslim will have a difficult time ever getting out of the dark dungeon that his culture and religious forbears have put him in under the name of Allah. He would have to learn to open some gates, and close others. And to do that he would have to learn that such gates even exist.

Golden Gate, Jerusalem

It is said that the Muslims sealed the Golden Gate in the city of Jerusalem's eastern city walls because it was foretold by the prophet Ezekiel that the Messiah would enter through that gate. In a similar manner, the Muslim has bricked up that part of his heart through which that first grace, the natural law, enters: reason. Before he can accept Christ, the Messiah, he will have to dislodge those rocks that block his access to the first grace, the natural law. He would have to close the gates of jihad and reject the example of Muhammad which leads to and justifies such atrocities as the quartering of Umm Qirfa. Yet he will have to open other gates:

ارفعن ايتها الارتاج رؤوسكنّ وارفعنها ايتها الابواب الدهريات فيدخل ملك المجد

Lift up your heads, ye gates; yea, lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.

Psalm 24:9.

Who is the King of Glory? Why, He who said he was the Truth, the Lord Christ!

Take out the stones that plug up the openings of your heart to the natural moral law, brothers! Then open up the gates of your hearts to the cross of Christ, and close the gates of your heart to the sword of Muhammad. For it is not the sword that lifts you up, but the cross that does, the cross which is the law of Christians: Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi, filii Dei vivi. "The law of the Christians is the holy cross of Christ, the living son of God."

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*A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Muhammad and the Natural Law: Murder for Prophet: The Poetess 'Asma bint Marwan

ʾASMAʾ BINT MARWAN (عصماء بنت مروان‎) was another victim of Muhammad's intolerant wrath. ʾAsmaʾ, a pagan woman married to Yazid ibn Zayd, was a poetess who lived in Mecca. Upset with the killing of Abu 'Afak,* this Meccan poetess had the temerity to write a lampoon against Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq has preserved the poem for us, and, by modern standards, it seems rather innocuous.

I despise B. Malik and al-Nabit
and Auf and B. al-Khazraj.
You obey a stranger who is none of yours,
One not of Murad or Madhhij.
Do you expect good from him after the killing of your chiefs
Like a hungry man waiting for a cook's broth?
Is there no man of pride who would attack him by surprise
And cut off the hopes of those who expect aught from him?"

Life, 675-76.**

How dare this pretentious pagan poetess write to her townsmen blaming them for paying heed to a "stranger who is none of yours," one who was responsible for "the killing of your chiefs," i.e., Muhammad? How dare she hope for a "man of pride who would attack him by surprise," and ruin the hopes of the Muslims, "those who expect aught from him?"

The name Muhammad eight times encircling the
name of Allah in Arabic calligraphy

Those words merit death: that much is clear to a hypersensitive, priggish, self-aggrandizing moral monster. So naturally, when Muhammad heard the report about this poetess' words, Ibn Ishaq relates that he said, "Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter?"

(Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter? Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter? No, the question is: Who will rid us of Muhammad? )

And among his motley crew of Muslims assassins, he found many a volunteer, among them a member of the victim's husband's tribe. Ibn Ishaq tells us that this assassin "crept into her house that night." The poetess had five children, one so young as to still be nursing, and which, in fact, was sleeping at her breast. The assassin of Islam removed the child, drew his sword from its scabbard, "and plunged it into her, killing her in her sleep." Allahu Akbar! Oh the weary and ever-prevalent takbir (تَكْبِير) which seems to be on the lips of the murderous, the assassins, the evil, the brutal, the vicious to justify their crimes, tribute to the great Satan whose name is Allah.

(Maybe I speak too harshly? But whoever this Allah is that is invoked after an act of hatred, this Allah is not the Lord of Life, the Dominus vitae.)

Killing women is apparently this great Satan Allah's will, for الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best. That's why Hassan ibn Thabit, a Muslim poet, could write such enormities in his opposing poem:

She stirred up a man of glorious origin,
Noble in his going out and his coming in.
Before midnight he dyed her in her blood
And incurred no guilt thereby.

