Monday, March 9, 2020

TREVOR PHILLIPS EXPELLED BY ALLAH'S BITCH BOYS FOR EXPOSING PAKI MUSLIM RAPIST

Such is how Islam’s skilled apologists dupe the West: they admit to some of the more controversial aspects that many other apologists shy away from—namely that Shariah is indeed foundational to Islam and that hundreds of millions of Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented—but then, having established trust with the reader, they slip back into the “game,” portraying all the intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism daily committed in the name of Islam as products of anything and everything—fallible Muslim interpretations, self-serving clerics and terrorists, socio-economic pressures, Western criticism or encroachments—never Shariah itself.


Labour Party Expels Anti-Racism Campaigner for Criticising Pakistani Grooming Gangs

LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 18: Trevor Phillips, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, speaks at the British Chamber of Commerce Annual Conference held at the headquarters of BAFTA on March 18, 2010 in London, England. The annual conference entitled 'Preparing for Change - Setting the Business Agenda' …
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
3:33

Trevor Phillips, a veteran anti-racism campaigner, accused the Labour Party of “shutting down debate” after he was expelled from the party over allegedly Islamophobic statements concerning Pakistani grooming gangs.
The former head of Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, was expelled from the Labour Party in the UK for the use of language “which targets or intimidates members of ethnic or religious communities, or incites racism, including Islamophobia”, according to The Times.
The decision to remove Mr Phillips centres around a 2016 pamphlet he wrote for the think-tank Civitas, entitled Race and Faith: The Deafening Silence, in which he wrote: “The most sensitive cause of conflict in recent years has been the collision between majority norms and the behaviours of some Muslim groups.”
“In particular, the exposure of systematic and longstanding abuse by men, mostly of Pakistani Muslim origin in the north of England,” he added.
The anti-racism campaigner accused the party of “shutting down genuine debate”, saying that he “fell victim to Labour’s inquisition”.
“They say I’ve accused Muslims of being different — Muslims are different, and in many ways I think that’s admirable… We cannot continue to simply say differences don’t matter — it’s a form of disrespect,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.


Mr Phillips commissioned a report for the Runnymede Trust in 1997 which investigated Islamophobia in the United Kingdom and is widely credited with popularising the term for which he now stands accused.
Phillips later admitted in 2016 that he “got almost everything wrong” on Muslim immigration, and the ability of the group to integrate into British society.
“For a long time, I too thought that Europe’s Muslims would become like previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain’s diverse identity landscape. I should have known better,” he said.
The anti-racism campaigner was the first chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which launched an investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party. Before the last general election, Phillips and 23 other Labour members wrote an article in The Guardian, saying that they would refuse to support Jeremy Corbyn in the election over his handling of antisemitism within the party.


Phillips has also come under fire from left-wing activists for his stance against a push by MPs to reclassify the term Islamophobia as a “kind of racism” hostile to “Muslimness”. Mr Phillips said that the proposed update to the term was dangerous as Islam is not a race, but rather a doctrine that should be up for scrutiny.
“It was therefore only a matter of time before this ‘definition’ would lead to the persecution of dissidents. But I never imagined that I would be one of its first victims,” Phillips wrote in The Times.
Trevor Phillips said although he has disagreements with the current leadership of the Labour Party, he believes that dissenting voices are crucial for healthy debate.
“If this is how Labour treats its own family, how might it treat its real opponents if it ever gains power again? It would be a tragedy if, at the very moment we most need a robust and effective opposition, our nation had to endure the spectacle of a great party collapsing into a brutish, authoritarian cult,” Phillips warned.


Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

Petition to Release Secret Govt Report on Grooming Gangs Smashes 80,000 in Days

Rotherham
OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images
2:47
More than 80,000 people signed an official petition demanding the release of a suppressed report on the ethnic background of grooming gangs over the weekend.
“The Government is refusing to release official research on the characteristics of grooming gangs, claiming it is not in the ‘public interest’,” the petition begins.
“We, the British public, demand the release of the official research on grooming gangs undertaken by the Government in full.”
Official petitions which break 10,000 signatures require an official response from the government — which has not yet been given — and petitions which break 100,000 signatures much be considered for a full parliamentary debate.


