Posted on 09/15/2001 11:27:05 PM PDT by freedom_from_socialism
II Th 2:3
3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Rev 13:11-16
11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,
14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
Rev 20:4
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
(KJV)
I know that many expect microchip implants and other high-tech devices but what about some low-tech possibilities? How about these verses from the Quran:
48:29
Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves. Thou (O Muhammad) seest them bowing and falling prostrate (in worship), seeking bounty from Allah and (His) acceptance. The mark of them is on their foreheads from the traces of prostration. Such is their likeness in the Torah and their likeness in the Gospel - like as sown corn that sendeth forth its shoot and strengtheneth it and riseth firm upon its stalk, delighting the sowers - that He may enrage the disbelievers with (the sight of) them. Allah hath promised, unto such of them as believe and do good works, forgiveness and immense reward.
27:78-83
78 Lo! thy Lord will judge between them of His wisdom, and He is the Mighty, the Wise.
79 Therefor (O Muhammad) put thy trust in Allah, for thou (standest) on the plain Truth.
80 Lo! thou canst not make the dead to hear, nor canst thou make the deaf to hear the call when they have turned to flee;
81 Nor canst thou lead the blind out of their error. Thou canst make none to hear, save those who believe Our revelations and who have surrendered.
82 And when the word is fulfilled concerning them, We shall bring forth a beast of the earth to speak unto them because mankind had not faith in Our
revelations.
83 And (remind them of) the Day when We shall gather out of every nation a host of those who denied Our revelations, and they will be set in array;
8:11-14
11 When He caused calm to fall on you as a security from Him and sent down upon you water from the cloud that He might thereby purify you, and take
away from you the uncleanness of the Shaitan, and that He might fortify your hearts and steady (your) footsteps thereby.
12 When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.
Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
13 This is because they acted adversely to Allah and His Messenger; and whoever acts adversely to Allah and His Messenger-- then surely Allah is severe
in requiting (evil).
14 This-- taste it, and (know) that for the unbelievers is the chastisement of fire.
Princess by Jean Sassoon is a book that shows that it doesn't matter if you are from one of the richest families, you can get killed if you are a woman and a man brings a charge against you. (In this book, a young girl from a rich Saudi family was raped by her brother's friend after he was high on drugs, and since the brother and friend said that it wasn't rape, that she seduced the boy, the girl was killed. I think she was 15 years old!
Fifteen year old sentenced to amputation
July 28, 2001
An Islamic court in Kebbi State, northern Nigeria, has sentenced a teenager to the amputation of one of his hands for stealing 32,000 naira (about US $286) from a businessman, media organisations reported.
Should the sentence be carried out, 15-year-old Abubakar Aliyu would become the first person to suffer amputation for theft since the Sharia legal system was imposed in Kebbi in December 2000, 'The Guardian' reported.
"Considering the increasing Islamic presence in the Western world, Christians need to learn some basic facts about the Islamic conquest that went on for centuries and to grasp what "dhimmitude" means."
"Dhimmitude" is slavery and oppression, and is fully supported by the Koran. Thank you for posting this information. People who don't know the truth of Islam are destined to suffer under its chains. For proof, see the examples I posted (above) of Christians persecuted in Islamic countries.
Islam is the new evil empire. Better get used to it.
And he was smiling the whole time too...
"You can be a Moslem and persecuted too."
Which simply illustrates further the evils of Islam and Islamic law.
Totally irrelevant, unless you can show us Christians and Jews acting like animals throughout the world today, in the 21st century.
when Christians in this country start blowing up busloads of school children, or flying fully fueled airplanes into the sides of tall buildings, then you can claim that we have attained moral equivalence with the animals that do this routinely to the Jews, and that did this to us last Tuesday.
And just what exactly have you been calling for for these last three days? Shall we back-track, cut & paste, and allow folks to draw their own conclusions? Just how do you propose to accomplish your goals without crushing a few innocents along the way?
How then does your lust for revenge differ from their fanaticism? Especially when your delivery includes wrapping it in your own theological rationalizations, just like they do?
You're just another zealot, overjoyed to have a sharply-defined target for your hatred. The fact that you try to justify this through appeals to the Prince of Peace absolutely disgusts me.
There is more than enough anger to go around. America will do what must be done. But to try to convince people that we should act as the terrorists have, and embark on a 'holy war', is beneath contempt.
