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Posted on 01/13/2003 6:08:16 AM PST by Mrs. Obelix
Muslim Disinformation Campaign By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | January 13, 2003
Islam has an image problem, and American Muslim organizations know it.
If you ask them, this problem comes from people lying about Islam. Irresponsible, hate-filled Christian preachers and others decry Islam as a violent religion, Muslim spokesmen claim, and this bigotry gives rise to acts of violence against Muslims. The Council on American Islamic Relations and other Muslim groups have dedicated themselves to heading off such attacks by setting the record straight. On its website CAIR says that it was established in order to "promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America," and declares that "we believe misrepresentations of Islam are most often the result of ignorance on the part of non-Muslims and reluctance on the part of Muslims to articulate their case."
Laudable — but the cure offered by American Muslim groups may be worse than the disease. Instead of taking the post-September 11 interest in Islam as an opportunity for a thorough and searching examination of the root causes of Islamic terrorism and the hatred that fomented the terrorist attacks, all too often these groups have constructed a "positive image of Islam" out of smoke and mirrors. Instead of dealing forthrightly and constructively with the concerns and questions that non-Muslims have had since the attacks, CAIR, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and others seem interested in what one ex-Muslim termed "throwing sand in our eyes."
Sand in hand, the IIIT recently sponsored general mailing of a flyer entitled "Q & A on Islam and Arab Americans." Virtually everything about this little flyer is misleading, starting with the title itself: although it purports to be about "Arab Americans," in fact it is solely about Islam. Several times the author of the flyer does what American Muslim groups in other contexts scold non-Muslims for doing: equating Muslims and Arabs. In one place it states that American Muslims come "from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and national origins," yet in the very next column it poses the question, "What is an appropriate way to greet an Arab-American?," and explains in the answer that "some Muslims feel it is inappropriate for unrelated men and women to shake hands." While it acknowledges that "most Arab-Americans grew up in the USA and do not require special greetings," it makes no mention of the main reason why for most American Arabs, it’s completely irrelevant what Muslims feel about shaking hands or anything else: the vast majority of Arab Americans are Christians.
This confusion is common; it even appears at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). This organization lists boxer Muhammad Ali as a member of its Advisory Board. Ali is a famous American convert to Islam, but does that make him an Arab? The ADC does acknowledge that most Arab Americans aren’t Muslims, but the boxer’s inclusion raises an intriguing question about the group’s overall agenda: it "welcomes people of all backgrounds, faiths and ethnicities as members," but is it welcoming them into an Arab group or a Muslim group? Perhaps the blurring of the distinction between a racial group (Arabs) and a religious group (Muslims) is in service of efforts to portray Muslims as a racial group subject to discrimination in the United States, and thus entitled to privileged victim status.
In any case, the distortions and inaccuracies of this flyer are indicative of the half-truths and untruths that American Muslim groups are propagating today:
1. Islam means peace. The flyer notes that "the Arabic word for ‘Islam’ means ‘submission,’ and it derives from a word meaning ‘peace.’" Indeed, in Arabic, Islam and salaam ("peace") share the same linguistic root, but this in itself is virtually meaningless. All sorts of words share the same roots, and can still have quite divergent meanings — such as the English word love and the related Sanskrit word lubh (lust). Noting the derivation of the word Islam in this brief information flyer can only be an attempt to lend credibility to the currently fashionable idea that Islam is a religion of peace.
But that idea glosses over some troubling facts.
2. "Jihad does not mean ‘holy war,’" says the IIIT flyer, which originally ran in USA Today. "Literally, jihad in Arabic means to strive, struggle and exert effort. It is a central and broad Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self defense or fighting against tyranny or oppression."
This is the prevailing notion in academic circles today. Articulating the currently accepted orthodoxy, Duke University professor of Islamic studies Bruce Lawrence agreed that jihad doesn’t mean "holy war": he defines this all-important Islamic concept as "being a better student, a better colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to control one’s anger." To its credit, the flyer’s explanation goes farther than Lawrence by mentioning the battlefield, and in this it is more accurate than the professor’s preposterously innocuous farrago. Islamic theology distinguishes between the "greater jihad," which involves "struggle against evil inclinations within oneself," and the "lesser jihad," which is hinted at here as "struggle in the battlefield for self defense or fighting against tyranny or oppression."
Still, left unmentioned is the fact that throughout history, Muslims have not stopped at self-defense or fighting against tyranny. "In premodern times," observes the noted scholar of Islam Daniel Pipes, "jihad meant mainly one thing among Sunni Muslims, then as now the Islamic majority. It meant the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims (known in Arabic as dar al-Islam) at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims (dar al-harb). In this prevailing conception, the purpose of jihad is political, not religious. It aims not so much to spread the Islamic faith as to extend sovereign Muslim power (though the former has often followed the latter). The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world."
