An Analysis of Robert Spencer’s Views of Jihad in his Book Chapter The Muhammad’s Legacy

This study focuses on the theme of jihad in Robert Spencer's opus namely The Truth
about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion. In this book, he
focuses on the Islamic history particularly in a series of military jihad and related events
that happened in the early spread of Islam. The jihad concept in Islam has been abused
by the radical jihadist movements that giving false impressions of Islam toward non-
Muslims. Even more, the current worldwide radical movement bases the legitimacy of
their violent actions on both the Qur’anic passages and the Prophet Muhammad
PBUH’s Hadith. A lot of individuals believe that Islam promotes bloodshed by calling
for jihad. Spencer believes that the global terrorism is associated with the deeds and the
teachings of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH as he narrated in this book. Through the
qualitative content analysis, this study was done to meet the research objectives as
follows. Firstly, to introduce Robert Spencer’s biography. Secondly, to delineate
Spencer’s perspectives on jihad war based on the chapter ‘Muhammad’s Legacy’.
Thirdly, to analyse the concept of jihad by Spencer according to the Islamic
understanding of jihad. Based on the Spencer’s view of jihad, this study finds that he
has characterized the Prophet Muhammad PBUH as a person who teaches violent
through his military command. And he believes the victory of the Messenger of Allah
and his Companions in the battle field as a fuel factor for the radical jihadists. The
findings of this study demonstrate that jihad is an endeavour and a means of achieving
goals in accordance with His teachings because of Allah SWT, which include the armed
jihad. The combative jihad in Islam must adhere to the rules established by Allah SWT,
which forbid persecuting or treating people cruelly based on their religion. In light of
this, Spencer's interpretation of jihad as committed by jihadists is obviously at
contradictions with the jihad concept as the Prophet PBUH practiced. Based on this
opus, the ideas of the other contemporary orientalists need to be scrutinizingly read and
understand in order to avoid misinterpret the Islamic teaching. This study perhaps could
contribute as one of the analyses in response to one of the Spencer’s ideas in his books
that connect the teaching of the Messenger of Allah PBUH with the radical jihadist
movements.