The Mufti’s
Islamic Jew-Hatred

What the Nazis Learned
From the ‘Muslim Pope’

By Andrew G. Bostom

Also by Andrew Bostom

The Legacy of Jihad  (2006/2008)

ISBN-10: 1591026024

ISBN-13: 978-1591026020

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism  (2008)

ISBN-10: 1591025540

ISBN-13: 978-1591025542

Sharia Versus Freedom  (2012)

ISBN-10: 1616146664

ISBN-13: 978-1616146665

On the Cover

The cover features the emblem of the predominantly Bosnian Muslim13th SS Handschar division, which fought for the Nazis in former Yugoslavia. The title Handschar denotes a local scimitar, or sword, carried by Turkish Muslim forces during the half millennium that the region, having been conquered by jihad wars, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The collar patch of the Handschar fighters was worn on the right collar in place of the SS Sig runes worn by Germanic SS divisions.

Praise for

The Mufti’s Islamic Jew-Hatred

“Andrew Bostom’s study is a scholarly, well-researched response to those who would argue that antisemitism in the Islamic world is a modern, Nazi-inspired phenomenon. As Bostom himself once put it, ‘Muslim Jew-hatred … dates back to the origins of Islam.’ The ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, forged a symbiotic relationship with the Nazis in order to reinforce each other’s pre-existing murderous prejudices. A timely and necessary work.”

— Ibn Warraq, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim, and Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism

“Nothing is more congenial to the contemporary Western mind than the tolerant acceptance of other peoples and people, the inclusive acceptance of social and cultural differences, celebrated as ‘diversity.’ Ironically, this acceptance entails the under-recognition and under-communication, if not the active denial of actual substantive differences among peoples and people, on the implicit or explicit grounds that comparisons are always tendentious and insidious. We like to hear about and celebrate diversity, but not actual differences.

“Nowhere is the denial of differences more acute than in sensitive areas such as religion. The contemporary Western mind has evolved past its earlier obsession with religion, having relegated it largely to the private sphere, and is not keen to revisit the religious wars, massacres, trials, tortures, executions, and pogroms of previous centuries. Religious freedom and tolerance of religious differences was hard won and is seen as a great accomplishment to be cherished and defended.

“How does our contemporary Western mind respond when it is challenged by a religion which has not been limited to the private sphere, but which is a political project for a total society, a society which excludes religious freedom and tolerance, and which insists on domination? This is the challenge that Islam – traditional mainstream Islam, at heart a tribal religion – brings to the West. How do we react? Why, we refuse to take up the challenge, lest our tolerance and inclusiveness be called into question, and lest we be labeled, quite illogically, racist.

“One way to refuse the challenge of Islam is to deny that there is a challenge. We deny, in the face of most Islamic literature, historical and contemporary, that Islam is aggressive and intolerant, and that it aims to dominate. Instead, we assert, contrary to every evidence, that ‘Islam is a religion of peace.’ We would rather ignore reality than be politically incorrect.

“It is not that knowledge of Islam is difficult to find. Centuries of Western research, translations of Islamic documents, and a plethora of recent accounts, including Andrew Bostom’s comprehensive volumes The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, demonstrate in sickening detail the aggressiveness and intolerance of Islam. Now, in The Mufti’s Islamic Jew-Hatred, Bostom once again documents the rooting of Islamic antisemitism in the foundational works of Islam: the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sira. Many have tried to deny this reality, but reality has a way of finding us and making us sorry that we ignored it.”

— PHILIP CARL SALZMAN, Professor of Anthropology, McGill University, and author of Culture and Conflict in the Middle East

“Andrew Bostom’s The Mufti’s Islamic Jew-Hatred is an important and insightful account of the political career of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem in the nineteen-twenties and thirties and leader of passionate Muslim support of Adolf Hitler, the so-called ‘Final Solution,’ and Germany’s failed attempt to replicate Europe’s death camps in Palestine. Among the many accounts of the Mufti’s career, Bostom’s stands out. All too many see the Mufti as having been influenced in his hatred of the Jews by Hitler and National Socialism. Bostom sets the record straight, demonstrating conclusively that the Mufti needed no such instruction. With brevity, clarity, and authority Bostom shows that a murderous hatred of the Jews was present from the very beginning in the Islamic canon and Muslim societies, and it was this well-established tradition that inspired el-Husseini.”

— Richard L. Rubenstein, Distinguished Research Professor of Religion, University of Bridgeport, and author of The Cunning of History and Jihad and Genocide

“Dr. Andrew Bostom is certainly fighting the good fight by illuminating one of the darkest intersections of modern Islamic and European history—what the Nazis gleaned about Muslim Jew-hatred from the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini.”

— JOHANNES J.G. JANSEN, Houtsma Professor for Contemporary Islamic Thought, Emeritus, Utrecht University, and author of The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, and The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins

“An enlightening follow-up to his three prodigious anthologies on jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and the Sharia’s challenge to freedom, Andrew Bostom’s monograph rivets on the Islamic ideology of the most important founding figure of the Palestinian Muslim movement.”

— RAPHAEL ISRAELI, Professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern, and Chinese Studies, Hebrew University, Emeritus, and author of Islamikaze: Manifestations of Islamic Martyrology and Muslim Minorities in Modern States: The Challenge of Assimilation

“Andrew Bostom’s monograph is essential reading for anyone—from the interested citizen to the credentialed scholar to the Prime Minister of Israel—who still believes that Islamic Jew-hatred was outsourced from Nazi Germany. Basing his conclusions upon a wealth of canonical and modern materials and long familiarity with the subject, Bostom shows that Islamic Jew-hatred dates back to earliest times; is founded on the Koran, the Hadith and the Sira; and is far more likely to have influenced the Nazis than vice versa.”

— DAVID SOLWAY, author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism and Identity

“Combining heroic archival research and aggressive intellectual courage, Andrew Bostom shows us the dark roots of the Arab-Islamic antisemitism which is plaguing our world after Auschwitz.”

— GIULIO MEOTTI, author of A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword by Bat Ye’or

Author’s Preface

Introduction

Proclamation of the Grand Mufti
  to the Islamic World in 1937

Commentary

References

DEDICATION

This essay is dedicated to both the late David Littman (d. May 20, 2012) and his widow, Gisele Littman, nom de plume Bat Ye’or, for their wise, patient, and generous mentorship.

Paragons of meticulous scholarship and unflinching intellectual courage, the Littmans introduced me to the themes explored herein and virtually all my other writings on Islam. David Littman’s 1971 monograph, Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, and Bat Ye’or’s 1974 book chapter,  “Modern Egyptian Jew Hatred: Indigenous Elements and Foreign Influences,” will stand forever as examples of their uniquely prescient understanding of modern, canonical Islamic Jew-hatred.

I was blessed to have David Littman and Bat Ye’or as mentors, personifications of this Confucian dictum:

“A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive,
is also able to understand the present.”

−− Confucius (Analects 2.11)

FOREWORD

By Bat Ye’or

The issue of anti-Jewish incitement and indoctrination in Islamic theology and jurisprudence was examined, unfettered, in seminal academic publications by Western scholars during the end of the 19th century, through the early to mid-20th century. However, with rare exceptions, since the 1970s, if not somewhat earlier, an ever increasing censorship from major Western European, American, and Israeli academic institutions has managed to obfuscate this subject. Concomitantly, an obsessive self-flagellating Western public opinion has emerged, forged by well-funded “anti-racist” state networks in UN organizations, international policy groups, and the media. Denouncing racist bigotry exclusively in Europe, America and above all, Israel, these utopians aggressively promoted immigration and globalization as the only antidote to Judeo-Christian racism.

Yet the texts published herein present another picture, truer and less partial. Along with other doctrinal Islamic writings in the same vein concerning Christians, often referred to as mushrikun (polytheists associating a partner to Allah), Buddhists, Hindus and others, they were intentionally concealed. Bringing these texts to public awareness allegedly undermined efforts designed to promote a harmonious “global society.” Among other questions raised by Dr. Bostom’s essay, one wonders about the connections between deliberately tailored scholarship, and the pursuit of delusive policies.

But there is more to ponder on this issue. The canonical Islamic texts herein establish the theological and legal jurisdiction for over a billion Muslims spread over the planet. Most were written between the 9th and12th centuries in specific political and social contexts when illiteracy and superstition were commonplace. Nearly all of these texts record the acts and sayings of a prophet who lived at least two centuries before the authors compiled them, and whom none of the compilers ever met. These testimonies tell us about facts that no other contemporary record mentions. Moreover, it is this compendium of materials that is ruling the activities of  Muslim communities in the 56 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and will determine the contemporary fate of the world’s billions of people, even those who ignore their existence and their meaning. This situation highlights the West’s failure—rejecting the application of objective, critical thought in the area of Islamic studies, which was encouraged, appropriately, for other theological systems with similar prejudices and superstitions.

Many reasons could have motivated this obstruction, but one is alluded to in note 52, which includes an extract from an October 1957 US intelligence report on Johan von Leers. After World War II, von Leers, a leading Nazi, took refuge in Egypt where he converted to Islam. With his friend Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who had actively collaborated with Hitler, representing the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood branch, von Leers advocated “an expansion of Islam in Europe to bring about stronger unity through a common religion.” From the 1960s, throughout the following decades, this policy was unofficially promoted in Europe where former Nazis and collaborationist officials kept important functions as ministers, diplomats and civil servants. The situation was similar throughout Western Europe where former fascists and collaborationists held the same functions in governments or in international organizations, the UN, the European Community, Interpol and so on. For instance Walter Hallstein, officer of the Wehrmacht and Nazi jurist became architect of the European Community and first president of the European Commission (1958- 1967).

This New Europe of Hitler, von Leers and Hajj Amin el-Husseini has taken shape under our own eyes. It has reinforced hatred of the Jews through the Euro-Arab religion of “Palestinianism,” and seeks the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.

Bat Ye’or

October 2013

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

During an October 6, 2013 speech* at Bar Ilan University, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini. Mr. Netanyahu characterized el-Husseini as, “the undisputed leader of the Palestinian national movement in the first half of the 20th century.” The Prime Minister highlighted the ex-Mufti’s role in fomenting pogroms (dating back, in fact, to the so-called “Nabi Musa” riots of  1920) during the decades between the Balfour Declaration, and the eventual creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Netanyahu’s address also focused on el-Husseini’s World War II era collaboration with the Nazis, the clear implication being that the Mufti’s murderous, Jew-hating ideology was simply another manifestation of Nazi evil, transplanted to a local “nationalistic struggle” in the Middle East.

The following presentation consists of an introductory historical background, a carefully annotated English translation of el-Husseini’s 1937 proclamation to the global Muslim umma (community), and a comprehensive analysis of the canonical Islamic motifs which punctuate this text, throughout. These analyses demonstrate that Netanyahu’s naïve rehashing of the conventional academic tropes about the Mufti’s alleged “Nazi-inspired” Jew-hatred, does not withstand any serious, objective scrutiny.

* “PM Netanyahu’s speech at Bar Ilan University,” Isracast, published Monday, October 07, 2013. http://bit.ly/16gQUTF

Hajj Amin el-Husseini meeting with Muslim volunteers to brigades fighting for the Nazis, including the Legion of Azerbaijan, at the opening of the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin on December 18/19, 1942, during the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha. (Bundesarchiv, Berlin, Bild 147-0483, via Wiki Commons, http://bit.ly/18uPbXq)

INTRODUCTION

October 4, 1944—69 years ago—a then internationally renowned Muslim cleric, addressing imams of the Bosnian SS Division fighting for the Nazis, stated the following to his co-religionists:

Nearly one-third of the Koran concerns the Jews.  The Koran calls upon all Muslims to protect themselves against the Jews and to fight them wherever they may meet them.  The Jews in Khaybar attempted to poison Muhammad, the messenger of Allah; they also carried out themselves or supported various attacks on the person of the Prophet, all of which failed.  Muhammad’s many attempts to bring the Jews to their senses were unsuccessful, with the result that he saw himself as simply forced to dispose of the Jews and to run them out of Arabia.¹

This accurate summary of canonical, mainstream Islamic theology regarding Jews,² was made by Hajj Amin el-Husseini—the preeminent Arab Muslim leader of the World War II era. Concordant with his stature then, in Islamdom, el-Husseini was viewed by Adolph Hitler (and also the Waffen-SS), as a “Muslim pope.” For example, the Nazi regime promoted this former mufti of Jerusalem in an illustrated biographical booklet (printed in Berlin in 1943) which declared him Muhammad’s direct descendant, an Arab national hero, and the “incarnation of all ideals and hopes of the Arab nation.”³

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about “Turkish and Arab agitators . . . preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against . . . the Jews” of Palestine.⁴ During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current—epitomized by Hajj Amin el-Husseini—promulgated the forcible restoration of sharia-mandated dhimmitude for Jews via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, that is, in 1918, Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish coworker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I. A. Abbady, “This was and will remain an Arab land . . . the Zionists will be massacred to the last man. . . . Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.”⁵

Despite his role in fomenting the1920 pogroms against Palestinian Jews, el-Husseini was pardoned and subsequently appointed mufti of Jerusalem by the British high commissioner, in May 1921, a title he retained, following the Ottoman practice, for the remainder of his life. Throughout his public career, the mufti relied upon traditional Koranic anti-Jewish motifs to arouse the Arab street. For example, during the incitement which led to the 1929 Arab revolt in Palestine, he called for combating and slaughtering “the Jews.” not merely Zionists. In fact, most of the Jewish victims of the 1929 Arab revolt were Jews from the centuries-old dhimmi communities (for example, in Hebron), as opposed to recent settlers identified with the Zionist movement.⁶

With the ascent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the mufti and his coterie intensified their antisemitic activities to secure support from Hitler’s Germany (and later Bosnian Muslims, as well as the overall global Muslim umma [community]), for a jihad to annihilate the Jews of Palestine. Following his expulsion from Palestine by the British, the mufti fomented a brutal anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad (1941), concurrent with his failed effort to install a pro-Nazi Iraqi government. Escaping to Europe after this unsuccessful coup attempt, the mufti spent the remainder of World War II in Germany and Italy. From this sanctuary, he provided active support for the Germans by recruiting Bosnian Muslims, in addition to Muslim minorities from the Caucasus, for dedicated Nazi SS units. The Mufti’s objectives for these recruits, and Muslims in general, were made explicit during his multiple wartime radio broadcasts from Berlin, heard throughout the Arab world: an international campaign of genocide against the Jews. For example, during his March 1, 1944, broadcast he stated: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion [i.e., Islam].”⁷

Hajj Amin also attempted to contribute to the German war effort in Yugoslavia by recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the so-called Handzar Division.⁸ Jan Wanner has observed that,

His [the mufti’s] appeals . . . addressed to the Bosnian Muslims were . . . close in many respects to the argumentation used by contemporary Islamic fundamentalists . . . the Mufti viewed only as a new interpretation of the traditional concept of the Islamic community (umma), sharing with Nazism common enemies.⁹

However, the creation of these Muslim units, for which the mufti bears direct responsibility, had only a limited impact on the overall destruction of European Jewry when compared with his nefarious wartime campaign to prevent Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. Wanner, in his 1986 analysis of the mufti’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II, concluded,

[T]he darkest aspect of the Mufti’s activities in the final stage of the war was undoubtedly his personal share in the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population. On May 17, 1943, he wrote a personal letter to Ribbentrop, asking him to prevent the transfer of 4500 Bulgarian Jews, 4000 of them children, to Palestine. In May and June of the same year, he sent a number of letters to the governments of Bulgaria, Italy, Rumania, and Hungary, with the request not to permit even individual Jewish emigration and to allow the transfer of Jews to Poland where, he claimed they would be “under active supervision.” The trials of Eichmann’s henchmen, including Dieter Wislicency who was executed in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, confirmed that this was not an isolated act by the Mufti.¹⁰

Invoking the personal support of such prominent Nazis as Himmler and Eichmann, the mufti’s relentless hectoring of German, Romanian, and Hungarian government officials caused the cancellation of an estimated 480,000 exit visas which had been granted to Jews (80,000 from Rumania, and 400,000 from Hungary). As a result, these hapless individuals were deported to Polish concentration camps. A United Nations Assembly document presented in 1947 which contained the mufti’s June 28, 1943, letter to the Hungarian foreign minister requesting the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Poland, includes this stark, telling annotation: “As a Sequel to This Request 400,000 Jews Were Subsequently Killed.”¹¹ Moreover, in the mufti’s memoirs (Memoirs of the Grand Mufti, edited by Abd al-Karim al-Umar, Damascus, 1999), he describes what Himmler revealed to him during the summer of 1943 regarding the genocide of the Jews. Following pro forma tirades on “Jewish war guilt,” Himmler told the mufti that “up to now we have liquidated [abadna] around three million of them.”¹²

According to historian Howard M. Sachar, meetings the mufti held with Hitler in 1941 and 1942 led to an understanding whereby Hitler’s forces would invade Palestine with the goal being “not the occupation of the Arab lands, but solely the destruction of Palestin(ian) Jewry.”¹³ And in April 2006, the director of the Nazi research center in Ludwigsburg, Klaus-Michael Mallman, and Berlin historian Martin Cueppers, revealed that a murderous Einsatzgruppe Egypt, connected to Rommel’s Africa Korps, was stationed in Athens awaiting British expulsion from the Levant, prior to beginning their planned slaughter of the roughly five hundred thousand Jews in Palestine. This plan was only aborted after Rommel’s defeat by Montgomery at El Alamein, Egypt, in October/November 1942.¹⁴

The mufti remained unrelenting in his espousal of a virulent Jew-hatred as the focal tenet of his ideology in the aftermath of World War II, and the creation of the State of Israel. He was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements, who maintained a longstanding relationship with Hasan al-Banna,14a founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna, in 1927, one year prior to the Brotherhood’s establishment, sent a message to el-Husseini conveying his desire for strengthening “Islamic fraternity.”14b El-Husseini confirmed his own desire to strengthen those bonds by facilitating the transfer of German financial subsidies to the Muslim Brotherhood in 1938-1939. These funds supported the Brotherhood’s propaganda efforts directed toward the jihad against the Jews of Palestine.14c And shortly after arriving in Egypt in 1946, el-Husseini stated the following about al-Banna, “I have come to realize the truth about this great man whom Allah has endowed with rare, high and honorable qualities which are rarely found in anyone.”14d Continuing his encomium, el-Husseini extolled al-Banna’s jihadist passion:14e

…burning with zeal and enthusiasm against the colonizers who have usurped Egypt and the Arab and Islamic countries. He has worked to the best of his ability to liberate the Nile valley and all the Arab and Islamic countries of all forms of foreign colonialism. He is also keen to unite Muslims and to hold dear the fraternity of Islam and forge links among Muslims to get them to cooperate for the public good and piety and for glory and advancement. To him his country is the wider Islamic World.

