Taken from http://www.gunnyding.com/islam.htm
Those passages present a spirit of peacefulness and yet Christianity is not called a religion of peace and Islam is, so it is important to look at Islam and what it really teaches.
Much of this site comes from the work by Gregory M.Davis at Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/ and Paul WilsonThe Quran is about as long as the Christian New Testament. It comprises 114 suras (a chapter of the Quran; Quranic passages are cited as Sura number: verse number, e.g., 9:5.). According to Islamic doctrine, it was around 610 AD in a cave near the city of Mecca (now in southwest Saudi Arabia) that Muhammad received the first revelation from Allah by way of the Archangel Gabriel.
While in Mecca, Muhammad showed great respect for the monotheism religions of the Christian and Jewish inhabitants.The Allah of the Quran claimed to be the same God worshiped by Jews and Christians, who now revealed himself to the Arab people through his chosen messenger, Muhammad. It is the Quranic revelations that came later in Muhammad's career, after he and the first Muslims left Mecca for the city of Medina, that transformed Islam from a relatively benign form of monotheism into an expansionary, military-political ideology that persists to this day.
Orthodox Islam does not accept that a rendering of the Quran into another language is a "translation" in the way that the King James or NIV Bibles are translations of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. A point often made by Islamic apologists to defang criticism is that only Arabic readers may understand the Quran. Arabic is a language like any other and fully capable of translation, thus such a claim is false.
Those Westerners who manage to pick up a translation of the Quran are often left bewildered as to its meaning thanks to ignorance of a critically important principle of Quranic interpretation known as "abrogation". The principle of abrogation -- al-naskh wa al-mansukh (the abrogating and the abrogated) -- directs that verses revealed later in Muhammad's career "abrogate" -- i.e., cancel and replace -- earlier ones whose instructions they may contradict. Thus, passages revealed later in Muhammad's career, in Medina, overrule passages revealed earlier, in Mecca. The Quran itself lays out the principle of abrogation: 2:106. Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?
It seems that 2:106 was revealed in response to skepticism directed at Muhammad that Allah's revelations were not entirely consistent over time. Muhammad's rebuttal was that "Allah is able to do all things" -- even change his mind.
To confuse matters further, though the Quran was revealed to Muhammad sequentially over some twenty years' time, it was not compiled in chronological order. When the Quran was finally collated into book form under Caliph Uthman, the suras were ordered from longest to shortest with no connection whatever to the order in which they were revealed or to their thematic content. In order to find out what the Quran says on a given topic, it is necessary to examine the other Islamic sources that give clues as to when in Muhammad's lifetime the revelations occurred.Upon such examination, one discovers that the Meccan suras, revealed at a time when the Muslims were vulnerable, are generally benign; the later Medinan suras, revealed after Muhammad had made himself the head of an army, are favoring or inclined to starting quarrels or wars. Let us take, for example, 50:45 and Sura 109, both revealed in Mecca
50:45. We know of best what they say; and you (O Muhammad) are not a tyrant over them (to force them to Belief). But warn by the Qur'an, him who fears My Threat.
109:1. Say (O Muhammad to these Mushrikun and Kafirun): "O Al-Kafirun (disbelievers in Allah, in His Oneness, in His Angels, in His Books, in His Messengers, in the Day of Resurrection, and in Al-Qadar {divine foreordainment and sustaining of all things}!
109:2. "I worship not that which you worship,
109:3. "Nor will you worship that which I worship.
109:4. "And I shall not worship that which you are worshiping.
109:5. "Nor will you worship that which I worship.
109:6. "To you be your religion, and to me my religion (Islamic Monotheism)."
In contrast, take 9:5, commonly referred to as the "Verse of the Sword", revealed toward the end of Muhammad's life:9:5. Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun {unbelievers, Christians} wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat {the Islamic ritual prayers}), and give Zakat {alms}, then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Having been revealed later in Muhammad’s life than 50:45 and 109, the Verse of the Sword abrogates (cancels, nullifies) Islam's peaceful verses in accordance with 2:106.
Sura 8, which was revealed shortly before Sura 9, demonstrates a similar theme:
8:39. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshiping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.
9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
9:33. It is He {Allah} Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it superior over all religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate (it).
The Quran's commandments to Muslims to wage war in the name of Allah against non-Muslims are unmistakable. They are, furthermore, absolutely authoritative as they were revealed late in the Prophet's career and so cancel and replace earlier instructions to act peaceably. Without knowledge of the principle of abrogation, Westerners will continue to misread the Quran and misdiagnose Islam as a "religion of peace."
There are thousands upon thousands of hadiths, some running to multiple pages, some barely a few lines in length. When the hadiths were first compiled in the eighth century AD, it became obvious that many were inauthentic.
The early Muslim scholars of hadith spent tremendous labor trying to determine which hadiths were authoritative and which were suspect. The hadiths on this page come exclusively from the most reliable and authoritative collection, Sahih Al-Bukhari , recognized as sound by all schools of Islamic scholarship.
Because Muhammad is himself the measuring stick of morality, his actions are not judged according to an independent moral standard but rather establish what the standard for Muslims properly is.
