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IS THERE RADICAL ISLAM?

by Shalom Noury

The pro Islamic apologia reached unprecedented heights after the bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) and has continued relentlessly since them. Variations have of course appeared since the recent London subway bombings. One can hardly find somebody that does not try to absolve Islam from the actions of its "radicals".

That distinguished group includes, among so many others, Shimon Peres, George W. Bush and of course every "liberal-leftist" around the globe, as well as every Anti-Jew and oil business-connected person. The absurdity of their assumptions and assertions puts to shame even Josef Goebbel's [1] best efforts while at the same time displaying either total ignorance, mental distortion or reliance on the ignorance of people around the world - a much more acceptable notion - to spread that concept.

Central to the issue is the basic question: Is what we call "radical Islam" in contradistinction to "Islam" proper - to sop the feelings of would-be political partners and to make Moslem neighbours feel that we really like them and their faith - an illusion?

Are the doctrines labeled radical and extremist and fanatic or fundamentalist not essentially part of mainstream Islam?

One of the first statements to appear right after the WTC bombing: only a perfect ignorant would connect the 9/11 bombing with Jihad. That bombing and Islamic terror in general have a completely different cause.

Jihad, they continue to explain to us, is, as taught in the several Islamic theological schools, an internal, spiritual fight in which the believer fights with himself in order to arrive at the truth.

So there are good and bad Moslems, radical and non radical Islam, and terror has nothing to do with Islam or Jihad.

In his Radical Islam, Bruno Etienne [2] states: "in fact, Jihad means war against ourselves, but, as a means for the expansion of Islam and thus a fight against the infidels and "bad" Moslems.

That is exactly the opposite of what all apologists are trying to shove down the throats of the ignoramuses and their associates.

Furthermore, Etienne explains, the effort on oneself cannot be separated from the fight against "evil", given that the scope of Jihad is the establishment of an Islamic geographical regime over all social groups. Jihad has to bring all of humanity to submission to god and therefore Moslems must first of all transform themselves. In that sense Jihad becomes the organization of violence.

Moreover, Etienne explains, Jihad is not a fundamentalist's deviation of Islam; it is the ethical contents of Islam itself.

Moslems rely on the Koran and the Sunna, the classic Islamic doctrine on which the original sense of Islam was founded: the fight is not only against the infidels but also against the same Moslems in order to bring to the world the fulfilment of the prophecy and with it the world Islamic state, or Kalifat.

The Umma - the community of Moslims - has the historical mission of converting everybody to the "true" religion. Etienne then quotes the Koran's suras that command you to the holy war.

The Islamists' most quoted author, Ibn Taymiyya, [3] places the divulging of Islam by holy war above the five pilasters and asserts that the Jihad may be only finished by the establishment of the total Umma, that is, when the whole world would be converted to Islam. He allows for "cease-fires and prorogations which are necessarily only provisory and of short duration, because: "Islam has to spread all over the universe, if necessary by force."

Islam is not only supercessionist as a religion, it is triumphalist and there must be no mistaking this.

Islam does not mean "peace", as some try to present it. That word in Arabic is "salaam" and even though the same consonants are present, the words are entirely different in denotation and connotation.

According to Mohammed and those who followed him, it is the will of Allah that Islam spread throughout the world and become dominant.

The territorial base of Islam knows no boundaries. As soon as any Moslem has set foot anywhere, that territory automatically becomes an active part of the Umma, an Islamic holy land, and it is completely justified to secure that territory by acts of aggression, deceit and treachery. So, is any part of the world safe once any mullah or imam or sheikh has declared that it "is" part of Moslem lands?

The Arabs, from the seventh century to the present, have spread Islam by violence, forcibly converting populations en masse and waging war to expand the territorial base of the religion.

We are most familiar with the Middle East, but let's not forget the Indian sub-continent and South East Asia ... Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia ... Can Michigan - or Toscana - be far behind?^**

It isn't that we must criminalize every Moslem; that would be stupid and disgusting. But we must understand them and they should help us to do so. Let's understand:

I remember the 14th. Of Sept. 1998 title on an important Italian newspaper, La Repubblica: "Italy will be Islamized - that's how holy war is being prepared". It reported the words of sheik Omar Bakri, who, quoting Muhammad, asserted that after Constantinople "it will be Rome's turn; no Moslem doubts that Italy would be Islamized and that Islam's flag would fly over Rome".

It is thus not an issue of terrorism. We need to know whether the Moslems that live amongst us, in this and every country, approve or condemn the concept of freedom in countries of a Moslem majority, given that Moslem immigration into the western countries has become significant and massive. And if they approve, does that mean freedom for them alone.

Bernard Lewis [4] talks about "the third attempt of Moslem invasion of Europe, more successful than the previous ones". This applies to America.

A high Islamic exponent said: "we will invade you thanks to your democratic laws; we will dominate you thanks to our religious rules." It may not be every Moslem's opinion, but then why don't the Moslems of the West ask and demand of the Arab and Islamic regimes equal rights to all?

They often assert that Jews and Christians are not obligated to convert, but must pay an additional tax in order for them to be "protected. "Protected, but not citizens", observes Alexandre Del Valle. They are dhimmies or some sort of third class subject or a first class slave. Thus Christians cannot publicly profess their religion, nor proselytize. That means the disappearance of Christianity, as is evidenced at present in all Moslem countries, including those called "moderate", while in other countries, as in the Sudan, Christians have suffered genocide.

Del Valle, an Islamologist in the University of Paris, observes, "comparative study of the legal status of non-Moslems - as is conceived in the four Sunni juridical schools and as is in the Shiite tradition shows that rejection of "infidels" political-juridical power is inscribed in a historically continuous practice - from the submission of the Jews of Arabia in 638 to date[5]. It stems from the purest orthodox Islamic tradition of which all Islam's' tendencies and divisions are unanimous.

Del Valle is criticizing the fact that "all our 'intellectuals' blinded by their own western concepts of religion or faith" and also by their ignorance, "refuse, generally, to analyze Islam as being a threat." Indeed, in the political arena and in Catholic and Anglican circles, the preference is to defend the Arab regimes. Maybe it's done in order to alleviate the pressure on the Christian communities there. Or, more probably, it's due to their supercessionist beliefs, oil interests or plain old antisemitism.

But, what are the results? Limes, Italy: "Christianity today is the most persecuted religion. Numbers are shocking: 250 million Christian persecuted in 1997, 160,000 victims every year of violent death in 70 [Moslem] countries".

Of course, since Jews were already all but eliminated from the Moslem countries they can't be persecuted there - except the few that remain. Islam has taken to eliminate Jews by wars or terror from the Middle East and the rest of the world, as is being daily preached from every mosque and by all Arab-Moslem media and most of its rulers.

I wish, although I don't believe it will happen, that the west would wake up before those who want to transform the whole world into a great Moslem Caliphate or a Saudi Arabia or an Iran of planetary dimensions will start blowing it up to demand the liberation of Pakistani London occupied by the British.

1. Josef Goebbel was Hitler's Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda during the Nazi era.

2. Bruno Etienne is professor at the Institute of Politics at Aix-en-Provence and a specialist on the Maghreb and the Arab world. His book Radical Islam was published by Hachette (Paris) in 1987. He has recently written that the London attacks are "a serious warning for France," (www.crisisstates.com/download/wp/WP34.pdf).

3. Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya was a moslim scholar who lived from 1263-1328 C.E. According to Ted Thornton (www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/taqi_al.htm), "His thinking inspired the late eighteenth century Wahhabi school of thought as well as many nineteenth and twentieth century revivalist movements, (including the Jihad Organization that was responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981).

4. Bernard Lewis, "The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror," (The Modern Library, 2003).

5. See also the comments by David Eden, June 5, 2002 about the dhimmitude of Tunisian Jewry (http://www.harissa.com/discus/messages/97/1338.html?1023418448).

Shalom Noury (Shuny) is a columnist. He can be contacted by email at shuny206@hotmail.com or at his home page: http://www.israele-dossier.info

This is a revision of an article that initially appeared Sep 24 2001 on the Israele Dossier website.