Given Islam's violent history and the unfavorable contrast
of its oppressive practices against 21st century values, Muslims are
hard-pressed to repackage their faith in the modern age. Some of
its leading apologists have come to rely on tricks involving semantics and
half-truths that are, in turn, repeated by novices and even those outside the
faith.
This is a document (which we hope to improve on and expand
over time) that exposes some of these games and helps truth-seekers find their
way through the maze of disingenuous (often blatantly false) claims about Islam
and its history.
“If Islam were a violent religion, then all Muslims
would be violent.”
The Muslim Game:
Most Muslims live peacefully, without harming others, so how
can Islam be a violent religion? If Islam were the religion of
terrorists, then why aren’t most Muslims terrorists?
The Truth:
The same question can easily be turned around. If
Islam is a religion of peace, then why is it the only one that consistently
produces religiously-motivated terrorist attacks each and every day of the
year? Why are thousands of people willing and able to cut off an innocent
person’s head or fly a plane full of passengers into an office building while
screaming praises to Allah? Where’s the outrage among other Muslims when
this happens… and why do they get more worked up over cartoons and hijabs?
Rather than trying to answer a question with a question,
however, let's just say that the reason why most Muslims don't kill is that regardless
of what Islam may or may not teach it's wrong to kill over religious
beliefs.
Consider that many Muslims would not even think of
amputating a thief's hand. Does this mean that it is against Islam to do
so? Of course not! In fact, it is clearly mandated in both the
Qur'an (5:38) and the example set by Muhammad according
to the Hadith (Bukhari 81:792). As individuals, Muslims
make their own choices about which parts of their religion they practice.
However, even though believers may think whatever they want
about what Islam says or doesn't say, it doesn't change what Islam says about
itself. As a documented ideology, Islam exists independently of anyone's
opinion. As such, it may be studied objectively and apart from how
anyone else practices or chooses to interprets it.
The Qur'an plainly teaches that it is not only proper to
kill in the name of Allah in certain circumstances, but that it is actually a requirement. Muslims who don't believe in
killing over religion may be that way out of ignorance or because they are more
loyal to the moral law written in their hearts than they are to the details of
Muhammad’s religion. Those who put Islam first or know Islam best know
otherwise.
In fact, few Muslims have ever read the Qur'an to any
extent, much less pursued an honest investigation of the actual words and deeds
of Muhammad, which were more in line with hedonism, deception, power and violence than with moral restraint.
The harsh rules that Muslim countries impose on free speech to protect Islam
from critique also prevent it from being fully understood. In the West,
many Muslims, devout or otherwise, simply prefer to believe that Islam is
aligned with the Judeo-Christian principles of peace and tolerance, even if it
means filtering evidence to the contrary.
It is no coincidence, however, that the purists who take
Islam too heart are far more likely to become terrorists than
humanitarians. Those most prone to abandoning themselves to Muhammad's
message without moral preconception are always the more dangerous and
supremacist-minded. They may be called ‘extremists’ or ‘fundamentalists,’
but, at the end of the day, they are also dedicated to the Qur’an and following
the path of Jihad as mandated by Muhammad.
“Other
religions kill, too.”
The Muslim Game:
Bringing other religions down to the level of Islam is one of
the most popular strategies of Muslim apologists when confronted with the
spectacle of Islamic violence. Remember Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma
City bomber? How about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian killer? Why
pick on Islam if other religions have the same problems?
The Truth:
Because they don’t.
Regardless of what his birth certificate may or may not have
said, Timothy McVeigh was not a religious man (in fact, he stated explicitly
that he was agnostic and that "science" was his
religion). At no time did he credit his deeds to religion, quote Bible
verses, or claim that he killed for Jesus. His motives are very well documented
through interviews and research. God is never mentioned.
The so-called “members of other faiths” alluded to by
Muslims are nearly always just nominal members who have no active
involvement. They are neither inspired by, nor do they credit religion as
Muslim terrorists do - and this is what makes it a very different matter.
Islam is associated with Islamic terrorism because that is
the association that the terrorists themselves choose to make.
Muslims who compare crime committed by people who happen to
be nominal members of other religions to religious terror committed explicitly
in the name of Islam are comparing apples to oranges.
Yes, some of the abortion clinic bombers were religious (as
Muslims enjoy pointing out), but consider the scope of the problem. There
have been six deadly attacks over a 36 year period in the U.S.
Eight people died. This is an average of one death every 4.5 years.
By contrast, Islamic terrorists staged nearly ten
thousand deadly attacks in just the six years following September 11th,
2001. If one goes back to 1971, when Muslim armies in Bangladesh began
the mass slaughter of Hindus, through the years of Jihad in the Sudan, Kashmir
and Algeria, and the present-day Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq, the number of innocents
killed in the name of Islam probably exceeds five million
over this same period.
Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 innocents in a lone rampage
on July 22nd, 2011, was originally misidentified as a "Christian
fundamentalist" by the police. In fact, the killings were later
determined to be politically motivated. He also left behind a detailed
1500 page manifesto in which he stated that he is not religious, does not know
if God exists, and prefers a secular state to a theocracy. Needless to
say, he does not quote any Bible verses in support of his killing spree, nor
did he shout "praise the Lord" as he picked people off.
In the last ten years, there have been perhaps a dozen or so
religiously-inspired killings by people of all other faiths combined. No
other religion produces the killing sprees that Islam does nearly every day of
the year. Neither do they have verses in their holy texts that arguably support
it. Nor do they have large groups across the globe dedicated to the mass murder of people who
worship a different god, as the broader community of believers struggles with
ambivalence and tolerance for a radical clergy that supports the terror.
Muslims may like to pretend that other religions are just as
subject to "misinterpretation" as is their “perfect” one, but the
reality speaks of something far worse.
Muhammad preached “No
compulsion in religion.”
(Qur’an, Verse 2:256)
(Qur’an, Verse 2:256)
The Muslim Game:
Muslims quote verse 2:256 from the Qur’an to prove what a
tolerant religion Islam is. The verse reads in part, “Let there be no
compulsion in religion; truth stands out clearly from error…”
The Truth:
One trick of apologists is to quote from earlier verses in
the Quran to portray Islam as peaceful without mentioning that they are
superceded by later, more violent verses.
The Muslim who offers verse 2:256 may or may not know that
it is from one of the earliest Suras (or chapters) from the Medinan
period. It was “revealed” at a time when the Muslims had just arrived in
Medina after being chased out of Mecca. They needed to stay in the good
graces of the stronger tribes around them, many of which were Jewish. It
was around this time, for example, that Muhammad decided to have his followers
change the direction of their prayer from Mecca to Jerusalem.
But Muslims today pray toward Mecca. The reason for
this is that Muhammad issued a later command that abrogated (or nullified) the
first. In fact, abrogation is a very important principle to keep in mind
when interpreting the Qur’an – and verse 2:256 in particular – because later
verses (in chronological terms) are said to abrogate any earlier ones that may
be in contradiction (Qur'an 2:106, 16:101).
Muhammad’s message was far closer to peace and tolerance
during his early years at Mecca, when he didn’t have an army and was trying to
pattern his new religion after Christianity. This changed dramatically after he attained the power to conquer, which he
eventually used with impunity to bring other tribes into the Muslim fold.
Contrast verse 2:256 with Suras 9 and 5, which were the last “revealed,” and it
is easy to see why Islam has been anything but a religion of peace from the
time of Muhammad to the present day.
There is some evidence that verse 2:256 may not have been
intended for Muslims at all, but is instead meant to be a warning to other
religions concerning their treatment of Muslims. Verse 193 of the same
Sura instructs Muslims to "fight with them (non-Muslims)
until there is no more persecution and religion is only for Allah."
This reinforces the narcissistic nature of Islam, which places Muslims above
non-Muslims, and applies a very different value and standard of treatment to
both groups.
Though most Muslims today reject the practice of outright
forcing others into changing their religion, forced conversion has been a part of Islamic
history since Muhammad first picked up a sword. As he is recorded in many
places as saying, "I have been commanded to fight against people till
they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of
Allah..." (See Bukhari 2:24)
Muhammad put his words into practice. When he marched
into Mecca with an army, one of his very first tasks was to destroy idols at
the Kaaba, which had been devoutly worshipped by the Arabs for centuries.
By eliminating these objects of worship, he destroyed the religion of the
people and supplanted it with his own. Later, he ordered that Jews and
Christians who would not convert to Islam be expelled from Arabia. Does forcing others
to choose between their homes or their faith sound like "no compulsion in
religion?"
According to Muslim historians, Muhammad eventually ordered
people to attend prayers at the mosque to the point of burning alive those who didn't comply. He
also ordered that children who reached a certain age be beaten if they refused to pray.
Interestingly, even the same contemporary Muslims who
quote 2:256 usually believe in Islamic teachings that sound very much like
religious compulsion. These would be the laws punishing apostasy by
death (or imprisonment, for females), and the
institutionalized discrimination against religious minorities under Islamic
rule that is sometimes referred to as “dhimmiitude.”
Islamic law explicitly prohibits non-Muslims from sharing
their faith and even includes the extortion of money from them in the form of a
tax called the jizya. Those who refuse to pay this arbitrary
amount are put to death. If this isn’t compulsion, then what is?
The Crusades
The Muslim Game:
Muslims love talking about the Crusades… and Christians love
apologizing for them. To hear both parties tell the story, one would
believe that Muslims were just peacefully minding their own business in lands
that were legitimately Muslim, when Christian armies decided to wage holy war
and "kill millions.”
