Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest-Growing Faith

by Robert Spencer

  Maybe. But this scenario has serious problems.

  In the first place, why should the development of Islam mirror that of Christianity? Not only George Bush and Tony Blair, but Westerners in general misunderstand Islam on a massive scale because they persist, probably without realizing it, in viewing the religion of Muhammad in light of Christian categories and experience. The most prominent indication of this is the constant reference to Islamic "fundamentalists." This has become the common label for those who take the above-quoted verses of the Qur'an literally enough to strap bombs to themselves and become human missiles.

  The word, of course, has been imported from Christianity. In Christian parlance, a fundamentalist is someone who adheres to the core beliefs-the fundamentals-of the faith. A fundamentalist Christian holds to the traditional, literal understanding of elements of the faith such as the Virgin Birth and bodily Resurrection of Christ. Liberal Christians read the life of Jesus as metaphor and fable; fundamentalists read it as historical fact.

  But if a Christian fundamentalist is someone who strictly maintains the traditional core teachings of the faith, by analogy a Muslim fundamentalist would simply be someone who upholds the Five Pillars of Islam. Inside and outside the umma (the worldwide community of Muslim believers), Muslims agree that these Pillars are the heart of their religion: the confession of faith, daily prayer, almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. In this sense, virtually all Muslims are fundamentalists.

  To isolate Islamic terrorists as "Muslim fundamentalists" is absurd, then, because it suggests something that those who use the term would deny: that violence and terror are fundamentals of Islam.

  The Living Qur'an?

  Muslims everywhere almost all view the Qur'an as literally and eternally true, including its exhortations to violence. There are liberal Muslims who read the Qur'an's exhortations to battle as a call to wage spiritual warfare against sin and error, but they are difficult to find. Liberalism and modernism have not invaded the House of Islam in any significant measure or had any general influence on the way the average Muslim reads the Qur'an. At this time, the novelist Salman Rushdie is one of the very few Muslims in the world who are trying to bring Islam into the modern world, calling his coreligionists to see the tenets of their faith as metaphor and parable rather than as simple, unalloyed, all-encompassing fact.

  In addition to allegorical interpretation, the idea of progressive revelation is generally absent from Islam, whereas in Judaism and Christianity, it is commonly accepted. The Old Testament has numerous passages that no Jew or Christian would take as marching orders for today. No Christian or Jew is likely to sell his daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7), for example, or put to death someone who works on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2). But for the Muslim, all of the Qur'an's commands are valid for all time.

  This fact is often overlooked when religionists of all persuasions start waging scripture wars. For instance, a Muslim spokesman who expressed outrage at Pat Robertson's remarks about Islam, Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, asserted: "I could come here ... with quotes from the Talmud and quotes from the Bible and try to paint Judaism and Christianity, or any other religion, in this negative light too. I think that is ... a really despicable and sick game."43 It is true that Ibish wouldn't have difficulty finding violent statements in the Bible, such as to cause modern Jews and Christians to cringe. There is Psalm 137:9, speaking to the Babylonians who have subjugated the Israelites: "Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks!" Another Psalm vows: "Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the LORD" (Psalm Io1:8). After David performs heroically in battle, the Israelite women sing, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands" (I Samuel 18:7). The Book of Joshua is full of bloody, merciless battles waged at the command of God.

  Even so, these are not really equivalents of the aggressive language in the Qur'an, for no modern Jew or Christian reads the stories and celebrations of Hebrew warriors as a guide for behavior in the present. Jews and Christians do consider the violent passages in the Psalms, the Book of Joshua and elsewhere to be part of God's Word, but not in the same sense that Muslims regard all of the Qur'an. Rather than a strict moral code for all time, these passages are a portion of the historical record of how God brought his people out of sin and gradually into the light. Virtually all Christians, including fundamentalists, would agree that they pertained to a particular time and set of circumstances, and reflected an incomplete stage of the divine revelation, which would eventually be fulfilled-and superseded-by the New Testament gospel of love and reconciliation. Jews as well as Christians have developed highly refined methods of allegorical interpretation through which they view bellicose scriptural passages.

  Islam, by contrast, generally rejects any idea of a historical progression in revelation, and allows little latitude for allegorical interpretation of the martial verses in the Qur'an. This is partly because Muslim beliefs about the authorship of the Qur'an differ from Christian beliefs about how the Bible came to be. As Newsweek religion expert Kenneth Woodward explains,

  Like the Bible, the Qur'an asserts its own divine authority. But whereas Jews and Christians regard the biblical text as the words of divinely inspired human authors, Muslims regard the Qur'an, which means "The Recitation," as the eternal words of Allah himself. Thus, Muhammad is the conduit for God's words, not their composer.44

  The Muslim scholar Ahmad Von Denffer summarizes the Muslim understanding of the holy book thus: "The Qur'an can be defined as follows: The speech of Allah, sent down upon the last Prophet Muhammad, through the Angel Gabriel, in its precise meaning and precise wording ... inimitable and unique, protected by God from corruption."45 Everywhere around the globe, all sects of Islam teach that the Qur'an is the perfect word of Allah, valid for all peoples and all times.

