Hugh Fitzgerald

There is a reason why Islamic “reformers,” who had a brief run early in the twentieth century (circa 1900-1920), insisted on promoting the idea of “jihad” as “a spiritual struggle.” By so doing, they accomplished two things. First, the “reformers” attempted to supply a new authority for their novel interpretations and analyses. Second, at a time when Europe was overwhelmingly powerful, it was important to assuage any worries Infidels might have, to gain their support.

After all, in 1900, there were many educated Orientalists who knew perfectly well what the doctrines of Islam were all about. William St. Clair Tisdall, for example, engaged in a fierce polemic with a Muslim apologist over Tisdall’s Original Sources of Islam. From Ignaz Goldziher, the Hungarian who was the first Westerner to subject the Hadith to rigorous study, to Emile Fagnan, a French scholar who lived in Algeria, to Samuel Zwemer, the American missionary, to Henri Lammens, a Jesuit and Professor of Arabic at St. Joseph’s University in Beirut, to the Dutchman C. Snouck Hurgronje, to the Italian Leone Caetani, to David Margoliouth, Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford, to Arthur Jeffery, who taught at Columbia University when that school’s Islamic scholars were a matter of pride, the period 1900-1940 represented the highest point in the Western study of Islam – a point not reached since.

It is only in the West, and by non-Muslims, that Islam has been subject to real study. What is now occurring is simply a picking-up where Orientalists left off a few decades ago. Much of this work is done by lone scholars, for the situation in academic departments in the West has been grimly declining for some time. Muslims and non-Muslim apologists for Islam have taken over many of the major departments. At Columbia University’s Middle Eastern and Asian Languages program, there is not a chance that today, either Arthur Jeffery or Joseph Schacht would be hired by the likes of Rashid Khalidi, George Saliba, and Hamid Dabashi. Rather, these promoters of the Arab and Muslim worldview insist on offering every conceivable subject, real or imaginary, that they can connect to the Middle East -- the “construction of Israeli identity” (bad), the “construction of Palestinian identity” (good), colonialism, the West’s need for “the Other,” studies in narrativising the construction of identity on the basis of the alterity inherent in post-colonial hegemonic discourse – in short, every modish kind of gobbledygook one can imagine.

If Islam is taught at all, it is in courses on World Religions, where there may be a “unit” on Islam, taught by some enthusiast who insists that All Religions Want the Same Thing, and who is enamored of the “three Abrahamic faiths” idea, mistaking the appropriation, and distortion, of Christian and Jewish figures and stories, by Islam, for a splendid “sharing” of a common monotheistic tradition. If the Qur’an is read at all, it will most likely be offered in carefully-select excerpts, such as the “lyrical” suras collected by Michael Sells in his utterly misleading and treacly Approaching the Qur’an.

Islam exhibits a peculiar brittleness. There is no incipient sign, within Islam, of any attempt to seriously study the origins of the religion in a manner similar to what both Christianity and Judaism have undergone. Instead, the work of Western scholars is ignored or denounced.

Muslims, and not only on NPR, have preferred that Infidels take the word Jihad to mean what they want those Infidels to think it means: “a spiritual struggle.” But the evidence, textual and historical, is overwhelmingly the other way. We are told: Forget what people chant at rallies in Cairo, or Karachi, or Gaza, or what imams in Jiddah and Baghdad and Teheran preach. Forget what the boys in the madrassas learn, or what the Qur’anic commentators have written. Just remember – What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love, and not a “clash” but a “dialogue” of “civilizations,” and if that means pretending that people do not mean what they mean, surely it is worth it.

It is prudent for Muslims in the West not to attack Infidels head on (though little can be done about hotheads such as Abu Hamza, late of the Finsbury Mosque) , but rather to treat Infidels in Europe as a bunch of frogs in pots full of water. The flame beneath is being turned up, slowly and steadily, but so slowly that those amphibians go quietly, as if falling asleep in a warm bath. And many non-Muslims have begun to despair, as if their own culture of “tolerance” is a permanent bar to taking action that, in order to preserve a modicum of that culture, they will have to consider.

Lacking the wit and imagination to figure out what can be done about creeping Islamization, Europeans have convinced themselves that there is no point in getting excited. An extraordinary defeatism needs to be identified and attacked, wherever it is. It is not “too late;” Muslim strength, and Islamization, depends entirely on the continued misperception, by Infidels, both of Islam, and of the measures that they are amply justified in taking.

Or perhaps another analogy is more fitting. Remember Abbott and Costello? Thin Abbott and fat Costello were always getting into verbal misunderstandings (as in “Who’s On First”). In one skit, they are in the jungle, accompanied by a native interpreter. Suddenly they are surrounded by menacing men with bones in their noses, wearing grass skirts. The sound of tom-toms can be heard. The chief head-hunter approaches. He looks at Costello, points to his head, then licks his lips. And Costello, sweating and stuttering with fright, asks the interpreter what was just said, and the interpreter explains: “Oh, he was just admiring the way you look. And he asked me ‘Who does his hair?’” Costello is greatly relieved.

But we Infidels are not so many Lou Costellos. And when Asina Mehdi, or John Esposito, or Karen Armstrong, or Richard Bulliet, a professor of history at Columbia and author of The Case for IslamoChristian Civilization, all tell us, in the same misleading spirit as that native-interpreter, that Jihad does not mean Jihad or, still worse, that the word should not be used by Infidels, we are entitled to our doubts.

Suppose we were all to pledge to use Jihad only with the clear understanding that it be taken to mean “a spiritual struggle,” a way to establish internal mental harmony. Then, to be consistent, we should endow every well-known phrase in which the word Jihad occurs with new meaning. Take, for example, the group Tawhid and Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad). As is well-known, the mild-mannered Dr. A. M. Al- Zarqawi has taken a leadership role in Tawhid & Jihad, that organization of social workers dedicated to meeting the psychic needs of the troubled Sunni community of Iraq, and to address their feelings of inadequacy and loss of status. Perhaps the title “Mental Health Through Monotheism” would help to win friends and influence Infidels.

And many more words and phrases will need to be redefined to protect Islam from prying eyes. Certain words that could prove too hot to mishandle may have to be eliminated altogether. One word that seems to be getting much disturbing attention lately, is dhimmi. If Infidels were to visit the website www.dhimmitude.org, or read the books of Bat Ye’or, they might develop a negative view of Islam. And that would never do. Muslims are keenly aware of the problem – hence all the talk of “protected peoples” and the Compact of Omar.. No less a personage than Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a Turkish historian of Ottoman science, who is now the Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Countries, explained in a recent address to an audience of American Infidels, that the “privilege of becoming a protected minority via an act of dhimmiship was given only to the followers of a prophet to whom a sacred book was revealed.”

In defining dhimmiship as the “privilege of becoming a protected minority” Dr. Ihsanoglu did his best. But those who are so solicitious of the public image of Islam realize that it should not be left up just to NPR, or the BBC, or Le Monde; we all have to pitch in. It might be better if dhimmi were to be jettisoned altogether. The word upsets Infidels.

Instead of dhimmis why not call them “Friends With Benefits”?

(This is excerpted from an article that appeared on Jihad Watch of Feb. 14. Mr. Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to Outpost.)