by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n I<\/span>slamic apologist extraordinaire Karen Armstrong is at it again.\u00a0 In an article entitled \u201cBalancing the Prophet\u201d published by the Financial Times, the self-proclaimed \u201cfreelance monotheist\u201d engages in what can only be considered second-rate sophistry.<\/p>\n The false statements begin in her opening paragraph:<\/p>\n Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure.\u2026 The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, \u201cpeople in the west\u201d have had something of a \u201cdim\u201d view of Muhammad for nearly half a millenium before the Crusades. As early as the 8th<\/sup>century \u2014 just a few generations after Muhammad \u2014 Byzantine chronicler Theophanes wrote in his\u00a0Chronographia<\/i>\u00a0that:<\/p>\n He [Muhammad] taught those who gave ear to him that the one slaying the enemy \u2014 or being slain by the enemy \u2014 entered into paradise [e.g., Koran 9:111]. And he said paradise was carnal and sensual \u2014 orgies of eating, drinking, and women. Also, there was a river of wine \u2026 and the women were of another sort, and the duration of sex greatly prolonged and its pleasure long-enduring [e.g., 56: 7-40, 78:31, 55:70-77].\u00a0 And all sorts of other nonsense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This passage totally contradicts Armstrong\u2019s claims: 1) It wasn\u2019t\u00a0only<\/i>\u00a0during the Crusades \u2014 when, as Armstrong would have it, popes desperately needed to demonize Muhammad and Islam in order to rally support for the Crusades \u2014 that Westerners began to see him as a \u201csinister figure.\u201d Many in the West have seen him as that from the very start.\u00a0 2) Thus claims of Muhammad being a \u201clecherous pervert\u201d were not due to any \u201cill-conceived envy\u201d on the part of 12th<\/sup>-century popes trying to \u201cimpose celibacy on the reluctant clergy.\u201d (Indeed, this last notion posited by Armstrong \u2014 an ex-nun \u2014 appears to be more telling of her own \u201cill-conceived envy\u201d against the Church.) 3) Despite the famous mantra that the West is \u201cignorant\u201d of Islam \u2014 dear to apologists like Armstrong \u2014 this passage reveals that, from the start, Westerners were in fact aware of some aspects of the Koran.<\/p>\n Having distorted history, Armstrong next goes on to distort Islamic theology:<\/p>\n Until the 1950s, no major Muslim thinker had made holy war a central pillar of Islam. The Muslim ideologues Abu ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), among the first to do so, knew they were proposing a controversial innovation. They believed it was justified by the current political emergency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 1) Even better than a \u201cmajor Muslim thinker,\u201d Allah himself proclaims: \u201cFight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger [i.e., uphold Sharia], nor embrace the true faith, [even if they are] from among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay tribute with willing submission, and feel themselves utterly subdued\u201d\u00a0(Koran 9:29). Muhammad confirms: “I have been commanded [by Allah] to fight against mankind until they testify that none but Allah is to be worshipped and that Muhammad is Allah\u2019s Messenger\u201d (Bukhari B2N24; next to the Koran, the second most authoritative text in Islam). The word \u201cuntil\u201d in both quotes should demonstrate the perpetual nature of these statements: there are still Jews and Christians who have yet to be \u201csubdued\u201d; and all of mankind has yet to \u201ctestify that none but Allah is to be worshipped and that Muhammad is Allah\u2019s Messenger.”<\/p>\n 2) Based on the above (as well as countless other Koranic verses and oral traditions of Muhammad, not to mention the course of conquest the first \u201crightly-guided\u201d caliphs followed), Islam\u2019s jurists and theologians throughout the ages have all reached the consensus \u2014 binding on the entire Muslim community \u2014 that whenever the Muslim world is\u00a0militarily capable<\/i>, it must go on the offensive until it subsumes the entire world.\u00a0 Moreover, this world-view was postulated and acted upon well before Armstrong\u2019s blame-all \u2014 the Crusades \u2014 ever took place.<\/p>\n 3) So Qutb and Mawdudi were certainly not, as she puts it, \u201cthe first major Muslim thinkers to do so.\u201d Their claim to fame is that they were great articulators of jihad who awoke the\u00a0umma<\/i>\u00a0to its obligation \u2014 an obligation, however, which was formulated by the great sheikhs of Islam (such as revered scholars Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim of the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century) who, in their turn, based it on the words of the Koran and Muhammad. But Armstrong is right in that they\u00a0did<\/i>\u00a0stress jihad due to the \u201ccurrent political emergency\u201d \u2014 but not in the way she means (i.e., \u201cself-defense\u201d): in their lifetime the Ottoman empire \u2014 which, until its last moribund centuries, waged one jihad after another, terrorizing and conquering many of its Christian neighbors \u2014 fell and there was no longer a central Muslim sultanate, or \u201ccaliphate,\u201d to maintain even a semblance of Islamic power, authority, and expansion. This needed \u2014 and still needs \u2014 to be rectified under Islam\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n In fact, Qutb was a staunch opponent of those apologists of Islam in his day who were \u2014 just like Armstrong \u2014 trying to reinterpret jihad into a defensive movement. Nearly half a century ago, Qutb wrote:<\/p>\n As to persons who attempt to defend the concept of Islamic jihad by interpreting it in the narrow sense of the current concept of defensive war\u2026 they lack understanding of the nature of Islam and its primary aim\u2026\u00a0 Can anyone say that if Abu Bakr, Omar, or Uthman [the \u201crightly-guided\u201d caliphs] had been satisfied that the Roman or Persian powers were not going to attack the Arabian penninsula [in the 7th<\/sup>\u00a0century], that they would not have striven to spread the message of Islam throughout the world?