http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/08/fitzgerald-salam-al-marayati-loyalty-and-patriotism.html#moreFitzgerald: Salam al-Marayati, loyalty, and patriotism
“Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati is the newest blogger for the popular website The Huffington Post. Here is an excerpt from his first blog: ‘As Muslims, when we take an oath of citizenship or allegiance, it is tantamount to making an oath with God: “And be true to your bond with God whenever you bind yourselves by a pledge, and do not break [your] oaths after having [freely] confirmed them and having called upon God to be witness to your good faith: behold, God knows all that you do.” - Quran 16:91. As Muslim Americans, when we take the oath of allegiance to America witnessed by our families and our friends (and now DHS), we must remain true to our word. It is an Islamic obligation to defend what we are taking an oath to, namely the constitution of the United States of America. That does not equate with supporting the policies of the government. Patriotism is not waving the flag or using it to intimidate others; patriotism is love of country, and when we as Muslim Americans see a danger to our country, such as terrorism or xenophobia, or policies that hurt the image and interests of the United States, it is our American and Islamic responsibility to change toward the betterment of America….’” -- From the Huffington Post, which apparently will now regularly include articles by Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (see the announcement here)
This is the purest taqiyya, or kitman, or combination of both.
Islam teaches -- inculcates, rather -- the notion that Muslims do not owe any allegiance to non-Muslims, not to their countries, not to their institutions, legal and political, not to anything. Within Islam -- uniquely, among world religions -- such a doctrine has arisen, and has been elaborated, and has been written about, one that is based on both the letter and spirit of the Qur'an and on the example of Muhammad, the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana), the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil). See the assurances given the Meccans in the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya.
Look at the false equivalences: “terrorism or xenophobia,” with the first referring to real acts of terror by Muslims, following promptings that are found in the texts of Islam (see the Qur’an, see the Hadith, passim) and the “xenophobia” in question merely being, in this case, not “hatred of foreigners” but, of course, the fear and suspicion of those who are adherents of Islam, a fear and suspicion that are entirely rational, and that are felt most by those who have taken the most time to inform themselves about the texts and tenets and history of Islam.
And note how carefully he says that “we must remain true to our word” when we “take the oath of allegiance to America.” Why? It makes no sense to remain true to a word, or an oath, given to an Infidel polity in order to obtain American citizenship or to relieve the suspicions of non-Muslims. Islam is a Total Belief-System that reinforces, through a whole variety of means, again and again the idea that for a Muslim the main thing, possibly the only thing, in life that truly matters is being Muslim, and that loyalty to fellow Muslims and to the teachings of Islam are the only things that matter, not the trivial and the transient, the without-worth because non-Muslim, Infidel polities.
Al-Marayati pretends that Muslims are just full of the patriotism and loyalty that animates other Americans. Is this true? Have Muslims rallied to the cause of fighting against “Muslim extremism” abroad? Have they flocked into the military, imitating the Japanese-Americans of the 422nd Regiment during World War II, the first (or possibly second) most decorated regiment in the entire U.S. military? Or have the handful of Muslims who have served reported how difficult it has been for them, how they have been repeatedly criticized and attacked by other Muslims for fighting “for the Infidel”?
And what has been the behavior of Muslims, and Muslim organizations, in this country? Have they encouraged Muslims to report on that “tiny handful of extremists,” or have they repeatedly refused to do so? Have Muslim organizations, and not only CAIR, exhibited a spirit of cooperation, or have they repeatedly urged Muslims not to voluntarily cooperate but to carefully go through them, and what’s more, have encouraged Muslims to report any and all supposed “anti-Muslim incidents,” all of which are scrupulously investigated, and almost all of which have been found to be baseless, or greatly exaggerated? Have they not encouraged in Muslims themselves, and in a credulous media that believes uncritically Muslim complaints, the idea that Muslims are being “victimized”?
There are a handful of exceptions. These consist of those who, having through no fault of their own been born in to Islam, have decided that they no longer are believers. But they are unwilling, out of fear or filial piety, to declare themselves openly to be apostates, and so signal to the outside world their disenchantment with Islam by identifying themselves as “cultural Muslims” or in some other way as “Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims. They are as yet unwilling to wholeheartedly declare that disenchantment and their own falling-away from the faith.
All over the countries of Western Europe, as in the Muslim -dominated lands (Dar al-Islam), one can find the message of Islam clearly set out in the sermons of imams who are either uninhibited or perhaps, in some cases, simply unaware that they are being eavesdropped on by agents of the various Infidel governments. That message is clear: loyalty to Islam and to fellow members of the Umma comes first. And if one goes to Muslim websites (it isn't hard to do) and reads around, one discovers that the universal answer to the question "do I have to obey the laws of Infidel states if I have managed to obtain citizenship in those states" is not a resounding and unqualified "Yes" but, rather, the obvious: obey the laws of Infidel states only insofar as those laws do not contradict the principles of Islam, of the Holy Law of Islam or Shari'a. In other words, "be a good citizen" just so long as what you do does not contradict Islam.
The "loyalty" and "patriotism" that Salam Al-Marayati describes sounds fine. Anyone who knows little or nothing of Islam might be taken in. One might be if one has ignored all the evidence, in both the clearly-stated doctrines of Islam, and in what might reasonably be called the necessary developments from those doctrines -- including kitman ("mental reservation") and taqiyya. These have naturally been developed and are practiced, as we can all see, in every encounter with non-Muslims, when Muslims feel they need to conceal, in order to preserve Islam and Muslims from critical scrutiny, and to delay for as long as possible the widespread understanding of the texts and tenets of Islam.
