Reversing the Roles of Crusade and Jihad

The lesson of a new book is clear: Islam can do no wrong and the West can do no right.

The following book review of William R. Polk’s book, Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War between the Muslim World and the Global North (Yale University press, Jan. 2018) first appeared in the Christian Research Journal.  Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

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From beginning to end, Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War between the Muslim World and the Global North by William R. Polk is paradigmatic of all the misrepresentations and errors of history that have caused the West to become clueless of the sources behind its conflict with the Muslim worldview. Worse, such blatant distortions of the past leave the West unable to provide solutions for the present.

Title vs. Content

For starters, the book’s title and ambitious subtitle present it as a comprehensive history. The jacket cover claims that “Crusade and Jihad is the first book to encompass, in one volume, the entire history of the catastrophic encounter between the Global North … and Muslim societies.” The book reportedly “explain[s] the deep hostilities between the Muslim world and the Global North and show[s] how they grew over the centuries” (emphasis added). 
Rather bizarrely, however, the first thousand years of history are allotted only some 30 (out of 550) pages of coverage; that is, only 5% of the book deals with the many centuries of conflict between the eighth and eighteenth centuries. 
What explains this lopsided approach? After all, that initial millennium contains all the seeds of conflict. As historian Franco Cardini explains,
If we … ask ourselves how and when the modern notion of Europe and the European identity was born, we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative one) in its creation. Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe between the seventh to eighth centuries, then between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries … was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.
While these “violent midwives” are known today as Arabs, Moors, Turks, and Tatars, their invasions and subsequent atrocities were all conducted under the same jihadi logic used by contemporary groups such as the Islamic State: as “infidels” (or kuffar), Christian Europeans were always free game for rape, enslavement, or slaughter.
Or to quote Bernard Lewis:
We tend nowadays to forget that for approximately a thousand years, from the advent of Islam in the seventh century until the second siege of Vienna in 1683, Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam, the double threat of conquest and conversion. Most of the new Muslim domains were wrested from Christendom. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were all Christian countries, no less, indeed rather more, than Spain and Sicily. All this left a deep sense of loss and a deep fear.[i]

A Twisted Vacuum

Not only are these formative centuries largely ignored, but what Polk does present is often distorted to Islam’s favor. As the book’s succinct description explains, “Polk shows how Islam arose and spread across [euphemism for violently conquered] North Africa into Europe, climaxed in the vibrant and sophisticated caliphate of al-Andalus in Medieval Spain, and was the bright light in a European Dark Age.”[ii] 
Similarly, after effusively praising Islamic Spain, Polk writes (rather disdainfully) that “The contrast to the rest of Europe was stunning. Few in Europe could read, and those few were holed up in monasteries…. It is hard to find evidence of more than a few men or women of culture or even of a degree of social refinement. In al-Andalus, in contrast, the arts flourished, new forms of poetry were invented, and musical tastes” advanced.[iii]
The problem here is not that these descriptions are false but that they are presented in a vacuum. In fact, the prosperity of Islamic Spain, as with all premodern Islamic states, was built almost entirely on plundering its non-Muslim neighbors of their wealth and bodies (Córdoba was a slave emporium of white flesh for centuries). As earlier and more sober historians, such as Louis Bertrand, explained:
To keep the Christians [of northern Spain] in their place it did not suffice to surround them with a zone of famine and destruction. It was necessary also to go and sow terror and massacre among them. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, an army sallied forth from Córdoba to go and raid the Christians, destroy their villages, their fortified posts, their monasteries and their churches…. If one bears in mind that this brigandage was almost continual, and that this fury of destruction and extermination was regarded as a work of piety — it was a holy war [jihad] against infidels — it is not surprising that whole regions of Spain should have been made irremediably sterile. This was one of the capital causes of the deforestation from which the Peninsula still suffers. With what savage satisfaction and in what pious accents do the Arab annalists tell us of those at least biennial raids. A typical phrase for praising the devotion of a Caliph is this: “He penetrated into Christian territory, where he wrought devastation, devoted himself to pillage, and took prisoners.”… The prolonged presence of the Muslims, therefore, was a calamity for this unhappy country of Spain. By their system of continual raids they kept her for centuries in a condition of brigandage and devastation.[iv]
Likewise, Polk fails to mention that the “stunning” illiteracy of Europeans was itself a byproduct of the jihad. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (circa 641), papyrus ceased to be imported into Europe, causing literacy rates to drop back to pre-Roman levels. Indeed, Christian Europe’s “Dark Ages” came about largely “because Islam had destroyed the ancient unity of the Mediterranean,” as eminent medievalist / archaeologist Henri Pirenne showed.

