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

by Robert Spencer

  At the Lahore press conference, al-Muhajiroun issued a declaration that said nothing at all about whether the September ii terrorist attacks were legal or not. Instead, it simply took them as an occasion to declare world war:

  I. The Shariah [Islamic law] verdict dictates that the life and wealth of anyone who attacks Muslims has no sanctity. [That is, those who are considered to have attacked Muslims can be killed at any time, with the murderer incurring no legal or moral penalty.]

  2. We call upon the Muslims to side with their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan and engage in Jihad against USA and target their government and military installations.

  3. We warn the West to be ready for a World War against Islam in which they will suffer not only militarily but also economically.

  Although it distinguishes between soldiers and civilians (without reference to or apology for the killing of noncombatants on September ii), the document warns that Muslim warriors will make no distinction between "soldiers fighting against the Taliban or soldiers relaxing in the US," for "this war is not a war against Terrorism but rather this is a war against Islam." Accordingly, "This war will not be restricted to this region but rather this war will, unless the aggressors withdraw from the Muslim lands, encapsulate the entire world. No country will escape the effects of this war.""

  Likewise, Hassan Butt, a leader of al-Muhajiroun, told the BBC early in 2002 that British Muslims trained by the Taliban who had survived the American bombings would soon return to the sceptered islechastened not a whit. There they would "take military action" against "British military and government institutes, as well as British military and government individuals.""

  Ominous as all this is, even more so is the silence of so-called "moderate" Muslim clerics-that is, clerics who are about as far from Wahhabism as an imam can get. An alarming number of imams in the Western world simply said nothing about the September ii attacks, or sent out a vague statement that could be interpreted favorably by both sides. Few have stood up and said in so many words that they condoned the terrorist acts, but few have condemned them either.

  There have been, of course, notable exceptions. Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, the secretary general of the Italian Muslim Association, led the Italian Muslim leadership to condemn Palestinian suicide bombings in no uncertain terms: "In defense of a wicked regime [Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority], innocent ignorant children are sent to be killed in criminal actions.... This regime even dares to declare that Islam approves of these criminal acts. 1120

  Yet a chorus of imams did not join Palazzi. The strange silence was noted within the Muslim community. For instance, the Egyptian Muslim journalist Mona Eltahawy declared in early 2002, "Moderate and progressive Muslims must speak out.... It is no longer enough for the clerics to issue tired platitudes on how Islam means peace.... Where were they when Osama bin Laden and his coalition of terrorists vowed to target every American man, woman and child? We have to look inward and ask ourselves: What in Islam, what in the way it is practiced today, allowed bin Laden to promote his murderous message? 1121

  Even some of those clerics who appeared with President Bush in the wake of the attacks had skeletons in their closets. The president of the American Muslim Council, Abdurahman Alamoudi, joined Bush at a prayer service for the victims; but not quite a year before September ii, 2ooi, he had said to a Muslim group, "Hear that, Bill Clinton! We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they add that I am also a supporter of Hizballah [sic]."22 According to news reports, Alamoudi wasn't the only one who took that position:

  Also invited to the prayer service attended by Alamoudi after the attacks was Muzzammil Siddiqi, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Orange County. At that service, Siddiqi prayed: "keep our country strong for the sake of the good." Only a year earlier, Siddiqi was an organizer of the rally where Alamoudi expressed support for HAMAS and Hezbollah. Then, Siddiqi said, "The United States of America is directly and indirectly responsible for the plight of the Palestinian people. If you remain on the side of injustice the wrath of God will come."

  Confronted with this, Siddiqi pleaded ignorance. Even though he had been one of the rally's organizers, Siddiqi claimed that he "was not aware of all the speakers at the rally and doesn't support the extremist viewpoints some expressed." Evidently it isn't extremist to invoke the wrath of God; it's only extremist to be the agent of this wrath. Said Siddiqi, "I don't support Hezbollah and HAMAS. I don't support any terrorist groups. Terrorism is not what Islam teaches."23 Yet apparently what the terrorists teach is not so foreign to Islam as to bring Siddiqi or anyone else to want to keep these groups from appearing at the rally.

