Islamic Commanders Quotes

There are certain verses in the Quran which convey injunctions similar to the following: 'Kill them wherever you find them.' (2:191) Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is total untrue. Such verses relate in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. (pp. 42-43)

The earth isn’t spinning because you told it to do so. Your intestines aren’t digesting by your command. You’re made up of a trillion cells who don’t ask your permission before offering their rakats. And we think submission is applying strict discipline to our worship? We think surrender is about not eating a pig? It’s just not that small to me. i can’t fit my deen into a neat little box, because to me everything comes from Allah. Birds sing Allah’s name. to say Allah is in this book and not that… do you know who you’re talking about? the Allah that made you from a clot and clothed in flesh… Allah is too big and open for my deen to be small and closed.

We had no ambition for more land or power, and nothing in the religion commands us to conquer non-Yazidis and spread our faith.

A fourth group of people climbs from ignorance and pretends to possess the rational faculty. They suppose that the highest felicity is the expansion of honor and fame, the spread of reputation, a multiplicity of followers, and the influence of the command that is obeyed. Hence, you see that their only concern is eye service and cultivation of the things upon which observers cast their glance. One of them may go hungry in his house and suffer harm so that he can spend his wealth on clothes with which to adorn himself so that no one will look at him with the eye of contempt when he goes out. The types of these people are beyond count. All of them are veiled from Allah by the sheer darkness that is their own dark souls.

The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered the world during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world. Accordingly,

Respect and the observation of good manners when dealing with ulama (the Muslim clergy) are commanded by the nas (Scripture) of Islam, but this has never stopped a person presenting intelligent criticisms, nor prevented his questioning the opinions of ulama, even though he maintains the disciplines of religion.

I have identified five precepts central to the faith that have made it resistant to historical change and adaptation. Only when these five things are recognized as inherently harmful and when they are repudiated and nullified will a true Muslim Reformation have been achieved. The five things to be reformed are: 1. Muhammad’s semi-divine and infallible status along with the literalist reading of the Qur’an, particularly those parts that were revealed in Medina; 2. The investment in life after death instead of life before death; 3. Sharia, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an, the hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence; 4. The practice of empowering individuals to enforce Islamic law by commanding right and forbidding wrong; 5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran.

In short, taken together, commanding right and forbidding wrong are very effective means of silencing dissent. They act as a grassroots system of religious vigilantism. And their most zealous enforcers find in these words an excuse not just to command and to forbid but also to threaten, to beat, and to kill.

In Christianity, God has promised to avenge attacks against His people. We trust the One who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” (Romans 12:19 KJV)—but to the Muslim mind, this makes us look like cowards. In Islam, it’s the opposite: the people are commanded to punish insults to the honor of Allah and Muhammad.

Good became identified with anything that redounded to the benefit of Muslims, regardless of whether it violated moral or other laws. The moral absolutes enshrined in the Ten Commandments, and other teachings of the great religions that preceded Islam, were swept aside in favor of an overarching principle of expediency.

Love in the Quran is very capricious. Culturally, love in Islam should only be given to someone if they are also a Muslim and loves you back; which is contradictory to the Bible for which Muhammad claimed was an extension of the Quran. In total, out of the whole Quran, only about 5 verses pertain to nonmaterialistic and unconditional love. Of these 5, 3 refer to loving Muslims only while the 4th commands love for Allah. The final is a reference to charity which is to be given explicitly to Muslims only.29 It’s understandable now why Muslim women refuse to shake hands with unbelievers, and why treaties between Muslim and non-Muslim countries never last.

These changes, I believe, can be the basis of a true Islamic Reformation, one that progresses to the twenty-first century rather than regresses to the seventh. Some of these changes may strike readers as too fundamental to Islamic belief to be feasible. But like the partition walls or superfluous stairways that a successful renovation removes, they can in fact be modified without causing the entire structure to collapse. Indeed, I believe these modifications will actually strengthen Islam by making it easier for Muslims to live in harmony with the modern world. It is those hell-bent on restoring it to its original state who are much more likely to lead Islam to destruction. Here again are my five theses, nailed to a virtual door: 1. Ensure that Muhammad and the Qur’an are open to interpretation and criticism. 2. Give priority to this life, not the afterlife. 3. Shackle sharia and end its supremacy over secular law. 4. End the practice of “commanding right, forbidding wrong.” 5. Abandon the call to jihad. In the chapters that follow, I will explore the source of the ideas and doctrines in question and evaluate the prospects for reforming them. For now, we may simply note that they are closely interrelated.

matter with you, Commander of the Believers?’ To this he would reply: ‘The time has come for a trust which God offered to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it; they were wary of it, but I have taken it on.

You don't fight America…You get America’s Democratic and Republican parties to fight each other... and destroy each other. Worst case scenario…the enemy can slip thru the back door while they are fight like third graders. ~~High Commander Mustafa

Now how does all this relate to Islamic jihad? Islam sees violence as a means of propagating the Muslim faith. Islam divides the world into two camps: the dar al-Islam (House of Submission) and the dar al-harb (House of War). The former are those lands which have been brought into submission to Islam; the latter are those nations which have not yet been brought into submission. This is how Islam actually views the world! By contrast, the conquest of Canaan represented God’s just judgement upon those peoples. The purpose was not at all to get them to convert to Judaism! War was not being used as an instrument of propagating the Jewish faith. Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior. The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God. If the Muslim thinks that our moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, then I agree with him. But Muslims and Christians differ radically over God’s nature. Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind.

It must be admitted that the West has reached a level of scientific mastery and outstanding specialisation. In its points of reference, this evolution commands admiration and all civilisations have to benefit from the dynamic of this rationality, as they can derive lessons from the progress achieved. "Benefiting", "deriving lessons" do not, nevertheless, mean submission. In the same way, it must be acknowledged that other civilisations and cultures propose a rich vision of the world, and that some of these have managed to preserve the basic values of life, and glimpses of their fundamental shape are beginning to be seen in the West. It is not a question of suggesting a new wave of "love for exoticism and folklore". On the contrary, it is a question of engaging in an exigent reflection about cultural specificities and possible enrichment starting from within cultures and not at their peripherals.

The lieutenant colonel wondered if the high scores reflected a defect in the newly built shooting range at the women’s academy. To find out, he commandeered the men’s academy shooting range and ordered the women to redo the test. There he watched in growing astonishment as bullet after bullet slammed home, right smack in the center of the target.

The main object of the Islamists’ struggle was to impose Islamic law—Sharia. They believe that the five hundred Quranic verses that constitute the basis of Sharia are the immutable commandments of God, offering a road back to the perfected era of the Prophet and his immediate successors—although the legal code actually evolved several centuries after the Prophet’s death.

God’s truth is not in a “holy” book, is not delivered by prophets, has no connection with churches, synagogues and mosques, with commandments and religious prohibitions, with customs, rules, regulations, restrictions on diet and clothing etc. God’s truth is within us and our task is to find the key that unlocks the direct knowledge of God. Everyone has the key, but many will never use it.

In any case, the Christian world is not one, neither is the Islamic, nor does their combined authority speak to or for the entire world, but the world of the fanatic IS one and it cuts across all religions, ideologies and vocations. The tributaries that feed the cesspool of fanaticism may ooze from sources separated by history, clime and race, by injustices and numerous privations, but they arrive at the same destination - the zone of unquestioning certitude - sped by a common impetus that licences each to proclaim itself the pure and unsullied among the polluted. The zealot is one that creates a Supreme Being, or Supreme Purpose, in his or her own image, then carries out the orders of that solipsistic device that commands from within, in lofty alienation from, and utter contempt of, society and community.

To engage Muslims, we must see them as people, not merely as representatives of a foreign religion, culture, or political ideology. As people, they are products of those things, but they are also husbands and wives, children and students, truck drivers and heart surgeons. They are God’s lost children too, and he has given us the task of making disciples from among them, teaching them to obey everything that he has commanded. 

Many religious fundamentalists around the world would like to see the establishment of theocracies — states where religion and government are closely intertwined. While some just reject separation of [name of place of worship] and state, others go further and insist that one religion’s tenets be made law. The normal arguments for a theocracy are that, for example, it would lend a greater sense of morality to the making and enforcement of laws. Or that as our laws were originally derived from some moral commandments in a particular religion, it makes sense to enthrone this religion as chief in the state. Basically, theocrats can talk until the cows come home about how great it would be if we were ruled by God, how great it would be if our laws followed God’s laws, and so forth. But this vision of theocracy will never come to be, and should never come to be. The fundamental problem with every theocracy is that is innately unfair. Not just unfair to those who do not follow the state religion, but also unfair to those who do not follow the state religion as it is understood and interpreted by the humans who run the state. After all, who really believes that all the Muslims in any of the Islamic theocracies we have today are happy? Those who believe the wrong things about Islam from one particular point of view are mercilessly vilified — the present civil war in Iraq is an excellent example. Why a theocracy would be unfair to those who don’t practice the state religion should be very apparent. Whatever flowery talk there may be of equality, if the laws are derived from one religion, then the laws will favour that religion, like it or not. At this point, supporters of theocracy often get riled up. This is because they can point topassages in their holy book which they argue justify their claims that their religion would be fair to all. On occasion they will also argue that their particular God’s laws are perfect.

