MEQ 2005 Article on Beheading in Islamic Theology and History

The following by Timothy R. Furnish is reposted here with the permission of the Middle East Forum:

Beheading in the Name of Islam

by Timothy R. Furnish
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2005, pp. 51-57

Images of masked terrorists standing behind Western hostages in Iraq and Saudi Arabia have become all too common on Arabic satellite stations such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar. Islamist websites such as Muntadiyat al-Mahdi[1] go further, streaming video of their murder.

The February 2002 decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, true to its intention, horrified the Western audience. Chechen rebels, egged on by Islamist benefactors, had adopted the practice four years earlier,[2] but the absence of widely broadcast videos limited the psychological impact of hostage decapitation. The Pearl murder and video catalyzed the resurgence of this historical Islamic practice. In Iraq, terrorists filmed the beheadings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong. Other victims include Turks, an Egyptian, a Korean, Bulgarians, a British businessman, and a Nepalese. Scores of Iraqis, both Kurds and Arabs, have also fallen victim to Islamist terrorists' knives. The new fad in terrorist brutality has extended to Saudi Arabia where Islamist terrorists murdered American businessman Paul Johnson, whose head was later discovered in a freezer in an Al-Qaeda hideout. A variation upon this theme would be the practice of Islamists slitting the throats of those opponents they label infidels. This is what happened to Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, first gunned down and then mutilated on an Amsterdam street,[3] and to an Egyptian Coptic family in New Jersey after the father had angered Islamists with Internet chat room criticisms of Islam.[4]

Daniel Pearl, pictured in an image sent to media organizations by
his kidnappers. Credit: Daily Mail. Photo not from original article.

Raymond Ibrahim on Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation in the Quran

The following by Raymond Ibrahim is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation

by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 6, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/3787/islamic-jihad-abrogation-doctrine

Raymond Ibrahim

While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in which peaceful and tolerant verses lie almost side by side with violent and intolerant ones. The ulema were initially baffled as to which verses to codify into the Shari'a worldview—the one that states there is no coercion in religion (2:256), or the ones that command believers to fight all non-Muslims till they either convert, or at least submit, to Islam (8:39, 9:5, 9:29). To get out of this quandary, the commentators developed the doctrine of abrogation, which essentially maintains that verses revealed later in Muhammad's career take precedence over earlier ones whenever there is a discrepancy. In order to document which verses abrogated which, a religious science devoted to the chronology of the Koran's verses evolved (known as an-Nasikh wa'l Mansukh, the abrogater and the abrogated).

Photo not from original article

During BBC Interview, Robert Spencer Shows He Knows More About Islam Than Muslim Imam

During this segment of a BBC interview where Robert Spencer speaks on his being banned, along with Pamela Geller, from entering Great Britain, an Imam is asked to counter Spencer on what the Koran says.

And the Imam can't do it.

Here is the segment:

Religion of Peace: Violence and Context in Islamic Texts

The following by Mark Durie is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Violence and Context in Islamic Texts

by Mark Durie
Gatestone Institute
June 20, 2013

Recently, the journalist Paul Sheehan, reflecting on the Woolwich beheading of Drummer Lee Rigby, invited consideration of the view of Muslim violence in authoritative Islamic texts. In the Sydney Morning Herald of May 27, 2013, Sheehan observed that the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad seem to be a factor behind Muslim violence, and offered these critical observations:

• Many violent attacks on civilians are done in the name of Islam.
• The existence of violent Islamic sectarian conflict and the repression of religious dissent in Muslim nations give the lie to the "absurd claim" that Islam is "the religion of peace."
• Many verses in the Koran call for violence against unbelievers, and these are invoked by Muslims who murder others: "So many Muslims have been encouraged to murder civilians by such exhortations that the rate of violent incidents perpetrated in the name of Islam is staggering, a toll that shows no sign of subsiding."

A rejoinder was published the next day by Associate Professor Mohamad Abdalla, founding director of the Islamic Research Unit at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Abdalla rejected the proposition that Islam supports killing innocent people: "A contextual reading of the Koran or Hadith leads to one conclusion only: there is no justification for killing of innocent people…"

In Europe, You Can Go To Prison For Tearing A Koran -- But Not A Bible

The following by Andrew Harrod is reposted here with permission of The Legal Project:

Thrown in Prison for Shredding the Koran

by Andrew Harrod
Frontpage Magazine
May 13, 2013

A Bruges, Belgium criminal court convicted a man for shredding a Koran on March 6, 2013. The court imposed a four-month prison sentence and a 600 euro fine upon him. He now additionally faces a revocation of a previous suspension of an 18-month prison sentence for having set a fire in a wood. This case highlights yet again the greater restrictions on speech in free societies outside of the United States and how these restrictions can limit open debate about Islam.

Shocker: BBC Executives Admit Bias

Back on May 2002, a report came out on BBC coverage of the Middle East, put together by a London lawyer.

Now, the BBC is fighting to prevent the publication of The Balen Report that is crtical of its coverage of the Middle East. So far, the BBC has appeared to be successful--but only so far.

