Islam is a Tolerant Religion
To evaluate the degree of tolerance in Islam, the term must be defined. For the purposes of this exposition, I shall eschew the "modern" definition of "tolerance" as espoused by the Political Correctness fascists on our college campuses, which gives the idea that all viewpoints, ideas, cultures, etc. etc. are equal and equally valid, and ought to be promoted equally. Instead, I shall go by the simple dictionary definition. "Tolerate", as defined by the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary is, "To suffer to be, or to be done, without prohibition or hindrance; to allow or permit by not preventing." Thus, tolerance essentially means that you may not agree with something, but you do not hinder this "something" from being practiced, said, taught, etc. Tolerance does NOT mean agreeing with everything you hear, or promoting every viewpoint. From the standpoint of the discussion at hand, it merely means to not hinder another person from practicing a different religious faith or saying something with which you disagree.
Toleration - The American Example
America has a long (though of course not perfect) history of religious toleration. This nation has been a haven for those who have sought to escape religious persecution, specifically because we practice toleration. America does not hinder a person from following their religious conscience. If a person wants to be a Quaker, Baptist, Mormon, Catholic, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, or anything else under the sun, they are free to do so. Further, America was built upon this foundation of religious toleration because of its Christian heritage. Separation of church and state, as rightly understood to be the barrier to intermingling of the exercise of ecclesiastical and secular authority (i.e. no state church), was pioneered by Baptists and their European forebearers such as the Waldensians and Anabaptists. Colonial Baptist John Leland was instrumental in securing American religious freedom through his persuasion of James Madison to include the language that became the 1st amendment in the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. The builders of this nation, both Christian and not, rightly understood, as the Bible teaches, that there cannot be force used in religious conversion and religious practice,
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.)" (II Corinthians 10:3-4)
Matters of eternity, of the salvation of souls, are to be dealt with through spiritual means (prayer, witnessing, a good testimony), not by carnal (earthly) means.
Likewise, though America has had a checkered history of tolerance toward racial differences, this nation is now more colourblind than it has been at anytime before. Race means less to fewer people than it ever has. In fact, racism is more of a problem caused by those claiming to fight it, such as the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Centre, than it is from the traditional (and dying) groups like the Klan or the Aryan Nations. Ethnic minorities today can get a job, buy a house, go to school, and live in peace and safety almost anywhere they choose, with a very few (though highly publicised) exceptions to this new order. In short, America is demonstrating tolerance towards this sort of difference, that of race and culture, as well.
To clear up any misconceptions among those who have imbibed too much doctrinaire academic political correctness, tolerance does NOT mean never disagreeing with something, arguing against it, or challenging a view. My purpose for including this proviso is that many people who read this book will see my justified criticisms of Islam, and automatically make the pre-programmed accusation that I am being intolerant. However, I am not. I am not seeking to hinder Muslims from practicing their religion, or believing what they want, or acting as they see fit (provided they remain within the bounds of the law and human decency). I am merely engaging in that most American of activities: challenging and criticising that with which I disagree.
Islamic Intolerance of Opposing Views
Continuing then, the question to be asked is this: Is Islam a tolerant religion? And, of course, the answer must be an emphatic NO! In fact, Islam is well characterised by a high degree of intolerance both to internal dissent and external challenge. As I said above, challenging and criticising what we disagree with is as American as apple pie and Little League ball games. It's what this country was built upon. Islam takes a diametrically opposite stance. In most countries with a Muslim majority, even "moderate" nations like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, freedom of thought and expression are severely curtailed.
Saudi Arabia, with its absolute ban on any religion besides Islam and its rigourous suppression of critics of the House of Sa'ud is a typical example of the sort of intolerance towards free thought and religious expression found in most Muslim nations. In Pakistan, protestors get bludgeoned over the head....when they're not doing the bludgeoning themselves. In Iran, dissenters from the Shi'ite Muslim theocracy are usually jailed, whipped, or executed. One need only to remember the death warrant placed on the head of Salman Rushdie for writing a book critical of Islam, The Satanic Verses. The very title of that book offended Muslim sensibilities by its reminder of Mohammed's penning what are called "the Satanic verses". These were verses which he supposedly wrote while under the influence of Satan, condoning that greatest of sins in Islam, shirk, which is when a person associates other gods with Allah. There seems to be an inherent tendency in Islam which influences its followers away from toleration of opposition. In fact, only ONE nation with a Muslim majority qualifies as having a truly democratically-elected government with freedoms protected by the rule of law, this being Turkey. And Turkey's democracy is none too stable, what with the constant tension in that nation between the government on one hand, and Islamist extremists (and the military strongmen ready to take over if the Islamists make a move) on the other. Further, Turkey's democratic system originated through the efforts of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the Young Turks movement, who set Turkey on an overtly secular path which sought to consciously imitate the West. Despotism as seen in Libya, Syria, Sudan, and formerly in Iraq, and monarchy as seen in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait, are the norm for the Muslim world.
The simple explanations for Muslim intolerance can stem simply from the more medieval aspect of Middle Eastern culture. Islamic tradition and culture, as we will see a little later, is basically the grafting of 7th century Arabian culture onto the civilisation which falls into its grasp. Viewed in this light, it should be little surprise to us that many Islamic practices and shari'a laws would appear, in the very least, barbaric to Western eyes. After all, Europe did away with many of the same practices centuries ago. Likewise, any authoritarian system is not likely to endorse the acceptance or toleration of opposition. One could hardly expect dictatorships like those found in Syria to act differently than modern despots like Stalin or Hitler, or medieval despots of all nationalities.
But this does not just hold true for Middle Eastern nations. After all, even Muslims in the United States and the West who have lived here for years and have (supposedly) imbibed Western values and ideas, still often seem opposed to tolerating those they disagree with. Muslim apologists, for instance, will attempt to make the Qur'an "hands-off" as far as being a topic of discussion or debate is concerned, while at the same time attempting to subject the Bible to critical scrutiny. This sort of one-sidedness, this unwillingness to engage in a free and open discussion, is inimical to Western notions of criticism and debate, but fits right into the Muslim world's intolerance of opposition, a world in which criticising the Qur'an most often leads to death or disfigurement. The actions of Muslims are considered off-limits for criticism, even the most heinous of behaviour. This holds true even for "Westernised, moderate" Muslims. Columnist Don Feder reported that when the imam of the Hazrat-I-Abubakr Sadiq mosque in New York City denounced the World Trade Centre terror attack, half of the congregation got up and walked out 1. Thus, it would seem that half of this Americanised congregation approved of the murder of over 3,000 civilian non-combatants, enough so to refuse to listen to the criticism of that murderous act from their own religious leader. It is not unusual for the authors of publications and websites critical of Islam to receive death threats and hateful ad hominem messages, even in the United States. Joseph Farah and others associated with online news source WorldNetDaily and its associated printed magazine Whistle Blower have received numerous death threats because of links and articles they have ran exposing the darker side of Islam. Worldnetdaily's advertisers have also been the target of a campaign of intimidation from self-identified Muslims. Likewise, Dr. Robert Morey, an evangelical Christian apologist who has written several books about Islam, has found himself to be the target of both verbal harassment and attempted physical attacks on his person, as a result of some of the ideas which he has put forth in his books which were critical of Islam. These attacks have been reported in both Canada and the United States.
