Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?

by Raymond Ibrahim
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2009, pp. 3-12

http://www.meforum.org/2159/are-judaism-and-christianity-as-violent-as-islam

“There is far more
violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed
itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of
the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting
brutal holy wars against Islam.”[1]
So announces former nun and self-professed “freelance monotheist,”
Karen Armstrong. This quote sums up the single most influential
argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is
inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions,
proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair
share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody
histories. Thus, whenever Islam’s sacred scriptures—the Qur’an first,
followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the
Hadith)—are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion’s innate
bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures,
specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent
passages.

Medieval times: The Crusades were violent and led to atrocities by the modern world’s standards under the banner of the cross and in the name of Christianity. But the Crusades were a counterattack on Islam. Muslim invasions and atrocities against Christians were on the rise in the decades before the launch of the Crusades in 1096.

More often than not, this argument puts an end to any
discussion regarding whether violence and intolerance are unique to
Islam. Instead, the default answer becomes that it is not Islam per se
but rather Muslim grievance and frustration—ever exacerbated by
economic, political, and social factors—that lead to violence. That
this view comports perfectly with the secular West’s “materialistic”
epistemology makes it all the more unquestioned.

Therefore, before condemning the Qur’an and the historical words
and deeds of Islam’s prophet Muhammad for inciting violence and
intolerance, Jews are counseled to consider the historical atrocities
committed by their Hebrew forefathers as recorded in their own
scriptures; Christians are advised to consider the brutal cycle of
violence their forbears have committed in the name of their faith
against both non-Christians and fellow Christians. In other words, Jews
and Christians are reminded that those who live in glass houses should
not be hurling stones.

But is that really the case? Is the analogy with other scriptures
legitimate? Does Hebrew violence in the ancient era, and Christian
violence in the medieval era, compare to or explain away the tenacity
of Muslim violence in the modern era?

Violence in Jewish and Christian History

Along with Armstrong, any number of prominent writers, historians,
and theologians have championed this “relativist” view. For instance,
John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, wonders,

How come we keep on asking the same question, [about violence in
Islam,] and don’t ask the same question about Christianity and Judaism?
Jews and Christians have engaged in acts of violence. All of us have
the transcendent and the dark side. … We have our own theology of hate.
In mainstream Christianity and Judaism, we tend to be intolerant; we
adhere to an exclusivist theology, of us versus them.[2]

An article by Pennsylvania State University humanities professor
Philip Jenkins, “Dark Passages,” delineates this position most fully.
It aspires to show that the Bible is more violent than the Qur’an:

[I]n terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim
about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong.
In fact, the Bible overflows with “texts of terror,” to borrow a phrase
coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains
far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and
biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more
indiscriminate savagery. … If the founding text shapes the whole
religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation
as religions of savagery.[3]

Several anecdotes from the Bible as well as from Judeo-Christian
history illustrate Jenkins’ point, but two in particular—one supposedly
representative of Judaism, the other of Christianity—are regularly
mentioned and therefore deserve closer examination.

The military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews in about
1200 B.C.E. is often characterized as “genocide” and has all but become
emblematic of biblical violence and intolerance. God told Moses:

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you
as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive,
but you shall utterly destroy them—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite,
Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite—just as the Lord your God has commanded
you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations
which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your
God.[4]

So Joshua [Moses’ successor] conquered all the land: the mountain
country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and
all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that
breathed, as the Lord, God of Israel had commanded.[5]

As for Christianity, since it is impossible to find New Testament
verses inciting violence, those who espouse the view that Christianity
is as violent as Islam rely on historical events such as the Crusader
wars waged by European Christians between the eleventh and thirteenth
centuries. The Crusades were in fact violent and led to atrocities by
the modern world’s standards under the banner of the cross and in the
name of Christianity. After breaching the walls of Jerusalem in 1099,
for example, the Crusaders reportedly slaughtered almost every
inhabitant of the Holy City. According to the medieval chronicle, the Gesta Danorum, “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.”[6]

In light of the above, as Armstrong, Esposito, Jenkins, and others
argue, why should Jews and Christians point to the Qur’an as evidence
of Islam’s violence while ignoring their own scriptures and history?

