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Today many, including President
George W. Bush, classify Islam as a religion of peace. When reading the Bible, Christ stated in Matthew
5:39 “But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also.”
Even in the Old Testament which is filled arguably more with wrath than is the New Testament, Leviticus
19:18 states "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of
your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”
Those passages present a spirit of peacefulness and yet Christianity is not called
a religion of peace and Islam is, so it is important to look at Islam and what it really teaches.
Much of this site comes from the work by Gregory M.Davis at Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/
and Paul Wilson
THE QURAN -- BOOK OF ALLAH
According to Islamic teaching, the Quran came down as a series of revelations from Allah (See below 1)
through the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, who then dictated it to his followers.
The Quran is about as long as the Christian New Testament. It comprises 114
suras (a chapter of the Quran; Quranic passages are cited as Sura number: verse number, e.g., 9:5.). According to
Islamic doctrine, it was around 610 AD in a cave near the city of Mecca (now in southwest Saudi Arabia) that Muhammad received the
first revelation from Allah by way of the Archangel Gabriel.
While in Mecca, Muhammad showed great respect for the monotheism religions of the Christian and Jewish
inhabitants.The Allah of the Quran claimed to be the same God worshiped by Jews and Christians, who now revealed
himself to the Arab people through his chosen messenger, Muhammad. It is the Quranic revelations that came later
in Muhammad's career, after he and the first Muslims left Mecca for the city of Medina,
that transformed Islam from a relatively benign form of monotheism into an expansionary, military-political ideology
that persists to this day.
Orthodox Islam does not accept that a rendering of the Quran into another language is
a "translation" in the way that the King James or NIV Bibles are
translations of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. A point
often made by Islamic apologists to defang criticism is that only
Arabic readers may understand the Quran. Arabic is a language like
any other and fully capable of translation, thus such a claim is false.
Those Westerners who manage to pick up a
translation of the Quran are often left bewildered as to its meaning
thanks to ignorance of a critically important principle of Quranic
interpretation known as "abrogation".
The principle of abrogation -- al-naskh wa al-mansukh (the
abrogating and the abrogated) -- directs that verses revealed later
in Muhammad's career "abrogate" -- i.e., cancel and replace --
earlier ones whose instructions they may contradict. Thus, passages
revealed later in Muhammad's career, in
Medina, overrule passages revealed earlier, in Mecca. The Quran itself lays out
the principle of abrogation:
2:106. Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate
or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it.
Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?
It seems that 2:106 was revealed in response to
skepticism directed at Muhammad that Allah's revelations were not
entirely consistent over time. Muhammad's rebuttal was that "Allah
is able to do all things" -- even change his mind.
To confuse matters further, though the Quran
was revealed to Muhammad sequentially over some twenty years' time,
it was not compiled in chronological order. When the Quran was
finally collated into book form under Caliph Uthman, the suras were
ordered from longest to shortest with no connection whatever to the
order in which they were revealed or to their thematic content. In
order to find out what the Quran says on a given topic, it is
necessary to examine the other Islamic sources that give clues as to
when in Muhammad's lifetime the revelations occurred. Upon such
examination, one discovers that the Meccan suras, revealed at a time
when the Muslims were vulnerable, are generally benign; the later
Medinan suras, revealed after Muhammad had made himself the head of
an army, are favoring or inclined to starting quarrels or wars.
Let us take, for example, 50:45 and Sura 109, both revealed in Mecca 50:45.
We know of best what they say; and you (O Muhammad)
are not a tyrant over them (to force them to Belief). But warn by
the Qur'an, him who fears My Threat.
109:1. Say (O Muhammad to these Mushrikun and Kafirun): "O
Al-Kafirun (disbelievers in Allah, in His Oneness, in His Angels, in
His Books, in His Messengers, in the Day of Resurrection, and in
Al-Qadar {divine foreordainment and sustaining of all
things}!
109:2. "I worship not that which you worship,
109:3. "Nor will you worship that which I worship.
109:4. "And I shall not worship that which you are worshiping.
109:5. "Nor will you worship that which I worship.
109:6. "To you be your religion, and to me my religion (Islamic Monotheism)."
In contrast, take 9:5, commonly referred to as the "Verse of the Sword", revealed toward the end
of Muhammad's life:9:5. Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and
12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the
Mushrikun {unbelievers, Christians} wherever you find them, and capture them and
besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if
they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat {the Islamic
ritual prayers}), and give Zakat {alms}, then leave their way free.
Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Having been revealed later in Muhammad’s life than 50:45 and 109, the Verse of
the Sword abrogates (cancels, nullifies) Islam's peaceful verses in accordance with
2:106.
Sura 8, which was revealed shortly before Sura 9, demonstrates
a similar theme:
8:39. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah
(disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah)
and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole
of the world]. But if they cease (worshiping others besides Allah),
then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.
9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah,
nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and
His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth
(i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and
Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and
feel themselves subdued.
9:33. It is He {Allah} Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad)
with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it superior
over all religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans,
idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate
(it).
The Quran's commandments to Muslims to wage war in the name of Allah against non-Muslims are unmistakable. They are,
furthermore, absolutely authoritative as they were revealed late in the Prophet's career and so cancel and replace earlier instructions
to act peaceably. Without knowledge of the principle of abrogation, Westerners will continue to misread the Quran and misdiagnose Islam
as a "religion of peace."
