here - Moonbattery

chapter 16
Murder, Inc.
Excerpted from It’s All About Muhammad,
a Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet
W
hen Muhammad left to attack the Meccan caravan, the
Jews and polytheists of Yathrib were nervous. When he
returned victorious over the Meccan army, they were terrified.
The day of the beheading of Uqbah Muayt, Muhammad dispatched two heralds to Yathrib to announce his victory. Arriving
in the heat of the late morning on Muhammad’s personal camel,
Zayd Haritha spread the news in Lower Yathrib, while Abdullah
Rawaha, the man who had urged Muhammad to incinerate all
the captives in a forest fire, brought the news to Upper Yathrib.
Riding his mount into the courtyard of the mosque, Zayd
proclaimed the victory from atop the camel. “O Helpers, rejoice
at the safety of the Messenger of God and at the killing and
capture of the polytheists!” When he named the dead Meccans,
the believers broke into cries of Allahu Akbar! Children ran
through the streets and alleys crying, “The evil Abu Jahl is dead!”1
repeating Muhammad’s nickname for Abul Hakam.
The Jews and pagan Arabs were in a state of shock and at
first refused to believe it. They turned the fact that Zayd was
riding Muhammad’s camel into evidence that he had in fact been
slain and his army defeated. It was a trick of some kind. One of
the polytheists boasted to Osama, the nine-year-old son of Zayd,
“Your master has been killed, and all those with him!” The boy
ran to his father to ask about it. Zayd told him it was untrue.
Muhammad had indeed been victorious, and he, his army, and
their prisoners would arrive in Yathrib in the next day or two.
The youngster ran back to the polytheist and accused him of
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spreading lies. “We’re going to have you up before the Messenger of God, and he will execute you!” 2 The rumor of
Muhammad’s death took on a life of its own and was not contained until enraged followers poured into the streets and
frightened nonbelievers with threats of violence.
Muhammad arrived the next morning, a day ahead of his triumphant warriors and their dejected captives. When he entered
Najjar territory, he lifted the skinny Osama onto the camel to
ride with him the rest of the way. Once he was back at his mosque,
powerful clan leaders who had kept their distance from him found
it prudent to drop in to congratulate him for his victory.
Muhammad had brought one of the captives, Suhayl Amr,
with him and turned his wife Sauda’s room into a holding cell.
An important Meccan leader, Suhayl was a former brother-inlaw of Sauda and was the man Muhammad had first appealed to
for protection after he was run out of Taif four years earlier.
While Suhayl had kept a polite distance from Muhammad’s religion, his brother Sakran Amr had joined it as had Sauda, and
they were among the second wave of émigrées to Abyssinia. Sakran later died there. Suhayl was captured at Badr, but escaped
during the forced march to Yathrib. Muhammad ordered that
whoever found him should kill him, but after he was discovered
hiding in a clutch of trees Muhammad tethered him to his camel
and forced him walk to Yathrib with his hands tied behind his
neck. Muhammad apparently did not have the opportunity to
inform Sauda about the guest arrangement. When he arrived at
the mosque with his captive in tow, she was out visiting the family of two young men who had been killed at Badr. Upon
returning home she was startled to find her former brother-inlaw kneeling the corner of her room, his hands still roped behind
his neck. “O Abu Yazid,” she said, calling him by his nickname. “You gave yourself up then! Couldn’t you have died a
noble death?”3
Muhammad spent much of the next month working out ransom deals. The high-value prisoners ended up paying four
thousand dirhams for their release, representing about thirty
pounds of pure silver. As one of the important captives, Suhayl
was made to pay the full amount. A Meccan who went to Yathrib
to negotiate his release traded places with him and was kept as a
hostage until Suhayl sent the ransom money from Mecca. Some
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of the indigent captives who were literate were offered their freedom in exchange for teaching reading and writing to the children
of the Yathrib converts.
Muhammad’s uncle Abbas paid the most for his freedom. As
a major investor in all the caravans going out of Mecca, Abbas
was well off and was known for his fondness for gold. At that
time he owned forty slaves whom he employed in his various
import-export enterprises. The literature states he was made to
pay forty awqiyyas in gold dinars, equivalent to one hundred and
seventy-five ounces of gold,4 to secure his release and that of
several of his nephews and confederates. As with the war booty,
Muhammad kept one fifth of the ransom amounts, the balance
distributed to the captors.
