MY COMMENTS ON AN ANTI-MUHAMMAD VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5fVgM0gLQ

This video is pretty standard in how it shows hadith and Quran in a certain light and portends to "let the facts speak for themselves". . . I would strongly suggest visiting www.MuhammadFactCheck.org and read through the concise and well-vetted answers to many of the criticisms leveled in this video.

The trouble with her "take" on Islam and the Life of Muhammad (saw) is that it seems totally historically accurate the way she recounts it from hadith and Quran. But like her recounting of the poisoning of Muhammad (saw) event, she makes it seem like he ingested the poisoned meat and then immediately died, when in fact a good long length of time transpired between the two events. 

       And anyone who knows how poisoning works, knows that poison either kills you right away, or your body successfully fights off the poison and you survive the attempt without dying from it -- which is obviously what Muhammad did.

Regarding the story of Muhammad ordering (and in some Internet reports single-handedly performing) the beheading of 700-900 Jews.

#1. There are no Jewish historical records of this ever happening. Strange, for a group that has meticulously documented every injustice and atrocity committed against Jews throughout their history.

#2. The recorder of this event was a well-known anti-Semite (he hated the Jews with a passion), so much of what he says Muhammad said or did pertaining to the Jews needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

#3. The way the lady describes the attack on the Jews makes it look like the Jewish tribe in question was totally impartial and innocent of any malice towards the Muslims. Not true AT ALL.

The Jewish tribe instigated war against the Muslims at every opportunity. All the Jewish tribes in Medina agreed to and signed The Charter of Medina when the Prophet Muhammad was freely elected by the town as their mayor. He was invited to relocate to Medina for this express political purpose.

The conditions of the Charter were that all signatories pledged to defend the town and all the other signatories in the event of an attack by outside forces, like the Meccans. (Read the Charter of Medina here: www.CovenantsoftheProphet.com)

The Jewish tribe in question repeatedly conspired against the Muslims with the Meccans to undermine and destroy Islam and the Muslims. For one egregious breach of the Charter, Muhammad ordered the tribe banished -- not exterminated -- from Medina to another town.

Then, later, when this same tribe helped the Meccans breach the defenses of Medina and nearly cause a rout of the Muslim forces, Muhammad assembled his forces and went to their fort and besieged it for like a week. When the Jews finally agreed to surrender, to negotiate their terms, the Jews picked a Jew who had converted to Islam, thinking he would treat them favorably. He didn't.

The Jewish Muslim convert cited Deut. 20:10-14 which commands that after the war that all men on the losing side be killed and that all others be made captives of war and their property taken as spoils of war. These are not the commandments in the Quran, but in the Jewish Holy Book. The Jews agreed to abide by the ruling of their chosen arbiter.

Now, again, there are other hadith which state that Muhammad gave pardons to most of those Jews about to be slaughtered under the rules of war from their own book. And since the charge against them was, essentially, treason against the state (of Medina), death is the standard punishment for treason even today. Remember the Rosenbergs?

But like I said, for something so gruesome to have actually taken place, you would think the surviving Jews of Arabia would have recounted the event repeatedly in their oral and written histories -- but they didn't. Maybe because it never happened.

#4. About the Jewess poetess that Muhammad supposedly ordered killed for writing insulting poetry about him. . . In the book "Extremist" by Qasim Rashid (from which the website www.MuhammadFactCheck.org is based), this event is covered in detail. The salient facts NOT reported (i.e., intentionally omitted) in the video are as follows:

The man reportedly sent to kill her was a blind man (the first thing that doesn't make sense), who didn't know where she lived, but managed to find her house anyway. Then, he enters the woman's house while she's wide awake, with a baby in her lap, and her grown children asleep around her.

But the woman never yells to wake up her kids, doesn't get up and run away from the blind man with the knife (and I would assume easily escape) nor does she wake up her sleeping family members to come to her defense -- again something pretty easy against a blind guy.

So none of these escape maneuvers enter the woman's mind, and the blind guy is able to find his way across the room without waking up anyone sleeping by stumbling over them, and then he manages to stab her to death while not harming the baby in her lap and without waking up her family members or her fighting back. (If you believe THAT story, I've got a bridge I wanna sell yah. . .)

#5. The age of Aisha at marriage & consummation. There's only one source hadith for this story, and it comes from a guy -- Hisham ibn 'Urwah -- who narrated a decent number of uncontested hadith throughout most of his life, but the one in question about the age of Aisha was done AFTER he migrated from Medina to Baghdad at the age of 71.

