INVESTIGATING ISLAM

The Deathbed Plea That Died — and the Islam That Died With It

Author’s Note:

This essay examines Islam through its own sources, separating the Qurʾān-defined faith of Muhammad’s lifetime from the Qurʾān + Sunnah system created after his death.

What follows isn’t an attack on the Qurʾān but a forensic look at how the later construction replaced it—and how that substitution birthed the contradictions and civil wars that have scarred Islamic history.

Introduction: The Final Words That Never Worked

In Sahih Muslim, one of Sunni Islam’s most authoritative collections, the dying Prophet of Islam issues a last command:

“Do not revert to disbelief after me—by striking the necks of one another.”

If ever a sentence was meant to preserve unity, this was it.
It defines fratricidal violence not as sin but as disbelief itself—a red line for the ummah.

Yet history is an unbroken chronicle of Muslims killing Muslims.
From Abu Bakr’s Ridda Wars in 632 CE to Husayn’s beheading at Karbala in 680, from Safavid–Ottoman wars to the Iran–Iraq war and the Yemen bloodbath, Islam’s community has drowned itself in the very blood its Prophet forbade to spill.

How can a command said to carry divine authority die on the lips of its messenger?
If this injunction was revelation, it should have bound the community.
If it wasn’t, then Islam’s foundation collapses under its own contradiction.

This is the autopsy of that failure—and of the faith that was replaced.

Part I — The Command

The Arabic text appears across Sahih Muslim and Sahih al-Bukhari:

لا ترجعوا بعدي كفّارًا يَضرب بعضكم رقاب بعض
Do not revert to unbelief after me, striking the necks of one another.

Classical commentary agrees:

Intra-Muslim killing = kufr (functional unbelief).
Unity is the boundary of faith itself.

It was meant as a final moral firewall.
But within months, it was rubble.

Part II — Day One: The Ridda Wars

Context: Muhammad dies in 632. Abu Bakr becomes caliph. Many tribes refuse to pay zakat to Medina’s treasury, claiming loyalty to God, not to the new regime.

Response: Abu Bakr declares them apostates and launches the Ridda campaigns. Tens of thousands die; the battle of Yamama alone leaves some 28 000 corpses.

Meaning: The first act of the first caliph was to violate the Prophet’s final command.
The plea failed before the grave dust settled.

Part III — The Companions at War

Within one generation the Prophet’s companions turned their swords on each other.

Battle of the Camel (656 CE): ≈ 10 000 dead — Ali ibn Abi Talib vs Aisha, Talha, Zubair.
Battle of Siffin (657 CE): ≈ 70 000 dead — Ali vs Muawiya.

If killing believers is disbelief, then the sahaba—those who heard the plea with their own ears—became disbelievers by their own blades.
Authority collapsed at its source.

Part IV — Karbala (680 CE): Islam Kills Its Own Bloodline

Husayn ibn Ali, Muhammad’s grandson, refuses allegiance to Yazid.
At Karbala he and about 70 followers are surrounded and slaughtered; his head is carried to Damascus.
The Prophet’s flesh and blood is decapitated by Muslims shouting God’s name.
If killing a believer is disbelief, what is killing the Prophet’s heir?
Karbala is the funeral of the deathbed plea.

Part V — The Pattern That Never Stopped

Era	Conflict	Dead	Nature
632–633	Ridda Wars	20–50 000	Apostasy wars
656–661	First Fitna	70–100 000	Sahaba civil war
680	Karbala	70 +	Dynastic succession
1514–1736	Safavid–Ottoman	200–300 000 +	Sunni vs Shia empires
1980–1988	Iran–Iraq	≈ 1 million	Shia vs Sunni states
2014–2025	Yemen etc.	≈ 400 000 +	Sectarian civil wars

Fourteen centuries; one pattern: Muslims striking Muslims.
The hydra keeps eating its own heads.

Part VI — The Qurʾān’s Ideal vs Islam’s Reality

3 : 103 – “Hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together.”
49 : 10 – “The believers are but brothers; make peace between them.”
8 : 46 – “Do not dispute lest your strength depart.”

The record? Division from year one.
If the Qurʾān is timeless and protected, why did its first generation ignore its central injunction?

