Response To "Muhammad as Al-Amin (the Trustworthy): How His Enemies Really Viewed Him" And The Christian Missionaries 1

Response To Muham­mad as Al-Amin (the Trust­wor­thy): How His Ene­mies Real­ly Viewed Him” And The Chris­t­ian Missionaries

It has become a habit for some to pub­lish respons­es to any paper deal­ing with the issue of Islam, its truth­ful­ness and the false­hood of oth­er reli­gions. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies as such peo­ple do not care whether they pro­vide an effi­cient respons­es or not ; all they care about is to respond, regard­less of the out­come. Is this reac­tion an idi­ot­ic one ? Well, we can­not claim that it is a stu­pid strat­e­gy ; because it is always use­ful to show your fol­low­ers that you are able to respond and speak loud­ly, drown­ing oth­er voic­es. The psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tor is after all always impor­tant here. But what is glar­ing indeed are the con­tent of such respons­es” because the writer tries to show that he is com­pe­tent in the field when in actu­al fact he is total­ly unqualified.

This lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tion was espe­cial­ly glar­ing when it appeared in a recent Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary arti­cle, alleged­ly respond­ing” to the arti­cle titled A Ratio­nal Approach To The Prophet­hood of Muham­mad, the writer of this response” made grave errors that does not suit a writer who respects him­self and his read­ers. So since he has made such errors, he should know that he is not just a stu­pid per­son, he is a dis­re­spect­ed indi­vid­ual as well.

The first of these errors is the fail­ure to com­pre­hend the argu­ment of his oppo­nent. Any answer to a paper is based upon the argu­ments of the for­mer. If you answer argu­ments which are not present in a paper, you have not answered” the paper.

Are the above words easy to understand ?

I want to make my words as sim­ple as I can in order not to make my oppo­nent mis­un­der­stand me again. We are com­mand­ed to con­vey the Mes­sage of Allah to all peo­ple in a clear and con­cise man­ner with­out any con­fu­sion or mis­un­der­stand­ing whatsoever.

The writer quot­ed some Qur’an­ic vers­es show­ing that the dis­be­liev­ers belied the Prophet(P) and denied his Mes­sage, and used them to prove that the dis­be­liev­ers viewed him as a liar. Then he advances in his response to say that if their tes­ti­mo­ny is reli­able enough to sup­port Muhammad’s integri­ty then the unbe­liev­ers are also a good enough source to call his char­ac­ter into ques­tion”, and the issue here is not whether what the unbe­liev­ers said was cor­rect, but whether the Mus­lim asser­tion that even the dis­be­liev­ers praised Muhammad’s hon­esty is true”, and After all, they are the ones appeal­ing to the state­ments of the dis­be­liev­ers to prove that Muham­mad was a trust­wor­thy person.”

This clear­ly indi­cates that he has failed to com­pre­hend my argu­ment, for I argued that the dis­be­liev­ers regard­ed Muham­mad(P) as a truth­ful per­son who does not lie and from whom they nev­er expe­ri­enced any lie from. How­ev­er, they belied him in the mat­ter of Prophet­hood and revelation.

This con­tra­dic­to­ry atti­tude of the dis­be­liev­ers was the rea­son why they deserved God’s pun­ish­ment in the end ; they knew that Muham­mad(P) was a truth­ful per­son and that he nev­er told a lie. How­ev­er, they dis­be­lieved in him and vig­or­ous­ly reject­ed his Mes­sage”, I said.

The posi­tion of the dis­be­liev­ers was incon­sis­tent ; that was what was men­tioned. You can­not belie any per­son with­out proof, let alone of some­one who nev­er told a lie in his life.

This is the argu­ment that the writer failed to under­stand, and our schol­ars say :

Do not answer any­one till you under­stand his words ; for this dis­tracts you from answer­ing him to answer­ing oth­ers and con­firm your igno­rance, but under­stand him. If you under­stand him, answer him, and do not rush to answer before you ask (for clar­i­fi­ca­tion) and do not be ashamed of ask­ing before you answer ; for answer­ing before under­stand­ing is idio­cy.Ibn Abdul-Barr, Jami’ Bayan Al-‘Ilm wa Fad­luh, 1\148

Also, the writer of the response in ques­tion fell in a major log­i­cal fal­la­cy which is gen­er­al­iza­tion ; he iso­lat­ed the texts show­ing that the dis­be­liev­ers belied the Prophet(P) in the mat­ter of Mes­sage, as if I denied them and their sig­nif­i­cance, and gen­er­al­ized them to claim that the dis­be­liev­ers viewed him(P) as a liar in addi­tion to rejec­tion of texts show­ing that his truth­ful­ness and hon­esty were some­thing agreed upon among his(P) contemporaries.

Any­way it was not expect­ed from Chris­tians to evade log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es, for they are known for their inco­her­ent faith and illog­i­cal beliefs. But it is iron­ic indeed that the peo­ple who do not even know how to trans­mit a report attack the authen­tic reports trans­mit­ted by Mus­lim schol­ars from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion with utmost care and accuracy.

The Scrip­tures of Peo­ple of the Book were trans­mit­ted by unknown indi­vid­u­als on the author­i­ty of unknown peo­ple on author­i­ty of unknown peo­ple, etc., until we are told that these are God’s Words ! They do not know how to trans­mit a report, let alone how to eval­u­ate it. How­ev­er, they still have the audac­i­ty to crit­i­cize authen­tic Mus­lim reports.