Pipes adds: "Jihad was no abstract obligation through the centuries, but a key aspect of Muslim life. . . . Within a century after the prophet’s death in 632, Muslim armies had reached as far as India in the east and Spain in the west. Though such a dramatic single expansion was never again to be repeated, important victories in subsequent centuries included the seventeen Indian campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazna (r. 998-1030), the battle of Manzikert opening Anatolia (1071), the conquest of Constantinople (1453), and the triumphs of Uthman dan Fodio in West Africa (1804-17). In brief, jihad was part of the warp and woof not only of premodern Muslim doctrine but of premodern Muslim life."
Has this changed? Certainly it’s quite different from the idea of jihad purveyed by Muslim groups and the major media today. But this older idea of jihad is alive and well in the Islamic world. One manual of Islamic law — said to conform "to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community" by Al-Azhar University of Cairo, Egypt, the oldest and most prestigious university in the Islamic world — calls jihad "a communal obligation" to "war against non-Muslims. . . . The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax . . . The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim."
Some Muslims assert that because there is no caliph today (the caliphate was abolished by the secular state of Turkey in 1924), there can be no jihad. That’s one reason why some radical Muslims urge that the caliphate must be restored. Says Britain’s Sheikh Omar Bakri: "The Muslim Ummah [worldwide Muslim community] has never before been in a position where we are divided into over 55 nations each with its own oppressive kufr [infidel] regime ruling above us. There is no doubt therefore that the vital issue for the Muslims today is to establish the Khilafah [caliphate]."
Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden isn’t waiting for this restoration to declare jihad, and he is by no means isolated in this perspective in the Islamic world — witness the many terrorist groups around the world that rally under the name of jihad. Pipes asks, "And what about all the Muslims waging violent and aggressive jihads, under that very name and at this very moment, in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, Ambon, and other places around the world? Have they not heard that jihad is a matter of controlling one’s anger?"
3. Islam condemns terrorism. The "Q & A" asserts that "Islam does not support terrorism under any circumstances. Terrorism goes against every principle in Islam. If a Muslim engages in terrorism, he is not following Islam. He may be wrongly using the name of Islam for political or financial gain."
This assertion is closely allied to the differing explanations of the meaning of jihad. There is no necessary connection between jihad and terrorism, and indeed, many moderate Muslims declare that their extremist brethren who justify terrorism on Islamic grounds only do so by distorting the concept of jihad. "Jihad is misused," says an expert in PBS’s documentary, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet. "There is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies, uh, the claim of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or other similar groups to kill innocent civilians. That is unequivocally a crime under Islamic law. Acts of terror violence that have occurred in the name of Islam are not only wrong, they are contrary to Islam."
Once again, this is not as much of an open-and-shut case as these authorities would like us to believe. After all, no less an authority than George Bush’s "imam of peace," Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University, disagrees. Bush quoted him in late 2001 at the United Nations as saying that "terrorism is a disease, and that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians." But evidently his definition of terrorism would differ from that of the average American: according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), last spring Tantawi called suicide bombing "the highest form of Jihad operations," and added that "every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment."
Tantawi is no isolated crank. He holds his position at Al-Azhar by the grace of the Egyptian government, and he uses that position to wield enormous influence in the Islamic world: the New York Times called Al-Azhar the "revered mosque, the distinguished university, the leading voice of the Sunni Muslim establishment. . . . It has sought to advise Muslims around the world that those who kill in the name of Islam are nothing more than heretics. It has sought to guide, to reassure Westerners against any clash of civilizations."
Nor is Tantawi singular in his opinions. Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected mastermind of the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali as well as bombings of churches in 2000, declared that "martyrs’ bombs are a noble thing, a jihad of high value if you are forced to do it. For instance, in Palestine there is no other way to defend yourself and defend Islam. All Ulamas [Muslim leaders] agree with martyrs’ bombs because we are forced to do it. There is no other way to defend ourselves and to defend Islam. . . . We are obliged to defend ourselves and attack people who attack Islam. In Islam there is no word for hands up, there is no word for surrender, there are only two things, win or die . . . if infidels do want to attack Islam, fight Islam, so we are instructed to fight them."
Instructed by whom? Does Abu Bakar Bashir read the same Qur’an that moderate Muslims say condemns terrorism?
After a shooting at a church in Pakistan, police detained another Muslim cleric, Mohammed Afzal, who is alleged to have told his people that "it is the duty of every good Muslim to kill Christians . . . You should attack Christians and not even have food until you have seen their dead bodies."
