This AP picture pretty much says it all but just to make sure, let's read the original caption:And mass impeachment proceedings. Remove them all from office.
In this picture taken Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, an Afghan police trainee from the United States Marine police mentoring program eats a lollipop as Marines search a house that was thought to have explosives during a joint patrol in Khan Neshin, in the volatile Helmand province of southern Afghanistan....Insert primal scream.
"And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man, was the early object of his mission; and the authoritative demonstration of the immortality of man, was that, which constituted the more than earthly tribute of glory to God in the highest . . . The first conquest of the religion of Jesus, was over the unsocial passions of his disciples. It elevated the standard of the human character in the scale of existence . . . On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE.And from page 300 (emphases added):
[. . .]
“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE
[. . .]
"Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant . . . While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men” (Blunt, pp. 268-269).
The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies. There is no denomination of Christians, which denies or misunderstands this doctrine. All understand it alike—all acknowledge its obligations; and however imperfectly, in the purposes of Divine Providence, its efficacy has been shown in the practice of Christians, it has not been wholly inoperative upon them. Its effect has been upon the manners of nations. It has mitigated the horrors of war—it has softened the features of slavery—it has humanized the intercourse of social life. The unqualified acknowledgement of a duty does not, indeed, suffice to insure its performance. Hatred is yet a passion, but too powerful upon the hearts of Christians. Yet they cannot indulge it, except by the sacrifice of their principles, and the conscious violation of their duties. No state paper from a Christian hand, could, without trampling the precepts of its Lord and Master, have commenced by an open proclamation of hatred to any portion of the human race. The Ottoman lays it down as the foundation of his discourse.
Great, more Jesusnazi horse[deleted]. Thankfully, Choadette McJesusstein won't get the cash and this [deleted] will be relegated to the trash can where it most rightfully belongs.Don't murder.
I can't wait until my grandchildren look back at history at religion and ask "People actually believed that egregious stupidity?"
Don't commit adultery.
Don't steal.
Don't lie.
Don't want what belongs to another.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Love your enemies.
The foundation of Western Civilization and its advances in the sciences, law, morality, music, art, and literature.
You call that "egregious stupidity," and you hope your children do too.
You've made any sardonic reply on my part superfluous.
Well-played.
And to those equating falsely "all religions" -- especially Islam and Christianity -- let's see if you're able to discern any contrast between Christ and Muhammad.
According to eyewitnesses of both men (as recorded in each religion's authoritative texts):
Christ spoke only the truth, committed no sin, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the whole world, and resurrected. He commanded His people to love even their enemies, just as He prayed for those who murdered Him.
On the other hand, Muhammad committed genocide, pedophilia, rape, mutilation, slavery, theft, extortion, deception, and blasphemy and commanded his followers to do the same, claiming "allah made me do it."
In other words, Christ overcame sin, death, and the devil by His own precious blood, but the criminally-insane Muhammad "sacralized" the violation of all Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.
Even suicidally-ignorant, anti-Christian bigots should be able to pick out a difference or two there.
A week after a Muslim jihadi gunned down more than 40 fellow citizens at Ft. Hood, Texas, America’s national security leadership still won’t admit that the attack had anything to do with Islam. By failing to acknowledge that connection, those with a constitutional duty to defend this nation “against all enemies foreign and domestic” consistently substitute a policy of political correctness at the expense of military readiness. The fact is that the 5 November 2009 attack that took the lives of thirteen American patriots was not just an act of terrorism: it was an act of war. When a gunman from the ranks of Islamic Jihad mounts an armed assault against a military target in complete consistency with the enemy doctrine of war, it is time to recognize that the U.S. actually is at war -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but with all those who follow the call of Jihad. These are the Jihad Wars and the stakes are clear: shall Americans live in security under the Constitution or shall the enemy within and without compel us to submit to Shari’a (Islamic law)?
The few courageous commentators, like Colonel Ralph Peters, Bill O’Reilly, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), who dare to notice that U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was born and raised a Muslim, yelled “Allahu Akbar (“God is the greatest”) while shooting people in the back, and sought Islamic fatwas from American-born Yemeni al-Qa’eda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (who’d been his imam at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia), have been ignored. Hasan told colleagues, "I'm a Muslim first and an American second." He proselytized his psychiatric patients, many with PTSD, trying to convert them to Islam -- and they complained about it. He gave a Power Point presentation while at the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences entitled ‘Why the War on Terror is a War on Islam" in which a classmate says he “justified suicide bombing" and spewed "anti-American propaganda.”
The Army knew about all of this. Further, the 9/11 Commission, Congress, and the FBI had all focused on al-Awlaki’s links to al-Qa’eda eight year ago. DIA issued an internal report in 2003 warning that Muslim soldiers in the U.S. military pose a possible security threat after Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a Muslim convert, killed two and wounded 15 others at a military camp outside Baghdad.
But in the days since the Ft. Hood massacre, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George Casey has appeared more worried about the possibility that diversity in the military could become “a casualty” than he has about his constitutional duty to ensure force protection within the ranks of this country’s military, unit cohesion, and readiness to defeat this nation’s enemies. The reality that Maj. Hasan and Sgt. Akbar should alert us to is that some of those enemies are already inside the gates. They do not wear an enemy uniform or fight within the bounds of the Geneva Convention code. They pose as loyal Americans but render their true allegiance to Islam and Shari’a.
The grandmother of US president Barack Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the 'Hajj' or Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a Saudi daily said on Wednesday. Sarah Obama, 87, is being accompanied by a nephew and Obama's cousin, Omran.
On Wednesday Sarah Obama was in the valley of Mina with an African delegation, according to the Saudi daily Okaz.
Obama, the mother of the American president's father, lives in a village in Kenya and is one of the many guests of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud . . . .
For the purposes of argument, let's accept the media's insistence that Major Hasan is a lone crazy.
So who's nuttier?
The guy who gives a lecture to other military doctors in which he says non-Muslims should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats?
Or the guys who say "Hey, let's have this fellow counsel our traumatized veterans and then promote him to major and put him on a Homeland Security panel?
Or the Army Chief of Staff who thinks the priority should be to celebrate diversity, even unto death?
Or the Secretary of Homeland Security who warns that the principal threat we face now is an outbreak of Islamophobia?
Or the president who says we cannot "fully know" why Major Hasan did what he did, so why trouble ourselves any further?
Or the columnist who, when a man hands out copies of the Koran before gunning down his victims while yelling "Allahu akbar," says you're racist if you bring up his religion?