The Truth:
Every part of this myth is a lie. By the rules that
Muslims claim for themselves, the Crusades were perfectly justified, and the
excesses (though beneath Christian standards) pale in comparison with the
historical treatment of conquered populations at the hands of Muslims.
Here are some quick facts…
The first Crusade began in 1095… 460 years after
the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies, 457 years after
Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies, 453 years after Egypt
was taken by Muslim armies, 443 after Muslims first plundered
Italy, 427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the
Christian capital of Constantinople, 380 years after Spain was
conquered by Muslim armies, 363 years after France was first
attacked by Muslim armies, 249 years after the capital of the
Christian world, Rome itself, was sacked by a Muslim army, and only after
centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of
Christians.
By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had
conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.
Europe had been harassed by Muslims since the first few
years following Muhammad’s death. As early as 652, Muhammad’s followers
launched raids on the island of Sicily, waging a full-scale occupation 200
years later that lasted almost a century and was punctuated by massacres, such
as that at the town of Castrogiovanni, in which 8,000 Christians were put to
death. In 1084, ten years before the first crusade, Muslims staged
another devastating Sicilian raid, burning churches in Reggio, enslaving monks
and raping an abbey of nuns before carrying them into captivity.
In 1095, Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I Comneus began begging
the pope in Rome for help in turning back the Muslim armies which were
overrunning what is now Turkey, grabbing property as they went and turning
churches into mosques. Several hundred thousand Christians had been
killed in Anatolia alone in the decades following 1050 by Seljuk invaders interested
in 'converting' the survivors to Islam.
Not only were Christians losing their lives in their own
lands to the Muslim advance but pilgrims to the Holy Land from other parts of
Europe were being harassed, kidnapped, molested, forcibly converted to Islam
and occasionally murdered. (Compare this to Islam’s justification for
slaughter on the basis of Muslims being denied access to the Meccan pilgrimage
in Muhammad’s time).
Renowned scholar Bernard Lewis points out that the Crusades,
though "often compared with the Muslim jihad, was a delayed and limited
response to the jihad and in part also an imitation.... Forgiveness for
sins to those who fought in defence of the holy Church of God and the Christian
religion and polity, and eternal life for those fighting the infidel: these
ideas... clearly reflect the Muslim notion of jihad."
Lewis goes on to state that, "unlike the jihad, it
[the Crusade] was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of
threatened or lost Christian territory... The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was
perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all
the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule...
The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law."
The Crusaders only invaded lands that were Christian.
They did not attack Saudi Arabia (other than a half-hearted expedition by a
minor figure) or sack Mecca, as the Muslims had done (and continued doing) to
Italy and Constantinople. Their primary goal was the recapture of
Jerusalem and the security of safe passage for pilgrims. The toppling of
the Muslim empire was not on the agenda.
The period of Crusader “occupation” (of its own former land)
was stretched tenuously over about 170 years, which is less than the Muslim
occupation of Sicily and southern Italy alone - to say nothing of Spain and
other lands that had never been Islamic before falling victim to Jihad.
In fact, the Arab occupation of North Africa and Middle Eastern lands outside
of Arabia is almost 1400 years old.
Despite popular depiction, the Crusades were not a
titanic battle between Christianity and Islam. Although originally
dispatched by papal decree, the "occupiers" quickly became part of
the political and economic fabric of the Middle East without much regard for
religious differences. Their arrival was largely accepted by the local
population as simply another change in authority. Muslim radicals even
lamented the fact that many of their co-religionists preferred to live under Frankish
(Christian) rule than migrate to Muslim lands.
The Islamic world was split into warring factions, many of
which allied themselves with the Frankish princes against each other at one
time or another. This even included Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who is
credited with eventually ousting the "Crusaders." Contrary to
recent propaganda, however, Saladin had little interest in holy war until a
rogue Frankish prince began disrupting his trade routes. Both before and
after the taking of Jerusalem, his armies spent far more time and resources
battling fellow Muslims.
For its part, the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire
preferred to have little to do with the Crusader kingdoms and went so far as to
sign treaties with their Muslim rivals on occasion.
Another misconception is that the Crusader era was a time of
constant war. In fact, very little of this overall period included
significant hostilities. In response to Muslim expansion or aggression,
there were only about 20 years of actual military campaigning, much of which
was spent on organization and travel. (They were from 1098-1099,
1146-1148, 1188-1192, 1201-1204, 1218-1221, 1228-1229, and 1248-1250). By
comparison, the Muslim Jihad against the island of Sicily alone lasted 75
grinding years.
