Posted on 09/27/2001 6:39:54 PM PDT by Starmaker
"The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans and make no distinctions among military and civilians, including women and children." So said President Bush in his September 20th address to Congress and the nation. "I also want to speak tonight directly to Moslems throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah."
I would respectfully disagree with the President. Little in Islam's history, dating back to 610 AD, when Muhammad began preaching, and 622AD, from which Islam dates its calendar, has demonstrated an inclination towards peace and, for decades now, its imams have preached hatred against Israel and the United States. Despite suppressing militant Moslem movements in their own nations, most of the Middle East leadership also contributed to their upkeep and permitted their media to validate their fanaticism.
While Americans are accustomed to expressing ourselves plainly and openly, one of the difficulties to be faced in the days ahead is that the opposite is true of Arab culture. The plain language of the President's address, understood instantly by Americans, is still being parsed by our enemies. In addition, Arabs live with too many bogeyman fantasies about Jews. It clouds their ability to see things as they are. Regrettably, this can be also said of some Christians.
There is, however, a very big difference between Islam and Christianity. Writing in Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 2lst Centuries, historian Paul Fregosi documented the history of Islam and its attacks upon European nations. "'The sword is the key to heaven and hell,' Muhammad told his followers. Six hundred years earlier, Christ had said, 'He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword.' It can be said that Moslems who kill are following the commands of Muhammad, but Christians who kill — and there are many — are ignoring the words of Christ. Therein", wrote Fregosi, "perhaps lies one of the basic philosophical differences, as well as one of the basic ethical differences, between Islam and Christianity."
To ignore these differences-and they exist between Islam and all other religions-is to ignore a terrible truth, one that has been articulated by the leaders of Islam since its beginning. The late Ayatollah Khomeini whose Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran is a saint to millions of Moslems around the world. This is what he said of Jihad: "It means the conquest of non-Muslim territory. The domination of Koranic Law from one end of the earth to the other is … the final goal … of this war of conquest."
Fregosi characterized Jihad as "essentially a permanent state of hostility that Islam maintains against the rest of the world." Many other historians have seen Islam in this light as well. Bat Yeor's "The Decline of Eastern Christianity" identifies Jihad as "a religious obligation. It forms part of the duties that the believer must fulfill; it is Islam's normal path to expansion." In this respect, Jihad is what Christians would call a sacrament; it is a religious duty that Muslim's must perform if called upon.
In February 1998, Osama bin Laden issued the following order: "Kill Americans." On September 25, 2001, in a statement to the people of Pakistan, he said, "We ask God to make us defeat the infidels and the oppressors and to crush the new Jewish-Christian crusader campaign on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan." That's worth repeating: "the new Jewish-Christian crusader campaign." Not the American campaign or the British campaign, but one he identified totally in terms of Christianity and Judaism.
For all those loathsome liberals, intellectuals, and Hollywood types who want to blame the attack on America, this is what syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer, had to say, "America conducted three wars in the 1990s. The Gulf War saved the Kuwaiti people from Saddam. American intervention in the Balkans saved Bosnia. And then we saved Kosovo from Serbia. What do these three military campaigns have in common? In every one we saved a Muslim people. And then there was Somalia, a military operation of unadulterated altruism. Its sole purpose was to save the starving people of Somalia. Muslims all."
Americans and others around the world must now consider how we are going to deal with both militant Moslems and the great, largely silent majority of Moslem faithful. Since the early 1980's, except when provoked, America has largely "turned the other cheek", but I respectfully suggest this is no longer an option and this poses some very difficult questions and issues for everyone.
The Kalima, the central prayer of Islam says, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet." This recitation, said daily by Moslems, is a proclamation of his or her faith in Islam. It can also be interpreted to be a declaration that all other religions are false. By comparison, the central prayer of Judaism is "Hear Oh Israel, the Lord, my God, the Lord is one." It simply declares the singularity of God.
Americans are being urged to avoid giving offense to Moslem citizens. This is a nation that prides itself on its tolerance for all religions. Our Constitution extends protection to the free practice of religion and says in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", but in Moslem nations around the world, the practice of any religion other than Islam is forbidden, often on pain of death.
A major campaign by US Moslem organizations is being waged to convince Americans that Moslem Americans are loyal. Daniel Pipes, one of the nation's leading authorities on Moslems and Islam, has written that many of these organizations are saying one thing in public and another in private.
