Fact checking DNM (and discovering the Islamic gold mine)

Submitted by Prashant, Feb 23, 2019 at 16:20

Dear Dr Pipes, For all my criticism of Islam, I admire that a lot of Islamic stuff is documented and can be verified. Since they are so stubbornly convinced about their righteousness, Islamic narrators have no qualms about narrating things that are entirely indefensible.

When I read Islamic things, I verify. And to be sure that no one blames me for picking things out of context, I verify things in their full context. The hadith that DNM quoted made no sense to me. I was bewildered why the Prophet of Allah describe people in terms of their facial features and not in terms of 'content of their character' (to steal one of MLK's beautiful phrases). So I set out to fact-check DNM. What I discovered was an Islamic gold mine. No kidding!

It seems when these hadiths were created, Muhammad was in his best of forms. He was on a streak.

I found that DNM was 100% right. He had quoted the hadith verbatim and I found at least one Pakistani source that confirmed the hadith. Whether it makes sense or not, the hadith is quoted by DNM correctly.

I looked at some of the other hadiths prior to these. I am being polite, precise, but intentionally blunt. If you look at the hadiths prior to this. what you will find is given below:

(ref: https://sunnah.com/bukhari/56/141)

141: (quoted by DNM) describes Turks by their flat noses.

140: Tells people that they will fight with people "whose faces will look like shields coated with leather."

139: Tells "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."

138: States that even objects of nature will betray the Jews: 'The stones will (betray them) saying, 'O 'Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.'"'

137: Tells his followers to launch a naval expedition. The prophet, leaving no ambiguity about the purpose of the expedition goes on to clarify: the first army amongst my followers who will invade Caesar's City will be forgiven their sins.

136: This one is hilarious. It tells that you can eat a sheep by cutting form his shoulder and then pray. You do not have to repeat your ablution after eating and before prayers. I dare to think that in the order of importance betraying and killing of Jews and cleanliness before prayers are equivalent things and can be discussed next to each other.

133-135: This one tells that you can wear silk if your body is itching.

I stopped at this because till this point I think I had captured enough context for 141 (DNM's original quotation). I am wondering whether ISIS and affiliates reinvented the wheel about killing non-Muslims on their own or just learned their trade from these hadiths.

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