Christians Under Attack

 a few reliable reports” (1) has often been used by the educated Muslims and their scholars to defend their Prophet and his actions that we find unpalatable to our taste. While defending his actions, they brush off even those narratives that have come to us from his earliest biographers, terming them hearsay and untenable.

But what about the Quran? Though its contents were collected from the mouths of other people, Muslims do not consider them to be hearsay; to them, what we read in it are the exact words as were used by Muhammad and, therefore, there is no scope for anyone – Muslims or non-Muslims – to doubt their veracity.

Keeping the above position of the Muslims in mind, I have tried to find out from the Quran what kind of a conjugal life did Muhammad lead, and how he treated his wives. To me, it is a very interesting subject, and I am sure readers will agree with me.

I chose Sura Ahzab, or The Confederates (33) for my study. I am reproducing my findings with a brief introduction to this Sura, following which are some of its verses that I have commented on to make their contents clear to the readers.

Sura Ahzab deals with the Battle of Trench as well as Zainab’s marriage with Zaid, who was a former slave of Prophet Muhammad. After freeing him, the Prophet adopted him as his son. Because adoption was a pious and generous matter for the Pagans, Muhammad called himself Abu Zaid, i.e. Father of Zaid. His action was in line with the Pagans’ age-old tradition.

Here I will not talk about the Battle of Trench, as I know readers already know about this battle and the repercussions that followed in its wake. Instead, I will concentrate on the verses that deal with his conjugal life. In this connection, I want readers to read what Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall, a highly erudite English Christian convert to Islam, who is held in high esteem by the Muslim, has said in introduction of this Sura. He wrote:

“In v. 37 the reference is to the unhappy marriage of Zeyd, the Prophet’s freedman and adopted son, with Zeynab, the Prophet’s cousin, a proud lady of Qureysh. The Prophet had arranged the marriage with the idea of breaking down the old barrier of pride of caste, and had shown but little consideration for Zeynab’s feelings. Tradition says that both she and her brother were averse to the match, and that she had always wished to marry the Prophet. For Zeyd, the marriage was nothing but a cause of embarrassment and humiliation. When the Prophet’s attention was first called to their unhappiness, he urged Zeyd to keep his wife and not divorce her, being apprehensive of the talk that would arise if it became known that a marriage by him had proved unhappy. At last, Zeyd did actually divorced Zeynab, and the Prophet was commanded to marry her in order, by his example, to disown the superstitious custom of the pagan Arabs, in such matters, of treating their adopted sons as their real sons, which was against the laws of God (i.e. the laws of nature); whereas in arranging a marriage, the woman’s inclinations ought to be considered. Unhappy marriage was no part of Allah’s ordinance, and was not to be held sacred in Islam.”(2)

I urge readers to keep Pickthall’s above introduction of the Sura in their mind, while reading my comments.

This Sura begins with a call from Muhammad, asking himself:

“O Prophet! Fear Allah, and hearken not to the Unbelievers and the Hypocrites: verily Allah is full of knowledge and wisdom. But follow that which comes to thee by inspiration from thy Lord: for Allah is well acquainted with (all} that ye do.”(3)

The fact that Muhammad believed that it was the Lord of Mecca,(4) who was inspiring him with His messages and that the said Lord was under the command of a Supreme Allah is reinforced by his above statement. The first verse gives us the indication that at the time he uttered these words, he was tired and frustrated- two factors- that had made him to consider seriously whether or not he should stop dreaming of Zainab, the wife of his adopted son, Zaid. While he was about to abandon his quest for her, his vindictive nature kicked in, and it encouraged him not to be discouraged by the thought of what people would be thinking about him, if he was able to lay his hands on Zainab; instead, it urged him to rely on his determination, and to do whatever it takes to procure her so that he could avenge the insult he had suffered at the hands of her mother and brother.

But what were the real issues that had forced him to fear the Unbelievers and the Hypocrites? Let us explore them.

Dateline Mecca: After the death of Khudeija in 619 A.D: It was the same year in which Muhammad’s uncle and his protector Abu Talib also died. He found himself alone. No money and no protector. While trying to find a male protector, he was desperately in need of a woman to satisfy his sexual cravings.

His eyes fell on his cousin Zainab. A member of the Quraish tribe, she was young and very beautiful. Despite being the child of a poor family, she carried an aristocratic demeanor and conducted herself in a manner that was befitting the traditions of her tribe.

