Among the reports quoted most often against Islam is one about a battle at the end of time in which a stone or a tree calls out to Muslims that a Jew is hiding behind it. Some who left Islam say they were taught it as the plan of the faith, and they cite it as proof that the religion is hostile to Jews by design. Others who still hold the faith have never heard of it. Both groups deserve a straight account of the text.
These six entries give the wording of the reports, what the genre of the report is, what the Prophet ﷺ did with Jews while he lived, how the report has been used, and what a fair reader can and cannot conclude. The article names no person. It concedes that the report is in the two most trusted collections and that it has been used for hatred, and it asks what the report is. The related articles are the verses on apes and pigs, the Jewish tribes of Medina and the end of time in the sources.
Number 1: What the reports say
The report is in al-Bukhari in two forms. In the first, the Prophet ﷺ said, “You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews until 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.’”[1] In the second he 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.’”[2]
Muslim has a fuller version, in the book on the trials and signs of the Hour, which adds that the tree called gharqad would not call out, “for it is the tree of the Jews”.[3] The report is graded sound by the scholars of hadith. This article does not dispute that. A reader cannot remove the report from the sources, and an honest account starts by admitting that it is there.
Verdict: the report is real. What it means is the next question.
Number 2: It is a prediction about the end of time, and not a command
The grammar of the report is the future. “You will fight”, “the Hour will not be established until”, “the stone will say”. It sits with the reports on the signs of the Hour, with the rise of the Dajjal, the descent of Jesus and the appearance of Gog and Magog. The Prophet ﷺ is telling his community what will happen. He is not telling them to go out and do it.
The rules for fighting in the sources come from elsewhere. The Prophet ﷺ forbade the killing of women and children in his campaigns.[4] He told a commander not to kill a woman or a hired servant.[5] The Quran limits fighting to those who fight (2:190), and it says that God does not forbid kindness and justice toward those who do not fight over religion (60:8).[6] None of these is cancelled by a report about the last days.
It is stated from general knowledge that the classical books of law do not build a rule of war on this report, and it was not checked on a page for this article. A reader who doubts the claim can look in the chapters on jihād in any of the four schools and see what their rules are built on. Verdict: it describes a future event. It is not an order for any time before that.
Number 3: What the Prophet ﷺ did with Jews while he lived
When the Prophet ﷺ died, his iron armour was pawned to a Jew for thirty measures of barley.[7] He dealt with the Jews of Medina in trade and credit to the end of his life. A man who held that Jews were to be killed on sight would not have left his armour in a Jew’s keeping.
A young Jewish boy used to serve him, and when the boy fell sick he went to visit him and sat by his head.[8] When a funeral procession passed and he was told it was a Jew’s, he stood up and said, “Is it not a living being?”[9]
The Quran permits eating the food of the People of the Book and marrying their chaste women (5:5), and it tells Muslims not to let hatred of a people stop them from justice (5:8).[10] The fighting at Medina, and the fate of Banu Qurayza, are disputed history, and the article on them sets out what the sources say. They concern named tribes who broke agreements. They are not a rule that all Jews are enemies. Verdict: the life contradicts the use made of the report.
Number 4: Which "Jews"? A reading from the other reports
The report says “the Jews”, and a reader who takes the word as the whole people has a reading available. The Quran itself does not use the word that way. It says: “They are not [all] the same; among the People of the Scripture is a community standing [in obedience]” (3:113), and of the people of Moses, a community that guides by the truth (7:159).[11]
Another report in Muslim, about the Dajjal, says that he “would be followed by seventy thousand Jews of Isfahan wearing Persian shawls”.[12] Some readers place the fight in the stone-and-tree report inside the cycle of the Dajjal, so that the Jews fought are the Dajjal’s followers and not the Jewish people. This is one reading among those offered, and this article does not claim that it settles the text. It is a reading from the sources themselves, and it fits the form of the report better than a plan for a whole people.
The honest summary of this entry is that the report is general in its wording, and the sources supply reasons to read it as particular. Verdict: mixed. The wording is hard, and the surrounding sources limit it.
