Analysis of Islam’s Hijacking

Who is hijacking peaceful Islam?

Laina Farhat Holzman
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Madeleine Albright, our former secretary of state, recently claimed that jihad is an “internal struggle,” not “holy war” Clever Islamists have been telling everybody from the president down that Islam is a “peaceful religion” that has been hijacked by some really violent people.

Bernard Lewis, the dean of Islamic studies, wrote “What Went Wrong” after we were attacked on 9/11 to try to explain Muslim anger and failure to thrive. A handful of brave Muslims have also published books discussing some horrific problems with Islam. And now a Muslim doctor, Tawfik Hamid, who was once a member of a terrorist cult, has published in the Wall Street Journal April 3 “The Trouble With Islam” and he says, “Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence” Mainstream!

Hamid shows that Islam was a violent religion from the very beginning. The Prophet Muhammad himself was violent, and the collected religious texts of Islam give multiple examples of this, usually explaining the necessity of such violence. Then how is this different from the violence in the Bible or the violence of such Christian practices as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Religious Wars of the 17th century? It is different. We don’t do this any more.

Two biographies of the Prophet Muhammad represent opposite ways two scholarly authors see this religion. Reza Aslan No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Random House June 2005 tells the story of Islam with sympathy and a good sense of history. He reminds us that this story begins in the 7th century and the players are people of their time and place. He presents the Prophet as a revolutionary who was doing nothing less than transforming a narrow, brutal tribal society into a universal Muslim community. And he is critical of those who followed in the leadership of Islam after Muhammad’s death, including the clerics who had a monopoly over interpreting and developing the institutions of Islam as a religion; something that Muhammad did not have time to do.

Aslan thus adds to the already popular notion that what Muhammad said and did was very different from how the religion was shaped — something comparable to the difference between Jesus and the religion that followed in his name. Using this excuse further, Aslan who is Iranian shows enormous sympathy for the Shiite side of the religious quarrel that erupted the moment the Prophet died. I find his arguments in this case completely unconvincing.

Robert Spencer’s “The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion Regnery Publishing, 2006 is a book every bit as scholarly as Aslan’s that uses most of the same sources, yet he provides a picture of dueling Muhammads — on one hand meek and mild, preaching peace and tolerance — and on the other a fire-breathing warrior and man of violence. Apparently, both of these pictures are true because there were things that the Prophet said early in his ministry that he violated later because of changing circumstances. Had he died after his first 10 years, polygamy, warfare, raids, torture and decapitations never would have been enshrined in Islam. But then, Islam might not have become a world religion, either.

“Islamic Imperialism” by Efraim Karsh Yale, 2006 charts what should be obvious to everybody but the naive — that Islam was from its very beginning an imperialistic movement devoted to conquest, loot and forcing their religion on the unwilling. In the Prophet’s farewell address in March 632, he said, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.'” And this same message was repeated by Saladin in 1189, Khomeini in 1979 and Osama bin Laden in 2001. Where did they get this if not from the founder’s mouth?

The real problem for Muslims, then, is to separate themselves from undue reverence for their holy texts Koran, Hadith and Sharia and the model of the Prophet Muhammad’s behavior. These texts are as revered as is the Bible, but except for a small fringe of Christian fundamentalists, nobody today expects to cure appendicitis with holy oil or to blow trumpets to make a city’s walls fall down. Modern Western religion is introspective and seeks to find the internal meaning in their faiths to make them better human beings; they don’t look to it literally as a blueprint for war or a permanent code of law.

The solution for Muslims is to go back to their religion’s real roots. We look to the Hebrew scriptures for the Golden Rule and Ten Commandments and Christians look to the behavior of Jesus: love your neighbor as yourself. Islam can look to the Five Pillars of Islam prayer, belief in one God, alms to the poor, fasting one month a year, and a one-time pilgrimage to broaden the mind and soul. The examples of Muhammad, the collected memories of his words and deeds, and the code of laws drawn up later, all belong in the realm of historic documents, not blueprints for modern life.

Every horror carried out by al-Qaida and its ilk — decapitations, kidnappings, torture, stoning women, child marriage and murdering hostages — is justified by referring to the model of the Prophet himself. This is the problem with Islam.

Laina Farhat Holzman is a historian, lecturer and author of ‘Strange Birds from Zoroaster’s Nest’ and ‘God’s Law or Man’s Law.’ Contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or visit her Web site at http://www.globalthink.net.

Explore posts in the same categories: Editorial, know your enemy