We need a break from the Jihad
by Henrik Ræder Clausen
Colleen LaRose, commonly known as “Jihad Jane” for her plans to kill Lars Vilks, is just another example of the worldwide Jihad movement, which seeks to impose Islam on our free societies.
Now, the idea of having some arcane Arabic religion imposed on us is somewhat far-fetched, also in light of the fact that the Western world provides freedom and living conditions rarely found in the Islamic world. In order that we may pause from fear of random killing of our cartoonists, and that we can have a free debate on the merits of Islam in the West, we really need a pause from the Jihad.
A temporary truce of 10 years, a so-called ‘Hudna’ in Islamic parlance, should do. After we have spent that time considering the relevance — or the lack thereof — in the West, we can resume fighting just fine. Violent Islamists would resume vilifying Jews, assaulting cartoonists and hijacking ships, non-violent Islamists would keep using anti-discrimination and libel laws to suffocate our freedoms — but we in the West would have a much clearer idea of what we are facing and how to counter it.
What is the Jihad?
Jihad is the Arabic word for effort, struggle, undertaking hardships for some end. In the context of Islam, it means the effort to make Islam reign superior, as set out by the example of the religion’s founder Muhammad, who made it very clear that those who believed in him had an obligation to fight for his religion. Some examples, courtesy of TheNobleQuran.com. Note also the translators’ comments in brackets, clarifying the supposedly clear prose of Allah:
| Qu’ran 8:39: | And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allâh) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allâh Alone [in the whole of the world]. | |
| Qu’ran 8:60: | And make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery, etc.) to threaten the enemy of Allâh and your enemy, and others besides whom, you may not know but whom Allâh does know. And whatever you shall spend in the Cause of Allâh shall be repaid unto you, and you shall not be treated unjustly. | |
| Qur’an 9:5: | Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islâmic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikûn (see V.2:105) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. | |
| Qur’an 9:29: | Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allâh, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allâh and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islâm) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. | |
| Qur’an 9:88: | But the Messenger and those who believed with him strove hard and fought with their wealth and their lives. Such are they for whom are the good things, and it is they who will be successful. | |
| Ibn Ishaq p. 325: | Muslims, fight in Allah’s Cause. Stand firm and you will prosper. Help the Prophet, obey him, give him your allegiance, and your religion will be victorious. | |
| Ibn Ishaq p. 324: | He said, ‘Fight them so that there is no more rebellion, and religion, all of it, is for Allah only. Allah must have no rivals.’ | |
| Quran 2:216: | Jihâd (holy fighting in Allâh’s Cause) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allâh knows but you do not know. | |
| Quran 2:190: | And fight in the Way of Allâh those who fight you, but transgress not the limits. Truly, Allâh likes not the transgressors. |
A footnote rich in meaning
Verse 2:190 is said to be the first call for Jihad in the Quran. In The Noble Quran, it has this footnote (also at QuranComplex.com and many other places):
- - - - - - - - -
Jihad is holy fighting in Allah’s Cause with full force of numbers and weaponry. It is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars. By Jihad Islam is established, Allah’s Word is made superior (which means only Allah has the right to be worshiped), and Islam is propagated. By abandoning Jihad Islam is destroyed and Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim. He who tries to escape from this duty, or does not fulfill this duty, dies as a hypocrite.
Here we have the holy war at its finest, without a hint of remorse. It is even elevated to a pillar of Islam, a status later revoked in the final edition of the religion. The question is, should not Jihad have remained an official pillar, like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad thinks? It is, after all, the most important novelty that Muhammad introduced to the Arab religion, which had most the core elements of Islam (tax, prayer, pilgrimage, Allah worship) centuries before Muhammad (see Al-Tabari Vol. VI, pp. 19-26). Fasting was inspired by the Jews of Medina. In any case, although Jihad is not officially a pillar of Islam, it is exactly the modern-day Jihad movement that causes us much suffering as well as significant security expenses.
Next, this sentence:
By Jihad Islam is established, Allah’s Word is made superior (which means only Allah has the right to be worshiped), and Islam is propagated.
A more open admission of guilt would be hard to find. The purpose of Jihad is to establish Islamic rule, period.
Immediately follows:
By abandoning Jihad Islam is destroyed and Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish.
This would seem innocent, but reveals a disturbing attitude: Without the constant pressure of Jihad, Islam would have no authority, and its rule would vanish. This is radically different from other religions, say Christianity or Buddhism, where personal conviction is what upholds the creed and the religious practice.
Therefore:
Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim.
This does not mean that every Muslim must be a warrior or a terrorist, but it does mean that every Muslim has an obligation to act in ways that further the “Cause of Allah”, i.e. Islamic rule.
Finally:
He who tries to escape from this duty, or does not fulfill this duty, dies as a hypocrite.
Nothing like a quick threat at the end to make sure the preceding statements are taken seriously. ‘Hypocrites’ in this context would mean persons who declare themselves Muslims, but refuse to join the battle when called to do so. The Quran systematically condemns ‘hypocrites’. This is rather natural, for Muhammad needed soldiers for his campaigns out of Medina, and Muslims staying home to take care of their land and their families instead of fighting would damage morale severely.
This is not only a historical consideration, this is used just as well today. In a recent fatwa, the hypocrites, not the unbelievers, are destined for the lowest levels of hell (presumably those with the worst suffering):
The Hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of the Fire; and you will not be able to find for them a helper. (Qur’an 4:145)
Most people may have assumed that the disbelievers would occupy that spot. As has been illustrated, hypocrites, by far, are the most harmful of the two. They not only deceive themselves, but they fuel the flames of discord in this world among believers and non-believers both.
Jihad and sacrifice
If one reads the core scriptures of Islam, the Quran and the sirat, the meaning of ‘Jihad’ is clear enough: Fighting and sacrifice. This may be all jolly good and merry for the winners, but the victims (the infidels) probably do not like it as well.
