I would have hoped that after Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) launched 450 rockets at Israeli civilians in two days as a reaction to
Israel assassinating their leader Bahaa Abu Al-Ata, at least some in the media
would have explained what does this term Jihad
in the organization’s name actually mean. Of course, that never happened.
So if I were a journalist, what would I have done?
It is a symptom of the denial and willful ignorance that
blankets the present age that this book even had to be written, and that Ibn
Warraq, a historian and social theorist of preeminent insight and wisdom,
should have had to devote his considerable talents to it.
Nonetheless, we can be
grateful that he has given us The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs,
Ideas, and Ideology, as this book is breathtakingly comprehensive
despite its quite manageable length, and is, quite simply, irrefutable. If
there remains in the world anyone who holds that Islam is a Religion of Peace
and yet has sufficient intellectual honesty and acumen to consider these
arguments on their merits, this is the book to give.
First there is the necessary
work of clearing away the nonsense. Ibn Warraq takes up each of the major
excuses that are commonly given for Islamic jihad violence -- that it is all
about Israel, or all about U.S. foreign policy, or all about poverty and lack
of opportunity -- and shows why each does not and cannot sufficiently explain
the phenomenon at hand.
Then he treads ground that has been much-tilled before:
the exhortations to jihad violence in the Qur’an and Sunnah. But here, even the
most well-informed reader will find much that is new, especially the detailed
description of the Islamic concept of al-walaa wal baraa, commanding the right and
forbidding the wrong, and how it leads to jihad attacks against unbelievers.
Also highly rewarding is
Warraq’s examination of a subject that receives insufficient attention: the
goals of jihad. Authorities in Europe and North America continue to treat jihad
attacks as discrete criminal acts that have no necessary connection to any
wider movement or imperative. Ibn Warraq shows here, with copious references to
Islamic scholars ancient and modern, that jihad is a means of spreading Islam,
and that the “greater jihad” -- the spiritualized idea so beloved of Western
apologists -- actually has quite slim foundation in the Islamic sources, and is
given scant attention throughout Islamic history by the religion’s foremost
theologians.
The most rewarding sections of this amply rewarding book
are Ibn Warraq’s surveys of jihad in theory and practice from the death of
Muhammad up to the present day.
This includes a look at the
Kharijites, who are often invoked by contemporary Islamic apologists as the
precursors of modern terrorists and the archetypal Islamic heretics. Ibn
Warraq, by contrast, demonstrates that “the fundamental principle for the
Kharijites was that the Islamic community must be based on the Koran.” Those
who claim the Kharijites were twisting and hijacking Islam say the same thing
about contemporary jihadis, with just as little justification.
The historical survey that
makes up the balance of the book is its most illuminating and valuable
material. While many informed readers will know that the Qur’an exhorts jihad
and that Muhammad preached and practiced it, few will be familiar with the
history of jihad violence in ninth and tenth century Baghdad, or with the
Qadizadeli movement in 17th century Constantinople, or with the career of Ibn
Abd al-Wahhab (of Wahhabi fame) and his movement.
This is jihad doctrine as applied by Muslims throughout
history. Readers will see immediately that Muslim obedience to the exhortations to jihad warfare in the
Qur’an and Sunnah has been remarkably consistent in form since the beginnings
of Islam.
Those who would peruse this
material and then still insist that Ibn Warraq is “cherry picking” from both
Islamic scripture and history, leaving out both the peaceful exhortations and
the fabled eras of peace and tolerance, would be willfully and incurably blind.
There are no such exhortations of any force, and no such eras, as any serious
student of renowned al-Andalus will know.
The facts are, in the final
analysis, quite simple: the Qur’an teaches jihad warfare. So does Muhammad. So
do the mainstream Islamic theologians and jurists. And Muslims have
consequently waged jihad warfare throughout history.
The Islam in Islamic Terrorism offers facts
that ought to be taught in every high school and college history class; a saner
age than ours would not find this book remotely controversial. It may indeed
have mandated that it be put to exactly that kind of use in academic
institutions.
As it is, this book will most
likely not be used in schools, which will continue to purvey the half-truths
and outright lies that pass for scholarly exposition of Islam these days. The
students will not be the only ones who lose out. Among the losers also will be
those whose lives will be taken when they otherwise could have been spared were
it not for all the willful ignorance that prevents an honest evaluation of the
threat we face.
Ibn Warraq has performed an
immense service in The Islam in Islamic
Terrorism. Anyone who wonders, and has the courage to brave the
opprobrium of our self-appointed moral superiors to find out, will get the
truth in this invaluable and deftly executed book.
