Muhammad (15 page)

Revolting as it seems to us today, almost everybody in Arabia would have expected Sa‘d’s judgment. According to the texts, not even the Qurayzah were surprised by the decision. The executions sent a grim message to the Jews of Khaybar, and the Bedouin would have noted that Muhammad did not shrink from retaliation. He had staged a defiant show of strength, which, it was hoped, would bring the conflict to an end. Change was coming to this desperate, primitive society, but for the time being, violence and killing on this scale were the norm.
⁶³

Nevertheless, the incident marks the nadir of Muhammad’s career. It is, however, important to note that the Qurayzah were not killed on religious or racial grounds. None of the other Jewish tribes in the oasis either objected or attempted to intervene, clearly regarding it as a purely political and tribal matter. A significant number of the Arab tribe of Kilab, the clients of Qurayzah, were also executed alongside the Jews. Muhammad had no ideological quarrel with the Jewish people. He once said, “He who wrongs or destroys a Jew or a Christian will have me to answer on the Day of Judgment.” The men of Qurayzah were executed for treason. The seventeen other Jewish tribes of Medina remained in the oasis, living on friendly terms with the Muslims for many years, and the Qur’an continued to insist that Muslims remember their spiritual kinship with the People of the Book:

Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner—unless it be such of them as are bent upon evil-doing—and say: “We believe in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, as well as that which has been bestowed upon you: for our God and your god is one and the same, and it is unto Him that We all surrender ourselves.”
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Later in the Islamic empires, Jews would enjoy full religious liberty and anti-Semitism would not become a Muslim vice until the Arab/Israeli conflict became acute in the mid-twentieth century.

The tragedy of Qurayzah may have seemed expedient to the Arabs of Muhammad’s time, but it is not acceptable to us today. Nor was it what Muhammad had set out to do. His original aim had been to end the violence of jahiliyyah, but he was now behaving like an ordinary Arab chieftain. He had felt impelled to go to war in order to achieve a final peace, but the fighting had unleashed a grim and vicious cycle of strike and counterstrike, atrocity, and retaliation, which violated essential principles of Islam. As he rode away from the village of Qurayzah towards a city that was still seething with resentment, Muhammad must have realized that he would have to find another way to end the conflict. Somehow he had to abandon this jahili behavior once and for all and find an entirely different solution.

Chapter Five

Salam

M
UHAMMAD’S VICTORY
over the Quraysh greatly enhanced his prestige in the peninsula. During the next few months, he capitalized on this, dispatching raiding parties against tribes who belonged to the Meccan confederacy, hoping to tighten the economic blockade that was damaging Qurayshan trade and attract some of the Syrian caravans to Medina. His continuing success made many of the Arabs question the validity of their traditional faith. They were pragmatic people, less interested in abstract speculation than in the effectiveness of a religious system. When the Meccan army had left Medina after the siege, the commander Khalid ibn al-Walid had cried: “Every man of sense now knows that Muhammad has not lied!”
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Even the most committed adherents of the old faith were beginning to agree. During a raid against one of the Meccan caravans, Muhammad’s former son-in-law Abu l-‘As, who had been ready to give up his family rather than accept Islam, was taken prisoner; Muhammad ordered that he be released and his merchandise returned to him, and this second act of generosity so impressed Abu l-‘As that after he had taken the goods back to Mecca, he made the hijrah, converted to Islam, and was reunited with Zaynab and their little daughter.

In Arabia as a whole, the tide had turned in Muhammad’s favor, but within Medina the opposite was true. There the conflict had become more venomous than ever; every day Ibn Ubayy insinuated that had
he
retained the leadership, Yathrib could have been pacified without incurring the lethal enmity of the most powerful city in Arabia. Muhammad’s enemies rarely attacked him openly, but conducted a somewhat underhanded smear campaign. His controversial attempt to improve the status of women was a godsend to them, and they began to circulate malicious and salacious rumors about his wives. Some made it known that they had their eye on some of the more attractive members of his harem and intended to marry them after his death—a suggestion that carried more than a hint of assassination.
²
It was whispered that Muhammad was now too old to satisfy his wives or that he had a testicular hernia.
³
There was a good deal of spiteful gossip about ‘A’isha and a young man called Safwan ibn al-Mu‘attal. When people crowded into his family quarters to put their questions and complaints to Muhammad, some of the men had actually insulted his wives before his very eyes. The situation was getting out of hand. At night, when it was cooler, Medina came to life, and people liked to walk about and socialize outside, enjoying the fresher air, but since the siege, women had been attacked on the streets. When the Prophet’s wives went out together, the Hypocrites had started to follow them, yelling obscene suggestions and making lewd gestures.
⁴
When challenged, they protested that in the darkness they had mistaken the women for slave girls, who were considered fair game for this type of harassment.

