Freedom of opinion and expression in Islam (Part 6)

We had noted in the previous article that after the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) migrated from Mecca to Medina, he faced several types of enemies, and we dealt with the explanation and analysis of the first type, represented by the Quraish, who fought the Messenger and showed enmity towards him.

Here we begin to talk about the second type, namely, the Jews of Medina, whom the Prophet entrusted with the condition that they do not fight him and do not turn his enemy against him, and that they support him when he is raided.

When the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) came to Medina, he found Jews and polytheists settled there, yet he did not think devising a policy of expulsion or confiscation and strife, but rather accepted their presence willingly, and he offered to make a pact with the two parties on equal terms, guaranteeing that they have their religion to practice and he has his. (1)

This document became the first constitution in this era that stipulated freedom of worship and pure cooperation between all the citizens of Medina, including Muslims, Jews and polytheists, in order to spread tranquility throughout the city and to strike at the hands of the enemies and the plotters of sedition, whatever their religion.

It clearly stated that freedom of religion is guaranteed.

There was not the slightest thought about fighting a sect or coercing a weak person. Rather, the clauses in this pact joined forces to support the oppressed, protect the neighbor, and protect private and public rights, and God’s support descended on the most prominent and pious in it, and His anger descended on those who betray and deceive.

The Muslims and the Jews agreed to defend Yathrib (as Medina was known at the time) if an enemy attacked it, and they recognized the freedom to leave the city for those who wanted to leave it and the freedom to stay there for those who preserved its sanctity.

The document raised the importance of the idea of “citizenship”, because the external danger that threatens the homeland (Medina) overrides following a particular religion, and therefore the resistance here must be “national” and not religious, and defense is a right and duty upon all citizens of different religious affiliations and doctrinal differences.

Free debate

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was not satisfied just with this constitution, but he also presented a wonderful example of self-respect and etiquette of dialogue, even when he disagreed with the Jews. How many dialogues took place between him and those who opposed him and rejected his prophethood and message, and how many questions were asked to him and he answered them to prove in a practical way that differences of opinion are permissible, dialogue is allowed without restrictions, and compulsion is not found.

The Messenger debated with them in the best manner, despite his knowledge that their questions did not aim to reach the truth or reality but were a means of provocation, skepticism and creating confusion among the Muslims. But the Messenger insisted on adhering to the method he was commanded to, the Noble Quran: {and only debate with them in the best manner} [Surah Al-Nahl: 125].

The Jews asked him about the Hour, and it was a wrong question full of mines, because they knew that the matter is not from human knowledge, as it is something that God Almighty has singled out for Himself: {They ask you [O Prophet] regarding the Hour, “When will it be?” Say, “That knowledge is only with my Lord. He alone will reveal it when the time comes. It is too tremendous for the heavens and the earth and will only take you by surprise.” They ask you as if you had full knowledge of it. Say, “That knowledge is only with God, but most people do not know.”} [Surah Al-A'raf: 187].

And they asked him about the spirit, and it is one of the secrets of existence that is unique to divine knowledge alone: {They ask you [O Prophet] about the spirit. Say, “Its nature is known only to my Lord, and you [O humanity] have not been given except little knowledge.”} [Surah Al-Isra: 85].

And they asked him about Dhul Qarnayn: {They ask you [O Prophet] about Dhul Qarnayn. Say, “I will recite to you something of his narrative.”} [Surah Al-Kahf: 83].

These questions were not aimed at knowledge, rather their main aim was embarrassment and maliciousness! (2)

Although the Messenger was aware of all their real goals, he did not take away the right that they abused (freedom of opinion), and he continued to implement the divine law, as the constant that is common in all the aforementioned verses is: “They ask you about... Say...”

Every question has an answer, and the questioner has the freedom to ask what he wants without the intentions being scrutinized. There is no taking away the right of Jews or others to ask questions. As for latent intentions, they should not represent an obstacle and should not lead to repression or subjugation!

