Another Rebuttal

After responding to Jackson Free Press' "ladd" earlier today, I'm feelin' in a rebuttin' sort of mood, and it turns out that I now have the chance. Although my opponent may never read this, I think my responses will be instructive to others and so I feel it's worth doing.

I was browsing back through my review of Fitna, and I noticed I'd got a comment there. The anonymous commenter says this:

"As you said geert wilder doesn't know the quran.

You seem to know nothing yourself nethier.

Those verses don't relate to the incidents because they are quoted out of context.

If you read those verses then read the few verses before it and the few verses after it you will see muslims are told to strike fear/kill non muslims in self defence if they are attacked first.

All his out of context verses in the film has an innocent explaanation like i said you know nothing of the quran yourself and the extremists are not proper muslims just using out of context verses like geert for political goals and are not really religously motivated."

The "out-of-context" line is a common staple among Muslims and their apologists, but does he have a point?

I just looked through the passages "before and after" 8:60 in the Qur'an, as my anonymous commenter suggested. And they say nothing about self-defense.

And what about the historical context of this verse? Sura 8 was revealed in the aftermath of the Battle of Badr. This was fought between the Muslims and the Quraysh, the pagan tribe Muhammad had left after they rejected his message. In the wake of the Hijra (Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina), he launched a series of raids against Quraysh trading caravans. These were not defensive actions; they were designed specifically to steal the wealth of the Quraysh, which was partly an act of revenge for their rejection of Muhammad, and partly a way of financing his new religious and military group. The Battle of Badr was started when Muhammad heard about a new wagon, laden with money and goods, that was coming from Syria. "This is the caravan of the Quraysh possessing wealth," he said. "It is likely that Allah may give it to you as booty." (Ibn S'ad v.2, p.9) The Muslims marched against the Quraysh, 300-strong, and were met by the Quraysh with 1000 men. After the battle, in which the Muslims were victorious, one of the Muslims beheaded the Quraysh leader, Abu Jahl. Muhammad did not admonish him; in fact, he was delighted, and gave thanks to Allah for the death of his enemy. (Ibn Ishaq p.304) None of this was defensive on Muhammad's part, except by his own weak justifications.

But even if it was defensive, and even if 8:60 is only talking about defensive jihad, this makes little difference, since most jihads today are justified as defensive. Bin Laden justified 9/11 by saying: "The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates." Such an action would be defensive, and the elastic definition of defensive warfare in Islamic law makes it fairly easy for jihadists to justify just about anything in the name of self-defence. So any Muslim who quotes the verse wouldn't be doing so outside of the canons of Islamic law.

As for the suggestion that these preachers are using Islam purely for political and not religious reasons, this is something I hear quite a bit also. To an extent it may be true, although it must be noted that since Islam itself treats political warfare as a religious matter, the two are a lot harder to separate than you might think. But the point is that it is the religious part of the appeal which is so successful in winning Muslims over to the jihadists' cause. It would be wrong to assume an absence of religious motives, especially when doing so does nothing to stop religious "window dressing" being used as the main driving force behind jihad recruitment.