For more on how telling the truth will bring down the opprobrium of the world upon you, get the new book, Confessions of an Islamophobe, here.
“The Watchtower on Jihad: An interview with Robert Spencer,” by Niram Ferretti, Informale, December 16, 2017:
For many years Robert Spencer has written extensively about Islam and jihad, debunking the common misconception according to which the theological-political system founded by Mohammed in the VII century, is essentially a religion of peace.
The director and founder of “Jihadwatch” has become the bugbear of the many apologists of Islam, both in the United States and abroad, who, in order to delegitimize his work have qualified him as an “islamophobe”, the smear definition used so often today as a stigma against all those who criticize Islam. With his usual irony, Spencer has titled his latest book, “Confessions of an Islamophobe”.
A regular on L’Informale, he has accepted to answer some new questions.
Mr. Spencer, Islam, like Judaism, does not have a central authority. In the Sunni world there are four main schools of jurisprudence, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i and Hanbali. Apart from the different exegetical approach of these schools can we say that in the Islamic world there is a general consensus regarding the main role and duty of a devout Muslim?
Yes there is very much a consensus among all the madhahib, schools of jurisprudence about the necessity to impose Islamic law over the world. This is not something about which there is disagreement. There is a great value placed upon Ijma, consensus in Islamic law. If something is agreed upon by the scholars of all the principal schools of jurisprudence, then it is considered to be settled and not to be open to discussion any longer. Mohammed is said to have stated “My community will not agree on an error” and so, unfortunately for non Muslims, the teachings that the Muslim community must wage jihad warfare against non Muslims in order to impose Islamic law upon them and subjugate them as inferiors. These are points that are all agreed upon in all the schools of jurisprudence and as such are not considered to be opened to further reform or change.
According to the late Sudanese religious thinker Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, the Quran has two different and contrasting messages, one more peaceful, which the prophet Mohammed preached in Mecca, and the other more intolerant and violent, which he preached when he lived in Medina. Taha thought that only by repudiating the second message Islam could be brought to its essential message. For his ideas he was arrested and executed in Sudan in I985. Would you like to comment?
Of course, Mahmud Mohamed Taha did not originate the division of the Quran into the Meccan suras and the Medina suras, this is something that is traditional and is part of classic Quranic exegesis among mainstream Islamic scholars, and certainly he did not originate the idea either that the Meccan passages are more peaceful than the Medina passages. Actually they are not kind to unbelievers and are constantly threatening them with hellfire but they are not counseling warfare against unbelievers either. As far as Taha is concerned, when he says that the Meccan passages are more tolerant and should take precedence over the Medina passages that counsel warfare, this is against the grain of standard Islamic theology which teaches that the Medinan passages since they come later chronologically in Mohammed’s life, supersede the Meccan passages. In chapter 2 verse 106 of the Quran, Allah says “We do not abrogate a verse or cause to be forgotten, except that We bring forth one better than it or similar to it”. Thus the chronological precedence is absolute. If something comes later and it seems to contradict what comes earlier, then what comes later takes precedence. This means that warfare against unbelievers is always the highest and final stage of jihad for Quranic believers. Taha was condemned as a heretic because his views were not traditional and they constituted innovation Bid‘ah, which is a great sin in Islam. So while I wish that it were so, that the Meccan passages superseded the Medinan passages and that Taha were correct, unfortunately his view goes against the tradition of Islamic theology and it was for that reason that he was executed.
We often hear the distinction between “political Islam” and an Islam which is not political. It sounds bizarre, as Islam has been political since its inception. What do you have to say about this?
You are absolutely right. Islam has been political since its inception. It is noteworthy that Mohammed was a prophet, or claimed to be a prophet according to the Islamic traditions, for twenty three years, and for the first twelve years when he was in Mecca, he was only a preacher of religious ideas. It was not until the hijra, when he and his followers moved to Medina, that he became a political and a military leader as well as a religious one. It was then that the Islamic calendar begins with year one, this is the year of the hijra of Mohammed to Medina. Muslims are beginning Islam at the point when it becomes political, not at the point when Mohammed begins to preach, when he begins to preach or state that there is no God but Allah and no other prophet but Mohammed. This shows in itself that the political aspect of Islam is considered by mainstream Muslims to be intrinsic to it and not separable from it. You have to have a political aspect for it to be Islam at all. The political is not separable from Islam, at least if you are speaking traditional.