The thorniest ransom involved his son in law, Abu al-As, the
son of Khadija’s sister Hala. Muhammad had married his eldest
daughter Zaynab to him a year or so before the epileptic experience on Mount Hira. Though she accepted her father’s religion,
she remained in Mecca with her disbelieving husband after Muhammad fled for his life to Yathrib. By all accounts they deeply
loved one another. When news of her husband’s capture reached
her, she sent ransom money and an onyx necklace Khadija had
given her as a wedding present. Muhammad let his son-in-law
go after he agreed to send Zaynab to Yathrib and to recognize
that they were no longer married due to the fact he refused to
join the religion. Once back in Mecca, Abu al-As told his wife
they had no choice but to separate and arranged for his brother
to escort her to Yathrib.
The Meccans, however, intervened when she was already on
the road, having learned about her departure at the last minute.
They saw her leaving as an insult. Her father had slaughtered
dozens of their people and was holding many more for ransom,
so they forced her to return as a hostage. She was pregnant at
the time, and the tussling caused her to fall from her camel. As a
result she miscarried. Abu Sufyan, who was now the most powerful man of Mecca, finally allowed her to leave. He wanted
revenge against Muhammad, but he did not believe that withholding a daughter from her father was the right thing to do.
Muhammad later sent a raiding party with orders to burn to
death the men who had forced her back to Mecca, bringing about
the miscarriage, but a day after the raiders left, he sent word he
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had changed his mind about roasting them alive. “Just kill them,”
he told them. “No one has the right to punish by fire save God.”5
In Mecca, the news of the Badr defeat shattered the town. Everyone was related to everyone else, and everyone therefore had
lost a son, brother, father, cousin, or uncle. Even though he himself had lost a son and many close relatives, Abu Sufyan
suppressed his grief and advised the people against mourning
because it would drain too much of their sorrow. That would
take away the energy needed for vengeance. Hearing this, a blind
man who had lost three sons had a slave lead him to a mountain
retreat overlooking the town so that he could grieve in private.
He brought wine with him, and after getting drunk he wept inconsolably and poured sand over his head. About the same time
a wave of wailing broke out in the valley, and the sound reached
him. The Meccans had ignored Abu Sufyan’s advice, and their
sorrow broke out all across town. The blind man sent the slave
to investigate. The slave returned and lied about it, telling his
master that it was only a woman weeping over a lost camel.
Instead of refraining from mourning, the women of Mecca
cut their hair and put up curtains in the alleys and roads to mark
places for people to gather to grieve for their beloved. A favorite
camel or horse of the slain would be brought and they would
stand around it with their heads bowed and one hand placed
gently on the creature as if to connect with the spirit of the dead
through the animal.
One of the few who refused to mourn was Abu Sufyan’s wife
Hind, a strong-willed woman who burned with desire for vengeance against Muhammad for killing her son Hanzala, her father
Utba Rabia, her brother Walid, and her uncle Shayba. When a
woman asked her, “Will you not cry over . . . the people of your
house?” She replied, “May God afflict your throat! Shall I cry
over them so it will reach Muhammad and his companions and
the women of the Khazraj, so they will rejoice over our misfortune? No, by God, not until I am revenged of Muhammad and
his companions.”6
Hind refused to sleep with her husband until he struck back
at Muhammad, and Abu Sufyan himself publicly renounced the
pleasures of life until he made a display of Meccan backbone.
As soon as all the ransom money had been paid and the captured
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Meccans returned, he organized a raiding party of two hundred
men and led them north to Yathrib. They waited until late at
night to enter through the rugged southeast mountain pass into
the highlands of Yathrib where most of the Jewish fortresses were
located. Abu Sufyan first banged on the door of the fortress of
Huyayy Akhtab, one of the leaders of the Nadir tribe, to request
entry for himself and his men, but was refused. He led his men
to the nearby fortress of Sallam Mishkam, the chief rabbi of the
Nadirs, who swung the doors open and regaled them with food
and wine. Sallam, one of the rabbis who had debated theology
with Muhammad and later ridiculed him, shared what intelligence he had about him. Abu Sufyan wanted to kill Muhammad,
but the only way to do so would be to attack him at his mosque
in the center of Najjar territory. Under cover of darkness, he
and his small force could reach the mosque before being detected, but Sallam warned him that even if they were able to kill
Muhammad it was not likely many of them would get out of
Yathrib alive. It would be a suicide mission.