Islamic Intolerance Towards Other Religions
It should not be surprising then that a system of thought which discourages and suppresses dissent will also suppress and persecute other religions. As anyone who has been paying attention to the Middle East for the last fifty years can see, Islam is a prime persecutor of other religions, especially Christians. In many Muslim countries, even "moderate" nations like Saudi Arabia, renouncing Islam is a capital crime. Religions other than Islam are formally suppressed by the governments of most Muslim nations. For instance, in Sudan, Christians and animists in the South are enslaved and sold north by Muslim (mostly Arab) radicals, and this goes on with the knowledge and promotion of the Sudanese government. It is little wonder that Muslim nations routinely top all the lists of human rights abusers.
Even without official government sanction, Islamic persecution of Christians is widespread all across the Middle East. Christians are routinely the target of terror campaigns in nations such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Algeria, and Iran. Often the violence results in outright murder, a recent example being the gunning down of 17 people in a Protestant congregation in Pakistan by three Islamic fanatics, on 28 October, 2001. Many other examples can be shown, such as the murder of the Gospel missionary Martin Burnham in Mindanao, the Philippines, by Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim terrorist organisation. The recent prosecution of several Pakistani Christians under anti-blasphemy laws (which carry the death sentence) also serve to illustrate Islamic intolerance and fear of religious competition. Likewise, the Copts of Egypt have undergone systematic abuse at the hands of not only radical Islamist groups in Egypt, but also the government. Islam has an endemic problem with violence, as has been demonstrated previously, which stems in large part from that religion's intolerance of competition. Islam, it would seem, fears any sort of dissent or challenge. Due to the unsaved condition of Muslims, who do not have the Spirit of God residing in their hearts and are thus lost sinners under Satan's influence, the only means they have of propagating and maintaining their religion is through the use of force and subjugation.
Islam's intolerance is spotlighted even more when one considers that nations with a Protestant Christian heritage demonstrate a diametrically opposite attitude towards religious freedom. In the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, and other nations with Christian heritages, people are free to choose their religion (or lack thereof) without either government sanction or popular violence. Muslims in America, even in the wake of the September 11 attacks, have little to fear in the way of persecution or violence. Despite the intense provocation which Islam made against America with the terror attacks, there was little more than a handful of scattered reprisals against Muslims in America, mostly from individuals who were less than mentally balanced to begin with. The American government has even gone to great lengths to prevent and discourage attacks upon Arabs and Muslims. One can easily imagine how this would NOT be the case if the roles were reversed and Americans had hijacked and crashed airplanes into a few buildings in, say, Islamabad or Cairo, and killed thousands of civilians.
What must be understood, however, is that this Islamic intolerance for other religions is not a recent aberration, as even a cursory study of history would show. We must understand that the militant and violent intolerance demonstrated by orthodox Islam is not a product of Islam's exclusivist claims per se. Indeed, Bible-believing Christianity makes exactly the same sort of claims for itself as the way to salvation,
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me." (John 14:6)
Yet, we do not see Bible-believing Christians gunning down members of other religions or bombing the houses of worship of other faiths. Instead of being merely a matter of exclusivism, Islam's often violent intolerance stems from its ingrained attitude of superiority over those who are not Muslim. Traditional Muslim teaching on the subject depicts those who refuse to accept Islam as deficient, unintelligent, and morally bankrupt because of their refusal to acknowledge the "obvious" superiority of the Islamic deen (way of religion) and convert. This attitude of superiority, however, is confronted by the obvious inferiority of Muslim power and prestige in the world today. Huntington sums up the matter quite succinctly when he writes,
“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”2
This position is inimical to the view which Islam idealises for itself. Islam, as the final revelation of Allah to mankind, should naturally be superior to all other systems, and should rightly exercise mastery over them all, until these can be extirpated and Islam rules as the sole deen on earth. Because Islam is a combined religio-political system, its claims for exclusivity will naturally cross over into the exercise of state power to enforce religious dictates, much as the popes used secular princes to enforce papal decrees during the Middle Ages. However, Muslims for the past few centuries have suffered the heartbreak of seeing their once dominant position removed by "Christian" Europeans who advanced far beyond the Islamic world in the sciences, the arts, and military power.
This inferior position, coupled with the ingrained belief in their own natural and rightful superiority, has served to radicalise many Muslims towards a very violent form of Islamic traditionalism. It is intolerable to the orthodox Muslim mind that any non-Muslims should exercise any sort of superior position over them, and yet, this is exactly what has happened. It began when the various European powers started to push Islam back out of Europe and reclaim their former territories. It continued when the Europeans took advantage of the relative backwardness of Muslim lands to end the scourge of Muslim piracy in the Mediterranean and gain ascendancy over these former pirate powers. It reached its apex with the piecemeal subjugation and partition of the former Ottoman Empire amongst the various colonial powers. It still is felt today by the economically and militarily dominant position of the United States and other Western powers in the world today. In short, the Muslim ego, his sense of self-worth as it is had through his domination over the infidels, has been disappointed and confuted by the present position in which Muslim lands exist. In the space of a few centuries, the Islamic world went from being poised to literally conquer the known world, to being an ummah whose combined gross domestic production is only roughly 40% that of the United States alone.
This terrible sense of inferiority before the unbelievers is coupled with the innate fundamentalism of Islamic life and theology which has gripped the religion since the 12th century. In its early centuries, Islam was characterised, if not by religious toleration, than at least by an openness to innovative discovery and science which generally causes a civilisation to advance ahead of its rivals. Thus, the Islamic nations advanced far ahead of the petty Catholic European states, being justly renowned for their advances in fields such as optics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, and governmental philosophy.3
However, around the 12th century, this attitude of inquiry was gradually replaced by the present attitude of anti-innovation and societal regression, in large part due to the influence of the Damascene theologian al-Taymiya (1263-1328 AD). The son of a theologian of the Hanbalite school (the strictest of the four major schools of Islamic law), al-Taymiya proved even more reactionary, and his hatred of all heretics (even Muslims who disagreed with strict orthodoxy, such as Ismailis and Shi'ites) caused him to advance an extreme position against innovation of any kind, coupled with an advocacy of a return to the strict interpretation of the Qur'an. This sort of return to the 7th century has been, for all practical purposes, the position taught uniformly throughout Islam since al-Taymiya. Various revival movements, such as the Wahhabi movement and the Sudanese Mahdism, have served to retain this strict and unyielding interpretation of the Qur'an, with its concommitant intolerance and hatred for all non-Muslims.4
For many, perhaps most, Muslims, the way of altering the inferior status in which they find themselves vis-á-vis the Judeo-Christian West is to return to an idealised past when the Qur'an was followed perfectly and Islam ruled. For some Muslims, this is attained by purging the Muslim world of all foreign influences interjected by the infidels, and by returning to the military advancement of Islam, the jihad, believed to be the will of Allah. For more Muslims, it simply means to try to advance Islam by any means, whether through the military, propaganda, subterfuge, or otherwise. Indeed, most Muslims are "fundamentalist" in the sense that they hold to a strict interpretation of the Qur'an. The difference between the militant and the peaceable Muslim is similar to that between the revolutionary and the democratic socialist: one is willing to use even violence to achieve the ultimate end, while the other contents him or herself with "working within the system" to realise the goal of Islamisation and bringing the world into Dar es-Salaam.
