Understanding Islam XVI: The Wrong Response to Islam

Kafirs have a basic instinct when faced with Islam. They make compromises in the face of force and terror. We will do things our way based on Judeo-Christian morals and ethics: Islam can reform and life will be good. You cannot meet a philosophy of force with compromise. Reform of Islam is a logically impossible. Since most kafirs don’t know anything about the history of Islam, they think that we will work this out like we always have. We will find middle ground. This is a crucial error in western Christianized thinking that our rules apply to Islam. Here’s the problem. Even if a Muslim wanted to leave Islam, it is a death sentence. They would become an apostate. An apostate is worse than a kafir. The Qur’an says that apostasy is a crime worse than mass murder.

As a true Christian, Islam will not even recognize you as a follower of Jesus. How is that you say? Simple really, Islam teaches that true Christians are those who say that Jesus was a Muslim prophet; there is no crucifixion, no resurrection and no Trinity (this is exactly why Muslim Imam and clerics often agree with liberal theology in Christianity). The only true Jews are those who admit that the Torah is wrong and that Muhammad was the last in the line of Jewish prophets. Otherwise, you are not a Christian or Jew in the eyes of Islam. Lousy start point for conversation. In Islam the only real Christians and Jews are dhimmis, since they must declare the Scriptures to be corrupt and that Muhammad is the last prophet of both Jews and Christians. Those who don’t are not true Christians and Jews by Islamic standards, but kafirs.

In western culture, there is the ability to criticize our own actions and the action of our political and religious leaders and correct mistakes. Criticism of Islamic religion or politics by Muslims is rare and for a kafir can lead to a deadly end. We learned this from Danish Muhammad cartoons and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. So when Islam says you are free to say anything you want, you are…just don’t offend a Muslim. As for religion and politics…the US Constitution separates the church and state, but Islam demands that religion and state be combined as one unit. In Islam these are inseparable because it is a theocracy.

As a Christian my correct response to Islam is a fearless and compassionate explanation of the Gospel to Muslims. It is the only thing powerful enough to reach into the mindset where Muslims are at. The few points of commonality like Jesus and the portions of Scripture lifted from the Bible are always a good place to start. My best advice is to start with Jesus and see where it goes from there.

Understanding Islam XV: Islamic Ethics (or lack thereof)

Let’s get this out of the way. Islamic ethics…are not ethics as westernized cultures would understand ethics. In Christianity and western society in generally they would be considered deceitful immoralities. Islamic ethics are dualistic and in their very nature contradictory and often hypocritical. They have one set of rules for Muslims and one for Kafirs True moral type ethics like loyalty, truth and love are applied to Muslims but Kafir can be deceived, robbed, murdered and raped. There is a doctrine for sacred deceit…al-Taqiyya. Most westernized ethics are based upon the Golden Rule, treat others as you would be treated.

Who are others? The others are everyone. There’s no elimination of someone because of race, sex, ethnicity, religion. Islam the Golden Rule only applies to Muslims. Since Kafir are sub human those types of ethics do not apply to them. The Qur’an never addresses humanity as a whole. Instead humanity is always divided into the Kafir and Muslim. The Qur’an states Kafir are to be treated differently from the believer and this treatment can be violent. In Islam there is no universal humanity therefore no ability to have peaceful unity. They do not believe all men are created equal so they will also deny American founding principles. Because of this contradictory philosophy there cannot be concept of right and wrong in Islam.

Also, when Muslim scholars say terror is not the way of Islam, they are practicing al-Taqiyya (dissimulation). It means sacred deception. To even have a concept of sacred deceit is an extraordinary ethical-less thought. Islamic ethics are clearly laid out in the Hadith. The nuts and bolts?: A Muslim is to never cheat another Muslim in business, does not lie to another Muslim, does not kill another Muslim, does not bother another Muslim’s wife. These statements are very dualistic because this behavior is only reserved for other Muslims. Everyone else is fair game.

To deal with Islam, it is critical that we understand its ethics and lack of them, especially al-Taqiyya. We assume that they’re fundamental ethics are the same as ours but this assumption is based upon ignorance. Ignorance that can get people dead. Ours ethics are based on the unitary law of treating all people the same. Islamic ethics are based upon the idea of Kafirs and believers and having a separate set of ethics and being inferior. One cannot understand Islam without understanding this ethical duality. Islam is a supremacist religion that looks down on all other people as inferior and not worth treating as human.

