"The popular “explanation” that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are not Muslims, but fanatics, is a rebuke to the Qur’an, to Muhammad, and to Islam itself."
That Islam is “peace and tolerance” is the most popular lie in the world today. Intellectuals in the West who defame Christ parrot the most fatuous praise of Muhammad, in spite of his legacy of murder, pillage and rape. A Sesame Street-type Arabic TV program features children training to be suicide bombers and chanting “Death to Israel”—for peace, of course. Reporter Ann Coulter suggests, “Inasmuch as liberals are demanding that Americans ritualistically proclaim, ‘Islam is a religion of peace,’ Muslims might do their part by not killing people all the time.”
That our leaders promote this lie, and that so many believe it without one fact to support it, bodes ill for America and the world. We only ask Muslims for one example of where and when Islam ever brought peace and tolerance—and please don’t threaten us with death (the standard Islamic persuasion) for asking!
Never forget that Muslims slaughtered and conquered “for Allah” from Spain to China. These Arab conquests (defensive battles, they claim) were “more rapid than the Roman, more lasting than the Mongol...the most amazing feat in military history.”
Islam’s founder, Muhammad, began his career attacking rich caravans passing near his base in Medina. The first three assaults failed. The fourth succeeded because the victims were surprised by an ambush during Ramadan. Arab tribes had long refrained from aggression in that “holy month.” Muhammad, however, had received a “revelation” authorizing plunder and murder in Allah’s name during this special time of peace (Surah 2:217). Another absolved the Muslims of killing: “Ye slew them not, but Allah slew them” (Surah 8:17).
Most Muslims don’t realize that in observing Ramadan and the annual pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, they follow what pagan Arabs practiced for centuries before Muhammad was born (see TBC Feb ’00 ). Had President Bush known the truth instead of the misinformation fed to him by Cleveland State University law professor David F. Forte, he might not have hosted a White House dinner honoring “the holy month Ramadan,” nor flattered Muslims saying “all the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements.” Benefit?
Challenged to do miracles like Christ, Muhammad could do none. On March 16, 624, near Badr, he led 300 warriors in a vicious attack against a large Meccan caravan protected by a force of 800. Some 40 Meccans were killed and 60 taken prisoner to a loss of only 14 Muslims. This amazing victory was seen as the attesting miracle Muhammad needed. As a result, the ranks of Muslims swelled with those eager to share in future plunder.
Having proved himself the prophet of Allah with the sword, Muhammad sealed his apostleship with more than twenty murders, beginning with al-Nadr, an old enemy from Mecca. Taken captive in the battle at Badr, he pleaded that the Meccan Qur’aish tribe would never kill captives. Muhammad had him beheaded anyway, justifying the deed with another “revelation”: “It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land” (Surah 8:67).
Much of the growing Muslim wealth came from robbing and killing Jews, causing “the disappearance of these Jewish communities from Arabia proper”—justified by a further “revelation” (Surah 33:26,27). To this day, by law no Jew may set foot in Saudi Arabia.
A number of poets were murdered at Muhammad’s behest for having mocked him in verse. The first was the poetess Asma bint Marwan, stabbed to death by Umayr while she was nursing her youngest child. The poet Abu Afak (reportedly more than 100 years old) was murdered next. Then came the Jewish poet Ka’b bin al-Ashraf. A timely “revelation” said all poets were inspired of Satan (Surah 26:221-227).
Does it bother today’s Muslims that murder, rape, plunder and slavery of innocent people were the accepted way of life upon which Islam was founded and still operates? Apparently not. Ka’b’s murder (the account slanted with fictitious details) is justified on a popular Muslim web site, revealing Islam’s peculiar meaning of “peace” and “justice”:
Ka’b had become a real danger to the state of peace and mutual trust which the Prophet was struggling to achieve in Madinah....The Prophet was quite exasperated with him....This was all part of the great process...which helped to make Islam spread and establish it on foundations of justice and piety. [Emphasis added]
Christ left Christians “an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not...[but] bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness...” (1 Pt 2:21-24). But the Muslim must follow the example of Muhammad who killed all who dared to disagree with him!
