The End of Faith (14 page)

Zakaria observes that Muslims living in the West generally appear tolerant of the beliefs
of others. Let us accept this characteri- zation for the momentthough it ignores the
inconvenient reality that many Western countries now appear to be “hotbeds of Islamic
militancy.”12 Before we chalk this up to Muslim tolerance, however, we should ask ourselves how Muslim
intolerance would reveal itself in the West. What minority, even a radicalized one, isn't
generally “tolerant” of the majority for most of its career? Even avowed ter- rorists and
revolutionaries spend most of their days just biding their time. We should not mistake the
“tolerance” of political, economic, and numerical weakness for genuine liberalism.

Lewis observes that “for Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can
ever be finally renounced.”13 We might also add that no mind, once added to the realm, can ever be finally renouncedbecause, as Lewis also notes, the
penalty for apostasy is death. We would do well to linger over this fact for a moment,
because it is the black pearl of intolerance that no liberal exegesis will ever fully
digest. Within the House of Islam, the penalty for learning too much about the worldso as
to call the tenets of the faith into questionis death. If a twenty-first-century Muslim
loses his faith, though he may have been a Muslim only for a single hour, the normative
response, everywhere under Islam, is to kill him.

While the Koran merely describes the punishments that await the apostate in the next world
(Koran 3:86-91), the hadith is emphatic about the justice that must be meted out in this
one: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” No metaphor hides this directive, and it
would seem that no process of liberal hermeneutics

can brush it aside. We might be tempted to accord great significance to the fact that the
injunction does not appear in the Koran itself, but in practical terms the hadith
literature seems to be every bit as con- stitutive of the Muslim worldview. Given the fact
that the hadith is often used as the lens through which to interpret the Koran, many
Muslim jurists consider it to be an even greater authority on the practice of Islam.14 It is true that some liberal jurists require that the apostate subsequently speak against
Islam before sanctioning his murder, but the penalty itself is generally not considered
“extreme.” The justice of killing apostates is a matter of mainstream acceptance, if not
practice. This explains why there did not appear to be a single reasonable Muslim living
on earth when the Ayatollah Khomeini put a bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie. Many
Westerners wondered why millions of “moderate” Muslims did not publicly dis- avow this
fatwa. The answer follows directly from the tenets of Islam, according to which not even
Cat Stevens, a Western-born folk singer (now Yosuf Islam), could doubt the justice of it.15

As we have seen, Christianity and Judaism can be made to sound the same, intolerant
notebut it has been a few centuries since either has done so. It is, however, a current
reality under Islam that if you open the wrong door in your free inquiry of the world, the
brethren deem that you should die for it. We might well wonder, then, in what sense
Muslims believe that there should be “no com- pulsion in religion.”

In reviewing Lewis's recent book on Islam, Kenneth Pollack raised a criticism that could
be applied with even greater felicity to my account thus far:

Lewis still has not grappled with the deeper questions for his readers. He still has not
offered his explanation for why the Islamic Middle East stagnated, why its efforts at
reform failed, why it is notably failing to become integrated into the global economy in a
meaningful way and why these failures have pro- duced not a renewed determination to
succeed (as in East Asia

over the past 50 years, and arguably in India, Latin America and even parts of sub-Saharan
Africa today) but an anger and frus- tration with the West so pervasive and vitriolic that
it has bred murderous, suicidal terrorism despite all of the Islamic prohibi- tions
against such action.16

These are all good questionsand Zakaria offers plausible answers to thembut they are not
the “deeper questions.” If you believe anything like what the Koran says you must believe
in order to escape the fires of hell, you will, at the very least, be sympathetic with the
actions of Osama bin Laden. The prohibitions against “sui- cidal terrorism” are not nearly
as numerous as Pollack suggests. The Koran contains a single ambiguous line, “Do not
destroy your- selves” (4:29). Like most commentators on these matters, Pollack seems
unable to place himself in the position of one who actually believes the propositions set forth in the Koranthat paradise awaits, that our senses deliver
nothing but evidence of a fallen world in desperate need of conquest for the glory of God.
Open the Koran, which is perfect in its every syllable, and simply read it with the eyes
of faith. You will see how little compassion need be wasted on those whom God himself is
in the process of “mocking,” “cursing,” “shaming,” “punishing,” “scourging,” “judging,”
“burning,” “anni- hilating,” “not forgiving,” and “not reprieving.” God, who is infinitely
wise, has cursed the infidels with their doubts. He pro- longs their life and prosperity
so that they may continue heaping sin upon sin and all the more richly deserve the
torments that await them beyond the grave. In this light, the people who died on September
11 were nothing more than fuel for the eternal fires of God's justice. To convey the
relentlessness with which unbelievers are vilified in the text of the Koran, I provide a
long compilation of quotations below, in order of their appearance in the text. This is
what the Creator of the universe apparently has on his mind (when he is not fussing with
gravitational constants and atomic weights):

