(Above: The Greek symbol for "666," also known as "The Mark of the Beast." Read further to see why I posted this photograph.)
I would like to extend a very deep debt of gratitude to author A Petree of Conservative Blogs Central for posting this article and bring the issue to my attention. I had not been aware of this going on in my home state, by federal law enforcement from my home town and region of Knoxville and East Tennessee.
We live in dangerous times, where the federal government is looking at every possible angle to infringe upon our constitutionally-guaranteed liberties. We are well aware of what is going on in the congressional committee hearings regarding the Benghazi, IRS, and AP/Fox News/CBS News correspondents scandals, but today, local federal branches of law enforcement brought the attack on the people's First Amendment right to free speech home to Knoxville, TN and the rest of this region by not merely speaking on the virtues of peaceful coexistence and tolerance for those who are of the Islamic faith, but also on the legal ramifications that can result from one's infractions of what has apparently been interpreted as federal law according to the Obama administration.
First of all, let me state that I have never publicly discriminated against any member of a minority race, nor have I ever done so toward those of religions other than my own. However, I do believe that if the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) wants to march down Gay Street in downtown Knoxville spewing its messages of hate and bigotry toward those groups, it is their constitutional right to do so based upon the right to free speech guaranteed within the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
By the last half of this article, I will reveal why there is a very real possibility the Christian nations of the Western world are in mortal danger of being exterminated by Islam, with President Obama being the savior of the Islamic religion bent on establishing a New World Order.
By the last half of this article, I will reveal why there is a very real possibility the Christian nations of the Western world are in mortal danger of being exterminated by Islam, with President Obama being the savior of the Islamic religion bent on establishing a New World Order.
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The article below from The Chattanooga Times-Free Press describes the gathering that was organized and met by U.S. Attorney for East Tennessee Bill Killian. And wouldn't you know it, guess what kind of a religious group was responsible for sponsoring this gathering?:
NASHVILLE — Hoping to quell a budding controversy, U.S. Attorney Bill Killian says an event today at which he and the FBI will discuss enforcement of federal civil rights laws protecting Muslims also will specify what speech is guaranteed under the First Amendment.The move came as a state lawmaker said he has "grave concern" about the Manchester, Tenn., event over a news report that said Killian indicated violations could include posting of inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media."This community forum is an educational effort to inform the community about civil rights laws as they play into the exercise of religious freedom," wrote Killian, the U.S. Attorney for East Tennessee, in an email response Monday to criticisms raised by state Rep. Tony Shipley, R-Kingsport, chairman of the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee.Killian said "our purpose is to simply facilitate discussion towards the goal of greater tolerance, understanding and peaceful community relations, as well as to inform the public about what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are for violating them, including what speech is protected and what speech could be considered a threat under the law."Asked to comment, the prosecutor sent the same statement to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.Killian and Kenneth Moore, special agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville office, are speaking this evening at the "Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society" event.It is sponsored by the American Muslim Advisory Council of Tennessee, which was formed two years ago when state lawmakers were considering legislation that would ban Sharia, the law followed by devout Muslims.The Tullahoma News last week quoted Killian saying "this is an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion. This is also to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are."The newspaper said Killian referred to a controversial Facebook posting made by Coffee County Commissioner Barry West. It showed a picture of a man pointing a double-barreled shotgun with the caption saying, "How to Wink at a Muslim."Killian was quoted saying he and Moore had discussed the issue."If a Muslim had posted 'How to Wink at a Christian,' could you imagine what would have happened?" he told the newspaper. "We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we're here, they're going to be protected."Killian said Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal jurisdiction. "That's what everybody needs to understand," he was quoted saying.Shipley said he's concerned."I want to know what he's doing. If it's what was reported, it's unconstitutional. You can't punish people for what they think or what they say on Facebook."The lawmaker called West's Internet posting "stupid, tasteless and unnecessarily inflamatory, but it's freedom of expression and it's freedom of speech."But he said Americans have had to endure protesters urinating or defecating on American flags and pictures of Jesus over the decades."Just because we don't agree with it, we don't have a right to go out there and tell him he doesn't have a right to say it," Shipley said of people like West. "Now if he points that gun at a human being, that's another story altogether."Shipley said he believes Killian's comments are "going to inflame a lot of people down there, and I think he shoudn't go."There have been a number of Middle Tennessee controversies involving hate speech or outright threats against Muslims.On Monday, The Associated Press reported a Texas man has pleaded guilty in federal district court in Nashville to leaving a voicemail threatening to blow up the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.Javier Alan Correa was sentenced Monday to five years on probation, including eight months of home detention, on a charge of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs, AP reported.The Islamic Center already has been the target of vandalism and a court suit as Muslims sought to build a new place to worship.Earlier this year, some conservative Republican lawmakers were upset because they thought a special bath for Muslims to wash their feet had been installed in the state Capitol.It turned out to be a new mop sink.Contact staff writer Andy Sher at 615-255-0550 or asher@timesfreepress.com.
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While I condemn such acts as leaving a voicemail threatening to blow up the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro and respect the rights of people of all faiths to engage in the free exercise of worshiping as they so choose in a peaceful manner, what the U.S. Attorney is doing is serving as a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, who has been suspected for quite some time of being a closet practicing Muslim. His actions favoring radical Islamic fundamentalists in both the Middle East as well as in the U.S. is well-documented for those who care to do the research. Knoxville's local newspaper The News Sentinel describes his history and appointment in an article from May 21, 2010:
(Above: U.S. Attorney for East Tennessee Bill Killian, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010 to the position as a replacement for former George W. Bush appointee Russ Dedrick. Courtesy of Knoxnews.com)
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has nominated Jasper, Tenn., lawyer William C. Killian to become the new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The appointment, announced Thursday by the White House, is for four years and requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
If confirmed, Killian will replace Russ Dedrick, who has held the job for the past three years. Dedrick was appointed by former President George W. Bush, but after Obama was elected, agreed to stay on until Obama chose his replacement.Killian could not be reached for comment.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee School of Law, Killian is the sole practitioner at his law firm in Marion County, just west of Chattanooga. An attorney for 35 years, he specializes in civil and criminal trial work.
Killian is a former assistant district attorney general for the 12th Judicial District of Tennessee. He is city attorney for the town of Monteagle and a former adjunct professor at Edmondson Junior College in Chattanooga and Northeast State Junior College in Blountville, Tenn.
Killian served in the Tennessee National Guard from 1970 to 1973, when he received an honorable discharge as a corporal.
"I am proud to have such an accomplished individual from the 4th Congressional District nominated as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee," said U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Pall Mall. "I hope Mr. Killian will have a speedy hearing and confirmation in the U.S. Senate. When confirmed, I have no doubt he will serve the people of Tennessee with character and distinction."
Other top contenders for the job had included Knoxville lawyer Melinda Meador and Chattanooga lawyer Lee Davis.
Michael Collins may be reached at 202-408-2711.
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Ironically, there were two U.S. Supreme Court cases that addressed this issue in favor of the conservative-libertarian position, a trait political minds of said-description are committed to the protection and observance of the American people's civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America and Bill of Rights:
Per Curiam Opinion
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
395 U.S. 444
Brandenburg v. Ohio
APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO
No. 492 Argued: February 27, 1969 --- Decided: June 9, 1969
PER CURIAM.
The appellant, a leader of a Ku Klux Klan group, was convicted under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism statute for "advocat[ing] . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety [p445] of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform" and for
"voluntarily assembl[ing] with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism."
Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2923.13. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to one to 10 years' imprisonment. The appellant challenged the constitutionality of the criminal syndicalism statute under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, but the intermediate appellate court of Ohio affirmed his conviction without opinion. The Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed his appeal sua sponte "for the reason that no substantial constitutional question exists herein." It did not file an opinion or explain its conclusions. Appeal was taken to this Court, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 393 U.S. 94 (196). We reverse.
The record shows that a man, identified at trial as the appellant, telephoned an announcer-reporter on the staff of a Cincinnati television station and invited him to come to a Ku Klux Klan "rally" to be held at a farm in Hamilton County. With the cooperation of the organizers, the reporter and a cameraman attended the meeting and filmed the events. Portions of the films were later broadcast on the local station and on a national network.
The prosecution's case rested on the films and on testimony identifying the appellant as the person who communicated with the reporter and who spoke at the rally. The State also introduced into evidence several articles appearing in the film, including a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, ammunition, a Bible, and a red hood worn by the speaker in the films.
One film showed 12 hooded figures, some of whom carried firearms. They were gathered around a large wooden cross, which they burned. No one was present [p446] other than the participants and the newsmen who made the film. Most of the words uttered during the scene were incomprehensible when the film was projected, but scattered phrases could be understood that were derogatory of Negroes and, in one instance, of Jews. [n1]Another scene on the same film showed the appellant, in Klan regalia, making a speech. The speech, in full, was as follows:
"This is an organizers' meeting. We have had quite a few members here today which are -- we have hundreds, hundreds of members throughout the State of Ohio. I can quote from a newspaper clipping from the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch, five weeks ago Sunday morning. The Klan has more members in the State of Ohio than does any other organization. We're not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.