1. Read the New Testament,
2. Read the Koran,
3. Compare the teachings of the two,
4. Get back to us when you've "refined" your lame arguments of moral equivalence.
"You can not condemn an entire religion for the acts of a few of its members."
The acts of its members condemn Islam. The Koran condemns Islam. Islam hardly needs me to condemn it. You shall know them by their fruits.
Islam's fruit is pretty rotten.
"And just what exactly have you been calling for for these last three days?"
And you're a liar, too.
Your argument is about as vacuous a post on Free Republic can be. Don't use Christianity to defame it while trying to make a point you can't even understand completely. Watch closely now:
(1) This is not about theological differences qua analogically as in Christianity. Please try to think through what you're saying before you put your fingertips to the keyboard.
(2) This is about the pervasive, deadly, and insidious expressions of Islam - Islamicism or the Koran as not historically conditioned (retro-hermeneutices, although indeed Koranic interpretation internationally has struggled to remove itself from a medieval mindset)
(3) Islam has joined itseld at the hip with pan-Arab Islamic Fascism. This is the acceptance of the non-conditioned chauvinistic notions of the Koran with respect to, for example: dar al-Islam,"Territory of Islam"; dar al-Harb, "Territory of War"; the Jihad; shari'a as the basis for political and social existence.
All of these notions are dangerous. For example, most Muslims refuse to recognize the State of Israel as a legitimate state because the Jews were formerly dhimmiized under Arab Islamic lands, and Israel is viewed as conquered Arab territory. I can show you how a Western European Muslim who fundamentally disagrees with these Koranic notions (a small voice of peace in the midst of the chauvinism and intolerance of Islam) but there are few who speak out in this fashion. Why? Why is there not more Muslims speaking against pan Arab Islamic ideology? Almost uniformally, Muslims in the Western Hemisphere either refuse to disengage Islam from Islamicism and pan-Arab Islamicism or they are afraid to, maybe because some mullah might issue a Fatwa against them.
Hence, your simplistic and insulting analogy misses the boat entirely. Below I've posted the submission, from the first Organization I've ever seen who has spoken out against Islamicism, which material was presented at the Durban Conference without much as a peep from most major news outlets. You will see that this isn't some little doctrinal game going on here - this is genocidal and murderous expressions of Islam. Where are the Islamic States and Islamic people in the West speaking out against these atrocities? Why is it that it took a Christian Organization to bring to light collectively this Islamicism menace? These are hard questions which aren't answered by naive posts such as you have posted.
CDHR Declaration at Durban
Jihad-Islamism (not Islam) abuses human rights worldwide
Declaration by The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights Affirming the Dangers of Radical Islamism and a Call to Recognize the Historical Oppression of Religious Minorities Subjected to this Racist-like Practice.
We, the members of The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, representing minority religious and ethnic communities from around the world, call upon the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, now meeting in Durban, South Africa, to address and condemn the ideology of Radical Islamism — a deviation from Islam — as intolerant, xenophobic, racist, supremacist, discriminatory, anti-democratic, and genocidal.
We also call upon the Conference to alert the international community to the widespread dangers of Radical Islamism's culture of animosity and destruction, and to remember and honor the victims of this oppressive ideology of hate toward religious minorities of all beliefs, races, and nationalities.
Finally, we call upon the Conference to recognize that Radical Islamism is a totalitarian movement aimed at establishing a worldwide Radical Islamist state that would:
We believe that the World Conference must act in a manner consistent with the defense of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ensure that its summary record reflect that Radical Islamism is recognized by all democratic societies as an evil doctrine that should be confronted at Durban and in all United Nations bodies.
To that end, the Conference should recognize the following irrefutable historical facts and warn against the future threats of Radical Islamism:
(I) Radical Islamism Sanctions War through its Radicalized Version of a World Religion.
(A) Jihad, or Holy War, is a religiously sanctioned call for individual and collective violence made by Radical Islamists against "infidels" worldwide. In the past, the concept of Jihad was responsible for many of the greatest tragedies in human history. For over thirteen centuries, millions of human lives have been sacrificed by Jihad campaigns around the world . Now, inspired and organized by the Supremacist ideology of Radical Islamism, Jihad again threatens millions of individuals across the globe.
(B) Fatah, or military conquest, is the employment of Jihad for imperial expansion and colonization of non-Islamic lands. Radical Islamists believe that Fatah is as legitimate today as when the concept gave rise to a series of invasions of countries outside Islam's original birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula.
