Andrews University History Essay

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Read the “The Qur’an: Call for Jihad” found on the course homepage. There are 15 points possible. Have the Muslims been true to the teachings of the Qur’an on the subject of jihad? Would you consider Christianity a violent religion? Is there a similar teaching to jihad in Christianity? Is it possible to argue Islam is a religion of peace having read the words of the Prophet Muhammad? Read the “A Guide to Buying Female Slaves” found on the course homepage. There are 15 points possible. Write a thoughtful response paragraph on the slave-buying guide. Remember, this document was written by a Christian living in an Islamic country. Online Activities: Read the article “Why Do They Hate US?” by Mona Eltahawy.Answer the following questions using complete sentences. There are 15 points possible. This article is the view of just one woman. Do you think it is a fair assessment of the state of women in the Middle East? Use two examples from the article to illustrate your point. Do you think the situations Eltahawy describes have more to do with Islam or Arab culture? Is there a difference? In order to end the mistreatment of women in the Middle East Eltahawy says what must be done? Do you agree? Do you have anything to add to her remedy?
Read the “The Qur’an: Call for Jihad” found on the course
homepage. There are 15 points
possible.
1.
Have
the Muslims been true to the teachings of the Qur’an on the subject of jihad?
2.
Would you
consider Christianity a violent religion?
3.
Is
there a similar teaching to jihad in Christianity?
4.
Is it possible to argue Islam is a religion of
peace having read the words of the
Prophet Muhammad?

Read the “A Guide to Buying Female Slaves” found on the
course homepage. There are 15 points
possible.

1.
Write a thoughtful response paragraph on the
slave-buying guide. Remember, this document was written by a Christian living
in an Islamic country.

Online Activities:
Read the article “Why Do They Hate US?” by Mona
Eltahawy.
Answer the following
questions using complete sentences.
There are 15 points possible.
1.
This article is the
view of just one woman. Do you think it is a fair assessment of the state of
women in the Middle East? Use two examples from the article to illustrate your
point.
2.
Do you think the situations Eltahawy describes
have more to do with Islam or Arab culture? Is there a difference?
3.
In order to end the mistreatment of women in
the Middle East Eltahawy says what must be done? Do you agree? Do you have
anything to add to her remedy?

