The Generalship of Muhammad: Battles and Campaigns of the Prophet of Allah

8. The Generalship of Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah

231 The Generalship of Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah It had been twenty-three years from the time Muhammad took on the task to be the Prophet of Allah to the pinnacle of his triumph and death. He had gone from keeping his followers a closely guarded secret to being the de facto king of most of Arabia, although there were still some pockets of resistance to his movement that his first successor, Abu Bakr, would need to suppress during the Riddah, or Apostates War. When evaluating the Prophet’s generalship during the two decades that he conducted operations, one is confronted by the possible danger of misinterpretation regarding what Muhammad knew as a man versus what he recited from Allah. Early Islamic tradition is clear that the Prophet, while being without error regarding his recitations, was still human like anyone else, and as noted previously it was necessary for him to learn and grow in human knowledge.1 Therefore, like any other person, Muhammad gained knowledge and experience over time, and his operations reflect such growth. Moreover, like any other general, Muhammad had both strengths and weaknesses. As the prophet of Allah, Muhammad operated in three specific planes of military endeavor, symmetric insurgency, asymmetric insurgency , and asymmetric conventional warfare. These three aspects in large measure established the norm of how many Muslim warriors would wage war in the future, and as a consequence his operations  8 8 232 · The Generalship of Muhammad can be divided into three distinct stages.2 The first stage, where he emphasized tolerance and freedom of religion, was while he was still in Makkah and his following was very small. This phase was in large measure a symmetric insurgency, for he was using the same concepts and techniques within the worldview of the Quraysh. The Quraysh, who had started out under Qusay 150 years prior as a movement that focused on their way as the final truth, had devolved to the point that all religious ideas were to be accepted within a swirl of pluralistic tolerance . The only aspect that they had trouble with was if another claimed that their religious worldview was the only way or truth. Therefore, when Muhammad began to preach against the religious diversity of Makkah, the Quraysh began to turn on him. When several prominent Qurayshi men, such as Hamzah bin ῾Abd al-Muttalib and ῾Umar bin al-Khattab, came to Islam, Muhammad began to alter his techniques. He not only had personal protection from his uncle Abu Talib but now had two powerful men who could act as bodyguards for other members of the infantile ummah. These two allowed the Prophet to begin the transformation to stage two, which emphasized personal and collective self-defense against ridicule and persecution. By this point he also began to move toward asymmetric insurgency, for now his tactics focused on an exponential response to insults, where Hamzah and others used physical force and even threatened death to those who opposed Islam.3 The migration to Madinah accentuated this asymmetry when Muhammad began employing propaganda , assassinations, and kidnappings, the latter two in particular being fairly unique to the region. Once in Madinah, Muhammad utilized raids that went beyond the norm of what was expected in Arabia, and when men were killed during these operations, he refused to pay the bloodwit. In doing this, he openly incited other tribes to engage in blood feuds against the Muslims , but these failed to organize in large measure because those leaders who attempted to do so, such as Ka῾b bin al-Ashraf, were assassinated by men who had hidden their Islam to their families and the general public. These men moved about their former tribes and clans at will, not only collecting intelligence but engaging in more active operations when called upon.4 This had a chilling effect on any who thought of organizing some type of resistance, allowing the Prophet to take on each tribe individually rather than as a collective whole. Had the tribes of the Hijaz managed to organize with the Quraysh, Muhammad’s movement The Generalship of Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah · 233 would have been crushed. In conjunction with his raids, the Prophet organized alliances, embargoes, and even waged war on the Quraysh during a time of peace by secretly supporting a proxy in Abu Basir. It took only a half year for Muhammad to move from stage two to...