“Victimhood”: The Blame-All to Islam’s Problems

About 520 of 550 pages (or 95%) of Polk’s book on The Thousand-Year War are confined to the last two or so centuries, when Europe ceased being on the defensive and went on the offensive against Islam. Here Polk meticulously describes in vivid (and hyperbolic) detail every conceivable sin the West committed against Muslims:
Beginning at various times after Christopher Columbus led the way across the Atlantic and the Portuguese plunged down the West African coast, the actions of the North have been uniformly destructive and sometimes genocidal…. The first cause of the danger and insecurity [i.e., Islamic terrorism] we feel today is the long history of imperialism. A century or more of invasion, occupation, humiliation, and genocide has left scars that are still not healed, and cannot heal if they are constantly reopened.[v]
Having whitewashed the first millennium of jihad on the West, it’s easy for Polk to make Europeans appear as unprovoked aggressors—greedy monsters come to destroy the glories of Islam. Yet he fails to mention that Columbus sailed west precisely because the Mediterranean was an Islamic terror zone; and he presents Russian expansion into Tatar regions as a merciless enterprise without explaining that the Tatars—known as the “heathen giant who feeds on our blood”—terrorized and enslaved Russians for centuries earlier.
As more balanced historians, such as Bernard Lewis, have long known:
[T]he whole complex process of European expansion and empire … has its roots in the clash of Islam and Christendom. It began with the long and bitter struggle of the conquered peoples of Europe, in east and west, to restore their homelands to Christendom and expel the Muslim peoples who had invaded and subjugated them.  It was hardly to be expected that the triumphant Spaniards and Portuguese would stop at the Straits of Gibraltar, or that the Russians would allow the Tatars to retire in peace and regroup in their bases on the upper and lower Volga—the more so since a new and deadly Muslim attack on Christendom was underway … threatening the heart of Europe. The victorious liberators, having reconquered their own territories, pursued their former masters whence they had come.[vi]
Regardless, Polk habitually harps on how “Memories of [Western] imperialism are deep [among Muslims], and they helped create much of the world’s disorder and danger today…. [T]he humiliation and wholesale massacres of populations carried out by imperialists, though largely forgotten by the perpetrators, remain today vivid to the descendants of the victims.”[vii] As such, every Islamic terror group—including the Islamic State—are products of “the anger and frustration of Muslims.”[viii]
Again, one need only look to real history to appreciate the folly of this deterministic reading which sees Muslims as perpetual victims of an imagined history. After a millennium of actual European victimhood—a millennium of Muslim invasions that saw the conquest of three-quarters of Christendom’s original territory, the enslavement of five million Europeans (between just the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries), and the slaughter of untold millions—“backwards” Europe still managed to rise to the top of the world, and without any apologies or appeasements from Muslims.
Why can’t Islam? Could it be that its problems are intrinsic and have nothing to do with the purported sins of Europe?  
For instance, in Polk’s chapter, “Somalia, the ‘Failed State,’” imperialism is again cited as the blame all. Yet in 1855, decades before Europeans colonized it, adventurer Richard Burton described Somalia in decidedly unappealing terms, adding that Somalis “are extremely bigoted, especially against Christians … and are fond of Jihading.” Today Somalia remains a “failed state,” Al Shabaab (“the Youth”) is its jihadi vanguard, and any Somali outed as a Christian is beheaded. Is European colonialism really necessary to explain such continuity?

“What Went Wrong?”

This is the crux of the issue: in order to exonerate the problems plaguing and emanating from the Muslim world—from socio-economic-political  difficulties, to rampant Islamic radicalization and terrorism—Islamophiles like Polk are committed to two premises: 1) that for centuries Islam was a beacon of light in a dark world (and thus something must have gone wrong since) and 2) that which went wrong begins and ends with Western meddling via colonization. 
As should be evident by now, the reverse is true: Islam always did what Islam does, and was constrained only during that brief era of Western assertion. The greater irony is that whereas jihads often culminated in slavery, depopulation, and devastation, European colonialists abolished slavery and introduced their Muslim subjects to the boons of modernity, from scientific and medicinal advances to the radical concepts of democracy and religious freedom. 
“In a word,” writes a Copt around the turn of the twentieth century concerning British rule, “we say that the Egyptian State was at the highest degree of justice and good order and arrangement. And it removed religious fanaticism, and almost established equality between its subjects, Christian and Muslim, and it eliminated most of the injustice, and it realized much in the way of beneficial works for the benefit of all the inhabitants.”
Or consider how North Africa was among the most prosperous and civilized regions of Christendom in the seventh century, but centuries of “jihading,” ransacking, and the enslavement of literally millions turned it into a desert. Then, for some three centuries before the colonial era, its Muslim population subsisted entirely on enslaving Europeans. 
In fact, the United States’ first war as a nation was with these “Barbary States.” When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary’s ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, he said nothing about “open scars” or the “anger and frustration of Muslims.” Rather the “ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that … it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners….”[ix]

Sticking to the “Narrative”

Sadly, Crusade and Jihad is reflective of both academic and popular opinion concerning the relationship between Islam and the West. As is typical of the social sciences—and increasingly the hard sciences as well—reality, in this case history, has been recast in conformance to the accepted narrative, one which follows a familiar matrix: anything white and Christian = hypocrisy, intolerance, greed, exploitation; anything non-white and non-Christian = honesty, tolerance, fair-mindedness, dignity.
The double standards required to make this narrative work are often stark. Thus and despite how Muslims persecuted Spain’s Christians for centuries, here is how Polk describes the indigenous liberators vis-à-vis the invading occupiers: “Over the centuries … the warlike Christian states … pushed south until, in 1492, they drove away tens of thousands of Muslims … and put an end to one of the most advanced societies in Europe.”[x]
The lesson is clear: from a historical point of view, Islam can do no wrong—even when it invades, conquers, and persecutes; and the West can do no right—even when it defends, liberates, and civilizes. While we are to exonerate contemporary Muslim terrorism as a product of “grievances” against (an imagined) history, only censure remains for those premodern Christians who set wrongs to rights (but to Islam’s disadvantage).
Such are the pseudo-histories that have long plagued the West’s understanding of its relationship to Islam. It is in part to combat these false narratives that I wrote my new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Not only does it document the politically incorrect facts of history, but every century gets its fair due.
Raymond Ibrahim has been researching and writing on Western and Islamic history since 1998, when he began his MA thesis in History on the Battle of Yarmuk (636), the first and arguably most consequential battle between the two civilizations (available here)
[i] Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 127.
[ii] Al-Andalus was the Arabic name for Islamic Spain.  The word is etymologically based on an Arabic corruption of the word “Vandal,” apparently the earliest Germanic barbarian group to invade and be known to the inhabitants of North Africa.
[iii] Polk, Crusade and Jihad, 31–32.
[iv] Louis Bertrand, The History of Spain (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952), 90-91.
[v] Polk, Crusade and Jihad, 518, 533.
[vi] Lewis, Islam and the West, 17-18.
[vii] Polk, Crusade and Jihad, 518.
[viii] Ibid., 436.
[ix] Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9 (Princeton University Press, 1954), 357–359.
[x]Polk, Crusade and Jihad, 32.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/reversing-roles-crusade-and-jihad-raymond-ibrahim/

IHS

Making of Islamic Terrorists

Dr. Babu Suseelan

FFI disclaimer: we do not believe that assassinating anyone is a justifed moral action. Some of the views in this article represent the author’s view, and not that of FFI staff.

