Monday, November 16, 2009

RACE AND ETHNICITY IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

from http://punjabi.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1176

[first published at the original "Islamic Danger" on October 4, 2007]

[If you want insight into happenings on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in the "tribal areas" of Waziristan, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in India-Pakistan relations, you will find reading this post and more views in the forum itself (punjabi.net link shown above) worthwhile.]

This comes from a forum. Although I have not checked the speaker's facts, they ring true and can be related to current events and those described in
ISLAM IN THE PUNJAB (of India) THE MOSLEM MUGHALS (TURKIC/MONGOLS)
IN THE PUNJAB)


. . . phindko and saraiki are languages not ethnic groups or a race of people. there are pakhtuns who speak hindko and saraiki and punjabis also. hindko and saraiki are punjabi dialects of pakistan but have a lot of pashto and farsi words. how many times am i going to tell u that i am not an afghan or pakhtun but a mughal (sunni mughal) kaum from dera ismail khan. there are jats rajputs pakhtun, qureshi, mughals, bolochis, afghan refugees etc all living in dera ismail khan. the afghan pakhtuns are friendly with their brothers of nwfp and the tribal areas who are also pakhtuns. and are related and families living on both sides of the durrand line. it's only the tajiks and uzbeks and hazaras who hate pakhtuns and pakistanis. and anyway tajiks and uzbeks all these people are not afghans anyway because their are decendents of turks mongols and are not the sons of afghana the pakhtuns are the true afghans the sons of afghana. i'm a mughal that means that i am a decendent of the mughals who were a mix of turk/persian/afghan - pakhtun and since we invaded pakistan/india there is a good chance i also have rajput concubine maternal genes. but my blood is pure from hindu man. but never the less my family/clan and kaum are always mistaken as pakhtuns and don't look like indians u can easily tell the afghan and central asian ancestory. the mughal and pakhtuns (waziris) were known to take hindu (rajput) women away. sahar u are an indian, there are afghan refugees tajiks uzbeks living in dera ismail khan and many have become settled opened shops and do business carpets jewellery etc. and regarding pakhtuns whether from pakistan or afghanistan they have nothing against the pakistan people. i should know because we live with these people and have had disputes tribal warfare with these people and also have done business with them. most of the construction work and truck haulage in our area of pakistan is done by us mughal/pakhtuns and we regularly see afghan refugees and do business with them. regarding indian origin yes the punjabis and sindhis do have indian blood but mughal, awans, qureshi, abbasi, sheikhs, ghoris, etc are not of the indian stock but the decendants of the muslim invaders. i know u being an indian that u want to associate with your former rulers and masters. i will say one thing my forefathers timur lang and babar remember the mound of skulls in dehli. i hope that helps. and there is no region called afghania in pakistan it is known as FATA or NWFP but we call it pakhtoonkhwa or pakhtunistan. and it is pakhtun not pathan by u indians and british least call these lion people by the correct name.

http://punjabi.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1176

There's more back-and-forth about this subject at the forum website given immediately above . Insults fly, and insight is given into inter-ethnic-racial relations in the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Hindu/Indian sphere.

. . AND . . .

A NOTE ABOUT THE PASHTUNS:


Ironically the Pashton/Pathan/Pashto people mentioned by the mughal-descended speaker above have preponderous evidence of being descendants of two or more of the ten "Lost Tribes" of Ancient Israel. Although today Pashtuns are thoroughly Islamicised, and because of that not to be trusted to be friendly towards today's Israelis and Jews, like all peoples that have fallen victim to Islam, there is evidence to point to the veracity of the widely-held belief of Pashtun origins.


Here is a good place to get started looking at this phenomenon. Although the Pashtuns are not the only people of (supposedly) Jewish origins that have been Islamicised to such a degree that their koranic Jew-hatred equals or exceeds that of the Islamic Arabs--the Jewish Berber tribes of North Africa come to mind--the Pashtuns apparently can be distinguished that they (like the Christian descendants of Spanish Jews) keep some Judaic traditions--whether aware of their origins or not.


"I love Israel, for my forefathers were most probably Israelites"

…Says Pashtun-historian from India Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi


By Alexander Maistrovoy

http://middleeastfacts.com/guests/maistrovoy_09jul07a.php


40 years ago, in triumphant nation of Israel of 1967, in the Jewish community of India occurred an extraordinary event: the President of India Dr. Zakir Hussain made a highly surprising visit to the Ohel David Synagogue of Pune, Maharashtra, which was celebrating its centenary. The significance of the event and the title of the guest were incommensurable and caused a lot of surprise. Why?

Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi has his own explanation. Dr. Zakir Hussain, one of the most famous sons of India, honored with the India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, was a member of a Pathan/Pakhtun/Pashtun tribe – the Afridi. And the Afridi tribe is identified with the lost tribe of Ephraim, one of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.

Navras Jaat Aafreedi is an Indian citizen, a representative of the Afridi tribe too, and an historian. He isn’t 30 yet but he has Ph.D. on Medieval & Modern Indian History, and his research topic was: "The Indian Jewry and the Self-Professed ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in India". His book of the same title is the third serious major work ever by a Gentile (non-Jew) on this subject. Now he is doing his Post-Doctoral Research at Tel Aviv University.

Navras began his research of the connection between Afridi Pathans/Pakhtuns from Malihabad in Lucknow district (state Uttar Pradesh) and the Ephraim tribe. Pakhtuns settled here in the mid XVIII century and they are about 1200 today. It is a drop in the ocean compared to about 45 million Pashtuns of the world. Pathans/Pakhtuns/Pashtuns mainly live in the highlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan and are divided into 60 tribes and 400 clans.

* * *
Afridi tribe is one of the largest (about three million) and very martial. They controlled the famous Khyber and the Kohat passes, collected tribute from caravans and became famous for their fearlessness and selflessness in the battles with everyone who tried to conquer Afghanistan: from Mughal troops in the XVI and XVII centuries to Britons in the XIX and Russians in the XX century.

For hundreds of years Afridis have called themselves Bani Israel (Pushto for the Hebrew B'nei Yisrael meaning Children of Israel) and believe that they originated from the Ephraim tribe. Lately, the hatred of Jews in the Islamic world made the young generation of Pashtuns give up their beliefs. But Navras quotes a number of Jewish immigrants from Afghanistan who testify to the prevalence of many Jewish rituals and customs among the Afridi Pathans, e.g., the lighting of candles on Shabbat, keeping long side locks, wearing shawls resembling the tallith, circumcision on the eighth day after birth, and Levirate.

He refers to great Jewish writers like Saadia Ga’on and Moses Ibn Ezra, who mention Afghanistan and the Pathan territories in Pakistan as the home of Jews descended from the lost tribes, and to a number of medieval Arabic and Farsi texts. In the XIX century some British travelers and officers, like Sir Alexander Brunes and J.P.Ferrier, wrote about the Israelite origin of Afghan tribes.

. . . Continued at

http://middleeastfacts.com/guests/maistrovoy_09jul07a.php

There's a lot more there, if this intrigues you, as it does me. lw.

More links to this can be found at:

http://www.hujra.net/index.php?topic=4771.0;wap2

AND more yet from

GOOGLE Search for Pashtun Afridis Ephraim

should you be research-minded.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The Quranic Concept of War

by JOSEPH C. MYERS
06 May, 2007
A review of BG S. K. Malik's book "The Quranic Concept of War."1

Copied from Islam Watch
http://www.islam-watch.org/Others/Quranic-Concept-of-War.htm

“The universalism of Islam, in its all-embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political, if not strictly military. . . . The Jihad, accordingly, may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not continuous fighting.” — Majid Khadduri2

Political and military leaders are notoriously averse to theory, but if there is a theorist about war who matters, it remains Carl von Clausewitz, whose Vom Kriege (On War) has shaped Western views about war since the middle of the nineteenth century.”3 Both points are likely true and problematic since we find ourselves engaged in war with people not solely imbued with western ideas and values or followers of western military theorists. The Hoover Institution’s Paul Sperry recently stated, “Four years into the war on terror, US intelligence officials tell me there are no baseline studies of the Muslim prophet Muhammad or his ideological or military doctrine found at either the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, or even the war colleges.”4

Would this be surprising? When it comes to warfighting military audiences tend to focus on the military and power aspects of warfare; the tangibles of terrain, enemy, weather, leadership, and troops; quantifiables such as the number of tanks and artillery tubes—the correlation of forces. Analysts steer toward the familiar rather than the unfamiliar; people tend to think in their comfort zones. The study of ideology or philosophy is often brushed aside, it’s not the “stuff of muddy boots;” it is more cerebral than physical and not action oriented. Planners do not assess the “correlation of ideas.” The practitioners are too busy.

