The Legacy of Jihad
Encyclopedia
Andrew G. Bostom
Andrew G. Bostom is an American author and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School. He is an expert on connections between homocysteine and cardiovascular disease....
. The foreword was written by self-proclaimed ex-Muslim author and polemicist, "Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of a polemical author of Pakistani origin who is critical of Islam, and who founded the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society . He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qur'anic criticism...
".
The book provides a textual analysis of the concept and practice of jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
by examining Islamic theological and legal texts, eyewitness historical accounts of Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
and non-Muslim chroniclers, and essays by scholars analyzing jihad - "war against unbelievers in the path of Allah
Allah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
" - and the conditions imposed upon the non-Muslim peoples conquered by jihad campaigns.
From the book's foreword: "Dr. Bostom is the first scholar to have had translated from the Arabic the works of commentators on Sura IX.29 like al-Badawi
Al-Badawi
The surname al-Badawi can refer to:*Ahmad al-Badawi, a Muslim saint*Jamal al-Bedawi, also written Jamal al-Badawi, a contemporary Yemeni accused and convicted of planning the USS Cole Bombing*Jamal Badawi, Egyptian-born Canadian professor and author...
, al-Suyuti
Al-Suyuti
Jalaluddin Al-Suyuti also known as Ibn al-Kutub was an Egyptian writer, religious scholar, juristic expert and teacher whose works deal with a wide variety of subjects in Islamic theology. He was precocious and was already a teacher in 1462. In 1486, he was appointed to a chair in the mosque of...
, al-Zamakhshari
Al-Zamakhshari
Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn Umar al-Zamakhshari. Known widely as al-Zamakhshari . Also called Jar Allah was a medieval Muslim scholar of Chorasmian-Iranian origin, who subscribed to the Muʿtazilite theological doctrine, who was born in Khwarezmia, but lived most of his life in Bukhara, Samarkand, and...
, and al-Tabari. Other primary sources translated for the first time into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
include documents on Jihad such as the one written by al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
Abu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī , known as Algazel to the western medieval world, born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia was a Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic....
.... Similarly, Dr Bostom is the first scholar to have overseen the translations of important, and in some cases, neglected or forgotten secondary sources from French works on Jihad by Edmond Fagnan, Roger Arnaldez, Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, Clement Huart, Dimitar Angelov, and Maria Mathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru.
The Jerusalem Post calls The Legacy of Jihad "a breakthrough inasmuch as the enormous task of assembling together all the major sources which govern the holy war
Religious war
A religious war; Latin: bellum sacrum; is a war caused by, or justified by, religious differences. It can involve one state with an established religion against another state with a different religion or a different sect within the same religion, or a religiously motivated group attempting to...
in Islam had never been attempted before," Matt Carr writing in Race & Class
Race & Class
Race & Class is a peer-reviewed academic journal on contemporary racism and imperialism. It is published quarterly by SAGE Publications on behalf of the Institute of Race Relations.- History :...
, described Bostom as a "protégé" of Bat Ye’or, and described Bostom's perspective of Islam as reducing to the acronym "‘MPED’ – massacre, pillage, enslavement and deportation". Carr further likens The Legacy of Jihad with another book by "former supporter of the Bosnian Serbs" Serge Trifkovic—Sword of the Prophet: the politically incorrect guide to Islam.
Interviews
Sources
- Bostom, Andrew, ed. (2005). The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-59102-307-6.
- http://www.andrewbostom.org/
- http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4616