The Council on American Islamic Relations says that its mission is “to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue,” and “build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.” The UK “Islam Is Peace” campaign says it wants “to create dialogue.”
And over the years I have participated in many discussions and debates with Muslim spokesmen, including, among others, Salam Al-Marayati of MPAC, Hussam Ayloush of CAIR, Hussein Ibish, then of the ADC, As’ad AbuKhalil, who calls himself the “Angry Arab,” Muqtedar Khan of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, and, years ago on MSNBC, CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper. I was once even on a BBC panel with the jihadist Sheikh Omar Bakri. Bakri differed markedly from those and others “moderate” Muslim spokesmen in that he actually made arguments for his positions, and did not content himself simply with making personal attacks and heaping abuse upon his opponent. Insults are not arguments, but all too many Muslim spokesmen in America today seem not to be able to distinguish the two. You can see Ayloush and AbuKhalil slinging mud lustily and avoiding substantive issues in earnest here.
Meanwhile, others whom one might expect would debate in a more civil and rational fashion refuse to debate at all. Akbar Ahmed of American University was allowed to comment on my interview with C-Span’s Brian Lamb in 2006 before that interview even aired. In the course of doing so, he said: “I know the work of Dr. Spencer and I know a lot of these arguments because I”ve been a scholar of Islam for the last several decades. So, I”m very aware with all my friends and colleagues. And we interact with them. We debate. We discuss.” But he ignored my invitations to debate or dialogue (with the exception of one noncommittal email saying he was looking forward to “talking soon”), and responded to my statements on C-Span with evasions and irrelevancies. Others who have attacked my work but declined to discuss it or debate me include Ahmed Afzaal, Omid Safi, Jamal Badawi, and non-Muslim academic propagandist Carl Ernst.
This is not to say no one has been willing to discuss these matters with me. Ali Eteraz was willing, but he proved not a little disingenuous. And so it remains true that Islamic spokesmen, while denigrating and dismissing my work, have never actually refuted it.
I know, I know: ربما كان السكوت جواباً — rubbama kana as-sukootu jawaaban. That is, “silence is sometimes an answer.” Indeed it is, and it speaks loud and clear, and it says that they cannot refute what I say about jihad and Islamic supremacism. So all they can do is cry “Islamophobe!” and try to turn people of good will away from the realities I am reporting about. And this is a much larger issue than simply who will or will not debate me, because it highlights the fact that peaceful Muslims have never formulated an Islamic response to the jihadists’ claim to represent pure and true Islam — and as long as they do not and apparently cannot do so, the jihadists will continue to hold the intellectual initiative within Islamic communities worldwide. “Moderate” Muslim spokesmen such as those above have not just not answered me; they’ve done nothing to seize that intellectual initiative and blunt the force of jihadist recruitment among Muslims.
Anyway, I am telling you all this because of Nadir Ahmed, an Islamic apologist who runs the website examinethetruth.com. Take a look around that site, and you will see that he is no more interested than Ayloush or AbuKhalil in reasoned, respectful debate; instead, he constantly demeans his opponents in the most juvenile terms, and no matter what the outcome of his debates, claims victory and thumps his chest like a witless teenager. He and a group of his friends and associates have been clogging my inbox for quite some time, pointing to what I said here, that “I would, of course, be happy to debate any scholar about Islam and jihad; this is a standing invitation,” and claiming that I had run away from Nadir Ahmed’s debate challenge. Of course, it isn’t worth debating Nadir Ahmed, because he has abundantly demonstrated already that he has no idea what a genuine debate even is, but is only interested in racking up pelts in his imaginary game of Great Islamic Hunter. But because I have engaged in discussions with other mean-spirited characters with no interest in fair-minded exchange, such as Dean Esmay, in the interest of illuminating points in ways that might benefit people of good will, and because Ahmed has debated at least one person I respect highly — Sam Shamoun — I offered to debate Ahmed in print. At that point he fled — doubtless because it isn’t as easy in print to traffic in emotionalism, grandstanding, and unsubstantiated assertions as it is in person.
