An emblematic 2013 incident shows the dangers of our willful ignorance regarding Islam.
Islamic jihadists insist they’re acting on Islamic imperatives, embedded within the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teaching. Non-Muslim leaders in the West insist that this is not the case, that Islamic teaching is peaceful, benign, and even beneficial for society, and that violence is committed in the name of Islam only by those who misunderstand its true teachings.
Over the years, there have been numerous Muslims who have refuted this idea by quoting chapter and verse of the Qur’an to justify the most blood-curdling brutality. One of the bloodiest and most memorable of these incidents took place in May 2013, when Michael Adebolajo, a convert to Islam who called himself Mujaheed, brutally murdered a British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, on a London street. Immediately after the murder, his hands scarlet with Rigby’s blood and still holding the tools of his murder, Adebolajo approached a television cameraman and calmly began explaining himself.
In the course of his explanation, Adebolajo invoked the Qur’an’s ninth chapter (Surat at-Tawba), which enjoins Muslims to make war against and subjugate Jews and Christians, declaring: “We are forced by the Qur’an, in Sura At-Tawba, through many ayah [verses] in the Qur’an, we must fight them as they fight us.” He added: “I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our lands women have to see the same.”
Adebolajo’s reference to “our lands” likely appeared odd to many who read them at the time, as Adebolajo’s parents were Nigerians who immigrated to England in the early 1980s. As far as the left is concerned, that made Michael Adebolajo as English as Winston Churchill or Oliver Cromwell. But Adebolajo himself, of course, meant neither English nor Nigerian lands. He converted to Islam around 2003, and that meant that in his mind he was no longer English, if he ever was. He understood his commitment to Islam to supersede everything else, demanding a loyalty above national allegiances and even ties of kith and kin. The Qur’an commands Muslims to “be good to parents” (17:22). However, even in that relationship, the overarching principle is that Muslims must be “ruthless against the unbelievers, merciful one to another” (48:29).
And so Mujaheed Adebolajo committed murder on a street of the land where he grew up in defense of those he considered to be his only true kith and kin: Muslims worldwide. He did so, moreover, in obedience to what he considered to be the commands of his holy book.
British government and media elites, however, were absolutely certain that he had gotten his religion all wrong, and perfectly complacently in this certainty. Unsurprisingly, they rushed to assure the public that Islam had nothing to do with his action. Adebolajo was an “extremist” who misunderstood the clear and peaceful teachings of Islam.
British Prime Minister David Cameron summed up the mainstream view when he said in the House of Commons: “What happened on the streets of Woolwich shocked and sickened us all. It was a despicable attack on a British soldier who stood for our country and our way of life and it was too a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country. There is nothing in Islam that justifies acts of terror and I welcome the spontaneous condemnation of this attack from Mosques and community organisations right across our country.”
Muslim organizations did indeed condemn the murder, but that in itself did not necessarily establish that it was a betrayal of Islam; Muslim organizations may have condemned the murder because they thought was inopportune, or because they thought it was politically necessary to do so. Whatever their genuine sentiments about it, however, their condemnations reinforced Cameron’s core belief that Islam was a peaceful religion that was not represented by its “extremists.”
When Adebolajo and an accomplice were sentenced in 2014, a certain Mr. Justice Sweeney told them: “You each converted to Islam some years ago. Thereafter, you were radicalised and each became an extremist, espousing views which, as has been said elsewhere, are a betrayal of Islam.”
This infuriated Adebolajo and his partner, Michael Adebowale. They began screaming “Allahu akbar” and fighting the prison guards who were standing by. Adebowale shouted:
“That’s a lie. It’s not a betrayal of Islam. You don’t know what Islam is.” Adebolajo added: “I swear by Allah that America and Britain will never have any safety. Allahu akbar.”
And he was right. We won’t have any safety, in large part because of the still-prevailing denial and willful ignorance regarding the jihad threat.
Article posted with permission from Robert Spencer
