Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet

Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet | HistoryNet

"Despite Muhammad’s remarkable accomplishments, there is no modern account of his life that examines his role as Islam’s first great general and the leader of a successful insurgency. Had Muhammad not succeeded as a commander, however, Islam might have been relegated to a geographic backwater—and the conquest of the Byzantine and Persian empires by Arab armies might never have occurred.

The idea of Muhammad as a military man will be new to many. Yet he was a truly great general. In the space of a single decade he fought eight major battles, led eighteen raids, and planned another thirty-eight military operations where others were in command but operating under his orders and strategic direction. Wounded twice, he also twice experienced having his positions overrun by superior forces before he managed to turn the tables on his enemies and rally his men to victory. More than a great field general and tactician, he was also a military theorist, organizational reformer, strategic thinker, operational-level combat commander, political-military leader, heroic soldier, and revolutionary. The inventor of insurgency warfare and history’s first successful practitioner, Muhammad had no military training before he commanded an army in the field.

Muhammad’s intelligence service eventually rivaled that of Byzantium and Persia, especially when it came to political information. He reportedly spent hours devising tactical and political stratagems, and once remarked that “all war is cunning,” reminding modern analysts of Sun Tzu’s dictum, “all war is deception.” In his thinking and application of force Muhammad was a combination of Karl von Clause­witz and Niccolo Machiavelli, for he always employed force in the service of political goals. An astute grand strategist, he used non­mili­tary methods (alliance building, politi­cal assassination, bribery, religious appeals, mercy, and calculated butchery) to strengthen his long-term position, sometimes even at the expense of short-term military considerations.

Muhammad’s belief in Islam and his own role as the “Messenger of God” revolutionized Arabian warfare and resulted in the creation of the ancient world’s first army motivated by a coherent system of ideological belief. The ideology of holy war (jihad) and martyrdom (shahada) for the faith was transmitted to the West during the wars between Muslims and Christians in Spain and France, where it changed traditional Christian pacifistic thinking on war, brought into being a coterie of Christian warrior saints, and provided the Catho­lic Church with its ideological justification for the Crusades. Ideology—whether religious or secular—has remained a primary component of military ventures ever since...

Muhammad was first and foremost a revolutionary, a fiery religious guerrilla leader who created and led the first genuine national insurgency in antiquity that is comprehensible in modern terms, a fact not lost on the jihadis of the present day, who often cite the Koran and Muhammad’s use of violence as justification for their own insurgencies. Unlike conventional generals, Muhammad did not seek the defeat of a foreign enemy or invader; rather, he sought to replace the existing Arabian social order with a new one based upon a radically different ideological worldview. To achieve his revolutionary goals Muhammad utilized all the means recognized by modern analysts as characteristic of a successful insurgency in today’s world...

Muhammad’s rise to power was a textbook example of a successful insurgency, in all likelihood the first such example in antiquity. The West has been accustomed to thinking of the Arab conquests that followed Muhammad in purely conventional military terms. But the armies that achieved those conquests did not exist in Arabia before Muhammad. It was Muhammad’s successful unconventional guerrilla operations, his successful insurgency, that brought those armies into existence. The later Arab conquests, as regards both strategic concept and the new armies as in­struments of military method, were the consequences of Muhammad’s prior military success as the leader of an insurgency...

Once Muhammad had created his cadre of revolutionaries, he established a base from which to conduct military operations against his adversaries. These operations initially took the form of ambushes and raids aimed at isolating Mecca, the enemy’s main city, and other trading towns that opposed him. Only one in six Arabs lived in a city or town at this time; the others resided in the desert, living as pastoral nomads. Muhammad chose Medina as his base of operations because of its strategic location. Medina was close to the main caravan route from Mecca to Syria that constituted the economic lifeline of Mecca and other oases and towns dependent upon the caravan trade for their economic survival. Medina was also sufficiently distant from Mecca to permit Muhammad a relatively free hand in his efforts to convert the bedouin clans living along the caravan route. Muhammad understood that conversions and political alliances with the bedouins, not military engagements with the Meccans, were the keys to success.

