Breivik on Islam

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[Deep rooted ignorance and hatred in Europe of the Holy Prophet Muhamad and the Holy Quran.]

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Anders Behring Breivik

Manifesto

Content

Breivik has been linked to a document titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, which is 1,518 pages and bearing the name "Andrew Berwick". Breivik admitted in court that it was mostly other people's writings he had cut-and-pasted from the web. The file was e-mailed to 1,003 addresses about 90 minutes before the bomb blast in Oslo

. The document describes two years of preparation of unspecified attacks, supposedly planned for autumn 2011, involving a rented Volkswagen Crafter van (small enough to not require a truck driving license) loaded with 1,160 kilograms (2,600 lb) of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive (ANFO), a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle, a Glock 34 pistol, personal armor including a shield, caltrops, and police insignias. It also reports that Breivik spent thousands of hours on gathering email addresses from Facebook for distribution of the document, and that he rented a farm as a cover for a fake farming company buying fertilizer (3 tons for producing explosives and 3 tons of a harmless kind to avoid suspicion) and as a lab. It describes burying a crate with the armor etc. in July 2010 in the woods, and collecting it on 4 July 2011, and abandoning his plan to replace it with survival gear because he did not have a second pistol.

The introductory chapter of the manifesto defining "Cultural Marxism" is a copy of Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology by the Free Congress Foundation. Major parts of the compendium are attributed to the pseudonymous Norwegian blogger Fjordman. The text also copies sections of the Unabomber manifesto, without giving credit, while exchanging the words "leftists" for "cultural Marxists" and "black people" for "muslims". The New York Times described American influences in the writings, noting that the compendium mentions the anti-Islamist American Robert Spencer 64 times and cites Spencer's works at great length. The work of Bat Ye'or cited dozens of times. Neoconservative blogger Pamela Geller, Neo-pagan writer Koenraad Elst and Daniel Pipes are also mentioned as sources of inspiration. The manifesto further contains quotes from Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell, as well as from Jeremy Clarkson's Sunday Times column and Melanie Phillips' Daily Mail column. The publication speaks in admiration of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders, Bruce Bawer, Srđa Trifković, and Henryk M. Broder. Breivik blames feminism for allowing the erosion of the fabric of European society. The compendium advocates a restoration of patriarchy which it claims would save European culture.

In his writings Breivik states that he wants to see European policies on multiculturalism and immigration more similar to those of Japan

and South Korea, which he said are "not far from cultural conservatism and nationalism at its best". He expressed his admiration for the "monoculturalism" of Japan and for the two nations' refusal to accept refugees. The Jerusalem Post describes his support for Israel as a "far-right Zionism". He calls all "nationalists" to join in the struggle against "cultural Marxists/multiculturalists".

He summarizes his goals, stating "I believe Europe should strive for: A cultural conservative approach where monoculturalism, moral, the nuclear family, a free market, support for Israel and our Christian cousins of the east, law and order and Christendom itself must be central aspects (unlike now)."

Comments

Norwegian computer security analysts are in the process of researching what appear to be hidden codes in Breivik's manifesto, including references to the GPS coordinates of several major sites throughout Europe

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Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, PhD student at Brown

University, said that parts of the manifesto suggest that Breivik was concerned about race, not only about Western culture or Christianity.

Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment has described the ideologies of Breivik as "not fitting the established categories of right-wing ideology, like white supremacism, ultranationalism or Christian fundamentalism", but more akin to macro-nationalism and a "new doctrine of civilisational war". Norwegian social scientist Lars Gule characterised Breivik as a "national conservative, not a Nazi".

In one section of the manifesto entitled "Battlefield Wikipedia" Breivik explains the importance of using Wikipedia as a venue for disseminating views and information to the general public, although the Norwegian professor Arnulf Hagen claims that this was a document that he had copied from another author and that Breivik was unlikely to be a contributor to Wikipedia. According to the leader of the Norwegian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation an account has been identified which they believe Breivik used. In the second day of his trial Breivik cited Wikipedia as the main source for his worldview. The blogger Fjordman claims that a large part of his manifesto quoted Wikipedia and that it "probably shaped his strange and imprecise political vocabulary".

Defence hearing

In the pre-trial hearing, February 2012, Breivik read a prepared statement demanding to be released and treated as a hero for his "pre-emptive attack against traitors" accused of planning cultural genocide. He said, "They are committing, or planning to commit, cultural destruction, of which deconstruction of the Norwegian ethnic group and deconstruction of Norwegian culture. This is the same as ethnic cleansing."

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2083: A European Declaration of Independence

On the 22nd of July, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people in a bombing and a shooting spree in Norway

. Hours beforehand, he released a 1500 page manifesto, outlining his thoughts and his actions for the world to see. Here is that manifesto.

[ Other pages from the Breivik’s Manifesto are omitted. Only Islam sections aregiven here.]

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Review 1: Religion of Peace? Islam’s war against the world - Islam 101

Islam 101 is meant to help people become better educated about the fundamentals of Islam and to help the more knowledgeable better convey the facts to others. With the aim of lending clarity to the public understanding of Islam and of exposing the inadequacy of prevailing views.

Table of Contents

1. The Basics
1. The Five Pillars of Islam
2. The Quran — the Book of Allah
3. The Sunnah — the “Way” of the Prophet Muhammad
1. Battle of Badr
2. Battle of Uhud
3. Battle of Medina

Conquest of Mecca

Sharia Law

Jihad and Dhimmitude

1. What does “jihad” mean?
2. Muslim Scholar Hasan Al-Banna on jihad
3. Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of War
1. al-Taqiyya — Religious Deception
2. How al-Taqiyya is a central part of the Islamisation of Europe
3. Quranic abrogation (Naskh)
4. Jihad Through History
1. The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
2. The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
5. The Dhimma
6. Jihad in the Modern Era

Conclusion

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What about the Crusades?
2. If Islam is violent, why are so many Muslims peaceful?
3. What about the violent passages in the Bible?
4. Could an Islamic “Reformation” pacify Islam?
5. What about the history of Western colonialism in the Islamic world?
6. How can a violent political ideology be the second-largest and fastest-growing religion on earth?
7. Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?
8. What about the great achievements of Islamic civilisation?

Further Resources

The Basics

The Five Pillars of Islam

The five pillars of Islam constitute the most basic tenets of the religion. They are:

1. Faith (iman) in the oneness of Allah and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (indicated by the declaration [the Shahadah] that, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”).
2. Keeping of the five scheduled daily prayers (salah).
3. Almsgiving (zakat).
4. Fasting (sawm).
5. Pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca

for those who are able.

The five pillars in and of themselves do not tell us a lot about the faith or what a Muslim is supposed to believe or how he should act. The second through fifth pillars — prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage — are aspects shared by many religions. The finality of the prophethood of Muhammad, however, is unique to Islam. To understand Islam and what it means to be a Muslim, we must come to understand Muhammad as well as the revelations given through him by Allah, which make up the Quran.

The Quran — the Book of Allah

According to Islamic teaching, the Quran came down as a series of revelations from Allah through the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, who then dictated it to his followers. Muhammad’s companions memorised fragments of the Quran and wrote them down on whatever was at hand, which were later compiled into book form under the rule of the third Caliph, Uthman, some years after Muhammad’s death.

The Quran is about as long as the Christian New Testament. It comprises 114 suras (not to be confused with the Sira, which refers to the life of the Prophet) of varying lengths, which may be considered chapters. According to Islamic doctrine, it was around 610 AD in a cave near the city of Mecca (now in southwest Saudi Arabia) that Muhammad received the first revelation from Allah by way of the Archangel Gabriel. The revelation merely commanded Muhammad to “recite” or “read” (Sura 96); the words he was instructed to utter were not his own but Allah’s. Over the next twelve or so years in Mecca

, other revelations came to Muhammad that constituted a message to the inhabitants of the city to forsake their pagan ways and turn in worship to the one Allah.

While in Mecca

, though he condemned paganism (for the most part), Muhammad showed great respect for the monotheism of the Christian and Jewish inhabitants. Indeed, the Allah of the Quran claimed to be the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians, who now revealed himself to the Arab people through his chosen messenger, Muhammad. It is the Quranic revelations that came later in Muhammad’s career, after he and the first Muslims left Mecca for the city of Medina, that transformed Islam from a relatively benign form of monotheism into an expansionary, military-political ideology that persists to this day.

Orthodox Islam does not accept that a rendering of the Quran into another language is a “translation” in the way that, say, the King James Bible is a translation of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. A point often made by Islamic apologists to defang criticism is that only Arabic readers may understand the Quran. But Arabic is a language like any other and fully capable of translation. Indeed, most Muslims are not Arabic readers. In the below analysis, we use a translation of the Quran by two Muslim scholars, which may be found here. All parenthetical explanations in the text are those of the translators save for my interjections in braces, { }.

The Sunnah — the “Way” of the Prophet Muhammad

In Islam, Muhammad is considered al-insan al-kamil (the “ideal man”). Muhammad is in no way considered divine, nor is he worshipped (no image of Muhammad is permitted lest it encourage idolatry), but he is the model par excellence for all Muslims in how they should conduct themselves. It is through Muhammad’s personal teachings and actions — which make up the “way of the Prophet,” the Sunnah — that Muslims discern what a good and holy life is. Details about the Prophet — how he lived, what he did, his non-Quranic utterances, his personal habits — are indispensable knowledge for any faithful Muslim.

Knowledge of the Sunnah comes primarily from the Hadith’s (“reports”) about Muhammad’s life, which were passed down orally until codified in the eighth century AD, some hundred years after Muhammad’s death. The Hadith’s comprise the most important body of Islamic texts after the Quran; they are basically a collection of anecdotes about Muhammad’s life believed to have originated with those who knew him personally. There are thousands upon thousands of Hadith’s, some running to multiple pages, some barely a few lines in length. When the Hadith’s were first compiled in the eighth century AD, it became obvious that many were inauthentic. The early Muslim scholars of Hadith spent tremendous labour trying to determine which Hadith’s were authoritative and which were suspect.

The Hadith’s here come exclusively from the most reliable and authoritative collection, Sahih Al-Bukhari, recognised as sound by all schools of Islamic scholarship, translated by a Muslim scholar and which may be found here. Different translations of Hadith’s can vary in their breakdown of volume, book, and number, but the content is the same. For each Hadith, the classifying information is listed first, then the name of the originator of the Hadith (generally someone who knew Muhammad personally), and then the content itself. While the absolute authenticity of even a sound Hadith is hardly assured, they are nonetheless accepted as authoritative within an Islamic context.

Because Muhammad is himself the measuring stick of morality, his actions are not judged according to an independent moral standard but rather establish what the standard for Muslims properly is.

Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88; Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).

Volume 8, Book 82, Number 795; Narrated Anas: The Prophet cut off the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and did not cauterise (their bleeding limbs) till they died.

Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413; Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews {of Medina

} brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque.

Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57; Narrated Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to Ali {the fourth Caliph} and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn ‘Abbas who said, “If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah’s Apostle forbade it, saying, “Do not punish anybody with Allah’s punishment (fire).” I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah’s Apostle, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.”

Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle was asked, “What is the best deed?” He replied, “To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, “What is the next (in goodness)?” He replied, “To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah’s Cause.”

In Islam, there is no “natural” sense of morality or justice that transcends the specific examples and injunctions outlined in the Quran and the Sunnah. Because Muhammad is considered Allah’s final prophet and the Quran the eternal, unalterable words of Allah himself, there is also no evolving morality that permits the modification or integration of Islamic morality with that from other sources. The entire Islamic moral universe devolves solely from the life and teachings of Muhammad.

Along with the reliable Hadith’s, a further source of accepted knowledge about Muhammad comes from the Sira (life) of the Prophet, composed by one of Islam’s great scholars, Muhammad bin Ishaq, in the eighth century AD.

Muhammad’s prophetic career is meaningfully divided into two segments: the first in Mecca, where he laboured for fourteen years to make converts to Islam; and later in the city of Medina (The City of the Apostle of God), where he became a powerful political and military leader. In Mecca, we see a quasi-Biblical figure, preaching repentance and charity, harassed and rejected by those around him; later, in Medina, we see an able commander and strategist who systematically conquered and killed those who opposed him. It is the later years of Muhammad’s life, from 622 AD to his death in 632, that are rarely broached in polite company. In 622, when the Prophet was better than fifty years old, he and his followers made the Hijra (emigration or flight), from Mecca to the oasis of Yathrib — later renamed Medina — some 200 miles to the north. Muhammad’s new monotheism had angered the pagan leaders of Mecca, and the flight to Medina was precipitated by a probable attempt on Muhammad’s life. Muhammad had sent emissaries to Medina to ensure his welcome. He was accepted by the Medinan tribes as the leader of the Muslims and as arbiter of inter-tribal disputes.

Shortly before Muhammad fled the hostility of Mecca, a new batch of Muslim converts pledged their loyalty to him on a hill outside Mecca called Aqaba. Ishaq here conveys in the Sira the significance of this event:

Sira, p208: When God gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the second {oath of allegiance at} Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of fealty. Now they {Muhammad’s followers} bound themselves to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle, while he promised them for faithful service thus the reward of paradise.

That Muhammad’s nascent religion underwent a significant change at this point is plain. The scholarly Ishaq clearly intends to impress on his (Muslim) readers that, while in its early years, Islam was a relatively tolerant creed that would “endure insult and forgive the ignorant,” Allah soon required Muslims “to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle.” The Islamic calendar testifies to the paramouncy of the Hijra by setting year one from the date of its occurrence. The year of the Hijra, 622 AD, is considered more significant than the year of Muhammad’s birth or death or that of the first Quranic revelation because Islam is first and foremost a political-military enterprise. It was only when Muhammad left Mecca with his paramilitary band that Islam achieved its proper political-military articulation. The years of the Islamic calendar (which employs lunar months) are designated in English “AH” or “After Hijra.”

The Battle of Badr

The Battle of Badr was the first significant engagement fought by the Prophet. Upon establishing himself in Medina following the Hijra, Muhammad began a series of razzias (raids) on caravans of the Meccan Quraish tribe on the route to Syria.

Volume 5, Book 59, Number 287; Narrated Kab bin Malik: The Apostle had gone out to meet the caravans of Quraish, but Allah caused them (i.e. Muslims) to meet their enemy unexpectedly (with no previous intention).

Volume 5, Book 59, Number 289; Narrated Ibn Abbas: On the day of the battle of Badr, the Prophet said, “O Allah! I appeal to You (to fulfill) Your Covenant and Promise. O Allah! If Your Will is that none should worship You (then give victory to the pagans).” Then Abu Bakr took hold of him by the hand and said, “This is sufficient for you.” The Prophet came out saying, “Their multitude will be put to flight and they will show their backs.” (54:45)

Having returned to Medina after the battle, Muhammad admonished the resident Jewish tribe of Qaynuqa to accept Islam or face a similar fate as the Quraish (3:12-13). The Qaynuqa agreed to leave Medina if they could retain their property, which Muhammad granted. Following the exile of the Bani Qaynuqa, Muhammad turned to individuals in Medina he considered to have acted treacherously. The Prophet particularly seems to have disliked the many poets who ridiculed his new religion and his claim to prophethood — a theme evident today in the violent reactions of Muslims to any perceived mockery of Islam. In taking action against his opponents, “the ideal man” set precedents for all time as to how Muslims should deal with detractors of their religion.

Sira, p367: Then he {Kab bin al-Ashraf} composed amatory verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women. The Apostle said: “Who will rid me of Ibnul-Ashraf?” Muhammad bin Maslama, brother of the Bani Abdu’l-Ashhal, said, “I will deal with him for you, O Apostle of God, I will kill him.” He said, “Do so if you can.” “All that is incumbent upon you is that you should try” {said the Prophet to Muhammad bin Maslama}. He said, “O Apostle of God, we shall have to tell lies.” He {the Prophet} answered, “Say what you like, for you are free in the matter.”

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 270; Narrated Jabir bin ‘Abdullah: The Prophet said, “Who is ready to kill Kab bin Al-Ashraf who has really hurt Allah and His Apostle?” Muhammad bin Maslama said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Do you like me to kill him?” He replied in the affirmative. So, Muhammad bin Maslama went to him (i.e. Kab) and said, “This person (i.e. the Prophet) has put us to task and asked us for charity.” Kab replied, “By Allah, you will get tired of him.” Muhammad said to him, “We have followed him, so we dislike to leave him till we see the end of his affair.” Muhammad bin Maslama went on talking to him in this way till he got the chance to kill him.

A significant portion of the Sira is devoted to poetry composed by Muhammad’s followers and his enemies in rhetorical duels that mirrored those in the field. There seems to have been an informal competition in aggrandising oneself, one’s tribe, and one’s God while ridiculing one’s adversary in eloquent and memorable ways. Kab bin Malik, one of the assassins of his brother, Kab bin al-Ashraf, composed the following:

Sira, p368: Kab bin Malik said: Of them Kab was left prostrate there (After his fall {the Jewish tribe of} al-Nadir were brought low). Sword in hand we cut him down By Muhammad’s order when he sent secretly by night Kab’s brother to go to Kab. He beguiled him and brought him down with guile Mahmud was trustworthy, bold.

The Battle of Uhud

The Meccan Quraish regrouped for an attack on the Muslims at Medina. Muhammad got wind of the Meccan force coming to attack him and encamped his forces on a small hillock north of Medina named Uhud, where the ensuing battle took place.

Volume 5, Book 59, Number 377; Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah: On the day of the battle of Uhud, a man came to the Prophet and said, “Can you tell me where I will be if I should get martyred?” The Prophet replied, “In Paradise.” The man threw away some dates he was carrying in his hand, and fought till he was martyred.

Volume 5, Book 59, Number 375; Narrated Al-Bara: when we faced the enemy, they took to their heel till I saw their women running towards the mountain, lifting up their clothes from their legs, revealing their leg-bangles. The Muslims started saying, “The booty, the booty!” Abdullah bin Jubair said, “The Prophet had taken a firm promise from me not to leave this place.” But his companions refused (to stay). So when they refused (to stay there), (Allah) confused them so that they could not know where to go, and they suffered seventy casualties.