But recently he turned up again, in emails cc’ing Ayloush and Ahmed Bedier of CAIR, along with AbuKhalil and others, including some apparent dhimmis in New Zealand, and saying he would take up the challenge. Against my better judgment, I agreed to debate this point: “The schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the hadith, and the Qur’an teach that Muslims must make war against the People of the Book and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law.” I agreed not because I thought Ahmed would deal fairly, but because here again I thought our exchange might be illuminating for people of good will. And indeed, I think it will be, albeit not perhaps in the way I expected. Ahmed crowed over his victory in advance, writing me this on Monday: “I will submit my opening statements to you latest Wednesday. However I am afraid that my opening shots are going to sink the ship – I am afraid that the opening is going to be devastating that you will abandon the debate right there and then.” However, what he delivered was somewhat less than overwhelming — in fact, it’s just more of the same from all too many Islamic spokesmen, insults instead of arguments:
Alhumdulilah(Praise be to God)… the Lord has delivered you to me… Robert Spencer. You can always run… but you can’t hide forever. And Robert, make sure you bring your girlfriend Pam to this debate… she is going to be important, because you’re going to need to her to nurse you back to health after I get done with you.
Let me start off by saying that these print debates are stupid. The only reason why I am agreeing to this type of exchange is because Robert Spencer requires it before he can find the courage to face the public challenge to debate with ExamineTheTruth.com and Islamlife.com. So if this is the only way for him to come out of his spider hole, so that we can CRUSH his LIES and DECEPTION, then fine let’s get it over with.
Today we will be confronting Robert Spencer’s great hoax, in which he has spooked countless number of ignorant Americans and Westerners:
Islam must make war against the People of the Book(Jews, Christians) and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law”¦
By God’s grace, we will bust up this racket. Now you might be thinking that I am avoiding the topic, “Terrorism and Islam”, but this is not true. Rather we have been actively debating it and hunting down those liars who have made this claim. And Allah-hu-Akbar, not a single person has been able to show any evidence for this claim. Don’t forget to see our latest debate on video against MinistryToMuslims.com:
Debate: Is Islam a religion of peace?
But rather… the Quran actually did speak about the issue of terrorism and clearly condemned it. The Quran made it clear… under no circumstances can innocent civilians nor non-combatants be targeted in warfare.
When I and Ahmed Bedier challenge Robert Spencer on Islam and terrorism last year, behold! just have a look what choked out of his gullet – out of fear of being exposed in debate, Spencer nervously said I agree with the anti-Islamic Dr. Ergun Caner’s statement.
And that is the deception of Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch.org. They had full knowledge the Quran and the Sunnah addressed the issue of terrorism and clearly condemned it, yet… they withheld this information from the public. Keep in mind Robert Spencer never actually explicitly stated that Islam teaches terrorism, but rather… he *mislead* his audience into thinking that it did!
ExamineTheTruth.com has issued the following indictment against Robert Spencer and Jihadwatch.org:
1. Robert Spencer knowingly withheld important information from his blind followers – Islam condemns terrorism. (He did make a reference to this in one of his books on page 23423434324234 🙂 )
2. Neither would he correct those who promoted this false view, but rather, he provided material support to those liars…and aided and abided them to help promote a view which he knew to be false.
3. Robert Spencer knowingly, made statements that would mislead a person into thinking that Islam permits the killing of innocent civilians – terrorism. Therefore, Spencer’s scam was not to come out and explicitly state this(because he would get caught), but rather he mislead people into believing this false view.So why is terrorism important for this debate? Because that is why military Jihad was declared against the Christians. Islam does not teach to declare war on nations just because they are “infidels”. But rather, Islamic Jihad came to confront and condemn the genocide and terrorism of Biblical Christianity, and to save the world from the genocide of Jesus Christ.
(Islam believes in Jesus Christ, but not the false Christ which has been erected in the Bible).
