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Islam Is a Religion of Violence
Can the wave of violence sweeping the Islamic world be traced back to the
religion's core teachings? An FP debate about the roots of extremism.
BY AYAAN HIRSI ALINOVEMBER 9, 2015facebooktwittergoogle-plusredditemail
Islam Is a Religion of Violence
In the past few weeks, both Russia and the United States have escalated
their military campaigns against the Islamic State. As the brutal jihadist
group continues to wreak havoc in Syria and Iraq, Foreign Policy’s Peace
Channel, a partnership with the United States Institute of Peace, asked
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, and
United States Institute of Peace acting Vice President Manal Omar, one of
the foremost voices on peace and Islam, to debate what is behind this newest
breed of extremism and how can it be defeated. In the age of al Qaeda, the
Islamic State, and Boko Haram, is there a link between the violence these
groups perpetrate and the faith they profess? (Read Manal Omar’s piece here
.)
In the 14 years since the attacks of 9/11 brought Islamic terrorism to the
forefront of American and Western awareness and then-President George W.
Bush launched the “Global War on Terror,” the violent strain of Islam
appears to have metastasized. With tracts of Syria and Iraq in the hands of
the self-styled Islamic State, Libya and Somalia engulfed in anarchy, Yemen
being torn apart by civil war, the Taliban resurging in Afghanistan, and
Boko Haram terrorizing Nigeria, policymakers are farther away from
eliminating the threat of violent Islamism than they were when they began
the effort. In fact, Western countries are increasingly witnessing domestic
attacks such as the murder of British military drummer Lee Rigby and the
Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the shootings at Parliament Hill in Canada
in 2014, the attacks at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and at a Jewish
supermarket in Paris this past January, and most recently the terrorist
attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a military recruiting center and naval
compound.
But does this violent extremism stem from Islam’s sacred texts? Or is it
the product of circumstance, which has twisted and contorted Islam’s
foundations?
To answer this, it’s worth first drawing the important distinction between
Islam as a set of ideas and Muslims as adherents. The socioeconomic,
political, and cultural circumstances of Muslims are varied across the globe
, but I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims in
the world today based on how they envision and practice their faith.
The first group is the most problematic — the fundamentalists who envision
a regime based on sharia, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam
largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version
and take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone
else. I call them “Medina Muslims,” in that they see the forcible
imposition of sharia as their religious duty, following the example of the
Prophet Mohammed when he was based in Medina. They exploit their fellow
Muslims’ respect for sharia law as a divine code that takes precedence over
civil laws. It is only after they have laid this foundation that they are
able to persuade their recruits to engage in jihad.
The second group — and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world —
consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but
are not inclined to practice violence or even intolerance towards non-
Muslims. I call this group “mecca Muslims.” The fundamental problem is
that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are
unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant
for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts.
More recently, and corresponding with the rise of Islamic terrorism, a third
group is emerging within Islam — Muslim reformers or, as I call them, “
modifying Muslims” — who promote the separation of religion from politics
and other reforms. Although some are apostates, the majority of dissidents
are believers, among them clerics who have come to realize that their
religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an
interminable cycle of political violence.
The future of Islam and the world’s relationship with Muslims will be
decided by which of the two minority groups — the Medina Muslims and the
reformers — wins the support of the meccan majority. That is why focusing
on “violent extremism” is to focus on a symptom of a much more profound
ideological epidemic that has its root causes in Islamic doctrine.
To understand whether violence is inherent in the doctrine of Islam, it is
important to look at the example of the founding father of Islam, Mohammed,
and the passages in the Quran and Islamic jurisprudence used to justify the
violence we currently see in so many parts of the Muslim world. In Mecca,
Mohammed preached to his fellow tribesmen to abandon their gods and accept
his. He preached about charity and the conditions of widows and orphans. (
This method of proselytizing or persuasion, called dawa in Arabic, remains
an important component of Islam to this day.) However, during his time in
Mecca, Mohammed and his small band of believers had little success in
converting others to this new religion. So, a decade after Mohammed first
began preaching, he fled to Medina. Over time he cobbled together a militia
and began to wage wars.
Anyone seeking support for armed jihad in the name of Allah will find ample
support in the passages in the Quran and Hadith that relate to Mohammed’s
Medina period. For example, Q4:95 states, “Allah hath granted a grade
higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to
those who sit (at home).” Q8:60 advises Muslims “to strike terror into (
the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides,
whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Finally, Q9:29 instructs
Muslims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold
that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor
acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the
Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves
subdued.”
Mainstream Islamic jurisprudence continues to maintain that the so-called “
sword verses” (9:5 and 9:29) have “abrogated, canceled, and replaced”
those verses in the Quran that call for “tolerance, compassion, and peace.”