Truth­ful indeed is the say­ing of Ahmad ibn Salam al-Faqeeh :

Noth­ing is heav­ier and more hat­ed to peo­ple of dis­be­lief than hear­ing the Hadith and its nar­ra­tion with isnad i.e., chain of trans­mis­sion.“Ma’re­fah Uloum al-Hadith, p. 4

Again, pon­der upon the fol­low­ing report which was quot­ed in the pre­vi­ous article :

It is report­ed on the author­i­ty of Ibn Abbas that when this verse was revealed:” And warn thy near­est kin­dred” (and thy group of select­ed peo­ple among them) the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (may peace be upon him) set off till he climbed Safa’ and called loud­ly : Be on your guard ! They said : Who is it call­ing aloud ? They said : Muham­mad. They gath­ered round him, and he said : O sons of so and so, O sons of so and so, O sons of Abd Man­af, O sons of Abd al-Mut­tal­ib, and they gath­ered around him. He (the Apos­tle) said : If I were to inform you that there were horse­men emerg­ing out of the foot of this moun­tain, would you believe me ? They said : We have not expe­ri­enced any lie from you. He said : Well, I am a warn­er to you before a severe tor­ment. He (the nar­ra­tor) said that Abu Lahab then said : Destruc­tion to you ! Is it for this you have gath­ered us ? He (the Holy Prophet) then stood up, and this verse was revealed:” Per­ish the hands of Abu Lahab, and he indeed per­ished” (cxi. 1). A’mash recit­ed this to the end of the Sura.Sahih Mus­lim, Book 1, Chap­ter 87, Num­ber 406

In the above report, it is not­ed that the Prophet Muham­mad(P) had gath­ered all peo­ple of Mec­ca before him, then he asked them about his cred­i­bil­i­ty before them ; he said : If I were to inform you that there were horse­men emerg­ing out of the foot of this moun­tain, would you believe me?” This ques­tion is a test of his cred­i­bil­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty in the eyes of his peo­ple, he asked them about a very illog­i­cal event, if he told them that it is true, would they believe him in such an illog­i­cal claim, that there were horse­men emerg­ing out of the foot of this mountain”?

The answer was : We have not expe­ri­enced any lie from you” indi­cat­ing that his truth­ful­ness and cred­i­bil­i­ty among his peo­ple were at the high­est levels.

How­ev­er, when he informed them about his Mes­sage, they did not retract their tes­ti­mo­ny, instead they abused him saying :

Destruc­tion to you ! Is it for this you have gath­ered us?”

This shows that his truth­ful­ness was some­thing agreed upon among his peo­ple and contemporaries.

Yes, they belied him in the Mes­sage and dis­be­lieved in him, but this shows none but their inco­her­ence. This is the rea­son why they were humil­i­at­ed and defeat­ed by Allah’s Aid in their lives and in the Hereafter.

Even after many years of his Mis­sion, they did not retract their tes­ti­mo­ny to him with truth­ful­ness as the con­ver­sa­tion between Her­a­clius and Abu Sufyan shows.

Pres­ence of those who dis­be­lieve in Prophets does not dis­cred­it them ; in fact it indi­cates that world­ly desires, bias and greed can make some peo­ple reject pres­ence of shin­ing sun in the sky !

In a report relat­ed by Ibn Ishaq in his Sira, al-Akhnas ibn Shu­rayq asked Abu Jahl :

O Abu Al-Hakam ! What is your opin­ion about what you heard from Muham­mad”. Abu Jahl said : We com­pet­ed with Bani Abd Man­af (the Prophet’s sub­tribe) and so we fed as they fed and gave away as they gave away. So, when we were neck and neck with them, just as two hors­es in a race, they said : There is a Prophet from among us, to whom rev­e­la­tion from the heav­en comes.’ So how can we ever beat them at that ? By Allah we will nev­er believe in him or accept what he says.Sira of Ibn Ishaq,1÷389

This indi­cates that world­ly desires and trib­al bias were the rea­sons as to why the dis­be­liev­ers reject­ed the Mes­sage of Muham­mad(P). This is indi­cat­ed in anoth­er report relat­ed by Al-Hakim, that Abu Jahl met the Prophet(P) and said :

We do not belie you, but we dis­be­lieve in what you came with”. Then, Allah revealed : {It is not you that they belie, but it is the vers­es of Allah that the wrong­do­ers deny} Sura Al-An’am, verse 33.Al-Hakim, Al-Mus­tadrak, 2\315

Ibn Kathir says :

{It is not you that they belie, but it is the vers­es of Allah that the wrong­do­ers deny} means, they do not accuse you of being a liar,{but it is the Vers­es of Allah that the wrong­do­ers deny} It is only the truth that they reject and refuse.Tafsir Ibn Kathir, 3155

Many peo­ple know the truth­ful­ness of any per­son with no need to mir­a­cles, this is due to the fact that they know this per­son­’s habits and man­ners, so they can rec­og­nize his truth­ful­ness or false­hood. For exam­ple, when Moses came to Egypt and said to Aaron and oth­ers that God sent him, they knew he was truth­ful before he did any mir­a­cles, and when he asked Aaron to sup­port him, Aaron believed him because he knew him and his man­ners very well.

