Daniel Pipes: Back in the News: The Treaty of Hudaybiya
October 16, 2003
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/106

Back in the News: The Treaty of Hudaybiya. Yasir Arafat somewhat cryptically
mentioned the Treaty of Hudaybiya in a 1994 speech in South Africa while
discussing his views of the Oslo Accord ("I see this agreement as being no
more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh
in Mecca.") and this reference prompted years of speculation about his
intentions. Iin 1999, I took up the issue in "Lessons from the Prophet
Muhammad's Diplomacy,"
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/316 in which I reviewed the
historiography of the prophet's life, the treaty itself, modern assessments
of it, and the post-1994 controversy about Arafat's reference. My key
conclusion:

The Hudaybiya precedent implies that Arafat can choose any lapse or
transgression [in the Oslo Accord] . and turn this into a casus belli for an
all-out attack on the Jewish state.

The treaty is back in the news today with a prominent mention in Malaysian
prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's opening speech to the Organization of the
Islamic Conference http://www.pmo.gov.my/website/webdb.nsf/fsEngMain - the
same one in which he flaunted his antisemitism. Mahathir broods on how
Muslims can defeat Jews and suggests that the prophet's career "can provide
us with some guidance as to what we can and should do." He then goes on (and
I quote the official text, changing only some transliterations to make them
more standard):

We know he and his early followers were oppressed by the Quraysh [tribe].
Did he launch retaliatory strikes? No. He was prepared to make strategic
retreats. He sent his early followers to a Christian country and he himself
later migrated to Medina. There he gathered followers, built up his defence
capability and ensured the security of his people. At Hudaybiya he was
prepared to accept an unfair treaty, against the wishes of his companions
and followers. During the peace that followed he consolidated his strength
and eventually he was able to enter Mecca and claim it for Islam. Even then
he did not seek revenge. And the peoples of Mecca accepted Islam and many
became his most powerful supporters, defending the Muslims against all their
enemies.

From this, Mahathir concludes that Muslims today are making a mistake.

We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the
enemy because they hurt us. Naively we expect them to surrender. We
sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more
massive retaliation and humiliation.
He takes up the case of Israel to illustrate his point.

For well over half a century we have fought over Palestine. What have we
achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before. If we had paused to think
then we could have devised a plan, a strategy that can win us final victory.
Pausing and thinking calmly is not a waste of time. We have a need to make a
strategic retreat and to calmly assess our situation.
The key to the situation, he argues, is to find non-Muslim allies and then
declare a Hudaybiya-like truce:

We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are well disposed
towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews
there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing. We must
not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win
them to our side not by begging for help from them but by the honourable way
that we struggle to help ourselves. We must not strengthen the enemy by
pushing everyone into their camps through irresponsible and unIslamic
acts. . We need only to call a truce so we can act together in tackling only
certain problems of common interests, the Palestine problem for example.

Mahathir concludes with this bit of cleverness:

The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for peace we must react
positively. True the treaty offered is not favourable to us. But we can
negotiate. The Prophet did, at Hudaybiya. And in the end he triumphed.

Translated into policy terms, Mahathir seems to be advising the Palestinians
to accept any interim terms Israel's government offers, bide their time,
consolidate their strength, and then "triumph." (October 16, 2003)