Part VII — The Logic in Plain Form

Muhammad commanded: Do not kill one another; doing so = disbelief.
Muslims immediately did exactly that.
Not fringe rebels—caliphs, companions, dynasties, states.
Therefore either the command had no binding authority or the ummah has lived in perpetual disbelief.

Either way, the claim of divinely protected unity is void.

Part VIII — The Structural Cause: Warlord Religion

Between 622 and 632 CE the Prophet led roughly sixty expeditions; the Qurʾān commands fighting (9 : 29; 47 : 4).
Political obedience and faith were fused: “Obey Allah and the Messenger and those in authority among you” (4 : 59).
Violence became legitimacy.
When the central commander died, every faction claimed revelation.
The same logic that unified Arabia through war fractured it through succession.
His last plea—“don’t strike necks”—contradicted the system that made him leader.
The machine outlived the man.

Part IX — Why the Qurʾān + Sunnah Hybrid Failed

Textual contradiction: Qurʾān claims completeness (6 : 38; 16 : 89); Hadith claims to complete it.
Chronological gap: Hadith compiled centuries later by non-eyewitnesses.
Political use: Caliphs and jurists weaponised Hadith to justify rule.
Moral inversion: Prophet forbids fratricide; Hadith wars sanctify it.

The result is the faith-political complex that history records: empires, madhhabs, inquisitions, and civil wars—all claiming the same God and book.

Part X — The Authentic Islam That Was Lost

During Muhammad’s lifetime:

Principle	Qurʾānic Islam (as lived)	Post-Prophetic Islam
Law	Qurʾān alone – “best hadith” (39 : 23)	Hadith and fiqh manuals
Mediator	None – direct accountability to God	Imams, scholars, chains
Unity	Single Book	Sects and schools
War ethic	Defensive, ethical	Imperial, expansionist
Outcome	Moral monotheism	Authoritarian orthodoxy

The original Islam was a Qurʾān-only moral code, not an empire.
Its derailment began the day revelation was fused with human rule.

Part XI — The Meta-Contradiction

Islamic theology insists the ummah is divinely protected from error.
History shows the opposite.

Claim	Historical Fact
“The ummah is one.”	200 + sects.
“The Qurʾān unites.”	Used to justify mutual slaughter.
“Obey those in authority.”	Each authority contested by force.
“Killing a believer is kufr.”	A constant of Islamic history.

A religion that calls itself unity has been division incarnate.
The dissonance is terminal.

Part XII — The Verdict

The deathbed plea recorded in Sahih Muslim 2408 is not evidence of prophetic foresight but of a system’s collapse.
A command ignored instantly and perpetually is not divine law—it’s a moral wish that died with its speaker.

From the Ridda to Karbala to Yemen, “do not strike necks” has echoed over fourteen centuries of Muslim corpses.
If the plea was revelation, then believers have lived in disbelief ever since.
If it wasn’t, then Muhammad’s final breath was a human plea against a machine he could no longer control.

Either way, the Qurʾān + Sunnah construct stands refuted by its own record.

Part XIII — What Truly Died

What this history exposes is not the failure of the Qurʾān’s message, but the death of the Qurʾānic Islam Muhammad actually practised.
During his life the faith was simple: one Book, one God, personal conscience, no intermediaries.
After his death, men rebuilt it into a hierarchy of chains, narrations, and laws, each claiming to preserve the truth while burying it deeper.

The Islam defined by the Qurʾān alone ended at his death.
What survived was the religion of men—the Qurʾān plus centuries of hearsay, politics, and empire.

That hybrid is what produced the blood trail.
The authentic Qurʾānic faith never failed; it was abandoned.

Citations

Qurʾān 3 : 103 • 4 : 59 • 6 : 38 • 8 : 46 • 9 : 29 • 16 : 89 • 39 : 23 • 45 : 6 • 47 : 4 • 49 : 10 (https://quran.com)
Hadith: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Book of Faith / Book of Hajj; Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book of Knowledge / Fitan variants (search: “Do not revert to disbelief… striking the necks”).
Historical sources: al-Ṭabarī History, al-Balādhurī Futūḥ al-Buldan, UNDP Yemen data.