One of the main modern Muslim sects, if not the main one, that brought back the necessity of jihad, was the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Hasan al Banna in Egypt in 1928. Al Banna was a puritan who thought that Islam at his purest and most strict required jihad against infidels. Is this so, the “purity” of Islam is coessential with jihad?
Yes, certainly because Islam considers Mohammed’s example to be paramount. The Quran says, chapter 33 verse 21, that Mohammed is the excellent example for believers, which is interpreted by Islamic scholars in an absolute sense, that if Mohammed did it it’s good and right and Muslims should do it as well. And so, as Mohammed waged jihad, the Quran counsels jihad. This is central, you cannot have Islam without jihad. There has never been Islam without jihad.
This is a question I have recently asked to renowned European scholar Bat Ye’or. We keep hearing that Islam has been a very important source during the Middle Ages for the coming into being of Western civilization, but basically all the contributions of Islam to the West in that period did not have specific Muslim roots. Do you agree?
Islam is the only religion in the world nowadays with a public relations arm, a concerned effort on the part of believers in order that nobody thinks bad about Islam and everybody thinks that Islam is a positive force. There is no other religion that works so hard in trying to make a good impression and no other religion needs to work so hard to make a good impression. Islamic apologists constantly explain to us that Islam is a religion of peace, they have to explain it because it’s not obvious, because Muslims are doing violence in the name of Islam every day. There are constantly Islamic apologists also telling us that Islam has been responsible for wonderful achievements. This also is not obvious. Every Islamic state and majority Muslim country in the world is a backwater and a human rights abuser and certainly not a place that no one will think of as a center of cultural learning. We are constantly told these deceptive lies that are designed to make us complacent in the face of the massive Muslim immigration to the West. When it came to the matter of Islam’s achievements and inventions we are told that the Jewish and Christian dhimmi captives of the Islamic state of Caliphate Baghdad, the Abbasid Caliphate, a thousand years ago, that their translations of the classical Greek texts or their inventions in terms of medicine or other innovations, that those are all due to Islam. These people weren’t even Muslims, they were just living in the Islamic state. What we are facing is a concerned effort to make Westerners believe that the mass of Muslim immigration into Western countries is something they mustn’t be concerned about, because presumably there will be a new flowering of an Islamic Golden Age, and there will be inventions, and there will be learning, and there will be tolerance and peace. It is all nonsense. There never was in the past and there will not be now. It is all part of this public relations effort.
For Islamic theology, Islam is the primeval religion of humanity. This means that every other religion and specifically the two religions of the Book, Judaism and Christianity are defective, full of errors and falsehoods. Only Islam is correct. However we often hear that Judaism, Christianity and Islam can get along together. Do you believe this is possible?
Yes, certainly Islam and Judaism and Christianity can get along just fine as long as Jews and Christians know their place and accept the second class status that Islamic law mandates for non-Muslims under the rule of Islam. In the Islamic state, according to Islamic law, Jews and Christians are free to practice their religions as long as they don’t build new houses of worship, or repair old ones, so that their communities are always in decline. They cannot hold authority over Muslims, so they must only hold the most menial jobs in society where they don’t have authority over anybody else and they have of course to pay the jizia, the special tax mandated by the Quran. They have to abide by all sorts of regulations that make sure that they are always reminded that they are renegades who have rejected the truth of Mohammed and Islam. So, they have to step off the sidewalk if a Muslim is coming, they are greeted with “Peace be upon the rightly guided” rather than “Peace be upon you”, which is the standard Muslim greeting for other Muslims, because a Muslim does not wish a non-Muslim peace. He wishes peace to the Muslims, peace be upon them, to the rightly guided. There are all sorts of other daily humiliations, discriminations and harassment, that are mandated in Islamic law for the Jews and Christians. This is how it was in Muslim Spain which was supposed to be such a wonderful, multicultural and tolerant place, and this is how it is in any other place where Islamic law is fully implemented. So that there is no place where in majority Muslim countries, or countries under Muslim rule, there has ever been equality of rights between Jews and Christians and Muslims and there will never be because Islam hasn’t changed.
