Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Lloyd De Jongh on September 09, 2016, 11:03:00 AM
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Good day all
I have recently had a great deal of fun and games on a university forum dedicated to counter-terror research. Need I say it's terribly PC, and with regards to Islamic terror the general consensus ranges from "Nothing to see here" to the shockingly unexpected "Nothing to do with...". I believe our next and current generation of academics, analysts and policy makers are required to both bury their heads in the sand and be in denial.
If I duplicate or preach to the choir, please advise if I am barking up the wrong tree. However, I thought I might some of my extensive learning and writing on the subject to those of you who engage in debate with their apologists and come up short, want to know more about Islam, its political aims, its ideology and common arguments. Some may need a good introduction, or rebuttals to the common arguments. Also, I may need input from you when I run into a tough question. It amazes me how much ignorance exists among policy makers, researchers, the otherwise educated - and how Christians and Westerners are apologists for and defend groups and individuals expressing an ideology that clearly intends to subjugate them.
Yes, I have good Muslim friends. Yes, I know more about the doctrine and history of Islam than they do, and every other Muslim I have (carefully and respectfully) spoken to on the subject. I have visited every country in the Middle East multiple times except for Yemen and Syria, though I have spent time on both borders from different countries and locations in my role in the defense industry.
I hope this will be useful to you who want to know more and discuss the subject intelligently, offer rebuttals to the often dishonest arguments out there and understand the threat of supremacist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. It is easy to spot where a bomb went off, it's harder to trace networks and subversive political infiltration.
Final note, if you would permit me, this is also a repository for some of my discussion and course notes because things disappear rapidly on a FB forum. Often it took extensive searching and reading to gather the information to write these responses, it would be a shame to lose them.
Please post and ask questions. I look forward to the interaction. Do keep it respectful to avoid controversy.
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Recently I watched reports on terror activities that included distinctly Boydian language in the analysis. Colonel John Boyd is a legendary US Air Force pilot who created the OODA Loop concept, and his methods were extensively applied to 4th Generation Warfare.
OODA goes well beyond the common conception that one normally sees, it is a powerful strategic and tactical tool that, based on both observed recent events and their own writing, has been embraced and applied by Islamic terror groups like IS and Al Qaeda with success. CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), an Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood front also use these ideas effectively.
Boyd is regarded by some as a strategists equal to Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz, so his thoughts carry some weight in military circles. An easy way to understand his thinking, the OODA concept and its application to counter-terror is the book A Vision So Noble by Daniel Ford. It's a short read and only $3 on Kindle. I have read it maybe 6 times this year alone and taken extensive notes.
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-So-Noble-Americas-Terror/dp/1451589816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472576473&sr=8-1&keywords=daniel+ford+a+vision
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There was a question in one of the counter-terror class lectures, it asked if the Ikhwan (the Muslim Brotherhood) was a terror group. (NB, the professor said no) They have certainly been ruled as such by Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because Jihad is not only about overt warfare (against the Kafir), there is also stealth Jihad.
The following is an official document from a meeting which outlines the Muslim Brotherhood's strategic goals for North America. The document was entered as evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation/Hamas Terror Funding Trial.
Page 5:
"...the Movement must plan and struggle to obtain "the keys" and the tools of this process in carry out [sic] this grand mission as a 'Civilization Jihadist' responsibility."
Page 7:
“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”
“[W]e must possess a mastery of the art of ‘coalitions’, the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’”
Certainly subversive with malicious aims against the West. They are a group worth investigating more closely.
From the Ikhwan charter: “The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means." Settlement here refers to migration or Hijrah. The Islamic calendar begins at the migration of Mohammad from Mecca to Medina, and not at his birth, which shows its importance within the doctrine.
Islam is a political ideology (the way Socialism, Democracy, Fascism and so on are political ideologies), as well as a religious ideology (Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity). There is also a military component - Jihad. There is however no separation between mosque and state the way one has a separation between secular law and religious belief in Western constitutions. To quote from the Quran 8:74 "But those who have believed and emigrated and fought in the cause of Allah and those who gave shelter and aided - it is they who are the believers, truly. For them is forgiveness and noble provision."
Migration is a form of Jihad. From the Hadith, “Migration cannot be ended as long as there is kufr (unbelief) or as long as there is an enemy that resists” [Kenz al Umal 46274] This underscores the rational basis behind the insistence on 'settlement' as a critical part of the ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ to destroy the West. These groups are educated, very well funded, stealthy and fanatical with large followings and present a significant danger that too often goes unrecognised.
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This was written to illustrate how one cannot separate the Islamic religious doctrine from the political doctrine and political aims. Are the aims religious? Yes. Are the aims political? Yes.
A quote from the Ikhwan document entered into evidence at the 2008 Holy Land Terror Funding Trial: “The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means." Settlement here refers to migration or Hijrah.
The Islamic calendar begins at the migration of Mohammad from Mecca to Medina, and not at his birth, which shows its importance within the doctrine.
Islam is a political ideology (the way Socialism, Democracy, Fascism and so on are political ideologies), as well as a religious ideology (Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity). There is also a military component - Jihad.
There is however no separation between mosque and state the way one has a separation between secular law and religious belief in Western constitutions.
To quote from the Quran 8:74 "But those who have believed and emigrated and fought in the cause of Allah and those who gave shelter and aided - it is they who are the believers, truly. For them is forgiveness and noble provision." Migration is a form of Jihad, the Ikhwan see this as their responsibility to dominate the world, to turn the Dar al-Harb (house of war) into the Dar al-Islam.
“It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” - Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna
From the Hadith, we have the words of Mohammed: “Migration cannot be ended as long as there is kufr (unbelief) or as long as there is an enemy that resists” [Kenz al Umal 46274]
This Hadith passage underscores the historical and religious basis behind their insistence on 'settlement' as a critical part of the ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ to destroy the West.
These groups are educated, well funded, stealthy, well integrated into Western administrative structures, and quietly fanatical with large followings.
They present a significant danger that often goes unrecognised.
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If the Castle Falls
A report by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation discusses the issue of other Jihad groups in Syria. It was release 21 Dec 2015, and found that 15 Islamic groups with 65000 members stand ready to fill the vacuum left by ISIS if they are defeated. That's just in that part of Syria.
http://tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/religion-geopolitics/reports-analysis/report/if-castle-falls
To quote from a summary: "Our research has found 15 groups stand ready to succeed ISIS. Their ideology is Salafi-jihadism: a transnational religious-political ideology based on a belief in violent jihad to enforce a return to a perceived Islam of the Prophet Mohammad's first followers.
Its cruel and horrific acts rightly shock us. But ISIS is not simply a 'death cult.' The group represents a continuation of a way of thinking that started before it existed and will carry on if it is defeated. The West risks making a strategic failure by focusing only on ISIS. Defeating it militarily will not end global jihadism."
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A basic introduction to Islam - part 1
To understand Jihad, first we have to know what is Islam.
Allow me to set a foundation.
I will write as accurately and academically as I can, citing only the most authentic, credible Islamic sources that present the ideas, the ideology, the doctrine of Islam.
Islamic doctrine is found in 3 works of literature -
1. Quran
2. Hadith (Mohammed's Traditions)
3. Sira (Mohammed’s biography, first collected together by Ibn Ishaq)
These works are in order of importance.
There are strong and weak Hadith. The most authentic or sound Hadith is considered to be that written by Bukhari followed by Muslim, often referred to as Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Sahih means 'sound', in the sense of good, reliable or trustworthy.
The Quran contains a little bit more than 150 000 words.
The Sira a little bit over 290 000 words.
The Hadith of Bukhari a little over 640 000 words.
The Hadith + Sira = Sunna (Mohammed's words and deeds).
The Sunna + Quran = Shariah, Islamic law.
Allah, as found in the Quran is 14% of the total content. The remaining 86% is about the life, sayings and deeds of Mohammed.
It is a fundamental principle of Islam that a Muslim is to follow the example of Mohammed, the ideal pattern of conduct. This is stated in the Quran 91 times. The commands take two types — historical examples and direct commands.
The Quran has an early period and a late period, often referred to as the Meccan Quran and Medinan Quran. They have wildly contradictory peaceful and violent verses. The Law of Abrogation (Naskh) tells us that a chronologically later verse is theologically better than an older one. However both verses stand as true, since the Western concept of unitary logic and disqualification does not apply for theological reasons. See Q2:106, Q16:101. Approximately 225 verses are abrogated by later verses. 71 of the 114 chapters of the Quran have abrogations.
Further confusion arises because the Quran is arranged by length of chapter, not in chronological order.
I'll stop here or this will get lengthy, but I hope this establishes a basic neutral framework of understanding. Later I will draw the implications of all of this together.
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Commentary on understanding Islam
Unlike books like the Torah or the Bible, only a relatively small portion of Islamic doctrine deals with instructions on how to be a Muslim.
61% of the doctrine of Islam found in the Quran, Sira and Hadith discuss the Kafir - a word with specific meaning and connotations beyond just that of non-Muslim.
In the early, or Meccan Quran, 67% of the text is devoted to the Kafir. In the late, or Medinan Quran, 51% is devoted to Kafirs.
Since the religious aspects of Islam do not involve non-Muslims, as the theology would apply only to practicing Muslims, the text that applies to Kafirs (you and me and all non-Muslims) is political. This is the political aspect of the doctrine which deals with government, law and the treatment of non-Muslims. The 3rd component is of course warfare, be it by stealth (deception, as defined by Mohammed in the Hadith) or by military force and the use of violence.
Part of this political aspect are the blasphemy laws, which not only apply to Muslims, but non-Muslims as well (to silence criticism). Again, since non-Muslims are not members of the religion, this is a political involvement.
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naskh (Abrogation), the killing of children
Later verses in the Quran abrogate older verses, and the Sunna provides examples from the deeds of Mohammed to follow, and Jihadi groups like the Islamic State are detailed in their adherence to doctrine.
The dualism of Islam allows completely contradictory verses to exist, and for both to be true, due to Abrogation. Since the Islamic State is an extreme group, they will follow the extreme path - Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing... " - Sahih International version. It makes no distinction for children.
The Hadith of both Bukhari and Sahih Muslim: It is reported on the authority of Sa'b b. Jaththama that the Prophet of Allah (may peace be upon him), when asked about the women and children of the polytheists being killed during the night raid, said: “They are from them.” (Sahih Muslim 4322, see also Bukhari 52:256) Here killing children was entirely acceptable in the pursuit of Jihad.
Mohammed provided justification for killing a child here: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) used not to kill the children, so thou shouldst not kill them unless you could know what Khadir had known about the child he killed, or you could distinguish between a child who would grow up to he a believer (and a child who would grow up to be a non-believer), so that you killed the (prospective) non-believer and left the (prospective) believer aside. (Sahih Muslim 4457).
In the Sira (biography) of Mohammed, he ordered the death of two girls who had mocked him in a song: “…two singing-girls Fartana and her friend who used to sing satirical songs about the apostle, so he ordered that they should be killed…” (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 819).
An excellent short article (on abrogation and why it is significant for Jihad) by the Martel Group, who write that Islamic violence and Islamization are a threat to the free world https://app.box.com/s/1mfzkbkczmbocdt1ty3cppo5krbldwot
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Is ISIS unIslamic? A few points to consider, and a resource to verify doctrine against.
All members of ISIS practice Sunni Islam. No exceptions. Shiites are killed without compunction.
A caliphate is an exclusively Islamic concept.
The leader of ISIS has a PhD in Islamic studies.
Al-Azhar University, the scholarly seat of Sunni Islam and the home of the man regarded as perhaps the world's most influential Muslim, Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, has refused to denounce ISIS militants as non-Muslims.
ISIS is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, an Islamic group with similar doctrine.
Polls demonstrate that tens of millions of Muslims support ISIS.
The black flag of ISIS (itself a piece of Islamic historical tradition) has the Islamic Shahada written on it: “There is no god but Allah. Mohammad is the messenger of Allah.”
The males have grown out their beards, a tradition derived from the Hadith.
The punishments that ISIS carries out are found in the Quran - slicing off the hands of thieves (Quran 5:38), crucifying people (Quran 5:33).
The stoning of adulterers is found in the Hadith and Sira (Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Ibn Ishaq).
The Reliance of the Traveller is an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine. This link to an online Islamic bookstore provides good explication: https://www.albalagh.net/bookstore/?action=view&item=0423
A few reviews from the site: “There is no doubt that this translation is a valuable and important work, whether as a textbook for teaching Islamic jurisprudence to English-speakers, or as a legal reference for use by scholars, educated laymen, and students in this language.” Dr Taha Jabir al-‘Alwani, President of the International Institute of Islamic Thought.
“We certify that the above-mentioned translation corresponds to the Arabic original and conforms to the practice and faith of orthodox Sunni Islam (Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jam’ah)” Al-Azhar.
“This is a truly magnificent piece of work that will prove to be indispensable to the English-speaking Muslims and to any Western student of Islam….” Professor Farhat J. Ziadah, Journal of the American Oriental Society
For example, Professor Ziadah has a highly impressive, distinguished academic career as an Islamic scholar and expert on Islamic law. His Alma Mater honours him highly.
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The Reliance of the Traveller: Classic Manual of Sacred Law (Islamic Sharia Law) contains clear information for those who want to learn the Islamic rulings for daily Muslim life, or to learn what is Jihad, or the penalty for Apostasty, or the penalty for Adultery. The penalties are not always applied as indicated, however they exist on the books as law and could be applied.
This is a classic manual of fiqh rulings based on Shafi'i School of jurisprudence and includes translations from classic works of prominent Muslim scholars such as Al-Ghazali and several other highly regarded Islamic scholars.
Al-Ghazali has been referred to by historians as the single most influential Muslim after the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is considered to be a Mujaddid or renewer of the faith.
Fiqh is an Arabic word, meaning "deep understanding" or "full comprehension". It refers to the body of Islamic law extracted from studying detailed Islamic sources and the process of gaining knowledge of Islam through jurisprudence.
Islamic Jurisprudence is the study and critical analysis of the origins, sources, and principles upon which Islamic jurisprudence is based. The main sources include the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Sira + Hadith).
An excellent resource for understanding Islamic Sharia Law (especially as applied to the letter by groups like the Islamic State), it is highly relevant today. The leading Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) entity in the United States, the Islamic Society of North America, recommends that this book be in every Muslim home in America.
It is written by Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, who began studying Islam in 1977 at al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, who also later studied the traditional Islamic Sciences of hadith, Shafi'i and Hanafi jurisprudence, legal methodology (usul al-fiqh), and tenets of faith (`aqidah) in Syria and Jordan.
This translation of `Umdat al-Salik [The Reliance of the Traveller] is the first Islamic legal work in a European language to receive the certification of al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest, most prestigious and most important institution of higher learning and Sunni Islamic jurisprudence on the planet.
Further certificates of authenticity from the governments of Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia attest to the translation.
It has ironclad credentials. An excellent copy of the Reliance, sourced to http://www.shafiifiqh.com, which is an authentic site for Islamic jurisprudence: https://app.box.com/s/fpf6tu1axto1m8qxp88s1l9d092dd4vb
I found a copy of the Al-Azhar certification for verification in a copy that references http://islamicbulletin.com/, linked below.
It is a generally easy to read document and easy to search. The more we understand Islam and Sharia the more we can discuss without confusion, and understand more about the actions of Jihadist groups.
Al-Azhar certification link: https://app.box.com/s/geja1ukqr3rkicji5qzmrkfgulv6wz2t
For example, search for o9.0 in the text to learn what is Jihad.
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What is Islam - part 2
I will try to keep this short, and lay more of the foundation for understanding the action of groups like ISIS and the Ikhwan.
The doctrine of Islam establishes 3 things:
- Religious practice, which defines the Islamic
- Political system and the conduct of
- Warfare / Jihad (against the Kafir).
Jihad (Fighting for the Cause of Allah as defined in Hadith of Bukhari) may be by stealth (deception) or by use of violence.
On the use of deception, which is epitomised by designated terror groups like the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), I cite Sahih Bukhari 3029 - "Allah's Messenger said: "War is deceit".
We are dealing with groups to whom details matter.
Unlike books like the Torah or the Bible, only a relatively small portion of Islamic doctrine deals with instructions on how to be a Muslim.
61% of the doctrine of Islam found in the Quran, Sira and Hadith discuss the Kafir - a word with specific meaning and connotations beyond just that of 'non-Muslim'.