Muhammad approached her mother, Umimah bint Abdul Muttalib and her brother, Abdullah Ibn Jash and sought her hand in marriage. Despite their conversion to Islam, they declined the marriage because Zainab was too young to be married to a man of his age and also for the reason that he was not in a position to pay them the dowers they expected her to fetch. Their refusal hurt him badly, and he vowed to avenge the insult they unintentionally inflicted on him.

Dateline: Medina: Timeline: The end of the fifth and end of the seventh year of migration (Hijrah): By this time, Muhammad had not only become powerful, he also had gathered four women in his harem to meet his sexual needs. They were: Sawda, Aisha, Hafsah and Umm Salama.(5) He was now in a position to implement his plan to humiliate Zainab and her family members.

His plan required his freedman Zaid to divorce his wife and to marry Zainab in her instead. It also required him to divorce his new bride soon after she got married to him, thereby lowering her position and esteem in the eyes of the people. Made an outcast by the divorce, Zainab will then have no respectable man to marry her, a situation that will force her to accept Muhammad as her husband, if he wanted to marry her, and also to live with whatever status he was willing to give her after she fell under his control.

But an old social taboo, a declaration Muhammad himself had made earlier as well as his political ambitions stood on his way to implementing his plan. The Pagans did not approve a marriage between an adoptive father and the wife of his divorced wife. His declaration that a man could not have more than four wives at a time.(6) was another stumbling block that he had to pay attention to before taking any action on his plan to acquire Zainab. Moreover, his full ascent to power was not yet complete, and he needed more time to become the absolute ruler of the Islamic State he was dreaming to establish in the Peninsula of the Arabs.

All the above considerations weighed heavily on Muhammad’s mind. He was fearful that if he implemented his plan and brought Zainab to his harem, the Pagans were going to stand up, and raise a huge hue and cry against him, thus making the achievement of his main objective of becoming the undisputed leader of his yet-to-be established State much more difficult.

It was this extreme fear of the Unbelievers and the Hypocrites that the verse 33:1 has referred to. Being a very cautious man, he brooded on the negative consequences of his plan, but, at the end, his bestial nature prevailed, and he decided to follow its dictate for avenging the insult he had suffered at the hands of Zainab’s mother and brother.

But again, he was unable to execute his plan without, first, invalidating the Pagans’ custom that barred an adoptive father from marrying his adopted son’s divorced wife. With this objective in his mind, he declared:

“Allah has not made for any man two hearts in his (one) body: nor has He made your wives whom ye divorce by Zihar your mothers: nor has He made your adopted sons your sons. Such is (only) your (manner of) speech by your mouths. But Allah tells (you) the Truth, and He shows the (right) Way.”

Zihar was a custom of the Pagan Arabs, by adopting which husbands granted motherly status to their wives. After a husband declared that his wife was like his mother, she could not demand conjugal rights from him, nor was she free to marry another man in place of him. Without declaring that Zihar was an obnoxious practice, Muhammad proceeded to lay down rules that were intended to restrict adoption in Islam, and this he did to demolish the Pagans’ position on adoption as well as the restriction they had placed on the adoptive fathers. He said nothing on the abolition of Zihar, as it was not standing on his way.

He declared:

“Call them by (the names of) their fathers: that is juster in the sight of Allah. But if ye know not their father’s (names, call them) your Brothers in faith, or your Maulas. But there is no blame on you if ye make a mistake therein: (what counts is) the intention of your hearts: and Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.”

Muhammad was very categorical on the naming of the adopted children. He told his followers that instead of giving their own names to their adopted children, they must call them by the names of their fathers, and if they did not know their fathers’ names, in that case, they should call them brothers in faith or Maulas. In no case, adoptive Muslim men were to give their names to the children they adopt.

His terms on adoption are not only inhuman, they are also nonsensical and impractical. Here is why?

In the Tsunamis of the year 2004, hundreds and thousands of men and women had died. Some of their infants survived, but with no one to take care of them. Some of those infants found shelter in charitable care centers, others were adopted by kind and loving people from all over the world.

Suppose one of the infants was adopted by a Muslim man, and he did not know the infant’s father’s name, nor was the infant able to tell him who his father was, in such a situation, what he, unlike the men of other faiths, was required to do?

He must not give the infant as much love as he would give to his own son, and also, he must not give him his own name in order to avoid the appearance of a father-and-son relationship between them, nor should he be calling him a “brother,” for this expression would denote that they have a blood relationship between them. Calling him “brother in faith,” or Maula would let everyone know that they were not blood relatives.

