The indirect but unequivocal command to Muslims to conquer the world is of extraordinary interest, since one of the main sins that Muslims attribute and attribute to the West is “imperialism”:
“Imperialism is a particularly important issue in the argumentation of the inhabitants of the Middle East, and especially the Islamists, against the West. For them, the term “imperialism” has a special meaning. For example, this term is never used by Muslims in relation to the great Muslim empires established initially by the Arabs and in later periods by the Turks, who conquered vast tracts of land and incorporated their populations into the ‘house of Islam’. It was perfectly legal for the Muslims to conquer parts of Europe and subjugate their populations, thus enabling them, but not forcing them, to embrace the true faith. But, when Europeans try to conquer and subjugate Muslims, that was a sin, and even worse to try to convert them to another faith. In the Muslim worldview, conversion to Islam is a boon to the convert and a beneficence to those who convert him. According to Islamic law, leaving Islam is tantamount to apostasy – a fundamental crime for both the one who goes astray and the one who leads him astray. On this point the law is very clear: If a Muslim renounces Islam, even if a convert returns to his old faith, the penalty is death.” (Bernard Lewis – “The Crisis of Islam”)
In this case we must notice that Lewis’s comment about not forcing conversion to the new faith is misleading. It is true that the Qur’an provides a kind of “brake” to the “moderate” Muslims: “There shall be no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an 2: 256), but if we take a look at the rest of the Qur’an, as well as in Muslim history, we will see that … we probably shouldn’t expect much from this phrase. As things stand, this sentence provides extremely weak support for the rather …. invisible Muslim tolerance. Also, the Muslim concept of tolerance is limited to Jews and Christians – i.e. the “people of the Scriptures” – while the practices of Buddhists, Hindus and other pagans are considered by Muslims to be so spiritually depraved that they completely exceed all limits. Even the People of the Scriptures must restrain themselves and “humbly” pay the burdensome head tax “jizyah” to their Muslim masters.
From a doctrinal point of view, the way in which Muslims perceive tolerance towards the infidel is a situation in which non-Muslims will simply be politically and economically subjugated, converted, or slaughtered. The fact that the Muslim world for most of its history has not been united under a single government and may never be united again in the future is irrelevant to the Muslim desire for sovereignty.
Lewis observes that “for the Moslems, no piece of ground, once added to the realm of Islam, can ever be permanently abandoned.” We may also add that no conscience once its bearer joins the kingdom of Islam can ever be completely abandoned, for, as Lewis again notes, the penalty for apostasy is death. This fact of institutionally consolidated intolerance no degree of liberal interpretation will ever be able to completely neutralize!
Within the … peaceful “House of Islam”, the penalty for acquiring too much knowledge about this world (so as to ultimately question the tenets of the Faith) is death. If a Muslim in the current 21st century loses his faith, even if he has been a Muslim for just one hour, the expected “normal” reaction throughout the Muslim world is to put him to death.
While the Qur’an merely describes the punishments that threaten the apostate in the next world (Qur’an 3: 86-91), the hadith [texts of Islamic tradition that report the sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad or even his approval of what was said or executed before him. The hadith literature is recognized today as the main foundation of Islam, second only to the Qur’an] they emphatically describe how justice should be administered in this world: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him!”. There is no metaphorical formulation here behind which this command can be hidden, and it seems that no interpretative process, even the unbearably liberal one, can ignore it. It is certainly possible to be tempted to place greater emphasis on the fact that this command does not appear in the Qur’an itself, but from a practical point of view, it seems that the hadiths shape the Muslim worldview to a similar extent. Given that the hadiths often serve as the lens through which the Qur’an is interpreted, many Muslim scholars regard them as the greatest authority on the practice of Islam.
It is certainly true that some liberal Muslim jurists believe that the apostate must have spoken against Islam before they sanctioned this murder, but the sentence itself is generally not rated as…extreme. The right to kill apostates is a matter of general acceptance, if not of practice. This fully explains why there was not a single apparent “sane” Muslim on Earth when Imam Khomeini issued his fatfa (edict) on the blasphemer Salman Rushdie.
Both Judaism and Christianity could present themselves as equally intolerant, but it has been several centuries since these religions last did so. However, today it is an indisputable reality within Islam that if you open the impermissible door in your search for the world, your brothers in God will automatically judge that for this reason you must die. Therefore we must ask ourselves with deep consideration, in what sense do Muslims believe that …. there should be no “compulsion on religion”. What do they mean? What are the limits of coercion according to them?
Islam, more than any other religion invented by man, has all the characteristics of a pure-blood death cult. Sayyid Qutb, one of the most authoritative thinkers in the Islamic world and the “father” of contemporary Sunni Islam, wrote: “The Qur’an points out another reprehensible feature of the Jews: their fearless desire to live, regardless of their price, their honor, their quality of their lives or dignity” [This is emphatically emphasized by Paul Lawrence Berman (the first major ideologue of the American “War on Terror”, claiming that the West faces another “threat from a pathologically irrational and bloodthirsty ideology of hatred and reaction, not dissimilar to the Bolshevik and fascist epidemic of evil”), in his essay “Terrorism and Liberalism”].
