Answering Objections to Islam · Prophetic Biography

The Banu Qurayza Judgement

In short

1.The tribe chose its own arbitrator; the Prophet accepted their choice.
2.The charge was treason during a siege that nearly destroyed Medina, under the Constitution of Medina.
3.Sa'd's ruling tracks Deuteronomy 20:12-14 — the law Banu Qurayza themselves held.

The claim being examined

Ibn Ishaq's Sira records the execution of the fighting men of Banu Qurayza after the Battle of the Trench. Critics present this as a massacre ordered by the Prophet.

The Islamic position

The verdict was not the Prophet's. Banu Qurayza asked to be judged by Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, their own former ally, and the ruling he issued matches the law of the Torah for a besieged city that breaks its covenant.

Analysis

This was a wartime treason judgement under the terms of a written civic pact, delivered by an arbitrator the accused selected. Jonathan A.C. Brown notes that judging it requires the norms of late-antique Near Eastern warfare, in which the biblical law of the herem is the closest legal parallel. The numbers in the sira reports are also debated: they come from Ibn Ishaq without an isnad meeting hadith criteria, and some historians regard them as inflated. None of this makes the event comfortable by modern standards; it makes it a legal act of its time rather than an act of personal cruelty.

From the Bible

Deuteronomy 20:12-14

Hebrew

If a besieged city makes war against you, you shall put all its males to the sword — the law under which Sa'd ruled.

Read it in their Bible

From the Sunnah

Sahih al-Bukhari 3043 · Sahih

Banu Qurayza accepted the judgement of Sa'd ibn Mu'adh.

Sources

Jonathan A.C. Brown · Ibn Ishaq · W. N. Arafat

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