Now, can we imagine a fully-grown man calling an infant “a brother in faith”? Can we imagine an infant deciding to be a Muslim? Can we imagine a merciful, kind and compassionate Allah telling Muslim men not to treat the infants with all the love they are able to command?

And what about an infant female adopted by a Muslim man? Let us find out.

The Quran has said nothing about the adoption of a female child by a Muslim man. Perhaps the word “Maula” covers such an adoption.

The word “Maula” in Arabic carries many meanings. Some take it to denote a cousin; others take it to imply a close relative or a friend. Calling an adopted female child a Maula by a Muslim male adopter leaves open a great opportunity for him.

If he wishes, he can have sex with the child, or marry her when she reaches a certain age. Calling her a daughter or giving her his own name not only limits his options, it is also likely to deter him from doing either of the two things I have mentioned in this paragraph. .

It was the ugly opportunity of adoption propounded by Muhammad for his followers that has prompted one highly respected Muslim scholar to declare that “adoption in the technical sense is not allowed in Muslim law.” He is telling us that even if a child has no parent or any relative to nurse and take care of him or her, a Muslim should not adopt that unfortunate child, and let him or her die, as the Muslim law does not permit him to save his or her life.

To me, this is the extreme cruelty Muhammad could have exhibited towards children. I do not think even the beasts would have approved of his law, for they are known to have more compassion, love and respect for their infants than Muhammad appears to have for the human infants.

His law on adoption proves that he was worse than a beast; he felt no compunction while promulgating a barbaric law for his followers. Yet, Muslims call him the best and the kindest man who graced our earth. I wonder what else he must have done to qualify himself for such a lofty title and veneration!

It was Muhammad’s own intention to sleep with Zainab that had made him to lay out his peculiar and inhumane rules of adoption. He knew that when a Pagan adopted a boy, he loved him like his own son; and when he adopted a girl, he loved her like his own daughter. While raising her, he did not entertain a thought to have sex with her, nor did he harbor an intention in his mind to marry her when she grew up.

It was the clean mind, ethics, morality and the conscience of the Pagans that kept them away from any kind of sexual relationship with the former wives of their adopted sons. To the Pagans, marrying them was a sin.

Driven by his vindictive and licentious nature, Muhammad broke the Pagans’ long standing taboo with a revelation that, he claimed, came to him from Allah. But when they asked him why he called himself Abu Zaid (father of Zaid) after freeing and adopting his slave-boy Zaid, he most ashamedly told them that he was neither his father, nor of “any one of them.” What he did in the past was a mistake and that it should not count in the changed circumstances of the land.

The Pagans could not defend their conscience from being mauled by the predator we call Muhammad, as by the time he was making his own rules, he had become the most powerful man of the land.

The Pagans let their conscience die under the weight of his steamroller. They had to accept his dictates, as defiance of them was sure to bring them death. What had happened to them was a tragedy for the conscience of mankind. Their surrender is the cause that has gradually been decimating our own conscience. Unless we are able to understand the real impact of Islam on human lives, it will be almost impossible for us to fight this demon. It is this realization on my part that has induced me to write this article.

I hope my humble effort will help humankind to save themselves from the evil affect of Islam.

After tearing the Pagans’ long standing rules on adoption into pieces, Muhammad took steps to define his own special position among his followers with a view to freeing himself from the rules that prohibited an adoptive father from marrying the divorced, or the widowed wife of his adopted son. He told them:

“The Prophet is closer to the Believers than their own selves, and his wives are their mothers. Blood-relations among each other have closer personal ties, in the Decree of Allah, than (the Brotherhood of) of Believers and Muhajirs: nevertheless do ye what is just to your close friends: such is the writing in the Decree (of Allah).”

Through the above proclamation, he demanded total obedience to, and respect for, him from his followers. He based his demands on his spiritual authority, which made him closer to his followers than their own fathers, mothers and other blood relatives. Using his special position with his followers, he banned them from marrying his divorced or widowed wives, claiming they were their mothers.

As far as the relationship between the Muhajirs (those Muslims who migrated from Mecca to Medina) and the Ansars (those Muslims who were the residents of Medina) was concerned, Muhammad declared that their blood relatives had precedence over their brotherhood, but it was alright for them to do what they thought was just, claiming that “such is the writing in the Decree (of Allah).”

