Debating Islam’s “Golden Age”

Front Page Magazine
25 Oct. 2004

Debating Islam’s “Golden Age”
By FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 26, 2004

(In our October 8th issue, we ran Mustafa Akyol’s article Still
Standing for Islam – and Against Terrorism. Below is a response from
Bat Ye’or, followed by a rejoinder from Mr. Akyol, and then a final
word from Bat Ye’or. – The Editors)

*
Spare Us Another “Golden Age” By Bat Ye’or

The hope inspired by Mr. Mustafa Akyol’s long article in Front Page
Magazine is tempered by his deception. Mr. Akyol speaks of the
necessity to re-interpret the fundamental teachings and scriptures of
Islam, particularly the hadith and sira (the biography of the Prophet).
Finally we see here a potential Muslim effort to continue and improve
the critical exegesis initiated by the great Orientalists of the 19th
century, particularly Ignaz Goldziher, whose work has since become
anathema to the Muslim intelligentsia. However, Mr Akyol does not
explain on what authority a selection of hadith and events of the sira
will be made, since, he himself, in the course of his argumentation,
simply uses them to prove the justice of Islam.

Disputing the veracity of the claim in the sacralized biography of
Muhammad regarding the massacre of the Qurayza Jews is most welcome
since it negates the Muslim command to kill Jews in order to emulate
the Prophet. This assertion must be fully encouraged, because the
treatment of the Jews by the Prophet has became the standard by which
the classical Muslim jurists formulated their policy toward
non-Muslims, as embodied in the Shari’a and in the jihad’s rules.
Hence, when non-Muslims (primarily Hindus and Christians) were killed
in Bali, Amrozi, the Indonesian terrorist, invoked the fate of the Jews
in the oasis of Khaybar, perhaps confusing them with the mass slaughter
of their co-religionists, the Qurayza. Although many of the Jews of
Khaybar were killed in an unprovoked jihad campaign by Muhammad, those
vanquished Khaybar Jews who surrendered were not killed, but were
dispossessed and became exploited dhimmi tributaries, until, within a
decade later, they were expelled by the “Rightly Guided” Caliph Umar.

In fact, there is no way for us, in the 21st century. to know what
really happened in a small Arabian oasis in the seventh century given
the lack of contemporary evidence. But Mr. Akyol again contradicts
himself by implying that the Qurayza’s punishment was justified,
because they acted treacherously while of course there are no objective
proofs for such accusations, which rest merely on the demonization of
the victims. Moreover the problem does not concern only the Qurayza
Jews but the Jews and Christians throughout the Hedjaz, who were, soon
afterward dispossessed, and within a decade of Muhammad’s death,
expelled, according to his professed (i.e., again, in the sira)
deathbed wishes.

As Mr. Akyol stated rightly, this was not exceptional at that time. The
problem now is that such acts have been attributed to the Prophet
Muhammad who is the model to be emulated by all Muslims. Hence, while
even worse wars might have been perpetrated in the world by rulers long
since forgotten, the acts and sayings of Muhammad concerning
non-Muslims are still binding for over a billion Muslims today. To
decry Dr. Bostom’s analyses, based on 13 centuries of Islamic teaching
and writing, and accepted today in all Muslim countries, is almost
surrealistic.

It is true that now we see an effort by Muslim theologians to
contextualize the actions and words attributed to the Prophet Muhammad,
and thereby introduce an element of relativity between the seventh
century, and the present. But this timid and belated tendency has not
the slightest influence on the current jihadist war of terror against
the West overwhelmingly approved in the Muslim countries.

Mr Akyol’s explanation of jihad itself is particularly disingenuous. In
a democracy “a final jihad on western secular materialism” is shocking.
This is especially concerning given that the word “faith” can be
understood in its Muslim sense which states that the only true faith is
Islam. (Qur’an 3:17).

