Carrying Water for the Qur'an's Violent Teachings (Part 1)
Why so many people in the West instinctively reach for the 'Nothing to do with Islam' response
A major part of my work is to challenge the idea that there is no link between Islam and acts of violence committed in its name. This is in response to the ‘Nothing to do with Islam’ response that we invariably get from such quarters when suck attacks occur. This is the first of two long-form articles that seeks to explain the “Nothing to do with Islam” phenomenon. It is, more than likely, inevitable that I will be treading on some toes along the way, but please understand that this was not written to score political hits, but as an attempt to come to terms with the puzzling fact that many people in the West will tie themselves into knots to come up with ways to ‘get Islam off the hook’.
With this in mind, I offer what I regard as the ten (five in this article and five in the next) most significant reasons behind the impulse to deny any link whatsoever between Islam and violence committed in its name.
1. Ignorance
I recently had an interesting debate with someone who rejected with contempt my assertion that there is an indisputable connection between the teachings of Islam and violence against unbelievers. He quite confidently stated that only “ignorant fools” hold such views. I responded to this by asking him a series of questions: “What verses of the Qur’an do you base your views on?”, “How would you reconcile Muhammad’s violent example with a message of peace?”, “Which sound Hadiths (traditions) can you quote in support of your views?” and “Which books or articles have you read that question the view that Islam is essentially peaceful?” As I expected, my debating partner could offer very little by way of adequate fact-based responses to these questions. This was particularly ironic given his claim that my position is supposedly based on ignorance.
The fact is that many people in the West are profoundly ignorant about Islam and would not be able to provide anything beyond the most basic information when it comes to the contents of the Qur’an and hadith collections. Sadly, at least some of these people are convinced that their sketchy hearsay knowledge about the tenets of Islam is a sufficient foundation for their views on the supposed peacefulness of the Muslim religion. It is as if the mere repetition of the phrase “Islam is a religion of peace” is all the evidence one could possibly need.
I think we can all agree that one of the most important questions facing the world today should be settled based on a rigorous examination of the available evidence. Vague notions of what Islam is supposed to teach (or what we fervently hope it does) will not do.
2. Statements by Muslim groups
This point is very closely related to the previous one. Some Muslim people are obviously very aware of the potential damage to the reputation of Islam if the full extent of the exhortations to violence in the Qur’an and traditions become obvious. They can mitigate this by relying on the fact that the average Westerner has little knowledge of the Qur’an and will, therefore, not be able to challenge assertions that it teaches a certain doctrine. Many Muslim leaders make use of this fact by constantly making claims about the supposed peacefulness of Islam, especially after acts of violence committed by people quoting the Qur’an. These claims are, often, based on the outright ignoring of problematic Qur’anic passages, out-of-context quotation of others and the very selective presentation of some favorable (but weak) traditions. Since most non-Muslims are not able to critically evaluate the merits of this whitewashed version of Islamic teaching on violence, it has become the accepted orthodoxy among many in the West.
It is an open question whether Muslim spokespersons in the West deliberately set out to create a much more benign picture of Islam’s view of non-believers than the one that can be found in the foundational texts of their religion. The answer to this question is a very complex one and would, most probably, differ from case to case. With that said, I would suggest that the following factors are often at play:
Only a minority of Muslims in the West use Arabic as a home language. They are, therefore, very unlikely to read the text of the Qur’an in its original setting and context. Essentially, this means that their understanding and interpretation of Islam will often be mediated through the teachings of spiritual leaders and secondary literature on Islam. Simply put, many Western Muslims will understand Islam not so much through the Qur’an as much as through what is being taught at their local mosque. If it happens to be the case that their local mosque under-emphasizes certain aspects of Islamic teaching (e.g., hatred towards unbelievers), then these Muslims may genuinely and sincerely believe that their version of Islam is the full and correct one. Their (limited) understanding of what is in the Qur’an does not, however, somehow magically erase some of the troubling passages that we will be looking at later in this book. They are still believed and practiced by other Muslims who emphasize different parts of Islam’s holy text.
The second scenario is related to the previous one. I call it the development of “personal Islam”. This is where individual Muslims in the West become very uncomfortable with aspects of classical Islamic teaching and propose to reform them to be more in line with the Western emphasis on individual human rights. Many of them then proceed to push this new version of Islam (essentially their own “personal Islam”) as the true understanding of what the faith should be. This is often done through online activism, which is why this phenomenon is sometimes known as “Cyber Islam” The problem with this approach should immediately be apparent. The individuals working away at trying to convince others that their own idiosyncratic interpretations of Islam are indeed the correct ones are just that – individuals. Unless, and until, they can manage to convince mosque authorities, Islamic institutions of higher education or legal authorities within the major Islamic legal schools to adopt their perspectives, they only speak for themselves. As such, they represent only an infinitesimally small minority of Muslims through their promotion of positions that are fundamentally at odds with centuries of Islamic teaching and that would be rejected by the vast majority of religious authorities in the Muslim world.
Thirdly, we find what might charitably be called deliberate under-emphasis of problematic aspects of Islamic theology. This is where Muslim leaders are probably perfectly aware of the teachings of Islam regarding warfare and violence but choose to counteract this by emphasizing more positive (although traditionally secondary) teachings. A prime example of this is the image makeover that the word “jihad” is receiving at the hands of Muslim apologists. They never cease to point out that the word simply means ‘to struggle’ in Arabic. Based on this, they then proceed to state that “jihad” can be anything from striving to be a better Muslim, getting your sinful desires under control or (as the high-profile #myjihad campaign in the U.S. would have it) even getting into shape. All of this is based on a limited exposition of the Arabic meaning of the word and a very weak tradition calling inner struggle the “Greater Jihad”. This sounds very plausible and heart-warming to Western ears. What these apologists fail to mention is that the Qur’an itself, and many sound hadiths, explicitly state that offensive warfare is the most important form of jihad that a Muslim can possibly engage in. The treatment of the word jihad is, therefore, an example of the general trend of over-emphasizing positive secondary Islamic teachings to divert attention from much more belligerent core doctrines.
Finally, it is, unfortunately, necessary to highlight the doctrine of taqiyya at this point . This is the teaching that Muslim people are allowed to deceive non-Muslims in cases where the interests of Islam are under threat. It is clear that at least some Muslim leaders feel that the development of unfavorable perceptions of Islam as a result of a full appreciation of its violent teachings qualifies as a circumstance where such deception would be justified. This is presumably the case because these leaders perceive that such unfavorable perceptions would make the spreading of Islam among non-Muslims more difficult. It is, therefore, possible to cite numerous examples of Muslim spokespersons who toe the “Islam is peace” line in front of non-Muslim audiences, only to exhort their fellow Muslims to the cause of jihad when they believe they are out of earshot of unbelievers.