Life-of-Muhammad

Life of Muhammad sa 103considerable losses. They had lost only a few men. Inless than a year's time they could have come andattacked Medina again and with even betterpreparations. Instead of any army of twenty thousandthey could have raised for a new attack an army of forty,or even fifty, thousand. An army numbering a hundredor a hundred and fifty thousand was not beyond theircapacity. But now for twenty-one years, the enemies ofIslam had done their utmost to extirpate Islam andMuslims. Continued failure of their plans had shakentheir confidence. They had begun to fear that what theProphet sa taught was true, and that their national idolsand gods were false, that the Creator was the OneInvisible God taught by the Prophet sa . The fear that theProphet sa was right and they wrong had begun to creepupon them. There was no outward sign of this fear,however. Physically, the disbelievers went about as theyhad always done. They went to their idols and prayed tothem as national custom required. But their spirit wasbroken. Outwardly they lived the lives of pagans anddisbelievers; inwardly their hearts seemed to echo theMuslim slogan, 'There is no God but Allah.'After the Battle of the Ditch the Prophet sa , as we haveobserved already, declared that henceforwarddisbelievers would not attack Muslims but that, instead,Muslims would attack disbelievers. Muslim endurancehad reached its limit. The tide was going to turn(Bukhari, Kitabal Maghazi ).DID THE PROPHET sa SEEK TO CONTINUEWARFARE?In the battles which had so far been fought, Muslimshad either remained in Medina or gone some distanceout of it to fight the aggression of disbelievers. Muslimsdid not initiate these encounters, and showed nodisposition to continue them after they had started.Normally hostilities once begun, can be ended in only