In the first place, it is certain that the Turk has no right or command to begin war and to attack lands that are not his. Therefore, his war is nothing else than outrage and robbery, with which God is punishing the world, as He often does through wicked knaves, and sometimes through godly people. For he does not fight from necessity or to protect his land in peace, as the right kind of a ruler does, but like a pirate or highwayman, he seeks to rob and damage other lands, who are doing and have done nothing to him.

Deuteronomy had listed a number of obligatory laws, which had included the Ten Commandments. During and immediately after the exile, this had been elaborated into a complex legislation consisting of the 613 commandments (mitzvot) in the Pentateuch. These minute directives seem off-putting to an outsider and have been presented in a very negative light by New Testament polemic. Jews did not find them a crushing burden, as Christians tend to imagine, but found that they were a symbolic way of living in the presence of God. In

As Rumi says, “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” As Muslims we are called to guide one another, advise one another and to celebrate one another. The Qur’an’s command toward “enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong” (Qur’an 3:104) is not an excuse for judging and shaming each other. As my teacher once said, “If you can’t counsel someone from love, then don’t counsel them because if you advise others from a place of judgment then you are fostering the quality of arrogance within you.

For although some praise his government because he allows everyone to believe what he will so long as he remains the temporal lord, yet this praise is not true, for he does not allow Christians to come together in public, and no one can openly confess Christ or preach or teach against Mohammed. What kind of freedom of belief is it when no one is allowed to preach or confess Christ, and yet our salvation depends on that confession as Paul says, “To confess with the lips saves,” and Christ has strictly commanded to confess and teach His Gospel.

Rwanda’s Muslim community is an example of a group (a full community rather than isolated individuals) that resisted the appeal of dangerous speech and other pressures to participate in the genocide. The Muslim community, which had both Hutu and Tutsi members, not only refused to participate in the genocide but actively opposed it. Its actions during the genocide included rescuing, hiding, and taking care of Muslim and non-Muslim Tutsis, and providing safe haven in mosques. Muslims also rejected commands to kill or reveal Tutsis hidden in their communities, on several occasions going so far as to fight back and be killed themselves.

From being a tiny, despised community, the Muslims were now a force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon—and they began to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Muhammad’s claim to be the last prophet of the One, True God appeared validated by a victory against enormous odds. With this victory, certain attitudes and assumptions were being planted in the minds of Muslims, which remain with many of them to this day. These include: Allah will grant victory to his people against foes that are superior in numbers or firepower, so long as they remain faithful to his commands. Victories entitle the Muslims to appropriate the possessions of the vanquished as booty. Bloody vengeance against one’s enemies belongs not solely to the Lord, but also to those who submit to him on earth. That is the meaning of the word Islam: submission. Prisoners taken in battle against the Muslims may be put to death at the discretion of Muslim leaders. Those who reject Islam are “the vilest of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6) and thus deserve no mercy. Anyone who insults or even opposes Muhammad or his people deserves a humiliating death—by beheading if possible. (This is in accordance with Allah’s command to “smite the necks” of the “unbelievers” (Qur’an 47:4)). Above all, the battle of Badr was the first practical example of what came to be known as the Islamic doctrine of jihad—a doctrine that holds the key to the understanding of both the Crusades and the conflicts of today.

But Paradise would not be a bore for Muslims with different proclivities. Allah also promised his blessed that in Paradise, “round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded” (Qur’an 52:24), “youths of perpetual freshness” (Qur’an 56:17): “if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls” (Qur’an 76:19). But surely the Qur’an isn’t condoning homosexuality, is it? After all, it depicts Lot telling the people of Sodom: “For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds” (7:81) and “of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits!” (26:165). A hadith commands that “if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.”6 Another hadith has Muhammad saying: “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.”7 These strictures have worked their way into Islamic legal codes, such that two Saudis were so anxious to avoid a flogging or prison term that they murdered a Pakistani who witnessed their “shameful acts” by running over him with a car, smashing his head in with a rock, and setting him on fire.8 But the pearl-like youths of Paradise have given rise to a strange double-mindedness about homosexuality in Islam. The great poet Abu Nuwas openly glorified homosexuality in his notorious poem the Perfumed Garden:

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible. Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children. We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause. The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.

And mind you, Muslims would still regard this onslaught as essentially defensive—a defensive action against the aggressions of unbelief. If Muslims must fight until unbelief does not exist, the mere presence of unbelief constitutes sufficient aggression to commence hostilities. This is one of the foundations for the supremacist notion that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers until those unbelievers are either converted to Islam or subjugated under the rule of Islamic law, as verse 9:29 states explicitly. As Muhammad puts it in an Islamic tradition: “I have been commanded to fight against people, till they testify to the fact that there is no god but Allah, and believe in me (that) I am the messenger (from the Lord) and in all that I have brought. And when they do it, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.”16 Thus, if one does not accept Muhammad as a prophet, the sanctity of one’s life and possessions (“blood and riches”) is not guaranteed.

In recent years, there have been some changes of perception and, consequently, of tactics among Muslims. Some of them still see the West in general and its present leader the United States in particular as the ancient and irreconcilable enemy of Islam, the one serious obstacle to the restoration of God’s faith and law at home and their ultimate universal triumph. For these there is no way but war to the death, in fulfillment of what they see as the commandments of their faith. There are others who, while remaining committed Muslims and well aware of the flaws of modern Western society, nevertheless also see its merits—its inquiring spirit, which produced modern science and technology; its concern for freedom, which created modern democratic government. These, while retaining their own beliefs and their own culture, seek to join us in reaching toward a freer and better world. There are some again who, while seeing the West as their ultimate enemy and as the source of all evil, are nevertheless aware of its power, and seek some temporary accommodation in order better to prepare for the final struggle. We would be wise not to confuse the second and the third.

But more importantly,  I agree with a CIA assessment that  “ all US military Combatant Commands,  Services , the National Guard Bureau, and The Joint Staff  will be devoid of learning about the psychology,  intent, rationale, and hatred imbedded in Islamic Radical Theory.” So from my professional  perspective,  I should never have been taught by the CIA and DARPA the following fields of knowledge—Soviet Communism;  Agitation Propaganda;  Political Psychology;  National Character Studies[ replete with their customs, hatreds and proclivities];  US Imperialism;  Arab Terrorism;  Muslim Terrorism;  Jewish Terrorism; Zionist Terrorism; Hindu Terrorism;  Christian Terrorism. As a matter of fact,  to put it very simply,  I should never had read both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution because both are extremely subversive documents dedicated to the eradication of any interference both military or civilian to the wellbeing of our republic---this wonderful experiment called America.                 This kind of censorship, in any form, in both the military and civilian sectors of our society begets the tyranny of today and suppression of tomorrow. And that leads, to … oh my God!  A Revolution! Perhaps…. a Second American Revolution.

Of all the terms used in the world's religions, none is as controversial as jihad. Jihad literally means "struggle," and Muslims have traditionally understood it to point to two kinds of struggles: the spiritual struggle against pride and self-sufficiency; and the physical struggle against the "house of war," namely, the enemies of Islam. The second of these struggles calls for a variety of tactics, including preaching, teaching, and working for social justice. It may also include war. Some apologists for Islam have tried to minimize the importance of jihad, and to insulate Islam from its extremists, by arguing that, of these two struggles, the spiritual struggle is higher. A Muslim merchant I met in Jerusalem took this argument further, contending that jihad has nothing whatsoever to do with war because jihad is nothing more than the personal struggle to be good. "Treating me with respect is jihad," he said. "Not ripping me off is jihad." The Quran, he added, never even mentions war. But the Quran does mention war, and it does so repeatedly. One Quranic passage commands Muslims to "fight," "slay," and "expel" in the course of just two sentences (2:190–191), while another says that fighting is "prescribed . . . though it be hateful to you" (2:216). Whether it is better for a religion to largely ignore war (as the Christian New Testament does) or to carefully regulate war (as does the Quran) is an open question, but there is no debating the importance of the themes of fighting and killing in both the Quran and Islamic law. So while it is incorrect to translate jihad as "holy war," the plain sense of this struggle in both the Quran and contemporary Islamic practice is both spiritual and military.

