<ul><li><p>I S L A M U N V E I L E D</p><p>DISTURBING QUESTIONS ABOUTTHE WORLDS FASTEST-GROWING FAITH</p><p>R O B E R T S P E N C E RF O R E W O R D B Y D A V I D P R Y C E - J O N E S</p><p>Encounter BooksSan Francisco</p></li><li><p>Copyright 2002 by Robert Spencer</p><p>All rights reserved, Encounter Books, 665 Third St., Suite 330, San Francisco, California 94107-1951.</p><p>First edition published in 2002 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter forCulture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit tax exempt corporation. </p><p>Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com</p><p>first edition</p><p>Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data</p><p>Spencer, Robert, 1962Islam unveiled : disturbing questions about the worlds fastest-growing faith /</p><p>Robert Spencer.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.ISBN 1-594030-95-21. IslamControversial literature. 2. Apologetics. 3. IslamRelations</p><p>Christianity. 4. Christianity and other religionsIslam. I. Title.BT1170 .S65 2002297dc21 2002073545</p><p>10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1</p></li><li><p>For S.</p></li><li><p>vii</p><p>Contents</p><p>Foreword (by David Pryce-Jones) </p><p>Authors Note </p><p>PROLOGUE What Does Islam Really Stand For? </p><p>ONE Is Islam a Religion of Peace? </p><p>TWO Does Islam Promote and Safeguard Sound Moral Values? </p><p>THREE Does Islam Respect Human Rights? </p><p>FOUR Does Islam Respect Women? </p><p>FIVE Is Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy? </p><p>SIX Can Islam Be Secularized and Made Compatible with the Western Pluralistic Framework? </p><p>SEVEN Can Science and Culture Flourish under Islam? </p><p>EIGHT The Crusades: Christian and Muslim </p><p>NINE Is Islam Tolerant of Non-Muslims? </p><p>TEN Does the West Really Have Nothing to Fear from Islam? </p><p>Acknowledgments </p><p>Notes </p><p>Index </p></li><li><p>ix</p><p>Foreword</p><p> nothing about Islam. A fewmay visit one or another Muslim country as tourists or perhaps on busi-ness, and nd that the inhabitants, hospitable and vivacious, seem to begetting on with their lives like everybody else. The events of September therefore appeared to come from nowhere. What was this holy waragainst the United States and the West, this jihad, declared by Osamabin Laden, and how was it possible that to the Arab and wider Muslimworld he became an instant popular hero because he had organized themurder of several thousand innocent people in New York and Washing-ton? Westerners in general, and perhaps Americans in particular, had lit-tle or no idea that there were Muslims out there who so hated them, andlittle or no idea either of the causes of that hate.</p><p>In a series of interviews and statements, bin Laden made it clearthat in attacking the United States he saw himself as a Muslim doingGods work. And that is the reason why so many Muslims from Beirutand Baghdad to Indonesia cheered and danced in the streets at the newsof September . Leaders and opinion makers including President GeorgeW. Bush, however, were quick to assert that bin Laden was a terroristpure and simple, whose actions were a violation of Islam rather than anatural expression of it. Islam, these leaders maintained, is essentially apeaceful religion.</p><p>Apologetics of this kind served a useful purpose. At a time of ten-sion and potential backlash, it was right to ensure that innocent Mus-lims were not held guilty by association. But in Islam Unveiled, RobertSpencer now argues that indeed bin Laden sincerely meant what he said,and that he and the millions of Muslims who admire him nd sanction</p></li><li><p>x ISLAM UNVEILED</p><p>in Islam. Far from being extremists or perverters of the faith, they inter-pret its tenets correctly.</p><p>From its inception, Islam has been a revealed religion with a text,the Quran, which is considered the Word of God and therefore sacro-sanct. The Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, and then the caliphswho immediately succeeded him at a time of war and imperial expansion,were simultaneously head of state and religious leader. Down the centuries,and still today, in spite of exposure to nationalism and the formation of avariety of nation states, that combination has remained an ideal form ofgovernance for many Muslims. Islam has never known the separation ofchurch and state which has determined the political and social evolutionof the West, leading as it does from absolutism to democracy, from obe-dience to civil rights and from blind faith to reason. Judaism and Chris-tianity were also originally revealed religions. The Reformation and theEnlightenment were the most well-known manifestations of a long processof rational inquiry that gradually altered the general understanding of therelation between church and state, permitting the concessions and com-promises toward those of other faiths upon which a civil society rests.