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n During the reign of the \u201crightly-guided\u201d caliphs, Islam, through the sword alone and with much bloodshed, burst forth from Arabia as far west as Spain, as far east as Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Armstrong then spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing author Robert Spencer and his new book\u00a0The Truth about Muhammad<\/i>:<\/p>\n The traditions of any religion are multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to quote so selectively that the main thrust of the faith is distorted. But Spencer is not interested in balance. He picks out only those aspects of Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For example, he cites only passages from the Koran that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does not mention the numerous verses that insist on the continuity of Islam with the People of the Book: \u2018Say to them: we believe what you believe; your God and our God is one [29:46]\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But is Armstrong herself not being a bit disingenuous by assuring the people of the West \u2014 who are primarily Christian \u2014 that the Koran\u2019s notion of God \u201cinsists on continuity\u201d with theirs?\u00a0 What about the other Koranic verses: \u201cInfidels are those who say Allah is one of three [i.e., the Christian Trinity ]\u201d (5:73). \u201cInfidels are those who say Allah is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary\u201d (5:17).\u00a0 Perhaps former-nun Armstrong is unaware that the divine nature of Christ \u2014 anathema to Islam \u2014 is fundamental to the Christian view of God?<\/p>\n Moreover, if writers like Spencer are guilty of quoting Koranic verses \u201cthat are hostile to Jews and Christians\u201d that may well be due to Islam\u2019s pivotal doctrine of abrogation \u2014 wherein verses revealed later in Muhammad\u2019s career (all the violent and intolerant ones such as 5:73, 5:17, 9:5, and 9:29) supercede and thus cancel out any contradictory verses revealed earlier, such as Armstrong\u2019s 29:46 and most of the other peaceful ones which apologists try to make the cornerstone of Islam.<\/p>\n Finally, if books like Spencer\u2019s focus on the violent side of Islam without devoting enough attention to Islam\u2019s more \u201cpositive\u201d aspects \u2014 is that not only natural? Let us be perfectly clear: most people in the West who are interested in learning more about Islam are so due to the 9\/11 attacks (which were, for the record, perpetrated by al Qaeda, Muslims who insist that Islam informed their actions). In other words, most Westerners do not have an intrinsic interest in Islam; instead, they are primarily interested in how it affects\u00a0them<\/i>, as non-Muslims. So it should be understandable if books written about Islam in the West focus more on that which concerns it \u2014 jihad \u2014 than on Islam\u2019s more peaceful side.<\/p>\n Indeed, Armstrong\u2019s lament that \u201cthere is widespread ignorance of Islam in the west\u201d and that we should rectify this by developing a more \u201cbalanced\u201d and \u201cnuanced\u201d understanding of the Koran is as ridiculous as asking Muslims living in Palestine and Iraq to overlook the \u201cCrusader\u201d presence there and instead consult the Bible itself and see how many portions of it accord with peace and justice. Worse, since nothing in the Bible comes anywhere near to theologically justifying violence against the \u201cOther\u201d in perpetuity as found in the Koran.<\/p>\n In the final analysis, Armstrong\u2019s historical and theological \u201cdiscrepancies\u201d (to be polite) are baffling \u2014 particularly her many one-line sentences that simply defy logic: \u201cMuhammad was not a belligerent warrior.\u201d \u201cThe idea that Islam should conquer the world was alien to the Koran\u2026\u201d \u201cMuhammad did not shun non-Muslims as \u2018unbelievers\u2019 [i.e., infidels] but from the beginning co-operated with them in the pursuit of the common good.\u201d \u201cIslam was not a closed system at variance with other traditions. Muhammad insisted that relations between the different groups must be egalitarian.\u201d These spectacular statements make one truly question if Armstrong has consulted any of the primary and most reliable sources on the life and deeds of Muhammad, such as 8th<\/sup>\u00a0century Ibn Ishaq\u2019sSira\u00a0<\/i>(\u201cLife of the Prophet\u201d), the histories of al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari, and the countless\u00a0hadiths \u2014\u00a0<\/i>all which unequivocally counter her imaginary portrayal of Muhammad, who she calls, in one of her books \u201ca prophet for our time.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, as dubious as Armstrong\u2019s claims may be, one should be careful to take her background into consideration: though no Mother Teresa, as a former nun Armstrong must surely possess a proclivity towards helping and standing up for others. (One is reminded, for instance, of the late Sister Leonella who, after devoting her life to helping the sick and needy in Muslim Somalia, was shot four times in the back by Somali gunmen, dying at the age of 65. Motive: one week earlier the Pope quoted from a Byzantine historical text \u2014 another, not unlike Theophanes\u2019 \u2014 that was unflattering to Muhammad and that sparked, once again, riots and outranges around the Islamic world).<\/p>\n Still, in the end, one can sympathize with Armstrong\u2019s closing sentence: \u201cUntil we all learn to approach one another with generosity and respect, we cannot hope for peace.\u201d But we should also hasten to add the more important virtues of honesty, sincerity, and truthfulness.<\/p>\n