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Lesson 9:
Short Video Lecture Note Taking: There are 30 points possible. Be as detailed as possible.
Video 1: “Arab Conquests”
Primary Source Readings:
Read the “‘Frank-land’: An Islamic View of the West” found on the course homepage.
There are 15 points possible.
1. How does this document suggest the kinds of contact most Easterners encountered with
Westerners?
There appear to be honorable encounters, and they appear to be respected for their power.
However, the Islamic viewpoint on their hygiene is disgusting. They don’t think they’re wellgroomed and think it’s strange that they shave their beards. Their stubble, according to AlQazwini, is “revolting.”
2. How might differences in geography account for some cultural differences mentioned by
Al-Qazwini?
When it comes to wearing their clothes all the time, having access to and money for
resources is required to have nicer clothes. Furthermore, different climates necessitate different
attire. Facial hair can be bothersome in some climates. Bathing would have been more difficult
without running water because you would have had to find a body of water to bathe in.
Read the “The Qur’an: Call for Jihad” found on the course homepage. There are 15 points
possible.
1.
Have the Muslims been true to the teachings of the Qur’an on the subject of jihad?
2. Would you consider Christianity a violent religion?
3.
Is there a similar teaching to jihad in Christianity?
4. Is it possible to argue Islam is a religion of peace having read the
Muhammad?
words of the Prophet
Read the “A Guide to Buying Female Slaves” found on the course homepage. There are 15
points possible.
1. Write a thoughtful response paragraph on the slave-buying guide. Remember, this
document was written by a Christian living in an Islamic country.
Online Activities:
Read the article “Why Do They Hate US?” by Mona Eltahawy. Answer the following
questions using complete sentences. There are 15 points possible.
1. This article is the view of just one woman. Do you think it is a fair assessment of the state of
women in the Middle East? Use two examples from the article to illustrate your point.
2.
Do you think the situations Eltahawy describes have more to do with Islam or Arab culture?
Is there a difference?
3.
In order to end the mistreatment of women in the Middle East Eltahawy says what must be
done? Do you agree? Do you have anything to add to her remedy?
2/21/2014
Why Do They Hate Us?
FEATURE
Why Do They Hate
Us?
The real war on women is in the Middle East.
BY MON A ELT AH AWY
I
n “Distant View of a Minaret,” the late and much-neglected Egyptian
writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex
with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a
spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her
husband’s repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, “as
though purposely to deprive her.” Just as her husband denies her an orgasm,
the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she
loses herself in prayer — so much more satisfying that she can’t wait until the
next prayer — and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts
her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap.
Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices
he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. “She returned to the
living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how
calm she was,” Rifaat writes.
In a crisp three-and-a-half pages, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and
religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the
pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it.
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They don’t hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American
cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman
so powerfully says.
Yes: They hate us. It must be said.
Some may ask why I’m bringing this up now, at a time when the region has
risen up, fueled not by the usual hatred of America and Israel but by a
common demand for freedom. After all, shouldn’t everyone get basic rights
first, before women demand special treatment? And what does gender, or for
that matter, sex, have to do with the Arab Spring? But I’m not talking about sex
hidden away in dark corners and closed bedrooms. An entire political and
economic system — one that treats half of humanity like animals — must be
destroyed along with the other more obvious tyrannies choking off the region
from its future. Until the rage shifts from the oppressors in our presidential
palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our homes, our revolution has
not even begun.
So: Yes, women all over the world have problems; yes, the United States has
yet to elect a female president; and yes, women continue to be objectified in
many “Western” countries (I live in one of them). That’s where the
conversation usually ends when you try to discuss why Arab societies hate
women.
But let’s put aside what the United States does or doesn’t do to women. Name
me an Arab country, and I’ll recite a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of
culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they
blaspheme or offend. When more than 90 percent of ever-married women in
Egypt — including my mother and all but one of her six sisters — have had their
genitals cut in the name of modesty, then surely we must all blaspheme. When
Egyptian women are subjected to humiliating “virginity tests” merely for
speaking out, it’s no time for silence. When an article in the Egyptian criminal
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code says that if a woman has been beaten by her husband “with good
intentions” no punitive damages can be obtained, then to hell with political
correctness. And what, pray tell, are “good intentions”? They are legally
deemed to include any beating that is “not severe” or “directed at the face.”
What all this means is that when it comes to the status of women in the Middle
East, it’s not better than you think. It’s much, much worse. Even after these
“revolutions,” all is more or less considered well with the world as long as
women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of
getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and
unable to marry without a male guardian’s blessing — or divorce either.
Not a single Arab country ranks in the top 100 in the World Economic Forum’s
Global Gender Gap Report, putting the region as a whole solidly at the planet’s
rock bottom. Poor or rich, we all hate our women. Neighbors Saudi Arabia and
Yemen, for instance, might be eons apart when it comes to GDP, but only four
places separate them on the index, with the kingdom at 131 and Yemen coming
in at 135 out of 135 countries. Morocco, often touted for its “progressive” family
law (a 2005 report by Western “experts” called it “an example for Muslim
countries aiming to integrate into modern society”), ranks 129; according to
Morocco’s Ministry of Justice, 41,098 girls under age 18 were married there in
2010.
It’s easy to see why the lowest-ranked country is Yemen, where 55 percent of
women are illiterate, 79 percent do not participate in the labor force, and just
one woman serves in the 301-person parliament. Horrific news reports about
12-year-old girls dying in childbirth do little to stem the tide of child marriage
there. Instead, demonstrations in support of child marriage outstrip those
against it, fueled by clerical declarations that opponents of state-sanctioned
pedophilia are apostates because the Prophet Mohammed, according to them,
married his second wife, Aisha, when she was a child.
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But at least Yemeni women can drive. It surely hasn’t ended their litany of
problems, but it symbolizes freedom — and nowhere does such symbolism
resonate more than in Saudi Arabia, where child marriage is also practiced and
women are perpetually minors regardless of their age or education. Saudi
