This is a serialization of the book titled ‘Crisis in Islam’. The full book and its Endnotes may be accessed at:
I ended the previous chapter with an enquiry about what Muslims did to Muslims and non-Arabs whose land they invaded. I intend to elaborate on this, not out of a wish to discredit what Muslims have glorified for centuries, but to understand the reasons behind what is happening today. I believe that today’s culture is very much connected to that history, and we must be able to admit that and accept a critical review of our history. We should aim at achieving a rationality that will enable us to understand our message to mankind, if we have any message left.
No sooner had the Prophet departed this world than the age of Jāhiliya (ignorance) raised its head again.[i] That should not be surprising, as ethics and norms do not change overnight. It may not be easy for every man to shed the dress of ignorance just by reciting the Shahāda (declaration of faith).[ii]
The first symbol of Jāhiliya that was revived was glorifying murder, as the pre-Islamic poet ‘Amro Ibn Kulthum At-Taghlibi said:[iii]
With young men who see glory in killing
And the old experienced in war
But there is a difference. While in Jāhiliya they used to raid each other, which Islam forbade, they decided after converting to Islam, to raid others outside of their people and their lands. They therefore amassed armies; sent them outside Arab lands; killed people on the grounds of infidelity; looted their wealth calling it spoils of war, and raped their women and claimed that these women were what “their right hands possessed”[iv]. In order to give legitimacy to these crimes against humanity, they claimed that it was a Divine Order for the propagation of Islam. Was it really so?
My starting point in answering this question is my conviction that Islam came to the Arabs or Arabic speakers. This is contrary to what is believed by most Muslims, as I think I am in the minority of people who believe this. I have written this in an article in Arabic entitled ‘To whom was the Ummi Prophet Sent’ in which I showed, through Qur’anic verses alone, how the Message was intended for the Arabs and the Arabs alone.[v] I shall borrow from that article three Qur’anic examples to prove this conviction.
In His assertion that no people were left without a messenger, Allah said: “And We did not destroy any city except that it had warners” (Ash-Shu’araa 26:208). He then addressed the Prophet: “that you may warn the Mother of Cities (Umm Al-Qura) and those around it” (Al-An’aam 6:92), thus showing us that our Prophet came to warn Arabs in Umm Al-Qura (as Mecca was called) and those around it. Lest people go astray trying to figure out who follows whom and against whom the argument would be, Allah has committed Himself in saying “And We did not send any messenger except in the language of his people to state clearly for them, and Allah sends astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills. And He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise” (Ibrāhim 14:4) that all people have a Messenger speaking their language so that His justice is achieved. In this justice of His, He can ask, if He wishes, for their obedience or the reason for their disobedience after he had warned them in their language.
When the Almighty commissioned the Meccan Prophet to call upon Arabs to follow the Message, He showed his Prophet the route to this call by saying: “Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best” (An-Nahl 16:125), commissioning him to call them to the faith only through this route. He then reminded the Prophet in man’s freedom to choose in saying: “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong” (Al-Baqara 2:256). The Almighty reminded His Prophet in His saying: “Not upon you is [the responsibility for] their guidance, but Allah guides whom He wills” (Al-Baqara 2:272), following that with His saying: “And if We had willed, We could have given every soul its guidance, but the word from Me will come into effect [that] I will surely fill Hell with jinn and people all together” (As-Sajda 32:13). He decided that His Prophet was not able to guide those whom He did not want to guide to the faith. How then could anyone, who came after the Prophet, claim that he wants to guide all the people? If he were truthful in his claim that he was charged with guiding people and would kill them if they did not follow, then such a God who charged him with that would be an unjust and dallying God. How could Allah be just if He created a soul and did not guide it to the true path “Whoever Allah guides – he is the [rightly] guided; and whoever He sends astray – it is those who are the losers” (Al-A’raaf 7:178), then sends someone to kill this soul without even charging this soul of having killed another soul or aggressed or caused corruption on earth?[vi]
It would be worth stopping here to ponder record keeping generally in Islam. It is generally agreed that the Prophet Muhammad forbade the codification of anything other than the Holy Qur’an during his life.[vii] Therefore, the first record was about the Prophet’s biography, before the Hadith was gathered.
