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By Mohammad Asghar
The first part of the above titled article was devoted to the issues that concerned mostly the authorship of the Quran. We are going to deal with Bukhari’s hadith number 369, Volume 5, Book 59 in its second part. The said hadith reads:
Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah:
Allah's Apostle said, "Who is willing to kill Ka'b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?" Thereupon Muhammad bin Maslama got up saying, "O Allah's Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?" The Prophet said, "Yes," Muhammad bin Maslama said, "Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab)."The Prophet said, "You may say it." Then Muhammad bin Maslama went to Kab and said, "That man (i.e. Muhammad demands Sadaqa (i.e. Zakat) from us, and he has troubled us, and I have come to borrow something from you." On that, Kab said,” By Allah, you will get tired of him!"
Muhammad bin Maslama said, "Now as we have followed him, we do not want to leave him unless and until we see how his end is going to be. Now we want you to lend us a camel load or two of food." (Some difference between narrators about a camel load or two.) Kab said, "Yes, (I will lend you), but you should mortgage something to me."
Muhammad bin Maslama and his companion said, "What do you want?" Ka'b replied, "Mortgage your women to me." They said, "How can we mortgage our women to you and you are the most handsome of the 'Arabs?" Ka'b said, "Then mortgage your sons to me." They said, "How can we mortgage our sons to you? Later they would be abused by the people's saying that so-and-so has been mortgaged for a camel load of food. That would cause us great disgrace, but we will mortgage our arms to you."
Muhammad bin Maslama and his companion promised Kab that Muhammad would return to him. He came to Kab at night along with Kab's foster brother, Abu Na'ila. Kab invited them to come into his fort, and then he went down to them. His wife asked him, "Where are you going at this time?" Kab replied, "None but Muhammad bin Maslama and my (foster) brother Abu Na'ila have come." His wife said, "I hear a voice as if dropping blood is from him, Ka'b said.” They are none but my brother Muhammad bin Maslama and my foster brother Abu Naila. A generous man should respond to a call at night even if invited to be killed." Muhammad bin Maslama went with two men. (Some narrators mention the men as 'Abu bin Jabr. Al Harith bin Aus and Abbad bin Bishr). So Muhammad bin Maslama went in together with two men, and said to them, "When Ka'b comes, I will touch his hair and smell it, and when you see that I have got hold of his head, strip him. I will let you smell his head." Kab bin Al-Ashraf came down to them wrapped in his clothes, and diffusing perfume. Muhammad bin Maslama said. “have never smelt a better scent than this. Ka'b replied. "I have got the best 'Arab women who know how to use the high class of perfume." Muhammad bin Maslama requested Ka'b "Will you allow me to smell your head?" Ka'b said, "Yes." Muhammad smelt it and made his companions smell it as well. Then he requested Ka'b again, "Will you let me (smell your head)?" Ka'b said, "Yes." When Muhammad got a strong hold of him, he said (to his companions), "Get at him!" So they killed him and went to the Prophet and informed him. (Abu Rafi) was killed after Ka'b bin Al-Ashraf."
According to most Muslims, including their scholars, the above is an authentic hadith. Since it is an authentic hadith, Muslims seek inspiration from it so that what their peace-loving Prophet had done in his Century of Ignorance, they can repeat it in the 21st century of Light, Civic Rights and Enlightenment.
It is evident from the hadith that Muhammad was madly angry at the Jewish poet Ka’b bin al-Ashraf. According to Ibn Ishaq, the cause of the anger was a simple thing: He composed some poems lamenting the defeat the Meccan Pagans had suffered at Allah’s hand in the battle of Badr.
At first, Muhammad employed Hassan b. Thabit to respond to the Jew’s verses with those of his own, but the poet remained undefeated. A Muslim woman by the name of B. Murayd of the clan of Bali also tried her hand at defeating him with her own poems, but she, too, failed. One of the amatory poems that Ka’b composed having a Muslim woman by the name of Ummu’l-Fadl d. al-Harith in his mind proved fatal for him. He is said to have said the following in his composition:
“Are you off without stopping in the valley
And leaving Ummu’l-Fadl in Mecca?
Out would come what she bought from the pedlar of bottles,
Henna and hair dye.
What lies ‘twixt and ankle and elbow is in motion[1]
When she tries to stand and does not.
Like Umm Hakim when she was with us
The link between us firm and not to be cut,
She is one of B. Amir who bewitches the heart,
And if she wished she could cure my sickness,
The glory of women and of a people is their father,
A people held in honour true to their oath.
Never did I see the sun rise at night till I saw her
Display herself to us in the darkness of the night.”
