And then note what comes in the very next verse, Sura 5:33:
The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.
This is a significant change in tone. Crucial to unlocking the verse’s meaning is an understanding of what it means to “wage war” or “do mischief.”
One clue is found in the writings of medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir: “ ‘Wage war’ mentioned here means, oppose and contradict, and it includes disbelief, blocking roads and spreading fear in the fairways. ‘Mischief in the land’ refers to various types of evil.”
In other words, the Quran states that those who do not follow the tenets of Islam (that is, express “disbelief”) are “waging war” against the religion itself. Under the Quran, disbelief alone is enough to justify crucifixion and murder.
Those who do not submit to Islam are “at war” with God himself. This understanding is further clarified elsewhere in the Quran. Here is a quote from Sura 9:29:
Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) 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 Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
The implications are clear. Failing to submit to Islam puts you at war with God and true believers, and those believers are instructed to fight you until you submit. In that sense, perhaps Islam could indeed be called a “religion of peace”—with peace coming only through submission.
Other evidence from Islam’s foundational texts further supports the use of violence in the name of God. The Quran, for instance, reminds Muslims that they are expected to fight even if they might rather not:
Jihad (holy fighting in Allah’s Cause) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know. (Quran 2:216)
The Quran also explains the goal of this fighting—the spread of Islam:
Say to those who have disbelieved, if they cease (from disbelief) their past will be forgiven. But if they return (thereto), then the examples of those (punished) before them have already preceded (as a warning). (Quran 8:38)
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. (Quran 8:39)
Muslims are allowed, even commanded, to fight until they achieve universal Islamic worship. This directive is further backed up by the Hadith:
[T]he Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah. . . . (Sahih Muslim 1:30)
A subsequent verse in the Hadith gets even more specific about the commands Muhammad received from Allah:
[T]he Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat. . . . (Sahih Muslim 1:33)
Other Quranic passages have been specifically used to justify violence by those committed to carrying it out. Osama bin Laden himself opened a 2002 “letter to the American people” by quoting these verses:
Permission to fight is given to those (i.e., believers against disbelievers), who are fighting them, (and) because they (believers) have been wronged, and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory. (Quran 22:39)
Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (Satan, etc.). So fight you against the friends of Shaitan (Satan); Ever feeble indeed is the plot of Shaitan (Satan). (Quran 4:76)
In fact, bin Laden was almost certainly aware that the Quran approves of the specific use of “terror”—and thus terrorism—by commanding that Allah’s warriors “strike terror into” their foes:
And make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery, etc.) to strike terror into the enemies of Allah and your enemy, and others besides whom, you may not know but whom Allah does know. And whatever you shall spend in the Cause of Allah shall be repaid unto you, and you shall not be treated unjustly. (Quran 8:60)
This, too, is supported by the Hadith:
Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror. . . .” (Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52:220)
In the real world, we are confronted constantly by the work of those who believe Allah will be “made victorious with terror.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an acclaimed Somali-born women’s rights activist and author, has warned the world about Islam for more than a decade. “For more than thirteen years now, I have been making a simple argument in response to such acts of terrorism,” she writes. “My argument is that it is foolish to insist, as our leaders habitually do, that the violent acts of radical Islamists can be divorced from the religious ideals that inspire them. Instead we must acknowledge that they are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in Islam itself, in the holy book of the Qur’an as well as the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad contained in the hadith.”
In case anyone missed what she was saying, she added for emphasis, “Let me make my point in the simplest possible terms: Islam is not a religion of peace.”
But you need not take this just from me, or from courageous speakers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The leader of ISIS has said the exact same thing.
A May 2015 recording reported to be from ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi opens with his recitation of several verses straight from the Quran. The very first is another translation of Verse 2:216: “Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you.” Al-Baghdadi continues:
And He (the Mighty and Majestic) said, “So let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory—We will bestow upon him a great reward.” (Quran 4:74)
And He (the Glorified) said, “And those who are killed in the cause of Allah—never will He waste their deeds. He will guide them and amend their condition, and admit them to Paradise, which He has made known to them.” (Quran 47:4–6)
Later, he provided his own blunt commentary:
O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war.
