No, Ed Husain, the Jihad Conquest of Palestine Was Not a 'Liberation'

by Andrew Bostom 

• The jihad conquest of Palestine created an Islamic state under Sharia jurisdiction for the surviving Jews, Christians and Samaritans, with all its accompanying religious and socio-political discriminations. There was nothing "liberating" about the jihad waged against the vanquished "dhimmi," per Qur'an 9:29: "Fight against those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islam] from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah1 willingly while they are humbled."
• This verse, and its interpretation by seminal Muslim Qur'anic commentators and jurists, was the key rationale for Sharia-based restrictions on non-Muslims' religious practices, as well as their pauperizing taxation, disarmament and inequality in penal law.
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali may have taken Husain's full measure — still unchanged — 17 years ago during an illuminating debate: "[I]f we continue to deny, those of us who were brought up in Islam, that there is anything wrong with the faith, then there is no point in having a debate on reformation or renaissance or any sort of change. Because if it is perfect – as most Muslims want us to believe – then there's nothing to change."
• It certainly appears that Hirsi Ali identified the complete obstruction to real change posed by this "ex-jihadist Muslim" turned apologist for Islam, whose replacement fanaticism is his angry denial of normative Islamic doctrine, and related history, past as prologue. Regardless, the jihad conquest of Palestine was not a "liberation," and most assuredly did not "reinstate Judaism and Jewishness to Jerusalem."

The Islamic conquest of Palestine, which began in the year 634 C.E., had devastating and decidedly "non-liberating" consequences, characterized by massacre, pillage, enslavement and deportation of the indigenous Palestinian Jewish, Christian and Samaritan populations. Pictured: The Islamic Dome of the Rock shrine, on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which was built atop the site of the destroyed First and Second Jewish Temples. (Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)


Ed Husain, self-styled ex-Hizb ut Tahrir and ex-Hamas "former radical," now "anti-Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood" campaigner, spoke on July 9, 2024 on a panel entitled, "Islam, Israel, and the West," at the fourth National Conservatism Conference.

Husain is an "ex-jihadist Muslim," turned apologist for Islam. Despite his recent assertion to the contrary, the jihad conquest of Palestine was not a "liberation," and most assuredly did not "reinstate Judaism and Jewishness to Jerusalem."

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