General Kennedy raised his hand. “Once we’ve destroyed these pigs, are we going to get our payback for their crucifixions?” he asked. The Marine commanders, who were beyond enraged, jumped in. “We found over 153 Marines crucified when we re-secured the Ben-Gurion University campus near Negev the other day,” blurted General Peeler, eyes burning with rage. “I know everyone wants payback for the crucifixions, and I assure you we will have it. Once the battlefields have been secured and the grave registration units move in, they are going to bury the IR forces in mass graves. They will do their best to identify the IR soldiers so that they can be properly marked. Prior to the graves being filled in, they have been instructed to cover all the bodies in pig’s blood, which the Germans and Brits have supplied. We have documented over 5,000 crucifixions of US Forces, so we will bury their dead in pig’s blood in retaliation. They believe that this will prevent them from entering Paradise, so we will test that theory.” A few laughs, snickers and whoops could be heard, mostly from the NCO’s. This was a tactic used by General “Black Jack” Pershing in the Philippines prior to World War One. The US had taken possession of the Philippines during the Spanish American War of 1898. In 1911, a Muslim uprising took place in Mindanao, and General Pershing had the insurgents shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood and then their bodies were buried with the guts of the pig. This discouraged future Muslim attacks by future Jihadis because they believed they would be prevented from entering Paradise if they were buried with the blood from a pig and its guts. General Gardner’s staff wanted to take a page from history and see if it would make a difference in this war--any small advantage that could be gained was something worth pursuing, no matter how strange or unconventional it may be.

As Hamas’s rocket stockpiles dwindled, it reduced the number of rockets launched nightly but increased the range to Tel Aviv and beyond. Several of my conversations with Obama were interrupted by sirens. “Sorry, Barack,” I’d say. “I’m afraid we’ll have to resume our conversation in a few minutes.” With the rest of the staff I had forty-five seconds to go into underground shelters, returning after getting the all-clear sign. These live interruptions strengthened my argument for taking increasingly powerful actions against Hamas. And so we did. The IAF destroyed more and more enemy targets. Hamas panicked and became careless. Our intelligence identified the locations of their commanders. We targeted them and delivered painful blows to their hierarchy. Hamas then shifted their command posts to high-rises, believing they would be immune to our strikes. Using a technique called “knock on roof,” the air force fired nonlethal warning shots on the roofs of the buildings. Along with phone calls to the building occupants, these warnings enabled them to leave the premises unharmed. The IDF flattened several high-rise buildings with no civilian casualties. The sight of these collapsing towers sent Hamas a powerful message of demoralization and fear. This was literally “you can climb but you can’t hide.” Desperation was seeping through Hamas ranks. Arguments began to flare between Mashal in Qatar and the ground command in Gaza, which was suffering the brunt of our attacks. Eventually they caved. In the talks with Egypt they rescinded all their demands and agreed to an unconditional cease-fire that went into effect on August 26, 2014. After fifty days, Protective Edge was over. Sixty-seven IDF soldiers, five Israeli civilians, including one child, and a Thai civilian working in Israel lost their lives in the war. There were 4,564 rockets and mortars fired at Israel from Gaza, nearly all from civilian neighborhoods. The Iron Dome system intercepted 86 percent of them.4 The IDF killed 2,125 Gazans,5 roughly two-thirds of whom were members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terrorist groups. A third were civilians who were often used by the terrorists as human shields. Colonel Richard Kemp, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “the IDF took measures to limit civilian casualties never taken by any Western army in similar situations.” At least twenty-three Palestinian civilians were executed by Hamas over false accusations of colluding with Israel. In reality many had simply criticized the devastation of Gaza brought about by Hamas’s aggression against Israel.6 Hamas leaders emerged from their bunkers. Surveying the rubble, they predictably declared victory. This is what all dictatorships do. They are not accountable to the facts or to their people. Less predictably, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas admitted that Hamas was severely weakened and achieved none of its demands.7 With the

Here is my six step process for how we will first start with ISIS and then build an international force that will fight terrorism and corruption wherever it appears. “First, in dedication to Lieutenant Commander McKay, Operation Crapshoot commenced at six o’clock this morning. I’ve directed a handpicked team currently deployed in Iraq to coordinate a tenfold increase in aerial bombing and close air support. In addition to aerial support, fifteen civilian security companies, including delegations from our international allies, are flying special operations veterans into Iraq. Those forces will be tasked with finding and annihilating ISIS, wherever they walk, eat or sleep. I’ve been told that they can’t wait to get started. “Second, going forward, our military will be a major component in our battle against evil. Militaries need training. I’ve been assured by General McMillan and his staff that there is no better final training test than live combat. So without much more expenditure, we will do two things, train our troops of the future, and wipe out international threats. “Third, I have a message for our allies. If you need us, we will be there. If evil raises its ugly head, we will be with you, arm in arm, fighting for what is right. But that aid comes with a caveat. Our allies must be dedicated to the common global ideals of personal and religious freedom. Any supposed ally who ignores these terms will find themselves without impunity. A criminal is a criminal. A thief is a thief. Decide which side you’re on, because our side carries a big stick. “Fourth, to the religious leaders of the world, especially those of Islam, though we live with differing traditions, we are still one people on this Earth. What one person does always has the possibility of affecting others. If you want to be part of our community, it is time to do your part. Denounce the criminals who besmirch your faith. Tell your followers the true meaning of the Koran. Do not let the money and influence of hypocrites taint your religion or your people. We request that you do this now, respectfully, or face the scrutiny of America and our allies. “Fifth, starting today, an unprecedented coalition of three former American presidents, my predecessor included, will travel around the globe to strengthen our alliances. Much like our brave military leaders, we will lead from the front, go where we are needed. We will go toe to toe with any who would seek to undermine our good intentions, and who trample the freedoms of our citizens. In the coming days you will find out how great our resolve truly is. “Sixth, my staff is in the process of drafting a proposal for the members of the United Nations. The proposal will outline our recommendations for the formation of an international terrorism strike force along with an international tax that will fund ongoing anti-terrorism operations. Only the countries that contribute to this fund will be supported by the strike force. You pay to play.

Probably it was the ways in which Bush expanded American military and intelligence alliances with dictators in nations such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Maybe it was when, in the first free and fair parliamentary election ever held by the Palestinian people, the militant Hamas party won and the United States refused to recognize the results. Surely it was the way the war in Iraq was going; the crusade to inject democracy into the Islamic world at gunpoint had gone haywire. His resplendent rhetoric aside, a truer expression of the way Bush saw the world came in the recounting of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who had been the top American commander in Iraq. As the war descended into chaos in the spring of 2004, the general wrote, Bush had shouted: “Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them!

Islamic philosophy of life brings a long-term perspective to the pursuit of self-interest by informing humans about the positive and negative consequences of their actions and choices in the life hereafter. In the Godless worldview, due to the absence of afterlife accountability, the rich people with absolute and inviolable property rights can command natural and environmental resources whose potential lifespan is much more than the lives of their owners. But, if the rich people believe in no afterlife accountability, they can extract and exploit these resources quickly and deprive future generations of their use.

Deprived of their direct ties with Central Asia -- and with it their access to Turkish slaves, mercenaries and war horses -- the later Ghaznavids lost their wider, imperial vision an acquired the character of a regional, North Indian state. They were certainly not seen as menacing aliens who might have posed a civilzational threat to Indian culture. Contemporary Sanskrit inscriptions refer to the Ghaznavids not as Muslims but as 'turushkas' (Turks), an ethnic term, or as 'hammiras', a Sanskritized rendering of 'amir' (Arabic for commander), an official title. For their part, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries Ghaznavid rulers in India issued coins from Lahore bearing the same legends that had appeared on those of their Indian predecessors, the Hindu Shahi dynasty (c.850-1002). These included Śiva's bull Nandi and the Sanskrit phrase 'śri samanta deva' (Honourable Chief Commander) inscribed in Devanagari script. Such measures point to the later Ghaznavids' investment in establishing cultural and monetary continuity with North Indian kingsdoms. Moreover, despite the dynasty's rhetoric about defending Sunni Islam, religion posed no bar to military recruitment, as Indians had always been prominent in Ghaznavid armies. In 1033 Mahmud of Ghazni gave the command of his army stationed in Lahore to a Hindu general, and in Ghazni itself Indian military contingents had their own commanders, inhabited their own quarter of the city, and were generally considered more reliable soldiers than the Turks. Crucially, the Ghaznavids brought to the Punjab the entire gamut of Persianate institutions and practices that would define the political economy of much of India for centuries to come. Inherited from the creative ferment of tenth-century Khurasan and Central Asia under the Samanid rulers of Bukhara, these included: the elaboration of a ranked and salaried bureaucracy tied to the state's land revenue and military systems; the institution of elite, or military, slavery; an elaboration of the office of 'sultan'; the courtly patronage of Persian arts, crafts and literature; and a tradition of spiritually powerful holy men, or Sufis, whose relations with royal power were ambivalent, to say the least.