Once one clears away the insults and attacks on my character and good will, there is dispiritingly little to deal with here, raising once again the question — why can’t, or won’t, Muslims debate? Why must exchanges with Muslim spokesmen so often be of this kind? Of course, Nadir Ahmed is the bottom of the barrel, but he appears to be close to CAIR’s Ahmed Bedier — is this what CAIR takes for genuine debate? And Salam Al-Marayati of MPAC, a much more respected and respectable individual, has hardly behaved differently in his exchanges with me. I am beginning to suspect that all the abuse they delight in is not just a manifestation of their abysmal intellectual bankruptcy, although it is that also; it is at the same time a demonstration of their Islamic supremacist assumptions. The filthy kaffir is not to be respected, much less his arguments answered; rather, he is to be rebuked for his insolence and put in his place.
Anyway, in response to the substantive points Ahmed makes, such as they are:
Today we will be confronting Robert Spencer’s great hoax, in which he has spooked countless number of ignorant Americans and Westerners: Islam must make war against the People of the Book(Jews, Christians) and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law”¦[…] And Allah-hu-Akbar, not a single person has been able to show any evidence for this claim.
Here’s some:
Islamic law calls for the subjugation of Jews, Christians, and others deemed “People of the Book” under the rule of Islam. This idea is based on a cluster of Qur’anic verses that contain general and open-ended commands to fight unbelievers. Among the Qur’an’s commands to fight unbelievers are these:
“O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him” (9:123).
“O Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (9:73). The Arabic word translated here as “strive hard” is jahidi, a verbal form of the noun jihad.
The command applies first to fighting those who worship other gods besides Allah: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” (9:5).
However, Muslims must fight Jews and Christians as well, although the Qur’an recognizes that as “People of the Book” they have received genuine revelations from Allah: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya [the special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).
That verse is the one place where Muslims are directed explicitly to make war against and subjugate Jews and Christians — the “People of the Book,” who according to traditional Islamic theology once subjugated enter the dhimma, the protection of the Muslims, and become dhimmis, protected (or guilty) people. The noted Qur’an commentator Ibn Juzayy says that Qur’an 9:29 is “a command to fight the People of the Book.” Another respected mainstream Qur’an commentary, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn says that when 9:29 says that Muslims must fight against those who “follow not the Religion of Truth,” it means those who do not follow Islam, “which is firm and abrogates other deens [religions].”
Qur’an 9:29 also mandates that Jews and Christians pay the jizya, the poll tax. The classical Islamic scholar As-Sawi specifies that the payment of the jizya signifies that the non-Muslims are “humble and obedient to the judgements of Islam.” The verse also specifies that the non-Muslims “feel themselves subdued,” or assume a “state of abasement.” The Bedouin commander al-Mughira bin Sa”d spelled this out when he met the Persian Rustam. Said al-Mughira: “I call you to Islam or else you must pay the jizya while you are in a state of abasement.”
Rustam replied, “I know what jizya means, but what does “˜a state of abasement” mean?”
Al-Mughira explained: “You pay it while you are standing and I am sitting and the whip hanging is over your head.”
Similarly, the renowned Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir (1301-1372), whose writings are still influential today, says that the dhimmis must be “disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated.” The seventh-century jurist Sa”id ibn al-Musayyab stated: “I prefer that the people of the dhimma become tired by paying the jizya since He says, “˜until they pay the jizya with their own hands in a state of complete abasement.– As-Suyuti elaborates that this verse “is used as a proof by those who say that it is taken in a humiliating way, and so the taker sits and the dhimmi stands with his head bowed and his back bent. The jizya is placed in the balance and the taker seizes his beard and hits his chin.” He adds, however, that “this is rejected according to an-Nawawi who said, “˜This manner is invalid.– Zamakhshari, however, agreed that the jizya should be collected “with belittlement and humiliation.”
