Allah and Muhammad

26 Comments

• mac

  June 4, 2014 10:40 am

  Reply

  child marriage is better than adultery

• mac

  June 4, 2014 6:55 am

  Reply

  admin, now i if you don`t respond to this i am going to file FIR against this site because SATYEN said – “Unfortunately, her expectations will be shattered once she comes to the truth face to face. I ask her, will she love to have a husband like Muhammad who married a grand daughter like girl of 6 years when he himself was of 54 years and bedded the women by killing their husbands” which is actually not true , mohammad(peace be upon him) was 44 and aisha(ra) was 9. so admin see how she/he has added 10 more years to mohammad(pbuh) and 3 more yeras to aisha(ra). admin you said you read kur`an and you know about islam then why didn`t you reply to him/her that she gave a wrong information but if when i wrote something which was true(you considered that as false) you then and then asked me to clerify. Why is that double standard is taht your “Forum for Interfaith Relationships with EQUALITY”, now if you don`t clerify me then i will file a FIR against you under false information and religious rights.

  • admin

    June 4, 2014 7:41 am

    Reply

    Mac,
    Can you quote where this says in Koran “mohammad(peace be upon him) was 44 and aisha(ra) was 9”? We learned from others that Muhammad married to Aisha when she was 6 and consumed her when she was 9, is that not true.

    Are you okay and happy with the fact that a 44 years old having sex with 9 years old? For readers knowledge, can you remind us how many other wives Muhammad had?

    • mac

      June 4, 2014 10:37 am

      Reply

      now i caught foolish admin, i actually gave mohammad(pbuh) age 44 to force admin to reply coz in other post admin hasn`t replied so i wanted to taste whether admin reads my comments or not. ya i know mohammad(pbuh) was 53/54 but aisha(ra) was 4/6/9/11 , and mohammad(pbuh) had no sex relationship with aisha(ra) because after marriage aisha(ra) stayed with her family, they(pbut) only had relation when aisha reached poverty, now don`t ask me when she reached poverty,poverty of a girl depends on which climate,place, now i am cent percent sure that you read all my comments but you failed to answer me because you don`t have amswers,isn`t. if mohammad age was 54 then aisha`s marriage age would be 11 becoz mohammad(pbuh) died at 62 and aisha(ra) dies at 18, so you calculate what was aisha`s age, stayen said that mohammad married at 54 with aisha 6 , then it means aisha died at 14 which is not true or mohammad married aisha at 58 which is not true too.

      watch these three videos and you will have clear idea about mohammad(pbuh) and aisha(ra)

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5LZHTEv1BI

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRayUpTP5l0

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKO2yTkJ4Lg

• Satyen

  April 22, 2013 8:30 pm

  Reply

  See the striking difference between the prophets of Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity versus Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

  1. The prophets of other religions were either unmarried or had only one wife. On the other hand Muhammad had at least twleve wives.

  2. Other prophets were married at much younger, before 25 years of age with a girl of similar age and lived as celibate (not having sex) after 30 years of age or so. Muhammad on the other hand kept on marrying until his death at age 62 with women much younger to him (he even married a grand daughter like girl aged 6 when he was 52 years of age). He didn’t practice celibacy at all (in fact he died lip locked with his youngest wife).

  3. Others addressed other women as daughters/mothers depending on their ages, but Muhammad never addressed them that way as he considered them. Muslims even today don’t address other girls as daughters/sisters/mothers (there could be exceptions due to cultural reasons in Indian sub-continent).

  4. The highest goal of life (In Buddhism and Jainism apart from Hinduism) is not Paradise/Heaven but freedom. In fact the desire to go to heaven/paradise was considered the impediment to achieve the highest goal. Muhammad on the other hand considered it the highest goal.

  5. Others considered practicing celibacy as a virtue but Muhammad considered sensuality as a motivating factor and hence he didn’t preach celibacy at all.

  6. Other prophets were peace lovers and preached forgiveness and peace and forbade wars/battles. Muhammad preached wars/battles and himself participated in them. In fact he went further and encouraged his entourage for plundering wealth and women of Non-Muslims as everthing belonged to Muslims, not to the kafirs!

  7. Others considered women as respectables and didn’t allow the men to beat them. In fact respecting them was considered a virtue. Muhammad allowed them to be beated by the males.

  8. Others didn’t prescribe any dress codes for the women while Muhammad prescribed.

  9. Others considered women equally qualified for the final goal of life depending on their behaviour. Also they considered the women as competent as the males. Muhammad, on the other hand considered the womenfolk as having half the intellect of males and a poor candidates for the Heaven/Paradise.

  10. Muhammad cried bitterly helplessly at the death of his son while others remain poised even in trying situations.

  Muhammad even after marrying 12 brides and passing all nights in their company, survived with a lone daughter who died just after his death at the age of 30 or so!

  Based on the above facts, the Muslims should think without any malice against non-Muslims, what was so special or sublime in Muhammad to consider Him a prophet. Make your won research without any prejudice and draw conclusion.

• junaid

  March 10, 2013 11:50 pm

  Reply

  All the lies againest our beloved prophet exposed on http://www.discoveringislam.org all the post are cut and paste from antiislamic sites as islamphobics gain knowledge about islam from antiislamic sites and they have no knowledge about true nature of islam

• Paki_girl

  March 8, 2013 12:32 am

  Reply

  Assalamalikoom.

  Regarding the hadith of 72 virgins I found this

  It was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu al-Haytham Abdullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa’id al-Khudhri, who heard the Prophet Muhammad (Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him) saying: ‘The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah(A village in Damascus.) to San’a(Capital city of Yemen.)

  Tirmidhi in “Sunan” (volume IV, chapters on “The Features of Heaven as described by the Messenger of Allah,” Chapter 21: “About the Smallest Reward for the People of Heaven,” hadith 2687).

  Imam Tirmidhi (Rh) has classified this hadith as ” Gharib”.

  ALSO

  Gharib (lit. rare/strange) is an Islamic term used in the science of Hadith.

  Tirmidhi’s understanding of the Gharib Hadith (weak tradition), concurs to a certain extent with that of the other traditionists.

  According to Tirmidhi a Hadith may be classified as Gharib for one of the following three reasons:

  Firstly, a Hadith may be classified as Gharib since it is narrated from one chain only. Tirmidhi mentions as an example a tradition from Hammad b. Salama from Abu ‘Usharai on the authority of his father who enquired from the Prophet (S.A.W.) whether the slaughtering of an animal is confined to the gullet and throat. The Prophet (S.A.W.) replied that stabbing the thigh will also suffice.

  Secondly, a tradition can be classified as Gharib due to an addition in the text, though it will be considered a sound tradition, if that addition is reported by a reliable reporter. The example cited by Tirmidhi is a tradition narrated through the chain of Malik (d. 179 A.H.) from Nafi’ (d. 117 A.H.) on the authority of Ibn ‘Umar (d. 73 A.H.) who stated that the Prophet (S.A.W.) declared alms-giving at the end of Ramadan (month of fasting) obligatory upon every Muslim, male or female, whether a free person or slave from the Muslims. However, this tradition has also been narrated by Ayyub Sakhtiyani and ‘Ubaid Allah b. ‘Umar, without the addition “from the “Muslims”, hence the above mentioned example due to the addition of “from the Muslims” in the text is classified as Gharib.

  Thirdly, a tradition may be declared Gharib since it is narrated through various chains of transmitters but having within one of its chains an addition in the Sanad. According to Tirmidhi, these definitions prove that a Gharib Hadith, does not necessarily mean weak, but it might be Sahih or Hasan, as long as it comes through a single Sanad.[1]

  • junaid

    March 10, 2013 11:57 pm

    Reply

    A careful study of the sources of Islam shows that there is no basis for such action and that these tactics are absolutely out of the question for true followers of Islam. Allah Almightysays in the Holy Quran
    *. And kill not your own selves. Surely Allah is Merciful to you. (Ch. 4.- v. 30)
    *. …and cast not yourselves into ruin with your own hands… (Ch. 2.- v.196)
    *. Islam strictly forbids the killing of innocent, non-aggressive people: no hostility is allowed except against the aggressors. (Ch. 2.- v.194)
    These three verses alone should have been sufficient to prevent Muslims from crashing airplanes into buildings or from sending suicide bombers to blow up innocent civilians. So why do they do it? Unfortunately, the Muslims are encouraged to do these unIslamic acts through the promise that if they do it; then they will be regarded by Allah as being martyrs and will go straight to Heaven. But this is a false promise and such acts will only lead a person to Hell. We seean example of this in the Ahadith.
    Abu Hurairah has narrated that the Holy Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be on him, said:
    “Whoever strangles himself strangles himself into fire, and whoever stabs himself with, a spear stabs himself into fire.” (Bukhari)
    Furthermore, when such acts are committed, innocent people are killed. The Holy Quran teaches us in Chapter 5, Verse 33
    “Whosoever killed a person – unless it be for killing a person or for creating disorder in the land – it shall be as if he had killed all mankind”
    Explaining this verse, Hazrat MirzaGhulam Ahmad , the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community said:
    “A person who kills a person unfairly or who kills someonewho had neither rebelled nor became a source of violating peace amongst the people norcreated disorder in the land, it is as if he has killed the whole of mankind. In other words to kill a person without any cause is, according to God Almighty, like the murder of the entire humanrace. It is obvious from this verse, how big a sinit is to take the life of another person without reason.” (Lecture Chashma-e-Ma’rifat p23-24)
    Therefore whoever commits suicide or any form of terrorism which takes innocent lives is totally against the teachings of Islam

• Saragul

  March 8, 2013 12:26 am

  Reply

  The Myth: Muhammad Promised 72 Female Virgins for Martyrs.

  The Truth: Prophet Muhammad has never made any promise on any kinds of sexual gratifications in the after life, much less on the alleged 72 virgins.

  It seems to be the staple ammunition for attacking Islam. Mention the atrocities and suicide bombings that are being committed by Muslims around the world and you get the same response – they are doing it for the “virgins in heaven”.

  In various Internet forums and conventional media, Muhammad has been accused of luring foot soldiers, past and present, with promise of eternal copulation in the afterlife. In the process Islam has been tainted with a dubiously sexual tint. Islam seems to be the path where sex-hungry young men can end their lives into a promise of endless erotica.

  The simple truth is, there is nothing in the Quran or Hadith that has ever promised this. Every Muslim knows it.

  Muslims have never been cajoled into doing deeds for the religion in promise of posthumous sex. As Muslims, we must never condone suicidal activities that take away the lives of innocents. They are against the teachings of the Prophet. The vilification on the alleged “virgins of paradise” must be dismissed at all costs.

  So how did the issue of the 72 virgins even come about?

  It all started on August 19th, 2001 in CBS studios, USA. This was just a month before the 9/11 attacks.

  The American TV network was broadcasting a program called 60 Minutes. It was featuring a special report on the militant group Hamas and included the translation of an interview between an American journalist and the Hamas functionary Muhammad Abu Wardeh. In the interview, Abu Wardeh was describing how martyrs will be accompanied by the “hur’ain” in heaven.

  At issue in this interview was the correct meaning of the Arabic word “hur’ain”. Translated to English, it means ‘angels’, with no gender connotations whatsoever. But the translators at CBS insisted that it means ‘virgins’. It carried on and broadcasted the translation as such.

  Arabs all over the United States spotted the faulty translation and protested to the TV network. Three experts of the Arabic languages, including Dr. Mather Hathout of the Islamic Centre of Southern California and Hafiz al-Mirazi Osman, the head Al-Jazeera’s Washington made official efforts to correct the translation.

  But CBS still insisted that it means ‘virgins’. The faulty translation was never amended. From then on Islam became known as the sexually perverted religion that promises 72 “virgins” for those who gave up their lives for it.

  The faulty translation took pace after the 9/11 attacks. Websites all over the world, especially those from the USA, began carrying distorted “translations” of verses from the Quran that interpret the word “hur’ain” as “virgins.

  Muslims around the world were potrayed as devotess who were into the religion solely for the promise of sex.
  The damage was done and till today the faulty translation provides a sore point in the true understanding of Islam.

  This myth is still rife today with various forms of distortions and connotations.

• Firdaus

  March 6, 2013 10:30 am

  Reply

  Mr.Imaan,

  You are Beimaan. The above texts are the realities of islamic culture.

  Perhaps you are the product of Mutta marriage and even your mother does not know who is exactly your biological father and she married on contract basis atleast 56 times in her life span.

  Shame on you and prophet the rapist and murderer and great enemy of the mankind.

• Imaan

  March 6, 2013 5:43 am

  Reply

  Copying and pasting lies from Anti Islamic websites and using Muslims names itself shows how Hypocrite and a hater you are. It shows a lot about your credibility. But by lying and deceitful and hateful venomous posts just exposes you………….Love dont hate!!!! hate will only destory you.

• Zainab

  March 5, 2013 5:04 am

  Reply

  TWO REASONS WHY MUSLIM WOMEN VEIL THEMSELVES

  There are 2 reasons why Muslim women cover themselves. The first reason is because when Muhammad conquered Saudi Arabia, Muslim men attacked and raped kafir women which in Islam is a holy act deserving of Paradise. However because there was no way to distinguish Muslim women from kafir women – Muhammad invented the veil so that on the streets Muslim men could distinguish their prey.

  The second reason is that Muhammad who was a woman hater and despised all women both Muslim and kafir was a controlling, jealous, sexual pervert who demanded that Muslim women submit and be the sexual objects of Muslim men – their domestic animals to sexually abuse. The veil is a form of submission and subjugation.

  Muslim men can have unlimited sex slaves and 4 wives. Muhammad could have unlimited sex slaves and unlimited wives.

  When Muhammad the stud and sexual lion of Islam – the man who had the erection of 100 men became impotent and could no longer get a hard on, his jealously and sexual abuse of his wives went through the roof. After his assassination, but before his death, when his commanders started to make eyes at Aisha and his other wives, Muhammad decreed that none of his wives could ever re -marry.

  Volume 1, Book 6, Number 298:

  Narrated ‘Aisha:

  The Prophet and I used to take a bath from a single pot while we were Junub. During the menses, he used to order me to put on an Izar (dress worn below the waist) and used to fondle me. While in Itikaf, he used to bring his head near me and I would wash it while I used to be in my periods (menses).

  Volume 1, Book 6, Number 299:

  Narrated ‘Abdur-Rahman bin Al-Aswad:

  (on the authority of his father) ‘Aisha said: “Whenever Allah’s Apostle wanted to fondle anyone of us during her periods (menses), he used to order her to put on an Izar and start fondling her.” ‘Aisha added, “None of you could control his sexual desires as the Prophet could.”

  Volume 1, Book 6, Number 300:

  Narrated Maimuna:

  When ever Allah’s Apostle wanted to fondle any of his wives during the periods (menses), he used to ask her to wear an Izar.

  Can you imagine sexually abusing your wife during menstruation.

  REASON 1: Raping Kafir Women

  In the pre-Islamic days of Arabia, veil was unknown and the practice originated in Medina, after the Prophet Mohammad took shelter in the city. One should recall that the fundamental teachings of the Quran is to divide the humanity into two groups, momens and kafirs. The Arabic word Islam stands for unconditional surrender, not peace. Who surrender to Allah’s Quran Allah’s apostle Muhammad, are momens and those who refuse to do so belong to the category of kafirs (or nonbelievers). It has been pointed out earlier that, according to the Quran, these kafirs are no better than animals and Allah instructs the believers to wage war or jihad against these kafirs. The doctrine of jihad includes indiscriminate killing of the kafirs, setting their houses on fire, looting their valuables, raping their women and finally to prevail over the kafirs and occupy their land and thus create an empire of Islam.

  When the prophet migrated to Medina in 622 AD, he became the chief administrator, chief of army, chief of judiciary and chief law maker in Medina and according to the self invented doctrine of jihad, started oppressing the original non-Muslim inhabitants of the city. But sometimes it happened that Muslims erroneously fell victims to Muslims, and Muslim women were molested and raped by their own believers (as in the eye of Allah, raping a kafir woman is merit for the rapist Muslim). So, necessary arose to distinguish Muslim men and women so that they could be easily identified from the non-Muslim kafirs. The problem for the male believers was solved by the Prophet by asking them to keep beard and shave moustache. But it became difficult to distinguish the women.

