Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth 173 · 14 Jul 2020 › Segment 8 of 42

Did the Prophet Muhammad ever kill anyone himself?

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Did the Prophet kill a man with a spear? His battles were defensive

QuestionLive chat · questioner not identifiedAnswered 14 Jul 2020Segment 8 of 42 in the recording2020-07-14-S08

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This segment40:56 to 42:49 · 1 min 53 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

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Mufti Abu Layth is not aware of such a killing and doubts the usual example, though it may have happened in battle; the Prophet's battles were all defensive in essence.

In more detail

A chat question asks whether the Prophet really killed a man with a spear while riding a horse. Mufti Abu Layth says he is not sure which incident is meant; scholars discuss whether the Prophet killed anyone, and even the reports used do not show people dying on the spot. He cites the incident in which the Prophet asked a man who will protect you now, which teachers gave as an example although the man died later and the Prophet did not kill him. He allows that it may have happened in battle, since that is the nature of battles, but says all the Prophet's battles were in essence defensive, even if pre-emptively defensive.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified
Did the Prophet really kill a man with a spear while riding a horse?

Position stated

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Mufti Abu Layth says all of the Prophet's battles were in essence defensive, even if pre-emptively defensive.

In his words

“to be fair all of the prophets battles in his lifetime were in essence were always defensive even if you feel that they were preemptive ly defensive”

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Transcript

machine40:56 to 42:49 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary

40:56

did the Prophet really kill a man with the spear whilst riding a horse I'm not so sure about that I've not I'm not sure what what incident are you referring to because they do discuss that did the Prophet kill anyone now the Prophet did participate in several battles and they say that some people did die but even in those narrations they don't show that they died there and then from this the

41:34

famous incident of when the Prophet says well who will protect you now and he kind of puts the sword out to the person and then later on the person happens to die so they include people like that in those people who did die but the Prophet didn't actually kill him even though when we were studying it they I remember the teachers mentioning it as that's an example but I was thinking even then that doesn't really make much sense but yeah so I'm not sure about this example but that said that said the fact that

42:13

the Prophet participated in battles it may have happened in battles obviously if people are swinging swords are each other then you know that's the nature of a battle but to be fair all of the prophets battles in his lifetime were in essence were always defensive even if you feel that they were preemptive ly defensive but they were always defensive so yeah

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Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2020-07-14-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/a6h5lye4mn8/s/8/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7

Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, July 14). Did the Prophet Muhammad ever kill anyone himself? [Video, segment 2020-07-14-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/a6h5lye4mn8/s/8/

Chicago author-date

Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "Did the Prophet Muhammad ever kill anyone himself?" Video, segment 2020-07-14-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded July 14, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/a6h5lye4mn8/s/8/

BibTeX

@misc{abulayth-2020-07-14-S08,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Did the Prophet Muhammad ever kill anyone himself?}},
  year = {2020},
  month = {7},
  date = {2020-07-14},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/a6h5lye4mn8/s/8/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/a6h5lye4mn8/s/8/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2020-07-14-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}

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