Dhimmitude
Many apologists will defend Islam against the charge of intolerance by pointing to the “tolerance” exhibited by the Muslims during the Middle Ages. When Islamic civilisation was at its height, so the myth is spun, Islam was wonderfully tolerant and open-minded towards other religions. While it is true that during this period Islam more often than not refrained from massacring dissenters and rivals (which is often more than can be said for the European Catholicism of the day), to say that Muslims were either tolerant or open-minded is an untidy falsehood. During this era, Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands were reduced to the position of dhimmis. Dhimmitude entailed allowing non-Muslims to remain non-Muslim, so long as certain stringent rules were adhered to, rules which were designed to humiliate the dhimmis and to "demonstrate" the superiority of Islam over the religions of the conquered peoples. Dhimmis were not allowed to engage in any outward show of their religion, such as ringing church bells, praying or reading their Scriptures in public, or disputing about religious matters with a Muslim. They were also not allowed to build any religious buildings such as churches or synagogues, nor were they allowed to repair those already existing which wore down with age. They were most often reduced to a position of economic privation and near-slavery. Dhimmis had to wear distinctive clothing that marked them as clearly non-Muslim. Further, the distinctive clothing was often meant to humiliate the wearers. At various times, Jews and Christians would be compelled to wear badges in the shapes of apes and pigs, drawn from the Quranic description of unbelievers as these animals (Surat 2:65, 5:60, 7:166).
Coupled with this position of dhimmitude was the requirement for non-Muslims to pay the jizyah, the religion tax. This was a tax levied specifically upon non-Muslims, usually Christians and Jews, which was the only life-preserving alternative to outright conversion to Islam. The jizyah was designed to “encourage” subject populations to convert to Islam, since conversion meant being relieved of a heavy financial burden. Further, the jizyah, as well as other financial burdens upon dhimmi populations (such as the kharaj, or land tax) were traditionally supported by Muslim theologians through appeal to various passages of the Qur'an, such as Surah 9:29, one of the most obvious passages in the Qur'an commanding Muslims to make war against non-Muslims and to force them into submission (and one which apologists for Islam today routinely say is "being taken out of context" by those who point to it as evidence of Muslim intolerance)5. Between the burdens of dhimmitude and jizyah, it is little wonder that Islam, which has remarkably little success making converts without coercion, came to hold the almost complete monopoly on Middle Eastern religion which we see it having today. To say that these actions, the religion tax and enforced second-class citizenry, are “tolerant” would be a gross misuse of that term for propagandistic purposes. Those who make the claim to Muslim tolerance would seem to either be ignorant of these, or else sweeping them under the rug.
In her excellent work on this subject, Bat Ye'or reproduces dozens of primary reference documents which detail the dhimmitude phenomenon firsthand. From these documents, it can easily be seen that the mythological toleration extended by the Muslims during the period of their ascendancy is complete fiction invented by modern apologists for Islam. Let us now look at a few of these firsthand accounts of Islamic "toleration".
Ibn Naqqash, a 14th century Egyptian religious teacher, recounted some of the opinions of early Muslim theologians,
"CHURCHES - It is related, according to the tradition, that the Prophet made this declaration: 'No churches are to be built in Muslim lands, and those that will have fallen into ruin shall not be repaired.' Another hadit is also quoted in his name: 'No churches under Islam.'
Umar b. al-Khattab (may Allah bless him!) commanded that every church that did not exist before the rise of Islam was to be demolished and he forbade the building of new ones. He also commanded that no cross was to be visible outside a church, otherwise it could be broken over the head of him who carried it.
Urwat b. Naj gave orders to destroy all the churches of San'a (Yemen). This is the law of the ulama of Islam.
Umar b. Abd al-Aziz went even further than this and gave orders to leave neither churches nor chapels standing anywhere, be they ancient or recent. It is customary, says Hasan al-Basri, to destroy the old and the new churches in any country.
Umar b. Abd al-Aziz also issued decrees prohibiting Christians to raise their voices while chanting in their churches, for these are the most distasteful hymns to the Most High. Moreover, he prohibited them from repairing those parts of their places of worship which fell into ruin. Concerning the latter point there are two opinions. If they resurface them on the outside, says al-Istakhari, then they must be prevented from doing so, but if they merely restore the inside, the portion that is on their side, then this can be tolerated. However, Allah is all-knowing."6
Al-Marrakushi, a Muslim historian of the Almohad reign in North Africa, recounts the following in his history,
"Toward the end of his reign, Abu Yusuf ordered the Jewish inhabitants of the Maghreb to make themselves conspicuous among the rest of the population by assuming a special attire consisting of dark blue garments, the sleeves of which were so wide as to reach to their feet and - instead of a turban - to hang over the ears a cap whose form was so ill-conceived as to be easily mistaken for a pack-saddle. This apparel became the costume of all the Jews of the Maghreb and remained obligatory until the end of the prince's reign and the beginning of that of his son Abu Abd Allah [Abu Muhammed Abd Allah al-Adil, the Just, 1224-1227]. The latter made a concession only after appeals of all kinds had been made by the Jews, who had entreated all those whom they thought might be helpful to intercede on their behalf. Abu Abd Allah obliged them to wear yellow garments and turbans, the very costume they still wear in the present year 612 [1224]. Abu Yusuf's misgivings as to the sincerity of their conversion to Islam prompted him to take this measure and impose upon them a specific dress. 'If I were sure,' said he, 'that they had really become Muslims, I would let them assimilate through marriage and other means; on the other hand, had I evidence that they had remained infidels I would have them massacred, reduce their children to slavery and confiscate their belongings for the benefit of the believers.'"7
A particularly sad example of the treatment of the Jews in Morocco during the 17th century is found in Halevy's archives, detailing in particular the Muslim contempt for Jewish womanhood,
"Needless to say it is primarily the working classes and the petty shopkeepers who are the most exposed to the arbitrary measures of the authorities. The Jewish craftsman who brings his work to the Moroccan official is paid with blows of a staff if he is not satisfied with half the price originally agreed upon. The heaviest tasks are continuously imposed upon the working population, women and children not excepted. While roaming through the bazaar in the Arab quarter, I saw long lines of young Jewish girls, bareheaded and barefooted, working in the manufacture of military uniforms, earning but 10 or 15 centimes per day. But the bodily sufferings are nothing compared to the moral vexations to which these sensitive and modest creatures are constantly exposed. In a country where no decent woman should be seen in the street without a veil, these Jewish women and girls are obliged to work unveiled in the middle of the bazaar and thereby exhibit themselves to the impudent stares of the Arab crowds.
