by on

How an obscure survival doctrine became the counter-Islam crowd’s favourite lie

Someone posts it online like a trump card. A thread about Islam, a debate about Muslims, a comment section under a news article — and there it is. Taqiyya. Dropped with the confidence of someone who thinks they’ve just revealed the cheat code to an entire religion. “Muslims are allowed to lie to non-Muslims. It’s called taqiyya. Look it up.”

They haven’t looked it up. They’ve never read the verse. They couldn’t name the companion it was revealed for. They don’t know the conditions under which it applies or the scholarly consensus on its limits. They don’t know that most Sunni Muslims have barely encountered the term in their entire religious lives. But they’re confident. They saw it on a blog, or a YouTube video, or a thread by someone with a flag in their bio and a reading level that doesn’t extend past headlines.

This article is for them. And for the people they’ve misled.

Here is the first problem with their argument: the word itself. Taqiyya is a Shia jurisprudential term. It belongs to a specific tradition within Islam — the minority tradition, representing roughly ten percent of the world’s Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims are Sunni, and most Sunni Muslims have never used the word taqiyya in their lives. It does not appear in standard Sunni legal vocabulary. The Sunni concept that covers the same ground is called idtirar — compulsion — a broader legal principle that applies to any situation of extreme duress, from concealing one’s faith under threat of death to eating prohibited food to avoid starvation. It is not a doctrine. It is not a strategy. It is a recognition that God does not punish a person for what is forced out of them at the point of a blade.

So when someone accuses “Muslims” of practising “taqiyya,” they are using a term from one tradition to smear an entire religion of nearly two billion people — most of whom would not recognise the word if you said it to them. They have built an accusation on a term they do not understand, borrowed from a tradition they cannot identify, and applied it to a population that largely does not use it. That is the foundation their argument stands on. It is worth knowing how sturdy it is before we go any further.

Now. Let’s start with where the concept — whatever you call it — actually came from.

The Story of Ammar ibn Yasir

In the earliest days of Islam, in Makkah, the new faith had no army, no state, no political power. The first Muslims were overwhelmingly poor, enslaved, or socially vulnerable. The Quraysh — the dominant tribe of Makkah — did not debate them. They tortured them.

Among the first to accept Islam was a family with no tribal protection at all: Yasir ibn Amir, his wife Sumayyah bint Khayyat, and their son Ammar. They were slaves. They had no one to shield them. And when the Quraysh learned of their conversion, they made an example of them.

The family was dragged into the open under the scorching midday sun. They were beaten. They were stretched over burning sand. They were told the price of their faith was pain — and the price of relief was to renounce it.

Sumayyah refused. Abu Jahl — one of the most powerful men in Makkah and among the most vicious opponents of the Prophet — tortured her publicly. When she would not break, he killed her. She is recognised in Islamic tradition as the first martyr of Islam. Not a warrior. Not a general. A woman. An enslaved woman. Killed because she would not conceal her faith.

Yasir was killed as well.

Ammar survived — but not intact. The torture broke his body to the point where, as the sources record, he no longer knew what he was saying. Under unbearable duress, he spoke words against the Prophet and praised the Quraysh’s gods. They released him.

He went to the Prophet Muhammad, weeping. He was terrified — not of the Quraysh, but of God. Had he committed apostasy? Had the words forced from his broken body cost him his faith?

The Prophet asked him one question: “How do you find your heart?”

Ammar replied: “Firm in faith.”

The Prophet told him: “If they do it again, do the same.”

And then God revealed the verse:

“Whoever disbelieves in Allah after having believed — except one who is forced while his heart remains firm in faith — but those who open their hearts to disbelief, upon them is wrath from Allah, and for them is a great punishment.” — Qur’an 16:106

That is the origin of taqiyya. Not a strategy. Not a doctrine of infiltration. Not a licence to deceive your neighbours. It is permission — from God — to survive.

A man whose mother was murdered for refusing to hide her faith was told that the words tortured out of him did not cost him his soul. That is all taqiyya is, and all it has ever been.

The Qur’anic and Hadith Basis

Two verses in the Qur’an are cited in connection with the concept of concealing one’s faith under duress. Both are narrow. Both are conditional. Neither says what the counter-Islam crowd claims they say.

The first is the verse already quoted — Qur’an 16:106 — revealed in direct response to Ammar ibn Yasir’s ordeal. Its meaning is plain: a person who is forced to utter disbelief, while their heart remains firm in faith, is not held accountable by God. The operative word is forced. Not inconvenienced. Not socially pressured. Not trying to win an argument on the internet. Forced — under threat of torture or death.

The second is Qur’an 3:28:

“Let not the believers take disbelievers as allies rather than believers. And whoever does that has nothing with Allah — except when taking precaution against them in prudence. And Allah warns you of Himself.”

The Arabic word used here — tuqatan — shares a root with taqiyya. Some variant readings (qira’at) of the Qur’an render it directly as taqiyyatan. The meaning, as explained by classical commentators including al-Tabari and al-Jalalayn, is that a Muslim may outwardly show amicability toward hostile non-Muslims if doing so is necessary to protect themselves from harm — but not in their heart. This is not a command to infiltrate. It is not a strategy for da’wah. It is permission to avoid getting killed.

Al-Tabari’s commentary on 16:106 makes the boundaries explicit: concealing one’s faith is only justified if the person faces mortal danger. Even then, choosing martyrdom — refusing to conceal and accepting death — is considered the nobler path. God permits survival. He honours sacrifice. The door is open in both directions. But neither direction leads to “lie to your neighbour about what you believe so you can secretly convert their children.”

The hadith literature reinforces the same narrow scope. In the Fath al-Bari — the most authoritative Sunni commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari — there is scholarly consensus recorded: whoever is compelled to deny their faith and chooses death instead receives a greater reward from God than the one who takes the dispensation. The dispensation exists. It is real. But it is the lesser option, granted out of mercy, not the preferred one.

The Prophet Muhammad also identified three specific circumstances in which deception is permitted. The hadith is narrated by Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah in Sahih Muslim: lying to reconcile between two people, speech during active warfare, and speech between spouses to preserve harmony. That is the complete list. Three narrow exceptions. Not one of them says “lie to non-Muslims about your religion.”

And the same Prophet said:

“The signs of a hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he makes a promise, he breaks it; and when he is entrusted, he betrays.” — Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim

“Whoever cheats is not one of us.” — Sahih Muslim

“The truthful and trustworthy merchant will be with the prophets, the truthful, and the martyrs.” — Jami’ al-Tirmidhi

Islam’s baseline position on lying is unambiguous: it is forbidden. Comprehensively. In trade, in testimony, in personal relationships, in community life. The exceptions are narrow, specific, and hedged with conditions. The idea that Islam teaches Muslims to lie as a general practice is not a misunderstanding. It is an inversion of the evidence.

Sunni and Shia Views — Side by Side

Understanding this subject honestly requires acknowledging that Sunni and Shia Islam engage with it differently — not because they disagree on the principle, but because they have different histories.

For Sunni Muslims, the concept falls under the broader legal principle of idtirar — compulsion. It is not unique to the concealment of faith. It is the same principle that permits eating pork if you are starving, drinking wine if you are dying of thirst, or uttering words of disbelief if someone is about to kill you for your religion. It is a jurisprudential recognition that God does not hold people accountable for what is forced upon them in extremis. The Qur’an states this explicitly: “He has explained to you in detail what is forbidden to you, except that which you are compelled to.” — Qur’an 6:119.

Most Sunni Muslims will go their entire lives without hearing the word taqiyya. It is not taught in Sunni religious education. It is not discussed in Friday sermons. It does not appear in the major Sunni legal texts as a named doctrine. When Sunni scholars address the permissibility of concealing faith under duress, they do so under the heading of ikrah (coercion) or idtirar (compulsion) — not taqiyya. For Shia Muslims, the history is different, and the doctrine developed accordingly. After the death of the Prophet, the Shia — those who believed the leadership of the Muslim community should have passed to Ali ibn Abi Talib — became a minority, often persecuted by the Sunni political establishment. Under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, being openly Shia could mean imprisonment, torture, or death. Taqiyya — the concealment of one’s true religious identity — became a survival mechanism. It was codified as a jurisprudential principle by the fifth and sixth Shia Imams, Muhammad al-Baqir and Ja’far al-Sadiq, during a period when Shia communities were being actively hunted. Ja’far al-Sadiq’s statement — “Taqiyya is my religion and the religion of my ancestors” — is often quoted out of context. In context, he was speaking as the leader of a persecuted minority whose followers were being killed for their beliefs. It is a statement of survival, not subterfuge.

Shia jurisprudence does extend the scope of taqiyya beyond the narrow Sunni framework. It permits concealment not only under mortal threat but in situations where openly expressing one’s beliefs would cause significant harm — including harm to the broader community. Some Shia scholars also recognise a form called mudarat (tolerance or endearment taqiyya), which covers situations like participating in Sunni congregational prayers or attending Sunni gatherings to maintain Muslim unity. This is not deception in any meaningful sense — it is the kind of diplomatic restraint that every human community practises.

The key point is this: both traditions root the concept in the same Qur’anic verses. Both agree that it applies under conditions of danger or compulsion. Both agree that it is not a licence for everyday deception. The Shia tradition developed it more formally because Shia Muslims faced more sustained persecution. That is a historical fact, not a theological scandal.

There is even a historical example of Sunni scholars practising exactly what taqiyya describes. During the Mihna — the inquisition imposed by Caliph al-Ma’mun in the ninth century — Sunni scholars were forced to publicly affirm that the Qur’an was a created thing, a position most of them rejected. Some complied outwardly while maintaining their true beliefs inwardly. Others, most famously Ahmad ibn Hanbal, refused and chose to endure imprisonment and torture rather than speak against his conscience. The Muslim community honoured both responses. The ones who concealed survived. The one who refused became a towering figure of principled defiance. Neither was condemned. Islam held room for both.

That is, again, exactly the framework laid out in Qur’an 16:106. The dispensation exists. Martyrdom is nobler. Both are valid. Both are human.

What Taqiyya Is Not

It is not a blanket permission to lie. It is not a strategy for converting non-Muslims. It is not a tool for infiltration. It is not a programme of civilisational subversion. It does not authorise deception in business, in personal relationships, in testimony, in contracts, in da’wah, or in any interaction where a Muslim is not facing mortal danger or severe persecution.

This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of reading.

Islamic law explicitly and repeatedly condemns dishonesty in every domain of daily life. The hadith literature is saturated with warnings against lying — not buried in obscure volumes, but in the most prominent and widely taught collections:

“Truthfulness leads to righteousness, and righteousness leads to Paradise. A man keeps on telling the truth until he is written before Allah as truthful. And falsehood leads to wickedness, and wickedness leads to the Hellfire. A man keeps on telling lies until he is written before Allah as a liar.” — Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim

“The signs of a hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he makes a promise, he breaks it; and when he is entrusted, he betrays.” — Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim

“Whoever cheats is not one of us.” — Sahih Muslim

“The truthful and trustworthy merchant will be with the prophets, the truthful, and the martyrs.” — Jami’ al-Tirmidhi

These are not peripheral teachings. They are foundational. Every Muslim child who attends a weekend Islamic school learns that lying is haram (forbidden). The hypocrite — munafiq — is described in the Qur’an as occupying the lowest level of Hellfire, beneath even the disbelievers. Hypocrisy in Islam is not a minor sin. It is among the gravest spiritual diseases a person can carry.

The claim that Islam teaches Muslims to lie as a general practice requires ignoring all of this. It requires treating an emergency dispensation — a narrow permission granted under threat of death — as though it were the default setting of an entire faith. That is not scholarship. It is not even competent reading. It is propaganda.

Everyone Practises This — They Just Don’t Call It That

Here is where the counter-Islam argument collapses entirely. Not because the principle of taqiyya is indefensible — it is eminently defensible — but because it is universal. Every civilisation, every legal system, every religious tradition, and every human being who has ever lived under threat has practised exactly what taqiyya describes. The only difference is that Islam gave it a name.

The Bible recognises it. Ecclesiastes 3:7 — “A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” The entire passage is a meditation on the seasons of human life, the recognition that wisdom requires knowing when to act and when to refrain. Silence is not cowardice. Speech is not always virtue. The Bible knows this.

The Bible does not merely recognise the principle. It celebrates people who lied — and rewards them for it.

In Exodus 1:15–21, Pharaoh commands the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill every newborn Hebrew boy. They refuse. When Pharaoh demands to know why the boys are still alive, the midwives lie to his face: “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife arrives.” The text is explicit about what happened next: “So God dealt well with the midwives… and because the midwives feared God, He gave them families.” God rewarded them. For lying. To a king. To protect the innocent.

In Joshua 2, Rahab — a Canaanite woman — hides Israelite spies in her home and lies to the soldiers who come looking for them. She tells them the spies have already left. She is not condemned. She is honoured. The Book of Hebrews names her among the heroes of faith: “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” — Hebrews 11:31. She lied. She is in the hall of faith. James 2:25 goes further: “Was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?” Justified. By works. The work in question was deception.

In 1 Samuel 21, David — the future king of Israel, the man after God’s own heart — feigns madness before King Achish of Gath to save his own life. He scratches at the gate, lets saliva run down his beard, and plays the lunatic. It is an act. A performance. A lie told with his entire body. Scripture does not condemn him for it.

These are not obscure passages. These are central narratives of the Jewish and Christian traditions. And they establish a principle that no honest reader can deny: lying to protect life is not only permitted in the biblical tradition — it is celebrated, rewarded, and held up as an example of faith.

Now consider the history.

Jews during the Spanish Inquisition were given a choice: convert to Christianity, leave, or die. Tens of thousands chose a fourth option — outward conversion while maintaining their Jewish faith in secret. They are known as Conversos or Marranos. They attended Mass. They ate pork in public. They performed every outward act of Christian devotion demanded of them. And in their homes, behind closed doors, they lit Shabbat candles and whispered Hebrew prayers.

No honest person calls them liars. They are remembered as heroes of endurance — people who preserved their faith across generations under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

And every year, on the eve of Yom Kippur, Jews around the world recite the Kol Nidre — a prayer that pre-emptively annuls vows made under compulsion. Its haunting melody, traditionally played on the violin, is one of the most recognisable sounds in Jewish liturgical life. Its purpose is inseparable from the memory of persecution: Jews forced to swear oaths of Christian faith under the Inquisition needed a theological mechanism to reconcile what their mouths were compelled to say with what their hearts still believed. Kol Nidre served that function. It is commemorated to this day in exactly that context — as a prayer of survival, not a licence for deception.

Antisemites have weaponised Kol Nidre against Jews for centuries. They point to it as proof that Jews are “allowed to break their oaths” — stripping it from its context of forced conversion and persecution and presenting it as evidence of inherent Jewish dishonesty. The logic is identical to the weaponisation of taqiyya against Muslims. The same lie, aimed at a different community, using the same intellectual dishonesty.

Christians practised the same thing — and not only under Roman persecution.

