Mohamed's extermination of the Banu Quraiza.

[stevecanuck]

(In case it needs to be said, obviously people who doubt the whole tradition reject the BQ massacre)

So, a blanket and utterly gratuitous dismissal of all things 'tradition' is all you have? Really?

Nothing you've provided explains the disappearance of three Jewish tribes from Yathrib. Where did they go? Unless you tell me what happened to those tribes, and provide proof, I won't be responding.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..Unless you tell me what happened to those tribes, and provide proof, I won't be responding.

Why don't you go and argue with these people..

Talk:Banu Qurayza - Wikipedia

 

[stevecanuck]

Why don't you go and argue with these people..

Talk:Banu Qurayza - Wikipedia

No, thank you. If you think they have arguments I need to see, then summarize them and present them. I'm not doing your work for you.

 

[Augustus]

So, a blanket and utterly gratuitous dismissal of all things 'tradition' is all you have? Really?

That's 2 posts in a row you have preferred to reply with an obvious lie rather than answering a simple question justifying your opinion. Why is that?

As I've explained several times, with evidence, even if we accept there is a kernel of truth behind the narratives, the remaining parts of the narrative are a mixture of de/recontextualised hagiography, theologically motivated, and contrived, events and timelines, and events fabricated to explain the Quran.

For example, the "eradication of powerful tribes who disobey god" is a common Biblical trope. As such, even if there was some historical conflict with some unknown cause and context, we should be sceptical of "historical" narratives that just, ever so conveniently, manage to mirror common tropes in that religious tradition.

I told you this before, I even bolded it to make it easier for you - Mohamed's extermination of the Banu Quraiza.

In his depiction of the actual destruction of the tribes, Ibn Ishaq uses a combination of mnemonic and Biblo-Qur'anic patterns: the community that rejects Muhammad is obliterated in so decisive a fashion that not only are the better-prepared Jews defeated by the smaller Muslim forces, but none of the Jewish tribes is ever heard of again. As for the actual means of Muhammad's victory, the violence against the Jews is depicted as having escalated from forced submission to exile and execution.

Al-Waqidi, for his part, plays with Ibn Ishaq's account, using repetition, a change of chronology, and new material (as is his wont) to weave a motif about the Jews' abrogation of the agreement with Muhammad. This, too, is an age-old biblical theme: the Jews had not kept their covenant with God.

Muhammad and the Medinan Jews: A Comparison of the Texts of Ibn Ishaq's Kitab Sirat Rasul Allah with al-Waqidi's Kitab al-Maghazi - Rizwi S. Faizer

Unless you tell me what happened to those tribes, and provide proof, I won't be responding.

I've presented plenty of evidence as to why we shouldn't uncritically take theological texts as objective history.

You haven't actually responded to anything all thread. Just found new ways to avoid presenting any rational argument in favour of your view that we should simply accept the Islamic narrative at face value.

If you want to acknowledge you are unable to defend your position and simply choose based on whatever best confirms your prejudices, then that's on you.

No, thank you. If you think they have arguments I need to see, then summarize them and present them. I'm not doing your work for you.

I did your work for you and summarised a range of high quality academic sources to help you understand what historians actually think on the reliability of the sirah/hadith. As someone who claims to have studied the topic for decades, surely you should relish becoming better informed in such a convenient manner.

But you ignored it and then pretended it didn't exist.

Something tells me your interest in this issue has absolutely nothing to do with becoming better informed and increasing your knowledge and understanding

Perhaps you will prove me wrong by answering the simple question you've dodged for the past 10 posts though.

 

[stevecanuck]

Start a thread.

 

[stevecanuck]

Perhaps you will prove me wrong by answering the simple question you've dodged for the past 10 posts though.

When you tell me what happened to the Jewish tribes of Yathrib that differs from the accepted narrative that they were expelled/killed by the Muslims, then I'll come back.