This statement of Sayyid Qutb is actually a miracle of comprehensiveness. Although it may seem like nothing more than a simple disparaging insinuation against the Jews, it actually represents an extremely dense distillation of the Muslim worldview. If we examine it a little more carefully, a whole mechanism of morpho-functional intolerance and suicidal bigotry emerges before our eyes. The controversial Koranic prohibition of suicide appears to be out of the question. There are sure to be Muslim jurists who will say that suicide bombings are against the tenets of Islam (by the way, where are those meek jurists anyway?) and therefore, that suicide bombers are not martyrs but … uninvited Persian newcomers to the Islamic Hell. Even if there is such a minority perception, it does not change the fact that suicide bombings have been rationalized by much of the Muslim world (where they are characteristically called “holy blasts”). And indeed, given the tenets of Islam, rationalization of this kind is surprisingly easy.
In light of what devout Muslims believe—about jihad, about martyrdom, about Heaven, and about infidels—suicide bombings are unlikely to strike them as violations of their faith. It is therefore no surprise that those who die in this way are considered venerable martyrs by many of their co-religionists. A military action, which entails a great risk of death, could in any case be considered a “suicide mission” blurring the distinction between suicide and death in the line of duty for someone fighting in the name of God. But the essential conclusion for the would-be witness seems to be: “As long as you kill infidels and apostates ‘defending Islam’, Allah does not care whether you are killed or not!”
Let’s imagine that one day peace reigns in the Middle East. What will Muslims say about the suicide bombings that the vast majority of them supported? Will they say that “the brutal Israeli occupation has made us lose our minds”? Will they say “we were a generation of socially awkward misfits”? How will they justify the celebrations that follow these “holy explosions”? A young man, belonging to an affluent family, fills his clothes with explosives and ball bearings and annihilates himself along with twenty or so young people in a disco, whereupon his mother immediately receives the warm congratulations of hundreds of her neighbors. What will the truly heroic and defiant Palestinians think of this kind of behavior after peace prevails? If they remain devout Muslims, this is all they should think: “Our children are in Paradise, and they have prepared the ground for us to follow them. Hell is ready for unbelievers.” In this case, it is probably an almost inviolable principle of human nature that no peace, (if it ever prevails), can long survive based on beliefs of this kind.
We should not overlook the fact that a significant percentage of Muslims around the world believe that the people who blew up the World Trade Center are now sitting at the “right hand” of Allah, between “…rivers of pure water and rivers of milk that is always fresh.” . In rivers of excellent wine for those who drink it, and in rivers of pure honey” (47: 15). The irony is almost a miracle in itself: Today’s particularly oppressive and sexually repressed people of the world (people who went into a murderous rage when they saw the TV series “Baywatch” on air, considering it … pornographic) are magnetized by the prospect of martyrdom and from a perception of Paradise, which probably reminds more of … an outdoor walk of dubious aesthetics.
Apart from the terrible moral implications that arise from this mentality, (the one originating from another world), we must of course note that the Paradise of the Qur’an is also completely unreal. For a 7th century Prophet to say that Paradise is a garden, adorned with rivers of milk and honey, is about the same as for a 21st century Prophet to say that Paradise is a city of glittering metal-glass buildings with one-story apartments, where all Tenant souls have a new one… Lexus luxury car. If one thinks about it, even for a moment, one must conclude that such proclamations convey no lofty message at all about life after death, but speak volumes about the limits of human imagination.
For devout Muslims, religious identity seems to trump all others. In our dialogue with the Muslim world, we are faced with people who are obsessed with beliefs for which there is little logical support, so that in the end they cannot even be discussed coolly and rationally, yet these are the very beliefs that exist unshakable and hidden under many of the claims they are going to make against us!
We should be especially concerned with the fact that the “beliefs” of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence as well. It is clear that there is little chance of a cold war with an Islamic regime equipped with long-range nuclear weapons. For a cold war to exist, there must be two opposing sides deterred by the mutual threat of death. But apparently the ideas of martyrdom and jihad exceed the logic that allowed the United States of America and the Soviet Union to pass half a century in peace, hanging with relative stability on the brink of Armageddon.
What will we do if an Islamic regime, (which seems to be deeply moved by the mere mention of Paradise), ever acquires nuclear weapons? So based on a horrible hypothetical scenario, a large part of the Earth’s population can be exterminated because of some religious ideas, [ideas which, when examined with cold logic, fall in the same category as Pastafarianism, Cthulhu, Superman and …….mermaids!] The fact that the death of many of us would be a horrible absurdity for the sake of a (rather tasteless) myth does not necessarily mean that it cannot happen.
The great Samuel Huntington has described the conflict between the West and Islam in a phrase that has become famous, as the “clash of civilizations.” Huntington went on to observe that where Muslim and non-Muslim countries border, there is a clear trend towards armed conflict. Discovering a catchphrase for an unfortunate event, he declared that, “Islam has bloody borders.” However, many thinkers have turned against Huntington’s position.
Whether or not we like Huntington’s sentiment, one thing is clear: The evil that has finally reached the countries of the European Continent is not just the evil of potential terrorism. It is the evil of the exacerbated fanatical religious faith, at the time of political domination!
Of course, Islam is not the only religious formation to undergo such horrific transformations, although in the current period of history, it is the only one on the rise.
