The Prophet and The Killing Of Ka'b Ibn Al-Ashraf
By Grace Mubashir, New Age Islam
22 October 2022
The Jewish-Christian-Orientalist
Critics Of The Prophet Have Long Used The Incident In Which The Companions Of
The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) Killed Ka'b Ibn Ashraf, A Prominent Jewish Leader
In Madinah, To Misrepresent The Prophet As A Cruel Oppressor Of Jews, This
Propaganda Has Been Staged For Centuries By Deliberately Concealing Facts
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The Jewish-Christian-Orientalist critics of the Prophet have
long used the incident in which the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
killed Ka'b Ibn Ashraf, a prominent Jewish leader in Madinah, to misrepresent
the Prophet as a cruel oppressor of Jews. This propaganda has been staged for
centuries by deliberately concealing facts.
The incident runs like this: In response to the Prophet's
(PBUH) inquiry as to who should deal with Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, Muhammad ibn Maslama of the tribe of Aus, a Sahabi
(Companion) took up the task and asked the Prophet for permission to use a
trick in speech to get Ka'b to come. Muhammad ibn Maslama said about Ka'b, who
was earning his income through this, that he gently rejected Ka'b's demand to
give women or children as a pledge and brought Ka'b to an agreement to provide
financial assistance in the form of weapons as a pledge.
It has been recorded in the dominant hadiths related to the
incident that Maslama gathered his companions armed with weapons under the
pretext of financial dealings at night and summoned Ka'b to the city. After
holding his head to taste the wonderful perfume on his head, it is recorded he
was deceptively murdered by Maslama.
It is clear that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), who had written
agreements that ensured religious freedom and civil rights for the Jewish
tribes when he came to power in Madinah, and had followed them ruthlessly, gave
a special order to kill a Jew named Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, because Ka’b was not a
Jew, and the punishment of the ruler for some delinquent crimes was pronounced
on him. Great care was taken to ensure that Jews do not become victims of any
racial or communal discrimination
The government system that was in Madinah was the Islamic
State, when it came to the point that another Muslim who stole the coat of arms
of a Muslim would be caught, stripped and taken to the house of a Jew in order
to escape, and the innocent Jew would be tried and punished based on the available
evidence, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) took the right judgment by declaring the
Muslim's treachery and the Jew's innocence unequivocally.
The hadiths do not contain the details of Ka'b's crime, but
rather the account of the execution of his punishment. There are detailed
accounts of the background to the pronouncement of punishment in all the early
prophetic books. Anyone who goes through them will realize the hollowness of
such criticisms. Those who ask whether those accused of treason should be tried
in courtrooms and executed in formal prison cells or on the gallows are
speaking within the framework of modern law enforcement systems.
Guilleme is doing a great job of trying to analyse a method
of execution in the 7th century. Muhammad ibn Maslama and his companions
realized the fulfilment of the Prophet's commandment in a time when there were
completely different methodologies and ethics to carry out the punishments
announced by the ruler for dangerous and rare criminals. The method they used
to kill Ka'b was justified and justified not in Islam, but in the
socio-political system in which they lived. Today an Islamic state is tackling
a similar problem using very modern techniques.
In each period, the
Islamic state functioned by assimilating the political logic of the respective
periods. In 7th century Medina, the Jews built fortresses and separated
themselves from other peoples and lived as communal colonies in an environment
where they did not attack them en masse but dealt with their worst offenders individually
and behind the scenes without openly declaring war.
Naturally, in the case of Ka’b Ashraf, the way in which the
statesmanship of the time was understood to be suitable for keeping the
conspirators who were pulling anti-state strings from there without military
equipment was followed. If innocent people were attacked in the name of Ka’b or
if the nation went too far in punishing him, then any criticism about it would
have the support of historiography. The critics themselves know that it is not.
Strategy is the all-time recognized artifice to deal with
the enemies of the nation. There are only seasonal changes in its methods. No
person with common-sense needs to be told how to maintain national security
that the country kills its enemies not only in war and sometimes has to adopt
non-war silent tactics to suppress internal enemies .