Also, when the Prophet(P) told his wife Khadi­jah about the rev­e­la­tion, she knew that he is truth­ful and believed in him. The same took place with Abu Bakr, Zaid ibn Harithah and oth­ers, for they knew his truth­ful­ness in rev­e­la­tion due to what they knew about his truth­ful­ness and honesty.

This is a case of a truth­ful hon­est per­son who said some­thing pecu­liar to either a high­ly truth­ful man or a wicked liar, and he is known to be the first, not the second.

Those who dis­be­lieved in the Prophet(P) are either igno­rant peo­ple who did not know his truth­ful­ness and hon­esty or arro­gant peo­ple who fol­lowed their world­ly desires. The élite of Quraish dis­be­lieved the Prophet (peace be upon him) to keep their lead­er­ship and their fol­low­ers dis­be­lieved him in obe­di­ence of their lead­ers as God tells us in many vers­es of the Qur’an.

Their dis­be­lief was not due to a proof of false­hood, for such a proof nev­er exist­ed. Actu­al­ly, there are evi­dences that they knew his truth­ful­ness and dis­be­lieved in him out of world­ly desires as we men­tioned before in the con­ver­sa­tion of Abu Jahl and Al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq.

In brief, it is well known that some­one who is famous for truth­ful­ness and hon­esty and known for not lying at all, is not expect­ed to change his per­son­al­i­ty sud­den­ly and become a liar against God with­out any cause.

Even if he did, this would appear in his habits and personality.

The writer of the response had no answer to this argu­ment but[!], but I real­ized that the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies and their ilka­re not accus­tomed to see or meet truth­ful or hon­est peo­ple, they are sur­round­ed by lying, cheat­ing and dis­hon­esty ; Abdul­lah Sa’d, a for­mer Arab Chris­t­ian tells us in his book Kont Nas­ranyan, i.e., I Was Chris­t­ian”, how Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies will lie, cheat and deceive oth­ers in order to con­vince them to accept Chris­tian­i­ty and how they employ the most bel­liger­ent meth­ods in order to do so.Con­fer Abdul­lah Sa’d, Kont Nas­ranyan (I Was Chris­t­ian), pub­lished by Dar al-Yaqin, p. 53

There­fore it is too much to ask such peo­ple to imag­ine pres­ence of a truth­ful hon­est reli­gious per­son, the same way it is too much to ask a lay­man of the 13th cen­tu­ry to believe that we can save entire books on CDs.

For such peo­ple, truth­ful­ness, hon­esty and high moral stan­dards are not qual­i­fi­ca­tions for Prophet­hood and Mes­sen­ger­ship ; it is accept­able for them that the mes­sen­ger of God is an ene­my to God and his fol­low­ers and an out­ward dis­be­liev­er, then he becomes mes­sen­ger or apos­tle all of a sudden !

The oth­er argu­ment is that how could a per­son who nev­er told a lie about oth­ers ever tell a lie about Allah?”

As Allah says :

Who can be more wicked than one who inven­teth a lie against Allah, or saith, I have received inspi­ra­tion, when he hath received none, or (again) who saith, I can reveal the like of what Allah hath revealed?“Sura Al-An’am, verse 93

And says :

And if the mes­sen­ger were to invent any say­ings in Our name, We should cer­tain­ly seize him by his right hand, And We should cer­tain­ly then cut off the artery of his heart.Sura Al-Haqqah, vers­es 44 – 46

And says :

What ! Do they say, He has forged a false­hood against Allah ? But if Allah willed, He could seal up thy heart, and Allah blots out Van­i­ty, and proves the Truth by His Words. For He knows well the secrets of all hearts.Sura Al-Shu­ra, verse 24

Pre­dictably, no answer to this argu­ment was available.

In fact, the writer of the response failed to show us any sound respons­es to these argu­ments. Instead, he denied the unde­ni­able fact of truth­ful­ness of the Prophet(P) and showed me the inco­her­ence of ene­mies of Islam when they are con­front­ed with what they call typ­i­cal argu­ment often made by Mus­lim polemicists”.

Sub­hanal­lah !

Anoth­er error made by the writer of the response was his claim that God pro­vid­ed super­nat­ur­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion that these prophets and mes­sen­gers were speak­ing on his behalf, show­ing that the claims of the dis­be­liev­ers were false. Muham­mad, on the oth­er hand, failed to pro­vide any super­nat­ur­al con­fir­ma­tion that he was speak­ing on behalf of God.”

These are two errors here, in fact : the first is his claim that the Prophet(P) had no mir­a­cles, and the sec­ond is his claim that the proof of Prophet­hood are mir­a­cles only.

As to the mir­a­cles of the Prophet(P) they are so many like split­ting of the moon, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of food and water, cry­ing of the tree stump, etc. They are as unde­ni­able as shin­ing sun.

But if the writer runs to the same argu­ment of All the records that we do have were writ­ten by Mus­lims, and even these were pro­duced long after Muhammad’s death” and these Islam­ic reports are sus­pect since Mus­lims have/​had the ten­den­cy of fab­ri­cat­ing sto­ries and state­ments in order to make Islam’s prophet look much bet­ter”, then we will ask him to pro­duce his proof of prophet­hood of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Isa­iah, Jere­mi­ah, John the Bap­tist or any prophet he believes in, and it will be shown to him that what­ev­er the method he proves their prophet­hood with, I’ll prove the prophet­hood of Muham­mad(P) by the same method, but in a stronger and clear­er way.

This is our open chal­lenge to the writer of this response who want­ed to answer me on this spe­cif­ic topic.