"A Muslim himself admitted to me that this humiliating exposure has no other purpose than to force these Jewish women to convert as the only means of escaping from such intolerable treatment. Indeed, must not their spirit be exceptionally noble in order to withstand such a life of misery and untold suffering, when conversion can offer them the most precious advantages, freedom, wealth, and honors?
"The petty shopkeepers in the Mellah are not treated any better, for retail transactions are often the cause of arguments between Arabs and Jews, from which the former are certain in advance to triumph. A Muslim who buys some commodity from a Jewish shop comes back some hours later accusing the vendor of having cheated him on the weight or quantity. Since, on the one hand, the testimony of a Jew is worthless and, on the other hand, it is impossible to find Arab witnesses in the Mellah, the Muslim's word is taken and the ghetto overseer (muhtasib) sees no harm in punishing the presumed offender with a round of thrashes from his staff, which leaves him unconscious on the ground or maimed for the rest of his life. With my own eyes I saw a great number of these victims, mostly butchers, woefully dragging themselves along the ground, unable to walk upright, their backs horribly hacked to pieces and looking like one gaping wound. Black decayed flesh hung at their ankles and their feet, crooked and swollen by the violent blows, ended in a hideous blue blister which hid the atrocious remains of toenails that had been smashed by the staff. It was hideous and heartbreaking to see, and yet these wounds were already ten or fifteen days old. What had the state of these wretched people been on the day when this treatment had been inflicted upon them?"
"Sometimes the cruelest punishments are meted out on these poor Jews without the slightest pretext, if only to remind them that they have masters who can do what they want with them. The main idea of the Moroccan authorities is that the Jew must not undertake nor initiate a commercial transaction without their mediation, the aim of which obviously is to receive a handsome commission. Consequently, their anger knows no bounds when such an opportunity escapes their greediness."8
Many, many more examples, and worse, could be recounted. Indeed, from first-hand accounts of the treatment of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands throughout most of the history of Islam, a picture is painted far different from our understanding of toleration. The history of Muslim dealings with the dhimmis is one of oppression, random massacres, avaricious greed and plunder, extortion under the threat of persecution, rape, systematic degradation, and slavery.
Far from being aberrations from "true" Islam, this sort of treatment of subject populations has been theologically sustained since the very beginning of Islam. The reason for this is found in the peculiar Muslim triumphalism inherent in Islamic theology. Islam teaches that it is the final revelation of Allah to mankind, which in and of itself is not superficially atypical from other religions. However, Islam also teaches that, since Islam is the final revelation, that those who refuse to accept Islam are obviously morally and intellectually inferior, and are thus should be subject to the Islamic ummah. This subjection is achieved through the dhimma treaty, whereby conquered peoples who refuse to convert to Islam are coerced into agreeing to the dhimmi conditions detailed above. For a dhimmi to attempt to rise above these conditions, even centuries after they were originally imposed, is considered a violation of the "treaty", and thus grounds for punishment. Further, this treaty of dhimma is considered to be conditional, subject to the disposition of Muslim rulers. Hence, the dhimmi populations could not and cannot feel secure even in the supposed toleration extended by Muslim rulers, as this toleration may be revoked at any time. Further, the dhimma treaty provided no practical protection against the Muslim masses in various countries who would periodically engage in popular massacres of Jews and Christians, if it were perceived by them that the dhimmis were in any way being less than absolutely submissive to the ummah.
Much is said today of the "humiliation" and the "anger" which are felt by the "Arab street". What we must understand, however, is that this particular brand of humiliation felt by the Muslims today results from their inability to exert humiliation upon others. It was noted above that orthodox Islam demands the ascendancy of Islam over all other systems and religions. This includes retaining indefinitely the mastery over the dhimmis who live in lands which have, at some point or another, been conquered by Islam. Essentially, Islam demands the right to continue to exercise what it considers to be its natural mastery over these subject populations. Further, Islam must (it is felt) be above the non-Muslim religions of the world, whether Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or other. For non-Muslims to exercise dominion over Muslims, and for them to be able to successfully resist Islamisation, is intolerable to the more militant wings of Islam. Hence, the "humiliation" and "anger" which the Muslims feel when presented with a "Great Satan" who will not bend to the Muslim will, but instead acts in ways which are often inconsistent with the desires of Muslims.
The focal point of this perceived Muslim humiliation is the nation of Israel. As has been and will be shown elsewhere, anti-Semitism has been historically endemic in Islam, even an early hadith records that, in the day of judgement, even the trees will cry out to the Muslims to tattle on Jews who hide behind them from extermination by the Muslims.9
Further, the Jews have been, since the conquests of the Arab Empire, a subject dhimmi people, thus by "treaty" destined for subordinate status in perpetuity. The nation of Israel, as a free Jewish state on soil once owned by the ummah is a grave affront to the sensibilities of nearly all Muslims. Israel represents a reversal for Islam which cannot be tolerated, hence the five wars which the Arab neighbours of Israel have fought to try and annihilate her, and the current intifada. The dhimma, which existed for the purpose of securing the dominance of the invading Muslims over a conquered region, has been broken, and thus the Jews of Israel, as rebels against the dhimma, are considered by orthodox Islamic law to be fair game for any and all retaliations. Hence, the Muslim obsession with the tiny nation of Israel, so often wondered at by Westerners, lies in the fact that Israel represents the worst incursion of dhimmi freedom to ever intrude itself into the ummah.
