Posted on 09/23/2001 7:22:17 AM PDT by Chuck N
From the February 1999 Issue of Chronicles VIEW Multiculturalism and Islam: Liberal Fiction and Historical Truth by Srdja Trifkovic THIS IS AN EXCERPT... "The beginnings of Muhammad's public career are little known to most Westerners. A non-Muslim reading the Koran, however, might conclude that Muhammad's career was marked by a long string of killings, armed robberies, and rape, interspersed by a series of inspired pronouncements of varying coherence. Outsiders--the Jews of Medinah, or Muhammad's Arabic kinsmen who were reluctant to accept his self-proclaimed divinity--could testify to his unique concepts of justice and mercy. When, in A.D. 626, for instance, six of Muhammad's henchmen murdered an elderly Jew by the name of Abu Rafi in his sleep, they argued afterwards whose weapon had actually ended the victim's life. The prophet decided that the person who owned the sword that still had traces of food on it was entitled to the credit. Abu Rafi had just finished his dinner before falling asleep, and the fatal slash went through his stomach". http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/Chronicles/February%201999/0299Trifkovic.htm
I am a Christian and I take the Word of God in the Bible literally as the Word of God, however, when reading some of the Bible I know it can be misconstrued and misintrepeted and too many times scripture is taken out of context.
"....Kill those who join other gods with Allah wherever you find them; besiege them, seize them, lay in wait for them with every kind of ambush...." (Sura 9:5)
"When you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until ye have made a great slaughter among them...." (Sura 47:4)
"....Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in Allah, or in the Last Day, and who forbid not what Allah and His Apostle have forbidden....until they pay tribute..." (Sura 9:29)
"Say to the infidels: If they desist, what is now past shall be forgiven them; but if they return, they have already before them the doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it Allah's." (Sura 8:39)
"Proclaim a grievious penalty to those who reject faith." (Sura 9:3).
"I will instil terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them." (Sura 8.12)
"Let not the unbelievers think they will ever get away... strike terror into the enemy of God and your enemy... rouse the faithful to arms!" (Sura 8:59)
Your title is what I was thinking, too, when I heard President Bush.
I have not heard an Islamic scholar specifically denounce this use of the Koran, or put out a Fatwa against Bin Ladin for misusing the Koran and thereby blaspheming Allah.
Perhaps they know they will be assassinated by islamic radicals if they do so.
If true Islam isn't a peace living religion, it will be soon.
I was just wondering if it is a Christian saying? (If so, is it heavily used?)
It seemed to me as though she were trying to send a message to the Muslims.
It seemed to me as though she were trying to send a message to the Muslims.
She was saying "please don't issue a Fatwa on me, I still have a few more million to make."
In 624 Muhammad, joined by more followers, called upon the Qaynuqa, one of the Jewish tribes of Medina, to recognize his prophetic mission. When they refused, he besieged and overcame them. On the intercession of one of their protectors---a recent convert to Islam---their lives were spared, but they were expelled from the city, their lands and a part of their possessions being confiscated by the Muslims. The following year the Jewish Nadir tribe suffered a similar fate: Muhammad burned down their palm groves and divided all their fields and houses among thecommunity of Believers. 4
In 627 the Meccans sent a united force to lay siege to the Muslims in Medina but they withdrew suddenly on a stormy night and without fighting. However, guided by the angel Gabriel, Muhammad then turned his host against the Jewish tribe of the Qurayza, who had been neutral during the seige. Because the Jews refused conversion, Muhammad attacked and overwhelmed them. Trenches were then dug in the marketplace of Medina, and the Jews---six to nine hundred of them, according to traditional Muslim sources-----were led forth in batches and decapitated. All the menfolk perished in this way, with the exception of one convert to Islam. The Prophet then divided the women, children, houses, and chattels among the Muslims.5
Shrewd in political matters, Muhammad then endeavored to win over the powerful tibes of Mecca. In 628, taking advantage of a treaty of nonbelligerency (Hudaybiya) with the Meccans,6 he attacked the oasis of Khaybar, one hundred and forty kilometers northwest of Medina, cultivated by another Jewish tribe. The assailants came to the oasis at night and in the morning attacked the peasants as they were coming out to work in the fields, carrying spades and baskets.7 Their palm groves were burned down. After a siege lasting a month and a half, the inhabitants surrendered under the terms of a treaty known as the dhimma. According to this agreement Muhammad allowed the Jews to continue cultivating their oasis, on condition they ceded to him half of their produce; he also reserved the right to break the agreement and expel them whenever he wished.8 Subsequently, all the Jewish and Christian communities of Arabia submitted to the Muslims under the terms of a dhimma similar to that granted at Khaybar
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4. al-Bukhari (d. 869), Les Traditions Islamiques (Al-Sahih), trans. O. Houdas and W. Marcais (Paris, 1903-1914), vol. 2, title 41, chap 6; title 56, chap. 80; 3, chap. 154:2. This compilation of the acts and sayings attributed to Muhammad, completed in the ninth century, constitutes one of the two pillars of Islamic jurisprudence, the other being the contemporary compilation made by his younger disciple, Muslim (d. 875).