Life, 676. Incurred no guilty thereby? Pray you obtuse Muslim poet, how? Muhammad stands guilty of murder before the natural law, which is to say, he stands guilty before the law of God. Since obedience to the natural law, which is the law of God, is essential for salvation, it would seem that Muhammad is objectively damned by the killing of this innocent mother who was giving suck to child. But then again, perhaps his thoughts for ʾAsmaʾ's five children were the same as his thoughts for the children of her fellow townsmen 'Uqba: Hell could raise them!**

Imagine the absurdity: Ibn Ishaq says the killing brought "conversions" among the Banu Khatma, a tribe at Mecca. How many of the Banu Khatma learned to love Allah because an assassin killed a women who was nursing her child while she slept? Ibn Ishaq relates:

[W]hen 'Umayr [the assassin] went to them [the Banu Khatma tribe] from the apostle he said, "I have killed Bint Marwan, O sons of Khatma. Withstand me if you can; don't keep me waiting. That was the first day that Islam became powerful among Banu Khatma; before that those who were Muslims concealed the fact.

Life, 676.

What was Muhammad's response to the murder he had ordered? Of course, the response was how a perfect man ought to respond to the news that his order to murder someone has been fulfilled:

In the morning when he ['Umayr] came to the apostle [Muhammad] and told him what he had done and he said, "You have helped God [Allah] and his apostle, O 'Umayr!" When he asked if he would have to bear any evil consequences the apostle said, "Two goats won't butt their heads about her," so 'Umayr went back to his people."

Life, 676.

No, Muhammad. Two goats will not butt heads over the murder of ʾAsmaʾ. You are right, Muhammad. Two goats, like two devils and their master Beelzebub, won't care one bit. But the God who loved ʾAsmaʾ, though she was pagan, will care. And so will you, because the God whom you invoked and abused for your personal and political gain will hold you accountable for your infractions of the natural moral law, just as he will all men, regardless of color, race, or creed.

* * *

The Muslims are wont to follow mention of Muhammad with the salawat (alayhi s-salām, عليه السلام, "Peace be upon him," or ṣall Allāhu ʿalay-hi wa-sallam, صلى الله عليه وسلم‎, "May Allah honor him and grant him peace, sometimes shortened as PBUH, and SAAW). There is even a symbol available it as a Unicode: ﷺ.

I do hope Muhammad found peace, though in view of his violations of the natural moral law, I harbor my doubts. Foris canes et venefici et inpudici et homicidae et idolis servientes et omnis qui amat et facit mendacium. (Rev. 22:15) To overcome these sins against the natural law, some of which we have discussed in prior postings, more of which we will discuss in postings to come, Muhammad is not deserving of honor and does not merit peace: he needs mercy. I think a better salawat, one consonant with the verdict of the natural moral law and the promise of the Gospel would be: Muhammad, الله يرحم روحه, Allah yirhamu, may God have mercy on his soul.
________________________________________
*We have written a post on Muhammad's assassination of Abu 'Afak which brought so much discomfiture to our ʾAsmaʾ, who, as far as I can tell, was a much better person than Muhammad ever was. See Muhammad and the Natural Law: Murder for Prophet-The Case of Abu 'Afak.
**A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Risat Rasul Allah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006) (herein referred to as Life). Maxime Rodinson's version is a little more vulgar:

Fucked men of Malik and of Nabit
And of 'Awf, fucked men of Khazraj
You obey a stranger who does not belong among you,
Who is not of Murad, nor of Madh'hij
Do you, when our own chiefs have been murdered, put your hope in him
Like men greedy for meal soup when it is cooking?
Is there no man of honour who will take advantage of an unguarded moment
And cut of the gulls' hopes?