In the early, or Meccan Quran, 67% of the text is devoted to the Kafir. In the late, or Medinan Quran, 51% is devoted to Kafirs. Since the religious aspects of Islam do not involve non-Muslims, as the theology would apply only to practicing Muslims, the text that applies to Kafirs (you and me and all non-Muslims) is a political involvement since it relates to law.
The political and social aspect of the doctrine deals with society, culture, government, law and the treatment of non-Muslims. There is no separation between mosque and state, religion is not a separate practice from law. Sharia is Islamic law, not secular law.
The 3rd component is of course Jihad.
The Sira (the biography of Mohammed written by Ibn Ishaq) details the importance of Islam’s political aspects.
After he migrated to Medina (the Hijrah, the event which marks the starting date of the Islamic calendar) he practiced Jihad .
There is religious Jihad, also called the greater jihad - the inner struggle. The conduct of violent Jihad is called the Lesser Jihad.
The Bukhari Hadith collection gives us the details of Jihad.
3% of the Hadiths are about the inner struggle.
97% of the Hadiths are about Jihad as warfare.
It would be useful in future to discuss the implications of being a 'Kafir'.
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ISIS, Salafism, and the Dhimmi status
On September 3, 2015, the media office of the Damascus province of the Islamic State (ISIS) published a photo report showing dozens of Christians from Al-Qaryaten city signing a Dhimma contract, requiring each of them to pay the jizya poll tax, abide by Islamic rules and refrain from certain activities. In return, under the 11-article contract, which was published on the leading ISIS-affiliated jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, ISIS will protect them and their property, and they will neither be forced to convert nor harmed. The contract adds that anyone violating any of the articles will be treated as a combatant.
It is reported that the Islamic State gave the Christians of Al-Qaryaten the three options given to Christians in other cities captured by ISIS such as Mosul and Raqqa:
Convert to Islam
Paying Jizya (willingly while they are humbled)
Death
I will list the terms of the contract and then reference the Reliance of the Traveller, a classic manual of Sharia law, an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law certified by Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the highest authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine in the world.
This way we can compare and determine if they adhere to the tenets of fundamentalist Salafism, an ultra-conservative reform movement within Sunni Islam that emerged in the second half of the 19th century. It advocated a return to the traditions of the "devout ancestors" (the salaf), or earliest caliphs.
The following are the contract's 11 articles:
1. Christians may not build churches, monasteries, or hermitages in the city or in the surrounding areas.
2. They may not show the cross or any of their books in the Muslims' streets or markets, and may not use amplifiers when worshiping or during prayer.
3. They may not make Muslims hear the reciting of their books or the sounds of church bells, which must be rung only inside their churches.
4. They may not carry out any act of aggression against ISIS, such as giving refuge to spies and wanted men. If they come to know of any plot against Muslims, they must report it.
5. They must not perform religious rituals in public.
6. They must respect Muslims and not criticize their religion.
7. Wealthy Christians must pay an annual jizya of four gold dinars; middle-class Christians must pay two gold dinars, and the poor must pay one. Christians must disclose their income, and may split the jizya into two payments.
8. They may not own guns.
9. They may not engage in commercial activity involving pigs or alcohol with Muslims or in Muslim markets, and may not drink alcohol in public.
10. They may maintain their own cemeteries.
11. They must abide by ISIS dress code and commerce guidelines.
From the Reliance of the Traveller
Chapter O11.0: Non-Muslim Subjects of the Islamic State (Ahl Al-Dhimma)
O11.1
A formal agreement of protection is made with citizens who are:
-1- Jews
-2- Christians
O11.3
Such an agreement is only valid when the subject peoples:
(a) follow the rules of Islam (A: those mentioned below (o11.5) and those involving public behavior and dress, though in acts of worship and their private lives, the subject communities have their own laws, judges, and courts, enforcing the rules of their own religion among themselves);
(b) and pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya).
O11.4: The Non-Muslim Poll Tax
The minimum non-Muslim poll tax is one dinar (n: 4.235 grams of gold) per person (A: per year). The maximum is whatever both sides agree upon.
O11.5
Such non-Muslim subjects are obliged to comply with Islamic rules that pertain to the safety and indemnity of life, reputation, and property. In addition, they:
-1- are penalized for committing adultery or theft, thought not for drunkenness;
-2- are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar);
-3- are not greeted with "as-Salamu 'alaykum";
-4- must keep to the side of the street;
-5- may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims' buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed;
-6- are forbidden to openly display wine or pork, (A: to ring church bells or display crosses,) recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays;
-7- and are forbidden to build new churches.
O11.9
If non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state refuse to conform to the rules of Islam, or to pay the non-Muslim poll tax, then their agreement with the state has been violated (dis: o11.11) (A: though if only one of them disobeys, it concerns him alone).
O11.10
The agreement is also violated (A: with respect to the offender alone) if the state has stipulated that any of the following things break it, and one of the subjects does so anyway, though if the state has not stipulated that these break the agreement, then they do not; namely, if one of the subject people:
-1- commits adultery with a Muslim woman or marries her;
-2- conceals spies of hostile forces;
-3- leads a Muslim away from Islam;
-4- kills a Muslim;
-5- or mentions something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), or Islam.
I'll stop here for reasons of length, however the stipulations above can be found within the Sharia. I believe this allows us to conclude that in this case there is a strict adherence to Islamic doctrine from ISIS, if we examine it from their perspective on Jihad and the functions of a caliphate/.
A note on the source of the report, which will be of interest to those who study Jihadi group activity:
The goal of MEMRI's JTTM is to inform government, military, intelligence agencies, and academia, of potential threats to public safety, security, and crucial interests and assets.
The MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) scrutinizes Islamist terrorism and violent extremism worldwide, with special focus on activity within and emanating from the Arab world, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, as well as on attacks and activity in the West inspired and encouraged by the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, and other global jihad organizations. This activity includes lone-wolf attacks by residents of Western countries.
http://www.memrijttm.org/isis-issues-dhimma-contract-for-christians-to-sign-orders-them-to-pay-jizyah.html
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Jihad - basic introduction
Reliance of the Traveller O9.0 tells us that "Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion."
It is supported by references to Q2:216 “Fighting is prescribed for you''
Q4:89 “Slay them wherever you find them''
Q9:36 “Fight the idolators utterly''.
It goes on to quote the Hadith of Bukhari 1:33 "the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat".
One verse in the Quran that may abrogate all previous verses is the verse of the sword, Surah 9:5 "When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful."
Certainly we must not only refer to one verse only, but refer to the totality of the Quran and Sunna - however there are passages like this in the Hadith - Sahih Bukhari (8:387) "Allah's Apostle said, 'I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah." Many Jihad groups cite and adhere to these texts.
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I found no mention of organisations that do real-time research into and monitoring of terrorist groups in the academic forum, especially the topical issue of Jihad terror groups. Also there has been little discussion towards cohesive understanding of their methods and motives.
I recommend 3 sources that provide topical, current insight that provide significant intelligence on the subject.
Middle East Forum - http://www.meforum.org/about.php
MEMRI JTTM - http://www.memrijttm.org/about-memri-jttm.html
Jihadology.net - http://jihadology.net/
Jihadology is, in their own words, "a clearinghouse for jihādī primary source material, original analysis, and translation".
The MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) scrutinizes Islamist terrorism and violent extremism worldwide, with special focus on activity within and emanating from the Arab world, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, as well as on attacks and activity in the West inspired and encouraged by the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, and other global jihad organizations. This activity includes lone-wolf attacks by residents of Western countries.
One prolific author is Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, who translates and maintains a library of Jihad-related documents from terror groups in the region. He is a graduate from Brasenose College, Oxford University, and a Jihad-Intel Research Fellow at the Middle East Forum. His article appears below.
A recent publication of his is a manual from the Islamic State that discusses the requirements of the Mujahid commander.
To clarify the meaning and significance of the words Jihad and Mujahid - The Reliance of the Traveller, Chapter O9.0: Jihad
Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion.
IS has istishhadiyun [‘martyrdom operatives’- i.e. suicide bombers], and theological teachers who provide instruction on Tawheed to recruits.
The textbook "Muqarrar fi al-Tawhid" (Course in Tawheed/Monotheism) must be learned and understood by training camp recruits if they are to pass the recruitment and training processes. Written by the Bahraini cleric Turki Binali, the contents of this textbook can be divided and summarised as follows:
(i) Introduction
(ii) Faith among Sunnis
(iii) First obligation: faith in God, disbelieving in taghut
(iv) Meaning of taghut
(v) Three principles: knowing God, religion and Prophet Muhammad
(vi) Three types of Tawheed
(vii) Meaning of shirk
(viii) Conditions of la illah ha ill Allah ('there is no deity but God')
(ix) The ten nawaqid [nullifiers] of Islam
(x) Types of kufr [disbelief]
(xi) Types of nifaq [hypocrisy]
(xii) Pillars of faith
(xiii) Five pillars of Islam
http://www.meforum.org/6034/islamic-state-military-commanders-manuel
http://jihadology.net/2016/04/11/the-archivist-unseen-islamic-state-military-commanders-manual-qualities-and-manners-of-the-mujahid-commander/
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We now know from captured documents from the Islamic State that everything they do is guided by strict adherence to the doctrine of Islam, most (it would seem) Wahhabism, a strict Salafist ideology. The citations of Islamic scholars and jurists shows that the textbook is most heavily influenced by Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim (a student of Ibn Taymiyya) and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (founder of the Wahhabi trend).
The most extensive section of this book- the ten nawaqid of Islam- is a distinctly Wahhabi concept.
The manual contains chapters on:
(ii) Faith among Sunnis
(iii) First obligation: faith in God, disbelieving in taghut
(iv) Meaning of taghut (the word refers to idolatry or to the worship of anything except Allah.)
(v) Three principles: knowing God, religion and Prophet Muhammad
(vi) Three types of Tawheed
(vii) Meaning of shirk
(viii) Conditions of la illah ha ill Allah ('there is no deity but God')
(ix) The ten nawaqid [nullifiers] of Islam
(x) Types of kufr [disbelief]
(xi) Types of nifaq [hypocrisy]
(xii) Pillars of faith
(xiii) Five pillars of Islam
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html
This article provides a good overview of Wahhabism in relation to IS.
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A source for monitoring the Muslim Brotherhood. Dalia Mogahed and John Esposito
This in relation to a question raised about Dalia Mogahed and John Esposito: http://www.globalmbwatch.com/2010/04/18/recommended-reading-dalia-mogahed-a-muslim-george-gallup-or-islamist-ideologue/
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch (GMBDW) was created in order to monitor the daily activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood. Each day, a large variety of news and other sources are sifted in order to identify the most relevant developments and which are presented in the form of postings referencing the original source material along with additional commentary and/or historical background . The GMBDW represents neither a political nor a religious point of view and seeks only to present the best available and reliable information on the daily activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood. The GMBDW is read widely by US government agencies as well as by other governments and users worldwide.
The Editor
The GMBDW is edited by Steven Merley, an investigator and intelligence specialist who since 1992 has specialized in the investigation of political extremism, beginning with the investigation of hate crimes and rightwing extremist groups in the United States. Since September 11, 2001, Mr. Merley has been collecting and analyzing intelligence on the Muslim Brotherhood in throughout the world. His work as an Investigative Researcher with the Wall Street Journal was used in a series of five articles on the European Muslim Brotherhood which appeared in the Journal during 2004. Mr. Merley is a former Senior Analyst with the NEFA Foundation, an anti-terrorist think tank, and is currently a Chief Analyst for Kronos Advisory, founded by Major Gen James E. Livingston, USMC (Ret), a recipient of America’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor.
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Research Center
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Research Center (GMBRC) was created as a companion site to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch (GMBDW). While the GMBDW monitors the the daily activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood, the GMBRC will provide the information needed to understand the larger context of those activities.
http://www.globalmbwatch.com/
http://www.globalmbresearch.com/
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Martel:
Welcome aboard!!! 8-)
May I ask you to use the Search function for "Islam" and see if one of the existing threads suits your purposes? In search of increasing the value of this forum and its threads for research purposes, we try to keep thread coherency around here.
Gents:
Please give a hearty welcome to my friend Martel. He will tell you as much or as little as he likes in the Rules of the Road thread, so I will limit myself to saying he is well traveled on a number of continents, and has more than a little time in the Middle East.
TAC!
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Martel:
Welcome aboard!!! 8-)
May I ask you to use the Search function for "Islam" and see if one of the existing threads suits your purposes? In search of increasing the value of this forum and its threads for research purposes, we try to keep thread coherency around here.
Gents:
Please give a hearty welcome to my friend Martel. He will tell you as much or as little as he likes in the Rules of the Road thread, so I will limit myself to saying he is well traveled on a number of continents, and has more than a little time in the Middle East.
TAC!
Thanks Marc!
I did find a few topics - "Islam, theocratic politics, & political freedom", "Islam in Europe", "Islam in America (and pre-emptive dhimmitude)". These seem to be copy and paste of articles in general, with little emphasis on original rebuttals to common issues with Islam. I felt a general introduction to Islam, which most Westerners are still unclear about, would create a foundation for educated discussion.
The encroachment of Sharia is of concern to me, and ignorance of Islam is not a successful strategy, as the latest European summer of Jihad violence can attest to.
I believe we are past the point of a non-violent resistance to reclaim Western values and standards in many parts of Europe and the UK, which is unfortunate, but education can allow people to inform others and create awareness to separate the truth from the subtle half-lies in the media. We have to know why we are speaking out, what we are standing against and what strategies the enemy, and yes I believe we are facing an enemy with great commitment and patience in service of his cause, is using.
They are succeeding because we let them.
I have successfully engaged in debate, armed with just the facts and integrity. I don't have to lie, cheat, obfuscate or misrepresent the truth (implying that the other side does these things routinely, if perhaps unknowingly) - it's easier than people realise to rebut the standard arguments.
Hopefully I can provide insight into some of the basis for the news articles posted, help people see a little clearer. I believe we need warriors and scholars, preferably combined into one person.
If anyone has comments, please add them.
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Hello,
After some lengthy discussions and correspondence with Crafty Dog, I've been compelled (arm bar :-D) to post with respect to, primarily, Islamism, and generally, to world affairs. Retired after 30 years of experience in three fields of human study (psychiatry for 7 years, as an experiential therapist - fancy terminology for getting people to problem solve; and 23 years, law enforcement and military intelligence, special operations).
With respect to Islamism, I did a search with respect to Unconstrained Analytics - available here: http://unconstrainedanalytics.org/ Much of what Martel posted, with respect to the Quran and extra-Quranic texts has been handled marvelously by Stephen Coughlin and Patrick Poole on their site and in their books, particularly - Catastrophic Failure: http://unconstrainedanalytics.org/books/catastrophic-failure-blindfolding-america-in-the-face-of-jihad/
I found Martel's postings confirmed all of their conclusions (if not directly derivative from them).
I graduated from the Denial and Deception Advanced Studies Program at the National Intelligence University a year after Stephen Coughlin posted his thesis. Much of what he wrote about there is covered in Catastrophic Failure.
My thesis is classified and, though I have an FOIA release from the Pentagon for some of it, I am reluctant to publish 60 pages of a 112 page volume, when much of what I argued is readily apparent in many other, open source findings - mainly, that what we are up against in Islamism is nothing we have not faced in Communism and Nazism.
Bottom line - Islamism is a direct product of Islam, which, as a whole, is an all-encompassing ideology that is incompatible with Western notions of separation of church and state.
Keep it simple stupid - wherever Islam is in power, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia some form of Sharia ensues and quickly robs anyone else, not Muslim, from their rights, e.g. either through payment of Jizya, or, in constrictions of others rights to free speech (it is, for example, case for arrest for Christians to share their faith with others, outside of the church, in many of these states). Sharia varies from one Islamic culture to another, from Sunni and Shia to Sufism, for example, and therefore is not monolithic.
What is monolithic for Islam is its stated claim for absolute and final truth, contending the Bible as errant in its claim of primary and central importance, the sacrifice, death on the cross, and conquering of sin and death by Jesus Christ - something Muhammad argues as insupportable from the standpoint of Allah being - one god, not three, as Christianity argues - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is the central point of argument to be had, with respect to Muslims and Christians entertaining HONEST dialogue.
Everything else is prologue.
