Recently I offered 38 questions to ask those carrying signs proclaiming, “I’m A Muslim — Ask Me Anything.” Here are answers to questions seven through ten.
7. Muslims often claim that Muhammad only attacked in self-defense. Among the clear exceptions to that claim was his attack on the inoffensive farmers of the Khaybar Oasis. They had not attacked Muhammad, did not even realize that they were supposedly at war with him. Having recently agreed to the Treaty of Hudaibiyya with the Meccans, which caused some grumbling among his followers (who could not foresee that he would soon find a way to breach that agreement) Muhammad wanted to placate his followers, and an attack on the wealthy farmers of Khaybar would provide the booty that he could then divide among them. Essentially, Muhammad attacked the Khaybar Oasis because its inhabitants were an easy target, completely unprepared for attack – they are described in the hadith as getting ready in the morning to go out into their fields when Muhammad’s warriors suddenly appeared — and above all, rich enough to be worth attacking.
8. According to the Qur’an, Muslim men are allowed to have up to four wives at one time (Qur’an 4:3). But Muhammad had between eleven and thirteen wives, with between nine and eleven at the same time. If Muslim Interlocutor (M.I.) denies this, quote the hadith of Bukhari:
Sahih al-Bukhari 268—“Anas bin Malik said, ‘The Prophet used to visit all his wives in a round, during the day and night and they were eleven in number.’ I asked Anas, ‘Had the Prophet the strength for it?’ Anas replied, ‘We used to say that the Prophet was given the strength of thirty (men).’ And Sa’id said on the authority of Qatada that Anas had told him about nine wives only (not eleven).”
The rules that were set down for everyone else did not, in this case, apply to Muhammad. Islamic tradition justified this by noting Muhammad’s extraordinary virility (“given the strength of thirty men”) Now Islamic apologists claim that the reason for so many wives was to cement political alliances with the various Arab tribes to which the wives belonged.
In any case, whatever the justification given, it is surely worth bringing up the issue; onlookers will not be impressed with the M.I.’s explanation(s), but will likely see this an example of Muhammad’s hypocrisy, making one rule for himself and a different one for everyone else, and that is exactly the point you wish to make.
9. Yes. Muhammad bought, sold, and captured slaves.
He bought slaves: “Jabir (Allah be pleased with him) reported: There came a slave and pledged allegiance to Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) on migration; he (the Holy Prophet) did not know that he was a slave. Then there came his master and demanded him back, whereupon Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) said: Sell him to me. And he bought him for two black slaves, and he did not afterwards take allegiance from anyone until he had asked him whether he was a slave (or a free man).” (Muslim 3901).
He owned slaves: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle was on a journey and he had a black slave called Anjasha, and he was driving the camels (very fast, and there were women riding on those camels). Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Waihaka (May Allah be merciful to you), O Anjasha! Drive slowly (the camels) with the glass vessels (women)!’” (Bukhari 8.73.182).
He captured slaves, including women to be used as sex slaves. in Qur’an 33:50, Allah tells Muhammad “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.” At Khaybar, the beautiful 17-year-old Safiya was first taken as booty by one of Muhammad’s followers, but ultimately the Prophet claimed her. The fact that he then freed her (as the M.I. may mention) and made her one of his wives does not obviate the fact that he first possessed Safiya as a slave (having just had her husband Kinana tortured and executed, and killed her father and other male relatives as well, as you should make a point of noting). If the M.I. replies that Muhammad freed many slaves, you should be quick to agree – he freed 63 in all, and his wife Aisha freed 67 – but remind onlookers that over his lifetime he kept many more. Even if Muhammad urged his followers to be more humane in the treatment of slaves, and even, at times, to free one or more, this is not the same thing as opposing the institution of slavery. Muhammad continued to own slaves, including female sex slaves, throughout his life. The bizarre remark by Reza Aslan, CNN’s new resident expert on religions, that “if you know anything about Islamic history, the very first thing that Muhammad did was outlaw slavery,” is flatly contradicted by the biographical details of Muhammad’s life, as set out in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira.
10. The M.I. will insist that Muhammad instructed his followers to treat slaves well, and set out rules for their decent treatment, and this claim is correct. You can respond by even adding that he manumitted 63 of his own slaves over his lifetime, and often urged his followers to do so as well, as a way of expiating their sins. But you will insist that this does not amount to disapproving of slavery as such, and that Muhammad never denounced the institution of slavery in itself, nor did he call for its abolition. He legitimized, rather, because he was a slave-owner himself, and the Model of Conduct, the practice of slavery by Muslims over the past 1400 years until in the 20th century, outside pressures from non-Muslim powers stopped it wherever possible. This had consequences for many tens of millions of people enslaved by Arab Muslims, especially those from sub-Saharan Africa.. The slave trade in Africa that began the earliest, and lasted the longest, and claimed the largest number of victims, was that of the Muslim Arabs, who took a special interest in castrating young black boys in the bush, and bringing those that survived the operation – 10-20% — to serve as eunuchs in the harems of the Muslim world.
