Your khutbah today, you spoke about the early history of Islam and the early spread of Islam. And you mentioned that there wasn’t very much bloodshed in the early history of Islam, as far as I understood. As far as I understood from the translation, you mentioned that there was not very much bloodshed at the early spread of Islam. It made me wonder about the massacre on one Jewish tribe in Medina. Why did this take place? Number one, whatever you call it, call it massacre or give it any big name, the number of people killed is still within hundreds.
And the story itself is so much exaggerated that some scholars are already working on this, that things which have been related are impossible to happen. Mathematically it can be proved that in that area, in that small place, so many prisoners of war, for instance, could not be kept in a small house. And so many other objections are also being raised and the matter is now under investigation. Secondly, when I talked of war, Islamic war, I did not have that in mind in particular. That was a punishment meted out to them of their own demand. That was outside the category of my discussion. Whatever happened, whatever the number of the Jews in turn, that is not for the time being relative to the point.
The point is why they were, as the western historians call, murdered or executed by a court of justice, as we call it. The fact is that they committed a crime of breaking the covenant which they had gone into with Muslims regarding war and peace and their behaviour and so on. Now, in case of war, if anybody turns traitor, even by the most modern and lenient standards of so-called civilization, the person is executed or even if it is a group of persons, I mean, the number doesn’t matter. Even if there are a million, they would be still put to death for the crime of treason to the nation at the time of the greatest crisis.
So the western scholars generally forget the numbers of such killings in their own countries in recent times, which we call the civilized times. And they pronounce out of one proportion that number of Jews which were killed at the time of Agra, Sagara, etc. You know, the Jews which were killed by the Nazis, according to the Jewish claim, were six million. And that six million is not a far remote incident of history, it has just happened within your lifetime and at least in my lifetime. Again, the claim is very much exaggerated there too.
I am quoting this particularly to point out the similarity between the habit of Jews with regards to their victims. Already many western scholars have taken strong exception to this propaganda that six million Jews were killed in concentration camps. In Nazi camps in Germany. And only recently I read a very interesting investigation in this regard. And he quoted document after document to prove the point that it was exaggerated, you know, by a factor of, say, ten or twenty.
And this is an incident of recent history. If this is what they do about things which happened before everybody’s eyes, what would they do to an incident which occurred 1400 years ago? So, this is an established fact that a lot of false statements have been added, introduced into Islamic history by the Jewish scholars intentionally. And this was a point of great interest to them, to create hatred against the Muslims.
So, as far as the number goes, we don’t know what number it was. But as far as the facts are concerned, the fact is that they were traitors. Even if they were in large numbers and they had been prosecuted and killed, it wouldn’t have made any point of objection. It shouldn’t have raised any point of objection. But the things how it happened are a very interesting story to be remembered by Muslims and to be told to Christians and the Jewish world. The fact is that when their fate was being decided, it was offered that Hazrat Surah Kareem Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam himself should decide what should happen to them. Now, this offer was turned down by the Jews because they did not have trust in him.
Rather, they would have trust in a so-called friend of theirs, who otherwise was a friend of course, but who happened to be a Muslim. What was the name of Hazrat Sa’ad? Sa’ad was a Muslim. Was Sa’ad a Muslim or was he a traitor? He was a Muslim. Do you remember Hazrat Sa’ad? Yes, I do. He was a Muslim, but I am not very sure. Anyway, there was a companion of Hazrat Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam who belonged to a tribe of Medina, who was a leader of a tribe of Medina, who was held in very high respect by the Jews in particular. He was quite friendly to them. So, they decided to make him the arbitrator rather than Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Had he decided, as we know his previous conduct, we are quite certain he would have forgiven them.
But it was their own choice of arbitrator. And that arbitrator chosen by the Jews, he decided according to the Bible, the book in which they believed. So, I think this was also a possibility to them. Whether they would go according to the Islamic tenets or according to the biblical verdict. And they chose their case to be decided according to the Bible. And they thought he would prove dishonest and he would be friendly to them. But having become a Muslim, he had to act honestly and righteously. He was left no choice by the Jews themselves. So, that sort of killing cannot be included in the category which I was discussing during the khutbah. That was just, you know, battles or an extended war between the Muslims and the non-Muslims on the other hand. And this does not fall into that category at all. There is still a treachery in times of war.
