Did al-Zuṭṭ Ride Muham­mad ? A Crit­i­cal Philo­log­i­cal Reassess­ment of a Mod­ern Anti-Islam Polemic

Abstract

A recur­ring polem­i­cal claim in con­tem­po­rary anti-Islam­ic media asserts that a nar­ra­tion attrib­uted to ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd and pre­served in Mus­nad Aḥmad depicts fig­ures iden­ti­fied as ​“al-Zuṭṭ” who ​“rode” the Prophet Muḥam­mad ﷺ in a sex­u­al­ly humil­i­at­ing sense. This inter­pre­ta­tion rests on a sen­sa­tion­alised Eng­lish ren­der­ing of the Ara­bic verb يَرْكَبُونَ (yark­abūn) and has been most vis­i­bly pop­u­larised by Ray­mond Ibrahim, a far-right Chris­t­ian polemi­cist wide­ly known for his inflam­ma­to­ry anti-Mus­lim rhetoric. The claim first appeared in an arti­cle pub­lished by Ray­mond Ibrahim in 2022 and was lat­er ampli­fied through a 2025 YouTube video that achieved viral cir­cu­la­tion. It was sub­se­quent­ly echoed by oth­er Chris­t­ian polem­i­cal out­lets, chief among them being David Wood.

This arti­cle offers a com­pre­hen­sive reassess­ment of the claim by exam­in­ing the pri­ma­ry Ara­bic text, its inter­nal nar­ra­tive res­o­lu­tion, its isnād sta­tus, clas­si­cal Ara­bic lex­i­cog­ra­phy, and vari­ant word­ings with­in the report’s trans­mis­sion fam­i­ly. It demon­strates that the polem­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion is not com­pelled by Ara­bic seman­tics. It also ignores deci­sive inter­nal and exter­nal inter­pre­tive con­trols and relies instead on anachro­nis­tic slang sub­sti­tu­tion and rhetor­i­cal stack­ing of unre­lat­ed sex­u­al mate­r­i­al. The con­tro­ver­sy is best under­stood as a case study in ​“innu­en­do trans­la­tion,” where­in pol­y­se­my is exploit­ed to man­u­fac­ture scan­dal rather than to illu­mi­nate his­tor­i­cal meaning.

Intro­duc­tion

The use of trans­la­tion as a polem­i­cal weapon is nei­ther new nor unique to con­tem­po­rary reli­gious debate. What dis­tin­guish­es the present con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the al-Zuṭṭ and the alleged ​“rid­ing” of the Prophet Muḥam­mad ﷺ is the degree to which a sin­gle Ara­bic verb has been iso­lat­ed, decon­tex­tu­alised, and re-seman­ti­cised to sus­tain a scan­dal nar­ra­tive. In mod­ern Anglo­phone polemics, this claim is repeat­ed­ly pre­sent­ed as the unavoid­able con­se­quence of ​“lit­er­al Ara­bic.” Crit­ics assert that Mus­lim schol­ars sup­press an embar­rass­ing text whose mean­ing is alleged­ly obvi­ous to any­one who ​“knows the lan­guage.” As it was with the nurs­ing of adults hadith, such claims rely heav­i­ly on rhetor­i­cal cer­tain­ty and shock val­ue, but they rarely with­stand sus­tained philo­log­i­cal scrutiny.

This arti­cle argues that the sex­u­alised inter­pre­ta­tion of the al-Zuṭṭ nar­ra­tion is a mod­ern con­struc­tion, depen­dent not on the Ara­bic text itself but on a sequence of method­olog­i­cal vio­la­tions. These include iso­la­tion of a pol­y­se­mous verb, sup­pres­sion of nar­ra­tive res­o­lu­tion, retro­jec­tion of mod­ern Eng­lish slang into clas­si­cal Ara­bic, and ampli­fi­ca­tion through ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned dig­i­tal media. When the nar­ra­tion is read in its entire­ty, and when its lan­guage is eval­u­at­ed accord­ing to clas­si­cal Ara­bic usage and inter­nal trans­mis­sion con­trols, the scan­dal dissolves.

The Pri­ma­ry Nar­ra­tion and Its Structure

This analy­sis will clar­i­fy the mean­ing of the con­tro­ver­sial terms used in this nar­ra­tion and empha­size the impor­tance of con­tex­tu­al understanding.

The report attrib­uted to ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd appears in Mus­nad Aḥmad¹ with­in a clus­ter of nar­ra­tions describ­ing noc­tur­nal encoun­ters and rev­e­la­to­ry experiences :

إن عبدالله قال إستبعثني رسول الله ﷺ قال فانطلقنا حتى أتيت مكان كذا وكذا فخطَّ لي خطة فقال لي كن بين ظهرَي هذه لا تخرج منها فإنك إن خرجت هلكتَ قال فكنت فيها قال فمضى رسول الله ﷺ خَذَفة أو أبعد شيئاً أو كما قال ثم إنه ذكر هنيناً كأنهم الزُطّ قال عفان أو كما قال عفان إن شاء الله ليس عليهم ثياب ولا أرى سوءاتهم طوالاً قليل لحمهم قال فأتوا فجعلوا يركبون رسول الله ﷺ قال وجعل نبي الله ﷺ يقرأ عليهم قال وجعلوا يأتوني فيخيِّلون أو يميلون حولي ويعترضون لي قال عبدالله فاُرعبتُ منهم رُعباً شديداً قال فجلست أو كما قال قال فلما إنشقَّ عمود الصبح جعلوا يذهبون أو كما قال قال ثم إن رسول الله ﷺ جاء ثقيلاً وَجِعاً أو يكاد أن يكون وجعاً مما ركِبوه قال إني لأجدني ثقيلاً أو كما قال فوضع رسول الله ﷺ رأسه في حجري أو كما قال قال ثم إن هنيناً أتوا عليهم ثياب بيض طوال أو كما قال وقد أغفى رسول الله ﷺ قال عبدالله فارعبت منهم أشد مما اُرعبت المرة الاولى 

قال عارم في حديثه فقال بعضهم لبعض لقد اُعطي هذا العبد خيراً أو كما قالوا إن عينيه نائمتان أو قال عينيه أو كما قالوا وقلبه يقظان ثم قال قال عارم وعفان قال بعضهم لبعض هلم فلنضرب له مثلاً أو كما قالوا قال بعضهم لبعض اضربوا له مثلاً ونؤوِّل نحن أو نضرب نحن وتؤوِّلون أنتم فقال بعضهم لبعض مثله كمثل سيد ابتنى بنياناً حصيناً ثم أرسل إلى الناس بطعام أو كما قال فمن لم يأت طعامه أو قال لم يتبعه عذّبه عذاباً شديداً أو كما قالوا قال الآخرون أما السيد فهو رب العالمين وأما البنيان فهو الاسلام والطعام الجنة وهو الداعي فمن اتّبعه كان في الجنة قال عارم في حديثه أو كما قال ومن لم يتبعه عُذِّب أو كما قال ثم إن رسول الله ﷺ إستيقظ فقال ما رأيت يا إبن أم عبد فقال عندالله رأيت كذا وكذا فقال نبي الله ﷺ ما خُفي عليّ مما قالوا شيء قال نبي الله ﷺ هم نفر من الملائكة أو قال هم من الملائكة أو كما شاء الله 

Inna ʿAb­dal­lāha qāla : istabʿathanī Rasūlu Llāhi ﷺ. Qāla : fanṭalaqnā ḥat­tā atay­tu makā­na kad­hā wa-kad­hā, fakhaṭṭa lī khaṭṭatan faqāla lī : kun bay­na ẓahray hād­hi­hi lā takhruj min­hā fa-inna­ka in khara­j­ta halak­ta. Qāla : fakun­tu fīhā. Qāla : famaḍā Rasūlu Llāhi ﷺ khaḏ­fa­tan aw abʿa­da shayʾan aw kamā qāl. Thum­ma innahu dhakara hanī­nan ka-annahum az-Zuṭṭ. Qāla ʿAf­fān aw kamā qāla ʿAf­fān in shāʾa Llāh : laysa ʿalay­him thiyāb wa-lā arā sawʾāti­him ṭiwālan qalīla laḥmi­him. Qāla : fa-ataw fa-jaʿalū yark­abū­na Rasūla Llāhi ﷺ. Qāla : wa-jaʿala Nabiyyu Llāhi ﷺ yaqraʾu ʿalay­him. Qāla : wa-jaʿalū yaʾtū­nanī fayukhayy­ilū­na aw yamīlū­na ḥawlayya wa-yaʿ­tar­iḍū­na lī. Qāla ʿAb­dul­lāh : fa-urʿib­tu منهم ruʿban shadī­dan. Qāla : fajalasstu aw kamā qāl. Qāla : falam­mā inshaqqa ʿamū­du ṣ‑ṣubḥ jaʿalū yad­hhabū­na aw kamā qāl. Qāla : thum­ma inna Rasūla Llāhi ﷺ jāʾa thaqīlan wajiʿan aw yakā­du an yakū­na wajiʿan mim­mā ركibūhu. Qāla : innī la-ajidu-nī thaqīlan aw kamā qāl. Fawaḍaʿa Rasūlu Llāhi ﷺ raʾsahu fī ḥijrī aw kamā qāl. Qāla : thum­ma inna hanī­nan ataw ʿalay­him thiyābun bīḍ ṭiwāl aw kamā qāl, wa-qad agh­fā Rasūlu Llāhi ﷺ. Qāla ʿAb­dul­lāh : fa-urʿib­tu منهم ashad­du mim­mā urʿib­tu al-mar­rah al-ūlā.

Qāla ʿĀrim fī ḥadīthi­hī : faqāla baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍ : laqad uʿṭiya hād­hā al-ʿab­du khayran aw kamā qālū. Inna ʿay­nay­hi nāʾi­matān aw qālū ʿay­nay­hi aw kamā qālū, wa-qal­buhu yaqẓān. Thum­ma qāla : qāla ʿĀrim wa-ʿAf­fān : qāla baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍ : halum­mū fal­naḍrib lahu math­a­lan aw kamā qālū. Qāla baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍ : iḍribū lahu math­a­lan wa-nuʾawwilu naḥnu aw naḍribu naḥnu wa-tuʾawwilu antum. Faqāla baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍ : math­aluhu ka-math­ali sayyidin ibtanā bun­yā­nan ḥaṣī­nan thum­ma arsala ilā an-nās bi-ṭaʿāmin aw kamā qāl, fa-man lam yaʾti ṭaʿāmahu aw qāl lam yat­tabiʿhu ʿad­hd­habahu ʿad­hāban shadī­dan aw kamā qālū. Qāla al-ākharūn : ammā as-sayyidu fahuwa Rab­bu al-ʿālamīn, wa-ammā al-bun­yānu fahuwa al-Islām, wa-aṭ-ṭaʿā­mu al-Jan­nah, wa-huwa ad-dāʿī ; fa-man ittabaʿahu kāna fī al-Jan­nah. Qāla ʿĀrim fī ḥadīthi­hī aw kamā qāl : wa-man lam yat­tabiʿhu ʿuḏḏhi­ba aw kamā qāl. Thum­ma inna Rasūla Llāhi ﷺ istayqaẓa faqāla : mā raʾay­ta yā Ibn Ummi ʿAbd ? Qāla : ʿin­da Llāh raʾay­tu kad­hā wa-kad­hā. Faqāla Nabiyyu Llāhi ﷺ : mā khu­fiya ʿalayya mim­mā qālū shayʾ. Qāla Nabiyyu Llāhi ﷺ : hum nafarun mina al-malāʾikah aw qāla hum mina al-malāʾikah aw kamā shāʾa Llāh.

Trans­la­tion :

ʿAb­dul­lāh ibn Mas’ud said : The Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ sent me. He said : ​“We set out until I reached such-and-such a place. He drew a line for me and said, ​‘Remain between these two sides and do not leave it. If you leave it, you will perish.’” 

He said : So I stayed with­in it. Then the Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ went a short dis­tance — or far­ther away, or as he said. Then he men­tioned beings like hanīn, as though they were the Zuṭṭ. ʿAf­fān said — or as ʿAf­fān said, God will­ing — that they had no clothes, and I did not see their pri­vate parts ; they were tall and lean, with lit­tle flesh. They came and began to yark­abūn the Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ. The Prophet of God ﷺ began recit­ing to them.

They came to me, mak­ing it seem to me — or lean­ing around me — and obstruct­ing me. ʿAb­dul­lāh said : I was struck with intense fear of them. So I sat— or as he said. When the pil­lar of dawn split, they began to depart — or as he said. Then the Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ returned heavy and aching, or near­ly aching, from what they had mount­ed upon him. He said : ​“I feel heavy,” or as he said. The Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ placed his head in my lap — or as he said.

Then the hanīn came again, wear­ing long white gar­ments — or as he said — while the Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ had fall­en asleep. ʿAb­dul­lāh said : I was even more fright­ened of them than I had been the first time.

ʿĀrim said in his nar­ra­tion : Some of them said to one anoth­er, ​“This ser­vant has been giv­en great good,” or as they said. ​“His eyes are asleep” — or they said ​“his eyes,” or as they said — ​“but his heart is awake.” Then ʿĀrim and ʿAf­fān said : Some of them said to one anoth­er, ​“Come, let us strike a para­ble for him,” or as they said. Some said, ​“You strike the para­ble and we will inter­pret it,” or ​“we strike it and you inter­pret it.”

So some of them said : ​“His like­ness is that of a mas­ter who built a for­ti­fied struc­ture, then invit­ed peo­ple to a feast — or as he said. Who­ev­er did not come to his feast,” or ​“did not fol­low him,” ​“he pun­ished with a severe pun­ish­ment,” or as they said. The oth­ers said : ​“As for the mas­ter, he is the Lord of the worlds ; the struc­ture is Islam ; the feast is Par­adise ; and he is the caller. Who­ev­er fol­lows him will be in Par­adise.” ʿĀrim said in his nar­ra­tion — or as he said — ​“and who­ev­er does not fol­low him will be punished.”

Then the Mes­sen­ger of God ﷺ awoke and said : ​“What did you see, O Ibn Umm ʿAbd?”
I said : ​“By God, I saw such-and-such.”
The Prophet of God ﷺ said : ​“Noth­ing of what they said was hid­den from me.”
The Prophet of God ﷺ said : ​“They are a group of angels,” or ​“they are from among the angels,” as God willed.

In the nar­ra­tion under dis­cus­sion, Ibn Masʿūd recounts that the Prophet ﷺ took him to a place at night, drew a pro­tec­tive bound­ary for him, and instruct­ed him not to leave it. Ibn Masʿūd then reports the appear­ance of fig­ures whom he describes using a sim­i­le : كَأَنَّهُمُ الزُّطّ (“as though they were al-Zuṭṭ”). The con­tro­ver­sial clause fol­lows : فَأَتَوْا فَجَعَلُوا يَرْكَبُونَ رَسُولَ الله ﷺ (“Then they came and began to yark­abūn the Mes­sen­ger of God”). Here, the polemi­cists ren­der the word yark­abūn as ​“ride” or ​“mount”.

Polem­i­cal treat­ments almost invari­ably arrest the nar­ra­tion at this point, treat­ing the clause as self-explana­to­ry and scan­dalous. Yet the report con­tin­ues. After fur­ther descrip­tion of fear, exhaus­tion, and sym­bol­ic dis­course, the nar­ra­tion con­cludes with the Prophet ﷺ explic­it­ly iden­ti­fy­ing the fig­ures : هُمْ نَفَرٌ مِنَ الْمَلَائِكَةِ (“They were a group of angels”). 

The al-Zuṭṭ hadith polemic thus serves as a reveal­ing case study in what may be termed innu­en­do trans­la­tion : a prac­tice in which seman­tic range is weaponised to man­u­fac­ture scan­dal rather than to recov­er his­tor­i­cal mean­ing. Recog­nis­ing this does not require the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ment or apolo­getic defence ; it requires only adher­ence to the basic dis­ci­plines of tex­tu­al analy­sis, lex­i­cog­ra­phy, and nar­ra­tive reading.

If we read the Mus­nad report of the the al-Zuṭṭ hadith as a nar­ra­tive, not as a scan­dal meme, the sto­ry­line is coher­ent with­out sex­u­al content :

1. Ibn Masʿūd is placed under pro­tec­tion (bound­ary in the sand).
2. Strange fig­ures appear ​“as if they were al-Zuṭṭ.”
3. They press toward the Prophet ﷺ and toward Ibn Masʿūd but can­not cross the boundary.
4. Ibn Masʿūd is terrified.
5. The Prophet ﷺ returns feel­ing heavy and tired from the overcrowding.
6. The vis­i­tors lat­er appear clothed in white.
7. The Prophet ﷺ iden­ti­fies them as angels.

If any­thing, the narrative’s ​“pres­sure” lan­guage fits the ازدحموا عليه gloss (“they crowd­ed onto him”) far more nat­u­ral­ly than the polem­i­cal fan­ta­sy. The nar­ra­tion itself con­firms this read­ing. The resem­blance is pro­vi­sion­al, while the final iden­ti­fi­ca­tion — as angels — is author­i­ta­tive. To col­lapse sim­i­le into iden­ti­ty is not an act of lin­guis­tic clar­i­fi­ca­tion but a delib­er­ate nar­row­ing of mean­ing designed to sus­tain a polem­i­cal outcome.

The Seman­tics of يركبون (yark­abūn)

The core of the al-Zuṭṭ hadith polemic cen­ters on the Ara­bic verb يَرْكَبُونَ (yark­abūn). In clas­si­cal Ara­bic, the root r‑k-b denotes rid­ing or mount­ing, with well-attest­ed metaphor­i­cal exten­sions such as press­ing upon, crowd­ing, or overtaking :

Lane’s Ara­bic – Eng­lish Lex­i­con iden­ti­fies ​“mount/​ride/​embark” as the core seman­tic field and also records the idiom :

رَكِبَ النَّاسُ بَعْضُهُمْ بَعْضًا (rak­i­ba al-nasu baʿḍuhum baʿḍan) — the peo­ple bore, or pressed, or crowd­ed (as though mount­ing) one upon anoth­er ; a phrase well known, and of fre­quent occur­rence.²

Lisān al-ʿArab like­wise anchors ركب in phys­i­cal rid­ing and its deriv­a­tive sens­es, not in sex­u­al mean­ing as a default lex­i­cal value.

With­in the same trans­mis­sion fam­i­ly, the dis­put­ed action in the al-Zuṭṭ hadith polemic is glossed as ازدحموا عليه (“they crowd­ed onto him”). This vari­ant pro­vides an inter­nal inter­pre­tive con­trol, indi­cat­ing that ear­ly trans­mit­ters under­stood the episode as crowd­ing rather than any­thing erot­ic. Once this evi­dence is acknowl­edged, a sex­u­al­ized read­ing los­es lin­guis­tic plausibility.

Although Ara­bic can employ ​“mount­ing” verbs euphemisti­cal­ly in sex­u­al con­texts, such usage requires explic­it con­tex­tu­al sig­nals — objects, idioms, or genre mark­ers — that are absent here. The nar­ra­tion instead describes a pub­lic event accom­pa­nied by recita­tion and fol­lowed by sym­bol­ic and the­o­log­i­cal com­men­tary, rein­forc­ing a non-sex­u­al reading.

The insin­u­a­tion aris­es not from Ara­bic seman­tics but from mod­ern Eng­lish inter­fer­ence. In con­tem­po­rary slang, ​“ride” may car­ry erot­ic con­no­ta­tions ; polem­i­cal trans­la­tions exploit this by import­ing col­lo­qui­al Eng­lish mean­ing into a clas­si­cal Ara­bic reg­is­ter, there­by com­mit­ting a reg­is­ter error in which a mod­ern, cul­ture-spe­cif­ic sense is retro­ject­ed into a his­tor­i­cal lin­guis­tic envi­ron­ment where it does not belong. What is pre­sent­ed as a ​“lit­er­al” ren­der­ing is there­fore not a recov­ery of his­tor­i­cal mean­ing, but a sub­sti­tu­tion of con­tem­po­rary slang for clas­si­cal seman­tic norms.

This maneu­ver is best under­stood as obscene pro­jec­tion rather than trans­la­tion. The inter­pre­tive move oper­ates less like philol­o­gy and more like vul­gar dou­ble-enten­dre : a clas­si­cal term is iso­lat­ed from its dis­cur­sive envi­ron­ment, stripped of its pre­mod­ern seman­tic con­straints, and re-cod­ed to yield a sen­sa­tion­al effect nev­er intend­ed by the orig­i­nal lan­guage. The obscen­i­ty does not reside in the his­tor­i­cal source itself, but in the polemicist’s intru­sive frame­work, which sub­sti­tutes insin­u­a­tion for evi­dence and shock for seman­tic accountability.

Illus­tra­tion of innu­en­do trans­la­tion, where obscen­i­ty is imposed by the inter­preter rather than dis­cov­ered in the source.

Com­par­a­tive philol­o­gy fur­ther under­mines the polemic. The Ara­bic root ر‑ك-ب is a direct cog­nate of the Hebrew ר‑כ-ב (r‑k-b), both deriv­ing from a shared Pro­to-Semit­ic base whose pri­ma­ry sense con­cerns rid­ing or mount­ing. Across Semit­ic lan­guages, any erot­ic usage emerges only as a marked, con­text-bound exten­sion rather than a nar­ra­tive default. A sex­u­al­ized read­ing of يركبون would there­fore vio­late not only Ara­bic usage in this report but the inher­it­ed seman­tic struc­ture of the broad­er Semit­ic fam­i­ly.³

In Bib­li­cal Hebrew, the root רכב (rākav, ​“to ride”) is fre­quent­ly employed in fig­u­ra­tive and metaphor­i­cal expres­sions of dom­i­na­tion, ele­va­tion, or tri­umph, with­out any sex­u­al implication.

Psalm 66:12 states :

הִרְכַּבְתָּ אֱנוֹשׁ לְרֹאשֵׁנוּ
​“You caused men to ride over our heads” .⁴

Here, ​“rid­ing” express­es oppres­sion and sub­ju­ga­tion, not phys­i­cal mount­ing in any lit­er­al sense. 

Like­wise, Isa­iah 58:14 declares :

וְהִרְכַּבְתִּיךָ עַל־בָּמֳתֵי אָרֶץ
​“I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth”.⁵

No inter­preter sug­gests a bod­i­ly or sex­u­al act ; the verb con­veys exal­ta­tion and domin­ion. To impose mod­ern sex­u­al slang onto these vers­es would be recog­nised imme­di­ate­ly as inter­pre­tive mal­prac­tice. The ver­b’s seman­tic range does not license erot­ic retrojection.

The same prin­ci­ple gov­erns New Tes­ta­ment Greek. In Luke 10:34, the evan­ge­list writes of the wound­ed man in the para­ble of the Good Samaritan :

ἐπιβιβάσας δὲ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸ ἴδιον κτῆνος
​“He set him upon his own ani­mal” .⁶

The verb ἐπιβιβάζω, derived from ἐπιβαίνω (“to mount, to board”), denotes phys­i­cal place­ment upon an ani­mal for trans­port. No sex­u­al impli­ca­tion is con­ceiv­able with­in the nar­ra­tive genre. 

Sim­i­lar­ly, Acts 21:2 uses ἐπιβαίνω for board­ing a ship :

καὶ ἐπιβάντες εἰς πλοῖον
​“And hav­ing board­ed a ship…”.⁷

The seman­tic core is motion and con­tact, not eroticism.

Cru­cial­ly, how­ev­er, Greek lex­i­cog­ra­phy demon­strates that these same verbs can acquire sex­u­al or repro­duc­tive mean­ings out­side bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ani­mal-breed­ing con­texts or erot­ic metaphor. Pol­lux, in his Ono­mas­ti­con, lists ἐπιβαίνειν among verbs used for ani­mal copulation :

τὸ μίγνυσθαι ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν ἀλόγων βαίνειν, ἐπιβαίνειν, ὀχεύειν…
​“To mate : of ani­mals, [the verbs] ​‘to go upon,’ ​‘to mount,’ ​‘to cop­u­late’…” .⁸

Mod­ern schol­ar­ship con­firms this usage, not­ing that ἐπιβαίνω can denote ​“repro­duc­tive ani­mals mount­ing a female” in tech­ni­cal con­texts. Inter­est­ing­ly also, ἐπιβαίνω can car­ry an​“obscene allu­sion” in Greek com­e­dy usage by Aristo­phanes, and explic­it­ly con­nects that to ἐπιβαίνω being used obscene­ly (“to mount”) by anal­o­gy with ani­mals. Yet no schol­ar would there­fore read Luke 10:34 or Acts 21:2 as sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive. The genre, nar­ra­tive con­text, and syn­tac­tic envi­ron­ment strict­ly delim­it meaning.

This com­par­i­son expos­es the fal­la­cy at work in the al-Zuṭṭ hadith polemic. The Ara­bic يَرْكَبُونَ, like Hebrew רכב and Greek ἐπιβαίνω, pos­sess­es a broad seman­tic range. Sex­u­al mean­ing exists only as a sec­ondary, con­text-depen­dent exten­sion, nev­er as a default. To iso­late the verb, ignore its nar­ra­tive envi­ron­ment, sup­press inter­nal clar­i­fi­ca­tions, and then import a mod­ern col­lo­qui­al mean­ing is not trans­la­tion but insin­u­a­tion. It is pre­cise­ly the same abuse that would be required to sex­u­alise large por­tions of the Hebrew Bible and New Tes­ta­ment — an abuse that no respon­si­ble schol­ar countenances.

What emerges is a rec­og­niz­able rhetor­i­cal pat­tern : pol­y­se­my is exploit­ed, nar­ra­tive coher­ence is ignored, and mod­ern slang is sub­sti­tut­ed for clas­si­cal mean­ing to man­u­fac­ture scan­dal. This ​“innu­en­do trans­la­tion” depends on sug­ges­tion and rep­e­ti­tion rather than philol­o­gy, and col­laps­es under lin­guis­tic, com­par­a­tive, and con­tex­tu­al scrutiny.

Con­clu­sion

A care­ful exam­i­na­tion of the al-Zuṭṭ hadith nar­ra­tion attrib­uted to ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd demon­strates that the sex­u­alised inter­pre­ta­tion of the al-Zuṭṭ episode is nei­ther lin­guis­ti­cal­ly com­pelled nor nar­ra­tive­ly coher­ent. The claim rests on the iso­la­tion of a pol­y­se­mous verb, the sup­pres­sion of inter­nal inter­pre­tive con­trols, and the retro­jec­tion of mod­ern Eng­lish slang into clas­si­cal Ara­bic. When the nar­ra­tion is read in full, its struc­ture is clear : pro­vi­sion­al per­cep­tion gives way to author­i­ta­tive clar­i­fi­ca­tion, and phys­i­cal crowd­ing is framed with­in a vision­ary encounter, cul­mi­nat­ing in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the fig­ures as angels.

Com­par­a­tive evi­dence from Bib­li­cal Hebrew and New Tes­ta­ment Greek con­firms that such abuse of pol­y­se­my is not unique to Ara­bic polemics but rep­re­sents a gen­er­al method­olog­i­cal fail­ure. Verbs mean­ing ​“ride” or ​“mount” do not default to sex­u­al mean­ing ; they acquire such mean­ings only under spe­cif­ic con­tex­tu­al and gener­ic con­di­tions. To ignore those con­di­tions is to aban­don philol­o­gy in favour of insinuation.

The al-Zuṭṭ hadith polemic thus serves as a reveal­ing case study in what may be termed innu­en­do trans­la­tion : a prac­tice in which seman­tic range is weaponised to man­u­fac­ture scan­dal rather than to recov­er his­tor­i­cal mean­ing. Recog­nis­ing this does not require the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ment or apolo­getic defence. It requires only adher­ence to the basic dis­ci­plines of tex­tu­al analy­sis, lex­i­cog­ra­phy, and nar­ra­tive read­ing. When those dis­ci­plines are applied con­sis­tent­ly, the polem­i­cal edi­fice col­laps­es under its own method­olog­i­cal weight.

When these dis­ci­plines are applied con­sis­tent­ly, the polem­i­cal edi­fice col­laps­es under its own method­olog­i­cal weight. The sex­u­alised read­ing of the al-Zuṭṭ hadith polemic lacks any cred­i­ble sup­port from philo­log­i­cal evi­dence. And only God knows best !

Fre­quent­ly-Asked Questions

Notes

1. Aḥmad b. Ḥan­bal, al-Mus­nad, ḥadīth no. 3788, was grad­ed ḍaʿīf (weak) by Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ et al., where­as Aḥmad Shākir clas­si­fied it as ṣaḥīḥ. A sim­i­lar report is nar­rat­ed in Jami’ Al-Tir­mid­hī 2861 but with­out the men­tion of ​“crowd­ing”.[⤶]
2. E. W. Lane, Ara­bic-Eng­lish Lex­i­con, (Beirut : Librairie du Liban, 1968) Book I, Part 3, 1142.[⤶]
3. See Lane, Ara­bic – Eng­lish Lex­i­con, s.v. ركب ; Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. ركب ; Brown – Dri­ver – Brig­gs, Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con, s.v. רכב ; Koehler & Baum­gart­ner, HALOT, s.v. רכב ; Moscati et al., Com­par­a­tive Gram­mar of the Semit­ic Lan­guages ; Rubin, Brief Intro­duc­tion to the Semit­ic Lan­guages ; Barr, The Seman­tics of Bib­li­cal Lan­guage.[⤶]
4. Psalms 66:12[⤶]
5. Isa­iah 58:14[⤶]
6. Luke 10:34[⤶]
7. Acts 21:2[⤶]
8. Pol­lux, Onom. 5.92[⤶]