The passage above should raise eyebrows and more than eyebrows. It is clear that Al-Marayati is determined to misrepresent Islam. It will be interesting to see what protests there are in comments, and how informed those protests are. The level of preparation of those who answer him will be important.
But all you need to do is look at Islam from the inside out -- look at the ample testimonies provided by a growing army of defectors from that other army, the army of Islam. Look at what Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells us in her Infidel about all the ways that Muslims talk about fooling the non-Muslims of the Netherlands. Look at Ibn Warraq, or Ali Sina, or all the many ex-Muslims who have contributed to such websites as the latter's
www.faithfreedom.org. Look at the opinion polls, where Muslims in Western Europe support attacks within, and against, the countries and non-Muslim peoples among whom they have been allowed to settle. There they are treated by the innocent and the ignorant with great generosity, which has been repaid with a malevolent determination to relentlessly spread the power and might of Islam, and to undercut, in every way that is deemed effective, the legal and political institutions, the liberties, the social understandings, of Infidel peoples and polities.
One detects in the soft-spoken assurances of Tariq Ramadan the hiss of a slitherer. Read Caroline Fourest, or many others, on his slitherings. And then re-read carefully the excerpt from Al-Marayati above. Then go to
www.faithfreedom.org, or answering-islam.org, or to the books of Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or to the articles by many defectors from Islam, or the studies of Islam by the great Western scholars who wrote during the century of flourishing Western scholarship on Islam, roughly from 1870 to 1970, which is roughly when the portcullises came down, to defend the castle of Islam, and the Age of Inhibition began.
When Al-Marayati utters his sly remarks about “love of country” and the “betterment of America,” what do you think he means? What could he possibly mean, if he is a believer in Islam? If you believe in Islam, if you believe in the Message of the Last of the Prophets, then what would be best for America, what would bring about its “betterment”? Surely not more of the same, not more of the same belief that mere men should, through the ballot, decide on the political and legal institutions of this country. Men are, or should ideally be, “slaves of Allah.” And a well-ordered world, according to Muslim doctrine, is that in which the will, not of mere mortals, but of Allah himself, is obeyed. So it is not the will of the people, expressed through elections and representative government, but rather the will of Allah, as expressed in the Qur’an and glossed by the Sunnah, that should prevail. That is surely what Al-Marayati sees as the best hope for this country, the “betterment” for which he, and all of the Believers, will naturally strive. In other words, the entire basis for the American policy is flatly contradicted by the most essential understandings of Islam.
And what does Al-Marayati think of the Constitution of the United States? What, for example, does he think of the First Amendment, and the rights of free speech, and of freedom of conscience, as guaranteed by both the Free Exercise and the Establishment clause? Does Al-Marayati think that anyone in this country who wishes to leave Islam should be perfectly free to do so without any repercussions whatsoever? What does he think about the case of Rifqa Bary? What punishment does he think should properly be meted out to those Muslim men who have, on their own, killed or greatly harmed their own daughters or wives, because they thought their daughters or wives had left Islam, or behaved in a way that brought “dishonor” to the family? And if he thinks such people should be properly punished by the full force of the law, does he also think that people guilty of similar behavior in other countries, such as Jordan or Syria or Iraq or Saudi Arabia, should also be punished? Or does he merely counsel acquiescence in the American legal system because, at present, Muslims cannot change it, and it is more important to outwardly conform -- temporarily -- with the American system so as better to work, over the long term, for changes in America that will lead to what Al-Marayati and those who think and believe like Al-Marayati consider to be the “betterment” of America?
And what could be “better” for America than the onward march of Islam, and an end to all of those elements, including the Constitution of the United States, that flatly contradict the spirit and letter of Shari’a? Just look around the world, look at the vast lands that over the past 1350 years have been conquered by Islam, ordinarily, though not exclusively, through military force. And look at the wiles and guiles that have helped Muslims avoid having to declare, in their mental baggage, as they leave the Lands of Islam (where all the failures of those lands can be intelligently attributed to the teachings of Islam itself), that they are quite different from refugees from the Nazis, who hated the Nazis and Nazism, and refugees from Communism, who hated the Communists and Communism, despite in a sense being “refugees” from the Misrule, in every sense, of Islam.
No, most of those who leave the awful societies of Dar al-Islam take a bit of Dar al-Islam with them. Yet they flee its natural violence, and aggression, and corruption, and political paralysis, and economic paralysis which are natural results both of the Muslim hatred of bida (innovation), and of the Muslim encouragement of an attitude of inshallah-fatalism. They flee an intellectual wasteland, reflected in such things as openness to the world as suggested by the number of translated works, because in Islam, what is pre—Islamic, or what is non-Islamic, is part of one vast and contemptible Jahiliyya -- save in the one area that seems truly to interest Muslims, and that is the area of weapons manufacture. While they are indifferent to pure science, they seem terribly concerned to acquire the ability to rival or surpass the West in the production, or at least accumulation, of weaponry.
There’s much more, but you can elaborate on the theme -- including the moral squalor that the mistreatment of women and of all non-Muslims reveals.
Oh, yes.
What could be better?
What could be worse?