These amatory and some other supposedly insulting verses the poet composed against a Muslim woman are said to have thrown the Prophet into a rage. Claiming that the poet had hurt Allah and His Apostle (we do not know how?), the Prophet of Mercy ordered him killed. For the assassin to succeed in his heavenly-sanctioned mission, he even permitted him to tell lies to his would-be victim. And the assassin did, indeed, live up to the standard of the Prophet; he killed Ka’b while pretending that he was friend of his and that he was at his home to collect some “sadaqa” on behalf of the noblest among all the noble humans that Allah has ever created.
The description of the episode mentioned in the hadith tells us some other aspects of Muhammad’s conducts after he migrated to Medina in 622 A.D. Some of them are as follows:
Muhammad and his hungry followers from Mecca had made the lives, especially those of the Jews of Medina unbearable. Otherwise, the assassin would not have said, and his would-be Jewish victim, Ka’b, would not have agreed to the former’s statement in which he had claimed that the Prophet of Islam was troubling them with his demands of ‘sadaqa.’
The word “sadaqa,” also written and pronounced as “sadaqah,” among others, denotes: 1. Propitiatory offerings. These include offerings made to Allah to appease His anger. 2. Alms given to beggars to end their hunger and misery. 3. To give something to someone to avert mishap.
It is clear from the hadith that Muhammad and his followers in Medina lived, until many Jews were killed, others expelled or subdued and their possessions taken over by the Muslims, on sadaqa. The Jews were forced to help Muslims sustain their lives. Those of them who refused to yield to the Muslims’ demands faced reprisals. This is inferable from Muhammad bin Maslama’s statement to Ka’b in which he had said: "That man (i.e. Muhammad demands Sadaqa (i.e. Zakat) from us, and he has troubled us, …”
It should be noted here that Sadaqa and Zakat are two different things. Whereas it is obligatory for all reasonably affluent Muslims to pay zakat at a fixed rate at a certain time of every lunar year (cf. verse 2:43 et al), there is no fixed rate or time for giving alms or sadaqa. They can give any amount or anything as sadaqa at any time of a day, month or a year.
That Muhammad and his cohorts subsisted on sadaqa and also used it for spreading Islam among the poor Pagans of Medina are supported by the Quran. It says: “Alms are for the poor and the needy, and those employed to administer the (funds); for those whose hearts have been (recently) reconciled (to the Truth); for those in bondage and debt; in the Cause of Allah; and for wayfarer: (Thus is) ordained by Allah, and Allah is full of Knowledge and Wisdom (9:60).
Muhammad announced the above decree in Medina. Through this, he legitimized payment and forceful collection of sadaqa, mostly from the Jews of the city. He also specified in it the purposes on which he intended to spend it.
He set aside a part of the alms collected by his followers from all over Medina for bribing those Pagans who had some sympathy for Islam, but were reluctant to adopt it as their faith. Another part was reserved for administrating the alms. A third part of it was designated for expending in the Cause of Allah.
We find no good reason for Muhammad to set up an administrative body to manage the alms, unless he was acting as the head of all the Muslim beggars. In this capacity, he must have forced them to deposit their collections with him at the end of the day.
Out of the total collection, he set aside a chunk of it on accounts he specified in his decree. Only a small portion of the total alms went to its real collectors.
The share Muhammad thus took from the beggars he spent on himself as well as on the maintenance of a large number of women he kept in his harem. Our thought is reinforced by the fact that after migrating to Medina, he neither took up any profession to earn money nor did he carry from Mecca enough of it with which he could maintain himself and a large number of his dependents. In the light of this situation, what was he supposed to do to make a living?
Muhammad resorted to extortion mostly from the Jews of Medina, but called it sadaqa (see the meanings of this word given at serial 2, above). When the Jews resisted extortion by his brigade of beggars, he legitimized their action through the decree we have noted above from the Quran.
The All-Knowing and Wise Allah considers poverty among the Muslims a virtue. Following His thought process, many Muslims take up the virtue-filled profession of beggary. It is rampant among the Asian Muslims. The following news item published by Arab News in its cyber- edition of September 12, 2004 validates our assertion.
1,000 Beggars arrested in Jeddah
Jeddah, 12 September 2004-The anti-beggary department in Jeddah has arrested more than 1,000 beggars from different Arab and Asian countries in the past few months. They were arrested in commercial locations and public squares.
Two percent of those arrested were Saudis and 55 percent overstayers, most of them women and children, Arab News has learned.
December 12, 2004
[1] Presumably, the woman’s buttocks are meant here; they would be between her ankle and elbow as she reclined. Large and heavy buttocks were marks of female beauty among the old Arabs.