Muhammad was emotionally and physically drained by the strain of the last few years. He had always been emotionally dependent upon his women and this made him vulnerable. When he decided to take another wife, tongues started to wag again.
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Zaynab bint Jahsh had always been close to Muhammad; she was his cousin, but she was also the wife of Zayd, his adopted son. Muhammad had arranged the match himself shortly after the hijrah, even though Zaynab had been far from enthusiastic: Zayd was not physically pre-possessing and she may even then have been interested in Muhammad himself. Zaynab was now in her late thirties, but, despite the harsh climate and conditions of Arabia, she was still extremely beautiful. A pious woman, she was a skilled leather-worker and gave all the proceeds of her craft to the poor. Muhammad seems to have seen her with new eyes and to have fallen in love quite suddenly when he had called at her house one afternoon to speak to Zayd, who happened to be out. Not expecting any visitors, Zaynab had come to the door in dishabille, more revealingly dressed than usual, and Muhammad had averted his eyes hastily, muttering “Praise be to Allah, who changes men’s hearts!” Shortly afterwards, Zaynab and Zayd were divorced. The marriage had never been happy and Zayd was glad to release her. This story has shocked some of Muhammad’s Western critics who are used to more ascetic, Christian heroes, but the Muslim sources seem to find nothing untoward in this demonstration of their Prophet’s virility. Nor are they disturbed that Muhammad had more than four wives: why should God not give his prophet a few privileges? What scandalized his opponents in Medina was the fact that Zaynab had been married to Zayd: Arabs regarded adoption as conferring an almost biological relationship and there was much scandalized talk about incest. Muhammad was reassured on this point by a revelation that assured him that Allah himself desired the match and that it was not sinful to marry the spouse of an adopted child.
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‘A’isha, who was always prone to jealousy, happened to be with Muhammad when he received this divine message. How very convenient! she remarked tartly, “Truly thy Lord makes haste to do thy bidding!” As usual, tensions in the harem reflected divisions in the community as a whole: Muhammad’s marriage to one of his own cousins would further the political ends of the Prophet’s family, advancing the cause of the ahl al-beit.

Because of the scandal, Muhammad insisted that the entire community attend the wedding celebrations. The courtyard was crowded with guests, many of them hostile to the Prophet, and the atmosphere would not have been pleasant. Eventually the party began to break up, but a small group remained behind in Zaynab’s new apartment, apparently blissfully unaware that it was time for the bride and groom to be alone. Muhammad left the room and sat with his other wives, hoping that these tactless guests would take the hint. “How do you like your new companion?” ‘A’isha inquired acidly, when he dropped in on her. He eventually returned to Zaynab’s hut, where the revellers were finally being ushered out by his friend Anas ibn Malik. As he entered the room, Muhammad somewhat impatiently drew a curtain (
hijab
) between himself and Anas, uttering the words of a new revelation:

O you who have attained to faith! Do not enter the Prophet’s dwellings unless you are given leave; [and when invited] to a meal, do not come [so early as] to wait for it to be readied: but whenever you are invited, enter [at the proper time]; and when you have partaken of the meal, disperse without lingering for the sake of mere talk: that, behold, might give of-fence to the Prophet, and yet he might feel shy of [asking] you [to leave]: but God is not shy of [teaching you] what is right.

And as for the Prophet’s wives, whenever you ask them for anything that you need, ask them from behind a screen: this will but deepen the purity of your hearts and theirs.
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The revelation went on to ordain that Muhammad’s wives should not remarry after his death, and ordered them to wear their
jilbab
(which could refer to various garments) in a distinctive way, so that they could be recognized in the street and avoid harassment.
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The hijab verses have become extremely controversial.
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They would eventually—about three generations after the Prophet’s death—be used to justify the veiling of all women and their segregation in a separate part of the house. But they must be seen in context. They occur in Surah 33, which also deals with the siege, and must be considered against this frightening backdrop. These directives did not apply to all Muslim women, but only to Muhammad’s wives. They were prompted by the thinly disguised threats of Muhammad’s enemies, the aggressive encroachment upon his personal space, and the abuse to which his wives were subjected almost daily. The poisonous atmosphere of Medina after the siege had compelled Muhammad to change his personal arrangements. Henceforth there would be no open house; instead of crowding freely into his wives’ apartments, Muslims must approach them from behind a protective screen. The word
hijab
comes from the root
HJB
: to hide. The curtain established a threshold; it shielded a “forbidden” or “sacred” (haram) object, like the damask cloth that covered the Kabah. In times of vulnerability, women’s bodies often symbolize the endangered community, and in our own day, the hijab has acquired new importance in seeming to protect the ummah from the threat of the West.