THE SUNNAH -- "WAY" OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD AND SIRA
In Islam, Muhammad is considered al-insan al-kamil (the "ideal man"). Muhammad is in no way considered divine,
nor is he worshipped (no image of Muhammad is permitted lest it encourage idolatry),
but he is the model par excellence for all Muslims in how they should conduct themselves. It is through
Muhammad's personal teachings and actions -- which make up the "way of the Prophet," the Sunnah -- that Muslims discern what is a good
and holy life. Knowledge of the Sunnah comes primarily from the hadiths ("report"; any of thousands of episodes from the life of
Muhammad transmitted orally until written down in the eighth century AD) and are second only to the Quran in authority.) and from the
Sira ("life"; abbreviation of Sirat Rasul Allah, or "Life of the Prophet of God"; the canonical biography of the Prophet Muhammad)
composed by one of Islam's great scholars, Muhammad bin Ishaq, in
the eighth century AD.
There are thousands upon thousands of hadiths,some running to multiple pages, some barely a few lines in length.
When the hadiths were first compiled in the eighth century AD, it became obvious that many were inauthentic.
The early Muslim scholars of hadith spent tremendous labor trying to determine which hadiths
were authoritative and which were suspect. The hadiths on this page come exclusively from the most reliable and authoritative
collection, Sahih Al-Bukhari , recognized as sound by all schools of Islamic scholarship.
Because Muhammad is himself the measuring stick of morality, his actions are not judged according to an independent moral standard but rather establish what
the standard for Muslims properly is.
Volume 7, Book 62,
Number 88; Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the
(marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and
consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and
she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his
death).(see 8 below)
Volume 8, Book 82,
Number 795; Narrated Anas: The Prophet cut off
the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and
did not cauterise (their bleeding limbs) till they died. (see 9 below)
Volume 2, Book 23,
Number 413; Narrated Abdullah bin Umar:
The Jews Medina brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have
committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of
them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral
prayers beside the mosque. (see 10 below)
Volume 1, Book 2,
Number 25; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle
was asked, "What is the best deed?" He replied, "To believe in Allah
and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, "What is the
next (in goodness)?" He replied, "To participate in Jihad (religious
fighting) in Allah's Cause." (see 11 below)
Muhammad's prophetic career is meaningfully divided into two segments: the first in
Mecca , where he labored for fourteen years to make converts to Islam; and later in the city of Medina where
he became a powerful political and military leader. In Mecca, we see a quasi-Biblical figure,
preaching repentance and charity, harassed and rejected by those around him. Later, in Medina, we see an able commander
and strategist who systematically conquered and killed those who opposed him. It is the later years of Muhammad's life, from 622 AD
to his death in 632, that are rarely broached in polite company. In 622, when the Prophet was better than fifty years old, he and his
followers made the Hijra (emigration or flight), from Mecca to the oasis of Yathrib -- later renamed Medina -- some 200 miles to the
north. Muhammad's new monotheism had angered the pagan leaders of Mecca, and the flight to Medina was precipitated by a probable attempt on Muhammad's life. Shortly before
Muhammad fled the hostility of Mecca a new batch of Muslim converts pledged their loyalty to him on a
hill outside Mecca called Aqaba.
Ishaq here conveys in the Sira the significance of this event:
Sira, p208: When God gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the
second {oath of allegiance at} Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of fealty. Now they {Muhammad's
followers} bound themselves to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle, while he promised them for faithful service thus
the reward of paradise.
That Muhammad's
nascent religion underwent a significant change at this point is
plain. The scholarly Ishaq clearly intends to impress on his
(Muslim) readers that, while in its early years, Islam was a
relatively tolerant creed that would "endure insult and forgive the
ignorant," Allah soon required Muslims "to war against all and
sundry for God and his Apostle." The Islamic calendar testifies to
the paramouncy of the Hijra by setting year one from the date of its
occurrence. The year of the Hijra, 622 AD, is considered more
significant than the year of Muhammad's birth or death or that of
the first Quranic revelation because Islam is first and foremost a
political-military enterprise. It was only when Muhammad left
Mecca with his paramilitary band that Islam achieved its proper political-military
articulation. The years of the Islamic calendar (which employs lunar
months) are designated in English "AH" or "After Hijra."
SHARIA LAW
Unlike many religions, Islam includes a
mandatory and highly specific legal and political plan for society
called Sharia which translates approximately as
"way" or "path." The precepts of Sharia are derived from the
commandments of the Quran and the Sunnah (the teachings and
precedents of Muhammad as found in the reliable hadiths and the
Sira). Together, the Quran and the Sunnah establish the dictates of
Sharia, which is the blueprint for the good Islamic society. Because
Sharia originates with the Quran and the Sunnah, it is not optional.
Sharia is the legal code ordained by Allah for all mankind. To
violate Sharia or not to accept its authority is to commit rebellion
against Allah, which Allah's faithful are required to
combat.
There is no separation between the religious and the political in Islam(See 2 below); rather Islam and Sharia constitute a
comprehensive means of ordering society at every level. While it is in theory possible for an Islamic society to have different outward
forms -- an elective system of government, a hereditary monarchy, etc. -- whatever the outward structure of the government, Sharia is
the prescribed content. It is this fact that puts Sharia into conflict with forms of government based on anything other than the
Quran and the Sunnah.
The precepts of Sharia may be divided into two
parts:
| Acts of worship (al-ibadat): |
Human interaction (al-muamalat) |
| Ritual Purification (Wudu) |
Financial transactions |
| Prayers (Salah) |
Marriage, divorce, and child care |
| Fasts (Sawm and Ramadan) |
Food and drink |
| Charity (Zakat) |
War and peace |
| Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) |
Judicial matters & Penal
punishments |
As
one may see, there are few aspects of life that Sharia does not
specifically govern. It seems fair then to classify Islam and its
Sharia code as a form of totalitarianism.
JIHAD
Jihad literally translates as "struggle." Strictly speaking, jihad does not mean "holy war" as Muslim
apologists often point out. However, the question remains as to what sort of "struggle" is meant: an inner, spiritual struggle against
the passions, or an outward, physical struggle.