Mirza Masroor is not the Present Khalifa Of Islam He is only a cozener of a fake Religion --- Misusing of the internet and Google Search has become a beneficial tool for fake ones, and even such ones neither fall in international jurisdiction nor considered dangerous that damage others' values and realities. It is a collapse of the truth in the mirror and the context of the minorities' right to freedom, which is under the process of falsehood in all its directions and dimensions. The fake Messiah, or Jesus Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani and his all fake khalifas fooled Christianity and Islam, and they continuously practice on this false claim of the prophetic mission. Wikipedia, the unreliable and untrusty encyclopedia, facilitates the way of command to a minority of the fake prophet upon a clear majority of Muslims and Christians. The followers of a fake Hindustani Jesus Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani entered world media and websites such as Wikipedia to publicize their wrong and false mission. Qadiyanis are doubtlessly termites of religion, who have challenged, not only Islam but factually, also Christianity with the creation of fake Jesus. Virtually, I have been the victim of Qadiyanis during my contribution to the Wiki-project to maintain standards and neutrality of it; thereupon, a gang of Qadiyanis succeeded that I left Wikipedia, and they, with the collaboration of my opponent ones, also managed to delete my article in Wikipedia. Not only that, but they also tried hard to eliminate me from the net-world, but thanks to Google Search, which significantly displayed Ehsan Sehgal more than that it was. Consequently, they stayed humiliated with their actions of bad-faith. These days on social media, a non-Muslim, non-Christian; however, self-made and self-claimed, Mr. Miraza Masroor Ahmad is in Google Search as Present Khalifa Of Islam, which is indeed not only incorrect only; it is a shameless and false claim for provoking the real Muslims. As a fact, Qadiyanis are neither Muslim nor Christian; they are just grifters and cozeners. Qadiyanis know that they deliberately victimize Muslims theoretically to become practically victimizers, for achieving empathy and sympathy from Westerners stupids and idiots, who have even not a little knowledge and study about Islam and Christianity, except media discriminations and wrong interpretations with the ill-mental context.

With Muawiya’s rise from leader of Islamic Syria to become commander of all the Muslim faithful,

After making the hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca – Abd al-Malik recast the caliphate in terms of faith and family: Islam would be central. He was the first to be widely called caliph instead of the more military commander, and his later coins eschewed the human imagery previously employed, a prohibition that came to be part of Islamic tradition. Arabic became the language of government, a decision that changed the world, imposing the language from Morocco to Iraq, and he relaunched Muawiya’s jihad against Constantinople.

From the 1070s, instability in the Holy Land deepened. In 1071 an army led by the Seljuq commander Alp Arslan, or Heroic Lion, routed Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert, in what is eastern Turkey today. The battle, which marked the beginning of Turkish ascendancy in Anatolia and the slow decline of Byzantium, was a cataclysmic defeat. Humiliatingly Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured and taken prisoner.

Once upon a time, the Islamic world was a superpower and its jihad an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Over two centuries ago, however, a rising Europe—which had experienced more than one millennium of Muslim conquests and atrocities—eclipsed and defanged Islam. As Muhammad’s civilization retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam did not change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion—which commands jihad against infidels—whereas the West has learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to become an unwitting ally of the jihad.

Shari’a, my son, is not just the ahkam or positive commands, Shari’a is a way of life. It is the full process of the law - the positive command is simply the by-product of the process. Shari’a is the way with its signs and posts, with its evidence and indicators, and with its purposes and ends. The positive commands are like the rules of the road, and the rules are part of the Divine way, but the rules, by themselves, are not the way. The positive laws, the ahkam, are the bare minimum for staying on the road; they set the outer limits. But it is possible to follow all the rules and still lose your way. The law does not define justice, it simply sets some of the outer limits of justice. The law does not define morality, it sets some of the outer limits of morality. And the law does not define beauty, it sets some of the outer limits of beauty. Hence, it is possible to follow the outer limits and still be unjust, immoral, and ugly. On the other hand, if you have no regard, even for the outer limits, then you are not just, moral, or beautiful.

Laws and commands exhort and punish, but if the heart is corrupted, no command or order can replace the intimacy and truthfulness of a lively conscience, beautiful soul, and loving heart.

But in Islam, the word chosen does not carry the same meaning of the Bible. The Jews regard being chosen as a heavy responsibility to follow God’s commandments and to repair the world. In Islam it simply means superiority.

Over the past three years, I have heard a lot of stories about other Yazidi women who were captured and enslaved by ISIS. For the most part, we were all victims of the same violence. We would be bought at the market, or given as a gift to a new recruit or a high-ranking commander, and then taken back to his home, where we would be raped and humiliated, most of us beaten as well. Then we would be sold or given as a gift again, and again raped and beaten, then sold or given to another militant, and raped and beaten by him, and sold or given, and raped and beaten, and it went this way for as long as we were desirable enough and not yet dead. If we tried to escape, we would be punished severely.

Michael Nagata, U.S. Special Operations commander in the Middle East, put it: [The United States does] not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it … We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.177

There are 35,213 Qur’an verses, hadiths, Sharia laws, and various Muslim scriptures commanding and encouraging killing, violence, war, annihilation, corporal punishment, hatred, boycott, humiliation, and subjugation aimed mainly against non-Muslims.

Whosoever wishes that his vision be truthful must seek to attain truthfulness, consume nothing but what is lawful, hold fast to the commandments and prohibitions. Furthermore, he should sleep in the state of ritual purity, face the Qibla and mention God until overtaken by sleep. The vision of such a one is seldom false. In addition, the most truthful of visions are those seen in the early morning [before dawn], as that is the time of divine descent, and proximity of mercy and forgiveness, respite from the devils. Its opposite is the vision seen in the early part of the night when the devils and devilish souls are spread about.

Old Testament prophets foretold that God would reveal “his Arm,” his own Son, to show us what he’s like in a human form we could relate to. And this Messiah would pay our debts for us, so that all willing people could come home to God (Isaiah 53). God removed every barrier between you and himself. You don’t have to prove you can be good enough—you can’t. You can’t perfectly follow the eightfold path of Buddhism, the five pillars of Islam, the Ten Commandments, or even your own moral conscience. Ever say, “I’ll never . . . ,” but you did? We can’t be who God intended without relationship with God—so God paid the ultimate human price to forgive us and restore relationship with every willing person.

According to the great and decisive discoveries of Bachofen and Morgan in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in spite of the rejection their findings have found in most academic circles, there can be little doubt that there was a matriarchal phase of religion preceding the patriarchal one, at least in many cultures. In the matriarchal phase, the highest being is the mother. She is the goddess, she is also the authority in family and society. In order to understand the essence of matriarchal religion, we have only to remember what has been said about the essence of motherly love. Mother's love is unconditional, it is all-protective, all-enveloping; because it is unconditional it can also not be controlled or acquired. Its presence gives the loved person a sense of bliss; its absence produces a sense of lostness and utter despair. Since mother loves her children because they are her children, and not because they are 'good,' obedient, or fulfill her wishes and commands, mother's love is based on equality. All men are equal, because they all are children of a mother, because they all are children of Mother Earth. The next stage of human evolution, the only one of which we have thorough knowledge and do not need to rely on inferences and reconstruction, is the patriarchal phase. In this phase the mother is dethroned from her supreme position, and the father becomes the Supreme Being, in religion as well as in society. The nature of fatherly love is that he makes demands, establishes principles and laws, and that his love for the son depends on the obedience of the latter to these demands. He likes best the son who is most like him, who is most obedient and who is best fitted to become his successor, as the inheritor of his possessions. (The development of patriarchal society goes together with the development of private property.) As a consequence, patriarchal society is hierarchical; the equality of the brothers gives way to competition and mutual strife. Whether we think of the Indian, Egyptian or Greek cultures, or of the Jewish-Christian, or Islamic religions, we are in the middle of a patriarchal world, with its male gods, over whom one chief god reigns, or where all gods have been eliminated with the exception of the One, the God. However, since the wish for mother's love cannot be eradicated from the hearts of man, it is not surprising that the figure of the loving mother could never be fully driven out from the pantheon. In the Jewish religion, the mother aspects of God are reintroduced especially in the various currents of mysticism. In the Catholic religion, Mother is symbolized by the Church, and by the Virgin. Even in Protestantism, the figure of Mother has not been entirely eradicated, although she remains hidden.

