By 630 C.E. Muhammad had what he wanted from the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. The truce had allowed him to smash Khaybar, pull more tribes into his orbit, enrich his followers with Jewish land and slaves, and project himself as the man the powerful Quraysh now had to treat as an equal. But Hudaybiyyah was never meant to be permanent peace. It was a pause on the road to Mecca.

Two years after signing the “ten-year” truce, Muhammad marched on his native city at the head of an army of around 10,000 men. Muslim sources present the conquest as a bloodless miracle and an outpouring of mercy: the humbled prophet entering the city with his head bowed, forgiving his enemies, destroying idols, and watching Mecca embrace Islam out of conviction. In children’s books and da‘wah pamphlets, Meccans are portrayed as throwing aside their paganism the moment the idols fell.

The closer we read the early records, the more the spin collapses.

The conquest of Mecca begins with Muhammad using a tribal skirmish to declare the treaty void, assembling a massive force to overawe the city, issuing a small but chilling “blood list” of people to be killed on sight, no matter where they sought refuge, and supervising the destruction of 360 idols while tribes and citizens rushed to profess Islam under visible military pressure. Bilal’s call to prayer atop the Kaaba, later romanticized as a symbol of equality, in context functions as a deliberate act of humiliation against a city he had long wanted to break. And beneath the public amnesty, quiet settling of old scores continued through targeted killings and confiscations.

Measured by Jehovah’s standards, this was not the peaceful victory of a servant of the true God. It was the culmination of years of raiding, treaty-gaming, and intimidation, sealed by forced submission in the shadow of the swords of 10,000 men.

March on Mecca with 10,000 Men

The formal trigger for the march on Mecca came from the tribal clause of Hudaybiyyah. As noted earlier, that treaty allowed tribes to ally either with Muhammad or with Quraysh. Two long-time rivals did just that: Khuza‘a aligned with Muhammad; Banu Bakr aligned with Quraysh. Their older feud simmered beneath the surface.

One night, men from Banu Bakr attacked Khuza‘a at a water source, killing several. Reports indicate that some Quraysh individuals supplied weapons and even joined the raid despite the truce. Khuza‘a’s survivors fled toward the sanctuary, clinging to the curtains of the Kaaba, crying for protection. Blood was spilled in a supposedly safe place. In panic and anger, Khuza‘a appealed directly to Muhammad: “You are our ally; avenge us.”

This was precisely the kind of incident the treaty’s tribal clause made possible. Muhammad could now argue that Quraysh, by supporting Banu Bakr’s assault on his allies, had broken Hudaybiyyah. Whether the Meccan leadership had formally ordered the attack is beside the point. As far as Muhammad was concerned, he had his justification.

He sent envoys demanding that Quraysh either pay blood money for those killed, sever ties with Banu Bakr, or accept that the treaty was finished. Meccan chiefs, divided and demoralized, responded clumsily. Some wanted to appease him. Others refused to abandon their allies. No unified, decisive apology or restitution was offered. Muhammad treated their hesitation as confirmation that Hudaybiyyah was dead.

At that point he moved quickly. He ordered preparations for a major campaign but tried to preserve the element of surprise. Envoys were sent around Arabia to summon tribes that had already entered his alliance network. The response showed how much his power had grown: from the mere hundred or so followers who fled Mecca years earlier, he now could call on thousands. By the time the army began to move, roughly 10,000 men marched under his banner.

This was not a peaceful pilgrimage. It was a strong army, deliberately overwhelming, aimed at making Mecca’s resistance look suicidal. Muhammad marched with enough force to make a point: Quraysh had lost the upper hand. Any talk of equal terms was gone.

Compared with biblical revelation, this strategy is deeply worldly. The Lord Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem knowing He would be killed, not that He would finally crush His enemies by superior numbers. He rebuked Peter’s attempt to defend Him with the sword, saying that His kingdom is not of this world, otherwise His servants would fight. Muhammad’s march on Mecca is the opposite: it is the climax of a kingdom very much “of this world,” whose legitimacy is proved, in his own logic, by visible military superiority.