The emphasis on sacrifice is uncanny. Sure, Islam and other religions have historically used animal sacrifice as part of their worship, but killing a few animals to satisfy some god would hardly represent a major problem, especially if the meat, the sinews etc. of the dead animals were put to good use. Sacrificing one goat (pig, whatever) at some annual ritual constitutes limited bloodshed. Bad for the sacrificial animal, messy where it gets killed, but no open-ended problem in society.
This is different, for the sacrifice in Jihad is open-ended, and it encompasses material goods as well as human life. There are promises of reward in return for this magnificent sacrifice, but by the very nature of death, the veracity of these promises could not and cannot be verified. Believers would have to take Muhammad on faith for this.
A distinct kind of sacrifice called for here is the abandonment of personal judgement, as seen in 2:216:
It may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allâh knows but you do not know.
This flies in the face of every Western, Christian and Enlightenment concept of individual rights and responsibility. For a mature society to emerge, we need citizens to be individually mature and responsible, that they largely restrain from harmful actions and choose constructive ones. Requesting believers to act from the (supposedly) will of Allah rather than their own sense of Right and Wrong is not conductive to civilized behaviour.
The call for ‘martyrdom’ (becoming a Shahid)
The sacrifice of ones’ one life is of course the ultimate human sacrifice, as well as the ultimate abandonment of ones’ own good. Here one sacrifices not other persons, like slaves or prisoners of war, but the very body that enables one to act in this world. Sacrificing oneself in the battle for Allah means that one becomes a ‘Shahid’ (also spelled ‘Shaheed’, Wikipedia article here. The original meaning is ‘witness’.), the Islamic mirror of the Christian martyrs. This concept was spelled out in detail during the life of Muhammad, for instance in context of the battle of Mutah, where the Muslims were defeated by the Byzantines.
The reaction of Muhammad to the news of the defeat and that several of his commanders had fallen in battle, is telling (Al-Tabari Vol. VIII p. 158):
“A gate to good fortune! A gate to good fortune! A gate to good fortune! I bring you news of your campaigning army. They have set out and have met the enemy. Zayd has died a martyr’s death” — he prayed for forgiveness for him. “Then Ja’far took up the banner and attacked the enemy until he died a martyr’s death.” — he testified that he attained martyrdom and prayed for forgiveness for him.” Then ‘Abdallah b. Rawahah took up the banner and planted his legs firmly until he died a martyr’s death” — he prayed for forgiveness for him.
[…]
“Hasten to reinforce your brothers! Let none of you hang bank.” So they went forth to fight both on foot and mounted. It was a time of extreme heat.
It is not known for what purpose the Muslims decided to attack the Byzantines, but the encounter with a superior army gave them a solid licking. That does not deter Muhammad from sending the Muslims right back into battle, without a hint of sorrow for the dead, whom he obviously had known personally. Deep faith can move people to the most astonishing acts, and getting away from the desert heat into the promised lush paradise would sound like a good trade for the dusty warriors.
What about the ‘Greater Jihad’?
There is no indication that Muhammad or the early Muslims had any concept of Jihad as an inner struggle.
Jihad, as related in the early Islamic sources, is about making Islam superior on earth, making Allah the only god worshipped, and implementing Islamic law (Sharia) in the land.
Impact in the West
The most visible expression of Islamic Jihad in the West in recent years was the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. This surprise attack killed some 3000 non-combatants, led to the war in Afghanistan, later Iraq, as well as extensive changes to legislation and security measures throughout the world. Had it not been for this and similar Islamic attacks, airline check-in would be a breeze, terrorism an obscure tactic applied only by fringe mafia groups.
Stealth Jihad
But the physical Jihad is only the tip of the iceberg. Visible, violent and scary, making the presence of Islam all over the world a factor to be reckoned with, challenging the existing world order and showing Muslims that their creed could potentially rule the world. Yet, this does not suffice to achieve Islamic world domination. Violence does give Islam a bad name, and does tend to provoke powerful reactions, as well as intense debate of the motivations and the goals of the terrorists.
Less visible, less prone to strong reaction is the so-called stealth Jihad, a global movement to subvert our societies without the use of guns or bombs.
The primary tools of stealth Jihad are the very laws and institutions of our Western societies, being exploited or subverted to implement Islamic rules of life, Islamic law into our societies, while simultaneously silencing any criticism hereof by means of our well-intended laws against ‘hate speech’, libel, racial discrimination and more.
Violent Jihad meets stealth Jihad
This strategy is, unfortunately, only all too effective. By creating an intricate web of possible excuses to confuse investigators and the public alike, alarming incidents like the Fort Hood shooting not only become possible, reactions to them also become muddle and ineffective.
Taking Fort Hood as an example, not only were the shooting perfectly preventable, the artificial doubts about the motivations also displayed a worrisome lack of national resolve to openly address the root causes of such events.
There were plenty of advance indicators that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a potentially dangerous person and that action was well warranted, but political correctness — or cowardice, simply — prevented the relevant authorities from taking action.
After the tragedy, which left 13 dead and 30 wounded, one should expect that the ideology so openly touted by Maj. Hasan would be subjected to extensive scrutiny, questioning and systematic profiling, in order to protect our security personnel as well as other citizens against more random violence.
This did not take place. Rather than our security, the ‘fear of an anti-Muslim backlash’ made the headlines, and carefully crafted government and media reactions dominated. CAIR led the dodging of the obvious: That rarely before had an anti-Islamic backlash against this open act of Jihad, right in the heart of the US army, been more warranted! For exactly a strong public outcry would finally trigger the richly deserved scrutiny of Islamic organisations.
Homegrown Jihad
Which brings us back to Jihad Jane. She is, by all accounts, a small-time criminal who personally decided to embrace Islam and the doctrine of Jihad, and set out to demonstrate the strength of her religious conviction by assassinating the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks.
