How I almost became a
millionaire
By Robert Spencer
A prominent Islamic apologist named Jamal Badawi,
renowned as a “moderate Muslim,” has offered one million dollars to
anyone who can find references in the Qur’an that condone “religious
war, or jihad.” He blames the media for giving people this idea.
Well, I want to be a millionaire. There are many
verses in the Qur’an that enjoin believers to fight. While some may
spiritualize them, their literal meaning is not hard to understand. This
verse also makes clear the religious (and physical) character of the
fight:
Therefore, when ye meet the
Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have
thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the
time for) either generosity or ransom. (47:4)
This one states the goal of the fighting in terms
that also make clear that the war is religious:
And fight them until
persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah. (
8:39
)
And this one establishes that the warfare is against
the People of the Book, that is, Jews and Christians:
Fight those who believe not
in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been
forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of
Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the
Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (
9:29
)
There are many other such verses, but I don’t have
to speak with Dr. Badawi to know what he will say about this list: I am
taking the verses out of context. I can only understand them properly in
the original Arabic. I need to be well-versed in the science of Qur’anic
interpretation, tafsir, to be
able to understand them. Only an “Islamophobe” would take such verses
at face value.
Very well. But what about Muslims take them at face
value? The Ingushetian Shura Council in Chechyna has explained in a recent
communiqué that Allah “permitted Jihad on His Straight Way, so that the
Religion of Allah could be above all, so that all areas of life could be
guided by Islam, and so that the
Earth could be cleansed of unbelief.” In support of this idea, the
Council quoted Sura 8:39, as it appears above. Likewise, in a treatise
entitled “The true meaning of Jihad” that was posted last year on
several jihadists websites, one Sidik Aucbur charged that “the West”
was trying to distort the meaning of jihad by teaching that “Jihad is
only about struggling against our desires.” He quotes the Qur’an
copiously to establish that jihad means warfare against unbelievers, and
declares: “there are over 120 verses of the Qur’an that use the
Shari’ah [Islamic legal] meaning of Jihad to mean fighting and
killing.” Aucbur adds that all four major schools of Sunni Muslim
jurisprudence agree on this point: “It has been agreed upon by the
classical scholars that the Shari'ah meaning of Jihad is to fight and kill
the kuffar [unbelievers].”
Aucbur is
hardly eccentric in pointing out this sort of thing; such arguments are
echoed by jihadists worldwide, who use passages of the Qur’an and
Islamic law to recruit new jihad warriors and convince Muslims that theirs
is the “true Islam.” Is Badawi unaware of all this? Rather than throw
his millions around with claims that the Qur’an contains nothing in the
way of exhortations to religious warfare, wouldn’t it be more honest of
him to acknowledge that such passages exist and are used by jihadists, and
to offer some cogent explanation of how their force can be blunted within
the Islamic community — if indeed it can?
This is one
of the fundamental defects of the post-9/11 discourse in
America
: Muslim spokesmen again and again have insisted that Americans accept
that Islam is a religion of peace, without offering a shred of evidence to
this effect. Meanwhile, Muslims worldwide continue to commit violence in
the name of Islam, and bland denials like Badawi’s do nothing to stop
them. As long as this goes on, nothing effective can or will be done to
stop the ideology of jihad terrorism from proliferating in mosques and
Islamic schools in the
United States
and around the world.
The Bergen
Record noted that Badawi made his million-dollar offer “jokingly,”
although it did not occur to the reporter (again, typically) to question
his assertion about the Qur’an. It’s a good thing Badawi was joking:
while I appreciate his kind offer, I don’t know what I would do with a
million dollars anyway.
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