Assassination of Poets and Critics — Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, Asma bint Marwan
These hadith and sira reports document a pattern in Muhammad's career: the targeted assassination of poets and public critics. The assassinations were carried out either by direct prophetic order or by Companions acting on Muhammad's expressed displeasure with the critic.
The most well-attested case is Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, a half-Jewish, half-Arab poet of Medina who composed verses mocking Muhammad after the Battle of Badr (which celebrated Quraysh casualties). Muhammad publicly asked his Companions, 'Who will rid me of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf?' Muhammad ibn Maslama volunteered, requested permission to deceive Ka'b ('lie to him'), and was given that permission. The assassins approached Ka'b by night under pretence of borrowing money, and killed him by deception. The hadith preserves the deception explicitly. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956) — the most sympathetic major Western biography of Muhammad — accepts the historicity of the killing while minimising its moral weight, reflecting how even favourable scholarship cannot deny the event occurred. Uri Rubin's academic study, 'The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf,' Oriens, vol. 32 (1990), pp. 65–71, confirms the narrative's solid transmission history and examines its role in establishing precedent for early Medinan politics.
Asma bint Marwan, a poetess of Medina, composed verses criticising Muhammad and the Muslims. She was killed in her own home, in her bed, while nursing her infant. Muhammad's reported reaction was indifferent or approving. The account appears in Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, preserved in Ibn Hisham, translated by A. Guillaume as The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 675, and corroborated by Ibn Saʿd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir.
Abu ʿAfak, an aged Jewish man (reported as 120 years old, likely an exaggeration but indicating advanced age), composed similar critical verses. He was assassinated. Muhammad's reaction was approving. Both he and Asma appear in Ibn Ishaq's account (Guillaume trans., p. 675) and in Ibn Saʿd's Tabaqat.
Various other targets are reported in the sira literature: ʿAbdullah ibn Abi Sarh (a former scribe who left Islam and was nearly assassinated, escaping by Uthman's intervention), al-Nadr ibn al-Harith (executed after capture), ʿUqba ibn Abi Muʿayt (executed after capture), and others.
The ethical analysis:
1. Targeted killing of speech offenses. The targets were not military enemies engaged in combat; they were people who composed verses critical of Muhammad. The killings were responses to speech, not to violence.
2. Killing through deception. The Ka'b assassination explicitly used deception: the assassin asked Muhammad's permission to lie to Ka'b, and Muhammad granted it. This established a precedent that deception is permissible when killing enemies of Islam — a precedent later codified in classical fiqh (the principle that 'war is deception,' al-ḥarb khudʿa).
3. Killing of women and elderly. Asma bint Marwan was a woman; Abu ʿAfak was elderly. Both were non-combatants. Their killings violate even the limited protections classical Islamic law claims to provide for non-combatants. The targets were vulnerable critics, killed in their homes.
4. The pattern of speech-control. The cumulative pattern is one of suppressing criticism of Muhammad through assassination. The message to other potential critics was unmistakable: composing verses against Muhammad meant death. This is a classic mechanism of authoritarian control — extra-judicial elimination of dissident voices.
5. Modern resonance. The assassination of critics has continued in Islamic history: the Salman Rushdie fatwa (Khomeini 1989), the murder of Theo van Gogh (2004), the Charlie Hebdo killings (2015), the Samuel Paty murder (2020), and many others. These modern killings cite the early Muslim assassinations as foundational precedent. Fatwas authorising the killings frequently invoke Muhammad's treatment of his critics. Robert Spencer, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion (Washington DC: Regnery, 2006), argues that the killing of critics is not an aberration but a constitutive precedent, deliberately continued by modern jihadists who read the sira carefully and imitate it.
5a. Classical legal codification. The assassinations provided the foundation for a developed doctrine of death for insulting the Prophet (sabb al-nabi), held by all four Sunni schools of law. The Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyyah's al-Sarim al-Maslul ʿala Shatim al-Rasul ('The Drawn Sword Against Those Who Insult the Messenger,' c. 1294 CE) codified the doctrine most explicitly, arguing that execution is mandatory for any insult to Muhammad regardless of repentance — a ruling directly traceable to the Medinan assassinations and preserved in operative fiqh to the present day. Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), provides a sober academic survey of how this classical doctrine — rooted in the early Medinan precedents — remained operative across the Ottoman period and into modern Islamic penal codes.
6. The Quranic context. Q 33:57 ('those who annoy Allah and His Messenger — Allah has cursed them in this world and the Hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment') and Q 33:60 (warning the 'hypocrites' that they will be 'taken and killed wherever they are found') provide Quranic support for the assassinations. The framework — that critics of Muhammad merit death — is present in both the Quran and the hadith.
- P1. Muslim 1801 (and Bukhari 4037) record Muhammad ordering the assassination of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, with explicit permission for the assassins to deceive Ka'b in carrying out the killing.
