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

by Robert Spencer

  Muhammad vs. the Qur'an?

  Are these stories from the hadiths in harmony with the Qur'an? Actually, they fit in quite well with the book that commands the Prophet to "deal rigorously" with unbelievers (Sura 9:73). This he did. When the Muslims defeated the Jewish tribe of Bani Qurayzah, he ordered that trenches be dug in what had been the marketplace of their town. Then the men of the tribe, seven hundred in all, were made to sit alongside the trenches, where the Muslims beheaded them. The women and children, in accord with what Muhammad called "the judgment of God from above the seven heavens," were enslaved.56

  The forthright bloodlust and barbarism of stories like these-and there are many others like them-is not exclusive to the Muslims of Muhammad's day. Christian armies of that era behaved much the same way, particularly the Crusaders whose memory inflames Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to this day. But here again, Christians have no justification in their Scriptures or anywhere else to behave this way. Jesus did say, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34), yet he was speaking in metaphor, and he forbade his followers to fight when he was arrested (Luke zz:si).

  Muslims, on the other hand, have no verses that effectively mitigate the violent passages from the Qur'an and Sunnah; classical and stillrespected Islamic theologians have used the concept of naskh (abrogation) to teach that the Qur'an's belligerent verses cancel out any others that seem to be more tolerant and peaceful. To minimize the stories of Muhammad's bloody escapades by referring to the historical context in which they occurred is not compelling, because as we have seen, Muslims themselves do not do this. The Qur'an and its Prophet are guides valid for all time. To admit any shame at the bloody exploits of Muhammad or those who emulate him today would be to judge Muhammad. But in Muslim tradition, Muhammad cannot be judged; rather, he is the standard by which all others are judged.

  Does Islam Respect

  Human Rights?

  LIKE CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM TEACHES THAT ONE God created the heavens and the earth, and all things visible and invisible. Like Christianity, Islam calls out to all people on earth, offering them what it proclaims as the only way to salvation. But while these elements of their faith led Christians-with the help of John Locke and other founding fathers of the Enlightenment-to articulate what the world knows today as fundamental human rights, the same rights which triumphed dramatically in the West have not taken hold in Islam.

  Hard-line Muslims have openly admitted this fact. In 1985, Sa'id Raja'i-Khorassani, the permanent delegate to the United Nations from the Islamic Republic of Iran, declared, according to Amir Taheri, that "the very concept of human rights was `a Judeo-Christian invention' and inadmissible in Islam.... According to Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the Shah's `most despicable sins' was the fact that Iran was one of the original group of nations that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."'

  Does God Desire the Death of the Sinner?

  Islam's quite different understanding of human rights is manifested in microcosm in the way the Qur'an regards unbelievers. Here Islam sharply divides the world in half, with harsh consequences for non-Muslims. Taheri explains that besides maintaining strict distinctions between men and women, "Islam further divides human beings into two groups: the Muslims and the non-Muslims. All male Muslims are equal and enjoy the same individual and collective rights and privileges. Non-Muslims living in a society where Muslims form the majority and control the state, however, are treated separately."2 We'll examine the details of this separate treatment later on; at this point it suffices to note that Muslim society is divided in such a manner, and this division makes it tough for the concept of universal human rights to gain much of a foothold.

  The reasons why are rooted in the Qur'an, which proclaims that "Muhammad is God's Apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another" (Sura 48:29). Far from being endowed with unalienable rights according to the Western idea, unbelievers in the realm of Islam do not seem to be entitled to anything but hatred and contempt, and ultimately great suffering. A huge portion of the Qur'an is taken up with hellfire-and-brimstone warnings of terrible intensity.

