War against Islam

War against Islam, also called the War on Islam or Attack on Islam, is a coined term to describe a perceived campaign to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means. The campaign is supposedly waged by non-Muslims and by "false Muslims", who are supposedly in collusion with the Western world. The crusades are often seen as the start of western aggression against Islam. The phrase or similar phrases have been used by Muslims such as Ayatollah Khomeini,[ Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden, the imam Anwar al-Awlaki, Chechen militant Dokka Umarov, Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary, and Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan. The English-language political neologism of "War on Islam" was coined in the 1990s and popularized only after 2001, with the "War on Terror" denounced as a "War on Islam" by critics. The supposed perpetrators of the war include Western powers (especially the United States), pro-Western Muslim states (e.g. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia), and non-Western, non-Muslim states such as Israel (Israeli–Palestinian conflict), Serbia (Genocide in Bosnia), Russia (Chechen–Russian conflict), India (for the conflict in Kashmir), and more recently China (for the Xinjiang conflict). Usage: According to scholar David B. Cook, a religious studies professor at Rice University, what some believe is scriptural evidence for the existence of the alleged war is found in a popular hadith, one that supposedly prophesies a war against Islam "is the Tradition of Thawban": The Messenger of God said: The nations are about to flock against you the Muslims from every horizon, just as hungry people flock to a kettle. We said: O Messenger of God, will we be few on that day? He said: No, you will be many in number, but you will be scum, like the scum of a flash-flood, without any weight, since fear will be removed from the hearts of your enemies, and weakness (wahn) will be placed in your hearts. We said: O Messenger of God, what does the word wahn mean? He said: Love of this world, and fear of death. An early modern example of belief in the alleged war is the book Qadat al-gharb yaquluman: dammiru al-Islam, ubidu ahlahu (Western Leaders Are Saying: Destroy Islam, Annihilate All of Its People) written by Jalal `Alam and published in 1977. A measure of the strength of the belief that a non-Muslim power (the United States) is at least attempting to weaken, if not annihilate, Islam can be found in opinion polls that showed, as of late 2006/ early 2007, strong majorities — at least 70% — in the Muslim countries of Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia, answering "yes" to the pollsters' question: do you believe the United States seeks to “weaken and divide the Islamic world?” Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write in their book Age of Sacred Terror: In the Middle East and Pakistan, religious discourse dominates societies, the airwaves, and thinking about the world. Radical mosques have proliferated throughout Egypt. Bookstores are dominated by works with religious themes … The demand for sharia, the belief that their governments are unfaithful to Islam and that Islam is the answer to all problems, and the certainty that the West has declared war on Islam; these are the themes that dominate public discussion. Islamists may not control parliaments or government palaces, but they have occupied the popular imagination. And in particular, the idea of a Western war against Islam is a belief "at the heart of the radical Muslim and especially the globalist radical Muslim;" a factor "binding globalist radical Muslims together." Notable Muslims (Islamists and Salafists) who have alleged a war on Islam, or at least malicious conspiracies against the religion include: Ayatollah Khomeini: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, preached that Western imperialists or neoimperialists sought to make Muslims suffer, to "plunder" their resources and other wealth, and had to undermine Islam first because Islam stood in the way of this stealing and immiseration. The Imperialist plan is to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state so they can exploit our riches, our underground wealth, our lands and our human resources. They want us to remain afflicted and wretched, and our poor to be trapped in their misery … they and their agents wish to go on living in huge palaces and enjoying lives of abominable luxury. "Agents" refers to Westernizing Muslim rulers such as the Shah of Iran, whom Khomeini aggressively opposed. European-Imperialists have known the power of Islam themselves for it once ruled part of Europe, and they know that true Islam is opposed to their activities. They have also realized they cannot make the true religious scholars submit to their influence, nor can they affect their thinking. From the very outset, therefore, they have sought to remove this obstacle from their path by disparaging Islam and besmirching the religious leaders. They have resorted to malicious propaganda so that today, we imagine that Islam simply consists of a handful of legal topics. They have also tried to destroy the reputation of the fuqaha and the `ulama, who stand at the head of Islamic society, by slanderous accusations and other means. The agents of