The Mohammed Code: Why a Desert Prophet Wants You Dead (17 page)

“
The Messenger of God said, ‘Let me go!’—he was so angry that they could see shadows in his face. Then he said, ‘Damn you, let me go! He [the tribal leader calling for mercy] replied, ‘No, by God, I will not let you go until you treat my mawali [friends and allies
³⁶⁹
] well. Four hundred men without armour 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.”
³⁷⁰

Mohammed was forced to give up his publicly-announced project of killing all the Jews, and finally spat an answer to the local chief, “You can have them.
³⁷¹
…Let them go; may Allah curse them, and may he curse” you.
³⁷²

But merely letting the Jews go free was not enough for the Prophet of Mercy
³⁷³
. Says al-Tabari, Muhammad went back on his word and “gave orders to expel” the Jews.
³⁷⁴
He ordered an ethnic cleansing.

Though Mohammed had gained a reputation for honesty in his early days as a trader, double-dealing with Jews was apparently OK. How can we tell? Allah provided Mohammed with a hefty bonus for breaking his word. Says al-Tabari, “God gave their [the Jews’] property as booty to his Messenger [Mohammed] and the Moslems”.
³⁷⁵
This holy gift of loot included weapons, goldsmithing tools,
³⁷⁶
and in all likelihood a small treasure of gold.

What’s more, it wasn’t really Mohammed who uprooted an entire tribe from their homes and “decreed exile for them.”
³⁷⁷
It was God. Explains the Qur’an, “Allah…is He who got out the Unbelievers among the People of the Book from their homes…. they thought that their fortresses would defend them from Allah! But the (wrath of) Allah came to them from quarters from which they little expected (it) and cast terror into their hearts….. ”
³⁷⁸
The Qur’an follows up this assertion with a threat that resounds to our very day: “Take warning then o ye with eyes (to see)! if anyone resists Allah verily Allah is severe in Punishment.”
³⁷⁹

The lesson wasn’t lost on Mohammed. Trouncing an easy target, a scapegoat, can give you wealth, standing, and solidarity. And pounding your scapegoat in theatrically brutal ways can frighten the pants off of bigger targets…a strategic insight Mohammed would use to its utmost three years later.

But first came further lessons in the creative use of nerds and scapegoats. in 625 AD Mohammed fought—and lost—the Battle of Uhud, the battle in which the wives of the victorious Meccans made anklets, necklaces, and pendants out of the ears and noses of the defeated Moslem corpses.
³⁸⁰
Defeat is dangerous. Allies flee from a group that’s lowered to the bottom of the pecking order. And the Moslems had just taken a pecking order tumble. A big one.

At Uhud many of Mohammed’s troops had become discouraged and lain down their arms or had fled the battlefield.
³⁸¹
To prevent future military failures of this sort, Allah manufactured a new message, a new meme hook. Those who stand firm in battle, who charge under impossible circumstances, who refuse to retreat, and who are killed while “fighting in the cause of Allah”,
³⁸²
said the Prophet, will be rewarded with something that’s worth more than earthly booty. They’ll be given a prize conceived by a clever meme--a towering position in an invisible world. They’ll be martyrs and will go to paradise.
³⁸³

Explained Mohammed, “When your brethren were smitten at the battle of Uhud, Allah put their spirits in the crops of green birds which go down to the rivers of Paradise, eat its fruit and nestle in lamps of gold in the shade of the Throne [of Allah].”
³⁸⁴
If this wasn’t a combat bonus sweet enough to persuade the reluctant to battle unto death, Mohammed added that, “chairs made of pearl are arranged for the martyrs and the maidens with big lustrous eyes will get down from their upstairs rooms… Which are made of green emerald and red ruby.”
³⁸⁵
Worldviews can concoct remarkable fantasies. And those fantasies can produce astonishing deeds. Deeds that a mere 20 years later would change the world. But back to Mohammed’s pickle—how to wipe out the stain of defeat at Uhud.

