In this fascinating and thoughtful article, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour argues that both jihadis and foes of jihad are not actually dealing with Islam as such, but with a hollowed-out shell of the real thing. In a more sophisticated guise, this is a variant of the old “Islam has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists” canard, but Mansour is not arguing, at least not directly, that it is actually a religion of peace. He is instead maintaining that properly understood, “jihad was a juridically bounded, state-sanctioned act—not an individual moral impulse, not a populist uprising, and certainly not a private license for violence. It belonged to the sovereign authority of the legitimate Muslim polity.” This is a bit out of focus with his conclusion, in which he states that Islam must return “not to reclaim the world, but to reorder the soul.” But didn’t the sovereign authority of the legitimate Muslim polity try to “reclaim the world”?
Mansour’s analysis falters on the actual history of jihad, which even when state-sponsored and state-sanctioned, was a uniformly brutal, bloody, repressive, and unyielding. There was no reordering of the soul about it. Also, it is not quite accurate to say that “in classical Islamic thought, jihad was a juridically bounded, state-sanctioned act—not an individual moral impulse, not a populist uprising, and certainly not a private license for violence.”
A 14th-century Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that in 1991 was certified by Al-Azhar as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community” defines jihad as “war against non-Muslims,” noting that the word itself “is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.” It spells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific terms: “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by a Jordanian jurist that corresponds to Muhammad’s instructions to call the unbelievers to Islam before fighting them: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya) . . . while remaining in their ancestral religions.” But — and this is the critical point for Mansour — the manual also states that in the absence of a caliph, Muslims must still wage jihad. (see Reliance of the Traveller, p. xx; o9.0; o9.8; o9.6.)
In classic Islamic law, only the caliph is authorized to declare offensive jihad, but anyone can engage in defensive jihad, and indeed, every Muslim is legally obligated to do so, if a Muslim land is attacked. That’s why jihadis today like to publish long lists of grievances against the West — these grievances justify their defensive jihad.
In the final analysis, jihad is now and has always been for 1,400 years a bloody, repressive thing, not a vehicle for personal liberation or the ordering of the soul.
“Islam: The Bane of Our Civilization,” by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, April 25, 2025:
No other word in the modern world produces so much noise, yet so little meaning, as Islam.
The Arab weeps at the mosque for the “fall” of Islam—though he would not recognize it if it stood before him. The Westerner panics over the “rise” of Islam—though what rises is not a religion, but a people broken by the absence of one.
Islam today is not feared because it is strong, nor mourned because it is sacred. It is feared because it is present without form, and mourned because it is named without substance. The Islamist raises his fist in its name, while knowing nothing of its faith. The post-Christian European recoils from its sound, while having long abandoned his own….
In classical Islamic thought, jihad was a juridically bounded, state-sanctioned act—not an individual moral impulse, not a populist uprising, and certainly not a private license for violence. It belonged to the sovereign authority of the legitimate Muslim polity. It was the prerogative of rulers and jurists, conducted under the law of the land, according to conditions, procedures, and ethical constraints outlined by the fuqahā’ (jurists). The idea that any Muslim—or group of Muslims—could spontaneously declare and conduct jihad was alien to the tradition. Jihad was a matter of public law, not private zeal. It was the military doctrine of a particular kind of human society and embedded within a moral cosmology that knew the difference between war and rage.
Modern thought annihilated that distinction. The collapse of Muslim throught [sic], and with it the fragmentation of legal authority, created a vacuum into which ideological actors poured, turning jihad into a voluntary association of resentment—a private act of will disguised as public piety. The modern Islamist no longer waits for legitimate command; he commands himself. He is not subject to the moral order; he is its self-appointed executor. He does not inherit the tradition; he performs its corpse in the theater of revolution.
Jihad was extracted from its legal casing and refashioned as total war in the service of ideological salvation. The modern Islamist speaks of jihad not as an act of law, but as an act of being—a permanent revolution, a holy violence justified not by law but by historical necessity.
In this new paradigm, jihad is no longer a legal category. It is a metaphysical justification for insurgency. It no longer serves the polity; it expresses the pathology of a deracinated ego seeking sacred validation through violence. The Islamist invokes jihad the way modern revolutionaries invoke “resistance”: as a license for purification through destruction. As a matter of fact, there is no distinction between the two, as Hamas has shown us.
