Nothing to Do With Islam

August 18, 2014  by  Bruce Thornton

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book ,Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.

The war against jihadism has been chronically misunderstood because of our failure to acknowledge the religious motives of Muslim jihadists. This failure began in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Trapped in our Western secularist paradigms, we interpreted the uprising against the Shah as an anti-colonial revolt against a “brutal” autocrat propped up by the West for its own exploitative economic and geostrategic purposes. The aim of the revolution, the argument went, was to create a government more sympathetic to national sovereignty and Western pluralistic government. However, it soon became clear with the political triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini that the revolution was in the main a religious one, inspired in part by anger at the Shah’s secularization, modernization, and liberalization policies. As Khomeini said in 1962, the Shah’s regime was “fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of a religious class.”

Despite that lesson, the rise of al Qaeda in the 90s was also explained as anything and everything other than what it was and still is–– a movement with deep religious roots. Under administrations of both parties, the mantra of our leaders has been “nothing to do with Islam.” We created various euphemisms like “Islamism,” “Radical Islam,” “Islamic extremists,” or “Islamofascism,” to explain an ideology that is firmly rooted in traditional Islamic theology and historical practice. We were anxiously assured that Islam was a “religion of peace,” its adherents tolerant and ecumenical. Popular figures like Osama bin Laden were “heretics” who had “highjacked” this wonderful faith, distorting its doctrines to serve their evil lust for power. We looked upon them as “beards from the fringe,” malignant cranks like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or David Koresh.

This fundamental error continues today, as Muslim violence and anti-Semitism are explained by every factor instead of the essential one––the theology, jurisprudence, and history of Islam.

When one asks for evidence for this detachment of Muslim violence from the tenets of Islam, the best most apologists can do is produce a Westernized nominal Muslim, a propagandist like Tariq Ramadan, or a left-wing academic who reflexively considers any enemy of the colonialist, imperialist, capitalist West to be a friend of the left. Jihad is not, they assure us, the theological imperative to “fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah,” as Mohammed himself commanded. Jihad is merely a form of self-improvement and community service. “Allahu Akbar” is not the traditional Muslim battle cry, but merely a way of saying “Thank God.” Revered Muslim scholars like the Ayatollah Khomeini––educated in Qom, the “Oxford and Harvard of Iranian Shi’ism,” as Barry Rubin put it, and honored as a “grand sign of Allah” for his theological knowledge––was simply wrong when he said, “Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you,” and “Islam is a religion of blood for the infidels.”

Despite being consistent with such statements, dismissed as racist ignorance are the centuries of Western observation and bloody experience showing that, as Tocqueville wrote in 1838, “Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. … The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels … These doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran … The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.” Likewise Samuel Huntington’s phrase “Islam’s bloody borders” is called a racist lie, used to justify neo-colonial incursions into Muslim lands. Meanwhile, of the 7 global conflicts costing more than a 1000 lives a year, 6 involve Islam.

As for “moderate” Muslims, those ordinary millions who we are constantly told abhor the jihadists as violators of the true Islam are, with some rare exceptions like M. Zudhi Jasser, curiously silent in the face of horrific jihadist violence against non-Muslims, the beheadings, torture, crucifixions, rape, kidnappings, and indiscriminate slaughter of women and children justified by supposedly slanderous distortions of their faith. After every jihadist atrocity, we never see global mass protests against this malicious degradation of Islam. But after 9/11, we did see thousands of Muslims worldwide cheering the attack in a “tremendous wave of joy,” as a London-based Saudi cleric wrote to President Bush in a Muslim newspaper.

But when newspaper cartoons deemed offensive to Mohammed, or false rumors of Korans flushed down toilets in Guantánamo, or reports of an obscure pastor planning to burn a Koran become known, then we see tens of thousands of Muslim protesting violently. Right now Muslim terrorists are committing unspeakable atrocities in northern Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and elsewhere, but there is no global “Not in Our Name” mass movement, no “Million Muslim March” springing up among the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to protest this alleged distortion of Islam, and to reaffirm its true dogmas of peace and tolerant coexistence.