Former Home Secretary Sajid Javid, as the petition reminds viewers, “promised the review as Home Secretary in July 2018, pledging that there would be ‘no no-go areas of inquiry'” and that he would “not let cultural or political sensitivities get in the way of understanding the problem and doing something about it”.
Shortly afterwards, however, the Home Office announced that it would be keeping the report “internal”, and has now officially refused a Freedom of Information request attempting to force its release — on grounds that this would not be “in the public interest” and undermine “the ‘safe space’ necessary for ministers and officials to consider policy options in private”.
Previous probes and independent reports have indicated that grooming gangs are comprised overwhelmingly of Muslim men, usually with roots in Pakistan, and their victims are overwhelmingly white working-class girls — although Sikhs and Hindus have also been targetted.


The decision to suppress the review was reportedly a source of friction between Priti Patel, the current Home Secretary, and Sir Philip Rutnam, the former Permanent Secretary who served as the Home Office’s top bureaucrat until his dramatic resignation.
The decision was also met with outrage from many campaigners and members of the public, especially given the context of grooming gang abuse having been ignored by police and local government officials for decades — for fear taking action would cause tension with the Muslim community or lead to accusations of racism.
To the surprise of many, even Diane Abbott, the Labour party’s far-left Shadow Home Secretary, has called for the report to be released.
“There must be no more cover-ups around these horrific crimes and no more inaction from the government,” she said in comments reported by the Independent.
“Many of the girls will never recover from the abuse they suffered and they and their families deserve all the facts. This report should be published.”


Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London


A French intellectual warns that France will have a Muslim future

Because of its relationship with Algeria, France has a 50-year history of Muslim immigration, pre-dating Angela Merkel’s 2015 welcome mat. Last month, Michel Gurfinkiel, a French intellectual who founded the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institution, participated in a radio interview with Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum. During the interview, he warned that French demographic changes predict a future in which Islam is ascendant:
Domestically, the past fifty years of steady immigration from Islamic countries into France is “transforming the fabric of French society” from within. Demographic and sociological surveys indicate that 10-15% of the French population is now of Muslim origin, including 20-30% of French citizens or residents under the age of 25. Some integrate successfully, but many align with the most radical and militant expression of the religion. Their rejection of France’s secular constitution is matched by resentment of the French military’s fight against global jihadism in Africa and the Middle East, seen as a “deliberate assault ... on Islam.”
Meanwhile, French people, as is true for most Europeans, have lost faith in their institutions. Christianity is declining and the French are no longer marrying or having children. Free speech is also dying in France:
In January, a 16-year old identified only as “Mila’ criticized Islam as a “religion of hate” on her Instagram account in response to online harassment from a homophobic Muslim troll. The resulting online threats of bodily harm led to Mila and her family being placed under police protection. The French custom of satirizing or criticizing religion does not extend to Islam, “and the main reason ... is, of course, fear,” said Gurfinkiel. “It’s a fact that Muslims don’t react peacefully to these kinds of [speech] as ... Christians [do], and everybody ... remember[s] ... the humorists of Charlie Hebdo ... slaughtered by a Muslim commando a few years ago.”
Another sign that Islam is ascendant in a land that was once considered the cradle of European Christianity is that churches in France are routinely desecrated.
Dr. Peter Hammond, in his early 21st-century book about Christian genocide in Muslim lands, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, produced a rough rule of thumb about the threat to a dominant culture from Islamic immigration:
As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:
United States — Muslim 0..6%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1.8%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%
At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:
Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:
France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim 5.8%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burnings. In Russia, grade-schools were attacked. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in:
Guyana — Muslim 10%
India — Muslim 13.4%
Israel — Muslim 16%
Kenya — Muslim 10%
Russia — Muslim 15%
After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:
Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%
At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:
Bosnia — Muslim 40%
Chad — Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%
From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:
Albania — Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar — Muslim 77.5%
Sudan — Muslim 70%
After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, beheadings, stoning, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:
Bangladesh — Muslim 83%
Egypt — Muslim 90%
Gaza — Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%
Iran — Muslim 98%
Iraq — Muslim 97%
Jordan — Muslim 92%
Morocco — Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim 97%
Palestine — Muslim 99%
Syria — Muslim 90%
Tajikistan — Muslim 90%
Turkey — Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%
France’s Muslim population has substantially increased since Hammond wrote those words. The tipping point is near.