We are marching on Congress July the Fourth, four hundred thousand strong. From there, we are dividing into two groups, one group to march on St. Augustine, Florida, the other group to march into Mississippi. Thank you." [p447]
The second film showed six hooded figures one of whom, later identified as the appellant, repeated a speech very similar to that recorded on the first film. The reference to the possibility of "revengeance" was omitted, and one sentence was added: "Personally, I believe the nigger should be returned to Africa, the Jew returned to Israel." Though some of the figures in the films carried weapons, the speaker did not.
The Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Statute was enacted in 1919. From 1917 to 1920, identical or quite similar laws were adopted by 20 States and two territories. E. Dowell, A History of Criminal Syndicalism Legislation in the United States 21 (1939). In 1927, this Court sustained the constitutionality of California's Criminal Syndicalism Act, Cal.Penal Code §§ 11400-11402, the text of which is quite similar to that of the laws of Ohio. Whitney v. California,274 U.S. 357 (1927). The Court upheld the statute on the ground that, without more, "advocating" violent means to effect political and economic change involves such danger to the security of the State that the State may outlaw it. Cf. Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380 (1927). But Whitney has been thoroughly discredited by later decisions. See Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, at 507 (1951). These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. [n2] As we [p448] said in Noto v. United States, 367 U.S. 290, 297-298 (1961),
"the mere abstract teaching . . . of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action."
See also Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, 259-261 (1937); Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 134 (1966). A statute which fails to draw this distinction impermissibly intrudes upon the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It sweeps within its condemnation speech which our Constitution has immunized from governmental control. Cf. Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298(1957); De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937); Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931). See also United States v. Robel,389 U.S. 258 (1967); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589(1967); Elfbrandt v. Russell, 384 U.S. 11 (1966); Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964); Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360 (1964).
Measured by this test, Ohio's Criminal Syndicalism Act cannot be sustained. The Act punishes persons who "advocate or teach the duty, necessity, or propriety" of violence "as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform"; or who publish or circulate or display any book or paper containing such advocacy; or who "justify" the commission of violent acts "with intent to exemplify, spread or advocate the propriety of the doctrines of criminal syndicalism"; or who "voluntarily assemble" with a group formed "to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism." Neither the indictment nor the trial judge's instructions to the jury in any way refined the statute's bald definition of the crime [p449] in terms of mere advocacy not distinguished from incitement to imminent lawless action. [n3]
Accordingly, we are here confronted with a statute which, by its own words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action. [n4] Such a statute falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The contrary teaching of Whitney v. California, supra, cannot be supported, and that decision is therefore overruled.
Reversed.
1. The significant portions that could be understood were:How far is the nigger going to -- yeah.This is what we are going to do to the niggers.A dirty nigger.Send the Jews back to Israel.Let's give them back to the dark garden.Save America.Let's go back to constitutional betterment.Bury the niggers.We intend to do our part.Give us our state rights.Freedom for the whites.Nigger will have to fight for every inch he gets from now on.
2. It was on the theory that the Smith Act, 54 Stat. 670, 18 U.S.C. § 35 embodied such a principle and that it had been applied only in conformity with it that this Court sustained the Act's constitutionality. Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494"]341 U.S. 494 (1951). That this was the basis for Dennis was emphasized in 341 U.S. 494 (1951). That this was the basis for Dennis was emphasized in Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 320-324 (1957), in which the Court overturned convictions for advocacy of the forcible overthrow of the Government under the Smith Act, because the trial judge's instructions had allowed conviction for mere advocacy, unrelated to its tendency to produce forcible action.
3. The first count of the indictment charged that appellant
did unlawfully by word of mouth advocate the necessity, or propriety of crime, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing political reform. . . .
The second count charged that appellant "did unlawfully voluntarily assemble with a group or assemblage of persons formed to advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism. . . ." The trial judge's charge merely followed the language of the indictment. No construction of the statute by the Ohio courts has brought it within constitutionally permissible limits. The Ohio Supreme Court has considered the statute in only one previous case, State v. Kassay, 126 Ohio St. 177, 184 N.E. 521 (1932), where the constitutionality of the statute was sustained.
4. Statutes affecting the right of assembly, like those touching on freedom of speech, must observe the established distinctions between mere advocacy and incitement to imminent lawless action, for, as Chief Justice Hughes wrote in De Jonge v. Oregon, supra, at 364: "The right of peaceable assembly is a right cognate to those of free speech and free press, and is equally fundamental." See also United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 552 (1876); Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 513, 519 (1939); NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 460-461 (1958).
This is the legal brief to the case Brandenburg v. Ohio, courtesy of Cornell University Law School. This ruling alone would nullify the legal activities Killian is implementing per the Obama administration. However, in 1977, the issue was revisited in a slightly different form by the High Court with a case involving the National Socialist Party of America (aka. "the Neo-Nazis") marching in Skokie, IL, in protest against the vast Jewish population of the town:
NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA et al. v. VILLAGE OF SKOKIE.
432 U.S. 43 (97 S.Ct. 2205, 53 L.Ed.2d 96)
NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA et al. v. VILLAGE OF SKOKIE.
No. 76-1786.
Decided: June 14, 1977.
PER CURIAM.
On April 29, 1977, the Circuit Court of Cook County entered an injunction against petitioners. The injunction prohibited them from performing any of the following actions within the village of Skokie, Ill.: "(m)arching, walking or parading in the uniform of the National Socialist Party of America; (m)arching, walking or parading or otherwise displaying the swastika on or off their person; (d)istributing pamphlets or displaying any materials which incite or promote hatred against persons of Jewish faith or ancestry or hatred against persons of any faith or ancestry, race or religion." The Illinois Appellate Court denied an application for stay pending appeal. Applicants then filed a petition for a stay in the Illinois Supreme Court, together with a request for a direct expedited appeal to that court. The Illinois Supreme Court denied both the stay and leave for an expedited appeal. Applicants then filed an application for a stay with Mr. Justice Stevens, as Circuit Justice, who referred the matter to the Court.
(1, 2) Treating the application as a petition for certiorari from the order of the Illinois Supreme Court, we grant certiorari and reverse the Illinois Supreme Court's denial of a stay. That order is a final judgment for purposes of our jurisdiction, since it involved a right "separable from, and collateral to" the merits, Cohen v. Beneficial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1225, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). See Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 2034, 52 L.Ed.2d 651 (1977); cf. Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 476-487, 95 S.Ct. 1029, 1036-1042, 43 L.Ed.2d 328 (1975). It finally determined the merits of petitioners' claim that the outstanding injunction will deprive them of rights protected by the First Amendment during the period of appellate review which, in the normal course, may take a year or more to complete. If a State seeks to impose a restraint of this kind, it must provide strict procedural safeguards, Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 85 S.Ct. 734, 13 L.Ed.2d 649 (1965), including immediate appellate review, see Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 423 U.S. 1319, 1327, 96 S.Ct. 237, 251, 46 L.Ed.2d 199, 237 (1975) (Blackmun, J., in chambers). Absent such review, the State must instead allow a stay. The order of the Illinois Supreme Court constituted a denial of that right.
Reversed and remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Mr. Justice WHITE would deny the stay.
Mr. Justice REHNQUIST, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Mr. Justice STEWART join, dissenting.
The Court treats an application filed here to stay a judgment of the Circuit Court of Cook County as a petition for certiorari to review the refusal of the Supreme Court of Illinois to stay the injunction. It summarily reverses this refusal of a stay. I simply do not see how the refusal of the Supreme Court of Illinois to stay an injunction granted by an inferior court within the state system can be described as a "(f)inal judgmen(t) or decre(e) rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had", which is the limitation that Congress has imposed on our jurisdiction to review state-court judgments under 28 U.S.C. 1257. Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 476-487, 95 S.Ct. 1029, 1036-1042, 43 L.Ed.2d 328 (1975), relied upon by the Court which surely took as liberal a view of this jurisdictional grant as can reasonably be taken, does not support the result reached by the Court here. In Cox there had been a final decision on the federal claim by the Supreme Court of Georgia, which was the highest court of that State in which such a decision could be had. Here all the Supreme Court of Illinois has done is, in the exercise of the discretion possessed by every appellate court, to deny a stay of a lower court ruling pending appeal. No Illinois appellate court has heard or decided the merits of applicants' federal claim.
I do not disagree with the Court that the provisions of the injunction issued by the Circuit Court of Cook County are extremely broad, and I would expect that if the Illinois appellate courts follow cases such as Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 85 S.Ct. 734, 13 L.Ed.2d 649 (1965), and Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 423 U.S. 1319, 96 S.Ct. 237, 46 L.Ed.2d 199 (1975), relied upon by the Court, the injunction will be at least substantially modified by them. But I do not believe that in the long run respect for the Constitution or for the law is encouraged by actions of this Court which disregard the limitations placed on us by Congress in order to assure that an erroneous injunction issued by a state trial court does not wrongly interfere with the constitutional rights of those enjoined.
The above legal brief, too, is a courtesy of Cornell University Law School. The terminology used in this brief is what I like to refer to as "legalese," and is therefore rather difficult to understand for those not employed in the legal profession. To place the brief in "layman's terms," here is a brief description from Find Law.com:
The Illinois Supreme Court denied a stay of the trial court's injunction prohibiting petitioners from marching, walking, or parading in the uniform of the National Socialist Party of America or otherwise displaying the swastika, and from distributing pamphlets or displaying materials inciting or promoting hatred against Jews or persons of any faith, ancestry, or race, and also denied leave for an expedited appeal. Held:
1. The Illinois Supreme Court's order is a final judgment for purposes of this Court's jurisdiction, since it finally determined the merits of petitioners' claim that the injunction will deprive them of First Amendment rights during the period of appellate review.
