Muslim Heretics Conference

Graham Stewart

Was England ever on the verge of becoming an Islamic state? In 1215 King John was forced to accept the Magna Carta, that touchstone of English liberties. But according to one medieval chronicler, only two years previously he was toying with passing the country over to Sharia.

The claims appear in the Chronica Majora written some years after the event by a Benedictine monk by the name of Matthew Paris.

In 1207 Pope Innocent III placed England under an interdict that effectively closed down the country’s churches. He excommunicated John two years later. Facing war with France and rebellion at home, the monarch was in a tight spot.

If Matthew Paris is to be believed, this was the background to perhaps the most bizarre diplomatic initiative in English history. John dispatched Thomas of Erdington, Radulus, son of Nicholas Esquire, and a cleric, Robert of London, on a top secret mission to Morocco.

On arrival, they approached the powerful Almohad caliph, Muhammad an-Nâsir. Their task was to win his military assistance to help to see off John’s converging enemies. Paris claimed that they brought a letter from the King offering to place England at the caliph’s disposal and promising that John “would not merely relinquish the Christian faith, which he considered vain, but would adhere faithfully to the law of Muhammad”. Far from being impressed, the caliph sent John’s emissaries away, curtly assuring them that he had no intention of allying with someone so lacking in faith that he was intent on becoming an apostate for the sake of political expediency. Thus rebuffed, John ended up having to appease the Pope and the barons instead.

Can this bizarre Moroccan adventure possibly be true? Although John was certainly exploring various extreme diplomatic options at the time, many leading medieval historians believe that the story of his offer to convert to Islam must be largely or wholly a work of fiction.

After all, while Paris may have been an early historian, he was also a propagandist, intent on misrepresenting the King’s position. On the other hand, he claimed an impeccably placed source for the story. Paris was a monk at St Albans Abbey where the guardian was Robert of London, supposedly one of King John’s Moroccan posse.

At any rate, if the whole story was a concoction, then it ended up missing its target. While subsequent generations of British historians have tended to pass over it as a red herring, it has gained wide currency across the Maghreb.

Only the discovery of John’s letter of self-abasement lying undisturbed in some Moroccan archive could prove the story true. And if we could read it now, would apologists for his late Majesty be able to assert that his words had, in fact, been taken terribly out of context?

The king who wanted Sharia England Past Notes: The Times unveils an amazing plot to turn this nation into a Muslim state (The Times On-Line)

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of The Times

Muslim leaders from around the world will tomorrow issue a statement to the world’s Jewish Community in “a call for positive and constructive action that aims to improve Muslim - Jewish relations.”

In the letter, which has emerged from the Muslim-Jewish study centre at the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths in Cambridge, Muslim scholars admit: “Many Jews and Muslims today stand apart from each other due to feelings of anger, which in some parts of the world, translate into violence.

“It is our contention that we are faced today not with ‘a clash of civilizations’ but with ‘a clash of ill-informed misunderstandings’.”

Signatories include Professor Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington DC and former High Commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain. Professor Ahmed also signed the recent letter from Muslim scholars to Christian leaders around the world, which has led to plans for Muslim leaders to visit the Vatican in an attempt to continue to improve relations between the faiths.

The latest letter states: “Deep-seated stereotypes and prejudices have resulted in a distancing of the communities and even a dehumanizing of the ‘Other’. We urgently need to address this situation. We must strive towards turning ignorance into knowledge, intolerance into understanding, and pain into courage and sensitivity for the ‘Other’.”

The Muslims note that Judaism and Islam share core doctrinal beliefs, the most important of which is strict monotheism.

“We both share a common patriarch, Ibrahim/Abraham, other Biblical prophets, laws and jurisprudence, many significant values and even dietary restrictions. There is more in common between our religions and peoples than is known to each of us,” they state. “It is precisely due to the urgent need to address such political problems as well as acknowledge our shared values that the establishment of an inter-religious dialogue between Jews and Muslims in our time is extremely important.

“Failure to do so will be a missed opportunity. Memories of positive historical encounters will dim and the current problems will lead to an increasing rift and more common misunderstandings between us.”

The Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, is understood to have seen a copy of the letter. Responses from him and other Jewish leaders are expected this week.

The aim is to show that Muslims are willing to engage in dialogue with the Jewish community about issues other than the conflict in Israel-Palestine.

Sheikh Michael Mumisa, lecturer at the Woolf Institute, described the letter as the first in modern times sent to the Jewish community with the backing of scholars and Muslim leaders. “The message in this letter conveys to the Jewish community a genuine desire for mutual respect, for dialogue and deeper understanding,” he said.

Muslim leaders issue letter to improve relations with Jewish community (The Times On-Line)

By Aysha Chowdhry and Andrew Masloski
Commentary by
Monday, February 25, 2008

Notably absent from the presidential primary campaign in the United States is serious discussion on how to implement an effective long-term strategy for protecting the US from future terrorist acts. Many political leaders in the past have embraced winning “the battle of ideas” against Muslim extremists as the most important component of any strategy, yet this ubiquitous catchphrase stems from an erroneous, counterproductive framework for understanding extremists like Osama bin Laden.

The framework assumes that groups like Al-Qaeda possess a coherent and compelling interpretation of Islam that the US must counter to prevent Muslims from adopting it. This flawed understanding should be replaced by a more nuanced approach based on the true nature of the terrorist threat.

The “battle of ideas” approach is counterproductive for two important reasons: first, it encourages the concept of a Manichean struggle raging between two equally powerful and opposing world views, in effect legitimizing the extremists’ understanding of the struggle; and second, it overstates the extent to which Bin Laden’s worldview constitutes a viable theological alternative for the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. His zealous religious views are not only alien to most Muslims living today, but have also earned a place on the fringes of Islamic intellectual thought.

For an effective strategy, the United States needs to take three important steps. The first is de-coupling Islam and terrorism. The 9/11 Commission report states that “the enemy is not just ‘terrorism’ … it is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.” While it is true that America faces a significant threat from people who identify themselves as Muslims and dress their grievances in religious terms, this does not mean that such people are perpetrators of “Islamist terrorism.” The phrase implies that Islam sanctions terrorism and that Muslims are more likely to commit terrorist acts. “Terrorism in the name of Islam” is more accurate.

