HAMAS IS NOTHING MORE THAN ONE MORE PACK OF MUSLIM THUGS FUNDED BY JOE BIDEN, SOCIOPATH IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
OBAMA’S WAR ON THE JEWS
The Democrats are now officially the party of Jew-hatred. This is largely due to the disastrous presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. PAMELA GELLER
https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-disaster-of-barack-obama-democrats.html
Abunimah’s piece -- and Obama’s numerous anti-Semitic associations -- got little attention. Throughout his life Barack Obama has been close friends with numerous virulent anti-Semites: Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi and others. PAMELA GELLER
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM
They’re Infiltrating The US Border - Customs & Border Patrol Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfvBGYsR3JE&ab_channel=ThePoplarReport
KEEP IN MIND OUR SOCIOPATH GAMER LAWYER JOE IS A GOOD CATHOLIC ABORTIONIST. OR MERELY ONE MORE POS POL!
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
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/new-novel-blasphemes-fornicating-dog.html
Koran 2:191 "s lay 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, k ill 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".
Biden and Islamophobia
I was hoping against hope that Joe Biden would totally and irrevocably expose the evil of radical Islam in speaking of the dastardly Hamas attacks.
But once he asserted that “we must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia” in bis October 2020 speech to the nation, it was patently clear that he had fallen into the clutches of those who would demand utter capitulation to Islamists and thus destroy free speech, and independent thinking.
Islamists would assert that "Islamophobia is “an allegedly irrational fear of losing life or liberty to Islamic rule merely because the laws, sacred texts, and traditional practices of Islam demand the submission of culture, politics, religion and social expression. But, in the real world, it is a product of rational observation.”
After all “[a]n ideology that has as its stated goal to put the entire world under its eternal rule, by force if necessary, and to kill those who stand in its way, criticize it or leave it, is genuinely dangerous. Having some healthy doses of fear and skepticism of such a force is perfectly rational.”
As thereligionofpeace.com explains that:
To obscure the fact that the same problems and reactions follow Islam into every country, no matter how tolerant, a word has been invented to suppress any assessment or criticism of Islam.
Consider that Hinduism is different in almost every way from every other major world religion, but no one is accused of having Hinduphobia.
In fact, Islam is the only religion that requires a pretend word to protect against critical inquiry. The sole purpose of ‘Islamophobia’ is to conflate ideological truth with anti-Muslim bigotry. The irony is that of all religions, the tenets of Islam are the least tolerant and most hostile toward the others.
Sadly, “[i]t appears that the inventors and purveyors of ‘Islamophobia’ have succeeded beyond their dreams in silencing criticism of Islam. In fact, those who would criticize Islam include such Islamophobes as
Christians, Sikhs and Jews who don’t want to be forced into a political system that treats them as third-class citizens (Islamic teaching).
Atheists who want the freedom to live openly and challenge religious orthodoxy in the public sphere (Islamic teaching).
Women who don’t want to be draped in black bags (Islamic teaching).
Heterosexual males who prefer not to see women draped in black bags (Islamic teaching).
Wives who don't want to be beaten (Islamic teaching).
Drinkers (Islamic teaching).
Artists and art lovers (Islamic teaching).
Historians who don’t want to see priceless manuscripts and books burned just because they disagree with the Quran.
Homosexuals who don’t want to be beaten to death or thrown from a building (Islamic teaching).
Anyone else who believes that consenting adults should not be killed or tortured over sexual practices (Islamic teaching).
Dog lovers (Islamic teaching).
Animal Rights activists and anyone else who is opposed to the cruel and unethical treatment of animals (Islamic teaching).
Mothers who don’t want their daughters killed over a man’s ‘honor’ (Islamic teaching).
Intellectuals who value freedom of conscience and public dissent (Islamic teaching).
Anyone believing that the value of a person's life is not determined by their religious beliefs (Islamic teaching).
Feminists who believe that women should not be made subordinate to men by a religion which openly insists that females are the intellectual and legal inferior of males (Islamic teaching).
Anyone else who objects to a religion in which a woman’s identity is defined by her relationship to a man (Islamic teaching).
Secularists who believe in the separation of government and religion (Islamic teaching)
The left-handed (Islamic teaching).
Liberals who don’t believe that culture and moral values should be established by a state-sponsored religion (Get past The Religion Barrier).
Conservatives who believe in preserving the Western heritage responsible for the civil freedom, political liberty and economic success which has attracted the flood of immigrants from Muslim nations, where such values are conspicuously lacking (Islamic teaching).
Muslims who would like the freedom to leave Islam (Islamic teaching).
Consequently, it truly isn’t Islamophobia when they really are trying to kill you. Why didn’t Biden just recite Hamas’ beliefs in their own words?
So when Biden equates Islamophobia with anti-Semitisim, he is aiding the very enemy which despises Jews and wants to exterminate them. He is acting as the agent for those who loathe freedom. Antisemitism is a calculated ideology of hatred for the Jews. Islamophobia is an artificial term created to hide the genuine fear of a brutal social system.
In 2017, Ed Brodow explained
The effort to defend against Islamic terrorism has been cut off at the knees by a thought crime known as Islamophobia: a dislike of, criticism of, or prejudice against Islam or Muslims.
Author and activist Pamela Geller, explains that Islamists ‘consider any critical examination of Islam to be blasphemous and subject to the death penalty.’ The term Islamophobia was invented in the 1990s by a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to export Islamic blasphemy laws to the West.
In fact, Muslim writer Abdur-Rahman Muhammad reveals the original intent behind the concept: ‘This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliché conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.’
Islamophobia is classic political correctness. You don’t have to deal with the substance of arguments against Islamic extremism. All you have to do is label critics a cluster of ‘Islamophobes.’ If this lie prevails, we become infinitely more vulnerable to terrorism and the negative impact of Islam because we are afraid to talk about them. As a manipulation, it has been highly effective.
In the US, the thrust of the Islamophobia strategy is to (a) accuse Americans of harboring a deep prejudice against Muslims, (b) convince the public that, as a result, Muslims are disproportionately targeted by perpetrators of hate crimes and acts of discrimination, and (c) suppress any and all criticism of Islam and Muslims.
In 2011 Martin Peretz explained that “[a]t the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term ‘Islamophobia’ formed in analogy to ‘xenophobia.’ The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist.
...The term ‘Islamophobia’ serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire.
Islamophobia—that is, the word itself—is meant to silence you.
