The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran

Robert Spencer

• Publisher: Regnery
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781596981041
• eBook ISBN: 9781596981263
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran exposes how the Koran incites hatred and violence and is anti-democratic, anti-freedom, and intolerant of any other ideology. Stripping out the obsolete debate, The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran focuses on the decrees toward Jews and Christians, how they were viewed by Muhammad, what "the infidels" have done wrong and what the Koran has in store for them. The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran is the essential primer to comprehending one of the most cryptic and misunderstood religious texts. Robert Spencer sheds light on the violence inherent in the Koran and reveals the frightening implications for the War on Terror, the U.S. and the world.In The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran you will learn:

• The true meaning of celebrated and seemingly benign verses, such as "Strive in the way of Allah" and "Persecution is worse than slaughter"
• How the Koran sanctions domestic abuse, honor killing, and murder

• How the Koran not only discourages Infidels from reading it, but mandates that they don't even touch it

• Why Obama, Clinton, and others are dangerously close to supporting a multiculturalism based on an ideology that aims to destroy the principles America holds dear

Chapter One

WHY EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW WHAT’S IN THE KORAN

IT IS THE MOST REVERED and reviled of books. It is the primary religious text of one of the world’s most prominent and influential religions—one that attracts a steady stream of converts in non-Muslim countries today.

For more than a billion Muslims, the Koran is the unadulterated, pure word of Allah, eternal and perfect, delivered through the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad.¹ In many Muslim countries, boys memorize large sections of it before they can even read.

The book is to be treated with the deepest reverence. Muslims consider it so holy that they are not to touch a Koran unless they are in a state of ritual purity; non-Muslims, according to Islamic law, are not supposed to touch it at all except under strictly defined circumstances.² And the failure to show proper respect for a Koran, anywhere in the world, can be fatal—a false report in Newsweek magazine in 2005 that U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down a toilet sparked rioting in Muslim countries, resulting in at least fifteen deaths.³

This reverence for the Koran is even expressed by non-Muslims. Michael Potemra, deputy managing editor of National Review magazine, asserts, “The Koran is one of the loveliest books ever written, a distillation of monotheism that is full of spiritual wisdom, and I never fail to profit from my reading of it.”⁴ And at Guantanamo Bay, contrary to Newsweek’s false account, U.S. military procedures require guards to don gloves before touching a prisoner’s Koran, which must be handled “as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art.”⁵

So what exactly does the Koran say? The U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims that the book reveals the true, peaceful nature of Islam and promotes interfaith harmony. As CAIR’s “Explore the Quran” campaign urges, “In today’s climate of heightened religious sensitivities and apparent cultural clashes, now is the time for people of all faiths to better acquaint themselves with Islam’s sacred text, the Holy Quran.” CAIR indicates that this campaign is a response to those who dare to claim that Islam has something to do with terrorism:

This campaign, titled Explore the Qur’an, serves as a response to those who would defame and desecrate the holy book of Muslims without full knowledge of its teachings. False and uninformed accusations have been leveled against the Qur’an for some time. But now, this initiative places the sacred text directly in the hands of people of other faiths in the American public and encourages people of conscience to discover the truth about Islam. Explore the Qur’an allows the holy book to speak for itself and educate people of other faith traditions about the universal teachings of Islam.⁶

Muslims often insist vociferously that the Koran teaches peace. Adil Salahi, the Muslim author of a biography of Muhammad, maintains, “You only need to open the Koran and read to realize that what it calls for is peace, not war.”⁷ Likewise, Spc. David Burgos, a Muslim operations clerk for the 492nd Harbormaster Detachment, Fort Eustis, Virginia, has said, “I have read the Koran several times. . . . Islam teaches its followers to be peaceful. Islam is all about giving life, not taking it.”⁸

Not only is the Koran’s message ostensibly peaceful, but the book also seems to contain timeless wisdom that is hailed by leaders across the world. Former British prime minister Tony Blair insists that “the authentic basis of Islam, as laid down in the Koran, is progressive, humanitarian, [and] sees knowledge and scientific advance as a duty, which is why for centuries Islam was the fount of so much invention and innovation. Fundamental Islam is actually the opposite of what the extremists preach.”⁹

Blair’s genuflection was perhaps exceeded by former U.S. president George W. Bush’s second Inaugural Address, which classed the Koran with the formative texts of Western civilization: “Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people.”¹⁰

On the other hand. . .

