Life-of-Muhammad

Life of Muhammad sa 103
considerable losses. They had lost only a few men. In
less than a year's time they could have come and
attacked Medina again and with even better
preparations. Instead of any army of twenty thousand
they could have raised for a new attack an army of forty,
or even fifty, thousand. An army numbering a hundred
or a hundred and fifty thousand was not beyond their
capacity. But now for twenty-one years, the enemies of
Islam had done their utmost to extirpate Islam and
Muslims. Continued failure of their plans had shaken
their confidence. They had begun to fear that what the
Prophet sa taught was true, and that their national idols
and gods were false, that the Creator was the One
Invisible God taught by the Prophet sa . The fear that the
Prophet sa was right and they wrong had begun to creep
upon them. There was no outward sign of this fear,
however. Physically, the disbelievers went about as they
had always done. They went to their idols and prayed to
them as national custom required. But their spirit was
broken. Outwardly they lived the lives of pagans and
disbelievers; inwardly their hearts seemed to echo the
Muslim slogan, 'There is no God but Allah.'
After the Battle of the Ditch the Prophet sa , as we have
observed already, declared that henceforward
disbelievers would not attack Muslims but that, instead,
Muslims would attack disbelievers. Muslim endurance
had reached its limit. The tide was going to turn
(Bukhari, Kitabal Maghazi ).
DID THE PROPHET sa SEEK TO CONTINUE
WARFARE?
In the battles which had so far been fought, Muslims
had either remained in Medina or gone some distance
out of it to fight the aggression of disbelievers. Muslims
did not initiate these encounters, and showed no
disposition to continue them after they had started.
Normally hostilities once begun, can be ended in only