Or his media colleagues who put Americans in the same position as East Germans twenty years ago of having to get hold of a foreign newspaper to find out what's going on?
General Casey has a point: An army that lets you check either the "home team" or "enemy" box according to taste is certainly diverse. But the logic in the remarks of Secretary Napolitano and others is that the real problem is that most Americans are knuckledragging bigots just waiting to go bananas. As Melanie Phillips wrote in her book Londonistan:
Minority-rights doctrine has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a 'victim' group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the 'oppressive' majority.To the injury of November 5, we add the insults of American officialdom and their poodle media. In a nutshell:
The real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness. We are setting our hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.
Hello, Maheen,
“freedom does not protect you from looking ignorant when you quote sacred text out of context.”Please, show me where I’ve misrepresented the Islamic texts I posted. It should be easy to do, since I am so “ignorant.” (Didn’t Mr. Appel say we were supposed to be nice?)
“I encourage you to educate yourself on the sacred tradition of hijab and follow it through its heritage in all of the Abrahamic faiths, including Christianity.”What “sacred tradtion” has hijab outside of Islam?
It is true that propriety in worship in the ancient church included clear gender
distinctions, but that was completely devoid of the tyranny in Muhammad’s
“revelation” and practice.
“Christianity too has quite a violent past but one should not blame the religion for the work of the ignorant. I do not attribute the savage crusades to the peaceful Christian friends that I have, and likewise, you should not attribute the evil works of some Muslims to the beautiful faith of Islam and other Muslims.”[At least she admits Islam's "violent past." Now, to address the Source and Sustenance of that bloodshed!]
That’s a false moral equivalence and a false tu quoque, two “arguments” offered often by jihad’s apologists in response to the genocidal content of their own authoritative texts.
Where have I blamed “other Muslims”? Where did I “attribute the evil works of some Muslims to . . . Islam”?
I quoted Allah and his apostle.
Ironically (and tragically, for non-Muslims) enough, so do those Muslims practicing the “evil works.”
How are you going to convince them that they too are “ignorant” and taking passages “out-of-context”?
How will you persuade ["]all four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, Sahih Muslim, Sahih Bukhari, Sunan Abu Dawud, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Juzayy, Tafsir al-Jalalayn, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Khaldun, Muhammad Muhsin Khan, S. K. Malik [. . .] Averroes, al-Ghazzali, numerous Shi’ites,[" (credit Robert Spencer)] etc. of their grievous error?
Are you honestly unaware of Islam’s traditional understanding and practice of offensive jihad against non-Muslims? If not, will you engage in honest discourse? If you are unaware, how can you engage in intelligent discourse?
Christians did commit great sins during the Crusades. (Do you know why the first was called by Pope Urban II? It was for the defense of Christians under siege by . . . Islam.)
When Christians murder, do they do so in fulfillment of Christ’s commands and in accord with His example or not? Since you are expert enough in Christian theology to claim that the hijab is a sacred tradition in Christianity, you must know the answer.
Produce one verse that has Christ commanding believers to enslave or slaughter non-Christians.
Since you are so well-versed in Islamic theology that you can say that I am “ignorant” and taking passages “out-of-context,” when Muslims slaughter innocent non-Muslims in Allah’s name, is that in fulfillment of his commands and Muhammad’s example, or not?
When, “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘I have been made victorious with terror . . . ’” (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220), did he really mean, “I’ve succeeded by love and good deeds”?
“If you go so far as to denigrate the Prophet Muhammad”“denigrate”?
Muhammad married little Aisha when she was six and began raping her when she was nine. What “context” makes that okay? Does that not deserve “denigration”? Are you aware that one of Khomeini’s first acts when he came to power was to lower the marriageable age of girls in Iran to nine? Why is that?
What about Muhammad’s assassinations of those who mocked him — Asma bint Marwan, Abu Akaf? The beheading of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza? Muhammad and his followers raping women whose brothers, fathers, and husbands they had just slaughtered? The attack on the innocent Jewish farmers, tilling their fields in the Khaybar Oasis [(credit Hugh Fitzgerald)]? What decent person should not feel rage at such evil?
That is the “Perfect Man,” “uswa hasana[,]” you defend.
If someone who commits theft, slavery, rape, pedophilia, genocide, and blasphemy — and commands others to do the same, calling it “divine” — does not deserve to be denigrated, who does?
More importantly, how can any decent person aware of what Muhammad said and did not condemn his words and deeds?
You claim respect for the Prophets of YHWH and His Christ — how then can you defend Muhammad? For he stated that whoever claims Allah has a son is a blasphemer. If Allah is YHWH (He is not), then Muhammad is calling Jesus a “blasphemer,” since Christ called Himself the Son of God.
“Just look at Spain. Muslims, Christians, Jews, and agnostics/atheists all lived peacefully under the Muslim rule of Spain for hundreds upon hundreds of years; however, the moment Christians overthrew the Muslims, they slaughtered every Muslim man, woman, elderly and child.”If things were so peaceful, why did the Spaniards slaughter “every Muslim” as soon as they regained their freedom? Why did they overthrow them in the first place?
So, is that what you’ve been taught, or is that what you’ve been taught to offer as a rebuttal to non-Muslims who discover Islam’s texts and history?
“Do a little more reading with the aid of understanding of what you read in a historical context, and you will find a lot of your false notions answered.”You’re going to have to show from Qur’an, ahadith, and sira that:
-When Muhammad commanded, “Invite . . . demand the jizya . . . then fight,” he really meant, “Invite . . . make small talk . . . befriend.”Here’s a final quotation for you; perhaps [Moses ben Maimon] didn’t really mean what he said, just like Muhammad:
-When Muhammad told some Jews, “accept Islam and you’ll be safe,” he really meant, “Let’s have a potluck! How ’bout those Greeks?”
-When Muhammad began raping little nine-year-old Aisha, he was really only giving the local kids a puppet show.
-When Muhammad commanded that whomever leaves Islam should be murdered, he really only meant to exclude him from Bingo.
Remember, my coreligionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs [Muslims], who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us … Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they . . .
[Although we were dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and had to put up with their fabrications, yet we behave like him who is depicted by the inspired writer: “But I am as a deaf man, I hear not, and I am as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth (Psalm 38: 14).
Similarly our sages instructed us to bear the prevarications and preposterousness of Ishmael in silence . . .
We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation . . .
All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continual maltreatment which well nigh crushes us.
No matter how we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them [Muslims] they stir up strife and sedition . . .]
