[190] The Life of Mahomet, Vol. III, p. 79.
[191] From attacking and persecuting you and preventing you from entering your homes and visiting the sacred mosque.
[192] That is, if again attack you and commit aggressions.
[193] Meaning those who were defeated at Badr.
[194] The Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, p. 319.
[195] The Life of Mahomet, Vol. III, p. 282.
[196] There is only one instance of intolerance, i.e., making converts at the point of sword, which Sir W. Muir, so zealous in accusing Mohammad of religious persecution during the Medina period, has succeeded in finding out during the ten eventful years of Mohammad's sojourn in Medina. I refer to the story of Khalid's mission in the beginning of the tenth year A.H., to Bani Haris, a Christian tribe at Najran, whose people had entered into a covenant of peace with Mohammad, and to whom an ample pledge had been guaranteed to follow their own faith. According to Sir W. Muir, Khalid was instructed to call on the people to embrace Islam, and if they declined, he was, after three days, to attack and force them to submit (Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, p. 224). The version of the story thus given by the Biographers of Mohammad is too absurd to be believed; because it is a well-established fact that the Bani Haris, or the Christians of Najran, had sent a deputation to Mohammad only a year ago, i.e., in A.H. 9, and obtained terms of security from him (Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. II, p. 299; Ibn Hisham, p. 401). It is quite an unfounded, though a very ingenious, excuse of Sir W. Muir to make the Bani Haris consist of two sects,—one of Christians, and the other of idolators,—and to say that the operations of Khalid were directed against the portion of Bani Haris still benighted with paganism; thus reconciling the apocryphal tradition with the fact of the Bani Haris being at a treaty of security, toleration and freedom, with Mohammad.
"I conclude," he writes in a note, "the operations of Khâlid were directed against the portion of Bani Hârith still idolaters:—at all events not against the Christian portion already under treaty" (The Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, foot-note, p. 224). See the account of the conversion of Bani Hárith to Christianity long before Islam in Hishamee, pp. 20-22. Gibbon, Chapter XLII, Vol. V, p. 207, foot-note; and Muir's Vol. I, p. ccxxviii.
[197] A name applied to an idol or idols—especially Allat and Ozza, the ancient idols of the Meccans.
[198] The past tense, third person plural, of the infinitive Fitnah.