anas bin malik reported that some people belonging to tribe of ‘uraina came to allâh’s messenger [pbuh] and made pretensions to islam. they stayed in madinah but found its climate uncongenial, so they were asked to pitch their tents in the pastures nearby. they did so and were all right. they then fell on the prophet’s shepherd and killed him, turned apostates from islam and drove off the camels. this news reached the prophet [pbuh] , who sent a group of twenty muslims led by karz bin jabir al-fihri on their track. they were brought and handed over to him. he had their hands and feet cut off, their eyes gouged out in recompense for their behaviour, and then they were thrown on the stony ground until they died. [za'd al-ma'ad 2/122]
biographers also reported ‘amr bin omaiya ad-damari and salamah bin abi salamah to have been sent on an errand to kill abu sufyan, the chief of quraish, who had already sent a bedouin to kill the prophet [pbuh]. the two-men mission failed except for three polytheists killed on the way. it is noteworthy that all the foregone invasions did not imply real bitter fighting, they were rather skirmishes or punitive military manoeuvres carried out to deter some enemies still unsubdued. deep meditation on the development of war circumstances reveal the continuous collapse of the morale among the enemies of islam, who had come to understand that they were no longer in a position to contain the islamic call or weaken its active drive. this state of affairs reached its climax in al-hudaibiyah treaty when the two belligerent parties, believers and disbelievers, entered into a truce agreement that pointed markedly to the ever-growing power of islam, and recorded unequivocally the perpetuity of this heavenly religion in pan-arabia.