Bible versus Qur’an

The answer lies in the fact that such observations confuse history
and theology by conflating the temporal actions of men with what are
understood to be the immutable words of God. The fundamental error is
that Judeo-Christian history—which is violent—is being conflated with
Islamic theology—which commands violence. Of course, the three major
monotheistic religions have all had their share of violence and
intolerance towards the “other.” Whether this violence is ordained by
God or whether warlike men merely wished it thus is the key question.

Old Testament violence is an interesting case in point. God clearly
ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding
peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God’s will, for
good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the
Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that—history. It
happened; God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and
place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such
violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law. In
short, biblical accounts of violence are descriptive, not prescriptive.

This is where Islamic violence is unique. Though similar to the
violence of the Old Testament—commanded by God and manifested in
history—certain aspects of Islamic violence and intolerance have become
standardized in Islamic law and apply at all times. Thus, while the
violence found in the Qur’an has a historical context, its ultimate
significance is theological. Consider the following Qur’anic verses,
better known as the “sword-verses”:

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.[7]

Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day, and do not
forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden – such men as practise
not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book
– until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.[8]

As with Old Testament verses where God commanded the Hebrews to
attack and slay their neighbors, the sword-verses also have a
historical context. God first issued these commandments after the
Muslims under Muhammad’s leadership had grown sufficiently strong to
invade their Christian and pagan neighbors. But unlike the bellicose
verses and anecdotes of the Old Testament, the sword-verses became
fundamental to Islam’s subsequent relationship to both the “people of
the book” (i.e., Jews and Christians) and the “idolators” (i.e.,
Hindus, Buddhists, animists, etc.) and, in fact, set off the Islamic
conquests, which changed the face of the world forever. Based on Qur’an
9:5, for instance, Islamic law mandates that idolators and polytheists
must either convert to Islam or be killed; simultaneously, Qur’an 9:29
is the primary source of Islam’s well-known discriminatory practices
against conquered Christians and Jews living under Islamic suzerainty.

In fact, based on the sword-verses as well as countless other
Qur’anic verses and oral traditions attributed to Muhammad, Islam’s
learned officials, sheikhs, muftis, and imams throughout the ages have
all reached consensus—binding on the entire Muslim community—that Islam
is to be at perpetual war with the non-Muslim world until the former
subsumes the latter. Indeed, it is widely held by Muslim scholars that
since the sword-verses are among the final revelations on the topic of
Islam’s relationship to non-Muslims, that they alone have abrogated
some 200 of the Qur’an’s earlier and more tolerant verses, such as “no
compulsion is there in religion.”[9]
Famous Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) admired in the West for
his “progressive” insights, also puts to rest the notion that jihad is
defensive warfare:

In the Muslim community, the holy war [jihad] is a religious duty,
because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to
convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force … The
other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy
war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of
defense … They are merely required to establish their religion among
their own people. That is why the Israelites after Moses and Joshua
remained unconcerned with royal authority [e.g., a caliphate]. Their
only concern was to establish their religion [not spread it to the
nations] … But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other
nations.[10]

Modern authorities agree. The Encyclopaedia of Islam‘s entry
for “jihad” by Emile Tyan states that the “spread of Islam by arms is a
religious duty upon Muslims in general … Jihad must continue to be done
until the whole world is under the rule of Islam … Islam must
completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread
Islam] can be eliminated.” Iraqi jurist Majid Khaduri (1909-2007),
after defining jihad as warfare, writes that “jihad … is regarded by
all jurists, with almost no exception, as a collective obligation of
the whole Muslim community.”[11] And, of course, Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.[12]

