Verses from Islamic scriptures

[KettleWhistle]

The text below is from an anti-Islam web site, so please be forwarned that it is likely to be biased. I know that Islam generally prohibits racism, so I would like to get comments from Muslims on these specific verses. I just want to know how you understand these.

RACISM:

Ishaq:243 “I heard the Apostle say: ‘Whoever wants to see Satan should look at Nabtal!’ He was a black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks…. Allah sent down concerning him: ‘To those who annoy the Prophet there is a painful doom.” [9:61] “Gabriel came to Muhammad and said, ‘If a black man comes to you his heart is more gross than a donkey’s.’”
Ishaq:144 “A rock was put on a slave’s chest. When Abu Bakr complained, they said, ‘You are the one who corrupted him, so save him from his plight.’ I will do so,’ said Bakr. ‘I have a black slave, tougher and stronger than Bilal, who is a heathen. I will exchange him. The transaction was carried out.”
Koran 9:97 “The Arabs of the desert are the worst in unbelief and hypocrisy, and most fitted to be in ignorance of the command which Allah hath sent down to His Messenger.”
Tabari II:11 “Shem, the son of Noah was the father of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Greeks; Ham was the father of the Black Africans; and Japheth was the father of the Turks and of Gog and Magog who were cousins of the Turks. Noah prayed that the prophets and apostles would be descended from Shem and kings would be from Japheth. He prayed that the African’s color would change so that their descendants would be slaves to the Arabs and Turks.”
Tabari II:21 “Ham [Africans] begat all those who are black and curly-haired, while Japheth [Turks] begat all those who are full-faced with small eyes, and Shem [Arabs] begat everyone who is handsome of face with beautiful hair. Noah prayed that the hair of Ham’s descendants would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his descendants met Shem’s, the latter would enslave them.”
Tabari IX:69 “Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds. We were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah’s helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in Allah’s Cause. Killing him is a small matter to us.”
Bukhari: V9B89N256 “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he is a black African slave whose head looks like a raisin.’”
Ishaq:405 “It is your folly to fight the Apostle, for Allah’s army is bound to disgrace you. We brought them to the pit. Hell was their meeting place. We collected them there, black slaves, men of no descent.
Ishaq:374 “The black troops and slaves of the Meccans cried out and the Muslims replied, ‘Allah destroy your sight, you impious rascals.’”
Bukhari:V4B52N137 “The Prophet said, ‘Let the negro slave of Dinar perish. And if he is pierced with a thorn, let him not find anyone to take it out for him.... If he [the black slave] asks for anything it shall not be granted, and if he needs intercession [to get into paradise], his intercession will be denied.’”

[andak01]

Thanks for asking for a response. I usually see quotes prepackaged with their assumed to be vile meanings in large bold-face.

Two things I note immediately. Either you did not get these from an Islamic site, or you chose (I'll assume for space saving purposes) to edit them in a way that most Muslims would not. What I'm referring to is the missing Isnad, or chain of narrators. Second, editing of any sort can change the meaning. A hadith without its Isnad is of little value for evaluating the importance of a quote within Islamic doctrine. Because, if a hadith comes from a doubtful source, it may be discounted. And that doubtful source includes any single link within the chain of narrators. Believe it or not, there are biographies of everyone who ever relayed a hadith that continue for some centuries after the death of the Prophet, tens if not hundreds of thousands of them. My aquaintance, who received a degree in hadith studies had to memorize the chain of professors from his own teacher, to his teacher's teacher, back to the time of the Prophet.

Not only that, but even the doubtful chains are maintained, so that future scholars don't have to repeat the work of past ones. And there may be multiple chains for the same hadith. How? The Prophet stood in a room in front of ten or twelve people and said something. Companion A memorizes it, as does Companion B and C. They form the first links of three Isnads. The words of the hadith as related by each, even if identical, are stored only with that Isnad.

So, in the end, by looking at all the Isnads together, you can even see which direction the Prophet's followers were walking. For example, an early collection of hadiths may reference a short Isnad, and say that it was relayed in Medina. A later collection may have a longer Isnad and say that it was relayed in Kufa and a third may state Cairo as its point of relay.