 

[Augustus]

When you tell me what happened to the Jewish tribes of Yathrib that differs from the accepted narrative that they were expelled/killed by the Muslims, then I'll come back.

Of course you won't reply, if you were capable of offering a rational reason you would have done so by now. No need to pretend otherwise.

Even proving it is an obvious recreation of a common Biblical trope won't break your blind faith in the unerring accuracy of the Islamic tradition (except when your ideological prejudice benefits from rejecting things on a whim).

As I've explained many times by now:

Everything that happened was probably significantly different as your theological narrative was never written to be factual history but theology.

I guess there was some conflict between groups that happened for different reasons in a completely different context, more or less around the time of Muhammad and was much later turned into a mythologised version of a Biblical trope for theological reasons.

It's like the Bible, kernels of truth recast in mythical terms for religious purposes. Do you take the bible for fact too?

I've already explained a) the Late Antique context for Christian/Jewish Byzantine/Persian disputes in the periods leading up to this era that might well be relevant to this issue and which are absent from the Islamic account b) that the BQ narrative is an obvious Biblical trope c) that the whole narrative is unreliable for numerous reasons

Your sole response has been "It doesn't matter. We must take it uncritically as fact because it's what the scriptures say".

Maybe you'll understand it in this form, as you seem very confused by Islamic historiography:

"Prove to me David didn't kill Goliath with a sling! What happened to the giant? All the Bibles agree that David killed Goliath. How come nobody heard of him again?

If you prove to me the giant wasn't killed by David then I'll find another reason not to answer your very simple question about my David v Goliath OP that assumes the David v Goliath story is highly accurate"

I guarantee if someone made the above argument, you'd find it risible. How does it feel to be the person making that argument?

 

[stevecanuck]

Of course you won't reply, if you were capable of offering a rational reason you would have done so by now. No need to pretend otherwise.

Even proving it is an obvious recreation of a common Biblical trope won't break your blind faith in the unerring accuracy of the Islamic tradition (except when your ideological prejudice benefits from rejecting things on a whim).

As I've explained many times by now:

Everything that happened was probably significantly different as your theological narrative was never written to be factual history but theology.

I guess there was some conflict between groups that happened for different reasons in a completely different context, more or less around the time of Muhammad and was much later turned into a mythologised version of a Biblical trope for theological reasons.

It's like the Bible, kernels of truth recast in mythical terms for religious purposes. Do you take the bible for fact too?

I've already explained a) the Late Antique context for Christian/Jewish Byzantine/Persian disputes in the periods leading up to this era that might well be relevant to this issue and which are absent from the Islamic account b) that the BQ narrative is an obvious Biblical trope c) that the whole narrative is unreliable for numerous reasons

Your sole response has been "It doesn't matter. We must take it uncritically as fact because it's what the scriptures say".

Maybe you'll understand it in this form, as you seem very confused by Islamic historiography:

"Prove to me David didn't kill Goliath with a sling! What happened to the giant? All the Bibles agree that David killed Goliath. How come nobody heard of him again?

If you prove to me the giant wasn't killed by David then I'll find another reason not to answer your very simple question about my David v Goliath OP that assumes the David v Goliath story is highly accurate"

I guarantee if someone made the above argument, you'd find it risible. How does it feel to be the person making that argument?

Of course you won't reply, if you were capable of offering a rational reason you would have done so by now. No need to pretend otherwise.

Even proving it is an obvious recreation of a common Biblical trope won't break your blind faith in the unerring accuracy of the Islamic tradition (except when your ideological prejudice benefits from rejecting things on a whim).

As I've explained many times by now:

Everything that happened was probably significantly different as your theological narrative was never written to be factual history but theology.

I guess there was some conflict between groups that happened for different reasons in a completely different context, more or less around the time of Muhammad and was much later turned into a mythologised version of a Biblical trope for theological reasons.

It's like the Bible, kernels of truth recast in mythical terms for religious purposes. Do you take the bible for fact too?