A Christian must “know” God (Jer 9:24; Jn 17:3), “love” God with all his heart (Deut 6:5; Mat 22:37, etc.) and “believe” in Christ in his heart (Acts 8:37; Rom 10:9). The God of the Bible wants man’s trust and affection without coercion.
In contrast, Allah can be neither known nor loved. Nor does one even have to believe to become a Muslim. Under threat of death, one merely recites aloud, “There is no ila (god) but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” This “conversion without faith” was established when Abu Sufyan, a Qur’aish leader, upon surrendering Mecca in 630 to Muhammad and his superior army, admitted that he doubted the latter’s prophethood. He was warned, “‘Accept Islam and testify that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before your neck is cut off by the sword.’ Thus [without believing] he professed the faith of Islam and became a Muslim.” This pattern is followed today: confess or die!
Upon Muhammad’s death in A.D. 632, many Arabs attempted to abandon Islam. Abu Bakr (the first caliph to succeed Muhammad) and his warriors in the infamous Wars of Apostasy killed tens of thousands of ex-Muslims, forcing Arabia back into Islam. Muhammad had commanded, “Whoever relinquishes his faith, kill him.” Islam is still enforced this way under shari’a (Islamic law) in Saudi Arabia and wherever Muslims are able to do so. This is peace and tolerance?!
The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights was announced at the International Conference on the Prophet Muhammad and his Message held in London in April 1980. It declares, “Islam gave to mankind an ideal code of human rights fourteen centuries ago...based on the Qur’an and the Sunnah [teachings and practice of Muhammad]....” Human rights? What deceit!
Abu Bakr was succeeded as caliph by Umar Abu Hafsa. His armies took Damascus in 635, Antioch in 636, Jerusalem in 638, Syria in 640, Egypt and Persia in 641. Entire cities were massacred, such as Behnesa, Fayum, Nikiu and Aboit in Egypt, Tripoli in North Africa and Euchaita in Armenia. Carthage was razed to the ground. In 644, Umar was murdered.
Uthman ibn Affan, the third caliph, consolidated and expanded the growing Islamic empire. A son-in-law of Muhammad, he standardized the Qur’an, burning all rival copies over protests of those still alive who remembered different readings and missing verses. Among these was Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha who, by the way, never veiled her face. Uthman, too, was murdered by a rival Muslim faction. Prevented from being buried in a Muslim cemetery, he was buried at night by friends, ironically, in a Jewish cemetery.
Islam divides the world into dar al-Islam (the house of peace) and dar al-Harb (the house of war). To bring “peace,” Allah commands, “I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads! (8:13); Slay the idolaters wherever you find them...(9:5); O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites and be thou harsh with them...(9:73); Believers, make war on the infidels that dwell around you...” (9:123). Perpetual jihad is commanded until all the world is under shari’a. Nor would that bring peace, because Muslims fight among themselves, as history testifies.
The fourth and last of the “rightly guided” caliphs was Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. Accused of complicity in Uthman’s murder, he never fully established his rule. Aisha supported a rebellion against him, resulting in the Battle of the Camel in which 10,000 were killed. Ali won, but was murdered in 661.
Wars of succession pitted Qur’aish against Bedouins, Umayyads against the Hashimite followers of Ali, etc. Most of Ali’s family were killed by rival Muslims in 680. Mecca was besieged by troops of Yezid, an Umayyad; the Ka’aba (later restored) was burned to the ground, its Black Stone split into three pieces. Mecca was taken in 692 by Abd-al-Malik (who in 691 had built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to replace the Ka’aba). He united Muslims once again by force and Islam continued its conquests.