Abu Sufyan needed something to show for the raid. Sallam
pointed out an easy target—a farm owned by one of Muhammad’s followers located in the southeast corner of the highlands.
That morning, the Meccans struck the farm, killing the owner
and a slave. They set fire to the houses, barley fields, and palm
groves and were gone before Muhammad could muster a force
against them. Muhammad chased the raiding party for several
days, but Abu Sufyan slipped away through the desert.
The victory at Badr gave Muhammad the confidence to take on
his Yathrib enemies. Immediately following his return from Badr,
he orchestrated the assassination of poets who had mocked or
criticized him. Their influence worried him. News spread by
gossip, but the attitude towards the news was shaped by poetry—the editorials of the day. Jewish poets and pagan poets
friendly to the Jews were whipping up opposition to him with
their verses, branding him an outsider and questioning the wisdom of letting him acquire power in Yathrib. Muhammad decided
that murder was the best way to deal with them.
The first of the poets to die was an elderly sheikh named Abu
Afak who had irked Muhammad even before Badr with satirical
verses. After Muhammad returned victorious, the sheikh composed
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“WHO WILL RID ME OF OF . . . ?” Whenever he wanted someone
dead, Muhammad would recruit an assassin at the mosque. When
the killer returned to report the murder had been successfully carried
out, Muhammad would praise him in front of the congregation for his
good work in “the cause of Allah.”
a strident poem that obliquely called for Muhammad’s ouster by
heaping praise of Yathrib’s ancestors who had repulsed foreign
invasions. When Muhammad heard of the poem, he solicited a
killer at one of the mosque assemblies: “Who will deal with this
rascal for me?”7 A convert of the Najjar tribe who had fought at
Badr took up the challenge. He plunged his sword into the sheikh
while he was asleep in the courtyard of his home.
Equally ruthless was the murder of Asma, the daughter of
Marwan, who was noted for her strong opinions and sharp
tongue. The details of her background are sketchy, but she may
have been a Jewish convert or belonged to a clan on friendly
terms with the Jews, because she lived in the shadow of one of
the Jewish fortresses. Instead of being intimidated by the murder of Abu Afak, she composed forceful verses blasting the tribes
of Yathrib for allowing an outsider the run of their valley.
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“Fuck the men of Malik and Nabit and Aws and Khazraj! You
obey a stranger who does not belong among you.”8 The poem
went on to criticize her people for letting Muhammad get away
with the murder of their leaders, an allusion to the killing of
Abu Afak, and she called for a manly man to take it upon himself
to slay him.
Muhammad reacted to these words the same way he reacted
to Abu Afak’s verses. At a mosque assembly, he fumed that the
woman had harmed Allah and his messenger and therefore deserved to die. “Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?” he
bellowed. 9 A member of the tribe of Asma’s husband jumped
to his feet. He was partly blind, but he could see sufficiently to
make his way to her home late that same night. It is said that
when the assassin broke into her home, Asma was asleep with
her young children and had a swaddled newborn in her arms.
The killer moved the infant to one side and plunged his sword
into her. At dawn prayers, he reported to Muhammad. When
Muhammad saw him, he motioned for him to come to him and
said, “Did you kill the daughter of Marwan?” The assassin replied, “Yes, for you are dearer to me than my father, O Messenger
of God.” The killer, however, worried that his action might have
angered Allah, but Muhammad told him not to lose any sleep
over it: “Two goats won’t butt their heads together over her.”10
Turning to his congregation, Muhammad gave an account of
the deed and praised the killer as a man who had greatly helped
Allah and his messenger.