Some BBC employees are making their views felt.

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

The BBC bias seems to be in favor of multiculturalism--so that would explain the pro-Moslem and anti-American bias that the BBC is known for.

The full account of the meeting shows how senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive', about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'

What it does not explain is the anti-Israel bias.
Perhaps The Balen Report will explain that.
Then we will know why the BBC's multiculturalism has its limits

Technorati Tag: Israel and BBC and Medias Bias.

Hijab Hijinks

Jack Straw writes that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

A British education minister says he supports universities that ban Islamic students from wearing veils.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday that Muslim immigrant women should not be completely “hidden” behind full veils if they want to integrate and become part of Italy’s future.

Tony Blair said the full face veils by Muslim women is a "mark of separation" and made some "outside the community feel uncomfortable".

Allahpundit notes that the latest opposition to the veil comes from...Egypt:

Saleh, known in Egypt as “the women’s mufti” for her numerous fatwas, or religious edicts relating to women, rebutted on daily al-Sharq Al-Awsat, that hers was “a personal comment on an increasingly common phenomenon but which was not meant in any way to offend women.”

“There is a significant difference between the hijab, a simple veil which frames the face, and the niqab, which leaves only the eyes visible” she added. “The first is a religious duty, but the second is a sheer cultural convention, which has no raison d’etre in Islamic sources” she said.

Saleh seems to be echoing something more controversial that Amir Taheri wrote back in 2004:

The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.

Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that "scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane." To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.

By the mid 1980s, a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America.

But the bottom line is, just what does Europe think they are doing?

Of all the ways to confront the growing problem of Islamist violence in Europe, why tackle an issue that is more likely to encourage moderates to join the extremists in protesting what they interpret as an assault on their religion?

Europe is going after veils while failing to go after those who in speech and action encourage the Islamist extremists.

They are likely to fail in the former while losing the war against the latter.

Technorati Tag: Hijab and Blair and Amir Taheri.

The Majority of Muslims Cannot Read The Qur'an

In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Robert Spencer writes that not every Muslim is a terrorist. Why not? Because since

the Qur'an is in difficult, classical Arabic, and must be read and recited during Muslim prayers in that language only, a surprisingly large number of those who identify themselves as Muslims have scant acquaintance with what it actually says. (p. 43)

According to Spencer, for Muslims this applies not only to the classical Arabic of the Qur'an, but to modern Arabic as well--and the Qur'an is often memorized by rote without having any clear idea of what it actually says.

That last point is substantiated by the New York Times in an article about the Muslim Center of New York, where students from 7 to 14 years old spend the entire day from 8am to 5pm, including the summer, just memorizing the Qur'an. Ann Althouse points out this arrangement violates the laws of compulsory schooling. But the article also points out one of the things that makes the memorizing so challenging:

Making the work even more difficult, the students, for the most part, do not understand what they are reciting. Muslims believe the Koran was spoken to the prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel in Arabic. Because it is seen as the literal word of God, the use of translations is frowned upon. Students know how to pronounce the words but mostly do not know what they mean.

Going one step further, Raphael Patai, in The Arab Mind, writes that the difficulty in understanding the Qur'an extends not only to the non-Arab Muslims, but to Arabs themselves:

The unschooled, who form the majority in most Arab countries, speak a local, colloquial dialect which is so different from literary Arabic as to make it appear almost a foreign language...They have their own language, which is adequate for all their needs and which is the only tongue they know, apart from a few verses from the Koran which are in literary Arabic, and which make them aware of the existence of a literary language that is greatly different from their own idiom (p.196)

As far as the educated Arabs who can understand the classical Arabic of the Qur'an:

Even among the educated Arabs, the knowledge of the literary language is primarily a passive one. they know it well enough to understand it, enjoy it, come under its magnetic influence; but they do not know it well enough to speak it with any degree of fluency.

Keep in mind that according to Patai, the uneducated Arabs who do not understand the Qur'an make up 90% of the Arab population. (p. 198)

Michael Cook writes in The Koran: A Very Short Introduction, on the options on how to deal with the Arabic barrier:

There are only two clear-cut solutions to this problem: either the believers have to learn Arabic, or the Koran has to be translated...mass literacy in a foreign language is not a very realistic educational project...[and] the non-Arab Muslim world shows little sign of adopting the idea of a vernacular scripture in the manner of sixteenth-century Protestantism or twentieth-century Catholicism. (p. 26-7)

That is not to say that the Qur'an has not been translated.

In Why I Am Not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq writes in his introduction:

The majority of Muslims have to read the Koran in translation in order to understand it. Contrary to what one might think, there have been translations of the Koran into, for instance, Persian, since the tenth or eleventh century, and there are translations into Turkish and Urdu. The Koran has now been translated into over a hundred languages, many of them by Muslims themselves, despite some sort of disapproval from the religious authorities.

So, bottom line is--so what? What does it matter whether Muslims can read the Qur'an in the original Arabic or have to read it in translation?

