Author: Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of
Sydney
Publication: Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
Date: 4/2/2006
URL: http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200627_681.shtml
September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally.
I recognised that I had to know more about Islam.
In the aftermath of the attack one thing was
perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the "Coalition
of the Willing" were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and
that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two
people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me
that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.
Although I had possessed a copy of the Koran
for 30 years, I decided then to read this book for myself as a first step
to adjudicating conflicting claims. And I recommend that you too read this
sacred text of the Muslims, because the challenge of Islam will be with us
for the remainder of our lives - at least.
Can Islam and the Western democracies live
together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? Views
on this question range from näive optimism to bleakest pessimism. Those
tending to the optimistic side of the scale seize upon the assurance of specialists
that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving, and that the extension
of this concept to terrorism is a distortion of koranic teaching[1]. They
emphasise Islam's self-understanding as a "religion of peace". They
point to the roots Islam has in common with Judaism and Christianity and the
worship the three great monotheistic religions offer to the one true God.
There is also the common commitment that Muslims and Christians have to the
family and to the defence of life, and the record of co-operation in recent
decades between Muslim countries, the Holy See, and countries such as the
United States in defending life and the family at the international level,
particularly at the United Nations.
Many commentators draw attention to the diversity
of Muslim life-sunni, shi'ite, sufi, and their myriad variations-and the different
forms that Muslim devotion can take in places such as Indonesia and the Balkans
on the one hand, and Iran and Nigeria on the other. Stress is laid, quite
rightly, on the widely divergent interpretations of the Koran and the shari'a,
and the capacity Islam has shown throughout its history for developing new
interpretations. Given the contemporary situation, the wahhabist interpretation
at the heart of Saudi Islamism offers probably the most important example
of this, but Muslim history also offers more hopeful examples, such as the
re-interpretation of the shari'a after the fall of the Ottoman empire, and
particularly after the end of the Second World War, which permitted Muslims
to emigrate to non-Muslim countries[2].
Optimists also take heart from the cultural
achievements of Islam in the Middle Ages, and the accounts of toleration extended
to Jewish and Christian subjects of Muslim rule as "people of the Book".
Some deny or minimise the importance of Islam as a source of terrorism, or
of the problems that more generally afflict Muslim countries, blaming factors
such as tribalism and inter-ethnic enmity; the long-term legacy of colonialism
and Western domination; the way that oil revenues distort economic development
in the rich Muslim states and sustain oligarchic rule; the poverty and political
oppression in Muslim countries in Africa; the situation of the Palestinians,
and the alleged "problem" of the state of Israel; and the way that
globalisation has undermined or destroyed traditional life and imposed alien
values on Muslims and others.
Indonesia and Turkey are pointed to as examples
of successful democratisation in Muslim societies, and the success of countries
such as Australia and the United States as "melting pots", creating
stable and successful societies while absorbing people from very different
cultures and religions, is often invoked as a reason for trust and confidence
in the growing Muslim populations in the West. The phenomenal capacity of
modernity to weaken gradually the attachment of individuals to family, religion
and traditional ways of life, and to commodify and assimilate developments
that originate in hostility to it (think of the way the anti-capitalist counter-culture
of the 1960s and 70s was absorbed into the economic and political mainstream-and
into consumerism), is also relied upon to "normalise" Muslims in
Western countries, or at least to normalise them in the minds of the non-Muslim
majority.
Reasons for optimism are also sometimes drawn
from the totalitarian nature of Islamist ideology, and the brutality and rigidity
of Islamist rule, exemplified in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Just as the
secular totalitarian-isms of the twentieth century (Nazism and Communism)
ultimately proved unsustainable because of the enormous toll they exacted
on human life and creativity, so too will the religious totalitarianism of
radical Islam. This assessment draws on a more general underlying cause for
optimism, or at least hope, for all of us, namely our common humanity, and
the fruitfulness of dialogue when it is entered with good will on all sides.
Most ordinary people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, share the desire for peace,
stability and prosperity for themselves and their families.