Though deprived of victory at Uhud, Muhammad was by no means vanquished. He continued making raids that made being a Muslim not only virtuous in the eyes of Allah but lucrative as well. In an Islamic worldview, there is no incompatibility between wealth, power, and holiness. Indeed, as a member of the true faith, it is only logical that one should also enjoy the material bounty of Allah — even if that means plundering it from infidels.

As Muhammad had neutralised the Jewish tribe of Bani Qaynuqa after Badr, he now turned to the Bani Nadir after Uhud. According to the Sira, Allah warned Muhammad of an attempt to assassinate him, and the Prophet ordered the Muslims to prepare for war against the Bani Nadir. The Bani Nadir agreed to go into exile if Muhammad permitted them to retain their movable property. Muhammad agreed to these terms save that they leave behind their armour.

The Battle of Medina

In 627 AD, Muhammad faced the greatest challenge to his new community. In that year, the Quraish of Mecca made their most determined attack on the Muslims at Medina itself. Muhammad thought it advisable not to engage them in a pitched battle as at Uhud but took shelter in Medina, protected as it was by lava flows on three sides. The Meccans would have to attack from the northwest in a valley between the flows, and it was there that Muhammad ordered a trench dug for the city’s defence.

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 208; Narrated Anas: On the day (of the battle) of the Trench, the Ansar {new converts to Islam} were saying, “We are those who have sworn allegiance to Muhammad for Jihad (for ever) as long as we live.” The Prophet replied to them, “O Allah! There is no life except the life of the Hereafter. So honour the Ansar and emigrants {from Mecca} with Your Generosity.”

And Narrated Mujashi: My brother and I came to the Prophet and I requested him to take the pledge of allegiance from us for migration. He said, “Migration has passed away with its people.” I asked, “For what will you take the pledge of allegiance from us then?” He said, “I will take (the pledge) for Islam and Jihad.”

The Meccans were foiled by the trench and only able to send small raiding parties across it. After several days, they turned back for Mecca. Following his victory, Muhammad turned to the third Jewish tribe at Medina, the Bani Quraiza. While the Bani Qaynuqa and Bani Nadir had suffered exile, the fate of the Bani Quraiza would be considerably more dire.

Sira, p463-4: Then they {the tribe of Quraiza} surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of Bani al-Najjar. Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches. Among them was the enemy of Allah Huyayy bin Akhtab and Kab bin Asad their chief. There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900. As they were being taken out in batches to the Apostle they asked Kab what he thought would be done with them. He replied, “Will you never understand? Don’t you see that the summoner never stops and those who are taken away do not return? By Allah it is death!” This went on until the Apostle made an end of them.

Thus do we find the clear precedent that explains the peculiar penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims: it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet.

Following yet another of the Muslims’ raids, this time on a place called Khaibar, “The women of Khaibar were distributed among the Muslims” as was usual practice. (Sira, p511) The raid at Khaibar had been against the Bani Nadir, whom Muhammad had earlier exiled from Medina.

Sira, p515: Kinana bin al-Rabi, who had the custody of the treasure of Bani al-Nadir, was brought to the Apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came to the Apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the Apostle said to Kinana, “Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?” he said, Yes. The Apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the Apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr bin al-Awwam, “Torture him until you extract what he has,” so he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the Apostle delivered him to Muhammad bin Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his brother Mahmud.

The Conquest of Mecca

Muhammad’s greatest victory came in 632 AD, ten years after he and his followers had been forced to flee to Medina. In that year, he assembled a force of some ten thousand Muslims and allied tribes and descended on Mecca. “The Apostle had instructed his commanders when they entered Mecca only to fight those who resisted them, except a small number who were to be killed even if they were found beneath the curtains of the Kaba.” (Sira, p550)

Volume 3, Book 29, Number 72; Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle entered Mecca in the year of its Conquest wearing an Arabian helmet on his head and when the Prophet took it off, a person came and said, “Ibn Khatal is holding the covering of the Kaba (taking refuge in the Kaba).” The Prophet said, “Kill him.”

Following the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad outlined the future of his religion.

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour {of the Last Judgment} will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”

Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24; Narrated Ibn Umar: Allah’s Apostle said: “I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.”

It is from such warlike pronouncements as these that Islamic scholarship divides the world into dar al-Islam (the House of Islam, i.e., those nations who have submitted to Allah) and dar al-harb (the House of War, i.e., those who have not). It is this dispensation that the world lived under in Muhammad’s time and that it lives under today. Then as now, Islam’s message to the unbelieving world is the same: submit or be conquered.

Sharia Law

Unlike many religions, Islam includes a mandatory and highly specific legal and political plan for society called Sharia, which translates approximately as “way” or “path.” The precepts of Sharia are derived from the commandments of the Quran and the Sunnah (the teachings and precedents of Muhammad as found in the reliable Hadith’s and the Sira). Together, the Quran and the Sunnah establish the dictates of Sharia, which is the blueprint for the good Islamic society. Because Sharia originates with the Quran and the Sunnah, it is not optional. Sharia is the legal code ordained by Allah for all mankind. To violate Sharia or not to accept its authority is to commit rebellion against Allah, which Allah’s faithful are required to combat.

There is no separation between the religious and the political in Islam; rather Islam and Sharia constitute a comprehensive means of ordering society at every level. While it is in theory possible for an Islamic society to have different outward forms — an elective system of government, a hereditary monarchy, etc. — whatever the outward structure of the government, Sharia is the prescribed content. It is this fact that puts Sharia into conflict with forms of government based on anything other than the Quran and the Sunnah.

The precepts of Sharia may be divided into two parts:

1. Acts of worship (al-ibadat), which includes:
• Ritual Purification (Wudu)
• Prayers (Salah)
• Fasts (Sawm and Ramadan)
• Charity (Zakat)
• Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj)
2. Human interaction (al-muamalat), which includes:
• Financial transactions
• Endowments
• Laws of inheritance
• Marriage, divorce, and child care
• Food and drink (including ritual slaughtering and hunting)
• Penal punishments
• War and peace
• Judicial matters (including witnesses and forms of evidence)

As one may see, there are few aspects of life that Sharia does not specifically govern. Everything from washing one’s hands to child-rearing to taxation to military policy falls under its dictates. Because Sharia is derivate of the Quran and the Sunnah, it affords some room for interpretation. But upon examination of the Islamic sources (see above), it is apparent that any meaningful application of Sharia is going to look very different from anything resembling a free or open society in the Western sense. The stoning of adulterers, execution of apostates and blasphemers, repression of other religions, and a mandatory hostility toward non-Islamic nations punctuated by regular warfare will be the norm. It seems fair then to classify Islam and its Sharia code as a form of totalitarianism.

Jihad and Dhimmitude

What does “Jihad” mean?

Jihad literally translates as “struggle.” Strictly speaking, jihad does not mean “holy war” as Muslim apologists often point out. However, the question remains as to what sort of “struggle” is meant: an inner, spiritual struggle against the passions, or an outward, physical struggle.

As in any case of trying to determine Islamic teaching on a particular matter, one must look to the Quran and the Sunnah. From those sources (see above) it is evident that a Muslim is required to struggle against a variety of things: laziness in prayer, neglecting to give zakat (alms), etc. But is it also plain that a Muslim is commanded to struggle in physical combat against the infidel as well. Muhammad’s impressive military career attests to the central role that military action plays in Islam.

Hasan Al-Banna on jihad

Below are excerpts from Hasan Al-Banna’s treatise, Jihad. In 1928, Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which today is the most powerful organisation in Egypt after the government itself. In this treatise, Al-Banna cogently argues that Muslims must take up arms against unbelievers. As he says, “The verses of the Qur’an and the Sunnah summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea fighting.”

All Muslims Must Make Jihad

Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modelled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward. Furthermore, Allah has specifically honoured the Mujahideen {those who wage jihad} with certain exceptional qualities, both spiritual and practical, to benefit them in this world and the next. Their pure blood is a symbol of victory in this world and the mark of success and felicity in the world to come.

Those who can only find excuses, however, have been warned of extremely dreadful punishments and Allah has described them with the most unfortunate of names. He has reprimanded them for their cowardice and lack of spirit, and castigated them for their weakness and truancy. In this world, they will be surrounded by dishonour and in the next they will be surrounded by the fire from which they shall not escape though they may possess much wealth. The weaknesses of abstention and evasion of jihad are regarded by Allah as one of the major sins, and one of the seven sins that guarantee failure.

Islam is concerned with the question of jihad and the drafting and the mobilisation of the entire Ummah {the global Muslim community} into one body to defend the right cause with all its strength than any other ancient or modern system of living, whether religious or civil. The verses of the Qur’an and the Sunnah of Muhammad (PBUH {Peace Be Unto Him}) are overflowing with all these noble ideals and they summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea fighting.

Here Al-Banna offers citations from the Quran and the reliable Hadith’s that demonstrate the necessity of combat for Muslims. The citations are comparable to those included in Islam 101 section 1b and are here omitted.

The Scholars on Jihad

I have just presented to you some verses from the Qur’an and the Noble Ahadith concerning the importance of jihad. Now I would like to present to you some of the opinions from jurisprudence of the Islamic Schools of Thought including some latter day authorities regarding the rules of jihad and the necessity for preparedness. From this we will come to realise how far the ummah has deviated in its practice of Islam as can be seen from the consensus of its scholars on the question of jihad.

The author of the ‘Majma’ al-Anhar fi Sharh Multaqal-Abhar’, in describing the rules of jihad according to the Hanafi School, said: ‘Jihad linguistically means to exert one’s utmost effort in word and action; in the Sharee’ah {Sharia — Islamic law} it is the fighting of the unbelievers, and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship and smashing their idols. This means that jihad is to strive to the utmost to ensure the strength of Islam by such means as fighting those who fight you and the dhimmies {non-Muslims living under Islamic rule} (if they violate any of the terms of the treaty) and the apostates (who are the worst of unbelievers, for they disbelieved after they have affirmed their belief).

It is fard (obligatory) on us to fight with the enemies. The Imam must send a military expedition to the Dar-al-Harb {House of War — the non-Muslim world} every year at least once or twice, and the people must support him in this. If some of the people fulfill the obligation, the remainder are released from the obligation. If this fard kifayah (communal obligation) cannot be fulfilled by that group, then the responsibility lies with the closest adjacent group, and then the closest after that etc., and if the fard kifayah cannot be fulfilled except by all the people, it then becomes a fard ‘ayn (individual obligation), like prayer on everyone of the people.

The scholarly people are of one opinion on this matter as should be evident and this is irrespective of whether these scholars were Mujtahideen or Muqalideen and it is irrespective of whether these scholars were salaf (early) or khalaf (late). They all agreed unanimously that jihad is a fard kifayah imposed upon the Islamic ummah in order to spread the Da’wah of Islam, and that jihad is a fard ‘ayn if an enemy attacks Muslim lands. Today, my brother, the Muslims as you know are forced to be subservient before others and are ruled by disbelievers. Our lands have been besieged, and our hurruma’at (personal possessions, respect, honour, dignity and privacy) violated. Our enemies are overlooking our affairs, and the rites of our din are under their jurisdiction. Yet still the Muslims fail to fulfill the responsibility of Da’wah that is on their shoulders. Hence in this situation it becomes the duty of each and every Muslim to make jihad. He should prepare himself mentally and physically such that when comes the decision of Allah, he will be ready.

I should not finish this discussion without mentioning to you that the Muslims, throughout every period of their history (before the present period of oppression in which their dignity has been lost) have never abandoned jihad nor did they ever become negligent in its performance, not even their religious authorities, mystics, craftsmen, etc. They were all always ready and prepared. For example, Abdullah ibn al Mubarak, a very learned and pious man, was a volunteer in jihad for most of his life, and ‘Abdulwahid bin Zayd, a sufi and a devout man, was the same. And in his time, Shaqiq al Balkhi, the shaykh of the sufis encouraged his pupils towards jihad.

Associated Matters Concerning Jihad

Many Muslims today mistakenly believe that fighting the enemy is jihad asghar (a lesser jihad) and that fighting one’s ego is jihad akbar (a greater jihad). The following narration [athar] is quoted as proof: “We have returned from the lesser jihad to embark on the greater jihad.” They said: “What is the greater jihad?” He said: “The jihad of the heart, or the jihad against one’s ego.”

This narration is used by some to lessen the importance of fighting, to discourage any preparation for combat, and to deter any offering of jihad in Allah’s way. This narration is not a saheeh (sound) tradition: The prominent muhaddith Al Hafiz ibn Hajar al-Asqalani said in the Tasdid al-Qaws:

‘It is well known and often repeated, and was a saying of Ibrahim ibn ‘Abla.’

Al Hafiz Al Iraqi said in the Takhrij Ahadith al-Ahya’:

‘Al Bayhaqi transmitted it with a weak chain of narrators on the authority of Jabir, and Al Khatib transmitted it in his history on the authority of Jabir.’

Nevertheless, even if it were a sound tradition, it would never warrant abandoning jihad or preparing for it in order to rescue the territories of the Muslims and repel the attacks of the disbelievers. Let it be known that this narration simply emphasises the importance of struggling against one’s ego so that Allah will be the sole purpose of everyone of our actions.

Other associated matters concerning jihad include commanding the good and forbidding the evil. It is said in the Hadeeth: “One of the greatest forms of jihad is to utter a word of truth in the presence of a tyrannical ruler.” But nothing compares to the honour of shahadah kubra (the supreme martyrdom) or the reward that is waiting for the Mujahideen.

Epilogue

My brothers! The ummah that knows how to die a noble and honourable death is granted an exalted life in this world and eternal felicity in the next. Degradation and dishonour are the results of the love of this world and the fear of death. Therefore prepare for jihad and be the lovers of death. Life itself shall come searching after you.

My brothers, you should know that one day you will face death and this ominous event can only occur once. If you suffer on this occasion in the way of Allah, it will be to your benefit in this world and your reward in the next. And remember brother that nothing can happen without the Will of Allah: ponder well what Allah, the Blessed, the Almighty, has said:

‘Then after the distress, He sent down security for you. Slumber overtook a party of you, while another party was thinking about themselves (as to how to save themselves, ignoring the others and the Prophet) and thought wrongly of Allah - the thought of ignorance. They said, “Have we any part in the affair?” Say you (O Muhammad): “Indeed the affair belongs wholly to Allah.” They hide within themselves what they dare not reveal to you, saying: “If we had anything to do with the affair, none of us would have been killed here.” Say: “Even if you had remained in your homes, those for whom death was decreed would certainly have gone forth to the place of their death: but that Allah might test what is in your hearts; and to purify that which was in your hearts (sins), and Allah is All-Knower of what is in (your) hearts.”’ {Sura 3:154}

Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of War

The violent injunctions of the Quran and the violent precedents set by Muhammad set the tone for the Islamic view of politics and of world history. Islamic scholarship divides the world into two spheres of influence, the House of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the House of War (dar al-harb). Islam means submission, and so the House of Islam includes those nations that have submitted to Islamic rule, which is to say those nations ruled by Sharia law. The rest of the world, which has not accepted Sharia law and so is not in a state of submission, exists in a state of rebellion or war with the will of Allah. It is incumbent on dar al-Islam to make war upon dar al-harb until such time that all nations submit to the will of Allah and accept Sharia law. Islam’s message to the non-Muslim world is the same now as it was in the time of Muhammad and throughout history: submit or be conquered. The only times since Muhammad when dar al-Islam was not actively at war with dar al-harb were when the Muslim world was too weak or divided to make war effectively.

But the lulls in the ongoing war that the House of Islam has declared against the House of War do not indicate a forsaking of jihad as a principle but reflect a change in strategic factors. It is acceptable for Muslim nations to declare hudna, or truce, at times when the infidel nations are too powerful for open warfare to make sense. Jihad is not a collective suicide pact even while “killing and being killed” (Sura 9:111) is encouraged on an individual level. For the past few hundred years, the Muslim world has been too politically fragmented and technologically inferior to pose a major threat to the West. But that is changing.

Al-Taqiyya – Religious/political deception

Due to the state of war between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, systematic lying to the infidel must be considered part and parcel of Islamic tactics. The parroting by Muslim organisations throughout dar al-harb that “Islam is a religion of peace,” or that the origins of Muslim violence lie in the unbalanced psyches of particular individual “fanatics,” must be considered as disinformation intended to induce the infidel world to let down its guard. Of course, individual Muslims may genuinely regard their religion as “peaceful”, but only insofar as they are ignorant of its true teachings, or in the sense of the Egyptian theorist Sayyid Qutb, who posited in his Islam and Universal Peace that true peace would prevail in the world just as soon as Islam had conquered it.

A telling point is that, while Muslims who present their religion as peaceful abound throughout dar al-harb, they are nearly non-existent in dar al-Islam. A Muslim apostate once suggested to me a litmus test for Westerners who believe that Islam is a religion of “peace” and “tolerance”: try making that point on a street corner in Ramallah, or Riyadh, or Islamabad, or anywhere in the Muslim world. He assured me you wouldn’t live five minutes.

{A} problem concerning law and order {with respect to Muslims in dar al-harb} arises from an ancient Islamic legal principle — that of taqiyya, a word the root meaning of which is “to remain faithful” but which in effect means “dissimulation.” It has full Quranic authority (3:28 and 16:106) and allows the Muslim to conform outwardly to the requirements of un-Islamic or non-Islamic government, while inwardly “remaining faithful” to whatever he conceives to be proper Islam, while waiting for the tide to turn. (Hiskett, Some to Mecca Turn to Pray, 101.)

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 269; Narrated Jabir bin ‘Abdullah: The Prophet said, “War is deceit.”