Sorry to get technical, but I thought you might find that interesting. Now, to the sources of your quotes. With the exception of the Quran, the sources are collections. So, we could refer to the collection to obtain the Isnads. However, as noted, to know how core a particular hadith is, that is exactly what the scholar would do. Here are the biographies of these three collectors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Ishaq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-Tabari
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_Bukhari

[andak01]

Would you at least be willing to admit that you did not get your quotes from an Islamic site, but rather from an anti-Islamic hate site?

[KettleWhistle]

Ooops... sorry andak, didn't mean to edit your post... just clicked a wrong button. Please repost the links if you still have them.

Would you at least be willing to admit that you did not get your quotes from an Islamic site, but rather from an anti-Islamic hate site?

Yes. That's what I said in the very beginning of my first post.

[andak01]

Well at least you won't have to undergo two or three hundred hate posts like I did. Welcome aboard.

Now then, do you mean those links that point to the fact that you got all your quotes from prophetofdoom? That is not an Islamic site. If you can find me an Islamic site that contains those quotes, I'd be interested.

[KettleWhistle]

Well at least you won't have to undergo two or three hundred hate posts like I did. Welcome aboard.

Now then, do you mean those links that point to the fact that you got all your quotes from prophetofdoom? That is not an Islamic site. If you can find me an Islamic site that contains those quotes, I'd be interested.

It was from another site, but as I mentioned, and even wrote in bold, I expect these to be biased. When I was replying to you, I hit edit button instead of the quote button by mistake, then I wrote my response, and hit the submit button before realizing that I wasn't replying.

As for the original post, I would like to know how mainstream Muslims undertand these. I'm not here to convert or demonize anybody, so it wasn't meant as an attack on Islam. I had similar questions for some Mormons that I worked with, and I got pretty satisfactory answers from them. I hope I could get some from you, or anybody else who'd know.

[andak01]

Look, most of that outside of the Quran isn't even known to most Muslims. I was raised Christian and I never learned to be fearful of Jews despite what John says. It's just not central to the message of Christianity. I have never found more in the Quran to make me uneasy than in the Bible. After all, the whole Book of Joshua speaks of total genocide upon tribe after tribe. But I don't in any way thing that shapes the Jewish faith. The core of these faiths is how to love people, not how to hate and kill them.

Now, about racism.

Genesis 34:14 And they said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one that is uncircumcised; for that were a reproach unto us:

Exodus 12:43
And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof:
12:44
But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof.
12:45
A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof.

Leviticus 22:10
There shall no stranger eat of the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest, or an hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing.

24:16
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

Numbers 1:51
And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levites shall take it down: and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.

Deuteronomy 7:5
But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

Joshua 8:24
And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

8:25
And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai

[KettleWhistle]

Listen, I'm not trying to bash your religion. I'm just asking how you understand these in the larger context of your beliefs.

[andak01]

I've said about all I have to say on those. The Quranic verse is accurate, if out of context. It is in the middle of a Surah about battling the Meccans. But that's as good as it gets. The rest of your quotes are so mangled that it's not worth researching. For example.

Ishaq:243 “I heard the Apostle say: ‘Whoever wants to see Satan should look at Nabtal!’ He was a black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks….

Where's the rest?

Allah sent down concerning him: ‘To those who annoy the Prophet there is a painful doom.” [9:61]

Here, the relayer is misquoting a verse.

9:61
Among them are men who molest the Prophet and say, "He is (all) ear." Say, "He listens to what is best for you: he believes in Allah, has faith in the Believers, and is a Mercy to those of you who believe." But those who molest the Messenger will have a grievous penalty.

]“Gabriel came to Muhammad and said, ‘If a black man comes to you his heart is more gross than a donkey’s.’”

And who said this??? That whole thing is a cobbling together of several things which in the end may have been made up.

When I Yahoo searched "Killing him is a small matter to us", I get.