2. The State must allow a stay where procedural safeguards, including immediate appellate review, are not provided, and the Illinois Supreme Court's order denied this right.
Certiorari granted; reversed and remanded.
In other words, what the Circuit Court of Cook County (Chicago) did by issuing the injunction against members of the National Socialist Party of America was unconstitutional.
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In summation, what the Obama administration is enforcing through his appointed puppet U.S. attorney is a violation of the Constitution, not to mention an implementation of a legal and institutional double standard. One man U.S. Attorney Killian pointed out who was in violation of federal law regarding the civil rights of Muslims was Coffee County Commissioner Barry West, who posted a picture on Facebook of a man pointing a double-barrel shotgun and contained the inscription, "How to Wink at a Muslim." The picture can be shown below in order to provide a proper perspective:
While admittedly crude in nature, the double-standard involved with Killian's pledge to enforce these supposed "civil rights laws" guaranteed by the First Amendment's directive of the right to freedom of religion while simultaneously denying the rights to the majority of castigating and even discriminating against Muslims if they so choose can be defined by the following picture, yet again courtesy of my fellow conservative friend, A Petree, at Conservative Blogs Central:
Does this look like a photograph containing a race, ethnicity, and/or religious group of people who are tolerant toward those who oppose the radical extremism of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists? These are the collection of souls who would engage in the ethnic and religious cleansing and, for that matter, genocide, of all Christians and Jews throughout the world.
On May 27, 2013, the Free Syria Army massacred an entire Christian village. The New American reported this act of ethnic cleansing, which Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned his colleagues about when they voted in favor of arming them that they were, in essence, siding with allies of al-Qaeda and putting the lives of the 2 million Christians in Syria in danger:
(Above: This is an apparent photograph of a Free Syrian Army militant in action. Courtesy of The New American.)
While President Obama’s administration weighs overt military aid to Syrian rebels, the true character of the revolution underway in that country is becoming horrifically clear. Numerous press reports are providing details of a massacre perpetrated by the Free Syrian Army that annihilated the entire population of a Christian village.As the New York Times reported last December, anti-American sentiment has grown among the rebel organizations even as the American government has played a key role in propping up the rebellion. A crucial step in that support was the administration’s decision to give formal recognition to rebel organizations — a step just short of recognizing them as the legitimate government of Syria. But now, those rebels Obama has vehemently supported are now proving that in Syria — as in Egypt several years ago — the rebels may prove worse than the tyrants they struggle to overthrow.According to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), forces of the Free Syrian Army massacred the village on May 27: “The armed rebels affiliated to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) raided the Christian-populated al-Duvair village in Reef (outskirts of) Homs near the border with Lebanon today and massacred all its civilian residents, including women and children. The Syrian army, however, intervened and killed tens of terrorists during heavy clashes which are still going on in al-Duvair village.”Although the United States had opposed the involvement of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front in the rebel coalition, it did not express such reservations in December when Obama lavished his praise on the coalition. As the New York Times reported at that time:But Mr. Obama praised the opposition, known formally as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, for what he said was its inclusiveness, its openness to various ethnic and religious groups, and its ties to local councils involved in the fighting against Mr. Assad’s security forces.“At this point we have a well-organized-enough coalition — opposition coalition that is representative — that we can recognize them as the legitimate representative of Syrian people,” he said.…The United States has played an active role behind the scenes in shaping the opposition, insisting that it be broadened and made more inclusive. But until Mr. Obama’s announcement, the United States had held off on formally recognizing the opposition, asserting that it wanted to use the lure of recognition to encourage the rebel leaders to flesh out their political structure and fill important posts.Now Obama’s inclusive opposition has allegedly slaughtered the entire population of al-Duvair, which is the type of crime that the U.S. president has previously purported was sufficient reason for the people of Syria to rise up and overthrow their government. And the massacre is hardly an isolated incident; for example, only several weeks ago, rebels attacked the St. Elijah Orthodoxy monastery. As Voice of Russia reported on May 12: “The militants ransacked the cloister, destroyed the sanctuary, blew up the belfry and tore down the statue of St. Prophet Elijah who is equally revered in Syria by both Christians and Muslims, Syria’s SANA news agency reports, quoting the head of the monastery, hegumen Gadir Ibrahim. The hegumen believes the attack to be the work of foreign mercenaries.”Reports of foreign mercenaries are nothing new in the war against the Assad regime, and the “Syrian” character of the rebellion has been in doubt for some time. As the Independent reported on December 20:Fighters from as many as 29 countries have filtered into Syria to join a civil war that has split along sectarian lines, increasingly pitting the ruling Alawite community against the majority Sunni Muslims, UN human rights investigators said today.The deepened sectarian divisions in Syria may diminish prospects for post-conflict reconciliation even if President Bashar al-Assad is toppled. And the influx of foreign fighters raises the risk of the war spilling into neighbouring countries.“As battles between government forces and anti-government armed groups approach the end of their second year, the conflict has become overtly sectarian in nature,” the investigators led by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro said in an updated report.…Most of the foreign fighters slipping into Syria to join rebel groups, or fight alongside them, are Sunnis from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the UN investigators found. “They come from all over, Europe and America, and especially the neighbouring countries,” said Ms [Karen] Abuzayd.Even as the American government has expanded its involvement in the war in Syria, the radicalization of the rebel forces has continued. While Syrian rebels perpetrate their own atrocities, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was still insisting “We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people.” As Reuters reported on May 29:U.S. Senator John McCain said on Wednesday, two days after meeting with rebels in Syria, that he is confident the United States can send weapons to fighters in Syria without the risk they will fall into the wrong hands."We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people," McCain said on CNN's program "Anderson Cooper 360." …Critics of some lawmakers' push to arm the rebels have expressed concerns that weapons could end up in the hands of militants who might eventually end up using them against the United States or its allies.But McCain said such radical fighters make up only a small part of the rebels forces.For example, he said, Syria's Islamist al-Nusra Front, identified as an alias of al Qaeda in Iraq, accounts for only about 7,000 of the 100,000 fighters battling the government of Assad."Every single day, more and more extremists flow in.... "They're flowing in all the time, these extremists. But they still do not make up a sizeable portion," the Arizona senator said.When 7,000 members of an al-Qaeda front are acknowledged to be part of a US-backed coalition, one wonders how McCain and his allies are now defining “small.” And as McCain’s and Obama’s purported “right people” are busy massacring Christians — and others — in an “overtly sectarian” war conducted by foreign mercenaries and religious fanatics, the latest phase in the “perpetual war for perpetual peace” has moved on to the phase where its proponents will soon, once again, be "shocked" by the actions of their allies.
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Sadly, many of our GOP senators are just as guilty via complicity as is the president.
I attempted to find articles from mainstream mass media outlets covering this act of ethnic cleaning. Unfortunately, they are either few and far between or the vast majority of mass media, controlled by demagogues from the Left, failed to be considerate enough to inform the American people about what type(s) of people with whom the Obama administration is attempting to conduct business. It is greatly tragic that this has occurred, and that the international community feels compelled to jump on the U.S.-and NATO-led bandwagon of providing food and military supplies, even going so far as promulgating their desires to send troops to Syria, to provide a show of support for these religious fascists.
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Domestically, the president has shown extraordinary compassion toward domestic Islamic organizations who support the activities of radical Islamic terrorists (Courtesy of PJ Media):
Currently the Obama administration is facing three big scandals — the IRS targeting, the bugging of AP and Fox, and Benghazi. Now we have scandal Number Four, just as large in scope.
For the last four years, the Obama administration has conducted a major “outreach” program to Islamic groups in the United States and in the Middle East. In a comprehensive article, investigative journalist and PJ Media contributor Patrick Poole now presents the full scoop and scope of what’s been going on. His article — “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Policy” — appearing in the new Summer issue of the MERIA Journal is a game-changer.
You may think that you know about this subject, but the scandal extends far beyond what you have heard.
