Muslim 1767 records Muhammad's directive to expel Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, leaving only Muslims. The hadith was reportedly delivered near the end of Muhammad's life and was carried out by the second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, after Muhammad's death.
The hadith is sahih in Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, and other collections, with multiple chains.
The historical implementation:
Umar (r. 634-644 CE) carried out the expulsion. The Jewish communities of Khaybar, Fadak, and Wadi al-Qura were expelled to Syria. The Christians of Najran (in southern Arabia) were expelled to Iraq. The Banu Nadir and Banu Qaynuqa Jewish tribes had been expelled earlier, by Muhammad himself. The Banu Qurayza had been massacred (b08). By the end of Umar's reign, the Arabian Peninsula was effectively cleansed of indigenous Jewish and Christian communities — a religious-ethnic cleansing carried out under prophetic instruction.
The modern continuity:
Saudi Arabia, the modern state covering most of the Arabian Peninsula, applies a religious-exclusivity policy to its territory. Non-Muslims may visit on temporary visas (and even then, with restrictions on entering Mecca and Medina). Permanent residence and citizenship for non-Muslims is severely restricted. Public Christian or Jewish worship is forbidden. The kingdom cites this hadith and the Umar-era expulsion as foundational precedent.
The ethical analysis:
1. Religious-ethnic cleansing. The hadith commanded the removal of religious minorities from a defined territory based purely on their religion. This is the structural definition of religious-ethnic cleansing: forced displacement of a population based on religion. Modern international law (Geneva Conventions, Rome Statute) classifies such acts as crimes against humanity.
2. The Najran Christians. The Christians of Najran had a long-standing community in Arabia, predating Islam by centuries. They had a treaty (Pact of Najran) negotiated with Muhammad himself, which the Najrani Christians believed protected their continued residence. Umar's expulsion violated this treaty. The Najrani Christians' fate — forced relocation to Iraq, with eventual disappearance of the community — is a documented case of treaty violation followed by religious-ethnic cleansing.
3. The 'two religions cannot coexist' claim. Muslim 1637's variant — 'two religions cannot coexist in the Arabian Peninsula' — is theologically more severe than the simple expulsion order. It establishes a principle: a territory under Muslim rule cannot contain other religions in equal status. The framework is structurally exclusivist.
4. Modern Saudi Arabia. The kingdom's religious policy directly applies the hadith. Mecca and Medina are restricted to Muslims. The 2017 Saudi reforms (Vision 2030) have eased some social restrictions but maintained the religious-residency restrictions. Non-Muslim foreigners working in Saudi Arabia are required to keep their religious practice private; public worship in non-Islamic forms remains forbidden in most contexts.
5. Comparison with religious tolerance frameworks. The hadith is incompatible with modern religious-tolerance principles (UDHR Article 18, ICCPR Article 18). It is also in tension with Q 5:48 ('we have made for each of you a law and a way of life... so vie with one another in good works') and Q 2:62 ('those who believe — Jews, Christians, Sabians — whoever believed in Allah and the Last Day and worked righteousness'), which suggest religious pluralism.
6. Historical impact on Jewish communities. The Jewish communities of Khaybar, Fadak, and other Arabian sites had existed for centuries before Islam — possibly since the Babylonian exile (587 BCE) or earlier. The expulsion ended their presence in Arabia. The communities were displaced to other parts of the Islamic world (Mesopotamia, Yemen, Egypt), where they continued to exist under dhimmi status. The Arabian peninsula has had no significant indigenous Jewish presence since.
- P1. Muslim 1767 records Muhammad commanding the expulsion of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula.
- P2. The hadith is sahih in the highest-rated Sunni collections, with multiple chains.
- P3. Caliph Umar carried out the expulsion, removing the Jewish communities of Khaybar, Fadak, and Wadi al-Qura, and the Christians of Najran.
- P4. The Najrani Christians had a treaty with Muhammad himself; the expulsion violated this treaty.
- P5. The implementation constitutes religious-ethnic cleansing — forced displacement of a population based on religion.
- P6. Modern Saudi Arabia applies the hadith as ongoing religious policy, restricting non-Muslim residence and prohibiting public non-Islamic worship.
- P7. The hadith is incompatible with modern religious-tolerance principles and with several Quranic verses suggesting religious pluralism (Q 2:62, 5:48).
Muslim 1767 is a sahih hadith ordering religious-ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula. The order was implemented by Umar, with documented historical effect: the elimination of indigenous Jewish and Christian communities from Arabia, including violation of the Najran treaty Muhammad himself had negotiated. The hadith continues to be applied in modern Saudi religious policy. Modern Muslim apologetics struggles with this text because it directly authorises what international law now classifies as a crime against humanity. The hadith is what we would expect of a 7th-century territorial-religious consolidation, anchored in tribal-religious exclusivism, and exactly what we would not expect of a divine teaching that elsewhere affirms religious pluralism.
The hadith refers specifically to the area around Mecca and Medina (the 'Hijaz'), not the entire Arabian Peninsula — preserving the holy cities for Muslims is reasonable.
The Arabic uses 'Jazīrat al-ʿArab' — the Arabian Peninsula — not specifically the Hijaz. Classical jurisprudence has debated the scope, with some scholars (Hanbalis) restricting to Hijaz, but others (Malikis, Shafiʿis) extending to the entire peninsula. The Najran expulsion was in southern Arabia, not the Hijaz, indicating the broader interpretation was applied. And 'preserving the holy cities for Muslims' is itself a religious-supremacist principle — Mecca was the sacred site of pre-Islamic Arabian religion before Islam co-opted it, but no parallel principle applies to keeping Jerusalem (sacred to Jews and Christians) under their exclusive control.
The Jews and Christians expelled were specifically those who had broken treaties or actively opposed the Muslim community — not all Jews and Christians.
The Khaybar Jews had been defeated and were operating under terms imposed by Muhammad. The Najran Christians had a treaty with Muhammad himself, which the expulsion violated (rather than enforcing). The 'they broke treaties' framing requires evidence the expelled communities were treaty violators — which is not in the historical record for all the affected groups. The expulsion was based on religious identity, not on individual conduct.
The expulsion was not violent — it was an orderly relocation with compensation paid, allowing the communities to continue elsewhere.
Forced relocation, even with compensation, is forced relocation. Modern international law classifies it as a crime against humanity regardless of the manner. And the implementation involved substantial property loss, family separation, and disruption of livelihoods. The 'orderly' framing minimises the harm. The Najrani Christians' eventual disappearance as a community shows the long-term destructive effect of the relocation, even if the initial removal was not directly violent.
The hadith establishes a principle of preserving sacred space — analogous to other religions' restrictions on access to specific sites.
The scope is not 'specific sites' but the entire Arabian Peninsula (or at minimum the Hijaz region). This is not analogous to (e.g.) Vatican access restrictions or Jerusalem's Temple Mount status. Restricting non-believers from a small specific shrine is different from emptying a peninsula-sized territory of all non-Muslims. The analogy is over-reaching.
Modern Saudi Arabia's restrictions on non-Muslim residence are administrative policy, not religious mandate — Islam permits more pluralism than Saudi practice.
The Saudi religious establishment cites the hadith and Umar's example as the religious basis for the policy. The administrative practice and the religious mandate align in this case, not diverge. And Muslim-majority countries that practice greater pluralism (Indonesia, Malaysia, Tunisia) generally do so by departing from the strict Hanbali-Salafi reading of this hadith — that is, by overriding the textual basis with secular pluralist principles. The pluralism comes from outside the text, not from the text.