At Focus on Western Islamism, author Soeren Kern reveals that Islamists are deliberately exaggerating discrimination against Muslims in the West to silence critics. In essence, “[t]he main objective is to smash any criticism of Islamism [.]” Here are some examples of what is considered Islamophobic. See Report.
In Finland, the European Islamophobia Report (EIR) claims it is ‘Islamophobic’ for students to be required ‘to speak only Finnish at school.’
The country report for France was authored by a UK-based specialist on ‘spatialized Islamophobia’ who ‘focuses on the omnipresence of Islamophobia across spatial scales.’ She asserts’that it was ‘Islamophobic’ for President Emmanuel Macron — whom the EIR brands as ‘the world leader of Islamophobia’ — to initiate a crackdown on political Islam, which seeks to replace the liberal democratic order with a new political system based on Islam and the Qur’an.
In Greece, the European Islamophobia Report [EIR] contends that it was ‘Islamophobic’ for the government to publicly state that ‘slaughtering animals without anaesthetizing them is unconstitutional and should be forbidden.’
Consequently, “[l]ike the previous seven annual editions of the EIR, the 2022 edition does not provide a precise definition of ‘Islamophobia.’ Instead, it promotes a highly subjective and expansive notion of ‘Islamophobia’ — a notion that falsely views any perceived slight as proof positive of pervasive Muslim persecution and victimhood in Europe.”
The “EIR is replete with pseudo-scientific terminology such as ‘subliminal Islamophobia,’ ‘internalized Islamophobia,’ ‘contemporary Islamophobia,’ ‘institutionalized Islamophobia,’ ‘state Islamophobia,’ and ‘undirect [sic] Islamophobia.’ It warns of ‘systematic signaling of Islamophobia,’ ‘systemic Islamophobic practices,’ and “potentially Islamophobic situations.”
How can we defeat the enemy when we so easily fall prey to their word salads, lies, and deceptive manipulations?
Eileen can be contacted at middlemarch18@gmail.com
A prayer to Allah to “destroy the enemies of Islam, and annihilate the heretics and the atheists” is not just a request directed to the deity. The Qur’an explicitly says that Allah will punish people by the hands of the believers: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people, and remove the fury in the believers’ hearts.” (9:14-15) Thus Kathrada may be issuing a call to action to believers who think it incumbent upon themselves to heed this Qur’anic directive and become instruments of Allah’s wrath.
Poll: 60% of Voters Want Groups Who Support Hamas Investigated JOE WANTS THEM REGISTERED TO VOTE DEMOCRAT!
A new poll indicates that 60% of American voters want organizations that support Hamas to be investigated, and four in five agree that the Palestinian group is a terrorist organization.
The Rasmussen poll, conducted October 23-25 among 888 likely voters, found that 78% of respondents answered “yes” when asked: “Should the Palestinian group Hamas be considered a terrorist organization?” Only 8% said “no,” and 15% said “not sure.”
When asked, “Should American organizations that support Hamas be investigated by federal authorities?”, 60% said yes, 19% said no, and 21% were not sure.
Both questions are relevant in current political debate. The Associated Press stylebook discourages the use of the words “terror” and “terrorism” to describe Hamas and its murder of more than 1,400 people in Israel Oct. 7: “[T]he AP is not using the terms for specific actions or groups, other than in direct quotations or when attributed to authorities or others.”
In a similar vein, staff of the University of California ethnic studies departments scolded administrators for using the word “terrorism” to describe Hamas and its atrocities, claiming that using such language “has made Palestinian students and community members unsafe.”
But 78% of likely voters — including 85% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats — believe “terrorist” is the right word.
As for investigating groups that support terror, the issue has arisen because most of the pro-Palestinian protests that erupted after the Oct. 7 attack — long before Israel had mounted any significant response — celebrated the attacks. One “Free Palestine” rally in Dearborn, Michigan, defended Hamas explicitly. And “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) embraced the image of Hamas paragliders — who descended on Israeli towns and a music festival and proceeded to kill as many people as they could.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — who had a strong pro-Israel reputation long before he ran for president — announced that state universities would ban SJP from campus because of its support for Hamas.
Some 70% of Republicans believe such groups should be investigated. A majority of Democrats — 53% — agrees.
The poll has a margin of error of 3% with a 95% level of confidence.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
California Jihadi Planned to Kill People, Then Read Qur’an Until Police Arrived
Not that this has anything to do with Islam.
Mon Nov 23, 2020
Yet another blow to the establishment media narrative came Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that Faisal Mohammad, who in 2015 stabbed four people in a classroom at the University of California, Merced, where he was a freshman, “planned to praise Allah while slitting the throats of classmates and use a gun taken from an ambushed officer to kill more.” Then he planned to call 911 to report the killings, “read the Quran until he heard sirens, and then ‘take calm shot after shot’ with the gun” when the police arrived. All this happened while the U.S. government was institutionally and thoroughgoingly committed to the proposition that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. And even after four years of President Trump, that institutional culture hasn’t changed.
The detailed plan that Mohammad sketched out for his attack has just been released; it “included putting on a balaclava at 7:45 a.m. and saying ‘in the name of Allah’ before stepping into his classroom and ordering students to use zip-ties he provided to bind their hands. Mohammad also planned to make a fake 911 distress call to report a suicidal guy [sic; this is how they write at AP these days] and wait for police outside the classroom before ambushing from behind ‘and slit calmly yet forcefully one of the officers with guns.’”
It was during that wait that he planned to sit down and spend some time in spiritual reading. Yet Mohammad’s attack, as The College Fix reported back in November 2015, was characterized as “revenge for being kicked out of a study group.” The establishment media gave scant attention to the fact that “Mohammad was found to have an image of the ISIS flag, a handwritten manifesto with instructions on how to behead someone, and reminders to pray to Allah.”
The university where this jihad attack took place was even worse. The College Fix reported that instead of waking up to the reality of Islamic jihad, many at the University of California-Merced mourned for the attacker, with a Facebook “R.I.P” tribute to Faisal Mohammad “gaining massive support among the campus community.”
Even worse, UC Merced faculty hosted a “teach in” that about 200 students attented, entitled “Don’t Turn Our Tragedy Into Hate” that was “conspicuously devoid of discussions of radical Islam, and instead delved into topics such as how society’s notions of masculinity pressure men.” Among the topics discussed at this “teach in” were “What does mental health have to do with this?”; “Why are men more likely to be perpetrators of violence?”; “How do we define our community – what lives are grievable?”; and “What do race and religion have to do with this?”