For example, American Muslims for Jerusalem publicly emphasizes "the profound attachment Moslems have to Jerusalem" and calls it a symbol of "religious tolerance and dialogue." In a November 1999 fundraiser however, AMJ speakers, Nihad Awad and Abduraham Alamoudi, reportedly "vied with each other in verbally assaulting the State of Israel and American Jews. In particular, they spun an elaborate conspiracy theory about Jewish control of the United States and Zionist brainwashing of American Christians," noted Pipes.
Pipes has warned for years against "the covert radicalism of American Moslem organizations", suggesting that "Government and corporate policymakers should not meet with them. The media should not quote them as authorities. Immigration officials should study closely whom they invite from abroad. Religious leaders should exclude them from ecumenical events."
American Moslems and surely all others around the world are faced with a profound spiritual decision. Can they break with sacramental ties to a religion that is based upon an unending Jihad against all other religions? Other major religions have evolved over the centuries. Only Islam appears resistant to any change. The President has taken the lead, inviting American Moslems to participate fully in the mainstream of our national community. He is a Born Again Christian and, as such, a man who takes forgiveness and redemption very seriously. The rest of us can only pray that American Moslems take the hand extended to them and grasp it firmly.
For my part, despite the rhetoric in high places, I believe it is folly to think that those in Middle Eastern nations are our "allies" or "friends", no matter how many times our leaders use these terms in the effort to secure their leaders' cooperation to root out the terrorists in their midst. Whether Moslems such as those in Afghanistan are the victims of the so-called fundamentalists among them or whether they are those who danced in the streets of their cities, there is little evidence of anything other than widespread support for the evil that was visited upon the United States on September 11th.
Right now, the reality is that there are Moslem organizations dedicated to the Islamic domination of the world and they don't care who they kill or how many they have to kill in order to achieve it. These organizations include al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization, spread throughout all the nations of the Middle East and in African nations, as well as those in Asia and the Pacific Basin. Its cells exist in America and in the United Kingdom as well, and extend into former Soviet republics that include Chechnya, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In the Philippines and Malaysia, there's the Abu Sayyaf group. In Algeria there's the Armed Islamic group. In Egypt there's Al-Gam'a al-Islamiyya and Al-Jihad.
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestinian Liberation Front are groups whose names are familiar to those who have followed the Islamic effort to destroy the nation of Israel and claim its land for Islam. It's claim goes back over 5,000 years, pre-dating both Islam and Christianity. Jews around the world just celebrate Rosh Hashonah, their New Year, whose calendar is 5762.
The United States has had a strange relationship with nations such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, the Sudan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. We are extremely dependent on the oil that props up most of their regimes. We have fought wars on their behalf and we have been the target of their scorn. The leaders of almost all these nations have now cut off diplomatic relations with the Taliban. As noted, they have suppressed militant Islamic movements within their own nations, but they have not curbed the ceaseless campaign of hatred against America and Israel.
The President, in his address to Congress, said, "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." There has to be a cultural and — yes, spiritual — change within Islam.
For America, the United Kingdom, Europe, the nations of South America, nothing less than the future of Western values, of human progress is at stake. For Buddhists and Hindus, and members of other faiths, Islam must reject its intolerance.
Are there good Moslems in the United States? Yes, of course, just as there are surely millions of Moslems worldwide who personally and privately condemn what is occurring. They must reclaim Islam and they must reform it. For now, however, America is a nation at war with an enemy who killed more than 6,000 of us on a single day. They call it Jihad.
Frankly if it gets that far I forsee laws being created banning islam as a security risk, first ammendment or no. Even my imagination starts to freeze at this point and we would need a Tom Clancy, or a Stephen King to concieve where this would end. The most obvious nightmare is crusades with nukes that would kill half the world's population within a few weeks, and the rest within a year or two. In this case civilization would be over, and frankly, I am not ready to let these psycho B@stards do this.
These are some of the obligations of a good muslim:
O ye who believe! take your precautions and sally in detachments or altogether. Verily, there is of you who tarries behind, and, if a mischance befalls you, says, ‘God has been gracious to me, since I am not with them a martyr.’But if there befalls you grace from God, he would say—as though there were no friendship between you and him—‘O would that I had been with thee to attain this mighty happiness!’ Let those then fight in God’s way who sell this life of the world for the next; and whoso fights in God’s way, then, be he killed or be he victorious, we will give him a mighty hire.
