Bush Declares war on Radical Islam

Submitted by iasius (India), Oct 22, 2005 at 16:14

If nothing else, President Bush's speech once again exposes the tenacity with which incorrect perceptions about Islam are even now making the rounds in ‘political leadership' circles despite solid incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. At the same time, it is heartening to note from the plethora of responses on this excellent forum that lay public opinion is finally veering around to a fair amount of down to earth pragmatism.

"Moderate" Islam, our most ardent craving notwithstanding, just DOESN'T exist because it cannot. It is wishful thinking. Reform in Islam is not possible, for which reason it was called the "perfected" religion by Allah in the Quran [HQ 5:3] The singular aim, purpose and intent of the faith - world domination at ANY cost - should be apparent to anyone who can read and think for himself. A Muslim, the fictitious "moderate" or otherwise, can contest this fact only at the risk of renouncing his faith.

We need to be clear about basic and inalienable Quranic claims that are 'de rigueur' for every Muslim (Mr.Mohammed Saleem Akhtar included), viz., that "al-Islam" was the original religion Allah gave to humankind through His prophets (124,000 of them in all, according to the Holy Book), beginning with the first, Adam, down to the last, Muhammad (PBUH), and that it was time and again corrupted by vested human interest into various religions like Judaism, Christianity, et al. The Quran further claims that it is Allah's desire that all should follow His pristine religion to which end every Muslim worth his salt must strive; that He had punished mankind repeatedly for its "sin" of disbelief; every other religion or doctrine must be eradicated because it is wrong and misleading [HQ, 2:256; 6:153; 6:56; 13:14; 13:33; 10:66]; Allah's Earth belongs to "believers" alone who will rule over it by His law [Syed Ameer Ali, ‘The Spirit of Islam', London, p.116]. A natural corollary of these beliefs is: those who deny Islam even after being invited ("dawah"), are sinners of the worst kind, have no right to exist and render their lives and persons perfectly expendable. Killing them, therefore, is only advancing Allah's cause (He did precisely the same thing through all those "natural calamities" anyway!) Because victims of terrorist attacks fall into this category of self-condemned sinners, they deserved to die. In the August 8 BBC "Hard Talk" interview, Anjem Choudhary (Al Muhajiroun) crisply brought out these inalienable Islamic beliefs with extraordinary clarity and unfazed candor.

During this rewarding exchange on the DP website, some commentators broached considerations like "rightful" ownership of Jewish/Christian/Islamic homelands. But, except for passing reference by Yair Weinstock and Charles Fortner, I failed to find a single comment on, for instance, the shocking purloinery, sanctified as the consequence of "divine covenant" in the OT, performed so thoroughly by Joshua under Jehovaic instructions received through mentor Moses, that "there was none left that breathed" in the so-called "Promised Land" of Canaan [Joshua, 11:11]. There was likewise no serious critique of the annihilation of entire indigenous civilizations of the two Americas by Christians. It is both astonishing and disturbing that gory details of blatant seizure of unowned land and misappropriation of unearned wealth [Deut. 10:10-11], even if belonging to gentiles ("seven nations greater and mightier than thou" - Deut. 7:1), or the systematic massacre of original American inhabitants, not only seem to leave our modern collective reckoning unperturbed but actually continue to enjoy the status of "holy" scripture, or pious deeds of "Christ's Soldiers"!

If we are willing to not just condone but even accord divine character to arrant genocide and theft on an industrial scale, committed in the name of God (and also by His express desire and intervention, if the OT narratives are to be believed) that yielded the "promised land", or a near-complete extermination carried out by "pious" Christians (with much vaunted "Christian Goodness" in tow, it must be remembered), isn't it incomprehensible that we are now suddenly so squeamish when a third Abrahamic fallout – Islam – is trying to do nothing too different?

As is rapidly becoming quite apparent to laity (thanks also to fast information sharing over internet), the real conflict was never - as it isn't now - between what is truly "Right" and what is truly "Wrong" vis-à-vis rationalism and genuine human welfare, nor indeed has it ever been for "spiritual" advancement of our species. The whole industry of Abrahamic religions, it would unquestionably seem, was and is to satiate innate cravings for parasitic and self-seeking geopolitical hegemony at the cost of larger humanity.

Rather than spend time on discussing relatively recent history of the Middle East, which is merely a severe symptom of Abrahamic faiths, would it not be more fruitful to tackle the origin of the disease and find out what genetic and pathological characteristic inspires in their followers such rank avarice and endemic callousness? Perhaps the answer is provided by Jonathan Kirsch in his book, "God Against The Gods: The History Of The War Between Monotheism And Polytheism" (Viking).
[http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1086949562408&call_pageid=991479973472&col=991929131147 and http://www.cfiwest.org/calendar/Jonathan%20Kirsch.htm ].

If we understand the perilous phenomenon of ruthless intolerance attendant upon a malady called ‘exclusivism', spawned right from day one by monotheistic thought, we might possibly get nearer a resolution of the matter we are discussing.

Perhaps there is more truth in what Thomas Jefferson is believed to have said in a speech than the Religious (Ridiculous?) Right might be willing to concede: "… it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg…."!

Just out of curiosity, I wonder if Mr.Akhtar is willing to write on this board that the "correct, true, ideal, post-Ijtehad, post-Tafseer" Islam he keeps harping on, concedes to another (non-Islamic, non-Abrahamic, polytheistic, idolatrous or whatever) doctrine a right to exist on a par with itself……

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