The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (12 page)

Luke 9:52–55

“Narrated Ibn Abbas: When the Verse: ‘And warn your tribe (O Muhammad) of near-kindred (and your chosen group from among them)’ [Qur’an 26:214] was revealed, Allah’s Messenger went out, and when he had ascended As-Safa mountain, he shouted, ‘
Ya Sabahah!
’
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The people said, ‘Who is that?’ Then they gathered around him, whereupon he said, ‘Do you see? If I inform you that cavalrymen are proceeding up the side of this mountain, will you believe me?’ They said, ‘We have never heard you telling a lie.’ Then he said, ‘I am a plain warner to you of a coming severe punishment.’ Abu Lahab said, ‘May you perish! You gathered us only for this reason?’ Then Abu Lahab went away. So the
Surat Al-Masad
: ‘Perish the two hands of Abu Lahab!’ was revealed.”
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Surat Al-Masad
is the Qur’an’s 111th sura: “May the hands of Abu Lahab perish! May he himself perish! Nothing shall his wealth and gains avail him. He shall be burnt in a flaming fire, and his wife, laden with faggots, shall have a rope of fibre around her neck!”

Qur’an 111:1–5

So far this is similar to the Islamic “protection” of the subject peoples. But then Gregory adds, “In addition, no one shall disturb them in any way during the celebration of their festivals, whether by day or by night, with clubs or stones or anything else.” This is clearly distinct from the Sharia prohibitions of dhimmis celebrating their religious festivals in public. Also, in view of the fact that a Jew’s testimony was not admissible against a Christian, the pope also forbids Christians to testify against Jews—while the Sharia forbids a dhimmi from testifying against a Muslim, but has no problem with a Muslim testifying against a dhimmi.
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This is not to say that there weren’t abuses. Protections of the Jews, such as those enunciated by Gregory X, were often honored in the breach. But it was no accident that by the dawn of the modern age, the great majority of Jews lived in the West, not within the confines of Islam. The reasons for this may be because in Christian lands there was the idea, however imperfect, of the equality of dignity and rights for all people—an idea that contradicted the Qur’an and Islamic theology and never took root in the Islamic world.

PC Myth: Dhimmitude is a thing of the past

But surely all this is a question of history, isn’t it? Islamic apologists have maintained that no one is calling for restoration of the dhimma today. We have already seen that that is not true. Also false is the widespread assumption that dhimmitude is not found in the Islamic world today. Since Sharia is not fully in place anywhere except Saudi Arabia (where non-Muslims are not allowed to practice their religions at all) and Iran, the laws of the dhimma are not fully in effect in the Islamic world. However, elements of them remain on the books in every Muslim country. Nowhere in the Islamic world today do non-Muslims enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims.

A few recent and representative incidents from Egypt:

Apostasy—leaving the faith—is a capital offense in Islamic law. Egyptian officials arrested twenty-two Christians, many of them former Muslims who had secretly converted to Christianity, in October 2003. They were questioned and tortured; authorities suspected that several of them were trying to bring other Muslims to Christianity.
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In December 2003, the Brethren Church of Assiout was demolished, with official permission, so that church members could build a new structure. But before they could do so, their building license was revoked—recalling the dhimmi prohibition against building new churches or repairing old ones.
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On November 25, 2003, Boulos Farid Rezek-Allah Awad, a Coptic Christian married to a Christian convert from Islam, was arrested while attempting to leave the country and held for twelve hours. When an Egyptian security police officer asked him about his wife, Rezek-Allah told him that she had already left Egypt. Perhaps mindful of the death penalty for apostates, the officer responded, “I’ll bring her back and cut her into pieces in front of you.”
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Several months later, however, Rezek-Allah was allowed to leave Egypt and settle in Canada.
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Three Books You’re Not Supposed To Read

The Dhimmi: Jews and Christian Under Islam
(1985),
The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude
(1996), and
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide
(2001), written by Bat Ye’or and published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Ye’or is the pioneering scholar of the dhimma. Each book is full of primary source documents that bring the harsh realities of dhimmitude home and give the lie to Islamic apologists and whitewashers who try to explain it away.

From Pakistan:

In November 2003, Pakistani police arrested Anwar Masih, a Christian, on a charge of blasphemy. According to the
Daily Times
of Pakistan, Masih began discussing Islam with a Muslim neighbor, Naseer. “During the discussion, the sub-inspector said, Masih got angry and blasphemed. Naseer related the discussion to two other neighbours of his mother, Attaullah and Younas Salfi. The three subsequently gathered other locals and pelted stones at Masih’s house, on which police reached the scene and taking no notice of the attack on his home, arrested Masih.”
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The following month, a church in the Pakistani village of Dajkot was attacked during a prayer service by a mob of Muslims shouting, “You infidels, stop praying and accept Islam!” According to the
Pakistan Christian Post
, the mob “entered the church and started beating the worshipers. The Muslim attackers desecrated the Holy Bible and broke every thing in the church.” However, the police “refused to lodge any report,” and at the local hospital, Muslim doctors ignored the injured Christians at the direction of an influential local Muslim.
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In May 2004, another Christian charged with blasphemy, Samuel Masih, was beaten to death with a hammer by a Muslim policeman as he lay in a hospital bed suffering from tuberculosis.
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And from Kuwait:

Hussein Qambar Ali, a Kuwaiti, converted from Islam to Christianity in the 1990s. Even though the Kuwaiti constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and says nothing about the traditional Islamic prohibition on conversion to another faith, he was arrested and tried for apostasy. During his trial, a prosecutor declared that the Sharia took precedence over Kuwait’s secular legal code: “With grief I have to say that our criminal law does not include a penalty for apostasy. The fact is that the legislature, in our humble opinion, cannot enforce a penalty for apostasy any more or less than what our Allah and his messenger have decreed. The ones who will make the decision about his apostasy are: our Book, the Sunna, the agreement of the prophets and their legislation given by Allah.”
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