virus: Islam and Armageddon from http://www.secularislam.org

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 20:39:30 MDT


    
    Islam and Armageddon
    Suddenly, everyone, or so it seems, is an expert on Islam.
    From Presidents and Prime Ministers to the humblest
    hack, all are ready to lecture the public on what real Islam
    is. If this` knowledge is so readily available to such
    unlikely mentors it seems odd that so much wrong opinion
    is abroad on the subject. Tony Blair, apparently, knows so
    much about it that he can confidently announce from a
    public platform that any 'muslim' who has a different view
    of Islam from his own is not a proper muslim. According
    to this view, real muslims are just like members of the
    Church of England, all sweetness and light, interested only
    in being good neighbours, engaging in 'inter-faith dialogue'
    and, presumably, voting for New Labour.
    Islam, we are told over and over again by the self-
    appointed guardians of right thinking, is not a religion of
    violence and aggression but of peace and love. Does not
    the Koran have at the head of every chapter: 'In the name
    of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate'? Who could
    disagree with that? That's the sentiment of all decent
    people everywhere isn't it? Why, we could even have it as
    the slogan for the next Labour Party Conference,
    fetchingly lit in shades of green and rose, with a copy of
    the Koran given away free to every delegate. This
    wonderful book is already the Prime Minister's favourite
    bed -time reading and was ostentatiously flourished on the
    plane to America in the wake of recent events.
    How can people in high office be so naïve and stupid?
    Very easily it seems, almost a mandatory qualification,
    since it makes it easier to spout sanctimonious drivel with
    a straight face. But where are the doubting voices, the
    posers of awkward questions that might expose this
    ludicrous charade for the expedient nonsense it is?
    Certainly not the TV interviewers and ambitious
    journalists with careers to think about, who in any case
    know no more about the subject than the people they are
    interviewing, and are every bit as keen to appear 'tolerant'
    and 'understanding' for fear of something nasty happening
    on their own doorsteps.
    Here are a few questions that might be put to Mr Blair or
    any other apologist for Islam that appear regularly in the
    media. (1) If real Islam is all about peace and love, how
    did it acquire an empire that stretched from Spain to India,
    by sweet reason? (2) When is Islam going to apologise for
    overrunning the Hellenic-Christian civilization of the
    Middle East, conquering Constantinople in 1453, and
    laying siege to Vienna in 1529? (3) If the Koran is all
    about peace and love, how are such verses as the following
    to be explained. K.4:74, 'Let those fight in the cause of
    God who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To
    him who fights in the cause of God, whether he is slain or
    victorious, soon we shall give him a great reward'. K.4:76,
    'Those who believe fight in the cause of God, and those
    who reject faith fight in the cause of evil.' K.5:54, 'O
    believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends, they are
    friends of each other. Those of you who make them his
    friends is one of them. God does not guide an unjust
    people.' K.9:29, 'Fight those who believe neither in God
    nor the Last Day, nor what has been forbidden by God and
    his messenger (Muhammad), nor acknowledge the religion
    of Truth (Islam), even if they are People of the Book (Jews
    and Christians), until they pay the tribute and have been
    humbled.' K.47:4, 'When you meet the unbelievers, smite
    their necks, then when you have made wide slaughter
    among them, tie fast the bonds, then set them free, either
    by grace or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens.'
    It is not difficult to see how those who regard the Koran as
    God's own speech can find in verses such as these the
    justification for practically any act of 'terrorism'
    imaginable. When such texts are put to apologists the
    usual response is to say that they are bad translations and it
    is quite different in the Arabic, and in any case such verses
    are balanced or cancelled by other meliorating texts
    elsewhere in the Koran. Unfortunately, according to the
    traditional muslim chronology of revelation, early texts are
    abrogated by apparently contradictory later texts, and all
    the above texts are late or 'Medinan', while most of the
    'compassionate' texts are early or 'Meccan'. It has been said
    that the text at K.9:5, 'Slay the idolaters wherever you find
    them', cancels 124 verses advocating mercy and toleration.
    There is no Pope in Islam, no ultimate authority able to say
    what real Islam is, or what is the right interpretation of
    texts, there is just and endless spectrum of opinion. Those
    involved in recent events, wearing red head -bands
    emblazoned with texts such as those above, have every
    right to consider themselves real muslims going about
    God's work and deserving reward in the hereafter. Indeed,
    such people probably have more right to consider
    themselves good muslims than those Western educated,
    Western suited, representatives of muslim institutions
    expressing sympathy and regret, or any benignly smiling
    Sufi talking about 'the heart'; the latter are especially
    nauseating in that they share many of the aims of the
    militants, such as the restoration of the caliphate, without
    the courage to do anything about it.
    It is important that such things are said loudly and said
    now, since it is likely that before long both the writer and
    the publisher of these words could be deemed guilty of the
    crime of inciting religious hatred. This is the dream of yet
    another expert on Islam, the Home Secretary, who is so
    unstinting in his admiration that he thinks anyone
    suggesting that Islam is anything less than wonderful, and
    muslims anything other than wholly admirable, deserve to
    be prosecuted. So widespread are such sentiments amongst
    the liberal intelligentsia that it is surprising that there have
    not yet been mass conversions. In contrast, outside such
    circles, it appears that either Islam is true, in which case
    we all ought to be muslims, or it is not true, in which case
    it is pernicious nonsense and it cannot be criminal to say
    so.
    The fear here of course is of blood on the streets. That
    there have been physical attacks on muslims arises largely
    from the fact that they choose to make themselves obvious
    by their mode of dress, and of course, as we all know, this
    is prescribed by their religion, especially in the case of