Qur’anic Language

When the Qur’an’s violent verses are juxtaposed with their Old
Testament counterparts, they are especially distinct for using language
that transcends time and space, inciting believers to attack and slay
nonbelievers today no less than yesterday. God commanded the Hebrews to
kill Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and
Jebusites—all specific peoples rooted to a specific time and place. At
no time did God give an open-ended command for the Hebrews, and by
extension their Jewish descendants, to fight and kill gentiles. On the
other hand, though Islam’s original enemies were, like Judaism’s,
historical (e.g., Christian Byzantines and Zoroastrian Persians), the
Qur’an rarely singles them out by their proper names. Instead, Muslims
were (and are) commanded to fight the people of the book—”until they
pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled”[13] and to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them.”[14]

The two Arabic conjunctions “until” (hata) and “wherever” (haythu)
demonstrate the perpetual and ubiquitous nature of these commandments:
There are still “people of the book” who have yet to be “utterly
humbled” (especially in the Americas, Europe, and Israel) and
“idolators” to be slain “wherever” one looks (especially Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa). In fact, the salient feature of almost all of the
violent commandments in Islamic scriptures is their open-ended and
generic nature: “Fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no persecution and the religion is God’s entirely. [Emphasis added.]”[15] Also, in a well-attested tradition that appears in the hadith collections, Muhammad proclaims:

I have been commanded to wage war against mankind until they
testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger
of God; and that they establish prostration prayer, and pay the
alms-tax [i.e., convert to Islam]. If they do so, their blood and
property are protected. [Emphasis added.][16]

This linguistic aspect is crucial to understanding scriptural
exegeses regarding violence. Again, it bears repeating that neither
Jewish nor Christian scriptures—the Old and New Testaments,
respectively—employ such perpetual, open-ended commandments. Despite
all this, Jenkins laments that

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize
segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions … all are in
the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Qur’an.
At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and
certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But
the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the
scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in
the Muslim scripture.[17]

One wonders what Jenkins has in mind by the word “canonized.” If by
canonized he means that such verses are considered part of the canon of
Judeo-Christian scripture, he is absolutely correct; conversely, if by
canonized he means or is trying to connote that these verses have been
implemented in the Judeo-Christian Weltanschauung, he is absolutely wrong.

Yet one need not rely on purely exegetical and philological
arguments; both history and current events give the lie to Jenkins’s
relativism. Whereas first-century Christianity spread via the blood of
martyrs, first-century Islam spread through violent conquest and
bloodshed. Indeed, from day one to the present—whenever it could—Islam
spread through conquest, as evinced by the fact that the majority of
what is now known as the Islamic world, or dar al-Islam, was
conquered by the sword of Islam. This is a historic fact, attested to
by the most authoritative Islamic historians. Even the Arabian
peninsula, the “home” of Islam, was subdued by great force and
bloodshed, as evidenced by the Ridda wars following Muhammad’s death
when tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword by the first
caliph Abu Bakr for abandoning Islam.

Muhammad’s Role

Moreover, concerning the current default position which purports to
explain away Islamic violence—that the latter is a product of Muslim
frustration vis-à-vis political or economic oppression—one must ask:
What about all the oppressed Christians and Jews, not to mention Hindus
and Buddhists, of the world today? Where is their religiously-garbed
violence? The fact remains: Even though the Islamic world has the
lion’s share of dramatic headlines—of violence, terrorism,
suicide-attacks, decapitations—it is certainly not the only region in the world suffering under both internal and external pressures.

For instance, even though practically all of sub-Saharan Africa is
currently riddled with political corruption, oppression and poverty,
when it comes to violence, terrorism, and sheer chaos, Somalia—which
also happens to be the only sub-Saharan country that is entirely
Muslim—leads the pack. Moreover, those most responsible for Somali
violence and the enforcement of intolerant, draconian, legal
measures—the members of the jihadi group Al-Shabab (the
youth)—articulate and justify all their actions through an Islamist
paradigm.

In Sudan, too, a jihadi-genocide against the Christian and
polytheistic peoples is currently being waged by Khartoum’s Islamist
government and has left nearly a million “infidels” and “apostates”
dead. That the Organization of Islamic Conference has come to the
defense of Sudanese president Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who is wanted by
the International Criminal Court, is further telling of the Islamic
body’s approval of violence toward both non-Muslims and those deemed
not Muslim enough.