The oth­er error is that super­nat­ur­al events are a def­i­nite proof of truth­ful­ness ; for we see that dev­ils, sor­cer­ers and pagan priests do mir­a­cles. How can you dis­tin­guish them from mir­a­cles done in name of God ?

This is actu­al­ly a fatal ques­tion to Chris­tians because they have no dis­tinc­tion. They pay no atten­tion to the Mes­sage car­ried by the Mes­sen­ger or his teach­ings whether they are iden­ti­cal to teach­ings of oth­er Prophets of God or not. Sup­pose that a man claimed he is a prophet and preached poly­the­ism, wor­ship of idols, lewd­ness, lying, injus­tice, etc. Would such a per­son be asked for a mir­a­cle or doubt­ed to be a liar ? Even if he pro­duced super­nat­ur­al events, they would be con­sid­ered works of the devil.

Teach­ings of the Prophets and Mes­sen­gers are very well-known, so when Muham­mad(P) came with preach­ing God’s wor­ship, destruc­tion of idols, belief in the Here­after, chasti­ty, ruth­ful­ness, hon­esty and kind­ness to rela­tions, it was accept­ed that he was preached what all the Prophets and Mes­sen­gers before him preached.

But Chris­tians have a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, it is accept­able for them that a dis­be­liev­er sud­den­ly claims rev­e­la­tion and preach­es asso­ci­a­tion of part­ners to God, abol­ish­ment of all God’s Laws and faith-only doc­trine. Then, they fol­low this dis­be­liev­er in vio­la­tion of all teach­ings of Prophets. This proves that Chris­tians are stu­pid, igno­rant peo­ple who knew nei­ther the Prophets nor their teachings.

Mov­ing on to oth­er alle­ga­tions, we find that the writer of the response quot­ed reports men­tion­ing the per­mis­sion of the Prophet(P) to some Saha­ba (i.e., Com­pan­ions of the Prophet) to tell a lie in cer­tain cir­cum­stances as a proof that truth­ful­ness was not a char­ac­ter of his. This indi­cates to me that the writer is a biased and dis­hon­est per­son (in addi­tion to him being an obtuse and stu­pid indi­vid­ual!), for he ignored the over­whelm­ing evi­dences that show that Islam preach­es truth­ful­ness and hon­esty and for­bids lying and dis­hon­esty, and quot­ed reports with­out expla­na­tion of their mean­ings or ask­ing Mus­lims to explain them for him.

When he failed to cap­ture a sin­gle proof that the Prophet(P) ever told a lie, he tried to run away by quot­ing these reports about Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf and Al-Haj­jaj ibn Ilat which we will dis­cuss short­ly, insha’Allah.

It is well known about the reli­gion of Islam that it preach­es truth­ful­ness and pro­hibits lying as all Prophets of God did before him, as God says in the Holy Qur’an :

O ye who believe ! Fear Allah and be with those who are true (in word and deed)“Sura Al-Taw­bah, verse 119

The Prophet(P) said :

Truth­ful­ness leads to right­eous­ness, and right­eous­ness leads to Par­adise. And a man keeps on telling the truth until he becomes a truth­ful per­son. False­hood leads to Al-Fujur (i.e. wicked­ness, evil-doing), and Al-Fujur (wicked­ness) leads to the (Hell) Fire, and a man may keep on telling lies till he is writ­ten before Allah, a liar.“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 6, Book 73, Num­ber 116

The Prophet(P) said :

The signs of a hyp­ocrite are three :

1. When­ev­er he speaks, he tells a lie.
2. When­ev­er he promis­es, he always breaks it (his promise ).
3. If you trust him, he proves to be dis­hon­est. (If you keep some­thing as a trust with him, he will not return it.)“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 1, Book 2, Num­ber 32

The Prophet(P) said :

Who­ev­er has the fol­low­ing four (char­ac­ter­is­tics) will be a pure hyp­ocrite and who­ev­er has one of the fol­low­ing four char­ac­ter­is­tics will have one char­ac­ter­is­tic of hypocrisy unless and until he gives it up.

1. When­ev­er he is entrust­ed, he betrays.
2. When­ev­er he speaks, he tells a lie.
3. When­ev­er he makes a covenant, he proves treacherous.
4. When­ev­er he quar­rels, he behaves in a very impru­dent, evil and insult­ing man­ner.“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 1, Book 2, Num­ber 33

More­over, Arabs con­sid­ered lying as an ugly char­ac­ter even before Islam, despite their prac­tice of idol wor­ship, adul­tery and alco­hol drink­ing, they refrained from lying. The proof is the report of Abu Sufyan and Her­a­clius and the say­ing of Abu Sufyan :

By Allah ! Had I not been afraid of my com­pan­ions labelling me a liar, I would not have spo­ken the truth about the Prophet.“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 1, Book 1, Num­ber 6

Ibn Hajar commented :

This is a proof that lying was ugly before them. His say­ing (labelling) instead of (bely­ing) indi­cates that he was sure they would nev­er belie him if he lied because of their ani­mos­i­ty of the Prophet, but he refrained from this because he was ashamed that they would report his words when they returned back, so those who would hear this would label him as a liar. This is even clear in the report of Ibn Ishaq, its word­ing is By Allah ! If I lied, they would nev­er belie me, but I was a notable man refrain­ing from lying, I knew that the least of it — if I lied — is that it would be report­ed about me and trans­mit­ted to all peo­ple, so I did not tell a lie”.

