Part Two

Values

INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO

As the founder of a world religion, the figures with whom Muḥammad invites comparison are the Buddha and Jesus—in the nature of things he has no Hindu counterpart. Neither the Buddha nor Jesus could be reckoned a political innocent. When Ajātaśatru, the king of Magadha, planned to destroy the Vṛjjis, a thriving republican people of the day, he dispatched his chief minister to announce his intention to the Buddha and observe his reaction. The Buddha gave the minister an answer that endorsed the political traditions of the Vṛjjis while pointedly omitting to comment on the king’s plan to destroy them.1 Jesus acted in a similar way when confronted with the question whether it was lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, asking whose image and superscription appeared on the coinage and inferring that one should render unto Caesar the things which were Caesar’s—but unto God the things that were God’s.² In each case a religious leader was faced with a politically dangerous question and responded with an indirection that was at once principled and prudent. Both of these founding figures have been regarded by their followers as in some sense kings: the Buddha is a “king of the Law” (dharmarājā),³ and Jesus is a “king of kings.”⁴ But neither acted as a ruler in the course of his earthly mission.

Muḥammad, by contrast, was the founder of a state as well as a religion. He therefore faced political choices on a daily basis—and not just on the rare occasion when he was put on the spot by an awkward question. Moreover the sources have no inhibitions about presenting him as an astute politician, a fact that is likely to reflect the character of their earliest audience: the Arab political and military elite, themselves fully active in politics. Muḥammad is thus portrayed very differently from his predecessor Moses. Like Muḥammad, Moses was the founder of a polity, but in the Pentateuchal narrative divine micromanagement leaves him only limited scope for independent decision making in his relations with his people, and the decisions he does make are not depicted as political judgment calls.5 God does, of course, intervene in Muḥammad’s political and military affairs, but He does so far less persistently, often leaving him to rely on his wits.

By way of example, let us take an incident that occurred on one of the many military expeditions that Muḥammad led out from Medina, this one mounted around 627 against a group of desert nomads who were quickly defeated and play no further part in our story.⁶ Following the victory trouble flared up between Muḥammad’s Meccan and Medinan supporters as a result of friction between two individuals at a watering place.⁷ ʿAbdallāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl, a powerful but disaffected Medinese tribal chief and the leading “hypocrite” (munāfiq), as such covert Medinese enemies of Muḥammad were called, then worked behind the scenes to exacerbate the tensions. A boy came and reported this, and Muḥammad had to decide what to do about it. The standard narrative of the Prophet’s life, though not composed by a political philosopher, implicitly separates two distinct issues that arose here. The first was whether it would be ethical to kill Ibn Ubayy; after all, the only witness against him was a boy whose testimony could hardly be relied on in such a matter. This question was resolved in an incontrovertible fashion when God sent down a revelation confirming the truthfulness of the boy’s account (Q63:8).8 The other question was whether, assuming it was ethical to kill Ibn Ubayy, it would also be prudent to do so. ʿUmar, one of Muḥammad’s closest Meccan followers and the future second caliph, urged him to have the man killed; to this Muḥammad objected that people would say he was killing his own Companions.⁹ By contrast, a Medinese supporter advised him to be gentle with the man. Muḥammad did this, and the decision worked out very well. Ibn Ubayy’s position among his Medinese fellow tribesmen subsequently crumbled, and at that point Muḥammad remarked to ʿUmar how right he had been to ignore his advice and let the man live.¹⁰ What the course of events had vindicated was not Muḥammad’s rectitude, which was not in question, but his political astuteness.¹¹