In the first three centuries of Christianity, the faith existed under intermittent but often savage Roman persecution. Christians were fed to lions, burned as human torches, crucified, and forced to renounce their faith or face execution. Many refused and died as martyrs. Others concealed their faith, met in catacombs, used coded symbols like the ichthys fish to identify one another. The early Church debated how to receive back the lapsi — those who had denied their faith under persecution. The debate was about reintegration, not condemnation. The Church understood that survival under duress was a human reality, not a moral failure.

But Christian persecution did not end with Rome. Christians tortured and killed other Christians over doctrinal differences for centuries. Catholics burned Protestants. Protestants burned Catholics. Both burned Anabaptists. The Wars of Religion devastated Europe. The Inquisition targeted not only Jews and Muslims but Christian “heretics” — people whose Christianity was the wrong kind of Christianity.

And under that persecution, Christians concealed their denominational identity to survive. Early Protestants in Catholic territories practised their faith in secret. Catholic recusants in Elizabethan England hid priests in purpose-built concealment spaces — priest holes — cut into the walls and floors of their homes. When the authorities came looking, they lied. When asked if they harboured a priest, they said no. They are venerated today as martyrs and heroes. Entire books are written about their courage.

They were practising exactly what taqiyya describes. They did not call it that. But the principle was identical: conceal what you believe when revealing it means death, and trust that God sees your heart.

During the Holocaust, Christians lied to protect Jews — not under compulsion, but out of moral and religious duty. They forged baptismal certificates. They hid families in walls and attics and cellars. They told the Gestapo that the people in their care were Christian relatives, orphaned children, household servants. They lied systematically, repeatedly, and deliberately. They are called the Righteous Among the Nations. They are honoured at Yad Vashem. Their lies are treated not as sins but as the highest expression of Christian love.

Japanese Christians during the Tokugawa shogunate practised their faith in secret for over two hundred years after Christianity was banned and believers were hunted, tortured, and executed. They are known as the Kakure Kirishitan — the Hidden Christians. They concealed their prayers inside Buddhist chants. They disguised statues of the Virgin Mary as Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy. They passed their faith down through generations in whispers. When missionaries returned to Japan in the nineteenth century, they found these communities still intact — still believing, still hiding, still practising what the counter-Islam crowd would call deception if Muslims did it.

Resistance fighters across occupied Europe during the Second World War lied to protect the hunted. They gave false names. They forged identity papers. They concealed weapons, radio equipment, and human beings. They are called heroes. Entire nations honour them with monuments and national holidays.

Undercover police officers and intelligence operatives lie professionally, as a career, sanctioned by the state. They assume false identities, build false relationships, and deceive people for months or years at a time. They are honoured for it. Medals are given. Films are made.

And every person who has ever hidden their political opinion at work to keep their job, concealed their sexuality from a hostile family to avoid violence, or told a border guard what they needed to hear to get through safely — every one of them has practised the same principle.

Western law itself recognises it. The legal concept of duress holds that testimony, confessions, or contracts obtained under coercion are inadmissible — precisely because the law acknowledges that people will say what they must to survive, and that words extracted by force do not represent truth. This is not a contested legal theory. It is a foundational principle of every Western legal system.

The principle is universal. The human reality is universal. Judaism named it. Christianity lived it. Western law codified it.

Islam called it taqiyya. And for that, Muslims are accused of being uniquely deceptive.

Three Faiths, One Principle

Strip away the polemics. Strip away the blog posts and the YouTube rants and the breathless threads. Look at what is actually in front of us.

Judaism forbids lying. The Ninth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour” — Exodus 20:16. And lest anyone try to limit that to testimony about neighbours, Exodus 23:7 broadens it: “Distance yourself from falsehood.” Not from false witness. From falsehood itself. The prohibition is comprehensive. And yet Jewish law recognises pikuach nefesh — the preservation of life — as an overriding obligation that supersedes nearly every other commandment. When life is at stake, the rules bend. The Talmud identifies specific circumstances in which deception is permitted or even required: to protect the vulnerable, to preserve peace, to save life. The midwives lied to Pharaoh. Rahab lied to the soldiers. The Conversos lied to the Inquisition. And every year, Kol Nidre remembers.

Christianity forbids lying. The Ninth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness.” Colossians 3:9: “Do not lie to one another.” The prohibition is clear. And yet Christians — across centuries, across denominations, across continents — have lied to protect life and been honoured for it. Augustine debated the ethics of lying and distinguished between types of deception. Aquinas refined the doctrine of mental reservation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer — one of the most celebrated Christian theologians of the twentieth century — conspired against the Nazi regime, lied to the authorities, and was executed for it. He did not see his deception as a sin. He saw it as obedience to a higher moral law. The Church agrees. He is remembered as a martyr, not a liar.

Islam forbids lying. Comprehensively, repeatedly, with the weight of Qur’an, hadith, and fourteen centuries of jurisprudence behind the prohibition. And yet Islam recognises — as Judaism and Christianity recognise — that there are moments when concealment is not sin but survival. When the blade is at your throat. When your family is in hiding. When speaking the truth means death, and silence means another day to live and worship and serve.

All three faiths forbid lying as a baseline. All three permit it under duress. All three recognise the protection of life as a moral duty that can override other obligations in extremis. The theology is parallel. The human reality is identical. The principle is shared.

“A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” — Ecclesiastes 3:7

This is not a Muslim verse. It is a Jewish and Christian verse. And it says exactly what taqiyya says — that there are times when silence or concealment is not cowardice or deception, but wisdom, survival, and moral duty. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are equal in this. They always have been.

The only difference is that Islam gave the principle a jurisprudential name. And for that — for the act of naming what everyone practises — Muslims are singled out as uniquely dishonest by people who cannot be bothered to read their own scriptures.

Who Benefits From the Lie?

If taqiyya is this narrow, this conditional, this well-documented — why does the myth persist? Who benefits from the distortion?

The answer is an industry.

The counter-Islam movement in the West — a network of organisations, commentators, and self-appointed experts — has built an entire infrastructure around the claim that Islam is inherently deceptive and that Muslims cannot be trusted. Taqiyya is their skeleton key. It is the claim that makes all other claims unfalsifiable.

The logic works like this: if a Muslim says something you agree with, they might be telling the truth — or they might be practising taqiyya. If a Muslim denies something you’ve accused them of, that’s definitely taqiyya. If a Muslim corrects a factual error about Islam, that’s taqiyya too. If a Muslim scholar explains the actual jurisprudence behind the concept — well, that’s just advanced taqiyya.

The accusation is designed to be irrefutable. It is a closed loop. No Muslim can escape it because any statement a Muslim makes can be dismissed as deception. It does not require evidence. It does not require engagement. It requires only suspicion — and suspicion is the one thing the counter-Islam industry produces in abundance.

This is not a fringe position confined to anonymous social media accounts. It has been amplified by organisations with offices, budgets, and access to legislators. The Middle East Forum published an article framing taqiyya as a comprehensive doctrine of Islamic deception, stripping it entirely from its jurisprudential context. Figures like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have built careers on the claim that Muslims are religiously obligated to lie. ACT for America — at one point the largest anti-Muslim organisation in the United States — distributed materials to law enforcement agencies warning them that Muslim community engagement was itself a form of taqiyya.

The effect is not academic. It is operational. It poisons the well of every conversation, every interfaith initiative, every policy discussion in which a Muslim participates. It tells the audience: do not listen to what Muslims say, because they are theologically required to deceive you. It turns Muslim speech into evidence of Muslim guilt. And it does so by exploiting the ignorance of an audience that has never read the Qur’an, never heard of Ammar ibn Yasir, and never encountered the term idtirar in their lives.

The Irony

The people who weaponise taqiyya are themselves practising selective concealment — though not taqiyya or idtirar, but something far more insidious and deceitful.

Taqiyya has conditions. Mortal danger. Compulsion. A heart that remains firm in faith. It is survival under duress, with theological accountability attached. The person practising taqiyya knows they are concealing, knows why, and knows that God sees their heart. There is a moral framework around it. There are limits. There is a Day of Judgement.

What the counter-Islam crowd does meets none of those conditions. They are not under threat. They are not being compelled. No one is holding a blade to their throats and demanding they misrepresent Islamic jurisprudence. They are choosing — freely, deliberately, without duress — to conceal the context of the verse, the story of Ammar, the scholarly consensus on the conditions, and the fact that their own religious traditions and legal systems recognise the identical principle. They are selecting the fragments that serve their narrative and discarding everything that doesn’t.

That is not taqiyya. Taqiyya is what you do when someone holds a blade to your throat.

What they do is hold the blade — and then accuse you of hiding.

Closing

The person who posted that screenshot — the one who dropped taqiyya like a trump card — doesn’t know any of this.

They have never read Qur’an 16:106. They have never heard of Ammar ibn Yasir. They do not know that his mother, Sumayyah, was the first martyr of Islam — killed not because she concealed her faith, but because she refused to. They do not know that the verse was revealed to comfort a man who had been tortured until he no longer knew what he was saying, and who came to the Prophet in tears, terrified that the words beaten out of him had cost him his soul.

They do not know that the Prophet’s response was not a doctrine of deception but an act of mercy: Your heart is firm. You are still a believer. If they do it again, do the same.

They do not know that their own scriptures celebrate Rahab for lying, reward the midwives for deceiving Pharaoh, and honour David for feigning madness. They do not know that Kol Nidre exists for the same reason taqiyya exists. They do not know that their own ancestors hid priests in walls, whispered prayers in catacombs, and forged baptismal certificates to save Jewish children from the gas chambers.

They do not know any of this. And the people who taught them the word taqiyya are counting on them never finding out.

Because the lie only works in the dark. And this article is a light.

 

______

James S. Coates writes about AI ethics, consciousness, and the intersection of faith and technology. His books include A Signal Through Time, The Threshold, The Road to Khurasan, the memoir God and Country (published under pen name Will Prentiss) and his forthcoming Neither Gods Nor Monsters. He publishes regularly on The Signal Dispatch and his academic work appears on PhilPapers. 

© 2026 James S. Coates

Image: An auto-da-fé of the Spanish Inquisition and the execution of sentences by burning heretics at the stake in a market place.” Engraving by Bernard Picart. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0.

by on

How Politicians, Profiteers, and Foreign Governments Are Playing You

 

You’re not wrong to be angry about Islam. You’re just angry at the wrong people.

I know that’s not what you expected to read. You clicked on this because the title confirmed something you already believed — that something about Islam isn’t right, that someone’s running a game, that you’re being played. You’re correct on all three counts. You’re just wrong about who’s doing the playing.

My name is James Coates. I’m a white American, born Catholic, raised in Illinois. I served as a Joint Drugs Enforcement Team operative for the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations and later an undercover counterterrorism operative for the FBI. In 2004, when I learned that members of an Islamic group I was embedded with were plotting to travel to Iraq and join Al-Qaida’s insurgency against American forces, I acted on it. I wore a wire to their weekly meetings. I ran firearms training at their jihad camp while federal agents watched from the treeline and snipers held positions in the surrounding woods. I did this for two years. When it was over, all four men were convicted. The media called them the “Houston Taliban.”

I am also a published author and expert on Islam who trained officers at the Houston Police Academy on Islamic extremism in America. I have spent decades studying its theology, its legal traditions, its internal fractures, and the way it is exploited by people on every side. I have written publicly about the tribalism in Muslim communities, the ethnic hierarchies, the organisational cowardice that refuses to confront radicalism when it surfaces in their own ranks. I have named these problems and paid for naming them. If you want someone who will tell you everything is fine, you’re reading the wrong article.

But I didn’t write this to tell you what’s wrong with Muslims. I wrote this because your anger — which is real, and in many cases justified — is being exploited by people you haven’t identified yet, for purposes that have nothing to do with your safety or your country. Someone is profiting, and they need you never to find out who.

Let me show you.

 

The Industry

There is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States whose product is your anger toward Muslims. It has an organisational structure, a revenue model, donor networks, legislative infrastructure, and a well-documented track record. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is conspiracy fact. The financial trail is public record for anyone who cares to look. Mainstream American charities have been caught unknowingly funneling millions of dollars to counter-Islam advocacy groups through a financial mechanism called donor-advised funds, which allow wealthy donors to give anonymously through reputable institutions. The money flows from names you’d recognise — household charitable foundations — into organisations you’ve never looked into, run by people who’ve made careers out of your concern. The only people who haven’t told you about it are the people cashing the cheques.

Between 2014 and 2016 alone, auditors identified 1,096 charitable organisations funneling money to 39 counter-Islam groups, with a combined revenue capacity of at least $1.5 billion. Since 2010, over 230 counter-Islam, Muslim ban and counter-sharia bills have been introduced or enacted in state legislatures across the country. This isn’t grassroots concern. This is an industry.

The ecosystem has clearly defined roles. ACT for America — the largest counter-Islam organisation in the country, with chapters in every state and a direct pipeline to legislators — provides the grassroots muscle. The Center for Security Policy serves as the think tank, churning out reports raising the spectre of Shariah law. The David Horowitz Freedom Center operates as the content factory, publishing FrontPage Magazine and funding Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch blog. Spencer has been barred from entering the United Kingdom for his views. In my decades of studying Islam, I can tell you that much of what he publishes wouldn’t survive five minutes of scrutiny from anyone who’s actually done the fieldwork. But accuracy was never the point. Outrage was.

The funding flows through channels designed for anonymity. Mainstream charitable foundations — commercial, community, and religious organisations — have been exploited as vehicles for funneling anonymous donations from wealthy donors into this network. A donor gives to a credible institution through a donor-advised fund, and that money quietly is siphoned away to organisations whose entire business model depends on keeping the outrage machine running.

And then there’s the political infrastructure. On December 18, 2025, Representatives Chip Roy and Keith Self launched the Sharia Free America Caucus. It now claims 47 members from 22 states, including the House Majority Whip. The caucus has introduced seven bills. The Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act would make advocacy for Shariah law grounds for deportation. Another bill would give Congress the power to designate organisations as terrorist groups through legislation — not through courts, not through evidence, but through a vote.

If that doesn’t concern you, it should. The Patriot Act was sold as a tool to fight Al-Qaida. It was used to surveil American citizens. The TSA was sold as airport security. It became a permanent bureaucracy that hasn’t caught a single terrorist. Every expansion of government power gets sold on the target you agree with and used on the target you didn’t see coming. That’s not a left-wing talking point. That’s American history. Politicians prey on our concerns, stoking fear. Organisations profit off of our concern. And we find that the freedoms we enjoy become less and less over time.

Here’s what none of these 47 members will tell you: every one of those seven bills is a fundraising engine. Every press release generates donor emails. Every media hit drives campaign contributions. They aren’t solving a problem. They’re fundraising off one. And the last thing any of them want is for the issue to actually get resolved — because the moment it does, the donations stop.

You may already be familiar with what the members of this caucus say when they think you’re on their side.

Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee — whose district includes over 40,000 Muslim Americans — posted on X: “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.” That post received 2.6 million views. The next day he wrote: “Paperwork doesn’t magically make you American. Muslims are unable to assimilate; they all have to go back.” When challenged, his response was: “My comments wouldn’t even be a news story if I had said this about Christians. Cry harder. Christ is King.”