One speaker suggested that the attack was all about men not being allowed to be weak, self-centered, weepy narcissists: “Anger, that is really what we think about when we think about emotional men. They are subject to social sanctions if they deviate from masculinity. If you are perceived as failing at it, you are subject to being called a fag, a pussy, a wimp, pretty much what women are, right? So when you have this limited ability to sort of express your emotions and possible feelings of emasculation, of low self esteem, how do you really [deal with] that? A lot of times they … engage in violence. They need to compensate for their loss of masculinity in the most manly way they have access to, and unfortunately, a lot of times that’s violence.”
Yes, you see? Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people just because he was a sensitive soul in a world that was too harsh for him. Why, what other explanation could there possibly be? According to one student who attended the teach in, “‘Islamophobia’ was cited as the reason people want to call it a terrorist attack….‘People were quick to sympathize with the attacker and assume anyone who thought this was related to radical Islam was a xenophobic racist.’”
The University of California Merced is no different from any other campus all over the country today: full of indoctrinated bots who have been thoroughly imbued with the notion that when Islamic jihadists attack us, it is our fault. All too many even among law enforcement and counterterrorism officials assume the same thing. No number of Faisal Mohammads, and there will be many more, will convince them otherwise. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate but true that eventually all this denial and willful ignorance is going to blow up in everyone’s face. We can only hope that this doesn’t happen literally.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Islamic Jew-Hatred, Dhimmitude and the Doctrine of Sacred Space
For certain entities, the existence of Israel - and Jews - is intolerable.
In the wake of the savage HAMAS attack against Israel on the morning of 7 October 2023, many are waking up to its genocidal intent against Jews. Understandably, there are memories of pogroms past, of the horrific toll of the Holocaust, and references to “Nazis” and the “Einsatzgruppen”.
This time, though, as Israel prepares to do what must be done to wipe out the HAMAS presence in Gaza, we need to understand exactly who and what it is: an Islamic terror group, dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel and the killing of as many Jews as possible. We might start with the HAMAS Covenant, published in 1988, the year that HAMAS was formally established. Its opening lines tell us exactly who HAMAS is and why it exists:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al Banna, of blessed memory).
We’ll note here that this quote is from Hassan al-Banna, the 1928 founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And here is the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood:
‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration.’
Why this fanatical hatred? We find the answer in the Qur’an, in the Islamic doctrine of Sacred Space, and the laws of dhimmitude. The Qur’an, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of Allah (the Arabic word for “God”), lays the foundation for HAMAS’ visceral Jew-hatred.
Those who reject (Truth) among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews]…will be in Hell-fire…They are the worst of creatures. (Q 98:6)
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and kill the infidels wherever ye find them… (Q 9:5)
Curses were pronounced on those among the Children of Israel who rejected Faith [Islam]…(Q 5:78)
The HAMAS Covenant also includes this quote from the hadith collection of Sahih Muslim:
Judgment Day will not come until you fight the Jews and kill them. The Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and trees will call: Oh, Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him…
Then there is the historical record, which informs us of the Islamic institution of dhimmitude and the doctrine of Sacred Space. As the armies of Islam overran formerly Christian and Jewish lands in the 7th century, there were too many to kill or convert; and so, beginning with the 638 CE Pact of Umar (the 2nd Caliph), the institution of the Ahl al-Dhimma was established to subjugate Christians and Jews to a rigid set of rules that would relegate them to a legally enforced inferior status intended to be so onerous as to compel them to convert to Islam.
Along with dhimmitude, the Muslim conquests developed a concept known as “Sacred Space”. That is, the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) must conquer all the Dar al-Harb (House of War) because according to Islam, the entire world belongs to Islam and must be conquered and subjugated to it. Once conquered and/or occupied, such land is waqf, forever endowed to Muslims by Allah. Any such waqf, if ever lost to Islam, must be fought for by jihad until it is re-conquered.
As we look at the modern-day Jewish State of Israel, we can see that the Jewish people not only are no longer dhimmis but have established a powerful country in their ancestral homeland. These remarkable accomplishments are intolerable to the forces of jihad and help to explain why HAMAS and other Islamic terror groups like it have been so intent upon wiping Israel from the face of the map.
It’s Islam, Stupid
It’s not about Israel, colonialism, globalism or capitalism; it’s about Islam.
October 19, 2023 by Daniel Greenfield 44 Comments
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[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Beslan. Mumbai. Paris. Manchester. New York City. Nairobi. Luxor. Sulu. Kibbutz Be’eri.
186 children murdered in a school in Beslan. Dozens of children taken hostage from a Catholic school in the Philippines. Two teachers were beheaded, but not the girls. “We do not kill women. We will just enslave them,” the Jihadists promised. 8-year-olds gunned down in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The terrorists asked their victims to name Mohammed’s mother to tell apart the non-Muslims from the Muslims. In Luxor, Egypt, the terrorists danced, sang and killed and mutilated the foreign tourists. They “took all the young women, the girls, and disappeared with them. I don’t know where they went with the women, but they hurt them. We could hear screams of pain.” Among the dead was Shaunnah Turner, a 5-year-old British girl.
Pregnant women and children murdered in Israel baffle the world. They seem implausible because each time they happen, we forget. A few days of horror pass and we move on.
When a Muslim terrorist set off a bomb in Manchester at a concert full of children and teens, there was shock and outrage. Nails were pulled out of children’s faces.
“This attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenceless children and young people,” then Prime Minister Theresa May fumed.
That was 6 years ago. It might have been an eternity.
Our governments, talking heads and thought leaders find excuses for the killers. The Manchester Arena bomber was angry about the Syrian Civil War so he killed some British kids. Abu Sayyaf, ‘Bearers of the Sword’, keeps attacking Christian schools in the Philippines because it isn’t allowed to form its own state. The Jihadis who murdered children in Beslan were furious about Chechnya, in Nairobi, they were upset about Somalia, and in Luxor about the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood. In Israel, Hamas murdered children because the border wall makes their terror entity into an “open air prison” which prevents them from killing Israeli children.
We’re told not to look at the pattern. It’s Islamophobic. Instead we must take each attack not as a manifestation of Islam, but of local issues or a response to oppression. When Muslims gang raped and sawed in half a Hindu schoolteacher in Kashmir, it was about India’s treatment of Muslims. And when they rampaged through the Bataclan theater in Paris, killing everyone within reach, they were protesting France’s treatment of ISIS. And when they rape a woman at a concert in Israel by the bodies of her murdered friends, they’re protesting for Gaza.
