with the object of forcing Islām upon a people, why should women and children have been excepted? It would rather have been easier to win them over by holding the sword over their heads, because women and children naturally do not have the power to resist, like men who can fight. The fact that there is an express direction against killing three-fourths of the population, as women and children must be in every community, shows that the propagation of religion was far from being the object of these wars. In some ḥadīth the word ‘asīf is added to women and children, showing that there was also a prohibition against killing people who were taken along with the army as “labour units” (Ah. Ill, p. 488; IV, p. 178; AD. 15:112). There is yet another ḥadīth prohibiting the killing of shaikh fānī (very old man) who is unable to fight (MM. 18:5-ii). Monks were also not to be molested (Ah. I, p. 300). It was only in a night attack that the Holy Prophet excused the chance killing of a woman or child saying, “They are among them” (Bu. 56:146); what he meant was that it was a thing which could not be avoided, for at night children and women could not be distinguished from the soldiers.

The above examples may be supplemented by some others taken from Sayyid Amīr ‘Alī’s Spirit of Islam. The following instructions were given to the troops dispatched against the Byzantines by the Holy Prophet: “In avenging the injuries inflicted upon us, molest not the harmless inmates of domestic seclusion; spare the weakness of the female sex; injure not the infant at the breast, or those who are ill in bed. Abstain from demolishing the dwellings of the unresisting inhabitants; destroy not the means of their subsistence, nor their fruit trees; and touch not the palm” (p. 81). Abū Bakr gave the following instructions to the commander of an army in the Syrian battle: “When you meet your enemies acquit yourselves like men, and do not turn your backs; and if you gain the victory, kill not the little children, nor old people, nor women. Destroy no palm trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill for the necessity of subsistence. When you make any covenant or article, stand by it, and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons that live retired in monasteries, who propose themselves to serve God that way. Let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy their monasteries” (p. 81).