The majority of these groups and individuals promoted by the Obama administration have been radical Islamists, particularly Muslim Brotherhood cadre, and more than occasionally were people involved in terrorist activity.Actual moderate Muslims have been neglected and isolated by this project, which has helped the radicals, Islamists, and pro-terrorists gain hegemony in the Muslim community in America.Again, you may think that you know this story — but it is far more extensive than has ever before been revealed. Often, the White House and FBI have granted access and worked with those who were simultaneously being investigated on serious charges of terrorism.The whole “outreach” program has been a farce, and it would be charitable to describe it as incompetence on the part of the Obama administration. Patrick Poole pulls all of the material together for the first time and shows serious flaws that have endangered Americans in scores of cases. Radicals have been given credentials as moderates, been provided with information that should have remained secret, and been allowed to advise and influence U.S. policy. The kind of government mishandling of terrorist threats that characterize the Fort Hood case and the Boston bombing has been business as usual.On the following page is an excerpt from Patrick Poole’s article:When President Obama hosted his annual Iftar dinner in August 2010 to commemorate the Muslim celebration of Ramadan, the list of invitees published by the White House was curiously missing the names of several attendees — all of whom were top leaders of organizations known to be purveyors of jihadist ideology and implicated by federal prosecutors in financing terrorism.[But it wasn’t like they had crashed the party. In fact, one of the individuals missing on the official White House list, Mohamed Majid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was pictured in a news service photograph sitting at the front table just a few feet from the president as he spoke. When Majid was hailed by Time Magazine in November 2005 as a “moderate Muslim cleric” that was helping the FBI fight terrorists, he quickly published an open letter to his congregation on the mosque’s website assuring his congregants that he was doing no such thing stating that his relationship with the FBI was a one-way street only to communicate Muslim community concerns – not to report on individuals suspected of terrorist activity.[iii]It was just a few years ago the Attorney General of the United States was canceling Muslim outreach events for the sole reason that Majid would be present at the meeting, because the Department of Justice had just named ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in American history.But Majid’s connection to terrorism goes back even farther than that, since the offices of the mosque he leads, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, were raided by U.S. Customs authorities in March 2002 in a wide-sweeping terror finance investigation. In an affidavit requesting a search warrant for the raids, Customs Agent David Kane testified that Majid’s mosque was being used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars for the targeted terror finance network that shared offices withADAMS.An appendix to the Customs Service affidavit also names eleven ADAMS Center officials as targets of their terror finance investigation.And yet Majid and the ADAMS Center are still considered legitimate outreach partners by the FBI.This was just the most recent episode in the disastrous attempts at outreach to the Muslim community since the 9/11 attacks. And with the release in 2011 of President Obama’s strategic plan to combat “violent extremism” to expand outreach to these same terror-tied groups, the present administration seems intent on compounding the disaster wrought by previous administrations.The results of this investigation should be a serious embarrassment for the Obama administration. The results should be distributed as widely as possible, as they involve the expenditure of millions of dollars of taxpayer money and the promotion of the forces most dangerous to American interests and to the American people today.
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This is a damnable situation over which the American people, upon learning this from a reputable news agency such as Fox News or the The Blaze, will be outraged -- except, of course, for the Left. The Left will favor subsidies for the plights of Muslims, homosexuals, environmentalist organizations, African-Americans, Hispanics -- even the illegal immigrants from Mexico and Cuba --, and feminists seeking to perpetuate their gender's culture of immorality, irresponsibility, and unaccountability by lobbying for more and friendlier abortion laws, among other things. Yet, conservatives should not expect one cent of tribute toward pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, Christian evangelical, and now pro-Jewish/Israel groups, the last of which was once a demographic of the population championed by the Left as recently as the Clinton presidency.
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Liberty does not come free, as we have all learned from history. The U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million military personnel since the start of the American Revolution in 1775. Yet the principles upon which this nation was found -- "the laws of nature and the Laws of nature's God" in the words of Bill Fortenberry -- have long since been forgotten since the era of Progressive movement reached Washington in the form of Theodore Roosevelt inherited the presidency from his assassinated predecessor, William McKinley, in 1901. Since then, Progressives, as well as Populists, have formed an unholy bond with the Democratic Party first under Woodrow Wilson, whose Democratic-controlled Congress in 1913 passed into law the Sixteenth Amendment legalizing a graduated federal income tax and the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment that established the direct election of U.S. Senators by popular vote; he also signed into law the Federal Reserve Act. The Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson administrations were the beginnings of big government in the U.S., while the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt gave birth to the modern welfare state as well as federalized-socialism in the U.S. As time progressed, the Democrats would champion through silent complicity the votes stemming from members of the Communist Party of the USA; they defended those individuals who were branded as Communists by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) in the hearings which took place from 1950 to 1956, yet continued trying to ameliorate the situation under the guise of sending up to 550,000 +/- to Vietnam to fight in a war the military had no possible chance of winning due to the flawed and faulty manner in which it was conducted; this attempt at amelioration resulted in the deaths of 58,209 troops between 1963 and 1975, during the time President Lyndon B. Johnson escalated the conflict notoriously via conscription. The Clinton administration involved the military again in NATO-based operations in Europe with the conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the bombing of Yugoslavia. And let us not forget one thing: the same Democratic Party of today that is denigrating Jews domestically and Israel in foreign affairs is also the same Democratic Party who, under President Harry S. Truman, recognized the sovereignty of the new nation of Israel within 11 minutes of its declaration of being a new nation; the U.S. was also the first nation to recognize Israel's sovereignty.
The Republicans in the White House over the past 32 years have escalated U.S. involvement in the Middle East compared to what the federal government had previously endeavored; however, the first Republican act of military force in the Middle East under the Eisenhower administration during the 1958 Lebanese crisis when 14,000 +/- troops were sent to quell the opposition to President Camille Chaumoun and neighboring countries. The operation was considered a success. Some 22 years later, President Ronald Reagan was thrown into the fire of the Iran Hostage Crisis upon running for president in 1980; within hours of his inauguration, however, the hostages were all released by the Iranian government under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini, presumably out of fear of what the new president would do to the government should they fail to release them; in 1987, the Iran-Contra Scandal involving the trading of arms for hostages by members of the Reagan administration proved to be the low point of the Reagan presidency. In 1982, the U.S. participated in the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) consisting of its allied nations of Great Britain, France, and Italy in order to oversee the withdrawal of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under the leadership of Yasser Arafat from the nation's capital, Beirut. Despite the PLO's withdrawal, the mission proved to be a virtual failure, with the lead example being the bombing of the U.S. Marine and French paratrooper barracks on October 23, 1983, killing 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French soldiers. In all, the U.S. suffered 265 deaths in the conflict, which should have served as a foreshadowing of the dangers of becoming embroiled in military conflict in the Middle East. In 1991, the U.S. fought and defeated Iraq in the Gulf War, thus driving the Republican Guard under the direction of the nation's dictator Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Throughout the 1990's, President Bill Clinton ordered sporadic bombings of the Iraqi capital city, Baghdad, under the guise of attempting to stifle the nation's perceived effort of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction (WMD's), when in reality the president did this to divert the media's attention away from the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Then his successor, George W. Bush, engaged us in two separate military conflicts: one in Afghanistan in the pursuit of the orchestrator of the September 11, 2001, attacks of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field -- Osama bin Laden; and the other conflict coming two years later in Iraq, a war that turned out to be completely unnecessary and a terrible waste of the lives of 4,497 troops from 2003-2011. Though President Obama pulled troops out in his exit strategy from the Iraqi-theater of the War on Terror, the problems in Iraq continue to escalate, with more than 1,700 Iraqi civilians having been killed over the past two months (April-June 2013) according to an article dated June 1, 2013 courtesy of The Associated Press. And despite assassinating bin Laden on May 2, 2011, the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is being escalated and increased by President Obama as casualties continue to mount.
The more the U.S. foreign policy encompasses the task of promoting peace in the Middle East, the more it will perpetuate the elusive truth of preordained failures for generations to come. In his autobiography, former president Bill Clinton describes the collapse of the Camp David summit conducted between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, PLO Chairman Arafat, and himself, blaming Arafat for "miss[ing] the opportunity" to facilitate a "just and lasting peace." In May, the Israeli Air Force conducted air strikes over targets in Syria believed by the government to be manufacturing chemical weapons. President Obama, in response, threw his support behind Israel, an irony in that he had already proposed providing weapons to the Syrian rebels. The greatest, gravest mistake ever made by the U.S. government as well as the United Nations (U.N.) was creating an independent Jewish state that had been sovereign territory of the nation of Palestine for centuries.
The Koran, the holy book of Islam, is clear and unequivocal in its diction and syntax. The website Infidels are Cool discusses the key points within its texts whereby it advocates intolerance that should result in violence:
In Islam, all non-Muslims are called unbelievers or infidels. The treatment of the infidels in Islam is divided into two categories. The polytheists, pagans, idolaters and heathens have the choice of converting to Islam or suffer death. The Jews and Christians, whom the Koran calls people of the book, can retain their religion but on the sufferance of accepting humiliation and subjugation to Islam and payment of Jizyah (poll-tax) to the Islamic rulers [For more detail read this article: Unfettered Religious Freedom in Islam – A Fact or Fiction? - by Alamgir Hussain].
Now, let us have a closer look at what the Koran says about the infidels:-
- Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them(2:191)
- Make war on the infidels living in your neighboorhood (9:123)
- When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them (9:5)
- Kill the Jews and the Christians if they do not convert to Islam or refuse to pay Jizya tax (9:29)
- Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable (3:85)
- The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them (9:30)
- Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticise Islam. (5:33)
- The infidels are unclean; do not let them into a mosque (9:28)
- Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them (47:4)
- The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them (8:65)
- Muslims must not take the infidels as friends (3:28)
- Terrorise and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an (8:12)
- Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorise the infidels (8:60)
The Qur’an certainly proclaims that when the time is appropriate, Muslims must use force to convert the unbelievers to Islam. For the non-Muslims, the alternative to this is to pay the humiliating protection money (Jizya tax) or be killed (by beheading, of course). A militarily dominant Islam, without doubt, precludes the peaceful co-existence with the unbelievers if the Muslims have to abide strictly by the unalterable stipulations of the Qur’an.
This is why we see very few “moderate” [M]uslims coming out and speaking against the violence. There is so much overwhelming evidence stacked against them not able to be “moderate” because of the fundamental belief’s of Islam.
Referenced from Islam-Watch
Related posts:
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Those on the Left who claim differently will combat what is scriptural fact by citing the verse within the Koran that states:
"It may be that God will grant love (and friendship) between you and those whom ye (now) hold as enemies. For God has power (over all things), and God is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.God does not forbid you, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for God loves those who are just." (Koran 60:7-8)
The verse's phrasing, however, does not make the concept of barbaric violence toward those who are of different faiths (aka. "infidels") mutually exclusive from this. Meanwhile, there are other sources of information to support the previous source's claim of the violent nature of this religion (Courtesy of The Religion of Peace):
Does the Quran really contain dozens of verses promoting violence?
Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad's own martial legacy - and that of his companions - along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.
Bukhari (52:177) - Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."Bukhari (52:256) - The Prophet... was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, "They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans)." In this command, Muhammad establishes that it is permissible to kill non-combatants in the process of killing a perceived enemy. This provides justification for the many Islamic terror bombings.Bukhari (52:65) - The Prophet said, 'He who fights that Allah's Word, Islam, should be superior, fights in Allah's Cause. Muhammad's words are the basis for offensive Jihad - spreading Islam by force. This is how it was understood by his companions, and by the terrorists of today.Bukhari (52:220) - Allah's Apostle said... 'I have been made victorious with terror'Abu Dawud (14:2526) - The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Three things are the roots of faith: to refrain from (killing) a person who utters, "There is no god but Allah" and not to declare him unbeliever whatever sin he commits, and not to excommunicate him from Islam for his any action; and jihad will be performed continuously since the day Allah sent me as a prophet until the day the last member of my community will fight with the Dajjal (Antichrist)Abu Dawud (14:2527) - The Prophet said: Striving in the path of Allah (jihad) is incumbent on you along with every ruler, whether he is pious or impiousMuslim (1:33) - the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of AllahBukhari (8:387) - Allah's Apostle said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah'. And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally."Muslim (1:30) - "The Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah."Bukhari (11:626) - [Muhammad said:] "I decided to order a man to lead the prayer and then take a flame to burn all those, who had not left their houses for the prayer, burning them alive inside their homes."Muslim (1:149) - "Abu Dharr reported: I said: Messenger of Allah, which of the deeds is the best? He (the Holy Prophet) replied: Belief in Allah and Jihad in His cause..."Muslim (20:4645) - "...He (the Messenger of Allah) did that and said: There is another act which elevates the position of a man in Paradise to a grade one hundred (higher), and the elevation between one grade and the other is equal to the height of the heaven from the earth. He (Abu Sa'id) said: What is that act? He replied: Jihad in the way of Allah! Jihad in the way of Allah!"Muslim (20:4696) - "the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: 'One who died but did not fight in the way of Allah nor did he express any desire (or determination) for Jihad died the death of a hypocrite.'"Muslim (19:4321-4323) - Three separate hadith in which Muhammad shrugs over the news that innocent children were killed in a raid by his men against unbelievers. His response: "They are of them (meaning the enemy)."Muslim (19:4294) - "When the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him... He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them.Tabari 7:97 The morning after the murder of Ashraf, the Prophet declared, "Kill any Jew who falls under your power." Ashraf was a poet, killed by Muhammad's men because he insulted Islam. Here, Muhammad widens the scope of his orders to kill. An innocent Jewish businessman was then slain by his Muslim partner, merely for being non-Muslim.Tabari 9:69 "Killing Unbelievers is a small matter to us" The words of Muhammad, prophet of Islam.Tabari 17:187 "'By God, our religion (din) from which we have departed is better and more correct than that which these people follow. Their religion does not stop them from shedding blood, terrifying the roads, and seizing properties.' And they returned to their former religion." The words of a group of Christians who had converted to Islam, but realized their error after being shocked by the violence and looting committed in the name of Allah. The price of their decision to return to a religion of peace was that the men were beheaded and the woman and children enslaved by the caliph Ali.Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 327: - “Allah said, ‘A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.’”Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 990: - Lest anyone think that cutting off someone's head while screaming 'Allah Akbar!' is a modern creation, here is an account of that very practice under Muhammad, who seems to approve.Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 992: - "Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve in Allah." Muhammad's instructions to his men prior to a military raid.Saifur Rahman, The Sealed Nectar p.227-228 - "Embrace Islam... If you two accept Islam, you will remain in command of your country; but if your refuse my Call, you’ve got to remember that all of your possessions are perishable. My horsemen will appropriate your land, and my Prophethood will assume preponderance over your kingship." One of several letters from Muhammad to rulers of other countries. The significance is that the recipients were not making war or threatening Muslims. Their subsequent defeat and subjugation by Muhammad's armies was justified merely on the basis of their unbelief.
Other than the fact that Muslims haven't killed every non-Muslim under their domain, there is very little else that they can point to as proof that theirs is a peaceful, tolerant religion. Where Islam is dominant (as in the Middle East and Pakistan) religious minorities suffer brutal persecution with little resistance. Where Islam is in the minority (as in Thailand, the Philippines and Europe) there is the threat of violence if Muslim demands are not met. Either situation seems to provide a justification for religious terrorism, which is persistent and endemic to Islamic fundamentalism.The reasons are obvious and begin with the Quran. Few verses of Islam's most sacred text can be construed to fit the contemporary virtues of religious tolerance and universal brotherhood. Those that do are earlier "Meccan" verses which are obviously abrogated by later ones. This is why Muslim apologists speak of the "risks" of trying to interpret the Quran without their "assistance" - even while claiming that it is a perfect book.Far from being mere history or theological construct, the violent verses of the Quran have played a key role in very real massacre and genocide. This includes the brutal slaughter of tens of millions of Hindus for five centuries beginning around 1000 AD with Mahmud of Ghazni's bloody conquest. Both he and the later Tamerlane (Islam's Genghis Khan) slaughtered an untold number merely for defending their temples from destruction. Buddhism was very nearly wiped off the Indian subcontinent. Judaism and Christianity met the same fate (albeit more slowly) in areas conquered by Muslim armies, including the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe, including today's Turkey. Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of a proud Persian people is despised by Muslims and barely survives in modern Iran.So ingrained is violence in the religion that Islam has never really stopped being at war, either with other religions or with itself.Muhammad was a military leader, laying siege to towns, massacring the men, raping their women, enslaving their children, and taking the property of others as his own. On several occasions he rejected offers of surrender from the besieged inhabitants and even butchered captives. He actually inspired his followers to battle when they did not feel it was right to fight, promising them slaves and booty if they did and threatening them with Hell if they did not. Muhammad allowed his men to rape traumatized women captured in battle, usually on the very day their husbands and family members were slaughtered.It is important to emphasize that, for the most part, Muslim armies waged aggressive campaigns, and the religion's most dramatic military conquests were made by the actual companions of Muhammad in the decades following his death. The early Islamic principle of warfare was that the civilian population of a town was to be destroyed (ie. men executed, women and children taken as slaves) if they defended themselves. Although modern apologists often claim that Muslims are only supposed to attack in self-defense, this is an oxymoron that is flatly contradicted by the accounts of Islamic historians and others that go back to the time of Muhammad.Consider the example of the Qurayza Jews, who were completely obliterated only five years after Muhammad arrived in Medina. Their leader opted to stay neutral when their town was besieged by a Meccan army that was sent to take revenge for Muhammad's deadly caravan raids. The tribe killed no one from either side and even surrendered peacefully to Muhammad after the Meccans had been turned back. Yet the prophet of Islam had every male member of the Qurayza beheaded, and every woman and child enslaved, even raping one of the captives himself (what Muslim apologists might refer to as "same day marriage").One of Islam's most revered modern scholars, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, openly sanctions offensive Jihad: "In the Jihad which you are seeking, you look for the enemy and invade him. This type of Jihad takes place only when the Islamic state is invading other [countries] inorder to spread the word of Islam and to remove obstacles standing in its way." Elsewhere, he notes: "Islam has the right to take the initiative…this is God’s religion and it is for the whole world. It has the right to destroy all obstacles in the form of institutions and traditions … it attacks institutions and traditions to release human beings from their poisonous influences, which distort human nature and curtail human freedom. Those who say that Islamic Jihad was merely for the defense of the 'homeland of Islam' diminish the greatness of the Islamic way of life."The widely respected Dictionary of Islam defines Jihad as "A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur'an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims…[Quoting from the Hanafi school, Hedaya, 2:140, 141.], "The destruction of the sword is incurred by infidels, although they be not the first aggressors, as appears from various passages in the traditions which are generally received to this effect."