1) www.prophetofdoom.net/nickberg.html
2) www.prophetofdoom.net/faqs16.html
3) this very thread in Israelforum
4) http://fruitofislam.com/faqs16.html
[i]Question: Isn't the Bible's history just as violent as Islam's?
Answer: The answer to the comparative fighting question is found in "The Pedophile Pirate" chapter of Prophet of Doom.
5) www.jihadwatch.org/archives/002357.php
6) http://www.jihadwatch.org/cgi-bin/mt...?entry_id=2010
7) fruitofislam.com/JIHAD.htm
8) http://www.londonschoolofislamics.or...35&forum_id=1&

Finally something that looks like a Muslim site, and a search in the blog on the quote above turns up your list verbatim, quoted from prophetofdoom. Would you be willing to admit that that is your source???

Since a google search and a yahoo search turns up no other source for that quote, I can only surmise that it is an invention. I won't bother with the rest, but I might go into more detail on the verse from the Quran.

[scattergood]

For purposes of this discussion, might it be helpful to agree on a version that seems like a reasonable translation? I was able to find:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/browse.html

It has an english translation which is searchable and browseable for free. Does this wokr?

Scattergood

[andak01]

I have already posted my own preference. This is a neutral site containing scriptures of many religions. Yusef Ali is a good translation and a common one.

http://ishwar.com/
http://ishwar.com/islam/holy_quran_(yusuf)/

[andak01]

You know, I was thinking of this charge of racism. I wonder which Muslims are the most harmed by it, the Chinese? The blacks from Senegal? The Indonesians? The Indians of Utter Pradesh? This is a religion that has attracted people of all races for centuries. If you showed me quotes from the KKK and said they were racist, I'd be inclined to believe. However, if I later found that tens of millions of their members were black, I'd wonder at the quotes or that there might be something I was missing.

I pray shoulder to shoulder with black people, yellow people, every shade of brown people. Whether I am here or in Morocco, we are brothers and sisters to each other. I grew up in the Jim Crow south, where there was real racism and lynchings and bathrooms marked "white only".

[Jehan]

KettleWhistle

I know this is a relatively old thread, but you asked for comments from Muslims.

This will be a long post.


1.

In your heading, you call these quotes verses from Islamic scriptures.
Your use of the plural form for 'verses' and 'sciptures' is a little confusing.
A more approprate heading would perhaps be: 'Verse from the Islamic Scripture', since there is only one Islamic Scripture (the Koran) and there is only one verse from this Scripture in your list. (More on this verse later.)


2.

You note that:

The text below is from an anti-Islam web site, so please be forwarned that it is likely to be biased.

I'm not saying the disclaimer is not a good idea, but what do you mean by 'it is likely to be biased?'

If you go to a site which is anti-Semetic, believes Christianity is nonsense, is racist against Blacks, or hates Hinduism, you wouldn't say: hmm, this might be biased against Jews, or Christians, or Blacks, or Hindus. You would expect it to be biased. That's kind of the whole point. There's no 'likely' about it.
I mean, imagine saying:

The text below is from an anti-Semetic web site, so please be forwarned that it is likely to be racist.

The two clauses sort of repeat each other, don't they?

Since you admit the website you took these 'verses' from is anti-Islam (and therefore prejudiced, against a religion), and since it is talking about Islam (the subject it is prejudiced against), it is clearly going to have to be one-sided, isn't it?

Although, for Craig Winn's site, to say 'one-sided' is to put it mildly. Words like distorted and warped come to mind.

Such a prejudiced, Islam hating source is not 'likely to be biased'.

It is biased.

[Jehan]

3.

Please note that all but one of the 'verses' you quoted are not verses at all, but ahadith.

The Status of Hadith:

In Arabic, hadith only means 'speech', but in a religious sense, it signifies a report of the prophet's sayings or actions. These reports are collected and studied, but they are not scripture, and are neither holy nor infallible.
The whole theory of hadith is based on a tripartite division: Authentic, Unauthentic and Undecided. Within these three classes, hadith has different degrees of authenticity, according to the wording (Matn) and the chain (Sanad), which is missing in all the quotes you list.

