Are leading voices in the "counter-jihad" movement actually reinforcing the ideological claims of the extremists they oppose?
Some Westerners facilitate “Islamic terror” directly, by providing material support, like Jihad Jane. Others, however, facilitate it indirectly, by opposing it in a way that gives it legitimacy. Take Steven Coughlin, for example. Coughlin is an American lawyer and former Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence analyst who has written several books about Islam., People like Coughlin covertly provide support for Islamic terror while overtly speaking against it. They are part of what Nathan Lean calls The Islamophobia Industry (Pluto Press, 2012).
The authors and activists who make up this industry include the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth; British firebrand, Tommy Robinson; and author Sam Harris. All of them use a particular framework to support terrorism as legitimately Islamic. That framework consists of: 1) using key terms in Arabic such as jihad, sharia, and fatwa; 2) using the theory of abrogation to dismiss all interpretations of jihad that do not involve the use of force; 3) ignoring the way that the majority of Muslim scholars and lay people have understood these terms for more than 1200 years while focusing on a limited number of works that support the meaning they champion; and 4) dismissing the all positive interpretations as disingenuous apologetics. While this often has the effect of generating fear of Islam and Muslims among the general public, it also (somewhat perversely) champions and encourages the most violent interpretations of Islamic sources.
For example, in Islam and the Future of Tolerance, Sam Harris states that “groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda are enacting very literal (and therefore plausible) interpretations of Islamic doctrine” (Kindle edition, 115). Describing some religious interpretations as “very literal” and “plausible” while dismissing other interpretations as “acrobatic” and “reformist” (114) is a theological claim that asserts the religious legitimacy of the former over the latter. Likewise, Stephen Coughlin argues in Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, that Islamic terrorism “seamlessly merges Islamic Law through the doctrine of abrogation” (Kindle edition, 166). Both Harris and Coughlin rely on a narrow view of the highly contested concept of abrogation, but that is just one of many misleading aspects of their works dealing with Islam. Harris cites few sources in Islam and the Future of Tolerance, which is a relatively short work written as a dialogue between Harris and Maajid Nawaz, founder of the now defunct Quilliam Foundation. By contrast, Coughlin’s Catastrophic Failure is a long work containing copious citations. At first glance, this seems like an impressive piece of scholarship. However, a close examination of the sources cited by Coughlin shows that his work is a carefully stacked deck built by meticulously selecting only those sources (and particular parts of those sources) that support the claims he makes. Thispost will focus on Coughlin’s Catastrophic Failure.
The issues with Coughlin’s work are too many and too serious to address in this brief post, so I will deal with only two of the most egregious issues: 1) the highly selective use of limited sources; 2) the erroneous claims about the concepts of consensus (ijma) and abrogation (naskh) that arise from that highly selective use.
Early in the book, Coughlin says, “The United States is currently fighting this war according to the Barnes and Noble Standard. That is, every insight into the enemy’s threat derives from sources no deeper than an introductory book from Barnes and Noble” (Catastrophic Failure, Kindle edition, 668). The analogy he uses to illustrate the “Barnes and Noble Standard” is someone being confident that they can perform brain surgery because they “just went to Barnes and Noble yesterday and got this cool book on neurosurgery” (Coughlin, Kindle edition, 676). The difference between Coughlin and his imaginary brain surgeon is that instead of Barnes and Noble, Coughlin goes to an Islamic bookstore, where he gets an English translation of a book on Islamic law. The book is a 14th century reference manual, Reliance of the Traveller and Tools of the Worshipper, meant to aid worshippers in daily life and practice. This is clear from the fact that most of the book deals with daily practices such as cleanliness, prayer, charity, and fasting, as well as interpersonal issues related to marriage, divorce, inheritance, business relationships and trade (Table of Contents, Reliance). Comparing this to his Barnes and Noble analogy, the work is not even equivalent to an introduction to neurosurgery. Instead, it is a first aid manual. Using it to argue that Islamic terrorism “seamlessly merges Islamic Law through the doctrine of abrogation” is like using a first aid manual to do brain surgery. This general reference manual written to help the average lay Muslim with day-to-day life is the one book Coughlin cites more than any other in support of his claims.
In addition to Reliance of the Traveller and Tools of the Worshipper, Coughlin cites English translations of two other 14th century works. One of those is Ibn Khaldun’s (d. 1406) Muqaddimah. The Arabic word muqaddim means “introduction,” and this book is the Introduction to Ibn Khaldun’s multivolume history of the world. Ibn Khaldun was a historian and philosopher. He was not a legal scholar or theologian, and the Muqaddimah is not an authoritative work on Islamic Law. Returning to the Barnes and Noble analogy, using the Muqaddimah to support the claim that terrorism, or anything else for that matter, “seamlessly merges with Islamic Law” is like doing brain surgery after reading the introduction to a general history of medicine.
The third 14th century work cited by Coughlin is the Quranic commentary (tafsir) of Ibn Kathir (d. 1373). This and the 15th century commentary, Tafsir Jalalayn are the only premodern commentaries he uses. There are nearly 3,000 Quran commentaries that have survived in manuscript since middle of the second century after the time of Muhammad, and of these some 300 of the most highly respected and authoritative have been published in print (Ross, “State of tafsīr Studies”), yet to support his claims about how Muslims have historically understood the Quran, Coughlin uses only two commentaries out of hundreds spanning more than eight centuries from the time of Muhammad (d. 632) to the time of Jalalayn (d. 1505).