On the pessimistic side of the equation, concern
begins with the Koran itself. In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note
down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned
this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages. I will return to the problems of
Koranic interpretation later in this paper, but in coming to an appreciation
of the true meaning of jihad, for example, it is important to bear in mind
what the scholars tell us about the difference between the suras (or chapters)
of the Koran written during Muhammad's thirteen years in Mecca, and those
that were written after he had based himself at Medina. Irenic interpretations
of the Koran typically draw heavily on the suras written in Mecca, when Muhammad
was without military power and still hoped to win people, including Christians
and Jews, to his revelation through preaching and religious activity. After
emigrating to Medina, Muhammad formed an alliance with two Yemeni tribes and
the spread of Islam through conquest and coercion began[3]. One calculation
is that Muhammad engaged in 78 battles, only one of which, the Battle of the
Ditch, was defensive[4]. The suras from the Medina period reflect this decisive
change and are often held to abrogate suras from the Meccan period[5].
The predominant grammatical form in which
jihad is used in the Koran carries the sense of fighting or waging war. A
different form of the verb in Arabic means "striving" or "struggling",
and English translations sometimes use this form as a way of euphemistically
rendering the Koran's incitements to war against unbelievers[6]. But in any
case, the so-called "verses of the sword" (sura 9:5 and 9:36)[7],
coming as they do in what scholars generally believe to be one of the last
suras revealed to Muhammad[8], are taken to abrogate a large number of earlier
verses on the subject (over 140, according to one radical website[9]). The
suggestion that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving is also
contemptuously rejected by some Islamic writers on the subject. One writer
warns that "the temptation to reinterpret both text and history to suit
'politically correct' requirements is the first trap to be avoided",
before going on to complain that "there are some Muslims today, for instance,
who will convert jihad into a holy bath rather than a holy war, as if it is
nothing more than an injunction to cleanse yourself from within"[10].
The abrogation of many of the Meccan suras
by the later Medina suras affects Islam's relations with those of other faiths,
particularly Christians and Jews. The Christian and Jewish sources underlying
much of the Koran[11] are an important basis for dialogue and mutual understanding,
although there are difficulties. Perhaps foremost among them is the understanding
of God. It is true that Christianity, Judaism and Islam claim Abraham as their
Father and the God of Abraham as their God. I accept with reservations the
claim that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship one god (Allah is simply the
Arabic word for god) and there is only one true God available to be worshipped!
That they worship the same god has been disputed[12], not only by Catholics
stressing the triune nature of God, but also by some evangelical Christians
and by some Muslims[13]. It is difficult to recognise the God of the New Testament
in the God of the Koran, and two very different concepts of the human person
have emerged from the Christian and Muslim understandings of God. Think, for
example, of the Christian understanding of the person as a unity of reason,
freedom and love, and the way these attributes characterise a Christian's
relationship with God. This has had significant consequences for the different
cultures that Christianity and Islam have given rise to, and for the scope
of what is possible within them. But these difficulties could be an impetus
to dialogue, not a reason for giving up on it.
The history of relations between Muslims on
the one hand and Christians and Jews on the other does not always offer reasons
for optimism in the way that some people easily assume. The claims of Muslim
tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities are largely mythical, as the
history of Islamic conquest and domination in the Middle East, the Iberian
peninsula and the Balkans makes abundantly clear. In the territory of modern-day
Spain and Portugal, which was ruled by Muslims from 716 and not finally cleared
of Muslim rule until the surrender of Granada in 1491 (although over half
the peninsula had been reclaimed by 1150, and all of the peninsula except
the region surrounding Granada by 1300), Christians and Jews were tolerated
only as dhimmis[14], subject to punitive taxation, legal discrimination, and
a range of minor and major humiliations. If a dhimmi harmed a Muslim, his
entire community would forfeit protection and be freely subject to pillage,
enslavement and murder. Harsh reprisals, including mutilations, deportations
and crucifixions, were imposed on Christians who appealed for help to the
Christian kings or who were suspected of having converted to Islam opportunistically.
Raiding parties were sent out several times every year against the Spanish
kingdoms in the north, and also against France and Italy, for loot and slaves.
The caliph in Andalusia maintained an army of tens of thousand of Christian
slaves from all over Europe, and also kept a harem of captured Christian women.
The Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula suffered similar sorts of discriminations
and penalties, including restrictions on how they could dress. A pogrom in
Granada in 1066 annihilated the Jewish population there and killed over 5000
people. Over the course of its history Muslim rule in the peninsula was characterised
by outbreaks of violence and fanaticism as different factions assumed power,
and as the Spanish gradually reclaimed territory[15].