Another example of this intellectual myopia is the way many commentators explain the anti-Semitism rampant in the Muslim world, where Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the early 20^th century Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are popular. Misled by this popularity and the use of Nazi-era metaphors describing Jews as a “bacillus,” “cancerous tumor,” or “vermin,” these pundits attribute Muslim anti-Semitism to the malign influence of Nazism on the Muslim Middle East in the 30s. However, such an explanation mistakes rhetoric for content. Nazi-style anti-Semitism flourishes among many Muslims because their faith has already created a “potential space” for it––the Koran-sanctioned use of violence to enforce Muslim hegemony, and the broader intolerance of other religions, especially Christianity and Judaism, resented as precursors and rivals to Islam. But the hostility of the Jews in Mohammed’s traditional biographies––for example, he died after allegedly being poisoned by a Jewish woman–– has made them an special object of contempt and hatred.

Consider the doctoral dissertation of Dr. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. No crank or fringe character, from 1996 to his death in 2010 Tantawi was the Grand Sheik of the most prestigious institution for Sunni Islamic theology, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, a position reserved for the highest authority in Sunni Muslim thought. His 1966 dissertation, The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and the Tradition (Sunna), has asits subtitle, The Jews’ Abominations Described in the Qur’an Are Demonstrated Throughout the Ages. The following is a representative sample of this esteemed theologian’s thinking:

“In the Qur’an the Jews are people of various bad qualities, known for their loathsome characters and contemptible behavior. The Qur’an calls them infidels and liars and ingrates; selfish, arrogant and cowardly naggers and cheaters; rebels and lawbreakers, cruel and constitutionally given to deviating from the correct path . . . Jews are prone to crime and aggression. They cheat and steal people’s money with lies. The Jews must be oppressed and humiliated.”

The bulk of Tantawi’s book supports these slanders with meticulous exegeses of the numerous Koranic verses, hadiths, biographies of Mohammed, and theological interpretations of these texts over the centuries, large numbers of which have been collected in Andrew Bostom’s The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism.

This long tradition is the foundation of Tantawi’s anti-Semitic slurs, which are typical of both popular and academic writing in the region, such as the Holocaust-denying PhD dissertation of “moderate” Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. Thus it beggars belief to think that these are idiosyncratic misinterpretations that violate the true meaning of Islam’s sacred texts, or that they are a recent creation of Nazi-era anti-Semitism––not when Tantawi was awarded such a highly prestigious position, one that requires expert knowledge of and fidelity to Islamic doctrine.

Obviously, later motifs of anti-Semitism, like the medieval blood libel or the fever-swamp paranoia of the Protocols, have over the years been taken up by Muslim anti-Semitism and used to reinforce and validate the traditional Jew-hatred of the Koran. Similarly, racists in America in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries incorporated Darwinism into their racist theory and rhetoric, a practice given warrant by Darwin’s The Descent of Man, with its speculations that the Negro is the transitional species between humans and animals. But no one argues that racism was a secondary effect of Darwinism. Rather, Darwinism and its technical terms conferred a patina of “scientific” prestige and validation on a preexisting irrational hatred, just as in the 30s writings from an advanced global power like Germany reinforced and legitimized traditional Islamic anti-Semitism.

Similarly, one can argue that the eliminationist rhetoric now lacing traditional Muslim anti-Semitism reflects Nazi influence. After all, historically Muslims did not aim, like the Nazi final solution, to kill off the whole Jewish race, but to keep Jews subordinated and subjected to a humiliating second-class status, as the Koran instructs. So too in the Jim Crow South, most whites were content to keep blacks in their second-class place, and violence reflected perceptions that blacks were getting “uppity” and threatening institutional segregation. Something similar has happened in the Middle East, where the failure of the Arabs to enforce Jewish submission to Muslims with violence has led to more radical calls to eliminate Jews completely from the region. But once again, the “potential space” for such genocidal aims was in place before the Holocaust, created by the justified violence used over the centuries against Jews who resisted or threatened Muslim hegemony.

The point is not that all Muslims are anti-Semites and terrorists, or even are sympathetic to the jihadists. Rather, the scope and volume of jihadist violence, the financial and moral support given to jihadists by many millions of Muslims, and the relative silence of those who have no intention of practicing jihad themselves, all suggest that modern jihadism and its theological justifications have deep roots in Muslim theology, and ample models in Mohammed’s life and Islam’s history. This in turn means that Muslims who oppose jihadism or Muslim anti-Semitism do not have the authoritative, traditional, canonical arguments and precedents for that position, unlike the jihadists, who routinely and copiously quote chapter and verse of Islamic sacred texts in support of their violence.

