Sep 22, 2009
Which pending questions are in this thread that you want answered? I thought I asked to tell me what 'crimes against humanity' the Banu Nadir tribe was 'guilty' of. I see my question has not been answered, maybe you'll get around to it in your next reply.
It certainly is interesting to compare Watt's account with what shafique claims the Banu Nadir tribe were 'guilty' of 'crimes against humanity'. I guess even Watt, sympathetic to Muhammad, did not see such 'flimsy evidence' as any proof of guilt, let alone as a crime against humanity, which Watt later says such an attempt against an individual life did not merit the expulsion ('out of proportion to the offence'), ethnic cleansing, of an entire people.
Oh, and here's Watt's version of events:
p211
Almost exactly a year after Ka'b's death, a second Jewish clan, Banu n-Nadir, were expelled from Medina. The story is that Muhammad went to the settlement of an-Nadir to demand a contribution towards the blood-money due to B. 'Amir b. Sa'sa'ah for the two men killed by the survivor of Bi'r Ma'unah. As an-Nadir were in the alliance with 'Amir, there may been complications, though the sources say nothing of these; Muhammad may have thought that the Jews ought to do more than the average of the inhabitants of Medina, and they may have thought they ought to do less. Whatever the precise point was, an-Nadir professed themselves ready to give a satisfactory answer, but bade Muhammad make himself comfortable while they prepared a meal. He and his companions seated themselves with their backs to the wall of one of the houses. Presently Muhammad slipped quietly away and did not return, and his companions also eventually left. When they found him at his house, he explained that he had had a Divine warning that an-Nadir were planning a treacherous attack on him - they could easily have rolled a stone onto his head and killed him as he sat by the house. He therefore at once dispatched Muhammad b. Maslamah to an-Nadir with an ultimatum' they were to leave Medina within ten days on pain of death, though they would still be regarded as owners of their palm-trees and receive part of the produce. Such an ultimatum seems out of proportion to the offence, or rather to the apparently flimsy grounds for supposing that treachery was meditated. Yet perhaps the grounds were not so flimsy as they appear at first sight to the Westerner of today. Both parties knew how some Muslims had treated Ka'b b. al-Ashraf, and, in accordance with the ideas of the Arabia of that day, Muhammad was bound to expect that, if he gave his opponents and opprtunity, they would kill him. And-Nadir's postponement of a reply created such an opportunity, and was therefore tantamount to a hostile act.
Basically, Muhammad receives a 'divine' revelation that the Jews in the settlement he traveled to had planned to kill him when he was with a few companions.
One wonders why Allah did not warn Muhammad ahead of time to save his prophet a trip?
Strangely, the Jews did not cut Muhammad and his few companions down when they were in the heart of their walled compound and the Jews must have been so busy talking to themselves that Muhammad was able to walk out of their compound without so much as a single Jew even noticing.
Those Jews must have been watching Muhammad like a hawk!...or not.
Muhammad then uses his 'divine' revelation of an alleged assassination attempt as a pretext to expel the entire B. Nadir tribe, in which he wastes no time in doing - immediately sending out troops to besiege the tribe.
Now, a normal person might say, 'woah, since when are 'divine' revelations enough evidence for an alleged assassination attempt and since when do *rational* people expel an entire people, i.e., ethnically cleanse an entire people, over this alleged assassination attempt?'
Well, the answer is that you have to think like a Muslim. In doing so, you have to throw common sense ('flimsy evidence' to boot) out of the window and unconditionally accept that Muhammad really did have a 'divine' revelation, as opposed to a made up excuse, and, unfortunately, the Muslims following Muhammad uncritically accepted Muhammad's account and his advice for 'dealing' with the problem.
So, how would a 'rational', 'normal' person such as you now do? Again, you must think like a Muslim. Throw common sense out of the window, now.
Does it make sense to forcibly expel an entire tribe within, presumably, a few hours based on an alleged assassination plot, you might ask? Well, no, it doesn't. Even historians sympathetic to Muhammad, such as Montgomery Watt, seem baffled over this *very* convenient 'divine' revelation, based on 'flimsy evidence' and must rationalize the ethnic cleansing of the tribe based on their interpretation of the cultural values of Muhammad's time.
Watt tacitly acknowledges that there was not a *real* assassination plot. No, this was, like many other things, a figment of Muhammad's imagination. The assassinaiton plot was, instead, what Muhammad was expecting the Banu Nadir tribe to eventually carry out to avenge Ka'b's death - who was murdered on orders from Muhammad for writing poetry of Muslim women and sympathizing with the Meccans killed at the battle of Badr.
So, Muhammad, in fact, pre-emptively expelled, i.e., ethnically cleansed, an *entire* tribe of people - hundreds (well over one thousand) of men, women and children to save his own skin from some future assassination attempt.
Well then! That certainly turns things around. Now, a rational, normal Westerner may ask, so Muhammad is basically a tyrant who expels tribes - entire peoples, based on his whims and desires and, of course, profits from their expulsion?
Of course! One does not need to have shafique's level of IQ to see that this assassination plot was a convenient invention of Muhammad's. Surely, it sounds odd that Muhammad could just sneak out of the Banu Nadir walled compound if the Jews were really plotting to kill the prophet. If the Jews really wanted to kill Muhammad, would they hatch and argue over a silly plan of dropping a millstone on Muhammad when they could arm their men and cut Muhammad and his few companions down in a matter of minutes? Think not.
But alas! We are not Western, rational, normal people. We are Muslims and we are unable to see the 'duh' parts of this story which, when put together, illustrate how ridiculous this story is. Unfortunately, the sad part is that as a result of Muhammad, an entire tribe was ethnically cleansed due to his Stalin like paranoia.