What is your evaluation of President Trump’s decision of declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel and consequently to move the USA embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
It is welcome, it is important, it is historical on a political level that I think has not been reached since Ronald Reagan’s called upon Michail Gorbacev to tear down the Berlin Wall. There are great parallels between the two things, because in both cases all the learned analysts, all the mainstream opinion makers, all the setters of policy told Reagan and Trump t must not do this. They were all wrong. Trump and Reagan have both gone against the main dream view that you have to appease those who are violent, that if you are facing people who are going to be murderous, then you give them what they want, you don’t stand up to them. Trump and Reagan both, Trump with this decision about Jerusalem and Reagan calling for the end of the Berlin Wall, have been standing against evil and calling it up for what it was. They have both showed immense courage in going against the accepted opinion and standing up to the violence, intimidation and bullying that everyone else wanted to appease and accommodate. I think that Trump will be remembered as one of the great courageous man of history for this decision.
If you were to sum up what is Islam for you in its essence what would you say?
Islam is many things for me, something that I have studied for all these years. Right now I am writing a history of jihad from Mohammed to Isis which will show that jihad is a constant of Islamic history. Islam is a force that has oppressed many people, destroyed the life of many people in the world throughout history and today and we need to call that up for what it is. There are many people that claim that it is the source for all that is good in the world. If they want to pull these views I don’t have any problems if they are not trying to impose them upon me and trying to subjugate me under their rule. I believe very strongly in free societies in the West, in open societies where there is not one single opinion that is mandated by the elites that we all have to hold on to. I will fight to my last breath for the defense of these societies against this radically intolerant, violent, aggressive, suprematist and authoritarian political system.
dumbledoresarmy says
God bless you, Mr Spencer.
Keep on keeping on.
Michael Copeland says
Yeehaw!
gravenimage says
Hear, hear!
Gordon Miller says
Yes, you’re doing a fine job, Mr.Spencer. Now do what some of us have begun to do: stop capitalizing the beginning “m” in muslim. ( I know you really can’t.)
David Anderson says
All well stated, Robert. It will be interesting to compare your forthcoming book to Paul Fregosi’s history of jihad.
A question you might want to consider: In your estimation, what lenght of time has human civilization been set back by the rise of Islam?
Michael Copeland says
“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world” –
Churchill
Terry Gain says
This is a very good interview conducted by someone Obviously informed about Islam of one of the world’s foremost authorities on Islamic doctrine and history. I was delighted to see Mr. Spencer put the boots to the myth of the Muslim Golden Age. It answers the question: “if Islam was so advanced a thousand years ago, why is it so backward today”?
It is nice to hear the truth and compare it with the bunk served up by Obama.
Wellington says
Bunk indeed. Obama’s very good at bunk and on sundry topics. Spencer, by contrast, “merely” serves up the truth, something which is increasingly difficult to get nowadays.
Greyhound Fancier says
Conquered territories in the wake of the mohammedan tsunami were often formerly vibrant places. The Mediterranean world was a true multicultural area until mohammedanism.
Those areas once gripped by mohammedanism gradually lost their morale, their life of the mind, their work ethic, and demonstrated that places that are overwhelmingly mohammedan are poor, ignorant, violent, hellholes. Mohammedanism only “works” when a small minority of totalitarian muslims control a vast majority of normal people, who pay the taxes and do the work.
If al Andalus were such a terrific place, why did the Spanish spend eight centuries fighting to get their country freed of mohammedans?
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
Mr Spencer, you are the one with misconception on Islam due to ignorance and you expect your critics to take your garbage hook, line and sinker, thereby killing their intellectual prowess. To avoid that, you have to devote your time to study Islam and discard the lies contained in your write-ups.
Arthur says
No man was ever so much deceived by another, as by himself.
–Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
mortimer says
Ibrahim, you cannot identify ONE error in what Robert Spencer has written. Please find ONE error.
Wellington says
Seconded, mortimer. Old Ibrahim keeps saying that Spencer gets Islam wrong and lies about it but he never provides any proof. Just “Muslimthink” at work yet again.
