Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  10.UN Security Council, 7316th Meeting, November 19, 2014. http://www.un.org/press/en/2014/sc11656.doc.htm. See also Spencer Ackerman, “Foreign Jihadists Flocking to Syria on ‘Unprecedented Scale’—UN,” Guardian, October 30, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/30/foreign-jihadist-iraq-syria-unprecedented-un-isis.

  11.Economist, “It Ain’t Half Hot Here, Mum: Why and How Westerners Go to Fight in Syria and Iraq,” August 30, 2014. http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/ 21614226-why-and-how-westerners-go-fight-syria-and-iraq-it -aint-half-hot-here-mum.

  12.Pew Research Center, “The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010–2030,” 2011.

  13.Pew Research Center, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” 2013.

  14.Ibid., “Survey Topline Results”: Apostasy (Q92b), Belief in God (Q16), Duty to convert (Q52), Sharia revealed word (Q66), Influence of religious leaders (Q15), Western entertainment (Q26), Polygamy (84b), Honor killings (Q54), Suicide bombings (Q89), Divorce (Q77), Daughter marrying a Christian (Q38). http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-topline1.pdf.

  CHAPTER 1: The Story of a Heretic

  1.Sohrab Ahmari, “Inside the Mind of the Western Jihadist,” Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2014. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB20001424052970203977504580115831289875638.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Michele McPhee, “Image Shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Last Message Before Arrest,” ABC News, April 17, 2014. http://abc news.go.com/Blotter/image-shows-dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-message-arrest/story?id=23335984&page=2.

  4.Ahmari, “Inside the Mind of the Western Jihadist.”

  CHAPTER 2: Why Has There Been No Muslim Reformation?

  1.Nonie Darwish, “Qaradawi: If They [Muslims] Had Gotten Rid of the Punishment for Apostasy, There Would Be No Islam Today,” February 5, 2013. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/ 3572/islam-apostasy-death. Original footage available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB9UdXAP82o.

  2.Pew Research Center, “In 30 Countries, Heads of State Must Belong to a Certain Religion,” 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/22/in-30-countries-heads-of-state-must-belong-to-a-certain-religion/.

  3.Daniel Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 81.

  4.Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 247.

  5.“Hassan al Banna” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought, edited by Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 49–55.

  6.Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, p. 8.

  7.Sahih al-Bukhari, volume 8, book 76, no. 437.

  8.Ella Landau-Tasseron, “The ‘Cyclical Reform’: A Study of the Mujaddid Tradition,” Studia Islamica 70 (1989): 79–117.

  9.David Bonagura, “Faith and Emotion,” The Catholic Thing, February 6, 2014. http://thecatholicthing.org/2014/02/06/faith -and-emotion/. Accessed December 18, 2014.

  10.Elizabeth Flock, “Saudi Blogger’s Tweets about Prophet Muhammad Stir Islamists to Call for His Execution,” Washington Post, February 9, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/post/saudi-bloggers-tweets-about-prophet-muhammad-stir-islamists-to-call-for-his-execution/2012/02/09/gIQATqbc1Q_blog.html.

  11.Ibid.

  12.Pew Research Institute, “Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Middle East,” 2014. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/ 07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle -east/.

  13.Raymond Ibrahim, “Egypt’s Sisi: Islamic ‘Thinking’ Is ‘Antagonizing the Entire World,’ ” January 1, 2015. http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/egypts-sisi-islamic-thinking-is-antagonizing-the-entire-world/. Emphasis added.

  14.Shmuel Sasoni, “Son’s Suicide Is Rohani’s Dark Secret,” Ynet Middle East, June 18, 2013. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/ 0,7340,L-4393748,00.html.

  CHAPTER 3: Muhammad and the Qur’an

  1.Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 1.

  2.Sahih Muslim, book 19, nos. 4464, 4465, 4466, 4467.

  3.Gerhard Bowering, “Muhammad (570–632),” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, edited by Gerhard Bowering (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 367–75.

  4.Qur’an, Yusufali translation. University of Southern California Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement. http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/033-qmt.php.

  5.Philip Carl Salzman, “The Middle East’s Tribal DNA.” Middle East Quarterly (2008): 23–33.

  6.Philip Carl Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2008).

  7.Gerhard Bowering, a professor of Islamic studies at Yale, summarizes the transition from Arab tribes to Muslim supertribe as follows: “For the first time in history, the tribal energy of the Arab clansmen, spent in the past on nomadic raids or tribal blood feuds, became directed towards the common goal of building a coordinated polity. This polity was to be driven by jihad.” “Muhammad (570–632),” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought.

  8.Patricia Crone, “Traditional Political Thought,” in ibid., p. 559.

  9.See Sahih Bukhari, book 53 (Khumus) and book 59 (Al-Maghaazi). University of Southern California Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement. http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/.

  10.Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).

  11.Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 10.

