Archive for the ‘My Articles on Islam’ Category

Muhammad’s Sex Slaves

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Muhammad was the kindest man who ever lived, according to Muslims. He was filled with love and compassion for all living things. In fact, he was the only perfect human being who ever lived, according to Muslims. If you want to lead a perfect life, you just have to look at Muhammad and do what he did.

I’m no Muslim, but I’ve always yearned to be perfect, so I decided to get myself some sex slaves. Muhammad had several, in addition to ten or a dozen wives. This is all legal according to God’s laws, given in the Koran, and God’s laws don’t change. What was legal 1400 years ago is legal today.

There has been a polite tradition in English of referring to these sex workers by the old-fashioned euphemism “concubines,” but we’re not living in the Victorian era, so let’s use plain English. They were slaves and their job was to provide sex. By the way, those dark-eyed virgins waiting for Muslim martyrs in paradise are also sex slaves. If they were only there to serve heavenly tea and cookies they wouldn’t have to be virgins, right?

I’m still wondering about certain practical problems of acquiring my slaves, since Islamic law is not recognized in the United States, but I decided to start researching Islamic sources on the subject, so I’ll know how to handle my women when I do get them. In particular I want to know the kind way to deal with sex slaves. The Koran doesn’t have a lot of detailed slave management advice, but that’s not really a problem. There are thousands of traditional stories about the prophet’s daily life and sayings known as hadith, collected after his death by people who knew him. There are six main collections of hadith considered reliable by Muslims and these books have authority equal to the Koran. I found just what I needed in the collection known as Sahih Bukhari, in volumes I, IV and V.

After the Battle of Khaybar one of Muhammad’s soldiers named Dihya asked the Prophet if he could choose one of the captive women. Muhammad told him to take his pick, but not long afterwards some other soldiers told Muhammad that Dihya had snagged the hottest babe they had ever seen. The Messenger of Allah immediately ordered the couple to be brought to him. After one look at the slave, named Safiyya, Muhammed told Dihya to choose someone else. Safiyyah was not only gorgeous, she was high-class, the daughter of the chief of the tribe that had just been defeated. Bukhari adds that Safiyyah’s father and all the other men of her tribe had been killed. This means that those who didn’t die in battle were murdered as prisoners. Bukhari also notes that Safiyyah’s husband, Kinana, had just been tortured before being killed. You might be wondering at this point, as I was, how Muhammad (a.k.a. The Soul of Kindness & Compassion) would treat this unfortunate woman.

Wasting few words, Bukhari continues, “Muhammad immediately freed her and married her himself—since she agreed to convert to Islam, she was able to be elevated beyond the portion of a slave. That night Safiyyah was dressed as a bride and a wedding feast was hastily arranged. On the way out of Khaybar that night, Muhammad halted his caravan as soon as they were outside the oasis, pitched a tent and consummated the marriage.”

At this point I began to wonder if I have what it takes to own slaves in the authentically kind Islamic manner. The first un-Islamic thought that occurred to me is that Safiyyah might have preferred a longer engagement. Maybe she would have preferred a little time to mourn her father and her husband, a day or two to adjust to the fact that every adult man in her tribe had just been butchered. The dead would have included her brothers, cousins, nephews, every male above the age of say, fifteen. And perhaps Safiyyah could have used a little time to mourn for her mother, her sisters and all the children of the tribe, who were headed to the nearest slave market. I wondered also if the women and children were forced to watch the murder of their menfolk, but due to his extraordinary kindness I’m sure that Muhammad would have allowed them to look in the other direction. But then, screams carry a long way. When I think about that wedding feast, which Bukhari tells us was “hastily arranged,” I figure that Safiyyah probably noticed that all the guests were from the groom’s side.

But Muhammad’s unbelievable kindness really shines out in this story. After all, he freed her, gave her one thousand gold pieces and an escort of soldiers to take her wherever she wanted to go. She moved to Cairo, well outside Muslim control, and observed the one year period of mourning required by Jewish law. Then Muhammad sent her so many beautiful letters describing his great love for her that she returned to Mecca and married him.

Except I guess I made most of that up. In my version, though, she would have been really free, as in free to leave the man who had erased her tribe, free to accept or reject his proposal of marriage, free to decide if she wanted to bow down to him as the anointed of God. In Bukhari’s version though, which is unimpeachable truth for Muslims, Safiyyah had a choice of (A.) remaining Jewish, in which case she would still be a sex slave, with the same status as Mary, another sex slave who was Christian, or choice (B.) she could convert and become a “wife” of Muhammad. Saying that Muhammad had set her free is absurd. She was a woman with nothing but the clothes she was wearing, she had no money, no food, no family, no one to protect her and she was surrounded by ten thousand soldiers who knew that God wanted them to kill Jews like her. If Muhammad had truly freed her, in the sense of cutting her loose and then forgetting about her, she would have starved to death or become the slave of some other soldier.