Ironically, the Crusades are justified by the Quran itself,
which encourages Holy War in order to "drive them out of the places
from whence they drove you out" (2:191), even though the aim wasn't to
expel Muslims from the Middle East, but more to bring an end to the molestation
of pilgrims. Holy war is not justified by New Testament teachings, which
is why the Crusades are an anomaly, the brief interruption of centuries of
relentless Jihad against Christianity that began long before and continued well
after.
The greatest crime of the Crusaders was the sacking of
Jerusalem, in which at least 3,000 people were said to have been
massacred. This number is dwarfed by the number of Jihad victims, from
India to Constantinople, Africa and Narbonne, but Muslims have never apologized
for their crimes and never will.
What is called 'sin and excess' by other religions, is what
Islam refers to as duty willed by Allah.
"Muhammad never killed anyone.”
The Muslim Game:
In order to give others the impression that Muhammad was a
man of peace, Muslims sometimes claim that he never killed anyone. By
this, they mean that he never slew anyone with his own hand (except in battle…
which they may or may not remember to mention).
The Truth:
By this logic, Hitler never killed anyone either.
Obviously, if you order the execution of prisoners or the
murder of critics by those who are under your command, then you are at least as
guilty as those who carry out your orders. In Muhammad’s case, the number
of people that he had murdered were literally too many for historians to fully
know.
There were the men taken prisoner at Badr (including one who
cried out for his children at the point of execution), a mother of five
(stabbed to death for questioning Muhammad’s claim to be a prophet), dozens of
Jewish citizens, including poets and merchants who were accused of mocking
Islam, numerous adulterers, at least one slave girl, 800 Qurayza men and boys taken captive and
beheaded on Muhammad’s order, a Qurayza woman made delirious by the execution
of her family, and an unfortunate individual who was tortured to death so that
the prophet of Islam could discover his hidden treasure and then “marry” his
freshly-widowed wife.
Indirectly, Muhammad is also responsible for the millions
upon millions of people who have been slaughtered down through the centuries by
those carrying on his legacy of Jihad. Not only did he kill, he is truly
one of the bloodiest figures in history.
“The
Qur’an Teaches that all Life is Sacred”
(Qur’an, Verse 5:32)
(Qur’an, Verse 5:32)
The Muslim Game:
In an effort to portray their religion as non-violent,
Muslim apologists vigorously employ verse 5:32, which would appear to promote a
universal principal that all life is sacred to Allah - especially the way it is
typically quoted by apologists:
"…if
any one slew a person… it would be as if he slew a whole people; and if any one
saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of a whole people…"
(As quoted by the Fiqh Council of North America in their ultimately meaningless “Fatwa against Terrorism”)
(As quoted by the Fiqh Council of North America in their ultimately meaningless “Fatwa against Terrorism”)
The Truth:
This fragment of verse 5:32 is what the apologists want
non-Muslims to believe is in the Qur’an, as opposed to the dozens of other
open-ended passages that command warfare, beheadings and torture. But
even what they usually quote from 5:32 isn’t quite how it appears.
Remember all those ellipses? There's something being left out.
Here’s the full text of the verse:
“On
that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one
slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the
land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a
life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although
there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that,
many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.”
First, notice the gaping loophole. Killing is
allowed in cases of murder or “for spreading mischief in the land.”
Murder is pretty straightforward, but “spreading mischief?” If anything
begged for a careful and precise explanation, this phrase certainly
would. But generations of Muslims are left to apply their own
interpretation of what “mischief” means - with varying standards.
Violating Sharia law or sharing a different religious faith appears to qualify.
Verse 7:103 of the Quran even indicates that merely rejecting Muhammad and the
Quran counts as "mischief".
Secondly, note the broader context of this verse. It
turns out that this isn’t a divine command to Muslims after all. It’s a
recounting of a rule that was given to the Jews. It isn’t an admonition
against killing. It’s an indictment against the Jews for violating the
law given to them. “Any one” doesn’t mean “anyone,” but rather “any one”
of the Jews.
Any application to Muslims would have to apply only to
Muslims - as in Muslim on Muslim murder within the brotherhood of
believers. In fact, the context of the verse is the murder of Abel by
Cain. Historically, this verse has never been interpreted by
Islamic scholars to mean that Allah places equal value on the lives of
non-Muslims. The Quran says that restitution for murder is bound by the
law of equality (2:178) and that non-believers are not equal to Muslims
(39:09). Muhammad affirmed that while a Muslim may be punished with
death for killing a fellow Muslim, they should never be slain for killing a non-believer.
Rather than encouraging tolerance, Sura 5 as a whole is
actually an incitement of hatred with a hint of violence. Jews and
Christians are explicitly cursed as ‘wicked’ people with ‘diseased
hearts’ and as hateful ‘blasphemers’ respectively. Muhammad
goes on to coyly remind his people that Allah loves those who “fight” in his
service - and it’s fairly obvious who the enemy is.