Maxine Robinson, Muhammad (New York: The New Press, 1980), 157-58 (translated from the French by Anne Carter).
**On Muhammad's murder of 'Uqba, see Muhammad and the Natural Law: Murder for Prophet-Al Nadr and 'Uqba.

Muhammad and the Natural Law: Murder for Prophet: Murdering the Competition--Al-Aswad

MUHAMMAD NOT ONLY MURDERED his political opponents, he also could not entertain the existence of rival politico-religious prophets. Combining religion and politics and claiming a monopoly on both was Muhammad's specialty and trademark. Competition--either through a secular state, through the separation of church and state, or by reference to a natural law above both church and state--is bad for Islam. It prefers the benefits of, and the ease of profit obtained by, a politico-religious monopoly and restraint on freedom in both politics and religion. Consequently, it should come as no surprise when we read, in Volume IX of al-Tabari's work, of Muhammad busy at work sending "messengers," i.e., assassins, to murder rival governors and prophets.*

One such prophet to whom Muhammad sent "messengers" was named al-Aswad al'Ansi. Between the history of al-Tabari and the Kitab Futuh Al-Buldan by Ahmad Yahya bin Jabir al-Baladhuri (a 9th century Persian historian),** we have some interesting facts about Al-Aswad al-'Ansi. Whether all these are true or not is hard to tell, but it seems reliable, given our knowledge of Muhammad, when the early Muslim historians say that Muhammad both planned and delighted in this rival prophet's death.

Muhammad Inciting his Disciples to Violence

Al-Aswad al-'Ansi was also known also Dhu al-Khimar (or Dhu al-Himar) 'Abhalah b. Ka'b. His real name we are told 'Aihalah, but he was called al-Aswad (الأسود), "the black one," because he had a black (أسود) face. It was said that he had a trained donkey (حمار) that was trained to bow at the command, "Bow before your Lord," and would kneel when so commanded. For that reason, some called him al-Himar (الحمار), meaning "he of the donkey." Yet another story was that he was called al-Khimar (الخمار), "he of the veil," because he used to appear with a veil (خمار) and turban. This black-faced, turbaned, veiled, donkey-man was known as a "soothsayer and a juggler." "He used to show [the people] wondrous things captivating the hearts who listened to his speech." al-Tabari, 165. "The first time," al-Tabari tells us, al-Aswad claimed prophethood, "was [after] his coming out of the Khubban cave." al-Tabari, 165. The cave was his home, as he had been both born and raised there. He seemed like another Muhammad in the making: an ambitious prophet.

Muhammad apparently feared the same. Muhammad sent a messenger to al-Aswad in Yemen inviting him to convert to Islam. But al-Aswad declined Muhammad's offer. Instead, he decided to act like Muhammad and battled Khalid ibn Sai'd ibn al'-Asi from the town of San'a' (now the capital of Yemen, صنعاء‎), thereby becoming its governor. The Islamic historians naturally find fault in al-Aswad, and state that he was "haughty and oppressed al-Abna', the descendants of the Persians who were originally sent to al-Yaman [Yemen] by Kisra in the company of ibn-dhi-Yazan and under the leadership of Wahriz." KFaB, 160. (Remember! Muhammad was not haughty, nor did he oppress anyone. Whatever "haughtiness" he showed or whatever "oppression" he was guilty of, it was not haughtiness or oppression by definition, since Muhammad is--regardless of the facts, regardless of reason, regardless of reality--al-Insan al-Kamil (الإنسان الكامل), i.e., the perfect human.) Al-Aswad is also accused of making the people which he ruled to "serve him and compelled them to do things against their will," something, of course, that Muhammad never, ever did.

Muhammad's appetite for killing in the name of Allah, though himself quite sick and only a few days himself from death, remained unabated and unappeased. His blutlust and mordlust ran deep. He summoned his "messengers" to go to Yemen "instructing them [to get rid] of al-Aswad by artful contrivance." Rival prophets were apostates in the mind of Muhammad, any means of escape was to be "cut off," and they were to be attacked while "in a state of waning," in other words, while asleep. In that way they would be "isolated," and "occupied with themselves," and could be dispatched efficiently.

