- Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo quotes a 2006 study by the Combatting Terrorism
Center which found that Qurtubi ranked fourth in all the Islamic
commentators cited by jihadi terrorists, the jihadis believing themselves
commanded by Allah to engage in the kind of warfare and genocide that
Mohammed and his Companions conducted in the seventh century (see
Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam, London, 2007,
p.309). Lest you think that the jihadis have plucked a scholar like Qurtubi
from obscurity, here is what The Encyclopaedia of Islam has to say about
Qurtubi: “His commentary is of great richness and of great utility... all
the authors... acknowledge it and insist on the benefit which may be
derived from it” (see Andrew Bostom, Sharia Versus Freedom: the
Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, New York, 2012, p.582). From this
we can conclude that Ms. Bewley and Sheikh Bewley are not
idiosyncratic in appreciating the importance of Qurtubi’s scholarly
interpretation. Qurtubi is precisely so significant for our exposition since
his commentary on the Koran was translated by educated converts to
Islam, people who could by no means be classed as “jihadi”, “Salafi” or
“Wahhabi”. That people whom no-one would regard as extremist should
spend their time translating a scholar that Muslim terrorists take as their
inspiration shows how meaningless are all these attempts to separate off
“Muslim extremists” from “moderate Muslims”. Whilst the Wahhabi
movement dates from the eighteenth century and the Salafi movement
dates from the early twentieth century (see Hamid Enayat, Modern
Islamic Political Thought, Austin, Texas, 1982, pp.41-42), both
movements hark back to the Islam of the seventh century. Thus the same
“Islamic fundamentalism” is propounded from the seventh century to the
thirteenth century, and from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first
century. Moreover, the warfare, sieges, genocide and slave-taking of
Muslims between the thirteenth century and the eighteenth century shows
that there are has really never been any significant length of time in which
Islam could be regarded as peaceful or tolerant. ↵
dana p.
(Dana P.)
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