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Hear But Not Understand, Look But Never See Patrick D. O'Brien, September 16, 2005	Home Search Forum Terms

Four years ago, the words Islam and jihad made a spectacular entrance into the American lexicon of public discourse. At 8:46 AM one 767 full of human beings and a few monsters was deliberately flown into north tower, 1 WTC: Islam! Sixteen minutes later, as another 767 slammed into south tower, 2 WTC: Jihad! The jetliner that struck the Pentagon and the one which was brought down by courageous Americans in Shanksville, Pennsylvania were more exclamation points. Islam and its jihad were now household American words, originally reviled, now twisted into deceptively disarming terms by four years of diligent work by indefatigable jihad front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), along with their Western left useful idiot allies. When it comes to plainly evil Islamic terror damage control and image rehabilitation propaganda, there's a lot you can do with millions of Saudi petrodollars and an eager cadre of self-loathing American ideologues at your disposal.

We knew it was coming, that awful day that none of us saw coming. The fatwa was duly drawn up and delivered by the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders on February 23, 1998. It was quite explicit in its complaint and intent, well-supported by core Islamic scripture, that wasn't twisted by radical extremists. This is scripture that informs orthodox Islam and its mainstream doctrine of jihad, not some hijacked version thereof.

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."

This is in addition to the words of Almighty Allah: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"

We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.

Almighty Allah said: "O ye who believe, give your response to Allah and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that Allah cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."

Almighty Allah also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things."

Almighty Allah also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."

This sort of thing has been going on for quite some time now—about fourteen centuries to be exact. From the time a violent, power-hungry Arab illiterate with grandiose delusions went out on a raid against the merchant caravan of his own people, through the holy war incursions into old Europe that prompted the Crusades, to the grenade thrown at a bus stop in India yesterday killing one civilian and wounding twelve others, jihad has been the reliable vehicle by which Muslims have always carried their message of hate for all things infidel and the decree of making God's law supreme in all lands.

Americans were angry after 9/11, but not as angry as the mujahideen who came after us that day. Actually, these men—and sometimes women—aren't so much angry as they are in thrall to the great homicidal spirit of hatred for God's sake.¹ It is a duty, an honor, and a privilege for the faithful to fight, kill, and die for the angry war deity of Islam.² This is not terror, this is jihad—holy war against the infidel.

Most of us didn't give much thought to jihad before 9/11. We didn't really have to. Many Americans don't remember the jihad of the Turks at the beginning of the last century, with the resultant mass deportation and murder of Christian Armenians before the sick old Ottoman was finally defeated and forced to dissolve Islam's 1,300 year-old Khilafah (Caliphate).³

America's own battle against Islam's holy warriors is not new. In fact, it is 200 years old. Few recall that we fought a prolonged, no-compromise, and successful war against jihad in the southern Mediterranean under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.⁴ Perhaps as a portent for today, we were the only Western infidels at the time who refused to pay the dhimmi jizya tax to sail the waters off of Muslim North Africa. The Republican watchword of the time was: Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. We will surely triumph over the barbarian and his backward faith of intolerance and violence again, but this time it will take longer, because times have changed.

Thomas Jefferson never had to contend with homicidal/suicidal mujahideen units piloting gunpowder-packed frigates up the Delaware River into the Port of Philadelphia. The weaponry of the U.S. and that of the Barbary Muslims was more or less evenly matched, although ours was better and greater in number. And this was a time when America's success on the world stage was by no means guaranteed. Americans were challenged at every turn to survive in the perilous arena of global geopolitics. Back then, freedom was still a very new concept and it was incumbent on Americans to fight hard to preserve it, to make great sacrifices so that it might grow and nurture its own future progress and success. This conflict tested our military might, and we passed that test.