Here is an interesting video from a former Muslim turned Christian, Nabeel Qureshi, who expounds on some important topics to consider, whenever debating Muslims:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtJTpFv4o7M
It also answers the question from agnostics, atheists, and others, outside of either faith, as to whether Muslims can, critically think through ideas they have been born into.
Nabeel Qureshi's answer, along with others who have turned away from Islam is - YES.
If you have not guessed by now, I am a non-denominational Christian and, YES, I would love for everyone to accept Jesus as their Savior.
HOWEVER, my beliefs in Jesus contrast greatly with altar boy raping priests, prosperity preachers, and other deceivers of many kinds who say they are Christian, but are as far away from what I believe a Christian to be.
I am a warrior/Christian - believing in Christophanies (https://faithbibleministriesblog.com/2012/05/24/the-preeminence-of-christ-part-8-christophanies-the-ot-appearances-of-jesus/).
I believe that Christ was there in front of Joshua, leading him into battle and, in Joshua 5:13-15, specifically told him, directly what to do concerning the Walls of Jericho.
Christ said to Joshua - "I am neither for nor against you, but as Commander of the Host of the Lord's Army..."
Christ violently threw the money-changers out of the temple.
The Jesus Christ I believe in is not the dope-smoking, turn-the-other-cheek, leftist, commie, Tolstoy version, liberals and progressives argue whenever they quote scripture.
WRONG!
Jesus Christ conquered sin and death and is the best alternative to any Muslim - moderate, extremist, jihadist, or simply entertaining the idea of Islam, as many in prisons do, for Islam is a cult of discipline, as Nabeel Qureshi so accurately points out.
Whereas, Christianity involves principles such as forgiveness - God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit conspired to create us, in their image, as the Genesis story points out - in plural form.
They were relational and created Heaven and Earth in order (cosmos means order, not chaos) that, humans - made in their image (relational), could populate and increase the love which the Trinity experienced. What is better, three beings or billions of beings, free to act and create, forever???
It came with a price though, for angels and humans share one thing - the propensity, in freedom, to rebel against the idea of whether God has our best interests.
Lucifer and a third of the angels thought and acted upon their belief, that they could know better than God.
Muhammad was certainly rebelling against the Christian concept of God in three persons, and arguably, did one of two things:
Either he simply made up the Quran; or, he was deluded from too many days in the hot sun, wearing a turbin, and actually, truly believed he was listening to an angel he called Gabriel.
The Jesus of the Quran and God in the Quran are mutually exclusive from those in the Bible, and are either patently false, constructed from Muhammad; or, delusions.
Why so quick and to the point???
I agree with Martel - that we are beyond chit chat and non-violent means and measures.
On the other hand, I understand where people like Nabeel Qureshi are coming from - for it is very Christian to say and argue, even by quoting scripture, that God is as he says he is, in 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some people understand slowness, but is being patient with you. He does not want anyone to perish, but wants everyone to repent."
Meanwhile, China watches Western atheists, agnostics, believers of many kinds, from all walks of life outside of China, and wonders - "when will we, the meek, inherit the earth?" Their way of thinking goes beyond chess, to such things as the game of GO, and thinking along the lines of - "well, maybe not in our time, but in our grandchildren's, grand child's time..."
You see, you cannot strategically consider all things, without considering those outside your own, particular, narrowed visions, which brings us to Boyd's Observe, Orient, Decide and Act - OODA Loop.
Teams I conducted strategic research with, over the years, were purposely comprised of analysts from very different backgrounds and yes, faiths - and I consider atheism a faith, for they have not proven God dead, as some of them have contended.
What matters is what happens, more so than what is believed to be happening.
It does not matter, for example, whether people believer Putin is old KGB and cannot shed his stripes. What matters, in fact, is whether the cards he has been playing line up with cards revealed (such as Mitrokhin's archives revealed: https://plus.google.com/110005138153908277516/posts/S6hMNtr3f9e).
The KEY point of understanding both World War I and II is something which, to this day, Putin will not concede - that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was Russian propaganda and that it Blew Back on them, when Hitler ate it whole, as truth (to include the Mufti of Palestine). Operation Barbarossa is an irony in that the same fervor which fueled pogroms against the Jews in Czar Nicholas II's time, helped create Nazism and Hitler's Mien Kampf.
Take, for example, Hitler mentioning Henry Ford then, watch this, revealing Ford acting on The Protocols - as fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pgV0ehidyo
Comprehensively and absolutely, Putin is playing Islamist hatred of the Jews and antipathy towards the West as a fine honed, two-edged sword:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110005138153908277516/posts/fc4nyDqfQBg
I told Crafty Dog that I would not be posting here often because I am working on an open source, unclassified, dissertation, which, summarily, is much represented here and boils down to one thing:
Without incorporating religious understandings into war-gaming analysis, you will fail to see how it can be used as, both a weapon and salve.
I am not religious, as said before, I hold little accord with any established Christian churches nowadays, though I recommend Charles Stanley and Ravi Zaccharias as mostly representative of what I believe.
The tidal wave of Islamism is both crashing forward on its own, as well as being given a huge push by Putin and others - these are undeniable facts.
Obama's failed Countering Violent Extremism approach is coming to an end and, under Trump, may, hopefully, be consigned to the trash bin. Its replacement must involve much of what I have just argued; otherwise, we'll continue to be played by both Russia and China, and overrun by Islamists, acting on their own, as Europe already has.
If Hillary wins, I'll be in Texas, waiting and contributing to TEXIT.
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http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1661.0
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Martel:
I am about 1/4 of my way through what you posted-- very lean and mean with no wasted effort--very impressive!!!
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Martel:
I am about 1/4 of my way through what you posted-- very lean and mean with no wasted effort--very impressive!!!
Thank you, Crafty! I try to keep things more or less bite sized for easy consumption, allowing for easy follow up, while also preempting the typical rebuttal.
I appreciate you drafting in Concerned Citizen, this should lead to some good discussion. I also read the thread link you posted. It's a bit lengthy, and not geared towards novices, whereas I'm leaning towards novices and fence sitters.
It may be good to keep posts short for easy reading, as a resource for the newly interested.
I have never read Stephen Coughlin and Patrick Poole, though I do know of Stephen Coughlin's book. I used a host of other sources, however the verification by scholars of their caliber is gratifying. I will certainly take a closer look at both of these gentlemen.
I prefer to think of Political Islam than Islamism, as that word is an attempt to deflect responsibility away from Islam, to subtly describe it as a fake Islam and thus imply a disconnect and innocence of the Islamic doctrine. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations)
According to the FBI, CAIR (a designated terror group), is affiliated to HAMAS.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request received a chart from the FBI that shows CAIR falling under the umbrella of the jihadi organisation.
The FBI chart details the Hamas-related groups, which include CAIR, created to ultimately support the Palestinian terrorist organisation. It establishes Nabil Sadoun’s (former CAIR national board of directors member and vice chairman) connections to Hamas.
A Brookings report stated that:
"from a national security standpoint, perhaps more important ever—to make careful distinctions between Islamists. While extremists may garner the most attention, the vast majority of Islamists are not, in fact, violent.
Mainstream Islamist groups primarily consist of Muslim Brotherhood and Brotherhood-inspired movements."
Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister, recently came out with a list of terrorist organisations, CAIR is among them, in the company of ISIS, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
He stated, “Our threshold is quite low. . . . We cannot accept incitement or funding.” In their investigation, the UAE found CAIR guilty of incitement to and funding of terror.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/15/fbi-chart-documents-portray-cair-hamas-related-organization/
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CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations)
A previously-referenced Brookings Institution report tells us that
"...from a national security standpoint, perhaps more important than ever—to make careful distinctions between Islamists. While extremists may garner the most attention, the vast majority of Islamists are not, in fact, violent.
Their definition of these non-violent political groups tells us that "Mainstream Islamist groups primarily consist of Muslim Brotherhood and Brotherhood-inspired movements."
Article 8 of the HAMAS Covenant reiterates the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan of "Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur'an its constitution, JIHAD its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief."
From the article: "Senior UAE officials have responded to the criticism by restating that CAIR, MAS and other Muslim groups in the West are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, promote extremism, and incite and finance terrorism.
The UAE banned CAIR and MAS along with approximately 80 other organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood itself. CAIR and MAS are both U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities.
By calling out European and American affiliates of the Brotherhood, the UAE is trying to bring attention to the Islamists’ influence in and danger to the West."
It is worth investigating the people, political aims, history, shared ideology and ties of these groups. The Muslim Brotherhood is a political organisation with numerous front groups, and self-professed to be engaged in Jihad.
http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/uae-doubles-down-designation-cair-terrorists
A full list of the groups banned by the UAE government:
http://www.thenational.ae/uae/government/list-of-groups-designated-terrorist-organisations-by-the-uae
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Moderate groups? The Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS, CAIR and establishment of a global caliphate.
There exist links between groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, HAMAS (and others). While not evident on the surface, a cursory search reveals that public-facing front groups have a history and ideological motivations that are not 'moderate', but share common goals with more violent, radical extremist groups.
The acronym HAMAS, taken from the Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement, (Harakat al-Muqawama al-lslamiya) literally denotes "zeal" or "enthusiasm." The HAMAS Covenant: Article 8 - The Hamas document reiterates the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan of "Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur'an its constitution, JIHAD its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief."
HAMAS is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Sheik Hasan al-Bana; and subsequently spread throughout the Arab world. The Brotherhood shares with HAMAS a complete rejection of Western values and Communism and calls for the establishment of a pan-Islamic state founded on the basis of Shari'a, or Islamic law. To attain this objective, the Brotherhood promoted the concept of an ideal Muslim state to be ruled by a Caliph, the title bestowed upon the successors of the Prophet Muhammad at the beginning of the Islamic empire.
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) executive director Nihad Awad wrote a letter to Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2009 asking him for funding for a new project.
Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’ founder, and first leader emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood. He joined the movement in 1955 and also belonged to its first official cell it the Gaza Strip. He and Hamas’ original cofounders studied at Egyptian universities, where they were exposed to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology.
HAMAS, Article 2 -The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/30/fbi-cuts-ties-cair-following-terror-financing-trial.html
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Documented Muslim Brotherhood aims (CAIR)
The FBI seized a Muslim Brotherhood document in 2004 that laid out its plan to overtake the West. Link: https://app.box.com/s/kxkp00bnwna0oxi8dl2vvfmgudn10wds
The plan consists of five phases:
1. The “secret establishment of leadership”
2. “...gradual appearance on the public scene.”
Phase 2 calls for “infiltrating various sectors of government,” “gaining religious institutions,” “gaining public support and sympathy” and “establishing a shadow government.”
3. “Escalation phase,” which focuses on “utilizing mass media.” The document says that this stage is “currently in progress.”
4. “Open confrontation with the government through ... political pressure” and “training on the use of weapons domestically.” The document says that there are “noticeable activities in this regard.”
5. The final phase: “Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united.”
Phase 5 is the establishment of a caliphate in the United States. These goals do not read as those of a benign organisation.
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I am enjoying and appreciating Martel's posts. Welcome!
I love the detail and the supporting research. I wonder what the over-riding theme could bne boiled down to in a thesis point or two or three. What is it that people, voters and policy makers need to know?
We all have our own discussions with liberals we know or people we disagree with. (The Libertarian candidate is also for open borders and soft on terrorism.) What I have heard back when I talk of the threat of Islamic terrorism is something like, 'I choose not to live in fear'. The Obama administration has mostly embodied that, don't name the threat, don't acknowledge it. Many believe that if peaceful, loving people talk more about peace and love it will come true.
Meanwhile, al Qaida, ISIS, the caliphate, Jihad, torture, terror, bombings and beheadings and the Islamic immigration invasion are all real, true and coming our way.
The violence in Islam is a feature, not a bug. Peaceful Muslims are not able to point to real meanings in text and convince the Jihadists they have it all wrong.
I don't live in a specific fear that I will be blown up or beheaded. The numbers of killings, even counting 9/11/01, are relatively small. Rather, I live in a policy vacuum where we aren't doing the right things to protect our country.
The invasion of Europe, the no-go zones and the civil wars there are real. We have the same going on here to a smaller degree in an earlier phase.
There is only one lesson the US could take out of WWII if we had the full benefits of clairvoyance and hindsight. Intervene sooner. This threat is different from Hitlerism for sure but the idea that we are way over here so it doesn't affect us is wrong and dangerous.
We need deep, strategic thinking and long term consistent actions. It starts with a clear understanding of the threat.
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Western Europe is too far gone. Western civilization isn't looking too healthy either.
I am enjoying and appreciating Martel's posts. Welcome!
I love the detail and the supporting research. I wonder what the over-riding theme could bne boiled down to in a thesis point or two or three. What is it that people, voters and policy makers need to know?
We all have our own discussions with liberals we know or people we disagree with. (The Libertarian candidate is also for open borders and soft on terrorism.) What I have heard back when I talk of the threat of Islamic terrorism is something like, 'I choose not to live in fear'. The Obama administration has mostly embodied that, don't name the threat, don't acknowledge it. Many believe that if peaceful, loving people talk more about peace and love it will come true.
Meanwhile, al Qaida, ISIS, the caliphate, Jihad, torture, terror, bombings and beheadings and the Islamic immigration invasion are all real, true and coming our way.
The violence in Islam is a feature, not a bug. Peaceful Muslims are not able to point to real meanings in text and convince the Jihadists they have it all wrong.
I don't live in a specific fear that I will be blown up or beheaded. The numbers of killings, even counting 9/11/01, are relatively small. Rather, I live in a policy vacuum where we aren't doing the right things to protect our country.
The invasion of Europe, the no-go zones and the civil wars there are real. We have the same going on here to a smaller degree in an earlier phase.
There is only one lesson the US could take out of WWII if we had the full benefits of clairvoyance and hindsight. Intervene sooner. This threat is different from Hitlerism for sure but the idea that we are way over here so it doesn't affect us is wrong and dangerous.
We need deep, strategic thinking and long term consistent actions. It starts with a clear understanding of the threat.
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I am enjoying and appreciating Martel's posts. Welcome!
I love the detail and the supporting research. I wonder what the over-riding theme could be boiled down to in a thesis point or two or three. What is it that people, voters and policy makers need to know?
We all have our own discussions with liberals we know or people we disagree with. (The Libertarian candidate is also for open borders and soft on terrorism.) What I have heard back when I talk of the threat of Islamic terrorism is something like, 'I choose not to live in fear'. The Obama administration has mostly embodied that, don't name the threat, don't acknowledge it. Many believe that if peaceful, loving people talk more about peace and love it will come true.
Meanwhile, al Qaida, ISIS, the caliphate, Jihad, torture, terror, bombings and beheadings and the Islamic immigration invasion are all real, true and coming our way.
The violence in Islam is a feature, not a bug. Peaceful Muslims are not able to point to real meanings in text and convince the Jihadists they have it all wrong.
I don't live in a specific fear that I will be blown up or beheaded. The numbers of killings, even counting 9/11/01, are relatively small. Rather, I live in a policy vacuum where we aren't doing the right things to protect our country.
The invasion of Europe, the no-go zones and the civil wars there are real. We have the same going on here to a smaller degree in an earlier phase.
There is only one lesson the US could take out of WWII if we had the full benefits of clairvoyance and hindsight. Intervene sooner. This threat is different from Hitlerism for sure but the idea that we are way over here so it doesn't affect us is wrong and dangerous.
We need deep, strategic thinking and long term consistent actions. It starts with a clear understanding of the threat.
Thank you, DougMacG!
i) Westerners need an academic, unbiased knowledge of Islamic doctrine and history.
I have attempted to provide such an introduction in various posts above, based on the doctrine in the Quran and the Sunna (collections of Hadith + Biography) of Mohammed and other highly authoritative sources (I do link to The Reliance of the Traveller as an accessible guide to Sharia/Islamic jurisprudence). Not what a friend said, or the nice grocer, or the co-worker or the reporter - just the text of the Quran and the life of Mohammed. With a bit of priming it is easy to read and discover for oneself what the thrust of the doctrine is - which is the uncompromising global dominance of Islam.
ii) Know that most Jihad is of the stealthy, non-violent kind.
There are networks of highly committed Jihadis infiltrating their way into the media, educational institutions, places of worship, law enforcement and government. It is a war in the information space, a 4th Generation Conflict of ideas, based around deception and manipulation - and we are losing.
iii) Have strong Western values.