She was never offered freedom and she knew it, from the moment she and Dihya were ushered into the Prophet’s presence. When Muhammad looked her up and down and told Dihya to go pick himself another slave, Safiyyah knew that her future would be providing sexual services to Muhammad. She knew she was going to spend the rest of her life being raped by a man more than thirty years older than she was and that she would have to pretend to enjoy it. She could submit to him as a slave or as a quote, wife, unquote. I imagine that she chose “wife” in the hope that her higher status would allow her to help some of her people, who now had the status of livestock. Perhaps she thought she could convince Allah’s Messenger to choose her mother for a slave also, allowing them to remain together. However, if the Kindest Man Who Ever Lived showed any compassion to his new wife’s family, none of the books of canonical hadith mention it.

Bukhari does however conclude his tale with the truly romantic story of Muhammad pitching a fast tent on the edge of the oasis to sample the charms of his new bride A.S.A.P. Some people might find this a bit abrupt, but Muhammad had needs. Powerful needs. As he explained himself, in another hadith (Ibn Ishaq, 459) “(The Angel) Gabriel brought a kettle from which I ate and I was given the power of sexual intercourse equal to forty men.” In other words, it is Allah’s fault that The Soul Of Compassion was so horny he couldn’t wait to get Safiyyah into the tent.

From our wimpy 21st century viewpoint it might not be pleasant to contemplate that particular sex act, but I think we should try to imagine Safiyyah’s options when she found herself alone in that tent with the butcher of her people, who for some twisted hypocritical reason wanted to think of himself as her “husband.” Resistance would have meant death. She could have merely submitted. She could have let Allah’s Anointed do what he had come to do and hope it was quick…

But she was a woman of high status. Bukhari says that she was “the chief-mistress of the ladies of the tribes of Qurayzah and An-Nadir.” At that point she was the only high-ranking member of her tribe left and it was therefore her duty to do what she could to help her enslaved relatives. But she was now the newest wife of four, and she would be competing with those other three wives and several sex slaves in trying to gain influence with Muhammad. If she were to have any chance of helping what was left of her people, she would have to do more than submit to Muhammad, she would have to thrill him.

Her duty, and I imagine that she understood it, was to make the old murderer fall in love with her.

***********************************************************

Sources: Robert Spencer: The Truth About Muhammad

Sahih Bukhari, vol. I (book 8, #371)

Sahih Bukhari, vol. IV (book 53, #3169) cf. Ibn Sa’d vol.II, 144

Sahih Bukhari, vol. V (book 64, #4242)

See also the Wikipedia entry for Muhammad’s Wives, Safiyyah

Muhammad also had another sex slave named Rihana (or Rihayna), whose story is very similar to that of Safiyyah.

AND DON’T FORGET, June 21st is coming soon and that’s “International Say Anything About Islam Day.”

Read about it here:

http://edmundpickett.com/blog/2009/05/14/say-anything-about-islam-days/

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Islam, My Articles on Islam | No Comments »

Stephen Schwartz Not In Favor Of Genocide?

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

 

  

 

          I have received an email from Stephen Schwartz objecting to a post on my blog entitled “Cheerleader For Genocide.” Actually I’ve received two objections from him and I will discuss them in order.

          In my original post, I reviewed his book, “Two Faces of Islam.” In that post I criticized the first sixty-five pages of the book, which I consider to be crude and even childish missionary propaganda for Islam, but I praised the remaining two hundred pages for the valuable information presented about the ways in which Saudi Arabia sponsors jihad all over the world. Discussing the first part of the book, I took particular exception to Schwartz’ account of the aftermath of the Battle of the Trench, in 627 A.D., where Mohammed murdered all the men of the tribe of Qurayzah and sold their women and children into slavery. I feel that Schwartz defends what is indefensible here, which was in fact genocide, by any definition. I stand by what I said concerning that issue.

          However, I made a serious error of fact when I stated that Schwartz converted to Islam from Judaism. He was in fact raised without any religion, as he pointed out to me in his first objection. I’m not sure where I got the incorrect information. I have been reading his articles in magazines for several years and somewhere I got the idea he had been Jewish before his conversion. After receiving his email I removed the post from my blog and apologized to him, in these words:

 

 “I’m sorry if I have offended you. I have removed the post.I read somewhere on the internet that you were formerly Jewish. That’s my fault for not checking more closely. Again, my apologies.
 My blog is under construction and I have not given the URL to anyone yet, nor have I linked to anyone. I was unaware that it was searchable at this time, but I realize that stupidity is no defense.”
 