-Maimonides, victim of Islam in conquered Spain[, Iggeret Taiman (Epistle to Yemen), edited by A S Halkin; translated by B. Cohen, New York, 1952]
Al-Andalus [or any other Muslim-dominated land] was no paradise for non-Muslims. It was — to varying degrees — just what Allah requires (Qur’an 9:29). Pact of Umar, anyone? You know what that requires, right?And here is how Maimonides ended up in Cairo:
Again, please show from the Islamic texts where I’ve erred. Show me where I’ve been false or unfair.
I encourage you to put your faith in Christ, the Son of God, Who reconciled you to His Father in His body on the cross. True religion is in Him alone.
Moses was only thirteen years old when Cordova fell into the hands of the fanatical Almohades, and Maimon and all his coreligionists there were compelled to choose between Islam and exile. Maimon and his family chose the latter course, and for twelve years led a nomadic life, wandering hither and thither in Spain.
In 1160 they settled at Fez, where, unknown to the authorities, they hoped to pass as Moslems. This dual life, however, became increasingly dangerous. Maimonides' reputation was steadily growing, and the authorities began to inquire into the religious disposition of this highly-gifted young man.
He was even charged by an informer with the crime of having relapsed from Islam, and, but for the intercession of a Moslem friend, the poet and theologian Abu al-'Arab al-Mu'ishah, he would have shared the fate of his friend Judah ibn Shoshan, who had shortly before been executed on a similar charge. These circumstances caused the members of Maimonides' family to leave Fez. In 1165 they embarked, went to Acre, to Jerusalem, and then to Fostat (Cairo), where they settled.Death or Islam? Wandering for twelve years? Trying to pass as Muslims? Shared the fate of his friend, executed for "relapsing from Islam"?
The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.Would those "groups" include CAIR? MPAC? ISNA? Hizb'allah? Al Qaeda? The Taliban?
Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Musim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hey, Bob, Leigh14 is practicing taqiyya. You've just been had.Muhammad must be in a special part of hell.
If you define Islam as a religion based on the Qur'an, these men are not Muslims, either. The Qur'an is the most liberal and supportive toward women of the three Abrahamic religious books.This is true only if the definition of "liberal and supportive" includes rape, child-rape, wife-beating, considering a woman's testimony worth only half of a man's, valuing a daughter so little that she receives half the inheritance of a son, and requiring a rape victim to have four witnesses -- which, of course, she will not, and so will she be executed for [admitting to] sexual intercourse outside of marriage.
[On the other hand, Christ commands His people to "Love your neighbor as yourself," and, "Treat others the way you want to be treated." He declares through His apostle: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).]
Here is what Sunni Islam has to say about "honor killings":
"A manual of Islamic law certified by Al-Azhar as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy says that 'retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.' However, 'not subject to retaliation' is 'a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring.' ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2)."Speaking of 'Umdat al-Salik:
"There is no doubt that this translation is a valuable and important work, whether as a textbook for teaching Islamic jurisprudence to English speakers, or as a legal reference for use by scholars, educated laymen, and students in this language." Dr. Taha Jabir al-'Alwani, International Institute of Islamic Thought (Herndon, VA; December 1990).Leigh14 is correct about the "Christians" noted above; no one can murder, rape, or torture in obedience to Christ's commands.
"...We certify that this translation corresponds to the Arabic original and conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community (Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama'a)." al-Azhar, the Muslim world's most prestigious institution of higher Islamic learning (Cairo; February, 1991).
On the other hand, not only the command of Allah -- Qur'an -- but the life of Muhammad -- recorded in [a]hadith and sira -- [is] considered authoritative by Islam.
Following is some of what Qur'an says regarding the treatment of females [. . .]
"Paradise" is a cosmic brothel:Here are a couple of ahadith regarding Muhammad's favorite wife Aisha. He was in his fifties when he "married" her.
"As to the Righteous (they will be) in a position of Security, Among Gardens and Springs; Dressed in fine silk and in rich brocade, they will face each other; So; and We shall join them to fair women with beautiful, big, and lustrous eyes" (Qur'an 44:51-54).Allah-ordained child-rape:
"And for such of your women as despair of menstruation, if ye doubt, their period (of waiting) shall be three months along with those who have it not. And for those with child, their period shall be till they bring forth their burden. And whosoever keepeth his duty to Allah, He maketh his course easy for him" (Qur'an 65:4).Beat your wives if "you fear desertion." Considering Muhammad's vile sadism, why would a woman -- or little girl -- ever want to run?
". . . good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them . . . " (Qur'an 4:34).Rape your wife at will:
"Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will" (Qur'an 2:223).A woman's testimony is worth only half of a man's:
"Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (Qur'an 2:282).Polygamy, and raping your female slaves:
"If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (Qur'an 4:3).Murdering women accused of "lewdness":
"If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four (Reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some (other) way . . ." (Qur'an 4:15).A daughter receives only half of what a son does:
"Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (Qur'an 4:11).Why women must be hidden like someone's property:
"And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex . . ." (Qur'an 24:31).Raping married slaves:
"Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess . . . " (Qur'an 4:24).
She was six.
And Aisha was a little, prepubescent nine-year-old when he began raping her:
"My mother came to me while I was being swung on a swing between two branches and got me down. My nurse took over and wiped my face with some water and started leading me. When I was at the door she stopped so I could catch my breath. I was brought in while Muhammad was sitting on a bed in our house. My mother made me sit on his lap. The other men and women got up and left. The Prophet consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old" (Tabari 9:131).But Christ warned:
"Narrated 'Aisha [Mohammed's six-year-old "bride" and nine-year-old sexual "partner"]: 'Allah's Apostle said (to me), "You were shown to me twice in (my) dream [before I married you]. Behold, a man was carrying you in a silken piece of cloth and said to me, 'She is your wife, so uncover her,' and behold, it was you. I would then say (to myself), 'If this is from Allah, then it must happen.'"'" (Bukhari Volume 9, Book 87, Number 139 and 140).
"whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).
A U.S. soldier opened fire Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, killing at least 11 people and wounding 31 others, military officials said. The gunman was shot to death, and two other soldiers were in custody.Yes, there is "no intelligence," since the only "plot" a Muslim needs to slaughter "the worst of creatures" is the command of Allah and the example of Muhammad.
Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, commanding general of the Army’s III Corps, who briefed President Barack Obama on the shootings, said the gunman used two handguns.
