The Reporting of Information of Events associated with Islam

Integration is Not the Answer to Muslim Terrorism

April 2, 2016 10:49 am By Ralph Sidway 42 Comments

“What is often described as ‘radicalization’ is really a choice by ‘integrated’ Muslims to become religious and to act on their beliefs.”



“Integration is Not the Answer to Muslim Terrorism”, by Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine, April 1, 2016:

There is a famous photo of Anjem Choudary, the head of multiple banned organizations calling for imposing Sharia law on the UK whose follower was responsible for the Lee Rigby beheading, getting drunk as a young law student. Friends recall “Andy” smoking pot and taking LSD, sleeping around and partying all the time. Andy was really well integrated, but he still turned back into Anjem.
While the proliferation of segregated Muslim areas, no-go zones in which English, French or Dutch is the foreign language, is a major problem, it is a mistake to think that “integration” solves Islamic terrorism.
It doesn’t.
The Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings seemed integrated. Nobody noticed anything wrong with Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooter, or Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber. They weren’t lurking in a no-go zone. They had American friends, an education and career options if they wanted them. They didn’t want them. And that’s the point.
Bilal Abdullah was a British-born doctor who tried to carry out a terrorist attack at Glasgow International Airport. He wasn’t marginalized, jobless or desperate. He had a cause.


Islamic terrorists have not been alienated by our rejection. They champion an alien creed that rejects us.


Quite a few converts have become Muslim terrorists. If integration were the issue, white converts to Islam wouldn’t be running off to join ISIS or plotting terrorist attacks like Don Stewart-Whyte, who converted to Islam and planned to blow up planes headed from the UK to the US. Along with his friend Oliver Savant, the son of a secular Iranian father and British mother, they are the reason why you can’t carry liquids onto a plane.
Muslim terrorism is not caused by failed integration, but by a conscious disintegration. What is often described as “radicalization” is really a choice by “integrated” Muslims to become religious and to act on their beliefs. Muslim men who formerly dressed casually begin growing beards and wearing Salafist garb. They consciously reject what Western society has to offer because they have chosen Islam instead.
Islamic terrorists have not been alienated by our rejection. They champion an alien creed that rejects us.
The debate over Islamic terrorism is bogged down by a refusal to name it and understand what it is. ISIS is not a form of “nihilism” that European Muslims resort to after being alienated by racism and driven to despair by joblessness. It’s an alternative system that draws on over a thousand years of Islamic religion and culture. It’s not a negative choice, but a positive one. It’s not an act of despair, but of hope.

Social, linguistic and cultural integration won’t stop Islamic terrorism. They may prevent it in some cases and accelerate it in others. But it’s not the primary factor. Religion is. Cultural integration won’t make much of a difference in the face of religious disintegration.
This is the type of integration that is the real problem. Some of the worst Jihadists are culturally integrated and religiously disintegrated. They speak the native language fluently. They are intimately familiar with popular culture. They move easily among the native population. It’s their belief system that is fundamentally disintegrated and whose demands cannot be integrated without a civil war.
Their choices are not a referendum on our society. What we do in response to their terrorism is.
The issue is not economic. It is not linguistic. It is not about alienation or racism. It is about religion. And Europe is not comfortable with religion. It assumes that the religious is political, but in Islam, the political is instead religious. Europe has given no thought to how Islam can be integrated as a religion. Instead it has relied on the assumption that all religions are basically alike and that the aims and ideas of Islam are therefore interchangeable with those of Catholics, Lutherans, Jews and anyone else.
Every Islamic terrorist attack sends the message that its ideas and aims are not interchangeable.


Islamic terrorism is what happens when Muslims ‘get’ religion.


Europe does face challenges of cultural integration. But cultural disintegration isn’t blowing up airports or subways. Religious disintegration is. Cultural disintegration accounts for crime, riots and unemployment. It occasionally feeds into Islamic terrorism, but ideological violence is aspirational. It’s generally practiced by members of the middle class with money, leisure time and lots of self-esteem.
Like left-wing terror, Islamic terrorism is based on realizing a set of ideas about what the world should be like. These ideas are already embedded in the worldview of every Muslim to some degree. This is not a clash of civilizations or even cultures. It is a collision between the political and the religious.
The EU’s Federica Mogherini states, “Islam belongs in Europe…. I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.” Mogherini thinks of political Islam as a social welfare organization with a steeple, like the rest of the political religions of Europe. But political Islam is theocracy. And Europe was never able to integrate theocracy. Instead it overshadowed it with nationalism and then Socialism.
Secular Europe has forgotten what religion is. Religion is passion, conviction and redemption. It is not something that you occasionally live on the weekends. It transforms your life and your worldview.
How do you integrate that? Do you do it with language lessons, job training and a pat on the back?
Islamic terrorism is what happens when Muslims “get” religion. Not of the occasional casual variety, but of the fundamentally transformative kind. Integration assumes that once Mohammed is at university and drinking beer that he won’t suddenly decide to Jihad his way across Europe. But there are plenty of examples that show what a poor and fitful defense this is against the rebirth of a religious conviction.