For one thing, Ibn Warraq writes that some Muslims claim that outsiders are not qualified to critique what is written in the Qur'an until they are actually able to read it in the original. In light of the fact that a majority of Muslims themselves cannot read and understand the Qur'an in the original, such a counter-argument falls short.

More importantly, as alluded to by Robert Spencer, the difficulty of the language of the Qur'an to some degree has allowed for some level of moderation with Islam by keeping some of it's more extreme statements out of the limelight. So what happens now that the number of translations and their availability is on the rise?

According to Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad, in a response to an email:

The Koran is now available in translation to local languages on an unprecedented scale in history...This, in my humble opinion, fuels Islamic fundamentalism...

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Islam and Koran and Quran and Arabic.

Is The Pope On A Crusade Against Islam?

That is the impression you would get if you listen to the Moslem outcry against Pope Benedict XVI's address this week at the University of Regensburg.

Near the beginning of his talk, the Pope said:

In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point -- itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself -- which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason," I found interesting and which can serve as the starting point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation ("diálesis" -- controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...."

That one sentence apparently has the Moslem world in an uproar, asking for an apology and comparing Pope Benedict with Hitler and Mussolini.

Maybe the Moslem world has a short memory. Powerline doesn't. From 2002:

Al-Qaeda planned to assassinate Pope John Paul II on two occasions during visits made or planned by the Pontiff to the Philippines in 1995 and 1999, The Times of London reported today.

Masterminding the assassination attempts was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also accused of plotting the September 11 attacks on the US, who was in the Philippines during both papal visits, the newspaper reported.

Also, as has been noted at The Corner, 2 Christian reporters were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint.

Apparently the Moslem world missed the last line of the address:

It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Some of the reaction has been a little less heated. From the Guardian:

...if you cannot, as part of a lengthy and profound academic lecture, cite a 600 year-old text for fear of stirring the aggravation of noisy politicians half way around the world, what CAN you do? We might as well all retreat into obscurantism. And keep our mouths shut, for otherwise, who knows who we might offend. And if, as a result of the outrage, some Catholics get killed or their churches burned down by offended scholars and textual exegesists it might be thought that Manuel's original point had rather been made.

But all the analysis and defense of what the Pope said are worthless now:

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologised for causing any offence to Muslims amid growing fury across the Islamic world over a speech he made implicitly linking Islam and violence.

“The Holy Father is extremely sorry that certain passages of his speech appeared offensive to Muslim believers and were interpreted in a way that does not correspond in any way to his intentions,” said the Vatican’s new secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone.

If someone is going to criticize Islam, they should first be sure they are able to stand up to the fierce rhetoric--and more--that the Moslem world will dish out.

Update: Arutz Sheva points out that Pope Doesn´t Quite Apologize to Muslims.

If so, then whatever will come of Pope Benedict's words has not yet run its course.

The Anchoress puts it this way:

Whether he is “media savvy” or not, Benedict has managed - in his very scholarly fashion - to apply a very hot drawing poultice to the enormous and festering boils of both radical Islamism and rampant secularism.

All the more reason to hope that the Pope has thought this thing through
The Anchoress has all kinds of links on the subject and in a subsequent post here.

If the JBlogosphere is looking for an opportunity to help focus attention on the threat of Islamism, here it is.

Technorati Tag: Pope Benedict XVI and Islam.

One Moderate Arab

From an OpEd in Tuesday's New York Post by Emilio Karim Dabul, a freelance writer and PR consultant living in New Jersey--and Arab Muslim.

WELL, here it is, five years late, but here just the same: an apology from an Arab-American for 9/11. No, I didn't help organize the killers or contribute in any way to their terrible cause. However, I was one of millions of Arab-Americans who did the unspeakable on 9/11: nothing.

The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.

Well, I'm sick of saying the truth only in private - that Arabs around the world, including Arab-Americans like myself, need to start holding our own culture accountable for the insane, violent actions that our extremists have perpetrated on the world at large.

Yes, our extremists and our culture.

Every single 9/11 hijacker was Arab and a Muslim. The apologists (including President Bush) tried to reassure us that 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam, but was a twisting of a great and noble religion. With all due respect, read the Koran, Mr. President. There's enough there for someone of extreme tendencies to find their way to a global jihad.

There's also enough there for someone of a different mindset to find a path to enlightenment and peace. Still, Rushdie had it right back in 2001: This does have to do with Islam.

A moderate Moslem is not someone who rejects violence because it is not working, but because it is wrong.

And he doesn't have to reject Islam in order to do that.

Technorati Tag: Islam and 9/11.

Does CAIR Want To Raise Your Taxes?

Think about it.

World Net Daily, among others, notes that

Ibrahim Hooper, the future CAIR spokesman, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 4, 1993: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

Under Moslem law, non-Muslims pay a tax called jizya. According to Wikipedia:

In states ruled by Islamic law, jizya or jizyah is a per capita tax imposed on non-Muslim adult males, known as dhimmis.

...In practice the word is applied to a special type of tax, levied on those who did not accept Islam, and applied for the benefit of the Muslim community.