Insurgencies require an armed force and the manpower to sustain them. It was from the original small cadre of guerrillas that the larger conventional army could be grown that would ultimately permit the insurgency to engage its enemies in set-piece battles when the time and political conditions were right. Muhammad may have been the first commander in history to understand and implement the doctrine later espoused by General Vo Nguyen Giap of North Vietnam as “people’s war, people’s army.” Muhammad established the belief among his followers that God had commandeered all Muslims’ purposes and property for His efforts and that all Muslims had a responsibility to fight for the faith. Everyone—men, women, and even children—had an obligation for military service in defense of the faith and the ummah that was the community of God’s chosen people on earth. It is essential to understand that the attraction of the Islamic ideology more than anything else produced the manpower that permitted Muhammad’s small revolutionary cadre to evolve into a conventional armed force capable of large-scale engagements...

The leader of an insurgency must take great care to guard his authority from challenges, including those that come from within the movement itself. Muhammad had many enemies, and he was always on guard against an attempt upon his life. Like other leaders, Muhammad surrounded himself with a loyal group of followers who acted as his bodyguard and carried out his orders without question. For this purpose he created the suffah, a small cadre of loyal followers who lived in the mosque next to Muhammad’s house. Recruited from among the most pious, enthusiastic, and fanatical followers, they came from impoverished backgrounds. The suffah members spent much of their time studying Islam. They were devoted to Muhammad and served not only as his life guard but also as a secret police that could be called upon at a moment’s notice to carry out whatever task Muhammad set for them, including assassination and terror...

Insurgencies succeed or fail to the degree that they are able to win the allegiance of great numbers of uncommitted citizens to support the insurgency’s goals. Muhammad understood the role of propaganda and went to great lengths to make his message public and widely known. In a largely illiterate Arab society, the poet served as the major conveyor of political propaganda. Muhammad hired the best poets money could buy to sing his praises and denigrate his opponents. He issued proclamations regarding the revelations he received as the Messenger of God, and remained in public view to keep the vision of the new order and the promise of a heavenly paradise constantly before the public. He also sent missionaries to other clans and tribes to instruct the “pagans” in the new faith, sometimes teaching those groups to read and write in the process. Muhammad understood that the conflict was between the existing social order with its manifest injustices and his vision of the future, and he surpassed his adversaries in spreading his vision to win the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab population.

Terrorism seems to be an indispensable element of a successful insurgency, and it was no less so in Muhammad’s case. He used terrorism in two basic ways: First, he ensured discipline among his followers by making public examples of traitors and backsliders. In Muhammad’s day the penalty for apostasy in Islam was death. He also ordered some of his political enemies assassinated, including poets and singers who had publicly ridiculed him. When his armies marched into Mecca, for example, Muhammad’s suffah set about hunting down a list of old enemies marked for execution. Second, Muhammad used terrorism to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies on a large scale. In the case of the Jewish tribes of Medina, Muhammad seems to have ordered the death of the entire Beni Qaynuqa tribe and the selling of their women and children into slavery, though he was later talked out of it by the chief of one of his allies. On another occasion, again against a Jewish tribe of Medina, he ordered all the tribe’s adult males, some nine hundred, beheaded in the city square, the women and children sold into slavery, and their property distributed among his Muslim followers. Shortly after the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad declared “war to the knife” against all those who remained idolaters, instructing his followers to kill any pagans they encountered on the spot. His ruthlessness and brutality served to strengthen his hand with opponents and allies alike...

Over time the violent origins of religions are forgotten and only the faith itself remains, so the founders of the creeds come to be remembered as untouched by the violence of the historical record. In Muhammad’s case the result has been to deemphasize the military aspects of his life and his considerable military accomplishments as Islam’s first great general and the inventor of the theory and practice of insurgency...

