Islam 101 is meant to help people become better educated about the fundamentals of Islam and to help the more knowledgeable better convey the facts to others.
Similarly, my book and documentary are meant to serve as concise explanations of the major moving parts of Islam and their implications for Western society. Islam 101 is a condensation of the book and documentary with the aim of lending clarity to the public understanding of Islam and of exposing the inadequacy of prevailing views. All should feel free to distribute and/or reproduce it.
Table of Contents
1) The Basics
a) The Five Pillars of Islam
b) The Qur’an — the Book of Allah
c) The Sunnah — the “Way” of the Prophet Muhammad
i. Battle of Badr
ii. Battle of Uhud
iii. Battle of Medina
iv. Conquest of Meccad) Sharia Law
2) Jihad and Dhimmitude
a) What does “jihad” mean?
b) Muslim Scholar Hasan Al-Banna on jihad
c) Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of Wari) Taqiyya — Religious Deception
d) Jihad Through History
i) The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
ii) The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 ADe) The Dhimma
f) Jihad in the Modern Era
3) Conclusion
4) Frequently Asked Questions
a) What about the Crusades?
b) If Islam is violent, why are so many Muslims peaceful?
c) What about the violent passages in the Bible?
d) Could an Islamic “Reformation” pacify Islam?
e) What about the history of Western colonialism in the Islamic world?
f) How can a violent political ideology be the second-largest and fastest-growing religion on earth?
g) Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?
h) What about the great achievements of Islamic civilization?
5) Glossary of Terms
6) Further Resources
1. The Basics
a. The Five Pillars of Islam
The five pillars of Islam constitute the most basic tenets of the religion. They are:
1. Faith (iman) in the oneness of Allah and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (indicated by the declaration [the Shahadah] that, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”).
2. Keeping of the five scheduled daily prayers (salah).
3. Almsgiving (zakat).
4. Fasting (sawm).
5. Pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca for those who are able.
The five pillars in and of themselves do not tell us a lot about the faith or what a Muslim is supposed to believe or how he should act. The second through fifth pillars — prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage — are aspects shared by many religions. The finality of the prophethood of Muhammad, however, is unique to Islam. To understand Islam and what it means to be a Muslim, we must come to understand Muhammad as well as the revelations given through him by Allah, which make up the Qur’an.
b. The Qur’an — the Book of Allah
According to Islamic teaching, the Qur’an came down as a series of revelations from Allah through the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, who then dictated it to his followers. Muhammad’s companions memorized fragments of the Qur’an and wrote them down on whatever was at hand, which were later compiled into book form under the rule of the third Caliph, Uthman, some years after Muhammad’s death.
The Qur’an is about as long as the Christian New Testament. It comprises 114 suras (not to be confused with the Sira, which refers to the life of the Prophet) of varying lengths, which may be considered chapters. According to Islamic doctrine, it was around 610 AD in a cave near the city of Mecca (now in southwest Saudi Arabia) that Muhammad received the first revelation from Allah by way of the Archangel Gabriel. The revelation merely commanded Muhammad to “recite” or “read” (Sura 96); the words he was instructed to utter were not his own but Allah’s. Over the next twelve or so years in Mecca, other revelations came to Muhammad that constituted a message to the inhabitants of the city to forsake their pagan ways and turn in worship to the one Allah.
While in Mecca, though he condemned paganism (for the most part), Muhammad showed great respect for the monotheism of the Christian and Jewish inhabitants. Indeed, the Allah of the Qur’an claimed to be the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians, who now revealed himself to the Arab people through his chosen messenger, Muhammad. It is the Qur’anic revelations that came later in Muhammad’s career, after he and the first Muslims left Mecca for the city of Medina, that transformed Islam from a relatively benign form of monotheism into an expansionary, military-political ideology that persists to this day.
Orthodox Islam does not accept that a rendering of the Qur’an into another language is a “translation” in the way that, say, the King James Bible is a translation of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. A point often made by Islamic apologists to defang criticism is that only Arabic readers may understand the Qur’an. But Arabic is a language like any other and fully capable of translation. Indeed, most Muslims are not Arabic readers. In the below analysis, we use a translation of the Qur’an by two Muslim scholars, which may be found here. All parenthetical explanations in the text are those of the translators save for my interjections in braces, { }.
Those Westerners who manage to pick up a translation of the Qur’an are often left bewildered as to its meaning thanks to ignorance of a critically important principle of Qur’anic interpretation known as “abrogation.” The principle of abrogation — al-naskh wa al-mansukh (the abrogating and the abrogated) — directs that verses revealed later in Muhammad’s career “abrogate” — i.e., cancel and replace — earlier ones whose instructions they may contradict. Thus, passages revealed later in Muhammad’s career, in Medina, overrule passages revealed earlier, in Mecca. The Qur’an itself lays out the principle of abrogation:
2:106. Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?
It seems that 2:106 was revealed in response to skepticism directed at Muhammad that Allah’s revelations were not entirely consistent over time. Muhammad’s rebuttal was that “Allah is able to do all things” — even change his mind. To confuse matters further, though the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad sequentially over some twenty years’ time, it was not compiled in chronological order. When the Qur’an was finally collated into book form under Caliph Uthman, the suras were ordered from longest to shortest with no connection whatever to the order in which they were revealed or to their thematic content. In order to find out what the Qur’an says on a given topic, it is necessary to examine the other Islamic sources that give clues as to when in Muhammad’s lifetime the revelations occurred. Upon such examination, one discovers that the Meccan suras, revealed at a time when the Muslims were vulnerable, are generally benign; the later Medinan suras, revealed after Muhammad had made himself the head of an army, are bellicose.
Let us take, for example, 50:45 and Sura 109, both revealed in Mecca:
50:45. We know of best what they say; and you (O Muhammad) are not a tyrant over them (to force them to Belief). But warn by the Qur’an, him who fears My Threat.
109:1. Say (O Muhammad to these Mushrikun and Kafirun): “O Al-Kafirun (disbelievers in Allah, in His Oneness, in His Angels, in His Books, in His Messengers, in the Day of Resurrection, and in Al-Qadar {divine foreordainment and sustaining of all things}, etc.)!
109:2. “I worship not that which you worship,
109:3. “Nor will you worship that which I worship.
109:4. “And I shall not worship that which you are worshipping.
109:5. “Nor will you worship that which I worship.
109:6. “To you be your religion, and to me my religion (Islamic Monotheism).”
Then there is this passage revealed just after the Muslims reached Medina and were still vulnerable:
2:256. There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path. Whoever disbelieves in Taghut {idolatry} and believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower.
In contrast, take 9:5, commonly referred to as the “Verse of the Sword”, revealed toward the end of Muhammad’s life:
9:5. Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun {unbelievers} wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat {the Islamic ritual prayers}), and give Zakat {alms}, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Having been revealed later in Muhammad?s life than 50:45, 109, and 2:256, the Verse of the Sword abrogates their peaceful injunctions in accordance with 2:106. Sura 8, revealed shortly before Sura 9, reveals a similar theme:
8:39. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.
8:67. It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land. You desire the good of this world (i.e. the money of ransom for freeing the captives), but Allah desires (for you) the Hereafter. And Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise.
9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
9:33. It is He {Allah} Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it superior over all religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate (it).
The Qur’an’s commandments to Muslims to wage war in the name of Allah against non-Muslims are unmistakable. They are, furthermore, absolutely authoritative as they were revealed late in the Prophet’s career and so cancel and replace earlier instructions to act peaceably. Without knowledge of the principle of abrogation, Westerners will continue to misread the Qur’an and misdiagnose Islam as a “religion of peace.”
c. The Sunnah — the “Way” of the Prophet Muhammad
In Islam, Muhammad is considered al-insan al-kamil (the “ideal man”). Muhammad is in no way considered divine, nor is he worshipped (no image of Muhammad is permitted lest it encourage idolatry), but he is the model par excellence for all Muslims in how they should conduct themselves. It is through Muhammad’s personal teachings and actions — which make up the “way of the Prophet,” the Sunnah — that Muslims discern what is a good and holy life. Details about the Prophet — how he lived, what he did, his non-Qur’anic utterances, his personal habits — are indispensable knowledge for any faithful Muslim.
Knowledge of the Sunnah comes primarily from the hadiths (“reports”) about Muhammad’s life, which were passed down orally until codified in the eighth century AD, some hundred years after Muhammad’s death. The hadiths comprise the most important body of Islamic texts after the Qur’an; they are basically a collection of anecdotes about Muhammad’s life believed to have originated with those who knew him personally. There are thousands upon thousands of hadiths, some running to multiple pages, some barely a few lines in length. When the hadiths were first compiled in the eighth century AD, it became obvious that many were inauthentic. The early Muslim scholars of hadith spent tremendous labor trying to determine which hadiths were authoritative and which were suspect.
The hadiths here come exclusively from the most reliable and authoritative collection, Sahih Al-Bukhari, recognized as sound by all schools of Islamic scholarship, translated by a Muslim scholar and which may be found here. Different translations of hadiths can vary in their breakdown of volume, book, and number, but the content is the same. For each hadith, the classifying information is listed first, then the name of the originator of the hadith (generally someone who knew Muhammad personally), and then the content itself. While the absolute authenticity of even a sound hadith is hardly assured, they are nonetheless accepted as authoritative within an Islamic context.
Because Muhammad is himself the measuring stick of morality, his actions are not judged according to an independent moral standard but rather establish what the standard for Muslims properly is.
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88; Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).
Volume 8, Book 82, Number 795; Narrated Anas: The Prophet cut off the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and did not cauterise (their bleeding limbs) till they died.
Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413; Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews {of Medina} brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque.
Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57; Narrated Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to Ali {the fourth Caliph} and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn ‘Abbas who said, “If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah’s Apostle forbade it, saying, “Do not punish anybody with Allah’s punishment (fire).” I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah’s Apostle, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.”
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle was asked, “What is the best deed?” He replied, “To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, “What is the next (in goodness)?” He replied, “To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah’s Cause.”
In Islam, there is no “natural” sense of morality or justice that transcends the specific examples and injunctions outlined in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Because Muhammad is considered Allah’s final prophet and the Qur’an the eternal, unalterable words of Allah himself, there is also no evolving morality that permits the modification or integration of Islamic morality with that from other sources. The entire Islamic moral universe devolves solely from the life and teachings of Muhammad.
Along with the reliable hadiths, a further source of accepted knowledge about Muhammad comes from the Sira (life) of the Prophet, composed by one of Islam’s great scholars, Muhammad bin Ishaq, in the eighth century AD.
Muhammad’s prophetic career is meaningfully divided into two segments: the first in Mecca, where he labored for fourteen years to make converts to Islam; and later in the city of Medina (The City of the Apostle of God), where he became a powerful political and military leader. In Mecca, we see a quasi-Biblical figure, preaching repentance and charity, harassed and rejected by those around him; later, in Medina, we see an able commander and strategist who systematically conquered and killed those who opposed him. It is the later years of Muhammad’s life, from 622 AD to his death in 632, that are rarely broached in polite company. In 622, when the Prophet was better than fifty years old, he and his followers made the Hijra (emigration or flight), from Mecca to the oasis of Yathrib — later renamed Medina — some 200 miles to the north. Muhammad’s new monotheism had angered the pagan leaders of Mecca, and the flight to Medina was precipitated by a probable attempt on Muhammad’s life. Muhammad had sent emissaries to Medina to ensure his welcome. He was accepted by the Medinan tribes as the leader of the Muslims and as arbiter of inter-tribal disputes.
Shortly before Muhammad fled the hostility of Mecca, a new batch of Muslim converts pledged their loyalty to him on a hill outside Mecca called Aqaba. Ishaq here conveys in the Sira the significance of this event:
Sira, p208: When God gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the second {oath of allegiance at} Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of fealty. Now they {Muhammad’s followers} bound themselves to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle, while he promised them for faithful service thus the reward of paradise.
That Muhammad’s nascent religion underwent a significant change at this point is plain. The scholarly Ishaq clearly intends to impress on his (Muslim) readers that, while in its early years, Islam was a relatively tolerant creed that would “endure insult and forgive the ignorant,” Allah soon required Muslims “to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle.” The Islamic calendar testifies to the paramouncy of the Hijra by setting year one from the date of its occurrence. The year of the Hijra, 622 AD, is considered more significant than the year of Muhammad’s birth or death or that of the first Qur’anic revelation because Islam is first and foremost a political-military enterprise. It was only when Muhammad left Mecca with his paramilitary band that Islam achieved its proper political-military articulation. The years of the Islamic calendar (which employs lunar months) are designated in English “AH” or “After Hijra.”
i. The Battle of Badr
The Battle of Badr was the first significant engagement fought by the Prophet. Upon establishing himself in Medina following the Hijra, Muhammad began a series of razzias (raids) on caravans of the Meccan Quraish tribe on the route to Syria.
