Comments: "Khaybar and a historical question"

Forum Comments:

Khaybar and a historical question

Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq
Associate Professor of Economics and Finance
Upper Iowa University

IBF-Net; 08/06/06; Message #5418

[Note: To access the messages to which my comments were in reply, one may need to subscribe to the respective forum.]

Salam and greetings.

I have been reading a recently published book edited by Abdulkader Thomas [Interest in Islamic Economics: Understanding Riba, publisher: Routledge].

In the chapter "What is Riba?" the author wrote:

"Following the conquest of Khaybar, the Muslim soldiers exchanged gold coins for gold bullion with the departing Jews. In appeared that some soldiers took advantage of the Jews, extracting those bullion for the minted gold than the price of gold by its weight. ... Foremost, the situation at Khaybar raised the problem of some of the Muslim soldiers being unfair, and the Jews uncomplaining because the victorious Muslims were armed and Jews feeling obliged to accept what they knew to be an unfair exchange." [p. 128]

None of the hadith that I have come across mentions, explicitly or implicitly, that Muslims were being unfair there, which became the context of this Prophetic injunction. Unfortunately, in such a book published by a leading academic publisher, the author did not provide any reference for this.

I could be wrong, but the understanding I have is just the opposite. It that particular context where Muslims just had availed a lot of war booties were at a disadvantage in securing fair market value. So, the hadith in the context of Khaybar was to protect the Muslims in that context and lay out the principle toward fairness in that type of transactions for all. Allamah Iqbal Ahmad Khan SUHAIL in his book What is Riba? [New Delhi, India: Pharos, 1999] explained the historical context of these transactions of Khaybar. He also referred to Al-Tahawi, a major classical scholar (d. 321 AH), and wrote:

The object of the order was only that Muslims should not suffer losses in selling the booty. ... Allamah al-Tahawi, a muhaddith of a very high stature and one of the pillars of the Hanafi fiqh, says that the reason for this instruction was (so that Muslims should not be cheated in their trading). [Suhail, p. 61]

Maybe the author or someone else who has some pertinent information about it can shed some light.

Thanks in advance.

[The readers might be interested in reading the reply of Abdulkader Thomas, a well known expert in Islamic finance.] Message #5460

"Was everybody in Madina a saint? Finally, our rash researcher worries that the companions have been impugned by the context given for one of the hadith. But, the reality is that our beloved Prophet, peace be upon him, was sent to humanity; the Noble Quran and hadith alike discuss hypocrites and others with flaws in the Muslim community. If one is upset that some soldiers might have sought to take advantage of a people about to be exiled, what would one say about soldiers who abandon their position for fear of not getting booty, allowing the enemy to escape defeat and wound the Prophet? I hope that our researcher would not deny the events of the Battle of Uhud because they demonstrate that some companions did not behave in an ideal manner (i.e., they disobeyed orders). I will not extend the philosophical argument further than to say that Islam is more compelling because the Holy Quran was revealed to the Prophet as he lived in the context of true humanity, amongst people of great character as well as people with great flaws."