Introduction

The destructive instinct is in every human being. It is true, nevertheless, courageous application of our intelligence, values, spiritual philosophy and formula for co-existence led to the logical progression toward civilization. We were able to face disease, destruction, war, accidents, and natural calamities. In the face of these overwhelming calamities, men were able to create poetry, philosophy, literature, music, art and science. As a result a brotherhood of humanity flourished. Men were able to prolong their life and diminish their sufferings. Many great men developed spiritual guidelines and practical formula to ward of our death instinct and destructive tendencies.

Mohammed, who claimed to be a prophet successfully exploited destructive tendencies of man and established a rigid, dogmatic, reductionist and non-compromising dogma called Islam. Islamic followers marched ahead with their vengeful hands with the abhorrent Islamic faith. Time after time in the past, Islamic dogmatic believers with the strength of their flesh proved bloodshed was honorable. Millions of innocent people were hacked to death, and several civilizations perished.

Islamic terrorism is nothing new. It is as old as Islam. After the death of Mohammed, his followers had dispatched Jihadi warriors to conquer non-Islamic world through a wave of Islamic terror. Mohammedans placed their sacred duty to conquer the world for Islam at the front of their policy. Mohammedans had crushed Persia, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Hungary, Part of India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and every part in North Africa. Mohammedans were exuberant. They were inspired by Allah. They were inspired as one without pity or restraint. They had the blessing of Allah and Jihad war was the manifestation of the divine will of Allah. Jihad War unfettered and pure was fought to its smoking conclusion through every conceivable extreme cruelty and horror. Mohammedans claimed those who have not known war has not known Allah. Jihadi warriors considered the power of Allah flow through them.

Islam has been responsible for more death and destruction on the face of this planet than just about anything else. Islam was started by predators and spread by predators. It has lived off the decaying corpses of the civilizations it has destroyed.

Even today, Jihad Muslims are busy planting explosive bombs on schools, hotels, office buildings, museums, temples, churches, trains and airplanes. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for injuring and killing others. Why do Islamic homicide bombers spend their time, energy and life in shortening life of others? Why do Islamic homicide bombers allow themselves to be dominated by their death instinct? If at heart, they want to die for Allah, why do they want to kill innocent people? Why Islamic homicide bomber’s “wish to kill” triumph over the wish to live? Why they love hate, death and destruction? Instead of loving life, why do they nurture destructive tendencies? Does Islamic religious indoctrination maintains their homicide instinct to kill others?

THE ISLAMIC MINDSET
Over the course of the last three decades, a number of large-scale prospective studies have convincingly demonstrated that, Islamic Jihadis commit a disproportionately large percentage of all serious and violent offenses. Since 1973, there have been 179 armed conflict around the world 169 were involved with Muslims. Worldwide Islamic Jihadist offenders accounted 95 percent of homicide bombing, 89 percent of aggravated assault and hundred percent of honorable (dishonorable) killing.

Clearly Jews and Hindus are primary targets of Islamic terrorists. Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have murdered more than 1,600 and injured over 6,000 in the past two years. In Kashmir, India, Islamic terrorists have either killed or forced out all Hindus. These worldwide Islamic terrorist acts are meant to overthrowing democracy and replacing it with Islamic sharia. Killing innocent civilians is a high priority and legitimate way to achieve their goals. Jihadists justify heartless, cold blooded killing of infidels, women and children on behalf of Allah. Jihad murderers want to become martyrs and expect rewards from Allah. Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have carried out more than 13944 attacks. Islamic Taliban leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan wander around the country, pursuing their vision of Islam with fanatical zeal while the poor villagers struggle with cold, hunger, wretched poverty and disease. They have no pity for the citizens. The history of Islamic martyrs clearly indicates insensitiveness to the suffering of poor citizens. They are happy to desert their families for the sake of Jihad war and happy to imperil their own lives by their flaming devotion to Allah.

Today is tough for many non-Muslims living in Islamic countries. What makes matters worse is Islamic religious police (Mutaween) freely exercise their power in intimidating, harassing, abusing and punishing non-Muslims. All Islamic countries strictly enforce Islamic blasmephy laws to satisfy Allah and the virtues of Islam. To their support, they use Koran and Sahi Hadiths. In Islamic countries, non-believers have no value over the Islamic virtue. Fanatical Jihadists can kill non-believers, so easily in the name of Allah. Jihadists believe they are following the dictums of Allah. Jihadists have no fear, guilt, or shame whatsoever in committing terrorism, homicide bombing, public beheading, limb amputation, stoning women to death, practicing polygamy or child marriage.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JIHADIST HOMICIDE BOMBERS
It is important that we need to understand the psychology behind Islamic homicide bombers. How can it be that Islamic homicide bombers kill others and kill themselves? It is not impossible to dissect and investigate the process and elucidate its details. It enables us to recognize how the “killer instinct: is activated by Jihadists. The purposeless self-destructive acts are projected upon infidels. It arrests our attention, and demands that we scrutinize analytically various ways in which Jihadists commit homicide/suicide. What underlying motives determine Jihadists to commit voluntary homicide/suicide? If their death instinct is dominant why not commit suicide? Are they afraid of life, can’t they endure life and tolerate non-believers?