The second step requires recognition that most grievances expressed by extremists like Bin Laden are secular and political in nature. They are angry about what they perceive as the exploitation of Muslims at the hands of the US. They enjoy sympathy from Muslims who perceive the US - and the West in general - as perpetuators of an unjust global political-economic system. As many have already noted, the attacks of 9/11 targeted American financial and military complexes and not Western religious symbols. Though Washington should not accept at face value the legitimacy of Al-Qaeda grievances, we cannot effectively prevent terrorist acts from taking place without a better understanding of their ultimately profane roots.

The third step involves ensuring the US actively works for the promotion of human dignity. American policy makers should make a concerted effort to understand the circumstances of the countries of the Muslim world that cause a sense of deprivation and humiliation among their populations, as these factors contribute to sympathy for Al-Qaeda’s political aims. US conventional wisdom states that Muslims need to believe in an alternative vision for their economic and political future, though the vast majority of Muslims need no convincing that economic prosperity and political freedom are good things.

Muslims share the same vision held by humanity everywhere - a secure future for their children and a life defined by dignity and liberty. Thus, policymakers should approach Muslims as partners on the path toward bettering livelihoods in Muslim societies. If the US continues to be implicated in the social, political and economic underdevelopment of much of the Muslim world, Al-Qaeda will continue to gain followers who are blind to everything but the perceived destructive effects of American hegemony.

In the end, focusing on winning the “battle of ideas” obscures our view of what must be done to prevent future terrorist attacks. The US should recognize the true nature of the terrorist threat, identify its root causes, and partner with Muslims to eliminate them.

Aysha Chowdhry and Andrew Masloski work for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Chowdhry is a research assistant with the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, and Masloski is a senior research assistant with the Middle East Democracy and Development Project. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Common Ground News Service.

Don’t credit Al-Qaeda by assuming it offers Muslims hope (The Daily Star)

Catholic intellectual and writer, George Weigel

Boulder, CO, Feb 24, 2008 / 03:18 pm (CNA).- George Weigel, Catholic thinker and biographer of Pope John Paul II, delivered a lecture on Thursday on religion and world politics in which he argued that Pope Benedict XVI has provided a unique model for global understanding between Christianity, Western secularism and Islam. 

In the lecture, Weigel also called on Muslim leaders engaged in inter-religious dialogue to acknowledge and vigorously condemn the specific abuses of human rights and religious freedom found among some Muslim nations. 

During the lecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder, sponsored by the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, Weigel said that Pope Benedict XVI was uniquely suited to addressing world conflicts grounded in religious differences.  Weigel believes that the Pope, especially in his 2006 Regensberg lecture, provides a “grammar” to world leaders that could help them understand and reform both the relativism of the secular West and the violence of Islamic extremism.

At his 2006 lecture at the University of Regensberg, the Pope said that religious violence and compulsion are rooted in the idea that God is pure will instead of a rational, loving being.  He said that Christianity’s belief in a loving, reasonable God has helped Christians reconcile themselves to Enlightenment values of religious freedom and human rights, while aspects of Islamic theology have hindered such reform among Muslims.

Weigel countered the media portrayal of the speech as a “gaffe” for its perceived insult of Mohammed.  Far from being a gaffe, he argued, the Regensberg address was an important reflection that considered questions important to world policy today.  These questions included:

“Can Islam be self-critical?  Can its leaders condemn and marginalize its extremists, or are Muslims condemned to be held hostage to the passions of those who consider the murder of innocents to be pleasing to God?  Can the West recover its commitment to reason, and thus help support Islamic reform?”

Weigel argued that no one other than Pope Benedict could have framed the discussion in such a way.  “No president, prime minister, king, queen, or secretary general could put these questions in play at this level of sophistication before a world audience,” Weigel said.

Pope Benedict’s lecture has given the world political community “a grammar for addressing these questions, a genuinely transcultural grammar of rationality and irrationality.”

“Far from being an exercise in theological abstraction, the Regensberg lecture was a courageous attempt to create a new public grammar capable of disciplining and directing the world discussion of what is arguably the world’s greatest problem,” Weigel continued.

Weigel also criticized some of the reactions to the Regensberg lecture.  Though acknowledging that Muslim critiques of the West are often “not without merit,” Weigel argued that the October 2007 letter from the 138 Muslim leaders “sidestepped” the questions raised by the Pope’s lecture.

Muslim scholars addressed the letter, titled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” to global Christian leaders in pursuit of inter-religious dialogue.  Many observers considered the letter an important breakthrough.

Weigel said the letter had spoken at length about the “Two Great Commandments” to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.  However, Weigel claimed, the letter said nothing applicable to relevant issues of “faith, freedom, and the governance of society,” such as death threats against Muslims who convert to Christianity or the prohibition of Christian worship in Saudi Arabia.

He challenged the Muslim leaders to be more specific in future dialogue:

“Do these 138 Muslim leaders agree or disagree that religious freedom and the distinction between spiritual and political authority are the issues at the heart of the tension between Islam and the West, indeed between Islam and ‘the rest,’ and even more within Islam itself.  Would it not be more useful to concentrate on these urgent issues of classical reason, which bear on the organization of 21st century society, than to frame the dialogue in terms of a generic exploration of the Two Great Commandments, which risk leading to an exchange of banalities?

“Why not get down to cases?” Weigel asked.  He further asserted that authentic dialogue requires a “precise focus” and a commitment to “condemn by name the members of their communities who murder in the Name of God.”

Weigel also criticized the “secularization thesis,” which claims that countries become less religious as time advances.  He argued that in fact the secularization of the West was the exception, rather than the rule.  The secularization thesis, he said, has clouded the analysis of Western thinkers and politicians who cannot understand the religious basis of many world movements, including Islamic extremism.

The centuries-long Catholic encounter with the positive Enlightenment values of religious freedom and human rights, Weigel thought, could be a model for Christian-Muslim dialogue.  While not compromising with what Weigel called the “chaff” of Enlightenment scientific atheism, past Catholic mistakes and successes could help Muslims navigate reforms of their own religion.

Weigel cited Pope Benedict’s 2006 Christmas address as evidence the Pope approved of a similar strategy.  In that speech the Pope said:

“In a dialogue to be intensified with Islam, we must bear in mind the fact that the Muslim world today is finding itself faced with an urgent task. This task is very similar to the one that has been imposed upon Christians since the Enlightenment, and through which the Second Vatican Council, as the fruit of long and difficult research, found real solutions for the Catholic Church.”

