The amazing Nihad Awad of CAIR and the Pope

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Sep 20, 2006 at 07:42

This past Monday Nihad Awad was invited to the PBS news program to make some comments in reagrd to the Pope's remarks that Islam was spread by the sword, Jihad means holy war and it is nothing but violence, and that Muhammad did not bring any new message to humanity, and he only brought violence and war or something to that effect and this was actually a quote from a text. However, I do believe or at least I hope so that the Pope did mean every wrod he said that day.

Now, Awad puts on his hat of the Muslim scholar and the results are nothing short of being funny and pathetic and he says the following:

1. Islam means peace! When he was reminded by Gwenn Ifil about the killings and the burning of Chrisitan churches in response to the Pope's remarks, he came up with the other gem about Islam being the religion of peace one more time.

2. Jihad does not mean Holy War. It seems that the good scholar from CAIR never heard of the ancient Quranic and Islamic law scholar Malik describing Jihad as: Holy war. But the fantasy goes on, and he says: "in actual fact holy war in Arabic means Harb Muqaddasa." And he is correct here but what he does not tell the audience is that Harb Muqaddasa was defined in the ancient commentaries of the Qur'an including Malik as: Jihad! So much for scholarship and honesty.

3. Then he says (and this one comes out of no where): "And the Qur'an says that there is no compulsion in religion." That is very true, but he also does not tell us that this was abrogated (mansukh) by ayat al-saif (the sword verse or the infamous 9:5) and in this case the sword verse abrogates (nasikh) the no compulsion. It is either he really does not know that and in this case he is no scholar or he is making things up, and in either case shame on PBS for inviting him.

4. Oh that is not all, and then he goes on describing how great Muhammad was, and how angry Muslims because everyone and his cousin (this is my observation) is after Islam.

The amazing thing that the likes of Nihad Awad would not get is that, more likely than not, the remarks made by the Byzanitine emepror and his dialogue with the Persian cleric was what historians would call heilsgeschichte or sacred history and not real history. Notice also that the sitz im leben (or the situation in life or setting) of such discourse was the near collapse the Byzantine empire at the hands of the invading MuslimTurks. So who is the actual author of such text? I do not think we will ever know, but that does not matter here. These were obvious questions and real concerns posed by the Greeks back than in regard to Muhammad and to Islam and I do not think that Muslims got it back then or now.

When it was over I really was ready, and you must pardon me, to vomit!

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".