Statement by Ibn Warraq on the WTC Atrocity (Author of "Why I am not a Muslim")

Secularislam.org ^ | 10/11/01 | Ibn Warraq

[truthandlife]

Given the stupefying enormity of the acts of barbarism of 11 September, moral outrage is appropriate and justified, as are demands for punishment. But a civilized society cannot permit blind attacks on all those perceived as “Muslims” or Arabs.  Not all Muslims or all Arabs are terrorists. Nor are they implicated in the horrendous events of Tuesday. Police protection for individual Muslims, mosques and other institutions must be increased.

 However, to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist Tuesday is to wilfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events. Without Islam the long-term strategy and individual acts of violence by Usama bin Laden and his followers make little sense. The West needs to understand them in order to be able to deal with them and avoid past mistakes. We are confronted with Islamic terrorists and must take seriously the Islamic component. Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, do not understand the passionate, religious, and anti-western convictions of Islamic terrorists. These God-intoxicated fanatics blindly throw away their lives in return for the Paradise of Seventy Two Virgins offered Muslim martyrs killed in the Holy War against all infidels. 

 Jihad is “a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of the Prophet Muhammad  [the Prophet]. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur’an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims”[1]. 

 The world is divided into two spheres, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The latter, the Land of Warfare, is a country belonging to infidels which has not been subdued by Islam. The Dar al-Harb becomes the Dar-al Islam, the Land of Islam, upon the promulgation of the edicts of Islam. Thus the totalitarian nature of Islam is nowhere more apparent than in the concept of Jihad, the Holy War, whose ultimate aim is to conquer the entire world and submit it to the one true faith, to the law of Allah. To Islam alone has been granted the truth: there is no possibility of salvation outside it. Muslims must fight and kill in the name of Allah. 

We read (IX. 5-6):“Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them”; 

IV.76: “Those who believe fight in the cause of God”; 

VIII.39-42: “Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven; but if they return to it, they have already before them the doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it God’s.”

 Those who die fighting for the only true religion, Islam, will be amply rewarded in the life to come: 

IV.74: “Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter the life of this world for that which is to come; for whoever fights on God’s path, whether he is killed or triumphs, We will give him a handsome reward.”

 What should we make with these further  unfortunate verses from the Qur’an:

*Torment to Non-believers->IV.56
*Only Islam Acceptable-> III.85
* No friends from outsiders->III.118
*No friends with Jews, christians->V. 51
* No friends with non believers->IV.144, III.28
* No friends with parents/siblings if not believers->IX.23
* Fight non-believers->IX.123 * Kill non-believers->IV.89
*Anti Jewish verses->V.82
* God a "plotter"->VIII.30
*Killing Idolators->IX.5
* Idolators are unclean just because they are idolator->IX.28
* Forcing non-believers to pay tax->IX.29
* The Torment of Hell->XLIV.43-58
* All except Muslims/Jews/Christians/Sabeans will go to hell->II.62, V.69
* Cast terror in the hearts, smite the neck and cut fingertips of unbelievers->VIII.12
* Smite the neck of unbelievers->XLVII.4
*  Severe Punishment for atheists->X.4 ; V.10 ; V.86
*  Severe Punishment for non-believers->XXII.19-22 ; LXXII.23, XCVIII.6
*Punishing non-believers of Hereafter->XVII.10
* Punishing for rejecting faith->III.91
* Non believers go to hell->IV.140 ; VII.36 * Partial Believers go to hell too->IV.150-1
* Sadistic punishments->LVI.42-43
* Punishment for apostates->XVI.106 ; III.86-88 ; III.90 ; IV.137.
* Threat of punishement for not going to war->IX.38-39, XLVIII.16
 *God making someone more sinful so he can be punished more->III178
*Intentionally preventing unbelievers from knowing the truth->VI.25 ; VI.110
* Intentionally preventing unbelievers from Understanding Quran->XVII.45-46
* It is God who causes people to err and He punishes them for that->XVII.97
* God could guide, if he chose to, but did not->VI.35
* Intentionally misguiding those whom he pleases to->XIV.4
* Willfully misguiding some->XVI.93
* God causes human to err->IV.143 ; VII.178
* God deceiving humans->IV.142

It is surely time for us who live in the West and enjoy freedom of expression to examine unflinchingly and unapologetically the tenets of these fanatics, including the Qur’an which divinely sanctions violence. We should unapologetically examine the life of the Prophet, who was not above political assassinations, and who was responsible for the massacre of the Jews. 

“Ah, but you are confusing Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. The Real Islam has nothing to do with violence,” apologists of Islam argue. 

