"May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again, Amen." — "praise" from the author of revivingislam.com

The Politically Incorrect Guide to ISLAM (AND THE CRUSADES)

You think you know about Islam.

But did you know:

Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states
American Muslim groups are engaged in a huge cover-up of Islamic doctrine and history
Today's jihad terrorists have the same motives and goals as the Muslims who fought the Crusaders
The Crusades were defensive conflicts
Muslim persecution of Christians has continued for 13 centuries — and still goes on

ROBERT SPENCER

Praise for The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

"With a provocative and Irreverent style, Robert Spencer assails, with much erudition, the taboos imposed by the Politically Correct League. A daring tonic that teaches fundamental truths," — Bat Ye'or, author, Eurabia end The Decline of Western Christianity Under Islam

"The jihad that the Western world faces today is identical in its motivations and goals to that which Europe managed to stave off almost a thousand years ago, thanks in large part to the Crusades of which the West is now ashamed. In this book, Robert Spencer tells the truth that few in the U.S. or Europe wish to face. Today's jihad, as Spencer illustrates here, is proceeding on two fronts: one of violence and terror, and another of cultural shaming and the rewriting of history. Here is a devastating riposte to that revisionism — and a clarion call for the defense of the West, before it is too late." — Ibn Warraq, author, Why Am Not A Muslim, and editor of Leaving Islam and What the Koran Really Says

"The value of Spencer's book is twofold. He reminds us of the consequences of our failure to come to grips with the message and implications of Islam. And he warns against the spirit of masochistic self-loathing that permeates the Western elite class. In a sane world, Spencer's recommendations — notably that the upholders of sharia should be treated as political radicals and subjected to appropriate supervision — would not be deemed "politically incorrect" but eminently sensible. — Serge Trifkovic, author, Sword of the Prophet

"With the 2005 Kingdom of Heaven movie trying to visualize the actual scenes that occurred between European Crusaders and Arab Muslim armies in the Middle Ages, the whole issue of the clash of civilizations came back to haunt politicians. Traditional historians used to relate facts. Politicized historians, such as Amine Maalouf, insisted that Western Crusaders were evil, and their enemies were righteous. Robert Spencer, an expert on historical jihad, responds with a "politically incorrect" but academically sound and challenging work. Spencer displays an enormous amount of well researched material. He throws the ball hack into the camp of Arabist historians." — Dr. Walid Phares author, Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of on Ethnic Resistance

"Sweeping away the politically correct myths about a tolerant, peaceful Islam brutalized by demonic Christian Crusaders, Robert Spencer in this powerful, important book lets the facts of history speak for themselves. The truth he recovers is simple: an aggressive, violent Islamic creed for fourteen centuries has waged war against the infidel West a scourge of conquest and persecution that roused the Crusaders to restore the Near East to the Christian and Hellenic culture devastated by the armies of Islam. Spencer's rousing, straight-talking book is a much needed antidote to the poisonous propaganda that compromises our current battle against jihadist murder." — Bruce S. Thornton, author, Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

Introduction

The Crusades may be causing more devastation today than they ever did in the three centuries when most of them were fought. Not in terms of lives lost and property destroyed — today's is a more subtle destruction. The Crusades have become a cardinal sin not only of the Catholic Church but also of the Western world in general. They are Exhibit A for the case that the current strife between the Muslim world and Western, post-Christian civilization is ultimately the responsibility of the West, which has provoked, exploited, and brutalized Muslims ever since the first Frankish warriors entered Jerusalem and — well, let Bill Clinton tell it:

Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with three hundred Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple mound. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple mound, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees, I can tell you that that story is still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.[1] (Emphasis added)

In this analysis Clinton curiously echoed Osama bin Laden himself, some of whose own communiques spoke of his organization not as "al Qaeda" but of a "World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," and called in a fatwa for "jihad against Jews and Crusaders"[2].

Such usage is quite widespread. Shortly before the beginning of the Iraqi war that toppled Saddam Hussein, on November 8, 2002, Sheikh Bakr Abed Al-Razzaq Al-Samaraai preached in Baghdad's Mother of All Battles mosque about "this difficult hour in which the Islamic nation [is] experiencing, an hour in which it faces the challenge of [forces] of disbelief of infidels, Jews, crusaders, Americans and Britons"[3].

Similarly, when Islamic jihadists bombed the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in December 2004, they explained that the attack was part of a larger plan to strike back at "Crusaders:" "This operation comes as part of several operations that are organized and planned by al Qaeda as part of the battle against the crusaders and the Jews, as well as part of the plan to force the unbelievers to leave the Arabian Peninsula." They said that jihad warriors "managed to enter one of the crusaders' big castles in the Arabian Peninsula and managed to enter the American consulate in Jeddah, in which they control and run the country"[4].

"One of the crusaders' big castles in the Arabian Peninsula?" Why, would Islamic jihad terrorists have such a fixation with thousand-year old castles? Could Clinton be right that they see the Crusades as the time that their troubles with the West began, and present-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as a revival of the Crusader ethos?

In a sense, yes. The more one understands the Crusades — why they were fought, and from what forces within Christianity and Islam they sprang — the more one will understand the present conflict. The Crusades, in ways that Bill Clinton and those who bombed the consulate in Jiddah only dimly fathom, hold the keys to understanding the present world situation in numerous ways.

This book explains why, with its first half devoted to Islam and second half to the Crusades. It will, in the process, clear away some of the fog of misinformation that surrounds Islam and the Crusades today. That fog is thicker than ever. One of the people most responsible for it, Western apologist for Islam Karen Armstrong, even blames Westerners' misperceptions of Islam on the Crusades:

Ever since the Crusades, the people of Western Christendom developed a stereotypical and distorted vision of Islam, which they regarded as the enemy of decent civilization.... It was, for example, during the Crusades, when it was Christians who had instigated a series of brutal holy wars against the Muslim world, that Islam was described by the learned scholar-monks of Europe as an inherently violent and intolerant faith, which had only been able to establish itself by the sword. The myth of the supposed fanatical intolerance of Islam has become one of the received ideas of the West.[5]

Armstrong is right in a sense (no human being, it seems, can be wrong all the time) when it comes to talk of Islam, you can't believe everything you hear — especially after the September 11 attacks. Misinformation and half-truths about what Islam teaches and what Muslims in the United States believe have filled the airwaves and have even influenced public policy.

Much of this misapprehension comes in analyses of the "root causes" of the jihad terrorism that took so many lives on September 11 and has continued to threaten the peace and stability of non-Muslims around the world. It has become fashionable among certain media people and academics to place much, if not all, of the blame for what happened on September 11, 2001, not on Islam and Muslims, but on the United States and other Western countries. A pattern of mistreatment of the Islamic world by the West, say learned professors and self-important commentators, is continuing. It began centuries ago, they say — at the time of the Crusades.

But in fact, the seeds of today's conflict were planted much earlier than the First Crusade. In order to understand the Crusades properly, and the peculiar resonance they have in today's global conflict with Islamic jihad terrorists, we must begin with a survey of the prophet of Arabia and the religion he founded. For the Crusades, as we shall see, were fundamentally a reaction to events that were set in motion over 450 years before the battles began.

I intend this book to be neither a general introduction to the Islamic religion, nor a comprehensive historical survey of the Crusades. Rather, it is an examination of certain highly tendentious assertions about both Islam and the Crusades that have entered the popular discourse. This book is an attempt to move the public discourse about both subjects a bit closer to the truth.

ISLAM

MUHAMMAD: PROPHET OF WAR

Why does the life of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, matter today? Fourteen centuries have passed since he was born. Millions of Muslims have lived and died since then, and many leaders have risen to lead the faithful, including descendents of the Prophet himself. Surely Islam, like other religions, has changed over 1,400 years.

Here's why the life of Muhammad matters: Contrary to what many secularists would have us believe, religions are not entirely determined (or distorted) by the faithful over time. The lives and words of the founders remain central, no matter how long ago they lived. The idea that believers shape religion is derived, instead, from the fashionable 1960s philosophy of deconstructionism, which teaches that written words have no meaning other than that given to them by the reader. Equally important, it follows that if the reader alone finds meaning, there can be no truth and certainly no religious truth); one person's meaning is equal to another's. Ultimately, according to deconstructionism, we all create our own set of "truths," none better or worse than any other.

Yet for the religious man or woman on the streets of Chicago, Rome, Jerusalem, Damascus, Calcutta, and Bangkok, the words of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha mean something far greater than any individual's reading of them. And even to the less-than-devout reader, the words of these great religious teachers are clearly not equal in their meaning.