Understanding Islam XIV: The Qur'an

The Qur’an might now be the most famous book never read (next to the Bible). The Qur’an was supposedly written by Muhammad over a period of 23 years beginning in 610 AD, starting when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632 AD. The Quran is composed of verses (Ayah) that make up 114 chapters (Sura) of unequal length which are classified either as Meccan or Medinan depending upon the place and time of their claimed revelation. The interesting thing about Muhammad is that during the time that these portions of the Qur'an were written, they appear to change in tone from somewhat benevolent to outright murderous and violent. It seems that in Muhammad’s movement (The Hijra/Hajj, fleeing) through the desert from Mecca to Medina something changed him drastically. That is why the Qur’an is often viewed as nearly two distinct documents, one more peaceful than the other: Mecca (young and peaceful) and Medina (older and more violent).

Most Muslims will agree that the Qur'an we see today was canonized by Uthman Ibn Affan (653-656). Upon the canonization of the Qur'an, Uthman had the other codices that existed at the time destroyed and burnt. I suggest this is to standardize all text to make a claim to perfect divine inspiration while simultaneously destroying all manuscripts and copies that were obvious evidences of contradiction and discrepancies. This is why we now have no extant copies of the Qur’an and no disputes because all evidence to the contrary was destroyed centuries ago to cover Islam’s tracks so to speak. The divinely inspired accuracy of the Qur’an is not evidence of divine inspiration but rather evidence of duplicity and deceptive use of corroborating evidences.

The Qur’an contains 114 Suras or chapters. If you pick up a Qur’an and thumb through it, you will notice very quickly that the long chapters are in the beginning and the short chapters are all at the end. The only organizational structure in the Qur’an is large to small…that’s it. That’s why the Qur’an is so confusing. A feature that stands out is how repetitious it is. The other thing that is striking is the Qur’an’s duality or contradictory nature. This cancellation of one verse by another later verse is called abrogation. But abrogation does not cancel or negate the verse because if the earlier verse was by Allah then that verse is true because, Allah by definition, cannot tell a lie. The Qur’an is contradictory, but both sides of the contradiction are true. This turns out to be an insight into the mind of Islam because it means that Muslims can hold in their mind two contradictory ideas and accept both of them as true. This explains how Muslims after September 11th were able to say Islam is a peaceful religion. A peaceful religion doesn’t send out jihadists to kill 3,000 people. This of course is a violation of the first axiom of logic called the Law of Non-contradiction. This then begs the question. If Allah is omniscient and perfect, how can he also be contradictory?

Understanding Islam XIII: Dhimmitude, Control Through Fear

Dhimmitude is a concept unique to Islam but similar to the caste system in India. It is governed by submission through fear and dominance. It is a form of semi-slavery so that is why I place it here after the posts on slavery and submission. A Dhimmi is a Kafir (infidel) that is allowed to live under Islamic Sharia. Anyone that fashions their behavior around Islam to appease it is also dhimmi. Today we see our politicians, journalists and intellectuals play the role of dhimmis. A dhimmi is what amounts to a semi-slave. First enslaved mentally to sharia, then physically. They are firstly taxed into submission. A dhimmi was not really a free person under sharia. In another sense a church couldn’t ring its bells because bells are a sign of Satan, according to Muhammad. Sharia Law for Dhimmi are appalling because they established a second-class citizenship. The dhimmi did not have civil rights regardless of skin color. A dhimmi couldn’t prosecute a crime against a Muslim.

In a recent 20th century incident in Turkey...

When Smyrna, the last of the seven churches of Asia was destroyed in 1922, it was not done with the military. Rioting Muslims did it (Smyrna Massacre of 1922). Riots are also a form of jihad. It was known as the Armenian/Pontic genocide and was the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population from its historic homeland in Anatolia. Estimates are that up top 1,000,000 were murdered by the Ottoman Empire, Turkish National Movement…what were considered “moderate Muslims."

Dhimmitude, which is the mind of the dhimmi, destroys the civilization because the only way out is by giving up all of your old culture and taking on Islamic philosophies. Here is the abbreviated version: Islam seeks to annihilate all other cultures by dhimmi laws that come out of the Sharia law. The lack of civil rights, abuse, humiliation and oppressive tax burden wears away the spirit to resist becoming Islamic. Dhimmi get new names and names of cities change and then the cultural history vanishes. Once a nation has been fully Islamisized, all of its history disappears. The culture of the Greeks in Anatolia was destroyed by 1922-23. In Pakistan, a Muslim country, the native culture was Hindu. Afghanistan was a Buddhist culture that has since been completely annihilated and replaced by the Taliban and others.