imperialism are busy in every corner of the Islamic world drawing our youth away from us with their evil propaganda. Come to the aid of Islam; save Islam! They are destroying Islam! Invoking the laws of Islam and the name of the Most Noble Messenger (upon whom be peace and blessing), they are destroying Islam! Agents – both foreigners sent by the imperialists and natives employed by them – have spread out into every village and region of Iran and are leading our children and young people astray. Some of the alleged Western plots are not recent but hundreds of years old: The British imperialists penetrated the countries of the East more than 300 years ago. Being knowledgeable about all aspects of these countries, they drew up elaborate plans for assuming control of them. Then came the new imperialist, the Americans and others. They allied themselves with the British and took part in the execution of their plans. Sayyid Qutb: Sayyid Qutb, possibly the most influential Islamist author, often described as "the man whose ideas would shape Al Qaeda", also preached that the West was not just in conflict with Islam but plotting against it. In his book Milestones he wrote: The Western ways of thought … have an enmity toward all religion, and in particular with greater hostility toward Islam. This enmity toward Islam is especially pronounced and many times is the result of a well-thought-out scheme the object of which is first to shake the foundations of Islamic beliefs and then gradually to demolish the structure of Muslim society. Osama bin Laden: Osama bin Laden emphasizes the alleged war and urges Muslims to take arms against it in almost all of his written or recorded messages. In his 1998 fatwa where he declared the killing of "Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it," bin Laden listed three reasons for the fatwa: the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the increase in infant mortality in Iraq following US-supported sanctions there, and US aid to Israel. All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. Other examples of accusations of war by bin Laden: What bears no doubt in this fierce Judeo-Christian campaign against the Muslim world, the likes of which has never been seen before, is that the Muslims must prepare all possible might to repel the enemy, militarily, economically, through missionary activity, and all other areas. It is crucial for us to be patient and to cooperate in righteousness and piety and to raise awareness of the fact that the highest priority, after faith, is to repel the aggressive enemy that corrupts the religion and the world. Nothing deserves a higher priority, after faith, as the religious scholars have declared. It is crucial to overlook many of the issues of bickering to unite our ranks so that we can repel the greater Kufr. Every day, from east to west, our umma of 1200 million Muslims is being slaughtered, in Palestine, in Iraq, Somalia, Western Sudan, Kashmir, the Philippines, Bosnia and Chechnya. Regarding the invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime. We...see events not as isolated incidents, but as part of a long chain of conspiracies, a war of annihilation...In southern Sudan hundreds of thousand were killed. According to journalist Lawrence Wright, evidence that bin Laden's accusations have struck a chord among many Muslims was found in the popularity of bin laden T-shirts among Muslims, including children in Kenya and Tanzania following the 1998 American embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, despite the fact that all but a handful of the 224 people killed were Kenyians and Tanzanians, not Americans. Bin Laden asserted, The West is incapable of recognising the rights of others. It will not be able to respect others' beliefs or feelings. ... They regard jihad for the sake of God or defending one's self or his country as an act of terror. US and Europe consider jihad groups in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups, so how could we talk or have understanding with them without using weapons? Salafists: Rabee Al-Madkhali, one of Salafism's most radical thinkers, mentioned the attack on the Muslims (particularly Salafis) and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies for increasing its magnitude. So now you incited Russia and so it came and took over the Chechnyan people - those who (have always) made Jihaad and made Jihaad, until they established a state. So they came and said "destroy this state", this house is not sound, destroy it, so they destroyed their house, and now they are masaakeen, like the strange animals that wander in the forests. If they (the Ikhwaan, Jihadis) had only left them (the Chechnyan people) (after their independence), they would have bettered themselves in terms of their religion, and both spiritually and materially. But they never gave them a chance to do this, but they only hastened them, until they granted the Russians the chance (to attack them), and so they destroyed them. And now they transgress upon the Muslims in the entire world, from America to Japan to Australia, to every place and to every (Muslim) society, and to all forms of destruction, and evils. So the Muslims in the eastern and western parts of the earth are faced with humiliation and degradation at the hands of Atheistic Kuffaar, and they made the