Muhammad's failure to leave a clear line of succession resulted in perpetual internal war following his death. Those who knew him best first fought to keep remote tribes from leaving Islam and reverting to their preferred religion (the Ridda or 'Apostasy wars'). Then, within the closer community, early Meccan converts battled later ones. Hostility developed between those immigrants who had traveled with Muhammad to Mecca and the Ansar at Medina who had helped them settle in. Finally there was a violent struggle within Muhammad's own family between his favorite wife and favorite daughter - a jagged schism that has left Shias and Sunnis at each others' throats to this day.The strangest and most untrue thing that can be said about Islam is that it is a Religion of Peace. If every standard by which the West is judged and condemned (slavery, imperialism, intolerance, misogyny, sexual repression, warfare...) were applied equally to Islam, the verdict would be devastating. Islam never gives up what it conquers, be it religion, culture, language or life. Neither does it make apologies or any real effort at moral progress. It is the least open to dialogue and the most self-absorbed. It is convinced of its own perfection, yet brutally shuns self-examination and represses criticism.This is what makes the Quran's verses of violence so dangerous. They are given the weight of divine command. While Muslim terrorists take them as literally as anything else in their holy book, and understand that Islam is incomplete without Jihad, moderates offer little to contradict them - outside of opinion. Indeed, what do they have? Speaking of peace and love may win over the ignorant, but when every twelfth verse of Islam's holiest book either speaks to Allah's hatred for non-Muslims or calls for their death, forced conversion, or subjugation, it's little wonder that sympathy for terrorism runs as deeply as it does in the broader community - even if most Muslims personally prefer not to interpret their religion in this way.Although scholars like Ibn Khaldun, one of Islam's most respected philosophers, understood that"the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force", many other Muslims are either unaware or willfully ignorant of the Quran's near absence of verses that preach universal non-violence. Their understanding of Islam comes from what they are taught by others. In the West, it is typical for believers to think that their religion must be like Christianity - preaching the New Testament virtues of peace, love, and tolerance - because Muslims are taught that Islam is supposed to be superior in every way. They are somewhat surprised and embarrassed to learn that the evidence of the Quran and the bloody history of Islam are very much in contradiction to this.Others simply accept the violence. In 1991, a Palestinian couple in America was convicted of stabbing their daughter to death for being too Westernized. A family friend came to their defense, excoriating the jury for not understanding the "culture", claiming that the father was merely following "the religion" and saying that the couple had to "discipline their daughter or lose respect." (source). In 2011, unrepentant Palestinian terrorists, responsible for the brutal murders of civilians, women and children explicitly in the name of Allah were treated to a luxurious "holy pilgrimage" to Mecca by the Saudi king - without a single Muslim voice raised in protest.For their part, Western liberals would do well not to sacrifice critical thinking to the god of political correctness, or look for reasons to bring other religion down to the level of Islam merely to avoid the existential truth that this it is both different and dangerous.There are just too many Muslims who take the Quran literally... and too many others who couldn't care less about the violence done in the name of Islam.
On the website on religion, archaeology, history, astrotheology, and archeoastronomy called Acharya's Truth Be Known, there are more details pertaining to Islam's violence:
Quotes from and about Islam
.jpg "Quran Koran quotes")
What does the Koran say about "infidels?" Is Islam a "religion of peace?" What does the Quran say about women? Do Muslim men get served by 72 virgin girls and "young boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearls," when they go to Paradise?
Quotes from the Koran/Quran
"About sixty-one percent of the contents of the Koran are found to speak ill of the unbelievers or call for their violent conquest; at best only 2.6 percent of the verses of the Koran are noted to show goodwill toward humanity. About seventy-five percent of Muhammad's biography (Sira) consists of jihad waged on unbelievers."
Dr. Moorthy Muthuswamy
(Quotes below are from N.J. Dawood's The Koran: with a Parallel Arabic Text, Penguin Classics, 1990)
Freedom of Religion
There shall be no compulsion in religion.
Quran 2:236; "The Cow," Dawood, p. 41
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The only true faith in God's sight is Islam.
Quran 3:19; "The Imrans," Dawood, p. 51
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Abraham and Ishmael built the House and dedicated it, saying . . . "Lord, make us submissive to You; make of our descendants a nation that will submit to You..."
Quran 2:127-129, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 19
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He that chooses a religion over Islam, it will not be accepted from him and in the world to come he will be one of the lost.
Quran 3:85, "The Imrans," Dawood, p. 60
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This Book is not to be doubted.... As for the unbelievers, it is the same whether or not you forewarn them; they will not have faith. God has set a seal upon their hearts and ears; their sight is dimmed and grievous punishment awaits them.
Quran 2:1/2:6-2:10; "The Cow," Dawood, pp. 1-2
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If you doubt what We have revealed to Our servant, produce one chapter comparable to it. Call upon your idols to assist you, if what you say be true. But if you fail (as you are sure to fail) then guard yourselves against the Fire whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the unbelievers.
Quran 2:23-4, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 3
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It is not for true believers men or women to take their choice in the affairs if God and His apostle decree otherwise. He that disobeys God and His apostle strays far indeed.
Quran 33:36, "The Confederate Tribes," Dawood, p. 422
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It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer, accidents excepted. He that accidently kills a believer must free one Muslim slave... He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell for ever. He shall incur the wrath of God, who will lay His curse on him and prepare for him a mighty scourge.
Quran 4:92-93; "Women," Dawood, p. 92
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We have made you a just nation, so that you may testify against mankind and that your own Apostle may testify against you.
Quran 2:142-3; "The Cow, Dawood, p. 21
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You are the noblest community ever raised up for mankind. You enjoin justice and forbid evil. You believe in God. Had the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] accepted the Faith, it would surely have been better for them. Some are true believers, but most are evil-doers.
Quran 3:110-111, "The Imrans," Dawood, p. 63
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Infidels, Unbelievers and Non-Muslims
Let not believers make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful - he that does this has nothing to hope for from Good - except in self-defense. God admonishes you to fear Him: for to God shall all return.
Quran 3:28; "The Imrans," Dawood, p. 52
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God's curse be upon the infidels! Evil is that for which they have bartered away their souls. To deny God's own revelation, grudging that He should reveal His bounty to whom He chooses from among His servants! They have incurred God's most inexorable wrath. An ignominious punishment awaits the unbelievers.
Quran 2:89-2:90, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 13
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Lord...Give us victory over the unbelievers.
Quran 2:286, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 46
"Lord...give us victory over the unbelievers."
Quran 3:148, "The Imrans," Dawood, p. 67 |
I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers.
Quran 8:12, "The Spoils," Dawood, p. 177 |
Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love the aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage.
Quran 2:190-2:191, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 28
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When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.
Quran 9:5; "Repentance," Dawood, p. 186
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Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.
Quran 9:73, "Repentance," Dawood, p. 198
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Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous.
Quran 9:123, "Repentance," Dawood, p. 206 |
Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and that which is in their bellies. They shall be lashed with rods of iron. Whenever, in their anguish, they try to escape from Hell, back they shall be dragged, and will be told: "Taste the torment of the Conflagration!"
Quran 22:19-20, "The Pilgrimage," Dawood, p. 333
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Muhammad is God's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another.
Quran 48:29, "Victory," Dawood, p. 514
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Those that deny Our revelations We will burn in fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than We shall give them other skins, so that they may truly taste the scourge. God is mighty and wise.
Quran 4:56, "Women," Dawood, p. 86 |
Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain and crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.
Quran 5:33, "The Table," Dawood, p. 112 |
When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly.
Quran 47:4, "Muhammad," Dawood, p. 506 |
Let not the unbelievers think that they will ever get away. They have not the power to do so. Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your command, so that you may strike terror into the enemy of God and your enemy...
Quran 8:59-60, "The Spoils," Dawood, p. 183 |
Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number. God does not guide the wrong-doers.
Quran 5:51, "The Table," Dawood, p. 116 |
| Believers, know that the idolaters [non-Muslims] are unclean. Let them not approach the Sacred Mosque after this year is ended. Quran 9:28, "Repentance," Dawood, p. 190 |
The unbelievers among the People of the Book [Bible] and the pagans shall burn for ever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures.
Quran 98:6, "The Proof," Dawood, p. 598
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Women
They ask you about menstruation. Say: 'It is an indisposition. Keep aloof from women during their menstrual periods and do not approach them until they are clean again; when they are clean, have intercourse with them whence God enjoined you....'
Quran 2:222, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 34 |
Women are your fields: go, then, into your fields whence you please.
Quran 2:223, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 34 |
Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and forsake them in beds apart, and beat them.
Quran 4:34, "Women," Dawood, p. 83
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A male shall inherit twice as much as a female.
Quran 4:11, "Women," Dawood, p. 77 |
Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses...
Quran 2:282, "The Cow," Dawood, p. 47 |
If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those [of your wives] who have not yet menstruated.
Quran 65:4, "Divorce," Dawood, p. 557
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[Forbidden to you are] married women, except those whom you own as slaves.
Quran 4:24, "Women," Dawood, p. 81 |
If you fear that you cannot treat [orphan girls] with fairness, then you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only or any slave-girl you may own.
Quran 4:3, "Women," Dawood, p. 76 |
Rewards in Paradise
The righteous shall return to a blessed retreat: the gardens of Eden, whose gates shall open wide to receive them. Reclining there with bashful virgins for companions, they will call for abundant fruit and drink.
Quran 38:51-2, "Sad," Dawood, p. 455
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God has purchased from the faithful their lives and worldly goods, and in return has promised them the Garden. They will fight for the cause of God, they will slay, and be slain. Such is the true promise which He has made them in the Torah, the Gospel and the Koran....
Quran 9:111, "Repentance," Dawood, p. 203 |
As for the righteous, they shall be lodged in peace together amid gardens and fountains, arrayed in rick silks and fine brocade. Even thus; and We shall wed them to dark-eyed houris.
Quran 44:51-54, "Smoke," Dawood, p. 497 |
On that day [the unbelievers] shall be sternly thrown into the fire of Hell . . . But in fair gardens the righteous shall dwell in bliss, rejoicing in what their Lord will give them. Their Lord will shield them from the scourge of Hell. He will say: Eat and drink to your hearts content. This is the reward of your labours. They shall recline on couches ranged in rows. To dark-eyed houris [virgin girls] We shall wed them. . . . Fruit We shall give them, and such meats as they desire. They will pass from hand to hand a cup inspiring no idle talk, no sinful urge; and there shall wait on them young boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearls.