Know who you are, know what you fight for. Know your history, know your roots, the miracle that is Western civilisation and the positive effect it has had on the world. Have strong beliefs in family, country and your faith. If you have nothing to stand for you will be divided, lost, unsure of your place and direction. The modern 'liberal' SJW phenomenon is a cancer eating at our culture. While not intending to disparage, atheism is a similar tool used to destroy social cohesion caused by common shared beliefs. While we can no longer decide what is a man or a woman, the enemies we face have a very firm, unyielding set of beliefs that we are wavering in front of.
Our current policy decisions to take the statements of some groups and individuals at face value is, at best, naive. It is both an underestimation of terror groups and wilful ignorance of their ethos.
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Western Europe is too far gone. Western civilization isn't looking too healthy either.
Hi GM
They only succeed because we let them. They couldn't get far if we opposed them, however our leadership is confused, weak, agenda-driven, traitorous or all of the above. They are using subversive means since direct confrontation would be a losing strategy and always has been. However, they have mastered Boyd's concepts of 4th Generation Warfare (low intensity guerrilla warfare) and use them to good effect.
I do think in many places we are beyond dialogue and there will be conflict, which is unfortunate but likely unavoidable to reassert Western values. I believe there is reason to be optimistic, and that we should engage in an effort to educate ourselves and others. Ignorance and complacency led us here, knowledge and action will see us through.
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The West's leaders, especially our traitorous president don't much care for the nations they are responsible for leading.
Western Europe is too far gone. Western civilization isn't looking too healthy either.
Hi GM
They only succeed because we let them. They couldn't get far if we opposed them, however our leadership is confused, weak, agenda-driven, traitorous or all of the above. They are using subversive means since direct confrontation would be a losing strategy and always has been. However, they have mastered Boyd's concepts of 4th Generation Warfare (low intensity guerrilla warfare) and use them to good effect.
I do think in many places we are beyond dialogue and there will be conflict, which is unfortunate but likely unavoidable to reassert Western values. I believe there is reason to be optimistic, and that we should engage in an effort to educate ourselves and others. Ignorance and complacency led us here, knowledge and action will see us through.
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Martel, Thank you for a great response! - Doug
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Very glad to see this thread getting traction.
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CAIR. Deception and subversive activity by political front groups.
“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
That’s not a quote from Osama bin Laden. It’s a quote from Omar Ahmad, a founder of the Council for American Islamic Relations, the Hamas-affiliated Muslim Brotherhood front group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial.
In 1993, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Palestine Committee organised a secret meeting in Philadelphia that the FBI wiretapped. The participants, which included two future CAIR founders, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, discussed how to support Hamas and, in the words of a 2009 ruling by a federal judge, “goals, strategies and American perceptions of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Ahmad was recorded discussing how to modify language about destroying Israel for an American audience.
The need to create a new “neutral” entity for influencing U.S. policy and opinion was agreed upon because as they said “it is known who we are.” CAIR was formed by Awad and Ahmad the next year.
Federal prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR (along with two other Islamic organizations) as “unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venturers” in a criminal conspiracy in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing and providing support to the Hamas terrorist group. CAIR was listed among “individuals/entities who are/were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.”
The United Arab Emirates’ ministerial cabinet listed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as one of 83 proscribed terrorist organizations, up there with the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
The Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti, and Bahraini rulers view politicians like Mohamed Morsi of Egypt as their enemies, as they do Hamas and its offshoot groups - including CAIR.
Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister, recently published a list of terrorist organisations. Two of them raised eyebrows - the Council of American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim-American Society. He said, "Our threshold is quite low when we talk about extremism. We cannot accept incitement or funding ... we cannot tolerate even the smallest, tiniest amount of terrorism.
At least seven board members or staff at CAIR have been arrested, denied entry to the U.S., or were indicted on or pled guilty to (or were convicted of) terrorist charges: Siraj Wahhaj, Bassem Khafagi, Randall (“Ismail”) Royer, Ghassan Elashi, Rabih Haddad, Muthanna Al-Hanooti, and Nabil Sadoun.
The UAE minister of state for foreign affairs replied that if organizations can show that their “approach has changed,” they are eligible to appeal “to have their names eliminated from the list.”
Based on all of this, there is ample reason to delve deeper into these groups, networks and individuals, to examine their motives and intentions. To take the statements of some groups and individuals at face value is, at best, naive.
It is both an underestimation of terror groups and wilful ignorance of their ethos.
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Good thing CAIR isn't allowed to infiltrate and influence government in the US!
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5107/obama-white-house-turns-to-islamists-who-demonize
CAIR. Deception and subversive activity by political front groups.
“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
That’s not a quote from Osama bin Laden. It’s a quote from Omar Ahmad, a founder of the Council for American Islamic Relations, the Hamas-affiliated Muslim Brotherhood front group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial.
In 1993, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Palestine Committee organised a secret meeting in Philadelphia that the FBI wiretapped. The participants, which included two future CAIR founders, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, discussed how to support Hamas and, in the words of a 2009 ruling by a federal judge, “goals, strategies and American perceptions of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Ahmad was recorded discussing how to modify language about destroying Israel for an American audience.
The need to create a new “neutral” entity for influencing U.S. policy and opinion was agreed upon because as they said “it is known who we are.” CAIR was formed by Awad and Ahmad the next year.
Federal prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR (along with two other Islamic organizations) as “unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venturers” in a criminal conspiracy in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing and providing support to the Hamas terrorist group. CAIR was listed among “individuals/entities who are/were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.”
The United Arab Emirates’ ministerial cabinet listed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as one of 83 proscribed terrorist organizations, up there with the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
The Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti, and Bahraini rulers view politicians like Mohamed Morsi of Egypt as their enemies, as they do Hamas and its offshoot groups - including CAIR.
Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister, recently published a list of terrorist organisations. Two of them raised eyebrows - the Council of American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim-American Society. He said, "Our threshold is quite low when we talk about extremism. We cannot accept incitement or funding ... we cannot tolerate even the smallest, tiniest amount of terrorism.
At least seven board members or staff at CAIR have been arrested, denied entry to the U.S., or were indicted on or pled guilty to (or were convicted of) terrorist charges: Siraj Wahhaj, Bassem Khafagi, Randall (“Ismail”) Royer, Ghassan Elashi, Rabih Haddad, Muthanna Al-Hanooti, and Nabil Sadoun.
The UAE minister of state for foreign affairs replied that if organizations can show that their “approach has changed,” they are eligible to appeal “to have their names eliminated from the list.”
Based on all of this, there is ample reason to delve deeper into these groups, networks and individuals, to examine their motives and intentions. To take the statements of some groups and individuals at face value is, at best, naive.
It is both an underestimation of terror groups and wilful ignorance of their ethos.
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Good thing CAIR isn't allowed to infiltrate and influence government in the US!
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5107/obama-white-house-turns-to-islamists-who-demonize
I'm familiar with the collaboration with Ikhwan front groups, and how they have infiltrated the US government and other institutions as per their own documented strategy. Discussing these facts sounds like you're discussing a crazy conspiracy theory, except every word is true.
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I've been curious about the Muslim Brotherhood network and their front groups, which they specifically set up as 'neutral' entities since they were too well known, as demonstrated in documents obtained by the FBI.
The focus in this post is the court document linked below, with several quotes from it. The linked Clarion article provides further detail and source references.
The Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood are a designated religious terror group with political aims based on their religious agenda, and I posted earlier on their self-professed Jihad by political and media infiltration against the West.
I went to look at court documents related to Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood subversive activity and want to post some highlights. CAIR appeared, tied to the Ikhwan. This is clearly a case of "Go back to sleep, nothing to see here...".
The court document: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/542.pdf
Quoted text below is from the court document.
"CAIR and MAS (Muslim American Society) omit reference to a shared background that limits their membership to those of a particular political bent, and undercuts their credibility. "
"The Muslim Brotherhood is a generally covert international organization whose credo is
Allah is our goal:
the Qur'an is our constitution:
the Prophet is our leader:
Struggle (Jihad) is our Way:
and death in the path of Allah is our highest aspiration. "
The Ikhwan wants to establish an American caliphate under the Sharia as their stated goal. Or they're Boy Scouts. The meaning of the above goal is unclear to me.
"MAS was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America."
"Moreover, from its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists. "
"Proof that the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists was introduced at both the Texas trial in 2007 and also at a Chicago trial the previous year. United States 11. Askqai-, et al.. No. 03-978 (N.D. 111.2006). "
http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/cair-recognized-terrorist-org-exposed-tv-debate
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Gents:
Some REALLY good work being done here. Please let's use the Subject line to its full potential so as to maximize Search command efficiency!!!
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Gents:
Some REALLY good work being done here. Please let's use the Subject line to its full potential so as to maximize Search command efficiency!!!
Thank you for the kind words, Crafty. I adjusted each subject line to reflect the content of each post, and will do so for future posts.
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Woof!
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The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, further ties and involvement.
The Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) was an organ of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.
Citing from their documents:
The Palestine Committee is a specialized committee emanating from the Palestine Section which was formed by the executive office of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Levant countries. Its scope of work is limited to North America and its contacts include other countries.
Due to ... the important developments produced by the blessed Intifada in the Occupied Territories and the impact it had on the Muslim Brotherhood Movement, and particularly the directions of his eminence the General Guide and the latest visit to America by the Palestine Section, ... which discussed the cause and its developments with their Brothers in the leadership of the Group here in America, the Palestine Committee was formed to serve the Palestinian cause on the U.S. front.
C- Affairs of the Islamic Association [IAP] which include the following main duties:
- Drawing the strategy.
- Supervision, follow-up and direction.
Attached below is CAIR named as coordinator.
As discussed before, attached is an excerpt of a transcript made by the FBI, from a secret meeting where the formation of a 'neutral' organisation with no previous terror association is discussed. The meeting was recorded, and the tapes were recovered during an investigation.
Telling is the statements that "We will remain a front ... instead of having all our organizations classified and exposed."
Links to screen caps of the relevant parts of the documents:
https://app.box.com/s/aqg7kqllsro0qgsrp4bjyy0g91aj38tn - CAIR coordinating for the HLF/IAP Muslim Brotherhood front groups
https://app.box.com/s/u8isf5c6cdrmhue84d4d7jsxiby5stai - Transcript of recorded meeting discussing creating CAIR as a front group.
Links to the full PDF documents:
Palestine Committee meeting minutes: https://app.box.com/s/93jq9s5ppct2q4yukqebuh3t0fev7zbh
FBI transcript: https://app.box.com/s/41258dypq2ni1l46ajezgw76qcink9rk
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A brief look inside the Muslim Brotherhood. A sample of its bylaws, member pledges and motto.
My comments are preceded by *
"The Muslim Brotherhood, is an international Muslim Body, which seeks to establish Allah's law in the land by achieving the spiritual goals of Islam and the true religion which are namely the following:
E – The need to work on establishing the Islamic State, which seeks to effectively implement the provisions of Islam and its teachings.
* The Ikhwan were formed after Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924, and are committed to the establishment of a new worldwide Caliphate governed by the Sharia.
D– Make every effort for the establishment of educational, social, economic and scientific institutions and the establishment of mosques, schools, clinics, shelters, clubs as well as the formation of committees to regulate zakat affairs and alms.
* They have built an extensive network. Its members are required, as shown below, to have uncompromising loyalty to the group's ethos, religious doctrine and political aims.
E –The Islamic nation must be fully prepared to fight the tyrants and the enemies of Allah as a prelude to establishing an Islamic state.
* Their motto says "Jihad is our way"
I pledge allegiance to the Almighty Allah to constantly uphold and safeguard the principles of Islam, **to fight in the cause of Allah, to adhere to the terms and duties of the Brotherhood's membership, showing as much as possible obedience to the just leaders in sorrow and in joy as long as it does not involve disobedience to Allah, I pay allegiance and may Allah be my witness.
** Direct from the Quran 4:74 - Let those (believers) who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter fight in the Cause of Allah, and whoso fights in the Cause of Allah, and is killed or gets victory, We shall bestow on him a great reward.
I pledge allegiance to Allah Almighty constantly upholding the sublime principals of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace be upon him) and commitment to the Brotherhood's platform to act promptly in implementing the decisions entrusted to me...
“Allah is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” (The Brotherhood's Motto)
* According to the Islamic doctrine followed by the Ikhwan, the highest reward in paradise is reserved for those who kill and are killed for the sake of Allah.
Sahih Bukhari 2782 - The Messenger of Allah was asked, "Which deed is the best?" He replied, "Faith in Allah and His Messenger." He was asked, "What is next?" He replied, "Jihad (holy fighting) in the Cause of Allah."
Sahih Bukhari 2787 - I heard Allah's Messenger saying, "The example of a Mujahid in Allah's Cause-- and Allah knows better who really strives in His Cause----is like a person who fasts and prays continuously. Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty."
Sahih Muslim Book 20 Hadith 4646
A man stood up and said: Messenger of Allah, do you think that if I am killed in the way of Allah, my sins will be blotted out from me? The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said: Yes, in case you are killed in the way of Allah and you were patient and sincere and you always fought facing the enemy, never turming your back upon him. Then he added: What have you said (now)? (Wishing to have further assurance from him for his satisfaction), he asked (again): Do you think if I am killed in the way of Allah, all my sins will be obliterated from me? The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said: Yes, it you were patient and sincere and always fought facing the enemy and never turning your back upon him, (all your lapses would be forgiven) except debt. Gabriel has told me this.
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The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan for North America, part 1
"... what is between your hands is not strange or a new submission without a root, but rather an attempt to interpret and explain some of what came in the long-term plan which we approved and adopted in our council and our conference in the year (1987). ~ Mohammed Akram
In August 2004 Ismail Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, VA was arrested after authorities witnessed his wife videotaping Maryland's Chesapeake Bay Bridge from their SUV. The images captured by Elbarasse's wife included close-ups of cables and other features that were "integral to the structural integrity of the bridge."
Elbarasse is a former board member of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and Hamas activist. He served on the Palestine Committee, a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States to help Hamas politically and financially. He was an assistant to Mousa Abu Marzook when Marzook was Hamas political director. The two shared a bank account.
Investigators discovered 80 boxes of internal Palestine Committee records during a search of his Virginia home. The documents were subsequently used for the prosecution of five Holy Land Foundation officials, found guilty in 2008 of funneling money to Hamas. Those exhibits were admitted into evidence and titled "Elbarasse Search" followed by an identification number.
It was written by member of the Board of Directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America and senior Hamas leader, Mohammed Akram. It discusses the plan approved by the Brotherhood’s Shura Council and Organizational Conference in 1987, and it establishes the mission of the Muslim Brother in North America. These documents were never meant to be seen outside of the Ikhwan and its affiliates.
Article 4- Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America: The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.
A copy of the original document can be found here: https://app.box.com/s/bwqi9hssurrlasy2jkpa8xetjlyt9fj6
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The dangers of 'scope creep'. This article should provide a sobering appraisal of the effects of this particular label.
(Note: this is a summary of the full article)
Javaria Saeed, a practising Muslim who worked in Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism division, has attacked the Metropolitan police for failing to tackle extremist views among some of its Muslim officers for fear of being labelled “Islamophobic”.
However, ... her managers ... failed to take action ... because they were afraid of being accused of racism.
Saeed said she resigned in March after becoming disheartened by “political correctness”, which allowed an “us and them” culture to thrive among some Muslim officers who considered themselves beyond the law.
Saeed told The Sunday Times that the Met applied a different standard when looking into complaints against some Muslim officers from those it applied to non-Muslims.
“Racism in the Met is not from white officers in my case, but from Muslim officers who the service refused to properly investigate because they were afraid of being called Islamophobic and racist,” said Saeed.
Saeed said she joined the police in the wake of the 2005 London bombings to help bridge the division between the Muslim community and the authorities.
Downloadable PDF: https://app.box.com/s/b2fjen7ej8dofd1yrgkijb40oww1ijkv
Original article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/met-ignored-extremism-among-my-fellow-muslim-officers-xz2z2g8hp
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When criticism and discussion are demonised... the dangers of scope creep. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"...in an increasingly effective move that’s fast become something of an epidemic, I can shame you into silence for criticizing my ideas simply by calling you bigoted or Islamophobic.
