A FRIEND OF MINE wrote me with a question: "Do you know of Sami Zaatari from YouTube? I wish I had my Quran because I was watching a video and he was talking about how anti-Islamists use a verse from the Quran to prove that Muslims are told to kill non-believers. It was chapter 2 verse 191. He then quoted verse 190 which says Muslims should only kill in self-defense and if the non-believers stop then they should stop. I would like to know if these verses were actually written in sequence or is it a result of the Quran being out of order."I love answering questions like this. My answer was: "No, I don't know who Sami Zaatari is. But he is correct about the verses in the Quran. They were written in sequence." Here are the verses:
2:190 Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors.
2:191 And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.
I told my friend: The verses Sami Zaatari quoted are correct, but he is trying to pull one over on you. He is implying that the verse means Muslims are only allowed violence in self-defense. As I'm sure he is aware, the more fair-minded, egalitarian passages have been abrogated by the less fair and more violent passages. But even if this particular passage was not abrogated, his statement would still be misleading because simply being a member of a free society is enough of an offense to justify "defensive" hostilities to an orthodox Muslim. Read more about that here:
Supporting Israel is offense enough to justify defensive hostilities. Being an American and thus "supporting" the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is offense enough to justify killing us all.
According to Mohammad, merely trying to inhibit Islam's spread is an "attack on Islam" which justifies violent defense.
The cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, for example, were considered an attack on Islam and justified the riots that led to the deaths of 180 people — killed because of cartoons! It doesn't take much. Like I heard someone say the other day, what would be a smaller political statement than a cartoon? You can't really make a smaller protest against this aggressive ideology.
So even if "only" defensive warfare was justified by the Quran, it would not be a comforting thought. It would still not make this a peaceful or tolerant religion by any non-Muslim standards.
As it is, there are 109 verses in the Quran that advocate violence against non-Muslims.
And beyond that, Mohammad's example alone would be enough to justify unending warfare against unbelievers until every last non-Muslim has been subjugated under Sharia law. Mohammad's example must be followed.
I think Sami Zaatari's answer is a great example of taqiyya. He didn't really lie, but he was definitely practicing deception, and in a very crafty way. Here's another good example of taqiyya.
Statements like this are made frequently by people who know a lot about Islam. It is profoundly confusing to people. I believe the confusion is often caused deliberately. The answer is to take the Pledge. Reading the Quran is really the straight road to being permanently inoculated against the unending disinformation non-Muslims are being fed by Islamic apologists.
About a half hour after posting this article, I was reading Robert Spencer's excellent book, The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran. The section I read was a perfect thing to add to this article, but it was already complete, so I'll add it as a comment here. Spencer wrote:
ReplyDeleteMany of these benign interpretations are deceptive and untenable. For example, Muslim theologians and scholars in the West commonly assert that the Koran sanctions only defensive warfare, and to equate this with Catholic just war theory. As we have seen, however, what constitutes a "defensive" conflict is quite different in an Islamic context from what is generally understood in the West. A few years ago, at the popular website "Islam Q & A Online," the South African mufti Ebrahim Desai was asked a question of critical concern to Infidels: "I have a question about offensive jihad. Does it mean that we are to attack even those non-Muslims which [sic] don't do anything against Islam just because we have to propagate Islam?"
Desai's response was telling: "You should understand that we as Muslims firmly believe that the person who doesn't believe in Allah as he is required to, is a disbeliever who would be doomed to Hell eternally. Thus one of the primary responsibilities of the Muslim ruler is to spread Islam throughout the world, thus saving people from eternal damnation." Referring to a commentary on the Koran, he explained that "if a country doesn't allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying [sic] in waging Jihad against this country, so that the message of Islam can reach its inhabitants, thus saving them from the Fire of Jahannum [Hell]. If the Kuffaar [unbelievers] allow us to spread Islam peacefully, then we would not wage Jihad against them."
In other words, a country is left alone as long as it passively acquiesces to its Islamization. But if it is perceived to be hindering the spread of Islam, then Muslims are obliged to wage jihad against it. And such a jihad would be considered defensive — against the aggression of unbelief.