What ails you that ye do not fight in God’s way, and for the weak men and women and children, who say, ‘Lord, bring us out of this town 19 of oppressive folk, and make for us from Thee a patron, and make for us from Thee a help?’
Those who believe fight in the way of God; and those who disbelieve fight in the way of Tâghût; fight ye then against the friends of Satan, verily, Satan’s tricks are weak.
Do ye not see those to whom it is said, ‘Restrain your hands, and be steadfast in prayer and give alms;’ and when it is prescribed for them to fight then a band of them fear men, as though it were the fear of God or a still stronger fear, and they say, ‘O our Lord! why hast thou prescribed for us to fight, couldst thou not let us abide till our near appointed time?’ Say, ‘The enjoyment of this world is but slight, and the next is better for him who fears;’—but they shall not be wronged a straw.
Why are ye two parties about the hypocrites, when God hath overturned them for what they earned? Do ye wish to guide those whom God hath led astray? Whoso God hath led astray ye shall not surely find for him a path. They would fain that ye misbelieve as they misbelieve, that ye might be alike; take ye not patrons from among them until they too flee in God’s way; but if they turn their backs, then seize them and kill them wheresoever ye find them, and take from them neither patron nor help,—save those who reach a people betwixt whom and you is an alliance—or who come to you while their bosoms prevent them from fighting you or fighting their own people. But had God pleased He would have given you dominion over them, and they would surely have fought you. But if they retire from you and do not fight you, and offer you peace,—then God hath given you no way against them.
Ye will find others who seek for quarter from you, and quarter from their own people; whenever they return to sedition they shall be overturned therein: but if they retire not from you, nor offer you peace, nor restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wheresoever ye find them;—over these we have made for you manifest power.
These are some of the obligations of a good muslim:
Evr hear that saying that people "get the government they deserve"?
We have sufficient proof to believe otherwise.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba1b4cc7ce3.htm
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PROTECTING MUSLIMS WHILE ROOTING OUT ISLAMISTS
by Daniel Pipes
The Daily Telegraph
September 14, 2001
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/dt?pg=/01/9/14/do02.html
That the assault on New York's highest buildings and the American military
headquarters appears to have been organised by Osama bin Laden and carried
out exclusively by Muslims has large implications for the way Muslim
populations living in all Western countries will be seen in the future.
Knowing a bit of background helps to explain what brought us to this
situation. Bin Laden's men are not just Muslims but also Islamists. Islam (a
religion) is not the problem, but Islamism (a totalitarian ideology) is.
Islamism is not so much a distortion of Islam, but a radically new
interpretation. It politicises the religion, turning it into a blueprint for
establishing a coerced utopia. In many ways, its programme resembles those of
fascism and Marxism/Leninism.
This week's events mark not the outbreak of a new problem but the heightening
of a two-decade-long pattern of Islamist violence. That violence is a truly
global phenomenon, affecting such varied countries as Algeria, Pakistan,
Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Philippines. Islamists constitute a
small but significant minority of Muslims, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of the
population. Many of them are peaceable in appearance, but they all must be
considered potential killers.
Here is some guidance, starting with steps to take to protect the rights of
the Muslim minority:
* Maintain the utmost respect for individual Muslims, mosques and other
institutions. A time of crisis does not change the assumption that each of us
is innocent until proved guilty.
* Do not make any prejudicial statements against Muslims, a great majority of
whom are innocent of Islamism or illegal behaviour.
* Provide extra protection against acts of vandalism or hooliganism against
Muslim property and individuals.
* The press, politicians and other opinion leaders should speak out on these
points.
So much for the easy steps. The harder ones concern the investigation of past
crimes and their prevention in the future. The painful fact is that Muslims
alone are susceptible to the lure of Islamist extremism. While safeguarding
the civil rights and religious freedoms of Muslims, then, steps must be taken
to diminish their unique susceptibility to this totalitarian ideology. Here
are some recommendations:
* Crack down hard on the Islamic institutions that funnel Muslim youth into
jihad (sacred war) activities. This is a particularly British problem. For
about a decade, these youths have signed on for such acceptable foreign
activities as studying at Islamic seminaries or working for Islamic
charities, which have then served as recruiting devices for jihad against
non-Muslims in such places as Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. These men clearly
serve as potential cadres for attacks within Britain, perhaps elsewhere.
