Badr changed everything.

Up to 624, Muhammad in Medina was still in the process of consolidating power. He had launched raids, spilled the first blood at Nakhla, and begun to issue rules as both preacher and judge. But the decisive victory at Badr gave him something he had never enjoyed before: open military prestige. Men who had hesitated now saw that those who followed him came home with spoils, captives, and stories of angels. Fear and admiration spread together.

That new confidence needed somewhere to go. It turned, first, on the nearest visible rival community inside Medina itself: the Jews of Banu Qaynuqa.

The Qaynuqa were the smallest of the three principal Jewish tribes in and around Medina, but they were strategically important. They were craftsmen and armorers, goldsmiths and metalworkers, living in a fortified quarter and controlling significant economic activity. They held the Torah. They knew the God of Abraham by His true name, Jehovah, though they had rejected His Son and were spiritually blind. They did not accept Muhammad’s claim to prophethood. They also had weapons and walls. For a man like Muhammad, who had just bloodied the Quraysh at Badr, that combination was intolerable.

Islamic storytellers try to paint what happened next as a reasonable response to Jewish treachery. In their version, the Qaynuqa broke their pact, insulted Muslim women, and threatened the very life of the Medinan community. Muhammad, they say, had no choice but to besiege and expel them.

When we look carefully, a very different pattern appears. A small marketplace quarrel was inflated into a pretext. A siege was launched when Muhammad knew the tribe was isolated. The men surrendered expecting ordinary tribal terms, only to face the threat of mass execution. They were spared chiefly because a powerful Medinan chief physically confronted Muhammad and forced him to relent. Their property was seized, their homes stripped, their community driven out. Around this same period, a prominent Jewish poet, Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf, who satirized Muhammad and lamented the dead of Badr, was lured out at night and butchered in a coordinated assassination.

From that point forward, “permission to assassinate” critics and “permission to expel” inconvenient communities became part of the operating system of the Medinan state. Medina was no longer merely a town with a new preacher. It was becoming an armed camp under a man who used sacred language to sanctify vengeance and ethnic cleansing.

Fabricated Pretext for Siege

The so-called “Constitution of Medina” had placed Jews and Muslims within a single defensive framework, but it had not settled deeper questions of authority. Jews like the Qaynuqa recognized only the Torah as the written Word of God. Muhammad insisted that his recitations were also revelation and that ultimate arbitration of disputes lay with him. This tension smoldered beneath the surface from the start.

After Badr, the tension flared.

The Qaynuqa watched Muhammad’s rise with alarm. He had defeated the Quraysh in open battle. He had clearly gained control of Medina’s mosque, legal processes, and economic direction. His companions swaggered in new armor, carrying the weapons and spoils of Badr. The Jewish goldsmiths and armorers could see the direction of events: a man who claimed to be in the line of Moses yet preached a message that contradicted the Torah was rapidly becoming unchallengeable.

In this climate, a minor incident in the Qaynuqa marketplace was magnified into a cause for war. The Muslim version of the story goes roughly like this: a Muslim woman came to a Jewish goldsmith to sell or repair jewelry. She was seated, veiled. Some Jewish men allegedly mocked her, asked her to uncover her face, and then one of them, in crude mischief, pinned her garment so that when she stood, she was exposed. A Muslim man saw this, attacked and killed the Jewish craftsman. The Jews then killed the Muslim in response. The cycle of revenge began.

Even if we accept the outline, the scale is strikingly small. It is a tragic marketplace altercation, a flash of immodesty, insult, and bloodshed between individuals. In ordinary tribal terms, it would call for blood money, compensation, and perhaps a mediated reconciliation. The very existence of law and elders in both communities was meant to contain such incidents before they spiraled into open warfare.

Muhammad did not choose containment. He chose escalation.

He used the episode as evidence that the Qaynuqa were hostile to Islam as a whole. He gathered his followers and marched against their quarter. He accused the entire tribe of breaking their pact, not because they had assembled an army, but because they had allegedly “insulted” a Muslim woman and then resisted Muslim retaliation. Underneath this accusation lay a deeper grievance: the Qaynuqa refused to accept him as Jehovah’s prophet and refused to submit to his legal supremacy in Medina.