Presumably Afzal would not consider Christians "innocent civilians." Osama and other Muslim extremists have maintained that the people killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not innocent, but complicit in what they imagine to be the American government’s worldwide oppression of Muslims. Consequently, they argue that they were fitting victims of jihad — even envisioned only as a struggle against "tyranny or oppression."
Disquieting evidence indicates that such ideas are not restricted to obscure covens of ranting radicals, shunned by decent Muslims everywhere. According to MEMRI, "Mahmoud AlZahhar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, told the Israeli Arab weekly Kul AlArab, ‘Two days ago, in Alexandria, enrolment began for volunteers for martyrdom [operations]. Two thousand students from the University of Alexandria signed up to die a martyr’s death. This is the real Egyptian people.’"
Two thousand students from one university? Didn’t these two thousand students know that "those who kill in the name of Islam are nothing more than heretics"? Didn’t they know that "terrorism goes against every principle in Islam"?
The point is not that the moderates who wrote the flyer are wrong and that these radicals are right. The point is that these radical Muslims use the Qur’an and other core Islamic sources to justify their actions, and their exegesis is compelling enough to win over large numbers of Muslims. Moderate Muslims have thus far not been remotely successful in reading the radicals out of Islam. Certainly terrorism is not universally accepted in the Islamic world, but with terrorist groups rallying under the banner of jihad in all corners of the globe today, IIIT might have performed a valuable service by explaining how this violation of "every principle in Islam" came to be so widely accepted in the Muslim world.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
In fact, many authorities in the study of religion have come to rather harsh conclusions Mohammed himself; including the conclusions of theological scholar and reformer Martin Luther, who quite simply pronounced Mohammed to have fallen under *Satanic* influences.
According to Sir William Muir, Marcus Dods, and some others, Mohammed was at first sincere, but later, carried away by success, he practiced deception wherever it would gain his end. Koelle "finds the key to the first period of Mohammed's life in Khadija, his first wife", after whose death he became a prey to his evil passions [Demonstrated by his repeated rape of his nine year old 'wife' -- my comment].
Sprenger attributes the alleged revelations to epileptic fits, or to "a paroxysm of cataleptic insanity".
Zwemer himself goes on to criticize the life of Mohammed by the standards, first, of the Old and New Testaments, both of which Mohammed acknowledged as Divine revelation; second, by the pagan morality of his Arabian compatriots; lastly, by the new law of which he pretended to be the "divinely appointed medium and custodian". According to this author, the prophet was false even to the ethical traditions of the idolatrous brigands among whom he lived, and grossly violated the easy sexual morality of his own system. After this, it is hardly necessary to say that, in Zwemer's opinion, Mohammed fell very far short of the most elementary requirements of Scriptural morality. Quoting Johnstone, Zwemer concludes by remarking that the judgment of these modern scholars, however harsh, rests on evidence which "comes all from the lips and the pens of his own devoted adherents. . . And the followers of the prophet can scarcely complain if, even on such evidence, the verdict of history goes against him".
"Cataleptic insanity" ... and demonic possession sums up the true nature Mohammed and Islam in my view.
Life is going to be difficult for any and all American Muslim organizations trying to convince me of this disinformation or misrepresentations of Islam when I read articles such as this one above.
The worldwide political subversion movement we call Islamism benefits greatly from the willingness of benevolent-minded people to believe what organizations such as CAIR say about Islam and Muslims, without looking at the objective evidence. At a time when non-Muslims should be extremely wary of such things, and fully informed about the differences among Muslims, the Islamists are holding forth unopposed. Whatever the reason, "liberal" Muslims refrain from condemning their militant co-religionists, or even distinguishing themselves unambiguously from them.
If there are sincere, tolerant Muslims without political agendas -- I'm not yet convinced that there are enough to matter, but I must admit the possibililty -- they don't have much time left before the propaganda and deeds of the Islamists make their lives unbearable. If the general American public becomes convinced that all Muslims seek to impose Islam and sharia on all lands, or that no Muslim will ever raise his hand against a Muslim terrorist, their future here will be too terrible to contemplate.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Important article -- must read. Here's a Jehadi website ping for CAIR -- the "Council on American Islamic Relations".
http://www.cair-net.org/ -- Wash. D.C.
http://www.caircan.ca/ -- Canada
http://www.cair-ny.com/ -- New York
http://www.cair.info/ -- Seattle, WA
http://www.cair-florida.org/ -- Florida
http://www.cairmichigan.org/ -- Michigan
http://www.cairchicago.org/ -- Chicago
http://www.cairaz.org/ -- Arizona
There could be a more sinister motive - to stereotype Arab Christians as apostates?
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