  At such a juncture, Umar, a close associate and son in-law of the Prophet, suggested that Muslim women, when went out door, should wear clothes to cover their modesty. And Allah wasted no time to approve the idea by revealing a verse (surah 33, verse 59) of the Quran, that reads – “O prophet, speak unto thy wives, and thy daughters and the wives of the true believers, that they cast their outer garments over them when they walk abroad; this will be more proper, that they may be known to be matrons of reputation, and may not be affronted by unseemly words or actions. Allah is gracious and merciful” . [ KORAN, Translated into English by George Sale; & Published by Frederick Warne Ltd., London- (only word God has been replaced by Allah)].

  It is not difficult to notice that Allah had no hesitation to tell that the basic need of such a dress code for Muslim women was firstly, to distinguish them from kafir women and secondly, to escape humiliation and molestation by their own people. In no time, Allah revealed other similar verses – “And speak unto the believing women that they restrain their eyes and preserve their modesty and discover not their ornaments, except what necessarily appeareth thereof; and let them throw their veils over their bosoms and not show their ornaments, unless to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers , or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or their captives which right hands shall possess, or unto such men as attend them, and have no need of women, or unto children, who distinguish not the nakedness of women. And let them not make a noise with their feet, that their ornaments which they hide may thereby be discovered” (Quran: 24/31). “And sit still in your house; and set not out yourselves with the ostentation of the former time of ignorance; and observe the appointed times of prayer, and give alms; and obey Allah and his apostle; for Allah desireth only to remove from you the abomination of vanity, since ye are the household of the prophet, and to purify you by a perfect purification” (Quran: 33/33) and “It shall be no crime in them as to their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their woman, or the slaves which their right hands possess, if they speak to them unveiled; and fear Allah; for Allah is witness of all things” (Quran: 33/55). One should not miss the point that the verse (33/33) conclusively proves that a thing like veil was unknown in pre-Islamic Arabia.

  Later on, the prophet started to face another serious problem, problem of protecting his harem of 12 (or more) wives and some concubines, or mainly to protect his youngest wife Ayesha (whom he married at the age of 52, when Ayesha was a child of 6) , from the visitors who used to come frequently to meet their beloved Prophet to sort out various problems. Allah took no time to understand the agony of his beloved prophet and spent no time to reveal verses like- “O wives of the prophet, ye are not as other women; if ye fear Allah, be not too complaisant in speech, lest he should covet, in whose heart is a disease of incontinence; but speak the speech which is convenient.” (Quran- 33/32). One day the Prophet saw that one of his associates, while receiving something from Ayesha, touched her hand. Allah could understand the Prophet’s anguish and without delay, revealed, “….. And when ye ask of the prophet’s wives what ye may have occasion for, ask it of them from behind a curtain. This will be more pure for your hearts and their hearts. Neither is it fit for you to give any uneasiness to the apostle of Allah, or to marry his wives after him for ever; for this would be a grievous thing in the sight of Allah” (Quran-33/53). As mentioned above, Syed Bukhari has mentioned that there are verses in chapters 18 and 22 of the Quran that ask Muslim women to cover themselves from head to foot with black hijabs. But the present author has failed to find such commands of Allah in the verses mentioned by him. It should also not escape one’s notice that, through the verse (33/53), Allah has forbidden remarriage of the widows of the Prophet, to console his heart.

  In this context, it would be relevant to mention an incident from Indian history. When Afzal Khan, a military commander of the Bijapur state, led a military campaign against Raja Shivaji in 1659 AD, he had 63 wives in his harem. Before the campaign, Afzal slaughtered all his 63 wives, as he was afraid that in case of his death, other people would enjoy his widows. There is no doubt that a similar psychology of the Prophet led Allah to reveal the verse (33/53) of the Quran. After Aqsa was murdered by her father, some authors described Muhammad Parvez as an animal. But the incident and many other similar incidents show that they are worse than animals.

  In fact women, in the eye of Islam, are no better than subhuman creatures, or domestic animals, or simply slaves of their men-folk, or rather an instrument for satiation of lust and procreation of children.

  To define status of women, Allah says, “Men shall have the pre-eminence above women, because of those advantages wherein Allah hath caused the one of them to excel the other, and for that which they expend of their substance in maintaining their wives. The honest women are obedient, careful in absence of their husbands, for that Allah preserveth them, by committing them to the care and protection of the men. But those, whose perverseness ye shall be apprehensive of, rebuke; and remove them into separate apartments, and chastise them. But if they shall be obedient unto you, seek not an occasion of quarrel against them; for Allah is high and great” (Quran-4/34). So women should always remain obedient to men as men have pre-eminence over women and this pre-eminence originates from the fact that men spend money for maintaining their wives. And due to this pre-eminence husband has the right to beat their wives up if they seem to be disobedient to the slightest extent and ultimately divorce them by simple oath (Triple Talaq), and kick them out of their houses like domestic animals without paying any alimony. And women should endure all these atrocities without any protest.

  If women receive education and get enlightened, and above all, if they become financially self sufficient, it will not be possible for men to treat them as slaves, and that is the reason they are to be veiled, to be confined indoor and should be kept away from education. And that is the reason the mullahs and moulabhies are furiously against discarding veil and imparting any kind of education to them. In this context one should recall what Talibans,when they ruled Afghanistan, had prevented women from receiving education and still are doing so in that country. As soon as they could gain control over the country, they closed all schools and colleges for women and made wearing veil compulsory when they went outdoor. And it has been mentioned above that the women who violated their order were executed in public places by shooting on the head from point blank range. At that time, many women who had lost their husbands due to continuous warfare, were earning there living by doing odd jobs. But Talibans pushed them towards starvation by forcing them to remain indoor and forbidding them from doing outdoor jobs.

  REASON 2: THE IMPOTENCY OF MUHAMMAD

  By Ali Sina

  This leads to another twist to the story of Muhammad’s sexual prowess, and it also implies that Muhammad was impotent. Muhammad’s nine surviving wives were quite young. Aiyisha, who he defrocked when she was nine and he was 54, was only eighteen when Muhammad died. The only wife who was not in her teens or twenties, was Sauda who was in her thirties when Muhammad died. Obviously, all of these women were still attractive and were still of child-bearing age. So was it an act of cruelty or an attempt to cover up his impotency when Muhammad’s wives forbidden to remarry after his death?

  The Quran was quite explicit: “The Prophet has a greater claim on the faithful than they have on each other. His wives are their mothers.” (Surah 33:6) Simply put, marrying a widow of Muhammad would be incest. This is reinforced in verse 53, which says, “You must not speak ill of God’s apostle, nor shall you ever wed his wives after him; this would be a grave offence in the sight of God.” A more logical motive for this decree is that if the surviving widows began to have babies with their new husbands, it would be proof positive that Muhammad was indeed impotent. So these young women were condemned to spinsterhood for the rest of their lives.

  In the later years of his life Muhammad was affected by acromegaly, a disease caused by excessive production of a growth hormone, resulting in large bones, cold and fleshy hands and feet and coarse facial features such as enlarged lips, nose and tongue.
  Acromegaly occurs after the age of 40 and usually kills the patient in his early 60s. It causes impotence, while it increases libido. This explains Muhammad’s sexual vagaries in his old age and why in the later years of his life he had such an insatiable craving for sex. He would visit all his 9 wives in one night to touch and fondle them, without being satisfied. His impotence explains his insecurity, paranoia, and intense jealousy of his young wives. He ordered them to cover themselves, lest other men would cast a lusting eye on them. Today, half a billion Muslim women veil themselves, because Muhammad
  was impotent. Muhammad’s illnesses explain a lot of mysteries of Islam.

  MUSLIM WOMEN: THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS OF ISLAM

  Muhammad and his wives

  When Islam is the subject, the topic „Women in Islam“ is also frequently discussed. This is not merely the result of controversial books on Islam (like Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses) or of the problems associated with a “parallel society”, or of the visible external differences between Muslim and non-Muslim women.

  The reports from human rights organizations on the situation of women in Islamic countries and the autobiographical accounts of Muslim women also fuel the debate about the acculturation of Muslim women in Western culture, under the rubric of “Women’s Rights in Islam“, for example.

  Women played a fundamental role in he life of the Prophet Muhammad and his since his early childhood. The sources say that, as a newborn baby, he was nursed and cared for by the slave woman Zu’aiba and then by the nurse Halima. Afterwards, he was taken over by his mother Amina who, however, died when he was six years old.

  At the age of about 25 (ca. 595 A.D.), he married the wealthy, nearly 40 year-old Khadidja, through whom he acquired affluence and esteem in his tribe.

  Up to Khadidja’s death (ca. 619 A.D.), he entered into no other union. After her death, he married a number of other women. Muhammad dealt frequently with the affairs of the female sex. In the Koran and the tradition, numerous instructions for women are to be found.

  Islam and Polygamy

  While the Bible, at the very beginning, explains that the marriage relationship is limited to one man and one woman, Islam considers polygamy to be legal. The Bible declares the marriage bond to be a holy, eternal, and exclusive relationship:

  “For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they (only these two) shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24, see also Matthew 19:5) – even if, in biblical times, this commandment was violated.

  On the other hand, the Koran continues pre-Islamic polygamy and justifies it as legal. Polygamy is, though, a right belonging only to men.

  In pre-Islamic times, women, too, according to reports from the tradition, could live in different polygamous forms of marriage:

  A woman could have sexual relations with a series of men one after the other.

  In the case that she became pregnant, the man who, after the birth, resembled the child most closely was considered to be the father. He had to accept this decision in any case (Arabic: nikah al-baghaya).

  The man could send his wife, after the end of her period, to another man with whom she desired to conceive a child.

  If she became pregnant, her husband could resume sexual relations with her (Arabic: nikah al-istibda’).

  A group of fewer than ten men could have intercourse with one woman.

  In the case that the woman became pregnant, she chose one of the men as the father of her child. The man was required to accept this decision (Arabic: nikah al djam’). 1

  Islam did not permit these pre-Islamic forms of marriage, but retained, in the majority opinion, polygamy for men. The number of wives is limited in the Koran to four; the number of female slaves as additional concubines is, however, not limited:

  “So marry women as it befits you, two, three, or four; and if you fear that you are not just to all of them, then (marry) one or whatever is in your legal possession (female slaves)” (surah 4:3).

  While the pre-Islamic form of polygamy also permitted women to have several husbands, this could have led only to a limited increase in the Bedouin population, since a woman normally can give birth only once a year regardless of the number of her husbands. Islamic sources report that the limitation of polygamy to the man served the purpose of bringing about a swift increase in the number of followers of, and warriors for, Muhammad.

  Muslim tradition describes it as follows:

  “A man approached Muhammad and asked him: ‘There is a lovely noble woman, but she suffers from infertility. Shall I get married to her?’ Allah’s prophet answered: ‘No!’ The man asked the same question again. Allah’s prophet answered: ‘No!’. The man asked the same question the third time. Allah’s prophet answered: ‘No! Get married to a lovely fertile woman. I want you to increase in numbers’“2

  In the Koran, too, it is stated:

  “Property and sons are the ornament of life in this world” (18:46).

  New Regulations for Women in the Islamic Period Among several Bedouin tribes on the Arabian Peninsula that were neither Jewish nor Christian, it was possible, too, to marry one’s own mother or daughter.3

  It was also permitted to marry two sisters at the same time.4

  The Koran reports that the pre-Islamic Arabs, out of fear of impoverishment, buried newborn girls alive.

  These practices, which already long before had been forbidden in the Bible (Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 5:17), were forbidden in Islam also, nearly 600 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

  New rules for the behavior of women, and altered legal regulations, were issued:

  The inheritance received by a women was reduced to half that received by a man:

  “Allah prescribes with regard to your children: To one of masculine sex falls (in the division of an estate) just as much as to two of the feminine sex” (4:11).

  In the pre-Islamic period, the woman inherited nothing at all.

  The testimony of a woman was fixed as half of that of a man:

  “And let two witnesses among your men testify to it. And if it cannot be two men, then it should be a man and two women, such ones as are agreeable to you – (two women) so that (in the case) that one of them errs, the one (the one who does not err) may remind the other (the one who errs) of the true state of affairs” (2:282).

  According to the majority of Muslim theologians the husband has the right, in the case of disobedience, to beat his wife and to lock her up at home:

  “The men take precedence over the women in responsibility, because Allah has honored the one more the others and because they give (their wives) from their property. Thus, virtuous women are those who obey and those who, with Allah’s help, keep the secrets (of their husbands). And those, whose rebelliousness (arrogance and indifference) you fear: admonish them, avoid them in the marriage bed, and beat them!” (4:34).

  And:

  “And if some of your women do something despicable, then summon four of yourselves as witnesses against them; if they give testimony to this, then shut them up in the houses until death overtakes them or Allah gives them an escape” (4:15).

  Many theologians, to be sure, hold the opinion that the man may not cause any physical injury to his wife through his punishment of her, but the fact that a man has the right to punish his wife in the case of her “rebelliousness” is hardly questioned publicly.

  In the case of genuine maltreatment, many Islamic countries allow the woman recourse to the courts, but, on the one hand, she must provide unassailable proof and, on the other hand, divorce for many women does not represent a feasible alternative, because, for example, she must fear the shame connected with it or because she remains destitute after the divorce, loses her children, or does not know her rights.

  Women are characterized in the Koran as “pleasure” or “desire” for men:

  “The joy in their desire for women and children is given to men as a pleasure …”
  (3:14).

  The Koran, as does the Islamic tradition, emphasizes the man’s right to sexual intercourse at any time:

  “Your women are a fertile field for you; there-fore, cultivate your field, whenever you wish” (2:223).

  The word “where” in this verse is rendered in many Koran translations as “when”. The Arabic word in the original Koran text is “anna”.

  It can mean both“ where“ and “when”. The interpreters are agreed that a woman is obliged to be sexually obedient to her husband whenever he wishes it (excepted are the period of menstruation, the lying-in period, the days of the fasting month, and the pilgrimage). Other interpreters are of the opinion that all types of intercourse thereby are allowed to the man.

  A woman who is repudiated irrevocably by her husband – that is, with the prescribed phrase repeated three times –

  is permitted to remarry him only after she has married another man, consummated the marriage with him, and again has been repudiated by him:

  “And when he (the husband) releases her (the wife), then she is no longer allowed to him as long as she has not married another man”
  (2:230).

  This koranic regulation has led in many Islamic countries to the practice that many men, in exchange for money, marry a woman in a purely formal manner and then immediately obtain a divorce so that the woman is permitted to remarry her previous husband. This marriage is called colloquially “tadjhish”, the marriage with a “djahsh”: an “ass” or “donkey”.

  Islam forbids any sort of formal marriage and considers consummation with the husband to be a decisive condition for the provisional marriage. 5

  Islam had a complex relationship to slavery. Although Muslims were not to be enslaved, it was especially Muslim merchants who operated the slave trade and slaves were considered to be commercial property.

  At the same time, the Koran instructs Muslims to ransom male and female slaves who, however, had to be converts to Islam:

  “Then he should pay blood money to his heirs and free a believing (Muslim) slave” (4:92). 6

  Muslims were permitted to marry married women when they came into their possession as spoils of war, even if the husbands of these women were still alive:

  “And the respectable women (are forbidden to you) except for those (wives as slaves) that you possess. (This is) prescribed to you by Allah” (4:24).

  This regulation is also confirmed in Muslim tradition. 7

  Muhammad – a Conditional Model for Muslims

  The Koran instructs Muslims to consider Muhammad as a model. Indeed, it instructs Muslims to emulate his example:

  “Verily, you (Muslims) have in the messenger of Allah (Muhammad) a beautiful model for every one who hopes in Allah and the Last Day and who thinks often of Allah” (33:21).

  Thus, the deeds, teachings, and the biography of Muhammad is accounted as the “sunna” (the practice to be emulated), and his legal instructions are just as binding as those of the Koran.

  Muhammad’s example, however, cannot always be emulated by Muslims because the Koran grants to Muhammad several special rights and exceptions that are allowed to no other Muslim, or are even forbidden to other Muslims.

  In the area of marriage, Muhammad enjoyed the following special rights and exceptions:

  The Koran forbids Muslims to have more than four wives (4:3); the Prophet, however, was allowed an unlimited number of wives:

  Oh, Prophet, we allow you your wives, those to whom you have given your dowry and those who you possess by rights from (the number of) those who Allah has given you as spoils of war, and the daughters of your father’s brother and the daughters of your father’s sister and the daughters of your mother’s brother and the daughters of your mother’s sister, who emigrated with you and every single believing woman who gives herself as a gift to the Prophet, provided that the Prophet desires to marry her; (this applies) only to you and not to the believers” (31:50).