Islam is not Lutheranism with more Arabic…


Cultural integration is an issue, but the real issue is philosophical integration. The real challenge is not in linguistic integration, but in the integration of ideas. And it is impossible to do that without addressing what Islam actually is and what it believes. Islam is not Lutheranism with more Arabic. Political Islam is not a soup kitchen and a used clothes bin. It is a conviction that the world is locked in a titanic struggle between Islam and the infidels, the forces of light and darkness, which must be won at any cost.
How do you integrate an ideology that is convinced that non-Muslim political systems are evil into Europe? What explanatory videos will you use to admonish Ahmed from Syria that he shouldn’t set off bombs at the railway station even though his religion commands him to fight the infidels? Which job will you use to induce Abdul to abandon his fervent belief that everyone must live under Islamic law?
Sanctimony and denial won’t untangle this Gordian knot. No amount of NGOs will turn Islam into something else. Cultural integration won’t transform Muslims into non-Muslims. All it does is make them conflicted and insecure. And that is why it is those second-generation culturally integrated Muslims who go to bars, call themselves Andy or Mo, sell drugs, go to university, who take a detour into Syria and come back with bomb plans and big plans for transforming Europe into an Islamic state.
Cultural integration builds up a conflict with Islam. Some Muslims respond to it by abandoning Islam, others by embracing it. If we fail to recognize this, then integration becomes a ticking time bomb.



Jihad terrorist refused to blow himself up during Paris jihad massacre
Video: Muslim terrifies passengers on crowded airliner by repeatedly screaming "Allahu akbar"

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Raymond Ibrahim: Revive Clear Thinking and the Jihad Dies

April 7, 2016 4:42 pm By Raymond Ibrahim 31 Comments



Because it is my field of study, one would expect I’d have much to say immediately after jihadi attacks of the sort that recently occurred in Brussels (35 killed), or San Bernardino (14 killed), or Paris (130). Ironically, I don’t: such attacks are ultimately symptoms of what I do deem worthy of discussion, namely, root causes. (What can one add when a symptom of the root cause he has long warned against occurs other than “told you so”?)
So what is the root cause of jihadi attacks? Many think that the ultimate source of the ongoing terrorization of the West is Islam. Yet this notion has one problem: the Muslim world is immensely weak and intrinsically incapable of being a threat. That every Islamic assault on the West is a terrorist attack — and terrorism, as is known, is the weapon of the weak — speaks for itself.
This was not always the case. For approximately one thousand years, the Islamic world was the scourge of the West. Today’s history books may refer to those who terrorized Christian Europe as Arabs, Saracens, Moors, Ottomans, Turks, Mongols, or Tatars — but all were operating under the same banner of jihad that the Islamic State is operating under.

No — today, the ultimate enemy is within. The root cause behind nonstop Muslim terrorization of the West is found in those who stifle or whitewash all talk and examination of Muslim doctrine and history; who welcome hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants while knowing that some are jihadi operatives and many are simply “radical”; who work to overthrow secular Arab dictators in the name of “democracy” and “freedom,” only to uncork the jihad suppressed by the autocrats (the Islamic State’s territory consists of lands that were “liberated” in Iraq, Libya, and Syria by the U.S. and its allies).
So are Western leaders and politicians the root cause behind Islamic terrorization of the West?
Close — but still not there yet.

Far from being limited to a number of elitist leaders and institutions, the Western empowerment of the jihad is the natural outcome of postmodern thinking — the real reason an innately weak Islam can be a source of repeated woes for a militarily and economically superior West.
Remember, the reason people like French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in power — three prominent Western leaders who insist that Islam is innocent of violence and who push for Muslim immigration — is because they embody a worldview that is normative in the West.
In this context, the facilitation of jihadi terror is less a top down imposition and more a grass root product of decades of erroneous, but unquestioned, thinking. (Those who believe America’s problems begin and end with Obama would do well to remember that he did not come to power through a coup but that he was voted in — twice. This indicates that Obama and the majority of voting Americans have a shared, and erroneous, worldview. He may be cynically exploiting this worldview, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s because this warped worldview is mainstream that he can exploit it in the first place.)

Western empowerment of the jihad is rooted in a number of philosophies that have metastasized into every corner of social life, becoming cornerstones of postmodern epistemology. These include the doctrines of relativism and multiculturalism on the one hand, and anti-Western, anti-Christian sentiment on the other.

Taken together, these cornerstones of postmodern, post-Christian thinking hold that there are no absolute truths and thus all cultures are fundamentally equal and deserving of respect. If any Western person wants to criticize a civilization or religion, then let them look “inwardly” and acknowledge their European Christian heritage as the epitome of intolerance and imperialism.

Add to these a number of sappy and silly ideals — truth can never be uttered because it might “hurt the feelings” of some (excluding white Christians, who are fair game), and, far from suspecting them, the West should go out of its way to appease Muslims until they “like us” — and you have a sure recipe for disaster, that is, the current state of affairs.

Western people are bombarded with these aforementioned “truths” from the cradle to the grave — from kindergarten to university, from Hollywood to the news rooms, and now even in churches — so that they are unable to accept and act on a simple truism that their ancestors well knew: Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant creed that cannot coexist with non-Islam (except insincerely, in times of weakness).
The essence of all this came out clearly when Obama, in order to rationalize away the inhuman atrocities of the Islamic State, counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that their Christian ancestors have been guilty of similar if not worse atrocities. That he had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the crusades and the Inquisition — both of which have been completely distorted by the warped postmodern worldview, including the portrayal of imperialist Muslims as victims — did not matter to America’s leader.
Worse, it did not matter to most Americans. The greater lesson was not that Obama whitewashed modern Islamic atrocities by misrepresenting and demonizing Christian history, but that he was merely reaffirming the mainstream narrative that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing. And thus, apart from the usual ephemeral and meaningless grumblings, his words — as with many of his pro-Islamic, anti-Christian comments and policies — passed along without consequence.

