Leftist Bigotry vs. Qur'anic Islam
Listening to Islam in its own voice.
October 8, 2015
Jack Kerwick
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The second phase occurs after Muhammad had fled Mecca for Medina, a city some 300 miles away. While in Medina, Muhammad manages to accumulate considerable power and influence, resources that he is determined to deploy with an eye toward taking hold of the city from which he was driven. Accordingly, the Quran’s teachings on tolerance and war change:
“Fight in the cause of God those who fight you…[a]nd slay them wherever ye catch them[.]” (Sura 2:190).
At this point, it’s true that the Quran commands Muslims to fight defensively. But once Muhammad and his army invade and seize command of Mecca, these older teachings are abrogated:
“But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war).”
However, “if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity [if they submit to Islam], then open the way for them” (Sura 9:6).
It is worth noting that while the Quran refers to Jews and Christians as “people of the Book,” of the Bible, it nevertheless includes them among the unbelievers upon whom Muslims must wage war.
“Fight those who believe not in God nor the last day…even if they are people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission” and “feel themselves subdued” (Sura 9:29).
The “jizya” is the money, the tribute, that non-Muslims had always been required to pay to their Muslim rulers in exchange for being permitted to practice their own religion free from harm or death.
Muhammad, the greatest of God’s prophets, the messenger through whom God Himself expressed His will, was a conqueror. The first biography of Muhammad
(“The Life of Muhammad”), authored by Ibn Ishaq in the 8th century, informs us of how after the members of one of the Jewish tribes that Muhammad and his army besieged surrendered, “the apostle went out to the market of Medina…and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.”
Ibn Ishaq continues: “There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900.”
The women, children, and properties of the slain were then taken.
Quranic Islam is a seventh-century precursor to neither libertarianism nor left-wing “progressivism” nor any other contemporary Western ideology. It is what it is.
Unlike the comments of many of Carson’s supporters and all of his critics, my remarks here are not designed to either affirm or deny the value of Islam per se. Rather, by listening to the Quran in something like its own voice, they are intended to serve as an antidote to the PC bigotry that seems to inevitably engulf current discussions of Islam.
And when we actually step outside of our own present sensibilities, it becomes clear—for many, just too painfully clear—that, considered theoretically, Carson was correct: Islam and the Constitution (“liberal democracy”) are systematically incompatible.
Leftist Bigotry vs. Qur'anic Islam