Muslim Deceit and the Burden of Proof



In his recent defense of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya (dismantled here), Usama Hasan of the UK think tank Quilliam made the following admission:
It is true that hardened islamist terrorists, such as the Al-Qaeda & ISIS supporter Usman Khan who murdered two people at Fishmongers’ Hall [after pretending to have been “rehabilitated”], do misuse the principle of taqiyyah in order to further their cause. However, the charge that all Muslims are generally religiously obligated to lie, and do so routinely, is both dangerous and untrue.
However true this may be, it is also irrelevant.  After all, how is the infidel to know which Muslim is and isn’t “misusing the principle of taqiyyah”?  Moreover, why should the burden of proof be on the non-Muslim -- who stands to (and often does) suffer and even die from ignoring the role of deceit in Islam -- and not on the Muslim, whose religion allows deception in the first place? This is particularly so since more than a few “hardened islamist terrorists” are convinced that their creed allows them to dissimulate to their heart’s content -- so long as doing so can be seen as helping further the cause of Islam.
In this, as in virtually all things Islamic, Muslims have their prophet’s example -- two that are especially poignant -- to turn to. 
First is the assassination of Ka‘b ibn Ashraf (d. 624), an elderly Jew.  Because he dared mock Muhammad, the latter exclaimed, “Who will kill this man who has hurt Allah and his messenger?” A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to Ka‘b to murder him, he needed permission to lie to the Jew. 
Allah’s messenger agreed. So Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka‘b and began to complain about Muhammad until his disaffection became so convincing that Ka‘b eventually dropped his guard and befriended him.
After behaving as his friend for some time, Ibn Maslama eventually appeared with another Muslim, also pretending to have apostatized.  Then, while a trusting Ka‘b’s guard was down, they attacked and slaughtered him, bringing his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of “Allahu Akbar!”
In another account, after Muhammad and his followers had attacked, plundered, and massacred a number of non-Muslim Arabs and Jews, the latter assembled and were poised to defeat the Muslims (at the Battle of the Trench, 627).   But then Naim bin Mas‘ud, one of the leaders of these non-Muslim “confederates,” as they came to be known in history, secretly went to Muhammad and converted to Islam. The prophet asked him to return to his tribesmen and allies -- without revealing that he had joined the Muslim camp -- and to try to get them to abandon the siege.  “For,” Muhammad assured him, “war is deceit.”
Mas‘ud returned, pretending to be loyal to his former kinsmen and allies, all while giving them bad advice. He also subtly instigated quarrels between the various tribes until, no longer trusting each other, they disbanded -- thereby becoming a celebrated hero in Islamic tradition.
In the two well-known examples above, Muslims deceived non-Muslims not because they were being persecuted for being Muslim but as a tactic to empower Islam.  (Even the Battle of the Trench was precipitated precisely because Muhammad and his followers had first attacked the confederates at the Battle of Badr and massacred hundreds of them on other occasions.)
Despite these stories being part of the Sunna to which Sunnis adhere, UCLA’s Abou El Fadl -- the primary expert the Washington Post once quoted to show that Islam does not promote deceit -- claims that “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.”
Tell that to Ka‘b ibn Ashraf, whose head was cut off for believing Muslim lies.  The prophet of Islam allowed his followers to deceive the Jew to slaughter him -- even though Ka‘b posed no threat to any Muslim’s life.
Especially revealing is that, in Dr. Sami Makerem’s seminal book on the topic, Al-Taqiyya fi’l Islam (Taqiyya in Islam), he cites the two aforementioned examples from the prophet’s biography as prime examples of taqiyya.
It comes to this: even if  one were to accept the limited definition of taqiyya as permitting deception only under life-threatening circumstances (as Usama Hasan and any number of apologists insist), the fact remains: Islam also permits lies and deception in order to empower itself.  Accordingly, and considering that Islam considers itself in a constant state of war with non-Islam (typified by the classical formulation of Dar al-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb) any Muslim who feels this or that piece of deception over the infidel is somehow benefiting Islam will believe that he has a blank check to lie. 
That’s the inconvenient fact -- passingly admitted to by Usama Hasan -- that needs addressing; and that’s why the burden of proof belongs on Muslims, not non-Muslims.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center; a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute; and a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum.