  Another Muslim who prayed with Bush was Hamza Yusuf, a California-based imam:

  On Sept. zo, FBI agents showed up at the house of Hamza Yusuf, a Muslim teacher and speaker in Northern California. They wanted to question him about a speech he had given two days before the Sept. ii attacks, in which he said that the U.S. "stands condemned" and that "this country has a great, great tribulation coming to it."

  "He's not home," his wife said. "He's with the president."

  The agents thought she was joking, Yusuf said. But she wasn't. That day Yusuf was at the White House, the only Muslim in a group of religious leaders invited to pray with President Bush, sing "God Bless America," and endorse the president's plans for military action.

  To his credit, Hamza Yusuf says the attacks were sobering: "This has been a wake-up call for me as well, in that I feel in some ways there is a complicity, that we have allowed a discourse centered in anger.""

  Meanwhile, Muslim crowds worldwide were hardly condemning the attacks. Besides the now-infamous Palestinians dancing in the streets for CNN's cameramen at the news that the World Trade Center towers had collapsed, demonstrators around the world chanted their approval. These people were not all Wahhabis or uneducated mobs. "Reporters from Arab shores," according to Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami, "tell us of affluent men and women, some with years of education in American universities behind them, celebrating the cruel deed of Muhammad Atta and his hijackers." A Libyan told the New York Times: "September ii was the happiest day of my life."25

  As crowds chanted their approval of bin Laden's terrorism, even imams who condemned the terrorist attacks declined opportunities to condemn also the imams who approved of the attacks-a fact with enormous significance for the Bush/Blair attempts to portray the terrorists as a fringe group within Islam. Soon after September ii, for example, Jake Tapper of the Internet magazine Salon tried to get the communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an American Muslim named Ibrahim Hooper, to speak out against Osama bin Laden. Hooper ducked:

  "We condemn terrorism, we condemn the attack on the buildings," Hooper said. But why not condemn bin Laden by name, especially after President Bush has now stated that he was clearly responsible for the Sept. ii attacks? "If Osama bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him by name," Hooper said. But why the "if"-why qualify the response? Hooper said he resented the question. And what about prior acts of terror linked to bin Laden? Or that bin Laden has urged Muslims to kill Americans? Again, Hooper demurred, saying only that he condemns acts of terror. Both groups [CAIR and the American Muslim Council] also refuse to outright condemn Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.26

  Why?

  Perhaps a clue lies in the nature of the book that all Muslims regard as their supreme authority: the Qur'an.

  The Centrality of the Qur'an

  When Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traveled into the lands of Islam in 1979, on a seven-month expedition he recorded in his book Among the Believers: An Islamic journey, he had an encounter in Pakistan that concisely illustrated Muslim attitudes toward the Qur'an. When a Pakistani government official told a colleague that Naipaul wanted to see "Islam in action," the colleague responded, "He should read the Koran."27

  The Qur'an is the highest authority in Islam, believed by Muslims to have been dictated by Alla
h and delivered to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel. The Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nast of George Washington University explains: "The Quran constitutes the alpha and omega of the Islamic religion in the sense that all that is Islamic, whether it be its laws, its thought, its spiritual and ethical teachings and even its artistic manifestations, have their roots in the explicit or implicit teachings of the Sacred Text."28