Historically, Fatah was employed repeatedly over the centuries and included the unprovoked invasions known as Ghazwas by Arab Muslims beginning in 636 AD/CE. These invasions aimed to capture and dominate the Dar al-Harb and impose the religion, and in many areas the language and culture, of the Arab Muslims on their captive subjects. Radical Islamists today wish to re-institutionalize the Ghazwas, thereby re-connecting themselves to a nostalgic, "heroic" past. If successful, they will have reconstituted the world's longest ongoing campaign of imperialist aggression.
History's Three Regional Jihads:
In the 7th Century following the establishment of a government under the Caliph or supreme Muslim religious leader in the Arabian Peninsula, Arab Muslim armies conquered Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and imposed their rule over the indigenous Christian Armenians, Arameans, Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans, and Jews. Coptic Christian Egypt, Nubian Northern Sudan, Berber Cyrenaica (Libya) and Numedia (Algeria) also were then conquered followed by Spain, southern France, and Sicily. The Arab Muslim armies also invaded Persia and Central Asia reaching as far as India. In all of these lands, an Islamic state was established against the will of the native populations and imposed by Arab governors under the Caliph.
A second unprovoked Fatah was launched from the 11th to the 17th century when Turkish Muslim warriors stormed and conquered Christian Armenia, Byzantium, Greece, the Balkans, and parts of eastern and central Europe, up to the gates of Vienna. Meanwhile a third unprovoked Fatah caused the subjugation of Hindu and Buddhist India.
The Fatah was a planned and organized movement to subdue cultures, and destroy them as a prelude to replacing them with a new foreign religious culture. Today, Radical Islamists wish to revive the Fatah on a global scale.
(II) The Adepts of Radical Islamism Subscribe to an Anachronistic and Widely Discredited Version of a Universal, Monotheistic Faith, Islam, that is a Source of Inspiration to Hundreds of Millions of Muslims worldwide.
(A) Radical Islamists believe in a 1400 year-old religious concept that divides the world into two zones: Dar al-Islam: the realm of peace and Dar al-harb: the realm of war. The former is a zone that is ruled by Islamic states which are worthy of full peace, while the latter is ruled by infidels who inhabit a zone of war, susceptible to Islamic subjugation. Radical Islamists promote a religious worldwide confrontation between the two zones that grants legitimacy to imperial conquest, colonialism, slavery, ethnic cleansing, suppression of liberties, forced religious conversion, and Jihad or Holy War.
(B) Radical Islamists also believe in the 1400 year-old concept of Ridda which holds that a natural born or converted Muslim may not convert or revert to another religion. Today, in many countries ruled or influenced by the Radical Islamist version of Koranic Law, there exists a religiously sanctioned death penalty for those who may decide to change their religion.
(III) Radical Islamism Imposes an Inferior Status on All Non-Muslims and the Special Subservient Status of Dhimmi for "the People of the Book" - Jews and Christians.
In the 7th century, the Caliph Umar imposed this Dhimmi status on conquered populations under his rule. Christians, Jews, and others were forced to accept Al-Shurut al-Umariya, or Umar's conditions, a system of restrictions designed to shame and despoil non-Muslim subjects. Dhimmi peoples had to relinquish their land, were forced to pay a special "protection" tax (dhimma) or face death, wear distinctive clothing, and were banned from most government positions.
Today, Radical Islamists seek to re-impose this state-sanctioned discrimination, calling it an effort to "protect" minorities. In reality, such measures are always part of an effort to enforce assimilation, conversion, and to annihilate the identity of others. The example of Afganistan, where the Hindu minority is forced to wear distinctive clothing to mark them as infidels, is among the most well known.
In areas throughout the Islamic world, Radical Islamists use repression and violence against infidel minorities. In Egypt, Radical Islamists persecute the Copts; in Sudan, the Radical Islamist regime massacres and enslaves the Dinkas, both Christian and traditionalist; in Lebanon, Radical Islamists terrorize the Christians; in Nigeria, they butchered Biafran Ibos and oppress the Christians. In Iraq and Syria, alleged secular radical regimes that are governed by Arab nationalist ideologies and penetrated by Jihadic norms suppress native Christian cultures. In Iran, they persecute Christians and Bahais; in Kashmir, they wage a terrorist war against the Hindu minority; in the southern Philippines, they terrorize Catholics and kidnap foreigners; in East Timor, they have endorsed the regime's attempts at ethnic cleansing against Christians; in Indonesia, they routinely assault the native Christians, particularly in the Moluccas.