Historically, examples of al-taqiyya include permission to renounce Islam itself in order to save one’s neck or ingratiate oneself with an enemy. It is not hard to see that the implications of taqiyya are insidious in the extreme: they essentially render negotiated settlement — and, indeed, all veracious communication between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb — impossible. It should not, however, be surprising that a party to a war should seek to mislead the other about its means and intentions. Jihad Watch’s own Hugh Fitzgerald sums up taqiyya and kitman, a related form of deception.

“Taqiyya” is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi’a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi’a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers. A related term, of broader application, is “kitman,” which is defined as “mental reservation.” An example of “Taqiyya” would be the insistence of a Muslim apologist that “of course” there is freedom of conscience in Islam, and then quoting that Qur’anic verse — “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” {2:256} But the impression given will be false, for there has been no mention of the Muslim doctrine of abrogation, or naskh, whereby such an early verse as that about “no compulsion in religion” has been cancelled out by later, far more intolerant and malevolent verses. In any case, history shows that within Islam there is, and always has been, “compulsion in religion” for Muslims, and for non-Muslims.

“Kitman” is close to “taqiyya,” but rather than outright dissimulation, it consists in telling only a part of the truth, with “mental reservation” justifying the omission of the rest. One example may suffice. When a Muslim maintains that “jihad” really means “a spiritual struggle,” and fails to add that this definition is a recent one in Islam (little more than a century old), he misleads by holding back, and is practicing “kitman.” When he adduces, in support of this doubtful proposition, the hadith in which Muhammad, returning home from one of his many battles, is reported to have said (as known from a chain of transmitters, or isnad), that he had returned from “the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad” and does not add what he also knows to be true, that this is a “weak” hadith, regarded by the most-respected muhaddithin as of doubtful authenticity, he is further practicing “kitman.”

In times when the greater strength of dar al-harb necessitates that the jihad take an indirect approach, the natural attitude of a Muslim to the infidel world must be one of deception and omission. Revealing frankly the ultimate goal of dar al-Islam to conquer and plunder dar al-harb when the latter holds the military trump cards would be strategic idiocy. Fortunately for the jihadists, most infidels do not understand how one is to read the Quran, nor do they trouble themselves to find out what Muhammad actually did and taught, which makes it easy to give the impression through selective quotations and omissions that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Any infidel who wants to believe such fiction will happily persist in his mistake having been cited a handful of Meccan verses and told that Muhammad was a man of great piety and charity. Digging only slightly deeper is sufficient to dispel the falsehood.

How al-Taqiyya is a central part of the Islamisation of Europe

The following article will demonstrate that the concept of “al-Taqiyya” is an integral part of Islam, and that it is NOT a Shi’ite concoction. I had to shorten the analysis considerably. You can however see sources for more material.

The word “al-Taqiyya” literally means: “Concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.” A one-word translation would be “Dissimulation.”

Rejecting al-Taqiyya is rejecting the Quran, as will be shown:

Reference 1

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in his book, “al-Durr al-Manthoor Fi al-Tafsir al-Ma’athoor,” narrates Ibn Abbas’, the most renowned and trusted narrator of tradition in the sight of the Sunnis, opinion regarding al-Taqiyya in the Quranic verse: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, (they) shall have no relation left with Allah except by way of precaution (“tat-taqooh”), that ye may guard yourselves (“tooqatan”) from them….[3:28]” that Ibn Abbas said:

“al-Taqiyya is with the tongue only; he who has been coerced into saying that which angers Allah, and his heart is comfortable (i.e., his true faith has not been shaken.), then (saying that which he has been coerced to say) will not harm him (at all); (because) al-Taqiyya is with the tongue only, (not the heart).”

NOTE 1: The two words “tat-taqooh” and “tooqatan,” as mentioned in the Arabic Quran, are both from the same root of “al-Taqiyya.”

NOTE 2: The “heart” as referred to above and in later occurrences refers to the center of faith in an individual’s existence. It is mentioned many times in the Quran.

Reference 2

Ibn Abbas also commented on the above verse, as narrated in Sunan al-Bayhaqi and Mustadrak al-Hakim, by saying:

“al-Taqiyya is the uttering of the tongue, while the heart is comfortable with faith.”

NOTE: The meaning is that the tongue is permitted to utter anything in a time of need, as long as the heart is not affected; and one is still comfortable with faith.

Reference 3

Abu Bakr al-Razi in his book, “Ahkam al-Quran,” v2, p10, has explained the aforementioned verse “…except by way of precaution (“tat-taqooh”), that ye may guard yourselves (“tooqatan”) from them….[3:28]” by affirming that al-Taqiyya should be used when one is afraid for life and/or limb. In addition, he has narrated that Qutadah said with regards to the above verse:

“It is permissible to speak words of unbelief when al-Taqiyya is mandatory.”

Reference 4

It has been narrated by Abd al-Razak, Ibn Sa’d, Ibn Jarir, Ibn Abi Hatim, Ibn Mardawayh, al-Bayhaqi in his book “al- Dala-il,” and it was corrected by al-Hakim in his book “al- Mustadrak” that:

“The non-believers arrested ‘Ammar Ibn Yasir and (tortured him until) he uttered foul words about Muhammad, and praised their gods (idols); and when they released him, he went straight to the Prophet. The Prophet said: “Is there something on your mind?” ‘Ammar Ibn Yasir said: “Bad (news)! They would not release me until I defamed you and praised their gods!” The Prophet said: “How do you find your heart to be?” `Ammar answered: “Comfortable with faith.” So the Prophet said: “Then if they come back for you, then do the same thing all over again.” Allah at that moment revealed the verse: “….except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith…[16:106]”

NOTE: The full verse that was quoted partially as part of the tradition above, is: “Anyone who, after accepting Faith in Allah, utters unbelief, except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith — but such as open their breast to unbelief, — on them is Wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful Chastisement [16:106].” (Emphasis Mine)

Reference 5

It is narrated in Sunan al-Bayhaqi that Ibn Abbas explained the above verse “Anyone who, after accepting Faith in Allah, utters unbelief….[16:106]” by saying:

“The meaning that Allah is conveying is that he who utters unbelief after having believed, shall deserve the Wrath of Allah and a terrible punishment. However, those who have been coerced, and as such uttered with their tongues that which their hearts did not confirm to escape persecution, have nothing to fear; for Allah holds His servants responsible for that which their hearts have ratified.”

Reference 6

Another explanation of the above verse is provided by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in his book, “al-Durr al-Manthoor Fi al- Tafsir al-Ma-athoor,” vol. 2, p178; he says:

“Ibn Abi Shaybah, Ibn Jarir, Ibn Munzir, and Ibn Abi Hatim narrated on the authority of Mujtahid (a man’s name) that this verse was revealed in relation to the following event: A group of people from Mecca accepted Islam and professed their belief; as a result, the companions in Medina wrote to them requesting that they emigrate to Medina; for if they don’t do so, they shall not be considered as those who are among the believers. In compliance, the group left Mecca, but were soon ambushed by the non-believers (Quraish) before reaching their destination; they were coerced into disbelief, and they professed it. As a result, the verse “…except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith [16:106]…” was revealed.”

Reference 7

Ibn Sa’d in his book, “al-Tabaqat al-Kubra,” narrates on the authority of Ibn Sirin that:

The Prophet saw `Ammar Ibn Yasir crying, so he wiped off his (RA) tears, and said: “The non-believers arrested you and immersed you in water until you said such and such (i.e., bad-mouthing the Prophet and praising the pagan gods to escape persecution); if they come back, then say it again.”

Reference 8

It is narrated in al-Sirah al-Halabiyyah, v3, p61, that:

After the conquest of the city of Khaybar by the Muslims, the Prophet was approached by Hajaj Ibn`Aalat and told: “O Prophet of Allah: I have in Mecca some excess wealth and some relatives, and I would like to have them back; am I excused if I bad-mouth you (to escape persecution)?” The Prophet excused him and said: “Say whatever you have to say.”

Reference 9

It is narrated by al-Ghazzali in his book, “Ihya `Uloom al-Din,” that:

Safeguarding of a Muslim’s life is a mandatory obligation that should be observed; and that lying is permissible when the shedding of a Muslim’s blood is at stake.

Reference 10

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in his book, “al-Ashbah Wa al-Naza’ir,” affirms that:

“it is acceptable (for a Muslim) to eat the meat of a dead animal at a time of great hunger (starvation to the extent that the stomach is devoid of all food); and to loosen a bite of food (for fear of choking to death) by alcohol; and to utter words of unbelief; and if one is living in an environment where evil and corruption are the pervasive norm, and permissible things (Halal) are the exception and a rarity, then one can utilise whatever is available to fulfill his needs.”

NOTE: The reference to the consumption of a dead animal is meant to illustrate that even forbidden things become permissible in a time of need.

Reference 11

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in his book, “al-Durr al-Manthoor Fi al-Tafsir al-Ma’athoor,” v2, p176, narrates that:

Abd Ibn Hameed, on the authority of al-Hassan, said: “al-Taqiyya is permissible until the Day of Judgment.”

Reference 12

Narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari, v7, p102, that Abu al-Darda’ said:

“(Verily) we smile for some people, while our hearts curse (those same people).”

Reference 13

Narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari, v7, p81, that the Prophet said:

“O `Aisha, the worst of people in the sight of Allah are those that are avoided by others due to their extreme impudence.”

NOTE: The meaning here is that one is permitted to use deception to get along with people. The above tradition was narrated when a person sought permission to see the Holy Prophet and prior to his asking permission the Prophet said that he was not a good man, but still I shall see him. The Prophet talked to the person with utmost respect, upon which Aisha inquired as to why the Prophet talked to the person with respect despite his character, upon which the above reply was rendered.

Reference 14

Narrated in Sahih Muslim (English version), Chapter MLXXVII, v4, p1373, Tradition #6303:

Humaid b. ‘Abd al-Rahman b. ‘Auf reported that his mother Umm Kulthum daughter of ‘Uqba b. Abu Mu’ait, and she was one amongst the first emigrants who pledged allegiance to Allah’s Apostle, as saying that she heard Allah’s Messenger as saying: A liar is not one who tries to bring reconciliation amongst people and speaks good (in order to avert dispute), or he conveys good. Ibn Shihab said he did not hear that exemption was granted in anything what the people speak as lie but in three cases: in battle, when infiltrating the enemy and for bringing temporary reconciliation amongst persons.

The (Sunni) commentator of this volume of Sahih Muslim, Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, provides the following commentary:

Telling of a lie is a grave sin but a Muslim is permitted to tell a lie in some several cases.

Please refer to Sahih Muslim Volume IV, Chapter MLXXVII, Tradition no. 6303 p1373, English only - Abdul Hamid Siddiqui

Al-Taqiyya vs. Hypocrisy [2]

Some people have fallen victim to confusing al-Taqiyya with hypocrisy, when in fact they (al-Taqiyya and Hypocrisy) are two opposite extremes. Al-Taqiyya is concealing faith and displaying non-belief; while Hypocrisy is the concealment of unbelief and the display of belief. They are total opposites in function, form, and meaning.

The Quran reveals the nature of hypocrisy with the following verse:

“When they meet those who believe, they say: We Believe;' but when they are alone with their evil ones, they say:We are really with you, we (were) only jesting [2:14].”

The Quran then reveals al-Taqiyya with the following verses:

“A Believer, a man from among the people of Pharaoh, who had concealed his faith, said: “Will ye slay a man because he says,`My Lord is Allah’?….[40:28]”

Also:

“Anyone who, after accepting Faith in Allah, utters unbelief, except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith — but such as open their breast to unbelief, — on them is Wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful Chastisement [16:106].”

And also:

“Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, (they) shall have no relation left with Allah except by way of precaution (“tat-taqooh”), that ye may guard yourselves (“tooqatan”) from them….[3:28]”

Moreover:

And when Moses returned unto his people, angry and grieved, he said: Evil is that (course) which ye took after I had left you. Would ye hasten on the judgment of your Lord? And he cast down the tablets, and he seized his brother by the head, dragging him toward him. (Aaron) said: “Son of my mother! Lo! People did oppress me and they were about to kill me. Make not the enemies neither rejoice over my misfortune nor count thou me amongst the sinful people. [7:150]”

Now, we see that Allah himself has stated that one of His faithful servants CONCEALED his faith and pretended that he was a follower of the Pharaoh’s religion to escape persecution. We also see that Prophet Aaron (Haroon) observed Taqiyya when his life was in danger. We also observe that al-Taqiyya is CLEARLY permitted in a time of need. In fact, the Book of Allah instructs us that we should escape a situation which causes our destruction for nothing:

“and make not your own hands contribute to your destruction [2:195]”

Reason and Logic for performing al-Taqiyya

Aside from the instructions of the Quran and Hadith on the permissibility and necessity of Taqiyya, such necessity can also be derived from a logical and rational standpoint. It is apparent to any discerning observer that Allah has bestowed upon His creation certain defence mechanisms and instincts to protect themselves from impending danger. What follows are some examples that serve to illustrate the above point.

It is clear that al-Taqiyya as a defence or attack mechanism is Allah’s mercy to His creation, such that He has not left them unprotected. As such, al-Taqiyya, build upon an instinctive defence/attack mechanism that Allah has endowed humans with. The ability to use one’s tongue to escape persecution when you are weak or vulnerable is indeed a supreme example of defence. Al-Taqiyya is a truism because it satisfies an instinctive need to survive and prosper.

Comments

It has been demonstrated under the section of “Sunni Sources In Support of al-Taqiyya” that it is permissible to lie and deceive if you are at a disadvantage or vulnerable to any non-Muslim (F example as long as Muslims are still a minority in Europe), as al-Ghazzali asserted; and that it is legitimate to utter words of unbelief as al-Suyuti stated; and that it is acceptable to smile at a person while your heart curses him as al-Bukhari confirms; and that al- Taqiyya is an integral part of the Quran itself, as has been shown under the section of “al-Taqiyya vs. Hypocrisy;” and that it was practiced by one of the most notable companions of the Prophet, none other than `Ammar Ibn Yasir; and we have seen that al-Suyuti narrates that al-Taqiyya is permissible until the Day of Judgment (When Islam has conquered the entire world); and that a person can say anything he wants, even to badmouth the Prophet if he is in a dangerous and restrictive situation; and we have also seen that even the Prophet himself practiced al-Taqiyya in a manner of deception that served to advance “temporary” good relations among selected neighbouring people until they could be conquered. Furthermore, keep in mind that the Prophet Muhammad did not disclose his mission for the first three years of his prophet hood, which was, in fact, another practice of al- Taqiyya by the Prophet to save the young Islam from annihilation.

There is NO difference between the Sunnis and Shia vis-a-vis al-Taqiyya, except that the Shia practices al-Taqiyya for fear of persecution from Sunnis, while the Sunnis are actively using it in its relations with the Western world (Especially for the majority of Muslims (Sunnis) who have immigrated to Europe and the US).

It is enough to say “I am a Shi’i” to get your head chopped off, even today in countries like Saudi Arabia. As for the Sunnis, they were never subjected to what the Shia have been subjected to, primarily because they have always been the friends of the so-called Islamic governments throughout the ages.

My comment here is that Wahhabis themselves do indeed practice al-Taqiyya, but they have been psychologically programmed by their mentors in such a way that they don’t even recognise al-Taqiyya when they do actually practice it. Ahmad Didat said that the Christians have been programmed in such a way that they may read the Bible a million times, but will never spot an error! They are fixed on believing it because their scholars say so, and they read at a superficial level. I say that this also applies to those who oppose al-Taqiyya.

Dr. al-Tijani wrote a short event where he was sitting next to a Sunni scholar on a flight to London; they were both on their way to attend an Islamic Conference. At that time, there was still some tension due to the Salman Rushdi affair. The conversation between the two was naturally concerned with the unity of the Ummah. Consequently, the Sunni/Shia issue introduced itself as part of the conversation. The Sunni scholar said: “The Shia must drop certain beliefs and convictions that cause disunity and animosity among the Muslims.” Dr. al-Tijani answered: “Like what?” The Sunni scholar answered: “Like the Taqiyya and Muta’ ideas.” Dr. al-Tijani immediately provided him with plenty of proofs in support of these notions, but the Sunni scholar was not convinced, and said that although these proofs are all authentic and correct, we must discard them for the sake of uniting the Ummah!!! When they both got to London, the immigration officer asked the Sunni scholar: “What is the purpose of your visit sir?” The Sunni scholar said: “For medical treatment.” Then Dr. al-Tijani was asked the same question, and he answered: “To visit some friends.” Dr. al-Tijani followed the Sunni scholar and said: “Didn’t I tell you that al-Taqiyya is for all times and occasions!” The Sunni scholar said: “How so?” Dr. al-Tijani answered: “Because we both lied to the airport police: I by saying that I came to visit some friends, and you by saying that you are here for medical treatment; when, in fact, we are here to attend the Islamic Conference!” The Sunni scholar smiled, and said: “Well, doesn’t an Islamic Conference provide healing for the soul?!” Dr. al-Tijani was swift to say: “And doesn’t it provide an opportunity to visit friends?!”

So you see, the Sunnis practice al-Taqiyya whether they acknowledge the fact or not. It is an innate part of human nature to save oneself, and most often we do it without even noticing.

My comment again is: Who, in Allah’s Name, is this Scholar to state that although the proofs provided to him by Dr. al-Tijani are ALL authentic, they must be discarded for the sake of uniting the Ummah?! Do you truly believe that the Ummah will be united by abandoning Allah’s commandments? Does the above statement represent scholarly merit, or pure rhetoric, ignorance, and hypocrisy on the part of that scholar? Is a scholar who utters such words of ignorance worthy of being obeyed and listened to? Who is he to tell Allah, the Creator of the Universe, and His Messenger what is right and wrong? Does he know more than Allah about al-Taqiyya? Exalted be Allah from being insulted by those who lack ALL forms of intelligence to interpret His religion.

al-Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq [The Sixth Imam of Ahlul-Bayt] said:

“al-Taqiyya is my religion, and the religion of my ancestors.” He also said: “He who doesn’t practice al-Taqiyya, doesn’t practice his religion.”