5. Idn Ishaq, pp. 461-69; M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet (Paris, 1969), pp. 142-46; W. Montgomery Watt, "Muhammad", in the Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge, 1970), 1:39-49.
6. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, p. 154: Bukhari, vol. 2, title 54, chap. 15.
7. Ibn Ishaq, p. 511; Bukhari, vol. 2, title 56, chaps. 102: 5, 130.
8. Ibn Ishaq, pp. 524-25; Bukhari, vol. 2, title 41, chaps. 8, 9, 11, 17, and title 57, chap. 19: 10. For example of the treaties between Muhammad and the Jews living in Makna (near Eilat), see al-Baladhuri, vol. 1, The Origins of the Islamic State (Kitab Futuh al-Buldan), trans. P.K. Hitti (New York, 1916), pp. 93-94.
The Arab Islamics began the rape, pillaging, massacres, forced conversions, head taxes, etc. with the prophet Mohammed, in the Arabian peninsula, as he massacred 600-900 Jewish men in cold-blood and his men raping and enslaving the women and children (Banu Qurayza, 627). This Jihad would extend throughout the Arabian peninsula (where under the second caliph in 640 the Jews and Christians were expelled from the peninsula), North Africa, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Persia, Syria, Palestine, South Spain before finally being stopped at Narbonne (720) and Poitiers (732). In the space of 100 years the Arab Islamics had massacred, conquered, dhimmiized, pillaged, whole INDIGENOUS Christian (non Arab) and Jewish communities. Most of the time this would consist of massacring, enslaving, and ethnically cleansing whole Christian and Jewish populations. Bat Ye'or in, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (1996), at pp. 44ff. describes this blight on long-standing Christian and Jewish communities:
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After the death of the Prophet, the caliph Abu Bakr organized the invasion of Syria which Mohammed had already envisaged. He gathered tribes from the Hijaz, Najd, and Yemen and advised Abu Ubayda, in charge of operations in the Golan (Palestine), to plunder the countryside but, due to a lack of adequate weaponry, to refrain from attacking towns.2 Consequently, the whole Gaza region up to Cesarea was sacked and devastated in the campaign of 634. Four thousand Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants who defended their land were massacred. The villages of the Negev were pillaged by Amr b. al-As, while the Arabs overran the countryside, cut communications, and made roads perilous. Towns such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea, Nablus, and Beth Shean were isolated and closed their gates (note: these towns had a majority Jewish/Christian (non Arab) populations). In his sermon on Christmas Day 634, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, lamented over the impossibility of going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem as was the custom, because the Christians were forcibly kept in Jerusalem:"not detained by tangible bonds, but chained and nailed by fear of the Saracens [Arab Islamics]," whose "savage, barbarous and bloody sword" kept them locked up in the town.3
In Syria...Sophronius, in his sermon on the Day of Epiphany 636, bewailed the destruction of churches and monasteries, the sacked towns, the fields laid waste, the villages burned down by the nomads who were overrunning the country. In a letter the same year to Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, he mentions the ravages wrought by the Arabs.4 Thousands of people perished in 639, victims of the famine and plague that resulted from these destructions..... Country areas, particularly the plains and valleys populated with hamlets and villages, were ravaged by Bedouins who set fire to crops, massacred and carried off the peasantry and their cattle, and left nothing but ruins. Townspeople were in a different position. Protected by their walls, they could defend themselves or negotiate the conditions of their surrender on payment of tribute to the Bedouin chiefs....
