"The Crisis of Islam" by Bernard Lewis

• For bin Laden and those who follow him, this is a religious war, a war for Islam against infidels, and therefore, inevitably, against the United States, the greatest power in the world of the infidels.
• The Muslim peoples, like everyone else in the world, are shaped by their history, but unlike some others, they are keenly aware of it.
• Muslims tend to see not a nation subdivided into religious groups but a religion subdivided into nations.
• Middle Easterners’ perception of history is nourished from the pulpit, in the schools, and by the media, and although it may be -- indeed, often is -- slanted and inaccurate, it is nevertheless vivid and powerfully resonant.
• Judaism and Islam share the belief in a divine law that regulates all aspects of human activity, including even food and drink.
• The Old and New Testaments both consist of collections of different books, extending over a long period of time and seen by the believers as embodying divine revelation. The Qur’an, for Muslims, is a single book promulgated at one time by one man, the Prophet Muhammad.
• The very notion of something that is separate or even separable from religious authority, expressed in Christian languages by terms such as lay, temporal, or secular, is totally alien to Islamic thought and practice.
• Islam is not only a matter of faith and practice; it is also an identity and loyalty -- for many, an identity and a loyalty that transcend all others.
• The Muslim fundamentalists, unlike the Protestant groups whose name was transferred to them, do not differ from the mainstream on questions of theology and the interpretation of scripture. Their critique is, in the broadest sense, societal. The Islamic world, in their view, has taken a wrong turning. Its rulers call themselves Muslims and make a pretense of Islam, but they are in fact apostates who have abrogated the Holy Law and adopted foreign and infidel laws and customs. The only solution, for them, is a return to the authentic Muslim way of life, and for this the removal of the apostate governments is an essential first step. Fundamentalists are anti-Western in the sense that they regard the West as the source of the evil that is corroding Muslim society, but their primary attack is directed against their own rulers and leaders.
• If the fighters in the war for Islam, the holy war “in the path of God,” are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God.
• The duty of God’s soldiers is to dispatch God’s enemies as quickly as possible to the place where God will chastise them, that is to say in the afterlife.
• During the centuries that in European history are called medieval, the most advanced civilization in the world was undoubtedly that of Islam.
• According to Islamic law, it is lawful to wage war against four types of enemies: infidels, apostates, rebels, and bandits. Although all four types of wars are legitimate, only the first two count as jihad. Jihad is thus a religious obligation.
• The presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule. Those who fight in the jihad qualify for rewards in both worlds -- booty in this one, paradise in the next.
• In Islamic usage the term martyrdom is normally interpreted to mean death in a jihad and its reward is eternal bliss, described in some detail in early religious texts.
• Because holy war is an obligation of the faith, it is elaborately regulated in the shari’a. Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a truce, and to honor agreements.
• At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point -- as far as I am aware -- do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.
• The apostate or renegade, in Muslim eyes, is far worse than the unbeliever. The unbeliever has not seen the light, and there is always hope that he may eventually see it. The renegade is one who has known the true faith, however briefly, and abandoned it. For this offense there is no human forgiveness, and according to the overwhelming majority of the jurists, the renegade must be put to death -- that is, if male. For females, because of a presumed reduced responsibility, a lesser penalty of flogging and imprisonment may suffice.
• Most if not all of the Muslim rulers whom we in the West are pleased to regard as our friends and allies are regarded as traitors and, much worse than that, as apostates by many if not most of their own people.
• The major exception was the Christians, whom Muslims recognized as having a religion of the same kind as their own, and therefore as their primary rivals in the struggle for world domination -- or, as they would have put it, world enlightenment. Christendom and Islam are two religiously defined civilizations that were brought into conflict not by their differences but by their resemblances.
• In the Muslim perception, the Jews and later the Christians had gone astray and had followed false doctrines. Both religions were therefore superseded, and replaced by Islam, the final and perfect revelation in God’s sequence.
• In the lands under Muslim rule, Islamic law required that Jews and Christians be allowed to practice their religions and run their own affairs, subject to certain disabilities, the most important being a poll tax imposed on every adult male.
• Under the medieval Arab caliphate, and again under the Persian and Turkish dynasties, the empire of Islam was the richest, most powerful, most creative, most enlightened region in the world, and for most of the Middle Ages, Christendom was on the defensive.
• Imperialism is a particularly important theme in the Middle Eastern and more especially the Islamic case against the West.
• In the Muslim perception, conversion to Islam is a benefit to the convert and a merit in those who convert him. In Islamic law, conversion from Islam is apostasy -- a capital offense for both the one who is misled and the one who misleads him. On this question, the law is clear and unequivocal. If a Muslim renounces Islam, even if a new convert reverts to his previous faith, the penalty is death.