But in 1929, Muslim mobs in the Jewish city of Safed burst into an orphanage and “smashed the children’s heads and cut off their hands.” During the Hebron Massacre that same year, a British policeman described how, “on hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child’s head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin.”
Israel had not even come into existence yet. What were Muslims protesting then: Jews?
During the first siege of Vienna in 1529, when the invading Muslim horde decided that “children were cut out of their mothers’ wombs and stuck on pikes”, was that a protest against colonialism or capitalism? When a Muslim chronicle boasted that during the genocide against the Sikhs in the 18th century, “the shrieks of the women captives who were being raped, deafened the ears of the people”, was this a response to globalism or Zionism? Or was this just Islam.
Everything Hamas did during the bloody High Holy Days massacres has been done by Muslims throughout history and is still being practiced today. There is nothing new here whatsoever. Medieval barbarism never went away because Islam kept those grisly practices alive. It endures side by side with the modern world of smartphones, electric cars and AI because its worst crimes are an object of religious law and faith.
A Yazidi girl abducted by the Islamic State when she was only 12 described how the Jihadist who raped her explained to her that because she “practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it”. He “bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her. When it was over, he knelt to pray again”. The girl begged him to stop, but he “said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to Allah.”
This is Islam.
It’s not about Israel, India, Russia, America, England, France, the Philippines or any of the numerous other countries that have been marked by Islamic terrorism. It’s not about “oppression”, “colonialism”, “settlers”, “cartoons” or a lack of “integration”. None of the excuses ever hold up or explain the pattern that consistently and indelibly marks Islamic violence.
Hamas called its assault, ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’, a reference to the colonial mosque planted by Islamic conquerors in Jerusalem on top of the holiest place in Judaism, site of the former Temple. This wasn’t about “resistance”, Gaza being an “open air concentration camp” (with luxurious hotels, restaurants and mansions) or any of the excuses that the media has thrown at us.
It was a religious war. That’s why Hamas scheduled its attack on the Sabbath and on Simchat Torah, the final day of the High Holy Days and the most joyous day in Judaism. Just as the Yom Kippur War had been scheduled for the holiest day in Judaism. And the worst previous Hamas terrorist attack had been the bombing of a Passover seder in Netanya which killed 30 and wounded 140.
In Nigeria, Boko Haram has set off bombs in churches on Christmas. In 2015, a Muslim couple opened fire at a workplace Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, while a year later a Muslim terrorist drove through a Christmas market in Berlin and a 12-year-old Muslim boy tried to detonate a nail bomb at another Christmas market in Germany.
In India, Muslim terrorists set off bombs on the Hindu festival of Diwali. Massacring Christians, Jews and Hindus on their religious holidays is not a political statement: it’s a religious one.
Islamic terrorism is not an American problem, a British problem, a French problem, a Russian problem, a Chinese problem or an Israeli problem. It’s an Islamic problem. The only way we will ever triumph against it is to stop treating it as someone else’s problem. If only India gave up Kashmir, Israel gave up more of the West Bank, if America stopped being involved in the Middle East, if France hadn’t banned the hijab and the Netherlands hadn’t allowed cartoons of Mohammed, there would be no Islamic terrorism are the kinds of lies that are killing us.
We are not responsible for Islamic terrorism. None of us. Only Islam is responsible.
Islamic violence is over 1,000 years old. It predates most modern countries and it is not caused by anything we do. The only thing we are guilty of is our failure to smash the Jihad.
Nothing that we or anyone else does will appease the terrorists. Islam is not Northern Ireland: peace negotiations have never accomplished and will never accomplish anything. It cannot be reasoned or co-existed with. Its violence is a religious duty written into its scripture and its laws, its atrocities, murder, torture, mutilation and rape, are acts of sacred religious devotion. The Islamic kingdom of heaven can only be achieved when the entire world submits to Islam.
The horrors we have seen in the Jewish communities near Gaza are the same ones that Islam has perpetrated across Africa, Asia, Europe and America. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has kidnapped over 1,000 children from Christian schools. In the Philippines, Muslims burst into a school and took children hostage. In Algeria, they beheaded Trappist monks while in Thailand, they beheaded Buddhist monks. In Boston, they blew the legs off marathon runners while in France they drove a truck through a crowd on Bastille Day until the wheel well filled up with body parts.
This is grotesque, hideous, horrific and unimaginable. This is Islam.
We look away because we can’t bear it. When the attacks happen somewhere else, we pretend that it has nothing to do with us. And when it happens to us, then we let ourselves be persuaded that if we just avoided doing anything to upset the Muslims, like allying with the peoples and countries they’re trying to exterminate, drawing cartoons or mishandling korans, we’ll be fine.
It’s not a problem of “those people fighting over there and bringing their problems here.”
Islam is not just at war with us or with them, but with the entire world. If you are not a Muslim or the right kind of Muslim, then you are in a war whether you like it or not. You can be a peace activist and march with a ‘Queers for Palestine’ banner. You can welcome in migrants or blame the whole thing on conspiracy theories, but it still won’t matter. They will kill you if they can.
This is not about politics: it’s a thousand plus year crusade to subjugate all of mankind.
To win, we have to stop blaming ourselves, stop treating Islamic terrorism as someone else’s problem and stop pretending that it goes away when it’s not in the headlines. To win, we have to stand together and stop letting the enemies of mankind and their useful idiots divide us up. To win we have to recognize that we either fight or die. If we’re not faced with that choice right now, we will be, and if not us, then our children and grandchildren will one day come up against it.
We must reject terms like “senseless violence” because there is nothing senseless about it. Our enemies know who they are and what they want. We refuse to understand who they are. The only thing truly standing between us and victory are the lies that we tell ourselves. In moments of truth, the lies temporarily fall away and we see the enemy revealed for what it is.
Through a rain of paper and ash on a September in New York City, nails driven into the faces of children in Manchester and the mutilated legs of runners in Boston, the bloodied half-naked children of Beslan and the kidnapped children of kibbutzim in Israel, we glimpse the truth.
Hold on to that truth. We are not weak, we have been weakened by lies. And the greatest of those lies is that this endless catalog of crimes to which a new one is added every few weeks is about anything but Islam. It is about Islam. It has been about Islam for over 1,000 years.
Instead of “regional dispute”, say Islam. Instead of “cycle of violence”, say Islam. Instead of militants, say Islam. Instead of terrorists, say Islam. Instead of war, say Islam.
One little word explains all of this. One little world has led to an endless world of horror.
