By 631–632 C.E. Muhammad had done what no Arab before him had done. He controlled Mecca and Medina. The Jewish tribes who had resisted him were dead, expelled, or paying tribute. Pagan idols lay smashed. Christian and Jewish communities on the fringes were signing jizya agreements. Delegations from across Arabia came to Medina to pledge loyalty, often out of fear more than conviction.

Islamic tradition wraps these last years in a glow of sanctity: the “Farewell Sermon,” the perfect completion of religion, the Prophet’s gentle departure after a life of mercy. In the same breath, however, those same sources admit hard facts they cannot erase: a marriage consummated with a nine-year-old girl, a household full of wives and concubines, legal sanction of temporary sex unions, a failed poisoning that left lingering pain, a death marked by delirium and the cry “I feel my aorta being cut,” and final curses against Jews and Christians.

This chapter does not repeat the idealized legend. It traces what the earliest Muslim reports themselves say about Muhammad’s last period: the scandal around Aisha’s necklace and the push toward stricter veiling, the consummation of a child marriage that later Muslim scholars tried to normalize, his appetite for muta and concubines, the poisonous lamb at Khaybar that he himself linked to his fatal sickness, his agonizing final days, and his last words cursing those who honored the graves of prophets.

Measured against Jehovah’s revelation and the character of Christ, these final scenes expose the true nature of Muhammad’s “prophethood.” He did not finish in holiness and love. He ended as he had lived: entangled in sex, power, and violence, claiming new “revelations” whenever his reputation or desires were at stake.

Aisha’s Necklace Scandal and the Hijab Revelation

Aisha bint Abu Bakr is one of the most important figures in Islamic tradition. She is presented as Muhammad’s favorite wife, the “Mother of the Believers,” a sharp mind, and a source of countless hadith. Yet the same sources that praise her preserve an episode that nearly destroyed her reputation and forced Muhammad once again to bring new “revelation” tailored to his personal crisis.

The so-called “necklace scandal” occurred after Muhammad had already consummated his marriage with Aisha. On a campaign—often associated with the expedition against Banu Mustaliq—Aisha accompanied him. On the return journey, the army halted at night. Aisha left the camp briefly to relieve herself and, on returning, noticed her onyx necklace was missing. She went back to search for it. While she was away, the men responsible for carrying her howdah (litter) assumed she was inside, lifted it onto the camel, and the column departed before dawn.

When Aisha returned to the campsite, the army was gone. Alone in the desert, she decided to remain where she was, reasoning that once her absence was noticed, someone would come back. She lay down and fell asleep. In the morning, a young man named Safwan ibn al-Mu‘attal, who had been traveling behind the army, came upon the scene. Recognizing her, he exclaimed “Inna lillah…” and offered his camel. She mounted, and he led the animal silently until they reached the army at midday.

The sight of the Prophet’s wife arriving later in the company of a young man was enough to ignite scandal. Hypocrites and opportunists in Medina began whispering that Aisha had committed adultery. Chief among them, according to the sources, was Abdullah ibn Ubayy. The rumor spread. Even some sincere Muslims heard and repeated it. Aisha herself did not initially know. She fell ill shortly after returning and noticed only that Muhammad was distant and that her parents seemed troubled.

When she finally learned of the gossip, she went to her parents’ home in shock. For roughly a month, Muhammad received no “revelation” to clear the matter. He visited Aisha and, instead of affirming her innocence, delivered a cold speech: if she had done wrong, she should repent; if she was innocent, Allah would clear her. In other words, he publicly refused to take his young wife’s side on the basis of personal knowledge and character. He waited for a convenient word from above.

Only after this long period did verses arrive—now preserved in Surah 24—declaring Aisha innocent, condemning the slanderers, and setting out penalties for those who accuse chaste women without four witnesses. The tone of these verses is defensive and angry. They insist that the slanderers are cursed and that those who believe the rumors show corrupted hearts. They also conveniently exonerate Muhammad, who had hesitated and allowed his wife to suffer in limbo rather than trust her testimony.

Connected to this climate of scandal and suspicion was an increased emphasis on veiling and seclusion. The earlier hijab revelation had already ordered the Prophet’s wives to speak to men from behind a screen and had introduced the idea of special barriers around Muhammad’s household. After the necklace incident, the logic extended: if an innocent girl could be accused so easily simply by being seen with a man, then women must be further separated from public life to avoid “fitna.”

From a biblical perspective, this is a tragic distortion. Jehovah’s Law calls for careful investigation of accusations, protection for the innocent, and punishment of malicious witnesses. The Lord Jesus showed trust and compassion toward women whom society suspected—such as the woman accused of adultery or the Samaritan at the well—using their cases to expose male hypocrisy and offer forgiveness. He did not respond to gossip by locking women away or forcing them to cover more of their bodies.

