But although I'm not going to be publishing this work in full here, I thought I would in any case post an extract from what I have written so far, as it contains a number of important points. People constantly mischaracterise and misrepresent my writing, and I am often asked why I write so vehemently and so often about Islam. And this extract covers some of those issues. It comes from the very beginning of the booklet. Enjoy:
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With the increasing amount of jihad attacks carried out by Muslims around the world, much debate has arisen over how justified Islamic terrorism is according to the teachings of Islam. On one side, many – such as myself – contend that Islam contains within it elements which give rise to and justify terrorism, holy war and even the killing of innocents. But on the other side, many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, contend that there is actually nothing in the Qur'an or any Islamic teaching that could possibly justify such appalling violence. Islam is, they argue, a Religion of Peace.
But regardless, at this stage, of which point of view is more accurate, it remains a matter of fact that many Muslims around the world do believe that Islam commands them to wage violent jihad against non-Muslims. They state this unreservedly. Often, jihadists such as Osama bin Laden will quote specific verses from the Qur'an to justify their actions, and invoke Islam as the basis for their murderous ideology. One pro-Osama website, www.waaqiah.com, said in 2002: “The truth is that a Muslim who reads the Qur'an with devotion is determined to reach the battlefield in order to attain the reality of jihad. It is solely for this reason that the kuffar [unbelievers] conspire to keep the Muslims far away from understanding the Qur'an, knowing that Muslims who understand the Qur'an will not distance themselves from jihad.”
But are Muslims such as these simply ignorant beginners who have little experience studying the religion? Not always. In many cases, those Muslims who claim that Islam sanctions violence are learned scholars who have devoted their entire lives to the study of Islam. For example, Omar Rahman was once a teacher at the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the highest spiritual authority in the Sunni Islamic world. In 1999, he was asked by a student why his lessons always dwelt on “jihad and killing”, instead of peace and love. He responded: “Listen, my brother, there is a whole sura [chapter of the Qur'an] called 'The Spoils of War' [sura 8]; there is no 'Sura of Peace'. Jihad and killing is the head of Islam. If you take it out, you cut off the head of Islam.” Rahman went on to become the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bomb plot.
How does something like this happen? If Islam teaches universal love and peace, how does a man devoted to studying it get it so dramatically wrong, and end up believing it is telling him to commit tremendous violence?
A common answer we are fed is that Islam, or religious texts in general, “can be whatever you want it to be”. But this is an easy answer. Words – any words – have meaning, and that meaning has significant impacts on the behaviour of those who read it. If a book tells those who read it and believe in it to commit violent acts, those people are far more likely to do so than readers of a book which does not instruct anyone to do this. The idea that written words have no meaning, and that Muslims can get anything they like out of the Qur'an, is also difficult to reconcile with the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of jihadists and jihad sympathisers all over the world, in virtually every country, and they all seem to “misunderstand” their religion in exactly the same way. And the behaviour and stated aims of Islamic armies throughout the centuries show a remarkable sameness that indicates that they were working from a common ideology – an ideology that they must have gotten from somewhere.
And this is one of the most important things to note about the controversy surrounding Islam. Often indignant Muslims will accuse those non-Muslims who say that Islam sanctions violence against unbelievers of being bigoted or, even worse, unwittingly “endorsing” bin Laden's version of Islam. But the fact is that it was not “Islamophobes” or Western bigots who first drew the connection between Islam and violence. Muslims have been doing that for centuries, by quoting the Qur'an to justify their actions and making statements like those quoted above. And yet those who criticise western non-Muslims for their statements remain curiously silent whenever Muslims say the same things. Some Westerners have picked up on the fact that some Muslims make a direct link between Islam and violence, and are reporting on this fact. For liberal apologists and disingenuous Muslims to then accuse those people of inciting hatred, when all they have done is report on someone else's hatred, is a very peculiar form of hypocrisy.
But ultimately, it pays to examine what Islam does teach, so that we can be closer to understanding what must be done to counter the ideology of Islamic jihadists. If Islam really does teach peace, it should not be too difficult for moderate Muslims to wean out radicalism by spreading the true message of Islam, dissolving the jihadists' arguments and destroying their power to make recruits. But if Islam really teaches war, then it becomes incumbent on those same moderate Muslims to figure out ways to deal with this, and to blunt the power of jihadists to use these teachings to make recruits among otherwise peaceful Muslims.
The following is an in-depth examination of what Islam, and in particular the Qur'an, teaches about peace and war, how this material can be understood, and how jihadists use it to justify terrorism. One final note: I am not saying, and have never said, that there is one “true” version of Islam. Islam is not monolithic, and there is much disagreement among Muslim scholars about various issues. But the fact is that jihadists do claim that their version of Islam is “true” or “pure” Islam, and by quoting the Qur'an and the words of Muhammad they have had great success in convincing other Muslims of this. This is an examination of why they are so successful.
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