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88; Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).(see 8 below)
Volume 8, Book 82, Number 795; Narrated Anas: The Prophet cut off the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and did not cauterise (their bleeding limbs) till they died. (see 9 below)
Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413; Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews Medina brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque. (see 10 below)
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle was asked, "What is the best deed?" He replied, "To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, "What is the next (in goodness)?" He replied, "To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah's Cause." (see 11 below)
Muhammad's prophetic career is meaningfully divided into two segments: the first in Mecca , where he labored for fourteen years to make converts to Islam; and later in the city of Medina where he became a powerful political and military leader. In Mecca, we see a quasi-Biblical figure, preaching repentance and charity, harassed and rejected by those around him. Later, in Medina, we see an able commander and strategist who systematically conquered and killed those who opposed him. It is the later years of Muhammad's life, from 622 AD to his death in 632, that are rarely broached in polite company.
In 622, when the Prophet was better than fifty years old, he and his followers made the Hijra (emigration or flight), from Mecca to the oasis of Yathrib -- later renamed Medina -- some 200 miles to the north. Muhammad's new monotheism had angered the pagan leaders of Mecca, and the flight to Medina was precipitated by a probable attempt on Muhammad's life. Shortly before Muhammad fled the hostility of Mecca a new batch of Muslim converts pledged their loyalty to him on a hill outside Mecca called Aqaba. Ishaq here conveys in the Sira the significance of this event:
Sira, p208: When God gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the second {oath of allegiance at} Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of fealty. Now they {Muhammad's followers} bound themselves to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle, while he promised them for faithful service thus the reward of paradise.
That Muhammad's nascent religion underwent a significant change at this point is plain. The scholarly Ishaq clearly intends to impress on his (Muslim) readers that, while in its early years, Islam was a relatively tolerant creed that would "endure insult and forgive the ignorant," Allah soon required Muslims "to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle." The Islamic calendar testifies to the paramouncy of the Hijra by setting year one from the date of its occurrence. The year of the Hijra, 622 AD, is considered more significant than the year of Muhammad's birth or death or that of the first Quranic revelation because Islam is first and foremost a political-military enterprise. It was only when Muhammad left Mecca with his paramilitary band that Islam achieved its proper political-military articulation. The years of the Islamic calendar (which employs lunar months) are designated in English "AH" or "After Hijra."
There is no separation between the religious and the political in Islam (See 2 below); rather Islam and Sharia constitute a comprehensive means of ordering society at every level. While it is in theory possible for an Islamic society to have different outward forms -- an elective system of government, a hereditary monarchy, etc. -- whatever the outward structure of the government, Sharia is the prescribed content. It is this fact that puts Sharia into conflict with forms of government based on anything other than the Quran and the Sunnah. The precepts of Sharia may be divided into two parts:
| Acts of worship (al-ibadat): | Human interaction (al-muamalat) |
| Ritual Purification (Wudu) | Financial transactions |
| Prayers (Salah) | Marriage, divorce, and child care |
| Fasts (Sawm and Ramadan) | Food and drink |
| Charity (Zakat) | War and peace |
| Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) | Judicial matters & Penal punishments |
As one may see, there are few aspects of life that Sharia does not specifically govern. It seems fair then to classify Islam and its Sharia code as a form of totalitarianism.
In 1928, Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which today is the most powerful organization in Egypt after the government itself. In this treatise, Al-Banna cogently argues that Muslims must take up arms against unbelievers. As he says, "The verses of the Qur'an and the Sunnah summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea" fighting."
Al-Banna clarifies that this is not just a fringe element of fanatical Muslims "Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward. Furthermore, Allah has specifically honoured the Mujahideen {those who wage jihad} with certain exceptional qualities, both spiritual and practical, to benefit them in this world and the next. Their pure blood is a symbol of victory in this world and the mark of success and felicity in the world to come."
Al-Banna adds that there is punishment for those Muslims who do not undertake Jihad. "Those who can only find excuses,however, have been warned of extremely dreadful punishments and Allah has described them with the most unfortunate of names. He has reprimanded them for their cowardice and lack of spirit, and castigated them for their weakness and truancy. In this world, they will be surrounded by dishonour and in the next they will be surrounded by the fire from which they shall not escape though they may possess much wealth. The weaknesses of abstention and evasion of jihad are regarded by Allah as one of the major sins, and one of the seven sins that guarantee failure."
The rest of the world, which has not accepted Sharia law and so is not in a state of submission, exists in a state of rebellion or war with the will of Allah. It is incumbent on dar al-Islam to make war upon dar al-harb until such time that all nations submit to the will of Allah and accept Sharia law. Islam's message to the non-Muslim world is the same now as it was in the time of Muhammad and throughout history: submit or be conquered. The only times since Muhammad when dar al-Islam was not actively at war with dar al-harb were when the Muslim world was too weak or divided to make war effectively.
