Assassinations

Confucius said: You can judge a man by seeing how his words match his deeds.  Lying and murdering are great sins in Islam. Yet Muhammad himself ordered his followers to lie and to assassinate his enemies.

QUOTE FROM BUKHARI, VOLUME 5, #369

Narrated Jabir Abdullah:

Allah's messenger said "Who is willing to kill Ka`b bin al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His apostle?" Thereupon Maslama got up saying, "O Allah's messenger! Would you like that I kill him?" The prophet said, "Yes". Maslama said, "Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Ka`b). The prophet said, "You may say it."

Maslama went to Ka`b and said, "That man (i.e. Muhammad) demands Sadaqa (i.e. Zakat) [taxes] from us, and he has troubled us, and I have come to borrow something from you." On that, Ka`b said, "By Allah, you will get tired of him!" Maslama said, "Now as we have followed him, we do not want to leave him unless and until we see how his end is going to be. Now we want you to lend us a camel load or two of food." Ka`b said, "Yes, but you should mortgage something to me." Maslama and his companion said, "What do you want?" Ka`b replied, "Mortgage your women to me." They said, "How can we mortgage our women to you and you are the most handsome of the Arabs?" Ka`b said, "Then mortgage your sons to me." They said, "How can we mortgage our sons to you? Later they would be abused by the people's saying that so and so has been mortgaged for a camel load of food. That would cause us great disgrace, but we will mortgage our arms to you."

Maslama and his companion promised Ka`b that Maslama would return to him. He came to Ka`b at night along with Ka`b's foster brother, Abu Na'ila. Ka`b invited them to come into his fort and then he went down to them. His wife asked him, "Where are you going at this time?" Ka`b replied, None but Maslama and my (foster) brother Abu Na'ila have come." His wife said, "I hear a voice as if blood is dropping from him." Ka`b said, "They are none by my brother Maslama and my foster brother Abu Na'ila. A generous man should respond to a call at night even if invited to be killed."

Maslama went with two men. So Maslama went in together with two men, and said to them, "When Ka`b comes, I will touch his hair and smell it, and when you see that I have got hold of his head, strike him. I will let you smell his head."

Ka`b bin al-Ashraf came down to them wrapped in his clothes, and diffusing perfume. Maslama said, "I have never smelt a better scent than this." Ka`b replied, "I have got the best Arab women who know how to use the high class of perfume." Maslama requested Ka`b "Will you allow me to smell your head?" Ka`b said "yes." Maslama smelt it and made his companions smell it as well. Then he requested Ka`b again, "Will you let me (smell your head)?" Ka`b said "Yes". When Maslama got a strong hold of him, he said (to his companions) "Get at him!" So they killed him and went to the prophet and informed him."

The stories of Muhammad's plots and assassinations are among the most damaging stories about Muhammad. May modern Muslims prefer to deny the authenticity of these hadithes than try to explain them. However, this is not that easy. These hadithes are classified as sahih (authentic). Why should anyone forge such hadithes in the first place? No intelligent person would accept that Muslims, who fabricated so many false stories about Muhammad’s “miracles” to make him look saintly and a superior being, would fabricate stories that implicate him as a gangster godfather and an assassin. That would have defied their faith and defies our intelligence. 

Would a believer say such damaging things about Muhammad if they were not true? In fact the Muslims in their fanatical zeal disregard even human reason to save Muhammad from blemish. While their loyalty is noteworthy, their intellectual honesty is deplorable. Why in the world believers would fabricate so many stories about assassination plots of their prophet? Why Bukhari and Muslim would listen and write hadithes of such horrible nature if they were not true? Why so many Muslims read them for so many centuries and no on denied them?  If you pay attention to the details in those stories you would admit that they couldn’t be fabricated. There are names of the people involucrated and there are so many of them. These were people known to everyone. 

There are many phony hadithes that anyone could have made-up. Like the one that says water flew out of the fingers of Muhammad, or the stones moved around to hide him when he went to answer the call of the nature, or that he started to praise Allah as soon as he was born. These are unintelligent stories that have no base. Nevertheless the believers loved to hear them because they strengthened their faith. But the accounts of his assassinations are not the kind of stories that someone would willingly fabricate for the person he loves most. 

It is not just one story that portrays Muhammad as an assassin. There are many of them, reported by several people and preserved by several Hadith collectors. All of them corroborate each other. Those who don’t believe in hadithes as religious source of guidance, must accept them as historic sources. The stories of Muhammad's assassinations do not contain religious guidance, (though it became the standard of conduct for Muslims throughout the history) but they are “historic” facts.  

There are two categories of Muslims. The first are those that unabashedly defend Muhammad and whatever he did irrespective of any consideration for decency, rightness or justice. The second group, are those that dishonestly deny the facts about him and try to twist the evidence to make Muhammad acceptable by modern morality and values.

I don’t want to pass the judgment as which one is better, but I certainly admire the honesty of the first group that the second group lacks. Sometimes ago I had a debate with someone representing the first category. He had no difficulty accepting the stories of Muhammad’s assassinations and tried to prove Muhammad’s greatness by reminding me that the assassin who went to kill him hurt his ankle and Muhammad touched it and it healed. This gentleman could not think that if Muhammad had powers to heal he would have been able to kill his enemies by remote control and would not have needed to recruit an assassin.

However in my view the greatest enemies of democracy and reform are those pertaining to the second group. These are the ones disguised as intellectuals and modernists. They want to present Islam as a peaceful and tolerant religion. They lie. They twist the facts. They hide the evidence not because they truly believe that Islam is a religion of peace, for anyone who reads that book knows that this is not so. They lie to gain advantages, especially in the West as long as Islam is in the minority and as long as it is weak. But as soon as Islam become powerful, all that sweet talk of tolerance is put aside, the mask will be off and the real face of Islam as evinced by its founder will become manifest. Then those phony smiles give way to showing the fangs. This is precisely how the Prophet himself acted. When he was in Mecca and weak, he spoke of tolerance, but when he became powerful he forgot all that talk and started his campaign of genocide of the Jews and the Christians of Arabia.  

For more stories of assassinations plotted by Muhammad and executed by his followers click here.