Possibly here is the place to state what the M.I. cannot deny, that slavery ended in the Muslim lands only under Western pressure, and as late as 1962 in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and that Arabs still enslave black Africans in Mauritania today; that should provide a salutary shock for onlookers. Slavery has also been justified recently by Islamic scholars in Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, as well as Mauritania. Those onlookers can be further reminded that the Arabs from the northern Sudan enslaved hundreds of thousands of Christian and pagan blacks in the southern Sudan during the Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005). Lest the M.I. insist that no Islamic authority nowadays defends slavery, you can respond with, for example, this from a 2006 interview with an Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, of the Iranian Assembly of Experts (80 respected theologians), who stated,
Today, too, if there’s a war between us and the infidels, we’ll take slaves. The ruling on slavery hasn’t expired and is eternal. We’ll take slaves and we’ll bring them to the world of Islam and have them stay with Muslims. We’ll guide them, make them Muslims and then return them to their countries.
That should be the last word in this Q-and-A exchange on slavery in Islam.

I says
Excellent piece, thanks for it. Just finished Nabeel Qureshi’s first book, well into his second. Well done on clarifying some of the (pathetic, absurd) minutiae on islam.
MorrisBCanada says
Thanks for this article, Hugh Fitzgerald, great read.
To “I” I’ll put Nabeel Qureshi on my “books to read” list. You might want to check out:
“Atheist Muslim” by Ali Rizvi published 2016
“Sea of Faith” by Stephen O’Shea published 2006
both quite edifying
Cheers
Saleem Smith says
Great series of articles by Hugh Fitzgerald.
We ex-Muslims know that Islamic doctrine is overflowing with evil instructions that Muslims are expected to act upon. Islamic Sharia law is essentially derived exclusively from the Qur’an and Muhammad’s Sunnah. The following are some of the most important, and, particularly for Western non-Muslims, deeply problematic, tenets of Sharia. Here are 7 more evils found in Islamic doctrine and law.
1) Democracy & Islam: Any system of man-made law is considered illicit under Islamic law, for whose adherents Allah already has provided the only law permitted, Sharia.
2) Apostasy (‘Irtidad’ or ‘Ridda’ in Arabic): The established ruling of sharia is that apostates are to be killed wherever they may be found.
3) Gender Inequality: Sharia explicitly relegates women to a status inferior to men.
* Muslim men are given permission by Allah in the Koran to beat their wives. (Qur’an 4:34)
* Testimony of a woman before a judge is worth half that of a man.(Qur’an 2:282)
* Muslim men are permitted to marry up to four wives and to keep concubines in any number. (Qur’an 4:3)
* Women are to receive just one half the inheritance of a male. (Qur’an 4:11)
* Muslim women may marry only one Muslim man and are forbidden from marrying a non-Muslim.
* Muslim men are given permission by Allah to commit marital rape, as they please.
* A woman may not travel outside the home without the permission of her male guardian and must be accompanied by a male family member if she does so.
* Under sharia, to bring a claim of rape, a Muslim woman must present four male Muslim witnesses in good standing. Islam thus places the burden of avoiding illicit sexual encounters entirely on the woman. In effect, under sharia, women who bring a claim of rape without being able to produce the requisite four male Muslim witnesses are admitting to having had illicit sex. If she or the man is married, this amounts to an admission of adultery.
* Rape is a felony under U.S. law, but under Sharia Law it is not. It is akin to damaging something (the woman’s virginity), so the penalty is the usual cost of what was damaged – typically, $400 and up. There would be no jail time for rape, unless the man didn’t pay for the damages.
* A Muslim woman who divorces and remarries loses custody of children from a prior marriage.
4) ‘Honor’ Killing (a.k.a. Muslim family executions): A Muslim parent faces no legal penalty under Islamic law for killing his child or grandchild.
5) Hudud Punishments: The plural of hadd, is “a fixed penalty prescribed as a right of Allah. Because hudud penalties belong to Allah, Islamic law does not permit them to be waived or commuted.”
* “Sharia stipulates these punishments and methods of execution such as amputation, crucifixion, flogging, and stoning, for offenses such as adultery, homosexuality, killing without right, theft, and ‘spreading mischief in the land’ because these punishments were mandated by the Qur’an or Sunnah.” (Islamic Hudood Laws in Pakistan, Edn 1996, 5.)
6) Islamic Supremacism: belief that Islam is superior to every other culture, faith, government, and society and that it is ordained by Allah to conquer and dominate them.
7). Jew Hatred: Anti-Semitism is intrinsic to sharia and is based on the genocidal behavior of Mohammed himself in wiping out the entire Jewish population of the Arabian Peninsula.
“Muhammad was once a refugee taken in by the Jewish City of Medina. Within 5-years, he had driven out, executed, or enslaved every Jew there.”
