slam;Religion of War
Umdat al-Salikspells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific -The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.,. unt il they beco me Musli m or pay the non-Musl im poll tax. ' Ther e fol-
lows a comment by a Jordanian jurist that corresponds to Muhammad's
instr uctio ns to call the unbel ieve rs to Isla m befor e figh ting them: The
cal iph wage s thi s war onl y "pr ovi ded tha t he has fir st invi ted [Je ws,
Chris tians , and Zoroas trians ] to enter Islam in fait h and pract ice, and if
they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by pay-
ing the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya),while .remaining in their ancestral
religions,' Also,ifthere is no caliph, Muslims must still wage jihad,"
These laws have been well known for centuries to those who suffered
because of them. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), a Greek monk and the-
ologian (today revered as a saint by the Orthodox Church] who was
imprisoned for a time bythe Turks, remarked trenchantly about Muslims-
These infamous people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having gotthe
bett er of the Roman s [i.e ., Byzan tine s by their love ofGod Theylive by
the bow, the sword , arid debau chery, findi ng pleasu re in takin gslaves ,
devoti ng themsel ves to murder, pillage , spoil ... and not only do they
commit these crimes , but eyen—what an aberr ation—they belie vethat
God approves of them.'
PC Myth: Islam is a religion of peace that
bas been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists
This, of course, is the mother of all PC myths about Islam. Yet its persist-
ence and resilien ce in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary,
both from Islamictheology and today's newspapers, is not simplydue to
naive multi cultu ralis m and cynic al dupli city. Even the Musli m Broth er-
hood theorist Sayyld Qutb, one of the twentieth century's foremostadvo-
cate sof viol ent jih ad, taug ht (wit hout a trac e of iron y) that Isla m isa
religion of peace. However, he had a veryspecifickind of peaceinmind:-
When Islam strives for peace, its objective is not that superficial peace