Category Archives: BAB’s A List

The Religion of Peace? By Andrew G. Bostom

BAB's A List, Islam, Jihad

My guest today is Jihad scholar Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS. Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, an occasional contributor to FrontPage Magazine and to Barely a Blog too.–ILANA

The Religion of Peace?
By Andrew G. Bostom

During the discussion period after a recent talk by the courageous secular Muslim “apostate Wafa Sultan, Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (who was barbarously murdered by pious Muslim terrorists), alluded to the Koran’s “verses of peace,” which certain votaries of Islam uphold as the religion’s exclusive legacy. According to an observer at the event, Judea Pearl derided Ms. Sultan’s critical view of Islam by further contending that the Koran’s bellicose and brutal verses were mere cultural baggage, akin to similar pronouncements in the Old Testament. The comparison was naive, if not absurd.

Naive because the Koran’s verses of peace, frequently cited by both Muslim and non-Muslim apologists, most notably verse 2:256, “ There is no compulsion in religion, were all abrogated by the so-called verses of the sword. These abrogating verses of the sword recommend beheading or otherwise murdering and mutilating non-Muslims, and Muslim apostates. According to classical Muslim Koranic commentators verse 9:5 (perhaps the most infamous verse of the sword), “ Slay the idolators wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush … , for example, cancels 124 verses that promote patience and toleration.

The sacralized Islamic sources indicate that as the Muslim prophet Muhammad accrued political and military power, he evolved from a proselytizer and persuader, to a warrior (i.e., a prototype jihadist; see: The Prophet Muhammad as a Jihad Model), and dictatorial legislator. Thus the sword and other similar Koranic verses — as per the linkage between Muhammad’s biography and the Koranic narrative — capture the Muslim prophet at his most dogmatic, belligerent, and intolerant. Muslims are enjoined to fight and murder nonbelievers — woe unto those who shirk these campaigns — but those who are killed fighting for the one true religion, i.e., Islam, will be rewarded amply in the afterlife. A sampling of such verses, which established these eternal injunctions, are included below:

47:4: “ Now when ye meet in battle those who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks until, when ye have routed them, then making fast of bonds

9:29: “ Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

4:76: “ Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak.

8:12: “ When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

8:38-39: “ Say to the Unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them). And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do.

9:39: “ If you do not go forth, He will chastise you with a painful chastisement and bring in your place a people other than you, and you will do Him no harm; and Allah has power over all things.

4:74: “ Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world’s life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward.

9:111: “ Surely Allah has bought of the believers their persons and their property for this, that they shall have the garden; they fight in Allah’s way, so they slay and are slain; a promise which is binding on Him in the Taurat and the Injeel and the Quran; and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? Rejoice therefore in the pledge which you have made; and that is the mighty achievement.

As Ibn Warraq notes, aptly (p.69):

… “ tolerance has been abrogated by “ intolerance

And this doctrine of abrogation, necessitated by the many contradictions which abound in the Koran, originates as putatively taught by Muhammad, himself, at verse 2:106: “ Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that Allah has power over all things?. This verse, in combination with verses* 16:101, 22:52, and 87:6, was elaborated into a formal system of abrogation (naskh in Arabic) by the greatest classical Muslim Koranic scholars and jurists, which entailed (p.72),

… the suppression of a ruling without the suppression of the wording. That is to say, the earlier ruling is still to be found in the Koran, and is still to this day recited in worship, but it no longer has any legal force [emphasis added]

But it is only when viewed in the larger context of the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad war— which derives substantively from the abrogating Koranic sword verses — that Judea Pearl’s naïve equation to “s imilar verses from the Old Testament, becomes entirely fatuous. From the bellicose verses in the Koran, expounded upon in the hadith (the words and deeds of Muhammad as recorded by pious Muslim transmitters), Muslim jurists and theologians formulated the Islamic institution of permanent jihad war against non-Muslims to bring the world under Islamic rule (Shari’a law).

Since its earliest inception, through the present, jihad has been central to the thought and writings of prominent Muslim theologians and jurists. The precepts and regulations elucidated in the 7th through 9th centuries are immutable in the Muslim theological-juridical system, and they have remained essentially unchallenged by the majority of contemporary Muslims. The jihad is intrinsic to the sacred Muslim texts, including the divine Koranic revelation — “ the uncreated word of Allah.