***​

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 over one millennium of jihadi conquests and atrocities — defeated and defanged Islam.
As Islam retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam didn’t change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion — which impels them to jihad against the Western “infidel” — whereas the West learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to become an unwitting ally of the jihad.
Hence the current situation: the jihad is back in full vigor, while the West — not just its leaders, but much of the populace — facilitates it in varying degrees. Nor is this situation easily remedied. For to accept that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant is to reject a number of cornerstones of postmodern Western thinking that far transcend the question of Islam. In this context, nothing short of an intellectual/cultural revolution — where rational thinking becomes mainstream — will allow the West to confront Islam head on.
But there is some good news. With every Islamic attack, the eyes of more and more Western people are opened to the true nature of Muhammad’s religion. That this is happening despite generations of pro-Islamic indoctrination in the West is a testimony to the growing brazenness of the jihad.

Yet it still remains unclear whether objective thinking will eventually overthrow the current narrative of relativism, anti-Christianism, and asinine emotionalism.
Simply put, both celebrating multiculturalism and defeating the jihad is impossible.
However, if such a revolution takes place — sooner rather than later — the Islamic jihad will be easily swept back into the dustbin of history. For the fact remains: Islam is terrorizing the world, not because it can, but because the West allows it to.
Note: An earlier version of the following article was first published by PJ Media.


Robert Spencer, FP: DHS: Airport Workers Suspected of Terror Ties Have All Been Vetted
Paris: Police arrest "lonewolf gunman" after shots fired

Islamic Jihad: Symptom of a Western Cause

December 16, 2015 by Raymond Ibrahim 35 Comments
PJ Media. Portuguese

As someone specializing in Islamic jihadism, one would expect I’d have much to say immediately after jihadi attacks of the sort that recently occurred in San Bernardino, or Paris, or Mali, where a total of about 180 were killed. Ironically, I don’t: such attacks are ultimately symptoms of what I do deem worthy of talk, namely, root causes. (What can one add when a symptom of the root cause he has long warned against occurs other than “told you so”?)



So what is the root cause of jihadi attacks? Many think that the ultimate source of the ongoing terrorization of the West is Islam. Yet this notion has one problem: the Muslim world is immensely weak and intrinsically incapable of being a threat. That every Islamic assault on the West is a terrorist attack—and terrorism, as is known, is the weapon of the weak—speaks for itself.
This was not always the case. For approximately one thousand years, the Islamic world was the scourge of the West. Today’s history books may refer to those who terrorized Christian Europe as Arabs, Saracens, Moors, Ottomans, Turks, Mongols, or Tatars[1]—but all were operating under the same banner of jihad that the Islamic State is operating under.
No, today, the ultimate enemy is within. The root cause behind the nonstop Muslim terrorization of the West is found in those who stifle or whitewash all talk and examination of Muslim doctrine and history; who welcome hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants while knowing that some are jihadi operatives and many are simply “radical”; who work to overthrow secular Arab dictators in the name of “democracy” and “freedom,” only to uncork the jihad suppressed by the autocrats (the Islamic State’s territory consists of lands that were “liberated” in Iraq, Libya, and Syria by the U.S. and its allies).

So are Western leaders and politicians the root cause behind the Islamic terrorization of the West?
Close—but still not there yet.

Far from being limited to a number of elitist leaders and institutions, the Western empowerment of the jihad is the natural outcome of postmodern thinking—the real reason an innately weak Islam can be a source of repeated woes for a militarily and economically superior West.
Remember, the reason people like French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in power—three prominent Western leaders who insist that Islam is innocent of violence and who push for Muslim immigration—is because they embody a worldview that is normative in the West.
In this context, the facilitation of jihadi terror is less a top down imposition and more a grass root product of decades of erroneous, but unquestioned, thinking. (Those who believe America’s problems begin and end with Obama would do well to remember that he did not come to power through a coup but that he was voted in—twice. This indicates that Obama and the majority of voting Americans have a shared, and erroneous, worldview. He may be cynically exploiting this worldview, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s because this warped worldview is mainstream that he can exploit it in the first place.)

Western empowerment of the jihad is rooted in a number of philosophies that have metastasized into every corner of social life, becoming cornerstones of postmodern epistemology. These include the doctrines of relativism and multiculturalism on the one hand, and anti-Western, anti-Christian sentiment on the other.
Taken together, these cornerstones of postmodern, post-Christian thinking hold that there are no absolute truths and thus all cultures are fundamentally equal and deserving of respect. If any Western person wants to criticize a civilization or religion, then let them look “inwardly” and acknowledge their European Christian heritage as the epitome of intolerance and imperialism.
Add to these a number of sappy and silly ideals—truth can never be uttered because it might “hurt the feelings” of some (excluding white Christians who are free game), and if anything, the West should go out of its way to make up for its supposedly historic “sins” by appeasing Muslims until they “like us”—and you have a sure recipe for disaster, that is, the current state of affairs.

Western people are bombarded with these aforementioned “truths” from the cradle to the grave—from kindergarten to university, from Hollywood to the news rooms, and now even in churches—so that they are unable to accept and act on a simple truism that their ancestors well knew: Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant creed that cannot coexist with non-Islam (except insincerely, in times of weakness).

The essence of all this came out clearly when Obama, in order to rationalize away the inhuman atrocities of the Islamic State, counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that their Christian ancestors have been guilty of similar if not worse atrocities. That he had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the crusades and inquisition—both of which have been completely distorted by the warped postmodern worldview, including by portraying imperialist Muslims as victims—did not matter to America’s leader.

Worse, it did not matter to most Americans. The greater lesson was not that Obama whitewashed modern Islamic atrocities by misrepresenting and demonizing Christian history, but that he was merely reaffirming the mainstream narrative that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing. And thus, aside from the usual ephemeral and meaningless grumblings, his words—as with many of his pro-Islamic, anti-Christian comments and policies—passed along without consequence.