There was an answer near at hand. Pick on the nerds! Mohammed claimed that God had whispered a message in his ear—that the Jewish Banu Nadir tribe a walking distance from Mecca planned to kill him by rolling a stone from a roof above him while he sat with his back to a wall.
³⁸⁶
When a Jewish leader, Huyayy, was told that Mohammed was using this fantasy as a pretext in Medina to recruit every able-bodied male for a full-scale military assault on yet another Jewish tribe, he sloughed it off as “a clever trick of Muhammad’s.”
³⁸⁷
He didn’t believe that the Moslems could be roused to battle by a mere imagined assassination attempt.

But Huyayy was wrong. When there was an opportunity to get rich by stealing other people’s goods, even the flimsiest excuse would do. Especially when those other people were too small in number to resist. Mohammed roused the men of Medina to a righteous fury, then “ordered them [the believers in Islam] to prepare for war and to march against”
³⁸⁸
the Banu Nadir. The men of the Moslem community strapped on their armor, their bows, their arrow cases, and their swords and marched off to the exurb of Medina that housed the unsuspecting Jewish clan.

To quote Ibn Ishaq, when Mohammed and his army approached their homes:

“
The Jews took refuge in their forts and the apostle ordered that the palm trees should be cut down and burnt, and they [the besieged Banu Nadir] called out to him, ‘Muhammad, you have prohibited wanton destruction and blamed those guilty of it. Why then are you cutting and burning down our palm trees?’
³⁸⁹

The Qur’an supplies the answer. It says about the vandalism, “Whether ye cut down (o ye Muslims!) the tender palm trees or ye left them standing on their roots it was by leave of Allah and in order that He might cover with shame the rebellious transgressors. … Allah gives power to His apostles over any He pleases: and Allah has power over all things.”
³⁹⁰
In other words, God cut down the trees using the Moslems as his saws and axes. And God could do far more damage to anyone he wished, including, way, way down the line, you and me. Al-Tabari picks up the story from there.

“
The Messenger of Allah besieged the Banu Nadir for fifteen days until he had reduced them to a state of utter exhaustion”
³⁹¹

The Jews had allies who had sworn to come to their defense in affairs of this kind. But the rules of social learning machines drive allies away from losers. So when no allies appeared to help,
“God cast terror,” Mohammed’s favorite emotion, “into their hearts.”
³⁹²
The Jews of the Banu Nadir gave up without resistance. Says Ishaq, they pleaded for a simple ethnic cleansing instead of the alternative, genocide. “They asked the apostle to deport them and to spare their lives on condition that they could retain all of their property which they could carry on their camels, except their armour, and he [Mohammed] agreed.”
³⁹³

The Jews tried to carry away as many of their possessions as they could under the circumstances.
³⁹⁴
Says Ibn Ishaq, “Men were destroying their houses down to the lintel of the door which they put upon the back of their camels.”
³⁹⁵
And they were forced to accept this mass expulsion with as much dignity as they could muster. The Jews put their families on their camels’ backs, and “carried off the women and children and property with tambourines and pipes and singing-girls playing behind them. …(They went) with such pomp and splendour as had never been seen from any tribe in their day.”
³⁹⁶
Good for them.

This act of nerd-bashing produced a hefty payoff…a reversal of the abject state Mohammed and his men had been in when they were trounced and humiliated at the Battle of Uhud. Bonanza number one: the Banu Nadir “left their property to Muhammad and it became his personal possession, which he could dispose of as he wished.”
³⁹⁷
That property included items of tremendous value to a prophet of war—“weapons and mail coats” and rich oases.
³⁹⁸
The income from the Jews’ date palms alone supported Mohammed’s “dependents for the whole year…[and] whatever was saved from it was spent…for horses and weapons.”
³⁹⁹

Bonus number two: bragging rights. The right to crow with all your might over the glory of your violence. Like modern gangsta rappers, the Arabs of Mohammed’s time were renowned for their poetry. It’s in poetry that they advertised the prizes that come to those who intimidate or kill in the name of Allah. And it’s in poetry that they warned about the losses of those who refuse to knuckle under. After the ethnic cleansing of the Banu Nadir, one Moslem warrior, his chest puffed up with pride, recited these lofty verses about obeying the will of what he calls “God the Kind, God the Most Kind”
⁴⁰⁰
: