Thomas Haidon, a commentator on Islamic issues.
Serge Trifkovic, a former BBC commentator and US NEWS and World Report reporter. He is the author of The Sword of the Prophet and sequel Defeating Jihad. Read his commentaries on ChroniclesMagazine.org.
and
Bat Ye’or, the world's foremost authority on dhimmitude. She is the author of Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide. Her latest book is Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.
FP: Mustafa Akyol, Thomas Haidon, Serge Trifkovic and Bat Ye’or, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Thomas Haidon, let’s begin with you.
The controversy over the Pope’s visit to Turkey, as we well know, has been ignited by the Muslim world’s violent reaction to the Pope’s statements several weeks ago. There were calls to kill the Pope, there was the burning of Christian Churches, there was the tragic murder of the nun in Somalia etc.
Let’s begin with this question: if members of a religion are offended at the implication of their religion being violent, what is the logic of reacting with violence?
And where are the “real” Muslims decrying the violent reactions that supposedly taint their "religion of peace"?
Haidon: Thank you Jamie.
The events that have unfolded since the Pope Benedict remarks have been nothing short of disturbing, albeit predictable given recent events and the jurisprudence Islam governing blasphemy. As a Muslim, while I found the Pope's remarks provocative I was far more disturbed by the collective reaction of the Ummah. This reaction has presented itself in violent and non-violent form. The subsequent murder of Christians and threats of death and destruction of Christian institutions and communities from Gaza to Bangladesh, coupled with non-violent, but disproportionately vitriolic reaction from many in the Muslim world is likely to only reinforce the Pope's statement on jihad and Islam.
In my view both levels of reaction are blatantly hypocritical. Seminal figureheads in Islam (including Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar in Cairo; Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi; Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani ) both Sunni and Shi'a have consistently made consistent efforts to publicly denigrate Christianity, Judaism and other faiths through a broad range of medium and fora. The imagery described in their writings and sermons is degrading and specifically designed to dehumanise members of other faiths. The Pope certainly did not engage in such virulent denigration of Islam. There is undoubtedly a double standard that Muslims must address.
I want to be very careful however to distinguish Muslims and organisations who have criticised the Pope but have not engaged in poisonous, disproportionate and unmeasured criticism. Muslims certainly have every right to be concerned over the Pope's remarks and to partake in legitimate legal protest to countenance those remarks. I am disturbed by dialogue from some non-Muslim circles which have condemned such protests, as if some Muslims somehow cease being moderate or liberal because they were offended by the remarks. However, the best was to countenance the remarks are to engage in meaningful interfaith dialogue, to which a current framework does not exist. The current model of interfaith dialogue which superficially focuses on general high level and common traits of faiths has failed. An effective meaningful framework for "safe" dialogue must be developed which also focuses on the "difficult" issues in Islam that Muslims have failed to address. Far too often, questions from Christians and Jews during interfaith dialogue sessions (particularly at the regional level) on aspects of the laws of the dhimma, or jihad are met with accusations of discrimination and vilification, thus rendering such dialogue completely ineffectual, and potentially misleading and destructive.
In my view, Muslims should not place a significant amount of scrutiny on the Pontiff's apparent "misrepresentation" of Islam, but instead should place that scrutiny inward. I am far less concerned about addressing or changing the Pope's apparent views on jihad, than I am about the views of Muslims, which have been clearly articulated by influential Muslim scholars. Instead of rioting and demonstrating against the Pope, I yearn for the day when I see widespread Muslim anger at the Islamists that monopolise our faith.
The Pontiff's remarks must be seen in the broader context of Islamic-Christian relations. Firstly, it is worth pointing out that the Pope is not naive when it comes to Islam (contrary to the views of the Iranian spiritual leader and others), and has evinced a fairly developed understanding of Islam. He certainly appears to be more attuned to the aspects of shari'ah and Islamic jurisprudence governing Muslim/non-Muslim relations. To reiterate, while viewed the Pope's remarks as provocative, I consider them to be a legitimate challenge to moderate Muslims to commence internal discussions on the problems of violence and intolerance within Islam that have emerged from a number of sources, including the legal prohibition on Muslim scholars in exercising independent and contextual reasoning in Islamic decision-making ( itjihad). Will we rise to the challenge?