—–​

Once upon a time, the Islamic world was a super power and its jihad an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Over two centuries ago, however, a rising Europe—which had experienced over one millennium of jihadi conquests and atrocities—defeated and defanged Islam.

As Islam retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam didn’t change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion—which impels them to jihad against the Western “infidel”—whereas the West learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to be an unwitting ally of the jihad.

Hence the current situation: the jihad is back in full vigor, while the West—not just its leaders, but much of the populace—facilitates it in varying degrees. Nor is this situation easily remedied. For to accept that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant is to reject a number of cornerstones of postmodern Western thinking that far transcend the question of Islam. In this context, nothing short of an intellectual/cultural revolution—where rational thinking becomes mainstream—will allow the West to confront Islam head on.
But there is some good news. With every Islamic attack, the eyes of more and more Western people are opened to the true nature of Muhammad’s religion. That this is happening despite generations of pro-Islamic indoctrination in the West is a testimony to the growing brazenness of the jihad.

Yet it still remains unclear whether objective thinking will eventually overthrow the current narrative of relativism, anti-Westernism, and asinine emotionalism.
Simply put, celebrating multiculturalism and defeating the jihad is impossible.

However, if such a revolution ever does take place, the Islamic jihad will be easily swept back into the dustbin of history. For the fact remains: Islam is terrorizing the world, not because it can, but because the West allows it to.




[1] Although the original Mongol-Tatar conquerors were not Muslim, most of them eventually converted to Islam—finding natural appeal in its divine validation for conquest, rapine, and plunder—and articulated their later wars on Christendom and others in the name of jihad.

http://www.raymondibrahim.com/2015/12/16/islamic-jihad-symptom-of-a-western-cause/

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Direct Experience: The One Benefit of Accepting Muslim Migrants

October 25, 2015 by Raymond Ibrahim 30 Comments

A silver lining exists in the dust cloud being beat up by the marching feet of millions of Muslim men migrating into the West: those many Europeans and Americans, who could never understand Islam in theory, will now have the opportunity to understand it through direct and personal experience.
Perhaps then they will awaken to reality?



The fact is, most Western people have had very little personal interaction with Muslims. Moreover, because Muslims in the West are still a tiny minority—in the U.S., they are reportedly less than one percent of the population—those few Muslims that Westerners do interact with are often on their best behavior, being surrounded as they are by a sea of infidels (according to the doctrine of taqiyya).

And although there are a few media outlets and websites that document the hard but ugly truths of Islam, these are drowned out by the overarching “Narrative” that emanates from the indoctrination centers of the West (schools, universities, news rooms, Hollywood, political talking heads, et al).
According to the Narrative, there is nothing to fear from Islam. If violence and mayhem seem to follow Muslims wherever they go—not to mention plague the entire Islamic world—that is because Muslims are angry, frustrated, and aggrieved, usually at things the West has done.

Although Islamic doctrine calls on Muslims to have enmity for and strive to subjugate non-Muslims whenever possible; although Muslims initiated hostilities against and were the scourge of Europe for a thousand years, until they were defanged in the modern era; although most of the so-called “Muslim world” rests on land that was violently seized from non-Muslims; although reportedly some 270 million non-Muslims have been killed by the jihad over the centuries; and although many modern day Muslims maintain the same worldview that animated their ancestors—most people in the West remain ignorant.

In this context—or absolute lack thereof—how is the average Western person to know the truth about Islam?

Enter mass Muslim migrations. That is, let the barbarians at the gate in.

I speak not of the true refugees—women and children—but of the hordes of young and able bodied Muslim men; the ones shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as they barge into Europe.

When discussing Western and Muslim interactions in the modern era, it’s my custom to provide historical precedents to show that Muslim hostilities—whether hate for Christians and their churches and crosses, or whether violent lust for “white” women—are not aberrations but continuations.

In this case, however, I have none to give. For never before in history have the peoples of one civilization been so divorced from reality as to welcome millions of people from an alien civilization—one that terrorized their ancestors for centuries—to come and dwell among them.

The only “history” one can cite is the modern day experiences of those European regions that already have significant Muslim populations, and are taking more in.

In Germany and the United Kingdom, crime and rape have soared in direct proportion to the number of Muslim “refugees” accepted. Sweden alone—where rape has increased by 1,472% since that country embraced “multiculturalism”—is reportedly on the verge of collapse.

The price of the Islamic influx into Western lands is violence and chaos, in accordance with Islam’s Rule of Numbers: women and children will be exploited and raped; the elderly will be mugged; churches and other institutions will be attacked; terror will set in. Look to the plight of non-Muslims living alongside Muslims to get an idea of what is coming.

But alas, at this late hour, such appears to be the price that must be paid for decades of willful ignorance. If the West cannot learn the truth about Islam from theory, from doctrine, from history, and now even from ongoing current events, then let it learn from up close and personal contact.

And if after such firsthand experiences, any Western nation is still too politically correct to act in the name of self-preservation, then let it die. For it will be evident that there is little left worth saving.

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April 1991 - April 2016
Mammon Anti-Christian versus Judeo-Christian
25 Years Fertility Rates and Cultural Survival
(Statistics 2008)






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Obama: Islam Inherently Violent? Absurd!

That’s something only the “Republican base” believes. Along with all too many Muslims.

March 31, 2016
Robert Spencer
44
512187


Barack Obama is amused.