Next time you hear the never-ending platitudes about Islam being a “religion of peace,” don’t cite my words as evidence to the contrary. Go directly to the source. Pick up a Quran and find any of the dozen Suras quoted in this chapter. Or read the words of our enemies. As Baghdadi put it plainly to each and every one of us, “Islam is the religion of war.”
LIE #2
* * *
“ISLAM IS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN CHRISTIANITY OR JUDAISM.”
“There is nothing in the Islam that is more violent than Christianity. All religions have been violent, including Christianity.”
—Karen Armstrong, religion writer and former nun
“Remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
—Barack Obama
Time and again, in some bizarre attempt at moral equivalence, we’ve heard the comparisons of Islam and Christianity. Those who kill today in the name of Islam, we’re told, aren’t that different from those who killed in the name of Christ. After all, they claim, the Bible contains passages that seem to condone violence or sla
very.
Philip Jenkins, a scholar of history and religion at Baylor University and Pennsylvania State University, claims that “the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible.” Sajjad Rizvi of the University of Exeter has tried to equate Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition. “Almost all the prophets of the Quran will be familiar to those who know the Bible,” he says. “And the Quran explicitly refers to parables, ideas and stories from the Bible. The common roots—and inheritances—of the three faiths make it useful for us to think seriously in terms of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization and heritage that we all share.” Karen Armstrong, a former nun and religion writer, argues that “[t]errorism has nothing to do with Muhammad, any more than the Crusades had anything to do with Jesus.”
Proponents of the hand-holding, drum-circle view of world religions often point to the common origin of the three monotheistic faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This does have a basis in fact as they can each be traced back to Abraham, who is viewed by all three faiths as a great prophet and—to varying degrees—as a literal or figurative father of the religion. In Judaism, he is the patriarch of the ancient Israelites and, therefore, the Jews of today. Christianity grew out of Judaism, and the book of Matthew in the Bible explains that Abraham was an ancestor of Joseph, whose wife, Mary, gave birth to Jesus Christ. Muslims also revere Abraham as a significant prophet. According to Muslims, Muhammad himself is descended from Abraham as well.
The Bible—particularly the Old Testament—contains stories of wars and battles and brutality that were everyday reality in the ancient world. In one passage in Leviticus, for instance, God commands Moses to take a blasphemer outside the camp, after which “the entire assembly is to stone him.”
But that was centuries ago. Hebraic law does not command the murder of blasphemers and adulterers. Jews don’t routinely resort to practices that date to the time of Moses and David. For Christians, Jesus Christ brought an entirely different understanding of the relationship between his followers and the state. Christ told his disciples, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and that they should “[g]ive back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
In the first centuries, Christians were an embattled minority that fought against the empires that persecuted them. Only three hundred years after the time of Christ did Christianity become associated with temporal or worldly authority with its adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire. A millennium later, Christianity underwent a reformation that adopted the modern idea of a permanent separation between the church and state.
Islam, by contrast, hasn’t reformed at all. The vast majority of Muslims since the time of Muhammad have seen their faith as a holistic, all-encompassing way of life, inseparable from politics and law. All authority in the Islamic faith flows from God. There is no separation of church and state in the Sunni Islamic tradition. The caliph was a religious and political leader in one.
Robert Spencer, director of the Jihad Watch program at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, explains that “Islam has always had a political and social character, including a full program for government.” This “program for government” comes in the form of Islamic law—sharia—a series of rules and prescriptions derived from the Quran and other sources of the teachings of Muhammad, such as the Hadith.
Unlike the Jews fleeing Egypt for the promised land of Israel, and unlike Christians escaping martyrdom and the persecution of the Roman Empire, Islam has been a political force from its start, when Muhammad gathered his followers and moved them to Medina from his original hometown of Mecca. This event was so significant that it marks the beginning of time for the faith. The Islamic calendar does not begin at Muhammad’s birth or death, nor when he first received visions of Allah, but at the date of this move to Medina, “where [Muhammad] became a political and military leader and Islam became a state.” Spencer points out that, to this day, “Islam assumes that its faith must be the ruling ideology of the state.”
The capacity for willful ignorance among members of the political and media elite when it comes to the realities of radical Islam never ceases to amaze. They ignore, for instance, the inherently political goals of Islam, such as the desire to impose Islamic (sharia) law as the law of the land and to resurrect the Caliphate that will ensure its enforcement. Other religions make demands on their community of adherents; Islam, by contrast, demands “submission” before Islamic law for non-Muslims as well.