But the lulls in the ongoing war that the House of Islam has declared against the House of War do not indicate a forsaking of jihad as a principle but reflect a change in strategic factors. It is acceptable for Muslim nations to declare hudna, or truce, at times when the infidel nations are too powerful for open warfare to make sense. Jihad is not a collective suicide pact even while "killing and being killed" (Sura 9:111) is encouraged on an individual level. For the past few hundred years, the Muslim world has been too politically fragmented and technologically inferior to pose a major threat to the West. But that is changing.
Due to the state of war between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, reuses de guerre, i.e., systematic lying to the infidel, must be considered part and parcel of Islamic tactics. The parroting by Muslim organizations throughout dar al-harb that "Islam is a religion of peace," or that the origins of Muslim violence lie in the unbalanced psyches of particular individual "fanatics," must be considered as disinformation intended to induce the infidel world to let down its guardd. Of course, individual Muslims may genuinely regard their religion as "peaceful" -- but only insofar as they are ignorant of its true teachings, or in the sense of the Egyptian theorist Sayyid Qutb, who posited in his Islam and Universal Peace that true peace would prevail in the world just as soon as Islam had conquered it.
A telling point is that, while Muslims who present their religion as peaceful abound throughout dar al-harb, they are nearly non-existent in dar al-Islam. A Muslim apostate once suggested to me a litmus test for Westerners who believe that Islam is a religion of "peace" and "tolerance": try making that point on a street corner in Ramallah, or Riyadh, or Islamabad, or anywhere in the Muslim world. He assured the person wouldn't live five minutes.
A problem concerning law and order {with respect to Muslims in dar al-harb} arises from an ancient Islamic legal principle -- that of taqiyya, a word the root meaning of which is "to remain faithful" but which in effect means "dissimulation." It has full Quranic authority (3:28 and 16:106) and allows the Muslim to conform outwardly to the requirements of unislamic or non-Islamic government, while inwardly "remaining faithful" to whatever he conceives to be proper Islam, while waiting for the tide to turn as did the 9/11 hijackers prior to their suicide mission.
The Prophet said, "War is deceit."
Historically, examples of taqiyya include permission to renounce Islam itself in order to save one's neck or ingratiate oneself with an enemy. It is not hard to see that the implications of taqiyya are insidious in the extreme: they essentially render negotiated settlement -- and, indeed, all veracious communication between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb -- impossible. It should not, however, be surprising that a party to a war should seek to mislead the other about its means and intentions. Jihad Watch's own Hugh Fitzgerald sums up taqiyya and kitman, a related form of deception.
"Taqiyya" is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi'a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi'a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers. A related term, of broader application, is "kitman," which is defined as "mental reservation." An example of "Taqiyya" would be the insistence of a Muslim apologist that "of course" there is freedom of conscience in Islam, and then quoting that Qur'anic verse -- "There shall be no compulsion in religion." {2:256} But the impression given will be false, for there has been no mention of the Muslim doctrine of abrogation, or naskh , whereby such an early verse as that about "no compulsion in religion" has been cancelled out by later, far more intolerant and malevolent verses. In any case, history shows that within Islam there is, and always has been, "compulsion in religion" for Muslims, and for non-Muslims.
"Kitman" is close to "taqiyya," but rather than outright dissimulation, it consists in telling only a part of the truth, with "mental reservation" justifying the omission of the rest. One example may suffice. When a Muslim maintains that "jihad" really means "a spiritual struggle," and fails to add that this definition is a recent one in Islam (little more than a century old), he misleads by holding back, and is practicing "kitman." When he adduces, in support of this doubtful proposition, the hadith in which Muhammad, returning home from one of his many battles, is reported to have said (as known from a chain of transmitters, or isnad), that he had returned from "the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad" and does not add what he also knows to be true, that this is a "weak" hadith, regarded by the most-respected muhaddithin as of doubtful authenticity, he is further practicing "kitman."
In times when the greater strength of dar al-harb necessitates that the jihad take an indirect approach, the natural attitude of a Muslim to the infidel world must be one of deception and omission. Revealing frankly the ultimate goal of dar al-Islam to conquer and plunder dar al-harb when the latter holds the military trump cards would be strategic idiocy. Fortunately for the jihadists, most infidels do not understand how one is to read the Quran, nor do they trouble themselves to find out what Muhammad actually did and taught, which makes it easy to give the impression through selective quotations and omissions that "Islam is a religion of peace." Any infidel who wants to believe such fiction will happily persist in his mistake having been cited a handful of Meccan verses and told that Muhammad was a man of great piety and charity. Digging only slightly deeper is sufficient to dispel the falsehood.
Al-Maghili, a fifteenth century Muslim theologian, explains: On the day of payment {of the jizya} they {the dhimmi} shall be assembled in a public place like the suq {place of commerce}. They should be standing there waiting in the lowest and dirtiest place. The acting officials representing the Law shall be placed above them and shall adopt a threatening attitude so that it seems to them, as well as to others, that our object is to degrade them by pretending to take their possessions. They will realize that we are doing them a favor in accepting from them the jizya and letting them go free.
