Raymond Ibrahim on Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation in the Quran

The following by Raymond Ibrahim is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation

by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 6, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/3787/islamic-jihad-abrogation-doctrine

Raymond Ibrahim

While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in which peaceful and tolerant verses lie almost side by side with violent and intolerant ones. The ulema were initially baffled as to which verses to codify into the Shari'a worldview—the one that states there is no coercion in religion (2:256), or the ones that command believers to fight all non-Muslims till they either convert, or at least submit, to Islam (8:39, 9:5, 9:29). To get out of this quandary, the commentators developed the doctrine of abrogation, which essentially maintains that verses revealed later in Muhammad's career take precedence over earlier ones whenever there is a discrepancy. In order to document which verses abrogated which, a religious science devoted to the chronology of the Koran's verses evolved (known as an-Nasikh wa'l Mansukh, the abrogater and the abrogated).

Photo not from original article

During BBC Interview, Robert Spencer Shows He Knows More About Islam Than Muslim Imam

During this segment of a BBC interview where Robert Spencer speaks on his being banned, along with Pamela Geller, from entering Great Britain, an Imam is asked to counter Spencer on what the Koran says.

And the Imam can't do it.

Here is the segment:

Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2013: Islam's Hatred of the Non-Muslim

The following by David Bukay is reposted here with permission of the Middle East Forum:

Islam's Hatred of the Non-Muslim

by David Bukay
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2013, pp. 11-20 (view PDF)

It is accepted as a truism by many liberals and multiculturalists and touted by much of the Western media that the "clash of civilizations" between the West and the Islamic world is a clash of values between a secular, tolerant, post-Christian world and a minority (albeit a large one) of Muslims, fundamentalists, and literalists who pervert the meaning of their faith-traditions. The Qur'anic verse, "There is no compulsion in religion,"[1] is frequently invoked to prove that Islam is not the intolerant, subjugating religion that Islamist clerics like Yusuf Qaradawi or terrorists like Osama bin Laden make it out to be. The belief is that "Islam," as former president George W. Bush said not long after the 9-11 attacks, "is peace."[2]

But what if Bush's statement, along with the mainstream view, ignores the reality of Islam's central tenets? Are the Islamists' beliefs really only a warped minority position or are they a truer reflection of the inherent nature of the Muslim faith-system? Can the West ever reach a modus vivendi with an Islam that by its very nature considers Western civilization an unclean "other" that must be brought into the orbit of Islam through subjugation at best or destruction at worst?