Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam

by Robert Spencer

  The Qur’an almost unanimously when it speaks of jihad—and when it uses the Arabic word jihad in its various forms—means “struggle.” Of course in Arabic the word struggle has just as many connotations as struggle does in English: You can struggle to quit smoking, you can struggle to lose weight, you can struggle against Communism or have states struggling against one another. So it is also in Islam. But the primary meaning of the word jihad in the Qur’an is unmistakably warfare. The Muslim hero of Dr. Kreeft’s book further says that Muhammad never fought against Christians and Jews unless he did so in a defensive manner. That, unfortunately, is factually false. As a matter of fact, in the last battle of his career, right before he died, Muhammad went to Tabuk, which was a Byzantine imperial outpost, to fight a Christian garrison there. He didn’t actually find them there. They had left.

  In chapter nine of the Qur’an are numerous teachings—which of course are portrayed as divine revelation which cannot be questioned and have to be obeyed by any pious and observant Muslim. These are instructions to wage offensive warfare against Jews and Christians—particularly in chapter nine, verse twenty-nine, which tells Muslims to fight against those who do not obey Allah and his messenger and do not forbid that which he has forbidden (in other words, don’t follow the strictures of Islamic law), even if they are the People of the Book, which is the Qur’anic designation for primarily Jews and Christians, until they pay the jizya (which is a tax) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

  That verse became the foundation of an elaborate superstructure of laws that are still part of Islamic jurisprudence and of Islamic political law that Islamists, that jihad terrorists, that any Islamic supremacist wants to impose over the world today. These laws mandate that non-Muslims, the People of the Book, must pay a special tax from which Muslims are exempt. As a matter of fact, you can pretty much correlate in Islamic history the strength and aggression and rise of the great Islamic empires of the past with the size of the Jewish and Christian communities that were subjugated within those empires and were paying for that imperial expansion. When those communities were exhausted economically, then the Islamic empires went into decline. This is an absolute correlation that recurs again and again and again. The Christians and Jews in Muslim lands were subjugated in accord with that section of the verse, that last part where they must ‘pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.’ They never enjoyed equality of rights with Muslims. They were denied the right to build new houses of worship or to repair old ones; they were denied the right to hold authority over Muslims so that Jews and Christians were relegated to the most menial and degrading jobs in the society. They were subject to various other humiliating and discriminatory regulations.

  Now this is, as I cannot emphasize enough, still part of Islamic law. This is not one sect or one school or one group that’s heretical that has made this part of their teaching. This is universal among all sects and schools of jurisprudence that are recognized as mainstream and orthodox by fellow Muslims. They all teach—you cannot find one that does not teach—the necessity to wage wars against unbelievers and to subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law. In fact, Hamas, in Gaza, has announced its intention, once it’s fully consolidated its power, to impose this system of dhimmitude and subjugate the Christians that remain there under institutionalized forms of discrimination. Gangs in Baghdad, without government authority to be sure, terrorized the Christian community—which I’m sure you know is terrorized on a more or less daily basis. There was just another massacre in a church in Baghdad the other day—they were knocking on doors in Baghdad last year and demanding payment of the jizya, this tax that amounts to protection money. You pay it and you don’t get killed. But you don’t pay it, or you transgress some of the other laws that are set out for these subjugated peoples, and then your life is forfeit.

  These things are still part of the agenda for Islamic jihadists today. The Islamic jihadists routinely portray themselves in the Muslim community worldwide and among peaceful Muslims, as being the most pious, most observant—in other words, the best Muslims available. They are, in other words, the Muslims who present themselves as being the true, the pure Muslims. As a matter of fact, the worldwide Salafi movement is dedicated to restoring the purity of Islam as they see it. Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 after Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate in 1924, which was the symbol of the supranational unity of the Muslims that transcended all national boundaries. Ataturk abolished the caliphate in 1924. Hasan al-Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt as a direct reaction, because he believed that without the political aspects of Islam—that have never been considered separable from the religious individual aspects of spiritual observance in any Islamic tradition—without the political aspect of Islam that had been damaged by the abolition of the caliphate, Islam was not being fully observed in the world.

  He dedicated the Muslim Brotherhood—which is the direct forefather of Hamas and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as many pseudo-moderate groups in the United States today like the Council on American Islamic Relations—to what he saw as the fullness of Islamic observance, the true observance of Islamic piety, which involved the subjugation of unbelievers, violence against them if they resisted, and the establishment of Muslims as a special class that would enjoy certain rights and privileges that the other classes would not enjoy. These things are represented around the world today, in the Islamic world and in Muslim communities in the West as well, as being part of what it means to be a good Muslim. They make their appeal to peaceful Muslims. They justify their own actions of terror or supremacism and they make recruits among peaceful Muslims by representing themselves as being the embodiment of authentic Muslim observance.

