Koran Curious - A Guide for Infidels and Believers (8 page)

Thus according to Aisha’s own words, as recorded in the hadith, “He (Muhammad) had intercourse with me when I was nine years old.” Here, as you can see, if we applied our moral subjectivity, then indeed he was sexual criminal. However, if you don’t believe in a moral giver i.e. God, then there’s no such thing as moral objectivity. In other words, our definition of what constitutes moral or immoral behavior changes over time (and I’m just tip-toeing around this whole moral relativity argument) and, therefore, what we find morally repugnant today was, in fact, deemed morally acceptable 1,500 years ago i.e. slavery, honor killings, and human sacrifice to name a few such examples. In Muhammad’s era, marrying an underage girl was regarded as morally kosha, as was the selling of you daughter into sexual slavery as stipulated in the book of Deuteronomy. Now my point isn’t to justify or excuse Muhammad for breaking the hymen of a nine-year-old, it’s just to illustrate that one must judge him against the morals of that time.

Later, Muhammad would take an additional two wives, who were both widowed during wars Muhammad later fought against the Meccans. In this sense, Muhammad never exploited the misogynistic laws for his own sexually polygamous benefit. The wives he took in were outcasts and the misfortunate, and he saw it as his duty to care and provide for them. Once more remembering that it was expected of Arabian leaders and the wealthy of that period to house a harem of women. In fact, a number of Muhammad’s friends would often criticize him for the leniency he showed his wives and for the way he sought their consul on religious and political matters. In regards to polygamy, Muhammad made it Islamic law that men and women are equal partners before God, but a man may marry up to a maximum of four wives at any one time. But this polygamy law was not without purpose, he made this decree at the time the Muslim men were being killed in skirmishes fighting the Meccan military, and their deaths meant the surviving wives would be without care. Moreover it was Muhammad who led the charge for the emancipation of women. In fact, the Koran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce hundreds of years before women in what is now Europe would receive similar entitlement. When critics of Islam point to the veiling of women as an example of blatant sexism and demonization of women, this was not something Muhammad decreed, and something that came centuries after his death by Islamic revisionists.

With Muhammad’s house becoming the centre of Islam within Medina, his example of charity and anti-materialism won him practically all of the pagan population of the city to his religious faith. The numbers who called themselves Muslim was now in the few thousands, but the Jews and Christians remained aloof towards him. This disappointed him greatly, as he had looked forward to working closely with both Abrahamic faiths because he believed they were the Muslim’s equals as “people of the book.” In fact, Muhammad streamlined Islam to be in synch with Judaism by instituting communal prayer on Friday afternoons, and a fast on the Jewish Day of Atonement. Some of the Jews from the smaller clans welcomed Muhammad, and they would tutor him on the stories of the Old Testament, but the vast majority treated him with private scorn. Nevertheless, Muhammad remained confident he could convert the Jewish clans of Medina to Islam, and he had some initial success with a handful of former Jews accepting Islam. Muhammad’s pride in this achievement is demonstrated in the following Koranic verse:

These converts would become far and few between, however, and the Jews, in particular, began to publicly deride and taunt Muhammad for his lack of biblical knowledge. They couldn’t accept the notion God would send a prophet who was not only illiterate but was also ignorant of the Jewish bible, the Torah. Seventeen months after arriving in Medina, Muhammad had enough of their teasing, and he made a profoundly massive theological changing decision to point the kiblah away from the Temple in Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca. From this point onwards, Muslims would bow towards Mecca rather than the home of Judaism. Effectively, this change would be construed as a declaration of independence; Islam was turning its back on the Jewish and Christian faiths, and was beginning to establish its own identity.

In less than two years, Muhammad had successfully transformed Medina. Despite the fact the Jews and Christians continued to patronize him, he had converted the remainder of the city, and in doing so, he had put an end to the civil strife and substantially grown the Muslim population in encouraging every Muslim family to produce as many offspring as they could. There now would be a new pressing challenge to address immediately, the Muslims of Medina would need commerce and trade. Medina was an agricultural town and the emigrants from Mecca were not farmers, they were merchants. Muhammad knew he had to come up with a solution fast or face revolt. His solution? War.

The Meccans had made it impossible for the Muslims to work the caravan trade routes, and Muhammad knew that if any of his Muslims were found isolated from the security of Medina, they would be attacked and killed. This, combined with the Muslims lack of farming knowledge, left very few available options for the Muslims to earn a living. At this time Muhammad had declared war on Mecca. However, it was not a struggle for prestige, wealth, or empire, but for the advancement of God’s word and his prophethood. The Koran specifies his war objective:

Moreover, Muhammad knew he had not yet assembled a military large enough to take Mecca by sheer force, but he also knew where he could hit them hardest – the caravans. Not only was this a brilliant military strategy but it also would serve as a means to resolve Medina’s economic woes, as seized caravans would provide war booty. Muhammad assembled a small raiding party in December of AD 623 and gave them instructions on where and how to hit a caravan he knew would be traveling on the route to Yemen, at an oasis that links Mecca to Taif. Significantly, Muhammad gave his followers two specific orders: Firstly, avoid killing anyone, as this would result in a vendetta. Secondly, wait until the day after the holy month of Rajab. Well, his men failed on both orders. Some Meccan merchants were killed and they executed their attack on the last day of Rajab. When his followers brought home the caravan’s treasure, Muhammad was appalled they had disobeyed his directive, but he took responsibility because he was their leader. Muhammad prayed for guidance from above and the following reply came back from one of God’s prayer envoys:

This was Muhammad’s way of saying killing in a religious month is bad but it’s not as bad as hindering people from the way of God. This would be a passage that radical Islamic terrorists in the 21
^st
century would use to convince their combatants to wage attacks against Western targets during the month of Ramadan.