women far outnumber their male counterparts on university campuses but are
reduced to watching men far less qualified control every aspect of their lives.
Yes, Saudi Arabia, the country where a gang-rape survivor was sentenced to
jail for agreeing to get into a car with an unrelated male and needed a royal
pardon; Saudi Arabia, where a woman who broke the ban on driving was
sentenced to 10 lashes and again needed a royal pardon; Saudi Arabia, where
women still can’t vote or run in elections, yet it’s considered “progress” that a
royal decree promised to enfranchise them for almost completely symbolic
local elections in — wait for it — 2015. So bad is it for women in Saudi Arabia
that those tiny paternalistic pats on their backs are greeted with delight as the
monarch behind them, King Abdullah, is hailed as a “reformer” — even by
those who ought to know better, such as Newsweek, which in 2010 named the
king one of the top 11 most respected world leaders. You want to know how
bad it is? The “reformer’s” answer to the revolutions popping up across the
region was to numb his people with still more government handouts -especially for the Salafi zealots from whom the Saudi royal family inhales
legitimacy. King Abdullah is 87. Just wait until you see the next in line, Prince
Nayef, a man straight out of the Middle Ages. His misogyny and zealotry make
King Abdullah look like Susan B. Anthony.
SO WHY DO THEY HATE US? Sex, or more precisely hymens, explains much.
“Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,” U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently. “But they all seem to. It doesn’t
matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to
control women.” (And yet Clinton represents an administration that openly
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supports many of those misogynistic despots.) Attempts to control by such
regimes often stem from the suspicion that without it, a woman is just a few
degrees short of sexual insatiability. Observe Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the popular
cleric and longtime conservative TV host on Al Jazeera who developed a
stunning penchant for the Arab Spring revolutions — once they were under
way, that is — undoubtedly understanding that they would eliminate the
tyrants who long tormented and oppressed both him and the Muslim
Brotherhood movement from which he springs.
I could find you a host of crackpots sounding off on Woman the Insatiable
Temptress, but I’m staying mainstream with Qaradawi, who commands a huge
audience on and off the satellite channels. Although he says female genital
mutilation (which he calls “circumcision,” a common euphemism that tries to
put the practice on a par with male circumcision) is not “obligatory,” you will
also find this priceless observation in one of his books: “I personally support
this under the current circumstances in the modern world. Anyone who
thinks that circumcision is the best way to protect his daughters should do it,”
he wrote, adding, “The moderate opinion is in favor of practicing circumcision
to reduce temptation.” So even among “moderates,” girls’ genitals are cut to
ensure their desire is nipped in the bud — pun fully intended. Qaradawi has
since issued a fatwa against female genital mutilation, but it comes as no
surprise that when Egypt banned the practice in 2008, some Muslim
Brotherhood legislators opposed the law. And some still do — including a
prominent female parliamentarian, Azza al-Garf.
Yet it’s the men who can’t control themselves on the streets, where from
Morocco to Yemen, sexual harassment is endemic and it’s for the men’s sake
that so many women are encouraged to cover up. Cairo has a women-only
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subway car to protect us from wandering hands and worse; countless Saudi
malls are for families only, barring single men from entry unless they produce
a requisite female to accompany them.
We often hear how the Middle East’s failing economies have left many men
unable to marry, and some even use that to explain rising levels of sexual
harassment on the streets. In a 2008 survey by the Egyptian Center for
Women’s Rights, more than 80 percent of Egyptian women said they’d
experienced sexual harassment and more than 60 percent of men admitted to
harassing women. Yet we never hear how a later marriage age affects women.
Do women have sex drives or not? Apparently, the Arab jury is still out on the
basics of human biology.
Enter that call to prayer and the sublimation through religion that Rifaat so
brilliantly introduces in her story. Just as regime-appointed clerics lull the
poor across the region with promises of justice — and nubile virgins — in the
next world rather than a reckoning with the corruption and nepotism of the
dictator in this life, so women are silenced by a deadly combination of men
who hate them while also claiming to have God firmly on their side.
I turn again to Saudi Arabia, and not just because when I encountered the
country at age 15 I was traumatized into feminism — there’s no other way to
describe it — but because the kingdom is unabashed in its worship of a
misogynistic God and never suffers any consequences for it, thanks to its
double-whammy advantage of having oil and being home to Islam’s two
holiest places, Mecca and Medina.
Then — the 1980s and 1990s — as now, clerics on Saudi TV were obsessed with
women and their orifices, especially what came out of them. I’ll never forget
hearing that if a baby boy urinated on you, you could go ahead and pray in the
same clothes, yet if a baby girl peed on you, you had to change. What on Earth
in the girl’s urine made you impure? I wondered.
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Hatred of women.
How much does Saudi Arabia hate women? So much so that 15 girls died in a
school fire in Mecca in 2002, after “morality police” barred them from fleeing
the burning building — and kept firefighters from rescuing them — because the
girls were not wearing headscarves and cloaks required in public. And nothing
happened. No one was put on trial. Parents were silenced. The only
concession to the horror was that girls’ education was quietly taken away by
then-Crown Prince Abdullah from the Salafi zealots, who have nonetheless
managed to retain their vise-like grip on the kingdom’s education system writ
large.
This, however, is no mere Saudi phenomenon, no hateful curiosity in the rich,
isolated desert. The Islamist hatred of women burns brightly across the region
— now more than ever.
In Kuwait, where for years Islamists fought women’s enfranchisement, they
hounded the four women who finally made it into parliament, demanding that
the two who didn’t cover their hair wear hijabs. When the Kuwaiti parliament
was dissolved this past December, an Islamist parliamentarian demanded the
new house — devoid of a single female legislator — discuss his proposed
“decent attire” law.
In Tunisia, long considered the closest thing to a beacon of tolerance in the
region, women took a deep breath last fall after the Islamist Ennahda party
won the largest share of votes in the country’s Constituent Assembly. Party
leaders vowed to respect Tunisia’s 1956 Personal Status Code, which declared
“the principle of equality between men and women” as citizens and banned
polygamy. But female university professors and students have complained
since then of assaults and intimidation by Islamists for not wearing hijabs,
while many women’s rights activists wonder how talk of Islamic law will affect
the actual law they will live under in post-revolution Tunisia.
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In Libya, the first thing the head of the interim government, Mustafa Abdel
Jalil, promised to do was to lift the late Libyan tyrant’s restrictions on
polygamy. Lest you think of Muammar al-Qaddafi as a feminist of any kind,
remember that under his rule girls and women who survived sexual assaults
or were suspected of “moral crimes” were dumped into “social rehabilitation