That's why I have placed a "Muhammad vs. Jesus" sidebar in every chapter to emphasize the fallacy of those who claim that Islam and Christianity — and all other religious traditions, for that matter — are basically equal in their ability to inspire good or evil. It is also meant to emphasize that the West, built on Christianity, is worth defending, even if we live in a so-called post-Christian era. Furthermore, through the words of Muhammad and Jesus, we can draw a distinction between the core principles that guide the faithful Muslim and Christian. These principles are important. The followers of Muhammad read his words and imitate his actions, which leads to an expression of faith quite different from Christians. One does not have to look too far to see that life in an Islamic country is different from life in the United States or Britain. The difference begins with Muhammad. In these days when so many invoke Muhammad's words and deeds to justify actions of violence and bloodshed, it is important to become familiar with this pivotal figure.

For many in the West, Muhammad remains more mysterious than other major religious figures. Most people know, for example, that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, that Jesus died on a cross at Calvary and was raised from the dead, and maybe even that Buddha sat under a tree and received enlightenment. But less is known about Muhammad, and even that much is disputed. Hence, what follows will be taken solely from Islamic texts.

First basic fact: Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Abd al-Muttalib (570-632), the prophet of Islam, was a man of war. He taught his followers to fight for his new religion. He said that their god, Allah, had commanded them to take up arms. And Muhammad, no armchair general, fought in numerous battles. These facts are crucial to anyone who really wants to understand what caused the Crusades centuries ago or, in our own time, what has led to the rise of the global jihad movement.

In the course of these battles, Muhammad articulated numerous principles that have been followed by Muslims to this day. Therefore, it is important to record some features of Muhammad's battles, which can provide insight into today's newspaper headlines — insights that continue, sadly, to elude many analysts and experts.

Muhammad the raider

Muhammad already had experience as a warrior before he assumed the role of prophet. He had participated in two local wars between his Quraysh tribe and their neighboring rivals Banu Hawazin. But his unique role as prophet-warrior would come later. After receiving revelations Allah through the angel Gabriel in 610, he began by just preaching to his tribe the worship of One God and his own position as a prophet. But he was not well received by his Quraysh brethren in Mecca, who reacted disdainfully to his prophetic call and refused to give up their gods. Muhammad's frustration and rage became evident. When even his uncle Abu Lahab, rejected his message, Muhammad cursed him and his wife in violent language that has been preserved in the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam: "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 fiber around her neck!" (Qur'an 111:1-5).

Ultimately, Muhammad would turn from violent words to violent deeds. In 622, he finally fled his native Mecca for a nearby town, Medina where a band of tribal warriors had accepted him as a prophet and pledged loyalty to him. In Medina, these new Muslims began raiding the caravans of the Quraysh, with Muhammad personally leading many of these raids. These raids kept the nascent Muslim movement solvent and helped form Islamic theology — as in one notorious incident when a band of Muslims raided a Quraysh caravan at Nakhla, a settlement not far from Mecca. The raiders attacked the caravan during the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting was forbidden. When they returned to the Muslim camp laden with booty, Muhammad refused to share in the loot or to have anything to do with them, saying only, "I did not order you to fight in the sacred month".[1]

But then a new revelation came from Allah, explaining that the Quraysh's opposition to Muhammad was a worse transgression than the violation of the sacred month. In other words, the raid was justified. "They question thee, O Muhammad, with regard to warfare in the sacred month. Say: warfare therein is a great transgression, but to turn men from the way of Allah, and to disbelieve in Him and in the Inviolable Place of Worship, and to expel His people thence, is a greater sin with Allah; for persecution is worse than killing" (Qur'an 2:214). Whatever sin the Nakhla raiders had committed was overshadowed by the Quraysh's rejection of Muhammad.

Just Like Today: Killing non-combatants

When Osama bin Laden killed innocent non-combatants in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and later his co-religionists captured and beheaded civilian hostages in Iraq, American Muslim spokesmen blandly asserted that this targeting of innocent people was forbidden by Islam. This was debatable, since some Islamic legal authorities allow the killing of noncombatants if they are seen as aiding the enemies of Islam in war.[2] However, even if the principle were correct, it would give way to another that arose out of the Nakhla raid: "Persecution is worse than killing". And therefore, to fight against the persecution of Muslims, by any means necessary, is the highest good.

This was a momentous revelation, for it led to an Islamic principle that has had repercussions throughout the ages. Good became identified with anything that redounded to the benefit of Muslims, regardless of whether it violated moral or other laws, The moral absolutes enshrined in the Ten Commandments, and other teachings of the great religions that preceded Islam, were swept aside in favor of an overarching principle of expediency.

The Battle of Badr

Soon after Nakhla came the first major battle the Muslims fought. Muhammad heard that a large Quraysh caravan, laden with money and goods, was coming from Syria. "This is the Quraysh caravan containing their property," he told his followers. "Go out to attack it, perhaps God will give it as a prey."[3] He set out toward Mecca to lead the raid. But this time the Quraysh were ready for him, coming out to meet Muhammad's three hundred men with a force nearly a thousand strong. Muhammad seems not to have expected these numbers and cried out to Allah in anxiety. "O God, if this band perish today Thou wilt be worshipped no more."[4]

Despite their superior numbers, the Quraysh were routed. Some Muslim traditions say that Muhammad himself participated in the fighting, others that he exhorted his followers from the sidelines. In any event, it was an occasion for him to see years of frustration, resentment, and hatred toward his own people, who had rejected him, avenged. One of his followers later recalled a curse Muhammad had pronounced on the leaders of the Quraysh: "The Prophet said, 'O Allah! Destroy the chiefs of Quraysh, O Allah! Destroy Abu Jahl bin Hisham, 'Utba bin Rabi'a, Shaiba bin Rabi'a, 'Uqba bin Abi Mu'ait, 'Umaiya bin Khalaf (or Ubai bin Kalaf).'"[5]

All these men were captured or killed during the battle of Badr. One Quraysh leader named in this curse, 'Uqba, pleaded for his life, "But who will look after my children, O Muhammad?"

Another Quraysh chieftain, Abu Jahl (which means "Father of Ignorance", a name given him by Muslim chroniclers; his real name was 'Amr ibn Hisham) was beheaded. The Muslim who severed the head proudly carried his trophy to Muhammad: "I cut off his head and brought it to the apostle, saying, "This is the head of the enemy of God, Abu Jabl'".

Muhammad was delighted. "By God than Whom there is no other, is it?" he exclaimed, and gave thanks to Allah for the death of his enemy.[7]

The bodies of all those named in the curse were thrown into a pit. As an eyewitness recalled, "Later on I saw all of them killed during the battle of Badr and their bodies were thrown into a well except the body of Umaiya or Ubai, because he was a fat man, and when he was pulled, the parts of his body got separated before he was thrown into the well."[8] Then Muhammad taunted them as "people of the pit" and posed a theological question: "Have you found what God promised you is true? I have found that what my Lord promised me is true." When asked why he was speaking to dead bodies, he replied: "You cannot hear what I say better than they, but they cannot answer me."[9]

The victory at Badr was the legendary turning point for the Muslims. Muhammad even claimed that armies of angels joined with the Muslims to smite the Quraysh — and that similar help would come in the future to Muslims who remained faithful to Allah: "Allah had helped you at Badr, when ye were a contemptible little force; then fear Allah; thus may ye show your gratitude. Remember thou saidst to the Faithful: 'Is it not enough for you that Allah should help you with three thousand angels specially sent down? Yea, if ye remain firm, and act aright, even if the enemy should rush here on you in hot haste, your Lord would help you with five thousand angels making a terrific onslaught" (Qur'an 3:123–125). Another revelation from Allah emphasized that it was piety, not military might, that brought victory at Badr: "There has already been for you a Sign in the two armies that met in combat one was fighting in the cause of Allah, the other resisting Allah; these saw with their own eyes twice their number. But Allah doth support with His aid whom He pleaseth. In this is a warning for such as have eyes to see" (Qur'an 3:13). Another Qur'anic passage asserts that the Muslims were merely passive instruments at Badr: "It is not ye who slew them: it was Allah" (Qur'an 8:17). And Allah would grant such victories to pious Muslims even though they faced odds even more overwhelming than those they had at Badr: "O Prophet! Rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the unbelievers: for these are a people without understanding" (Qur'an 8:55).