Dr. Antulio Echevarria recently argued the US military does not have a doctrine for war as much as it has a doctrine for operations and battles.5 The military has a deficit of strategic, and, one could add, philosophic thinking. In the war against Islamist terrorism, how many have heard of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Project”?6 Is the political philosophy of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in fact well-grounded in western political theory and rigorously rejected it, studied in our military schools? Are there any implications to his statement in 1981 that “Iran . . . is determined to propagate Islam to the whole world”?7

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To understand war, one has to study its philosophy; the grammar and logic of your opponent. Only then are you approaching strategic comprehension. To understand the war against Islamist terrorism one must begin to understand the Islamic way of war, its philosophy and doctrine, the meanings of jihad in Islam—and one needs to understand that those meanings are highly varied and utilitarian depending on the source.

With respect to the war against the global jihad and its associated terror groups, individual terrorists, and clandestine adherents, one should ask if there is a unique method or attitude to their approach to war. Is there a philosophy, or treatise such as Clausewitz’s On War that attempts to form their thinking about war? Is there a document that can be reviewed and understood in such a manner that we may begin to think strategically about our opponent. There is one work that stands out from the many.

The Quranic Concept of War

The Quranic Concept of War, by Brigadier General S. K. Malik of the Pakistani Army provides readers with unequalled insight. Originally published in Pakistan in 1979, most available copies are found in India, or in small non-descript Muslim bookstores.8 One major point to ponder, when thinking about The Quranic Concept of War, is the title itself. The Quran is presumed to be the revealed word of God as spoken through his chosen prophet, Mohammed. According to Malik, the Quran places warfighting doctrine and its theory in a much different category than western thinkers are accustomed to, because it is not a theory of war derived by man, but of God. This is God’s warfighting principles and commandments revealed. Malik’s attempts to distill God’s doctrine for war through the examples of the Prophet. By contrast, the closest that Clausewitz comes to divine presentation is in his discussion of the trinity: the people, the state, and the military. In the Islamic context, the discussion of war is at the level of revealed truth and example, well above theory—God has no need to theorize. Malik notes, “As a complete Code of Life, the Holy Quran gives us a philosophy of war as well. . . . This divine philosophy is an integral part of the total Quranic ideology.”9

Historiography

In The Quranic Concept of War, Malik seeks to instruct readers in the uniquely important doctrinal aspects of Quranic warfare. The Quranic approach to war is “infinitely supreme and effective . . . [and] points towards the realization of universal peace and justice . . . and makes maximum allowance to its adversaries to co-operate [with Islam] in a combined search for a just and peaceful order.”10 For purposes of this review, the term “doctrine” refers to both religious and broad strategic approaches, not methods and procedures. Malik’s work is a treatise with historical, political, legalistic, and moralistic ramifications on Islamic warfare. It seemingly is without parallel in the western sense of warfare since the “Quran is a source of eternal guidance for mankind.”11

The approach is not new to Islamists and other jihad theorists fighting according to the “Method of Mohammed” or hadith. The lessons learned are recorded

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and form an important part of Quranic surah and jihadist’s scholarship.12 Islamic scholars both Muslim and non-Muslim will find much to debate in terms of Malik’s view of jihad doctrine and Quranic warfare. Malik’s work is essentially modern scholarship; although he does acknowledge the classical views of jihad in many respects.13

Malik’s arguments are clearly parochial, often more editorial than scholarly, and his tone is decidedly confident and occasionally supremacist. The reach and influence of the author’s work is not clear although one might believe that given the idealism of his treatise, his approaches to warfare, and the role and ends of “terror” his text may resonate with extremist and radicals prone to use terroristic violence to accomplish their ends. For that reason alone, the book is worth studying.

Introduction

The preface by Allah Bukhsh K. Brohi, the former Pakistani ambassador to India, offers important insights into Malik’s exposition. In fact, Brohi’s 13-page preface lays the foundation for the books ten chapters. Malik places Quranic warfare in an academic context relative to that used by western theorists. He analyzes the causes and objects of war, as well as war’s nature and dimensions. He then turns attention to the ethics and strategy of warfare. Toward the end of the book he reviews the exercise of Quranic warfare based on the examples of the Prophet Mohammed’s military campaigns and concludes with summary observations. There are important jus en bellum and jus ad bellum implications in the author’s writings, as well as in his controversial ideas related to the means and objectives of war. It is these concepts that warrant the attention of planners and strategist.

Zia-Ul-Haq (1924-88), the former President of Pakistan and Pakistani Army Chief of Staff, opens the book by focusing on the concept of jihad within Islam and explaining it is not simply the domain of the military:

Jehad fi sabilallah is not the exclusive domain of the professional soldier, nor is it restricted to the application of military force alone.

This book brings out with simplicity, clarity and precision the Quranic philosophy on the application of military force within the context of the totality that is JEHAD. The professional soldier in a Muslim army, pursuing the goals of a Muslim state, cannot become ‘professional’ if in all his activities he does not take the ‘colour of Allah,’ The nonmilitary citizen of a Muslin state must, likewise, be aware of the kind of soldier that his country must produce and the only pattern of war that his country’s armed forces may wage.14

General Zia states that all Muslims play a role in jihad, a mainstream concept of the Quran, that jihad in terms of warfare is a collective responsibility of the Muslim ummah, and is not restricted to soldiers. General Zia emphasizes how the concept of Islamic military professionalism requires “godly character” in order to be fully achieved. Zia then endorses Malik’s thesis as the “only pattern of war,” or approach to war that an Islamic state may wage.

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Battling Counter-initiatory Forces

In the preface Ambassador Brohi details what might be startling to many readers. He states that Malik has made “a valuable contribution to Islamic jurisprudence” or Islamic law, and an “analytic restatement of the Quranic wisdom on the subject of war and peace.” Brohi implies that Malik’s discussion, though a valuable new version, is an approach to a theme already well developed.15

Brohi then defines jihad, “The most glorious word in the Vocabulary of Islam is Jehad, a word which is untranslatable in English but, broadly speaking, means ‘striving’, ‘struggling’, ‘trying’ to advance the Divine causes or purposes.” He introduces a somewhat cryptic concept when he explains man’s role in a “Quranic setting” as energetically combating forces of evil or what may be called, “counter-initiatory” forces which are at war with the harmony and the purpose of life on earth.16 For the true Muslin the harmony and purpose in life are only possible through man’s ultimate submission to God’s will, that all will come to know, recognize, and profess Mohammed as the Prophet of God. Man must recognize the last days and acknowledge tawhid, the oneness of God.17

Brohi recounts the classic dualisms of Islamic theology; that the world is a place of struggle between good and evil, between right and wrong, between Haq and Na-Haq (truth and untruth), and between halal and haram (legitimate and forbidden). According to Brohi, it is the duty of man to opt for goodness and reject evil. Brohi appeals to the “greater jihad,” a post-classical jihad doctrine developed by the mystical Sufi order and other Shia scholars.18

Brohi places jihad in the context of communal if not imperial obligation; both controversial formulations:

When a believer sees that someone is trying to obstruct another believer from traveling the road that leads to God, spirit of Jehad requires that such a man who is imposing obstacles should be prevented from doing so and the obstacles placed by him should also be removed, so that mankind may be freely able to negotiate its own path that leads to Heaven.” To do otherwise, “by not striving to clear or straighten the path we [Muslims] become passive spectators of the counter-initiatory forces imposing a blockade in the way of those who mean to keep their faith with God.19

This viewpoint appears to reflect the classic, collective duty within jihad doctrine, to defend the Islamic community from threats—the concept of defensive jihad. Brohi is saying much more than that; however, he is attempting to delineate the duty—the proactive duty—to clear the path for Islam. It is necessary not only to defend the individual believer if he is being hindered in his faith, but also to remove the obstacles of those counter-initiatory forces hindering his Islamic development. This begs the question of what is actually meant by the initiatory forces. The answer is clear to Brohi; the force of initiative is Islam and its Muslim members. “It is the duty of a believer to carry forward the Message of God and to bring it to notice of his fellow-men in handsome ways. But if someone attempts to obstruct him from doing so he is entitled as a matter of defense, to retaliate.”20

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This formulation would appear to turn the concept of defense on its head. To the extent that a Muslim may proclaim Islam and proselytize, or Islam, as a faith, seeks to extend its invitation and reach—initiate its advance—but is unable to do so, then that represents an overt threat justifying—a defensive jihad. According to Brohi, this does not result in the “ordinary wars which mankind has been fighting for the sake of either revenge or for securing . . . more land or more booty . . . [this] striving must be [is] for the sake of God. Wars in the theory of Islam are . . . to advance God’s purposes on earth, and invariably they are defensive in character.” In other words, everywhere the message of God and Islam is or can be hindered from expansion, resisted or opposed by some “obstruction” (a term not clearly defined) Islam is intrinsically entitled to defend its manifest destiny.21

While his logic is controversial, Brohi is not unique in his extrapolation. His theory in fact reflects the argument of Rashid Rida, a conservative disciple of the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh. In 1913 Abduh published an article evaluating Islam’s early military campaigns and determined that Islam’s early neighbors “prevented the proclamation of truth” engendering the defense of Islam. “Our religion is not like others that defend themselves . . . but our defense of our religion is the proclamation of truth and the removal of distortion and misrepresentation of it.”22

No Nation is Sovereign

The exegesis of the term jihad is often debated. Some apologists make clear that nowhere in the Quran does the term “Holy War” exist; that is true, but it is also irrelevant. War in Islam is either just or unjust and that justness depends on the ends of war. Brohi, and later Malik, make clear that the ends of war in Islam or jihad are to fulfill God’s divine purpose. Not only should that be a holy purpose, it must be a just war in order to be “Holy War.”23

The next dualism Brohi presents is that of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the house of submission and the house of war. He describes the latter, as “perpetuating defiance of the Lord.” While explaining that conditions for war in Islam are limited (a constrained set of circumstances) he notes that “in Islam war is waged to establish supremacy of the Lord only when every other argument has failed to convince those who reject His will and work against the very purpose of the creation of mankind.”24 Brohi quotes the Quranic manuscript Surah, al-Tawba:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge 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.25

Acknowledging western critics who believe that Islam is in a state of perpetual struggle with the non-Islamic world, Brohi counters in a clearly dismissive tone by explaining that man is the slave to God, and defying God is treason under Islamic law. Those who defy God should be removed from humanity like a cancerous growth. Islam requires believers “to invite non-believers to the fold of Islam” by using “persuasion” and “beautiful methods.” He continues, “the first duty” of a Muslim

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is dawa, a proclamation to conversion by “handsome ways.” It is only after refusing dawa and the invitation to Islam that “believers have no option but in self-defense to wage a war against those threatening aggression.”

Obviously, much turns on how threats and aggression are characterized. It is difficult to understand, however, based on the structure of his argument, that Brohi views non-believers and their states as requiring conversion over time by peaceful means; and when that fails, by force. He is echoing the doctrine of Abd al-Salam Faraj, author of Al-Farida al-Ghaibah, better known as The Neglected Duty, a work that is widely read throughout the Muslim world.26

Finally, Brohi examines the concept of the ummah and the international system. “The idea of Ummah of Mohammad, the Prophet of Islam, is incapable of being realized within the framework of territorial states.” This is a consistent view that underpins many works on the concept of the Islamic state.27 For Muslims, the ummah is a transcendent religious and cultural society united and reflecting the unity (tawhid) of Islam; the idea of one God, indivisible, one community, one belief, and one duty to live and become godly. According to the Prophet, “Ummah participates in this heritage by a set pattern of thought, belief and practice . . . and supplies the spiritual principle of integration of mankind—a principle which is supra-national, supra-racial, supra-linguistic and supra-territorial.”28

With respect to the “law of war and peace in Islam” Brohi writes it “is as old as the Quran itself. . . . ” In his analysis of the law of nations and their international dealings, he emphasizes that in “Islamic international law this conduct [war and peace] is, strictly speaking, regulated between Muslims and non-Muslims, there being, from Islamic perspective, no other nation. . . . ” In other words, war is between Muslims and non-Muslims and not in actuality between states. It is transnational. He adds, “In Islam, of course, no nation is sovereign since Allah alone is the only sovereign in Whom all authority vests.”29 Here Brohi is echoing what Islamic scholars such as Majid Khadduri have described as the “dualism of the universal religion and universal state that is Islam.”30

The Divine Philosophy on War

General Malik begins by categorizing human beings into three archetypes: those who fear Allah and profess the Faith; those who reject the Faith; and those who profess, but are treacherous in their hearts. Examples of the Prophet and the instructions to him by God in his early campaigns should be studied to fully understand these three examples in practice. The author highlights the fact that the “divine philosophy on war” was revealed gradually over a 12 year period, its earliest guidance dealing with the causes and objects of war, while later guidance focused on Quranic strategy, the conduct of war, and the ethical dimensions of warfare.31

In Chapter Three, Malik reviews several key thoughts espoused by western scholars related to the causes of war. He examines the ideologies of Lenin, Geoffery Blainey, Quincy Wright, and Frederick H. Hartman each of whom spoke about war in a historical or material context with respect to the nature of the state system. Malik finds these explanations wanting and turns to the Quran for explanation, “war could only be

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waged for the sake of justice, truth, law, and preservation of human society. . . . The central theme behind the causes of war . . . [in] the Holy Quran, was the cause of Allah.”32

The author recounts the progression of revelations by God to the Prophet that “granted the Muslims the permission to fight . . . .” Ultimately, God would compel and command Muslims to fight: “Fight in the cause of Allah.” In his analysis of this surah Malik highlights the fact that “new elements” were added to the causes of war: that in order to fight, Muslims must be “fought first;” Muslims are not to “transgress God’s limits” in the conduct of war; and everyone should understand that God views “tumult and oppression” of Muslims as “worse than slaughter.”33 This oppression was exemplified by the denial of Muslim’s right to worship at the Sacred Mosque by the early Arab Koraish, people of Mecca. Malik describes the situation in detail, “. . . the tiny Muslim community in Mecca was the object of the Koraish tyranny and oppression since the proclamation of Islam. . . . The enemy repression reached its zenith when the Koraish denied the Muslims access to the Sacred Mosque (the Ka’aba) to fulfill their religious obligations. This sacrilegious act amounted to an open declaration of war upon Islam. These actions eventually compelling the Muslims to migrate to Medina twelve years later, in 622 AD. . . .”34

Malik argues that the pagan Koraish tribe had no reason to prohibit Muslim worship, since the Muslims did not impede their form of worship. This historical example helps to further define the concept that “tumult and oppression is worse than slaughter” and as the Quran repeats, “graver is it in the sight of Allah to prevent access to the path of Allah, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members.” Malik also notes the Quran distinguishes those who fight “in the cause of Allah and those who reject Faith and fight in the cause of evil.”35 In terms of Quranic just war theory, war must be waged “only to fight the forces of tyranny and oppression.”36

Challenging Clausewitz’s notion that “policy” provides the context and boundary of war; Malik says it is the reverse, “‘war’ forced policy to define and determine its own parameters” and since that discussion focuses on parochial issues such as national interests, and the vagaries of state to state relations it is a lesser perspective. In the divine context of the Quran war orients on the spread of “justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere.” According to the author war is to be fought aggressively, slaughter is not the worst evil. In the course of war every opportunity for peace should be pursued and reciprocated. That is every remonstrance of peace by the enemies of Islam, but only as prescribed by the Quran’s “clear-cut philosophy and methodology” for preserving peace.37

Understanding the context in which the Quran describes and defines “justice and peace” is important. Malik refers the reader to the battle of Badr to elucidate these principles. There is peace with those pagans who cease hostilities, and war continues with those who refuse. He cites the following surah, “as long as these stand true to you, stand ye true to them, for Allah doth love the righteous.”38 Referring to the precedent setting Hodaibayya treaty in the ninth year of the hijra, or pilgrimages to Mecca, Malik outlines how Allah and the Prophet abrogated those treaties with the pagan Meccans.

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Pagans who accepted terms voluntarily without a treaty were respected. Those who refused, the Quran directed, were to be slain wherever found. This precedent and “revelations commanded the Muslims to fulfill their treaty commitments for the contracted period but put them under no obligations to renew them.”39 It also established the precedent that Muslims may conclude treaties with non-believers, but only for a temporary period.40 Commenting on western approaches to peace, Malik views such approaches as not standing the “test of time” with no worthwhile role to play even in the future.41 The author’s point is that peace between states has only secular, not divine ends; and peace in an Islamic context is achieved only for the promotion of Islam.

