Politics major with Middle Eastern focus clocking in....
Fact is, Islam is not the devil. It is not Revelation's harlot of Babylon nor Babylon itself. And it is not the most inherently violent religion ever devised by man (that dishonor, I might posit, goes to the Canaanites...).
However, it is extremely problematic on the world scene to see the vast majority of dictatorships and contemporary religious strife taking place in and around the Islamic world.
But what is even more problematic is Christians trying to interpret the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sunna without understanding its overall framework. More than the context of individual verses, we need to understand the theological context and themes found throughout Islamic writings.
Chief among those relevant to our present conversation are the concepts of dar al-Islam and dar al-harb.
The Dar al-Islam
The dar al-Islam, or House of Submission (or Peace), is roughly analogous both to Paul's conception of political empire (Romans 13) and the kingdom of God. One of the reasons 'mosque' has never been translated 'church' is because while church can refer both to the local congregation and the worldwide community, the mosque is only the local community. The worldwide community is the 'umma,' a bloc of people that comprised not only the worshipers of Allah but also the subjects of the Caliphate. Classical Islam never developed an ecclesiology (doctrine of the church) because there was no 'church' to speak of; local mosques were intimately tied to the local government, and the Muslim community as a whole was tied intimately to the imperial government.
Classical Islam never had any concept of a church separate from the state because from the very outset Muhammad was a Arab political leader. Indeed much of the best scholarship coming out about early Islam (that is, the scholarship coming out of London University's School for Oriental and African Studies in the leadership of the late John Wansbrough and his pupils) shows that if we disregard the later writings of Muslims and focus our attention on the archaeological and non-Muslim testimonies we come to a picture of an Arabist nationalism marching out into the world and standing in contrast to Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia that makes no mention of Allah. It has demonstrated with some success that the Shi'ite, who claim that the Caliph (leader of all Muslims) must be a success to Muhammad, are more thoroughly connected to original Muslim practice and that the Qur'an is a product of later Sunni editing under the leadership of a non-descendent.
But whether one accepts the traditional Muslim account or the historical reconstruction, the fact remains that Islam began with no conception of separation between mosque, umma, and state, because all three were embodied in the dar al-Islam.
The Dar al-Harb
What about the dar al-harb? Meaning House of War, the dar al-harb is the Muslim characterization of the non-Muslim world. It is characterized as such not because it is necessarily more violent, but because it is in a state of rebellion against the laws of Allah. The solution is to bring the House of War into the House of Submission (dar al-Islam)- a submission to the laws of Allah that bring peace.
There are two implications to the two-house model
First Implication of the Two Houses: Internal
The first implication to the two-house model is that the Muslim emphasis has never been on individual conversion (although this is preferable). It is not so important that individuals within a society believe (this is a culturally insensitive Christian interpolation) but rather that the society as a whole follows the laws of Allah.
This is especially visible in the institution of dhimmitude.
A dhimmi is a 'protected person' under Islamic law. Muhammad, indeed, laid down the laws of dhimmitude in order to protect non-Muslims living under his rule (and the rule of his successors). And who were these protected persons? 'People of the Book,' as the Qur'an calls them- Christians and Jews.
According to the Qur'an, the Torah of Musa (Moses), Psalms of Da'ud (David), and Gospels of Isa (Jesus) are three divine revelations given by these three prophets of Islam. Unfortunately for Muslims (though fortunately for Muhammad as an innovator), the current Torah, Psalms, and Gospels are quite corrupted versions of the original documents. However, since Jews and Christians worship by these documents they are considered 'People of the Book' and therefore protected under Islamic law.
Much as the ancient Israelites dealt with Gentiles living in their land, Islamic law stipulates that in order for the Peoples of the Book to be dhimmi (a protected person), they must abide by the outward, ceremonial law. They are not required to believe in Allah, but they are required to follow his laws. This is why, even today, female American soldiers in Islamic theonomies (states that are governed by religious law) are required to wear headscarves and face coverings.
Yet what do these laws require? A nigh-full curb of religious freedom. Jews and Christians are not allowed to proselytize, build new houses of worship, or repair old houses of worship. They must wear public identification of their religion (in the case of Jews, a yellow star of David... and you thought the Nazis made that one up) and pay special taxes in order to maintain their protected status. Murdering a dhimmi is punishable only by a fine.
Far from protection, this is slavery. As the classic commentator Ibn Kathir wrote in his commentary on Sura 9:29, '[dhimmi must be] disgraced, humiliated, and belittled.'
This internal enforcement of Islamic law does not extend only to the Peoples of the Book. Eighteenth century Islamic thinker Ibn al-Wahhab wrote a book Kitab al-Tawheed (Book of/on Monotheism). In it he exposited the Qur'an to show that many Islamic sects improperly applied their devotion to Allah to alternate sources and even when worshiping Allah did so in an unlawful manner. These include Shiites, who revere Muhammad with high esteem and demand that the leader of the Islamic world (Caliph) be his descendent, and the Sufi, who revere Islamic saints and promote mystical encounters with Allah.
If you haven't read Kitab al-Tawheed I highly recommend you do (read the Qur'an first, of course), because it shows how Wahhab, the founder of modern Islamic fundamentalism, is a far better and more honest Qur'anic scholar than the liberals within Islam trying desperately to make their religion acceptable to the post-Enlightenment word.
Suffice it to say, Wahhab formed an alliance with Ibn al-Saud, the founder of the Saudi monarchy. It gave Wahhab state sponsorship and Saud theological legitimacy. Today the Wahhabist Saudi monarchy controls the two most sacred shines of Islam-Mecca and Medina-and funds Islamic schools imbued with Wahhabist thought across the Muslim world.