Sources:

1. http://www.al-islam.org/ENCYCLOPEDIA/chapter6b/1.html
2. http://www.al-islam.org/ENCYCLOPEDIA/chapter6b/3.html

Naskh - Quranic abrogation

Quranic abrogation (Naskh) is another central and under-analysed part of Islam.

Those Westerners who manage to pick up a translation of the Quran are often left bewildered as to its meaning thanks to ignorance of a critically important principle of Quranic interpretation known as “abrogation.” The principle of abrogation — al-naskh wa al-mansukh (the abrogating and the abrogated) — directs that verses revealed later in Muhammad’s career “abrogate” — i.e., cancel and replace — earlier ones whose instructions they may contradict. Thus, passages revealed later in Muhammad’s career, in Medina, overrule passages revealed earlier, in Mecca. The Quran itself lays out the principle of abrogation:

2:106. Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?

It seems that 2:106 was revealed in response to scepticism directed at Muhammad that Allah’s revelations were not entirely consistent over time. Muhammad’s rebuttal was that “Allah is able to do all things” — even change his mind. To confuse matters further, though the Quran was revealed to Muhammad sequentially over some twenty years’ time, it was not compiled in chronological order. When the Quran was finally collated into book form under Caliph Uthman, the suras were ordered from longest to shortest with no connection whatever to the order in which they were revealed or to their thematic content. In order to find out what the Quran says on a given topic, it is necessary to examine the other Islamic sources that give clues as to when in Muhammad’s lifetime the revelations occurred. Upon such examination, one discovers that the Meccan suras, revealed at a time when the Muslims were vulnerable, are generally benign; the later Medinan suras, revealed after Muhammad had made himself the head of an army, are bellicose.

Let us take, for example, 50:45 and Sura 109, both revealed in Mecca:

50:45. We know of best what they say; and you (O Muhammad) are not a tyrant over them (to force them to Belief). But warn by the Qur’an, him who fears My Threat.

109:1. Say (O Muhammad to these Mushrikun and Kafirun): “O Al-Kafirun (disbelievers in Allah, in His Oneness, in His Angels, in His Books, in His Messengers, in the Day of Resurrection, and in Al-Qadar {divine foreordainment and sustaining of all things}, etc.)!

109:2. “I worship not that which you worship,

109:3. “Nor will you worship that which I worship.

109:4. “And I shall not worship that which you are worshipping.

109:5. “Nor will you worship that which I worship.

109:6. “To you be your religion, and to me my religion (Islamic Monotheism).”

Then there is this passage revealed just after the Muslims reached Medina and were still vulnerable:

2:256. There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path. Whoever disbelieves in Taghut {idolatry} and believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that will never break. And Allah is All-Hearer, All-Knower.

In contrast, take 9:5, commonly referred to as the “Verse of the Sword”, revealed toward the end of Muhammad’s life:

9:5. Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun {unbelievers} wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat {the Islamic ritual prayers}), and give Zakat {alms}, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Having been revealed later in Muhammad’s life than 50:45, 109, and 2:256, the Verse of the Sword abrogates their peaceful injunctions in accordance with 2:106. Sura 8, revealed shortly before Sura 9, reveals a similar theme:

8:39. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.

8:67. It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land. You desire the good of this world (i.e. the money of ransom for freeing the captives), but Allah desires (for you) the Hereafter. And Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise.

9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

9:33. It is He {Allah} Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it superior over all religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate (it).

The Quran’s commandments to Muslims to wage war in the name of Allah against non-Muslims are unmistakable. They are, furthermore, absolutely authoritative as they were revealed late in the Prophet’s career and so cancel and replace earlier instructions to act peaceably. Without knowledge of the principle of abrogation (naskh), Westerners will continue to misread the Quran and misdiagnose Islam as a “religion of peace.”

Naskh – Quranic abrogation – origin and implementaion

Naskh (Quranic abrogation) is a legal practice first put in place by 9th century Islamic scholars with the intention of understanding seemingly contradictory verses in the Quran and the hadith. Its practical consequence in relation to Jihad is that the aggressive Medina verses of the Quran cancels the peaceful Mecca verses. As far back as the sources will take us, Muslim jurisprudence discerned Quranic abrogation (‘Naskh’ or ‘Man-sookh’) in the Quran. One of the earliest extended discussions of Quranic abrogation was; al-Naskh wa-al-mansukh fi al-quran by Abu Ubayd (839 AD). Another source from the ninth century is; Kitab Fahm al-quran of al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi. Other sources from the same century are the writings of al-Shafii and Ibn Qutaybah. The conclusions of these “works” were among other things that Medina (war mongering) verses cancel Mecca (peaceful) verses whenever appropriate.

Even though the abrogated texts remain a part of the Qur’an and are even recited during prayers, the application thereof, or applicable information therefrom is inappropriate. This foundation for duality makes the Quran and the Hadith extremely effective when opposing different challenges. It allows every Muslim to use the appropriate texts based on the circumstances. The Mecca verses are given emphasis for tactical reasons in the ongoing peaceful conquering of nations through demographic warfare (as we see in Europe) or whenever appropriate, while the aggressive Medina verses are given emphasis through regular Jihad (warfare) as we see in Sudan.

Basis for abrogation

The concept of abrogation has been mainly extrapolated from two Quranic texts:

[Q 2:106] What We [Allah] cancel of ‘Ayaaat’ or made forgotten, We replace it with something better than it, or at least similar. Do you not know that truly, Allah is powerful over everything?

The word ‘Ayaaat’ used in the above text, means “signs”. Throughout the Qur’an, this word is used for a variety of meanings, and is not limited to the Quranic verses [see 30:21, for example].

The second passage usually referred to as the basis for Quranic abrogation is the following:

[Q 87:6-7] We [Allah] will relate to you [knowledge], so do not forget, except what Allah wills. Surely, he knows what the apparent and the hidden.

We can understand the development of the concept of Naskh in the following manner; commentators were perplexed in understanding seemingly contradictory verses. They therefore evaluated the practices of the Prophet (especially the various hadiths) and the actions of the first generations of Muslims. By doing so much confusion could be avoided.

For example; [Q 8:61], which commands Muslims to remain in a peaceful setting with those who maintain a similar stance, has been replaced with 9:73, which reads as follows;

[Q 9:73] O Prophet, fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.

By ignoring the peaceful verse 8:61 which was clearly of a limited scope, given to the Prophet at a time when Islam was weak and vulnerable and when he was under constant attack from his foes (thus the peaceful Medina verses), a foundation for constant Jihad until Islam has conquered the world was created.

Texts such as 9:73 are cited by Islamists everywhere.

Look at 2:62 as the perfect example. It, along with 5:69, actually names some Non-Muslim religious groups as being rewarded by God for their faith and deeds. These verses are however cancelled by Q 3:85 [and other texts, such as 5:3], or are said to refer to nations prior to Muhammad’s time.

At the end of the day, there is really no doubt whatsoever what Muhammads own agenda and conclusions were as the following authentic Hadith explains:

Hadith of the Prophet

“Lataftahanna al-Qustantiniyya wa lanima al-amiru amiruha wa lanima al-jayshu dhalika al-jaysh.”

“Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will he be, and what a wonderful army will that army be!”

Needless to say; every single kuffar capital is considered modern day Constantinople’s. The only difference is that the strategic weapon used in the Jihad against Europe is Islamic demographic warfare instead of regular infantry units (which is the preferred method in the Sudan Jihad).

Jihad Through History

In 622 AD (year one in the Islamic calendar, AH 1), Muhammad abandoned Mecca for the city of Medina (Yathrib) some 200 farther north in the Arabian peninsula. In Medina, Muhammad established a paramilitary organisation that would spread his influence and that of his religion throughout Arabia. Because there has never been a separation of the political-military and the religious in Islam, this development was entirely natural by Islamic principles. By the time of his death in 632 AD, Muhammad had extended his control in a series of raids and battles over most of southern Arabia. The conquered populations of these areas either had to submit to Muslim rule and pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.

The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD

Near the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam’s expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as “the four rightly-guided Caliphs”) and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.

Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, “Let one of you talk to me!” Al-Mughira replied, “Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: “Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master.”

Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad’s death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia.

As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas — incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia — of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilisations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.

Ibn Hudayl, a 14th century Granadan author of an important treatise on Jihad, explained the original methods which facilitated the violent, chaotic Jihad conquest of the Iberian peninsula, and other parts of Europe:

It is permissible to set fire to the lands of the enemy, his stores of grain, his beasts of burden if it is not possible for the Muslims to take possession of them as well as to cut down his trees, to raze his cities, in a word, to do everything that might ruin and discourage him, provided that the imam deems these measures appropriate, suited to hastening the Islamisation of that enemy or to weakening him. Indeed, all this contributes to a military triumph over him or to forcing him to capitulate.

The historian al-Maqqari, who wrote in seventeenth-century Tlemcen in Algeria, explains that the panic created by the Arab horsemen and sailors, at the time of the Muslim expansion in the zones that saw those raids and landings, facilitated the later conquest, if that was decided on:

Allah, he says, thus instilled such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants, to beg for peace.”

Bat Ye’or, the leading scholar of Islam’s expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian’s account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:

… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery — men and women, boys and girls — and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)

The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including non-combatants.

In 177 <17 793="793" april="april">, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2 837="837" december="december">, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6 845="845" september="september">, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27 860="860" march="march">, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)

This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.

The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD

Some twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire’s capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades (see Islam 101 FAQs), but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.

In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the “Arabness” of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:

Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognised Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse’s legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman Empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.)

This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Iceland into the 19th century.

Dhimmitude

Islam’s persecution of non-Muslims is in no way limited to jihad, even though that is the basic relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. After the jihad concludes in a given area with the conquest of infidel territory, the dhimma, or treaty of protection, may be granted to the conquered “People of the Book” — historically, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The dhimma provides that the life and property of the infidel are exempted from jihad for as long as the Muslim rulers permit, which has generally meant for as long as the subject non-Muslims — the dhimmi — prove economically useful to the Islamic state. The Quran spells out the payment of the jizya (poll- or head-tax; Sura 9:29), which is the most conspicuous means by which the Muslim overlords exploit the dhimmi. But the jizya is not merely economic in its function; it exists also to humiliate the dhimmi and impress on him the superiority of Islam. Al-Maghili, a fifteenth century Muslim theologian, explains:

On the day of payment {of the jizya} they {the dhimmi} shall be assembled in a public place like the suq {place of commerce}. They should be standing there waiting in the lowest and dirtiest place. The acting officials representing the Law shall be placed above them and shall adopt a threatening attitude so that it seems to them, as well as to others, that our object is to degrade them by pretending to take their possessions. They will realise that we are doing them a favour in accepting from them the jizya and letting them go free. (Al-Maghili, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 361.)

Islamic law codifies various other restrictions on the dhimmi, all of which derive from the Quran and the Sunnah. Several hundred years of Islamic thought on the right treatment of dhimmi peoples is summed up by Al-Damanhuri, a seventeenth century head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious center for learning in the Muslim world:

… just as the dhimmis are prohibited from building churches, other things also are prohibited to them. They must not assist an unbeliever against a Muslim … raise the cross in an Islamic assemblage … display banners on their own holidays; bear arms … or keep them in their homes. Should they do anything of the sort, they must be punished, and the arms seized. … The Companions [of the Prophet] agreed upon these points in order to demonstrate the abasement of the infidel and to protect the weak believer’s faith. For if he sees them humbled, he will not be inclined toward their belief, which is not true if he sees them in power, pride, or luxury garb, as all this urges him to esteem them and incline toward them, in view of his own distress and poverty. Yet esteem for the unbeliever is unbelief. (Al-Damanhuri, quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 382.)

The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian peoples of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe suffered under the oppressive strictures of the dhimma for centuries. The status of these dhimmi peoples is comparable in many ways to that of former slaves in the post-bellum American South. Forbidden to construct houses of worship or repair extant ones, economically crippled by the jizya, socially humiliated, legally discriminated against, and generally kept in a permanent state of weakness and vulnerability by the Muslim overlords, it should not be surprising that their numbers dwindled, in many places to the point of extinction. The generally misunderstood decline of Islamic civilisation over the past several centuries is easily explained by the demographic decline of the dhimmi populations, which had provided the principle engines of technical and administrative competence.

Should the dhimmi violate the conditions of the dhimma — perhaps through practicing his own religion indiscreetly or failing to show adequate deference to a Muslim — then the jihad resumes. At various times in Islamic history, dhimmi peoples rose above their subjected status, and this was often the occasion for violent reprisals by Muslim populations who believed them to have violated the terms of the dhimma. Medieval Andalusia (Moorish Spain) is often pointed out by Muslim apologists as a kind of multicultural wonderland, in which Jews and Christians were permitted by the Islamic government to rise through the ranks of learning and government administration. What we are not told, however, is that this relaxation of the disabilities resulted in widespread rioting on the part of the Muslim populace that killed hundreds of dhimmis, mainly Jews. By refusing to convert to Islam and straying from the traditional constraints of the dhimma (even at the behest of the Islamic government, which was in need of capable manpower), the dhimmi had implicitly chosen the only other option permitted by the Quran: death.

Dhimmitude in Spain (Iberian peninsula)

The Iberian peninsula was conquered in 710-716 C.E. by Arab tribes originating from northern, central and southern Arabia. Massive Berber and Arab immigration, and the colonisation of the Iberian peninsula, followed the conquest. Most churches were converted into mosques. Although the conquest had been planned and conducted jointly with a faction of Iberian Christian dissidents, including a bishop, it proceeded as a classical jihad with massive pillages, enslavements, deportations and killings. Toledo, which had first submitted to the Arabs in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. The town was punished by pillage and all the notables had their throats cut. In 730, the Cerdagne (in Septimania, near Barcelona) was ravaged and a bishop burned alive. In the regions under stable Islamic control, subjugated non-Muslim dhimmis -Jews and Christians- like elsewhere in other Islamic lands were prohibited from building new churches or synagogues, or restoring the old ones. Segregated in special quarters, they had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, the Christian peasantry formed a servile class exploited by the dominant Arab ruling elites; many abandoned their land and fled to the towns. Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing.

By the end of the eighth century, the rulers of North Africa and of Andalusia had introduced rigorous and harsh Maliki jurisprudence as the predominant school of Muslim law. Three quarters of a century ago, at a time when political correctness was not dominating historical publication and discourse, Évariste Lévi-Provençal, the pre-eminent scholar of Andalusia wrote:

The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation.

Dufourcq provides this illustration of the resulting religious and legal discriminations dhimmis suffered, and the accompanying incentives for them to convert to Islam: by converting [to Islam], one would no longer have to be confined to a given district, or be the victim of discriminatory measures or suffer humiliations. Furthermore, the entire Islamic law tended to favour conversions. When an “infidel” became a Muslim, he immediately benefited from a complete amnesty for all of his earlier crimes, even if he had been sentenced to the death penalty, even if it was for having insulted the Prophet or blasphemed against the Word of God: his conversion acquitted him of all his faults, of all his previous sins.

A legal opinion given by a mufti from al-Andalus in the ninth century is very instructive: a Christian dhimmi kidnapped and violated a Muslim woman; when he was arrested and condemned to death, he immediately converted to Islam; he was automatically pardoned, while being constrained to marry the woman and to provide for her a dowry in keeping with her status. The mufti who was consulted about the affair, perhaps by a brother of the woman, found that the court decision was perfectly legal, but specified that if that convert did not become a Muslim in good faith and secretly remained a Christian, he should be flogged, slaughtered and crucified.

Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year (sometimes twice a year) raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Many thousands of non-Muslim captives were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousand of Christian slaves, brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women. Society was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognised as equals, despite their Islamisation; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.

The Andalusian Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun (d. 1134) offered these telling legal opinions regarding Jews and Christians in Seville around 1100 A.D.:

No Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression], “Peace be upon you”. In effect, Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning. They are the confederates of Satan’s party; Satan’s confederates will surely be the losers!” (Quran 58:19 [modern Dawood translation]). A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognised and this will be for them a form of disgrace.

Ibn Abdun also forbade the selling of scientific books to dhimmis under the pretext that they translated them and attributed them to their co-religionists and bishops. In fact, plagiarism is difficult to prove since whole Jewish and Christian libraries were looted and destroyed. Another prominent Andalusian jurist, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (d. 1064), wrote that Allah has established the infidels ownership of their property merely to provide booty for Muslims.

In Granada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade. The Granada pogrom was likely to have been incited, in part, by the bitter anti-Jewish ode of Abu Ishaq a well known Muslim jurist and poet of the times, who wrote:

Bring them down to their place and Return them to the most abject station. They used to roam around us in tatters Covered with contempt, humiliation, and scorn. They used to rummage amongst the dungheaps for a bit of a filthy rag to serve as a shroud for a man to be buried in…Do not consider that killing them is treachery. Nay, it would be treachery to leave them scoffing.” [The translator then summarises: The Jews have broken their covenant (i.e., overstepped their station, with reference to the Covenant of Umar) and compunction would be out of place.]

The Muslim Berber Almohads in Spain and North Africa (1130-1232) wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations. This devastation- massacre, captivity, and forced conversion- was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators 13 . Maimonides, the renowned philosopher and physician, experienced the Almohad persecutions, and had to flee Cordoba with his entire family in 1148, temporarily residing in Fez - disguised as a Muslim - before finding asylum in Fatimid Egypt.

Indeed, although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk this utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews:

..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us…Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they..