Volume 5, Book 59, Number 287; Narrated Kab bin Malik: The Apostle had gone out to meet the caravans of Quraish, but Allah caused them (i.e. Muslims) to meet their enemy unexpectedly (with no previous intention).
Volume 5, Book 59, Number 289; Narrated Ibn Abbas: On the day of the battle of Badr, the Prophet said, “O Allah! I appeal to You (to fulfill) Your Covenant and Promise. O Allah! If Your Will is that none should worship You (then give victory to the pagans).” Then Abu Bakr took hold of him by the hand and said, “This is sufficient for you.” The Prophet came out saying, “Their multitude will be put to flight and they will show their backs.” (54:45)
Having returned to Medina after the battle, Muhammad admonished the resident Jewish tribe of Qaynuqa to accept Islam or face a similar fate as the Quraish (3:12-13). The Qaynuqa agreed to leave Medina if they could retain their property, which Muhammad granted. Following the exile of the Bani Qaynuqa, Muhammad turned to individuals in Medina he considered to have acted treacherously. The Prophet particularly seems to have disliked the many poets who ridiculed his new religion and his claim to prophethood — a theme evident today in the violent reactions of Muslims to any perceived mockery of Islam. In taking action against his opponents, “the ideal man” set precedents for all time as to how Muslims should deal with detractors of their religion.
Sira, p367: Then he {Kab bin al-Ashraf} composed amatory verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women. The Apostle said: “Who will rid me of Ibnul-Ashraf?” Muhammad bin Maslama, brother of the Bani Abdu’l-Ashhal, said, “I will deal with him for you, O Apostle of God, I will kill him.” He said, “Do so if you can.” “All that is incumbent upon you is that you should try” {said the Prophet to Muhammad bin Maslama}. He said, “O Apostle of God, we shall have to tell lies.” He {the Prophet} answered, “Say what you like, for you are free in the matter.”
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 270; Narrated Jabir bin ‘Abdullah: The Prophet said, “Who is ready to kill Kab bin Al-Ashraf who has really hurt Allah and His Apostle?” Muhammad bin Maslama said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Do you like me to kill him?” He replied in the affirmative. So, Muhammad bin Maslama went to him (i.e. Kab) and said, “This person (i.e. the Prophet) has put us to task and asked us for charity.” Kab replied, “By Allah, you will get tired of him.” Muhammad said to him, “We have followed him, so we dislike to leave him till we see the end of his affair.” Muhammad bin Maslama went on talking to him in this way till he got the chance to kill him.
A significant portion of the Sira is devoted to poetry composed by Muhammad’s followers and his enemies in rhetorical duels that mirrored those in the field. There seems to have been an informal competition in aggrandizing oneself, one’s tribe, and one’s God while ridiculing one’s adversary in eloquent and memorable ways. Kab bin Malik, one of the assassins of his brother, Kab bin al-Ashraf, composed the following:
Sira, p368: Kab bin Malik said: Of them Kab was left prostrate there (After his fall {the Jewish tribe of} al-Nadir were brought low). Sword in hand we cut him down By Muhammad’s order when he sent secretly by night Kab’s brother to go to Kab. He beguiled him and brought him down with guile Mahmud was trustworthy, bold.
ii. The Battle of Uhud
The Meccan Quraish regrouped for an attack on the Muslims at Medina. Muhammad got wind of the Meccan force coming to attack him and encamped his forces on a small hillock north of Medina named Uhud, where the ensuing battle took place.
Volume 5, Book 59, Number 377; Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah: On the day of the battle of Uhud, a man came to the Prophet and said, “Can you tell me where I will be if I should get martyred?” The Prophet replied, “In Paradise.” The man threw away some dates he was carrying in his hand, and fought till he was martyred.
Volume 5, Book 59, Number 375; Narrated Al-Bara: when we faced the enemy, they took to their heel till I saw their women running towards the mountain, lifting up their clothes from their legs, revealing their leg-bangles. The Muslims started saying, “The booty, the booty!” Abdullah bin Jubair said, “The Prophet had taken a firm promise from me not to leave this place.” But his companions refused (to stay). So when they refused (to stay there), (Allah) confused them so that they could not know where to go, and they suffered seventy casualties.
Though deprived of victory at Uhud, Muhammad was by no means vanquished. He continued making raids that made being a Muslim not only virtuous in the eyes of Allah but lucrative as well. In an Islamic worldview, there is no incompatibility between wealth, power, and holiness. Indeed, as a member of the true faith, it is only logical that one should also enjoy the material bounty of Allah — even if that means plundering it from infidels.
As Muhammad had neutralized the Jewish tribe of Bani Qaynuqa after Badr, he now turned to the Bani Nadir after Uhud. According to the Sira, Allah warned Muhammad of an attempt to assassinate him, and the Prophet ordered the Muslims to prepare for war against the Bani Nadir. The Bani Nadir agreed to go into exile if Muhammad permitted them to retain their movable property. Muhammad agreed to these terms save that they leave behind their armor.
iii. The Battle of Medina
In 627 AD, Muhammad faced the greatest challenge to his new community. In that year, the Quraish of Mecca made their most determined attack on the Muslims at Medina itself. Muhammad thought it advisable not to engage them in a pitched battle as at Uhud but took shelter in Medina, protected as it was by lava flows on three sides. The Meccans would have to attack from the northwest in a valley between the flows, and it was there that Muhammad ordered a trench dug for the city’s defense.
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 208; Narrated Anas: On the day (of the battle) of the Trench, the Ansar {new converts to Islam} were saying, “We are those who have sworn allegiance to Muhammad for Jihad (for ever) as long as we live.” The Prophet replied to them, “O Allah! There is no life except the life of the Hereafter. So honor the Ansar and emigrants {from Mecca} with Your Generosity.”
And Narrated Mujashi: My brother and I came to the Prophet and I requested him to take the pledge of allegiance from us for migration. He said, “Migration has passed away with its people.” I asked, “For what will you take the pledge of allegiance from us then?” He said, “I will take (the pledge) for Islam and Jihad.”
The Meccans were foiled by the trench and only able to send small raiding parties across it. After several days, they turned back for Mecca. Following his victory, Muhammad turned to the third Jewish tribe at Medina, the Bani Quraiza. While the Bani Qaynuqa and Bani Nadir had suffered exile, the fate of the Bani Quraiza would be considerably more dire.
Sira, p463-4: Then they {the tribe of Quraiza} surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of Bani al-Najjar. Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches. Among them was the enemy of Allah Huyayy bin Akhtab and Kab bin Asad their chief. There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900. As they were being taken out in batches to the Apostle they asked Kab what he thought would be done with them. He replied, “Will you never understand? Don’t you see that the summoner never stops and those who are taken away do not return? By Allah it is death!” This went on until the Apostle made an end of them.
Thus do we find the clear precedent that explains the peculiar penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims: it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet.
Following yet another of the Muslims’ raids, this time on a place called Khaibar, “The women of Khaibar were distributed among the Muslims” as was usual practice. (Sira, p511) The raid at Khaibar had been against the Bani Nadir, whom Muhammad had earlier exiled from Medina.
Sira, p515: Kinana bin al-Rabi, who had the custody of the treasure of Bani al-Nadir, was brought to the Apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came to the Apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the Apostle said to Kinana, “Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?” he said, Yes. The Apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the Apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr bin al-Awwam, “Torture him until you extract what he has,” so he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the Apostle delivered him to Muhammad bin Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his brother Mahmud.
iv. The Conquest of Mecca
Muhammad’s greatest victory came in 632 AD, ten years after he and his followers had been forced to flee to Medina. In that year, he assembled a force of some ten thousand Muslims and allied tribes and descended on Mecca. “The Apostle had instructed his commanders when they entered Mecca only to fight those who resisted them, except a small number who were to be killed even if they were found beneath the curtains of the Kaba.” (Sira, p550)
Volume 3, Book 29, Number 72; Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle entered Mecca in the year of its Conquest wearing an Arabian helmet on his head and when the Prophet took it off, a person came and said, “Ibn Khatal is holding the covering of the Kaba (taking refuge in the Kaba).” The Prophet said, “Kill him.”
Following the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad outlined the future of his religion.
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour {of the Last Judgment} will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24; Narrated Ibn Umar: Allah’s Apostle said: “I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.”
It is from such warlike pronouncements as these that Islamic scholarship divides the world into dar al-Islam (the House of Islam, i.e., those nations who have submitted to Allah) and dar al-harb (the House of War, i.e., those who have not). It is this dispensation that the world lived under in Muhammad’s time and that it lives under today. Then as now, Islam’s message to the unbelieving world is the same: submit or be conquered.
d. Sharia Law
Unlike many religions, Islam includes a mandatory and highly specific legal and political plan for society called Sharia (pronounced “sha-r�e-uh”), which translates approximately as “way” or “path.” The precepts of Sharia are derived from the commandments of the Qur’an and the Sunnah (the teachings and precedents of Muhammad as found in the reliable hadiths and the Sira). Together, the Qur’an and the Sunnah establish the dictates of Sharia, which is the blueprint for the good Islamic society. Because Sharia originates with the Qur’an and the Sunnah, it is not optional. Sharia is the legal code ordained by Allah for all mankind. To violate Sharia or not to accept its authority is to commit rebellion against Allah, which Allah’s faithful are required to combat.
There is no separation between the religious and the political in Islam; rather Islam and Sharia constitute a comprehensive means of ordering society at every level. While it is in theory possible for an Islamic society to have different outward forms — an elective system of government, a hereditary monarchy, etc. — whatever the outward structure of the government, Sharia is the prescribed content. It is this fact that puts Sharia into conflict with forms of government based on anything other than the Qur’an and the Sunnah.
The precepts of Sharia may be divided into two parts:
1. Acts of worship (al-ibadat), which includes:
Ritual Purification (Wudu)
Prayers (Salah)
Fasts (Sawm and Ramadan)
Charity (Zakat)
Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj)2. Human interaction (al-muamalat), which includes:
Financial transactions
Endowments
Laws of inheritance
Marriage, divorce, and child care
Food and drink (including ritual slaughtering and hunting)
Penal punishments
War and peace
Judicial matters (including witnesses and forms of evidence)
As one may see, there are few aspects of life that Sharia does not specifically govern. Everything from washing one’s hands to child-rearing to taxation to military policy fall under its dictates. Because Sharia is derivate of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, it affords some room for interpretation. But upon examination of the Islamic sources (see above), it is apparent that any meaningful application of Sharia is going to look very different from anything resembling a free or open society in the Western sense. The stoning of adulterers, execution of apostates and blasphemers, repression of other religions, and a mandatory hostility toward non-Islamic nations punctuated by regular warfare will be the norm. It seems fair then to classify Islam and its Sharia code as a form of totalitarianism.
2. Jihad and Dhimmitude
a. What does “jihad” mean?
Jihad literally translates as “struggle.” Strictly speaking, jihad does not mean “holy war” as Muslim apologists often point out. However, the question remains as to what sort of “struggle” is meant: an inner, spiritual struggle against the passions, or an outward, physical struggle.
As in any case of trying to determine Islamic teaching on a particular matter, one must look to the Qur’an and the Sunnah. From those sources (see above) it is evident that a Muslim is required to struggle against a variety of things: laziness in prayer, neglecting to give zakat (alms), etc. But is it also plain that a Muslim is commanded to struggle in physical combat against the infidel as well. Muhammad’s impressive military career attests to the central role that military action plays in Islam.
b. Hasan Al-Banna on jihad
Below are excerpts from Hasan Al-Banna’s treatise, Jihad. In 1928, Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which today is the most powerful organization in Egypt after the government itself. In this treatise, Al-Banna cogently argues that Muslims must take up arms against unbelievers. As he says, “The verses of the Qur’an and the Sunnah summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea fighting.”
All Muslims Must Make Jihad
Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward. Furthermore, Allah has specifically honoured the Mujahideen {those who wage jihad} with certain exceptional qualities, both spiritual and practical, to benefit them in this world and the next. Their pure blood is a symbol of victory in this world and the mark of success and felicity in the world to come.
Those who can only find excuses, however, have been warned of extremely dreadful punishments and Allah has described them with the most unfortunate of names. He has reprimanded them for their cowardice and lack of spirit, and castigated them for their weakness and truancy. In this world, they will be surrounded by dishonour and in the next they will be surrounded by the fire from which they shall not escape though they may possess much wealth. The weaknesses of abstention and evasion of jihad are regarded by Allah as one of the major sins, and one of the seven sins that guarantee failure.
Islam is concerned with the question of jihad and the drafting and the mobilisation of the entire Umma {the global Muslim community} into one body to defend the right cause with all its strength than any other ancient or modern system of living, whether religious or civil. The verses of the Qur’an and the Sunnah of Muhammad (PBUH {Peace Be Unto Him}) are overflowing with all these noble ideals and they summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea fighting.
Here Al-Banna offers citations from the Qur’an and the reliable hadiths that demonstrate the necessity of combat for Muslims. The citations are comparable to those included in Islam 101 section 1b and are here omitted.