As the Prophet gained control of Mecca he decreed that non-believers could assemble or watch over the Sacred Mosque. He later consolidated power over Arabia and many who had not yet accepted Islam, “including Christians and Jew, [they] were given the option to choose between war and submission.” These non-believers were required to pay a poll-tax or jizya and accept the status of dhimmitude [servitude to Islam] in order to continue practicing their faith. According to Malik the taxes were merely symbolic and insignificant. In summarizing this relationship the author states, “the object of war is to obtain conditions of peace, justice, and faith. To do so it is essential to destroy the forces of oppression and persecution.”42 This view is in keeping with that outlined by Khadduri, “The jihad, it will be recalled, regarded war as Islam’s instrument to transform the dar al-harb into dar al-Islam . . . in Islamic legal theory, the ultimate objective of Islam is not war per se, but the ultimate establishment of peace.”43

The Nature of War

Malik argues that the “nature and dimension of war” is the greatest single characteristic of Quranic warfare and distinguishes it from all other doctrines. He acknowledges Clausewitz’s contribution to the understanding of warfare in its moral and spiritual context. The moral forces of war, as Clausewitz declared, are perhaps the most important aspects in war. Reiterating that Muslims are required to wage war “with the spirit of religious duty and obligation,” the author makes it clear that in return for fighting in the way of Allah, divine, angelic assistance will be rendered to jihad warriors and armies. At this point The Quranic Concept of War moves beyond the metaphysical to the supernatural element, unlike anything found in western doctrine. Malik highlights the fact that divine assistance requires “divine standards” on the part of the warrior mujahideen for the promise of Allah’s aid to be met.44

The author then builds upon the jihad warrior’s role in the realms of divine cause, purpose, and support, to argue that in order for the Muslim warrior to be unmatched, to be the bravest and the most fearless; he can only do so through the correct spiritual preparation, beginning with total submission to God’s will. The Quran reveals that the moral forces are the “real issues involved in the planning and conduct of war.”45 Malik quotes the Quran: “Fighting is prescribed for you . . . and ye dislike a thing which is good for you and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”

The Quran instructs the jihad warrior “to fight . . . with total devotion and never contemplate a flight from the battlefield for fear of death.” The jihad warrior,

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who dies in the way of Allah, does not really die but lives on in heaven. Malik emphasizes this in several Quranic verses. “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. . . . Nay, they live finding their sustenance in the Presence of the Lord.” Malik also notes that “Not equal are those Believers . . . Allah has granted a higher grade to those who strive and fight . . . .”46

The Quranic dimensions of war are “revolutionary,” conferring on the jihad warrior a “personality so strong and overbearing as to prove themselves equal to, indeed dominate, every contingency in war.”47 This theme of spiritual preparation and pure belief has appeared in the prolific jihad writings of Usaman Dan Fodio in the early 1800s and repeated by the Saudi writer Abdallah al-Qadiri in 1992, both emphasizing the role of the “greater jihad.” Becoming a purer and more disciplined Muslim serves the cause of Islam better in peace and war.48

Malik, like Brohi, acknowledges critics who say that Islam has been “spread by the sword,” but he responds that Islam is spread through restraint in war and in “the use of force [that] have no parallel.” He then argues that restraint in warfare is a “two-sided affair.” Where the enemy (not defined) fails to exercise restraints and commits “excesses” (not defined) then “the very injunction of preserving and promoting peace and justice demands the use of limited force . . . . Islam permits the use of the sword for such purpose.”49 Since Malik is speaking in the context of active war and response to the “excesses of war” it is unclear what he means by “limited force” or response.

The author expands on the earlier ideas that moral and spiritual forces are predominate in war. He contrasts Islamic strategic approaches with western theories of warfare oriented toward the application of force, primarily in the military domain, as opposed to Islam where the focus is on a broader application of power. Power in Malik’s context is the power of jihad, which is total, both in the conduct of total war and in its supporting strategy; referred to as “total or grand strategy.” Malik provides the following definition, “Jehad is a continuous and never-ending struggle waged on all fronts including political, economic, social, psychological, domestic, moral and spiritual to attain the objectives of policy.”50 The power of jihad brings with it the power of God.

The Quranic concept of strategy is therefore divine theory. The examples and lessons to be derived from it may be found in the study of the classics, inspired by such events as the battles of the Prophet, e.g., Badr, Khandaq, Tabuk, and Hudaibiyya. Malik again references the divine assistance of Allah and the aid of angelic hosts. He refers to the battles of Hunain and Ohad as instances where seeming defeat was reversed and Allah “sent down Tranquility into the hearts of believers, that they may add Faith to their Faith.” Malik argues that divine providence steels the jihadi in war, “strengthens the hearts of Believers.” Calmness of faith, “assurance, hope, and tranquility” in the face of danger is the divine standard.51

Strike Terror into their Hearts

Malik uses examples to demonstrate that Allah will strike “terror into the hearts of Unbelievers.”52 At this point he begins to develop his most controversial and conjectural Quranic theory related to warfare—the role of terror. Readers need to understand that the author is thinking and writing in strategic terms, not in the vernacular

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of battles or engagements. Malik continues, “when God wishes to impose His will on his enemies, He chooses to do so by casting terror into their hearts.”53 He cites another verse, “against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts) of the enemies of Allah . . . .” Malik’s strategic synthesis is specific: “the Quranic military strategy thus enjoins us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost in order to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, known or hidden, while guarding ourselves from being terror-stricken by the enemy.”54 Terror is an effect; the end-state.

Malik identifies the center of gravity in war as the “human heart, [man’s] soul, spirit, and Faith.” Note that Faith is capitalized, meaning more than simple moral courage or fortitude. Faith in this sense is in the domain of religious and spiritual faith; this is the center of gravity in war. The main weapon against this Islamic concept of center of gravity is “the strength of our own souls . . . [keeping] terror away from our own hearts.” In terms of achieving decisive and direct decisions preparing for this type of battlefield first requires “creating a wholesome respect for our Cause”—the cause of Islam. This “respect” must be seeded in advance of war and conflict in the minds of the enemies. Malik then introduces the informational, psychological, or perception management concepts of warfare. Echoing Sun Tzu, he states, that if properly prepared, the “war of muscle,” the physical war, will already be won by “the war of will.”55 “Respect” therefore is achieved psychologically by, as Brohi suggested earlier, “beautiful” and “handsome ways” or by the strategic application of terror.

When examining the theme of the preparatory stage of war, Malik talks of the “war of preparation being waged . . . in peace,” meaning that peacetime preparatory activities are in fact part of any war and “vastly more important than the active war.” This statement should not be taken lightly, it essentially means that Islam is in a perpetual state of war while peace can only be defined as the absence of active war. Malik argues that peace-time training efforts should be oriented on the active war(s) to come, in order to develop the Quranic and divine “Will” in the mujahid. When armies and soldiers find limited physical resources they should continue and emphasize the development of the “spiritual resources” as these are complimentary factors and create synergy for future military action.

Malik’s most controversial dictum is summarized in the following manner: in war, “the point where the means and the end meet” is in terror. He formulates terror as an objective principal of war; once terror is achieved the enemy reaches his culminating point. “Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose . . . .” Malik’s divine principal of Islamic warfare may be restated as “strike terror; never feel terror.” The ultimate objective of this form of warfare “revolves around the human heart, [the enemies] soul, spirit, and Faith.”56 Terror “can be instilled only if the opponent’s Faith is destroyed . . . . It is essential in the ultimate analysis, to dislocate [the enemies] Faith.” Those who are firm in their religious conviction are immune to terror, “a weak Faith offers inroads to terror.” Therefore, as part of preparations for jihad, actions will be oriented on weakening the non-Islamic’s “Faith,” while strengthening the Islamic’s. What that weakening or “dislocation” entails in practice remains ambiguous. Malik concludes, “Psychological dislocation is temporary; spiritual dislocation is permanent.” The soul of man can only be touched by terror.57

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Malik then moves to a more academic discussion of ten general categories inherent in the conduct of Islamic warfare. These categories are easily translatable and recognizable to most western theorists; planning, organization, and conduct of military operations. In this regard, the author offers no unique insight. His last chapter is used to restate his major conclusions, stressing that “The Holy Quran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test . . . lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of our enemies.”58

Evaluation of The Quranic Concept of War

While the extent and reach of Malik’s thesis cannot be confirmed in the Islamic world neither can it be discounted. Though controversial, his citations are accurately drawn from Islamic sources and consistent with classical Islamic jurisprudence.59 As Malik notes, “Quranic military thought is an integral and inseparable part of the total Quranic message.”60 Policy planners and strategists striving to understand the nature of the “Long War” should consider Malik’s writings in that light.

Malik makes clear that the Quran provides the doctrine, guidance, and examples for the conduct of Quranic or Islamic warfare. “It gives a strategy of war that penetrates deep down to destroy the opponents’ faith and render his physical and mental faculties totally ineffective.”61 Malik’s thesis focuses on the fact that the primary reason for studying the Quran is to gain a greater understanding of these concepts and insights. The Prophet Mohammed, as the Quran attests, changed the intent and objective of war—raising the sphere of war to a Godly plane and purpose; the global proclamation and spread of Islam. This obviously rejects the Clausewitizian politics and policy dyad: that war is simply policy of the state.

Quranic warfare is “just war.” It is jus en bellum and jus ad bellum if fought “in the way of Allah” for divine purposes and the ends of Islam. This contradicts the western philosophy of just war theory. Another important connotation is that jihad is a continuum, across peace and war. It is a constant and covers the spectrum from grand strategy to tactical; collective to the individual; from the preparatory to the execution phases of war.