That refusal, wrapped in moral indignation over the woman’s treatment, became his trigger. It allowed him to present a political and theological conflict—Who rules Medina? Whose revelation is final?—as if it were simply a case of protecting Muslim honor. It is the same pattern seen in many later episodes of Islamic history: a specific incident is invoked to justify action that clearly serves broader ambitions.

From a biblical perspective, this is telling. Jehovah hates injustice and truly sees the suffering of women who are dishonored. But He also forbids partiality and collective punishment. To use a shop-level quarrel as a justification to besiege an entire tribe, including those who had nothing to do with the original outrage, and then to claim divine sanction for that collective revenge, is not the behavior of a prophet of the true God. It is the behavior of a leader looking for a reason to crush a rival community.

Surrender and Total Expulsion

The Qaynuqa retreated to their stronghold. They were craftsmen, not nomad raiders, and their neighborhood was fortified. For about two weeks Muhammad’s forces besieged them. This was not a full-scale battle like Badr, with two armies meeting in open field. It was a surrounding of one quarter by another, the slow squeeze of an urban siege.

Inside the fortress, food stores dwindled. The Qaynuqa had no outside allies with the strength or willingness to break the siege. The “Constitution” that had once proclaimed mutual defense now meant little. Muhammad and his men were not coming as allies; they were coming as an occupying army.

Eventually, seeing no way out, the Qaynuqa surrendered. In tribal custom, surrender under siege often led to negotiated terms: relocation, payment, acknowledgment of overlordship. A strong leader could demand harsh conditions. But there was also an expectation that elders and chiefs would be treated with some degree of respect, especially in a city where yesterday’s neighbor was today’s captive.

Muhammad’s first impulse, however, was not to negotiate. Early Islamic reports show that he wanted to execute the men. Some narratives have him prepared to butcher all adult males, leaving women and children to be taken as captives. He had done something similar in principle already on a smaller scale, and he would do it on a much larger scale later with Banu Qurayza. The concept of wiping out the fighting men of a rival tribe and dividing their families among his men was already in his mind.

What prevented the massacre was not a gentle “revelation” urging mercy. It was politics.

Abdullah ibn Ubayy, a powerful Medinan chief from the Khazraj, intervened. Ibn Ubayy had longstanding ties with the Qaynuqa. Before Muhammad’s arrival, he had been on the verge of being acclaimed as a kind of king or arbiter of Medina, in part because of his relationships with various Jewish clans. Muhammad’s sudden rise had sidetracked that trajectory. Even so, Abdullah still had influence, and he was not prepared to watch allies butchered without protest.

According to the sources, he went to Muhammad as the Prophet was moving to carry out his plan. He seized him—some accounts say by his armor—insisting that the Qaynuqa were his allies and warning that if Muhammad killed them, Abdullah would be left with nothing. He reminded Muhammad that it had been the Qaynuqa who had protected him and the Muslims in earlier days. The scene was tense. Muhammad was angered by the challenge. But he eventually relented.

The result was a compromise. The Qaynuqa would not be executed. They would be expelled.

They were forced to leave Medina with what they could carry, forbidden to return. Their land, houses, workshops, and most of their possessions were confiscated and divided among the Muslims. In a matter of days, a Jewish community that had lived in Medina for generations was uprooted and driven out, not because they had launched an armed uprising, but because they had refused to submit to Muhammad’s religious and political supremacy and because a single marketplace incident had provided the excuse.

In modern terms, this was ethnic cleansing. A clearly defined group, marked by religion and ancestry, was removed by force from its homes and stripped of property because the ruling power found its continued presence intolerable. The fact that they were allowed to leave with their lives does not erase the nature of the act.