Representative Randy Fine of Florida posted: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” That post received 45.6 million views. Forty-five million. When asked about Ogles’s comments, House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to condemn them, saying there’s “a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem” — validating the lie while pretending to distance himself from its language.

Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project and former Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee — a man with 475,000 followers and direct access to power — posted a timeline of what he imagines a Muslim’s evening looks like: “6 pm: pray to their pedophile god. 7 pm: eat on the floor like dogs. 8 pm: like posts of Jewish women and their babies getting raped and slaughtered. 9 pm: build dirty bombs. 10 pm: pray to their pedophile god.”

Conservative commentator Benny Johnson, with over 2.5 million followers, posted: “A Muslim flag was raised at Newark City Hall as people chanted ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Mamdani sat on the floor and ate with his hands at New York City Hall. This isn’t assimilation. This is takeover.” That post received 215,000 views. Here’s what Johnson left out: the Newark flag raising was part of New Jersey’s official Muslim Heritage Month, enacted through bipartisan state law in 2022. The US flag flew alongside it, as required by state law. “Allahu Akbar” translates to “God is great.” Sitting on the floor to eat is a cultural tradition older than the United States. Johnson stripped the context, manufactured a threat, and a quarter of a million people absorbed it without checking a single fact. That’s not journalism. That’s a business model.

The popular account Libs of TikTok described a man performing the tawhid gesture — a raised index finger signifying monotheism, used in every daily prayer by every Muslim on earth — as “a Muslim doing the ISIS symbol.” That post received 426,000 views. Major international news outlets have had to issue formal corrections and apologies for making the same false claim. The gesture predates ISIS by fourteen centuries. But 426,000 people now associate a prayer gesture with terrorism, because an account with millions of followers told them to.

Political commentator Stacy Ruth declared: “Buddhism is a religion. Hinduism is a religion. Judaism is a religion. Christianity is a religion. Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion.” Representative Mary Miller said she was “proud to stand firmly against this radical ideology that seeks to uproot the constitutional principles and Christian values on which our nation was founded.”

These aren’t backbenchers. These are powerful voices with audiences in the tens of millions. But ask yourself — what has any of them actually done about the problem they keep telling you exists? Have any of those seven bills passed? Has a single one of those posts made your community safer? Or did they just make someone’s follower count bigger and someone’s campaign fund fatter? The question isn’t whether they believe what they’re saying. The question is who else benefits when they say it.

You thought you were forming your own opinion. You were consuming a product. And the product is our anger.

 

The Foreign Hand

Before I continue, I need to make a distinction that the people profiting from this deliberately blur, because keeping it blurred protects them from scrutiny.

Some of the most devout Jewish communities in the world — groups like Neturei Karta, the Satmar Hasidim, True Torah Jews — have opposed Zionism on religious grounds since the ideology was founded in the 1890s. They argue that it hijacked Jewish identity for a political project that had no basis in Jewish theology before the nineteenth century. For this, they are called self-hating Jews. They are told they are not real Jews. They are marginalised, smeared, and shut out — by the very apparatus that claims to speak for all Jews everywhere. Ask yourself why. These communities don’t raise money for Israel. They don’t lobby Congress. They don’t fit the model. And when the most religiously observant Jews on the planet tell you that the Israeli government doesn’t represent them or their faith, and get attacked for saying it, that should tell you everything about the operation I’m about to describe. What follows is about the Israeli government’s cash cow, its lobbying apparatus, and where our money is going.

The Israeli government spends enormous sums to shape how we think about Muslims. In 2025, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed a $6 million contract with the US-based firm Clock Tower X LLC to produce digital content and influence how artificial intelligence systems — including tools like ChatGPT — respond to topics involving Israel. The 2025 budget allocated an additional $150 million to the Foreign Ministry for influence operations — a twenty-fold increase over previous years. These funds target American college campuses, social media platforms, and international media.

Then there’s TikTok. In September 2025, Netanyahu sat down with a group of American influencers at Israel’s Consulate General in New York — and the meeting was recorded. His words were not ambiguous. He called social media “the most important weapon to secure our base in the US.” He identified the TikTok sale as “the most important purchase going on right now. Number one. Number one.” He then said of Elon Musk and X: “We have to talk to Elon. He’s not an enemy, he’s a friend. If we can get these two things, we will get a lot.”

Days later, the TikTok deal went through. The US operations were transferred to a consortium led by Oracle, whose co-founder Larry Ellison is a longtime Netanyahu ally and major donor to the Israeli military. Ellison has hosted Netanyahu on his private island. The consortium includes Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell — Dell posted a photo with the Israeli president captioned “It’s an honor to stand with Israel” and is a major donor to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

A foreign head of state went on camera, called our social media platforms weapons, celebrated their purchase by his allies, and told a room full of influencers that controlling these platforms would allow Israel to “get a lot.” Again, that’s not a conspiracy theory. That is a PsyOp by a foreign government on our minds.

The strategic logic is straightforward. Our concern about Islam serves Israeli foreign policy by reframing the conflict as civilisational — the West versus Islam — rather than what it actually is: a political conflict over occupation, dispossession, and the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. The more focused we are on Islam as a threat at home, worrying about what our neighbour is up to, the less likely we are to question what is being done with our tax money overseas.

And it is our money. The United States has provided Israel with over $317 billion in US taxpayer funded aid since 1951, adjusted for inflation, making it the largest cumulative recipient of American foreign aid since World War II. In the two years since October 2023 alone, the US has spent $21.7 billion in direct military aid to Israel, with an additional $9 to $12 billion on related military operations in the region. The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed that since October 2023, the United States delivered ninety thousand tons of arms and equipment on eight hundred transport planes and one hundred and forty ships.

Israel receives its annual aid in the first thirty days of the fiscal year — no other country gets this treatment. Unlike any other recipient, Israel is not required to account for how it spends US aid, including on settlements that violate stated US policy. Meanwhile, Israel maintains free universal healthcare and free education for its citizens. We are subsidising another country’s social safety net while our own crumbles, and the people telling us to be angry about Muslims are making sure we never connect those dots.

Ask yourself why the conversation is always steered toward Islam and never toward the cheque our government writes every year. Someone doesn’t want us connecting those dots.

The same infrastructure extends into technology — and this is where it comes home. The tech companies taking billions in defence contracts with Israel, paid for by our tax dollars, are the same ones building the surveillance systems being deployed on American soil. Google’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract provides cloud and AI services to the Israeli military. Microsoft’s Azure powers Israeli government operations. Amazon Web Services enables intelligence gathering overseas. These are the same companies providing facial recognition to American police departments, predictive policing algorithms to American cities, and cloud infrastructure to American intelligence agencies. The technology gets tested on someone else’s population, AI designed for warfare, and then deployed on ours. If you think the AI tools being built for foreign military operations won’t eventually be pointed at American citizens, you haven’t been paying attention to how this works. It’s already coming home while we are distracted by the political sleight of hand of our politicians.

Our tax dollars fund the bombs. Our anger provides the political cover. And the people telling us to be angry about Muslims are the same people making sure we never ask why. The road to truth always lies at the end of a money trail.

 

The Intel

Now let’s look at some of the claims we’ve all heard repeated. Some of them don’t hold up when you check the source.

Shariah is one of the most misunderstood words in this debate. There is no single book of Shariah — you cannot walk into a bookshop and buy one, the way you can buy a Bible or a Qur’an. There are books about Shariah, and there are law books in Muslim-majority countries that reflect local cultural norms — sometimes with an Islamic flavour. But that’s no different from Western nations whose laws carry a Christian influence without being based on the Bible, or Israel, where Jewish identity shapes the state but not every law of the Torah is practised. Shariah is not a legal code waiting to be imposed. It’s a tradition of thinking that different countries apply differently — or not at all. Shariah is a science of interpretation practised across five major schools of thought, each reaching different conclusions on issues ranging from prayer posture to commercial law. Over ninety percent of Shariah has nothing to do with criminal law. It covers prayer, fasting, charity, personal hygiene, inheritance, and business ethics. When politicians ban Shariah, they won’t be banning a book — they will be banning a way of thinking. And once the government can ban one way of thinking, yours is next.

Shariah courts in Western countries — including the United States and United Kingdom — operate identically to Jewish Halakha courts, known as Beth Din. Both handle civil matters on an opt-in basis: divorce, inheritance, contract disputes. Neither imposes religious law on non-adherents. Neither has jurisdiction over criminal matters. The Beth Din system has operated in America for decades without a single “Ban the Beth Din” bill. The forty-seven members of the Sharia Free America Caucus could not define what they are trying to ban — and have never proposed banning its Jewish equivalent. The inconsistency tells you everything about who’s running the game.

In fact, Israel itself — the country our tax dollars subsidise to the tune of $317 billion to expand, operate influence campaigns against us — operates Shariah courts for its Muslim citizens, handling matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The politicians who vote to send that money to a country with Shariah courts are the same ones telling you that Shariah in America is an existential threat. Let that sink in.

The claim that Muhammad was a pedophile is a commonly debunked claim Mike Davis recently shared with 475,000 followers. It is built on a single hadith — a recorded oral tradition written down two to three centuries after the events it describes. What no one sharing this claim tells you is that the hadith literature contains multiple contradictory accounts, and the weight of the evidence — drawn from independent chronological records, biographical sources, and battlefield participation logs that prohibited anyone under fifteen from military expeditions — places Aisha in her late teens to early twenties at the time of marriage. The single account claiming she was nine requires ignoring all of it. No contemporary of the Prophet — not even his bitterest enemies, who accused him of everything from insanity to sorcery — ever accused him of marrying a girl too young. Meanwhile, US state laws as recently as today permit marriages as young as twelve with parental consent. Before condemning seventh-century Arabia, examine your own legal codes. The person who told you this was counting on you never looking it up.

Halal slaughter requires that an animal be humanely raised throughout its life, removed from the sight of other animals before slaughter, and killed with a single clean cut to the jugular using a razor-sharp knife, with a short prayer said beforehand. This is virtually identical in principle to Jewish kosher slaughter, known as shechita. Both traditions mandate humane treatment and the rapid draining of blood. The “ban halal” crowd has never proposed banning kosher. Ask yourself why. When politicians target one practice and protect an identical one, they’re not legislating food safety or concern for animal cruelty. They’re picking a target and hoping you don’t notice the double standard. Remember the political sleight of hand and who benefits from the outrage.

The idea that Islam is incompatible with democracy or trying to take over isn’t new — and it didn’t convince the founding fathers of our great nation. Thomas Jefferson hosted the first White House iftar dinner in 1805, rearranging the time of a state dinner to accommodate the Ramadan fast of the Tunisian ambassador, Sidi Soliman Mellimelli. Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an. And the author of this article served as a counterterrorism operative protecting American democracy — and helped bring to justice people who were plotting against it.

In a nation of many religions — and we often forget that different denominations of Christianity were once treated as separate and rival faiths — this is where we should be most concerned. Article VI of the United States Constitution states: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law regardless of religion. Every bill introduced by the Sharia Free America Caucus — from making Shariah advocacy grounds for deportation to designating organisations as terrorists by legislative vote — violates the foundational principles of the country these legislators claim to defend.

And here’s where it gets personal. What happens when Evangelicals set religious tests for Catholics? Or Protestants for Mormons? Setting the precedent by banning Islam — a religion that believes Jesus is the Christ, that he ascended to Heaven, and that he will return in his second coming — brings it home on just how easy it would be to ban any denomination the group in power deems undesirable or a threat to what they believe is the real religion of the nation. The person who told you Islam is incompatible with America was counting on you never reading your own Constitution. Or just not caring. Benjamin Franklin warned us: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” He wasn’t talking about Islam. He was talking about us.

 

The Exit

The people profiting from our anger don’t live in our neighbourhoods. They’ve never set foot in the communities they talk about. They have constructed, for profit and for political power, an image of 1.8 billion people based on the worst acts of a fraction of a fraction — and they’ve made a very comfortable living doing it.

And it isn’t just domestic profiteers. AIPAC and the Israeli government benefit directly from every ounce of our outrage. It is the political cover for a foreign policy that costs thousands of American lives and American treasure — $317 billion and counting — while the recipients enjoy the social programmes we can’t afford. The outrage machine keeps our eyes on Islam so we never look at the line item in the federal budget.

We were never stupid. We were targeted. The same psychological machinery that radicalises a young Muslim man watching jihadi recruitment videos in his bedroom is the same machinery being used on us: curated content selected for maximum emotional impact, an in-group that rewards escalation, an algorithm that serves us more of what makes us angry, and an industry that profits from our inability to see past the noise. The mechanism is identical. Only the content differs.

I know this because I’ve watched radicalisation from every angle a person can watch it from. I was radicalised myself, as a teenager, in a Christian cult that beat me with oak table legs and broomstick handles in the name of God’s authority — I know what it feels like to have a worldview constructed for you by people who profit from keeping you captive. I watched people I was close to get radicalised by online propaganda until they were ready to fly to Iraq and kill American soldiers. I trained them at a jihad camp while wearing a wire, and I helped put them away. And now I watch ordinary, decent Americans get radicalised by a billion-dollar industry that needs our outrage more than it needs the truth.

The machinery is the same every time. A curated feed. An authority figure who profits from our outrage. A community that polices doubt — where questioning the narrative gets you branded a traitor or a sympathiser. And a set of claims that fall apart the moment you verify them independently. The men I helped convict had their Anwar al-Awlaki recordings and their Baghdad Sniper videos. We have our Benny Johnson posts and our Libs of TikTok screenshots. The emotional architecture is identical: select the most inflammatory content, strip it of context, serve it to people who are already angry, and watch the radicalisation compound.

The real-world consequences are already here. In 2024, monitors recorded 8,658 complaints about incidents targeting Muslims across the United States — the highest number ever documented. That’s not a sign of a country getting safer. That’s a sign of a population being manipulated into attacking their own neighbours while the people running the operation cash cheques and win elections. Every incident is a data point in someone’s fundraising deck. Every headline is a donation driver. The outrage isn’t a side effect of the industry. It is the industry.

The exit starts with checking what we’ve been told — and not by asking the people who told us, because they have a financial interest in keeping us in the dark. Not by retreating into our own curated content to reinforce what we already believe. Step out. Challenge the beliefs we’ve been carrying. Beliefs aren’t permanent — they change as we grow, and changing them is a sign of strength, not weakness. Look up the donor-advised fund filings. Read the actual text of the bills being proposed in our name. Search the names I’ve given you and follow the money. See who’s getting paid, and ask yourself whether the people getting rich off our anger have ever done a single thing to make our lives better.

I told you about my work for the USAF Office of Special Investigations and my counterterrorism work for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, I told you about being raised Catholic, my time in a Christian cult and after becoming an Evangelical Christian, but there’s one more thing you should know about the man who wrote this article.