The ‘crime’ of Vilks is obviously that he has not shown sufficient ‘respect’ for her newfound religion, and that by making an example of him, other cartoonists and authors would be cowed into submission and refrain from ridiculing Mohammad or anything Islamic in the future. Quite predictably, the assassination plans has caused Islamic leaders to condemn — Lars Vilks.
By all accounts, assassinating Vilks would be a classical effort to demonstrate the strength of Islam, and very much in line with the example of Muhammad towards artists critical of his activities. Fortunately for Lars Vilks and freedom at large, her homegrown Jihad efforts fell apart before any actual attempt on Vilks had been made. But our reliance on technical measures to counter what is essentially an ideological problem is obviously flawed. The key problem is not terrorism, it is Jihad.
Enough, already!
Now, after almost 1400 years of Jihad, has Jihad made the earth a better place to live?
If one looks at the lists at Freedom House, it is striking that countries where Islam rule supreme flock at the bottom of the list. Islam does not seem to go well with freedom of press, rule of law, women’s rights or other civil liberties.
Similar arguments can be made with respect to living conditions, though this is compensated upwards in those Islamic countries with rich oil reserves.
The trend repeats when looking at ongoing wars and armed conflicts in the world, the majority of which involve Muslims. ‘Peace’ is not an objective of Islamists, ‘Submission’ is. But that does not improve the life for actual human beings, anywhere.
We need a break from the Jihad
What we really need is a break from the Jihad, from all this “Striving in the Cause of Allah”. Jihad has existed for almost 1400 years, and taking a 10-year break could hardly cause any significant harm to Islam, yet would be a major relief for the rest of us, who treasure ham sandwiches, beer and women not dressing up like tents. Islamists worldwide, violent as well as stealthy, have shown sufficient religious zeal that they deserve a rest, and we deserve a break.
One may wonder here: “Why exactly 10 years”? This is not chosen at random, it is the longest time span permitted for Islamic leaders to enter a truce with non-Muslims, a so-called Hudna. It is clear from the outset that the truce is temporary, and unless a new agreement is entered into, fighting will resume after this time span has elapsed. The historical precedent for this arrangement is the Treaty of al-Hudaybiyya, where Muhammad signed an agreement with the non-Muslims in Mecca that peace would prevail for the following ten years. Unfortunately, the historical precedent also implies a right for the Muslim side to break the treaty at their own discretion, a problem we would need to be aware of.
That goes inside the Islamic community as well. It is well known that Islamic practices are also enforced internally through various kinds of threats and intimidation, like forcing children to fast during Ramadan. It would be a relief for Muslim children and women to be free of any form of coercion (like dress codes) for a decade, after which they can be free to decide if their religious laws really bring them a better life, or if freedom of the individual to choose freely what seems appropriate and useful is the better option.
But the most important area in which to stop the Jihad is that of Lawfare. Turning our own laws against democracy and freedom seems like the utmost in impossible irony, for aren’t our laws just and basically fine?
As mentioned previously, they are not. Determined Islamists with money and crafty lawyers find broken laws, like the English/Welsh libel laws, well-meaning but overly broad laws against discrimination, noise regulation directives, anti-discrimination laws etcetera.
Suspending the violent Jihad is easy, in principle: It would require that Islamic leaders agree that any use of violence in the name of Islam is against fundamental tenets of the religion, and thus constitutes abandonment of Islam. This has historically been done by means of a Takfir Declaration, and would be very effective towards eliminating the religious justification of terrorism. It would certainly destroy the motivation of recent converts like “Jihad Jane”, who seek to prove themselves good Muslims, as the result of any terrorist acts would not be religious admiration, but rather excommunication.
Suspending the non-violent Jihad is much harder, for it is difficult to identify, and in many situation Muslims would need to compromise on the strictness of their religious rules and traditions, for instance concerning halal slaughter or the habit of forcing others to obey these quite extensive regulations on living. Some proposals for this:
- Suspend the enforcement of any defamation, blasphemy and anti-discrimination laws — but uphold punishment on actual crimes, such as threats, violence and damage to property. If any of these crimes would constitute treats to a wider group of people, seek a conviction for these threats as well. Otherwise, leave the ‘problem’ of discrimination to the common sense of common people, who for centuries have had the right to individually discriminate between good and bad, and to act accordingly.
- Criminalize the use of threats to enforce religious habits. Religious bullying, inside or outside the family, constitutes a coercion that should not be needed if religion is truly a personal, individual choice. Threats or violence intended to force the behaviour of others constitute infringements on individual freedom, and should not be needed if a religion is constructive and attractive in itself.
- Protect Christians in Islamic countries (and Jews, too). It is estimated that upwards of 250 million Christians face severe discrimination, restrictions as well as physical assaults on their churches and property, all based on their faith. If Islam, as frequently claimed, respects Christianity, it should respect the rights of Christians as well, including the right of Christians to freely say that they do not believe in the Quran or the status of Muhammad as a holy person.
After ten years of abstaining from enforcing religious ritualism and protecting individual rights, we can then assess the situation. If violence is down, individual freedoms are up, and the misuse of religion to gain political power has abated, the West should unilaterally continue this policy, even in face of renewed violent Jihad.
34 comments:
A major problem is that time is NOT on our side. It is only a matter of time before an Islamic terrorist organization obtains and deploys an effective WMD.
A major problem is that time is NOT on our side.
Fortunately, the Internet is. I've learned so much about Islam over the next five years that I've had enough of it, and I hope my grandchildren will never hear the word.
How about just repealling the anti-discrimination laws? That would be a nice start. Tolerance is the last virtue of a dying society. I'm really fed up with it, to be honest.