Weigel’s lecture drew its content from his recent book, “Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action.” The lecture was co-sponsored by the St. Thomas More Society of Colorado.

Pope Benedict provides “new public grammar” for reform of Islam, says George Weigel (Catholic News Agency)

The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.

The Pew Research Center conducted more than 55,000 interviews to obtain a national sample of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. The resulting study, which draws on Pew’s survey research among Muslims around the world, finds that Muslim Americans are a highly diverse population, one largely composed of immigrants. Nonetheless, they are decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes. This belief is reflected in Muslim American income and education levels, which generally mirror those of the public.

Key findings include:

• Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.
• A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard.
• The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
• Roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere. A relatively large proportion of Muslim immigrants are from Arab countries, but many also come from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Among native-born Muslims, roughly half are African American (20% of U.S. Muslims overall), many of whom are converts to Islam.

 

• Based on data from this survey, along with available Census Bureau data on immigrants’ nativity and nationality, the Pew Research Center estimates the total population of Muslims in the United States at 2.35 million.
• Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.
• A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government "singles out" Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.
• Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.

Pew Research Center: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream

American Public Diplomacy in the Islamic World
Remarks of Andrew Kohut to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing

Released: February 27, 2003

I am delighted to help this committee achieve a better understanding of how the United States is perceived in the Islamic world. I am not here to make recommendations about how to solve America’s image problems, but rather to give you as much as I can on the nature of the problem.
While this committee is primarily interested in the image of United States in the Islamic world, I will put my remarks in context by also discussing attitudes toward the United States around the world more generally. The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed 38,000 people in 44 countries. We released our results, "What the World Thinks in 2002," in December and you all should have copies of our report.
Despite an initial outpouring of public sympathy for America following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, discontent with the United States has grown around the world over the past two years. Images of the U.S. have been tarnished in all types of nations: among longtime NATO allies, in developing countries, in eastern Europe and, most dramatically, in Muslim societies.
Since 2000, favorability ratings for the U.S. have fallen in 19 of the 27 countries worldwide where trend benchmarks are available. While criticism of America is on the rise, however, a reserve of goodwill toward the United States still remains. The Pew Global Attitudes survey finds that the U.S. and its citizens continue to be rated positively by majorities in 35 of the 42 countries in which the question was asked.¹ True dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today’s areas of greatest conflict.
The most serious problem facing the U.S. abroad is its very poor public image in the Muslim world, especially in the Middle East/Conflict Area.² Favorable ratings are down sharply in two of America’s most important allies in this region, Turkey and Pakistan. The number of people giving the United States a positive rating has dropped by 22 points in Turkey and 13 points in Pakistan in the last three years. And in Egypt, a country for which no comparative data is available, just 6% of the public holds a favorable view of the U.S.
Fully three-quarters of respondents in Jordan, the fourth largest recipient of U.S. assistance, have a poor image of the United States. In Pakistan and Egypt, an even-larger aid recipient, nearly as many (69%) have an unfavorable view and no more than one-in-ten in either country have positive feelings toward the U.S. In Jordan, Pakistan and Egypt, the intensity of this dislike is strong – more than 50% in each country have a very unfavorable view.
Public perceptions of the United States in Turkey have declined sharply in the last few years. In 1999, a slim majority of Turks felt favorably toward the U.S., but now just three-in-ten do. As is the case in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, the intensity of negative opinion is strong: 42% of Turks have a very unfavorable view of the U.S. The same pattern is evident in Lebanon, where 59% have a poor opinion of the U.S.
Uzbekistan, a new U.S. ally in the fight against terror, is a notable exception to this negative trend. By nearly eight-to-one (85%-11%) Uzbeks have a positive opinion of the United States and more than a third (35%) hold a very favorable view of the U.S.
Dislike of America undoubtedly reflects dislike of U.S. policies in the Middle East. In a survey of opinion leaders released by the Pew Research Center in December 2001 ("America Admired, Yet its New Vulnerability Seen as Good Thing, Say Opinion Leaders"), a majority in Islamic countries told us that U.S. support of Israel is the top reason that people in their countries dislike America.
But backlash against the U.S.-led war on terror is also a big part of the problem. Unlike in much of the rest of the world, the war on terrorism is opposed by majorities in 10 of the 11 countries predominantly Muslim country surveyed by Pew. This includes countries outside the Middle East/Conflict Area, such as Indonesia and Senegal where majorities still held favorable opinion of the US. While they still like us, they don’t like our war on terrorism. The principal exception is the overwhelming support for America’s anti-terrorist campaign found in Uzbekistan, where the United States currently has troops stationed.
Jordanians, in particular, are overwhelmingly opposed to the war on terror (85%-13%). Majorities in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey and a plurality in Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the region, also oppose the U.S.-led war on terror. In Pakistan, Lebanon and Egypt, Muslims are more likely to oppose these efforts to fight terrorism than non-Muslims.
The prevailing opinion among people in this region is that the United States ignores the interests of their countries in deciding its international policies. This view is as dominant in Turkey (74%), a NATO ally, as it is in Lebanon (77%). More specifically, the Pew survey finds a strong sense among most of the countries surveyed that U.S. policies serve to increase the formidable gap between rich and poor countries. Moreover, sizable minorities feel the United States does too little to help solve the world’s problems.
The Gallup Poll, which conducted nationwide surveys in nine predominately Muslim countries in January 2002, summed it up well. They concluded that "the perception that Western nations are not fair in their stances toward Palestine fits in with a more generalized that the West is unfair to the Arab and Islamic worlds…it is one of several examples of Western bias that might extend to Afghanistan, Iraq Gulf oil and other situations"
‘Americanization’ Rejected
But it is all not one way - even in Muslim countries, opinions about the U.S. are complicated and contradictory. As among other people around the world, U.S. global influence is simultaneously embraced and rejected by Muslim publics. America is nearly universally admired for its technological achievements and people in most countries say they enjoy U.S. movies, music and television programs.
Very large majorities of the publics in most of the world admire U.S. technology. This is the case even among people with a low regard for the United States generally. In Jordan, where just a quarter have a favorable opinion of the U.S., 59% say they admire U.S. technological achievements. Even in Pakistan, where one-in-10 have a positive image of the U.S., a 42% plurality says they admire U.S. scientific advances.
Opinion of American popular culture is mixed, but more positive than one might expect. In Lebanon, where most have an unfavorable view of the U.S., 65% say they like American music, movies and television. In African countries with significant Muslim populations such as Senegal and Nigeria, majorities say they like American popular culture. But majorities in Jordan and Cairo dislike U.S. culture, as does a plurality in Turkey. Pakistan stands alone in the extent of its dislike of American popular culture. Eight-in-ten Pakistanis dislike American music, movies and television.
Although people in some Islamic countries like American popular culture while others reject it, there is more of a consensus that people do not like the spread of "Americanism." In general, the spread of U.S. ideas and customs is disliked by majorities in almost every country included in this worldwide survey. In the Middle East/Conflict Area, overwhelming majorities in every country except Uzbekistan have a negative impression of the spread of American ideas and customs. Just 2% of Pakistanis and 6% of Egyptians see this trend as a good thing. Even in generally pro-American Uzbekistan, 56% object to the spread of American ideas and customs.
War in Iraq
The unpopularity of a potential war with Iraq can only further fuel hostilities—almost no matter how well such a war goes. At the Pew Research Center, we got some sense of this when we conducted another survey in addition to our 44-nation poll. In November, we also surveyed the people of five countries Britain, France, Germany, Turkey and Russia, about their attitudes toward a potential U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Unlike western Europeans and Russians, Turkish respondents were divided on whether the regime in Baghdad is a threat to the stability of the region, and were divided over whether ending Saddam Hussein’s rule would be good or bad for Turkey. Further, and of particular interest to this committee, a 53% majority of Turkish respondents believe the U.S. wants to get rid of Saddam Hussein as part of a war against unfriendly Muslim countries, rather than because the Iraqi leader is a threat to peace.
Summary: Opinion of U.S. Linked to Views of Policies
In summary, antipathy toward the U.S. is shaped by how its international policies are interpreted. Gallup’s findings reflected that clearly in showing that large majorities in their nine-nation survey said the West doesn’t respect Muslim values, nor show concern for the Islamic and Muslim worlds.
Improving America’s image is a tough charge unless we can prove that our critics in the Muslim world are wrong about our intentions and the consequences of our policies. Until that happens, U.S. communication efforts in the region can only be defensive, doing the best possible in a bad situation – correcting misinformation, softening hostility by playing to aspects of America that are still well regarded. But in the end, we will only be affecting opinions on the margins.
However, I think there are some bigger opportunities down the road as I look at the second wave of the Pew Global Attitudes polling. We will show a very substantial level of democratic aspirations among Muslim people. People in Muslim countries place a high value on freedom of expression, multi-party systems, equal treatment under the law – in fact, higher than in some nations of eastern Europe. Our upcoming release this spring will detail these aspirations, and show how they exist side-by-side with a desire for a strong role for Islam in governance.
American policies that are seen as encouraging democratization might help establish, or bolster, constituencies for the U.S. in Muslim countries, especially outside of the Middle East–in Africa, particularly, where America’s Palestinian policies have not so inflamed opinion. In the Middle East, the establishment of democratic institutions in Iraq after Saddam Hussein could prove to be an important first positive step in that most problematic part of the Muslim world.