Below are excerpts from Hasan Al-Banna's treatise, Jihad (italics). In 1928, Al-Banna founded the Muslim
Brotherhood, which today is the most powerful organization in
Egypt after the
government itself. In this treatise, Al-Banna cogently argues that Muslims must take up arms against unbelievers. As he
says, "The verses of the Qur'an and the Sunnah summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and
the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea"
fighting."
Al-Banna clarifies that this is not just a fringe element of fanatical Muslims
"Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great
importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted
similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward. Furthermore,
Allah has specifically honoured the Mujahideen {those who wage jihad} with certain exceptional qualities, both spiritual and
practical, to benefit them in this world and the next. Their pure blood is a symbol of victory in this world and the mark of success
and felicity in the world to come."
Al-Banna adds that there is punishment for those Muslims who do not undertake Jihad.
"Those who can only find excuses,however, have been warned of extremely dreadful punishments and
Allah has described them with the most unfortunate of names. He has reprimanded them for their cowardice and lack of spirit, and
castigated them for their weakness and truancy. In this world, they
will be surrounded by dishonour and in the next they will be surrounded by the fire from which they shall not escape though they
may possess much wealth. The weaknesses of abstention and evasion of jihad are regarded by Allah as one of the major sins, and one of the
seven sins that guarantee failure."
Hanafi
School, said: "Jihad linguistically means to exert
one's utmost effort in word and action; in the Sharee'ah {Sharia --
Islamic law} it is the fighting of the unbelievers, and involves all
possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the
enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth,
destroying their places of worship and smashing their idols. This
means that jihad is to strive to the utmost to ensure the strength
of Islam by such means as fighting those who fight you and the
dhimmies {non-Muslims living under Islamic rule} (if they violate
any of the terms of the treaty) and the apostates (who are the worst
of unbelievers, for they disbelieved after they have affirmed their
belief).It is fard (obligatory) on us to fight with
the enemies. The Imam must send a military expedition to the
Dar-al-Harb {House of War -- the non-Muslim world} every year at
least once or twice, and the people must support him in this. If
some of the people fulfill the obligation, the remainder are
released from the obligation. If this fard kifayah (communal
obligation) cannot be fulfilled by that group, then the
responsibility lies with the closest adjacent group, and then the
closest after that etc., and if the fard kifayah cannot be fulfilled
except by all the people, it then becomes a fard 'ayn (individual
obligation), like prayer on everyone of the people.
The scholarly people are of one opinion on
this matter as should be evident and this is irrespective of whether
these scholars were Mujtahideen or Muqalideen and it is irrespective
of whether these scholars were salaf (early) or khalaf (late). They
all agreed unanimously that jihad is a fard kifayah imposed upon the
Islamic ummah in order to spread the Da'wah of Islam, and that jihad
is a fard 'ayn if an enemy attacks Muslim lands. Today, my brother,
the Muslims as you know are forced to be subservient before others
and are ruled by disbelievers. Our lands have been besieged, and our
hurruma'at (personal possessions, respect, honour, dignity and
privacy) violated. Our enemies are overlooking our affairs, and the
rites of our din are under their jurisdiction. Yet still the Muslims
fail to fulfill the responsibility of Da'wah that is on their
shoulders. Hence in this situation it becomes the duty of each and
every Muslim to make jihad. He should prepare himself mentally and
physically such that when comes the decision of Allah, he will be
ready.
Dar al-Islam=House of Islam and Dar al-harb=House of War
The violent injunctions of the Quran and the
violent precedents set by Muhammad set the tone for the Islamic view
of politics (See 3,4,5,6,7 below) and of world history. Islamic scholarship divides the
world into two spheres of influence, the House of Islam (dar
al-Islam) and the House of War (dar al-harb). Islam means
submission, and so the House of Islam includes those nations that
have submitted to Islamic rule, which is to say those nations ruled
by Sharia law.
The rest of the world, which has not accepted Sharia
law and so is not in a state of submission, exists in a state of
rebellion or war with the will of Allah. It is incumbent on dar
al-Islam to make war upon dar al-harb until such time that all
nations submit to the will of Allah and accept Sharia law. Islam's
message to the non-Muslim world is the same now as it was in the
time of Muhammad and throughout history: submit or be conquered. The
only times since Muhammad when dar al-Islam was not actively at war
with dar al-harb were when the Muslim world was too weak or divided
to make war effectively.
But the lulls in the ongoing war that the
House of Islam has declared against the House of War do not indicate
a forsaking of jihad as a principle but reflect a change in
strategic factors. It is acceptable for Muslim nations to declare
hudna, or truce, at times when the infidel nations are too powerful
for open warfare to make sense. Jihad is not a collective suicide
pact even while "killing and being killed" (Sura 9:111) is
encouraged on an individual level. For the past few hundred years,
the Muslim world has been too politically fragmented and
technologically inferior to pose a major threat to the West. But
that is changing.
Due to the state of war between dar al-Islam
and dar al-harb, reuses de guerre, i.e., systematic lying to the
infidel, must be considered part and parcel of Islamic tactics.
The parroting by Muslim organizations throughout dar al-harb that
"Islam is a religion of peace," or that the origins of Muslim
violence lie in the unbalanced psyches of particular individual
"fanatics," must be considered as disinformation intended to
induce the infidel world to let down its guardd. Of course,
individual Muslims may genuinely regard their religion as "peaceful"
-- but only insofar as they are ignorant of its true teachings, or
in the sense of the Egyptian theorist Sayyid Qutb, who posited in
his Islam and Universal Peace that true peace would prevail in the
world just as soon as Islam had conquered it.
