(Source: The Spectator
Website)
The myth of moderate Islam
Patrick Sookhdeo.
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo is Director of the Institute for the Study of
Islam and Christianity.
The funeral of British suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer was held in
absentia in his family’s ancestral village, near Lahore, Pakistan.
Thousands of people attended, as they did again the following day
when a qul ceremony was held for Tanweer. During qul, the Koran is
recited to speed the deceased’s journey to paradise, though in
Tanweer’s case this was hardly necessary. Being a shahid (martyr),
he is deemed to have gone straight to paradise. The 22-year-old
from Leeds, whose bomb at Aldgate station killed seven people, was
hailed by the crowd as ‘a hero of Islam’.
Some in Britain cannot conceive that a suicide bomber could be a
hero of Islam. Since 7/7 many have made statements to attempt to
explain what seems to them a contradiction in terms. Since the
violence cannot be denied, their only course is to argue that the
connection with Islam is invalid. The deputy assistant commissioner
of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, said that ‘Islam and
terrorists are two words that do not go together.’ His boss, the
Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, asserted that there is nothing wrong
with being a fundamentalist Muslim.
But surely we should give enough respect to those who voluntarily
lay down their lives to accept what they themselves say about their
motives. If they say they do it in the name of Islam, we must
believe them. Is it not the height of illiberalism and arrogance to
deny them the right to define themselves?
On 8 July the London-based Muslim Weekly unblushingly published a
lengthy opinion article by Abid Ullah Jan entitled ‘Islam, Faith
and Power’. The gist of the article is that Muslims should strive
to gain political and military power over non-Muslims, that warfare
is obligatory for all Muslims, and that the Islamic state, Islam
and Sharia (Islamic law) should be established throughout the
world. All is supported with quotations from the Koran. It
concludes with a veiled threat to Britain. The bombings the
previous day were a perfect illustration of what Jan was
advocating, and the editor evidently felt no need to withdraw the
article or to apologise for it. His newspaper is widely read and
distributed across the UK.
By far the majority of Muslims today live their lives without
recourse to violence, for the Koran is like a pick-and-mix
selection. If you want peace, you can find peaceable verses. If you
want war, you can find bellicose verses. You can find verses which
permit only defensive jihad, or you can find verses to justify
offensive jihad”. You can even find texts which specifically
command terrorism, the classic one being Q8:59-60, which urges
Muslims to prepare themselves to fight non-Muslims, 'Against them
make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including
steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies'
(A. Yusuf Ali's translation). Pakistani Brigadier S.K. Malik's book
The Quranic Concept of War is widely used by the military of
various Muslim countries. Malik explains Koranic teaching on
strategy: 'In war our main objective is the opponent's heart or
soul, our main weapon of offence against this objective is the
strength of our own souls, and to launch such an attack, we have to
keep terror away from our own hearts.... Terror struck into the
hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself.
Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained,
hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the
means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing
decision on the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose on
him.'
If you permit yourself a little judicious cutting, the range of
choice in Koranic teaching is even wider. A verse one often hears
quoted as part of the 'Islam is peace' litany allegedly runs along
the lines: 'If you kill one soul it is as if you have killed all
mankind.' But the full and unexpurgated version of Q5:32 states:
'If anyone slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading
mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people.'
The very next verse lists a selection of savage punishments for
those who fight the Muslims and create 'mischief' (or in some
English translations 'corruption') in the land, punishments which
include execution, crucifixion or amputation. What kind of
'mischief in the land' could merit such a reaction? Could it be
interpreted as secularism, democracy and other non-Islamic values
in a land? Could the 'murder' be the killing of Muslims in Iraq?
Just as importantly, do the Muslims who keep quoting this verse
realise what a deception they are imposing on their
listeners?
It is probably true that in every faith ordinary people will pick
the parts they like best and practise those, while the scholars
will work out an official version. In Islam the scholars had a
particularly challenging task, given the mass of contradictory
texts within the Koran. To meet this challenge they developed the
rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are
found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate
further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to
traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done.
Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away
from peace and towards war. For the peaceable verses of the Koran
are almost all earlier, dating from Mohammed's time in Mecca, while
those which advocate war and violence are almost all later, dating
from after his flight to Medina. Though jihad has a variety of
meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed's
own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as
literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and
torture. From these sources the Islamic scholars developed a
detailed theology dividing the world into two parts, Dar al-Harb
and Dar al-Islam, with Muslims required to change Dar al-Harb into
Dar al-Islam either through warfare or da'wa (mission).