Banu Qaynuqa

A long period of time had passed and the Jews were antagonizing the Muslims, so the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) stood up to them so that they may turn away from their transgression.

When the Muslims were victorious in the Battle of Badr, that great victory, anger consumed the hearts of the Jews, and their envy of the Muslims reached a high degree. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) had sent two men to give glad tidings to the people of Madinah of that victory, and was a big deal to the Jews, so Ka’b ibn Al-Ashraf said, “Is this right? Do you see that Muhammad killed those who named these two men? By God, the inner part of the earth is better than its outer surface.”

Ka'b used to say poetry and he was good at it, and the Jews of Hijaz had prevailed with his wealth, so when he was certain of the news and saw the captives, he went out to the Quraysh lamenting their dead and used his poems to incite to fight the Prophet (peace be upon him), and then he returned to Medina and started inciting the people against the Muslims.

The Jews of Banu Qaynuqa stayed among the Muslims in Medina, and they were the wealthiest of the Jews and the most courageous and tyrannical. There was an alliance between them and Abdullah bin Ubayy, the leader of the hypocrites in Medina, before Islam, so this increased their injustice. They thought that Abdullah would not neglect their oath, so they tried to tempt a Muslim woman, revealing her private parts in a gathering in the market. This act, prior to Islam (in accordance with the Arabs), would have caused war that would last for many years during which entire tribes would perish. When the woman cried for help, a Muslim man jumped on the perpetrator and killed him, so his Jewish people rallied against the Muslim and killed him.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) decided to put an end to these actions, which began with treachery and inciting people against the Muslims and then ended with tempting their women and attempting to desecrate their honor in full view and hearing of all people, so he began with the Jews of Banu Qaynuqa, because they mixed with the Muslims in Medina and were more provocative and treacherous than others. Perhaps what would happen to them would deters others and compel them to respect their association with the Muslims and appreciate the covenant that was still in force between them.

Thus, he declared war on them and besieged them for fifteen nights in their fortresses until they yielded to his authority. Then they asked him to release them and that they be able to depart from Medina with their women and offspring, and he could have the rest of the wealth from the weapons, so he released them according to that, and they left Medina to Daraa in the Levant, and they stayed there.

What happened to Banu Qaynuqa in the second year of the Hijrah should have been enough to make the Jews who remained near Medina think about their oppression against the Muslims and not fulfilling their vows, but their strength and wealth blinded them from such thinking. So what happened to Banu Qaybuqa did not benefit them, but rather they and the hypocrites went on plotting against the Muslims and secretly contacting Quraish in order to agree with them on eliminating the Muslims.

Banu Nadir

When the third year of the Hijrah came, the Quraish came in large numbers wanting to attack Medina, so the Jews of Banu Nadir began plotting against the Muslims and showed enmity and hatred for them. The Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) asked them to loan their wealth to God to fight in his way, as they believe in Him as the Muslims believe in Him, while the polytheistic Quraish worship graven images and idols. So they said to him, “You claim that our Lord borrows our wealth, but only the poor borrow from the rich, so if what you say is true, then God is poor and we are rich.” So God revealed the following about them: {Indeed, God has heard those [among the Jews] who said, “Allah is poor; we are rich!” We have certainly recorded their slurs and their killing of prophets unjustly. Then We will say, “Taste the torment of burning.”} [Surah Aal Imran: 181].

Thus, the Jews refused to help the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) with some of their wealth, even though the covenant they took upon themselves stipulated that of them.

The Muslims were suffered in this battle (the Battle of Uhud), so the Banu Nadir gloated and revealed what they were hiding of enmity and hatred, and they began to challenge the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and question his prophecy due to the defeat that happened to the Muslims in this battle. They used to say to those who sat with them that Muhammad was only seeking wealth and that no prophet was ever afflicted like this, as his body and his Companions were injured.