The first biography of the Prophet that has reached us is the biography of Ibn Ishāq Ibn Yasār who died in (151 AH)[viii]. This means that the first text written about the Prophet was 100 years after the Hijra (emigration from Mecca to Medina), which makes it difficult to believe that Ibn Ishāq narrated from contemporaries of the Prophet: That was the beginning of the use of secondary sources (العنعنة).[ix] Ibn Ishāq’s biography did not attain the desired attention even though it is the oldest. This is not the place to go into this subject because it is outside the scope of this work. Then Abdul-Malik Ibn Hishām, who died in the year (218 AH) took Ibn Ishāq’s biography, left some parts of it and produced the famous and better known biography (Sirat Ibn Hishām).[x] The collection of the Prophet’s Hadith came only late when Al-Bukhāri who died on the year (256 AH) produced the first book of collections of Hadith, way before the history books.[xi]
What do we deduce from these dates?
The writing of the biography of the Prophet and the collection of Hadith as well as documenting the history of early Islam did not begin until the end of the Umayyad dynasty in the year (132 AH). This no doubt means that the Umayyad Caliphs ruled with their minds and independent reasoning in understanding the Qur’an, as there was nothing like a biography or a Hadith or jurisprudence to bind them otherwise. This necessarily means that politics not religion defined the outlines of the early Islamic state since not even the founder of the dynasty Mu’āwiya himself was versed in Isalm as he was a very late convert to it. Thus more precisely, it means that politics forced religion to adapt to it accordingly. Historians and collectors of Hadith and fuqahā have found themselves facing the reality of the political legacy of the Umayyad Caliphs, having to choose one of two options: Either to oppose such policies in the light of their understanding of the religion and what could be the consequent challenge in some of the policies that were in conflict with Islam, or to accept those policies and find solutions and religious justifications for their interpretation.
It is not difficult to figure out the position chosen by these officials. They decided to recognize the legality of the policies of the Umayyad Caliphs and claim that they were of the essence of religion, proceeding afterwards towards finding justifications and explanations. Some of those officials have done so because of their belief that it was for the good of the nation whereas challenging some of the policies as contradictory to religion would have exposed the nation to a major conflict that might have led to sedition “And fear a trial which will not strike those who have wronged among you exclusively” (Al-Anfaal 8:25). Some of them did so because of ignorance, because a number of Persians and others who entered Islam, were not truly able to absorb the Qur’an due to the difficulty of its language even to Arabs. They therefore believed that the Muslim Caliphs from Quraysh must have known the innermost intricacies of religion and did what they did rightly.
The first action introduced by historians into Islamic behavior was the word ‘invasion’ (Ghazu); a word from the age of ignorance (Jāhiliya) which never appeared in any form nor did the verb ‘to invade’ (Ghazā) or any of its conjugations appear in the Qur’an describing Muslims. But when the Almighty said: “O you who have believed, do not be like those who disbelieved and said about their brothers when they travelled through the land or went out to fight, “If they had been with us, they would not have died or have been killed,” so Allah makes that a regret within their hearts. And it is Allah who gives life and causes death, and Allah is Seeing of what you do” (Aal-Imran 3:156), He was referring to the unbelievers as invaders and the subject of rebuke. The Almighty did not associate Muslims anywhere in the Qur’an with invasions. The absence of that word in relation to Muslims in the Qur’an was neither a coincidence nor inadvertent, for the Almighty is above forgetfulness. There was a clear reason for this. An Invasion is a Jāhiliya norm of behavior that Islam came to revoke, and Allah forbade it to Muslims and did not invite them to carry on doing it. But when the early Muslim historians had to explain the invasions carried out by the Umayyad Caliphs, they did not find an easier way to justify them than to attribute invasions to the Prophet Muhammad. They wrote about his invasions, citing the first as the ‘Invasion of Badr’,[xii] as described by Ibn Ishāq in the biography and repeated and quoted afterwards. But Arabs know that a invasion, as defined by Ibn Mandhoor in Lisān Al- Arab,[xiii] means: ‘Marching to fight the enemy and looting him’. This is precisely what Arab tribes did before Islam. An invasion is the polite word for ‘aggression’. How can people’s marching to fight and loot others be described as anything but aggression, which is forbidden in the Qur’an? Moreover, how was the ‘Battle of Badr’ in this sense, an invasion?
