A Monthly Newsmagazine from Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT)
To Gain access to thousands of articles, khutbas, conferences, books (including tafsirs) & to participate in life enhancing events

News & Analysis

Bani Qaynuqa‘, Bani al-Nadir, and Bani Qurayzah back in Madinah!

Tahir Mustafa

Saudi Prince Turki ibn Faisal, former head of Saudi intelligence, and retired Major General Yaakov Amidror, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, share a platform at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 5-5-2016. According to a story in the Times of Israel, the Saudis are running a media campaign seeking to combat anti-Semitism in the Kingdom, apparently in an effort to prepare public opinion for deepened relations with Israel. Key sentences in recent articles by Saudi columnists and reporters in state-run media outlets demonstrate a shift in attitude toward Israel and Jews in general. Cases in point: Saham al-Kahtani, a famous Saudi columnist, recently wrote that describing Jews as the “sons of apes and pigs,” and other derogatory descriptions of Jews from the Qur’an, relates to the period in which Islam’s holiest book was written, and should not be seen to refer to all Jews today; and similarly, Ahmed Adnan, writing for al-Arabiya website, argued that the Saudis should speak to Israel in line with their own national interests, and without mediators.

The Zionists are not shy about declaring that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been visiting ‘Saudi’ Arabia even though the two regimes have no formal diplomatic relations. We need to bear in mind that Zionist maps show Makkah and Madinah as part of ‘Greater Israel’.

Early last month, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) revealed that some 234,600 Israelis, whose ultimate destinations were Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, had passed through the overland crossings to Jordan between January and July of 2016. Why the Israeli Statistics Bureau revealed this information at this particular time is not clear but it represents a 9.3% increase over the same period last year.

The figures further show that 99,200 Israelis traveled to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula through the Taba border crossing in the same period. This marks a dramatic increase of 44.9% over the seven-month period of a year earlier. It is interesting to note that while the Sinai Peninsula has faced numerous terrorist attacks, nearly 100,000 Israelis still visited the desert in seven months. What exactly they were doing there is not completely clear.

What is clear is that the Egyptian military regime has completely sealed the Rafah border crossing for Palestinians seeking medical attention and obtaining food supplies or for students wishing to go abroad for studies. There are no restrictions on Zionists. The Egyptian military regime has also blown up all the tunnels that the Palestinians had dug to smuggle essential goods including desperately needed medicines and food in order to circumvent Israel’s siege of the tiny Gaza Strip. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian dictator is a well-known Zionist; his grandmother was a Jewish woman from Morocco. One of his maternal uncles was a member of the Israeli Knesset and allied with David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel. So el-Sisi’s sympathies with his half-brothers in Occupied Palestine can be explained.

What is the explanation for Israeli Zionists heading to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf States? They do not have diplomatic relations although the Israelis have opened an office in Abu Dhabi at the International Renewable Energy Agency, manned by an official from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, according to a report in the Haaretz newspaper of last January. Further links have emerged through the installation of the mass surveillance system, Falcon Eye, developed by a company owned by Mati Kochavi, a former Israeli intelligence agent. The system is worth $816 million, according to a report in the Middle East Eye (July 15, 2016).

There are other deals struck between Abu Dhabi and Israel even while the two do not have formal diplomatic ties. Not surprisingly, the Emiratis are somewhat circumspect while the Zionists want to highlight this in order to burnish their image. There is one deal worth $1.5 billion through which Emirates Future supplies cow meat to Israel. Prince Mansour bin Zayd al-Nahyan owns 40% of the shares in Emirates Future. The prince is deputy prime minister and brother of the crown prince Shaykh Mohammed bin Zayd al-Nahyan who is considered to be the de facto ruler of Abu Dhabi.

The meat business, however, is not a one-way supply chain. If the Zionists like cow meat even if Abu Dhabi imports it from cow-worshipping Hindus of India, the Emiratis like meat of a different kind! The Israelis (and indeed the Europeans, especially the French and Scandinavians) supply “white meat” in large quantities to the UAE that all Arabians are so fond of. In the past, only Dubai had such “facilities”; Abu Dhabi did not want to be left behind.