Understanding Islam XII: Islam IS Submission

Islam is a chain of submission. From the top down it is Allah, Muhammad, the Muslim, the Kafir, the dhimmi and the slave. In this country we are beginning to see how submission works. We’re not as far along as Europe, but Muslims have immigrated here and have started making their demands as we have seen in public Islamic calls to prayer in America’s first Muslim majority city in Hamtramck, Michigan and with “Clock Boy”. The first thing they demanded was that the textbooks of America must conform to their way of teaching about Islam. I’ve spoken with a history major at West Chester University in PA and he has confirmed this fact just as a precursory review of textbooks will show. Yet, Islam will claim they are just trying to fit in according to our rules and ethics.

This duality is explained in two phases that Islam manifests to the world. The face of Mecca and the face of Medina. Medina is the violent phase, the political phase. Mecca is the nice phase. What we have is that the Qur’an of Mecca is used as a shield. It’s the public face of Islam. Mecca is what Muslims always talk about peace with or to Kafirs. This duality, this subtlety is what makes Islam so powerful because you can’t just jump up and condemn Islam as being totally violent. It needs to be clarified like this and this is a critical distinction that all Kafir must understand about Islam.

It isn’t that all Muslims are peaceful or all Muslims are violent at any one given time. It is unique characteristic of Islam that it allows all Muslims to be peaceful at any one given moment or allows them to all be violent at any one given tie based on their current political military position. This is obviously based on Jihad an whether or not they feel they are under threat (remember al-Taqiyya?). In other words, all Muslims are capable and permitted by their holy writ to wage jihad and are expected to. The question is: Are they being obedient to the murderous decrees of Allah and obedient to the murderous character of Muhammad that all Muslims are called to emulate? Remember, the Qur’an and Hadith are filled with contradictory/dualistic statements of jihad and peace. That peace is defined by Islam…which is only directed at Muslims. Kafir must submit or convert…or be subject to death.

When jihad happens such as the 9/ 11 or the Paris massacre, Muslims say, “Oh, that is not the real Islam”. But it is. “Moderates” will not protest, merely deny. Why don’t they protest against the Medinan Muslims, the jihadists? Because they are outranked in order of submission. The Medinan Qur’an that celebrates war and political power is higher and more powerful than the Meccan Qur’an in terms of authority in Islam.

What is peace in Islam? Peace in Islam comes only after you have submitted to Islam. The submission can be brought about by jihad. So here we have again the Qur’an of Mecca (the peaceful religious portion) covering the Qur’an of Medina (the violent political portion). Our common westernized Christian understanding of the word peace misleads us here. It hides the fact that jihad can be used to achieve Islamic peace. It is literally George Orwell's 1984 slogan: WAR IS PEACE. You will submit, one way or another. We would like to think that everyone can peacefully, but Islam does not work like that. Islam demands submission. There is simply no compromise between a system that wants to use the Golden Rule /democracy and a supremacist system which says that everyone has to submit.

Understanding Islam XI: Islam and Slavery

You do not know the history of African slavery if you do not know about Islam’s involvement. It is impossible to study the history of Muhammad and Islam and not understand slavery is integral to Islam. Some people think that slavery only happened when white men showed up in ships off the coast of Africa, captured slaves and brought them to America. To only see this piece is to see only a portion of slavery. Islam has 40 different words in their holy writ for slave. Why would the Arabic language have over forty words for slave? They would have 40 or more words for slavery because it is critical to their religion/politics.

White man’s involvement with slavery does involve him showing up on the coast of Africa in a ship to get slaves. That is only half the story though. In reality white man left with his slaves purchased from Muslim slave traders. The Muslims had been trading and capturing slaves in Africa since before Muhammad. White men only represented the newest market. In reality the ideal Muslim views himself as a slave of Allah. As a matter of fact, this is reflected in one of many Muslim names…Abdullah. Abd means slave and Allah - Slave of Allah. The truth is that slavery and subjugation holds a high position in the Islamic mentality.