(IV) Radical Islamists Seek to Establish the Supremacy of their Version of Islam Over all Other Faiths: the "Global Jihad."
Guided by a deviated interpretation of Islam, the Radical Islamists believe that they will rule the world because of their conviction in the superiority of their religion. Their propaganda mirrors such beliefs as in the Middle East, where they call for the takeover of secular governments in Muslim countries, the destruction of Israel, and the elimination of Christians in Lebanon and South Sudan. In Africa, they call for the conversion to Islam of Black Africa. In Russia, they call for the violent secession of Chechnya, and Dagestan. In Pakistan, they promote Jihad to sever the multi-ethnic province of Kashmir from India. In China, they call for the creation of an Islamic state in Xinjiang. In South East Asia, they support the elimination of East Timor, the destruction of Christian and Chinese minorities in Indonesia, the establishment of a Radical Islamist state in the South Philippines. In Europe, they encourage Radical Islamist separatism in Bosnia and Kosovo, and now in Macedonia. In America and Europe, they have taken over the leadership of the growing Muslim communities to radicalize them and pave the way for Radical Islamist political action in the service of a global Jihad. In every instance, their message is carefully tuned to promote the legitimization of Jihad movements by the international community. To accelerate that goal the Radical Islamists of today are planning, and implementing a Jihad to re-establish the universal Caliphate.
(V) Radical Islamists Abuse Human Rights in their Home Countries
Racial Islamists reject political pluralism, democracy, and fundamental human freedoms in their home countries and abroad. Wherever possible, they use existing freedoms to reach power and then physically eliminate or subdue their opposition. Radical Islamists prohibit or have eliminated political freedoms in Afganistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, and plan on eliminating those freedoms enjoyed in other countries as they come to dominate them.
Similarly, Radical Islamists do not tolerate religious freedom, or regimes that permit religious equality. In Saudi Arabia, state law forbids non-Muslims to practice their faith. In Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and Egypt, non-Muslims are discriminated against in varying degrees.
Much like Dhimmis, women under Radical Islamist regimes and throughout the Muslim world live as an inferior class of citizens. Such regimes promote gender discrimination against women, theologically, ideologically, socially, politically and economically. From Afghanistan to Morocco, women suffer dearly at different levels and in different contexts. Women, who have unequal legal rights, are abused through systematic social discrimination, psychological oppression. Female genital mutilation (FGM) and honor killings are among the most well-known depravations suffered by women in many countries.
Radical Islamists proclaim the equality of races under Islam, but have established a form of religious racism wherever they expanded. They have developed the concept of the "Umma" - the "religious nation" - from which non-Muslims are excluded as a whole. Hence, religion to Radical Islamists is not just a faith held by some citizens and not others; it is an absolute demarcation, dividing superior from inferior human beings. To Radical Islamists, religion is akin to race in any racist system as it sets up an exclusive, superior category of human beings with rights to dominate the others. Within this system, Arab Radical Islamists advocate an Arab Caliph, the Arabic language as the sacred language, and regard other Muslims, especially those of African origin, as inferior. The Radical Islamists' distaste for Africans is rooted in the Arab Muslim participation in the enslavement of Africans, a practice that dates back to the 7th Century AD/CE. Arab-Islamist raids into Africa since the conquest of Egypt have ravaged Africa, uprooted tens of millions of men, women and children, destroying countless families. It contributed to the European slave trade from Africa to the Americas from the 17th century. The Arab enslavement of Africans over the centuries remains active today in Sudan.
(VI) Radical Islamists Deny Their Crimes Against Humanity
While other cultures, movements and religions have acknowledged and sometimes apologized for past racist practices, the Radical Islamists refuse to admit the historical crimes they, and their predecessors, have perpetrated since the 7th century and refuse to acknowledge that those crimes are still being perpetrated today.
In the areas under their control they write revisionist histories of their actions, denying the identity and history of the nations they have subjugated and burying the evidence of the Jihad that they waged against native peoples. In the West, they fund educational programs aimed at erasing their crimes from history. Radical Islamists are penetrating the public educational systems to impose their view of their victims world with the unwitting assistance of their victims. In this way, they obliterate the violent and racist nature of their predecessors' actions and prepare for their return to absolute power, decreed by their beliefs.