• Perhaps the most frequently cited example of Western interference and of its consequences it the overthrow of the Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953.
• The American and British governments therefore decided, allegedly in agreement with the shah, to get rid of Mosaddeq by means of a coup d’etat.
• Yet the most powerful accusation of all is the degeneracy and debauchery of the American way of life, and the threat that it offers to Islam.
• This is what is meant by the term the Great Satan, applied to the United States by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Satan as depicted in the Qur’an is neither an imperialist nor an exploiter. He is a seducer, “the insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men.”
• The first concern of any American government is of course to define U.S. interests and to devise policies for their protection and advancement.
• There are, in general, two quite different kinds of alliance. One of them is strategic and may be a purely temporary accommodation on the basis of perceived common threats. The other kind of alliance is one based on a genuine affinity of institutions, aspirations, and the way of life -- and is far less subject to change.
• Democracies are more difficult to create. They are also more difficult to destroy.
• Middle Eastern governments, such as those of Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority, have developed great skill in controlling their own media and manipulating those of Western countries.
• There is some justice in one charge that is frequently leveled against the United States, and more generally against the West: Middle Easterners increasingly complain that the West judges them by different and lower standards than it does Europeans and Americans, both in what is expected of them and in what they may expect, in terms of their economic well-being and their political freedom.
• It is simpler, cheaper, and safer to replace a troublesome tyrant with an amenable tyrant, rather than face the unpredictable hazards of regime change, especially of a change brought about by the will of the people expressed in a free election.
• As many Middle Easterners see it, the European and American governments’ basic position is: “We don’t care what you do to your own people at home, so long as you are cooperative in meeting our needs and protecting our interests.”
• Almost the entire Muslim world is affected by poverty and tyranny. Both of these problems are attributed, especially by those with an interest in diverting attention from themselves, to America.
• The burning of books was often accompanied by the summary execution of those who wrote, copied, or taught them.
• In traditional Islamic usage the term madrasa denoted a center of higher education, of scholarship, teaching, and research. In modern usage the word madrasa has acquired a negative meaning; it has come to denote a center for indoctrination in bigotry and violence.
• The literal divinity and inerrancy of the Qur’an is a basic dogma of Islam, and although some may doubt it, none challenge it.
• Broadly speaking, Muslim fundamentalists are those who feel that the troubles of the Muslim world at the present time are the result not of insufficient modernization but of excessive modernization, which they see as a betrayal of authentic Islamic values.
• Most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists are not terrorists, but most present-day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such.
• Fatwa is a technical term in Islamic jurisprudence for a legal opinion or ruling on a point of law.
• Apostasy is a major offense in Muslim law and for men carries the death penalty.
• For the new-style terrorists, the slaughter of innocent and uninvolved civilians is not “collateral damage.” It is the prime objective.
• Thanks to the rapid development of the media, and especially of television, the more recent forms of terrorism are aimed not at specific and limited enemy objectives but at world opinion. Their primary purpose is not to defeat or even to weaken the enemy militarily but to gain publicity and to inspire fear -- a psychological victory.
• Unlike the medieval holy warrior or assassin, who was willing to face certain death at the hands of his enemies or captors, the new suicide terrorist dies by his own hand. This raises an important question of Islamic teaching. Islamic law books are very clear on the subject of suicide. It is a major sin and is punished by eternal damnation in the form of the endless repetition of the act by which the suicide killed himself.
• Responses in the Arabic press to the massacres in New York and Washington were an uneasy balance between denial and approval, rather similar to their response to the Holocaust. On the Holocaust three positions are not infrequently found in the Arabic media: it never happened; it was greatly exaggerated; the Jews deserved it anyway.
• A “letter to America” published in November 2002, and attributed to Osama bin Laden, enumerates in some detail various offenses committed not just by the government but also by the people of the United States and sets forth, under seven headings, “what we are calling you to do, and what we want from you.”
• The first is to embrace Islam
• The second, “to stop your oppressions, lies, immorality, and debauchery”
• The third, to discover and admit that America is “a nation without principles or manners”
• The fourth, to stop supporting Israel in Palestine, the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens, and the Manila government against the Muslims in the southern Philippines.
• The fifth, “to pack your luggage and get out of our lands.” This is offered as advice for America’s own good, “so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.”
• The sixth, “to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.”
• Seventh, “to deal and interact with the Muslims on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of subjugation, theft, and occupation.”
• Even the vaunted merits of the American way of life become crimes and sins. The liberation of women means debauchery and the commercial use of women as “consumer products.” Free elections mean that the American people freely choose their rulers and must therefore be held accountable and punishable for those rulers’ misdeeds -- that is, there are no “innocent civilians.” Worst of all is the separation of church and state: “You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, chose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.” In sum, “You are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.”