Quran 52:13-24, Dawood, p. 370
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Reclining there upon soft couches, they shall feel neither the scorching heat nor the biting cold. Trees will spread their shade around them, and fruits will hang in clusters over them. They shall be served with silver dishes, and beakers as large as goblets; silver goblets which they themselves shall measure: and cups brim-full with ginger-flavoured water from a fount called Salsabil. They shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth, who to the beholders eyes will seem like sprinkled pearls. When you gave upon that scene, you will behold a kingdom blissful and glorious.
Quran 76:9-20, Dawood, p. 414
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Quotes by and about Some of Islam's Most Famous Spokesmen
[Muhammad] said, "...fight everyone in the way of God and kill those who disbelieve in God..."
Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, p. 672
Allah's Apostle [Muhammad] said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand."
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220
The Prophet used to go round (have sexual relations with) all his wives in one night, and he had nine wives.
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 6
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).
It is better for a girl to marry in such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband's house rather than her father's home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.
Ayatollah Khomeini
(Quote taken from Khomeini's book, Tahrirolvasyleh, vol. 4, Darol Elm, Gom, Iran, 1990, Source: Homa For more sensational and outrageous quotes regarding "taboo" issues, please see the Homa website.)
If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, an ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrements become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed and as quickly as possible and burned.
Ayatollah Khomeini
(From The Little Green Book: Sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini, Political, Phylosophica, Social and Religious, with a special introduction by Clive Irving, ISBN number0-553-14032-9, page 47 Source: Soma)
Eleven things are impure: urine, excrement, sperm...non-Moslem men and women...and the sweat of an excrement-eating camel.
Ayatollah Khomeini (From The Little Green Book, Source: Harwood's Mythology's Last Gods, 175)
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 6, Number 301
Commentary on the Koran and Islam
Mohammed promised his followers seven heavens in which:
They are to cohabit with demure virgins...as beauteous as corals and rubies...full-breasted maidens for playmates...in the gardens of delight.... They're to lie face to face on jewelled couches, and be serviced by immortal youths...young boys, their personal property, as comely as virgin pearls.... We created the houris [dancing girls] and made them virgins, carnal playmates for those on the right hand.... We are going to wed them to dark-eyed houris. [The Koran 55:56; 55:58; 78:33; 56:12; 52:16-17, 24; 56:35-38; 52:20]
Each Muslim man, in exchange for a lifetime of mindless obedience, was to be rewarded after death with an unspecified number of pretty boys to bugger, plus eight heavenly houris, each more phallus-raising than the others and each endowed with the capacity to grow a new hymen after each bout of sexual recreation. The male chauvinist Muslim could thus satisfy his virginity fetish by deflowering them over and over again, for eternity. When one compares Mohammed's gardens of delight with the Christian heaven of harps and celibacy, it becomes apparent why significant numbers of Christian men turn Muslim while conversions the other way are almost non-existent.
William Harwood, Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, 248
The thought of an old man becoming aroused by a child is one of the most disturbing thoughts that makes us cringe as it reminds us of pedophilia and the most despicable people. It is difficult to accept that the Holy Prophet [Mohammed] married Aisha when she was 6-years-old and consummated his marriage with her when she was 9. He was then, 54 years old.
In 1992, Islamic assassins had gunned down my good and brave friend Farag Foda, a professor and columnist, a human-rights activist, and an outspoken critic of the Islamic militants. The murder had shocked Cairo and terrified intellectuals... Egypt's most popular preacher, Abdel Hamid Kishk, a blind sheikh who constantly attacked both the government and its official religious establishment...had been telling his audience that Muslims who entered paradise would enjoy eternal erections and the company of young boys draped in earrings and necklaces. Some of the ulema, the religious scholars at al-Azhar University, the governments seat of Islamic learning, had disagreed. Yes, they said, men in paradise would have erections, but merely protracted, not perpetual. Other experts disputed the possibility of pederasty in paradise. "Is this what concerns Muslims at the end of the 20th century?" [Farag] Foda asked in a column in October magazine. "The world around us is busy with the conquest of space, genetic engineering and the wonders of the computer, while Muslim scholars," he wrote in sadness and pain, "were worried about sex in paradise."... he was killed.
Judith Miller
Sharia Law practically means: stoning of women for "honor" offences including for the "crime" of having been raped; beheadings for apostasy or blasphemy hand/foot amputations for "lesser" offences; public hanging of homosexuals and outspoken women; incessant war against infidels and especially Jews; black slavery; female sexual slavery; FGM [female genital mutiliation]; no democracy; no human rights; everyone down on their knees; Mullahs as Gods; non-Muslims as dhimmis; no music except for drums (ask "Cat Stevens"); no dancing; public floggings for "sexual crimes" such as flirting or speaking with an unrelated person of the opposite sex; all women under the veil; prison rape-brothels run by the Mullahs; and so forth. It is perhaps the most cruel and violent system of human life and social organization which has so far been invented, and it came to the world from those populations once only living in the desert "dead heart of Arabia", but now lording over gigantic sums of oil-wealth, and spreading their vile doctrines all around the world.
James DeMeo
[The Koran is one of] the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known.
William Muir
Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam’s first two centuries - they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What’s more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the stand Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God.... What the Yemeni Korans seems to suggest, Puin began to feel, was an evolving text rather than simply the Word of God as revealed in its entirety to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century A.D.
Toby Lester
So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God’s unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana’a fragments will help us do that.
Gerd-R. Puin
The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic texts is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed.
Andrew Rippin
To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community. The Koran is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. And ideally though obviously not always in reality Islamic history has been the effort to pursue and work out the commandments of the Koran in human life. If the Koran is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless.
R. Stephen Humphreys
There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century.
Michael Cook
My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants.
Gerd-R. Puin
...until the Crusades Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and... only then did it receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first Caliphs are mythical figures.
N.A. Morozov
...the history of early-medieval Arabia is nearly all legend. Like Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and other founders of patriarchal religions, Mohammed lacks real verification. There is no reliable information about his life or teachings. Most stories about him are as apocryphal as the story that his coffin hangs forever in mid-air "between heaven and earth," like the bodies of ancient sacred kings.
Barbara Walker
The only real source of historical information about pre-Islamic Mecca and the circumstances of the Koran's revelation is the classical Islamic story about the religion's foundation...
Toby Lester
The Koran claims for itself that it is "mubeen," or clear. But if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesnt make sense. Many Muslims and Orientalists will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible.
Gerd-R. Puin
[The canonization of the Koran involved the] attribution of several, partially overlapping, collections of logia [sayings] (exhibiting a distinctly Mosaic imprint) to the image of a Biblical prophet (modified by the material of the Muhammadan evangelium into an Arabian man of God) with a traditional message of salvation (modified by the influence of Rabbinic Judaism into the unmediated and finally immutable word of God).
John Wansbrough
...the prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein...devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology.... [T]he Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti...repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called myth-making and miracle-mongering.
Toby Lester
...it is time [for Islam] to assume, along with all of the great cultural traditions, the modern risks of scientific knowledge.
Mohammed Arkoun
For a long time scholars have considered Islamic origins as basically unproblematic. It seemed fairly straightforward: the founder was a figure of relatively recent history, amply documented, and many of his own writings and sayings survived. True, there had been a frenzy of fabrication, but early Muslim scholars themselves had seen this early on and moved to weed out spurious hadith (traditions of the founder's sayings and deeds). What was left seemed ample enough, as did the text of the Koran, the revelation of Allah to Muhammad. Even if one could not confess with Muslims a belief in the divine inspiration (actually, dictation) of the Koran, one still agreed the text preserved the preachments of Muhammad. The most recent generation of students of Islam, however, have broken with this consensus. Gunter Luling is joined by many in his opinion that Western scholars of Islam and the Koran had simply accepted the official party line of Muslim jurists and theologians regarding the sources for Muhammad and early Islamic history.... In fact, Western Islamicists had done everything but accept the Koran as the revealed Word of God. In retrospect one wonders why they balked at this last step!...
The Koran was assembled from a variety of prior Hagarene texts (hence the contradictionsre Jesus' death) in order to provide the Moses-like Muhammad with a Torah of his own....
[T]his means that all we thought we knew of the Prophet Muhammad is really a mass of fictive legal precedents meant to anchor this or that Islamic practice once Muhammad had been recast as an Arab Moses. And the question of the origin of the Koran is no longer "from Allah?" or "from Muhammad?" but rather "from Muhammad?" or "from countless unnamed Hagarene jurists?"... And it becomes equally evident that the line between the Koran and the hadith must be erased, for both alike are now seen to be repositories of sayings fictively attributed to the Prophet and transmitted by word of mouth before being codified in canonical written form.
Robert M. Price
Sharia [Islamic law] is totally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Women are inferior under Islamic law—their testimony in a court of law is worth half that of a man; their movement is strictly restricted; they cannot marry non-Muslims. Non-Muslims living in Muslim countries also have inferior status under Islamic law; they may not testify against a Muslim. In Saudi Arabia, following a tradition of Muhammad, who said that "two religions cannot exist in the country of Arabia," non-Muslims are forbidden to practice their religion, build houses of worship, possess religious texts, etc. Non-believers or atheists in Muslim countries do not have "the right to life"; all the major law schools, whether Sunni or Shia, agree that they are to be killed. (Muslim doctors of law generally divide sins into great sins and little sins. Of the 17 great sins, unbelief is the greatest, more heinous than murder, theft, adultery, etc.) Slavery is recognized as legitimate in the Koran. Muslim men are allowed to cohabit with any of their female slaves, and they are allowed to take possession even of married female slaves. One does not have the right to change one’s religion if one is born into a Muslim family; here is how the great commentator Baydawi sees the matter: "Whosoever turns back from his belief, openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever you find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard." And here are the punishments in store for transgressors against the Holy Law: amputation, flogging, crucifixion, and stoning to death.
