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. . . ISLAM see: "ANTI-SEMITISM" see: "TERRORISM" see: "RELIGION" for other related links 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. --Council on American-Islamic Relations Chairman Omar M. Ahmad, speech [July 1998] We with Allah's help call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. --Osama bin Laden (19572011) Terrorist founder of Al-Qaeda. Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders World Islamic Front Statement [23 February 1998]. The Muslim may show only hostility to infidels when encountered: war against them is a religious duty. Idol-worshippers must always be attacked without more ado, Jews and Christians, however, only after they have ignored a summons, made three times, to accept Islam. After defeat the men are to be killed, women and children to be sold into slavery. Whoever is killed in the Holy War is sure of paradise, as a martyr. In addition, it is permitted to conclude treaties with Jews and Christians, following the example of the Prophet [ ] But the obligation of the Holy War is merely postponed by such contracts, not annulled [ ] --Carl Brockelmann (18681956) _History of the Islamic Peoples_ [1948] For a millennium, the struggle for mankind's destiny was between Christianity and Islam; in the twenty-first century, it may be so again. For, as the Shi'ites humiliate us, their co-religionists are filling up the countries of the West. --Patrick Buchanan (b. 1938) American journalist, author, and candidate for U.S. President. In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 939 [2004]. Cohan & Major add: The ultra-conservative Buchanan responds to the hostage crisis (1979-81) and to Moslem immigration into western Europe and North America. - Moslem children at a very early age undergo horrific indoctrination to hate Jews and Christians. We all had to go through Islamic education breeding fear, anger, Jihad and extreme criticism and rivalry of other religions. We were told stories beyond belief about Jews. We were told Jews were hated by God and should be eterminated. ... The mother of a suicide bomber said "Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr's death for the sake of Allah." This woman and many others like her are speaking and living a life that is against the normal impulses of Motherhood. The religious and political indoctrination through tyranny pushed her against herself and her child into insanity. --Nonie Darwish (b. 1949) Arab-American writer and public speaker. "Escaping Submission" - Western leaders keep saying after every terrorist attack, 'This is not about Islam.' Sorry, but this is all about Islam. It is about a war within Islam between a jihadist-fascist minority engaged in crimes against humanity in the name of Islam, and a passive Sunni silent majority. --Thomas Friedman (b. 1953) American journalist. "Silence and Suicide," in _The New York Times_ [12 October 2005]. - The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages. Students of history are sickened when they read of the long-ago, gruesome practice of beheading. How brutal were those societies that chopped off the heads of Cicero, Sir Thomas More and Marie Antoinette. And how lucky we thought we were to have evolved from such elemental barbarity. Twenty-four hundred years ago, Socrates was executed for unpopular speech. The 18th-century European Enlightenment gave people freedom to express views formerly censored by clerics and the state. Just imagine what life was like once upon a time when no one could write music, compose fiction or paint without court or church approval? Over 400 years before the birth of Christ, ancient Greek literary characters, from Lysistrata to Antigone, reflected the struggle for sexual equality. The subsequent notion that women could vote, divorce, dress or marry as they pleased was a millennia-long struggle. It is almost surreal now to read about the elemental hatred of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, 19th-century Russian pogroms or the Holocaust. Yet here we are revisiting the old horrors of the savage past. Beheading? As we saw with Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, our Neanderthal enemies in the Middle East have resurrected that ancient barbarity and married it with 21st-century technology to beam the resulting gore instantaneously onto our computer screens. Xerxes and Attila, who stuck their victims' heads on poles for public display, would've been thrilled by such a gruesome show. Who would have thought centuries after the Enlightenment that sophisticated Europeans in fear of radical Islamists would be afraid to write a novel, put on an opera, draw a cartoon, film a documentary or have their pope discuss comparative theology? The astonishing fact is not just that millions of women worldwide in 2006 are still veiled from head-to-toe, trapped in arranged marriages, subject to polygamy, honor killings and forced circumcision, or are without the right to vote or appear alone in public. What is more baffling is that in the West, liberal Europeans are often wary of protecting female citizens from the excesses of Sharia law sometimes even fearful of asking women to unveil their faces for purposes of simple identification and official conversation. [...] To grasp the flavor of our own Civil War, impersonators now don period dress and reconstruct the battles of Shiloh or Gettysburg. But we need no so such historical reenactment of the Dark Ages. You see, they are back with us live almost daily from the Middle East. --Victor Davis Hanson (b. 1953) American military historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. "The Dark Ages Live From the Middle East!" [26 October 2006] - Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. --David Hume (17111776) Scottish philosopher. _A Treatise of Human Nature_, bk I [1739] The representatives of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight. --Jamal Husseini, to the UN Security Council [16 April 1948] In Security Council Official Records, S/Agenda/58, p. 19 [16 April 1948]. - Did you ever read the Koran? I recommend it. What the Koran teaches people is aggression; and what we [Christians] teach our people is peace. ... Christianity aspires to peace and love. Islam is a religion that attacks. If you start teaching aggression to the whole community, you end up pandering to the negative elements in everyone. You know what that leads to: Such people will assault us. --Pope John Paul II [Karol Wojtyla] (19202005) The first non-Italian Pope since the 16th century. In Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi's _His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time_ [1996]. - - Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those (who say this) are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured (by the unbelievers)? Islam says: Kill them (the non-Muslims), put them to the sword and scatter (their armies). Does this mean sitting back until (non-Muslims) overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender to the enemy? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other (Quranic) psalms and Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim. --Ruhollah Khomeini (19021989) Iranian Shiite cleric who led the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979 and who was Iran's ultimate political and religious authority for the next 10 years. "Islam is not a Religion of Pacifists" [1942] The author of the Satanic Verses book [Salman Rushdie], which is against all Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all Moslems to execute them wherever they find them. --Ruhollah Khomeini (19021989) Ayatollah Khomeini was the founder and supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Fatwa against Salman Rushdie [14 February 1989]. - The history of Islam in recent times has been one of conflict with the evil machinations of England. Muslims all over the world should unite for a crusade to defeat the Americans and British who are the enemies of religion. It is very fortunate, indeed, that Java lives under the protection of the Dai Nippon Army. Let us, therefore, set up a Muslim volunteer corps on Java, so that it may become the trailblazer in the effort to destroy America and England. --Letter from Javanese Muslims to the Japanese commander-in-chief, in _Djawa Baroe_ [1 October 1943]. - - It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be pushed into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival. --Bernard Lewis (b. 1916) British-born American professor and Middle-Eastern scholar. "The Roots of Muslim Rage" in _Atlantic Monthly_, p. 60 [September 1990]. During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?" A few examples may suffice. During the troubles in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, there were many attacks on American installations and individuals notably the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, followed by a prompt withdrawal, and a whole series of kidnapping of Americans, both official and private, as well as of Europeans. There was only one attack on Soviet citizens, when one diplomat was killed and several others kidnapped. The Soviet response through their local agents was swift, and directed against the family of the leader of the kidnappers. The kidnapped Russians were promptly released, and after that there were no attacks on Soviet citizens or installations throughout the period of the Lebanese troubles. These different responses evoked different treatment. While American policies, institutions and individuals were subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim, colonial empire accumulated by the tsars in Asia passed unnoticed, as did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim beliefs and institutions. Most remarkable of all was the response of the Arab and other Muslim countries to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Washington's handling of the Tehran hostage crisis assured the Soviets that they had nothing to fear from the U.S. They already knew that they need not worry about the Arab and other Muslim governments. The Soviets already ruled or misruled half a dozen Muslim countries in Asia, without arousing any opposition or criticism. Initially, their decision and action to invade and conquer Afghanistan and install a puppet regime in Kabul went almost unresisted. After weeks of debate, the U.N. General Assembly finally was persuaded to pass a resolution "strongly deploring the recent armed intervention in Afghanistan." The words "condemn" and "aggression" were not used, and the source of the "intervention" was not named. Even this anodyne resolution was too much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no; Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the non-voting PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the Soviets. One might have expected that the recently established Organization of the Islamic Conference would take a tougher line. It did not. After a month of negotiation and manipulation, the Organization finally held a meeting in Pakistan to discuss the Afghan question. Two of the Arab states, South Yemen and Syria, boycotted the meeting. The representative of the PLO, a full member of this organization, was present, but abstained from voting on a resolution critical of the Soviet action; the Libyan delegate went further, and used this occasion to denounce the U.S. The Muslim willingness to submit to Soviet authority, though widespread, was not unanimous. The Afghan people, who had successfully defied the British Empire in its prime, found a way to resist the Soviet invaders. An organization known as the Taliban (literally, "the students") began to organize resistance and even guerilla warfare against the Soviet occupiers and their puppets. For this, they were able to attract some support from the Muslim world some grants of money, and growing numbers of volunteers to fight in the Holy War against the infidel conqueror. Notable among these was a group led by a Saudi of Yemeni origin called Osama bin Laden. To accomplish their purpose, they did not disdain to turn to the U.S. for help, which they got. In the Muslim perception there has been, since the time of the Prophet, an ongoing struggle between the two world religions, Christendom and Islam, for the privilege and opportunity to bring salvation to the rest of humankind, removing whatever obstacles there might be in their path. For a long time, the main enemy was seen, with some plausibility, as being the West, and some Muslims were, naturally enough, willing to