Allah rewarded those he had granted victory at Badr: There was great booty — so much, in fact, that it became a bone of contention. So divisive did this become that Allah himself spoke about it in a chapter (sura) of the Qur'an devoted entirely to reflections on the battle of Badr: the eighth chapter, titled Al-Anfal, "The Spoils of War" or "Booty". Allah warns the Muslims not to consider booty won at Badr to belong to anyone but Muhammad: "They ask thee concerning things taken as spoils of war. Say; '(Such) spoils are at the disposal of Allah and the Messenger: so fear Allah, and keep straight the relations between yourselves. Obey Allah and His Messenger. if ye do believe'" (Qur'an 8:1). Ultimately Muhammad distributed the booty among the Muslims equally, keeping a fifth for himself: "And know that whatever ye take as spoils of war, lo! a fifth thereof is for Allah, and for the messenger and for the kinsman (who hath need) and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, if ye believe in Allah and that which We revealed unto Our slave on the Day of Discrimination, the day when the two armies met" (Qur'an 8:41). Allah emphasized that it was a reward for obedience to him: "Now enjoy what ye have won, as lawful and good, and keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful" (Qur'an 8:69).[10]

From being a tiny, despised community, the Muslims were now a force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon — and they began to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Muhammad's claim to be the last prophet of the One, True God appeared validated by a victory against enormous odds. With this victory, certain attitudes and assumptions were being planted in the minds of Muslims, which remain with many of them to this day. These include:

Above all, the battle of Badr was the first practical example of what came to be known as the Islamic doctrine of jihad — a doctrine that holds the key to the understanding of both the Crusades and the Conflicts of today.

Assassination and deceit

Flushed with victory, Muhammad stepped up his raiding operations. He also hardened in his attitudes toward the Jewish tribes of the region, who kept their faith and rejected Muhammad as a prophet of God. With this rejection, Muhammad's prophetic calls to Jews began to get violent, emphasizing earthly punishment. Striding into the center of the marketplace of the Banu Qaynuqa, a Jewish tribe with whom he had a truce, he announced to the crowds, "O Jews, beware lest God bring upon you the vengeance that He brought upon Quraysh and become Muslims. You know that Iam a prophet who has been sent — you will find that in your scriptures and God's covenant with you."[11] The Jews of the Banu Qaynuqa were not persuaded, frustrating the Prophet even more. He laid siege on them until they offered him unconditional surrender.

Even then Muhammad's anger was not assuaged. He found a new focus for it in a Jewish poet, K'ab bin Al-Ashraf, who, according to Muhammad's first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, "composed amatory verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women."[12] Muhammad asked his followers, "Who is willing to kill Ka'b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?"[13]

Ibn Warraq on Islam: "the theory and practice of jihad was not concocted in the Pentagon.... It was taken from the Koran, the Hadith and Islamic tradition. Western liberals, especially humanists, find it hard to believe this.... It is extraordinary the amount of people who have written about the 11th of September without once mentioning Islam. We must take seriously what the Islamists say to understand their motivation, [that] it is the divinely ordained duty of all Muslims to fight in the literal sense until manmade law has been replaced by God's law, the Sharia, and Islamic law has conquered the entire world.... For every text the liberal Muslims produce, the mullahs will use dozens of counter-examples [that are] exegetically, philosophically, historically far more legitimate."

He found a volunteer in a young Muslim named Muhammad bin Maslama: "O Allah's Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?" After the Prophet answered, "Yes", Muhammad bin Maslama asked him for permission to lie in order to deceive K'ab bin Al-Ashraf into walking into an ambush.[14] The Prophet granted him this permission, and Muhammad bin Maslama duly deceived and murdered K'ab.[15]

After the murder of K'ab, Muhammad issued a blanket command: "Kill any Jew that falls into your power." This was not a military order: The first victim was a Jewish merchant, Ibn Sunayna, who had "social and business relations" with the Muslims. The murderer, Muhayissa, was rebuked for the deed by his brother Huwayissa, who was not yet a Muslim. Muhayissa was unrepentant. He told his brother, "Had the one who ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you I would have cut yout head off."

Huwayissa was impressed: "By God, a religion which can bring you to this is marvelous!" He became a Muslim.[16] The world is still witnessing such marvels to this day.

Revenge and pretexts

After their humiliation at Badr, the Quraysh were anxious for revenge. They assembled three thousand troops against one thousand Muslims at Uhud. Mohammad wore coats of mail and, brandishing a sword, led the Muslims into battle. But this time they were routed. The Prophet himself had his face bloodied and a tooth knocked out; rumors even flew around the battlefield that he had been killed. When he was able to find water to wash the blood off his face, Muhammad vowed revenge: "The wrath of God is fierce against him who bloodied the face of His prophet."[17] When Abu Sufyan, the Quraysh leader, taunted the Muslims, Muhammad was adamant, and emphasized the traditional sharp Islamic distinction between believers and unbelievers. He told his lieutenant 'Umar to respond: "God is most high and most glorious. We are not equal. Our dead are in paradise; your dead in hell."[18]

Just Like Today: Pretexts

Another pattern was set at Uhud that played out across the centuries: Muslims would see any aggression as a pretext for revenge, regardless of whether they provoked it. With a canny understanding of how to sway public opinion, jihadists and their PC allies on the American Left today use current events as pretexts to justify what they are doing: Time and again they portray themselves as merely reacting to grievous provocations from the enemies of Islam. By this they gain recruits and sway popular opinion.

Conventional wisdom among a surprisingly broad political spectrum today holds that the global jihad movement is a response to some provocation or other: the invasion of Iraq, the establishment of Israel, the toppling of Iran's Mossadegh — or a more generalized offense such as "American neocolonialism" or "the lust for oil". Those who are particularly forgetful of history blame it on newly minted epiphenomena such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, which cast a shadow over America's presence in Iraq in 2004. But the jihadists were fighting long before Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Israel, or American independence. Indeed, they have been fighting and imitating their warrior Prophet ever since the seventh century, casting their actions as responses to the enormities of their enemies ever since Muhammad discovered his uncle's mutilated body.

Muhammad vowed revenge again when he found the body of his uncle Hamza. Hamza had been killed at Uhud and his body horribly mutilated by a woman, Hind bint 'Utba, who cut off Hamza's nose and ears and ate a part of his liver. She did this in revenge for the killing of her father, brother, uncle, and eldest son at Badr. The Prophet was not in the least moved by the fact that she had done these terrible deeds in revenge: "If God gives me victory over Quraysh in the future," he exclaimed, "I will mutilate thirty of their men." Touched by his grief and anger, his followers made a similar vow: "By God, if God gives us victory over them in the future we will mutilate them as no Arab has ever mutilated anyone."[19]

In victory and defeat, more Islam

Defeat at Uhud, meanwhile, did nothing to shake Muslims' faith or dull its fervor. Allah told them they would have gained another victory if they had not disobeyed him: "Allah verily made good His promise unto you when ye routed them by His leave, until (the moment] when your courage failed you, and ye disagreed about the order and ye disobeyed, after He had shown you that for which ye long" (Qur'an 3:152).

Here again a pattern was set: When things go wrong for the Muslims, it is punishment for not being faithful to Islam. In 1948, Sayyid Qutb, the great theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the distinction of being the first modern Islamic terrorist group, declared of the Islamic world: "We only have to look in order to see that our social situation is as bad as it can be." Yet "we continually cast aside all our own spiritual heritage, all our intellectual endowment, and all the solutions which might well be revealed by a glance at these things: we cast aside our own fundamental principles and doctrines, and we bring in those of democracy, or socialism, or communism."[20] In other words, Islam alone guarantees success, and to abandon it brings failure.

The theological connection between victory and obedience and defeat and disobedience was reinforced after the Muslim victory at the Battle of the Trench in 627. Muhammad again received a revelation that attributed the victory to Allah's supernatural intervention: "O ye who believe! Remember Allah's favor unto you when there came against you hosts, and We sent against them a great wind and hosts ye could not see" (Qur'an 33:9).

PC Myth: We can negotiate with these people

Yet another key Islamic principle was formulated by events surrounding the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. In 628, Muhammad had a vision in which be performed a pilgrimage to Mecca — a pagan custom that he wanted to make part of Islam, but had so far been unable to do because of Quraysh control of the city. He directed Muslims to prepare to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and advanced on the city with 1,500 men. The Quraysh met him outside the city, and the two sides concluded a ten-year truce (hudna), the treaty of Hudaybiyya.