In addition to calling out prejudice against Muslims (a people), the term “Islamophobia” seeks to shield Islam itself (an ideology) from criticism"
For decades, Muslims around the world have rightly complained about the Israeli government labeling even legitimate criticism of its policies “anti-Semitic,” effectively shielding itself from accountability. Today, Muslim organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) have borrowed a page from their playbook with the “Islamophobia” label — and taken it even further.
It’s as if every time you said smoking was a filthy habit, you were perceived to be calling all smokers filthy people. Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. But when did we start extending those rights to ideas, books, and beliefs? You’d think the difference would be clear, but it isn’t. The ploy has worked over and over again, and now everyone seems petrified of being tagged with this label."
... a white American man successfully convinced the Massachusetts liberal arts school Brandeis University that he was being victimized and oppressed by a black African woman from Somalia — a woman who underwent genital mutilation at age five and travels with armed security at risk of being assassinated.
That is the power of this term.
The man, Ibrahim Hooper, is a Muslim convert and a founding member and spokesman for CAIR.
Original article. Well worth reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/the-phobia-of-being-calle_b_5215218.html
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The religious motive for Jihad. Inside the mind of a Jihadi.
In June 2007, Malik Hasan Nidal was supposed to deliver a medical presentation to military doctors. Instead, he presented a 50 slide talk on Islam called "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military." One can determine from this fascinating presentation why Hasan went on to kill 13 men and women and wound another 32. Had he not been shot, he could have gone on to shoot and kill many others. Hasan allegedly shouted the Takbir or "Allahu Akbar" as he went on the killing spree. This translates to "Allah is greater", by implication [than your God].
None of the attendees said anything to their superiors, they were afraid of being labelled Islamophobic and racist. As a consequence, people died. This presentation provides an excellent first hand insight into the Jihadist mind.
The imam who was the leader of the mosque that Malik Hasan Nidal attended said he was a quiet man who came to service daily. Hasan attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and was "very devout," according to Faizul Khan, a former imam at the center. Khan said Hasan attended prayers at least once a day, seven days a week, often in his Army fatigues.
Khan is a leading board member of the Islamic Society of North America — a lobby group established by Saudi Arabia to spread Wahhabi doctrine among American Muslims. ISNA, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the North American Islamic Trust, are unindicted conspirators as one of a number of "entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." as per court records from the Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial. Additional records exist showing a relationship to HAMAS.
Federal law enforcement officials say the Fort Hood shooter had come to their attention at least six months prior because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats. One web posting that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.
"To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause," "Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees [sic] in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i [sic] you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best."
In his presentation, Nidal does go on to discuss rewards for Martyrs.
Anwar al-Awlaki praised Hasan's actions "Nidal Hasan [sic] is a hero." 18 E-mails between Maj. Nidal Hasan and Anwar Awlaki (al-Qaeda) were released as part of the FBI's investigation into the case.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110903618.html (Their presentation link may not work)
A copy of the presentation can be downloaded here: https://app.box.com/s/c93hqhkx7oybhodjq7gnkrxa9tw9tqxl
http://unconstrainedanalytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/nidal-hasan-powerpoint.pdf
As per the slides:
- Nidal Hasan's definition of Islamist: "Advocates rule by God's law - Islamic political rule/Sharia law i.e. (No separation of Church and State).
- Nidal Hasan on the influence of Islamist groups: "If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the "infidels"; ie: enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing etc." This does leave one to think who these "Muslim groups" groups are, what message they are spreading and how they are spreading it.
- The final statement in the slide above, about loving death, has a long history within the Jihadist community. As just one example, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife advised Muslim women: “I advise you to raise your children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instil in them a love for religion and
- The Abrogation slide demonstrates the importance of the Law of Abrogation in the Jihadi mind, as he correctly states that later verses supercede earlier verses in the Quran. This is the ideological foundation among these groups and thinkers for Jihad against the West and eradication of all unbelief.
- The Conclusion slide alone could lead to a lengthy investigation and discussion into the mindset of the soldiers of Jihad. As Hasan writes: "Muslims may be seen as moderate (compromising) but God is not." Also noteworthy is "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam." More reference to the need and desire for a Caliphate, especially after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by Ataturk in 1924
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Hi all
I hope this series has been helpful to many so far. The more I dig into this, especially into the hidden networks of the Muslim Brotherhood, the more it unsettles me to know what we're facing - knowing that the most powerful force to stop this, the US government, has been infiltrated and hamstrung by them.
General academia will not be of help, in my estimation. It's both ignorant of the nature of the Islamic subversive/terror threat and overrun with ignorance-inspiring PC, terrified of being accused of racial bias and Islamophobia.
The more we can educate ourselves and provide simple resources we can use, the better we empower ourselves to stand up and speak against the half truths and lies.
Any comments or thoughts?
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You'll find only agreement here!
I think we all appreciate your concise presentation of facts and lines of analysis for persuading others.
Speaking of Muslim Brotherhood, a pet peeve of mine is how Huma Abedin's family connections to it are ignored , , , :x :x :x
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https://newrepublic.com/article/136609/moral-hazard
Moral Hazard
The life of a liberal Muslim.
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, who was born in Egypt, poses for photographs in his home in Van Nuys, February 16, 2011. (Photo by Ann Johansson/Corbis via Getty Images).
The death threats began shortly after September 11, 2001. Every few days, for about four months, Khaled Abou El Fadl would receive an angry, anonymous phone call at either his San Fernando Valley home or his UCLA office. In his e-mail inbox, he found ominous messages from obscured sources with warnings such as, “You know what we’re capable of.” At first, the pudgy, 39-year-old professor of Islamic jurisprudence dismissed the calls as harmless outbursts at a tense moment. But, as the fall of 2001 progressed, Abou El Fadl began suspecting that the threats were more serious than he had initially assumed. Twice in November, he noticed a van that inexplicably lingered outside of his relatively isolated home but then disappeared after he called the police. A few months later, he found the windows of his family’s SUV smashed at a crowded movie theater parking lot. Neither the radio nor the cash in the car had been stolen; no other vehicle in the lot had been touched.
When he brought these incidents to the attention of police, they requested--and he granted--permission to tap his home phone. UCLA installed a red panic button next to his desk, ensuring that campus cops could respond within minutes to any crisis in his office. The FBI even assigned an agent to track down his tormenters. (To date, they have not been found.) All of this might sound like the prelude to a textbook hate crime, but the Abou El Fadl case has a twist: The callers weren’t angry white men accusing him of terrorist sympathies; they were fellow Muslim Americans accusing him of selling out the faith.
On September 14, 2001, Abou El Fadl had published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. Many Muslim Americans had condemned the week’s attacks as un-Islamic. But Abou El Fadl felt this response amounted to an evasion. The attacks, he worried, didn’t represent a deviation from mainstream Islam; they reflected a crisis at the core of the faith, the logical conclusion of “a puritanical and ethically oblivious form of Islam [that] has predominated since the 1970s.” Centuries of Islamic intellectual development had been destroyed by the “rampant apologetics” of Muslim thinkers, which had “produced a culture that eschews self-critical and introspective insight and embraces projection of blame and a fantasy-like level of confidence and arrogance.”
The callers weren’t angry white men accusing him of terrorist sympathies; they were fellow Muslim Americans accusing him of selling out the faith.
Abou El Fadl had, for years, made essentially the same argument in his scholarly writings, particularly the books And God Knows the Soldiers (1997) and Speaking in God’s Name (2001). With imams justifying suicide bombings in Israel and elsewhere, Abou El Fadl had voiced concern that Islam had been “rendered subservient to political expedience and symbolic displays of power.” And he’d railed against the ascendance of Wahhabism, a rigidly puritanical brand of Islam exported and subsidized by the government of Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis insist that Islam must recover the practices of the “golden age”--the decades that followed the prophet’s death--and dismiss subsequent centuries of interpretation and intellectual exploration as devilish sophistry. It is that thoughtful, pluralist tradition that Abou El Fadl wants to recover, an “ethos where the numerous traditions ... emphasiz[ed] that pursuit of knowledge is an act of permanent worship.”
Whereas the thrust of modern Christian history has been toward decentralization, Sunni Islam has undergone a rapid period of theological consolidation. In the faith’s first century and a half, Abou El Fadl estimates that 135 legal schools competed to influence the religion. Even up until the last part of this century, Greek-inspired rationalists (mu’tazila) argued against puritanical literalists (ahl-al-hadith) and strict constructionists (usulis). But with Saudi money, and in the guise of Wahhabism, the ahl-al-hadith have of late won the upper hand. And, unlike other traditions that accommodate dissenting views, the Wahhabis claim to possess an undebatable vision of “true Islam.” Abou El Fadl, by contrast, comes from the ever-shrinking usuli school. As he describes usulism, it is a conservative tradition. To protect the Koran’s integrity, usulis impose a stiff test for the derivation of God’s laws. For edicts to carry divine imprimatur, they must be unambiguously stated in the Koran or sunna (the body of literature that includes the sayings and biography of the prophet). “You have to be willing to bet your soul that law is God’s will,” he argues. “Otherwise you might be guilty of arrogance in the eyes of God.”
Paradoxically, the usulis’ theological conservatism makes them quite liberal relative to much of the current Muslim world. While Wahhabis assert the necessity of veiling women, for example, Abou El Fadl and other usulis point to texts casting doubt on God’s intention that women’s faces be constantly covered. (The Koran urges the veil specifically to protect against molestation, notes Abou El Fadl; if there’s no threat of molestation, there’s no need for the veil.) Likewise, the usulis reject many of the Wahhabis’ other proscriptions--guidelines for sex, prohibitions against keeping pet dogs and women attending funerals--as passages plucked from context that ignore vast chunks of the holy books. But what bothers Abou El Fadl most about Wahhabism isn’t simply its textual distortions. It is the tradition’s denigration of morality, which the Wahhabis argue shouldn’t affect the implementation of Koranic law. Abou El Fadl insists that his usuli tradition naturally leads Islam to an et hical humanism--a set of ideas about justice and beauty that help to achieve God’s will. “If the intent and moral vision do not exist, then the rules become meaningless pedantry,” he argues. Indeed, he considers much of modern Islam to be a tyranny of the picayune. As he wrote in the introduction to his 2001 collection of essays Conference of the Books, “I pray that this is a passing phase in the history of Islam and that Muslims will regain their intellectual vigor and enlightened spark.”
Abou El Fadl is part of an international movement of Muslim intellectuals who oppose the extremism of the Wahhabis. It includes the Syrian theorist Mohammad Shahrour, the Italian imam Abdul Hadi Palazzi, and the Egyptian jurist Muhammad Imara. Abou El Fadl has his own informal cluster of American dissident scholars, which self-deprecatingly calls itself the “consolation club”--in e-mail and phone calls, they console each other. They trade stories of receiving death threats, being protested by their own radical students, and being constantly tempted by the enticements of Saudi emissaries who offer grants and endowed chairs in exchange for their theological conformity. Even in the West, dissident thinkers like Abou El Fadl have been shut out of mainstream Islamic institutions. To find an intellectual home, they reside in secular academia, where they grow even further removed from potential constituents. It’s a condition that breeds depression and deep cynicism. When I ask Abou El Fadl about his hope for the future of Islam, he pulls a Diet Coke from the mini-refrigerator next to his desk before lighting a cigarette and smoking it out his window. “The chances are that I would be appreciated by a rabbi interested in interfaith discussions far more than I will be by a leader of a Muslim organization,” he says. After a few puffs, he rubs the cigarette into the sill and throws it from the window. “It’s very disheartening and discouraging. The reason I’m speaking so openly is that I’m fed up to the core.”
For centuries, the Abou El Fadl family included jurists who studied in the schools affiliated with Cairo’s Al Azhar mosque, the venerable epicenter of Sunni Islamic thinking--Islam’s Oxbridge. But for the epicenter of Sunnism, it had a strange history: The mosque had been founded by Shia from Tunisia in the tenth century. Perhaps, because of this lineage, Al Azhar tolerated dissident sects long after the Shia vacated the mosque in the twelfth century. Proponents of nearly all varieties of Islamic legal thinking--mu’tazila, ahl-al-hadith, and usuli alike--found intellectual homes in Al Azhar. To be sure, Al Azhar shifted with the politics of the times. After Napoleon conquered Egypt in 1798, the mosque’s leaders made slandering the French occupiers a religious crime; during the Ottoman era, the school excelled at producing pliant scholars versed in the empire’s favored hanafi legal school. But, for the most part, Al Azhar’s acceptance of intellectual diversity continued regardless of fluctuations in Egypt’s political leadership.
At least up until the post-colonial era, that is. In 1961, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the school. Sheiks at Al Azhar became government-paid functionaries--and were expected to conduct themselves as such, promoting Nasser’s vision of a secular pan-Arab socialism. As Gilles Kepel, the French historian of political Islam, writes in his book Jihad, “By linking the reformed Azhar institution too directly to the state, Nasser’s regime deprived it of credibility. ... A vacuum had been created, to be filled by anyone ready to question the state and criticize governments in the name of Islam.”
The vacuum was filled by proponents of radical Islamism--first by theorist Sayyid Qutb (who was hung by Nasser in 1966) and his comrades in the Muslim Brotherhood and then, more gradually, by Wahhabi clerics supported by Saudi Arabia. In 1962, Saudi Arabia founded the Muslim World League to fund the distribution of Korans, the production of Wahhabi scholarship, and the building of mosques throughout the globe. And, over the course of the next four decades, the Saudis steadily purchased the ideological direction of Al Azhar. It started subtly, with cushy Gulf sabbaticals for scholars. “In six months on sabbatical, they would earn twenty years’ salary,” says Abou El Fadl. As these contributions became more customary--and scholars became increasingly eager to supplement their $40-a-month salaries--the Saudis expanded their influence. Through the Muslim World League, they began endowing chairs for scholars and funding departments. By the late ‘90s, it was growing difficult to find an Azhari who hadn’t benefited from Saudi largesse--and who hadn’t returned the favor with pro-Wahhabi scholarship.
I pray that this is a passing phase in the history of Islam and that Muslims will regain their intellectual vigor and enlightened spark
When Abou El Fadl began studying with the Azhari sheiks, in 1969 at the age of 6, the mosque was in the midst of this transition from religious diversity to Wahhabi predominance. Signs of moderation still existed: Following Abou El Fadl’s adolescent flirtation with Islamism--during which he destroyed his sister’s Rod Stewart tapes and fulminated against mixed gatherings--the sheiks persuaded him to adopt a more moderate path. But, over the years, Abou El Fadl noticed the increasing presence of Saudi money and of Wahhabism. For years, one of his most beloved teachers, Muhammad Jalal Kishk, had mocked the ignorance of Wahhabi Islam. But, in 1981, after Kishk received the $200,000 King Faisal Award and the $850,000 King Fahd Award from the Saudi government, he published a pro-Wahhabi tome called The Saudis and the Islamic Solution.
Today, the takeover of Al Azhar is largely complete. The highest-ranking sheik in the once-moderate institution, Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, endorses suicide bombings. And Al Azhar has bullied the Egyptian government into granting it power to censor all books on Islam. As the university’s president told Al-Ahram Weekly last year, “Freedom is restricted by respect for God, his prophet and all religious values.” Many Azharis who refused to toe the Wahhabi line have been purged from the institution. Abou El Fadl tells the story of another of his teachers, Muhammad al-Ghazali. Even though al-Ghazali was among the more conservative Azharis, he grew impatient with the rising anti-intellectualism at the school. In 1989, he published a book called The Sunna of the Prophet: Between the Legists and Traditionalists, accusing the Wahhabi of justifying fanaticism and defiling Islam’s reputation. Within two years, the Saudis subsidized the publication of seven books trashing al-Ghazali. At three Muslim World League-sponsored conferences in Saudi Arabia, scholars lined up to dismiss his arguments. Even the Saudi newspaper, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, issued its own lengthy rebuttals. But, what most pained al-Ghazali, according to Abou El Fadl, was not the Saudi smear campaign but watching his old students--many of whom had received Saudi fellowships and book advances--remain silent amid the uproar. At the time, al-Ghazali told Abou El Fadl, “I never realized how bad it has become until this instance. I realize that the foreseeable future is lost.” After years of suffering polemics, Abou El Fadl told me, “al-Ghazali died of a broken heart.”
