Regarding Mohammed – Should We Dish Out the Dirt?

To say that Guardian columnist, Polly Toynbee, single-handedly brought down Boris Johnson and his Conservative government in 2022 — by suggesting that leader and party be smeared and tarred with sleaze accusations — would, perhaps, be taking it too far.

Toynbee did, though, play an indisputable part in their downfall.

To suggest the same tactics for dispensing with Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam – though they may change some minds – may be ineffective, probably disruptive and perhaps self-destructive. Those of his followers who unquestioningly adhere to Mohammed’s Qur’anic and Hadithian warnings against gossip will likely rise up in arms to defend his name and reputation if anyone dares to impugne “truths” which have been accepted for so many centuries – particularly when the accusations are hurled at Mohammed himself.

Salman Rushdie’s story springs immediately to mind when one considers what may happen to any writer who wishes to sling mud at the person and name of Mohammed.

Salman Rushdie, at the height of the demonstrations against his book, Satanic Verses, was made the subject of a Fatwa by Khamenei’s predecessor, the first Supreme Leader of Iran, Khomeini. Most recently, Rushdie was subjected to a knife attack and blinded in one eye.

The staff of France’s satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, also need to take a bow at final curtains and claim recognition in this context.

The “dirt” cannot but be quickly listed, including his marriage to his first wife, Khadija, who was some 15 years older than Mohammed and who supported him financially; the fact that Aisha, said to be his third wife, was married to the prophet at the age of six or seven; his epileptic fits which were claimed to have been feigned and his unethical treatment of the Jewish Clan, Banu Qurayza’s, males.

Yet, though Israel continues to stretch out the hand of peace (see the Editorial by the Times of Israel’s Editor in Chief, David Horowitz, published over the last few days); though the writer still waits for Hamas to shake that hand, Hamas’s leaders urge unlawful terrorism of the worst, the most heinous, kind including the illegal taking of hostages. (See the Times of Israel’s article, Burn towns, slaughter, broadcast: 2022 Sinwar memo said to detail Hamas plan for Oct. 7, published on October 11, 2025.)

As an aside, Hamas’s leaders’ orders to take hostages on October 7th in the opinion of the writer – as, indeed, their injunctions to burn and behead everyone – can only be seen as pure, undisputed cowardice, admittedly of a more sophisticated kind than the Arabs’ historical mien of discarding their boots and fleeing the battle scene, but nevertheless cowardice.

Why acknowledge, from the first, that you may lose a “war” and that you may need to use the release of hostages to gain “war” aims?

Hamas’s Charter of 1988 must, in the light of such instructions, be seen as wasted breath.

Even so, the writer waits for those in the camp who are prepared to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist to come forward and disregard such attitudes.

Should Hamas try once more to inflict on Israel the evil it inflicted on October 7th, the writer however, feels there will be no alternative but to set down, in its full glory, smear by smear, accusation by accusation, something that is, in any case, out there, in the public domain.

There is no reason why Jews should not show disrespect and iterate these and other claims if the Umma will not rein in such demonic groups.