For these reasons, the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights calls upon the World Conference Against Racism to:
1) Request the Organization of the Islamic Conference - acting on behalf of its 57 members - to apologize for past Jihad crimes against humanity, including the brutal invasion and occupation of lands and peoples in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and Asia, and the mass enslavement of Africans and others, including Europeans;
2) Condemns all current Jihads, and calls on these Governments to cease violating the rights of ethnic and religious minorities and peoples;
3) Calls on the United Nations to Equate Radical Islamism, Jihad-ism, and Dhimmitude with Racism, Colonialism, and Imperialism;
4) Calls on the United Nations to intervene to protect the rights and lives of religious and ethnic minorities and non-Islamist Muslims in Afganistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia Sudan, and Syria;
5) Calls on Islamic scholars and intellectuals to reject the concepts of Fatah, Jihad, and Dhimmitude;
6) Calls on Islamic Governments to stop imposing the Shari'a on non-Muslims and guarantee the rights of all enlightened Muslim humanists and intellectuals.
Submitted by: The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, an umbrella coalition representing various organizations from the following communities: Hindus, Buddhists, Bahais, Humanist Muslims, Copts, Assyrians, Syriacs, Southern Sudanese, Maronites, Southern Philippinos, West Africans, Ibos, Slavic Christians, Armenians, Arab Christians, Nubians, secular intellectuals, and women's groups.
The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights
14000 Gunner's Place, Centerville, VA 20121
703-234-3954 x 7542
http://www.dhimmi.com
CDHR is a registered 501c3 non-profit organization. All donations are tax-deductible.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF BAT YE'OR BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS SUBJECT - HEARING ON RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST PAST IS PROLOGUE: THE CHALLENGE OF ISLAMISM TODAY
Basic text of oral Statement; more passages in brackets to be omitted. Fuller text to be used for Freedom House Briefing Seminar on 30 April.]
Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress,. Ladies and Gentlemen.
"Past is Prologue." These words are engraved on the pediment of the Archives building in Washington. The English source is probably Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the original perhaps Ecclesiastes (1:9). I have chosen this motto for my Statement today and shall first give:
An Historical Overview of the Persecution of Christians under Islam.
To fully understand the present tragic situation of Christians in Muslim lands, one must comprehend the ideological and historical pattern that is conducive to violations of human rights, even though this pattern does not seem to be a deliberate, monolithical, anti-Christian policy. However, as this structure is integrated into the corpus of Islamic law (the shari'a), it functions in those countries that either apply the shari'a in full, or whose laws are inspired by it. The historical pattern of Muslim-Christian encounters developed soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632.
The historical pattern of Muslim-Christian encounters developed soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. Muslim -- Christian relations were regulated by two legal-theological systems: one based on jihad, the other on the shari'a. A Jihad should not be compared to a Crusade -- or to any other war. The strategy and tactics of jihad are minutely fixed by theological rules, which the calif or ruler wielding both spiritual and political power -- must obey. The jihad practised now in Sudan is conducted according to its traditional rules. One could affirm that all "jihad" groups today conform to these decrees.
It is an historical fact that all the Muslims countries around the southern and eastern Mediterranean were Christian lands before being conquered, during a millenium of jihad under the banner of Islam. Those vanquished populations -- here I am referring only to Christians and Jews - were then "protected," providing they submitted to the Muslim ruler's conditions- Therefore, "protection" in the context of a conquest is the consequence of a war, and this is a very important notion.
In April 1992, for instance, religious leaders in Sudan's Southern Kordofan region -- who were "publicly supported at the highest government level" -- issued a fatwa, which stated: "An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them." This fatwa appears in a 1995 Report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the U.N.'s special Rapporteur on Sudan, Dr. Gaspar Biro. (ECOSOC, E/CN.4/1996/62, para.97a). This religious text gives the traditional definition of a harbi (someone living in the Dar al-harb, the "region of war"), an infidel who has not been subjected by jihad, and therefore whose life and property -- according to classical texts of Islamic jurists -- is thus forfeited to any Muslim. (It also gives a definition of an apostate who can be killed -- the case of Salman Rushdie in 1989, Farag Foda in 1992, and Taslima Nasreen 1994, are other examples where the death sentence was decreed.)