centers,” effective prisons from which they could not leave unless a man
agreed to marry them or their families took them back.
Then there’s Egypt, where less than a month after President Hosni Mubarak
stepped down, the military junta that replaced him, ostensibly to “protect the
revolution,” inadvertently reminded us of the two revolutions we women
need. After it cleared Tahrir Square of protesters, the military detained dozens
of male and female activists. Tyrants oppress, beat, and torture all. We know.
But these officers reserved “virginity tests” for female activists: rape disguised
as a medical doctor inserting his fingers into their vaginal opening in search of
hymens. (The doctor was sued and eventually acquitted in March.)
What hope can there be for women in the new Egyptian parliament,
dominated as it is by men stuck in the seventh century? A quarter of those
parliamentary seats are now held by Salafis, who believe that mimicking the
original ways of the Prophet Mohammed is an appropriate prescription for
modern life. Last fall, when fielding female candidates, Egypt’s Salafi Nour
Party ran a flower in place of each woman’s face. Women are not to be seen or
heard — even their voices are a temptation — so there they are in the Egyptian
parliament, covered from head to toe in black and never uttering a word.
And we’re in the middle of a revolution in Egypt! It’s a revolution in which
women have died, been beaten, shot at, and sexually assaulted fighting
alongside men to rid our country of that uppercase Patriarch — Mubarak — yet
so many lowercase patriarchs still oppress us. The Muslim Brotherhood, with
almost half the total seats in our new revolutionary parliament, does not
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believe women (or Christians for that matter) can be president. The woman
who heads the “women’s committee” of the Brotherhood’s political party said
recently that women should not march or protest because it’s more “dignified”
to let their husbands and brothers demonstrate for them.
The hatred of women goes deep in Egyptian society. Those of us who have
marched and protested have had to navigate a minefield of sexual assaults by
both the regime and its lackeys, and, sadly, at times by our fellow
revolutionaries. On the November day I was sexually assaulted on Mohamed
Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square, by at least four Egyptian riot police, I was
first groped by a man in the square itself. While we are eager to expose assaults
by the regime, when we’re violated by our fellow civilians we immediately
assume they’re agents of the regime or thugs because we don’t want to taint
the revolution.
SO WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
First we stop pretending. Call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural
relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and
uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips. You — the
outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z
to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman.
The Arab uprisings may have been sparked by an Arab man — Mohamed
Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in desperation -but they will be finished by Arab women.
Amina Filali — the 16-year-old Moroccan girl who drank poison after she was
forced to marry, and beaten by, her rapist — is our Bouazizi. Salwa el-Husseini,
the first Egyptian woman to speak out against the “virginity tests”; Samira
Ibrahim, the first one to sue; and Rasha Abdel Rahman, who testified
alongside her — they are our Bouazizis. We must not wait for them to die to
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become so. Manal al-Sharif, who spent nine days in jail for breaking her
country’s ban on women driving, is Saudi Arabia’s Bouazizi. She is a onewoman revolutionary force who pushes against an ocean of misogyny.
Our political revolutions will not succeed unless they are accompanied by
revolutions of thought — social, sexual, and cultural revolutions that topple
the Mubaraks in our minds as well as our bedrooms.
“Do you know why they subjected us to virginity tests?” Ibrahim asked me
soon after we’d spent hours marching together to mark International Women’s
Day in Cairo on March 8. “They want to silence us; they want to chase women
back home. But we’re not going anywhere.”
We are more than our headscarves and our hymens. Listen to those of us
fighting. Amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye. There
was a time when being an Islamist was the most vulnerable political position in
Egypt and Tunisia. Understand that now it very well might be Woman. As it
always has been.
Reuters
Model photos by Aaron Goodman for FP
Mohammed Hossam/AFP/Getty Images
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“A Guide to Buying Female Slaves”
Ibn Butlan (Christian physician living in Baghad)
11th Century
The Turkish women combine beauty and whiteness and grace. Their faces tend to look
sullen, but their eyes, though small, are sweet. They have a smooth brownness and their
statures is between medium and short. There are very few tall ones among them. The
beautiful ones are extremely beautiful and the ugly ones exceptional. They are treasure
houses for children, gold mines for generation. It very rarely happens that their children
are ugly or badly formed. They are clean and refined….Bad breath is hardly ever found
among them, nor any with large buttocks, but they have some nasty characteristics and
are of little loyalty.
The women of Daylam (North Iran) are both outwardly and inherently beautiful but they
have the worst characters of all and the coarsest natures. They can endure hardship like
the women of Tabaristan in every respect.
The women of the Alans (Northern Caucasus) are reddish-white and well-fleshed. The
cold humor predominates in their temperaments. They are better suited for service than
for pleasure since they have good characters in that they are trustworthy and honest and
are both reliant and compliant. Also, they are far from licentious.
The Greek women are blond, with straight hair and blue eyes. As slaves they are obedient,
adaptable, serviceable, well-meaning, loyal, trustworthy, and reliable. They are good as
treasurers because they are meticulous and not very generous. Sometimes they are skilled
in some fine handicraft.
The Armenians would be beautiful were it not for their peculiarly ugly feet, though they
are well built, energetic and strong. Chastity is rare or absent among them and thievery
widespread. Avarice is very rare among them, but they are coarse in nature and speech.
Cleanliness is not in their language. They are slaves for hard work and service….This
race is untrustworthy even when they are contented, not to speak of when they are angry.
Their women are useless for pleasure. In fine, the Armenians are the worst of the whites
as the Zanj are the worst of the blacks. And how much do they resemble one another in
the strength of their bodies, their great wickedness, and their coarse natures!
The Qur’an:
Call for Jihad
(c. 650)
The Prophet Mohammad
Introduction
Exiled from their home city of Mecca, Mohammed and the first Muslims found sanctuary in Medina in 622.
Determined to get revenge, Mohammed and his supporters led a series of raids to disrupt caravan trade to Mecca.
These raids gradually escalated into full-scale warfare between the two cities that ended in Muslim conquest of
Mecca in 630. Muhammad died two years later with his religion firmly established in Arabia. The call for jihad,
rather than being interpreted as “holy war,” more accurately refers to using this traditional practice of raiding
enemies to defend the new faith. The late seventh and early eighth centuries saw tremendous expansion for Islam.
Arab armies built an incredible empire out of the ruins of the southern and eastern Roman world and extended
their boundaries farther east than the Romans ever did. This expansion added thousands to the ranks of Muslim
faithful, but generally not through forced conversion.
Questions to Consider