After a five hour meeting with the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood branch in Alexandria, August 23, 1946, el-Husseini concluded, “I believe the Muslim Brothers are the troops of Allah who shall defeat the troops of Satan.”14f For his part, immediately following the November 29, 1947 U.N. General Assembly resolution partitioning historical Palestine, al-Banna sent an incendiary telegram to el-Husseini which declared:14g

The United Nations absurdity will only reinforce our sincerity and our adherence to our rights, and our jihad for the sake of our countries—and Allah will show them what they did not expect from us.

Consistent with his global jihadist Weltanschauung, el-Husseini urged a “full struggle” against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress: “We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine.” Declassified intelligence documents from 1942, 1947, 1952, and 1954 confirm the mufti’s own Caliphate desires in repeated references from contexts as diverse as Turkey, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Pakistan, and also include discussions of major Islamic conferences dominated by the mufti, which were attended by a broad spectrum of Muslim leaders literally representing the entire Islamic world (including Shia leaders from Iran), that is, in Karachi from February 16–19, 1952, and Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem, December 3–9, 1953. Zvi Elpeleg’s edited translation of el-Husseini’s 1954 essay series, which originally appeared in the Cairo newspaper al-Misri, includes an observation by the Mufti (as a titled subheading, from one of the Mufti’s essays) that “Hitler Noted the Jihad of the Palestinian Arabs as a Worthy Example,” as well as additional explicit references to “the Jihad of Palestine,” “the Jihad of the Arab nation,” “Palestinian jihad warriors,” and the “Palestinian jihad movement” (of 1936-1939). Viewed in their totality these data do not support the current standard assessment of the mufti as merely a “Palestinian Arab nationalist, rife with Jew-hatred.”¹⁵

Moreover, even the common conception of “Arab nationalism,” whether applied to certain examples of el-Husseini’s rhetoric, appositely, or not, obfuscates the underlying Islamic roots of this ideology. Sylvia Haim, a renowned expert on the Arab national movement, identified its Islamic jihad quintessence in a 1955 essay:15a

Another feature of the modern doctrine which fits in with the Muslim past is the emphasis which both of them lay on communal solidarity, discipline and cooperation. The umma in Islam is a solidary entity, and its foremost duty is to answer the call of the jihad. [emphasis added This brings us to the third feature which both modern and ancient systems have in common, to wit the glorification of one’s own group. The traditional attitude of the Muslims to the outside world is one of superiority, and the distinction between the Dar al-harb, Dar al-Islam, and Dar as-sulh, is an ever present one in the mind of the Muslim jurist. It may therefore be said in conclusion of this modern doctrine of nationalism, that although it introduces into Islam features which may not accord with strict orthodoxy, it is the least incompatible perhaps of modern European doctrines with the political thought and political experience of Sunni Islam [emphasis added].

Subsequently, in her 1962 anthology on Arab nationalism, Haim quoted the non-Muslim (i.e., Christian) founder of the Arab nationalist Baath Party, Michel Aflaq’s own confirmatory pronouncement:15b

Muhammad was the epitome of all the Arabs, so let all the Arabs today be Muhammad. . . . Islam was an Arab movement and its meaning was the renewal of Arabism and its maturity . . . [even]Arab Christians will recognize that Islam constitutes for them a national culture in which they must immerse themselves so that they may understand and love it, and so that they may preserve Islam as they would preserve the most precious element in their Arabism.

Haim concluded:15c “ For Aflaq, Islam is [emphasis in original] Arab nationalism.”

Elpeleg acknowledged his deliberate omission of the Koranic references when he compiled the Mufti’s 1954 al-Misri essays:15d “I (also) excluded verses from the Koran the Mufti integrated into the text…” This passing confessional is a fitting segue to another parallel negationist trend, which is also widely prevalent: the claim that el-Husseini’s canonical Islamic Jew-hatred somehow represented a sui generis “Nazification” of Islam, which has “persisted” into our era.¹⁶ Paul Berman articulated an unabashed formulation of this broadly held thesis, proclaiming, that abetted by the Nazis, el-Husseini “monstrously,” and “infernally,” “blurred Islam and Nazism,” achieving

A victory of Himmler’s Islam…A victory for the Islam of fanaticism and hatred over its arch-rival, the Islam of generosity and civilization.¹⁷

During 1938, a booklet Muhammad Sabri edited, Islam, Judentum, Bolschewismus (Islam, Jewry, Bolshevism), was published in Berlin by Junker-Duennhaupt [Dünnhaupt].¹⁸ Sabri’s booklet included Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s 1937 declaration—also deemed by some as a “fatwa” (an Islamic religious ruling)¹⁹—appealing to the worldwide Muslim umma. El-Husseini’s declaration was extracted and reprinted, separately, by the Nazi regime as Islam und Judentum (Islam and Jewry), and distributed to Muslim SS units in Bosnia, Croatia, and the Soviet Union.²⁰

As best as I can determine, the first complete, annotated translation of this pamphlet, directly from the German, is provided herein. Although author Jennie Lebel included a somewhat awkward Serbo-Croatian to English translation of the pamphlet in her important biography of el-Husseini, neither she,²¹ nor any other scholar has ever identified, let alone comprehensively explicated, the antisemitic Islamic motifs which punctuate el-Husseini’s pronouncement, from beginning to end. Accordingly, what follows the translation, is a detailed commentary which addresses this critical—and frankly, self-fulfilling—lacuna in the scholarship on el-Husseini’s Jew-hatred, i.e., identifying and analyzing its traditionalist Islamic origins.

Proclamation of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic World in 1937

(Translated by James Hodge, George Taylor Files Professor of Modern Languages and Professor of German (Emeritus), Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine)

Since the earliest days of their history, the Jews have been an oppressed people and there must be good reason for that.  As far back as the Egyptian pharaohs, energetic oppressive measures had to be taken against the Jews, because they were exploiting the Egyptian people and destroying general morale through usury and other crimes.²²  Finally there was nothing left to do but banish the Jews from the land and, under the leadership of Moses, the Jews traveled through the Red Sea. As the recognized Arabic theologian, Tabari, relates,²³ the Jews wanted to kill Moses when he returned from Mount Sinai.  As punishment for this crime and for their apostasy, Allah caused them to wander in the desert for forty years.  By means of this catharsis, the new generation which arose during this  time would have had the possibility of stripping away the sins of their fathers and returning to the way of Allah.  This new generation spread out across Mecca, Medina, Syria and Iraq—the lands where milk and honey flowed.  But this generation was still worse than the previous one, as says the Arabic proverb: “A dog had a young one, but the young one was more like a dog than the one that created it.” 

That portion of the Jews which had come to Syria and Palestine were now under Roman rule.  The Romans very quickly recognized the danger posed to the land by Jewry and therefore decreed sharp measures against the Jews.  Added to this was the fact that a serious epidemic—the plague—broke out, which in general opinion had been brought in by the Jews.  When the doctors, too, declared that the Jews were the epicenter of the disease—in which they were no doubt correct—such outrage arose among the people that many Jews  were killed.  This event is the reason that the Jews to this day are called “microbes.”²⁴  For that reason, the Arabs understand especially well when likewise energetic measures are undertaken in Germany against the Jews and they are driven off like mangy dogs.  In any case, the Arabs are the injured party by that, since the Jews for the most part made their way from Germany to Palestine. 

The Jewish scum from all lands came together there, to take the Arabs’ land away.  They have bought up land from the poorest of the poor and from conscienceless landowners; they have stolen bread from the mouths of poor widows, taken milk from children, to gorge themselves.  They have not shied away from committing bloody murders. when Arabs resisted the Jewish immigration, and they deprived families of their providers and brought them to misery.  “Allah will punish them for these shameful deeds!”

This battle of Jews against Arabs is nothing new; the venue has just changed over time.  The Jews hate Muhammad and Islam and every person who wishes to improve his people and fights against Jewish greed and corruption.²⁵ The battle between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina, where he created the foundation  for the development of Islam. At that time, the Jews were great business people and noticed immediately that Muhammad’s influence in spiritual as well as in business matters could become dangerous to them.  So they developed an even greater hatred for Islam and this hatred increased more and more, the stronger and more powerful Islam became.²⁶ They broke the treaty of Khaybar²⁷ that had been agreed upon with Muhammad and their rage reached its height when the Koran²⁸ showed their deepest spiritual feelings and revealed their unscrupulousness and lack of conscience, and made them generally known.  And at that time the Jewish methods were already the same as today.  Their weapon as ever was defamation, and so they tried to lower Muhammad in the eyes of his followers.  They said he was a swindler, a magician, a liar.²⁹  And when they did not achieve their ends that way, they tried to undermine Muhammad’s honor by spreading the rumor that his wife Aisha had committed adultery.³⁰  By spreading these rumors and reports, they wanted to sow doubt in the hearts of Muhammad’s followers.³¹

And when none of this worked, they tried to discredit Muhammad’s teaching.  To this purpose, several Jews converted to Islam, only to take up Judaism again the next day.  When they were asked about this sudden change of feeling, they explained slyly that they had tried Islam with good intentions, but were forced to conclude that everything was a lie.  The following words about this are in the Koran: “Many of the people of the Book wished they could make you unbelievers again, after you had become  believers.  The envy in their souls, after the truth had become clear to  them.”  (Koran 2: 109)³²

When the Jews recognized the impossibility of  achieving their ends by the means already attempted, they sought a new way and began to ask Muhammad senseless and unsolvable questions.  By doing this, they wanted to show others that Muhammad was lacking in knowledge and wisdom.  But with this method too, as before, they had no success.  So they became convinced that Islam is firmly rooted in the hearts of Muslims and thereafter tried to eradicate the Muslims.  They committed the cowardly crime of giving money to several non-Muslim Arabic tribes to fight against Muhammad.  But almighty Allah wished it otherwise and with an iron fist struck down the rebellious tribes for Muhammad and conquered their city.  The Jews could not bear this defeat and decided to destroy Muhammad and hired murderers for this purpose.³³

The Jews in Medina lived in the city district Banu Nadir and Muhammad had concluded a treaty with them after he had come to Medina.³⁴ One day, he went to this district with ten companions in order to speak with the Jews and convert them to Islam.  Muhammad showed the Jews the foundations of Islam and the Jews appeared interested and approachable,  While Muhammad was in friendly conversation with some of the Jews, other Jews were preparing an attempt on his life.  They convinced a man to throw a heavy stone at Muhammad’s head.  Muhammad would have been lost if a warning had not come from Allah.  An inner voice warned him to leave the place, so the traitorous Jews could not carry out their plan.  Muhammad sent one of this followers to the Jews to tell them that they were to leave the city within ten days.  They had broken the treaty they had made with him by plotting to take his life.  Every Jew still found in the city after ten days would be punished by death.³⁵

Now some of the Jews who had outwardly adopted Islam but were inwardly still Jews convinced the other Jews not to leave the city. Therefore, when the ten days had elapsed, Muhammad saw himself constrained to drive the Jews out by force.  Some of the Jews fled to Khaybar, others to Syria, and in the Koran is the following: “It is he who has driven those people of the Book who were unbelieving from their dwellings in the first banishment.  You did not think that they would leave and they themselves thought their castles would protect them from Allah.  But Allah came to them, from where they did not imagine, and cast fright into their hearts, so that they destroyed their houses with their hands and with the hands of the believers.  So heed the example, oh you who have eyes.”  (Koran 59: 2)³⁶

Bosnian Muslims, in death’s-head fezzes, examine Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s 1937 proclamation on Islam and Jewry, reproduced as a pamphlet, at their camp in Yugoslavia, 1943. (Photo from The SS, in the series The Third Reich, published in 1988/1989, Time-Life Books Inc., Alexandria, Virginia, p. 161.)

The Jews who had fled to Khaybar did not admit defeat and resolved to avenge themselves on Muhammad.  They turned to the other Jews in Khaybar as well as the Jews of Taima and Wadil el Kura with whom they fashioned a plot.  With the help of much money, they incited the non-Muslim Arab tribes to attack Medina.  When Muhammad learned of these plans, he quickly armed his people and marched against Khaybar, the center of the revolutionary plans.  The Muslims conquered Khaybar, drove out most of the Jews, while Muhammad concluded a treaty with the remaining Jews and assured the peace.  Only after this   devastating blow could the Islamic realm develop peacefully.  It is, however, no wonder, considering Jewish character, that the Jews did not give up their dark plans in spite of the agreed treaty, and tried by all means to destroy Muhammad.  They invited Muhammad to a banquet and he accepted the invitation without suspicion.  Splendidly roasted lamb was set before him, which was served him by Zaynab, the Jewess, the wife of Sallam b. Mishkam.  There was talk about the treaty and the good understanding which now prevailed, and nothing was further from Muhammad’s mind than to suspect treachery.  Muhammad and his faithful follower Bishr b. al-Baraa each took a piece of the lamb, but Muhammad did not swallow his, because he noticed an odd flavor and said:

“The bone tells me that the lamb is poisoned.” Muhammad had Zaynab the Jewess summoned and asked whether this  meat was in fact poisoned.  She answered: “You know that I have a good reputation among the Jews, and I admit that I poisoned the lamb.  I thought that, if you are only a king, I would be killing a king, but if you are a true prophet, you would know that the meat was poisoned.”³⁷

Muhammad’s companion died as a result of the poison.  The little bit of poison that Muhammad had on his tongue became more and more noticeable, and there are historians who attribute his death to the effects of this poison.  They refer to a hadith passed on by Abu Huraira in which Muhammad shortly before his death said: “The meal of Khaybar makes itself noticed repeatedly until I die.”³⁸

The Muslims must think again and again of the meal of Khaybar.  If the Jews could be so treacherous to Muhammad, how treacherous will they be to them.