The plan was for Kais ibn-Hubairah-l-Makshuh al Muradi and some of his men to be sent to San'a' and feign that they agreed with al-Aswad against Muhammad. By this pretext (i.e., lie), he and his men were allowed entry into the town. Once in the town, he started gaining converts for Islam among the discontented, including al-Aswad's wife.

Kais thus slipped into al-Aswad's home before the break of dawn, digging a whole through a crack or slipping in through a gutter. Kais the assassin found al-Aswad in bed, "sleeping under the influence of drink." KFaB, 161.

Kais slew him [al-Aswad] and he began to bellow like a bull, so much so that his guard scared by the noise, asked, "What is the matter with Rahman al-Yaman?"*** "The inspiration," answered his wife, is upon him."

KFaB, 161.

Then the historian al-Baladhuri informs us of a scene which could have been written yesterday:

Kais severed [al-Aswad's] head and shouted, "Allah is great! Allah is great! I testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Prophet of Allay, and that al-Aswad, the false Prophet, is the enemy of Allah!" As the followers of al-Aswad gathered, Kais cast the head to them and they dispersed with the exception of a few. At this the men of Kais opened the door and put the rest of the followers of [al-Aswad] al-'Ansi to the sword, and none escaped except those who accepted Islam.

KFaB, 161.

How many times have we heard Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! in the context of violence. Some things in Islam never change.

So it was that Al-Aswad was killed.†

Though some sources say Muhammad died before al-Aswad was actually killed, other sources suggest it was his last earthly delight:

Certain scholars assert that the death of [as-Aswad by] Kais took place five days before the expiration of the Prophet, who on his death-bed said: "Allah has brought about the death of al-Aswad al-'Ansi through the righteous man Fairuz ibn-ad-Dailami" . . . .

* * *

Christ and Muhammad were both put on a high place, a very high mountain, where all the kingdoms could be seen. All the powers of the world were shown Jesus and Muhammad by Satan. "All these things I will give you if you fall down and worship me." To which Jesus replied, "Begone, Satan: for it is written, 'The Lord thy God shall you adore, and him only shall you serve.'" (Matt. 4:7-9). We know Christ's response. What was Muhammad's? Muhammad set eyes on tribes, then towns, then kingdoms. His followers, who imitate him, have dreams of ruling the world. Jesus answered Satan no. It would seem that the evidence is mounting, nay, even conclusive, that to that question (if it was by posed by Satan, and who else would pose it?) Muhammad answered yes.

There are too many dead bodies in Muhammad's trail to think otherwise. Someone with their pulse on the natural moral law would have second thoughts to the suggestion that Muhammad was a prophet of God. Ordinarily, someone who follows the natural law does not leave a mounting trail of dead bodies behind him. It seems the presumption is against Muhammad, and the common refrain, that الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best the natural law notwithstanding, are empty words that bear no weight. When used to excuse violence, they are the words of thugs.

___________________________
*History of al-Tabari, Volume IX: The Last Years of the Prophet (New York: SUNY Pres, 1990).
**The Origins of the Islamic State: Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (Philip Khuri Hitti, trans.) (New York: Columbia, 1916) (herein KFaB).
***All his names were apparently insufficient, al-Aswad also called himself Rahman al-Yaman, "The Merciful one of Yemen," once he assumed the governorship of San'a'.
†As the KFaB notes, some sources suggest that the actually killer was Fairuz inb-ad-Dailamni, a convert to Islam, and that Kais only severed al-Aswad's head.