There isn't even a real right of not being discriminated against, it's actually an infringement of a lot of rights, like the freedom of assembly, which implies that I'm free to exclude whoever I want.
How about just repealling the anti-discrimination laws?
This would be most useful!
Discriminating wisdom represents the common sense of common people. It is extremely harmful to outlaw that.
Henrik Ræder Clausen: A temporary truce of 10 years, a so-called ‘Hudna’ in Islamic parlance, should do. After we have spent that time considering the relevance — or the lack thereof — in the West, we can resume fighting just fine. Violent Islamists would resume vilifying Jews, assaulting cartoonists and hijacking ships, non-violent Islamists would keep using anti-discrimination and libel laws to suffocate our freedoms — but we in the West would have a much clearer idea of what we are facing and how to counter it.
I myself have grown heartily sick of dealing with Islam. It’s always “jihad this” and “taqiyya that”. And if it isn’t coping with some new terrorist atrocity, it’s dealing with yet another way that Muslims have invented of further constraining our liberties while deliberately keeping such intrusions upon them ever so slightly below the threshold of what would normally initiate Total War.
All the while, we are somehow expected to delicately refrain from advocating a swift end to this Islamic Grand Guignol™ through the simple expedient of nuclear arms. This, even as our terrorist Muslim enemies demonstrate no compunction over using them if they only had such Weapons of Mass Destruction in their own possession.
It is also no small matter that the Islamic notion of hudna has neither been implemented nor honored by modern Muslims in any of the instances where it has been invoked, if it even has at all. Therefore, while we deluded ourselves that some simulacrum of a temporary truce had been contrived between us and our Islamic enemies; They would proceed apace with flying more passenger airliners into occupied skyscrapers, blowing up sundry buildings, mass transit vehicles and public edifices as deemed necessary by their own interminably violent ideological dogma.
Thus would any hudna require us to maintain a continuous war footing and, big surprise here folks, not actually represent any sort of temporary respite from Muslim predations no matter how much we sought to convince ourselves otherwise. Any resemblance between the foregoing hypothetical situation and what we are currently experiencing is purely coincidental and not the direct intention of our Islamic foes. Believe that and there’s a number of different bridges ready for purchase by yourself.
This is different, for the sacrifice in Jihad is open-ended, and it encompasses material goods as well as human life.
Were I of a more religious bent, this would seem an ideal place to summon up the notion that Islam’s basic tenets defy many of the most significant attributes we in the West designate as important in a Deity. My Biblical studies bring to mind that after various plagues, those trials and torments of Job and Abraham plus a deluge and what such, the Old Man finally declared a Covenant with humanity the precluded both His wholesale slaughter of mankind and any demand or reward for human sacrifice.
All in all, this seems to be thoroughly Deity-like behavior and what could be well enough expected of an Almighty who managed to cobble up this worldly paradise along with the flora and fauna that populate it.
There now arises the niggling question of why it is that Islam’s Allah continues to reward and even encourage the most base forms of human sacrifice when its seems patently clear that any civilized culture had long ago gotten the Word from on high that such activities were no longer desirable or particularly kosher, so to speak. Well over a thousands years seems like plenty of time for any bunch of worshipers to get clued in about just how nasty and unacceptable to polite company the entire notion of human sacrifice has become. This certainly seems to not be the case with Islam and it summons up all sorts of questions concerning theological validity and other uncomfortable points of debate.
Requesting believers to act from the (supposedly) will of Allah rather than their own sense of Right and Wrong is not conductive to civilized behaviour.
Most certainly not but it sure enables a degree of near-robotic control over Islam’s disciples that would inspire envy in even slightly mad scientists. Ergo, don’t expect Allah’s cadre of scholarly elite to abandon this particular tenet anytime soon.
There is no indication that Muhammad or the early Muslims had any concept of Jihad as an inner struggle.
Nor is there any suggestion that modern Muslims (quite an oxymoron that), have taken to heart the “concept of Jihad as an inner struggle”. From all outward indications it seems that jihad is more concerned with the deliberate maximizing of human slaughter whilst engaging in the demolition of whatever vehicle or building that was foolish enough to allow whichever terrorist to gain admission.
Violence does give Islam a bad name, and does tend to provoke powerful reactions, as well as intense debate of the motivations and the goals of the terrorists.
Quite clearly, neither is the name bad enough, said reactions adequately powerful nor the debate sufficiently intense, elsewise much of the MME (Muslim Middle East) would consist of smoking holes and bouncing rubble, if not large plains of glow-in-the-dark glass.
By creating an intricate web of possible excuses to confuse investigators and the public alike, alarming incidents like the Fort Hood shooting not only become possible, reactions to them also become muddle and ineffective.
Of far greater importance is identifying exactly who it is that continues to make these “excuses” that so confuse our investigators. While indubitably up to the task, Islam no longer seems to take quite the lead that both Mainstream Media and the Left have assumed in portraying Muslims as downtrodden victims prone to sudden but inexplicably violent outbursts of protest against their erstwhile Judeo-Christian oppressors.
That rarely before had an anti-Islamic backlash against this open act of Jihad, right in the heart of the US army, been more warranted!
The aforementioned flying of fully loaded passenger jet airliners into occupied skyscrapers seemed as though it rather immediately warranted the above noted “anti-Islamic backlash” in more than a few different ways. Why it did not continues to remain quite an impenetrable mystery.
But our reliance on technical measures to counter what is essentially an ideological problem is obviously flawed.
This is more than a little true and it seems beyond doubt that insufficient amounts of palpable agony accompany any prevalent embrace of jihad. Were there more noticeably deleterious consequences for active support of Islam’s violent conquest its popularity would evaporate with even greater celerity than the original adoption of this nettlesome Muslim fad. Such has always been the case with causes that are wholly antagonistic to the greater global community and there is no special reason why Islam should be particularly exempt in this case.