What exactly is “western secular materialism”? Will that be replaced by
a Shari’a morality? Much of Mr. Akyol’s reasoning seems inspired by the
International Institute of Islamic Thought set up in 1983 in the U.S.A.
to teach the Islamization of Knowledge. This program, financed by Saudi
Arabia, was developed under the guidance of, among others, Ismail Raji
al-Faruqi, a Palestinian Professor who taught at Temple University. A
document from the Islamization of Knowledge program summarized its
objectives:

“The new reform effort should present a systematic and methodological
approach to rebuild Islamic knowledge on the same firm foundation that
supported Islamic Civilization in its first cycle. The Muslims, being
an Ummah (nation) of a Divine message, can only rise to civilization
dominance if they carry the message in its original clarity, purity,
and relevance.”1

The program to reform Islamic religious thinking thus aims at
reinforcing traditional teaching through modern reasoning. Thus, one is
imprisoned within a circular argumentation which goes back to its
Islamic starting point. While I understand the difficulties of
reforming a religion, a process that takes centuries, and does not
relate to Islam alone, I deplore the violent animosity displayed
against those writers and researchers in the West who denounce, very
courageously, the brazen acts of terrorism perpetrated throughout the
world, primarily against non-Muslims, by Muslims invoking the very
texts that Ibn Warraq, Bostom, Spencer, and so many others have
analyzed, and brought to public attention.

Mr. Akyol denies their self-evident interpretations, and that is his
right, but he should try to convince – not a Western audience – but
over a billion Muslims who curiously share the views of the Muslim
texts and authorities quoted by the courageous authors mentioned above.
Mr. Akyol prefers to try and persuade Westerners of the perfection of
Islam, simply denying that the horrors that occurred in Muslim history,
chronicled with great accuracy by Dr. Bostom, either didn’t happen, or
were not done by Muslims. This sort of twisted logic is little removed
from the warped thinking which justified the bizarre accusations that
the CIA, Americans, or Zionists must have perpetrated 9/11 because
Muslims could not commit such horrors. Many books elaborating this
preposterous thesis were disseminated in Europe, and in the Muslim
world.

It would be meaningless to answer all of Mr. Akyol’s affirmations,
accusations and denials, including the genocide of the Armenians. His
total rejection of the history of dhimmitude, despite copious
documentation by both Muslim and non-Muslim sources, and its
replacement by a glorification of a just and peaceful Islamic rule over
tens of millions of subjected, non-Muslim peoples, precludes any
understanding between those who call a jihad a genocidal war, and those
who call it a liberation (even having the temerity to deny the jihad
genocide of the Armenians). Mr. Akyol invokes testimonies which are
contradicted, multiple times over, by others he chose to ignore.

A mass of documents from a vast array of sources describe throughout
the centuries and even till today, the trials of populations –
Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Animists –
vanquished by the Muslim armies. The affirmations of modern scholars
that he quotes, just confirm the political rewriting of history but do
not suppress, by overlooking them, the veracity of the facts enunciated
by Dr. Bostom. Mr. Akyol’s affirmation that it was not Muslims who
perpetrated the acts described is merely his personal opinion based on
his current appreciation of Islam. Finally, while Mr. Akyol’s efforts
to modernize religious beliefs are praiseworthy, they should be
directed exclusively at convincing his coreligionists, not attempting
to persuade the non-Muslim victims of Muslim aggression that their
ordeal did not happen or was an idyllic era for which they should be
grateful. Spare us another “Golden Age”.

Notes

[1] Amber Haque ed., Muslims and Islamization in North America:
Problems & Prospects, Amana Publications, Maryland, 1999, p.19.

*

Inviting Bat Ye’or To Consider Fairness
By Mustafa Akyol

It appears that both Ms. Ye’or and Mr. Bostom believe that terrorists
such as al-Qaeda spring from and represent the supposedly inherent
violence of Islam. I argue, on the other hand, that the current
“Islamic terrorism” we face stems from a distortion of the true Islamic
faith.

In order to defend my case, let me shortly answer the questions,
counter the criticisms and unveil the misjudgments of Ms. Ye’or.

The first issue is about the traditional, post-Koranic Islamic sources.
Ms. Ye’or welcomes my critical approach to the hadith and sira
traditions but criticizes me for failing to “explain on what authority
a selection of hadith and events of the sira will be made.” (Hadiths
are sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad and sira are his
biographies.) I feel free to question these traditional sources,
because they are very late constructs. The earliest sira was written
about 150 years after the Prophet. Hadiths were compiled even later.
And it is already known that these sources include many fake,
irrational stories. I just argue that the inauthenticity is wider than
commonly acknowledged.

