Talk:Military career of Muhammad

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This page was created to take some of the pressure off the main Muhammad article, and to give the combatants room to spread out and make extended arguments with citations. As it stands, it is only a sketch. Zora 08:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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I doubt this statement.

Muslim commentator Ismail Patel summarized modern historical research suggesting that the total casualties in the Arabian peninsula during the period of Muhammad's ten-year career as a warrior could be estimated at 216.

How did he get that number? If you accept Banu Quariza incident, just that number alone will exceed 216. I haven't checked the number of reported causalities for Badar and Uhad yet, but I seriously doubt the credibility of this figure. The source "Ismail Patel" is not neutral. Also, Ramakrishna Rao wrote a very pro-Islamic biography of Muhammad. Credibility of that is also doubtful OneGuy 07:37, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I've reverted it. It sounds like you, like me, have not yet found a credible non-Muslim researcher willing to estimate a specific casualty figure. I don't want to use bad numbers, so let's just keep our eyes open for a credible non-Muslim estimate of this number.BrandonYusufToropov 11:50, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A Muslim source can be credible if he is a well known scholar or cites his references. This guy's numbness just don't seem right, especially if you accept Banu Quraiza incident as historical OneGuy 19:59, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What make Islamic sources are indeed more reliable than non-Islamic sources? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.52.89.91 (talk) 10:50, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Casualty est -- let's replace or substitute

10/10/2022: If you count up the casualties of individual battles and sieges by Mohammed here on Wikipedia, the number is well over 2000. So Wikipedia is not consistent here.  Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:D1:F2C:1E6A:E03A:1514:D8BB:F41 (talk) 12:16, 26 October 2022 (UTC)


Hi there -- I've been out of circulation for a while and am just re-entering the atmosphere here.

This was deleted:

By consulting the sirah, or biographical work, of early writers such as Ibn Hisham, it is possible to reconstruct an casualty figure of well under one thousand persons during the campaigns of Muhammad. Of these, something like 600 were the men of a Jewish tribe, the Bani Quraiza, whose case is a special one. They had agreed to, and violated, a treaty of alliance with the Muslims, who then met them in battle. When the Quraiza surrendered to Muhammad, they agreed that their fate should be decided by Sa'd bin Mu'adh, a former ally of theirs. Sa'd thereupon considered the case and held that the men of the Bani Quraiza should be put to death.

Now, I went to some trouble to get an informal but reliable consensus on this from folks I considered to be trustworthy sirah-heads. If the figure I offered is not credible, my question is -- Compared to what other figure does its credibility suffer?

We really should make an effort to identify some casualty total here.

  • If we think <1000 is incorrect, what specifically makes us think that this number is incorrect?
  • Are we doing the reader a service by not specifying any figure at all?
  • Are we doing the reader a service by omitting the details of the Bani Quraiza incident? No matter what the number is, this business of Muhammad murdering hundreds of Jews has been oversimplified to make him look a) more responsible for the decision of execution than he was and b) like an anti-Semite.

Key point we are now overlooking: From everything I can make out, the advent of Muhammad (p) came about with an astonishingly low casualty rate, and this astonishingly low casualty rate was the RESULT of his (new) way of thinking about military conflict.

Now, as unlikely as this way of thinking about war may appear, even to a modern reader, surely it is even MORE unlikely that it actually, you know, worked!

Can we picture the American, or French, or Russian Revolutions proceeding under the injunction to spare life whenever possible, encourage personal repentance before God, and forgive enemies? Can we picture them succeeding in these goals while holding casualties to microscopic levels? (Understand: He berated one of his own men for killing an opponent who professed Islam -- conveniently -- on the battlefield, with the conflict raging, and when it was quite obvious that there was no other option for survival.)

This <1000 figure, or some other comprehensible measure, needs to show up in the article, I think. If it's off, can you share by how much you think it's off?

If you're going to delete this estimate, can you take responsibility for providing a better estimate for the reader?

For some reason this subject of the specific level of casualties keeps getting passed over in summaries of his military career.

The result is people assume Muhammad (p) was a blood-drenched military figure in the model of Alexander the Great or Hitler, which is manifestly not the case.

We should rectify this misimpression by getting specific with some kind of casualty figure. BrandonYusufToropov 14:20, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)



Regarding the treatment of Meccans after the final onslaught on Mecca, somebody has written: "The Meccans, even those who had been notable for their opposition to Islam, were spared." This is not innacurate. It is plain wrong and seems to be written by someone who wants to alter the image of Muhammed to better suit today's standards. Here is the truth from islamic sources:

"Tabari VIII:178 Ishaq:550 "Muhammad ordered that certain men should be assassinated even if they were found behind the curtains of the Ka'aba. Among them was Abdallah bin Sa'd [the Qur'an's one and only scribe]. The reason that Allah's Messenger ordered that he should be slain was because he had become a Muslim and used to write down Qur'an Revelation. Then he apostatized [rejected Islam]."

"Tabari VIII:179 "Abdallah bin Sa'd fled to Uthman, his brother, who after hiding him, finally surrendered him to the Prophet. Uthman asked for clemency. Muhammad did not respond, remaining silent for a long time. Muhammad explained, 'By Allah, I kept silent so that one of you might go up to him and cut off his head!' One of the Ansar said, 'Why didn't you give me a sign?' Allah's Apostle replied, 'A prophet does not kill by pointing.'"

"Tabari VIII:179 Ishaq:550 "Among those who Muhammad ordered killed was Abdallah bin Khatal. The Messenger ordered him to be slain because while he was a Muslim, Muhammad had sent him to collect the zakat tax with an Ansar and a slave of his.... His girls used to sing a satire about Muhammad so the Prophet ordered that they should be killed along with Abdullah. He was killed by Sa'id and Abu Barzah. The two shared in his blood. One of the singing girls was killed quickly but the other fled. So Umar caused his horse to trample the one who fled, killing her.""

"Ishaq:551 "Another victim was Huwayrith. He used to insult Muhammad in Mecca. Huwayrith was put to death by Ali. The Messenger ordered Miqyas' assassination only because he had killed an Ansar who had killed his brother by mistake and then became a renegade by rejecting Islam.""

"Tabari VIII:180 "Also among those eliminated were Ikrimah bin Abu Jahl and Sarah, a slave of one of Abd Muttalib's sons. She taunted Muhammad while he was in Mecca.""

There are more, but I think I've made my point quite clear here. In short, the evidence is overwhelming that Muhammed (the forgiving and exemplary) used this occasion to pay back old dues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.19.145.78 (talk) 01:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

=====

tabari isn't an accepted source, not by Muslims or non-Muslims. Nor is ishaq for that matter.

Really?

There is extremely strict and actually UN-SPARING method of confirming legitimacy of the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad. Even then, legitimacy is categorized to be perfect, good, weak or fabricated. The narrator also is checked strictly, he also should never have told major lie in his lifetime or committed a major sin or have said wrongly or accused a confirmed pious person or another narrator. Many other things are used to authenticate and by all means Tabari is not to be trusted only in minor issues. Crazy clasher (talk) 19:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

And the claim that the prophet was "paying back old dues" is illogical. When in a savage, tribal country a bitter enemy conquers sworn enemy of life, no one is spared. The most that happened was that several families were exiled because of their explicit lying and instigation. One of whom DID prove his rascality during the period of the Third Caliph by betraying him, being a close cousin and aide, and instigating bloodshed between Muslims on an extremely sensitive issue. Crazy clasher (talk) 19:48, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Considered to be final prophet, or IS final prophet?

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