Muslims against Islamism

Having previously praised certain moderate Muslims, here is an interview with M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD): Muslims against Islamism.

The war against Christians is being waged not just by ISIS but by its ideological Sunni forefathers of the Wahhabi Islamist movement, nurtured by the house of Saud and the Muslim Brotherhood and fed by Islamist benefactors from the Gulf (e.g., Qatar) and beyond. ISIS’s attacks against Christians were simply learned from the ideologies of the Wahhabi militants of Saudi Arabia, the home and the headquarters of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which sets the tone for the supremacist Islam, or Islamism, promoted across the planet. Saudi Arabia has a long, notorious track record of being one of the world’s worst offenders of religious freedom and notably of Christians, who are not allowed to worship publicly, build churches, or carry Bibles. The fate of Christians is tied to the abysmal fate of all minorities, including dissident Muslims — of all victims of persecution under political Islam and its militant fascist offshoots.

Related: "Nonsense about terrorism's 'root causes'," on CNN no less.

Already a predictable tsunami of nonsense has washed over us about the "root causes" of terrorism. We have heard from Obama administration officials and even the President himself that terrorism has something to do with lack of opportunities and poverty. Obama said on Wednesday that "we have to address grievances terrorists exploit, including economic grievances."

But almost all the Islamist terrorists are actually men and women of the upper half.

 

The Islamic State is Very Islamic

The Atlantic, "What ISIS really wants:"

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. ...

Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

In 2002, I wrote that "Islam is what Muslims do," meaning that there is no objective reality to Islam that exists apart from the deeds of its adherents. There is no ideal form of Islam that exists independently of Muslims. The original post vanished when Google bought Blogger, but I made the same points here. And so back to Prof. Haykel, who makes the same point as well:

He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

David Goldman, Jihad and Self-Sacrifice in Islam:

Comparative religion is not a statistical exercise: it is meaningless to tally up the victims of Crusaders and compare them to the victims of Islam and quibble about which religion is more violent. Religious war of conquest, that is, jihad, has the same role in Islam that the Lord’s Supper has in Christianity. Christianity (and Judaism) have exercised violence in the past but never sacralized violence. That is unique to Islam among the self-styled Mosaic religions.

Burning the Jordanian pilot as an act of mercy

The murder of Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh by dousing him with fuel, then setting him alight, is garnering fierce reaction in the West. Barbaric, vicious, inhuman and all manner of like accusations have been slung.

But it could be that ISIS burned al Kasabeh to death as an act of religious mercy. Dying by fire, not by one's own hand, confers martyrdom on the victim. According to the Muslim site Islam Question and Answer,

The one who dies by burning is a martyr, because of the report narrated by Ahmad (23804), Abu Dawood (3111) and al-Nasaa’i (1846) from Jaabir ibn ‘Ateek (may Allah be pleased with him), according to which the Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: What do you regard as martyrdom?” They said: Being killed for the sake of Allaah. The Messenger of Allaah (S) said: “Martyrdom is seven things besides being killed for the sake of Allaah. The one who dies of the plague is a martyr, the one who drowns is a martyr, the one who dies of pleurisy is a martyr, the one who dies of a stomach disease is a martyr, the one who is burned to death is a martyr, ...

 There has been over the centuries a great deal of discussion about what kind of death by burning exactly qualifies. The site quotes a scholar as saying that "in general," one who dies by burning is a martyr but that with very few exceptions, no such victim specifically can be so thought.

Muslims know all this, of course, which is why the outcry in the Muslim world at the killing has not been over its method but that it occurred at all.

Update: "Honor killings" in the Arab/Muslim world are unfortunately all too common. The victim is a female (not necessarily a grown woman) who, in the opinion of her male relatives, has brought shame and dishonor upon the family by doing deeds such as adultery, fornication, being raped, flirting with a man or even becoming too westernized.

Burning the woman to death is a very common means of killing her. Example headlines:

"Yemeni girl, 15, 'burned to death by father'"

"A Father Burned His 13-Year-Old Daughter to Death for Walking Home With a Boy."

"Honor killing in Scotland: Muslim burns ex-wife to death for being “too Westernised"

"Man burns daughter to death in suspected honor killing"

There is nothing in the Quran that commands or even justifies honor killings, and Arab culture is certainly not the only culture that evokes such murders, but that burning is so common is almost certainly related to Mohammed's teaching that such a death confers martyrdom. Since martyrs are guaranteed paradise, killing by burning is thought to be less cruel, eternally, than by other means. This accounts, I believe, why in my readings of Jordan's responses to the pilot's death, I have not seen condemnation of the means used, just the fact of the killing.