Racism in Islam
Islam is also a religion which promotes racism. Muslim anti-Semitism is well known. Islam has essentially fought five wars seeking to annihilate the nation of Israel, and failed five times. Muslim leaders, both in the Middle East and in the West, routinely denounce Jews and "Zionists", and are quite known for making fantastical claims against Jews. For instance, in an interview given to an Arab newspaper just days after the September 11 attacks, the Egyptian imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha made claims that Jewish doctors in New York were poisoning Muslim babies, and that the Jews and Israel were responsible for the World Trade Centre terrorism.10
What is even more amazing than the claims made is that millions of Muslims all across the world BELIEVE these, without evidence and without thinking, simply because they are made against Jews and Israel. The view that the Jews blew up the World Trade Centre is even the official position of the Syrian government. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document purporting to be a transcript of a secret meeting of Jewish world leaders in which they lay out their plans for world conquest through subterfuge, remains an ideological force in the Muslim world, giving many a pretended justification for Jew-hatred. Indeed, Egyptian state television ran a multi-part series promoting the Protocols in 2003. When the Israelis captured and tried Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the Saudi Arabian press hailed Eichmann as a "martyr who bestowed a true blessing on humanity", and who had "the honour of killing six million Jews". Yet, while celebrating the extermination of Jews during World War II, Holocaust denial at the same time remains vigourously in vogue in Arab and Muslim circles. It is therefore not surprising that the only groups in America giving appreciable support to Osama bin Laden and Muslim terrorists in the wake of the September 11 attacks (aside from various reflexively anti-American leftists and Americanised Muslims themselves) are the racist hate groups such as Aryan Nations and others like it. This makes sense as these groups share with much of Islam a rabid hatred for Jewish people.
Indeed, radical Islam has a sordid history of consorting with the Nazis, as well. In the two decades preceding the war, the Muslim Brotherhood, a jihad organisation founded in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, forged the anti-Semitic ideological underpinnings which eventually led this organisation to alliance with the Nazis. Going beyond the traditional disdain for Jews (which was applied also to the local Christians as well), the Brotherhood made an active point of opposing the sometime Zionist-supportive policies of the British government, and violently opposed the immigration of Jews back to the Holy Land. This particular form of anti-Semitism was coupled with the idealisation by al-Banna of the death of martyrdom.11
Closely allied with the Brotherhood was the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, the highest Muslim religious authority in Palestine. The Mufti was almost single-handedly responsible for the radical turn which Palestinian Arabs took towards militant Islam and towards the vociferous anti-Semitism expounded by the Brotherhood. He instigated the "Arab Revolt" of 1936, in which his supporters ruthlessly put down rival (and more moderate) Arab factions as well as the minority Christian populations, instituting strict shari'a among the Palestinian Muslims on pain of death. This anti-Semitism, though, was not wholly native. As early as 1933, the Mufti had sought out the support of the Nazi regime in Germany. However, the only support he received was ideological, until 1937, when the Islamist movement began to receive generous gifts of funding and weapons from the Nazis, a factor which the Mufti himself acknowledged to be a determinative factor in his later "success".12
The Mufti openly collaborated with the Nazis throughout the war, met with high Nazi officials on several occasions during the war, and was known to be a close friend of Heinrich Himmler. After the destruction of the Nazi state, he fled to Egypt, where he was given shelter within the Brotherhood, and even made al-Banna's personal representative and the supervisor over the Brotherhood's activities in Palestine. This pro-Nazi attitude remains as vociferous in some parts of the Muslim world today as it did in those dark decades. As Bernard Lewis has noted, in many places, a pro-Nazi past was a mark of recognition, not shame.13 Even today, Mein Kampf remains one of the best-selling works in many Muslim countries.
However, anti-Semitism is not the only aspect of Arab/Muslim racism. Islam carries in it, subconsciously or no, a grain of racism against blacks as well. Surah 3:106-107 indicates that on the day of judgment before Allah, those with white faces will receive Allah's mercy, while those with black faces will receive damnation.
"On the Day when some faces will be white, and some faces will be black: To those whose faces will be black, will be said: "Did ye reject Faith after accepting it? Taste then the penalty for rejecting Faith." But those whose faces will be white,- they will be in Allah's mercy: therein to dwell."
Muslim apologists will claim that these colour references are to those whose faces will be "lit up with" white and "in the gloom of" black, but the literal reading of the Arabic does not support this revision. Indeed, given the historic treatment which the Arab Muslims have meted out to darker-skinned peoples, especially black Africans, the racial interpretation of these ayat is quite understandable. Further, al-Qayrawani (d. 966 AD), a noted early Muslim jurist of the Maliki school, stated that it is permissible (though not mandated) to kill a white non-Arab enemy who is taken prisoner.14 This at least implies that this was mandated, or at least was not viewed to be as offensive, for non-white non-Arab prisoners. Further, in the work of Abu Yusuf (d. 798 AD), a comprehensive gradation is given of the treatment to be meted out to conquered peoples on the basis not only of the status of their religion, but also of their race.15 He makes the point of saying that there were certain races with whom the Arabs would not mingle or marry, even where this separation is not enforced on religious grounds.
In many ways, Islam itself is viewed as a mark of Arab superiority over the other peoples of the world, even other Islamic groups. This prejudice has been prevalent even in the modern world, and found much currency in the Arab nationalist movement beginning in the last century. Nationalist scholar al-Bazzaz stated,
"Islam, although it is a universal religion suitable for all peoples and has in fact been disseminated among many nations and races, is undoubtedly a religion revealed first to the Arabs themselves, In this sense, it is their own special religion. The Prophet is from them, the Koran is in their language; Islam retained many of their previous customs, adopting and polishing the best of them....These gracious verses and many others, both Meccan and Medinese, confirm that Islam is the religion of the Arabs before being a universal religion. This does not contradict other verses, such as verse 107 of surat al-Anbiya (XXI): 'We have sent thee only in mercy to mankind,' because it is proved historically that the sending of the Prophet to the Arabs revived the Arab nation in its entirety and resurrected it. This resurrection was, at the time, beneficial to all the inhabited universe. The Arabs were the propagators of Islam and the saviors of the world from the reigning oppression and from the absolute ignorance which was then supreme; they were, as Gustave lebon said, the most merciful conquerors that the world has known."16
Hence, the Arabs were the ones chosen to bring the "benefit" of Islam to the ignorant masses of the world, much the same as the 19th century European man may have felt it his imperative to bring civilisation to the "savages". Islam yet remained, however, first and foremost an institution of Arab superiority even despite the brotherhood of non-Arab Muslims, the Arabs being a sort of "first among equals". The primacy of the Arabs in Islamic matters has been reiterated by al-Kawakibi, who also injects a certain amount of racial overtone into his exaltation of the Arab people,
"The peninsula is the place where the light of Islam originated. It contains the exalted Kaaba. In it is found the Prophet's Mosque and the holy ground of his house, pulpit, and grave.....Of all countries it is most free of racial, religious, or sectarian intermixture.....The habit of religion has become ingrained in them because religion is more compatible with their social customs than with those of others....Of all Muslims, the peninsula Arabs are the best able to bear hardships in order to attain their aims, and to undertake travel and residence abroad because they have not succumbed to the servile habits of luxury. The peninsula Arabs preserve better than all other peoples their race and customs; for though they mingle with others they do not mix with them...The language of the Arabs is the language common to all the Muslims, who number 300 million souls...The Arabs are of all nations the most suitable to be an authority in religion and an example to the Muslims; the other nations have followed their guidance at the start and will not refuse to follow them now."17
The Arabs, in the resurgent nationalism just as in the days when they first attained to empire, are the vanguard of the Islamic movement, the elite cadre about whom Islam rightly revolves, who have kept themselves most pure and are most fit to guide the other Muslim peoples in the right way. Unfortunately, as with any attitude like this, no matter how benevolent it purports is headship to be, the principle can easily cross over into more malevolent arenas of racial and cultural superiority. These attitudes are often demonstrated in a practical way in Arab Muslim attitudes towards non-Arabic Muslims, especially those of South Asia. Muslims in India, whose skins are generally darker than those of Arabs from the Middle East, are considered to be "second-class" Muslims, as I have been told by several Indians with whom I have been acquainted over the years. Muslims of the Middle East often
still regard black people as slaves.18
Notice that phrase, "STILL regard". Muslim Arabs were the reason the black African slave trade ever was started in the first place, because they provided a market for African tribes to sell captured prisoners of war as slaves. This began centuries before Europeans became involved in the trade. It is estimated that 9.3 million black Africans were taken across the Sahara desert to serve as slaves in the Muslim Empire.19
Of these, many died from exhaustion and thirst in the long trek to Mediterranean coast, those who could not make the trip on their two feet often were simply beheaded on the spot so that they would not hold up the caravan. This equals in volume, both living and dead, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade with which Muslims so often like to chastise the West. The slaves being taken today in Sudan by Arab Muslims are black Africans as well, mostly from the Christian and animist Nilotic tribes of the South, such as the Dinka peoples. Mohammed himself kept black people as slaves,20 and on several occasions referred to Africans as "raisin-heads"21 or "pug-nosed slaves".22 Even today, a common term used in Saudi Arabia for "black" is the term abd, the word for a servant or slave.