The Qur’an is very clear about slavery. It’s quite desirable and it has only one limitation: You cannot enslave Muslims. Only Kafir (nonbelievers) can be enslaved. Often the full history of slavery is not taught in the United States. Nor is it easy to find textbooks written that include the full truth. That truth is horrible. Out of the approx. 25 million slaves that were taken out of Africa, 11 million were sold in the Americas. The other 14 million were sold in West/North Africa and southern Europe, where Islam is dominate. By the numbers, for every single slave captured, the slavers had to kill in a 10:1-5:1 ratio.

Sources vary but according to some of those who visited Africa during the peak slave trading days said that there was (conservatively) a 5:1 death ratio for one slave in the wholesale market. In other words, for the 25 million enslaved ten times as many died. That means conservatively 100 million Africans killed to acquire the body of slaves that survived. Worst case scenario 200,000,000+ (and that is just the African totals, not other people’s too). That is a deplorable and murderous statistic and says a lot about the value placed on human life by Islam. Many of the slaves were wholesaled to raise money for jihad. I suppose it is not surprising that that for centuries Islam has been involved in slavery. Allah likes a slave and Allah clearly wants Muslims to enslave others. I’m guessing it is because after keeping slaves long enough, they will convert to Islam and if they don’t, then their children will. Slavery cannot be removed from the Islamic doctrine because Islamic doctrine is eternal. It’s permanent. You cannot change a zebra’s stripes.

Let us be very clear on another fact also. Islam subjugates all non-Muslims. It will just as soon enslave and murder Buddhist, Hindus and Sikhs as it will Christians and Jews. There is no COEXIST in unity with Islam, Their holy writ will not allow it. As a matter of fact history again proves this out. Afghanistan used to be primarily Buddhist until the 10th century when Islam infiltrated. These areas are now primarily Islamic. As a matter of fact, some of the Buddhist statues of antiquity have recently been destroyed by the Taliban.

Understanding Islam X: Islam’s Persecution of Christians and Jews

Although the Islamic persecution of Jews has been horrid, I will mainly focus on the Christian persecution because both Jews and Christians have gotten the brunt of the violence that emanates from the Qur’an, Hadith and Sira. When Muhammad had his first vision, which no one else saw, and when he heard the voices, he said they were the voice was of the Angel Gabriel. This is important because Gabriel is in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is borrowed. From the beginning Muhammad said that his authenticity rested on the fact that he had the same basis as the prophets in the Old Testament (thus sayeth the Lord). The characters were the same but the stories were wrong. If there had been Jews in Mecca they, would have said: “That’s not the way this story really happened.” The Qur’an claims the stories in the Old Testament have been corrupted.

In truth, one of the main reasons I wished to write about Islam is to have people understand the absurdity of the religious/political system that is Islam and then give a better option in the truth of the Christian Gospel. In this post I begin to turn that page. The truth is that Islam has two views of Christians/Jews (duality again). The first view is that Christianity and Islam are brother religions. The second view is that Christians must change their religion to meet the demands of Islam. Modern Christians want to believe that there is a bridge between Islam and Christianity. But the history of Islam shows that Islam first deceives and then annihilates Christianity. Wherever true Islam becomes dominate, Christian and all non-believers end up suffering death or oppression. When Islam takes over an area all of the culture, laws and politics becomes Islamic (Sharia). A Dhimmi, Kafir (nonbeliever, infidel) has to pay a tax, the Jizya. Half of everything they earned is paid to Islam.

Whenever the issue of Islamic persecution comes up, apologists of Islam are quick to state that Christians and Muslims worship the same God (Abrahamic God). That sounds like a good commonality to get started but this is just not true. Since many don’t know any better about Islam’s Allah and the God of the Bible most are accepting of this fallacy. Islam will say they honor Jesus because Jesus was a prophet of Allah, Jesus was a Muslim. They will also say that Jesus was not the Son of God, merely a Prophet. They’ll tell you that the Apostles of Christ were Muslims. They’ll state that Jesus was not crucified, therefore was not resurrected. They’ll state that Trinity is an affront to Allah. They’ll claim Allah is the only one true God and that the Trinity makes Christians polytheist. Islam will say that the New Testament was a corrupt document. In particular, the reason that the New Testament was wrong was that the prophet of Allah, Jesus’ chief prophecy was that after him would come the final prophet and his name would be Ahmed (Muhammad).