Our only hope for victory begins with ending the lies and telling the truth.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
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Robert Spencer's 'The Critical Qur'an'
A must-read, essential book.
[Robert Spencer's new book, The Critical Qur'an, will be out May 3. Preorder now: HERE.]
If I were queen, I would reward every reader who completed Robert Spencer's new book, The Critical Qur'an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary Historical Research. The Critical Qur'an is an essential book that every thinking person would benefit from reading. About one in four humans is a Muslim. Given child marriage, polygyny, and women's low status, Muslims have high fertility rates and the percentage of the world's population that is Muslim is predicted to increase till Islam is the world's majority religion in 2075. While it is true that the Qur'an is often not read or understand by most Muslims, Muslims do revere the Qur'an. Muslims may have little idea what the book contains, but they are ready to kill over it. When, in 2005, Newsweek circulated false rumors that Americans were flushing Qur'ans down toilets – which is of course impossible – at least seventeen people were killed in ensuing violence and "a council of more than 300 mullahs …threatened to declare holy war."
In the past, reading the Qur'an was difficult. Some translations used pseudo-King-James English, for example archaic forms like "thee, thou, thine," in an attempt to make the Qur'an sound Biblical, and, therefore, holy. Some translations attempt to paper over the Qur'an's lack of clarity by adding parenthetical fixes. For example, Qur'an 2:1 begins "Alif Lam Meem." No one knows what this means. One translation tries to "help" the reader with a parenthetical explanation: "Alif-Lam-Mim. [These letters are one of the miracles of the Quran and none but Allah (Alone) knows their meanings]." The reader is left to wonder how the incoherent equals the miraculous. Translators try to draw a smiley face over darker Qur'anic passages. "Jihad," which clearly means actual warfare to claim territory, booty, corpses, and slaves for Allah, is translated as "struggle." Spencer's new translation avoids these pitfalls, and, on the sentence level, it is easy to read.
Many make assumptions about the Qur'an based on false comparisons to the Bible. The works are different in important ways. The King James Bible contains 783,137 words in 66 books. These books were composed over the course of hundreds of years in three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Christians and Jews agree that their scriptures were not actually written by God himself, but by roughly forty different human authors. The genres of Biblical books include hymns,letters, proverbs, prophecy, erotica, history, allegory, andreportage. Jews and Christians have long engaged in exegesis of their sacred texts – that is, Jews and Christians debate what Bible passages mean and how they should be applied. Jews and Christians respect hard copies of their scriptures, but they do not worship these hard copies, nor do most attribute supernatural attributes to them. To do so would be idolatry.
The Qur'an contains c. 77,430 words, making it less than one tenth the length of the Bible. Islam teaches that the Qur'an was never written by anyone. It is uncreated. Like God himself, the Qur'an has always existed and will always exist. There are numerous rules for handling the Qur'an. Kufar – Non-Muslims – should never touch the Qur'an in Arabic, but may touch "interpretations" in other languages. One must say "interpretation" because the Qur'an exists only in Arabic, the language of Allah. Muslims must perform ablutions before reading the Qur'an. The Qur'an must be stored in a specially designated place, and never be put on the floor or taken into a bathroom.
To say that the Qur'an was created, as opposed to eternally existing, is a death penalty offense. Even Western scholars have hesitated to explore the Qur'an's origins. For example, scholar Christoph Luxenberg must hide behind a pseudonym to protect his life. The Qur'an "leaves no room for dispute"; see also Qur'an 33:36. Indeed, the Qur'an suggests that even a second of doubt will lead to an eternity in hell (e.g. 49:15) . Thus, rather than debating or discussing the meaning of the Qur'an, Islam places emphasis on memorization. A Muslim once said to Robert Spencer that he had memorized the entire Qur'an, and one day he was going to find out what it says. The hafiz, or Qur'an memorizer, did not speak Arabic, and had no idea of the meaning of the sounds he had memorized.
Mohammed Hijab, an Islamic apologist, demonstrated Muslim beliefs about the magic powers of the Qur'an in a November 10, 2021, YouTube discussion with Dr. Jordan Peterson. Hijab began to recite in Arabic, in the voice prescribed for reading the Qur'an. That prescribed voice is a singsong, nasal drone, with drawn out vowels. Peterson asked what Hijab's point was. Why recite Arabic to me, a non-Arabic speaker? Hijab said, "We believe that the Qur'an has divine qualities itself. We believe it is a physical cure." Just exposing Peterson to the sounds of the Qur'an might cause Peterson to convert to Islam. Ibn Kathir, an important exegete, claimed that recitation of Sura 2 causes Satan to fart. It can be argued that Islam treats the Qur'an as if it were a "divine, conscious agent."
Muslim history claims that Islam was founded by an orphaned, illiterate, seventh-century Meccan caravan driver named Muhammad who was visited by the angel Jibril (from the Biblical Gabriel) who ordered him to recite. Muhammad's followers wrote down his recitations and compiled them into the Qur'an. Textual criticism suggests that the Qur'an is a compilation of heavily edited, pre-existing material. Recent scholarship theorizes that, during the Arab Conquest, conquerors decided that their new, Arab empire, no less than the Christian Byzantine and Zoroastrian Persian empires, required a state religion. These Arab conquerors took bits and pieces of Jewish,Christian, Zoroastrian and Pagan material and compiled them into the Qur'an.
Christianity's early centuries were rocked by Christological debates. These debates asked, "What was the nature of Jesus?"Some said Jesus was human; others said he was divine; still others argued that Jesus was some combination of human and divine. Jesus' proposed divinity troubled many. They understood the divinity of Jesus as an assault on Judaism's monotheism. Some were offended by Jesus's divinity for a different reason. If Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, then God urinated and defecated. These bodily functions were seen as beneath a divinity.
Islam's emphasis on Jesus being merely a man, not a divinity, may testify to the influence of nontrinitarian Christianity on the formulation of Islam. The shahada is the Islamic confession of faith. "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Merely stating the shahada makes one a Muslim, yet it may be a buried statement of nontrinitarian Christian creeds. "There is not God but Allah" is a rejection of Jesus' divinity and the trinity. According to new theories, "Muhammad is the messenger of God" may be a reference to Jesus. "Muhammad" is translated as "the praised one" and "the messenger of God" is a denial of Jesus' divinity. "The praised one" was but a messenger, not God himself. The nontrinitarian Christians' discomfort at the thought of God urinating or defecating is reflected in al-Wahidi's commentary on the Qur'an. "Our Lord does not eat or drink nor has He any need to relieve Himself" but Jesus "was fed like any other child, and then he ate and drank and relieved himself … Then how could he be the son of Allah?"