From Jehovah’s standpoint, this is not righteous judgment. The God of the Bible did discipline Israel’s enemies when He chose to use Israel as His instrument at specific points in redemptive history. But those acts were bound to His covenant purposes and openly revealed beforehand, not driven by one man’s offended pride and desire to secure his new regime. Muhammad’s expulsion of the Qaynuqa was not commanded by the God who spoke through Moses and the prophets. It sprang from the ambitions of a leader whose power had grown and who now meant to reshape Medina’s population to fit his plans.

Seizure of Property and Women

Once the Qaynuqa were forced out, their assets became “spoils in the path of Allah.”

The tribe’s homes, workshops, tools, and stored wealth were divided under Muhammad’s authority. As earlier at Badr, he claimed a special share for “Allah and His messenger” and then apportioned the rest among his followers. The craftsmen’s shops were reassigned. Fields and gardens they may have controlled came under new management. What had been a Jewish quarter became another brick in the economic foundation of the Islamic state.

This was not merely incidental. It was part of the attraction of Muhammad’s path. Men who had left Mecca and lost property there now saw that following the Prophet brought them new property in Medina, taken from those who refused him. Armies and raiding bands are expensive to sustain. Expulsions like that of the Qaynuqa supplied the Medinan treasury without the need for honest trade or labor.

Alongside material property came human beings. Women and children who had not fled in time or who were seized as the tribe was forced out could be distributed as slaves. Some would later be sold. Others would be kept in Muslim households as servants or concubines, their status permanently reduced.

The Qur’an’s phrase “those whom your right hands possess” covers this practice. It makes clear that sexual relations with slave women were considered lawful for Muslim men, provided the captives were acquired in war or legal purchase. That principle, established in these early conflicts, would be applied repeatedly as Islam spread: women captured from Jewish, Christian, and pagan communities could be used sexually, regardless of their will. Their old family ties, their own beliefs, and their personal dignity meant nothing once they were in Muslim hands.

In Banu Qaynuqa’s case, the records do not list individual women the way later sources list particular concubines from Banu Qurayza or from other campaigns. But the logic is the same. A community is attacked, its men disarmed and humiliated, its property seized, and its women and children treated as assets to be absorbed into the victor’s households.

From a biblical viewpoint, this is another mark against Muhammad. Jehovah hates theft. He forbids coveting a neighbor’s house, land, or wife. He commands His people to remember that they were slaves in Egypt and so to extend compassion and protection to the vulnerable. The Lord Jesus dignified women, treated them as disciples, and protected them from male exploitation. A leader who presents the seizure of other people’s homes and the sexual use of captured women as holy is not serving Jehovah. He is sanctifying predation.

The expulsion of Banu Qaynuqa therefore served multiple purposes for Muhammad. It removed a theological and political rival. It enriched his followers. It normalized the equation “victory equals property plus women.” All this was done in the name of the God of Abraham, even though it trampled the very righteousness that Jehovah had revealed to Abraham’s descendants.

The Poet Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf: Lured and Butchered

While the Qaynuqa were being besieged and expelled, another Jewish figure in Medina drew Muhammad’s ire: Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf.

Ka’b belonged to Banu Nadir, not Banu Qaynuqa, but he illustrates the same ruthless pattern. He was a wealthy man, half-Arab and half-Jewish, known for his poetry. In Arabia, poets were the opinion-shapers, the broadcasters of honor and shame. Their verses could strengthen alliances, humiliate enemies, or stir tribes to war. Ka’b used his gift to criticize Muhammad.

After Badr, when news of the Quraysh slain reached Medina, Ka’b is reported to have been deeply disturbed. He had ties to Mecca and to its nobility. He traveled there and composed elegies lamenting the fallen leaders, stirring emotional grief and bitterness. Back in Medina, he recited verses mocking Muhammad, questioning his claims, and warning his own community of the danger of giving this new leader control over their lives.

Muhammad could not tolerate such dissent. A rival voice, sophisticated and influential, was telling a different story about Badr and about the rising Islamic state. Instead of confessing his own violence and seeking to persuade through Scripture and reason, Muhammad did what he was increasingly prone to do: he sought the critic’s death.

