If you ask me to find the source of this Hadith, the answer is simple – they have pushed it under the carpet and buried. I was told it is in the Tafsir of a verse, if you find it, let me know.
Yes, not everything that was narrated and shared…and believed for 1350 years is still available for us. What apologist can twist and come up with ever creative way to explain it, they kept it. Anything in the Quran, they simply cannot change it. But the Hadith (narrations of people who spoke to Muhammad and passed on these stories) there has always been some questions on what to believe and what not to believe.
I have seen this and many variations of this meme shared in Arab Atheist social media. The consensus is that the narrative behind it is only found in Arabic printed hadith pre-1960’s editions. After that, most publishers removed it as questionable and religious authorities stopped talking about it. Why? What happened in the 1960’s that changed everything?
One important thing happened….first man landed on the moon and took a picture of Earth!! Arabs and Islamic countries had an Earthquake that shocked the population…the concept of a flat Earth had finally been set and no…there is nothing mysterious about how the Earth floats. Dig back and see how people from Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq lived. But the religious elite were not ready to give up…Islamic teachings where adapted to the new reality of no more slavery (now they pretend they always were against it, even though we did it for 1350 years) and Quran said the Earth is round – even though we have 11 verses that says the Earth is flat like carpet, sheet, bed and cover! There is a good reason Islamic scholars don’t want you to dig up the past and old books…you will realise then that Islam is full of fairytale, scientific errors, and immoral commands.