</p><p>For many centuries, absolutism served Islam well enough, and thereare great achievements to show for it, such as the science and architec-ture of the Muslim Middle Ages. Certain of their superiority, Muslimsfelt they had nothing to learn from the despised and barbarian West. Bythe time they realized that this was a mistake of historic proportions, itwas too late to do anything about it. Stultied in their absolutism, alto-gether backward, Muslims and their lands were almost entirely overrunby one or another Western empire. This prolonged contact with the Westhas changed the landscape with such physical features as oil wells andairports and skyscrapers, but only a minority of individuals have adoptedWestern values and ways of thinking.</p><p>Through the twentieth century, Muslims struggled to regain con-trol of their history from the Western empires. In the outcome they wontheir independence, but not their freedom. Absolutism remains the rule.Some Muslim countries have religious rulers, others have nationalist andsecular rulers, but all (with the doubtful exception of Turkey) are despo-tisms, in which the rule of law is a matter to be negotiated. Everywherethe secret police and the military are an ominous presence. This is whatinhibits the creative energies of Muslims and prevents them doing jus-tice to themselves. Anyone who knows Muslim countries, however, will</p></li><li><p>FOREWORD xi</p><p>also be aware that the rigidity of Islamic doctrine conicts with the actualdaily conduct of Muslims. The imam or mullah who comes beseechingfor a bottle of whisky or a bribe is a familiar gure, and so is the rabidanti-Western Islamic extremist who asks how to get his son into an IvyLeague university. Hypocrisy smoothes the rough surfaces of every soci-ety, and perhaps there is more to rejoice in that than to blame.</p><p>Ernest Renan, who founded the study of comparative religion morethan a century ago, thought that Islam was the engine of this spiritualand temporal despotism, describing it as the heaviest chains that evershackled humanity. Robert Spencer follows in that tradition. To him,the concept that the Quran is a perfect book leads to anti-intellectual-ism. Certainly there have been no Islamic Renans; and exegesis of thesacred text as practiced by Christians and Jews would be blasphemous.The result, as Spencer puts it, is that bigotry, fanaticism and plain igno-rance are rooted in some of the central tenets of Islam. There is no scopefor questioning the absolutism inherent in the faith and its accompany-ing Islamic society, or for reforming the injustices deriving from it.</p><p>One unequal relationship postulated by Islam is that between menand women, and another is between master and slave. Robert Spencermay sound polemical on these topics, but he is only reporting the real-ity. Women in Islam are victimized by the Sharia, or Islamic law, whichprivileges men in numerous social and legal instances, and in some coun-tries they are further victimized by customs such as polygamy and femalecircumcision. As for slavery, it still survives in a few Arab countries includ-ing Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Mauritania.</p><p>A third unequal relationship goes back to the origins of Islam, whenMuslims conquered other peoples, then put them to the sword, con-verted them or offered them the choice of becoming dhimmi, that is, sec-ond-class citizens suffering social and nancial impositions that did notaffect Muslims, but protected by the state in return. The assumption ofMuslim superiority and dhimmi inferiority underlay the rightful order-ing of the Islamic world. In the modern age, however, such an assump-tion evidently became absurd. Twin reactions have followed in the Houseof Islam: self-pity at nding itself in such backwardness, and hatred ofthose thought to be responsible for it. Inamed by this mindset, Mus-lims all around the perimeter of the Islamic world are ghting their neigh-bors of other religionsHindus in India, Communist and BuddhistChinese, Jews, Christians in a score of countries, and pagan animists in</p></li><li><p>xii ISLAM UNVEILED</p><p>Africa. In this light, it is wishful thinking to bracket Islam and peace.It is, or ought to be, an unarguable and universal truth that Mus-</p><p>lims and their neighbors should meet on equal terms. Should Muslimsinstead follow the likes of bin Laden and other extremists, insisting oninequality and the enforcement of absolutism, they will have to be resis-ted, if need be militarily. Muslims themselves will have to nd the wayout of this dilemma of their own making. Elsewhere I have called for theMuslim equivalent of an Andrei Sakharov and a Solzhenitsyn, brave andchallenging thinkers who showed their fellow Russians how to escapefrom the dead end of absolutism, to democratize and modernize.</p><p>Robert Spencer doesnt see much prospect of such an eventuality.He tends to believe that the West has so lost condence in itself and itsspiritual, cultural and political values that it is defenseless before vio-lencein which case absolutism will triumph and the Muslim fantasyof superiority will come true. In its own lively style, this book puts downa strong and signicant marker to what lies ahead, as Islam and the restof the world strive to come to terms.