Latin American and non-Muslim Asian countries also have their fair
share of oppressive, authoritarian regimes, poverty, and all the rest
that the Muslim world suffers. Yet, unlike the near daily headlines
emanating from the Islamic world, there are no records of practicing
Christians, Buddhists, or Hindus crashing explosives-laden vehicles
into the buildings of oppressive (e.g., Cuban or Chinese communist)
regimes, all the while waving their scriptures in hand and screaming,
“Jesus [or Buddha or Vishnu] is great!” Why?

There is one final aspect that is often overlooked—either from
ignorance or disingenuousness—by those who insist that violence and
intolerance is equivalent across the board for all religions. Aside
from the divine words of the Qur’an, Muhammad’s pattern of behavior—his
sunna or “example”—is an extremely important source of
legislation in Islam. Muslims are exhorted to emulate Muhammad in all
walks of life: “You have had a good example in God’s Messenger.”[18] And Muhammad’s pattern of conduct toward non-Muslims is quite explicit.

Sarcastically arguing against the concept of moderate Islam, for
example, terrorist Osama bin Laden, who enjoys half the Arab-Islamic
world’s support per an Al-Jazeera poll,[19] portrays the Prophet’s sunna thusly:

“Moderation” is demonstrated by our prophet who did not remain more
than three months in Medina without raiding or sending a raiding party
into the lands of the infidels to beat down their strongholds and seize
their possessions, their lives, and their women.[20]

In fact, based on both the Qur’an and Muhammad’s sunna, pillaging and plundering infidels, enslaving their children, and placing their women in concubinage is well founded.[21] And the concept of sunna—which
is what 90 percent of the billion-plus Muslims, the Sunnis, are named
after—essentially asserts that anything performed or approved by
Muhammad, humanity’s most perfect example, is applicable for Muslims
today no less than yesterday. This, of course, does not mean that
Muslims in mass live only to plunder and rape.

But it does mean that persons naturally inclined to such activities,
and who also happen to be Muslim, can—and do—quite easily justify their
actions by referring to the “Sunna of the Prophet”—the way Al-Qaeda,
for example, justified its attacks on 9/11 where innocents including
women and children were killed: Muhammad authorized his followers to
use catapults during their siege of the town of Ta’if in 630
C.E.—townspeople had refused to submit—though he was aware that women
and children were sheltered there. Also, when asked if it was
permissible to launch night raids or set fire to the fortifications of
the infidels if women and children were among them, the Prophet is said
to have responded, “They [women and children] are from among them
[infidels].”[22]

Jewish and Christian Ways

Though law-centric and possibly legalistic, Judaism has no such
equivalent to the Sunna; the words and deeds of the patriarchs, though
described in the Old Testament, never went on to prescribe Jewish law.
Neither Abraham’s “white-lies,” nor Jacob’s perfidy, nor Moses’
short-fuse, nor David’s adultery, nor Solomon’s philandering ever went
on to instruct Jews or Christians. They were understood as historical
acts perpetrated by fallible men who were more often than not punished
by God for their less than ideal behavior.

As for Christianity, much of the Old Testament law was abrogated or
fulfilled—depending on one’s perspective—by Jesus. “Eye for an eye”
gave way to “turn the other cheek.” Totally loving God and one’s
neighbor became supreme law.[23] Furthermore, Jesus’ sunna—as
in “What would Jesus do?”—is characterized by passivity and altruism.
The New Testament contains absolutely no exhortations to violence.

Still, there are those who attempt to portray Jesus as having a
similarly militant ethos as Muhammad by quoting the verse where the
former—who “spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable
spoke not”[24]—said, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.”[25]
But based on the context of this statement, it is clear that Jesus was
not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting
that strife will exist between Christians and their environment—a
prediction that was only too true as early Christians, far from taking
up the sword, passively perished by the sword in martyrdom as too often
they still do in the Muslim world. [26]

Others point to the violence predicted in the Book of Revelation
while, again, failing to discern that the entire account is
descriptive—not to mention clearly symbolic—and thus hardly
prescriptive for Christians. At any rate, how can one conscionably
compare this handful of New Testament verses that metaphorically
mention the word “sword” to the literally hundreds of Qur’anic
injunctions and statements by Muhammad that clearly command Muslims to
take up a very real sword against non-Muslims?