Muhammad and the Natural Law: Murder for Prophet-Al-Nadr and 'Uqba

MUHAMMAD COULD BE MERCILESS in the handling of his political and theological opponents. Another example of this attitude--de rigeur for all good Muslims who strive for that imitation of Muhammad that follows from the perception that he was a perfect man, al-Insan al-Kamil (الإنسان الكامل)--is his treatment of his fellow Quraysh tribesmen, al-Nadr bin al-Harith and 'Uqba bin Abu Mu'ayt. It is true that al-Nadr and 'Uqba were political and theological enemies of Muhammad (but then so is every Westerner and every Jew and Christian, not to mention Buddhist or Hindu or Agnostic or Atheist or Neo-Pagan: indeed everyone except a Muslim, that is, someone who is supposed to think and act like Muhammad).

Al-Nadr opposed himself to the man who claimed to be the exclusive and final spokesman for an Arabic mental idol, and irrepressible figment of diseased imagination which demanded obeisance from all men bar none and on the word of one man alone. A rich merchant, al-Nadr was well-read, was relatively cultured, and so he would compete with Muhammad when Muhammad was at Mecca competing for the ears of his townsmen. He would taunt Muhammad for his historical ignorance, for his copying and re-tailoring the the stories of others, and he rejected the Muhammadan revelations as authentic, accusing them of being asatir al-awwalin (أَسَاطِيرُ الأَوَّلِينَ), tales or fables of the ancients. He was one of those of whom Muhammad complained through the words of Allah:

And when Our Verses (of the Qur'ān) are recited to them, they say: "We have heard this (the Qur'ān); if we wish we can say the like of this. This is nothing but the tales of the ancients."

وَإِذَا تُتْلَى عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتُنَا قَالُوا قَدْ سَمِعْنَا لَوْ نَشَاءُ لَقُلْنَا مِثْلَ هَذَا إِنْ هَذَا إِلاَّ أَسَاطِيرُ الأَوَّلِين

Qur'an 8:31.*

Al-Nadr fought Muhammad and his troops at the Battle of Badr and had the misfortune of captured. Muhammad then ordered him killed, and his son-in-law `Ali cut off al-Nadr's head with the blade of his sword.

The entire event between Muhammad and al-Nadr is handled by the Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, and all references or quotes in this post will be to that work as translated by A. Guillaume.**

Al-Nadr bin al-Harith, a leader of the Abu Nashim tribe, is introduced by Ibn Ishaq as a leader among the Quraysh, Muhammad's own greater tribe at Mecca. When introduced to him in Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, al-Nadr is conferring with his fellow leaders on how to handle the erratic Muhammad--then without political power and relying entirely on the protection of his uncle Abu Talib and the wealth of his wife Khadija. In the elders' view, Muhammad was an impertinet rabble rouser, breaching the peace with his demands and eccentric behavior. And so they decide to make him an offer:

If it was money he wanted, they would make him the richest of them all; if it was honour, he should be their prince; if it was sovereignty, they would make him king; if it was a spirit which had got possession of him (they used to call the familiar spirit of the jinn ra'iy), then they would exhaust their means in finding medicine to cure him.

But this was a time when Muhammad was in Mecca, before he tasted political power, and he appeared to have some integrity, though if not integrity, perhaps it was merely a self-righteous, priggish response which was his way of making himself better that his elders:

The apostle replied that he had no such intention. He sought not money, nor honour, nor sovereignty, but God had sent him as an apostle, and revealed a book to him, and commanded him to become an announcer and a warner. He had brought them the messages of his Lord, and given them good advice. If they took it then they would have a portion in this world and the next; if they rejected it, he could only patiently await the issue until God decided between them, or words to that effect.

Life, 133-34. The Muhammad at Mecca is a man a moral man can like. The Muhammad at Medina is a man a moral man begins to despise. It is the Muhammad at Medina that is the hero of Muslims: the majority of the Qur'anic revelations at Mecca abrogated by the later ones of Medina. Muhammad's life, like the Qur'an, may be divided in twain: the Meccan and the Medinan, pre-Hegira and post-Hegira. White and black are these two lives, almost opposites like the flag of the caliphate and the flag of jihad. It is as if a spirit of darkness entered into Muhammad during his Hegira to Medina: introivit in eum satanas.

