HISTORY OF JIHAD ON HUMANITY. It's first victims, the pre Islamic Arabs & Jews. (622-634)

Unill the rise of Islam, the world had known only imperial conquests, where the war took place between the opposing armies and the fate of the battle was decided on the battlefield alone The unarmed civilians were in no danger except  than new taxes and newi administrators.

Islam changed the rules of warfare making the entire civilian population of a defeated adversary, into a victim of tyranny. The choice for the nature & idol-worshipping pre Islamic Arabs was only Islam or Death, a point missed by Arab historians- there are no surviving nature and idol-worshipping non-Muslim Arabs today!

The Pre-Islamic Bedouin Arabs inhabited the Arabian peninsula who were polytheist & matriarchs & worshipped many gods like Hubal/ Baal, Allah, his daughters- Allat, Alluza, Mannat; only Allah survived in Mohammed’s Islam, so Allah did not choose Mohammed, it was the other way round.

Ancestors of the Semitic Jews also came from the same ethnic tribes & lived further north in Mesopotamia & had a different pantheon of gods. 

The two comminutes who lived in Yathrib/ Madina, the pagan Arabs & the Jews were on constant warpath. Arabs were more in numbers but the Jews were more prosperous, organized, had built fortresses within and around Medina to defend themselves during their bloody wars with the pre-Islamic Arab tribes. Jews were mostly victorious & boasted that they would wipe out the Arabs when the prophet of god would appear among them.

The Pre-Islamic Bedouin Arabs, made bitter by the environment were institutionalizing into a  theology by Mohammed!

Mohammed declared himself the prophet and was on his way to Yathrib/ Medina. The Arabs of Yathrib decided to outwit the Jews by becoming his followers (1st converts) and seek his help in

defeating & breaking monopoly of the Jews &  Quraysh of Mecca.

 Immediately on getting a following, he organized them and took his first revenge on the Meccans. ,

He organized 64 such Ghazawats/ Razzias/ raids from 622 to 630, of which he personally led 27. Out
of the 28 battles, Mohammad fought 27 were offensive, none of his adversaries attacked him.

The battle of Badr as believed, was not defensive, the beginning of the Islamic Jihad was in Mohammed’s banditry, when he  arrived in their valley claiming his versions were directly from God and insisted that the Jews accept him as their prophet. The Jews heard him but laughed & mocked him on realizing that the verses were not based on the Torah. Mohammed branded the Jews as apes and pigs and stirred up hatred against them in diatribes from the pulpit at his mosque. 

They are mischief makers. They are fools. The Jews deny the truth"- Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, p. 248

“Sufficient for the Jew is the Flaming Fire!” he said in Koran 4:55. 

“There is a grievous punishment awaiting them. Satan tells them not to believe so they will end up in Hell.” Koran 59:14  

In the battle near the caravan stop of Badr, about 18 months after his flight from Mecca, Muhammad's band of 300 men defeated Meccan army and on his return to Yathrib, began assassinating Jewish poets who had mocked him in their poems, forced one of the Jewish tribes to leave, confiscated all of their property and wanted to behead them all but was dissuaded by one of his  pagan allies.

       

With in a year he forced another tribe to leave and distributed their fortresses, date plantations, and farms to the elite of his Meccan followers. The remaining Jewish tribe, the Quraysh suffered a worse fate after they lost against him because Muhammad dug a defensive ditch  around Yathrib. He beheaded as many as 900 men and boys. His attacks against the Jews continued with the conquest of Khaybar, a wealthy Jewish oasis and other ancient Jewish centers in western Arabia.




After losing the battle of Mu’ta in the year 629 with the Christian Rumis (Arabic for Romans aka Byzantines), Mohammed turned on to the richest of the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraizah/ Ben Koresh who had earlier promised to help if the Quraysh  attacked him but gave half hearted help during the battles at Badr, Uhud and Trench. 

Ali carried the citadel by assault on the last day of the twenty five day long siege. All the Jews were taken captive as per Mohammed’s verdict, all male adults were killed in cold blood - their heads sawn off and piled before Mohammed, their women and children sold off as slaves and their property distributed among the Muslims. 

Other Jewish clans like the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qaynuqa and twenty other smaller Jewish clans who had been inhabiting Arabia in the 7th century were converted by force to Islam in the subsequent years. But many of these Jewish clansmen who refused to convert were murdered en masse. By the year 634, there were hardly any Jews left in the Hejaj.

Mohammed's first convert was his wife Khadija, followed by his slave Zaid. His powerful uncle Abu Talib did not convert till he died in 620. His son, Ali (Mohammed's son-in-law) too resisted giving up the worship of the gods of the Kaaba & embrace Islam since his father forbade him but grieving from the loss of his father fell prey to Mohammed’s blackmail that Abu Talib was burning in Jahannum because he worshipped gods of  Kaaba.

The pre-islamic Arabs were violent and there were internecine and incessant tribal and clan wars, but the honor of womenfolk was never in danger, there are no records where a victorious Arab tribe violated the honor of the womenfolk of the defeated tribe, they did not practice polygamy. The pre-islamic Arab womenfolk never wore the Hijab, Niqab nor were they confined to a Zenana/ women’s chamber. Tyranny, slaughter, rape of the conquered women, loot of the conquered population were made, 'a matter of faith', all these practices became a hallmark of Islam.

What Mohammed did to the Quraish, to the people of Taif, the newly converted Muslims did to the Sassanian Persians, Byzantines, Visigoths in Al Andalus/ Spain and so on..

The battle of Badr, the defeat of the Meccans in 624 marked the beginning of the Islamic terror of Jihad- genocide against all humanity. On his deathbed Mohammed ordered his followers not to allow any religion but his to exist on the Arabian Peninsula (or anywhere else).

After the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula had been subjugated, the Muslims turned on their northern neighbors the Persians and the Byzantines.
Not many know that Iran was the first nation that waged a short but bloodied campaign of battles with the Jihadi hounds that were unleashed on an unsuspecting world by Mohammed.


Continued...

References:

The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World by Srdja Trifkovic
What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary by Ibn Warraq
Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq

Perfect Soldiers : The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott

The False Prophet by Ellis H. Skolfield
Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam) by David Cook
Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle by Mark A., Ph.D. Gabriel

Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle by Mark A., Ph.D. Gabriel
Women in Ancient Egypt, by Gay Robins, Harvard University Press, 1996

Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Source Book by Jane Rowlandson, Cambridge University Press, 1998