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This article follows
History and Origins: The Life of
Muhammad.
See
also The Qur'an:
Verses of Violence
The only thing more shocking
than the ridiculous level of violence coming out of the Islamic world is the
genuine indifference shown by most of those Muslims who are not directly
involved. Though the number of terrorists is relatively small, they are
sustained by the apathy of hundreds of millions, even in the heart of the
Western world. One of the biggest questions asked in the aftermath of 9/11
was, “Where’s the outrage?” as Americans had trouble understanding why Muslims
did not act as people of other religions would have in the wake of a horrific
mass murder committed in the name of their faith.
The simple fact is that Islam is
not like other religions. The roots of the faith, the history, and the
teachings from basic texts compel both the violence and the broad indifference
that sustains it. Despite the drive that Westerners have to believe that
other people are just like them, and that other religions are just like theirs,
it is anti-intellectual to ignore the stark evidence that demands otherwise.
Clever “fifth
column” groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have
learned that multiculturalists can be easily manipulated with tactical language
that includes broad, but ultimately meaningless, “condemnations
against terror”
and periodic declarations that “innocents” are not legitimate targets for
Jihadis.
Although fooling some into believing what they want to believe, astute observers
recognize that these groups almost never define their key terms, such as “terror
attacks” and “innocents,” and that a tiny minority of attacks are specifically
denounced. CAIR, for example, only acknowledged eighteen acts of terror in
the four years following 9/11 – less than 1/2 of 1% of the actual number of
documented attacks.
So what explains the violence
and the level of comfort that many Muslims have with those who kill in the name
of Allah?
Given that
Islam’s founder was a military leader who personally conducted terror attacks on
caravans, led offensive battles against communities in order to steal and
subjugate, who took slaves, broke truces, supervised the execution of captives,
advocated the murder of Jews, and even advised his warriors on raping women
captured in battle, the wonder is that there isn’t more violence than we see
today.
Immediately following Muhammad's death, the "Religion of Peace" turned against
itself in a bloody fratricide that continues to this day in the form of
sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. Muhammad's own companions and
relatives fought each against other. Three of the first four caliphs were
murdered, and many other early Muslims lost their lives including the nearest
members of Muhammad's family.
Muhammad’s martial philosophy
has been faithfully practiced by his followers, who obeyed his commands to wage
Jihad (holy war) against unbelievers, and succeeded in spreading Islam by the
sword throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa and well into
Europe.
Unlike the Crusades, for
example, which were founded on papal proclamation and not Christian scripture,
there are literally
dozens of verses
in the Qur’an that exhort violence against people who do not follow the ways of
Allah as dictated by Muhammad, and only a handful that could be construed as
suggesting tolerance. There are literally hundreds more that speak of
hate
toward unbelievers
Unfortunately, the more violent verses were spoken later in Muhammad's life,
which leads most Islamic scholars to believe that they abrogate the handful of
earlier, more tolerant ones (as is the tradition with other parts of the Qur'an
that are in contradiction). Muhammad and his followers did not have power
over the people around them at the time that the more peaceful verses were
spoken. As the balance of power shifted, so did the strategy of winning
detractors over, from the use of deception to outright military force.
These militant verses, combined
with
Wahabbi teachings (a radical and violent strain of Islam), are being drummed
into the heads of children in religious schools called madrasses well
before they are able to develop an independent moral character. Radical
mosques throughout the globe do their best to reinforce rigid personalities that
are unable to see the world in anything other than dualistic terms, where there
is only Dar al-Salaam (the believers) and Dar al-Harb, which
literally means “the house of war” and refers to those outside the faith.
The goal of existence, according
to the Qur’an, is a struggle for Islamic domination by any means – including
deceit and terror, which were both practiced by Muhammad. The world must
submit to Allah. There is no other point to life, and this explains the
near absence of cultural and technological innovation on the part of Muslims in
history, who merely borrowed from the hapless souls they conquered.
Knowledge outside of religious teachings is not encouraged, except as it
contributes to Islamic goals.
This two-dimensional thought
process is responsible not only for the astonishing apathy toward the victims of
Islamic violence on the part of those who are trained to view the world in such
simplistic terms, but it also explains the dismal economies of Muslim countries.
Though the religion comprises about a fifth of the world’s population, for
example, the Arab countries combined have non-oil GDP numbers that are lower
than the state of Louisiana.
The Middle East before the time
of Muhammad was mostly made up of Jewish and Christian communities – in addition
to some who practiced pagan and polytheistic religions. Within a century,
these people were brought under the heel of rulers who had no interest in them
beyond what could be squeezed from them in the form of the jizya (tax on
unbelievers).
Slowly, the subjugated began to
lose their cultural identity under the pressures of a brutal system that
discriminated against them even to the point of stealing their children to make
them into Fedayeen warriors in foreign campaigns. Entire populations were
consumed.
Most felt they had no choice but
to convert to Islam, sacrificing their religion, identity and culture to their
masters. Once a person professes Islam, they can only recant on penalty of
death. The system is also skillfully set up to ensure demographic triumph
by allowing a Muslim man to marry women outside the faith, provided that the
children are to be raised Muslim.
By feeding on conquered
populations, Islam expanded with an unquenchable appetite, quickly threatening
the very center of the Christian world, Constantinople. The siege of this
city in 670 exposes the biggest fib that that contemporary Muslims like to tell
about Islam's military expansion, namely that it was only as a result of
self-defense.
In
fact, there were no Byzantine armies threatening Muslims when the fifth caliph,
Muawiya, struck at the capital of the eastern Christian world. The
citizens of Constantinople were surprised by the naval attack, even though they
were well-prepared to defend against it.
More
importantly, following the humiliating defeat of the Muslims, there were no
"Christian" armies marching into the vacuum to capture land, as might have been
expected had there truly been an aggressive threat to Islam. The siege of
Constantinople, like the many other campaigns of Muslim aggression was about
Jihad and the spread of Islamic rule.
In the west, Islamic fighters
invaded Europe and conquered Spain. Attempting to overrun the rest of
Europe, they were finally stopped by Charles Martel at Tours. In the East,
the empire quickly expanded into the heart of the Indian subcontinent, taking an
awful toll on Hindu and Buddhist lives as well as the destruction of their
beautiful temples.
All this a mere century after
Muhammad’s death. Such was the violent legacy left by the Prophet.
Through horrific massacres and
cultural cannibalism, Islam maintained a stranglehold on its occupied territory.
The reactive Crusades that followed, as well as the Mongol invasions, were mere
setbacks in the religion’s insatiable quest for imperial expansion.
Constantinople eventually fell
in 1453, well after the Crusades. Three days of looting, raping and
killing followed, as soldier and citizen alike were butchered. Entire
families waited in their homes for death or slavery. Churches were
ransacked and burned, and a significant part of Christian and Greek heritage in
the form of relics and ancient text were completely destroyed.
Jihad and genocide threatened
Europe for the next two centuries until the Muslims were finally stopped at the
gates of Vienna in 1683 by a determined Christian army of Poles, Austrians,
Lithuanians, Germans and others. If not for their victory, and that of
France's Charles Martel on the slopes of the Pyrenees nearly a thousand years
earlier, the lights of civilization would have been dimmed and the continent
overrun before the great contributions to science and medicine could be made.
None of the technology that
improves the quality of life for billions in the world would have been possible
had the vision of Jihad succeeded. The medicine that we take for granted
(that we ship to Islamic countries when they face natural disasters, for
example) would not have been discovered, and the miracles of modern science
would never have seen the light of day had the Prophet’s followers been able to
take the rest of Christian Europe.
Since the religion discourages
art, it can be assumed that there would have been no great Renaissance, as there
has never been such in the Muslim world, and generations of scholars would have
been limited to studies of the Qur’an and Sunnah.
Islam’s mandate to consume and
dominate religion and culture means that there is little if any emphasis placed
on advancing knowledge or improving life for future generations.
