Muslim Offers $10,000 to Anyone Who Can Show That Qur’an Promotes Terrorism

From FrontPage Magazine
By Robert Spencer   |    28 March 2016

Should I use the money to buy a good used car or take an extended vacation?

Dear Omar Alnatour:

Thank you so very much for offering “anyone $10,000 if they can find me a verse in the Quran that says it’s ok to kill innocent people or to commit acts of terror.” My 1999 Toyota is on its last legs, and your generous gift will enable me to replace it with a modest but fully operational used midsize sedan. Or maybe (since it has been years since I’ve had a break), if I can keep the jalopy going for awhile, I will use your ten grand take a vacation to Paris and Brussels — before it’s too late, you know?

Anyway, here is my entry, which I am confident will win the $10,000 prize. I’ll make sure of that by giving you even more than you asked for: you wanted just a single Qur’anic verse that “says it’s ok to kill innocent people or to commit acts of terror,” I’ll give you more than one of each, just so there is no doubt:
 

• The Qur’an says it’s ok to kill innocent people

“Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.” (Qur’an 9:5)

The verse says to kill the idolaters – mushrikun – those who worship others besides Allah. Now I don’t know, Mr. Alnatour, if you might think “idolaters” are by virtue of being “idolaters” are not innocent and therefore worth killing, but I’m with Thomas Jefferson: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I don’t think my neighbor to have forfeited his innocence if he prays to gods I don’t recognize, and I hope you don’t, either.

Now I expect that you will say that this Qur’an verse refers not to all idolaters, but only to one very specific group of idolaters, the polytheist Quraysh tribe of Mecca that was making war against Muhammad, and that this verse has no force now that they have been conquered and Islamized, and doesn’t apply to any other idolaters. It would have been nice for Allah to make that clear in the pages of his perfect book, but who am I to question the will of a deity?

What’s more, classic Muslim commentators on this Qur’an verse give no hint that it has long expired. On the contrary, Ibn Juzayy notes that it cancels out peaceful verses; he says that it abrogates “every peace treaty in the Qur’an,” and specifically abrogates the Qur’an’s directive to “set free or ransom” captive unbelievers (47:4). As-Suyuti agrees: “This is an Ayat of the Sword which abrogates pardon, truce and overlooking” — that is, perhaps the overlooking of the pagans’ offenses. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says that the Muslims must “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, be it during a lawful [period] or a sacred [one], and take them, captive, and confine them, to castles and forts, until they have no choice except death or Islam.” He is offering this as instruction for Muslims in his day; he seems to have no idea that this verse doesn’t apply to them.

Neither does Ibn Kathir. He writes that Muslims should “not wait until you find them. Rather, seek and besiege them in their areas and forts, gather intelligence about them in the various roads and fairways so that what is made wide looks ever smaller to them. This way, they will have no choice, but to die or embrace Islam.” He also doesn’t seem to subscribe to the view that this verse applies only to the pagans of Arabia in Muhammad’s time, and has no further application. He asserts, on the contrary, that “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” means just that: the unbelievers must be killed “on the earth in general, except for the Sacred Area” — that is, the sacred mosque in Mecca, in accord with Qur’an 2:191.

So there you are, Mr. Alnatour: the Qur’an calling for the murder of those who are innocent, except for the crime of being “idolaters” – a “crime” that requires earthly punishment only in the Qur’an.

And there’s more:
 
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Also see

• Prophet of Doom

Prophet of Doom is the best-documented, most comprehensive, presentation of Islam’s five oldest and most reliable scriptural sources. Ishaq’s Biography of Muhammad, Tabari’s History of Islam, and Bukhari’s and Muslim’s Hadith, were used to reorder the Qur’an chronologically and to set its surahs into the context of Muhammad’s life. When this evidence is evaluated systematically, the only rational conclusion is that Islam’s lone prophet was a ruthless terrorist, a mass-murderer, a thief, slave trader, rapist and pedophile.

• Prophet of Doom Qur’an

Prophet of Doom presents the Qur’an in chronological order and in the context of Muhammad’s life as it is known through Ishaq’s Sira (Biography) and Tabari’s Ta’rikh (History). There is no better way to understand Islam’s lone prophet, his god, their message, or their purpose–especially since the Qur’an itself is a jumbled and incoherent mess.
The translation presented in Prophet of Doom was a blend of the literal Noble Qur’an by Khan (the one found in most American mosques), and English translations by Ahmed Ali, Pickthal, Yusuf Ali, and Shakir. Collectively, these represent the five most respected and universally accepted Muslim translations of Allah’s book.

• The Teachings of Muhammad v. Jesus Christ
• Re-Interpreting the Koran
• Beheading, According to the Koran
• Koran 101: Muhammad and Terror
• Quran against Unbelievers Part 19
• Idiot’s Guide to Islam

I am an Iraqi exile (and native Arabic reader and speaker) who has spent about 30 years carefully studying the original texts of Islam (especially the Qur’an – a book that most Muslims own but relatively few are even capable of reading, let alone have bothered to do so).