  12.For an analysis of determinism in Islamic history, see Suleiman Ali Mourad, “Free Will and Predestination,” in The Islamic World, edited by Andrew Rippin (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 179–90.

  13.Ibid.

  14.Tawfik Hamid, “Does Moderate Islam Exist?” Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2014. http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Does- moderate-Islam-exist-375316.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Yahya Michot, “Revelation,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Quran, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 180–96.

  18.Harald Motzki, “Alternative Accounts of the Quran’s Formation,” in ibid., p. 60.

  19.John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), and The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

  20.Fred Donner, “The Historical Context,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an, pp. 23–40.

  21.Claude Gilliot, “Creation of a Fixed Text,” in ibid., pp. 41–58.

  22.Arthur Jeffery, “Abu ‘Ubaid on the Verses Missing from the Quran,” in The Origins of the Quran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book, edited by Ibn Warraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998), pp. 150–54.

  23.Toby Lester, “What Is the Quran?” Atlantic, January 1, 1999. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-Quran/304024/.

  24.Motzki, “Alternative Accounts of the Quran’s Formation,” pp. 59–75.

  25.Michael Cook, “The Collection of the Quran,” in The Quran: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 119–26.

  26.Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 81, emphases added.

  27.Ibid.

  28.Ibn Warraq, “Introduction,” in Which Quran? Variants, Manuscripts, Linguistics, edited by Ibn Warraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2011), p. 44. Warraq refers to Abul A’la Mawdudi, Towards Understanding Islam (Gary, IN: In
ternational Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, 1970).

  29.Raymond Ibrahim, “How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War” Middle East Quarterly (2010): pp. 3–13. http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war.

  30.David Bukay, “Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam,” Middle East Quarterly, 2007, pp. 3–11.

  31.Raymond Ibrahim, “Ten Ways Islam and the Mafia Are Similar,” 2014. http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/ten-ways-the-mafia-and-islam-are-similar/.

  32.Bukay, “Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam.”

  33.Andrew Higgins, “The Lost Archive: Missing for a Half Century, a Cache of Photos Spurs Sensitive Research on Islam’s Holy Text,” Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2008. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB120008793352784631.

  34.Ibid.

  35.Michael Cook, The Quran: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 77, 80, 95, 127.

  36.Ibid., p. 79.

  37.David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), p. 43.

  38.Ibid., p. 32.

  39.Ibid., p. 42.

  40.Mariam Karouny, “Apocalyptic Prophecies Drive Both Sides to Syrian Battle for End of Time,” Reuters, April 1, 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/01/us-syria-crisis-prophecy -insight-idUSBREA3013420140401.

  41.Ibid.

  42.Ali Khan and Hisham Ramadan, Contemporary Ijtihad: Limits and Controversies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 36.

  43.Christina Phelps Harris, Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt (New York: Hyperion Press, 1981 [1964]), p. 111.

  44.Jason Burke, “Taliban Prepare for Civilian Rule,” Independent, August 21, 1998. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/taliban-prepare-for-civilian-rule-1173015.html.

  45.Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, The Second Message of Islam (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987).

  CHAPTER 4: Those Who Love Death

  1.Kevin Sullivan, “Three American Teens, Recruited Online, Are Caught Trying to Join the Islamic State,” Washington Post, December 8, 2014. http://www.washington post.com/world/national-security/three-american-teens-recruited-online-are-caught-trying-to-join-the-islamic-state/2014/12/08/8022e6c4-7afb-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Asma Afsaruddin, “Martyrdom,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, p. 329.

  5.Imam Al-Ghazzali, Ihya Ulum-id-Din (Karachi: Darul-Ishaat), vol. 4, p. 428.

  6.Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “The Special Case of Women and Children in the Afterlife,” in The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), pp. 157–82.

  7.Sermon by Sheikh Muhammad Hassan. 13:34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i92a3oKkGk.

  8.Discussion based on Terence Penelhum, “Christianity,” in Life After Death in World Religions, edited by Harold Coward (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), pp. 31–47.

  9.Thomas Hegghammer, “Suicide,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, pp. 530–31.

  10.Sullivan, “Three American Teens.”

  11.John Estherbrook, “Salaries for Suicide Bombers,” CBS News, April 3, 2002. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/salaries-for-suicide -bombers/.

  12.MEMRI, “Gaza Lecturer Subhi Al-Yazji: Suicide Bombers Are Motivated by Islamic Faith, Not Financial Need or Brainwashing,” 2014. http://www.memri.org/clip_transcript/en/4318.htm.

  13.Itamar Marcus, “Islamic Law and Terror in Palestinian Authority Ideology,” Palestinian Media Watch, 2002. http://www.palwatch .org/main.aspx?fi=155&doc_id=2321.

  14.Raphael Israeli, Islamikaze: Manifestations of Islamic Martyrology (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 216.

  15.Al-Risala, July 7, 2001.

  16.Palestinian Media Watch, January 1, 2006.