As-Sawi specifies that the payment of the jizya signifies that the non-Muslims are “humble and obedient to the judgements of Islam.” As-Suyuti notes that the jizya is “not taken from someone in a state of hardship,” although that was a stipulation at times honored in the breach. For example, a contemporary account of the Muslims” conquest of Nikiou, an Egyptian town, in the 640″s, says that “it is impossible to describe the lamentable position of the inhabitants of this town, who came to the point of offering their children in exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month”¦”
All this is in accord with Muhammad’s command to Muslims invite non-Muslims to Islam and then go to war with them if they refused both conversion and second-class dhimmi status: “Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war.”¦When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to accept Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them”¦. If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [a special tax on non-Muslims; cf. Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.” (Sahih Muslim 4294)
All four principal Sunni schools agree on the importance of jihad warfare against non-Muslims. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist, declared: “Jihad is a precept of Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may dispense others from it. We Malikis maintain that it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them.”
Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a Hanbali jurist who is a favorite of Osama bin Laden and other modern-day jihadists: “Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought. As for those who cannot offer resistance or cannot fight, such as women, children, monks, old people, the blind, handicapped and their likes, they shall not be killed unless they actually fight with words (e.g. by propaganda) and acts (e.g. by spying or otherwise assisting in the warfare).”
The Hanafi school sounds the same notes: “It is not lawful to make war upon any people who have never before been called to the faith, without previously requiring them to embrace it, because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith, and also because the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war”¦ If the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax, it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do” (Hedaya).
And so does the Shafi”i scholar Abu”l Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058), who echoes Muhammad’s instructions to invite the unbelievers to accept Islam or fight them if they refuse: “The mushrikun [infidels] of Dar al-Harb (the arena of battle) are of two types: First, those whom the call of Islam has reached, but they have refused it and have taken up arms. The amir of the army has the option of fighting them”¦in accordance with what he judges to be in the best interest of the Muslims and most harmful to the mushrikun”¦ Second, those whom the invitation to Islam has not reached, although such persons are few nowadays since Allah has made manifest the call of his Messenger”¦it is forbidden to”¦begin an attack before explaining the invitation to Islam to them, informing them of the miracles of the Prophet and making plain the proofs so as to encourage acceptance on their part; if they still refuse to accept after this, war is waged against them and they are treated as those whom the call has reached”¦”
These are all extremely old authorities — such that one might reasonably assume that whatever they say couldn’t possibly still be the consensus of the Islamic mainstream. The laws of the United States have evolved considerably since the adoption of the Constitution, which itself has been amended. So why shouldn’t this be true of Islamic law as well? Many observers assume that it must be, and that Al-Qaeda’s departure from mainstream Islam must be located in its preference for the writings of ancient jurists rather than modern ones. But in this, unfortunately, they fail to reckon with the implications of the closing of the gates of ijtihad.
Ijtihad is the process of arriving at a decision on a point of Islamic law through study of the Qur’an and Sunnah. The founders of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence are among the small number of scholars — mujtahedin — thus qualified to perform ijithad. But they all lived very long ago; for many centuries, independent study of the Qur’an and Sunnah has been discouraged among Muslims, who are instead expected to adhere to the rulings of one of those established schools. Islamic scholar Cyril Glasse notes that –˜the door of ijtihad is closed” as of some nine hundred years, and since then the tendency of jurisprudence (fiqh) has been to produce only commentaries upon commentaries and marginalia.”
This means that the doctrines of jihad enunciated by those ancient jurists remain unchanged. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari”ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, in a 1994 book on Islamic law quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book”¦is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.”
Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.
But if this is so, why hasn’t the worldwide Islamic community been waging jihad on a large scale up until relatively recently? Nyazee says it is only because they have not been able to do so: “the Muslim community may be considered to be passing through a period of truce. In its present state of weakness, there is nothing much it can do about it.”
That is the weakness that contemporary jihadists are striving to correct. In a recent Friday sermon preached in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, Sheikh Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi said this about Jews and Christians in Muslim lands:
If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet “” there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions are . . . that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes . . . that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim …If they violate these conditions, they have no protection.