I’ve been Muslim nearly thirty years. But I didn’t abandon Christianity — I grew into Islam through it. I spent years studying the Bible, the Jewish scriptures, and eventually the Qur’an. What I found was that Islam didn’t ask me to reject Jesus — it asked me to revere him, as the Christ, born of a virgin, who ascended to Heaven and will return. My faith deepened. It didn’t break. The men I helped convict didn’t just betray their country — they betrayed a faith that teaches the same reverence for Jesus that your church taught you.

Everything I told you about the profiteers, the foreign influence operations, the manufactured outrage, the claims that fall apart when you check them — I told you as a man who knows Islam from the inside, who has lived it, bled for it, and been exiled for defending it honestly.

Christ himself told us: “You cannot serve God and money.” Every politician, every lobbying group, every influencer, every organisation I have named in this article — ask yourself which one they are serving. The answer has been staring us in the face the entire time.

You just read an entire article by a Muslim and didn’t throw it in the bin. You evaluated the evidence on its merits. You followed the facts where they led. That is the version of you that the hate industry cannot afford to exist — because a person who evaluates evidence is a person who can’t be hustled.

The most radical thing you can do right now is verify.

 

James S. Coates writes about AI ethics, consciousness, and the intersection of faith and technology. His books include A Signal Through Time, The Threshold, The Road to Khurasan, the memoir God and Country (published under pen name Will Prentiss) and his forthcoming Neither Gods Nor Monsters. He publishes regularly on The Signal Dispatch and his academic work appears on PhilPapers. 

© 2026 James S. Coates

by on

A July, 6 1959 fatwah from Al-Azhar made great strides towards healing and reconciliation in the historic divide between Sunni and Shi’a.

After 9 years of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq which allowed the Shi’a government of Iran to make significant political gains in the Middle East, Al-Azhar saw a massive increase in Salafist influence. The Salafi movement is a Saudi Arabian based movement, a nation that is Iran’s historic enemy. Consequently, in 2012, the 1959 fatwah was reversed.

As a consequence of both of these events, we have a proxy war raging between two Muslim nations in multiple third party nations while their leaders vie for public support among Muslims worldwide for their cause against each other based on religious grounds.

As Muslims we need to remain committed to following Allah’s command. Our struggle, fisabilillah, is to remain a united community and resist the dividers.

“Hold fast to God’s rope all together; do not split into factions. Remember God’s favour to you: you were enemies and then He brought your hearts together and you became brothers by His grace; you were about to fall into a pit of Fire and He saved you from it- in this way God makes His revelations clear to you so that you may be rightly guided.” – Qur’an 3:103

by on

The Myth of Wahhabism

by James S. Coates

Introduction

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of working with many types of people in the Islamic community—a cross-section of ideologies, cultures and sects. I have taught classes with them, represented them in the media, and learned about them from them. When someone opens themselves up to learning about others, understanding comes, fears subside, and stereotyping dissipates.

One of the divisive ideological topics among Muslims is that between those with an agenda to malign the Saudi Kingdom and their brand of Islam dominant on the Arabian Peninsula by labelling Salafis “Wahhabi.” Interestingly, it is also a term propagated by anti-Islam haters to describe all of us Muslims.

I will explain how the term is misleading, divisive, offensive and, yes, even racist in its use by Muslims and non-Muslims alike—and should not be used. However, before I explain, it is important that anyone who discusses this topic understand the basic history of the Saud’s rise to power and the modern politic. There are a lot of supporting link references throughout the article for you to study if you really wish to delve into the topic.

The purpose of this write-up isn’t for the defence of the Salafi movement or the Saudi Kingdom. However, as a Muslim, it is my duty to draw the line where the facts and sound reason exist, to stand firm for justice. Far too often innocent bystanders (and new Muslims) are caught up in a vicious propaganda campaign of hate waged by some Muslim groups and non-Muslim hate groups on this topic.

“You who believe, uphold justice and bear witness to God, even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or your close relatives. Whether the person is rich or poor, God can best take care of both. Refrain from following your own desire, so that you can act justly—if you distort or neglect justice, God is fully aware of what you do.” — Qur’an 4:135

Basic History

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was born and lived in ‘Uyaynah, Arabia from 1703–1792, though he spent many years abroad and taught in Basra, Iraq. He completed his education in Madina. In Iran, 1736, he taught against the ideas of various prominent Sufi leaders. The movement he founded in his lifetime never extended beyond Arabia, though its emphasis on Tawhid (monotheism) would later spread through educational institutions funded by Saudi oil wealth.

The Context of Decline

Since the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongols, the Islamic Empire struggled with decline. Europe, in the period after the Dark Ages, benefited from education in Islamic territories and began to increase with technological and cultural innovation. By the 1700s, it had fully experienced the Renaissance and began exporting this cultural innovation back to Islamic lands.

Seeing these things as corrupt Western innovation (bid’ah) of religion, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab began a peaceful (non-violent) revivalist response to the decaying beliefs, morals, and Islamic practice in the Arabian Peninsula. He preached the removal of polytheism from Islamic society and a return to the roots of the Salaf (ancestors). The Salafi movement was mainly concerned with issues of Tawhid (monotheism), shirk (polytheism), and Western modern innovative influence among Arab Muslims seen to be the cause of moral decay. Today, the movement views the world in much the same way.

The Saudi-Wahhab Alliance

In 1744, Muhammad bin Saud sought to use his immense military forces to found the first Saudi state but didn’t have the influence he desired among all of the people to secure his rule. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was well known among these same Arabian tribes for his revivalist work. The two movements officially allied. Muhammad bin Saud married his son to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s daughter to seal the deal. Under the new Saudi state, Muhammad bin Saud was to be charged with political and economic affairs; Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was in charge of religious affairs.

The alliance became strong as the Sauds conquered much of the Arabian Peninsula. Religious enforcement (sometimes religious violence) was sanctioned and backed by the government of the newly formed state. To bolster Muhammad bin Saud’s forces, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab began to use his influence as a religious leader to recruit people to join the military for deployment in battlefield jihad on behalf of the state.

The Illusion of Orthodoxy

The mix of fundamental revivalist teaching coupled with strict state-sanctioned enforcement lends outsiders to have the “illusion” of orthodoxy in Islam where Salafis are concerned. The madhab (school of thought) dominant in Saudi Arabia where the Salafi movement originates is Hanbali. There are many schools of thought in Islam, and thus there is no “orthodoxy” in Islam.

What Salafis Actually Believe

Before addressing the slanders against them, it’s worth understanding what Salafis actually teach:

  • Tawhid (monotheism) as the absolute centre of faith—rejection of anything that could compromise the oneness of God
  • Return to the Salaf (the first three generations of Muslims) as the model for authentic practice
  • Rejection of bid’ah (religious innovation) that lacks precedent in the Qur’an, Sunnah, or practice of the early community
  • Literalist approach to hadith with emphasis on authenticated narrations
  • Political quietism (for most Salafis)—obedience to rulers and avoidance of political activism, which they consider sinful

Salafi groups generally do not partake in protests or even the political process, considering it a sin. They believe in obedience to government and are generally peaceable. Such an idea may work well in a monarchy like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

However, as with any group, there are varying degrees of those (a minority) who grow disillusioned with passivity and become militant within the same ideology. Militant groups in all movements often go to the extent of replacing reputable established Islamic jurists with their own leaders in order to pronounce takfir (declaring disbelievers) on other Muslims to sanction and attack them for not acting on the same “triggers” deemed legitimate by the group. Duality is human nature, and within individuals or groups the reversal of moral value or opinion can happen for many reasons and often has triggers. It is not an event that is specific to the Salafi movement or Islam and happens all over the world.

Modern Politics

The Myth of Ideological “Export”

Attempts are often made to say that the Salafi movement is the “exporter” of extremist ideology because groups like ISIS are “Salafist,” but the facts do not support the idea of such sinister ideological “export.” The spread of terrorism misusing the Salafist ideology is incidental. ISIS is not the only terrorist group in the world. There is no evidence to support that all terrorist movements are “Salafist,” and most of these terrorist movements engage in acts that contravene the teachings of the movements from which they came.

The Root Cause: Foreign Policy

The root cause for the current terrorism crisis is simmering political instability caused by United States foreign policies that began in the 1980s. To advance the interests of the United States to fight communism, the US secured an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government (in coordination with Pakistan, Egypt, and Israel) to drive the communist Soviet Union from Afghanistan by funding, arming, and training extremist groups with US taxpayer money and resources.

The problem was made worse by Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and subsequent 12 years of sanctions that reduced a middle-class nation (Iraq) to one of the poorest in the world. These same CIA-funded and equipped jihadist assets based in Afghanistan became disillusioned with US foreign policy and later went on to attack the United States on September 11, 2001. The problem of global terrorism metastasised after the destabilisation of Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and continues to grow with US foreign policies that include endless bombing campaigns, attempts at nation building, and interventions across the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North Africa.

The Birth of ISIS

Today’s Middle East crisis with ISIS is born directly out of political instability created by the United States invasion of Iraq, the attempt to “de-Baathify” the Iraqi civil and military services leaving hundreds of thousands of Sunnis formerly loyal to Saddam Hussein without a job, and removing the only security apparatus from the nation. The United States established a Shi’a-led Iraqi government that marginalised Sunni groups. Al-Qaida Iraq chose to capitalise on this, and in 2006 it was renamed Islamic State of Iraq. The group has rebranded itself many times since (ISIS/ISIL/IS; all the same group).

If countries are not stable, there is either no security apparatus or it is too weak to be effective. Lawlessness becomes the norm. Misuse of religion, iconography, and ideology is commonplace in unstable or lawless countries. In fact, a large number of the recruits of these criminal enterprises or gangs also have criminal histories. The most notable global misuses of religion in human history have been the pogroms, Crusades, and Inquisitions inflicted on the world by Christendom.

“Whether Sunni or Shia, Salafi or Sufi, conservative or liberal, Muslims—and Muslim leaders—have almost unanimously condemned and denounced ISIS not merely as un-Islamic but actively anti-Islamic.” — New Statesman

The Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia have issued a ruling against terrorism and groups like ISIS, irrespective of the political establishment’s support for using them in the proxy war to confront Iranian influence in the region.

State Terrorism

It’s also worth noting that in political foreign affairs most governments have employed or supported terrorist groups to achieve their goals. In the case of the United States, examples range from the jihadist groups fighting “godless” Soviet communism, to the Bay of Pigs disaster, to even funnelling arms and money to Al-Nusra Front in Syria (an Al-Qaida affiliate).

The current regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia (supporting groups like ISIS against Iran) and Iran (Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards against the Saudi Kingdom) should be seen with these facts in mind as we try to make sense of and solve the crisis of terrorism. If one condemns one nation’s terrorism, we must face the fact and condemn our own nation’s terrorism equally.

The coordinated efforts by the United States, Israel, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia (circa 1978) to fund, arm, and train these extremist groups to fight Soviet communism gave the initial credibility and rise to jihadist groups that we despise, like Al-Qaida and ISIS. The problem of terrorism (a tactic of war) lies primarily with government entities, not Islam or any one Islamic movement.

Now that we have waded through the politic and how Islamic movements have been distorted and misused for political gain of both Muslim and non-Muslim governments, let’s go on to draw the lines where they belong.

The Myth of “Wahhabism”

“Do not speak ill of one another; do not use offensive nicknames for one another. How bad it is to be called a mischief-maker after accepting faith! Those who do not repent of this behaviour are evildoers.” — Qur’an 49:11

“The Messenger of Allah said, ‘Do you know what is backbiting?’ The Companions said: ‘Allah and His Messenger know better.’ Thereupon he said, ‘Backbiting is talking about your (Muslim) brother in a manner which he dislikes.’ It was said to him: ‘What if my (Muslim) brother is as I say?’ He said, ‘If he is actually as you say, then that is backbiting; but if that is not in him, that is slandering.'” — Riyadh as-Salihin (Muslim)

Why Not “Taymiyyan”?

The Salafi do not follow Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. They rarely make mention of any of his teachings, instead referencing various hadith from common sources (Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Majah, Tirmidhi, etc.). In fact, if one is lucky they may just find a biography of his life in a bookstore where Salafis patronise. Of the four Islamic schools of thought, their madhab is Hanbali. Why are they not named after the madhab—”Hanbalian”?

The Salafi rely on a host of scholarly opinions, but Orientalist scholars claim that they rely more heavily on Ibn Taymiyyah. If they reference Ibn Taymiyyah extensively and rarely if ever (I’ve never heard one in my 21 years as a Muslim) reference Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, how can they be “Wahhabi”? Why not “Taymiyyan”?

Followers of Muhammad (PBUH)

Salafis never call themselves Wahhabi. In fact, it is considered a derogatory term designed to malign their movement by making the false claim that their movement is synonymous with terrorism (much like Islam-haters do to all Muslims). Like any other Muslim with our pet ideologies or favourite movement, they are followers of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Consequently, this is the same logic that is used by the Islam-hate industry to slander all Muslims.

A Tool of Islam-Hate

It is a term also used by many non-Muslims to promote anti-Islam agendas. The term “Wahhabi” means different things to different people. It means nothing (other than slander) to the Salafi because they don’t follow Wahhab. It is misapplied to them by other Muslims. It is a term applied by media pundits at times to identify terrorism. It is applied to all Muslims by the Islam-hate industry. The term is the source of confusion and hatred used not against just Salafi, but all Muslims—be one Sunni, Sufi, Shi’a, liberal or conservative, whatever your persuasion.

Sectarianism

Muslim political and religious opponents (like some Sufi, Shi’a, even fellow Sunnis and others) intentionally mislabel Salafi as “Wahhabi.” It is commonplace among those opposing Muslim groups with an agenda to stereotype and malign both the militant and the pacifist among the Salafi, Saudi citizens, or Arabs in general—painting them with a broad brush as the monolithic ideological source of all that is evil in the world (convenient for those swayed by alternate religious or national agendas).

It is also used by some Muslim groups with an agenda to disqualify, dehumanise, and demonise a fellow group of Muslims through labelling them extremists and spread unjustified fear and abhorrence for them. The fact is that we have already discussed the factors that brought extremist groups into existence and gave them credibility; no one group is the source of all evil. Muslim groups are being played in a game of divide and conquer by corrupt governments (Muslim and not) to advance their own interests.

No Clerical System

Catholics believe that Jesus himself is God. Yet not all Catholics follow the dictates of the Pope, despite the Pope being the head of the clergy and Jesus Christ’s divine representative on earth among Catholics. In Islam, there is no formal clerical hierarchy, let alone God’s divine representative on earth. It should be a no-brainer that not all Salafi side with the dictates of the Saudi political/religious establishment.

Like other religious groups of people, despite perceived religious hierarchy or clergy, they are still not homogeneous. Salafism has developed several schools of thinking:

“There are Salafis who have become close to centrism, which is based on combining the opposites, combining mind and matter, combining the spirit and the material, sometimes interpreting and at other times abstaining from interpretation, and combining intellect, action, religion, and politics. Moreover, we cannot disregard the development of the Salafis; in the past they did not talk about politics, but now they participate in the political battles…” — Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Just Plain Stupid

In its mislabelling, the efforts of these Muslim opponents to keep people away from the teaching of the Salafi are made futile. As people become familiar with the slanderous label and then enter the mosque or community centre, there is no one there that calls him/herself “Wahhabi”—but you will find people that refer to themselves as Salafi or following the Salaf.