The Jews now were convinced that Muhammad’s person was protected against any attack, so they decided to sow dissension among the tribes, to break the power of Islam.  When Muhammad had returned to Medina, he had succeeded in reconciling the tribes of the Aus and the Khazraj who had been at war for 120 years and by doing that had strengthened the position of Islam enormously.  These two hostile tribes had become true brothers under the sign of Islam, and peace had entered the city.  This was also the point when the Jews attempted to undermine the Islamic realm.  A vengeful old Jew, Shas b. Qays, was one day with his friends passing through a square where there was a gathering of the reconciled tribes.  He could not bear to see the two tribes which had had so many wars with each other so peacefully united, and he devised a devilish plan.  He sent his friend, who was a connoisseur of the war literature of  the earlier time and charged him to perform some of the old songs of hatred in their gathering.   The Jew, an accomplished orator, went to the gathering and began to recite the battle songs of both tribes.  He succeeded in  finding one man in each tribe in  whom the old hatred flared up.  These two began fighting with each other and called their tribesmen to their weapons.  An incalculable disaster would have occurred if Muhammad—as soon as he had report of the civil war—had not hurried to the place of battle.  He shouted: “Oh, my Allah, are the old times to return while am still among you?  After you received Islam as a religion, the old tribal feuds were buried and you became brothers in your hearts.  Do you want to fall back into unbelief?” Now the two tribes became aware that it was only through the Jews that strife had been sowed between them.  They threw down their weapons, asked Allah for forgiveness, embraced one another and formed a new bond of brotherhood.³⁹

The Koran has this to say about the Jew Shas b. Qays in this connection: “Oh, people of the Book, why do you hold back the one who believes from the path of Allah, when you yourselves are witnesses?  But he will not overlook what you are doing.” (Koran 3:99)⁴⁰ And on the two tribes Aus and Khazraj, it is said: “Oh you who believe you are complying with those who receive the scripture. they are making you into infidels again, after you became believers. How can you be unbelieving, when Allah’s verses have been read to you, and his Messenger is among you?  He who holds fast to Allah is already on the right path.” (Koran 3: 100; 3:101)⁴¹

In spite of all their efforts, the Jews never succeeded in sowing dissension among Muhammad's followers and leading them back to unbelief.  Although the Jews must have realized the futility of their efforts, they tried repeatedly to carry out their devilish plans.  And indeed this time they attempted by deception to bring Muhammad himself to apostasy. There was conflict between two Jewish tribes, and the one that  was in the wrong had a meeting and sent their leaders to Muhammad.  The Jewish leaders said to Muhammad: “You know that we are very influential men.  If you judge in our favor in our quarrel with the other party, we will use our influence to assure that all Jews convert to Islam.” Naturally, Muhammad rejected this request.  In the Koran, this is said about it: “That you make your decisions according to that which Allah reveals and do not follow your own desires.  Be cautious in their presence, so that they do not divert you from a part of what Allah reveals to you.  If they turn away, know that Allah will surely strike them for some of their sins.  Truly, many people are transgressors.” (Koran 5:49)⁴²

Another example of the subversive activities of the Jews is passed on by Ibn Abbas.⁴³ At the time when Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina, prayer was said in the direction of Jerusalem.  This situation lasted only 17 months and then Muhammad received a divine revelation to change the direction of prayer for the future to Mecca, and since this time prayer is always said with the face turned toward Mecca.  The Koran says about this: “We saw you turn your face to heaven.  Now we want to turn it in a direction agreeable to you.  Turn your face in the direction of the holy place of prayer. And wherever you are, turn your face in this direction.  Behold, those who receive the scripture know that this is the truth from their lord.  And Allah does not overlook what they do.” (Koran 2:144)⁴⁴

When the Jews heard these verses, they became very angry and raised the idea with Muhammad of turning the direction of prayer back to Jerusalem.  In this case, they promised that all Jews would accept Islam.  Muhammad, however, did not allow himself to be diverted by this offer into offending against the divine command.  There is this on the subject in the Koran: “We are changing the direction you turn for prayer so that we may distinguish him who follows the Messenger from him who turns on his heel.  This was surely difficult, but not for those whom Allah guides.  And Allah will not destroy your faith for, behold, Allah is all-gracious and all-merciful to people.” (Koran 2: 143)⁴⁵

And yet another example of how the Jews did not shy away from stabbing Muhammad in the back at times of greatest danger.  When Muhammad had won the battle of Badr, he sent a messenger to Medina on his own camel—because it was the fastest, in order to bring the news of victory.  The Jews attempted to cause confusion in the Muslim ranks and to dishearten Muhammad’s comrades-in-arms by spreading the false report that Muhammad had fallen in the battle.  As proof of that, they offered the fact that Muhammad’s camel had returned with a strange rider. When this plan too was unsuccessful, some of the Jews turned to Mecca and tried to incite Muhammad’s enemies against him.  They declared that they were prepared to support the Meccans against Muhammad with an army.  When the heathen Meccans asked the Jews whether Muhammad's religion was good, since  the Jews indeed had received a holy scripture before Muhammad, the Jews said: “You know that we are men of science.  So believe us when we tell you that your religion is better.”  In the Koran the following is said about this: “Do you not see those who received a portion of the scripture?  They believe in Jibt and Taghut, but they say of those who do not believe that they are better guided on the path than those who believe.  They are the ones whom Allah has cursed, and whomever Allah curses, you will find no helper for him.” (Koran 4:51-52)⁴⁶

And it can be seen how this curse has come true.  The Jews are scattered homeless across the entire world and nowhere do they find true help and support.

Further, there is a verse in the Koran which quite unmistakably characterizes the position of Islam and Judaism. It says, “You will certainly find that the Jews and the idolaters harbor the strongest hostility toward those who believe.” (Koran 5: 82)⁴⁷

And this thought is even more strongly expressed in a statement of Muhammad: “It will never be possible to see a Jew and a Muslim together without the Jew having a secret intent to destroy the Muslim.”⁴⁸

Abu Huraira passes on the following hadith: “The day of judgment will only come when the Muslims have dealt the Jews a crushing blow, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden, speaks to the Muslim: ‘Behind me is a Jew.  Strike him dead.’ Only the tree Gharqad, a small shrub with sharp thorns, will not take part, for it is a Jewish tree.”⁴⁹

The reason for the arguments made above is that the Jews are on the point of reaching out their hands toward the holy places which are sacred for each Muslim and each Christian.  The Islamic world and the friends of Islam shall be shown how the Jews truly are in their innermost being.  Usually, one only sees the Jews with the veneer of civilization, but the Arabs have learned best how they really are, that is, as they are described in the Koran and in the sacred scriptures.  Then the agonies to which the Arabs in Palestine have been subjected can be understood.  And one can imagine how these agonies will increase to the monstrous when the Jews have fully and completely laid their hands on Palestine.

I present to my Muslim brothers in the entire world the history and the true experience which the Jews cannot deny.  The verses from the Koran and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it.  Do not believe them.  They know only hypocrisy and guile.   Hold together, fight for Islamic thought, fight for your religion and your existence!  Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews. Do not tolerate the plan of division, for Palestine has been an Arabic land for centuries and shall remain Arabic.

COMMENTARY

Just before his concluding admonition for a jihad to annihilate the Jewish community of historical Palestine, Hajj Amin el-Husseini recapitulates the dominant thematic narrative, woven together from a myriad of specific, canonical Islamic motifs, throughout the 1937 proclamation: 

[T]he Arabs have learned best how they really are, that is, as they [the Jews] are described in the Koran and in the sacred scriptures… The verses from the Koran and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. 

El-Husseini’s own apt summary assessment of the proclamation raises basic, important questions for those, in particular, who expound the view that his Islam was a form of modern “ideological chimerism,” spatchcocked from “fundamentalist elements” of the Muslim creed, engrafted, fiendishly, to Nazism.50  What do attentive, full tallies, comparing the numbers of Islamic and non-Islamic motifs cited by El-Husseini, demonstrate?  Specifically, regarding the latter, what examples (if any), derived from Hitler’s Mein Kampf,⁵¹ or the writings of Nazi racial theorists⁵² can be adduced? Do invocations of the Czarist Russian era forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,⁵³ accompany, or complement these references to Nazi ideology? Is there any evidence that central themes from European Christian antisemitism are invoked, to confirm Paul Berman’s fulmination⁵⁴ about how “Nazified Islam” strove to demonstrate “that European and Christian superstitions ought to be regarded as authentically Middle Eastern and Islamic”?

What in fact can be readily gleaned from a careful, objective reading of el-Husseini’s proclamation is there are no concrete, substantive references to any of these major non-Islamic sources of antisemitism. This absence of references contrasts starkly with the numerous and specific antisemitic motifs from Islam’s canonical texts—the Koran (consistent with its gloss in authoritative Koranic commentaries), hadith, and sira—which el-Husseini’s declaration invokes continuously, from opening to closing.

The less familiar terms hadith, and sira merit a brief introduction.

Hadith, which means “story” (“narrative”), refers to any report of what the Muslim prophet Muhammad said or did, or his tacit assent to something said or done in his presence. (Hadith is also used as the technical term for the “science” of such “Traditions”). As a result of a lengthy process which continued for centuries after Muhammad’s death (in 632), the hadith emerged for Muslims as second in authority to the Koran itself. Sunna, which means “path,” refers to a normative custom of Muhammad or of the early Islamic community. The hadith “justify and confirm” the Sunna. Within the first century of Islam’s advent, this aphorism was coined, which highlighted the importance of the Sunna (and, by extension, the hadith): “The Sunna can dispense with the Koran but not the Koran with the Sunna.” The hadith compiled by al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875) are considered, respectively, to be the most important authoritative collections. The titles Sahih (“sound”) or Jami, indicating their comprehensiveness, signify the high esteem in which they are held. Their comprehensive content includes information regarding religious duties, law and everyday practice (down to the most mundane, or intimate details), in addition to a considerable amount of biographical and other material. Four other compilations, called Sunan works, which indicates that they are limited to matters of religious and social practice, and law, also became authoritative. Abu Dawud (d. 888), al-Tirmidhi (d. 892), Ibn Maja (d. 896), and al-Nasi (d. 915) compiled these works. By the beginning of the 12th century, Ibn Maja’s collection became the last of these compilations of hadith to be recognized as “canonical.” 54a

Sira, which can mean “epistle,” “pamphlet,” or “manifesto,” also means “biography,” “the life and times of ”. Ibn Ishaq of Medina (d. 767-770) composed the earliest full-length biography of Muhammad, Sirat Rasul Allah (Biography of the Prophet of Allah), nearly 150 years after the Muslim prophet’s death. However, as has been observed, little written standard text by Ishaq survives; we are dependent, primarily upon Ibn Hisham’s (d. 834) selections from Ishaq’s work. The combined efforts of Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham produced a biography that placed Muhammad in the tradition of the earlier prophets, with Ibn Hisham (possibly) focusing the perspective on ancient Arabia. Two other important early Muslim biographies of Muhammad were composed by al-Wakidi (d. 822), and his student and secretary, Ibn Sa’d (d. 845). The accounts by al-Wakidi (Kitab al-Maghaz) and Ibn Sa‘d (Kitab al-Tabakat al-Kabir) concentrate on the life and times of Muhammad, only, in particular the many battles, razzias (raids), and even political assassinations he led or sanctioned.54b

Already cited, together with a preliminary discussion in the notes (i.e., notes 22-49) which accompany the proclamation’s text, the following analyses will elaborate on these individual motifs from canonical Islam, and gauge how el-Husseini’s interpretation of them, separately, and in aggregate, comports with, or deviates from, normative Islamic understandings.

A simple enumeration conveys el-Husseini’s extensive use of references from Islam’s canonical texts: ten explicit references to Koranic motifs⁵⁵ (including eleven separate verses quoted directly in the proclamation⁵⁶), with an additional six implicit references⁵⁷; two explicit citations of the sira,⁵⁸ and five implicit references⁵⁹; and two major, explicit citations (with quotation) of hadith,⁶⁰ accompanied by three additional implicit references to the hadith literature.⁶¹ These citations are complemented by an explicit reference to the great early Muslim scholar al-Tabari (d. 923), and his monumental History.⁶²  

How does el-Husseini’s interpretation of the eleven Koranic verses he quotes, directly, compare with their authoritative exegeses, classical, and modern?

Maulana Muhammad Shafi (1898-1976), a former grand mufti of India (prior to the August, 1947 partition), was the author of Maariful Qur’an, which remains the best-known work of tafsir (Koranic commentary) in Urdu. He also wrote more than three hundred books, and in addition to these literary works, broadcasted tafsir of the Koran on Radio Pakistan for a number of years. Here is Mufti Shafi’s commentary on Koran 2:109, from Maariful Qur’an, bearing in mind el-Husseini’s reference to the verse as an example of the Jews’ efforts to “discredit Muhammad’s teachings”:63

Some of the Jews, pretending to be the well-wishers of the Muslims, were always inventing new stratagems to make them turn away from Islam, and, in spite of repeated failure in this effort, did not refrain from it. The verse warns the Muslims against their intentions, which are motivated, not by sincerity and friendship, but by envy—which in its turn arises not from anything the Muslims do, but spontaneously from within themselves even after they have come to understand clearly what the truth is. The verse also asks the Muslims not to give way to their justifiable anger at such misconduct, but to forgive the Jews, and wait till Allah sends a new commandment with regard to such matters. Thus, the verse gives an indication that Allah is soon going to lay down a law for the preservation of peace and order on the earth which would guide the Muslims in dealing with mischief-makers – the law, of course, being the permission to go to war against the enemies of Islam. The Muslims were actually conscious of their own weakness and the strength of their foe, and could have wondered how they would be able to act upon the new law. So, the verse reminds them that Allah's power extends over everything, small or big, ordinary or extraordinary…This command to show forbearance towards the Jews was proper to the situations of the Muslims at that time. Later on, Allah fulfilled the promise made in verse [2:]109, and sent down the injunction with regard to Jihad. Then, this new law was applied to the Jews as well as to other miscreants - in order to prevent disorder and to make peace and order prevail on the earth, Muslims went to war against them, and the mischief-makers were either killed, or forced into exile, or made to pay jizya.” ⁶⁴ [emphases added]

Two renowned classical Koranic commentators, Qurtubi (d. 1273), and Ibn Kathir (d. 1373) earlier concurred that the sentiments expressed in Koran 2:109 regarding tolerant forbearance toward the Jews, were indeed abrogated by the jihad verses in the Koran’s “final revealed chapter,” sura 9, both citing verses 9:5, and 9:29, specifically.65

El-Husseini maintains that Koran 59:2⁶⁶ is about how “Muhammad saw himself constrained to drive the (Medinan) Jews (of the Banu Nadir tribe) out by force,” for their perfidious “disbelief.” His understanding of this verse comports with its classical exegesis in the seminal Tafsir al-Jalalayn, which, as the contemporary Dutch Islamologist Johannes J.G. Jansen notes in his treatise, The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt, remains one of the most popular, as well as the most authoritative Koranic commentaries in present day Egypt.⁶⁷ Here is the gloss on Koran 59:2 from Tafsir al-Jalalayn:⁶⁸

“It is He who expelled those who disbelieved among the People of the Book”—meaning the Jewish clan of the Banu Nadir—“from their homes” in Medina “to the first gathering-place” on the way to Syria; the final step was when Umar [b. al-Khattab, the second “Rightly Guided” Caliph] exiled them from Khaybar when he was khalifa. “You” believers “did not think they would leave; and they thought that their fortresses would protect them from” the punishment of “Allah.” “Then” the command and punishment of “Allah came upon them from where they least expected it”—from the believers, which possibility had not occurred to them—“and cast terror into their hearts” by the killing of their leader, Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf. “Their houses were pulled down by their own hands and by the hands of the believers. People of insight take note!”

 A concordant modern interpretation of Koran 59:2, with relevant supplementary details, is presented in Maariful Qur’an:⁶⁹

The entire Surah Al-Hashr [sura 59] was revealed in connection with Bani [Banu] Nadir…Ibn Abbas used to call this Surah, Surah Bani Nadir…They were jealous and on account of their jealousy, they were inhibited from embracing the Faith. But in their heart of hearts they knew Muhammad was the Final Messenger of Allah…[A]fter that battle [Uhud] they betrayed the treaty [“Constitution” of Medina; see note³⁴] and started conspiring secretly, in that a leader of Banu Nadir, Ka’b Ibn Ashraf, went to Makkah with a caravan of forty Jewish members to curry favor with the pagan Quraish who were anxious to avenge the defeat of the battle of Badr, and had gone to the battle of Uhud for that reason but were eventually defeated on the latter battle as well. The defeated men returned and the Jews met them. They conspired and agreed to wage a war against the Messenger of Allah and the Muslims. Ka’b Ibn Ashraf with his forty Jewish members and Abu Safyan with his forty members of pagan Quraish entered the Sacred Mosque and holding on the curtain of the House of Allah, pledged that they would jointly fight the Muslims and annihilate them. When, after this pledge, Ka’b Ibn Ashraf returned Jibra’il [the angel Gabriel] descended and informed the Messenger of Allah about the entire episode and the details of the pledge. In the meantime, the Holy Prophet issued the command to kill Ka’b Ibn Ashraf. A noble Companion Muhammad Ibn Maslamah killed him. Subsequently, Banu Nadir hatched many different plots to harm the Messenger of Allah, one of which was, (as reported earlier), their plot to kill him. The Holy Prophet, after collecting blood monry from the Muslims in a particular case of murder, decided to collect money from the Jews in terms of the treaty that was concluded between himself, the [Jewish] tribes of Banu Nadir, Banu Qainuqa and Banu Qurayzah. Before his arrival, they planned to kill him, (as detailed above). The person who was entrusted with the task of throwing a rock on the head of the Holy Prophet was a Jew Umar Ibn Jahhash by name who had volunteered himself for the task. Had it not been for the revelatory information the Holy Prophet received from Allah, their plot would have worked. But Allah protected His Messenger and the conspiracy was thwarted and their plan failed.

El-Husseini asserts that verses Koran 3:99-3:101 pertain to Shas b. Qays, and characterize his machinations to incite discord amongst the so-called “Ansar” tribes,⁷⁰ i.e., those Median men who supported Muhammad from the Aus and Khazraj. The commentary on verses 3:99(/98)-3:101 in Maariful Qur’an affirms el-Husseini’s narrative (while adding details from the sira account):⁷¹

These verses relate to a particular event. There was a Jew Shammas [Shas] ibn Qays, who harbored a chronic malice against the Muslims. Once when he saw two Ansar tribes, Aws [Aus] and Khazraj, gathered together amiably at one place, his malevolence got the better of him and he went back to looking for ways to sew seeds of discord between them. Finally, he set up a man suggesting to him that these two tribes have fought a much long-drawn war in pre-Islam days and both parties had recited poetical compositions highlighting their tribal pride. So why sit together. The moment these poems were recited there, emotions rose high, there were charges and counter charges to the limit that the place and time of a fresh war was all set. When the Holy Prophet heard about this, he came to them and said: “What is all this? Here I am amidst you, and you are doing this after having become Muslims and after having become united and friendly with each other. This is sheer ignorance. Do you want, in this state of yours, to revert to kufr [unbelief]?” They took the warning to their heart. They knew this was a slip caused by Satan. They embraced each other, wept and repented. These verses were revealed in the background of this event.

Tafsir al-Jalalayn’s brief classical gloss on verse 3:100 provides additional, independent confirmation of these interpretations:⁷²

This ayat [verse] was revealed when a Jew passed by Aws and Khazraj and envied their cohesion. He mentioned the past differences they used to have in the time of Jahiliyya [prior to the advent of Islam] and they began to quarrel and almost fight.