  The Koran forbids Muslims to covet other women:

  “Speak to the believing men that they should cast their eyes toward the earth and preserve their chastity. This is purer for them” (24:30).

  This is also one of the biblical Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Deuteronomy 5:21). Jesus confirmed this rule: “But I say to you, that every one who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:28-29).

  The Koran reports, however, that Muhammad felt a great desire for the beautiful, but married, Zainab, the wife of Muhammad’s adopted son Zaid 8 :

  “And there you (Muhammad) said to him, to whom Allah had shown grace and to whom you had shown grace: ‘Keep your wife (Zainab) for yourself and fear Allah.’ And you (Muhammad) concealed that (desire for Zainab), which you bore in yourself, that which Allah wanted to reveal, and you feared human beings, while Allah is the one who, in reality, you ought to fear” (33:37).

  Muhammad, thus, had not expressed openly his desire to take Zainab as his wife, for which he was rebuked by Allah (but not because of his lust for Zainab). When Zaid learned of Muhammad’s wish, he obtained a divorce from Zainab, and Muhammad married her.

  According to Arabic law (and also according to Islamic opinion), this actually was forbidden, for marriage with a daughter-in-law is considered as the same as marriage with one’s own daughter (33:38 and 33:50-51).

  The Koran forbids Muslims to marry wives without a marriage contract; excepted are common-law relationships (70:30).

  On the other hand, the Koran al-lows Muhammad to have wives without even a marriage contract:

  “Prophet! We have allowed you for marriage: your spouses … and every believing woman when she gives herself as a gift to the Prophet (Muhammad) and he desires to marry her. This applies especially for you in contrast to the (other) Believers”
  (33:50).

  Following this Koran verse, the Koran interpreter al-Qurtubi, with reference to the famous al-Zamahshari, lists the names of women with whom Muhammad had sexual relations without concluding a marriage contract: Maimuna, the daughter of al-Harith; Zainab, the daughter of Khuzaima Ibn al-Harith; Umm Sharik al Azdiy’a, the daughter of Djaber Ibn Hakim 9, and Khaula, the daughter of Hakim Ibn Umay’ia 10

  In his interpretation of Sure 33:50, Ibn Kathir makes the following statements:

  “When a woman would like to unite with a Muslim man, then he is permitted to have intercourse with her only after he has presented her with something (herewith, the dowry is meant). Only Allah’s Prophet (Muhammad) was permitted to have intercourse with women without a dowry, surrogate, and witnesses”

  (the presence of a surrogate 11 and two witnesses are absolutely necessary for the conclusion of a marriage contract). Tradition considers marriage without dowry or surrogate as adultery.12

  Several traditions name women with whom Muhammad had intercourse in this informal manner. It is reported about ‘Aisha, as Muhammad’s “favorite wife” the most important wife of Muhammad for Sunni Muslims, that she did not agree with these informal marriages and that she complained about Muhammad’s relationship with women such as Khaula, the daughter of Hakim Bin Umay’ia, with the words:

  “‘Is the woman not ashamed to give herself to a man!’ When the Koran verse was revealed: You (Muhammad) may release those from them (the women) that you wish (to release), and you may keep those that you wish (to keep); and if you want to receive again one who you have released, then the reproach does not concern you (3:51), I (‘Aisha) said: ‘Oh, Allah’s Prophet! Your god amazes me. His instructions always correspond to your wishes.’”13

  Islam allows widows to marry; several of Muhammad’s wives also were widows as, for example, his first wife Khadidja.

  On the other hand, Muhammad’s widows were not permitted to marry after his death:

  “And it does not befit you (Muslims) to trouble Allah’s messenger, nor (does it befit you) ever to marry his wives after him” (33:53).

  The tradition justifies this prohibition by proclaiming that his earthly wives will be in Muhammad’s possession among his wives in Paradise. Whether this applies also to Muhammad’s wives that he released (divorced) or married merely formally without consummating the marriage with them, is a controversial judgment among Muslim theologians.

  The tradition mentions that additional noble women were promised only to Muhammad in Paradise as a reward. Among these are, for example, Asi’a, the wife of the Egyptian Pharoah; Kulthum, the sister of Moses, and Mary, the biological mother of Jesus Christ. 14

  Muhammad’s wives are instructed to speak with men not related to them only from behind a “curtain”, or with a veiled body – face and hands included:

  “And if you (Muslims) have anything to ask of them (Muhammad’s wives), then ask them behind a curtain (without being able to see them or their face)” (33:53).

  Since this instruction to veil the entire body, including the face and hands – so was it overwhelmingly understood – was formulated as a demand, a general obligation for all Muslim women to veil themselves was derived from this later by many Muslim theologians. 15

  Justice in Relations with Muhammad’s Wives

  The koranic permission to engage in polygamy is given under the condition that several wives are treated “justly”. Justice is the decisive condition for the validity of these polygamous marriages:

  “and if you fear that you are not just to all of them, then (marry) one or whatever is in your legal possession” (4:3).

  The Koran, thus, admonishes justice, but, at the same time, observes that no man is able to be just:

  “And you cannot practice justice between your wives, however much you may wish to do so. But do not incline yourselves completely (to one) so that you leave the others hanging in the air, as it were. And when you make amends and fear God, then Allah is the All forgiving and Compassionate”
  (4:129).

  Islamic tradition declares that Muhammad treated his wives absolutely justly. Several reporters of the tradition remark that Muhammad had regular sexual relations with all his wives. The most important collection of tradition, Sahih al-Bukhari, reports: “The Prophet of Allah could have sexual relations with all of his wives – eleven wives – within an hour, by night or by day … he had the virility of 30 men”. 16

  At the same time, many passages speak of the fact that ‘Aisha clearly was preferred before the other wives:

  She is said to have been Muhammad’s “favorite wife”. 17

  The Archangel Gabriel is said to have visited him only in her presence, 18 for the purpose of delivering a revelation to him.

  She received the day and night with Muhammad “entitled” to Sauda Bint Sam’a. 19

  Muhammad is said to have spent twice as many nights with ‘Aisha as with his other wives. 20

  When he fell ill, he wanted to convalesce in her tent. 21

  According to tradition, he died in her tent, in her lap. 22

  The Number of Muhammad’s Wives

  Muslim theologians are not agreed about the number of Muhammad’s wives. In the trust-worthiest Islamic sources, one comes across contradictory figures that even, at times, differ in the work of one and the same author. So, for example, al Bukhari, considered by Sunni Muslims as the trust-worthiest collector of Muhammad’s sayings, gives the number of Muhammad’s wives in one place as nine, 23 and in another as eleven. 24

  Al-Qurtubi is considered by many Islamic groupings to be one of the most competent interpreters of the Koran.

  In his interpretation of Sure 33:28, he divides Muhammad’s wives into four groups:

  1. Women who Muhammad married and with whom he had sexual relations:

  • Khadidja, daughter of Khuwalid ibn Asad

  • Sauda, daughter of Zama’a
  • ‘Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr
  • Hafsa, daughter of ‘Umar
  • Umm Salma (Hind), daughter of Abi ‘Umaya
  • Umm Habiba (Ramla), daughter of Abu Safyan
  • Zainab, daughter of Dshahsh Bin R’ab
  • Zainab, daughter of Khuzaima Bin al-Harith
  • Dshuwairiya, daughter of Harith Nin Abi Dirar
  • Safiya, daughter of Huiai bin Akhtab
  • Rehana, daughter of Zaid Bin ‘Amr Bin Khunaka
  • Maimuna, daughter of al-Harith

  2. Women, to whom Muhammad was engaged, but with whom he did not marry or have intercourse:

  • Fakhita (Umm Hane’), daughter of Ali Talib
  • Daba’a, daughter of Amer
  • Safiya, daughter of Bashama Bin Nadla
  • Khaula, daughter of Hakim Bin Umay’ia
  • Djamra, daughter of al-Harith Bin ‘Auf al-Marri
  • Sauda al-Kurshiya
  • a women whose name is unknown

  3. Women with whom Muhammad concluded a marriage contract without having had intercourse with them:

  • Al-Kilabiya, daughter of al-Dah’ak
  • Asma’, daughter of al-Ni’man Bin al-Djon
  • Katila, daughter of Kais
  • Umm Sharik al-Azdiy’a, daughter of Djaber Bin Hakim
  • Khaula, daughter of al-Hasil Bin Habira
  • Sharaaf, daughter of Khalifa
  • Laila, daughter of al-Khatim
  • ‘Amra, daughter of Ma’awia
  • Al-Djanda’yia, daughter of Djandab Bin Damra
  • Al-Ghafar’yia

  4. Concubines:

  • Maria, the Coptic woman
  • Rihana
  • a beautiful woman who was taken as booty during a conquest
  • a woman who was given to Muhammad as a gift by Zainab, daughter of Dshahsh

  The Most Famous Wives of Muhammad

  Several of Muhammad’s wives stand out prominently in the tradition:

  Khadidja, daughter of Khuwailid: Muhammad married her at the age of twenty-five, when she was nearly forty years old and had become a widow twice.

  She was a wealthy woman and Muhammad became a merchant in her employ. As long as the two were married, Muhammad married no other additional women.

  – ‘Aisha

  He consummated the marriage with her when she had become nine years old, he was about fifty-four. 25

  ‘Aisha reported some incidents concerning her marriage with Muhammad: She was playing with a swing when her mother came to take her.

  ‘Aisha did not know what would happen, when her mother and some other women were washing her face and her hair and brought her to Muhammad. She took her toys with her when she came to Muhammad. 26

  When Muhammad had consummated the marriage with her she was still playing with her toys. 27

  Several traditions originate with ‘Aisha. After Muhammad’s death, ‘Aisha took part in a war against Ali b. Abi Talib, Muhammad’s biological cousin and son-in-law. Ali has great significance especially for Shiites, for he is the caliph who was most closely related to Muhammad. Muhammad is said to have promised him a place in Paradise. 28

  Safiya, the daughter of Huiai bin Akhtab, was a lovely Jewish woman of noble origin from the tribe of the Khaibar. Muhammad’s warriors killed many men from her tribe, including her fiancé.29

  Muhammad is said to have married her and spent his first night with her on the very day of the battle. At the time of the marriage, he was about sixty years old and she was seventeen.

• Zarina

  March 4, 2013 7:33 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters,

  Introduction

  What if a man you knew began telling people that God was routinely speaking to him and only him – and that the “revelations” he claimed to be receiving were mostly about him and his relative importance to all other people? Say, for example, that this self-proclaimed prophet insisted that God had declared him to be the ‘perfect example’ for mankind and that others were therefore to accord him with special privilege, unwavering obedience, wealth and earthly desires, including all of the slaves and women that his lust could handle.

  Such figures still arise from time to time. Some of the more dynamic manage to develop a small group of followers so taken with their leader’s self assurance that they willingly offer their own children to him for “marriage” or even kill on his behalf if requested.

  Would it really validate the message of any such cult leader if his followers did successfully kill and seize the property of anyone who dared disagree? What if they gradually expanded their power and numbers in such fashion that eventually they were enough to be recognized as a major world religion? Would that make the cult leader’s claims about himself true? Would it really change the fact that what they believe ultimately sprang from the imagination of a narcissist?

  In 610, an Arab salesman with a commanding personality attracted a small cult of credulous fanatics by claiming to be a prophet. Though his “revelations” were self-referential and occasionally contradicting, he was successful in manipulating his followers with promises of heavenly reward and threat of divine wrath. The god heard only by him told them to lie and steal for him, to give their children to him for sexual pleasure and, eventually, to gruesomely murder his detractors.

  There are two ways to approach a study of Muhammad. One is with reverence and the other is with skepticism. Thinking persons choose they latter. They are not influenced by the number of Muslim believers in the world today or by their force of belief because these are meaningless for determining truth. They care only about fact.

  The facts presented here about the life of Muhammad and the origins of Islam are fully supported by the works of early Muslim biographers upon which all later historians rely.

  Origins

  To understand Islam, you must understand the harsh circumstances into which the religion was born. The Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad (b.570 AD) was a barren and desolate region with scorching sun and oppressive heat by day, and chilling cold at night. There was little vegetative growth, and the nomadic inhabitants lived between jagged rocks and shifting sand dunes.

  While Europe and much of the Middle East was transitioning from the Roman to the Byzantine Empire, with roads, irrigation canals, aqueducts, and a culture that included philosophical discourse and theater, the Arabians lived short and brutal lives in warring tribes with little to offer the rest of the world beyond their own harsh existence.

  This partly explains Islam’s inherent hostility to music and art, which some extremists, such as the Taliban, take quite literally. Islam does not encourage the pursuit of knowledge outside of itself. It is, as Oriana Fallaci puts it, it is “the religion which has produced nothing but religion.”

  The inhospitable climate protected the peninsula from conquest and cultural influence. No foreign army felt that sheep and goats were worth taking from the desert fighters, so the area was relatively isolated, with the exception of certain trading routes. The renaissance of knowledge that the rest of the world had been experiencing since the Greek revival was largely missed out on by the Arabs, whose entire energies were devoted to daily survival against the ruthless environment and other tribes.

  For these people, morality was dictated merely by necessity, and obligations did not extend beyond one’s tribe. This is a critical basis for the development of the Islamic attitude toward those outside the faith, including the moral principle that the ethics of any act are determined only by whether or not it benefits Muslims.

  There were pagan religious traditions in Arabia, particularly among those based in the trading centers such as Muhammad’s birthplace of Mecca. Some of these towns had Kaabas – cube-like structures that would attract pilgrims during holy months. The Kaaba at Mecca housed various idols, including the black meteorite that remains to this day.

  In addition to the black rock, Muhammad’s Quraish tribe worshipped a moon god called Allah. Other gods were recognized as well. In fact, the town of Mecca was renowned for religious tolerance, where people of all faiths could come and pray at the Kaaba. (This would later change once Muhammad gained the power to establish his authority by force).

  Islam was created both from these crude pagan practices and from the basic theological elements of Christianity and Judaism as Muhammad [often erroneously] understood them (his inaccurate interpretation of Christianity, for example, is often attributed to an early experience with fringe cults in the Palestinian region, then known as Syria).

  Early Life at Mecca

  Muhammad was born around 570 AD to a widowed mother who died just six years later. He grew up poor and orphaned on the margins of society, which was controlled by tribal chiefs and trading merchants. He worked for his uncle, Abu Talib, as a camel herder. Although his uncle had some standing in the community, Muhammad himself did not rise above his lowly station until he was 25, when he met and married a wealthy widow, Khadija, who was 15 years older.

  His wife’s trading business not only nurtured Muhammad’s natural talents of persuasion, but it also gave the successful salesman an opportunity to travel and acquire knowledge that was not as accessible to the local population. He would later use this to his advantage by incorporating the stories that he had come across into his “revelations” from Allah, particularly the tales from the earlier religions, Judaism and Christianity.

  Having attained a comfortable lifestyle and the idle time that wealth affords, Muhammad would wander off occasionally for periods of meditation and contemplation. It is quite likely that he was experiencing the symptoms of a midlife crisis, including a desire for personal accomplishment and meaning.

  One day, at the age of 40, he told his wife that he had been visited by the angel Gabriel in a dream. Thus began a series of “revelations” which lasted almost until his death 23 years later. The Qur’an is a collection of words that Muhammad attributed to Allah. The Hadith is a collection of narrations of the life and deeds of Muhammad. The Sira is his recorded biography. The Sunnah is said to be Muhammad’s way of life, on which Islamic law (Sharia) is based.

  With his wife’s influence and support, Muhammad proclaimed himself a prophet in same “lineage” as that of Abraham and Jesus, and began trying to convert those around him to his new religion. He narrated the Quran to those who believed him, telling them that it was the word of Allah (heard only by himself, of course).

  Muhammad’s Quran did not contain a single original moral value and it contributed only one new idea to world religion – that Muhammad is Allah’s prophet. In fact, Muhammad’s “Allah” seemed oddly preoccupied with making sure Muslims knew to obey Muhammad’s every earthly wish, as this mandate is repeated at least twenty times in the narration of the Quran.