“I’m amused,” he said in remarks published Tuesday, “when I watch Republicans claim that Trump’s language is unacceptable, and ask, ‘How did we get here?’ We got here in part because the Republican base had been fed this notion that Islam is inherently violent, that this is who these folks are. And if you’ve been hearing that a lot, and then somebody shows up on the scene and says, well, the logical conclusion to civilizational conflict is we try to make sure that we’re not destroyed internally by this foreign civilization, that’s what you get.”

Where would anyone get the crazy idea that Islam was inherently violent? Well, the day’s headlines might give us that very strong impression, but Obama would tell us (and has told us) that those Muslims who are screaming “Allahu akbar” as they murder non-Muslims are, despite appearances, not really Muslims at all, but just people who have twisted, hijacked, misunderstood the Religion of Peace.
It is, true, however, that there are plenty of Muslims who tell us that Islam is inherently violent. Here are a few of them:

“Jihad was a way of life for the Pious Predecessors (Salaf-us-Salih), and the Prophet (SAWS) was a master of the Mujahideen and a model for fortunate inexperienced people. The total number of military excursions which he (SAWS) accompanied was 27. He himself fought in nine of these; namely Badr; Uhud, Al-Muraysi, The Trench, Qurayzah, Khaybar, The Conquest of Makkah, Hunayn and Taif . . . This means that the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to go out on military expeditions or send out an army at least every two months.” — Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, Join the Caravan, p. 30

“If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.” — Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

“Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 defendants

“Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfill God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” — Taliban terrorist Baitullah Mehsud

“Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad

“So step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad.” — Little Rock, Arkansas terrorist murderer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

“And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad.” — Texas terrorist bomber Khalid Aldawsari.

Obama would dismiss all these as “extremists” who are not really Muslim at all and have nothing to do with Islam. Yet one also might get the impression that Islam is inherently violent from the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib):

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).
Of course, there is no caliph today, unless one believes the claims of the Islamic State, and hence the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes “obligatory for everyone” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: ‘Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until “the final descent of Jesus.” After that, “nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent” (o9.8).

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”
However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”


This is also taught by modern-day scholars of Islam. Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world….The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)
Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.
All this makes it clear that there is abundant reason to believe that Islam is indeed inherently violent. It would be illuminating if Obama or someone around him produced some quotations from Muslim authorities he considers “authentic,” and explained why the authorities I’ve quoted above and others like them are inauthentic. While in reality there is no single Muslim authority who can proclaim what is “authentic” Islam, and thus it would be prudent not to make sweeping statements about what “authentic Islam” actually is, clearly there are many Muslim who believe that authentic Islam is inherently violent.

One might also get the impression that Islam is inherently violent from these Qur’an verses:

2:191-193: “And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.”

4:34: “Men are the managers of the affairs of women, for Allah has made one superior to the another, and because they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for Allah’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; Allah is All-high, All-great.”

4:89: “They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of Allah; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.”

5:33: “This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

5:38: “And the thief, male and female: cut off the hands of both, as a recompense for what they have earned, and a punishment exemplary from Allah; Allah is All-mighty, All-wise.”

8:12: “When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!”

8:39: “Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s entirely; then if they give over, surely Allah sees the things they do.”

8:60: “Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to strike terror thereby into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; Allah knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of Allah shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.”

9:5: “Then, when the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book — until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfils his covenant truer than Allah? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph.”

9:123: “O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that Allah is with the godfearing.”

47:4: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will not send their works astray.”

There are some tolerant verses in the Qur’an as well — see, for example, sura 109. But then in Islamic tradition there are authorities who say that violent passages take precedence over these verses. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.”

The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Ibn Ishaq gives no hint that that command died with the seventh century.

The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”
In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established.” He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.

Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history.

According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh Abdullah is referring to Qur’anic verses such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)

Here again, obviously there is a widespread understanding of the Qur’an within Islamic tradition that sees it, and Islam, as inherently violent. And we see Muslims who clearly understand their religion as being inherently violent acting upon that understanding around the world today, in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Nigeria and elsewhere. We can hope that those who embody the true, peaceful Islam that Obama assumes to exist come forward and work against the Muslims who believe in violence, instead of just issuing pro-forma condemnations. So far we have not seen that. On the contrary, we see reformers threatened and cowed into silence. The Moroccan activist Ahmed Assid condemned violence in Islam’s name and was immediately declared an apostate and threatened with death by Muslim clerics. If the Ahmed Assids of the world represent the true Islam that is not inherently violent, the message has not gotten through to all too many of their coreligionists.

We may hope it does someday. In the meantime, it is imperative to continue to speak about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, so as to alert all people of good will to the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, and its motives and goals. This is not indulging in hateful generalizations; it is simply to speak honestly and realistically about a threat all free people face. If we cannot speak about it, it will nonetheless keep coming, and catch us unawares.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262361/obama-islam-inherently-violent-absurd-robert-spencer

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The Observer
Losing my religion: life after extreme belief

Fleeing the grip of a sect can be a matter of life or death. Megan Phelps-Roper, and two other former believers, reveal how they lost almost everything when they lost their faith

Imad Iddine Habib. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for the Observer

Megan Phelps-Roper, 30, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church


‘I weep thinking about how callous and unmerciful I was’: Megan Phelps-Roper. Photograph: Katy Grannan for the Observer