  Hell exists in the Christian scheme of things, of course, and is often harrowingly portrayed. Yet Christianity, in contradistinction to Islam, declares unequivocally that God "has no pleasure in the death of any one, says the LORD God; so turn, and live" (Ezekiel 18:32). Moreover, Christian thinkers in most churches and denominations throughout history have regarded hell as a consequence of the sinner's free choice.*

  The Qur'an, on the other hand, repeatedly announces that Allah "leads the wrongdoers astray" (Sura 14:28) and "had He pleased, He would have given you guidance all" (Sura 16:9). Evidently he does not so please: the judgment and torture of the wicked is a great preoccupation of the Muslim holy book, dwelt upon with unmistakable relish. The vision of horror is repeated many times. For instance:

  For the wrongdoers We have prepared a fire which will encompass them like the walls of a pavilion. When they cry out for help they shall be showered with water as hot as molten brass, which will scald their faces. Evil shall be their drink, dismal their resting-place. (Sura 18:29)3

  Those who have denied the Book and the message We sent through Our apostles shall realize the truth hereafter: when, with chains and shackles around their necks, they shall be dragged through scalding water and burnt in the fire of Hell. (Sura 40:71)

  They that deny Our revelations We will burn in fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than We shall give them other skins, so that they may truly taste the scourge. God is mighty and wise. (Sura 4:56)

  Christianity too has had a full share of fire-and-brimstone preachers, but neither the Bible nor Christian tradition depicts hell with such lurid delight. The paintings of Hieronymous Bosch and the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri contain some analogous imagery, but neither has ever enjoyed the canonical status of the Qur'an. Indeed, Dante's splendid poem, which no one has ever mistaken for divine revelation, falls within a long tradition of allegory. The Bible itself does contain warnings of hellfire, but these are in no way as graphically detailed as those in the Qur'an, and do not appear in the context of a Divine Will so zealous to punish unbelief as to lead sinners purposely astray.

  It is no surprise that this dogma should have implications in the behavior of individual believers. A man who imbibes the words of the Qur'an from his earliest days, memorizing long passages even before he has any idea what it means, singing it, chanting it, repeating it, proclaiming it every day of his life, will unavoidably be influenced by the spirit of the pages. The Muslim world not only welcomes that influence, but even celebrates and glories in it.

  The spirit of the Qur'an is one of judgment, not mercy. About the only place where the Qur'an mentions Allah's mercy is the heading of each Sura: "In the Name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful." Beyond that and scattered passages, the reader will have a hard time finding evidence of his compassion and mercy-at least for non-Muslims.

  The pious Muslim is the executor of the divine judgment, at least toward those who war against Muslim armies.

  Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be put to death or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the country. They shall be held up to shame in this world and sternly punished in the hereafter: except those that repent before you reduce them. For you must know that God is forgiving and merciful. (Sura 5:33)

  Is this the content of Islamic mercy: accept Islam or suffer banishment, amputation or death by crucifixion?

  The Qur'an further enjoins: "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous." (Sura 9:123)

  And also: "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)

  Those who reject the message of the Qur'an but live in Muslim
societies are entitled to a small number of narrowly delineated rights, as we shall see in more detail later on. Those who resist incorporation into those societies are entitled only to the judgment executed by the good Muslims here on earth and by Allah Himself in the hereafter. Muslim sinners, according to the letter of the Sharia (although, to be sure, this has been interpreted variously in different times and places), deserve not mercy but the harshest of punishments.

  The world recoiled when the Taliban began to use a soccer stadium that Western relief agencies had built in Kabul for executions of those who violated Islamic law. When questioned about this horrifying development, a Taliban official simply requested that a Western agency build them a suitable stadium for public executions, so that they could go back to playing soccer in the stadium! He felt no need to apologize for the executions themselves. They were simply the Taliban's Islamic duty.

  When Amnesty International lodged a protest, Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar protested in turn. The Pakistani News Network International reported:

  Threatening Amnesty International with grave consequences for criticism of Taliban's human rights, its supreme leader Mullah Omar, has said the student [that is, the Taliban] is simply implementing and observing Islamic injunctions. In an interview with Voice of America, Mullah Omar said Taliban would react sharply if AI continued the criticism. He rejected the AI report as mere allegations. "We are just implementing the divine injunctions," he maintained.'