But how will we judge these sources, as Ms. Ye’or rightly asks. Robert
Spencer raised the same question, too. My answer is the Koran. The
Koran must be the sole infallible Islamic criterion and hadiths should
be compared with its verses and the overall message. There are some
modern scholars who reach this conclusion. Professor Hayri Kirbasoglu,
a theologian in Ankara University and an expert on hadiths, argues that
a new method is necessary to evaluate the hadith collection and
compatibility with the Koran — a criterion much neglected before –
should be its basis. The same holds for sira as well.

With this reasoning, I see the sira and hadith accounts about the
massacre of the men of Bani Qurazya as incompatible with the Koran.
Thus I reject it.

Ms. Ye’or welcomes my rejection of this story, but finds another reason
to accuse me:

But Mr. Akyol again contradicts himself by implying that the Qurayza’s
punishment was justified, because they acted treacherously while of
course there are no objective proofs for such accusations, which rest
merely on the demonization of the victims.

There is a logical inconsistency here. Ms. Ye’or says that there “are
no objective proofs” showing that Bani Qurazya was treacherous, but
there is no objective proof for the rest of the story as well. We can
either take the story at face value or doubt or reject it completely.
By taking the killing as granted but by doubting its accepted reason,
Ms. Ye’or stealthy walks away from fairness.

Ms. Ye’or also questions my effort to redefine jihad as an intellectual
stance against atheism, and its philosophical underpinning, i.e.
materialism. First of all, she asks what this is. Put simply,
materialism is the idea that matter is all there is, God is imaginary
and we humans are the products of a blind process of evolution.

Ms. Ye’or then asks whether I want to replace the materialist morality
with a “Shari’a morality”. The latter term is an oxymoron[i] and it is
not my vision for any society. But, yes, I would love to see a
transformation from the materialist morality, which feeds hedonism and
selfishness, into a theistic morality — which depends on the
recognition that we are not mere animals in a struggle for survival and
our lives have a meaning beyond earthly mundane existence.

This topic is undoubtedly related with science and Ms. Ye’or noticed
that. Good. Yet, she traced my ideas to the “Islamization of Knowledge”
project that was launched by International Institute of Islamic
Thought. Probably to add an alarming detail, Ms. Ye’or also notes that
the institute in question was “financed by Saudi Arabia.”

Yet, this is totally unrelated to me. The scientific project that I
believe in and actively support is not the “”Islamization of
Knowledge,” but the “Intelligent Design Theory.” And it has nothing to
do with Saudi Arabia; it is in fact a brainchild of several prominent
American scientists and thinkers and is spearheaded by the Discovery
Institute in Seattle and the Intelligent Design Network based in
Kansas. Intelligent design theorists argue for a paradigm shift to
liberate modern science from the materialist dogma. This is desperately
needed because of the overwhelming scientific evidence against
materialist theories of origins such as Darwinism.[ii] In my article
titled Why Muslims Should Support Intelligent Design, I explain why
this theory is a common intellectual stance for all theists, whether
they be Christian, Jewish or Muslim.

In short, I am not trying to “Islamize” knowledge as Ms. Ye’or assumes,
rather I seek objectivity and argue that knowledge — in the form of
scientific data — is already compatible with the basic tenets of
theistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

After her suspicions about my scientific endeavors, Ms. Ye’or employs a
straw man argument against me. She makes a caricature of what I have
said in my recent reply to her colleague, Andrew Bostom, and then
attacks that caricature.

According to her, I “affirmed that it was not Muslims who perpetrated
the acts described” by Mr. Bostom. I was “simply denying the horrors
that occurred in Muslim history”, and I was asserting that those
horrors “either didn’t happen, or were not done by Muslims.” From here,
she goes on to equate me with bizarre conspiracy theorists who pointed
to the CIA or the Mossad as the force behind 9/11.