Hudaybiyyah Treaty Torn Up

When the army drew near Mecca, Quraysh still had options. They could attempt a defensive stand, negotiating from within the walls. They could send envoys to seek fresh terms. They could try to rally allies. Instead, faced with the sheer size of Muhammad’s force and their own internal weariness from years of war and economic pressure, they cracked.

Abu Sufyan, long their political leader and one of Muhammad’s chief opponents, went out with others to meet the Muslims. After some maneuvering, he was brought into Muhammad’s camp. Here, sources describe a series of humiliations and pressured choices. Abu Sufyan was confronted with the obvious: “Has not the time come for you to acknowledge that there is no god but Allah and that I am His messenger?” After initial reluctance, and under the weight of military reality, he gave in and uttered the shahada. His “conversion” reads less like spiritual conviction and more like the surrender of a beaten politician.

Muhammad then used him as a symbol. He sent Abu Sufyan back to Mecca with a message: whoever enters Abu Sufyan’s house will be safe; whoever shuts his door will be safe; whoever stays in the sacred mosque will be safe. On the surface this sounds merciful. In reality it signaled that organized resistance was futile and that safety lay only in passive submission.

At no point did Muhammad consider that Hudaybiyyah should still morally restrain him. From his perspective, the treaty had been broken when Quraysh aided Banu Bakr. But even if they had not, his own agenda had always been to reach this moment. The “ten-year” truce lasted barely two. Once it no longer served his interests, it was effectively torn up.

Scripture shows that Jehovah takes oaths seriously, even when they are inconvenient. Joshua’s leaders were deceived by the Gibeonites into making a treaty, yet they honored it later despite the trick, fearing God. Saul’s violation of that old agreement brought judgment on Israel in David’s day. The God of the Bible does not treat covenants as disposable tactics. Muhammad did. Hudaybiyyah had done its job; now it could be brushed aside.

As the army advanced, Muhammad divided his force into several columns to enter Mecca from different directions. Instructions varied. In some sectors, he ordered that fighting be avoided unless attacked. In others, he placed hard men like Khalid ibn al-Walid, who engaged and killed those who tried to resist. The conquest was not perfectly bloodless. There were skirmishes, dead on both sides, and individuals cut down even while trying to flee. Later retellings downplay this and focus on the absence of large-scale massacre, but the reality remains: Mecca was taken under military threat, with specific people marked for death regardless of refuge.

Only Eight “Blood List” Executions—Propaganda Mercy

One of the most famous elements of the conquest narrative is the so-called “blood list.” Muslim tradition tells that Muhammad named a small group of individuals—often said to be eight or so—to be killed even if they clung to the curtains of the Kaaba. All others, it is said, were granted general amnesty. Modern apologists present this as evidence of extraordinary mercy: out of thousands of old enemies, only a handful were singled out.

The names on the list vary by source, but they tend to include:

• Men who had once been Muslims, then left and publicly mocked or opposed Muhammad (apostates).

• Poets and satirists who had used verse to attack him.

• Individuals accused of murder or particularly offensive acts against Islam.

• A former scribe who had allegedly manipulated Qur’anic phrases and fled.

• Some slave women or singing girls who had composed songs ridiculing him.

Example cases include a man like Abdullah ibn Khatal, who had killed his own servant and defected to Mecca, and whose slave singers performed abusive verses; or individuals such as al-Huwayrith ibn Nuqaydh, who had insulted Muhammad in Mecca. The exact roster differs, but the principle is constant: Muhammad reserved to himself the right to cancel the supposed amnesty in specific instances, not through a court process, but by decree.

When his army entered Mecca, these “blood list” targets were hunted. Some were killed while attempting to hide. One was speared or cut down while clinging to the Kaaba’s covering. Others tried to seek intercession and, in a few cases, were later pardoned after pleading or via advocates. But the message was unmistakable: the conqueror’s mercy had limits, and those limits were drawn around anyone who had dared personally cross him.