  Is it unfair to use the Taliban as exemplar when discussing the fate of human rights under Islam? Maybe it would be if their behavior were unusual, or against the words of the Qur'an. But throughout Islamic history, Muslims have used the plain words of the Qur'an that we have already quoted in order to justify the idea that it isn't a sin to kill nonMuslims.

  Opium and the Kafirs

  On the issue of drugs, too, the Taliban divides the world into Muslims and non-Muslims. In his seminal study of the Taliban, journalist Ahmed Rashid reports:

  Abdul Rashid, the head of the Taliban's anti-drugs control force in Kandahar, spelt out the nature of his unique job. He is authorized to impose a strict ban on the growing of hashish, "because it is consumed by Afghans and Muslims." But, Rashid tells me without a hint of sarcasm, "Opium is permissible because it is consumed by kafirs [unbelievers] in the West and not by Muslims or Afghans."5

  This seems to have been a common view among the Taliban. Another Talib named Khaled asked, "Who cares if heroin is wreaking havoc in the West? It doesn't matter; they aren't Muslims."6

  Meanwhile, a Malaysian Muslim told V. S. Naipaul that believers should not use tobacco, for essentially the same reason that the Taliban encouraged non-Muslims to use opium: "Most of the tobacco manufacturers are Jewish, and in order to destroy the Jews we must not consume their products.... The Jews are the enemies of God."'

  Many mullahs would be quick to reply that Islam prohibits all drug trafficking, whether to believers or to enemies of God. Yet although what the Taliban did was extreme, it wasn't without support in Islamic thought. After all, what respect do Muslims owe unbelievers? The Qur'an says to fight them and subdue them everywhere. If selling them drugs will do the job, why not? For fourteen hundred years, Muslims have regarded infidels as not entitled to the basic rights and respect owed to Muslims. Why then should the Taliban be expected to subscribe to the Western notion of universal human rights?

  The Cost of Conversion

  A Muslim convert to Christianity (or to anything else) in a Muslim land forfeits his life. By classical Muslim understanding, the apostate "deserves to die."8 The full story comes later on, but a few representative details have a place here. In Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries that follow the strict letter of Islamic law, the Sharia, conversion from Islam is a capital offense. A fine Catholic priest of my acquaintance had to flee Egypt in the 199os or face almost certain death. His crime? Making converts from Islam.

  Even in a relatively open Muslim society like Egypt, Christians live under constant threat. According to Amnesty International, in July 2000 "the Sohag Criminal Court sentenced Sourial Gayed Ishaq, a 37-yearold Coptic Christian, to three years' imprisonment for publicly insulting Islam."9 This parallels the case of Ayub Masih, who faces execution in Pakistan for allegedly suggesting that a Muslim read Salman Rushdie. Because the testimony of Christians weighs less than that of Muslims, Masih's denials have been discounted.

  Nor are Christians the only targets for such punishment; Muslims in minority sects receive hardly more tolerance. On August io, 1998, Mullah Marion Niazi, the Taliban governor of the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, had this to say about Afghanistan's minority Hazara people, who are not Sunni Muslims like the Taliban, but Shi'ites like the Ayatollah Khomeini: "Hazaras are not Muslim. You can kill them. It is not a sin." This idea is based on the Qur'anic injunction to "slay [unbelievers] wherever you find them" (Sura z:191; also 4:89). Niazi added the invitation: "Oh Hazaras! Become Muslims and pray God as us."10 The Taliban massacred large numbers of Hazaras-enough to get the Hazaras listed as victims of genocide by international human rights groups."

  Shi'ite Muslims, the largest minority Muslim sect worldwide, are also in danger in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim holy land controlled by Wahhabi Muslims. Amnesty International reports this incident from Saudi Arabia: `Abd al-Karim Mal al Allah, a Shia Muslim, was found guilty of apostasy and executed in 1992. It has been reported that he was told by the judge `abandon your rejectionist beliefs or I will kill you.""' The situation has not improved since then. Sheikh Ali Khursan, an official of al-Dawa, a Saudi government organization dedicated to promoting Wahhabism, said this of the Shi'ites: "These people are infidels because they do not follow the Sunna [the traditions about Muhammad].... They don't believe that the Quran is complete and they hate the Sun- nis."13 To classify them as infidels is to expose them to a variety of harsh punishments. According to news reports, "Four Shiite high school students in Najran [a Shi'ite city in Saudi Arabia], aged 16 and 17, were arrested after a fight with a Wahhabi instructor who insulted their faith. They received two to four years in jail and Soo to Boo lashes each."" Two teachers suspected of fomenting riots among the Shi'ite minority in Saudi Arabia were each sentenced to be given 1,500 lashes, "to be carried out in front of their families, students and other teachers."15

