World Religions

by Don Closson –

“So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” Qur’an 9:5

If one looks around the world where violence is occurring in the name of religion, Islam is an obvious common denominator. A short list of nations or states in which Muslim groups or governments are currently at war would include Israel, the Sudan, Nigeria, Kashmir, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chechnya, and, in a sense, the United States. If you add hostilities between fundamentalist Muslim organizations and Islamic states, you can add Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia as well. But is this activity enough to argue that Islam is inherently violent and that the message of the Qur’an supports violence on behalf of Allah?

The West is divided over this question of Islam and violence. Those who defend Islam as a religion of peace argue that references in the Qur’an referring to jihad (striving) speak more to a personal struggle against sin rather than physical warfare against unbelievers. They add that the Qur’an only allows violence when Islam is threatened. They might also say that physical violence towards non-Muslims in the Qur’an must be understood within the original setting of the text and therefore does not apply to the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims today. Skeptics, on the other hand, are convinced that the Qur’an promotes violence as a tool to accomplish the primary goal of Islam established during the days of Muhammad. That goal is to see the entire planet under Qur’anic law (sharia) and every individual either a Muslim or willingly submitted to the rule of Islam. Critics add that this mandate has never been revoked and that those who take the Qur’an seriously today are more likely to be followers of Osama bin Laden than those who oppose him.

Some Key Qur’anic Texts
There is little question about how the leaders of Al Qaeda interpret the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad. In both of bin Laden’s fatwas against the United States in 1996 and 1998 he quotes the Qur’an and other Muslim authorities to support his call to arms and the killing of Americans. Here are a few passages from the Qur’an used by bin Laden:

The last verse is known as the “Verse of the Sword.” Referring to it, bin Laden has written, “Praise be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to his servant and messenger [the prophet Muhammad] in order to establish truth and abolish falsehood.”¹

Bin Laden certainly believes that the sword verse is relevant to today. My contention is that this view of the Qur’an is consistent with traditional Islamic understanding of the text and that bin Laden is closer to understanding the heart of Islam than those who claim that he and other so-called Islamists are outside the orthodox understanding of the Qur’an.

What assumptions should one bring to the Qur’an in order to interpret it correctly? Before going any further it should be noted that according to most Muslims only those who can read the Qur’an in Arabic can begin to understand it, and only Islamic religious leaders have the authority to interpret it. But as non-Muslims we have an obligation to make sense of what Islam teaches and determine an appropriate response to any present or future threat Islam represents to its neighbors. We would be foolish not to consider the claims made by Muslims themselves regarding the meaning of the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad. The challenge is how to choose between the numerous interpretations being offered. The purpose of this essay is to present one set of building blocks for an interpretive system through which we can understand the Qur’an and the rest of Islam’s religious writings.

The foundation of any interpretive system for understanding the Qur’an is the example set by the prophet Muhammad. The impact of both his actions and teachings cannot be underestimated. He has traditionally been held by both Islamic scholars and the general Muslim population to be the perfect man; perfect in intellect, in appearance, in bravery, in humility and most importantly, in his fear of God.² As Serge Trifkovic writes,

The problem of Islam, and the problem of the rest of the world with Islam, is not the remarkable career of Muhammad per se, undoubtedly a “great man” in terms of his impact on human history. It is the religion’s claim that the words and acts of its prophet provide the universally valid standard of morality as such, for all time and all men forever.³

If this is the case, it is of first importance that we take some time to consider what kind of example Muhammad left to aid his followers in understanding the meaning of the Qur’an.

Key Texts From the Qur’an

47: 4-6 So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]. And if Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them [Himself], but [He ordered armed struggle] to test some of you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah – never will He waste their deeds. He will guide them and amend their condition And admit them to Paradise, which He has made known to them.

9:14 Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them and heal the hearts of a believing people.