The Scholars on Jihad
I have just presented to you some verses from the Qur’an and the Noble Ahadith concerning the importance of jihad. Now I would like to present to you some of the opinions from jurisprudence of the Islamic Schools of Thought including some latter day authorities regarding the rules of jihad and the necessity for preparedness. From this we will come to realise how far the ummah has deviated in its practice of Islam as can be seen from the consensus of its scholars on the question of jihad.
The author of the ‘Majma’ al-Anhar fi Sharh Multaqal-Abhar’, in describing the rules of jihad according to the Hanafi School, said: ‘Jihad linguistically means to exert one’s utmost effort in word and action; in the Sharee’ah {Sharia — Islamic law} it is the fighting of the unbelievers, and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship and smashing their idols. This means that jihad is to strive to the utmost to ensure the strength of Islam by such means as fighting those who fight you and the dhimmies {non-Muslims living under Islamic rule} (if they violate any of the terms of the treaty) and the apostates (who are the worst of unbelievers, for they disbelieved after they have affirmed their belief).
It is fard (obligatory) on us to fight with the enemies. The Imam must send a military expedition to the Dar-al-Harb {House of War — the non-Muslim world} every year at least once or twice, and the people must support him in this. If some of the people fulfill the obligation, the remainder are released from the obligation. If this fard kifayah (communal obligation) cannot be fulfilled by that group, then the responsibility lies with the closest adjacent group, and then the closest after that etc., and if the fard kifayah cannot be fulfilled except by all the people, it then becomes a fard ‘ayn (individual obligation), like prayer on everyone of the people.
The scholarly people are of one opinion on this matter as should be evident and this is irrespective of whether these scholars were Mujtahideen or Muqalideen and it is irrespective of whether these scholars were salaf (early) or khalaf (late). They all agreed unanimously that jihad is a fard kifayah imposed upon the Islamic ummah in order to spread the Da’wah of Islam, and that jihad is a fard ‘ayn if an enemy attacks Muslim lands. Today, my brother, the Muslims as you know are forced to be subservient before others and are ruled by disbelievers. Our lands have been besieged, and our hurruma’at (personal possessions, respect, honour, dignity and privacy) violated. Our enemies are overlooking our affairs, and the rites of our din are under their jurisdiction. Yet still the Muslims fail to fulfill the responsibility of Da’wah that is on their shoulders. Hence in this situation it becomes the duty of each and every Muslim to make jihad. He should prepare himself mentally and physically such that when comes the decision of Allah, he will be ready.
I should not finish this discussion without mentioning to you that the Muslims, throughout every period of their history (before the present period of oppression in which their dignity has been lost) have never abandoned jihad nor did they ever become negligent in its performance, not even their religious authorities, mystics, craftsmen, etc. They were all always ready and prepared. For example, Abdullah ibn al Mubarak, a very learned and pious man, was a volunteer in jihad for most of his life, and ‘Abdulwahid bin Zayd, a sufi and a devout man, was the same. And in his time, Shaqiq al Balkhi, the shaykh of the sufis encouraged his pupils towards jihad.
Associated Matters Concerning Jihad
Many Muslims today mistakenly believe that fighting the enemy is jihad asghar (a lesser jihad) and that fighting one’s ego is jihad akbar (a greater jihad). The following narration [athar] is quoted as proof: “We have returned from the lesser jihad to embark on the greater jihad.” They said: “What is the greater jihad?” He said: “The jihad of the heart, or the jihad against one’s ego.”
This narration is used by some to lessen the importance of fighting, to discourage any preparation for combat, and to deter any offering of jihad in Allah’s way. This narration is not a saheeh (sound) tradition: The prominent muhaddith Al Hafiz ibn Hajar al-Asqalani said in the Tasdid al-Qaws:
‘It is well known and often repeated, and was a saying of Ibrahim ibn ‘Abla.’
Al Hafiz Al Iraqi said in the Takhrij Ahadith al-Ahya’:
‘Al Bayhaqi transmitted it with a weak chain of narrators on the authority of Jabir, and Al Khatib transmitted it in his history on the authority of Jabir.’
Nevertheless, even if it were a sound tradition, it would never warrant abandoning jihad or preparing for it in order to rescue the territories of the Muslims and repel the attacks of the disbelievers. Let it be known that this narration simply emphasises the importance of struggling against one’s ego so that Allah will be the sole purpose of everyone of our actions.
Other associated matters concerning jihad include commanding the good and forbidding the evil. It is said in the Hadeeth: “One of the greatest forms of jihad is to utter a word of truth in the presence of a tyrannical ruler.” But nothing compares to the honour of shahadah kubra (the supreme martyrdom) or the reward that is waiting for the Mujahideen.
Epilogue
My brothers! The ummah that knows how to die a noble and honourable death is granted an exalted life in this world and eternal felicity in the next. Degradation and dishonour are the results of the love of this world and the fear of death. Therefore prepare for jihad and be the lovers of death. Life itself shall come searching after you.
My brothers, you should know that one day you will face death and this ominous event can only occur once. If you suffer on this occasion in the way of Allah, it will be to your benefit in this world and your reward in the next. And remember brother that nothing can happen without the Will of Allah: ponder well what Allah, the Blessed, the Almighty, has said:
‘Then after the distress, He sent down security for you. Slumber overtook a party of you, while another party was thinking about themselves (as to how to save themselves, ignoring the others and the Prophet) and thought wrongly of Allah – the thought of ignorance. They said, “Have we any part in the affair?” Say you (O Muhammad): “Indeed the affair belongs wholly to Allah.” They hide within themselves what they dare not reveal to you, saying: “If we had anything to do with the affair, none of us would have been killed here.” Say: “Even if you had remained in your homes, those for whom death was decreed would certainly have gone forth to the place of their death: but that Allah might test what is in your hearts; and to purify that which was in your hearts (sins), and Allah is All-Knower of what is in (your) hearts.”‘ {Sura 3:154}
c. Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of War
The violent injunctions of the Qur’an and the violent precedents set by Muhammad set the tone for the Islamic view of politics and of world history. Islamic scholarship divides the world into two spheres of influence, the House of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the House of War (dar al-harb). Islam means submission, and so the House of Islam includes those nations that have submitted to Islamic rule, which is to say those nations ruled by Sharia law. The rest of the world, which has not accepted Sharia law and so is not in a state of submission, exists in a state of rebellion or war with the will of Allah. It is incumbent on dar al-Islam to make war upon dar al-harb until such time that all nations submit to the will of Allah and accept Sharia law. Islam’s message to the non-Muslim world is the same now as it was in the time of Muhammad and throughout history: submit or be conquered. The only times since Muhammad when dar al-Islam was not actively at war with dar al-harb were when the Muslim world was too weak or divided to make war effectively.
But the lulls in the ongoing war that the House of Islam has declared against the House of War do not indicate a forsaking of jihad as a principle but reflect a change in strategic factors. It is acceptable for Muslim nations to declare hudna, or truce, at times when the infidel nations are too powerful for open warfare to make sense. Jihad is not a collective suicide pact even while “killing and being killed” (Sura 9:111) is encouraged on an individual level. For the past few hundred years, the Muslim world has been too politically fragmented and technologically inferior to pose a major threat to the West. But that is changing.
i. Taqiyya — Religious Deception
Due to the state of war between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, reuses de guerre, i.e., systematic lying to the infidel, must be considered part and parcel of Islamic tactics. The parroting by Muslim organizations throughout dar al-harb that “Islam is a religion of peace,” or that the origins of Muslim violence lie in the unbalanced psyches of particular individual “fanatics,” must be considered as disinformation intended to induce the infidel world to let down its guard. Of course, individual Muslims may genuinely regard their religion as “peaceful” — but only insofar as they are ignorant of its true teachings, or in the sense of the Egyptian theorist Sayyid Qutb, who posited in his Islam and Universal Peace that true peace would prevail in the world just as soon as Islam had conquered it.
A telling point is that, while Muslims who present their religion as peaceful abound throughout dar al-harb, they are nearly non-existent in dar al-Islam. A Muslim apostate once suggested to me a litmus test for Westerners who believe that Islam is a religion of “peace” and “tolerance”: try making that point on a street corner in Ramallah, or Riyadh, or Islamabad, or anywhere in the Muslim world. He assured me you wouldn’t live five minutes.
{A} problem concerning law and order {with respect to Muslims in dar al-harb} arises from an ancient Islamic legal principle — that of taqiyya, a word the root meaning of which is “to remain faithful” but which in effect means “dissimulation.” It has full Qur’anic authority (3:28 and 16:106) and allows the Muslim to conform outwardly to the requirements of unislamic or non-Islamic government, while inwardly “remaining faithful” to whatever he conceives to be proper Islam, while waiting for the tide to turn. (Hiskett, Some to Mecca Turn to Pray, 101.)
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 269; Narrated Jabir bin ‘Abdullah: The Prophet said, “War is deceit.”
Historically, examples of taqiyya include permission to renounce Islam itself in order to save one’s neck or ingratiate oneself with an enemy. It is not hard to see that the implications of taqiyya are insidious in the extreme: they essentially render negotiated settlement — and, indeed, all veracious communication between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb — impossible. It should not, however, be surprising that a party to a war should seek to mislead the other about its means and intentions. Jihad Watch’s own Hugh Fitzgerald sums up taqiyya and kitman, a related form of deception.
“Taqiyya” is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi’a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi’a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers. A related term, of broader application, is “kitman,” which is defined as “mental reservation.” An example of “Taqiyya” would be the insistence of a Muslim apologist that “of course” there is freedom of conscience in Islam, and then quoting that Qur’anic verse — “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” {2:256} But the impression given will be false, for there has been no mention of the Muslim doctrine of abrogation, or naskh, whereby such an early verse as that about “no compulsion in religion” has been cancelled out by later, far more intolerant and malevolent verses. In any case, history shows that within Islam there is, and always has been, “compulsion in religion” for Muslims, and for non-Muslims.
“Kitman” is close to “taqiyya,” but rather than outright dissimulation, it consists in telling only a part of the truth, with “mental reservation” justifying the omission of the rest. One example may suffice. When a Muslim maintains that “jihad” really means “a spiritual struggle,” and fails to add that this definition is a recent one in Islam (little more than a century old), he misleads by holding back, and is practicing “kitman.” When he adduces, in support of this doubtful proposition, the hadith in which Muhammad, returning home from one of his many battles, is reported to have said (as known from a chain of transmitters, or isnad), that he had returned from “the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad” and does not add what he also knows to be true, that this is a “weak” hadith, regarded by the most-respected muhaddithin as of doubtful authenticity, he is further practicing “kitman.”
In times when the greater strength of dar al-harb necessitates that the jihad take an indirect approach, the natural attitude of a Muslim to the infidel world must be one of deception and omission. Revealing frankly the ultimate goal of dar al-Islam to conquer and plunder dar al-harb when the latter holds the military trump cards would be strategic idiocy. Fortunately for the jihadists, most infidels do not understand how one is to read the Qur’an, nor do they trouble themselves to find out what Muhammad actually did and taught, which makes it easy to give the impression through selective quotations and omissions that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Any infidel who wants to believe such fiction will happily persist in his mistake having been cited a handful of Meccan verses and told that Muhammad was a man of great piety and charity. Digging only slightly deeper is sufficient to dispel the falsehood.
d. Jihad Through History
In 622 AD (year one in the Islamic calendar, AH 1), Muhammad abandoned Mecca for the city of Medina (Yathrib) some 200 farther north in the Arabian peninsula. In Medina, Muhammad established a paramilitary organization that would spread his influence and that of his religion throughout Arabia. Because there has never been a separation of the political-military and the religious in Islam, this development was entirely natural by Islamic principles. By the time of his death in 632 AD, Muhammad had extended his control in a series of raids and battles over most of southern Arabia. The conquered populations of these areas either had to submit to Muslim rule and pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.
i. The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
Near the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam’s expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as “the four rightly-guided Caliphs”) and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.
Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. ? When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, “Let one of you talk to me!” Al-Mughira replied, ? “Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: “Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master.”
Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad’s death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia.
As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas — incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia — of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.
Bat Ye’or, the leading scholar of Islam’s expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian’s account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery — men and women, boys and girls — and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)
The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
In 177 <17 April 793>, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2 December 837>, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6 September 845>, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27 March 860>, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)
This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
ii. The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
Some twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire’s capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades (see Islam 101 FAQs), but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.
In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the “Arabness” of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse’s legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.)
