“If Jihad had been a transitory phenomenon in the life of the Muslim Umma [community or nation], all these sections of the Koranic text would not flooded by this kind of verse!… If Jihad were a passing phenomenon of Islam, the messenger of Allah… would not have said the following words to every Muslim until the Day of Judgment, ‘Whoever dies having never fought (in Jihad), nor having made up his mind to do so, dies on a branch of hypocrisy'”It is fashionable in some sections of the media and political Establishment in the West to deny the Islamic nature of the terrorism that has disfigured our world for the past generation or more. Here’s a quick selection of views expressed about ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)…
“Now let’s make… things clear: ISIS is not “Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIS’s victims have been Muslims.” Barack Obama, US President 2009-17.
“[ISIS] are not Muslims but monsters.” David Cameron, UK Prime Minster 2010-16.
“Islam itself is not itself our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever with terrorism.” Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State 2009-13, Democratic nominee for US presidency in 2016.
Three things strike me about these quotes (and there are lots more I could have used). First, not one of these people is a practising Muslim, despite the accusations against Barack Obama by, amongst others, Donald Trump. Secondly, not one of these people is an Islamic scholar. And thirdly, the sheer dishonesty of Clinton’s quote which equates an ideology (Islam) with a group of human beings.
Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian writer, poet and Islamic scholar. He was executed in 1966 for his alleged role in a plot to assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (see here for a Nasser quote I shared in 2017) and before that Qutb had spent much of the previous decade in prison. He can be fairly described as the intellectual godfather of modern day Islamism/Jihadism. His key works are Milestones and a thirty volume (!) commentary on the Koran called In the Shade of the Qur’an. May I suggest that Qutb knows more about Islam than Cameron, Obama and Clinton and anyone else whose automatic response to the mildest criticism of Islam is an accusation of the thoughtcrime of our time – Islamophobia – or (hilariously) of racism.
Islam is a nitpicking and legalistic religion. Its clergy are more akin to lawyers looking for precedents in the Koran, the Hadiths (saying of Muhammad) or the Sunnah (the actions of Muhammad and his Companions) than the priests of Christianity who have been given magic powers by the Apostolic Succession. Even the most brutal Jihadists of our times rely on jurisprudential justifications for their actions. The online magazine published by ISIS was called ‘Dabiq’ after the town in Syria where the final battle between true Muslims and their enemies will take place – think Armageddon in the lunatic and deeply disturbing Book of Revelation at the end of the Christian Bible.
To say that terrorism is nothing to do with Islam or to suggest that opposition to Islam is racist is completely ridiculous. Am I saying that all Muslims are terrorists? No, of course not; anyone with half a brain knows this. However, there is small but significant number of Muslims who do believe Islam is Jihad and that Jihad is Islam (challenging ‘The Triumph of the Will,’ like George Lucas did in 1977) I just looked in the phone book and counted 39 different Christian denominations in the Queensland town where I live; Islam is at least as divided into competing sects as Christianity and to deny the Islamic nature of certain groups is both cowardly and intellectually dishonest.
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