Now, after almost 1400 years of Jihad, has Jihad made the earth a better place to live?
Only for Muslims, but that should neither come as any great surprise nor constitute even the mildest excuse for what has essentially been a near-continuous bloodbath of routinely genocidal proportions.
Islam does not seem to go well with freedom of press, rule of law, women’s rights or other civil liberties.
It could be ventured with equal confidence that Islam “does not seem to go well” with much of anything at all save Islam itself. Even then the amount of apparently limitless internecine violence that Islam inspires among its own adherents would look as if to contradict what would otherwise be such a relatively safe assumption. Islam’s immiscibility with “freedom of press, rule of law, women’s rights or other civil liberties” should come as a surprise only to those few cave dwelling hermits left who have forsaken all contact with modern civilization.
The historical precedent for this arrangement [hudna] is the Treaty of al-Hudaybiyya, where Muhammad signed an agreement with the non-Muslims in Mecca that peace would prevail for the following ten years. Unfortunately, the historical precedent also implies a right for the Muslim side to break the treaty at their own discretion, a problem we would need to be aware of.
Which is precisely why the making of or agreeing to any such thing has all the usefulness of ejection seats on a mine cart. For reasons noted above, all non-Muslim parties would enjoy exactly zero reprieve whilst Islam could continue going about its nefarious business with even fewer encumbrances to deter it. This is the formula for disaster on an unprecedented scale. A disaster, mind you, that should more aptly befall Islam than any other party in question.
It would be a relief for Muslim children and women to be free of any form of coercion (like dress codes) for a decade, after which they can be free to decide if their religious laws really bring them a better life, or if freedom of the individual to choose freely what seems appropriate and useful is the better option.
The only problem being is that such freedom is not just alien to Islam throughout much of its history but not at all within the prescriptions of hudna. The above noted repression of women and children would continue right along on a schedule so rigid as to make even the most casual trainspotter shiver with jealousy.
Turning our own laws against democracy and freedom seems like the utmost in impossible irony, for aren’t our laws just and basically fine?
Indeed they are. It is just that they were never intended to accommodate in any way the seditious or treasonous who have chosen to reside among us. In fact, most bodies of constitutional law typically specify the very harshest of penalties for such actions. In a similar fashion, many of these same legal bodies also tend to revoke any constitutional protections in the case of an ideology that demands for its practitioners to engage in such subversive conduct. Thus does it seem that the West’s only shortcoming lies in a lack of determination that its wholly adequate legal framework should be applied in exactly the manner it was designed.
Suspending the violent Jihad is easy, in principle: It would require that Islamic leaders agree that any use of violence in the name of Islam is against fundamental tenets of the religion, and thus constitutes abandonment of Islam.
At this point it is fairly safe to deliver ourselves from all hope that Islamic leaders would cast aside “violence in the name of Islam” or that they would declare said violence to be “against fundamental tenets of the religion, and thus constitutes abandonment of Islam”. Long ago it became more than apparent that Islam is all violence, all of the time. Considering that some of its most pious ceremonies involve gashing oneself about the cranium with a sword or risk being trampled to death whilst approaching various shrines, the element of incipient violence seems to be an unwritten part and parcel of this seriously retrograde belief system.
It would certainly destroy the motivation of recent converts like “Jihad Jane”, who seek to prove themselves good Muslims, as the result of any terrorist acts would not be religious admiration, but rather excommunication.
Save that Islam, intentionally it would seem, has absolutely nothing that even remotely resembles excommunication nor the sort of centralized Papal authority required to implement such an exclusionary act. Consider just how well this plays into the hands of those who perpetuate jihad. There is, literally, nothing that a Muslim can do against the Infidel which will result in ejection from Islam. All is permitted, all is consecrated and all is rewarded with paradise, be it the most inhumane mass slaughter or the most abject cowardice.
Suspending the non-violent Jihad is much harder, for it is difficult to identify, and in many situation Muslims would need to compromise on the strictness of their religious rules and traditions, for instance concerning halal slaughter or the habit of forcing others to obey these quite extensive regulations on living.
All of which automatically gives such the suggested suspension every chance of a proverbial snowball in Hell. For Muslims to “compromise on the strictness of their religious rules and traditions” has traditionally been labeled as “blasphemy” or “apostasy” and rewarded by the pious among them with swift, or not-so-swift, death. The “extensive regulations on living” mentioned above go more commonly by the familiar name of shari’a law and they are not just cut in stone but represent an immutable god-given legal body whose usurpation in any form typically warrants immediate amputation, petrologic bombardment or simple execution.
Otherwise, leave the ‘problem’ of discrimination to the common sense of common people, who for centuries have had the right to individually discriminate between good and bad, and to act accordingly.
In Islam, all notion of “the common sense of common people” was known as ijtihad and it was promptly banned some one thousand years ago in favor of the unassailably calcified, hidebound, intolerant tripe volcano currently referred to as the Qur’an.
Criminalize the use of threats to enforce religious habits.
Said criminalization, alone, would make Islam disappear in a puff of brimstone.
Protect Christians in Islamic countries (and Jews, too).
This has slightly better chances of success which are only precluded by the intensely anti-Judeo-Christian attitude that permeates nearly all seats of global power that matter in this case. Other than that extremely minor detail, there is no reason why this shouldn’t become a top priority.
After ten years of abstaining from enforcing religious ritualism and protecting individual rights, we can then assess the situation.
At least those of us who are still alive can do so. Ten years is more than adequate time for Iran to acquire or produce nuclear weapons and that alone will go down in history as one of the single greatest strategic blunders of this new century. That same ten years could see numerous other less wealthy Muslim tyrannies go the poor man’s route of WMD production via manufacture of biological, chemical or radioactive contaminants. Any such hudna that you suggest could just as easily be a death pact. Islam has no intention and never has had any intention of respecting even its own invention of hudna and, like so much else pertaining to this steaming dung heap of an ideology, it is there merely as window dressing for the ill-informed or unaware.