Just Like Today: Tsunami calls for more Islam

After a tsunami devastated the South Pacific on December 26, 2004, Australia and the United States alone pledged more than one billion dollars in aid. Oil-soaked Arab countries — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Algeria, Bahrain, and Libya — made a combined pledge of less than one-tenth this amount. One reason for this: Islamic teachers attributed the tsunami to the sins committed by infidels and Muslims in heavily Islamic Indonesia. As one Saudi cleric said, "It happened at Christmas when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion."[21]

The Muslims agreed to return home without making the pilgrimage, and the Quraysh would allow them to make the pilgrimage the following year. Muhammad shocked his men by agreeing further to provisions that seemed highly disadvantageous to the Muslims: Those fleeing the Quraysh and seeking refuge with the Muslims would be returned to the Quraysh, while those fleeing the Muslims and seeking refuge with the Quraysh would not be returned to the Muslims. The Quraysh negotiator, Suhayl bin 'Amr even compelled Muhammad not to identify himself as "Muhammad, the apostle of God." Said Suhayl, "If I witnessed that you were God's apostle I would not have fought you. Write your own name and the name of your father." To the dismay of his companions, Muhammad did so.

Then, contrary to all appearances, he insisted that the Muslims had been victorious, producing a new revelation from Allah: "Verily We have granted thee a manifest victory" (Qur'an 48:1). He promised that his followers would reap much booty: "Allah was well pleased with the believers when they swore allegiance unto thee beneath the tree, and He knew what was in their hearts, and He sent down peace of reassurance on them, and hath rewarded them with a near victory; and much booty that they will capture. Allah is ever Mighty, Wise. Allah promiseth you much booty that ye will capture, and hath given you this in advance, and hath withheld men's hands from you, that it may be a token for the believers, and that He may guide you on a right path" (Qur'an 48:18-20),

If any of his followers were still skeptical, their fears would soon be assuaged. A woman of the Quraysh, Urnm Kulthum, joined the Muslims in Medina; her two brothers came to Muhammad, asking that she be returned, "in accordance with the agreement between him and the Quraysh at Hudaybiya."[22] Muhammad refused because Allah forbade it. He gave Muhammad a new revelation: "O ye who believe! When there come to you believing women refugees, examine and test them: Allah knows best as to their faith: if ye ascertain that they are believers, then send them not back to the unbelievers" (Qur'an 60:10).

In refusing to send Umm Kulthum back to the Quraysh, Muhammad broke the treaty. Although Muslim apologists have claimed throughout history that the Quraysh broke it first, this incident came before any treaty violations by the Quraysh. Furthermore, breaking the treaty reinforced the principle that nothing was good except what was advantageous to Islam, and nothing evil except what hindered it. Once the treaty was formally discarded, Islamic jurists enunciated the principle that, in general, truces were to he concluded for no longer than ten years and only entered into for the purpose of allowing weakened Muslim forces to gain strength.

THE QUR'AN: BOOK OF WAR

With Muhammad's prophetic career so thoroughly marked by blood and warfare, it should be no surprise that the sacred book bequeathed by the Prophet of Islam to the world, the Qur'an, would be similarly violent and intransigent. And it's true: The Qur'an is unique among the sacred writings of the world in counseling its adherents to make war against unbelievers.

The Qur'an counsels war

There are over a hundred verses in the Qur'an that exhort believers to wage jihad against unbelievers. "O Prophet! Strive bard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed" (Qur'an 9:73). "Strive hard" in Arabic is jahidi, a verbal form of the noun jihad. This striving was to be on the battlefield: "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly" (Qur'an 47:4). This is emphasized repeatedly: "O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him" (Qur'an 9:123).

This warfare was to be directed against both those who rejected Islam and those who professed to be Muslims but did not hold to the fullness of the faith: "Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate" (Qur'an 9:73). This warfare was only part of the larger spiritual conflict between Allah and Satan: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil: so fight ye against the friends of Satan" (Qur'an 4:76).

"Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful" (Qur'an 9:5). The "poor-due" in this verse is zakat, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and regulates religious tithes. Thus the verse is saying that if the "idolaters" become Muslims, leave them alone.

Jews and Christians were to be fought along with "idolaters": "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29). The Jizya was a tax inflicted upon nonbelievers.

Jihad is the highest duty of Muslims: "Do ye make the giving of drink to pilgrims, or the maintenance of the Sacred Mosque, equal to the pious service of those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and strive with might and main in the cause of Allah [jihad fi sabil Allah]? They are not comparable in the sight of Allah: and Allah guides not those who do wrong. Those who believe, and suffer exile and strive with might and main, in Allah's cause (jihad fi sabil Allah), with their goods and their persons, have the highest rank in the sight of Allah; they are the people who will achieve salvation" (Qur'an 9:19-20). In Islamic theology, Jihad fi sabil Allah refers specifically to taking up arms for Islam.

Paradise is guaranteed to those who "slay and are slain" for Allah: "Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth" (Qur'an 9:111).

One may attempt to spiritualize such verses, but there is no doubt from the historical record that Muhammad meant them literally.

PC Myth: The Qur'an teaches tolerance and peace

But wait a minute: Doesn't the Qur'an really teach tolerance and peace? Sure, there are a few bad verses here and there, but there are also a lot of verses that affirm the brotherhood of man and the equality and dignity of all people, right?

No. The closest the Qur'an comes actually to counseling tolerance or peaceful coexistence is to counsel believers to leave the unbelievers alone in their errors: "Say: O disbelievers! I worship not that which ye worship: nor worship ye that which I worship. And I shall not worship that which ye worship. Nor will ye worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion" (Qur'an 109:1-6). Of course, they are to be left alone so that Allah can deal with them: "And have patience with what they say, and leave them with noble dignity. And leave Me alone to deal with those in possession of the good things of life, who yet deny the Truth; and hear with them for a little while" (Qur'an 73:10-11).

Above all, no Muslim should force anyone to accept Islam: "Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold, that never breaks" (Qur'an 2:256).

But is this really tolerance the way that modern Westerners understand it? It might be a reasonable facsimile if that were all the Qur'an has to say about the subject. But it isn't.

PC Myth: The Qur'an teaches believers to take up arms only in self-defense

At this point, Islamic apologists might grant that the Qur'an doesn't leave relations between believers and unbelievers at the live-and-let-live stage. They may admit that it counsels believers to defend themselves, and will argue that it is somewhat akin to the Catholic Church's just-war theory.

There is support for this view in the Qur'an: "Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors." So Muslims are, in this verse at least, not to start conflicts with unbelievers. Once hostilities have begun, however, Muslims should wage them furiously: "And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you there then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

And what is to be the conclusion of this war? "And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah" (Qur'an 2:190-193). This would seem to indicate that the war must continue until the world is Islam — the "religion is for Allah" — or under the hegemony of Islamic law.

Consequently, there is a problem with the interpretation that jihad warfare can only be defensive. The South African mufti Ebrahim Desai repeated a common teaching in Islam when he answered a question at "Islam Q & A Online." The questioner asked, "I have a question about offensive jihad. Does it mean that we are to attack even those non-Muslims which don't [sic] do anything against Islam just because we have to propagate Islam?" Desai responded:

You should understand that we as Muslims firmly believe that the person who doesn't believe in Allah as he is required to, is a disbeliever who would be doomed to Hell eternally: Thus one of the primary responsibilities of the Muslim ruler is to spread Islam throughout the world, thus saving people from eternal damnation. Thus what is meant by the passage in Tafsir Uthmani [a commentary on the Qur'an] is that if a country doesn't allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying in waging Jihad against this country, so that the message of Islam can reach its inhabitants, thus saving them from the Fire of Jahannum [Hell]. If the Kuffaar [unbelievers] allow us to spread Islam peacefully, then we would not wage Jihad against them.[1]

Just Like Today: Jihadists cite Muhammad's battles to prove jihad is not just defensive

In an article titled "The True Meaning of Jihad," posted in 2003 at the website Khilafah.com, which is affiliated with the jihadist group Huzb ut-Tahrir, one Sidik Aucbur cites the example of Muhammad against those who would argue that jihad is purely defensive:

Moreover some will say that jihad was only defensive; this is incorrect. A quick study of the Life of thr Prophet (SalAllahu Alaihi Wasallam) shows us something different:

The battle of Mut'ah was instigated by the Muslims against the Romans; the Muslims were 3,000 faced against a Roman army of 200,000.
The battle of Hunayn was inevitable shortly after the Muslims had conquered Makkah.
The battle of Tabuk was also instigated to finally destroy the Romans.

We see from the ijmaa (Consensus) of Sahaba (the companions of Muhammad), that they too instigated jihad, through As-Sham, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and North Africa. Moreover, the status of Martyr in Islam is of the highest, so how can it be that jihad is reduced to anything lower than that.[2]

In other words, if a country is perceived to be hindering the spread of Islam, Muslims are obliged to wage war against it. This would, of course, be a defensive conflict, since the hindrances came first. Here then is another illustration of how elastic and essentially meaningless the concept of fighting only in self-defense has become. What constitutes a sufficient provocation? Must the defending side wait until the enemy strikes the first military blow? These questions have no clear or definitive answers in Islamic law, making it possible for anyone to portray virtually any struggle as defensive without violating the strict canons of that law. But this also renders meaningless the oft-repeated claims that jihad warfare can only be defensive.