Islamic Imperialism
One of the most common complaints made in the Muslim world is that of American or Western "imperialism". The pervasiveness of American culture, attitudes, and ideas has allowed our way of life to penetrate even behind the Iron Crescent. Cell phones, McDonalds, and a host of other Western innovations are now commonplace in cities all across the Middle East, and it is even reported that the most popular American television show in many Muslim countries is Baywatch. But with this technology and culture have come other influences alien to traditional Muslim civilisation, influences such as women's rights, religious and political freedom, and Western-style secularism. These influences often lead to charges of "imperialism" from traditionalist Muslim religious leaders, because they threaten to alter the way of life in many nations. This phenomenon, coupled with the disparity of wealth between the West and the Muslim world, makes it very easy and tempting for leaders in Muslim nations to incite and play upon envy, fear, and anger among their populations at large. As a result, "imperialism" has grown to become a dominant lens through which the Muslim world views its relationship with the West. Every woe is to be blamed on the infidel Westerners (especially the Americans) because they are richer, and they support Israel, and they are Christian (supposedly), etc. etc. ad nauseum.
But what about Muslim imperialism? While Western imperialism in the Middle East is now pretty much a figment of the imaginations of mullahs living a hundred years in the past, Muslim imperialism still thrives today, just as it has since Islam's inception. As was seen earlier, Islam was and is a religion spread primarily by the sword. The world according to Islam is divided into two regions: Dar es-Salaam and Dar al-Harb, the house of peace and submission to Islam, and the house of war, respectively. Islam is a religion and a culture built upon imperialism and expansionism.
Islamic culture is basically the imposition of 7th century Arabian culture onto a whole host of conquered peoples all across the Middle East and elsewhere. Looking across the Muslim world, one finds nations and ethnicities which did NOT adopt Islam of their own volition, but instead did so because of conquest and force. The Persians were not originally a Muslim people, but were conquered by Islam. Neither were the Berbers, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Syrians, or Black Africans who were forcibly converted. In fact, the Arabs were not originally Muslims, of course, until the first Arab conquerors and their successors spread Islam to them by the sword. Hence, the religion of nearly a billion people in the world was brought to their ancestors by the force of arms.
Further, as was noted earlier, the laws of the shari'a are little more than transplantation of various Arabian customs and traditions dating from the time of the Arab takeovers of Syro-Palestine and Persia, coupled with the indigenous (and still barbaric by modern standards) laws present in the Hellenistic East at the time of the Arab Empire's rise. The veil, the burkha, and other facial coverings for women stem from this Arabian society. So do the Islamic attitudes toward women which virtually require women to be accompanied by male relatives when in public (common in many Middle Eastern countries), prevent them from driving (Saudi Arabia and others), and keep them from receiving an equal share of inheritance (Quranic
law, but comes from Arab culture in the 7th century).
The execution of laws and punishment of criminals is also distinctly Arabian in
methodology. The cutting off of hands for theft, execution for many seemingly
minor crimes, etc. stem from the harsh life of desert nomads where force had to
prevail to keep the rowdier elements in line and to preserve individual
property.
The advancement of Islamic imperialism led to the invasions of Europe by the Moors, and later the Turks. India also suffered the brunt of Muslim invasions from the west, and was controlled by Muslim Moghuls for several centuries, a fact for which many Indians to this day are STILL bitter. Islam reached to the Russian steppes at the height of its expansion before being driven back by the Slavs. The Muslim enclaves in Bosnia and Albania are reminders to this day of Muslim Turkish imperialism in the Balkans, these being Slavic Europeans who converted to Islam because of persecution, force, and the persuasion of being free from paying the religion tax imposed on non-Muslims. In terms of brutality and outright violence, Islamic imperialism ranks right up there with the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the Japanese conquest of China and Korea in the 20th century.
This imperialism is still going on today. Islam is still trying to conquer new territory and bring it into Dar es-Salaam, whether by sword or by money. Muslim radicals regularly terror bomb targets in Indian Kashmir in an effort to force the Indians out and unite that region with Pakistan. Muslims in Nigeria are imposing shari'a law in many northern states in that country, in violation of Nigerian law, and impose this on the many non-Muslims in those states. Muslim fanatics are operating a guerilla war in the Philippines, with the stated aim of setting up a Muslim state in Mindanao. Monetary bounties are offered to people in South Africa for conversions to Islam. Even in the West, Muslim leaders have at various times stated their aim of bringing Europe and America into the fold of Dar es-Salaam, and much Muslim literature emphasises the eventual conquest of the West (and the rest of the world) for Islam. An example is the prediction by Maududi,
"The powers that are today aligned with the anti-Islam camp will break away one by one and merge in the camp of Islam. And the time will come when communism will be under stress for its survival in Moscow itself; and capitalist democracy will be in a desperate plight to defend itself in Washington and New York even. Materialistic atheism will find its position untenable even in the universities of London and Paris. Racialism and Nationalism will find no devotees even among the Brahmins and the Germans. And the present epoch will be commemorated in history as an eye-wash that the adherents of such a universal and world-conquering power as Islam had been reduced to the folly of trembling in the face of sticks and ropes when they held the staff of Moses (the Divine Wand) under their arm."23
Daniel Pipes, a noted expert in the areas of Middle Eastern politics, culture, and the Islamic religion, has written recently on this topic, giving numerous examples of how even "moderate" Islamic groups in America, such as the various Muslim Student Associations and the American Muslim Council, identify with the ultimate goal of "Islamising" the United States of America.24 He discusses the various ways which Muslims in America are often expected to follow in reaching this goal, non-violently due to the extremely small percentage of the American population which Muslims currently make up. These include encouraging immigration to the United States from Muslim nations, encouraging acceptance of and the spreading of information about Islamic practices and religion, and silencing dissenters against Islam through legal action. All are becoming, disturbingly, more commonplace in America.
