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

by Robert Spencer

  This law is recorded in Reliance of the Traveller, compiled by the fourteenth-century Muslim scholar Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri from numerous ancient and respected sources. It is no mere museum piece. Based largely on the legal rulings of some of the most highly regarded imams in Islamic history, it is updated in a new edition to deal with modern questions.

  Reliance of the Traveller is a product of the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam. Comprising roughly 85 percent of all Muslims, Sunni Islam is divided into four "rites" (madhhabs), or schools of Islamic law and practice: Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali. Sunni Muslims understand their religious duties according to the guidance of the imams of their school. A Sunni may switch from one madhhab to another without jeopardizing his orthodoxy. Moreover, the four schools agree on about threefourths of their rulings.58 Noted Shafi'is in Muslim history include all the compilers of the six collections of traditions about Muhammad generally recognized as authentic: Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud and an-Nasai. These collections are second only to the Qur'an in importance for Muslims.

  Thus, not without reason does Al-Azhar, the thousand-year-old Islamic university in Egypt, state that even today Reliance of the Traveller "conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Commu- nity."59 I will return to it repeatedly for examples of Islamic law, not because it is the sole or even the principal Islamic legal manual, but because it is in many ways typical of such manuals and representative of widespread and long-established currents of thought in the umma.

  What Would Muhammad Do?

  The example of the Prophet Muhammad is a supreme paradigm for Muslims. And as we shall later see more fully, Muhammad was a man of war. He led armies. He ordered his enemies killed. He never shrank from bloodshed. Notes Kenneth Woodward, "Israeli commandos do not cite the Hebrew prophet Joshua as they go into battle, but Muslim insurgents can readily invoke the example of their Prophet, Muhammad, who was a military commander himself.""

  In one celebrated incident among the many in which Muhammad lashed out violently against his opponents, he took his revenge on two poets: Abu Afak, a man who was reputed to be over one hundred years old, and `Alma bint Marwan, a woman. These poets were not just entertainers. Their verses ridiculing Muhammad and his new religion were, in his eyes, costing him prestige and followers. When Muhammad had had enough, he cried out, "Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?" 6' One of his followers, `Umayr ibn CAdi, went to her house that night and found her sleeping next to her children. The youngest, a nursing babe, was in her arms. But that didn't stop cUmayr from murdering her, a deed for which the Prophet commended him: "You have done a great service to Allah and His Messenger, Umayr!" Abu `Afak was also killed in his sleep, in response to the Prophet's question, "Who will avenge me on this scoundrel?"62

  Muhammad's example of intolerance has been often imitated. Most students of history know that Christendom's treatment of religious minorities was far from spotless, but fewer know that the celebrated Islamic tolerance of Christianity and Judaism was not as enlightened and expansive as it may seem. Modern-day terrorists are the sons and heirs of the Islamic warriors who overwhelmed the ancient Christian lands of the Middle East and North Africa by the force of arms, and who made it so humiliating and difficult for the Christians who survived the conquests to continue to live in their homelands that many gave up the struggle: they converted to Islam just to survive.

  Christian and post-Christian citizens of Western republics, surrounded by material comforts and hearing constantly the mantra of "tolerance," may blanch to read about what life was like for their forefathers in the Faith who had the misfortune of falling under the heel of Islam. First, there was the onerous poll-tax levied on non-Muslims unless they converted to Islam .63 In Muslim Spain, innumerable Christians and Jews converted in order to escape this crushing burden; but this meant a loss of revenue to the treasury. So Muslim officials sometimes closed off this escape route from a miserable existence by forbidding Christians and Jews to convert to Islam. Too many converts would destroy the tax base. Besides having to pay prohibitive taxes, Christians in the lands of St. Augustine, St. Athanasius and St. Ignatius of Antioch were forbidden to build new churches or repair old ones, forbidden to try to prevent the conversion of a child to Islam, forbidden to hold authority over a Muslim, forbidden to ring bells or perform other acts of worship that offended Muslim sensibilities, and made to wear distinctive clothing. The spiritual children of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great became a despised, inferior caste.

  Most humiliating and outrageous of all was the Ottoman Empire's practice of devshirme: the Muslims' drawing of their most formidable warriors against Christianity from among Christians themselves." Christian fathers were forced to appear in the town squares with their sons, the strongest and brightest of whom would be seized from their parents, converted to Islam and trained up to be part of the empire's crack fighting force, the janissaries. In some areas this became an annual event.