According to the Qur’an, what conditions justify the use of force to defend the faith? What restrictions
apply?

How does this selection fit into a broader discussion of the connections between religious and military
expansion during the early medieval period?
Source
Fight in the path of God against those who fight you, but do not transgress, for God does not love transgressors.
Kill them wherever you encounter them, and expel them from whence they have expelled you, for dissension [fitna]
is worse than killing. But do not fight them by the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you first, and if they do fight
you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the unbelievers.
But if they desist, then God is forgiving and merciful.
Fight them until there is no more dissension, and religion is God’s. If they desist, there is no enmity, save against
the unjust.
When you meet those who are infidels, strike their necks until you have overwhelmed them, tighten their bonds,
and then release them, either freely or for ransom, when war lays down its burdens. Thus it is, and if God wished,
He would crush them Himself, but He tests you against one another. Those who are killed in the path of God, He
does not let their good deeds go for nothing.
Source: Bernard Lewis, ed., Islam: From the Prophet Muhammed to the Capture of Constantinople (New York:
Walker, 1987), 1:209-210.
https://college.cengage.com/history/world/bulliet/earth_peoples/2e/students/primary/qura
n.htm
“Frank-land”:
An Islamic View of the West
(1275-1276)
Al-Qazwini
Introduction
Al-Qazwini (c. 1203-1283) ranks among the leading scientists of the thirteenth-century Muslim world. Most noted
for his study of cosmology, he also wrote a comprehensive study of geography, Athar al-bilad (Monuments of
Countries). Regular contact with westerners both through trade and warfare increased Islamic awareness of the
“Franks,” as they called them. Al-Qazwini, using a Hellenistic division of the world into seven climatic zones,
begins by describing the weather in northern Europe and ends with a candid discussion of “Frankish” personal
hygiene.
Questions to Consider