* Worry about Islamist "sleepers". These individuals go quietly about their
business until one day they are called into action. Ali A Mohamed, a
naturalised US citizen born in Egypt, reached the rank of sergeant in the US
army; earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to scouting out the American
embassy in Nairobi as a bombing target on behalf of bin Laden, as well as
assorted other tasks.
* Combat the broader climate of hatred and extremism among Muslim populations
resident in the West that has repeatedly lead to terrorism. Rashid Baz, the
Lebanese-born delivery driver who randomly killed a Hasidic Jewish boy on the
Brooklyn Bridge in March 1994, one report found, "lived in a milieu that
cultivated terrorism" and "encouraged him to perpetrate violence".
* Listen to the advice of anti-Islamist Muslims, the people first threatened
by Islamism, who know it from closest proximity, and who can help penetrate
its clandestine hierarchies.
* Close internet sites that promote violence, raise money for this purpose
and recruit new members. The American government took a first step in this
direction last week by closing down InfoCom, a Dallas-based host for many
Islamist organisations.
* Guard vigilantly against the possibility of visitors and immigrants with
Islamist records entering the country. No Western government has dared do
this because it smacks of bias (the British ban on Louis Farrakhan was a
temporary exception). But each Islamist who enters is an enemy on the home
front.
* Beef up aircraft profiling - the practice of looking at passengers' ethnic
and religious characteristics. This has been controversial in the US, where
lobbies have impeded law enforcement officials from using their common sense
to keep an especially watchful eye for Islamists because, allegedly, this
"unfairly singles out" minorities. The consequences of not profiling became
painfully obvious on Tuesday, when between 12 and 24 Islamists hijacked four
separate flights.
* Isolate noisy and prominent Islamist organisations such as the Muslim
Council of Britain and the Islamic Human Rights Council. These are in fact
fringe organisations and they should be avoided by politicians, the media,
corporations and all the rest of mainstream society.
* Reconsider past mistakes. Universities, media outlets, churches and
government bureaus have some hard soul-searching to do; their experts on
Islam and Muslims have an influential group of apologists (one recent example
is the BBC with its week-long BBC programming on Islam). They have counselled
against every one of the steps outlined here. These specialists bear some
responsibility for the unpreparedness that led to this week's disaster. They
and their institutions must review past mistakes and begin with a fresh,
realistic approach.
The goal in formulating policy toward domestic Muslim populations must be
two-fold: to combine fairness toward their moderate majority with a very
tough stance toward the Islamists. This balance requires sensitivity but not
political correctness - a match that can be achieved if done honestly and
intelligently.
Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings approximately once per week.
To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list, go to
http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/dplist
All articles are also available online at http://www.DanielPipes.org
Islam's bloody beginnings
The Arab Islamics began the rape, pillaging, massacres, forced conversions, head taxes, etc. with the prophet Mohammed, in the Arabian peninsula, as he massacred 600-900 Jewish men in cold-blood and his men raping and enslaving the women and children (Banu Qurayza, 627). This Jihad would extend throughout the Arabian peninsula (where under the second caliph in 640 the Jews and Christians were expelled from the peninsula), North Africa, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Persia, Syria, Palestine, South Spain before finally being stopped at Narbonne (720) and Poitiers (732). In the space of 100 years the Arab Islamics had massacred, conquered, dhimmiized, pillaged, whole INDIGENOUS Christian (non Arab) and Jewish communities. Most of the time this would consist of massacring, enslaving, and ethnically cleansing whole Christian and Jewish populations. Bat Ye'or in, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (1996), at pp. 44ff. describes this blight on long-standing Christian and Jewish communities:
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After the death of the Prophet, the caliph Abu Bakr organized the invasion of Syria which Mohammed had already envisaged. He gathered tribes from the Hijaz, Najd, and Yemen and advised Abu Ubayda, in charge of operations in the Golan (Palestine), to plunder the countryside but, due to a lack of adequate weaponry, to refrain from attacking towns.2 Consequently, the whole Gaza region up to Cesarea was sacked and devastated in the campaign of 634. Four thousand Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants who defended their land were massacred. The villages of the Negev were pillaged by Amr b. al-As, while the Arabs overran the countryside, cut communications, and made roads perilous. Towns such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea, Nablus, and Beth Shean were isolated and closed their gates (note: these towns had a majority Jewish/Christian (non Arab) populations). In his sermon on Christmas Day 634, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, lamented over the impossibility of going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem as was the custom, because the Christians were forcibly kept in Jerusalem:"not detained by tangible bonds, but chained and nailed by fear of the Saracens [Arab Islamics]," whose "savage, barbarous and bloody sword" kept them locked up in the town.3
In Syria...Sophronius, in his sermon on the Day of Epiphany 636, bewailed the destruction of churches and monasteries, the sacked towns, the fields laid waste, the villages burned down by the nomads who were overrunning the country. In a letter the same year to Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, he mentions the ravages wrought by the Arabs.4 Thousands of people perished in 639, victims of the famine and plague that resulted from these destructions..... Country areas, particularly the plains and valleys populated with hamlets and villages, were ravaged by Bedouins who set fire to crops, massacred and carried off the peasantry and their cattle, and left nothing but ruins. Townspeople were in a different position. Protected by their walls, they could defend themselves or negotiate the conditions of their surrender on payment of tribute to the Bedouin chiefs....
