A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Chapter 4/30

[Sidenote: 30. The judgment of Sâd.]

The Bani Koreiza had surrendered themselves to the judgment of Sâd, an Awsite of their allies, Bani Aws. To this Mohammad agreed. Sâd decreed that the male captives should be slaughtered. Mohammad, disapproving the judgment, remarked to Sâd: "Thou hast decided like the decision of a king," meaning thereby a despotic monarch. The best authentic tradition in Bokhari (Kitáb-ul-Jihád) has the word 'Malik,' monarch; but in other three places of Bokhari, Kitabul Monakib, Maghazi, and Istizan, the narrator has a doubt whether the word was "Allah" or Malik. Moslim, in his collection, has also 'Malik,' and in one place the sentence is not given at all. It was only to eulogize the memory of Sâd after his death, that some of the narrators of the story gave out that Mohammad had said that Sâd had decided like the decision of a Malak, angel; or some narrators interpreted the word Malik, king, as meaning God; and therefore put the word Allah in their traditions. Mohammad never said "Malak", meaning angel, or Malik, allegorically meaning "Allah"; he simply said Malik, literally meaning a king or monarch.