American Public Diplomacy in the Islamic World

The Truth About Islam in Europe

From the desk of Fjordman on Sun, 2008-02-24 14:32

This essay was inspired by Joan Acocella’s review of David Levering Lewis’ book God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215. Lewis is an American historian and two-time winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Acocella’s review is not bad, but she reveals little evidence that she has read authors such as Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or or Andrew G. Bostom. She refers to Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism, but not Ibn Warraq’s excellent criticism of him in the recent book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism.

According to Acocella, "The Muslims came to Europe, he writes, as ‘the forward wave of civilization that was, by comparison with that of its enemies, an organic marvel of coordinated kingdoms, cultures, and technologies in service of a politico-cultural agenda incomparably superior’ to that of the primitive people they encountered there. They did Europe a favor by invading. This is not a new idea, but Lewis takes it further: he clearly regrets that the Arabs did not go on to conquer the rest of Europe." This was "one of the most significant losses in world history and certainly the most consequential since the fall of the Roman Empire."

Abd al-Rahman I, a Syrian-born prince who took over in 756, is the hero of "God’s Crucible." According to Acocella, "It was he who built the Great Mosque of Córdoba, the most spectacular extant example of Muslim Spain’s architectural achievements. He also botanized, and imported to Spain its first date palms, its first lemons, limes, and grapefruit, as well as almonds, apricots, saffron, and henna."

In a digression, I would like to qualify that statement. Apricots were known in the Mediterranean world already in Antiquity. The apricot is called armeniaca vulgaris in Latin because many Europeans thought it originated in Armenia, where it was grown in the Ararat Valley. However, apricots come from China or nearby regions in Central Asia and were cultivated there in prehistoric times. They were later brought to Armenia and the Mediterranean world via Persia through the Silk Road trade.

Citrus fruits originate in south-eastern Asia, and certain types were known in the Mediterranean in ancient times as the Romans did participate to some extent in the Indian Ocean trade. However, the use of citrus fruits was limited at the time and was disrupted after the fall of Rome. It is true that various citrus fruits were reintroduced via Arabs, who brought sour oranges from India. The drink lemonade may have been invented in Egypt.

Sweet oranges had been cultivated by the Chinese for many centuries and were introduced in Europe by the Portuguese, who probably got them from Indians, in the fifteenth century. Sweet oranges quickly replaced sour oranges. Christopher Columbus in 1493 brought with him seeds of orange, lemon and citron from Spain’s Canary Islands to Hispaniola in the Caribbean. Oranges were abundant in Haiti by the sixteenth century and were introduced to Florida while the Portuguese brought them to Brazil. Oranges were for many Native Americans one of the more welcome things Europeans brought with them, certainly more so than smallpox. The juice of citrus fruits was used as a cure for scurvy. James Lind of the British Royal Navy conducted the first clinical trial in 1747 to prove this effect.

