Muslims killing Jews.
“Believe
in My [Allah’s] revelation [the Koran], which is confirming your [the Jews]
scriptures; do not be the first one to deny My revelation… Do not mix the Truth
with falsehood, or knowingly conceal the truth.” – Koran, 2:40-42
Many
Muslims claims that when Muhammad first arrived in Medina the Jewish tribes
reacted peacefully to him and accepted his civil leadership.
One
of the reasons why the Jews acquiesced, Muslims argue, is that many Jews
believed - or hoped - that Muhammad would eventually convert to Judaism and
thus increase Jewish power in central Arabia. This is in contrast to the
well-known historical fact that Judaism has never been a proselytising
religion. Islam, on the other hand, has always been a proselytising (or
converting) religion. Indeed this is seen when Muslims tell us that, at this
time, several Jewish families converted to Islam (rather than Muslim families
being converted to Islam).
It
is claimed that the case of dispute between Jew and Muslim occurred because the
Jews were angry that Muhammad did not convert to Judaism.
The
story then continues that as a result of Muhammad’s non-conversion to Judaism,
as well as other things, that
“Jewish
clan leaders began a vicious propaganda campaign against Muhammad, and a lot of
slanderous talk was directed at Muslims [by the Jews].”
Indeed,
because the Jews didn’t convert to Islam, it is not surprising that, as a
result, Muhammad thought that such Jewish “tribes were not examples of the best
in Judaism.”
Of
course, it wasn’t only Jewish non-conversion that angered Muhammad. The Koran
itself accused these Jews of the following:
i)
Of
practising racial discrimination and hypocrisy.
ii)
Of
not following the teachings of Moses and that their customs had no authority
from God [Allah].
iii)
Of
not accepting Muhammad as a new prophet despite the fact that ‘Jewish leaders
often predicted to the Arabs [at that time] that a new prophet would come and
destroy them and their idols.”
There
are other aspects of Judaism that the Koran questions and then condemns:
i)
‘Jewish
law is overly harsh without sanction from God [Allah].’ – Koran, 2:140
ii)
‘Rabbis
have not done a good job of influencing their people to lead moral lives.’ –
Koran, 5:78:81
iii)
‘The
Jews of Medina engaged in slander and misinformation in their intrigues against
Islam, and they publicly taunted and were disrespectful of the prophet
Muhammad.’ – Koran, 4:46
iv)
‘Jews
assert that Abraham and his immediate descendents were Jewish, but that is
rejected in the Qur’an.’ – Koran, 2:140
More
importantly than all this. Yes Muslims saw – and still see - the Jews as a
‘People of the Book’. But was/is that a good thing? Not for the Jews then or
Jews today. Precisely because they were a People of the Book Muhammad
expected the Jews ‘to look at Islam and accept it as the best expression of the
messages of Abraham and Moses’. There’s more than that. Muslims believed that
by
“accepting
Islam… the Jewish people can perfect their faith and bring themselves back
under the terms of the covenant between Moses and God [Allah]…”
But
the Jews, on the whole, didn’t do any of these things. The People of the Book (quite rightly so) rejected Muhammad and Islam and what they claimed about Abraham, Moses and so
on. So rather than Jews being People of the Book giving them a positive status
in Islam, it does the exact opposite! The Koran shows us, or tells us, that
Jews were wrong to reject Muhammad. That they were a sinful and bad people. And
then, of course, as we have seen, the Koran lays out a whole list of Jewish sins,
crimes and vices. So much for being a People of the Book!
It
is not surprising, then, that conflict occurred between the Jews and Muslims of
Medina and Arabia. More correctly, it is no surprise that Muhammad himself
decided to crackdown and even annihilate the Jews of that area and beyond.
Many
Muslims argue that when Muhammad was alive, the Jewish tribes of Medina, and no
doubt elsewhere in Arabia and the Arab world generally, played one Arab tribe
against another and, in so doing, asserted a certain political dominance there.
This clashes with the often-repeated historical fact that it was Arab tribes
themselves who were always fighting one another - without the malign influence
of the Jews. After all, Islam, or Muhammad himself, reacted against a fierce
and obsessive Arabic tribalism that simply didn’t require the Jews, or anyone
else, to get them to fight one another, just like they do to this very day.
Again,
Muslims portray this bit of history from a Muslim perspective or bias. They say
that Jewish ‘tribes engaged the Muslims in battle’. And that the ‘first tribe
to pick a fight with the Muslims was the Banu Qaynuqa’. So, isn’t it strange
that given the warlike nature of Muhammad and his fellow Muslims, which Muslims
acknowledge and are even proud of, it was Jewish tribes who ‘engaged Muslims in
battle’ and the not the other way around? That it was the Banu Qaynuqa tribe that
‘picked a fight’ and not any of the Muslim tribes?
It
is all this which clearly explains the well-known Koranic feature of
‘abrogation’. That is, in the parts of the Koran which discuss Muhammad’s early
career, when he knew the Jews and didn’t want to push them too far and too
soon. Thus the Koran is seemingly sympathetic towards the Jews and Judaism and
even speaks of ‘peace’ between them. However, as Muslims themselves
acknowledge, “the Qur’an grew increasingly harsh in its tone as all the
aforementioned events unfolded.” In other words, Muhammad and his cronies kept on changing the Qu'ran at will and whenever the situation called for, new verses were "revealed".
Yet
despite all this Muslim acknowledgement of conflict with a People of the Book,
even today Muslims still betray an unquestioning attitude to all Muhammad’s
actions in this period – conflict or no conflict. They still believe that
“Muhammad
kept his end of the treaties at all times, and many Jews converted to Islam of
their own free will. He never forced any conversions nor did he act in an unjust
manner.”
There’s
more of the same:
“The
expulsion of the three organised Jewish tribes was due to their own duplicity
and treachery.”
One
conclusion you can make about all this is that Muslims seem intent on fostering
the idea that they were not against Judaism per se, but they were
against the Jews! Thus the antipathy in often painted, indirectly and
often unknowingly, as being more ethnically- or even racially-based than
strictly religious.
For
example, this writer says that ‘Islam is not anti-Jewish’. Instead it merely
‘considers the collective failure of the Jewish people to live up to God’s
[Allah’s] revelations’.
It
was not Judaism that was at fault, despite the fact that Muhammad clearly did
think that as well, but the Jews themselves. This, clearly, is as close to pure
ethnic - or even racial - prejudice as you could possibly get without being
unhistorical.
-
By PAM
JDL UK Team