Arab rule in Spain and Portugal was a disaster
for Christians and Jews, as was Turkish rule in the Balkans. The Ottoman conquest
of the Balkans commenced in the mid-fifteenth century, and was completed over
the following two hundred years. Churches were destroyed or converted into
mosques, and the Jewish and Christians populations became subject to forcible
relocation and slavery. The extension or withdrawal of protection depended
entirely on the disposition of the Ottoman ruler of the time. Christians who
refused to apostatize were taxed and subject to conscript labour. Where the
practice of the faith was not strictly prohibited, it was frustrated-for example,
by making the only legal market day Sunday. But violent persecution was also
a constant shadow. One scholar estimates that up to the Greek War of Independence
in 1828, the Ottomans executed eleven Patriarchs of Constantinople, nearly
one hundred bishops and several thousand priests, deacons and monks. Lay people
were prohibited from practising certain professions and trades, even sometimes
from riding a horse with a saddle, and right up until the early eighteenth
century their adolescent sons lived under the threat of the military enslavement
and forced conversion which provided possibly one million janissary soldiers
to the Ottomans during their rule. Under Byzantine rule the peninsula enjoyed
a high level of economic productivity and cultural development. This was swept
away by the Ottoman conquest and replaced with a general and protracted decline
in productivity[16].
The history of Islam's detrimental impact
on economic and cultural development at certain times and in certain places
returns us to the nature of Islam itself. For those of a pessimistic outlook
this is probably the most intractable problem in considering Islam and democracy.
What is the capacity for theological development within Islam?
In the Muslim understanding, the Koran comes
directly from God, unmediated. Muhammad simply wrote down God's eternal and
immutable words as they were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel. It
cannot be changed, and to make the Koran the subject of critical analysis
and reflection is either to assert human authority over divine revelation
(a blasphemy), or question its divine character. The Bible, in contrast, is
a product of human co-operation with divine inspiration. It arises from the
encounter between God and man, an encounter characterised by reciprocity,
which in Christianity is underscored by a Trinitarian understanding of God
(an understanding Islam interprets as polytheism). This gives Christianity
a logic or dynamic which not only favours the development of doctrine within
strict limits, but also requires both critical analysis and the application
of its principles to changed circumstances. It also requires a teaching authority.
Of course, none of this has prevented the
Koran from being subjected to the sort of textual analysis that the Bible
and the sacred texts of other religions have undergone for over a century,
although by comparison the discipline is in its infancy. Errors of fact, inconsistencies,
anachronisms and other defects in the Koran are not unknown to scholars, but
it is difficult for Muslims to discuss these matters openly.
In 2004 a scholar who writes under the pseudonym
Christoph Luxenberg published a book in German setting out detailed evidence
that the original language of the Koran was a dialect of Aramaic known as
Syriac. Syriac or Syro-Aramaic was the written language of the Near East during
Muhammad's time, and Arabic did not assume written form until 150 years after
his death. Luxenberg argues that the Koran that has come down to us in Arabic
is partially a mistranscription of the original Syriac. A bizarre example
he offers which received some attention at the time his book was published
is the Koran's promise that those who enter heaven will be "espoused"
to "maidens with eyes like gazelles"; eyes, that is, which are intensely
white and black (suras 44:54 and 52:20). Luxenberg's meticulous analysis suggests
that the Arabic word for maidens is in fact a mistranscription of the Syriac
word for grapes. This does strain common sense. Valiant strivings to be consoled
by beautiful women is one thing, but to be heroic for a packet of raisins
seems a bit much!
Even more explosively, Luxenberg suggests
that the Koran has its basis in the texts of the Syriac Christian liturgy,
and in particular in the Syriac lectionary, which provides the origin for
the Arabic word "koran". As one scholarly review observes, if Luxenberg
is correct the writers who transcribed the Koran into Arabic from Syriac a
century and a half after Muhammad's death transformed it from a text that
was "more or less harmonious with the New Testament and Syriac Christian
liturgy and literature to one that [was] distinct, of independent origin"[17].
This too is a large claim.
It is not surprising that much textual analysis
is carried out pseudonymously. Death threats and violence are frequently directed
against Islamic scholars who question the divine origin of the Koran. The
call for critical consideration of the Koran, even simply of its seventh-century
legislative injunctions, is rejected out of hand by hard-line Muslim leaders.