According to el-Husseini, Koran 5:49 is yet another depiction of the Jews’ efforts to “sew dissension among Muhammad’s followers,” and even cause Muhammad to act against the Sharia, Allah’s “divine law,” in effect, apostasizing. Ibn Kathir’s classical gloss, and the modern commentary of Maulana Muhammad (Mufti) Shafi in Maariful Qur’an are entirely consistent this interpretation:⁷³

[Tafsir Ibn Kathir] “but beware of them lest they turn you far away from some of that which Allah has sent down to you” meaning; beware of the Jews, your enemies, lest they distort the truth for you in what they convey to you. Therefore, do not be deceived by them, for they are liars, treacherous and disbelievers…Muhammad bin Ishaq reported that Ibn Abbas said, “Ka’b bin Asad, Ibn Saluba, Abdullah bin Suraya and Shas bin Qays said to each other, ‘Let us go to Muhammad to try and misguide him from his religion.’ So they went to the Prophet and said, ‘O Muhammad! You know that we are the scholars, noblemen, and chiefs of the Jews. If we follow you, the Jews will follow suit and will not contradict us. But, there is enmity between us, and some of our people, so we will refer to you and your judgment in this matter, and you should rule in our favor against them and we will believe in you.’ The Messenger of Allah refused the offer…

[Maariful Qur’an]…[T]he Holy Prophet has been given the same instruction as was given to the people of the Torah and the people of the Injil [Gospels], that is, all orders and judgments given by him should be according to injunctions revealed by Allah, and that he should see through the ploy of these people who intend to have him decide matters according to their wishes and take his guard against their evil plans. There was a particular reason for saying what was said. Some Jewish religious scholars came to the Holy Prophet. They told him that they were religious leaders among the Jews. If they became Muslims, the rest of them would become Muslims too. But. There was a condition to it. They said they had a legal dispute with his people. They would bring that case to him. If, in this case, he were to decide in their favor, they would embrace Islam. Thereupon. Almighty Allah have him the word of caution that he should never decide against considerations of…the Law revealed by Allah because of the offer to become Muslims made by these people…

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:⁷⁴

[Tafsir Ibn Kathir] Ibn Abbas said: “When Allah’s Messenger migrated to Al-Madinah, Allah commanded him to face Bayt Al-Maqdis (Jerusalem). The Jews were delighted then. Allah’s Messenger faced Jerusalem for over ten months. However, he liked (to offer prayer in the direction of) Prophet Ibrahim’s [the Biblical Abraham] Qiblah (the Ka’bah in Makkah) and used to supplicate Allah and kept looking up to the sky (awaiting Allah’s command in this regard). Allah then revealed: “turn your faces (in prayer) in that direction” meaning, its direction. The Jews did not like this change…When the change of Qiblah (to Ka’bah in Makkah) occurred, those inflicted with hypocrisy and mistrust, and the Jews, both were lead astray from the right guidance and fell into confusion…The Jews, who did not like that you change your Qiblah from Bayt Al-Maqdis, already knew that Allah will command you (O Muhammad) to face the Ka’bah. The Jews read in their Books their Prophets’ description of Allah’s Messenger and his Ummah, and that Allah has endowed and honored him with complete and honorable legislation. Yet, the People of the Book deny these facts because of their envy, disbelief, and rebellion. That is why Allah threatened them when He said: “And Allah is not unaware of what they do.”

[Tafsir al-Jalalayn] “We only appointed the direction you used to face”, which was the Ka’ba toaerds which the Prophet had first prayed; when he emigrated, he was commanded to face Jerusalem as the Jews did, and he did so for sixteen or seventeen months, after which the qibla changed back, “ in order to distinguish” manifestly “those who follow the Messenger” and confirm him “from those who turn round on their heels” and revert to unbelief, doubting the din [religion, i.e., Islam], and thinking that the Prophet…was confused about the matter. One group reverted “Though in truth it” (turning toward its) “is a very hard thing” and difficult for people—“except for those” among them “Allah has guided”.

[Maariful Qur’an] According to the blessed Companion Abdullah ibn Abbas, the first Qiblah was the Baytul-Maqdis, and continued to be so even after the Hijrah [emigration to Medina] for some sixteen or seventeen months, and it was only then that Allah commanded that the Baytullah [at Mecca] be taken as the Qiblah…The raison d’etre of these changes of orientation has been explained like this. When the Holy Prophet came to Madinah, he had to deal with the Jews, and in order to familiarize them with Islam he adopted their Qiblah under divine commandment. But, by and by it became evident that a stubborn people like the Jews would not easily give up their hostility to Islam. So, Allah allowed him [Muhammad] to go back to the original Qiblah…[T]he commandment with regard to the change in orientation is a test of the faith of those who claim to be the followers of the Holy Prophet, which would openly demonstrate the distinction between those who are genuinely obedient to Allah and His Messenger, and those who follow their individual opinion. History records that after this verse had been revealed, those who were weak in their faith, or were just hypocrites, forsook Islam, and even accused the Holy Prophet of having gone back to the ways of his own people—that is, of the mushrikun [infidels]…Once the Ka’bah had been made the Qiblah of the Muslims, the Arabs could be expected to find Islam more acceptable. As for the hope that the adoption of Baytul-Maqdis as the Qiblah would bring the Jews closer to Islam, it had been dashed by the events of the last sixteen or seventeen months, for the hostility of the Jews to Islam, fed by their vanity, had only been growing more intense.  

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:⁷⁵

[Tafsir Ibn Kathir] Ibn Abi Hatim  recorded that Ikrimah said, “Huyay bin Akhtab and Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf (two Jewish leaders) came to the people of Makkah, who said to them, ‘You (Jews) are people of the Book and knowledge, so judge us and Muhammad.’ They said, ‘Describe yourselves and describe Muhammad.’ They said, ‘We keep relation with kith and kin, slaughter camels (for the poor), release the indebted and provide water for pilgrims. As for Muhammad he is without male children, he severed our relations, and the thieves who rob pilgrims (the tribe of Ghifa) follow him. So who is better, we or him?’ They [the Jews] said, ‘You are more righteous and better guided.’ Thereafter, Allah sent down, “Have you not seen those who were given a portion”. This story was also reported from Ibn Abbas and several others among the Salaf [the first disciples of Muhammad]. This Ayah [verse 4:52] contains a curse for the Jews and informs them that they have no supporter in this life or the Hereafter, because they sought the help of idolators. They uttered this statement [in verse 4:51] to lure the disbelievers into supporting them, and they ultimately gathered their forces for the battle of Al-Ahzab [the Battle of the Trench], forcing the Prophet and his Companions to dig a defensive tunnel around Al-Madinah.

[Tafsir al-Jalalayn] This was revealed about Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf and other Jewish scholars when they went to Makka and were made aware of those killed at Badr, and they encouraged the idolators to take revenge and fight the Prophet…“Do you not see those who were given a portion of the Book believing in idols and false gods”, the idols of Quraysh, “and saying of those who disbelieve”, referring to Abu Sufyan and his people when they said to them, ‘Who is more guided: us, when we are the guardians of the House and give water to Pilgrims, hospitality to guests and ransom captives, or Muhammad, who opposes the din [religion] of his fathers, and cuts himself off from his own kin?’ “These people” (you) are better guided” and straighter “on their path than the believers?”/”These are the ones Allah has cursed. And if someone is cursed by Allah, you will not find any helper for him” against the punishment of Allah when it comes.

[Maariful Qur’an] Ibn Abbas narrates that two chiefs of the Jews, Huyayy ibn Akhtab and Ka’b ibn Ashraf came along with a group of theirs, after the battle of Uhud, to meet the Quraysh at Makkah. The Jewish Chief, Ka’b ibn Ashraf met Abu Sufyan and promised to collaborate with him in his fight against the Holy Prophet. The people of Makkah told Ka’b ibn Ashraf that they were a people who cheated by making false promises. Then, they challenged them to prostrate before two particular idols (Jibt and Taghut) there, if they really meant what they said. So, in order to assure the Quraysh, he did exactly that. After that Ka’b told the Quraysh: “Let thirty people from among you and thirty people from among us come forward so that we declare our resolve before the Lord of the Ka’bah that all of us will jointly fight against Muhammad.” The Quraysh liked this proposal from Ka’b and this was how they opened a united front against [the] Muslims. After that, Abu Sufyan told Ka’b: “You are learned people. You have the Book of Allah with you. But, we are totally ignorant. Now, you let us know what do you think about us—tell us if we are on the right path, or is it Muhammad?” Ka’b asked: “What is your religion?” Abu Sufyan said: “We slaughter our camels for the Hajj. We offer their milk to pilgrims, and entertain guests. We maintain good relations with our kin. We make tawaf [circumambulate, ritualistically] of the House of Allah and perform Umrah [pilgrimage]. Contrary to this, Muhammad has abandoned his ancestral religion and he has cut himself off from his own people, and on top of all that, he has challenged our ancestral religion by introducing a new religion of his own.” Hearing all this, Ka’b ibn Ashraf said, “You people are on the right path, Muhammad has gone astray.” Thereupon, Allah Almighty revealed these verses [Koran 4:51-52] and, thus, exposed their lying and deceit. Ka’b ibn Ashraf was a distinguished scholar among the Jews…However, when the ghost of overweening desires overpowered his mind and heart, he offered to join forces with the Quraysh against the Muslims. As we already know, the Quraysh put forth the position that he should prostrate before their idols. He swallowed this bitter pill to achieve his personal end. Here we see that he squarely stooped to fulfill the condition imposed by the Quraysh, something contrary to his religion, but he made no effort to stand by his religious beliefs and did not show the courage to part ways with them on so crucial an issue…The words of the Holy Qur’an in verse [4:]52 state that anyone under the curse of Allah has no helper to help him in that predicament.

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):⁷⁶

[Tabari]: In my (Tabari’s) opinion, (the Christians) are not like the Jews who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophets, and who oppose Allah in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books.

[Zamakshari]: Here Allah portrays the Jews as being unyielding and as acknowledging the truth only grudgingly. . . . On account of their vehement enmity against the believers, Allah places the Jews together with the idolaters; indeed, going even further, he shows them to be at the head, since they are mentioned before the idolaters. Allah does the same in his words: “And thou shalt find them (the Jews) the eagerest of men for life—even more so than the idolaters. Each of them wishes he could be given a life of a thousand years; but the grant of life would not save him from chastisement—for God sees well all that they do!” (sura 2:96/90). The Jews are surely like this, and even worse! From the Prophet (the following is related): “If a Muslim is alone with two Jews, they will try to kill him.”. . . The Jews focused their hostility to the Muslims in the most overt and intense manner . . .

[Baydawi]: [B]ecause of [the Jews’] intense obstinacy, multifaceted disbelief, and their addiction to following their whims, their adherence to the blind following of their tradition, their distancing themselves from the truth, and their unrelenting denial of, and hostility toward, the prophets . . . [the Christians] . . . easiness to deal with, the softness of their hearts, their dismissal of gain in this world, and their serious concern with learning and good deeds . . .their acceptance of the truth as soon as they understand it; or, because of their humility as opposed to the arrogance of the Jews.

[Ibn Kathir]: Allah said, “Verily you will find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers the Jews and those who commit Shirk [i.e., the polytheists, or idolaters].” This describes the Jews, since their disbelief is that of rebellion, defiance, opposing the truth, belittling other people, and degrading the scholars. This is why the Jews—may Allah’s continued curses descend on them until the Day of Resurrection—killed many of their Prophets and tried to kill the Messenger of Allah several times, as well as performing magic spells against him and poisoning him. They also incited their likes among the polytheists against the Prophet.

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!⁷⁷

Mentioned earlier was the friendliness of Jews with disbelievers. Mentioned now is their hostility towards Muslims—which was the real cause of that friendship (the enemy of my enemy is my friend!)… Mentioned in these verses are those among the people of the Book who had no feelings of malice or enmity for Muslims because of their goodliness and tilt towards the truth. But people of such quality like—Abdullah ibn Salam—were very rare, rather almost non-existent among the Jews…[T]here were some people…even among Jews who adhered to the Torah since the period of Musa [Moses], but when Islam came, they entered the fold of Islam. However, the number of such people was so small that it cannot be considered significant in the context of communities and nations. As for the rest of the Jews, they were the foremost in their hostility towards Muslims. Therefore, their attitude was identified at the very beginning of the verse by saying: “You will certainly find that the most hostile people against the believers are the Jews…”…It must be kept in mind that these verses [5:82-5:86] were revealed to show this particular difference between the two groups [Jews and Christians]. The Qur’an has itself pointed out this fact at the end of this very verse [5:82] in the following words: “That is because among them there are priests and monks and because they are not arrogant (which could make them unwilling to listen and think).” Comparison makes it clear that this was not the condition of the Jews. They were not God-fearing and truth-loving. Their scholars and rabbis were far removed from renouncing the material pleasures of mortal life for the sake of knowledge and religion, instead of which, they had harnessed their knowledge as a source of accumulating material benefits. This lust for the mundane had gripped them to the extent they did not care to make a distinction between the true and the false or the lawful and the unlawful.

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:⁷⁸

Shas b. Qays, who was an old man hardened in unbelief and most bitter against the Muslims and exceeding envious of them, passed by a number of the apostle’s companions from Aus and Khazraj in a meeting, while they were talking together. When he saw their amity and unity and their happy relations in Islam after their enmity in pagan times he was filled with rage and said: “The chiefs of B. Qayla in this country having united there will be no firm place for us with them.” So he gave orders to a Jewish youth who was with them to go to them and sit with them and mention the battle of Bu’ath and the preceding events, and recite to them some of the poetry composed by each side. Now at the battle of Bu’ath Aus and, Khazraj fought and the victory went to Aus who were commanded at the time by Hudayr b. Simak Al-Ashhali the father of Usayd b. Hudayr, Khazraj being led by Amr b. alNu'man al-Bayadi, and both were killed. The youth did so. Thereupon the people began to talk and to quarrel and to boast until two men of the two clans leapt up, Aus b. Qayzi of B. Haritha b. Harith of Aus and Jabbar b. Sakhr of B. Salama of Khazraj. They began to hold forth against each other until one of them said, “If you wish we will do the same again.” Thereupon both sides became enraged and said, “We will. Your meeting-place is outside-that being the volcanic tract-To arms! To arms!” So out they went and when the news reached the apostle he went out with such of the emigrants as were with him and said to them: “O Muslims, remember God. Remember God. Will you act as pagans while I am with you after God has guided you to Islam and honored you thereby and made a clean break with paganism; delivered you thereby from unbelief; made you friends thereby?” Then the people realized that the dissension was due to Satan and the guile of their enemy. They wept and the men of Aus and Khazraj embraced one another. Then they went off with the apostle, attentive and obedient, God having quenched the guile of the enemy of God Shas b. Qays. So God sent down concerning him, and what he did: “Say: O Scripture folk, why do you deny God's signs while God is witness of what you do? Say, O Scripture folk, why do you keep those who believe from God’s way wishing to make it crooked when you are witnesses and God is not unmindful of what you are doing ? ” [Koran 3:99]

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. Abu Huraira did describe the poisoning, but not its ostensibly chronic, lethal impact.⁷⁹

Ibn Abbas replied, “That indicated the death of Allah's Apostle which Allah informed him of.” Umar said, “I do not understand of it except what you understand.” Narrated Aisha: The Prophet in his ailment in which he died, used to say, “O Aisha! I still feel the pain caused by the food I ate at Khaibar, and at this time, I feel as if my aorta is being cut from that poison.”

Anas reported that a Jewess came to Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) with poisoned mutton and he took of that what had been brought to him (Allah's Messenger). (When the effect of this poison were felt by him) he called for her and asked her about that, whereupon she said: “I had determined to kill you.” Thereupon he said: “Allah will never give you the power to do it.” He (the narrator) said that they (the Companions of the Holy Prophet) said: “Should we not kill her?” Thereupon he said: “No.” He (Anas) said: “I felt (the affects of this poison) on the uvula of Allah's Messenger.”

Narrated Abu Huraira: When Khaibar was conquered, a (cooked) sheep containing poison, was given as a present to Allah's Apostle.

Narrated Abu Huraira: When Khaibar was conquered, Allah’s Apostle was presented with a poisoned (roasted) sheep. Allah's Apostle said, “Collect for me all the Jews present in this area.” (When they were gathered) Allah's Apostle said to them, “I am going to ask you about something; will you tell me the truth?” They replied, “Yes, O Abal-Qasim!” Allah's Apostle said to them, “Who is your father?” They said, “Our father is so-and-so.” Allah's Apostle said, “You have told a lie. for your father is so-and-so,” They said, “No doubt, you have said the truth and done the correct thing.” He again said to them, “If I ask you about something; will you tell me the truth?” They replied, “Yes, O Abal-Qasim! And if we should tell a lie you will know it as you have known it regarding our father,” Allah’s Apostle then asked, “Who are the people of the (Hell) Fire?” They replied, “We will remain in the (Hell) Fire for a while and then you (Muslims) will replace us in it” Allah's Apostle said to them. “You will abide in it with ignominy. By Allah, we shall never replace you in it at all.” Then he asked them again, “If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?” They replied, “Yes.” He asked. “Have you put the poison in this roasted sheep?” They replied, “Yes,” He asked, “What made you do that?” They replied, “We intended to learn if you were a liar in which case we would be relieved from you, and if you were a prophet then it would not harm you.”