I was born on a Friday at prayer time, which was seen as an auspicious sign in my community. Growing up in Morocco I was constantly told I was to become a religious scholar. My name is translated as “pillar of religion”. I was enrolled into a Salafi Koranic school at four, but I had trouble reading and reciting verses of the Koran, as I was so dyslexic. This was seen as a big disappointment in my family, so I learned most of the Koran by heart to save myself any grief. By the time I left the Koranic school at 13, I knew I didn’t believe.
Our lives were based around a single version of a much bigger religion. Disagreements were frowned upon. We weren’t to voice questions. I couldn’t understand why no one debated or discussed the opinion of the scholars and imams – we were expected to blindly follow. Many of the students from my school went to Afghanistan and Syria – that had been their life’s purpose, and though I was interested in Islam as a religion from an
My first memories are of picketing ex-servicemen’s funerals and telling their families they were going to burn in hell. For us, it was a celebration. My gramps was the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, so it wasn’t just our religion – it was our whole life. I don’t remember much before the picketing. I was allowed to mix with other kids early on, but over time my world shrank.
We believed it was a Good vs Evil situation: that the WBC was right and everybody else was wrong, so there was no questioning. It was a very public war we were waging against the “sinners”. I asked a lot of questions as I got older, but there’s a big difference in asking for clarification and actually questioning the beliefs you’re taught. I spent so much time reading the Bible, trying to see the world through this very particular framework, that to have truly considered [it was wrong] was inconceivable. I’d seen members leave in the past, including my brother, and the thought of ever leaving the church was my worst nightmare.


‘I knew straightaway I was not a part of the church any more. I was out. I miss my family every single day’: Megan Phelps-Roper with her mother Shirley at the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Megan used social media to spread the church’s message. Photograph: Kansas City Star/MCT via Getty Images

The WBC loves and thrives on publicity, so I joined Twitter in 2009 to run the church’s account. I was very zealous and adamant that my beliefs were the truth, but I began to realise that the 140-word limit meant I had to drop the throwaway insults or conversations would die. Over time, I found I was actually beginning to like people: to see them as human beings rather than people to condemn. For the first time, I started to care about what people outside the WBC thought of me. As my feelings towards my faith wavered I’d boomerang between thinking “none of this makes sense” to “God is testing me and I am failing”, but it was only in the four months before I left in 2012 that I actually started to make a plan. I cornered my sister in our room one evening and told her I was going to leave and asked her to come with me. She initially said no and told me I was being silly, but over time we’d have stolen conversations about it and she came round to the idea.

My mom was so broken by the news – I’d never seen her face like that before

Leaving was unbearably sad. Having dinner with my grandparents or bouncing on a trampoline with my brother for the last time; asking my parents about their history in detail because I knew I’d never be able to ask them about it again: I was consciously saying goodbye to my family while they had no idea. I was trying to keep as much of it as I could. On the day, my younger sister and I sat down with my parents after they’d heard that we had planned to leave. They were really upset and my mom was so broken by the news – I’d never seen her face like that before. We told them we didn’t believe anymore, then went to pack. The adrenaline pumping through me made my hands shake as I stuffed my things into bags. Word spread among the family and several of my aunts and uncles turned up to talk us out of it. It started with: “You know better than this” and spiralled into shouting as we left. I went back the next day to pick up the rest of my stuff and knocked on the front door of the house I grew up in for the first time. The cold was immediate. I knew straight-away that I was not a part of the church any more. I was out. I miss my family every single day.
I still momentarily flinch when I come across someone or something the WBC would disapprove of. Two men kissing on the street, a drag queen – anything that takes me back to what I believed for so long. I still encounter those old feelings and then I have to process it: “That’s what the old me would have felt” – it’s an ongoing process of deep deprogramming.
I see the world in split screen now. I remember feeling like we at WBC were a persecuted minority, triumphant in the face of evil people “worshipping the dead” as we picketed funerals or rejoiced at the destruction of the Twin Towers. But beside that memory is the one where I weep thinking about how callous and unmerciful I was to so many people who’d just lost a son or a daughter. I’m ashamed of that now, and it’s still really difficult to think about the harm I caused. It’s overwhelming sometimes.


Deborah Feldman, 29, ex-Satmar Hasidic Jew


‘By denying who I really was, I was slowly killing myself’: Deborah Feldman. Photograph: Steffen Roth for the Observer

The Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism I was born into was founded by Holocaust survivors who wanted to reinvent the Eastern European shtetl in America. Before I learned anything else, I learned the Holocaust had happened because Jews were bad and that the way we lived was different from the rest of the world because if we didn’t, the Holocaust would happen to us again.
Growing up in such a strict community meant we had no contact with the outside world. It still amazes me to think that was and is possible in the Bronx. The only time I’d get a glimpse was if I were ill. Tonsillitis meant a car journey to the doctor, where I’d watch, from the window, people living their lives freely.
I hit my teens and figured out what I needed to do to survive in the community. I’d drawn the wrong sort of attention to myself as a young girl. I’d been rebellious. Asking “why?” was forbidden and I’d be yelled at, ostracised; kids stopped talking to me at school. Women and girls belonged in the kitchen, my grandfather often reminded me. Soon I figured out how to live a double life: I had the version of me that fitted in with the community, and then I had my interior life that no one knew about. As soon as I pretended I was going along with it all, things got easier for me. I got married to someone from the sect when I was 17 and had my son. The most difficult thing was the constant lying. By denying who I really was, I was slowly killing myself.

