Mohammed and the Jews of Arabia

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                                      

                   Moses with the 10 Commandments

There is the saying about G-d going to all the nations and people of the world seeing how many would accept the 10 Commandments and it was only the Jews who would accept all 10 unconditionally.  The story is that it was the Jews, who were the stiff-necked people, who would stay the course  with G-d about his other 613 laws to be accepted.  That's why the Jews came to be called, the Chosen people.  They accepted G-d's Laws.   They were told to beware of prophets who would try to make them follow other religions.                                      

These same Chosen People were chosen by Rome to lose their country, Judea, which contained Jerusalem, their capital.  It happened in 70 CE when they ruthlessly burned down the city and their 2nd Temple of Solomon.  The people were not only starved to death, but whoever was left, taken as slaves to Rome.  The few who escaped fled to the surrounding country-sides or hid out successfully in the crags and crannies of Judea.                                      

Southern Arabia became a Persian (today's Iran) dominion under a Yemenite vassal and thus came within the sphere of influence of the Sassanid Empire.  Sassanid period (570 – 630 CE).  This covered the life-span of Mohammed who died in 632.  

Many such Jewish tribes made it to  Arabia for many reasons.  Some lived  in Medina, one of the larger cities.  From 70 CE  until about 590, Jews lived there in peace.  There were at least 5 different Jewish tribes living in Arabia;  

• 1. Banu Harith or Bnei Chorath.
• 2. Banu Qaynuqa.
• 3. Banu Shutayba.
• 4. Jafna Clan of the Banu Tha'laba who were exiled members of the Banu Ghassan - while both tribes were not Jewish, they did have Jewish members; whereas the Jafna Clan was solely Jewish.
• 5. Banu Zaura.
• What brought them there were several reasons:
•  
• 1. After the collapse of Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE.
• 2. After the Roman conquest of Judea in 70 CE.
• 
  
• After the Jewish rebellion in 66 CE, and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE, exiles found a home in the desert.
• 
  
• 3. Survivors of the Bar Kochba Revolt, in 135 CE, who sought religious freedom in the Arabian desert rather than live under the yoke of the Romans.
• 4. Immigration, around 300 CE, by people who are known in Islamic literature as the Banu Aus and the Banu Khazraj who fled the Ghassanids in Syria.
• 
  
• 5. Migration from Judea into southern Arabian Peninsula to ride the ascent of the Himyarite Kingdom around 380 CE.
•                                           
  
  This was taken from a 13th-century Persian manuscript (most likely a different edition of al-Biruni's The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries) housed at the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland.

In 570 CE, Mohammed was born, probably in Mecca,  who was to become a prophet of his Middle Eastern people.  In his early days, he accompanied the Meccan trade caravan and often met Jews and Christians  who probably first turned  his interests into religious questions.  

Therefore, it's possible that there were these migrations continuing to come into Arabia.  

By the time he was 40 years old in 610, he was doing a lot of meditating  about G-d, the hereafter and the Day of Judgement.  He felt such a day was close at hand.  He knew about the Jewish prophets as he heard the stories as they were told outside when he passed by the Jewish storytellers of Medina.  Mohammed was illiterate; could neither read nor write.  At any rate, he had convinced himself that G-d had come to him and revealed himself to him.  So he thought he had been chosen as the first Arab prophet.                                                   

Detail of Gabriel from Pinturicchio's The Annunciation (1501)

Annunciation is a painting on wood that is attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci and dated to circa 1472–1475. It is housed in the Uffizi gallery of Florence, Italy.  Christianity also includes Gabriel in the Catholic denomination.  

Mohammed then proclaimed himself in public  and started preaching in 613 of his revelation and that he had the experience of an intermediation  of the angel, Gabriel, the leader of the angels found in the Tanakh (Dan. 8-10) of the Jews.  Gabriel's messages to him eventually were written down as Mohammed told his scribe to write as he reiterated them.  In the Hebrew Bible, Gabriel appears to the prophet Daniel to explain his visions (Daniel 8:15–26, 9:21–27). The archangel also appears in the Book of Enoch and other ancient Jewish writings. Alongside archangel Michael, Gabriel is described as the guardian angel of Israel, defending its people against the angels of the other nations.                                                 

In 620 Mohammad experienced his NIGHT JOURNEY where he reported that he had been carried to Paradise on his flying horse and had met the other prophets.  As the Koran/Quran has it, Prophet Muhammad took a night trip to heaven aboard a trusty winged pony-horse-mule-ish creature called Buraq. It's an episode that's inspired Islamic art ever since, because few artists can resist a theologically sound reason to draw a winged horse.  

