Two Men Killed by Mistake

The next important event took place in the fourth year of the hijrah. Umayyah ibn ʿAmr al-Ḍamrī (may Allah be pleased with him) saw two men sleeping under a tree.^** He asked them, "Who do you belong to?" So they said, "We belong to such-and-such a tribe" — and this was the tribe held responsible for killing the seventy men, the Qurrāʾ. So he waited until they had fallen asleep, and he killed them. He thought he had done something right in killing these two men, because they belonged to this treacherous tribe. But it turned out that these two men had an agreement with the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him): these two men specifically held a peace agreement with the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said to Umayyah ibn ʿAmr, "You have killed two men — I am going to have to pay their blood money." These men had been killed by mistake; they should not have been killed. Therefore the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had to pay their blood money.

Here can be seen the ruling that lā yuqtalu muslimun bi-kāfir — a Muslim is not killed for a disbeliever. That is an important rule of fiqh.^† So even though Umayyah ibn ʿAmr had killed two men who should not have been killed, he was not executed for it; instead the Muslims paid their blood money. Now, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had an agreement with the Jewish tribes that they would support one another in matters of blood money, as set out in the compact governing the tribes of the city. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) went, with Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and some of the other Companions, to Banū al-Naḍīr, this Jewish tribe, and told them: two men have been killed, and I want you to support me in paying their blood money. They said, "We agree, and we will help you, O Muḥammad." The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) sat under a wall of theirs, and they pretended they were going to bring money to help him, while in fact they went off to conspire and plan how to assassinate him. They said, "You will never find him in a better position to assassinate than this — he is right under your wall; have someone climb up and throw a stone down on him, and let us be rid of him once and for all, let us be rid of this problem." So they conspired to assassinate the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). This was not new: such attempts had been made before, against ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and against plenty of other messengers of Allah. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they failed.