The Massacre of the Banu Qurayzah: Difference between revisions

Yet critics of these pro-Islam viewpoints have pointed out that the verse cited by modern Muslims from Deuteronomy to justify the extermination of the Banu Qurayzah yet in fact this is not how the verse has been viewed in traditional Christian or especially Jewish scholarship. According to Jewish doctrine, these verse were revealed to him before the Israelites entered the Holy Land, specifically instructing them on how to deal with the people living there <ref> Citation need</ref>. Morever, the claim that there was no apparent animus towards the Jews of Banu Qurayzah on the part of Muhammad is contradicted by ibn Ishaq's account:  

The narrative of the Banu Qurayza is an accepted part of Islamic law, and multiple Islamic jurists have cited it, including when ruling that certain populations of Jews and other non-believers be massacred. As such there is no question amongst orthodox Muslims that it happened <Ref> "Extended Interview: The legacy of Islamic Antisemetism" Andrew Bostom andrewbostom.org  13 June 2008</Ref>. Yet the historiography of the subject is not without its own problems.  

Within the Islamic tradition, ibn Ishaq was frequently criticized for giving too much weight to Jewish stories and being biased in general in his retellings of certain events. Malik ibn Anas accusses ibn Ishaq of being a "liar" for listening to "Jewish stories" <Ref> "New Light on the Story of Banu Qurayza and the Jews of Medina", W.N Arafat 2001 p. 100-107 </Ref>.

Modern scholarship has cast much more serious doubts on the scholarship of Islamic scholars working in the 8th century (2nd Islamic century) such as ibn Ishaq. As Fred Donner points out, one of the earliest documents we have from the nascent proto-Islamic movement in the ''Constitution of Medina''  صحيفة مدينة also known as the Ummah Document or صحيفة الأمة. This remarkable document, preserved by the Islamic historian [[Al-Tabari]], lays out a compact for the "believers" of Medina, an "ummah" or national community that includes the Jews as "believers" on the same level as the Arab believers. Fred Donner believes this document actually points to an early, occulted history of Islam in which Arab monotheists joined with Jews into one "ummah" under the command of Muhammad. Troublingly for the historical narrative, this document makes mention of many different Jewish tribes, but the main 3 tribes of the sira, the Banu Qurayzah, the Banu Qaynuqaa', and the Banu Nadir are conspicuously absent. It is in fact the absence of these tribes which convinces scholars that the document must be very old despite being preserved only in the 9th-century works of Tabari, since a younger document would presumably would have been changed to agree with the established historical narrative. Donner mentions that many early 7th century mosques do not include the qibla facing towards Mecca, and concludes that this story of the massacre of the Banu Qurayzah may have been invented or embellished in order to explain a much later break between the Jewish and Muslim communities <Ref> Muhammad and the Believers: At the Orgins of Islam, Fred Donner, Harvard University Press 2010, p. 72-73 </Ref>.   

Patricia Cronner and Michael Cook in their groundbreaking work ''Hagarism'' likewise report on an Armenian historian writing in the 7th century known as pseudo-Sabeous. This historian imputes the Arab invasions to a confederation of Jews and Arabs led by Muhammad himself, contradicting the Islamic narrative that Muhammad died before the invasion of Palestine and the Middle East. Pseudo-Sebeos likewise imputes to the Arabs and Jews a shared monotheism and brotherhood through their ancestry to Abraham and his wife Hagar <Ref> Hagarism: Making of the Islamic World, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Cambridge University Press 1977, p. 6-8</Ref>. If this account is to be believed, there could not have been any great massacre of the Jews by Muhammad as we has working with them when he invaded Palestine. Stephen Shoemaker in his work ''The Death of a Prophet'' adds further evidence to thesis of Crone and Cook, marshaling evidence from a wide variety of sources, almost all of which predate the first Islamic sources, that Muhammad himself was actually the leader of the believers when they entered Palestine and he died only after its conquest. In particular he calls attention to a Jewish apocalypses, the Secrets of Rabbi ben Shim'on, which seems to paint Muhammad as the redeemer of the Jews from the oppression of the Romans in the Holy Land. If this is to be believed, and this source predates every Islamic source we have, the massacre of the Banu Qurayza could not have taken place, since Muhammad, the leader of the invasion of Palestine, was seen as a savior of the Jewish people <Ref> The Death of a Prophet, Stephen Shoemaker, University of Pennsylvania Press 2012, p. 27-33 </Ref>. This would seem to indicate that the break between the Muslims and the Jews took place after his death, and would indicate that stories such as the massacre of the Banu Qurayzah were fabricated in order to "back date" the break with the Jews to the prophet's own lifetime.