http://www.challenging-islam.org/contributors/hugh/onislam.htm
ISLAM FOR THE PERPLEXED by Hugh Fitzgerald There is an old joke: a wife returns home suddenly to find her husband in bed with another woman. Unfazed, the husband looks up from the sheets at her and, with great indignation, demands: Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes? It seems to me that right now almost the entire world is like that wife, looking down at that husband, who represents Islam. As we look around the world at the veritable orgy of violence directed at Infidels - from the killings of 200,000 Christians in East Timor, the murders of Christians in the Moluccas, the bomb in Bali directed mostly at Australian Christians, the attack on Filipino Christian peasants in the Philippines, the plots uncovered in Singapore, the Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus persecuted and often murdered by Muslims in Kashmir and Pakistan, the attacks on Jews all over the Muslim world, but especially in the Arab world, the attacks on non-Muslims, 800 of whom were held hostage in a Moscow theatre, the attacks in New York and Washington, that killed 3000, the plots uncovered in Spain, and Italy, and France, and Holland, and Norway, and Germany, and almost everywhere in the Infidel world - all tell us one thing. Yet, the world of organized Islam, including those we are repeatedly told are "moderate", keep telling us: Who are you going to believe? Us, or your lying eyes? I propose today to offer a Guide for the Perplexed among you. I will talk about several things. First, I will offer a kind of taxonomy - a la Linnaeus - of the different kinds of apologetics for Islam, some made by Muslims, some made by non-Muslims who act as their willing collaborators. I will then go on to discuss the main features of Islam which an Infidel need not worry about - the Five Pillars of Islam, which all concern individual worship, and which so much unnecessary attention is given, while the real essence of Islam, the basic political attitudes and preachings concerning the Infidels, are almost entirely ignored. Then I shall suggest why the Infidel world has to educate itself - not from agents of Islam, just as one would not study the Soviet Union by learning from KGB agents, but only from defectors from the KGB - and how we, the Infidels, need to protect ourselves in two very basic ways, and then what else we can do to go on the offensive against Islam, to weaken it, to cause it to divide within, and to keep it permanently at bay. Because this is not a struggle that will end in a year or a decade, or indeed, I think, ever. Islam has over a billion believers. It is in a campaign to spread Islam within the Infidel world, a campaign until now not sufficiently recognized or opposed. But I will get to that later. First, let me explain the various kinds of Muslim apologetics. After the attack of September 11, 2001, many different things were said in defense of Islam. One thing that was repeated, endlessly and mindlessly - and if you have a mind in this area, you are likely to suffer more worry, more woe; indeed, gore ot uma deistvitel'no gore ot uma - was that Islam is a religion of "peace" and "tolerance." Well, yes, and no. The "peace" that Muslims mean is not the kind of "peace" we mean. It is the "peace" or pax Islamica that will reign once the entire world accepts Islam, and Islam rules. As for "tolerance" - yes, it is true that Muslims will "tolerate" Christians and Jews-or at least they did in high Islamic civilizations. But that "tolerance" had nothing, has nothing, to do with Western ideas of "tolerance." Chirsitnas and Jews were kept in the status of second-class citizens, deliberately humiliated, and subjected to a host of requirements. First, there was a heavy financial burden. The "dhimmi" or tolerated Christian or Jew, had to pay a jizyah or head tax. After a while, this lead to many conversions. After all, if you lived in a country, and had to pay 50 or 100 thousand dollars each year, just to keep practicing a certain religion, you too might, in the year 900 or 1100 or 1300, give up your religion. Only the most stubborn would continue. Then, too, you were not equal to a Muslim at law, and could not testify against him. Then, too, you often had to wear special identifying clothes or signs on your clothes. Christians often had to wear a special belt. The yellow star for Jews, which Gospodin Gitler imposed, had its first use in medieval Baghdad. Then you could not build your synagogues or churches higher than any mosque, or indeed, behave as individuals or as a community, as other than a "tolerated" minority - one that could be subject to attack, and frequently was, at any time. But the truth of this "tolerance" is almost never discussed. When a great expert, such as Bat Ye'or, tries to deliver a lecture, as she did recently at Georgetown, she was shouted down by organized groups of Muslim Arabs, and could hardly speak. Instead of defending her, the students, Jews and Christians, later apologized for her "views" which they thought were "unworthy" and "hateful" - but Bat Ye'or is the world's greatest expert, a famous historian , on the subject of treatment of minorities in the Islamic world, from the earliest times to the present. Along with this denial of certain realities, there is another technique. Focus on the presumed links of Islam with Judaism and Christianity. For example, offer such treacly notions