106down to honoring covenants and treaties— a duty
that I can’t imagine any serious Muslim believes
will trump the obligation to defend the faith. The
fatwa also cites the Mughals and the Ottomans as
historical pre ce dents for tolerance in the House of
Islam. Apart from my aforementioned concerns
about getting the history wrong— the Ottomans, for
instance, perpetrated a genocide against Christians
(Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek), killing millions—
I mainly worry that such a pre ce dent, where true,
can’t be nearly as persuasive as the example set by
Muhammad himself— which, as you know, offers
ample justifi cation for religious vio lence.
So this fatwa, while better than no fatwa at all, is
symptomatic of the prob lem I’ve been describing.
Reformists either rely on examples that are not
doctrinal— that is, instances in which Muslims be-
haved better than their scripture mandates—or cite
something like a commitment to honoring cove-
nants and treaties, which occasionally has sinister
implications. One regularly hears Muslims saying,
“Yes, we must follow the laws of England because
our faith tells us that we should follow covenants.”
But many of these people want the laws to change—
indeed, many want shari’ah established in the UK.
Hand- waving displays of tolerance often conceal
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