The Old Testament [I prefer “Hebrew Testament.”–ILANA] sanctions the Israelites conquest of Canaan — a limited domain — it does not sanction a permanent war to submit all the nations of humanity to a uniform code of religious law. Similarly, the tactics of warfare are described in the Old Testament, unlike the Koran, in very circumscribed and specific contexts. Moreover, while the Old Testament clearly condemns certain inhumane practices of paganism, it never invoked an eternal war against all of the world’s pagan peoples.

Uninformed ecumenical zeal, in search of a fantasy Islam yet to be created, does not excuse making intellectual–let alone moral–equivalences, between the severely limited and contextualized war proclamations of the Old Testament, and the permanent proto-jihad war injunctions of the Koran. Staking out the presumptive “ higher moral ground by a thinly veiled (and ahistorical!) attack on a courageous secularist seeking profound, not cosmetic (and meaningless) changes in Islamdom, is unsavory and destructive, regardless of the misguided motivations.

* 16: 101: “ And when We change (one) communication for (another) communication, and Allah knows best what He reveals, they say: You are only a forger. Nay, most of them do not know.; 22:52: “ And We did not send before you any messenger or prophet, but when he desired, the Shaitan made a suggestion respecting his desire; but Allah annuls that which the Shaitan casts, then does Allah establish His communications, and Allah is Knowing, Wise; 87:6: “ By degrees shall We teach thee to declare (the Message), so thou shalt not forget

The discussion of abrogation/naskh draws heavily upon the insightful analysis, here pp. 67-75, of my courageous mentor and colleague Ibn Warraq.

Iraqi War Blues By Tibor Machan

America, BAB's A List, Democrats, Economy, Iraq, War, WMD

I’ve said before that I’ve nothing new to say about the crime the Bush administration perpetrated in Iraq. Other than the necessary repetition, few have. I take that back. My guest today on Barely a Blog is Tibor Machan, who has come up with this philosophically acute principle: “Believing something that’s unjustified to believe doesn’t count as a reason for acting on the belief.”

Machan is RC Hoiles Professor of business ethics & free enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

IRAQI WAR BLUES
By Tibor Machan

It is blues because it’s such a torment—to most Americans, to those who have died—and to a lot of families who have lost members—in this war, and to the supporters because they can’t advance a convincing reason to stay the course.

President George W. Bush may have wanted to hit Iraq even before 9/11 and his reason may well have been that he thought Saddam Hussein did hide some weapons of mass destruction. I have no idea whether Bush was honest but even if he was, it’s no excuse because believing that WMD were hidden in Iraq doesn’t appear to have been justified. Believing something that’s unjustified to believe doesn’t count as a reason for acting on the belief. Say you irrationally believe your spouse is cheating on you and so you decided to meet out punishment. It’s no excuse to say, “But I believed you were cheating on me— even if you did but in fact had no reason to.

Did Bush have good reasons, compelling ones, to think Iraq had WMD? There seems to be no support for this view anywhere now. So then attacking Iraq, while not anything most reasonable people could be too upset about so far as Saddam Hussein is concerned, doesn’t appear to have been justified.

How does this bear on the current debate as to whether the war in Iraq is “a war of choice”? Yes, this seems to be a big deal now—was the war necessary or did Bush decide to wage it as a matter of preference, something he didn’t need to do? Some—for example Republican pundit Morton Kondracke of weekend TV news program “The Beltway Boys”—think that since Bush believed there were WMD in Iraq, the war was not one of choice but of necessity. But this is the kind of justification I sketched above for punishing one’s spouse because one honestly but irrationally thinks one has been betrayed. Even if Bush honestly thought Iraq had WMD, if that belief was ill founded, as it evidently was, the war could be considered a war of choice. There was no objective necessity for it.

Mind you, most of Bush’s critics from among the liberal Democrats have no good case against him either. They haven’t ever objected to preemptive public policies that intrude on innocent people, let alone those under serious if mistaken suspicion. Just consider as a perfect current example how eagerly former VP Al Gore is urging his various precautionary measures—ones that would intrude on millions of us without any regard for civil liberties and due process—because he feels we face big risks from environmental hazards (global warming, climate change, what have you). Gore and his supporters, who complain about Bush’s preemptive war policies because they were preemptive, are hypocrites.

Only those who consistently uphold what we might dub the George Washington doctrine about getting America militarily entangled have a case against Bush & Co. These folks believe that free countries may only go to war when there is a justified and dependable belief that the country is under attack or about to be attacked. The emphasis here is on justified and dependable. Forcibly intervening in other people’s lives is only justifiable when these other people are mounting or about to mount an attack. A war is just, in other words, only when it is defensive.

