Incorrect Islam
One of these passages was written in the C11th, one in the C21st. Can you tell which?
O God, raise the banner of Islam and its helper and refute polytheism by wounding its back and cutting its ropes. Help those who fight with jihad for your sake and who in obedience to you have sacrificed themselves and solder their souls to you … Because they persist in going astray, may the eyeball of proponents of polytheism become blind to the paths of righteousness.
We ask Allah to turn this Ramadan into a month of glory, victory and might, to hoist high in [this month] the banner of religion, to strengthen Islam and the Muslims, to humiliate polytheism and polytheists, to wave the banner of monotheism, to firmly plant the banner of jihad, and to smite the perverts and the obstinate
The answer is: the first passage was written from Islamic scholar Ibn al-Mawsilya in the late C11th. The al Qaeda Sheikh Aamer bin Abdallah al-Aamer wrote the second in 2004.
This comparison comes from another of Politically Incorrect Guides™, the Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), written by Robert Spencer, one of the principals of JihadWatch.
Spencer takes the eccentric view that what is in the Qu’ran counts, that the actions of the Prophet Muhammad are worth examining, that what is in the Hadith count, that it is worth reading contemporary Islamic commentary and that the full gamut of Islamic history is worth examining. That is, one looks at the evidence and draws conclusions from that. What makes this politically incorrect is that he does not infer what is from what ought to be. That is, he doesn’t presume that Islam is inherently benign, that religious aspirations are irrelevant, that Muslims have the same set of relations in a similar distribution to the Qu’ran and Islam that Westerners do to the New Testament and Christianity. Or, even more eccentrically, he holds that the different history of Christendom-cum-the West from that of Islam might actually make a profound difference in outlooks. That Muslims and Islam did not vicariously experience the consequences of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Great Transformation merely by being on the same planet.
Clearly, the guy’s a kook.
The book is a corrective to various fashionable beliefs about Islam and the Crusades. Spencer is careful to distinguish Islam from Muslims. It is the content and practice of Islamic belief he is interested in. Taking the eccentric view that history counts, he notes that (at least until the late C17th) Islam was a much more successful and thorough aggressor against Christendom than the other way round. That calls to violence are an integral part of the religion (inserts contrast the words of Jesus with those of the Qu’ran as well as suggesting books for further reading). That it is the consistency of Islamic belief and action across the centuries that is striking. The degree of fervour certainly waxes and wanes, but in a consistent oscillation around continuing patterns.
The aim of the jihadis is simple and often expressed-the world-wide imposition of Sharia. An impeccably Islamic aim-indeed, a religious duty that every Muslim is supposed to work towards. (Hence the importance of Qu’ranic studies in recruiting jihadis.)
What most struck me, going through the quotes, citations and history, is what a powerful device for self-replication Islam is. Not only is it selling cognitive simplicity and collective narcissism (a powerful combination which has proven to be attractive in all sorts of forms well beyond Islam), it contains within it the full panoply of devices for closing minds, punishing dissent (capital punishment for apostasy is impeccably Islamic) and displaying complete opportunism towards non-believers-all while doing God’s will!
It is easy enough to show that, for example, the Catholic Church has frequently been a very dubious carrier of the message of the Gospels. It is rather harder to prove that, for example, Osama is other than a devoted follower of the Prophet. (Even suicide bombing and targeting of infidel civilians are not as quite as clear-cut violations of Islamic precepts as it would be convenient to claim.)
This causes all sorts of difficulties for Virtuous opinion. First, it involves People of the Book taking their religion seriously in awkward and inconvenient ways, when religion is simply not supposed to be a serious causal factor (except as something to sneer at fellow Westerners for) . Second, it raises the awful spectre that Dubya, conservative Americans, the West may really not be the Worst Things in the World. Or, even worse, that, actually, Christianity might be preferable for all sorts of reasons to Islam. This being all far too confronting, it is much more congenial to engage in a giant game of Let’s Pretend that Islam is really some form of touchie-feelie New Age hugginess and any problems are really just the West’s fault because of colonialism, racism, the Crusades and any other sin one can lay at the feet of the West.
One thousand years of Islamic aggression against every culture it came up against from Muhammad’s first assembly of fighting supporters to the Ottoman defeat at the second siege of Vienna and the death of Aurangzeb is held to be not relevant. Spencer argues, rather cogently, that actually, it, and a lot more besides, are entirely relevant.
The book has some editing flaws and could do with a few more footnotes. But its fundamental argument-that we should take the claims of the jihadis seriously; that history-history as it was, not as it would be congenial for it to be-counts, is surely correct.