So, mislabelling may seem like semantics, but all it does (besides the obvious slander and misleading people) is keep people from recognising them in the mosque. So, if one seriously fears their ideology so much as to want to preach to people against them, why not want them identified by their proper name? Again, a no-brainer here.

Discouraging Converts

Intentionally mislabelling them a name that they don’t call themselves is divisive. The slander creates needless trouble between religious leaders (and their followers) who have agendas of hatred for the Salafi, the Salafi who don’t want to be maligned, and those who want to learn about Islam.

It confuses people, especially new Muslims, who don’t know better and struggle to decipher Islamic groups that may be approaching them in the mosque. The agenda is more easily seen by new Muslims who get turned off by the divisiveness in a religion they chose—more than likely—to get away from this same kind of behaviour in a Church. Perhaps they just don’t have the time in their lives for such childish behaviour either.

You aren’t doing da’wah here; you are doing anti-da’wah. People will leave Islam and probably not even take the time to tell anyone. How is that going to look in our book of deeds?

“The record of their deeds will be laid open and you will see the guilty, dismayed at what they contain, saying, ‘Woe to us! What a record this is! It does not leave any deed, small or large, unaccounted for!’ They will find everything they ever did laid in front of them: your Lord will not be unjust to anyone.” — Qur’an 18:49

Racism and Cultural Supremacism

There is a conglomerate of groups that engage in this type of smear campaign. Western media and pundits, Islam-haters, and even other Muslims who use the term “Wahhabi” are using the term to identify a particular type of extremism (or terrorism) that they oppose. Yet there are no “Wahhabis.”

Who They Really Mean

Instead, what they are tacitly referring to without being forthright is:

  • “All Salafis,” or
  • “All Saudis,” or
  • In some cases, “all Arabs,” or
  • In the case of non-Muslim Islam-haters: all practising Muslims

The Colonial Legacy

Racism isn’t merely maligning someone based on ethnicity. It is a legacy construct of colonialism that places value on European civilisations over that of the occupied “savage” colonies. The implication is an “us versus them” attitude where all of “them” are savages worthy of hatred, pogroms, or civilising campaigns based on “their” grouping.

By the same token, these former colonies have begun using these “superior” attitudes against others based on ethnicity, nationality, madhab, religion, etc. It is an attitude of “supremacy” once particular to colonial Europe (that still exists among white supremacists today) which has been learned by the colonised, who are now using it against each other—in this case, against the mythical demon named the “Wahhabi.”

Racism is also not always expressed in explicit terms but tacitly. Racism may also entirely cast aside ethnic markers. This is known as “cultural racism.”

A Personal Experience

There are many groups of Muslims and Western non-Muslims that use the term “Wahhabi” in the derogatory sense to imply “all Arabs” or “all Saudis” are extremists. Recently, I experienced a group on Facebook (which will go unnamed).

It was a 7,000-member-strong Facebook group with a stated goal to “help new convert Muslims.” In reality, the group was mostly a cross-section of Asian Muslims who had repeated threads about the evil “Wahhabi” and how to defeat them. The discussions rapidly descended into hate speech against Arabs.

When prodded about what was meant by some of the anti-Arab statements, one of the members joked, “All Arabs are killing machines.” I reasoned with him that mislabelling them and grouping all of them together, coupled with making a statement like that, is what leads to hate speech against peaceful Salafi (fellow Muslims)—and it does no practical good to mislabel them.

Needless to say, he didn’t take that well. He sent me a message cursing at me, accused me of calling him a hater, and called on the admin to try to get me banned.

The point is that, though the group may have started with the best of intentions, the entire group was whipped up into a frenzy of “us versus them” to the point that no one could reason—and it didn’t take long. It was a flash response to challenging the social norm of anti-Arab (Muslim-on-Muslim) hate.

If I were to believe their psychological projection onto the Salafi, it would be something I might have expected from these so-called “intolerant” people they hated. It was no longer a forum of learning but a forum of anti-Arab hate speech. Stereotyping, educating new Muslims (their stated goal), teaching them not to paint people with a broad brush of blind hatred, giving reasons for objection to the Salafi movement—none of it mattered. Anyone who questioned their blind stereotyping was a threat and needed to be cursed at and strong-armed into silence.

What mattered more was that they are Malay and they don’t like Arabs; “our Islam is more valuable and valid while someone else’s is not.” It is “us versus them.” It’s the same thing Muslims often complain about when non-Muslims stereotype Islam, but on a micro level. I suspect, in addition to ethnicity, religious persuasion played an “us versus them” role in this hateful response also.

“The Messenger of Allah said, ‘Four are the qualities which, when found in a person, make him a sheer hypocrite, and one who possesses one of them possesses one characteristic of hypocrisy until he abandons it. These are: When he is entrusted with something, he betrays trust; when he speaks, he lies; when he promises, he acts treacherously; and when he argues, he behaves in a very imprudent, insulting manner.'” — Al-Bukhari and Muslim

Summary

Bottom line: it doesn’t solve the problem of extremism to mislabel Salafi (or anyone) “Wahhabi.”

Most Salafis, like most Muslims, are peaceful. Extremist militants do exist among them, but extremist militants have existed among Jamaat-e-Islami, Ikhwan, Sufi, Shi’a, etc.—and in all other non-Muslim faiths, even Buddhism. In all cases, most people (Muslims and those of the Salafi movement included) value peace and security, and militants are very much a small minority. Triggers and variations in these groups and their numbers are often relative to the politics in the region or globe and governments asserting their interests.

It’s okay to disagree with how Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab did things, to criticise the Salafi or their scholars, to criticise how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does things, to think they have an ideological problem that needs fixing, or to have fundamental disagreements between each other—but maligning others by calling them by false names is unbecoming of a Muslim and fraught with error.

Instead, our language should be precise and accurate. Reasonable discussion, intellectual education, and debate need to happen for any of us to benefit or solve the problems that plague our global community.

The term “Wahhabi” is a manufactured-from-history and inaccurate name created by people with the intent to malign. It is incoherent, divisive, and slanderous. If one is a Muslim and sincere in their faith, they should ask themselves if this is the kind of thing Allah would want us to be doing. I suspect He wouldn’t.

“Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best. Indeed, your Lord is most knowing of who has strayed from His way, and He is most knowing of who is [rightly] guided.” — Qur’an 16:125

Article by BrJimC © 2016, revised 2026

by on

Long History of Islamic Art

In dealing with the issue of photography, we naturally have to reach back and talk about Islamic art since they both deal with the thing people object to, images.  Art creativity has been around since long before the time of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but as Islam expanded to new regions different attitudes towards the arts emerged.  As Islam spread rapidly throughout the middle east, the Umayyids (661–750CE) made some advances in the arts but were the predecessors of the Islamic Golden Age.  The Umayyids spread Islam as a dynamic religion which adapted to local cultures and the arts within the limitations of Islamic civilisation.

The Umayyids were a ruling tribe from the tribe Banu Umayya. The Banu Umayya were a tribe of Quraysh who converted to Islam during the time of the Prophet, the most notable of them Uthman ibn Affan who went on to become the third Caliph during the Rashidun period.  Uthman ibn Affan is considered the third of four ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs‘ who Sunni look to (in addition to Qur’an and Hadith) when interpreting Shari’ah.  Caliph Uthman is also attributed with completing the very first full edition of the Qur’an begun under Abu Bakr’s term as Caliph.

The Umayyid Caliphate was established by Caliph Muawiya I ibn Abu Sufyan who succeeded Caliph ‘Ali ibn Abi-Talib. The Umayyid period (661 CE – 750 CE) is the second to rule Islamic civilisation after the Rashidun Caliphate period (the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, 632 CE – 661 CE).  Islamic civilisation since thrived in the sciences and arts, some of which have survived until today.

The Abassids where direct descendants of Al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, the youngest uncle of the Prophet Muhammad and overthrew the Umayyids in 750 CE.  The Abassid reign under Caliph Harun al-Rashid built upon the culture and sciences of the Umayyids.  The result was an explosion of advances in art, music, literature, science, medicine and much more that led Islam into a full blown Golden Age, while Europe plunged itself into the Dark Ages.  It was this age that Europeans traveled to Islamic lands to study in Islamic universities to acquire education which they would carry back to Europe.  Eventually, this led to the renaissance in 1300 CE pulling Europe out of the Dark Ages.

 

In the illustration on the right, a doctor and his assistant or patient stand on either side. (Source)

The Abbasid rule lasted from 750 CE until the Mongol invasion and sack of Baghdad in 1258 CE and killed Caliph al-Musta’sim.  Dynastic struggles brought about political instability and declining institutions but it was this moment that marked the decline in Islamic civilisation.  Islamic civilisation has not fully recovered since.

Traditionally, as seen in Islamic History, even human portrayals can be found in all eras of Islamic art.  In addition to humans, animals and plant portrayals are common even in Islam’s fourth most revered mosque, The Great Mosque of Damascus.  Since the earliest days of the Islamic empire Muslims have designed coinage and miniatures with depictions as well.

 

Islamic coin featuring human figure in art. American University of Beirut, Lebanon

 

Abbasid Bowl, 9th Century, Iraq. Qatar Museum of Islamic Art

 

Since the beginning, Islamic civilisation has been familiar with depictions of Allah’s creation. 1400 years of Islamic history tells us that these depictions were mostly permitted unless there was an element of shirk (idolatry) associated with it.  Even in the case of art that had idolatrous significance that became owned by Muslims, it was often marked but not destroyed. Human (or any) representation for the purpose of worship is shirk (idolatry) and is strictly forbidden.  However, the evidence shows that Muslims from all eras have never conclusively viewed representation of mundane figures as forbidden.

However, if we reach back to the Prophet’s example, although shirk is forbidden, we still do not see a total destruction or defacement of works of art among non-Muslim communities who were in alliances with Muslims.  The Prophet himself demanded that Muslims respect other faiths and even participate in maintaining and repairing their religious buildings, which were decorated with paintings, statues and other works that would naturally have items of religious value considered shirk by Muslims.  Examples:

“No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it… Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.” – Prophet Muhammad, Promise to the Monks of St. Catherine’s Monastery Until the End of Days

“Assist in reconstruct (patch, remodel) their churches and monasteries, and this would be as aid to them in their religion and for their commitment to the covenant.” – Prophet Muhammad, Covenant penned in the Prophet’s Mosque by Ali bin Abi Taleb

In recent centuries an effort to re-establish the past glory of Islam’s Golden Age, many Muslims have come to believe that instead of building from where we were at the height of the Golden Age that we must dial back Islamic civilisation by viewing it all as bid’ah (innovation) involving varying degrees of shirk (idolatry).  In doing so, there is considerable effort put into regressive ideologies that do not consider the ‘larger picture’ of the facts of Islamic history, modern living, culture, science, economy and governance.  One such movement today, the Salafist movement, is preoccupied with forbidding the things that were once the pinnacle of Islamic civilisation from its earliest days to its decline at the hands of the Mongols.  This movement began 300 years ago in the mid 1700s and is rooted in Saudi Arabian history. The fundamentals of this revivalist Salafist movement seems sound on the surface. It is more often overly zealous to avoid what it identifies as unnecessary bid’ah (innovation) and ascribes shirk (polytheism) where none exists. It’s marriage to the Saudi Arabian government often is problematic when interpreting Islam as it applies autocratic ideology within the country and in the movement worldwide.  Since the earliest days, Islam has always been a more dynamic faith.

O people, beware of exaggeration in religious matters for those who came before you were doomed because of exaggeration in religious matters. – Sunan Ibn Majah 

There is nothing wrong with being overly cautious, however, this seemingly monastic outlook is unnecessary and shouldn’t be put off as the only correct Islamic view.  Furthermore, it is over-burdensome in a way Allah and the Prophet (PBUH) never intended for the believers.  Such puritan ideas in the arts (among other things) are themselves a destructive bid’ah (innovation) of religion in my view.

God wants ease for you, not hardship. He wants you to complete the prescribed period and to glorify Him for having guided you, so that you may be thankful. – Qur’an 2:185b

God does not wish to place any burden on you: He only wishes to cleanse you and perfect His blessing on you, so that you may be thankful. – Qur’an 5:6

A bedouin urinated in the mosque and some people rushed to beat him up. The Prophet said: “Leave him alone and pour a bucket of water over it. You have been sent to make things easy and not to make them difficult.” – Riyad as-Salihin (Bukhari)

Interestingly, one of the things that most Muslims do not think about is the representation of one celestial body (sometimes accompanied by a second) that were once used by pagan idolaters that exists on most Mosques, many national flags or religious accessories today (like carpets).  Like representations of humans, animals or plants, and unlike other symbols of faith, they are representations of Allah’s creation and people in the past have gone astray to worship them or use them for polytheistic purpose.

The Star and Crescent signifies victory, sovereignty and divinity. According to tradition, in 339 BC a brilliant crescent moon saved Byzantium (now Istanbul) from attack by Philip of Macedon. To mark their gratitude, the citizens adopted the Crescent of Diana as the city’s emblem. After Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, Byzantium became a Christian city in 330 AD and was renamed Constantinople.  The Crescent was adopted from the goddess Diana and given a Star by the Emperor as symbolic of the Virgin Mary.

After 1299, during the reign of Sultan Osman Gazi of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan had a dream of a crescent moon in every corner of the world with a “mighty wind, and turned the points of the sword-leaves towards the various cities of the world, but especially towards Constantinople.”  The dream then became a symbol of the Ottoman dynasty. When Constantinople was conquered by Mehmed II in 1453, the crescent came to represent both Islam and the Turkish empire.

It is understood by all Muslims that this is merely symbolic and has no religious significance or polytheistic merit despite its idolatrous origins.

The night, the day, the sun, the moon, are only a few of His signs. Do not bow down in worship to the sun or the moon, but bow down to God who created them, if it is truly Him that you worship. – Qur’an 41:37

Yet, the Crescent and Star decorate our Islamic societies in the same way as picture art since the earliest days of Islam (unlike the Crescent and Star, such Islamic art never had any polytheistic or religious merit).  We know with certainty that picture art decorated Mosques, town centers, palaces, homes, etc. since the Umayyids.  There is one similarity between these two things (Crescent decoration and art) that tie this up into a neat bundle of understanding and is perfectly in line with Quran and Hadith.  In creating and using these items, there is no intent to create a relic for people to venerate.  No shirk is involved.

Image by yours truly.

Modern Photography

Since the development of the camera, there has been the ongoing debate over whether or not taking a photograph is forbidden or permitted in Islam, but there has been little understanding about what photography actually is.  There are two forms of photography addressed by the scholars, ‘still photo’ and ‘video’.