By chance or by intention, the assassin walked through the
cemetery during Asma’s burial. One the grieving family members pointed him out as her killer. He boasted about it to them
and challenged them to do something about it. He warned
them that the same fate would befall them if they insulted
Muhammad.
The affair came to an end with another poem. Around that
time, Muhammad began using the public relations talent of Hassan Thabit, a Yathrib poet who would serve from then on as one
of his spokesmen. One of Thabit’s first compositions praised Asma’s killer:
She stirred up a man of glorious origin,
Noble in his coming in and his going out.
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He colored her in the redness of blood
Shortly before dawn, and he felt no guilt.11
In addition to murdering his critics, Muhammad also
launched the first phase of an unprecedented program of religious cleansing and genocide against the Jews of Yathrib,
beginning with his closest Jewish neighbors, the Qaynuqas. With
the change of prayer direction to Mecca and the invention of
a new Abraham storyline, Muhammad signaled that he had severed his links to their religion for good. But merely turning his
back on them was not enough. A few weeks after the battle of
Badr, he stood before the gate of their fortress and gave the
entire tribe an ultimatum: Join his religion, or “God” would bring
down his vengeance on them just as he had done to the Meccans
for rejecting him as the bearer of truth. “You know that I am a
prophet who has been sent—you will find that in your scriptures
and God’s covenant with you.”12
The Qaynuqa fortress, less than two miles from Muhammad’s
mosque, was an imposing four-story castle built at the top of the
slope leading to Upper Yathrib and was near a strategic bridge
over one of the major riverbeds that had been gouged deep by
torrential runoff. Unlike the Nadir and Qurayza Jews who owed
their wealth to agriculture, the Qaynuqa Jews made their money
as goldsmiths, artisans, arms manufacturers, and merchants.
Their market was located in the plaza in front of the fortress
and was famous throughout Arabia for its offerings of fine jewelry. They were allies of the Khazraj and had sided with them in
several of the intertribal wars of the previous decades. Their
warriors had more than once saved the day for Abdullah Ubayy,
the polytheist leader of the Khazraj. When Muhammad delivered his ultimatum, the Jewish leaders came out of the fortress
in an attempt to reason with him. They pointed out that his
Torah claims were without merit: Their holy books said nothing
about him. He was not even a Jew, so how could he be their
prophet? They reminded him of a nonaggression pact existed
between them; the fact of not accepting his religion did not violate the pact.13 One of the Jewish leaders was defiant: “Don’t
delude yourself just because you did battle with those who lacked
knowledge of warfare and so you could take advantage of them.
If you fight against us, you’ll find us to be real men!”14
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THE MURDER OF ASMA, the daughter of Marwan. Muhammad wanted her dead because of a poem she composed criticizing the tribes of Yathrib
for failing to retaliate against him after he assassinated an elderly sheikh
who had composed satirical verses about him. The assassin Muhammad
recruited at the mosque broke into her home late at night and plunged his
sword into her while she slept with her five children, including a newborn. Only the infant is depicted here.
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Muhammad was a stickler for adhering to agreements when
they benefited him, but discarded them when they were no longer
useful. His solution to the nonaggression pact was to compose a
Koran verse that allowed him to repudiate a treaty if he “feared
treachery” from the other party. To this end he had Allah say:
“And if thou fearest treachery from any folk, then throw back to
them (their treaty) fairly. Lo! Allah loveth not the treacherous.”15
With this, all he needed to do nullify the pact with the Qaynuqa Jews was to allege feeling fear of them. A prankish incident at
the Qaynuqa market gave him the pretext he needed. A young
Bedouin woman who was married to a Yathrib convert had taken a trinket to sell to a goldsmith at one of the Qaynuqa artisan
booths. While she sat with him haggling over its value, a Jew
came up from behind and pinned her skirt in such a way that
when she stood up her buttocks were exposed. Everyone broke
out in laughter at her embarrassment. One of Muhammad’s followers saw what happened and killed the perpetrator. In reprisal,
a group of Jews surrounded him and slew him. That was all Muhammad needed to declare, “I fear the Banu Qaynuqa.” 16,17
That same day he assembled several hundred followers to lay
siege to the Qaynuqa fortress. The Jews barricaded themselves
inside and prayed their allies would come to their rescue, but
help never came. Over the next few days, Muhammad used
the promise of booty to encourage even more people to join the
siege. The number of volunteers ended up formidable enough
to dissuade anyone from helping the Qaynuqas. Not even the
other Jewish tribes sent help. Their closest non-Jewish ally was
Abdullah Ubayy, but his power was in decline relative to Muhammad’s, and he decided it was not in his interest to intervene.