As to your final question with respect to the apparent silence of moderate Muslims, I am aware of a number of prominent Muslims and organisations which have condemned the violent reactions (albeit some have superficially), including some Muslims perceived as Islamists. However I would concur that it does not appear that there has not been a significant proportion of Muslims whom has specifically condemned the violent acts. I think there may be a number of reasons for this silence. Firstly, it is worth stating that unfortunately there is some precedence in Islamic history and jurisprudence which gives impetus to the violent reaction against the Pope. The laws of blasphemy under orthodox Islam are fairly well established, embedded and have generally remain unchanged over centuries. In most Muslim countries, moderate Muslims cannot speak on this issue out of fear of being accused of apostasy.
In 2005, Sheikh Al- Qaradawi issued a legal ruling on moderate Muslims who challenged the Islamist orthodoxy. His solution to this problem was to declare them "intellectual apostates", subject to death. Moderate Muslims are under siege in these countries. Several weeks ago, my friend and Sudanese reformer Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Taha (editor of Al-Wikaf in Khartoum) was beheaded by Islamists sympathetic to Al Qaradawi for the crime of apostasy because he merely printed an article which dared question the Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) ancestral lineage, despite the fact that he disagreed with the content of the article. This does not bode well for moderate Muslim voices. A second primary reason for the "silence" of moderate Muslims is the lack of a unified voice. There are many moderate Muslims in the West and in the Muslim world. However they often speak as lone voices. Moderate Muslims do not have a collective power base to be able to speak, in security, in a unified voice.
Trifkovic: The Pope's allegedly objectionable statements in his lecture at the University of Regensburg were taken out of context. He has said and done nothing that a reasonable person of any religious persuasion would find objectionable.
His comments were made in the course of a complex theological-philosophical treatise delivered to academics in an ancient institution of higher learning, not in a public homily to the faithful in a square or a cathedral. Had he intended to make a high-profile controversial statement, the chosen venue would have been singularly inappropriate.
His quote of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus was accompanied with an explicit disclaimer that it did not reflect his own views. That disclaimer was far more strongly emphasized in the German original - available to the curious - than in the English-language reportage and commentary.
The purpose of the quote was not to "defame" the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, and his religion, or even to make a comment about Islam per se, but to develop an argument about the relationship between faith and reason.
If there is anything potentially offensive to a Muslim ear in the address, it is not the verdict of a learned Byzantine emperor on Muhammad's contribution to the history of ideas - but Benedict XVI's conceivably implied view that Islam is, or may be, unreasonable.
If anyone should feel insulted, it is the blasé, deracinated, faithless, postmodern elite class of the Western world. It was to them that the Pope sent his warning to avoid the contempt for God and the cynicism that deems mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom. A reason which is deaf to the divine, and which relegates religion to the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures, said the Pope. His true targets understood, and responded with unrestrained animus - notably The New York Times editorialist on September 16.
As for the Muslims, the Pope's message came at the end of his address: "'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God', said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures." It was an eminently conciliatory and generous message. It could be argued that it was unduly optimistic in tone and excessively conciliatory in its assumptions, in view of Islam's past record on "dialogue."
Even had the Pontiff repeated Emperor Manuel's words without the disclaimer, those words should have been judged by their veracity and not by their emotional effect on a supposedly aggrieved group. That Muhammad's major innovation was "his command to spread by the sword the faith that he preached" is not a value judgment, it is an "objective" truth. The sentence does not suggest that "Muhammad was evil and inhuman," as most rampaging Muslims seemed to believe, but rather that his original contribution to the edifice of Islam - as opposed to the many elements he had borrowed from Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastranism, pre-Islamic Arab paganism, etc. - was such.