A telling point is that, while Muslims who
present their religion as peaceful abound throughout dar al-harb,
they are nearly non-existent in dar al-Islam. A Muslim apostate once
suggested to me a litmus test for Westerners who believe that Islam
is a religion of "peace" and "tolerance": try making that point on a
street corner in Ramallah, or Riyadh, or Islamabad, or anywhere in the
Muslim world. He assured the person wouldn't live
five minutes.
A problem concerning law and order {with
respect to Muslims in dar al-harb} arises from an ancient Islamic
legal principle -- that of taqiyya, a word the root meaning of which
is "to remain faithful" but which in effect means "dissimulation."
It has full Quranic authority (3:28 and 16:106) and allows the
Muslim to conform outwardly to the requirements of unislamic or
non-Islamic government, while inwardly "remaining faithful" to
whatever he conceives to be proper Islam, while waiting for the tide
to turn as did the 9/11 hijackers prior to their suicide
mission.
The Prophet said, "War is deceit."
Historically, examples of taqiyya include
permission to renounce Islam itself in order to save one's neck or ingratiate oneself with
an enemy. It is not hard to see that the implications of taqiyya are
insidious in the extreme: they essentially render negotiated
settlement -- and, indeed, all veracious communication between dar
al-Islam and dar al-harb -- impossible. It should not, however, be
surprising that a party to a war should seek to mislead the other
about its means and intentions. Jihad Watch's own Hugh Fitzgerald
sums up taqiyya
and kitman, a related form of deception.
"Taqiyya" is the
religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi'a Islam but
now practiced by non-Shi'a as well, of deliberate dissimulation
about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and
the Believers. A related term, of broader application, is "kitman,"
which is defined as "mental reservation." An example of "Taqiyya"
would be the insistence of a Muslim apologist that "of course" there
is freedom of conscience in Islam, and then quoting that Qur'anic
verse -- "There shall be no compulsion in religion." {2:256} But the
impression given will be false, for there has been no mention of the
Muslim doctrine of abrogation, or naskh , whereby such an early verse
as that about "no compulsion in religion" has been cancelled out by
later, far more intolerant and malevolent verses. In any case,
history shows that within Islam there is, and always has been,
"compulsion in religion" for Muslims, and for non-Muslims.
"Kitman" is close to
"taqiyya," but rather than outright dissimulation, it consists in
telling only a part of the truth, with "mental reservation"
justifying the omission of the rest. One example may suffice. When a
Muslim maintains that "jihad" really means "a spiritual struggle,"
and fails to add that this definition is a recent one in Islam
(little more than a century old), he misleads by holding back, and
is practicing "kitman." When he adduces, in support of this doubtful
proposition, the hadith in which Muhammad, returning home from one
of his many battles, is reported to have said (as known from a chain
of transmitters, or isnad), that he had returned from "the Lesser
Jihad to the Greater Jihad" and does not add what he also knows to
be true, that this is a "weak" hadith, regarded by the
most-respected muhaddithin as of doubtful authenticity, he is
further practicing "kitman."
In times when the greater strength of dar
al-harb necessitates that the jihad take an indirect approach, the
natural attitude of a Muslim to the infidel world must be one of
deception and omission. Revealing frankly the ultimate goal of dar
al-Islam to conquer and plunder dar al-harb when the latter holds
the military trump cards would be strategic idiocy. Fortunately for
the jihadists, most infidels do not understand how one is to read
the Quran, nor do they trouble themselves to find out what Muhammad
actually did and taught, which makes it easy to give the impression
through selective quotations and omissions that "Islam is a religion
of peace." Any infidel who wants to believe such fiction will
happily persist in his mistake having been cited a handful of Meccan
verses and told that Muhammad was a man of great piety and charity.
Digging only slightly deeper is sufficient to dispel the
falsehood.
DHIMMITUDE
Islam's persecution of non-Muslims is in no way
limited to jihad, even though that is the basic relationship between
the Muslim and non-Muslim world. After the jihad concludes in a
given area with the conquest of infidel territory, the dhimma, or
treaty of protection, may be granted to the conquered "People of the
Book" -- historically, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The
dhimma provides that the life and property of the infidel are
exempted from jihad for as long as the Muslim rulers permit, which
has generally meant for as long as the subject non-Muslims -- the
dhimmi -- prove economically useful to the Islamic state. The Quran
spells out the payment of the jizya
(poll- or head-tax; Sura 9:29),
which is the most conspicuous means by which the Muslim overlords
exploit the dhimmi. But the jizya is not merely economic in its
function; it exists also to humiliate the dhimmi and impress on him
the superiority of Islam.
Al-Maghili, a fifteenth century
Muslim theologian, explains:
On the day of payment
{of the jizya} they {the dhimmi} shall be assembled in a public
place like the suq {place of commerce}. They should be standing
there waiting in the lowest and dirtiest place. The acting officials
representing the Law shall be placed above them and shall adopt a
threatening attitude so that it seems to them, as well as to others,
that our object is to degrade them by pretending to take their
possessions. They will realize that we are doing them a favor in
accepting from them the jizya and letting them go free.
Islamic law codifies various other restrictions
on the dhimmi, all of which derive from the Quran and the Sunnah.
Several hundred years of Islamic thought on the right treatment of
dhimmi peoples is summed up by Al-Damanhuri, a seventeenth century
head of Al-Azhar University in
Cairo, the most prestigious center for learning in the Muslim world:
… just as the dhimmis
are prohibited from building churches, other things also are
prohibited to them. They must not assist an unbeliever against a
Muslim … raise the cross in an Islamic assemblage … display banners
on their own holidays; bear arms … or keep them in their homes.
