Muhammad and Jihad: A Study in Islamic Sources

“Islam is a religion of peace,” or so many say. But was Muhammad a man of peace? According to the tenets of Islam, Muhammad perfectly exemplified obedience to Allah: “The best talk is Allah’s Book and the best way is the way of Muhammad.”^[1] What did Muhammad model for his followers regarding Jihad? Here, we will let the earliest and most authoritative Islamic sources speak for themselves.^[2]

The Years Before Warfare

Muhammad received his first revelation in AD 610 and began preaching monotheism to his polytheistic kinsmen, the Quraysh tribe, in Mecca. They took issue with him insulting their gods and mocking their customs,^[3] and they began persecuting his companions, the first Muslims: attacking, beating, imprisoning, and starving them.^[4] Allah revealed that he should carry out his religious duties with greater discretion: “Do not recite your prayers too loudly or silently, but seek a way between” (Quran 17:110, hereafter Q).^[5] Nevertheless, persecution continued so intensely “that apostasy was excusable,”^[6] at least for a season.

The Quraysh then offered Muhammad a way for peace, “Come let us worship what you worship, and you worship what we worship.”^[7] In response, Allah instructed him to say, “You have your way, and I have my Way” (Q 109:6), which is interpreted as meaning, “If you will only worship God on condition that I worship what you worship I have no need of you at all.”^[8] This explanation is different than those today who posit Surah 109:6 as teaching religious tolerance.

The Early Years of Warfare

Muhammad’s life was safe as long as his uncle Abu Talib protected him, so within three years of him dying, Muhammad migrated to Medina in AD 622.^[9] He was invited there by the Ansar, who promised to protect him, even militarily.^[10] Islam became firmly established in Medina,^[11] and within a year of gathering religious and political authority (including a treaty with the Jews to “help the other against anyone who attacks”^[12]), Muhammad received “God’s command to fight his enemies.”^[13] This launched the last decade of his life, during which he personally took part in twenty-seven raids and fought in nine engagements.^[14]

Muhammad’s military activity is more accurately described as retaliatory than purely defensive. Allah “gave permission to His apostle to fight . . . those who wronged them and treated them badly.”^[15] This is consistent with the first verses sent down on the subject: “Permission is granted to those being fought, for they have been wronged . . . those who have been expelled from their homes for no reason other than proclaiming: ‘Our Lord is God’ ” (Q 22:39–40). Muhammad soon received further instructions: “Fight against them until there is no more persecution, and devotion will be to God” (Q 2:193), which is explained as, “Until God alone is worshipped,”^[16] which means that the polytheists need to be converted or killed.

Muhammad’s military campaign began with raids on Quraysh caravans, at least six times without fighting.^[17] Then his men sacked a Quraysh caravan with raisins and leather, having “decided to kill as many as they could of them and take what they had.”^[18] But the raid happened during a sacred month, and so they feared punishment until Allah sent down approval: “Kill them wherever you come upon them and drive them out of the places from which they have driven you out. For persecution is far worse than killing” (Q 2:191).^[19] Warfare in the sacred months was not only the lesser of two evils, but something good that the Muslims should learn to embrace: “Fighting has been made obligatory upon you, though you dislike it. Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you” (Q 2:216).

The Years of Intense Warfare

The Muslims continued targeting the caravans. And when the Quraysh finally sent an accompanying army, it produced the first battle, which occurred at Badr in AD 624. Muhammad did not expect the Ansar to “feel obliged to help him unless he was attacked by an enemy in Medina”^[20]; nevertheless, three-fourths of the men who fought for Muhammad came from the Ansar.^[21] However, the men were reluctant until he “incited them” by promising Paradise to anyone who would be “slain this day.”^[22] Not only that, Allah warned those who would turn back, “Their home will be Hell” (Q 8:16).^[23] Consequently, the Muslims won a decisive victory,^[24] which much of Surah 8 in the Quran celebrates and credits to Allah.