In 712, Muslim raiders under Muhammad Qasun began the invasion of India, demolishing temples and palaces and massacring, as in Constantinople, where the streets ran with blood. “The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger in sheer numbers than the Holocaust....” But Islam is “peace!”
The Umayyad caliphate ruled the Muslim world until 749 when all of the Umayyads were murdered by the rival Abbasids, except one survivor, abd-al-Rahman, who fled to Spain where he established an independent caliphate. Thus began the Abbasid caliphate, which lasted until 1258 in spite of intrigue, assassinations and uprisings—all peaceful, of course.
The double-cross and murder of Muslims at the hands of Muslims continues to this day. Scarcely a Muslim regime is not ruled by a dictator who seized power from other Muslims, as in Syria and Iraq. The ten-year revolution in Algeria has cost 100,000 lives. In Afghanistan, rival Muslim warlords fight one another. “Infidels” have to intervene there as in the Gulf, to enforce peace among “peaceful” Muslims.
Muslims loyal to the murdered Ali and his sons are called Shi’ites (the majority in Iran). The others are called Sunnis and comprise the majority elsewhere. These two factions have long demonstrated that “Islam is peace” by fighting one another, as in the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq when more people were killed than in World War I.
Muslim conquests involving multiple massacres of literally millions continued for more than 1,300 years. Under the Abbasids the Islamic empire reached its zenith of power, prosperity and learning.
In Spain (to which Muslims point as an example of their tolerance) the garrison of Muez was slaughtered in 920; Pamplona was put to the sword in 923; then Cordova, Zaragoza and Mereda, with all adult males killed and women and children enslaved. The Jews of Granada were butchered in 1066, 34 years after 6,000 Jews had been slaughtered in Fez, Morocco. In 1146, Islamic Fez was put to the sword by rival Muslims, the Almohads, who conquered much of North Africa after annihilating the Almoravides (another Muslim faction) with about 100,000 massacred, another 120,000 killed in Marrakesh, and similar slaughters elsewhere—all gestures of “peace.”
The 400-year rule of the Ottoman Turks saw forced kidnappings of young boys into Islam and slavery, causing parents to mutilate children to make them undesirable. Under the Ottomans, being Greek, Armenian, Serb or any other non-Muslim was to live in daily fear of murder, rape, torture, genocide. To this day, Serbs and Bulgarians loathe Turks and Bosnians.
When Sultan Murad III died, his son Muhammad had all nineteen of his brothers murdered and the seven of his father’s concubines who were pregnant sewn into sacks and thrown into the sea. The successor of Murad IV had all 300 women in his harem sewn into sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus. Like so many other Muslim leaders, he was murdered—peacefully.
The persecution of Jews in Roman Catholic Europe was mild compared to what Ottoman Christians endured for four centuries. More than a million Armenians were slaughtered in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth centuries, as well as many thousands of Jews, Greeks, Assyrians, Lebanese, et al. Tragically, the oppression and bloodshed were often condoned by Western powers, particularly England and at times America. In the great 1915 genocide, “women came with butcher knives [to] gain that merit in Allah’s eyes that comes from killing a Christian.”8 The destruction of Smyrna in September 1922 with the deliberate massacre of nearly 300,000 inhabitants is another example of Islamic “peace.” English, American, Italian and French battleships anchored in the harbor repelled fleeing victims who swam out to them for help.
The popular “explanation” that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are not Muslims, but fanatics, is a rebuke to the Qur’an, to Muhammad, and to Islam itself. As Trifkovic writes (p. 127), “Thirteen centuries of...suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic ‘tolerance’....” The West winks at the blatant denial of basic human rights and support of terrorism by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries—even favors Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kashmir, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sudan and East Timor.
Our politically correct delusion is leading to disaster. Tragically, the gospel is kept from Islamic countries by the failure of Western governments to admit and confront the truth about Islam. Please continue to inform yourselves, to protest to our leaders, to pray for God’s intervention, and to be witnesses for Christ to Muslims in our country.Hunt, Dave
March 1, 2003
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