The Old Testament recounts the history of the creation of the world and God's choosing the Jewish people as his own, and leading them out of slavery in Egypt. The New Testament offers Jesus' biography, a short history of the early church, and the letters of early Christians. No clear history of what is conventionally thought of as the early days of Islam is to be found in the Qur'an itself. There's no caravan driver, no Mecca, no new religious revelation, and the word "Muhammad" is mentioned only four times, and it is not clear that the word refers to a person or if it means, only, "praised one." Many argue that early references to Muhammad may in fact be references to Jesus.
Muslims express exaggerated praise for the Qur'an. For example, Ibn Kathir said, "The Arabic language is the most eloquent, plain, deep and expressive of the meanings that might arise in one's mind. Therefore, the most honorable Book, was revealed in the most honorable language, to the most honorable Prophet and Messenger, delivered by the most honorable angel, in the most honorable land on earth, and its revelation started during the most honorable month of the year, Ramadan. Therefore, the Qur'an is perfect in every respect."
In fact, though, the Qur'an is possibly the world's worst-written influential book. Muslims will of course object to this assessment. Their first objection: only an Islamophobe would call the Qur'an badly written. My reply: No, I'm happy to acknowledge the excellence of many Islamic cultural products, for example, the Taj Mahal, calligraphy, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's singing, and Muslim Arab folktales. Second objection: The Qur'an is the product of an oral culture. This objection lacks merit. Most people in the world have been illiterate. The Bible is the product of a population where most people could not read or write. Acknowledged masterpieces of world literature, including the Iliad, the Bhagavad Gita, and Zen Koans all emerged from predominantly oral cultures. One Thousand and One Nights, an Arabic-language collection of previously oral folklore, has entranced audiences around the world. Third objection: translations cannot capture the fine qualities of the Arabic Qur'an. I have never read The Iliad in Greek, the Vedas in Sanskrit, Psalm 23 in Hebrew, or Arabic folktales in Arabic, nor do I need to. The excellence and power of these works transcends translation. For those questioning the quality of Robert Spencer's new Qur'an translation, visit this site. You can find any Qur'an verse as translated by six different translators. Study that website all you might; you will not find a translation that can remedy the Qur'an's many problems.
What's wrong with the Qur'an? The Qur'an uses pronouns like "he," "we," and "they," but the Qur'an offers few clues as to whom is meant by these pronouns. The Qur'an hops from topic to topic, not just paragraph by paragraph, but within the same sentence, for example in 4:29: "Do not squander your wealth among yourselves in vanity, except in a trade by mutual consent, and do not kill yourselves." After telling men that they are superior to women and that men should beat their wives (4:34), the Qur'an offers, in 4:36, a sentence fragment, that is a sentence with a subject but no verb. "Kindness to parents." Other translators rescue this fragment by adding the missing verb, e.g.,"Show kindness to parents" or "Do good to parents." Spencer makes so such rescue effort. Qur'an 6:143 is a similar sentence fragment. It reads, "Eight pairs two of the sheep and two of the goats." There is no verb, and, therefore, no sense. Another sentence fragment, this one also missing a verb: "Those who chose unbelievers for their friends instead of believers." Another fragment, 74:30, reads "Above it are nineteen." Above what are nineteen what, exactly? There are more than a few verses that leave the reader scratching her head, e.g., "Would one of you love to eat the flesh of his dead brother?" 49:12, "We used to wade with waders" 74:45, and "Color from Allah, and who is better than Allah at coloring?" 2:138.
Scholar Gerd Puin estimates that twenty percent of the Qur'an is unclear to anyone. This lack of clarity is thanks in part to words, often of non-Arabic derivation, like "jibt," "sijill," "ghislin,""abb," "as-sakhkhah," "sijjin," "illiyyin," "tasnim," "saqar," and many others, whose meanings are uncertain. The full text of a scholarly, 1938 book entitled "The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an" can be found here. The Qur'an acknowledges its own lack of clarity in 3:7, in which Allah states that he alone knows the meaning of some verses. Which verses? He never says. Readers can only guess which verses they are understanding correctly and which verses whose meaning is beyond their grasp.
The books of the Bible are arranged more or less chronologically, with some thematic arrangement, and events in those books are also arranged chronologically. For example in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is first born, then he preaches and heals, then he is crucified, then he rises from the dead. The Qur'an is not arranged chronologically. With the exception of the very short first chapter, the Qur'an's chapters are arranged from longest to shortest. This bizarre choice confounds the reader seeking coherence. Given that chapter length appears entirely arbitrary – the chapters contain more or less the same material, repeated endlessly – why some chapters are long and others are short escapes the reader. Chapter titles do not relate to the theme of the chapter. One of the Qur'an's most notorious verses, "Kill them wherever you find them" is found in the chapter entitled "Women." In any case, the phrase is repeated three times in the Qur'an. Sura 9, perhaps the most bloodthirsty chapter, is titled "Repentance."
That a Qur'an chapter is titled "Women" should not mislead the reader. Women are afterthoughts; they exists as the possessions of men. They appear as child brides, as sex slaves, as Heavenly whores, and as war captives. In verse 43 of "Women," females are identified as a source of pollution. Men should not pray if they have been sick, if they have urinated or defecated, or if they have had contact with a woman. After such contamination, men must cleanse themselves, possibly by rubbing their face and hands with dirt (a practice called Tayammum). Women are inferior to me n (2:282, 2:228, 4:34, 4:11). The Qur'an instructs men on how to handle divorce from pre-pubescent wives with whom they have had sexual intercourse. Females are a "field"that men should enter however they wish. There are dozens of named male characters, but only one named female character: Mary. Compare the Qur'an's lack of named female characters with the indelible females of the Bible, women who changed the course of Jewish and Christian history: Eve, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, Rahab, Deborah, Judith, Ruth, Esther, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalene, the sisters Martha and Mary, Junia, Priscilla, Anna the Prophetess, etc.
The Qur'an chapter entitled "Mary" is, as is the case with other chapter titles, not closely related to Mary. In a commentary on this chapter, Mary is given voice to mourn that she is not "an owned slave woman" – she is unfortunate because she is not some man's property. The Qur'an confuses Mary, mother of Jesus, with Miriam, sister of Moses, who lived over a thousand years before Jesus' mother. The Qur'an tells Mary, "Do not grieve. Your lord has placed a stream beneath you." It's not clear how this stream placement should cheer Mary up.
