“Now is the time for Islamic organizations to state flatly: Like slavery and concubinage, the doctrine of armed jihad is obsolete.”

Tarek Fatah

National Post

We Muslims had barely recovered from the news of the 14-year conviction of the Canadian terrorist Saad Khalid, when our Labour Day holiday was interrupted with the bulletin that three of our co-religionists had been found guilty in the U.K. of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes bound for Toronto, Montreal and other North American cities.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain, who were convicted of plotting to blow up at least seven planes.

A British court convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as soft drinks, and later boasting in videos there would be “floods of martyr operations” that would leave body parts scattered in the streets. “Don’t mess with Muslims,” Hussain threatened.

I will not be surprised if Islamist leaders in the U.K. and North America now line up at the mics and issue the familiar denunciations of terrorism accompanied by the oft-repeated claim that “Islam is a religion of peace.” I say to them, this is not enough. Now is the time to say loudly, the doctrine of jihad is outdated and needs to be abandoned.

However, instead of distancing themselves from jihad, too many Muslim leaders are defending it by hiding behind its supposedly peaceful nature. Many take to the pulpit and state with disarming smiles and polite language that jihad is a peaceful exertion of spiritual warfare waged against oneself — against one’s ego and against one’s evil intentions, a sort of a cleansing of the soul. This is all said to be true because after returning from a battle, the Prophet told his colleagues: “You are returning from a lesser jihad to a greater jihad,” and when asked to clarify, he said the greater jihad “is the jihad against your passionate souls.”

But make no mistake: The jihad that Osama bin Laden and these three now-convicted British lieutenants wish to launch on British and Canadian citizens is the lesser jihad.

The jihad that convicted Ottawa terrorist Momin Khawaja talked about in his musings is the jihad of warfare, as clearly enunciated by such 20th-century Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood as Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, and Pakistan’s Abu Ala Maudoodi.

This triad of Islamist gurus may be dead, but their ideological inspiration of the world jihadi movements is alive with their apologists in Canada. It is not what the Koran says that matters; it is how Mr. Qutb, Mr. Banna and Mr. Maudoodi interpret the Koran for the jihadis that needs to be discussed.

In the fall of 2007, Islamists set up a stand at Toronto’s annual Word on the Street book festival where they distributed a free booklet titled Towards Understanding Islam, written by Mr. Maudoodi. In the booklet, Mr. Maudoodi exhorts ordinary Muslims to launch jihad, as in armed struggle, against non-Muslims.

“Jihad is part of this overall defence of Islam,” he writes. In case the reader is left with any doubt about the meaning of the word “jihad,” Mr. Maudoodi clarifies: “In the language of the Divine Law, this word [jihad] is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims.”

Mr. Maudoodi goes on to label Muslims who refuse the call to armed jihad as apostates: “Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception.”

If Muslim countries do not go to war against the enemies of Islam, Mr. Maudoodi says a worldwide uprising by ordinary Muslims is the answer. He writes: “Muslims of the whole world must fight the common enemy.”

Does it surprise anyone that ordinary Muslims in Britain and Canada have rallied to his call and declared jihad against their own countries of birth?

If Mr. Maudoodi’s exhortations to jihad are not enough, we have the words of the late Hassan al-Banna being distributed in our schools and universities. Mr. Banna makes it quite clear that the word “jihad” means armed conflict. He mocks the concept of the lesser and greater jihad, suggesting that this theory is a conspiracy so “Muslims should become negligent.”

In addition, here is what Mr. Qutb, another Egyptian stalwart of the Islamist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, writes in his classic book Milestones:

“Any place where Islamic shariah is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the Home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb). ... A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located.”

Sayyid Qutb reduces the message of Islam to the rejection of all laws made by parliaments. He says: “The basis of the message [Islam] is that one should accept the shariah without any question and reject all other laws in any shape or form. This is Islam.”

Unless the leaders of British, American and Canadian mosques, as well as the Islamic organizations in these countries, denounce the doctrine of jihad as pronounced by the Muslim Brotherhood, and distance themselves from the ideology of Messrs. Qutb, Banna and Maudoodi, the insistence that “jihad means peace” will sound hollow. It will merely reinforce the suspicions of many Canadians who feel some overseas groups are pulling the strings in this carefully staged puppet show.

Now is the time for Islamic organizations to state flatly in their weekly sermons from the pulpit: Like slavery and concubinage, the doctrine of armed jihad is obsolete. If they do not, their public utterances should be viewed with suspicion and politicians of all stripes must lay down the law.

Muslims must abandon doctrine of Jihad