In May 1985, after Abou El Fadl completed his junior year at Yale, he returned home to Cairo for the summer. A few weeks earlier, Yale had named him “Scholar of the House,” an award that Al-Ahram celebrated in its pages. In addition to his academic work, Abou El Fadl had spent the year studying for certification in a top-level field of Islamic jurisprudence called hadith authentication. Now, at home with his Azhari teachers, he put the final touches on his preparation. One evening, as he left his study circle, however, two plainclothes Egyptian policemen approached him. Without explanation, they shoved him in a truck and blindfolded him. Abou El Fadl later discovered that they had taken him to the basement of a detention center called Lazoughli. “You think that you’re scholar of the house,” his interrogators declared sarcastically as they beat him. Next, the police transferred him to a notorious desert prison called Tora, rumored to be surrounded by the makeshift graves of tortu re victims. Abou El Fadl was suspended from the ceiling by his left arm for six-hour intervals; guards shocked him with electricity and pulled out his fingernails. After three weeks, and without a conviction, they released him.
This was not the first time Abou El Fadl had been targeted by police. As a teenager, he had published anti-regime poetry and stories in the opposition dailies and had twice been taken in for beatings. But, whereas many of Abou El Fadl’s contemporaries responded to such police-state tactics by embracing militant Islamism, the abuse only magnified his desire to find a community where he could speak his mind without fear of retribution from either secular or religious authorities. And so, after his 1985 visit, Abou El Fadl returned to the United States in self-imposed exile. He had high hopes for the Muslim community in the United States. Unlike the scholars at Al Azhar, they didn’t have to contend with government censorship and Wahhabi oppressiveness, he imagined. “Naively, I had assumed that the freedoms afforded in the United States, and the relative absence of political persecution, would allow for a Muslim intellectual rebirth,” he writes in the introduction to And God Knows the Soldiers. He even daydreamed that American Muslims might form a diaspora movement that would return to remake the Middle East.
But, instead of tolerance, Abou El Fadl found a community that wasn’t significantly more open than the one he’d left behind. Where he expected vibrant intellectual debate, he found rigid conformity to Wahhabi-like practices. “As I move from mosque to mosque, I encounter Muslims who seem to think that the harsher and the more perverse the law, the more it’s Islamic,” he says. He noticed that American imams often lacked even the rudiments of Islamic education. And he noticed that community leaders worried more about combating criticism of their organizations than about building educational institutions. “Despots,” he calls them.
After finishing graduate school at Princeton in 1995, Abou El Fadl began publicly criticizing mainstream Islam, and it was not long before it got him in trouble. In 1997, while teaching at the University of Texas, he was driven from his mosque, the Islamic Center of Greater Austin. Finishing Friday supplications, he was interrupted by a man who “kindly invited” him into the building’s boardroom. Entering the room, he found 15 men sitting around a long table. They took turns condemning his scholarship as heretical. A board member stood up and pronounced him “the great Satan.” Abou El Fadl left the room. But congregants began to trail him on the street. One took off his shoe and began swinging it at him. The attack only stopped after the intervention of a passing graduate student.
The criticism that followed his Los Angeles Times op-ed was not limited to anonymous threats; it came from good friends, too.
But the post-September 11 backlash was much greater. The criticism that followed his Los Angeles Times op-ed was not limited to anonymous threats; it came from good friends, too. This past summer, he was banned from The Minaret magazine, a publication to which he had contributed a monthly column for nearly 20 years. “Good luck with your career that is based on self-promotion and self-aggrandizement,” the magazine’s editor wrote in an e-mail. The Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) posted condemnations of Abou El Fadl on the American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism (AMILA) Internet site. And, several days after he published another contentious op-ed this summer, a lawyer with ties to MPAC began representing Abou El Fadl’s ex-wife of ten years in a custody battle. “My son has been living with me for the past ten years. Suddenly, their lawyer is representing her in her lawsuit filed against me,” he says. “They’ve made it personal.” In an e-mail to Abou El Fadl, MPAC denied all involvement in the custody suit.
Last month, Abou El Fadl had been scheduled to lecture at the University of Kuwait on the subject of Islam and democracy. He’d been looking forward to the talk, a rare opportunity to address Islamic intellectuals in the Middle East. But, a week before the lecture, he caught wind of a disturbing rumor. A dissident within the Saudi government told a friend of his that the Saudis planned to pick him up and make him disappear. “The Kuwaitis would say, `We don’t know what happened,’” he explains. “Everyone would be interested for a while; then, it would be forgotten like everyone else.” Abou El Fadl canceled the trip.
Even within the confines of Western academia, the Saudis have attempted to impose their Wahhabist interpretation of Islam, to re-create their takeover of Al Azhar. And, just as with the Azharis, their primary inducement has been monetary. There’s no better way to gauge the Saudi effort than by reading off the names of prominent Middle Eastern studies departments and the gifts they have received from the Saudi royal family. Five years ago, King Fahd gave Oxford University more than $30 million to its Islamic Studies Center. In 1994, the University of Arkansas received a $20 million grant to begin the King Fahd Program for Middle East Studies. Thanks to a $5 million gift, U.C. Berkeley now houses the Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz Program in Arab Studies. Even Harvard has a chair, currently occupied by legal scholar Frank Vogel, called the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Adjunct Professor of Islamic Legal Studies--and subsidized by at least $5 million from the Saudis.
Ever since Abou El Fadl’s days as a graduate student at Princeton, the Saudis have plied him with similar offers of wealth. In 1991, before he’d finished his dissertation, the Muslim World League offered him $100,000 to write a book on Islam; in return, however, it demanded “final editorial control.” Abou El Fadl rejected the offer. Seven years later, the Saudis offered to nominate him for the $200,000 King Faisal award. After a preliminary phone call, Abou El Fadl stopped returning the Saudis’ messages; they’d made him uncomfortable with too many leading questions about the “enemies of Islam.” But, despite his past rejections, the Saudis have kept trying. Last year, they offered Abou El Fadl and his “guests” an all-expenses-paid “VIP” trip to Mecca for Hajj.
Abou El Fadl has rejected the offers because he’s seen what Saudi patronage has done to the scholarship of his colleagues. He calls Vogel’s book on Saudi law, Islamic Law and Legal System: Studies of Saudi Arabia, “an embarrassment.” (Vogel says he has no qualms about accepting Saudi money. “I saw it as something very much in the greater good of the Muslim world and particularly of Saudi Arabia,” he told NPR in 1993.) In Abou El Fadl’s view, the Saudi contributions have exacerbated the shift in Middle Eastern studies away from critical, secular analyses of modernization toward celebrations of Islamist “civil society.” As the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Martin Kramer puts it, “The last places to look for anything critical are Berkeley and Harvard. There’s nothing out there on opposition trends in Saudi Arabia. Because even if you aren’t getting money, you’re trying to get in the game.”
To give me a sense of the Saudi advantage on the intellectual battlefield, Abou El Fadl took me on a tour of his massive home library. First, he showed me a Saudi-published five-volume set listing Islamic texts that good Muslims should never read. According to Abou El Fadl, the Saudis have even banned some of the works of their most important ahl-al-hadith jurist, the thirteenth-century Syrian Ibn Taymiyyah. Next, he pulled several books from the shelves. One, a volume from Riyadh, is leather-bound with a gold-leaf pattern on the spine that, when lined up with other books on the shelf, makes up a lovely mosaic. Next, he showed me the work of an important moderate jurist from Cairo. The pages have a quality a bit higher than toilet paper, and the printing looks like it was run off a mimeograph machine. Only 100 copies of the book exist, and, despite its low quality, it is expensive. The Wahhabi texts, by contrast, are not only beautiful, they’re cheap, thanks to heavy subsidies from the Saudis.
“Islam is about the subjective engagement,” Abou El Fadl told me, neatly encapsulating how his theological vision differs from the strident absolutism of Wahhabism. But, because he believes the true meaning of Islam should be continually debated, hashed out in arguments between jurists, he finds himself rhetorically disadvantaged when facing opponents who lay claim to ultimate truth. This asymmetrical warfare was on display last month, when Abou El Fadl went to Qatar to debate the morality of suicide bombings with Islamist Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi, who preaches on the TV network Al Jazeera. (Al-Qaradawi had previously announced that those who shook hands with Shimon Peres should wash their hands “seven times, one time with dirt.”) Abou El Fadl only agreed to the trip because the State Department had helped organize it and guaranteed his safety. Bodyguards maintained a constant watch over his hotel room.
In a conference room at the Doha Ritz Carlton, Abou El Fadl pointed out the logical inconsistencies in al-Qaradawi’s defense of suicide bombing and cited pre-modern Islamic jurists on the ethics of revenge. But such details were of no interest to al-Qaradawi. According to Abou El Fadl, al-Qaradawi told the crowd of Muslim intellectuals and foreign journalists, “I don’t know why brother Abou El Fadl keeps needlessly complicating things; Islam is against such complications,” before going on to cite statistics about the murders of Palestinian children. By the end of the debate, Abou El Fadl felt that he’d been mocked, ignored, and rhetorically run over. Al-Qaradawi stopped addressing him by his proper title--sheik--and, as he left the stage, refused to shake hands. “It wasn’t a fair fight,” one participant told me later.
Two weeks after he returned from Qatar, Abou El Fadl got a visit from the FBI. The State Department, the agents told him, had asked them to set up a meeting: It wanted to ensure that his criticism of al-Qaradawi didn’t result in any physical harm. Already, al-Qaradawi had mentioned their debate on his website, and it had unleashed a torrent of response. A group of social scientists in Egypt had e-mailed Abou El Fadl to tell him that they “prayed God would return him to a straight path.” And he received similar messages from Jordan and elsewhere. A few days before the FBI visited, we had discussed the debate and the consequences of challenging popular imams. As he spoke, he stroked his blind terrier, Lulu. With a resigned tone, he told me, “There may need to be sacrificial lambs. I’m going to play this role and speak my conscience.”
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https://newrepublic.com/article/136609/moral-hazard
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and anyone else who seeks to question current Islamic doctrine end up needing security details.
And it isn't to protect them from rednecks in pickups.
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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/213767/euripides-mao-and-qutb
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https://newrepublic.com/article/136609/moral-hazard
Excellent! This is a great article with much food for thought. Like during the 60s where MLK lost and Malcolm X won, the Islamic rationalists lost the debate and the current orthodoxy became entrenched. I think there is hope for black America, but I'm not willing to speculate easily on the future of Islamic thought.
I've started looking deeper into this aspect of Islamic theology by means of comparative religion. Nabeel Qureshi has written a fantastic book comparing Christian and Islamic theology, with fascinating insights into the history of Islam and the forces that shape(d) its thinking. The early chapter on the Islamic Inquisition is an eye opener for me. The book is No God But One - Allah or Jesus?
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Something that has influenced my thinking greatly is "evolutionary psychology" in general and the writings of Konrad Lorenz in particular (after whom my son Conrad is named btw).
One of his most important books is "On Aggression". Speaking quite simplistically about a subtle book, Lorenz says aggression (defined as intra and not inter species) has three purposes: Territory; Hierarchy; and Reproduction.
In my own thinking in the case of humans I have added Predation. Normally predatory behavior is inter species and thus outside the definition of aggression, but in the case of humans, much criminal behavior is predatory in nature (e.g. the money stolen is a form of food)
But I digress , , ,
In one of his final books, "The Waning of Humanness" Lorenz spoke of particular dynamic that he called "collective militant enthusiasm" in which a group whips itself into a frenzy for collective action against "the other".
Lenin-Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Islamic Fascism can all be seen as manifestations of this dynamic.
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https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2016/09/21/deadliest-lie-without-lone-wolf-lie-u-s-could-have-stopped-nearly-every-attack/?singlepage=true
DEADLIEST LIE: Without 'Lone Wolf' Lie, U.S. Could Have Stopped Nearly EVERY ATTACK
By Andrew C. McCarthy September 21, 2016
chat 137 comments
Some time ago, the invaluable Patrick Poole coined the term “known wolf,” sharply shredding the conventional Washington wisdom that “lone wolf” terrorism is a major domestic threat.
Pat has tracked the phenomenon for years, right up to the jihadist attacks this weekend in both the New York metropolitan area and St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Virtually every time a terror attack has occurred, the actor initially portrayed as a solo plotter lurking under the government’s radar turns out to be -- after not much digging – an already known (sometimes even, notorious) Islamic extremist.
As amply demonstrated by Poole’s reporting, catalogued here by PJ Media, "lone wolves" --virtually every single one -- end up having actually had extensive connections to other Islamic extremists, radical mosques, and (on not rare occasions) jihadist training facilities.
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The overarching point I have been trying to make is fortified by Pat’s factual reporting. It is this: There are, and can be, no lone wolves.
The very concept is inane, and only stems from a willfully blind aversion to the ideological foundation of jihadist terror: Islamic supremacism.
The global, scripturally rooted movement to impose sharia -- in the West, to incrementally supersede our culture of reason, liberty, and equality with the repressive, discriminatory norms of classical Islamic law -- is a pack. The wolves are members of the pack, and that’s why they are the antithesis of “lone” actors. And, indeed, they always turn out to be “known” precisely because their association with the pack, with components of the global movement, is what ought to have alerted us to the danger they portended before they struck.
This is willful blindness, because of the restrictions we have gratuitously imposed on ourselves.
The U.S. government refuses to acknowledge the ideology that drives the movement until after some violent action is either too imminent to be ignored or, sadly more often, until after the Islamic supremacist has acted out the savagery his ideology commands.
The U.S. government consciously avoids the ideology because it is rooted in a fundamentalist, literalist interpretation of Islam. Though it is but one of many ways to construe that religion, the remorseless fact is that it is a mainstream construction, adhered to by tens of millions of Muslims and supported by centuries of scholarship.
I say “the U.S. government” is at fault here because, contrary to Republican campaign rhetoric that is apparently seized by amnesia, this is not merely an Obama administration dereliction -- however much the president and his former secretary of State (and would-be successor) Hillary Clinton have exacerbated the problem.
Since the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, the bipartisan Beltway cognoscenti have “reasoned” (a euphemism for “reckless self-delusion”) that conceding the Islamic doctrinal roots of jihadist terror -- which would implicitly concede the vast Islamist (sharia-supremacist) support system without which the global jihadist onslaught would be impossible -- is impractical.
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But how could acknowledging the truth be impractical?
Especially given that national security hinges on an accurate assessment of threats?
Obama Press Sec.: 'This is Actually Just a War of Narratives' Against ISIS
Bipartisan Washington “reasons” that telling the truth would portray the United States as “at war with Islam.” To be blunt, this conventional wisdom can only be described as sheer idiocy.
We know that tens of millions of Muslims worldwide, and what appears to be a preponderance (though perhaps a diminishing one) of Muslims in the West, reject Islamic supremacism and its sharia-encroachment agenda. We know that, by a large percentage, Muslims are the most common victims of jihadist terror. We know that Muslim reformers are courageously working to undermine and reinterpret the scriptural roots of Islamic supremacism -- a crucial battle our default from makes far more difficult for them to win. We know that Muslims, particularly those assimilated into the West, have been working with our law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies for decades to gather intelligence, infiltrate jihadist cells, thwart jihadist attacks, and fight jihadist militias.
None of those Muslims -- who are not only our allies, but are in fact us -- believes that America is at war with Islam.
So why does Washington base crucial, life-and-death policy on nonsense?
Because it is in the thrall of the enemy. The “war on Islam” propaganda is manufactured by Islamist groups, particularly those tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
While we resist study of our enemies’ ideology, they go to school on us. They thus grasp three key things:
(1) Washington is so bloated and dysfunctional, it will leap on any excuse to refrain from strong action;
(2) the American tradition of religious liberty can be exploited to paralyze our government if national defense against a totalitarian political ideology can be framed as hostility and persecution against an entire religious faith; and
(3) because Washington has so much difficulty taking action, it welcomes claims (or, to be faddish, “narratives”) that minimize the scope and depth of the threat. Topping the “narrative” list is the fantasy that the Islamist ideological support system that nurtures jihadism (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood and its tentacles) is better seen as a “moderate,” “non-violent” partner with whom we can work, than as what it actually is: the enemy’s most effective agent. The stealth operative that exploits the atmosphere of intimidation created by the jihadists.
In other words, in proceeding from the premise that we must do nothing to convey the notion that we are “at war with Islam” -- or, in Obama-Clinton parlance, in proceeding from the premise that we need a good “narrative” rather than a truth-based strategy -- we have internalized the enemy’s worldview, a view that is actually rejected by our actual Islamic allies and the vast majority of Americans.