The missionaries were not ignorant of the fact that those
tasked with the task were only trying to carry out the secret punishment order
given by Ka'b, the ruler of the country, unknowingly in the case of Ashraf, and
that there was nothing unusual about it. It is only blind enmity of Islam that
prompts them to present only a partial account of the Ka'b incident and portray
the tactics and secret killings used in it as immoral and brutal. Because of
that blindness, they are unable to see that it is completely ridiculous to ask
Jesus for parallels of such events, since he was neither a ruler, judge, nor
military leader.
There is no way that the missionaries who read these passages
of the Bible will not be convinced of the ethics of the covert military action
of the state if Madinah against Ka’b Ashraf!
All the narratives related to him state that Ka’b al-Ashraf
was born to a non-Medinan Arab father and a Banu Nadir Jewish mother of Madina,
and as a Jew, he built his own private fort/palace among the Banu Nadirs and
lived in it lavishly. Ka'b, who was a staunch enemy and public critic of the
Prophet, expected the story of Islam to end with the Battle of Badr. But when
he heard the news of the victory of the Muslims in Badr, he became depressed and decided that he would
rather die than witness it, and to inspire the Meccans to ask for the blood of
the prominent enemies of the Prophet from Mecca who were killed in Badr.
Ka'b, who went to Makkah and settled in the house of
Al-Muttalib Ibn Abu Wada'a, wrote and widely circulated poems lamenting the
dead in the war and inciting a thirst for revenge, and the famous Muslim poets
of Madinah, including Hassan Ibn Thabit, intended to stir up the anger of the
Meccans. Ibn Ishaq's subsequent narratives also show that Ka'b's poetry became
popular throughout the Hijaz by writing retorts to his poetry. Ibn Ishaq also
adds that when Ka'b returned to Madinah after staying in Makkah for some time,
he began to insult the Muslim women in Madinah by creating obscene and erotic
poems containing physical descriptions of them.
The Banu Nadir tribe, who entered into a treaty of assurance
with Ntuna and enjoyed honorable and faithful protection from the Prophet under
the terms of the same treaty, are notorious for their attempts to break the
treaty and raise the flag of rebellion. Badr was an unexpected and decisive
battle with the Prophet's enemies in Mecca, who unjustly expelled the Prophet
and his companions from Mecca in the name of Islam and planned wars against
them by making wealth by trading with the properties they left behind. Instead
of being excited as a Medinan by the valiant resistance of the Prophet (PBUH)
and his followers when its enemies came to destroy Medina, he went to Makkah
and mourned the death of their soldiers who had fought Madinah, fanned the
flames of revenge, and urged them to fight again against Madinah. In turn, the
poems were circulated openly. A defiant spy who made the Makkan people wary and
the Madina people panic by going into the midst of its greatest enemies and
chanting to the ears of the Madina people about the destruction of Madinah.
In short, he was a traitor. If a citizen of a country goes
to an enemy country and makes public interventions urging its soldiers to fight
against his country and returns to his own country, what will its rulers who
are interested in national security do? That is what the Prophet (PBUH) did as
the ruler of Madinah.
It can be understood how imperative the Prophet's order was
when it is said that after Ka'b returned to Madinah, without showing even the
slightest remorse, he went to the height of arrogance and proceeded to sexually
abuse virtuous Muslim women with letters.
All this means that Ka'b was a treasonous criminal who
declared war on the ruler of the living kingdom. The most striking fact is that
those closest to him were aware of his subversive status. Ka’b was about to
leave the fort at night. Ibn Ishaq narrates that his wife, trying to dissuade
him, said: “You are at war; Those who are at war should not go out today.” It
is easy to understand how much of a rebel Muhammad Ibn Maslama and his cohorts
were dealing with when the mature wife realized that her husband was a man who
openly advocated a similar stance to war against the country and that those
responsible for ensuring the country's security could come to him at any time.
