TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

in order of the number of casualties or by the duration of battles in history, the armed conflicts that the Prophet Muhammad and his people were forced to engage in, do not even figure in the records. Before the Prophet's birth, there was an ongoing conflict between two major tribes of Madinah, the Aws and the Khazraj. It is said that this war continued for 120 years and thousands of people perished in these battles, the prominent one of which was known by the name of Battle of Buath. (Ibn Ishaq) As a comparison here are some details of some of the famous battles in the history of humankind1. Battle / War Period Duration Casualties World War I 1914 – 1918 4 years Over 15 million World War II 1939 – 1945 6 years About 65 million American Civil War 1861 – 1865 4 years About 500,000 Iran Iraq War 1980 – 1988 8 years Over 500,000 Battle of Waterloo 18 Jun 1815 1 day 47,000 Battle of Panipat 14 Jan 1761 1 day Over 100,000 Gulf War Aug 1990–Feb 1991 7 months 25,000 Iraq War Mar 2003–Dec 2011 8 ½ years 35,000 In comparison to the above sampling of battles from history, the defensive battles fought by the Prophet were those at Badr, Uhud and Hunain. The combined total duration of actual fighting was equivalent to only 1½ days2. The total number of casualties in all these battles was 1,018. Because of a lack of objective understanding of the Prophet's life, Muslim biographers have misrepresented the facts by ignoring the prevailing customs and culture of the time. Due to this, their writings about the Prophet's life show a war-like pattern. On the other hand, non-Muslim biographers of the Prophet have adopted a different approach. These people have largely ignored the main events of the Prophet’s life choosing to focus on a few, exceptional incidents that 1. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_by_casualties 2. Battle of Badr (morning to noon) ~6 hrs; Battle of Uhud (one day) ~12 hrs; Battle of Hunain (one day) ~12 hrs