  Granted, in the days of the devshirme, most cultures condoned slavery, and most behaved in war the way Muslims did. The difference is the presence of the Qur'an, whose injunctions validate such behavior for all time. And the oppressed and enslaved peoples had no recourse; for according to a preeminent historian of the experience of religious minorities under Islam, "all litigation between a Muslim and a dhimmi [a nonMuslim, chiefly a Jew or a Christian] was under the jurisdiction of Islamic legislation, which did not recognize the validity of the oath of a dhimmi against that of a Muslim."65 Reliance ofthe Traveller stipulates that "legal testimony is only acceptable from a witness who ... is religious"-that is, Muslim-for, it further explains, "unbelief is the vilest form of corruption, as goes without saying."66 By this a Christian's or Jew's testimony was, at the least, devalued.

  Even in our own day, Christians in Sudan, Pakistan and other Muslim lands have lost their lives for blaspheming the prophet Muhammad, on the basis of accusations which they could not defend against. For instance, Pakistan's blasphemy law is, in effect, a declaration of open season against Christians: "Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad ... shall be punished with death and shall be liable to a fine." 67 Ayub Masih, a Pakistani Christian, was arrested under this law in 1996 for allegedly making a reference to Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses-a charge he denied. He has been sentenced to death and repeatedly tortured.

  Theological Equivalence

  When confronted with this kind of evidence, many Western commentators practice a theological version of "moral equivalence," analogous to the geopolitical form which held that the Soviet Union and the United States were essentially equally free and equally oppressive. "Christians," these commentators say, "have behaved the same way, and have used the Bible to justify violence. Islam is no different: people can use it to wage war or to wage peace.

  This is a book about Islam, not about Christianity. Nevertheless, since proponents of certain policies toward the Muslim world use this argument to support their case, it bears examining.

  The main features of the case that Christian violence equals Muslim violence are well known. After Pat Robertson's statement about violence in Islam hit the headlines, the National Catholic Reporter ran a cartoon of a haloed Robertson clasping his palms together in the posture of prayer and piously asking, "Whoever heard of violence in the name of Christ?" Behind him loom the menacing figures of a Crusader brandishing a sword, the Grand Inquisitor, a Puritan holding a torch ready to burn a wretched accused witch at the stake, and a Ku Klux Klansman holding a noose and standing beside a burning cross."

  The humanist Samuel Bradley relates one notorious blot on Christian history:

  It was for this country's God that Central America was savaged. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Pulitzer-prize winning history of human societies, Jared Diamond recounts the tale of Spanish conquistador Pizarro def
eating an army of 8o,ooo belonging to Atahuallpa with his 168 soldiers. I quote from a journal written that day: "If night had not come on, few out of the more than 40,000 (sic) Indian troops would have been left alive. Six or seven thousand Indians lay dead, and many more had their arms cut off or other wounds." I now quote from the same man's journal. "Truly, it was not accomplished by our own forces, for there were so few of us. It was by the grace of God, which is great."69

  Bradley does not mention the appalling cruelty of the Inca practice of human sacrifice, which Pizarro's conquest halted. But our concern is that the conquistador justified his own brutality, according to Bradley, as being accomplished "by the grace of God."

  This is fundamentally different from terrorists' use of the Qur'an for several key reasons. As we have seen, the Bible does contain martial verses-although in this account Pizarro quoted none of them. More important, his claim that he massacred by God's grace violates clear Christian principles that are held by Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox alike. His bloodlust does not accord with the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, or with the Just War principles of his own Roman Catholic Church. As Kenneth Woodward says in a different context, "While the Crusaders may have fought with the cross on their shields, they did notcould not-cite words from Jesus to justify their slaughters .1170

  Pizarro, like the rest of mankind according to Christian doctrine, was a sinner. His sinful status is obvious with reference to the clear teachings of Jesus Christ, whom he professed to follow, and who said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). This attitude is not ruled out in the Christian understanding of a just war. It is easy to see how Pizarro and the other conquistadors violated central tenets of Christianity.

  Mutatis mutandis, did the Muslims who practiced the devshirme or turned the great Christian populations of the Middle East into despised dhimmis pervert the true principles of Islam? Is Osama bin Laden a sinner and thus no fit representative of Islam? Which teachings of Islam has he violated?

  William J. Bennett sums up the difference: "To put the issue at its starkest, there is simply no equivalent in the Koran to the New Testament's admonition to `turn the other cheek'; conversely, there is no equivalent in the New Testament to the Koranic injunction to `kill the disbelievers wherever [you] find them."7' For Christians, the New Testament supersedes the Old and corrects its violent tendencies, as in Jesus' celebrated admonition, "You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' [Leviticus 24:20]. But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil" (Matthew 5:38-39). Judaism itself, of course, cultivated a rich tradition in which the violence of the Old Testament was regarded as anything but a guide for believers' daily behavior. But Muslims have no such tradition, and nothing akin to the New Testament corrective of the gospel of merry.

  Those who say that Islam is peace constantly invoke Qur'anic injunctions against killing innocents. But Osama insists that his victims were not innocents. The terrorists kill unbelievers in keeping with the commands of Allah's book and the example of his Prophet. They plot to strike as hard as they can at the nation that, in their view, has humiliated and oppressed the House of Islam-and they do this because the Qur'an tells them to.