Equally revealing is the large number of Israelis now visiting Saudi Arabia. Again, they do not have formal diplomatic relations although in recent years, the Najdi Bedouins have come out of purdah and are now on public kissing terms with their Zionist cousins. Where are the Zionists heading? At the official level, the Najdi Bedouins have been meeting Israeli officials in open forums.

Former saudi general, Dr. Anwar Eshki (center, in striped tie), and other members of his delegation, meet with Israeli Knesset members and others at the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv on 7-22-2016. To tamp down reaction at home, Eshki said that “the trip had not been coordinated with the royal household,” but to prepare to bring the long-existing relationship out into the open, Eshki had already met with Israeli Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold several times, no doubt taking pointers from media-savvy Jews who know how to manufacture public opinion. This should come as no surprise because two of Washington’s key historic allies are Saudi Arabia and Israel, the former putting something on the order of trillions of dollars into US/Western financial institutions and the latter managing the deposits in the banks that it owns and runs. According to a Washington source, the Saudis have given Israel at least $16 billion over the past 2.5 years, funneling the money through another Arabian country and into an Israeli “development” account in Europe to help finance infrastructure inside Israel. The source first called the account “a Netanyahu slush fund,” but later refined that characterization, saying the money was used for public projects such as building settlements (Jewish colonies) in the West Bank!

In late July, General Anwar Eshki, a retired Saudi general and head of a think-tank, the Saudi Institute for Strategic Studies, led a delegation of Saudi businessmen and academics and met with Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold; the Coordinator of Government Activities in the occupied Palestinian Territories, Major-General Yoav Mordechai; and several Knesset members from the opposition. Several Israeli newspapers including Haaretz, Times of Israel, and others reported on the visit. Eshki had met Gold in Washington in June 2015 at a conference organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. Their handshake was widely reported and publicized. The Eshki-Dore public handshake in Washington was preceded by Prince Turki al-Faisal appearing on a platform with General (reservist) Amos Yadlin in Brussels on May 26, 2014. Yadlin, a former commander of the Israeli military intelligence directorate invited Turki to visit Jerusalem and address the Knesset a la Anwar Sadat.

While Turki declined the invitation at this stage, he left the door open for a future visit. In the meantime, his meetings with Israeli officials have continued, the latest being a May 5, 2016 appearance with Major General (retired) Yaakov Amidror. Turki al-Faisal is the former chief of Saudi intelligence and has been, after his upstart cousin Bandar bin Sultan, the most prominent face of Saudi contact with the Zionists.

It is, however, the traffic in the other direction — Israelis flocking to Saudi Arabia — that is of major concern. What are the Israelis doing in the Kingdom; surely they are not there on site-seeing visits? There is a lot more to the Israelis’ visit than meets the eye. The Israeli regime’s publication of statistics about the numbers also gives a clue. It needs bearing in mind that maps of “Greater Israel” have shown Makkah and Madinah also as part of the Zionist entity. If they can tunnel their way 2,500 years into history to claim Palestine because there was a Kingdom of Judea and Samaria (led by the father and son Prophets Dawud and Sulayman – pbut) why would it be difficult for the Zionists to lay claim to lands that date back 1,400 years?

Muslims knowledgeable about the Prophet’s Sirah would know that upon arrival in Madinah, the noble Messenger (pbuh) gave the people the Covenant of Madinah. This bound the various constituencies into a legal agreement in which the Jewish power factions were given a status on par with the Muslims because they were also residents of Madinah. The Covenant of Madinah clearly stipulated that no signatory to this treaty would betray another member or align themselves with the enemies such as the mushriks of Makkah.