Henrik, please be sure that I am keenly aware of the good intentions that drove you to post this. I would even wager to say that you may well be similarly tongue-in-cheek to some varying degree as I am in posting my polemic reply.
The near hopelessness of dealing with Islam in any productive fashion remains a central issue that I have sought to address and your own writing has made more than abundantly clear. I can only hope that others who read this will take to heart the immense stumbling blocks which await anyone who is still of a notion that hudna or any other non-military option will have the slightest efficacy with respect to combating Islam’s predations upon the free world.
I would even wager to say that you may well be similarly tongue-in-cheek (...)
Absolutely. I'm pointing out options that are reasonable to a Western mind, would constitute a honest 'mutual dialogue', and make Islam disappear in a puff of brimstone.
One correction to your wonderful responses:
Islam (...) has absolutely nothing that even remotely resembles excommunication
Actually it does. It's the Takfir declaration mentioned above. There's a catch to that, though: It has only been used by radical fundamentalists to justify the murder of less fundamentalist Muslims, for instance in the Wahhabi Wars.
Applying Takfir declarations to terrorists would be quite effective. Chances of that actually are somewhat less than that of Hell freezing over, though. I tried to calculate, but got a "Division by zero" error.
Then, raising and justifying seemingly reasonable demands is a good way to unmask fundamentalist Islam.
One more thing:
"Now, after almost 1400 years of Jihad, has Jihad made the earth a better place to live?"
Only for Muslims
I really take issue with that. I can't remember which of my book I read it in - might have been Madden: Concise History of the Crusades - but I do remember an Islamic historian traveling in the Crusader Kingdoms, who noted that living conditions, even for Muslims, were significantly better than in the surrounding Islamic realms.
Absent of documentation to the countrary, I do not accept the idea that Islam improves living conditions for Muslims.
I have posted a link to this article here.
I strongly urge other bloggers to do the same.
I think a 10 year break from the Western Left would be much more useful.
Zenster, you're insane!
I haven't had that much fun in a long time, at least not while thinking about these matters.
"modern Muslims (quite an oxymoron that)"
Right. Language is very important, it shapes people's minds (see PC for example). "Modern Muslims" gives the impression that there is some kind of modern Islam and that this kind is the prevalent kind of Islam. One may think the Muslim majority world went through the same stages as the West and had its period of Enlightenment. A more accurate term would be 'present-day Muslims' or 'Muslims that just happen to physically live today'.
Henrik R Clausen: Actually it does. It's the Takfir declaration mentioned above.
My point remains that there is still no central authority to make it stick. Just about any Muslim with hajj in his middle name can issue a Takfir declaration, fatwa or terrorist manifesto and there is no one in all Islam or on the entire earth who can force its retraction save by even further degrees of violence.
It is among the most insidious aspects of Islam and one that Muslims milk like the last cow on the farm. As Wretchard observes in his magnum opus, "The Three Conjectures":
At this point [subsequent to multiple nuclear terrorist attacks], a United States choked with corpses could still not negotiate an end to hostilities or deter further attacks. There would be no one to call on the Red Telephone, even to surrender to. In fact, there exists no competent Islamic authority, no supreme imam who could stop a jihad on behalf of the whole Muslim world. Even if the terror chiefs could somehow be contacted in this apocalyptic scenario and persuaded to bury the hatchet, the lack of command and control imposed by the cell structure would prevent them from reining in their minions. Due to the fixity of intent, attacks would continue for as long as capability remained. Under these circumstances, any American government would eventually be compelled by public desperation to finish the exchange by entering -1 x 10^9 in the final right hand column: total retaliatory extermination. [emphasis added]
This is why Islam is foredoomed to a catastrophic demise. It has no other modus operandi other than to push everything straight to the ragged edge. While in historical times this may have served to demoralize even better armed foes who had no stomach for Islam's style of relentless bloodletting, the advent of nuclear weapons has changed all of that.
Most disturbing of all is how we have but a decade at most to resolve this entire crisis before Islam procures a sufficient number of nuclear weapons to permanently alter the deterrance landscape. Once Islam acquires a certain quantity of atomic bombs, there emerges a non-zero probability that one of them will fall into terrorist hands and that is a situation so unacceptable to the West's overall survival as to begin justifying pre-emptive annihilation of the MME (Muslim Middle East).
There's a catch to that [the Takfir declaration], though: It has only been used by radical fundamentalists to justify the murder of less fundamentalist Muslims, for instance in the Wahhabi Wars.
Which only goes to prove my point and, to a lesser degree, yours as well. The mechanisms that exist to ostensibly moderate Islamic excesses in actuality only serve to moderate any tendency towards moderation and not the doctrinal impetus that keeps urging Islam on towards even greater purity or fundamentalism. Again, this can only have the most dire of consequences for Infidels in general and Muslims in particular.
Henrik R Clausen: I really take issue with that.
Let's try that one more time:
Now, after almost 1400 years of Jihad, has Jihad made the earth a better place to live?
Only for a select few MALE Muslims, but that should neither come as any great surprise nor constitute even the mildest excuse for what has essentially been a near-continuous bloodbath of routinely genocidal proportions.
There, satisfied?!
d&g, Zenster is not insane. Rather he is the Nostradamus of our time although I think he will resent that title lol. Total annihilation is the most likely scenario if the muslims are not stopped soon.
Robin Shadowes: d&g, Zenster is not insane.
Robin, my dear fellow, I'm confident that doom-and-gloom meant "insane" in a good way. At least the immediately following comment seemed to indicate that:
I haven't had that much fun in a long time, at least not while thinking about these matters.
Then again, it could be the gloating of a megalomaniac terrorist laughing at the futility of Western efforts to undercut Islamic jihad, but my money's on laughing with and not laughing at.
