The Key to Understanding the Koran: Sura 9 and Abrogation

Hat tip Answering Islam


One of the observations you constantly hear about the Koran is that there are peaceful verses and violent verses. American imams and other Muslim leaders are fond of quoting the ones that are peaceful in nature, such as, "Let there be no compulsion in religion". Critics of Islam, on the other hand, quote the more violent or intolerant ones. It's all very confusing, right?

Not really.

Muslims believe that the Koran represents the revelations from God passed to the Prophet Mohammad by the Archangel Gabriel over the course of several years in Mohammad's life. Critics would maintain that the Koran is the work of Mohammad himself. In his early prophesy in Mecca, Mohammad tried to spread the word peacefully, but was rebuffed by those in power and driven to Medina with his followers. Subsequently, Mohammad turned to spreading the religion through the sword. That is when the wording in the Koran becomes more violent and intolerant of those who didn't accept Islam.

It is important to understand that the Koran is not written chronologically. It is in order of the longest chapters-or suras- to the shortest. In order to fully follow the thinking over the years that the Koran was recorded by Mohammad, who, being illiterate, dictated the verses to others, it is necessary to obtain a Koran that is ordered chronologically.

It is also important to note that over the centuries, the leading Islamic scholars and schools of Islam have come up with an answer to the contradictions that are found in the Koran. It is the principle of abrogation. That means that if there is a conflict between two different verses, then that which was recorded later abrogates that which was recorded earlier.

Sura 9 is the final sura. Here is the full text, which I have chosen from an Islamic source (Masjid Tucson-Tucson Mosque). Pay particular attention to verse 5. Naturally, since the Koran was written in Arabic, there are many translations, and there is a lot of argument over these translations and the slant they may give.

Here is an analysis of Sura 9 by Answering Islam.

I think this gives true context to the question of whether all the horrors we are witnessing, most recently the beheading of James Foley, represents true Islam or whether the present-day terrorists are really radical rogues, somewhat like James Jones or David Koresh were to Christianity. In my view, they are what we called them about 30 years ago-fundamentalists. The more you read the Koran, the Hadith, and the life of the Prophet Mohammad, it becomes difficult to view the horrors happening today (and over the previous 14 centuries) and still conclude  that Islam is a religion of peace as its Western defenders maintain. That does not mean that most Muslims are terrorists-they are not. By the same token, most Germans were not committing the crimes of the Nazis. The Germans, for the most part, were silent, however, for a variety of reasons. That made them irrelevant to the discussion of what to do about Nazism. Indeed, we defeated Nazism by killing Nazis, defeating them in war, and bringing the surviving criminals to trial. In the process, many German civilians died in our bombing raids-as did many Japanese civilians.

What this all means is that we have to start recognizing the enemy and the threat we are facing without worrying about whose feelings we are offending. True, our political leaders-at least our presidents and prime ministers- probably can't say certain things lest the entire Islamic world rise up against us. They don't have to lie to us, however or mislead us. The rest of us, however, cannot allow ourselves to be muzzled by political correctness or fears of being called "Islamophobes".

As I have said before, innocent Muslims must not be harmed or have their own rights violated. But given the world situation, they cannot expect not to be viewed with a certain degree of suspicion. It is only natural. Now with the new threat from ISIS, their situation has become worse.

As for sura 9, are these really the words of God? To many, they are the final will and testament of Mohammad.