...The imposition of jizya upon non-Muslims is mandated by the Qur'an 9:29:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden that which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

And Hooper is not alone. According to Daniel Pipes:

as reported by the San Ramon Valley Herald, CAIR Chairman Omar M. Ahmad told a crowd of California Muslims in July 1998, "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

And CAIR is not the only one that wants to put in practice the Moslem law that would impose the jizya. Imam Zaid Shakir, an American Muslim leader, is quoted by the New York Times as saying:

"Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said.

What are the chances of that happening?

In the US, we may forget Islam's past history of global conquest.
We may even ignore the Islamists' goal of world domination.
But higher taxes?
No red-blooded American will allow that!

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and CAIR and Jizya and Islamists and Dhimmis.

Al Qaeda To Attack U.S.--Now They Tell Us

Artuz Sheva reports Al-Qaeda Issues "Offer that Can't be Refused"

An Al-Qaeda video released on Saturday called on Americans and the rest of the Christian world to "repent" and convert to Islam. Expert: "This is the invitation that precedes the attack."

The newly released video, posted on an extremist Islamic website, contained footage of Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri and a man identified as Adam Yehiye Gadahn. Gadahn is an American convert to Islam, wanted by the FBI for his alleged role in developing Al-Qaeda propaganda in Pakistan.

“To Americans and the rest of Christendom we say, either repent [your] misguided ways and enter into the light of truth," Gadahn threatened, "or keep your poison to yourselves and suffer the consequences in this world and the next... But whatever you do don’t attempt to spread your misery and misguidance to our lands.”

“Muslims don’t need democracy to rid themselves of their homegrown despots and tyrants. What they do need is their Islamic faith, the sprit of jihad and the lifting of foreign troops and interference from their necks,” Gadahn stated. He read verses from the Koran in Arabic, and then translated them into English, calling on Muslims to strengthen their faith and expel their rulers.

Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch and author of several popular books on Islam, explained to Arutz-7's Nissan Ratzlav-Katz that the tape "appears to be the call to Islam that the Muslim Prophet Muhammed requires to be extended to infidels before they can be lawfully attacked by Muslims."

"Once that call is rejected," Spencer feels, "Muslims are required to begin hostilities in order to subjugate the infidel population in question and bring it into the Islamic social order. Thus it seems likely that terror attacks and/or attempted terror attacks will follow Gadahn's 'invitation' - although there is no certainty that they will follow within a certain time frame."

Al-Zawahri, also speaking on the tape, urged viewers to heed Gadahn's “Invitation to Islam. He stated ominously, "To the American people and the people of the West in general ... Allah sent his Prophet Muhammad with guidance and the religion of truth ... and sent him as a herald."

If Spencer is correct, then this call to 'accept Islam or face attack':

1. is a warning--unlike 9/11. How would Al Qaeda explain that--Practice?
2. amounts to 'convert or die'--what about "there is no coercion in religion." Religion no, Islam yes?

According to Answering Islam

S. A. Rahman makes the distinct claim:

This verse is one of the most important verses in the Qur'an, containing a charter of freedom of conscience unparalleled in the religious annals of mankind.... [1]

Compare that with what Raphael Patai writes in The Arab Mind about

the doctrine of Din Muhammad bi'l-sayf (literally, "The religion of Muhammad with the sword"), which required all Mulsims to spread Islam by the force of arms. [p.155]

After all, Islam's massive occupation during its heyday reached as far as Russia.

Rahman does admit that some commentators minimize the area covered by the 'no compulsion' verse, and claims with a straight face:

Such an interpretation can perhaps be attributed to the unconscious pressure of orthodox tradition. [emphasis added]

Have Rahman and his fellow apologists ever heard of Al Qaeda?

Technorati Tag: Al Qaeda and Terrorism and US and Islam.

Al Qaeda To Attack--Now They Tell Us

Artuz Sheva reports Al-Qaeda Issues "Offer that Can't be Refused"

An Al-Qaeda video released on Saturday called on Americans and the rest of the Christian world to "repent" and convert to Islam. Expert: "This is the invitation that precedes the attack."

The newly released video, posted on an extremist Islamic website, contained footage of Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri and a man identified as Adam Yehiye Gadahn. Gadahn is an American convert to Islam, wanted by the FBI for his alleged role in developing Al-Qaeda propaganda in Pakistan.

“To Americans and the rest of Christendom we say, either repent [your] misguided ways and enter into the light of truth," Gadahn threatened, "or keep your poison to yourselves and suffer the consequences in this world and the next... But whatever you do don’t attempt to spread your misery and misguidance to our lands.”

“Muslims don’t need democracy to rid themselves of their homegrown despots and tyrants. What they do need is their Islamic faith, the sprit of jihad and the lifting of foreign troops and interference from their necks,” Gadahn stated. He read verses from the Koran in Arabic, and then translated them into English, calling on Muslims to strengthen their faith and expel their rulers.

Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch and author of several popular books on Islam, explained to Arutz-7's Nissan Ratzlav-Katz that the tape "appears to be the call to Islam that the Muslim Prophet Muhammed requires to be extended to infidels before they can be lawfully attacked by Muslims."