All the same, thank you for the kind word. I've been called far worse things than "the Nostradamus of our time".
The mere word 'hudna', as well as that other one, 'tahdia', make me wanna throw up. Hudna means that instead of dozens of rockets launched at you every day, you only get a couple of rockets every other day, and if you respond in any way the Western media writes "Israel broke the lull" (as long as only the Muslims are shooting it's a lull). But more importantly it means you're supposed to sit idly and watch as the Muslims are piling more and more weapons, smuggling longer-range missiles from Iran, bettering their positions and having plenty of time to plan their next attacks. And then when they resume fire they can inflict more damage than before the hudna. Usually they only talk of hudna when they are at a disadvantage or need rearming or about to lose. The purpose of a hudna is for the Muslims to rearm, reposition themselves, become stronger and prepare for the next round. On a global scale, as Zenster said, a 10 year hudna will allow them to acquire all sorts of WMD and calmly plan and prepare for inflicting a more massive damage on you.
So you're joking, but imagine one day the West will be offered a hudna. There's always the possibility that it's a way for the Muslims to stop fighting without admitting defeat. You can have a 10 years hudna and when it ends renew it for another 10 years and so on. But more likely the hudna will only last until the Muslims feel strong enough to defeat you or at least inflict serious damage without being defeated. And I'm not even sure the West will even hesitate and ask itself what are their intentions because most Westerners don't know what a hudna is. They think it's a Western style ceasefire that is likely to lead to a permanent cessation of hostilities.
"Then again, it could be the gloating of a megalomaniac terrorist laughing at the futility of Western efforts to undercut Islamic jihad"
Still giggling behind my black hood...
But yes, I meant it was furiously hilarious or hilariously furious. I particularly liked the comparative deity-ology regarding human sacrifice, though I figured I might have to behead Zenster for it, which I'm not too excited about since even after taking many baths you still find blood stains in the most unexpected places for weeks after the fact. Besides, you might get AIDS. But I guess you have to take the risk when you choose an extreme sport.
And the only total annihilation I see in the future is the total annihilation of Israel as the West gradually allies with the Muslims. That won't save the West, of course, but I won't live to see its future.
Zenster, since I know you're not as interested in fringe topics as I am, in fact I mostly surfed such sites before I got involved in the counter-jihad and islam. Unfortunately the mahoundians now take so much of my time I don't have time for those sites anymore, at least not on a daily basis. I've cut it down to C2C and a couple of more sites I visit every day. Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of the bloody thing islam but I just can't stick my head in the sand like the PC MC people. The thing with Nostradamus was not meant as an insult which I think you understood. Back in the 80's i saw a documentary about him, it was hosted by the late Orson Welles. I'll never forget about the Anti-Christ in the latter part of the film. He clearly came from the east and had a red turban. Back then islam was not really the big issue. To be honest it gives me more the creeps today than it did 25 years ago. I've never seen Mad Jad in a turban but maybe it was meant more symbolically, like the Book of Revelations and the beast with 12 horns for instance. Perhaps the red turban meant an alliance by islam and socialism, who know? I hope I'll never find out.
Robin, you can read an analysis of Biblical prophesy at the Australian Islamist Monitor site.
There's so much well written material in this posting and comments that it's hard to integrate, especially since Islam ennui is sweeping us all. I'm very resentful that since 9/11 too much of all our time has been spent studying an enemy and ideology so primitive that one feels oneself regressing by reading about them, and they lack the compensating charm of dinosaurs, for example.
One small observation. The "inner jihad" whether it had actual currency in Muslim thought briefly centuries ago or not is just a piece of takiya now. There is no significant movement in any Arab or Muslim country toward any self-awareness or accountability. Sure, occasionally an Arab journalist or small group of intellectuals will blame the Arab world for something but this is an evanescent speck disregarded by the billion plus Arab and non-Arab Muslims.
Arab and/or Muslim culture externalizes any problem, the men onto their women, both men and women onto non-Muslims. In addition, there is the fatalism of a closed system where there is no individual choice and all is ordained (Insh'allah...As Allah wills it).
In such a Bell Jar suffocating atmosphere, the only communing that a Muslim man does with his soul is how he can help advance outer jihad. It's like a Muslim virtual reality video game...they get their kicks from imagining blow-em-up-good jihad scenarios and Muslim supremacist "King of the World" fantasies. Muslim men are not praying and dreaming about building hospitals and schools in Palestine to help little children or discovering the cure for cancer. If they were, we'd have seen some sign of it by now. Instead we have Keystone Kops attempts on cartoonists' lives.
I believe it was a blue turban.
And the EU is the many headed hydra...the Anti Christ. But that is from a different source.
I am getting in a bit late.
Dealing with the death of very good friend but that aside what great discourse on an excellent post.
As to all the comments, Zenster
you pretty much know how I feel
and I am tipping my glass to you
as I type.
Henrik, I will posting a link
at Patriot's Corner and thank you.
Hudna? ha ha. Like any mussie
whack job would honor one.
I tend to like end solutions:
Smoking holes and glow in the
dark glass lots all over the
MME. Peace through superior
weaponry and firepower, plus the
bloody balls to be willing to
use them!
1389, PatriotUSA: Thanks for linking. Reposting my articles is always encouraged.
Zenster: Thanks for all the comments here. You're making a tongue-in-cheek point explicit:
There is no rational reason to expect a valid and binding truce from the Islamists.
Islamic leaders would never start issuing Takfir declarations against the bomb-wielding fundamentalists, for these leaders are as scared as our inept politicians.
Henrik R Clausen: And Islamic leaders would never start issuing Takfir declarations against the bomb-wielding fundamentalists, for these leaders are as scared as our inept politicians.
Perhaps "scared" but only in the sense of one who has decided to ride the tiger and finally understands that there is just one way off of the beast's back.