The Qur'an's tolerant verses: "canceled"

What's more, the Qur'an's last word on jihad is not defensive, but offensive. The suras of the Qur'an are not arranged chronologically, but according to length. However, Islamic theology divides the Qur'an into "Meccan" and "Medinan" suras. The Meccan ones come from the first segment of Muhammad's career as a prophet, when he simply called the Meccans to Islam. Later, after he had fled to Medina, his positions hardened. The Medinan suras are less poetic and generally much longer than those from Mecca; they're also filled with matters of law and ritual — and exhortations to jihad warfare against unbelievers. The relatively tolerant verses quoted above and others like them generally date from the Meccan period, while those with a more violent and intolerant edge are mostly from Medina.

Why does this distinction matter? Because of the Islamic doctrine of abrogation (naskh). This is the idea that Allah can change or cancel what he tells Muslims: "None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?" (Qur'an 2:106). According to this idea, the violent verses of the ninth sura, including the Verse of the Sword (9:5), abrogate the peaceful verses, because they were revealed later in Muhammad's prophetic career: In fact, most Muslim authorities agree that the ninth sura was the very last section of the Qur'an to be revealed.

In line with this, some Islamic theologians have asserted that the Verse of the Sword abrogates no fewer than 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of the Qur'an.[3] Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a commentary on the Qur'an by the respected imams Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mahalli (1389-1459) and Jalal al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr al-Suyuti (1445-1505), asserts that the ninth sura "was sent down when security was removed by the sword."[4] Another mainstream and respected Qur'an commentator, Isma'il bin 'Amr bin Kathir al Dimashqi (1301-1372), known popularly as Ibn Kathir, declares that sura 9:5 "abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet and any idolater, every treaty, and every term.... No idolater had any more treaty or promise of safety ever since Surah Bara'ah [the ninth sura] was revealed."[5] Ibn Juzayy (d. 1340), yet another Qur'an commentator whose works are still read in the Islamic world, agrees: The Verse of the Sword's purpose is "abrogating every peace treaty in the Qur'an."[6]

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]

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 wagging 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

The 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 Allah), and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah 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 he 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 a man intimately. But all the girls who have not known a 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?

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.

Just Like Today: Using the Qur'an to justify terrorism

In a sermon broadcast an official Palestinian Authority television in 2000, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, a member of the Palestinian Authority's Fatwa Council, declared: "Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them. And he who does that is one of them, as Allah said: 'O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies, for they are allies of one another. Who from among you takes them as allies will indeed be one of them'.... Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them".

In this Abu Halabiya was quoting Qur'an 5:51 ("O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them") and 9:5 ("slay the idolaters wherever ye find them"). He applied these words to the contemporary political situation: "Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them — and those who stand by them — they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims — because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine. They created it to be the outpost of their civilization — and the vanguard of their army, and to be the sword of the West and the crusaders, hanging over the necks of the monotheists, the Muslims in these Lands."[9]

By contrast, Osama bin Laden, who is only the most visible exponent of a terror network that extends from Indonesia to Nigeria and into Western Europe and the Americas, quotes the Qur'an copiously in his communiques. In his 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," he quotes suras 3:145; 47:4-6; 2:154; 9:14; 47:19; 8:72; and of course the notorious "Verse of the Sword," sura 9:5.[10] In 2003, on the first day of the Muslim holy celebration Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, he began a sermon: "Praise be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to his servant and messenger [the Prophet Muhammad], in order to establish truth and abolish falsehood."[11]

Of course, the devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose, but Osama's use of these and other passages in his messages is consistent (as we shall see) with traditional Islamic understanding of the Qur'an. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don't interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition. The jihad passages in the Qur'an are anything hut a dead letter. In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere, a key recruiting ground for jihad terrorist groups is the Islamic school: The students learn that they must wage jihad warfare, and then these groups give them the opportunity.

ISLAM: RELIGION OF WAR

The Qur'an is clear enough about the warfare that Muslims must wage against unbelievers, but it lacks overall clarity. In its entirety, the Qur'an is a monologue: Allah is the only speaker (with a few notable exceptions), and with no particular concern for narrative continuity, he speaks with Muhammad about various events in the Prophet's life and about the earlier Muslim prophets (most notably, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus). That makes reading the Qur'an somewhat like walking in on a private conversation between two unknown people: It's confusing, disorienting, and ultimately incomprehensible.

That's where the Hadith, the traditions of Muhammad, enter. The Hadith are volumes upon volumes of stories of Muhammad in which he (and sometimes his followers) explains how and in what situations various verses of the Qur'an came to him, pronounces on disputed questions, and leads by example. In a very small number of ahadith (the plural of Hadith), Muhammad quotes words of Allah that do not appear in the Qur'an; these are known as the hadith qudsi, or holy hadith, and Muslims consider them to be just as much the revealed Word of Allah as the Qur'an itself. Other ahadith that Muslims consider authentic are second in authority only to the Qur'an itself — and often the Qur'anic text is simply incomprehensible without them.

PC Myth: Islam's war teachings are only a tiny element of the religion

Okay, even if the Qur'an does contain some verses about war, that doesn't mean Muslims agree with them, right? After all, there are a lot of Christians who don't take every aspect of Christian doctrine seriously, aren't there?

Of course; however, there is no mistaking the centrality of violent jihad in Islam. In fact, the Prophet of Islam repeatedly emphasized that there was nothing better his followers could do than engage in jihad warfare. When a Muslim asked him to name the "best deed" one could do, besides the act of becoming a Muslim, the Prophet responded, "To participate in Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah's Cause."[1] He explained that "to guard Muslims from infidels in Allah's Cause for one day is better than the world and whatever is on its surface."[2] For "a journey undertaken for jihad in the evening or morning merits a reward better than the world and all that is in it."[3]

Muhammad also warned that Muslims who did not engage in jihad would be punished: "Muhammad was firm about the necessity of jihad not only for himself personally, but for every Muslim. He warned believers that he who does not join the warlike expedition (jihad), or equip, or looks well after a warrior's family when he is away, will be smitten by Allah with a sudden calamity.'"[4]

Those who fought in jihads would enjoy a level of Paradise higher than that enjoyed by others:

It has been narrated on the authority of Abu Sa'id Khudri that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said (to him]: Abu Sa'id, whoever cheerfully accepts Allah as his Lord, Islam as his religion and Muhammad as his Apostle is necessarily entitled to enter Paradise. He (Abu Sa'id) wondered at it and said: Messenger of Allah, repeat it for me. He (the Messenger of Allah) did that and said: There is another act which elevates the position of a man in Paradise to a grade one hundred (higher), and the elevation between one grade and the other is equal to the height of the heaven from the earth. He (Abu Sa'id) said: What is that act? He replied: Jihad in the way of Allah! Jihad in the way of Allah![5]

On another occasion "a man came to Allah's Apostle and said, 'Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).' He replied, 'I do not find such a deed.'"[6]

Three choices

In one key hadith, Muhammad delineates three choices that Muslims are to offer to non-Muslims:

It has been reported from Sulaiman b. Buraid through his father that when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and to be good to the Muslims who were with him. He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war.... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to accept Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them.... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them.[7]

Just Like Today: Osama invites America to Islam

Following the example of the Prophet, Osama bin Laden called Americans to Islam in his November 2002 "letter to the American people":

What are we calling you to and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.... It is the religion of jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme.[8]

"Allah's Word and religion" may only "reign Supreme" in this view when the fullness of Islamic law is imposed and enforced in society. jihadist theorists and groups have declared their intention to unify the Islamic nations of the world under a single ruler: the caliph. Historically, the caliph was the successor of the Prophet as the spiritual and political leader of the Muslims, or at least the Sunnis. The caliphate was abolished in 1924; many contemporary jihadists date the woes of the Islamic world from this event. They want to restore the caliphate, unite the Islamic world behind it, and reimpose Islamic law (the Sharia) on Islamic countries. Apart from Saudi Arabia and Iran, Sharia is today only partially enforced, if at all. Modern Islamic warriors seek to carry Sharia to non-Muslim states by force, under the banner of jihad.

2. Fay the jizya, the poll-tax on non-Muslims, which (as we shall see) is the cornerstone of an entire system of humiliating regulations that institutionalize inferior status for non-Muslims in Islamic law.

Always remember, "peaceful coexistence as equals in a pluralistic society" isn't one of the choices.