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”:⁸⁰

When the apostle had rested Zaynab d. al-Harith, the wife of Sallam b. Mishkam prepared for him a roast lamb, having first inquired what joint he preferred. When she learned that it was the shoulder she put a lot of poison in it and poisoned the whole lamb. Then she brought it in and placed it before him. He took hold of the shoulder and chewed a morsel of it, but he did not swallow it. Bishr b. al-Bara b. Ma’rur who was with him took some of it as the apostle had done, but he swallowed it, while the apostle spat it

out, saying, “This bone tells me that it is poisoned.” Then he called for the woman and she confessed, and when he asked her what had induced her to do this she answered: “You know what you have done to my people. I said to myself, If he is a king I shall ease myself of him and if he is a prophet he will be informed (of what I have done).” So the apostle let her off. Bishr died from what he had eaten. Marwan b. Uthman b. Abu Sa’id b. al-Mu’alla told me: “The apostle had said in his illness of which he was to die when Umm Bishr d. al-Bara' came to visit him, ‘O Umm Bishr, this is the time in which I feel a deadly pain from what I ate with your brother at Khaybar.’ ” The Muslims considered that the apostle died as a martyr in addition to the prophetic office with which God had honored him.

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:⁸¹

The Jews discussed about poisons and became united in one poison. She [a Khaybar Jewess, Zaynab Bint al-Harith] poisoned the goat putting more poison in the forelegs. . . . The Apostle of Allah took the foreleg, a piece of which he put into his mouth. . . . The Apostle of Allah sent for Zaynab Bint al-Harith [and] . . . handed her over to the heirs of Bishr Ibn al-Barra [who the Jewess had also poisoned, leading to his rapid death] who put her to death. This is the approved version [emphasis added]. . . . The Apostle of Allah lived after this three years, till in consequence of his pain he passed away. During his illness he used to say: “I did not cease to find the effect of the poisoned morsel I took at Khaybar.”

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:⁸²

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.⁸³

Despite its minor errors, or deviations,84 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:⁸⁵

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.⁸⁶

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:⁸⁷

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,⁸⁸

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:89

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.”⁹⁰

Haggai Ben-Shammai’s 1988 essay “Jew Hatred in the Islamic Tradition and Koranic Exegesis”⁹¹ rivets on two key examples of Jew hatred in the Koran (and Koranic exegesis)—the “curse against the Jews” (in Koran 2:61, repeated elsewhere), and Koranic verses (most notably, 5:82) rationalizing why Jews were to be held in greater contempt than Christians.⁹² Ben-Shammai highlights the centrality of the Jews’ “abasement and humiliation,” and being “laden with God’s anger” in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Qur’an 2:61, including the hadith and Koranic commentaries. Despite the literal reference of 2:61 to the Israelites in the wilderness during their exodus from Egypt, he notes,⁹³

to all of the Muslim exegetes, without exception, it was absolutely clear that the reference was to the Jews of their day. The Arabic word translated as “pitched upon them” also means, literally, that the “abasement and poverty” were decreed for them forever. The “abasement” is the payment of the poll tax [jizya] and the humiliating ceremony involved. As for the “poverty,” this insured their remaining impoverished forever. There are traditions which attribute this interpretation to Muhammad himself.

The terrifying rage decreed upon the Jews forever is connected in the hadith and exegeses to Koran 1:7, where Muslims ask Allah to guide them rightly, not in the path of those who provoke and must bear His wrath. This verse is in turn linked 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). Ben-Shammai explains the primary reason for this “fearful decree,” which resulted in the Jews being “so terribly cursed”:⁹⁴

[F]rom time immemorial the Jews rejected God’s signs, the wonders performed by the prophets. They did not accept the prophecy of Jesus whom the Koran counts among the prophets. But this is all part of the Jews’ nature: they are by their very nature deceitful and treacherous.

Indeed according to the sira of both Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa’d,  just before subduing the Medinan Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza, and orchestrating the mass execution of their adult males, Muhammad himself invoked  Koran 5:60, addressing these Jews, with hateful disparagement, as “You brothers of monkeys” (Ibn Sa’d’s account adds, “and pigs”).94a Muhammad also repeats the Koranic curse (of verse 5:78) upon the Jews in a canonical hadith, “He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘...curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’.”94b

Although the Jews initially longed for Muhammad to triumph over the pagan Arabs, “Would that Allah send this prophet of whom our Book says that his coming is assured” (according to a tradition cited by Ben-Shammai), realizing that Muhammad was not one of them, Ben-Shammai observes, quoting from Koran 5:64,⁹⁵

they then denied him out of jealousy of the Arabs, though they knew in truth he is the prophet. Furthermore, this Jewish trait brought them to grave heresy. They thought that they would succeed not only in leading humankind astray but also in fooling God . . . (5:64). “The Jews have said, God’s hand is tied. . . . As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it.” Exegetes cite traditions which prove that the Jews always hated the true prophets and put them to death. Therefore they always failed in their wars and their Temple was destroyed time and again.

Ben-Shammai’s analysis of Koran 5:82 links this verse to Koran 3:54-56, and in turn to the tradition, “The Christians are to be above the Jews until the day of Judgment, for there is no land where the Christians are not above the Jews, neither in the east nor the west. The Jews are degraded in all the lands.”⁹⁶

He emphasizes that in the traditions,⁹⁷

the Christians have a clear priority over the Jews. If we posit that the early tradition reflects the historical development of early Islam and that the political, economic, and social reality was apt to produce this preference, there is no doubt that these traditions reflect this reality.

Ben-Shammai, arguing for prolonged historical continuity, “As has been stated, this tradition (i.e., of more intense Muslim-Jewish hatred) has remained alive to this very day,”⁹⁸ refers to the travelogue accounts of Edward William Lane, which record Lane’s observations of Egyptian society, originally published in 1835.⁹⁹  But Ben-Shammai fails to discuss a remarkable essay by the polymath Arabic writer al-Jahiz (d. 869),¹⁰⁰ composed a millennium earlier, which bolsters his argument by illustrating the anti-Jewish attitudes already prevalent within an important early (i.e., mid-9th century), Islamic society—the seat of the Abbasid-Baghdadian Caliphate.

Al-Jahiz’s essay—an anti-Christian polemic believed to have been commissioned by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861), who inaugurated a literary campaign against the Christians—explores the reasons why the Muslim masses prefer the Christians to the Jews. This empirical preference (although decried by the author) is acknowledged by al-Jahiz from the outset:¹⁰¹

I shall begin to enumerate the causes which made the Christians more liked by the masses than the Magians [Zoroastrians], and made men consider them more sincere than the Jews, more endeared, less treacherous, less unbelieving, and less deserving of punishment. For all this there are manifold and evident causes.

Al-Jahiz offers two primary explanations for this abiding hostility of the Muslim rank and file toward the Jews. First was the “rancorous” relationship between the early Muslim community, exiles from Mecca, and their Jewish neighbors in Medina:¹⁰²

When the [Muslim] Emigrants [from Mecca] became the neighbors of the Jews [in Medina] . . .the Jews began to envy the Muslims the blessings of their new faith, and the union which resulted after dissension. They proceeded to undermine the belief of our [i.e., the Muslim] masses, and to lead them astray. They aided our enemies and those envious of us. From mere misleading speech and stinging words they plunged into an open declaration of enmity, so that the Muslims mobilized their forces, exerting themselves morally and materially to banish the Jews and destroy them. Their strife became long-drawn and widespread, so that it worked itself up into a rage, and created yet greater animosity and more intensified rancor. The Christians, however, because of their remoteness from Mecca and Medina, did not have to put up with religious controversies, and did not have occasion to stir up trouble, and be involved in war. That was the first cause of our dislike of the Jews, and our partiality toward the Christians.

However, al-Jahiz then identifies as “the most potent cause” of this particular animus toward the Jews, Koran 5:82, and its interpretation by the contemporary (i.e., mid-ninth-century) Muslim masses.¹⁰³ It is also worth noting that al-Jahiz (described as a “skeptic,” who harbored “indifferent views toward religion in general”)¹⁰⁴ included these sociological observations that reveal the interface between Islamic religious and indigenous (and indigenous ethnic/racial discriminatory attitudes toward) Jews expressed a millennium before any secular Western European antisemitic ideologies would be exported to the Muslim Near East:¹⁰⁵  

Our people [the Muslims] observing thus the occupations of the Jews and the Christians concluded that the religion of the Jews must compare unfavorably as do their professions, and that their unbelief must be the foulest of all, since they are the filthiest of all nations. Why the Christians, ugly as they are, are physically less repulsive than the Jews may be explained by the fact that the Jews, by not intermarrying, have intensified the offensiveness of their features. Exotic elements have not mingled with them; neither have males of alien races had intercourse with their women, nor have their men cohabited with females of a foreign stock. The Jewish race therefore has been denied high mental qualities, sound physique, and superior lactation. The same results obtain when horses, camels, donkeys, and pigeons are inbred.

Al-Jahiz’s contention that the Muslims harbored greater enmity toward the Jews than the Christians is supported by the independent observations of another Arab author active during the beginning of the ninth century in Iraq, the Sufi theologian al-Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857). He maintained that because the Jews stubbornly denied Muhammad’s truth, they were “in the eyes of the Muslims worse than the Christians.”¹⁰⁶  

One thousand years later, Lane’s testimony on the difference between the attitude of Egyptian Muslims toward the Jews and the Christians again highlights the influence of Koran 5:82:¹⁰⁷ 

They [the Jews] are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general, and they are said to bear a more inveterate hatred than any other people to the Muslims and the Muslim religion. It is said, in the Koran [quoting 5:82] “Thou shalt surely find the most violent all men to those who have believed to be the Jews . . . ”

Lane further notes:¹⁰⁸

It is a common saying among the Muslims in this country, “Such one hates me with the hate of the Jews.” We cannot wonder, then, that the Jews are detested far more than are the Christians. Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten for merely passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed: but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the Koran or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

The missionary Gregory Wortabet’s mid-19th century account from Jerusalem (published in 1856) confirms Lane’s reference about the apparent commonality of Muslims equating their domesticated asses (donkeys) with Jews, accompanied by “opprobrious epithets”—and often abuse—of either, or both. Wortabet cites another Jew-hating motif from canonical Islam’s repertoire, the alleged poisoning of Muhammad by a Khaybar Jewess, as a possible rationale for such chronic Muslim attitudes toward Jews. His anecdote also documents the pejorative reference to Jews as “hogs” (pigs), in accord with Koran 5:60.¹⁰⁹

The Jew is still an object of scorn, and nowhere is the name of “Yahoodi (Jew)” more looked down upon than here in the city of his fathers. One day, as I was passing the Damascus gate, I saw an Arab hurrying on his donkey amid imprecations such as the following: “Emshi ya Ibn-el-Yahoodi (Walk, thou son of a Jew)! Yulaan abuk ya Ibn-el-Yahoodi (Cursed be thy father, thou son of a Jew)!” I need not give any more illustrations of the manner in which the man went on. The reader will observe, that the man did not curse the donkey, but the Jew, the father of the donkey. Walking up to him, I said, “Why do you curse the Jew? What harm has he done you?” “El Yahoodi khanzeer (the Jew is a hog)!” answered the man. “How do you make that out?” I said. “Is not the Jew as good as you or I?” “Ogh!” ejaculated the man, his eyes twinkling with fierce rage, and his brow knitting. By this time he was getting out of my hearing. I was pursuing my walk, when he turned round, and said, “El Yahoodi khanzeer! Khanzeer el Yahoodi! (The Jew is a hog! A hog is a Jew!)” Now I must tell the reader, that, in the Mahomedan vocabulary, there is no word lower than a hog, that animal being in their estimation the most defiled of animals; and good Mahomedans are prohibited by the Koran from eating it. The Jew, in their estimation, is the vilest of the human family, and is the object of their pious hatred, perhaps from the recollection that a Jewess of Khaibar first undermined the health of the prophet by infusing poison into his food. [emphasis added] Hence a hog and a Jew are esteemed alike in the eye of a Moslem, both being the lowest of their kind; and now the reader will better understand the meaning of the man’s words, “El Yahoodi khanzeer!”

Moshe Perlmann, an eminent scholar of Islam’s Medieval era anti-Jewish polemical literature, made this rueful summary observation in 1964:¹¹⁰

The Koran, of course became a mine of anti-Jewish passages. The hadith did not lag behind. Popular preachers used and embellished such material.

The numerous salient examples of Islam’s canonical Jew-hatred punctuating Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s 1937 declaration validate Perlmann’s concise overarching assessment of these foundational Islamic sources, and their tragic application across space and time, into the modern era.

El-Husseini’s promulgation of jihad and canonical Islamic Jew-hatred in pursuit of the destruction of Palestinian Jewry, and later, the nascent Jewish State of Israel, has reverberated across the ensuing decades. Consider two complementary fatwas, one written January 5, 1956, by then grand mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma’moun, and another January 9, 1956, signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar University—Sunni Islam’s Vatican—and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. These rulings elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine—modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza—having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), “fay territory”—booty or spoils—to be governed eternally by Islamic law.¹¹¹

Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory. [As] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants. . . . Jihad . . . to restore the country to its people . . . is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim… Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Although free of  eschatological references, the January 1956 Al Azhar fatwas’ language and arguments—pronounced from Sunni Islam’s most esteemed religious teaching institution—are otherwise indistinguishable from those employed just over three decades later by Hamas (in its 1988 covenant),¹¹² revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred.

Koran 3:112, which affirms the curse of permanent abasement upon the Jews for transgressing Allah’s will, and killing his prophets, is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement of the document.¹¹³ Article 7 re-states the canonical apocalyptic hadith of Jew annihilation requisite to ushering in the messianic age, which concluded Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s 1937 declaration:¹¹⁴

...the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah's prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

 Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas’ foundational ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Article 15 (subtitled, “Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty”) elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad:¹¹⁵

The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements...It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such…

Recent polling data¹¹⁶ indicate that these traditionalist Islamic views—espoused across a continuum of 75 years by el-Husseini, Al Azhar University, and Hamas—resonate with the Palestinian Muslim population. American pollster Stanley Greenberg performed what was described as an “intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”¹¹⁷ As reported in July, 2011 these data revealed that seventy-three percent of Palestinian Muslims agreed with the dictates of the apocalyptic hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985; included in both el-Husseini’s 1937 declaration, and the 1988 Hamas Covenant) calling for the annihilation of the Jews, to bring on the messianic age.118  Eighty percent  supported the destruction of Israel by jihad,  and the need to recruit the entire global Muslim community, or “umma” in this quintessential Islamic cause.¹¹⁹

Almost four decades ago Bat Ye’or published a remarkably insightful analysis of contemporary Islamic Jew-hatred, in particular, its annihilationist predilection. She hypothesized that the rise of Jewish nationalism—Zionism—posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order—jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews—of apocalyptic magnitude.¹²⁰

The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are equivalent—due to the inferior status of Jews in Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad. Here the Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce religious anti-Judaism.

Bat Ye’or’s 1974 observations have now been confirmed by the first thorough textual analysis of the exclusively Islamic sources utilized in a critically important 1937 pronouncement by Hajj Amin el-Husseini. One can only speculate as to why such an investigation was not conducted decades earlier.

REFERENCES

1. Gerhard Hopp. Mufti-Papiere. Briefe, Memorranden, Reden und Aurufe Amin al-Husainis aus dem Exil, 1940-45, Berlin, 2001 (Mufti Papers: Amin el-Husseini’s Letters, Memoranda, Speeches, and Appeals from the Exile Period, 1940-45) No. 104: “Speech before the Imams of the Bosnian SS division, October 4, 1944,” p. 221. (English translation of extracts by David Kneip)

2. Andrew Bostom. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Amherst, N.Y., 2008, pp. 31-76; and 209-312 for a sampling of the extensive canonical Islamic sources of Jew-hatred, from the Koran, the most authoritative Koranic exegeses, the hadith, and the sira (earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad). See pp. 394, 33 for a contemporary example from the late Sunni Muslim Papal equivalent, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University between 1996-2010, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (d. March, 2010), which recapitulates much of el-Husseini’s October 4, 1944 statement:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not. …[T]he Jews always remain maleficent deniers….they should desist from their negative denial…some Jews went way overboard in their denying hostility, so gentle persuasion can do no good with them, so use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil. One may go so far as to ban their religion, their persons, their wealth, and their villages.[p. 394]

. . . anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward. My stance stems from Allah’s book [the Koran], more than one third of which deals with the Jews. . . . [I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah. I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. (i.e., cited above, in Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna) [p. 33]

3. Jennie Lebel. The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini and National Socialism, translated from Serbian by Paul Munch, Belgrade, 2007, p. 243.

4. Congressional Record, 1922 House of Representatives, National Home for the Jewish People, June 30, 1922, House Resolution 360 (Rept. NO. 1172), http://bit.ly/11du9ie.

5. I.A. Abbady. “Will Massacre All Zionists, Said Mufti 30 Years Ago,” The New York Post, December 29, 1947; see also, Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 92, 180 note 73,  and 188 note 439. Musa Kazem el-Husseini, former governor of Jaffa during the final years of the Ottoman rule and president of the Arab (primarily Muslim) Palestinian Congress, demanded restoration of the sharia in a 1920 letter* to the British high commissioner, Herbert Samuels:

No individual or Government has any right to represent the country in legislating laws because the country is better acquainted with its own needs and because laws, as Jurists state, are the reflection of the people’s spirit and because [Ottoman] Turkey has drafted such laws as suit our customs. This was done relying upon the Shari’a (Religious Law), in force in Arabic territories, that is engraved in the very hearts of the Arabs and has been assimilated in their customs and that has been applied . . . in the modern [Arab] states. . . . We therefore ask the British government . . . that it should respect these laws [i.e., the sharia] . . . that were in force under the Turkish regime.