The statement may be insulting or painful to some - so much so that they are prepared to kill elderly nuns and put churches to torch to make their point - but it is nonetheless TRUE. The doctrine of jihad - violence in the path of Allah with the objective of converting, killing, or else subjugating and taxing the "infidel" - was Muhammad's most significant original contribution to world history. It defined Islam in its earliest days, it has defined the relations between "the world of faith" and "the world of war" ever since, and - as we've seen from the reactions to Pope Benedict's lecture - it continues to define the mindset of Islam to this day.
"God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature" is the key statement in Emperor Manuel's verbal duel with his Persian interlocutor. "Faith is born of the soul, not the body." The world outlook based on this simple yet essential adage is light years away from the Verse of the Sword. That Islam sees the world as an open-ended conflict between the Land of Peace (Dar al-Islam) and the Land of War (Dar al-Harb) is the most important legacy of Muhammad. Ever since his time, Islam has been a permanent challenge to all non-Muslim polities around it. The Kuranic dictum to fight the rest of us infidels until we "pay the Jizya with willing submission," denies the possibility of permanent peaceful co-existence. "Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them" is an injunction both unambiguous and powerful.
Akyol: I very much agree with Haidon's comments. And I no doubt disagree with what Pope Benedict XIV said about Islam in Regensburg. But I think it is insane to attack churches and Christians because of his comments. Moreover, I think the Pope has the right to express his views about Islam, whatever they are. So I wouldn't even demand an apology from him, as most Muslims have done. Instead, I would ask for a dialogue and present him some facts about Islam and would wonder whether he would like to reconsider his views in the light of those facts.
Let me point out to the first fact: Pope Benedict said that the Koranic verse "There is no compulsion in religion" is "one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]." However, that verse, numbered 2:286, is actually a very late verse. The traditional Islamic consensus was that this verse was revealed in the Medinan period, when Prophet Muhammad and Muslims were not powerless, but in fact, were the rulers of their own state.
This is one reason why the great majority of Muslim scholars accept that forced conversion is against Islam. Again that's why in Islamic lands, non-Muslim religious minorities, especially Jews and Christians were tolerated as "protected" communities. Theirs was a second-class citizenship and thus not very favorable when compared to modern standards, but according to the standards of the medieval times, it was really fine. That's why Jews of Spain fled to the Ottoman Empire when they were forced to convert to Catholicism in medieval Spain. That's again why you still have many Christian and Jewish communities in many parts of the Islamic world. The Coptic Christians of Egypt, the Christians of Palestine, Iraq and Syria, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and many others have lived under Islamic states for centuries and they are still there; obviously they are not converted. This does not mean that Islamic history is full of only tolerance; as with every civilization, there are episodes of violence and bloodshed but the Islamic norm was, "no compulsion in religion."
This does not mean, however, that Muslims did not aim to spread Islamic rule by the sword. They did. From the earliest caliphs, Islamic armies went around to have military conquests. This was not, of course, abnormal at all at that time. It was an age of empires and many other states, including the Christian ones such as Byzantium, were trying to extend their borders.
Today, I think the question is whether it is a necessity of the Islamic religion to "spread the Islamic rule by the sword." And my answer is no. There are both peaceful and belligerent verses in the Koran and how we interpret them is the key. After prophet Muhammad, the expansionism of the Islamic empire led some Muslim jurists to conclude that the belligerent verses abrogated the peaceful ones. Hence came the doctrine of offensive jihad. What Pope Benedict refers to must be this. However, Islamic jurists had different opinions on this. Imam Shafi was in favor of offensive jihad whereas Imam Hanafi was in favor of only defensive jihad. In today's world, in which all states are bound by treaties — something on which the Koran makes great emphasis — and religious freedom is widespread, there is simply no justification for offensive jihad. The doctrine of abrogation is also rejected by many contemporary Muslims, including myself.