Faced with Muhammad's pretentious response, the leaders of Mecca mocked him, challenged him, demanded from him proof of his divine warrant, asked for a sign, a miracle, anything except his own witness. How else distinguish him from a mere charlatan? But Muhammad could give them none of these. He was the sole witness of his claimed authenticity. His prophetic office was pulled up by his own bootstraps. Muhammad was self-ordained:

"Well, Muhammad," they said, "if you won't accept any of our propositions, you know that no people are more short of land and water, and live a harder life than we, so ask your Lord, who has sent you, to remove for us these mountains which shut us in, and to straighten out our country for us, and to open up in it rivers like those of Syria and Iraq, and to resurrect for us our forefathers, and let there be among those that are resurrected for us Qusayy b. Kilab, for he was a true shaikh, so that we may ask them whether what you say is true or false. If they say you are speaking the truth, and you do what we have asked you, we will believe in you, and we shall know what your position with God is, and that He has actually sent you as an apostle as you say."

He replied that he had not been sent to them with such an object. He had conveyed to them God's message, and they could either accept it with advantage, or reject it and await God's judgement.

They said that if he would not do that for them, let him do something for himself. Ask God to send an angel with him to confirm what he said and to contradict them; to make him gardens and castles, and treasures of gold and silver to satisfy his obvious wants. He stood in the streets as they did, and he sought a livelihood as they did. If he could do this, they would recognize his merit and position with God, if he were an apostle as he claimed to be.

He replied that he would not do it, and would not ask for such things, for he was not sent to do so, and he repeated what he had said before.

They said, "Then let the heavens be dropped on us in pieces, as you assert that your Lord could do if He wished, for we will not believe you unless you do so."

The apostle replied that this was a matter for God; if He wanted to do it with them, He would do it.

They said, "Did not your Lord know that we would sit with you, and ask you these questions, so that He might come to you and instruct you how to answer us, and tell you what He was going to do with us, if we did not receive your message? Information has reached us that you are taught by this fellow in al-Yamama, called al-Rahman, and by God we will never believe in the Rahman. Our conscience is clear. By God, we will not leave you and our treatment of you, until either we destroy you or you destroy us." Some said, "We worship the angels, who are the daughters of Allah." Others said, "We will not believe in you until you come to us with God and the angels as a surety."

When they said this the apostle got up and left them.

Life, 134.

One can feel the discomfiture of the powerless Muhammad in the presence of scoffers, of doubters. In Muhammad's defense, any kind of faith does not do well in front of scoffers. But this is nothing unique to Muhammad. It is part and parcel of the rough-and-tumble life of a person who sets himself up as a prophet. We know many prophets are false: indeed, Muhammad has his hand in putting some prophets to death. But even if a prophet is true, he ought to expect resistance, some of which comes in the form of ridicule. It is for this reason that it is practically dogma that a prophet is not honored in his own country. (Cf. John 4:44; Mark 6:4; cf. also Luke 4:28-30.) The Quraysh knew of Muhammad's eccentricities, of his disposition to depression and suicide, of his epilepsy and fits and strange seizures, of his public and unusual praying. For them, Muhammad was human, all too human. But then maybe not. It appears that they misread the man. When he got political power in his hands, and had swords at his command, he was not human, all too human--but inhuman, all too inhuman to his enemies.

When the effort at reconciling Muhammad failed, al-Nadr addressed all the leaders of Mecca gathered before him as follows:

Al-Nadr b. al-Harith b. Kalada b. `Alqama b. Abdu Manaf b. Abdu'l-Dar b. Qusayy got up and said: "O Quraysh, a situation has arisen which you cannot deal with. Muhammad was a young man most liked among you, most truthful in speech, and most trustworthy, until, when you saw grey hairs on his temple, and he brought you his message, you said he was a sorcerer, but he is not, for we have seen such people and their spitting and their knots; you said, a diviner, but we have seen such people and their behaviour, and we have heard their rhymes; and you said a poet, but he is not a poet, for we have heard all kinds of poetry; you said he was possessed, but he is not, for we have seen the possessed, and he shows no signs of their gasping and whispering and delirium. Ye men of Quraysh, look to your affairs, for by God, a serious thing has befallen you."