I lived a double life: I had the version of me that fitted in with the community, and then I had my interior life

Leaving wasn’t about courage or strength for me. It was all much more practical than I thought it would be. Some of it was perhaps biological: as soon as my son was born I had this driving instinct to get him out. It took three years of planning and at the very end, when I had everything lined up – money in the bank, a small network of friends on the outside, a divorce lawyer working on the custody of my son – I still couldn’t quite cross the boundary. I was too scared.
What happened next was fate. I was in a car accident I shouldn’t have survived and I walked away without a scratch. As I got out of the car, the Jewish girl in me thought: “God is punishing me and telling me I shouldn’t go”, but as I walked away from the wreck, I thought: “Hang on, if I can survive this, I can survive leaving.”
I have no contact with my family now. The backlash was immense. My family wrote me threatening letters, and later on when I wrote a book about my experiences, the community said I was a hysteric, a liar. I don’t know that I’ll ever be fully deprogrammed. I didn’t just leave a religion, I left a sect that was based on inherited trauma and incorporated antisemitism. Many of the [antisemitic] ideas my grandparents heard in Europe got integrated into their beliefs about themselves and then passed on to their children. I grew up believing we were genetically inferior. They didn’t see that as a bad thing – they’d sit me down and explain: “We’re special to God. Our souls are special, but our genes are inferior, just like they said about us.” How do you even begin to unstitch that?


Imad Iddine Habib, 26, ex-Salafi Muslim


‘There are vivid moments where I miss my mother. I can’t afford to get emotional about it’: Imad Iddine Habib. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for the Observer

I was born on a Friday at prayer time, which was seen as an auspicious sign in my community. Growing up in Morocco I was constantly told I was to become a religious scholar. My name is translated as “pillar of religion”. I was enrolled into a Salafi Koranic school at four, but I had trouble reading and reciting verses of the Koran, as I was so dyslexic. This was seen as a big disappointment in my family, so I learned most of the Koran by heart to save myself any grief. By the time I left the Koranic school at 13, I knew I didn’t believe.
Our lives were based around a single version of a much bigger religion. Disagreements were frowned upon. We weren’t to voice questions. I couldn’t understand why no one debated or discussed the opinion of the scholars and imams – we were expected to blindly follow. Many of the students from my school went to Afghanistan and Syria – that had been their life’s purpose, and though I was interested in Islam as a religion from an academic viewpoint, I knew I wasn’t a Muslim.

I was scared, but I also felt it was my duty

My faith finally ruptured at 14. I told my parents I didn’t believe, and I also came out as pansexual. I felt, and still feel, that I was looking at the bigger picture, but they weren’t open to it. I couldn’t be a part of a faith that kept changing the rules depending on the situation. My family’s reaction was typical: a lot of violence and threats initially, and when that didn’t work, my mum got “sick” for 40 days, saying I was being banished from heaven and making her suffer. I was resolute, so they kicked me out. I became homeless and I’ve not seen or heard from them since. In a way I feel I may have shut the emotion of losing my family away somewhere. I try not to feel. There are vivid moments where I miss my mother: her face, her cooking, knowing what she is thinking about, but I can’t afford to get emotional about it.
I moved from place to place and stayed with friends. I got an education: I have a baccalaureate in Islamic sciences and I then founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco. The resistance is small, but we have a voice. I have had to live in hiding and have received countless death threats. In Morocco, Islam is the state religion, and the state considers you a Muslim by default. You can be jailed for eating in public during Ramadan, so you can imagine what my future there looked like. There is a wide belief that all apostates should be killed.
I attended a public conference in 2013 and spoke out about my beliefs. I was scared, but I also felt it was my duty. I called Islam a virus, which I knew would be inflammatory. Secret services began investigating me and I heard that they contacted my family and questioned my father. I was asked to attend court. My father would later testify against me on the count of an apostasy charge. When it all got too heavy, I knew I had to come to England as a refugee and start over. Not long after I arrived here, I was sentenced to seven years in prison in absentia. I gave up everything and everyone I know, but I’m free.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/losing-my-religion-life-after-extreme-belief-faith

 

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The Christian militia fighting IS

By Owen Bennett-Jones BBC News, Iraq

• 11 April 2016
• From the section Magazine

Image copyright Getty Images

In today's Magazine

• What happened to the self-sufficient people of the 1970s?
  12 April 2016
• How one man got the world making pesto by hand
  12 April 2016
• My secret life as a gay ultra-Orthodox Jew
  11 April 2016
• Turkmens 'ordered to exercise'
  12 April 2016

A group of Christians in Iraq have formed their own militia to protect people from the so-called Islamic State group. The leader of the Babylon Brigade says they were left with no choice but to take up arms when IS fighters targeted Christians.
There's a striking picture on the wall. It shows an untarmacked road, scorched by sunlight, leading to a small village with a mountain range behind it. And all along the side of the road there are crosses every 100m - taller even than lamp posts.
"Christian village," a guard mumbles. "Near Mosul."
We are in the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraq Christian Resistance, Babylon Brigade. They are a militia, although they prefer the phrase popular mobilisation unit. Whatever the language, about 30 of these outfits have sprung up in the past couple of years and between them they have 100,000 armed volunteers. They were formed to block the advance of the so-called Islamic State group when it swept through north and west Iraq in 2014, even threatening Baghdad. When the Iraqi national army collapsed the militias stood firm.


Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Shia fighters from a popular mobilisation unit hold a position north of Baghdad, June 2015
Most are Shia Muslim. A handful are Sunni Muslim, one is Christian - the Babylon Brigade.
The other pictures on the wall are photographs, all depicting the Babylon Brigade's leader and the man I have come to meet, Rayan al-Kildani. Kildani in military fatigues, Kildani with shades, Kildani meeting some important people, Kildani looking contemplative, Kildani looking determined.
And then the man himself arrives with a small entourage, most of them in suits but one young man with a wispy beard is in military clothing.