In another hadith repeated several times in the collection of traditions that Muslims consider most reliable, Muhammad says that he has been "commanded to fight against people" until they become Muslim, and that those who resist risk forfeiting their lives and property: "The Prophet spoke clearly about his own responsibility to wage war for the religion he had founded: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform As-Salat (prayers) and give Zakat, so if they perform all that, then they save their lives and properties from me except for Islamic laws, and their reckoning (accounts) will be with (done by).'"[9]

It's not just Muhammad's opinion. It's the law.

Okay, so Muhammad was commanded to fight against people until they became Muslims or submitted to Islamic law. And the Qur'an teaches warfare. But that doesn't mean Muslims have taught all this, right? Didn't we see in chapter two that certain portions of the Bible aren't taken literally by most Jews and Christians? Isn't it the same with Islam? Aren't you just cherry-picking embarrassing verses in an attempt to make Islam look bad?

In a word: no. The unpleasant fact is that violent jihad warfare against unbelievers is not a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists, but a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. Islam is preoccupied with legal questions; indeed. Islamic law contains instructions for the minutest details of individual behavior, as well as regulations on the structuring of government and relations between states. It also contains unmistakable affirmations of the centrality of jihad warfare against unbelievers. This is true of all four principal schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence, the Maliki, Hanafi, Hanbali, and Shafi'i, to which the great majority of Muslims worldwide belong. These schools formulated laws centuries ago regarding the importance of jihad and the ways in which it was to be practiced; however, that doesn't mean that these laws are ancient history and have been superseded by more recent rulings. It is a commonly accepted principle in the Islamic world that the "gates of ijtihad," or free inquiry into the Qur'an and Islamic tradition in order to discover Allah's rulings, have been closed for centuries. In other words, Islamic teaching on principal matters has long been settled and is not to he called into question. (To he sure, there are reform-minded Muslims today who have called for a reopening of the "gates of ijtihad" so that Islam can be reinterpreted, but so far these calls have gone unheeded by the most important and influential authorities in the Islamic world.)

Therefore, barring a general reopening of the "gates of ijtihad," which seems extremely unlikely, these rulings will remain normative for mainstream Muslims. All four principal Sunni schools agree on the importance of jihad. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist, declared:

Jihad is a precept of Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may dispense others from it. We Malikis maintain that it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them."[10]

Likewise, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a Hanbali jurist who is a favorite of Osama bin Laden and other modern-day jihadists, proclaimed:

Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God's entirely and God's word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought. As for those who cannot offer resistance or cannot fight, such as women, children, monks, old people, the blind, handicapped and their likes, they shall not be killed unless they actually fight with words (e.g. by propaganda) and acts (e.g. by spying or otherwise assisting in the warfare)."[11]

It is not lawful to make war upon any people who have never before been called to the faith, without previously requiring them to embrace it, because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith, and also because the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war... If the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax, it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do."[12]

Shafi'i scholar Abu'l Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058), who echoes Muhammad's instructions to invite the unbelievers to accept Islam or fight them if they refuse, also agrees:

The mushrikun [infidels] of Dar al-Harb (the arena of battle) are of two types: First, those whom the call of Islam has reached, but they have refused it and have taken up arms. The amir of the army has the option of fighting them... in accordance with what he judges to be in the best interest of the Muslims and most harmful to the mushrikun... Second, those whom the invitation to Islam has not reached, although such persons are few nowadays since Allah has made manifest the call of his Messenger... it is forbidden to ... begin an attack before explaining the invitation to Islam to them, informing them of the miracles of the Prophet and making plain the proofs so as to encourage acceptance on their part; if they still refuse to accept after this, war is waged against them and they are treated as those whom the call has reached.[13]

Proof that none of this is merely of historical interest is another Shafi'i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the highest authority in Sunni Islam, Cairo's Al-Azhar University. The manual, 'Umdat al-Salik (available in English as Reliance of the Traveler), was declared to conform "to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community."[14] After defining the "greater jihad" as "spiritual warfare against the lower self," it devotes eleven pages to the "lesser jihad". It defines this jihad as "war against non-Muslims", noting that the word itself "is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion."[15]

'Umdat al-Salik spells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific terms: "The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians... until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax." There follows a comment by a Jordanian jurist that corresponds to Muhammad's instructions to call the unbelievers to Islam before fighting them: The caliph wages this war only "provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)... while remaining in their ancestral religions."[16] Also, if there is no caliph, Muslims must still wage jihad.[17]

These laws have been well known for centuries to those who suffered because of them. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), a Greek monk and theologian (today revered as a saint by the Orthodox Church) who was imprisoned for a time by the Turks, remarked trenchantly about Muslims: "These infamous people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having got the better of the Romans [i.e., Byzantines] by their love of God... They live by the bow, the sword, and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil ... and not only do they commit these crimes, but even — what an aberration — they believe that God approves of them."[18]

PC Myth: Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists

This, of course, is the mother of all PC myths about Islam. Yet its persistence and resilience in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, both from Islamic theology and today's newspapers, is not simply due to naive multiculturalism and cynical duplicity. Even the Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb, one of the twentieth century's foremost advocates of violent jihad, taught (without a trace of irony) that Islam is a religion of peace. However, he had a very specific kind of peace in mind: "When Islam strives for peace, its objective is not that superficial peace which requires that only that part of the earth where the followers of Islam are residing remain secure. The peace which Islam desires is that the religion (i.e. the law of the society) be purified for God, that the obedience of all people be for God alone, and that some people should not be lords over others. After the period of the Prophet — peace be on him — only the final stages of the movement of Jihad are to be followed: the initial or middle stages are not applicable."[20]

In other words, Islam is a religion of the peace that will come when everyone is Muslim or at least subject to the Islamic state. And to establish that peace, Muslims must wage war.

Just Like Today: Chechen jihadists cite Islamic law on jihad

Islamic legal treatises enjoining jihad do not gather dust on the shelf. Jihadists use them to convince recruits that they need to fulfill their responsibility as Muslims by waging war against unbelievers. One example of this came in late 2003 from the Shariah Council of the State Defense Council (Majlis al-Shura) of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. In its underground publication Jihad Today, the Sharia Council published an article titled "Jihad and its Solution Today". In it three of the four main schools of Sunni jurisprudence were cited to argue for jihad against the Russians in Chechnya:

First, what is Jihad?

Hanbali School defined it as spending power and energy in the war in the way of Allah by personal participation, property, word, etc.

Maliki School considers it a war (a battle) of a Muslim with a Kafir (an infidel) who has no treaty, to exalt the Word of Allah, or who trespassed on the territories of Muslims.

Hanbalis say that this is a war against Kafirs (the infidels), unlike an armed fight with the Muslims bordering on being rebels, or brigands or robbers for an example. (Mugni-Muhtaj, vol. 6, page 4).[20]

But what about moderate Muslims?

As I have demonstrated in the first three chapters, Islam is unique among the religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers. However, many will claim that even by marshalling this evidence, I am trying to make people think that every Muslim is a terrorist, and that your Arab or Pakistani convenience store clerk is secretly plotting the violent downfall of the United States. Some will even say that I am trying to incite violence against that convenience store clerk and other innocents.

This is, of course, arrant nonsense, but it does indicate that some clarification is needed. In the first place, the fact that warfare against unbelievers is not a twisting of Islam, but is repeatedly affirmed in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the example of Muhammad, and the rulings of every school of Islamic jurisprudence, does not make every Muslim a terrorist.

There are several principal reasons for this. One is that because the Qur'an is in difficult, classical Arabic, and must be read and recited during Muslim prayers in that language only, a surprisingly large number of those who identify themselves as Muslims have scant acquaintance with what it actually says. Although the media establishment continues to interchange the words "Muslim" and "Arab", most Muslims worldwide today are not Arabs. Even modern Arabic, much less classical Qur'anic Arabic, is foreign to them. They often memorize the Qur'an by rote without any clear idea of what it actually says. A Pakistani Muslim once proudly told me that he had memorized large sections of the Qur'an, and planned to buy a translation one day so that he could find out exactly what it was saying. Such instances are common to a degree that may surprise most non-Muslims.