With this, the Banu Nadir broke their covenant with the Muslims, and they did not perform the duty of defending this homeland that sheltered them, so it became the right of the Muslims to expel them from it, as they had expelled the Banu Qaynuqa before them, to give other Jews a new lesson, teach them to keep their covenants, and remind them of what they ought to do in this regard towards this homeland that unites them all.

The Prophet (God’s prayers and peace be upon him) sent Muhammad ibn Maslamah al-Ansari to tell them, “Get out of this town and do not neighbor us in it. I have postponed you ten times, so whoever of you is seen after that, I will have his neck cut off.”

When Muhammad ibn Maslamah informed them of this, they decided to leave, as they knew what had happened to Banu Qaynuqa before them, but Abdullah bin Ubayy sent to them, saying, “Do not leave your homes, and stay in your fortresses, for with me are two thousand of my people who will enter your fortresses and die from the last of them.”

So they were deceived by the words of Abdullah bin Ubayy, and they sent to the Prophet (peace be upon him), saying, “We will not leave our homes, so do what you like.” 

They were encamping in the Bathan Valley two or three miles on the outskirts of Medina, so the Prophet (peace be upon him) marched and besieged them for twenty-five nights, and Abdullah bin Ubayy did not move to help them. When they despaired of him, they sent to the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) to evacuate them and restrain from killing them, and that they had nothing of their wealth that camels carried except weaponry. He complied with what they requested, so they left their valley, and some of them went to Khaybar and stayed there, and some of them went to Daraa and stayed next to Banu Qaynuqa.

Banu Qurayza

Among the Jews, the tribes of Banu Qurayza remained in Medina, and this indicates that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not expel Banu Nadir and Banu Qaynuqa before them because they were Jews but because they had betrayed the covenant they signed with the Muslims, and what happened to them was the minimum penalty for betraying the covenant in that era.

The issue here is about national treason and has nothing to do with religious difference. The Jews neglected their homeland, betrayed the covenant of citizenship, and allowed themselves to conspire against the interests of the homeland, which included Muslims, Jews and polytheists. Every attempt to evaluate the position of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) on a religious basis is in vain due to the fact that the position of the Prophet was patriotic, not religious.

The leaders of Banu Nadir had worked to provoke the Quraish and the Arab tribes against the Muslims, and they were blinded by their hatred of the Muslims as a result of what had happened to them (their removal from Medina) to the extent that they sold their religion. When they came to the Quraish and invited them to wage war against the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Quraish said to them, “O Jews, you are the people of the First Book, and you are qualified to judge what we and Muhammad have become in disagreement about, so is our religion better or his religion?” The Jews of Banu Nadir said, “Your religion is better than his religion.” (3)

This was the biggest scandal that happened to the Jews throughout history, because the religion of Muhammad is monotheism, while the religion of Quraish is polytheism, and the religion of the Jews is monotheism, not polytheism. How could they judge that the religion of polytheism is better than the religion of monotheism? So God reproached them for this: {Do you not see how those given a share of the Scripture now believe in idols and evil powers? They say of the disbelievers that they are more rightly guided than the believers} [Surah Al-Nisa: 51].

Then He ruled that this was apostasy from their religion: {You see many of them taking the disbelievers as allies. Truly wicked are their misdeeds, which have earned them God’s wrath, and they will be in everlasting torment. Had they believed in God, the Prophet, and what has been revealed to him, they would have never taken those [pagans] as allies. But most of them are rebellious} [Surah Al-Ma'idah: 80-81].

The Prophet referred to in the two verses is Moses (peace be upon him), and what is meant by what was revealed to him is the Torah.

The speeches against the Muslims intensified when they learned that the Banu Qurayza had broken their covenant and fallen into great terror, to the point that some of the hypocrites said, “Muhammad used to promise us that we would devour the treasures of Khosrow and Caesar, but none of us today is safe to go to the bathroom.”