The question of homicide bombing and destructive acts by Islamic terrorists is one which has received no competent scientific investigation. In the popular mind the homicidal tendency is a social reaction against American-Israeli- and Indian interference in Islamic affairs. There is no convincing scientific evidence that the Islamic homicidal impulse is external.

It is a known fact that death wish is inherent in Islam. Islam approves martyrdom in the name of Allah and the Islamic community is gratified when kefirs (infidels) are murdered. Muslims are seen rejoicing when a kafir is beheaded, hanged, killed in some other way, or stoned to death. Such heinous behavior is unintelligible to the uninitiated partly because it is clearly reveals the content of the Islamic mind. The preoccupation with homicide, terrorism, beheading, limb amputation, and stoning always seems shocking and incredible to those not familiar with Jihadist terrorist methods. Their deviant methods leave little doubt as to their general significance and reinforce as to the motives of Jihadist acts. The curious element is the formation of Islamic self-concept.

THE ISLAMIC SELF-CONCEPT

We should not overlook Islamic justification for martyrdom. What seem to us to have been unnecessary and foolhardy hazards may be interpreted to mean that their attitudes were determined by strong individual tendencies toward self-destruction. But at the same time, these impulses were undoubtedly stimulated by popular Islamic influences. Islamic culture contains certain elements which tend to encourage and facilitate the individual self-destructive trends.

Islamic history gives abundant testimony to the existence of martyrdoms and assassins. Devouring Islamic enemies (kafirs) is justified by Mullahs. They encourage Jihadists to seek positive satisfaction in martyrdom. Islamic homicide bombers behavior denotes the destructive elements in their self. The Jihadist may have wished to destroy them and others because of the Islamic social values are predominant in them. They clearly demonstrate their deliberate goal of destruction by subordinating their interest in life. They glorify Islamic martyrdom and its social usefulness. The paradox of joy out of pain, suffering and death is one of the strange phenomenons in Islam. Homicide bombing, public beheading of infidels, arson, limb amputation, stoning women to death, assassination of opponents, and unrealistic interpretation and justification of such heinous crimes in the name of Allah is a kind of socially acceptable psychosis in Islamic society.

Islamic religious education indoctrinates Muslims not to accept non-believers. Jihadists use martyrdom as an aggression, a weapon of offense and an ex-pression of their buried feelings of revenge, anger, hostility, and distorted reaction. These are developed at Islamic religious schools and remain dormant in a latent form until their full flower later in life. The underlying psychological faults in Jihadist terrorism have been observed through Islamic rationalization. The elements of joy in death, of love gratified by inflicting suffering to non-believers and of violence against infidels are clear in Jihadists.

The cost to the individual Jihadi, his family and the victims is enormous. Why Mullahs could force Jihadists to commit homicide/suicide? There is nothing in Islam to neutralize or soften the hostile drives. The Islamic education results in the rigidity of the personality and they suffer from intermittent explosive disorder, defiant personality disorder and cognitive disorder. The iron control which the Mullahs impose upon certain forms of critical thinking, kindness, and tolerance, encourages destructive truths. There is nothing in Islamic education sufficient to hold in check the aggression, hostility and anger which are extraordinarily powerful in Muslim youths.

Ego development is not a function of simple brainwashing. For ego development one needs to go through different stages. Islamic education at the religious school allows only the values of the Islamic community to be internalized. Right and wrong, good and bad are defined by compliance with Islamic rules rather by universally accepted moral standards. Islam never allows Muslims to transition from conformist to conscious stage. As a result Muslims are not permitted to deviate from Islamic norms. Multiple possibilities, self-awareness and eclectic thinking are not allowed. Nor do Muslims see moral rules as primarily creating better conditions for non-Muslims. They do not see non-Muslims as having a rich internal life. They fail to develop more accurate empathy and mutuality in interpersonal relations. They fail to comprehend individual differences and the complexity of circumstances. They lack the ability to tolerate paradox and contradictions, and understanding of psychological causality. Muslims in general see non-Islamic world as hostile, nauseating and impure. They cannot hold of broad, abstract, social ideals, such as justice, tolerance and pluralism and they miserably fail to achieve peace or higher understanding.

Islamic history is overflowing with evidence of brutal behavior, assassination, homicide, beheading, kidnapping, and sexual aggression due to the selective effect of Islamic self-concept and deviant beliefs. Even today, Islam tends to maintain and reinforce dangerous Islamic self-concept. This circular characteristic of the self-concept may often be observed in the violent behavior of Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Lasker-E-Taibia. To make matters worse, Jihadists are frequently surrounded by a veritable conspiracy in which their murderous behavior is corroborated. The self-perpetuating effect of the Islamic self-concept is no means limited to Jihadist terrorist groups. The same dangerous dynamics may be seen at work in every Islamic community. The circular effect of this Islamic self-concept operates in negative directions.

Muslims cite Islamic taboos and Koranic injections as more important than freedom of thinking. Freedom of ex-pression is and always has been subject to Islamic taboos. Islamic taboos exist to keep Muslims from thinking independently and these taboos are enforced by Mullahs and Islamic rulers. Those who oppose are silenced or beheaded. Public ex-pression against Mohammed or Allah will be labeled as apostate and those dissenters will be severely punished. Strict censorship is imposed on TV, film, magazines and newspapers by religious bodies and by the government.

Islamic Madrassa education does not allow Muslim youths to develop greater consciousness and more autonomy or freedom for critical thinking which is necessary condition for personality change. Mohammed, the Islamic leader is the only model they are expected to emulate. They are not expected to higher level models for “pacer-situations” which are clearly necessary condition for healthy personality development. Islamic culture that values conformity prevents Muslim youths from seeking greater freedom and autonomy and higher consciousness. Jihadi terrorists are schooled to love death. The lust for death may overwhelm the Jihadists that go beyond any bounds of social norms. The custom of humiliating non believers and publically demeaning them is widespread in Islamic communities. Mullahs recognize and approve deviant behaviors of Islamic homicide maniacs. It is Allah’s will that they present themselves –compelling them to be more cruel against Kafirs. They seem to be in a state of unhealthy exaltation before they detonate the bombs to kill infidels.

The necessity to hate is so fundamental in Islam and the frequent breakdown of relationship with infidels bears witness to their underlying hate. When they speak of Jews, Hindus and Americans the hate impulses gain an overwhelming strength. They have no pity for Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and kafirs. The Islamic martyrs show unconscious pride and satisfaction in killing Jews and Hindus. The paradox of pleasure from inflicting pain influence Islamic martyrs. They are also motivated by the special privileges supposed to be secured through martyrdom. This impelling thirst for sexual privileges is an important factor in determining the homicidal intend. The flagrant display of murderous tendencies is universally disapproved. But in Islamic society, such cruel acts against non-believers is socially accepted and supported.

All behavior is a function of the perception that exist for an individual at the moment of behaving, especially those perceptions about self and the world. As a consequence of Islamic indoctrination, Muslim’ perceptual field becomes narrow. The self-concept Jihadist accumulates at the Islamic religious schools is a unique and the distorted self-concept is extremely difficult to change. Islamic self-concept is a gestalt, a peculiar pattern they use as identification which enable Muslims to exclude non-Muslims. They seldom expand their self-concept to include non-Muslims or abstract ideas of justice, coexistence, pluralism, liberty and secularism.

HOW TO NEUTRALIZE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS

Why some of the biggest problems we face from Islamic terrorists never seem to be fixed? The reason is simple. The solutions just are not convenient for the politicians and phony liberals. For several years, appeasement policies and special interests and outright irrational tolerance have gotten us far away from the effective solutions we need.

Our response so far is based on a criminal justice model using the criminal justice system to arrest, prosecute and sentence Jihadist terrorists. Such justice system is politically motivated, slow and Jihadist groups exert pressure on the system and it is ineffective.

Failure to neutralize Jihadist extremism would result in Islamic terrorists to grow in strength. Our failure will strengthen Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Mullah al-SadrÂ’s Islamic army in Iraq, Al-Qaeda in the Middle East, and Lasker-e-Taiba in Pakistan.

The self-perpetuating characteristics of the Islamic self-concept make it of special concern in dealing with Islamic terrorism, homicide bombing, beheading, oppression of women and honor killing. Having defined themselves as AllahÂ’s warriors, they remain forever victims of their own self-perception.

Islamic education must be changed to discovering more effective relationships between Muslims and the world. To accomplish this objective, non-Muslims need to confront Islamic system. Non-Muslims must engage in subtle and active process in changing Islamic education. Passive approaches are ineffective.

Appeasement, unconditional positive regard, non-directive policies and passive diplomatic initiatives are unable to turn the tide completely. Non-Muslims must not fall into the trap of thinking that “All Religions are the same”. To do so may only contribute further to the inadequacies of Jihadists. Such an unfortunate attitude overlooks the fact that Islam is hostile to co-existence, pluralism, and liberty.

We need to wage a psychological warfare effectively and efficiently for cognitive and behavior restructuring Of Muslims. The methods required for cognitive restructuring of Muslims must be powerful ones. The world cannot ignore or reward perverse philosophy of the Jihadists.

Phony secularists and leftist liberals must be confronted and forced to change their bogus theories. Their mindless theories are totally inadequate, ambiguous and it rests on a tragic illusion. Their misguided moral idealism is not in itself a guarantee of moral goodness, peace and freedom. It is a pathway to Islamic terrorism, death, destruction and wholesale anarchy. Their goal is not to free the world from the roots of Islamic terrorism or destroy destructive urges of Islamic terrorists. They are interested only in slippery slope arguments. We have to defeat leftist liberals in order to protect and preserve freedom and peace for us and for the children yet to be born.

Liberal media with their conspiracy of silence, attempt to cover up the root cause of Islamic terrorism. The media is determined not to rock the boat and pretending that they did not know. Such callous indifference to the life and limb of innocent civilians is shocking. It is of course utterly inconsistent with the sanctity of life and the obligations to defend citizens from Jihadist murderers. There must be public awareness against liberal politicians and the media. They should be condemned and exposed for continuing to stand by passively as our innocent civilians are killed and maimed by Jihadists.

The media are potent in shaping and defining attitudes and actions. Media should be coerced, if need be, to have some effect on the desired outcome. In this era of globalization, media including TV can reach every continent. We need to use the Internet, satellite Communications, digital Photography and all available communications technology for a broad range of operations against Islamic ideology of hatred and terror. Information warfare is the “Battle of Will” for shaping the will and attitude of Islamic fascists.

Our Schools, Colleges and Universities must teach Islamic dogma as it is without distortion. We also need to change the cultural perception of public affairs dealing with Islamic nations. In addition to formal education to expose brutal Islamic history, public officials and military leaders might be exposed to a series of programs on Jihadist terrorist operations. Islamic leaders should be kept abreast of our concerns and warn them the need for revision for Islamic education.

Continuing Islamic terrorism require special and unorthodox means. Such means include defensive preemptive measures that can range from targeted assassinations of known Jihadist leaders. In this respect we must take special attention to the principle:

Ubi Cessat Remedium ordinarium Ibi decurritur ad Extraordinaritur; “Where the remedy fails, recourse must be had to an extraordinary one”.

Islamic terrorists are enemies of the human race. We are justified in uniting together with whatever means necessary to punish and even exterminate such brutal lunatics. 

Source: http://www.faithfreedom.org/2009/09/15/making-of-islamic-terrorists/

IHS

Beslan: Jihad Against Children Must Trigger Global Response

Posted by Dr. Walid Phares on 9/09/09 • Categorized as Jihad & Terrorism
Dr. Walid Phares
Wars have always had inhuman results, no matter what is the scale. Since the early 20th century, terrorism has perpetrated mass killing of innocents, condemned by all moral values. Salafi jihadism in particular has produced extreme scales of bloodshed against civilians, comparing with the monstrosity of totalitarian regimes under Hitler or Pol Pot, among others.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and throughout the 1990s, Salafi terror groups operating from the Philippines to Algeria have butchered families, students, journalists, elderly, and the weakest elements of civil society.
Children, too, have been murdered during these ghazwas (jihadi raids). In the post 9/11 era, al Qaeda, the Taliban, Indonesia’ Jemaa, the Janjaweed in Darfur and the Shabab of Somalia, among others, have bombed and slaughtered kids. The al-Muhayya bombing in Saudi Arabia, the Amman bloody wedding, and the Baghdad’s surreal infanticides are only examples as to how Salafi jihadists and Khomeinist operatives have gone in their devastation of children’s lives.
Obviously, the young souls lost in New York, Madrid, and London testifies to the universality of jihadi terror. The latter’s ideologues do not exclude children from their operations, regardless of any consideration: The “caliphate” can be built on the skulls of all enemies, Muslims and non-Muslim alike. But five years ago in Beslan, the zombies of jihadism took the Caucuses’ population to an unreached low. Not only did the so-called “separatists” target specifically a school in the Russian town of Beslan, but they built their tactical goals on causing pain to the kids and their parents. We now know the details of the operation and have seen the atrocious pictures of boys and girls laying dead or being whisked out from the premises covered in blood.
However, even if massacres can’t be compared when collective punishments are exerted on the little ones, Beslan’s killings have something peculiar in its horror: a calculated will to display the scenery of captured children via media all over the world: The Jihadi Kamikazes were proud of doing it. For whatever the “Chechen cause” is, and regardless of the political debate surrounding it, Beslan’s savage “intention” shattered any demands the armed terrorists were allegedly advancing.
Fighting face to face or even as a guerilla is one thing; targeting children specifically is a very different matter. The real message from that tragic episode, at least the one that has registered in Russia and around the world, is that jihadi terrorism has no moral boundaries. Or at least the Takfiri Salafi strain, which nevertheless is an emanation from Wahhabism. Neither the international community, nor the Muslim societies subscribing to universal human rights can accept the premise of such inhuman violence when it openly, unashamedly, and ideologically, legitimizes infanticide. There are simply no merciful spaces in any set of legal traditions, from Scotland to Jordan that can incorporate a legitimization of Beslan’s motives.
But regardless of legal and doctrinal debates, Beslan sent irreversible chills throughout the globe. Notwithstanding academic discussion of Chechen and Russian politics, the raw scenes affected moms and dads around the world. Mumbai’s urban jihad alerted citizens across the planet that it can happen in any city. But Beslan’s butchery awoke basic instincts of parents: it can happen in any neighborhood, any school. Even if top government advisers in Brussels and Washington are claiming jihadism is just a “spiritual experience,” this ideology has committed unforgivable sins. Its doctrinaires have often repeated (and were heard on satellite TV and in chat rooms) that punishment of the enemy can require millions of children dead.
Beslan’s long-term effect is going to harden democratic societies and crumble the argument that engagement with totalitarians can mitigate their actions. Only political development within civil societies where the jihadists are produced can isolate the radicals and reverse their advances. Ironically, women and children are the real hope against the terror ideology; and it is precisely these two weak segments of society that the terrorists have been targeting. The questions after Beslan and all similar horrors are simple: who is providing the “fatwas,” who is sending the petrodollars and what is the doctrine behind the violence? Everything else can be figured out when these answers will be provided.
Beslan is perhaps a unifying platform which must be seized promptly by the main players in international security.
The United States, Britain, France, Russia, and even China have all been targeted by Salafi Takfiris. The jihadists are aiming at the five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as India and major Muslim countries. There cannot be a wider consensus at this stage of global politics than waging a U.N. campaign against global jihadism.
Way beyond al Qaeda as an organization, the Security Council must render its ideology illegal. Let there be discussion of the issue and let clarity win the day: There should not be room to any violence promising the rise of empires and totalitarianism, and grounded with ideological legitimacy. The fascist genocides of the 20th century were enough reasons not to allow this to happen again.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr Walid Phares is the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. He is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy.

Source: http://www.faithfreedom.org/2009/09/09/beslan-jihad-against-children-must-trigger-global-response/

IHS

Kashmir: Propagation of Islam and Terror of the Sufis

                           
How did Islam come to Kashmir?
 
 “It came through the peaceful missionary preaching of the Sufis,” comes the answer.

Sufis have been universally credited with the peaceful propagation of Islam around the world. An Islamic legend tells us that there was a king in Kashmir, at an uncertain point in time, who had no religion. One day, he wished to adopt a religion. Both Muslims and Hindus came to convince him. Their contradictory views left him rather confused, and resolved that, “he would embrace the religion of the first man he would meet in the street after coming out of his house the next morning” [Chapter 2, Baharistan-i-Shahi, an anonymous 17th-century Persian book on the history of Kashmir, translated by Prof. K. N. Pundit]. And it was a dervish [Sufi master], whom he encountered first the next morning. There he became a Muslim, and Kashmir became Islamic.

In many places, one encounters very similar Islamic legends: that a Sufi, through his supernatural power or this and that, converts a king. Thus, the place becomes Islamic peacefully—thanks to Islam’s prophets of peace, the Sufis.

A Kashmiri ex-Muslim friend, who wants eradication of Islam because of its barbaric teachings, nonetheless, told me about how Islam, however abhorrent and barbaric in nature, came to Kashmir through the peaceful preaching of Sufis. And now, how this peaceful valley of Islam has become a land of barbarism, thanks to Wahhabism—which he calls the real Quranic and prophetic Islam!!

