On the Islamic calendar, yesterday was the 17th day of Ramadan, which, as Martin Kramer explains
marks 1,400 years since the battle of Badr (624 CE), the first military confrontation between the Muslims and their opponents—in this case, the grandees of the prophet Mohammad’s own tribe of Quraysh. He had fled their persecution in Mecca less than two years earlier (the hijra, 622), along with his followers, in order to regroup and recruit in Medina, to the north.
At Badr, southwest of Medina, Mohammad led a contingent of 313 Muslims, outnumbered three to one, to a decisive victory over the polytheists of Mecca. The Muslims killed many, took others prisoner for ransom, and secured much booty. Angels supposedly helped out. It’s considered a turning point in the fortunes of nascent Islam, demonstrating Mohammad’s skills as a commander as well as the divine favor enjoyed by the believers.
The date is well known to Muslims today, and its symbolism is frequently invoked. The Egyptian military, for instance, named its plan to invade Israel in 1973 “Operation Badr,” and al-Qaeda would speak of its success on September 11, 2001 as “Badr September.” Kramer adds:
Like much in history and myth, the memory of Badr is so elastic that it’s been invoked across the entire range of contemporary politics—by Egypt’s military, the biggest Arab beneficiary of American military aid, and by al-Qaeda, America’s deadliest Arab enemy. It’s also the name of an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, a Taliban battalion in Afghanistan, and rockets fired off by the Houthis in Yemen and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. To name something after Badr is to associate it with resistance and faith, the weak against the strong, the few against the many.
Read more on Sandbox: https://martinkramer.org/2024/03/26/islam-1400-years-embattled/