Afghan society and its state to face destruction and ruin and to the falling of this state - and now they cry of over it with false tears of crocodiles - all at the hands of the Americans and Northern Alliance which was led by the Ikhwaan al-Muslimoon. A group of Jordanian Salafists (Imaam Albani Center in Amman) quoted in an English translation circulated on the Internet also quote the Tradition of Thawban and warn against alleged "plots and plans" and "machinations and intrigues" against Islam by non-Muslims (specifically mentioning the US). Muslims assist the enemy (the authors assert) by deviating from true (i.e. Salafist) Islam: Hence it is obligatory upon all Muslims to beware of the plots and plans of the non-Muslims and their machinations and intrigues, and that they should adopt the matters which cause assistance from Allaah such as holding fast to the rope of Allaah, upon the word of Tawheed, and the Manhaj of the Sunnah, and the absence of division into sects and parties, just as Allaah, the Most High said, "And be not of Al-Mushrikun (the disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah, polytheists, idolators, etc.). Of those who split up their religion (i.e. those who left the true Islamic Monotheism), and became sects, [i.e. they invented new things in the religion (Bid‘ah), and followed their vain desires], each sect rejoicing in which is with it" And amongst the causes of weakness and the enemies overpowering us, is differing and dissenting, and being far from the legislation of Allaah and referring to it and implementing it, and from ordering the good and forbidding the evil, and the absence of striving against the enemies of Allah, the occupiers of the lands of the Muslims and their sanctities - as well as being attached to the world, and hating death - all of which makes to inherit weakness and leads to becoming scum. As has been said by our Prophet (sallallaahu alaihi wasallam), "The nations are about to invite each other upon you, just as a group of people invite each other for food." It was said, "O messenger of Allaah! Will we be few in number on that day?" He said, "No, however you will be like the scum on the river. Weakness will be placed into your hearts and the fear of you in the hearts of your enemies will be removed, due to your loving this world and hating of death." And Allaah, the free from all imperfections, says, "Say: It (the calamity) is from your ownselves." And it is also known that the evil does not bring about except evil and forced control does not bring about except which is more bitter and more calamitous, hence whatever the United States of America exercises of continues, unrestricted propping up of the Brethren of Apes and Pigs, the occupiers of our land of Palestine and the precious Aqsaa, the place of the ascent of our Trustworthy Messenger (sallallaahu alaihi wasallam), and what follows on from that of the total disregard of the affairs of the Muslims, and a great prejudice against their rights, then all of this makes the US reap the fruits of its own actions, and whoever sows bitter seed, will reap bitter fruit. Claims of proof- Historical basis: Western supporters of the belief in ingrained Western hatred/hostility of Islam include historian Roger Savory, and Boston-based novelist and author James Carroll. According to Savory, Christendom felt threatened by Islam and its march into Europe, (the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate advanced into Europe as far as northern France before being defeated at the Battle of Toursin 732; the Muslim Ottoman Empire attempted to conquer Vienna twice, laying siege to the city in 1485 and 1683), and thus became hostile to it. "The existence of Islam has always made the West profoundly uneasy. Islam was the only major world religion to be revealed after the rise of Christianity, and consequently it was, from the moment of the revelation of Islam in the seventh century A.D., viewed by Christendom as a direct threat and challenge to itself. On the theological and religious level, the reaction of the West was strong, sustained and, almost without exception, hostile. Hostility was based on fear, and fear had its roots in ignorance. ... Islam on the other hand, was ignorant of the West because it was indifferent to it. Crusades and legacy: Muslims who use this term often point to the Crusades and European colonization (of the lands that Muslims themselves had conquered from Christians a few centuries earlier), believing it to be an example of an attempt to destroy the Muslim way of life. Sayyid Qutb, for example, not only believed the West had "a well-thought-out scheme the object of which is first to shake the foundations of Islamic beliefs," but maintained that the medieval Christian Crusades were not "a form of imperialism," but rather Western imperialism was a new form of the Crusades, "latter-day" imperialism in Muslim lands being "but a mask for the crusading spirit." Savory says: It is not surprising, therefore, to find a great similarity between the medieval view that it was safe to speak ill of Muhammad because his malignity exceeded whatever ill could be spoken of him, and the tone of nineteenth-century missionary tracts which exhorted the Muslims in India to abandon the false religion which they had been taught. There were even echos of the old crusading spirit. When