Quraysh organized the massing of one of the largest armies in the history of the ancient Arabs to advance on Medina and put an end to the state of Islam, which was threatening its position. Quraysh’s army had reached such a size that Allah, in His Mercy, supplied the believers with five thousand angels fighting with them and strengthening them.[xiv] Had Abu Sufyān’s army been composed of a small number, the believers would not have needed this Divine support. What did the Messenger do except confront them in defense of himself, his people and his belief? How can it be said that the Battle of Badr was an invasion by the Prophet? How can a defender be an invader? The historians continued to label all the wars of the Prophet as invasions. Even the Battle of the Ditch, in which Medina was besieged, was called an invasion.[xv] I do not know how the Prophet could have invadeed anyone or anything when he was sitting in a ditch?
The use of this word (invasion) was not arbitrary but was intended in order to implant the concept of invasions in the minds of Muslims as a normal behavior of the Prophet. Once it was implanted in the minds of the people, talking about the invasions of the Caliphs became legitimate and acceptable, so much so that no one could dispute them so long as the Prophet was responsible. Thus Muslims were raised for a thousand years, studying this in all stages of their education, in the mosques and on every religious occasion that (Ghazu) ‘Invasion’ was essential in the mission of Islam!
The compilers of history books decided that their recording begins in basing Islam on invasions of people outside the land of the Arabs. They soon found out, just like their jurists, that they needed to find support for the invasions in the Qur’an or in the Hadith. If that would be possible to do, it would have been a relief: If they were to fail in finding support for that behavior from the Qur’an, it would then be necessary to find a Hadith to back it up even if they had to invent that Hadith! When they failed to find an explicit verse calling for the invasions, which would make the behavior of the Umayyad Caliphs compliant with religion and not just politics, they took verses in the Qur’an out of context and made them the bases for justifying these acts. This penetrated the conscious and subconscious of Muslims for centuries to an extent that may make it seem impossible to dislodge it or to awaken people to denigrate such invasions.
No better example than in the (Surat Al-Baqara) Cow Chapter of Qur’an where fighting is mentioned in detail in several verses. Allah says: “Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like aggressors” (Al-Baqara 2:190). He ordered the Muslims to fight those who fight them, but forbade aggression, and that was an irreversible prohibition. No one can claim that the Almighty allowed aggression elsewhere in order to spread his religion, because He is incapable of contradicting Himself. His orders are neither restricted, limited in time, nor are they affected by happenings, and His words are final and absolute. The prohibition on aggression is a Divine Law beyond any interpretation. No Caliph or faqih, no matter how good a Muslim he could be, or how high his status would be, can change that or add to it, unless out of Jāhiliya zealotry! This is the way every verse that refers to fighting should be read and understood: through the perspective of absolute prohibition on aggression. Whoever cannot do this, should not indulge in interpreting His Divine words, because he would be unjustly ascribing to the Lord what He did not say.
I am, sometimes, baffled when I hear what some Muslims say about them being assigned the duty of spreading Islam, even if that necessitated killing people. I ask myself how those people can believe in this when the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet order otherwise. But I am soon awakened by His words: “Have you seen he who has taken as his God his [own] desire, and Allah has sent him astray due to knowledge and has set a seal upon his hearing and his heart and put over his vision a veil? So who will guide him after Allah? Then will you not be reminded?” (Al-Jaathiya 45:23).