as "we are all children of Abraham" or "we all worship the same God." Sounds good, doesn't it? But it isn't true. Muslims believe that Moses and David and Jesus were previous prophets, but imperfect prophets, received imperfectly by Christians and Jews. Islam is the final, the perfect revelation, and even though it incorporates the other, older monotheisms by recognizing its figures as important prophets (but denying, for example, Jesus' divinity) it actually takes them over, appropriates them, and assigns them the value it wants. By taking over all these figures from the other two monotheisms, it denies their validity within the earlier religions, just the way the Muslims have deliberately appropriated the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as a sacred site in Islam, even though this is all based on one obscure passage in the Koran about Muhammed' s Night Journey to Heaven on his winged steed Al-Buraq, from a site that is not identified but later they decided to claim it must have been in Jerusalem. As a religion that was seeking converts among Jews and Christians in the 7th and 8th centuries, naturally Islam had to recognize, and use for its own purposes, bits and pieces of the doctrines of both religions, and its holy figures, and even holy sites - but it has taken them over, and regards with obvious hostility, as any reading of the Koran would show, both Jews and Christians, to a murderous extent. Along with denial of any hostility, and focusing on those features which presumably link Islam with Judaism and Christianity - and so they do, but not in a way that should cause us to think everything is okay, there is another technique. That is to focus not on the central tenets of Islam which make it a threat to Infidels, but precisely on those features which are unthreatening. For example, Imams at local mosques, and Muslim professors supposedly explaining Islam, will spend a lot of time discussing the features of individual worship, the so-called Five Pillars of Islam. These Pillars are relatively simple; they consist of the Shehada, or Profession of Faith; zakat, or alms-giving, salat, or the five canonical prayers, Ramadan, or the annual monthly fast; and, if you can afford it, the hajj to Mecca at least once in your life. Now think for a moment. Does giving alms, or going to Mecca, or observing Ramadan, or saying prayers, bother you at all, as an Infidel? No, not at all. What do we care? But by focusing on these essentially trivial matters, we ignore the much darker and sinister aspects. It is as if the Vatican, trying to answer questions as to why the Church did almost nothing to stop Hitler, or why it even actively promoted anti-Semitism, were to begin speaking about the Eucharist, or the difference between how the Orthodox cross themselves, and how Catholics do it. A complete red herring. Then there is still another brand of apologetics. This is not to deny that Muslims may be guilty of some crimes, or even that Islam itself may not have some doctrines that are dangerous. But instead, the argument is invoked that everyone does it, the Roman Tu Quoque (YOU TOO DO IT). How many of you know that anecdote about the American tourist who is being taken around Moscow by an official guide in the 1930s. The guide takes him to the Moscow Metro. He shows him the gleaming marble walls and fountains. He shows him the chandeliers. Everything is clean. Everything is sparkling. Everything is beautiful. But the American asks: "But where are the trains?" The KGB Guide quickly answers: "What about lynching in the South?" That is how Islam today is behaving -when asked about the reality, it says: What about lynching in the South? Isn't the Old Testament, especially in Leviticus, full of bloodthirsty talk? Aren't there persecutionst by Christians (the Muslims seem to overlook the fact that the victims of that persecution were not Muslims, who were constantly attacking Western Christendom, but rather the Jews, whom Muslims nowadays speak of with genocidal hatred). So: the arguments consist of 1) denial of the truth 2) pretending that only a small fraction of Muslims are extremists, and most deplore Bin Laden and the rest, when in fact Muslims all over the Arab world were delirious with joy at the attacks on New York and Washington, just as 80% of the Palestinian Arabs applaud suicide bombing, and Arabs everywhere continue to applaud Muslim terrorism. 3) using the Tu Quoque argument - You do it too (most Christians and Jews are eager to agree, and to believe that "we are all guilty." Some of you may remember Nabokov's examples of poshlost': such as "we all share in Germany's guilt." No, we don't. We didn't. And there is no other major religion in the world that takes, as central tenets of its beliefs, an open and incessant hatred and contempt and desire to subjugate the non-believer, as does Islam. Let me turn to the second topic, which is the central political tenets of Islam. Let me first mention the Qur'an. If you read the Qur'an, you must do so with notes. It cannot be read unaided. It is quite literally an incomrepehensible document, for about 20% of its content. No Muslims have been able even to explain it. Whether you accept the traditional Muslim view of its origins - which as Infidels we obviously do not - there is even a question as to whether there was a historical Muhammad, and much of the most recent Western scholarship, such as that by Michael Cook and