Jews of Medina by W. N. Arafat

Submitted by Insight (United Kingdom), Jul 9, 2010 at 09:54

The article is widely used in Muslim message boards to deflect the Banu Qurayza incident which it seems everyone accepts occurred and it seems that only the scale of the murders/execution, depending on your point of view is in questions. The argument is simple and Arafat sees it as a minor incident and not the wholesale slaughter spoken of by Ibn Ishaq. He argued that the only significant sources are Muslim and although he agrees that Ibn Ishaq's has the most detail he regards him as unreliable and others quoted say he was a liar. In addition to Ibn Ishaq's accounts Arafat cites some others although they all contain supernatural insertions and cannot therefore be accepted as factually accurate.

For example, the Qu'ran is technically hearsay since its content cannot be corroborated by anyone since the revelations were entirely private events; no one else heard or saw the messenger. So the cased is simple, was Ibn Ishaq lying, did he invent the whole thing, were his sources unacceptable etc. If he invented it why did he do it and if so how many other things did he invent and given that I have not seen a single biography of the prophets that does not use Ibn Ishaq's materials so what else is not suspect if Arafat is right and what does it say about Muslim sources in general?

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