The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (7 page)

Ibn Kathir makes this clear in his commentary on another “tolerance verse”: “And he [Muhammad] saith: O my Lord! Lo! these are a folk who believe not. Then bear with them, O Muhammad, and say: Peace. But they will come to know” (Qur’an 43:88–89). Ibn Kathir explains: “
Say Salam
(peace!) means, ‘do not respond to them in the same evil manner in which they address you; but try to soften their hearts and forgive them in word and deed.’” However, that is not the end of the passage. Ibn Kathir then takes up the last part: “But they will come to know. This is a warning from Allah for them. His punishment, which cannot be warded off, struck them, and His religion and His word was supreme. Subsequently Jihad and striving were prescribed until the people entered the religion of Allah in crowds, and Islam spread throughout the east and the west.”
⁷

That work is not yet complete.

All this means that warfare against unbelievers until they either become Muslim or pay the jizya—the special tax on non-Muslims in Islamic law—“with willing submission” (Qur’an 9:29) is the Qur’an’s last word on jihad. Mainstream Islamic tradition has interpreted this as Allah’s enduring marching orders to the human race: The Islamic
umma
(community) must exist in a state of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, punctuated only by temporary truces.

Some Islamic theologians today are attempting to construct alternative visions of Islam based on a different understanding of abrogation; however, such efforts have met with little interest and support among Muslims worldwide—not least because they fly in the face of interpretations that have been mainstream for centuries.

PC Myth: The Qur’an and the Bible are equally violent

All right, so the Qur’an teaches war. But so does the Bible, right? Islamic apologists and their non-Muslim allies frequently try to make a case for moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity: “Muslims have been violent? So have Christians. Muslims are waging jihad? Well, what about the Crusades? The Qur’an teaches warfare? Well, I could cherry-pick violent verses out of the Bible.” You can find that sort of thing in
all
religious traditions we’re told. None of them is more or less likely to incite its followers to violence we’re assured.

Just Like Today: The peaceful verses
still
abrogated

T
he doctrine of abrogation is not the province of long-dead muftis whose works no longer carry any weight in the Islamic world. The Saudi Sheikh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajid (b. 1962), whose lectures and Islamic rulings (
fatawa
) circulate widely throughout the Islamic world, demonstrates this in a discussion of whether Muslims should force others to accept Islam. In considering Qur’an 2:256 (“There is no compulsion in religion,”) the sheikh quotes Qur’an 9:29, 8:39, “And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism, i.e. worshipping others besides Allaah), and the religion (worship) will all be for Allaah Alone [in the whole of the world]”, and the Verse of the Sword. Of the latter, Sheikh Muhammad says simply: “This verse is known as Ayat al-Sayf (the Verse of the Sword). These and similar verses abrogate those saying that there is no compulsion to become Muslim.”
⁸

But is all this really true? Some Islamic apologists and non-Muslim purveyors of moral equivalence claim to find even in the New Testament passages that exhort believers to violence. They most often point to two passages:

“I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence” (Luke 19:26–27). Of course, the fallacy here is that these are the words of a king in a parable, not Jesus’ instructions to His followers, but such subtleties are often ignored in the modern communications age.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:34–35). If this passage were really calling for any literal violence, it would seem to be intra-familial jihad. But to invoke it as the equivalent of the Qur’an’s jihad passages, which number over a hundred, is absurd: Even the Crusaders at their most venal and grasping didn’t invoke passages like these. Also, given the completely peaceful message of Jesus, it is clear that he meant “a sword” in an allegorical and metaphorical way. To interpret this text literally is to misunderstand Jesus, who, unlike Muhammad, did not take part in battles. It fails to recognize the poetry of the Bible, which is everywhere.

Perhaps aware of how absurd such New Testament arguments are, Islamic apologists more often tend to focus on several Old Testament passages.

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you. And when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them” (Deuteronomy 7:1–2).

“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:10–17).

“Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves” (Numbers 31:17–18).

Strong stuff, right? Just as bad as “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” (Qur’an 9:5) and “Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them” (Qur’an 47:4) and all the rest, right?

Muhammad vs. Jesus

“…if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…”

Jesus (Matthew 5:39)

“Will ye not fight a folk who broke their solemn pledges, and purposed to drive out the messenger and did attack you first?”

Qur’an 9:13

Wrong. Unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, these Biblical passages simply do not apply to you. The Qur’an exhorts believers to fight unbelievers without specifying anywhere in the text that only certain unbelievers are to be fought, or only for a certain period of time, or some other distinction. Taking the texts at face value, the command to make war against unbelievers is open-ended and universal. The Old Testament, in contrast, records God’s commands to the Israelites to make war against particular people only. This is jarring to modern sensibilities, to be sure, but it does not amount to the same thing. That’s one reason why Jews and Christians haven’t formed terror groups around the world that quote these Scriptures to justify killing civilian non-combatants.