Though it shares all of the characteristics of imagination involved in creating a painting, photography today is not creating a picture, nor is it taking a picture.  A photograph is a reflection of a scene that already exists.  Photography is the control of reflective light bouncing off of a subject.  Controlling this light is similar to the control of water if you were to open a water tap and fill a jug for use at a later date. Photography is both an art form and a science.  Photography is applying the talent that Allah has given you to see something and adjusting the mechanisms to control light which in turn determines how it is recorded on a micro storage chip, resulting in a great photograph for you to consume (use) at a later date.  Here is how it works:

 

 

In the above diagram light rays already exist, even in total darkness.  You can adjust light with a flash or simply have a longer exposure.  Light bounces off or radiates from something in the world and is constantly travelling towards your camera. When you point the camera at a subject, the image is bouncing off of your mirror (or shutter in the case of mirror-less).  The aperture in your lens can be adjusted for a faster (larger) or slower (smaller) light setting. The shutter can be set slower to allow more light or faster to allow less light.  The sensor that will record the light can be set to more or less light sensitive.  When the settings are optimal the shutter is released for the specified time.  When the shutter is released, light that is already travelling into your camera continues on its way to the sensor.  The sensor is electronic and the light from the scene is interpreted by the CPU, converted to data and stored in your data drive.  The still photo is called a ‘frame’.  The data from the photo frame can be exported for data manipulation on your PC, stored or printed for whatever reason.

Whether you have a camera dedicated for television or movies, DSLR or mobile phone, all digital cameras are video capable. A video is a series of still photo frames that are taken with the correct lighting controls (aperture, shutter speed and sensor strength) that are recorded for playback into what is called ‘frame rate’.  When they are played back, the frame rate is the number of images that are played back, displayed or projected per second.  Although video can be viewed as a separate art form, it works in the exact same way that still photography works, with one exception:  audio.  Audio breathes life into the collection of rapidly projected photographs and is imprinted on what we call television, computer screens, tablets and mobile phones.  It can also be frozen by frame and printed the same as a still photo with the right software.  Although this is less quality and overlooked in place of more appropriate still photography, Ultra-High Definition is making for clearer television pictures as technology advances.

Photography has many beneficial uses and as with anything that exists can be abused.  It has some very relevant purposes, such as to communicate, tell a story, inspire, capture history, innocent retention of memories and challenge creativity.  All of this can be used for good causes like remembering lost loved ones, making a record of your life for your family, communicating beauty on various subjects, conveying emotions, identification for ID cards or social media profiles, journalism, education in all sciences, and much more.

Scholarly Opinions, are Opinions

In large part, scholars do ‘permit’ photographs, even if they forbid painting art. However, most Salafis, who have now propagated their movement worldwide with the support of the Saudi Arabian government, have taught that still photography is forbidden except for photo ID like passports, etc.  Interestingly, in the same stroke of a brush they claim that taking video is permitted.  In fact, there is no difference between the two from a photographic standpoint.

It seems a lot of us Muslims get amnesia when it comes to leaders like the Saudi Arabian King Salman and a number of other Muslim dictators across Arab ‘Muslim’ countries.  Their imposing portrait paintings and photographs are plastered all over our Islamic societies.  These types of paintings and photos are designed to remind us who is in charge, who we should fear and who we should admire, and I don’t think they have Qur’an, Sunnah or Allah in mind.  Still two wrongs wouldn’t make a right and someone’s disingenuous argumentation doesn’t allow us a free pass, so lets examine this topic further.

 

Saudi Arabian King Salman

The evidences the scholars use to come to these conclusions are not based in Qur’an.  There is no prohibition on drawing, painting, or creating art of any type in the Qur’an.  The core message of Allah to Muslims is Tawheed (Oneness) and in the Qur’an He warns us about engaging in forms of idolatry.  In other words, ascribing a supernatural quality, partnership, or divinity to corruptible things, either in Creation or that we create.  If one examines the totality of hadith on the topic, there is a clear line in Islam between permissibly and discretion that indicates to us at what point our intent becomes the idolatrous behaviour which is prohibited in the Qur’an.  Allah does not prohibit us from enjoying his creation through the arts, but limits us in our acts of divine adoration, supplication and worship to Him only.  What I am speaking of is plain in the Quran:

If any, after this, invent a lie and attribute it to Allah, they are indeed unjust wrong-doers. – Qur’an 3:94

Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him. – Qur’an 112

Further to the discussion, according to the Qur’an Allah even blessed Prophet Sulaiman (a.s.) and his family to enjoy these things that were made for them.

They made him whatever he wanted- palaces, statues, basins as large as water troughs, fixed cauldrons. We said, ‘Work thankfully, family of David, for few of my servants are truly thankful.’ – Qur’an 34:13

The Qur’an is our primary source as it is the most authentic source.  The hadith are our secondary source because they are not the words of Allah but a series of chain narrations that have been authenticated and recorded hundreds of years later (longer than it took for parts of the Bible to be put on papyrus), hence all hadith must be looked at in light of the Qur’an.

The prohibitions imposed by scholars who prohibit photographic art are entirely based on a group of hadith that if seen together, in light of Qur’anic verses and the history of what purpose many images served in the time of the Prophet, they can be easily understood as they always have been since the time of the Prophet Muhammad when Islam was perfected.

This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion. – Qur’an 5:3

Here is what the scholars say:

According to Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the subject matter of a photograph is factor in prohibition.  For example, nude or semi-nude photographs, drawings or paintings would be forbidden because they go squarely against Islamic morals.  Such a prohibition would also include portraits of tyrants or people who are leaders or celebrities that propagate immoral behavior.  He also includes subject matter like religious symbols, such as crosses, idols, etc.

Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, says, “Photography as a medium of communication or for the simple, innocent retention of memories without the taint of reverence/shirk does not fall under the category of forbidden Tasweer [picture/image].

One finds a number of traditions from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, condemning people who make Tasweer, which denotes painting or carving images or statues. It was closely associated with paganism or shirk [association of partners with Allah]. People were in the habit of carving images and statues for the sake of worship. Islam, therefore, declared Tasweer forbidden because of its close association with shirk. One of the stated principles of usul-u-Fiqh( Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence) is that if anything directly leads to haram [forbidden acts], it is likewise haram. In other words, Tasweer was forbidden precisely for the reason that it was a means leading to shirk.

The function of photography today does not fall under the above category. Even some of the scholars who had been once vehemently opposed to photography under the pretext that it was a form of forbiddenTasweerhave later changed their position on it – as they allow even for their own pictures to be taken and published in newspapers, for videotaping lectures and for presentations; whereas in the past, they would only allow it in exceptional cases such as passports, drivers’ licenses, etc. The change in their view of photography is based on their assessment of the role of photography.

Having said this, one must add a word of caution: To take pictures of leaders and heroes and hang them on the walls may not belong to the same category of permission. This may give rise to a feeling of reverence and hero worship, which was precisely the main thrust of the prohibition of Tasweer. Therefore, one cannot make an unqualified statement to the effect that all photography is halal. It all depends on the use and function of it. If it is for educational purpose and has not been tainted with the motive of reverence and hero worship, there is nothing in the sources to prohibit it.”

Imam Afroz Ali, writes, “…the dominant opinion of the modern Scholars of High Knowledge is that photography is permissible as long as they are of benefit and not for any harmful or prohibited purposes, and that photographs of humans and animals not be displayed [on a wall].”

 

Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz (Source)

Sheikh Ibn Baz and other more restrictive scholars expressly forbids photographs and art, claiming that the areas that he deems ‘doubtful’ should be avoided. I’ve included a portrait of him here to illustrate that this type of outright restriction seems disingenuous.

The swiftness that Shiekh Ibn Baz and others exchange ‘avoidance’ (or other qualifiers) with ‘forbidden’ regarding photography is concerning.  Qur’an says:

Be a community that calls for what is good, urges what is right, and forbids what is wrong: those who do this are the successful ones. – Qur’an 3:104

God wants ease for you, not hardship. He wants you to complete the prescribed period and to glorify Him for having guided you, so that you may be thankful. – Qur’an 2:185b

You who believe, do not forbid the good things God has made lawful to you- do not exceed the limits: God does not love those who exceed the limits – Qur’an 5:87

Allah has never given a command forbidding picture making, but he has forbidden shirk, that we know in the Prophet’s time was more often associated with picture making.  In the same ease of saying it is a ‘doubtful’ area (since it isn’t mentioned directly in Qur’an, hadith and history seem to conflict) that the Sheikh forbids it, we can also say that it is permitted unless shirk is involved.  With the same logic to forbid it we can also make it permitted as something good for us, unless misused in ways against Qur’anic teaching of Tawheed.  It’s important to note also that where these scholars used to expressly forbid it in all cases, many have now changed their views regarding some of it.  Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi has even noted this among some of these Salafist scholars:

“The Salafis also have developed in several jurisprudence issues, such as “photography,” which they used to consider one of the major crimes, but now they consider it allowed.”

My viewpoint

As a photographer, I would also say that there is legitimate reason to photograph some of these things Sheikh Al-Qaradawi mentions depending on circumstance.  For example, education, journalism, news reporting, etc.  The line to draw is in the intent of the photograph.  For example, a picture of a cross can tell a story that can illustrate to the audience a valid educational opportunity or simply can serve as a mere collection of memories on a holiday trip to the Vatican, etc.  Conversely, a portrait of a nation’s regime leadership is intended to portray them in a false light that exalts them, normalises them, reinforces their rule or washes out their crimes.  I agree with Sheikh Kutty that the line is drawn at the use and function of it.

According to the sum of the hadith that even Sheikh Ibn Baz lists, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) dealt with issues where the images were closely associated with promoting shirk, which was common in the culture of his time.  The intent of such art was towards advancing beliefs contrary to Islam.  Centuries of Islamic civilisation dating back to the earliest surviving examples from the 7th century through the Islamic Golden Age serve as an indicator of how this topic was interpreted by the early sahabbah [companions] and subsequent scholars. Surviving documents dictated by the Prophet Muhammad himself tell us how even in some cases Muslims were ordered to repair and maintain properties of other faiths that (as common in that time) would have had religious statues, paintings and other image art incorporated into their architecture. Such a notion is still completely in line with Qur’an that expressly forbids Muslims from engaging in all forms of shirk while serving a higher purpose of Islamic civilisation.

If we consider the sum of all hadith, the Qur’an, historical context since the time of the Prophet and sahabbah, agreements the Prophet Muhammad has made with non-Muslim groups and even later Islamic history leading into the Golden Age, we can see that the hadith that many people today use to prohibit all image making is really only prohibiting Muslims from the making of relics.

I’ve also found that many scholars do not understand what photography is and have not properly consulted the industry and educated themselves on the science.  When making rulings on any topic this is imperative. In the end we are responsible to Allah for ourselves. Photography is a beautiful art that has many purposes.  When you take photographs, consider your subject matter, is it haram?  What is the intent of the image, education, saving a memory?  In the end, you are the best qualified to chart the course of your life.  Don’t surrender your mind to others who wish to use the ‘just in case’ reasoning to ban photography.

We have bound each human being’s destiny to his neck. On the Day of Resurrection, We shall bring out a record for each of them, which they will find spread wide open, ‘Read your record. Today your own soul is enough to calculate your account.’ Whoever accepts guidance does so for his own good; whoever strays does so at his own peril. No soul will bear another’s burden, nor do We punish until We have sent a messenger. – Qur’an 17:13-15

My view is that if you feel you need to go that extra mile to avoid something, then do it. However, such personal convictions shouldn’t be imposed on others. It could be that Allah has permitted it, as I believe is clearly shown in in light of all of the facts of Qur’an, hadith and history.  The one who does not transgress the limits set by Allah (shirk) is exercising a creative right given by Allah to enjoy for a better purpose. There are things Allah has made clear and other things He has not.  Of the things He hasn’t made clear He has left us room for growth. Both the conservative and liberal thinker can be right within the confines of what Allah has set out for us in the Qur’an.  In the end, we must have faith in Allah that He is the God He says He is, the Most Merciful.  Niyyah (intentions) is the foundation for every act in Islam.

Messenger of Allah said, “The deeds are considered by the intentions, and a person will get the reward according to his intention. So whoever emigrated for Allah and His Messenger, his emigration will be for Allah and His Messenger; and whoever emigrated for worldly benefits or for a woman to marry, his emigration would be for what he emigrated for”. – Riyad as-Salihin [Bukhari and Muslim]

Allah would, however, raise them according to their intention. – Sahih Muslim

 

Pray: Muhammad Berkati, Indonesia, Arts and Culture; 2015 Sony World Photography Awards

 

Allah has given us a beautiful gift and it should be used for His glory and our enjoyment.  An art that portrays a sense of skill, pride, joy and beauty in the world is not forbidden from Allah, it is a gift of Allah.

And (He has created) horses, mules, and donkeys, for you to ride and use for show; and He has created (other) things of which ye have no knowledge. – Qur’an 16:8

Article by BrJimC © 2017

by on

The Core Problem: Certainty Where None Exists

There is no scholarly consensus on Aisha’s age at marriage. The hadith literature contains multiple contradictory accounts, and anyone claiming certainty—whether asserting she was six, nine, or nineteen—is revealing their agenda rather than their scholarship.

To arbitrarily say Aisha was six or nine years old without taking into account the many other hadith that contradict this is a serious logical error. To put faith in that assertion and deliberately hang on to the belief that Islam teaches Aisha was this young, the Prophet Muhammad was a sexual predator or Islam teaches Muslims to do this is simply half-baked and absurd.

This article examines the full body of evidence. The honest conclusion is not a specific number but rather an acknowledgment of uncertainty—with the weight of evidence pointing away from the lowest figures commonly cited.

Understanding Hadith: Why Contradictions Exist

As I have established in my articles on ‘The Hadith‘ and ‘Shariah‘, the Qur’an is the primary source that guides a Muslim’s belief system, lifestyle and values. The hadith supplement these things in interpretations of Shariah that scholars make. In this decision making process, Shari’ah which does not relate to religious life (See: Islam is a 3 Dimensional Religion) or practice is “dynamic” and able to change based on time, place, the people and technology. Interpreting hadith is a science that many scholars devote their entire lives to. There is a historical and cultural context to hadith.

The hadith were written between 200-300 years after the Prophet and he never saw them or authorized them as he did the Qur’an, so we have to ‘authenticate’ the narrators. We call this ‘isnad‘ (chain of narration) and this tells us that the people who narrated the hadith are trustworthy or not. Isnad does not tell us that what was recorded in the hadith is definitively what was said or happened. Hadith are basically “hearsay evidence” and have many classifications of authenticity of isnad, not accuracy of content. This is why the hadith are a secondary source that supplement the Qur’an.

Keep in mind that although Muslims believe in the Bible (New Testament), we don’t rely on it for our belief system partly for the reason that the earliest writings are from 132AD (in Aramaic) and wasn’t canonized until 325AD (in Greek). More precisely, it has no isnad (chain of narration). That’s 100 to over 300 years after Jesus. The Prophet never saw our books of hadith and Jesus never saw the Bible to authorize it.

