Muslim Conference Points to the "Charter of Medina" As a Way to Protect Non-Muslims--and the New York Times Falls For It, Of Course

Here's how the Grey Lady's scribbler writes it up:

MARRAKESH, Morocco — At a recent conference held by Muslim scholars to confront violence in the Islamic world, a representative of the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq and Syria said his people desperately needed protection from the Islamic State. 

“Please help us,” said Hadi Baba Sheikh, the Yazidi representative. “They are killing us and kidnapping our women and children.” 

The gathering here of about 300 muftis, theologians and scholars last month responded far more broadly by issuing the Marrakesh Declaration, which calls for Muslim countries to tolerate and protect religious minorities living within their borders — among them Christians, Jews, Hindus and Bahais as well as Yazidis and Sabians. 

They cited the Charter of Medina, established by the Prophet Muhammad after he fled to Medina, in what is now Saudi Arabia, from Mecca in the seventh century to escape an assassination plot.  

“The Medina Charter established the idea of common citizenship regardless of religious belief,” said Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah, a Mauritanian religious scholar and a professor of Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia who helped convene the meeting, in a speech. “Enough bloodshed. We are heading to annihilation. It is time for cooperation.”

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

Until you take a second or two to read up on said charter, that is.

Here, for example, is what Robert Spencer, a scholar who really knows his way around this stuff, had to say about the Medina thingy back in 2014:

In reality, the Constitution of Medina is of doubtful authenticity: it is first mentioned in Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad, which was written over 125 years after the accepted date for Muhammad’s death. 

...Ibn Ishaq also details what happened to three Jewish tribes of Arabia after the Constitution of Medina. Muhammad exiled the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir, massacred the Banu Qurayza after they (understandably) made a pact with his enemies during the pagan Meccans’ siege of Medina, and then massacred the exiles at the Khaybar oasis, giving Muslims even today a bloodthirsty war chant: “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.” (Indicative of the influence of Khaybar, and not the Constitution of Medina, in the real world outside the pages of the New York Times is the fact that while jihadists frequently repeat the Khaybar chant, no one ever chants, “Relax, relax, O Jews, the Constitution of Medina will return.”)…

The wily Islamists depend on our ignorance about the ins and outs of their religion and its history. And damned if the useful idiots/leftist ideologues over at the NYT aren't more than willing to oblige 'em.

And, oh yeah, if I have to hear one more time from Barack Hussein Obama about how Muslims--"from Albanians to Arabs"--rescued Jews during the Holocaust, I'm going to puke.