Patricia Crone at Princeton, suggest that the Qur'an is a concoction from about a century after Muhammad supposedly lived, that it consists largely of fragments of Jewish and Christian lore, mixed up, sometimes confused, and that it came about after the Arabs began conquering their neighbors, as an ideology both to explain, and to justify, the conquests of first, the pagans of the Hejaz, and then of the Jews and Christians in the area of Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq. It is probably in the Fertile Crescent that the Qur'an actually came from, according to this modern, and obviously entirely non-Muslim, scholarship. Equally important, however, are the hadith - the sayings and traditions associated with Muhammad, as handed down through a chain of narrators. This narration-chain - A said to B who said to C who said to D, depends, of course, on the quality of the first narrator, or A, who usually has to have been one of the original Companions of the Prophet. The entire narration-chain or isnad, will have to be studied, and Islamic scholars do study them, to see if the chain is authentic, in their view. And these hadith, of which there are many tens of thousands, obviously include many that are apocryphal, not authentic. Indeed, almost all of them are tales told about what Muhammad did, or said, made up after his life (if indeed he is a real figure), to in essence expand upon, or help interpret, the Koran. Now the Qur'an contains many suras, or chapters. Some of these were apparently written first, and are somewhat more mild in their hostility to the Infidels. The later suras are definitely uncompromising. Given that there are many passages that seem to contradict each other, we may ask: how does a Muslim decide which passages are the ones that are true, or to be followed, if they are all dictated by God? The solution has been to invoke the doctrine of ABROGATION - that is, the later Suras abrogate, or in a sense OVERRULE, the earlier, more moderate suras. But here is what is interesting. Muslim and non-Muslim apologists will always quote the same passages, and the same hadith, to "prove" to the Infidel that Islam is a tolerant religion. Let me give just two examples. At one point in the Qur'an it says: "There shall be no compulsion in religion." That is often quoted, as supposedly showing that Islam does not believe in forcing others to convert. It is also directly contradicted by hundreds of OTHER verses in the Qur'an, that came later, and that are taken by most Muslims as the final word. We have only to look at how Islam has treated minorities, and the various ways - the taxes, the special clothes, the inequality at law, all the deliberate signs of subjugation and humiliation to which other "Ahl al-Kitab" or "People of the Book" must undergo, to show that of course there is compulsion in religion. Indeed, Muslims themselves, throughout history, have been punished by death if they have tried to leave Islam --- the death sentence has been imposed in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Pakistan, in Indonesia, and elsewhere, for Muslims who have trieed to become Christians. Of course there is "compulsion in religion" in Islam. It could not be otherwise. If you possess the truth, Islam, and Islam must be everywhere victorious, you will use force in such a worthy cause. The other standard quote is about the Jihad. In one hadith Muhammad is described as returning from combat to his domestic life. It is written that he said "I am returning from the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad." This supposedly means: the real Jihad is the struggle you fight within yourself, to be a good Muslim, and not the Jihad of warfare." Now this is ridiculous. Jihad has always meant to believing Muslims, and is used to day, to mean conducting warfare - by all means available - to spread Islam. For the central political tenet of Islam is that there must be uncompromising hostility between the Dar al-Islam, or Lands of Islam, and the Dar al-Harb, or Lands of the Infidels. It is the duty of Muslims, the religious duty, to constantly expand the Dar al-Islam at the expense of the Dar al-Harb. This does not mean you must kill every last Infidel. If you can take control of their lands, and create conditions so that Muslim rule and the Muslim Holy Law, or shari'a, can be imposed, so that Islam will take over in those territories, that is enough. Now the conflict between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb can not ever end until Islam covers the globe. So even if all of Israel were to disappear, and Kashmir be given to Pakistan, and all the Christians expelled from Indonesia and the Philippines, this would mean nothing. It would only whet, rather than sate, the appetite. Islam must control Australia, and China, and Japan. It must cover all of Africa. It must, and through demography it might, take over all of Europe - and then, of course, the final struggle will be with the United States, the most powerful Infidel state, and the only one willing, it seems, to confront Islam, because it is the only one where there is a critical mass of people who are beginning to understand the real problem that Islam poses. The weapon of Islam is the Jihad. It means, literally, "struggle," but it is not innocent, any more than "Mein Kampf" meant innocently "My Struggle." It is more sinister, rather like that bor'ba za mir I druzhbu, about which you do not need any further explanation. It is mentioned 28 times in the Qur 'an, always in connection with combat, or qital. However, combat is not the only form of struggle. When your enemies are too powerful, you may use other means in the Jihad. For example, "wealth" or economic warfare is to be employed, and is specifically discussed. This means economic boycotts-as of Israel. It means bribery - as the bribing of diplomats who are accredited to Saudi Arabia and then go back to their Western countries as Saudi agents, including almost every single American ambassador since the early 1970s, with the honorable exception of Hume Horan. It includes the bribery of CIA officials, including those, such as Raymond Close, who were stationed in Saudi Arabia. It means bribes to African diplomats and others at the U.N. It means using their vast oil wealth to build mosques everywhere, especially in the heart of Rome, Paris and London, as a political act, a way of showing that Islam is here, Islam is on the march, Islam will triumph. It means paying for tens of thousands of madrasas, that in places such as Pakistan help to brainwash millions of children, who spend their entire youth studying the most fanatical brands of Islam, those of Wahhabism, and memorizing the Qur'an, a skill which simply ruins their brains and makes them unfit for learning any skill or acquiring any real education that might be of use to them in the modern world. But the Saudis have their oil money, and do not have to work. Poor people in Indonesia and Pakistan and Africa, however, need to acquire real skills and education: when they are used as "soldiers of Islam" they are also deprived of any real chance at education. Along with military combat and economic warfare, there is propaganda. When the Saudis buy large shares in CNN and other media companies, when they openly discuss their plans to buy up media, it is clear that they understand their task as one of both preventing any serious understanding of Islam, and also that they realize that they can, like the Nazis and the Communists, win converts and support through powerful, well-financed propaganda. As against Israel, they have been remarkably successful: they have turned much of Europe into the enemy of this tiny country, which is only trying to defend itself against cruel and cowardly murderers. They have also had success against the United States. It is absolutely incredible how the Europeans, for example, have forgotten what it is America has done for them, both against the Nazis and the Communists, and seem willing to accept the idea that the world of Muslim Arabs are at least as worthy of belief as is the United States. It is an absolutely unbelievable situation. Of course, one must never discout the power as well of envy - of American power, and that age-old disease, anti-Semitism, which affects anywhere from between 10-30% of the population, irrespective of the presence of Jews, and obviously, in a world war where one side, the Muslim side, also has as one of its aims the destruction of Israel, there are antisemites who are willing to overlook the threat to themselves, so powerful is this disease of anti-Semitism, the etiology and epidemiology of which still needs profound, and widespread, study. Finally, there is a new weapon in the Jihad. When, during the Reconquista of Spain, and the Muslims were finally overcome in 1492 after a campaign lasting hundreds of years, Muslim jurists were asked what the Muslims should do? They all replied: Muslims must leave Spain, because they could not stay and live under Infidel rule. So they left, and went to North Africa. The idea of migration is central to Muslim history. The Muslim calendar itself dates from 622, the year of the Hijra, or migration, from Mecca to Medina, by Muhammad and his followers. Now, in the last 30-40 years, slowly at first, and now much faster, there is a new phenomenon: migration of Muslims to the Bilad al-Kufr, or Lands of the Infidels. And how do Muslims explain this migration, this willingness to live in countries largely run by Infidels, without Muslim rule? It is explained, within Islam, and by Muslims, and this has all been articulated, as justified because it is a way of eventually taking over these lands, of subversion by demography. Already there are many reports of Muslim leaders telling their people in Europe that in a generation or two, because the Europeans have so few children, and the Muslims between 6-10 children per family, they will "inherit Europe." More and more mosques are being built. Within 20 years, in Holland, the majority of school-age children will be Muslim. Without 40 years, Italy - an essential part of the Western world, of Western civilization - will, if present birth-rates and immigration rates continue, have a majority Muslim population. Will the West allow it? Can the West allow Italy to become Muslim? If Italy, or for that matter Israel, are lost simply through demography, then the very idea of Western civilization may be fatally damaged. Let me repeat: this is not a fantasy I have constructed. I have written about 150 pages of a text that includes many quotes from such leaders as Sheik Fadlallah, former head of Hezbollah. Let me offer you one: Fadlallah told his followers that when Hulegu, the Mongol leader, invaded Baghdad in 1258 and conquered the Abbasid Caliphate, it seemed that Islamic civilization was on the verge of being destroyed. But, said