Addressing the Strongest Counterargument

Some readers will note that certain hadith in Sahih Bukhari—considered among the most rigorously authenticated collections—state that Aisha was six at marriage and nine at consummation. This requires acknowledgment.

However, strong isnad (chain of narration) does not guarantee accurate content. It tells us the narrators were considered trustworthy, not that memories recorded 200+ years after the events were free from error, confusion between lunar and solar years, or transmission mistakes. When multiple hadith with credible chains contradict each other, we must examine the full body of evidence rather than privileging one account while ignoring others.

The Evidence: Categorised

The contradictions in the hadith regarding Aisha’s age fall into several categories. Examining them systematically reveals why confident assertions about her age are unwarranted.

Chronological Calculations

The Asma Calculation:

It is generally accepted among historians that Aisha’s sister Asma was ten years older than her. Two sources (Taqreeb al-Tehzeeb and Ibn Kathir’s Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah) state that Asma died in the 73rd year after Hijra (migration to Madina) when she was 100 years old. If Asma was 100 at that time, she would have been 27 or 28 during Hijra in 622 CE. This would make Aisha 17 or 18 years old at that time. If Aisha got married a year or two later in 1 AH or 2 AH (After Hijra) she would have been somewhere between 18-20 years old at the time of marriage.

The Fatima Calculation:

Fatima was five years older than Aisha according to Ibn Hajar. Fatima was born when Muhammad was 35 years old. This means that Aisha was born when the Muhammad was 40 years old which would make Aisha twelve years old when she was married.

The Jahiliyyah Report:

Tabari also reports that during Jahiliyyah (days before he accepted Islam) all of his kids were born. His jahiliyyah ended in 610 CE. This would make Aisha twelve when she married in 622 CE.

Participation Constraints

Battlefield Minimum Age:

Sahih Bukhari states that Aisha participated in both the battle of Badr and Uhud. According to Bukhari’s Kitab Al’ Maghzi (Book of History), Ibn Umar said that the Prophet did not allow him to participate in the battle of Uhud because he was 14 years old. No one younger than 15 was allowed to accompany raiding parties. However, on the day of the Khandaq battle Ibn Umar was 15 and he was allowed to participate. Since it was not allowed for people younger than 15 to participate in raiding parties, Aisha who participated in the battle of Uhud was at minimum 15 years old. This would put her at 13-14 at the time of marriage.

The Battle of Badr:

According the Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, Aisha was at the battle of Badr, which took place in 624 CE. It is not possible for her to be at the battle of Badr without being at minimum age 15 because no one younger than this was allowed to accompany raiding parties. If she was at the battle of Badr (which she was according to Qur’an) she would have been 15 or older. So, when she was married following the hijra (migration to Medina) in 622 CE she would have been 13 or older.

Pre-Islamic Betrothal Evidence

Abu Bakr is reported in Tabari to have wished to spare Aisha the harsh trip to Ethiopia shortly after 615 CE and tried to marry her to Mut’am’s son sooner than planned (she was engaged once prior to the Prophet marrying her). Mut’am refused because Abu Bakr had converted to Islam. If Aisha was old enough to be engaged (of marriageable age) in 615 CE she would have been much older than nine in 622 CE when she married.

Internal Contradictions

The Surah Al-Qamar Problem:

Aisha is said also to have been born eight years before Hijra (migration to Medina) in 622 CE. Yet, in Sahih Bukhari that at the time of the 54th chapter of the Qur’an was revealed (Surah Al-Qamar) Aisha is reported to have said, “I was a young girl”. However, the 54th Chapter of Qur’an was revealed nine years before Hijra. According to this, Aisha had not even been born yet. So, if Aisha, as an adult after the death of the Prophet, relayed a hadith remembering to a time when she was a young girl (during a time when she wasn’t even born yet) she would most likely be referring to being between 7-14, which would make her between 14-21 at the age of marriage.

The Ibn Sa’d Discrepancy:

Ibn Sa’d’s Tabaqat and Ansab al-Ashraf books are in disagreement concerning Aisha’s marriage. Accordingly, her marriage would have been two to five years after Hijra (migration to Madina) and would make her about 17-20. (Source)

The Early Conversion Evidence

The earliest surviving biography of the Prophet (Ibn Hisham) says that she converted to Islam before one of the Prophet’s main companions (Umar ibn Al-Kattab) in the few years around 610 CE. In order to convert to Islam she had to be of the age of talking and understanding. Assuming this is around age three, that would make her at least 15 in 622 CE when she was married.

Why This Matters to Muslims

Some readers may wonder why Muslims engage with this question at all. The answer is theological, not defensive.

The Prophet Muhammad’s character (uswa hasana—the beautiful example) is central to Islamic ethics. Muslims look to his life as a model for conduct. Getting the history right matters because it shapes how that model is understood. This is not about “excusing” anything; it is about accurate scholarship regarding a figure of profound religious significance.

The Qur’an itself establishes principles regarding marriage that require consent and maturity. Forced marriages are prohibited. The Islamic tradition has always maintained that Aisha’s marriage was willful and accepted by her as per custom among Muslims.

What We Can Say With Confidence

Tallying the contradictions across the hadith literature, the weight of evidence points toward late teens rather than single digits. The lowest figures require ignoring substantial contradictory evidence from credible sources.

Important points:

Aisha was at minimum the age of puberty at the time of marriage according to 7th century customs, possibly older.

Aisha deeply loved the Prophet Muhammad long after he died and until the day she died. She was in love with him her entire life and he with her. Many hadith support how close and intimate their love was for each other.

Of all the demonizing from local tribes claiming he was demonically possessed, insane or altering the market economy by making their gods obsolete, etc., no one ever accused him of marrying a girl too young to be married.

Aisha was a warrior who commanded men from her tribe in battle. She was a strong woman with high status in Islam and Arabia. She relayed the majority of the Prophet Muhammad’s hadith after he died. Since she had the power to do so, there is no evidence that she reflected in her stories of the Prophet’s life that he victimized her by marrying her or that her marriage or relationship made her unhappy. She was totally devoted to him until she died.

Aisha never gave any indication that she was forced to marry. Forced marriages are against Islamic teaching, and her marriage was willful and accepted by her as per custom among Muslims.

Aisha had a healthy relationship with the Prophet and no serious scholar of Islamic history has ever noted signs of a forced or sexually abusive relationship.

The Double Standard

Before making negative judgments about 7th century Arabian customs, consider the standards applied—and not applied—elsewhere.

Unlike in much of today’s western world, in seventh century Arabia, the onset for puberty defined adulthood. As late as five centuries later, this was the case also in Europe. King John of England was 33 years old and married Isabella of Angoulême, who was 12 at the time.

“Modern standards” in the United States alone vary greatly but all states allow early marriageable ages, some as young as 12. According to various US state law, a girl with her parents consent can marry and have sex in that marriage in her early to mid teens. There is no top end cap on the age of men, either. In Europe, many countries limit the legal age of consent to sex as low as 14 years old. In Israel, the age of consent can be as low as 14, provided both parties consent and have an age gap of three years or less—and in 2023, the Justice Ministry reportedly sought to expand this to a five-year gap. It may not be acceptable to most of us at these ages, but before holding a double standard on 7th century Arabian cultural norms, we need to consider these facts, because they aren’t much different.

The critique of Islam on this basis often comes from people whose own legal codes permit marriages at ages they would condemn if practiced elsewhere. If someone genuinely cared about child welfare as a matter of principle, they would be lobbying their state legislature rather than point-scoring about contested medieval hadith.

Seventh-century Arabian norms are held to a standard that modern Western legal codes do not even meet. And crucially, Islamic jurisprudence itself has mechanisms for updating rulings based on time, place, and circumstance—the dynamism referenced earlier. The tradition is not frozen in the 7th century.

Before condemning 7th century Arabia, examine your own legal codes.

Article by BrJimC © 2017, revised 2026

by on

What is Jihad?

The Struggle

by James S. Coates

The Mistranslation of “Jihad”

The term “Jihad” is almost always mistranslated by Westerners as “Holy War.” In fact, the term “Jihad” literally translates to “struggle against.” “Holy War” today is often misapplied to Jihad because of Western Orientalist and Christian cultural understanding of the Crusades. The First Crusade was launched in 1095 when Pope Urban II preached a war ideology that came to be known as “Holy War” in order to garner Christian support to retake the “Holy Land” from the Muslims.

Why “Holy War” Is Alien to Islam

The concept of what is “holy” may seem like semantics over something petty, but it is a significant part of understanding proper Islamic Aqeedah (Creed) and Tawhid (Purity, Uniqueness, and Oneness of Allah).

Often, Muslims who don’t have the knowledge, are trying to bridge the understanding gap on your own terms, or are speaking from common cultural misunderstanding will misuse the word “Holy.” It’s important to know that in Islam, nothing is “Holy” except Allah. Many Muslims often say “Holy Qur’an” or “Holy Prophet,” but this is misleading. In Islam, nothing that is part of creation—able to be corrupted, mutilated, or annihilated—is “Holy.” We often say that the Qur’an or the Prophets are most deserving to be called holy, but they by nature are not Holy. Muslims with the understanding of this concept will call the Qur’an the “Glorious (or Noble) Qur’an” or the Prophet the “Most Beloved (or Noble) Prophet” or something similar.

According to Islamic teachings, the worst failing in human history is war, and war is certainly NOT “Holy.” Therefore, the concept of “Holy War” is alien to Islam.

War in Islamic Terminology

The Arabic word for “war” is “harb” and the Arabic word for “fighting or killing” is “qital.” Neither harb nor qital are Holy. According to the examples set forth in the Qur’an, they are only engaged in AFTER extensive diplomacy by a form of government has failed. According to Islam, state-sanctioned war is a last resort; it ceases and peace is re-established when diplomacy becomes viable again.

The Three Types of Jihad

It is worth noting that the word “jihad” appears in the Qur’an primarily in contexts of spiritual struggle, not warfare. Armed conflict is a narrow application of a much broader concept.

There are three types of Jihad in Islam:

Jihad bil Nafs – The struggle of the inner self relating to immoral or imperfect behaviour. It is closely related to the concept of “Ihsan” that I spoke about in my post entitled “Islam is a 3 Dimensional Religion.”

Jihad bil Qalam – The struggle of society through the pen or tongue (lisan) to establish justice in the land. In Western analogy, it can be comparable to the Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1839 quote, “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword.” It is one of the greatest forms of Islamic Jihad according to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Jihad bis Saif – A “state level” self-defence permission in Islam which is given to an Islamic government that allows for a well-regulated standing military controlled by a diplomatic system of governance. It refers to harb and qital when all possibility of diplomacy has failed.

The Greatest Jihad

Of the three types of Jihad:

“The best fighting (jihad) in the path of Allah is (to speak) a word of justice to an oppressive ruler.” — Prophet Muhammad (Abu Dawud Book 38, Hadith 4330; Grade: Sahih)

The Strict Rules of Armed Struggle

Contrary to what you see misguided Muslim individuals, Muslim terror groups and criminal enterprises, or even some Muslim-controlled governments doing today, jihad or struggle (which is a defensive strategy) involving harb or qital has very strict rules. These rules are more restrictive than most any modern government, including the United States, Britain, and other governments.

According to Islam, both combatants and non-combatants, believer and unbeliever, have rights that are not to be infringed upon. In all cases, no exception, these are just a few things which are expressly FORBIDDEN (haram or major sins) in Islam:

  • Vigilantism
  • Force converting
  • Enslaving
  • Raping
  • Torturing
  • Killing non-combatants (civilians)
  • Committing suicide
  • Attacking the wounded
  • Executing prisoners
  • Mutilating dead bodies or refusing to return them to their families
  • Intentionally destroying buildings or property
  • Looting
  • Destroying agriculture/crops
  • Burning people with fire

Islam is very clear that Muslims who do this are not martyrs, but criminals subject to punishment in this life and in the afterlife.

“THE FIRST of men (whose case) will be decided on the Day of Judgment will be a man who died as a martyr. He shall be brought [before the Judgment Seat]. Allah will make him recount His blessings (i.e. the blessings which He had bestowed upon him) and he will recount them (and admit having enjoyed them in his life). [Then] will Allah say: What did you do [to respond to these blessings]? He will say: I fought for Thee until I died as a martyr. Allah will say: You have told a lie. You fought that you might be called a ‘brave warrior.’ And you were called so. [Then] orders will be passed against him and he will be dragged with his face downward and cast into Hell.” — Prophet Muhammad (Sahih Muslim; The Book on Government, Hadith 4688)

The Purpose of Jihad

The purpose of Jihad as taught by Islam in all cases is to promote and establish justice in one’s own life or the life of others. Where there is struggle that does not include from start to finish the establishment of justice, or where the rules of this concept are not followed, there is no struggle (jihad)—only sin and corruption.

“He will not enter Paradise whose neighbour is not secure from his wrongful conduct.” — Prophet Muhammad (Sahih Muslim Book 1, Hadith 74)

Article by BrJimC © 2016, revised 2026

by on

What is Shari’ah?

The Path

by James S. Coates

As recent politics has put Islam and Islamic Shari’ah into the spotlight of public discourse, there is every reason you all should know about the topic of Shari’ah. A ton of misinformation has been circulating about Shari’ah and I’d suggest paying close attention to this post and ask questions if you don’t understand something or wish clarification.

What Does “Shari’ah” Mean?

The word “Shari’ah” literally means “an immense road leading to a flowing source of water.” It is literally the lifeblood of human social development, advancement, economics, enlightenment, culture and sophistication. Shari’ah guides us in every aspect of our lives such as our religion, culture, society and even as minute as personal hygiene.

There is no theocracy in Islam and as such Shari’ah as a whole is NOT God’s Law. Shari’ah consists of laws and interpretations codified by groups of ‘Ulamā (scholars/judges) in legal judgments called fatāwā (rulings or opinions, plural) or fatwā (singular).

These scholarly opinions are based in part on God’s revelations, the recordings of the hadith of Prophet Muhammad’s life compiled into canonical collections approximately 200–250 years after his death, modern social and cultural norms, and new technologies. Scholarly opinions on Shari’ah are based in areas of study among various Islamic schools of thought.

The Schools of Thought (Madhab)

There are five main “Madhab” (pronounced “maḏhab”), or “Schools of Thought,” that are based on Imams (scholarly thinkers; teachers) who lived over 1,000 years ago. Each school interprets Islamic texts differently on various issues, and our modern scholars often refer to them to make decisions of Shari’ah and issue fatāwā (rulings/opinions). Some madhab are more predominant in some countries or regions than others.

Prime examples of differences between the madhab are Saudi Arabia (Sunni; Hanbali) and Iran (Shi’a; Ja’fari school), which are both Muslim but have developed hugely different religious structures and viewpoints. You can see that many countries also share the same madhab. Some Muslim communities in the West may have representations of all of the schools of thought, like the United States, United Kingdom and others. Muslims in the West are a melting pot of ideas, not just in secular society but also often in their religious communities.

