MUHAMMAD AS HE REALLY WAS IN HISTORY…..RELYING SOLELY ON Islamic sources – the Koran and the hadith (recorded “traditions”)……………….

Muhammad was born around A.D. 570 in Mecca and started receiving “revelations,” verbal messages that he claimed came from Allah, when he was 40. But no where does he have a “witness” to these “revelations”. They were first delivered in the tone of warnings and appeals rather than threats, but the Meccan leaders sneered at the audacity of this commoner who had no natural claim to authority. The initial humorous contempt for Muhammad’s claims eventually turned to indignation and enmity, forcing him to escape to Medina with a small band of followers in June 622. Significantly, just before leaving for Medina,  Muhammad received his first revelations that allowed him to fight the Meccans (Sura 22 :39-41).

Once he was physically secure in his new abode, Muhammad ordered armed raids against Meccan caravans passing near Medina on their way to Syria. An early raid, at Nakhla, took place in the sacred pagan month of Rajab, in which no Arab was permitted to raise arms in battle. Since both his foes and his followers were likely to be scandalized by the violation of sacred trust, he received a revelation from Allah indicating that the raid enjoyed divine Sanction (2:214). From that moment on, Muhammad abrogated the moral codes of pre-Islamic Arab traditions and scriptures whenever it suited him.

In 624, at Badr, his men killed over 40 Meccans in a single raid, which fortified Muhammad’s power. Yet again, divine justification was required – this time for ambushing and murdering his own kinsmen. (3:123-125). Conveniently, Ahhah’s messages grew more bellicose: “I will instill terror into the hearts of the un-believers, Smite ye above there necks and smite all their finger tips of them” (8:12). The “messenger” gloated over the spectacle of his slain enemies and ordered the execution of several prisoners who had opposed him in Mecca. After, Badr, in the words Ayatollal Khomeini, “Islam grew with blood.”

Muhammad began using the  prospect of booty and ransom to recruit followers. This motive was so important that it merited a whole “sura” in the Koran; one fifth of the booty would belong to Muhammad (8:41). Once the loot was divided, it was time to relax: “now enjoy what ye have won” (8:69). “Enjoy what you have won as lawful and good” (69:30-37). A tangible, X-rated paradise filled with virgins “untouched by man” (52:17-20, 55:56-77) and “fresh” pre-pubescent boys (52:24, 56:17, and 76:19) awaited the “martyrs” immediately.

The simple preacher eventually morphed into a vengeful warlord, who    jubilantly exclaimed that the spectacle of severed enemy heads pleased him better than “the choicest camel in Arabia.” Killing prisoners was divinely condoned by Allah (8;68). Fresh revelations described the unbelievers as “the worst animals” (8:55) and “the vilest of creatures”(98:6). The enemy’s heads were to be cut off (47:4). Killing, enslaving, and robbing them was not only sanctioned but mandated.

When Muhammad returned from Badr to Medina, he proceeded to settle scores with his detractors, resorting to murder. His first victims were poets who dared mock him in verse. Asma bint Marwan, who nursed her youngest child while she was stabbed, and two Jews, Abu Afak and Kab Ashraf. They were guilty of verbal insults.

Muhammad next told his followers to “kill any Jew you can lay your hands on.” When six of his henchmen murdered Alu Rah, an elderly Jew, in his sleep, Muhammad decided that the owner of the sword that still had traces of food on it was entitled to the credit, since Abu rafi had just eaten his dinner before falling asleep, and the fatal slash had gone through his stomach.

Muhammad’s attack against the Jewish tribe of Banu-’l-Mustaliq came next. His followers kidnapped 500 of their women, and the night after the battle, they staged an orgy of rape. His pogroms culminated in an attack on the last Jewish tribe in Medina, Banu Qurayzah. As many as 900 men were decapitated in a ditch, in front of their women and children. Allah praised Muhammad for the way “he struck terror into their hearts” (33:25). The women were subsequently raped. Muhammad chose as his concubine one Raihana bint Armr, whose father and husband were slaughtered before her eyes, only hours before.

Allah’s messages concerning the “infidel” subsequently grew ever harsher. “Take him and fetter him and expose him to hell fire” (69-30-37). They “will be killed or crucified or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off” (5:33-34). In this world, for the captured infidel, “We have prepared chains, yokes, and a blazing fire” (76:4). In the hereafter, things get even worse: “garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down their heads. Where by that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted … and for them are hooked rods of iron” (22:19-22). One single Koranic verse, “the Verse of the Sword” (9:5) Islamic scholars agree, abrogates 124 earlier verses – the ones that are cited most regularly by Islam apologists to prove its tolerance and benevolence.

The image of a victorious leader, merciless with the defeated infidel and feared by his foes, worked wonders for Muhammad. On January 12, 630 AD, he marched into Mecca in triumph; having violated the ten-year truce of Hudaybiyya signed two years before. Predictably, the violation was condoned by Allah (60:10). Ever since, the view of Islamic jurists has been that truces with the infidel could only be temporary and that their only permissible objective is to enable the Muslim side to gain strength for a new onslaught.

Muhammad’s progression from a marginalized outside to a master of life and death produced a transformation of his personality in the decade preceding his death in 633. Allah was invoked as the authority supporting the prophet’s daily political objectives and his personal needs. Nowhere was this more obvious than when it came to his exaggerated sensuality. Contrary to his own regulations he had at least 15 wives.

The youngest was Aisha, who was seven years old and “with the dolls” when Muhammad (44 years her senior) “married” her. Two years later, when she was 9 and he, 53, Muhammad consummated the liaison – i.e., raped the little girl. Some years later he came up with a Koranic verse approving his nightly trysts with an Egyptian slave girl and admonishing his jealous wives for their objections in the practice (66:1-3). Allah’s revelations also enabled Muhammad to take his daughter-in-law Zainab as a wife when he lusted after her (36:37).

Many commands of the Koran and Muhammad’s actions and words recorded in the hadith are morally abhorrent and criminal by the standards of our time. But even in the context of seventh-century Arabia, they were often considered repugnant. Muhammad had to resort to “revelations” as a means of justifying his actions and suppressing the prevalent moral code of his own society. Attacking caravans in the holy month, taking up arms against his kinsmen, slaughtering prisoners, reserving the lion’s share of the booty, murdering people without provocation, violating treaties, and indulging his sensual passions – these actions were at odds with the moral standard of his Arab Contemporaries. Only the ultimate authority could sanction it, and Allah duly obliged.

Muhammad’s practice and constant encouragement of bloodshed are unique in the history of religions. Allah’s order to “kill the unbelievers wherever you find them”, an injunction both, powerful and unambiguous. The word “genocide” had not yet been coined when Muhammad conveyed Allah’s alleged dictum, “When we decide to destroy a population … then we destroy them utterly” (17:16-17). Disobedient people “we utterly destroy” (21-11). The problem today as seen in Iraq and other places, is that NOW who DECIDES who destroys whom? Now Muslim kills Muslim following this command!

On its own admission, Islam stands or falls with the person of Muhammad, a deeply flawed man by the standards of his own society, as well as those of the Old and New Testaments, both of which he acknowledged as divine revelation – and even by the new law, of which he claimed to be the divinely appointed medium and custodian.