Even before the first Soviet tanks crossed into Afghanistan in 1979, a movement of Islamists had sprung up nationwide in opposition to the Communist state. They were, at first, city-bound intellectuals, university students and professors with limited countryside appeal. But under unrelenting Soviet brutality they began to forge alliances with rural tribal leaders and clerics. The resulting Islamist insurgents—the mujahedeen—became proxies in a Cold War battle, with the Soviet Union on one side and the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia on the other. As the Soviets propped up the Afghan government, the CIA and other intelligence agencies funneled millions of dollars in aid to the mujahedeen, along with crate after crate of weaponry. In the process, traditional hierarchies came radically undone. When the Communists killed hundreds of tribal leaders and landlords, young men of more humble backgrounds used CIA money and arms to form a new warrior elite in their place. In the West, we would call such men “warlords.” In Afghanistan they are usually labeled “commanders.” Whatever the term, they represented a phenomenon previously unknown in Afghan history. Now, each valley and district had its own mujahedeen commanders, all fighting to free the country from Soviet rule but ultimately subservient to the CIA’s guns and money. The war revolutionized the very core of rural culture. With Afghan schools destroyed, millions of boys were instead educated across the border in Pakistani madrassas, or religious seminaries, where they were fed an extreme, violence-laden version of Islam. Looking to keep the war fueled, Washington—where the prevailing ethos was to bleed the Russians until the last Afghan—financed textbooks for schoolchildren in refugee camps festooned with illustrations of Kalashnikovs, swords, and overturned tanks. One edition declared: Jihad is a kind of war that Muslims fight in the name of God to free Muslims.… If infidels invade, jihad is the obligation of every Muslim. An American text designed to teach children Farsi: Tey [is for] Tofang (rifle); Javed obtains rifles for the mujahedeen Jeem [is for] Jihad; Jihad is an obligation. My mom went to the jihad. The cult of martyrdom, the veneration of jihad, the casting of music and cinema as sinful—once heard only from the pulpits of a few zealots—now became the common vocabulary of resistance nationwide. The US-backed mujahedeen branded those supporting the Communist government, or even simply refusing to pick sides, as “infidels,” and justified the killing of civilians by labeling them apostates. They waged assassination campaigns against professors and civil servants, bombed movie theaters, and kidnapped humanitarian workers. They sabotaged basic infrastructure and even razed schools and clinics. With foreign backing, the Afghan resistance eventually proved too much for the Russians. The last Soviet troops withdrew in 1989, leaving a battered nation, a tottering government that was Communist in name only, and a countryside in the sway of the commanders. For three long years following the withdrawal, the CIA kept the weapons and money flowing to the mujahedeen, while working to block any peace deal between them and the Soviet-funded government. The CIA and Pakistan’s spy agency pushed the rebels to shell Afghan cities still under government control, including a major assault on the eastern city of Jalalabad that flattened whole neighborhoods. As long as Soviet patronage continued though, the government withstood the onslaught. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, however, Moscow and Washington agreed to cease all aid to their respective proxies. Within months, the Afghan government crumbled. The question of who would fill the vacuum, who would build a new state, has not been fully resolved to this day.

The second modern commandment, "Thou shalt consume!" is the natural complement of the first—"Create more desire!" Together they lead the attack on the key bastion of the Indo-European, Islamic, and Hebrew traditions—the impulse control system—for the desire for a million things cannot be created without stimulating a craving for everything.

Behold I am about to bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle. Because they have forsaken Me … and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind; therefore, behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when this place will … be called … the valley of Slaughter.’” (Jeremiah 19:3-5)

Islamic apologists in the West today commonly assert that verse 9:29 commands warfare only against the Jews and Christians who fought against Muhammad. It would be comforting if every Muslim believed that, but unfortunately that has never been the mainstream Islamic understanding of this verse. Indeed, if it had been, the regulations delineated in the Pact of Umar would never have been formulated—and Islamic tradition even specifies that they were formulated after Muhammad’s death with Christians against whom he did not fight. That in itself, as well as the teachings of all the schools of Islamic law, illustrates that this verse was always understood to have a universal application.

Now that we have seen what is in the Koran, let’s consider what is not in the Muslim holy book. Islam, being one of the “world’s great religions,” as well as one of the “three great Abrahamic faiths,” enjoys the benefit of certain assumptions on the part of uninformed Americans and Europeans. Many people believe that since Islam is a religion, it must teach universal love and brotherhood—because that is what religions do, isn’t it? It must teach that one ought to be kind to the poor and downtrodden, generous, charitable, and peaceful. It must teach that we are all children of a loving God whose love for all human beings should be imitated by those whom he has created. Certainly Judaism and Christianity teach these things, and they are found in nearly equivalent forms in Eastern religions. But when it comes to Islam, the assumptions are wrong. Islam makes a distinction between believers and unbelievers that overrides any obligation to general benevolence. A moral code from the Koran As we have seen, the Koran recounts how Moses went up on the mountain and encountered Allah, who gave him tablets—but says nothing about what was written on them (7:145). Although the Ten Commandments do not appear in the Koran, the book is not bereft of specific moral guidelines: its seventeenth chapter enunciates a moral code (17:22–39). Accordingly, Muslims should:           1.    Worship Allah alone.           2.    Be kind to their parents.           3.    Provide for their relatives, the needy, and travelers, and not be wasteful.           4.    Not kill their children for fear of poverty.           5.    Not commit adultery.           6.    Not “take life—which Allah has made sacred—except for just cause.” Also, “whoso is slain wrongfully, We have given power unto his heir, but let him not commit excess in slaying”—that is, one should make restitution for wrongful death.           7.    Not seize the wealth of orphans.           8.    “Give full measure when ye measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight”—that is, conduct business honestly.           9.    “Pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge.”           10.  Not “walk on the earth with insolence.” Noble ideals, to be sure, but when it comes to particulars, these are not quite equivalent to the Ten Commandments. The provision about not taking life “except for just cause” is, of course, in the same book as the thrice-repeated command to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5; 4:89; 2:191)—thus Infidels must understand that their infidelity, their non-acceptance of Islam, is “just cause” for Muslims to make war against them. In the same vein, one is to be kind to one’s parents—unless they are Infidels: “O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith. Whoso of you taketh them for friends, such are wrong-doers” (9:23). You

Knowledge will not be taken away from mankind, but scholars will disappear. When no scholar remains, stupid men will be put in command. They will go astray themselves as well as lead others astray.

Ilm is rather a comprehensive term, for the Prophet has said: “Knowledge consists of three things, a clear verse (of the Qur- ân), a well-established sunnah, and a fair religious duty ( farîdah).” Also, Jesus has said: “There are three (kinds of ) knowers (- âlim), a knower of God, a knower of the command of God, and a knower of the command of God who is at the same time a knower of God.” Consequently, there are three kinds of knowledge, namely, the knowledge of what is lawful and what is unlawful, which is the legal knowledge of the rules governing this world and which is exoteric material knowledge; the knowledge of the rules governing the other world, which is esoteric intuitive knowledge; and the knowledge of the divine rules as they affect God’s creation in both this world and the other world.

It is these cancelled, earlier commands which our leaders use to deceive us about the violent history of Islam and the commands to violence contained in the Koran. One of the most frequently cited verses used to claim that those Muslims who use terrorism are not Islamic is a verse which says “there is no compulsion in religion”.22 But as our chronological Koran shows, this is one of the parts of the Koran which experts say was cancelled by the commands to kill. Those who cite this verse about supposed religious tolerance are either lying or they are ignorant.

for the last half of the Koran recited by Mohammed, the god of Islam was commanding Muslims to fight the unbelievers (the Kuffar), to kill those who refuse to abandon their beliefs, to kill those who refuse to follow the rules of Islam.

Instead, our cultural warlords in the mainstream media, academia, and entertainment strictly enforce the blasphemy laws of Islam, which command that one must not insult or slander Islam. In Muslim countries, blasphemy is punishable by death; in the West, it is your character that is assassinated if you dare to speak out against the Islamic supremacist agenda. Our last line of defense was always the rule of law. So it was particularly jarring and deeply disturbing to come upon this latest initiative from the ABA, one of America’s last lines of defense against the litigation jihad and creeping Sharia in this country. Furthermore, the ABA’s “Middle East Law committee” has promoted Sharia finance, the implementation of Islamic laws regarding financial transactions (including its prohibition of interest-based transactions) for some time with the same warmly positive slant. Sharia is being imposed across state lines, across the country, by way of these varying initiatives.

