Articles
Expulsions & Ethnic Cleansing
Expulsions & Ethnic Cleansing
Dr T H Chowdary*
Persecution and expulsion of minority ethnic and religious groups by the ruling majority is a tragic part of human history. The world is too familiar with Hitler’s Germany putting six million Jews to death in gas chambers .(This event is memorialized in the Yad Vashim Museum in Jerusalem, capital of Israel) . We are less familiar with Stalin’s ( Communist ruler of the former USSR; 1922-53) persecution of Tartars of Crimea, their exile and dispersion and eventual rehabilitation by Khruschev (1953-64) . The persecution and exile of non- Arab black Muslims of Darfur region of Sudan is a recent event. So is the squeezing out of Rohingyas of Bangla Desh origin (infiltrator-settlers) from Myanmar. We in India, have 400,00 Kashmiri’s Hindu Pundits, expelled by the Muslim majority ( 90% converts from Hinduism over a period of 500 years) in a frenzy of intolerance. What however is generally not known is the expulsion and partial extermination of Jews from the areas in and around Medina by Prophet Mohammad.
2.Prophet Mohammed started propagation of Islam in his native Mekka in Arabia. The Mekkans ridiculed and insulted him; life became unbearable. Some of his followers emigrated to Abyssinia. He emigrated in July 622 AD with a few followers to Yathirb (Madina) the birth place of his late mother, Amina. Around Medina, there were Jewish settlements. From the Jews, the Prophet picked up knowledge of the Jewish Prophets of the Old Testament of the Bible. He told the Jews that he is the Messiah foretold by the Judaic Prophets . The Jews did not believe this.
But the monotheism and denunciation of idolatry preached by Prophet Mohammed disposed the Jews favourably to the Prophet. But what would be the attitude of the prosperous Jews in the Prophet’s struggle, his battles with the Mekkan Koreish, the non-believers and foes? That was what determined the fate of the three Jewish tribes in the area over which Prophet Mohammad established his mastery, both as Prophet and law-giving ruler. The Medinese who accepted Islam were called “Helpers” and the Meccans who came with their Prophet were called “Refugees” (Mohazzirs in Sindh).
3. Once the Prophet had to pay blood money to the tribe which he unsuccessfully raided. He was approaching the rich Jewish tribe Banu Nadir for a gift of that amount he needed to pay the tribe he wronged. But a voice from heaven told him that Banu Nadir was plotting to kill him. He told the Medinese that “he was escaping from a treacherous assault and summoned his followers to besiege the Banu Nadir”. (P 314). Mohammed had the date trees of. Banu Nadir cur or burnt. The Nadirs were under siege for three weeks. They capitulated. They were exiled. “The Prophet’s victory was bloodless” He distributed the land and properties of the Banu Nadir Jews to the Refugees: that is, the Meccans who migrated with him to Medina. The confiscation of the exiles’ property and wealth, is the precursor of the waqf’s lands and wealth in India.
4. The next affair of the Prophet with Jews was gruesome. This was in March 626 AD. After besieging Mohammed and his armed followers for 15 days, the Mekkan army under the command of Abu Sufyan withdrew from the Battle of the Ditch, Jews of Beni Koreiza did not join the ranks of the Prophet’s army against Abu Subyan’s Meccan invaders. Gabriel (Allah’s messenger) brought the command to the Prophet to proceed against the Jews of Beni Koreiza. The Jews’ fortress was invested. “They sought to capitulate on condition of quitting the neighbour-hood even empty handed”. The Prophet accepted the judgement of the Chief of the Arab tribe Aus, allies of the Prophet in Medina that the men shall be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery and the spoil divided among the army”. Trenches were dug in the market place of the city (Medina). Mohammed himself, a spectator of the tragedy commanded the male captives to be brought forth . 800 male Jews in batches of five to six were brought, “each batch made to sit in a row on the brink of the trench destined for his grace, there beheaded and the bodies cast there in”. (p318) . The butchery began in the morning, lasted all day and continued by torchlight till the evening” (329). During the butchery, one Jewess sallied forth and demanded of Mohammed that she might share her husband’s fate. The Prophet granted. “She met her death with cheerful countenance. (Like Rajaputni’s jauhar) . Mohammed invited her to be his wife; but “she declined and chose to remain his slave, concubine…She also declined the summons to conversion” (p319). 1000 women and children were presented as slaves and servants to Muslims and some sold to Badawie tribes. Some property was divided among the 3000 soldiers of Medina, as were women. (It is this prospect of gaining wealth, women and slaves that the Arab converts to Islam, went out for the conquest of whole of Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, North Africa and Spain, led first by the four properly guided Caliphs (Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman and Ali) and later, Sultans and Kings.
5.The third conquest and expulsion (ethnic cleansing) of the Jews by the Prophet was from their rich settlement in Khaibar on the way to Syria, in Aug/September 628AD. The Jews here committed no offence. Their fertile fields , nice houses, forts and wealth were coveted by the Prophet. After fierce fight, the Jews’ citadel of Al-Kamus surrendered. Their Chief, Kinana was accused of not divulging where all the treasures were hidden. He was “subjected to cruel torture – fire being placed on his breast, until he died. By command of the Prophet, his head was severed from his body. Mohammed commanded Billal, his Muezzin, to bring the beautiful, 17-year young , wife of the beheaded Chief of the Jews and took her as wife. (Duryodhana commanded brother Dussashan to bring the beautiful Draupadi to the assembly and signalled her to sit on his thighs) .
The sixty year old Prophet Mohammed took the 17 years young widow Saffia , as wife that very day her husband was beheaded. The plunder of Kheibar was rich beyond experience. The Prophet and his Muslims no longer depended upon the hospitality of the Medinese helpers. One half of all villages and lands embracing all places which surrendered without fighting became a crown domain ( like Sarf-e-Khas of the Nizam of Hyderabad). The Prophet had ample revenue to himself from which he made assignments to all his eight wives. He distributed the confiscated treasures among his soldiers. The Jews of Kheibar were not slaughtered but allowed to live as dhimmis, surrendering half the produce of their lands (just as the unconverted Hindus in India were allowed to live under Muslim rule by paying Zezia).
6. Gandhiji once said, “ Muslims are bullies and Hindus are cowards”. About the atrocities of rape, forced conversion and desecration of temples by the rebellious Moplahs in Malabar in 1921, “Gandhiji did not condemn the Moplah’s vandalism and demoniac acts against Hindus. He described the Moplahs as “god-fearing” people and declared that “they are fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner they consider as religious” .
The scant respect for animal as well as human life, polygamy; beheading ( Akbar beheaded Hemu, the defeated and captured the Hindu warrior), torture to death (Guru Arjun Dev by Jahangir; burying Guru Tegh Bahadur alive by Aurangzeb, keeping numerous concubines; appropriation of the properties and wealth of defeated people for sustenance and welfare of the conquering and converted hordes (Wakf) , assassinations (three of the four Prophet Mohammed’s successor Caliphs fell to assassins), expulsion and ethnic cleansing of non- believers (The Prophet said, “no faith other than Islam should exist in Arabia) as in the Indian territory of Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh, all seem to have their sanction and origin during the life- time of Prophet Mohammed and practised by him.
Note: This article is based on the contents of the books
1. Mohammad and the Rise of Islam by D S Margoliouth and
2. The Life of Mahomet (from original sources) by Sir William Muir
The quotations in para (3) are from Margoliouth and in paras - 4 and 5 are from Muir
(1,306 words)
END