This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
e. Dhimmitude
Islam’s persecution of non-Muslims is in no way limited to jihad, even though that is the basic relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. After the jihad concludes in a given area with the conquest of infidel territory, the dhimma, or treaty of protection, may be granted to the conquered “People of the Book” — historically, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The dhimma provides that the life and property of the infidel are exempted from jihad for as long as the Muslim rulers permit, which has generally meant for as long as the subject non-Muslims — the dhimmi — prove economically useful to the Islamic state. The Qur’an spells out the payment of the jizya (poll- or head-tax; Sura 9:29), which is the most conspicuous means by which the Muslim overlords exploit the dhimmi. But the jizya is not merely economic in its function; it exists also to humiliate the dhimmi and impress on him the superiority of Islam. Al-Maghili, a fifteenth century Muslim theologian, explains:
On the day of payment {of the jizya} they {the dhimmi} shall be assembled in a public place like the suq {place of commerce}. They should be standing there waiting in the lowest and dirtiest place. The acting officials representing the Law shall be placed above them and shall adopt a threatening attitude so that it seems to them, as well as to others, that our object is to degrade them by pretending to take their possessions. They will realize that we are doing them a favor in accepting from them the jizya and letting them go free. (Al-Maghili, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 361.)
Islamic law codifies various other restrictions on the dhimmi, all of which derive from the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Several hundred years of Islamic thought on the right treatment of dhimmi peoples is summed up by Al-Damanhuri, a seventeenth century head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious center for learning in the Muslim world:
… just as the dhimmis are prohibited from building churches, other things also are prohibited to them. They must not assist an unbeliever against a Muslim … raise the cross in an Islamic assemblage … display banners on their own holidays; bear arms … or keep them in their homes. Should they do anything of the sort, they must be punished, and the arms seized. … The Companions [of the Prophet] agreed upon these points in order to demonstrate the abasement of the infidel and to protect the weak believer’s faith. For if he sees them humbled, he will not be inclined toward their belief, which is not true if he sees them in power, pride, or luxury garb, as all this urges him to esteem them and incline toward them, in view of his own distress and poverty. Yet esteem for the unbeliever is unbelief. (Al-Damanhuri, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 382.)
The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian peoples of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe suffered under the oppressive strictures of the dhimma for centuries. The status of these dhimmi peoples is comparable in many ways to that of former slaves in the post-bellum American South. Forbidden to construct houses of worship or repair extant ones, economically crippled by the jizya, socially humiliated, legally discriminated against, and generally kept in a permanent state of weakness and vulnerability by the Muslim overlords, it should not be surprising that their numbers dwindled, in many places to the point of extinction. The generally misunderstood decline of Islamic civilization over the past several centuries is easily explained by the demographic decline of the dhimmi populations, which had provided the principle engines of technical and administrative competence.
Should the dhimmi violate the conditions of the dhimma — perhaps through practicing his own religion indiscreetly or failing to show adequate deference to a Muslim — then the jihad resumes. At various times in Islamic history, dhimmi peoples rose above their subjected status, and this was often the occasion for violent reprisals by Muslim populations who believed them to have violated the terms of the dhimma. Medieval Andalusia (Moorish Spain) is often pointed out by Muslim apologists as a kind of multicultural wonderland, in which Jews and Christians were permitted by the Islamic government to rise through the ranks of learning and government administration. What we are not told, however, is that this relaxation of the disabilities resulted in widespread rioting on the part of the Muslim populace that killed hundreds of dhimmis, mainly Jews. By refusing to convert to Islam and straying from the traditional constraints of the dhimma (even at the behest of the Islamic government, which was in need of capable manpower), the dhimmi had implicitly chosen the only other option permitted by the Qur’an: death.
f. Jihad in the Modern Era
Following its defeat at the walls of Vienna in 1683, Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the increasingly predatory European powers.
In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire’s non-Muslim subjects labored. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over unbelievers.
By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim groups seeking independence.
It was in this atmosphere that the first stage of the Armenian genocide took place in 1896 with the slaughter of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.
To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,” the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.” In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has appeared. All Muhammadans, young and old, men, women, and children must fulfill their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Muhammadan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.” (quoted in Balakian, The Burning Tigris, 169-70.)
The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922 at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships. All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish government.
Since the breakup of the Islamic Empire following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens against the Russians in the Caucasus. Jihads have also been waged throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01 (USA), 3/11/04 (Spain), and 7/7/05 (UK). (For a more comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visit http://www.thereligionofpeace.com.)
The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is making a comeback.
3. Conclusion
The chief barrier today to a better understanding of Islam — apart, perhaps, from outright fear — is sloppy language. Let us take, to start with, the much-vaunted “war on terror.” Upon scrutiny, the phrase “war on terror” makes as much sense as a war on “blitzkrieg,” “bullets,” or “strategic bombing.” The “war on terror” implies that it is perfectly fine if the enemy seeks to destroy us — and, indeed, succeeds in doing so — as long as he does not employ “terror” in the process.
“Terrorism,” it should be obvious, is a tactic or stratagem used to advance a goal; it is the goal of Islamic terrorism that we must come to understand, and this logically requires an understanding of Islam.
As we have seen, contrary to the widespread insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term “Islamo-fascism” is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.
The spectacular acts of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are but the most recent manifestation of a global war of conquest that Islam has been waging since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century AD and that continues apace today. This is the simple, glaring truth that is staring the world today in the face — and which has stared it in the face numerous times in the past — but which it seems few today are willing to contemplate.
It is important to realize that we have been talking about Islam — not Islamic “fundamentalism,” “extremism,” “fanaticism,” “Islamo-fascism,” or “Islamism,” but Islam proper, Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present. The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are due largely to the geostrategic changes following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options available to terrorists.
With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe. In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against the non-Muslim world is because they can.
It is paramount to note, however, that, even if no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would simply mean a change in Islam’s tactics — perhaps indicating a longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round of violence. It cannot be overemphasized that Muslim terrorism is a symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while Islam proper remains permanently hostile.
Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his “Future of the Islamic Movement” (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.
Our own Prophet … was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist and a first-class manager all in one. … In the Qur’an’s historic vision Allah’s support and the revolutionary struggle of the people must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. … But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his mi’raj {“nocturnal voyages to the ‘court’ of Allah”}. … It is Allah who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted.
It must be emphasized that all of the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources themselves and is not the product of critical Western scholarship. (Indeed, most modern Western scholarship of Islam is hardly “critical” in any meaningful sense.) It is Islam’s self-interpretation that necessitates and glorifies violence, not any foreign interpretation of it.
4. Frequently Asked Questions
There are a handful of questions that invariably arise when the point is made that Islam is violent. These questions for the most part are misleading or irrelevant and do not contest the actual evidence or arguments that violence is inherent to Islam. Nonetheless, they have proven rhetorically effective in deflecting serious scrutiny from Islam, and so I deal with some of them here.
a. What about the Crusades?
The obvious response to this question is, “Well, what about them?” Violence committed in the name of other religions is logically unconnected to the question of whether Islam is violent. But, by mentioning the Crusades, the hope of the Islamic apologist is to draw attention away from Islamic violence and paint religions in general as morally equivalent.
In both the Western academia and media as well as in the Islamic world, the Crusades are viewed as wars of aggression fought by bloody-minded Christians against peaceful Muslims. While the Crusades were certainly bloody, they are more accurately understood as a belated Western response to centuries of jihad than as an unprovoked, unilateral attack. Muslim rule in the Holy Land began in the second half of the 7th century during the Arab wave of jihad with the conquests of Damascus and Jerusalem by the second “rightly-guided Caliph,” Umar. After the initial bloody jihad, Christian and Jewish life there was tolerated within the strictures of the dhimma and the Muslim Arabs generally permitted Christians abroad to continue to make pilgrimage to their holy sites, a practice which proved lucrative for the Muslim state. In the 11th century, the relatively benign Arab administration of the Holy Land was replaced with that of Seljuk Turks, due to civil war in the Islamic Empire. Throughout the latter half of the 11th century, the Turks waged war against the Christian Byzantine Empire and pushed it back from its strongholds in Antioch and Anatolia (now Turkey). In 1071, Byzantine forces suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in what is now Eastern Turkey. The Turks resumed the jihad in the Holy Land, abusing, robbing, enslaving, and killing Christians there and throughout Asia Minor. They threatened to cut off Christendom from its holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, rebuilt under Byzantine stewardship after it was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009.
It was in this context of a renewed jihad in the Middle East that the Roman Pope, Urban II, issued a call in 1095 for Western Christians to come to the aid of their Eastern cousins (and seems to have harbored the hope of claiming Jerusalem for the Papacy after the Great Schism with Eastern Christianity in 1054). This “armed pilgrimage,” in which numerous civilians as well as soldiers took part, would eventually become known years later as the First Crusade. The idea of a “crusade” as we now understand that term, i.e., a Christian “holy war,” developed years later with the rise of such organizations as the Knights Templar that made “crusading” a way of life. It worth noting that the most ardent Crusaders, the Franks, were exactly those who had faced jihad and razzias for centuries along the Franco-Spanish border and knew better than most the horrors to which Muslims subjected Christians. At the time of the First Crusade, the populations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, though ruled by Muslims, were still overwhelmingly Christian. The “Crusading” campaigns of the Western Christian armies were justified at the time as a war liberating the Eastern Christians, whose population, lands, and culture had been devastated by centuries of jihad and dhimmitude. Conquering territory for God in the mode of jihad was an alien idea to Christianity and it should not be surprising that it eventually died out in the West and never gained ascendancy in the East.
Following the very bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Latin armies and the establishment of the Crusader States in Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian forces fought a see-saw series of wars, in which both parties were guilty of the usual gamut of wartime immorality. Over time, even with reinforcing Crusades waged from Europe, the Crusader States, strung out on precarious lines of communication, slowly succumbed to superior Muslim power. In 1271, the last Christian citadel, Antioch, fell to the Muslims. No longer having to divert forces to subdue the Christian beachhead on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Muslims regrouped for a 400-year-long jihad against Southern and Eastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna before it was halted. In geostrategic terms, the Crusades can be viewed as an attempt by the West to forestall its own destruction at the hands of Islamic jihad by carrying the fight to the enemy. It worked for a while.
Significantly, while the West has for some time now lamented the Crusades as mistaken, there has never been any mention from any serious Islamic authority of regret for the centuries and centuries of jihad and dhimmitude perpetrated against other societies. But this is hardly surprising: while religious violence contradicts the fundamentals of Christianity, religious violence is written into Islam’s DNA.
b. If Islam is violent, why are so many Muslims peaceful?
This question is a bit like asking, “If Christianity teaches humility, tolerance, and forgiveness, why are so many Christians arrogant, intolerant, and vindictive?” The answer in both cases is obvious: in any religion or ideology there will be many who profess, but do not practice, its tenets. Just as it is often easier for a Christian to hit back, play holier-than-thou, or disdain others, so it is often easier for a Muslim to stay at home rather than embark on jihad. Hypocrites are everywhere.
Furthermore, there are also people who do not really understand their own faith and so act outside of its prescribed boundaries. In Islam, there are likely many Muslims who do not really understand their religion thanks to the importance of reciting the Qur’an in Arabic but not having to understand it. It is the words and sounds of the Qur’an that attract Allah’s merciful attention rather than Qur’anic knowledge on the part of the supplicant. Especially in the West, Muslims here are more likely to be attracted by Western ways (which explains why they are here) and less likely to act violently against the society to which they may have fled from an Islamic tyranny abroad.
However, in any given social context, as Islam takes greater root — increasing numbers of followers, the construction of more mosques and “cultural centers,” etc. — the greater the likelihood that some number of its adherents will take its violent precepts seriously. This is the problem that the West faces today.
c. What about the violent passages in the Bible?
First, violent Biblical passages are irrelevant to the question of whether Islam is violent.
Second, the violent passages in the Bible certainly do no amount to a standing order to commit violence against the rest of the world. Unlike the Qur’an, the Bible is a huge collection of documents written by different people at different times in different contexts, which allows for much greater interpretative freedom. The Qur’an, on the other hand, comes exclusively from one source: Muhammad. It is through the life of Muhammad that the Qur’an must be understood, as the Qur’an itself says. His wars and killings both reflect and inform the meaning of the Qur’an. Furthermore, the strict literalism of the Qur’an means that there is no room for interpretation when it comes to its violent injunctions. As it is through the example of Christ, the “Prince of Peace,” that Christianity interprets its scriptures, so it is through the example of the warlord and despot Muhammad that Muslims understand the Qur’an.
d. Could an Islamic “Reformation” pacify Islam?
As should be plain to anyone who has examined the Islamic sources, to take the violence out of Islam would require it to jettison two things: the Qur’an as the word of Allah and Muhammad as Allah’s prophet. In other words, to pacify Islam would require its transformation into something that it is not. The Western Christian Reformation, that is often used as an example, was an attempt (successful or not) to recover the essence of Christianity, namely, the example and teachings of Christ and the Apostles. Trying to get back to the example of Muhammad would have very different consequences. Indeed, one may say that Islam is today going through its “Reformation” with the increasing jihadist activity around the globe. Today, Muslims of the Salafi (“early generations”) school are doing exactly that in focusing on the life of Muhammad and his early successors. These reformers are known to their detractors by the derogative term Wahhabi. Drawing their inspiration from Muhammad and the Qur’an, they are invariably disposed to violence. The unhappy fact is that Islam today is what it has been fourteen centuries: violent, intolerant, and expansionary. It is folly to think that we, in the course of a few years or decades, are going to be able to change the basic world outlook of a foreign civilization. Islam’s violent nature must be accepted as given; only then will we be able to come up with appropriate policy responses that can improve our chances of survival.
e. What about the history of Western colonialism in the Islamic world?
