[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
As the Muslim population increases in the U.S. and Muslims grow ever more assertive and aggressive in their hatred of Israel and attempts to gain political power, it’s worthwhile to step back and consider why this matters. It’s useful to recall that many of the points of pride of the post-Christian Western world—notably the equality of rights of women, the freedom of speech, and the principle of republican rule—developed in Christian Europe, but not in the Islamic world, for very good reasons that were embedded within the texts and teachings of Islam itself.
The Qur’an itself mandates that a woman “from whom you fear disobedience” must be beaten (4:34). A hadith puts into Muhammad’s mouth the saying, “You should listen to and obey, your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin.” This statement has become notorious because of its casual racism: the most outlandish ruler Muhammad can think of, and the one who appears to be least worthy of obedience, is a black man. Overlooked, however, is the absolutism of Muhammad’s statement: one must obey the ruler even when the ruler appears absurd and unworthy of obedience.
Throughout its history, Islam has lent itself to authoritarian rule, with Turkey being the sole example of a secular republic in a majority-Muslim state—and a poor example at best—as modern Turkey was founded upon an explicit rejection of political Islam. And in our own day Turkish secularism is rapidly eroding under pressure from its Islamizing president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Islam’s expansionism and supremacism are embedded within its core texts. Not only did Muhammad affirm that he had been commanded to fight against the non-Muslims of the world until they accepted that he was Allah’s prophet, but numerous Islamic leaders and thinkers have repeated this throughout history. In the twentieth century, the Pakistani theologian and politician Maulana Syed Abul A’la Maududi stated that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines. For if they are given such an opportunity, corruption and mischief will ensue. In such a situation the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
In a commentary about Qur’an 9:29, the verse that commands Muslims to wage war against Jews and Christians, Maududi explains that “the purpose for which the Muslims are required to fight” is “to put an end to the suzerainty of the unbelievers so that the latter are unable to rule over people. The authority to rule should only be vested in those who follow the True Faith; unbelievers who do not follow this True Faith should live in a state of subordination. Anybody who becomes convinced of the Truth of Islam may accept the faith of his/her own volition. The unbelievers are required to pay jizyah (poll tax) in return for the security provided to them as the dhimmis (“Protected People”) of an Islamic state. Jizyah symbolizes the submission of the unbelievers to the suzerainty of Islam.”
In 2015, the Council of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation declared that “Offensive Jihad” in Islam “aims to protect freedom of spreading the call for Islam; removing any barriers it may encounter; and defending those who are under oppression and tyranny, subject to specific rules and conditions that Islamic jurists have indicated for the achievement of interest and aversion of harm.” This appears reasonable on its surface, but it must be borne in mind that the barriers to spreading Islam can be removed by means of violence, and the “oppression and tyranny” that is meant is any system of government and law that is not based on Sharia, Islamic law.
Today, however, most Westerners assume that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not take these exhortations and commands seriously and that Islam has developed new ways of looking at uncomfortable passages in its scriptures, just as Jews and Christians have done with theirs. Unfortunately, this is not the case, but it has become commonplace
in Western Europe and North America to be resigned to occasional jihad attacks and far less concerned about them and about the advancing jihad in general than about “Islamophobia,” that is, vigilante attacks against innocent Muslims, although the word is often used also to disparage and silence any critical word about Islam whatsoever, no matter how accurate or justified by the facts.
It’s a recipe for disaster.