Back in 1415, Prince Henry and his brothers had convinced their father, King John of Portugal, to capture the principal Muslim trading depot in the western Mediterranean: Ceuta, on the northeastern tip of Morocco. These brothers were envious of Muslim riches, and they sought to eliminate the Islamic middleman so that they could find the southern source of gold and Black captives. After the battle, Moorish prisoners left Prince Henry spellbound as they detailed trans-Saharan trade routes down into the disintegrating Mali Empire. Since Muslims still controlled these desert routes, Prince Henry decided to “seek the lands by the way of the sea.” He sought out those African lands until his death in 1460, using his position as the Grand Master of Portugal’s wealthy Military Order of Christ (successor of the Knights Templar) to draw venture capital and loyal men for his African expeditions. In 1452, Prince Henry’s nephew, King Afonso V, commissioned Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a biography of the life and slave-trading work of his “beloved uncle.” Zurara was a learned and obedient commander in Prince Henry’s Military Order of Christ. In recording and celebrating Prince Henry’s life, Zurara was also implicitly obscuring his Grand Master’s monetary decision to exclusively trade in African slaves. In 1453, Zurara finished the inaugural defense of African slave-trading, the first European book on Africans in the modern era. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea begins the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas. Zurara’s inaugural racist ideas, in other words, were a product of, not a producer of, Prince Henry’s racist policies concerning African slave-trading.1

A major sub-theme of America at the Crossroads (Tyndale House, 1979) was that as bad as things seemed in America there was still hope. Hope that if we heeded God’s call to repentance (II Chronicles 7:14), that we would be healed, and we would survive coming difficult times. That message is still operative, as America can still be healed, if we humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways, He will heal our land. That’s His promise and He will do it – that is, if we do what He has commanded us to do.

Is it too late, even at this stage in human history? No, it’s not too late, until, as Casey Stengel might say, until, it’s too late. Israel was healed on one occasion, as they cried out to God and repented as the Philistines were coming over the sand dunes to destroy them. America can still be healed. There’s hope that we can survive the evil plans of those who seek to destroy us as a nation. However, hope can only remain as a viable reality for a finite period of time. God is patient, but He’s not a doddering fool, forgetting what He has commanded, nor neglecting to enforce his justice.

America has been the ‘mother’ of the promotion and glorification of adultery (leading to divorce), in spite of the Seventh Commandment’s prohibition (Exodus 20:14). What other nation can make such a dishonorable claim?

No Christian friends, please, we’re Muslims The Koran warns Muslims that the Jews and pagans will be their worst enemies, but “nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant” (5:82). One Muslim interpretation of this passage holds that it refers not to all Christians, but only to those who accept Islam; this is made clear by the following two verses, in which those Christians accept Muhammad’s message. But even if one takes the text at face value, the totality of the Koranic record suggests that while Christians may themselves feel “nearest in love” to the Muslims, Muslims are not to return the favor. For Allah commands them, “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust” (5:51).

After the beheading of journalist James Foley by the Islamic State in August 2014, President Barack Obama stated in his remarks: “ISIL speaks for no religion … no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.”54 Unfortunately, this is only accurate if we share the same definition of “innocent” as the authors of the sacred texts of these religions, which we don’t. In verses 9:1–6 of the Quran, for instance, one need only be a polytheist who won’t capitulate to Islamic authority to be worthy of death. In the Old Testament, nonvirginal brides (Deuteronomy 22:21–22), sexually active gay men (Leviticus 20:13), and those who dare to work on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) are all to be killed by divine command. To the authors of these books, these are not innocent people. To us—needless to say—they are.

Most people love their country, so honestly, looking at the errors of one’s own homeland is not easy. Many American expatriates who have chosen to live in other parts of the world write that it was only from the viewpoint of living outside America that they could clearly see America’s failures. Seeing America as it really is, though, may be quite difficult, even for God’s people. If we ask our loving Lord to open our eyes and show us the true condition of our church and our nation, we will better see the abominations of both.          As for the reference in Revelation 17 to Babylon as the “Mother of Prostitutes,” insight into its meaning is found in Judges 2:17:            “Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the LORD’s commands.”            What is meant in Revelation 17 goes beyond the physical act of prostitution and applies to the spiritual aspects of turning away from the true God, “to other gods.” The United States has turned away from the God who founded and birthed us, “to other gods.’ Founded as a Christian nation, as our Supreme Court acknowledged over one hundred years ago (Holy Trinity Church v. U.S., 12 Sup. Ct. 511 – 1892), we have become anything but.

...practicing or teaching business administration can, inshallah, essentially become a profession that is full of righteous acts on the part of the believer if a person follows the rights, commands, and limits established in Islam.

The Jihadist mindset and unfailing commitment is to replace every single national government in the world with a Muslim government, with Sharia law replacing all former national laws. “Muslim nations are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world.” (Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi, quoted by Dr. Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism).

If one thinks like the Jihadists, one understands their actions, past, present, and future, from the belief that Muhammad has demanded:            “I command by Allah to go fight all the people of the world until they confess there is no God but Allah, and I am his messenger…” (From           the Hadith, recorded by Sahih Al-Bukhari, Islam and Terrorism, Dr. Gabriel).

What, then, is Jihad? Dr. Gabriel was an Imam of a mosque in Gaza, Egypt, and a respected professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, before he became a follower of Jesus Christ, and changed his name for his personal security. He writes that a major motivator for his leaving Islam was its emphasis on Jihad. Dr. Gabriel was troubled by Muhammad’s command, labeled as the “verse of the sword,” known to be the final development of Jihad in Islam, found in Surah 9:5:          “Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)…

to emigrate, God’s people should remember the importance of assembling together with other believers. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.”(Hebrews 10:25). We are commanded to associate with, pray and worship with fellow believers, plus it’s medically indicated. Neuroscientist John Cacioppo concluded that people who don’t associate regularly with other people are more prone to illness, obesity and feelings of helplessness. (Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection).

vital historical fact: that Gamal Abdel Nasser signifies the only truly Egyptian developmental project in the country's history since the fall of the pharaonic state. There had been other projects: a Greek one in Alexandria, an Arab–Islamic one under the Ummayads (the first dynasty to rule the Islamic world after the end of the era of the ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’), military–Islamic ones under Saladin and the grand Mamelukes, a French one under Napoleon's commanders and a dynastic (Ottoman-inspired) one under Mohamed Ali Pasha and Khedive Ismael. But this was different – in origin, meaning and impact. For Nasser was a man of the Egyptian soil who had overthrown the Middle East's most established and sophisticated monarchy in a swift and bloodless move – to the acclaim of the millions of poor, oppressed Egyptians – and ushered in a programme of ‘social justice’, ‘progress and development’ and ‘dignity’: a nation-centred developmental vision.

The founder of Pakistan’s fundamentalist Muslim movement (Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi) has succinctly stated the ultimate goal of Islam:          “Islam is not a normal religion like the other religions in the world, and Muslim nations are not like normal nations. Muslim nations are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world….Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man….The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy.

Osama bin Laden drew inspiration from Hezbollah’s dual suicide attacks against the multinational forces in Beirut in 1983. Al Qaeda’s first simultaneous suicide attacks on two U.S. embassies in eastern Africa on August 7, 1998, were directly modeled on Hezbollah’s 1983 attacks. Al Qaeda’s coordinated suicide missions expanded the model three years later for four simultaneous airplane hijackings on September 11, 2001. The nineteen Islamic jihadists, who were armed only with box cutters, successfully hijacked four commercial planes to carry out their suicide mission. Their bravado spoke for itself in that they didn’t even bother to have a backup plan.