                                                      

               al Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount in Jerusalem

For one night, Muslims commemorate the Prophet Muhammad’s journey in 620  from Mecca to the “Farthest Mosque” in Jerusalem, which is the al Aqsa Mosque-3rd holiest to Muslims,  and then, finally, to heaven, where he was purified and given instructions from Allah to pray five times per day. Muslim tradition also describes the prophet, accompanied by the archangel Gabriel, meeting other prophets during his journey: Adam, John the Baptist, Moses and Abraham, just to name a few. The events of this night are recorded in both the Quran and the Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet).

Up to this point, the religion of Saudis was paganism.  Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia was a mix of polytheism, Christianity, Judaism, and Iranian religions. Arab polytheism, the dominant belief system, was based on the belief in deities and other supernatural beings such as djinn. Gods and goddesses were worshipped at local shrines, such as the Kaaba in Mecca.                         

Keeping well spaced during COVID 19 at Kaaba

The Kaabais believed by Muslims to have been rebuilt several times throughout history, most famously by Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismail (Ishmael), when he returned to the valley of Mecca several years after leaving his wife Hajar (Hagar) and Ismail there upon Allah's command.                          

Jews first introduced Abram who went through a name change to Abraham as he mentally developed.  Sarai, whose name was also changed to Sarah, seemed to be barren,  so as they both aged without children, This went against the dictum that Abraham had received from G-d  about having many children.   Abraham took Hagar as wife to produce a child.  Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian handmaid. Problems arose between the women but Hagar produced a son, Ishmael.  Then Sarah conceived (this often happens-pressure was off of her), and they named Sarah's son, Isaac.  This even happened in biblical days before the Exodus, which is dated sometime around 1579 BCE, which would be about 2,179 years before Mohammed was born.  Isaac was the father of Jacob who gave birth to 12 sons who became the fathers of the 12 Tribes of Israel.  

One can see that Judaism made a great influence on Mohammed.  We see Judaism in his revelation stories, in his tenets of faith and his religious precepts of the Koran.  He did believe in One G-d to a point.

He himself held that all Holy Books  were copies of a heavenly model and that all revelations were essentially one, but distorted in several ways by the respective people.  He said that his mission was only to confirm what had been revealed to former prophets, and to correct their distortions.  

Mohammed  understood that there was no differences between Judaism and Islam, so hoped that Jews would now follow him and accept the new faith he was offering.  In his sales pitch to the Jews, he even added a Jewish ritual in Medina to his Islam.  He added a 3rd daily prayer practiced by Jews.  He introduced a day of fast corresponding to Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement; and a day of public prayer like the Jewish Sabbath.  Then he directed his people to face Jerusalem when praying.  

 An angry and disappointed Mohammed saw that Jews were not buying into his new religion.  He altered his Islam by taking out the Jewish clauses he had added.  He was now hostile to the Jews of Medina.  Gradually, Mohammed had these same Jews of Medina either annihilated or expelled.  

Mohammed's relationship ended with the Quraysh tribe of Jews.  There had been many raids on this tribe's caravans by the new Islamic warriors.  Mohammed heard about one of their caravans coming from Syria that was laden with money and goods.  He said that it was likely that Allah may give it to you as booty. "He told these warriors to fight fiercely and behead the Jews.  

There were still other Jews living in Arabia.  He treated them better, possibly from political and economical considerations. Mohammed was a warrior, a leader with his own army of men.   

One of his wives, Sofia or Safiyya, was born in a Jewish family. She was the daughter of Huyayy bin Akhtab, who had induced the Banu Quatayzah Jews of Arabia to repudiate their alliance with Mohammed after the Khaybar Pass was conquered. 

  Sofia had  been married to a Jewish leader, when Mohammed was now going to give her to his friend, Dihya and had killed her father along with the rest of the other Jews in the battle.  Her husband had been Kinana ibn Rabi, who had been tortured and killed by Mohammed's men.  Sofia was a beautiful woman.  When he saw her he told dihya to take any slave girl other than her from the captives.  He then freed her and married her himself-since she agreed to convert to Islam, she was able to be elevated beyond the position of a slave.  That night, Sofia was dressed as a bride and a wedding feast was hastily arranged.  On the way out of Khaybar that night, Mohammed halted the caravan as soon as they were outside the oasis, pitched a tent, and consummated the marriage.  Here she had been the wife of a Jewish chieftain, to a widow, to a captive,, to the wife of the Prophet of Islam in the course of a single day.   