Muslim apologists conveniently leave out the fact that the
gruesome verse which follows 5:32 actually mandates killing in the case
of the aforementioned “mischief”. It even suggests crucifixion and “the
cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides.”
Although verse 5:32 recounts the law given to Jews, the
verse that follows is clearly intended for Muslims. Verse 5:33 provides
the basis for blasphemy laws, in which people are executed for insulting or
questioning Islam. Ironically then, the very part of the Quran that
apologists use to portray Islam as a non-violent religion has long been used as
justification for making verbal offense into a capital crime.
So, the Quran's best example of moral instruction is a
passage which actually mandates the torture and execution of those deemed a
threat to Islamic hegemony...
With this being the best that Islam has to offer, it’s not
hard to guess why the religion contributes over a thousand deadly terrorist
attacks to the world each and every year.
“Muslims
only kill in self-defense.”
The Muslim Game:
Muslims often claim that their religion only orders them to
kill in self-defense (ie. when their own lives are in danger).
The Truth:
In fact, self-defense is just one of several conditions
under which Muslims are permitted to take the lives of others. The myth
of killing only in self-defense is easily disproved from the accounts of
Muhammad’s own life as recorded in Islam’s sacred texts (with which Muslim
terrorists are only too familiar).
Muhammad’s career of killing began with raids on merchant caravans traveling between
Syria and Mecca. His men would usually sneak up on unsuspecting drivers
and kill those who defended their goods. There was no self-defense
involved here at all (on the part of the Muslims, at least). This was
old-fashioned armed robbery and murder – sanctioned by Allah (according to
Muhammad, who also demanded a fifth of the loot for himself).
The very first battle that Muhammad fought was at Badr, when a Meccan army of 300 was sent out to
protect the caravans from Muslim raids. The Meccans did not threaten
Muhammad, and (turning this Muslim myth on its ear) only fought in self-defense
after they were attacked by the Muslims. Following the battle,
Muhammad established the practice of executing surrendered captives – something
that would be repeated on many other occasions.
The significance of this episode can hardly be overstated,
because it lies at the very beginning of the long chain of Muslim violence that
eventually passed right through the heart of America on September 11th.
The early Muslims were not being threatened by
those whom they attacked, and certainly not by those whom they had
captured. They staged aggressive raids to eventually provoke war, just as
al-Qaeda attempts to do in our time.
Muslims try to justify Muhammad's violence by claiming that
he and his followers “suffered persecution” at the hands of the Meccans in an
earlier episode, in which Muhammad was evicted from the city of Mecca and had to seek
refuge at Medina. But even the worst of this persecution did not rise to the level of killing. Nor
were Muhammad and his Muslims in any danger at all in their new home of
Medina. They were free to get on with their lives.
Even Muhammad’s own men evidently questioned whether they
should be pursuing and killing people who did not pose a threat to them, since
it seemed to contradict earlier, more passive teachings. To convince
them, Muhammad passed along a timely revelation from Allah stating that “the
persecution of Muslims is worse than slaughter [of non-Muslims]” (Sura
2:191). This verse established the tacit principle that the authority of
Muslims is of higher value even than the very lives of others. There is
no larger context of morality against which acts are judged. All that
matters is how an event impacts or benefits Muslims.
Under Muhammad, slaves and poets were executed, captives were beheaded, and adulterers were put into the ground
and stoned. None of these were done during the
heat of battle or necessitated by self-defense. To this day, Islamic law
mandates death for certain crimes such as blasphemy and apostasy.
Following his death, Muhammad’s companions stormed the
Christian world - taking the Middle East, North Africa and parts of
Europe. They attacked and conquered to the East as well, including
Persia, Central Asia, and well into the Indian sub-continent. Few, if
any, of these campaigns involved the pretense of self-defense. They were about
Jihad.
"The
words, ‘Holy War’, aren’t in the Qur’an.”
The Muslim Game:
In early 2005, a well-known Muslim apologist named, Jamal
Badawi, offered $1 million to anyone who could prove that the Qur’an contained
the words, “Holy War.” Whether he actually had the money to put up is
somewhat in question, but his intention was to make people believe that Jihad
is not advocated in the Qur’an and that the terrorists are somehow tragically
mistaken when they wage their campaigns of holy war in the cause of Islam.
So successful is this myth, that it has been repeated on
popular television shows, such as “Criminal Minds.” Many now believe that
not only is holy warfare not advocated by the Qur’an, but that the word,
“Jihad” must not appear in it either, since Jihad has come to mean “Holy War”
(most especially by those who kill in the name of Allah).
The Truth:
In fact, not only is the word “Jihad” mentioned in several
places within the Qur'an, such as the infamous Sura 9 (which includes the
“Verse of the Sword”), there are over 150 calls to holy war scattered
throughout the entire text.
So what’s the catch?