Second Implication of the Two Houses: External
The second implication of the two-houses model is that because the spread of the Islamic religion is thought of mostly in legal terms and is vested in a state apparatus, wars of conquest in the name of religion are perfectly permissible.
Clearly there are multiple interpretations of jihad. Usually cited by those seeks reproachment and dialogue with Islam, the term can indeed be translated 'struggle.' In this first interpretation, it refers to the internal struggle to keep the laws of Allah. And there is not doubt that many, if not a majority, of the Qur'anic uses of the Arabic word jihad are to be interpreted in this sense of internal struggle for piety.
However, the term as often used in the sense of an outward struggle. It is perfectly acceptable in Islam to go to war with subjects of the dar al-harb because Allah has given the Muslim people political authority to forcibly counter the injustice of a humanity in rebellion against him. If one actually, and honestly, reads both secular and Muslim accounts of the first centuries of Islam, one will witness the fast, forceful, outward growth of the dar al-Islam by the sword- a growth by the sword that continues back to the post-Hajj/Meccan conquest life of the prophet Muhammad himself.
Many of my conservative brethren here have attempted to show that 'kill the infidel wherever you find him' is a Qur'anic quote that supports the killing of Jews and Christians. It is not. The term infidel is not synonymous with dhimmi (protected Person of the Book). It does apply, however, those within or at the borders of dar al-Islam who are neither Muslims nor People of the Book- Hinduism, Buddhists, atheists, etc. While dhimmis are monotheists who, given the above (horrendous) stipulations, may live within Islamic lands, these others are so far afield that having them within the dar al-Islam is an offense to Allah and his laws.
(In all fairness, Muslim regents over India during the Mughal period did not kill all the Hindus; they only justified this by innovation, however, in claiming that the Hindus were 'really' monotheists who just didn't know it; the resulting strain of monism in modern Hinduism is a result.)
Despite the annihilation of the Ottoman Caliphate by the allied powers and Kemal Ataturk at the end of World War I, this mentality has only strengthened in the twentieth century.
In the 1930s a Muslim scholar, paid by the Egyptian government, went on a sabbatical in the United States. When he returned he devoted himself to fervently following the laws of Allah and search the Qur'an for what to do with law-breakers in and out of Muslim lands. His name was Sayyid Qutb; the book he was was called Milestones. As with Kitab al-Tawheed, I highly recommend it.
Although his theories had never been so well articulated, Qutb's ideas had been strains running through Islamic thought since the Qur'anic period. His focus was on a concept called jahiliyyah.
Jahiliyyah is a word used in the Qur'an to refer to the 'period of darkness' that lorded over the Arab people during the time before the revelations by the angel Jabril (our Gabriel) to Muhammad. It connoted a time of polytheistic and materialist ignorance that was to be destroyed by force. And so Muhammad did; after being run out of Mecca (and fleeing to Medina in the Hajj) by the polytheist and materialist authorities, Muhammad returned at the head of Medinan armies to conquer Mecca by force- the first of many conquests that characterized the remainder of his life.
We, friends, are the people of jahiliyyah. Although Muhammad ended the period of jahiliyyah in Arabia, the rest of the world remains in darkness. This is the classic Islamic mindset.
Islam and its House Through the Centuries
I will not claim that Wahhab and Qutb are representative of Qur'anic Islam. However, I maintain that they are a far closer representation of the Qur’an’s meaning and Muhammad's political aspirations than those liberal factions within contemporary Islam that seek to debase their religion from its Qur'anic and historic roots. While Wahhabism and Qutbism are later elaborations on earlier threads, dhimmitude, jihad, and the two-house model are Qur'anic in thought and extremely origin in practice. We simply do not have record of early Islam that did not practice dhimmitude and jihad nor believe in the two-house model.
I will also be the first to admit that while I view the Qur'anic and Islamic system of thought as the most oppressive and violent among today's religions, I will also readily admit that this has not always been the case. During the Middle Ages dhimmitude did live up it its name. Jews were far safer as dhimmis than as subjects of the Spanish Habsburgs; hence why they fled to Muslim lands during the reconquista. Likewise Islamic legal policy toward women was far more progressive than its Christian and Hindu counterparts; view people realize that Muhammad instituted the veil as a means to protect women from rapists and lechers.
However, where Christianity has changed to adapt to post-Enlightenment codes of ethics and conceptions of universal human dignity, however imperfectly, and returned to the egalitarianism of Paul and the contra-imperial separation of church and state of the early church, Islam has utterly failed. I say this not to say that Christianity has done it better, but to say to Muslims that if we, the sad and repressive people of Medieval Europe can do it, you can too.
As I have attempted to show, dhimmitude was an institution of protection but only at the cost of slavery; the same can be said of women in Islamic lands. Muhammad instituted the veil and face-coverings to protect women from lecherous men; yet this assumes that women require such protection from the government. And so, women who see no need for such state protection and attempt to remove the veil are stoned in stadiums.
This problem is indicative of Islam in history. Where Islam was once the most progressive religion on the planet and the Caliphate the most powerful empire in the world, the Islamic world has been surpassed first by Enlightenment Europe and now by East Asia (in supreme humiliation, as they are not even People of the Book). An inability to adapt beyond their now-relatively brutal polity and jurisprudence has transformed a once-noble religious system into a bastion of tyranny and violence.
Might I suggest two books on the topic by the foremost authority on Middle Eastern studies, Bernard Lewis:
The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror
What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