I've already explained a) the Late Antique context for Christian/Jewish Byzantine/Persian disputes in the periods leading up to this era that might well be relevant to this issue and which are absent from the Islamic account b) that the BQ narrative is an obvious Biblical trope c) that the whole narrative is unreliable for numerous reasons

Your sole response has been "It doesn't matter. We must take it uncritically as fact because it's what the scriptures say".

Maybe you'll understand it in this form, as you seem very confused by Islamic historiography:

"Prove to me David didn't kill Goliath with a sling! What happened to the giant? All the Bibles agree that David killed Goliath. How come nobody heard of him again?

If you prove to me the giant wasn't killed by David then I'll find another reason not to answer your very simple question about my David v Goliath OP that assumes the David v Goliath story is highly accurate"

I guarantee if someone made the above argument, you'd find it risible. How does it feel to be the person making that argument?

Good bye, FD. It's been nice talking to you again.

 

[Augustus]

Good bye, FD. It's been nice talking to you again.

Very droll, albeit not quite as funny as your attempts to hide the fact you are unable to respond to the simplest questions on a topic you pretend to have studied for decades.

But seeing as you've never attempted to offer a single explanation of how you decide what to believe and what to reject other than rank ideological prejudice, our non-discussion has served its purpose.

I'll see you next time this needs to be demonstrated to the readers

 

[stevecanuck]

Just to put a pin in this - the majority historical consensus is that the Banu Quraiza were indeed slaughtered by Mohamed's men after the Battle of the Trench. I see no reason to doubt it. Historians have apparently exercised whatever due diligence is required by their chosen profession and have come up with this opinion. I'm good with it. If anyone isn't, that's okay too.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Just to put a pin in this - the majority historical consensus is that the Banu Quraiza were indeed slaughtered by Mohamed's men after the Battle of the Trench.

Indeed, many traitors were slaughtered .. but whether it was every man of that tribe cannot be known with certainty.

Pointless conjecture.
..and they were not slaughtered because they were Jews.
Muslims have had good relations with Jews, overall.

That is not to say that Muslims and Jews get on like "a house on fire".
We know there is enmity between the tribes of Ishmael and Isaac.
Envy is a destroyer of the human race.

 

[stevecanuck]

Muslims have had good relations with Jews, overall.

Anyone who believes that, please PM me. I've got a great piece of sea-side property for you just outside of Flagstaff.

 

[Augustus]

Just to put a pin in this - the majority historical consensus is that the Banu Quraiza were indeed slaughtered by Mohamed's men after the Battle of the Trench. I see no reason to doubt it. Historians have apparently exercised whatever due diligence is required by their chosen profession and have come up with this opinion. I'm good with it. If anyone isn't, that's okay too.

Really? Which scholars have you read on this issue? I only remember one of us actually bothering to back up their arguments with multiple scholarly sources.

In all your threads you just seem to assume the Islamic narrative is accurate, factual history and seem completely oblivious that this is widely questioned among historians. Maybe 50-100 years ago non-Muslim scholars took the sirah at face value, not any more though.

In case anyone is wondering, the majority consensus of secular historians is that while there may well be some degree of historicity behind some of the events, the sirah/hadith are not reliable history as they were recorded centuries after the fact for theological purposes. As such, specialists tend not to have a "consensus" on individual events without studying them specifically.

Scholars who do study individual events generally try to reconstruct or recontextualise events so that they fit into the Late Antique Middle East that existed, not the mythical version that is abstracted from the world we know about.

Specialist have noted regarding the Islamic sources on BQ:

1. Are an example of the Biblical trope where a group are exterminated due disobeying their covenant with God (in this case via Muhammad). Historians tend to be very sceptical of things that resemble common religious tropes.
2. Contain a miracle (bleeding magically stopping). Historians tend be sceptical of things that contain miracles.
3. Contain an obvious fabrication - BQ were buried in the marketplace in Medina. Why you dig what would be a very large and pestilent mass grave for an entire enemy tribe in a functional part of your town? Historians tend to be very sceptical of things that seem highly improbable.
4. Have clearly been stripped of their historical context - Why did Muhammad end up in Medina? What was the relations hip between the proto-Muslims and the Jews? How did this relate to the Byzantine-Persian power politics of the era? Where were the Christians? etc. Historians tend to be very sceptical of things that have clearly had their real-world historical context removed.