The battle of Badr demonstrated that much of divine judgment was carried out through Muhammad’s military victories. Surah 44:16 sounds like the eschaton—“On the Day We will deal the fiercest blow, We will surely inflict punishment”—but the earliest explanation points in a different direction: “The seizing implies that of the Day of Badr.”^[25] In fact, Badr proved that a supposed “peaceful passage” in the Quran was really a foil for warfare. Soon before Badr, Allah gave the following instructions to Muhammad: “Leave to Me the deniers—the people of luxury—and bear with them for a little while. We certainly have shackles, a Fire, choking food, and a painful punishment” (Q 73:11–13). The punishment is explained as happening when “God smote Quraysh on the day of Badr.”^[26]

While hailed as a supernatural triumph, Badr yielded substantial earthly benefits for Muhammad and his followers. Muhammad claimed that he could keep a fifth of the spoils for himself: “Booty was made lawful to me as to no prophet before me.”^[27] And Allah exhorted him to “motivate the believers to fight” by laying down a rule that the Muslims will overcome an army ten times their size (Q 8:65), only to relent and say that they must stand their ground and fight if the enemy is only two times their size (Q 8:66; cf. 8:45).^[28]

Muhammad enacted retributive warfare not only against the Quraysh but also against Jewish tribes. Those of B. Qaynuqa were “the first of the Jews to break their agreement with the apostle . . . and the apostle besieged them until they surrendered unconditionally.”^[29] After the Battle of Uhud (AD 625), some Jews in Medina invited the Quraysh to join them in attack at the Ditch (AD 627).^[30] Upon his victory, Muhammad besieged the Jews at B. Qurayza for twenty-five nights and, after they surrendered, Muhammad brought them out in batches and beheaded them, with reports varying between 600–900 executions in total.^[31] Soon after that, he launched a surprise attack against the Jews of Khaibar and conquered them,^[32] distributing their women among the Muslims^[33] and torturing the city’s custodian by kindling “a fire with flint and steel on his chest” for not telling him where the treasure was.^[34] Muhammad became increasingly aggressive and ruthless in his later years.

Muhammad’s Teaching on Warfare

Muhammad presented Jihad as an enduring obligation to his companions. He said, “There is no Hijra (i.e. migration) (from Mecca to Medina) after the conquest (of Mecca), but Jihad and good intention remain; and if you are called (by the Muslim ruler) for fighting, go forth immediately.”^[35] Muhammad migrated to Medina eight years earlier to preserve his life, but that example is obsolete. Now the enduring model is to stand and fight.

The word jihad means “struggle.” Today’s common distinction between “greater Jihad” (the internal struggle against sin) and “lesser Jihad” (the external struggle against infidels) is found nowhere in the authentic collections of Hadith. What, then, did Muhammad teach? He did describe Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) as a form of Jihad,^[36] but the Hadith sections addressing Jihad in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are all about armed conflict. In such fighting, a fellow Muslim should never be killed,^[37] neither should women or children.^[38] But not all fighting is true Jihad. One should not fight out of anger or pride; rather, “he who fights so that Allah’s Word should be superior, then he fights in Allah’s cause.”^[39]

Muhammad ascribed some of the greatest superlatives to Jihad. It is the second best deed, following only the call “to believe in Allah and His Apostle,”^[40] which the Quran affirms (Q 9:19).^[41] No deed equals Jihad in reward,^[42] because a fighter is “like a person who fasts and prays continuously.”^[43] A fighter’s horse provides an almost endless stream of reward, as the owner receives merit “for what the horse has eaten or drunk and for its dung and urine.”^[44] To highlight the reward, Muhammad said, “A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah’s Cause … is better than all the world and whatever is in it.”^[45]

