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The Muslims and the Jews
In A.D. 70, the Roman general, Titus, captured
Jerusalem and put an end to the Jewish rule of Palestine. Following the Roman conquest,
many of the Jews left their homeland and wandered into other countries. Some Jewish tribes
crossed the Syrian desert and entered the Arabian peninsula where they settled in Hijaz.
In course of time they built up numerous colonies in Medina and between Medina and Syria.
They are also said to have converted many Arabs to Judaism. At the beginning of the seventh century A.D., there
were three Jewish tribes living in Medina (Yathrib). They were Banu Qainuka'a, Banu Nadhir
and Banu Qurayza. All three tribes were rich and powerful, and also, they were more
civilized than the Arabs. Whereas the Arabs were all farmers, the Jews were the
entrepreneurs of industry, business and commerce in Arabia, and they controlled the
economic life of Medina (Yathrib). The two Arab tribes – Aus and Khazraj – were
debt-ridden to the Jews perennially. Besides Medina, the strong centers of the Jews in
Hijaz were Khyber, Fadak and Wadi-ul-Qura. The lands in these valleys were the most
fertile in all Arabia, and their Jewish cultivators were the best farmers in the country. The migration of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam,
from Makkah to Medina (then Yathrib), brought him into contact with the Jews for the first
time. At the beginning they were friendly to him. He granted them the famous Charter of
Medina, and they acknowledged him the ruler of their city, and agreed to abide by his
decisions in all disputes. They also agreed to defend the city in the event of an invasion
by an enemy. But, unfortunately, this friendship did not last
long. It soon became obvious that the Jews had given their friendship to Muhammad with
many reservations. In their own interest, they ought to have acted their part of the
agreement faithfully but they did not. For this change in their attitude, there were many
reasons, among them: 1. When Muhammad arrived in Medina, he reformed the
life of the Arabs or whoever became a Muslim. He taught them to be temperate and moderate
in everything, and taught them the value of discipline in life. They stopped drinking and
gambling both of which were the causes of their ruin in the past; and they gave up taking
loans at high rates of interest from the Jews. When the Arabs stopped taking loans and
paying interest on them, a rich source of revenue suddenly dried up for the Jews, and they
bitterly resented this. They could now see that their grip on the economic life of Medina
was beginning to loosen. 2. The Jews also realized that Islam was an enemy of
the system of exploitation, and of the capitalist system. They began to see Islam as a
threat to their economic interests. 3. The Jewish priests hated Muhammad as much as the
Jewish money-lenders. He had shown to the Jews how their priest followed deviant
interpretations of their scriptures, and how they distorted their text. The priests, on
their part, tried to convince their flocks that Muhammad did not have knowledge of their
scriptures, and they tried to point out to them the "errors" in the Qur’an.
The Jews also believed that they were safe only as
long as the two Arab tribes of Medina, the Aus and the Khazraj, were fighting against each
other. Peace between the Aus and the Khazraj, they thought, would pose a threat to their
survival in Arabia. For this reason, they were always fomenting trouble between them. Of the three Jewish tribes of Medina, the Banu
Qainuka'a and the Banu Nadhir had already been expelled after the battles of Badr and Uhud
respectively, and they had left with all their baggage, and herds of animals, and had
resettled in Khyber. The third and the last tribe of the Jews in Medina
was the Banu Qurayza. According to the terms of the Charter of Medina, it was their duty
to take an active part in defending the city during the siege of A.D. 627. But not only
they did not contribute any men or materials during the siege but were actually caught
conspiring with the enemy to compass the destruction of the Muslims. Some Jews even
attacked a house in which many Muslim women and children had taken refuge as it was
considered a safer place for them than their own houses. If Amr ibn Abd Wudd had overcome
the resistance of the Muslims, the Jews would have attacked them from the rear. Between
the pagans of Makkah and the Jews of Medina, the Muslims would have been massacred. It was
only the presence of mind of Muhammad and the daring of Ali that averted such a
disaster. R.V.C. Bodley The Jews were not at first inclined to listen to Abu
Sofian's proposal (to attack Muslims from the rear), but after a while they compromised
and agreed to betray the Moslems when the time seemed opportune. (The Messenger – the
Life of Mohammed) The conduct of the Jews during the siege of Medina
was high treason against the State. Therefore, when the confederate army broke up and the
danger to Medina was averted, the Muslims turned their attention to them. The Jews shut themselves up in their forts and the
Muslims besieged them. But some days later, they requested the Prophet to raise the siege,
and agreed to refer the dispute to arbitration. The Prophet allowed the Jews to choose their own
arbitrator. Here they made a very costly blunder. They should have chosen Muhammad himself
– the embodiment of mercy – to be their judge. If they had, he would have
allowed them to depart from Medina with their baggage and their animals, and the incident
would have been closed. But the Jews didn't choose Muhammad as their judge.
Instead, they chose Sa'ad ibn Muadh, the leader of their former allies, the Aus. Sa'ad was
a man who was utterly reckless with life – his own as well as that of others. Sa'ad had received a mortal wound during the battle
of the Trench, and in fact died soon after he had passed judgment on the fate of the Jews.
He declared treason to be an unpardonable offense, and his verdict was inexorable. He
invoked the Torah, the Scripture of the Jews, and sentenced all men to death, and women
and children to slavery. His sentence was carried out on the spot. The Jews of the tribe of Qurayza were massacred in
the spring of A.D. 627. From this date, the Jews ceased to be an active force in the
social, economic and political life of Medina.
