Jihad is not mainly about being a better person, a father who cheerfully drives his daughter to soccer practice, a good neighbor who tends a disabled neighbor’s lawn, a sophomore who studies really hard to ace a test on Western Civ. Writes Hugh Fitzgerald
But first, before getting to the faith of Islam, this Islamic scholar, Abd Al-Hamid Dabbous, wants you to know – and he dares to tell – the truth about jihad, as Muslims understand it. Jihad is not mainly about being a better person, a father who cheerfully drives his daughter to soccer practice, a good neighbor who tends a disabled neighbor’s lawn, a sophomore who studies really hard to ace a test on Western Civ. These are all lesser meanings of jihad, the kind of thing to spread among the credulous Infidels who come to an Open Mosque Night, eager to be told the truth about Islam. The real jihad is the violent one, the one by which Muslims subdue the Infidels by force and offer them only three choices: immediate conversion to Islam, death, or the permanent status of dhimmi, by which People of the Book – Christians and Jews – were allowed to remain alive, and even to practice their religions, if they paid the jizyah, a capitation tax, to the Islamic state, and agreed to endure a host of other disabilities as well. And it is that jihad that Abd Al-Hamid Dabbous wants us to know about, to accept, and to approve of. Christine Douglass-Williams wrote about Dabbous’ understanding of jihad earlier this morning, and there is much more that can be said.
Gaza Islamic Scholar Abd Al-Hamid Dabbous: The Goal of Jihad Is to Make People Convert to Islam,” MEMRI, April 10, 2022:
Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam. It is what makes Islam glamorous, strong, and lovable.
Few things show us how “glamorous, strong and lovable” is Islam as did the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. “Glamourous, strong, and lovable,” too, is Islam, for having incited the killings of the blaspheming twelve Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, the decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty for daring to display for the purposes of a class discussion about free speech a cartoon of Muhammad, the butchering of Drummer Lee Rigby on a London street, the bombing of the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem when it was full of mothers and children, the suicide bombing of a Passover seder attended by elderly Israelis, the massacre of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, the mass decapitations of dozens of kneeling Christians by ISIS executioners, the bombings of the London Metro and busses, the explosives set off at the Atocha subway station in Madrid, the pressure-cooker bombs that were blown up at the Boston Marathon by the Tsarnaev Brothers, the killing by a Muslim couple of fellow employees at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, the decapitation of a French priest while he was saying mass in Normandy, the murder of a rabbi and three little children, aged three, five, and eight, the younger two being his, as they stood outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, the grooming of thousands of young English girls by middle-aged Pakistanis, plying them with drink and drugs, turning them into their sex slaves, passed around like party favors for the sexual pleasure of their Muslim masters.
Anyone can appreciate how very “glamorous, strong, and lovable” Islam must be when it leads Muslims to….well, you can fill up the page yourself, with any of the 41,000 terrorist attacks by jihadists since September 11, 2001. I can think of many adjectives to describe Islam, but never would I have hit upon “glamorous, strong, and lovable.” Would you?
“We do not want to kill or terrorize people, nor do we want to plunder people’s lands or rights, but we want people to convert to Islam. This is Allah’s will, not ours.
[…]
“When groups of [Muslims] set out on jihad for the sake of Allah, they first call people to join Islam. If they accept this – this is what Allah wants and what the Muslims want. Then, those [people] become Muslims with the same duties and rights as ours. If not, they must pay the jizya poll tax in humiliation, or we will fight them, until we attain either martyrdom or victory, with the help of Allah.
Muslims “don’t want to terrorize people,” but only to “convert them to Islam.” Or rather, they do terrorize people, all the time, all over the world, whenever they have the chance, but only for a good cause – to weaken the Infidels’ resolve to resist, to conquer their lands, and then to convert them to Islam. And if non-Muslims don’t convert, and do not pay the jizyah, or fulfill any of the other conditions imposed on dhimmis, then Muslims simply have to wage war on them, to kill or be killed. By their stubbornness, the non-Muslims make Muslims do things they’d rather not do, for they are naturally a peaceful lot, believers in the one true faith, that is “glamorous, strong, and lovable.” It is an act of loving-kindness by Muslims to share Islam with everyone in the world.
“Through Jihad, Allah conquers lands as well as hearts and minds. Jihad is the means by which the Muslims, first of all, defend their lands, their lives, their honor, and their religion, and in addition, it is a means to spread this religion, because the bottom line is that Allah sent down this religion so it would spread throughout the world until all the people become Muslims.
Jihad is not merely, nor mainly, a spiritual campaign. Jihad involves not just the conquest of “hearts and minds,” but also of territory. Jihad involves a real war against non-Muslims, to prevent them from withholding lands that by Allah’s express command must be included in dar al-Islam, the domain of Islam. It is a defensive war when Muslims are being attacked. But more often, jihad designates an offensive war, as Muslims bring the fight to the Infidels, to conquer their lands for the best of reasons, which is to spread Islam through the entire world. The goal is simple: to conquer lands not as an end in itself, but so that all the people in those lands turn into Muslims.
Though Abd Al-Hamid Dabbous at first says that non-Muslims have the option of paying the jizyah and living as dhimmis, he appears to have become less tolerant of unbelief when he says that Allah sent down Islam “so that it would spread throughout the world until all the people become Muslims.” No longer does Dabbous think Islam should spread “until all the people either become Muslims or are forced to live as dhimmis.” That last option has disappeared. Is that a mere oversight by Abd Al-Hamid Dabbous, or isn’t it, far more likely, that he had decided there should be only two options available to non-Muslims after they have been conquered by Muslims: death, or conversion to Islam.
Those conquered Infidels should be grateful for the gift of Islam, even if they are at first forced to accept it. Later on they will come to appreciate that the One True Faith is indeed “glamorous, strong, and lovable.” What’s not to like?