Number 5: How the report has been used
The report has been used by movements that wished to turn it into a programme. A charter issued by a Palestinian movement in 1988, in its seventh article, quotes it in the form “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees”, and presents it as a statement of what the movement is part of.[13]
That use is real, and it is the use that the people who raise the report have in mind. A hadith can be taken out of its place and put in a manifesto. The same has happened to texts in other scriptures, as the entry below says. Misuse by a political movement does not show what the text means. It shows what its users want, and a reader should ask whether they have the support of the Prophet’s conduct and the Quran, which the entries above show they do not.
Nor does the report explain the politics of the present. It is older than the modern state of Israel by some thirteen centuries, and an argument that the modern conflict is caused by Islamic texts alone fails on that point, as an argument that the conflict has nothing to do with the texts fails on the other. Both facts are true: the report is old, and it is used now. Verdict: the report has been abused, and the abuse is a fact of the present.
Number 6: Does an end-time war prove the religion is hostile by design?
If a prediction of a final battle proved a religion hostile, most scriptures would stand condemned. The Hebrew Bible has the battle of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38 and 39 and a gathering of the nations against Jerusalem in Zechariah 14. The New Testament has the rider on the white horse who strikes the nations in Revelation 19.[14] None of these is a plan for the present. Each is a picture of the end.
This is not a way of saying that every scripture is the same, or that the question is closed. The Muslim has to answer for his own sources, as the Jew and the Christian do for theirs. It is a way of saying that a text about the last days is read by its place in the whole teaching, and that the whole teaching of Islam on those who live in peace with Muslims is set out in the Quran at 60:8, 5:8 and 109:6.[15]
A person who left Islam because he was taught this report as a rule for the present was taught wrongly. A person who stayed because he could not explain it away is owed a better answer than a denial that the report exists. It exists, it is hard, and the sources limit it. Verdict: no, a prophecy of the end is not a policy. The test of a faith is what it commands now.
The bottom line
The report is authentic by the standards of hadith. It is a prediction in the future tense, which sits among the signs of the Hour, and it is not a command given for any present time. Against its use as a licence stand the Prophet’s own treatment of Jews in his life, his prohibition on killing women and children, and the Quran’s limits on fighting and its fairness to those who do not fight. The wording is general, and the other reports leave room to read it as particular. A movement has made it a slogan, and the slogan should be answered with the rest of the sources.
A reader who wants a simple answer will not find one in the text. A reader who wants a true answer will find a hard report, a clear limit on its use, and a reason to keep both in view. Allāhu aʿlam.
Notes
- Sahih al-Bukhari 2925, report of ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar, read in the English text of the hadith-api edition, where it stands as book 56, hadith 138; the printed page was not checked.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 2926, report of Abū Hurayra, same edition and numbering note (book 56, hadith 139).
- Sahih Muslim 2922 (book of the trials and the signs of the Hour), the version that names the gharqad tree. This version is not in the English text of the hadith-api edition used for this article, so its wording was not checked and is given here in paraphrase.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 3014 and 3015, reports of ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd and Ibn ʿUmar; Sahih Muslim, the same report, which stands as book 32, hadith 28 in the hadith-api edition. Read in English; the printed pages were not checked.
- Sunan Abī Dāwūd 2669, report of Rabāḥ ibn Rabīʿ, read in the English text of the hadith-api edition.
- Quran 2:190 and 60:8, Saheeh International translation, read on the Quran.com API. The text of 2:190 was not reproduced in full and is cited for its limit on fighting those who fight.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 2916, report of ʿĀʾisha, read in the English text of the hadith-api edition.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 1356, report of Anas ibn Mālik. In the report the Prophet invited the boy to Islam, and the boy accepted; the point made here is the visit.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 1312, report of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Laylā.
- Quran 5:5 and 5:8, Saheeh International.
- Quran 3:113 and 7:159, Saheeh International. Verse 7:159 reads, in the translation, that among the people of Moses “is a community which guides by truth and by it establishes justice”; the paragraph cites it in summary.
- Sahih Muslim, report of Anas ibn Mālik on the Dajjal, read in English as book 54, hadith 153 in the hadith-api edition. The reading that places the stone-and-tree report in the Dajjal cycle is stated from general knowledge of the commentaries, and no commentator is cited for it.
- The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, 18 August 1988, article 7, in the translation published by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School (avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp), read for this article. Quotation as given there.
- Ezekiel 38-39, Zechariah 14 and Revelation 19 are cited by chapter, in general knowledge of their contents, and were not quoted.
- Quran 60:8, 5:8 and 109:6, Saheeh International.
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