George Vancouver of the Royal Navy accompanied Captain James Cook, the British explorer and cartographer, on two of his voyages in the Pacific Ocean in the 1770s while exploring the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand. Cook’s voyages are often seen to mark the beginning of colonialism in the region, and Cook himself died fighting native Hawaiians in 1779. Captain Vancouver later explored the north-western coast of North America, from California to Alaska. The city of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, is named after him. During a visit to California, then a part of Mexico and thus still a Spanish colony, he mentioned seeing oranges. With the growth of the transcontinental railway in the United States during the nineteenth century production grew, and boomed after the American Civil War. Oranges are still grown in the Mediterranean region, in Spain, Portugal, Israel and other countries as well as in Asia, but the largest production is in Brazil, Florida and California.

David Levering Lewis spends a lot of time demonstrating how the Franks were less civilized than Muslims and that their economy was "little better than the Late Neolithic." Their neighbors were supposedly even worse. The Vikings who invaded Frankland were "the filthiest race that God ever created," according to a Muslim ambassador. Being Scandinavian myself, I have no problems admitting that the Vikings did possess a number of barbarian traits, but history is more complex than that. Scandinavians of this age gradually became integrated into the civilized mainstream of European culture. Christian European culture, that is.

Vikings from Denmark went to England and France, Norwegians went to the British Isles and the North Atlantic and Swedes went east, though there was always considerable overlapping between these nations. Some went via the Volga and other rivers in Russia and the Ukraine to the Black Sea engaged in trade and piracy, and a few even settled in Kiev and Volgograd. They occasionally fought Byzantine forces, but the Byzantines had the advantage of Greek fire. Vikings were still respected for their fighting skills and were employed as mercenaries, even as personal bodyguards for the emperors. The Scandinavians called Constantinople Miklagard, "the Great City."

As Timothy Gregory says in A History of Byzantium, during the eleventh century the Byzantine Empire suffered from a decline in its conscript army. Because of this, "the state had to rely more and more on foreign mercenaries, at first Varangians from Russia but increasingly Normans from Sicily and France, Anglo-Saxons from England, and others. The most famous of these was the Varangian Duzina, attested from 1034 onward, which enrolled Vikings from Russia and eventually Anglo-Saxons. This elite guard, whose members had distinct arms and uniforms, had its quarters in Constantinople but also took part in field campaigns. In addition, Byzantium had to rely more than before on its alliances with foreign peoples who might be used to fight the empire’s wars."

The Varangian Guard defended Constantinople against other Westerners during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. One of their most prominent members was the future king Harald Hardråde, "Hard-ruler," from 1035, whose story was told by Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson ca. 1230 in the Heimskringla. Harald participated in a number of battles against Muslims and returned to Norway with great wealth. He wasn’t the only one to do so. Large quantities of Byzantine gold coins have been found in Scandinavia. He is most remembered, however, for his invasion of England in 1066 with several hundred longships. Harald Hardråde was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in England on 25 September 1066, a date which is often seen to mark the end of the Viking Age. The victor Harold Godwinson was himself soon defeated by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings the same year. This remarkable story has been immortalized in the beautiful Bayeux Tapestry.

It is interesting to notice, though, that much of the contact that did take place between the Byzantine Empire and north-western Europe at this point happened through backdoor channels like the rivers of Eastern Europe, linking the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The Mediterranean was still plagued by Muslim pirates.

Women enjoyed greater freedom in the Norse society than they did in Islamic societies even then, and this continued into Christian times. In What went Wrong?, historian Bernard Lewis writes: "The difference in the position of women was indeed one of the most striking contrasts between Christian and Muslim practice, and is mentioned by almost all travelers in both directions. Christianity, of all churches and denominations, prohibits polygamy and concubinage. Islam, like most other non-Christian communities, permits both…. Muslim visitors to Europe speak with astonishment, often with horror, of the immodesty and frowardness of Western women, of the incredible freedom and absurd deference accorded to them, and of the lack of manly jealousy of European males confronted with the immorality and promiscuity in which their womenfolk indulge."

Bernard Lewis has also, in my view correctly, suggested that the concept of "Holy War" was originally alien to Christianity and was imported to Europe after Europeans had been confronted with Islamic Jihad. The Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic rule, is traditionally seen to have begun with Pelayo in 718. Although initially slow, it speeded up from the eleventh century onwards. The Portuguese had been liberated in 1249 under King Afonso III.

As Joan Acocella says, "Toledo fell to Alfonso VI of León and Castile, a Catholic king, in 1085. Four more centuries passed before the expulsion of the last emir from Granada, in 1492, but [David Levering] Lewis gets through them fast. He doesn’t want to talk about it."

Lewis also fails to explain why Spaniards and Portuguese repeatedly rebelled against this glorious Islamic culture in favor of an "almost Neolithic" culture. He writes that Muslims did not enslave their co-religionists, only infidels. Yes, but exactly why is that better?

As Robert Spencer writes in Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t: "The Qur’an says that the followers of Muhammad are ‘ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another’ (48:29), and that the unbelievers are the ‘worst of created beings’ (98:6). One may exercise the Golden Rule in relation to a fellow Muslim, but according to the laws of Islam, the same courtesy is not to be extended to unbelievers. That is one principal reason why the primary source of slaves in the Islamic world has been non-Muslims, whether Jews, Christians, Hindus, or pagans. Most slaves were non-Muslims who had been captured during jihad warfare."

Slavery was taken for granted throughout Islamic history. When it was finally abolished this was due to Western pressure, especially through the efforts of the British Empire: "Nor was there a Muslim abolitionist movement, no Clarkson, Wilberforce, or Garrison. When the slave trade ended, it was ended not through Muslim efforts but through British military force. Even so, there is evidence that slavery continues beneath the surface in some Muslim countries - notably Saudi Arabia, which only abolished slavery in 1962; Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970; and Niger, which didn’t abolish slavery until 2004. In Niger, the ban is widely ignored, and as many as one million people remain in bondage. Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally treated like animals. There are even slavery cases involving Muslims in the United States. A Saudi named Homaidan al-Turki was sentenced in September 2006 to twenty-seven years to life in prison for keeping a woman as a slave in his Colorado home. For his part, al-Turki claimed that he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias."

Indian historian K. S. Lal states that wherever Jihadists conquered a territory, "there developed a system of slavery peculiar to the clime, terrain, and populace of the place." When Muslim armies invaded India, "its people began to be enslaved in droves to be sold in foreign lands or employed in various capacities on menial and not-so-menial jobs within the country."

