Statement By Ibn Warraq On The World Trade Center Atrocity
21 Dec, 2006
Given the stupefying enormity of the acts of barbarism of 11
September, moral outrage is appropriate and justified, as are
demands for punishment. But a civilized society cannot permit blind
attacks on all those perceived as “Muslims” or Arabs. Not all
Muslims or all Arabs are terrorists. Nor are they implicated in the
horrendous events of Tuesday. Police protection for individual
Muslims, mosques and other institutions must be increased.
However, to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist
Tuesday is to wilfully ignore the obvious and to forever
misinterpret events. Without Islam the long-term strategy and
individual acts of violence by Usama bin Laden and his followers
make little sense. The West needs to understand them in order to be
able to deal with them and avoid past mistakes. We are confronted
with Islamic terrorists and must take seriously the Islamic
component. Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, do
not understand the passionate, religious, and anti-western
convictions of Islamic terrorists. These God-intoxicated fanatics
blindly throw away their lives in return for the Paradise of Seventy
Two Virgins offered Muslim martyrs killed in the Holy War against
all infidels.
Jihad is “a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the
mission of the Prophet Muhammad [the Prophet]. It is an incumbent
religious duty, established in the Qur’an and in the Traditions as a
divine institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of
advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims”[1].
The world is divided into two spheres, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.
The latter, the Land of Warfare, is a country belonging to infidels
which has not been subdued by Islam. The Dar al-Harb becomes the
Dar-al Islam, the Land of Islam, upon the promulgation of the edicts
of Islam. Thus the totalitarian nature of Islam is nowhere more
apparent than in the concept of Jihad, the Holy War, whose ultimate
aim is to conquer the entire world and submit it to the one true
faith, to the law of Allah. To Islam alone has been granted the
truth: there is no possibility of salvation outside it. Muslims must
fight and kill in the name of Allah.
We read (IX. 5-6):“Kill those who join other gods with God wherever
you may find them”;
IV.76: “Those who believe fight in the cause of God”;
VIII.39-42: “Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their
unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven; but if they return to
it, they have already before them the doom of the ancients! Fight
then against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all
of it God’s.”
Those who die fighting for the only true religion, Islam, will be
amply rewarded in the life to come:
IV.74: “Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter the life
of this world for that which is to come; for whoever fights on God’s
path, whether he is killed or triumphs, We will give him a handsome
reward.”
What should we make with these further unfortunate verses from the
Qur’an:
*Torment to Non-believers->IV.56
*Only Islam Acceptable-> III.85
* No friends from outsiders->III.118
*No friends with Jews, christians->V. 51
* No friends with non believers->IV.144, III.28
* No friends with parents/siblings if not believers->IX.23
* Fight non-believers->IX.123 * Kill non-believers->IV.89
*Anti Jewish verses->V.82
* God a "plotter"->VIII.30
*Killing Idolators->IX.5
* Idolators are unclean just because they are idolator->IX.28
* Forcing non-believers to pay tax->IX.29
* The Torment of Hell->XLIV.43-58
* All except Muslims/Jews/Christians/Sabeans will go to hell->II.62,
V.69
* Cast terror in the hearts, smite the neck and cut fingertips of
unbelievers->VIII.12
* Smite the neck of unbelievers->XLVII.4
* Severe Punishment for atheists->X.4 ; V.10 ; V.86
* Severe Punishment for non-believers->XXII.19-22 ; LXXII.23,
XCVIII.6
*Punishing non-believers of Hereafter->XVII.10
* Punishing for rejecting faith->III.91
* Non believers go to hell->IV.140 ; VII.36 * Partial Believers go
to hell too->IV.150-1
* Sadistic punishments->LVI.42-43
* Punishment for apostates->XVI.106 ; III.86-88 ; III.90 ; IV.137.