  In fact, Muslim tradition goes even further, holding that the Qur'an is eternal and uncreated, and that it resided in heaven with Allah before he began to reveal it to Muhammad. Because it is considered to be Allah's actual speech in its "precise wording," traditionally minded Muslims even frown on translations of the Qur'an (although such translations nonetheless proliferate). Allah revealed the Qur'an in Arabic, and its Arabic language is part of its perfection: "We have revealed the Koran in the Arabic tongue so that you may grow in understanding" (Sura 12:2).

  A book with this kind of pedigree and claim to literal perfection tends to resist any interpretation that diminishes the literal truthfulness of any of its statements.46 Only a minority of Muslims favor such interpretations: "Modern deconstructionists, mainly European scholars, have boldly stated that the Qur'an should be treated as a historical document subject to modern notions of critical analysis as has the Bible in recent times."47 It doesn't take much analytical acumen, however, to figure out that the opinions of "deconstructionists" and "European scholars" carry little weight for most Muslims. After all, that is the kind of thinking that got Suliman Bashear thrown out of a second-story window.

  Canadian Muslim journalist Irshad Manji draws the logical conclusion of mainstream Muslim reasoning:

  It's time to question publicly whether Islam lends itself to fundamentalism [i.e., a literal reading of Qur'anic exhortations to violence] more easily than other world religions. Here's my case for why it might: We Muslims are routinely told that The Holy Koran is a book about which there is no doubt. By building upon the Torah and the Christian Bible, the Koran perfects their teachings. No need to interpret the final draft of G-d's manifesto. It is what it is, and that is that .18

  For orthodox Muslims, everything in the Qur'an is valid unless it has been abrogated by another part of the same book. There are such passages, but the violent ones I have quoted are not among them.

  There have been attempts throughout the history of Islam to temper the aggressive understanding of the Qur'an, often with hermeneutical ideas imported f
rom Christianity and from classical Greek philosophy. The most notable of these efforts was the Mu'tazilite movement, which originated in the theological and philosophical ideas of Wasil bin cAta (699-749) and swept furiously through the House of Islam, becoming the state religion of the Abbasid Caliphate in the ninth century.49

  Having imbibed pagan Greek philosophy, the Mu'tazilites (a name that means "Separated Ones" or "Those Who Have Withdrawn") held that reason must play a role in the Muslim's encounter with God. Accordingly, Mu'tazilite divines were uncomfortable with literal readings of the Qur'an's anthropomorphisms. They even went so far as to declare that the book itself was created, a notion contrary to the orthodox Muslim idea of a miraculous book that resided eternally with Allah in heaven.

  The debate over whether the sacred book was created or existed eternally had great practical implications. It allowed the Mu'tazilites to develop a method of Qur'anic interpretation that diverged further from the literal meaning of the text than most Muslim divines dared to venture. For instance, in reading Sura 14:27, "He leads the wrongdoers astray," Mu'tazilite theologians contradicted the literal meaning with its predestinarian implications, maintaining that it was not reasonable that Allah would lead people astray and condemn them to hell.

  Notwithstanding their respect for reason, however, the Mu'tazilites were no prototypes of modern, Western rationalists, and in power they were just as absolutist as many other Muslim regimes. Under the Abbasid caliph Abdullah al-Mamun (813-833) and his successors Muhammad al- Mu'tasim (833-842) and Harun al-Watiq (842-847), they initiated a fullfledged inquisition, the Militia. During this fifteen-year period, the qadis, or judges of religious questions, throughout the caliphate were forced to swear that the Qur'an was created, not eternal. This oath was fiercely resisted by the common folk, who had never warmed to the intellectualism and apparent skepticism of Mu'tazilism, and by some scholars as well. No less a personage than Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal (780-855), one of Sunni Islam's "Four Great Imams," was imprisoned and scourged for refusing to affirm the Mu'tazilite doctrine.

  Harun al-Watiq's successor, Ja'far al-Mutawakkil (847-861), ended the Mihna and turned the tables on the Mu'tazilites: the assertion that the Qur'an was created became a crime punishable by death. Although the Shi'ite Muslims of Iran adopted certain Mu'tazilite perspectives, with the end of the Mihna the movement largely lost its dynamism within the House of Islam in general. Over time, the less rationalistic views of anti-Mu'tazilites such as Ibn Hanbal and other revered Muslim scholars became entrenched within Sunni orthodoxy. Their chief concern was to uphold the literal and absolute truth of the words of the Qur'an.

  The marginalizing and discrediting of the Mu'tazilites has cast a long shadow over "moderate Islam," for it stands as a historical precedent that literalists can use to dismiss any interpretation of the Qur'an that doesn't take all its words at face value. If today's moderates stray too far from a literal reading of the sacred book (including its ferocity toward unbelievers), they risk being accused of trying to revive a longdiscredited way of thinking.