Should they do anything of the sort, they must be punished, and the
arms seized. …
The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian peoples
of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe suffered under the
oppressive strictures of the dhimma for centuries. The status of
these dhimmi peoples is comparable in many ways to that of former
slaves in the post-bellum American South. Forbidden to construct
houses of worship or repair extant ones, economically crippled by
the jizya, socially humiliated, legally discriminated against, and
generally kept in a permanent state of weakness and vulnerability by
the Muslim overlords, it should not be surprising that their numbers
dwindled, in many places to the point of extinction. The generally
misunderstood decline of Islamic civilization over the past several
centuries is easily explained by the demographic decline of the
dhimmi populations, which had provided the principle engines of
technical and administrative competence.
Should the dhimmi violate the conditions of the
dhimma -- perhaps through practicing his own religion indiscreetly
or failing to show adequate deference to a Muslim -- then the jihad
resumes. At various times in Islamic history, dhimmi peoples rose
above their subjected status, and this was often the occasion for
violent reprisals by Muslim populations who believed them to have
violated the terms of the dhimma. Medieval Andalusia (Moorish Spain)
is often pointed out by Muslim apologists as a kind of multicultural
wonderland, in which Jews and Christians were permitted by the
Islamic government to rise through the ranks of learning and
government administration. What we are not told, however, is that
this relaxation of the disabilities resulted in widespread rioting
on the part of the Muslim populace that killed hundreds of dhimmis,
mainly Jews. By refusing to convert to Islam and straying from the
traditional constraints of the dhimma (even at the behest of the
Islamic government, which was in need of capable manpower), the
dhimmi had implicitly chosen the only other option permitted by the Quran: death.
JIHAD THROUGH HISTORY
The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
Near the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters
to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his
authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's
expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the
one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should
have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the
peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar,
Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and
other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East,
Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.
Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of
Byzantium Persia, and Western Europe in the
decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian
powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered
little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim
armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and
Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally
into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at
the Battle of Poitiers/Tours , not far from
Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the
jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia
Almost overnight, the more advanced
civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and
Iberia saw their
agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or
plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to
negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands
suffered were very nearly complete.
Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's
expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an
inestimable service through the compilation and translation of
numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic
conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic
history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the
history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of
churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace.
Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion
of Cappodocia (southern Turkey in 650 AD under
Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the
Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all
the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no
one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set
to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures]
that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into
slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much
debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed
immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country
rejoicing.
The following description by the Muslim
historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding
expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth
centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the
destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
Hisham, prince of
Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid
b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as
Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where
there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed
the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He
then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions,
then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the
Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several
months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women,
killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging
everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder.
This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine,
Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn
Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south
through Spain, east across North Africa to
India, and north to
Russia. Early in the
second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly
weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
Some twenty-five years before the first
Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the
Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine
Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the
Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of
Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous
defeat, which left much of Anatolia Turkey open to invasion.
This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading
Latin Armies during the Crusades but, by the beginning of the 14th
century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.
In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by
bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in
1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In
Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One
of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and
the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in
1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the
Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly
slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century,
Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern
Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet
II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to
the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully
capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah.
Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following
the final assault on Constantinople Several thousand
of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles,
servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and
nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph}
Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of
course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least
four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at
noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to
climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to
Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the
inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and
taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest
commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked
that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish
soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine
{XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan
ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs
under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The
head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the
Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand
Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for
the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and
citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and
decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim
commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the
pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him
This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its
farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in
the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown
back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King,
John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were
driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected
from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial
jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian
territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery
from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
Jihad in the Modern Era
Following its defeat at the walls of Vienna, Austria in 1683,
Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated
by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness
vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale
military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then
ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the
increasingly predatory European powers.
In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman
government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire's non-Muslim
subjects labored. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for
social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also
fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation
of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over
unbelievers.
By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the
Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly
rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that
resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its
Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim
groups seeking independence.
It was in this atmosphere that the first
stage of the Armenian genocide took
place in 1896 with the slaughter
of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel
took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The
Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the
massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger
holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While
various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking
that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the
Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914,
as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central
powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.
To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the
Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world
to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,”
the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the
verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right,
and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.”
In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German
ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our
enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has
appeared. All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children
must fulfill their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the
subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills
even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule
over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by
God.”
The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922
at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred
by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships.
All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the
first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish
government.
Since the breakup of the Islamic Empire
following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the
globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist
groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against
Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land
formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that
fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the
Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the
Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens
against the Russians in the Caucasus.
Jihads have also been waged
throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of
other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming
majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed
by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01
in the USA, 3/11/04 in Spain, and 7/7/05 in UK. (For a more
comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visit www.thereligionofpeace.com.)
The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the
world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is
making a comeback. The second-largest religion in the world after
Christianity, Islam is also the fastest-growing religion. In the
United States, for example, nearly 80 percent of the more than 1,200 mosques have been built in the past 12 years.
In 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans - head of the Church of England) stated "it could help build a better and
more cohesive society if Muslims were able to choose to have marital disputes or financial
matters, for example, dealt with in a sharia court. The adoption of some elements of sharia law "seems unavoidable".
So our staunchest ally and country from which the United States was formed has its highest Christian leader stating that
England should use Sharia law! A report by the Church of England and endorsed by the Archbishop of York says the UK Government has become “unbalanced” in its
approach and that the Government has been diverting state funds towards Muslim groups and away from Christian groups
wanting to help the poor. An excerpt stated "The Equality Unit gave Muslim groups £1.5 million of public money,
compared with £137,500 given to Christian charities and £110,000 given to Jewish organisations."