Back to Nadir Ahmed:
But rather… the Quran actually did speak about the issue of terrorism and clearly condemned it. The Quran made it clear… under no circumstances can innocent civilians nor non-combatants be targeted in warfare.
Great. At this point Ahmed’s post links to his discussion of Qur’an 4:91 — actually 4:90 — which says: “Except those who join a group between whom and you there is a treaty (of peace), or those who approach you with hearts restraining them from fighting you as well as fighting their own people. If Allah had pleased, He could have given them power over you, and they would have fought you. Therefore if they withdraw from you but fight you not, and (instead) send you (guarantees of) peace, then Allah Hath opened no way for you (to war against them).”
This verse is sometimes adduced as proof that Muslims have no open-ended mandate to fight unbelievers, but the Tafsir al-Jalalayn makes clear that this refers only to unbelievers who submit to Islamic rule: “And so if they stay away from you and do not fight you, and offer you peace, reconciliation, that is, [if] they submit, then God does not allow you any way against them, [He does not allow you] a means to take them captive or to slay them.” Does Ahmed reject this interpretation? Good. But many Muslims don’t, and its very existence shows that 4:90 alone has never been understood among Muslims as refuting or rejecting Islamic supremacism.
And as for attacks on innocent civilians, I have pointed out many, many times before that it is not enough to say that the Qur’an forbids killing innocent civilians. Some jihadists, like Anjem Chaudary, maintain that no non-Muslim is innocent. Does Nadir Ahmed believe that non-Muslims such as the office workers in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 can be “innocent civilians”? He doesn’t say. Why not? The vagueness on this point, whether coming from CAIR and the Fiqh Council of North America or from this fellow, enables people like Anjem Chaudary to continue their jihad unchallenged — for they don’t believe, after all, that they are targeting innocent civilians. This is a condemnation of terrorism, in other words, that makes non-Muslims happy but does nothing actually to stop terrorism.
When I and Ahmed Bedier challenge Robert Spencer on Islam and terrorism last year, behold! just have a look what choked out of his gullet – out of fear of being exposed in debate, Spencer nervously said I agree with the anti-Islamic Dr. Ergun Caner’s statement.
In reality, I asked CAIR’s Bedier a series of questions about the interpretation of the Qur’an and Islamic supremacism, after he left an abusive hate message at this site. Of course, he never answered. I don’t expect him to answer at this point, but I do wish he would make clear the relationship between CAIR and Nadir Ahmed. Does CAIR endorse the work of this childish smear artist? I find the connection extremely illuminating.
1. Robert Spencer knowingly withheld important information from his blind followers – Islam condemns terrorism. (He did make a reference to this in one of his books on page 23423434324234 🙂 )
In reality, I’ve discussed the condemnations of terrorism coming from Islamic groups here a number of times, most recently several weeks ago.
2. Neither would he correct those who promoted this false view, but rather, he provided material support to those liars…and aided and abided them to help promote a view which he knew to be false.
I have never promoted a view that I know to be false. I scrupulously document every assertion I make about Islamic texts and teachings in my books and articles. This point is simply libelous.
3. Robert Spencer knowingly, made statements that would mislead a person into thinking that Islam permits the killing of innocent civilians – terrorism. Therefore, Spencer’s scam was not to come out and explicitly state this(because he would get caught), but rather he mislead people into believing this false view.
Actually, it was Muslims like Anjem Chaudary, linked above, who have made such statements. Muslims like Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress, who said a few years ago that all adult Israelis are targets. Muslims like Abu Shanab of Hamas, who, among many others, has said that there are no civilians in Israel. But Nadir Ahmed, along with many other more reputable Muslim spokesman, would prefer to pretend that it is I who make up such things. And they have nothing to say to Muslims who hold such views. Now, why is that?
Anyway, I am through with Nadir Ahmed. He will crow that he won our “debate,” but he would have done that no matter what happened anyway. I apologize for the length and tedium of this post, but I believe it encapsulates an important point: no one, Muslim or non-Muslim, has ever yet refuted the contention that Islam teaches warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. And so one thing is certain: that warfare will continue.