Finally, pretending that modern jihadism has “nothing to do with Islam,” and spinning pleasing distortions of Islam’s theology and history, will not help sincerely reform-minded Muslims, for they know that there is no historical or theological foundation for these flattering fairy tales, which consequently lack authority in the eyes of most of their fellow Muslims. They know their own history and religion too well, unlike the Western apologists who tell esteemed and learned Muslims like Khomeini and Tantawi that they don’t know their own faith. Indeed, a movement to create a genuine liberal-democratic Islam would be truly “radical” from the perspective of traditional Islam and its beliefs, as the continuing failure of liberal democracy to take hold in the Middle East demonstrates. But most of all, such fantasies endanger our attempts to destroy a committed enemy who is motivated by a storied history of conquest and domination, and inspired and justified by the most cherished beliefs of millions of their co-religionists.

Nothing to Do with Islam, Part 2

August 25, 2014 

In his comments on the jihad being waged by the Islamic State in northern Iraq (ISIL), President Obama recycled yet again the shopworn false knowledge about Islam that continues to compromise our response to Muslim violence: “So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day.”

Over at the New York Post, a columnist rightly took the president to task by saying, “You can’t divorce the Islamic State from religion.” Unfortunately, the column is full of numerous misstatements that perpetuate the illusion that there is some peaceful, tolerant version of Islam that has been distorted and twisted by “extremists” or “fundamentalists.”

According to the writer, adherents of any faith can misread sacred texts literally in order to justify violence: “The problem isn’t just literalist interpretations of the Koran: The New Testament, the Jewish Torah and many other religious books contain explicit calls for disproportionate punishments and killing of nonbelievers.” Forget the false assumption that we are supposed to read all sacred texts allegorically rather than literally. I’d like to see the verses from the New Testament that explicitly instruct Christians to kill non-believers rather than try to convert them. On the contrary, Jesus preached, “Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5.38), and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5.43).

Concerning other interactions with non-believers, Jesus instructed his disciples, “And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town” (Matthew 10.14).  Because there are no explicit commands to kill non-believers in the New Testament, over the ages Christians who have justified violence with scripture have had to engage in tortuous interpretations and misreadings that over time have not been able to gain traction among all the faithful. That’s why despite widespread persecution across the world today, there is no major Christian terrorist movement.

Compare, in contrast, the Koran’s explicit calls to violence against non-believers, such as Koran 4.76: “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil: So fight ye against the friends of Satan.” This is consistent with the famous command in 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah.” If someone wants to argue that “fight” is intended metaphorically in these verses, and has been “twisted” by a “literal” reading to serve some fringe interpretation, consider 4.74: “Let those fight in the cause of Allah Who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fights in the cause of Allah––whether he is slain or gets victory––Soon shall we give him a reward.” Obviously in this verse and numerous others “fight” means physical battle in which people are “slain.” Contrary to Christian scripture, in traditional Islamic doctrine non-believers who are invited to convert and refuse the call are not left alone, but killed or, if they are Jews or Christians, sometimes allowed to live in humiliating submission under a treaty that Muslims can break at any time for any reason.

As for the Torah, the list of verses allegedly commanding death for non-believers that crop up on anti-Biblical and atheist websites has nothing to do with gentiles. A favorite is Deuteronomy 17, which commands death for those who, “transgressing his covenant,” have “gone and served other gods and worshipped them.” But this is clearly a reference not to gentiles, but to Hebrews who have betrayed the covenant between God and the Jewish people by violating the first Commandment. So too with numerous other verses produced to prove that the Hebrew God ordered the Hebrews to kill gentiles. On the contrary, all these verses describe capital punishment for crimes committed by Jews, such as apostasy, witchcraft, adultery, fornication, and the like. Nowhere is there a verse commanding, like Koran 9.29, wholesale warfare against all gentiles who refuse to become Jews.