"Once that call is rejected," Spencer feels, "Muslims are required to begin hostilities in order to subjugate the infidel population in question and bring it into the Islamic social order. Thus it seems likely that terror attacks and/or attempted terror attacks will follow Gadahn's 'invitation' - although there is no certainty that they will follow within a certain time frame."

Al-Zawahri, also speaking on the tape, urged viewers to heed Gadahn's “Invitation to Islam. He stated ominously, "To the American people and the people of the West in general ... Allah sent his Prophet Muhammad with guidance and the religion of truth ... and sent him as a herald."

If Spencer is correct, then this call to 'accept Islam or face attack':

1. is a warning--unlike 9/11. How would Al Qaeda explain that--Practice?
2. amounts to 'convert or die'--what about "there is no coercion in religion." Religion no, Islam yes?

According to Answering Islam

S. A. Rahman makes the distinct claim:

This verse is one of the most important verses in the Qur'an, containing a charter of freedom of conscience unparalleled in the religious annals of mankind.... [1]

Compare that with what Raphael Patai writes in The Arab Mind about

the doctrine of Din Muhammad bi'l-sayf (literally, "The religion of Muhammad with the sword"), which required all Mulsims to spread Islam by the force of arms. [p.155]

After all, Islam's massive occupation during its heyday reached as far as Russia.

Rahman does admit that some commentators minimize the area covered by the 'no compulsion' verse, and claims with a straight face:

Such an interpretation can perhaps be attributed to the unconscious pressure of orthodox tradition. [emphasis added]

Have Rahman and his fellow apologists ever heard of Al Qaeda?

Technorati Tag: Al Qaeda and Terrorism and US and Islam.

How Do You Define a 'Moderate' Moslem?

The dictionary definition of a moderate is "professing or characterized by political or social beliefs that are not extreme"

You'd think you knew what that means, except when talking about moderate Moslems.

Abbas is a moderate, not because he eschews violence, but because he 'recognizes' it has not been effective.

The Imam Zaid Shakir is apparently a moderate because he is willing to wait for the US to become a Moslem country under Islamic law.

Over at The Corner, Cliff May quotes from an interview with Pierre Rehov, a French documentary maker. His latest film is Suicide Killers, based on interviews he conducted with the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers.

At one point Rehov is asked whether the principal motivation of suicide bombers is religious.

Yes, it is their only conviction. They don't act to gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity. They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He tells them to do. …

The main difference between moderate Muslims and extremists is that moderate Muslims don't think they will see the absolute victory of Islam during their lifetime, therefore they respect other beliefs. The extremists believe that the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Islam and ruling the entire world as described in the Koran, is for today. Each victory of Bin Laden convinces 20 million moderate Muslims to become extremists. …

Rehov is not an expert on Islam, nor is it clear what forms the basis of his opinion. Nevertheless, why does the definition of the term 'moderate' change--and is accepted in its changed meaning--when talking about Islam? Why suddenly is a moderate accepted not as someone who actually eschews extremism as wrong, but someone who pragmatically eschews extremism because it is ineffective--but would gladly use extreme measures, such as violence, the moment they would be effective.

Can it be that there are no moderate Moslems?
Or is the media just afraid there might not be?

See also The Prototypical Hamas Moderate

Technorati Tag: Islam and Suicide Bombers and Pierre Rehov.

Muslim Baalei Teshuva in America

Geneive Abdo, liaison for the Alliance of Civilizations at the United Nations and author of Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11, has written a piece for the Washington Post that may not be reassuring.

According to the Amazon review of her book:

The younger generation of Muslims in particular is charting a different way of life. They are following new imams and placing their Muslim identity before their American one.

This is the theme of her article for the Washington Post as well, America's Muslims Aren't as Assimilated as You Think:

If only the Muslims in Europe -- with their hearts focused on the Islamic world and their carry-on liquids poised for destruction in the West -- could behave like the well-educated, secular and Americanizing Muslims in the United States, no one would have to worry.

So runs the comforting media narrative that has developed around the approximately 6 million Muslims in the United States, who are often portrayed as well-assimilated and willing to leave their religion and culture behind in pursuit of American values and lifestyle. But over the past two years, I have traveled the country, visiting mosques, interviewing Muslim leaders and speaking to Muslim youths in universities and Islamic centers from New York to Michigan to California -- and I have encountered a different truth. I found few signs of London-style radicalism among Muslims in the United States. At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.

According to Abdo, this is due not only to the overall resurgence of Islam worldwide, but also--paradoxically--a result of 9-11, which has led American Muslims to feel more isolated on the one hand, but also has pushed them to rediscover Islam.

From schools to language to religion, American Muslims are becoming a people apart. Young, first-generation American Muslim women -- whose parents were born in Egypt, Pakistan and other Islamic countries -- are wearing head scarves even if their mothers had left them behind; increasing numbers of young Muslims are attending Islamic schools and lectures; Muslim student associations in high schools and at colleges are proliferating; and the role of the mosque has evolved from strictly a place of worship to a center for socializing and for learning Arabic and Urdu as well as the Koran.

