Saturday, June 28

Mohammed is 1.2 billion Muslims, or Establishing Shari'a, one family at a time

She says they "misinterpret their texts," but he says they're "fanatical." Which is it?

He defends Mohammed, right or wrong.

Quoting Mohammed's own words is insulting 1.2 billion Muslims
. I thought all Muslims were not the same.

Which is it? Or does it depend on whether or not Mohammed's words and deeds are being examined? What does that say about Mohammed? What does that say about those making such an "argument"?

A Christian family cannot discuss openly religious topics. A free man in a free society (and his wife!) must face character assassination, verbal abuse, and threats of violence over a factual statement (which is, coincidentally, no different than an American during World War II lamenting, "It's too bad Hitler made our boys' sacrifices necessary").

So this is the lay of the land: A non-Muslim is forbidden from quoting Mohammed.

If I can't quote Mohammed, and I can't quote the Bible, what can I quote? A cookbook?! [Hat tip to Zell Miller.]

One of the sad ironies here is that this is exactly one of the restrictions placed historically upon dhimmis, the Jews and Christians subjugated, humiliated, and oppressed under Islamic law, just as Mohammed commanded.

-Mention Mohammed and be bullied into silence.

-Everyone falls in line because the two tyrants throw a fit.

-Essentially, it's, "Shut up dhimmi. Don't talk about Mohammed, or else!"

It's insane.

Why are only the Muslim and his spouse apoplectic over quoting Mohammed? Why are not they being pressured into tolerance of others' freedoms of speech? Why must everyone submit to the bullies' sensibilities?

If the prophet from hell was such an "ideal man," what is wrong with looking at what he said and did? Of what are they afraid? Is not such rage at a non-Muslim looking at those texts an admission of shame over his words and deeds?

Why attack me for quoting what Mohammed said and did? Why not attack Mohammed for what he said and did?

How can a decent person defend universal, open-ended commands to slaughter, rape, and enslave?

So much for the thin veneer of false Muslim civility. I've seen it vaporize in online discussions over the word of Allah and the example of Mohammed, but I've not seen it in person and not from someone who previously had seemed decent.

Insane anger. Irrationality. And this, an observation intended to make the observer look good, or a threat? "If someone was fanatical about their religion, they'd kill you."

I will not be silent. I will not submit, for this is what they defend:
"Each of us was raped by between three and six men. One woman refused to have sex with them, so they split her head into pieces with an axe in front of us." This happened in Darfur, from which Sudanese military personnel actually airlifted women to Khartoum to serve as sex slaves. Meanwhile, Indira Dzetskelova, the mother of one of the child hostages in Beslan, Russia, reports that "several 15-year-old girls were raped by terrorists." Her daughter "heard their terrible cries and screams when those monsters took them away."

This indicates that there are two things the massacre in Beslan has in common with the ongoing massacres in Darfur: both, no less than the 9/11 attacks, are examples of Islamic jihad terrorism, and both are characterized by rape. The jihadist element has been made clear by the ringleaders of both atrocities. Sudanese General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman recently declared: "The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur."

[. . .]

As for Beslan, the Chechen jihadist leader Shamil Besayev warned the Russian government last winter: "Praise Allah, we are dreaming of dying in jihad, we are dreaming of dying on the way of Allah, so that we could earn paradise and mercy of Allah."

What does rape, then, have to do with these religious conflicts? Unfortunately, everything. The Islamic legal manual 'Umdat al-Salik, which carries the endorsement of Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates: "When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman's previous marriage is immediately annulled."

Why? So that they are free to become the concubines of their captors. The Qur'an permits Muslim men to have intercourse with their wives and their slave girls: "Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves" (Sura 4:23-24). After one successful battle, Muhammad tells his men, "Go and take any slave girl." He took one for himself also. After the notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad "went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches." After killing "600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900," the Prophet [sic] of Islam took one of the widows he had just made, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine. Emerging victorious in another battle, according to a generally accepted Islamic tradition, Muhammad's men present him with an ethical question: "We took women captives, and we wanted to do 'azl [coitus interruptus] with them." Muhammad told them: "It is better that you should not do it, for Allah has written whom He is going to create till the Day of Resurrection.'" When Muhammad says "it is better that you should not do it," he's referring to coitus interruptus, not to raping their captives. He takes that for granted.

With Muhammad revered throughout the Islamic world as al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, the rapes of Darfur and Beslan are nothing surprising. What is surprising, or ought to be, is the silence from the Islamic world about the rapes in both cases.

Where are the reformers who will dare to say that Muhammad's example must not be followed in this case?
Certainly not where I was last night.