Still Standing For Islam – And Against Terrorism

[Orginally published in FrontPage Magazine]

A few weeks ago, Frontpage published a very long article titled “Jihad Killings of POWs and Non-Combatants,” written by Andrew G. Bostom. Mr. Bostom’s
piece was basically a rebuttal against my two earlier articles appearing on the
National Review Online, titled “The Prophet and Paul Johnson”
and “Al-Qaeda vs. The Koran“.
In both of these articles, I had argued that indiscriminate killings by
al-Qaeda and its ilk are unacceptable from a true Islamic perspective.

However, this proved to be unacceptable for Mr. Bostom. For him, and for other like-minded authors such as Robert Spencer,who also criticized me at his “Jihad Watch” website, the very faith of Islam is the source of
today’s radical Islamist terrorism and al-Qaeda is doing exactly what the Koran advocates. In another article that disapproved my argued, Hugh Fitzgerald summed this up. “Bin Laden is a good Muslim,” Mr. Fitzgerald wrote, “an orthodox Muslim.”

I can well understand the concerns of these authors about radical Islamist terrorism. But they are mistaken in the way they connect it to the Muslim faith. It seems to me that they are applying a selective use of knowledge, a method in which one only uses the data that seems to support a preconceived thesis while ignoring the data that does not. They overlook the many examples of really humane and tolerant teachings and episodes in Islam and its history. Moreover, they attribute Islamic religious motives for every bloodshed in the history of the Islamic civilization—ignoring the fact Muslims can do evil, not because Islam directs it, but because they themselves individually choose to do so.
In this response to Mr. Bostom, I will examine all the issues raised in his article and will disclose the facts he neglected or misinterpreted. And I will be doing this not in a spirit of rebutting Mr. Bostom, or other critiques of Islam, but rather to help them, and others, see the Islamic faith more fairly.
Intellectual Jihad?
At the outset, I should clarify the meaning of the term jihad. It does not necessarily mean a military struggle. Yes, it was understood and used often in that denotation throughout Islamic history; however, it might also mean quite peaceful efforts for the sake of God. I personally believe that an intellectual jihad is necessary for today’s Muslims against materialism, both as a philosophy and as a worldview. That is why I call Muslims to be active in the scientific and intellectual challenge to materialism, hand in hand with other fellow theists, Christians and Jews. Many other Muslims emphasize the importance of such a “war” of ideas. On a popular Muslim website, under the title “The Final Jihad”, the author defines the enemy as “western secular materialism” and adds that, “the weapon in this jihad must be knowledge.”
Mr. Bostom asks for a Koranic source for this “non-military campaign against atheism.” Well, that is what much of the Koran is all about. In verse 2:28, for example, atheism is intellectually challenged: “How do you deny God when you were dead and He gave you life?” And there are hundreds of verses starting with the command “Say,” and among the facts to be said comes first the existence, power, mercy and benevolence of God. Refuting atheism and its related philosophies is just a modern version of telling about God. In fact, it has been a primal intellectual Islamic effort since the days of Ghazali – the Muslim equivalent of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Mr. Bostom also asks what will happen to atheists if they are not convinced. Of course, nothing. Let them deny the obvious. “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) and Muslims are ordered to say “The truth is from your Lord, so let him who please believe, and let him who please disbelieve.” (18:29)
Here is another Koranic verse telling what to do with non-Muslims:

If they argue with you, say, ‘I have submitted myself completely to God, and so have all who follow me.’ Say to those given the Book and those who have no Book, ‘Have you become Muslim?’ If they become Muslim, they have been guided. If they turn away, you are only responsible for transmission. God sees His servants. (3:20)

Yet probably this will not convince Mr. Bostom, because he will think that such Koranic verses of tolerance should have been abrogated by “war verses” that came later.
He is right in pointing out that such a dangerous doctrine of abrogation exists, but wrong in accepting it as the legitimate way of understanding the Koran.

