When the Prophet Muhammad marched from Badr with his troops, they took the prisoners with them. They stopped at a place called Al-Uthayl, where the Prophet looked at all the prisoners.

When he saw among them Al-Nadr ibn Al-Harith, his look struck fear into Al-Nadr's heart. The latter said to the man next to him: "By God, Muhammad will surely kill me. He looked at me with an eye full of death."

The man said: "He would not kill you; you are only scared."

Al-Nadr, however, had good reasons for his fears. He therefore started to look around for someone who might put in a good word for him. He tried with Musab ibn Umair, who was his relative: "Plead for me with your crony so that he may apply to me the same treatment as the rest of the Quraish prisoners. He will certainly kill me unless you do."

Musab said: "You used to speak ill of God's Book and His Messenger, claiming that the Quran was 'legends of the ancients' and that the Prophet was a liar. You used to inflict torture on Muslims." 

Nevertheless, Al-Nadr continued to plead with Musab: "Had you fallen prisoner to the Quraish, they would never have killed you while I was alive."

Musab answered: "I do not believe you. But then, I am not like you. I am a Muslim. My adoption of Islam means that all my other ties have been severed."

Indeed, Al-Nadr was not the sort of enemy anyone would wish to spare. He literally did all he could to turn people away from Islam, inflicting great torture on anyone upon whom he could lay his hands.

He started a propaganda campaign against Islam. Whenever the Prophet addressed a group of people and read a passage from the Quran to them, he would come and sit in the Prophet's place and say: "Do not listen to Muhammad. What he claims to be Divine revelations is nothing but some legends of the ancients.I have a book better than his!”

He would go on and tell them of the histories of ancient empires. His campaign of smear and defamation was effective with some people. His allegations about the Quran are referred to no fewer than eight times in the Divine Book.

For all this, the Prophet gave his command that Al-Nadr be beheaded.

Another prisoner, Uqbah ibn Abu Muayt, was also killed on the Prophet's order when he reached a place calledIrq Al-Zaybah.The Prophet pointed out to his Companions some of the crimes the man had perpetrated.

He said: "As I prostrated in my prayers once in the Mosque, he put his foot over my neck and pressed hard. He did not release me until I felt my eyes would come out of my face. On another occasion, he threw over my head the stomach of a dead sheep while I was praying. Fatimah came to wash it off my head."

Kind Treatment of Prisoners of War

When the Prophet Muhammad arrived in Madinah, he assigned the prisoners to various groups of his companions and asked them to look after them well. That meant, in effect, that the prisoners received the sort of treatment no prisoners of war could have expected or even dreamt of.

Abu Aziz ibn Umair, who was among them, reported: "I was assigned to a group of the Ansar.When they laid out their lunch or dinner, they would give me the bread, while they themselves ate dates without bread."

Dates were the most common food in Madinah, while bread was not always available. Bread is also filling; thus, someone who ate bread would not feel the pangs of hunger like someone who ate only dates.

Ibn Umair continued: "This was because of the Prophet's instructions to them. Every time any one of them had a piece of bread he would give it to me. Sometimes I felt embarrassed by theirhospitality and I gave the bread to any one of them who was around. He would return it without taking a single bite."

This was the sort of treatment Prophet Muhammad's prisoners received. The only reason for this noble treatment was that the Muslims did not go into war in the first place for any material or military gain.

Their objective in war was the same as their objective in peace: to make their message known to other people and to remove all obstaclesthat prevented people from accepting it.

The Quraish's military might was one such obstacle. When the Quraish came out in a demonstration of strength which, if successful, would have prevented many people from even listening to the message of Islam with open minds, then that exercise had to be challenged and smashed, even if that meant killing people who were very close relatives.

But when that immediate objective had been achieved and the Quraish army retreated in defeat, those who were taken prisoner would receive kind treatment because they could not, in their position, cause the Muslims any harm. Indeed, the Muslims looked on them as people who could become believers, if they were to know what Islam was all about.

One very important characteristic of the religion of Islam is that it teaches its followers to evaluate every situation within its own perspective. During the battle, and when the Muslims started to take prisoners from among the unbelievers, the same man who reported the type of treatment he and the rest of the prisoners received, Abu Aziz ibn Umair, was seen by his brother, Musab, a Companion ofthe Prophet, when a man from the Ansar was taking him captive.

Musabdrew near and said to the Ansari man: "Hold him tight. His mother is wealthy. She may pay you a generous ransom." In this case, Musab was pointing out something in the interest of the Muslim community.

His kinship with his brother was then of little importance. When the battle was over, the course of action which served the interests of Islam was to treat the prisoners well so that their hostility to Islam would be at least reduced, if not totally removed.

The immediate problem which had to be resolved when the Prophet (peace be upon him) arrived in Madinah after his victory in Badr was that of the prisoners of war.

Apart from the two who were killed because of their active hostility to Islam and the Prophet, all the prisoners of war were treated well. The Quraish were expectedto send for their release and a decision had to be taken on what to

do with them.