  In the beginning, Muhammad did his best to compromise his teachings with the predominant beliefs of the community’s elders, such as combining all 300 of their idols under the name “Allah.” His amalgamation of Judeo-Christian theology and pagan tradition grew more sophisticated over time. He also used his “revelations from Allah” to repeatedly affirm his own position. Even if he did not remember the Biblical stories correctly, for example, each one was conspicuously modified to incorporate a common theme: “Believe in the Messenger (Muhammad) or suffer the consequences.”

  Preaching and Persecution at Mecca

  According to early Muslim historians, the Meccans did not mind Muhammad practicing his religion, nor did they feel threatened by his promotion of it. This changed only after the self-proclaimed prophet began attacking their religion, including the customs and ancestors of the people (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 167). This was enough to stir up the resentment of the influential leaders of Mecca, who then mocked his humble background against his pretentious claims. (See also MYTH: Muhammad was Persecuted for Preaching Islam)

  Still, Mecca at the time was a remarkably tolerant society. Muhammad was allowed to attack the local customs for thirteen years, even though the town’s economy depended on the annual pilgrimage attended by visiting pagans, whose religion he actively disparaged.

  At first, Muhammad was only successful with friends and family. After thirteen years, “the street preacher” could boast of only about a hundred determined followers, who called themselves Muslims. Outside of his wife, his first convert was his young cousin Ali (who would later become his son-in-law and the fourth caliph of Islam). Another early convert was Abu Bakr, a wealthy merchant whose money and credulous acceptance of Muhammad can be credited with the survival of the fledgling cult. (Muhammad would later “marry” Abu Bakr’s 9-year-old daughter).

  Relations with the Meccans turned particularly sour after an episode known as “the Satanic Verses” in which Muhammad agreed to recognize the local gods in addition to Allah. This delighted the Meccans, who generously extended their welcome. But Muhammad soon changed his mind after his own people began to lose faith in him. He claimed that Satan had spoken through him, and he rescinded recognition of the Meccan gods (Tabari 1192, Quran 22:52 & 53:19-26).

  The locals intensified their mockery of Muslims and made life particularly difficult for some of them. Although Muslims today often use the word “persecution” to describe this ordeal (justifiably, in some cases), it is important to note that the earliest and most reliable biographers (Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari) record the death of only one Muslim during this period, an older woman who died from stress.

  This fact is a source of embarrassment to modern apologists, who do not like admitting that Muslims were the first to become violent at Mecca (see MYTH: The Meccans Drew First Blood against Muhammad) and that Muhammad was the first to resort to militancy… and at a later time, when it was entirely unnecessary.

  To deal with this unpleasant truth, sympathetic narratives of the early Meccan years usually exaggerate the struggle of the Muslims with claims that they were “under constant torture.” They may also include apocryphal accounts that are unsupported by earliest and most reliable historians (see MYTH: Persecution of Muslims at Mecca – Many Deaths).

  Modern storytellers and filmmakers (such as those behind 1976’s The Message) have even been known to invent fictional victims of Meccan murder, either to dramatize their own tale or to provide justification for the “revenge killings” that followed. But, in fact, the only Muslim whose life was truly in danger was that of Muhammad – after 13 years of being allowed to mock the local religion. (See also MYTH: Muhammad was Tortured at Mecca).

  The Hijra – Flight from Mecca to Medina

  The death of his uncle, Abu Talib, in 619 left Muhammad without a protector against the Meccan leadership, which was gradually losing patience with him. The true agitator in this situation, however, is quite clearly Muhammad himself, as even Muslim historians note. Consider this account of what happened at Abu Talib’s deathbed, as the Meccans implored him a final time for peace with his nephew:

  [Muhammad’s chief adversary] Abu Sufyan, with other sundry notables, went to Abu Talib and said: “You know the trouble that exists between us and your nephew, so call him and let us make an agreement that he will leave us alone and we will leave him alone; let him have his religion and we will have ours.” (Ibn Ishaq 278)

  Muhammad rejected the offer of peaceful co-existence. His new religion was obviously intended to dominate the others, not be on equal standing with them. Meanwhile, the Muslims were beginning to become violent with the people around them.

  Muhammad’s search for political alliance led him to make a treaty of war against the Meccans with the people of Medina, another Arab town far to the north (Ibn Ishaq 299-301). This was the last straw for the Meccans, who finally decided to capture Muhammad and put him to death. (see also MYTH: Muhammad and his Muslims Fled Mecca because of Persecution)

  Although this sounds harsh against Western standards, it is important to note the contrast between the Meccan reaction and that of Muhammad when he had the opportunity to deal with perceived treachery in Medina at a later date on the part of those who hadn’t even harmed anyone.

  The Meccans limited their deadly aggression to Muhammad himself. This is quite clear from the episode in which Muhammad escapes his home by using his son-in-law, Ali, to trick his would-be assassins into thinking that they had him trapped (Ibn Ishaq 326). No harm was done to Ali or his wife, both of whom subsequently remained in the city for several days to complete the transfer of Muhammad’s family business to Medina.

  Compare this to the episode of the Banu Qurayza (below), in which Muhammad slaughtered an entire tribe of people based on their leader having switched loyalties in a conflict in which none of them even participated.

  The year that Muhammad fled Mecca for Medina was 622, which marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.

  Medina and the Origin of Jihad

  Stinging from the rejection of his own town and tribe, Muhammad’s message quickly become more intolerant and ruthless – particularly as he gained power. Islam’s holiest book clearly reflects this contrast, with the later parts of the Quran adding violence and earthly defeats at the hands of Muslims to the woes of eternal damnation that the earlier parts of the book promises those who will not believe in Muhammad.

  It was at Medina that Islam evolved from a relatively peaceful religion borrowed from others and into a military force that was intended to govern all aspects of society. During these last ten years of Muhammad’s life, infidels were evicted or enslaved, converted upon point of death and even rounded up and slaughtered depending on expediency.

  To fund his quest for control, Muhammad first directed his followers to raid Meccan caravans in the holy months, when the victims would least expect it. This was despite the fact that the Meccans were not bothering him in Medina (see MYTH: Muhammad and his Muslims were Persecuted by the Meccans at Medina).

  Muhammad provided his people with convenient revelations “from Allah” which allowed them to murder innocent drivers and steal their property (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 426). The people around him gradually developed a lust for things that could be taken in battle, including material comforts and captured women and children. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Raided Caravans to Retrieve Stolen Property).

  Often the people captured in battle would be brought before the self-proclaimed prophet, where they would plead for their lives, arguing, for example, that they would never have treated the Muslims that way. The traditions are quite clear in portraying Muhammad as largely unmoved by their pleas, and ordering their deaths anyway, often by horrible means. In one case, he orders a man slain, telling him that “Hell” will take care of the poor fellow’s orphaned daughter (Ishaq 459). (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Captives)

  The raids on caravans preceded the first major battle involving a Muslim army, the Battle of Badr. This was the spot where the Meccans had sent their own army to protect their caravans from Muslim raiders. Although, Muslims today like to claim that they only attack others in self-defense, this was clearly not the case in Muhammad’s time. In fact, he had to compel his reluctant warriors with promises of paradise and assurances that their religion was more important than the lives of others. (See also MYTH: The Battle of Badr was Defensive).

  The Consolidation of Power

  Muhammad defeated the Meccan army at Badr, which emboldened him to begin dividing and conquering the three local Jewish tribes at Medina. Their mistake was to accept the Muslim presence, but reject Muhammad’s claim that he was in the line of Jewish prophets. His stories from the Torah simply did not agree with their own. (Muhammad’s recited version of Bible stories sounds more like fragmented fairy tales with the same moral – believe in his personal claim to be a prophet or else).

  How these three tribes, the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nadir, and the Banu Quyrayza met their fate is insightful into the Muslim mindset, which employs an inherent double standard in its relations with those outside the faith.

  First, to try and gain their favor, Muhammad briefly preached that Christians and Jews could attain salvation through their own faith. In fact, he changed his followers’ direction for prayer from Mecca to Jerusalem, which prompted the Jews’ tolerance of him while he worked surreptitiously for the power to evict them. These earlier concessions and teachings were later revoked by Muhammad, since the Jews ultimately refused his religion. The rare early verses of tolerance in the Quran are abrogated by later verses such as 9:29.

  The Jews’ knowledge of the Torah naturally threatened the Muslim leader’s credibility, since it easily refuted the claims that he made about himself as a prophet of God. They also saw through the Biblical narrations that he had picked up from secondhand sources and knew that these contradicted established revelation. Conveniently, Allah stepped in to tell Muhammad that the Jews had deliberately corrupted their own texts to hide the very evidence of his own prophethood that he had previously insisted existed. (To this day, Muslims have never been able to produce a copy of the “true” Torah or Gospel to which their own Quran refers).

  While the Jews remained unconvinced by such obvious gimmickry, Arab polytheists converted to Islam in large numbers, which soon gave Muhammad the power to make his intentions clear that Islam would be imposed by force:

  While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, “Let us go to the Jews” We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, “If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle.” Bukhari 53:392

  The Jews of Mecca were the first in a very long line of unfortunate people to be offered the opportunity to convert to Islam under obvious duress. Forcible conversion is very much a Muslim tradition started by Muhammad (see MYTH: Muhammad Rejected Conversions to Islam made under Duress)

  Since they chose to hold on to their religion (and their property) Muhammad looked for reasons to go to war against the Jews at Medina. According to some Muslims, the first tribe, the Qaynuqa, were driven from their homes and land on the pretext that one of their own had harassed a Muslim woman. Although the offender was killed prior to this by a Muslim, the Muslim was also killed by Jews in retaliation for the first murder.

  After laying siege to the entire community and defeating the tribe, Muhammad wanted to put every male member to death, but was talked out of it by an associate – something that Allah later “rebuked” him for. The Qaynuqa were forced into exile and the Muslims took their possessions and property, making it their own. Muhammad personally reserved a fifth of the ill-gotten gain for himself (a rule that he was sure to include in the Quran).

  This episode helped ingrain within Islam the immature principle of group identity, whereby any member of a religion or social unit outside of Islam is just as guilty as any of their peers who insult or harm a Muslim – and just as deserving of punishment. (Muhammad’s punishments usually did not fit the crime).

  Members of the second tribe, the Banu Nadir, were accused by Muhammad of plotting to kill him. What is most intriguing about this episode is that it occurred after the Muslims had killed several prominent Jews on Muhammad’s order, including a leader of the Banu Nadir (named Ka’b al-Ashraf). (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved of Murder)

  When the prophet of Islam learned that he might be targeted in retaliation (something that he claimed was “revealed” to him by Allah), he promptly laid siege to the Banu Nadir community. After forcing them to surrender, these original inhabitants of Medina were then banished from their homes and land by the Muslim newcomers, who again started to take as much as they could for themselves (Ibn Ishaq 653). (To the disappointment of his people, this time Muhammad produced a revelation from Allah that allowed him to confiscate the entire portion for himself).

  In a critical example of how deception is sanctioned under Islam, a surviving contingent of the Banu Nadir (under Usayr ibn Zarim) was later tricked into leaving their fortress by promise of peace talks. The contingent of Muslims sent by Muhammad to “escort” them, however, easily slaughtered the victims once they let down their guard (Ibn Ishaq 981). (See also MYTH: Muhammad always Disapproved of Dishonesty).

  The Qurayza Massacre

  By the time the Banu Qurayza met their fate, Muhammad was wealthy and powerful from his defeat of the other two tribes.

  The Jews of the Banu Qurayza tasted Muhammad’s wrath after their leader half-heartedly sided with the Meccan army during a siege of Medina (the Battle of the Trench). By then, Muhammad had evicted the other Jews and declared that all land at Medina belonged to him, so the original constitution of the town was no longer in effect. It is important to note that the Qurayza did not attack the Muslims, even after switching loyalties (contrary to another popular myth).

  Although the Qurayza surrendered peacefully to the Muslims, Muhammad determined to have every man of the tribe executed, along with every boy that had reached the initial stages of puberty (between the ages of 12 and 14). He ordered a ditch dug outside of the town and had the victims brought to him in several groups. Each person would be forced to kneel, and their head would be cut off and then dumped along with the body into the trench.

  Between 700 and 900 men and boys were slaughtered by the Muslims after their surrender.

  The surviving children of the men became slaves of the Muslims, and their widows became sex slaves. This included the Jewish girl, Rayhana, who became one of Muhammad’s personal concubines the very night that her husband was killed. The prophet of Islam apparently “enjoyed her pleasures” (ie. raped her) even as the very execution of her people was taking place.

  In some ways, women were much like any other possession taken in battle, to be done with however their captors pleased. But Muslims found them useful in other ways as well. In fact, one of the methods by which Islam owed its expansion down through the centuries was through the reproductive capabilities of captured women. In addition to four wives, a man was allowed an unlimited number of sex slaves, with the only rule being that any resulting children would automatically be Muslim.

  Muhammad ordered that a fifth of the women taken captive be reserved for him. Many were absorbed into his personal stable of sex slaves that he maintained in addition to his eleven wives. Others were doled out like party favors to others. (See MYTH: Muhammad was an Abolitionist)

  At one point following a battle, Muhammad provided instructions on how women should be raped after capture, telling his men not to worry about coitus interruptus, since “Allah has written whom he is going to create.” (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved of Rape)

  Following the battle against the Hunain, late in his life, Muhammad’s men were reluctant to rape the captured women in front of their husbands (who were apparently still alive to witness the abomination), but Allah came to the rescue with a handy “revelation” that allowed the debauchery. (This is the origin of Sura 4:24 according to Abu Dawud 2150).

  The Origin of Islamic Imperialism

  From Medina, Muhammad waged a campaign of terror, to which he openly attributed his success (Bukhari 52:220). His gang of robbers launched raids in which hapless communities were savaged, looted, murdered and raped. The tribes around the Muslims began to convert to Islam out of self-preservation.

  The excuse for military campaign began to shrink to the point that it hardly existed at all. Muhammad told his followers that Muslims were meant to rule over other people. Supremacist teachings became the driving force behind Jihad (see also MYTH: Muhammad Waged War Only in Self-Defense) and Jihad became the driving force behind Islam.

  The brutal conquest of the people of Khaybar, a peaceful farming community that was not at war with the Muslims, is a striking example. Muhammad marched in secret, took them by surprise and easily defeated them. He had many of the men killed, simply for defending their town. He enslaved women and children and had surviving men live on the land as virtual serfs, paying Muslims an ongoing share of their crops not to attack them again.

  Muhammad suspected that the town’s treasurer was holding out and had his men barbarically torture the poor fellow by building a fire on his chest until he revealed the location of hidden treasure. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved Torture).

  Afterwards, the prophet of Islam beheaded the man and “married” his widow on the same day (she first had to pass through the hands of one of his lieutenants). Given that the woman’s father was also killed by Muhammad, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that true love had very little to do with this “marriage.”

  A Life of Hedonism and Narcissism

  Muhammad’s personal life became the picture of hedonism and excess, all justified by frequent “revelations” from an increasingly arbitrary and capricious god In his later years, he frequently used his influence for purely personal goals, including sex, wealth and power. Allah’s authority for him to pursue these earthly ambitions is even immortalized in the Quran (suras 33 and 66, particularly).

  The same man who earlier in his career had justified his claims as a prophet by saying that he “asked for no reward” from others, reversed course and began to demand a fifth or more of all booty taken from conquered tribes. According to his biographers, he became fat from living off this enormous share of ill-gotten gain. (See also MYTH: Muhammad was a Brave Warrior who Trusted in Allah to Protect him)

  In the span of a dozen years, he married eleven women and had access to an array of sex slaves (see MYTH: Muhammad Married Multiple Women as a Favor to them). When he wanted a woman, even if she were the wife of another man, his own daughter-in-law, or a child as young as 6-years-old (see MYTH: Muhammad Condemned Pedophilia), Muhammad was able to justify his lust and inevitable consummation with an appeal to Allah’s revealed will for his sex life – which was then preserved forever in the Quran, to be faithfully memorized by future generations for whom it has no possible relevance.