Imam An-Nawawi commented :

It means that if I had not been afraid of my com­pan­ions report­ing my lies to my peo­ple and talk­ing about it in my home­land, I would have lied to him due to my hatred and ani­mos­i­ty (against the Prophet). This indi­cat­ed that lying is as ugly in Jahillyyah as in Islam”.Sharh An-Nawawi of Sahih Mus­lim, 12104

As for the report of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf in which Muham­mad ibn Masla­ma took per­mis­sion of the Prophet (peace be upon him) to tell a lie, this is spe­cif­ic to this occa­sion because it is relat­ed to the state of war and deceiv­ing the ene­my dur­ing war. This is the rea­son why Imam Al-Bukhari titled this hadith with (Chap­ter of Deceit in War), as the Prophet(P) said : War is deceit”.Sahih Bukhari, Book 52, Num­ber 68 on author­i­ty of Abu Hurairah and Num­ber 69 on author­i­ty of Jabir ibn Abdul­lah.

It is agreed that no sane per­son would want to be truth­ful to his ene­my who works to destroy him and plots to elim­i­nate him. Deceit of the ene­my is not only per­mis­si­ble, but also favourable. This rul­ing is con­fined only to war state. Objec­tion to such prin­ci­ple is not just unwise but is plain stu­pid­i­ty as well !

Imam An-Nawawi said :

Schol­ars agree on per­mis­si­bil­i­ty of deceiv­ing the dis­be­liev­ers in war in any pos­si­ble way, unless this leads to break of a treaty. In this case it is unlaw­ful.“Sharh An-Nawawi of Sahih Mus­lim, 1245

The same applies to Al-Haj­jaj ibn Ilat, in addi­tion to the fact that he feared the dis­be­liev­ers would kill him while he was going to col­lect his mon­ey from them. This is because human life is very pre­cious in our reli­gion and Islam preach­es its preser­va­tion and pro­tec­tion. So, when­ev­er one encoun­ters a life-threat­en­ing con­di­tion, it is per­mis­si­ble for him to save his life in any pos­si­ble way unless he threat­ens oth­ers’ lives. This is a huge top­ic dis­cussed in text­books of Islam­ic Law and we may briefly talk about it in anoth­er occasion.

In addi­tion, it must be not­ed that each of Muham­mad ibn Masla­ma and Al-Haj­jaj ibn Ilat was keen to take per­mis­sion of the Prophet(P) before they told a a lie to the dis­be­liev­ers. This act has great sig­nif­i­cance ; for if lying was per­mis­si­ble and the usu­al case in the Prophet’s(P) teach­ings, they would not have asked for his per­mis­sion in the first place and they would go and com­mit lies direct­ly. Ask­ing the Prophet(P) before lying against the ene­my indi­cates that lying and decep­tion is pri­mar­i­ly pro­hib­it­ed in Islam.

May Allah (T) save us from those who prac­tice guile and deception !

Before we go on to deal with the obtuse Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary who wrote a response” to our arti­cle on the truth­ful­ness of the Holy Prophet(P) includ­ing all sorts of inco­her­ent argu­ments and dim rea­son­ing in addi­tion to his scan­dalous lack of under­stand­ing of his oppo­nen­t’s argu­ment, think­ing that I was appeal­ing to the dis­be­liev­ers’ opin­ion in Muham­mad’s prophet­hood, we are going to show how per­fidy and breach of faith are utter­ly pro­hib­it­ed in Islam and how the Prophet(P) was a liv­ing exam­ple of this prohibition.

Sahih Mus­lim, Book 19 : Jihad and Expe­di­tion, Chap­ter 4 : Pro­hi­bi­tion (Denun­ci­a­tion) of Breach of Faith

Num­ber 4301 :

It has been nar­rat­ed on the author­i­ty of Ibn Umar that the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said : When Allah will gath­er togeth­er, on the Day of Judg­ment, all the ear­li­er and lat­er gen­er­a­tions of mankind, a flag will be raised (to mark off) every per­son guilty of breach of faith, and it will be announced that this is the per­fidy of so and so, son of so and so (to attract the atten­tion of peo­ple to his guilt).

Num­ber 4302 :
This hadith has been nar­rat­ed on the author­i­ty of Ibn Umar through some oth­er Chains of transmitters.

Num­ber 4303 :
This hadith has been nar­rat­ed by anoth­er chain of trans­mit­ters on the author­i­ty of the same nar­ra­tor, with the word­ing : Allah will set up a flag for every per­son guilty of breach of faith on the Day of Judg­ment, and it will be announced : Look, this is the per­fidy of so and so.

Num­ber 4304 :
Ibn Umar report­ed that he heard the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say­ing : There will be a flag for every per­fid­i­ous per­son on the Day of Judgment.

Num­ber 4305 :
Abdul­lah report­ed Allah’s Prophet (may peace be upon him) as say­ing : There will be a flag for every per­fid­i­ous per­son on the Day of Judg­ment, and it would be said : Here is the per­fidy of so and so.

Num­ber 4306 :
This hadith has been nar­rat­ed on the author­i­ty of Shu’­ba with a slight vari­a­tion of wording.

Num­ber 4307 :
It has been nar­rat­ed on the author­i­ty of Abdul­lah that the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said : There will be for every per­fid­i­ous per­son on the Day of Judg­ment a flag by which he will be recog­nised. It will be announced : Here is the breach of faith of so and so.