Islam Uber Alles by Any Means Necessary
Part and parcel with this are the many inflated claims made concerning the number of Muslims residing in Western nations. For years, it has been an article of faith among American Muslim leaders that Islam had over 7 million followers in the United States. This large number is designed to give Muslims additional clout with American political and cultural leaders. However, this number is vastly over-inflated. An article in the New York Post reported that two prominent scientific polling groups, using data from recent polls, each report numbers around 1.8 million.25 The same article also reveals that the American Muslim Council put pressure on researcher Fareed Nu'man to grossly inflate the figure for the Muslim population in a poll he was taking for them, and that Nu'man was fired when he refused to do so.
Related to these inflated population figures are the claims which Islam makes to ever-accelerating conversions of Westerners to the religion. However, these numbers are also exaggerated, and carry little real validity. The majority of white Western converts usually become disenchanted with Islam; because of the cool reception they receive from "born Muslims", the lack of true piety they observe in Muslim immigrants to the West, and family pressure against Islam; and revert back to their birth religions.26 Also, there appears to be a systematic attempt at deception on the part of many Muslims through the manufacture of "conversion stories" designed to influence people towards Islam. This author formerly was a member of an Islamic e-mail message group based in Egypt which regularly sent out stories of this type. Invariably, the individual who had "converted" would have a stereotypically Anglo-Saxon name, claim to be an American (or, less commonly, a Canadian, Englishman, or Australian), yet would appear to have almost no skills in the English language. The letters gave all the appearance of having been written by someone with no command of English whatsoever; grammar, punctuation, verb conjugations, adverbs; all used wrongly. One can easily surmise that either all the illiterates of the Western world were converting to Islam, or else the letters were being faked by zealous (but careless) Middle Easterners.
These are examples of a practice known as taqiyya, which essentially means to lie for the sake of Islam. The intention is to deceive unbelievers about Islam, for the explicit purpose of assuaging doubts and concerns about Islam, and encouraging conversion. Taqiyya underlies the whole gamut of Muslim propaganda which is disseminated in the West, from the claim that Islam promotes equal rights for women, to the attempts at inflating the perceived number of Muslims. All are designed to draw people to Islam, by hook or by crook. The example given before of the Durham imam who went so far as to claim that he would be compelled by his religion to prevent a vandal from destroying the property of a church or synagogue is a typical example of taqiyya. It was said in a public forum for the express purpose of giving an appearance to the Islamic religion which does not reflect reality. Certainly, as has been seen, the historical attitudes of Muslims toward churches and synagogues has NOT been to protect them from vandalism, just the opposite is in fact the case. But, the lie must be told in the public forum so as to present Islam in a positive and tolerant light which will appeal to Westerners, which will cause them to believe that the image of Islam as an intolerant and violent religion are just myths created by Islam's enemies to defame the True Faith.
This sort of sanctified dishonesty is also justified in the minds of many Muslims on the basis that everyone else who opposes Islam is lying. For many Muslims, it is absolutely inconceivable that anyone could ever reject Islam on logical or rational grounds, therefore to claim to do so indicates a failing in intelligence or morality on the part of the infidel. Schuon quite insightfully illuminates us to the attitude of the Muslim mind,
"The intellectual - and thereby the rational - foundation of Islam results in the average Muslim having a curious tendency to believe that non-Muslims either know that Islam is the truth and reject it out of pure obstinacy, or else are simply ignorant of it and can be converted by elementary explanations; that anyone should be able to oppose Islam with a good conscience quite exceeds the Muslim's imagination, precisely because Islam coincides in his mind with the irresistible logic of things."27
This insight elucidates many things which those who deal with Muslims on a regular basis can readily observe. It explains why Muslim apologetic defense of Islam is so often very elementary, even childish, in its presentation, and often quickly breaks down into name-calling against the infidel who has refuted Islamic arguments. It enlightens us as to why Muslims will loudly trumpet the "logic" and "rationality" of Islam while simultaneously defending their faith with circular reasoning and other errors of logic. This is why Muslims can, without any apparent irony, claim that Islam is a "religion of peace", even when the testimony of both history and current events bellows the opposite. For most Muslims, the idea that an infidel could reject Islam because of a sincere concern for knowing the truth is absolutely inconceivable. Hence, the infidel must be lying when he or she present facts and arguments against Islam, and the infidel must be an especially tricky liar when the facts and arguments cannot be answered by the Muslim. Hence, the resort to taqiyya to turn aside infidel lies so that the logic of truth, a priori defined as anything Islamic, will stand firm.
Taqiyya goes beyond mere lying for propaganda purposes. The word comes from a root meaning "to guard against, to keep (oneself)". It thus also includes dissimulation by the Muslim to give the appearance of not being religious, so as not to arouse suspicion. In this vein, a Muslim, if necessary, may eat pork, drink alcohol, and even verbally deny the Islamic faith, as long as he does not "mean it in his heart". If the end result of the lie is perceived by the Muslim to be good for Islam or useful to bringing someone to "submission" to Allah, then the lie can be sanctioned through taqiyya. As al-Tabbarah writes,
"Lying is not always bad, to be sure; there are times when telling a lie is more profitable and better for the general welfare, and for the settlement of conciliation among people, than telling the truth. To this effect, the Prophet says: 'He is not a false person who (through lies) settles conciliation among people, supports good or says what is good."28
The taqiyya concept is also found in the Qur'an,
"Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you (To remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah." (Surah 3:28)
Here, the Muslims are warned against taking unbelievers as friends, except if it will be beneficial to the Muslims as a way of defending Islam against its perceived enemies or preventing loss or danger from coming upon the Muslim because of his faith. In other words, the end justifies the means. If a Muslim must give the outward appearance of not being a Muslim, or must go against the general principle of not befriending infidels, then this is acceptable under the taqiyya doctrine. Keep in mind also that what is defined as "good" by the serious Muslim will be anything that aids the spread and eventual triumph of Islam over competing religions and ideologies. As such, this would tend to encourage infiltration of non-Muslim countries and institutions by Muslims who might pretend to support the organisations they join, but who are really working to undermine these for the greater goal of establishing Islam as supreme. Obvious recent examples of this sort of activity would be the misuse of their positions and access to information by Muslim members of America's armed forces, several of whom have been caught and arrested while attempting to pass information along to al-Qaeda and other militant Islamic terrorist organisations.