*This 1920 letter was brought to my attention by Gisele Littman (Bat Ye’or), who then kindly provided me with a photocopy of the document.

6. Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 94.

7. Ibid.

8. Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini and National Socialism, pp. 189-190; 311-319.

⁹. Jan Wanner, in, “Amin al-Husayni and Germany’s Arab Policy in the Period 1939-1945,” Archiv Orientalni Vol. 54, 1986, pp. 244.

10. Ibid., p. 243.

11. Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 95.

12. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz. “Amin al-Husaini and the Holocaust. What Did the Grand Mufti Know?,” World Politics Review.com, May 8, 2008, http://www.worldpolitic sreview.com/articles/2082/amin-al-husaini-and-the-holocaust-what-did-the-grand-mufti-know.

13. Stan Goodenough. “Hitler's little helpers” The Jerusalem Post, August 8, 2006 http://bit.ly/GzN4v7 .

14. Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers. “Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine: The Einsatzkommando of the PanzerArmy Africa, 1942,” Yad Vashem Studies, 2007, vol. 35, pp. 111-142, http://bit.ly/18O7Ama.

14a. Richard P Mitchell. The Society of the Muslim Brothers, London, Oxford University Press, 1969; Hasan al-Banna. Translated by Charles Wendell. Five tracts of Hasan al-Banna a selection from the Majmu at Rasa’il al-Imȧm al-Shahi̇d Ḥasan al-Banna, Berkeley, CA, 1978; Brynjar Lia. The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt—The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement, 1928-1942, Reading, UK, 1998.

14b. Abd Al-Fattah Muhammad El-AWaisi. The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question, 1927-1948, London, 1998, p. 28

14c. Lia. The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt—The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement, 1928-1942, pp. 179-180.

14d. El-AWaisi. The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question, 1927-1948, pp. 190-191.

14e. Ibid, p. 191.

14f. Ibid; El-Awaisi (pp. 162-163) marshals considerable evidence in support of his contention that el-Husseini was among a select group of “Islamic dignitaries” al-Banna referred to as “friends of the Ikhwan,” but kept “outside the ranks of the Society.” As such, el-Awaisi rejects the claim that el-Husseini was the “general overseer” of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. He notes, for example (on p. 163),

… in the reports written by Egypt’s Ikhwan on the Palestinian branches, Muhammad Ali al-Jabari, Mayor of Hebron, was cited in December 1945 as “The Chief of the Ikhwan in Palestine.” In February 1948, Abd al-Aziz al-Khayat was cited in the same title. According to the Muslim Brothers’ traditions, the holder of the post of general overseer (like the general guide) would have it for life unless he resigned or became incapable of holding it.

14g. Ibid, p. 199. Muslim Brotherhood hagiographer el-Awaisi observes, “With this statement and this telegram, the Ikhwan volcano had erupted.”

15. Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini and National Socialism, pp. 283-310; Haj Amin El-Husseini. Records of the Army Staff (Record Group 319), Investigative Records Repository (IRR), Personal Name Files, 1939-1976, XE001076/090F, in 270/84/01/01 - 270/84/19/07, National Archives in College Park, Maryland, http://1.usa.gov/19h5MUH; Zvi Elpeleg. (translated from Hebrew by Rachel Kessel), Through the Eyes of the Mufti, London, 2009, pp. 11, 5, 10, 12.

15a. Sylvia Haim, “Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism,” Die Welt Des Islams Vol. 4, Issue 2/3, 1955, pp. 124–49; quote from her p. 149 conclusion.

15b. Sylvia Haim. Arab Nationalism—An Anthology, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, pp. 63–64.

15c. Ibid, p. 64.

15d. Elpeleg, Through the Eyes of the Mufti, Preface, p. x.; A cartoonish variant on this theme of Islamic negationism appears in Wolfgang Schwanitz’s review of Elpeleg’s book. Schwanitz complains about Elpeleg’s omission of the Koranic verses as a “a regrettable loss especially for those who are researching the roots of the currently triumphant national and global Islamism which emerged triumphantly after the [Orwellian-named ‘Arab Spring’] revolts of 2011.” But Schwanitz then fails to elucidate these Koranic citations himself, despite being an Islamologist who takes prides in displaying his Arabic language fluency!  (Wolfgang Schwanitz. “Book Review: Through the Eyes of the Mufti. The Essays of Haj Amin”, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, No. 8556, February 29, 2012 http://bit.ly/1dUMqa6)

16. Jeffrey Herf. The Jewish Enemy—Nazi Propaganda During World War II and The Holocaust, Cambridge, MA, 2006,  and Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, New Haven, CT, 2010; Matthias Kuntzel. Jihad and Jew-Hatred—Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11, New York, NY, 2007. Reviewing Herf’s book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World,  Daniel Pipes opined, “In the Nazi telling, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7th century.”  (See Daniel Pipes.org, April, 2010 http://bit.ly/9ulKNX ) An informed, and doctrinally and  historically accurate representation by Pipes would have been, “In the canonical Islamic sources, as assessed by Islam’s greatest theologians and legists, classical and modern, alike, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7th century.”

17. “Berman Book Showcases Intellectual Double Standards on Islamists”, Investigative Project on Terrorism News, May 5, 2010 http://bit.ly/aSsPtu.

18. Muhammad Sabri. Islam, Judentum, Bolschewismus, (Islam, Jewry, Bolshevism), Berlin, 1938. http://bit.ly/18sA3gl.

19. Wolfgang Schwanitz. “A Mosaic on the Mufti’s Islam” Jewish Political Studies Review, Article 21, May 2009, 1-2, http://bit.ly/19UKbwf.

20. Ibid; see also Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini and National Socialism, pp. 312-319.

21. Serbo-Croatian to English translation in Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini and National Socialism, pp. 313-319.

22. Usury is a Koranic allegation against the Jews; see Koran 2:275, 4:161. For much more elaborate litanies of the Jews inveterate, perfidious Koranic traits, see Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 40-41,385-386, 459-461.

23. Al-Tabari (838-923). Born in Tabaristan, died in Baghdad; historian, theologian, and jurisconsult; author of a monumental commentary on the Koran, and a universal history, Annals, and Kitab al-Jihad [Book of the Holy War]. El-Husseini mistakenly asserts that Tabari refers to the Jews threatening to kill Moses when he returns from Mount Sinai. According to Tabari (see The History of al-Tabari, Volume 3, “The Children of Israel”, translated by William M. Brinner, Albany, N.Y., 1991, p. 77) and Koran 7:150, the threat was allegedly made to Moses’ brother Aaron—a “Muslim prophet”, i.e., Harun, according to Islamic doctrine—while Moses was at Mount Sinai, during the golden calf episode.  Tabari’s exegesis of Koran 7:159 distinguishes between the followers of Moses, the Islamic “Musa,” who are considered Muslims, and the vast majority of the condemned Israelites—Jews, disbelievers, who “killed their prophets.” (English translation of Tabari’s gloss on Koran 7:159 in, Brannon M. Wheeler. Moses in the Qur’an and Islamic Exegesis, New York, N.Y., 2002, p. 94)

24. It is unclear what el-Husseini is referring to vis a vis “The Romans” and “the Jews,” during, one assumes, the 542 C.E. Yersinia pestis bubonic plague epidemic. This outbreak, which occurred under the Byzantine ruler Justinian (who reigned from 527-565 C.E.) was not accompanied by the widespread hysteria, and related violent, mass-murderous persecutions of the Jews which were hallmarks of the Medieval era Western European “Black Death” bubonic plague epidemic that began in 1348 C.E. (For the Byzantine era, see Christine A. Smith. “Plague in the Ancient World: A Study from Thucydides to Justinian” The Student Historical Journal 1996-1997,  volume 28 http://bit.ly/19j1RRg; For the mid-14th century period Black Death, see Joshua Trachtenberg. The Devil and the Jews—The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism,  New Haven, CT, 1943, pp. 102ff.)

From the traditionalist Islamic perspective, for example Koran 2:59, its gloss by Tabari, and elaboration in the canonical hadith, plague was Allah’s just punishment for the transgressions of the Jews against his will.

Koranic translations from: Taqi al-Din Hilali; Muhammad Muhsin Khan.  Interpretation of the meanings of the noble Qurʼān in the English language:a summarized version of At [i.e. al.]-Tabarī, Al-Qurtubī, and Ibn Kathīr with comments from Sahīh Al-Bukhārī, 23rd revised, edition, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,  1998.; and A J Arberry. The Koran interpreted: a translation, New York, N.Y., 1996,1955.

(Koran 2:59, Hilali-Khan) “But those who did wrong changed the word from that which had been told to them for another, so We sent upon the wrong-doers Rijzan (a punishment) from the heaven because of their rebelling against Allah's Obedience.”

(Koran 2:59, Arberry) “Then the evildoers substituted a saying other than that which had been said to them; so We sent down upon the evildoers wrath out of heaven for their ungodliness.”

An extract of Tabari’s exegesis: “[S]o We sent down upon the evil-doers”—upon those who did what they should not have done when they substituted another saying for which Allah had commanded them to say, and when they disobeyed Him concerning what He had commanded them to do and perpetrated what he Had forbidden them to do—“an affliction out of heaven for ungodliness.”…rijz is ‘pustules’, from which comes the saying of the prophet concerning plague:… “Plague is ‘pustules’ which were inflicted on those who were before you”—or “on the Children of Israel.” (From Al-Tabari, The Commentary on the Qur’an, translated by J. Cooper, Volume 1, Oxford, pp. 340-341.)

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 56, Number 679: Narrated Usama bin Zaid: Allah’s Apostle said, “Plague was a means of torture sent on a group of Israelites. So if you hear of its spread in a land, don’t approach it, and if a plague should appear in a land where you are present, then don't leave that land in order to run away from it (i.e. plague).” http://bit.ly/GCbjJv

Sahih Bukhari; Translator: M. Muhsin Khan; Edited by: Mika’il al-Almany; 1st online edition October 2, 2009 http://bit.ly/16GJkUY; Sahih Muslim; Translator: Abd-al-Hamid Siddiqui; Edited by: Mika’il al-Almany; 1st online edition October 2, 2009 http://bit.ly/1aRpRhE: Khan’s translations are also (largely) reproduced here: http://bit.ly/GAsiLN; Siddiqui’s translations are also (largely) reproduced here: http://bit.ly/GCbuo4

25. Koran 2:96 (greed for worldliness); Koran 4:53 (miserliness);  Koran 5:32 and 5:64 (spreaders of corruption); Koran 5:13 (corrupters of sacred revelations); For the Jews’ hatred of Muhammad, see for example the gloss on Koran 5:64 in Tafsir al-Jalalayn, pp. 259-260. Meaning The Commentary of the Two Jalals, Tafsir al-Jalalayn is named after its two authors, al-Suyuti and his mentor Jalalu’d-Din al-Mahalli (1389–1459), who wrote the initial half of this classic work. Al-Suyuti completed Tafsir al-Jalalayn following al-Mahalli’s death. These apt comments  heralded the appearance of a 1,378-page English translation of Tafsir al-Jalalayn in 2008 (London, translated by Aisha Bewley): “The publication of this book is a landmark in the history of Islamic literature in English. With this work, for the first time, a complete translation of one of the great classical commentaries on the Holy Qur’an becomes available to English-speaking readers. For half a millennium Tafsir al-Jalalayn has been considered the essential first step in the study of the meanings of the Qur’an by teachers and students throughout the Islamic world. Although it is among the shortest and simplest of the complete commentaries, it is at the same time both wide-ranging and profound.” http://bit.ly/19UDUC0.; See also al-Jahiz’s mid-9th century discussion of the Jews hatred of the nascent Muslim umma (and Muhammad) [The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 317], confirmed a millennium later by Edward Lane’s observations of Egyptian Muslims, published in 1835 (The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 39).

26. Koran 5:82, and its specific exegesis (see for example, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 37-38); See also the writings of the 9th century Muslim polymath al-Jahiz (Ibid, p. 38), and the 15th century Moroccan Muslim jurist al-Maghili (Ibid, p.54); For a summary observation on the copious evidence of the Jews’ stubborn malevolence in the hadith literature (presented in full as Georges Vajda, “Jews and Muslims According to the Hadith,” pp. 235-260, in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism), see Vajda’s comment, extracted on p. 63.; For a summary assessment of the numerous sira accounts documenting the same Jewish attitudes, from the perspectives of Muhammad’s earliest pious Muslim biographer, Ibn Ishaq, and the late 19th through early 20th century Orientalist, Hartwig Hirschfeld, see pp. 67-69.

27. For the canonical Muslim apologetic viewpoint on Khaybar, and its “treaty,” see as examples, Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 39, Number 531 http://bit.ly/19mpe2p; and Sahih Muslim, Book 10, Number 3763 http://bit.ly/GBxuyZ   

It is worth noting that even Ibn Ishaq’s sira observes plainly, “So Khaybar became the prey [emphasis added] of the Muslims.” (The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, by A. Guillaume, 1955 (London)/2001 (Karachi), p. 516.)

The political rationale for Muhammad’s campaign against Khaybar has been discussed by Hartwig Hirschfeld and D. S. Margoliouth. Hirschfeld, in his review of Leone Caetani’s Annali dell Islam, agrees with the latter’s assessment: “The author [Caetani] is undoubtedly right in saying that the reasons given by the Muslim traditionalists are worthless, as Muhammad’s real motive was a purely political one, an additional motive being the opportunity which it gave of employing a number of followers unskilled in work but eager for spoil.” [Hartwig Hirschfeld, “The Annals of Islam,” review of Annali dell’Islam compilati de Leone Caetani, Principe de Teano, vol. 2, Milan, 1907, in Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 20,  1908, p. 876.]

Hirschfeld then adds, based upon his own research of the documentary record: “The expedition against Khaybar was a distinct breach of faith, as two years previously Muhammad had given the Jews of Khaybar and Maqna a charter of liberty which has fortunately been preserved, and traces of which are also to be found in the works of al-Wakidi and al-Baladhuri.” [Ibid. Regarding the breached treaty, Hirschfeld refers to its existence in his own essay “The Arabic Portion of the Cairo Genizah at Cambridge,” Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 15, 1905: 170–74.]

Margoliouth expands upon these arguments, and concludes, “[I]n plundering Meccans he [Muhammad] could plead that he had been driven from his home and possessions: and with the Jewish tribes of Medina he had in each case some outrage, real or pretended, to avenge. But the people of Khaybar, all that distance from Medina, had certainly done him and his followers no wrong: for their leaving unavenged the murder of one of their number by his emissary was no act of aggression. Ali, when told to lead the forces against them, had to enquire for what he was fighting: and was told that he must compel them to adopt the formulae of Islam. Khaybar was attacked because there was booty to be acquired there, and the plea for attacking it was that its inhabitants were not Muslims.’ ” [D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, London, 1905, reprint New Delhi: 1985), pp.362–63.]

The theological animus that motivated Muhammad’s political subjugation of the Jews, specifically, became an indelible part of Muslim attitudes toward Jews across space and time. It also defined eternal parameters in which Jews would be permitted to live as humiliated

Muslim dhimmis, the Jews of Khaybar—who, according to the hadith and sira, were eventually expelled from Arabia by Caliph Umar—being the prototype.

28. See again the lengthy enumeration of the Jews’ inveterate, perfidious Koranic traits referenced in note 22, above, as well as Koran 33:26 and 33:27, and the commentaries on these verses in Tafsir al-Jalalayn, p. 901: “ ‘He brought down from their fortresses those of the People of the Book’—meaning the Jewish clan of the Qurayza—‘who supported them [the disbelievers/ hypocrites], and cast terror into their hearts. You killed some of them’—those were the fighters—‘and some you took prisoner.’” [33:26]; “ ‘He bequeathed their land, their houses, and their wealth to you, and another land you had not yet trodden on.’ The first reference is to the expulsion of the Qurayza from Medina; the second to Khaybar which was taken after this [verse] was revealed. ‘Allah has power over all things.’ ” [33:27]

29. See Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 55, Number 546 http://bit.ly/16GJkUY (pp. 770-771); and The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 239, 248, 255. The Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun (who ruled from 813–833), allegedly had a Jewish notable drowned for referring to Muhammad as a liar. Immediately thereafter, it is also claimed, al-Mamun recounted for those present (The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 222)

the story of al-Miqdad ibn al-Aswad, a friend of the Prophet—how, (when he was on one of his journeys), he was accompanied for a whole day by a Jew. When evening came, al-Miqdad remembered the saying handed down from the Prophet: “No Jew meets with a Muslim in privacy unless he has some scheme to trap him.”