  The first verse of Sura 66 is a good example of this. It was narrated by Muhammad to his wives shortly after two of them pressured him into not visiting a favorite sex slave:

  O Prophet! why do you forbid (yourself) that which Allah has made lawful for you, seeking to please your wives? (Quran 66:1)
  Allah (according to Muhammad) was so upset with his prophet for denying himself an afternoon of pleasure with the concubine that Allah had provided for him that it was a good thing for Muhammad that Allah was a forgiving and merciful god! (For the Muslim faithful, it must surely be a source of embarrassment that Allah evidently had more interest in Muhammad’s personal sex life than he did about tolerance or universal love. The god of Islam encourages sex with slaves in several other places as well).

  Muhammad used eternal paradise and damnation to solicit strict obedience to his every command: “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Whoever obeys me will enter Paradise, and whoever disobeys me will not enter it’” (Bukhari 92.384).

  Islam became centered completely around its founder. Of all the prophets, new converts are required to affirm only the legitimacy of Muhammad. The Muslim leader even shares the Shahada with Allah (“There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger”). To this day, every Muslim must bow down five times a day “toward” Muhammad’s birthplace (Islam’s “prophet” did not know the earth was round).

  The prophet of Islam was also an extremely superstitious person, leaving many bizarre rules for Muslims to follow, including which direction they should defecate and how many stones they should wash their anus with afterwards (any odd number… for anyone who’s curious). (See also MYTH: Muhammad did Away with Superstition). Sketchy hygiene apparently left him with an annoying lice infection.

  Not content with waiting for Allah to act on his behalf, Muhammad had personal critics executed, including poets. One of these was a mother of five children, who was stabbed to death by Muhammad’s envoy after a suckling infant was removed from her breast (see MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Women). Other innocent people were killed merely because they were of a different religion, sometimes including children (see MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Children).

  The glaring double standards of Islam were ingrained by the prophet of Islam during his lifetime. This included commands to execute apostates (those who wish to leave Islam) and evict people of other religions from their homes.

  An elderly woman named Umm Qirfa once ran afoul of Muhammad merely by fighting back when her tribe was targeted by Muslim raiders. Muhammad’s adopted son tied the woman’s legs separately to two camels, then set the camels off in opposite directions, tearing the woman’s body in two. He also killed her two sons – presumably in gruesome fashion – and made her daughter into a sex slave. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed the Elderly).

  Today’s Muslims inherit this legacy of self-consumption and disregard for those outside the faith. They may or may not agree with terrorist attacks on non-Muslims, but they are nearly united in their belief that the victims have no right to strike back, even if it is in self-defense.

  The Quran distinguishes Muslims from others, bestowing the highest praise for believers while heaping the vilest condemnation on those outside the faith. Islam is a true supremacist ideology. (See also Is the Quran Hate Speech?)

  The Taking of Mecca

  Though many of the Arab and Jewish tribes were eliminated and absorbed through military victory and forced conversion, the city of Mecca remained.

  In 628, six years after fleeing, Muhammad’s followers were allowed to re-enter the city under an agreement whereby he set aside his title as “Prophet of Allah.” This was a temporary ploy that enabled him to gain a political foothold in the city through the same “fifth column” activities that are still used today by organizations such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which use their host’s language of religious tolerance to disguise an ulterior agenda that includes systematic discrimination against non-Muslims.

  Many of his followers were disappointed that Muhammad had made concessions to the Meccans, not understanding how it actually fit perfectly with his ultimate agenda of domination. It was during this time that he led the campaign against the Khaybar, to assuage their lust for blood, women and loot.

  Technically, Muhammad was the first to break the treaty with the Meccans when he violated the portion of it that restricted him from accepting members of the other tribe into his camp. His own people also staged deadly raids on Meccan caravans (see MYTH: The Meccans were the First to Break the Treaty of Hudaibiya). Although he evidently had no personal obligation to the treaty, the prophet of Islam held the other party to the letter of the law, particularly after he amassed the power to conquer in overwhelming fashion.

  The excuse that Muhammad eventually used to march his armies into Mecca was provided when a tribe allied to the Meccans conducted a raid on a tribe allied with the Medinans. Although a true man of peace would have heeded the fact that his enemy did not want war, and used non-violent means to resolve the tension while respecting sovereignty, Muhammad merely wanted power and vengeance. (See also MYTH: Muhammad always Chose Peace over War).

  In just under a decade, Muhammad had evolved from trying to sell himself as a Judeo-Christian prophet, seeking followers, to an Arab warlord, seeking subjects, slaves and total dominance. The early Quran (of Mecca) tells unbelievers to ‘follow the example’ of Muhammad or suffer Hell. The later Quran (of Medina) tells unbelievers to ‘obey’ Muhammad or suffer death.

  Following Mecca’s surrender, Muhammad put to death those who had previously insulted him (see also MYTH: Muhammad was a Forgiving Man). One of the persons sentenced was his former scribe, who had written revelations that Muhammad said were from Allah. The scribe had previously recommended changes to the wording that Muhammad offered (based on some of the bad grammar and ineloquent language of “Allah”) and Muhammad agreed. This caused the scribe to apostatize, based on his belief that real revelations should have been immutable.

  Although the scribe escaped death by “converting to Islam” at the point of a sword, others weren’t so lucky. One was a slave girl who was executed on Muhammad’s order because she had written songs mocking him.

  In what would also become the model for future Muslim military conquests, those Meccans who would not convert to Islam were required to accept third-class status. Not surprisingly, almost the entire city – which had previously rejected his message – immediately “converted” to Islam once Muhammad came back with a sword in this hand. This included has adversary, Abu Sufyan, who was bluntly ordered to “Submit and testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before you lose your head.”

  Those who would not convert to Islam were banned from the city a few months later – again underscoring the dual ethics of Islam. When Muhammad was previously banned from Mecca, he described it as a “persecution” that justified his “slaughter” of those who prevented him from performing the Haj. Yet, when he attained power, he immediately chased anyone who would not convert to Islam from Mecca and prevented them from performing the Haj.

  To this day, people of other religions are barred even from entering Mecca, the city where Muhammad was free to preach in contradiction to the established religion. Islam is far less tolerant even than the more primitive Arab religion that it supplanted. A person preaching the original Arab polytheism on the streets of Mecca today would be quickly executed.

  Jihad and Jizya

  Tellingly, some of the most violent verses in the Quran were handed down following Muhammad’s ascension to power, when there was no threat to the Muslim people. The 9th Sura of the Quran exhorts Muslims to Jihad and dominance over other religions:

  “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” (9:29)

  The verse that follows curses Christians and Jews by name and says “May Allah destroy them” (as with other sections of the Quran, it is unclear whether it is Allah or Muhammad speaking).

  Before his death, Muhammad ordered 30,000 men to march on Christian lands (which were Byzantine at the time). It is possible that he believed false rumors of an army amassed against him, but there is absolutely no evidence of such a force having been assembled. Instead, Muhammad subjugated the local people and extorted “protection” money from them – something that has come to be known as the jizya (a tax that non-Muslims pay to Muslims).

  Another episode from this period that offers insight into the legacy of Muhammad is the forced conversion of the al-Harith, one of the last Arab tribes to hold out against Muslim hegemony. Muhammad gave the chief of the tribe three days to accept Islam before sending his army to destroy them.

  Not surprisingly, the entire people immediately embraced the Religion of Peace!

  Most Arab tribes recognized Muhammad’s quest for power and wisely pledged their political allegiance without a fight. This quickly presented a problem for his core band of followers, however, since they had become used to living off of what could be stolen from others via raids and battle.

  Since it was against the rules to attack fellow Muslims, Muhammad began demanding tribute from his new “converts” instead, but this proved to be less profitable than the jizya – not to mention that it carried the risk of internal resentment and strife.

  Khaybar, the remote Jewish city that had been turned into a sharecropper state on behalf of its Muslim masters was a more preferable economic model for a growing Islamic empire that had become dependent on extortion justified by religious superiority.

  Years before attacking Christian and Persian lands, Muhammad wrote to governors in each, telling them, “embrace Islam and you will be safe.” There was no mention of oppression or liberation cited as a justification. The only threat these people faced would be from Muslim armies. (Only six years later, 4,000 peasants in the modern-day Palestinian region would be slaughtered for defending their homes).

  At the time, the wealth of other nations was an open source of envy among Muhammad’s followers, which he promised to rectify. The subsequent military expansion that he set in motion may have been sanctioned by Allah and powered by religious zealotry, but the underlying motives of money, sex, slaves and power were no less worldly than any other conqueror of the time.

  The Legacy of Islamic Imperialism

  Muhammad died of a fever in 632 at the age of 63, with his violent religion spread over most of Arabia. His method of forcing others to convert under duress had several negative consequences, beginning with the civil wars that were immediately engaged in following his death. Many tribes wanted out of Islam and had to be kept in the empire via horrific violence.

  Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who was literally forced to “embrace” Islam at the point of a sword actually had the last laugh. He skillfully worked his own family into the line of succession and his son, Muawiya, became the heir to Muhammad’s empire at the expense of the prophet’s own family. In fact, Abu Sufyan almost lived to witness his son and grandson kill off Muhammad’s own grandchildren and assume control of the Islamic empire.

  Muhammad’s failure to leave a clear successor resulted in a deep schism that quickly devolved into violence and persists to this day as the Sunni/Shia conflict. His own family fell apart and literally went to war with each other in the first few years. Thousands of Muslims were killed fighting each other in a battle between Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, and his adopted son, Ali.

  Infidels fared no better. Through Muhammad’s teachings and example, his followers viewed worldly life as a constant physical battle between the House of Peace (Dar al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). Muslims are instructed to invite their enemies to either embrace Islam, pay jizya (protection money), or die.

  Over the next fourteen centuries, the bloody legacy of this extraordinary individual would be a constant challenge to those living on the borders of the Islam’s political power. The violence that Muslim armies would visit on people across North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and into Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent is a tribute to a founder who practiced and promoted subjugation, rape, murder and forced conversion.

  In Muhammad’s words: “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them…” (Bukhari 8:387)

  It is certainly the basis not just for modern day terror campaigns against Western infidels (and Hindus and Buddhists) but also the broad apathy that Muslims across the world have to the violence, which is an obvious enabler.

  As Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir recently put it, “If the West wants to have peace, then they have to accept Islamic rule.”

  Good day

• Zubeda

  March 4, 2013 4:39 am

  Reply

  Young Danish women with immigrant backgrounds – most of them Muslim – continue to flock to private clinics across the country to have their ‘virginity’ restored for a few thousand kroner.

  Several years after the little-known procedure became a topic of political debate, doctors are reporting that demand for hymenoplasty operations has not decreased.

  Doctors who perform these operations have come under sharp criticism for legitimising the procedure and thereby protecting what critics say is the chauvinism and oppression that underlies the demand that new brides must be verified virgins.

  “I don’t have any scruples about helping. The important thing is that these girls have good lives moving forward. You could call it my form of foreign aid,” Dr Christine Felding, who performs 30 to 40 hymenoplasty procedures each year, told Berlingske newspaper.

  The procedure involves reconstructing the hymen – the membrane that partially covers the opening to the vagina, and which is presumed to tear and bleed the first time a woman has sexual intercourse. The doctor literally sews bits of the vaginal lining together to narrow the opening. It takes a little over an hour and is done under local anaesthesia. Felding charges 5,000 kroner. Other doctors charge as much as 12,000 kroner.

  Felding estimates that three or four women with immigrant backgrounds call her each week asking about the procedure. Most of them, she said, are frightened about what will happen if their fiancés or their families find out that they are not virgins.

  Women have been known to suffer rejection, public shaming and even violent retribution at the hands of men in their own families if there is a lack of ‘proof’, in the form of a bloody bed sheet, on the wedding night.

  “It is more cultural than religious. If the bride is not a virgin and does not bleed on the wedding night, it is a big shame on the family. There have been honour killings in extreme cases,” Dr Magdy Hend, a UK surgeon who performs several hymenoplasties a week, told the UK tabloid Daily Mail.

  Doctors in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium also report that the procedure is highly sought after in Muslim communities. The irony, as Time magazine’s Bruce Crumley writes, is that “the increase in the procedure reflects the growing emancipation of women from tradition-rooted communities, but also the ongoing male oppression signified by the obsession with female virginity.”

  Even though the focus on virginity remains strong among conservative families living in Western countries like Denmark and the UK, Felding believes it will wane – eventually.

  “It’s something that this generation of young immigrant women still have to live with. But I don’t think that their daughters will still suffer under it. Times change,” she told Berlingske.

  Change, however, is exactly what Felding and doctors like her are preventing, according to nurse and social counsellor Kristina Aamand.

  Aamand believes that by providing hymenoplasties, doctors are sheltering ignorance and helping a backwards tradition to persist in modern society.

  The daughter of a Danish mother and Pakistani father, Aamand knows well the confusing messages and conflicting pressures young Muslim women growing up in Denmark experience. That’s why she started NyMødom.dk, an advice website which aims to dispel myths about female virginity and the hymen.

  On NyMødom.dk, young women are encouraged to confront their families and fiancés about these myths, instead of opting for a secret surgery to create the illusion of virginity.

  “The young women see [a hymenoplasty] as a little thing next to the anxiety they feel. They see it as something they just have to get through. But the fear of being discovered remains, and ten little stitches in the vagina won’t change that,” Aamand told Berlingske.

  In 2009, Socialdemokraterne and Socialistisk Folkeparti, then in the opposition, challenged the old Venstre-Konservative government to outlaw hymenoplasties, along with other “religious- or culturally related surgical procedures”. Then-health minister Jakob Axel Nielsen (Konservative) refused, noting that they were medically approved by the national board of health, Sundhedsstyrelsen.

  Jonas Dahl, the health issues spokesperson for the Socialistisk Folkeparti, remarked last week that it was “worrying” that they were still sanctioned by Sundhedsstyrelsen, that private doctors were still earning money peddling them to frightened young women, and that demand for the procedures from young immigrant women was still strong.

  “I hoped and expected that they would decrease. That’s something we need to work at,” he said.

• Zubeda

  March 4, 2013 4:35 am

  Reply

  Hello learned sisters,

  When Aisha Salim marries her fiance in Pakistan next April, it will be the wedding of her dreams.
  Wearing a veil and gown, she will be every inch the fairytale virgin bride and as befits her strict Muslim religion, after the ceremony, she will hand her blooded wedding-night sheets to her in-laws as proof of her virginity.
  But far from being the traditional untouched bride that many Muslim families demand, she is a modern-day university graduate who has smoked, drunk, made love to – and even lived with – a previous English boyfriend.
  To disguise the fact that she has had sex, she has paid for painful surgery to “restore” her virginity.
  Scroll down for more …