Well, when knowledgeable infidels such as Robert Spencer
immediately responded to the challenge and went to collect
their prize, Mr. Badawi was forced to reveal the fine print on his offer. You see, he wasn’t
talking about the concept of holy war. He only meant the exact
Arabic phrase, “Holy War.”
And what about “Jihad?” Well, this doesn’t count,
according to Mr. Badawi, because technically it can be used in a context that
doesn’t mean ‘holy war’ (even if that is not how it was interpreted in
Muhammad’s time, nor in ours). "Jihad" is like the word
“fight,” which can be used in a benign sense (as in, “I am fighting a
craving to call Mr. Badawi a disingenuous hack”).
If “Jihad” is holy without war, then “Qital” must be
war without the holy. It is an Arabic term that literally means to wage
military combat. But, like Jihad, it is most certainly used within the
context of holy war, such as in Sura 2: “Fight against them until idolatry
is no more and religion is only for Allah.” Mr. Badawi is even on
record as admitting that Qital can be a form of Jihad… but even this
doesn’t qualify according to the niceties of his offer.
So, although the Qur’an tells believers to “slay the
infidels wherever ye find them,” and “smite their necks and fingertips,”
showing “ruthlessness to unbelievers,” and 150 other violent admonitions
to fight explicitly in the cause of Allah… the Arabic words “holy” and
“war” don’t literally appear side-by-side. (Neither do the German words,
“concentration” and “camp,” appear consecutively in Nazi documents, by the
way).
My, what a hollow victory this is! One has to wonder
whether Mr. Badawi sincerely believes that he has a point or if he recognizes
this for the shameful word game that it is.
At the very least, people should know that “Jihad” is used
within the context of religious warfare time and time again throughout the
Qur’an and Hadith, and that, regardless of the exact terminology, Islam’s most
sacred texts clearly advocate the sort of holy war that propels modern-day
terrorism.
“Verses
of violence are taken out of context.”
The Muslim Game:
All verses of violence were issued during times of war,
according to the apologists. They accuse critics who use Qur’anic verses
to discredit Islam of engaging in “cherry-picking” (pulling verses out of
context to support a position, and ignoring others that may mitigate it).
The Muslims who rely on this argument often leave the
impression that the Qur’an is full of verses of peace, tolerance and universal
brotherhood, with only a small handful that say otherwise. Their gullible
audience may also assume that the context of each violent verse is surrounded
by obvious constraints in the surrounding text which bind it to a particular
place and time (as is the case with violent Old Testament passages).
The Truth:
Unfortunately, the truth is just the opposite. This is
why new Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who begin studying the Qur’an and
Hadith, are often confronted with an array of disclaimers and warnings by
well-meaning Muslims who caution that it takes “years of study” to fully
understand the meaning of certain passages. Neophytes are encouraged to
seek the "counseling" of a Muslim scholar or cleric to "help
them" interpret what they read.
It isn't the verses of violence that are rare; it is the
ones of peace and tolerance (which were narrated earlier in Muhammad's life and
superseded by later ones). Neither is the “historical context” of these
verses of violence all that obvious from the surrounding text in most
cases. There is nothing overall that limits the targeting of unbelievers
to a specific place and time.
One would think that a perfect book from a perfect god would
be easy to understand, but in the Qur’an, constructs and topics often come from
out of nowhere and merge randomly in a jumbled mess that bears no consistent or
coherent stream of thought. Few Quran's are printed without extensive
commentary which often exceeds the size of the original "revelation."
This is a problem when it comes to many of the verse that
dictate violence. Although they can often be mitigated with non-intuitive
references to entirely separate passages, not all believers are as determined
to force the word of Allah into a separate moral framework. It is unclear
why a perfect book from a perfect god would so often leave the brutally
sensitive topic of killing open to human interpretation.
With external references to the Hadith and early biographies
of Muhammad’s life, it is usually possible to determine when a Qur’anic verse
was narrated and what it may have meant to the Muslims at the time. This
is what apologists opportunistically refer to as “historical context.”
They contend that such verses are merely a part of history and not intended as
present-day orders.
But “historical context” cuts both ways. If any verse
is a product of history, then they all are. Indeed, there is not a verse
in the Qur’an that was not given at a particular time to address a particular
situation in Muhammad’s life, whether he wanted to conquer the tribe next door
and needed a “revelation” from Allah spurring his people to war, or if he
needed the same type of “revelation” to satisfy a lust for more women (free of complaint from his
other wives).
Here is the irony of the “cherry-picking” argument: Those
who use “historical context” against their detractors nearly always engage in
cherry-picking of their own by choosing which verses they apply “historical
context” to and which they prefer to hold above such tactics of mitigation.
