Muhammad and The Jews — Page 51
CHAPTER III THE JEWISH SUPPORT TO MEDINAN OPPOSITION Mul;lammad's followers for their part-quite apart from their adherence to the fundamental ideas of Judaism and to the precepts of Noah-showed perfect willingness to conform to a number of Jewish rituals. In theory, there- fore, there was no reason why the two communities should not have lived peaceably together. But the Jewish tribes of Medina had probably not abandoned the idea of exerting a considerable political influence over the oasis as a whole. It was quite obvious to them, probably before very long, that Mul;tammad's behaviour and the importance he was assuming were likely to interfere with this objective. -MAXIME RODINSON The ummah, 1 as visualized by the Apostle and formalized in the Sabifah, which we have discussed in the previous chapter, could smoothly function only by the willing cooperation of its various constituents - the Muhiijiriin the An$iir and the Jews of Medina. The first five years of the Apostle's life in Medina, it seems, were spent in trying to obtain that cooperation. A section of the An$iir, called the munafiqiin 2 , and three Jewish clans of Medina- the B. Qaynuqac. , 1 The ummah in the context of our discussion of the Jews of Medina is confined to the definition given to it by the Sabifah i. e. 'the people of the Sabifah. ' For a fuller discussion of its meanings see Montgomery Watt, 'Ideal Factors in the Origin of Islam', The Islamic Quarterly, No. 3 (October 1955), pp 161-74. and his book Islamic Political Tlwught, Rudi Paret's article in EI(1) and Abu! A cla MaudOdi, Islamic Way of Life, referred to in the previous chapter. 2 Though a precise and rigid definition of the word is not possible, it would perhaps be safer to say that the term describes those inhabitants of Medina, who had outwardly accepted Islam, but were suspects for various reasons. They were unreliable during the time of crises (The Qur•an, Al-Abzab,12-24), avoided parti- cipation financially or physically in the Jihad (The Qur 0 an, Muhammad, 20, 31) and even looked forward to the time when the Apostle would be expelled from Medina (The Qur•an, Al-Munafiqiin, 8). See The Qur•an, Al-Munafiqiin and Ibn Hisham pp. 411-13. 51