30. The relevant events are described in Koran 24:11-24:26, and elaborated in the Koranic commentaries (see for example, Tafsir al-Jalalayn, pp. 750-755), hadith (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 273, pp. 1047-1050, here: http://bit.ly/16GJkUY), and Ibn Ishaq’s sira account (The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 493-499.). Overall, these narratives are not consistent with el-Husseini’s suggestion that the Jews played a significant role in this affair. However, Ibn Ishaq does report, twice, that a central character who fomented the allegation of Aisha’s adultery—the “disaffected” Abdullah b. Ubayy—may have been influenced by a Jew from the tribe Banu Qaynuqa, Rifaa b. Zayd b. al-Tabut, “one of the most important Jews and a secret shelterer of the disaffected,” who “wished ill to Islam and its people.” (The Life of Muhammad, pp. 493, 604)

31. See Koran 2:89, and Tabari’s exegesis on this verse (Al-Tabari, The Commentary on the Qur’an, pp. 444-446.) See also the analysis of late Al Azhar Grand Imam Tantawi (d. March, 2010), in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 400-401.

32. Koran 2: 109;  [Hilali-Khan translation] “Many of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) wish that if they could turn you away as disbelievers after you have believed, out of envy from their own selves, even, after the truth (that Muhammad Peace be upon him is Allah's Messenger) has become manifest unto them. But forgive and overlook, till Allah brings His Command. Verily, Allah is Able to do all things..”; [Arberry translation] “Many of the People of the Book wish they might restore you as unbelievers, after you have believed, in the jealousy of their souls, after the truth has become clear to them; yet do you pardon and be forgiving, till God brings His command; truly God is powerful over everything.”

33. See Koran sura [chapter] 59 (in its entirety), and the classical exegesis of this sura, for example Tafsir al-Jalalayn, pp. 1186-1191, as well as Ibn Ishaq’s sira account (The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 438-439), and the additional summary analysis of the Banu Nadir’s plight by Hartwig Hirschfeld (in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 72)

34. For the boilerplate Muslim apologetic on the purported “Constitution of Medina,” see Ibn Ishaq’s sira (The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 231-233); For modern scholarship on this alleged document, and its accompanying history, see key extracts from the analyses of Julius Wellhausen [1889], A. J. Wensinck [1908], and Moshe Gil [1974] (reproduced in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 66-67)

35. In addition to the citations in reference 33, see Ibn Ishaq ((The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 265), Ibn Saad’s sira account (reproduced in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 285-286), and Hartwig Hirschfeld’s modern analysis of the sira (in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 301-304)

36. Koran 59:2  [Hilali-Khan translation] “He it is Who drove out the disbelievers among the people of the Scripture (i.e. the Jews of the tribe of Bani An-Nadir) from their homes at the first gathering. You did not think that they would get out. And they thought that their fortresses would defend them from Allah! But Allah's (Torment) reached them from a place whereof they expected it not, and He cast terror into their hearts, so that they destroyed their own dwellings with their own hands and the hands of the believers. Then take admonition, O you with eyes (to see).”; [Arberry translation] “It is He who expelled from their habitations the unbelievers among the People of the Book at the first mustering. You did not think that they would go forth, and they thought that their fortresses would defend them against God; then God came upon them from whence they had not reckoned, and He cast terror into their hearts as they destroyed their houses with their own hands, and the hands of the believers; therefore take heed, you who have eyes!”

37. See The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 516; For another sira account see, Ibn Saad, Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, English translation by S. Moinul Haq and H.K. Ghazanfar, Volume 2, New Delhi, 1993, pp. 249-52

38. The relevant hadith are:

Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 713 http://bit.ly/GCu2nw

Sahih Muslim, Book 026, Number 5430 http://bit.ly/175J2Ap

Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 551 http://bit.ly/GCu2nw

Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 71, Number 669 http://bit.ly/1dZeVR7

39. See, The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 261-262.

40. Koran 3:99; [Hilali-Khan translation, 3:99] “Say: ‘O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)! Why do you stop those who have believed, from the Path of Allah, seeking to make it seem crooked, while you (yourselves) are witnesses [to Muhammad SAW as a Messenger of Allah and Islam (Allah's Religion, i.e. to worship none but Him Alone)]? And Allah is not unaware of what you do.’”; [Arberry translation, 3:99] “Say: ‘People of the Book, why do you bar from God's way the believer, desiring to make it crooked, yourselves being witnesses? God is not heedless of the things you do.’”

41. Koran 3:100; 3:101; [Hilali-Khan translation, 3:100] “O you who believe! If you obey a group of those who were given the Scripture (Jews and Christians), they would (indeed) render you disbelievers after you have believed!”; [Arberry translation, 3:100] “O believers, if you obey a sect of those who have been given the Book, they will turn you, after you have believed, into unbelievers.”; [Hilali-Khan translation, 3:101] “And how would you disbelieve, while unto you are recited the Verses of Allah, and among you is His Messenger (Muhammad)? And whoever holds firmly to Allah, (i.e. follows Islam Allah's Religion, and obeys all that Allah has ordered, practically), then he is indeed guided to a Right Path.”; [Arberry translation, 3:101] “How can you disbelieve, seeing you have God's signs recited to you, and His Messenger among you? Whosoever holds fast to God, he is guided to a straight path.”

42. Koran 5:49; [Hilali-Khan translation] “And so judge (you O Muhammad) between them by what Allah has revealed and follow not their vain desires, but beware of them lest they turn you (O Muhammad) far away from some of that which Allah has sent down to you. And if they turn away, then know that Allah's Will is to punish them for some sins of theirs. And truly, most of men are Fasiqun (rebellious and disobedient to Allah).”; [Arberry translation] “And judge between them according to what God has sent down, and do not follow their caprices, and beware of them lest they tempt thee away from any of what God has sent down to thee. But if they turn their backs, know that God desires only to smite them for some sin they have committed; surely, many men are ungodly.”

43. Ibn Abbas (d. 687-90 C.E.?), a cousin of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, admired for his knowledge of “profane and sacred” traditions of the early Islamic community, nascent Islamic jurisprudence, and Koranic exegesis. (The Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, Edited by H.A.R. Gibb and J.H. Kramers, Leiden/New Delhi, 1953/2008, p. 5)

44. Koran 2:144; [Hilali-Khan translation] “Verily! We have seen the turning of your (Muhammad’s SAW) face towards the heaven. Surely, We shall turn you to a Qiblah (prayer direction) that shall please you, so turn your face in the direction of Al-Masjid- al-Haram (at Makkah). And wheresoever you people are, turn your faces (in prayer) in that direction. Certainly, the people who were given the Scriptures (i.e. Jews and the Christians) know well that, that (your turning towards the direction of the Ka’bah at Makkah in prayers) is the truth from their Lord. And Allah is not unaware of what they do.”; [Arberry translation] “We have seen thee turning thy face about in the heaven; now We will surely turn thee to a direction that shall satisfy thee. Turn thy face towards the Holy Mosque; and wherever you are, turn your faces towards it. Those who have been given the Book know it is the truth from their Lord; God is not heedless of the things they do.”

45. Koran 2:143; [Hilali-Khan translation] “Thus We have made you [true Muslims - real believers of Islamic Monotheism, true followers of Prophet Muhammad and his Sunnah (legal ways)], a Wasat (just) (and the best) nation, that you be witnesses over mankind and the Messenger (Muhammad) be a witness over you. And We made the Qiblah (prayer direction towards Jerusalem) which you used to face, only to test those who followed the Messenger (Muhammad) from those who would turn on their heels (i.e. disobey the Messenger). Indeed it was great (heavy) except for those whom Allah guided. And Allah would never make your faith (prayers) to be lost (i.e. your prayers offered towards Jerusalem). Truly, Allah is full of kindness, the Most Merciful towards mankind.”; [Arberry translation] “Thus We appointed you a midmost nation that you might be witnesses to the people, and that the Messenger might be a witness to you; and We did not appoint the direction thou wast facing, except that We might know who followed the Messenger from him who turned on his heels –though it were a grave thing save for those whom God has guided; but God would never leave your faith to waste - truly, God is All-gentle with the people, All-compassionate.”

46. Koran 4:51-4:52; [Hilali-Khan translation] “Have you not seen those who were given a portion of the Scripture? They believe in Jibt and Taghut and say to the disbelievers that they are better guided as regards the way than the believers (Muslims).” “They are those whom Allah has cursed, and he whom Allah curses, you will not find for him (any) helper”; [Arberry translation] “Hast thou not regarded those who were given a share of the Book believing in demons and idols, and saying to the unbelievers, ‘These are more rightly guided on the way than the believers,?” “Those are they whom God has cursed; he whom God has cursed, thou wilt not find for him any helper.”

47. Koran 5:82; [Hilali-Khan translation] “Verily, you will find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers (Muslims) the Jews and those who are Al-Mushrikun (see V.2:105), and you will find the nearest in love to the believers (Muslims) those who say: ‘We are Christians.’ That is because amongst them are priests and monks, and they are not proud.”; [Arberry translation] “Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews and the idolaters; and thou wilt surely find the nearest of them in love to the believers are those who say ‘We are Christians’; that, because some of them are priests and monks, and they wax not proud”

48. See for example the classical Koranic commentator Zamakshari (d. 1143), in Tafsir al-kashshaf an haqa’iq ghawamid at-tanzil wa-uyun al-aqawil fi wujuh at-ta’wil (Cairo, 1953–1955; English translation by Helmut Gatje, The Qur’an and its Exegesis, Berkeley, CA: 1976, p. 134), in his commentary on Koran 5:82:

...From the Prophet (the following is related): “If a Muslim is alone with two Jews, they will try to kill him.”

Also from Haggai Ben-Shammai’s essay, “Jew-Hatred in the Islamic Tradition and Koranic Exegesis,” included within The Legacy of Islamic Antisemtism, p. 222:

As already mentioned, there are many variations of the old sayings. For example, “No Jew remains alone with a Muslim unless he plans to kill him,” or “No two Jews meet except to plot the death of Muslims.”

49.  http://bit.ly/19pfcHZ Sahih Muslim Book 41, Hadith 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.”

http://bit.ly/1ga214L 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.’ ” See also: Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 176. Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: Allah’s Apostle said, “You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews till some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, ‘O Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.’ ”

50. Herf, The Jewish Enemy—Nazi Propaganda During World War II and The Holocaust, and Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World; Kuntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred—Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11; “Berman Book Showcases Intellectual Double Standards on Islamists”

51. Adolph Hitler. Mein Kampf: the official 1939 edition, translated by James V. Murphy, Warwickshire, 2011.

52. Johan [aka, Johann, Johannes] von Leers. Foreword by Julian Huxley. History on a Racial Basis (an abridged translation of Geschichte auf Rassicher Grundlage), London, 1936. http://bit.ly/1aPyFom; Leers (d. 1965), is a fascinating case study. By any objective standard, his career trajectory—as a favored contributor in Goebbels’s propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/ anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser’s regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965—represents the “Islamification of Nazism,” rather than a “Nazification of Islam.” The discussion which follows is drawn from, and referenced in, my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 168-169, 204-205, 619-625; and Sharia Versus Freedom, Amherst, N.Y., 2012,  pp. 252-259, 610-614)

Upon his arrival in Egypt in 1956, it was Hajj Amin el-Husseini, who oversaw von Leers’ formal conversion to Islam, and remained one of his confidants. Leers described the origins of the Muslim “forename,” Omar Amin, that he adopted as part of his conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson:

I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.

Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad’s interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, that is, the Koran, hadith, and sira, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.

Leers’s 1942 essay simultaneously extols the “model” of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later. And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers sympathized with “the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. in the Arabians’ battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine.”

Leers’ 1942 essay also provides a reverent summary characterization of Muhammad’s activities in Mecca, and later Medina, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics. Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Koran 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka’b ibn Ashraf and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayza, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers chronicles Muhammad’s successful campaigns that vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, “or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax.” Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and, more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad’s poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith that records Caliph Umar’s rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad’s earlier campaigns. And von Leers (like Hajj Amin el-Husseini) even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith that forty-six years later became the keystone of Hamas’s 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel. Von Leers concludes his 1942 essay by acknowledging and endorsing the chronic, humiliating oppression imposed upon the Jews under Islam, while contrasting their perfidy with the nobility of Muhammad and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era he idealized, before eventually converting to Islam himself, in the mid-1950s.

I was able to obtain (from the Russian State Military Archive of captured Nazi documents), and have translated from the original German, an unpublished, approximately six-thousand-word essay Leers wrote during World War II (apparently in 1942–1943), titled, “Philosophies of Peace and War in Islam.” The views expressed by von Leers on jihad during the same era, prior to his formal conversion to Islam, were remarkably concordant with those of the classical Islamic legists, and modern era traditionalists. Disingenuously ignoring the explicit imperial designs of jihad—to subjugate all of mankind under Islamic law, as detailed with lucidity in the Koran, sunna, and a millennial continuum of Muslim jurisprudence—von Leers provides this hagiographic overview of Islam’s bellicose institution for global conquest, linked to his condemnation of Western European Christendom. Predictably, Leers also highlights this traditional Koranic statement of Jewish perfidy in relation to wartime treaties. But again, Leers “exegesis” on Koran 8:55 is entirely consistent with the gloss on this verse in Tafsir al-Jalalayn (p. 390), which maintains that 8:55 refers specifically to the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza.

An October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers’ writing and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphal Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad:

He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail.

None of the important data summarized above have been described by Jeffrey Herf, an avatar of the “Nazification of Islam” hypothesis. In his The Jewish Enemy—Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 180–81, Herf included a very limited English translation extract of von Leers’ conclusions from the 1942 essay “Judentum und Islam als Gegensatze,” (in Die Judenfrage in Politik, Recht, and Wirtschaft 6, no. 24, December 24, 1942): 275–78), whose fully annotated  translation (as “Judaism and Islam as Opposites”) I provided in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (pp. 619-625). Herf even failed to mention von Leers’ subsequent conversion to Islam, and was also oblivious to the Nazi author’s thorough grounding in, and accurate representation of, the pious Muslim sources (i.e., Koran, hadith, and sira).

53. Herman Bernstein. The History of a Lie, New York, 1921.; and The Truth About the “Protocols of Zion”—A Complete Exposure, New York, 1935. 

54. “Berman Book Showcases Intellectual Double Standards on Islamists”

54a. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 56-57.; A contemporary report, “The hadith is the second type of revelation,” The Gulf Times, Thursday October 23, 2008, http://bit.ly/1e3XzT9, confirmed  the ongoing importance of the hadith from a modern Islamic perspective, stating: 

Adherence to the Sunnah is an obligation. So there must be a means by which Muslims could fulfill their obligation. The only way to completely do so is to know exactly what the Prophet said and did. This cannot be fulfilled by following or reading the Koran alone, therefore we must turn to the reports and record of the Prophet’s words and deeds, meaning the hadith.  The hadith is the second type of revelation from Allah the Almighty. From the hadith do we derive the sunnah of the Prophet.

54b. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 64-65.

55. See references 28, 32, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46,  and 47.

56. See references 32, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46,  and 47.

57. See references 22, 35, 26, 30, 31, and 33.

58. See references 37 and 39.

59. See references 26, 30, 33, 34, and 35.

60. See references 38 and 49.

61. See references 27, 29, and 30.

62. See reference 23.

63. Maariful Qur’an (7th edition), Karachi, Vol. 1, 2008/2009, pp. 289-90.

64. The poll-tax, as per Koran 9:29, to be paid by non-Muslims who were vanquished by jihad, in lieu of being slain, as a form of subservient humiliation, often accompanied by debasing rituals during payment; see The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 44-45.

65. Tafsir al-Qurtubi, Vol. 1, London, 2003, p. 328; Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 1, Riyadh, 2000, pp. 333-34.; Qurtubi (d. 1273) was a Muslim scholar of the Maliki school of jurisprudence and an expert on hadith who was also well-known for his commentary on the Koran. Arnaldez’s minibiography of Qurtubi [Arnaldez, R. “al-Kurtubi,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman; , Th. Bianquis; , C.E. Bosworth; , E. van Donzel; and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2011, online edition] maintains, “His commentary is of great richness and of great utility. All the authors who have spoken of Kurtubi acknowledge it and insist on the benefit which may be derived from it.” Arnaldez adds, “Above all, the work consists of exegeses designed to clarify the meaning and implication of the Law. . . . [A]nd it can be understood how (al-Barduni), in the preface to the second edition of the Tafsīr, should write: ‘This work is such that the reader can almost dispense with the study of works of fiqh [jurisprudence].’ ”; Ibn Kathir (1300–1373), who was born in Basra, and died in Damascus, was one of the best-known historians and traditionalists of Syria during the reign of the Bahri Mamluks. He compiled an important history of Islam, as well as a Koranic commentary whose style foreshadows the commentary of Al-Suyuti.

On Koranic citations 9:5, and 9:29: [Hilali-Khan translation of 9:5] “Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun (idolatrous infidels; see V.2:105) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush”; [Arberry translation of 9:5] “Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.”; [Hilali-Khan translation of 9:29] “Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”; [Arberry translation of 9:29] “Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden – such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book – until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.”

Jizya is the poll-tax, as per Koran 9:29, to be paid by non-Muslims who were vanquished by jihad, in lieu of being slain, as a form of subservient humiliation, often accompanied by debasing rituals during payment; see The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 44-45.

66. For the text of Koran 59:2, see note 36.

67. J.J.G. Jansen. The interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt, Leiden, 1974, p. 16

68. Tafsir al-Jalalayn, p. 1186.

69. Maariful Qur’an, Vol. 8, pp. 369-370.

70. W. Montgomery Watt, “Al Ansar,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. P. Bearman, Thomas Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs, Leiden, 2006 (online version).