CONCLUSION
The chief barrier today to a better
understanding of Islam -- apart, perhaps, from outright fear -- is
sloppy language. Let us take, to start with, the much-vaunted "war
on terror." Upon scrutiny, the phrase "war on terror" makes as much
sense as a war on "blitzkrieg," "bullets," or "strategic bombing."
The "war on terror" implies that it is perfectly fine if the enemy
seeks to destroy us -- and, indeed, succeeds in doing so -- as long
as he does not employ "terror" in the process. "Terrorism," it
should be obvious, is a tactic or stratagem used to advance a goal;
it is the goal of Islamic terrorism that we must come to understand,
and this logically requires an understanding of Islam.
As we have seen, contrary to the widespread
insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its
adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that
engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and
indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal
faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and
permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and
individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social,
governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those
cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance
exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be
forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term
"Islamo-fascism" is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of
fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes
the powers of the state.
The spectacular acts of Islamic terrorism in
the late 20th and early 21st centuries are but the most recent
manifestation of a global war of conquest that Islam has been waging
since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century AD and
that continues apace today. This is the simple, glaring truth that
is staring the world today in the face -- and which has stared it in
the face numerous times in the past -- but which it seems few today
are willing to contemplate.
It is important to realize that we have been
talking about Islam -- not Islamic "fundamentalism," "extremism,"
"fanaticism," "Islamo-fascism," or "Islamism," but Islam proper,
Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced
by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present.
The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries are due largely to the geostrategic changes
following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options
available to terrorists.
With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much
of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the
Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly
possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe.
In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against
the non-Muslim world is because they can.
It is paramount to note, however, that, even if
no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam
still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would
simply mean a change in Islam’s tactics -- perhaps indicating a
longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher
birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round
of violence. It cannot be overemphasized that Muslim terrorism is a
symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while
Islam proper remains permanently hostile.
Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his “Future
of the Islamic Movement” (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.Our own Prophet …
was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist
and a first-class manager all in one. … In the Qur’an’s historic
vision Allah’s support and the revolutionary struggle of the people
must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put
to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order
to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The
Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of
mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of
the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. …
But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our
readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those
who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his
mi’raj {“nocturnal voyages to the ‘court’ of Allah”}. … It is Allah
who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the
trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted.
It must be emphasized that all of
the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources
themselves and is not the product of critical Western
scholarship.
Footnotes

References
1. Was Allah The Moon God of Ancient Arab Pagan?
By Syed Kamran Mirza http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/skm30804.htm
Historical evidences, impartial logic, well versed references and all available circumstantial judgments can very well
prove that?
(a) Allah name of deity was pre-existed much before the arrival of Islam,
(b) Pre-Islamic Pagan peoples worshipped Allah as their supreme deity (moon-god). Allah's name existed in pre-Islamic
Arab. In ancient Arab the Allah was considered to be the supreme God/deity (as Moon-God) and Arab Pagans worshipped
Allah before Islam arrived.
Let us examine below some valid questions and answers :
Did the Pagan Arabs in pre-Islamic times worship 360 gods? Yes
Did the pagans Arabs worship the sun, moon and the stars? Yes
Did the Arabs built temples to the Moon-god? Yes
Did different Arab tribes give the Moon-god different names/titles? Yes
What were some of the names/titles? Sin, Hubul, Ilumquh, Al-ilah.
Was the title al-ilah (the god) used as the Moon-god? Yes
Was the word Allah derived from al-ilah? Yes
Was the pagan Allah a high god in a pantheon of deities? Yes.
Was he worshipped at the Kabah? Yes.
Was Allah only one of many Meccan gods? Yes
Did they place a statue of Hubul on top of the Kabah? Yes.
At that time was Hubul considered the Moon-god? Yes.
Was the Kabah thus the house of the Moon-god? Yes.
Did the name Allah eventually replace that of Hubul as the name of the Moon god? Yes.
Did they call the Kabah the house of Allah? Yes.
Were al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat called the daughters of Allah? Yes. Yusuf Ali explains in fn. 5096, pg. 1445, that Lat,
Uzza and Manat were known as the daughters of God [Allah]
Did the Qur'an at one point tell Muslims to worship al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat? Yes. In Surah 53:19-20.
Have those verses been abrogated out of the present Quran? Yes.
What were they called? The Satanic Verses.
The variable names (Sin, Hubul, llumquh, Al-ilah) of moon god were used by various tribes of pagan Arabs. Pagan god SIN was the name of Moon-god.
Who is actually Allah?
According to Islamic Theologians (Mullahs, Maulana, Moulavis, etc.), or Islamic teachings-- Allah is the supreme God or
creator who (suddenly one day?) talked or introduced Himself with Prophet Muhammad through an Angel named Gabriel,
disclosing the truth that it is the Allah who created everything in the universe. Surprisingly, Quran never defines
the word Allah as to who actually Allah was or what was the relation of Allah with pagans. I believe, 99% percent of
Muslims do believe that Allah's name was invented or started right from the time when Gabriel disclosed the truth
to Prophet Muhammad in the cave of Hira Parvat (Mountain) and gave Muhammad the Quran. They believe that before this
truth was revealed pagan Arabs were in the total darkness (Andhakar Zuug) and they used to worship various puppet
goddess and that the pagans were very evil people. I can bet on this fact that no mullahs ever told us the real
truth, neither they believe this clean truth that Allah was in fact a pre-existing deity in pagan Arabia. What a hypocrisy?
