Here's my four-sentence review of Dr. Tawfik Hamid's new book Inside “Jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify Us; How to Defeat It.” Buy this book. Read this book. Refer to this book. Share this book.
I've read and reviewed counter-jihad classics by bestselling experts including Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Mosab Hassan Yousef, and Phyllis Chesler. I think highly of each. This is how good Inside Jihad is. If someone said to me, "I want to read just one book about jihad." I'd give that reader Dr. Hamid's book.
Inside Jihad is brief. Hamid's style is direct and fast-paced. He says what he needs to say without sensationalism, emotionality, literary ambition, or apologies. He pulls no punches.
Tawfik Hamid was born and raised in Egypt, the most populous Middle Eastern country. He was raised Muslim. Hamid's mother was a teacher; his father, a surgeon and a private atheist who taught him to respect Christians and Jews. The family observed the Ramadan fast but had little other religious observance. Arabic is his first language and he has studied the Koran in the original Arabic. From 1979-82, he was a member of Jamaa Islamiya, a terrorist group. He met Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda.
Hamid grew up under Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab socialism. Nasser wanted to modernize Egypt. He suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, executed one of its leaders, Sayyid Qutb, and curtailed travel to and from Saudi Arabia, fearing Wahhabi influence.
The 1973 Oil Embargo sparked a revival of Islam. Muslims concluded that Allah rewarded Saudi Arabia for the Saudis' strict religious observance. Allah's reward was the Saudi ability to humble the United States.
Islamization in Egypt "started mildly enough." Hamid warns the reader to pay careful attention to slow Islamization. He says that the same methods that were used in Egypt are now being used in the West. "The more we surrender" he warns "the more Islamists will demand."
The camel's nose under the tent was something few could object to: individual prayer. Previously, if an employee interrupted his workday to perform one of Islam's mandated five daily prayers, it was perceived as bizarre. Now it was admirable.
Another straw in the wind: the hijab. In school photos taken before the 1970s, many Egyptian girls are without hijab. After America's humbling in the oil shock, more and more girls began to wear hijab. Men stopped wearing gold wedding bands; gold was deemed "un Islamic" for men. More toxic Islamizations, including Jew-hatred, followed. Imams preached that Jews are monkeys and pigs and that they poisoned Mohammed.
Islamization on campus also began in an innocuous way: Islamists used the moments before class began to talk about Islam. One day, the Christian professor of one class said that it was time for discussion of Islam to stop and the academic hour to begin. The Islamists called the professor an infidel and broke his arm. "The Christian students were terrified," Hamid reports.
"I remember the first time I looked at a Christian with disdain," Hamid reminisces. He was reading a required textbook. The book told him that Mohammed said, "I have been instructed by Allah to declare war and fight all mankind until they say 'No God except Allah and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah.'" Hamid, who had previously had Christian friends, turned to a Christian student and said, "If we applied Islam correctly, we should be doing this to you."
Jamaa Islamiya actively recruited medical students like Hamid. It took six months for Hamid to become "sufficiently indoctrinated."
Hamid details several lures that recruiters used to bring young people into their movement:
fear of hell,
a demonization of critical thinking,
a sense of superiority over non-Muslims,
suppression of any emotional life outside of Islamism,
suppression of sexual expression,
a promise of sex for jihadis,
and upholding of Mohammed as the perfect example, beyond criticism.
Author Don Richardson estimates that one in eight verses in the Koran mentions Hell. By contrast, the Old Testament mentions Hell once in every 774 verses, and it is never described as graphically as it is described in the Koran. Hamid quotes Islamists using many Koranic passages that vividly describe Hell to terrorize potential members: "garments of fire shall be cut out for them … burning water will be poured over their heads causing all that is within their bodies as well as the skins to melt away … they shall be held by iron grips; and every time they try in their anguish to come out of it, they shall be returned and told 'Taste suffering through fire to the full!'" Infidels in Hell will eat thorns and drink scalding water as if they were "female camels raging with thirst and disease." Their intestines will be cut to pieces.