Ottoman Dhimmitude

Even the Turcophilic 19th century travel writer Ubicini acknowledged the oppressive burden of Ottoman dhimmitude in this moving depiction:

The history of enslaved peoples is the same everywhere, or rather, they have no history. The years, the centuries pass without bringing any change to their situation. Generations come and go in silence. One might think they are afraid to awaken their masters, asleep alongside them. However, if you examine them closely you discover that this immobility is only superficial. A silent and constant agitation grips them. Life has entirely withdrawn into the heart. They resemble those rivers which have disappeared underground; if you put your ear to the earth, you can hear the muffled sound of their waters; then they re-emerge intact a few leagues away. Such is the state of the Christian populations of Turkey under Ottoman rule.

Ottoman Devshirme-janissary system

Scholars who have conducted serious, detailed studies of the devshirme-janissary system have made the following conclusions; Vryonis, Jr. for example, makes these deliberately understated, but cogent observations;

…in discussing the devshirme we are dealing with the large numbers of Christians who, in spite of the material advantages offered by conversion to Islam, chose to remain members of a religious society which was denied first class citizenship. Therefore the proposition advanced by some historians, that the Christians welcomed the devshirme as it opened up wonderful opportunities for their children, is inconsistent with the fact that these Christians had not chosen to become Muslims in the first instance but had remained Christians. There is abundant testimony to the very active dislike with which they viewed the taking of their children. One would expect such sentiments given the strong nature of the family bond and given also the strong attachment to Christianity of those who had not apostacised to Islam. First of all the Ottomans capitalised on the general Christian fear of losing their children and used offers of devshirme exemption in negotiations for surrender of Christian lands. Such exemptions were included in the surrender terms granted to Jannina, Galata, the Morea, Chios, etc. Christians who engaged in specialised activities which were important to the Ottoman state were likewise exempt from the tax on their children by way of recognition of the importance of their labours for the empire. Exemption from this tribute was considered a privilege and not a penalty.

…there are other documents wherein their [i.e., the Christians] dislike is much more explicitly apparent. These include a series of Ottoman documents dealing with the specific situations wherein the devshirmes themselves have escaped from the officials responsible for collecting them. A firman… in 1601 [regarding the devshirme] provided the [Ottoman] officials with stern measures of enforcement, a fact which would seem to suggest that parents were not always disposed to part with their sons.

“..to enforce the command of the known and holy fetva [fatwa] of Seyhul [Shaikh]- Islam. In accordance with this whenever some one of the infidel parents or some other should oppose the giving up of his son for the Janissaries, he is immediately hanged from his door-sill, his blood being deemed unworthy.”

Vasiliki Papoulia highlights the continuous desperate, often violent struggle of the Christian populations against this brutally imposed Ottoman levy:

It is obvious that the population strongly resented this measure [and the levy] could be carried out only by force. Those who refused to surrender their sons- the healthiest, the handsomest and the most intelligent- were on the spot put to death by hanging. Nevertheless we have examples of armed resistance. In 1565 a revolt took place in Epirus and Albania. The inhabitants killed the recruiting officers and the revolt was put down only after the sultan sent five hundred janissaries in support of the local sanjak-bey. We are better informed, thanks to the historic archives of Yerroia, about the uprising in Naousa in 1705 where the inhabitants killed the Silahdar Ahmed Celebi and his assistants and fled to the mountains as rebels. Some of them were later arrested and put to death..

Since there was no possibility of escaping [the levy] the population resorted to several subterfuges. Some left their villages and fled to certain cities which enjoyed exemption from the child levy or migrated to Venetian-held territories. The result was a depopulation of the countryside. Others had their children marry at an early age …Nicephorus Angelus… states that at times the children ran away on their own initiative, but when they heard that the authorities had arrested their parents and were torturing them to death, returned and gave themselves up. La Giulletiere cites the case of a young Athenian who returned from hiding in order to save his father’s life and then chose to die himself rather than abjure his faith. According to the evidence in Turkish sources, some parents even succeeded in abducting their children after they had been recruited. The most successful way of escaping recruitment was through bribery. That the latter was very widespread is evident from the large amounts of money confiscated by the sultan from corrupt officials. Finally, in their desperation the parents even appealed to the Pope and the Western powers for help.

Papoulia concludes:

…there is no doubt that this heavy burden was one of the hardest tribulations of the Christian population.

Dhimmitude in Greece under Ottoman rule

A.E. Vacalopoulos, History of Macedonia, 1354-1833, Thessaloniki, 1973, pp. 67-74, 353-358, 636-652; “Background and Causes of the Greek Revolution”, Neo-Hellenika, Vol. 2, 1975, pp.53-68; The Greek Nation, 1453-1669, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1976, Chaps. 1-4.

Vacalopoulos describes how jihad imposed dhimmitude under Ottoman rule provided critical motivation for the Greek Revolution (Background and Causes of the Greek Revolution, Neo-Hellenika, pp.54-55):

The Revolution of 1821 is no more than the last great phase of the resistance of the Greeks to Ottoman domination; it was a relentless, undeclared war, which had begun already in the first years of servitude. The brutality of an autocratic regime, which was characterised by economic spoliation, intellectual decay and cultural retrogression, was sure to provoke opposition. Restrictions of all kinds, unlawful taxation, forced labour, persecutions, violence, imprisonment, death, abductions of girls and boys and their confinement to Turkish harems, and various deeds of wantonness and lust, along with numerous less offensive excesses — all these were a constant challenge to the instinct of survival and they defied every sense of human decency. The Greeks bitterly resented all insults and humiliations, and their anguish and frustration pushed them into the arms of rebellion. There was no exaggeration in the statement made by one of the beys if Arta, when he sought to explain the ferocity of the struggle. He said: ‘We have wronged the rayas [dhimmis] (i.e. our Christian subjects) and destroyed both their wealth and honour; they became desperate and took up arms. This is just the beginning and will finally lead to the destruction of our empire.’ The sufferings of the Greeks under Ottoman rule were therefore the basic cause of the insurrection; a psychological incentive was provided by the very nature of the circumstances.

Dhimmitude in Palestine

In his comprehensive study of 19th century Palestinian Jewry under Ottoman rule (The Jews of Palestine, pp. 168, 172-73), Professor Tudor Parfitt made these summary observations:

“…Inside the towns, Jews and other dhimmis were frequently attacked, wounded, and even killed by local Muslims and Turkish soldiers. Such attacks were frequently for trivial reasons: Wilson [in British Foreign Office correspondence] recalled having met a Jew who had been badly wounded by a Turkish soldier for not having instantly dismounted when ordered to give up his donkey to a soldier of the Sultan. Many Jews were killed for less. On occasion the authorities attempted to get some form of redress but this was by no means always the case: the Turkish authorities themselves were sometimes responsible for beating Jews to death for some unproven charge. After one such occasion [British Consul] Young remarked: ‘I must say I am sorry and surprised that the Governor could have acted so savage a part- for certainly what I have seen of him I should have thought him superior to such wanton inhumanity- but it was a Jew- without friends or protection- it serves to show well that it is not without reason that the poor Jew, even in the nineteenth century, lives from day to day in terror of his life’.”

Dhimmitude during and after the Tanzimat period – Ottoman Empire

The Tanzimat, meaning reorganisation of the Ottoman Empire, was a period of reformation that began in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. The Tanzimat reform era was characterised by various attempts to modernise the Ottoman Empire, to secure its territorial integrity against nationalist movements and aggressive powers. The reforms encouraged Ottomanism among the diverse ethnic groups of the Empire, attempting to stem the tide of nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The reforms attempted to integrate non-Muslims and non-Turks more thoroughly into Ottoman society by enhancing their civil liberties and granting them equality throughout the Empire.

Edouard Engelhardt, La Turquie et La Tanzimat, 2 Vols. In 1882, Paris; Engelhardt made these observations from his detailed analysis of the Tanzimat period, noting that a quarter century after the Crimean War (1853-56), and the second iteration of Tanzimat reforms, the same problems persisted:

Muslim society has not yet broken with the prejudices which make the conquered peoples subordinate…the raya [dhimmis] remain inferior to the Osmanlis; in fact he is not rehabilitated; the fanaticism of the early days has not relented…[even liberal Muslims rejected]…civil and political equality, that is to say, the assimilation of the conquered with the conquerors.

A systematic examination of the condition of the Christian rayas was conducted in the 1860s by British consuls stationed throughout the Ottoman Empire, yielding extensive primary source documentary evidence. [54]. Britain was then Turkey’s most powerful ally, and it was in her strategic interest to see that oppression of the Christians was eliminated, to prevent direct, aggressive Russian or Austrian intervention. On July 22, 1860, Consul James Zohrab sent a lengthy report from Sarajevo to his ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Bulwer, analysing the administration of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, again, following the 1856 Tanzimat reforms. Referring to the reform efforts, Zohrab states:

I can safely say, [they] practically remain a dead letter…while [this] does not extend to permitting the Christians to be treated as they formerly were treated, is so far unbearable and unjust in that it permits the Mussulmans to despoil them with heavy exactions. False imprisonments (imprisonment under false accusation) are of daily occurence. A Christian has but a small chance of exculpating himself when his opponent is a Mussulman (…) Christian evidence, as a rule, is still refused (…) Christians are now permitted to possess real property, but the obstacles which they meet with when they attempt to acquire it are so many and vexatious that very few have as yet dared to brave them… Such being, generally speaking, the course pursued by the Government towards the Christians in the capital (Sarajevo) of the province where the Consular Agents of the different Powers reside and can exercise some degree of control, it may easily be guessed to what extend the Christians, in the remoter districts, suffer who are governed by Mudirs (governors) generally fanatical and unacquainted with the (new reforms of the) law..

Even the modern Ottomanist Roderick Davison (in “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century” American Historical Review, Vol. 59, pp. 848, 855, 859, 864) concedes, that the reforms failed, and offers an explanation based on Islamic beliefs intrinsic to the system of dhimmitude:

No genuine equality was ever attained…there remained among the Turks an intense Muslim feeling which could sometimes burst into an open fanaticism…More important than the possibility of fanatic outbursts, however, was the innate attitude of superiority which the Muslim Turk possessed. Islam was for him the true religion. Christianity was only a partial revelation of the truth, which Muhammad finally revealed in full; therefore Christians were not equal to Muslims in possession of truth. Islam was not only a way of worship, it was a way of life as well. It prescribed man’s relations to man, as well as to God, and was the basis for society, for law, and for government. Christians were therefore inevitably considered second-class citizens in the light of religious revelation—as well as by reason of the plain fact that they had been conquered by the Ottomans. This whole Muslim outlook was often summed up in the common term gavur (or kafir), which means ‘unbeliever’ or ‘infidel’, with emotional and quite uncomplimentary overtones. To associate closely or on terms of equality with the gavur was dubious at best. “Familiar association with heathens and infidels is forbidden to the people of Islam,” said Asim, an early nineteenth-century historian, “and friendly and intimate intercourse between two parties that are one to another as darkness and light is far from desirable”…The mere idea of equality, especially the anti-defamation clause of 1856, offended the Turks’ inherent sense of the rightness of things. “Now we can’t call a gavur a gavur”, it was said, sometimes bitterly, sometimes in matter-of-fact explanation that under the new dispensation the plain truth could no longer be spoken openly. Could reforms be acceptable which forbade calling a spade a spade?…The Turkish mind, conditioned by centuries of Muslim and Ottoman dominance, was not yet ready to accept any absolute equality…Ottoman equality was not attained in the Tanzimat period [i.e., mid to late 19th century, 1839-1876], nor yet after the Young Turk revolution of 1908…

Dhimmitude – Zorastrians in Iran

Boyce, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism, pp. 7-8; Napier Malcolm lived among the Zoroastrians in the central Iranian town of Yezd at the end of the 19th century. He documented the following in his narrative, Five Years in a Persian Town, New York, 1905, pp. 45-50:

Up to 1895 no Parsi (Zoroastrian) was allowed to carry an umbrella. Even during the time that I was in Yezd they could not carry one in town. Up to 1895 there was a strong prohibition upon eye-glasses and spectacles; up to 1885 they were prevented from wearing rings; their girdles had to be made of rough canvas, but after 1885 any white material was permitted. Up to 1896 the Parsis were obliged to twist their turbans instead of folding them. Up to 1898 only brown, grey, and yellow were allowed for the qaba [outer coat] or arkhaluq [under coat] (body garments), but after that all colours were permitted except blue, black, bright red, or green. There was also a prohibition against white stockings, and up to about 1880 the Parsis had to wear a special kind of peculiarly hideous shoe with a broad, turned-up toe. Up to 1885 they had to wear a torn cap. Up to 1880 they had to wear tight knickers, self-coloured, instead of trousers. Up to 1891 all Zoroastrians had to walk in town, and even in the desert they had to dismount if they met a Mussulman of any rank whatsoever. During the time that I was in Yezd they were allowed to ride in the desert, and only had to dismount if they met a big Mussulman. There were other similar dress restrictions too numerous and trifling to mention.

Then the houses of both the Parsis and the Jews, with the surrounding walls, had to be built so low that the top could be reached by a Mussulman with his hand extended; they might, however, dig down below the level of the road. The walls had to be splashed with white around the door. Double doors, the common form of Persian door, were forbidden, also rooms containing three or more windows. Bad-girs [Air-shafts] were still forbidden to Parsis while we were in Yezd, but in 1900 one of the bigger Parsi merchants gave a large present to the Governor and to the chief mujtahid (Mohammedan priest) to be allowed to build one. Upper rooms were also forbidden.

Up to about 1860 Parsis could not engage in trade. They used to hide things in their cellar rooms, and sell them secretly. They can now trade in the caravanserais or hostelries, but not in the bazaars, nor may they trade in linen drapery. Up to 1870 they were not permitted to have a school for their children.

The amount of the Jizya, or tax upon infidels, differed according to the wealth of the individual Parsi, but it was never less than two tomans [a sum of money, 10,000 dinars]. A toman is now worth about three shillings and eight pence, but it used to be worth much more. Even now, when money has much depreciated, it represents a labourer’s wage for ten days. The money must be paid on the spot, when the farrash [literally, a carpet sweeper. Really a servant, chiefly, outdoor], who was acting as collector, met the man. The farrash was at liberty to do what he liked when collecting the jizya. The man was not even allowed to go home and fetch the money, but was beaten at once until it was given. About 1865 a farrash collecting this tax tied a man to a dog, and gave a blow to each in turn.

About 1891 a mujtahid caught a Zoroastrian merchant wearing white stockings in one of the public squares of the town. He ordered the man to be beaten and the stockings taken off. About 1860 a man of seventy went to the bazaars in white trousers of rough canvas. They hit him about a good deal, took off his trousers, and sent him home with them under his arm. Sometimes Parsis would be made to stand on one leg in a mujtahid’s house until they consented to pay a considerable sum of money.

In the reign of the late Shah Nasirud Din, Manukji Limji, a British Parsi from India, was for a long while in Tehran as Parsi representative. Almost all the Parsi disabilities were withdrawn, the Jizya, the clothes restrictions, and those with regard to houses, but the law of inheritance was not altered, according to which a Parsi who becomes a Mussulman takes precedence of his Zoroastrian brothers and sisters. The Jizya was actually remitted, and also some of the restrictions as to houses, but the rest of the firman was a dead letter.

In 1898 the present Shah, Muzaffarud Din, gave a firman to Dinyar, the present Qalantar [Head Man] of the Parsi Anjuman, or Committee, revoking all the remaining Parsi disabilities, and also declaring it unlawful to use fraud or deception in making conversions of Parsis to Islam. This firman does not appear to have had any effect at all.

About 1883, after the firman of Nasirud Din Shah had been promulgated, one of the Parsis, Rustami Ardishiri Dinyar, built in Kucha Biyuk, one of the villages near Yezd, a house with an upper room, slightly above the height to which the Parsis used to be limited. He heard that the Mussulmans were going to kill him, so he fled by night to Tehran. They killed another Parsi, Tirandaz, in mistake for him, but did not destroy the house.

So the great difficulty was not to get the law improved, but rather to get it enforced. When Manukji [British Parsi and consul in Tehran] was at Yezd, about 1870, two Parsis were attacked by two Mussulmans outside the town, and one was killed, the other terribly wounded as they had tried to cut off his head. The Governor brought the criminals to Yezd, but did nothing to them. Manukji got leave to take them to Tehran. The Prime Minister, however, told him that no Mussulman would be killed for a Zardushti, or Zoroastrian, and that they would only be bastinadoed. About this time Manukji enquired whether it was true that the blood-price of a Zardushti was to be seven tomans. He got back the reply that it was to be a little over.

The Yezd Parsis have been helped considerably by agents from Bombay, who are British subjects, and of late years things have improved slightly.

Jihad in the Modern Era

Following its defeat at the walls of Vienna in 1683, Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the increasingly predatory European powers.

In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire’s non-Muslim subjects laboured. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over unbelievers.

By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim groups seeking independence.

It was in this atmosphere that the first stage of the Armenian genocide took place in 1896 with the slaughter of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.

To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,” the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.” In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has appeared. All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children must fulfil their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.” (quoted in Balakian, The Burning Tigris, 169-70.)

The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922 at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships. All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish government.

Since the break-up of the Islamic Empire following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens against the Russians in the Caucasus. Jihads have also been waged throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01 (USA), 3/11/04 (Spain), and 7/7/05 (UK). (For a more comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visit www.thereligionofpeace.com.)

The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is making a comeback.

Conclusion

The chief barrier today to a better understanding of Islam — apart, perhaps, from outright fear — is sloppy language. Let us take, to start with, the much-vaunted “war on terror.” Upon scrutiny, the phrase “war on terror” makes as much sense as a war on “blitzkrieg,” “bullets,” or “strategic bombing.” The “war on terror” implies that it is perfectly fine if the enemy seeks to destroy us — and, indeed, succeeds in doing so — as long as he does not employ “terror” in the process.

“Terrorism,” it should be obvious, is a tactic or stratagem used to advance a goal; it is the goal of Islamic terrorism that we must come to understand, and this logically requires an understanding of Islam.

As we have seen, contrary to the widespread insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilisations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term “Islamo-fascism” is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.