In fact, the record of the precise progress of the Arab conquests constituted a basic principle in the earliest stages of Muslim law, since it fixed not only the nature and taxation of the land, but also the legislation applicable to its indigenous inhabitants. Although some disparities appeared in respect of the towns, the majority of the villages fell into the category of conquest without a treaty. According to the strategy of jihad, the absence of a treaty allowed the massacre or enslavement of the conquered population and the division of their property.... Helped by local Arab support---particularly active in the central region and the lower Euphrates---and by troop reinforcements sent from Arabia, Muslims extended their raids on the countryside and villages to the south and center of Iraq around Mada'in (Ctesiphon).......they invaded the Sawad (Babylonia), the villages near the Tigris and Euphrates....These raids were supported by Umar who sent reinforcements from Medina.
The monasteries were pillaged, the monks killed, and Monophysite [Christian] Arabs massacred, enslaved, or Islamicized by force; in Elam the population was also decimated, and in Susa their notables were put to the sword.... Palestine was laid waste and plundered.13 The Arabs moved into Cilicia, taking inhabitants with them into captivity. Mu'awiya sent Habib b. Maslama to Armenia....On his orders, the population of Euchaita [Jews and non-Arab, i.e., Armenian Christians] (on the river Halys) was put to the sword; those who escaped were all taken into slavery.14 According to the Armenian chroniclers, the Arabs, after they decimated the populations in Assyria and forced large numbers of people to embrace Islam, "entered the district of Daron [south-west of lake Van] which they sacked, shedding rivers of blood. They exacted tribute and forced the women and children to be handed over to them."15 In 642 they took the town of Dvin and annihilated the population [mainly Assyrian Christians] by the sword.
Then "the Ishmaelites returned by the route whence they had come, carrying off in their wake a multitude of captives to the number of thirty-five thousand."16 The following year, according to the same chronicler, the Arabs again invaded Armenia, "wreaking havoc, ruin, and slavery."17 .... In North Africa, the Arabs took thousands of captives and accumulated a large stock of booty...."the Muslims set to work overrunning and laying waste the open country."19 Tripoli was ransacked in 643; Carthage was entirely razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants were killed [majority Christian]. The Arabs put the Maghreb to fire and sword, and it took them more than a century to restore peace there by crushing the Berber resistance.... The wars continued on land and sea with Mu'awiya's successors. Arab troops wrought havoc in Anatolia by numerous incursions; churches were desecrated and burned down; all the inhabitants of Pergamum, Sardes, and other towns were led into captivity. The Greek towns of Gangres and Nicae were destroyed. Contemporary Christian chronicles mention entire regions ravaged, villages razed to the ground, towns burned, pillaged and destroyed, while entire populations were enslaved. As has been mentioned, town populations were not always spared. They often suffered massacre or slavery, always accompanied by deportations. This was the fate of the Christians and Jews of Aleppo, Antioch, Ctesiphon, Euchaita, Constantia, Pathos (Cyprus), Pergamum, Sardes, Germanicea (Marash), and Samosata---to cite but a few examples. In the course of the Umayyads' last attempt to take Constantinople (717), the Arab army commanded by Maslama carried out a pincer movement by land and sea and laid waste the whole region around the capital.
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During the course of Islamic hegemony Bedouins and other Arabs would immigrate to these ethnically cleansed and pillaged, non Arab areas and the remaining indigenous populations would be put in a dhimmi state with periodic sacking, persecution and massacring of the remaining Christian and Jewish populations or theses peoples would flee to other areas. The real ethnic cleansers and the unwanted neighborhood bullies - the Arab Islamics.
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