Why Muslims Think of Islam as a “Religion of Peace”

Grand Imam of al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb

Egypt’s leading Muslim cleric and sheikh, Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb recently asserted a demonstrable falsehood. On April 30, 2020, during his televised program that appears every year around Ramadan and is watched by millions in Egypt and the Arab world, the grand imam of the Islamic world’s most prestigious university, Al Azhar, declared that “Islam doesn’t seek war or bloodshed, and Muslims only fight back to defend themselves.”

This is a reaffirmation of the grand conclusion reached at — and therefore making a mockery of — a recent mega-conference dedicated to finding solutions to “extremism.” Hosted in Egypt by Al Azhar, and attended by leading representatives from 46 Muslim nations, al-Tayeb capped off the two-day conference by declaring:

Needless to say, such claims fly in the face of more than a millennium of well documented Islamic teachings and Islamic history. Beginning with Muhammad — whose later wars were hardly defensive, but rather raids meant to empower and aggrandize himself and his followers over non-Muslims — and under the first “righteous” caliphs and virtually all subsequent sultans and rulers, jihad consisted of raiding, slaughtering, enslaving, and ideally conquering non-Muslims who refused the invitation to embrace Islam. One need only look at a map of the Muslim world today and realize that the vast majority of it—all of the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Central Asia, as far east as Pakistan, and farther — was taken by violent conquest in the name of jihad.

The heyday of Islam’s expansion took place entirely by force.

However, rather than dismiss al-Tayeb as just another liar, trying to save face, it’s worth noting that something else is going on at a deeper level when Muslims insist to one another — in both instances, al-Tayeb was addressing not Westerners, but fellow Muslims — that jihad is defensive.

The fact is, the overwhelming majority of Muslims, even of the terrorist variety, are, like most people, committed to seeing themselves and their religion as the “good guys.” As such, there is an implicit agreement between them always to present their religion as according with innate concepts of justice. This has caused them to go to extreme lengths, as the current case suggests.

Muslims refer to historic Islamic conquests as “openings.”

For example, the historic Islamic conquests are never referred to as “conquests” in Arabic and other Muslim languages; rather, they are futuhat — literally, “openings” for the light of Islam to enter (or fatah in the singular, as the Palestinian group tellingly calls itself). In this context, every land ever invaded or seized by Muslims was done “altruistically” to bring Islam to wayward infidels, who are seen as the aggressors for unjustly resisting Islam.

Thus, according to an article titled “The Wisdom of Jihad,” published by Islam Question and Answer, jihad does not “only and simply mean to kill non-Muslims"; rather, "[t]he kuffaar [non-Muslims, or infidels] whom we fight will themselves benefit from jihad. We strive against them and fight them so that they will enter the religion of Allah which is acceptable to Him, which will lead to their salvation in this world and in the Hereafter.”

From here one understands why even sadistic mass murderers and pedophiles such as Ottoman Sultan Muhammad (or “Mehmet”) II is known in Islamic historiography as “Muhammad the Opener” — for it was he who brought Islam’s light to the reluctant denizens of Constantinople in 1453.

Mocking such Muslim logic, Dr. Ahmed ‘Abdu Maher, an Egyptian researcher and political activist, once made a video where he asked a hypothetical. What if Donald Trump — instead of banning immigration from a few terrorist nations (mostly Muslim) and being denounced as a “racist” for it — followed Islam’s “altruistic” outlook and offered American Muslims three choices: either convert to Christianity, pay jizya and live as second-class citizens, or die?

Maher — this nominal Muslim who has embraced the ugly realities of Islam’s historic conquests — is, however and unfortunately, a rare commodity in the Muslim world. As one American historian of Islam writes: Islam’s leaders such as Grand Imam al-Tayeb — one can add the Western mainstream as well — are committed to deluding Muslims about Islam’s past (and therefore present). And little wonder — the “average” Muslim who learns about the ugly reality of Islam’s past often apostatizes in his heart — lapses — remaining Muslim only in name.

In other words, the problem is not just that many in the West are being deceived about Islam and its past; hundreds of millions of “regular” Muslims are also being deceived—and for the very same reason.