to be forgotten and not one individual of it was to be harmed, however guilty he may have been, unless in the words of the ḥadīth an obligation of Islām rendered punishment necessary. It does not mean that the Holy Prophet was commanded to wage war against people until they accepted Islām; it simply means, as a reference to the Holy Qur’ān shows, that he was commanded to cease fighting with the Muslims if they of their own accord embraced Islām. Even people who had been guilty of the murder of a Muslim were not to be put to death if they accepted Islām afterwards, and examples of this are mentioned in Ḥadīth (Bu. 56:28).
One such case may be cited here. “Miqdād ibn ‘Amr al-Kindī referred the following case to the Holy Prophet: I meet in battle a man from among the unbelievers and we two fight against each other; he cuts off one of my hands with his sword, then he takes the shelter of a tree and says, I submit (aslamtu) to Allāh; can I kill him, O Messenger of Allāh, after he has spoken those words? The Holy Prophet said, Do not kill him. But, I said, he has cut off one of my hands, O Prophet! and then he says this after he has cut it off. The Holy Prophet said, Do not kill him, for if thou killest him, he is in thy place before thou didst kill him, and thou art in his place before he uttered those words which he spoke” (Bu. 64 :12). This shows that the Holy Prophet had given definite orders, which were known to his Companions, that fighting should immediately cease when the person or tribe fighting declared Islām. It is in this light that the ḥadīth under discussion has to be read, viz., that the Holy Prophet had been commanded to cease war when an enemy at war with him professed Islām. Numerous examples of this are met with in the history of the Holy Prophet’s wars, but there is not a single instance in which he declared war against a peaceful neighbour because that neighbour was not a believer in Islām.
The fact that treaties and agreements were entered into by the Holy Prophet with polytheists (mushrikīn) and the Jews and the Christians is proof that the word people used in the ḥadīth stands for particular tribes which, as the Holy Qur’ān shows, violated their treaties again and again. If there had been any commandment like that which it is sought to deduce from this ḥadīth, the Holy Prophet would have been the first man to act on it. But he always made peace