The most comprehensive book on the subject to date, The Legacy of Jihad, was published by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom. Bostom writes about how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as ambassadors, met in 1786 with the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of Jihad piracy – murder and enslavement emanating from the so-called Barbary States of North Africa, corresponding to modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. However, the spirit of the young Republic came to be embodied in the slogan "Millions for defense, not a penny for tribute." Bostom notes that "By June/July 1815 the ably commanded U.S. naval forces had dealt their Barbary jihadist adversaries a quick series of crushing defeats. This success ignited the imagination of the Old World powers to rise up against the Barbary pirates."

Robert Davis’ methodical enumeration in Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters indicates that perhaps one and one-quarter million white European Christians were enslaved by Barbary Muslims from 1530 through 1780. In his book White Gold, Giles Milton describes how regular Jihad razzias in Europe extended as far north as Iceland. Even during the time of Queen Elizabeth I, while William Shakespeare was writing his plays and poems, young Englishmen risked being surprised by a fleet of Muslim pirates showing up at their village, or being kidnapped while fishing at sea:

"By the end of the dreadful summer of 1625, the mayor of Plymouth reckoned that 1,000 skiffs had been destroyed, and a similar number of villagers carried off into slavery." Such events took place across much of Europe, also in Wales and southern Ireland: "In 1631…200 Islamic soldiers…sailed to the village of Baltimore, storming ashore with swords drawn and catching the villagers totally by surprise. (They) carried off 237 men, women, and children and took them to Algiers…The French padre Pierre Dan was in the city (Algiers) at the time…He witnessed the sale of the captives in the slave auction. ‘It was a pitiful sight to see them exposed in the market…Women were separated from their husbands and the children from their fathers…on one side a husband was sold; on the other his wife; and her daughter was torn from her arms without the hope that they’d ever see each other again’."

Englishman Thomas Pellow was enslaved in Morocco for twenty-three years after being captured by Barbary pirates as a cabin boy on a small English vessel in 1716. He was tortured until he accepted Islam. For weeks he was beaten and starved, and finally gave in after his torturer resorted to "burning my flesh off my bones by fire, which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions, after a most cruel manner."

Scholar Bat Ye’or is an expert on dhimmitude, the oppressive system for non-Muslims under Islamic rule, described in the book Islam and Dhimmitude. She writes this about the Jihad slave system: "When Amr conquered Tripoli (Libya) in 643, he forced the Jewish and Christian Berbers to give their wives and children as slaves to the Arab army as part of their jizya. From 652 until its conquest in 1276, Nubia was forced to send an annual contingent of slaves to Cairo. Treaties concluded with the towns of Transoxiana [Iranian central Asia], Sijistan [eastern Iran], Armenia, and Fezzan (Maghreb) under the Umayyads and Abbasids stipulated an annual dispatch of slaves from both sexes. However, the main sources for the supply of slaves remained the regular raids on villages within the dar-al-harb [non-Islamic regions] and the military expeditions which swept more deeply into the infidel lands, emptying towns and provinces of their inhabitants."

According to Sir Jadunath Sarkar, the pre-eminent historian of Mughal India, "The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State. If any infidel is suffered to exist in the community, it is as a necessary evil, and for a transitional period only…A non-Muslim therefore cannot be a citizen of the State; he is a member of a depressed class; his status is a modified form of slavery…In short, his continued existence in the State after the conquest of his country by the Muslims is conditional upon his person and property made subservient to the cause of Islam."

As Robert Spencer says: "Although the strictness with which the laws of dhimmitude (the subservient status of Jews and Christians) were enforced varied, they were never abolished, and during times of relaxation the subject populations always lived in fear that they would be enforced with new stringency. Muslim rulers did not forget that the Qur’an mandates that both Jews and Christians must ‘feel themselves subdued.’ One notable instance is recounted by Arab historian Philip Hitti: ‘The caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e., yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves…and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle.’"

In 1888, a Tunisian Jew noted: "The Jew is prohibited in this country to wear the same clothes as a Muslim and may not wear a red tarbush. He can be seen to bow down with his whole body to a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking him in the face, a gesture that can prove to be of the gravest consequence. Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has been the custom from time immemorial."

Maimonides, the renowned Jewish philosopher and physician, stated that "the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us…Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they." Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but Muslims he said, will interpret what they are taught "according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason…..they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them." But the Christians "admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact."

Richard Fletcher states in his book Moorish Spain that: "Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch."

In the essay Andalusian Myth, Eurabian Reality, Bat Ye’or and Andrew G. Bostom examine the myth of the supposed "tolerance" enjoyed by Christians and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula: "Segregated in special quarters, they had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, the Christian peasantry formed a servile class attached to the Arab domains; many abandoned their land and fled to the towns. Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing."

This humiliating status provoked many revolts, punished by massacres. Insurrections erupted in Saragossa in 781 and 881, Cordova (805, 818), Merida (805-813, 828 and the following year, and in 868), and again in Toledo (811-819). Many of the insurgents were crucified, as prescribed in the Koran 5:33:
"The revolt in Cordova of 818 was crushed by three days of massacres and pillage, with 300 notables crucified and 20 000 families expelled. Feuding was endemic in the Andalusian cities between the different sectors of the population: Arab and Berber colonizers, Iberian Muslim converts (Muwalladun) and Christian dhimmis (Mozarabs). There were rarely periods of peace in the Amirate of Cordova (756-912), nor later. Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year, sometimes twice a year, raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Thousands of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousand of Christian slaves brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women."

In Granada, up to five thousand Jews perished in a pogrom by Muslims in 1066. The Berber Almohads in Spain and North Africa (1130-1232) wreaked enormous destruction on the Jewish and Christian populations. Suspicious of the sincerity of converts to Islam, Muslim "inquisitors" (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslims. A prominent Andalusian jurist, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (d. 1064), wrote that Allah has established the infidels’ ownership of their property merely to provide booty for Muslims.