 There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism: at most there is a difference of degree but not of kind. All the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism are derived from the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the Hadith – Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct derived by Muslim jurists from the fundamental and defining texts of Islam. The fundamentalists, with greater logic and coherence than so-called moderate or liberal Muslims, have made Islam the basis of a radical utopian ideology<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-an

[FITZ]

It's a good article, there may be moderate peace loving Muslims but the religion itself never has been.

[537 Votes]

A Christian 'fundamentalist' reads the Bible and learns that he must turn the other cheek, forgive others, love his enemies. A Muslim fundamentalist reads the Koran and learns that he must kill without mercy.

[cgk]

``There is no moral equivalent to this attack. There is no justification for it,'' the mayor said. ``The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered four or five thousand innocent people, and to suggest that there is any justification for it only invites this happening in the future.'' -- NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani at a news conference where he turned down the Saudi prince's "blood money."

Interesting article. But I, for one, am tired of being told I "have" to understand Islam, Islamic fundamentalists, the meaning of Jihad & Allah, etc. Those terrorists and their associates still living and walking around in our country are not looking to be understood. They are looking to spill our blood.

Like my husband told me, we're acting like bin Laden is a country. If we are going to consider him such, we should treat him as such. He has declared war on us, before September 11th of course, by attacking civilians on our soil as well as outside our country's borders. He has never been elected (not that anyone in the free world would accept any election he won), nor is he the leader of any country. He is merely a violent & fanatical murderer, obsessed with his own mis-guided convictions, adept at preying on young & old Muslims who have little future in their own societies, twisting them into little bits of himself.

I do not need to understand anything more than that moment when I knew on September 11th that THOUSANDS of innocent children were suddenly orphaned because their parents did the unthinkable: they went to work.

Mrs Kus

[ASTM366]

Amen. You speak the truth. Those who deny that the Koran preaches violence against non-Muslims are lying to themselves.

Muslims need to repent and accept Jesus, the Christ, God's only begotten Son, as Savior and Lord. Period.

[supercat]

A Christian 'fundamentalist' reads the Bible and learns that he must turn the other cheek, forgive others, love his enemies. A Muslim fundamentalist reads the Koran and learns that he must kill without mercy.

How should Jews interpret the bible's commandment that if a man sleeps with another man's wife both he and the woman shall be put to death? The New Testament might allow for people to forgive the adulterers, but the commandment in the Old Testament/Torah is clear, unambigious, and unequivocal.

I think there's probably the same sort of inclination on the part of many Muslims to set aside some of the calls for Jihad as there is on the part of Jews to set aside the biblically-mandated punishments for crimes like adultery.

[pgkdan]

You're fooling yourself by trying to establish a moral equivelance between the prohibitions of the OT and the koran. Perhaps 2000 yrs ago the Torah was law, in the modern sense of the word...but no longer. Not so with the koran, therefore we see...in 2001, fornicators beaten or killed, petty thieves have hands cut off. Women unable to drive or even to travel w/o the written permission of a male relative. When the koran says to wage war against the kafir and slay them...these people take it seriously. Prepare yourself.

[supercat]

You're fooling yourself by trying to establish a moral equivelance between the prohibitions of the OT and the koran.

My point, which I failed to make clear, was that the fact that a religious text mandates what would be described today as a barbaric practice does not necessarily mean that all followers of that religion subscribe to it. The possibility that any given follower of that religion subscribes to the practice should not be ignored, of course, but a order in the Koran for Muslims to slay the infidels would not preclude the existence of peaceful Muslims.

[MinorityRepublican]

Bump for later reading.

[Anamensis]

but a order in the Koran for Muslims to slay the infidels would not preclude the existence of peaceful Muslims.

Nobody is denying that. Just as we all know people who don't really believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but still refer to themselves as "Christians" because of some vague precept that Christianity means, "being nice to people," so some call themselves Muslims even though they are no more familiar with the actual contents of the Koran than the former types are with the New Testament. That isn't the point of the article.

[Heuristic Hiker]

Bump. I've read Warraq's book (not his real named (he was a Muslim but had to change it - literally so he wouldn't be Salaman Rushieed)). Its a good solid account, in my view, of some of the historical and doctrinal falacies in Islam. They are problems which do directly bear on the actions of modern groups like al-Qaeda.

[Utah Girl]

I haven't read this book yet, but I do have it on request from the library.

[Misterioso]

Muslims need to repent and accept Jesus, the Christ, God's only begotten Son, as Savior and Lord. Period.

Now, let's see, would that be one by one, or in groups of ten, or settlement by settlement or city by city. Would it be women first, then the men, and then the kids, or the other way around. I'm just trying to get a handle on this.

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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