In fact, the record of the precise progress of the Arab conquests constituted a basic principle in the earliest stages of Muslim law, since it fixed not only the nature and taxation of the land, but also the legislation applicable to its indigenous inhabitants. Although some disparities appeared in respect of the towns, the majority of the villages fell into the category of conquest without a treaty. According to the strategy of jihad, the absence of a treaty allowed the massacre or enslavement of the conquered population and the division of their property.... Helped by local Arab support---particularly active in the central region and the lower Euphrates---and by troop reinforcements sent from Arabia, Muslims extended their raids on the countryside and villages to the south and center of Iraq around Mada'in (Ctesiphon).......they invaded the Sawad (Babylonia), the villages near the Tigris and Euphrates....These raids were supported by Umar who sent reinforcements from Medina.
The monasteries were pillaged, the monks killed, and Monophysite [Christian] Arabs massacred, enslaved, or Islamicized by force; in Elam the population was also decimated, and in Susa their notables were put to the sword.... Palestine was laid waste and plundered.13 The Arabs moved into Cilicia, taking inhabitants with them into captivity. Mu'awiya sent Habib b. Maslama to Armenia....On his orders, the population of Euchaita [Jews and non-Arab, i.e., Armenian Christians] (on the river Halys) was put to the sword; those who escaped were all taken into slavery.14 According to the Armenian chroniclers, the Arabs, after they decimated the populations in Assyria and forced large numbers of people to embrace Islam, "entered the district of Daron [south-west of lake Van] which they sacked, shedding rivers of blood. They exacted tribute and forced the women and children to be handed over to them."15 In 642 they took the town of Dvin and annihilated the population [mainly Assyrian Christians] by the sword.
Then "the Ishmaelites returned by the route whence they had come, carrying off in their wake a multitude of captives to the number of thirty-five thousand."16 The following year, according to the same chronicler, the Arabs again invaded Armenia, "wreaking havoc, ruin, and slavery."17 .... In North Africa, the Arabs took thousands of captives and accumulated a large stock of booty...."the Muslims set to work overrunning and laying waste the open country."19 Tripoli was ransacked in 643; Carthage was entirely razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants were killed [majority Christian]. The Arabs put the Maghreb to fire and sword, and it took them more than a century to restore peace there by crushing the Berber resistance.... The wars continued on land and sea with Mu'awiya's successors. Arab troops wrought havoc in Anatolia by numerous incursions; churches were desecrated and burned down; all the inhabitants of Pergamum, Sardes, and other towns were led into captivity. The Greek towns of Gangres and Nicae were destroyed. Contemporary Christian chronicles mention entire regions ravaged, villages razed to the ground, towns burned, pillaged and destroyed, while entire populations were enslaved. As has been mentioned, town populations were not always spared. They often suffered massacre or slavery, always accompanied by deportations. This was the fate of the Christians and Jews of Aleppo, Antioch, Ctesiphon, Euchaita, Constantia, Pathos (Cyprus), Pergamum, Sardes, Germanicea (Marash), and Samosata---to cite but a few examples. In the course of the Umayyads' last attempt to take Constantinople (717), the Arab army commanded by Maslama carried out a pincer movement by land and sea and laid waste the whole region around the capital.
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During the course of Islamic hegemony Bedouins and other Arabs would immigrate to these ethnically cleansed and pillaged, non Arab areas and the remaining indigenous populations would be put in a dhimmi state with periodic sacking, persecution and massacring of the remaining Christian and Jewish populations or theses peoples would flee to other areas. You should quit shilling for the real ethnic cleansers and the unwanted neighborhood bullies - the Arab Islamics.
If you have seen Professor Rob Sobhani's comments (Georgetown University) on Fox News, you will realize the tremendous importance of the "psychological" war and the need to isolate the Islamic extremists from the mainstream.
Allah of Islam VS. God of Christianity(Good artical)
Cheese .
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