In a sense, on some level you might even call them Ba'alei Teshuva.

But in keeping to that comparison--everything depends on the Rebbe you follow:

Imam Zaid Shakir -- who teaches at San Francisco's Zaytuna Institute, America's only true madrassa -- refers to such young Muslims as the "rejectionist generation." They are rejectionist, he says, because they turn their backs not only on absolutist religious interpretations, but also on America's secular ways. Many of these young American Muslims look to Shakir (and to celebrated Zaytuna founder Hamza Yusuf) for guidance on how to live pious lives in the United States.

According to the New York Times, in an article on both of these men:

Both Mr. Shakir and Mr. Yusuf have a history of anti-American rhetoric, but with age, they have tempered their views. Mr. Shakir told the Houston audience that they are blessed to live in a country that is stable and safe, and in which they have thrived.

The question is: how tempered are those views and how does that view reflect itself in the Islam that they teach.

While leading a mosque in New Haven in 1992, Mr. Shakir wrote a pamphlet that cautioned Muslims not to be co-opted by American politics. He wrote, "Islam presents an absolutist political agenda, or one which doesn't lend itself to compromise, nor to coalition building."

While he did not denounce Muslims who take part in politics, he pointed out the effectiveness of "extrasystemic political action" — like the "armed struggle" that brought about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A copy of the pamphlet was found in the apartment of a suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993. Mr. Shakir says he was questioned by the F.B.I., but had no link to the man, and that was the end of it.

While studying in Syria a few years later, he visited Hama, a city that had tried to revolt against the Syrian ruler, Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Shakir said he saw mass graves and bulldozed neighborhoods, and talked with widows of those killed. He gave up on the idea of armed struggle, he said, "just seeing the reality of where revolution can end."

The impression you get from Shakir's words is that he gave up the idea of armed struggle for purely pragmatic reasons. But that does not mean he has given up on the idea of the struggle itself--or its goals: the takeover of the US.

He said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, "not by violent means, but by persuasion."

"Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said. "I think it would help people, and if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be a Muslim. Because Islam helped me as a person, and it's helped a lot of people in my community."

Maybe we just need more honest Moslems.
Or maybe they need different Rebbes.

Technorati Tag: Islam and Zaid Shakir and Hamza Yusuf.

Does It Even Matter What the Koran Says--Centanni Conversion

Here is the YouTube video of the conversion--it may take a minute to come up:


Reuters reports that Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig have been released by the Palestinian terrorists.

And what is the Reuters headline?

Kidnapped Fox journalists convert to Islam on video

Two kidnapped Fox journalists appeared on a new videotape released by their captors on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in which the reporters said they had converted to Islam, the Fox News Channel said.

...They were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading a statement which Fox said was an announcement that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes.

If that is indeed the highlight of the entire story, then maybe Reuters should tell the entire story, which is left to Fox News.

On the one hand, like Reuters, Fox provides the storyline that the Palestinians are anxious to push on a gullible world:

The day had begun with promises by senior Palestinian officials that the two would be released in coming hours.

At the same time, before the journalists' release, a new video was released, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes. Wiig, of New Zealand, delivered an anti-Western speech, his face expressionless and his tone halting. The kidnappers claimed both men had converted to Islam.

But Fox also gives Centanni's side of this part of the story as well:

Both of the men were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint, Centanni said.

"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint," Centanni told FOX News. "Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on."

The issue with Reuters pointedly making the conversion the headline is summed up by Andy McCarthy at The Corner:

Will Reuters, which thought the "conversion" was newsworthy, report on that?

Or will we get the usual slew of "mainstream" Muslim experts who tell us that in Islam "there is no compulsion in religion," and that jihad is "the inner struggle against sin"?

According to the Koran Surah 2:256: "There is no compulsion in religion"

Apparently holding people at gunpoint does not count.
Neither does forcing Jews and Christians to pay the jizya tax as part the package of living as second class citizens under Islam--dhimmis--count either, apparently.

On this verse, Michael Cook writes in The Koran: A Very Short Introduction:

It does not compromise the notion of absolute religious truth, but it strongly suggests that the true religion can nonetheless coexist with any and all forms of false religion. For the traditional scholars, as we will see later, such a declaration of unconditional - not to say indiscriminate - tolerance was an embarrassment; they had to find ways and means of getting it out of the way. [emphasis added]

But does it even matter what the Koran says when those 'traditional scholars'--who are clearly in control of Islam today--have obviously been very successful in getting this verse out of the way in practice.

These days it is just trotted out for show by groups like CAIR.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Centanni and Koran and Islam and Islamic Fascists and Terrorism.

The Koran and Reading Incomprehension

From Ann Althouse:

The NYT has what seems meant to read as a charming human interest piece about "children" -- really, boys -- who are sent to school in New York City for 9 hours a day to work exclusively on the task of memorizing the Koran.

But this level of devotion to Islam has a way of causing suspicion these days. While parents whose children are in the schools said they were proud of them, they also worry about how they will be perceived.

