Author: Andrew G. Bostom
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: June 28, 2006
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23128
During the discussion period after a recent
talk by the courageous secular Muslim "apostate" Wafa Sultan, Judea
Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (who was
barbarously murdered by pious Muslim terrorists), alluded to the Koran's "verses
of peace"-which certain votaries of Islam uphold as the religion's exclusive
legacy. According to an observer at the event, Judea Pearl derided Ms. Sultan's
critical view of Islam by further contending that the Koran's bellicose and
brutal verses were mere "cultural baggage", akin to "similar"
pronouncements in the Old Testament. The comparison was naïve, if not
absurd.
Naïve because the Koran's "verses
of peace", frequently cited by both Muslim and non-Muslim apologists,
most notably verse 2:256, "There is no compulsion in religion",
were all abrogated by the so-called verses of the sword. These abrogating
verses of the sword recommend beheading or otherwise murdering and mutilating
non-Muslims, and Muslim apostates. According to classical Muslim Koranic commentators
verse 9:5 (perhaps the most infamous verse of the sword), "Slay the idolators
wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in
wait for them in every ambush
", for example, cancels 124 verses
that promote patience and toleration.
The sacralized Islamic sources indicate that
as the Muslim prophet Muhammad accrued political and military power, he evolved
from a proselytizer and persuader, to a warrior (i.e., a prototype jihadist;
see: The Prophet Muhammad as a Jihad Model), and dictatorial legislator. Thus
the sword and other similar Koranic verses-as per the linkage between Muhammad's
biography and the Koranic narrative-capture the Muslim prophet at his most
dogmatic, belligerent, and intolerant. Muslims are enjoined to fight and murder
nonbelievers-woe unto those who shirk these campaigns-but those who are killed
fighting for the one true religion, i.e., Islam, will be rewarded amply in
the afterlife. A sampling of such verses, which established these eternal
injunctions, are included below:
47:4: "Now when ye meet in battle those
who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks until, when ye have routed
them, then making fast of bonds"
9:29: "Fight those who do not believe
in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger
have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been
given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and
they are in a state of subjection."
4:76: "Those who believe fight in the
way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight
therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan
is weak."
8:12: "When your Lord revealed to the
angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast
terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their
heads and strike off every fingertip of them."
8:38-39: "Say to the Unbelievers, if
(now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but
if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter
of warning for them). And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression,
and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but
if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do."
9:39: "If you do not go forth, He will
chastise you with a painful chastisement and bring in your place a people
other than you, and you will do Him no harm; and Allah has power over all
things."
4:74: "Therefore let those fight in the
way of Allah, who sell this world's life for the hereafter; and whoever fights
in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant
him a mighty reward."
9:111: "Surely Allah has bought of the
believers their persons and their property for this, that they shall have
the garden; they fight in Allah's way, so they slay and are slain; a promise
which is binding on Him in the Taurat and the Injeel and the Quran; and who
is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? Rejoice therefore in the pledge
which you have made; and that is the mighty achievement."
As Ibn Warraq notes, aptly (p.69):
"tolerance" has been abrogated
by "intolerance"
And this doctrine of abrogation, necessitated
by the many contradictions which abound in the Koran, originates as putatively
taught by Muhammad, himself, at verse 2:106: "Whatever communications
We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like
it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?" . This verse,
in combination with verses* 16:101, 22:52, and 87:6, was elaborated into a
formal system of abrogation (naskh in Arabic) by the greatest classical Muslim
Koranic scholars and jurists, which entailed (p.72),
the suppression of a ruling without
the suppression of the wording. That is to say, the earlier ruling is still
to be found in the Koran, and is still to this day recited in worship, but
it no longer has any legal force [emphasis added]
But it is only when viewed in the larger context
of the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad war-which derives substantively
from the abrogating Koranic sword verses-that Judea Pearl's naïve equation
to "similar" verses from the Old Testament, becomes entirely fatuous.
From the bellicose verses in the Koran, expounded upon in the hadith (the
words and deeds of Muhammad as recorded by pious Muslim transmitters), Muslim
jurists and theologians formulated the Islamic institution of permanent jihad
war against non-Muslims to bring the world under Islamic rule (Shari'a law).
Since its earliest inception, through the
present, jihad has been central to the thought and writings of prominent Muslim
theologians and jurists. The precepts and regulations elucidated in the 7th
through 9th centuries are immutable in the Muslim theological-juridical system,
and they have remained essentially unchallenged by the majority of contemporary
Muslims. The jihad is intrinsic to the sacred Muslim texts, including the
divine Koranic revelation-"the uncreated word of Allah". The Old
Testament sanctions the Israelites conquest of Canaan-a limited domain-it
does not sanction a permanent war to submit all the nations of humanity to
a uniform code of religious law. Similarly, the tactics of warfare are described
in the Old Testament, unlike the Koran, in very circumscribed and specific
contexts. Moreover, while the Old Testament clearly condemns certain inhumane
practices of paganism, it never invoked an eternal war against all of the
world's pagan peoples.
Uninformed ecumenical zeal in search of a
fantasy Islam yet to be created, does not excuse making intellectual, let
alone moral equivalences, between the severely limited and contextualized
war proclamations of the Old Testament, and the permanent proto-jihad war
injunctions of the Koran. Staking out the presumptive "higher" moral
ground by a thinly veiled (and ahistorical!) attack on a courageous secularist
seeking profound, not cosmetic (and meaningless) changes in Islamdom, is unsavory
and destructive, regardless of the misguided motivations.
* 16: 101: "And when We change (one)
communication for (another) communication, and Allah knows best what He reveals,
they say: You are only a forger. Nay, most of them do not know."; 22:52:
"And We did not send before you any messenger or prophet, but when he
desired, the Shaitan made a suggestion respecting his desire; but Allah annuls
that which the Shaitan casts, then does Allah establish His communications,
and Allah is Knowing, Wise"; 87:6: "By degrees shall We teach thee
to declare (the Message), so thou shalt not forget"
The discussion of abrogation/naskh draws heavily
upon the insightful analysis, here pp. 67-75, of my courageous mentor and
colleague Ibn Warraq.