Num­ber 4308 :
Anas report­ed Allah’s Mes­sen­ger (may peace be upon him) hav­ing said this : There would be a flag for every per­fid­i­ous per­son on the Day of Judg­ment by which he will be recognised.

Num­ber 4309 :
It is nar­rat­ed on the author­i­ty of Abu Sa’id that the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said : On the Day of Judg­ment there will be a flag fixed behind the but­tocks of every per­son guilty of the breach of faith.

Num­ber 4310 :
It is nar­rat­ed on the author­i­ty of Abu Sa’id that the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said : On the Day of Judg­ment there will be a flag for every per­son guilty of the breach of faith. It will be raised in pro­por­tion to the extent of his guilt ; and there is no guilt of treach­ery more seri­ous than the one com­mit­ted by the ruler of men.

Imam An-Nawawi com­ments : These Hadiths dis­play the sever­i­ty of pro­hi­bi­tion of per­fidy“Sharh An-Nawawi of Sahih Mus­lim, 12\44

Under the top­ic of Keep­ing the Covenant, Imam Mus­lim relates the fol­low­ing tradition :

It has been report­ed on the author­i­ty of Hud­baifa b. al-Yaman who said : Noth­ing pre­vent­ed me from being present at ! he Bat­tle of Badr except this inci­dent. I came out with my father Husail (to par­tic­i­pate in the Bat­tle), but we were caught by the dis­be­liev­ers of Quraish. They said : (Do) you intend to go to Muham­mad ? We said : We do not intend to go to him, but we wish to go (back) to Med­i­na. So they took from us a covenant in the name of God that we would turn back to Med­i­na and would not fight on the side of Muham­mad (peace be upon him). So, we came to the Mes­sen­ger of Allah (peace be upon him) and relat­ed the inci­dent to him. He said : Both, of you pro­ceed (to Med­i­na) ; we will ful­fil the covenant made with them and seek God’s help against them.Sahih Mus­lim, Vol­ume 6, Book 19, Chap­ter 34, Num­ber 4411

This hadith shows how the Prophet(P) was keen to keep the covenant of the dis­be­liev­ers although he was going to war and need­ed every sol­dier. We have pre­vi­ous­ly quot­ed Imam An-Nawawi say­ing : Schol­ars agree on per­mis­si­bil­i­ty of deceiv­ing the dis­be­liev­ers in war in any pos­si­ble way, unless this leads to break of a treaty. In this case it is unlaw­ful”.Sharh An-Nawawi of Sahih Mus­lim, 1245 This means that keep­ing the covenant is pri­or to any oth­er rul­ing even dur­ing war.

Anoth­er glar­ing exam­ple of keep­ing the covenant is the sto­ry of Abu Jan­dal dur­ing stip­u­la­tion of treaty of Hudaibyyah with Suhail ibn Amru :

…Suhail said, We also stip­u­late that you should return to us who­ev­er comes to you from us, even if he embraced your reli­gion.” The Mus­lims said, Glo­ri­fied be Allah ! How will such a per­son be returned to the pagans after he has become a Mus­lim ? While they were in this state Abu- Jan­dal bin Suhail bin Amr came from the val­ley of Mec­ca stag­ger­ing with his fet­ters and fell down amongst the Mus­lims. Suhail said, O Muham­mad ! This is the very first term with which we make peace with you, i.e. you shall return Abu Jan­dal to me.” The Prophet said, The peace treaty has not been writ­ten yet.” Suhail said, I will nev­er allow you to keep him.” The Prophet said, Yes, do.” He said, I won’t do.: Mikraz said, We allow you (to keep him).” Abu Jan­dal said, O Mus­lims ! Will I be returned to the pagans though I have come as a Mus­lim ? Don’t you see how much I have suffered?”

Abu Jan­dal had been tor­tured severe­ly for the Cause of Allah. Umar bin Al-Khat­tab said, I went to the Prophet and said, Aren’t you tru­ly the Apos­tle of Allah?’ The Prophet said, Yes, indeed.’ I said, Isn’t our Cause just and the cause of the ene­my unjust?’ He said, Yes.’ I said, Then why should we be hum­ble in our reli­gion?’ He said, I am Allah’s Apos­tle and I do not dis­obey Him, and He will make me vic­to­ri­ous.‘Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 3, Book 50, Num­ber 891

Here we see that the Prophet(P) made a peace treaty with Quraish in which it was stip­u­lat­ed that if any­one came to him from them as a Mus­lim, he would return him, but if any­one came to them from him, they would not return him. This is the rea­son why he returned Abu Jan­dal to his peo­ple although he embraced Islam.

The same sit­u­a­tion took place with Abu Rafi’ who was an emis­sary from Quraish to the Prophet(P) and embraced Islam. Abu Rafi’ said : Quraish sent me to him and Islam entered my heart and I said : Oh, Mes­sen­ger of Allah ! I will not return.” But he(P) said : I will not break an agree­ment and I will not detain an emis­sary ; go back to them, then if there is still in your heart that which is there now, you may return.“Nar­rat­ed by Abu Dawud and Ahmad, Abu Dawud said : This took place dur­ing the time when it was a con­di­tion (of the treaty between the Mus­lims and the poly­the­ists that if any of them came to him, he would return him to them”.