Muhammad’s response went the other way. The scandal around Aisha did not lead him to rebuke those who objectified her or to examine his own behavior. Instead, he produced verses that shielded his reputation, punished some slanderers, and reinforced a system in which the burden of preventing sexual accusations fell overwhelmingly on women: veil more, stay out of sight, lower your voice, hide your form. The necklace incident thus contributed to the long-term culture of veiling and seclusion that has left millions of Muslim women constrained, not liberated.

The episode also foreshadows his death: once again, a crisis in his immediate circle is resolved not by humility or open repentance, but by “revelation” that happens to vindicate him and reshape law to his advantage.

Marriage to Nine-Year-Old Aisha Consummated

Islamic sources are remarkably frank about Aisha’s age. Multiple hadith collections record her saying that Muhammad married her when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. Scholars of every major Sunni school accepted this for centuries. Only in recent times, under modern moral scrutiny, have some Muslim writers tried to argue for a higher age, against their own tradition.

We must be clear about what this means. Muhammad was in his early fifties when he married her on paper, and in his mid-fifties when he took her to his bed. He already had other wives. He was not a lonely widower seeking companionship. He was a powerful leader, able to choose any number of adult women. Instead, he chose a child.

The consummation is described in terms meant to normalize it. Aisha says she was playing with dolls when the women of Medina came and prepared her, that she was brought to Muhammad’s house, that he smiled, and that he loved her more than the others. Later anecdotes depict her jealousy, wit, and favored status. All of this is told to Muslim readers as charming domestic detail.

The reality is horrific. A nine-year-old girl has not finished physical development, let alone emotional maturity, for marriage. She is not capable of informed consent. She looks to adults for protection, not for sexual demands. Any modern man who took a nine-year-old to his bed would be rightly branded a predator and imprisoned. When the man in question also claims to be the final prophet of the Creator, the moral offense is even greater.

Defenders of Muhammad argue that child marriage was common in seventh-century Arabia, that girls matured earlier, that it was culturally acceptable. Even if we granted the cultural claim, it would not rescue his character. A true prophet is not a mirror of his culture at its worst points. He confronts its sins with Jehovah’s holiness. The God who revealed Himself in the Scriptures forbade Israelite kings from multiplying wives and warned against exploiting the vulnerable. The Lord Jesus treated children as precious, placing them in the midst of His disciples and warning that anyone who causes one of these little ones to stumble would be better off drowned in the sea.

Muhammad did the opposite. He took a child entrusted to him by his closest companion, Abu Bakr, and entered into a sexual relationship with her once she reached nine. The fact that his community later glorified Aisha and used her testimony to shape Islamic law does not erase the underlying truth: their prophet set a precedent that has been used ever since to justify marrying pre-pubescent or barely pubescent girls wherever sharia is taken seriously.

This matters deeply in evaluating his claim to speak for Jehovah. A God of absolute purity does not send a man to the world whose behavior toward children violates basic human conscience. The contrast with Christ, who never married at all and whose relationships with women and children were marked by respect, is stark. Muhammad’s consummation of marriage with Aisha remains one of the clearest proofs that his moral compass was not guided by the Holy Spirit but by the customs and desires of a fallen man.

Muta, Concubines, and “Whoever Has the Most Wives Wins Paradise”

Muhammad’s sexual life did not stop with permanent wives. Islamic sources are clear that he also engaged in muta (temporary marriage) at points, kept concubines, and explicitly authorized his followers to do the same. Taken together, these practices created a culture in which male sexual appetite was regularized and made part of religious reward.

Muta was a form of contractual union for a fixed period. A man and woman agreed to be “married” for a specified time—days, weeks, months—and then separated without full divorce procedures. Payment was part of the arrangement. Early Muslim reports admit that muta was practiced among Muhammad’s companions during campaigns when they were away from their wives. Some traditions have Muhammad permitting it temporarily and later prohibiting it; others are more ambiguous. Regardless of the internal debates, the historical fact remains that the Prophet of Islam sanctioned a form of legalized prostitution under the label of marriage.

Concubinage was even more entrenched. Women captured in war—whether at Banu Qurayza, Khaybar, Hunayn, or elsewhere—could be used sexually by their captors once their wombs were declared empty. The Qur’an’s phrase “those whom your right hands possess” was interpreted as a blanket permission. Muhammad himself took at least two well-known concubines from captives: Mariya the Copt, given to him from Egypt, and Rayhana of Banu Qurayza, whose male relatives he had overseen being beheaded. Neither had the status of full wives; both were available to him sexually because they were slaves.