Muhammad redefined, when he became very powerful, Muhajirs’ relation with the Ansars with a specific reason in his mind, and it was this: at the time Muhammad and his followers migrated to Medina, its small number of Muslims were very poor. Despite being aware of their dire financial condition, he demanded that they help their Muhajir brethren. When they expressed their inability to do so, he contrived a scheme that had the potential to induce them to his and his followers’ help.

He told the Medinese Muslims that, as the followers of Islam, it was their religious duty to help their needy brethren in faith not only because their generous act will entitle them to the felicities of heaven, it will also entitle them to inherit whatever they, upon their death, were going to leave behind for them. These were two very strong allurements for the poor Muslims of Medina and they succumbed to them. But when Mecca fell to him and its citizens began to join their relatives in Medina, he reneged on the assurance of inheritance he gave earlier to the Medinese Muslims, and in their place, he made the Meccan Muslims the inheritors of whatever their relatives possessed, and left behind in Medina. This was a stab in the back of the Medinese Muslims, and he did it knowing fully well that they had no guts or strength to challenge him for whatever he did or asked them to do. Helpless as they were, he was sure they would accept anything and everything without resistance.

I must admit that Muhammad was one of the greatest geniuses that our world has ever produced. Not only that, he was also a great manipulator as well as a great liar. He lied when it was necessary to manipulate people; he used force where his manipulations faced resistance from his opponents. He threatened them with Allah’s wrath where his own force against them was unlikely to bring them to their knees.

I have drawn the above conclusions about him from the Quran, which tells us how he used his manipulative power to free himself from some of the important social norms of the Pagans, yet being able to use his manipulative power to keep them tied to some of the weird norms he laid out for the purpose of serving his own purpose. This fact will become clear, when the following declarations he had made are taken into consideration:

Muhammad declared that a Muslim man cannot call an adopted child his son, nor can he give him all the love he is supposed to give to his biological son, as the adopted child does not carry his blood. At the same time, he forbade his followers from marrying his wives, as he declared them to be their mothers. This prohibition applied even to those Muslims who had no blood ties with him or his wives, for he himself made it clear that he was not the father of any of his followers.

His declaration that he was not the father of any of his followers was designed at granting him the freedom to have sex with their women of his choice. This declaration was also intended to make his sexual relationship with Zainab, the would-be divorced wife of his adopted son Zaid, halal or permissible for him.

Armed with the declarations that entitled him to have sex with any women of his choosing, he decided to create a situation, which would not only humiliate Zainab, it would also force her to succumb to his caprices. With these intentions in his mind, Muhammad asked her mother and brother to give her in marriage to Zaid, his freed slave-man, who was already happily married with a son.

Because Zaid was an ex-slave and a married man and also utterly uncomely to look at, they rejected his proposal. Infuriated, he produced a revelation, reading as follows, to force them to bow down to his order.

“It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Apostle, to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Apostle, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path.”

The “revelation” had its intended impact and they gave in to his dictate. Zainab and Zaid got married. Their marriage gave Muhammad immense satisfaction and pleasure, prompting him to hold a grand party to celebrate his success.

Immediately after the marriage, Muhammad wanted Zaid to divorce her, lest he broke her virginity. But when Zaid, fearing that any delay in complying with his adoptive father’s order would bring him great harm, was about to divorce Zainab, another taboo of the Pagans forced Muhammad to come up with another revelation, through which he restrained his adopted son from going ahead with his action. The revelation in question reads thus:

“Behold! Thou didst say to one who had received the grace of Allah and thy favor: “Retain thou (in wedlock) thy wife, and fear Allah. But thou didst hide in thy heart that which Allah was about to make manifest: thou didst fear the people, but it is more fitting that thou shouldst fear Allah. Then when Zaid had dissolved (his marriage) with her, with the necessary (formality), We joined her in marriage to thee: in order that (in future) there may be no difficulty for the Believers in (the matter of marriage) with the wives of their adopted sons, when the latter have dissolved with the necessary (formality) (their marriage) with them. And Allah’s command must be fulfilled.”

Let us, at this stage of the narrative, revisit Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall’s introduction to the Sura, which I reproduced earlier, and in which he claimed that Muhammad had arranged Zainab’s marriage with Zaid to ‘break down the old pride of caste,’ and that “unhappy marriage was no part of Allah’s ordinance, and was not to be held sacred in Islam,” claims that are not supported by what is stated in verse 37 I have quoted above.