As for the orders given to Hebrew kings in the Old Testament to destroy another town or tribe, these are specific to that particular time, place, and people, and reflect the brutal warfare universal at that time. They are history, not theology. We may find such draconian punishments or collective violence distasteful, but they certainly do not comprise the sort of theology of violence against all non-believers that is found throughout the Koran and Islamic doctrine.

Obama is half-right that killing innocents, more specifically women and children, is forbidden in Islam. But there are conflicting traditions of interpretation about this prohibition going back centuries. The most famous Muslim philosopher, the 12^th century Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroës, discusses this controversy in his treatise Bidayat al-Mudjtahid. In contrast to the prohibition against killing women and children, Averroës writes, some interpreters quote Mohammed’s famous statement, “I have been commanded to fight the people until they say, ‘There is no God but Allah,’” which is consistent with Koran 9.5: “Then when the sacred months have slipped away, slay the polytheists wherever you find them.” As Averroës summarizes the controversy, “the source of their controversy is to be found in their divergent views concerning the motive why the enemy may be slain. Those who think that this is because they are unbelieving do not make exception for any polytheist,” including women and children. But even those who take the contrary view that only those able to fight may be killed make an exception for women who fight or who aid the enemy in some way, such as speaking against Islam or spying on Muslim warriors.

In short, many Muslims over the centuries have disagreed with Obama’s bald assertion that “no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” Modern jihadists like ISIL, al Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah, and the numerous other groups thus have a foundation for their actions in a long tradition of Islamic theology. They see the outsized power and influence of the West, and the people who support it economically or politically, as a mortal threat to Islam. Thus destroying them is acceptable as a defense of the faith, for they are not “innocent” of aggression against Islam.

Many other practices of the jihadists likewise have justifications found in Islamic tradition and history, even if there are disagreements among Muslims about their validity. The jihadists’ penchant for beheading has its precedent in Koran 8.12: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.” We have acted as though the filmed beheading of reporter James Foley is some unprecedented act of savagery by a Manson-like cult. But as Ian Tuttle reminds us, early in his career Mohammed beheaded the some 700 Jews of the Banu Qurayzah. In the 11^thcentury Yusuf ibn Tashfin beheaded 24,000 Spaniards and, in a primitive version of YouTube, sent the heads to cities in North Africa and Spain. In the 19^th century the Mahdist jihadists in Sudan beheaded their enemies, including the British war hero Charles “Chinese” Gordon. And Saudi Arabia today continues to publicly behead malefactors, 23 so far this August. There are few better ways to “cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve” or, as Obama said of Foley’s beheading, “shock the conscience of the entire world.”

Similarly, the indiscriminate bombing of people including women and children, whether through rockets or highjacked airliners, is argued as licit based on the fact that Mohammed used mangonels, a type of catapult, at the siege of al-Taif, even though such bombardment endangered women and children. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has written an essay justifying al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks of 9/11 based on this tradition. So too with the prohibition against suicide, used by some apologists to argue that so-called “suicide-bombers” are contrary to Islamic doctrine. But in the Koran and hadith it is clear that killing oneself as an act of martyrdom while fighting for the faith is acceptable. For example, according to one hadith, Muhammad said, “I would love to be martyred in Allah’s Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.” That’s why for 14 centuries jihadists have said they love death the way infidels love life.

Groups like ISIL or al Qaeda do not embrace “extreme religious views,” or “twist the overall message of religious texts,” as the New York Post has it. They act on a venerable tradition within Islam, one based on writings some Muslims have construed differently because of inconsistencies among various texts. But that doesn’t change the fact that the jihadists have within the faith long-established precedents for their actions, a tradition with millions of Muslim adherents worldwide, including the leaders of Turkey and Qatar who finance the vicious terrorist group Hamas, and the Mullahcracy in Iran, the world’s foremost supporter of Islamic terrorism.

We in the West correctly find such views “extreme,” or “savage” and “barbaric,” but they are not “fringe” anomalies conjured out of textual misreadings by an extremist cult. They derive from the history and sacred texts of Islam, the clear meaning of which is illustrated on page after page of Muslim history. And they are being acted upon today across the Muslim world, as evidenced by the nearly 24,000 violent attacks perpetrated by Muslim terrorists since 9/11. Contrary to Obama, ISIL does speak for a religion. It’s called Islam.