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Main_Page
Musalmaanmasala says
Hear! Hear!! Hear!!!
Mick says
In the end I couldn’t care what Muhammad did, it was thousands of years ago, there have been many equally sick people through history of many religions, what is sickening is that where as most religions (I dispose religion in its entirety!) have fallen back and are now over ruled by secular governments which it is how it should be, Islam hasn’t it holds the same sick practices as it did thousands of years ago. They still have slaves in the UAE I know I’ve been their working and was shocked at how the arabs treat everyone. I was tolerated at best and I was there to sort their botched jobs on sites. All over the Middle East they treat most like utter dirt this is also shown over western areas where large areas have been taken over, Bradford, Birmingham, even places like Huddersfield you could cut the atmosphere with a knife, the non Muslim people who live there have gotten used to it but there is so much sniping and anger on both sides. Who ever coined the word multiculturalism needs shooting as the phrase does not exist!!
dumbledoresarmy says
Not ‘thousands”.
Islam, as a system, as a cult, as an empire and/ or crime syndicate, is around 1400 years old. No more. In the 5th century AD, Islam did not exist; there was no Quran, no Hadiths, no Muhammad.
Jimdandi says
Religion is something men have made and is often used of Satan to lull people to sleep spiritually while they are on their way to hell. That is indeed sick. On the other hand, biblical Christianity is about God, our Creator, revealing himself to us, explaining that we are sinful and need a Savior from our sin. Jesus Christ, God’s Son provided that salvation via His death and resurrection. We are all accountable to Him. Read John 1:12-13 in the Bible. Religion and biblical Christianity are totally different. The word “religion” is used only about five times in the Bible and usually in a negative way.
Carmel says
And what about Muhammad calling blacks ” raisin heads” .
frederick King says
I would ask him to go live in an islamic country. We don’t need any more supremacists here.
Chris Slater says
I’d like to stand next to him with a sandwich board saying “I am anti-Islamic. Ask me anything!”
ECAW says
Great idea!
Or “He’s lying. Ask me why”.
Angemon says
XD
mortimer says
The sun sets in a muddy spring in the flat earth K.18.86. To clarify that this is NOT an optical illusion, Mohammed confirmed it. Sunan Abu Dawud 4002: “It was narrated that Abu Dharr said: “I was riding behind the Messenger of Allah while he was on a donkey, and the sun was setting. He said: ‘Do you know where this (sun) sets?’ I said: ‘Allah and His Messenger know best.’ He said: ‘It sets in a spring of warm water.’”
The Koran cosmology is clearly false. Therefore the Koran is a 7th century forgery and Muslims may abandon Islam with confidence.
Florida Jim says
Please do not tell Charles Ogletree or Dyson, both race-baiters about the Mohamed’s slaves they blame and try to milk America and no where else about the slaves which came from Africa and went to Mexico, West Indies and then to the South and were freed by American and English Christians conveniently forgotten in the history books read by these two race-baiters and the black Caucus.
citycat says
I am a benedictine catholic protestant jewish hindu atheist, ask me anything.
If i had a motorbike then i’d be also a sikh in order to ride without a helmet.
Now, the problem is this-
If alongside that Muslim there were other religions saying the same,
“ask me anything”,
then would the Muslim remain “peaceful”?
common sense says
Abe Lincoln wrestled, Jesus wad a pacifist, Buddha renounced his princely life and riches to pursue spiritual philosophy why did Mohammed kill? What gave him the right when no prophet before him practiced such barbarism?
common sense says
Common sense” (me) usually posts views of the common man or woman and hopefully adds some fire to the solutions we seek to the problematic bigotry of Islamic Supremacism and Jihad attacks.
I admittedly have little profound knowlege of Islam that many of the posts here display and Robert often educates us on.
If I could ask JW readers to make sure when reading comments that I’m the original “common sense” posting. “Commonsense”is a new post I’ve not seen and all of our views are variable and in light of real world problems its not a big deal I’d just rather not be confused for someone elses words. I can make myself look bad all on my own thank you.
John A. Marre says
Why do Muslims kill Jews, Christians, and Muslims that they don’t think are radical enough?
mortimer says
Why did Mohammed command Muslims to have such a strange beard and moustache to make them look different? Did Mohammed want Muslims to have a secret recognition sign so Muslims would be able to kill kafirs and spare Muslims?
gravenimage says
More great stuff, Hugh–thank you.
firefox says
This particular Muslim REALLY BOTHERS ME!! He is an Amadeyan (sp?) Muslim, a peaceful Muslim sect. He’s been on YouTube and he does his schtick without making thae differentiation between his beliefs and the mullahs of Iran Saudi etc., who would likely treat him as an apostate. Further he just promotes his Muslims are nice meme and does not vocalize anything against any terrorism that happens. Its taqqyia!!
gravenimage says
I’m afraid this is very common with Ahmadis–although orthodox Muslims murder them, they are happy to whitewash Islam for the “filthy Infidels”.