* Threat of punishement for not going to war->IX.38-39, XLVIII.16
*God making someone more sinful so he can be punished more->III178
*Intentionally preventing unbelievers from knowing the truth->VI.25
; VI.110
* Intentionally preventing unbelievers from Understanding
Quran->XVII.45-46
* It is God who causes people to err and He punishes them for
that->XVII.97
* God could guide, if he chose to, but did not->VI.35
* Intentionally misguiding those whom he pleases to->XIV.4
* Willfully misguiding some->XVI.93
* God causes human to err->IV.143 ; VII.178
* God deceiving humans->IV.142
It is surely time for us who live in the West and enjoy freedom of
expression to examine unflinchingly and unapologetically the tenets
of these fanatics, including the Qur’an which divinely sanctions
violence. We should unapologetically examine the life of the
Prophet, who was not above political assassinations, and who was
responsible for the massacre of the Jews.
“Ah, but you are confusing Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. The
Real Islam has nothing to do with violence,” apologists of Islam
argue.
There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate.
There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism: at
most there is a difference of degree but not of kind. All the tenets
of Islamic fundamentalism are derived from the Qur’an, the Sunna,
and the Hadith – Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct
derived by Muslim jurists from the fundamental and defining texts of
Islam. The fundamentalists, with greater logic and coherence than
so-called moderate or liberal Muslims, have made Islam the basis of
a radical utopian ideology that aims to replace capitalism and
democracy as the reigning world system. Islamism accounts for the
anti-American hatred to be found in places far from the Arab-Israeli
conflict, like Nigeria and Afghanistan, demonstrating that the
Middle East conflict cannot legitimately be used to explain this
phenomenon called Islamism. A Palestinian involved in the WTC
bombings would be seen as a martyr to the Palestinian cause, but
even more as a martyr to Islam.
“Ah, but Islamic fundamentalism is like any other kind of
fundamentalism, one must not demonise it. It is the result of
political, social grievances. It must be explained in terms of
economics and not religion,” continue the apologists of Islam.
There are enormous differences between Islamic fundamentalism and
any other kind of modern fundamentalism. It is true that Hindu,
Jewish, and Christian fundamentalists have been responsible for acts
of violence, but these have been confined to particular countries
and regions. Islamic fundamentalism has global aspirations: the
submission of the entire world to the all-embracing Shari’a, Islamic
Law, a fascist system of dictates designed to control every single
act of all individuals. Nor do Hindus or Jews seek to convert the
world to their religion. Christians do indulge in proselytism but no
longer use acts of violence or international terrorism to achieve
their aims.
Only Islam treats non-believers as inferior beings who are
expendable in the drive to world hegemony. Islam justifies any means
to achieve the end of establishing an Islamic world.
Islamic fundamentalists recruit among Muslim populations, they
appeal to Islamic religious symbols, and they motivate their
recruits with Islamic doctrine derived from the Qur’an. Economic
poverty alone cannot explain the phenomenon of Islamism. Poverty in
Brazil or Mexico has not resulted in Christian fundamentalist acts
of international terror. Islamists are against what they see as
western materialism itself. Their choice is clear: Islam or
jahiliyya. The latter term is redefined to mean modern-style
jahiliyya of modern, democratic, industrialised societies of Europe
and America, where man is under the dominion of man rather than
Allah. They totally reject the values of the West, which they feel
are poisoning Islamic culture. So, it is not just a question of
economics, but of an entirely different worldview, which they wish
to impose on the whole world. Sayyid Qutb, the very influential
Egyptian Muslim thinker, said that “dominion should be reverted to
Allah alone, namely to Islam, that holistic system He conferred upon
men. An all-out offensive, a jihad, should be waged against
modernity so that this moral rearmament could take place. The
ultimate objective is to re-establish the Kingdom of Allah upon
earth...”[2]
It is surely time for moderate Muslims to stand up and be counted. I
should like to see them do three things:
1. All moderate Muslims should unequivocally denounce this
barbarism, should condemn it for what it is: the butchery of
innocent people,
2. All moderate Muslim citizens of the United States should proclaim
their Americanness, their patriotism, and their solidarity with the
families of the victims. They should show their pride in their
country by giving blood and other aid to victims and their families.
