Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard: "Unfortunately, You Cannot Disconnect This Type of Event--Terrorism--From Islam in General"

We're so used to people in a position of power being weak-kneed and mealy-mouthed on the topic of jihad that when someone musters the courage to speak the truth it is as thrilling as it is shocking.

Such is the case with the Quebec premier's statement.

To bolster Couillard's observation, here's Bruce Bawer unpacking the essential argument Ibn Warraq makes in his latest book:

No, as Warraq demonstrates, there's no way around it: Islamic terrorism is jihad. And jihad is a founding Islamic concept. The apologists, of course, have their own line on this one, too: under true Islam, they say, the word jihad denotes an inner spiritual process, and has nothing to do with violence; when terrorists use the word to describe their depredations, they're distorting the word and the faith. Warraq, citing a wide range of scholarly sources – both Western and Islamic, some recent and some dating back to the eighth century – puts that fulsome falsehood firmly in its place: yes, jihad can be used to mean an inner struggle, but in the Koran and Hadith, and in key texts ever since, it always refers, above all, to the sacred obligation to advance Islam by means of armed action against unbelievers. 

Warraq also gives us a sweeping – but succinct – lesson in the history of jihad, beginning with Muhammed's own conquests, then moving on to ninth- through eleventh-century Baghdad, seventeenth-century Constantinople, eighteenth-century Saudi Arabia, and so on, right up to today's Muslim Brotherhood. Of course the apologists (Barack Obama among them) would have us believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and non-violent; Warraq establishes that throughout its existence, to the contrary, the Brotherhood has preached Holy War, period. Then there's the Nazis. Some apologists argue that Islam was just peachy until some of its leaders got chummy with Hitler and were infected by his love of violent world conquest and Jew-hatred; Warraq establishes that if Islamic higher-ups cozied up to the Nazis, it was because their totalitarian, exterminationist doctrines were already extremely similar. 

Warraq also introduces us to a 1979 book that has been called “the most influential treatise on why Jihad is necessary and how it must be fought.” Written by one Brigadier S. K. Malik, The Qur'anic Concept of War won the endorsement of no less a jihad enthusiast than the late Pakistani president Zia al-Haq. A brief sample: “The Quranic military strategy...enjoins us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost in order to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies....[The Koran] gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both the nation and the individual to be at war 'in toto,' that is, with all their spiritual moral and physical resources.” In addition to Malik's tome, Warraq reads (so we don't have to) several other vile works that have also inspired the suicide-vest set – a veritable library of holy hate. 

Warraq sums up his book's point as follows: “jihad is essential for the spread of Islam, and it is a duty incumbent on all Muslims until Islam covers the whole surface of the earth.” And what's essential for the West's survival is for us infidels to face up to the fact that nothing is more integral to Islam than that monstrous duty...