How they will be perceived? This isn't a matter of stimulating the supposed ethnic prejudice of Americans, it's blatantly violating the laws of compulsory schooling!

The young boys are taught that if they memorize the entire Koran, they will gain admittance to heaven and the right to choose 10 persons to bring along with them. If believed, this is a powerful incentive. There is a sense that the entire family is relying on him. Meanwhile, these boys -- who must be quite smart to have a shot at memorizing the 6,200 verses -- are deprived of all other education, including instruction in Arabic, the language of the text they are memorizing phonetically. (Nor are they provided with a translation: they are learning only to pronounce sounds.)

I'm out of town right now, but at home I have a copy of Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), where he writes about the significant number of Muslims who do not know what the Koran actually says.

I don't recall if he had more than annecdotal evidence for this claim, but this would seem to add credence to what he wrote.

Certainly knowing--and discussing--the text is part of learning, and memorizing Shas. The Baal Koreh's I know do more than just blindly memorize the Torah.

Then again, I suppose that blindly memorizing the Koran without having a clue as to what they are reading would be an essential tool to creating equally blind followers.

Except that this should not be happening on US soil.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Koran and Quran.

Did Everyone Get The Memo About The Holy War Against Israel?

Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command to Osama bin Laden, made an appearance in a video tape on Thursday, calling for

Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."

Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg asks that if a Holy War is being called for against Israel only now--what was going on between the Arab World and Israel till this point?

Then there is the other question:

Also, if al Qaeda wasn't already at maximum hostility to Israel, some of these "it's all about Israel" types need to account for that. I thought Israel was the Mother of All Root Causes for 9/11. If al Qaeda is only now focusing on Israel, maybe there was something else going on all along.

There was, but to admit that would mean recognizing the magnitude of the Islamist threat--something the West is still not ready to do.

One thing that Zawahri says that seems odd:

"We cannot just watch these shells as they burn our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and stand by idly, humiliated," he added.

And in Saudi Arabia:

The atrocities being committed in Lebanon once again provide us in the Arab world a superfluous, all too frequent and unnecessary reminder of the fact that our blood is cheap. As if Iraq wasn’t enough to prove to us our irrelevance in the global picture, further insults are being heaped onto our mounting sense of humiliation.

Is it just me or does it seem that historically they use the humiliation/victim theme alot--rumors about the Koran being flushed down toilets, Mohammed being vilified, holy sites being dishonored: all in order to energize the masses; usually ending in violence.

The Arabs have a history of achievement of which they are proud.
Pity they cannot respect the history--and lives--of others.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Islamists and Jihad and Zawahri.

The Difference Between Islamists and Rodney Dangerfield

In Misreading the Enemy, David Ignatius writes about the difficulty of negotiating with Iran and Al-Qaeda. Iran is theocratic regime, and therefore:

For a theocratic regime that claims a mandate from God, the very idea of compromise is anathema. Great issues of war and peace will be resolved by God's will, not by human negotiators. Better to lose than to bargain with the devil. Better to suffer physical hardship than humiliation.

He points to similar difficulties with Al-Qaeda and the fact that bin Laden has expressed the willingness to show patience and wait for the West to tire--"being patient and steady is much better, and the end counts."

Ignatius gets to his point at the end of his column:

A word that recurs in radical Muslim proclamations is "dignity." That is not a political demand, nor one that can be achieved through negotiation. Indeed, for groups that feel victimized, negotiation with a powerful adversary can itself be demeaning. That's why the unyielding Yasser Arafat remained popular among Palestinians, despite his failure to deliver concrete benefits. He was a symbol of pride and resistance. Hamas, too, gains support because of its rigid steadfastness, and a strategy that seeks to punish pro-Hamas Palestinians into compromise will probably fail for the same reason.

The Muslim demand for respect isn't something that can be negotiated, but that doesn't mean the West shouldn't take it seriously. For as the Muslim world gains a greater sense of dignity in its dealings with the West, the fundamental weapon of Iran, al-Qaeda and Hamas will lose much of its potency.

The problem is that Ignatius is himself misreads the enemy. What is dignity...what is respect? It is to be treated as an equal. Rodney Dangerfield's persona, in complaining about the lack of respect he got, was asking for nothing more than equality, to be treated like everyone else. However, what Islamists are demanding is not being treated as an equal.

It is all very well and good for Ignatius to write that "for a theocratic regime that claims a mandate from God, the very idea of compromise is anathema." However, in this case we are talking about the mandate as recorded in the Koran, on the basis of which Moslem countries have historically treated non-Moslems as dhimmis--second class citizens, with predictable results. And on the basis of which:

o Moslems in India claim the Taj Mahal
o Hamas demands the return of the Spanish city of Seville
o Other Islamists go one step further:

Unfortunately for Spain's Muslims, the militants who swear loyalty to Osama bin Laden are history buffs too. In claiming responsibility for the March bombings, they cited the loss of "Al Andalus" as motivation.

