Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (39 page)

25.
Hodgson,
Venture of Islam
, vol. 1, p. 181.

26.
Noted by Fazlur Rahman in “A Survey of Modernization of Muslim Family Law,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies
11, no. 4 (July 1980): 451. The Qur’anic verse is 30:21.

27.
Armstrong,
Muhammad
, p. 191.

28.
Ibid., p. 199.

29.
Noah Feldman, “Does Shariah Mean the Rule of Law?,”
International Herald Tribune
, March 16, 2008.

30.
Bernard Lewis,
Race and Slavery in the Middle East
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), chapter 1,
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.html
.

31.
Armstrong,
Muhammad
, p. 231.

32.
Mohammad Hashim Kamali,
Freedom of Expression in Islam
, rev. ed. (Cambridge, UK: Islamic Texts Society, 1997), p. 21. Kamali criticizes the common Western notion that Islam is essentially a system of duties. He argues that rights are equally central to Islam, and that this has only been obscured by the medieval Muslim jurists’ legalistic approach, which tended to look for and explicate duties rather than rights.

33.
One example is a book by a Turkish professor of Islamic law: Hayrettin Karaman,
Mukayeseli Islam Hukuku
[Comparative Islamic Law, vol. 1] (Istanbul: Nesil Publishing, 1996), pp. 75–77.

34.
Qur’an 7:188, Bewley translation.

35.
Qur’an 6:107, Bewley translation.

36.
Qur’an 18:29, Bewley translation, with Arabic words anglicized.

37.
Afsaruddin,
The First Muslims
, p. 5.

38.
F. E. Peters,
Muhammad and the Origins of Islam
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994). p. 200.

39.
Qur’an 22:39–40, Bewley translation, with Arabic words anglicized.

40.
Indian Muslim scholar Barakat Ahmad argues that Muslim historians have failed to take into account the fact that the historical source of the Banu Qurazya affair, the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq, written during the Abbasid caliphate, some 120 to 130 years after the Prophet’s death, was strongly influenced by the environment in which it was written. Ahmad argues: “Ibn Ishaq’s view regarding Muhammad’s relation with the Jews were strongly influenced by his own reaction to Jewish life under the Abbasids.” Harold Kasimow, “Muhammad and the Jews: A Re-Examination,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
50, no. 1 (March 1982): 157.

41.
Walid N. Arafat, “New Light on the Story of Banu Qurayza and the Jews of Medina,”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
, 1976, pp. 100–107. Arafat relates the testimony of Ibn Hajar, who denounced the massacre of Banu Qurayza and other accounts as “odd tales—and quoted Malik ibn Anas, a contemporary of Ibn Ishaq, whom he rejected as a “liar” and an “impostor” for seeking out the Jewish descendants for gathering information about Muhammad’s campaign against their forefathers.

42.
The two passages of the Qur’an (33:26 and 8:55–58) that traditionally have been regarded as referring to the Banu Qurayza incident are quite vague. They do speak of retribution to some People of the Book, but, as Arafat notes, “there is no indication whatever of the killing of a large number.”

43.
Norman A. Stillman,
The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), p. 16.

44.
Ibn Qutaybah in the ninth century and
al-Qarafi in the thirteenth century had distinguished between the religious and political missions of the Prophet and noted the latter’s contextuality. Interview with Saban Ali Düzgün, professor of theology at the Ankara University School of Theology,
Star
[Turkish daily], April 19, 2010.

45.
There are different views on this, but traditional sources write that Aisha was six or seven years old when betrothed to Muhammad, and that she was nine or ten years old when the marriage was consummated. Yet some scholars have argued against this view. Turkish Islamic law professor Hayrettin Karaman argues that it is more reasonable to assume that Aisha was fourteen at her marriage and eighteen when it was consummated. Hayrettin Karaman, “Hz. Aise kaç yasında evlendi?” [At What Age Did Aisha Get Married?],
Yeni Safak
, January 25, 2009. For another unorthodox assessment of this issue, see T. O. Shanavas, “Was Aisha a Six-Year-Old Bride?,” in
Critical Thinkers for Islamic Reform
, ed. Edip Yuksel et al. (Brainbow Press, 2009).

46.
Colin Turner,
Islam: The Basics
(Oxford: Routledge, 2005), pp. 34–35.

47.
Watt,
Muhammad
, p. 233.

48.
Qur’an 18:110, Bewley translation.

49.
Qur’an 17:81, Bewley translation.

50.
Armstrong,
Muhammad
, p. 243.

51.
Qur’an 110:2, Bewley translation, with Arabic words anglicized.

52.
Armstrong,
Muhammad
, p. 251.

53.
Rose Wilder Lane,
Islam and the Discovery of Freedom
, introduction and commentary by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2001), p. vi–vii, 1.

54.
David Forte, “Islam’s Trajectory,”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/08/islams_trajectory.html
, accessed October 23, 2006.

CHAPTER TWO: THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE ORIENT

1.
Bernard Lewis,
What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 156.

2.
Afsaruddin,
First Muslims
, p. 14.

3.
Qur’an 2:256, Shakir translation.

4.
Bernard Lewis,
The Middle East: 2000 Years of History from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), p. 234. Lewis also notes: “There are some parallels between the Muslim doctrine of
jihad
and the rabbinical Jewish doctrine of
milhemet mitsva
or
milhemet hova
, with the important difference that the Jewish notion is limited to one country whereas the Islamic
jihad
is worldwide.” Bernard Lewis,
The Jews of Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). p. 21.

5.
Bernard Lewis,
The Middle East
, p. 234.

6.
See Afsaruddin,
First Muslims
, pp. 41–44.

7.
Thomas Brown, “The Transformation of the Roman Mediterranean,” in
The Oxford History of Medieval Europe
, ed. George Holmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 11, 12.

8.
Andrew Wheatcroft,
Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam
(London: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 46.

9.
There are medieval Christian accounts of “violent conquests—by Muslims, but Near East historian Fred Donner argues that these accounts probably only reflect the plundering by “undisciplined” tribal soldiers in Muslim armies, rather than the general tendency. He adds: “The problem is that an increasing burden of archaeological evidence has turned up little or no trace of destructions, burnings, or other violence in most localities, particularly in geographical Syria, which is the area both most fully described by the literary sources and most thoroughly explored by archaeologists. Instead, the archaeological record suggests that the area underwent a gradual process of social and cultural transformation that did not involve a violent and sudden destruction of urban or rural life at all. In town after town, we find evidence of churches that are not destroyed”but, rather, continue in use for a century or more after the ‘conquest’”or new evidence that new churches (with dated mosaic floors) were being constructed.” Donner,
Muhammad and the Believers
, p. 107; also see p. 116.

10.
Afsaruddin,
First Muslims
, p. 39.

11.
“There is nothing in Islamic history to compare with the massacres and expulsions, the inquisitions and persecutions that Christians habitually inflicted on non-Christians and still more on each other. In the lands of Islam, persecution was the exception; in Christendom, sadly, it was often the norm.” Bernard Lewis,
The Multiple Identities of the Middle East
(New York: Schocken Books, 1998), p. 129.

12.
Noah Feldman,
The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 54.

13.
Under the Shariah, “no one can claim any immunity for his or her conduct merely on account of social and official status.” John L. Esposito, ed.,
The Oxford History of Islam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 149.

14.
Norman Barry, “Civil Society, Religion and Islam,” in
Islam, Civil Society, and Market Economy
, ed. Atilla Yayla (Ankara: Liberte Books, 2002), p. 30.