Malik highlights the fact that the preservation of life is not the ultimate end or greatest good in Quranic warfare. Ending “tumult and oppression,” achieving the war aims of Islam through jihad is the desired end. Dying in this cause brings direct reward in heaven for the mujahid, sacrifice is sacred. It naturally follows that death is not feared in Quranic warfare; indeed, “tranquility” invites God’s divine aid and assistance. The “Base” of the Quranic military strategy is spiritual preparation and “guarding ourselves against terror.”62 Readers may surmise that the training camps of al Qaeda (The Base) were designed as much for spiritual preparation as military. One needs only to recall the example of Mohammed Atta’s “last night” preparations.63

The battleground of Quranic war is the human soul—it is religious warfare. The object of war is to dislocate and destroy the [religious] “Faith” of the enemy. These principals are consistent with objectives of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic organizations. “Wars in the theory of Islam are . . . to advance God’s purposes on earth, and invariably they are defensive in character.”64 Peace treaties in theory are

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temporary, pragmatic protocols. This treatise acknowledges Islam’s manifest destiny and the approach to achieving it.

General Malik’s thesis in The Quranic Concept of War can be fundamentally described as “Islam is the answer.” He makes a case for war and the revitalization of Islam. This is a martial exegesis of the Quran. Malik like other modern Islamists are, at root, romantics. They focus on the Quran for jihad a doctrine that harkens back to the time of the Prophet and the classical-jihadist period when Islam enjoyed its most successful military campaigns and rapid growth.

The book’s metaphysical content borders on the supernatural and renders “assured expectations” that cannot be evaluated or tested in the arena of military experience. Incorporating “divine intervention” into military campaigns, while possibly advantageous, cannot be calculated as an overt force multiplier. Critics may also point to the ahistorical aspect of Malik’s thesis; that Islam is in a state of constant struggle with the non-Islamic world. There are examples of Muslim armies serving side by side with Christian armies in combat and campaigns are numerous, with Iraq being but a recent example.65

Malik’s appraisal of the Quran as a source of divine revelation for victory in war can likewise be criticized by historical example. Were it fully true and operationalized then the 1,400 years of Islamic military history might demonstrate something beyond its present state. War and peace in Islam has ebbed and flowed as has the conduct of war across all civilizations, ancient and modern. Islam as an independent military force has been in recession since 1492, although the latest jihadist’s threat of terror against the international system is, at least in part, a possible reaction to this long recession. Malik’s thesis essentially recognizes this historical pattern; indeed, Malik’s book may be an attempt to reverse this trend. The events of 9/11 may be seen as a validation of Malik’s thesis regarding the spiritual preparation and the use of terror. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were intended to seed “respect” (fear) in the minds of Islam’s enemies. These acts were not only directed at Western non-believers, but also the Muslim leaders who “profess the faith but are treacherous in their hearts” (allies and supporters of the United States). The barbarity of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others in Iraq reflect a focus on extreme terror designed to wilt the will of Islam’s enemies.

Malik and Brohi both emphasize the defensive nature of jihad in Islam, but this position appears to be more a defense of a manifest destiny inevitably resulting in conflict. In their rendering of jihad both, not surprisingly, owe an intellectual debt to the Pakistani Islamist theorist, Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi. Al-Mawdudi is an important intellectual precursor to the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, and other modern Islamic revivalists. As al-Mawdudi notes, “Islamic jihad is both offensive and defensive” oriented on liberating man from humanistic tyranny.66

The author’s most controversial and, perhaps, most noteworthy assertion, is the distinction of “terror” as an ends rather than as a means to an end. The soul can only be touched by terror. Malik’s divine principal of war may be summarized in the dictum “strike terror; never feel terror.” Yet, he does not describe any specific method of delivering terror into the heart of Islam’s enemies. His view of terror seems to conflict with his earlier, limited, discussion of the concept of restraint in warfare and what actually

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constitutes “excesses” on the part of an enemy. It also conflicts with the character and nature of response that the author says is demanded. Malik leaves many of these pertinent issues undefined under a veneer of legitimating theory.

In spite of certain ambiguities and theoretical weaknesses, this work should be studied and valued for its insight and analysis relate to jihadists’ concepts and the asymmetric approach to war that radical Muslims may adapt and execute. With respect to global jihad terrorism, as the events of 9/11 so vividly demonstrated, there are those who believe and will exercise the tenets of The Quranic Concept of War.


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NOTES

1. Brigadier S. K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War (Lahore, Pakistan: Associated Printers, 1979). Quranic War or Quranic Warfare refers to Malik’s treatment in his book.

2. Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins Press, 1955), p. 64.

3. R. D. Hooker, “Beyond Vom Kriege: The Character and Conduct of Modern War,” Parameters, 35 (Summer 2005), 4.

4. Paul Sperry, “The Pentagon Breaks the Islam Taboo,” FrontPage Magazine, 14 December 2005, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20539.

5. Antulio Echevarria, Towards an American Way of War (Carlisle, Pa.: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, March 2004).

6. Patrick Poole, “The Muslim Brotherhood ‘Project,’” FrontPage Magazine, 11 May 2006, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22415.

7. Farhand Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View: Khomeyni on Man the State and International Politics,” (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), p 71.

8. Irfan Yusuf, “Theories on Islamic Books You Wouldn’t Read About,” Canberra Times, 21 July 2005, http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your%20say&subclass=general&category=editorial%20 opinion&story_id=410105&y=2005&m=7.

9. Malik, pp. I-ii.

10. Ibid., p. 1.

11. Ibid., pp. I-ii.

12. See for example the discussion by Dr. Mary R. Habeck, “Jihadist Strategies in the War on Terrorism,” The Heritage Foundation, 8 November 2004, http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl855.cfm.

13. David Cook, Understanding Jihad, (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2005). There is approximately 1,400 years of jihad scholarship beginning with Mohammed and his military campaigns. Classical approaches to jihad as described by Mohammed’s successors, Abu Bakr for example, and the challenges presented by the struggles of succession to Mohammed.

14. Malik “Forward.”

15. Ibid., “Preface,” p. I.

16. Ibid., p. I. Note the Christian concept of the Trinity contained in the Nicene Creed is considered polytheistic according to Islam. The Trinity is not tawhid.

17. John Esposito, Islam, the Straight Path (3d ed.; New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 12-14, 89.

18. Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 72; Khadduri, pp. 65, 70-72; Cook, Understanding Jihad, pp. 35-39.

19. Brohi, “Preface,” p. ii.

20. Ibid., p. iii.

21. Ibid., p. iii.

22. Cook, pp. 95-96. Cook places these concepts of jihad doctrine in the lineage of contemporary and radical theory.

23. The indexed term for jihad is redirected to the term “Holy War” in this classic book of Islamic law or sharia by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, ed. and trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Beltsville, Md.: Amana Publication, 1997).

24. Malik, “Preface,” p. v.

25. Ibid., p. vii.

26. Cook, p. 107; Christoper Henzel, “The Origins of al Qaeda’s Ideology: Implications for US Strategy,” Parameters, 35 (Spring 2005), 69-80.

27. Ishtiaq Ahmed, The Concept of an Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).

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28. Malik, “Preface,” p. x. While in the Western tradition the state is viewed as a territorial and political body, based on “temporal elements such as shared memory, language, race, or the mere choice of its members.” Khomeini rejected this view, seeing the secular, political state and nationalism as Western constructs of imperialistic design to damage the cohesion of the ummah and impede the “advancement of Islam.” Rajaee, pp. 7, 67-71.

29. Ibid., p. x.

30. Khadduri, p. 63.

31. Malik, p. 6.

32. Ibid., p. 20.

33. Ibid., pp. 20-21. (Baqara: 190).

34. Malik, p. 11.

35. Ibid., p. 22. (Baqara: 217) and (Nissaa: 76).

36. Ibid., p. 23.

37. Ibid., p. 29.

38. Malik, p. 29. (Tauba: 7).

39. Ibid., p. 31.

40. Khadduri, p. 212. Jurists disagree on the allowable duration of treaties, the operative concept is that the dar al-Harb must be reduced to dar al-Islam over time.

41. Malik, p. 27.

42. Ibid., pp. 33-34.

43. Khadduri, p. 141.

44. Malik, p. 40

45. Ibid., pp. 37-38. (Baqara: 216).

46. Ibid., pp. 42-44. (Al-I-Imran: 169-70) and (Nissa: 95).

47. Ibid., pp. 42-44.

48. Cook, pp. 77, 124.

49. Malik, p. 49.

50. Ibid., p. 54.

51. Ibid., p. 57.

52. Malik, p. 57.

53. Ibid., p. 57.

54. Ibid., p. 58.

55. Ibid., p. 58.

56. Ibid., pp. 58-59.

57. Ibid., p. 60.

58. Ibid., p. 144.

59. Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Weiner Publishers, 1996), pp. 44-51, 128.