O God, raise the banner of Islam and its helper and refute polytheism by wounding its back and cutting its ropes. Help those who fight with jihad for your sake and who in obedience to you have sacrificed themselves and solder their souls to you … Because they persist in going astray, may the eyeball of proponents of polytheism become blind to the paths of righteousness.
We ask Allah to turn this Ramadan into a month of glory, victory and might, to hoist high in [this month] the banner of religion, to strengthen Islam and the Muslims, to humiliate polytheism and polytheists, to wave the banner of monotheism, to firmly plant the banner of jihad, and to smite the perverts and the obstinate
The answer is: the first passage was written from Islamic scholar Ibn al-Mawsilya in the late C11th. The al Qaeda Sheikh Aamer bin Abdallah al-Aamer wrote the second in 2004.
This comparison comes from another of Politically Incorrect Guides™, the Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), written by Robert Spencer, one of the principals of JihadWatch.
Spencer takes the eccentric view that what is in the Qu’ran counts, that the actions of the Prophet Muhammad are worth examining, that what is in the Hadith count, that it is worth reading contemporary Islamic commentary and that the full gamut of Islamic history is worth examining. That is, one looks at the evidence and draws conclusions from that. What makes this politically incorrect is that he does not infer what is from what ought to be. That is, he doesn’t presume that Islam is inherently benign, that religious aspirations are irrelevant, that Muslims have the same set of relations in a similar distribution to the Qu’ran and Islam that Westerners do to the New Testament and Christianity. Or, even more eccentrically, he holds that the different history of Christendom-cum-the West from that of Islam might actually make a profound difference in outlooks. That Muslims and Islam did not vicariously experience the consequences of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Great Transformation merely by being on the same planet.
Clearly, the guy’s a kook.
The book is a corrective to various fashionable beliefs about Islam and the Crusades. Spencer is careful to distinguish Islam from Muslims. It is the content and practice of Islamic belief he is interested in. Taking the eccentric view that history counts, he notes that (at least until the late C17th) Islam was a much more successful and thorough aggressor against Christendom than the other way round. That calls to violence are an integral part of the religion (inserts contrast the words of Jesus with those of the Qu’ran as well as suggesting books for further reading). That it is the consistency of Islamic belief and action across the centuries that is striking. The degree of fervour certainly waxes and wanes, but in a consistent oscillation around continuing patterns.
The aim of the jihadis is simple and often expressed-the world-wide imposition of Sharia. An impeccably Islamic aim-indeed, a religious duty that every Muslim is supposed to work towards. (Hence the importance of Qu’ranic studies in recruiting jihadis.)
What most struck me, going through the quotes, citations and history, is what a powerful device for self-replication Islam is. Not only is it selling cognitive simplicity and collective narcissism (a powerful combination which has proven to be attractive in all sorts of forms well beyond Islam), it contains within it the full panoply of devices for closing minds, punishing dissent (capital punishment for apostasy is impeccably Islamic) and displaying complete opportunism towards non-believers-all while doing God’s will!
It is easy enough to show that, for example, the Catholic Church has frequently been a very dubious carrier of the message of the Gospels. It is rather harder to prove that, for example, Osama is other than a devoted follower of the Prophet. (Even suicide bombing and targeting of infidel civilians are not as quite as clear-cut violations of Islamic precepts as it would be convenient to claim.)
This causes all sorts of difficulties for Virtuous opinion. First, it involves People of the Book taking their religion seriously in awkward and inconvenient ways, when religion is simply not supposed to be a serious causal factor (except as something to sneer at fellow Westerners for) . Second, it raises the awful spectre that Dubya, conservative Americans, the West may really not be the Worst Things in the World. Or, even worse, that, actually, Christianity might be preferable for all sorts of reasons to Islam. This being all far too confronting, it is much more congenial to engage in a giant game of Let’s Pretend that Islam is really some form of touchie-feelie New Age hugginess and any problems are really just the West’s fault because of colonialism, racism, the Crusades and any other sin one can lay at the feet of the West.
One thousand years of Islamic aggression against every culture it came up against from Muhammad’s first assembly of fighting supporters to the Ottoman defeat at the second siege of Vienna and the death of Aurangzeb is held to be not relevant. Spencer argues, rather cogently, that actually, it, and a lot more besides, are entirely relevant.
The book has some editing flaws and could do with a few more footnotes. But its fundamental argument-that we should take the claims of the jihadis seriously; that history-history as it was, not as it would be congenial for it to be-counts, is surely correct.