Why does this matter? Because the very publicity given to the blood list turns it into propaganda. Generations of Muslims are taught, “Look how merciful the Prophet was; he could have killed everyone, but he only killed eight!” Yet that framing ignores the context. The entire population had just been surrounded by 10,000 armed men. Their city had capitulated. Their religion had been publicly discredited. Their leaders had bowed. In that atmosphere of total domination, sparing the majority is not remarkable grace; it is practical politics.

The Lord Jesus, when rejected by Samaritans, refused even to call down fire from heaven, rebuking His disciples for suggesting it. While suffering on the torture stake, He prayed for His executioners, “Father, forgive them.” He had no “blood list” of names to be eliminated once He came into power; instead He sent His followers to preach repentance and forgiveness beginning in Jerusalem, the very city that killed Him. Muhammad’s blood list, small though it may appear beside modern genocides, reveals the opposite heart: a man who does not forget personal slights and who uses victory to settle them, then advertises selective restraint as proof of moral greatness.

Destruction of 360 Idols and Mass Conversion at Swordpoint

Having secured the city militarily and symbolically humiliated its leaders, Muhammad turned to the religious center: the Kaaba and the idols that surrounded it.

For generations, Mecca had housed a pantheon of tribal deities. Pagan pilgrimage and trade were interwoven. The Quraysh derived prestige and profit from being guardians of this shrine. Muhammad had attacked that system verbally for years in Mecca, then militarily from Medina. Now, with no serious resistance left, he walked into the sanctuary.

Sources describe him pointing at the idols with a staff or bow and reciting, “Truth has come and falsehood has vanished,” or similar phrases. One by one, statues and symbols were toppled, smashed, or removed. Tradition gives the number as 360—an emblematic figure suggesting a full cycle of Arabian idol worship. The message to onlookers was unmistakable: the old gods were gone; only “Allah and His messenger” remained.

At the same time, Muhammad ordered images inside the Kaaba, including paintings of Abraham, Ismael, and even Mary and Jesus, to be removed or covered, keeping only what fit his revised narrative. He redefined the shrine as an Islamic sanctuary, claiming that it had always belonged to Abraham’s monotheism and that the intervening centuries of paganism were a corruption now being corrected.

What about the people watching all this?

Meccan nobles and commoners alike were brought to profess Islam. They recited the shahada, one after another, in an atmosphere where refusal could mean exile, loss of property, or worse. Once the city had fallen, the choice was not between Islam and respected pagan citizenship; it was between Islam and marginalization or conflict with the new order. Some may indeed have been convinced by Muhammad’s years of preaching. Many more bowed their heads because the swords were real and the idols were already broken.

Later traditions speak of individuals who had fought against him now asking to be pardoned and accepted. Some names—like Ikrima ibn Abi Jahl—stand out as men who fled and later came back, professing Islam after formal guarantees. Their conversions are presented as noble; but again, the pressure of circumstances cannot be ignored. Muhammad’s power was now so great that resistance looked suicidal.

This is not how Jehovah brings people to worship Him in the age of the Gospel. The apostles preached Christ crucified and risen. Those who believed were baptized into congregations. Those who refused were left to Jehovah’s judgment; they were not compelled by a conquering army. Jesus explicitly rejected using the sword to spread His message. “My kingdom is not of this world,” He said, “otherwise My servants would fight.”

Muhammad, by contrast, achieved the “conversion” of Mecca at swordpoint. Once the idols were down and the army was in place, the population became Muslim by decree. Within a short time, the old pagan rites were replaced by Islamic ones, using the same building and the same general pilgrimage pattern, but now centered on his reinterpretation.

Bilal on the Kaaba: Symbol of Vengeance

One of the most often-quoted scenes from the conquest is Bilal ibn Rabah, the former Ethiopian slave and early convert, standing on top of the Kaaba to give the call to prayer. Muslim storytellers treasure this image as a symbol of equality: the ex-slave, once tortured in Mecca, now honored above the heads of his former masters as he proclaims the oneness of Allah.