  Now, obviously, there are Muslims who do not consider acts of terrorism or violence, or the supremacist attempts to impose Islamic law over non-Muslims, part of their Islamic piety. And certainly I applaud them and wish there were more of them insofar as they’re sincere. They are, however, universally worldwide on the defensive today. They are represented as the bad Muslims by their fellow Muslims who are pointing to the texts of the Qur’an and the teachings of Muhammad. And so the Muslims who we could look to with hopes of reform, the Muslims who we would look to in hopes of their being our allies, they are the ones who are considered to be the bad Muslims generally in the Islamic community. Now it must also be further stated, unfortunately, that there is no theological system in Islam, there is no sect, there is no group within Islam that has formulated a comeback, a construction of Islamic theology based on the Qur’an that makes a case to reject violence and supremacism and the subjugation of unbelievers. It doesn’t exist. There are many individuals who are working against it, but there is no group that we can point to and say “Ah, they’re the ones we need to work with!” In other words, they have not formulated any kind of convincing comeback. The texts are not on their side.

  There are peaceful, pacifistic texts in the Qur’an. Dr. Kreeft quotes many of them in his book. He does not, unfortunately, quote the violent ones to which I alluded before. I mentioned one of them specifically—chapter eight, verse sixty, part of that al-Anfal (spoils of war chapter) that directs Muslims to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.” Now you can say “Well, that doesn’t have anything to do with modern terrorism, that’s terror in a much broader sense,” but unfortunately, modern terrorists can and do point to that verse and say, “That’s what we’re doing! That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. We’re striking terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.”

  The peaceful passages, according to mainstream Islamic theologians, and to the preponderance of Islamic theological tradition, do not take precedence over the violent passages. The peaceful passages generally were revealed earlier in Muhammad’s career. He was a prophet for twenty-three years, and over those twenty-three years he received revelations from God, which were collected in the Qur’an.
Early in his career when he was in Mecca he had a small band of followers facing a very powerful pagan Arab establishment of his own tribe, the Quraysh, in Mecca. That’s when he was saying, “Say to the unbelievers that you have your religion and we have ours; you don’t worship what we worship and we don’t worship what you worship,” and essentially, “Let’s just leave each other alone.” That’s chapter 109 of the Qur’an. The unfortunate fact is that when he later moved in the hijra to Medina and became for the first time a political and military leader, the tenor of the Qur’anic revelations began to change and the violence began to be taught and carried out by Muhammad himself.

  Now, mainstream Islamic theologians and the preponderance of Islamic theological tradition teaches that if there is a disagreement between two passages in the Qur’an, then one of the chief ways to see which one takes precedence in our own day is, which one came later chronologically in Muhammad’s career. Unfortunately for us, the violence comes later, and thus is considered under the principles of al-nasikhwal-mansukh (or abrogation) to cancel out the peaceful passages. Or the peaceful passages only apply when Muslims are a small group, as the Meccan Muslims were in the first stage of Muhammad’s career. So in other words, when they’re a small group, when they’re powerless, then they teach tolerance and non-violence. But later, gaining in power and numbers, the other parts begin to kick in, and the violence and the supremacism apply.

  I believe right now we’re in the state of transition in the United States where we’re moving from one to the other. There’s a great deal more aggression and a great deal more assertiveness in Islamic communities and by Islamic jihadists against the United States, because they see that we are at a tipping point so they can move away from tolerance. Over a third of the attacks or attempted jihad attacks against the United States that have happened since 9/11 have happened in the past year, which means there’s been a sharp uptick in the last year. And so this indicates that we are dealing with a group that considers itself to be acting in complete accord with the dictates of Islamic teaching, and thus to say that we want to encourage Islamic piety is only to encourage, ultimately, the cutting of our own throat: culturally, politically, societally. Thank you.

  Professor Kreeft: I find myself in some difficulties here. I love debates, but I usually debate pro-choice people or atheists. And that’s a knock-’em-down-drag-’em-off debate between me and my enemy. Bob’s a good friend, a fellow Catholic, not my enemy, so I view this more as a discussion than a debate: a kind of in-house theological exploration between friends. Bob knows much more about Islam than I do. It is a minor interest of mine and usually when I say something about minor interests, even when it’s true, I get in trouble. Especially about controversial issues, like the sexual revolution or homosexuality or Islam! My final difficulty is I agree with almost everything Bob said tonight.

  (Audience laughs.)

  Professor Kreeft: Except! Except one more little question in the spirit of Columbo or Socrates, “one last little question.” Almost all your premises are true, but do they really entail your conclusion? It seems to me you have two conclusions, two main points, and I disagree with both of them. First is that the only good Muslim is a bad Muslim; the second is that Islam is a greater threat to us than the Enlightenment, so those are the two things I’d like to focus on.