The delusion comes into sharp relief if one listens to Hillary Clinton’s campaign bombast. Robert Spencer incisively quoted it earlier this week:
[W]e know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS, because they are looking to make this into a war against Islam, rather than a war against jihadists, violent terrorists, people who number maybe in the maybe tens of thousands, not the tens of millions, they want to use that to recruit more fighters to their cause, by turning it into a religious conflict. That’s why I’ve been very clear. We’re going after the bad guys and we’re going to get them, but we’re not going to go after an entire religion and give ISIS exactly what it’s wanting in order for them to enhance their position.
Sheer idiocy.
Our enemy is not the mere “tens of thousands” of jihadists. (She’s probably low-balling the number of jihadists worldwide, but let’s indulge her.) It is not merely ISIS, nor merely ISIS and al-Qaeda -- an organization Mrs. Clinton conveniently omits mentioning, since it has replenished, thanks to Obama-Clinton governance and despite Obama-Clinton claims to have defeated it, to the point that it is now at least as much a threat as it was on the eve of 9/11.
ISIS and al-Qaeda are not the sources of the threat against us. They are the inevitable results of that threat.
The actual threat, the source, is Islamic supremacism and its sharia imposition agenda.
The support system, which the threat needs to thrive, does indeed include tens of millions of Islamists, some small percentage of whom will inexorably become violent jihadists, but the rest of whom will nurture the ideological aggression and push the radical sharia agenda -- in the media, on the campus, in the courts, and in the policy councils of government that they have so successfully influenced and infiltrated.
Obviously, to acknowledge that we are at war with this movement, at war with Islamic supremacism, is not remotely to be “at war with Islam.” After all, Islamic supremacism seeks conquest over all of Islam, too, and on a much more rapid schedule than its long-term pursuit of conquest over the West. Islamic supremacism is not a fringe movement; it is large and, at the moment, a juggernaut. But too much of Islam opposes Islamic supremacism to be confused with it.
Moreover, even if being at war with Islamic supremacists could be persuasively spun as being “at war with Islam” -- i.e., even if we were too incompetent to refute our enemies’ propaganda convincingly -- it would make no difference.
The war would still be being prosecuted against us. We have to fight it against the actual enemy, and we lose if we allow enemies to dupe us into thinking they are allies. We have to act on reality, even if Washington is too tongue-tied to find the right words for describing reality.
The enemy is in our heads and has shaped our perception of the conflict, to the enemy’s great advantage. That’s how you end up with inanities like “lone wolf.”
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Something that has influenced my thinking greatly is "evolutionary psychology" in general and the writings of Konrad Lorenz in particular (after whom my son Conrad is named btw).
In my own thinking in the case of humans I have added Predation. Normally predatory behavior is inter species and thus outside the definition of aggression, but in the case of humans, much criminal behavior is predatory in nature (e.g. the money stolen is a form of food)
In one of his final books, "The Waning of Humanness" Lorenz spoke of particular dynamic that he called "collective militant enthusiasm" in which a group whips itself into a frenzy for collective action against "the other".
Lenin-Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Islamic Fascism can all be seen as manifestations of this dynamic.
Hi Crafty
That's an analysis I can agree with. Ideas can be predatory, and seek to destroy other ideas that challenge them - supremacist ideologies are predatory ideas.
There's something about the persistence of these particularly pernicious ideas that says a lot about our innate human nature with its potential for evil.
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Of the Ten Commandments, only one is against a thought-- "Thou shall not covet , , , "
Maybe God was trying to tell us something.
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Imagine this hypothetical scenario. It is World War 2, and the American government has instructed its military and intelligence services that they are not to use the words "Nazi", "SS", Hitler", "Third Reich", "Final Solution", "Mein Kampf" and other 'ideological' terms. The US also decides not to declare the Nazis an outlawed organisation.
The army and intelligence services will dismiss their experts on Europe, Germany, the Nazis, German speakers. Instead, euphemistic neutral terms must be employed. Next, a group of "moderate" Nazis (who are to remain anonymous) will consult with the army and intelligence services to draft policy and future plans on combating the enemy who must not be named, using only language which will not be offensive to Nazis.
As the report below indicates, this is precisely what the US government did in regard to the threat of Islamist terror. Since then, under President Obama, we have seen a rapid escalation of terror attacks worldwide, with marked escalation in Europe and America, and the spectacular growth of ISIS.
“Our job is to change the Constitution of America.”
~ Sayyid Syeed, PhD
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
43rd Annual Conference, Rosemont, IL. Labor Day, 2006
ISNA is a known Muslim Brotherhood front.
"Counter-terrorism and counter-violence should be defined by us ... We should define how an effective counter-terrorism policy should be pursued in this country.
~ MPAC founder Salam al-Marayati, at an Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference in Dallas, 2005.
To quote various passages from the attached document:
In June 2013, as a result of its lawsuit, Judicial Watch obtained and released hundreds of pages of FBI records revealing that, in 2012, the agency purged its anti-terrorism training curricula of material determined by a group of “Subject Matter Experts” to be “offensive” to Muslims.
The FBI refused to disclose the identities of these “Subject Matter Experts.” The excised material included references linking the Muslim Brotherhood to terrorism, tying al Qaeda to the 1993 World Trade Center and Khobar Towers bombings, and suggesting that “young male immigrants of Middle Eastern appearance ... may fit the terrorist profile best.”
The Department of Defense (DoD) instituted a purge similar to the FBI’s. On April 24, 2012, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin E. Dempsey ordered the entire U.S. military to “review” its educational and training classes, files, and rosters of instructors to ensure that no members of the armed services were studying material “disrespectful of the Islamic religion.”
Controlling language is essential for effective influence operations, as part of a broader active measures campaign. An example of the radical purging of certain terms and phrases from government lexicons can be found by comparing language used in the 9/11 Commission Report to that used in both the 2009 National Intelligence Estimate and the 2008 FBI Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon.
In an October 6, 2011 press release, CAIR Director Nihad Awad thanked “Director Mueller for his pledge to perform a ‘top to bottom’ review of FBI counterterrorism training.”
The Explanatory Memorandum documents how Islamists are waging Jihad on the West by a variety of means and on a number of fronts. There is nothing new about the Jihad phenomenon – it has been carried out to one degree or another since AD 632, although its current politicized manifestation traces its roots to the first half of the 20th century.
The Koran demands Jihad. We ignore that fact at our peril. Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, an expert in jihadist ideology and a Visiting Professor at the Defence Academy of the UK, has stated, “Islamism has replaced communism as the most significant ideological opponent of the Western liberal world order. Radical Islamist movements have declared war on the West as wellas on other Muslims."
Current jihadist operations are conducted under the umbrella, direction and coordination of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the MB, as well as al Qaeda (AQ) and its affiliates. The MB’s motto provides perspective on their ideology and operations: "Allah is our objective; the Koran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and dying in the way of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."
The arsenal of jihad includes the weapons of terrorism and acts of war, as well as influence campaigns, propaganda and active measures.
The Judicial Watch report:
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/JWSRGovtPurgeAndActiveMeasures5Dec2013.pdf
Homeland Security Advisory Council - Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Subcommittee Interim Report and Recommendations June 2016:
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/HSAC/HSAC%20CVE%20Final%20Interim%20Report%20June%209%202016%20508%20compliant.pdf
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE· COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION COUNTERRORISM ANALYTICAL LEXICON:
https://cryptome.org/fbi-ct-lexicon.pdf
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyvXe2HJg14
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http://www.meforum.org/6322/islamist-violence-will-steer-europes-destiny
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https://heatst.com/culture-wars/prestigious-swarthmore-college-offers-class-asking-is-god-a-white-supremacist/
My answer to Tariq is no. God is a murderous butcher named Allah. How would he appreciate that ?
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An article I published elsewhere that may be useful reading...
Understanding Islam’s core religious texts
There’s something different about Islam. Many of us realise this is the case, many have an undefined feeling that there is something ‘wrong’ with it that is at odds with our Western values, but are unable to articulate it.
Perhaps my extensive learning and experience in the subject of Islam after more than a decade working in the Middle East may be of value to those who have found themselves browbeaten by Islamic apologists and wished they had good rebuttals, for those interested in Christian outreach to Muslims, or people that just want to understand Islam.
Discussion about Islam is surrounded by a great deal of ignorance, assumptions and emotion – however these only cloud the issue. The way to truth is through facts.
My intention is that the information that I share will be useful to any who want discuss the subject of Islam and the recent major Jihad attacks intelligently, to rebut often dishonest or misguided arguments, and understand the threat of supremacist political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultimate motivation and methodology behind Jihad. It is easy to spot where a bomb went off, it’s harder to trace networks and subtle, subversive political and social infiltration.
Recently I participated in a university forum dedicated to counter-terrorism. The particular discussion topic was ‘religious terror’, however we were explicitly advised by moderators to leave any discussion of religion out of the subject of ‘religious terror’. Though of course if Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism were discussed or even criticised this was allowed without objection.
There was, of course, one religion that when mentioned, even in the most respectful and scholarly fashion with detailed references, even when referencing the public quotations, publications or documents from terror groups and their leaders, would receive almost immediate objection and accusations of the dreaded ‘Islamophobia’.
Any comments relating to the recent major acts of terror by Muslims in Europe and America were met with i) “This has nothing to do with Islam” and ii) “You’re an Islamophobic racist if you want to discuss a connection between terrorists shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ (Allah is greater! [than your God]) while murdering Westerners and Islam”. These claims were made by Muslim housewives, graphic artists and clerical workers who seemed to be on the forum purely to police any discussion of Islam and complain vehemently to the moderators about how offended they were.
No genuine discussion of the motives and doctrine of the terrorists was allowed by the university staff. Both our next and current generation of academics, terror analysts and policy makers seem required to bury their heads in the sand and remain in denial.
Detailed references to the most authentic Islamic sources will be invaluable for those wanting factual informationon Islam, its political and social aims in the West, its ideology, common arguments and methods.
Much ignorance exists among Western policy makers, researchers and the otherwise educated, it is also surprising to me how Christians and Westerners are apologists for Islam and defend those expressing an ideology that intends to subjugate them.
For the record, I have good Muslim friends. From my interactions I realised that I know more about the doctrine and history of Islam than they do, and the Muslims I have (carefully and respectfully) spoken to on the subject. I have visited nearly every country in the Middle East multiple times working in a sensitive role.
Let me set a foundation.
I will cite only the most authentic, credible Islamic sources to present the theology, ideology and doctrine of Islam. A simple rule is that Islam is what is found in the Quran and the sayings and actions of Mohammed. If it is found there it is Islamic, no matter what your neighbour or colleague says or feels.
Islamic doctrine is found in 3 works of literature
- Quran
- Hadith (A collection of reports describing the words, actions, or habits of Mohammed)
- Sira (Mohammed’s biography, first collected together by Ibn Ishaq).
These works are listed in order of their relative importance.
There are strong and weak Hadith. The most authentic or sound collection of Hadith is considered to be that written by Bukhari followed by Muslim, referred to as Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Sahih means ‘sound’, denoting good, reliable, strong or trustworthy.
The Quran contains a little bit more than 150 000 words, it is roughly the length of the New Testament.
The Sira is a little bit over 290 000 words.The Hadith of Bukhari is a little over 640 000 words, containing several thousand reports.
The Hadith + Sira = the Sunnah of Mohammed. The Sunnah + Quran = the primary sources for i) Islamic theology and ii) Shariah, Islamic Sacred Law.
The Sunnah are the record of the teachings, deeds and sayings, permissions and disapprovals of Mohammed, as well as reports about his companions. Sunnah is also defined as a path, a way, a manner of life (thus making Islam a social order as well); the Sunnah contains the traditions and practices of Mohammed that have become the ideal model to be followed by Muslims, since Mohammed is regarded as the perfect Muslim.
Often the “You’re quoting that out of context!” argument is used to deligitimise the use of uncomfortable passages from the Quran, and it is true that the Quran makes statements that often lack context. The Hadith collections and the Sira provide that context.
Then there are the Tafsir, commentaries on the by Quran by revered scholars of Islam. Literally, Tafsir means ‘interpretation’ and is the equivalent of Christian exegesis. Tafsir deals with linguistics, jurisprudence (law) and theology – and the Tafsir often provide detailed additional context for verses in the Quran.
One of the best online resources for searching and comparing the Quran, Hadith and Tafsir is http://www.quranx.com (http://www.quranx.com)
For example, use Quranx to compare Q4.34 (Quran Chapter 4, Verse 34): “As for women of whom you fear rebellion, admonish them, and remain apart from them in beds, and beat them.”
See http://quranx.com/4.34 (http://quranx.com/4.34).
Select the Arberry and Maududi translations and observe the differences and similarities in the various translations. (Note, the verse does not refer to women who have rebelled, it refers to women from whom you fear rebellion.)
Next we refer to the Tafsir for clarity on the verse. I’ll select 3 from Quranx.
Tafsir Al-Jalalayn
http://quranx.com/Tafsir/Jalal/4.34 (http://quranx.com/Tafsir/Jalal/4.34)
Tafsir Ibn Al Kathir
http://quranx.com/Tafsir/Kathir/4.34 (http://quranx.com/Tafsir/Kathir/4.34)
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi – Tafhim al-Qur’an
http://quranx.com/Tafsir/Maududi/4.34 (http://quranx.com/Tafsir/Maududi/4.34)
Now, let’s examine the Hadith. These are best searched with Google to find relevant references, after which they can be viewed on Quranx.
Iyas ibn Abdullah ibn Abu Dhubab reported the Messenger of Allah as saying: Do not beat Allah’s handmaidens, but when Umar came to the Messenger of Allah and said: Women have become emboldened towards their husbands, he (the Prophet) gave permission to beat them.
http://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-2146 (http://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-2146)
Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab:The Prophet said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife. http://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-2147 (http://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-2147)
Finally, let us examine Islamic Sacred Law (Sharia) for its ruling. From the highly respected Sharia manual, The Reliance of the Traveller:
M10.11: Dealing with a Rebellious Wife When a husband notices signs of rebelliousness in his wife (nushuz, dis: p42) (O: whether in words, as when she answers him coldly when she used to do so politely, or he asks her to come to bed and she refuses, contrary to her usual habit; or whether in acts, as when he finds her averse to him when she was previously kind and cheerful), he warns her in words (O: without keeping from her or hitting her, for it may be that she has an excuse. The warning could be to tell her, “Fear Allah concerning the rights you owe to me, ” or it could be to explain that rebelliousness nullifies his obligation to support her and give her a turn amongst other wives, or it could be to inform her, “Your obeying me [def: (3) below] is religiously obligatory”). If she commits rebelliousness, he keeps from sleeping (O: and having sex) with her without words, and may hit her, but not in a way that injures her, meaning he may not (A: bruise her,) break bones, wound her, or cause blood to flow. (O: It is unlawful to strike another’s face). He may hit her whether she is rebellious only once or whether more than once, though a weaker opinion holds that he may not hit her unless there is repeated rebelliousness.
…
(c) if keeping from her is ineffectual, it is permissible for him to hit her.
I believe this will suffice to get you started on the road to critical examination of Islam.
Back to the Quran. Passages about Allah, based on textual analysis of the Quran, are 14% of the total content. The remaining 86% is about the life, sayings and deeds of Mohammed.
It is a fundamental principle of Islam that a Muslim is to follow the example of Mohammed, the ideal pattern of conduct. This is stated in the Quran 91 times. These commands take two forms — historical examples and direct commands. Mohammed is ultimately the ideal moral example for all Muslims to follow.
Finally, the Quran has an early period and a late period, often referred to as the Meccan Quran and Medinan Quran. They have wildly contradictory peaceful and violent verses. The Law of Abrogation (Naskh) tells us that a chronologically later verse is theologically better than an older one. However both verses stand as true, since the Western concept of unitary logic and disqualification does not apply for theological reasons.
(Note, the Quranic progression is from peaceful to violent, which is the direct opposite of the Biblical progression).
Q2.106: And for whatever verse We abrogate or cast into oblivion, We bring a better or the like of it; knowest thou not that God is powerful over everything? http://quranx.com/2.106 (http://quranx.com/2.106)
Q16:101: And when We substitute a verse in place of a verse – and Allah is most knowing of what He sends down – they say, “You, [O Muhammad], are but an inventor [of lies].” But most of them do not know. http://quranx.com/16.101 (http://quranx.com/16.101)
The same process of consulting the Hadith, Tafsir, Sira and The Reliance applies to these verses for context and clarity.
