"Koran 2:143 and 2:144 recount another example of the Jews""angry subversion," as per el- Husseini, of the alleged divine revelation which mandated changing the direction of prayer (the "qibla") from Jerusalem to Mecca. Classical (Tafsir Ibn Kathir; Tafsir al-Jalalayn) and modern (Maariful Qur‘an) commentaries, substantiate el-Husseini‘s gloss...
El-Husseini claims that verses 4:51 and 4:52 provide yet more evidence of the Jews‘ attempts to confuse and dishearten Muslims, while simultaneously abetting Muhammad‘s enemies. As a result, they have been accursed by Allah, eternally. Here too, el-Husseini‘s gloss is validated by the interpretations of classical and modern exegetes...
Concluding his litany of Koranic quotations, appropriately, with Koran 5:82, el-Husseini insists this verse "quite unmistakably characterizes the position of Islam and Judaism." Once again, his assessment is upheld by a continuum of authoritative Koranic exegeses that span over a thousand years, till now. The classical Koranic commentaries on Koran 5:82 by Tabari, Zamakashari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. 1316), and Ibn Kathir demonstrate a uniformity of opinion regarding the animus of the Jews toward the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61 (i.e., for killing prophets, and transgressing against the will of Allah, repeated at verses including 2:90-91, 3:112, 3:181, and 4:155)...
The modern gloss on Koran 5:82 in Maariful Qur‘an notes that the vast preponderance of Jews felt an unremitting malice toward the Muslims, and a lust for the "material pleasures of mortal life"—the rare exceptions to this rule, for example, Abdullah ibn Salam, became Muslims!...
El-Husseini‘s depiction of the nefarious attempt by Shas b. Qays to foment discord amongst the nascent Muslim "Ansar" tribes is confirmed by Ibn Ishaq‘s sira account...
The verbatim canonical hadith which chronicle Muhammad‘s alleged poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, are reproduced below, confirming el-Husseini‘s paraphrase of these accounts. However, el-Husseini does incorrectly attribute to Abu Huraira the hadith reports of Aisha and Anas which recorded the long-term, purportedly terminal effects of Muhammad‘s poisoning...
Additional confirmation of el-Husseini‘s overall narrative regarding Muhammad‘s poisoning is provided by the sira accounts of Ibn Ishaq, and Ibn Sa‘d. Ibn Ishaq‘s report concludes that Muhammad ultimately died from this poisoning episode, and notes his death was considered an act of "martyrdom"...
Ibn Sa‘d (in his Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al- Kabir) focuses on the putative Jewish conspiracy behind Muhammad‘s poisoning, while insisting adamantly that the Khaybar Jewess perpetrator was put to death...
El-Husseini appositely concludes his compendious discourse on Islam‘s canonical Jew-hatred with a central motif from Muslim eschatology, as recorded in the hadith—how the destruction of the Jews is requisite for ushering in the messianic times. Here are the canonical hadith el- Husseini accurately renders:
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."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."
Finally, apropos of their longstanding Islamic relevance, Ibn Kathir‘s 14th century commentary on Koran 4:155-159, which discusses Isa‘s (the Muslim Jesus‘) role in defeating the Dajjal (the Muslim "anti-Christ"), and his Jewish minions, invokes these same apocalyptic canonical hadith of Jew annihilation.
Despite its minor errors, or deviations, Hajj Amin el-Husseini‘s proclamation demonstrates great fidelity to the canonical Islamic narrative regarding the Jews. Seminal Western academic studies of how the Jews are depicted in the sira, hadith, and Koran, independently validate el- Husseini‘s assessment of these canonical Muslim sources. Moreover, these analyses have long been available to the academic community.
For example, Hartwig Hirschfeld‘s detailed mid-1880s analysis of the sira accounts of Muhammad‘s interactions with the Jews includes this rather understated summary of the "mutual disappointment" that characterized their relationship, and the predictably disastrous results for the Jews:
The Jews, for their part, were singularly disappointed in their expectations. The way in which Muhammad understood revelation, his ignorance and his clumsiness in religious questions in no way encouraged them to greet him as their Messiah. He tried at first to win them over to his teachings by sweetness and persuasion; they replied by posing once again the questions that they had already asked him; his answers, filled with gross errors, provoked their laughter and mockery. From this, of course, resulted a deep hostility between Muhammad and the Jews, whose only crime was to pass a severe judgment on the enterprise of this Arab who styled himself "God‘s prophet" and to find his conduct ridiculous, his knowledge false, and his regulations thoughtless. This judgment, which was well founded, was nevertheless politically incorrect [une faute politique], and the consequences thereof inevitably would prove to be disastrous for a minority that lacked direction or cohesion.
Georges Vajda‘s 1937 essay "Juifs et Musulmans selon Le Hadit" ("Jews and Muslims according to the Hadith")—a magisterial seventy-page analysis, replete with 202 accompanying notes—remains the definitive study of Jews and their relations with Muhammad and the Muslims, as depicted in the hadith.
Vajda‘s meticulously documented research conclusions were not understated. He demonstrates how Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews supreme hostility toward Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjal—the Muslim equivalent of the Antichrist—and as per another tradition, the Dajjal is in fact Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions state that the Dajjal will be accompanied by seventy thousand Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjal is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered—everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree. Vajda also emphasizes how the notion of jihad "ransom" extends even into Islamic eschatology:
Not only are the Jews vanquished in the eschatological war, but they will serve as ransom for the Muslims in the fires of hell. The sins of certain Muslims will weigh on them like mountains, but on the day of resurrection, these sins will be lifted and laid upon the Jews.
And in the corporeal world, Vajda observes, "distrust must reign" in Muslims‘ relations with Jews, because,
the Jews . . . are rebels to the solicitations of Islam and keep their religious traditions in a way liable to lead Muslims into error. Even when Islam knowingly borrows from Judaism, these borrowings are presented as amendments of the corresponding Jewish customs, unless they expressly forge traditions that aim to efface the true origin of the rite in question, by transposing it either into Arab paganism or into "Israelite" or pre- Israelite antiquity . . . especially beware of asking them for information of a religious kind.
But it is the Jews‘ stubborn malevolence, Vajda adds, that is their defining worldly characteristic:
Jews are represented in the darkest colors [i.e., in the hadith]. Convinced by the clear testimony of their books that Muhammad was the true prophet, they refused to convert, out of envy, jealousy and national particularism, even out of private interest. They have falsified their sacred books and do not apply the laws of God; nevertheless, they pursued Muhammad with their raillery and their oaths, and harassed him with questions, an enterprise that turned to their own confusion and merely corroborated the authenticity of the supernatural science of the prophet. From words they moved to action: sorcery, poisoning, assassination held no scruples for them.
Vajda concludes that these archetypes, in turn, justify Muslim animus toward the Jews, and the admonition to at best "subject [the Jews] to Muslim domination," as dhimmis, treated "with contempt," under certain "humiliating arrangements.""
