One of the world’s leading Islamic authorities recently confirmed an important fact about Islam that has been repeatedly denounced as an “Islamophobic” fabrication.
As the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 jihad attacks came and went, and the establishment media wrung its hands over “Islamophobia,” no one bothered to mention the fact that Islamic theology and law actually envision no scenario in which non-Muslims and Muslims live together as equals in a secular society.
Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, is said to have declared that “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated,” and that became the guiding principle for Islam’s vision of society: non-Muslims must either convert to Islam or accept a state of subservience, accepting the hegemony of the Muslims and the loss of basic rights. This idea is based on a passage of the Qur’an that tells Muslims to fight “the people of the book” — that is, primarily Jews and Christians — “until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (9:29)
That business about making sure the Jews and Christians “feel themselves subdued” has had teeth throughout Islamic history. According to legend, the Bedouin commander al-Mughira bin Sa‘d explained to the Persian commander Rustam that he “must pay the jizya while you are in a state of abasement,” and elaborated: “You pay it while you are standing and I am sitting and the whip hanging is over your head.” The renowned Qur’an commentator Ibn Kathir says that the subject Jews and Christians must be “disgraced, humiliated and belittled.” Muslims are “not allowed to honor” them or to “elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated.”
I’ve been explaining all this for years, and for just as long, I’ve been accused of “Islamophobia.” Muslims, leftists, and what would today be called “woke right” people have all excoriated me for not realizing how tolerant, pluralistic, and downright cuddly Islam really is. Of course Islamic law is completely compatible with a secular, pluralistic society, and only the most hidebound “Islamophobe” would dare suggest otherwise.
Well, as it turns out, the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, is a hidebound “Islamophobe.” Coptic Solidarity recently revealed that “in remarks intended to emphasize Islam’s rejection of religious coercion and its supposedly strictly defensive conception of warfare, Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb declared that Muslims should not begin a war before offering the other side three choices: ‘Islam, peace, or fighting.’ The formulation creates a striking tension with the very argument against religious compulsion that preceded it.”
You may recall that al-Tayeb was the Islamic authority who several years ago, along with the late Pope Francis, signed a declaration condemning religious violence. He is widely assumed to be a “moderate” Muslim, but this reaffirmation of traditional Islamic theology shows that he is anything but. Al-Tayeb, says Coptic Solidarity, “said that Muslims are required to wait three days after inviting the enemy to embrace Islam and not begin the confrontation before the fourth day, in the hope that the enemy will accept Islam or agree to a peace treaty or reconciliation.”
So Muslims must go to war with infidels who commit the crime of refusing to convert to Islam. Islamic apologists in the West like to claim that Muslims can only go to war to defend themselves, but Coptic Solidarity asks a trenchant question: “If war is undertaken solely to repel aggression, why should conversion to Islam enter the equation at all?”
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Indeed. And as for that peace treaty, it is not the kind that Westerners envision, marking the end of a war and the beginning of a period of coexistence. A manual of Islamic law that al-Tayeb’s al-Azhar certified in 1991 as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community” states that “the subject peoples,” that is, non-Muslims who have concluded a peace treaty with the Muslims, must “pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)” and “are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not greeted with ‘as-Salamu alaykum’ [the traditional Muslim greeting, ‘Peace be upon you’]; must keep to the side of the street; may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims’ buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to openly display wine or pork…recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals or feastdays; and are forbidden to build new churches.” (Reliance of the Traveller, o11.3, 5).
Discrimination and second-class status are thus the hallmarks of this “peace treaty,” and if the Muslims decide that a non-Muslim has insulted Allah, Muhammad, or the Qur’an, or violated the rules of his subjugation, the non-Muslim can be killed at any time.
It used to be “Islamophobic” to point all this out. Thanks, al-Tayeb, for clearing up that it’s just basic Islam.