One of the strongest motivations to participate in Jihad was the reward for martyrdom. Allah revealed that all martyrs are alive with their Lord (Q 3:169–71) in order “to make the believers wish to fight and desire battle.”^[46] Muhammad often repeated the promise that death in battle secured entrance into Paradise,^[47] even to “grade one hundred” (the highest level), “and the elevation between one grade and the other is equal to the height of the heaven from the earth.”^[48] But getting there as a martyr is so superior that such a person “would like to come back to the world and get killed again,”^[49] even up to ten times over.^[50] And on the Day of Judgment, everyone who participated in Jihad will be raised with every wound showing “as it was when it was inflicted, and would be bleeding profusely.”^[51]

Muhammad was never short on motivation to fight. Old Testament figures are presented as models of participation in Jihad. Allah appoints Saul when the people want a king to do Jihad (Q 2:246–49); David “would not flee on facing the enemy”^[52]; and Solomon once sleeps with ninety of his wives in a single night to produce knights for Jihad.^[53] Keeping horses for Jihad presents a win-win situation, “for they bring about either a reward (in the Hereafter) or (war) booty (in this world).”^[54] A fighter’s share of the spoils increases with battlefield success,^[55] and whoever stays behind to look after his family and wealth receives half the reward.^[56] But whoever goes out for war needs to fight to the death, for whoever flees the battlefield or kills himself will go to Hell.^[57] Indeed, Allah laughs when he sees a person throw himself into the battle line without armor, unafraid to die.^[58]

Muhammad repeatedly extolled warfare in the strongest possible terms, and he expected fighting to continue after his death. One sign of the Last Hour is that women will increase and men will decrease “so that fifty women will be looked after by one man.”^[59] This is likely due to the expectation that men would continue to die in warfare. And the fighting leading up to the Last Hour would be brutal: “You will fight against the Jews and you will kill them until even a stone would say: Come here, Muslim, there is a Jew (hiding himself behind me); kill him.”^[60] Muhammad predicted that after his death fighting would be conducted “for the sake of ruling,”^[61] and Abu Bakr (Muhammad’s successor) providing an example, saying that he would fight against someone for refusing to pay something as small as a she-kid for Zakat (obligatory wealth tax).^[62]

Muhammad did not conceive of Jihad as simply defensive warfare. He ordered the death of every apostate, saying, “If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.”^[63] Further, an unbeliever’s life is forfeit, so “no Muslim should be killed for killing an infidel.”^[64] In fact, his men once marveled at someone “who would follow and kill with his sword any pagan going alone.”^[65] Muhammad believed that “war is a stratagem,”^[66] and he promised, “I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but [a] Muslim.”^[67] And he instructed the Muslims left behind, “You should kill [him] who seeks to undermine your solidarity or disrupt your unity.”^[68]

Conclusion

This article does not recount the few times when Muhammad negotiated treaties, granted amnesties, or discouraged certain forms of violence. But these read as the exception to the rule of violent Jihad. This leaves peace-loving Muslims today in a dilemma that Nabeel Qureshi describes well in his personal testimony: “Either I could trust the historical sources of Muhammad’s life and find a man I would never want to follow as a prophet, or I could question the sources and have no reason to consider him a prophet.”^[69] The dilemma disappears only when one forsakes Islam and embraces Jesus, the Prince of Peace, as Savior.