Following the defeat of the Ottoman army outside Vienna on September 11, 1683 by Polish forces, Islam went into a period of strategic decline in which it was overwhelmingly dominated by the European powers. Much of dar al-Islam was colonized by the European powers who employed their superior technology and exploited the rivalries within the Muslim world to establish colonial rule.
While many of the practices of the Western imperial powers in the governance of their colonies were clearly unjust, it is utterly unwarranted to regard Western imperialism — as it often is — as an endemic criminal enterprise that is the basis of modern resentment against the West. It was only due to the assertive role of the Western powers that modern nation-states such as India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. came to exist in the first place. Without Western organization, these areas would have likely remained chaotic and tribal as they had existed for centuries.
When one looks at the post-colonial world, it is apparent that the most successful post-colonial nations have a common attribute: they are not Muslim. The United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, India, and the South American nations clearly outshine their Muslim-majority post-colonial counterparts — Iraq, Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etc. — by just about any standard.
f. How can a violent political ideology be the second-largest and fastest-growing religion on earth?
It should not be surprising that a violent political ideology is proving so attractive to much of the world. The attractive power of fascist ideas has been proven through history. Islam combines the interior comfort provided by religious faith with the outward power of a world-transforming political ideology. Like the revolutionary violence of Communism, jihad offers an altruistic justification for waging death and destruction. Such an ideology will naturally draw to it violent-minded people while encouraging the non-violent to take up arms themselves or support violence indirectly. Because something is popular hardly makes it benign.
Furthermore, the areas in which Islam is growing most rapidly, such as Western Europe, have been largely denuded of their religious and cultural heritage, which leaves Islam as the only vibrant ideology available to those in search of meaning.
g. Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?
Islamic apologists often point out that Islam is not a monolith and that there are differences of opinion among the different Islamic schools of thought. That is true, but, while there are differences, there are also common elements. Just as Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians differ on many aspects of Christianity, still they accept important common elements. So it is with Islam. One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law. The four Sunni Madhhabs (schools of fiqh [Islamic religious jurisprudence]) — Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali — all agree that there is a collective obligation on Muslims to make war on the rest of the world. Furthermore, even the schools of thought outside Sunni orthodoxy, including Sufism and the Jafari (Shia) school, agree on the necessity of jihad. When it comes to matters of jihad, the different schools disagree on such questions as whether infidels must first be asked to convert to Islam before hostilities may begin (Osama bin Laden asked America to convert before Al-Qaeda’s attacks); how plunder should be distributed among victorious jihadists; whether a long-term Fabian strategy against dar al-harb is preferable to an all-out frontal attack; etc.
h. What about the great achievements of Islamic civilization through history?
Islamic achievements in the fields of art, literature, science, medicine, etc. in no way refute the fact that Islam is intrinsically violent. Roman and Greek civilizations produced many great achievements in these fields as well, but also cultivated powerful traditions of violence. While giving the world the brilliance of Virgil and Horace, Rome was also a home to gladiatorial combat, the slaughter of Christians, and, at times, rampant militarism.
Furthermore, the achievements of Islamic civilization are pretty modest given its 1300 year history when compared to Western, Hindu, or Confucian civilizations. Many Islamic achievements were in fact the result of non-Muslims living within the Islamic Empire or of recent converts to Islam. One of the greatest Islamic thinkers, Averroes, ran afoul of Islamic orthodoxy through his study of non-Islamic (Greek) philosophy and his preference for Western modes of thought. Once the dhimmi populations of the Empire dwindled toward the middle of the second millennium AD, Islam began its social and cultural “decline.”
5. Glossary of Terms
Allah: “God”; Arabic Christians also worship “Allah,” but an Allah of a very different sort.
Allahu Akhbar: “God is Great (-est)”; term of praise; war cry of Muslims.
AH: “after Hijra”; the Islamic calendar?s system of dating; employs lunar rather than solar years; as of January 2007, we are in AH 1428.
Ansar: “aiders” or “helpers”; Arabian tribesmen allied with Muhammad and the early Muslims.
Badr: first significant battle fought by Muhammad and the Muslims against the Quraish tribe of Mecca.
Caliph: title of the ruler or leader of the Umma (global Muslim community); the head of the former Islamic Empire; the title was abolished by Kemal Attaturk in 1924 following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of modern Turkey.
dar al-Islam: “House (Realm) of Islam”; Islamic territory ruled by Sharia law
dar al-harb: “House (Realm) of War”: territory ruled by infidels
dar al-sulh: “House (Realm) of Truce”: territory ruled by infidels but allied with Islam; territory ruled by Muslims but not under Sharia law
Dhimma: the pact of protection extended to non-slave “People of the Book”, usually Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, which permitted them to remain nominally free under Muslim rule.
dhimmi: “protected”; people under the protection of the dhimma.
dhimmitude: word coined by historian Bat Ye’or to describe the status of dhimmi peoples
hadith: “report”; any of thousands of episodes from the life of Muhammad transmitted orally until written down in the eighth century AD; sahih (reliable or sound) hadiths are second only to the Qur’an in authority.
Hijra: “emigration”; Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina (Yathrib) in AD 622.
Islam: “submission” or “surrender.”
jizya: the poll or head tax prescribed by Sura 9:29 of the Qur’an to be paid by Christians and Jews in Muslim-held territory.
Kaba: “cube”; the Meccan temple in which numerous pagan idols were housed before Muhammad’s conquest of Mecca in AD 632, which is still the most venerated object in Islam; the Kaba’s cornerstone, which is believed to have fallen from heaven, is the stone on which Abraham was to sacrifice his son, Ishmael (not Isaac).
Mecca: holiest city of Islam; place of Muhammad’s birth in AD 570; its Great Mosque contains the Kaba stone; early period in Muhammad’s life where more peaceful verses of the Qur’an were revealed; site of Muhammad’s victory over the Quraish in AD 630.
Medina: “city,” short for “city of the Prophet”; second holiest city of Islam; destination of Muhammad’s Hijra (emigration) in AD 622; later period in Muhammad’s life where more violent verses of the Qur’an were revealed; site of third major battle fought by Muhammad against the Quraish tribe from Mecca; formerly called Yathrib.
Muhammad: “the praised one.”
Muslim: one who submits.
Qur’an (Kuran, Qur’an, etc.): “recitation”; according to Islam, the compiled verbatim words of Allah as dictated by Muhammad.
razzia: “raid”; acts of piracy on land or sea by Muslims against infidels
Sira: “life”; abbreviation of Sirat Rasul Allah, or “Life of the Prophet of God”; the canonical biography of the Prophet Muhammad written in the eighth century by Ibn Ishaq and later edited by Ibn Hisham; modern translation by Alfred Guillaume.
Sunnah: the “Way” of the Prophet Muhammad; includes his teachings, traditions, and example.
Sura: a chapter of the Qur’an; Qur’anic passages are cited as Sura number:verse number, e.g., 9:5.
Uhud: second major battle fought by Muhammad against the Quraish tribe of Mecca.
Umar: second “rightly-guided” Caliph; ruled AD 634–44, succeeded Abu Bakr; conquered the Holy Land.
Umma (ummah): the global Muslim community; the body of Muslim faithful.
Uthman: third “rightly-guided” Caliph; ruled AD 644–56, succeeded Umar; compiled the Qur’an in book form.
Yathrib: city to which Muhammad made the Hijra (emigration) in AD 622/AH 1; renamed Medina.
Thanks for all the time you put in informing the public about the plague that is Islam.
hi watsup enjoy this life cuz after this life u dont have anything to live on except fire — goodluck with hell
Why is the progressive ideology so similar to Sharia Law?
Both progressive/liberal and the sharia law supporters will “slowly”, over periods of time, try to advance their goals to dominate their host societies while obtaining their goals. The progressive goal is to bring a country to socialism/Marxism while sharia law compliance is to control the country “completely” with their own type of perverted laws. This is why there is a “connection” between the two groups, one political and one theological. Why would anyone in their right mind want to be a Democrat when Sharia Law is on a parallel course which is beyond the majority of Americans views is beyond thought? Both views are Totalitarian and Pathetic!
Hey very great weblog!! Man .. Beautiful .. Astounding .. I’ll bookmark your weblog and get the feeds
also…
if you think you belong to a peaceful religion you should not hurt other’s feeling. m a proud muslim and i can answer all of your rubbish gossips you did here but its useless to talk to people like you.
publish my comments if you can …
is not very peaceful to talk about other ‘s relegion like that first of all u come to our countries and kill every thing we love for oil and saying that u’re helpin us how that work? please tell me who’s the terrorist here you have change the picture of islum in ur movies ur channels but i tell u something u are the bad ones and the problem is that u know it but u can’t edmet it “hadakom allah” peace on the ones who want it
Yo rag head. We have done more to help you assholes live a decent life. We don’t fly planes into tall buildings. Kill for Oil? Moron we pay the same price for oil in Iraq as anybody else in the world. My personal position is we should be getting it free. WE gave them the stability and democracy they have now. The entire Muslim world is going up in flames. We represent the only force to deal with Iran when push comes to shove. Can tell by your faux email above your are a fraud. Come back when you can say something of intelligence.
whoever said we needed it? you forced your way into our society. a society you did not understand but at the same time sought to fix/ take advantage of and at a price we have to suffer ourselves and than you blame us for retaliating that way? how many millions of us have died because of you? starting from the crusades? we lived in peace even with the jews but you wanted to take back what you thought was rightfully yours?? but no real muslim will blame a christian today for what christians than did during the crusades because we understand enough to know that true christians would have never acted that way. so why are you taking the 9/11 incident as the best examples of muslims? You think we see you as the enemy? we dont. look it up in the quran. But dont try deciphering things you dont understand. Even the quran says there are verses that need to be deeply studied to be understood correctly.
Hey, Anders Breivik republished your Islam 101 stuff in his terrorist manifesto! How’s that feel? Did you grant permission, or are you going to sue him for copyright infringement? It’s like they say, no publicity is bad publicity.
Any thingthat is here is free game to anyone that wishes to use it. It’s about educating on the Evils of Sharia, nothing more. J.C.
i don’t see why do you think that you’re peaceful i mean you’re the one who’s killing the muslims all we’re doing is Protecting our selves.
you’re trying desperately to change the picture of islum because these days you’re becaming muslims in the other side we’ll never change our perfect religion. Death to you and big satinn you will submit to Allah
we can clearly make it out what Mr asshole ie jim cambell want to show us..its nothing but Non Muslim’s frustration of False god….may allah sow u the right path……America Assohole Obama doin all this Bullshit just because he and bastard americans need gas and petrol, oil tank..
Allah doesn’t have a chance pal I’m a Christian, there is one God, his name is God. Allah is a fantasy of your cult.
your giving christians a bad rep you know.
From J.C. to Peace2World…Nice name, why to jihadists want to kill Jews,Christians,Copts and more frequently themselves. None of you ignorant fools are capable of independent thought.
If God and Allah are the same, why is it that those of you who follow a stone age cult want their to be one law and one religion, the word of Allah?
Jesus spoke Aramaic not Arabic. The number of early Christians that spoke Arabic were few and saw God’s light and became Coptic Christians. You would do well to bone up a bit before coming here and going off half cocked.
Allah and God are the same thing just in different languages. Before there was Islam Christens who spoke Arabic said Allah not God but in english its god
Thanks for your compliment, seems you are incapable of having an intelligent discussion. Actually no Obama isn’t doing this for gas and oil, it because we plan to kill as many of you as possible and as quickly as possible because your goal is to take over the world, that just isn’t going to happen. You fight like women, drop your weapons and walk away, hide behind women and children, you can’t do that her pig eater. We will send you to Allah but not before you are eaten by wild hogs!
muslims dont eat pigs. do your research before you say that your going to kill us. if you do then christians will be the new terrorists and do you want that? no i didnt think so! im muslim and im not a terrorist am i? no i have a bunch of friends and they dont care if im muslim or not? do your parents know about this?? did they teach you this?? because actually your one of the bad people and your going to rot in hell!
don’t worry, you people are arrogant because u are ignorant ? you Americans are real fools , can’t you see that you are controlled by the Jewish lobby. why are your brothers dying in the desert, why your billions and billions of tax payers money is spent in war? is it because you think that that 500 people sitting in the cave will cross the sea and conquer america?. you have the best military in the world and you have members of nato with you .and even after 10 years of Afghan war , why are you peeing in the pants. if you are so good show it … win if you can… clean up all your opponents, taliban is still roaming their freely .you can’t …. itz because ,war is a matter for soldiers , real soldier is will not only be willing to kill but also to die. you don’t have soldiers, itz something from heart, a ten feet long gun can’t make a soldier….
any way it is good to see americans running desperately all over the world and spending their money and getting nothing…and last reaching bankrupt.