Up until recent times, other cultural factors have also prevented Muslims, particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, from acting on or even knowing much about Islam's actual teachings on how to deal with unbelievers. That is changing, however: In those areas and elsewhere around the world, Muslim hardliners, though not always financed by Saudi Arabia, have made deep inroads into peaceful Muslim communities by preaching violent Islam as the "pure Islam" and calling Muslims back to the full observance of their religion."[21]

This recruitment focuses on the Qur'an and other key Islamic texts. Take, for example, the case of Sahim Alwan, an American citizen and leader of the Yemeni community in Lackawanna, New York, and onetime president of the mosque there. He has the distinction of being the first American to attend an al Qaeda training camp. Why did he go? He was convinced to do so by Kamal Derwish, an al Qaeda recruiter. Alwan explained that Derwish taught him that the Qur'an "says you have to learn how to prepare. Like, you gotta be prepared just in case you do have to go to war. If there is war, then you would have to be called for jihad. And that was the aspect of the camp itself, for going to learn how to use weapons, and stuff like that."[22]

Of course, there are some Muslims who are working to bring about change within Islam, but it is difficult to discern their motives. The prominent American Muslim spokesman Siraj Wahaj, for instance, is often presented as a moderate. In 1991, he even became the first Muslim to give an invocation to the U.S. Congress. And why not? Not long after the September 11 attacks, he said just what jittery Americans wanted to hear from Muslims: "I now feel responsible to preach, actually to go on a jihad against extremism."[23]

Whether his true thoughts are more extreme remains unclear; after all, he has also warned that the United States will fall unless it "accepts the Islamic agenda."[24] He has lamented that "if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate."[25] In the early 1990s, he sponsored talks by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in mosques in New York City and Jersey. Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and Wahaj was designated a "potential unindicted co-conspirator."[26]

The fact that someone who would like to see the Constitution replaced has led a prayers for those sworn to uphold it is just a symptom of a larger, ongoing problem: The government and media are eager to find moderate Muslims — and as their desperation has increased, their standards have declined. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find Muslim leaders who have genuinely renounced violent jihad and any intention, now or in the future, to impose Sharia on non-Muslim countries.

Nonetheless, there are enormous numbers of Muslims in the United States and around the world who want nothing to do with today's global jihad. While their theological foundation is weak, many are heroically laboring to create a viable moderate Islam that will allow Muslims to exist peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbors. They are to be commended, but make no mistake: This moderate Islam does not exist to any significant extent in the world today. Where Muslims do coexist peacefully with non-Muslims, as in central Asia and elsewhere, it is not because the teachings of jihad have been reformed or rejected; they have simply been ignored, and history teaches us that they can be remembered at any time.

ISLAM: RELIGION OF INTOLERANCE

Muslim spokesmen in the United States have worked hard to present a vision of Islam as benign, open, and accepting — worlds away from the fanatical intransigence of Osama bin Laden and his ilk. PC watchdogs, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have virtually ruled out any dissent from the idea that Islam is peaceful, benign, and tolerant to a degree that will present no problem whatsoever for Western societies. They depict Islam as akin to Judaism and Christianity and, like them, liable to be "hijacked" (through, no fault of its own) by "extremists". Most Americans today accept this as axiomatic — and many would consider rejecting it an act of "racism", despite the fact that Islam is not a race and most Muslims in the world today are not members of the ethnic group with which they are most often identified, the Arabs.

But there's just one problem with the common view: it isn't true. We've already seen how thoroughly Islam is a religion of war; it is also, profoundly, a religion of intolerance.

PC Myth: Islam is a tolerant faith

Jews and Christians, goes the PC line, lived in harmony with Muslims during the era of the great Islamic empires of the past. When jihad terrorists bombed Madrid on March 11, 2004, commentators unctuously reminded the world that when Muslims ruled Spain, it was a beacon of tolerance where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in peace and harmony. When jihadists bombed synagogues in Istanbul on November 15, 2003, the commentators intoned that the bombings were particularly heartbreaking in a city that for so long had known tranquility among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

This unquestionable dogma of Islamic tolerance has important political implications. It discourages anti-terrorism investigators in Europe and America from monitoring activity in mosques. It helps perpetuate the mistaken notion that Islamic terrorism comes from political grievances and socioeconomic imbalances. European governments with rapidly growing Muslim populations use it to reassure themselves that in old Al-Andalus, Islamic hegemony wasn't all that bad. European and American politicians and religious leaders woo the growing Islamic communities in their nations, trying to win their political support and assuming that they will assimilate easily and become peaceful, active participants in the political process. Why not? Islam is tolerant and teaches pluralism. What could be a better foundation for participation in Western democracy? The idea of a tolerant Islam has even been taken up at the United Nations. The Turkish daily Zaman reported in March 2005 that at a UN seminar, "Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understan ding," "the tolerance that Ottomans showed to people of different religions was held up as an example to be adopted even today" and was lauded as a "social model in which different religions and nations lived under the same roof for hundreds of years."[1]

It doesn't seem to have come up at the UN that when the different religions lived under the same roof, one was the master and the others lived as despised inferiors.

The dhimma

The Qur'an calls Jews and Christians "People of the Book"; Islamic law calls them dhimmis, which means "protected" or "guilty" people — the Arabic word means both. They are "protected" because, as People of the Book, they have received genuine revelations ("the Book") from Allah and thus differ in status from out-and-out pagans and idolaters like Hindus and Buddhists. (Historically, the latter two groups have been treated even worse by Islamic Conquerors, although as a practical matter their Muslim masters ultimately awarded them dhimmi status). Jews and Christians are "guilty" because they have not only rejected Muhammad as a prophet, but have also distorted the legitimate revelations they received from Allah. Because of that guilt, Islamic law dictates that Jews and Christians may live in Islamic states, but not as equals with Muslims. One Muslim jurist explained that the caliph must "make jihad against those who resist Islam after having been called to it until they submit or accept to live as a protected dhimmi-community — so that Allah's rights, may He be exalted, 'be made uppermost above all [other] religion' (Qur'an 9:33)."[2] While Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims are allowed to practice their religions, they must do so under severely restrictive conditions that remind them of their second-class status at every turn.

This lower status was first articulated by Umar ibn al-Khattab, who was caliph from 634 to 644. According to the Qur'anic commentary of Ibn Kathir, the Christians making this pact with Umar pledged:

We made a condition on ourselves that we will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration nor use any of them for the purpose of enmity against Muslims.[3]

This, of course, allowed Islamic authorities to seize churches whenever they wanted. Since testimony of Christians was discounted and disallowed in many cases, it was often enough for a Muslim simply to charge that a church was being used to foment "enmity against Muslims" and then seize it.

The Christians' agreement with the caliph Umar continues: "We will not prevent any Muslim from resting in our churches whether they come by day or night.... Those Muslims who come as guests will enjoy boarding and food for three days."[4] The agreement also mandates a number of humiliating regulations to make sure that the dhimmis "feel themselves subdued" in accordance with Qur'an 9:29. The Christians promised:

We will not... prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so. We will respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them. We will not imitate their clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names, or ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons.... We will not encrypt our stamps in Arabic, or sell liquor. We will have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist, refrain from erecting crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets. We will not sound the bells in our churches, except discreetly, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims.

Alter these and other rules are fully laid out, the agreement concludes: "These are the conditions that we set against ourselves and followers of our religion in return for safety and protection. If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion."[5]

All this is still part of the Sharia today. "The subject peoples," according to a contemporary manual of Islamic law, must "pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)" and "are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not greeted with 'as-Salamu 'alaykum' [the traditional Muslim greeting "Peace he with you"]; must keep to the side the street; may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims' buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to openly display wine or pork ... recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals or feast days; and are forbidden to build new churches."[6] If they violate these terms, the law further stipulates that they can be killed or sold into slavery at the discretion of the Muslim leader.

Dhimmis were also strictly forbidden, on pain of death, to proselytize among Muslims — a prohibition accompanied by a similar death sentence for Muslims who left Islam. Both of these, along with the other provisions of dhimmitude, remain part of Islamic law today.

These laws largely governed the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Islamic states for centuries, until Western pressure brought to bear on the weakened Ottoman Empire in the mid-nineteenth century led to the emancipation of the dhimmis. Here and there they were relaxed or ignored for various periods, but they always remained on the books, ready to be enforced again by any ruler with the will to do so.

And from the charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas, comes a keen awareness of how to manipulate the myth of Islamic tolerance: "Under the shadow of Islam, it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security. Safety and security can only prevail under the shadow of Islam, and recent and ancient history is the best witness to that effect.... Islam accords his rights to everyone who has rights and averts aggression against the rights of others."[7] Hamas doesn't exactly spell out the deprivation of rights entailed by living "under the shadow of Islam," however.

Just Like Today: Muslim leaders call for restoration of the dhimma

Sure, Jews and Christians lived as dhimmis in the old Islamic empires, but that's a relic of the past, right? No Muslims want to reinstitute dhimmi status for them today, do they?