Islamic law codifies various other restrictions on the dhimmi, all of which derive from the Quran and the Sunnah. Several hundred years of Islamic thought on the right treatment of dhimmi peoples is summed up by Al-Damanhuri, a seventeenth century head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious center for learning in the Muslim world:
… just as the dhimmis are prohibited from building churches, other things also are prohibited to them. They must not assist an unbeliever against a Muslim … raise the cross in an Islamic assemblage … display banners on their own holidays; bear arms … or keep them in their homes. Should they do anything of the sort, they must be punished, and the arms seized. …The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian peoples of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe suffered under the oppressive strictures of the dhimma for centuries. The status of these dhimmi peoples is comparable in many ways to that of former slaves in the post-bellum American South. Forbidden to construct houses of worship or repair extant ones, economically crippled by the jizya, socially humiliated, legally discriminated against, and generally kept in a permanent state of weakness and vulnerability by the Muslim overlords, it should not be surprising that their numbers dwindled, in many places to the point of extinction. The generally misunderstood decline of Islamic civilization over the past several centuries is easily explained by the demographic decline of the dhimmi populations, which had provided the principle engines of technical and administrative competence.
Should the dhimmi violate the conditions of the dhimma -- perhaps through practicing his own religion indiscreetly or failing to show adequate deference to a Muslim -- then the jihad resumes. At various times in Islamic history, dhimmi peoples rose above their subjected status, and this was often the occasion for violent reprisals by Muslim populations who believed them to have violated the terms of the dhimma. Medieval Andalusia (Moorish Spain) is often pointed out by Muslim apologists as a kind of multicultural wonderland, in which Jews and Christians were permitted by the Islamic government to rise through the ranks of learning and government administration. What we are not told, however, is that this relaxation of the disabilities resulted in widespread rioting on the part of the Muslim populace that killed hundreds of dhimmis, mainly Jews. By refusing to convert to Islam and straying from the traditional constraints of the dhimma (even at the behest of the Islamic government, which was in need of capable manpower), the dhimmi had implicitly chosen the only other option permitted by the Quran: death.
Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.
Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace.
Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing.
The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder.
This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing.
The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder.
This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him.
This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
Jihad in the Modern Era
Following its defeat at the walls of Vienna, Austria in 1683, Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the increasingly predatory European powers.
In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire's non-Muslim subjects labored. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over unbelievers.
By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim groups seeking independence.
It was in this atmosphere that the first stage of the Armenian genocide took place in 1896 with the slaughter of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.
To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,” the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.”
In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has appeared. All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children must fulfill their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.”
The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922 at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships. All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish government.
Since the breakup of the Islamic Empire following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens against the Russians in the Caucasus.
Jihads have also been waged throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01 in the USA, 3/11/04 in Spain, and 7/7/05 in UK. (For a more comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visitwww.thereligionofpeace.com.)
The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is making a comeback. The second-largest religion in the world after Christianity, Islam is also the fastest-growing religion. In the United States, for example, nearly 80 percent of the more than 1,200 mosques have been built in the past 12 years.
In 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans - head of the Church of England) stated "it could help build a better and more cohesive society if Muslims were able to choose to have marital disputes or financial matters, for example, dealt with in a sharia court. The adoption of some elements of sharia law "seems unavoidable". So our staunchest ally and country from which the United States was formed has its highest Christian leader stating that England should use Sharia law! A report by the Church of England and endorsed by the Archbishop of York says the UK Government has become “unbalanced” in its approach and that the Government has been diverting state funds towards Muslim groups and away from Christian groups wanting to help the poor. An excerpt stated "The Equality Unit gave Muslim groups £1.5 million of public money, compared with £137,500 given to Christian charities and £110,000 given to Jewish organisations."
CONCLUSION The chief barrier today to a better understanding of Islam -- apart, perhaps, from outright fear -- is sloppy language. Let us take, to start with, the much-vaunted "war on terror." Upon scrutiny, the phrase "war on terror" makes as much sense as a war on "blitzkrieg," "bullets," or "strategic bombing." The "war on terror" implies that it is perfectly fine if the enemy seeks to destroy us -- and, indeed, succeeds in doing so -- as long as he does not employ "terror" in the process. "Terrorism," it should be obvious, is a tactic or stratagem used to advance a goal; it is the goal of Islamic terrorism that we must come to understand, and this logically requires an understanding of Islam.
As we have seen, contrary to the widespread insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term "Islamo-fascism" is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.
The spectacular acts of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are but the most recent manifestation of a global war of conquest that Islam has been waging since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century AD and that continues apace today. This is the simple, glaring truth that is staring the world today in the face -- and which has stared it in the face numerous times in the past -- but which it seems few today are willing to contemplate.
It is important to realize that we have been talking about Islam -- not Islamic "fundamentalism," "extremism," "fanaticism," "Islamo-fascism," or "Islamism," but Islam proper, Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present. The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are due largely to the geostrategic changes following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options available to terrorists.
With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe. In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against the non-Muslim world is because they can.
