Koranic verses on the duty to kill

We've learned a lot since Antony Thomas's drama-documentary Death of a Princess set Saudi Arabian blood boiling in 1980, but the director's latest television film The Qur'an (for Channel 4) will certainly cause anger among many Muslims when it is screened on Monday.

Only a fool supposes that what you see on television is what you get. The scene that amused me was shot at the lovely, ancient convent of Saydnaya in Syria. Over a background of chanting, the narrator says in a hushed tone:

"Anyone familiar with the Koran will recognise words and phrases in the sung liturgy." It was just the film-makers' luck at that moment that the chant was "Kyrie eleison" - not Arabic or Syriac, but a litany in Greek familiar to a billion Catholics from its regular use at Mass.

The film The Qur'an asks a serious question, though, which is: if Muslims believe that the Koran is the timeless and unchanging word of God, how come Muslims behave in such diverse ways?

We see Sufi men and women sitting together for prayer, others whirling in dance; Shia formally beating themselves and seeking the intercessory prayers of the eighth Imam, Ali Reza; a German scholar calling for a "new interpretation and reading of the Koran"; a poor little girl being genitally mutilated; Israelis being blown up. There's something here to offend everyone.

After an hour or so, the viewer might wonder whether the film's title should have been Muslims rather than The Qur'an. Yet the role of the Koran may be a matter of life and death to non-Muslim Westerners.

An alert viewer will hear the Cambridge academic Timothy Winter referring to the Koran as "the uncreated word of God". But the non-stop images of the television screen tend to distract attention from an important pointer like this.

The fact is that Muslims settled the question of whether the Koran was created or not in the 9th century AD. In Baghdad, the pious Ibn Hanbal held out against the Caliph and against a temporarily triumphant group of speculative scholars who insisted that the Koran was created.

After a period of persecution, the teaching of Ibn Hanbal was confirmed: the Koran is indeed the uncreated word of God. Ibn Hanbal became the founder of a school of Islamic law that informs the attitude of the Wahhabi authorities in Saudi Arabia today.

The Qur'an makes much of the difficulty for Western liberals of verses in the Koran on the treatment of women. Since the film was made, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, has said that he does not think it "very radical to advocate embracing sharia, in the context of family disputes, for example".

I wonder how, in the context of a dispute between husband and wife, he'd view - as an immmovable element in sharia - verse 4:34 of the Koran: "Admonish those women whose rebelliousness you fear, shun them in their resting-places and hit them. If they obey you, do not seek a further way against them." Seems straightforward.

In any case, whatever one's personal understanding of the Arabic text of the Koran, the reality is that obligations on Muslims are decided by religious judges steeped in the hadith (the traditions about Mohammed's teaching and practice) and in legal commentaries.

I think this is where the television programme goes most astray. It argues that Iranian Shia "have one thing in common with the Saudis" and that is "a priestly caste, contrary to the spirit of the Koran".

Goodness knows where this notion comes from. There are no priests in Islam. Even if "clerics" are meant, the argument is upside down. It suggests that individual, unmediated interpretation of the Koran is good and clerical teaching about the Koran is bad.

This doesn't fit Islamic practice. Islam has no central authority but it has the ulama, the scholars of Koranic law. It would be a foolish Muslim who contradicted their judgments.

Yet trouble, from the point of view of the West, comes precisely when violent sectarian Islamists set themselves up without expertise as interpreters of Koranic verses. This one (9:5), has proved particularly dangerous: "Kill the polytheists wherever you find them, and take them and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush."

To Islamist extremists, Christians, because they associate creatures (such as Jesus) with God, count as polytheists.

Source: Telegraph