Fadlallah, the Muslims managed to convert their Mongol rulers, and turned things around. Instead of losing their territory to the Mongols, they made the Mongol territories Muslim, and enlarged the Dar al-Islam at the expense of the Dar al-Harb. No doubt Hulegu, whose name is instantly understood by all Muslims, will be much on Muslim minds in the coming months, when America conquers Baghdad. People will wonder: we cannot defeat the Infidels, especially America, directly on the battlefield. But with terrorism, economic warfare, propaganda, and above all through demography, will we do to America what we did to the seemingly more powerful and conquering Mongols - that is, eventually seize their territory, win over their people? Unless there is a real understanding of this, it could happen. In any case, life for Infidels everywhere is now much more dangerous and unpleasant, and the more Muslims we allow into our midst, the more that will be so. No country, no civilization has an obligation to commit suicide. Western civilization has many faults, but life in the Muslim world is, for any liberal, amused, educated Westerner, simply death: no art, except calligraphy and mosques (scultpture, and depiction of the human form, of course, forbidden), no literature, virtually no music (no Fred Astaire, no Louis Armstrong, no Bach, no Mozart, no nothing), no equality of sexes, a strange and rather sick attitude toward sex, and so much else - including I should say, a complete humorlessness. Think of everything you do in a day that makes it interesting and pleasant - what music you listen to, what books you read, what people you like, of both sexes, to have an easy and amiable time with. Think of what, in your daily routine, would be allowed under Muslim rule, and what would not be allowed. As for me, there is hardly a thought, hardly an action, hardly a line I read or a picture I look at or a song I listen to, that would not be forbidden in an Islamic world. Along with the division of the world between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, and the hostlility between them that must exist until, through Jihad, Dar al-Islam spreads across the globe, there is one other thing. According to Muslim thought, no permanent peace can ever be permitted between an Infidel power and a Muslim one. The principle that rules in Western legal thought, that "treaties are to be obeyed" or PACTA SUNT SERVANDA, has no place in Muslim legal thought. The rule is that based on the model of an agreement, or treaty, that Muhammad made with the Meccans in 628 A.D. This was the famous Treaty of Al-Hudabiyya, where Muhammad agreed to not invade Mecca if the Meccans would give him rights to visit the city each year. The treaty was to last ten years. The first year, the Meccans allowed Muhammad and his followers to enter Mecca and to worship. But before the second year was out, Muhammad had found a reason to break the treaty - he had gotten more powerful during that time, and now thought he could conquer Mecca. The reason given was that a tribe allied to the Meccans had attacked a tribe allied to the Muslims - but it was a flimsy excuse, and Muslims ever since have praised Muhammad's cunning in first making, and then in breaking, that agreement. It has been taken as the model, and endlessly discussed, for making agreements with Infidel states. For example, all agreements with Israel are not about "peace" but about a "truce" - though this is not really understood, even by Israelis, very few of whom have actually studied Islam. I know this seems unbelievable, amazing - shouldn't the Israelis, who live in that world, who are surrounded by Muslims, learn about the central tenets of Islam? Indeed, they should, but they have not, or only a handful have. It is simply too painful, it seems to me, to realize that your struggle will go on forever, that it has no end, that there is no "peace" treaty you can rely on. I perhaps should add that all Muslims understand perfectly what the Treaty of Al-Hudabiyya means. Arafat himself has constantly referred to it - always to Muslim audiences. He did it first in 1994, within a year of the Oslo Accords, at a gathering of Muslims in Johannesburg. There is a tape of it, which the Israelis got hold of. He has mentioned that Treaty as his model on at least four other occasions. He never does it to the Westerners, or to the Israelis, but always to his fellow Muslims. This should be a major focus of American, and Isareli attention: if no peace treaty between Infidels and Muslims can possibly mean a real peace, and can only last for 10 years, then Deterrence, and not a worthless agreement, is the only way to keep the peace. These then are the three main tenets (there are others) that I would think you should understand: Dar al-Islam/Dar al-Harb, Jihad and its various forms, and the Treaty of Al-Hudabiyya. Now let me turn to what the Infidels should do. First, they should - or a sufficient number of them should - study this subject. Know what I have just been talking about today. Learn in detail, and talk to your neighbors, so they will understand. The survival of Infidel civilization depends on a sufficient number of people knowing the real core of Islamic teachings and beliefs. Second, the Infidel world has two immediate goals: 1) keep all weapons of mass destruction, or indeed all major weaponry, out of the hands not only of Iraq, but of all Muslim countries. It is too late to