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Quadrant Magazine History
November 2003 - Volume XLVII Number 11
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Remembering Khaibar Mark Durie
WHEN AMROZI BIN NURHASIN, the smiling Bali bomber, entered a Bali courtroom
on the day of his sentencing, he was shouting, "Jews, remember Khaibar!
The army of Muhammad is coming back to defeat you!" What was this Khaibar,
and why should it be remembered?
In the time of Muhammad, Khaibar was a fertile oasis in the Arabian desert.
It was populated by Jews, who maintained its irrigation systems and lived off
its produce. When Muhammad conquered the oasis in 628 AD, the Jews who lived
there managed to negotiate a surrender. The conditions of their surrender were
that some of them could remain to tend the date palms and gardens, but in return
they had to give half of their harvest to the Muslims. The land itself would
henceforth belong to the Muslim community. The Jews of Khaibar were also granted
permission to keep practising their faith. Soon after, the Arab Christians of
Najran were forced to accept the same conditions.
The right of the Jews of Khaibar to stay on their former lands was a temporary
concession, withdrawn in 640 by Umar, in obedience to Muhammad's dying wish:
"Two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs."
In this same year the whole of Arabia was cleared of non-Muslims.
Khaibar is a name all Muslim jurists will recognise, since it was the conquest
of Khaibar which set the precedent in Islamic case law for the subsequent treatment
of non-Muslims who surrendered to Islamic conquest and rule. (Khaibar also provided
Muhammad with one of his wives, Safiya, a leading Jewish woman of Khaibar whom
he selected for himself from among the enslaved captives.)
The discriminatory shari'a regulations applying to non-Muslims, who are referred
to in Islamic law as dhimmis, are based upon the precedent of Khaibar. Through
a twist of history the defeat of the Jews of this little-known Arabian oasis
determined the treatment of many millions of non-Muslims after Islamic conquest,
including the once vast Christian populations of the Middle East.
For this reason, the name of Khaibar has great significance for us all. For
extremist Muslims like Amrozi, it stands for the defeat of infidel enemies,
and their humiliation and subjugation under shari'a conditions, an enduring
signpost to the hope of an Islamist victory. For non-Muslims this name stands
for centuries of obliterated history and oppressive discrimination, referred
to by Bat Ye'or, historian of the dhimmis, as dhimmitude. Amrozi the smiling
terrorist was right - we should all remember Khaibar, as a turning point in
world history. Today the precedent of Khaibar continues to shape the lives of
the Jews of Iran, the Copts in Egypt, Africans in the Sudan, Pakistani Christians,
Hindus and Zoroastrians, and many more. Widespread discrimination against non-Muslims
is endemic in Islamic nations, to a significant degree, and there are signs
that the problem is getting worse, not better.
Amrozi's laughing face has been constantly on the front page of Australian
newspapers in recent months. The grief felt over the casualties in the Bali
attacks is profound. So it was ironic that, when the Australian newspaper reported
Amrozi's words on the day after his sentencing, the editors did not recognise
the name of Khaibar and misspelled it as Hibah. Despite its landmark significance
for interfaith relations, the name of Khaibar now seems to be forgotten, its
significance obscured. The fate of the Jews of Khaibar had momentous consequences
for world history, yet this page of history has been torn out of the non-Muslim
world's collective consciousness. It is time for it to be returned to its rightful
place.
Dr Mark Durie wrote on the Amina Lawal case in
the December 2002 issue.
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