Muhammad ordered
Muslims to kill Jews?

The killing of Jews is a mandatory religious obligation established by Islam's founder Muhammad, according to a Muslim academic who spoke on Palestinian Authority television.

"Muhammad said in his Hadith: "The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'" said Hassan Khader, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia.

Khader spoke during a lecture, broadcast Sunday, on what he describes as the war of the Jews against Palestinian "trees."

The program was monitored by Palestinian Media Watch, or PMW, an Israel-based group.

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PMW director Itamar Marcus says Khader's statement was one of many instances in recent years of Palestinian religious leaders teaching publicly that this Hadith – part of Islamic traditions attributed to Muhammad – is a current obligation of Islam.

Marcus says these teachings challenge the common belief that the premise for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is over borders.

"Palestinian religious and academic leaders publicly teach that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of Islam's irreconcilable religious war against the Jews," he says.

"To justify this view," he adds, "Palestinians repeatedly cite Islamic sources to demand as religious doctrine, that Jews be hated, even demanding the killing of Jews as the will of Allah."

Marcus says "the continued expression of this PA worldview is most ominous."

"For by depicting redemption as dependent on Muslims' murder of Jews, the murder of Jews is being presented as mandatory religious obligation," he says.