Some important factors which will suggest that the name Allah was already in use by Pagans as their chief God/deity:
(A) In pre-Islamic days, that Muslims call the Days of ignorance, the religious background of the Arabs was pagan,
and basically animistic. Through Moon, Sun, Stars, Planets, Animals, wells, trees, stones, caves, springs, and
other natural objects man could make contact with the deity. At Mekka, Allah was the chief of the gods
and the special deity of the Quraish, Muhammad's tribe. Allah had three daughters: Al Uzzah (Venus) most revered
of all and pleased with human sacrifice; Manah, the goddess of destiny, and Al Lat, the goddess of vegetable life.
These three daughters of Allah (there is a Quranic verse about them) were considered very powerful over all things.
Therefore, their intercessions on behalf of their worshippers were of great significance.
(B) Arabs used to give their children names such as Abdullah (slave of Allah). Clean proof was the fact that,
Muhammad's father's name was Abdullah. Logical analogy here is had there been no Allah in pre-Islamic Arab, there could be
no Abdullah or slave of Allah in Arabia.
(C) Even today, in the entire Arab World, not only Muslims but all other non-Muslim
(Jews, Christians, Sabians, Bahai, an atheist etc.) Arabs says "Ya Allah" as the expression of surprise or unhappiness/sorrow.
(D). Albert Hourani's statement: "The Islamic name used for God was Allah, which was already in use for one of the
local Gods (it now used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians as the name of God (A history Of Arab people by Albert
Hourani, 1991, page-16, Belknap press of Harvard University, USA)
History tells us two theories of Allah's existence in and around the Kaba Sharif:
(1) Pagans used to call the largest Statue amongst the 360 deities as ALLAH whom they used to
consider the chief/supreme deity (god). Or,
(2) Pagan Arabs used to worship 360 deities inside Kaba Sharif, and they used to consider them
different smaller deities under the total control of a single most powerful chief deity called ALLAH
who was invisible (Nirakar) and was the all-powerful, all-knowing, and totally unknowable.
Amazing Similarities with Hindu Religion:
In India's Hindu religion is quite similar to the number two theory (above) of pagan belief. Although, Hindus
worship many different Goddesses they invariably have faith upon a single supreme invisible deity
called Bhagaban (some call it Ischhaar) whom they call Nirakar. And, surprisingly there is no sculptural
image/figure for this Bhagaban. But all Hindus worship Him along with other numerous deities. This
Bhagaban is considered as the lord of all other deities. What would happen if some intelligent prophet
would have asked Hindus to give up worshipping other goddesses and keeping only Bhagaban as
their only deity making it a monotheist religion just like Islam? Could it not be another religion like Islam?
Now some factors which will suggest Allah was the Moon-god of Arab pagans:
(A) In Quran there are at least a dozen verses in which Allah repeatedly swears by the names such as moon, sun,
stars, planets, night, wind etc. It is a mystery why the creator Allah should swear by his creations. Normally, we swear
by the name of something much superior to us, such as we swear by God or by the name of our father (who is
considered senior or superior to us). But we never swear by the name of something inferior to us. Here in the
Quran swearing fashions of Allah (God) by moon or stars hinting us that Allah considered these things superior to
himself. And this makes us to think (otherwise) as to who actually acted as Allah in Quran. However, in his explanation
of why the Quran swears by the moon in Surah 74:32, "Nay, verily by the Moon," Yusuf Alli comments, "The moon was
worshipped as a deity in times of darkness"(fn. 5798, pg. 1644). Perhaps, this swearing of Allah was due to the
usual/cultural habits of worshipping moon as their God in pagan customs.
(B) Yousuf Ali stated (Page-1921-1623 of his English Translation of Holy Quran): Moon-worship was equally popular in
various forms. Apollo and Diana the twin brother and sister, representing the sun and moon in the Vedic religion of
India the moon god was Soma, the lord of the planets. Moon was male divinity in ancient India. Moon was also male divinity
in ancient Semitic religion, and the Arabic word for the moon ,qamar, is of the masculine gender, on the other hand,
the Arabic word for sun, shams, is feminine gender. The pagan Arabs evidently looked upon the sun as a goddess and the moon
as a God. The Pagan deities best known in the Kaba and round about Mecca were Lat, Uzza, and Manat. the 360 idols
established by the Pagans in the Kaba probably represented the 360 days of an inaccurate solar year. This was the
actual modern pagan worship as known to the Quraish contemporary with our prophet.
(C) Influence of Moon in Islam: Who can deny the paramount influences of moon in Muslim's life? In Islam, moon is
considered holiest astronomical object, and moon is the guiding light of all Islamic rituals/festivals. Contradictions
and conflicts are very common with the dates of Eids and Ramadan and obviously it is a chronic problem and moon is the
nucleus of this problem. Crescent moon and stars are the symbolic sign in the national flags of many Muslim countries,
and it is present over the Mosques, in the Muslim graveyard etc.
Prophet Muhammad compromised to Pagans to establish Islam in Arabia:
Prophet Muhammad did his clever tactics of adapting many rites of paganism into Islam, in order to accommodate Islam
among the pagan Arabs. He made lots of political pacts with the Pagan Leaders such as Abu Suffian to accommodate his new
idea of religion and he agreed to incorporate many of the Pagan rituals in Islam. Prophet Muhammad asked the pagans to
worship only the Allah the largest God, and destroy the idols of all other gods and goddesses that existed in Kabah.
To establish oneness (monotheist) of God, he repeatedly asked them not to make any partners to Allah (That is why we can
find hundreds of Quranic verses asking not to make any partners to Allah). Finally, the Prophet was able to convince
(by force of course) the pagans to destroy all idols, and on return (he) agreed (perhaps) to keep the Names of
the goddess of most famous Pagan tribes as the alternative names of Allah hence Islam has 99 NAMES of Allah.
Prophet Muhammad did command his followers to participate in these pagan ceremonies while the pagans were still in control
of Mecca. (Please See Yusuf Ali, fn. 214, pg. 78). "... the whole of the [pagan] pilgrimage was spiritualized in Islam..."
