The Hudaybiyyah clause on leaving

In March 628, the sixth year after the Hijrah, the Prophet camped at al-Hudaybiyyah, on the edge of the sacred precinct of Makkah, with about 1,400 Companions. They had come in pilgrim dress to perform the ‘umrah. Quraysh barred the way, and the two sides wrote a treaty instead.

The ten-year truce is the part usually remembered. One clause bears directly on people who leave.

What the clause said

Anas ibn Malik reports the terms in Sahih Muslim. Quraysh stipulated that anyone who came from the Muslims to them would not be returned, and anyone who came from them to the Muslims would be sent back.

The Companions asked: “Messenger of God, shall we write this?” He said: “Yes. Whoever of us goes to them, God has put him far away. And whoever of them comes to us, God will make for him relief and a way out” (Muslim 1784).

So the Prophet put his name to a written term that let any Muslim who chose to cross over to Quraysh stay there, unreturned. Quraysh at that moment was the enemy, the side the Muslims had fought at Badr, Uhud and the Trench. Going over to them meant leaving the religion and the community together, the case the jurists would later treat as the gravest.

He agreed to the clause as written. His comment on it is short, and the verb carries the weight: God has put him far away. It names a loss and leaves the lost man with God.

The cost on the other side

The clause hurt the Muslims, and the sources say so plainly. While the treaty was still being written, Abu Jandal, the son of the Quraysh negotiator Suhayl ibn ‘Amr, stumbled into the camp in chains and begged not to be sent back. Suhayl held him to the terms. The Prophet returned him (al-Bukhari 2731).

‘Umar was so shaken that he went to the Prophet and then to Abu Bakr asking why they should accept such humiliation in their religion. The Qur’an called the treaty “a clear opening” all the same (48:1).

Soon afterwards the Qur’an ended the clause for one group. Believing women who fled Makkah were not to be sent back to the unbelievers once their faith was tested (60:10).

So the treaty ran one way for men arriving in Madinah and another way for women. For anyone going from Madinah to Makkah, it ran the same way for everyone: they could go.

What scholars made of it

The classical jurists read the clause as a treaty term, agreed under the terms of war and binding because a promise binds. In their view it showed that the ruler could waive pursuit by agreement. It did not, for them, cancel the penalty for apostasy inside Muslim jurisdiction, which they drew from other reports. The case for that penalty, and the case against it, is in the apostasy penalty.

I accept that this is the strongest reading of the treaty as law. I also think the clause tells us something the law books pass over quickly.

The Prophet signed it in a camp full of armed men, at a moment when he could have walked away from the talks. He agreed in writing that a Muslim who left for the enemy would be beyond reach. And the first thing he said about such a man was a sentence about God, with nothing about a sword in it.

The guide what apostasy is in Islamic law explains what riddah means in the law, and why doubts and questions sit outside it.

Why this matters to you

If you are thinking about leaving, you may be carrying a picture of the Prophet as a man who hunted down anyone who turned away. The treaty of al-Hudaybiyyah is a signed document that cuts against that picture. Use it to test the picture, and keep the limits above in mind while you do.

It does not tell you what your family will do, or what the law will do where you live. The rebuttal on the death threat charge deals with threats made in the religion’s name, and leaving Islam and the law has the law country by country.

If you would like a reading path that fits where you are right now, there is a short quiz on Compelling Evidence. It takes a few minutes, and your answers stay on your device.

The Qur’an quotations are my own renderings of the Arabic, and hadith numbers follow the sunnah.com numbering.