the French occupied Algeria in 1830, they declared that they had in mind 'the greatest benefit to Christendom'. Similarly, Canning's solution to the 'problem' of the Ottoman empire was to bring it into modern Europe under Christian tutelage. When the French invaded Tunis in 1881, they considered their action a sacred duty 'which a superior civilisation owes to the populations which are less advanced.' According to James Carroll, the conflict between Muslims and Westerners "has its origins more in `the West` than in the House of Islam." And can be traced to "the poison flower of the Crusades, with their denigrations of distant cultures," and other Western injustices. Proponents of this view often consider the War on Terrorism with the accompanying 2001 military activity in Afghanistan, 2003 invasion of Iraq to be part of the war against Islam. Western colonialism in the Middle East throughout the 20th century is also regarded as such an attack by some. On September 16, 2001, President George W. Bush referred to the war in Afghanistan as a Crusade: "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient." (In contrast, historian Bernard Lewis points out that the Crusaders had strong motives to wage the Crusade other than the denigration of Islam. The lands they attempted to recover were the lands where Christianity was founded, including "the holy land where Christ had lived, taught and died", and where "a substantial proportion of the population ... perhaps even a majority, was still Christian", since "not much more than four centuries had passed since the Arab Muslim conquerors had wrested theses lands from Christendom". Rather than the Crusades leaving a psychological scare passed down through the ages among Muslims, the Arabs of the time did not refer to the Crusaders as Crusaders or Christians but as Franks or Infidels, and "with few exceptions", the Muslim historians of the time showed "little interest in whence or why the Franks had come, and report their arrival and their departure with equal lack of curiosity".) Modern day: More recently, Western support for the continued occupation of the State of Palestine by the State of Israel has been declared part of a "war against Islam." Osama bin Laden declared that "the West's rejection of the fairly elected Hamas government is a reaffirmation of the 'injustice, aggression, and rancor' against Palestinians." Enver Masud, an Indian Muslim and author of the book The War on Islam stated that while there are no Muslims in high-level policy making and media jobs in the United States, "Jewish Americans occupy nearly every single position relating to US Arab-Israeli policy." India's control of Muslim-majority Kashmir has been called a "Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims" by Osama bin Laden. In modern day, events alleged to be attacks on Islam include media portrayal of the religion itself and "the War on Terror". Alleged conspiracies against Islam sometimes involve other Muslims who are accused of being apostates. The Ayatollah Khomeini believed that "agents of imperialism", the term he gave to "secular" pro-Western Muslims, were "busy in every corner of the Islamic world drawing our youth away from us with their evil propaganda." Danish cartoon controversy: The 2005 Danish cartoon controversy were satirical cartoons depicting Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that led to protests and the burning of the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Syria, and were seen by Osama bin Laden as part of the "Zionist-crusaders war on Islam". In an audio message, Osama bin Laden described the cartoons as taking place in the framework of a "new Crusade" against Islam, in which he said the pope has played a "large and lengthy role." "You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said, "This is the greater and more serious tragedy (than bombing Muslim villagers), and reckoning for it will be more severe." Among others, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed a "Zionist conspiracy" for the row over the cartoons. The Palestinian envoy to Washington D.C. alleged the Likud party concocted distribution of Muhammad caricatures worldwide in a bid to create a clash between the West and the Muslim world. Fitna film controversy: In 2008, Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, published a film called Fitna, exploring "possible Qur'anic motivation for terrorism, Islamic universalism, and Islam in the Netherlands." Wilders claimed that the 15-minute film will "show how verses from the Qur'an are being used today to incite modern Muslims to behave violently and anti-democratically based on those verses." He later described the film as “a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamization,” and a push for a Leitkultur, a culture that “draws on Christian, Jewish, humanistic traditions and that poses a challenge to the Islamic problem.” The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) protested the film saying that "The film is solely intended to incite and provoke unrest and intolerance among people of different religious beliefs and to jeopardize world peace and stability," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film as "offensively anti-Islamic" and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said it was "hateful". Iran called