  Pressure: Modern Muslim women can struggle to balance conflicting cultures
  It is a drastic and costly measure but as she takes her husband’s hand in marriage, she knows it is one which may – quite literally – save her life.
  The horror and outrage that would ensue if it was discovered she had already slept with a man would be so damning that her own strictly religious relatives might kill her rather than face public shame.
  “My virginity was restored in a delicate operation just last week, and I honestly view it as life-saving surgery,” says Aisha.
  “If my husband cannot prove to his family that I am a virgin, I would be hounded, ostracised and sent home in disgrace. My father, who is a devout Muslim, would regard it as the ultimate shame.
  “The entire family could be cast out from the friends and society they hold dear, and I honestly believe that one of my fanatically religious cousins or uncles might kill me in revenge, to purge them of my sins. Incredible as it may seem, honour killings are still accepted within our religion.
  “Ever since my family arranged this marriage for me, I’ve been terrified that, on my wedding night, my secret would come out. It has only been since my surgery last week that I’ve actually been able to sleep properly. Now, I can look forward to my marriage.”
  Aisha is far from alone in seeking such drastic – and almost barbaric – surgery.
  The rise in Islamic fundamentalism is being blamed for the growing trend for hymenoplasties, where the hymen is re-created from the already torn tissue, or a new membrane is inserted using a gelatine-like substance.
  In some cases, the vaginal lining can also be used to create a “false” hymen.
  A blood capsule can be inserted into the lining to ensure realistic blood flow when the false hymen is broken.
  Twenty-four women in the UK had the procedure on the NHS between 2005 and 2006, but it is thought that hundreds or even thousands more – Aisha included – have plundered their savings to pay up to £4,000 to have private surgery.
  Aisha’s story illustrates the intense pressures on young British Asian women caught between the strict moral code of their own community and the laxer, permissive attitudes of their white contemporaries.
  She grew up against a stiflingly strict background as one of seven dutiful Muslim daughters in an affluent middle-class family who moved to England from Pakistan two generations ago.
  Aisha says: “I’ve always adored my parents. My father, now 62, is a retired accountant and my mother raised a family of seven sisters in a five-bedroom house in Birmingham.
  “I attended the local Catholic secondary school and although I wore a scarf on my head, I refused to wear a veil, telling my parents that it would make me stand out too much.
  “I was one of the girls, totally accepted by my white, English friends whose lives revolved around shopping and fancying boys.
  “But the moment I stepped over the doorstep, normal teenage life would cease and it was like entering an entirely different world. At home, we had to pray together five times a day.
  “We weren’t allowed to watch television. My parents were so worried that Western influences might take our minds off the most important things – education and religion – that we were never allowed to bring any schoolfriends home.
  “But it made all the things my friends did more attractive to me. I would sneak out on Saturday afternoons and join them in town, hanging around, shopping and chatting to boys.”
  Perhaps ironically, it was Aisha’s academic success that was to prove her downfall, as she moved away from home to study language and politics at university, and found herself plunged into a world of louche student living.
  She recalls: “I was a totally naive 18-year-old, and found myself living away from my parents for the first time, and suddenly, everything that I had been bought up to believe was wrong, was being played out in front of me.
  “I decided that drinking, smoking and having boyfriends was just a part of normal, teenage growing up.
  “Like other young girls, I just wanted to be part of a crowd. I stopped wearing the veil and for the first time in my life I wore Western clothes – designs which revealed far more of my body than anything I had ever worn before.
  “I also started drinking. I started off on beer and then gradually things like vodka and cocktails, which naturally helped me lose my inhibitions.”
  Aisha was in her second year of university when she found love and inevitably, lust.
  She says quietly: “He was another student in my tutorial class, and the more time we spent together, the more I found myself falling in love.
  “Philip was white, English, charming and kind. When we started dating, I told him I was a virgin and that I was expected to keep my virginity for marriage.
  “But he wore my inhibitions down, and I began to see that having a physical relationship with him would be pleasurable.
  “All my friends were sleeping with their boyfriends and it was entirely accepted. I was the odd one out, so after several months I took the plunge and went on the contraceptive pill as a precaution.
  “As the months went past, he became more and more desperate to make love.
  “I wrestled with my conscience night after night, but having taken away the fear of pregnancy by being on the pill, I saw that – as long as my parents never found out – there was no reason not to make love.
  “Marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. Anyway, at that time I assumed I would marry for love, not have an arranged marriage.”
  She says: “I tried to resist Philip but I discovered that I liked the physical contact. Then one fateful night, we went out and I had too much to drink. My head was spinning, we ended up in bed together and couldn’t resist any longer. It was really lovely, and I felt no shame.
  “It was only when I woke up the next morning, and saw Philip lying beside me, that I thought: ‘What have I done?’
  “But there was no turning back and it felt entirely natural. He reassured me it was OK and told me that he loved me.
  “Part of me was scared but I was also rather proud of what I’d just done. I wasn’t just a little Muslim girl, I was an independent young woman who could make up her own mind how she was going to live her life.
  Scroll down for more …

  Traditional: Muslim brides are expected to be virgins when they marry
  “Four months later, Philip and I broke up but I suddenly felt sexually empowered.
  “When I started going out with another student, I knew from the word go that we would sleep together and we did, on the second night.
  “I also had another sexual fling at university with a friend.
  “Having lost my virginity, it didn’t seem to matter how many men I slept with, the damage was already done.
  “Besides, I was living away from my parents, and my old life of endless prayer and abiding by the customs of our religion seemed a long way away.”
  The full reality didn’t hit home until Aisha returned home to Birmingham at 22, after she finished her degree.
  “It was horrible,” she says. “It felt like returning to a prison, and I could feel my father’s eyes burning into me, as if he knew. I tried to play the dutiful Muslim daughter, but I had changed.
  “I felt as if I was being smothered. My parents wanted me to live at home and work in Birmingham, but I got a job on a graduate sales training scheme in London. I convinced my parents it was a great honour.”
  With a new job and a new life, Aisha fell in love with a colleague, Steve, and the couple moved in together in an astonishing breach of her strict Muslim upbringing.
  She says: “I still managed to keep it secret from my parents; my father was quite ill by now and they rarely travelled.
  “I would talk to them on my mobile phone, and we didn’t have a landline in the flat.
  “Steve and I lived together for two years, but then the relationship started to go wrong. He spent too much money, and he was very jealous and possessive of me.
  “When a job opportunity came up in the chain of stores I worked for in Birmingham, I seized it and moved back to get away from him. My parents were thrilled and they started talking seriously about an arranged marriage.
  “I realised I had two choices. I could either move back to London and live a Western life, bringing shame on my poor parents and estrange myself from the sisters, aunts and uncles I loved. Or I could go along with their dreams of an arranged marriage.
  “A Muslim husband would have the same values as me, and I would be firmly back within my family support system.
  “For a year I played the part of the dutiful daughter. I wore the hijab, even to work, and I helped my mother care for my father. His pleasure at my return was so touching.”
  Then last summer, Aisha’s mother announced that she had found a prospective husband who came from an affluent Muslim family living in Pakistan.
  As tradition demanded, the families had shared two ceremonial meetings and the parents of both prospective bride and groom agreed to a match.
  In July, Aisha flew to Pakistan to meet her “fiance” for the first time.
  She says: “I was absolutely terrified. This was the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
  “I didn’t know if I would get on with him, or even if he would approve of me.
  “And at the back of my mind was this awful, sickening worry about my virginity.
  “But when I met him, I liked him immediately. He is 28, 6ft 3in tall with black hair and very handsome. He made me feel so welcome.
  “I spent a month at his parents’ house, and I grew to love my future husband. We didn’t kiss in all the time we were together, and I played the diligent Muslim girl who prayed five times a day, wore my hijab and kept my eyes downcast.
  “But as I said goodbye to my future husband and flew back to Birmingham, I really started to panic about my virginity.
  “Muslim tradition demands that on my wedding night, my bridegroom will take the bloodied sheets to show his mother and aunts to prove that his bride is pure.
  “If I do not bleed, the wedding will be annulled, and I will be sent home in disgrace.
  “This was all I could think about. How could I fool my own husband and his family into believing that I was pure?”
  Through friends, Aisha heard of a new operation to “restore” a torn hymen, and, in her desperation, she went onto the internet to find out more.
  Aisha explains: “A few friends have already had this operation, though it has to be done with the utmost secrecy, as we would be disowned by our family if the news ever came out.
  “On the internet, I found the clinic of Dr Magdy Hend, at the Regency Clinic on Harley Street.
  “I went for an initial consultation, telling my family I was travelling to London on business, and was absolutely reassured.
  “The operation would cost £2,000 and would be done under local anaesthetic.
  “Dr Hend said it would take only about an hour and a half, and I would be able to go back to work the next morning, though I had to be careful not to do anything which would make the hymen break, such as strenuous exercise.
  “The operation would involve taking the ‘torn’ parts of my hymen and basically stitching them back together, adding further tissue from the side of my vagina.
  “If I wanted, just prior to my wedding he could place a capsule of blood into the hymen which would ensure a healthy amount of blood. It sounds barbaric, but what choice did I have?”
  Inevitably, there was controversy when it emerged that taxpayers had funded such operations on the NHS, with MPs suggesting it was a sign of “social regression”.
  But while Aisha felt she had no choice, she preferred the discretion of a private clinic: “The operation went just as he predicted. It was painless, and I can feel no difference at all.
  “I think I will have the blood capsule put in place, just to make sure. I’ve had to save up for months to afford it, and I still have student debts, but it is such a weight off my mind. I had been crying myself to sleep, wondering how I was going to cope, and now I know that my secret is safe.
  “I feel very sad that women like me feel so torn between our two cultures. Our religion is so rigid – yet I was brought up among Western friends who thought nothing of sleeping with their boyfriends.
  “It makes life so confusing and I feel so deeply for all the many Muslim girls in Britain who are caught in the same dilemma.
  “I was lucky, I suppose, in that I could afford to repair my ‘mistake’ so no one would know.
  “But it scares me to think what will happen to Muslim girls who do not have this option and are seen to be ‘shaming’ their families. They are the ones whose lives will be at risk.”

• Zeenat

  March 4, 2013 4:31 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters

  This is the new skills laborers being brought into the Western world. You got to laugh at the tribal level of extremely low intelligence that you find in Muslim cultures. Women must ‘bleed’ on the wedding night to prove they are virgins. Nothing could be more absurd and medically inaccurate. Since it would be highly rare that any adult female would bleed, Muslim women have to use tricks to pretend she is bleeding.

  Of course, this scenario can change if you are a 53-year old mass murderer and warlord who rapes a 6-year old undeveloped child like Aiysha who was still playing with dolls when she was married off to Muhammad. Then it is highly possible that she would bleed on her ‘wedding’ night. How many women in Islam have been punished and even killed over low-brow bedouine male thinking?

  Truly, the Muslim male must be one of the most evil creatures on earth.

• Rehana

  March 4, 2013 4:28 am

  Reply

  Hi sisters,

  At age 11, Ghulam was married off to 40-year-old Jaiz in a rural Afghan village, making her only one of more than 10 million young girls who are being forced to wed men old enough to be their fathers or grandfather every year.

  In an effort to start a global conversation about the devastating effects of early marriages, which are currently practiced in more than 50 developing countries, the United Nations designated October 11 as International Day of the Girl Child this year.

  To mark the occasion and draw attention to the problem of child brides, photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair teamed up with National Geographic to create a series of heart-breaking photos depicting girls as young as five years old being married off to middle-aged men in countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Afganistan, Bangladesh, kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanan etc .

  Several immatured girls die due to forced penetration and hurting badly.

• Sha Gul

  March 4, 2013 1:32 am

  Reply

  HET MUHAMMAD: MONSTER OF HISTORY” is a rip-away-the-facade, stunningly BOLD book of FACTS on the Koran. From cover to cover it holds back absolutely nothing concerning the the violence, perversion and abject immorality of the Koran. ” Prophet Muhammad: Monster of History” opens up the Koran, verse by verse like a recipe book to show how Muslims can validate murder, torture, sexual slavery and the subjugation of entire societies. The fact of the matter is best summarized by the author’s words on page 30: “The Koran is the most evil, vilest book ever written in human history.” and “Islam is a total and complete rejection of God…”

  The author wisely withholds his name on the book itself for safety reasons no doubt. Another book that preceded this triumph by 2 years, “Bleeding for Allah. Why Islam will Conquer the Free World. What Americans Need to Know” similarly and directly addressed the horrors of Muhammad’s lifestyle and the subsequent evil directives of his Koran. That author went missing in the spring of 2008 and authorities believe that it was his body strapped to a chair in a madrass in Pakistan. However, it is precisely this violence that substantiates the penetrating messages of both of these authors: that orthodox Islam IS violent, it IS wholly intolerant of freedom of thought and expression as well as any freedom to choose…whether it is your religion, political inclination or sexual orientation.

  “Prophet Muhammad” shows clearly in Chapter 32 how Muslim demographics work globally. At very low percentages, they remain dormant within their greater accepting societies like the United States and Canada. But then as the Muslim population grows, “prophet Muhammadl” shows how disproportional a control that Muslims begin to exert on the political systems. Then when their population grows large enough (not even a majority) Muslims then apply extreme violence to achieve their ultimate goal of absolute control. By then, it is too late for the “host” society. If you doubt this equation just check the names of the countries with large or near-majority Muslim populations: Ethiopia, Bosnia, Lebanon, Sudan, the break-away Russian “republics”. Countries that are primarily Muslim like Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan already permanently chained to Islam. France has only an 8% Muslim population (p 248) and has been experiencing chronic street violence.

  Ironically, it is America’s liberal politicians, led by our uber-liberal President Barak Hussein Obama, who play directly into the Muslims’ hands. We are like lambs being literally sent to slaughter. Yet President Obama is a brilliant man. And the facts contained in this book have been written about for at least 4 centuries and are clearly understood by Homeland Security.

• Sha Gul

  March 4, 2013 1:26 am

  Reply

  I recently set out to learn more about Islam. I had no agenda at the time except to broaden my knowledge on the subject. What I have learned sickened me. I had previously been accepting of the notion that Islam was a peaceful religion and that the Muslim terrorists who inflict so much pain and death around the world represented a fringe element outside of mainstream Islam. I was wrong.

  The Islamic deity, Allah, is a false god. While the term “Allah” does indeed carry the same meaning as “God,” Mohammed’s Allah is nothing more than a construct of a vile false prophet who sought to create an empire upon the rotting corpses of his enemies. Let’s review some history…

  In 621 A.D. Mohammed was in Mecca preaching to any who would listen that he alone was the Divine Prophet of the One God, Allah. Meccans eventually grew tired of his ranting and demanded that he cease and desist. With a tiny band of followers, Mohammed sneaked out of Mecca in the dead of night and traveled to the Jewish city of Medina. He and his followers were sick, tired, and hungry and the Jews there took them in and nursed them to good health.

  Unfortunately Mohammed was consumed with rage over his being booted out of Mecca and began plotting his revenge. It was this plan that became the basis for the religion of Islam. In January of 623 A.D. Mohammed ordered his band of thugs to attack four unarmed merchants who were transporting their wares to Mecca. All four were brutally murdered and their merchandise (raisins, animal skins, and honey) was stolen. Claiming a Divine Right, Mohammed received one fifth of the take.

  Mohammed began to preach to his followers that it was mandated by Allah that nonbelievers (like his perceived enemies in Mecca) were “the worst kind of beasts” and that they must be slain. This cruel rhetoric attracted the sort of people who enjoy such depraved activities and soon Mohammed had an army numbering in the hundreds. Rape, robbery, and murder were all sanctioned as being the Divine Will of Allah, and Mohammed reaped a fortune as his growing army raged across ancient Arabia.

  Poets and politicians alike who spoke out against him were tortured and murdered. Even the Jews of Medina, who had shown him such kindness, were eventually driven from their homes while Mohammed’s Muslim band pillaged the city. With each new raid, Mohammed would claim to have had yet another “revelation” from Allah that justified their actions. In short, Mohammed led a tribe of barbarians who truly believed that they were doing Allah’s will by destroying pre-Islamic Arabia. In all, Mohammed would order 86 raids upon the innocent, 26 of which he led himself. In 630 A.D. Mohammed marched triumphantly into Mecca with 40,000 followers. His revenge was complete, but the horrors of Islam had only begun.

  Mohammed’s sole purpose in everything he did was to feed his enormous ego and satisfy his perverse sexual needs. In all, Mohammed had eleven wives, nine of them simultaneously, with the youngest being only ten years old. Eye-witness accounts claim that Aisha brought her toys with her when she was delivered to the Prophet of Allah.

  Mohammed regarded women as nothing more than sexual toys and servants, and of course justified his actions by proclaiming that it was Allah’s will that women always be subjugated to men. Seeing him as their spiritual guide and role model, other Muslim men treated their women accordingly. A cycle of abuse that still endures today in many parts of the world had thus begun.

  By the time Mohammed died at age 63, the face of the Middle East had changed from a civilized and prosperous world to one of fear, poverty, and deprivation. Gone was any semblance of free expression or religious freedom. Mohammed and his followers had turned the known world upside down.

  The Twelfth-Century Crusades were in fact a response by England, France and Germany to the growing Muslim violence against Christians. It is quite appropriate to state that the Crusades against “Mohammedism” constituted the first War on Terror. A coalition of like-minded nations, setting aside their political differences for a time, engaging a barbaric and bloodthirsty Muslim enemy on its own soil. Sound familiar?

  As time passed, the Crusades came to an end due as much to internal bickering as success. The beast that is Islam had been diminished but not defeated. As the years rolled by Islam once again spread its leathery wings to darken the civilized world. Through violence and deception Islam has spread to virtually every nation on Earth.

  In current times, Islam still commits acts of unthinkable barbarism against the innocent. With videos of beheadings transmitted all over the world, the devastating attack in New York on September 11, 2001, the recent bombings in Madrid and London… haven’t we had enough? Isn’t it time that we recognize that Islam is not a religion, but rather a means of world conquest? It doesn’t matter if people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein actually believe in Allah. In truth I doubt that Mohammed believed. Mohammed saw an opportunity to become a world power and twisted the minds of men to serve his evil purposes. He was a fraud and I find it incredible that 1400 years after his death, that fraud is still being inflicted upon the world.