"We will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tarik Ben Ziyad," they said in a communique issued after the massacre, alluding to the Moorish warrior and original Islamic conqueror of the Iberian peninsula.

In a post from last year--Defender of the Faith--David Frum writes about “Islam in Britain,” a report by the UK Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, available from www.isic-centre.org. The report quotes Zaki Badawi, president of London’s Muslim College, holder of the Order of the British Empire, who is also widely recognized as the “unofficial leader, representative, and advocate of Britain’s mainline Muslims.” According to Mr. Badawi

”A proselytizing religion cannot stand still. It can either expand or contract. Islam endeavors to expand in Britain. … Islam is a universal religion. It aims at bringing its message to all corners of the earth. It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim community, the Umma...This reflects the historical fact that Muslims, from the start, lived under their own law. Muslim theologians naturally produced a theology with this in view – it is a theology of the majority. Being a minority was not seriously considered or even contemplated. … Muslim theology offers, up to the present, no systematic formulation of the status of being in a minority.” [ellipses added]

The report concludes:

”Muslims find it difficult to assume minority status in a majority non-Muslim society. More than other minority communities, they constantly, sometimes subconsciously, strive to redress the balance and assume an expanding and dominant position in their host countries.”

If, according to Ignatius, "as the Muslim world gains a greater sense of dignity in its dealings with the West, the fundamental weapon of Iran, al-Qaeda and Hamas will lose much of its potency," then why is it demanding ever more on the one hand, while seeking to put limits on the Western value of free speech and cultural symbols (going so far as to have the crown or the cross of St. George removed from police badges) on the other?

Technorati Tag: Islam and Islamists and Washington Post and Hamas and Moslem World and David Frum and Zaki Badawi.

Mohammed: Thomas Jefferson of Arabia?

Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.
Senator Lloyd Bentsen to Senator Dan Quayle during 1988 Vice Presidential Debate

On April 10, President Bush discussed the war on terror at John Hopkins Univesity, after which he answered questions from the students. Here is one of them:

I have a more general question about the United States' work to democratize the rest of the world. Many have viewed the United States' effort to democratize the world -- especially nations in the Middle East -- as an imposition or invasion on their sovereign rights. Considering that it was, in fact, the Prophet Mohammed who established the first known constitution in the world -- I'm referring to the constitution he wrote for the city of Medina --and that his life and the principles outlined in his constitution, such as the championing of the welfare of women, children and the poor, living as an equal among his people, dissolving disputes between the warring clans in Arabia, giving any man or woman in parliament the right to vote and guaranteeing respect for all religions, ironically parallel those principles that we hold most precious in our own Constitution. I'm wondering how might your recently formed Iraq Study Group under the U.S. Institute for Peace explore these striking similarities to forge a new relationship with Iraqis and educate Americans about the democratic principles inherent in Islam?

At The Corner, they give a link to an english translation of the Medina Constitution. One commentor notes an incongruity in that the document includes "A woman shall only be given protection with the consent of her family," and that the Athenian Constitution actually predates the Medina one by about 1000 years. But another commentor claims that:

Actually, that thing is pretty interesting. There's a lot of Jew-regulation (i.e. regulation of Jews), but some of it seems benign, given the period. It's certainly more friendly to Jews than, say, much of the stuff you find in the Arab press today (at least going by what Memri puts up).

This of course assumes 2 things:

o The line of the Medina Constitution that reads "(16) To the Jew who follows us belong help and equality. He shall not be wronged nor shall his enemies be aided" is translated from the Arabic accurately.

o This constitution, as translated, was actually put into effect.

Some things do seem to make the assumptions unlikely. First of all, Mohammed himself. As Mitchell Bard points out:

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to convert and rejected Muhammad, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled; in 627, Muhammad's followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.(3)

The Muslim attitude toward Jews is reflected in various verses throughout the Koran, the holy book of the Islamic faith. "They [the Children of Israel] were consigned to humiliation and wretchedness. They brought the wrath of God upon themselves, and this because they used to deny God's signs and kill His Prophets unjustly and because they disobeyed and were transgressors" (Sura 2:61). According to the Koran, the Jews try to introduce corruption (5:64), have always been disobedient (5:78), and are enemies of Allah, the Prophet and the angels (2:97­98).

Bernard Lewis, who generally downplays the disadvantages of the Dhimmi status, writes in The Jews of Islam, about the recent vintage of the claim of equality under Islam:

The claim to tolerance, now much heard from Muslim apologists and more especially from apologists for Islam, is also new and of alien origin. It is only very recently that some defenders of Islam have begun to assert that their socety in the past accorded equal status to non-Muslims. No such claim is made by spokesmen for resurgent Islam,' and historically there is no doubt that they are right. Traditional Islamic societies neither accorded such equality nor pretended that they were so doing. Indeed, in the old order, this would have been regarded not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. How could one accord the same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who willfully reject it? This would be a theological as well as a logical absurdity.

Mohammed as a Moslem Thomas Jefferson?
Not really.

More on the propogation of the myth of Islamic equality at Soccer Dad.

Technorati Tag: Mohammed and Islam and Medina Constitution.