Dude Rome wasn’t built in a day. You follow the teachings of a 7th Century lunatic. Don’t doubt or capabilities. We haven’t played Cowboys and Rag head yes. I suggest a Psy Ops mission dropping leaflets into countries telling the people to get out as we will use tactical nukes and turn the place to glass, that will cause chaos at the boarders, then his another country. Do we care what other countries think of us? Hell no. The UN is an organization run by corrupt, dictators and despots. Think we don’t have the will to nuke you ass holes? Look at History, as the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that war we fought zealots, to the tune that their god was the emperor. Muslims, trapped by Islam are a worse case, they know nothing but Jihad. They are a 7th century bunch of killers. Come to our shores and create problems, this isn’t the UK…Our current administration is filled with liberal wimps. In 2012 the game changes. Want to fuck with us here, bring. we have 16 million registered weapons. Enjoyed your comment Peace Brother. I’m J.C.
WHEN U WANT TO REACH THE TRUTH…hear FROM them….not hear ABOUT them
DEAR NON MUSLIMS…ASK MUSLIMS
SEARCH WIKIPEDIA WHY ISLAM IS THE MOST SPREADING RELIGION…DESPITE ALL YOUR MEDIA LIES
PEACE BE UPON YOU
Yo rag head you would do well to read the Qur’an instead of Wikipedia. Is there a wonder Islam is growing? Not if you understand population dynamics. You ignorant fools breed like rabbits, you inbreed thus you have freaks like Osama bin Laden with his Marfan’s disease. Go elsewhere maybe to CAIR if you want to blow smoke up your burqa. Not here amigo. Mohammad was a psycho, and you must be a bigger one to follow him.
ISLAM IS THE REAL RELIGION; it’s protect human rates ……….you say that the muslims are killer!!! we see that peoples die on palestine on pakistan on irak but its good because they are muslims! but one just one person is killed that’s crual when she’s not muslim…… THE muslims have a law that they musn’t kill any body and never just hurt any one where ever the main to do it ..we have a law that forbid us to talk about someone …….we dont kill ; we don’t hurt anyone but every one hurt us and kill us “”and you say that we are killer”" REALLYYYYYYYYYYYY THIS IS A JOKE!!!!
you who talk about human rites : where is that human rites on your prisons on palestine and iraq and every place on the world….
Yo Muslim…apparently you live under a rock or can’t tell what you know about the Quran. Suggest you watch the You Tubes about you ignorant bastards gutting throats, stoning women. Blow smoke up Allaha’s ass don’t try it here.
Why would e refer to Youtube as proof? what evidence is there that states it as flawless? Anyone can edit a video and anyone can spread false info.
@dancingczars…. you sad sad person. All you preach is hatred and war, what is seriously wrong with you? And your accusing islam of preaching war and hatred against the world. What an absolute hypocrite! When it comes to down to it God and Allah are the same thing and there is not much difference between Christianity and Islam in its fundamentals. Reading your responses makes me glad that I live in the UK because if people are like you in America I doubt I want to ever go there. Your responses convey your lack of intelligence and ignorance of islam. It is clear you have some sort of anger issue which has been directed towards Islam. Maybe if you spent less time hating Islam and only seeing one side and more time educating yourself with books/literature, possibly speaking to well educated muslim scholars, you would see differently. Muslims are just people. There are good people and there are bad people, just like there are good and bad muslims but the religion in itself is not bad just the way people interpret it. Certain words in surahs in the Quran can be translated differently. Bad translation/interpretation can be used to spread the wrong message of islam which leads to people such as yourself pouring islamic hatred into society. What it comes to down to is Islamphobia… What you don’t know or fully understand you fear which leads to lack of trust then hatred. I hope you open your eyes to see the other sides of muslims which isn’t portrayed in the media because there are a lot of nice, hard-working, intellectual muslims who contribute to society who wouldn’t mind befriending someone who wanted to know the other side of Islam.
Yusoff I’m glad you live in the UK. Why do you feel you can impose the will of your cult on other cultures? Why do you not assimilate and continue you worship. Factually it’s because you can’t. Sharia is an abomination. What religion would condone the torture handed down from a seventh century mad man” Cut the crap about Islam and Christianity being the same. Other than Mo probably stole the Old Testament, you don’t see nuns flying into high towers, you don’t see Christians, involved with honor killings, stonings, hanging, and amputations. You fool don’t limit your madness to killing copts, or Christians or Jews, you spend most of your time killing each other. My eyes are open my friend. You will not get a foot hold in the US because once our Muslim president is kicked to the curb. Legislation is just waiting to make every thing sharia stands for in the way of harm a crime against humanity. Also, attempting to overthrow our Constitution won’t fly as well. We are Americans, willing and able to take all comers in peace we always have. You lie about your cult. One thing is certain, come to our shores and try changing our laws any more than you have and you haven’t seen anything until you have watched a good old fashion game of Cowboys and Rag Heads, We have 18 million registered weapons and will be ready to use them. Yea come on and see how you are treated when the liberal assholes that let your cult stop traffic to say their prayers get taken away under new laws..Live with your delusions. The facts, the links to the articles, the video’s are all here. I particularly enjoy the one of the young boy cutting another Muslims head off with a dull knife. Peace be to you.
our prez isnt muslim his relatives are muslim. hes a christian like you…
You guys are generalizing everyone in the same bandwagon. There are warmongers and extremists who would do just about anything in the name of Islam. In order to understand the dynamics I would encourage you guys to really study Islam with an unbiased opinion. Do not judge the whole muslim community with what goes on the internet or the muslim population in general I know there are many things which are going wrong.
Islam indeed is a peaceful religion but the arguments you have posted above are either incomplete or not accurate since most of them are missing the context in which they have appeared in history. Esp the hadiths which you mentioned all have a proper context and can never be understood in isolation.
Also muslims and christians/jews can have healthy discussion about something rather than spreading hatred and abusing each other. I hope people here can talk logically and have discussion in a healthy manner.
Regards,
A peaceful muslim
It’s clear that the author has studied just enough of Islam to sound informed on the subject. Unfortunately, he’s not. This is a hateful, biased article wrapped in academic language. The author misconstrues the meaning of “abrogation” completely – not unlike the radical Islamic groups he condemns. Isn’t it ironic that he chooses a narrow, violent interpretation of the Qur’an in order to prove that the entire religion is narrow and violent? See how that lack of logic works?
Hi Florence thanks for your comment. I know quite a bit more about Sharia than you give me credit. I lecture on Sharia. Perhaps you will get back to me after you have take the time to view some of these videos. Islam is a cult, that hijacked Muslims. They were born into it and learn nothing but hate from the time they are children. Enjoy.
http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/category/beheadings-graphic/
hey dancingcars, The world is the realy and strong prouv that Islam is the right religion…..YOU sad that mouslims don’t learn anything eccepte hate…DO YOU KNOW US ? Did YOU LIVE WITH US?do YOU know WHAT’S THE NAME “ISLAM” MEANS?because if yOU knew that islam in arabic mean peace you’ll not told what have you told ? GOINTANAMO JAIL IT FULL OF WHO? WERE ARE HUMAN RITES ON?OKEY ,OKEY GOINTANAMO IS A JAIL ; on PALESTINE WERE ARE THEM? PEOPLE AREN KILLED ARE LEAVING ON STREETS THEY HAVEN’T WHAT TO EAT THEY HAVEN’T MEDECINES and WHEN ANYONE TRY TO GIVE THEM ANY FOOD ISRAIL BIT HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!AND AMERICA WHO PRETEND WORK FOR WORLD PEACE WHER IS SHE ?SHE’S HELPING ISRAEL AND SUPPORT THEM those palestiniens are kiled just because they wanna leave in peace on there earth…………………………JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE MUSLIMS ………..WHY MUSLIMS ARE NOT HUMANS?…. WHERE ARE HUMAN RITES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh my god. dancingczars, yu say Muslims are evil? look at your own people you dumb ass , when the third crusade began you people ravaged our cities, your prince killed a group of people off to our holy land! when we fought not one womens or child’s blood was shed , now you dogs treat us like ? didn’t you kill each other when it was Catholics vs. regular? You stupid child, you know NOTHING about Islam, have you beeen to iraq or pakistan? how about the countries your president invaded? you SLAUGHTERED US, KILLED OFF OUR CHILDREN YET YOU CALL YOURSELF PEACE KEEPERS? GO HIDE UNDER YOUR ILLUMANATI ORDER BEACUASE ONCE WE MUSLIMS COME, WELL BLOW THE CRAP OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND SHOW YOU HOW PISSED WE CAN GET! YOU DARE CALL THE PROPHET A 7TH CENTURY PSYCHO? IT WAS FOURTEEN CENTURY AND HE WAS A GREAT MAN WHO WANTED PEACE! WHEN SALEH AL-DEEN ATTACKED JURUSALEM HE TOLD HIS MEN TO NOT SHOOT AT THE CASTLE CUASE THERE WAS A WEADING ! THAT WAS OUT OF KINDNESS THAT YOU’VE NEVER SHOWED TO US YOU ARROGANT DOGS OF THE DEVIL!
Assalamualaikum Dear brother.
I know how you are feeling. i now the pain, i feel it to. but please dont stoop to their level. the name calling, the arguments, the yelling, the insults. What would the Prophet peace be upon have to say to this? This is not his Akhlaq. this is how it starts. Dont speak of hatred. We are not them, we are better than that. Remember my Muslim Brother “Allah is with those who are patient”.
Let us not forget! My breach with Islam started as far back as I could discern things. More to the point, I never embraced Islam in the first place, although I was born and raised in a Muslim family. For one thing, I had a very difficult time following a so-called religion whose founder and followers had butchered my ancestors, raped and sold our women, burned our libraries, and destroyed our magnificent culture. Islam was forced down the throats of Iranians with the sword of Allah. In my heart, I never considered myself a Muslim. However, I didn’t reveal this until later in life for fear of retribution by radical Muslims.
Sharia law stipulates that any Muslim who turns his back on Islam should be given a chance to revert to the faith. For an unrepentant male apostate, death is the prescribed punishment and life imprisonment for the female apostate.
“Kill whoever changes his religion.” __Sahih al-Bukhari 9:84:57
Islam considers an apostate as a person who unilaterally breaks the covenant he has made with the faith. An apostate is condemned as guilty of turning his back on Allah’s immutable eternal religion. I came to the realization that the root cause of my peoples’ degradation and suffering was Islam. It was a creed imposed on an enlightened, tolerant and free people at the point of the sword by savages hailing from the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century with promises of booty and women in this world and glorious eternal sensual rewards in the promised paradise of Allah in the next. With each passing day, I rejoice more and more in my good fortune; in my ability to avoid the yoke of Islamic slavery and its blinders that imprisons a billion and half people by walls of superstition, hatred of others, and a celebration of death.”
Please stop writing about things that you dont know… you might think you understand what Islam is or the Quran but you will never understand it unless you truly try to take an unbiased point of view toward as i’ve read here… it is a FACT among Muslims that the Quran does not contradict itself unlike the Bible. there are explanations to all of your accusations. Some i know and some i have yet to learn. i understand that you teach shariah law but the Quran is not something that you can study for a few years and claim to understand. most muslims scholars have to study it their entire lives and yet everyday there is still something new to be found in it after them. The prophet Muhammad (P.B.U H) has been proven even by non muslims to be one of the greatest leaders and infuential personas in history and i doubt as a human being that it would have been possible if he were anything but kind, just, humane and so mush more….. Please… it is hurtful for you to write something like this because even though most muslims know it is not the truth you are tarnishing the reputation of a man who has done so much for his people and a religion that is close to us and is our life. To me this article is ignorant and because of that i’m not angry and wont (with Allah’s will) start screaming at you but please know that this article is extremely hurtful not because its the truth but because its a lie and because i know there are probably many more articles like these everywhere and I am feel helpless to stop them all.