The Myth of Abrogation
The doctrine of abrogation is actually a late invention, introduced by some classical jurists during the fourth century (late 10th century) of Islam. These scholars came up with hundreds of cases of abrogated verses to the extent that they formulated a whole science of the subject filling lengthy books and references.
Yet they were in error and many Muslim thinkers are pointing this out since the 19th century. Dr. Khaleel Mohammed, a professor of Religion at San Diego State University, has a very good article that summarizes the refutations against the doctrine of abrogation. “The allegation that 120 verses on the invitation to Islam were abrogated by the verse of the sword (9:5)” says Dr. Mohammed, “is in fact one of crassest stupidity.”
The error of the classical exegetes who developed the doctrine of abrogation, explains Dr. Mohammed, was that they “followed an atomistic typology of interpretation, wherein every verse of Islam’s main document was treated as an independent unit.” Thus, a later verse on waging war against unbelievers was taken to invalidate all previous verses and define the Islamic political doctrine all by itself. However, a more consistent method is to stop treating verses as independent units and to try to understand their meaning by referring to their contexts and the overall meaning of the Koran.
Actually the Koran itself declares that it includes no contradictions (4:82), thus its verses should be seen not as conflicting and calling for abrogative passages, but rather as complimentary parts of a single mosaic.
If we try to build that mosaic, we will see that the war verses describe only an abnormal state of affairs – in which the Muslim community faced an enemy that sought its annihilation – and verses that promote peace and tolerance describe the Islamic ideal.
This becomes clear when we remember the context in which the Koran was revealed. During the initial thirteen years of Islam, Muslims were a totally pacifist community in the pagan-dominated city of Mecca. They simply tried to practice and evangelize their faith and told to the pagans, “You have your religion and I have my religion” (109:6) as the Koran ordered them to do. If the pagans of Mecca had accepted this formula, Muslims would not have needed to flee from Mecca, and then establish a state in Medina and afterwards get into a war of survival with Meccans and their allies.
Thus the “Meccan verses” of tolerance tell us about the ideal Islamic mission. “Medinan verses” of war tell us about a situation that we rarely face in the modern world – a religious community faced with a threat of annihilation, “merely for saying, ‘Our Lord is God’.” (22:40)
We should build the modern Islamic doctrine of politics based on Meccan verses, since the original Islamic model of mutual tolerance – which did not work in Mecca because of the bigotry of the Pagan establishment – does work in the modern world in which religious freedom is firmly established.1
That said, I now want to focus on the real issue that Mr. Bostom brought forth against me: The issue of the true Islamic rules of war. I have argued that these rules do not allow indiscriminate killing. This means attacks against non-combatants and POWs – such as we have seen in 9/11, suicide bombings in Israel, and recent kidnappings in Iraq – are illegitimate from a true Islamic point of view.
To argue otherwise, Mr. Bostom quotes many incidents from Islamic history in which Christians, Hindus or other non-Muslim populations – including POWs, and more horribly, women and children – were massacred by “Muslims.” The long quotes he cites from the eyewitnesses of such tragedies might persuade many readers that Islam is indeed a violent faith. When we take a closer look however, it turns out that the picture that Mr. Bostom presents is quite different from the objective truth.
Let’s see how. First, we have to start with the Prophet himself.
The Sword – and the Mercy – of the Prophet
After the Koran, and before everything else, the practice of Prophet Muhammad is binding for all Muslims. The way he treated non-combatants and POWS is thus crucial. In my previous articles on the issue, I have mentioned that he ordered his fellow Muslims to care for non-combatants in war and treat POWs well. In fact, the Koran explicitly orders the good treatment of POWs. (76:8)
To argue that the Prophetic treatment of POWs was in fact violent, Mr. Bostom quotes from W.H.T. Gairdner, who tells us about “the greatest vindictiveness and bloodthirstiness” at the end of the Battle of Badr, which took place between Muslims and pagan Meccans in the year 624. Although Gairdner vaguely tells us there was some killing and “The Prophet checked these excesses,” he doesn’t explain that killings POWs after a battle was the standard Arab custom of the day and Prophet Muhammad intervened to preclude that norm. Karen Armstrong, a British historian and former nun, writes about the aftermath of the fighting at Badr:

The Muslims were jubilant. They began to round up prisoners and, in the usual Arab fashion, started to kill them, but Muhammad put a stop to this. A revelation came down saying that the prisoners of war were to be ransomed. He also stopped the Muslims squabbling over the booty, and the 150 camels, ten horses and pile of armour and equipment were divided up equally. Then the victorious army began the trek home with seventy prisoners of war . . . On the way home, Muhammad received a revelation for the prisoners themselves:
O Prophet, say to the prisoners in your hands: ‘If God knows of any good in your hearts, He will give you better than what has been taken from you, and He will forgive you. Surely, God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.’ (8:70)2

Thus “the greatest vindictiveness and bloodthirstiness” that Mr. Bostom’s source attributes to Islam was in fact a pre-Islamic practice stopped by the Prophet of Islam.
It is known that the Prophet allowed the execution of two specific POWs at Badr. These were Nadr bin el-Haris and Ukba bin Ebi Muayt, who were notorious for repeatedly persecuting Muslims and insulting Islam in Mecca. In today’s terms, this would be tantamount to an execution of war criminals.
There is a tradition which claims that taking POWs at the end of Badr was a mistake and Prophet was warned about this by later verse (8:67). But this is not widely accepted and even radical interpreters of the Koran such as Mawdudi find this unconvincing. This issue has been considered recently in Time magazine and it was reported,