Another issue Pope Benedict has raised is the role of reason in understanding God in Islam. Islam is not monolithic on this either. Pope Benedict's has said, "for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent, His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." However this is not the universal Muslim opinion; it was the opinion developed by Imam Hanbal in the 8th century, who formed the most puritanist and rigid of the four major Sunni schools. (Today's Wahhabism is an offshoot of Hanbalism.) At the time of Imam Hanbal, there was another school of thought among Muslims called the Mutazila and they were very rationalist. The Mutazila view was that God was rational and "justice was the essence of God, He could not wrong anybody, he could not enjoin anything contrary to reason." (Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 1993 p. 164)
From the clash between the rationalist Mutazilis and the "traditionalist" Imam Hanbal, a middle ground was created by al-Ashari and that's the most widely accepted theological school today. There is also another school called Maturidi, which is more rationalist than Asharism. (The Maturidis say, for example, that the unaided human mind is able to find out what is evil to a certain degree.)
In short there is not a single, unified Muslim opinion which dismisses reason and opts for blind faith. On the contrary most modern Muslims think that they are the rational ones and Christians are the irrationalists, by referring to Christian Church fathers like Tertullian who said, "I believe it because it is absurd." Indeed Christianity is not represented solely by Tertullian and Islam is not represented solely by its own irrationalists. We should have the wisdom to see all these details and variations.
Bat Ye’or: I have read the whole text of Pope Benedict’s lecture given at Regensburg University. It is a deep reflection on a learned level regarding the different phases of the bonds between faith and reason. Emperor Manuel’s quote, from which the Pope distanced himself and even slightly criticized, is used merely as an introduction to his topic. He attributes to specialists the dating of Koranic verse 2:286. It is not his own opinion.
I totally agree with Thomas Haidon and will not repeat what he said so well. I think that it is a shame that in the 21st century innocent people should be killed, churches burned, and civilians terrorized because in a European university, in a lecture, a European Pope has quoted a sentence from a 14th century Byzantine Emperor, to which Muslims object. I doubt that those responsible for such criminal behavior even understand the Pope’s lecture.
I would like now to evoke the contemporary circumstances that provoked the observations of Manuel II (1391-1425). From the 7th century onward, the Byzantine Empire was under constant Muslim attacks, first from the Arabs, followed by the Turks. Muslim and non-Muslim contemporary witnesses wrote about whole cities destroyed, populations massacred or reduced to slavery of dhimmitude. I agree with Serge Trifkovic’s view on jihad, a religiously motivated war, which by itself totally contradicts the verse 2:286. The doctrine, legislation, strategy and tactics of jihad are all based on theological texts. Therefore this verse needs to be qualified not only in the historical field, but also and urgently within Muslim theology.
The reign of Manuel II was among the most painful years of the dying empire. He lamented the devastation of Morea by the Turkish armies. The situation was the same over the Balkans. In Bulgaria when Tirnovo fell (July 1393), the soldiers were killed and the mass of the population deported. At the battle of Nicopolis (September 1396), 10.000 men were beheaded in Sultan Bajazet’s presence and many more enslaved. There are numerous accounts of destruction, forced conversions, abduction and enslavement of women and children. Recent research (cf “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters” by Robert C. Davis) examines the enslavement of Christians by Muslims from 1500 to 1800 in the Mediterranean, as perpetrated by the Maghrebian States. Jews were also victims of this slave-trade. Muslim slavery which can be called religious because it targeted only non-Muslims, was widespread throughout the Levant, the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa and Asia. This went together with the system of dhimmitude – also determined by religious discrimination. Invoking the victims’ survival to prove Islamic tolerance is like praising slavery because slaves survived until their emancipation. And pretending that dhimmitude was fine by medieval standards is cynical. One can say that religious persecution existed everywhere, that it was wrong and inhuman, but not that it was fine.