What I said in fact was totally different. The exact wording in my
article in question include statements such as, “there of course were
many kinds of ‘Muslims’ who looted and pillaged simply for profit and
other worldly gains” and “Muslims can do evil, not because Islam
directs it, but because they themselves individually choose to do so.”
What I did was to distinguish between the Muslim acts for the sake of
Islam and the Muslim acts for the sake of worldly interests. I accepted
all the horrible massacres committed by such figures as Tamerlane,
Mahmud Ghaznavi, Mohammad Ghori, early Seljuks, and so on. But I
explained that these people were hardly good representatives of the
Islamic faith. In a more illustrative example, I showed that the
sacking of Thessalonica in 904 was not a “jihad campaign,” as Andrew
Bostom portrayed, but rather the work of Arab corsairs which acted
simply for world profit — the same motive that drew the “Christian
corsairs” of the Caribbean.

I really can’t understand how Ms. Ye’or overlooks what I have said,
distorts it so overtly and then expects to be persuasive.

I am sure she can do better than this.

Ms. Ye’or also criticizes me for speaking to the Westerners about
Islam. “While Mr. Akyol’s efforts to modernize religious beliefs are
praiseworthy,” she kindly says, “they should be directed exclusively at
convincing his coreligionists.” That is indeed true and I am indeed
trying to appeal to my co-religionists, too. But the struggle for the
soul of Islam has become, especially after September 11, a global issue
in which non-Muslims have a share to say. The outcome of that struggle
is very much related with Western, and especially American, policies
towards the Islamic world. That’s why I think that a fair assessment of
Islam in the West is crucial and I am trying to be helpful to that
assessment. We should also keep in mind that many opinion leaders of
the Islamic world are either living in the West or are affected the
Western intellectual climate; so it is not odd to argue for an Islamic
renewal in this medium.

But Ms. Ye’or believes that I am not being helpful. Interestingly, she
accuses not just me, but also many prominent Western scholars who study
Islam. According to her, “the affirmations of modern scholars” that I
quote from, “just confirm the political rewriting of history.”
Political rewriting of history for what? To luster Islam? And by the
many American, British, Italian historians that I quote from? Let me
remind that the scholars in question are not the usual guests of the
“Campus Watch,” rather they include names like Bernard Lewis and Daniel
Pipes. What could compel such historians to engage in a distortion of
history for the sake of a religion that they don’t adhere to? Who could
stir such a global conspiracy? The learned elders of Mecca whose
protocols are discovered by Ms. Ye’or and her colleagues?

A better explanation – of the Ockham’s Razor type – might be that in
fact it is Ms. Ye’or and her colleagues who are engaged in a political
rewriting of history.

I hope they are not. Or if they are, that they will reconsider their
stance. They should not see such self-criticism as an indignity.
Abrahamic monotheism, whether it be in the Jewish, Christian or Islamic
tradition, teaches us that it is indeed a great virtue to retreat from
a mistake.

And I will pray to better witness the virtues of Ms. Ye’or.

Notes:

[i] The term sharia refers to Islamic law. I don’t see it as the source
of an Islamic morality, because I believe that morality should stem
from personal faith, not penal law. The “enforced morality” we can see
in the horrible example of the Taliban, and in the Saudi regime, can
only achieve hypocrisy. In a forthcoming article of mine, titled
Deconstructing Islamic Radicalism, I deal with this issue in detail.

[ii] Intelligent Design is not creationism. The latter is based on a
literal interpretation of the Bible. Intelligent Design, on the other
hand, do not refer to religious texts, it is based purely on scientific
data. Intelligent Design theorists criticize Darwinism not because it
is against the Scripture, but rather because it is against the recent
findings of modern science.

*

Inviting Mr Akyol to Consider Intellectual Integrity, Without
Triumphalism

By Bat Ye’or

Let me begin by answering Mr. Akyol’s accusation of a “logical
inconsistency” which is entirely his own. He implies that I take for
granted the killing of the Banu Qurayza while in fact I said that
“there is no way for us, in the 21st century to know what really
happened in a small Arabian oasis in the seventh century given the lack
of contemporary evidence.” It is Mr. Akyol who rejects – a welcome
attitude – the hadith version that describes the execution of all the
Jewish males and the enslavement of their women and children. But a
little later he, himself, accuses the Qurayza Jews of having being
treacherous, hence justifying a treatment that he has previously
denied. Mr. Akyol has assumed from his own imagination that I take for
granted a massacre, and on this distorted and gratuitous allegation,
has accused me of unfairness.