60. Malik, p. 3.

61. Ibid., p. 146.

62. Ibid., p.58.

63. “In Hijacker’s Bags, a Call to Planning, Prayer and Death,” Washington Post, 28 September 2001.

64. Malik, “Preface,” p. iii.

65. Four notable examples are the Crimean War where French, British and Ottoman Forces allied against the Russians; Fuad Pasha of the Ottoman Army served as a coalition partner with French Army during the 1860 Rebellion in Syria; more recently Muslim Arab and Kabyle soldiers served in the Harkis of the French Army in the French-Algerian War; and, of course, today in Iraq. Malik would address some of these events as alliances of convenience serving Islam’s interests in accord with the Quran and Sharia Law, others as takfir or treason.

66. Cook, pp. 99-103. Peters, p. 130.

The Reviewer: Lieutenant Colonel Joseph C. Myers is the Senior Army Advisor to the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. A graduate of the US Military Academy he holds a Master of Arts from Tulane University. In 2004 he completed a Senior Army Fellowship at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Previous assignments include Army Section Chief, US Military Group, Argentina. He also served as Chief of the South America Division and Senior Military Analyst for Colombia at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Muhammad the torturer

by yellarebbi

Like in the case of pedophilia-pederasty the practice of torture is widespread in the muslim world ‎even in the most secular nations such as Turkey ‎where the torture of kurdish prisoners is well ‎documented.

Some so-called ‘moderate muslims’ ‎protest that islamist groups such as GIA (Algeria) ‎Janjiweed (Sudan), Taliban(Afghanistan) OR Iraqi ‎alqaida who commited massacres of innocents, ‎using the most abominable methods of torture and ‎mutilation, do not represent true islam which is,according to them, a ‎religion of peace, compassion and love. I am afraid I have ‎to say that it is they (‘’the moderate muslams’’) who ‎are false muslims because they do not follow the ‎example of their prophet who was an examplar toruturer ‎and mass murderer.the islamists who commited ‎such horrendous acts of torture and mutilation ‎follow the example of the prophet muhammad and ‎his companions as layed down in his Sira,Hadith and ‎the Koran.‎

someone may ask me here about France and her ‎systematic use of torture during the algerian war. I ‎would reply that I have no doubts that the french ‎army officers were heavily influenced by the local ‎islamic tradition.‎

therefore, as in the cases of pederasty-pedophilia and ‎murder-assassination of artists the origins of this ‎practice lie in the conduct of Muhammad himself, ‎the ‘’compassionate’’ prophet of Allah the ‎‎‘’Merciful’’.‎

Besides being a pedophile, an ethnic cleanser, an ‎assassin-murderer of poets and artists , ‎muhammad was also a torturer no different from ‎any islamic dictator-torturer of today’s islamic and ‎arabic countries. ‎

There are many koranic verses which call for torture ‎of prisoners . among them I cite:‎

‎‘’strike off every fingertip of them.’’On the fingertips ‎and underneath the nails are nerve ends that ‎transmit extreme pain , which makes this torture ‎technique a favorite among the torturers.‎

Praise and thanks are due to Allah-Muhammad for ‎having been the first to have discovered and used ‎this technique!!!!!‎

Another verse:‎

Koran 5:34:‎

‎“slay , crucify and cut the hands and feet of the ‎captive-unbelievers..." ‎

And there are many cases where Muhammad ‎ordered prisoners to be crucified and ‎dismembered in his presence, such as this one ‎recounted in Sahih Bukhari

Volume 1, Book 4, Number 234:

Anas said, "Some people of 'Ukl or 'Uraina tribe…killed ‎the shepherd of the Prophet and stole away all his ‎camels. The news reached the Prophet early in the morning and he sent his men in their pursuit ‎and they were captured and brought at noon. He then ‎ordered to have their hands and feet cut off , and then have their eyes branded with heated ‎pieces of iron,

They were put in an a ditch and when they asked for ‎water, no water was given and they died a very painful ‎slow death."‎



There is also the case a Jewish prisoner on the Kinana bin al-Rabi3 who was tortured to ‎death under the orders of muhammad , as recounted in Sira ‎of ibn Ishaq(muhammad’s biography by ibn ishaq):‎

‎‘’Kinana bin al-Rabi3, who had the custody of the ‎treasure of Bani al-Nadir, was brought to the apostle who ‎asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. ‎A Jew came (T. was brought) to the apostle and said that ‎he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every ‎morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, "Do you ‎know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?" he said ‎Yes. The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be ‎excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he ‎asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the ‎apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr b. al-`Awwam, "Torture ‎him until you extract what he has," so he kindled a fire ‎with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. ‎Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad b. ‎Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his ‎brother Mahmud. ‘’(Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, ‎translated as, The Life of Muhammad, (tr. A. ‎Guillaume), Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. ‎‎515.)‎

Probably the most known form of ritual islamic torture is ‎the islamic stoning . Muhammad himself stoned with his ‎own hands many women and men . among the stoning ‎hadiths suffice to cite the following:‎

Boukahri Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413:

Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar :

‎ the Prophet once ordered a man and a ‎woman who have committed sexual ‎intercourse to be stoned to death ,..."‎

The foregoing is very embarassing to today’s ‎muslim scholars, that is why you never find a ‎mention of it in their writings , and the majority ‎of muslims are still uneware of this dark side of ‎their ‘’compassionate’’ prophet of their god, ‎Allah the ‘’Merciful’’.‎

http://www.kabylia.info/muhammad-islam-torture/muhammad-torturer
 
Posted Sat, 08/29/2009 - 15:34 by yellarebbi

Monday, October 5, 2009

Hugh Fitzgerald: The Arabs, The Berbers & Africa

From New English Review, comes the following article:
The Arabs, The Berbers & Africa
by Hugh Fitzgerald

It is no mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers are concentrated, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs." (How many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)

The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers -- but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.

What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs -- one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers -- the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, Tamazight, in their schools or in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.

About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou that were reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East -- they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."

The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers?) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.

For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?

And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.

In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "maghrebins laiques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so bound up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.

The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arab, come to realize -- and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves -- that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.

Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?

Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy's folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.

We should help those in North Africa (and in France) who know, are well aware, of their Berber identity. And they will point out, in the ways that they think most effective, that many of those "Arabs" are in fact one or two or five generations away from being Berbers. DNA is coming to the rescue. There is a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished. Some who proudly identify themselves as "Arabs" will resist. But others may listen. And as they recognize the violence, the "culture of death" of Islam, as in Algeria, perhaps those who wish to make a break from Islam, and recognize that such a break is hardest of all for Arabs, and that another identity needs to be accepted, invented, believed in, will manage to discover, and embrace, their Berber "roots."

It seems fanciful, just as it seems fanciful that Iranians, those who are not merely disgusted with the mullahs running things, but are coming to be disgusted with Islam -- that "gift of the Arabs" --- itself, may wish to rediscover Zoroastrianism. Not because of any particular wonderfulness in what Zoroastrianism has to offer, but simply because it offers another identity (see Bernard Lewis's excellent "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East"), in a part of the world, and among people, who believe that "everyone simply has to be something." And that "something" cannot be, as it is in the advanced West, a collection of ideas or ideals -- as an American might define himself as loyal to the American Constitution, and wishing to defend the political and legal institutions of this country, fortunately fashioned by an inimitable group of geniuses, and fortunately, not yet made complete hash even by those who embody the degradation of the democratic dogma.

Many Frenchmen wrote about the differences they perceived between Arabs and Berbers. French photographers routinely took pictures of Berbers in their Berber dress; the Arabs were much less willing. French military men wrote about the Berbers as "un peuple europeen."

Some Berbers came not to resist their definition as "Arabs" the way some Copts and Maronites have had a false "Arab identity" pushed on them, or have semi-accepted it, an "identity" constructed out of nothing more than the fact that they are speakers, "users," of Arabic, and may have Arabic names forced on them over time. Indeed, there are differences between Arabs who have become Christians (as a few did in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and those Arabic-using Christians -- Maronites, Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans -- who are not Arabs, but some of whom have, in order to survive in an ever-threatening Muslim sea, had to find their role as "Arabs" or even, in the manner of the Christian Syrian Michel Aflaq (one of the founders of Ba'athism), hyper-Arabs, as promoters of an Arab identity, pan-Arabism, the whole works -- as an alternative to Islam (they were fooling themselves, because pan-Arabism for Muslim Arabs was never a real alternative to Islam, but merely a temporary goal, a subset, of the goal of a reunified Muslim world).