9:5 So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

The Example of Muhammad

After Muhammad’s death, Muslims had to wrestle with what his legacy meant for the future. It is acknowledged by Muslim authorities that Muhammad rose from a position of weakness to one of strength during his years as a prophet. In his initial period of relative weakness, Muhammad reached out to pagans, Christians, and Jews calling on them to accept his message that he claimed to have received from the angel Gabriel, as well as his role as Allah’s final prophet. Muhammad was particularly angered when the Jews rejected his prophetic claims. As a result, Muhammad became far less generous. His early antipathy against the Jews resulted in the execution of 900 men of the Banu Qurayzah tribe in front of their women and children. The women were raped and taken as concubines.⁴ Eventually, Jews disappeared from Arabia proper completely.

Muhammad supplied his followers with an example of a religious leader who is also a warrior and prince. His early victories in battle focused on rich Meccan caravans. His A.D. 624 raid called the Battle of Badr killed over forty men and required divine permission for attacking and stealing from Muhammad’s own kinsmen (see 3:123-125). This success attracted new followers drawn to his ability to acquire the property of others in a manner previously considered a violation of religious propriety. It was during this period that rules were established for dividing up the spoils of warfare that would last well into the future.

Once Mecca was conquered with an army of 10,000 followers, Muhammad took vengeance on those who rejected his role as prophet. Neither women nor old men were spared from Muhammad’s anger. He had his companions kill a poetess who mocked him as well as an elderly Jew who questioned the prophet’s tactics.⁵ Muslims today feel that these actions were appropriate because of the high regard Allah has for his final prophet. We see the same kind of response from Muslims today to any perceived slight of Muhammad in the world media such as the worldwide riots that broke out in reaction to Danish cartoons depicting the prophet.

Muhammad’s earliest biographer, the eighth century Muhammad Ibn Ishaq Ibn Yasar, wrote that originally the prophet had not been given permission to shed blood, but was to proclaim his message amid persecution.⁶ When Muhammad’s own tribe, the wealthy Quraysh, rejected him he was allowed to fight and protect himself. He was also given permission to attack the tribe’s caravans in order to support himself and his followers. Finally Ibn Ishaq writes, “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e., until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’ i.e., until God alone is worshipped.”⁷ A more recent Islamic authority, former Saudi Arabian chief justice Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, wrote that at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and eventually it became obligatory for all Muslims. Muslims must fight against those who fight against them, as Muhammad did, but they must also fight all those who worship others along with Allah.⁸

The Doctrine of Abrogation

An important aspect for understanding individual verses in the Qur’an is the doctrine of abrogation. Abrogation (or Naskh) is the principle by which verses in the Qur’an are modified by later ones. Thus, it is important to the understanding of a particular verse in the Qur’an to know when in the life of the prophet that it was given. Early dictates by the prophet regarding treatment of unbelievers were modified by later revelation. A verse’s physical location in the text itself is not helpful since the Qur’an is organized by sura (or chapter) length rather than chronologically. The author Robert Spencer writes, “Most Muslim authorities agree that the ninth sura was the very last section of the Qur’an revealed to Muhammad.”⁹ This would mean that it acts as a modifying passage regarding the treatment of unbelievers by the faithful. He adds that Islamic theologians agree that as many as 124 verses that promote tolerance in the Qur’an are abrogated by the Verse of the Sword.¹⁰

Muslim authorities from the Middle Ages to the modern era have supported this view of this important passage. Medieval commentator Ibn Kathir wrote that sura 9:5 “abrogated every treaty, and every term. . . . No idolater had any more treaty or promise of safety ever since Surah Bara’ah (ninth sura) was revealed.”¹¹ The Qur’an’s last word against unbelievers is that Muslims are to conduct warfare until they either convert to Islam or “pay the jizya with willing submission” as is dictated later in the sura (9:29). This has left Islam in a constant state of warfare and a constant struggle or jihad against all those who have yet to convert or willingly submit to the rule of Islam and sharia law. Non-Muslims have few options in the face of this conflict. Tenth century Maliki jurist Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani writes, “They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them.”¹²

It should be noted that it is unlikely that new interpretations of the Qur’an regarding this relationship of Islam to the rest of the world is likely to result in change. The process of determining a point of Islamic law through qualified expert study of the Qur’an and Sunnah is known as Ijtihad. Only a few scholars (mujtahedin) have been recognized by
the Islamic community as capable of issuing such opinions. The last Sunni Muslim to hold such status was Ahmad ibn Hanbal (founder of the Hanbali School of Islamic law) who died in A.D. 855.¹³

