Life-of-Muhammad

Life of Muhammad sa 101When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, thenproclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make theeanswer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, thatall the people that is found therein shall be tributaries untothee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peacewith thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shaltbesiege it: And when the Lord thy God hath delivered itinto thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof withthe edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones,and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoilthereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat thespoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath giventhee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which the Lordthy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt savealive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroythem; namely, the Hittites, and the Amoiites, theCanaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and theJebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:That they teach you not to do after all their abominations,which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sinagainst the Lord your God (Deut. 20: 10-18).According to the teaching of the Bible, if the Jewshad won and the Prophet sa had lost, all Muslims—men,women and children—would have been put to death. Weknow from history that this was the very intention of theJews. The least the Jews would have done was to put todeath the men, to enslave the women and children andmake away with the belongings of the Muslims, thisbeing the treatment laid down in Deuteronomy forenemy nations living in distant parts of the world. Sa‘d rawas friendly to the Banu Quraiza. His tribe was inalliance with theirs. When he saw that the Jews hadrefused to accept the award of the Prophet sa and refusedthus to have the lighter punishment prescribed for suchan offence in Islam, he decided to award to the Jews thepunishment which Moses as had laid down. Theresponsibility for this award does not rest with theProphet sa or the Muslims, but with Moses as and histeaching and with the Jews who had treated the