However, burning women to death is not even solely an Arab custom. "Bride burning" in India, usually over dowry issues, remains a huge problem there, accounting for at least 2,500 deaths per year.

Update: MEMRI has just published excerpts of a fatwa (Muslim religious ruling) issued by ISIS that states in part:

"Q: What is the ruling on burning an infidel with fire until he dies?"

"A: The Hanafi and Shafi'i schools [of Islam] hold that burning is completely permissible. They interpreted the saying of the Prophet that 'Only Allah shall torture with fire' as [a call for] humility. [The scholar] Al-Muhallab said: 'This ban is not [an actual] prohibition, but rather a means for [advocating] humility.'

"[Shafi'i scholar] Ibn Hajar, may Allah have mercy on him, said: '[This saying] indicates that it is permissibile to burn, as the Companions did. The Prophet blinded two men from 'Arina [whom he judged to be apostates and criminals] with a branding iron. Khalid bin Al-Walid, [one of the Prophet's Companions], also burned apostates with fire.'

"Some scholars hold that burning with fire is essentially prohibited, but is permissible while acting in retribution, as the Prophat did with the two men of 'Arina. He blinded them with an iron as an act of retribution, as is mentioned in authentic [hadith]. And this is the most prominent among the proofs."

This statement does not directly state that the murdered pilot is a infidel, but that is clearly the implication (MEMRI did not publish the entire fatwa). If ISIS did indeed hold that al-Kasabeh was an infidel then his murder by fire was "retribution" for his sorties against ISIS.

Sunni And Shiite British Imams Denounce ISIS Together

Sunni And Shiite British Imams Denounce ISIS Together In New Video

This is welcome, but I do not put a lot of stock in its effectiveness for reasons I explained in "The unserious stance of "moderate" Muslims."



As I said then, the Quran's "verses of the sword" are later than the verses of peace, hence abrogate the earlier verses. The terrorists know this. And so do moderates. And that's one reason Islamists win the argument - 1,400 years of Muslim exegesis is on their side, not the moderates. The other reason they win, of course, is that they simply kill anyone who opposes them, including moderates.

Meanwhile, this is what Daesh (ISIS) is doing, and warning, it is stomach turning:

Islamic State terrorists have begun their promised killing of Christians in Mosul, and they have started with the children. According to a report via CNN, a Chaldean-American businessman has said that killings have started in Mosul and children's heads are being erected on poles in a city park.

Photos at the link. I have seen some gore in my life, but those are sickening.

Speaking of ISIS and these imams, it's worth remembering the words of just retired British Gen. Jonathan Shaw.

He believes that Isil can only be defeated by political and ideological means. Western air strikes in Iraq and Syria will, in his view, achieve nothing except temporary tactical success.

When it comes to waging that ideological struggle, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pivotal. "The root problem is that those two countries are the only two countries in the world where Wahhabi Salafism is the state religion – and Isil is a violent expression of Wahabist Salafism," said Gen Shaw. ...

[The bombing campaign against ISIS is] "not addressing the fundamental problem of Wahhabi Salafism as a culture and a creed, which has got out of control and is still the ideological basis of Isil – and which will continue to exist even if we stop their advance in Iraq."

And yet history does show that German and Japanese ideology got changed pretty quick and permanently back in 1941-1945. But that is not like what we are doing against ISIS, not even remotely.

Gen. Shaw also makes clear the bloodstream of this rancid ideology is Saudi and Qatari money. And now even some Pakistani government ministers are starting to get it.

Sincere kudos to John Kerry

It is not often I compliment John Kerry, and rarer still on a topic relating to combating Muslim terrorists. But to this I can only say, "Good on yer, John!"

Kerry made clear earlier this week that he is committed to referring to the Islamic State as "Daesh," a name that the group considers so degrading that it has threatened to kill anyone under Islamic State rule who uses it. The Islamic State's opponents in the Muslim world have already embraced the name.

"Daesh" is an acronym for the Arabic phrase meaning the "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" (though the last word can also be translated as "Damascus" or "Levant"), and it is thought to offend the extremist group because it sounds similar to an Arabic word for crushing something underfoot.

Daesh in Arabic "sounds like something monstrous. ... It's a way of stigmatizing [the Islamic State], making it something ugly," Joseph Bahout, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Huffington Post.

"Daesh" shall henceforth be their moniker on Sense of Events as well.