Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser’s Koran

Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser has just released his first book with the understated title, A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith. Dr. Jasser’s egomania aside, the striking disingenuousness which characterizes the book is epitomized by his summary comments on the Koran which glibly dismiss multiple verses that sanction the jihad conquest of non-Muslims, including their subjugation and justified humiliation for a myriad of so-called "offenses.”

The Qur’an…is not actually a text that was written with the idea of conquering those of other faiths. Throughout the Qur’an, the debt to Christians and Jews, for their teachings and prophets, is acknowledged over and over again in their common origin from the God of Abraham.

First, Koran 3:67 and its classical exegesis (interpretation) thoroughly debunks Jasser’s uninformed or mendacious claim about ecumenical Islamic "indebtedness” to the shared Judeo-Christian ancestry of the Biblical Abraham. The seminal Koranic commentary Tafsir Al-Jalalayn of Suyuti (and al-Mahalli), provides this definitive gloss on verse 3:67—notwithstanding Jasser’s ecumenical burbling—which affirms Islam’s triumphant supersessionism, vis a vis both Judaism and Christianity:

Ibrahim was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but a man of pure natural belief, a hanif who inclines from all other religions to the Straight Din; a Muslim and affirmer of the Divine Unity. He was no idolator.

With regard to Jasser’s spurious assertion that that Koranic text did not instill an eternal conquering impulse among its Muslim votaries, Richard Bell, in his authoritative1937 translation and exegesis of the Koran demonstrates that Sura (chapter) 9, "…is a chapter of war proclamations…”, and verses Q.9.29 to Q.9-35, specifically,

…form in effect a proclamation of war against Jews and Christians, and probably belong to the year IX [9-years after the Hijra] when an expedition was designed for the North which would involve war with Christians and possibly also with Jews.

Al-Muntakhab fii Tafsiir al-Qur’aan al-Kariim, (the Culled [correct selection from] Qur’an Commentary, issued by the Vatican of Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University’s Committee for the Qur’an and Sunna [traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, and his early followers], 11th edition, Cairo 1985, re-affirms Bell’s scholarship, stating, with regard to Koran 9:29 and 9:30: (...)