There is no doubt that Bilal had been mistreated in Mecca, forced under stones in the heat, ordered to renounce his new faith. His endurance is historically noted. But when we look at this scene through the wider lens of the conquest, it carries a darker tone. It is not simply an act of vindication for one abused man; it is a calculated display of reversal and dominance.

To the Meccan aristocracy watching below, Bilal’s presence on top of the Kaaba shouted that their world was finished. The sex, lineage, and social hierarchy they had prized were overturned. A man they had once treated as property now stood above their holiest structure, aligned with the conqueror who had shattered their idols and taken their city. The call to prayer, ringing out over Mecca for the first time, was not merely an invitation to worship; it was a declaration that a new order had been imposed.

In the New Testament, Jehovah does indeed exalt the lowly and humble the proud. But He does so by drawing people into one body in Christ, where distinctions of slave and free, Jew and Gentile, male and female are erased in terms of access to salvation. There is no scene in which Christ parades a former slave on top of the temple to taunt former oppressors. Instead, He calls both slave and master to repentance, commanding love, forgiveness, and mutual respect in congregational life, not the inversion of one oppressive hierarchy into another.

Bilal’s elevation at the Kaaba therefore symbolizes more than personal vindication. It embodies the spirit of conquest—those once trampled now standing on the necks of their enemies, not through Christlike forgiveness, but through participation in a new system of religious rule. The man who had taken part in raids and battles now served as a herald of the victorious warlord’s new religious order, from the most prominent rooftop in Arabia.

Settling Old Scores Quietly

Publicly, Muhammad proclaimed a broad amnesty. Many Meccans were told, “Go, you are free.” They were allowed to retain property, remain in their homes, and enter the new Islamic order without mass expulsion. But beneath this general announcement lay a quieter process of settling scores.

We have already seen the blood list: those singled out for execution even if they clung to the Kaaba. Some were hunted down immediately. Others were killed later when they crossed Muslim territories or fell into the hands of Muhammad’s followers. A few secured high-profile intercession and were spared, reinforcing the message that survival depended on aligning with the Prophet’s friends.

In addition to outright executions, there were confiscations. Those who had been particularly hostile could see their homes or goods seized under various pretexts. The spoils of Mecca—though not as dramatic as earlier campaigns—still reinforced the pattern: victory brings property, women, and status to Muhammad’s followers. Those who had once laughed at him saw their fortunes in danger.

Old personal grievances also resurfaced. Individuals who had insulted Muhammad in Mecca years earlier had to watch their words be weighed afresh. Some died. Others saved themselves by a hurried profession of Islam and a show of submission. It was understood that forgiveness was the Prophet’s to grant—and that he did not forget those who had gone too far.

The contrast with the Gospel remains sharp. Christ’s first coming did not include a human conquest of Jerusalem in which He used armed disciples to punish those who had mocked Him. When the city fell decades later, it was under Roman armies as a judgment foretold by Christ but not directed by Him in a political scheme. Those who believed in Him were told to flee, not to stay and take revenge.

Muhammad’s conquest of Mecca, by contrast, is tied directly to his own program. He stands as both military victor and religious legislator, deciding who lives, who dies, who keeps property, and who becomes an example of his wrath. The amnesty he grants is real but conditioned: it lasts as long as Meccans accept their new subordinate role in an Islamic order that will shortly turn outward to subdue the rest of Arabia and beyond.

In sum, Chapter 17 of his life story is not the tale of a persecuted prophet returning gently to a city that once rejected him. It is the story of a man who used raids, treaties, and intimidation to build a war machine, then marched that machine into his birthplace, tearing up agreements when they no longer served him, demanding mass conversion under pressure, and cloaking selective revenge in the language of mercy. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not build His kingdom this way. The Lord Jesus calls sinners by the preaching of the cross, not by the shadow of 10,000 swords. The conquest of Mecca therefore stands as one of the clearest proofs that Muhammad was not Jehovah’s prophet, but the architect of an earthly empire falsely claiming heaven’s backing.

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