In the aggregate, these transformations constitute a conversion of the moral system. The language of Islam remains, but it now functions within a post-Enlightenment framework: man at the center, history as redemption, law as imposition, the state as savior, and justice as liberation from constraint.…
The Islamist must convert to Islam….
He must return not to the caliphate of his fantasies, but to the God who has never left.
He must forget the books he quoted to become “authentic.”
He must re-learn the Qur’an not as a manifesto, but as mercy.He must weep.
Then perhaps—perhaps—Islam can return. Not in triumph, but in truth.
Not to reclaim the world, but to reorder the soul….
SKA says
What “Islam” is he talking about?
I think all that he has proven is that Islam is full of contradictions and paradox.
As long as son’s notion of jihad is out there jihad violence will continue.
The recent horrific murders in Washington DC show that you don’t even have to have Muslims for jihad violence to occur.
alberto gorin says
unless the world see the light and it does t
somehistory says
So much balderdash on one short page.
And, a question: How can this idiot, lying fool, be labeled an intellectual?
SKA says
Technically he is not a “Muslim” because he renounced Islam upon being baptized into the Coptic Christian Church.
gravenimage says
SKA, there is a long article about him from just a couple of years ago–no mention of his having become Christian:
https://www.c4israel.org/news/a-remarkable-journey/
Citations, please,
SKA says
“Minority of One: The Unchaining of an Arab Mind,” Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, (2020) pp. 178-179 he describes how he sought out baptism with the help of a Coptic Christian friend: He went to a Coptic family in southern Egypt with a friend. They went to a Coptic church where he was baptized. Not long afterwards when Morsi had come to power mindful
Of the death penalty for apostasy he emigrated to the United States.
SKA says
Pp 178-179 of his memoire “Minority of One: The Unchaining of An Arab Mind,” he describes how he sought out and received baptism by a Coptic priest.
gravenimage says
Thank you, SKA. I have not read his book “Minority of One”. Still odd that I cannot find anything implying that he is now Christian. This is from a few years ago, and implies he is atheist or agnostic:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/coming-out-2/
SKA says
Dear GravenImage:
I read the linked post and it ended with “Today I say, I believe! I believe in God!”
I think his period of doubt is what Christian’s mystics refer to as “the dark night of the soul.”
Do read his book. I think he can no more be described as a “Muslim” anymore than could In Warraq.
Tanks care!
gravenimage says
Thank you, SKA–I had to click on a “continue” I did not see at first. It is still not entirely clear to me if he is Christian–but he does definately believe in God. Thanks.
somehistory says
Technically, that was not my question. I asked how can he be called an intellectual?
Doesn’t sound/read anything like a Christian, either.
Robert Spencer says
Whether or not he was baptized at some point, in the article upon which I was commenting and to which I linked, he says: “Then perhaps—perhaps—Islam can return. Not in triumph, but in truth. Not to reclaim the world, but to reorder the soul. We are not here to revive. We are here to believe.”
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to read that and conclude that he is not a Muslim.
somehistory says
Thank you, Mr. Spencer.!
SKA says
Dear Dr. Spencer: Given what he had written in his “Minority of One” I had high hopes that Mansour, might become an effective critic of Islam like Ibn Warraq, Ainaz Cyrus, or Anjuli Pandawar. But this more recent article by him seems to show either hopeless confusion or perhaps deliberate obfuscation. But here is a thought experiment: Imagine his writings (all of them including this latest one) and his actions tentatively leaving Islam, emigrating to the USA, teaching “enemy” soldiers Hebrew at the Monterey Institute, and his serving as a U.S. Army reservist were presented before a Shari’ah court along with a charge of apostasy how would they likely rule? Certainly his writing that a restoration of the caliphate is just a fantasy would not win him any favor. The “Islam” that he is writing about seems more likely like California-style New Age Sufism or Baha’iism than the real deal embraced by his brother and by the Brotherhood. But the reality of Islam, namely its unending jihad violence and its use of deception, really demands that he take a clear stand against it rather than indulging in this waffling casuistric fence-sitting.
somehistory says
Why imagine how a bunch of islime’s adherents sitting in *judgment* on him would decide?
They are all fools and liars. Who cares, when it’s pretty obvious he is not Christian.
