systematic reading.^359One might think that following the mass murder of his
fellow Americans on 11th September 2001, including an
attack on the Pentagon itself, that this soldier-turned-
sociologist would make a major contribution to the Westʼs
understanding Islam as a religion of war. Far from it.
Schwartz-Barcott’s book has an entire chapter on the
verses from the Koran relating to peace and war, and this is
described by the author as “the heart of this book”.^360 He
uses the Pickthall translation (as we do), on the basis that
Pickthall was “a widely respected British scholar who
converted to Islam”.^361 In his discussion of these verses, the
ex-Marine often offers his own moderating interpretation of
the verse^362 (as if Muslims care what a Kuffar offers as an
interpretation of the Koran). Schwartz-Barcott’s entire
project of looking for a peaceful spin on Islam is an exercise
in futility, since he seems to be completely unaware of the
concept of abrogation: verses which he thinks have
ambiguities allowing him to find less violent interpretations
are also verses which have been cancelled by abrogation.^363
That these violent verses have been cancelled does not
mean that the Koran and Islam are less violent than
Schwartz-Barcott realises: the verse which does the
cancelling is Koran 9:5 (“the verse of Sword”), one of the
most violent verses in the Koran! The verse of the sword is
of such overwhelming significance that it cancels over 120
other verses in the Koran (it is the single most important
abrogating verse). It is no accident that Saudi Arabia and