The view that sharia should be a “ruling ideology” enjoys broad support in the Muslim world today. We get into this a bit more later in the book, but what’s relevant for this lie about the Islamic equivalency to other major religions is the fact that a vast number of Muslims around the world still support enforcing some of the harshest punishments found in sharia law. These are known as hudud, and a 2013 Pew Research Center survey describes them as follows:
A class of punishments prescribed by the Quran and the sunna [another source of Muhammad’s teachings] for crimes considered to be against God. Although interpretations by Islamic jurists vary, such crimes commonly include theft, adultery, making unproven accusations of adultery, consuming intoxicants, armed robbery and apostasy. The prescribed punishments range from lashes to banishment to death.
Majorities of those Muslims who favored imposing sharia law also supported hudud punishments for theft, which can include whippings or the cutting off of hands. Among the supporters of such barbaric practices:
Hudud Punishments for Theft
Percentage supporting by country
—Pakistan
88
—Afghanistan
81
—Palestinian Territories
76
—Egypt
70
—Malaysia
66
—Jordan
57
—Iraq
56
And what about women accused of adultery? A majority of Muslims who support the imposition of sharia law in several countries believe those women should be stoned.
Stoning for Adultery
—Pakistan
89
—Afghanistan
85
—Palestinian Territories
84
—Egypt
81
—Jordan
67
—Iraq
58
—Tajikistan
51
Even in Russia, 26 percent of Muslims supporting sharia law shared this view of adultery. You’ll note that many of the countries on this list are those that have received billions of dollars and support from the United States government.
In case anyone forgets, this Pew survey was published thirteen years into the twenty-first century. Man has walked on the moon, cured devastating diseases, and invented ways to make information travel around the world instantly. But, in the Muslim world, significant portions of the population still want to cut off thieves’ hands, stone cheating spouses, and kill anyone who converts to another religion.
It’s not just the “stereotypical” countries that are home to Muslims with these extreme beliefs—the same sentiments have crept into unexpected places, like Norway.
In November 2013, Fahad Qureshi, an Islamic leader in the Scandinavian nation, proclaimed to a large assembly of Sunni Muslims that Americans are being lied to. The Western media, Qureshi said, falsely claim that only “radicals” and “extremist” Muslims support extreme hudud punishments for violators of sharia. “Every Muslim believes in these things,” said Qureshi. “Just because they are not telling you about it, or just because they are not out there in the media, doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in them.”
Qureshi asked attendees of the assembly to raise their hands if they agreed that “men and women should sit separate.” Then he asked, “How many of you agree that the punishments described in the Koran and the Sunna—whether it is death, whether it is stoni
ng for adultery, whatever it is—if it is from Allah and His Messenger, that is the best punishment ever possible for humankind, and that is what we should apply in the world. Who agrees with that?”
Nearly everyone in the crowd raised a hand.
And what about our closest ally, Great Britain? A Muslim leader there, who seeks to bring sharia law to England, declared that homosexuals should be stoned to death, in accordance with Islamic law.
As if this weren’t enough to blow up the false-equivalency argument for good, it is also worth addressing one of the apologists’ most-beloved topics: the Crusades. Everyone from Karen Armstrong to President Barack Obama, who famously reminded an audience at the National Prayer Breakfast that “people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” have used the Crusades to equate Islam with Christianity.
The Crusades did not happen in a historical vacuum. They were, in fact, part of what New York Times columnist Ross Douthat called “the incredibly complicated multicentury story of medieval Christendom’s conflict with Islam.”
Muslim armies had launched plenty of Crusade-like or, more accurately, jihadist efforts against Europe, both before and after the generally accepted period of Christian Crusading. Part of that period overlapped with the “Reconquista,” a centuries-long effort to expel Islamic invaders from modern-day Spain and Portugal, which they had controlled since the eighth century A.D. Some scholars maintain that “without centuries of Crusading effort, it is difficult to see how western Europe could have escaped conquest by Muslim armies.”
During the four centuries between Muhammad’s death and the First Crusade, Islamic warriors and navies launched offensives around the Mediterranean against European forces, including as far away as France. The Crusades were as much a reaction to the Islamic jihad as anything else.