the Prophet armed. The ambivalent relationship between the Sword and the Word…
Mohammed began to send raiding parties against Meccan caravans. Booty was his first source of income and allowed him to build up a treasury. His first real battle, at the Badr well, a relay point from caravans for Syria, took place in 624. Mohammed and his men set an ambush there after drying up or poisoning all the other wells. Word reached Mecca that he was at Badr, and a small army was sent to crush him. Mohammed stood fast with his three hundred men and defeated the thousand man Meccan force.
—Amid the heated debate in Israel regarding the possibility of a solo attack on Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s harsh statements against the Jewish state, Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, one of the leading interpreters of Muslim law in Iran, has urged the Islamic Republic not to fan the flames of war with Israel. “We must all do our best to prevent the Zionist attacks on Iran, because if they happen, Iran will be hurt greatly, even though the Zionist regime will be hurt even more,” the ayatollah was quoted as saying by the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Parsi service.
“We should not act, God forbid, as warmongers in our country and provoke a war. The nation is currently in a special condition, and the most important task is to shut the Zionist regime up with our thoughts, pen, and correct efforts and actions,” he said. Read More:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4271036,00.html image John Phillips, Life. 1948.
Mohammed’s troops were more highly motivated, we would say today, and he had carefully chosen the terrain. His victory was also proof that Allah was on his side. “it was not you who fired the arrow, it was Allah who fired the arrow,” the Koran says. Stories of the Prophet’s prowess sprang up, and his fingernail parings and hair were collected.
The yearafter the battle at Badr, the Meccans marched on Medina with three thousand men, and Mohammed’s men rashly left their citadels to confront the enemy at a place called Uhud, about a mile from Medina. This time they were routed, and the Prophet himself received a swordstroke across the face. If Badr was more than a victory, Uhud was more than a defeat, for Allah seemed to have abandoned the Prophet.
—The Arab poor are invisible yet they are everywhere. They are in the streets as beggars and as homeless people, and they are in tent cities and cemeteries. The poor are the obscenity in the age of gulf oil and gas extravagance. The current Saudi King admitted that there are poor in the land of plenty but did nothing about it. The gifts that the Arab royals bestow on Western rulers and royalties would be enough to eradicate Arab poverty. But bowing to the white man is in the genes of Arab royals.
Arab socialist movements used to speak about the poor, but such movements are long gone, and some have reached power (in Syria and Iraq under the Baath) and their socialism turned into a grotesque form of Kleptocracy. The Syrian uprising started as a revolt by the rural poor against the wealthy royal families of the center.
The poor, however, are woefully disorganized and promises of heaven for them – as Nasser famously warned – don’t suffice. Not in the slightest.—Read More:http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angry-corner/arab-poor-always-forgotten image:http://www.dipity.com/tickr/Flickr_collection/
Fortunately, a revelation arrived to explain the defeat as a test for believers. The soldiers were told that they had been beaten because they had fought for worldly gain rather than for Allah. In 627, a force of ten thousand men, a coalition of jews and Meccans, prepared to attack Medina. Mohammed conscripted the entire population to dig a broad ditch around the city. The ditch was finished in a few days. The Meccan army pitched its tents for a siege, but after two weeks the siege was lifted. There had been hardly any fighting. The failure to take Medina confirmed its power as a city state.
Medina was a sound territorial base, but to make it secure, the Prophet had to conqur Mecca. He now had only four years to love, years in which he must guarantee the survival of his faith by laying the foundation for an Islamic state. Rather than a frontal attack on Mecca, Mohammed concluded a treaty with his old enemies the Quraishites, at the same time subduing the tribes around Mecca, so that when he was ready to take the city, it would be encircled.
The treaty, negotiated in 628, made important concessions to the Quraishites and Mohammed obtained what he most wanted: he forced the Meccans to recognize him as a legitimate political and religious leader. They also granted him the right to proselytize among Bedouin tribes and permission to make pilgrimages to Mecca.
The following year Mohammed visited Mecca.The treaty allowed him to stay three days, in which he was able to enlist the secret alliance of several important Meccans. He co
sense they were weary of conflict. Returning to Medina, he waited for a chance to break the truce. It came soon enough, when a Bedouin tribe allied to the Quraishites attacked a tribe under Mohammed’s protection. The Prophet raised an army of ten thousand men and marched on Mecca. The Meccans capitulated with almost no resistance, and on January 11, 630, Mohammed entered his birthplace as a conqueror.
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