Rejecting calls for the revision of school textbooks while preaching recently
to those making the hajj pilgrimage to Mount Arafat, the Grand Mufti of Saudi
Arabia told pilgrims that "there is a war against our creed, against
our culture under the pretext of fighting terrorism. We should stand firm
and united in protecting our religion. Islam's enemies want to empty our religion
[of] its content and meaning. But the soldiers of God will be victorious"[18].
All these factors I have outlined are problems,
for non-Muslims certainly, but first and foremost for Muslims themselves.
In grappling with these problems we have to resist the temptation to reduce
a complex and fluid situation to black and white photos. Much of the future
remains radically unknown to us. It is hard work to keep the complexity of
a particular phenomenon steadily in view and to refuse to accept easy answers,
whether of an optimistic or pessimistic kind. Above all else we have to remember
that like Christianity, Islam is a living religion, not just a set of theological
or legislative propositions. It animates the lives of an estimated one billion
people in very different political, social and cultural settings, in a wide
range of devotional styles and doctrinal approaches. Human beings have an
invincible genius for variation and innovation.
Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam
is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is
severely limited. To stop at this proposition, however, is to neglect the
way these facts are mitigated or exacerbated by the human factor. History
has more than its share of surprises. Australia lives next door to Indonesia,
the country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world[19]. Indonesia
has been a successful democracy, with limitations, since independence after
World War II. Islam in Indonesia has been tempered significantly both by indigenous
animism and by earlier Hinduism and Buddhism, and also by the influence of
sufism. As a consequence, in most of the country (except in particular Aceh)
Islam is syncretistic, moderate and with a strong mystical leaning. The moderate
Islam of Indonesia is sustained and fostered in particular by organisations
like Nahdatul Ulama, once led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid, which
runs schools across the country, and which with 30-40 million members is one
of the largest Muslim organisations in the world.
The situation in Indonesia is quite different
from that in Pakistan, the country with one of the largest Muslim populations
in the world. 75 per cent of Pakistani Muslims are Sunni, and most of these
adhere to the relatively more-liberal Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence
(for example, Hanafi jurisprudence does not consider blasphemy should be punishable
by the state). But religious belief in Pakistan is being radicalised because
organisations, very different from Indonesia's Nahdatul Ulama, have stepped
in to fill the void in education created by years of neglect by military rulers.
Pakistan spends only 1.8 per cent of GDP on education. 71 per cent of government
schools are without electricity, 40 per cent are without water, and 15 per
cent are without a proper building. 42 per cent of the population is literate,
and this proportion is falling. This sort of neglect makes it easy for radical
Islamic groups with funding from foreign countries to gain ground. There has
been a dramatic increase in the number of religious schools (or madrasas)
opening in Pakistan, and it is estimated that they are now educating perhaps
800,000 students, still a small proportion of the total, but with a disproportionate
impact[20].
These two examples show that there is a whole
range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction,
affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy.
Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but
the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain
it. This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world.
Adherence to what George Weigel has called "a thin, indeed anorexic,
idea of procedural democracy"[21] can be fatal here. It is not enough
to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation,
in the short term at least[22]. Moderation and democracy have been regular
partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive
matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world,
as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in
January reminded us. There are many ways in which President Bush's ambition
to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. In its influence
on both religion and politics, the culture is crucial.
There are some who resist this conclusion
vehemently. In 2002, the Nobel Prize Economist Amartya Sen took issue with
the importance of culture in understanding the radical Islamic challenge,
arguing that religion is no more important than any other part or aspect of
human endeavour or interest. He also challenged the idea that within culture
religious faith typically plays a decisive part in the development of individual
self-understanding. Against this, Sen argued for a characteristically secular
understanding of the human person, constituted above all else by sovereign
choice. Each of us has many interests, convictions, connections and affiliations,
"but none of them has a unique and pre-ordained role in defining [the]
person". Rather, "we must insist upon the liberty to see ourselves
as we would choose to see ourselves, deciding on the relative importance that
we would like to attach to our membership in the different groups to which
we belong. The central issue, in sum, is freedom".[23]
This does work for some, perhaps many, people
in the rich, developed and highly urbanised Western world, particularly those
without strong attachments to religion. Doubtless it has ideological appeal
to many more among the elites. But as a basis for engagement with people of
profound religious conviction, most of whom are not fanatics or fundamentalists,
it is radically deficient. Sen's words demonstrate that the high secularism
of our elites is handicapped in comprehending the challenge that Islam poses.