  A Muslim's Duty

  In slaying infidels, are the terrorists not acting as pious Muslims? They believe they are, and the letter of the Qur'an seems to back them up. The challenge, therefore, that confronts those Muslims who say they are discredited fundamentalist fringe groups is to formulate a refutation of the terrorists' own justifications for their actions. To be effective, such a refutation would have to be an Islamic argument, based on clear Muslim principles.

  But the bellicosity of the Qur'an and Muslim tradition makes this virtually impossible. As Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini put it:

  Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.... But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur'anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.72

  Going even further are the terrorists of bin Laden's al-Qaeda. A terrorist manual found in a safe house in Manchester, England, declared that "Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established as they [always] have been by pen and gun, by word and bullet, by tongue and teeth."73 The manual doesn't explain at what point the pen, word and tongue give way to the gun, bullet and teeth; but if Islamic governments have "never been established through peaceful solutions," one may assume that the peaceful instruments give way fairly early in the struggle for Islam.

  The Iranian writer Amir Taheri, author of Holy Terror, the landmark study of Islamic terrorism, remarks that "Khomeini's teachings are Islamic, but Islam is not limited to what Khomeini teaches."74 Quite so. But what kind of firewall exists between Khomeiniism and "moderate" Islam? Imams who issue fatwas have followers. Those who have issued fatwas condoning or even praising the terrorist attacks are not preaching to empty mosques, for individual Muslims can easily see how their teachings reflect the Qur'an and the life of Muhammad. Thus, the Western view of peaceful Islam as having been "hijacked" by terrorists is simplistic and superficial-and the West's current sanguinity toward Islam could turn out to be fatally unwise.

  The fastest-growing religion in the world today, Islam now counts among its adherents one out of every five people on earth. President Bush thus has very good reasons to try to encourage a belief that the terrorists are but a tiny minority among these hundreds of millions of Muslims. He is prudent to emphasize the existence of moderate elements in Islam, and to play up the extent of their influence in the Muslim world. No European or American in his right mind wants Osama bin Laden's vision of a war between the West and the entirety of Islam to become a reality.

  But the number of terrorist sympathizers in Muslim countries is considerable. Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes estimates it as between ioo million and 150 million people.75 This doesn't mean that the remaining 850 to goo million Muslims around the world are all peace-loving. Granted, people find it wearying to live in a state of constant conflict, and so they settle down to lead ordinary lives. But in Islam, ordinary life can always be disrupted by the call of religion. Radical Muslims have at times treated nonradicals as one large sleeper cell that can be activated by a summons to the full practice of their religion. This is illustrated by a chilling story from the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century:

  Then one night, my husband came home and told me that the padisha had sent word that we were to kill all the Christians in our village, and that we would have to kill our neighbours. I was very angry, and told him that I did not care who gave such orders, they were wrong. These neighbours had always been kind to us, and if he dared to kill them Allah would pay us out. I tried all I could to stop him, but he killed them-killed them with his own hand.76

  In this light, the number of terrorists and their sympathizers is likely to grow beyond Pipe
s' ioo to i5o million. In a very real sense this group is what the less militant majority considers to be the conscience of the umma. They are the people who actually dare to do what Allah said to do, whatever the cost. The average Muslim can easily find enough in the Qur'an at least to discourage him from condemning them. He can read that the holy book instructs him to kill unbelievers, and conclude that Khomeini, bin Laden and the like are the true Muslims, just as they claim to be.

  For all too many, being a serious Muslim means doing Allah's work by any means necessary. Of course, most Muslims will never be terrorists. The problem is that for all its schisms, sects and multiplicity of voices, Islam's violent elements are rooted in its central texts. It is unlikely that the voices of moderation will ultimately silence the militants, because the militants will always be able to make the case that they are standing for the true expression of the faith. Liberal Muslims have not established a viable alternative interpretation of the relevant verses in the Qur'an. "When liberal Muslims declare that Sept. ii was an atrocity contrary to the Koran," observes Farrukh Dhondy, "the majority of Muslims around the world don't believe them. They accept the interpretation of fundamentalists, whom liberal Muslims have allowed to remain unchallenged."77

  This is why the Bush/Blair cure for terrorism may end up being worse than ineffectual. The Islam that the West embraces in order to coopt bin Laden today may be the Islam that assaults the West tomorrow. This is not idle fear-mongering. Taheri points out that "the Muslim world today is full of bigotry, fanaticism, hypocrisy and plain ignorance-all of which create a breeding ground for criminals like bin Laden."78 Violent Islam has the enemy (us) and the scriptural justification (in the Qur'an) to keep pushing until they win-that is, until the West is Islamicized. And moderate Islam is essentially powerless to stop it.