According to some hadiths, Muhammad was left wondering what to do with the resulting prisoners. This, the texts claimed, was the context for God’s Koranic statement “As to prisoners of war, we have not sent you as an oppressor of the land.” One 10th century gloss further asserted that the Prophet took God’s word to mean he should kill the captives so as not to continue to be a prisoner holder, and that is probably the proof text al-Zarqawi had in mind [while referring to Badr as a justification for beheadings].
But according to Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of Western and Islamic law at UCLA, that reading was discounted long ago. He says the vast majority of classical jurists subscribed to a more intuitively obvious version, whereby God’s words prompted Muhammad to free his captives. They saw the “off with their heads” reading as insupportable. “Al-Zarqawi,” says El Fadl, “searches for the trash that everyone threw out centuries ago and declares the trash to be Islam.”3

Mr. Bostom also raises the issue of the alleged massacre of the men of Bani Qurayza, the Jewish tribe who conspired against Muslims when Medina was besieged by the pagan army of Mecca in the year 627. Yes, I don’t accept the traditional view that the men of Bani Qurayza were beheaded and there are good reasons for that as stated in the article by W. N. Arafat.
Mr. Bostom faults me for failing to mention the supposed reference in the Koran to the alleged Bani Qurayza massacre. That supposed reference is verse 33:26:

He [God] brought down from their fortresses those of the People of the Book who supported them [pagans] and cast terror into their hearts. You killed some of them and some you took prisoner.

Well, I think it is pretty self-evident that the verse describes a heat of battle, not a slaughter. In fact, the verse tells us that some men of Qurayza were taken as prisoners – thus spared. As W. N. Arafat points out that,

In the Qur’an the reference can only be to those who were actually in the fighting. This is a statement about the battle. It concerns those who fought. Some of these were killed. Others were taken prisoner. One would think that if 600 or 900 people were killed in this manner the significance of the event would have been greater. There would have been a clearer reference in the Qur’an, a conclusion to be drawn, and a lesson to be learnt. But when only the guilty leaders were executed, it would be normal to expect only a brief reference.4

Yet Mr. Bostom insists on believing in the slaughter of Bani Qurayza. He also refers to the Sahih Bukhari (a hadith collection) supporting that story, and as a pre-caution to my possible rejection to that, he says, “once you start questioning the sacralized Muslim sources and texts- Koran, hadith, sira (sacred biographies of Muhammad)- this cannot be done selectively.”
My dear friend Mark Hartwig also pointed out the Sahih Bukhari source in a letter to NRO that discussed my previous articles.
Well, I don’t question the Koran, which I believe to be the infallible Word of God, yet I, like many other contemporary Muslims, feel free to question traditional Islamic sources such as the hadith and sira. These were written at least one and a half centuries after the Prophet and we already know that there were many fake sayings attributed to and fables made up about Prophet Muhammad. The collection we have today was compiled by men most of whom had the best intentions, but good intentions are not enough to create an infallible source.5
The overall evidence relating to Prophet Muhammad shows us that he never sanctioned indiscriminate killing. He is on the record for saying, “Do not kill the very old, the infant, the child, or the woman.”6 Abu-Bakr, his closest companion and successor as the first caliph of Islam, is also on the record for saying to Muslim soldiers, “Do not kill a young child, an old man, or a woman. Do not uproot or burn palms or cut down fruitful trees… You will meet people who have set themselves apart in hermitages; leave them to accomplish the purpose for which they have done this.”7
And although “the humanizing influence of Islamic teaching was in some ways diminished by [later] developments,” as Bernard Lewis, undoubtedly one of the greatest Western experts on Islam, explains8, it never sought to justify the indiscriminate killings that Mr. Bostom insistently attaches to Islam.
Muslim Jurists on POWs and Non-Combatants
Mr. Bostom quotes several Islamic jurists to show that killing of non-combatants and POWs are justified in Islam. We should be wary of the fact that the Muslim jurists, who gave permission for the killing of POWs, and some of whom are quoted by Mr. Bostom, always referred to the Bani Qurayza incident. Ibn Kathir, the author of one of most respected tafsirs (Koranic commentaries) explain that,

The majority of the scholars say that the matter of prisoners of war is up to the Imam. If he decides, he can have them killed, such as in the case of Bani Qurayzah. If he decides, he can accept a ransom for them, as in the case of the prisoners of Badr, or exchange them for Muslim prisoners.9