Another method used to Islamize recruits was "al-fikr kufr" – "one becomes an infidel by thinking critically."
Recruiters flattered recruits, telling them that they were superior to non-Muslims. "Take not Jews and Christians for friends," they quoted from Koran 5:51. Jews are monkeys and pigs: Koran 5:60. Those who worship Jesus are infidels: Koran 5:17. Do not offer the greeting "As-salamu alaykum," or "peace be with you," to Christians or Jews; whenever you meet Christians or Jews in a road, force them to its narrowest alley: Sahih Muslim. Muslims who did not carry out jihad were also inferior.
Some wonder how women could be recruited into a movement that keeps them in an inferior position in relation to men. Hamid clarifies: Muslimahs were told that they would be superior – to infidel women.
Hamid expounds uncompromisingly on the power and importance of hijab. He insists that when prominent Westerners such as Nancy Pelosi and Laura Bush travel to Muslim countries and wear hijab, they are making a grave error. Hijab is not "a neutral, or merely traditional, fashion statement." Hijab's purpose "is not modesty or to encourage observers to focus on a Muslim woman's personality." Hijab exists to proclaim "deep Islamic doctrinal connections to slavery and discrimination. Western women who cover themselves are unwittingly endorsing an inhumane system." Hijab's purpose, Hamid argues persuasively, is to create a society where superior free Muslimahs are visually distinct from inferior infidel slave women.
Islamists "despise women who did not wear hijab. We considered them vain … we believed they would burn in Hell." Further, "the hijab serves to differentiate between slave girls and women who are considered free … it creates a feeling of superiority among the women who wear it." The Koran promises that women who wear hijab will not be "molested." Women without hijab are slaves and can be raped without guilt.
Australia's foremost Muslim cleric restated this Islamist position in 2006. In Sydney, fourteen Muslim men gang-raped non-Muslim women. Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali said that it was the victims' fault. "If you take out uncovered meat" and cats eat it, the cats are not to blame. Women possess "igraa," "the weapon of enticement."
Hamid emphasizes that hijab is both vanguard and emblem of Islamic supremacy. During their 1953 meeting, the first thing Sayyid Qutb asked Nasser to do was to force women to wear hijab. A You Tube video documents this conversation. In the video, Nasser is speaking to a large assembly. When he repeats Qutb's demand, the crowd laughs. One wag shouts out, "Let him wear it!" Nasser points out that Qutb's own daughter does not wear hijab. The crowd laughs even more, and bursts into applause. This video is at least fifty years old. It is a reminder that fifty years ago, countries like Egypt and Iran were modernizing. Women, in cities at least, could be seen in public in miniskirts and without hijab.
Hamid reports that the Muslim Brotherhood does not announce its end goal openly. "They pose as peacemakers … The Muslim Brotherhood will accept circumstances that offend their beliefs – temporarily – if doing so will advance their goals." They will – temporarily – permit western dress for women and alcohol consumption. This is all part of taqiyya. The Muslim Brotherhood has a four stage plan: at first, merely preach. Then, move on to participation in public life. Next, consolidate power "while faking legitimacy." Finally, enforce sharia.
A few turning points turned Hamid away from Islamism, for example, when a fellow terror recruit described his plot to bury alive an Egyptian police officer.
Dr. Hamid remains a Muslim. He loves his religion, and he wants to save it. By writing this book and speaking out as he has, he is risking his life to do so. The final portion of the book offers his complete re-interpretation of Islam and the Koran, and his plan for defeating extremism.
Muslims like Dr. Tawfik Hamid inspire my hope and admiration. In his excellent book, one sentence struck me as most poignant and worth lengthy pondering. "I often wonder how al-Zawahiri would have turned out if his childhood religious education had promoted love instead of hate and violence." Dr. Hamid is doing his part to re-interpret his beloved natal faith, Islam, in a peaceful and loving way. One can only wish him good fortune in that herculean effort.