NBC News’ Pete Williams reported that a U.S. official identified the gunman as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was 39 or 40. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said military officials told her that the gunman was about to be deployed to Iraq and was “upset about it.” The Associated Press reported that Hasan was a mental health professional.
A senior administration official told NBC News that the shootings could have been a criminal matter rather than a terrorism-related attack and that there was no intelligence to suggest a plot against Fort Hood.
Military and local hospital official said the victims were a mixture of men and women, military and civilian. At least one of those killed was a civilian police officer, Cone said. At least four local SWAT officers were among those wounded, NBC affiliate KCEN-TV of Waco reported.Obama's part of a "Muslim group"? Isn't that racist?
Fort Hood, one of the largest military complexes in the world, was on lockdown, as were schools in the area. Dozens of agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the post, federal officials said.
Muslim group condemns shootings
Speaking in Washington, Obama called the shootings a “horrific incident.”
“It’s difficult enough when we lose these great Americans in battles overseas,” Obama said at the Interior Department. “It’s horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.”Just like Hasan's fellow soldiers, who took his comment about wishing that "Muslims would rise up against the aggressors" to mean that he wanted Muslims to aid America against the terrorists, you probably think that CAIR is referring to Hasan and anyone who helped him as "the perpetrators."
Noting the Arabic nature of the gunman’s name, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington interest group, condemned “this cowardly attack in the strongest terms possible and ask that the perpetrators be punished to the full extent of the law.”
”No political or religious ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence,” the council said in a statement. “The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted the all-volunteer army that protects our nation. American Muslims stand with our fellow citizens in offering both prayers for the victims and sincere condolences to the families of those killed or injured.”No ideology except their own, they mean.
As to "how often he is referred to as 'YHWH' in the Bible?"
Almost 6700 times.
That's funny, because "Holy Spirit" is found in 92 verses, and "Spirit of God" turns up in 26:It's hard to find anything in the Bible about the 'Holy Spirit.'
Psalms 51:11; Isaiah 63:10,11; Matthew 1:18,20; 3:11; 12:32; 28:19; Mark 1:8; 3:29; 12:36; 13:11; Luke 1:15,35,41,67; 2:25,26; 3:16,22; 4:1; 10:21; 11:13; 12:10,12; John 1:33; 14:26; 20:22; Acts 1:2,5,8,16; 2:4,33,38; 4:8,25,31; 5:3,32; 6:5; 7:51,55; 8:15,17,19; 9:17,31; 10:38,44,45,47; 11:15,16,24; 13:2,4,9,52; 15:8,28; 16:6; 19:2,6; 20:23,28; 21:11; 28:25; Romans 5:5; 9:1; 14:17; 15:13,16; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 12:3; 2 Corinthians 6:6; 13:14; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 1:5,6; 4:8; 2 Timothy 1:14; Titus 3:5; Hebrews 2:4; 3:7; 6:4; 9:8; 10:15; 1 Peter 1:12; 2 Peter 1:21; Jude 1:20
and
Genesis 1:2; 41:38; Exodus 31:3; 35:31; Numbers 24:2; 1 Samuel 10:10; 11:6; 19:20,23; 2 Chronicles 15:1; 24:20; Job 27:3; 33:4; Ezekiel 11:24; Matthew 3:16; 12:28; Romans 8:9,14; 15:19; 1 Corinthians 2:11,14; 7:40; 12:3; Ephesians 4:30; Philippians 3:3; 1 John 4:2
And no, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" are the direct words of Christ:
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit . . ." (Matthew 28:19).
"We believe that Christ (Isa) was a prophet, not the Son of God. But again, that's just an opinion."Jesus called Himself the "Son of God" and, "I AM," the name by which YHWH revealed Himself to Moses.
Every Surah in the Koran starts with "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful." Sometimes it's translated as "Most Merciful, Most Compassionate."Sura 9 does not.
Of the rest, several contain the commands for violence against non-Muslims, apostates, and women; Suras 4,5, and 8 come immediately to mind
In the ESV, NIV, and King James (at least; I haven't looked at other translations), YHWH in the Old Testament is translated into English as "The LORD." In the New Testament, which was written in Greek, rather than use "YHWH," the authors used Kurios, which is also translated "LORD" (all caps).
akhter wrote:
produce a chapter similar to the one in the glorious,you say Mohammad wrote the bookNo, Muhammad was illiterate.
And a chapter like Sura 9?
You're right. I cannot produce anything approaching the level of "glory" to which Qur'an 9 descends.
It is wise to be skeptical.
Unlike Allah (and all other gods, in fact), YHWH's miracles were done in plain sight, in history; no secret Moon-splitting, midnight flights, nor "divine revelations" on the word of one, utterly-depraved criminal.
From a plain reading of the Joshua passage you note (an historical account not necessarily devoid of symbolic meaning; when you're the Author of the universe, you can have both), the day standing still was intended primarily to allow Israel to defeat its enemies.
On the other hand, YHWH's defeating Egypt when He delivered Israel from slavery there and their preservation during forty years of wandering were intended to show His power and mercy.
Christ's miracles too were intended as signs so that Israel (and we) would believe that He was (is) the Promised Messiah, but even those were considered by Him as secondary; His person and words should be enough:
Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."Unlike Muhammad's self-serving fusion of the "religious" and the political, Christ made a careful distinction between the two.
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves" (John 14:8-11).
Faith in Him has nothing to do with societal majorities or being acceptable to friends, neighbors, or countrymen.
Jesus came to make us sinners acceptable to God. He came to bear our sins and be our Savior, to reconcile us to His Father in His body on the cross.
Christ does not demand that anyone believe, "Because I said so," or, "Believe, or else!"
He proved His power and love over and over again in public, in front of the whole world, in full view of multiple eyewitnesses (including hostile ones), in history.
As He did with Unbelieving (not "Doubting") Thomas -- who would not believe in the Resurrected Christ unless he saw and touched His wounds -- so Jesus does with us:
Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord."
But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe."
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe."
Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:24-31).
(Bukhari Volume 8, Book 82, Number 794): Narrated Anas:Hello, Mohamed.
Some people from the tribe of 'Ukl came to the Prophet and embraced Islam. The climate of Medina did not suit them, so the Prophet ordered them to go to the (herd of milch) camels of charity and to drink, their milk and urine (as a medicine). They did so, and after they had recovered from their ailment (became healthy) they turned renegades (reverted from Islam) and killed the shepherd of the camels and took the camels away. The Prophet sent (some people) in their pursuit and so they were (caught and) brought, and the Prophets ordered that their hands and legs should be cut off and that their eyes should be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that their cut hands and legs should not be cauterized, till they die.
I've had a lot of time to think over what I might have done wrong in order for you to forbid my posting at your site and to delete my comments quoting your allah and its prophet.
If what I was saying was false or in error or just plain nonsense, that should have been easy to demonstrate. You could have left up my words and your refutations of them in order to shame me publicly into perpetuity.
But you didn't. Why not?
It's a little ironic, isn't it? I disallowed Underclassed's comments for gratuitously and undeservedly insulting Reb and for his virulent use of profanity-as-argumentation, but you ban me for . . . telling the truth?
What does that say about you, Mohamed? Your arguments? Your god? Your prophet?
I have a question about Muhammad the Physician: Since he prescribed drinking camel urine for medicinal purposes, do you also drink camel urine (when the climate doesn't suit you, that is. We mustn't take anything out-of-context!)?
If not, how can you defend him as the Perfect Man, as Allah's "beautiful pattern of conduct"?
If you do, will you argue that camel urine used to provide a health benefit, but that only Muslims, and not other civilizations, noticed?
Will you argue -- as you did for Muhammad's raping little, prepubescent Aisha beginning when she was only nine-years-old -- that that camel liked it?
Or will you argue that infidel science has yet to determine the salutary effects of that magic elixir?
As far as convincing proofs go, Jesus did not turn clay into doves; that is an apocryphal story, not historical fact (as in the canonical books).
But if He had, Jesus would not have needed "the help of God," as if He were not God Incarnate Himself, which is your implication, is it not?
Finally, since Christ spoke only the truth, committed no sin, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the whole world (including you and me) -- and Himself resurrected and appeared to hundreds of eyewitnesses on many occasions over 40 days -- why do you not believe Him?
Instead you defend as "holy" Muhammad, who blasphemed the Living God you claim to worship, lied, stole, destroyed, enslaved, raped, mutilated, and slaughtered gratuitously. You defend all of it as "divine," going so far as to assert as scientific fact incidents that no one in the world ever witnessed.
What is it about Muhammad that convinces you to believe him? Is it the deceit? The genocide? The torture, The mutilation?
Is it his having assassinated poetesses while they nursed? His beheading prisoners of war? His murdering apostates?
Is it his anti-Semitism? His hatred for Christians? Animists? Hindus?
Is it the sex slaves? The rape?
Is it the Allah-ordained pedophilia that moves you so?
John and Ken,
I have been a listener for several years. I admire your vigor in exposing and condemning corruption in government.
Thank you.
On the matter of Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory and Islamic jihad, you hold yourselves to a lower burden-of-proof and demonstrate a profound lack of intellectual integrity, however.
During one show this week, you claimed that when a species needs to evolve, it does. Darwinism's mechanism of change is only random, minor genetic mutations. What do such copying errors produce?
Usually, death or severe illness.
Random, minor genetic mutations are not only unable to modify existing genetic program into newer, more complex code, it can do nothing to produce it from scratch in the first place.
When the first miraculous "evolved" bird hatched from a reptile's egg (how did that happen, again?) and soared up into the sky, what do you think went through its head when it realized it had no one with which to mate?
As for Islam, you asserted with regard to Muslim murder, "It doesn't matter which book you read!" Such a claim reveals an embarrassing lack of either education or moral clarity.
"Which book you read" matters absolutely.
Christ committed no sin, spoke only the truth, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the whole world, and Himself resurrected. He taught, "Love your neighbors as yourself," and, "Love your enemies."
Muhammad and his allah commanded, practiced, and endorsed genocide, child-rape, rape, mutilation, torture, slavery, extortion, blasphemy, religious and gender discrimination, and anti-Semitism. They demand, "kill the pagans wherever you find them . . . Fight against . . . the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] until they feel themselves subdued and pay the jizya [oppressive poll-tax, part of the dhimma system] . . . Paradise [belongs] to those who slay and are slain fighting in Allah's cause" (Qur'an 9).
Such nescient, false moral equivalences condemn souls to hell and perpetuate hell-on-earth for non-Muslims, apostates, women, and little girls.
You owe your listeners the facts . . . .
Certainly the "radicals" are recruiting among "traditional Muslims," and using American immorality as one among other pretexts. But while this argument looks impressive on its face, it dissolves among closer inspection -- chiefly because those "traditional Muslims" upon whom D'Souza places so much hope remain nebulous and elusive, even in his construction. Are they "moderates"? No: in his book he explains that they do not differ theologically or even politically from the jihadists. And in his book he doesn't name even one. When I asked him to name one, he named Ali Gomaa, the Mufti of Egypt. Ali Gomaa, however, has expressed support for Hizballah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has led chants of "Death to America!" This is an actual or potential ally?More on Gomaa:
Ali Gomaa has also ruled that statues are un-Islamic; when I mentioned this to D'Souza, he was contemptuously dismissive. But in fact it is an important point. Cultural conservatives are supposed to ally, in his view, with "traditional Muslims" who allegedly share the same values. But what about when they don't share the same values? What makes D'Souza think that "traditional Muslims" will ally with non-Muslims on cultural issues in opposition to the jihad being waged by their fellow Muslims -- when they have no theological differences with those fellow Muslims, and fewer cultural differences with them than they have with those non-Muslims?
This doesn't make sense. If they have no theological differences with the jihadists, then they believe in principle in the jihad, and also hold to the traditional Qur'anic prohibition against befriending non-Muslims. On what grounds will they set all this aside and join with non-Muslims against their fellow Muslims? D'Souza produces no evidence that the great majority of Muslims who are not waging jihad do not approve of that jihad, or that even if they don't approve, they will do anything to oppose it.
He's a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam, but he supports Hizballah.
He is the kind of cleric the West longs for, because of his assurances that there is no conflict with democratic rule and no need for theocracy. Gomaa has also become an advocate for Muslim women, who he says should have equal standing with men.He is an advocate for Muslim women who has spoken positively of wife-beating.
His forceful condemnations of extreme forms of Islam have made him an object of hatred among Islamists and an icon among progressives, whose voices have been overpowered by the thunder of the radicals.His forceful condemnations of extreme forms of Islam have been accompanied by his denial of reports that he had rejected the traditional Islamic death sentence for apostates.
The door finally opened, and Gomaa emerged. He is fifty-five, tall and regal, with a round face and a trim beard. He wore a tan caftan and a white turban. He held a sprig of mint to his nose as an aide whispered to him my reasons for coming. On the wall behind his desk was a photograph of President Mubarak.