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'Hating and Loving' for Islam

Understanding the roots of terror.
January 17, 2020 
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
During a New Year’s Eve Islamic terror attack that took place in Russia minutes before the clock struck midnight, two Muslim men—Akhmed Imagozhev, 22 and Mikail Miziyev, 18—drove their car into and stabbed to death two police officers, one a married father of four.  Other officers subsequently shot one of the jihadis dead, while hospitalizing the other.
An image of the two Muslim men posing with knives was later found on social media.  Beneath it appeared the words, “love and hatred based on Tawhid!”  This is hardly the first time this ostensibly oxymoronic phrase appears in connection with Islamic acts of terror.  After launching a successful terror attack that killed two policemen in the Kashmir Valley, the militant commander of Kashmir’s Hizb al-Mujahidin—“the Party of Jihadis”—justified the murders by saying,  “We love and hate for the sake of Allah.”
Interestingly, in this otherwise cryptic motto lie the roots of Islam’s conflict with the rest of the world.  “Loving and hating” is one of several translations of the Islamic doctrine of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ (which since 2006 I have generally translated as “Loyalty and Enmity”).
The wala’ portion—“love,” “loyalty,” etc.—requires Muslims always to aid and support fellow Muslims (including jihadis, for example through funds or zakat).  As one medieval Muslim authority explained, the believer “is obligated to befriend a believer—even if he is oppressive and violent toward you — while he must be hostile to the infidel—even if he is liberal and kind to you” (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 64 ).   This is a clear reflection of Koran 48:29: “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves.”
But it is the bara’—the “hate,” the “enmity”—that manifests itself so regularly that even those in the West who are not necessarily acquainted with the particulars of Muslim doctrine sense it.  For instance, in November 2015, after a series of deadly Islamic terror strikes in the West, then presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “I think Islam hates us.  There’s something there that — there’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an unbelievable hatred of us.”
This “tremendous” and “unbelievable hatred” is not a product of grievances, political factors, or even an “extremist” interpretation of Islam; rather, it is a direct byproduct of mainstream Islamic teaching.  Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse of this doctrine and speaks for itself.  As Osama bin Laden once wrote:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: “We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah alone” [Koran 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy!… Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion.  (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43).
Similarly, the Islamic State confessed to the West in the context of Koran 60: 4 that “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers.”  As for any and all political “grievances,” these are “secondary” reasons for the jihad, ISIS said:
The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
Koran 58:22 goes as far as to praise Muslims who kill their own non-Muslim family members: “You shall find none who believe in Allah and the Last Day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and His Messenger—even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred.”
According to Ibn Kathir’s mainstream commentary on the Koran, this verse refers to a number of Muslims who slaughtered their own non-Muslim kin (one slew his non-Muslim father, another his non-Muslim brother, a third—Abu Bakr, the first revered caliph of Islamic history—tried to slay his non-Muslim son, and Omar, the second righteous caliph, slaughtered his relatives).   Ibn Kathir adds that Allah was immensely pleased by their unwavering zeal for his cause and rewarded them with paradise. (The Al Qaeda Reader75-76).
In fact, verses that support the divisive doctrine of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ permeate the Koran (see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 60:1).  There is one caveat, captured by Koran 3:28: when Muslims are in a position of weakness, they may pretend to befriend non-Muslims, as long as the hate carries on in their hearts (such is taqiyya; see herehere, and here for examples; for other Islamic sanctioned forms of deception, read about tawriya, and taysir).
Little wonder, then, that America’s supposed best Muslim friends and allies—such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar—are on record calling on all Muslims to hate.  According to a Saudi governmental run website,  Muslims must “oppose and hate whomever Allah commands us to oppose and hate, including the Jews, the Christians, and other mushrikin [non-Muslims], until they believe in Allah alone and abide by his laws, which he sent down to his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him.”
Indeed, because enmity for non-Muslims is so ironclad in the Koran, mainstream Islamic teaching holds that Muslim men must even hate—and show that they hate—their non-Muslim wives, for no other reason than that they are “infidels.”
If Muslims must hate those closest to them—including fathers, sons, brothers, and wives—simply because they are non-Muslims, is there any surprise that so many Muslims hate foreign “infidels” who live oceans away—such as Americans, who are further portrayed throughout the Islamic world as trying to undermine Islam?
In short, jihad—or terrorism, war on non-Muslims for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims—is simply the physical realization of an overlooked concept that precedes it: Islam’s unequivocal command for Muslims to hate non-Muslims.


THE KORAN

BIBLE OF THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

Koran 2:191 "slay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".


“The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood also wages its deadly campaign through its dozens of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.”

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

* We will take advantage of their immigration policy to infiltrate them.

* We will use their own welfare system to provide us with food, housing, schooling, and health care, while we out breed them and plot against them. We will Caliphate on their dime.

* We will use political correctness as a weapon. Anyone who criticizes us, we will take the opportunity to grandstand and curry favor from the media and Democrats and loudly accuse our critics of being an Islamophobe.