Watt writes:

“[T]he helpers,” the usual designation of those men of Medina who supported Muhammad, in distinction from the muhajirun or “emigrants,” i.e., his Meccan followers. After the general conversion of the Arabs to Islam the old name of al-Aws (Aus) and al- Khazraj jointly, Banu Kayla, fell out of use and was replaced by Ansar, the individual being known as Ansari. In this way the early services of the men of Medina to the cause of Islam were honorably commemorated.

71. Maariful Qur’an, Vol. 2, p. 129.

72. Tafsir al-Jalalayn, p. 143.

73. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 3, pp. 200-201; Maariful Qur’an, Vol. 3, p. 181.

74. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 1, pp. 419-420, 431; Tafsir al-Jalalayn, pp. 50-51; Maariful Qur’an, Vol. 1, pp. 382-383, 375-377

75. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 2, p. 487; Tafsir al-Jalalayn, p. 194; Maariful Qur’an, Vol. 2, pp. 455-457.

76. Koranic verses mentioned—2:61, 2:90-91, 3:112, 3:181, and 4:155; [2:61 Hilali-Khan] And (remember) when you said, “O Musa (Moses)! We cannot endure one kind of food. So invoke your Lord for us to bring forth for us of what the earth grows, its herbs, its cucumbers, its Fum (wheat or garlic), its lentils and its onions." He said, "Would you exchange that which is better for that which is lower? Go you down to any town and you shall find what you want!” And they were covered with humiliation and misery, and they drew on themselves the Wrath of Allah. That was because they used to disbelieve the Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) of Allah and killed the Prophets wrongfully. That was because they disobeyed and used to transgress the bounds (in their disobedience to Allah, i.e. commit crimes and sins). [2:61 Arberry] And when you said, ‘Moses, we will not endure one sort of food; pray to thy Lord for us, that He may bring forth for us of that the earth produces - green herbs, cucumbers, corn, lentils, onions.’ He said, ‘Would you have in exchange what is meaner for what is better? Get you down to Egypt; you shall have there that you demanded.’ And abasement and poverty were pitched upon them, and they were laden with the burden of God’s anger; that, because they had disbelieved the signs of God and slain the Prophets unrightfully; that, because they disobeyed, and were transgressors.; [2:90-91 Hilali-Khan] How bad is that for which they have sold their own selves, that they should disbelieve in that which Allah has revealed (the Qur’an), grudging that Allah should reveal of His Grace unto whom He will of His slaves. So they have drawn on themselves wrath upon wrath. And for the disbelievers, there is disgracing torment./ And when it is said to them (the Jews), “Believe in what Allah has sent down,” they say, “We believe in what was sent down to us.” And they disbelieve in that which came after it, while it is the truth confirming what is with them. Say (O Muhammad Peace be upon him to them): “Why then have you killed the Prophets of Allah aforetime, if you indeed have been believers?” [2:90-91 Arberry] Evil is the thing they have sold themselves for, disbelieving in that which God sent down, grudging that God should send down of His bounty on whomsoever He will of His servants, and they were laden with anger upon anger; and for unbelievers awaits a humbling chastisement./ And when they were told, ‘Believe in that God has sent down,' they said, 'We believe in what was sent down on us’; and they disbelieve in what is beyond that, yet it is the truth confirming what is with them. Say: ‘Why then were you slaying the Prophets of God in former time, if you were believers?’; [3:112 Hilali-Khan] Indignity is put over them wherever they may be, except when under a covenant (of protection) from Allah, and from men; they have drawn on themselves the Wrath of Allah, and destruction is put over them. This is because they disbelieved in the Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) of Allah and killed the Prophets without right. This is because they disobeyed (Allah) and used to transgress beyond bounds (in Allah's disobedience, crimes and sins). [3:112 Arberry] Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God's anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God's signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors.; [3:181 Hilali-Khan] Indeed, Allah has heard the statement of those (Jews) who say: “Truly, Allah is poor and we are rich!” We shall record what they have said and their killing of the Prophets unjustly, and We shall say: “Taste you the torment of the burning (Fire).” [3:181 Arberry] God has heard the saying of those who said, ‘Surely God is poor, and we are rich.’ We shall write down what they have said, and their slaying the Prophets without right, and We shall say, ‘Taste the chastisement of the burning’; [4:155 Hilali-Khan] Because of their breaking the covenant, and of their rejecting the Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) of Allah, and of their killing the Prophets unjustly, and of their saying: “Our hearts are wrapped (with coverings, i.e. we do not understand what the Messengers say)”—nay, Allah has set a seal upon their hearts because of their disbelief, so they believe not but a little. [Arberry 4:155] So, for their breaking the compact, and disbelieving in the signs of God, and slaying the Prophets without right, and for their saying, ‘Our hearts are uncircumcised’—nay, but God sealed them for their unbelief, so they believe not, except a few’

Sources for the Koranic commentary glosses on verse 5:82: Tabari, Jåmi` al-Bayån fii Tafsiir al-Qur’aan, M. Shakir (Beirut: 1421/2001), vol. 7, pp. 5ff., English translation by Dr. Michael Schub;  Zamakshari, Tafsir al-kashshaf an haqa’iq ghawamid at-tanzil wa-uyun al-aqawil fi wujuh at-ta’wil(Cairo, 1953-1955). English translation in Helmut Gatje, The Qur’an and its Exegesis (Berkeley, CA: 1976), p. 134. The last line included (“the Jews focused their hostility to the Muslims in the most overt and intense manner”) was omitted by Gatje, and was translated by Dr. Michael Schub from the Beirut 2001 edition of Tafsir al-kashshaf, pp. 701ff.; Baydawi, Commentaius in Coranum: Anwaar al-Tanziil Wa-Asraar al-Ta’wiil, ed. H. O. Fleischer (1846–48; reprint, Osnabrück: 1968), vol. 1, p. 270.; Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, p. 246.;

Zamakshary’s commentary also cites Koran 2:96—[Hilali-Khan 2:96] And verily, you will find them (the Jews) the greediest of mankind for life and (even greedier) than those who - ascribe partners to Allah (and do not believe in Resurrection - Magians, pagans, and idolaters, etc.). Everyone of them wishes that he could be given a life of a thousand years. But the grant of such life will not save him even a little from (due) punishment. And Allah is All-Seer of what they do. [Arberry 2:96] And thou shalt find them the eagerest of men for life. And of the idolaters; there is one of them wishes if he might be spared a thousand years, yet his being spared alive shall not remove him from the chastisement. God sees the things they do.

Al-Zamakhshari (1070–1143), was a Persian scholar, born in Zamakhshar, a village of Khwarizm. He studied at Bukhara and Samarkand, and enjoyed the fellowship of the jurists of Baghdad. He stayed at Mecca for many years, becoming known as Jar-idlah (“Allah’s client”). Later he returned to Khwarizm, where he died at the capital, Jurjaniyya. Zamakhshari’s fame as a scholar rests upon his commentary on the Koran, called al-Kashaf [The Revealer], which was the basis of the widely read commentary of Baydawi.; Al-Baydawi (d. 1286–1316?), was a Shafi’ite jurist of the thirteenth to early fourteenth century who attained the position of chief kadi of Shiraz. He had a reputation for wide learning and wrote on a number of subjects, most notably Koranic exegesis and jurisprudence. His most famous work is a Koranic commentary that is largely a condensed and amended edition of Al-Zamakshari’s al-Kashaf.

77. Maariful Qur’an, Vol. 3, pp. 234-235; 237-239.

78. The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 261-262:

79. See ref. 38 for the canonical hadith citations

80. The Life of Muhammad—A Translation of Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 516.

81. Ibn Sa’d. Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, pp. 249-252.

82. Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177 http://bit.ly/1ga214L; Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985. http://bit.ly/19pfcHZ

83. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Volume 3, p. 34

84. For two distinct errors see reference 23, and references 38/79 about el-Husseini’s confusing the hadith report of Abu Huraira, with the accounts of Aisha and Anas.; For an exaggerated deviation from Ibn Ishaq’s actual sira narrative, see reference 30.  

85. Hartwig Hirschfeld. “Essai Sur l’Histoire des Juifs de Medina”, Revue des Etudes Juives, Vol. 7, 1883, pp. 192-193, and Vol. 10, 1885, pp. 10-31. A full English translation of the text and notes appears in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 299-312, with various extracts included earlier in the compendium. These extracts are from p. 67.

86. Georges Vajda. “Juifs et Musulmans selon Le Hadit” (Jews and Muslims according to the Hadith), Journal Asiatique, Vol. 229, 1937, pp. 57-129; A full English translation of the text and notes appears in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 235-260, with various extracts included earlier in the compendium.

87. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,  p. 63. Another apocalyptic hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, is described by James Robson.

[M]ost of the Arabs will be in Jerusalem when Jesus [i.e., Isa, the Muslim Jesus] will descend. The imam will give place to him, but Jesus will tell him to lead the prayers. Afterwards, Jesus will order the door to be opened, and the Dajjal will be seen there with 70,000 armed Jews. The Dajjal will begin to melt, but Jesus will pursue and catch him and kill him at the east gate of Ludd. God will rout the Jews who will find that even the places where they shelter will shout out where they are hiding. [cited in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 63.]

88. Ibid

89. Ibid.; Walter Fischel has described the severe hardships imposed upon Iranian Jews 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” [emphasis added]. 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.

(Walter Fischel. “The Jews in Medieval Iran from the 16th to the 18th Centuries: Political, Economic, and Communal Aspects,” Irano-Judaica, Jerusalem, 1982, pp. 275-276.)

90. Ibid.

91. Haggai Ben-Shammai. “Jew Hatred in the Islamic Tradition and Koranic Exegesis”, originally in Antisemitism through the Ages, editor, Shmuel Almog, Oxford, 1988, pp. 161-169, reproduced in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,  pp. 221-225, with various extracts included earlier in the compendium.

92. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,  p. 34

93. Ibid.

94. Ibid., p. 35. Koranic verses 1:7, 5:60, 5:78—[Hilali-Khan 1:7] The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). [Arberry 1:7] the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray.;

Authoritative exegeses on Koran 1:7 (see Andrew Bostom, “Ecumenical Editing of the Navy’s Muslim Sea Burial Prayer Service”, May 12, 2011 http://bit.ly/19wrHHA), spanning the late 7th  through early 21st centuries, concur, from Ibn Abbas (d. 687), Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767), Tabari (d. 923), and Qurtubi (d. 1273), through Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (d. 1976), and the analyses written by 43 Muslim and non-Muslim mainstream academic experts in The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia, http://amzn.to/GKIXMu, edited by Oliver Leaman, and published by Routledge, New York, 2006. For example, The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia, states on p. 614:

…[T]he phrase in the daily prescribed prayers” Guide us to the straight path, to the path of those you have blessed, not of those who incurred [Your] wrath, nor of the misguided (al-Fatiha, 1:5-7.)…mention two groups of people but do not say who they are. The Prophet [Muhammad] interpreted those who incurred God’s wrath as the Jews and the misguided as the Christians.

The Jews, we are told [i.e., in both the Koran, and hadith] killed many of their prophets, and through their character and materialistic tendencies have contributed much to moral corruption, social upheaval and sedition in the world…[T]hey were readily misled and incurred both God’s wrath and ignominy.

Pious Muslims repeat Koran 1:7  up to 17 times a day, as part of the five daily prayer sessions, consistent with this admonition, recorded by Ibn Kathir: “[R]eciting the Opening of the Book [the Fatiha, verses Koran 1:1 to 1:7], during the prayer by the Imam and those praying behind him is required in every prayer, and in every Ra’kah [unit of prayer]”; Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol. 1, p. 50.

[Hilali-Khan 5:60] Say (O Muhammad to the people of the Scripture): “Shall I inform you of something worse than that, regarding the recompense from Allah: those (Jews) who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshipped Taghut (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in the Hellfire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world).” [Arberry 5:60] Say: “Shall I tell you of a recompense with God, worse than that? Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols—they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way.”; [Hilali-Khan 5:78] Those among the Children of Israel who disbelieved were cursed by the tongue of Dawud (David) and Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary). That was because they disobeyed (Allah and the Messengers) and were ever transgressing beyond bounds. [Arberry 5:78] Cursed were the unbelievers of the Children of Israel by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son; that, for their rebelling and their transgression.

94a. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,  p. 54

94b. Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322 http://bit.ly/17P73A4  

95. Ibid.; Koran 5:64—[Hilali-Khan 5:64] The Jews say: “Allah's Hand is tied up (i.e. He does not give and spend of His Bounty).” Be their hands tied up and be they accursed for what they uttered. Nay, both His Hands are widely outstretched. He spends (of His Bounty) as He wills. Verily, the Revelation that has come to you from Allah increases in most of them their obstinate rebellion and disbelief. We have put enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection. Every time they kindled the fire of war, Allah extinguished it; and they (ever) strive to make mischief on earth. And Allah does not like the Mufsidun (mischief makers).  [Arberry 5:64] The Jews have said, “God’s hand is fettered.” Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption.

96. Ibid.; Koranic verses 3:54, 3:55, 3:56—[Hilali-Khan 3:54-3:56]  And they (disbelievers) plotted [to kill Iesa (Jesus)], and Allah planned too. And Allah is the Best of the planners. And (remember) when Allah said: “O Iesa (Jesus)! I will take you and raise you to Myself and clear you [of the forged statement that Iesa (Jesus) is Allah's son] of those who disbelieve, and I will make those who follow you (Monotheists, who worship none but Allah) superior to those who disbelieve [in the Oneness of Allah, or disbelieve in some of His Messengers, e.g. Muhammad, Iesa (Jesus), Musa (Moses), etc., or in His Holy Books, e.g. the Taurat (Torah), the Injeel (Gospel), the Qur’an] till the Day of Resurrection. Then you will return to Me and I will judge between you in the matters in which you used to dispute.” “As to those who disbelieve, I will punish them with a severe torment in this world and in the Hereafter, and they will have no helpers.” [Arberry 3:54-3:56] And they devised, and God devised, and God is the best of devisers. When God said, “Jesus, I will take thee to Me and will raise thee to Me and I will purify thee of those who believe not. I will set thy followers above the unbelievers till the Resurrection Day. Then unto Me shall you return, and I will decide between you, as to what you were at variance on.” “As for the unbelievers, I will chastise them with a terrible chastisement in this world and the next; they shall have no helpers.”

97. Ibid.; p. 35.

98. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 38.

99. Edward William Lane. An Account of the Customs of the Modern Egyptians, New York,  1973, pp. 553–56.

100. “A Risala of Al-Jahiz,” translated by Joshua Finkel, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 47, 1927, pp. 311–34. Al-Jahiz (776–868/869), born in Basra, Iraq, was a prolific Arabic prose writer, historian, and author of works of literature, theology, and politico-religious

polemics. He authored two hundred books throughout his lifetime that discuss a variety of subjects, including Arabic grammar, zoology, poetry, lexicography, and rhetoric. Extracts from pp. 322–24, 326, and 327–28 of  his “A Reply to the Christians,” (in “A Risala of Al-Jahiz,”) are included on pp. 317-318 of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, and referenced earlier in the book, as well.

101. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, p. 38

102. Ibid.

103. Ibid.

104. Ibid.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid.

107. Lane. An Account of the Customs of the Modern Egyptians, p. 554

108. Ibid., pp. 554-555.

109. Gregory Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, London, 1856, vol. 2,  pp. 263–64.

110. Moshe Perlmann, “Introduction to Samau’al al-Maghribi’s Ifham al-Yahud (Silencing the Jews),” American Academy for Jewish Research, Vol. 32, 1964, p. 19.

111. Document declassified and released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, 2006, PL105-246 State Department Telegram 1763/Embassy (Cairo) Telegram 1256 D441214. English translation (by the US embassy) of two fatwas written by the grand mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma’moun, January 5, 1956, and another dated January 9, 1956, signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar, that is, its chairman and ex-mufti of Egypt, and major representatives of all four Islamic schools of jurisprudence, the ex-sheikh of the Shari’a College (Shafi’i sect), Mahmoud Shaltout (Hanafi sect), the director of Religious Guidance (Maliki Sect), and the director of the Azhar Inspectorate (Hanbali sect), and published the following days in the Egyptian newspaper, Al Ahram. The redundant extracts from each fatwa were pooled for simplicity.

The expression “fay” is found in Koran 59: 6-10, which describes Muhammad’s attack upon the Jewish tribe Banu Nadir. In the traditional Muslim interpretation of these verses the theocratic conception of property rights is confirmed, as voiced by the Prophet— Allah returns to the Believers the possessions of His foes, what is properly His. See Leone Caetani, Annali dell’ Islam, Milan: 1905–1926, vol. 5, p. 332.

112. “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement–Hamas”, Middle East Media Research Institute, February 14, 2006, Special Dispatch No.1092 http://bit.ly/GLLLtJ

113. For the text of Koran 3:112, see note 76;  “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement–Hamas”

114. Ibid.

115. Ibid.; For detailed analyses of jihad war doctrine, see Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad, Amherst, N.Y, 2005, pp. 24-37, 125-367.

116. Gil Hoffman. “6 in 10 Palestinians reject 2-state solution, survey finds”, The Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2011 http://bit.ly/18lgxUN 

117. Ibid.

118. Ibid.

119. Ibid.

120. Bat Ye’or. From a French essay/chapter added in Hebrew translation to Yehudi Mitzraim (Jews in Egypt), Tel Aviv, 1974. The English translation from the original French appeared as “Modern Egyptian Jew Hatred: Indigenous Elements and Foreign Influences”, in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, pp. 613-618. The extract quoted is from p. 617.