George W. Bush’s war against Iraq was never defensive, not because he may not have believed the country needs defending from WMD, but because his and his administration’s beliefs about Iraq’s WMD were unjustified, ill founded. Nothing in the meantime, since the war commenced, has changed this fact. Not that there was nothing at all murky about Saddam Hussein and WMD. Yes there was, what with all that hide-and-seek involving the United Nations’ team of inspectors. But war is too big a deal, military, and indeed any other kind of aggression is too big a deal, to start in a murky situation.

Bush, of course, is no consistent follower of the George Washington doctrine. Nor are most of his liberal Democratic critics. So their quarrel about the war in Iraq is mostly incoherent. The only part that has some bona fide relevance concerns the issue of how long to keep American troops in Iraq now that the American military is there.

Jihad Means One Thing Only

BAB's A List, Islam

And it isn’t an “inner struggle‿ or a soul search: “There is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad despite contemporary apologetics,‿ says the brilliant Andrew Bostom, scholar of Jihad, in a speech entitled “The Legacy of Jihad in Historical Palestine,‿ delivered at the Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium.

Bostom’s seminal best seller, The Legacy of Jihad, “provides a comprehensive, meticulously documented compilation, which includes Muslim theological and juridical texts, eyewitness historical accounts by both Muslim and non-Muslim chroniclers, and essays by preeminent scholars analyzing jihad (‘holy war’) and the conditions imposed upon the non-Muslim peoples conquered by jihad campaigns.‿

“The Legacy of Jihad reveals how, for well over a millennium, across three continents – Asia, Africa, and Europe – non-Muslims who were vanquished by jihad wars, became forced tributaries (dhimmi in Arabic), in lieu of being slain. Under the dhimmi religious caste system, non-Muslims were subjected to legal and financial oppression as well as social isolation. Extensive primary and secondary source materials, many translated here for the first time into English, are presented, making clear that jihad conquests were brutal, imperialist advances, which spurred waves of Muslims to expropriate a vast expanse of lands and subdue millions of indigenous peoples. Also examined is how jihad war, as a permanent and uniquely Islamic institution, ultimately regulates the relations of Muslims with non-Muslims to this day.‿

Here is an excerpt from the speech, which is available in its entirety on Dr. Bostom’s website:

“The only Marxist philosopher I appreciate—Groucho—once said:

Beside a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Groucho’s satirical wisdom explains the lack of general knowledge about the two uniquely Islamic institutions I will introduce today—jihad and dhimmitude. Both are copiously documented in chronicles and documents and books whose brilliant light remains concealed by the darkness of denial, obfuscation, and apathetic ignorance. Jihad and its corollary institution dhimmitude have shaped events in historical Palestine—modern Israel, Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jordan—from 634, through the present. This living legacy, including the initial jihad conquest and imposition of Muslim rule in historical Palestine, set in place archetypal patterns which are still quite evident.

There is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad despite contemporary apologetics. The noted 19th century Arabic lexicographer E.W. Lane, who studied the etymology of the term, observed, ‘Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war against unbelievers.’ Jihad was pursued century after century because jihad embodied an ideology and a jurisdiction. Both were formally conceived by Muslim jurisconsults and theologians from the 8th to 9th centuries onward, based on their interpretation of Koranic verses and long chapters in the ‘hadith,’ or acts and sayings of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, especially those recorded by al-Bukhari [d. 869] and Muslim [d. 874].
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), jurist, renowned philosopher, historian, and sociologist, summarized these consensus opinions from five centuries of prior Muslim jurisprudence with regard to the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad:

‘In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force… The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense… Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.'”

Barely a Blog has also featured an exclusive–and related–essay by Dr. Bostom: “Death for Apostasy as Islamic as Apple Pie.‿ Read it here.

Death for Apostasy as Islamic as Apple Pie is American

America, Anti-Semitism, BAB's A List, Islam

I’m pleased to present Barely a Blog’s readers with an exclusive essay by Andrew G. Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad. The title speaks for itself.–ILANA

DEATH FOR APOSTASY AS ISLAMIC AS APPLE PIE IS AMERICAN
By Andrew G. Bostom

Abdul Rahman faced death at the hands of our Afghan allies for the “crime” of converting to Christianity. This fate is no fluke, not a brutal Afghan variant on the practice of “tolerant” Islam. Death for apostasy is part and parcel of Islamic scripture and tradition. When Afghanistan’s leading clerics endorse his death, they are on solid ground. Thus, in the wake of appeals by world leaders , including the Pope, even though Mr. Rahman appears to have received a “dispensation” by the Karzai Government—for “mental health”, or other reasons, unfortunately, he is and remains guilty as per Afghan religious leaders, and Shari’a.