What have come to be known as the `Six Authentic Books' of hadith of the majority Sunnite `orthodoxy' were compiled by Bukhari (d. 256/870), Muslim (d. 261/875), Abu Daud (d. 275/888), Tirmidhi (d. 279/892), Ibn Maja (d. 273/886), and al-Nasa'i (d. 303/915) during the second half of the second and the beginning of the third centuries of Islam, between 220 and 270 years after the prophet's death. No collection has been authenticated by the prophet himself.

Only two of the 'verses' in your list come from one of the sahihs. (More on these ahadith later). Other than the two quotes from Bukhari, you list hadith from Ishaq and Tabari.



4.

The Hadith of Ishaq and Tabari.

Ishaq:

a)

I heard the Apostle say: ‘Whoever wants to see Satan should look at Nabtal!’ He was a black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks….

On the hadith regarding Nabtal, part of it is missing, for some reason.
From Ishaq's Sirat Rasulallah, translated as The Life of Mohammad by A. Guillaume, page 243.

"I have heard that it was of him that the apostle said, "Whoever wants to see Satan let him look at Nabtal al-Harith!" He was a black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks. He used to come and talk to the apostle and listen to him and then carry what he had said to the hypocrites. It was he who said: "Muhammad is all ears: if anyone tells him anything he believes it."

By removing the last sentence, the implication is Nabtal is like Satan because of the way he looked and not because of what he did, which is more the sense in the Arabic text.

However, the hadith remains unauthentic, and the isnad is missing.

b)

“Gabriel came to Muhammad and said, ‘If a black man comes to you his heart is more gross than a donkey’s.

I have never heard this before, and I can't find it in Ishaq, so I can't say anything about it, except that it sounds a little... strange.

c)

“A rock was put on a slave’s chest. When Abu Bakr complained, they said, ‘You are the one who corrupted him, so save him from his plight.’ I will do so,’ said Bakr. ‘I have a black slave, tougher and stronger than Bilal, who is a heathen. I will exchange him. The transaction was carried out.”

The story of Bilal is a well-known one, and there are many ahadith about it. This one is deemed false by most people for two reasons.

First, when Abu Bakr heard what had happened to Bilal, he went to stop it. It does not make any sense for him to have 'exchanged' Bilal for another when he did not agree with the punishment.

Second, this is only one hadith, and must be checked against others. In this case, a larger number of ahadith report that Abu Bakr bought Bilal from Umayya, his pagan owner, for 200 dinars, and Bilal was then set free. He later became a Muslim, and was the first muezzin (person to perform the call to prayer) in Islam.

d)

It is your folly to fight the Apostle, for Allah’s army is bound to disgrace you. We brought them to the pit. Hell was their meeting place. We collected them there, black slaves, men of no descent.

Here the racist slant is given by distorting the hadith, as the text in Arabic does not even mention 'black'.

It is rare for people to be described as 'black' or 'white' in Arabic, more often they are described by family, tribe or country. eg. Bilal is called Bilal al Habashi, (the Ethiopian). So the text does not say abeed suud, but only abeed, thus 'slaves' or 'low people'. Although I can see why 'black' has been added to make the case for racism in Islam.

e)

The last hadith by Ishaq is similar to the above.

The black troops and slaves of the Meccans cried out and the Muslims replied, ‘Allah destroy your sight, you impious rascals.

The meaning here is not 'black people' but 'low/evil people'.

Again, however none of the ahadith above are reliable, as there is no isnad, and it is not sahih.

Tabari:

a)

He prayed that the African’s color would change so that their descendants would be slaves to the Arabs and Turks.

This does not make sense. Slavery at that time was not based on colour. If you were black, this did not mean you were automatically a slave, because slaves at the time were mostly people captured in wars or raids, and so came from all sorts of ethnicities.

b)

Shem [Arabs] begat everyone who is handsome of face with beautiful hair. Noah prayed that the hair of Ham’s descendants would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his descendants met Shem’s, the latter would enslave them.