"It is the same whether or not you forwarn them [the unbeliev-

ers], they will have no faith“ (2:6). ”God will mock them and keep them long in sin,
blundering blindly along“ (2:15). A fire ”whose fuel is men and stones“ awaits them
(2:24). They will be ”rewarded with disgrace in this world and with grievous punishment on
the Day of Resurrection“ (2:85). ”God's curse be upon the infidels!“ (2:89). ”They have
incurred God's most inexorable wrath. An igno- minious punishment awaits [them]“ (2:90).
”God is the enemy of the unbelievers“ (2:98). ”The unbelievers among the People of the
Book [Christians and Jews], and the pagans, resent that any blessing should have been sent
down to you from your Lord“ (2:105). ”They shall be held up to shame in this world and
sternly punished in the hereafter“ (2:114). ”Those to whom We [God] have given the Book,
and who read it as it ought to be read, truly believe in it; those that deny it shall
assuredly be lost“ (2:122). ”[We] shall let them live awhile, and then shall drag them to
the scourge of the Fire. Evil shall be their fate“ (2:126). ”The East and the West are
God's. He guides whom He will to a straight path“ (2:142). ”Do not say that those slain in
the cause of God are dead. They are alive, but you are not aware of them“ (2:154). ”But
the infidels who die unbelievers shall incur the curse of God, the angels, and all men.
Under it they shall remain for ever; their punishment shall not be lightened, nor shall
they be reprieved“ (2:162). ”They shall sigh with remorse, but shall never come out of the
Fire“ (2:168). ”The unbelievers are like beasts which, call out to them as one may, can
hear nothing but a shout and a cry. Deaf, dumb, and blind, they understand nothing“
(2:172). ”Theirs shall be a woeful punishment“ (2:175). ”How stead- fastly they seek the
Fire! That is because God has revealed the Book with truth; those that disagree about it
are in extreme schism“ (2:176). ”Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the
places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage. ... [I]f they attack you
put them to the sword. Thus shall the unbe- lievers be rewarded: but if they desist, God
is forgiving and merci- ful. Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's
religion reigns supreme. But if they desist, fight none except the evil-

doers“(21190-93). ”Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dis- like it. But you may
hate a thing although it is good for you, and love a thing although it is bad for you. God
knows, but you know not“ (2:216). ”They will not cease to fight against you until they
force you to renounce your faithif they are able. But whoever of you recants and dies an
unbeliever, his works shall come to nothing in this world and in the world to come. Such
men shall be the ten- ants of Hell, wherein they shall abide forever. Those that have
embraced the Faith, and those that have fled their land and fought for the cause of God,
may hope for God's mercy“ (2:217-18). ”God does not guide the evil-doers“ (2:258). ”God
does not guide the unbelievers“ (2:264). ”The evil-doers shall have none to help them“
(2:270). ”God gives guidance to whom He will" (2:272).