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
Mortimer, refer to my previous comments at this blog where I pointed many lies Mr Spencer said on Islam. He said the indiscriminate killings by Isis is exactly what Quranic verse “faqtuluhum haithu thaqiftumuhum (fight them wherever you find them )”teaches ignoring the context. There are So many other instances of lies he copied and pasted from lies concocted by evil Christian evangelist liars like Sam shamoun and devil wood.
Wellington says
Ah, yes, the “context” excuse masquerading as an argument. And that’s what it is, Ibrahim—-“merely” an excuse. And exactly where, per your words, does Robert Spencer say “the indiscriminate killings by Isis is exactly what Quranic verse……….” requires or teaches or demands, all the while taking things out of context as you insupportably allege?
Yes, where exactly did Robert Spencer assert what you aver he asserted? I say you can’t point to any such statement by Spencer, and I additionally say that your assertion that your “previous comments on this blog where I pointed many lies Mr {sic} Spencer said on Islam” again shows you as a rank liar because in your “previous comments” you did not cite a single example of Spencer’s lies. Muslimthink on display again, Ibrahim, this time courtesy of you.
You know, repeating the same mendacious crap over and over and over again, as is your wont, Ibrahim, does not make things true. You don’t get this, but it is fitting you don’t get this because you adhere to arguably the greatest lie of all time—–Islam.
Oh yeah, so fitting, and may your Allah strike me dead tonight if I’m wrong here. See you soon, turkey.
gravenimage says
Note that Ibrahim itace muhammed *himself* has affirmed that Islam allows the rape of Infidel women and their being kept as sex slaves; mandates that “blasphemers” and apostates be murdered; the genocide of the Jews; and the slaughter of all those who do not submit to Islam.
All mainstream Islam.
Sharyati says
What about Khaybar Ibrahim, were your prophet was the role model for future terrorists???, killing of a people when they were engaged in their morning chores? “Khaybar Khaybar Ya Yahood” eeh? This chant did not originate out of peaceful verses did they?
SAM says
Ibrahim, you are like the other millions of Muslims. Clueless or evil like millions of Muslims to call Robert a lier with no single proof.
Go read your Koran ONCE please!
David Hayden says
Thanks, Robert Spencer, for this interview. I’m looking forward to reading your book which will tell the history of Jihad from Muhammad to the present (ISIS, etc.). I also want to thank you for the blurb you wrote for my book about Muhammad and the Birth of Islamic Supremacism when it came out in Sept. 11, 2012. Your indefatigable energy and perseverence is inspiring.
mortimer says
This is a superb interview…great, well-informed questions and perfect answers by Robert Spencers:
The middle paragraph is surely one of Robert Spencer’s best summaries…worth memorizing and repeating often: (italics added)
“Islamic apologists constantly explain to us that Islam is a religion of peace, they have to explain it because it’s NOT obvious, because Muslims ARE doing violence in the name of Islam every day. There are constantly Islamic apologists also telling us that Islam has been responsible for WONDERFUL achievements. This also is NOT obvious. Every Islamic state and majority Muslim country in the world is a BACKWATER and a human rights abuser and certainly not a place that NO ONE will think of as a center of cultural learning. We are constantly told these deceptive lies that are designed to make us complacent in the face of the massive Muslim immigration to the West.” – Robert Spencer
Voytek Gagalka says
“…all the learned analysts, all the mainstream opinion makers, all the setters of policy told Reagan and Trump must not do this.”
Yes, in the case of Trump. Unfortunately, error in the case of Reagan, Mr. Spencer. You probably meant here much earlier Reagan statement about “evil empire.” That was indeed almost completely dismissed by those “learned analysts,” MSM et al. But in the case of calling for “turning that Wall down” it was done so late in Reagan presidency when the Berlin wall was about to be turn down anyway, when almost everybody saw the communist system crumbling that NOBODY, absolutely NO ONE (well, perhaps with exception of Soviet regime and few die-hard communists), criticized Reagan for that statement anymore.
gravenimage says
Reagan’s statement was widely criticized by appeasers in the West.
Your idea that his brave position was irrelevant is very odd.
gravenimage says
The Watchtower on Jihad: An Interview with Robert Spencer
…………………….
Good for The Watchtower for running this interview!
hendrikush says
My congratulations for this excellent interview.
Best wishes for your health and wellbeing in the coming years.