See above.

c)

“Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds. We were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah’s helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in Allah’s Cause. Killing him is a small matter to us.”

I think the objection in this hadith is this sentence: 'Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds.' This seems to me to be a case of Tabari's own personal opinion rather than anything the prophet said.

Again, the hadith is not holy. The narrators are not infallible, or revered in any way, they are just people who collected historical evidence, and Tabari is thus not seen as a great example or someone to follow in his personal opionion.

In fact Tabari and Ishaq are both seen as unreliable.

5.

The Unreliability of Ishaq and Tabari.

The authenticity of a report is often determined by the analysis of the consciousness of the reporter to verify its neutrality and objectivity, looking at things such as maturity, intelligence, memory and speech ability, since a report is the passage from hearing to memorizing and finally to communicating. Ancient scholars even invented a side-discipline, criteria to evaluate a reporter's neutrality and objectivity, called Ilm al-Jarh Wa al-Ta'dil, a kind of a biographical description of the reporter, his personality, motives, inclinations, loyalties and affiliations.

Many of Tabari's hadith have been deemed unreliable, either for the clear mistakes in them, or because they contradict Koranic teaching. It is not strange that he shoudl have made mistakes, especially considering the large amounts of hadith he collected. It is clear that he did not check his sources or detail them as accurately as the authentics.

Tabari himself has never claimed all the material in his huge work to be the truth. On the contrary, he states very clearly in his introduction:

Whatever is to be found in this book of mine as quoted from some past source, which the reader finds unacceptable or the hearer deems repugnant for the reason that he does not see any authenticity in it or does not find real meaning in it, let it be known that we are not responsible for it. The one responsible for it would be one of those who transmitted it down to us. We for our part have only reproduced what has been transmitted to us.

As for Muhammad ibn Ishaq, it is well known that he used to commit tadlîs. Tadlîs is when a narrator intentionally omits the name of his direct source and ascribes his information to a source higher up in the chain of narration. Ibn Hibban states about him: “The problem with Ibn Ishaq is that he used to omit the names of unreliable narrators, as a result of which unreliable material crept into his narrations.'' Ibn Hajar also notes Ishaq was well-known for committing tadlîs by omitting the names of unknown persons, and even from narrators who are regarded as unreliable for more serious reasons.
It is thus of no benefit to quote him as a separate reference, and the fact that all of the isnad is missing from all the hadith you mentioned does not really help to verify their authenticity.

[Jehan]

6.

The Hadith from Bukhari:

Unlike the two previous writers, Bukhari is one of the more reliable and acceptable narrators of Hadith, since most of what he collected have strong isnad, and are verified by other sources.

a)

Bukhari: V9B89N256 “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he is a black African slave whose head looks like a raisin.’”

Other versions of the same hadith:

The Prophet said: 'Stick to obedience if he be an Abyssinian slave.' (Ahmad)
The Prophet said: Obey your ruler, though he be a slave. (Majah)

Obviously, this hadith must be authentic as there are multiple sources and narrators.

The reason for there being so many ahadith dealing with the topic is that before Islam Arabs used to look down upon others, especially black slaves, so there are many hadith which repeatedly strike at this Arab pride of jahiliyyah. These ahadith make it clear that racial pride is not part of Islam.

For example:

The Prophet said: Whoever has pride in his heart equal to the weight of an atom shall not enter Paradise.
The Prophet said: Let people stop boasting about their ancestors. All men are sons of Adam, and Adam came from dust.

Because there are so many of these ahadith, and because many of them are repeated, have different narrators and isnads, it is clear that the prophet taught people not to take pride in their ethnicity, but only in their faith and work.

The right to lead is given to those endued with the correct creed, not the correct tongue or parentage.

You may still choose to see the above hadith as racist, despite this, but I don't think it is. I see it as the opposite. It certainly does away with the Tabari hadith, which says that Ham's descendents should be enslaved by Shem's, since this makes it clear that black people are equal to white, and can be their rulers. Your references are a little conflicting.

b)

Bukhari:V4B52N137 “The Prophet said, ‘Let the negro slave of Dinar perish. And if he is pierced with a thorn, let him not find anyone to take it out for him.... If he [the black slave] asks for anything it shall not be granted, and if he needs intercession [to get into paradise], his intercession will be denied.’”

