TheReligionofPeace.com Presents:
The Myths of Muhammad
The Myth:
Muhammad Raided Meccan
Caravans to Retrieve Stolen Property
The Truth:
After his eviction by the Meccans, Muhammad and his Muslims found refuge many miles away in Medina where they were
not being bothered by their former adversaries. Despite this, Muhammad sent his men on seven unsuccessful raids against Meccan caravans before finally finding one, whereupon they murdered the driver and plundered the contents. This particular caravan was especially vulnerable because the attack came during the holy months, when the merchants were least expecting it.
[A Muslim raider] who had shaved his head, looked down on them [the Meccan caravan], and when they saw him they felt safe and said, "They are pilgrims, you have nothing to fear from them." (Ibn Ishaq 423)
The shaved head caused the Muslims to look like pilgrims rather than raiders, which instilled a false sense of security in the drivers. Islam was a different sort of religion than what the Meccans were used to:
[The Muslim raiders] encouraged each other, and decided to kill as many as they could of them and take what they had. (Ibn Ishaq 424)
This was the first deadly encounter between Meccans and Muslims, and it is of acute embarrassment to contemporary Muslim apologists, who like to say that Islam is against killing for any reason other than self-defense.
For this reason, there has arisen the modern myth that the Muslims of that time were simply “taking back” what was theirs - rather than exacting revenge and stealing. Contemporary apologists like to say that Muhammad and his followers were basically robbed by the Meccans on their way out of town. (The 1976 movie, “The Message,” explicitly perpetuates this misconception as well).
Apologists are somewhat vague as to how property theft justifies killing (particularly on the part of someone they otherwise like to portray as the paragon of forgiveness), nor do they attempt to explain how the particular victims of Muslim raids (usually the caravan drivers and laborers) were directly responsible for this supposed theft. This is the least of their problems, however, since not only is there no evidence to support the misconception that the Muslims were "taking back what was theirs" but it is specifically contradicted by the early historical record.
The event of the first attack on Meccan caravans is detailed quite well by Muhammad's biographer, Ibn Ishaq, but nowhere does he mention the contents of the caravan as being Muslim property. In fact Ishaq explicitly describes the goods as belonging to the Meccans:
A caravan of Quraish carrying dry raisins and leather and other merchandise of Quraish passed by...” (Ibn Ishaq 424)
Note also that the cargo plundered from the caravan specifically included raisins, which would have long since perished had they been from grapes grown and dried by the Muslim before they left Mecca nearly a full year earlier. A fifth of the loot was also given to Muhammad as war booty, which would not have been the case if it rightfully belonged to another Muslim (Ibn Ishaq 425).
Most of the Muslims living in Mecca had few assets to begin with, having been drawn largely from the lower rungs of the social ladder, but those who did would have had several years to liquidate their assets or transport them to a new location. As the instigator of the discord, Muhammad was the
only Muslim literally forced to flee Mecca in the dead of night, but even his business affairs were sewn up on his behalf by Ali, his son-in-law:
Ali stayed in Mecca for three days and nights until he had restored the deposits which the apostle held. (Ibn Ishaq 335)
So, if the Muslims at Medina weren't trying to recover stolen goods, why then were they plundering Meccan caravans? Muhammad provides the real reason for the looting and the killing:
“If you have killed in the sacred month, they have kept you back from the way of Allah with their unbelief in Him, and from the sacred mosque, and have driven you from it when you were its people. This is a more serious matter with Allah then the killing of those of them whom you have slain. ‘And seduction is worse than killing.’ They used to seduce the Muslim in his religion until they made him return to unbelief after believing, and that is worse with Allah than killing.” (Ibn Ishaq 426)
Thus, the justification for killing the Meccans and stealing their goods is purely religious. The only thing stolen from the Muslims was the ability to enter the sacred mosque (ie. complete the Haj ritual at the Kaaba). The innocent caravan drivers were therefore fair game for Muhammad’s deadly raids simply because Muslims felt “kept back from the way of Allah” by the “unbelief” of the Meccan leadership.
This is all the more apparent by the next major episode in which Muhammad sent his men to plunder caravans, which precipitated the Battle of
Badr:
When the Apostle heard about Abu Sufyan coming from Syria, he summoned the Muslims and said, “This is the Quraish caravan containing their property. Go out to attack it, perhaps Allah will give it as a prey.” (Ibn Ishaq 428)
In this case the Meccans were returning to Mecca from a business trip to Syria. Any goods they were carrying would have been purchased from the Syrians.
Over the next nine years, the principle source of income for Muslims was wealth forcibly extracted from others. The targets of misfortune expanded well beyond the Meccans. By the time Muhammad died, his men were finding excuse to raid and steal from many other Arab tribes, Jews and even Christians. Like the mafia, a protection racket gradually evolved where other tribes were allowed to live peacefully provided they paid tribute to Muslim rulers.
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