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Find out more

• From Our Own Correspondent has insight and analysis from BBC journalists, correspondents and writers from around the world
• Listen on iPlayer, get the podcast or listen on the BBC World Service or on Radio 4 on Thursdays at 11:00 and Saturdays at 11:30

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I'm not sure how seriously to take Kildani. The militias have persuaded the central government to cover their expenses and as a result they are, taken altogether, receiving about $1.4bn (£1bn) a year. For a militia leader like Kildani it's more than $600 (£450) per man per month. Good money. There are stories about people renting a house in Baghdad, gathering a few people together, announcing they have formed a militia and going to the government to apply for the funds.
"How many men have you got?" I ask.
"That's a military secret," he says.
Really? I saw another man from the militias the day before and he was quite open about numbers. I'd been a little surprised when that militiaman apologised for his English saying it should have been better given that he was from Wembley in North London.


Image caption Rayan al-Kildani, the leader of the Babylon Brigade


"Really, Wembley? By the football ground?" I had said.
"Yes, my wife and children are still there."
Anyway he'd seemed happy to talk numbers. So I press Kildani again.
"Hundreds of men or thousands?"
"Many."
"Weapons?"
"Rockets," he says. "Medium ones. This is war. You can't fight a war with rifles."
"So, a Christian militia," I remark.
"What Islamic State was doing to the Christians is terrible," he says. "They are the devil."
"Your militia has fought?"
"We fight side by side with the Muslim militias," he says, claiming: "We are the first Christian power in Iraqi history."
And then: "I know the Bible says that if you get hit on one cheek you should offer the other. But we have really good defence forces now. No-one is going to do anything bad to the Christians. Some Christians had their homes taken over. I have personally been to those houses to tell the new people living there to get out. Christian suffering is over."



One of his four phones rings. He glances at the incoming number, grunts and gives it to someone to answer.
"What about the commandment: Thou shalt not kill?" I ask.
"You are a Christian?" Kildani asks, somewhat doubtfully.
"Church of England," I offer.
Kildani nods as if that explains it.
"He's a Protestant," someone says with a note of disapproval. "Sectarianism runs deep in Iraq," I think. But of course I don't say that.
Kildani turns to me again: "We have to fight. We have to defend ourselves."
And then, to my surprise, he adds: "Jesus himself told us that if you don't have a sword you should go out and buy one."
I cast my mind back to my schooldays of Bible study but can't remember Jesus telling people to arm themselves.
"Did he really say that?"
"It's in the Bible," Kildani insists.
"Matthew," one man says. "Luke," says another. "Matthew and Luke," they both say. I looked doubtful.
Kildani glances over to one of his assistants who is playing a game on his phone.
"Find it!" he orders.
The young man with the phone walks over to me. He has the verse on his screen in Arabic.
It is Luke chapter 22, verse 36: "If you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."
Turns out theologians have been arguing about the verse for centuries. Is that a real sword? Or a metaphorical one? Kildani is in no doubt. He says he and his men are out on patrol. And they're armed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35998716

SWORD=WORDS=MOTHER=ALPHAOMEGA

Luke 22:24-38 - King James Version (KJV)

²⁴ And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.
²⁵ And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.
²⁶ But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
²⁷ For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.
²⁸ Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.
²⁹ And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me;
³⁰ That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
³¹ And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
³² But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
³³ And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.
³⁴ And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.
³⁵ And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.
³⁶ Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
³⁷ For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.
³⁸ And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

 

News

Marine Vet Takes DRASTIC Action Against Public School After They Force Islamic Indoctrination On His Child

By Brendan | April 14, 2016

From US Herald:

Muslim indoctrination in our public schools is fast becoming a more common occurrence.
Making students read the Koran and recite the Five pillars of Islam is not what parents have in mind when paying their taxes to fund these schools.
John Kevin Wood, A Marine Corps veteran is suing the public school system in Maryland for promoting Islam in his daughters class. The school has not taught any other religion and solely focused on teaching Islam.


More from Free Beacon:
The Thomas More Law Center filed the civil rights complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, accusing leaders at the Charles County Public Schools of violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.John Kevin Wood, who served eight years in the Marine Corps, and his wife Melissa objected when they discovered that their daughter’s World History class at La Plata High School was circulating assignments that amounted to Islamic propaganda.
Their daughter and her fellow students were instructed to write out the Islamic creed “Shahada,” which says, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” When recited by non-Muslims, the creed amounts to conversion to Islam.
Students were also required to memorize and recite the Five Pillars of Islam and were subjected to disparaging teachings about Christianity.



“Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian,” one worksheet read.
The class also spent one day covering Christianity, while teachers devoted two weeks to instructing about Islam.
Upon learning of the lessons prioritizing Islam, Wood, who is Christian, contacted the school and demanded alternative assignments for his daughter. The school refused to allow his daughter to opt out of the assignments and threatened her with failing grades if they were not completed. She elected not to complete the worksheets.
The complaint filed Wednesday charges that the school discriminated against Wood’s daughter “by removing her from the academic environment of her World History class, relegating her to the student library, and issuing her failing grades on assignments because [she] refused to deny and insult her Christian beliefs.”
Following Wood’s complaints, the school principal also banned him from entering school grounds.

The lawsuit was filed against the Charles County Public Schools, the Board of Education, and the principal and vice principal of La Plata High School. It seeks a declaration from the defendants that they violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, in addition to a temporary and permanent injunction barring them from promoting Islam over other religions and from banning Wood from school grounds.
In announcing the complaint, the president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center warned that schools across the nation are forcing such “Islamic indoctrination.”
“Parents must be ever vigilant to the Islamic indoctrination of their children under the guise of teaching history and multiculturalism. This is happening in public schools across the country. And they must take action to stop it,” Richard Thompson, the law firm’s president, said in a statement.

http://supremepatriot.com/2016/04/1...ey-force-islamic-indoctrination-on-his-child/