I suspect one example of the secular incomprehension
of religion is the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into
Western nations, particularly in Europe. Of course they were invited to meet
the need for labour and in some cases to assuage guilt for a colonial past.
If religion rarely influences personal behaviour
in a significant way then the religious identity of migrants is irrelevant.
I suspect that some anti-Christians, for example, the Spanish Socialists,
might have seen Muslims as a useful counterweight to Catholicism, another
factor to bring religion into public disrepute. Probably too they had been
very confident that Western advertising forces would be too strong for such
a primitive religious viewpoint, which would melt down like much of European
Christianity. This could prove to be a spectacular misjudgement.
So the current situation is very different
from what the West confronted in the twentieth century Cold War, when secularists,
especially those who were repentant communists, were well equipped to generate
and sustain resistance to an anti-religious and totalitarian enemy. In the
present challenge it is religious people who are better equipped, at least
initially, to understand the situation with Islam. Radicalism, whether of
religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness.
But if we are going to help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme
variants it has thrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences
of religious faith. We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness
and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death.
This is another place where religious people have an edge. Western secularists
regularly have trouble understanding religious faith in their own societies,
and are often at sea when it comes to addressing the meaninglessness that
secularism spawns. An anorexic vision of democracy and the human person is
no match for Islam.
It is easy for us to tell Muslims that they
must look to themselves and find ways of reinterpreting their beliefs and
remaking their societies. Exactly the same thing can and needs to be said
to us. If democracy is a belief in procedures alone then the West is in deep
trouble. The most telling sign that Western democracy suffers a crisis of
confidence lies in the disastrous fall in fertility rates, a fact remarked
on by more and more commentators. In 2000, Europe from Iceland to Russia west
of the Ural Mountains recorded a fertility rate of only 1.37. This means that
fertility is only at 65 per cent of the level needed to keep the population
stable. In 17 European nations that year deaths outnumbered births. Some regions
in Germany, Italy and Spain already have fertility rates below 1.0.
Faith ensures a future. As an illustration
of the literal truth of this, consider Russia and Yemen. Look also at the
different birth rates in the red and blue states in the last presidential
election in the U.S.A. In 1950 Russia, which suffered one of the most extreme
forms of forced secularisation under the Communists, had about 103 million
people. Despite the devastation of wars and revolution the population was
still young and growing. Yemen, a Muslim country, had only 4.3 million people.
By 2000 fertility was in radical decline in Russia, but because of past momentum
the population stood at 145 million. Yemen had maintained a fertility rate
of 7.6 over the previous 50 years and now had 18.3 million people. Median
level United Nations forecasts suggest that even with fertility rates increasing
by 50 per cent in Russia over the next fifty years, its population will be
about 104 million in 2050-a loss of 40 million people. It will also be an
elderly population. The same forecasts suggest that even if Yemen's fertility
rate falls 50 per cent to 3.35, by 2050 it will be about the same size as
Russia - 102 million - and overwhelmingly young[24].
The situation of the United States and Australia
is not as dire as this, although there is no cause for complacency. It is
not just a question of having more children, but of rediscovering reasons
to trust in the future. Some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global
warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness, of Western fear when confronted
by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature. Belief in a
benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect,
although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate
and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals
and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today
they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
Most of this is a preliminary clearing of
the ground for dialogue and interaction with our Muslim brothers and sisters
based on the conviction that it is always useful to know accurately where
you are before you start to decide what you should be doing.
The war against terrorism is only one aspect
of the challenge. Perhaps more important is the struggle in the Islamic world
between moderate forces and extremists, especially when we set this against
the enormous demographic shifts likely to occur across the world, the relative
changes in population-size of the West, the Islamic and Asian worlds and the
growth of Islam in a childless Europe.
Every great nation and religion has shadows
and indeed crimes in their histories. This is certainly true of Catholicism
and all Christian denominations. We should not airbrush these out of history,
but confront them and then explain our present attitude to them.
These are also legitimate requests for our
Islamic partners in dialogue. Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the
Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? Is the programme of military
expansion (100 years after Muhammad's death Muslim armies reached Spain and
India) to be resumed when possible?
Do they believe that democratic majorities
of Muslims in Europe would impose Sharia law? Can we discuss Islamic history
and even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran without
threats of violence?
