Ecce Homo......Arabicus" by W.H.T. Gairdner at www.answering-islam.org.
Please comment?


Rapes by Moslem Troops


So much for the violation of conventions deemed sacred by the conscience of that time. But there were also violations of laws of humanity itself. We have heard with shuddering of the wholesale rapes during the present campaign: what will the public think, and what will Woking say, when it is known that troops composed of the first Mohammedan saints and martyrs and commanded by Mohammed in person, committed rape on the field on at least one occasion and under peculiarly shocking circumstances? The occassion was after the overthrow of the Bani Mustaliq at the wells of Marasi', when many of the two hundred captured women of the tribe (expressly said to be free women and not slaves, kara'im al 'Arab Halabi ii 296) were raped by Mohammed's men with his full consent! There can be no doubt about the facts; they are narrated by all the most reputed of the Traditionalists, and by at least two of the historians: so much so that a certain point in the Shari'a itself is settled by reference to the incident. The violated wives had actually still to be bought back by their husbands. We refrain from translating the passage in full, for the simple reason that it is really unprintable. The prejudiced Muir and other Christian historians (until "Caetini"!) have.... kept silent on the incident! Let not their generosity however be now represented as a silent verdict on their part that the incident is spurious. The authority is far too strong, as we saw. And who would have invented such things? And even supposing the incident is spurious, it was and is accepted by Islam as absolute truth, - except of course when Christians are in the neighborhood.


Nor was this an isolated incident. The very fact that on at lest two occasions, Khaybar and Hunain, Mohammed had to regulate what might be done with women taken on the field shows this sufficiently. It was at Hunain that he definitely enacted, against the scruples of some of his followers, that capture on the field ipso facto dissolved previous (heathen) marriages (see Koran iv 22); and that married wives (not merely virgins and slave-girls), their husbands being living and most likely present, might be passed to the immediate15 use of their conquerors, provided that certain precautions were taken against pregnancy. Are we to add these prescriptions to the universal "morals of war"?" />

 Powered by UITechs
Get password? Username Password
 
Menu << Go Back Home New Questions Popular Questions Ask a  Question

Rape by Muslim Troops
Question asked by Muhammad Asif.
Posted on: Monday, July 18, 2005 - Hits: 3991


Question:
Find below a passage from article "Mohammed without Camouflage:
Ecce Homo......Arabicus" by W.H.T. Gairdner at www.answering-islam.org.
Please comment?


Rapes by Moslem Troops


So much for the violation of conventions deemed sacred by the conscience of that time. But there were also violations of laws of humanity itself. We have heard with shuddering of the wholesale rapes during the present campaign: what will the public think, and what will Woking say, when it is known that troops composed of the first Mohammedan saints and martyrs and commanded by Mohammed in person, committed rape on the field on at least one occasion and under peculiarly shocking circumstances? The occassion was after the overthrow of the Bani Mustaliq at the wells of Marasi', when many of the two hundred captured women of the tribe (expressly said to be free women and not slaves, kara'im al 'Arab Halabi ii 296) were raped by Mohammed's men with his full consent! There can be no doubt about the facts; they are narrated by all the most reputed of the Traditionalists, and by at least two of the historians: so much so that a certain point in the Shari'a itself is settled by reference to the incident. The violated wives had actually still to be bought back by their husbands. We refrain from translating the passage in full, for the simple reason that it is really unprintable. The prejudiced Muir and other Christian historians (until "Caetini"!) have.... kept silent on the incident! Let not their generosity however be now represented as a silent verdict on their part that the incident is spurious. The authority is far too strong, as we saw. And who would have invented such things? And even supposing the incident is spurious, it was and is accepted by Islam as absolute truth, - except of course when Christians are in the neighborhood.


Nor was this an isolated incident. The very fact that on at lest two occasions, Khaybar and Hunain, Mohammed had to regulate what might be done with women taken on the field shows this sufficiently. It was at Hunain that he definitely enacted, against the scruples of some of his followers, that capture on the field ipso facto dissolved previous (heathen) marriages (see Koran iv 22); and that married wives (not merely virgins and slave-girls), their husbands being living and most likely present, might be passed to the immediate15 use of their conquerors, provided that certain precautions were taken against pregnancy. Are we to add these prescriptions to the universal "morals of war"?


Answer:
Islam has not introduced this kind (or any kind of) of slavery rather it was an internationally recognized legal practice which had strong roots in the social set-up of that time. Islam gradually demolished the strong walls of the edifice of this social institution and took effective measures to accommodate the liberated slaves in the society.

In those societies war captives were considered and treated as slaves and consequently were acknowledged the legal property of the captors. A believer is expected to obey all the Divine directives in the Book --- and the Prophet and his companions should be the first to do so. Therefore, all the narratives which do not fit into the Qur’anic portrayal of the Prophet (sws) and his companions need to be analyzed and if there is no way of reconciliation between the two they have to be abandoned for the Qur’an is reliable and established and the individual narratives are subject to analysis.


Sometimes authors like this try to misreport and misinterpret the facts to achieve specific ends. The facts are distorted and exactly the opposite of the probable conclusions are made. We know that it was not the case that the Muslim army marched in to the houses of the non-Muslim population of the state and raped the women and killed the men. The people enslaved by the Muslims at all occasions were the combatants and soldiers of the army that either marched for onslaught on the Muslim empire or were being attacked by the Muslim forces in order to punish them on the denial of the Messenger of Allah. Only those of the rival tribes were captured who participated actively in an ongoing war in the battlefield.

If you study the article carefully observing the facts presented and conclusion made on their basis you would find yourselves being betrayed. Most of the allegations of mistreatment of the enslaved women by the Muslims under the Holy Prophet (sws) are unfounded. How can the Messenger of God grossly ignore all moral values in this regard? The Qur’an and the established history give a completely different picture of the Messenger and his companions. How can an individual report be trusted against the established historical fact?

For a detailed discussion on the reforms Islam brought to correct this custom of enslaving the war captives and what it required from the believers to do regarding the war captives please refer to the following article of Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi: Prisoners of War.(http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/junespart42y2.html)

I hope this helps.


Tariq Mahmood Hashmi
RA Studying Islam


Counter Question Comment
You can post a counter question on the question above.
You may fill up the form below or click here to send via email.
Title
Detail
Name
Email


Note: Your counter question must be related to the above question/answer.
Do not use this facility to post questions that are irrelevant or unrelated to the content matter of the above question/answer.

Share |


Copyright Studying-Islam © 2003-7  | Privacy Policy  | Code of Conduct  | An Affiliate of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences ®
Top    





eXTReMe Tracker