Yet many non-Muslims, believing the Koran preaches intolerance and warfare, regard the book as about as holy as Mein Kampf. In fact, the direct comparison has been made more than once. Speaking of the Koran, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders called upon the Netherlands to “ban this wretched book like Mein Kampf is banned!”¹¹ Wilders’ view was shared by the late, world-renowned Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who said in 2005 that “the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion which has always aimed to eliminate the others.”¹² Even the great Winston Churchill, in denigrating Mein Kampf, called it “the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”¹³ And it’s not only Westerners who discern hateful messages in the Koran; Hindus in Calcutta petitioned the government to ban the book as hate speech.¹⁴

What exactly do these critics find in the Koran that is so objectionable? Wilders asserts that the Muslim holy book “calls on Muslims to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women and to establish an Islamic state by force.”¹⁵ Fallaci likewise found the roots of Islamic violence in the book Muslims venerate most of all: “Read it over, that Mein Kampf,” she declared. “Whatever the version, you will find that all the evil which the sons of Allah commit against us and against themselves comes from that book.”¹⁶

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How’s that again?

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Allah’s words don’t change:

“The word of thy Lord doth find its fulfilment in truth and in justice: None can change His words: for He is the one who heareth and knoweth all” (6:115).

But then again, maybe they do: “Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?” (2:106)

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Does the Koran really incite people to commit violence? Most Western analysts dogmatically deny it, characterizing jihadists as an infinitesimally small group of extremists who misunderstand the Koran’s peaceful message. In fact, for contradicting these assumptions, Wilders is denounced as a hatemonger by much of the European political establishment. Although he’s become one of the most popular political leaders in the Netherlands, Wilders has paid the price for contravening conventional wisdom about the Koran: he was recently denied entry to Britain, he faces prosecution for “incitement” by Dutch courts, and constant death threats have forced him to adopt a permanent security detail. Fallaci faced something similar; shortly before her death, she was put on trial in absentia in Italy in 2006 on the charge of “defaming Islam.”¹⁷

Of course, what is more consequential than the views of Wilders and Fallaci is that many Muslims themselves find calls to warfare in the Koran. And this group of “misunderstanders” is not as insignificant as Western analysts contend. To the contrary, they comprise a global movement, active from Indonesia to Nigeria and extending into Europe and North America, that is dedicated to waging war against “unbelievers”—that is, non-Muslims—and subjugating them as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law. This movement sees in the Koran its divine mandate to wage that war.

For example, in March 2009, five Muslims accused of helping plot the September 11 attacks, including the notorious Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, wrote an “Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” In it they quote the Koran to justify their jihad war against the American Infidels. “In God’s book,” asserts the letter, “he ordered us to fight you everywhere we find you, even if you were inside the holiest of all holy cities, The Mosque in Mecca, and the holy city of Mecca, and even during sacred months. In God’s book, verse 9 [actually verse 5], Al-Tawbah [the Koran’s ninth chapter]: Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush.”¹⁸

Osama bin Laden’s communiqués have also quoted the Koran copiously. In his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” he quotes seven Koran verses: 3:145; 47:4–6; 2:154; 9:14; 47:19; 8:72; and the notorious “Verse of the Sword,” 9:5.¹⁹ Bin Laden began his October 6, 2002, letter to the American people with two Koran quotations, both of a martial bent: “Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory” (22:39); and “Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah, e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan” (4:76).²⁰

In a sermon broadcast in 2003, bin Laden rejoiced in a Koranic exhortation to violence as being a means to establish the truth: “Praise be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to his servant and messenger [the Islamic Prophet Muhammad], in order to establish truth and abolish falsehood.”²¹ The “Verse of the Sword” is Koran 9:5: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”

The idea that the Koran commands them to do violence to unbelievers runs from the very top of the international jihadist movement—Osama bin Laden—down to the rank and file. In January 2004, Reem Raiyishi, a Gazan mother of two children aged one and three, blew herself up at an Israeli checkpoint, murdering four Israelis. Before she did that, she posed for pictures holding a rifle in one hand and the Koran in the other. In a videotaped recording she declared, “It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists.”²²

Apparently nothing she read in her holy Koran dissuaded her from pursuing that wish.

Nor was Raiyishi by any means the only jihad terrorist, or even the only suicide bomber, to invoke the Koran as justification for violence against non-Muslims. In January 2006, a gang of Muslims in Paris kidnapped Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jew, who was tortured, mutilated, and ultimately murdered. During Halimi’s weeks-long ordeal, his captors called his family, demandi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter One: Why Every American Needs to Know What’s in the Koran
• Chapter Two: What Is This Book Anyway, and What’s in It?
• Chapter Three: That Sounds Familiar
• Chapter Four: Understanding the Koran
• Chapter Five: Muhammad: It’s All about Him
• Chapter Six: Why Allah Hates the Infidels, and What He Has in Store for Them
• Chapter Seven: The Muslims’ Worst Enemies: The Koran on the Jews
• Chapter Eight: The Koran on Christians: They’re Not So Hot, Either
• Chapter Nine: The Koran on Women: Crooked and Inferior
• Chapter Ten: The Koran Teaches Nonviolence—Oh, and Violence, Too
• Chapter Eleven: “Love Your Enemies” and Other Things the Koran Doesn’t Say
• Chapter Twelve: “Ban This Fascist Book?”
• Acknowledgments
• Notes