According to Joan Acocella, "In view of Lewis’s high opinion of learning in Al Andalus, it is amazing how little space he gives it." In the twelfth century, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) wrote his commentaries on Aristotle, and Moses Maimonides produced his Aristotle-inflected Guide to the Perplexed. However, both these men had to flee Andalusia. Averroes, despite being an Islamic judge, was banished, his books burnt, and he was forced to emigrate to Morocco (in 1195) where he died in 1198. Maimonides had to flee in order to escape the Almohad Jihad.

It is true that the highly influential Christian scholar St. Thomas Aquinas in the late thirteenth century quoted both these men, but he was critical of the way Averroes used Aristotle and had at his disposal a more complete body of Aristotelian writings than any of the Muslim philosophers ever did. Another Catholic, the Flemish Dominican Friar William of Moerbeke, was heavily involved in translating Byzantine manuscripts into Latin. According to scholar John Dunn in his book Setting the People Free, the word demokratia entered modern Western discourse in the 1260s in William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s Politics, "the most systematic analysis of politics as a practical activity which survived from the ancient world."

Iranian intellectual Amir Taheri states that: "There was no word in any of the Muslim languages for democracy until the 1890s. Even then the Greek word democracy entered Muslim languages with little change: democrasi in Persian, dimokraytiyah in Arabic, demokratio in Turkish.…It is no accident that early Muslims translated numerous ancient Greek texts but never those related to political matters. The great Avicenna himself translated Aristotle’s Poetics. But there was no translation of Aristotle’s Politics in Persian until 1963."

Muslims inherited a great deal of accumulated knowledge when they conquered the Middle East, and most of the translations of earlier works were done by non-Muslims.

According to Robert Spencer, "The Christian Huneyn ibn-Ishaq (809-873) translated many works by Aristotle, Galen, Plato and Hippocrates into Syriac [in Baghdad], from which they were translated into Arabic by his son. The Jacobite Christian Yahya ibn ‘Adi (893-974) also translated works of philosophy into Arabic, and wrote his own; his treatise The Reformation of Morals has occasionally been erroneously attributed to various of his Muslim contemporaries. His student, another Christian named Abu ‘Ali ‘Isa ibn Zur’a (943-1008), also made Arabic translations of Aristotle and other Greek writers from Syriac. The first Arabic-language medical treatise was written by a Christian priest and translated into Arabic by a Jewish doctor in 683. The first hospital, another source of pride among Muslims and often a prominent feature of Islamic accomplishment lists, was founded in Baghdad during the Abbasid caliphate by a Nestorian Christian. A pioneering medical school was founded at Gundeshapur in Persia — by Assyrian Christians."

Greek or other pre-Islamic learning was never integrated into the regular curriculum at Islamic schools, as it was in European universities. The German-Syrian writer Bassam Tibi points out that "science" in the madrasa meant the study of the Koran, the hadith, Arab history etc.: "Some Islamic historians wrongly translate the term madrasa as university. This is plainly incorrect: If we understand a university as universitas litterarum, or consider, without the bias of Eurocentrism, the cast of the universitas magistrorum of the thirteenth century in Paris, we are bound to recognise that the university as a seat for free and unrestrained enquiry based on reason, is a European innovation in the history of mankind."

In The Rise of Early Modern Science, second edition, scholar Toby E. Huff warns that if Islam had taken over Europe, later Western scientific achievements would have been impossible: "If Spain had persisted as an Islamic land into the later centuries - say, until the time of Napoleon - it would have retained all the ideological, legal, and institutional defects of Islamic civilization. A Spain dominated by Islamic law would have been unable to found new universities based on the European model of legally autonomous corporate governance, as corporations do not exist in Islamic law. Furthermore, the Islamic model of education rested on the absolute primacy of fiqh, of legal studies, and the standard of preserving the great traditions of the past. This was symbolically reflected in the ijaza, the personal authorization to transmit knowledge from the past given by a learned man, a tradition quite different from the West’s group-administered certification (through examination) of demonstrated learning. In the actual event, the founding of Spanish universities in the thirteenth century, first in Palencia (1208-9), Valladolid, Salamanca (1227-8), and so on, occurred in long-established Christian areas, and the universities were modeled after the constitutions of Paris and Bologna."

Apparently, David Levering Lewis doesn’t care much about art, as he devotes little space to the subject in God’s Crucible. Pictorial arts are banned in Islam. Images have been made at certain times, but paintings, and certainly not sculptures, never had anything remotely resembling the importance they enjoyed in Western art. The Islamic world could produce some good poets, for instance the Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) whose works are still popular, but they tended to be unorthodox Muslims.

Jihad piracy and slavery remained a serious threat to Europeans for more than a thousand years. As historian Ibn Khaldun proudly proclaimed about the early Middle Ages: "The Christian could no longer float a plank upon the sea." The reason why the West for centuries didn’t have easy access to the Classical learning of the Byzantine Empire was because endemic Muslim raids made the Mediterranean unsafe for regular travel. It has to be the height of absurdity to block access to something and then take credit for transmitting it, yet that is precisely what Muslims do. As stronger states slowly grew up in the West, regular contact with their Christian cousins in Byzantium was gradually re-established, especially with the city-states of northern Italy where during the Renaissance the printing press – an invention aggressively rejected by Muslims – made Greco-Roman texts, with translations aided by Greek-speaking Byzantine refugees from Islamic Jihad, available to future generations. Westerners eventually gained access to the Greco-Roman manuscripts preserved in Constantinople, the Second Rome. Consequently, they no longer needed to rely on limited translations in Arabic, which had often been made from Byzantine manuscripts in the first place, and frequently by Christian or Jewish translators.

The Middle East had for thousands of years been more advanced than most of Europe. This situation didn’t begin with the introduction of Islam. On the contrary: it ended with Islamization. The region we today call the Greater Middle East, which includes Egypt, Palestine, Syria, south-eastern Anatolia, Iraq, Iran and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the seat of the oldest known civilizations on the planet and the source of many of the most important inventions in human history, including writing and the alphabet.

It is surely no coincidence that the first major civilization on the Indian subcontinent, the Harappan Civilization, arose in the Indus Valley in the northwest, i.e. closest to Sumerian Mesopotamia. A little understood culture at the Mediterranean island of Malta has left us with megalithic temples that may be the oldest freestanding stone structures in the world. Dating back to 3600 BC, they predate the pyramids of Egypt with a thousand years. Still, it is not a coincidence that literate European civilizations took root in lands that were geographically close to Egypt, the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia: The Minoan civilization at the island of Crete, later mainland Greece and the Balkans, then Rome. Even in the Roman Empire, the Eastern part was more urbanized than its Northern and Western regions, which is one of the reasons why the Eastern half proved more durable.