Islamist terror -- today associated with global jihad, genocidal threats, and a poisonous literature of hate -- gives a sinister picture. Ordinary people -- who do not know al-Ashari theories but have to suffer in their everyday lives the constraints and fears of Islamist terror -- do associate Islam with violence. Muslims could correct this view by organizing mass demonstrations against jihad and terror in their 56 Muslim countries. But nothing is done. On the contrary we see a massive support for Ben Laden, Hamas and Hizbullah. I agree that religious violence unfolded in every society. However Western societies now have created political, social, and cultural institutions that control and neutralize violence. This does not guarantee that it will not erupt again suddenly; it only means that the sources of violence and its channels of transmission must be recognized and suppressed in order to establish peaceful relations between faiths.
Having read the Pope’s lecture, I think that its whole structure might have irritated the Islamists. All through his lecture, the Pope clearly links Christianity to the Bible. Muslim orthodoxy opposes this view because it claims that Islam is the primal religion and sole true revelation. Christianity as well as Judaism is a subsequent and falsified deviation from the Islamic trunk (here). The Pope mentioned the Christian effort to rationalize faith through Greek philosophy – an endeavor already undertaken by the Jewish school of Alexandria (III BCE) He also stated that Europe’s faith and culture originate from the Bible and the Greco-Roman civilization. Now many European leaders, intellectuals and Muslims reject this assertion. Chirac declared in 2003 that Europe’s roots are as much Muslim as Christian. Many affirm that European culture grew from the Islamic civilization. This debate (has Christianity developed from Judaism or from Islam?) is the theological version:– or the cultural aspect of what is in fact a political issue, which today turns around the refusal of Europe’s Judeo-Christian identity, the legitimization of Turkey’s entrance into Europe and of the introduction of shari’a law and Muslim customs within Europe.
Haidon: At the outset, I must admit that when engaging with others on Islam, I deliberately endeavour to avoid the "equivalency trap", that is, attempting to compare Islam's travails with those of Judaism and Christianity (which have developed methods and frameworks through hermeneutics, to address doctrinal issues). I find that engaging in equivalency-type arguments tends to obfuscate the real issues and challenges facing Islam and prevents honest analysis of those issues and challenges.
While I agree with some of Mr Trifkovic's points in relation to the benign nature and motivation behind the remarks of the Pontiff and the disproportionate Muslim response, I wholeheartedly disagree with his unbending characterisation of Islam as a whole. To be sure however the collective of failure of Muslims on a wide scale to truly engage in the reform and liberalisation of Islam is a prime catalyst for such criticism. I cannot be entirely dismissive of Mr Trifkovic's characterisation of the so called "lesser jihad" as there is ample material in the Qur'an, and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad and Islamic jurisprudence to corroborate this. I am in complete agreement, with Bat Ye'or that jihad has to be immediately qualified within Islam by Muslims. The re-introduction of itjihad into Islamic decision-making would be a positive step in this regard.
I am generally agreement with Brother Akayol. Importantly, he illustrates that Islam and Muslims cannot be painted with a singular, broad brush, and that within Islam there are a variety of views and opinions. I applaud him for taking a measured and balanced view of the Pope's remarks. I do not necessarily agree with his view however that the Pope should be presented with facts about Islam with a view towards reconsidering his remarks. I am considerably less concerned with the Pope's possible misunderstanding of jihad, than I am of my co-religionists. It is Muslims who are "misinterpreting" Islam, and this is where focus should really lie. Future engagement with the Pope or inter-faith dialogue more generally will remain futile, and perhaps dangerous, if Muslims cannot first clarify these misinterpretations amongst ourselves in the first instance. The time for "self-victimisation" needs to come to an end.