Of course they do. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, a controversial pro-Osama Muslim leader in Great Britain, wrote in October 2002 that even though there was no caliph in the Islamic world today, that didn't mean Muslims could simply kill unbelievers. He affirmed that they must still be offered the choice to live subject to the Muslims: "We cannot simply say that because we have no Khilafah [caliphate] we can just go ahead and kill any non-Muslim, rather, we must still fulfill their Dhimmah."[8]

Likewise, Sheikh Yussef Salameh, the Palestinian Authority's undersecretary for religious endowment, in May 1999 "praised the idea that Christians should become dhimmis under Muslim rule, and such suggestions have become more common since the second intifada began in October 2000."[9]

In a recent Friday sermon at a mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi spelled out the Sharia's injunctions for dhimmis:

If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet — there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions are... that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes ... that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim... If they violate these conditions, they have no protection.[20]

Sheikh Abdullah Azzam (1941-1989), one of the founders of al Qaeda, also assumes that the Islamic state he fought to restore would collect the jizya from dhimmis. In his book Defense of the Muslim Lands he discusses various categories of jihad. In accordance width traditional Islamic theology, he explains that offensive jihad is an obligation of the Islamic community, and adds, "And the Ulama [Muslim scholars] have mentioned that this type of jihad is for maintaining the payment of Jizya."[11]

PC Myth: Historically the dhimma wasn't so bad

But in practice, it couldn't really have been like that, could it? Islamic apologist Stephen Schwartz, a convert to Islam, argues that in reality, dhimmitude wasn't all that bad and maintains that its horrors have been exaggerated: "The dhimma is now held out by a demagogic element in the West as a terrifying symbol of Islamic domination."[12] And it is certainly true that no law is ever universally enforced with uniform zeal and thoroughness. In the ninth century, Theodosius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote that the Muslims "are just and do us no wrong nor show us any violence."[13] But the legal status of the Christians and Jews was still precarious at best. Historian A. S. Tritton notes:

At one moment the dhimmi appears as a persecuted worm who is entirely negligible, and the next complaint is made of his pernicious influence on the Muslims around him. Laws were made, observed for a time, and then forgotten till something brought them to the remembrance of the authorities.... One feels that if events had been governed by logic, Islam would have swallowed up the subject religions; but they survive, vigorous though battered.[14]

Battered, indeed. The humiliations took various forms, but they were almost always present. Historian Philip Hitti notes one notorious example from the ninth century: "The Caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e. yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves,... and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle."[15]

Later, Christians in the Ottoman Empire, according to historian Steven Runciman, "were never allowed to forget that they were a subject people."[16] This extended to the appropriation of their holy places by the conquering people: When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, according to Hoca Sa'deddin, tutor of the sixteenth-century Sultans Murad III and Mehmed III, "churches which were within the city were emptied of their vile idols and cleansed from the filthy and idolatrous impurities and by the defacement of their images and the erection of Islamic prayer niches and pulpits ... many monasteries and chapels became the envy of the gardens of Paradise."[17]

In the fourteenth century, the pioneering sociologist Ibn Khaldun explained the options for Christians: "It is [for them to choose between] conversion to Islam, payment of the poll tax, or death."[18]

Taxpayer woes

Paving the special tax on non-Muslims, the jizya, wasn't as easy as filling out a 1040. The Syrian orthodox patriarch of Antioch, chronicler Michael the Syrian (1126-1199), recorded how crushing this burden was for the Christians in the time of the Caliph Marwan II (744-750):

Marwan's main concern was to amass gold and his yoke bore heavily on the people of the country. His troops inflicted many evils on the men: blows, pillages, outrages on women in their husbands' presence.[19]

Marwan was not alone. One of his successors, al-Mansur (754-775), according to Michael, "raised every kind of tax on all the people in every place. He doubled every type of tribute on Christians."[20]

Payment of the jizya often took place in a peculiar and demeaning ceremony in which the Muslim tax official hit the dhimmi on the head or back of the neck. Tritton explained, "The dhimmi has to be made to feel he is an inferior person when he pays, he is not to be treated with honor."[21] This ensured that the dhimmi felt "subdued", as commanded by Qur'an 9:29. The twelfth-century Qur'anic commentator Zamakhshari even directed that the jizya should be collected "with belittlement and humiliation."[22] The thirteenth-century Shafi'i jurist an-Nawawi directed that "the infidel who wishes to pay his poll tax must be treated with disdain by the collector: the collector remains seated and the infidel remains standing in front of him, his head bowed and his back bent. The infidel personally must place the money on the scales, while the collector holds him by the beard, and strikes him on both cheeks."[23]

According to historian Bat Ye'or, this blow as part of the payment process "survived unchanged till the dawn of the twentieth century, being ritually performed in Arab-Muslim countries, such as Yemen and Morocco, where the Koranic tax continued to be extorted from the Jews."[24]

Non-Muslims often converted to Islam to avoid this tax: This is how the vast Christian populations of North Africa and the Middle East ultimately became tiny, demoralized minorities. According to the seventeenth-century European traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, in Cyprus in 1651 "over four hundred Christians had become Muhammadans because they could not pay their kharaj [a land tax that was also levied on non-Muslims, sometimes synonymous with the jizya], which is the tribute that the Grand Seigneur levies on Christians in his states." The following year in Baghdad, when Christians "had to pay their debts or their kharaj, they were forced to sell their children to the Turks to cover it."[25]

In other instances, however, conversion to Islam was forbidden for dhimmis — it would destroy the tax base.[26]

Pushing too hard

Eventually, all this oppression provoked a reaction. Historian Apostolos E. Vacalopoulos describes an instructive set of circumstances surrounding Greece's early nineteenth century struggle for independence:

The Revolution of 1821 is no more than the last great phase of the resistance of the Greeks to Ottoman domination; it was a relentless, undeclared war, which had begun already in the first years of servitude. The brutality of an autocratic regime, which was characterized by economic spoliation, intellectual decay and cultural retrogression, was sure to provoke opposition. Restrictions of all kinds, unlawful taxation, forced labor, persecutions, violence, imprisonment, death, abductions of girls and boys and their confinement to Turkish harems, and various deeds of wantonness and lust, along with numerous less offensive excesses — all these were a constant challenge to the instinct of survival and they defied every sense of human decency. The Greeks bitterly resented all insults and humiliations, and their anguish and frustration pushed them into the arms of rebellion. There was no exaggeration in the statement made by one of the beys of Arta, when he sought to explain the ferocity of the struggle. He said: 'We have wronged the rayas (dhimmis) (i.e. our Christian subjects) and destroyed both their wealth and honor; they became desperate and took up arms. This is just the beginning and will finally lead to the destruction of our empire.' The sufferings of the Greeks under Ottoman rule were therefore the basic cause of the insurrection; a psychological incentive was provided by the very nature of the circumstances.[27]

Today the jihadist terrorists complain that the West has destroyed their wealth and honor; however, as they continue to commit acts of violence against innocent people — as they did on September 11 and in many other attacks — this complaint will ring increasingly hollow. It is even possible that these continued acts of violence will eventually give rise to a stronger and more forthright resistance to Islamization than we have seen.

PC Myth: Jews had it better in Muslim Lands than in Christian Europe

PC spokesmen assert every day that even if the dhimma really did subject Jews and Christians to ongoing and institutionalized discrimination and harassment, it certainly wasn't as bad as the way Jews were treated in Christian Europe. Historian Paul Johnson explains: "In theory,... the status of the Jewish dhimmi under Moslem rule was worse than under the Christians, since their right to practice their religion, and even their right to live might be arbitrarily removed at any time. In practice, however, the Arab warriors who conquered half the civilized world so rapidly in the seventh and eighth centuries had no wish to exterminate literate and industrious Jewish communities who provided them with reliable tax incomes and served them in innumerable ways."[28]

Certainly in terms of legal restrictions, the Muslim laws were much harsher for Jews than those of Christendom. In 1272, Pope Gregory X repeated what Pope Gregory I first affirmed in 598: Jews "ought not to suffer any disadvantage in those (privileges) which have been granted them." Gregory X also repeated earlier papal decrees forbidding forced conversions (as does Islamic law) and commanding that "no Christian shall presume to seize, imprison, wound, torture, mutilate, kill, or inflict violence on them; furthermore, no one shall presume, except by judicial action of the authorities of the country, to change the good customs in the land where they live for the purpose of taking their money or goods from them or from others."

Muhammad vs. Jesus

"And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans; to make ready for him; but the people would not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said. 'Lord. do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?' But he turned and rebuked them." Luke 9:52-55

"Narrated Ibn Abbass: 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!'[29] 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:"[30] 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 fiber 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 admissiable 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.[30]

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.

* Apostasy — leaving the faith — is a capital offense in Islamic law. Egyptian officials arrested twenty-two Christians, many of them former Muslims who had secre