“Those that deny God's revelations shall be sternly punished; God is mighty and capable of
revenge” (3:5). “As for the unbeliev- ers, neither their riches nor their children will in
the least save them from God's judgment. They shall become fuel for the Fire” (3:10). “Say
to the unbelievers: 'You shall be overthrown and driven into Hellan evil resting place!'”
(3:12). “The only true faith in God's sight is Islam.... He that denies God's revelations
should know that swift is God's reckoning” (3:19). “Let the believers not make friends
with infidels in preference to the faithfulhe that does this has nothing to hope for from
Godexcept in self-defense” (3:28). “Believers, do not make friends with any but your own
people. They will spare no pains to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their
hatred is evident from what they utter with their mouths, but greater is the hatred which
their breasts conceal” (3:118). “If you have suffered a defeat, so did the enemy. We
alter- nate these vicissitudes among mankind so that God may know the true believers and
choose martyrs from among you (God does not love the evil-doers); and that God may test
the faithful and annihi- late the infidels” (3:140). "Believers, if you yield to the
infidels they will drag you back to unbelief and you will return headlong to perdi-
tion....We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.... The

Fire shall be their home“ (3:149-51). ”Believers, do not follow the example of the
infidels, who say of their brothers when they meet death abroad or in battle: 'Had they
stayed with us they would not have died, nor would they have been killed.' God will cause
them to regret their words. . . . If you should die or be slain in the cause of God, God's
forgiveness and His mercy would surely be better than all the riches they amass“ (3:156).
”Never think that those who were slain in the cause of God are dead. They are alive, and
well provided for by their Lord; pleased with His gifts and rejoicing that those they left
behind, who have not yet joined them, have nothing to fear or to regret; rejoicing in
God's grace and bounty. God will not deny the faithful their reward“ (3:169). ”Let not the
unbelievers think that We prolong their days for their own good. We give them respite only
so that they may commit more grievous sins. Shameful pun- ishment awaits them“ (3:178).
”Those that suffered persecution for My sake and fought and were slain: I shall forgive
them their sins and admit them to gardens watered by running streams, as a reward from
God; God holds the richest recompense. Do not be deceived by the fortunes of the
unbelievers in the land. Their prosperity is brief. Hell shall be their home, a dismal
resting place" (3:195-96).

“God has cursed them in their unbelief” (4:46). “God will not for- give those who serve
other gods besides Him; but He will forgive whom He will for other sins. He that serves
other gods besides God is guilty of a heinous sin. . . . Consider those to whom a portion
of the Scriptures was given. They believe in idols and false gods and say of the infidels:
'These are better guided than the believers'” (4:50-51). "Those that deny Our revelation
We will burn in fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than We shall give them other
skins, so that they may truly taste the scourge. God is mighty and

wise“ (4:55-56). ”Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those

who were given the Book before you, who have made of your reli- gion a jest and a pastime“
(5:57). ”That which is revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase the wickedness
and unbelief of

many among them. We have stirred among them enmity and hatred, which will endure till the
Day of Resurrection“ (5:65). ”God does not guide the unbelievers“ (5:67). ”That which is
revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase the wickedness and unbe- lief of many
among them. But do not grieve for the unbelievers“ (5:69). ”You see many among them making
friends with unbeliev- ers. Evil is that to which their souls prompt them. They have
incurred the wrath of God and shall endure eternal torment.... You will find that the most
implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans, and that
the nearest in affection to them are those who say: 'We are Christians'“ (5:80-82).
”[T]hose that disbelieve and deny Our revelations shall become the inmates of Hell" (5:86).

“[T]hey deny the truth when it is declared to them: but they shall learn the consequences
of their scorn” (6:5). “We had made them more powerful in the land than yourselves [the Meccans], sent down for
them abundant water from the sky and gave them rivers that rolled at their feet. Yet
because they sinned We destroyed them all and raised up other generations after them. If
We sent down to you a Book inscribed on real parchment and they touched it with their own
hands, the unbelievers would still assert: 'This is but plain sor- cery' They ask: 'Why
has no angel been sent down to him [Muham- mad] ?' If We had sent down an angel, their
fate would have been sealed and they would have never been reprieved” (6:5-8). “Who is
more wicked than the man who invents falsehoods about God or denies His revelations?”
(6:21). "Some of them listen to you. But We have cast veils over their hearts and made
them hard of hearing lest they understand your words. They will believe in none of Our
signs, even if they see them one and all. When they come to argue with you the unbelievers
say: 'This is nothing but old fictitious tales.' They forbid it and depart from it. They
ruin none but themselves, though they do not perceive it. If you could see them when they
are set before the Fire! They will say: 'Would that we could return! Then we would not
deny the revelations of our Lord and would be