I am grateful for Brother Akayol's discussion on nansakh (abrogation) in the Qur'an. Far too often, abrogation is ignored by Muslims engaged in discussions with non-Muslims of da'wa efforts. However, it is a juridical reality and an impediment that Muslims must face in addressing and reconciling Meccan and Medinan verses. The common understanding that many of the earlier verses are abrogated by later verses is commonly accepted among all four madhab (schools of thought) as well as Sh'ia jurisprudence. I disagree with Brother Akayol in his assertion that abrogation can be rejected outright in Islam (although I would like to see this occur). Abrogation cannot be rejected, as the doctrine is not merely a man made jurisprudential aid (as is qiyas) but contained within the Qur'an. Few moderate scholars have wholeheartedly rejected abrogation. Moderate Muslim scholars including Muhammad al-Ghazali have advocated for the restrictive use of abrogation. It is important to note that there is no concerted, widespread effort to reject or limit the effect of the doctrine, so not to render verses espousing peaceful relations with non-Muslims as void (as many scholars in the Muslim world have advocated). The failure to address abrogation should be viewed as major impediment (among others) to reforming Islamic hermeneutics.
Similarly, I am grateful for Brother Akayol's acknowledgement that there is (contemporarily and historically) a diversity of views within Islam on the scope of jihad and qitaal. Unfortunately, while this diversity of opinion may exist, the discourse is dominated by the advocates of aggressive/offensive jihad which include Al-Azhar, Ikhwan al-Muslimun, Wahabism, Salafism (among other entities) and their collective leadership. I am also intrigued by the assertion that the moderately rationalistic teachings of Abu Al Hasan Al Ashari are "the most widely accepted theological school today". Rationalism in most forms has disappeared from intra-Islamic scholarship and has been viewed by many high profile scholars, including Sheikh Tantawi as bidah (innovation).
I am in general agreement with Bat Ye'or who has provided some important historical context to the discussion and has made measured observations about what Muslims should be doing, but are failing to do.
Trifkovic: Let's first set the record straight on the verse "la ikraha fiddeen" ("no compulsion in religion"), as it has great relevance for the proper understanding of the Pontiff's main point. Verse 2:256 is not at all "one reason why the great majority of Muslim scholars accept that forced conversion is against Islam." In reality, no mainstream Islamic scholar accepts today, or has ever accepted over the past 13 centuries, that 2:256 leaves non-Muslims free to make their religious choices unmolested and un-coerced, in accordance with their conscience and free will.
Some contemporary Islamic scholars explain that there is, indeed, no compulsion in making that choice - but once it is made, the options are bleak - death or submission - for those who make the "wrong" choice: "Faith and rejection, iman and kufr, cannot be forced upon one by others. So Islam does not say that others must be forced into Islam; that if they become Muslims, well and good, and if they do not, they are to be killed, that the choice is theirs." In the same spirit, there was no compulsion to accept Communism under the 1936 Soviet constitution, but the price of its insufficiently enthusiastic embrace was fatally steep for some tens of millions of Zeks.
The difference among Islamic scholars on 2:256 is that of degree, not kind. Some assert that it has been abrogated not only by 9:5 but also by 9:73 ("O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites, and be thou harsh with them"). Other scholars - more "tolerant" ones, we might say - said 2:256 has not been abrogated, but it had a special application: it was revealed concerning the People of the Book (Jews & Christians), who should not be compelled to embrace Islam if they submit to the rule of Islam and pay the Jizya. It is only the idol worshippers who are compelled to embrace Islam and upon them 9:73 applies. As al-Nahas points out in An-Nasikh wal-Mansukh, "this is the opinion of Ibn 'Abbas which is the best opinion due to the authenticity of its chain of authority." In exempting the Jews and the Christians from 2:256, the ulema agree that pagans and atheists can and should be compelled to accept Islam by force.
The foremost Islamic scholar of all time, Ibn Khaldun, summed up the mainstream consensus - the consensus that is valid to this day - when he defined systemic violence as a religious duty based on the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert all men to Islam either by persuasion or by force. He readily concedes that "Islam is under obligation to gain power over all nations." For individual Muslims to say that they disagree with this position, or to reject the doctrine of abrogation, is simply irrelevant, because the consensus remains unshaken (and we've been through this many times before); but for them to claim that their heterodox disagreement implies the existence of a wide array of opinion in "mainstream" Islam is misleading.
