Genocide Hadith Uncensored
A Youtube video complaining about censorship of the USC-MSA Hadith Database was referenced in an email from CVF. I was aware that the hadith had been stricken from the database and retained a previously compiled copy for comparison.
This is the text of Sahih Mulim 41.6985 as it appears in the .chm file, which is available at Crusader's Armory.
Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
Subsequent to viewing the video, made a fresh visit to USC-MSA and found this:
Book 041, Number 6985:Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
Evidently the censorship has been reversed. The sidebar has also been edited, the original links are gone. New links have been added to the Tanach and to Muhammad Assad's Qur'an translation, it links to a Geocities site which appears to have typos. It is difficult to discern between the text and Assad's commentary. It appears that the commentary preceeds the translation.
This Jihad Watch article of 08/22/08 cites the text of the deleted ahadith and gives the history of the case with other details of interest.
A Yahoo search for Book 041, Number 6985 turns up this URL:
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/041.smt.html
my URLGenerator produces this URL:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/041.smt.html#041.6985
which opens the exact same page as that discovered in the search.
The following hadith appears in Bewley's translation, and in the collection at Sunni Path, but not in the Compendium at USC.
It is mentioned from Ibn 'Umar from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, "My provision has been placed under the shadow of my spear, and abasement and humility have been placed on the one who disobeys my command."
Bewley associates that hadith to another in which Moe allegedly kills, cooks & eats a wild ass, over the objections of his companions. Other sources cite Ahmad, with a somewhat different text. Rasoulallah.net
I have been sent before the Hour so that Allaah alone should be worshipped without any partner for Him, and my provision has been placed beneath the shade of my spear, and subservience and humiliation have been placed upon those who disobey my orders, and whoever imitates a people then he is one of them.[9]
Objection to Muslim 41.6985 is based upon its expression of genocidal intention against the Jews. Similar sayings in Bukhari's Sahih collection express the same concept; where is the objection to them & demand that they be stricken? Where is the objection to 9:29 and demand that it be stricken? Where is the objection to Eternal Humiliation placed on the Jews, which depicts Jesus Christ as returning to lead the Muslims in exterminating the remaining Jews? Who objects to Muslim 1.0287, which encrypts the same concept?
The creator of the video bases his objection to censorship on the difficulty it poses by removing authentic documentation of one of his arguments. While one can find the passage in printed hadith collections, one must invest money to obtain them and can not link to them in blog posts & forums. Furthermore, different editions have varying page and reference numbers.
While sympathetic to that objection, I have previously expressed a different objection: censoring hadith only removes the outward sign, it does nothing to altar the mindset of Muslims who have memorized the saying or those who will hear it from Mullahs & Imams in their Mosques.
Thousands of hadith books have been printed; they are in Mosques, Madrassahs, libraries and private collections all over the world in many languages. Censoring a web site does nothing to altar that fact*, nor does it change Islam's doctrine of genocide. Taking down that hadith is like amputating a snake's rattles; it makes a deadly viper appear harmless.
*Note: most of the on line hadith search engines are dependent on the USC database. Removing the cited ahadith would make them much more difficult to find on line.
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