This is the atti­tude and guid­ance of the Prophet(P) regard­ing treaties and covenants with oth­ers, it is authen­ti­cal­ly report­ed that he said : When one has a covenant with peo­ple he must not loosen or strength­en it till its terms comes to an end or he brings it to an end in agree­ment with them.“Nar­rat­ed by Tir­mid­hi, Abu Dawud and Ahmad.

And said : Who­ev­er guar­an­teed the safe­ty of a man and then killed him, I dis­avow the killer.” And it is report­ed that he said : When­ev­er a peo­ple vio­late an agree­ment, the ene­my will tri­umph over them.“Nar­rat­ed by Al-Hakim.

We have the entire biog­ra­phy of the Prophet(P), where is it men­tioned that he ever broke an agree­ment or vio­lat­ed a treaty ?

How­ev­er, the inane Chris­t­ian writer of the response brings the issue of expi­a­tion of oath as a proof that the Prophet(P) broke his word !

For me, the fool­ish­ness of this writer is a well-estab­lished fact. But we want to show this to the read­ers ; he brought some reports from Sahih Bukhari talk­ing about expi­a­tion of oath think­ing that they mean that the Prophet(P) broke his words, ignor­ing the fact that the expi­a­tion of oath was actu­al­ly revealed in the Holy Qur’an, as Allah says :

Allah has already ordained for you, the dis­so­lu­tion of your oaths (in some cas­es)“Sura Al-Tahrim, verse 2

Al-Kar­mani said : His say­ing {the dis­so­lu­tion of your oaths} means dis­solv­ing them by expi­a­tion.“Ibn Hajar Al-‘Asqalani, Fath Al-Bari, 1985

And says :

Allah will not call you to account for what is futile in your oaths, but he will call you to account for you delib­er­ate oaths : for expi­a­tion, feed ten indi­gent per­sons, on a scale of the aver­age for the food of your fam­i­lies ; or clothe them ; or give a slave his free­dom. If that is beyond your means, fast for three days. That is the expi­a­tion for the oaths ye have sworn. But keep to your oaths. Thus doth Allah make clear to you his sign, that ye may be grate­ful.“Sura Al-Ma’i­da, verse 89

So, if one makes an oath and then he regrets for it and wants to dis­solve it, he expi­ates it. One exam­ple of cas­es in which one may regret for his oath is dis­played by the Prophet(P) in the report of Al-Ash’aryyin quot­ed by the Chris­t­ian writer in which the Prophet (peace be upon him) made an oath not to pro­vide them with camels to mount on because he had none, then when he got camels, he gave them to the Ash’aryyin dis­solv­ing his pre­vi­ous oath and say­ing, By Allah, and Allah will­ing, if I take an oath and lat­er find some­thing else bet­ter than that, then I do what is bet­ter and expi­ate my oath.“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 8, Book 78, Num­ber 620

Anoth­er exam­ple is told in the report nar­rat­ed by Abu Huraira that the Prophet(P) said : By Allah, if any­one of you insists on ful­fill­ing an oath by which he may harm his fam­i­ly, he com­mits a greater sin in Allah’s sight than that of dis­solv­ing his oath and mak­ing expi­a­tion for it.“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 8, Book 78, Num­ber 621

And said : ““Any­one who takes an oath through which his fam­i­ly may be harmed, and insists on keep­ing it, he sure­ly com­mits a sin greater (than that of dis­solv­ing his oath). He should rather com­pen­sate for that oath by mak­ing expi­a­tion.“Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 8, Book 78, Num­ber 621

Imam An-Nawawi, when com­ment­ing on the above reports, said as follows :

These reports indi­cate that if some­one makes an oath to do some­thing or not to do it, and dis­solv­ing is bet­ter than ful­fill­ing this oath, then dis­solv­ing is pre­ferred and expi­a­tion is oblig­a­tory upon him. This is agreed upon.“Sharh An-Nawawi of Sahih Mus­lim, 6\39

Do we need to explain more that expi­a­tion of oath is quite far from lying or a breach of faith ?

Any­way, if we excuse this writer for his slow under­stand­ing when bring­ing up the issue of expi­a­tion of oath, how can we do this in a total­ly irrel­e­vant issue like taqiyyah ? Have you ever seen such stu­pid­i­ty in involv­ing any­thing rel­e­vant and irrel­e­vant in the response ?

He answers my basic fun­da­men­tal argu­ment by drag­ging in what­ev­er comes to his mind and lim­it­ed under­stand­ing — regard­less whether rel­e­vant or irrel­e­vant — in the response.

This is real­ly pathetic !

As for taqiyyah, it is avoid­ance of harm of dis­be­liev­ers by show­ing friend­ship to them. Imam Al-Baghawi says : Taqiyyah is per­mis­si­ble only if one fears get­ting killed with his good inten­tion, Allah says : {except under com­pul­sion while his heart remains firm in Faith}. More­over, it is mere­ly per­mis­si­ble, if one stays firm till he is killed, he gains great reward (from Allah).“Tafsir Al-Baghawi, 1336

So, it is con­fined only for life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions, con­trary to oth­ers who teach it as a reg­u­lar pol­i­cy for preaching.