Let me add that the orthodox Islamic rationale for compulsion - e.g. that given by Ibn al-'Arabi - is worthy of dialectical materialism's somersaults; we find that "no compulsion" actually means compulsion, and freedom is only the freedom to accept revealed truth:
"The Prophet said: I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah. This Hadith is taken from the words of Allah, 'Fight them until there is no more tumult and religion becomes that of Allah'. (2:193) If someone asks how can people be compelled in the truth when the mere fact of compelling indicates a violation of the will of the one compelled? - the first answer is that Allah sent Mohammad calling people to Him, showing the way to the truth, enduring much harm ... until the evidence of Allah's truth became manifest ... and His apostle became strong, He ordered him to call people by the sword ... hence there is no more an excuse after being warned. The second answer is that people first are taken and compelled, but when Islam becomes prevalent ... their faith strengthens and finally becomes sincere."
Translated into the language of contemporary and equally mainstream Islamic discourse, with "reasonable" people there is no need for compulsion because "after all the clear proofs, the logical reasoning and the manifest miracles there is no need for force at all." But with those who persist in their obstinate refusal to be reasonable and convert (or submit), coercion is both legitimate and necessary. After all is said and done, the authorities at al-Azhar hold, jihad is "a divine obligation: the Muslim is always mindful that his religion is a Qur'an and a sword ... the Muslim is forever a warrior."
Comparing the early spread of Islam by the sword with the tendency of other past empires to expand by force is misleading because the Islamic empire was unique in its universalistic proclamations. Unlike Rome, Byzantium, Persia, Spain, etc., it knew no natural limits short of turning the entire world into Dar al-Islam; imperialism is immanent to Islam, as Ephraim Karsch argues so eloquently.
The apologists assert that Muslims are called by the Kuran to strive for peace, but the "peace" is possible only under an all-pervasive Islamic rule. Such "peace" does not only have the negative meaning of the absence of war. It is a positive state of security, attainable once all infidels are killed, converted or subjugated. This is exactly the same definition of "peace" as that used by the Soviet empire in the period of its external expansion (1944-1979): attainable only after the defeat of "imperialism as the final stage of capitalism" and the triumph of the vanguard of the proletariat in the whole world.
And by the way, the Mutazila school or al-Farabi were as "Islamic" as Voltaire was "Christian." Yes indeed, they held that God was rational and "justice was the essence of God," etc. but that was over a millennium ago, and persecution, exile, and death were their reward. The resulting "middle ground" - supremely prevalent to this day - may use the rational form, but in substance it is implacable in the view that only Allah creates our acts and enables us to act, and we are but transmission belts with a preordained balance of debit or credit that determines our destiny in the hereafter. Even the salaat is a payment of debt, not communication, and it is offered in the hope of placating a capricious and unpredictable Master. The Master, Allah, is so transcendent as to be devoid of personality.
As then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger wrote back in 1979, "the unrelated, unrelatable, absolutely one, could not be a person. There is no such thing as a person in the categorical singular." In the end, Allah the unknowable and un-personable, is served out of fear, obedience, and hope of bountiful heavenly reward. Islam explicitly rejects the notion that "he who has my commandments and keeps them, he is it who loves me." (John, 14:21) The Kuran states the opposite: "Say, If ye love Allah, follow me; Allah will love you and forgive you your sins." (3:31) This "love" is a means of winning love and forgiveness. It is the "love" of the self.
If "Islam is not represented solely by its irrationalists," it is undeniably dominated by them - to the extent of making rationalist dissenters irrelevant at best, and heretical apostates at worst. The willingness of a few rationalists to risk such designation may be laudable in human terms but it will do absolutely nothing to modify Islam as a doctrine. As Sir William Muir noted a century ago, a reformed faith that should question the divine authority on which the institutions of Islam rest, or attempt by rationalistic selection or abatement to effect a change, would be Islam no longer. Pope Benedict is aware of this important fact, and for that insight he will not and cannot apologize. A timely reminder of that reality, rather than another futile round of "interfaith dialogue," is the lasting benefit of the Regensburg controversy.
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