Non-Muslims are protected only if they submit to Islamic domination by a "Pact" -- or Dhimma -- which imposes degrading and discriminatory regulations. In my books, I have provided documents from Islamic sources and from the vanquished peoples, establishing a sort of classification so that the origins, development and aims of these regulations can be recognized when they are revived nowadays. I am only referring to Christians and Jews because they share the same Islamic theological and legal category, and are referred to in the Koran as "People of the Book" -- the word "people" is in the singular. If they accept to submit to a Muslim ruler, they then become "protected dhimmi peoples" -- tributaries, since their protection is linked to an obligatory payment of a koranic poll tax (the jizya) to the Islamic community (the umma).
This protection is abolished: - if the dhimmis should rebel against Islamic law; give allegiance to non-Muslim power; refuse to pay the koranic jizya; entice a Muslim from his faith; harm a Muslim or his property; commit blasphemy. Blasphemy includes denigration of the Prophet Muhammad, the Koran, the Muslim faith, the shari'a by suggesting that it has a defect, and by refusing the-decision of the ijma -- which is the consensus of the Islamic community or umma (Koran III: 106). The moment the "pact of protection" is abolished, the jihad resumes, which means that the lives of the dhimmis and their property are forfeited. Those Islamists in Egypt who kill and pillage Copts consider that these Christians -- or dhimmis -- have forfeited their "protection" because they do not pay the jizya.
In other words, this "protector-protected" relationship is typical of a war-treaty between the conqueror and the vanquished, and this situation remains valid for Islamists because it is fixed in theological texts. But it should be emphasized that other texts in the Koran stress religious tolerance and peaceful relations, which frequently existed. (Nonetheless, early jurists and theologians - invoking the koranic principle of the "abrogation" of an earlier text by a later one - have established an extremist doctrine ofjihad, which is a collective duty.)
The protection system presents both positive and negative aspects: it provide security and a measure of religious autonomy. On the other hand, dhimmis suffered many legal disabilities intended to reduce them to a condition of humiliation and segregation. Those rules were established as early as the 8th and 9th centuries by the founders of the four schools of Islamic law: Hanafi, Malaki, Shafi'i and Hanbali.
The shari'a is a complete compendium of laws based on theological sources, principally the Koran and hadiths - that is, the sayings and acts of the Prophet. The shari'a comprises the legal status of the dhimmis: what is permitted and what is forbidden to them. It sets the pattern of the Muslims' social and political behavior toward dhimmis and explains its theological, legal and political motivations.
It is this comprehensive system, which lasted for up to thirteen centuries, that I have analyzed in my last book The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam] as the "civilization of dhimmitude." Its archetype - the dehumanized dhimmi - has permeated Islamic civilization, culture and thought and is being revived through the Islamist resurgence and the return of the shari'a.
The main principles of "dhimmitude" are:
1) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis;
2) the social and economic discrimination of the dhimmis;
3) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis.
Numerous laws were enacted over the centuries in order to implement these principles, which remained in practice throughout the 19th century and in some regions into the 20th century.
Arab-Islamic civilization developed in conquered Christian lands, among Christian majorities, which were eventually reduced to minorities. The process of the Islamization of Christian societies appears at all levels. It is part and parcel of the Christian suffering embodied in laws, customs, behavior patterns, and prejudices that were perpetuated during many centuries. Christianity could survive in some countries like Egypt and the Balkans where their situation was tolerable, but in other places they were wiped out physically, expelled, or forced to emigrate.
During the whole of the 19th century, European governments tried to convince Muslim rulers -- from Constantinople to North Africa -- to abolish the discriminations against dhimmis. This policy led to reforms in the Ottoman Empire from 1839 -- known as the Tanzimat -- but it was only in Egypt, under the strong rule of Muhammad Ali, that real progress was made. Improvements in the Ottoman Empire and Persia, imposed by Europe, were bitterly resented by the populace and religious leaders.
European laws were introduced in the process of Turkish modernization, and in some Arab countries, but it was only under colonial rule that Christian and Jewish minorities were truly liberated from centuries of opprobrium. Traditionalists however resented the Westernization of their countries, the emancipation of the dhimmis and the laws imported from infidel lands. The fight for decolonization was also a struggle by the Islamists to re-establish strict Islamic law.]
Why is this persecution ignored by the Churches, governments and media?
The 19th century -- and even after World War I -- was a traumatizing period of genocidal slaughter of Christians, spreading from the Balkans (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria) to Armenia and to the Middle East. In this context of death, the doctrine of an Islamic-Christian symbiosis was conceived toward the end of the 19th century by Eastern Christians as a desperate shield against terror and slavery. This doctrine -- which also included anti-Zionism -- had many facets, both political and religious. In the long term, its results were mostly negative.