  Other countries are little better. In the Comoro Islands off Madagascar (home of the "living fossil" fish, the coelacanth), there are no particular incidents of repression against religious minorities to rival those recounted above, for such minorities do not exist: all religious observance outside of Islam is prohibited. Members of other religions aren't even allowed to meet together.

  Slavery in the Qur'an

  Non-Muslims in at least two Muslim countries, Sudan and Mauritania, also face the threat of slavery. This is an especially touchy issue for Islam, because its apologists often refer to past slavery in the West to compare Islam favorably with Christianity. Yet slaveholding, a topic of perennial reproach in the history of the United States, is today practiced not within the former bounds of Christendom, but only in Muslim lands.

  Once again, chief responsibility for this must be placed upon the Qur'an. Slavery, especially of war prisoners, is taken for granted throughout the Muslim holy book. The Qur'an casually assumes that a believer will be a slaveowner: "The penalty for a broken oath is the feeding of ten needy men with such food as you normally offer to your own people; or the clothing of ten needy men; or the freeing of one slave" (Sura 5:89). The Qur'an also includes directions about marriage with slaves: "Take in marriage those among you who are single and those of your male and female slaves who are honest" (Sura 24:32). Taking slaves as concubines (in addition to one's wives) is expressly allowed as well: "Blessed are the believers, who are humble in their prayers; who avoid profane talk, and give alms to the destitute; who restrain their carnal desires (except with their wives and slave-girls, for these are lawful to them)" (Sura 23:1).

  Slavery is, admittedly, also taken
for granted in the Bible. But here again the radically different ways that Christians and Muslims understand their scriptures, and the different contents of the rest of each book, are decisive. The abolitionist movement grew in the United States because of Christians who reasoned from the Bible's declarations of universal salvation and the Christian understanding of the dignity of mankind as created by God. Confederate Protestants pointed to passages of the New Testament in support of the "peculiar institution," but Christians were not restricted to this single interpretation.

  Despite the words of the Qur'an, many Muslims have attempted to construct arguments against slavery on Islamic principles. Shehzad Saleem, director of the Institute of Islamic Studies in Lahore, Pakistan, states flatly: "Among many other misconceptions about Islam is the notion that it gives sanction to slavery and permits its followers to enslave prisoners of war, particularly women and establish extra-marital relations with them. We strongly affirm that Islam has not the slightest link with slavery and concubinage. On the contrary, it completely forbids these practices." This is a noble assertion, but wholly at odds with the Qur'anic passages quoted above, which Saleem doesn't refer to in his article, "The Condemnation of Slavery in Islam." Instead, he ascribes Muslim acceptance of slavery to prevailing social conditions, saying, "Islam had adopted a gradual process to abolish the institution of slavery because of the social conditions prevalent in Arabia at that time. It must be kept in mind that slavery was an integral part of the pre-Islamic Arab society." 16

  Christians often make a similar argument: the Church didn't move against slavery in apostolic times because of prevailing social conditions. This may be true in the histories of both religions, but here again the established understanding of the Qur'an handicaps the Muslim. The verses above make reformists like Saleem vulnerable to charges that they are disobedient to Allah. Since Muslims almost universally hold the Qur'an to be the perfect Word of Allah, valid for all time, those who join Saleem in suggesting that it doesn't enunciate a universal moral principle because of variable "social conditions" are inviting suspicion of their Islamic loyalty. The continuing existence of slavery in pockets of the Islamic world indicates that some Muslims still take the Qur'an at face value on this matter.