  Some Muslims have tried in other ways to soften the harshness of certain Qur'anic verses. The Turkish Muslim apologist Adnan Oktar, who writes under the biblically inspired nom de plume Harun Yahya (Aaron John), doesn't take the bellicose pronouncements as a direct call to arms for today. Working within the bounds of a literal reading of the Qur'an, he has tried to construct an Islamic answer to violence and terrorism on the basis of this verse:

  That was why We laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as a punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be looked upon as though he had killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as though he had saved all mankind. (Sura 5:32)

  Harun Yahya concludes, "This being the case, it is obvious what great sins are the murders, massacres and attacks, popularly known as `suicide attacks,' committed by terrorists."50

  A Religious Duty to Wage War

  Alas, it isn't obvious to all. For one thing, Harun Yahya does not address the martial verses quoted earlier. (After all, what can he say about them?) And the verse he does quote includes a large exception: "punishment for murder or other villainy [or, corruption] in the land." Bin Laden and his ilk charge America with these very crimes. Denouncing the infidel presence in the Islamic holy land and declaring that America has sown corruption in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and elsewhere, they lay claim to Qur'anic carte blanche for their terrorist acts.

  There is no Muslim version of "love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44) or "if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:39). Instead, there is something more like the ethos that Jesus exhorts his followers to rise above, that of "love your neighbor and hate your enemy" (Matthew 5:43). The Qur'an instructs:

  God does not forbid you to be kind and equitable to those who have neither made war on your religion nor driven you from your homes. But He forbids you to make friends with those who have fought against you on account of your religion and driven you from your homes or abetted others so to do. Those that make friends with them are wrongdoers. (Sura 60:9)

  From the militant Muslim perspective, Americans have done just what the Qur'an specifies as ruling out the need for kindness. The Americans, bin Laden might say, have indeed made war on our religion and driven us from our homes. Therefore, as he has declared, he owes us no mercy, but actually has a religious duty to make war against us. Indeed, he would be a wrongdoer if he overlooked our alleged offenses.

  And so, rather than join Harun Yahya in condemning suicide attacks, some Muslims celebrate them. In June 2001, Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi exclaimed on Palestine's official TV station, "Blessings on whoever has put a belt of explosives on his body and plunged into the midst of the Jews."" On its website, al-Muhajiroun posted this perspective:

  The name "suicide-operations" used by some is inaccurate, and in fact this name was chosen by the Jews to discourage people from such endeavours. How great is the difference between one who commits suicide ... because of his unhappiness, lack of patience and [the] weakness or absence of [an imam-] and [who] has been threatened with Hell-Fire-and between the self-sacrificer who embarks on the operation out of strength of faith and conviction, and to bring victory to Islam, by sacrificing his life for the upliftment [sic] of Allah's word! 12

  According to the Qur'an, the "self-sacrificer" has much to look forward to: "He that leaves his dwelling to fight for God and His apostle and is then overtaken by death, shall be rewarded by God" (Sura 4:100). These rewards are well known: a heaven filled with the delights of the flesh, vividly described in many verses of the Qur'an: dark-eyed maidens, nonintoxicating liquors and so forth. The blessed

  shall recline on jeweled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the darkeyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds. (Sura 56:15-24)

  That these promises are real incentives for many Muslims today was underscored by a jarring incident witnessed by Jack Kelley of USA Today. At a school run by Hamas, he saw a youth of eleven years give a report to his class:

  "I will make my body a bomb," said the boy, "that will blast the flesh of Zionists, the sons of pigs and monkeys.... I will tear their bodies into little pieces and will cause them more pain than they will ever know." His classmates shouted in response, "Allah Akhbar," [God is great] and his teacher shouted, "May the virgins give you pleasure."53

  The Parameters of Islamic Belief

  Are these Muslims not deriving their conclusions straight from the Qur'an? Thus how can Harun Yahya insist that "Islam is by no means the source of this violence and that violence has no place in Islam 11?54

  In fact, it isn't all that easy to say that something-even terrorismhas no plac
e in Islam, unless it's explicitly condemned in the Qur'an. The American Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh (no authority, to be sure, but certainly a zealous student, or talib, of the religion) put it this way to an Internet newsgroup in 1997: "If a person or a group of people believe in the unity of Allah and the day of judgement, believe in the prophethood of Muhammad, believe in the angels, if they keep up Salat [Friday prayers], pay Zakat [alms], fast in Ramadan, and perform the Hajj [the pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca] if they're able to, they are Muslims." That's it, according to this budding Taliban fighter: "They can believe things completely contradictory to the Qur'an, or the words of any of the prophets and still be Muslim. They can commit any imaginable sin and still be Muslim, so long as they still fulfill the aforementioned items."55

  This is overstated, but it expresses the common view in Islam that the elements enumerated by Lindh-the Five Pillars-are indeed the essentials. If someone observes those, it would be very difficult to read him out of Islam. "No group may be excluded from the community unless it itself formally renounces Islam," says a Muslim writing team, Mohamed Azad and Bibi Amina, coauthors of the incomparably titled Islam Will Conquer All Other Religions andAmerican Power Will Dimin- ish.56 No group-not even a terrorist group. An important manual of Islamic law declares that to classify a Muslim as an unbeliever is itself an act of apostasy.57 Although this law is often honored in the breach, it does indicate that unless they deny that Allah is God and Muhammad is his prophet, Muslim terrorists cannot easily be read out of Islam by anyone-not even by the President of the United States.