Here, God provided compensation for the Muslims by His mercy and guided one of the leaders of the polytheists to Islam, Nuaym ibn Masoud Al-Ashja’i. He came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) in secret and informed him of his conversion to Islam, and he asked the Prophet to order him to do whatever he wanted, so the Prophet (peace be upon him) said to him, “You are only one man among us, so leave us if you can, for war is deception.” (4)

Nuaym ibn Masoud went to Banu Qurayza, and he had been a companion of theirs, so when they saw him, they welcomed him and offered him food and drink. He told them that he had come to them for something other than this and that he feared for them if they fought Muhammad that the Quraish would leave them and they would have no power, and that he thinks they should take a pledge from their nobles that they will be trusted in their hands before they fight alongside them. So they approved of what he indicated to them, and he ordered them to conceal his communication with them.

Then he went to the Quraish and told them that the Banu Qurayza regretted breaking the covenant of Muhammad and that they wanted to please him by taking seventy of Quraish’s nobles as pawns and then would submit them to the Prophet to kill them, and he asked them to conceal what he had told them.

When they sent message to Banu Qurayza to invite them to fight, thy asked them to give them a pledge that they would not leave them and go to Mecca, so they believed what Nuaym ibn Masoud had told them was true. They did not respond to the request of the pledge, and they also did not answer the request to fight, so the plan that had been between them was spoiled by this ingenious trick.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) performed a more brilliant deed than that of Nuaym ibn Masoud when he was able to bring two leaders from the leaders of the besieged army, Uyainah ibn Hisn and Al-Harith ibn Awf, to offer them a peace agreement separately on the condition that he would them a third of the fruits of Medina. Despite the failure of the deal because the leaders of the Ansar objected to it, Uyainah and Al-Harith returned to Quraish after they had committed this betrayal, filled with anxiety and fear that the Quraish had known about them.

The previous behaviors indicate the Messenger’s awareness of the world and the rules and customs that govern it. War is deception, psychological warfare is an enjoined means, deep religious faith does not mean dependence and submission to fate, and ideal principles do not live in the absolute, because they are the product of friction and interaction with reality.

The crime of Banu Qurayza was more severe than that of Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir, because they committed what is called in modern history the crime of high treason to their homeland against those who live under it and to their citizens with whom they are bound by a covenant of safety. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not give them anything after the departure of the Quraish, so he told his Companions, “None of you prays the afternoon prayer except in Banu Qurayza.” They besieged them for twenty-five nights, until they requested that they descend from their fortresses according to what the Banu Nadir had descended upon. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) refused anything but submission to his authority without any restrictions or conditions, they accepted to do so. Men from the Aws, due to an alliance that was between them before Islam, entered into their matter, and they asked the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) to treat them the same as he did the Banu Nadir, but he refused to oblige this. Rather he thought of politics and wisdom to hand over the issue of judgement on them to Saad ibn Muadh, the chief of the Aws, and Saad ruled that he should kill their men but not their women and children, and this is the ruling for high treason in all the ancient and modern laws. (5)

Thus, the treaty between the Muslims and the Jews of Medina ended with these disasters that befell them, because they were not faithful to it. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) put them off as much as he could and punished them for breaking the covenant, tribe after tribe, to give the rest of them time to review themselves, but they were not deterred and preferred aggression and betrayal after betrayal until they took full punishment for what they did.

In the next episode, we talk about the third type of enemies that the Prophet dealt with, and they are the hypocrites.

Footnotes:

1. Muhammad Al-Ghazali, “The Fiqh of Seerah”, p. 141

2. Dr. Abdul Mutaal Al-Saidi, “Freedom of Thought in Islam”, p. 85

3. Dr. Abdul Mutaal Al-Saidi, previous reference, p. 90

4. Dr. Abdul Mutaal Al-Saidi, previous reference, p. 94

5. Dr. Abdul Mutaal Al-Saidi, previous reference, p. 95