These Islamic despots know damn well what they have unleashed upon our world and they have Hell to pay for it. I have not an iota of sympathy for these scumbags, and the havoc they have knowingly let loose upon us is worthy of a thousand death sentences. Very sloooow death sentences.
Other than that, it is gratifying being able to play the quasi-humorous foil to your straight man approach on this subject. Sometimes it is necessary to inject a little grim humor to relieve the ennui, as laine so aptly puts it. My own personal sense of jihad fatigue is steadily coercing me towards wanting the most swift and abrupt end to all of this, collateral damage be damned. It's not a very nice feeling but, then again as laine put it, neither is "studying an enemy and ideology so primitive that one feels oneself regressing by reading about them". And that certainly describes exactly how I feel about it.
To Patriot USA, doom-and-gloom, Robin Shadowes, laine and last but not least, Henrick thank you for the positive feedback and may we all carry on with the good fight, wearying as it sometimes may be.
Finally, a huge thanks to Dymphna and the Baron for providing this arena of free thought where we are able to hash out these topics in the sort of detail that is so desperately needed for those less familiar with this subject.
Thank you Henrik R Clausen and Zenster
Much appreciated.
All very helpful, especially the clarification of ‘leaders’ in Islam. The Muslims I talk to are clear. Their ‘leader’ is what the texts in the first 300 years of Islam say - Qur'an, hadith, sira and a major school of Islam. If there is a disagreement with fellow Muslims on particular points they will argue their case using the texts, but the trump card is the sword.
The Muslims I talk to are clear. Their ‘leader’ is what the texts in the first 300 years of Islam say.
This is a rather dramatic development from the situation a century ago. Back then, 'Traditional' Islam was ruling the day, mainly under Ottoman rule. In that, the hard fundamentals were mitigated by centuries of softening interpretations, making the actual practice more palatable to most parties. That tradition broke down with the abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924.
There has been much talk about the need for an 'Islamic Reformation', and a corresponding Islamic reform movement of sorts. I have good news, and I have bad news:
Good news first:
The Islamic reform movement exists, it is powerful and influential.
Then the bad news:
The name is Ikwan, their most important representative is Tariq Ramadan.
The reform movement seeks to bring Islam back to its roots, and seems to be widely successful. This is helped immensely by the wide availability of the core Islamic scriptures which used to be the property of imams, mullahs and muftis only. Now anyone can read what Mo said and did, and follow his example. The result is, predictably, a big mess.
One could call such reformed Islam 'Classical' Islam, due to its direct reliance on the core scriptures, in contrast with the 'Traditional' Islam of the Ottoman Empire.
Islam has widely moved into a fundamentalist direction over the last decades, and the result is that The Religion of Peace now stands responsible for over 15,000 deadly Jihad attacks since 9/11.
Henrik R Clausen: Then the bad news:
The name is Ikwan, their most important representative is Tariq Ramadan.
Don't worry, he's on The List™
1. Ayman al-Zawahiri
2. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
3. Ayatollah Kahmeini
4. Mullah Muhammad Omar
5. Abu Bakar Ba'asyir (Bashir)
6. Moqtada Sadr,
7. Abu Hamza al-Masri,
8. Fateh Najmeddin Faraj — Mullah Krekar (AKA: Abu Sayyid Qutb)
9. Khaled Meshal
10. Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
11. Ismail Haniya
12. Mohammed Abbas
13. Yusuf al-Qaradawi
14. Tariq Ramadan
15. Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali
16. imam Omar Bakri Muhammed Fustuq
17. imam Abdel-Samie Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa
18. imam Sheikh SyeSyed Mubarik Ali Gilani
19. Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal
20. Sheik Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi
21. Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar
22. Prince Sultan Ibn Abd al-Aziz
23. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz
24. Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz
25. Muhammad Taqi Usmani
26. Yasin al Qadi (Saudi terrorist financier)
27. Sheikh Abdullah bin Jibreen — top Wahabbi cleric
28. Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan — top Wahabbi cleric
29. Sheikh Nasser Al-Omar — top Wahabbi cleric
30. Sheikh Essa
31. Abu Waleed Ansari
32. Abu Yahya al-Libbi
33. Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri
34. Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi (al Qaeda CEO)
35. Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al al-Sheikh — Saudi Grand Mufti
36. Ramadan Shalah — Islamic Jihad leader
37. Ali Abdullah Saleh – Yemini President
38. Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith — head SA’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
39. Imad Mugniyah — Iranian master terrorist – Killed 2/13/2008
Substitute: Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu — OIC Secretary General
40. Ahmed Abu Laban — DEAD unfortunately of natural causes— January 19, 2007
Substitute: Nour al Maliki or Hamid Karzai
The Religion of Peace now stands responsible for over 15,000 deadly Jihad attacks since 9/11.
Perhaps one of the most incredible things of all is that Muslim majority nations have not experienced anywhere near 15,000 reprisals. Muslims around the world pay zakat and, by command of the Qur'an, their voluntary tithing finances international terrorism.
Even more astonishing is how Islam's politicians, imams, scholars and clerics alike all strenuously ignore the simple fact that each of these lethal jihadist attacks ups a butcher's bill that, someday, Muslims will be called on to account for. The more that they fecklessly run up this tab, the more likely it is that this horrendous bill will be called in all at once in the form of a massive and disproportionate retaliation.
Regardless of how much Western governments attempt to ignore Islam's open declaration of war upon dar al harb, there awaits somewhere a leader who is nowhere near so willfully blind to the need for an eventual reckoning. The longer it takes for this modern day Churchill to emerge, the more that Islam’s slaughter will have gone on unchecked.
Heaven help those Muslims that manage to survive the day of reckoning that awaits them. They will learn to curse Osama bin Laden’s name a hundred times more loudly than they ever once cheered it.
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