The early sources preserve his words: “Who will rid me of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf?” Those words are not a direct execution order in a legal court; they are a personal appeal from a leader who knows that there are eager swords around him. They are a signal. A small circle of men understood the signal.

Muhammad ibn Maslama, a close associate, volunteered. He asked permission to speak deceitfully to Ka’b in order to lure him. Muhammad granted it. The plan was simple but chilling. Muhammad ibn Maslama and a few helpers would pretend to be disillusioned with Islam, complain about Muhammad’s rules, and ask Ka’b for financial help, offering to pledge weapons as security. This would build trust. Then they would invite him out at night under pretext of finalizing matters and kill him when he was off guard.

The trap unfolded as designed. Muhammad ibn Maslama met Ka’b, expressed supposed frustration with the new order, and gained his sympathy. At the appointed night, he and others went to Ka’b’s house and called him out. His wife, sensing danger, warned him not to go, saying she had heard a murderous tone. He dismissed her fears, trusting in the apparent goodwill of his visitors. He went down to meet them.

As they walked with him outside, they drew him close. They praised his scent, touched his hair, and then suddenly grabbed him and attacked with swords and knives. He cried out. One blow failed to kill him immediately; he struggled. The assailants struck again until he died.

When they returned to Muhammad, bloodied and triumphant, he praised them for their deed. Ka’b’s killing had several effects. It removed a sharp critic. It terrified others in Medina who might have considered using poetry or speech against Muhammad. It sent a clear message to Jewish tribes: your most prominent voices are not safe if they oppose the Prophet.

From the standpoint of Jehovah’s righteousness, this is premeditated murder by deception. A true prophet does not authorize lying as a tool to lure an opponent into a vulnerable place. He does not encourage disciples to feign apostasy or discontent in order to draw a man out and stab him. He does not treat the killing of critics as a moment for congratulations. Christ and His apostles endured mockery and slander without resorting to assassination. They answered with the Word of God, trusting Jehovah to judge.

Muhammad’s conduct is the opposite. He fuses political calculation with religious rhetoric. Ka’b’s blood became another stone in the foundation of a regime that upheld “honoring the Prophet” above the sanctity of life. Once the community had accepted that this kind of murder was holy work, it would accept many more such acts in the years to come.

“Permission to Assassinate” Becomes Permanent Policy

The killing of Ka’b did not stand alone. It followed hard on the murders of Abu Afak and Asma bint Marwan, already discussed in an earlier chapter. Both had been civilian critics—one an elderly man, the other a woman with an infant—who used verse to question Muhammad’s claim and the behavior of his followers. In each case, Muhammad expressed a desire for them to be removed, and loyal men took that as authorization to strike at night.

With Ka’b, the pattern hardened. Now the target was a wealthy, armed man of influence from a major Jewish tribe. The operation was more complex and more clearly coordinated. Deception was openly allowed. The success emboldened Muhammad and his circle. They had discovered that they could kill opponents inside Medina without open battle and that fear would do as much to secure their rule as any formal decree.

“Permission to assassinate” thus became, in effect, a permanent feature of the Medinan state. Revelation verses would soon be recited that spoke of those who “hurt Allah and His messenger” as cursed and destined for painful punishment. Any public challenge to Muhammad’s status could be framed as hurting the messenger, and so as an offense not just against a man, but against God.

This merging of personal honor with divine honor is deadly. Once questioning Muhammad became equivalent to insulting Allah, and once insulting Allah and His messenger was treated as a capital offense, the road was open for a kind of religious totalitarianism. There is no space for genuine debate when any dissent can be labeled blasphemy, and blasphemy carries the possibility of death.

In later Islamic jurisprudence, this hardened into explicit rules: those who insult the Prophet are to be killed, even if they repent. The precedent was set in Medina. The sword that cut down Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf was not just a momentary outburst. It was a template.