Understanding Islam IX: More Misogyny and Islam’s Honor Killing

Men are allowed to perform honor killings on women. An honor killing is when a man kills a woman because she has violated his honor. A Muslim male must control the sexuality of the females in his household or he is dishonored. The Qur’an speaks at great length about women’s rights (lack of them). Among them women are to receive half the amount of inheritance of a male. In a court of law it takes testimony of two women to equal testimony of one man. If a woman testifies against a man and he denies the accusation, then the testimony has no weight at all. In Islamic court this makes cases of rape impossible to prove.

Muhammad commented that he had seen Hell and the great majority of its inhabitants were women. Why were they there? They had not fully appreciated their husbands. In the same hadith, it is stated that women were spiritually inferior to men and women are not as intelligent as men. This treatment extents to the afterlife too where men become sexual deviants and women remain subjugated and servants of men.

Then there is the Burqa / head-to-toe covering that often includes the face. Some Islamic women say that it is not really required. Again, we encounter dualism (or contradiction). We know this much: Muhammad made all of his wives wear a veil. So although there is not a universal commandment that says women should wear a burqa, we do know that from other precedents…Muhammad’s life and emulation of it is the highest pinnacle of Islamic behavior. Burqa is therefore expected of obedient Muslims.

Another aspect of Islam is polygamy. The Qur’an is quite clear on polygamy. A man can have up to four wives. There is also the travesty of stoning. Sharia law is very technical about stoning. It even denotes the stones should to be chosen so they do not kill immediately. They have to be big enough so that when enough of them are thrown, they will kill the victim. Death by stoning is meant to be a torture that the entire community participates in.

Understanding Islam VIII: Islam’s Misogynistic History

The dualism of Islam allows for two ways to treat women. They can be honored or they can be beaten. If you’re going to study Islam you have to study women as a separate category because Muhammad had a misogynistic love/hate relationship with them. The reason for this is simple, Islamic doctrine denies that men and women are equal. Men are greater than women. The Qur’an has entire sections devoted to how women are treated inferior to men (too many to note here). On the subject of wife beating, the Qur’an is clear. It says that if a woman does not obey her husband or submit she can be beaten. Some argue that since Islamic women are beaten from an early age, by the time they are married they are used to this treatment and it does not seem to bother them. Wife beating is thoroughly entrenched in Islam. This is not a religious aberration in Islam, it is fundamental to their doctrine.

Muhammad left a great deal of information about the thrashing of women. In a hadith Muhammad is noted as saying that if hitting a woman is necessary do not strike them in the face (unsightly and unbecoming). Because Islam’s holy books are dualistic they hold contradictory positions. There are statements that says that it is proper to beat a woman, then somewhere else, in another hadith, Muhammad supposedly says: “Do not strike Allah’s handmaidens.” The truth is there are explicit rules laid out as to the gradation of how the man makes the woman submit and the final stage is a beating/thrashing. It is a form dominance through progressive punishment.

Then there are child marriages and the rape of children. In 2002, research in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found that half the girls were married by age 13 [“Violent Oppression of Women in Islam”, Spencer and Chesler, Frontpage Magazine, pg. 15.] In an Afghan refugee camp more than two out of three second grade girls were either married or engaged. Virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. This is pure Sunna or the way of Muhammad. How do we know this? When Muhammad was in his mid-fifties, he was engaged to Aisha, a child of six. At age nine he consummated the marriage with her. So, when the 60-year-old Pakistani Muslim is engaged to the 10-year-old it is Sunna, it is the way of Muhammad.

Understanding Islam VII: Jihad in the Education System

One of the primary places that Muslims use money to advance jihad is in educational systems. The Saudis have pumped in enormous amounts of money into our universities. The Middle East history departments and Arabic department's textbooks teach a sanitized version of Islam in schools. In many cases the Islam that is studied in our schools is a glorified religion, not a glorified political system. No mention is ever made of nearly 300 million Kafir deaths since Islam’s inception. There is usually no mention of the dhimmitude or a Kafir as slave. Very little attention is brought to shine on Islam’s role in the African American slave trade either (a later post). On the issue of slavery it needs to be understood that nearly every single African slave that was sold to the white man was bought from a Muslim wholesaler.

While on the topic of slavery it should be noted that Islam as a politic has a political status for the Christians called dhimmi (another later post). When Islam takes over a governmental situation it implements Sharia law. How Christians and Jews end up being treated in Islamic courts is awful. Dhimmi have no civil rights like slaves. So this history of dhimmitude and special taxes that Christians had to pay was in essence taxed slavery.