Accusations of “distortions”, “unfairness”, “selectivity”, in my
analyses of dhimmi history manifest an unwillingness to acknowledge the
violent history of Islamic expansion. What we are now seeing in Sudan
echoes the Muslim chronicles of jihadist expansion over the centuries
across Asia, Africa, and Europe. I am used to such ad hominem
indictments because I have refused, deliberately, to accept the
Islamophile stratagem that deflects the jihad violence onto the victims
of jihad, or minimizes the victims’ trials, by specious arguments. I
have explained this position in chapter 10 of The Decline of Eastern
Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude.

As a researcher on dhimmi peoples (the non-Muslim indigenous
populations subdued by jihad conquests), I tried to recover their
testimonies from the ashes of their past. Mr. Akyol’s negationist view
on the Armenian genocide, and his whitewashing of the historical jihad
illustrates both his lack of objectivity, and his contempt for the
detailed historical records of a multitude of non-Muslim populations.
His refusal of John of Nikiu’s account which he attributes to an
alleged xenophobic Egyptian character as a whole is spurious and
racist. The horrors of the Arab conquest in Armenia, narrated by local
historians, corroborate similar accounts, including that of John of
Nikiu, a distinguished member of the Coptic clergy. In fact, the
descriptions that recount in detail the warfare: slavery, massacres,
deportation, destruction, cities or villages razed, usually come from
Muslim chroniclers. Such events are referred by Mr. Akyol as
“liberation wars”. It looks as if Mr. Akyol has an encyclopedic
knowledge of both Western and Islamic civilizations regarding every
“historical episode”, allowing him to assert that Islam has a better
record than the West, – after he rejects any event he dislikes.

The numbers of former non-Muslims involved in jihadist operations
against their own people, throughout history, under whatever pressures
(including for example, the gulam/devshirme enslavement systems for
Christian children under the Seljuks and Ottomans, which, combined
persisted for over 500 years), are beyond calculation. But, like the
contemporary examples of the American “Taliban” John Lindh, or the
British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, they represent individuals
propelled along by a 13 centuries old jihad system which they have
neither invented, nor engineered. This system embodies an ideology of
world domination and world governance based on specific strategies and
tactics conceived from the 8th – 9th centuries as a war machine against
the infidels. Patrick Sookdheo’s excellent book Understanding Islamic
Terrorism 1 examines in detail from its inception till today, the
Muslim framework of relations with non-Muslims.

Historical contingencies and accidental enrolment or participation of
Christians or others in this theological warfare machinery cannot hide
the basic and perennial structural configuration that has destroyed
through massacres, slavery or oppression countless populations. Peoples
recording their own history – i.e., Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians,
Bahais, Assyrian Christians, Armenians, Copts, Maronites, Greeks,
African and Mediterranean Jews and Central Europeans Christians –
contradicts the Islamophilic re-casting of history that designates
imperialistic Islamic expansion through jihad war- a “liberation”.
Such historical obfuscation has nurtured modern Islamic
“fundamentalism” and terror. Free nations today find themselves
engulfed in a 13 centuries-old jihadist war about which they know
almost nothing – being oblivious to both its ideology, and its tactics.

I do not know what Mr. Akyol means by “saving the soul of Islam”. If it
implies a projection on others of the negative aspects of one’s own
history or their negation, such a salvation seems to me doubtful,
indeed. A recent debate in Cairo (October 5-6) discussed the way to
implement a radical revision of Islamic scholarship and Jusrisprudence
and called for both religious and political reforms. This may be a
positive harbinger for progress, if religious hierarchies do not
succeed in condemning it. 2

A little less triumphalism and certitude, and a little more humility
will pave the way toward an intellectual integrity that forbids
equating massacre and liberation.

Notes:

1 Patrick Sookhdeo, Understanding Islamic Terrorism, with a foreword by
General Sir Hugh Beach, Isaac Publishing, Pewsey, U.K., 2004.

2 MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis – Egypt/Reform Project, October 22, 2004,
N° 192.

Mustafa Akyol is a political scientist, columnist, writer and a
director at the Intercultural Dialogue Platform, based in Istanbul.

Bat Ye’or is the world’s foremost authority on Dhimmitude. Her latest
study is Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide. Her
forthcoming book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, will be published in
January 2005.

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