Endnotes

1. Sahih al-Bukhari 7277. ↑
2. These sources are (1) the Quran, (2) the earliest biography of Muhammad, and (3) the Hadith, oral reports typically about what Muhammad did or said, transmitted by later generations and preserved in written collections. I appeal to no claims about Muhammad outside of these three sources of authority. The biography was written ~150 years after Muhammad’s death, and the Hadith collections date to ~250 years after his death, the two most authentic collections being Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, translated by Dr. M. Muhsin Khan and Abdul Hamid Siddiqui respectively, available online at sunnah.com. ↑
3. Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. Alfred Guillaime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 118–19. ↑
4. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 120, 133, 143–44. ↑
5. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 141. All quotations of the Quran are taken from The Clear Quran, translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab. ↑
6. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 145. ↑
7. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 165. ↑
8. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 165. ↑
9. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 191. ↑
10. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 197–99, 202–5, 208. ↑
11. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 235. ↑
12. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 231–33. ↑
13. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 280. ↑
14. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 659–60. Another tradition says that he conducted nineteen expeditions and fought in eight of them (Sahih Muslim 1254b). ↑
15. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 212. ↑
16. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 213. ↑
17. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 281–86. ↑
18. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 287. ↑
19. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 287–88. ↑
20. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 294. ↑
21. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 336. ↑
22. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 300. ↑
23. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 322. ↑
24. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 336–39. According to another report, there were 1,000 infidels at Badr, and Muhammad’s army of 319 killed 70 of them and captured another 70 (Sahih Muslim 1763). ↑
25. Sahih Muslim 2798a. ↑
26. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 324. ↑
27. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 326. ↑
28. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 326. ↑
29. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 363. ↑
30. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 450. ↑
31. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 461–64. ↑
32. Sahih al-Bukhari 2991; Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 511. ↑
33. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 511 ↑
34. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 515 ↑
35. Sahih al-Bukhari 2783; cf. Sahih al-Bukhari 2960–62, Sahih Muslim 1863b. ↑
36. Sahih al-Bukhari 1516. ↑
37. Sahih al-Bukhari 7075–76; Sahih Muslim 95–96. ↑
38. Sahih al-Bukhari 3015, Sahih Muslim 2327a. ↑
39. Sahih al-Bukhari 123. ↑
40. Sahih al-Bukhari 1519; cf. Sahih al-Bukhari 26. ↑
41. Sahih Muslim 1879a. ↑
42. Sahih al-Bukhari 2785. ↑
43. Sahih al-Bukhari 2787; cf. Sahih Muslim 1878a. ↑
44. Sahih al-Bukhari 2853; cf. Sahih al-Bukhari 2860, 7356; Sahih Muslim 987c. ↑
45. Sahih al-Bukhari 2796; cf. Sahih Muslim 1880. ↑
46. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 399. ↑
47. Sahih al-Bukhari 2887, 2924, 7530; Sahih Muslim 1789, 1885a. ↑
48. Sahih Muslim 1884. This is the significance of the saying, “Paradise is under the shadows of shades” (Sahih Muslim 1742a), which motivated at least one man to grab his sword and fight until he was slain (Sahih Muslim 1902). ↑
49. Sahih al-Bukhari 2795; cf. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 400. ↑
50. Sahih al-Bukhari 2817; Sahih Muslim 1877b. ↑
51. Sahih Muslim 1876e; cf. Sahih al-Bukhari 2803; Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 388. ↑
52. Sahih al-Bukhari 3419. ↑
53. Sahih al-Bukhari 3424. ↑
54. Sahih al-Bukhari 2852; cf. Sahih al-Bukhari 36, 7463; Sahih Muslim 1872a, 1876c. ↑
55. Sahih Muslim 1751c. ↑
56. Sahih Muslim 1896d. ↑
57. Sahih al-Bukhari 3463; Sahih Muslim 109a, 1856a. ↑
58. Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 300; cf. Sahih Muslim 1890c. ↑
59. Sahih al-Bukhari 81; cf. Sahih Muslim 2671b. ↑
60. Sahih Muslim 2921a; cf. Sahih al-Bukhari 2926. ↑
61. Sahih al-Bukhari 7095. ↑
62. Sahih al-Bukhari 1399; Sahih Muslim 20. ↑
63. Sahih al-Bukhari 3017; cf. Sahih Muslim 1066a, 1733d. ↑
64. Sahih al-Bukhari 3047; cf. Sahih Muslim 1891b. ↑
65. Sahih al-Bukhari 2898. ↑
66. Sahih Muslim 1739. ↑
67. Sahih Muslim 1767a; cf. Sahih Muslim 1765. ↑
68. Sahih Muslim 1852c. ↑
69. Nabeel Qureshi, No God but One: Allah or Jesus? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 264. ↑