* We will use their own discrimination laws against them and slowly introduce Sharia Law into their culture..

 

Duping Americans on Sharia

A detailed look at how Islamic apologist extraordinaire John Esposito whitewashes Islamic terror.
January 14, 2020 
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Does Islam itself promote hostility for and violence against non-Muslims, or are all the difficulties between the West and Islam based on secondary factors—from “radical” interpretations of Islam, to economics and grievances?
This is the fundamental question.
Obviously, if “anti-infidel” hostility is inherent to Islam itself, then the conflict becomes existential—a true clash of civilizations, with no easy fixes and lots of ugly implications along the horizon.
Because of this truism, those whose job it is to whitewash Islam’s image in the West insist on the opposite—that all difficulties are temporal and not rooted to innate Islamic teachings.
Enter Shariah: What Everyone Needs to Know, co-authored by John Esposito and Natana J. Delong-Bas.  The authors’ goal is to exonerate Shariah, which they portray as enshrining “the common good (maslahah), human dignity, social justice, and the centrality of the community” from Western criticism or fear, which they say is based solely on “myth” and “sensationalism.”
In their introductory chapters they define Shariah as being built upon the words of the Koran and the Sunna (or example) of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as contained in sahih (canonical) hadiths.  They add: “Shariah and Islamic law are not the same thing.  The distinction between divine law (Shariah) and its human interpretation, application, and development (Islamic law) is important to keep in mind throughout this book…. Whereas Shariah is immutable and infallible, Islamic law (fiqh) is fallible and changeable.”
Next the authors highlight how important Shariah is to a majority of Muslims.  They cite a 2013 Pew Poll which found that  69% of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, 73% in South Asia, and 55% in Central Asia believe that “Shariah is God’s [Allah’s] divine revelation.”
Even larger numbers “favored the establishment of Shariah as official law”: 99% in Afghanistan, 84% in South Asia, 74% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 64% in sub-Saharan Africa.
So far so good.  The authors’ introductory claims (that Shariah is fundamental to Islam) and statistics (that hundreds of millions of Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented) are correct.
But they also beg the aforementioned question: is Shariah itself behind the intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism committed in the name of Islam?
Here, the hitherto objective authors shift gears and take on the mantle of apologists. Their thesis is simple: Any and all negative activities Muslims engage in are to be pinned on anything and everything—so long as it’s not Shariah.
In order to support this otherwise unsupportable position, and as might be expected, the remainder of the book consists of obfuscation, dissembling, and lots and lots of contextual omissions and historical distortions.
A small sampling follows:
Shariah on Women
The authors quote and discuss at length many Koran verses about women that seem positive (Koran 30:21, 3:195, and 2:187), without alluding to counter verses that permit husbands to beat their wives (4:34) and treat them as “fields” to be “plowed however you wish” (2:223).  Nor do they deal with Muhammad’s assertions that women are “lacking in intelligence” and will form the bulk of hell’s denizens, as recounted in a canonical hadith.
They partially quote Koran 4:3: “…marry those that please you of other women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then marry only one.”  This suits the authors’ purpose, which is to present the Koran as implicitly recommending only one wife, since it acknowledges the near impossibility for a man to treat all wives equally.  Yet the authors deliberately cut off the continuation of that verse—which permits Muslim men to copulate with an unlimited amount of sex slaves (ma malakat aymanukum) even if they are married.
They also dissemble about child marriage, saying “classical Islamic law” permits it, but only when “the child reaches a mature age.”   Yet they make no mention that, based on Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha—that is, based on his Sunna, which is immutable and part of Shariah—nine is considered a “mature age.”
Freedom of Religion and Non-Muslims
The authors claim that “There are more than 100 Quranic verses that … affirm freedom of religion and conscience.”  They quote many at length and assert that “The guiding Shariah principle … underscored by Quran 3:28, 29:46, and 60:89, is that believers should treat unbelievers decently and equitably as long as the unbelievers do not behave aggressively.”
Yet they fail to mention or sideline the many contradictory verses that call for relentless war on non-Muslims—who are further likened to dumb cattle in Koran 25:44 —until they surrender, one way or another, to Islam (e.g., 8:39, 9:5, 9:29).
They fail to quote the verses that form the highly divisive doctrine of al-wala’ w’al bara’ (“Loyalty and Enmity”), including Koran 5:51, which forbids Muslims from befriending Jews and Christians, and Koran 60:4, which commands Muslims to harbor only “hate” for non-Muslims, until they “believe in Allah alone.”
