What "Religion of Peace" Really Means
Thursday, November 8
Malise Ruthven's book, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America, seeks to understand the forces behind Islamic terrorist attacks. It is a difficult book to read, and yet parts of it clarified and illuminated Islamic terrorism better than anything I've ever read. And A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America is one of the very few books I've read that has no obvious ax to grind. Below are some selected quotes from the book:
As almost every account of Islam will explain, the word Islam (self-surrender) derives from the same root as salam (peace). In its self-definition Islam is primarily a "religion of peace." The problem consists not in the idea of peace as a good, but in the means deployed to achieve it. In the Quranic discourse, as in the legal formulations derived from the Quran and the Prophet's traditions, the very notion of peace is conditional on the acknowledgment of the Islamic idea of God.
The Quran implies that the world will be at peace when every person on Earth submits to the will of Allah (by force if necessary). In that sense, Islam is a religion of peace. Another quote from the book:The jihad was integral to Islamic expansion. Understood as a political-military struggle, it provided the rationale for the Islamic imperium.
...Jihad, as is now widely known, means "struggle:" it has the same root as ijtihad, the interpretative "effort" needed to fathom the law as revealed by God and his Prophet. According to a well-known hadith, jihad is the "monasticism" of faith. "Every nation has its monasticism and the monasticism of this nation is the jihad." Muhammad disapproved of asceticism: there was to be "no monkery" in his community. Jihad held the place occupied by asceticism in early Christianity.
Ever since I read that, I've thought differently of jihad. If you are a devout person, if you want to please Allah and show him how much you worship Him, but you do not have the avenue of expression called asceticism, how can you demonstrate your devotion? Muhammad gave the answer: Jihad. Express it in action. Express it by striving mightily in the name of Allah, not just in your mind, but in the world. Advance Allah's cause by defending Islam, and by trying to make every country on earth follow the law of Allah. Work at it. Put your money where your faith is.
And one final quote from A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America:Modernity is seductive: Satan is a tempter, not a tyrant. Since Muslim cultures tend to draw boundaries around social behavior, emphasizing external rather than internal moral constraints, governments — or more pervasively "the West" — are blamed for the availability of temptations. Imported American dramas such as Dallas, Knott's Landing and Falcon Crest, showing human behavior in situations dominated by lust, greed, and selfishness, are seen as undermining the Muslim family by introducing aspirations towards materialism and sexual immorality.
I thought that was interesting. In the West, because we hold liberty as a fundamental value, we think of morality as something we exercise personally, from within.
Islam is more oriented toward controlling the environment — essentially to limit temptations — in order to impose morality (or strengthen it) from outside. In that sense, then, a free society is incompatible with the strict application of Islam. An Islamic-style moral life would require an Islamic state, or at the very least, the kind of isolated or enclosed community the Amish have. (This may explain, at least in part, why the mosque Nonie Darwish attended encouraged American Muslims to stay isolated from the infidel American culture.)
Islamic fundamentalists see the establishment of Islamic law as a moral duty. It creates an environment where everyone can be moral, and where infidels cannot infect the Muslims with their immoral example. The Islamic vision is very much like the Pleasantville fantasy-perfect world, but the achievement of the vision requires the removal of so many liberties it becomes a repressive totalitarian state.
Anyway, I recommend Malise Ruthven's book, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America. It is a valuable contribution to the greater conversation about how to reverse the trend toward global jihad.
2 comments:
CULTURAL JIHAD: MOSQUE-BUILDING, CHURCH-BURNING, BUDDHA-BASHING AND THE HUMILIATION OF THE KUFFAR
Islam is the only religion which is more obsessed with unbelievers than it is with its own followers. Muslims define their own identity solely in opposition to the Kuffar. Islamic accomplishments are so negligible that they have no positive cultural features with which they can identify. Hence the unceasing and implacable aggression toward civilized peoples and envy of their accomplishments. The development
and deliberate cultivation of hatred is such a central feature of Islam that there is nothing that we
Kuffars can do, or not do, that would make our univited guests hate us any less or any more.
Rage is so intrinsic to Islam that external events are irrelevant. Hatred of non-Moslems is the pivot of Islamic existence. Muslims are bound together by a shared and carefully nurtured animosity to 'The Other' developed from earliest childhood, which ignites a permanent fire of tension between Moslems and non-Moslems. Ever since Jihadists started immigrating into the West, we have become all too familiar with concepts such as 'Killing the unbelievers wherever you find them' and the tribal polarities of Dar al-Harb versus Dar al-Islam , Ummah versus Kuffar etc.
This venom manifests not only as highly publicised murderous attacks - 9/11, 7/7, Beslan, Madrid, Bali etc but as less well publicised local instances of 'street-jihad' - small scale SJS murders, child abductions , rapes and general gangsterism. Muslims do not necessarily want to kill all unbelievers, since Muslim culture is predatory and parasitic and
incapable of sustaining itself. Large numbers of non-Muslims have always been kept as 'dhimmis' - second
class citizens who supported their indolent masters by their labour and payment of the crippling 'jizya' -
the infidel poll tax. But if the kuffar is not killed, it is essential that he must be thoroughly humiliated.
Humiliation is very important in Islam - second only to killing. Humiliation of the kuffar takes a number of forms:
1) Dhimmitude - economic
and social oppression bordering on slavery.
(2) Sexual predation - historical white
slavery and modern day pedophile rings and rape of 'uncovered
meat'.
(3) Cultural humiliation - muslim cultural triumphalism and destruction of the kuffars' culture.
Most counter-jihadists are familiar with humiliation
by dhimmitude and Islamic sexual predation, but cultural humiliation doesn't get as much publicity in the blogosphere, and yet it is a growing danger that deserves far more attention.
At first sight the idea of muslim cultural triumphalism seems absurd. Dar al-Islam produces nothing of any cultural significance that Dar al-Harb wants . But the fact that they have nothing to offer doesn't stop them imposing their cultural presence with domineering and triumphalist structures.
A major expression of cultural supremacism in Europe is the building of large, aggressive 'in-yer-face' mosques in prominent locations. For example, the London megamosque will be next to the
Olympic site and will be many times bigger than any Christian building in London - an edifice of Stalinesque gigantomania . What Muslims lack in quality they attempt to make up for in size and numbers. Nevertheless, large piles of masonry still can't compensate for the inherent cultural barrenness of Islam, and the main effort in cultural humiliation is directed at destroying the kuffars' culture rather than creating anything new. Constant attempts are made to restrict the public celebration of traditional kuffar festivals, such as Halloween, Christmas and Easter.
Also, and most importantly, the religious artifacts of the Kuffar, especially 'idolatrous' images such as crosses, carvings, statues and stained glass windows, are regarded as Jahiliyya - worthless trash. Today, as all throughout its past, Muslims devalue the civilisations which they attempt to supplant through the defacing of ancient historical and religious sites. Any culture that is pre-Islamic is considered to be jahiliyya, that is, from " the time of ignorance .
As the European Jihadist population increases in number and expands outwards from its ghettos, we can expect escalating attacks on the physical remnants of our culture, especially sacred sites such as churches.
Eventually the architectural and artistic heritage of Europe will go the way of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Islamic multiculturalism will not have produced 'vibrant cultural enrichment' but cultural desolation.
najistani,
I agree, they are barbarians and the barbarians are at the gate. We can't fail or the western world along with its liberty and prosperity will be nothing more than a fading memory, if it is remembered at all.
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