It clearly and unambiguously tells us that it were both Allah and Muhammad who had forced Zainab’s mother to give her in marriage to Zaid, when both of them knew well that their marriage was not going to be a happy one, and that both of them had done this so that when Zaid, who “had received Allah’s grace and Muhammad’s favor,” divorced her, Allah’s Apostle Muhammad could take her to bed. But fearing the criticisms and the wrath of the people, Muhammad kept his desire hidden in his heart, waiting for Allah to make his desire public “in order that in future there may be no difficulty to the Muslims in the matter of marriage with the (divorced) wives of their adopted sons.”

Marrying his adopted son’s divorced wife was a ‘duty’ that Allah had imposed on His Apostle Muhammad. Therefore, he could not have avoided the marriage, even if he thought it was not a nice and respectable thing for him to do!

Above being the fact, which I have culled from the Quran’s verse, I believe that the reason for which the Muslim scholar has lied by choosing to overlook its contents is obvious: he was embarrassed by the disgusting act of a man under whose influence he left his parental religion and embraced Islam, and whom he accorded his highest veneration. He did not have the courage to admit that what his admired Prophet had done to satisfy his lust (to me, it was his rage for vengeance) was morally and ethically repugnant, hence the scholar’s recourse to naked and blatant lying!

I believe that the Pagans considered having sex with their cousins, with or without marriage, to be as abominable as having sex with their adopted sons’ divorced wives. When this reality came to his mind, Muhammad had another wahi (revelation) revealed to himself, whereby he nullified another morally and medically correct practice of the Pagans, simply because such nullification gave him an open and unrestricted license for engaging himself in sexual activities with any one he chose to have sex with. In it, he said:

“We Prophet! We have made lawful to thee they wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee; and daughters of thy paternal uncles and aunts, and daughters of they maternal uncles and aunts, who migrated with thee; and any believing woman who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her; - this only for thee, and not for the Believers (at large); We know what We have appointed for them as to their wives and captives whom their right hands possess; - in order that there should be no difficulty for thee. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful”

All obstacles on the way to bringing Zainab to his harem thus removed, Muhammad wanted her in bed in no time. While she was on her way, his burning desire to avenge his insult as well as his sadistic inclinations to play hell with her overwhelmed his senses. Upon recovery, he moaned: “Who will go unto Zainab and tell her the good tidings that {Allah} hath given her to me in marriage, even in heaven.”

His extreme eagerness to inflict severe emotional injuries to Zainab through his sadistic acts forced Muhammad to do away with the formalities that formed the basis of the marriage between a Muslim man and a woman. Claiming that his marriage with Zainab was solemnized by Allah in heaven, he paid no dowers to her - a basic requirement of a Muslim marriage, without fulfilling which, no Muslim man can sleep with his wife - and straightaway took her to his bed. What the Pagans had said, or how they had reacted against this bizarre and other anti-social activities of his is not recorded in the Quran.

His mission of vengeance and reprisal against Zainab accomplished, Muhammad began paying full attention to other activities that were necessary for him to expand the influence of Islam as well as to conquer the lands of those people who had refused to become his followers. While forcing people to his faith and also forcibly taking over others’ lands, he found himself marrying more beautiful and young women together with taking the possession of a large number of slave girls who fell in his share after the end of each war or raid he launched against his real or perceived enemies.

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1 History of the Arabs, p. 111 & 112.
2 The Glorious Koran, p. 300.
3 The Quran; 33:1 & 2.
4 The Quran; 27:91.
5 Abul Ala Mududi; Tafhimul Quran, Vol. 4, p. 65.
6 The Quran; 4:3.
7 The Quran; 33:4.
8 The Quran; 33:5.
9 Allama Reza Khan translated it to denote a cousin; Yusuf Ali a close relative and Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi a friend.
10 Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran, Vol. 2, p. 1103.
11 The Quran; 33:40.
12 The Quran; 33:6.
13 The Quran; 33:36.
14 The Quran; 33:37. It is one of the rarest verses in which the name of an ordinary man’s name has appeared. It enables us to conclude that when Allah (or Muhammad) was writing His celestial book, He also wrote down in it that at the time Muhammad would be preaching Islam, he would adopt a slave and his name would be Zaid. His adopted son would marry someone Muhammad would choose for him and that he would divorce her so that his adoptive father could marry her.
16 The Quran; 33:38.
17 The Quran; 33:50.
18 Martin Lings, Muhammad; p. 213.
19 Cf. The Quran; 4:21 et al.
20 The Quran; 66:4.

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