JIHAD IS EVERTHING THE GOLDEN RULE IS NOT
Gates of Vienna
February 2, 2008 Saturday 5:15 PM EST
Feb. 2, 2008 (Gates of Vienna delivered by Newstex) — The paperback
edition of Dr. Andrew Bostoms book, The Legacy of Jihad (complete with
a new preface) is due out this Spring. The following review from The
Winter 2008, Middle East Quarterly is by Professor Johannes J.G.
Jansen, whom Bostom calls the Netherlands leading contemporary scholar
of Islam.
He also credits Jansens work as definitive examinations of the Islamic
movements that gave rise to Al Qaeda.
The re-edition of this remarkable book in paperback form will make it
accessible to more people. However, if you can afford it, I recommend
the hard-bound version. Its a lovely book just to have.
Professor Jansen says:
Bostoms book amply documents the systematic and destructive character
of Islamic jihad, refuting the much-repeated argument that jihad is
a rich concept that has many meanings and that jihad first of all
signifies inner struggle. Jihad is first of all war, bloodshed,
subjugation, and expansion of the faith by violence. The book
implicitly devastates the fashionable but uninformed opinion that all
religions are elaborations of the Golden Rule. Jihad is everything
the Golden Rule is not. [my emphasis – D]
Jihad has been extremely effective and has served Islam well. In the
light of this success, it can hardly be expected from Muslim leaders
that they renounce jihad for more peaceful methods for propagating
their faith. Renunciation of jihad would simply not be in the interest
of Islam. But it would, to the contrary, be very much in the interest
of the rest of the world. How should the rest of the world react
to Muslim insistence on the legitimacy of jihad? Do modern, free,
and democratic societies have the stomach to withstand jihad?
This question becomes more and more important when jihadists see
themselves increasingly not as an alternative to Christianity, Judaism,
or any other faith but as an alternative to democracy. One almost
gets the impression that present-day jihadists fervently desire to
add Islam to the list that starts with Nazism and communism.
Bostom not only presents us with classical mainstream Islamic
sources and their justifications for jihad, plus witness reports
from victims that survived by accident, etc., but he also quotes
contemporary Muslim clerics. For Yusuf al-Qaradawi (b. 1926) discusses
martyrdom operations, a relatively new tactic of jihadists. Are such
operations jihad or suicide? This is an important question because
Islam forbids suicide. Luckily Qaradawi, regarded by many in the
West as a moderate, knows the exact difference between suicide and a
martyrdom operation. Someone who kills himself is too weak to cope
with the situation in which he finds himself. In contrast, the one
who carries out a martyrdom operation does not think of himself. He
sells himself to Allah in order to buy Paradise in exchange.
If this is how the moderates reason, what can we expect from the
radicals?
Answer? Not much
Dr. Bostoms book is not easy to read, but it is worth the effort.
Besides having to wade through the descriptions of the Islamic ritual
of making piles of Hindu heads, you come across fascinating bits
of history.
For example, the people we now know as gypsies fled from the Muslim
invasions into India. They gradually made their way across the world,
the first exodus coinciding with the Arab invasion of Sind (India).
Surprisingly, the Roma are of Hindu stock, though many later converted
to Christianity. Nonetheless they maintained their Roma identity. Roma
means simply man, and they referred to themselves as Roma chave,
or sons of Rama, the Indian God:
Even today, a visit to the new community of Romanies in Skopje in
the southeastern part of Yugoslavia is like entering a village in
Rajasthanwith regard to their language, a large number of the words
in different dialects are of Indian originas their persons and customs
show much of the Hindu character [Chapter Muslims Invade India]
Dr. Bostom has a full account of the Armenian genocide – you know,
the one the Turks say didnt happen. Turkey stonewalls better than
the USSR ever did. On the other hand, theyve had more practice at it.
What I find amazing is that he managed to write this amazing compendium
while maintaining his medical practice. Truly productive people are
examples to the rest of us, we of the couch potato brigade.