Circling the Kaaba seven times counterclockwise, known as Tawaf (Arabic: طواف‎, romanized: tawaaf), is a Fard (obligatory) rite for the completion of the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages. The area around the Kaaba on which pilgrims circumambulate is called the Mataaf.                                             

 The Kaaba is a windowless building at the center of Islam's most important mosque, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is the most sacred site in Islam. It is considered by Muslims to be the Bayt Allah (Arabic: بَيْت ٱللَّٰه‎, lit. 'House of God') and is the qibla (Arabic: قِبْلَة‎, direction of prayer) for Muslims around the world when performing salah.

In early Islam, Muslims faced in the general direction of Jerusalem as the qibla in their prayers before changing the direction to face the Kaaba, believed by Muslims to be a result of a Quranic verse revelation to Muhammad.  A good Muslim is to make the trip to Mecca and walk the walk.  For that they will receive a title to their name of Haj.  

                                                

"It was only in 1932 when Arabia became Saudi Arabia.  Since King Abdulaziz Al-Saud established the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, its transformation has been astonishing. In a few short decades, the Kingdom has turned itself from a desert nation to a modern, sophisticated state and a major player on the international stage."  The discovery of oil helped that to happen.  no Jews are allowed to step foot in Saudi Arabia.  Their population is 100% Muslim.  They follow the Sunni sect and Hanbali fiqh.  It is an Islamic State, and the 14th largest in population.  The  land area is of approximately 2,150,000 km² or 830,000 sq mi. Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the Middle East, and the second-largest country in the Arab world. Their population had been 27,601,038 in 2011. The current population of Saudi Arabia is 35,304,697 as of Sunday, May 30, 2021, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data. 

Compare that to 8,019---8,522 sq mi for Israel. and the current population of Israel is 8,777,703 as of Saturday, May 29, 2021, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.

Resource:  

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.saudiembassy.net/history

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.TOTL.K2?locations=SA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annunciation_(Leonardo)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_tribes_of_Arabia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Saudi_Arabia

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/saudi-arabia-population/#:~:text=The%20current%20population%20of%20Saudi,the%20latest%20United%20Nations%20data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/pre-islamic-arabia/#:~:text=Overview,as%20the%20Kaaba%20in%20Mecca.

The Truth about Muhammad by Robert Spencer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Mosque

 

How Islam Was Born Decided Its Outlook

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    
The dictionary defines  religion as:  the service and worship of God or the supernatural;  commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance;  a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices;  scrupulous conformity, conscientiousness, a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.
                                                                     

How Islam was created was quite different from Judaism or Christianity and even Buddhism.  Islam was founded upon conquest.  For nearly 1,000 years, it drew its lifeblood from war and expansion.  What happened to Christianity and Buddhism was that they were minority communities for 300 years at their beginnings and both experienced persecutions that have left indelible marks on them, and then they became oppressive and perpetrated war.

 Judaism started with Abraham's monotheistic belief and his family held onto that pretty much until about 400 years later when Moses led them out of Egypt from slavery.  They had to fight in Canaan to enter there, then settled down to follow the commandments of Moses which were of how to live with each other peacefully and worship G-d.  They would not have fought had they been met with friendly people in Canaan, but that was expecting a lot when 600,000 people entered the land uninvited.

Islam never experienced persecution and never experienced the feeling of a minority group, but only knew victory over other societies.  These facts have helped to create the Muslim attitude of superiority.  It led to making "others" living among them as 2nd class citizens or dhimmis.  From the position it started at with Mohammad, it started with pagan people, not monotheistic people affected by Abraham's revelation.  They were people believing in many gods and used idols that were in the Kaaba.  Mohammad seemed to be the only person recorded who bothered to listen to the stories of the Jews and Christians of Medina.
                                                                               

Christianity's First Crusaders 1096-9 to win Palestine from Moslems, but went through Europe killing the Jews in N. France, Rhineland, massacring them in Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Cologne, etc., later in Prague, Salonica, and etc.  There were about 4 Crusades.  

Judaism had experienced persecution right  from the beginning from Greeks and Romans. Then when Christianity was born about a 1,000 years later, the persecution continued on a grander scale for 2,000 years and it looks like it hasn't really stopped yet if you look at the UN decisions against Israel, for Israel is a Jewish country, attacked by Muslim countries because of its religion.