deprive Pakistan of nuclear weapons. But that situation can be watched. What about Saudi Arabia? It is unpleasant, but not like Iraq. What about Egypt? What about Jordan? Not a single one of these countries can be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction. For even if one believed - and I do not, not for one minute - that the regime itself could be trusted, there is always the chance that someone, or some group, allied to someone powerful in the country, could then acquire such weaponry. After all, just this past week it was discovered that in tiny Qatar, the small sheikdom that has allowed our soldiers to be based, the Interior Minster, himself a member of the ruling family, has for years been an Al Qaeda supporter, and helped the leading Al Qaeda leader, the man who planned the Sept. 2001 bombings, to escape from FBI agents who were about to arrest him in Qatar. Not a single one of these countries could be trusted to be able to keep such material out of the hands of terrorists, even if it wanted to - and I doubt that it would want to. The second important goal is to stop all Muslim migration to Muslim lands, to the U.S., to Canada, to Western Europe. For obvious reasons, Muslims do not migrate to Eastern Europe and Russia. If possible, not only should migration be stopped, but life can be made more difficult, if not by the government, then by private individuals, so that Muslims will be discouraged from remaining. What do I mean? I mean that we, as private citizens, do not have to hire Muslims, we do not have to buy their goods, or make their lives, economically, more rewarding. It may seem mean, and many of you may be offended by it, and I am perfecty aware that there are nice Muslims, that there are those who simply ignore the main tenets of Islam. But as a group, the Muslims are a threat to me and those I love. Even the innocent ones, merely by being here, swell Muslim political power. Lookat France, where the government is afraid to offend its 5 million Muslims, and its leaders have admitted as much. We cannot allow Infidels to be prevented from defending themselves out of fear of Muslim political power. For already Muslims in England have demanded a separate Muslim parliament. In France they have demanded the right to ignore the French laws and to wear the hijab to school. In Italy they have demanded that Dante no longer be taught in schools because he condemned Muhammad. In Germany, in Cologne, the Muslims tried to set up a separte Muslim state that they called the "Caliphate." What is amazing is that these, and many other demands I cannot go into here, is that these are made by relatively tiny groups of Muslims. What happens if there are not 5 million Muslims in France, but 10 or 15 or 20 million? What happens if Italy has a majority Muslim population by 2040? What happens to America's ability to have a muscular foreign policy if it has to worry, not about a few million Muslims, but ten million? Finally, along with depriving Muslim states of weaponry, and stopping all immigration of Muslims, and even encouraging returning to the Muslim lands by making life not completely easy, there is another weapon: we have to get off oil. They do not have economies; their huge wealth, amounting to many trillions since 1973, trillions, is a result not of hard work, not of entrepreneurial activity, but solely from the fact that so many Muslim Arab states sit on large amounts of oil and gas. We have to figure out ways to limit the demand. And this is not only a fight for all Infidels, but also for the existence of a world that, environmentally, is at all tolerable. A Manhattan Project, much greater taxes on gasoline, and so on, are a start. Finally, there are ways to exploit uncertainties and differences within Islam. It is not unified, and we should play, for example, on the contempt and hatred of Turks for Arabs, of Arabs for Persians, of Persians for Arabs, and so on. If we can encourage the Kemalist example of modern Turkey, which is the only kind of Islam the Infidel world can abide-for the great Kemal Ataturk decided that for Turkey to survive, it had to suppress all the political aspects of Islam, the very aspects I have told you about here. The new oil wealth of the Turkic states of Central Asia may make them relatively more powerful within the Muslim world, and they have more in common with their fellow Turkic peoples, following Kemalism, than with the Arabs, whose way of life, is quite foreign for example, to the peoples of Central Asia. They are to be encouraged to follow Kemalism, or even, where possible, to allow real religious diversity. In other words, the Infidel world should not be only defending itself, but must go on the offenseive: the ideological offensive, against Islam as it currently exists. The great Ibn Warraq, in his study Why I Am Not a Muslim, notes that "there are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate." So we must encourage more "moderate" Muslims, but never forget that "Islam itself is not moderate" and it is only by suppressing or ignoring certain aspects, as Ataturk required in his state, that Islam and we, the Infidels, can coexist. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Something is new at Yahoo! Groups. Check out the enhanced email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/SISQkA/gOaOAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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