It is paramount to note, however, that, even if no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would simply mean a change in Islam’s tactics -- perhaps indicating a longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round of violence. It cannot be overemphasized that Muslim terrorism is a symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while Islam proper remains permanently hostile.
Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his “Future of the Islamic Movement” (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.Our own Prophet … was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist and a first-class manager all in one. … In the Qur’an’s historic vision Allah’s support and the revolutionary struggle of the people must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. … But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his mi’raj {“nocturnal voyages to the ‘court’ of Allah”}. … It is Allah who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted.
It must be emphasized that all of the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources themselves and is not the product of critical Western scholarship
a. The Holy Qur'an, Translated by A. Yousuf Ali, Published by Amana Corporation, Brentwood, Maryland, 1983
b. Buchari Sharif, Bengali Translation by Maulana Muhammad Mustafizur Rahman, Sulemani Printers and Publishers, Dhaka, Second edition-1999
c. A History of the Arab peoples, by Albert Hourani, the Belknap press of Harvard University press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991
d. Dr. Robert Morey, 1996 Research and Education Foundation.
e. Gilchrist, The Temple, The Kaaba, and the Christ (Benoni, South Africa, 1980), p. 16.
f. G. J. O. Moshay, Who Is This Allah?, (Dorchester House, Bucks, UK, 1994), pg. 138
g. Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not A Muslim, (Prometheus, Amherst, 1995) p. 42.
h. Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971, II:1093.)
i. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (ed. Hastings), I:326.
j.The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, Lorenz Books, New York 10011, Anness Publishing Limited 1999
k. Roots of the Western Tradition, (a short history of ancient world) by C.Warren Hollister, Library of congress cataloging-in-publication data, 6th edition, 1
Syed_mirza@hotmail.com
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him.
This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
Following its defeat at the walls of Vienna, Austria in 1683, Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the increasingly predatory European powers.
In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire's non-Muslim subjects labored. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over unbelievers.
By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim groups seeking independence.
It was in this atmosphere that the first stage of the Armenian genocide took place in 1896 with the slaughter of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.
To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,” the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.”
In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has appeared. All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children must fulfill their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.”
The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922 at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships. All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish government.
Since the breakup of the Islamic Empire following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens against the Russians in the Caucasus.
Jihads have also been waged throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01 in the USA, 3/11/04 in Spain, and 7/7/05 in UK. (For a more comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visitwww.thereligionofpeace.com.)
The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is making a comeback. The second-largest religion in the world after Christianity, Islam is also the fastest-growing religion. In the United States, for example, nearly 80 percent of the more than 1,200 mosques have been built in the past 12 years.
In 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans - head of the Church of England) stated "it could help build a better and more cohesive society if Muslims were able to choose to have marital disputes or financial matters, for example, dealt with in a sharia court. The adoption of some elements of sharia law "seems unavoidable". So our staunchest ally and country from which the United States was formed has its highest Christian leader stating that England should use Sharia law! A report by the Church of England and endorsed by the Archbishop of York says the UK Government has become “unbalanced” in its approach and that the Government has been diverting state funds towards Muslim groups and away from Christian groups wanting to help the poor. An excerpt stated "The Equality Unit gave Muslim groups £1.5 million of public money, compared with £137,500 given to Christian charities and £110,000 given to Jewish organisations."
As we have seen, contrary to the widespread insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term "Islamo-fascism" is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.
The spectacular acts of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are but the most recent manifestation of a global war of conquest that Islam has been waging since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century AD and that continues apace today. This is the simple, glaring truth that is staring the world today in the face -- and which has stared it in the face numerous times in the past -- but which it seems few today are willing to contemplate.
It is important to realize that we have been talking about Islam -- not Islamic "fundamentalism," "extremism," "fanaticism," "Islamo-fascism," or "Islamism," but Islam proper, Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present. The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are due largely to the geostrategic changes following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options available to terrorists.
With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe. In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against the non-Muslim world is because they can.
It is paramount to note, however, that, even if no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would simply mean a change in Islam’s tactics -- perhaps indicating a longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round of violence. It cannot be overemphasized that Muslim terrorism is a symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while Islam proper remains permanently hostile.
Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his “Future of the Islamic Movement” (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.Our own Prophet … was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist and a first-class manager all in one. … In the Qur’an’s historic vision Allah’s support and the revolutionary struggle of the people must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. … But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his mi’raj {“nocturnal voyages to the ‘court’ of Allah”}. … It is Allah who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted.
It must be emphasized that all of the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources themselves and is not the product of critical Western scholarship
References
1. Was Allah The Moon God of Ancient Arab Pagan? By Syed Kamran Mirza http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/skm30804.htm
Historical evidences, impartial logic, well versed references and all available circumstantial judgments can very well prove that?
(a) Allah name of deity was pre-existed much before the arrival of Islam,
(b) Pre-Islamic Pagan peoples worshipped Allah as their supreme deity (moon-god). Allah's name existed in pre-Islamic Arab. In ancient Arab the Allah was considered to be the supreme God/deity (as Moon-God) and Arab Pagans worshipped Allah before Islam arrived.