Muhammad transformed the social composition of Arab armies from a collection of clans, tribes, and blood kin loyal only to themselves into a national army loyal to a national social entity, the ummah. The ummah was not a nation or a state in the modern sense, but a body of religious believers under the unified command and governance of Muhammad. The ummah transcended the clans and tribes and permitted Muhammad to forge a common identity, national in scope, among the Arabs for the first time. It was leadership of this national entity that Muhammad claimed, not of any clan or tribe. Loyalty to the ummah permitted the national army to unify the two traditional combat arms of infantry and cavalry into a genuine combined arms force. Bedouins and town dwellers had historically viewed one another with suspicion. Arab infantry had traditionally been drawn from the people living in the towns, settlements, and oases of Arabia. Arab cavalry was traditionally drawn from bedouin clans, whose nomadic warriors excelled at speedy raids, surprise attacks, and elusive retreats, skills honed to a fine edge over generations of raiding.

These two different types of combatants possessed only limited experience in fighting alongside one another. Bound by clan loyalties and living in settlements, Arab infantry was steadfast and cohesive and could usually be relied upon to hold its ground, especially in the defense. Arab cavalry, on the other hand, was unreliable in a battle against infantry, often breaking off the fight to keep their precious mounts from being hurt or make off with whatever booty they had seized. Bedouin cavalry was, however, proficient at reconnaissance, surprise attack, protecting the flanks, and pursuing ill-disciplined infantry. Muhammad was the first Arab commander to successfully join both combat arms into a national army and use them in concert in battle. Thanks to the larger religious community of believers, the ummah, he could combine the two primary elements of traditional Arab society, town dwellers and bedouin tribes, into a single Arab national identity. That change was actually preceded by a shift in the social composition of Arab society...

Traditional Arab warfare emphasized the courageous performance of individual warriors in battle, not the clan’s ability to fight as a unit. The Arab warrior fought for his own honor and social prestige within the kin group, not for the clan per se. One consequence was that Arab armies and the clan units within them did not usually reflect a high degree of combat unit cohesion, the ability of the group to remain intact and fight together under the stress of battle.

Muhammad’s armies, by contrast, were highly cohesive, holding together even when they fought outnumbered or were overrun. The ummah served as a higher locus of the soldier’s loyalty that transcended the clan. Many of Muhammad’s early converts had left their families and clans to follow the Prophet. There were many instances where members of the same clan or even families fought on opposite sides during his early battles. Religion turned out to be a greater source of unit cohesion than blood and clan ties, the obligations of faith replacing and overriding those of tradition and even family. His soldiers cared for each other as brothers, which under the precepts of Islam they were, and quickly gained a reputation for their discipline and ferocity in battle.

Muhammad’s armies demonstrated a higher degree of military motivation than traditional Arab armies. Being a good warrior had always been at the center of Arab values, but Muhammad enhanced the warrior’s status. His soldiers were always guaranteed a share in the booty. It became a common saying among Muslims that “the soldier is not only the noblest and most pleasing profession in the sight of Allah, but also the most profitable.” Muhammad’s soldiers were usually paid better than Persian or Byzantine soldiers.

But better pay was only a small part of the new Islamic warriors’ motivation. One of Muhammad’s most important innovations was convincing his troops that they were doing God’s work on earth. There were of course soldiers of other faiths who fought on religious grounds. But no army before Muhammad’s ever placed religion at the center of military motivation and defined the soldier primarily as an instrument of God’s will on earth. The soldiers of Islam came to see themselves as fighting under God’s instructions. The result, still evident in Islamic societies today, was a soldier who enjoyed much higher social status and respect than soldiers in Western armies.

A central element to an Islamic soldier’s motivation in Muhammad’s day was the idea that death was not something to be feared but rather embraced. Muhammad’s pronouncement that those killed in battle would be welcomed immediately into a paradise of pleasure and eternal life was a powerful inducement to perform well in combat. To die fighting in defense of the faith was to fulfill God’s will and become a martyr...