Not every ill that befell the non-Muslims in the Muslim world, or non-Arabs in the Muslim Arab world, can be attributed to colonial powers. There were French then, during the time of the "presence francaise" that brought schools, hospitals, modern agriculture, and other elements of modern civilization, to North Africa (in Morocco and Tunisia, over about half-a-century; in Algeria, over a 132-year period) who were quite capable of distinguishing Berbers from Arabs, and it was not their pressure that caused some Berbers to forget their own identity, any more than it was France as the guarantor of the Christians in Lebanon and Syria who caused some to make themselves hyper-Arabs. Aflaq founded the Ba'ath party with two associates not when the French seemed to be there to stay, but when it was clear that they would, in a few years, be leaving.

Aflaq's "Ba'athism" came to dominate only two countries, and for two similar reasons. The first was Syria, with a large Christian population, and with a powerful military caste, the Alawites, who were not regarded as orthodox Muslims, were indeed disliked by orthodox Muslims for the obvious elements of syncretism in their worship (go to an Alawite village and see the pictures of Mary everywhere), Alawites who had been miserable under the Turkish rule but under that of the French formed part of the Troupes speciales, and were trained to fight, and when the French left, the Alawites remained in the army, and the air force (Hafez al-Assad) and gradually took over, in the way that people or groups always take over in the Muslim Middle East -- through the application, or threat, of military force. In Syria Ba'athism disguises, is the facade, for the rule by the Alawites.

In Iraq, Ba'athism took a different turn. There, the Sunnis knew that they were numerically far inferior to the Shi'a, but they were put in control of modern Iraq, by the British, and never lost their grip.

The Hashemite king, Feisal a Sunni, was put in control of Iraq, and aided throughout the 1920s by British troops, and such British civilians as the celebrated Gertrude Bell, until finally, the expense of suppressing the tribes, and the obvious hopelessness of it all, caused the British to leave. It was Winston Churchill who described Mesopotamia (Iraq) as an "ungrateful volcano." And when the British left, the local Arabs solemnly promised not to harm the local Christians, and five months after the last British troops pulled out, Muslim Arabs killed up to 100,000 largely helpless Assyrians. (William Saroyan wrote a book about it).

Everywhere Muslims spreading Islam are careful to present it as the vehicle for whatever grievance the potential local converts may have. If it is black prisoners in the United States, then Islam is presented as the vehicle both of "social justice" (see how Muslim ruling classes everywhere seize the national wealth, see how the poor are treated in Muslim countries), and against "racism.” And the Infidels do little or nothing. Have you seen any campaigns of deliberate counter-Da’wa anywhere in the prisons or elsewhere? It would be easy to show, and to keep showing, perhaps by organizing the “Lost Boys” of the Sudan, that anti-black racism, of the purest and most virulent kind, is found among the Arabs. Anyone who has studied in an Arab country returns amazed at what is said, and not a few are shaken. Anyone who looks into the history of African slavery soon discovers that the Arab slave trade began earlier, and ended later, than that of the Europeans – or rather, ended formally later, but actually continues, in several countries, to this day. Why is this not screamed from every housetop? Why have the countries of the advanced world, that have poured $400 billion into aid to black Africa, not tried to halt the spread of the most retrograde force, a force which encourages the habit of mental submission, and which, in its inshallah-fatalism, is in fact fatal to economic development, not tried to stop the spread of Islam? If they have the wellbeing of black Africans at heart, they must begin to understand, and to share their understanding, that Islam has been, is, and always will be, a force that hinders, with that inshallah-fatalism and that habit of mental submission, any possibility of either economic or intellectual development.

The evidence is there. What sustained the Muslims for centuries, at a low level, was simply the accumulated intellectual capital of those peoples whom they conquered, and slowly leached of life, and of property as well. Now North Africa and the Middle East are virtually without the non-Muslims who once provided a certain supply of Jizyah, and what sustains the Arabs and Muslims are two things, and only two things; the new disguised Jizyah of Western foreign aid (which should be ended, and used to meet the new expenses of monitoring Muslim populations in the West), and the manna of oil wealth, entirely undeserved, and the only conceivable way that the Arabs and Muslims might acquire great wealth – through an accident of geology. Are the peoples of black Africa misled into thinking that they, too, somehow share in that wealth?

There was a very large and intelligent, because it focused on small-scale, doable projects, aid effort by Israel in black Africa. It was the most successful of all such foreign aid efforts. It was widespread. It was widely welcomed. But it came to an end, after the Six-Day War, under Arab pressure, and bribery – the same bribery that caused several dozen African states, under Arab command, to break diplomatic relations with Israel. Some of those African states no doubt thought that the Arabs would share just a little of that vast unearned wealth – if only to replace what Israel, a tiny country, had so remarkably provided. It was not to be. It will never be. The Arabs are trying in Africa to dominate the Continent. They are patient. They are methodical. In West Africa, where Islam is already dominant, as in uranium-rich Niger, they have transformed the easygoing, syncretistic practice of Islam to something much more akin to what can be seen in Saudi Arabia. And everywhere mosques are becoming subject to the strictures of those who pay for them, or pay the imams – and that usually means the Saudis. In some countries that once had a clear Christian majority, such as the Ivory Coast, the Christians are feeling besieged by Muslims who come in from the north, and the French government under Chirac supported not the local black Christians, and understood their fear, but rather attempted to appease the world’s Muslims.

In East Africa, when the black Africans rose up against their Arab masters in Zanzibar and Pemba some decades ago (the slave trade by the Arabs in East Africa had been centered there – indeed, the Sultan of Muscat and Oman had for a time ruled directly from Zanzibar), little was made of this in the West. No one discussed the long history of the Arab slave trade, with its practice of castrating black children when they were first caught, and then taking them by slave coffle or dhow to the slave markets of Islam, a trip which about 10% survived (see “The Hideous Trade” by Jan Hogedorn). And so the Arabs have continued their march southward. The Sudan had very few Arabs in the southern part one hundred years ago. But steadily they have taken territory, pushed back, killed, black Africans. 1.8 million non-Muslim blacks were killed, or deliberately starved to death, in the southern Sudan in the last two decades. Not content with that, not content with having seized complete control of the oil wealth that lies under the Christian and animist areas of the artificial state of Sudan, the Arabs are now trying to seize, by mass murder, the lands as well of the Muslim, but non-“Arab” blacks of Darfur. The campaign of mass rape, destruction of property, and killing of every man, woman and child they can get their hands on has been reported and reported, and reported. It has been reported without any understanding of Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism (the nicholas-kristofs of this world do not bother to figure out what is going on, what ideology prompts the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government that supports it, or the other Arab and Muslim governments that run interference for that Sudanese government), but are content with writing endless columns of easy anguish.

Egypt supports the Sudanese, while pretending not to, and so does the Arab League which welcomes the reduction, in the southern Sudan and from Darfur, of non-Arabs and non-Muslims to a state of hopelessness and surrender, where they continue to live at all. For Egypt and the Arabs have their eyes not merely on the Sudan, but on Ethiopia, the famous Christian kingdom, now rapidly becoming Islamized. Egypt has no intention of letting the Christian government of Ethiopia help its own people by, at long last, diverting some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation. The Egyptians think the Nile belongs, from its very source onward, to them and only to them. The water wars have been declared –but only by the Arab side.

Americans and other Infidel peoples should be supporting Ethiopian efforts to halt the spread of Islam, or of the purest kind of Islam, whether in Somalia or in Ethiopia itself, and to help Ethiopia remain a Christian kingdom that can help prevent the takeover of southern East Africa by Islam. Muslims owe their loyalty to the umma al-islamiyya, to fellow Muslims. It would make sense, in Africa, for the Americans not only to have handfuls of advisors and troops here and there, but to engage in propaganda. This propaganda, which happens to be the truth simply megaphoned to make a point, should describe in vivid detail the history of the Arab slave trade. It should explain to Africans that slavery is permanently sanctioned by both Qur’an and Sunnah, and can therefore never, within Islam, be banished. It should detail the continuing racism of the Arabs. And it should show how Islam stands in the way of economic and other kinds of development in two ways: in the encouragement of the habit of mental submission, central to Islam, and in the inshallah-fatalism that limits economic activity, and how Islam has relied on two kinds of manna: the Jizyah that is demanded from, or voluntarily supplied by, non-Muslims, and the oil wealth that has resulted from an accident of geology. And despite the ten trillion dollars that the Arab and Muslim states have received from oil revenues since 1973, not a single one has managed to create a real economy, not a single one has ceased to be hopelessly dependent on oil.

Islam, as it spreads, will merely guarantee that the countries and peoples of sub-Saharan Africa will be forced to endure the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim states and societies – failures whose source can be found in Islam itself.