It is this doctrine -- still professed today -- that is responsible for the general silence about the ongoing tragedy of Eastern Christians. Any mention of jihad and of the persecutions of Christians by Muslims was a taboo subject because one could not denounce persecution and simultaneously proclaim that an Islamic-Christian symbiosis has always existed in the past and the present. It is in this cocoon of lies and of a deliberately imposed silence, solidly supported by the Churches, governments, and the media -- each for its own reasons -- that persecution of Christians could develop freely, during this century, even until now, with little hindrance. Moreover, this doctrine also blocked the memory of dhimmitude, leaving a vacuum of thirteen centuries whose emptiness was filled with a myth that was useless as a means to prevent the return of old prejudices and persecutions.
For this reason, dhimmitude -- which covers several centuries of Christian and Jewish history, and which is a comprehensive civilization englobing legislation, customs, social behavior, and prejudices -- has never been analyzed, nor publicly discussed. It is this silence for which academia in Europe and America bear much responsibility that allows the perpetuation of religious discrimination and persecution today. There are many factors that explain this silence of governments, Churches, academia, and the media, on such a tragic issue concerning persecuted Christians in the Muslim world; they are interrelated and although their motivations are different they have solidly cemented a wall of silence that has buried the historical reality.
Proposals for redressing these violations of fundamental human rights:
1. To define the ways and means to end this tragedy:
1) Not to foster an anti-Islamic current which would be wrong, as the vast majority of Muslims are themselves victims of Islamists in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, etc.
2) Christians must continue to live in their historical lands because it is their right, and only they can transform traditional Muslim mentalities. These dwindling communities should be encouraged to stay, as their presence will signify that Muslims have accepted that Jews and Christians also possess the right to life and dignity in their ancient homelands -- and not under a dhimmi protection, but with human rights equal to those of Muslims. If they fail, it will be our loss in the West too. Islamic countries that once had a Judeo-Christian culture should not become monolithically Islamic -- that is, Christianrein, as they have become virtually Judenrein -- through a policy of ethnic cleansing that followed a long historical period of discrimination.
3) If the human rights -- and the minority rights -- of Christians are not respected in those countries that formerly had Christian majorities, then the rights of all non-Muslims will be challenged by the Islamists' resurgence. It is for Christians worldwide -- particularly in America and Europe, and for the international community also -- to assure that the human rights for all religious minorities are respected worldwide.
II. We should realize that those populations are in grave danger and that even Muslim governments cannot protect them from mob violence -- sometimes they pretend to be unable to do so in order to stop foreign pressure or public campaigns. We should also remember that, from the late 1940s, the Jewish communities in the Arab-Muslim world -- then more than a million, now 1% of that number, under 10,000 and fast dwindling -- were the victims of persecution, terrorism, pillage and religious hatred that forced them to flee or emigrate. Christians were left as the only non-Muslims on whom religious fanaticism and hatred could be focused. Each Christian community tried to resist the return of the old order, following the path of secularism or communism.
The Islamists reproach Christians in their countries of:
1) being against the implementation of the shari'a;
2) demanding equal rights, basing themselves on International Covenants;
3) seeking foreign help to achieve equality with fellow Muslim citizens.
For the Islamists, these three accusations alone are tantamount to rebellion. It was these same motives that had justified the first great massacres of the Armenians a century ago in 1894-96, punished for having rebelled and for claiming the reforms that were promised.
This is why dhimmis communities were always careful to proclaim their enmity to Europe. An outward opposition to Christian countries being their life-saving shield against threats from their environment, they have interiorized this animosity to the point that they often strive for the triumph of Islam, some of them even becoming the best and most perfect tools of Islamic propaganda and interests in Europe and America. (The late Father Yoakim Moubarac and Georges Corm in France, and Edward Said in America, are but three examples out of many.)
III. In order to avoid mistakes and be more effective, one has to realize the difference of contexts between the campaign for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s, and the promotion of human rights for Christians in Islamic lands today. The main difficulty arises because the discrimination or persecution in some countries cannot be ascribed to a deliberate government policy. It is rather a fact of civilization: the traditional contempt for dhimmis -- not so different from that of African Americans in the past -- and irritation because they are out-stepping their rights and must be obliged to return to their former status.