Today only commentaries on established interpretations are written. Virtually all
Muslims agree that jihad against the unbelieving world continues today. Even the so-called moderate Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong agrees that “Muslim jurists. . .taught that, because there was only one God, the whole world should be united in one polity and it was the duty of all Muslims to engage in a continued struggle to make the world accept the divine principles and create a just society.”¹⁴ She claims that this mandate was laid aside when Islam reached its peak expansion in the middle of the 8th century. However, as Spencer points out, “this doctrine of Islamic supremacism was never reformed or rejected.¹⁵ A 1991 manual of Islamic law certified by the highest authority in Sunni Islam, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, states that jihad is still to be carried out. It says that “The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zorastrians. . .until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax” with the only qualifier being that the unbeliever must first be invited to convert before war is conducted.¹⁶

Jihad as Defense

It might be argued that moderate Muslims have condemned the actions of terrorists like bin Laden. In 2005 for instance, the Fiqh Council of North America issued a religious ruling against terrorism. Other Muslim groups quickly endorsed this fatwa which was widely publicized as an example of moderate Muslims clearly denouncing terrorist acts against innocent civilians. The Council stated that “All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram [forbidden] in Islam.”¹⁷ The problem is that Western non-Muslims assume that the definition of terms like “terrorism” and “civilians” are obvious and shared by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

For instance, a leader of a British jihadist group argues that the victims of the 2005 bombings in London were not innocent. He writes, “When we say innocent people, we mean Muslims. As far as non-Muslims are concerned, they have not accepted Islam. As far as we are concerned, that is a crime against God…”¹⁸ The word “civilian” is also open to interpretation. According to a Palestinian jihadist, “All Israelis are military, all of them.”¹⁹ And a Tunisian jihadist added, “There are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females, and children— are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed.”²⁰

The word terrorist or terrorism creates further problems. When a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations was asked to condemn Hamas or Hizballah as terrorist groups, she responded, “I don’t understand what the relevance is.” Even the former pop musician Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) refused to label Hamas a terrorist group. When asked to do so by a New York Times interviewer, he said, “I don’t think you will achieve that [peace] by putting people into corners and asking them very, very difficult questions about very contentious issues.”²¹ In other words, he dodged the question.

Sayyid Qutb provided much of the ideological foundation for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and eventually for other jihadist groups like al Qaeda. He believed that all Muslim societies had fallen into a state of ignorance similar to the condition that existed before Muhammad’s preaching. Beginning with the assumption that all non-Islamic nations were illegitimate, al Qaeda has built upon Qutb’s teachings regarding the killing of non-combatants.

Here are a few details from an al Qaeda justifying the acts on 9/11:²²

Since America has targeted Muslim civilians, either itself or by proxy (Israel), the same response is legal…

Muhammad allowed killing civilians when it is hard to distinguish combatants from non-combatants…

Non-combatants may be killed if they have assisted in combat “in deed, word, opinion, or any other way.” (Every employed American is guilty due to his tax contribution to the government.)

Women and children may be killed when it is necessary to sap the strength of the enemy by destroying his property…

Infidels may be killed if used as human shields.

Since Muslims believe that Allah has given the entire planet to them to rule over both politically and theologically, there can be no neutral ground. If a country or a people stand in the way of Islam’s advance it becomes a defensive battle to protect the name of Allah and the opportunity of people to accept him and his prophet. In other words, almost any conflict can be defined a defensive one if you assume that all belongs to Allah and his followers.

Human Rights and Freedom

Another lens through which to read the Qur’an is the view that Muslims have of human rights and freedom. Many Muslims, both in the past and today, have a very different view of human nature and, as a result, they reject the West’s idea of equality of all people.