Today, they come here to kill us en masse. The Earth is a global community, and open democratic societies accommodate the freedom of movement needed to infest and kill from the inside like a virulent disease. Our weaponry, including the makeshift killing machine of a fuel-laden jetliner hijacked and flown into our skyscrapers, now far surpasses anything the mujahideen could have created, as their retrograde culture keeps them trapped in the Middle Ages. But they steal it from us and employ it in the service of their medieval program of hateful, intolerant religious expansionism through violence. Today, Americans don't feel quite the same sense of urgency to stand up and win as they did at the start of the nineteenth century. We've been to the moon, we make the world go 'round, in world wars and any other endeavor we always win—can't this jihad thing wait till American Idol is over, when the baseball season ends, after the new Explorer in the driveway is paid off, and at the conclusion of a well-deserved vacation? 9/11 was four years ago.

Now we bicker over which side of the political fence has the most piles of jihad dog excrement on the lawn instead of just cleaning it up together so the whole neighborhood will smell better. This is sickening—and I don't mean the metaphor—to any American who wants to stop the next 9/11 from happening. It is coming, and it will be worse. Then we'll have far more dead Americans to blame each other over, instead of blaming the enemy we need to acknowledge, understand, and confront right now: Islamic jihad.

The United States, or George W. Bush specifically, is accused of "making" new terrorists through our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Such an accusation demonstrates not only ignorance of normative Islamic doctrine and unyielding ideological blindness, but also a foolhardy willingness to imperil oneself and ones countrymen over petty spite and insensate political animus. Islamic terrorists are not "made" by anything or anyone but the angry Muslim war god and the bellicose mandates in his hate and war manual. Before the United States "made" the mujahideen, the job was handled by Israel, Britain, France, Italy, India, the Philippines, Hungary, Serbia, Spain, Egypt, Persia, and Byzantium. There's always been and there always will be someone making the holy warriors ride into battle against anyone in the way of their vile, expansionist program of murder, rapine, and subjugation in God's name (that is, if the peaceful, tolerant method da'wa missionary work isn't effective).

The problem is that so few of us have bothered to take any time to objectively study Islam in the context of its universal literalistic interpretation by the faithful and its universal jihad terror the world over, in the past and right now. While an ignorant pundit on the far right may advocate nuking Mecca, an equally oblivious academic on the left will shill for Islamosuprmeacy by equating honest criticism of the faith with bigoted hatred of all Muslims. These are both dishonest, unhelpful, and stupid positions.

Robert Spencer, Bat Yo'er, Steve Emerson, and Daniel Pipes, who all have countless broken hourglasses and a mountain of esoteric and common research material to stand upon, can write and speak prodigiously on the topics of Islam, jihad, and dhimmitude—and they do—but their formidable efforts amount to little if they end up being transformed into cheap, feel-good dissimulation by the leftist/Islamic p.c.-multicultural mangling machine, never to be fact-checked by an informed public. Why aren't we more willing to summon the intellectual honesty and commitment to learn from the source material about what gives rise to these insane acts of violence in God's name? Easier is not always better.

This isn't a partisan matter, or at least it shouldn't be. Freedom is for everyone; Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, liberals, conservatives, and everyone else. When a religion threatens freedom, and threatens its own adherents if they show an inclination to challenge or reform it, the right and the left are in the same position: faced with the prospect of not having the option to disagree.

There's a place to start learning about Islam and its doctrine of jihad against the unbeliever: Buy the Quran and read it while bearing a few things in mind: To Muslims, this is the perfect, literal, and immutable word of God as revealed to Muhammad through the angel, Gabriel. It is unchanged and Islamic dogma demands that it stay that way. It is not open to interpretation as allegory or symbolism. It is not viewed to be figurative or obsolete in any way. The Quran is God's direct and final message of guidance to all of humanity for all time. In mainstream Islam, it is binding on the believer to preserve this centuries old state of the faith, fighting those who would challenge it, until submission to God is universal. This is a distinct departure from the Christian who leads a moral life in a free society among those of divergent beliefs without the antiquated brutal precepts of Leviticus.

Also important to remember is that the suras (chapters/books) of the Quran are not arranged in chronological order, and it is subject to the doctrine of abrogation:

If we abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, We will replace it by a better one or one similar. Did you not know that God has power over all things? —Quran 2:106

And when you get to Sura 9 (Repentance), be aware that it is penultimate in chronology⁵, and therefore its ayat (verses) replaced many earlier ones that are today held up as being exemplary of Islam's tolerance.

Listen, understand, see.