As dangerous as the excitement Ka'b gave to his enemies in
Mecca and the humiliation and insecurity he tried to inflict on Muslim women in
Medina was his potential influence on other Jews.
He should have been punished as an example and a warning to
all the rebellious, because if Ka'b was allowed to roam safely despite
inflicting severe violence on the country and spreading cultural anarchy, many
other rebellious Jews would openly follow Ka'b's path, and the internal
security of the country would become deplorable. Ibn Ishaq himself suggests
that the Islamic State was successful in achieving this goal because the assassination
of Ka'b spread fear of similar actions among the Jews.
The unfortunate incident known as Ghazwa Saweeq (battle of
Saweeq) gives a clear idea of the divisiveness of the Banu Nadir and the
possible national security implications of Ka'bnu Ashraf's efforts to bridge
the gap between the Quraysh and them. The general opinion of the historians is
that the killing of Ka'b took place in the month of Rabi'ul Awwal following
Ghazwa Saweek.
It is in Ibn Sa'd's historical account that the Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH) himself declared that the killing of Ka'b bin Ashraf was not
because he was a Jew and that the Jews did not have to fear injustice in
Madinah. The Jews who asked for an explanation for the killing of Ka'b were
asked to incite the people to attack Madinah.
Ibn Sa'd's narrative that the Prophet (PBUH) renewed the
peace-keeping pact with the other Jews, reminding them of the misdeeds of Ka'b
and the dangers of allowing them to continue, and pointing out that there was
only punishment for it, is capable of shattering all critical imaginations of
using the Ka'b assassination. Ibn Sa'd, a prominent scholar of Prophetic
history, added similar narrations of Abu Dawud and Bayhaqi that this
information provided by Ibn Sa'd is reliable. It can be understood from the
analysis of Mahdi Rizqullah Ahmad.
What we have analyzed is that the historical texts reveal
the background of the events that describe the hadiths that explain the killing
of Ka’b al-Ashraf. Accordingly, shortly after Ka'b's journey to Mecca after the
Battle of Badr and his subsequent return to Medina, the order to kill him was
issued and carried out. The Banu Nadir tribesmen were expelled from Madinah for
their infamous anti-state violence, again several days after the assassination
of Ka'b.
There is a difference of opinion among the narrations as to
whether it was during or after the Battle of Uhud. But there are reports that
action will be taken against Ka'b not immediately after the revolting Makwaz
after the Battle of Badr. Surat al-Hashr, the fifty-ninth chapter of the Holy
Qur'an, is an indictment against the Banu Nadir tribes.
Scholarly opinion is that it was introduced with reference
to nation making process. Prominent early Qur'anic commentators such as Imam
Qurtubi have suggested that a name Sura belongs to the said chapter. Many
historical accounts quoted by many leading Qur'anic commentators in their
explanation of Surat al-Hashr present the expulsion of the Banu Nadir and the
killing of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf as part of a single event. A tradition recorded
by Imam Jalaluddin Suyutwi in his Qur'anic commentary, Addurrul Manthuri
Fitafsiri Bil Mathur, states that Ka'b played a leading role in the sudden
indiscipline to expel the Banu Nadir and their plots to assassinate the
Prophet.
It was shortly before that that Ka'bn al-Ashraf, who had
signed a treaty of war against the Prophet with the leader of Medina's enemies,
was executed as a prelude to the expulsion of the Banu Nadir. According to the
reports in the historical books, Ka'b was killed a little earlier. In either
case, Ka’b was a rebel who became a serious threat to the country and the
locals. The Prophet's act of ensuring the safety of the country and its
inhabitants by killing him only underlines his mercy, justice, and rule of law.
His action should be seen as a justifiable act of
statesmanship to protect his people.
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A regular columnist for NewAgeIslam.com, Mubashir V.P is
a PhD scholar in Islamic Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia and freelance
journalist.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/prophet-killing-kab-ibn-al-ashraf/d/128237
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