Alongside this, he maintained a growing roster of wives: Khadija first, then Sawda, Aisha, Hafsa, Zaynab bint Jahsh (after engineering her divorce from his adopted son), Umm Salama, Juwayriya, Safiyya, and others. At one point, according to the sources, he was allowed by “revelation” to rearrange the order in which he visited them and to keep or drop whom he wished, a privilege granted to him alone. He was also allegedly given the exclusive right to marry more than four women at once, whereas his followers were restricted.

Some traditions go further, promising increased reward for those who have more wives or who treat their wives in certain ways, turning marital quantity and management into a factor in paradise. The mindset that emerged was simple: in this life, a believing man could have up to four wives plus any number of concubines, and temporary unions were at times acceptable; in the next life, he was promised even more sexual pleasure in the form of houris. Islam thus spiritualized male sexual desire and built it into the architecture of reward.

From Jehovah’s revealed standard, this is corruption, not holiness. In the beginning, God created marriage as a one-flesh union between one man and one woman. The Old Testament records polygamy among patriarchs and kings, but never endorses it as ideal; it consistently shows the jealousy, strife, and heartbreak that result. The Lord Jesus cut through all compromise, pointing back to creation and saying that from the beginning it was not so: two become one flesh; what God joins, man must not separate. He elevated faithfulness within monogamy and spoke of those who remain single for the sake of the Kingdom, offering themselves entirely to Jehovah’s service.

Muhammad, instead of calling men up to this standard, accommodated and codified their lust. The result has been centuries of suffering for women treated as one among many, for slave girls used without covenant, and for children born into houses where their mother’s status was lower because she was concubine, not wife. When combined with child marriage, the picture darkens further. A system that tells men “the more wives, the more sex, the more reward,” and that lets captives and minors fill those roles, cannot claim to reflect the character of the Holy One of Israel.

The Jewish Woman of Khaybar Poisons the Lamb

Several years before his final sickness, Muhammad participated in an event that he himself later linked to his death: the poisoning at Khaybar.

After expelling and slaughtering Jewish tribes around Medina, Muhammad marched against Khaybar, a rich oasis north of the city that had become a refuge for many exiles. The siege ended with Muslim victory, forced tribute, and the seizure of land, goods, and people. Among the captives was a woman named Safiyya, whom Muhammad took as wife after killing her husband. Another Jewish woman, Zaynab bint al-Harith, chose a different response.

Zaynab prepared a roasted lamb and laced it with poison, concentrating the poison in the shoulder, Muhammad’s favorite part. She then sent it as a gift, pretending to honor the new overlord. Muhammad began to eat. One companion, Bishr ibn al-Bara’, ate more. According to the sources, before Muhammad swallowed much, the meat “spoke” or his inner sense warned him that it was poisoned, so he spat it out. Bishr, however, had already ingested enough to become fatally ill and soon died.

When the plot was uncovered, Zaynab was brought before Muhammad. She admitted what she had done, explaining that she wanted to see: if he were truly a prophet, the poison would not harm him; if he were a fraud, she would rid her people of him. Faced with this reasoning, Muhammad first refrained from killing her, according to some reports, saying that he would not execute her because he had not fully swallowed the meat. Later, after Bishr’s death, other accounts say she was put to death in retribution.

The key detail comes later. As Muhammad’s final sickness worsened, he is reported to have said, “I still feel the pain from the food I ate at Khaybar, and at this time my aorta is being cut because of that poison.” In other words, he attributed his agonizing condition to a slow-acting consequence of the lamb. Whether medically accurate or not, that is how he interpreted it.

The irony is deep. The Qur’an itself contains a passage where Allah warns that if Muhammad had forged sayings and claimed they were revelation, He would seize him and cut his aorta. Muslim commentators struggle to explain this in light of Muhammad’s own deathbed statement. Here we have a prophet who claims that his “aorta is being cut” by poison prepared by a Jewish woman whom he had conquered and whose people he had subjugated. The very sign of divine judgment in the Qur’an appears, by his own confession, in his body.

From Jehovah’s perspective, one does not build doctrine on poisoning scenes. But this incident fits a larger pattern. Muhammad brought violence and dispossession upon the Jews of Khaybar. A woman retaliated by trying to kill him. He escaped immediate death, but a loyal follower did not. Later he saw his prolonged agony as linked to that act. The just response would have been to recognize that his own aggression had provoked hatred and to reassess his path. Instead he persisted in his course, returning to Mecca, leading further campaigns, and only at the very end of his life acknowledging the poison’s bite.