Muhammad had not wanted to separate his private life from his public duties. He continued to take his wives on military expeditions, though they would now remain in their tent. But the other women of the ummah continued to move around the oasis freely. The hijab was not devised to divide the sexes. In fact, when the revelation had come down, the curtain had been drawn between two men—the Prophet and Anas—to separate the married couple from the hostile community. The introduction of the hijab was a victory for ‘Umar, who had been urging the Prophet to segregate his wives for some time—a somewhat superficial solution to a complex problem. Muhammad had wanted to change people’s attitudes, and the imposition of this external barrier was a compromise, because it did not require Muslims to exercise an internal control over their actions. But he gave in to ‘Umar, because of the crisis that was tearing Medina apart.

But the situation did not improve. A few weeks after the introduction of the hijab, Muhammad’s enemies orchestrated a vicious attack on ‘A’isha, which devastated the Prophet and almost succeeded in dividing the community.
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‘A’isha was an easy target. Everybody knew that she was Muhammad’s favorite. She was beautiful, spirited, proud of her prominent position, jealous, outspoken, not without egotism, and had doubtless made many enemies. On this occasion, Muhammad had chosen ‘A’isha to accompany him on an expedition against an ally of the Quraysh who had somewhat menacingly encamped a little closer to Medina than usual. According to Muhammad’s spies, the Quraysh had persuaded them to attack the oasis. It was a successful raid: the Muslims intercepted them at the Well of Muraysi on the Red Sea coast and managed to carry off two hundred camels, five hundred sheep, and two hundred of their women. Juwayriyyah bint al-Harith, daughter of the chief, was among the captives. ‘A’isha’s heart sank as soon as she set eyes on her, because Juwayriyyah was so pretty, and, sure enough, during the negotiations that followed the raid, Muhammad proposed marriage to seal the alliance with her father.

The Muslims camped at Muraysi for three days, but, despite the positive outcome of the ghazu, the simmering tension between the Emigrants and the Helpers escalated into a serious incident. While the Muslims were watering their camels at a well, local people from two different tribes—one confederated to the Quraysh, the other to the Khazraj—started to quarrel about a fairly trivial matter. Before long there was a full-scale brawl, and the combatants called upon the Muslim bystanders for help. The Emigrants rushed to the aid of the tribesmen who were allied to the Quraysh, while the Helpers from Khazraj rallied round their opponents. In a matter of moments, in direct violation of the Qur’an, Muslim was fighting Muslim. When they heard the news, ‘Umar and some of Muhammad’s other companions rushed in to stop this unseemly fighting, but Ibn Ubayy was enraged: how dared ‘Umar prevent the Khazraj from helping their own allies! “They seek to take precedence over us!” he cried. “By Allah, when we return to Medina, the higher and mightier of us will drive out the lower and the weaker.” A bystander ran immediately to report this to Muhammad, who paled when he heard this latest threat. ‘Umar wanted to have Ibn Ubayy executed immediately, but Muhammad restrained him: did he want it said that the Prophet killed his own companions?
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But he gave the Muslims orders to decamp immediately and begin the trek home, even though this meant travelling through the worst heat of the day—something he had never done before.

During one of the halts, ‘A’isha slipped away to relieve herself, and when she returned, found that she had mislaid her necklace. It had been a wedding gift from her mother, and she could not bear to lose it, so she went back to search for it. While she was gone, the men lifted her litter—duly shrouded with the hijab
—
onto her camel, assuming that she was safely inside, and the party moved off without her. ‘A’isha was not too distressed when she discovered the deserted campsite, because she knew that it was only a matter of time before somebody missed her. She sat down to wait and sure enough, her old friend Safwan ibn al-Mu‘attal, who had fallen behind the others, turned up and put her on the back of his own camel. When ‘A’isha rejoined the expedition with Safwan, the old rumor about their illicit relationship started up again, and Muhammad’s enemies gleefully imagined the worst. It was not surprising that ‘A’isha had fallen for Safwan, Ibn Ubayy remarked loudly, because he was so much younger and more attractive than her husband. The scandal rocked Medina, and the story seemed so plausible that some of the Emigrants began to believe it and even Abu Bakr, ‘A’isha’s father, began to suspect that it might be true.

More seriously, Muhammad himself began to doubt ‘A’isha’s innocence—a telling sign of his waning confidence during this difficult period. For a few days he seemed confused and uncertain. His need for ‘A’isha was so great that, faced with the possibility of losing her, he seemed confused and hesitant. He no longer received any messages from God; it was the first time, since the very beginning of his prophetic career, that the divine voice had fallen silent. Ibn Ubayy continued to exploit the situation, and old tribal hatreds flared, as the Khazraj, Ibn Ubayy’s tribe, threatened to fight the Aws, who argued that the people who were stirring the scandal should be immediately executed. The situation was so grave that Muhammad was forced to summon all the chiefs of Medina to a meeting and ask for their support should he find it necessary to take action against Ibn Ubayy, who was threatening his family.