There were three Jewish factions in Madinah — Bani Qaynuqa‘, the Bani al-Nadir and Bani Qurayzah — and their allies. Each of the tribes was bound into the treaty agreement separately. Yet the chief of the Bani Qaynuqa‘, Ka‘ab ibn Ashraf, not only violated the terms of the treaty by going over to the Makkan mushriks but he also tried to instigate them against the Prophet (pbuh) and the Muslims. Further, a jeweler from the Bani Qaynuqa‘ humiliated a Muslim woman by stripping her dress leaving her naked in the street. This led to a skirmish resulting in a Muslim killing the Jewish jeweler. A Jewish mob then attacked and murdered the Muslim. This fight resulted in the expulsion of the Bani Qaynuqa‘ from Madinah because of their violation of the treaty terms and their refusal to make amends.

Bani al-Nadir likewise attempted to kill the Prophet (pbuh). This was nothing unusual for these enemies of Allah (swt) for they had done much the same to earlier prophets, most notably Zakariya and his son Yahya (pbut). They too were expelled from Madinah. What is noteworthy is that the Prophet (pbuh) did not punish the other Jewish factions for the treachery of their coreligionists. In-stead, he gave them an opportunity to renew their Covenant agreement. Both Bani al-Nadir and Bani Qurayzah did so, later violating the treaty at the first opportunity.

True to their treacherous nature and despite the example of the other two power factions, Bani Qurayzah also betrayed the Muslims at a most critical juncture when 10,000 heavily armed mushrik and Bedouin tribes besieged Madinah in the fifth year of the Hijrah. Despite being in a treaty relationship with the Muslims and obliged to remain neutral, they sided with the invading hordes. This was treason of the highest order made all the more serious by the fact that the noble Messenger (pbuh) had renewed the treaty after the other two Jewish tribes had violated their agreement and were expelled from Madinah.

Under influence of Jewish writers, lurid tales of their “mistreatment” at the hands of Muslims have found their way into Sirah books that do not stand closer scrutiny. Without going into too much detail, not all male members of Bani Qurayzah were executed as has erroneously been claimed and regrettably uncritically accepted by many Muslims. Suffice it to say that a handful of the Bani Qurayzah plotters were executed for treason and the others were expelled from Madinah.

So how have their offspring made a comeback in Makkah and Madinah today? The Najdi Bedouins (aka Bani Saud) who can rightly be called the heirs of Ibn Sallul, have made their entry in large numbers into the Arabian Peninsula possible. Who was Ibn Sallul? His full name was Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Sallul. He was the chief of the Khazraj tribe, one of the two Arabian tribes in Madinah, the other being al-Aws. While descendants of two Yemeni brothers, they had become mortal enemies in subsequent years. Ibn Sallul was hoping to be crowned king of Madinah but the arrival of the noble Messenger (r) derailed his ambitions. He turned into a mortal enemy of the Muslims and while pretending to be one of them, was actually a hardcore munafiq (the English word hypocrite does not accurately capture the depth of treachery and lowly conduct of a munafiq).

It was Ibn Sallul who together with 300 followers abandoned the Prophet (r) just before the Battle of Uhud. It was also Ibn Sallul who was responsible for the scandalous allegation against the Prophet’s wife ‘A’ishah (g) and its propagation. Further, this munafiq was responsible for keeping a number of munafiqs from joining the Tabuk expedition against the Romans in the ninth year of the Hijrah. At each juncture, he also tried to protect the treacherous Yahudi tribes, whether Bani Qaynuqa‘ or Bani Qurayzah, from getting their just punishment despite their well-known betrayal and violation of treaty obligations.

Today, Ibn Sallul’s offspring in the shape of Bani Saud are busy doing exactly the same. While Bani Saud prevent committed Muslims from performing Hajj, they are welcoming the Zionists with open arms into the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Sallul may be dead but his offspring continue to pollute the Arabian Peninsula and together with the Zionist cousins, are causing havoc with Muslim lives, honor, and dignity.


Article from

Crescent International Vol. 45, No. 7

Dhu al-Qa'dah 29, 14372016-09-01


Sign In


 

Forgot Password ?


 

Not a Member? Sign Up