3. All moderate Muslims should take this opportunity to examine the
tenets of their faith; should look at the Qur’an, recognize its role
in the instigation of religious violence, and see it for what it is,
a problematical human document reflecting 7th or perhaps 8th Century
values which the West has largely outgrown.
While it should not be too difficult for moderate Muslims to accept
the need to denounce the violence of Terrorist Tuesday, I am not at
all optimistic about their courage or willingness to proclaim their
love for their chosen country, the USA, or examine the Qur’an
critically.
Too many Muslims are taught from an early age that their first
allegiance is to Islam. They are exhorted in sermons in mosques, and
in books by such Muslim intellectuals as Dr Siddiqui of the Muslim
Institute in London, that if the laws of the land conflict with any
of the tenets of Islam, then they must break the laws of the
infidels, and only follow the Law of God, the Shari’a, Islamic Law.
It is a remarkable fact that at the time of the Gulf War, a high
proportion of Muslims living in the West supported Saddam Hussein.
In the aftermath of the WTC terror, it is now clear from reports in
the media that many Muslims, even those living in the West, see
these acts of barbarism as acts of heroism; they give their
unequivocal support to their hero, Usama bin Laden.
Few Muslims have shown themselves capable of scrutinising their
sacred text rationally. Indeed any criticism of their religious
tenets is taken as an insult to their faith, for which so many
Muslims seem ready to kill (as in the Rushdie affair or the Taslima
Nasreen affair). Muslims seem to be unaware that the research of
western scholars concerning the existence of figures such as
Abraham, Isaac and Joseph or the authorship of the Pentateuch
applies directly to their belief system. Furthermore, it is surely
totally irrational to continue to believe that the Qur’an is the
word of God when the slightest amount of rational thought will
reveal that the Qur’an contains words and passages addressed to God
(e.g. VI.104; VI.114; XVII.1; XXVII.91; LXXXI.15-29; lxxxiv.16-19;
etc.); or that it is full of historical errors and inconsistencies.
Respect for other cultures, for other values than our own, is a
hallmark of a civilised society. But Multiculturalism is based on
some fundamental misconceptions. First, there is the erroneous and
sentimental belief that all cultures, deep down, have the same
values; or, at least, if different, are equally worthy of respect.
But the truth is that not all cultures have the same values, and not
all values are worthy of respect. There is nothing sacrosanct about
customs or cultural traditions: they can change under criticism.
After all, the secularist values of the West are not much more than
two hundred years old.
If these other values are destructive of our own cherished values,
are we not justified in fighting them both by intellectual means,
that is by reason and argument, and criticism, and by legal means,
by making sure the laws and constitution of the country are
respected by all? It becomes a duty to defend those values that we
would live by. But here western intellectuals have sadly failed in
defending western values, such as rationalism, social pluralism,
human rights, the rule of law, representative government,
individualism (in the sense that every individual counts, and no
individual should be sacrificed for some utopian future collective
end), freedom of expression, freedom of and from religion, the
rights of minorities, and so on..
Instead, the so-called experts on Islam in western universities, in
the media, in the churches and even in government bureaus have
become apologists for Islam. They bear some responsibility for
creating an atmosphere little short of intellectual terrorism where
any criticism of Islam is denounced as fascism, racism, or “orientalism.”
They bear some responsibility for lulling the public into thinking
that “The Islamic Threat ” is a myth. It is our duty to fight this
intellectual terrorism. It is our duty to defend the values of
liberal democracy.
One hopes that the U.S. government will not now act in such a way
that more innocent lives are lost, albeit on the other side of the
globe. One hopes that even now there is a legal way out in
international courts of law. The situation is far more delicate and
complex than a simple battle between good and evil, the solution is
not to beat hell out of all Arabs and Muslims but neither is it to
pretend that Islam had nothing to do with it, for that would be to
bury one’s head in the Sands of Araby.
[1] T.Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, entry “Jihad”
[2] E.Sivan, Radical Islam, New haven, 1985, p.25.