    women - well, no, actually we don't and it isn't. Nowhere
    in the Koran and the Hadith is it laid down that muslim
    women must go around wearing head scarves and long
    shapeless garments, all that is required is modest dress,
    and there are literally thousands of ways of dressing
    modestly, many of them indistinguishable from Western
    dress. The fuss about muslim women wearing head scarves
    is quite literally a fuss about nothing, they don't have to
    wear them.
    The fact that some muslim women choose to make an
    exhibition of themselves by wearing head scarves is of no
    more significance or importance than any other affectation
    or fashion statement. With others it is simply a result of
    the ignorance and poor education that is endemic amongst
    muslims; they have been told by their communities that
    this is the proper muslim thing to do and they have no
    means of knowing anything to the contrary. This is
    especially chilling when it is applied to girls as young as
    four or five when the rule does not apply until the onset of
    puberty. But can we imagine any telly journalist putting
    these points to a female 'victim' of prejudice and
    misunderstanding? If Islam is all about peace and love and
    good behaviour, as we are constantly told, such things do
    not require a peculiar mode of dress, an attention
    attracting uniform, to make them manifest. Indeed, such a
    thing is redolent of a peculiar vanity - look at me, how
    modest I am, so virtuous, so beautiful, a veritable living
    reproach to your wanton ways, I must make a play of
    hiding myself for your good as well as mine.
    We are constantly told that we are not engaged in a war
    against Islam, but why not a war against Islam? Why not a
    war against that billion of the world's population bound in
    benighted ignorance and superstition? Why not a war
    against a world-view diametrically opposed to all those
    secular, liberal, humanist, democratic values that it is
    supposed to hold so dear? Why not? Because the West is
    led by a pair of evangelical nincompoops, one with
    messianic delusions, more than half in love with what in
    their muddled minds they like to think real Islam is, and
    what in their dreams they would like the West to be - God-
    fearing, Bible-reading, Church-going, a land of inanely
    grinning communitarians whose highest value is that their
    pathetic little egos strut about the world stage for as long
    as possible. Compared with such people the hijackers are
    heroes.
    We are also told that the events of September 11th were
    not a clash of civilizations or world-views, but that is
    exactly what they were. It was not by chance that the twin
    towers of the World Trade Centre were the first to go. In
    the minds of many muslims tall buildings are the ultimate
    symbol of infidel pride and arrogance and defiance of
    Allah, especially evident in the end times before the final
    reckoning. The fact that they were also temples of usury
    and symbols of the economic power with which Jews and
    Christians undermine and exploit the muslim world can
    only have added to the satisfaction of bringing them down,
    especially when it was achieved by just ten men wielding
    pen knives. That there were muslims in the building at the
    time is of no consequence, since their fate was already
    sealed by K.5:54 and K.9:29 quoted above.
    The purpose of the attack on Afghanistan we are told is to
    bring about 'justice', as if there were some cross-cultural
    consensus on what any such word means, a Platonic
    archetypal heaven from which its form could be plucked
    by be-wigged Western lawyers for the recognition and
    satisfaction of all 'decent' people. The only relevant
    question to be asked about 'justice' is: Whose justice, mine
    or yours, ours or theirs, man's or God's? How much shar'ia
    is there in 'international law'? Where did that law
    originate, who invented it, with what purpose in mind?
    What kind of world did it come from and what kind of
    world was it intended to bring about? Certainly not that of
    the ecumenical imperium of the caliphate, where muslim
    justice held sway for almost 1400 years. (See the review of
    Muslim Kingship in this issue, p.?) It is not without
    significance that 'infinite justice', the original name for the
    American attack, had to be changed since it unwittingly
    usurped one of the Koranic names of God (al adl), it was
    replaced with the favourite shibboleth from the Western
    lexicon of praise: 'infinite freedom'.
    The enormity of the crime - the attack on New
    York/Afghanistan - we are told, is the slaughter of the
    innocent, but who is not willing to sacrifice the innocent
    when it suits them? Certainly 'Western Civilization' was
    when, between 1914 and 1945 in Europe alone, it
    managed to wipe out over one hundred million civilians in
    the name of one cause or another. Such figures are the
    result of the employment of technology in the furtherance
    of a cause, but before the technological age the causes
    were no less virulent and murderous in intent, it was just
    more difficult to kill large numbers.
    But who believes in causes any more? Not even the
    majority of modern muslims can be got of their backsides
    for a decent jihad. Like most Westerners their main
    motivations are money and sex and a comfortable life,
    with a little religion on top for identity, consolation,
    companionship, and at least the possibility of a
    continuation of the same in an afterlife. Religion survives,
    and will probably always survive, not because it is true but
    because human beings are pathetic.
    Yet we still need war, if only to satisfy the barely
    subconscious, barely acknowledged recognition of how
    mind numbingly dull a perpetually peaceful world would
    be. Since God refuses to supply us with an apocalypse it
    seems we must supply our own: 'I am become Shiva the
    destroyer of worlds', as Robert Oppenheimer said. Who
    was not fascinated, amazed, entranced, by those planes
    going into those towers? Was it not the most astonishing
    and exciting thing you have ever seen in your life?
    Perhaps Osama and his followers, like many others, are
    the true children of Turgenev's Bazarov, whose day may
    have finally dawned. Any cause will do, or no cause at all,
    we shall have terrorism for the hell of it. In the immortal
    words of Pisarev: 'Here is the ultimatum of our camp: what
    can be smashed should be smashed; what will stand the
    blow is good; what will fly into smithareens is rubbish; at
    any rate, hit out right and left - there will and can be no
    harm from it.' Allahu Akbar.
    Ibn al Rawandi



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