Virtually all scholars of hadith consider his hadith narrations from when he lived in Baghdad unreliable because he was losing his memory. Now, in Arabic, to say six is "sittah" and to say 9 is "tissah." To say 16 or 19 you add the word for 10 in Arabic: "asharah."

What scholars believe happened is that the narrator forgot the word "ashara" to make it 16 and 19 respectively. Scholars think this mistake occurred (or maybe it was deliberate because pedophiles preferred the age of Aisha being 6 and 9 instead of 16 and 19) because of the failing memory problem. Plus the narrator only cites his father as the first reporter of the ages of Aisha being 6 and 9.

The reason it most certainly was not 6 and 9 is supported by the fact that almost all hadith record that Aisha was born BEFORE 610 AD -- the advent of Islam -- in what's called "jahiliyyah" the Time of Ignorance.

Aisha is recorded as being born about 4 years before the start of Islam. Now, the Muslims were in Mecca for 13 years before they migrated to Medina. Muhammad was Nikah'd (married) with Aisha about a year before he migrated, making a total of 16 years as the age of Aisha.

She was officially taken by Muhammad as his wife about 2 years after migrating to Medina, making her age 19 at the time of consummation. Aisha is also cited as being on the battlefield during the battle of Badr, and Muhammad would certainly not have allowed an 8-year-old girl to be in the midst of deadly fighting. Muhammad, in fact, forbade anyone under 15 from being in the battle.

Now, taking into account the bad memory and "10" dropping probability in the hadith, you can see how the ages line up exactly historically as either 6 and 9 (going by hadith) or 16 and 19 going by actual, dateable, historical events.

The nail in the coffin of the "Aisha age" hadith controversy is the following point: Aisha's older sister, Asma, was 10 years older than Aisha, and it is well recorded that Asma was 27 at the time of the migration to Medina. So Aisha would have been 17 at the time of the actual migration. One year less for her Nikah makes her 16 which lines up historically; three years later, in Medina, when Aisha became Muhammad's actual wife makes her 19. End of story.

The other point to remember is that the age of puberty is and has traditionally always been the age of "adulthood" in Judaism and in all pre-modern cultures. Puberty means menstruation in women. Able to have kids = legal to get married. That usually happens between the ages of 12-14 in girls. And in Islam, you cannot make a marriage contract -- or any contract -- with a minor. They must have reached what is called the "age of reason."

(As an aside with regard to Christian American history, the "Age of Consent" in America -- the age at which a girl could get married and/or have consensual sex with a grown man was 7 in the very early 1800s, 10 by the mid-1850s, 12 by the last quarter of the 1800s, and 14 by the 1900s. That's why the '50s rocker Jerry Lee Lewis could legally marry his 13-year-old cousin in Arkansas. It caused a scandal, but it wasn't illegal under Christian-passed marriage laws.)

People will believe anything they want if it aligns with their prejudices and beliefs. But those who have actually read the Quran and the vast majority of hadith (the Quran supersedes all hadith, by the way, not the other way around) know that the themes of: justice towards all (especially one’s enemies), love of God and His Creation, forbidding Muslims from being the aggressors in a fight or war, seeking peace to end fighting even when it is dishonorable to Muslims, no killing of religious clergy or any non-combatants in a war / battle, respect for one's parents, relatives, the elderly, the orphans and the oppressed -- all of these very clear commandments in Quran and hadith overwhelmingly demonstrate what is taught and focused on in Islam.

As Muhammad (saw) once stated: If anything he is said to have said or done goes against the Quran or his sunnah (behavior established by repeated example), don't follow or believe it to be true. The hadith are records of events and teachings sent and evolved over 23-years.

Many reports, like stoning to death for adultery, reflect punishments given before the Quranic ruling came down or punishments delivered to Jews by request from their Holy Book, the Torah. The Quran states only lashes for adultery not stoning to death, and no other punishment can supersede or countermand it.

Just because ignorant and often evil-minded Muslims do not obey God's Divine Commandments is not a poor reflection on Islam or Muhammad, but on those ignorant or disobedient Muslims who either do not know or choose not to follow the teachings of the Quran.

If anyone with an open mind and heart wants to know the truth about what Islam really teaches and requires from its followers, go to Alislam.org and get yourself educated. If one is literate, ignorance is a largely self-curable affliction.