 Some of the Jewish people still have not shed its slave mentality in trying to appease their "Others."  For being the "Chosen" by G-d, most have never taken on a superiority complex like the Muslims.   Actually, Jews are more like Mr. Spock, in that other religions just don't compute. They are not logical to most Jews.    I guess I'm speaking for myself.  Now, I have Muslim friends, and they all do not act superior about their religion, not until a few have  tried  to convert me to their way of thinking, which has happened.   Jews had started a conversion policy in the beginning but was stopped in their tracks by the new Christian Church laws, and being a minority without a country, couldn't do anything but try to stay alive, so dropped it.
                                                                           

Mecca and the Kabba

 Getting back to Islam, however, Muhammad was not an accepted person in Mecca when he started to teach his new beliefs.  The first to convert was his faithful wife, Khadija.  Next was Ali bin Abu Talib, a little boy 10 years old who later became an important leader of Islam.  Like most who are not a hit in their own home town, and that goes for artists as well often times, he had to move out to Medina in 622 to find his willing. audience.  The largest Jewish community in Arabia was in Medina.  They may have arrived after the fall of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE.   The 3 main Jewish tribes were Banu el Nadir, Banu Kainuka and Banu Kuraiza who made a living by the cultivation of palm-groves and other callings.
                                                                           

He turned on the Jews when they didn't convert willingly.  Eventually, whole tribes of Jews were slaughtered.  Individuals converted.  Mohammad led raids on the large Quraysh caravans coming from Syria full of money and goods and had his followers rob them.  He told them that Allah told his followers to fight fiercely and behead their enemies.  "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks...."  He hated the Quraysh, his own tribe, because they had rejected him and so he put a curse on them.  One of those cursed, Uqba, had once  thrown camel dung, blood and intestines on Mohammad when he was praying.  He probably had his head cut off as they did to another, Abu Johl.
                                                                       

Mohammed was born in 570 and died in 632. He was an orphan from the Quraysh tribe, part of the  Banu Hashim clan when but a small child and was raised by his Uncle Abu Talib.  They were pagans.   When a young man, he had accompanied the Meccan trade caravans and often met Jews and Christians who probably whet his interest in religion. The Quraysh, based in Mecca, happened to be the center of trade and pilgrimage as everyone passed through it.  Pilgrims came there to the local shrine, the Ka'bah, which housed many pagan idols-mainly the image of the god, Hubal.  Then there were the local gods as well.  Other idols identified with trees and stones near the Ka'bah.  One of these gods, "Allah," probably was a tribal god of the Quraysh.

 By age 40, he was thinking a lot about God, the hereafter, and the Day of Judgement which he seemed to think was close, just like we think this today.  He had learned that G-d revealed himself through prophets.   He felt he was the one chosen to be the Arab prophet because he said he had been visited by Gabriel, one of the angels.   His mission, he said, was to confirm what had been revealed to earlier prophets and to correct distortions.  He thought there was little difference between Judaism and his Islam and figured that Jews would be his first followers.  He must have been very disappointed when this did not happen.  The Jews of Medina were either eventually annihilated in attacks or expelled from the land.
                                                                         

One of his wives was Safia, (Safia bint Huyayy) , daughter of Huyayy bin Akhtab who had induced the Banu Qurayzah Jews to repudiate their alliance with Muhammad.  Muhammad killed Huyayy and the rest of the men of the Qurayzah tribe.  Safiyya's husband was Kinana ibn Rabi, who had just been tortured and killed by the warriors of Jihad.  She was  a Jewish woman, widow of a slain Jewish chieftain, taken captive, to possible position of slave, freed by Mohammad who married her after she promised to convert to Islam. Safia must have been very beautiful, because the killers of her husband said, "We have not seen the like of her among the captives of war,"  and that she was the chief-mistress of the ladies of the tribes of Quraiza and An-Nadir.    Mohammad had to fight to become recognized by the Arabian fighters and now took the best of the female captives as a wife.

We in the West see Islam in 3 parts;  religion, empire and culture.  The Muslims see themselves in one whole.  They believe Allah ordered their wars and attacks in order to expand.  Their soldiers were God's soldiers.  Muhammad was in the battles leading the charges of which Muslims take pride. They do not separate their religion from their actions.   Their picture of Mohammad is a man with a sword in his hand.  Mohammad was in the battle in 624 of Badr.  The end of the 1000s, Islam's armies did not have any major defeats.  Nobody had stopped their advances.
                                                                       