And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews ; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are with­out law, as with­out law, (being not with­out law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are with­out law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak : I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake.“1 Corinthi­ans 9:20 – 23

This is the rea­son why Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies deceive and cheat peo­ple dur­ing the process of preach­ing in order to bring them to Chris­tian­i­ty, using very bel­liger­ent method as Abdul­lah Sa’d, the for­mer Chris­t­ian, says.Abdul­lah Sa’d, ibid., p. 53

In the end, the Chris­t­ian writer does not for­get to praise his god, the spot­less Lamb of the Father”! It is amaz­ing indeed to have a lamb as a god ; so instead of eat­ing it, they can wor­ship it !

These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over­come them : for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings.“Rev­e­la­tion 17:14

… stood a Lamb as it had been slain, hav­ing sev­en horns and sev­en eyes“Rev­e­la­tion 5:6

Sev­en horns and sev­en eyes ! Is this the god they want us to worship ?

No, it is not THE god, it is only one of gods they want us to wor­ship ; for their Scrip­ture says :

Sal­va­tion to our God which sit­teth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb“1

The poor writer wants us to dis­be­lieve in Prophet Muham­mad(P) and wor­ship three gods : the Father, the Lamb and the Holy Spir­it. It is some­thing very dif­fer­ent from Monothe­ism preached by all true Prophets and Mes­sen­gers of God ; for there is only One God with no lamb, no son and no partner.

Abdul­lah Sa’d, the for­mer Chris­t­ian writer, says :

After long resis­tance and con­flicts between my emo­tions and thoughts I decid­ed to respect my mind and accept its con­vic­tions, so I said : God Whom I am look­ing for in the Scrip­tures is not present in the Gospel. Con­se­quent­ly, I quit or stopped search­ing for God in Chris­tian­i­ty believ­ing it is not a heav­en­ly reli­gion, and it is unimag­in­able to come from Great God due to much dis­or­der and con­fu­sion in its creed and unac­cept­able para­bles which indi­cate lim­it­ed think­ing of its inven­tors.“ Abdul­lah Sa’d, ibid.

Thus it is clear that :

Say : O Peo­ple of the Book do ye dis­ap­prove of us for no oth­er rea­son than that we believe in Allah, and the rev­e­la­tion that hath come to us and that which came before (us), and that most of you are rebel­lious and dis­obe­di­ent?“Sura Al-Ma’i­da, verse 59

In the end, we — the Mus­lims — bear wit­ness that Muham­mad is the Mes­sen­ger of God whom Allah sent to us to con­vey the Mes­sage before the Day of Judge­ment. We bear wit­ness to this because he was a truth­ful per­son who had nev­er told a lie nei­ther dur­ing the peri­od of Jahillyyah nor dur­ing the time of Islam. This leads us to pri­mar­i­ly believe in him, espe­cial­ly since he preached the same which all true prophets and mes­sen­gers of God had preached ; God sig­nif­i­cant­ly made him vic­to­ri­ous over his enemies.

We require who­ev­er dis­be­lieves in the Prophet(P) to bring a proof that he ever told a lie ; for it is known that any claim must be found­ed upon proof.

The mere claim that Muham­mad is not a prophet can­not stand on its own ; you are required to bring evi­dence that he was not a prophet against what he said about himself.

If you ask us about proof, we will tell you that he was truth­ful and nev­er told a lie either before or after revelation.

If you ask us about proof that he nev­er told a lie, we answer that no per­son relat­ed that he ever told a lie despite the fact that his oppo­nents had the motive to relate any lie from him. How­ev­er, they did not.

If you argue that those who believed in him would nev­er relate a lie from him out of reli­gious bias and those who sym­pa­thized with him with­out belief would not do this out of sym­pa­thy, then how come those who opposed and fought him nev­er relat­ed a sin­gle lie from him ? On the con­trary, they did direct­ly bear wit­ness that he does not lie and that they nev­er expe­ri­enced any lie from him.

Why did not they relate even a sin­gle lie from the Prophet(P)? The answer is obvi­ous ! This is because he actu­al­ly nev­er lied. If this is the case, why do not we believe in him and fol­low his Mes­sage espe­cial­ly he preached the same that all oth­er prophets and mes­sen­gers had preached. This is anoth­er proof of his Prophet­hood ; for we know the Prophets and their teach­ings. So, if a per­son known for truth­ful­ness and hon­esty claims Prophet­hood and preach­es the same teach­ings of prophets, we know that he is one of them, i.e., the Prophets.

A third proof is the way God made him and his fol­low­ers vic­to­ri­ous over the dis­be­liev­ers despite their small num­ber the same way He (i.e., God) made oth­er prophets vic­to­ri­ous over their ene­mies like drown­ing of Pharaoh and his army when he fol­lowed Moses(P) and his peo­ple in the sea.

We will dis­cuss these in a sep­a­rate paper, insha’Al­lah. How­ev­er, if you have any proof that Muham­mad(P) is not a true prophet, bring forth your evi­dence if you are truth­ful. Oth­er­wise, accept Islam to be saved from God’s pun­ish­ment and the Hellfire.

We bear wit­ness that there is none wor­thy of wor­ship but Allah, and we bear wit­ness that Muham­mad is His Messenger.Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : The Ter­ror­ist, Response To Muham­mad as Al-Amin (the Trust­wor­thy): How His Ene­mies Real­ly Viewed Him” And The Chris­t­ian Mis­sion­ar­ies,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Novem­ber 21, 2007, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​i​s​l​a​m​/​r​e​s​p​o​n​s​e​-​t​o​-​m​u​h​a​m​m​a​d​-​a​s​-​t​h​e​-​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​hy/
  1. Rev­e­la­tion 7:10[]

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *