Muslims Celebrate! Harvard Declares Koran 'Best Book on Justice'
Muslims Celebrate! Harvard Declares Koran 'Best Book on Justice'
A look at Islam’s inferiority complex.
Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Sword and Scimitar, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Muslims around the world are thrilled at the recent news: “Harvard University ranks the Koran as the best book on justice,” is the January 20, 2020 headline of a report published by Youm7, a popular Egyptian news site visited by millions of Arabic readers. It writes (in translation):
The official website of the World Muslim Communities Council said on social media that, after lengthy, scientific studies that closely examined the rules of justice contained in the Noble Koran, the American university of Harvard has ranked the Noble Koran as the best book on justice…. In its final evaluation, Harvard University’s Classification Committee cited verses from the Noble Koran which confirm that the Noble Koran is a book replete with the rules of human justice … and that Islam has no room for injustice but rather includes tolerance and respect for the other.
Several other leading news websites and newspapers—including Al Ahram, Egypt’s most widely circulated and state owned newspaper founded in 1875—carried the story, followed by all sorts of triumphant celebrations on social media.
But is it true? Did Harvard make such a pronouncement? No. The real story is that, back in 2012, a group of law students painted a number of historical quotes dealing with justice on the walls of a Harvard building.
Known as the “Words of Justice,” they consist of 33 quotes from a variety of thinkers and civilizations—including African, Chinese, European, and Hindu—from 600 BC to the present. Among some of the more recognizable names and documents quoted are Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, the Magna Carta, Benjamin Franklin, Immanuel Kant, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Among these 33 quotes is one that is Islamic, derived from Koran:
O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allah is more worthy of both. So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just (4:135).
That’s it—the entire story. There were no “lengthy, scientific studies,” nor “classification committees,” that led Harvard to announce that the Koran is the “best book on justice.” Rather, one Islamic quote was deemed worthy of inclusion with 32 other non-Islamic quotations.
What to make of this shameful episode? Why would Muslims fabricate such a story? More to the point, why would they even care what infidel Harvard thinks in the first place?
For those in the know, the answer is simple: Muslims are ever and always looking for outside validation. Why? Because a growing number of them have a nagging suspicion that their religion is not just.
Indeed, they need look no further than to the very same Koran chapter/sura (4, al-Nisa’, “the Women”) whence the much celebrated “justice” verse (4:135) was excerpted to encounter any number of decidedly unjust verses, including permission to sexually enslave—buy and sell—women (4:3), permission for husbands to beat their wives—since men are “superior” to women (4:34)—and so on.
Accordingly, what can be more reassuring than Western intellectual praise for Islam?
Consider this Arabic op-ed on Islam’s “inferiority complex” that I translated back in 2011. Although its author, Khaled Montaser, an Egyptian intellectual, focuses on all the hoopla that erupts whenever a Westerner converts to Islam—whether in reality or not—the essence of his arguments perfectly apply to and shed light on this recent Harvard fiasco:
We Muslims have an inferiority complex and are terribly sensitive to the world, feeling that our Islamic religion needs constant, practically daily, confirmation by way of Europeans and Americans converting to Islam. What rapturous joy takes us when a European or American announces their [conversion to] Islam—proof that we are in a constant state of fear, alarm, and chronic anticipation for Western validation or American confirmation that our religion is “okay.”.… And we pound our drums and blow our horns [in triumph] and drag the convert to our backwardness, so that he may stand with us at the back of the world’s line of laziness, [in the Muslim world] wherein no new scientific inventions have appeared in the last 500 years. Sometimes those who convert relocate to our countries—only to get on a small boat and escape on the high seas back to their own countries.
He goes on to discuss how the Arab world—in the guise of “our media and Internet sites … our writers and intellectuals”—exulted when it mistakenly thought that the German writer Henryk Broder had accepted Islam, based on sarcastic remarks he had made: “but we are a people incapable of comprehending sarcasm, since it requires a bit of thinking and intellectualizing. And we read with great speed and a hopeful eye, not an eye for truth or reality.” Montaser continues:
How come the Buddhists don’t hold the festivities we do for those who convert to their religion? And some of these converts are much more famous than Broder. Did you know that Richard Gere, Steven Seagal, Harrison Ford—among Hollywood’s most famous actors—converted to Buddhism? What did the Buddhist countries of Asia do regarding these celebrities? What did the Buddhists in China and Japan do? Did they dance and sing praise and march out in the streets, or did they accept these people’s entrance into Buddhism as a mere matter of free conviction?... It is sufficient for the Buddhists that these celebrities purchase their nations’ electronic goods—without any beggary or enticements.
A closing thought: Muslim excitement over one small—and often fraudulent—compliment finds a parallel in the Western establishment’s behavior: government, media, and academia are all in the habit of highlighting and fixating over one small (and often fraudulent) compliment to Islam—such as the “Andalusian Paradise” (a myth)—while suppressing Islam’s numerous shortcomings.
And it’s a reminder that, instead of flattering Islam, openly and honestly criticizing it—objectively, without rancor or hyperbole—is potentially one of the Western world’s most powerful, though largely untapped, strategies that could go a long way in neutralizing Islam, and without force.
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".
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 here, here, here, here, 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.
Islamic Center of Irving’s
Mass Data Deletions
Islamic
religious leaders at a local Texas mosque allege that former leaders stole key
files and security camera footage.
According
to an announcement posted on December 31, 2019, the current leaders alleged
former Shura council members deleted key files and transferred files from
security camera footage.
On
December 31, 2019, the Islamic Center of Irving (ICI)
announced on its website that two members of ICI’s outgoing Shura Council
had “engaged in mass data deletions, downloading, copying of thousands of
documents and emails.” The announcement notes that information about lawsuits
and audio/video files of Congregants were transferred from ICI’s camera and
security systems. According to the announcement, the mosque’s attempts to have
the information returned have gone unanswered. Later the announcement was
deleted from the ICI website.
While
information regarding the two councils is not available on ICI’s
website, ICI announced the results of the 2019
election and the current Shura Council on October 22, 2019. The announcement lists
Hassan A. Hye as the current ICI president. In another
announcement from October 21, 2016, Bayinnah Institute and superstar
preacher Nouman Ali Khan presents himself as the
former president of the Islamic Center of Irving. This information is
corroborated by a photo on ICI’s Facebook page of Nouman Ali Khan at a
fundraiser in his capacity as ICI President in 2017.
Khan
first faced scrutiny in 2017 after screenshots went pubic showing him
bribing, threatening and “sexting” with different women online. Khan defended
his actions by stating in a Facebook post that he had been
divorced for two years and that both his and the women’s actions were based on
mutual consent.
Muslim
American writer and lawyer Rabia Chaudry then
reported on Facebook that “multiple people have had Facebook posts removed
and a number of people have had their Twitter accounts suspended for
criticizing Bayinnah” and also speculated that possibly Khan had threatened to
bury them in legal fees.
There
have been two criminal incidents that brought media coverage to ICI in the last
year. In May 2019, a security guard at ICI, Syed Humzah
Hashmi, was arrested for aggravated sexual assault of a child. According to the
arrest warrant, the male victim was in third grade and attended the Islamic
School of Irving. The alleged assaults allegedly included attempted sodomy and
took place at the Islamic Center of Irving from August 2016 through June 2017.
A
few months later, the former imam of Islamic Center of Irving, Zia ul-Haq
Sheikh. Imam Sheikh was ordered to pay $2.55
million to a woman identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit alleging sexual
exploitation.
The
lawsuit states:
“Jane’s emotional dependency as a result of being
counseled by the defendant from age 13 to age 19 led Jane to be fearful of
losing the defendant’s support in her life, and therefore created a situation
where Jane was unable to refuse the defendant’s requests.”
Sheikh
allegedly requested sexually explicit photos and videos and ultimately
intercourse from Doe in exchange for his support. According to the lawsuit,
when the woman was nineteen, shortly after Sheikh and Doe had sex at a Motel 6,
Sheikh gave Doe a pregnancy test to make sure he wouldn’t lose his job and then
cut off contact with her.
The
lawsuit was filed in July 2018 and was later amended to include an allegation
of sexual assault.
Zia
Sheikh was for a time a darling of the local news media. In 2015, after former
mayor of Irving Beth Van Duyne objected to the
opening of an Islamic Tribunal in Irving, of which Sheikh was
a member,
the Dallas Observer wrote a piece called “Imam Zia Sheikh
opens minds to the real Islam.” D magazine wrote another glowing
piece about the imam called “Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Irving (and
the Imam who has to tolerate it)”.
ICI’s
Shura Council, according to an archived page from Islamic Center
of Irving’s website, as late as February 2012, included a representative for
the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA was founded as an
organization of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1970s. According
to Brotherhood archival documents submitted during the Holy Land Foundation
Trial, it was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document, called “An Explanatory Memorandum on the
General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” as an ally of the
Muslim Brotherhood. That document was entered into evidence during the Holy
Land Foundation Trial as “Elbarasse Search-3.”
The
face behind the lawsuits against Sheikh is an unlikely one. Alia Salem is the
former head of CAIR DFW as well as the founder and executive director of FACE (“Facing
Abuse in Community Environments”). According to their website, that
organization is designed to counter abuses of power within leadership in the
Islamic community. Before founding FACE, she created a stir when she advised
local Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI investigating ISIS.
ICI’s
current religious leaders seem as eager as the previous council to keep these
events out of the public eye. On January 13th, an
announcement on the ICI homepage stated that after a meeting on Sunday,
January 12, attended by two former ICI presidents, the current ICI Shura
Council, members of the ICI Shura Body, and “a group of brothers,” the various
parties completed the transition from the previous Shura Council and came
to an agreement.
Current
ICI president Hassan A. Hye asked that members of the masjid “refrain from
posting or commenting in public forums” regarding ICI or matters related to it.
Given
the legal and ethical cloud hovering over ICI’s recent leaders and staff,
there’s serious questions to be asked about the management of Irving Masjid.
The Islamist penchant for covering up scandal is sure to only exacerbate community
dissension. Irving Masjid congregants should think seriously about following
the maxim that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and bucking leadership which
seeks to silence and protect rather than expose wrongdoing.
Anne-Christine Hoff is the Dallas
associate of the Counter Islamist Grid. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
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.
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.
///
'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 Reader, 75-76).
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 here, here, 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.
Home Office Bureaucrats Accused of Burying Report on Ethnicity of Grooming Gang Rapists
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Home Office bureaucrats have been accused of burying a report on the ethnic background of grooming gang rapists announced in 2018.
The report was commissioned by Sajid Javid — then Home Secretary, now Chancellor of the Exchequer — in 2018, with the Pakistani-heritage Muslim MP saying it made him “feel angry” that such a disproportionate number of grooming gang rapists came from his community, and that they had “disgraced our heritage”.
The Home Office later said the review would remain internal, however, supposedly due to operational sensitivity, and Javid was accused of having essentially shelved it.
Now his successor as Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is reportedly being met with “obfuscation” and “given the run around” by departmental bureaucrats as she attempts to find out what has become of their investigation.
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“I have no idea why, but it has consistently felt like Home Office officials deliberately avoid ministers clear instructions for research when it comes to grooming gangs,” commented Sarah Champion, a Labour MP who has pressed the issue of grooming gangs for some time, and was sacked from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow government for daring to say that “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.”
“The Home Office ministers and the former Home Secretary [Javid] have all stated to me that the department will carry out research into perpetrators of gang-related child sexual exploitation,” Champion said of the current impasse.
“Still we have nothing. It appears civil servants in the Home Office believe if they ignore requests into grooming gang data for long enough, ministers will just move on to a different topic.
“I think they might be shocked by the persistence of Priti Patel on this issue.”
Sources told the Huffington Post that Patel was “not best pleased” with officials in her department, who are seen as “not being completely upfront” about the issue. She is said to be insistent on seeing the results of the report for herself, even if they are not revealed to the public.
Independent research by think tank Quilliam has previously indicated that some 84 per cent of groomers are South Asian origin men.
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“We were promised a review of sorts by the then home secretary and then when it didn’t surface, we were told it was for internal use only,” commented Nazir Afzal, a former Crown prosecutor who led some of the early cases against grooming gang when the authorities were finally forced to act on the scandal.
“Now it seems nobody can find it, he added.
“It’s victims that constantly get let down by the failures of those in authority.”
Afzal wants the report released because, in his view, its absence is being “exploited by the far right”.
Because of his background and work on grooming gang cases, Afzal is often wheeled out by the mainstream media outlets who neglected the issue for years as an authoritative voice ont the subject — but he has previously tried to play down the religious and ethnic dimensions of the large-scale sexual exploitation of overwhelmingly non-Muslim, usually white girls by overwhelmingly Mulsim, usually Pakistani-origin men as non-existent or minimal.
In 2014 he suggested that while the ethnic profile of victims and perpetrators “is what it is”, Asian-origin men were vastly overrepresented in the offender statistics in large part because “Pakistani men, Asian men, [are] disproportionately employed in the night-time economy” — cab drivers, takeaway owners and workers, and so on — and that brings vulnerable seeking “transport” and “food” in contact with the “very small minority” of night-time economy workers inclined towards sexual abuse.
“There is no religious basis for this. These men were not religious,” Afzal insisted — but victims vehemently disagree.
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