Needless to say, they ignore Koran 3:28, which permits Muslims to feign friendship for non-Muslims, whenever the former are under the latter’s authority (such is the doctrine of taqiyya; see herehereherehere, and here for examples).
It is, incidentally, because of all these divisive Koran verses—because of Shariah—that the Islamic State forthrightly explained, “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers.”
The closest the authors get to address these issues is in a section titled, “Can Muslims in the West be Loyal Citizens.”  They respond with a yes—but the evidence they cite are polls (based on wishful interpretations), which of course tells the reader little about the topic they purport to “de-mythologize”: Shariah.
Jihad
As might be expected, when the authors reach the topic of jihad, their dissembling reaches a new level.  They repeatedly insist that jihad, as enshrined in Shariah, is simply the Muslim counterpart of Western Just War theory, which teaches that war and aggression are permissible, but only in defense or to recover one’s territory from occupiers:  “The lesser or outer jihad involves defending Islam and the Muslim community.”   As usual, they spend much time quoting and elaborating on Koran verses that comport with this position, while ignoring or sidelining the many contradictory verses.  In reality, mainstream Islam holds that the Koran’s “Sword Verses” (especially 9:5 and 9:29) have abrogated all the peaceful ones, thereby making warfare on non-Muslims—for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims—obligatory.
Consider Koran 9:29:  “Fight those who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [Islam] from the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”
What, exactly, is “defensive” about this verse?
Similarly, they claim that dar al-harb, or “abode of war”—Islam’s designation for all those non-Muslim territories (such as Europe) that Muslims were historically in a permanent state of war with—“applied to other parties with whom Muslims were in conflict.” Again, they fail to mention that the primary reason Muslims were “in conflict” with them was because they were non-Muslim, and that all non-Muslim territories were by default part of the “abode of war,” except when treaties advantageous to Islam were drawn.
Instead, the authors say, “The territories classified as the abode of war were those that refused to provide such protection to Muslims and their clients”—thereby implying Muslims were hostile to, say, Europe, because Europe was first hostile to Muslims.  (Reality, as chronicled in Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, was the exact opposite.)
Miscellaneous Subterfuge
One can go on and on; the authors engage in other forms of subterfuge to exonerate Shariah.  They frequently project a Western veneer to Islamic terms and concepts, saying for example that Shariah is ultimately about “promoting good and preventing evil”—which sounds admirable—without pointing out that, based on the Koran and Sunna (that is, Shariah), conquering non-Muslim territories is about “promoting good” and keeping women under wraps and indoors, beating them as required, is about “preventing vice.”
While admitting that Christians and other non-Muslim minorities are currently being persecuted, not only do the authors insist that this has nothing to do with Shariah, but they invoke relativistic thinking: “Just as Muslims living in non-Muslim countries are often concerned with their rights and civil liberties as minorities,” they say, “so some consider the rights and status of non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim countries to be a parallel issue.” In other words, because some Americans view Muslims in their midst with suspicion, the ongoing enslavement and slaughter of Christians—more than 6,000 in Nigeria alone since January 2018—and ban on or destruction of churches is a sort of tit for tat, a “parallel issue” that can only be solved when the West becomes less critical about Islam.
Relativism is also invoked during the authors’ brief treatment of apostasy in Islam: “Historically, apostasy was sometimes punishable by death in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”  They claim that apostasy is still a major issue in Islam due to “radical” interpretations or politics—bolstering their position by again quoting the same Koran verses that seem to support freedom of religion—without mentioning, say, the canonical hadith (meaning part of Shariah) where Muhammad said, “Whoever leaves his religion [Islam], kill him.”
Such is how Islam’s skilled apologists dupe the West: they admit to some of the more controversial aspects that many other apologists shy away from—namely that Shariah is indeed foundational to Islam and that hundreds of millions of Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented—but then, having established trust with the reader, they slip back into the “game,” portraying all the intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism daily committed in the name of Islam as products of anything and everything—fallible Muslim interpretations, self-serving clerics and terrorists, socio-economic pressures, Western criticism or encroachments—never Shariah itself.
Contrary to its subtitle, then, John Esposito’s  and Natana J. Delong-Bas’s Shariah is not “what everyone needs to know”; rather, it is what non-Muslims need to believe in order to give Shariah—which is fundamentally hostile to all persons and things un-Islamic—a free pass.

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