 
           That appeared to satisfy him, as he then wrote:

 

“No problem, I shouldn’t have been so picky, considering that your overall comments were quite favorable.  Thanks again.
S”
  

            Today, however, I received his second objection, which follows:

 

Dear Mr Pickett

 

Your original column cannot be removed from google blogs and I really do consider the headline “Cheerleader for Genocide” to be quite offensive, and even libelous.  I have thought about this and really must insist you publish a complete apology as soon as possible. 

 

I am not a cheerleader for genocide.  I would point out to you that when the gentle Christians expelled Jews as well as Muslims from Spain, the Jews were welcomed into Morocco and the Ottoman domains, settled, and provided with resources to build homes, businesses, synagogues, and religious schools. 

 

For almost five centuries there was only one mosque in Christian Europe — the Ottoman merchants’ mosque in Venice — while there remained many Christian churches in the Muslim world.  These are incontrovertible facts that nobody can challenge. 

 

I have published a book called SARAJEVO ROSE about Muslim-Jewish relations in the Balkans that defends friendship between the two communities, not genocide.  And Albanian Sufis led a successful effort to protect Jewish refugees from the Nazis, so that Albania was the only Axis-controlled state in Europe with more Jews at the end of the second world war than at the beginning.  That is the Islam I accepted and defend, as anybody could see from my books.  Bosnian Muslim and Albanian Muslim righteous gentiles are now recognized at Yad Vashem in Israel; I was there and saw the memorial, while helping lead a delegation of moderate Muslims to the Jewish state.

 

Finally, amateur scholarship on Qur’an and the life of Muhammad is shaky ground at best and I fear your exercise in defamation against me is an excellent proof of that fact.

 

All that said, I already indicated that I appreciated your compliments to me about my expose of the Wahhabis, but referring to me as a “cheerleader for genocide” is simply not acceptable.  I am well known for helping prevent two attempted genocides, in the Balkans.

 

Sincerely

 

Stephen Schwartz

 

 

            My response is that I never said that Stephen Schwartz is in favor of all attempts to commit genocide. I am happy to hear that he has campaigned against genocide in the Balkans and I’m glad to hear that there has been interfaith understanding there in the past. My post makes it clear that my argument with him is that he definitely defends and excuses a successful genocide against the Jewish tribe of Qurayzah committed by Muhammad. This is typical of far too many Muslims who say, for example, that they are against suicide bombing if Muslims are killing Muslims, but that it is okay if they are killing Jews. You are either against terror in all cases or you are for it. The same goes for genocide. Being against it in two out of three cases isn’t good enough. Because of his current religion Stephen Schwartz is not allowed to criticize Muhammad, but non-Muslims have been criticizing the “prophet” for his atrocities at the Battle of The Trench and other places for 1300 years.

        It is amusing to see that he thinks that the title of my post is “libelous.” If we were in Great Britain, it would be. There you can be successfully prosecuted for libel even if you can prove the truth of what you have said. In the United States, however, truth is a perfect defense against libel. Readers can make up their own minds as to whether I have libeled Stephen Schwartz by reading the post in question, which is back on my blog, minus the incorrect information about his religious history: http://edmundpickett.com/blog/2009/05/31/cheerleader-for-genocide/

  

        I hope you noticed his dig at me for being an amateur student of Islam. That’s a good point, but he doesn’t list a single factual error in my revised post. The facts about the Battle of the Trench that I used are taken from canonical Muslim sources. Those who have not sworn allegiance to Allah’s Messenger have the right to form their own opinions of these facts. It should be mentioned that not all Muslims agree with Schwartz’ own scholarship. Here is an opposing view: http://www.icsfp.org/EN/contents.aspx?AID=2592

 

Another source on Stephen Schwartz are the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen-Schwartz-(author)

 

    Both the above sources make for very interesting reading. The Muslim critique is obviously written from the Wahabi point of view and defends Al-Wahab while ingoring Schwartz’ main target, which is the actions of the government of Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t matter what label you use to indicate the official religion of Saudi Arabia. That is all theological hair-splitting. What matters is what the Saudis do, and Stephen Schwartz has information about that which you can find nowhere else.

 

 

        I will conclude by saying that God gave me and all people the right to free speech. That includes freedom of religion and the freedom to have opinions. I will continue to blog on that subject. I’m now preparing a post that I doubt will please Stephen Schwartz, entitled “Muhammad’s Sex Slaves.” It also is based solely on canonical Muslim sources.

        And don’t forget, June 21st is not far away, and that will be the first “International Say Anything About Islam Day.” Read about it here: http://edmundpickett.com/blog/2009/05/14/say-anything-about-islam-days/

  

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Articles & Essays, Islam, My Articles on Islam | No Comments »