the film heinous, blasphemous and anti-Islamic, and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and a former Dutch colony, said it was an insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression. The Saudi Arabian embassy in The Hague said the film was provocative and full of errors and incorrect allegations that could lead to hate towards Muslims. Reactions: Reactions in the non-Muslim West to the alleged war have varied. Some Western political leaders have dismissed the claims of a war being fought against Islam as untrue, while also being sensitive to Muslim fears of such a "war" and shaping some of their political statements and actions with Muslim fears in mind -- including denouncing those who verbally attack Muslims. Other non-Muslims have argued that the truth of a religious war is the other way around -- it being Muslims who are waging war against non-Muslims. At least one non-Islamist Muslim (Salman Rushdie), has called the claim of a war on Islam "paranoid". Following Islamist terrorist attacks both President Barack Obama (following the San Bernardino attack) and George W. Bush (after the 9/11 attacks) made a point of stating that the US was not at war with Islam. ("This great nation of many religions understands, our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil"—Bush in January 2002. "We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam."—Obama February 2015) When Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that foreign Muslims should not be allowed in the United States, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham replied that “Donald Trump has done the one single thing you cannot do — declare war on Islam itself. To all of our Muslim friends throughout the world, like the king of Jordan and the president of Egypt, I am sorry. He does not represent us.” Another reaction was that of The Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, which printed a full-page headline stating: “To All Muslims: Trump Does Not Speak For Us.” The idea itself that the West is waging war on Islam has been dismissed by many non-Muslims in the west. In 2015 White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has called the idea that the US is at war with Islam “a fantasy",[76] But when asked why US president Barack Obama has refused to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism”, Earnest explained that “It has been instrumental to our efforts against groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS and other terrorist organizations to make clear that the United States is at war with those organizations but we’re not at war with Islam,” or "with Muslims around the world.” At least one conservative non-Muslim scholar (Jonathan Schanzer) has argued that while the US government is waging a "War on Militant Islam" (as opposed to a war on Islam), this adversary is a "minority outgrowth" of Islam. Militant Islam of the sort advanced by Al-Qaeda, "exudes a bitter hatred for Western ideas," and Schanzer quotes a number of militant clerics calling for the destruction of the United States and its allies, and enumerates killings, threats of killings and terror attacks on Western targets by Islamists and associated groups starting with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's coup in Libya and the Islamic Revolution in Iran (Iran hostage crisis, 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, Lebanon hostage crisis, Rushdie Fatwa, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, September 11 attacks, etc.). Schanzer argues that the historical Muslim indifference to the West turned to "alarmed dislike" with the beginning of Western military superiority in the 17th century. However, with the end of the era of Western colonialism, Islamist rage against non-Muslims and the governments of Muslim-majority countries stems not from alleged non-Muslim aggression and enmity, but from frustration over the unrelenting encroachment of western culture, technology, economies, and from a yearning for a "return to the glorious days when Islam reigned supreme." Citing attacks on minority Christians in Muslim countries, some Christian fundamentalists (such as "Billion Bibles") allege that a war against Islam is self-defense because militant Muslims "are waging war against us" and "burn down churches, behead and/or massacre Christians in Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, Mali, Malaysia, Bangladesh, etc." Following the 9/11 attacks, one right-wing American website (Ayn Rand Institute) declared that "politicians, the press, and academics have rushed to declare that this is not a war between Islam and the West. Islam, we have been told again and again, is really `a religion of peace.` Perhaps the reason we have to be told this so many times is because it so obviously contradicts the facts." Salman Rushdie, victim of a Fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his death, has argued that what Islamists have called a war of "the west versus Islam" is more complicated. Islamists are "opposed not only to the west and `the Jews` but to their fellow Islamists", an example being the fight between the Sunni Taliban and the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran. "This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest-growing version of Islam in the world," according to Rushdie.