Come on Muslim Girl who are you trying to BS? I’ve read more about Islam, since 9-11 than you can have hoped to. I’ve read the Qur’an. I lecture on Sharia law. What is it you refuse to admit about the link I will post for you. You are living a delusional life, Islam isn’t a religion it’s a cult, an all pervasive way of life, Sharia and it’s practices will be stopped in the US during the next administration as soon as we get Mr taqiyya out of our White house. Please get back to me. Thanks for your comments. I honestly believe you need the objective look, then you would leave the cult. I’m J.C.
just stop arguing i am a muslim and i dont like it
Maya what do you have against the truth? Have you only read the first part of the Qur’an? If you are lucky you live in the west. If allah were so benovelant why would his followers inhabit the shit holes of the earth. Wake up, read this site, the pictures and videos don’t like, you have been brainwashed like those before you. Who would willingly submit to this type of treatment? Nobody here, so bring it to the U.S. we will teach you about Cowboys and rag heads, the Cowboys never loose.
you suck islam is the greatest religion of all times allah loves u even more than your mother
Keep believing that you fucking rag head. My mother is as dead as the cult you worship.
ignore him as he is going to be juged on jugement day i am a muslim to and allah is very kind
which religion u belong to
actually the bad u said i dont even know the meaning of it so see what your religion teaches and what my religion taught me
you are all dogs how dare you say and put bad pictures about this great religon u are in big troble when the day of jugement comes there are NO dangers of allah.
i don’t no why u r insult ISLAM pls don’t do like this
I don’t insult Islam I speak the truth what which you are to ignorant to admit or see. What is it about the Qur’an that you don’t get. Did you only read the first part? Islam is about submission and death to those who do not follow the will of Allah as passed down by a 7th century lunatic. Wake up smell the coffee. Get your head out of your ass. J.C.
how would you know?? you never lived with us you never been a muslim you never experienced the pain we had to go through.
There’s a way of speaking the truth without victimising or insulting the subject so badly as you have done. If what you is true and that muslims should seek the truth than why do you display it in a way that will clearly only frustrate and anger them?
stop the trolling everyone!! every religion teaches peace and tolerance, so why doesn’t everyone just do it already?!?! get along! learn about each religion and stop talking smack about the other! i’m muslim, my mom’s muslim, but my dad’s christian so…whatever. they get along so why can’t everyone else? jeez!
Dear Mixed kid, glad to hear it, you mus live here in the United States, the comments here are directed at those that follow Sharia. I’m not thinking you will be stoning your mother or father anytime soon. Thanks for your comments. I’m J.C.
Mixed Kid chose to follow his mom rather than his dad. why do you think that is??? wouldnt he notice the abuse and danger the religion is to his other?
I would bet mixed kid lives in the US and doesn’t practice Islam as she should or according to the Qur’an she would be worse than an Infidel. Not to late to start thinking for yourself instead of following the cult of death, submission, and horrific treatment of women. J.C. Thanks for your comments.
if u teach sharia? we live with it.. we knowing it… we know more than u.. and yes… everyone can teach sharia, but does everyone live with it?? NO..
Well my friend, the readings of the Quran, subsequent suras and videos and individual pictures don’t seem to leave much doubt for who know what and who is ignorant. Would you stone your wife if she went outside unaccompanied by a male family member? Like to hear your reply on this page. Seriously doubt that I’ll be hearing from you, you are like liberal democrats, you don’t do well when presented with the fact.
His answer would obviously be NO because if you’ve actually lived what you teach you dont go around stoning woman for something like that. Islam orders woman to go out with a man for her own safety. But theres no problem with woman traveling alon if her life isnt in danger in anyway.
“Hadith Adi in which the Prophet (peace be upon him) said to him “if your life is prolonged, you shall live to see Adh-Dha’inah (a woman) traveling from Al-Hirah (in Iraq) all the way until she performs Tawaf of the Ka’bah, fearing no one except Allah.”
They also cite Qiyas. They compare a woman traveling alone to that of a woman who converts to Islam in the land of the Kuffar. Or a Muslim woman who may have escaped from the clutches of the disbelievers – in both cases there is unanimous agreement that she is permitted to travel alone. So should the case be in her traveling alone to perform Hajj.”
The hadith and the above comment were taken from a “Hajj guide for women”. If a women can travel alone to perform Hajj than there would be absolutely no problem for a women to go out alone anywhere else provided that she would be completely safe from thieves and such as it was common back during the days of the prophet for a Caravan to be raided by robbers while travelling.
Nice try sweetie, you can quote all the hadith’s you want but you can’t dismiss the needles brutality of Muslims to Christians, Jews, Copts, and most important, women. Wake up dear you need some serious deprogramming. J.C.
You are real enemy of human kind, you kill,, you oppress, you repress, you suppress, you drop bombs, you treat us as we are animals you killed thousands at Hiroshima Nagasaki, you killed thousands at Afghanistan, Iraq and are killing thousands of Pakistanis by drones. You have attacked on our chest.
You attack and it is good thing. If we reply its bad haan?
You made Atom bomb that’s Good, well doesn’t matter, If Iran makes for purpose of electricity that’s really hurts.
astaghfirullah…..hope Allah will open their heart and give hidayah for them…Islam is the one…no other religion is right beside Islam….who is in Islam….Allah promise heaven for them…im proud to be Muslim…..Allahuakbar
everyone stop saying islam is better than christianity or christianity is better than islam! its not fair to muslims and christians! this whole argument is stupid so why dont we all just stop and live in peace together.
“Do people think that they will be left (at ease) only on their saying, “We believe” and will not be put to any test?”
— The Holy Quran [29:2]
“Islam’s War Against the World” => This is your fictitous!
ISLAM was never in War in the World; like Christians in Crusades!
ISLAM is peace!
I invited hundreds of People to IZMIR (Turkiye) to be my guest for one week for two people; to see yourself how I live so…
I INVITE YOU TOO!
The situation is: Who is in War against the World? JEWS! Fanatic JEWS! ZIONISM! They are ruling USA and thus the World! On the way to world domination, the ISLAM is the biggest danger! This is why they are against ISLAM! All internet sites against ISLAM are built by Jews! JEWS ARE ENEMIES OF CHRITIANS TOO! Who killed Jesus CHRIST? Who has demolished Bible? Trinity is a jewish lie you are believing since 2000 years! Because your eyes & hearts are blind, you can’t see the truth! God doesn’t need to have a son! A lord never dies! Wake up!
COME TO ISLAM!
My friend I just go your note about Islam being the religion of peace. You fools started the Crusades we finished them. You will get your asses kicked again. Your rant about the Jews shows clearly that Islam is not peace, try reviewing some of the material here then please come back and support your nonsense. J.C.
salam alikoum every body let reason and talk sense talking about Islam or whatever religion we must face one thing real and truly worthy to confront. than sharping our tongues and spread only poison look and deeply talk why this malicious campaign against Islam ?i am an educated Muslim i understand what is going around us and we all know that not us whom are targeted but the Islam as religion if just one of you take an effort to understand what is Islam than the words will change .in the USA every day people convert to Islam the rate of converting is rising up even the devilish media and its network working their best to stop people from embarrassing Islam The GOD says he will make this religion prevailed upon all religions and the signs are happening at the time being…….they have tried to draw cartoons about our PROPHET MOHAMMED peace upon him but that did the contrary outcome his call increased and people from around the world investigated to finally found the truth inside of their selves .Islam will be and will come to be the religion of the world one day this what God wants.
dancingczars this is to you if you are working for some hidden division .i think my sister whom you are insulting must turn away her attention .dancingczars i don’t think that you have deep insightful vision about Islam you are only faking the words the hate inside and the envy the grudge which you suckled from your country udder had made you mixed up .
Who started the first world war ? Muslims ? Who started the second world war ? Muslims ? Who killed about 20 millions of Aborigines in Australia ? Muslims ?? Who sent the nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? Muslims ?? Who killed more than 100 millions of Indians in North America ? Muslims ?? Who killed more than 50 millions of Indians in south America ? Muslims ?? Who took about 180 millions of African people as slaves and 88% of them died and was thrown in Atlantic ocean ? Muslims ?? No , They weren’t Muslims!!! First of all, You have to define terrorism properly… If a non-Muslim do something bad..it is crime. But if a Muslim commit same..he is terrorist… So first remove this double standard…then come to the point!!! , . . . . .
Which side of those wars were Muslims on? Hitler Mohammad both the same…nothing but delusionary dictators.
How many Jews, Pagans and Christians did Muhammad (Peace be upon him) kill? How many wars did he start by himself? how many civilians did he massacre? dont just give me the number, get me proof.
He only met the pagans halfway and there was a definite certainty that the countries who he waged war against were about to do the same. he only beat them at who made the decision first. look it up. even christian scholars (biased or not) admit Muhammad (peace be upon him) was no Alexander. He was born in Mekkah, migrated to Madinah, passed away in Madinah. Leaving no masacres behind because there were none. I want facts. show me majority of scholars (muslim or none) who’d call him a hitler. no accusations. and as for the wars and massacres centuries or decades after Muslims remained defensive. only during occasions when the Khalifah was not acting on shariah or sunnah did Muslims ever deviate from that defensive line
MO wasn’t around long enough couldn’t get any followers in the beginning. Suggest you read the Crusades, his followers have killed more people in a very short period of time than Hitler and Stalin combined. Why the peace be with mo nonsense…..If he was a good guy he would be with Allah, I suggest he is burning in hell…
I am a muslim since were born. Let me explain. EVEN IN THE QUR’AN, ALLAH HAVE SAID THAT MUSLIM STILL CANNOT FORCE OTHER RELIGION TO CONVERT TO ISLAM NOR MOCKING OTHER’S RELIGION! BACK TO THE DAYS OF MUHAMMAD, HE GOES TO MADINAH AND EVERYONE THERE LIKE HIM. HE THEN MAKES ISLAM AND OTHER RELIGION AS FRIENDLY. FOR WHO DON’T FOLLOW THIS LAW WILL BE FORCED TO GO AWAY. I can see it now. Christians now adays are mocking Islam. I’ve also studied Christians and many of it are very weird. You serves Jesus, Jesus is explicitly prophet EDIT and he serves Allah. Isn’t that obvious? You said you studied the Qur’an, of course you know all about the 25 prophets! I hate americans because they hate Islam. Hey, even Christians doesn’t MOCK Islam in the past days!!!! Oh, and about terrorism, Osama Bin Laden is indeed cruel but why other muslim also die because of your lousy war? Osama Bin Laden already breaks the rule; Islam only WAR if anything wants to war with us. If america have done something in the past days then Osama is not a complete cruel. If you don’t, then indeed Osama isn’t actually follow Allah’s rules! I do have friends here, Hindus, Christians.. They respect Islam, so do us! You who mocks Islam will die cruelly more than you imagine! Remember, non-muslims live longer than muslims because; Allah give you all time to repent and converts to Islam. Bible is changed by a man (I forgot him). Bible is also from Allah but in that duration, Islam doesn’t existed yet. I pray to Allah to make you all realize that Islam is true.. Every time I know that someone converts to Islam, I pray to Allah “alhamdulillah”. I am happy to see people who converts to Islam and I want to help them. We are living near the end. The time is near, south america once encountered storms.. the world happened earthquakes.. The small sign is completed. Don’t look bad to Islam. If you saw muslim who kill a people, who suicide or even mock you, he/she/they are not 100% muslim (unknowledgeable or abusing Allah’s rule). I am 14. As a children, I am pity to america. If my words here are wrong, please fix it. Peace be upon you.
It might not be a bad idea to go back for a refresher course. All taken from the Qur’an and various Suras..J.C.
The concept of God as “Allah” is of a being that is totally other, wholly transcendent to the point of implying that Allah is unknowable in himself but known in his will and requirements revealed in the Qur’an (Sura 42:11; 112:1-4). In the words of a Muslim scholar: “You may not have complete transcendence and self-revelation at the same time.”\ This view of God is accompanied by a view of humans as the “slaves” of God (Sura 19:93). One major concept in Islam is captured in the very meaning of the word “Islam” itself: namely “submission,” which carries the sense of laying down arms before the victor and is taken to exemplify the total submission of every aspect of life, as an individual and society to Allah (The God).
The Qur’an teaches about itself that it is God’s direct and verbal word, that it is eternal and came down from what is preserved in heaven (Sura 85:22) as the “Mother of the Book” (Sura 3:7; 13:39; 43:4). Although the Qur’an considers the Old and New Testaments as God’s word (Sura 3:93; 4:163; 5:46 etc.), it considers its own authority as greater than theirs (Sura 5:48). Even the Arabic language of the Qur’an is considered an integral part of Allah’s word (Sura 20:113; 12:2), therefore, Muslims consider the Islamic culture as of heavenly origin.
So, Islam is a political, cultural and religious system. Religion, as based primarily on the Qur’an, is a part of the system, which informs all the other aspects of the Islamic system. Religious doctrine, however, is viewed in Islam as a preamble to Islamic law, the Shariah (divine law), which is a comprehensive code governing every aspect of life, because Islam is a religion primarily oriented toward law rather than theology.[17]
Another important Muslim concept is the “Umma,” or “the community of submission.” Although Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, had been reciting the earliest Suras of the Qur’an starting in A.D. 610 for about 13 years, it is A.D. 622 that marks the beginning of the Muslim era, because this marks the emergence of the “Umma,” the establishment of the Muslim political- religious structure. Dr. W. Bonar Sidjabat writes: “… the Islam of the Qur’an is theocratic and the Muslim state was a theocracy from its first ascent to power.”
