The Terms of the Treaty, and the Two Camps of Arabia

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The treaty's terms, dictated largely by Suhayl and written by ʿAlī, were: a ten-year truce with no fighting between the two sides; the freedom of each side to enter alliances with any other tribe, whose members would then fall under the same treaty; no ʿUmrah this year, "as for this year, no," Suhayl insisted, lest the Arabs say the Muslims had forced their way in, but a return the following year, when Quraysh would vacate Makkah for three days; and, most bitterly, that any man defecting from Quraysh to the Muslims be returned, while any Muslim who abandoned Islam for Makkah would not be, a plainly one-sided clause. Witnesses were named on both sides: Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī for the Muslims; Suhayl, Mikraz, and others for Quraysh.

Yet Dr. Qadhi draws out the decisive positive beneath the Muslims' anger: for the first time, Quraysh were treating the Muslims as an independent, powerful political entity, one does not write a treaty except with an equal. After years of battles, the Muslims had been upgraded to a party Quraysh were forced to negotiate with as a peer.

He also notes the deeper significance of the two sides' very natures: one is a religious identity, the Muslims, the Ummah, and the other a tribal, ethnic one, Quraysh and its allies. Here is the real dividing line Islam draws: what binds the believers is faith, stronger than kinship, tribe, or nation, whereas every other society sets something above religion. And the clause letting any tribe ally with either side effectively split the whole Arabian Peninsula into two camps, Islam and disbelief, forcing the Arabs, for the first time, to choose which side of the coin they stood on. Dr. Qadhi frames this as the direct precursor to the Conquest of Makkah and the end of Arabian idolatry within a few years.