An Iranian journalist Amir Taheri states the Muslim view plainly,

…the non-believer cannot be the equal of the believer. Even among the believers only those who subscribe to the three so-called Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam are regarded as fully human. Here is the hierarchy of human worth in Islam: At the summit are free male Muslims. Next come Muslim male slaves. Then come free Muslim women. Next come Muslim slave women. Then come free Jewish and/or Christian men. . . . Non-Muslims can, and have often been, treated with decency, but never as equals.²³

Commenting on the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, a Muslim U.N. delegate wrote that “the very concept of human rights was ‘a JudeoChristian invention’ and inadmissible in Islam.”²⁴ Religious freedom, especially the freedom to leave Islam, is almost universally lacking even in the most moderate of Islamic nations. People converting to Christianity must fight the government, often for years for permission to marry a Christian and to register as one. In one Malaysian state, the government was even paying Muslim preachers to marry non-Muslim women and convert them to Islam.²⁵

The Islamic view of human rights is derived partly from the lack of separation between civil and religious authority within the ideal Muslim community. Muhammad set the example for Muslims for all time by playing the role of both civil and religious leader. There is nothing in Islam similar to Jesus’ command to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. Muslims regard Christianity as incomplete precisely because it does not offer a system for governance along with spiritual revelation. Islam is a totalizing ideology. To be a faithful follower of Muhammad, one must strive until all of humanity is under the rule of sharia and is either a Muslim or under submission to Muslims. Spencer writes that “…Muslims have never accepted any alternative to Islamic law except when it has been imposed by force.”

Understanding the Qur’an

A final protest might be made that there are over a billion Muslims on the planet and there is no evidence that they all feel obligated to spread sharia throughout the world violently or non-violently. However, within every religious tradition there is always a minority of followers who both understand and live consistently with its core values and goals. Although there are nearly two billion Christians on the planet, most would agree that a relatively small fraction both know what the Bible teaches and strive consistently to live it out.

How many Muslims believe that Osama bin Laden and other mujahidin accurately interpret the sword verse (9:5) and other passages in the Qur’an calling for worldwide jihad? Forty four percent of Nigerian Muslims believe that suicide bombings are often or sometimes acceptable, only 28 percent argued that they were never justified.²⁶ The annual Pew Global Attitudes Survey in 2006 discovered that in the predominantly Muslim countries of Jordan and Egypt less than half of the Muslims would agree that terror attacks are never justified. The same study found that a quarter of Jordanians, a third of Indonesians, 38 percent of Pakistanis, and 61 percent of Nigerians all had indicated confidence in Osama bin Laden.²⁷

Even in non-Muslim countries, Muslims fail to support the Western values of their host countries. In 2006 a poll in Great Britain discovered that nearly 25 percent of British Muslims felt that the commuter bombings of 2005 that killed 52 people were justified and that they would prefer to live under sharia law.28 In the heart of Europe (Spain, France, and Great Britain), one in seven Muslims agrees that suicide bombings against civilians can be justified at least some of the time.

These numbers are large enough to argue that bin Laden’s interpretive system of the Qur’an and the Hadith sit well inside Islamic orthodoxy. At minimum, it is a compelling version of Islam for a large number of Muslims around the world.

Don Closson is Director of Administration for Probe Ministries (www.probe.org). He is co-editor (with Kirby Anderson) of Kids, Classrooms, and Contemporary Education (Kregel, 2000).

N o t e s
¹Robert Spencer, Religion of Peace? (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2007), 69.
²Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 84.
³Serge Trifkovic, Defeating Jihad, (Regina Orthodox Press, 2006), 30.
⁴Ibid., 26.
⁵ bid., 27.
⁶Spencer, Religion of Peace, 76.
⁷Ibid.
⁸Ibid., 77.
⁹Ibid., 78.
¹⁰Ibid.
¹¹Ibid.
¹² bid., 79.
¹³Ibid., 82.
¹⁴Ibid.
¹⁵Ibid.

¹⁶Ibid., 83.
¹⁷Ibid., 52.
¹⁸Ibid., 53.
¹⁹Ibid.
²⁰Ibid.
²¹Ibid., 54.
²²Trifkovic, Defeating Jihad, 43. ²³Spencer, Religion of Peace, 166. ²⁴Ibid., 167.
²⁵Ibid., 169.
²⁶Ibid.
²⁷Ibid.
²⁸Ibid., 56.

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 10 No. 1 – Is Islam a Religion of Peace?)