From a Christian perspective, this reveals the nature of the spirit working behind Muhammad’s project. Jehovah does not need human swords to defend His honor against mockery. He sits in the heavens and laughs at rebels, calling them to repentance and warning of His own judgment, which He executes in His time. He sent His own Son to endure spit, slaps, and thorns, not to call for assassins. The apostles wrote letters and preached sermons to correct error and expose false teaching, but they never killed those who opposed them.

By 625, Muhammad had normalized the idea that killing critics pleased God. That idea would haunt Jewish, Christian, and even Muslim communities under Islamic rule for centuries to come. The ethnic cleansing of Banu Qaynuqa and the assassination of Ka’b are two sides of the same policy: silence those who resist, either by driving them out or by cutting them down.

Medina Transformed into Armed Camp

The siege of Banu Qaynuqa, the expulsion that followed, the seizure of property, and the assassination of Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf had a cumulative effect on Medina. The city was no longer a collection of tribes trying to manage their own feuds. It was becoming a militarized base for a single man’s religious-political project.

Everywhere, the signs of this transformation multiplied.

Men carried weapons not just as tribal warriors but as soldiers of a cause defined by revelation. The mosque was not merely a place of prayer; it was headquarters, command center, and courtroom. People knew that a single incident in a market could bring siege to an entire quarter if Muhammad decided that “the treaty” had been broken. Jews who remained—especially Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayza—understood that they lived under a regime that had already uprooted one Jewish tribe and killed a Jewish poet with impunity.

Every raid sent out from Medina reinforced the militarized atmosphere. Returning raiders brought spoils, stories of daring, and recitation of verses praising those who fought in the path of Allah. Young men grew up seeing violence joined to piety. Their identity was reshaped: they were no longer just Aws, Khazraj, or Muhajir from Mecca; they were the armed community of the Messenger.

Fear also reshaped daily life. It was not only fear of external enemies. It was fear of being labeled a hypocrite, a “weak believer,” or a friend of Jews. Abdullah ibn Ubayy’s reluctance to see his allies slaughtered, and his forceful intervention to save Qaynuqa’s lives, stained his reputation in Islamic memory. Later Muslim authors branded him leader of the “hypocrites.” That label fell on anyone who questioned Muhammad’s decisions, especially regarding war and treatment of opponents.

In practical terms, Medina functioned increasingly like a camp preparing for ongoing campaigns. Resources were organized around the needs of fighters. Legal rulings addressed distribution of spoils, internal discipline, and treatment of captives. Those who could fight were expected to be ready. Those who could not were expected to support the fighters with labor or goods. The qibla (direction of prayer) had already been switched from Jerusalem to Mecca, signaling that Muhammad’s long-term goal remained control of the Kaaba. Everything between 622 and 625 was preparation.

From Jehovah’s point of view, what was happening in Medina was not the birth of a holy community. It was the hardening of a militant society under a leader who claimed God’s name yet contradicted His written Word. The God of Abraham had revealed Himself in the Scriptures and, in the fullness of time, in His Son Jesus Christ. He had called people into congregations marked by love, mutual service, and the preaching of the Gospel, not by raiding parties, sieges, and assassinations.

By 625, however, anyone living in Medina could see where things were going. One Jewish tribe was gone. Another had had its leading poet murdered. Trade with Mecca was under attack. Oaths of war at Aqaba had already bound the town to fight against Muhammad’s enemies. Within a few short years, Banu Nadir would be expelled, Banu Qurayza would be massacred, and Mecca itself would fall.

Chapter 13 is therefore not an isolated episode. It is the midpoint in a grim progression. The fabricated pretext in the marketplace, the siege of Qaynuqa, the expulsion and plunder, the luring and butchering of Ka’b, and the acceptance of assassination as a tool—all these show that Islam in Medina was no longer about persuading hearts. It was about breaking opponents and remaking a city into the hub of a war-driven religious empire.

Any claim that such a project came from Jehovah must be rejected. The God who inspired the Torah, the Prophets, and the Gospel does not build His kingdom on ethnic cleansing, stolen property, and knives in the dark. He builds it through the proclamation of His Son, through repentance and faith, and through congregations that reflect His holiness, justice, and love.

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