If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran

by Carla Power

Attention to context, both textual and historical, is all too often overlooked by jihadis and Islamophobes alike. Take the case of the so-called “Verse of the Sword”: But when the sacred months are past, then kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and capture them, and blockade them, and watch for them at every lookout. (9:5) Court scholars during the Muslim Empires cited this verse in fatwas supporting rulers’ foreign wars. Bin Laden used it in his famous 1996 fatwa declaring jihad on the Americans. The scholar Bruce Lawrence has described the sword verse as the “shibboleth, the battle cry” for jihadis. What the jihadis tend to leave out, however, is the verse’s second half: “But if they repent and practice prayer and give alms, then let them go their way; for God is most forgiving, most merciful.”