So why isn’t much of Islamic history taught and thoroughly examined in schools? Some do but many do not. Why? I am guessing based on reading it is because their history is not glorified but instead...morbid and murderous. It is graphic like the images we see from ISIS. One of the main reasons that even Christians don’t teach the history of Christianity and Islam is the history is so dreadful, frankly a lot of it is horrid and disgusting. We see some of it in the censored videos online. For Christian’s who attempt to stay chaise and pure, discussion of khafḍ (female genital mutilation) in a classroom setting is, well, unsettling. Are Christian’s angels? No. they're not BUT... Islam’s history is often that HORRENDOUS. To understand true Islam, true history needs to be studied. This dreadful history continues until today. We see it in the 9/11 attacks, Paris, the poor treatment of Jews worldwide and the blatant and horrible persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Understanding Islam VI: Jihad Is Defense Not Offense

Sept 11, 2001 attacks followed Muhammad’s pattern for Jihad in that it was a premeditated sneak attack (Guerilla-type warfare). Before Muhammad there had been Arabian established rules of war. But when Muhammad developed jihad he threw out all the rules in favor of offensive Guerilla warfare. Brother could now kill brother, father could kill son and tribe member would go to war against another tribe.

Islam will always claim a “defensive” attack in the Muslims mind. They are protecting their way of life. They view themselves victims of circumstance. This mindset is often employed by the Palestinians in Israel. According to most devout Imam, September 11 was a defensive attack. All jihad is considered defensive because the Kafir (infidel) creates the first offense by denying Muhammad. So the Kafir has already offended Allah. Logically it is a no-win situation for a Kafir. Therefore, what follows the offense is a defensive attack. If it were not for the Kafir there would be no jihad. The Kafir are to blame, there are virtually no exception. Therefore until all are converted to Islam and submission to Allah, jihad is considered perpetual and is incumbent upon all Muslims to perform. If a Muslim is not willing to perform jihad, they are Kafir. There is no middle ground or “moderate” position. Jihad is not to cease until the last Kafir has submitted. As long as there are Kafirs there will be jihad.

Interestingly, not all jihad comes as C4 strapped to someone’s waist. The biggest jihad happening in America today is practiced by Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries. And they’re not using the sword, they’re using the dollars we pay them for oil. The most problematic jihad though is the money funneled into special interest politics. Washington, D.C. is awash in money from the Middle East and this money is used to influence votes, influence people and launch political campaigns. The most powerful jihad is the Islamification of our education, political and judicial systems.

 

Understanding Islam V: Jihad, The Little Engine That Shouldn’t

As I’ve said before, Islam is a machine that runs on an engine powered by jihad. Jihad can come in many different guises, not just violence…and this is where Islam gets tricky…and deceptive. Jihad does not mean holy war (it can include holy war). Jihad actually means “struggle”. It includes much more than war and violence. Jihad can be done with words, a pen, money and courts. The Qur’an lays out the vision of jihad. The Sira (Muhammad’s biography) lays out the strategies of jihad. The hadith (traditions) give us the warlike tactics. Again, all modeled upon Muhammad, because Muhammad is the only perfect Muslim and jihadist. Jihad takes up about two-thirds of the Sira. There was only a nine-year period in which Muhammad pursued intense jihad, but the number of pages that are devoted to it gives you an idea of how important it was to the spread of Islam. It is critical to note that Islam/Muhammad did not succeed until he turned to jihad. It’s obvious then why Muslims would look to jihad as their most useful stratagem.

I know many have heard Muslims say, “The real jihad is inner struggle, the spiritual struggle.” That is the Greater Jihad. The jihad of the sword and war is the Lesser Jihad. But the hadith tell us about the greater jihad— the inner spiritual struggle. By the numbers only approx. 2% of the hadith are devoted to this kind of struggle. The other 98% are about enslaving, taxing or killing the Kafir. Notice again we have a duality. There are two ways to view jihad. A Muslim may choose whichever he needs for the moment when practicing al-Taqiyya during a time of eminent danger (which could be jihad). Their beliefs literally allow them to use circular reasoning in these instances. Present a dual way of thinking. If under threat claim the peaceful option to gain strategic advantage and then switch back to violent methods claiming they were under threat.