However, as I explained above, while the sparing of POWs in Badr is evident in the Koran, the killing of Bani Qurayza is not, and its authenticity is highly suspect. Thus, from a purely Koranic – one could say, Sola Scriptura – point of view, there is no justification for killing POWs. That is what I have been arguing in my recent articles on the issue, and what I still maintain.
Moreover, even if one takes the Bani Qurayza at face value, still it doesn’t justify indiscriminate killing, because this Jewish tribe in question was much different from ordinary prisoners of war. They were living in Medina and had an alliance with the Muslims there. When the pagan army from Mecca besieged the city, however, they secretly collaborated with them—an act of treason that could well lead to the annihilation of all Muslims. One can reason that their attack against Islam was crueler than the pagans.
This unique situation is why some Muslim jurists, who allowed the killing of POWs by referring to the Qurayza incident, emphasized that only such cruel foes deserve that punishment. For example, Abu Yusuf, as quoted by Mr. Bostom, writes “one can kill prisoners who might prove dangerous to the Muslims.” (Such as Saladin’s execution of Reynauld de Chatillon and Templars, while sparing many other ordinary POWs.) It is evident that such considerations can not legitimize the killing of women, children, and recently kidnapped individuals in Iraq who would not even dream of “being dangerous to Muslims.”
Mr. Bostom also quotes jurists who opined on issues like the usage of catapults against fortresses that include civilians. That was actually a debate on “collateral damage,” and with our recent memories of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that should not seem so unusual even to modern minds. In fact, the very existence of such debates on catapults indicate the concern for non-combatants in traditional Islamic law. Bernard Lewis confirms this and explains that,

Fighters in jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture of mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a truce, and to honor agreements. The medieval jurists and theologians discuss at some length the rules of warfare, including questions such as which weapons are permitted and which are not. There is even some discussion in medieval texts of the lawfulness of missile and chemical warfare, the one relating to mangonels and catapults, the other to poison-tipped arrows and the poisoning of enemy water supplies. Some jurists permit, some restrict, some disapprove of the use of these weapons. The stated reason for concern is the indiscriminate casualties that they inflict. At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point – as far as I am aware – do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.10

There is also a much neglected truth about classic Muslim jurists: in some cases, they were forced by the secular authorities to give religious permission to their planned conquests or attacks. It is well known that 11th century Shafi jurist al-Mawardi was imprisoned because he did not condone the plan of the Abbasid leader to break a truce with the Byzantines, without prior notice. The political leadership and army would often press the jurists to give laxer rulings on the laws of combat – a fact that raises questions about the legitimacy of those rulings. According to UCLA professor Khaled Abou el Fadl: “The army would tell the jurists ‘Give us this or that ruling, or the enemy will come for you and all your dear books will go up in flames.’ “11
As a result, as pointed out by Rashid Rida, a reformist Muslim of the early 20th century, “men of learning (ulama), who were charged with the responsibility for maintaining the sharia, became corrupted through compromise with temporal authority (sulta) and consequently often lent themselves to the support of tyrants”12
Still, many jurists stood against the exploitation of Islamic principles for tyranny or worldly profits. Bernard Lewis tells that a common concern among Muslim jurists was the corrupt Muslims who tried to justify their plunders by exploiting the concept of jihad:

The jihad, to have any validity, must be waged “in the path of God” and not for the sake of material gain. There are, however, frequent complaints of the misuse of the honorable name of jihad for dishonorable purposes. African jurists in particular lament the use of the term jihad by slave raiders to justify their depredations and establish legal ownership of their victims.13

Actually, Bernard Lewis points to a crucial fact. Many “Muslims” indeed carried out quite secular campaigns on non-Muslims and labeled them as jihads simply for fake legitimacy in the eyes of other Muslims.
And most of the horrible episodes that Mr. Bostom presents us as the proofs of the supposed violence of Islam would fall into that category.
To see how, let’s take a closer look at history.
The Early Expansion of Islam
Mr. Bostom and other critics of the Islamic faith continually tell us about how “Islam” spread around the world and conquered territories extending from Spain into India. Yet, the historical reality was not that monolithic. Instead of a single “Islam” spreading all around, we find a very diverse history of Islamic civilization, made up of many different states, empires, emirates, dynasties, renegades and sects who strived to expand their territories sometimes for the sake of Islam, but most of the time for the sake of their worldly interests. The internal bloody conflicts and wars among them also testify to this complex historical reality.
Thus, to judge the Islamic faith within these diverse historical events, we should first of all consider the conquests which were really driven by a passion to serve Islam. The most prominent examples would be, of course, the wars of Prophet Muhammad and, after those, the conquests of the four “rightly guided” caliphs.
The conquests of these four “rightly guided” caliphs, especially of Caliph Omar, were directed to the Byzantine and Persian ruled Middle East.
Most of these conquests were not bloody excursions, they were more like liberation wars. The peoples of both empires were hardly happy with their sovereigns. That’s why most of them welcomed the advent of Islam. Franco Cardini, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Florence and one of the most prominent historians of Italy, in his book Europe and Islam, confirms the above view:

The expansion of Islam never resembled an inexorable military conquest, much less a V