The Qur'an is repetitious. Repetition is frequently encountered in oral lore. See the Kumulipo, a Hawaiian creation chant.
"Born was Kumulipo in the night, a male
Born was Po'ele in the night, a female
Born was the coral polyp, born was the coral, came forth
Born was the grub that digs and heaps up the earth, came forth…"
This poetic repetition echoes creation itself; the multiplicity of lines with parallel construction reflects the abundance of creatures the chant catalogues, and also their place in an orderly universe. Repetition makes this important lore easy to remember and its has a hypnotic effect on the listener.
The Qur'an makes no such use of repetition. Rather, as Spencer's footnotes show, the Qur'an includes repetitive, garbledf ragments – not coherent retellings – of Jewish and Christian scriptural and folkloric material, and Zoroastrian and Pagan elements. The Qur'an offers repeated, fragmented mentions of the Exodus story from the Bible, and extra-biblical material like a folktale of Jesus making clay birds fly. A sixth-century Christian legend, The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, tells of seven men who retreated to a cave during Roman persecution. The men awoke two hundred years later and were surprised to find that Christianity was now the empire's official religion. The Qur'an's telling of this tale, found in 18:9-26, is so thoroughly garbled that a reader with no previous knowledge of the Christian source would not have any idea what these verses allude to. Don Richardson, author of "Secrets of the Koran,"estimates that if all repetitions were removed, the Qur'an would be forty percent of its current size.
God's rebuke of David, recounted in 2 Samuel 12, is one of the most moving, terrifying passages in the Bible. I can hardly think of it without crying. Through the prophet Nathan, God rebukes David for murdering Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, a woman David lusted after. The Qur'an takes this terrifically moving, cinematic passage and flubs it so badly in the retelling that it is a literary crime (38:21-25).
Qur'an 4:157 states that Jesus did not die on the cross. Muslims believe that Allah placed either a dummy or a Jesus lookalike on the cross. Spencer's footnotes identify this belief as an appropriation from a third century Gnostic text, "Second Treatise of the Great Seth." Gnostics were nontrinitarian Christians. As Spencer writes, they held an "abhorrence of the material world and the flesh, which led to their denying altogether the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation." Jesus was too supernatural to suffer death on the cross.
Ex-Muslim Ridvan Aydemir insists that Qur'an 4:157 deals a devastating blow to the Qur'an's integrity. Aydemir argues that, yes, the Gnostics had a reason, that was consistent with their own belief system, to tell a story in which Jesus did not die on the cross. Those compiling the Qur'an borrowed that passage from a Gnostic document, but could not borrow the logic behind the passage. The Jesus of the Qur'an is not, as was the Gnostic Jesus, a supernatural creature, too rarefied to be crucified. The Jesus of the Qur'an is simply a human being, comparable to any other mortal. Aydemir quotes Qur'an passages that mention other prophets being killed; similarly, Jesus, a mere prophet, could have been killed. The Qur'an's logic, that prophets are killed and that Jesus is merely a prophet, as human as anyone else, does not support Jesus' not being killed on the cross. Aydemir points out that the Qur'an borrows other belief system's narratives without borrowing the logic informing those narratives.
The Qur'an has a limited number of themes that it hits upon with a thudding monotony. Those themes include the following. Allah is all powerful. Allah saves and damns arbitrarily. Allah created some people just to send them to hell fire. Muslims must not pray for these damned souls or feel sad for them. Compare this to the Bible, which records that God wants all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:23) If Muslims don't please Allah, Allah can kill them all and create a new group of people who will please him. In a footnote, Spencer points out that Allah says that he "loves" only those who fight for him in jihad, and he does not love unbelievers. Allah has a very thin skin and grouses about humans who "mock" and "ridicule" his "warners." Allah promises sadistic tortures to scoffers. He will burn off their skins and replace those skins with new skins so that they can be burned off again "so that they may taste the torment" 4:56 He will turn white faces black. Kufar in Hell will consume boiling water, pus, and a fruit made of devils' heads. This fruit will boil in their bellies. "As for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them, boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads, By which what is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted, And for them are hooked rods of iron" (22:19-21). The Qur'an's narrator says that those who disagree with him should hang themselves (22:15). Allah promises an afterlife of pleasant gardens, fruits, and silk clothing to Muslim men.Heavenly beings with large, firm – "not sagging" – breasts will service Muslim men.
The Qur'an is ferociously hostile to non-Muslims. The Qur'an directs special fury at Christians and Jews. The very first chapter condemns Jews as having angered God, and Christians as having gone astray. Muslims who pray the full allotment of daily prayers repeat this condemnation of Christians and Jews seventeen times daily. Muslims are as superior to Christians and Jews as human beings are to animals (3:110, 98:6). Jews are so irredeemable that Allah turned them into apes and pigs. In 2:54, Moses tells sinning Jews to kill themselves; Ibn Kathir, a commentator, reports that 70,000 Jews lost their lives as a result of Moses' suicide command.
The Qur'an repeatedly emphasizes that one must not worship anyone but Allah. This point is hammered home in various ways. Don't assign a partner to Allah. Don't pray to anyone but Allah. Don't imply that Allah needs "helpers." All of these phrasings have one target: Christians, and their belief in the Trinity. The Qur'an misunderstands the Trinity, suggesting that Christians worship God the Father, Jesus, and Mary. This is not the Trinity. The Qur'an also drastically misunderstands the purpose of the incarnation. To say that Allah has a son is a "monstrous thing" (19:89) because to do so is to imply that Allah has some weakness or need and his son is a "helper." The incarnation of God as a human being was not so that Allah would have a "helper." Rather, the purpose of the incarnation is expressed succinctly in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
No other world scripture is so obsessed with condemnation of two other belief systems, in this case, Judaism and Christianity. Without its condemnations of Jews and Christians, the Qur'an would not be a book-length work, but a pamphlet, .
Jihad is another main theme of the Qur'an. The Qur'an makes abundantly clear that jihad is warfare for the sake of expanding Islam's worldly power, not an interior struggle to, say, remain on a diet, a message promoted by a 2013 CAIR public relationscampaign. The Qur'an says, multiple times, that believers should strike the necks of kufar, kill them wherever the Muslims find them, etc. As if these passages were not grisly enough, a Qur'an commentator offers, "Strike them on their foreheads to tear them apart and over the necks to cut them off, and cut off their limbs, hands and feet." Other commentators are even more bloodthirsty, demanding that Muslims smite the very toes of the kufar.