And this impression, that Islam was peacefully propagated in Kashmir and around the world by the Sufis, is universally entertained by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and historians alike. Ask Dr. Yoginder Sikant, the prominent scholar and historian of Islam, and an alleged specialist in Sufism. He would tell you the same.

And this paradigm is being successfully and exclusively propagated despite the fact that available historical records give an opposite picture.

It is hard to know when Islamic rule was established in Kashmir. Muhammad bin Qasim was in the preparation for an invasion of Kashmir in 715. Thereafter, Kashmir suffered a number of Islamic invasions; Sultan Mahmud, the master barbarian (although idolized by Muslims), had also led a failed expedition there. Caliph al-Mansur (r. 755–74) had sent an expedition under Hasham bin Amru for waging holy war against Hindu territories. Amongst many places, between Kandahar and Kashmir, he conquered, he “subdued Kashmir and took many prisoners and slave” [Elliot & Dawson, History of India as Told by Its Historians (it contains experts from Islamic chronicles), Vol. I, p. 122–23,203]. In 1033, Sultan Mahmud’s not-so-illustrious son, Sultan Masud I, made up for his illustrious father’s failure by launching “an attack on the fort of Sursuti in Kashmir. The entire garrison was put to the sword, except the women and children, who were carried away as slaves.”

While it is hard to establish which of these invasions established Islamic rule in Kashmir, the Sufis, Islam’s alleged prophets of peace, however had a prominent role in its Islamization, but it was a barbaric one.

About conversion of the masses to Islam in Kashmir, we get an idea of it around 1371 or 1381 CE, when Sayyid Ali Hamdani, a famous Sufi saint, arrived in Kashmir. The first thing he did was to build his khanqah [lodge orashram] on the site of “a small temple which was demolished…” [Baharistan, p. 36]. Before his coming to Kashmir, the reigning Sultan Qutbud-Din paid little attention to enforcing Islamic laws. In the tolerant local culture, Muslims at all levels of the society—including the Sultan, the Qadis [Qazi]—had all tolerantly and comfortably submerged themselves in the Hindu culture and customs of Kashmir [ibid, p. 37].

But Sufi saint Sayyid Hamdani was horrified by the un-Islamic practices of Kashmiri Muslims, and forbade this laxity and tried to revive orthodoxy. The reigning Sultan Qutbud-Din tried to adopt Islamic orthodoxy in his personal life, but “failed to propagate Islam in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of Amir Sayyid Ali Hamdani” [ibid]. As a result, the Sufi saint left Kashmir because of his reluctance to live in a land dominated by the idolatrous culture, customs and creed.

Later on, his son Amir Sayyid Muhammad, another great Sufi saint, came to Kashmir during the reign of the famous idol-breaker, Sultan Sikander. Sikander was not such a barbarian until the arrival of holy Sufi saint Sayyid Muhammad, who prodded the Sultan into enforcing the Islamic code in his domain. Unlike Sultan Qutbud-Din, Sikander agreed to the Sufi saint’s instruction. Sikander and Sayyid Muhammad, thus, formed an alliance to wipe out all signs of idolatry and its professors from Kashmir.

According to Muhammad Farishtah (d. 1614) [History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Vol. IV, 1997 imprint, p. 268], a historian of Delhi Sultan, Sikandar issued an order:

…proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead… Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins [Brahmins], rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur [Sikandar] ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down… Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, Destroyer of Idols.

According to another 17^th-century Persian chronicle, HM Chadurah’s Tarikh-i-Kashmir, Sikandar “was constantly busy in annihilating the infidels and destroyed most of the temples…” [trans. Razia Bano, Delhi, 1991, p. 55].

This, to learned Farishtah, was Sultan Sikandar’s greatest achievement. And to whom goes the credit?

Find it out from the proud author of Baharistan-i-Shahi, who writes: “…the credit of wiping out the vestiges of infidelity and heresy from the mirror of the conscience of the dwellers of these lands,” goes to Sufi saint Sayyid Muhammad [p. 37].

Succeeding the Iconoclast, his son Ameer Khan (aka Ally Shah) continued the butchery of the remaining Hindus of Kashmir, as adds Farishtah, he “persecuted the few Brahmins who still remained firm in their religion; and by putting all to death, who refused to embrace Mahomedism. He drove those who still lingered in Kashmeer entirely out of that kingdom” [ibid, p. 269].

Next, the liberal and tolerant Sultan Zainul Abedin (1423–1474) brought relief to the brutalized non-Muslims: he allowed religious freedom, even let the forcibly converted Hindus to revert. This enabled the flourishing of Hinduism, “which had been stamped out in the [earlier] reign of Sultan Sikandar the Iconoclast” [ibid, p. 74]. Under deviant Zainul Abedin, records Sydney Owen, “many Hindus (i.e. Hindus converted to Islam by force) were re-admitted into the Hindu fold” [From Mahmud Ghazni to the Disintegration of Mughal Empire, Delhi, p. 127). The horrified author of Baharistan-i-Shahi notes of the ascendancy of Hinduism and decline of Islam under Sultan Zainul Abedin [p. 74]:

…the infidels and their corrupt and immoral practices attained such popularity that even the ulema, the learned [Sufis], the Sayyids [nobles] and the Qadis [Islamic judges] of this land began to observe them without exhibiting even the slightest repugnance for them. There was none to forbid them to do so. It resulted in a gradual weakening of Islam and a decay in its cannons and postulates; idol-worship and corrupt and immoral practices thrived.