The most prominent example of modern jihad is 9/11, African bombings and Paris shootings. All these are patterned after Muhammad. Muslims claimed “We are the religion of peace.” The veil of the religion of Islam was used to hide the political act of jihad. This has been done before as well. Muhammad always covered his political actions with a religious necessity.  Additionally, the World Trade Center was targeted specifically as a business center. It was the hope of Al Qaeda that destroying the WTC would paralyze the American economy. Jihad wherever possible is a political/economic attack. Similarly Muhammad’s attacks on the caravans were to gain wealth for himself and to remove wealth from the Kafirs.

Understanding Islam IV: Islam Lives or Dies Based on Jihad

It is pretty much this simple. This is not a generalization. Islam literally means “submit.” Jihad was Muhammad’s greatest invention for the propagation of Islamic philosophy. Islam is based upon complete submission to the laws of Islam in every area of life, private and public. This is Sharia Law. Sharia Law is essentially the example of Muhammad, made into law. Islam also teaches that those who are not currently Muslims must be brought into submission as well. While this sometimes occurs through conversion, it more often takes place through acts of violence. This violence is most often jihad.

 

Islam’s definition of jihad is, “…to war against on-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word Mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.” (Reliance of the Traveler, pg. 599). Jihad is obligatory for all Muslims. (et al pg. 600-602). Jihad simply emulates the way of Muhammad who said, “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me…” Jihad is also commanded in the Qur’an. “Fighting is prescribed for you.” (Qur’an Surah 2:216) “Slay them wherever you find them.” (Qur’an Surah 4.89) “Fight the idolaters (Kafir) utterly.” (Qur’an Surah 9:36).

 

Jihad makes up a large portion of the Islamic holy writings: Meccan Qur’an: 0%, Medina Qur’an: 24%, Sira (Biography of Muhammad): 67%, Hadith (Traditions of Muhammad): 21%, Overall: 31% of Islam’s holy writings is dedicated to jihad and violence. According to its most central teachings, true Muslim people cannot live in peace with their neighbors. It is quite plainly against their religion in their very own sacred texts.

Understanding Islam III: Muhammad the Bad Neighbor

Muhammad did not get along well with his neighbors. Even in his early religious phase, he was pushy and aggressive. When he went to Medina, his behavior became 10 times worse. When he eventually began to settle in Medina, approx.  half the town was Jewish. Within three years after he arrived, all the Jews were eradicated. They had been either driven out of Medina— after their money was taken— or they’d been killed and sold into slavery. Before Muhammad died, he had struck out to the north to Syria to fight the Christians. Some of his dying words were: “Let there be neither Jew nor Christian left in Arabia.” He would often attack neighboring tribes and attempt to force them to submit to Allah (himself). When they’d refuse, he would often kill the male members until the rest surrendered and then they were given a choice to convert. If they didn’t, they were killed or sold into slavery. Women, children, men. This was profitable enterprise for him. Jihad was profitable. He used jihad to finance more jihad. Muhammad came up with a way to make religion and politics pay. You still see the fruits of that philosophy today in modern Jihad. What we see is that in Islamic philosophy, Jihad not only supposedly helps the believer in the afterlife, it helps their families now in this life because the families are rewarded for the suicide bombings performed on behalf of other family members.

Understanding Islam II: Muhammad in Mecca and Then Medina

Muhammad believed and acted as if there was a duality in reality. What do I mean? In a figurative sense there are two Muhammad’s. There is the religious preacher Muhammad (the younger more peaceful one), and there is the warrior-politician Muhammad (the violent murderous thug). Duality is one of the things that is confusing about Islam even to those who study it. It always has two messages to preach, and the reason it has two messages to preach is that there are two Muhammads. One that was dominant during the Meccan years of the Qur'an (the young peaceful portion) and one that was dominant in the later years of Muhammad's life after the Haj in Medina (old murderous thug). More than that, when you read the Qur'an, it’s clear there are two Qur'ans because they were written over a 23 year period and during Muhammad's life he became more murderous. One Qur'an is religious (early), the other Qur'an is political/murderous (later); both are combined in the Qur'an you buy at Amazon. Muhammad the religious man was not much of a success at all, but Muhammad the political man, and the warrior, was overwhelmingly successful. The truth of Muhammad's legacy is this. In the last nine years of his life he averaged an event of violence every six weeks. By this process of constant warfare he became the first ruler of all of Arabia.