(b) Pre-Islamic Pagan peoples worshipped Allah as their supreme deity (moon-god). Allah's name existed in pre-Islamic Arab. In ancient Arab the Allah was considered to be the supreme God/deity (as Moon-God) and Arab Pagans worshipped Allah before Islam arrived.
Let us examine below some valid questions and answers :
Did the Pagan Arabs in pre-Islamic times worship 360 gods? Yes
Did the pagans Arabs worship the sun, moon and the stars? Yes
Did the Arabs built temples to the Moon-god? Yes
Did different Arab tribes give the Moon-god different names/titles? Yes
What were some of the names/titles? Sin, Hubul, Ilumquh, Al-ilah.
Was the title al-ilah (the god) used as the Moon-god? Yes
Was the word Allah derived from al-ilah? Yes
Was the pagan Allah a high god in a pantheon of deities? Yes.
Was he worshipped at the Kabah? Yes.
Was Allah only one of many Meccan gods? Yes
Did they place a statue of Hubul on top of the Kabah? Yes.
At that time was Hubul considered the Moon-god? Yes.
Was the Kabah thus the house of the Moon-god? Yes.
Did the name Allah eventually replace that of Hubul as the name of the Moon god? Yes.
Did they call the Kabah the house of Allah? Yes.
Were al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat called the daughters of Allah? Yes. Yusuf Ali explains in fn. 5096, pg. 1445, that Lat, Uzza and Manat were known as the daughters of God [Allah]
Did the Qur'an at one point tell Muslims to worship al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat? Yes. In Surah 53:19-20.
Have those verses been abrogated out of the present Quran? Yes.
What were they called? The Satanic Verses.
Did the Pagan Arabs in pre-Islamic times worship 360 gods? Yes
Did the pagans Arabs worship the sun, moon and the stars? Yes
Did the Arabs built temples to the Moon-god? Yes
Did different Arab tribes give the Moon-god different names/titles? Yes
What were some of the names/titles? Sin, Hubul, Ilumquh, Al-ilah.
Was the title al-ilah (the god) used as the Moon-god? Yes
Was the word Allah derived from al-ilah? Yes
Was the pagan Allah a high god in a pantheon of deities? Yes.
Was he worshipped at the Kabah? Yes.
Was Allah only one of many Meccan gods? Yes
Did they place a statue of Hubul on top of the Kabah? Yes.
At that time was Hubul considered the Moon-god? Yes.
Was the Kabah thus the house of the Moon-god? Yes.
Did the name Allah eventually replace that of Hubul as the name of the Moon god? Yes.
Did they call the Kabah the house of Allah? Yes.
Were al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat called the daughters of Allah? Yes. Yusuf Ali explains in fn. 5096, pg. 1445, that Lat, Uzza and Manat were known as the daughters of God [Allah]
Did the Qur'an at one point tell Muslims to worship al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat? Yes. In Surah 53:19-20.
Have those verses been abrogated out of the present Quran? Yes.
What were they called? The Satanic Verses.
The variable names (Sin, Hubul, llumquh, Al-ilah) of moon god were used by various tribes of pagan Arabs. Pagan god SIN was the name of Moon-god.
Who is actually Allah?
According to Islamic Theologians (Mullahs, Maulana, Moulavis, etc.), or Islamic teachings-- Allah is the supreme God or creator who (suddenly one day?) talked or introduced Himself with Prophet Muhammad through an Angel named Gabriel, disclosing the truth that it is the Allah who created everything in the universe. Surprisingly, Quran never defines the word Allah as to who actually Allah was or what was the relation of Allah with pagans. I believe, 99% percent of Muslims do believe that Allah's name was invented or started right from the time when Gabriel disclosed the truth to Prophet Muhammad in the cave of Hira Parvat (Mountain) and gave Muhammad the Quran. They believe that before this truth was revealed pagan Arabs were in the total darkness (Andhakar Zuug) and they used to worship various puppet goddess and that the pagans were very evil people. I can bet on this fact that no mullahs ever told us the real truth, neither they believe this clean truth that Allah was in fact a pre-existing deity in pagan Arabia. What a hypocrisy?
Some important factors which will suggest that the name Allah was already in use by Pagans as their chief God/deity:
(A) In pre-Islamic days, that Muslims call the Days of ignorance, the religious background of the Arabs was pagan, and basically animistic. Through Moon, Sun, Stars, Planets, Animals, wells, trees, stones, caves, springs, and other natural objects man could make contact with the deity. At Mekka, Allah was the chief of the gods and the special deity of the Quraish, Muhammad's tribe. Allah had three daughters: Al Uzzah (Venus) most revered of all and pleased with human sacrifice; Manah, the goddess of destiny, and Al Lat, the goddess of vegetable life. These three daughters of Allah (there is a Quranic verse about them) were considered very powerful over all things. Therefore, their intercessions on behalf of their worshippers were of great significance.
(B) Arabs used to give their children names such as Abdullah (slave of Allah). Clean proof was the fact that, Muhammad's father's name was Abdullah. Logical analogy here is had there been no Allah in pre-Islamic Arab, there could be no Abdullah or slave of Allah in Arabia.
