The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (5 page)

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Jesus (Matthew 5:44)

“Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.”

Qur’an 8:60

Revenge and pretexts

After their humiliation at Badr, the Quraysh were anxious for revenge. They assembled three thousand troops against one thousand Muslims at Uhud. Muhammad wore two coats of mail and, brandishing a sword, led the Muslims into battle. But this time they were routed. The Prophet himself had his face bloodied and a tooth knocked out; rumors even flew around the battlefield that he had been killed. When he was able to find water to wash the blood off his face, Muhammad vowed revenge: “The wrath of God is fierce against him who bloodied the face of His prophet.”
¹⁷
When Abu Sufyan, the Quraysh leader, taunted the Muslims, Muhammad was adamant, and emphasized the traditional sharp Islamic distinction between believers and unbelievers. He told his lieutenant ‘Umar to respond: “God is most high and most glorious. We are not equal. Our dead are in paradise; your dead in hell.”
¹⁸

Just Like Today: Pretexts

A
nother pattern was set at Uhud that played out across the centuries: Muslims would see any aggression as a pretext for revenge, regardless of whether they provoked it. With a canny understanding of how to sway public opinion, jihadists and their PC allies on the American Left today use current events as pretexts to justify what they are doing: Time and again they portray themselves as merely reacting to grievous provocations from the enemies of Islam. By this they gain recruits and sway popular opinion.

Conventional wisdom among a surprisingly broad political spectrum today holds that the global jihad movement is a response to some provocation or other: the invasion of Iraq, the establishment of Israel, the toppling of Iran’s Mossadegh—or a more generalized offense such as “American neo-colonialism” or “the lust for oil.” Those who are particularly forgetful of history blame it on newly minted epiphenomena such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, which cast a shadow over America’s presence in Iraq in 2004. But the jihadists were fighting long before Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Israel, or American independence. Indeed, they have been fighting and imitating their warrior Prophet ever since the seventh century, casting their actions as responses to the enormities of their enemies ever since Muhammad discovered his uncle’s mutilated body.

Muhammad vowed revenge again when he found the body of his uncle Hamza. Hamza had been killed at Uhud and his body horribly mutilated by a woman, Hind bint ‘Utba, who cut off Hamza’s nose and ears and ate a part of his liver. She did this in revenge for the killing of her father, brother, uncle, and eldest son at Badr. The Prophet was not in the least moved by the fact that she had done these terrible deeds in revenge: “If God gives me victory over Quraysh in the future,” he exclaimed, “I will mutilate thirty of their men.” Touched by his grief and anger, his followers made a similar vow: “By God, if God gives us victory over them in the future we will mutilate them as no Arab has ever mutilated anyone.”
¹⁹

In victory and defeat, more Islam

Defeat at Uhud, meanwhile, did nothing to shake Muslims’ faith or dull its fervor. Allah told them they would have gained another victory if they had not disobeyed him: “Allah verily made good His promise unto you when ye routed them by His leave, until (the moment) when your courage failed you, and ye disagreed about the order and ye disobeyed, after He had shown you that for which ye long” (Qur’an 3:152).

Here again a pattern was set: When things go wrong for the Muslims, it is punishment for not being faithful to Islam. In 1948, Sayyid Qutb, the great theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the distinction of being the first modern Islamic terrorist group, declared of the Islamic world: “We only have to look in order to see that our social situation is as bad as it can be.” Yet “we continually cast aside all our own spiritual heritage, all our intellectual endowment, and all the solutions which might well be revealed by a glance at these things; we cast aside our own fundamental principles and doctrines, and we bring in those of democracy, or socialism, or communism.”
²⁰
In other words, Islam alone guarantees success, and to abandon it brings failure.

The theological connection between victory and obedience and defeat and disobedience was reinforced after the Muslim victory at the Battle of the Trench in 627. Muhammad again received a revelation that attributed the victory to Allah’s supernatural intervention: “O ye who believe! Remember Allah’s favor unto you when there came against you hosts, and We sent against them a great wind and hosts ye could not see” (Qur’an 33:9).

Just Like Today: Tsunami calls for more Islam

A
fter a tsunami devastated the South Pacific on December 26, 2004, Australia and the United States alone pledged more than one billion dollars in aid. Oil-soaked Arab countries—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Algeria, Bahrain, and Libya—made a combined pledge of less than one-tenth this amount. One reason for this: Islamic teachers attributed the tsunami to the sins committed by infidels and Muslims in heavily Islamic Indonesia. As one Saudi cleric said, “It happened at Christmas when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion.”
²¹

PC Myth: We can negotiate with these people

Yet another key Islamic principle was formulated by events surrounding the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. In 628, Muhammad had a vision in which he performed a pilgrimage to Mecca—a pagan custom that he wanted to make part of Islam, but had so far been unable to do because of Quraysh control of the city. He directed Muslims to prepare to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and advanced on the city with 1,500 men. The Quraysh met him outside the city, and the two sides concluded a ten-year truce (
hudna
), the treaty of Hudaybiyya.