Do we wish black Africa well, or ill? If we do wish to help the peoples of black Africa, preventing or halting the spread of Islam makes sense. And it makes sense for us to help the Berbers regain their history, their language and their culture, and it makes sense for us, in other ways, as well.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/15319/sec_id/15319

(Feb. 2008)

Thursday, October 1, 2009

WHO--AND WHAT--ARE THE ARABS?










































We hear much about the "Arabs," and with much concern and tears (from the "nations") about the so-called "Palestinian" Arabs.

What are they? The "Ishmaelites"--as the one who thought up the Moslem "religion" (a political ideology disguised as a spiritual faith) claimed to be?

The following excerpts are from THE ORIGIN AND IDENTITY OF THE ARABS by Avraham Sándor at THINK-ISRAEL http://www.think-israel.org/imninalu.araboriginidentity.html

NOTE: These are only excerpts--Please refer to the original linked to above for the complete story



The "Arabs"

Arab myths concerning the Patriarchs

Historic and archaeologic evidences show that the ancient Arabian peoples did not leave any written testimony of themselves before they received the influence of Assyria, around the 8th-7th century b.c.e., and all what we know about them until then has been recorded by external sources and accounts of eyewitnesses. The peoples of Arabia had no records of their own genealogies, which have been artificially invented in Islamic times as well as the alleged pre-Islamic history without any real knowledge concerning location and period, besides the imaginary character of the events. There are many examples that show the inaccuracy of Islamic traditional concepts, based on hearsay from unreliable sources. Just to mention a couple of them, one is that the qur'an identifies Miryam the sister of Aharon with Miryam the mother of Yeshua as if she was the same person, when actually there are about 1400 years that separate the two Miryams; another is that in sura "al-qasas" (38), Haman is said to be Pharaoh's vizier, mistaking both time and place, because actually Haman was a minister of the Persian king when there was no longer any Pharaoh in Egypt. The same sura asserts that Pharaoh intended to build a tower, a story based on Josephus' account about Nimrod (Antiquities, I: 4). There are hundreds of resounding errors like these which are not to be listed here since it is not the intention of this essay to make any process to religious conceptions, but only to present the historic truth.

Concerning the two Arabian forefathers, we can say that Qahtan may be well identified with the Biblical Yoqtan, but Adnan seems to be rather legendary, and as allegedly is only one of Ishmaels' descendants -- not even one of his twelve sons -- he cannot be the ancestor of all the Northern Arabians. The geographic distribution of the Ishmaelites indeed leave a vast "empty" space between them and the Yoqtanite peoples, namely, the whole Central Arabia. The southernmost Ishmaelite tribe was Teyma', whose capital was located about 400 kilometres north from Yathrib (Medinah). Yet, Arab traditions assert that Ishmael was with his father Avraham in Mekka (that is more than 700 kilometres south of Teyma'), a claim that is utterly groundless, without the least hint of possibility to find any historic support.

The only existing written record concerning the person of Ishmael is found in the Bible, witnessing that he dwelled in the region of Paran, north of Midyan. This account was written by Mosheh, who spent half of his life in the very land where Ishmael lived and had undoubtedly more accurate information than the Arab writers that invented the tales about Avraham and Ishmael more than 2000 years after Mosheh. The Scriptures as well describe Avraham's movements in a very accurate way, from his departure from Ur haKashdim to Haran, then to Canaan, his journeys to Egypt and Gherar, his expedition to rescue his nephew, and every place where he sojourned -- none of them is in Arabia. He kept attached to his Akkadian family settled in Northern Mesopotamia and not to any allegedly sacred place in Arabia. Having described all Avraham's movements in detail, would Mosheh not mention a trip involving a distance over 1000 kilometres away from Canaan (and the same length for the way back)? And supposing, for the sake of argument, that Avraham actually travelled to Mekka, if Mosheh ignored such a journey it undoubtedly means that it was completely irrelevant, without any Divine purpose.

The fact is that the name of Ishmael was unknown in Central Arabia in pre-Islamic times, and the Arabic form Isma'il, beginning with an aleph shows that it passed through the Greek and is not directly derived from the Semitic/Aramaic original name Yishmael, with an initial yod -- the change of a consonant/semivowel into a vowel is explained only if a Semitic name has been translated into a western language and then from the western form into another Semitic tongue, which is the case of Hebrew into Greek and then into Arabic. Indeed, there is no mention of Avraham or Ishmael in any ancient Arabian inscription, neither Sabean nor Minean, nor Safaitic, nor Lihyanite, nor Thamudic and not even Nabatean.

The Arabs got acquainted with the existence of Avraham and Ishmael only through the Jewish and Christian sources from which Islam drew its own scriptures. Therefore, according to overwhelming historic, archaeologic, scriptural and scientific evidence, neither Avraham nor Ishmael have ever been in Arabia from Midyan southwards.































































































Arabs today--the ideological heirs of the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem--decide that the Temple never existed and that Jews have neither connection to it nor to Jerusalem: PMW: No Jewish connection to Western Wall: PA academic - Just the usual denial of reality that leads to nothing but further conflict. It's also a pure case of inversion where the truth is that the Muslim exaltation of Jerusalem is a purely political a-historical invention derived for no other reason than to make sure no one else gets it. This is the kind of guy a lot of universities here in the West would love to have in as a guest for "balance" and a different perspective.
Continued at . . .
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/08/pmw-no-jewish-connection-to-western-wall/

Sunday, September 27, 2009

What Arab Civilization?

by Peter BetBasoo

[excerpt]

Islam the religion itself was significantly molded by Assyrians and Jews (see Nestorian Influence on Islam and Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World).

Arab/Islamic civilization is not a progressive force, it is a regressive force; it does not give impetus, it retards. The great civilization you describe was not an Arab/Muslim accomplishment, it was an Assyrian accomplishment that Arabs expropriated and subsequently lost when they drained, through the forced conversion of Assyrians to Islam, the source of the intellectual vitality that propelled it. What other Arab/Muslim civilization has risen since? What other Arab/Muslim successes can we cite?

You state, "and perhaps we can learn a lesson from his [Suleiman] example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions." In fact, the Ottomans were extremely oppressive to non-Muslims. For example, young Christian boys were forcefully taken from their families, usually at the age of 8-10, and inducted into the Janissaries, (yeniceri in Turkish) where they were Islamized and made to fight for the Ottoman state. What literary, artistic or scientific achievements of the Ottomans can we point to? We can, on the other hand, point to the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians, 1.5 million Armenians and 400,000 Greeks in World War One by the Kemalist "Young Turk" government. This is the true face of Islam.

Arabs/Muslims are engaged in an explicit campaign of destruction and expropriation of cultures and communities, identities and ideas. Wherever Arab/Muslim civilization encounters a non-Arab/Muslim one, it attempts to destroy it (as the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were destroyed, as Persepolis was destroyed by the Ayotollah Khomenie). This is a pattern that has been recurring since the advent of Islam, 1400 years ago, and is amply substantiated by the historical record. If the "foreign" culture cannot be destroyed, then it is expropriated, and revisionist historians claim that it is and was Arab, as is the case of most of the Arab "accomplishments" you cited in your speech. For example, Arab history texts in the Middle East teach that Assyrians were Arabs, a fact that no reputable scholar would assert, and that no living Assyrian would accept. Assyrians first settled Nineveh, one of the major Assyrian cities, in 5000 B.C., which is 5630 years before Arabs came into that area. Even the word 'Arab' is an Assyrian word, meaning "Westerner" (the first written reference to Arabs was by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he tells of conquering the "ma'rabayeh" -- Westerners. See The Might That Was Assyria, by H. W. F. Saggs).

Even in America this Arabization policy continues. On October 27th a coalition of seven Assyrian and Maronite organizations sent an official letter to the Arab American Institute asking it to stop identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs, which it had been deliberately doing.

There are minorities and nations struggling for survival in the Arab/Muslim ocean of the Middle East and Africa (Assyrians, Armenians, Coptics, Jews, southern Sudanese, Ethiopians, Nigerians...), and we must be very sensitive not to unwittingly and inadvertently support Islamic fascism and Arab Imperialism, with their attempts to wipe out all other cultures, religions and civilizations. It is incumbent upon each one of us to do our homework and research when making statements and speeches about these sensitive matters.

I hope you found this information enlightening. For more information, refer to the web links below. You may contact me at keepa@ninevehsoft.com for further questions.

Thank you for your consideration.

Peter BetBasoo

Excerpt from [a] letter . . .  sent to Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard Corporation, in response to a speech given by her on September 26, 2001.

Complete letter at http://www.ninevehsoft.com/fiorina.htm
and at
http://www.joinourfight.com/joinourfight/dispatcher?userAction=10&countryCode=US&articleId=4