  17.Palestinian Media Watch, “Success of Shada Promotion,” 2006. http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=635&fld_id=635&doc_id =1109.

  18.Palestinian Media Watch, “Martyrs Rewarded with 72 Virgins,” 2004. http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=565.

  19.MEMRI, “Ten-Year-Old Yemeni Recites Poetry about the Liberation of Jerusalem,” 2010. http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/2723.htm.

  20.Drew Hinshaw, “Children Enlist in African Religious Battles,” Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2014.

  21.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/06/the-isis-online-campaign-luring-western-girls-to-jihad.html.

  22.Shamim Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah Il Allah in American Perspective (Brentwood: International Graphic, 1989), chapter 3, p. 33.

  23.James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed (New York: Hachette, 1985), p. 38.

  24.Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 41–42.

  25.Maribel Fierro, “Heresy and Innovation,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, pp. 218–19.

  26.Televised interview of Zakir Naik by Shahid Masood on ARY Digital. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jYU L7eBdHg.

  27.“Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi and to the Fighters and Followers of the Self-Declared ‘Islamic State,’ ” 2014. http://www.letterto baghdadi.com/.

  28.Timur Kuran, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

  CHAPTER 5: Shackled by Sharia

  1.Harriet Alexander, “Meriam Ibrahim ‘Should Be Executed,’ Her Brother Says,” Telegraph, June 5, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/10877279 /Meriam-Ibrahim-should-be-executed-her-brother-says.html.

  2.Cited in Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cabridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 1.

  3.Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 287.

  4.Gellner, Muslim Society, p. 1.

  5.Dan Diner, Lost in the Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  6.Ibid.

  7.http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/middleeast/saudi-beheading -video/.

  8.BBC, “What Are Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws?” November 6, 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12621225.

  9.Nurdin Hasan, “Aceh Government Removes Stoning Sentence from Draft Bylaw,” Jakarta Post, March 12, 2013. http://the jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/aceh-government-removes -stoning-sentence-from-draft-bylaw/.

  10.Richard Edwards, “Sharia Courts Operating in Britain,” Telegraph, September 14, 2008. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ 2957428/Sharia-law-courts-operating-in-Britain.html.

  11.Maryam Namazie, “What Isn’t Wrong with Shariah Law?” Guardian, July 5, 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/jul/05/sharia-law-religious-courts.

  12.Ruud Koopmans, “Fundamentalism and Out-Group Hostility: Immigrants and Christian Natives in Western Europe,” WZB Berlin, 2013. http://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u6/koopmans _englisch_ed.pdf.

  13.Alex Schmid, “Violent and Non-violent Extremism: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” ICCT Research Paper, The Hague, 2014, p. 8.

  14.Ahmad ibn Nagil al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classical Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (Beltsville: Amana, 1997), F 5.3.

  15.Ibid., M 10.12, p. 541.

  16.Ibid., M 3.13, M 3.15.

  17.Richard Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Traditions,” American Anthropologist 70 (4): 671–97.

  18.Phyllis Chesler, “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” Middle East Quarterly, 2009, pp. 61–69.

  19.Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, “The Problem of Honor Killings,” Foreign Policy Journal, September 2010. http://www.foreignpolicy journal.com/2010/
09/13/the-problem-of-honor-killings/.

  20.Yotam Feldner, “ ‘Honor’ Murders—Why the Perps Get Off Easy,” Middle East Quarterly, 2000, pp. 41–50. http://www.meforum.org/50/honor-murders-why-the-perps-get-off-easy. Emphases added.

  21.MEMRI, “Egyptian Cleric Sa’d Arafat: Islam Permits Wife Beating Only When She Refuses to Have Sex with Her Husband, 2010.” http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/2600 .htm.

  22.Brian Whitaker, “From Discrimination to Death—Being Gay in Iran,” Guardian, December 15, 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/gay-iran-mahmoud-ahmad inejad.

  23.IRQO, The Violations of the Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Persons in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2012. http://www2.ohchr.org/English/bodies/cescr/docs/ngos/JointHeartlandAlliance_IRQO_IH RC_Iran_CESCR50.pdf. See also Vanessa Barford, “Iran’s ‘Diagnosed Transsexuals,’ ” BBC, February 25, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7259057.stm.

  24.Pew Research Forum, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” 2013. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/.

  25.Daniel Howden, “ ‘Don’t Kill Me,’ She Screamed. Then They Stoned Her to Death,” Independent, November 9, 2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/dont-kill-me-she-screamed-then-they-stoned-her-to-death-1003462.html.

  26.Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1997), p. 144.

  CHAPTER 6: Social Control Begins at Home

  1.Michael Cook, Forbidding Wrong in Islam: A Short Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 147.

  2.Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 300–301.

  3.Ben Quinn, “ ‘Muslim Patrol’ Vigilante Pleads Guilty to Assaults and Threats,” Guardian, October 13, 2013. http://www.theguar dian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/18/muslim-patrol-vigilante-guilty -assault.