These are the five main Madhab (Islamic Schools of Thought):

  • Hanafi (Sunni)
  • Maliki (Sunni)
  • Shafi’i (Sunni)
  • Hanbali (Sunni)
  • Ja’fari (Shi’a)
Islamic Madhab – Schools of Thought

How Shari’ah Differs by Region

Shari’ah on an issue in one group may not resemble the Shari’ah in another.

For example, the religious Shari’ah rulings of the Hanafi school (South Asia) say Muslims should pray with their hands folded, while the Maliki school (North Africa) says to pray with the arms by one’s side. Such rulings that differ can be on social, political and national differences as well.

An example of national differences might be Saudi Arabia (Hanbali), which may cut off someone’s hand for stealing, whereas Malaysia (Shafi’i) may simply put them in prison and give a hefty fine.

There is no single book of Shari’ah. You cannot go to a bookshop and ask for “The Book of Shari’ah” like you might the Bible or Qur’an or a volume of hadith. It isn’t there. Shari’ah is a “science of interpretation” by groups of people (‘Ulamā; scholars or judges) among the various schools of thought, which appear in fatāwā (rulings) that can be made on a regional, national, or local level—or even internationally agreed upon by consensus.

What Shari’ah Is NOT

Many Western antagonists like to pretend to know about Shari’ah and claim that the totality of Shari’ah is summed up in penal codes only acceptable in ancient times (such as the Roman Empire) but considered barbaric today. Shari’ah is made up of infinitely more than the few penal codes of certain repressive governments which they commonly point to today.

There are some “religious” aspects of Shari’ah that are internationally recognised as unchangeable, and some of those rulings you have already read in my previous posts, like “Islam is a 3 Dimensional Religion.” The very basic religious aspects of Shari’ah are agreed upon internationally by all Muslims and therefore unchangeable. To change or deny these religious ideals would be to deny Islam itself.

So, it is ridiculous for an antagonist to ask a Muslim if they deny Shari’ah as a measure of religious “moderation, reform or modernisation.” What part of it? Why would we deny “Shari’ah”?

For example, based on the Qur’an and hadith, according to all scholars of Islam worldwide, there are five pillars of Islam. The first pillar of Islam is the very basic entry point to becoming a Muslim (Shi’a and Sunni), and to become Muslim one must recite with wilful conviction the Shahadah (Confession of Faith). It is a requirement to be considered a Muslim by our peers. It is, therefore, part of the Shari’ah that a person must understand that there is no other god except the One God and Muhammad is the Last Messenger, and make a confession of their belief.

Shari’ah goes on to detail the other pillars (like Prayer, Fasting, Charity, and Pilgrimage) and the requirements for successfully fulfilling those requirements. How to pray, how many times to wash per day, requirements for giving charity, how to make pilgrimage—all are detailed by Shari’ah. Why would we be asked to deny these as a sign of “moderation or reform” when to do so makes us either a non-Muslim, like a non-Muslim, or prevents us from carrying out our Islamic duties?

To ask us to deny Shari’ah in light of this aspect is tantamount to asking a Christian to deny the articles of faith decided upon by their founding Church elders.

Shari’ah Courts and the Halakha Parallel

A Beth Din is a Jewish Halakha (Jewish Law) court that is set up in the United States, Europe, and many other countries. These Jewish courts make rulings (like fatwā) on behalf of Jewish communities in the United States. One such ruling is for Jewish communities to establish the Eruv (a physical public barrier that encircles a township or area predominantly Jewish, which allows certain religious rights to Jews) in predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods in non-Jewish countries. If one isn’t Jewish, he or she wouldn’t even know what it is even if it was pointed out to them, let alone know if one is present in the area they live in.

Despite the ancient Jewish practices (no longer practised) of stoning for various offences (Leviticus 20:10, 20:13; Deuteronomy 17:5), these Jewish courts in foreign countries (like the United States) function the same way Islamic law courts do in many non-Muslim countries around the world today. The implementation of Jewish law in a non-Jewish society has no bearing on non-Jews because Jews living in the West have modernised the portions of Jewish law that are not necessary to faith, like barbaric penal codes once acceptable 3,000 years ago. Like Jewish Halakha courts, Shari’ah courts operate in many countries, Muslim and non-Muslim (including Israel), leaving behind the ancient barbaric penal codes.

In fact, the debate about allowing Jewish law and Jewish Halakha courts, especially on issues like the Eruv to be implemented in Jewish communities in the US (and even in Europe), has brought the same concerns from the public as with Shari’ah courts. Despite antisemitic fear-mongering that has suggested in the past that the Jews were setting up a Jewish enclave in the US, it hasn’t created such issues like Jews stoning people in the streets, etc.

Shari’ah courts in a large number of countries (including many Western countries) are offered on an “opt-in” basis and make rulings between parties on issues of civil matters, divorce, or inheritance. Some Muslim countries refer marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance to Shari’ah courts by default, preferring un-Islamic (and barbaric) European colonial penal codes, laws, and cultural attitudes for the rest. In some dictatorships, where freedom to challenge the ruling party does not exist, these courts are used as a mouthpiece of the Monarchy or Dictatorship to make religious and other rulings often nonsensical to most ordinary Muslims and often contrary to Islam itself and a violation of human rights.

Modernisation and Reform

Shari’ah is a living, breathing legal system that is interpreted differently by different people, and only a small portion of it actually defines religious duties. It is imperative to note that over 90% of Shari’ah does not relate to religious life or practice and is “dynamic”—able to change based on time, place, the people, and technology. Social issues and criminal penal codes of Shari’ah could and should be modernised.

Often the only modernisation we see is among Western Muslim scholars and communities who live away from brutally repressive regimes. Under dictatorships that control Muslim populations today (like Saudi Arabia or Egypt), speaking publicly with new ideas that challenge, criticise, or question social norms, the law, and government could be a prison or death sentence. The state exerts absolute control over the religious establishment.

Freedom of expression in the West has cultivated a new generation of scholars free to propose new ideas on modernisation of Shari’ah that could not be done in nations like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.

Conclusion

Shari’ah and Shari’ah courts are not something to be feared by Westerners. Islamic Shari’ah is not divine, monolithic, or rigid. Islam never allows compulsion in religion. Shari’ah is not imposed on non-Muslims, and Muslims may opt in or out.

Islamic Shari’ah is as compatible with Western law and way of life as Jewish Halakha. The key to a successful and integrated Shari’ah is to foster religious freedom for Muslims to debate ideas and partner with us to help us promote human rights in our communities here and around the world.

We will never “abandon our Shari’ah” because it defines and shapes our Aqeedah (Creed) and our religious practice. However, we can modernise, assimilate, or shed outdated interpretations of Shari’ah, such as penal codes designed for a place, a time, and a people that is far distant in the past.

It is not against Islam but rather consistent with Islam, from its inception to its Golden Age, to replace old ideas with new modern values suited for the times and place we live in.

“O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.” — Qur’an 4:135

Article by BrJimC © 2016, revised 2026

 

 

by on

What is Sunnah?

Mainstream Core Concepts

by James S. Coates

There are three main usages of the word “Sunnah” among Muslims. Understanding these distinctions is important because the term appears frequently in Islamic discourse with different meanings depending on context. Although Muslims worldwide agree on the Qur’an and these basic concepts, building past the foundations of “Sunnah” (which also overlap with historical events) is where the Sunni and Shi’a divide begins to take shape. I’m going to keep this simple so I don’t make this article too large or off topic. In an upcoming article I’m going to explain about the division in historical events, its effect on the followers of the religion, and modern times.

1. Sunnah as “The Way”

In the earliest description of Jesus’ followers, before Paul’s mission to the Pagans where they were first called “Christians” in a derogatory sense, the movement of the original disciples of Jesus who were in the Synagogues was known as “the Way” (Acts 9:2). Muslims carry on this tradition and description in the word “as-Sunnah” which means “the Way.”

When we refer to the Sunnah (unless otherwise ascribed to another Prophet or Jesus Christ) we are generally referring to “the Way” of the Prophet Muhammad. The Sunnah in this sense refers to the things he is reported to have said, did, or approved of in hadith. In the same way that we use it for the Prophet Muhammad, we can also apply this to others, such as the “Sunnah of Jesus Christ” or “the Way of Jesus Christ” based on what we know of the things he said, did, or approved. We can apply the usage to “the Way” of any of the other Prophets or Messengers when referring to events in their lives.

2. Sunnah as Reference to Hadith

Sunnah is a reference to the collective recordings of hadith. For example, the “Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad” says:

“Messenger of Allah [Muhammad] said, ‘When any of you is invited to a meal, he should accept the invitation. If he is observing Sawm (fasting), he should supplicate for the betterment of the host and if he is not fasting, he should eat.'” (Sahih Muslim)

So, as an example, Muslims would say, “The Sunnah says it is better for us not to turn down an invite to a meal when invited.” Sunnah in this sense is a reference to any hadith in any of the recorded volumes.

3. Sunnah as a Legal Term

Sunnah is also a legal definition used by the ‘Ulamā (Scholars/Judges) to classify whether something is recommended for one’s own good. Legal classification is where we get our concept of what is “sin” against God, ourselves, fellow humans, animals, the planet, etc.

In this context, there are five categorisations in Shari’ah:

Fardh (Mandatory) – One receives God’s blessing for doing and His punishment for not doing.

Sunnah (Recommended) – One receives God’s blessing for doing and nothing for not doing.

Mubah (Permissible) – One does not receive God’s blessing for doing and does not receive His punishment for not doing.

Makruh (Strongly disliked, though technically permitted) – One does not receive God’s blessing for doing but receives His blessing for NOT doing.

Haram (Forbidden) – One receives God’s punishment for doing and receives His blessing for NOT doing.

Why is “Sunnah” both a reference to hadith and a legal term for “recommended”?

This can be confusing at first. The legal term “Sunnah” derives from the Prophet’s voluntary practices—things he did regularly but which were not obligatory commands from God. When scholars examined his life, they distinguished between what he did because God commanded it (Fardh) and what he did out of personal devotion or preference (Sunnah). The latter became the model for “recommended” acts: blessed if performed, but not sinful if omitted.

Conclusion

The concept of Sunnah is integral to both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, as it guides us to better enlightenment by the example of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe he was sent by God as the final prophet in the line of prophets and messengers, whose Sunnah confirms and completes the way of those before him.

Article by BrJimC © 2016, revised 2026

by on

 

What are Hadith?

Secondary (or Supplemental) Books

by James S. Coates

The Primary Principle

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about hadith is that the Qur’an is more authoritative. If there is not a direct Qur’anic reference to cross-reference and unequivocally confirm a hadith, then the hadith holds less authority. This principle underlies everything that follows.

Hadith in Context

Similar to Judaism which has a core book (the Torah) and secondary oral traditions (the Talmud), Islam has a core book (the Qur’an) and a recorded “oral tradition” that we call “al-Hadith.” The Talmud and Hadith have both been recorded in many hundreds of volumes and both serve to supplement understanding of their respective core books (Torah and Qur’an) and build upon the foundation of religious practice.

The hadith are the “secondary source” after the Qur’an to which Muslims refer in order to supplement their faith, interpret Islamic Shari’ah, or to form opinions on interpretation of our religion.

How Hadith Were Recorded

Hadith writing began very early. Many of the Sahaba (Companions of the Prophet) and their students recorded hadith in suhuf (personal written notes), and these early texts circulated among the Tabi’een (the generation after the Companions) long before the major compilations.

However, the canonical collections—the large, systematically verified works we largely rely on today—were compiled and codified later:

  • Imam Malik’s Muwatta (c. 760s CE, approximately 140 years after the Prophet)
  • Sahih al-Bukhari (d. 870 CE) and Sahih Muslim (d. 875 CE), approximately 240 years after the Prophet
  • Other collections (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Nasa’i, Ibn Majah) followed in the same 9th century

So while hadith recording itself began very early, the formal canonisation of those reports into comprehensive, systematically authenticated books came in the 8th–9th centuries. Both points fit within the same historical development.

We call the chain of transmission ‘isnad‘ (chain of narration), and this tells us whether the people who narrated the hadith are considered trustworthy or not. Isnad does not tell us that what was recorded in the hadith is definitively what was said or happened. Hadith are basically hearsay evidence and have many classifications of authenticity of isnad, not accuracy of content. This is why the hadith are a secondary source that supplement the Qur’an.

Keep in mind that although Muslims believe in the Bible (New Testament), we don’t rely on it for our belief system partly for the reason that the New Testament was composed over a century after Jesus and compiled into its current form over several more centuries, without an isnad system to authenticate transmission. The Prophet never saw our books of hadith and Jesus never saw the Bible to authorise their authenticity.

The Nature of Hadith

Unlike the Qur’an, the hadith were transmitted by a chain of ordinary individuals about the things the Prophet Muhammad reportedly said (qawl), did (fi’l), or approved (taqrir). The Prophet Muhammad never authorised or saw these compilations or recordings. They were not preserved with the same integrity as the Qur’an. The hadith have errors, contradictions, and are NOT considered “infallible.” The Qur’an is the primary authoritative source of all things in Islam. The hadith are secondary—they supplement or clarify the Qur’an and are subordinate to it.

Classifications of Hadith

Hadith are categorised based on what we call isnad, or trustworthiness of the chain of narrators. The three categorisations are:

Sahih (Strong) – Narrators were known to be reputable.

Hasan (Good) – Narrators may be questionable.

Da’if (Weak) – Serious problems with narrators or method of transmission.

It is important to note that a “Strong” narration may still have inaccuracies or have different narrations of the same event described in Islamic history. The categorisation only speaks to the reputations of the individuals in the chain over generations or the method of transmission: were the individuals transmitting known to be liars, cheats, abusers, or trustworthy people?

Also, as we know, even a story told by the most trustworthy people in a chain of many individuals can come out on the other side of the chain a very different story than when it began.

The Science of Hadith

In order to sort these matters out, we have to study the event in-depth according to hundreds of other hadith, Qur’an, and Islamic history to determine the outcome. There is no room for “clever slogans,” rash interpretations, or assumptions that many deviant Muslims or anti-Islam proponents try to assert. It is why we call the study of hadith “The Science of Hadith.” It takes serious long-term study, and every hadith that remotely can speak to a situation must be evaluated in light of each other.

Divisions among Muslims have arisen over the existence of volumes of hadith, interpretations of hadith, and even ascribed authors or recorders of hadith. Entire schools of thought have been formed and draw on some hadith more than others. The Sunni and Shi’a historical divide has been greatly amplified over the existence and interpretations of hadith.

How Hadith Function: An Example

An example of hadith that would hold a great degree of authority in a valid interpretation of Islam can be seen in the Qur’anic verse that tells Muslims to establish formal prayers. The Qur’an does not tell us how to do that:

“Verily, I am Allah: There is no god but I: So serve thou Me (only), and establish regular prayer for celebrating My praise.” (Qur’an 20:14)

So, we have to refer to hadith that directly describe the topic in order to learn how. The Qur’an makes the mandate; the hadith explain the mandate.

Article by BrJimC © 2016, revised 2026