The Peace of Islam

Last week I linked to an article about the brave moderate Muslim reformer Tawfik Hamid, and his attempts to teach against the violence and hatred of the Qur'an. During the article, he makes a number of assertions about certain things that Islam supports (although he rather annoyingly refers to "the Salafist ideology" rather than simply the teachings of the Prophet). I just thought I'd quote those various assertions and provide the evidence from Islamic texts that Hamid is working from, for those who are new to this site and various "Islam 101" articles I wrote last year about Islamic violence, and may not be aware of them.

So here goes (and just a note; I haven't provided a reference for the comment about Jews as apes and pigs, as Hamid already provides this in his article):

Among the more appalling notions it supports are the enslavement and rape of female war prisoners...: "We got female captives in the war booty and we used to do coitus interruptus with them. So we asked Allah's Apostle about it and he said, 'Do you really do that?' repeating the question thrice, 'There is no soul that is destined to exist but will come into existence, till the Day of Resurrection.'” (Bukhari v.7, b.62, no.137)

...and the beating of women to discipline them: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great." (Qur'an 4:34)

It permits polygamy... "Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice." (4:3)"

and pedophilia... "[The Prophet] married 'Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old." (Bukhari v.5, b.58, no. 234, and others).

and exhorts believers to kill [the Jews] before the end of days: "The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or tree would say: Muslims, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him." (Muslim, b.41, no.6985)

Homosexuals are to be killed as well: “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him” (Muhammad; quoted in Umdat al-Salik, a classic manual of Islamic law).

And all of that is in addition to the various exhortations for believers to fight non-Muslims in Islamic tradition and Islamic law.

Which is why reformers such as Tawfik Hamid should be encouraged and supported. But, as Hamid says, being a moderate Muslim these days is more likely to get you rejected by your co-religionists than it is to get you praised. Now why is that?