Perhaps related to its false presentation of itself is the Islamic tendency towards discouraging open inquiry about itself, by which is meant inquiry that is not shepherded by some sort of Muslim religious authority or a Muslim already well-versed in Islamic dogma. This is most plainly seen in the Islamic teaching that the Qur'an cannot be translated out of Arabic. Per strict Islamic traditional teaching, when the Qur'an is translated into some other language, it instantly ceases to be the true Qur'an, becoming instead a document which has had the admixture of man's thoughts and words interjected into it (presumably as a result of the translation process). Only the Qur'an in Arabic, according to Islam, is the true word of Allah. As a result, there are millions of Muslims all over the world who do not know Arabic, and who, when they respond to the muezzin call and hear the Qur'an chanted in Arabic, have not the slightest idea what is really being said. These people have to rely upon an imam or other religious leader to tell them what the Qur'an says, and what it means. Through this means, Islam maintains and enforces the submission of millions of non-Arab Muslims who have to rely upon the Arabic-speakers for knowledge of what their religion teaches and what their holy book says. Because of this teaching, Islam can be said to take on a role as a knowledge control cult much like the Jehovah's Witnesses (who are "encouraged" to read only what the Watchtower Society publishes) or other cults where independent examination of the religion's doctrines are discouraged or prohibited.
This sort of attitude is exactly what is presented in the Muslim traditions, too. In the Qur'an, we find that Muslims are encouraged not to ask hard questions about their own religion, and the reason is because they might lose their faith in Islam if they do,
"O ye who believe! Ask not questions about things which if made plain to you, may cause you trouble. Some people before you did ask such questions, and on that account lost their faith." (Surah 5:102-103)
This discouragement to open questioning is also seen in the ahadith, one of which records that Mohammed was asked about some matters which he did not want to have to answer, and got so angry when the questioner persisted that he grew enraged, red in the face.29 Other statements in the ahadith also record Mohammed's adverse reaction to being challenged on the things he taught.30 Maududi, one of the most prominent theologians of Islam in the modern age, likewise encourages Muslims to leave off asking the difficult to answer questions about their faith.31 The tendency against open questioning and willingness to examine the beliefs of Islam suggests to us that Islam is not really interested in people investigating Islam for the truth's sake (despite what many a Muslim making dawah might say). Rather, it tells us that Islam seeks to suppress its internal inconsistencies and embarrassing teachings, things which might cause the Muslim to doubt his faith and even apostasise if he were to dwell on them.
The conclusion which all the evidence gives to us is that Islam cannot be considered a religion or way of life which is in any wise tolerant of dissent or disagreement. Thus, Islam cannot rightly be called "tolerant". Instead, we see an aggressive, imperialistic power bent on supplanting all competitors, and which gives all appearance of being uninterested in peaceful coexistence.
End Notes
(1) - Insight Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 41, Nov. 5, 2001, p.43
(2) - S.P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, p.217
(3) - Indeed, a number of common terms in English beginning with the prefix al belie their Islamic origin, such as algebra and alkaline, as well as the names of numerous stars such as Aldebaran, Algeiba, Alnasl, and Alnair, this not including the many other stars with Arabic names which do not contain this prefix.
(4) - For a most incisive discussion on this turn of events in the 12th century, and what its ramifications are for Islam in the present day, see chapters 6 and 7 of F. Hoveyda, The Broken Crescent: The Threat of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism
(5) - see, e.g. al-Mawardi, Al-ahkam as sultaniyya, trans. E. Fagnan, Les Statuts Gouvernementaux, pp. 299-300; in B. Ye'or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, p. 175.; also Ibn an-Naqqash, Fatwa concerning the condition of the dhimmis and particularly of the Christians en Muslim lands, since the establishment of Islam, until the middle of the 8th century after the Hegira, vol. 18, pp. 515, trans. Belin, Journal Asiatique, Vol. 18 (1851) and Vol. 19 (1852); in B. Ye'or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, p. 185.
(6) - Ibn an-Naqqash, Fatwa concerning the condition of the dhimmis and particularly of the Christians en Muslim lands, since the establishment of Islam, until the middle of the 8th century after the Hegira, vol. 18, pp. 513-514, trans. Belin, Journal Asiatique, Vol. 18 (1851) and Vol. 19 (1852); in B. Ye'or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, pp. 184-185
(7) - al-Marrakushi, Al-mu'jib fi talkhis akhbar al-maghrib, trans. E. Fagnan Histoire des Almohades, pp. 264-265; in B. Ye'or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, p. 189
(8) - J. Halévy in Bulletin, Alliance Israelite Universelle: 52-54; in B. Ye'or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, pp. 314-315
(9) - Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Bk. 52, no. 177
(10) -
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/nyregion/23IMAM.html?pagewanted=print
(11) - see A.A.M. el-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question, 1928-1947, p. 125
(12) - K. Gensicke, The Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini, and the National Socialists, p. 234
(13) - B. Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, p. 160
(14) - Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, La Risala: Epitre sur les elements du dogme et de la loi de l'Islam selon le rite malakite, trans. ed. L. Bercher, p. 163
(15) - Ya'qub Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharadi, trans. E. Fagnan, pp. 103-104
(16) - Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, "Islam and Arab Nationalism", Arab Nationalism: An Anthology, ed. S.G. Haim, pp. 176-177
(17) - Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, "The Excellences of the Arabs", Arab Nationalism: An Anthology, ed. S.G. Haim, pp. 78-80
(18) - V. and D. Khalil, "When Christians Meet Muslims", Christian Herald, July/August 1988, p.44
(19) - K.P. Moseley, “Caravel and Caravan: West Africa and the World-Economies, ca. 900–1900 AD”, Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations, Vol. XV (1992), p. 534
(20) - Sahih al-Bukhari vol. 6, no. 435
(21) - Sahih al-Bukhari vol. 1, no. 622; vol. 9, no. 256
(22) - Sahih Muslim, Vol. 9, pp. 46-47
(23) - S. Abul Ala Maududi, The Evidence of Truth, p. 23
(24) - D. Pipes,
The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America
(25) - New York Post, Oct. 29, 2001
(26) - D. Pipes, book review of "The Sun is Rising in the West", in Middle East Quarterly, December 2000.
(27) - F. Schoun, Stations of Wisdom, p. 64, note #1
(28) - A. al-Tabbarah, The Spirit of Islam, p.247
(29) - Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. I, no. 92
(30) - Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. II, no. 555, and Vol. III, no. 591
(31) - see S. Abul 'Ala Maududi, The Meaning of the Qur'an, Vol. III, pp. 76-77
