Muhammad established his authority through intrigue, manoeuvring, assassinations, wars.
There is clear historical evidence that Muhammad established his authority through intrigue, manoeuvring, assassinations, wars, and made monetary gain through caravan raids, mainly on the Jewish traders. When Muhammad was successful in battle (Nakhla and Badr) we have strong evidence that he was far from the kind and considerate Saladin figure portrayed by Professor Casey. For example, Abu Jahl, Muhammad's 'enemy' from Mecca, was executed and his head given to Muhammad! Many Arabian poets who rejected Islam wrote verses mocking Muhammad and a female poet, Asthma bint Marwan, and two males, Abu Afak and Kab, were killed for writing disrespectful verses. Terror was an effective weapon used by Muhammad and caused many people to become loyal - the alternative was death. There are many examples of Muhammad's cruelty. Those whose cities and lands he invaded were tortured to reveal their hidden treasures, and tribesmen to whom he feigned hospitality were robbed and then vilely killed (by cutting off their hands and feet so they bled to death slowly). Kihouna, the Jewish chief at Khaybar, was tortured by Muhammad in order to reveal the whereabouts of his gold and, when he was dead, Muhammad married his 19 year old widow, Safiya, on the same day. The Jewish Beni Quraiza tribe were decimated, all the men being slain (~800) and their wives and children sold as slaves. The Muslim soldiers responsible received large amounts of booty but Muhammad took a fifth for himself! The Koran (Sura 33:25) praises God for the killings because they caused Muhammad to be feared. This kind of murder and intrigue, feigning peace treaties which they renége on, is typical of today's Muslim ruler, and Israel is right to trust Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein as far as they could throw them! How ironic that the West was dull enough to award a Peace Prize to a man (Arafat) whose organisation had been responsible for more assassinations and terrorism than any other Islamic terrorist group - until Tuesday, 11th September! Muhammad convinced his gullible followers that those who proved willing to assassinate his enemies would go straight to Paradise through the promise of the 'Seven Rewards,' in which the suicide killer gets rewards which include passage straight into heaven to enjoy the pleasures of 72 virgins, and all his sins and the sins of 72 of his family members who join him in heaven are fully forgiven! The Muhammad of the Muslim psyche is presented as kind, charitable to the poor, loving towards children and an excellent husband to his 11 wives. Zaid, Muhammad's adopted son, carried out a raid on a Median caravan after an assassination attempt on their 'prophet' failed. Noteworthy of the cruelty was the barbaric murder of a middle-aged woman named Um Kirfa, and her daughter and two sons - they tied her legs to camels and pulled her to pieces. This act earned Muhammad's praise! Perhaps the most gruesome hadith is the following. A woman came to the prophet and asked for purification (by being punished for her sin). He told her to go away and seek God’s forgiveness. She persisted four times and admitted that she was pregnant as a result of fornication. He told her to wait until she had given birth. Then he said that the Muslim community should wait until she had weaned her child. When the day arrived for the child to take solid food, Muhammad handed the child over to the community and ordered the woman's death by stoning. And when he had given command over her and she was put in a hole up to her breast, he ordered the people to stone her. Khalid b. al-Walid came forward with a stone which he threw at her head, and when the blood spurted on his face he cursed her ... (Muslim, no. 4206) It is true that Muhammad told Khalid to be gentler, but how gentle does one have to be when one throws a rock at a woman buried up to her breasts? Is the rock required to go only 30 miles per hour or 40? Perhaps Muhammad was ordering Khalid not to curse her. In any case, the prophet prayed over her dead body and then buried her. Truthfully, how effective was the prayer when Muhammad and his community murdered her in cold blood? Muhammad in his Quran permits husbands to beat their wives. 4:34 Husbands should take full care of their wives, with (the bounties) God has given to some more than others and with what they spend out of their own money. Righteous wives are devout and guard what God would have them guard in the husbands’ absence. If you fear high-handedness from your wives, remind them (of the teaching of God), then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. If they obey you, you have no right to act against them. God is most high and great. (Haleem) Written in the historical context of the Battle of Uhud (March 625), in which Islam lost 70 holy warriors, this verse belongs to a larger collection of verses that outlines laws for the family, such as how to divide the inheritance and to how to oversee the assets of orphans (vv. 1-35). Plainly said, Sura 4:34 specifies that husbands may beat their unruly wives if the husbands "fear" highhandedness, quite apart from whether the wives are actually being highhanded. This puts the interpretation of the wives behavior squarely in the husband's judgment, and this swings the door to abuse wide open. This verse embodies a gigantic cultural and social step backwards and should be rejected by all fair-minded and reasonable people. The hadith says that Muslim women in the time of Muhammad were suffering from domestic violence in the context of confusing marriage laws: Bukhari reports this incident about the wives in the early Muslim community in the context of marital confusion and an odd remarriage law: Rifa'a divorced his wife whereupon 'AbdurRahman bin Az-Zubair Al-Qurazi married her. 'Aisha said that the lady (came), wearing a green veil (and complained to her (Aisha) of her husband and showed her a green spot on her skin caused by beating). It was the habit of ladies to support each other, so when Allah's Apostle came, 'Aisha said, "I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women. Look! Her skin is greener than her clothes!" (Bukhari, emphasis added) This hadith shows Muhammad hitting his girl-bride, Aisha daughter of Abu Bakr, his right-hand Companion: "He (Muhammad) struck me (Aisha) on the chest which caused me pain." (Muslim no. 2127) Muhammad aggressively attacks Meccan caravans. A year or so after Muhammad's Hijrah from Mecca to Medina in 622, he attacks Meccan caravans six times, and sent out a punitive expedition three-days away against an Arab tribe that stole some Medinan grazing camels (or cattle), totaling seven raids. W. Montgomery Watt, a highly reputable Western Islamologist who writes in favor of Muhammad and whose two-volume history of early Islam (Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956)) has won wide acceptance, tells us why geography matters: The chief point to notice is that the Muslims took the offensive. With one exception the seven expeditions were directed against Meccan caravans. The geographical situation lent itself to this. Caravans from Mecca to Syria had to pass between Medina and the coast. Even if they kept as close to the Red Sea as possible, they had to pass within about eighty miles of Medina, and, while at this distance from the enemy base, would be twice as far from their own base. (Muhammad at Medina) It must be emphatically stated that the Meccans never sent a force up to the doorstep of Medina at this time -- they did later on when they were fed up with Muhammad's aggressions. It is true that the Meccans gathered forces to protect their caravans, but when Muhammad confronted them, they were many days' journeys away from Medina, often more than eighty miles. (Medina and Mecca are around 200-250 miles from each other, taking seven to eleven days of travel by foot, horse, or camel.) Hence, two Muslim scholar-apologists are misleading when they assert that the caravans "passed through" Medina, adding that the Muslims haphazardly sought for whatever spoils they could get, whereas the Meccans mobilized for war (Isma'il R. al-Faruqi and Lois Lamya'al Faruqi, The Cultural Atlas of Islam, New York: Macmillan, 1986, 134). Rather, it is more accurate to say that the Muslims were aggressively harassing the Meccans. To complete the picture of expeditions, raids and wars in Muhammad's life from 622 to 632, Watt totals up the number that Muhammad either sent out or went out on: seventy-four (Muhammad at Medina, pp. 2; 339-43). They range from negotiations (only a few compared to the violent expeditions), to small assassination hit squads, to the conquest of Mecca with 10,000 jihadists, and to the confrontation of Byzantine Christians (who never showed up), with 30,000 holy warriors to Tabuk. answering-islam.org/Authors/Arlandson/ten_reasons.htm
