Jihad

Despite the evidence of the past half-decade (longer, actually), many Muslims still insist on portraying Islam as fundamentally peaceful, tolerant of non-Muslims, and claim the holy-war interpretation of jihad as an aberration of a few fanatics. Perhaps not surprisingly, these apologists are found not only in Arab and Iranian mosques but in American univerities.

Andrew G Bostom, a professor of medicine in Rhode Island, massively destroys these apologies in The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (Prometheus 2005). After a lengthy introduction, the book consists mainly of a compilation of texts relating to jihad – from the Qur’an, ancient and modern Qur’anic commentators, eye-witnesses to jihad from the seventh to the twentieth century, and historians and journalists.