(Yusuf Ali: fn. 223 pg. 80). In the Tafsir (of Quran-2:200) maoulana Yousuf Ali stated: "After Pilgrimage, in Pagan
times, the pilgrims used to gather in assemblies in which the praises of ancestors were sung. As the whole of the
pilgrimage rites were spiritualized in Islam, so this aftermath of the Pilgrimage was also spiritualized. It was
recommended for pilgrims to stay on two or three days after the pilgrimage, but they must use them in prayer and praise
to God.(#223 of Shane nazul by Maoulana Yousuf Ali, page-81)
In Islam many rituals performed (today) by devoted Muslims in the name of Allah are connected to the pagan worship that
existed before Islam. Pagans practices of the Pilgrimage of Kabah once a year--the Fast of Ramadan, running around the
Kabah seven times, kissing the black stone, shaving the head, animal sacrifices, running up and down two hills,
throwing stones at the devil, snorting water in and out the nose, praying several times a day toward Mecca, giving alms,
Friday prayers, etc. are strictly followed by Muslims today. Nobody can deny the fact that, all the above rituals of
Muslim's hajj today existed well before the arrival of Islam.
It is highly plausible to consider the fact that by incorporating much of the Pagan's rituals in new
religion Islam Prophet successfully reduced the pagan-risk and it was perhaps one of the most important milestone-attempts
to conquer the minds of Pagans resulting in massive breakdown of the Pagans' moral and support to oppose Islam.
The central shrine at Mekka was the Pagan's Kaaba (called House of Allah), a cube like stone structure which still
stands though many times rebuilt. Imbedded in one corner is the black stone, probably a meteorite,
the kissing of which is now an essential part of the Muslim's pilgrimage.
It is the historical fact that the Kaaba, the sacred shrine which contains the Black Stone, in Mecca was used for pagan
idol worship before Islam and even called the House of Allah at that time. The name of the God whom the Arabs
worshipped was the god of pantheon Ali-ilah the god, the supreme, the predeterminer of everybody's life or
destiny the chief God Allah
Who did not read the story of BLACK STONE which was very sacred (povitra) to all various tribes of Quraish.
When one day this sacred stone was needed to transfer from one place to another, there was a quarrel amongst
the various tribes, as to who will carry that sacred stone? Then most intelligent and righteous young boy Muhammad
(was not a prophet then) invented the solution of this serious problem. He (Muhammad) put this sacred stone over a
Chaddor (piece of cloth) and asked one representative from each tribe to hold the Chaddor and carry the stone.
I narrated this story briefly just to prove that black stone did exist long before Islam was invented.
References:
a. The Holy Qur'an, Translated by A. Yousuf Ali, Published by Amana Corporation, Brentwood, Maryland, 1983
b. Buchari Sharif, Bengali Translation by Maulana Muhammad Mustafizur Rahman, Sulemani Printers and Publishers, Dhaka, Second edition-1999
c. A History of the Arab peoples, by Albert Hourani, the Belknap press of Harvard University press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991
d. Dr. Robert Morey, 1996 Research and Education Foundation.
e. Gilchrist, The Temple, The Kaaba, and the Christ (Benoni, South Africa, 1980), p. 16.
f. G. J. O. Moshay, Who Is This Allah?, (Dorchester House, Bucks, UK, 1994), pg. 138
g. Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not A Muslim, (Prometheus, Amherst, 1995) p. 42.
h. Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971, II:1093.)
i. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (ed. Hastings), I:326.
j.The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, Lorenz Books, New York 10011, Anness Publishing Limited 1999
k. Roots of the Western Tradition, (a short history of ancient world) by C.Warren Hollister, Library of congress cataloging-in-publication data, 6th edition, 1
Syed_mirza@hotmail.com
2. Ayatollah Muhammad Yazdi, a conservative member of Iran’s Guardian Council and the former head of the judiciary,
lashed out at Mr. Rafsanjani, saying the former president did not have the right to call for the release of arrested
protesters. He also said Mr. Rafsanjani had exaggerated the role of democracy in Islamic government and thereby
diminished the importance of divine sanction. “Legitimacy and acceptance are different in Islamic government,” Ayatollah Yazdi told the semi-official Fars news
agency. “Votes alone do not create legitimacy.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/world/middleeast/19iran.html
3. Pakistan: Police patrol streets after Christians murdered
4. Young Muslims in Turkey Murder Three Christians
5. 130 Christians murdered over cartoons, Muslim rioters rampage through Nigerian villages
6. At least 6 Christians - all but one women and children - have been killed in Gojra, Pakistan by a rampaging mob of Muslim fundamentalists. The reason? It was rumored that a Koran was damaged in a Christian wedding held in the town.
7. A young Christian man was raped and brutally murdered in Pakistan for refusing to convert to Islam, and police are doing nothing about it.
8. Muhammad was a pedophile
9.This article deals with Muhammad's request to have his men murder a Jewish man named Abu Afak. Abu Afak was 120 years old. What was Afak's crime? He had urged his fellow Medinans to doubt Muhammad.
10. Allah allowed Muhammad along with the other men (as well as Muslims of today) to commit adultery with
married women whom they have enslaved or taken captive. In light of the teachings of the Holy Bible,
the true Word of God, we are forced to conclude that Allah is not the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob nor
is Muhammad a true messenger.
11. Islam Muhammad and the Koran
Resources
Islam Watch at http://www.islam-watch.org/index.html
Jihad Watch at http://www.jihadwatch.org/
What the West Needs to Know at http://whatthewestneedstoknow.com
The Middle East Forum at http://www.meforum.org/
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