Three Days of Delirium and Pain: “I Feel My Aorta Being Cut”

Muhammad’s final illness struck not long after the Farewell Pilgrimage, in which he had proclaimed that he had conveyed the message and perfected the religion. Back in Medina, he began to suffer intense headaches and fever. His pain was so severe that he asked his wives to allow him to stay in Aisha’s room, where he spent his last days.

The hadiths paint a picture of a man in extreme distress. He was wrapped in cloths, his body burning. At times he asked that water be poured over him so that he could address people in the mosque despite the fever. When he tried to stand and walk, he had to be supported on both sides by men—some accounts say by ‘Ali and ‘Abbas, others by different companions. His feet dragged on the ground.

In the midst of this, he complained repeatedly of the pain in his chest and side, linking it to the Khaybar poison. “I feel my aorta being cut,” he said, using the very image the Qur’an associated with divine punishment on a false prophet. He drifted in and out of consciousness. At points he cursed those who had turned graves into places of worship. At other times he expressed frustration with his followers’ disunity, warning them not to idolize him.

For several days this continued: intense fever, headaches, delirium. Aisha tried to comfort him, reciting prayers and verses. Others came to visit. Factions within the community quietly maneuvered, each wondering who would rule when he died. There was no clear, written instruction designating a successor.

In these final hours, we see none of the serenity and sacrificial love that marked Christ’s path to the torture stake. The Lord Jesus, facing death, spoke clear, composed words of comfort to His disciples, prayed for His enemies, and willingly laid down His life, trusting Jehovah completely. His suffering was real, but it was embraced as atonement. He did not complain that His heart was being cut because of someone else’s poison; He proclaimed that no one took His life from Him, but that He Himself laid it down.

Muhammad, by contrast, endured a degrading sickness he attributed to an enemy’s attempt to kill him. His followers’ accounts stress his pain and confusion. His repeated statement about his aorta shows a man aware that his body was failing in a way that resonated disturbingly with a Qur’anic warning. There is no sense of voluntary sacrifice for others. His death is not the climax of redemptive love; it is the collapse of a mortal leader under the cumulative weight of his choices.

Last Words: Cursing Christians and Jews from the Grave

What of Muhammad’s final words? Islamic traditions preserve several themes. One of the most striking is his curse on Jews and Christians for honoring the graves of prophets and righteous men.

Aisha reports that in his last moments he said, “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians; they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship.” She explains that he warned against this so that his own grave would not be turned into an idol. Other reports mention him repeating this curse while leaning against her, just before he died.

We should notice several things.

First, his last recorded public sentiment toward Jews and Christians is not a call to them to repent and believe, nor a prayer that Jehovah would show them mercy, but a curse. After a life spent attacking Jews around Medina and extracting tribute from Christians, he dies denouncing them for a practice that, in itself, is indeed wrong—turning graves into shrines—but without any balancing word of love or hope. His attitude is consistent: they are enemies whose religious behavior deserves condemnation.

Second, his fear that his grave would become an idol betrays an awareness that the religion he founded had a strong pull toward venerating him. Indeed, within generations, Muslims would flock to Medina to visit his tomb, pray at it, and seek blessing. Even when jurists tried to restrain extreme forms of tomb-veneration, the emotional attachment persisted. He was right to worry, but the remedy Jehovah provides in the Gospel is not to curse others; it is to lift up Christ alone as the focus of worship and to remind believers that all human leaders are mere servants.

Third, contrasted with the final words of Christ and His faithful apostles, Muhammad’s last words ring hollow. Jesus prayed, “Father, into Your hands I entrust My spirit,” and “It is finished,” completing the work of atonement. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, cried, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Paul faced death saying he had finished the race and was ready to be poured out, looking forward to the crown of righteousness. Their focus was on Jehovah’s grace, the hope of resurrection, and even mercy for their killers.

Muhammad’s focus, by the report of his own wife, was on cursing religious rivals and worrying about how people would treat his grave.

This is the man billions are told to follow as the final and greatest prophet, the seal of messengers. Yet at the crucial moments—sexual ethics, treatment of enemies, handling of power, and even final words—his life and death stand in sharp opposition to the holiness and love revealed in Jehovah’s Word and in Jesus Christ. His marriage to a nine-year-old, his use of muta and concubines, his involvement in genocidal violence, his link of his own death to poisoning, and his last curses from the sickbed all testify that whatever spirit drove his mission, it was not the Spirit of the living God.

For those seeking the truth, Muhammad’s end should be decisive. A tree is known by its fruit. The fruit of his life—seen most clearly as he approached the grave—is not the fruit of the Spirit described in Scripture. It is the bitter harvest of a man who built an earthly empire in Jehovah’s name while contradicting Jehovah’s character at every crucial point.

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