How does this document suggest the kinds of contact most easterners encountered with westerners?

How might differences in geography account for some cultural differences mentioned by Al-Qazwini?
Source
Frank-land, a mighty land and a broad kingdom in the realms of the Christians. Its cold is very great, and its air is
thick because of the extreme cold. It is full of good things and fruits and crops, rich in rivers, plentiful of produce,
possessing tillage and cattle, trees and honey. There is a wide variety of game there and also silver mines. They
forge very sharp swords there, and the swords of Frank-land are keener than the swords of India.
Its people are Christians, and they have a king possessing courage, great numbers, and power to rule. He has two
or three cities on the shore of the sea on this side, in the midst of the lands of Islam, and he protects them from his
side. Whenever the Muslims send forces to them to capture them, he sends forces from his side to defend them.
His soldiers are of mighty courage and in the hour of combat do not even think of flight, rather preferring death. But
you shall see none more filthy than they. They are a people of perfidy and mean character. They do not cleanse or
bathe themselves more than once or twice a year, and then in cold water, and they do not wash their garments
from the time they put them on until they fall to pieces. They shave their beards, and after shaving they sprout only
a revolting stubble. One of them was asked as to the shaving of the beard, and he said, “Hair is a superfluity. You
remove it from your private parts, so why should we leave it on our faces?”
Source: Al-Qazwini, Athar al-bilad, in Lewis, Islam: From the Prophet Muhammed to the Capture of Constantinople (New York:
Walker, 1987), 2:123.
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Christianity

Call for Jihad

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