This game of context is, in fact, one of the most popular
and disingenuous in which Muslims are likely to engage. Simply put, the
apologists appeal to context only when they want it to be there - such
as in the case of the bellicose 9th Sura of the Qur'an, which calls for the
subjugation and death of unbelievers. They ignore context when it proves
inconvenient. An example of the latter would be the many times in which
verse 2:256 is isolated and offered up as proof of
religious tolerance (in contradiction to Muhammad's later imposition of the
jizya and the sword).
Islamic purists do not engage in such games. Not only
do they know that the verses of Jihad are more numerous and authoritative
(abrogating the earlier ones), they also hold the entire Qur’an to be the
eternal and literal word of Allah… and this is what often makes them so
dangerous.
"Islam
is the world’s fastest growing religion"
The Muslim Game:
How can Islam be a bad religion if it is growing so
fast? Doesn’t this mean that it is actually a truthful religion, since so
many are accepting it?
The Truth:
In the first place, the truth of an idea or doctrine is
never established by mere belief. Up until the last hundred years or so,
the vast majority of people on our planet did not even believe that they were
on a planet. Nor did they believe that the earth was spinning at a
thousand miles an hour or hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour.
Does this mean that the earth wasn’t doing these things up until people
believed that it was?
Secondly, Islam is not "growing faster" than other
religions because “people are accepting it,” but rather because the birthrate
among Muslims is significantly higher than it is among Christians and others,
particularly in the West. Kids can be raised to believe in just about
anything, so this hardly constitutes any sort of genuine accomplishment.
There are also a few women who "marry into Islam" each year, but this
is usually just a nominal change in official designation.
Of the so-called “converts” from other religions, only a
miniscule number were active believers. Nearly all are really just people
who had no faith to convert from – regardless of their nominal
designation. In the West and other parts of the non-Muslim world in which
all religions are allowed to compete equally such people experiencing a
spiritual awakening are far more likely to turn to Christianity than
Islam.
This leads to our most important point, which is that decent
Muslims should feel a sense of embarrassment rather than pride over the rules
that they have to enforce in order to maintain Islam's status as the
"fastest growing religion." In truth, it speaks more to the
insecurity that Muslims have in their own religion - and the banal immaturity
of Islam compared with other faiths.
Let’s say that you are playing chess with a 6-year-old
boy. Instead of following the same set of rules, however, the child is
allowed to make up rules that are preferential to him. One of the rules
he decides on is that you aren’t allowed to make any moves on his half of the
board, but he is allowed to make moves on yours. Another might be that it
is impossible for any of his pieces to be taken.
Now, if the child is winning the game – which is assured by
the conditions that he has imposed - is it really something in which he can
truly take pride?
The rules that Muslims impose on the “conversion game” are
almost exactly like this chess analogy. Other religions are not allowed
to operate in Islam’s own territory (ie. preaching their faith and
evangelizing) as Muslims are in others. Neither is conversion away from
Islam allowed – on penalty of death.
In the Muslim world, Christians who evangelize are imprisoned, assaulted, beaten,
set on fire, shot, bludgeoned, and tortured by Islamists. Missionaries are raped and killed. Former Muslims who embrace
Christianity as their religion of choice are thrown in jail along with their children, sexually
assaulted, crippled, hanged, stoned, stabbed, dismembered,
carved up, scalded, beheaded, brutalized, doused with acid, burned alive and publicly executed...
...and Muslims brag that their religion is growing faster!
Muslims who gloat over their “fast growing" religion
are no different than the child from our example who deludes himself into
thinking that he is smarter and better for “beating” a much wiser adult in a
game played under manufactured conditions that render the artificial “victory”
entirely meaningless.
So the more pertinent question isn't which religion is
growing faster, but which is growing faster where people are free to
choose. In this environment, Christianity wins easily. Converts are
even won in Muslim countries under draconian conditions that Muslim evangelists
never have to face anywhere on the planet. When was the last time a
person was killed or tortured merely for embracing Islam?
Islam has been playing by its own rules since its
inception. It is unlikely that Muslims will soon develop enough maturity
or confidence in their own religion to lift the shameful restrictions to which
it owes its success, and risk competition with other faiths on a level playing
field.
As was first mentioned, the truth of a belief or creed is
never established by how many followers it has (by that standard, Christianity
would be true). But when a religion has to be supported by double
standards, death threats and violence there is all the more reason to doubt its
veracity.
(Note: Our article does not take issue with the claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion, not because we necessarily believe it, but because others have done a better job of refuting it. See Islam is not the Fastest Growing Religion in the World for an example.)
"The
Qur'an Can Only be Understood in Arabic"
The Muslim Game:
The Qur’an can only be fully understood in Arabic. One
cannot criticize Islam without knowing Arabic.
The Truth:
Although Muslims often tell critics of Islam to "read
the Qur'an," they are usually unprepared for what happens when their
advice is heeded. An honest translation of Islam's holiest book generally
reinforces negative opinion. The fallback is to then claim that the
Qur'an can only be understood in Arabic.