The generosity of the Lord has no boundaries. He has instructed His subjects that moral obligations take precedence over religious solidarity, saying in the description of a Muslim aiding a Muslim against a non-Muslim: “And if they seek help of you in religion, then you must help, except against a people between yourselves and whom is a treaty. And Allah is Seeing of what you do” (Al-Anfaal 8:72). Is there nobleness greater than that of Allah’s given morals to us, when he instructed His believing subjects that a treaty, which is a moral obligation, takes precedence over the right of the believer towards another believer? Is it conceivable that such a Lord ordered his servant to kill non-Muslims for no reason other than the latter’s refusal to accept Islam as his faith?
If we want to take a lesson from the Sunnah of the Prophet, we will not find in his life any act or directive allowing assault on anyone who rejected Islam as a religion. This is because the Prophet was knowing of Allah’s command: “You are only a warner, and for every people is a guide” (Ar-Ra’d 13:7). There were Jews and Christians in the Arabian Peninsula, and we have never found any record of Him offering them Islam or threatening them with death if they refused. When Jews of Medina asked Him to arbiter between them, He directed them to rule according to the Torah.[xvi] He did not fight them until they conspired against Him and assaulted Him in Medina, doing so in accordance with the Almighty’s words: “So whoever has assaulted you, then assault him in the same way that he has assaulted you” (Al-Baqara 2:194).
As to the Christians of the Arabian Peninsula, the Prophet did not even offer them Islam. When the Christians of Najrān came to him, what transpired was that a debate took place between both sides without a fight or spears and swords, ending with the conversion of some Christians to Islam in peace. That was achieved after the Prophet boasted during the debate of the people of ‘His house’. The Qur’an described that in saying: “Then whoever argues with you about it after [this] knowledge has come to you – say: “Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves, then supplicate earnestly [together] and invoke the curse of Allah upon the liars [among us]” (Aal-Imran 3:61).[xvii]
We must consider the lesson from the story of the incidents described in the biography of Ibn Hishām of which most Muslims are unaware because they have not read the biography. Those who read it have either forgotten the incident or tried to forget it for the same obvious reason that made the Umayyad Caliph, Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwān, ‘wished that no one should be occupied with the Prophet’s biography because of its elevation of Banu Hāshim and Ansār’[xviii], in what can only be seen as a clear admission that Quraysh was antagonistic to the Prophet throughout his life.
The Prophet’s biography tells that the Prophet Muhammad sent missionaries inviting Arabs to Allah but he did not order them to fight. Among those he sent was Khālid Ibn Al-Walid whom he sent to Banu Jadhimah in the Lower Mecca.[xix] The standoff ended with the people of Banu Jadhimah putting down their arms. Ibn Hishām quotes Ibn Ishāq: ‘As soon as they laid down their arms, Khālid ordered their hands to be tied behind their backs and put them to the sword, killing a number of them. When the news reached the apostle, he raised his hands to heavens and said: “Oh God, I seek penitence before Thee from what Khālid has done…. The apostle summoned ‘Ali and told him to go to these people and look into the affair, and abolish the practices of the pagan era’[xx]. Every Arab understands the meaning of ‘penitence’ that has reached its peak when the Almighty excluded the Penitence Chapter 9 (Surat At-Tawba) from beginning with the Basmalah as every other Chapter does, so as not to include those He disassociated Himself from in the mercy and compassion included in the Basmalah[xxi]. If the Prophet was angry to the limit of penitence because Khālid had killed innocent people while calling them to Islam, then what about what the Umayyad, ‘Abbāsid and Ottoman Caliphs did in the name of Islam to the peoples they invaded? If the Almighty had ordained that Islam be spread by the sword, why did the Prophet not order his missionaries to use the sword in the call? And why did the Prophet not kill any of the Infidels of Mecca after Allah granted him power over them? He did not even offer them the option that was used by the Caliphs after him, to choose between Islam, Jizya and death.[xxii]
Where did this option come from then? How was the culture of killing in Islam that is being used today to incite those imbeciles to kill and ruin, founded after Allah and His Prophet forbade them?