Gomaa was born in Beni Suef, the same town as Dr. Fadl. “I began going into the prisons in the nineteen-nineties,” he told me. “We had debates and dialogues with the prisoners, which continued for more than three years. Such debates became the nucleus for the revisionist thinking.”
Before the revisions were published, Gomaa reviewed them. “We accept the revisions conditionally, not as the true teachings of Islam but with the understanding that this process is like medicine for a particular time,” he said.In other words, the true teachings of Islam include the mandate to wage violent jihad against unbelievers. But jihad violence can be set aside as "medicine for a particular time." That is, different times call for different tactics, but the overall objective remains the same.
Dear Mr. Abramson, Dr. Anagnostakos, Mr. Donnelly, Mr. Grupp, Ms. Heenan, Mr. McKessy, Mr. McMenamin, Ms. Sexton, and Ms. Thomas,
I am distressed and alarmed to learn of your recent censorship of the films Obsession and The Third Jihad, succumbing to pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in rejecting them.
Americans are generous by nature. We respect diversity, religious liberty, and freedom of conscience.
Islam does not.
Perhaps you are unaware that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal terrorism funding trial (and possesses many other links to terrorism, including being a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is to bring down Western Civilization from within).
Why would you submit to any demands from such an organization?
In fact, wouldn't their opposition to the films suggest to you that they should be viewed, as soon as possible, with the widest audience, and repeatedly?
You are, in effect, denying your students -- your own children -- the opportunity to learn about a threat not only to their lives and Liberty, but to Western Civilization itself. (Any real student of history knows that Islam has waged war against the non-Muslim world for fourteen hundred years. Nearly all of the societies which fell under its sword lost their lives, their freedoms, and their very identities.)
Ignorance of Islam's texts, tenets, and history helps only whom?
Do you want your children blind to the motives, beliefs, strategies, and efforts of those who seek to convert, enslave, or butcher them?
Below my signature are just a few of the Islamic "sacred" texts requiring the slavery or slaughter of all who refuse the "invitation" to Islam.
I urge you: Educate yourselves. Then inform -- and prepare -- those in your charge.
I am happy to assist you in that critical work in any way I can . . . .
During an interview conducted in the late 1930s (published in 1939), Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychiatry, was asked “…had he any views on what was likely to be the next step in religious development?” Jung replied, in reference to the Nazi fervor that had gripped Germany,
We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future.Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, wrote a contrite memoir of his World War II experiences while serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed by the Nuremberg tribunal. Speer’s narrative includes this discussion, which captures Hitler’s racist views of Arabs on the one hand, and his effusive praise for Islam on the other:
Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs. When the Mohammedans attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him, they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament.
Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.
Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"A similar ambivalence characterized Nazi Germany’s support for Arab Muslim causes in the World War II era. For example, in December 1937, Hitler even proposed omitting his “racial ladder” theory – which denigrated the Arabs – from a forthcoming Arabic translation of Mein Kampf. And a Berlin Foreign Ministry spokesman, during a November, 1942 press conference reported in the New York Times, took “great pains” to assure Arabs that Nazi anti-Semitic policies were directed at Jews exclusively. The spokesman elaborated:
The difference between Germany’s attitude toward Jews and Arabs has been clearly shown in the exchange of letters between the former Prime Minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali, and the German Institute for Racial Problems. We have never said the Arabs were inferior as a race. On the contrary, we have always pointed out the glorious historic past of the Arab people.Although now, inexplicably, almost ignored in their entirety, writings produced for 100 years between the mid-19th through mid-20th Centuries, by important scholars and intellectuals, in addition to Carl Jung – for example, the historians Jacob Burckhardt, Waldemar Gurian, and Stoyan Pribichevich, philosopher Bertrand Russell, Protestant theologian Karl Barth, sociologist Jules Monnerot, and most notably, the renowned 20th Century scholar of Islamic Law, G.H. Bousquet – referred to Islam as a despotic, or in 20th Century parlance, totalitarian ideology.
Being imbued with fanaticism was the ultimate source of Muhammad’s great strength, and led to his triumph as a despot, according to the 19th Century Swiss historian Burckhardt:
Muhammad is personally very fanatical; that is his basic strength. His fanaticism is that of a radical simplifier and to that extent is quite genuine. It is of the toughest variety, namely doctrinaire passion, and his victory is one of the greatest victories of fanaticism and triviality. All idolatry, everything mythical, everything free in religion, all the multifarious ramifications of the hitherto existing faith, transport him into a real rage, and he hits upon a moment when large strata of his nation were highly receptive to an extreme simplification of the religious.Burckhardt emphasizes that the Arabs, Muhammad’s henchmen, were not barbarians and had their own ingenuities, and spiritual traditions. Muhammad’s successful preaching among them capitalized upon an apparent longing for supra-tribal unification, “an extreme simplification.” Muhammad’s genius “lies in divining this.” Utilizing portions of the most varied existing traditions and taking advantage of the fact that “the peoples who were now attacked may also have been somewhat tired of their existing theology and mythology,” Muhammad
…with the aid of at least ten people, looks over the faiths of the Jews, Christians, and Parsis [Zoroastrians], and steals from them any scraps that he can use, shaping these elements according to his imagination. Thus everyone found in Muhammad’s sermons some echo of his accustomed faith. The very extraordinary thing is that with all this Muhammad achieved not merely lifetime success, the homage of Arabia, but founded a world religion that is viable to this day and has a tremendously high opinion of itself.Burckhardt concludes that despite this achievement, Muhammad was not a great man, although he accepts the understandable inclination,
…to deduce great causes from great effects, thus, from Muhammad’s achievement, greatness of the originator. At the very least, one wants to concede in Muhammad’s case that he was no fraud, was serious about things, etc. However, it is possible to be in error sometime with this deduction regarding greatness and to mistake mere might for greatness. In this instance it is rather the low qualities of human nature that have received a powerful presentation. Islam is a triumph of triviality, and the great majority of mankind is trivial…But triviality likes to be tyrannical and is fond of imposing its yoke upon nobler spirits. Islam wanted to deprive distinguished old nations of their myths, the Persians of their Book of Kings, and for 1200 years it has actually prohibited sculpture and painting to tremendously large populations.University of Notre Dame historian Waldemar Gurian, a refugee, who witnessed first hand the Communist and Fascist totalitarian movements in Europe, concluded (circa 1945) that Hitler, in a manner analogous to the 7th Century precedent of Muhammad as described by Burckhardt, had been the simplifier of German nationalism.
A fanatical simplifier who appeared as the unifier of various German traditions in the service of simple national aims and who was seen by many differing German group – even by some people outside Germany – as the fulfiller of their wishes and sharer of their beliefs, with some distortions and exaggerations – such, as long as he had success, was Adolf Hitler.Based upon the same clear understandings (and devoid of our era’s dulling, politically correct constraints), Karl Barth, like Carl Jung (cited earlier), offered this warning, also published in 1939:
Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill – with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s Prophet.Both philosopher Bertrand Russell, in 1920, and sociologist Jules Monnerot three decades later (in 1953), viewed the 20th Century’s other major strain of totalitarianism, emergent Bolshevism and established Soviet-style Communism, as in Monnerot’s words, “The Twentieth-Century Islam.” Russell wrote presciently in his 1920, Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, that,
Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world.By 1953, Monnerot (in his Sociology and Psychology of Communism) saw the “absolute tyranny” of Soviet Communism as “comparable to Islam,” for being both “a secular religion [emphasis in original] and as a universal State [emphasis in original].” He elaborated, in particular, on this concordance between the triumphal emergence of the Islamic and Soviet empires, as follows:
This merging of religion and politics was a major characteristic of the Islamic world in its victorious period. It allowed the head of State to operate beyond his own frontiers in the capacity of commander of the faithful (Amir-al-muminin); and in this way a Caliph was able to count upon his docile instruments, or captive souls, wherever there were men who recognized his authority. The territorial frontiers which seemed to remove some of his subjects from his jurisdiction were nothing more than material obstacles; armed force might compel him to feign respect for the frontier, but propaganda and subterranenan warfare could continue no less actively beyond it.In a brilliant, dispassionate contemporary analysis, Ibn Warraq describes 14 characteristics of “Ur Fascism” as enumerated by Umberto Eco, analyzing their potential relationship to the major determinants of Islamic governance and aspirations, through the present. He adduces salient examples which reflect the key attributes discussed by Eco: the unique institution of Jihad war; the establishment of a Caliphate under “Allah’s vicegerent on earth,” the Caliph – ruled by Islamic Law, i.e., Sharia, a rigid system of subservience and sacralized discrimination against non-Muslims and Muslim women, devoid of basic freedoms of conscience, and expression. Warraq’s assessment confirms what G.H. Bousquet concluded (in 1950) from his career studying the historical development and implementation of Islamic Law:
Religions of this kind acknowledge no frontiers. Soviet Russia is merely the geographical centre from which communist influence radiates; it is an ‘Islam’ on the march, and it regards its frontiers at any given moment as purely provisional and temporary. Communism, like victorious Islam, makes no distinction between politics and religion…
Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of fiqh [jurisprudence], to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer… the study of Muhammadan Law (dry and forbidding though it may appear)… is of great importance to the world of today.But already in the mid-19th Century, Burckhardt, expanding upon his characterization of Islam’s founder, Muhammad, as a despot, described the theocratic polity he created as a particularly extreme religious despotism, created (and expanded) via jihad, which sought to invalidate the pre-Islamic past of its new votaries, by shaming that heritage.
All religions are exclusive, but Islam is quite notably so, and immediately it developed into a state which seemed to be all of a piece with the religion. The Koran is its spiritual and secular book of law. Its statutes embrace all areas of life...and remain set and rigid; the very narrow Arab mind imposes this nature on many nationalities and thus remolds them for all time (a profound, extensive spiritual bondage!) This is the power of Islam in itself. At the same time, the form of the world empire as well as of the states gradually detaching themselves from it cannot be anything but a despotic monarchy. The very reason and excuse for existence, the holy war, and the possible world conquest, do not brook any other form.Historian Stoyan Pribichevich’s 1938 study of the Balkans “World Without End” demonstrates how Burckhardt’s conception of Islamic despotism applied to Ottoman rule. Pribichevich provides these illustrations, beginning with his characterization of the Ottoman Sultans:
The strongest proof of real, extremely despotic power in Islam is the fact that it has been able to invalidate, in such large measure, the entire history (customs, religion, previous way of looking at things, earlier imagination) of the peoples converted to it. It accomplished this only by instilling into them a new religious arrogance which was stronger than everything and induced them to be ashamed [emphasis in original] of their past.
Each was a blood descendant of Osman [d. 1326, founder of the Ottoman dynasty]; the commander of all armed forces; the Caliph, the religious chief of all Moslems; the Padishah or King of Kings with the power of life and death over even his own cabinet ministers; the indisputable executor of the Prophet’s will – the Shadow of God on EarthAlthough the Sultan had a Council composed of ranking dignitaries, headed by an erstwhile “Prime Minister,” the Grand Vizier who advised him, Pribichevich notes:
But like the Janissaries [military slaves taken from the families of the subjugated Christian populations while adolescents, and forcibly converted to Islam, as part of the Ottoman devshirme levy system] they were Kuls, slaves whose lives and properties belonged to the master. Cases occurred where a Grand Vizier was put to death at a mere whim of the Sultan.Thus Pribichevich concludes, regarding the Ottoman Sultanate, “Of all known dictators the Sultans were the most dictatorial.”
And Pribichevich goes on to explain how this dictatorial Ottoman Sultanate operated within the overall context of Islam’s religio-political totalitarian system, consistent with Bousquet’s observation (from 1950), based upon the latter’s analysis of Islamic Law:
Then, Islam was a totalitarian religion. The Koran regulated not only the relationship of man to God, but all aspects of political organization, economics, and private conduct. Although the Sultan was the sole legislator, his laws, the sheri [Shari’a], were expected to conform to the sacred text. Now, for the proper interpretation of the Prophet’s phrases, there was a body of learned priests and jurists, the Ulemas. While no born Moslem could become a member of the Janissaries, no ex-Christian was ever allowed to enter the sacred corporation of the Ulemas. These theologians were not the slaves of the Sultan, but their opinions nevertheless were only advisory. So, the whole exotic structure of the Ottoman state can be summed up this way: the Koran was the empire’s Constitution; the Sultan, its absolute executor; the Janissaries, the soldiers and administrators; and the thinking Ulemas, a sort of Supreme Court.Finally, investigative journalist John Roy Carlson’s 1948-1950 interviews of Arab Muslim religious and political leaders provide consummate independent validation of these Western assessments. Perhaps most revealing were the candid observations of Aboul Saud, whom Carlson described as a “pleasant English-speaking member of the Arab League Office.” Aboul Saud explained to Carlson that Islam was an authoritarian religio-political creed which encompassed all of a Muslim’s spiritual and temporal existence. He stated plainly,
You might describe Mohammedanism as a religious form of State Socialism…The Koran give the State the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate property. It grants the ruler of the State unlimited powers, so long as he does not go against the Koran. The Koran is our personal as well as our political constitution.And after interviewing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna himself, who “preached the doctrine of the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other,” Carlson observed:
It became clear to me why the average Egyptian worshipped the use of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]
[. . .]
34 years ago (1974), Bat Ye’or published a remarkably foresighted analysis of the Islamic anti-Semitism and resurgent Jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and Jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam’s foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.
The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are equivalent – due to the inferior status of Jews in Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad.
Here the Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce religious anti-Judaism. The religious and political fuse in a purely Islamic context onto which are grafted foreign elements. If, on the doctrinal level, Nazi influence is secondary to the Islamic base, the technique with which the Antisemitic material has been reworked, and the political purposes being pursued, present striking similarites with Hitler’s Germany. That anti-Jewish opinions have been widely spread in Arab nationalist circles since the 1930s is not in doubt. But their confirmation at [Al] Azhar [University] by the most important authorities of Islam enabled them to be definitively imposed, with the cachet of infallible authenticity, upon illiterate masses that were strongly attached to religious traditions.
Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers’ writings and personal career trajectory – as a favored contributor in Goebbel’s propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser’s regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965 – epitomizes this convergence of Jihad, Islamic anti-Semitism, and racist, Nazi anti-Semitism, as described by Bat Ye’or.
Leers – who was Goebbel’s favorite Nazi propagandist of annihilation – expressed two decades before eventually converting to Islam, in Blut und Rasse in der Gesetzgebung (Blood and Race in Legislation, 1936), his admiration for “the imperious and warlike Islam [of the peoples] who still had a clear Nordic racial component,” while also extolling in Der Kardinal und die Germanen (“The Cardinal and the Germans,” 1934) Islam’s ecumenical “tolerance.” In subsequent essays published during 1938 and 1942, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad’s interactions with the Jews of Medina. Collectively, these essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.
Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Koran 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka’b ibn Ashraf, and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers in his 1942 essay “Judiasm and Islam as Opposites,” chronicles Muhammad’s successful campaigns which vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, “…or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax.” Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad’s poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith which records Caliph Umar’s rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad’s earlier campaigns:
On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: “There must not be two religions in Arabia.” One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith which 46 years later became the keystone of Hamas’ 1988 charter sanctioning a Jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:
Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: “Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: ‘Behind me stands a Jew, smite him.’”Von Leers’ 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the “model” of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:
They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised… Mohammed’s opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect – oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken. Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism’s massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question – and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam’s traditional hostility to Jews – to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers further sympathized with, “the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem [Hajj Amin el-Husseini] in the Arabians’ battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine.” Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim, “…the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever’ who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet.”
Leers’ description of the origins of the Muslim “forename” (Omar Amin) that he adopted as part of his formal conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson, highlights his personal and doctrinal connections to the Mufti, with whom he engaged in a longstanding collaboration:
I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hadj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.Leers’ ceaseless efforts as a formal propagandist for the Nasser regime and Arab League were complemented by a staggering array of additional writing activities before and during this last decade of his life, including: translating modern Arabic treatises on Jihad and Islamic financing into German; writing the Foreword to an anti-Zionist analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict by an Egyptian scholar; and reviewing and promoting the works of neo-Nazi and Fascist ideologues as editor (while in Buenos Aires) of Der Weg (most prominently, his 1951 review of Francis Parker Yockey’s “Imperium”), while maintaining a prolific worldwide correspondence with individual Fascists, designed to garner their support for his global Jihad. Thus he wrote (again, to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson) in 1957 and 1958,
[1957] The Islamic bloc is today the only spiritual power in the world fighting for a real religion and human values and freedom. Besides that, it is a wonderful religion with a great philosophy and enormous richness of wisdom. I think sometime if my nation had got Islam instead of Christianity we should not have had all the traitors we had in World War II, two million women would not have been burnt as “witches” by the Christian churches, there would have been no Thirty Years War which destroyed Germany and killed more than half our nation.This recently declassified October 1957 U.S. intelligence report on von Leers’ writings and activities for Egypt and the Arab League independently confirms his complete adoption of the triumphalist Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by Jihad:
[1958] One thing is clear – more and more patriot Germans join the great Arab revolution against beastly imperialism. In Algeria half a company of German soldiers, dragging with them two French officers and two non-commissioned officers, have cut their throats in the view of the Algerian revolutionaries and have gone on the side of the Algerians and have embraced Islam. That is good! To hell with Christianity, for in Christianity’s name Germany has been sold to our oppressors! Our place as an oppressed nation under the execrable Western colonialist Bonn government must be on the side of the Arab nationalist revolt against the West….I hamd ul Allah! (“Thanks be to Allah!”)
He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail.Leers’ final vision of an Islamic supremacist hegemony – as formulated in the two decades after World War II – has had a profound influence on contemporary trends, now robust, from Morocco to Indonesia, and within Muslim communities living in Western, and other non-Muslim societies across the globe. All too prevalent today, numerous examples of this shared vision can be adduced, ranging from the activities and pronouncements of well-known jihad terror organizations (such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas), to the mainstream Organization of the Islamic Conference, and individuals, such as the profoundly influential Muslim cleric (“Spiritual adviser” to the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jazeera television personality, and head of the European Fatwa Council) Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and the Mufti-Leers disciple, and Swiss convert to Islam, Ahmed Huber – a former manager of Al Taqwa financial institution, alleged to have laundered money for Osama bin Laden.
The extent to which Nazi convert to Islam Omar Amin von Leers’ ugly vision has been implemented over the past 50 years – his “successful” living legacy – supports a simple, profoundly disturbing conception articulated by writer Lawrence Auster. Oblivious to the firmly entrenched politically correct orthodoxy, Auster has termed Muhammad a “successful Hitler.” Auster argues that Muhammad, whom he also calls “one of the great geniuses of history,” conceived
… a highly flexible and therefore sustainable ideology and program of subversion, conquest, and domination (as well as a sustainable way of life), while Hitler's ideology and program had no internal brakes. It was pedal to the metal, aiming at the instant and total destruction of other countries and of Western civilization as a whole, and thus making it necessary for other countries utterly to destroy Hitlerism