The Muslims agreed to return home without making the pilgrimage, and the Quraysh would allow them to make the pilgrimage the following year. Muhammad shocked his men by agreeing further to provisions that seemed highly disadvantageous to the Muslims: Those fleeing the Quraysh and seeking refuge with the Muslims would be returned to the Quraysh, while those fleeing the Muslims and seeking refuge with the Quraysh would not be returned to the Muslims. The Quraysh negotiator, Suhayl bin ‘Amr, even compelled Muhammad not to identify himself as “Muhammad, the apostle of God.” Said Suhayl, “If I witnessed that you were God’s apostle I would not have fought you. Write your own name and the name of your father.” To the dismay of his companions, Muhammad did so.

Then, contrary to all appearances, he insisted that the Muslims had been victorious, producing a new revelation from Allah: “Verily We have granted thee a manifest victory” (Qur’an 48:1). He promised that his followers would reap much booty: “Allah was well pleased with the believers when they swore allegiance unto thee beneath the tree, and He knew what was in their hearts, and He sent down peace of reassurance on them, and hath rewarded them with a near victory; and much booty that they will capture. Allah is ever Mighty, Wise. Allah promiseth you much booty that ye will capture, and hath given you this in advance, and hath withheld men’s hands from you, that it may be a token for the believers, and that He may guide you on a right path” (Qur’an 48:18–20).

A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read

A. Guillaume,
The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah
, Oxford University Press, 1955. An English translation of the earliest biography of Muhammad—written by a pious Muslim. Virtually every page presents a devastating refutation of the whitewashed, peaceful Muhammad of PC myth.

If any of his followers were still skeptical, their fears would soon be assuaged. A woman of the Quraysh, Umm Kulthum, joined the Muslims in Medina; her two brothers came to Muhammad, asking that she be returned, “in accordance with the agreement between him and the Quraysh at Hudaybiya.”
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Muhammad refused because Allah forbade it. He gave Muhammad a new revelation: “O ye who believe! When there come to you believing women refugees, examine and test them: Allah knows best as to their faith: if ye ascertain that they are believers, then send them not back to the unbelievers” (Qur’an 60:10).

In refusing to send Umm Kulthum back to the Quraysh, Muhammad broke the treaty. Although Muslim apologists have claimed throughout history that the Quraysh broke it first, this incident came before any treaty violations by the Quraysh. Furthermore, breaking the treaty reinforced the principle that nothing was good except what was advantageous to Islam, and nothing evil except what hindered it. Once the treaty was formally discarded, Islamic jurists enunciated the principle that, in general, truces were to be concluded for no longer than ten years and only entered into for the purpose of allowing weakened Muslim forces to gain strength.

Subsequent events would illustrate the dark implications of this principle.

Chapter 2

THE QUR’AN: BOOK OF WAR

W
ith Muhammad’s prophetic career so thoroughly marked by blood and warfare, it should be no surprise that the sacred book bequeathed by the Prophet of Islam to the world, the Qur’an, would be similarly violent and intransigent. And it’s true: The Qur’an is unique among the sacred writings of the world in counseling its adherents to make war against unbelievers.

Guess what?

• The Qur’an commands Muslims to make war on Jews and Christians.
  
• Oft-quoted tolerant, peaceful Qur’anic verses have actually been
  canceled
  , according to Islamic theology.
  
• There is nothing in the Bible that rivals the Qur’an’s exhortations to violence.
  

The Qur’an counsels war

There are over a hundred verses in the Qur’an that exhort believers to wage jihad against unbelievers. “O Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (Qur’an 9:73). “Strive hard” in Arabic is
jahidi
, a verbal form of the noun
jihad
. This striving was to be on the battlefield: “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly” (Qur’an 47:4). This is emphasized repeatedly: “O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him” (Qur’an 9:123).

This warfare was to be directed against both those who rejected Islam and those who professed to be Muslims but did not hold to the fullness of the faith: “Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate” (Qur’an 9:73). This warfare was only part of the larger spiritual conflict between Allah and Satan: “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” (Qur’an 4:76).

“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” (Qur’an 9:5). The “poor-due” in this verse is
zakat
, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and regulates religious tithes. Thus the verse is saying that if the “idolaters” become Muslims, leave them alone.

Jews and Christians were to be fought, along with “idolaters”: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29). The jizya was a tax inflicted upon non-believers.