The spectacular acts of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are but the most recent manifestation of a global war of conquest that Islam has been waging since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century AD and that continues apace today. This is the simple, glaring truth that is staring the world today in the face — and which has stared it in the face numerous times in the past — but which it seems few today are willing to contemplate.

It is important to realise that we have been talking about Islam — not Islamic “fundamentalism,” “extremism,” “fanaticism,” “Islamo-fascism,” or “Islamism,” but Islam proper, Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present. The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are due largely to the geo-strategic changes following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options available to terrorists.

With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe. In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against the non-Muslim world is because they can.

It is paramount to note, however, that, even if no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would simply mean a change in Islam’s tactics — perhaps indicating a longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round of violence. It cannot be overemphasised that Muslim terrorism is a symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while Islam proper remains permanently hostile.

Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his “Future of the Islamic Movement” (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.

Our own Prophet … was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist and a first-class manager all in one. … In the Qur’an’s historic vision Allah’s support and the revolutionary struggle of the people must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. … But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his mi’raj {“nocturnal voyages to the ‘court’ of Allah”}. … It is Allah who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted.

It must be emphasised that all of the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources themselves and is not the product of critical Western scholarship. (Indeed, most modern Western scholarship of Islam is hardly “critical” in any meaningful sense.) It is Islam’s self-interpretation that necessitates and glorifies violence, not any foreign interpretation of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

There are a handful of questions that invariably arise when the point is made that Islam is violent. These questions for the most part are misleading or irrelevant and do not contest the actual evidence or arguments that violence is inherent to Islam. Nonetheless, they have proven rhetorically effective in deflecting serious scrutiny from Islam, and so I deal with some of them here.

What about the Crusades?

The obvious response to this question is, “Well, what about them?” Violence committed in the name of other religions is logically unconnected to the question of whether Islam is violent. But, by mentioning the Crusades, the hope of the Islamic apologist is to draw attention away from Islamic violence and paint religions in general as morally equivalent.

In both the Western academia and media as well as in the Islamic world, the Crusades are viewed as wars of aggression fought by bloody-minded Christians against peaceful Muslims. While the Crusades were certainly bloody, they are more accurately understood as a belated Western response to centuries of jihad than as an unprovoked, unilateral attack. Muslim rule in the Holy Land began in the second half of the 7th century during the Arab wave of jihad with the conquests of Damascus and Jerusalem by the second “rightly-guided Caliph,” Umar. After the initial bloody jihad, Christian and Jewish life there was tolerated within the strictures of the dhimma and the Muslim Arabs generally permitted Christians abroad to continue to make pilgrimage to their holy sites, a practice which proved lucrative for the Muslim state. In the 11th century, the relatively benign Arab administration of the Holy Land was replaced with that of Seljuk Turks, due to civil war in the Islamic Empire. Throughout the latter half of the 11th century, the Turks waged war against the Christian Byzantine Empire and pushed it back from its strongholds in Antioch and Anatolia (now Turkey). In 1071, Byzantine forces suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in what is now Eastern Turkey. The Turks resumed the jihad in the Holy Land, abusing, robbing, enslaving, and killing Christians there and throughout Asia Minor. They threatened to cut off Christendom from its holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, rebuilt under Byzantine stewardship after it was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009.

It was in this context of a renewed jihad in the Middle East that the Roman Pope, Urban II, issued a call in 1095 for Western Christians to come to the aid of their Eastern cousins (and seems to have harbored the hope of claiming Jerusalem for the Papacy after the Great Schism with Eastern Christianity in 1054). This “armed pilgrimage,” in which numerous civilians as well as soldiers took part, would eventually become known years later as the First Crusade. The idea of a “crusade” as we now understand that term, i.e., a Christian “holy war,” developed years later with the rise of such organisations as the Knights Templar that made “crusading” a way of life. It worth noting that the most ardent Crusaders, the Franks, were exactly those who had faced jihad and razzias for centuries along the Franco-Spanish border and knew better than most the horrors to which Muslims subjected Christians. At the time of the First Crusade, the populations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, though ruled by Muslims, were still overwhelmingly Christian. The “Crusading” campaigns of the Western Christian armies were justified at the time as a war liberating the Eastern Christians, whose population, lands, and culture had been devastated by centuries of jihad and dhimmitude. Conquering territory for God in the mode of jihad was an alien idea to Christianity and it should not be surprising that it eventually died out in the West and never gained ascendancy in the East.

Following the very bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Latin armies and the establishment of the Crusader States in Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian forces fought a see-saw series of wars, in which both parties were guilty of the usual gamut of wartime immorality. Over time, even with reinforcing Crusades waged from Europe, the Crusader States, strung out on precarious lines of communication, slowly succumbed to superior Muslim power. In 1271, the last Christian citadel, Antioch, fell to the Muslims. No longer having to divert forces to subdue the Christian beachhead on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Muslims regrouped for a 400-year-long jihad against Southern and Eastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna before it was halted. In geo-strategic terms, the Crusades can be viewed as an attempt by the West to forestall its own destruction at the hands of Islamic jihad by carrying the fight to the enemy. It worked for a while.

Significantly, while the West has for some time now lamented the Crusades as mistaken, there has never been any mention from any serious Islamic authority of regret for the centuries and centuries of jihad and dhimmitude perpetrated against other societies. But this is hardly surprising: while religious violence contradicts the fundamentals of Christianity, religious violence is written into Islam’s DNA.

If Islam is violent, why are so many Muslims peaceful?

This question is a bit like asking, “If Christianity teaches humility, tolerance, and forgiveness, why are so many Christians arrogant, intolerant, and vindictive?” The answer in both cases is obvious: in any religion or ideology there will be many who profess, but do not practice, its tenets. Just as it is often easier for a Christian to hit back, play holier-than-thou, or disdain others, so it is often easier for a Muslim to stay at home rather than embark on jihad. Hypocrites are everywhere.

Furthermore, there are also people who do not really understand their own faith and so act outside of its prescribed boundaries. In Islam, there are likely many Muslims who do not really understand their religion thanks to the importance of reciting the Quran in Arabic but not having to understand it. It is the words and sounds of the Quran that attract Allah’s merciful attention rather than Quranic knowledge on the part of the supplicant. Especially in the West, Muslims here are more likely to be attracted by Western ways (which explains why they are here) and less likely to act violently against the society to which they may have fled from an Islamic tyranny abroad.

However, in any given social context, as Islam takes greater root — increasing numbers of followers, the construction of more mosques and “cultural centers,” etc. — the greater the likelihood that some number of its adherents will take its violent precepts seriously. This is the problem that the West faces today.

What about the violent passages in the Bible?

First, violent Biblical passages are irrelevant to the question of whether Islam is violent.

Second, the violent passages in the Bible certainly do no amount to a standing order to commit violence against the rest of the world. Unlike the Quran, the Bible is a huge collection of documents written by different people at different times in different contexts, which allows for much greater interpretative freedom. The Quran, on the other hand, comes exclusively from one source: Muhammad. It is through the life of Muhammad that the Quran must be understood, as the Quran itself says. His wars and killings both reflect and inform the meaning of the Quran. Furthermore, the strict literalism of the Quran means that there is no room for interpretation when it comes to its violent injunctions. As it is through the example of Christ, the “Prince of Peace,” that Christianity interprets its scriptures, so it is through the example of the warlord and despot Muhammad that Muslims understand the Quran.

Could an Islamic “Reformation” pacify Islam?

As should be plain to anyone who has examined the Islamic sources, to take the violence out of Islam would require it to jettison two things: the Quran as the word of Allah and Muhammad as Allah’s prophet. In other words, to pacify Islam would require its transformation into something that it is not. The Western Christian Reformation, that is often used as an example, was an attempt (successful or not) to recover the essence of Christianity, namely, the example and teachings of Christ and the Apostles. Trying to get back to the example of Muhammad would have very different consequences. Indeed, one may say that Islam is today going through its “Reformation” with the increasing jihadist activity around the globe. Today, Muslims of the Salafi (“early generations”) school are doing exactly that in focusing on the life of Muhammad and his early successors. These reformers are known to their detractors by the derogative term Wahhabi. Drawing their inspiration from Muhammad and the Quran, they are invariably disposed to violence. The unhappy fact is that Islam today is what it has been fourteen centuries: violent, intolerant, and expansionary. It is folly to think that we, in the course of a few years or decades, are going to be able to change the basic world outlook of a foreign civilisation. Islam’s violent nature must be accepted as given; only then will we be able to come up with appropriate policy responses that can improve our chances of survival.

What about the history of Western colonialism in the Islamic world?

Following the defeat of the Ottoman army outside Vienna on September 11, 1683 by Polish forces, Islam went into a period of strategic decline in which it was overwhelmingly dominated by the European powers. Much of dar al-Islam was colonised by the European powers who employed their superior technology and exploited the rivalries within the Muslim world to establish colonial rule.

While many of the practices of the Western imperial powers in the governance of their colonies were clearly unjust, it is utterly unwarranted to regard Western imperialism — as it often is — as an endemic criminal enterprise that is the basis of modern resentment against the West. It was only due to the assertive role of the Western powers that modern nation-states such as India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. came to exist in the first place. Without Western organisation, these areas would have likely remained chaotic and tribal as they had existed for centuries.

When one looks at the post-colonial world, it is apparent that the most successful post-colonial nations have a common attribute: they are not Muslim. The United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, India, and the South American nations clearly outshine their Muslim-majority post-colonial counterparts — Iraq, Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etc. — by just about any standard.

How can a violent political ideology be the second-largest and fastest-growing religion on earth?

It should not be surprising that a violent political ideology is proving so attractive to much of the world. The attractive power of fascist ideas has been proven through history. Islam combines the interior comfort provided by religious faith with the outward power of a world-transforming political ideology. Like the revolutionary violence of Communism, jihad offers an altruistic justification for waging death and destruction. Such an ideology will naturally draw to it violent-minded people while encouraging the non-violent to take up arms themselves or support violence indirectly. Because something is popular hardly makes it benign. Furthermore, the areas in which Islam is growing most rapidly, such as Western Europe, have been largely denuded of their religious and cultural heritage, which leaves Islam as the only vibrant ideology available to those in search of meaning.

Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?

Islamic apologists often point out that Islam is not a monolith and that there are differences of opinion among the different Islamic schools of thought. That is true, but, while there are differences, there are also common elements. Just as Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians differ on many aspects of Christianity, still they accept important common elements. So it is with Islam. One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law. The four Sunni Madhhabs (schools of fiqh [Islamic religious jurisprudence]) — Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali — all agree that there is a collective obligation on Muslims to make war on the rest of the world. Furthermore, even the schools of thought outside Sunni orthodoxy, including Sufism and the Jafari (Shia) school, agree on the necessity of jihad. When it comes to matters of jihad, the different schools disagree on such questions as whether infidels must first be asked to convert to Islam before hostilities may begin (Osama bin Laden asked America to convert before Al-Qaeda’s attacks); how plunder should be distributed among victorious jihadists; whether a long-term Fabian strategy (Wearing your opponent down) against dar al-harb is preferable to an all-out frontal attack; etc.

What about the great achievements of Islamic civilisation through history?

Islamic achievements in the fields of art, literature, science, medicine, etc. in no way refute the fact that Islam is intrinsically violent. Roman and Greek civilisations produced many great achievements in these fields as well, but also cultivated powerful traditions of violence. While giving the world the brilliance of Virgil and Horace, Rome was also a home to gladiatorial combat, the slaughter of Christians, and, at times, rampant militarism.

Furthermore, the achievements of Islamic civilisation are pretty modest given its 1300 year history when compared to Western, Hindu, or Confucian civilisations. Many Islamic achievements were in fact the result of non-Muslims living within the Islamic Empire or of recent converts to Islam. One of the greatest Islamic thinkers, Averroes, ran afoul of Islamic orthodoxy through his study of non-Islamic (Greek) philosophy and his preference for Western modes of thought. Once the dhimmi populations of the Empire dwindled toward the middle of the second millennium AD, Islam began its social and cultural “decline.”

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Review 2: Islam – What the West needs to know

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet
3. The struggle
4. Expansion
5. War is Deceit
6. More than a Religion
7. The House of War

Introduction

Tony Blair:

I wish to say finally as I’ve said many times before that this is not a war with Islam. It angers me as it angers the vast majority of Muslims to hear Bin Laden and his associates described as Islamic terrorists. They are terrorists pure and simple. Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion, and the acts of these people are holy contrary to the teachings of the Quran.

George Bush:

We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.

Bill Clinton:

Our actions were not aimed against Islam. The faith of hundreds of millions of good, peace loving people all around the world including the United States. No religion condones the murder of innocent men, women and children. But our actions were aimed at fanatics and killers who wrapped murder in the cloak of righteousness and in so doing profaned the great religion in whose name they claim to act.

Serge Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor, Chronicles Magazine:

The tendency of western political leaders to deny the connection between Orthodox Islamic Mainstream and terrorist violence are replicated in Universities and the media wherever you look both in Western Europe and North America.

The members of the elite class have the tendency to proclaim that Islam is peaceful and tolerant and those Muslims related to violence are a non representative group.

I would really appreciate if people who make such claims could then explain the continuity of violence from the earliest day of Islam, from the earliest days of the prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors throughout the 1300th century of recorded history.

Robert Spencer, Author, Islam Unveiled, Director of Jihadwatch.org:

Do Islam and an Islamic civilisation actually sanction the violence that we are seeing being perpetrated in its name around the world?

If we are going to be honest about this we would have to answer an absolute yes. The Islamic sources, the Islamic texts starting with the Quran but not limited to the Quran, Islamic texts including the Hadith, Islamic tradition, Islamic theology, Islamic law, the traditions of the interpretations of the Quran throughout history and Islamic history itself; All bear witness to the fact that Islam has a developed doctrine theology and law that mandates violence against unbelievers.

Bat Ye’or, Author – The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam:

The origins are, of course, in the Muslim desire to impose all over the world; the only religion – the only just religion – which is Islam and the suppression of all other religions in order to establish the rule of Allah throughout the world. This is a religious duty, which binds the whole community, and which the Muslim community is obliged to impose because they are obliged to obey the order of Allah and this is the desire of Allah as expressed in the Quranic revelation.

Abdullah Al-Araby – Director, The Pen vs. The Sword Publications:

I believe that those terrorists that want to do harm to others are applying the true Islam who was practiced by Muhammad and his followers in the early stage of Islam.

There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet

Robert Spencer:

In Islamic theology the prophet Muhammad is considered ” al-insan al-kamil” the perfect man. The more a Muslim is like him the better off he is. So the prophet Mohammad is revered today in the Islamic world as the primary model of human behaviour.

Abdullah Al-Araby

As an illustration, the following examples by Muhammad inspire current Palestinian groups to fight Jihad against the Jews in Palestine.

Authoritative Islamic History – The Life of Muhammad/Sirat Rasul Allah – By Muhammad bin Ishaq (d 773 AD). Edited by Abdul Malik bin Hisham (d 840 AD). Translated by Prof Alfred Guillaume (1955).

The life of Muhammad – P 464

They surrendered, and the Apostle confined them in Medina,,, Then the Apostle went out to the market of Medina and dug trenches in it.

Robert Spencer:

Another example which is the most chilling of the influence that Muhammad’s influence has today on the Islamic world was exemplified recently by an Egyptian leader of a radical Muslim party. He recently wrote that he couldn’t believe that the beheadings in Iraq were being protested by Muslims. Weren’t they aware that the prophet Muhammad himself beheaded between 600 and 900 men personally, members of the Jewish Quraiza tribe in Arabia after he had defeated them. Didn’t they realise that if the prophet did it then this was the proper way to behave? So the Mujahideen in Iraq who were beheading people are simply obeying the example of the prophet.

Now we can see then, since the prophet Muhammad himself participated in many battles and raids and did indeed perpetrate these beheadings, he ordered the assassination of several of his political opponents and he behaved in general like a typical 7th century warlord. The problem is that when this is transferred to 21st century behaviour and 21st century contexts of behaviour then what you get are terrorists.

The Quran occupies a place that has no parallel in Western civilisation. The Quran is considered by Muslims and by traditional Islamic theology to be dictated word for word by Allah himself through the Angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad. As a result every word of it is the word of Allah himself. Every word of the Quran except if it is cancelled by another section of the Quran itself is valid for all time and can not be questioned, can not be reformed, can not be changed within an Islamic context. This means that moderate Muslims, peaceful Muslims if they are sincere, have to reject entirely Quranic literalism but to do so put them outside the sphere anything that has been considered orthodox Islam throughout history. To do so is to reject the very basic premise of Islam that this is a book that is dictated by Allah which is a perfect copy of a perfect book, the “Umm Al-Kitāb”, the mother of the book that has existed forever with Allah in heaven.

The Noble Koran:

Translated with Parenthetical Notes by Dr. Muhammad Taqi-du-Din Al-Hilali and Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan.

Sura 98 Verse 6

Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Quran and the prophet Muhammad) from among the People of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Musrhikun (other disbelievers) will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are he worst of creatures.

Serge Trifkovic:

So the Quran is simply a set of direct commandments, descriptions, sometimes much distorted descriptions of Judaism and Christianity. Because of the nature of those commandments a second ”body” for Islamic interpretation is the Hadith, the tradition of the prophet Muhammad.

Robert Spencer:

The Hadith is absolutely necessary to make any sense of the Quran because Allah addresses Mohammad in the Quran and they talk about incidents in Muhammad’s life but they don’t fill in the narrative details. You have to go to the Hadith, the traditions of the prophet Muhammad in order to understand what’s being said in the Quran and why. The Hadith are many volumes of the traditions of the prophet, various Muslim scholars beginning in the 8th century which is some considerable time after the life of Mohammad who died in 632. They started to collect these traditions and try to window out the authentic ones from the in-authentic. From an Islamic standpoint, if something Muhammad said or did is recorded in of those books then it has authority second only to the Quran. And in those books there is a great that illuminates what the Quran says and how it is applicable to Muslims in the presence.