(C) Even today, in the entire Arab World, not only Muslims but all other non-Muslim (Jews, Christians, Sabians, Bahai, an atheist etc.) Arabs says "Ya Allah" as the expression of surprise or unhappiness/sorrow.
(D). Albert Hourani's statement: "The Islamic name used for God was Allah, which was already in use for one of the local Gods (it now used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians as the name of God (A history Of Arab people by Albert Hourani, 1991, page-16, Belknap press of Harvard University, USA)
History tells us two theories of Allah's existence in and around the Kaba Sharif:
(1) Pagans used to call the largest Statue amongst the 360 deities as ALLAH whom they used to consider the chief/supreme deity (god). Or,
(2) Pagan Arabs used to worship 360 deities inside Kaba Sharif, and they used to consider them different smaller deities under the total control of a single most powerful chief deity called ALLAH who was invisible (Nirakar) and was the all-powerful, all-knowing, and totally unknowable.
Amazing Similarities with Hindu Religion:
In India's Hindu religion is quite similar to the number two theory (above) of pagan belief. Although, Hindus worship many different Goddesses they invariably have faith upon a single supreme invisible deity called Bhagaban (some call it Ischhaar) whom they call Nirakar. And, surprisingly there is no sculptural image/figure for this Bhagaban. But all Hindus worship Him along with other numerous deities. This Bhagaban is considered as the lord of all other deities. What would happen if some intelligent prophet would have asked Hindus to give up worshipping other goddesses and keeping only Bhagaban as their only deity making it a monotheist religion just like Islam? Could it not be another religion like Islam?
Now some factors which will suggest Allah was the Moon-god of Arab pagans:
(A) In Quran there are at least a dozen verses in which Allah repeatedly swears by the names such as moon, sun, stars, planets, night, wind etc. It is a mystery why the creator Allah should swear by his creations. Normally, we swear by the name of something much superior to us, such as we swear by God or by the name of our father (who is considered senior or superior to us). But we never swear by the name of something inferior to us. Here in the Quran swearing fashions of Allah (God) by moon or stars hinting us that Allah considered these things superior to himself. And this makes us to think (otherwise) as to who actually acted as Allah in Quran. However, in his explanation of why the Quran swears by the moon in Surah 74:32, "Nay, verily by the Moon," Yusuf Alli comments, "The moon was worshipped as a deity in times of darkness"(fn. 5798, pg. 1644). Perhaps, this swearing of Allah was due to the usual/cultural habits of worshipping moon as their God in pagan customs.
(B) Yousuf Ali stated (Page-1921-1623 of his English Translation of Holy Quran): Moon-worship was equally popular in various forms. Apollo and Diana the twin brother and sister, representing the sun and moon in the Vedic religion of India the moon god was Soma, the lord of the planets. Moon was male divinity in ancient India. Moon was also male divinity in ancient Semitic religion, and the Arabic word for the moon ,qamar, is of the masculine gender, on the other hand, the Arabic word for sun, shams, is feminine gender. The pagan Arabs evidently looked upon the sun as a goddess and the moon as a God. The Pagan deities best known in the Kaba and round about Mecca were Lat, Uzza, and Manat. the 360 idols established by the Pagans in the Kaba probably represented the 360 days of an inaccurate solar year. This was the actual modern pagan worship as known to the Quraish contemporary with our prophet.
(C) Influence of Moon in Islam: Who can deny the paramount influences of moon in Muslim's life? In Islam, moon is considered holiest astronomical object, and moon is the guiding light of all Islamic rituals/festivals. Contradictions and conflicts are very common with the dates of Eids and Ramadan and obviously it is a chronic problem and moon is the nucleus of this problem. Crescent moon and stars are the symbolic sign in the national flags of many Muslim countries, and it is present over the Mosques, in the Muslim graveyard etc. Prophet Muhammad compromised to Pagans to establish Islam in Arabia: Prophet Muhammad did his clever tactics of adapting many rites of paganism into Islam, in order to accommodate Islam among the pagan Arabs. He made lots of political pacts with the Pagan Leaders such as Abu Suffian to accommodate his new idea of religion and he agreed to incorporate many of the Pagan rituals in Islam. Prophet Muhammad asked the pagans to worship only the Allah the largest God, and destroy the idols of all other gods and goddesses that existed in Kabah. To establish oneness (monotheist) of God, he repeatedly asked them not to make any partners to Allah (That is why we can find hundreds of Quranic verses asking not to make any partners to Allah). Finally, the Prophet was able to convince (by force of course) the pagans to destroy all idols, and on return (he) agreed (perhaps) to keep the Names of the goddess of most famous Pagan tribes as the alternative names of Allah hence Islam has 99 NAMES of Allah.