John Ralph Willis, Princeton University Professor of Near Eastern Studies, has described the “apparent paradox” that jihad wars and razzias (p.343)—rationalized as struggles to liberate men from unbelief—became, through the mass enslavement intrinsic to these campaigns, “a device to deprive men of freedom.” And freedom, in the Muslim conception, “being perfect slavery” to Allah, the sole (distant) hope of earthly freedom from the bondage and humiliation of slavery for the subjugated infidel—whose dignity and very legal essence were annihilated by jihad—was to “..incarcerate his spirit in Islam”, and await manumission at the discretion of his Muslim overlord. Another respected Princeton scholar of Islam, Patricia Crone, has stated bluntly (or one might argue, self-evidently) regarding such jihad enslavement—a major historical modality for Islamization— “.. it would be absurd to deny that force played a major role in their [the vanquished infidels] conversion [to Islam].”

A strikingly similar “œparadox” of Islam is the contention epitomized by Koran 2:256, “There is no compulsion in religion.” The poignant ongoing travails of Afghan Muslim convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman, who is willing to die for this basic expression of freedom of conscience, illustrate another uniquely Islamic fusion of absurdity and denial: in light of Koran 2:256 and repeated claims that Islam is characterized by freedom of belief and creed, devoid of compulsion, why has apostasy from Islam always been punished so harshly, for thirteen centuries, into the present era? Ibn Warraq’s seminal 2003 study of apostasy, “Leaving Islam” (p.31), distinguishes temporary doubt—edified by discovering the “truth” of Islam—from apostasy:

Doubt is a very good passageway, but a very bad place to stop in. However, apostasy is a matter of treason and ideological treachery, which originates from hostility and hypocrisy. The destiny of a person who has an inborn handicap is different from the destiny of one whose hand should be cut off due to the development of a dangerous and infectious disease. The apostasy of a Muslim individual whose parents have also been Muslim is a very infectious, dangerous and incurable disease that appears in the body of an ummah (people) and threatens people’s lives, and that is why this rotten limb should be severed.

And punishment by death for apostasy from Islam is firmly rooted in the most holy Muslim texts—both the Koran, and the hadith—as well as the sacred Islamic Law (the Shari’a). Koran 4:89 states*:

They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

One of the most authoritative Koranic commentators, Baydawi (d. 1315/16) interprets this passage thus: “Whosoever turns back from belief (irtada), openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard” (cited in Zwemer, The Law of Apostasy in Islam, 1924, pp. 33-34). Ibn Kathir’s (d. 1373) venerated commentary on Koran 4:89 concurs, maintaining that as the unbelievers have manifested their unbelief, they should be punished by death. These draconian judgments are reiterated in a number of hadith (i.e., collections of the putative words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as compiled by pious transmitters). For example, Muhammad is reported to have said “Kill him who changes his religion” in hadith collections of both Bukhari and Abu Dawud. There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi’i), as well as Shi’ite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death. Averroes (d. 1198), the renowned philosopher and scholar of the natural sciences, who was also an important Maliki jurist, provided this typical Muslim legal opinion on the punishment for apostasy (vol. 2, p. 552):

An apostate…is to be executed by agreement in the case of a man, because of the words of the Prophet, ‘Slay those who change their din [religion]’…Asking the apostate to repent was stipulated as a condition…prior to his execution

The contemporary (i.e., 1991) Al-Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy-endorsed Shafi’i manual of Islamic Law, —Umdat al-Salik (pp. 595-96) states:

Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst….When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory…to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed.

Finally, Warraq (p.19) summarizes the means by which convicted apostates have been killed, typically by the sword (i.e., beheading)

…though there are examples of apostates tortured to death, or strangled, burned, drowned, impaled, or flayed. The Caliph —Umar [d. 644] used to tie them to a post and had lances thrust into their hearts, and the [Mameluke] Sultan Baybars II (1308-09) made [their] torture legal.