And finally, when the celebrated Quranic commentator Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi (1149–1209) interpreted the verse “[God] created spouses for you of your own kind so that you may have peace of mind through them” (3:21) as “proof that women were created like animals and plants and other useful things [and not for] worship and carrying the Divine commands . . . because the woman is weak, silly, and in one sense like a child,” his commentary became (and still is) one of the most widely respected in the Muslim world. This last point bears repeating. The fact is that for fifteen centuries, the science of Quranic commentary has been the exclusive domain of Muslim men. And because each one of these exegetes inevitably brings to the Quran his own ideology and his own preconceived notions, it should not be surprising to learn that certain verses have most often been read in their most misogynist interpretation.

they will live aesthetic lives in the caves of Pakistan and Afghanistan, not requiring huge financial resources. Secondly, and most important, they won’t care. Jihadists have a singular goal that they believe their Allah has demanded of them. They also believe that their Allah has provided to them the weapons to accomplish that singular goal. The Jihadists will readily conclude that, if it is necessary to destroy the world’s richest consuming nation (and also the world’s only military superpower), in order to conquer the rest of the nations in the world for Islam, so be it. If one thinks like the Jihadists, one understands their actions, past, present, and future, from the belief that Muhammad has demanded: “I command by Allah to go fight all the people of the world until they confess there is no God but Allah, and I am his messenger…” (From      the Hadith recorded by Sahih Al-Bukhari, Islam and Terrorism, Dr. Gabriel).

after Muhammad moved to Medina, his revelations became very hostile to Christians. Dr. Gabriel writes: “The following verse is considered to be the final revelation from Allah regarding Christians and Jews; therefore, it is understood to override all other revelations: It states: “And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and    polytheism, i.e., worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will be for Allah Alone (in the whole of the world)….” (Surah 8:39 This fact is also emphasized in Surah 5:52-57 and Surah 4:89. When fighting Christians, the Quran commands severe punishment, so Christians will leave their homes and be dispersed. (Surah 8:57).

Ibn al-Khatib says: Ibn Battutah has a modest share of the sciences. He journeyed to the East in the month of Rajab 725 [1325], travelled through its lands, penetrated into Iraq al-Ajam, then entered India, Sind and China, and returned through Yemen. In India, the king appointed him to the office of qadi. He came away later and returned to the Maghrib [...]. Our Shaykh Abu l-Barakat Ibn al-Balfiqi told us of many strange things which Ibn Battutah had seen. Among them was that he claimed to have entered Constantinople and to have seen in its church twelve thousands bishops. He subsequently crossed the Strait to the Spanish coast [...]. Thereafter the ruler of Fez summoned him and commanded him to commit his travels to writing.

Ironically, while modern-day Islam rejects the Gospel accounts as corrupt, the Koran itself commands Muslims to read the Injeel—that is, the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus.

One way to avoid shame is by asserting superiority over those viewed as weaker.66 This is demonstrated within the Muslim culture in its treatment of women,67 but it is also externally displayed through Islamic supremacy—the belief that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims.68 Islam teaches that the blood of infidels is not equal to the blood of Muslims69 and commands them to treat non-Muslims harshly and fellow Muslims mercifully.70 This basic ideology of superiority is at the core of the historic and modern Islamic quest to conquer, subjugate, and establish dominance over the non-Muslim world.71 Furthermore, Western guilt cultures are natural targets of subjugation because they are viewed as weak.72 Unlike shame culture, guilt culture encourages individuals to harbor internal feelings of guilt for their own wrongdoing and to seek restoration by apologizing for error.73 From the viewpoint of a shame culture, however, admitting error is a sign of weakness because it brings shame upon oneself.74 This is vitally important to recognize, especially when one considers the apologies President Obama made to the Muslim world for past policies and the effect such statements have on the radical Middle Eastern mind.75

Islam divides the world into two parts: dar al-Islam (house of Islam), places where Sharia is the highest authority, and dar al-harb (house of war), places where Sharia is not the highest authority and must be brought within the fold of Islam.73 The distinction between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb proves that the Muslim ummah (community) is not limited by national boundaries or identities. Rather it is unified by Islam. That is why Muslim individuals from around the world leave their home countries to join ISIS and other terrorist groups to participate in jihad against the infidels. From the radical Muslim’s perspective, the jihad to transform dar al-harb into dar al-Islam does not end until the mission is fully accomplished. Although most Islamic jurists agree that only the head of state or the caliph (head of the Islamic ummah) has the authority to wage a holy war (jihad),74 radical Muslims argue that when the head of the state fails to faithfully perform his duties (one of which is to proclaim Sharia everywhere), it becomes incumbent on individual Muslims (members of the ummah) to carry out Allah’s commands.75 Only Allah is the legislator, and the prophet and his successors are vicegerents who enforce his law. Hence, peace occurs only when everything is either subject to Allah’s law or, for temporary periods, when Muslims regroup and prepare for the next campaign. Until then, a constant state of war between the ummah and nonbelievers exists. Israeli author and scholar of Arabic literature Mordechai Kedar said: Peace in their mind is not between Muslims and infidels. Peace is when infidels live under the umbrella of Islam. The conquest brings peace in their minds. Theoretically there cannot be [peace] between Islamic State, the Caliphate state, and other infidel states. Eternal war should be between them. Peace can reign only when everybody comes under the umbrella of Islam.76 Accordingly, the people who live in dar al-harb and do not accept Sharia are not considered innocent and can be killed or subdued. The Western mind views suicide bombing as an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people. To the radical Muslim mind, however, Western victims of suicide bombings are not innocent because they have not surrendered to Sharia and Muslim rule. They are still part of the house of war (dar al-harb). As a result, they have not acquired protected status under Islam, and accordingly, they are morally complicit in their own destruction. So the distinction between combatant and noncombatant status, as defined by international law, has no meaning to the Islamic radical’s mind.

Where did that remark come from? Mormonism, as anyone can easily find out, is one of a number of Christian sects which came into being in the USA in the nineteenth century. It differs from mainstream Christianity on certain technical points which Dawkins would at least pretend not to understand. So why write "four if you count Mormonism"? Why not "five if you count Mormonism and Christian Science"? Or "ten if you include Mormonism, Christian Science, Christedelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Reformed Judaism, Shi'ite Islam, Strict Baptists, Celtic Orthodox, Unitarians and Quakers?" Does Dawkins think that the Mormons' adoptionist Christology is so far removed from the mainstream as to constitute a separate faith (while the Jehovah's Witnesses' arianism is not?) Or is he playing a numbers game, saying that the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints is so numerous as to count as a religion in its own right, distinct from "Christianity". (But then, why not "Four if you include Catholicism"?) We never find out. Like Melchizidec, it comes from nowhere and it goes nowhere. It popped into Dawkins head and he wrote it down. It makes me doubt whether our author is fully in command of his brief."Four if you include Mormons". Honestly, you might just as well say "Britain consists of three countries: England, Scotland and Wales – or four if you include Tooting Bec.

[M]osques in Mughal India, though religiously potent, were considered detached from both sovereign terrain and dynastic authority, and hence politically inactive. As such, their desecration would have no relevance to the business of disestablishing a regime that had patronised them. Not surprisingly, then, when Hindu rulers established their authority over the territories of defeated Muslim rulers, they did not as a rule desecrate mosques or shrines, as, for example, when Shivaji established a Maratha kingdom on the ashes of Bijapur's former dominions of Maharashtra, or when Vijayanagara annexed the former territories of the Bahmanis or their successors. In fact, the rajas of Vijayanagra, as is well known, built their own mosques, evidently to accommodate the sizeable number of Muslims employed in their armed forces. By contrast, monumental royal temple complexes of the early medieval period were considered politically active, in as much as the state-deities they housed were understood as expressing the shared sovereignty of king and deity over a particular dynastic realm. Therefore, when Indo-Muslim commanders or rulers looted the consecrated images of defeated opponents and carried them off to their own capitals as war trophies, they were in a sense conforming to customary rules of Indian politics. Similarly, when they destroyed a royal temple or converted it into a mosque, the ruling authorities were building on a political logic that, they knew, placed supreme political significance on such temples. That same significance, in turn, rendered temples just as deserving of peace-time protection as it rendered them vulnerable in times of conflict.

There are two kinds of Fascists: those who give orders and those who take them. A popular base gives Fascism the legs it needs to march, the lungs it uses to proclaim, and the muscle it relies on to menace—but that’s Fascism from the neck down. To create tyranny out of the fears and hopes of average people, money is required, and so, too, ambition and twisted ideas. It is the combination that kills. In the absence of wealthy backers, we likely would never have heard of Corporal Mussolini or Corporal Hitler. In the absence of their compulsion to dominate at all costs, neither would have caused the harm he did. Most political movements of appreciable size are populist to one degree or another, but that doesn’t make them Fascist, or even intolerant. Whether they seek to limit immigration or expand it, criticize Islam or defend it, lobby for peace or agitate for war, all are democratic, provided they pursue their goals by democratic means. What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do whatever is necessary—including the use of force and trampling on the rights of others—to achieve victory and command obedience.

proselytism can be disregarded: 1) when they are broken under duress—for example, a Muslim is threatened with torture and death if he does not curse Muhammad and apostatize from Islam (see Koran 3:28 and 16:106); or 2) as a stratagem of war, as when Muhammad permitted a Muslim to feign apostasy and to blaspheme his name to win the confidence of the poet Ka’b in order to assassinate him. Likewise, Muhammad once commanded Na’im bin Mas’ud, a young convert from a tribe that refused to submit to Muhammad, to conceal his new Muslim identity, go back to his tribe—which he cajoled with a perfidious “You are my stock and my family, the dearest of men to me”—only to betray them to Muhammad’s waiting jihadis.21

he tried to invite European commanders to become advisors to the military without requiring them to convert to Islam.