</p><p>David Pryce-Jones</p></li><li><p>xiii</p><p>Authors Note</p><p> names is entirely satisfac-tory. English simply is not equipped to render the subtleties of the Ara-bic alphabet. I have chosen Muhammad and Quran overMohammed and Koran more or less arbitrarily, following the morecommon usage of the present day. My other choices are no more system-atic, but they generally have the advantage of being common. The sourcesI quote often use quite divergent spellings, which I hope will not try thereaders patience too much. Most often the differences are no more seri-ous than the employment or omission of a terminal h. Also, the versenumbers in the Quran, and its various English translations, are not stan-dard. But the passages quoted can usually be found within a verse or twoof the number given.</p></li><li><p>1P R O L O G U E</p><p>What Does Islam ReallyStand For?</p><p> Islam means peace. Everyone upto and including the President of the United States and the Prime Min-ister of Great Britain has been saying so ever since the terrorist attacksof September , . Yet open the pages of Islams holy book, the Quran,and you nd statements like this: Slay the pagans wherever you nd them.Such commands inspire people like Amir Maawia Siddiqi, the Pakistanison of a small businessman, to take oaths like this: I, Amir Maawia Sid-diqi, son of Abdul Rahman Siddiqi, state in the presence of God that Iwill slaughter infidels my entire life. . . . May God give me strength infullling this oath.1</p><p>The dissonance between the prevailing conventional wisdom andthe Quranic injunction to slay pagans calls for a deeper investigationinto Islams commitment to peace, and it encapsulates a set of larger prob-lems with the Wests perceptions of Islam.</p><p>Most Americans got their rst taste of contemporary Islamic ter-rorism at the Munich Olympics of , when Muslim terrorists mur-dered Israeli athletes. But at that time observers, both Western and MiddleEastern, assured us that this attack had nothing to do with true Islam,that it was simply another skirmish in the protracted war between Israeland Palestine. We have heard this line again since then. In , Mus-lims stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran and took fty-two hostages. Oncemore we were advised that this had nothing to do with Islam, but insteadwas an expression of the rage that Iranian citizens felt toward the Amer-ican government for its support of the hated shah. When a Muslim sui-cide bomber blew up a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in and killed Americans, news analysts again explained that this had nothing todo with Islam per se; it was another purely political matter.</p></li><li><p>2 ISLAM UNVEILED</p><p>Over and over, the counterpoint between violence and exculpationhas been repeated: when Muslim terrorists threw the elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer to his death off the hijacked cruise ship AchilleLauro in ; when militant Muslims first bombed the World TradeCenter in ; when they killed nineteen American soldiers in the bomb-ing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in ; when they bombedthe U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in ; when they bombedthe USS Cole in . Each time that Muslim terrorists struck, Ameri-cans hastened to assure themselves and the world: We know this is notreal Islam; we know these terrorists are hijacking the religion of peace.</p><p>This chorus swelled after September . George W. Bush, TonyBlair and virtually every other Western leader insisted that their shad-owy foe in this strange new war was not Islam, but terrorism, and thatthe relationship between the two was only coincidental.</p><p>Among the Western heads of state, only Italys Silvio Berlusconiwas out of step: We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation,a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights andin contrast with Islamic countriesrespect for religious and politicalrights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tol-erance.2 But the West, apparently, was aware of no such thing, for Berlus-conis pronouncement set off an international furor. Guy Verhofstadt,Prime Minister of Belgium and president of the European Union, lit intoBerlusconi for inciting reprisals from Muslims: These remarks could,in a dangerous way, have consequences. I can hardly believe that the Ital-ian prime minister made such statements. . . . Rather than bringing civil-isations together, they could feed a feeling of humiliation.3 Berlusconithen backed away from his remarks with the all-purpose dodge that theywere taken out of context.</p><p>Silvio Berlusconi gained an unlikely ally several months later inAmerican evangelist and sometime presidential candidate Pat Robert-son. On CNNs Late Edition Robertson said, I have taken issue withour esteemed president in regard to his stand in saying Islam is a peace-ful religion. Its just not. And the Koran makes it very clear, if you see anindel, you are to kill him. Thats what it says. Now that doesnt soundvery peaceful to me.</p><p>This, too, elicited outrage. For example, the Washington Post won-dered: Is Mr. Robertson trying to start a pogrom? If so, hes headed inthe right direction. A pogrom! There was exquisite irony in the choice</p></li><li><p>WHAT DOES ISLAM REALLY STAND FOR? 3</p><p>of terms. But the Post was more worried about violence from anti-Muslim Am...</p></li></ul>