Thus despite the apparent dispensation of Abdul Rahman’s case, he most assuredly remains guilty according to the Shari’a. As such, once released from prison, if he survives the incarceration, should any pious Afghan Muslim kill him (heeding the calls of local Afghan clerics), according to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, (which prevails in Afghanistan), specifically the important legal text “The Hidaya” by al-Marghiniani (d. 1197), “If any person kills an apostate….Nothing [i.e., no punishment]…is incurred by the slayer”. At this stage, perhaps the only way to assure that Mr. Rahman avoids a tragic and gruesome fate (“We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there’s nothing left,” maintained Abdul Raoulf a “moderate” cleric jailed for his previous opposition to the Taliban), is to find sanctuary for him outside of Afghanistan.

For a decade, three courageous, prescient scholars—Ibn Warraq, David Littman, and Bat Ye’or—have warned about the grave dangers posed by Shari’a-based “human rights” constructs, such as the 1990 Cairo Declaration (i.e., the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, to which all member states [now 57] of the Organization of the Islamic Conference—including “secular” Turkey—are signatories). Indeed the intrepid Senegalese jurist Adama Dieng (a Muslim, who subsequently became a United Nations special rapporteur), then serving as secretary-general to the International Commission of Jurists, declared forthrightly in February 1992 that the Cairo Declaration, under the rubric of the Shari’a,

..gravely threatens the inter-cultural consensus on which the international human rights instruments are based; introduces, in the name of the defense of human rights, an intolerable discrimination against both non-Muslims and women; reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and freedoms, to the point that certain essential provisions are below the legal standard in effect in a number of Muslim countries; [and] confirms the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal punishment, that attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.

And distracting, fatuous conceptions such as “Extreme Shari’a” are mere enervating delusions which do nothing to combat this growing, lethal threat to the most fundamental rights of free societies. Invoking the difficult lessons learned from Cold War experiences, David Littman stated with the requisite moral clarity that

…only a firm and uncompromising stand on the most fundamental questions can bring about the effective implementation of the ideals set forth in the International Bill of Human Rights. Diplomatically correct words and gestures are not enough

More than 80 years ago, in his 1924 “The Law of Apostasy in Islam,” Samuel Zwemer made these observations, still depressingly relevant today, and extending beyond the “Near East” to the entire Muslim world:

The story is told that Damocles, at the court of Dionysius of Sicily, pronounced the latter the happiest man on earth. When, however, Damocles was permitted to sit on the royal throne, he perceived a sword hanging by a horse-hair over his head. The imagined felicity vanished, and he begged Dionysius to remove him from his seat of peril. Today [circa 1924] we read of new mandatories, of liberty, and of promised equality to minorities under Moslem rule; and newspapers assert that a new era has come to the Near East. Economic development, intellectual awakening, reforms, constitutions, parliaments and promises. Does the sword of Damocles, however, still hang over the head of each convert from Islam to Christianity? Is the new Islam more tolerant than the old? Will the lives and property of converts be protected, and the rights of minorities be respected? ….

Again and again has European pressure, aided by a few educated Orientals, endeavored to secure equality before the law for all religions and races in the Near East. But as often as the attempt was made it proved a failure, each new failure more ghastly than the last. The reason is that the conscience and the faith of the most sincere and upright Moslems are bound up with the Koran and the Traditions. Civilization cannot eradicate deep-seated convictions. Rifles and ironclads, the cafe, the theatre, written constitutions, representative parliaments; none of these reach far below the surface. A truer freedom…than the one supplied by their own faith, must come before Moslems can enter into the larger liberty which we enjoy.

Denial or obfuscation of the role played by the very essence of Islam—by Shari’a—will never remove this murderous scimitar of Damocles hanging over the heads of hapless “apostates” such as Abdul Rahman, and others, perhaps untold thousands, if not more, like him, throughout the Muslim world. And burgeoning, often irredentist Muslim populations in the West, especially Western Europe, have established de facto Islamic colonies within their host countries, punctuated by demands for local jurisdiction under Shari’a Law.

Should nothing be done to desacralize the Shari’a and divorce it entirely from the governance of civil societies, future Western generations, may face the same brutal application of Shari’a punishments for “apostasy.” Or as the Danish cartoon jihad demonstrated, for “blaspheming” the Muslim prophet Muhammad. If that frightening scenario unfolds, Westerners may be forced to experience Mr. Rahman’s current dire predicament—to paraphrase (albeit inelegantly) John Donne: “Do not ask over whom the scimitar hangs, it hangs over thee”.

[*For three simultaneous translations of Koran 4:89, see: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html
YUSUFALI: They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks;-
PICKTHAL: They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them,
SHAKIR: They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.]