They forged links with other terrorist groups based in Southeast Asia whose members had fought in Afghanistan, including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The Afghanistan connection gave al-Qaeda members easy access to Southeast Asia. A number of JI members I later spoke with told me that they had met KSM and other al-Qaeda members when they went through the region. Khallad and 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi passed through Southeast Asia between December 1999 and January 2000, and Hambali helped with their lodging and travel. Hambali was central to cementing the relationship between al-Qaeda and JI. A disciple of Sungkar, he had been sent by him to train in Afghanistan in 1986, where he also fought the Soviets. He remained in the country for eighteen months, building a relationship with KSM in the process. As with other regional terrorist groups it tried to co-opt, al-Qaeda funded JI, thereby tying the two groups to each other. While Hambali embraced al-Qaeda and swore allegiance to bin Laden, other JI members resisted the connection, preferring to focus on their near enemy rather than al-Qaeda’s far enemy, the United States. Other JI commanders I later spoke to, including Nasir Abbas, told me that they had opposed Hambali and had refused to endorse his operations. He had control over Singapore and Malaysia, which is where al-Qaeda’s initial focus in the region was because that was where its members were. At times he managed to bypass local commanders and run operations in their fiefdoms, including in Indonesia itself. Hambali’s efforts were helped after Sungkar died, in 1999, and Abu Bakar Bashir took over. Bashir supported Hambali’s relationship with al-Qaeda and gave Hambali freedom to do almost whatever he liked. December 13, 2001. Hambali was furious when he learned of the arrests in Singapore. This was yet another failure for him: he had orchestrated a series of bombings of Christian churches across the Indonesian archipelago on Christmas Eve 2000,

Note throughout all of this that it was the pope who called for all of these wars and campaigns over a nearly two-hundred-year period. The pope in effect inspired, directed, and commanded the political and military actions of European princes. We are hard put to find any parallel of purely religious authorities in Islam directing the actions of Muslim armies.

Futuwwah is the way of the fata. In Arabic, fata literally means a handsome, brave youth. After the enlightenment of Islam, following the use of the word in the Holy Koran, fata (plural: fityan) came to mean the ideal, noble, and perfect man whose hospitality and generosity would extend until he had nothing left for himself; a man who would give all, including his life, for the sake of his friends. According to the Sufis, Futuwwah is a code of honorable conduct that follows the example of the prophets, saints, sages, and the intimate friends and lovers of Allah. The traditional example of generosity is the prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, who readily accepted the command to sacrifice his son for Allah's sake. He is also a model of hospitality who shared his meals with guests all his life and never ate alone. The prophet Joseph, peace be upon him, is an example of mercy, for he pardoned his brothers, who tried to kill him, and a model of honor, for he resisted the advances of a married woman, Zulaykha, who was feminine beauty personified. The principles of character of the four divinely guided caliphes, the successors of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, also served as guides to Futuwwah; the loyalty of Abu Bakr, the justice of 'Umar, the reserve and modesty of 'Uthman, and the bravery of 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with them all. The all-encompassing symbol of the way of Futuwwah is the divinely guided life and character of the final prophet, Muhammad Mustafa, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, whose perfection is the goal of Sufism. The Sufi aims to abandon all improper behavior and to acquire and exercise, always and under all circumstances, the best behavior proper to human beings; for God created man "for Himself" as His "supreme creation," "in the fairest form." As He declares in His Holy Koran, "We have indeed honored the children of Adam.

Divine support was not an entitlement; Muslims had to earn the favor of Allah by behaving as commanded and submitting to His will.

I’ve always yearned to be a black man, to have a black man’s soul, a black man's laughter. You know why? Because I thought you were diflFerent from us. Yes, I thought you were something special, something difiFerent on this sad earth of ours. I wanted to escape with you from the white man’s hollow materialism, from his lack of faith, his humble and frustrated sexuality, from his lack of joy, of laughter, of magic, of faith in the richness of after-life. encouragement and signs of gratitude or recognition have been very few, if any, along my road. If humanity can be compared to a tribe, then you may say I’m completely de-tribalized. You love Negroes out of sheer misanthropy, because you think they aren’t really men. in the end all human faces look alike with nothing bright or hopeful around me, except those distant stars— and even there, let’s be frank: it’s only their distance that gives them that purity and beauty ideals don't die— obliged to live on shit sometimes, but don’t die! the company a great cause always keeps: men of good will and those who exploit them your skin, you know, is worth no more than the elephants’ hide. In Gennany, at Belsen, during the war, it seems we used to make lampshades out of human skin— for your information. And don’t forget, Monsieur Saint- Denis, that we Germans have always been forerunners in everything ‘Women,’ I concluded rather bitterly, ‘have at their command certain means of persuasion which the best- organized police forces do not possess.’ The number of animals who lived in cruel suffering, sometimes for years, with bullets in their bodies, wounds growing deeper and deeper, gangrenous and swarming with ticks and flies, could not be estimated to change species, to come over to the elephants and live in the wilds among honest animals Always cheerful, with the cheerfulness of a man who has gone deep down into things and come back reassured. No one knew the desert better than Scholscher, who had spent so many nights alone there on the starlit dunes, and no one understood better than he did that need for protection which sometimes grips men’s hearts and drives them to give a dog the affection they dream so desperately of receiving themselves. by ‘defending the splendors of nature . . .’ He meant liberty.” Islam calls that ’the roots of heaven.’ and to the Mexican Indians it is of life’— the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. A need for protection and company, from which obstinate people like Morel try to escape by means of petitions, fighting committees, by trying to take the protection of species in their own hands. Our needs- for justice, for freedom and dignity— are roots of heaven that are deeply imbedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots ...” . . . And that girl sitting there in front of him with her legs crossed, with her nylon stockings and cigarette and that silent gaze, in which could be read that stubborn need, not so different from what Morel had seen in the eyes of the stray dogs at the pound. but not even all that was comic and childish about him could deprive him of the dignity conferred upon him by his love for his Maker. that human mass whose physical strength was nothing compared to the faith and spirit that dwelt in him. Three quarters of the Oul6 traditions and magic rites had to do with war or hunting while it's easy to suppress a magic tradition it's difficult to fill up the strange voids which it leaves in what you call the primitive psychology and what I call the human soul The roots of heaven are forever planted in their hearts, yet of heaven itself they seem to know nothing but the gripping roots It must be very consoling to take refuge in cynicism and to try and drown your own remorse in a consoling vision of universal swinishness, and you can always

Although not given the same rights as Muslims, both Christians and Jews who lived in Islamic countries often fared better than non-Christians in Christendom, because the Prophet Muhammad commanded his followers to recognize the common origins of their faith through Abraham, to honor their prophets, and to protect their believers.

No normative critic, conservative or otherwise, equates Islamic terrorism with all Muslims or with all of Islam. Rather, in Charles Krauthammer’s words, “Radical Islam is not, by any means, a majority of Islam. But with its financiers, clerics, propagandists, trainers, leaders, operatives and sympathizers—according to a conservative estimate, it commands the allegiance of 7 percent of Muslims, that is, more than 80 million souls—it is a very powerful strain within Islam. It has changed the course of nations and affected the lives of millions. It is the reason every airport in the West is an armed camp and every land is on constant alert.

Every citizen in the empire was required to be a Roman Catholic. Failure to give wholehearted allegiance to the pope was considered treason against the state punishable by death. Here was the basis for slaughtering millions. As Islam would be a few centuries later, a paganized Christianity was imposed upon the entire populace of Europe under the threat of torture and death. Thus Roman Catholicism became "the most persecuting faith the world has ever seen. . . [commanding] the throne to impose the Christian [Catholic] religion on all its subjects. Innocent III murdered far more Christians in one afternoon . . . than any Roman emperor did in his entire reign."4 Will Durant writes candidly:       Compared with the persecution of heresy in Europe from 1227 to 1492, the persecution of Christians by Romans in the first three centuries after Christ was a mild and humane procedure.       Making every allowance required by an historian and permitted to a Christian, we must rank the Inquisition, along with the wars and persecutions of our time, as among the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast.5