  The time has come to cease being tolerant of Islam. It is a false religion, based upon a false god and the teachings of a false prophet. We absolutely must see Islam for what it is: The Enemy of All Humanity.

  Allah’s Apostle said, “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I (Mohammed) am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.”
  The Qur’an, Volume 9, Book 83, Number 17

• Sabana Matlub

  March 4, 2013 1:24 am

  Reply

  What if a man you knew began telling people that God was routinely speaking to him and only him – and that the “revelations” he claimed to be receiving were mostly about him and his relative importance to all other people? Say, for example, that this self-proclaimed prophet insisted that God had declared him to be the ‘perfect example’ for mankind and that others were therefore to accord him with special privilege, unwavering obedience, wealth and earthly desires, including all of the slaves and women that his lust could handle.

  Such figures still arise from time to time. Some of the more dynamic manage to develop a small group of followers so taken with their leader’s self assurance that they willingly offer their own children to him for “marriage” or even kill on his behalf if requested.

  Would it really validate the message of any such cult leader if his followers did successfully kill and seize the property of anyone who dared disagree? What if they gradually expanded their power and numbers in such fashion that eventually they were enough to be recognized as a major world religion? Would that make the cult leader’s claims about himself true? Would it really change the fact that what they believe ultimately sprang from the imagination of a narcissist?

  In 610, an Arab salesman with a commanding personality attracted a small cult of credulous fanatics by claiming to be a prophet. Though his “revelations” were self-referential and occasionally contradicting, he was successful in manipulating his followers with promises of heavenly reward and threat of divine wrath. The god heard only by him told them to lie and steal for him, to give their children to him for sexual pleasure and, eventually, to gruesomely murder his detractors.

  There are two ways to approach a study of Muhammad. One is with reverence and the other is with skepticism. Thinking persons choose they latter. They are not influenced by the number of Muslim believers in the world today or by their force of belief because these are meaningless for determining truth. They care only about fact.

  The facts presented here about the life of Muhammad and the origins of Islam are fully supported by the works of early Muslim biographers upon which all later historians rely.

  Origins

  To understand Islam, you must understand the harsh circumstances into which the religion was born. The Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad (b.570 AD) was a barren and desolate region with scorching sun and oppressive heat by day, and chilling cold at night. There was little vegetative growth, and the nomadic inhabitants lived between jagged rocks and shifting sand dunes.

  While Europe and much of the Middle East was transitioning from the Roman to the Byzantine Empire, with roads, irrigation canals, aqueducts, and a culture that included philosophical discourse and theater, the Arabians lived short and brutal lives in warring tribes with little to offer the rest of the world beyond their own harsh existence.

  This partly explains Islam’s inherent hostility to music and art, which some extremists, such as the Taliban, take quite literally. Islam does not encourage the pursuit of knowledge outside of itself. It is, as Oriana Fallaci puts it, it is “the religion which has produced nothing but religion.”

  The inhospitable climate protected the peninsula from conquest and cultural influence. No foreign army felt that sheep and goats were worth taking from the desert fighters, so the area was relatively isolated, with the exception of certain trading routes. The renaissance of knowledge that the rest of the world had been experiencing since the Greek revival was largely missed out on by the Arabs, whose entire energies were devoted to daily survival against the ruthless environment and other tribes.

  For these people, morality was dictated merely by necessity, and obligations did not extend beyond one’s tribe. This is a critical basis for the development of the Islamic attitude toward those outside the faith, including the moral principle that the ethics of any act are determined only by whether or not it benefits Muslims.

  There were pagan religious traditions in Arabia, particularly among those based in the trading centers such as Muhammad’s birthplace of Mecca. Some of these towns had Kaabas – cube-like structures that would attract pilgrims during holy months. The Kaaba at Mecca housed various idols, including the black meteorite that remains to this day.

  In addition to the black rock, Muhammad’s Quraish tribe worshipped a moon god called Allah. Other gods were recognized as well. In fact, the town of Mecca was renowned for religious tolerance, where people of all faiths could come and pray at the Kaaba. (This would later change once Muhammad gained the power to establish his authority by force).

  Islam was created both from these crude pagan practices and from the basic theological elements of Christianity and Judaism as Muhammad [often erroneously] understood them (his inaccurate interpretation of Christianity, for example, is often attributed to an early experience with fringe cults in the Palestinian region, then known as Syria).

  Early Life at Mecca

  Muhammad was born around 570 AD to a widowed mother who died just six years later. He grew up poor and orphaned on the margins of society, which was controlled by tribal chiefs and trading merchants. He worked for his uncle, Abu Talib, as a camel herder. Although his uncle had some standing in the community, Muhammad himself did not rise above his lowly station until he was 25, when he met and married a wealthy widow, Khadija, who was 15 years older.

  His wife’s trading business not only nurtured Muhammad’s natural talents of persuasion, but it also gave the successful salesman an opportunity to travel and acquire knowledge that was not as accessible to the local population. He would later use this to his advantage by incorporating the stories that he had come across into his “revelations” from Allah, particularly the tales from the earlier religions, Judaism and Christianity.

  Having attained a comfortable lifestyle and the idle time that wealth affords, Muhammad would wander off occasionally for periods of meditation and contemplation. It is quite likely that he was experiencing the symptoms of a midlife crisis, including a desire for personal accomplishment and meaning.

  One day, at the age of 40, he told his wife that he had been visited by the angel Gabriel in a dream. Thus began a series of “revelations” which lasted almost until his death 23 years later. The Qur’an is a collection of words that Muhammad attributed to Allah. The Hadith is a collection of narrations of the life and deeds of Muhammad. The Sira is his recorded biography. The Sunnah is said to be Muhammad’s way of life, on which Islamic law (Sharia) is based.

  With his wife’s influence and support, Muhammad proclaimed himself a prophet in same “lineage” as that of Abraham and Jesus, and began trying to convert those around him to his new religion. He narrated the Quran to those who believed him, telling them that it was the word of Allah (heard only by himself, of course).

  Muhammad’s Quran did not contain a single original moral value and it contributed only one new idea to world religion – that Muhammad is Allah’s prophet. In fact, Muhammad’s “Allah” seemed oddly preoccupied with making sure Muslims knew to obey Muhammad’s every earthly wish, as this mandate is repeated at least twenty times in the narration of the Quran.

  In the beginning, Muhammad did his best to compromise his teachings with the predominant beliefs of the community’s elders, such as combining all 300 of their idols under the name “Allah.” His amalgamation of Judeo-Christian theology and pagan tradition grew more sophisticated over time. He also used his “revelations from Allah” to repeatedly affirm his own position. Even if he did not remember the Biblical stories correctly, for example, each one was conspicuously modified to incorporate a common theme: “Believe in the Messenger (Muhammad) or suffer the consequences.”

  Preaching and Persecution at Mecca

  According to early Muslim historians, the Meccans did not mind Muhammad practicing his religion, nor did they feel threatened by his promotion of it. This changed only after the self-proclaimed prophet began attacking their religion, including the customs and ancestors of the people (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 167). This was enough to stir up the resentment of the influential leaders of Mecca, who then mocked his humble background against his pretentious claims. (See also MYTH: Muhammad was Persecuted for Preaching Islam)

  Still, Mecca at the time was a remarkably tolerant society. Muhammad was allowed to attack the local customs for thirteen years, even though the town’s economy depended on the annual pilgrimage attended by visiting pagans, whose religion he actively disparaged.

  At first, Muhammad was only successful with friends and family. After thirteen years, “the street preacher” could boast of only about a hundred determined followers, who called themselves Muslims. Outside of his wife, his first convert was his young cousin Ali (who would later become his son-in-law and the fourth caliph of Islam). Another early convert was Abu Bakr, a wealthy merchant whose money and credulous acceptance of Muhammad can be credited with the survival of the fledgling cult. (Muhammad would later “marry” Abu Bakr’s 9-year-old daughter).

  Relations with the Meccans turned particularly sour after an episode known as “the Satanic Verses” in which Muhammad agreed to recognize the local gods in addition to Allah. This delighted the Meccans, who generously extended their welcome. But Muhammad soon changed his mind after his own people began to lose faith in him. He claimed that Satan had spoken through him, and he rescinded recognition of the Meccan gods (Tabari 1192, Quran 22:52 & 53:19-26).

  The locals intensified their mockery of Muslims and made life particularly difficult for some of them. Although Muslims today often use the word “persecution” to describe this ordeal (justifiably, in some cases), it is important to note that the earliest and most reliable biographers (Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari) record the death of only one Muslim during this period, an older woman who died from stress.

  This fact is a source of embarrassment to modern apologists, who do not like admitting that Muslims were the first to become violent at Mecca (see MYTH: The Meccans Drew First Blood against Muhammad) and that Muhammad was the first to resort to militancy… and at a later time, when it was entirely unnecessary.

  To deal with this unpleasant truth, sympathetic narratives of the early Meccan years usually exaggerate the struggle of the Muslims with claims that they were “under constant torture.” They may also include apocryphal accounts that are unsupported by earliest and most reliable historians (see MYTH: Persecution of Muslims at Mecca – Many Deaths).

  Modern storytellers and filmmakers (such as those behind 1976’s The Message) have even been known to invent fictional victims of Meccan murder, either to dramatize their own tale or to provide justification for the “revenge killings” that followed. But, in fact, the only Muslim whose life was truly in danger was that of Muhammad – after 13 years of being allowed to mock the local religion. (See also MYTH: Muhammad was Tortured at Mecca).

  The Hijra – Flight from Mecca to Medina

  The death of his uncle, Abu Talib, in 619 left Muhammad without a protector against the Meccan leadership, which was gradually losing patience with him. The true agitator in this situation, however, is quite clearly Muhammad himself, as even Muslim historians note. Consider this account of what happened at Abu Talib’s deathbed, as the Meccans implored him a final time for peace with his nephew:

  [Muhammad’s chief adversary] Abu Sufyan, with other sundry notables, went to Abu Talib and said: “You know the trouble that exists between us and your nephew, so call him and let us make an agreement that he will leave us alone and we will leave him alone; let him have his religion and we will have ours.” (Ibn Ishaq 278)

  Muhammad rejected the offer of peaceful co-existence. His new religion was obviously intended to dominate the others, not be on equal standing with them. Meanwhile, the Muslims were beginning to become violent with the people around them.

  Muhammad’s search for political alliance led him to make a treaty of war against the Meccans with the people of Medina, another Arab town far to the north (Ibn Ishaq 299-301). This was the last straw for the Meccans, who finally decided to capture Muhammad and put him to death. (see also MYTH: Muhammad and his Muslims Fled Mecca because of Persecution)

  Although this sounds harsh against Western standards, it is important to note the contrast between the Meccan reaction and that of Muhammad when he had the opportunity to deal with perceived treachery in Medina at a later date on the part of those who hadn’t even harmed anyone.

  The Meccans limited their deadly aggression to Muhammad himself. This is quite clear from the episode in which Muhammad escapes his home by using his son-in-law, Ali, to trick his would-be assassins into thinking that they had him trapped (Ibn Ishaq 326). No harm was done to Ali or his wife, both of whom subsequently remained in the city for several days to complete the transfer of Muhammad’s family business to Medina.

  Compare this to the episode of the Banu Qurayza (below), in which Muhammad slaughtered an entire tribe of people based on their leader having switched loyalties in a conflict in which none of them even participated.

  The year that Muhammad fled Mecca for Medina was 622, which marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.

  Medina and the Origin of Jihad

  Stinging from the rejection of his own town and tribe, Muhammad’s message quickly become more intolerant and ruthless – particularly as he gained power. Islam’s holiest book clearly reflects this contrast, with the later parts of the Quran adding violence and earthly defeats at the hands of Muslims to the woes of eternal damnation that the earlier parts of the book promises those who will not believe in Muhammad.

  It was at Medina that Islam evolved from a relatively peaceful religion borrowed from others and into a military force that was intended to govern all aspects of society. During these last ten years of Muhammad’s life, infidels were evicted or enslaved, converted upon point of death and even rounded up and slaughtered depending on expediency.

  To fund his quest for control, Muhammad first directed his followers to raid Meccan caravans in the holy months, when the victims would least expect it. This was despite the fact that the Meccans were not bothering him in Medina (see MYTH: Muhammad and his Muslims were Persecuted by the Meccans at Medina).

  Muhammad provided his people with convenient revelations “from Allah” which allowed them to murder innocent drivers and steal their property (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 426). The people around him gradually developed a lust for things that could be taken in battle, including material comforts and captured women and children. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Raided Caravans to Retrieve Stolen Property).

  Often the people captured in battle would be brought before the self-proclaimed prophet, where they would plead for their lives, arguing, for example, that they would never have treated the Muslims that way. The traditions are quite clear in portraying Muhammad as largely unmoved by their pleas, and ordering their deaths anyway, often by horrible means. In one case, he orders a man slain, telling him that “Hell” will take care of the poor fellow’s orphaned daughter (Ishaq 459). (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Captives)

  The raids on caravans preceded the first major battle involving a Muslim army, the Battle of Badr. This was the spot where the Meccans had sent their own army to protect their caravans from Muslim raiders. Although, Muslims today like to claim that they only attack others in self-defense, this was clearly not the case in Muhammad’s time. In fact, he had to compel his reluctant warriors with promises of paradise and assurances that their religion was more important than the lives of others. (See also MYTH: The Battle of Badr was Defensive).

  The Consolidation of Power

  Muhammad defeated the Meccan army at Badr, which emboldened him to begin dividing and conquering the three local Jewish tribes at Medina. Their mistake was to accept the Muslim presence, but reject Muhammad’s claim that he was in the line of Jewish prophets. His stories from the Torah simply did not agree with their own. (Muhammad’s recited version of Bible stories sounds more like fragmented fairy tales with the same moral – believe in his personal claim to be a prophet or else).

  How these three tribes, the Banu Qaynuqa, the Banu Nadir, and the Banu Quyrayza met their fate is insightful into the Muslim mindset, which employs an inherent double standard in its relations with those outside the faith.

  First, to try and gain their favor, Muhammad briefly preached that Christians and Jews could attain salvation through their own faith. In fact, he changed his followers’ direction for prayer from Mecca to Jerusalem, which prompted the Jews’ tolerance of him while he worked surreptitiously for the power to evict them. These earlier concessions and teachings were later revoked by Muhammad, since the Jews ultimately refused his religion. The rare early verses of tolerance in the Quran are abrogated by later verses such as 9:29.

  The Jews’ knowledge of the Torah naturally threatened the Muslim leader’s credibility, since it easily refuted the claims that he made about himself as a prophet of God. They also saw through the Biblical narrations that he had picked up from secondhand sources and knew that these contradicted established revelation. Conveniently, Allah stepped in to tell Muhammad that the Jews had deliberately corrupted their own texts to hide the very evidence of his own prophethood that he had previously insisted existed. (To this day, Muslims have never been able to produce a copy of the “true” Torah or Gospel to which their own Quran refers).

  While the Jews remained unconvinced by such obvious gimmickry, Arab polytheists converted to Islam in large numbers, which soon gave Muhammad the power to make his intentions clear that Islam would be imposed by force:

  While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, “Let us go to the Jews” We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, “If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle.” Bukhari 53:392

  The Jews of Mecca were the first in a very long line of unfortunate people to be offered the opportunity to convert to Islam under obvious duress. Forcible conversion is very much a Muslim tradition started by Muhammad (see MYTH: Muhammad Rejected Conversions to Islam made under Duress)

  Since they chose to hold on to their religion (and their property) Muhammad looked for reasons to go to war against the Jews at Medina. According to some Muslims, the first tribe, the Qaynuqa, were driven from their homes and land on the pretext that one of their own had harassed a Muslim woman. Although the offender was killed prior to this by a Muslim, the Muslim was also killed by Jews in retaliation for the first murder.

  After laying siege to the entire community and defeating the tribe, Muhammad wanted to put every male member to death, but was talked out of it by an associate – something that Allah later “rebuked” him for. The Qaynuqa were forced into exile and the Muslims took their possessions and property, making it their own. Muhammad personally reserved a fifth of the ill-gotten gain for himself (a rule that he was sure to include in the Quran).

  This episode helped ingrain within Islam the immature principle of group identity, whereby any member of a religion or social unit outside of Islam is just as guilty as any of their peers who insult or harm a Muslim – and just as deserving of punishment. (Muhammad’s punishments usually did not fit the crime).