Now al-Nadr b. al-Harith was one of the satans of Quraysh; he used to insult the apostle and show him enmity. He had been to al-Hira and learnt there the tales of the kings of Persia, the tales of Rustum and Isbandiyar. When the apostle had held a meeting in which he reminded them of God, and warned his people of what had happened to bygone generations as a result of God's vengeance, al-Nadr got up when he sat down, and said, 'I can tell a better story than he, come to me.' Then he began to tell them about the kings of Persia, Rustum and Isbandiyar, and then he would say, 'In what respect is Muhammad a better story-teller than I?'

Life, 135-36.

So the Pagan townspeople of Mecca decided to get advice from the Jews at Medina, which made sense since Muhammad seemed to be drawing on the Jewish traditions, and presumably the Jews knew about prophets. So Al-Nadr and another Meccan named `Uqba bin Abu Mu'ayt went to the Jewish rabbis in Medina to get information from them about what prophethood was all about.

Now 'Uqba was also an enemy of Muhammad. He had once listened to Muhammad and appeared a potential recruit to Muhammad's struggling group of Muslims, but his friend Ubayy ibn Khala ibn Wahb ibn Hudhafa had threatened to break his friendship off if 'Uqba continued to audit Muhammad's preaching, and so 'Uqba departed from Muhammad and turned on him. Life, 164-65. A hadith in Sahih Bukhari 1.9.499 relates how, at a time before Muhammad had political power and lived in Mecca, 'Uqba threw dung, blood and the offal of slaughtered camels on the shoulders of Muhammad when he bowed down for prayers, to the delight of some of the Meccans. It was a slight that Muhammad, who could bear a grudge, would never forget.

So it was that al-Nadr and 'Uqba went to the rabbis and asked them:

"You are the people of the Taurat [Torah], and we have come to you so that you can tell us how to deal with this tribesman of ours."

The rabbis said, "Ask him about three things of which we will instruct you; if he gives you the right answer then he is an authentic prophet, but if he does not, then the man is a rogue, so form your own opinion about him. Ask him what happened to the young men who disappeared in ancient days, for they have a marvelous story. Ask him about the mighty traveler who reached the confines of both East and West. Ask him what the spirit is. If he can give you the answer, then follow him, for he is a prophet. If he cannot, then he is a forger and treat him as you will."

The two men returned to Quraysh at Mecca and told them that they had a decisive way of dealing with Muhammad, and they told them about the three questions.

They came to the apostle and called upon him to answer these questions. He said to them, "I will give you your answer tomorrow," but he did not say, "if God will."

So they went away; and the apostle, so they say, waited for fifteen days without a revelation from God on the matter, nor did Gabriel come to him, so that the people of Mecca began to spread evil reports, saying, "Muhammad promised us an answer on the morrow, and today is the fifteenth day we have remained without an answer."

This delay caused the apostle great sorrow, until Gabriel brought him the Chapter of The Cave,*** in which he reproaches him for his sadness, and told him the answers of their questions, the youths, the mighty traveler, and the spirit.

Life, 136-137.

The answers, a synthesis of Greek, Arab, Jewish, and Christian tales, did not impress al-Nadr. Ibn Ishaq tells us how al-Nadr would follow up Muhammad's recitations of the Qur'an and the warnings to the Quraysh tribe, that al-Nadr would follow with a story about "Rustum the Hero and Isfandiyar and the kings of Persia, saying, 'By God, Muhammad cannot tell a better story than I and his talk is only of old fables which he has copied as I have.'" Life,, 162-163.

