KingClovis
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- Dec 10, 2007
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Warrior Muhammad
Even before Muhammad became a prophet, he was a warrior. He had fought in two local wars between his tribe, the Quraysh, and one of its rivals, the Banu Hawazin. In AD 610, when he began to preach his invented religion, Islam, in Mecca, the Quraysh rejected him. Outraged, he pledged to spill their blood, beginning with his uncle, Abu Lahab, who also dismissed him as a prophet. He thus railed, "May the hands of Abu Lahab perish! May he himself perish! Nothing shall his wealth and gains avail him. He shall be burnt in a flaming fire, and his wife, laden with faggots, shall have a rope of fibre around her neck." (Quran 111:1-5)
In AD 622, Muhammad fled Mecca, to the town of Medina (originally named 'Yathrib'; later re-named 'Medina', e.g., 'City of the Prophet'), where a band of tribal warriors accepted him as prophet, and swore allegiance to him. He immediately began to lead military raids in the area, in search of booty, to keep Islam solvent. One such raid was directed against a caravan of his own people, the Quyrash, at Nakhla.
Muslim marauders killed and looted there, during the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting was supposedly forbidden. Muhammad justified the slaughter, theft and violation of religious law by arguing that the Quyrash's opposition to Islam was a worse transgression than the actions of his warriors. In other words, according to Muhammad, Muslim fighting against the persecution of Muslims, by any means necessary, is the greater good.
"They question thee, O Muhammad, with regard to warfare in the sacred month. Say: warfare therein is a great transgression, but to turn men from the way of Allah, and to disbelieve in Him and in the Inviolable Place of Worship, and to expel His people thence, is a greater sin with Allah; for persecution is worse than killing." (Quran 2:214)