  The Qur'an's authority in the Muslim world far surpasses the authority the Bible has held in the West. An Islamic introduction to the study of the Qur'an calls the book a "protective haven and lasting gift of bliss, excellent argument and conclusive proof." Moreover, "it cures the heart's fear, and makes just determinations whenever there is doubt. It is lucid speech, and final word, not facetiousness; a lamp whose light never extinguishes ... an ocean whose depths will never be fathomed. Its oratory stuns reason ... it combines concise succinctness and inimitable expres- sion."29 Because it contains laws as well as dogmas, the Qur'an is the Muslim's fundamental guide to living. "More than representing the supreme embodiment of the sacred beliefs of Islam, its bible and its guiding light," says another Muslim scholar, "the Qur'an constitutes the Muslim's main reference not only for matters spiritual but also for the mundane requirements of day to day living."30

  Muslims have a tremendous affection and reverence for the Qur'an as the speech of almighty God. In the words of the English Muslim convert Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, it is an "inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstacy."31 Its poetic character is legendary. Some of the suras that Muhammad gave to his followers at Mecca early in his prophetic career are hypnotically powerful even in translation:

  When the sun ceases to shine; when the stars fall down and the mountains are blown away; when camels big with young are left untended, and the wild beasts are brought together; when the seas are set alight and men's souls are reunited; when the infant girl, buried alive, is asked for what crime she was slain;32 when the records of men's deeds are laid open, and heaven is stripped bare; when Hell burns fiercely and Paradise is brought near: then each soul shall know what it has done. (Sura 81:1-14)

  Qur'anic rhythms are captivating even to the listener who does not understand Arabic; many a non-Muslim through the centuries has remarked on the singular appeal of the Qur'an chanted.

  Muslims speak of the Qur'an's mesmerizing quality as proof of its divine origin, and they commit large portions of it to heart before they are able to understand what it says. According to the scholar John Esposito:

  Today, crowds fill stadiums and auditoriums throughout the Islamic world for public Quran recitation contests. Chanting of the Quran is an art form. Reciters or chanters are held in an esteem comparable with that of opera stars in the West. Memorization of the entire Quran brings great prestige as well as merit. Recordings of the Quran are enjoyed for their aesthetic as well as their religious value.33

  A Muslim will look to muftis and imams for guidance, but will also read the Qur'an on his own. Concerning the topic of how to treat non-Muslims, the sacred book will tell him: "Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate" (Sura 9:73).34 Inside the House of Islam there may be peace, or at least the absence of war, but Islam declares perpet ual war between believers and unbelievers. "The true believers fight for the cause of God, but the infidels fight for the devil. Fight then against the friends of Satan" (Sura 4:76). The Muslim who doesn't fight is hardly worthy of the name:

  Those that stayed at home were glad that they were left behind by God's apostle [Muhammad], for they had no wish to fight for the cause of God with their wealth and with their persons. They said to each other: "Do not go to war, the heat is fierce." Say to them: "More fierce is the heat of Hell-fire!" Would that they understood! (Sura 9:81)

  Muslims often maintain that Western commentators have distorted the concept of war in the Qur'an-the jihad. We'll delve into this issue more deeply later, but it warrants some attention here. One Muslim commentator complains, "A great misconception prevails, particularly among the Christians, propagated by their zealous missionaries, with regard to the duty of jihad in Islam." It doesn't refer solely to the taking up of arms against the enemies of Islam, he says, defining it as "The use of or exerting of one's utmost powers, efforts, endeavours or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation, and this is of three kinds, namely, a visible enemy, the devil and against one's own self."35 Other Muslim divines distinguish the "greater jihad," which involves the individual's spiritual struggle, from the "lesser jihad," which takes the struggle outward against enemies of the faith. Most Muslims will be concerned in their daily lives with the greater jihad-their own efforts to live out their faith. The term can also be applied to any action taken to defend or propagate the faith.