As for the example of Mohammed, Sahih Muslim, one of the six major
authoritative Hadith collections, claims the Prophet Mohammed undertook no
fewer than 19 military expeditions, personally fighting in eight of them. In
the aftermath of the 627 Battle of the Trench, “Mohammed felt free to deal
harshly with the Banu Qurayza, executing their men and selling their women
and children into slavery,” according to Yale Professor of Religious
Studies Gerhard Bowering in his book Islamic Political Thought. As the
Princeton scholar Michael Cook observed in his book Ancient Religions,
Modern Politics, “the historical salience of warfare against unbelievers …
was thus written into the foundational texts” of Islam.
There lies the duality within Islam. It’s possible to claim, following
Mohammed’s example in Mecca, that Islam is a religion of peace. But it’s
also possible to claim, as the Islamic State does, that a revelation was
sent to Mohammed commanding Muslims to wage jihad until every human being on
the planet accepts Islam or a state of subservience, on the basis of his
legacy in Medina. The key question is not whether Islam is a religion of
peace, but rather, whether Muslims follow the Mohammed of Medina, regardless
of whether they are Sunni or Shiite.The key question is not whether Islam
is a religion of peace, but rather, whether Muslims follow the Mohammed of
Medina, regardless of whether they are Sunni or Shiite.
Today, the West is still struggling to understand the religious
justification for the Medina ideology, which is growing, and the links
between nonviolence and violence within it. Two main viewpoints have emerged
in the debate on the causes of violent extremism in Islam. The difference
between them is reflected in the different terminology used by proponents of
the rival views.
Popular academics such as John Esposito at Georgetown and author Karen
Armstrong believe that religion — Islam, in this case — is the “
circumstantial” bit and that the real causes of Islamist violence are
poverty, political marginalization, cultural isolation, and other forms of
alienation, including real or perceived discrimination against Muslims.
These apologists for Islam use words such as “radicalism,” “violent
extremism,” and “terrorism” to describe the various attacks around the
world committed in the name of Islam. If Islam is mentioned at all, it is to
say that Islam is being perverted, or hijacked. They are quick to assert
that Islam is no different from any other religion, that there are terrible
aspects to other religions, and that Islam is in no way unique. That view is
more or less the “official” view of policymakers, not only of the U.S.
government, but also of most Western countries (though policy changes are
beginning to appear on this front in some countries such as the U.K., Canada
, and Australia).
But the apologists’ position has been a complete policy failure because it
denies the religious justifications the Quran and the Hadith provide for
violence, gender inequality, and discrimination against other religions.
Proponents of the alternative view, such as the late academic Patricia Crone
and author Paul Berman, rely on different terms such as “political Islam,
” Islamism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and Jihadism. All of these terms are
designed to convey the religious basis of the phenomenon. The argument is
that an ideological movement to impose sharia law, by force if necessary, is
gaining ground across the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and
even in Europe. In a speech this past July, British Prime Minister David
Cameron said: “[S]imply denying any connection between the religion of
Islam and the extremists doesn’t work, because these extremists are self-
identifying as Muslims. The fact is from Woolwich to Tunisia, from Ottawa to
Bali, these murderers all spout the same twisted narrative, one that claims
to be based on a particular faith. Now it is an exercise in futility to
deny that.” I agree.
The view that the ideology of radical Islam is rooted in Islamic scripture
understands fully the cause of terrorism; it takes religious arguments
seriously, and does not view them as a mere smokescreen for underlying “
real” motivations, such as socio-economic grievances. This school of
thought understands that the problem of radicalization begins long before a
suicide bomber straps on his vest or a militant picks up his machine gun; it
begins in mosques and schools where imams preach hate, intolerance, and
adherence to Medina Islam.
Western governments have tried to engage with “moderate Muslims”: imams
and community leaders who denounce terrorist attacks and claim to represent
the true, peaceful Islam. But this has not amounted to meaningful
ideological engagement. These so-called moderate representatives of Islam
insist that violence has nothing to do with Islam and as a result the
intolerant and violent aspects of the Quran and the Hadith are never
acknowledged or rejected. There is never any discussion about change within
Islam to bring the morally outdated parts of the religion in line with
modernity or genuine tolerance for those who believe differently.
Despotic governments, civil war, anarchy, economic despair — all of these
factors doubtless contribute to the spread of the Islamist movement. But it
is only after the West and, more importantly, Muslims themselves recognize
and defeat the religious ideology on which this movement rests that its
spread will be arrested. And if we are to defeat the ideology we cannot
focus only on violent extremism. We need to confront the nonviolent
preaching of sharia and martyrdom that precedes all acts of jihad.
We will not win against the Medina ideology by stopping the suicide bomber
just before he detonates himself, wherever he may be; another will soon take
his (or her) place. We will not win by stamping out the Islamic State or al
Qaeda or Boko Haram or al-Shabab; a new radical group will just pop up
somewhere else. We will win only if we engage with the ideology of Islamist
extremism, and counter the message of death, intolerance, and the pursuit of
the afterlife with our own far preferable message of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
Read Manal Omar’s piece here. |
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