Fitzgerald on fun, and indispensable, learning

The good news is, more and more of us know and continue to learn about the Religion of Gratuitous Decapitation.

Reflections on knowing Islam the way Allah and the prophet from hell define it, by Hugh Fitzgerald:

Up and down the coasts of Europe one can find ruins, the remnants of ancient watchtowers and fortifications. One is seldom provided with any explanation; when something is written very occasionally in a guidebook, there is mention of "invaders." Who were these “invaders”? The history of Muslim raiders, up and down those European coasts, the pillaging and razing of villages and towns, the murders, the vandalism, the seizure and enslavement of, over time, at least a million people from Western Europe, with the raiders even getting as far as Ireland and, in one celebrated case, Iceland, is hardly known to the Western world.

Giles Milton's book White Gold focuses on one Cornishman, Thomas Pellow, who was seized and brought back to Morocco in the mid-18th century. There the vast palace complex of Moulay Ismail, which Western tourists come to admire, was built on the sites of, and making use of the stone taken from, the prior non-Muslim structures. So many of the so-called "wonders of Muslim architecture" were built in this way, including the celebrated Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, which is on the site of, and makes use of, the St. John the Baptist Church that was previously on the same site. And who do you think built the Taj Mahal? Muslim soldiers, or enslaved Hindus?

When you begin, as many Infidels have, to study Islam, and then extend your study beyond the texts, and then add the behavior of Muslims today, and then go still further and begin to study the history of Islamic conquest, and the Islamic exaggerated claims to achievement, and the Islamic treatment of all non-Muslims subjugated by Muslims and Muslim rule, all sorts of the dark past become necessarily illuminated. How many of us, a few years ago, had any idea about when the Turks arrived in Byzantium, or why Constantinople fell, or when? Who knew about the Seljuk Turks, or the Ottomans? Who was aware of where Aramaic was spoken, or that the Maronites were a non-Arab people living in present-day Lebanon long before the Arab Muslims arrived? Who knew, even -- why Tom Friedman has just in the last week or two discovered -- that there are Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, and that the difference is not a minor one, and did not originate with the Americans clumsily undoing all that splendid harmony that naturally reigned in Iraq just a few pre-Saddam years ago? This is all nonsense, of course, but it is predictable nonsense.

It is wonderful, isn't it, to begin to study the history of the Middle East, and the history of Byzantium, and the history of Europe, all because it now has an immediacy and a significance that we who were not history-haunted did not previously ascribe to it all. But now that we are menaced by those who are haunted not so much by history as their own crazed version of history, we are forced to study -- and we are forced to be quick studies.

. . . studying that history is now essential. It is necessary to learn what taqiyya is, and what constitutes an acceptable isnad-chain, and the details of Muhammad's life (as Muslims accept it). It is essential to find out that Muslims do not accept the principle of Pacta sunt servanda, but follow instead the model of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya. All this is all the more essential seeing how even the most reasonable westernized semi-truth-telling Muslim will continue to skitter around the central question . . . .

Practical suggestions for resisting jihad

By Hugh Fitzgerald:

"The memo's writer, Mohamed Akram, wrote that members of the Brotherhood 'must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.'" -- from this article

Cut-and-paste. Print as many copies as you wish. Email others.

Home: Refrigerator (that magnet again). Wallet. Glove compartment.

Outside: Distribute to friends, family, colleagues at work, that person in the check-out line at the supermarket or the dry-cleaners or the Post Office with whom you deliberately strike up a conversation about Islam.

Keep it up. Don't stop.

And there is more to do with this. Much more. Don't merely put that up on your refrigerator door or bulletin-board. Don't merely have it at hand when you are engaging others in conversation, or to give out to acquaintances and colleagues, always as evidentiary accompaniment to, and not in lieu of, coherent argument.

Do something else. Take this remark and a half-dozen or dozen just like it, and put them on big boards. And then the next time you have to counter-picket some anti-American or anti-Israel or anti-Infidel demonstration, make sure you appear with those signboards, with those quotations in very big letters. And make sure the cameras get a view, and the inquiring reporters can't avoid seeing them.

And what's more, perhaps a permanent picketing of the White House and Congress, in which Infidel citizens, will take turns -- a number signing up who will, from the Washington area (or from out of town) to picket for one full day, outside either various Congressional office buildings, or outside the White House itself. Make it a permanent thing, with a dozen or so picketers, of the "from-all-walks-of-life" school. And be sure to include, symbolically, all non-Muslim faiths and also those of no faith at all, and of various ages, races, and so on.

This should be repeated and repeated, endlessly, at every opportunity, in every conceivable place. It should become and remain a permanent reminder of the nature of the menace. And perhaps a few of those picketers can also have relevant passages from the Qur'an inscribed. You can find on-line exactly which ones make the greatest impression, or perhaps just some phrases -- "Banu Qurayza," "Khaybar Oasis," "Asma bint Marwan," "Abu Afak," "Aisha" -- listed, so that those who pass by, and those who report as well, will have to ask what they mean. And then they will have to listen to the reply as each otherwise unfamiliar detail from the Life of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, is patiently and concisely explained.

Up to now, demonstrators have been remarkably limited and unimaginative. How many counter-PLO demonstrators have you seen wearing signs or chanting slogans such as "Israel will live" or "down with terrorism" or "Israel wants peace" or similarly utterly pointless, utterly unconvincing, utterly boring slogans that mean nothing? And they likewise do nothing to bring to any would-be audience's attention the nature of the menace that Israel faces. Such demonstrations are a useless exercise.

But "Stop the Jizyah" then requires people to find out about the "Jizyah," what it was and what it is and what it could be again. "No to the Lesser Jihad Against Israel" allows people to reinterpret the endless siege of Israel correctly, and not as this phony "nationalist" revolt of the "Palestinians." A sign saying "Stop the Campaigns of Da'wa" or "Stop Demographic Conquest" or "Isn't Ten Trillion Dollars Quite Enough?" will raise other issues -- the issue of what constitutes Jihad and the instruments of Jihad, so that those who apparently believe that "Jihadists" (a word to be used sparingly) are limited solely to those Muslims who use violence, who engage in qitaal or combat, will be disabused of the limited nature of their understanding, and will see that the global Jihad is advancing in many, many other ways quite aside from armed combat, or qitaal.

That's a start. That's a way of forcing the introduction of needed concepts. Begin with that of the "Dhimmi" and that of "Jihad." And go from there.

Keep it up. Don't stop.

There is a great deal of work to be done, a great many people who need to be educated.