Muslims should suspect even their wives and their children of being traitors to Allah (64:14). "Among your wives and your children there are enemies for you, therefore beware of them. Your wealth and your children are only a temptation, while with Allah is an immense reward." Other verses warn the believer against ties with parents and children who are not Muslims (9:23-24). Muslims are warned not to take Jews or Christians as friends (3:118, 5:51). Astute readers will, of course, recognize in these warnings the rules set down by cults, who demand that members sever ties with those not members of the cult.
The Qur'an is as remarkable for what it lacks as for what it contains. The Qur'an does not offer that new, world-changing expression of a timeless, soul-deep truth. There is nothing in the Qur'an that compares to the Jewish Ten Commandments, or tzelem Elohim, a loving God who creates humanity in his own image; the Christian Sermon on the Mount; the Hindu Kalidasa's Exhortation of the Dawn; Buddhism's Four Noble Truths; or the Greek Protagoras' observation that "Man is the measure of all things."
In a 2006 lecture at Regensburg University, Pope Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos. "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Mohammad himself is said to have said something similar. In hadiths, Mohammad announced that he was "superior" to other prophets because he alone was made "victorious with terror" and the earth's treasures were made lawful to him; in other words, he could violate the most primordial taboos. He could kill, he could steal, and he could rape other men's wives.
Spencer's new "Critical Qur'an" doesn't offer only an accurate and accessible translation. It offers commentary by canonical Islamic experts, including Ibn Kathir, a fourteenth century exegete, and Syed Abul Ala Maududi, a twentieth-century author. Thus, the reader knows not just what the Qur'an says, but how influential Muslims understand it. Spencer's footnotes also draw the reader's attention to variations in the Qur'an. These variations are of a utmost importance, as it is a tenet of Islam that the Qur'an is a perfect, eternal, unchanging and unchanged document that exists in Heaven. Variations in the text give the lie to this tenet.
Spencer's footnotes relate Qur'anic passages to taqiyya; to Islam's intellectual stasis; to suicide bombing; to Muslims'resistance to Israel's right to exist; to why it is morally acceptable for Muslim men to harass non-Muslim women; to why it takes four Muslim male witnesses to prove a rape case; and to treatment of dhimmis, that is, non-Muslims who live in Muslim states, and who must be economically fleeced and publicly humiliated. As Spencer points out, Qur'an verses, for example 10:94, record that the scriptures of Jews and Christians in the seventh century were authentically divine products. And yet Muslims today insist that Jews and Christians "corrupted"their scriptures. The Qur'an contradicts current Muslim belief about Jewish and Christian scripture. David Wood describes this as the "Islamic Dilemma."
Spencer's footnotes describe Islamic traditions designed to justify changes in the Qur'an, a book that Islam teaches is perfect, unchanging, and unchangeable. Again, one current theory is that the Qur'an was not written as one document, the product of one man, Muhammad. Rather, many scholars now think that the Qur'an was pieced together from pre-existing materials, materials that were then heavily edited to meet the needs of Arab conquerors. These changes occurred over time. Some early Muslims might have witnessed, and questioned, such changes. Traditions were invented to explain away the changes. For example, Muhammad's child bride Aisha is made to say that sheep ate some Qur'an verses that previously existed but then went missing.
Spencer points out the Qur'an's contradictions. Iblis is identified as a jinn, but, contrarily, as an angel. Sometimes one can intercede for another; sometimes one cannot. In one Qur'anic retelling of Exodus, Pharaoh survives. In another, he drowns. The number of days it took Allah to create the world varies, as does the substance from which Allah created mankind. Muslims insist that the Qur'an contains prescient scientific knowledge. In fact, though, as Spencer points out in a footnote, the Qur'an presents a pre-scientific picture of the earth and the solar system 13:2. For example, the heavens rest on "invisible supports" and the sun sets in a muddy pool, 18:86.
Spencer's footnotes also help bridge the gap between the English translation and the Arabic original, pointing out words of non-Arabic origin and places in the text where the rhyme scheme and other formal features break down, indicating interpolations into a pre-existing source document that was then patched into the Qur'an.
An Islamic website offers attractive quotes from the Qur'an. One of the quotes says "speak to people kindly," but this appears in the midst of a text that calls non-believers apes, pigs, and the vilest of created beings, describes graphic tortures for them and tells Muslims never to befriend them, not even if they are parents or children. "Remember me; I will remember you," says one quote. This from an Allah who states repeatedly that if Muslims displease him, he will destroy them utterly and take up a better group of people . "Wives are a garment for you," says one quote. Yet this book includes instructions on how to divorce a pre-pubescent child; before dumping her, one must make sure that she has not somehow gotten pregnant. "Allah does not burden a soul more than he can bear," says another quote. This same Allah repeatedly says that he creates people for the specific purpose of sending them to Hell, a Hell he describes with fiendish enthusiasm. "The life of this world is only the enjoyment of deception." And yet Paradise is utterly earthbound. It's all about rivers of booze, delicious food, silk garments, and sex slaves with round, "not sagging" breasts. The only thing that's missing is big-screen color TVs. There is no description of what Heaven will entail for women. "Men are in charge of women" are superior to women, and should beat them, says 4:34. But this website translates that verse as saying that men should protect women.
Compare this to the matrix of Bible quotes. Hosea, a prophet, married Gomer, an adulteress. Even though she cheated on him, Hosea could not quit her. Their story reflects God's love for the Jewish people. When the ancient Hebrews went astray, God could not get over his love for them. In the book of Hosea, God speaks of his frustrated love, "I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer." God's frustrated love for sinning humanity is also expressed in the New Testament which records, Christians believe, the son of God dying a torturous death for his love of humanity. In the extreme of pain, Jesus says, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do."These quotes are deeply embedded in rich narratives that demonstrate the truths the quotes hope to convey. Compare this to the Qur'an that mentions "kindness to parents" just a few words away from the advice to husbands to beat their wives. Both quotes are completely free of any supportive, illustrative narrative.
Please buy and read Robert Spencer's "Critical Qur'an." I emphasize "buy" because his book is a gift to thinking people, and "the workman is worthy of his hire." The most moving sentence in this translation was written by Spencer himself. He dedicates his book thus, "Offered with love to all the people of the world who love the Qur'an." I do not see how anyone could read this book, and all of its footnotes, and conclude that the Qur'an is divinely inspired. Muslims deserve to have access to the research presented so very clearly herein.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.
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