Once war was harnessed to strategic objectives, it became possible to expand its application to introduce tactical dimensions that were completely new to Arab warfare. Muhammad attacked tribes, towns, and garrisons before they could form hostile coalitions; he isolated his enemies by severing their economic lifelines and disrupting their lines of communication; he was a master at political negotiation, forming alliances with pagan tribes when it served his interests; and he laid siege to cities and towns. He also introduced the new dimension of psychological warfare, employing terror and massacre as means to weaken the will of his enemies. Various texts also mention Muhammad’s use of catapults (manjaniq) and movable covered cars (dabbabah) in siege warfare. Most likely these siege devices were acquired in Yemen, where Persian garrisons had been located on and off over the centuries. Muhammad seems to have been the first Arab commander to use them in the north. Where once Arab warfare had been a completely tactical affair, Muhammad’s introduction of strategic war permitted the use of tactics in the proper manner, as a means to greater strategic ends. War, after all, is never an end in itself. It is, as Clausewitz reminds us, always a method, never a goal...

Muhammad’s transformation of Arab warfare was preceded by a revolution in the way Arabs thought about war, what might be called the moral basis of war. The old chivalric code that limited bloodletting was abandoned and replaced with an ethos less conducive to restraint, the blood feud. Extending that ethos beyond the ties of kin and blood to include members of the new community of Muslim believers inevitably made Arab warfare more encompassing and bloody than it had ever been...

Muhammad’s military legacy is most clearly evident in the modern methodology of insurgency and in the powerful idea of jihad. In the years following his death, Islamic scholars developed an account of the Islamic law of war. This body of law, essentially complete by 850, ultimately rests on two foundations: the example and teaching of Muhammad and the word of God as expressed in the Koran...

According to classical Sunni doctrine, jihad can refer generically to any worthy endeavor, but in Islamic law it means primarily armed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates...

Shiites, some ten to fifteen percent of Muslims, subscribe to a somewhat different doctrine of jihad, believing that it can only be waged under the command of the rightful leader of the Muslim community, whom they call imam. Shiites believe that the last imam went into hiding in 874 and that the collective duty to wage expansionist jihad is suspended until his return in the apocalyptic future. But Shiite scholars do affirm a duty to wage defensive jihad against infidel invaders.

Classical Islamic law is less tolerant of non-Muslims. Apostates from Islam, pagans, atheists, agnostics, and pseudo-scriptuaries, that is, members of cults that have appeared since Muhammad’s day: for example, Sikhs, Bahais, Mormons, and Qadianis are only offered the option of conversion to Islam or death.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sunni Islamic modernists began to modify the classical law of war. The Indian Muslim thinker Sayyid Ahmad Khan argued that jihad was obligatory for Muslims only when they were prevented from exercising their faith, thus restricting jihad to defensive purposes. Mahmud Shaltut, an Egyptian scholar, likewise argued only for defensive jihad.

Conservative Sunnis, such as the Wahhabis of Arabia, and modern militant jihadis in Iraq and Pakistan still adhere to the traditional doctrine. It is among these militant conservative Muslims that the military legacy of Muhammad is most alive today.

Richard A. Gabriel, a military historian and adjunct professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, has authored forty-one books. His latest is Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General (Oklahoma University Press, 2007)."


The Sunni-Shiite distinction is interesting, as explicated:

Sunni and Shi’a Terror: A Difference That Matters

"While Sunni terrorists “tend to operate in a continuous, mid to high intensity manner, seeing war against infidels and apostates as a perennial condition,” Shi’a terror, carried out by groups or agents close to the Iranian government featured “discrete terror campaigns tethered to state and organizational objectives.” Lynch provides a detailed summary of Shi’a terrorist operations from the early eighties to the present. Shi’a terror, he concludes, is linked to Iranian-state aims, including most of all—which he mentions several times—“regime survival.” This is not the work of alienated loners trying to commit mass murder for essentially incomprehensible religious/mystical/reasons. It can be understood—and dealt with—as easily as one understands and deals with the Provisional IRA—a comparison Lynch does not make but one which flows logically from his analysis."


Addendum: predominant meaning of jihad, dominant meaning of jihad

See also: Islam, the West and Modernity