I dont see you problem with Islam from what you’ve just given here. Yes Muslims all over the worl view Islam as A WAY OF LIFE. its is complete and whole. that is one of the reasons why we see it as the truth. because in Islam, Allah (God) has sent down the Quran as a guide book of life. not a way to predict the future. Humans need rules. we need to know what to do do. despite what most people think, we DONT know what is best for ourselves. how can we???? how can one or even a dozen people decide what is right and what should be done for the whole of humanity. how can. My brain is just as good as yours. the only difference being how we think. how do I know that you’re way of thinking is the right one? how do i know that Obama isnt harboring some kind of violent way of thinking underneath it all? I dont… I dont know. no one does. that is why we completely rely on our creator for everything. That is what submission means. accepting that Allah exists and that he knows what is best for us because he IS our creator. and knows us inside out. To us submission doesnt mean submiting to a victor. for example if person ‘A’ loves person ‘B’ but person ‘B’ loves person ‘C’. And if person ‘A’ GIVES UP or SUBMITS to the love between person ‘B’ and ‘C’, wouldnt it mean that person ‘A’ loves ‘B’ to much to let person ‘B’ suffer the conflicts between person ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’? and in that definition Submit becomes a positive word correct?
Thank you that was a nice way of waltzing around the issue, submit or die that is what the Qur’an is all about perhaps they have found a new use? Fishing Korans Out of Pakistani Sewer
Waltzing around the issue? what Am i avoiding? there is no statement in the quran that says except Islam or Die. “La Ikraha Fi Din”, There is no forcing in religion especially for non-muslims. Yes it is obligatory for a muslim or for a better word the RESPONSIBILITY of every muslim to preach the message of Islam to a non-muslim but if he or she refuses to accept than we should leave them be because Allah states in the Quran that if he has closed a mans heart, no matter what we do it will not open.
That was a nice way of waltzing around the issue of Submit or Die…..Looks like Pakistani Muslims have found a new use for the good book..Fishing Korans Out of Pakistani Sewer
You make me sick. You don’t even know what Islam is, grow up.
So rag head prove me where I’m wrong? You can’t you are an ignorant fool who has been brain washed by the cult that wishes to dominate the world. That may fly in Western Europe, it won’t here, you assholes haven’t had a taste of good old fashion Cowboys and Rug Riders, Trust me the Cowboys always win. So here is your challenge, you come up with anything saying your are not what you are and I’ll refute it. The only thing I don’t fully understand is why any human being could be so easily duped. Don’t give me the moderation bull shit you are in the active Jihad or the silent Jihad. Come back if you have the guts for it. J.C.
We will see after 1000 0000 years who is wrong nd den dont cry and beg almighty ALLAH to forgive u
this picture represent christians and jews. thats what they r doing in palestine, iraq, iran, afghanistan, pakistan and in many more countries
What does Islam teach as far as violence is concerned? Looking at the Qur’an, we see that quite a lot is said about this subject. Muslim apologists will often point to Surah 2:190-193 as proof that Islam teaches only defensive warfare, but eschews offense.
“Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they first fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression.”
These verses, it is said, admonish Muslims only to fight against those who oppress or persecute Muslims, and only until the offenders have stopped oppressing Muslims. However, there is a catch to all this. The Qur’an also teaches for Muslims to enter into exile in lands where Islam is not the dominant force, and to stir up trouble, so that this persecution will come as the natives in those lands protect the integrity of their sovereignty and civilization.
Those who believed, and adopted exile, and fought for the Faith, with their property and their persons, in the cause of Allah, as well as those who gave them asylum and aid,- these are all friends and protectors, one of another. As to those who believed but came not into exile, ye owe no duty of protection to them until they come into exile; but if they seek your aid in religion, it is your duty to help them, except against a people with whom ye have a treaty of mutual alliance. And remember Allah seeth all that ye do. The Unbelievers are protectors, one of another: Unless ye do this, protect each other, there would be tumult and oppression on earth, and great mischief.” (Surah 8:72-73)
you people are rediculous…u don’t even know a single definition of islamm….only ALLAH can teach u a lesson…so be carefull your time is not so far now….illitrate people…
You Ignorant arse, Islam is a beautiful religion and even as an athiest I can see that. The Islamaphobia in America is a result of your superciliousness, “How dare the muslims bomb the americans, do they question our superiority”. Your website is a pack of lies.
btw did you know Allah means God in Arabic and that they also believe in Adam and Eve, Moses and Jesus, Muslimsm, Christians and Jews believe in the same God, by saying “The Dangers of Allah” you are being blashamous to the Lord.
You are such an ignorant, self-scholar-ed, hypercritical, cruel, evil fool. Islam has done nothing bad to America. And don’t bring up Osama Bin Laden, because he was not a Muslim, he was an extremist, along with his other members of Al-Qaeda! Look at what you Christians and Jews have done to the world. You evil fools are the terrorist!! Look in the mirror for once, and know, that YOU, Christians and Jews are the ones that attacked Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, and so many other countries! You guys are the ones that teach terrorism. You guys are the ones that kill civilians EVERY DAY! Now who are the terrorist? Islam teaches Peace. But you cruel, evil fools won’t allow peace! Get some knowledge in your head, for you sir do not have ANY knowledge of Islam. May God guide you all to the right path! Ameen!!
Also, were not the terrorist spreading hateful LIESS across the internet!!! ALL YOU SPREAD IS HATRED AND TERRORISM!!! YOU CRUEL EVIL FOOL!!!!
salam
First of we are all human. we live in the same earth amongst each others, if you believe that is Islam is wrong than keep your opinion to yourself. Islam does not teach you to kill or fight. now let me ask you a question.
Who started the first world war ? Muslims ? Who started the second world war ? Muslims ? Who killed about 20 millions of Aborigines in Australia ? Muslims ?? Who sent the nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? Muslims ?? Who killed more than 100 millions of Indians in North America ? Muslims ?? Who killed more than 50 millions of Indians in south America ? Muslims ?? Who took about 180 millions of African people as slaves and 88% of them died and was thrown in Atlantic ocean ? Muslims ?? No , They weren’t Muslims!!! First of all, You have to define terrorism properly… If a non-Muslim do something bad..it is crime. But if a Muslim commit same..he is terrorist… So first remove this double standard…then come to the point!!!
I agree that there are Muslims around the world that are corrupt but why are you judging Islam because of Muslims?
Islam is perfect, Muslims are not.
Who are we to judge? No One. so please keep your comment to yourselves.
may God bless you and guide you to the straight path,
Salam
Allah Hepinizin Belasını Versin
if they talk about our stunning Islam like this so why they forget the army of America in Afghanistan, Irak and how they kill the people, children and women. why you don’t talk about Israel and how they kill people in Palastine. why they don’t talk about Bourma now and the Chineese kill the Muslims in Bourma… why, why and why. they just talk about Islam because it spread in all over the world and you can see in Germany how many people changed their relegion to ISLAM. ISLAM IS THE TRUE OF LIFE
so right brother , Islam is rising strongly all over the world , this topic i just read wants to make a wrong ideas against only the Islam thats the point of all of that crap ,they r brain washing the new generations with lies lies lies , if u want to know about Islam “at least to judge on it the right way” ..then ask someone who knows about it , not ask a bunch of freaks , read about it from different resources don’t be lazy …. how come u judge on something ALL your knowledge is from people who doesn’t know anything about Islam ….Regads
HH ur funny man now we become the terrorists after all what you did to our people from killing us and destroying our lands!!! well put this information in your mind ” WE WILL WIN IN THE END TERRORIST” (hope you won’t pise in your pants , you’re all cowards ha3ha3a3
On August 15th I issued a challenge to the followers of the cult, Islam.
The number of visits daily have been consistent. Not one of the cowards who profess to know about the wonders of Allah has answered my questions.
Their silence is deafening while speaking more than the words of the Qur’an.
Obama’s bungling of the Arab Spring started with his blunders in Tunisia. In his infinite to make a timely decision Christian converts, “Copts” were murdered.
I’m sorry I cant seem to find the challenge. Would you mind reposting it for me? I’ll try my best to clear up any clear confusion. I’d also like to apologise for some of my muslim brothers and sisters for their offensive words. What they did was truly not Islam and I hope you do not perceive it as so. Hope to hear soon but if I dont reply as quick than its only because I livee in a hostel where no internet is allowed and I’m only able to use the internet a few times a month.
Who’s the crackpot old fool that’s writing all this bullshit about someone else’s religion? DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY KIND OF SENSE IN YOUR BRAIN OR DID IT GET EATEN AWAY BY ALL THAT PIG YOU’VE BEEN EATING? GO and learn some respect for other people’s religion, or trust me, you will definitely regret it.
And maybe you should learn to shut your mouth and learn the truth before you’re put in hell and you’ll regret it all.
You may think you’re so smart spreading all this bullshit, but it’s the people like you that end up begging for forgiveness as if their life depended on it … OH WAIT, your life does depend on it !!!
And why don’t you go do your research before assuming shit about other people or their religion. You’re clearly retarded and don’t have a brain for making all this shit up when you really don’t know anything about what you’re taking about!
Assumptions won’t get you anywhere and you’re just a liar. But you know the funny thing? The funny thing is that even though there are stupid people like you that say such useless things, so many people are becoming Muslims and will continue to do until the world ends.
SO NOW YOU GO AND SHUT YOUR TRASH AND WATCH AS THE WORLD EXCEEDS AND MUSLIMS MAKE A GREAT IMPACT ON EVERYONE.
MUSLIMS ARE ONLY IN THE WORLD TO SPREAD ALLAH’S MESSAGE AND THEY WILL WIN IN THE END NO MATTER WHAT!!!
I have a couple other things to say.
Did your parents not teach you any manners? We live in a world where everyone is equal no matter what race/religion/gender we are. So go get a life and ask God for forgiveness for all the shit you’ve said.
And I hope you’re led into the direction !
TO OWNER OF THIS SITE
i have no words to you because you are shaming yourself. are you studied this things in your religion? are your mother teach this? are your country teach this? . this sites thing show your personality i mean your evil heart in your body.our Islam religion,parents teach us to peace with every humans but i am not say all of our believers are just like us. some of them are just like your type. you also a terrorist. terrorist have no religion they have only hate others. you hate yourself in this site. my dear you can hates or hatred ours because its your freedom but you can’t fail our faith. first up all you have to teach manners. god bless you my dear
Now sir, you are among the brain washed, It you took the time to read the site you would see that your comments are baseless,
How about seeing if you are up for this challenge?
On August 15th I issued a challenge to the followers of the cult, Islam.
I didn’t think you would be.
اكبر دليل على خطا المسيحيين انشروه في كل الصفحات:
قال الله تعالى:
(وَإِذْ قَالَ اللّهُ يَعِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ أَأَنتَ قُلتَ لِلنّاسِ اتّخِذُونِي وَأُمّيَ إِلَـَهَيْنِ مِن دُونِ اللّهِ قَالَ سُبْحَانَكَ مَا يَكُونُ لِيَ أَنْ أَقُولَ مَا لَيْسَ لِي بِحَقّ إِن كُنتُ قُلْتُهُ فَقَدْ عَلِمْتَهُ تَعْلَمُ
مَا فِي نَفْسِي وَلاَ أَعْلَمُ مَا فِي نَفْسِكَ إِنّكَ أَنتَ عَلاّمُ الْغُيُوبِ)
[سورة: المائدة - الأية: 116]
[5.116] And when Allah said: ‘(Prophet)
Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to the
people: “Take me and my mother for two
gods, other than Allah?” ‘Exaltations to You,’
he said, ‘how could I say that to which I have
no right? If I had said that, You would have
surely known. You know what is in my self,
but I do not know what is in Yours. Indeed,
You are the Knowledgeable of the unseen.
(مَا قُلْتُ لَهُمْ إِلاّ مَآ أَمَرْتَنِي بِهِ أَنِ اعْبُدُواْ اللّهَ رَبّي وَرَبّكُمْ وَكُنتُ عَلَيْهِمْ شَهِيدا
ً مّا دُمْتُ فِيهِمْ فَلَمّا تَوَفّيْتَنِي كُنتَ أَنتَ الرّقِيبَ عَلَيْهِمْ وَأَنتَ عَلَىَ كُلّ شَيْءٍ شَهِيدٌ)
[سورة: المائدة - الأية: 117]
[5.117] I spoke to them of nothing except that
which You ordered me, that you worship
Allah, my Lord and our Lord. I witnessed them
whilst living in their midst and ever since You
took me to You, You have been the Watcher
over them. You are the Witness of everything
There are Christian rapists.
That doesn’t mean all Christians are rapists.
Just because one person messes up, doesn’t mean you gotta blame the whole religion!
Seriously.
Stop being immature and being rasist. Making stupid pictures. That shows that you are an idiot and do not know shit!
***PLEASE READ***
DO NOT COMMENT ANYMORE!
This guy is obviously not accepting the truth!
All the Muslims are posting such good proof! And jcscuba, you aren’t even letting them speak.
You are brainwashed by media!