The Jews held out for two weeks, but despairing of outside
help, they finally threw themselves at Muhammad’s mercy. He
was the wrong man to go to for mercy. He hated them for rejecting him and wanted to exterminate them. Perhaps anticipating
the need for it, he had composed a verse at Badr in which he
gave himself God’s blessing to commit mass murder: “It is not
for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land.”18
As the surrendering Jews came out of the fortress, they were
shackled, and word spread throughout the valley that Muhammad intended to behead them all. Though Abudullah Ubayy had
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not come to their rescue militarily, he rushed to the scene and
demanded that Muhammad treat them properly. When Muhammad ignored him, the burly Khazraj chieftain grabbed him by
his tunic and screamed in face to leave them alone. Muhammad
turned red with rage and shouted, “Damn you, let me go!” Abdullah said, “No, by God, I will not let you go until you treat my
(allies) well. Four hundred men without armor and three hundred with coats of mail, who defended me from the Arab and the
non-Arab alike, and you would mow them down in a single morning? By God, I do not feel safe and am afraid of what the future
may have in store.” Muhammad finally yielded and said in effect, “Have it your way then, damn you.”19
Muhammad expelled the Qaynuqas and seized their property, including their fortresses, blockhouses, businesses, artisan
tools, and a huge cache of armor and weapons. All that he left to
them were their camels and personal possessions. He gave them
a few days to pack up and leave the land that had been theirs for
nearly a thousand years. On the day of departure, Muhammad
ordered one of his men to escort them out of town. When they
had gone beyond the limits of the valley, the man told them to
keep going, the farther the better, and never to come back. Some of
them went to Khaybar, others to another Jewish oasis of Wadi
al-Qura. Most of them eventually migrated to Syria and settled
in Jewish communities.
Muhammad, meanwhile, had the booty transported to the
mosque courtyard where he divvied it up. He gave himself first
pick of the weapons as a part of his fifth, selecting for himself
swords, spears, and armor that had acquired such fame in battles
they had been given names. The balance he distributed among
his companions. As he made the distribution, he said to the faithful, “Those who take God and His apostle and the believers as
friends, they are of God’s party, they are the victorious.”20
Following the expulsion of the Qaynuqa Jews, the assassination
of poet-critics continued.
At the top of Muhammad’s hit list was Kab Ashraf. He was a
wealthy perfume merchant, half-Jewish through his mother, who
was of the Nadir tribe. Before the battle of Badr, he had insulted
Muhammad repeatedly in aggressive poetry that expressed the
theme taken up by the other critics, essentially that Muhammad
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was an outsider who had disrupted the life of the valley and should
be ousted. After the Meccan defeat at Badr, a distraught Ashraf
went to Mecca to urge them to take revenge against their mutual enemy. He flattered them by telling them their religion was
better than Muhammad’s: “You are more righteous and better
guided,” he said. From Mecca, Ashraf composed poems that
praised the Meccans, lamented the death of their warriors, and
called for action against Muhammad.
When Muhammad learned of his poems, he undertook a
smear campaign not only against Ashraf, but also against Meccans who harbored him. Hassan Thabit, Muhammad’s hired poet,
branded Ashraf’s hosts as “slaves of deceit” and “schooled monkeys.” Volleys of insulting poems were fired in each direction,
but Muhammad’s invective eventually won out. Even though
Ashraf espoused their cause, the notoriety resulting from Thabit’s barbs led the Meccans to end their hospitality, forcing
Ashraf to leave.