  As for the "lesser jihad," one manual of Islamic law defines it simply as "war against non-Muslims."36 It can be waged with the weapons of apologetics and debate, but an uncomfortable fact for Islamic moderates is that nothing says it cannot involve the force of arms. Though considered lower than the spiritual struggle, armed force is an integral element of jihad. When Sheikh Omar Bakri (whose muted applause for bin Laden's terrorism we quoted above) called jihad "a sacred duty imposed by Allah on all young males in good health," he did not mean simply that Allah wants all young males to study the Qur'an and struggle against sin: "The Koran," Sheikh Omar explained, "lays down that the Muslim must be capable of bearing arms and should be ready for the Jihad."37

  There has always been a martial element in jihad. Toward the end of the seventh century, Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq, wrote after a battle: "The Great God says in the Koran: `0 true believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads.' The above command of the Great God is a great command and must be respected and followed."38 Indeed, the military aspect of jihad is firmly rooted in the Qur'an itself. The verse that Hajjaj invoked, and others like it, leave little room for doubt:

  When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. (Sura 47:4)

  Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love the aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage. (Sura 2:i9o-i9i)*

  When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy [i.e., the jizya, the special tax on non-Muslims], allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful. (Sura 9:5)

  The word translated as "idolaters" in the last passage, al-Mushrikun, is sometimes rendered as "pagans" or "polytheists." Although some Muslims refrain from using al-Mushrikun to refer to those whom the Qur'an denotes as "People of the Book"-chiefly Jews and Christians (as well as Zoroastrians)-this word and this verse are commonly used in Muslim literature as a guide for dealing with any other group that supposedly worships created beings along with God. Strictly speaking this would not include Jews, yet the Qur'an seems to place them within it by asserting that "the Jews say Ezra is the son of God" (Sura 9:3o)-a claim that corresponds to no known Jewish tradition. Christians, of course, are considered guilty of shirk-worshiping created beings-because of the doctrine of the Trinity. While Muslims insist that they respect Jesus, and indeed they do within the bounds of what the Qur'an says about him, the twelfth-century Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar sums up a prevalent Muslim view of Christianity when he calls it "a blasphemous disgrace."39

  The command to make war against Jews and Christians is clearer in other portions of the Qur'an, which tie this obligation to their supposed disbelief in what was revealed to them. "Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe neither in God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the t
rue Faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued" (Sura 9:29). And similarly: "Muhammad is God's Apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another" (Sura 48:29).

  There are no mitigating verses prescribing mercy toward unbelievers. Therefore, when former pop star Cat Stevens-a convert to Islam who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam-appealed to terrorists for the release of American journalist Daniel Pearl, his words may not have resonated well with their intended audience. "Now the time has come to show the world the Mercy of Islam," said the author of "Peace Train."40 But where is there any explicit Qur'anic warrant for extending mercy to unbelievers? Boxing legend Muhammad Ali's appeal for Pearl's release displayed a similar assumption: "I have not lost [Allah's] hope in us to show compassion where none exists and to extend mercy in the most difficult of circumstances. We as Muslims must lead by example. 1141 Since Pearl wasn't a fellow believer, however, his captors could have replied to these famous converts from Christianity simply by invoking Sura 48:29, according to which he was entitled to no compassion.42

  Still, maybe all this isn't as bad as it looks. Maybe Muslims, or at least a sizable number of them, read the Qur'an's verses about killing unbelievers in some allegorical fashion. Perhaps something has happened in Islam analogous to the slow development within Christendom that brought us from the days when a figure no less august than St. Thomas Aquinas advocated the execution of heretics, to our present-day state of enlightened toleration. Perhaps Osama is out of the mainstream.

  Secular commentators are confident that this is, or will be, the case. Islam, they explain, is "still in the Middle Ages." After all, it has now been only 1400 years since the time of Muhammad, and 1400 years after Christ, goes the analogy, Christians were killing infidels (often fellow Christians of different sects) themselves. Islam is simply a religion that will eventually mature, as did Christianity, into a more tolerant, more expansive faith. Moreover, such observers say, it already has to some degree, and the moderates now show the true face of Islam. The benighted young men training in al-Qaeda camps to kill themselves and other people are simply clinging, out of fears and resentments of various kinds, to a more primitive and violent form of their religion.