Authoritative Traditions of the prophet Muhammad – The Hadith’s of Sahih Al-Bukhari, translated with Parenthetical Notes by Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khan.

Sahih Al- Bukhari

Vol 4, Bk 52, Hadith 53

The Prophet said; ”Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it.

… except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah’s Cause).

The Prophet said, ”A single endeavour (of fighting) in Allah’s Cause in the afternoon or in the forenoon is better than all the world and whatever is in it.”

Serge Trifkovic:

Since there is no sense of natural morality in Islam you have to go in to the Quran or the Hadith to find out what is allowed and what is not allowed

Robert Spencer:

And in those books we have very clear instructions from Muhammad that it is the responsibility of every Muslim to meet the unbelievers on the battlefield to invite them either to accept Islam or to accept second class Dhimmi status in the Islamic state. If they refuse both alternatives then they will wage war against them.

Sura 9 Verse 29

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger.

… and fight against those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e., Islam) among the People of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah (Tax for Jews/Christians) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

The Quran is broken down into two sections, one is called Mecca which means what was inspired to Muhammad in Mecca and one is called Medina, what was inspired to Muhammad in Medina.

In Mecca you find many of the peaceful Verses, Mohammad used to live with the Jewish and Christian community in peace and harmony. Those Verses almost invariably date back to beginning of Muhammad’s prophetic career and his native city of Mecca where he was powerless, where he was only beginning to attract followers.

Abdullah Al-Araby – Director, the Pen vs. the Sword Publications:

Only relatives and friends accepted the religion at that time. He has many foes so the revelations of that time are very peaceful. This all changes with the establishment of Muhammad’s theocratic state let in the city of Medina. He becomes a warlord and head of a totalitarian state, he becomes very rich and powerful and very intolerant and then many of these early Verses get abrogated.

In Sura 2 Verse 106 Allah says that if I abrogate a Verse I will give you one that is better.

Sura 2 Verse 106

Whatever a Verse (revelation) do we abrogate or cause to be forgotten, we bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?

Robert Spencer:

This is the basis, the foundation of the Quranic doctrine of ” Naskh” which is abrogation. And it is the idea that when there are Verses that are contradictory in the Quran the one that is revealed later chronologically is better as Allah has promised and cancels the earlier one.

Walid Shoebat – Former Muslim and member of PLO Fatah Brigade, Author; Why I Left Jihad:

Now the violence started, now you had to weigh between peaceful Verses and non-peaceful Verses. The result was that the peaceful ones were made null and void.

Serge Trifkovic:

It is indeed a very curious concept for a non-Muslim to accept a notion that God may change his mind about a topic. He may issue one injunction in AD 614;

Sura 2 Verse 256

There is no compulsion (i.e., coercion) in religion.

And then a very different one in AD 627;

Sura 9 Verse 5

Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. …But if they repent and accept Islam … then leave their way free.

But this is indeed what has happened in Islam.

Robert Spencer:

It’s very important to understand that the Quran is not arranged chronologically, it’s arranged on the basis of the longest chapter to the shortest.

Serge Trifkovic:

So you will find in the book itself some of these more tolerant Verses at a later point in the book than the very intolerant ones advocating violence and the subjugation of the infidels. But that doesn’t mean they came into being later, on quite the contrary. It is therefore the ones that came in ”Medina” that retains their validity and the ones that came early in Mecca that have been abrogated.

Walid Shoebat:

The peaceful Verses became null and void compared to Verses of the Sword.

Robert Spencer:

Traditional Islamic theology has it that the ninth chapter of the Quran – Sura 9, is the last revealed in the career of the prophet. And it is the only one that doesn’t begin with; In the name of Allah the compassionate, the merciful. Some have said that’s because there is no compassion or mercy in this particular chapter and that it is the Quran’s last word on Jihad and in particular on how Muslims should behave toward unbelievers. In it is the celebrated Verse of the Sword.

Walid Shoebat:

So what does the Verse of the Sword say? It’s very clear; Kill the people of the book (Christians and Jews) wherever you find them, lay siege for them, lay ambush for them, kill them wherever you find them. In fact, I converted to Christianity, Mohammad clearly stated that on the end of days there will be many who defect from the faith, kill them when you see them wherever you find them. So this is the question the West needs to understand, what part of kill don’t they understand?

The struggle

Condoleezza Rice;

We are a country that judges people not by their religious beliefs and not by their colour but by the fact that we are all Americans so that was the first part of the message. The second part of the message is that we have a lot of friends around the world who are Muslim, we have countries that are long friends of the United States who are of the Islamic faith and the President want it to be very clear that this is not a war of civilisations, this is not a war against Islam. This is a war against people who in many ways pervert what Islam stands for. Islam stands for peace and stands for non-violence.

Robert Spencer:

Islam and the Islamic civilisation are unique in their stance against non-believers. Islam is the only religion in the world that has a developed doctrine theology and law that mandates violence against un-believers. It is no doubt that there are peaceful Muslims, that there are Muslims around the world who are moderate, who live in harmony with their non-Muslim neighbours and have no intention of ever waging war against them in any way. But the fact is that they have a very slim justification for their own peacefulness within the Islamic sources themselves. They are only at peace with their neighbours so far as they are either ignorant of what Islam teaches about how Muslims should behave toward un-believers or they have explicitly and consciously rejected those elements of Islam. In short there are peaceful and moderate Muslims but no peaceful and moderate Islam.

The idea that Islam is a religion of peace however is paradoxically even held by the most violent and radical of Muslims. Sayved Qutb, the Egyptian Muslim theorist (1906-1966, wrote Islam and Universal Peace), whose writings are revered by radical Muslims and terrorists today. He wrote and insisted that Islam is a religion of peace. When you study his writings it becomes clear that he meant that Islam is dedicated to establishing the hegemony of Islamic law throughout the world. When that hegemony is established peace will reign in the world. Therefore, Islam is a religion of peace.

Walid Shoebat:

The problem is that the peaceful Muslims don’t understand the ”edicts” that comes out of the jurisprudence of Islam. If you look at the interpretation of these Verses in Al-Azhar University, in Islamic Sharia schools in Jerusalem, in Jordan, In Syria, In Damascus, all throughout the Middle East the jurisprudence of Islam clearly state that the Verse of the Sword make the peaceful Verses null and void. So what does the Verse of the Sword say?

Sura 9 Verse 5

Then when the sacred months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun (un-believers) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform Iqamat-as-Salat (The Islamic prayers), and give Zakat, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Walid Shoebat:

Kill them when you see them, wherever you find them. This is not an allegoric kill, it’s a literal kill. Its the killing of Zarqawi right in front of the camera, its the lynching that you see in Ramallah, its the killing of more than a million Sudanese, cutting the hands and feet from opposite sides. And here’s a dilemma. Even the peaceful Verse that is quoted by Bush, the Verse goes as follows;

Whoever kills a life without just cause or for doing mischief in the land then he has killed the entire earth.

You will find the same Verse in the Judea biblical tradition but most Westerners stop after that Verse. It continues; But those that do mischief in the land, then cut their hands and their feet from opposite sides and crucify them. And that is what you see happen in Afghanistan, in Sudan, a huge amount of crucifixions, killings and beheadings. There are also amputations and public assassinations. They really want to revive Islam as it used to be. This is why they call it Islamic fundamentalism.

Sura 5 Verse 33

The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified, or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.

Sahih Al-Bukhari

Vol 8, Bk 82, Hadith 795

The Prophet cut off the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and did not cauterise their bleeding limbs till they died.

Walid Shoebat:

In Islam’s thinking, the assurance of your salvation is dying as a martyr. In accordance to the Verse in the Quran; ”Do not think that the ones that die in Jihad are dead but are living”. So this ensures salvation.

Robert Spencer:

This is the calculus behind modern suicide bombing, modern Muslim advocates will say; “Islam forbids suicide” and this is plainly dishonest because all the defenders of suicide bombings in the Islamic world start out by saying; “This is not suicide”. The intention of the person is not to kill himself. The intention of the person is to kill others. And that is sanctioned because it is Islamic Jihad. And if they in the process are killed themselves, that’s an unavoidable consequence of their actions and they will be rewarded with the reward of martyrs in paradise.

Serge Trifkovic:

The Quran is quite clear about heavenly reward for a Jihadist who falls fighting in the path of Allah. He will be granted instant access to paradise and a Muslim paradise is an extremely sensual one. It is full of “whories” – black eyed beauties (72 virgins) that will await the martyr and the gratification that follows is endless.

Robert Spencer:

The Quran contains no guarantee of paradise except for those who slay and are slain in the cause of Allah.

Sura 9 Verse 111

Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their properties; for the price that theirs shall be the Paradise. They fight in Allah’s cause, so they kill others and are killed. Then rejoice in the bargain which you have concluded. That is the supreme success.

Robert Spencer:

In other words, the guarantees of paradise are for people who are killed while they are killing to establish the hegemony of Allah or Islamic law in the world.

Jihad can be spiritual or physical. The spiritual Jihad is striving to be a better Muslim. The physical Jihad is however something that can’t be ignored.

Walid Shoebat:

Jihad in Islam means struggle. That’s the literal meaning of the word. But what the West doesn’t understand is that there are more than 100 Hadith’s about Jihad. And if you look at every single one of them they all contain a sword, war or a military effort.

Serge Trifkovic:

It is a very dangerous element of the Islamic teaching because this instant gratification from martyrdom is an attractive concept. When a so called martyr operation is carried out by f. example Hamas what is announced from the minarets in Mosques is not the deaths of person “x”, who carried out the attack, but the wedding of person “x” to the whories (70 virgins). In other words they immediately make the implication that person “x’s” family, parents etc, instead of cry and mourn over the disappearance and end of his physical life should instead celebrate, be happy and throw a party because their son is now not only being transported to paradise but greeted there by 70 virgins.

Walid Shoebat:

The word Shaheed means witness, to testify. To testify that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger. And you die as a Shadeed for that cause. You’re a witness, a martyr. And a martyr becomes glorified. You’re family will glorify you after you die.

As a Muslim fundamentalist living in the Middle East, you have to be initiated. You have to basically kill your first Jew or destroy your first Zionist infrastructure. You have to prove without a shadow of a doubt that you are worthy. And there are ample amounts of students, teenagers, men who are willing to die a martyr’s death, willing to put explosives. The martyr applications are filled. There are many applicants. There are not enough bombs to fulfil the applicants. And to get on one of those missions you have to be a strong candidate, you have to be violent enough, you have to have joined every demonstration in the streets of Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, you have to show that you are worthy of a greater operation. If you are about to die or are taking a considerate amount of risk you struggle between the requirements of your Islamic upbringing and between the realities that you value your life.

Expansion

Robert Spencer:

Islam understands its earthly mission to extend the law of Allah over the world by force. Now this is distinct from extending the religion by force. Muslims often indignantly deny that Islam was spread by the sword as the old expression goes and that anybody is ever forced to convert to Islam. Forced conversions are a constant hallmark of Islamic history but they are technically forbidden by Islamic law. The idea in Islam is that Muslims must wage war to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. Not everyone will be forced to become Muslim but the non-Muslims will be relegated to second class status. They will not be able to live in the society as equals to the Muslims and it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to fight, to institute that kind of society.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 4, Bk 53, Hadith 392

While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, ”Let us go to the Jews”. We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, ”If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle.

Bat Ye’or:

The Muslims see the extension of Jihad as a war liberating the infidels from their infidelity and a privilege for them to enter in the religion of Islam and to abandon their wrong belief. So Jihad is seen as a favour which is given to the infidel population in order to change their ways and convert to the true religion; Islam.

Sura 8, Verse 67

It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land. You desire the good of this world (i.e. the money of ransom for freeing the captives), but Allah desires (for you) the Hereafter. And Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise.

Walid Shoebat:

In the Muslim thinking, in the Muslim Sharia, the way the world is depicted in two houses; the House of Islam or the House of War. So the whole world is under these two houses. If you’re not a Muslim you’re under the House of War. In the West the Islamic apologists would say; no, that’s not accurate. it is the House of Peace and the House of Islam. And in fact that’s not accurate, if you look in the Hadith and if you look what comes from the highest jurisprudence in the Middle East that’s what is being taught.

Bat Ye’or:

Now the infidel populations are seeing this war as a genocidal war since as it is described by the Muslim historians of Jihad as well as extremely numerous Christian sources this war was conducted in great ferocity, whole cities were given up to massacres, entire populations were deported in slavery or massacred.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 4, Bk 53, Hadith 386

Umar sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. … When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau (Persia) came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, ”Let one of you talk to me!” Al-Mughira replied… ”Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah alone or give Jizyah (tribute) and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: Whoever amongst us is killed (martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remains alive, shall become your master.

Bat Ye’or:

There have been two big waves of Jihad; the Arab waves which started in the 7th century and in the cause of only one century had Islamised huge territories, mainly Christian territory from Portugal to Armenia but also Persia. Iraq was at the time Christian in the north and Jewish/Christian in the south.

First wave:

• 634 AD Battle of Basra (Christian/Jewish)
• 635 AD Damascus Conquered
• 636 AD Ctesiphon Conquered
• 637 AD Jerusalem Conquered
• 641 AD Alexandria Conquered
• 666 AD Sicily Conquered
• 670 AD Kabul Conquered
• 698 AD Carthage Conquered
• 711 AD Southern Spain Conquered
• 720 AD Narbonne (South France) Conquered
• 732 AD Battle of Poitiers – Muslim Advance Halted

Second wave:

• 1064 AD Armenia Conquered
• 1071 AD Battle of Manzikert
• 1331 AD Nicaea Conquered
• 1453 AD Constantinople Conquered
• 1460 AD Greece Conquered
• 1389 AD Battle of Kosovo
• 1521 AD Belgrade Conquered
• 1683 AD Siege of Vienna – Muslim Advance halted

The second wave of Islamisation started in the eleventh century with the Turkish tribes. All the regions of Eastern Europe, Anatolia which was the seat of the Christian Byzantine Empire (Now Turkey), Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania. All the countries around the Mediterranean which once were Christian became the Islamic Empire.

This Turkish wave lasted from the eleventh century until the seventeenth century where the Ottoman army was stopped at the gate of Vienna in 1683.

The Crusades 1095-1270 AD

Serge Trifkovic:

The Crusades are not understood in the Muslim world today very differently to the way they are understood in the Western academia and among the Western elite class. Both talk of the Crusades as an aggressive war of conquest by Christian Europe against peaceful innocent Muslims. One may ask however what those Muslims were doing in the holy land in the first place. What happened was that Muhammad and his successors laid a series of wars of conquest and in one such onslaught in 624 AD the holy land – Palestine, Jerusalem was conquered by Muslims. Then Seljuk Turks started interfering with the ability of Christian pilgrims to go to the Holy Land, Jerusalem. When their physical safety was no longer guaranteed, the western Christians acted not only as re-conquerors of the Holy Land that had been once theirs, they also acted quite rightly one might say as protectors of their holy places. A defensive war in the case of the Muslims is even a war of conquest. They are obligated to spread Islam but a land which had once been Muslim in particular must be re-conquered and the Jihad is the rightful name of that war of re-conquest. They could never accept the Crusader states in Antioch and Jerusalem because they were ”dar al-harb” or “the House of War” – reinstated into ” ”Dar al-Islam” or ”the House of Islam”. This is a contemporary aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which many Westerners are not fully aware of.

Exactly the same psychology that prompted Saladin and others to fight the Crusaders is now motivating Hamas. In both cases it is not only a matter of the nationalistic desire of Arabs to expel Europeans and Jewish settlers. It is also the Quranic obligation of all good Muslims to make sure the land once ruled by Muslims will be reverted to their rule again.

From the British historian Hilaire Belloc’s – The Great Heresies – 1938

”… It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent.” ”The suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic – but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past: - one might say that they are blinded by it…” ”But not so very long ago, less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence… Vienna was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland… on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history —

September 11, 1683

Robert Spencer:

On September 11th, 1683 the siege of Vienna was broken. That was the high point of Islamic Jihad expansion into Europe. After that Islam went into a decline and the Islamic world was colonised and in a drastically weakened state. It seems very likely, almost certain as far as I’m concerned that Osama Bin Laden chose September 11 in 2001 to signal that the decline of the Islamic world was over and that the Jihadists were back and that they were going to pick up where they left of in Vienna in 1683.

Serge Trifkovic:

If we look at the tectonic plates between the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world today we notice something very interesting. That even very dI’Verse Muslim societies which can not be easily branded under one civilisation label have something in common and it is the tendency that they are in conflict with their neighbours. If we look at the extreme outreach of Islam we see East Timor were Indonesian Muslims slaughtered a third of the population of this former Portuguese colony who are Roman Catholics. In Southern Philippines an extremely violent Islamic rebellion has gradually escalated the last years. In Indonesia itself we had religious conflicts in the Spice Islands where the Christian minority are in danger of extinction. We have very active Islamic movements both in Thailand and in China, Xingjian. On the Indian subcontinent the history is tragic indeed, that’s where the Hindu holocaust took place in medieval times, a little known episode in the history of Islam in the Western world, but a one that left a deep traumatic mark on the people of the region and where the conflict is still present in the province of Kashmir. In Africa there is the constant war in Sudan which has been going on since 1987. It’s hard to estimate the number of lives that have been claimed but its most likely several hundreds of thousands. There is the constant instability in Nigeria between the resurgent central northern states which are increasingly pressuring the government into accepting Sharia law as the law of the lands in those provinces. And of course there is Mauritania where Muslims constantly battle non-Muslim southerners. Then there is of course Caucasus-Chechnya and in Europe itself we have the conflict in former Yugoslavia between the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats and the conflict between Albanians, Serbs and Macedonians and quite possibly within not too long the conflict between the Albanians and Greeks. If we eliminate these conflicts, Chechnya, the Balkans, Sudan the world is a pretty peaceful place. If we eliminate from the terrorist equation, terrorist acts carried out by Muslims the past 5 years we would come to realise that the war on terror is un-necessary because terror is not a very big problem.