In addition to this narrow selection of classical Islamic texts, Coughlin also relies on a few contemporary works, but like Reliance of the Traveller and the Muqaddimah, those works are general introductions rather than comprehensive advanced works on Islamic doctrine and law. These include Asaf A. A. Fyzee’s Outlines of Muhammadan Jurisprudence that deals with law in India and Pakistan in in the mid twentieth century and is a brief systematic textbook “written for the elementary student” (Fyzee, v, ix); Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee’s Islamic Jurisprudence is written “ to educate people of a variety of academic levels in Islamic Jurisprudence” (Ansari, “Foreword” to Islamic Jurisprudence, xx), and his Theories of Islamic Law: The Methodology of Ijtihad is also a textbook written to “help lay readers, lawyers, and university students to understand Islamic jurisprudence” (Ansari, Foreword to Theories of Islamic Law, vi); Mohammed Hashim Kamali’s Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence is a textbook intended for university students “who seek to acquire an intermediate to advanced level of proficiency in this subject” (Kamali, xvi).
It is ironic that after citing Imran Nyazee’s Theories of Islamic Coughlin concludes that “a non-Muslim cannot just pick up a book on Islamic Law and decide for himself what it means” (Coughlin 883) – and then goes on to do precisely that throughout Catastrophic Failure! In other words, Coughlin himself is guilty of using the very “Barnes and Noble Standard,” that he condemns. He picks up introductory and intermediate books on Islamic Law, decides for himself what they mean, and then carefully stacks the deck by selectively quoting from the sources and leaving out information that challenges his claims.
Likewise, Coughlin quotes from Reliance of the Traveller that scholarly consensus refers to “a ruling agreed upon by all mujtahids in the Islamic community” (Kindle edition, 912). Coughlin uses bold and italics to emphasize this criterion. He then cites Nyazee as affirming the continuing status of ijma: “The majority of jurists agreed” that if there is explicit ijma on an issue it becomes obligatory and cannot be opposed (Kindle edition, 923). Yet Coughlin ignores the clear criterion he has just emphasized and seems oblivious to the distinction between something that is agreed upon by all and something that is only agreed upon by the majority. He also fails to mention that Nyazee explicitly states that there were those who disagreed with the majority and argued that ijma is not a binding source, and that the “majority, who upheld ijma’ as a binding source, as well as those who opposed them on this issue argued on the basis of the Qur’an and the Sunnah” (Nyazee, Jurisprudence, 187-188). Nyazee then outlines the arguments of both the majority and the minority and states that the arguments of the majority are considered stronger (Nyazee, Jurisprudence, 189). While the majority arguments may be considered stronger, Nyazee’s presentation shows that there was no scholarly consensus on the binding nature of consensus. This is because the explicit criterion necessary for consensus to be binding is it must be “agreed upon by all mujtahids” of the community, not merely “the majority.”
Kamali puts it this way:
The classical definition and the essential requirements of ijmā‘, as laid down by the ᶜulamā’ of uṣūl, are categorical on the point that nothing less than a universal consensus of the scholars of the Muslim community as a whole can be regarded as conclusive ijmā‘. There is thus no room whatsoever for disagreement, or ikhtilāf, within the concept of ijma‘. The theory of ijma‘ is equally unreceptive to the idea of relativity or a preponderance of agreement within its ranks. (Kamali, Islamic Jurisprudence, 228)
To support his claims about abrogation in the Quran, Coughlin cites 2:256: “Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold. (Qur’an 2:256)” (Kindle edition, 1650). Coughlin uses bold type to emphasize the phrase that he believes is abrogated by the verse he cites immediately following his quote of Quran 2:256, where he again highlights part of the verse in bold: “Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam will never have it accepted of him, and he will be of those who have truly failed in the hereafter (Qur’an 3:85).” His claim is the highlighted portion of Quran 2:256 is abrogated by the highlighted portion of Quran 3:85, but the Quran commentaries that Coughlin says he has used contradict his claim.
In his lengthy commentary on Quran 2:256, Ibn Kathir does not mention that it has been abrogated (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 002 Baqarah II, 263-264). Likewise, in his commentary on Quran 3:85, Ibn Kathir does not say that it has abrogated Quran 2:256. He explains that Quran 3:85 means all the prophets and messengers brought the same religion, submission to God (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 003 Imran, 130). Tafsir Jalalayn also does not say Quran 2:256 was abrogated by any other verse. What it says is that it was revealed about Muslims in Medina who tried to force their children to accept Islam (Tafsir Jalalayn, 41). Likewise, Tafsir Jalalayn does not say that Quran 3:85 abrogates any other verse. It explains that the verse was revealed about those who apostatized, saying what will happen to them in the hereafter (Tafsir Jalalayn, 58).
A careful examination of the sources of Coughlin says he has used indicates that either he has not read those sources with care, or that he has intentionally omitted relevant information from those sources that directly contradict his conclusion that terrorism “seamlessly merges with Islamic Law through the doctrine of abrogation.” Is this simply carelessness on Coughlin’s part, or has he intentionally stacked the deck? Either way, the result is the same: He has reached a conclusion that will stoke fear of Islam and Muslims among readers who trust him, while giving aid, comfort and encouragement to groups and individuals who are looking for an excuse to commit terrorist acts in the guise of religion.
Coughlin is just one clear example of the limited and selective use of classical Muslim sources that gives aid and comfort to those who need to see their violence as righteous, begging the question: Whose side are they on?