  Members of the second tribe, the Banu Nadir, were accused by Muhammad of plotting to kill him. What is most intriguing about this episode is that it occurred after the Muslims had killed several prominent Jews on Muhammad’s order, including a leader of the Banu Nadir (named Ka’b al-Ashraf). (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved of Murder)

  When the prophet of Islam learned that he might be targeted in retaliation (something that he claimed was “revealed” to him by Allah), he promptly laid siege to the Banu Nadir community. After forcing them to surrender, these original inhabitants of Medina were then banished from their homes and land by the Muslim newcomers, who again started to take as much as they could for themselves (Ibn Ishaq 653). (To the disappointment of his people, this time Muhammad produced a revelation from Allah that allowed him to confiscate the entire portion for himself).

  In a critical example of how deception is sanctioned under Islam, a surviving contingent of the Banu Nadir (under Usayr ibn Zarim) was later tricked into leaving their fortress by promise of peace talks. The contingent of Muslims sent by Muhammad to “escort” them, however, easily slaughtered the victims once they let down their guard (Ibn Ishaq 981). (See also MYTH: Muhammad always Disapproved of Dishonesty).

  The Qurayza Massacre

  By the time the Banu Qurayza met their fate, Muhammad was wealthy and powerful from his defeat of the other two tribes.

  The Jews of the Banu Qurayza tasted Muhammad’s wrath after their leader half-heartedly sided with the Meccan army during a siege of Medina (the Battle of the Trench). By then, Muhammad had evicted the other Jews and declared that all land at Medina belonged to him, so the original constitution of the town was no longer in effect. It is important to note that the Qurayza did not attack the Muslims, even after switching loyalties (contrary to another popular myth).

  Although the Qurayza surrendered peacefully to the Muslims, Muhammad determined to have every man of the tribe executed, along with every boy that had reached the initial stages of puberty (between the ages of 12 and 14). He ordered a ditch dug outside of the town and had the victims brought to him in several groups. Each person would be forced to kneel, and their head would be cut off and then dumped along with the body into the trench.

  Between 700 and 900 men and boys were slaughtered by the Muslims after their surrender.

  The surviving children of the men became slaves of the Muslims, and their widows became sex slaves. This included the Jewish girl, Rayhana, who became one of Muhammad’s personal concubines the very night that her husband was killed. The prophet of Islam apparently “enjoyed her pleasures” (ie. raped her) even as the very execution of her people was taking place.

  In some ways, women were much like any other possession taken in battle, to be done with however their captors pleased. But Muslims found them useful in other ways as well. In fact, one of the methods by which Islam owed its expansion down through the centuries was through the reproductive capabilities of captured women. In addition to four wives, a man was allowed an unlimited number of sex slaves, with the only rule being that any resulting children would automatically be Muslim.

  Muhammad ordered that a fifth of the women taken captive be reserved for him. Many were absorbed into his personal stable of sex slaves that he maintained in addition to his eleven wives. Others were doled out like party favors to others. (See MYTH: Muhammad was an Abolitionist)

  At one point following a battle, Muhammad provided instructions on how women should be raped after capture, telling his men not to worry about coitus interruptus, since “Allah has written whom he is going to create.” (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved of Rape)

  Following the battle against the Hunain, late in his life, Muhammad’s men were reluctant to rape the captured women in front of their husbands (who were apparently still alive to witness the abomination), but Allah came to the rescue with a handy “revelation” that allowed the debauchery. (This is the origin of Sura 4:24 according to Abu Dawud 2150).

  The Origin of Islamic Imperialism

  From Medina, Muhammad waged a campaign of terror, to which he openly attributed his success (Bukhari 52:220). His gang of robbers launched raids in which hapless communities were savaged, looted, murdered and raped. The tribes around the Muslims began to convert to Islam out of self-preservation.

  The excuse for military campaign began to shrink to the point that it hardly existed at all. Muhammad told his followers that Muslims were meant to rule over other people. Supremacist teachings became the driving force behind Jihad (see also MYTH: Muhammad Waged War Only in Self-Defense) and Jihad became the driving force behind Islam.

  The brutal conquest of the people of Khaybar, a peaceful farming community that was not at war with the Muslims, is a striking example. Muhammad marched in secret, took them by surprise and easily defeated them. He had many of the men killed, simply for defending their town. He enslaved women and children and had surviving men live on the land as virtual serfs, paying Muslims an ongoing share of their crops not to attack them again.

  Muhammad suspected that the town’s treasurer was holding out and had his men barbarically torture the poor fellow by building a fire on his chest until he revealed the location of hidden treasure. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved Torture).

  Afterwards, the prophet of Islam beheaded the man and “married” his widow on the same day (she first had to pass through the hands of one of his lieutenants). Given that the woman’s father was also killed by Muhammad, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that true love had very little to do with this “marriage.”

  A Life of Hedonism and Narcissism

  Muhammad’s personal life became the picture of hedonism and excess, all justified by frequent “revelations” from an increasingly arbitrary and capricious god In his later years, he frequently used his influence for purely personal goals, including sex, wealth and power. Allah’s authority for him to pursue these earthly ambitions is even immortalized in the Quran (suras 33 and 66, particularly).

  The same man who earlier in his career had justified his claims as a prophet by saying that he “asked for no reward” from others, reversed course and began to demand a fifth or more of all booty taken from conquered tribes. According to his biographers, he became fat from living off this enormous share of ill-gotten gain. (See also MYTH: Muhammad was a Brave Warrior who Trusted in Allah to Protect him)

  In the span of a dozen years, he married eleven women and had access to an array of sex slaves (see MYTH: Muhammad Married Multiple Women as a Favor to them). When he wanted a woman, even if she were the wife of another man, his own daughter-in-law, or a child as young as 6-years-old (see MYTH: Muhammad Condemned Pedophilia), Muhammad was able to justify his lust and inevitable consummation with an appeal to Allah’s revealed will for his sex life – which was then preserved forever in the Quran, to be faithfully memorized by future generations for whom it has no possible relevance.

  The first verse of Sura 66 is a good example of this. It was narrated by Muhammad to his wives shortly after two of them pressured him into not visiting a favorite sex slave:

  O Prophet! why do you forbid (yourself) that which Allah has made lawful for you, seeking to please your wives? (Quran 66:1)
  Allah (according to Muhammad) was so upset with his prophet for denying himself an afternoon of pleasure with the concubine that Allah had provided for him that it was a good thing for Muhammad that Allah was a forgiving and merciful god! (For the Muslim faithful, it must surely be a source of embarrassment that Allah evidently had more interest in Muhammad’s personal sex life than he did about tolerance or universal love. The god of Islam encourages sex with slaves in several other places as well).

  Muhammad used eternal paradise and damnation to solicit strict obedience to his every command: “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Whoever obeys me will enter Paradise, and whoever disobeys me will not enter it’” (Bukhari 92.384).

  Islam became centered completely around its founder. Of all the prophets, new converts are required to affirm only the legitimacy of Muhammad. The Muslim leader even shares the Shahada with Allah (“There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger”). To this day, every Muslim must bow down five times a day “toward” Muhammad’s birthplace (Islam’s “prophet” did not know the earth was round).

  The prophet of Islam was also an extremely superstitious person, leaving many bizarre rules for Muslims to follow, including which direction they should defecate and how many stones they should wash their anus with afterwards (any odd number… for anyone who’s curious). (See also MYTH: Muhammad did Away with Superstition). Sketchy hygiene apparently left him with an annoying lice infection.

  Not content with waiting for Allah to act on his behalf, Muhammad had personal critics executed, including poets. One of these was a mother of five children, who was stabbed to death by Muhammad’s envoy after a suckling infant was removed from her breast (see MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Women). Other innocent people were killed merely because they were of a different religion, sometimes including children (see MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Children).

  The glaring double standards of Islam were ingrained by the prophet of Islam during his lifetime. This included commands to execute apostates (those who wish to leave Islam) and evict people of other religions from their homes.

  An elderly woman named Umm Qirfa once ran afoul of Muhammad merely by fighting back when her tribe was targeted by Muslim raiders. Muhammad’s adopted son tied the woman’s legs separately to two camels, then set the camels off in opposite directions, tearing the woman’s body in two. He also killed her two sons – presumably in gruesome fashion – and made her daughter into a sex slave. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed the Elderly).

  Today’s Muslims inherit this legacy of self-consumption and disregard for those outside the faith. They may or may not agree with terrorist attacks on non-Muslims, but they are nearly united in their belief that the victims have no right to strike back, even if it is in self-defense.

  The Quran distinguishes Muslims from others, bestowing the highest praise for believers while heaping the vilest condemnation on those outside the faith. Islam is a true supremacist ideology. (See also Is the Quran Hate Speech?)

  The Taking of Mecca

  Though many of the Arab and Jewish tribes were eliminated and absorbed through military victory and forced conversion, the city of Mecca remained.

  In 628, six years after fleeing, Muhammad’s followers were allowed to re-enter the city under an agreement whereby he set aside his title as “Prophet of Allah.” This was a temporary ploy that enabled him to gain a political foothold in the city through the same “fifth column” activities that are still used today by organizations such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which use their host’s language of religious tolerance to disguise an ulterior agenda that includes systematic discrimination against non-Muslims.

  Many of his followers were disappointed that Muhammad had made concessions to the Meccans, not understanding how it actually fit perfectly with his ultimate agenda of domination. It was during this time that he led the campaign against the Khaybar, to assuage their lust for blood, women and loot.

  Technically, Muhammad was the first to break the treaty with the Meccans when he violated the portion of it that restricted him from accepting members of the other tribe into his camp. His own people also staged deadly raids on Meccan caravans (see MYTH: The Meccans were the First to Break the Treaty of Hudaibiya). Although he evidently had no personal obligation to the treaty, the prophet of Islam held the other party to the letter of the law, particularly after he amassed the power to conquer in overwhelming fashion.

  The excuse that Muhammad eventually used to march his armies into Mecca was provided when a tribe allied to the Meccans conducted a raid on a tribe allied with the Medinans. Although a true man of peace would have heeded the fact that his enemy did not want war, and used non-violent means to resolve the tension while respecting sovereignty, Muhammad merely wanted power and vengeance. (See also MYTH: Muhammad always Chose Peace over War).

  In just under a decade, Muhammad had evolved from trying to sell himself as a Judeo-Christian prophet, seeking followers, to an Arab warlord, seeking subjects, slaves and total dominance. The early Quran (of Mecca) tells unbelievers to ‘follow the example’ of Muhammad or suffer Hell. The later Quran (of Medina) tells unbelievers to ‘obey’ Muhammad or suffer death.

  Following Mecca’s surrender, Muhammad put to death those who had previously insulted him (see also MYTH: Muhammad was a Forgiving Man). One of the persons sentenced was his former scribe, who had written revelations that Muhammad said were from Allah. The scribe had previously recommended changes to the wording that Muhammad offered (based on some of the bad grammar and ineloquent language of “Allah”) and Muhammad agreed. This caused the scribe to apostatize, based on his belief that real revelations should have been immutable.

  Although the scribe escaped death by “converting to Islam” at the point of a sword, others weren’t so lucky. One was a slave girl who was executed on Muhammad’s order because she had written songs mocking him.

  In what would also become the model for future Muslim military conquests, those Meccans who would not convert to Islam were required to accept third-class status. Not surprisingly, almost the entire city – which had previously rejected his message – immediately “converted” to Islam once Muhammad came back with a sword in this hand. This included has adversary, Abu Sufyan, who was bluntly ordered to “Submit and testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before you lose your head.”

  Those who would not convert to Islam were banned from the city a few months later – again underscoring the dual ethics of Islam. When Muhammad was previously banned from Mecca, he described it as a “persecution” that justified his “slaughter” of those who prevented him from performing the Haj. Yet, when he attained power, he immediately chased anyone who would not convert to Islam from Mecca and prevented them from performing the Haj.

  To this day, people of other religions are barred even from entering Mecca, the city where Muhammad was free to preach in contradiction to the established religion. Islam is far less tolerant even than the more primitive Arab religion that it supplanted. A person preaching the original Arab polytheism on the streets of Mecca today would be quickly executed.

  Jihad and Jizya

  Tellingly, some of the most violent verses in the Quran were handed down following Muhammad’s ascension to power, when there was no threat to the Muslim people. The 9th Sura of the Quran exhorts Muslims to Jihad and dominance over other religions:

  “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” (9:29)

  The verse that follows curses Christians and Jews by name and says “May Allah destroy them” (as with other sections of the Quran, it is unclear whether it is Allah or Muhammad speaking).

  Before his death, Muhammad ordered 30,000 men to march on Christian lands (which were Byzantine at the time). It is possible that he believed false rumors of an army amassed against him, but there is absolutely no evidence of such a force having been assembled. Instead, Muhammad subjugated the local people and extorted “protection” money from them – something that has come to be known as the jizya (a tax that non-Muslims pay to Muslims).

  Another episode from this period that offers insight into the legacy of Muhammad is the forced conversion of the al-Harith, one of the last Arab tribes to hold out against Muslim hegemony. Muhammad gave the chief of the tribe three days to accept Islam before sending his army to destroy them.

  Not surprisingly, the entire people immediately embraced the Religion of Peace!

  Most Arab tribes recognized Muhammad’s quest for power and wisely pledged their political allegiance without a fight. This quickly presented a problem for his core band of followers, however, since they had become used to living off of what could be stolen from others via raids and battle.

  Since it was against the rules to attack fellow Muslims, Muhammad began demanding tribute from his new “converts” instead, but this proved to be less profitable than the jizya – not to mention that it carried the risk of internal resentment and strife.

  Khaybar, the remote Jewish city that had been turned into a sharecropper state on behalf of its Muslim masters was a more preferable economic model for a growing Islamic empire that had become dependent on extortion justified by religious superiority.

  Years before attacking Christian and Persian lands, Muhammad wrote to governors in each, telling them, “embrace Islam and you will be safe.” There was no mention of oppression or liberation cited as a justification. The only threat these people faced would be from Muslim armies. (Only six years later, 4,000 peasants in the modern-day Palestinian region would be slaughtered for defending their homes).

  At the time, the wealth of other nations was an open source of envy among Muhammad’s followers, which he promised to rectify. The subsequent military expansion that he set in motion may have been sanctioned by Allah and powered by religious zealotry, but the underlying motives of money, sex, slaves and power were no less worldly than any other conqueror of the time.

  The Legacy of Islamic Imperialism

  Muhammad died of a fever in 632 at the age of 63, with his violent religion spread over most of Arabia. His method of forcing others to convert under duress had several negative consequences, beginning with the civil wars that were immediately engaged in following his death. Many tribes wanted out of Islam and had to be kept in the empire via horrific violence.

  Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who was literally forced to “embrace” Islam at the point of a sword actually had the last laugh. He skillfully worked his own family into the line of succession and his son, Muawiya, became the heir to Muhammad’s empire at the expense of the prophet’s own family. In fact, Abu Sufyan almost lived to witness his son and grandson kill off Muhammad’s own grandchildren and assume control of the Islamic empire.

  Muhammad’s failure to leave a clear successor resulted in a deep schism that quickly devolved into violence and persists to this day as the Sunni/Shia conflict. His own family fell apart and literally went to war with each other in the first few years. Thousands of Muslims were killed fighting each other in a battle between Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, and his adopted son, Ali.

  Infidels fared no better. Through Muhammad’s teachings and example, his followers viewed worldly life as a constant physical battle between the House of Peace (Dar al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). Muslims are instructed to invite their enemies to either embrace Islam, pay jizya (protection money), or die.

  Over the next fourteen centuries, the bloody legacy of this extraordinary individual would be a constant challenge to those living on the borders of the Islam’s political power. The violence that Muslim armies would visit on people across North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and into Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent is a tribute to a founder who practiced and promoted subjugation, rape, murder and forced conversion.

  In Muhammad’s words: “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them…” (Bukhari 8:387)

  It is certainly the basis not just for modern day terror campaigns against Western infidels (and Hindus and Buddhists) but also the broad apathy that Muslims across the world have to the violence, which is an obvious enabler.

• Sakira

  March 4, 2013 1:21 am

  Reply

  fter one successful battle, Muhammad tells his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. After the notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took one of the widows he had just made, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.