Terror’s Islamic Roots
By Robert Spencer
Front Page Magazine
Oct 11 2004
Mustafa Akyol’s third and latest attempt to show that Osama bin Laden
and Company have hijacked the religion of peace is as mind-numbingly
disingenuous as it is windy and off-point.
In his article, “Still Standing for Islam – and Against Terrorism,”
in Frontpage’s October 8 issue, Akyol says: “At the outset, I should
clarify the meaning of the term jihad. It does not necessarily mean a
military struggle….” He should know that it is completely beside
the point, because although it may not “necessarily” be a military
struggle, it is for the global jihadists. Does Akyol think they will
lay down their arms because jihad can also be a spiritual struggle?
As a matter of fact, Hassan Al-Banna (founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood) and Abdullah Azzam (a founder of Al-Qaeda) among others,
taught that the idea of jihad as a spiritual struggle was based on a
weak hadith, and thus had to be rejected by loyal Muslims. But of
course Akyol does not deal with that.
Akyol also says: “Mr. Bostom also asks what will happen to atheists
if they are not convinced. Of course, nothing. Let them deny the
obvious. ‘There is no compulsion in religion’ (2:256) and Muslims are
ordered to say ‘The truth is from your Lord, so let him who please
believe, and let him who please disbelieve.’ (18:29)”
Interestingly enough, just yesterday someone sent me this from a
Muslim Q&A website, quoting Qur’an 8:39 and 9:5 to say that yes,
there is compulsion in religion:
“And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and
polytheism, i.e. worshipping others besides Allaah), and the religion
(worship) will all be for Allaah Alone [in the whole of the world]”
[al-Anfaal 8:39]
“Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of
the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikoon (see
V.2:105) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them,
and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush. But if they repent
[by rejecting Shirk (polytheism) and accept Islamic Monotheism] and
perform As‑Salaah (Iqaamat-as-Salaah), and give Zakaah, then
leave their way free. Verily, Allaah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful”
[al-Tawbah 9:5]
This verse is known as Ayat al-Sayf (the verse of the sword).
These and similar verses abrogate the verses which say that there is
no compulsion to become Muslim.
But Akyol is ready for that. He attacks the Islamic doctrine of
abrogation on which this argument is based, saying it is “actually a
late invention, introduced by some classical jurists during the
fourth century (late 10th century) of Islam.” He quotes Dr. Khaleel
Mohammed, a professor of Religion at San Diego State University: “The
allegation that 120 verses on the invitation to Islam were abrogated
by the verse of the sword (9:5)…is in fact one of crassest
stupidity.”
Gee, that’s swell, but unfortunately, Dr. Khaleel Muhammad has not
yet taken up his throne as the Muslim Pope. And here, as in so many
other instances, he resorts to shallow and base name-calling instead
of actually addressing the arguments of his opponents. Jihadists,
quite obviously, still employ the practice of abrogation. Does he
think that pointing out that it is a tenth-century innovation and
accusing those who use it of the “crassest stupidity” will really
stop them? “Fellow mujahedin! Dr. Khaleel Muhammad has called us
stupid! Let us lay down our arms!”
In fact, abrogation (naskh) is not a tenth-century innovation. It is
based on the Qur’an itself: “Nothing of our revelation (even a single
verse) do we abrogate or cause be forgotten, but we bring (in place)
one better or the like thereof. Knowest thou not that Allah is Able
to do all things?” (Sura 2:106).
Likewise, Akyol’s contention that “the war verses describe only an
abnormal state of affairs — in which the Muslim community faced an
enemy that sought its annihilation — and verses that promote peace
and tolerance describe the Islamic ideal” will do nothing to pacify
radical Muslims, since they have argued again and again that today
the Muslim community faces an enemy that seeks its annihilation. Thus
even by Akyol’s own standards, Muslims are justified to invoke the
Qur’an’s war verses and wage jihad today.
