Safiyah: Difference between revisions

'''Safiyah bint Huyayy''' (صفية بنت حيي‎, c. 610 - c. 670) (also spelled Saffiya, Safiyya, Safiya bint Huyai) was the bride of [[Kinana]] and the chief mistress of the Jewish tribes of [[Banu Qurayza|Quraiza]] and An-Nadir. According to the [[sira]] Muhammad captured and married her after killing her husband. She and her husband were both captured after the victorious conclusion of Muhammad's [[conquest of Khaybar]]. The narrations agree that Muhammad chose her due to her exceeding beauty, as had been his custom in other engagements where the believers took slave women as booty, such as the conquest of the [[Banu Qurayzah]]. There was apparently some concern for his safety on the part of his followers, as he had just that day murdered her husband and her father after taking them as prisoners of war, going so far as to torture her husband Kinana in order to ascertain the location of his treasure. Modern Muslims have found the story emberassing from the modern, liberal point of view, which supports the rights of people to not be slaves and to choose their own sexual and marriage partners. The story of Safiyyah flies in the face of these norms, instead reflecting a world where powerful men like Muhammad take women as prizes in war use them sexually to their own advantage with little regard to the women's emotional well being. Rather than admit this rather plain reading of source texts, many Muslim [[Dawah]] and apologists rather seek to use isolated narratives to recast Safiyyah as a women deeply in love with the man who had just killed her father, brother, and new husband (including torturing her husband in order to find his gold) and profoundly possessed by the conviction that he was a prophet of [[Allah (God)]].