War is Deceit

US Senator from Nevada:

I’ve been on the floor before speaking about Islam and what a great religion it is. I’ve said before and I repeat; my wife’s primary physicians are two members of the Islamic faith, her internist and the person that has performed surgery on her. I know them well, been in their homes, socialised with them, talked about very serious things with them; we’ve helped each other with family problems. I’ve been to the new Mosque with them in Las Vegas. They are wonderful people with great families and I’ve come to realise that Islam is a good religion, it’s a good way of life, people have a good health code as their religion dictates and they have great spiritual values as their religion dictates. It’s too bad that there are some people, misdirected people, around the world trying to take away from this very fine religion. I believe that they cannot give this religion a bad name; I think that the power of this religion and the power of the people in this religion will overcome these evil people that are using this fine religion to do bad things to innocent people.

Robert Spencer:

Islam is a religion and is a political system that dictates that one must carry out warfare against un-believers until they either convert or submit. This is the justification that the terrorists around the world are using for what they are doing and that justification is based on core elements of Islamic tradition. That being the case; it’s very difficult for moderate Muslims, peaceful Muslims to stand up within the Islamic community and to say; this is not part of Islam. They only do so out of conscious deception intending to mislead Westerners in accord with the Islamic doctrine of ” Taqiyya” - religious deception, or they do so on the basis of simply being unaware of what Islam actually teaches.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 4, Bk 52, Hadith 269

The Prophet said; ”War is deceit.”

Abdullah Al-Araby:

Lying, generally speaking, is not allowed in Islam. But unlike other religions there are certain situations where a Muslim can lie and that would be acceptable, even encouraged. This concept is called ”al-Taqiyya” which means ”prevention”. So a Muslim is allowed to lie to prevent harm that may come to him, his group or to Islam

Robert Spencer:

When one is under pressure one may lie in order to protect the religion. This is taught in the Quran, Chapter 3, Verse 28 and Chapter 16, Verse 106.

Abdullah Al-Araby:

There are certain provisions for lying. A Muslim can lie for the cause of Islam, can lie to his family to keep peace, so he can lie to his wife. A Muslim can lie to his fellow Muslim to keep peace in the society.

Mohammad himself ordered people to lie. When people that he ordered to go and kill somebody, they told him; we cannot kill them unless we lie to that person. He said; ok, fine, lie.

The life of Muhammad – P 367

The Apostle said… ”Who will rid me of Ibnul-Ashraf?” Muhammad bin Maslama, brother of the Bani Abdul-Ashal, said, ”I will deal with him for you, O Apostle of God, I will kill him”. The Apostle said; ”Do so if you can.” … He said, ”O Apostle of God, we shall have to tell lies.” He answered; ”Say what you like, for you are free in the matter.”

Serge Trifkovic:

The spokesman for Islam in the Western world knows how to play the game. They know how to present their cause in a way that is not only regarded as acceptable by the society mainstream but also reasonable and just. They will appeal to democratic institutions and their human rights in the full knowledge that given the power to do so, they will abolish those institutions and deny those rights to others.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 7, Bk 67, Hadith 427

”By Allah, and Allah willing, if I take an oath and later find something else that is better than that, then I do what is better and expiate my oath.”

Walid Shoebat – Personal experiences around committing “al-Taqiyya”

When I used to work as a translator at the Luc College in Chicago we arranged fund raising events for Jihadi movements, PLO being one of those organisations. We handed out and placed announcements for the event on the walls of the College. And I remember on Arabic it would be basically the facts; bring your friends, we were intending to raise funds to support our Jihadi brothers in Lebanon during the fighting in Southern-Lebanon against Israel. And then comes the English part. In the English part it would be the standard; we would be conducting a Middle-Eastern cultural event, you are all welcome, we will be serving lamb and ”baklava”…

So the West really does not comprehend the magnitude of the “social deceit” that is going on in every aspect of social life, even from moderate Muslims. When we get together as a group our conversations are different. As soon as a Westerner would come into the scene then the whole conversation changes. It becomes compatible to western minds.

When I used to go to work, I worked for an American company during the Gulf war, everyone would be hovering around the TV sets as soon as there was a scud missile hitting Riad or something like that and everyone would be distraught, unhappy if a scud lands in the American camp. And I would be among my American colleagues and say; “oh that’s too bad, I’m sorry that we had loss of life”. Out of frustration from having to keep the truth of what I really felt I would roll down the window on my way home on the freeway and scream as loud as I could; Allahu achbar!, Allahu achbar!

This is the incantation you do when the enemy is killed, when you win. So if it was a victorious day for the Iraqi’s, when they land a scud missile it would be “Allahu achbar” on the freeway where no one could hear me. When I came home to my apartment the rest of the apartment complex were also Arabs from the Middle East. We would get together in my apartment, watch the Gulf war on satellite TV and we would be praising Allah every time there was an incident where Americans got killed. But it wasn’t the same face we put on in an American environment. In an American environment you played a different scenario, you acted as if you were on their side. So this whole façade is in place and the truth is often hidden from the west

Bat Ye’or:

It was Edward Said, who wrote “Orientalism”, who is the main contributor in the creation of the view of this new version of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance. These views are now established in all Western Universities and in academia. On this basis the whole history of Dhimmitude and Jihad disappeared.

Robert Spencer:

Edward Said who in his book “Orientalism” wrote that criticism of the Islamic world on the part of Westerners was racist and imperialist. It is spread in order to make political points, to accustom Westerners to the idea that Muslims are here to stay in Europe and the US and that they must not be questioned in terms of their loyalty to the secular framework of Western society. They must not be questioned in this despite Islam’s historical, political character because Islam is the religion of peace. This fiction has become so entrenched in American and European public discourse such that anyone who does question it is immediately branded as a racist, a hate monger and a bigot. Furthermore, this is a very effective tool in a country where racism is the cardinal sin among all, to silence any effective debate about the continuing attachment of Muslim immigrants to Sharia law and their intentions toward the secular systems in which they now reside.

More than a Religion

Spokesperson for the Bush administration:

This is not a clash between Islam or Arabs, this is about freedom, not culture. It’s about working with Islamic governments who want to move forward into the modern world. Working with Islamic governments who see their face as a face of peace, and working against the violence and terror and the people who seek to hold back the world and who seek to disrupt peace and freedom for others. So that is what it’s about for us, the true faith of Islam, we believe, is a religion of peace and we intend to work with them in that regard.

Abdullah Al-Araby:

Islam has to be known as more than a religion. The idea that Islam is a spiritual religion like f. example Christianity is completely incorrect.

Serge Trifkovic:

It would be incorrect to describe Islam primarily as a religion. Since its early beginning in Muhammad’s lifetime it has also been a geo political project and a system of government and a political ideology.

Robert Spencer:

Islam from its beginnings was both a religion and a system of government. F. example; the Islamic calendar doesn’t base year 1 from the time that Muhammad was born or the time that Muhammad received his first revelation from Allah which I think that both are what Westerners might expect. Year 1 is from the time that Muhammad became the leader of an army and a head of state in Medina. This is the beginning of the Islamic calendar because in the Islamic understanding Islam is a political and social system as well as an individual faith.

Serge Trifkovic:

In Islam the separation between temporal secular and religious power is not only impossible, it is heretical. Only in the complete blending of all aspects of human activity and all aspects of political and legal functions of the state can we have the Caliphate, the properly organised state that is pleasing to Allah.

Walid Shoebat:

When Westerners think of religion whether its Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Westerners think that it’s a personal issue, a Buddhist will go to the temple and worship peacefully, a Jew goes to the temple and does his “mitzvah”, a Muslim goes to the mosque and pays “zakat”, a Christian goes to church on Sunday to pray. They think it’s a personal issue, that religion is a personal issue. So when they look at Islam they compare Islam with the way they understand religions, and that’s the first mistake. Islam is not a religion for personal use, Islam is Sharia law, Islam is a form of government to the world, THEN a personal application. It is not just how you pray and that you pray towards Mecca, it’s how you dress, you dress in Arab culture, you speak Arabic, you can’t go to heaven unless you pray in Arabic, you can’t read the Quran in English and expect to get good deeds to go to heaven. You read the Quran in Arabic. It becomes an imperialistic system where everybody now must speak Arabic, think Arabic and practice the religion in Arabic. it’s a form of law, not just in how you eat but how you get married, how you deal with your government, how you deal with your military, how you deal with the youth, how you deal with women – EVERY aspect of your life becomes Islam. Everything is Islam.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 2, Bk 23, Hadith 413

The Jews brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who had committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. The Prophet ordered both of them to be stoned (to death) near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 7, Bk 62, Hadith 88

The Prophet wrote the marriage contract with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).

Robert Spencer:

In no way is Islamic Sharia, Islamic government compatible with Western understandings of human rights and freedom of conscience. Traditional Islam forbids conversion from Islam and forbids anyone to leave Islam. There is no way out. It forbids Muslims and non-Muslims to live as equals in society. It mandates the second class status (dhimmi) of non-Muslims, forbidding them to hold authority over Muslims thus forbidding them to hold certain jobs as a result. It even historically mandated that houses of worship (of Jews and Christians) were neither to be built or repaired resulting in communities ending up in a constant state of decline.

Sura 5, Verse 51

O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but Auliya to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya, then surely he is one of them.

Serge Trifkovic:

It is not possible for a non-Muslim, living in a Muslim society to invoke his civil rights and human rights that would be independent or separate from the Sharia concept. He is expected to submit to Sharia willingly and if he accepts his Dhimmitude he will be a protected person. A protected person is someone who is in fact a willing subordinate to the Muslim overlords.

The life of Muhammad – P 368

We saluted him as he stood praying, and he came out to us, and we told him that we had killed God’s enemy. He spat upon our comrade’s wounds and both he and we returned to our families.

Our attack upon God’s enemy cast terror among the Jews, and there was no Jew in Medina who did not fear for his life.

Walid Shoebat:

Muhammad very clearly said, which is documented through the Hadith, that; “I have been ordered to fight until everyone says that “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”. This is how Islam spread to North-Africa, this is how Islam spread all the way to Indonesia and this is how Islam spread throughout the Middle-East. Syria was not a Muslim country, Lebanon was not Muslim. Saudi Arabia even, was a mixed multitude. That is how Islam spread all throughout the Middle-East, by the sword. This is why you don’t see any synagogues and churches in Saudi Arabia. Christianity is virtually non-existent. Even in the village in Bethlehem, Muslims are taking over. There is only 20% left of the Christian population. In Lebanon, Christian Lebanese are moving by the droves, Hezbollah there are very active. Lebanon used to be a Christian nation. Now all of a sudden it is being Islamised so Islam is on the move and has been since its creation.

Robert Spencer:

Muslims who come to the United States and come to Europe with an idea that Sharia is the law of Allah, they look upon our freedom of religion and they look upon the fact that non-Muslims are in power making laws that are not on the basis of the law of Allah but on the basis of consensus and free elections. They look upon all that as a manifestation of “Jahelia” or unbelief - the pre-Islamic period of ignorance, as the times in any nation’s history before it became Muslim. You have Pakistan, Iran and so on; they refer to the period of their history before they became Muslim as the period of “Jahelia”. They will also consider the United States and Europe to be in periods of Jahelia today. And many Muslims coming into the United States and Western Europe will work to establish Islamic mechanisms of government here where the goal is to create Islamic states on the basis of the idea that secular states and the state based on elections has no legitimacy. You don’t have elections about the law of Allah, you simply obey what God says.

The House of War

Robert Spencer:

The most important thing of what the west needs to know about Islam today is that it has a political character and that it is not simply a religion. It is a religion and a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society. Americans needs to know this, Europeans need to know this because Muslims are coming in to Western countries while holding these beliefs and intending to act upon them. They are the motivation behind modern terrorist activity and they are the goals of millions of Muslims in the West and around the world. We need to know this so that we can protect ourselves. But unfortunately because of political correctness and because of media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.

Walid Shoebat:

Islamic fundamentalism is a sleeper cell in Europe and the US. A good casing point is Saladin. Saladin is a great hero in Islam. Saladin was the one who defeated the Crusades. There was a treaty that was supposed to be happening between the Crusaders and Saladin and the story goes as follows; the Arab mediator came to Saladin and said – the Quran says: “If they concede to peace than concede to it”, which means that if the enemy wants peace let’s have peace which is a Verse you can find directly in the Quran. And Saladin responded with a great answer when he stated to the guy; you are an Arab and I’m a Kurd. You should know the Quran better than me… Don’t forget that the Quran also says; “Why should we concede for peace when we have the upper hand”. So you find both Verses in the Quran. You concede to peace when you are the weaker party. This is why you hear the term “hudna”. “Hudna” is a peace treaty, a cease fire. In Iraq, Sadr asked for hudna because he knew he couldn’t defeat the Americans. You find hudna’s in several conflicts when the enemy is stronger than you are. But as soon as you gain strength then you don’t concede for peace. This is why the face of Islamic fundamentalism in the West has a façade that Islam is a peaceful religion. Because they are waiting to have more Islamic immigrants, they are waiting to increase in number, waiting to increase their political power. Once they do then history will repeat itself. You will see the real face of Islamic fundamentalism here in your country.

Robert Spencer:

It’s unfortunate but it’s no negotiating with Jihadists. There is no striking a deal with them. Islamic law is very clear on that and here once again is an example; we need to take Islam seriously! Islamic law does not allow for treaties. It does not allow for negotiated settlements between Muslim states and non-Muslim states. All it allows for is a temporary period of up to 10 years of hudna or what is commonly translated as truce. To allow the Islamic forces to gather its strength. But that’s not the same as peace as we know it. That’s not the same as the absence of the state of war, that’s only a temporary truce. In a war that the Jihadists consider has gone on for 14 centuries and are willing to fight for 14 more.

Sura 47, Verse 4

So, when you meet (in fight, Jihad in Allah’s Cause) those who disbelieve, smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly on them (i.e. take them as captives). … Thus you are ordered by Allah to continue in carrying out Jihad against the disbelievers till they embrace Islam (i.e. are saved from the punishment in the Hell-fire) or at least come under your protection), but if it had been Allah’s Will, He Himself could certainly have punished them (without you). But (he lets you fight), In order to test you, some with others. But those who are killed in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost.

Serge Trifkovic:

In Islamic thinking the world is divided into the “House of Islam”, where Islamic law has been established, where Allah rules supreme, and the “House of War” which is the rest of the world. This dichotomy is reminiscent of other totalitarian ideologies and most explicitly communism. Both communism and Islam seek the end of history in this world. The end of history will come when the entire world becomes Islam or when the proletarian revolution brings the working class to power all over the world which will be the end of state, the end of money and the end of class oppression. In both cases it is possible to have a period of truce. It is possible to have peaceful co-existence but that peaceful co-existence is a tactical ploy and not a permanent solution.

Sahih Al-Bukhari – Vol 4, Bk 52, Hadith 196

Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah.

Robert Spencer:

If we consider that, if only we changed our policies toward Israel and if only we changed our policies toward Iraq or changed our policies on something else, if only we hadn’t taken out the “Mossadegh regime” in Iran in 1953… These ideas are ridiculous. They are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the motives and goals of the Jihadists. This is not a conflict that was created with the creation of the state of Israel or a conflict that was created when the American army went into Iraq. The global Jihad has been going on without any significant interruption since the 7th century. And it only declined in force and activity at periods when the Islamic world was too weak to prosecute it.

Bat Ye’or:

The question now that we have to ask ourselves is; do we want to preserve our Judea-Christian values and our own civilisation or do we want, do we choose to go towards a dhimmitude, an enlarged dhimmitude in Europe which will engulf the whole of Europe. This process is not that imminent for the US but it will result in US isolation. It will have to deal in geopolitics with an Islamised, Dhimmi Europe. And these are problems that have to be taken into consideration by Europeans and Americans themselves in choosing their identity and their future – freedom or dhimmitude.

Serge Trifkovic:

In order to defend itself against the onslaught of global Jihad which will come in the century ahead, the West would need to really find itself and to say; what exactly is the geographic and cultural space to be defended and in the name of what? Defending the West in the name of the ideology of multiculturalism would be impossible. Multiculturalism and post-modern liberalism are not worthy dying for. They are not something that can inspire people to do what their ancestors had done at “Poitier” during the first wave and at the walls of Vienna in 1683 during the second wave. What global Jihad has on its side is simple minded commitment of millions of people to not only spread the faith but also better themselves at the expense of the infidel in the first instance through immigration and later on if necessary by other means.

Walid Shoebat:

What the west needs to understand about Islam is that Islam has the potential of replacing the dangers that National Socialism and Communism brought with them. Like Nazism and like communism, in Islamism the end justifies the means. There is no respect for national borders. And the whole ideology is to promote their way of thinking and to promote their way of life throughout the entire world. That’s what’s being taught in the Middle-East, that’s what’s coming out from all the jurisprudence in Saudi Arabia and all throughout the Muslim world. Islam will conquer and will continue to conquer until it triumphs, until everyone in the world says; there’s no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

Serge Trifkovic:

The peculiarity of Islam has to be faced. Unlike others, and I’m against saying this in the full knowledge that it will offend some Westerners, unlike the Hindus, unlike the Confucians, unlike the enemies of sub-Saharan Africa, the Muslims have an inherent tendency to expand and to convert the rest of the world. Not only to their religion but to their outlook and to their legal and moral system. They will not state this openly while they’re in a minority in the countries to which they immigrate, but we have seen this time and over again throughout history. Once they reach the numbers necessary to impose their will they will do so.

Miracles do happen. I do not know if it is another maybe even deadlier terrorist attack that will act as a catalyst or whether it will be a geo-political confrontation in the Middle-East itself, with Israel perhaps at serious peril, but I do hope and trust that a jolt will bring back into the minds and hearts of Europeans the awareness of the need to stand up and be counted. Before it is too late…

[Source: www.breiviksmanifesto.com]

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