Muḥammad’s remark that people would say he was killing his own Companions is widely attested in pre-modern Islamic texts,¹² often, though not always, in connection with the story of Ibn Ubayy’s misbehavior.¹³ The story itself, and hence the saying, appear in numerous collections of traditions, including the best,¹⁴ which in turn guarantees that they get wide attention from the commentators on these collections.¹⁵ At the same time the fact that the story is linked to a Koranic verse assures the saying a place in the vast literature of Koranic exegesis.¹⁶ It likewise recurs in works on the life of Muḥammad,¹⁷ in general histories,¹⁸ and in biographical dictionaries.¹⁹ The scholars explain that Muḥammad’s concern was to avoid the appearance that he was killing his own Companions because of the damage this would have done to his image and the aversion to Islam that would have resulted among potential converts.20 But they do not normally point to the incident as a lesson for their own times. They tend rather to stress circumstances that box the saying into the specific conditions of the early community. Thus they say that Muḥammad made a point of being nice to the hypocrites during his early years in Medina,²¹ at a time when Islam was still weak, but that this indulgence was already abrogated before his death.²² Or they observe that he had a personal right to be forbearing toward those who offended against him, an option that is no longer available to subsequent generations when injury is done to the Prophet.²³ At the same time they limit any application that the saying might have by stating that it applied only to those who had not manifested their unbelief,²⁴ as was the case with the hypocritical Ibn Ubayy. Thus, in general the discussion is devoid of clearcut practical implications.

Occasionally, however, the question of contemporary relevance is brought out into the open. One commentator remarks that there is disagreement among the scholars as to whether the practice of such restraint is still permitted or whether it came to an end when Islam waxed strong and the instruction to fight the hypocrites was revealed (Q9:73).²⁵ Ibn Taymiyya in one passage is more definite: he says that adverse consequences—such as driving away potential converts and causing Muslims to apostatize—remain to this day a valid ground for not imposing a punishment that would otherwise be incumbent.²⁶ Elsewhere, in a discussion of the permissibility of killing individual Shīʿites,27 he says that it is indeed permitted to kill one who is a propagandist for his beliefs or otherwise engaged in vicious activities (fasād); if eliminating such heretics is the only way to ward off their mischief, they are undoubtedly to be killed. We do not, however, have to kill a Shīʿite if he does not manifest his doctrine or if killing him would do more harm than good; this, he observes, is why Muḥammad once spared a heretic to avoid its being said that he was killing his own Companions.²⁸ In a less formal vein a nineteenth-century Moroccan historian invokes Muḥammad’s relations with the hypocrites and quotes the saying in criticizing the conduct of an impolitic ruler of his country who in 1729 had imprudently alienated the people of Fez in reaction to an incident that he should have overlooked.²⁹

What all this established was that in public affairs it was not enough just to act out one’s values. Values are, of course, fundamental; for those who are not simply selfish or cynical, they provide the purposes without which political activity is pointless. But to focus all one’s attention on one’s values without keeping a wary eye on public relations is to court disaster. We see here a certain political sophistication that must have appealed to the Arab elite of early Islamic times and that would also be available to modern Muslims who base their politics on their religion. But before we go on to ask what use they have in fact made of this source, we need to look at some length at the values themselves and their relevance in the modern context. We begin with social values.

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¹ Nakamura, Gotama Buddha, 2: 34–38. For the background, see J. P. Sharma, Republics in ancient India, 125–26.

² Matt. 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26.

³ Aśvaghoṣa, Buddhacarita, canto 1, verse 75 (Part 1, 9.2 = Part 2, 16).

⁴ Rev. 17:14 (referring to Jesus as the Lamb).

⁵ Moses is quite capable of making decisions on prudential grounds, as when he satisfies himself that no one is looking before he kills the Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and buries the body in the sand (Ex. 2:12). On at least two occasions he shows considerable astuteness in his handling of a difficult deity, arguing against God’s intended course of action on the ground that it would lead to a public relations disaster for Him (Ex. 32:11–14, Num. 14:13–16). But he does not manifest these qualities in his frequently problematic relations with his people. Even his remark that a certain plan put to him by them “seemed good to me” (Deut. 1:23) is exceptional. Immediately after the exodus, the route to be taken by the Israelites is chosen on the ground that “if the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt” (Ex. 13:17), but it is God, not Moses, who thinks in this prudential fashion.