When al-Nadr and 'Uqba had the upper hand, they abused Muhammad with words and with offal. But when Muhammad had the upper hand, he was brutal: he heartlessly abused his opponents with the sword.

A Veiled Muhammad Orders Decapitation of His Captive

After the battle of Badr, when the victorious Muslims were heading back to Medina, Ibn Ishaq relates the following:

Then the apostle began his return journey to Medina with the unbelieving prisoners, among whom were 'Uqba b. Abu Mu'ayt and al-Nadr bin Al-Harith. . . . Then the apostle went forward until when he came out of the pass of al-Safra' he halted on the sandhill between the pass and al-Naziya called Sayar at a tree there and divided the booty which God had granted to the Muslims equally. . . . When the apostle was in al-Safra', al-Nadr was killed by `Ali, as a learned Meccan told me. . . . .

Life, 308.

Ibn Ishaq records the plaint of al-Nadr's sister engendered at hearing of the death of her brother at the order of Muhammad:

Qutayla d. al-Harith, sister of al-Nadr b. al-Harith, weeping him said:

O Rider, I think you will reach Uthayl
At dawn of the fifth night if you are lucky.
Greet a dead man there for me.
Swift camels always carry news from me to thee.
(Tell of) flowing tears running profusely or ending in a sob.
Can al-Nadr hear me when I call him,
How can a dead man hear who cannot speak?
O Muhammad, finest child of noble mother,
Whose sire a noble sire was,
'Twould not have harmed you had you spared him.
(A warrior oft spares though full of rage and anger.)
Or you could have taken a ransom,
The dearest price that could be paid.
Al-Nadr was the nearest relative you captured
With the best claim to be released.
The swords of his father's sons came down on him.
Good God, what bonds of kinship there were shattered!
Exhausted he was led to a cold-blooded death,
A prisoner in bonds, walking like a hobbled beast.

Life, 311. A voice was heard at the pass of al-Safra', weeping and loud lamentation, Qutayla weeping for her brother, but she refused to be comforted, because he was no more. He was no more because of Muhammad.

'Uqba suffered a similar fate. Ibn Ishak tells us the following about Muhammad's captive, 'Uqba:

When he was in `Irqu'l-Zabya `Uqba was killed. He had been captured by `Abdullah b. Salima, one of the B. al-`Ajlan.

When the apostle ordered him to be killed `Uqba said, "But who will look after my children?"

"Hell," he said, and `Asim b. Thabit b. Abu'l-Aqlah al-Ansari killed him according to what Abu `Ubayda b. Muhammad b. `Ammar b. Yasir told me.

Life, 308.

Seventy-two Meccan prisoners were made captive by the Mohammadan forces at the Battle of Badr. Seventy traded for ransom. Two, however, killed at the order of Muhammad: al-Nadr and 'Uqba.

Learn well kuffar and mushrikun, unbelievers and Christians, from the example of Muhammad. Muhammad teaches his followers to be heartless to their opponents. He will teach them to feel no softness for the sisters and the children of their enemies, and the sorrow that they may cause them. Turn deaf ears to their pleas, to their wails, to the misery you have caused them, he tells them. Get even! Forget not! Get that revenge! Their children, for all they care, can go to Hell. And this hardness of heart is a fine thing, a very fine thing, a most blessed, noble, and virtuous thing, a divine thing--though it goes against the grain of any humane reasoning--for one ought to remember: in Islam, الله ورسوله أعلم, Allah and his messenger know best, the natural law notwithstanding.

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*The Qur'an refers to the asatir al-awwalin (أَسَاطِيرُ الأَوَّلِينَ), the tales or fables of the ancients, in numerous surahs, and it is commonly thought that these are references to al-Nadr and his criticisms of Muhammad.
**A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Risat Rasul Allah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006).
***Qur'an (Al-Khaf) 18:1-110