By the time he returned to Yathrib, Abu Afak and Asma had
been murdered, and Ashraf feared for his life. When Muhammad learned of his return, he recruited an assassin during a
mosque assembly. The volunteer this time was a man named Muhammad Maslama, a Badr veteran who jumped at the opportunity
to curry favor with Muhammad by killing someone for him. But
he worried that he was presented with a technical challenge the
previous assassins had not faced. Whereas their victims were relatively easy to reach, Ashraf lived in a fortified blockhouse built
atop a low hill. Given that he knew his life was in danger, he did
not readily venture beyond the walls of his stronghold. He would
have to be lured out, but Maslama was concerned the use of
deceit would offend Allah. When Muhammad told him to do
whatever was necessary to get the job done, Maslama enlisted
the help of four other zealots, one of them a foster brother of
Ashraf nicknamed Abu Naila. The foster brother was able to
earn Ashraf ’s trust by claiming during a visit with Ashraf that
he was dissatisfied with Muhammad. He was bringing ruin to
his followers through taxes, and it was getting so tough they did
not have enough money left over for food. He and several other
men badly needed an emergency loan to buy food for their families. Would he please help them out? As collateral for the loan,
they were willing to turn over their weapons and armor to
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him. Abu Naila knew the lure was working when Ashraf said,
“So, by God, you too are tired of him!” 21
On the night of the murder, the conspirators met with Muhammad at the mosque to inform him of their plan. He escorted
them as far as a cemetery and said, “Go in Allah’s name.” The
lure worked as planned. While the other men hid in the darkness, Abu Naila, with Maslama at his side, called to Ashraf from
the road to meet with them to exchange their weapons for the
loan money. He came out with the money reeking of perfumed
hair. He had just gotten in bed with his wife and they were bedaubed with the expensive perfume Ashraf dealt in. Abu Naila
complimented him on the perfume and ran his fingers through
his scented hair as if to show appreciation, then grabbed hold
and pulled Ashraf’s head back— the signal for the other men to
rush in. Shouting, “Kill the enemy of Allah!” Maslama shoved a
knife into Ashraf’s abdomen and ripped it downward so that his
intestines spilled out. In some versions of the story, they cut
his head off, either by sawing it off with the knife or with the
slash of a sword.22 Fearful the Jews would send out search parties, they made their way back to the mosque through the outlying
lava fields, taking Ashraf’s head with them. By the time they got
to the mosque it was nearing dawn and Muhammad was at prayer.
When he greeted them they dropped Ashraf’s head at his feet.23
Muhammad gave praise to Allah for the death of his enemy and
complimented them for their good work in the cause of Allah
and his messenger.
The literature does not state what was done with the head;
possibly it was impaled on a spear for everyone to see. What is
known is that following dawn prayers, Muhammad incited his
followers against all the Jews: “Whoever of the Jews falls into
your hands, kill him!”24
The Jews locked themselves into their strongholds, fearful
they would soon be subjected to a siege, but the only known
victim of the murder directive at that time was a Jewish merchant named Sunayna. He was slain when one of his business
associates, a convert named Muhayyisa, lured him out of his home
and stabbed him to death. The killer’s older brother, who was
not a convert, beat him savagely for it. “Did you kill him when
much of the fat on your belly comes from his wealth?” Revealing the depth of his zealotry, Muhayyisa said, “Had the one who
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ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you I would have cut
your head off.” The literature states that the brother saw the
light. He exclaimed, “By God, a religion which can bring you to
this is indeed a marvel.” He soon signed up.25
When some Jews and polytheists complained that Ashraf had
not committed any crimes that merited his death, Muhammad
warned that anyone insulting him in the future “shall be put
to the sword.”26
The murders spread terror throughout Yathrib and beyond
and brought many of the polytheists into the fold, if only nominally to protect themselves and their property from Muhammad’s
growing corps of fanatics. Even Asma Marwan’s extended family
joined because they “saw the power”27 of Muhammad’s religion.
Fearing for his life, Abdullah Ubayy, the Khazraj chieftain and
would-be king of Yathrib, also converted.
During his years of proselytizing in Mecca, Muhammad had
gained only a hundred or so core believers. The string of assassinations and the expulsion of the Qaynuqa Jews took place over
a period of months and brought about a rapid expansion to his
religion so that it now included much of the non-Jewish population of Yathrib.
Terror, it turned out, was a convincing missionary.
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