Spoerl / The Levantine Review Volume 2 Number 1 (Spring 2013)
apparently far more numerous in the Hijaz than the Christians, so Ibn Ishaq has much more to say about them, especially after the hijra.[1]
These passages from the first two hundred pages of Ibn Ishaq’s sira, covering Muhammad’s life up to the hijra, convey the following themes: the sacred books of the Jews and Christians plainly describe Muhammad and foretell his coming, with the clear implication that only dishonest and wicked people of the book would deny his prophethood.[2]
LIFE OF MUHAMMAD AFTER THE HIJRA (622-632)
After the Hijra in the year 622 CE, Ibn Ishaq initially paints a remarkably peaceful scenario: Muhammad enters a covenant with the Medinans and the Jews (the so-called “Constitution of Medina”), described as “a friendly agreement with the Jews” establishing them in their religion and their property (p. 231). The Muslims, for their part, settle down to practice their faith with a freedom unknown previously in Mecca: “Prayer was instituted, the alms tax and fasting were prescribed, legal punishments fixed, the forbidden and permitted prescribed, and Islam took up its abode with them” (p. 235).
However, this peaceful idyll is quickly shattered by two groups, the Jews and the hypocrites:
About this time the Jewish rabbis showed hostility to the apostle in envy, hatred, and malice, because God had chosen His apostle from the Arabs. They were joined by men from al-Aus and al-Khazraj who had obstinately clung to their heathen religion. They were hypocrites, clinging to the polytheism of their fathers denying the resurrection; yet when Islam appeared and their people flocked to it they were compelled to pretend to accept it to save their lives. But in secret they were hypocrites whose inclination was towards the Jews because they considered the apostle a liar and strove against Islam. (p. 239)
Ibn Ishaq adds: “It was the Jewish rabbis who used to annoy the apostle with questions and introduce confusion, so as to confound the truth with falsity” (p. 239). He then gives a lengthy and detailed list of Muhammad’s “Jewish adversaries” (pp. 239-240). After presenting this list, he says: “These were the Jewish rabbis, the rancorous opponents of the apostle […,] the men who asked questions, and stirred up trouble against Islam to try to
- ↑ Ibn Ishaq even asserts that the polytheists of Mecca knew that Muhammad was telling them the truth, “but envy prevented them from admitting his truth” (pp. 140-1). So Jews, Christians, and polytheists alike are portrayed as dishonest when they reject Muhammad’s message: the only honest non-Muslims are the ones who convert to Islam.
- ↑ The Koran asserts this quite explicitly, referring to Muhammad as “the Apostle - the unlettered prophet – whom they shall find described to them in the Torah and the Gospel” (7:157).
