Request for help regarding a hadith

[ by Charles Cameron — no extremism in religion, did Muhammad say that? ]

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1.

Illustrated above is the banner of the Khudi blog from Pakistan, offering a hadith in support of its vision, which it describes as follows:

As a movement Khudi stands against all forms of extremism, including those that use religion to justify a certain agenda. But simply saying ‘no’ to extremism isn’t good enough – it’s essential to challenge and undermine the arguments used by extremists and to refute the religious justifications they put forward.

However, challenging extremism in this way doesn’t mean that Khudi is eligible to comment on religious matters or issue fatwas about the length of the beard or the hijaab. At Khudi we believe religious beliefs are a personal matter that each individual may take guidance on from their respective religious authorities. Thus, our volunteers and friends belong to a variety of faiths and sects and span the religious spectrum, from conservative to liberal. The important thing is that we stand firmly by the principle of respecting each other’s difference.

2.

I’m intersted in Khudi, not least because it seems to be a brainchild of Maajid Nawaz, one of the ex-jihadists who founded the Qulliam Foundation in London:

Quilliam is the world’s first counter-extremism think tank set up to address the unique challenges of citizenship, identity and belonging in a globalised world. Quilliam stands for religious freedom, equality, human rights and democracy.

Khudi appears to be Quilliam’s Pakistan equivalent, more or less.

3.

Here’s the deal. The Khudi blog website header illustrated above cites Bukhari 9.582 as saying:

Beware of extremism in religion, for extremism destroyed those who went before you.

I would like to be able to point to that hadith with confidence in my own writings, and I’d be happy to give appropriate attribution to the Khudi blog. but first I need help in clearing up some questions I have about it.

Specifically, when I went to verify the hadith for scholarly accuracy before quoting it — not being a reader of Arabic, and thus being dependent on what resources in English I can muster — I found to my surprise that the

hadith-search function for MulsimOnline gave the following result for Bukhari 9.582:

Narrated Ibn `Abbas:

(regarding the Verse):– ‘Neither say your prayer aloud, nor say it in a low tone.’ (17.110) This Verse was revealed while Allah’s Apostle was hiding himself in Mecca, and when he raised his voice while reciting the Qur’an, the pagans would hear him and abuse the Qur’an and its Revealer and to the one who brought it. So Allah said:– ‘Neither say your prayer aloud, nor say it in a low tone.’ (17.110) That is, ‘Do not say your prayer so loudly that the pagans can hear you, nor say it in such a low tone that your companions do not hear you.’ But seek a middle course between those (extremes), i.e., let your companions hear, but do not relate the Qur’an loudly, so that they may learn it from you.

“Not too soft, not too loud” bears a kind of family resemblance to “nothing in excess” — but it’s not the same thing, and I rather doubt that the words in Bukhari rendered by one translator as “Neither say your prayer aloud, nor say it in a low tone” would be rendered by another as “Beware of extremism in religion” — and I don’t see anything there that would correspond with the phrase “for extremism destroyed those who went before you”.

4.

Okay, all this set me digging a little further, and I next found a hadith reported at the ProphetEducation site, which reads as follows:

On the authority of Ibn Abbas (May Allah be pleased with him):

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