The distortion of this hadith is almost amusing it is so obvious...

It seems that this web site take any references to 'slaves' and tacks on 'black' or 'negro' if they are negative.

The word 'slaves' occurs many times in the ahadith. For example, 'believing slaves' (meaning Muslims). The word for slave 'abd' is also used to mean servant. An example outside the hadith is names such as Abdullah, Abdulsalam, Adulrahman etc, which mean servant of Allah.

Thus, there may be a lot of ahadith which can easily be distorted, by playing on the Western idea of 'slaves' as black people, and not as what it meant originally.

This is what has happened in this hadith. There are two versions of it, both quoted by Bukhari with slightly differing isnads, although both come from Abu Huraira.

Here are both versions:

Volume 8, Book 76, Number 443:

Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "Perish the slave of Dinar, Dirham, Qatifa (thick soft cloth), and Khamisa (a garment), for if he is given, he is pleased; otherwise he is dissatisfied."

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 137:

Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "Let the slave of Dinar and Dirham, of Qatifa and Khamisa (i.e. money and luxurious clothes) perish for he is pleased if these things are given to him, and if not, he is displeased. Let such a person perish and relapse, and if he is pierced with a thorn, let him not find anyone to take it out for him. Paradise is for him who holds the reins of his horse to strive in Allah's Cause, with his feet covered with dust: if he is appointed in the vanguard, he is perfectly satisfied with his post of guarding, and if he is appointed in the rearward, he accepts his post with satisfaction; even though if he asks for permission he is not permitted, and if he intercedes, his intercession is not accepted."


Obviously, here the slave of Dinar is (literally) the slave of money, ie: a person who does nothing but hoard money, and thus worships it. AdbulDinar, as it were.

As for the last part of the text: If he asks for permission he is not permitted, and if he intercedes, his intercession is not accepted.

Again, this is deliberately distorted. This is not talking about AbulDinar, but about his opposite.

At the time, wealthy people were the only people with authortity, and they were the ones to be permitted to 'intercede', to judge or to help solve a problem between tribes or families, while a poor person's interception would not be permitted.

Here the prophet makes it clear that it is not a person's wealth which guarantees them a place in paradise, though it may guarantee them a place in this world.


7.

The Verse from the Koran.
Koran 9:97

“The Arabs of the desert are the worst in unbelief and hypocrisy, and most fitted to be in ignorance of the command which Allah hath sent down to His Messenger.”

This verse is true, as all the Koran is, however the translation is not very accurate.

Here is another translation for comparison:

The Arabs of the desert are the greatest in disbelief and argument (nifak) and more likely to be in ignorance of the limits.

To give this a racist slant, it is necessary to see this as reflecting on the intelligence of a certain race.

Even if we assume for a moment that this is in fact talking about a race, that race would be Arab, who supposedly all see themselves as 'the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds'. Again, your references are conflicting.

However, the verse is not even talking about a race. It is talking about a social group of people who exist in a specific environment.

The verse says that the people who live in the desert are more likely to be in ignorance of the teachings of Islam than people who live in the madinas.

Do you hold the following statement to be racist?

People who live in rural areas are more likely to be uneducated than the people who live in urban areas.

Unless you do, to see the above verse as 'racist' is ridiculous.

Especially when do not take it out of context and read the next verses, which go on to say:

And of the bedoiuns are those who take what they spend (in Allah's cause) as a fine and watch for evil to strike you. Evil shall strike them, and Allah hears all and knows all.

And of the bedoiuns are those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and look upon what they spend in Allah's cause as nearness to God, and receiving the prophet's blessings. No, (indeed) it is a nearness, Allah will enter them into his mercy.

This shows that although the bedoiuns are more likely to be in ignorance of the limits, for obvious social (not racist) reasons, there are those among them who are disbelieve, and there are those who believe.