G’(Last) Day Jews?—How Islamic Jew Hatred is Inculcated

Yet another “misunderstander” of the dictum*, “Love of the prophet requires hatred of the Jews?”

(*From a verse by the inveterate Jew hating Moroccan jurist al-Maghili [d. 1505], whose widely read treatises on the dhimmi Jews influenced Muslim attitudes towards them in the North African Maghreb, through at least the early 20^th century)

Deep (Islamic) thoughts from Australian Muslim convert and erstwhile jihad terrorist David Hicks’s handwritten diary, according to this story (hat tip Jihad Watch) provide, “…new insight into the sophisticated terrorism training he underwent, exploding claims that he was an innocent abroad.” 

Somehow, despite the putative absence of theological Antisemitism in the Jew-friendly Koran (and other core Islamic texts,) he also acquired a rather virulent Islamic Jew hatred, which manifested itself by Hicks—lo and behold—quoting an ecumenical passage from orthodox Islamic eschatology, specifically the same canonical hadith one finds in (section 7) of  the genocidal Hamas Charter:  

Sahih Muslim, 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.” 

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177:Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.” 

Even the allusion in Hicks’s diary to Satan as being aligned with Western society (in opposition to Islam), which was “full of poison” introduced by Jews, has its own independent Islamic origins, and one need not seek European influences to explain this worldview.  

As a central anti-Jewish motif, the Koran decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. This motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78 which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). The related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being “spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  

The seminal Qur’anic commentator Suyuti—referring to 5:60—claims that this apes/swine transformation is punishment for the Jews moral depravity, even Satan worship, resulting in their ultimate damnation to Hellfire. 

And historian Walter Fischel has described the severe hardships imposed upon the Jews of 17^th century Iran because of their image as sorcerers and practitioners of black magic, which was “as deeply embedded in the minds of the [Muslim] masses as it had been in medieval Europe.” The consequences of these bigoted superstitions were predictable:  

It was therefore easy to arouse their [the Muslim masses] fears and suspicions at the slightest provocation, and to accuse them [the Jews] of possessing cabalistic Hebrew writings, amulets, talismans, segulot, goralot, and refu’ot, which they [the Jews] were using against the Islamic authorities. Encouraged by another Jewish renegade, Siman Tob Mumin from Isfahan, who denounced his co-religionists to the authorities, the Grand Vizier was quick in ordering the confiscation of all Hebrew cabalistic writings and having them thrown into the river. 

Georges Vajda’s magisterial analyses of Muslim eschatology, as depicted in the hadith, highlight the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl—the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered— everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, (as per the canonical hadith included in the 1988 Hamas Charter in article 7, cited above). Another hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, has Isa (the Muslim Jesus) leading the Arabs in a rout of the Dajjâl and his company of 70,000 armed Jews. And the notion of jihad “ransom” extends even into Islamic eschatology—on the day of resurrection the vanquished Jews will be consigned to Hellfire, and this will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate.  

Finally, Ibn Kathir’s commentary on Koran 4:155-159 also discusses Isa’s (the Muslim Jesus’) role in defeating the Dajjal, and his Jewish minions, invoking the apocalyptic canonical hadith of Jew annihilation. The invocation of Sahih Muslim Book 041, Number 6985, by Ibn Kathir—a seminal 14^th century Qur’anic exegete, and Muslim historian—debunks the recently espoused, spurious contention that this prominent apocalyptic motif from the canonical hadith somehow received “no mention” in Arabic literature until “after at least 1870.”