  I’d like to make very clear that my standards of judgment are exactly the same as Bob’s. First of all, the magisterium of the Catholic Church; secondly, basic human reason; thirdly, the facts of history and experience, which can’t be denied. Since my ultimate standards of judgment are Catholic, I would like to start not with my own opinion but with the “opinion” of the Catholic Church. For the first time in 450 years, the Church has issued a universal Catechism. There is a paragraph in it especially about Islam—just one—but I think this quotation is just about the most important one we can use about Islam. It says, paragraph eight, verse forty-one, “The Church’s relationship with the Muslims: The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us they adore the One Merciful God, mankind’s judge on the Last Day.”

  Now, I think Bob would agree with that. First of all, he’s a Catholic; secondly, nothing he said contradicted that; but I would like to add to what Bob said rather than contradict it, because that’s a half-truth. I don’t think he uttered any lies, and I don’t think he uttered any false judgment except for his conclusions, but there are a lot of other things to say. First of all, “The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim.” I know that’s not true because I’ve met some good Muslims who are good. I’ve also met some bad ones. The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim means, quote unquote, a “good Muslim” is a self-contradiction.

  Somebody completely faithful to the teachings of Islam and the Qur’an—and there are many different interpretations of it, not just one Islam as there is one Catholicism, as you know there’s no magisterium for all the Muslims in the world, they’re like Protestants, they’re all over the place—

  (Laughter)

  Professor Kreeft: Well, not quite as bad as that, there are not 28,000 different sects and denominations. But just as all Protestants believe the Bible, all Muslims believe the Qur’an: It’s a textual unity rather than a magisterial unity. Let’s say there are three different levels of Islam that we have to distinguish: First of all, there’s the level of terrorist activity, which none of us here supports in the least—we abominate that, there’s absolutely no excuse for that. Secondly, there’s “Islamism,” there’s the imposition of sharia law over everyone, there’s a refusal to make a distinction between the church and the state, there’s the identification of religion with politics, which all good Muslims share. Not all good Muslims justify terrorism; in fact, most Muslims in the West profess not to, but I have never met a Muslim who believed in the separation of church and state. Therefore universal, equal human rights for people of all religions is not the ideal of any Muslim in the world, including good, pious Muslims who I am defending. So I thoroughly disagree with them on those two levels.

  But there’s a third level—namely, personal piety—and on that level I think we can learn a lot from Muslims. I think they can sometimes put us to shame. Especially the Sufis who, although they’re not mainline Muslims and although they’re labeled by most Muslims as unorthodox, are pretty universally respected for their piety. And if you read some of the writings of the Sufis you find, among some flaky stuff, some very profound stuff. So it is simply not true that the only good Muslim is a bad Muslim. Let me tell you a story about a good Muslim, based on some combination of idealized features of Muslims I’ve met or read about and my own imagination. One of them was a student at Boston College who I had in a course about comparative religions, and he always sat next to a Jewish student who I think was Orthodox, because he had a beard and a yarmulke and dreadlocks and they fought all the time over Palestine. They almost came to blows, but they sat in the front row and asked most of the difficult questions, and I loved them for it—because I love troublemakers as long as they don’t use physical violence, and they didn’t quite use physical violence, though they shouted a bit. And the rest of the students, about twenty-four of them, were Catholics, at least nominally and some stage of dissent or assent—you know, Boston College.

  (Laughter)

  Professor Kreeft: It used to be a Catholic college, now it’s a Jesuit college.

  (Laughter)

  Professor Kreeft: Actually, they’re not so much non-Catholics that think they’re Catholics, they’re really Hindus who think they’re Catholics, you know, they’re all pantheists who think God is everything, that’s the surprising result of questionnaires. You find out amazing things from your students from questionnaires. Anyway, it was time for the break, and we learn more during the break than in my lectures, so I gave them a long break. And we were munching on potato chips and drinking Coke, and the Jewish student, whose n
ame was Zvai, noticed that behind my head, on the cinderblock wall, there was a faint cross painted there, so he said, “Is that supposed to be a cross?” I turned around and looked and realized that that was where the crucifixes used to be before they were taken down. So I turned around and I was about to, in a shamed-faced sort of way, try to give some lame explanation for the fact that the Jesuits took the crucifixes down—when the Holy Spirit closed my mouth and opened the mouth of the student next to Zvai and said, “Oh, that’s where we used to have the crucifixes before we took them down,” in a very proud and self-satisfied sort of way. And I thought Zvai was going to say, “Why did you take them down?” But he said, “When did you take them down?” So I said, “Why is he saying when?”