- P2. The sira literature records the assassinations of Asma bint Marwan, Abu ʿAfak, and others — all killed for composing critical verses about Muhammad. The primary source is Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (preserved in Ibn Hisham), trans. A. Guillaume as The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 675; corroborated by Ibn Saʿd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir.
- P3. The targets were non-combatants: poets, women, elderly men. Their offenses were speech, not violence.
- P4. The assassinations frequently used deception — lying to the target to gain access — with prophetic permission.
- P5. The pattern established a precedent for the lethal suppression of speech critical of Muhammad, codified in classical fiqh.
- P6. Modern Islamic killings of critics (Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Charlie Hebdo, Samuel Paty, etc.) cite these early assassinations as foundational warrant.
- P7. A morally serious revelation does not authorise the assassination of poets and elderly men for composing critical verses.
The pattern of assassinations of Muhammad's poet-critics is among the most ethically troubling in his biography. The killings were of non-combatants, for speech offenses, often through deception, sometimes targeting women and the elderly. The pattern is preserved in canonical hadith (Muslim 1801, Bukhari 4037) and in the foundational sira sources: Ibn Ishaq (trans. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, Oxford, 1955, p. 675) and Ibn Saʿd's Tabaqat. Uri Rubin's academic study, 'The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf,' Oriens, vol. 32 (1990), confirms the narrative's solid transmission history. The Quranic framework supports it (Q 33:57, 33:60). The killings were subsequently codified in classical jurisprudence: Ibn Taymiyyah's al-Sarim al-Maslul ʿala Shatim al-Rasul (c. 1294) made execution for insult to the Prophet a mandatory hadd crime across all Sunni schools. Robert Spencer, The Truth About Muhammad (Regnery, 2006), demonstrates that modern Islamic violence against critics — Rushdie, van Gogh, Charlie Hebdo, Paty — continues the same precedent in an unbroken line. Modern Muslim apologetic responses tend to deny specific incidents (Asma bint Marwan), justify others (Ka'b had military intelligence), or contextualise generally — but the cumulative pattern resists soft framing. This is the suppression of speech by violence, anchored in prophetic precedent and legal tradition.
Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf was a treaty-violator who incited military attack against the Muslims — his killing was lawful execution of a war criminal, not assassination of a critic.
Ka'b's actions, on the most charitable Muslim sources, included composing verses lamenting Quraysh casualties at Badr and possibly attempting to encourage Mecca's continued hostility. He was not in command of any military force, was not directly preparing an attack, and was killed by deception in his own home in Muslim-controlled Medina. Even on the most accusatory framing, his offenses were political-rhetorical, not military. The 'war criminal' framing is severely strained.
The Asma bint Marwan and Abu ʿAfak narratives are weak in chain — they appear in Ibn Ishaq's sira but lack stronger hadith authentication.
Ibn Ishaq is the foundational sira source — selectively dismissing him on embarrassing material is special pleading. The narratives appear in Ibn Ishaq (Guillaume trans., p. 675) and are corroborated in subsequent sira literature: Waqidi's Kitab al-Maghazi and Ibn Saʿd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956) — the most sympathetic major Western scholarly biography — accepts the Ka'b narrative as historical, and does not deny the broader assassination pattern. Calling the sira reports 'weak' requires downgrading the entire sira tradition on which Islamic biography depends. And even granting only Ka'b's case as solid, that single case — preserved in canonical hadith — establishes the precedent of assassinating critics.
Asma bint Marwan and Abu ʿAfak were inciting violence against the Muslims — their poetry was political incitement, not just criticism.
There is no record of either targeting a specific person for violence; their verses were general anti-Muhammad commentary. Conflating 'criticism' with 'incitement' is precisely the rhetorical move authoritarian regimes use to silence speech. By the same logic, any criticism of any leader could be reclassified as 'incitement.' The standard is too elastic to function as a legal limit.
The deception used in the Ka'b assassination is specifically the kind of tactical deception permissible in war — 'war is deception' is a recognised principle.
Tactical deception in active combat is distinct from deceiving a non-combatant in his home in order to kill him. The classical principle ('war is deception') has been used by classical jurists to justify a range of pre-modern tactics, but its extension to assassinating critics in their bedrooms is a stretch. Modern just-war theory does not permit such applications. And the broader principle being defended — that lying is permissible when killing enemies — is itself ethically problematic.
Modern Muslim violence against critics is not endorsed by mainstream Islam — the connection to Muhammad's actions is opportunistic.
The connection is direct: Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie cited classical sources on the killing of insulters of the Prophet. The killing of Theo van Gogh, Samuel Paty, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists — each was justified by perpetrators (and by some clerics) with reference to the early Islamic precedent. 'Mainstream Islam' may not endorse all these killings, but the textual basis remains active in jurisprudence and in radical preaching. The connection is opportunistic only if you separate jihadists from their texts — which is not historically defensible.