Submission to Allah is the only mandate and Jihad is the highest duty.
Academic
contributions
that are often attributed to
Muslims, such as the mathematical concept of zero, were actually borrowed and
preserved from the civilizations and people they destroyed, much as a looter
might keep the ill-gotten gain that he finds useful. The Islamic world has
never made a single significant contribution beyond religion and death.
This doesn’t mean that the
Muslim sitting next to you is a violent person, or should be treated as such
merely by their profession of faith, but it does mean that peaceful Muslims can
be said to be that way in spite of their religion. In fact, given the
violent history and martial teachings of Islam, it is more of a challenge to
explain why most of its members do not participate in warfare or terror than
that many do.
There are at least three reasons
why the violence is relatively limited.
The first is that Islam is
succinctly designed to achieve total domination in areas where it is practiced.
Utter hegemony in Muslim countries means a virtual absence of opposition, even
in the arena of critical ideas, thus the opportunity for justified violence is
reduced. Of course, this doesn’t completely prevent terror attacks against
religious minorities in places like Pakistan and Indonesia, where minority
communities are completely powerless.
The second reason Islamic
violence is more subdued than might be expected is due to the massive amount of
global resources devoted to containing it. This includes not only the
billions (perhaps more than a trillion dollars) spent by governments and private
corporations worldwide each year to protect people from Muslim terrorists, but
also the security personnel from Algeria to India that often pay with their
lives to keep the planet safer than it would be if religious fundamentalists
operated with impunity.
Imagine the number of planes
that would be falling out of the sky in the absence of security. Air
travel would quickly come to a halt. In Israel, defense forces currently
kill over 95% of the Fedayeen attackers at the nation’s borders, and an untold
number of attacks are thwarted preemptively by intelligence efforts and
retaliatory strikes against leadership. The rest of the West also depends
on such measures along with leading-edge technology to stop Muslims from
fulfilling their dreams of slaughter.
The third [and most hopeful]
factor behind the limited violence in the modern age, however, seems to be the
natural law placed in most human hearts that dictates compassion to be of higher
moral value than killing. This competes with the Qur’anic command to wage
war against unbelievers until they either convert to Islam, are killed, or are
forced to submit to dhimmitude (third-class status under Islamic law).
Many Muslims realize the
discrepancy between radical Islam and traditional morality, and they seek to
bring their religion in line with the modern age – if only in their own hearts.
Reforming Islam is a monumental
struggle that will take centuries. It is not a religion that invites
introspection within itself or true dialogue with other faiths. Despite
the millions of victims of Jihad over the centuries, there are no memorials to
lost lives and lost cultures to be found anywhere in the Muslim world.
This even includes the Armenian genocide of the 20th century, which claimed over
a million innocents.
Whereas Western religion often inspires humility, Islam breeds personal
superiority. Though rare exceptions certainly exist, the Islamic community
is characterized by a general indifference to the lives and welfare of
unbelievers. Anyone who doubts this should contrast the genuine outrage
over periodic yet petty slights against Muslims (such as the recent Muhammad
cartoons) to the reaction - or lack thereof - that these same people have when
unspeakable acts of violence are committed in the name of Allah and Islam.
Unless it occurs directly to them, there is nothing that approaches true rage
over Islamic terror or honest sympathy for its victims.
And the terrorists themselves?
In contradiction to other religions, the most devoted followers of Islam are
likely to be the most unpredictable and sociopathic, not because they were born
that way, but because it is at the heart of what they have been taught.
Muhammad's legacy was an ideology that commands its followers to fight those
outside the faith until they either convert to Islam or accept complete
subjugation to Islamic rule. There simply is no such thing as an
innocent infidel
exempt from the threat of death - except those who demean themselves to
subordinate status and pay the jizya to Muslim masters. Armed with
religious teachings, today's terrorists are merely continuing what was begun in
the prophet's lifetime.
Go back to
the List of Islamic Terrorist Attacks
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