Obviously some of these questions about the
future cannot be answered, but the issues should be discussed. Useful dialogue
means that participants grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam
and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings.
Both Muslims and Christians are helped by
accurately identifying what are core and enduring doctrines, by identifying
what issues can be discussed together usefully, by identifying those who are
genuine friends, seekers after truth and cooperation and separating them from
those who only appear to be friends.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]. For some examples of this, see Daniel
Pipes, "Jihad and the Professors", Commentary, November 2002.
[2]. For an account of how some Muslim jurists
dealt with large-scale emigration to non-Muslim countries, see Paul Stenhouse
MSC, "Democracy, Dar al-Harb, and Dar al-Islam", unpublished manuscript,
nd.
[3]. Paul Stenhouse MSC, "Muhammad, Qur'anic
Texts, the Shari'a and Incitement to Violence". Unpublished manuscript,
31 August 2002.
[4]. Daniel Pipes "Jihad and the Professors"
19. Another source estimates that Muhammad engaged in 27 (out of 38) battles
personally, fighting in 9 of them. See A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad
by Ibn Ishaq (Oxford University Press, Karachi: 1955), 659.
[5]. Stenhouse "Muhammad, Qur'anic Texts,
the Shari'a and Incitement to Violence".
[6]. Ibid.
[7]. Sura 9:5: "Then, when the sacred
months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take
them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.
But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them
go their way; for God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate."
Sura 9:36: "And fight the unbelievers
totally even as they fight you totally; and know that God is with the godfearing."
(Arberry translation).
[8]. Richard Bonney, Jihad: From Qur'an to
bin Laden (Palgrave, Hampshire: 2004), 22-26.
[9]."The Will of Abdullaah Yusuf Azzam",
http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=532& (dated
20 April 1986).
[10]. M. J. Akbar, The Shade of Swords: Jihad
and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (Routledge, London & New
York: 2002), xv.
[11]. Abraham I. Katsch, Judaism and the Koran
(Barnes & Co., New York: 1962), passim.
[12]. See for example Alain Besançon,
"What Kind of Religion is Islam?" Commentary, May 2004.
[13]. Daniel Pipes, "Is Allah God?"
New York Sun, 28 June 2005.
[14]. On the concept of "dhimmitude",
see Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad
to Dhimmitude, trans. Miriam Kochman and David Littman (Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, Madison NJ: 1996).
[15]. Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad:
Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non Muslims (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY:
2005), 56-75.
[16]. Ibid.
[17]. Robert R. Phenix Jr & Cornelia B.
Horn, "Book Review of Christoph Luxenberg (ps.) Die syro-aramaeische
Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Qur'ansprache",
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 6:1 (January 2003). See also the article
on Luxenberg's book published in Newsweek, 28 July 2004.
[18]. "Hajj Pilgrims Told of War on Islam",
www.foxnews.com, 9 January 2006.
[19]. The World Christian Database (http://worldchristiandatabase.org)
gives a considerably lower estimate of the Muslim proportion of the population
(54 per cent, or 121.6 million), attributing 22 per cent of the population
to adherents of Asian "New Religions". On the WCD's estimates, Pakistan
has the world's largest Muslim population, with 154.5 million (or approximately
96 per cent of a total population of 161 million). The CIA's World Fact Book
(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook) estimates 88 per cent of Indonesia's
population of 242 million is Muslim, giving it a Muslim population of 213
million.
The Muslim proportion of the population in
Indonesia may be as low as 37-40 per cent, owing to the way followers of traditional
Javanese mysticism are classified as Muslim by government authorities. See
Paul Stenhouse MSC, "Indonesia, Islam, Christians, and the Numbers Game",
Annals Australia, October 1998.
[20]. William Dalrymple, "Inside the
Madrasas", New York Review of Books, 1 December 2005.
[21]. George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral:
Europe, America and Politics without God (Basic Books, New York: 2005), 136.
[22]. For a sophisticated presentation of
the argument of the case for the moderating effect of electoral democracy
in the Islamic world, see the Pew Forum's interview with Professor Vali Nasr
(Professor of National Security Studies at the US Naval Postgraduate School),"Islam
and Democracy: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan", 4 November 2005, http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=91.
[23]. Amartya Sen, "Civilizational Imprisonments",
The New Republic, 10 June 2002.
[24]. Allan Carlson, "Sweden and the
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