Of all the efforts to artificially insulate Islam from
intellectual critique, this is probably the most transparent. Unfortunately,
for those Muslims craving reassurance from the more embarrassing passages of
the Qur’an and Sunnah, this cheap tactic of arbitrarily dismissing anything
they disagree with still comes at a heavy price, since Islam cannot be
protected in this way without sacrificing its claim to being a universal
religion.
In the first place, it is fundamentally impossible for
anyone to learn a language that cannot be translated into the only one they do
know, which means the apologists who insist that one "must learn Arabic”
in order to understand the Qur’an are committing a logical fallacy.
Either the Arabic of the Qur’an is translatable (in which case there is no need
to learn Arabic) or it is not (in which case it can never be learned by the
non-native speaker).
Enter the skeptic. While every language has its
nuances, how is that Arabic is the only one with words and phrases that are
literally untranslatable? More importantly, why in the world would Allah
choose to communicate his one true religion for all people in the only language
that cannot be understood by all people? Even the vast majority of
Muslims and their imams do not speak Arabic.
Even more suspicious is that this amazing linguistic
“discovery” was only recently made – and that it corresponds quite remarkably
with the contemporary rejection of Islamic practices that were considered
acceptable up until the religion’s recent collision with Western
liberalism. In fact, the argument that hidden and alternate meanings
exist to unflattering Qur’anic passages (justifying slavery, the inferior
status of women, sexual gluttony, holy warfare, wife-beating, and religious
discrimination) perfectly corresponds with the level of embarrassment that
modern scholars have about the presence of such verses in the Qur’an!
No other world religion claims that it can only be fully
understood in one language. Neither is the same level of effort required
to massage primary messages into palatability. While the Bible is
distributed pretty much as is by various Christian groups, for example, it is
rare to find a Qur’an that does not include voluminous and highly subjective
footnoted commentary deemed necessary to explain away the straightforward
interpretation of politically-incorrect passages.
An additional problem for the apologists is that they want
to have it both ways. On the one hand they declare that (for some strange
reason) the "perfect book" can't be translated and that Allah's
perfect religion thus cannot be understood by most of humanity without a
battery of intercessors and interpreters. Then they turn around and blame
the reality of Islamic terrorism on this same "necessary" chain of
intermediaries by claiming that the Osama bin Ladens of the world have
simply gotten bad clerical advice, causing them to “misunderstand” the true
meaning of the Religion of Peace (in the most catastrophic and tragic way
imaginable).
Of course, another irony here is that, as a Saudi, the
Qur’an-toting Osama bin Laden was a native Arabic speaker – as
are most of the leaders and foot soldiers in his al-Qaeda brotherhood of devout
Muslims. In fact, many critics of Islam are Arabic speakers as well - a
fact that is often ignored by the apologists, who only find Arabic linguistic
skills relevant when they are lacking (not that the same pundits have ever been
known to care about whether a critic of the Bible speaks Hebrew or Greek).
At this point there is only one avenue of escape for the
beleaguered apologist - the weak claim that the Qur’an can only be understood
in Classical Arabic, an obscure Quraish dialect which has not been
commonly used in over a thousand years and is only known by a few hundred
people alive today (generally Wahabbi scholars, who are - ironically enough -
accused of taking the Qur'an 'too literally').
It is hardly plausible that the differences between
classical and modern Arabic are of such significance that peace and tolerance
can be confused with terrorism, but even if this were true, it merely begs the
question all the more. Why would such a “perfect book” be virtually
impossible for the rest of us to learn - and susceptible to such horrible
"misinterpretation" on an on-going basis?
Really, it isn't hard to see through this childish game, particularly since the rules are applied only to detractors and not to advocates. Apologists never claim that Arabic is a barrier to understanding Islam when it comes to lauding the religion, no matter how less knowledgeable those offering praise are than the critics. Neither do they qualify the claim that "Islam is the fastest growing religion" with the caveat that new converts (or the vast majority of existing Muslims) don't understand Islam since they can't read the Quran in Arabic.
Really, it isn't hard to see through this childish game, particularly since the rules are applied only to detractors and not to advocates. Apologists never claim that Arabic is a barrier to understanding Islam when it comes to lauding the religion, no matter how less knowledgeable those offering praise are than the critics. Neither do they qualify the claim that "Islam is the fastest growing religion" with the caveat that new converts (or the vast majority of existing Muslims) don't understand Islam since they can't read the Quran in Arabic.
Obviously, the real reason for this illogical myth is that
the information age is now making the full history and texts of the Islamic
religion available to a broader audience, and the contents are highly
embarrassing to both Muslim scholars and their faithful flock. Pretending
that different meanings exist in Arabic is means of self-assurance and saving
face with others.