⁶ For the raid on the Banū ʾl-Muṣṭaliq, see Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 3–4: 289–96 = 490–93.

⁷ Ibid., 3–4: 290.15 = 490–92.

⁸ Ibid., 3–4: 292.20 = 491–92.

⁹ Ibid., 3–4: 291.7 = 491.

¹⁰ Ibid., 3–4: 293.8 = 492.

¹¹ Cf. Ibn al-Jawzī, Kashf al-mushkil, 5: 12.21, speaking of siyāsa ʿaẓīma wa-ḥazm wāfir; Nawawī, Sharḥ, 15–16: 354.23, speaking of ḥilm.

¹² I found 134 instances of the phrase yaqtulu aṣḥābahu in the texts included in the electronic database al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr.

¹³ Of the other contexts in which it appears, the most common is a tradition regarding a man who protests against Muḥammad’s division of the spoils after the battle of Ḥunayn in 630 (see, for example, Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 740 no. 1063 (zakāt 47)).

¹⁴ Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 2: 386.3 (manāqib 8), 3: 355.14 (tafsir to Q63:6), and 3: 356.13 (tafsir to Q63:8); Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1998–99 no. 2584 (al-birr waʾl-ṣila 16).

¹⁵ See, for example, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-bārī, 8: 527.15; Nawawī, Sharḥ, 15–16: 354.23.

¹⁶ See, for example, Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 12: 105–9, nos. 34,169, 34,174–75, 34,177–78 (to Q63:8); Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 4: 390.24.

¹⁷ See, for example, Wāqidī, Maghāzī, 417.18, 418.19.

¹⁸ See, for example, Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, Series 1, 1512.12 = History of al-Ṭabarī, 8: 52; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya waʾl-nihāya, 4: 157.16. Both have it from Ibn Isḥāq.

¹⁹ See, for example, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb fī maʿrifat al-aṣḥāb, 941.6.

²⁰ See, for example, ʿIyāḍ, Sharḥ, 8: 55.10; ʿAynī, ʿUmdat al-qārī, 16: 89.15; Ibn Taymiyya, Ṣārim, 355.2, 441.5, 680.6 (the text is in volumes 2 and 3, which have continuous pagination). This last work is a treatise proving that a dhimmī who insults the Prophet must be executed (for the occasion and date of composition, see 1: 167–68), and in the course of his argument Ibn Taymiyya has incidental occasion to make numerous further references to the saying (340.5, 340.8, 342.2, 355.6, 425.17, 666.6, 668.13, 669.9, 671.3, 672.15, 681.6, 683.3, 829.1).

²¹ See, for example, Nawawī, Sharḥ, 15–16: 108.13.

²² Ibn Taymiyya, Ṣārim, 441.9, 682.6; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zād al-maʿād, 3: 568.3, 5: 61.5.

²³ See, for example, Nawawī, Sharḥ, 15–16: 354.23 (where the point is implicit in the reference to tark baʿḍ al-umūr al-mukhtāra); Ibn Taymiyya, Ṣārim, 425.14 (contrasting what is normative today with the right of the Prophet to forgive such an offense), 828.1, 829.15 (emphasizing that the Prophet had a right to forgive that the Muslim community since his death does not possess).

²⁴ See, for example, Nawawī, Sharḥ, 15–16: 355.17, and cf. 355.21.

²⁵ Iyāḍ, Sharḥ, 8: 55.12.

²⁶ Ibn Taymiyya, Ṣārim, 681.1.

²⁷ Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ, 28: 499.15, in response to a question about whether Shīʿites are to be fought and declared unbelievers (468.2).

²⁸ Ibid., 28: 500.6 (the heretic in question is the man who protested against Muḥammad’s division of the spoils after the battle of Ḥunayn).

²⁹ Nāṣirī, Istiqṣāʾ, 7: 129.13. The incident had occurred during the ruler’s recent visit to Fez (126.2).