Posted on 07/02/2007 11:59:41 AM PDT by free_life
I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist
By HASSAN BUTT
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.
More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.
For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."
I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.
And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.
If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?
How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?
There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.
Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.
For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.
But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).
Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.
Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.
In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.
The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.
For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"
But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.
They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.
This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.
Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.
Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.
A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.
In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.
But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.
The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.
For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.
But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.
However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.
Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.
I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.
Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.
If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.
And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.
I’ll wager I know as many or more than most of the people who feel free to bluster on this topic.
Freedom isn't free - it costs the lives and blood of sacrifice - from all men. Muslims see freedom as a natural-given right - not an earned one. Islam enslaves women, non-muslims, the poor, and anyone they can get away with enslaving.
Lotsa luck. If two mere cartoons can result in riots in many countries, several murders and many wrecked careers in journalism, dream on.
What he is proposing basically is a reformation of Islam...from within. He's right...it is needed. And I bet, should it gain the traction it needs, it will be bloody.
OTOH, if it doesn't happen, sooner or later the radicals will committ such horror in the name of Islam (as if what they have already done is not enough and indicative of where they will go), that it will be treated like Nazism by the rest of the world and wholly irradicated.
The idea of teh headline is to get us not to read it, right?
The ideas that fuel Islamic terrorism where people give up their lives voluntarily to kill Infidels, for a supernatural reward, comes from the Koran and Hadiths.
If Muslims have an open discussion on these issues, the fundamentalists will recruit more fundamentalists, since they have the sacred texts on their side.
The biggest thing that is helping us is the Infidel collaborators around the world like Ayotolla Sistani in Iraq and King Abdullah in Jordan and a whole host of so called Muslim political leaders who seem to be more interested in worldly thing than doing what God(Allah) wants done. (Subjugate , kill or convert non believers)
The religion is so hard to practice that many are backsliders and cageteria style Muslims who are more interested in worldly things, than following the religion as written and following the example of Muhammed.
You can't reform this religion. The word of God (Allah)doesn't change. It would take a new Prophet to appear with an updated version of Islam, to change it.
Heretics like the person mentioned in the article should just leave the religion. He can't abide by the basic tenets and wants the religion changed to accomodate his secular beliefs. Not an uncommon thing to happen in a religion. - tom
ping
“I’ll wager I know as many or more than most of the people who feel free to bluster on this topic.”
I’m willing to wager that you don’t know much about the field of statistics, which is why my point about ‘inadequate sample’ went right over your head.
In summary, no matter how many you know, it’s a self-selected sample and not representative of the entire population.
IOW your comment is meaningless.
Paging Ron Paul
bttt
But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).
Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.
I am utterly surprised that these concepts seem to be invisible to the MSM.
I am all for making it dangerous (no, make that deadly) to be an Islamic terrorist.
However, I have a problem with painting all Muslims with the jihadist brush since it plays right into the extremists' hands and makes us nothing but their pawns.
Obviously empty anti Islamic blustering makes some feel good, but it is ultimately extremely self-defeating.
For those who want to make that their bed, I hope they are truly willing to sleep in it.
LOL I thought the same thing
I could be wrong, but I don’t think this one is using a pen name (quite brave actually). I remember him from a few years back - seem to recall him declaring that they wouldn’t stop until the islamic flag was flying over Downing Street... phew!!!
Bump
The radical loser (Long Read)
Der Spiegel ^ | 1/12/05 | Hans Magnus Enzensberger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1694568/posts
(snip)
Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of “collateral damage”. In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.
The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.
(snip)
What Do Muslims Think?
The American Interest / Able2know.com ^ | May/June 2007 | Amir Taheri
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1835047/posts
(snip)
This distortion of religion is simply unsustainable, and it is increasingly unpopular. Most people seek religious affiliation for the comfort and stability it brings, for the bonds it provides to family and the solace it offers in times of sickness, disappointment and tragedy. Politicized religion cheapens and denies all this, and Muslims who understand and value their traditions will not allow themselves to be thus dispossessed. Increasingly common are remarks like those of Murad Ahmed, a British Muslim who wrote, after the revelation in late January of a radical plot to abduct and behead a British soldier of Muslim faith: “It’s a failing of our ‘silent majority’ for being silent too long. For cowering in the face of the perceived moral superiority of nutcases because they seem to believe in the faith more than we do. It’s time to get a megaphone and tell these people that they don’t speak for us.”
The New Debate
The internecine battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims is hardly over. It has barely begun. As the thin political façade of the latest round of this conflict wears away, and genuine religion comes to terms with the world, we will see a different social reality. For non-Muslims, it will help to know the principal participants in the new era of jahr as this reality takes shape.
(snip)
He’s got a point though. If all Muslims were inclined to suicide bombings, we’d be knee deep in conflict inside the US already. I suppose one could argue that US Muslims are just biding their time until their population goes up, but I wouldn’t. You might argue that any true believer would by nature of the religion become a radical jihadist, but I think in any religion true believers are scarce.
“He’s got a point though. If all Muslims were inclined to suicide bombings, we’d be knee deep in conflict inside the US already. I suppose one could argue that US Muslims are just biding their time until their population goes up, but I wouldn’t.”
We have plenty of them here.
WTC bombing 1 & 2
LA Intl Airport shooting
Richard Reid
The radical mosques the 911 hijackers went to
Lackawanna idiots
Fort Dix idiots
The Florida jihadi guys in that warehouse
That Palestinian comp sci professor from UCSF who is in jail now
The jihadi base in Virginia which has been described on FR
The flying Imams
Possibly the Oklahoma City bombing
Possibly the kid who tried to bomb the stadium
The kid who flew a plane into a building in Florida
Adam Gadhan
The DC sniper
That’s just off the top of my head. There’s others!
They are less in # and we’re better at catching them, here.
Yeah, but at 1% of our population if they were truly mobilized they’d be doing about half that list every day, not every 5 years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.