Scrutinizing Muhammad's example and teachings

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THE TRUTH ABOUT MUHAMMAD

By Robert Spencer

Regnery, $27.95, 224 pages

REVIEWED BY ANDREW G. BOSTOM

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch Parliamentarian and secular Muslim reformer, has courageously identified the taboo discussion which must take place to understand, and defuse, the scourge of modern jihad terrorism:

"In their thinking about radical Muslim terrorism most politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and other commentators have avoided the core issue of the debate, which is Muhammad's example."

This taboo is all the more puzzling, and dangerously delusional, given the public pronouncements of Muslim Brotherhood "spiritual" leader, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential contemporary Muslim thinkers.

The immensely popular Qaradawi reaches an audience of tens of millions of Muslim sympathizers across the globe with his regular appearances on Al-Jazeera television. During a June 19, 2001 broadcast, Qaradawi delivered a sermon entitled, "The Prophet Muhammad as a Jihad Model," proclaiming: " . . . Allah has . . . made the prophet Muhammad into an epitome for religious warriors [Mujahideen] since he ordered Muhammed to fight for religion . . . "

Consistent with the hadith (words and deeds of Muhammad recorded by pious followers), and earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad, Qaradawi further acknowledged that Muhammad launched aggressive jihad campaigns, and also maintained that there is in fact a "jihad which you seek," i.e., invading other countries in order to spread the word of Islam and to remove, by force of arms, "obstacles" standing in the way of this coercive Islamization.