Undeterred, Jenkins bemoans the fact that, in the New Testament,
Jews “plan to stone Jesus, they plot to kill him; in turn, Jesus calls
them liars, children of the Devil.”[27]
It still remains to be seen if being called “children of the Devil” is
more offensive than being referred to as the descendents of apes and
pigs—the Qur’an’s appellation for Jews.[28]
Name calling aside, however, what matters here is that, whereas the New
Testament does not command Christians to treat Jews as “children of the
Devil,” based on the Qur’an, primarily 9:29, Islamic law obligates
Muslims to subjugate Jews, indeed, all non-Muslims.

Does this mean that no self-professed Christian can be anti-Semitic?
Of course not. But it does mean that Christian anti-Semites are living
oxymorons—for the simple reason that textually and theologically,
Christianity, far from teaching hatred or animosity, unambiguously
stresses love and forgiveness. Whether or not all Christians follow
such mandates is hardly the point; just as whether or not all Muslims
uphold the obligation of jihad is hardly the point. The only question
is, what do the religions command?

John Esposito is therefore right to assert that “Jews and Christians
have engaged in acts of violence.” He is wrong, however, to add, “We
[Christians] have our own theology of hate.” Nothing in the New
Testament teaches hate—certainly nothing to compare with Qur’anic
injunctions such as: “We [Muslims] disbelieve in you [non-Muslims], and
between us and you enmity has shown itself, and hatred for ever until
you believe in God alone.”[29]

Reassessing the Crusades

And it is from here that one can best appreciate the historic
Crusades—events that have been thoroughly distorted by Islam’s many
influential apologists. Karen Armstrong, for instance, has practically
made a career for herself by misrepresenting the Crusades, writing, for
example, that “the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a
Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in
fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars
against Islam.”[30]
That a former nun rabidly condemns the Crusades vis-à-vis anything
Islam has done makes her critique all the more marketable. Statements
such as this ignore the fact that from the beginnings of Islam, more
than 400 years before the Crusades, Christians have noted that Islam
was spread by the sword.[31]
Indeed, authoritative Muslim historians writing centuries before the
Crusades, such as Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. 892) and Muhammad
ibn Jarir at-Tabari (838-923), make it clear that Islam was spread by
the sword.

The fact remains: The Crusades were a counterattack on Islam—not an
unprovoked assault as Armstrong and other revisionist historians
portray. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis puts it well,

Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad,
was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also
an imitation. But unlike the jihad, it was concerned primarily with the
defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. It
was, with few exceptions, limited to the successful wars for the
recovery of southwest Europe, and the unsuccessful wars to recover the
Holy Land and to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans. The Muslim
jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious
obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted
the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. … The object of jihad is
to bring the whole world under Islamic law.[32]

Moreover, Muslim invasions and atrocities against Christians were on
the rise in the decades before the launch of the Crusades in 1096. The
Fatimid caliph Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tariqu’l-Hakim (r. 996-1021) desecrated
and destroyed a number of important churches—such as the Church of St.
Mark in Egypt and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—and
decreed even more oppressive than usual decrees against Christians and
Jews. Then, in 1071, the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantines in the
pivotal battle of Manzikert and, in effect, conquered a major chunk of
Byzantine Anatolia presaging the way for the eventual capture of
Constantinople centuries later.