As such, the historians don't simply take the narrative at face value, as the quotes I provided demonstrate.

Now you insist that the above doesn't make you question any part of the accuracy of the narrative, and that it is still very accurate. What you do question in this "very accurate" narrative though is that Muhammad could have had any justification for his actions, and so you've made a fan-fiction version where he is far more mendacious.

You just so happen to believe and reject whatever best suits your goal of painting Muhammad in as negative a light as possible.

This is not a rational and good faith attempt to do some amateur historiography, it is simply blatant cherry picking based on ideological prejudices. While you may be deceiving yourself about this, the evidence suggests otherwise.

As the purpose of your threads are to attack the religious beliefs of others, it is fair enough to highlight this.

 

[paarsurrey]

Verse 33:26 - "Pickthall: And He brought those of the People of the Scripture who supported them down from their strongholds, and cast panic into their hearts. Some ye slew, and ye made captive some."

What follows is 100% my opinion. I can't support it with documentation because history is written by the victors (read the link at the bottom for a perfect example). Note: Yathrib was the name of the city now known as Medina.

In 627 Mohamed attacked the only remaining Jewish tribe in Yathrib - the Banu Quraiza. They surrendered without a fight, and then Mohamed oversaw their extermination (ordered by someone else, but approved by Mohamed). Hundreds of men and youth were beheaded, while the women and children were taken as slaves. Their property was seized and distributed as war booty (this much is not in dispute).

All of this happened because the Jews had it coming (this is the disputed bit). The Islamoapologist story is that the Jews had conspired against Mohamed during the Battle of the Trench and had aided the enemy. After the Muslims won said battle, Mohamed conveniently received a visit from Gabriel telling him his work was not done. He now had to attack the Banu Quraiza to make them pay for their perfidy and 'treason'.

I have a different take. After beating the Meccans and their allies, Mohamed no longer needed to maintain the pretense of having a defensive alliance with the Jews. He simply didn't need them any more, so he decided to complete his goal of taking the city over and getting rid of the people who made the fatal mistake of giving him a home when he entered Yathrib as a refugee.

Mohamed had already rid himself of the other two major Jewish tribes - the Banu Qaynuqa and the Banu Nadir. First, he expelled the Banu Qaynuqa from Yathrib and confiscated their wealth. Justification for this stemmed from an incident in which a Jew embarrassed a Muslim woman by exposing part of her leg. The Jew was killed by a Muslim man who in turn was killed by a group of Jews. This led Mohamed to lay siege to the Banu Qaynuqa fortress and to expel them after they surrendered without a fight. In my opinion, Mohamed used a single incident as a convenient excuse to expel an entire Jewish tribe rather than to treat it as the criminal/civil matter that it clearly was. Perhaps of greater significance is the fact that in only three years Mohamed had gained both the military and the political power to be in a position to make the rules in what used to be a largely Jewish city.

Next, in the aftermath of the Battle of Uhud, Mohamed expelled the Banu Nadir tribe for alleged acts of treason. Although the story varies, and is described in surah 59, Mohamed claimed to have evidence of either a Banu Nadir plot to kill him, or that they had colluded with the Meccans. This was a summary decision made by Mohamed with no trial or actual evidence presented, again suggesting he was looking to purge Yathrib of Jews on any pretext, regardless of how unsupported. This left only the Banu Quraiza, whose fate was now effectively sealed.

Al-Quran Ibn Kathir Tafsir | Alim.org

Is there mention of Banu Quraiza in any verse of Quran, the only source of events of Muhammad's time, when an event happened, please? Right?