No real Christian wants any part of satan’s religion to be here….in any form.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Mr. Spencer. I cannot see where he has actually rejectd Islam outright.
Bob Thebuilder says
Mansour may be obfuscating his belief to avoid stating a clear case for him to be murdered as an apostate.
James Lincoln says
somehistory,
He is a “special” kind of intellectual:
A muslim intellectual – with an advanced degree in taqiyya.
somehistory says
Thanks, James. They do have their own dictionary of terms….totally opposite from the rest of us.
James Lincoln says
Spot on, somehistory.
somehistory says
Thank you, James.
Winston 101 says
somehistory,
So true!
All the neck slashing-head decapitating-multiple child stabbing-gang raping, honor-killing
-car ramming etc. muslims don’t need all the intellectual understanding of their holy creed.
They know exactly what the Quran clearly says.
somehistory says
Thank you, Winston. mozlums have a mob mentality; what one does, they all do without reasoning on the right/wrong of it.
As you say, it’s in their book (of demon filth) and even if they can’t read, they follow.
Bob Thebuilder says
This sounds a lot like the tired argument repeated ad nauseum: “The emptiness we find in Islam is rooted in its current state of corruption. For true salvation, Islam must be returned to its roots by the actions of the faithful.”
gravenimage says
Muslim intellectual says Islam is not on the rise in the West, but rather the absence of Islam
…………………………………………….
Of course, this is claptrap–the West used to enjoy a large–virtually universal–absense of Islam. Now, not so much–it is all too present, and Jihad terror is just the most obvious form.
Then, Jihad is only state-run when a Muslim state is running it–still all too common these days. But if the state is either Infidel–as in the West–or deemed “insufficiently Islamic” by pious Muslims, then any believer can wage violent Jihad.
And the supposed caveat that this can only be defensive Jihad, note that being in the presense of those who refuse to convert to Islam or practice un-Islamic activities like freedom of speech are deemed to be “making war” on Islam.
As for “reordering the soult”, in practice this just means practicing more and more Islam–and yes, this does not just mean praying, but also things like raping chldren and murdering Infidels.
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour’s brother is an Imam who recruits Jihad terrorists. Now, of course I realize that people are not their families (I have a brother who spnt time in San Quentin prison). But I don’t know that Mansour has ever really condemned his brother’s actions–so this “moderate” may be more of a Taqiyya artist.
JOHN LLOYD SCHARF says
….“the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”
And what does th e tax pay for?
Finding Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who do not become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”
JOHN LLOYD SCHARF says
….“the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”
And what does th e tax pay for?
Finding Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who do not become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”
Hrb says
Total bull shit from a muslim. This will.probably not be accepted, but.I’m tired of Islam and.muslims. they will.lie.to infidels.and according to their “book” of rules that’s ok.
mgoldberg says
Hussain Mansour stated in his essay:
…Every Islamist manifesto begins with it. Every radical speech recites it.
We are on the brink.
This is the final hour.
Either Arabs/Islam returns, or history ends.
Sayyid Qutb, the architect of modern jihadist thought, opens Milestones not with patient theological reasoning but with the scream of terminal diagnosis: that the world is on the brink of disaster and that the Muslim world is sunk in a state of Jāhiliyya—a new, global ignorance even worse than pre-Islamic paganism—and that only total, violent rupture can redeem it. The modern Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist movements, the Islamist populist parties—all chant the same apocalyptic rhythm. Crisis is no longer a sign to reflect upon. It is the very proof of legitimacy: We are needed because the world is dying.
But this imagination is not Islamic. It is French. It is German. It is Marxist.
But this is actually a false ideation. Mohammed’s own creation of the utter failures of his pagan world, and the Jewish and Christian one are clear and resonate thruout the entirely of his time on the scene. Subjugation and Conquest of ‘all others’ immediately followed as the only possilbe outcome. This is what haunts all the muslims since- how to reclaim their self defining proof- mastery of this world as well as the next, as Mohammed proclaimed. I read this essay of Mansour’s but I seen little understanding of the fact that the terror of Islam was essentially due to the fact that there was no ten commandments of G-d almighty as given to the Jews with the Torah. There is only what Mohammed said was good was… the good and what Mohammed said was back… was bad. And that is a disaster in the making for all others- the ‘unbelievers’ the ‘Kuffar’, which is the dirtiest word, perhaps in the world.