Approximately 225 verses are abrogated by later verses. 71 of the 114 chapters of the Quran have abrogations, cancelling the previous verses.
Further confusion arises because the Quran is arranged by length of chapter, it is not in chronological order.
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Very good to have you with us again Martel.
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Very good to have you with us again Martel.
Thank you, Crafty. Never underestimate the good you do in the world by providing this discussion forum.
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This question arises often enough to be worthy of examination. The short answer is of course 'no'.
Can Islam be reformed?
Q5.3 "This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion."
It would seem contradictory to reform what is deemed perfect.
Reform is a crime in Islam, in that it may contradict Sharia Law. To quote highly regarded Islamic scholars in the Hadith:
- The Messenger of Allaah (sallallaahu alaihi wasallam) said: "Every innovation is misguidance and going astray" Reported by Abu Daawood (no. 4607), at-Tirmidhee (no. 2676)
- And he (sallallaahu alaihi wasallam) also said: "… and every innovation is misguidance and all misguidance is in the Hellfire." Reported by an-Nasaa'ee (1/224) from Jaabir bin Abdullaah and it is saheeh as declared by Shaikh ul-Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah in Majmoo' ul-Fataawaa (3/58)
To quote from the highly respected and authoritative manual of Sharia Law, The Reliance of the Traveller:
Reliance B7.2: Scholarly Consensus Is Legally Binding (see B7.1 for definition of 'Concensus')
When the four necessary integrals of consensus exist, the ruling agreed upon is an authoritative part of Sacred Law that is obligatory to obey and not lawful to disobey. Nor can mujtahids of a succeeding era make the thing an object of new ijtihadm because the ruling on it, verified by scholarly consensus, is an absolute legal ruling which does not admit of being contravened or annulled.
It is not possible within Islam to redefine what has been codified in law, since the the previous definitions and conclusions within Islam have legislative authority:
Imaam al-Shatibee in his excellent work, al-I'tisaam, has provided the most comprehensive, concise and definitive legislative definition of al-bid'ah
The common name for the desire to introduce change or reinterpret Islam is Bid'ah (innovation), which means 'a newly invented matter'.
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"Thank you, Crafty. Never underestimate the good you do in the world by providing this discussion forum."
Tail wags for your kind words.
I confess to being rather proud of our crew here and our collective effort. Very glad to have you aboard.
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So I did some reading from an organisation called the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and found this handy guide to Jihad. They're an offshoot of the Muslim Students Association of America (MSA).
According to their web site:
Purpose:To seek the pleasure of Allah through the struggle of Iqamat-ud-Deen [establishment of the Islamic system of life] as spelled out in the Qur'an and the Sunnah of [Muhammad]
Let's have a look at their manual, perhaps we will be educated as their adherents are. I especially loved their definition of Jihad at 113, below.
Islamic Circle of North America - Tarbiyah Guide
Overemphasizing certain conspicuous works, even to the point of going against the Sunnah: Some people become fixated on a certain type of work to the point where Satan can incite them on account of it to go against the Sunnah or to violate Islamic law. Take jihad for instance, since some of our young people today have become very interested in it. No doubt it is a great act of devotion. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “There are one hundred levels in Paradise that Allah has prepared for those who engage in jihad for the cause of Allah. The distance between any two levels is like the distance between the sky and the Earth.”111
He also said that the pinnacle of Islam is jihad in the way of Allah.112 Allah makes jihad the greatest of works when he says: “Do you consider the giving of drink to the pilgrims or the maintenance of the Sacred Mosque equal to the service of those who believe in Allah and the Last Day and strive113 with might and main in the cause of Allah? They are not equal in the sight of Allah; and Allah guides not those who do wrong. Those who believe and emigrate and strive with might and main in Allah’s cause with their wealth and their lives have the highest rank in the sight of Allah. They are the people who shall achieve success. Their Lord gives them glad tidings of mercy from Himself, of His good pleasure, and of Gardens for them wherein are delights that endure. They will dwell therein forever. Verily with Allah is a great reward.”
[Sûrah al-Tawbah: 19-22].
110 Ibn al-Jawzî, Talbîs Iblîs (280-283). Al-Minbariyyah Publishers.
111 Sahîh al-Bukhârî (2790).
112 Musnad Ahmad (21542). Sunan al-Tirmidhî (2616). Sunan Ibn Mâjah (3973).
113 The word Allah used in Arabic is: wa Jaahada Fee Sabeelillah - meaning: made Jihad in the path of Allah. It is incorrect to translate the word Jihad to mean strive/striving because Jihad is a legal terminology with a specific meaning, and that is, fighting in the path of Allah and the struggle therein. Translating the word Jihad to mean 'Striving' is misleading as it gives a meaning different to the intending meaning in the verse. Unfortunately, this error has become a common practice amongst the translators, so let them be careful from falling into such errors.
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ICNA and MSA both are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.
https://www.investigativeproject.org/2581/fbi-chief-muslim-brotherhood-supports-terrorism
The scope of the Brotherhood's vision for the United States was spelled out in a 1991 document called the "Explanatory Memorandum." In that memo, which federal prosecutors introduced as evidence in two trials of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Brotherhood leaders said they planned to create an Islamic state in the United States.
In that document, the Brotherhood's stated goal was "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
The memo also listed 29 organizations working in the United States to further the Brotherhood's goals. They include the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). The IAP and the Holy Land Foundation shared many members and directors, including those who founded the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
So I did some reading from an organisation called the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and found this handy guide to Jihad. They're an offshoot of the Muslim Students Association of America (MSA).
According to their web site:
Purpose:To seek the pleasure of Allah through the struggle of Iqamat-ud-Deen [establishment of the Islamic system of life] as spelled out in the Qur'an and the Sunnah of [Muhammad]
Let's have a look at their manual, perhaps we will be educated as their adherents are. I especially loved their definition of Jihad at 113, below.
Islamic Circle of North America - Tarbiyah Guide
Overemphasizing certain conspicuous works, even to the point of going against the Sunnah: Some people become fixated on a certain type of work to the point where Satan can incite them on account of it to go against the Sunnah or to violate Islamic law. Take jihad for instance, since some of our young people today have become very interested in it. No doubt it is a great act of devotion. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “There are one hundred levels in Paradise that Allah has prepared for those who engage in jihad for the cause of Allah. The distance between any two levels is like the distance between the sky and the Earth.”111
He also said that the pinnacle of Islam is jihad in the way of Allah.112 Allah makes jihad the greatest of works when he says: “Do you consider the giving of drink to the pilgrims or the maintenance of the Sacred Mosque equal to the service of those who believe in Allah and the Last Day and strive113 with might and main in the cause of Allah? They are not equal in the sight of Allah; and Allah guides not those who do wrong. Those who believe and emigrate and strive with might and main in Allah’s cause with their wealth and their lives have the highest rank in the sight of Allah. They are the people who shall achieve success. Their Lord gives them glad tidings of mercy from Himself, of His good pleasure, and of Gardens for them wherein are delights that endure. They will dwell therein forever. Verily with Allah is a great reward.”
[Sûrah al-Tawbah: 19-22].
110 Ibn al-Jawzî, Talbîs Iblîs (280-283). Al-Minbariyyah Publishers.
111 Sahîh al-Bukhârî (2790).
112 Musnad Ahmad (21542). Sunan al-Tirmidhî (2616). Sunan Ibn Mâjah (3973).
113 The word Allah used in Arabic is: wa Jaahada Fee Sabeelillah - meaning: made Jihad in the path of Allah. It is incorrect to translate the word Jihad to mean strive/striving because Jihad is a legal terminology with a specific meaning, and that is, fighting in the path of Allah and the struggle therein. Translating the word Jihad to mean 'Striving' is misleading as it gives a meaning different to the intending meaning in the verse. Unfortunately, this error has become a common practice amongst the translators, so let them be careful from falling into such errors.
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These people can't be more blatant about their intentions. Why are they still operating?
More about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Circle_of_North_America
The full document quoted above: https://app.box.com/s/fh3amyj26qvkemz94aa052yols7p88co (https://app.box.com/s/fh3amyj26qvkemz94aa052yols7p88co)
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These people can't be more blatant about their intentions. Why are they still operating?
More about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Circle_of_North_America
The full document quoted above: https://app.box.com/s/fh3amyj26qvkemz94aa052yols7p88co (https://app.box.com/s/fh3amyj26qvkemz94aa052yols7p88co)
Because the power structure in the west is ok with it.
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Have not watched this yet, but this promises to be interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=RbsEiYKi-2Y
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https://clarionproject.org/jihadism-fascism/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=Muiw2PYJwf4
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https://clarionproject.org/how-to-advocate-for-pluralism-within-islam/
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https://clarionproject.org/how-to-advocate-for-pluralism-within-islam/
:roll:
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LdJ is s serious student of Islam. Recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmfvu3iJNHU&fbclid=IwAR3eUDRoqkNLsJy5Rz3B53wZOtXkHTuRzO7Ze6kVSi1mJou7Sk8M-0jVvGY
He recommends reading this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uvcak3hcbfua64x/Reliance%20of%20the%20Traveller%20-%20PREFERRED.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR0FU5dlUVFbfGRk259N2dykfME2ZmiHraqsA6xOWyZ7MTRzUswx3oRZ6SU
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https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unspun+137
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUujWJREFRI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nF3ap6sSi8&fbclid=IwAR0W9NWsGCaPU5HYwDzHYYPpyXUZ34zTUm0rFqhNlOKRfTkgNkd76dEhu0E
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4Pb0xNxW4&fbclid=IwAR1WYw5T33A_CkJrDqqQgjFcrxB1N_JKyfl6pa2NKl83Pk_GNPRsdEYralg
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjZjdmZyzDM&list=PLa3bLMRvk6HobnJlDDzOLozFDkPZaJb1G&fbclid=IwAR1bgR4aP_qqLsDxEZPAuetvC-T0bRrWgZthMgN7OjfkFl1e3eY6QFeKR2Y
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The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin’ Review: A Portrait of a Champion
The legend of Saladin as an ideal Quranic leader who fought back invaders remains a potent symbol in the Islamic world’s public memory.
By Christopher Tyerman
Aug. 20, 2019 6:45 pm ET
Until the 21st century, Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Righteous of the Faith; Joseph, son of Ayyub), known in Europe as Saladin, was probably the most famous Muslim in Western culture after the Prophet Muhammad himself. The historical reputation of Saladin (1137-93) rests on a few celebrated achievements, each recounted and analyzed in Jonathan Phillips’s learned and engaging biography. He created a new Near Eastern empire that united Egypt with Syria, in the process suppressing the heretical (to orthodox Sunni Muslims) Shiite Fatimid caliphate in Cairo (1171); he recaptured Jerusalem for Islam (1187), defeating Christian rulers who had held the city since the First Crusade in 1099; and he resisted the massive Third Crusade (1188-92) led, in part, by Richard the Lionheart.
Photo: WSJ
The Life & Legend of the Sultan Saladin
By Jonathan Phillips
Yale, 478 pages, $32.50
Saladin’s legendary status was burnished early on by elaborate Western fantasies that emphasized his supposed chivalric qualities of bravery and mercy, and in later fictions from Walter Scott ’s “The Talisman” (1825) to the movie “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005), which similarly portray him as a worthy opponent. These depictions employ Saladin as a sophisticated, tolerant, just and generous cipher, intended to contrast with Western leaders’ supposed narrow-minded aggression or myopic enthusiasm. This anachronistic rebranding of an archenemy into an icon of praiseworthy rule is only equaled, perhaps, by the admiration some have for Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the Islamic world, Saladin’s actual achievements were also, if less tendentiously, refashioned to create a lasting portrait of a champion of Muslim tradition and power, a hero who successfully overcame heretics and infidels. The image of Saladin as the ideal pious Quranic leader remained a potent symbol in regional public memory, serving as an abiding challenge to politically divisive or corrupt local rulers. As Western powers encroached on the eastern Mediterranean over the last two centuries, he also came to be seen as the epitome of resistance for proponents of Arab unity and independence, from secularists such as Gamal Nasser, Hafez Assad or Saddam Hussein to the religious radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Portrait of Saladin. Photo: Bridgeman Images
Thus there are two Saladins, the 12th-century ruler and the equally historical subsequent political and literary invention. Not the least virtue of “The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin” is Mr. Phillips’s wide-ranging scrutiny of both. Saladin’s achievements as a Kurdish mercenary captain who founded an empire are startling on any scale—the result of skill and luck, as well as the fluid political and social setting of the 12th-century Near East, which Mr. Phillips captures well.
Inevitably Saladin has inspired many previous scholarly biographies, most recently a rich investigation of evidence by Anne-Marie Eddé (2008), translated from the French by Jane Marie Todd in 2011. Unlike his predecessors, however, Mr. Phillips is not an Arabist; he is a professor of history at Royal Holloway, University of London. Nonetheless, aided by existing translations and new ones (not least those of his former research pupil Osman Latiff ), Mr. Phillips has fruitfully extended the range of Arabic source material to create a rounded portrait of Saladin’s world, often sketched in sharp, unexpected detail.
The author makes telling observations on the importance of Saladin’s Ayyubid family, particularly the loyalty of his father (Ayyub), brother (al-Adil), and nephew (Taqi al-din), who all held land and power under him. His speculations on Saladin’s psychological and physical state in his exhausting final years are finely judged, drawing on biographies by the sultan’s intimates. The taxing bodily burdens of life as politician, administrator, ruler and warrior come across well, and the picture is lent immediacy by Mr. Phillips’s own travels in the region, from the sands around Acre to Saladin’s mausoleum in Damascus.
Mr. Phillips draws in the reader with vivid accounts of people, places and events, relying on apt quotation from primary sources of scenic descriptions and direct speech. Yet the unwary might miss a central difficulty: Much of the biographical material about Saladin was composed after his success by apologists following formal patterns to create an image of an ideal prince, or was written many generations later. More generally, it is a bit odd that a third of Mr. Phillips’s biography is dedicated to the climactic confrontation with the Franks and crusaders between 1187 and 1192—well-trodden territory in which Mr. Phillips can excavate little new. This account also underplays the important effects within the Islamic world of Saladin’s suppression of the Shiite Fatimids.
The picture that emerges of the historical Saladin is admiring. Mr. Phillips sidesteps what he calls the “eternal dilemma” of seeing Saladin either as a pious holy warrior or a grasping dynast, a paragon of sanctity or of selfish ambition. The two are not mutually exclusive. Because he was a Kurdish upstart, Saladin needed to wrap himself in the aura of holy warrior and upholder of orthodox Islam. It justified his own usurpation of power and lent respectability to followers of previous regimes who were changing allegiances.
All medieval rulers lived their lives—domestic no less than official—in public. Saladin’s austere, Quranic lifestyle, even if gilded by his eulogists, could be seen as a necessity; it hardly opens a window into his soul. After all, he failed to complete the Hajj, sending a proxy, and spent most of his career fighting fellow Muslims (Sunnis as well as Shiite). Only after the capture of Jerusalem did the mission to expel the Christians—with whom he previously had made a series of alliances—appear an inevitable trajectory.
Mr. Phillips’s book concludes with an innovative and sweeping final section on posthumous images of Saladin, demonstrating precisely how memories of the past are unfixed and easily manipulated. He has been recast as everything from a chivalrous knight to a tolerant gentleman of the Enlightenment to a modern jihadist fighter. Whatever the truth behind this image-making, Saladin’s was a truly astonishing career, one to which Mr. Phillips does justice.
Mr. Tyerman is a professor at the University of Oxford and the author, most recently, of “How to Plan a Crusade.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/17/muhammad-aisha-truth?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3r4ns5cXe5pyxiOokbdOZEyWpIvqkwGkYWm897Xp1ZYGrPry2asYAT2no_aem_AdY2WWO-txs7OqqWgwqrq-O8j2L5hbh4Bc8Z-ae5uI-9d6f7HGa42nMma6uUGJZ1ACJ0qIZNalIEIH-GQPQZq6Cq
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second post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_supporters_of_Israel?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1-mvjEIG0Pyz6ndAE1puZ00IrlEK9XS7izLmEvXoiBN-W4LjwW8Qpso1I_aem_AdZmIzEbsNcdv3_ArSmB6EAh1fut1lNQbnPeLnlfCk0vFpY32U3q9-GczmOnC8UIj9vW2_VwlAKry6U_dKTUukPU