Regards

 

[stevecanuck]

Is there mention of Banu Quraiza in any verse of Quran, the only source of events of Muhammad's time, when an event happened, please? Right?

Regards

Surah 33 is called "The Confederates", and deals with the Battle of the Trench. Verse 26 describes the killing.

He brought down those of the People of the Book who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror in their hearts; some you slew, some you made captive.

 

[muhammad_isa]

He brought down those of the People of the Book who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror in their hearts; some you slew, some you made captive.

Agreed.

 

[stevecanuck]

Is there mention of Banu Quraiza in any verse of Quran, the only source of events of Muhammad's time, when an event happened, please? Right?

Regards

Did my response satisfy your request to supply a verse?

 

[Augustus]

Surah 33 is called "The Confederates", and deals with the Battle of the Trench. Verse 26 describes the killing.

He brought down those of the People of the Book who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror in their hearts; some you slew, some you made captive.

Or to be more accurate…

Sectarian Islamic tradition from centuries after the fact has claimed the verse 26 describes the killing, but then again this tradition also describes Muhammad splitting the moon and flying on a donkey so must be treated with scepticism when claiming definitive occasions of revelation for vague and ambiguous verses as these often appear to be theological inventions rather than recorded history.

 

[stevecanuck]

Or to be more accurate…

Sectarian Islamic tradition from centuries after the fact has claimed the verse 26 describes the killing, but then again this tradition also describes Muhammad splitting the moon and flying on a donkey so must be treated with scepticism when claiming definitive occasions of revelation for vague and ambiguous verses as these often appear to be theological inventions rather than recorded history.

They couldn't describe seeing Mohamed actually flying the donkey because nobody else was there. The closest they can come is to say they heard Mohamed talking about it.

Btw, I'm still waiting for you to claim a positive position as opposed to simply saying "Nope". Was there ever a Banu Quraiza in Yathrib? If so, where did they go? How did they manage to just disappear without a little nudge, like, you know, a bit of genocide? What do you have to offer as an alternative?

 

[Augustus]

hey couldn't describe seeing Mohamed actually flying the donkey because nobody else was there. The closest they can come is to say they heard Mohamed talking about it.

They saw the moon being split and the tradition is so well preserved that it is mutawatir (i.e. so well preserved according to 'hadith science' that it is undeniable fact only fractionally less reliable than the Quran itself).

Both of these events however stem from a desire to offer an "occasion of revelation" to a passage of the Quran that would be ambiguous without it, which just so happens to be the same kind of passage that you are putting your faith into.

Btw, I'm still waiting for you to claim a positive position as opposed to simply saying "Nope". Was there ever a Banu Quraiza in Yathrib? If so, where did they go? How did they manage to just disappear without a little nudge, like, you know, a bit of genocide? What do you have to offer as an alternative?

The onus for demonstrating why we should believe them, so far your argument has been "because it is the historical consensus" despite the fact I've proved this to be completely false by referring to numerous pieces actual scholarship on the issue and you have made no attempt to support your position.

Let's assume they did exist for the sake of discussion though:

1. They existed in a context that is significantly different form the one described in Islamic theology which has obviously stripped much of the real historical context away (for example Roman/Persian presence in the region and it's connection to tribal and sectarian warfare). Agreed?
2. The theological narrative clearly contains numerous Biblical tropes, miracles and fabrications and thus should be treated with great scepticism. Agreed?
3. There are almost no tribes in history that we can track throughout their decline and/or assimilation. Almost all of these tribes assimilated into other groups and were not eradicated. Agreed?


But I explained all this before:

I guess there was some conflict between groups that happened for different reasons in a completely different context, more or less around the time of Muhammad and was much later turned into a mythologised version of a Biblical trope for theological reasons.

It's like the Bible, kernels of truth recast in mythical terms for religious purposes.

To add to that, their eradication is a trope. Like what happens to most groups, the rest got assimilated into other groups.