And Zainul pursued his liberal policies, like Akbar, by defying and angering the pious. Persian scholar Mulla Ahmad, for example, wrote to him reminding that,

…the main object of levying the jiziyah on them is their humiliation… God establishedjiziyah for their dishonor. The object is their humiliation and the (establishment) of the prestige and dignity of the Muslims. [Quoted by KS Lal, Theory and Practice of MuslimState in India, p. 113]

But terror befell upon the non-Muslims of Kashmir again in the reigns of Malik Raina and Kaji Chak, who converted the Hindus to Islam by the sword, again instigated by another Sufi saint, Amir Shamsud-Din Muhammad Iraqi, the greatest Sufi saint to arrive in Kashmir.

Iraqi arrived in Kashmir after Malik Musa Raina became the administrator of Kashmir (1501). He formed alliance with Malik Raina, and with his patronage and authority, says Baharistan-i-Shahi [p. 93–94]:

Amir Shamsud-Din Muhammad undertook wholesale destruction of all those idol-houses as well as total ruination of the very foundation of infidelity and disbelief. On the site of every idol-house he destroyed, he ordered the construction of a mosque for offering prayers after the Islamic manner.

And “on the instance of Shamsud-Din Iraqi, Musa Raina had issued orders that everyday 1,500 to 2,000 infidels be brought to the doorstep of Mir Shamsud-Din by his followers. They would remove their sacred thread (zunnar), administer Kelima [Muslim profession of faith] to them, circumcise them and make them eat beef”; and, thus, “twenty-four thousand Hindu families were converted to Iraqi’s faith by force and compulsion (qahran wa jabran)” [ibid, p. 105–06].

Saintly Iraqi continued his horror acts, when Malik Kaji Chak became the military commander under Sultan Muhammad Shah in 1519. And “one of the major commands of Amir Shamsud-Din Muhammad Iraqi carried out by him [Kaji Chak] was the massacre of the infidels and polytheists of this land,” says Baharistan-i-Shahi [p. 116]. What happened is that, many of those, forcibly converted to Islam by Malik Raina, later reverted to “polytheism”  [Hinduism]. Muslims spread a rumor that these apostates “had placed a copy of the holy Quran under their haunches to make a seat to sit upon.” Upon hearing this, the enraged Sufi saint protested to Kaji Chak, saying [ibid, p. 117]:
 
 “This community of idolaters has, after embracing and submitting to the Islamic faith, now gone back to defiance and apostasy. If you find yourself unable to inflict punishment upon them in accordance with the provisions of Sharia [which is death for apostasy] and take disciplinary action against them, it will become necessary and incumbent upon me to proceed on a self-imposed exile.”

Note that Iraqi’s complaint does not mention the alleged disrespect of the Quran, but simply emphasize the Hindus’ abandonment of Islam after accepting it—i.e. their apostasy, punishment for which is death in Islam. In order to pacify the enraged Sufi saint, Malik Kaji Chak “decided upon carrying out wholesale massacre of the infidels,” says Baharistan-i-Shahi, which was scheduled to be carried out on the holy festival day of Ahsura[Muharram, 1518 CE; Iraqi was Shiite], and,

…about seven to eight hundred infidels were put to death. Those killed were the leading personalities of the community of infidels at that time. [p. 117]

Thereupon, “the entire community of infidels and polytheists in Kashmir was coerced into conversion to Islam at the point of the sword. This is one of the major achievements of Malik Kaji Chak,” adds the proud author ofBaharistan-i-Shahi [p. 117].

This horrifying action, of course, was ordered by the great Sufi saint.

I need not say anything else to define the nature of the Sufis. Let me, however, emphasize that, Kashmir is flaunted by Muslims as the best example of peaceful penetration of Islam in India—thanks to peaceful Sufis, of course. And this is the story of the most peaceful Sufis that came to India from the Muslim world.

The story of other greatest Sufis of India is no better. They came, with their followers, as vicious Jihadi warriors to slaughter the infidels:

1.         Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmer came with Muhammad Ghauri’s army, which treacherously defeated the humane and benevolent king Prithviraj Chauhan.

2.         Nizamuddin Auliya participated in a Jihad war alongside Nasriruddin Qibacha in Multan.

3.         Sheikh Shah Jalal, the great Sufi saint of Bangladesh, fought in a Jihadi war against Hindu king Ghor Govinda of Sylhet.

And all of these Sufi saints have claimed their role as decisive in winning those bloody wars. And such go the stories of most of the great Sufis—from India, to Africa, to the Balkan. (For more on the horrible activities of Sufis, consult my book, Islam Jihad, p. 115–133).

Source: http://www.faithfreedom.org/2009/09/05/kashmir-propagation-of-islam-and-terror-of-the-sufis/

New York subway jihad plotter quotes Qur'an verse justifying suicide bombing

The last part of this, Ahmedzay's rant against "Zionist Jews," not reproduced below, was reported yesterday. This report is extraordinary for the fact that it shows Ahmedzay quoting Qur'an 9:111 to justify suicide bombing. This is a common tactic of suicide bombing recruiters, but to point it out in teh West usually brings one a charge of "Islamophobia." I guess Ahmedzay must be an "Islamophobe." "Zarein Ahmedzay's statement when he pleaded guilty to terrorist charges," from the New York Post, April 23 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

"Your Honor, I would like to quote from the Qur'an."

"Quote, Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their wealth for the price of Paradise, to fight in the way of Allah, to kill and get killed. It is a promise binding on the truth in the Torah, the Gospel and the Qur'an, end of quote."

That's Qur'an 9:111, the justification for suicide attacks. The only guarantee of Paradise in the Qur'an is this verse, which guarantees it to those who kill and are killed for Allah. This once again underscores the jihadist contention that they represent Islamic authenticity -- a charge never yet refuted by Muslim "moderates" in any way that has proven effective to change jihadists' minds.

Sources. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/new-york-subway-jihad-plotter-quotes-quran-verse-justifying-suicide-bombing.html

IHS