Then Akyol performs a neat pirouette to avoid the avalanche of
quotations that Bostom, others, and I myself invoked from the hadith
and sira — traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his biography —
to justify the killing of captives in Islam. He simply denies the
authority of the sources: “Well, I don’t question the Koran, which I
believe to be the infallible Word of God, yet I, like many other
contemporary Muslims, feel free to question traditional Islamic
sources such as the hadith and sira. These were written at least one
and a half centuries after the Prophet and we already know that there
were many fake sayings attributed to and fables made up about Prophet
Muhammad. The collection we have today was compiled by men most of
whom had the best intentions, but good intentions are not enough to
create an infallible source.”
That’s great for Mustafa Akyol, except for two small problems:
1. He immediately contradicts his own statement in the paragraph that
follows by invoking two statements of Muhammad that are not in the
Qur’an, but are taken from the Islamic traditions he just rejected.
2. Most Muslims accept the hadith and sira as authoritative. I am
glad that he and other Muslim reformers reject them, but they face a
herculean task in convincing the majority of their coreligionists to
do so (particularly when Akyol rejects them and then uses them in
practically the same breath).
But since Akyol rejects the authority of passages from Islamic law
that Bostom and I cited in our respective replies, he doesn’t have to
answer or explain them. Instead, he spends the bulk of his article
citing Muslim apologists and questionable historical sources to
establish that in history, Muslims acted better. Once again, even if
this is true, it establishes nothing: the mujahedin believe that they
are acting in line with Islamic law, and historical examples don’t
disprove this.
In order to avoid ten years in prison as mandated by law in his
native Turkey, in the course of his long-winded historical tour Akyol
breezily dismisses the Armenian genocide, in which two million people
were slaughtered, as “inter-communal violence,” and blames the
Armenians as much as the Ottomans.
This Holocaust denial in itself reveals the utter moral bankruptcy of
Akyol’s argument, but there is one more thing. He also sees dark
motives behind what Bostom and Ibn Warraq (and, by implication, I
also) are doing, seeing behind us the shadows of Stalin and Pol Pot.
“According to Ibn Warraq, as Mr. Bostom delightfully quotes, ‘There
are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate’ and ‘Islam
need [to] be marginalized for liberty to flourish.’ What Ibn Warraq
does is to reiterate the dull atheists mantra — that religion shrinks
our liberties and instead we must shrink religion to save them. From
Epicurus to Nietzsche, from Freud to Richard Dawkins, this is the
unholy crusade whose political fruits included mass murderers such as
the Jacobins, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. And I am firmly against that
secularist agenda.”
In case you missed it, the sleight-of-hand he performs here is to
equate Ibn Warraq’s opposition to Islam with the opposition to
Christianity that did indeed lead to the monstrous atheistic regimes
of Jacobins, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Ibn Warraq is indeed, as far as
I know, an atheist, but this has nothing to do with the statements
from him that Akyol quoted. “There are moderate Muslims, but Islam
itself is not moderate” is not a call to Stalinist genocide; it is an
observation that certain teachings of Islam itself enjoin violence
against unbelievers. If you don’t believe that, go back and read Sura
9:5 and what the Islam Q&A site makes of it.
I myself am not an atheist, and I do not reply to him out of some
sinister cypto-Stalinism. I made it abundantly clear why I am doing
this in an earlier reply to Akyol:
Why am I doing this? To make life difficult for a moderate? No. I am
only trying to point out that Akyol’s conclusion (the beheadings
“stem from a kind of necrophilic nihilism, not from the essence of
Islam”) is unwarranted, and his argument will be unconvincing to a
radical Muslim, who can invoke the authorities I have cited here and
others.
So in sum: Akyol’s piece is not the kind of moderate Islamic
presentation we need in order to neutralize the radicals. We need one
that confronts and refutes their arguments; his simply ignores them.
Those who are looking for moderate Muslims to rise up and refute the
radicals should keep looking.
I stand by those statements. Akyol more and more seems to me like one
who is trying to reassure jittery Westerners about Islam, rather than
refute the radicals. But his reassurance is hollow, and is only
likely to make people less guarded against future attacks by Muslims
who do not accept his arguments. His arguments do nothing to stop
jihadists from continuing their murderous work.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of
Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the
West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions
About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).