Back in Makkah, the Quraish leaders tried to put on a brave face. They instructed everyone not to cry in public over their relatives killed at Badr. They also decided not to rush to the Prophet with offers of ransom to obtain the release of their men who had been taken prisoner in order not to be asked to pay hefty sums of money.

But sooner or late,r someone would have had to make a move to get their prisoners released. Al-Muttalib ibn Abi Wadaah was the first to go to Madinah to buy the release of his father.

Consultation Concerning the Prisoners

Meanwhile, the Prophet consulted his Companions on what to do with the prisoners of war. Abu Bakr said: "They are, Messenger of God, your own people and tribesmen. If you spare them and accept ransom from them, the ransom will be useful to us and they may, in time, realize that Islam is the truth and accept it."

When the Prophet asked Umar his opinion, he received a totally different suggestion. Umar said: "I suggest that you give me my relative to kill, and you allow Ali [ the Prophet's cousin] to kill his brother Aqil, and you let  Hamzah [the Prophet's uncle] kill his brother, so that we all demonstrate in front of God that we have no love or loyalty whatsoever to the unbelievers. These prisoners are their leaders."

Abdullah ibn Rawahah of the Ansar suggested that the prisoners should be thrown in a huge fire specially made for the purpose. The Prophet went into his rooms for a while. When he came out, he said: "God makes some hearts so soft that they are softer than milk, and He makes others even harder than stones."

He then likened Abu Bakr's attitude to that of Abraham and Jesus, who had taken a soft line towards their peoples. He also likened Umar's attitude to that of Noah and Moses, who invoked hard punishment for those who belied their messages.

In conclusion, he gave his ruling: "You are poor indeed. No prisoner of war may, therefore, be released without a ransom, otherwise he shall be beheaded." Thus the process of releasing the prisoners was started.

Some time later, when the prisoners were already released, the Prophet received new Quranicrevelations taking the Muslims to task for accepting ransom from their prisoners. The Quranmade it clear that, in the circumstances, putting the prisoners to death was the right course to follow. The relevant verses may be rendered in English as follows:

[It is not fit for a prophet that he should take captives unless he has fought and triumphed in the land; you desire the frail goods of this world, while Allah desires (for you) the hereafter; and Allah is Mighty, Wise.] (Al-Anfal 8:67)

8:67)

The message of these verses is very clear indeed. In the circumstances of the Muslims at that time, the prisoners should have been put to death. It is not difficult to discern the reasons which called for that line of action.

For one thing, Badr was the first major battle between the Muslims and the unbelievers. The Muslims were still a small minority in Arabia, while the non-believers heavily outnumbered them. Hence, to kill those captives who were physically strong and able to fight, would weaken the non-believers and contribute to their humiliation.

That would have made them think twice before making another attempt to settle their scores with the Muslims by resorting to war. Thus, it would have been a step towards ensuring the security of the Muslim community in Madinah. No ransom obtained for the release of those prisoners could have given the Muslims comparable results.

Another reason was that to which Umar had referred when he suggested that the captives should be put to death and that those among the Muslims who had relations among them should be the ones to carry out the death sentence on their relatives.

His argument was "that we all demonstrate in front of God that we have no love orloyalty whatsoever to the unbelievers." Such an attitude would have made the issues abundantly clear between the two camps.

It is for these two reasons that the Muslims were rebuked for preferring to take ransom from the captives in their first major battle: "You may desire the fleeting gains of this world, but God desires [for you the good of] the life to come: God is almighty, wise."

But then, according to Islam, it had been God's earlier decree that He would forgive the fighters of Badr all their errors. Hence no punishment was to be exacted from them.

Instead, Muslims believe that God, out of His grace, decided also to make the ransom they had taken, as well as the booty they gained, lawful for them. Such booty was forbidden to earlier nations which followed other prophets: "Now enjoy what you have gained as lawful and good."

Umar reported that he met the Prophet and Abu Bark with tears in their eyes. He asked why they were crying and said: "If I find that you are crying for a good reason, I will join you; if not, I will feign crying in sympathy."

The Prophet said: "We are crying for what your fellows have persuaded me to do: take ransom from the captives. I was made to see your approaching punishment closer than this tree."

One cannot but see the overriding reasons which called for a much tougher attitude over the prisoners of war, yet the fact that the Muslims made this error of judgment was not without benefit to them. They were spared killing more of their kinsmen and thus aggravating the feelings of hatred between them and their fellow tribesmen.

Moreover, at least sixteen of the prisoners were later to become Muslims and that, in itself, was a tremendous gain. It must be pointed out also that there were several relatives of the Prophet among the prisoners, such as his uncle Al-Abbas, his cousinAqil ibn Abu Talib, and his son-in-law Abu Al-Aas ibn Al-Rabi.

The Muslims would have hesitated to kill the Prophet's own relatives. Muslims cannot but sense that it was God's will to spare the Prophet the pain of having to kill his own relatives and to spare the Muslims the embarrassment of killing them, as well as the pain of killing their own people.