Contrast this with modern times, when southeast Europe (the Balkans) is Europe’s number one trouble spot. So is the original seat of the first Indian civilization, in Pakistan and Kashmir. The Greater Middle East thus went from being a global center of civilization to being a global center of anti-civilization. This change largely coincided with the Islamization of the region.

Muslim reformist Irshad Manji has asked in her book The Trouble with Islam what caused the earlier "golden age" of Islam, and concludes, with a few reservations, that "tolerance served as the best way to build and maintain the Islamic empire." In light of the evidence quoted above I disagree with her, and even more so with David Levering Lewis. Islam’s much-vaunted "golden age" was in reality the twilight of the conquered pre-Islamic cultures, an echo of times passed. The brief cultural blossoming during the first centuries of Islamic rule owed its existence almost entirely to the pre-Islamic heritage in a region that was still, for a while, majority non-Muslim.

I’ve recently been re-reading some of the books of American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond, including Guns, Germs, and Steel. What strikes me is how Diamond, with his emphasis on historical materialism, fails to explain the rise of the West and especially why English, not Arabic, Chinese, Sanskrit or Mayan, became the global lingua franca. His most important flaw is his complete failure to explain how the Greater Middle East went from being a center of civilization to being a center of anti-civilization. This was not caused by smallpox or because zebras are more difficult to domesticate than water buffaloes. It was caused by Islam. Yet is striking to notice how Diamond totally ignores the influence of Islam. This demonstrates clearly that any historical explanation that places too much emphasis on material issues and too little on the impact of human ideas is bound to end up with false or misleading conclusions.

The Truth About Islam in Europe | The Brussels Journal

Apostasy and Death Penalty

Published:
Warning: date() expects parameter 2 to be long, array given in /home/sloki/user/t20498/sites/islamlib.com/www/lib/lib.php on line 149
23/1/2008

Meanwhile, no single verse of Quran declare that apostates should be killed. Allah would certainly have included this important penalty in the Quran if he wanted it performed. In fact, Quran clearly guarantees freedom of religion. Jawdat Said observed that the above hadith is dla?if (weak), since it conflicts with the fundamental Islamic teaching: namely freedom of religion.

By: Abd Moqsith Ghazali

I heard that several Muslim leaders in Indonesia have been considering the possibility of enforcing death punishment upon Muslim who leave Islam and convert to other religion (apostate). In the past, the Melaka Empire/ Malacca Sultanate under Sultan Muzaffar Shah?s reign (1450-1458) prescribed death penalty for Muslim who commits apostasy based on Melaka Constitution: Undang-Undang Darat Melaka, Undang-Undang Melayu, Undang-Undang Negeri dan Pelayaran (Laws of Melaka, Malay Constitution, the Maritime Laws of Melaka). Article 36 of the constitution mentioned, ?death penalty must be applied upon the apostate?. This exclusive view is based on a hadith (prophet Muhammad?s sayings) , "man baddala dinahu faqtuluhu" (Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.).
A question arises: is it possible to punish a Muslim who commit apostasy based on the above hadith? The answer is certainly not. Unlike the Melaka Empire which refers to the Islamic jurisprudence, the modern and democratic Indonesia is based on Pancasila and 1945 Constitution (UUD ?45), which guarantee the right to exercise freedom of religion in Indonesia. Anyone who convert religion is not a criminal and therefore not to be punished. Hence, prescribing death penalty upon Indonesian Muslim who commit apostasy violated the 1945 Constitution and UU RI No. 39/1999 on human rights which guarantee full freedom for every citizen whether to take or leave any religion.
Besides, the above hadith canot be simply used as justification, since it is doubtful from every aspects. Status of this hadith is ahad (which has been narrated by few people) instead of mutawaatir (which has been narrated by a number of people in every level of the chain such that it is impossible for all of them to make a mistake or error). Imam Abu Hanifah argued that dalalah or the meaning of hadith ahad is zhanni (non-definite or indecisive) instead of qath?I (conclusive or decisive). Khudlari Bik, an expert of principle of Islamic jurisprudence (ushul fiqh), explained that hadith ahad cannot abrogate the general verses of Quran. While the general verses of Quran is qathi, hadith ahad is zhanni therefore Tajuddin al-Subki in Jam`u al-Jawami argued that the zhanni cannot abrogate the qath`i.
Meanwhile, no single verse of Quran declare that apostates should be killed. Allah would certainly have included this important penalty in the Quran if he wanted it performed. In fact, Quran clearly guarantees freedom of religion. Jawdat Said observed that the above hadith is dla?if (weak), since it conflicts with the fundamental Islamic teaching: namely freedom of religion. Hence, the dalalah or justification of hadith is weak and therefore cannot abrogate the general principle of Quran which support freedom of religion.
Furthermore, Jamal al-Banna questioned about the integrity of the narrator of hadith. The chain of narration ended on Ikrimah, whose hadith narration often rejected by Imam Muslim. Imam Muslim quoted from ikrimah only a hadith on pilgrimage, which he narrated together with Sa?id bin Jubair. Sahih Muslim (Muslim?s hadith collection) did not mention hadith on death penalty for the apostate. It is reasonable because Ikrimah was known as a liar (kadzzab) among the experts of hadith. Doubt on the existence of hadits goes on, since the narrators including Ikrimah had never explained about sabab al wurud, or in which context and what for the Prophet stated that.
Apart from that, even if the hadith does really exist, history indicated that prophet Muhammad had never kill the apostates. Several classical literatures mentioned that in the days of prophet Muhammad, at least twelve Muslims reverted from Islam, like al-Harits bin Suwaid al-Anshari, and moved away from Medina to Mecca. Ubaidullah bin Jahsy, for instance, went to Habasyah where he converted to Christian and died as Christian. However, during his lifetime, the Prophet did not command his companions to chase them although they committed apostasy.
People who want to enforce death penalty for Muslim who commit apostasy do not realize the defects of the above hadith. Hopefully, as this explanation arrives before them, their eagerness to kill the apostate will be reduced.

Liberal Islam Network