Forging sayings of the Prophet for politics persists into modern times
Evidence
In the early Islamic centuries there could be no better way of promoting a cause, an opinion, or a faction, than to cite an appropriate action or utterance of the Prophet—in a word, a hfiadı¯th. The many conflicts of early Islamic history inevitably gave rise to a good deal of propagandist distortion and invention. At a very early date, Muslim scholars became aware of the dangers of spurious or dubious hfiadı¯th, created or adapted to serve some ulterior purpose. They re sponded to this danger by devising and applying an elaborate science of hfiadı¯th criticism, designed to distinguish the true from the false. Remarkably, the cre ation of new hfiadı¯ths designed to serve some political purpose has continued even to our own time. A tradition published in the Jerusalem daily newspaper al- Naha¯r on 15 December 1990, and described as “currently in wide circulation,” quotes the Prophet as predicting that “the Greeks and Franks will join with Egypt in the desert against a man named Sfia¯dim, and not one of them will return.” The allusion is clearly to the build-up of coalition forces leading up to the Gulf War. It has not been possible to find any reference to this tradition earlier than 1990, and it is not difficult to guess when, where and for what purpose this hfiadı¯th was invented. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 496 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Forged prophetic traditions were being invented for political purposes into the 1990s. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 496
Broader Connections
- Forged prophetic traditions were being invented for political purposes into the 1990s.
#expands(0.95) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 496