Prophet Muhammad did command his followers to participate in these pagan ceremonies while the pagans were still in control of Mecca. (Please See Yusuf Ali, fn. 214, pg. 78). "... the whole of the [pagan] pilgrimage was spiritualized in Islam..." (Yusuf Ali: fn. 223 pg. 80). In the Tafsir (of Quran-2:200) maoulana Yousuf Ali stated: "After Pilgrimage, in Pagan times, the pilgrims used to gather in assemblies in which the praises of ancestors were sung. As the whole of the pilgrimage rites were spiritualized in Islam, so this aftermath of the Pilgrimage was also spiritualized. It was recommended for pilgrims to stay on two or three days after the pilgrimage, but they must use them in prayer and praise to God.(#223 of Shane nazul by Maoulana Yousuf Ali, page-81)
In Islam many rituals performed (today) by devoted Muslims in the name of Allah are connected to the pagan worship that existed before Islam. Pagans practices of the Pilgrimage of Kabah once a year--the Fast of Ramadan, running around the Kabah seven times, kissing the black stone, shaving the head, animal sacrifices, running up and down two hills, throwing stones at the devil, snorting water in and out the nose, praying several times a day toward Mecca, giving alms, Friday prayers, etc. are strictly followed by Muslims today. Nobody can deny the fact that, all the above rituals of Muslim's hajj today existed well before the arrival of Islam.
It is highly plausible to consider the fact that by incorporating much of the Pagan's rituals in new religion Islam Prophet successfully reduced the pagan-risk and it was perhaps one of the most important milestone-attempts to conquer the minds of Pagans resulting in massive breakdown of the Pagans' moral and support to oppose Islam.
The central shrine at Mekka was the Pagan's Kaaba (called House of Allah), a cube like stone structure which still stands though many times rebuilt. Imbedded in one corner is the black stone, probably a meteorite, the kissing of which is now an essential part of the Muslim's pilgrimage.
It is the historical fact that the Kaaba, the sacred shrine which contains the Black Stone, in Mecca was used for pagan idol worship before Islam and even called the House of Allah at that time. The name of the God whom the Arabs worshipped was the god of pantheon Ali-ilah the god, the supreme, the predeterminer of everybody's life or destiny the chief God Allah
Who did not read the story of BLACK STONE which was very sacred (povitra) to all various tribes of Quraish. When one day this sacred stone was needed to transfer from one place to another, there was a quarrel amongst the various tribes, as to who will carry that sacred stone? Then most intelligent and righteous young boy Muhammad (was not a prophet then) invented the solution of this serious problem. He (Muhammad) put this sacred stone over a Chaddor (piece of cloth) and asked one representative from each tribe to hold the Chaddor and carry the stone. I narrated this story briefly just to prove that black stone did exist long before Islam was invented.
References
b. Buchari Sharif, Bengali Translation by Maulana Muhammad Mustafizur Rahman, Sulemani Printers and Publishers, Dhaka, Second edition-1999
c. A History of the Arab peoples, by Albert Hourani, the Belknap press of Harvard University press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991
d. Dr. Robert Morey, 1996 Research and Education Foundation.
e. Gilchrist, The Temple, The Kaaba, and the Christ (Benoni, South Africa, 1980), p. 16.
f. G. J. O. Moshay, Who Is This Allah?, (Dorchester House, Bucks, UK, 1994), pg. 138
g. Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not A Muslim, (Prometheus, Amherst, 1995) p. 42.
h. Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971, II:1093.)
i. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (ed. Hastings), I:326.
j.The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, Lorenz Books, New York 10011, Anness Publishing Limited 1999
k. Roots of the Western Tradition, (a short history of ancient world) by C.Warren Hollister, Library of congress cataloging-in-publication data, 6th edition, 1
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2. Ayatollah Muhammad Yazdi, a conservative member of Iran’s Guardian Council and the former head of the judiciary, lashed out at Mr. Rafsanjani, saying the former president did not have the right to call for the release of arrested protesters. He also said Mr. Rafsanjani had exaggerated the role of democracy in Islamic government and thereby diminished the importance of divine sanction. “Legitimacy and acceptance are different in Islamic government,” Ayatollah Yazdi told the semi-official Fars news agency. “Votes alone do not create legitimacy.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/world/middleeast/19iran.html
3. Pakistan: Police patrol streets after Christians murdered
4. Young Muslims in Turkey Murder Three Christians
5. 130 Christians murdered over cartoons, Muslim rioters rampage through Nigerian villages
6. At least 6 Christians - all but one women and children - have been killed in Gojra, Pakistan by a rampaging mob of Muslim fundamentalists. The reason? It was rumored that a Koran was damaged in a Christian wedding held in the town.
7. A young Christian man was raped and brutally murdered in Pakistan for refusing to convert to Islam, and police are doing nothing about it.
8. Muhammad was a pedophile
9.This article deals with Muhammad's request to have his men murder a Jewish man named Abu Afak. Abu Afak was 120 years old. What was Afak's crime? He had urged his fellow Medinans to doubt Muhammad.
10. Allah allowed Muhammad along with the other men (as well as Muslims of today) to commit adultery with married women whom they have enslaved or taken captive. In light of the teachings of the Holy Bible, the true Word of God, we are forced to conclude that Allah is not the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob nor is Muhammad a true messenger.
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