 The attack  at Khaybar, which is 93 miles from Medina,  in 629 between Muslims and Jews has not been forgotten by the Muslims.  It's their reason for hating Jews, their raison d'etre.    Mohammad led his men against the Khaybar oasis, inhabited by Jews who were exiles from Medina.  93 Jews were killed, farmers who were just working the oasis.  The invaders then looked for the Jews' wealth.  They beheaded the Jew they thought knew where it was hidden who wouldn't tell.  A hadith tells that "the Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and women taken as captives."  Later, during the caliphate of Umar (634-644), the Jews who remained at Khaybar were banished to Syria, and the rest of their land was seized.  "According to Francis Edwards Peters, "The Jews also began secretly to connive with Muhammad's enemies in Mecca to overthrow him."  This probably would have happened after  "Muhammad expelled from Medina the Banu Qaynuqa, one of the three main Jewish tribes."   The "Religion of Peace" has been led by the "Warrior Prophet."  

The background of this story is:  After they were sent into exile in 625 from Medina by Muslim forces, the Banu Nadir had settled in Khaybar. In 627, the Nadir chief Huyayy ibn Akhtab together with his son joined the Meccans and Bedouins besieging Medina during the Battle of the Trench. In addition, the Nadir paid Arabian tribes to go to war against the Muslims. Bribing Banu Ghatafan with half of their harvest, Banu Nadir secured 2,000 men and 300 horsemen from the tribe to attack Muhammad, and similarly persuaded the Bani Asad.  They attempted to get the Banu Sulaym attack the Muslims, but the tribe gave them only 700 men, since some of its leaders were sympathetic towards Islam.   Once the battle started, Huyayy ibn Akhtab persuaded the Banu Qurayza to go against their covenant with Muhammad and turn against him during the battle.   After the defeat of the confederates in the battle, and Qurayza's subsequent surrender, Huyayy (who was at that time in the Qurayza strongholds of Medina) was killed alongside the men of the Qurayza. After Huyayy's death, Abu al-Rafi ibn Abi al-Huqayq took charge of the Banu Nadir at Khaybar. Al-Huqayq soon approached neighboring tribes to raise an army against Muhammad.   After learning this, the Muslims, aided by an Arab with a Jewish dialect, assassinated him.^"
                                                                   

Arabs were overcome finally by the Saljuqs (Seljuks-a Turko-Persian Empire) from 1000 to 1194 whose capital was in Persia (Iran),  and other Turkish tribes had also become devout Muslims  and as it happened, actually helped to strengthen orthodoxy and unity  of the ummah ( the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion.) under the prevailing caliph of Allah.  Every time these Muslims won a battle, they would believe that Allah was with them and that they were invincible.  In 1071 the Saljuqs defeated the Byzantine army in the battle of Manzikert and created a kingdom in Asia Minor.  The Muslims had high expectations.  They believed that their caliph was the first to bring the whole world under the rule of Allah and his Prophet, Mohammad.  One can see that Arabs and Iranian, or Sunni and Shi'as have been competing for about a l,000 years with each other.  

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This must be the premise that IS is acting with.  They have even gone back to those primitive methods of fighting to act this out.  They have robbed banks and even kill Sunni Muslims who are not following the Salafist Way.

It seems that our religious leaders were truly men of primitive days and cultures. Evidently both heard a voice; Moses of G-d and Mohammad of the angel, Gabriel.   Moses had killed an overseer of slaves for his horrid treatment of beating those not working to suit him and then later during the Exodus, to have lost his temper by hitting a rock with a stick.  He, through G-d,  expected his people to show by example the religion of Judaism and that would be a light to the world.   Mohammad led charges in battle, ordered deaths of people and led in robbing caravans of his enemy.  He had ordered his people to convert by the sword.
                                                                             
 Many of his converts try to follow his example by copying his behaviors.  They do not seem to judge as "bad" what we see as "bad"  behaviors. Could it be  because they are not following the same set of laws? Would it also be true that those without any religion, the atheists, also have a different outlook of morality?  We have the idea that anyone, regardless of their religion,  follows basic right and wrong behaviors, that these things are inborn within us.  Perhaps not,  since Moses had to come along and teach such basic things as the 10 Commandments; such things such as killing others was wrong and robbing them and taking their things was also wrong.  

Textbook:  2nd Edition of Middle East Past & Present by Yahya Armajani, Thomas M. Ricks, Chapter 9, Islamic lands on the Defensive.
Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionary
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia; Mohammad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
The Truth about Muhammad by Robert Spencer
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/05/gabriel-angel-to-all-three-religions.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khaybar
http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/roark/hate_jews.html
http://www.historynet.com/muhammad-the-warrior-prophet.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safiyya_bint_Huyayy