accept what help they could get against that enemy. This explains the widespread support in the Arab countries and in some other places first for the Third Reich and, after its collapse, for the Soviet Union. These were the main enemies of the West, and therefore natural allies. Now the situation had changed. The more immediate, more dangerous enemy was the Soviet Union, already ruling a number of Muslim countries, and daily increasing its influence and presence in others. It was therefore natural to seek and accept American help. As Osama bin Laden explained, in this final phase of the millennial struggle, the world of the unbelievers was divided between two superpowers. The first task was to deal with the more deadly and more dangerous of the two, the Soviet Union. After that, dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy. We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility. From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000 all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places. Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary. More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences both for Islam and for America will be deep, wide and lasting. --Bernard Lewis (b. 1916) British-born American professor and Middle-Eastern scholar. "Was Osama Right?" in _The Wall Street Journal_ [16 May 2007]. - - I've been aware of madness in the Islamic world. I've written about it. The madness of people who have fallen behind technically, and who do not have the will to make the intellectual effort to catch up. I was aware of the religious hatred, I was aware of the indifference to life. I was aware of the anti-civilisation aspect of the new fundamentalism. But [until 9-11] I had no idea it had gone so far the madness. The idea of their strength is an illusion. Nothing is coming from within. The terrorists can fly a plane, but what they can't do is build a plane. What they can't do is build those towers. I think people have spoken much rubbish about that event. The poor revenging themselves on the rich! It's nothing but an aspect of religious hatred. And that is so hard to deal with, or even contemplate. You can deal with the poor striking out, but you can't deal with the threat of a universal religious war. --V.S. Naipaul (b. 1932) Trinidadian novelist and travel writer. Trinidadian novelist and travel writer. Interview in "Times" (London) [7 August 2002]. - It's ironic. If you don't say Islam is a religion of peace, they will kill you. ... If France just acquiesces to threats and intimidation while allowing radical Muslims to spread their message unhindered, it bodes ill not only for their society, but for the West. --Robert Spencer, on the death threats that led to the cancellation of the French edition of his book, _Islam Unveiled_, in "France's Rushdie Affair" [21 November 2003] The evil enemies entered the city [Jerusalem] with a rage which resembled that of infuriated beasts and irritated dragons. They gnashed their teeth in fury, bellowed like lions, hissed like serpents. They had no pity in their hearts but raced through the city, tearing with their teeth the flesh of the faithful, respecting neither male nor female, young nor old, priest nor monk ... but slaughtering all. --Antiochus Strategus 7th century Byzantine writer _Chronicle_, quoted in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_ [2004]. Cohan & Major explain: In 614 occurred the great disaster of the fall of Jerusalem to the Persians under the shah, Chosroes II (r. 590-628). The churches were destroyed, the relic of the Holy Cross was taken, and the Christian population was killed or enslaved. Holy war (Jihad) is an Arabic virtue, and a divine obligation: the Muslim is always mindful that his religion is a Qur'an and a sword ... the Muslim then is forever a warrior. --l-Azhar magazine, Cairo, the opening article by Ahmad Hasan az-Zayat [August 1959]. - Islam is Allah's religion for all human beings. It should be proclaimed and invite [people] to join it wisely and through appropriate preaching and friendly discussions. However, such methods may encounter resistance and the preachers may be prevented from accomplishing their duty then, Jihad and the use of physical force against the enemies become inevitable --_Islamic Culture_, a Palestinian textbook for 11th grade students. and see: The logical reason for executing a person who abandons Islam is the following: There is nothing in Islam that comes in contrast to human nature. Whoever joins Islam after recognizing its truth and after tasting its sweetness and then abandons it is in fact rebelling against truth and logic. Like any other regime, Islam has to protect itself therefore this punishment [execution] awaits the person who abandons it, because he is spreading doubt about Islam. Abandoning Islam is a crime that warrants a severe punishment. [The phases of punishment are]: Urging [the sinner] to recant immediately. Warning him of the implications of his persistence in abandoning Islam, namely warning him that he will be executed. Execute the sinner if he persists in [his decision to] abandon Islam. --ibid - We are the soldiers of God and we crave death violence will remain our only path. --statement issued by Islamic Jihad, 1980s - Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it ... have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind. --John Wesley (17031791) English preacher and founder, with his brother Charles, of the Methodist movement in the Church of England. "The Doctrine of Original Sin" in _Works_, ix [1841] ----- jihad (noun) 1. A holy war against enemies of Islam, undertaken by Muslims as a duty. 2. Any fanatical crusade for an ideal or principle. end page | IDAHO - IDIOTS | IDLENESS - ILLEGAL ALIENS | ILLNESS - IMMATURITY | IMMIGRATION & IMMORALITY | IMMORTALITY - IMPOSTORS | IMPRESSIONABLE - INDECISION | INDEPENDENCE - INDIANA | INDIFFERENCE - INDIVIDUALITY | INDOCTRINATION - INFORMATION | INGRATITUDE - INNOVATION | INNUENDO - INSPIRATION | INSULTS - INTEGRITY | INTELLECTUALS - INTENTIONS | INTERESTED(ING) - INTUITION | INVENTIONS - ITALY | IRAQ | ISLAM | JAIL - JOGGING | JOHNSON (LYNDON) - JOY | JOURNALISM | JUDGE (TO) - JUSTICE | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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