This attack would also create a new enemy for Muhammad, as the three Jewish tribes of Medina became determined to kill him, and as such they formed an alliance with Mecca. Muhammad learned of the plot and he expelled one of the clans, the Qaynuqah and the Nadir, to the Jewish settlement of Khaybar. The clans, however, proved to a more dangerous proposition for Muhammad, however, as they could join Mecca’s forces without him knowing of their mobilization. This is exactly what happened when Muhammad led the Muslims into a major engagement against the Meccans at the Battle of the Trench, or known by its more appropriate name, The Siege of Medina. But another, the Battle of Badr, would first precede that engagement.

Badr was the first large-scale engagement between the two rival militaries. Muhammad received intelligence that a caravan was on its way from Palestine to Mecca. He sent three hundred and fifty of his men to intercept the caravan at the wells of Badr. Muhammad led his small army on camel and horseback, but unbeknownst to him, the Meccans learned of the Muslim plan, and they sent out a force three times superior, numbering more than 1,000 warriors. The Meccans diverted the caravan away from the wells and replaced them with their soldiers, and then waited in ambush. However, an advance Muslim scout spotted the trap and reported back to Muhammad. The Muslims looked to their leader and asked whether they should return to Medina. Muhammad walked away to gather his thoughts. When he returned, he said to his men, “We attack!” With their swords held outstretched above their heads, they charged the Meccan lines. The battle was vicious hand-to-hand combat, and the Meccans had not only underestimated the fighting skill of the Muslims, they were completely overwhelmed by their willingness to sacrifice themselves with such ferocity. It didn’t take long for the Meccan lines to break, and from that point on it became a massacre. Most of the Meccans fled, but those who were captured were either sold for a ransom fee or were executed.

This was a huge victory for Muhammad and word spread that the Muslims were a force to be reckoned with, and many non-Muslims began to believe that Muhammad, based on securing victory against overwhelming odds, might indeed be a man of God. Moreover, it strengthened his position in Medina. Returning home, Muhammad honored the fallen as martyrs and told their respective widows they would now be in paradise for defending the word of God. Medina was delirious with joy.

The mood in Mecca couldn’t have been starker, however, as their noses had been bloodied by greatly inferior numbers, and they were further humiliated that the person who they despised most, had defeated them so comprehensively. For the next two years, the Meccans perfected a plan to lay siege on Medina with the purpose of razing the city to the ground and all its inhabitants with it. Further, they wanted Muhammad’s head on a stick.

In January 625, Mecca, seeking retribution for the Muslim attack on their caravan, sent an army of 4,000 men to Medina. The Quraysh were hell bent on ending Muhammad and his Muslims once and for all, and the Meccans weren’t alone, as the three Jewish clans, the clans expelled from Medina by Muhammad, joined Mecca’s fighting force. It was a ten-day foot march from Mecca to Medina, which meant forward scouts were able to report back to Muhammad that the Quraysh army was headed their way. When the Meccans moved within sight of the city, the Muslim warriors countered by moving to the slopes of a nearby mountain, Uhud, in an effort to gain the higher ground. The Meccans pursued them and hostilities commenced, but like Badr, the Muslims quickly gained the ascendency due to their ferociousness and fighting vigor. Suddenly, however, things turned quickly from good to bad when a number of Muhammad’s men fled in cowardice. For a brief moment this left Muhammad exposed and a blow to the head felled him. Word spread quickly that the prophet had been killed and the Meccans were elated, but the fog of war had provided them with incorrect information, as Muhammad had suffered only minor injuries. The leader of the Quraysh forces, Abu Sufyan, called out to the Muslims to surrender or face immediate extermination. Muhammad sent a lieutenant to deliver a reply, “God is most high and most glorious. We are equal: our dead are in paradise, yours in hell, and by God, you have not killed the Prophet. He is listening to us even as we speak!”

Surprisingly, Abu Sufyan decided to withdraw his forces, presumably he had underestimated the Muslim casualties, and he called an end to the fighting for that day and withdrew his troops back to Mecca. This military blunder by Abu Sufyan was another pivotal moment for why Islam has survived today, for had he continued his rout of Muhammad’s warriors, he would’ve successfully demolished Medina and executed the prophet, and Islam would now only read as a historical footnote. Instead, Muhammad’s reputation continued to grow throughout the region and his name was heard throughout the Middle East.