Robert Spencer reports that “the MSA of the University of Southern California became a focal point of this effort [to repudiate the genocidal hadith about Muslims killing Jews to bring on the end times] because it hosts a major online hadith collection here, which of course included the genocidal hadith. When this was brought to the attention of USA Provost, C. L. Max Nikias, he declared that “˜the passage cited is truly despicable…The passage in the Hadith that you brought to our attention violates the USC Principles of Community, and it has no place on a USC website.” Said Nikias: “˜I have ordered that the passage be removed.” You can see a pdf of his letter here. The USC MSA complied.”
That Hadith may have been taken off the website of the Muslim Students Association. But, like hundreds of similar Hadith, it has not been removed from the minds of Muslims. It has not been removed from the collections of the most authoritative muhaddithin or from this list of those hadiths that are often labeled as among the most “authentic.”
Why not ask if Sura 9 of the Qur’an — to start with — is going to be removed from the minds of Muslims? And the killings of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak? And the decapitation of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza? And the attack, prompted by a desire for loot (property and women), on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis? And are Muslims willing to distance themselves from the idea that everything Muhammad did was absolutely admirable and worthy of emulation, beginning with his having sexual intercourse with his nine-year-old wife, little Aisha?
Hundreds of Jihad passages — see the Calcutta Qur’an Petition — and hundreds of “authentic” (just study those isnad-chains) Hadith, and so many events from the life of that Perfect Man, Muhammad (uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil) will have to be held up for inspection by Infidels. Muslims will have to declare themselves: do you accept this, do you agree with this, do you admire this? Attempting to deal with the matter by simply removing it from a website where it can be seen by all just doesn’t do the trick in and of itself, without an explicit renunciation of these ideas by Muslim groups.
No, the texts and tenets of Islam are clear. What is unclear is why anyone, living in the West and knowing these texts, and knowing what they have meant over the past 1350 years, reflected in the behavior of Muslims toward the Infidels whose many and varied lands they conquered, would still insist on being called a Muslim. What is unclear is why we, the Infidels, should not in response assume that those who continue to self-identify as Muslims agree with those passages in the Qur’an, the Hadith, and those many examples of behavior that we take nowadays to be far from exemplary that are set out in the biographies of Muhammad.
At a certain point, we are entitled to assume that anyone who continues to identify with, to protect, to run interference for, to smilingly and plausibly offer us a diet of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, should be treated not just with the utmost suspicion, but as someone who is intent on furthering the Jihad, the “struggle” to remove all obstacles to the spread and then the dominance of Islam. And if you realize the full meaning and menace of Islam, such people have made themselves and have essentially declared themselves (oh, forget about the “three abrahamic faiths” propaganda, please do) to be the enemies of your country’s legal and political institutions, of individual liberties (Islam is completely collectivist), of free and skeptical inquiry, of freedom of artistic expression, of so much that makes us us. They are declaring themselves to be, in other words, enemies of the civilization into which they have been allowed to come, to settle, and to be treated, everywhere in Western Europe and North America, with amazing forbearance and generosity and naive hopefulness.
Enough of all that. It hasn’t worked. Just look around. Look, for example, at the sinister behavior of the Muslim Students’ Association, determined to avoid having to answer a pointed request, and instead simply slyly removing from its website, but not from the hearts and minds of its members, the particular outrageous (to Infidels) Hadith in question, and continuing to remain malevolently silent about the whole matter.
A silence that is telling.