The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam Read Online Free PDF Page B

Moreover, the status of Martyr in Islam is of the highest, so how can it be that Jihad is reduced to anything lower that that. 2
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    In other words, if a country is perceived to be hindering the spread of Islam, Muslims are obliged to wage war against it. This would, of course, be a defensive conflict, since the hindrances came first. Here then is another illustration of how elastic and essentially meaningless the concept of fighting only in self-defense has become. What constitutes a sufficient provocation? Must the defending side wait until the enemy strikes the first military blow? These questions have no clear or definitive answers in Islamic law, making it possible for anyone to portray virtually any struggle as defensive without violating the strict canons of that law. But this also renders meaningless the oft-repeated claims that jihad warfare can only be defensive.
     
    The Qur’an’s tolerant verses: “canceled”
     
    What’s more, the Qur’an’s last word on jihad is not defensive, but offensive. The suras of the Qur’an are not arranged chronologically, but according to length. However, Islamic theology divides the Qur’an into “Meccan” and “Medinan” suras. The Meccan ones come from the first segment of Muhammad’s career as a prophet, when he simply called the Meccans to Islam. Later, after he had fled to Medina, his positions hardened. The Medinan suras are less poetic and generally much longer than those from Mecca; they’re also filled with matters of law and ritual—and exhortations to jihad warfare against unbelievers. The relatively tolerant verses quoted above and others like them generally date from the Meccan period, while those with a more violent and intolerant edge are mostly from Medina.
    Why does this distinction matter? Because of the Islamic doctrine of abrogation ( naskh ). This is the idea that Allah can change or cancel what he tells Muslims: “None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?” (Qur’an 2:106). According to this idea, the violent verses of the ninth sura, including the Verse of the Sword (9:5), abrogate the peaceful verses, because they were revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career: In fact, most Muslim authorities agree that the ninth sura was the very last section of the Qur’an to be revealed.
     
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Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam:

     

     
“I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”
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    In line with this, some Islamic theologians have asserted that the Verse of the Sword abrogates no fewer than 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of the Qur’an. 3 Tafsir al-Jalalayn , a commentary on the Qur’an by the respected imams Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mahalli (1389–1459) and Jalal al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr al-Suyuti (1445–1505), asserts that the ninth sura “was sent down when security was removed by the sword.” 4 Another mainstream and respected Qur’an commentator, Isma’il bin ‘Amr bin Kathir al Dimashqi (1301–1372), known popularly as Ibn Kathir, declares that sura 9:5 “abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet and any idolater, every treaty, and every term…. No idolater had any more treaty or promise of safety ever since Surah Bara’ah [the ninth sura] was revealed.” 5 Ibn Juzayy (d. 1340), yet another Qur’an commentator whose works are still read in the Islamic world, agrees: The Verse