It was against this backdrop that Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099) called for the Crusades:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a
horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to
our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e.,
Muslim Turks] … has invaded the lands of those Christians and has
depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part
of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by
cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or
appropriated them for the rites of its own religion.[33]

Even though Urban II’s description is historically accurate, the
fact remains: However one interprets these wars—as offensive or
defensive, just or unjust—it is evident that they were not based on the
example of Jesus, who exhorted his followers to “love your enemies,
bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for
those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”[34]
Indeed, it took centuries of theological debate, from Augustine to
Aquinas, to rationalize defensive war—articulated as “just war.” Thus,
it would seem that if anyone, it is the Crusaders—not the jihadists—who
have been less than faithful to their scriptures (from a literal
standpoint); or put conversely, it is the jihadists—not the
Crusaders—who have faithfully fulfilled their scriptures (also from a
literal stand point). Moreover, like the violent accounts of the Old
Testament, the Crusades are historic in nature and not manifestations
of any deeper scriptural truths.

In fact, far from suggesting anything intrinsic to Christianity, the
Crusades ironically better help explain Islam. For what the Crusades
demonstrated once and for all is that irrespective of religious
teachings—indeed, in the case of these so-called Christian Crusades,
despite them—man is often predisposed to violence. But this begs the
question: If this is how Christians behaved—who are commanded to love,
bless, and do good to their enemies who hate, curse, and persecute
them—how much more can be expected of Muslims who, while sharing the
same violent tendencies, are further commanded by the Deity to attack,
kill, and plunder nonbelievers?

Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum and author of The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

[1] Andrea Bistrich, “Discovering the common grounds of world religions,” interview with Karen Armstrong, Share International, Sept. 2007, pp. 19-22.
[2] C-SPAN2, June 5, 2004.
[3] Philip Jenkins, “Dark Passages,” The Boston Globe, Mar. 8, 2009.
[4] Deut. 20:16-18.
[5] Josh. 10:40.
[6] “The Fall of Jerusalem,” Gesta Danorum, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.
[7] Qur. 9:5. All translations of Qur’anic verses are drawn from A.J. Arberry, ed. The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (New York: Touchstone, 1996).
[8] Qur. 9:29.
[9] Qur. 2:256.
[10] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqudimmah: An Introduction to History, Franz Rosenthal, trans. (New York: Pantheon, 1958,) vol. 1, p. 473.
[11] Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 60.
[12] See, for instance, Ahmed Mahmud Karima, Al-Jihad fi’l-Islam: Dirasa Fiqhiya Muqarina (Cairo: Al-Azhar University, 2003).
[13] Qur. 9:29.
[14] Qur. 9:5.
[15] Qur. 8:39.
[16] Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim, C9B1N31; Muhammad Ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), B2N24.
[17] Jenkins, “Dark_Passages.”
[18] Qur. 33:21.
[19] “Al-Jazeera-Poll: 49% of Muslims Support Osama bin Laden,” Sept. 7-10, 2006, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.
[20] ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Ali, Hilf al Irhab (Cairo: Markaz al-Mahrusa li ‘n-Nashr wa ‘l-Khidamat as-Sahafiya wa ‘l-Ma’lumat, 2004).
[21] For example, Qur. 4:24, 4:92, 8:69, 24:33, 33:50.
[22] Sahih Muslim, B19N4321; for English translation, see Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 140.
[23] Matt. 22:38-40.
[24] Matt. 13:34.
[25] Matt. 10:34.
[26] See, for instance, “Christian Persecution Info,” Christian Persecution Magazine, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.
[27] Jenkins, “Dark_Passages.”
[28] Qur. 2:62-65, 5:59-60, 7:166.
[29] Qur. 60:4.
[30] Bistrich, “Discovering the common grounds of world religions,” pp. 19-22; For a critique of Karen Armstrong’s work, see “Karen Armstrong,” in Andrew Holt, ed. Crusades-Encyclopedia, Apr. 2005, accessed Apr. 6, 2009.
[31]
See, for example, the writings of Sophrinius, Jerusalem’s patriarch
during the Muslim conquest of the Holy City, just years after the death
of Muhammad, or the chronicles of Theophane the Confessor.
[32] Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 233-4.
[33] “Speech of Urban—Robert of Rheims,” in Edward Peters, ed., The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p. 27.
[34] Matt. 5:44.

Related Topics:  History, Islam, Jews and Judaism  |  Raymond Ibrahim  |  Summer 2009 MEQ

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