Sometimes, however, it is imposed by the Islamists, and a weak government doesn't dare to protect the Christians, fearing to become even more unpopular because anti-Western, and anti-Christian prejudices have imbued Muslim culture and society for centuries.
1) There are many ways to persecute Christians; some are by legal means, like the laws concerning the building or the repair of churches; others, by terror. A Christian can be killed, not because he committed a crime, but simply because he belongs to a group of infidels, whom, allegedly, are in rebellion; or for reasons of "spectacle-terrorism" that can serve as a deterrent policy to fulfill the terrorists' aims.
2) Another point concerns the use of a fatwa. If a fatwa is decreed against an individual, any Muslim is authorized to kill him, and by so doing he is the executor of what is considered the sentence of Allah.
IV. The problem is multifarious; it is not only religious but also cultural. This aspect is more acute with Christian than with Jewish communities because Muslims conquered Christian lands and civilization that were then subjected to a deliberate policy of Arabization and Islamization. Take, as an example, Christian pre-Islamic Coptic history: language and culture are a neglected, if not forbidden, domain because it would imply that Muslim history had been imperialistic. But Culture and history are important elements in a group's identity, and there are many Muslim intellectuals who are proud of Egypt's Pharonic and Coptic past. It is the Islamists who reject this past as an infidel culture, a part of the jahaliyah, what existed before Islam, considered taboo. Therefore, I would also suggest further goals, such as:
1) Recovering "Memory," the long history of the dhimmi peoples, of dhimmitude -- the collective, cultural patrimony of Jews and Christians for without their memory and without their history, people fade away and die.
2) Preventing the destruction of Christian historical monuments, either by local governments, or as was done with Abu Simbel, and other sites that now belong to the World's cultural legacy.
V. Discussing "dhimmitude" in academia and elsewhere. This is a Judeo-Christian historical patrimony and those whose heritage it is are entitled to know about it. The discussion of dhimmitude with Muslims, however, is fraught with difficulties. In the eyes of Islamists, and criticism of Islamic law and history is assimilated to a blasphemy. For a dhimmi, it is forbidden to imply that Islamic law has a default, or to contradict the ijma, the consensus. Moreover, the court testimony of a dhimmi against a Muslim is not accepted. Therefore, as dhimmitude is the testimony of dhimmi history -- of Christians and Jews -- under Islamic oppression, it would not be considered valid in traditionalist circles. Besides, the unification of religious and political power transfers the political domain into the religious one, therefore any criticism of Islamic civilization may become, for Islamists and others, a blasphemy.
The case of Farag Foda, and Egyptian Muslim intellectual, who defended the Copts and strongly criticized some Muslim religious authorities was exemplary: he was assassinated in 1992 after a fatwa. In giving his testimony, the late Sheik Muhammad El-Ghazali implicitly justified Foda's assassination on the grounds of apostasy; he stated that anyone opposing the sharia was an apostate and thus deserved death.
VI. Encourage Muslim intellectuals to strive in their own countries and in the West for the defense of equal human rights for Christians and others. The 1981 UNESCO Declaration of Islamic Human Rights and that of Cairo, both conditional on the sharia, are insufficient.
VII. Creation of a team of experts and lawyers -- and not apologists in order to discuss the problem, always stressing that the aim is not to foster anti-Muslim nor anti-Islamic feelings, but to create peace and reconciliation between religions and people, without which the next century will become a bloodbath and clash of civilizations.
I'm sure you meant to say that you would make every effort to ensure that all innocent women and children were removed, first...right? That you wouldn't really intend to condemn people just because they happened to be born in a particular country, or professed a particular set of beliefs...but otherwise had absolutely nothing in common with those who perpetrated that foul deed on the WTC?Congressman Andrews just stated on Fox News Channel that the nuclear response remains a viable option.Turn the nation's that harbor these people to glass.
11 Posted on 09/13/2001 23:00:11 PDT by Stingray [ Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
Otherwise, you would only be showing your true colors as a foul, low-life, mouth-breathing, bigoted hypocrite.
You have been hammering the same selective quotes on a dozen or more threads, hoping to stir people to hate 'them rag-heads' as much as you do, implying the same kind of mindless 'guilt by association' which you so heartily condemn, and are simply too blind or stupid to see the moral equivalence.
You make such a fine, paragon exemplar of 'christian' virtue, stingray.
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