Ibn Warraq, "The Two Faces of Feisal Rauf"
Islamists are attempting to impose Shariah Compliant Finance (SCF) on Western institutions to use our own financial strengths against us. The most serious problem with SCF is that it legitimates and institutionalizes Shariah law (i.e., Islamic law), a theo-political-legal doctrine violently opposed to Western values. With $1-$2 trillion petrodollars annually looking for an investment home, blind exuberance is driving financial institutions to adopt SCF, without even a minimal baseline for legal compliance. This willful blindness, and lack of both transparency and due diligence may cause SCF to be the next sub-prime crisis, but this time with deadly consequences.
Legal Risks: Western financial institutions which adopt SCF may have criminal and civil exposure to claims of aiding and abetting sedition and the material support of terrorism, securities fraud, consumer fraud, racketeering, and antitrust violations, as well as exposure to tort claims for sedition and terrorism, and for the violation of internationally recognized norms of the law of nations.
Christopher Holton, Shariah Finance Watch
...sharia finance [is] the most serious--and most notorious--example of Islamic separatism. But who cares about that, when there is so much money to be made? ..."Islamic finance has rapidly emerged as one of the most dynamic segments of the global financial services industry and is today a global phenomenon. There are Islamic finance institutions operating in over 75 countries and with assets estimated at around US$700 billion, a figure which is growing at a rate of about 15% a year." With a May 2008 report declaring that approximately $4 trillion was available for investment in the Middle East, Islamic separatism in the form of sharia finance has become a big businesss--with Western financial institutions hurrying to get in on it by accommodating Muslims in setting up parallels financing structures in the West....
What's more, sharia finance is another tool of Islamic separatism; instead of assimilating into American society, Muslims are demanding, and receiving, parallel financial institutions that reinforce the idea that they are unique, not subject to the laws and norms to which the rest of us are subject--a privileged class. At the same time, sharia finance initiatives are giving Islamic interests increased control over Western economic life.
...what will be the outcome of this kind of thing? Holton predicts that "at best, the result could be Muslim enclaves in Western communities in which sharia supercedes native law." Or "at worst, sharia could start to creep into our lives and laws, changing our way of life little by little over time." That would be entirely in line with the stealth jihad goal of Islamizing American society.
The agents of this societal change are, all too often, Islamic scholars who have made no secret of their support for Islamic supremacism, whether advanced by violent or non-violent means. Holton notes that Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who has served on the Board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index (IMANX) and still holds a place on the sharia Advisory Board of several international financial institutions, explains that "the purpose of Jihad aims at breaking the grandeur of unbelievers and establish[ing] that of Muslims." He further insists that Muslims in Western countries "must live in peace until strong enough to wage Jihad"--and once they are strong enough, they will "establish the supremacy of Islam."
Robert Spencer, Stealth Jihad, 182, 185, 187
Recommended Reading
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The Religion of Peace again provides details into the myths surrounding Islam that are perpetuated by members of the Left:
TheReligionofPeace.com Presents:
Muslims often complain of popular "misconceptions" about their religion in the West.
We took a hard look, however, and found that the most prevalent myths of Islam are the ones held by Muslims and Western apologists. The only glaring exception to this is the misconception that all Muslims are alike (they aren't, of course), but even Muslims often believe this as well, as evidenced by the various contrary factions insisting that they are the true Muslims, while those who disagree with them are either infidels, hijackers, or hypocrites.
Don't be fooled! Hear the myths, but know the truth.
Islam Means ‘Peace’
The Myth:
Lesser educated Muslims sometimes claim that the root word of Islam is “al-Salaam,” which is “peace” in Arabic.
The Truth:
An Arabic word only has one root. The root word for Islam is “al-Silm,” which means “submission” or “surrender.” There is no disagreement about this among Islamic scholars. al-Silm (submission) does not mean the same thing as al-Salaam (peace), otherwise they would be the same word.
Submission and peace can be very different concepts, even if a form of peace is often brought about through forcing others into submission. As the modern-day Islamic scholar, Ibrahim Sulaiman, puts it, "Jihad is not inhumane, despite its necessary violence and bloodshed, its ultimate desire is peace which is protected and enhanced by the rule of law."
In truth, the Quran not only calls Muslims to submit to Allah, it also commands them to subdue people of other religions until they are in a full state of submission to Islamic rule. This has inspired the aggressive history of Islam and its success in conquering other cultures.
Islam Respects Women as Equals
The Myth:
The Quran places men and women on equal foundation before Allah. Each person is judged according to his or her own deeds. Women have equal rights under Islamic law.
The Truth:
Merely stating that individuals will be judged as such by Allah does not mean that they have equal rights and roles, or that they are judged by the same standards.
There is no ambiguity in the Quran, the life of Muhammad, or Islamic law as to the inferiority of women to men despite the efforts of modern-day apologists to salvage Western-style feminism from scraps and fragments of verses that have historically held no such progressive interpretation.
After military conquests, Muhammad would dole out captured women as war prizes to his men. In at least one case, he advocated that they be raped in front of their husbands. Captured women were made into sex slaves by the very men who killed their husbands and brothers. There are four Quranic verses in which "Allah" makes clear that a Muslim master has full sexual access to his female slaves, yet there is not one that prohibits rape.
The Quran gives Muslim men permission to beat their wives for disobedience, but nowhere does it command love in marriage. It plainly says that husbands are “a degree above” wives. The Hadith says that women are intellectually inferior, and that they comprise the majority of Hell’s occupants.
Under Islamic law, a man may divorce his wife at his choosing. If he does this twice, then wishes to remarry her, she must first have sex with another man. Men are exempt from such degradations.
Muslim women are not free to marry whom they please, as are Muslim men. Their husband may also bring other wives (and slaves) into the marriage bed. And she must be sexually available to him at any time (as a field ready to be “tilled,” according to the holy book of Islam).
Muslim women do not inherit property in equal portion to males. This is somewhat ironic given that Islam owes its existence to the wealth of Muhammad's first wife, which would not otherwise have been inherited by her given that she had two brothers and her first husband had three sons.
A woman's testimony in court is considered to be worth only half that of a man’s, according to the Quran. Unlike a man, she must also cover her head - and often her face.
If a woman wants to prove that she was raped, then there must be four male witnesses to corroborate her account. Otherwise she can be jailed or stoned to death for confessing to “adultery.”
Given all of this, it is quite a stretch to say that men and women have “equality under Islam” based on obscure theological analogies or comparisons. This is an entirely new ploy that is designed for modern tastes and disagrees sharply with the reality of Islamic law and history.
Further Reading from the Quran:
Jihad Means 'Inner Struggle'
The Myth:
Islam’s Western apologists sometimes claim that since the Arabic word, Jihad, literally means “fight” or “struggle,” it refers to an “inner struggle” rather than holy war.
The Truth:
In Arabic, "jihad" means struggle. In Islam, it means holy war.
The Quran specifically exempts the disabled and elderly from Jihad (4:95), which would make no sense if the word is being used merely within the context of spiritual struggle. It is also unclear why Muhammad and his Quran would use graphic language, such as smiting fingers and heads from the hands and necks of unbelievers if he were speaking merely of character development.
With this in mind, Muslim apologists generally admit that there are two meanings to the word, but insist that “inner struggle” is the “greater Jihad,” whereas “holy war” is the “lesser.” In fact, this misconception is based only on an a single hadith that Islamic scholars generally agreed was fabricated.
By contrast, the most reliable of all Hadith collections is that of Bukhari. Jihad is mentioned over 200 times in reference to the words of Muhammad and each one carries a clear connotation to holy war, with only a handful of possible exceptions (dealing with a woman's supporting role during a time of holy war).
Further Reading:
Islam is a Religion of Peace
The Myth:
Muhammad was a peaceful man who taught his followers to be the same. Muslims lived peacefully for centuries, fighting only in self-defense, and only when it was necessary. True Muslims would never act aggressively.
The Truth:
There shouldn't be any argument over who the "true Muslim" is because the Quran clearly distinguishes the true Muslim from the pretender in Sura 9 and elsewhere. According to this - one of the last chapters of the Quran - the true believer "strives and fights with their wealth and persons" while the hypocrites are those who "sit at home," refusing to join the jihad against unbelievers in foreign lands.
In truth, Muhammad organized 65 military campaigns in the last ten years of his life and personally led 27 of them. The more power that he attained, the smaller the excuse needed to go to battle, until finally he began attacking tribes merely because they were not yet part of his growing empire.
After Muhammad’s death, his successor immediately went to war with former allied tribes which wanted to go their own way. Abu Bakr called them 'apostates' and slaughtered anyone who did not want to remain Muslim. Eventually, he was successful in holding the empire together through blood and violence.
The prophet of Islam's most faithful followers and even his own family soon turned on each other as well. There were four caliphs (leaders) in the first twenty-five years, each of which was a trusted companion of his. Three of these four were murdered. The third caliph was murdered by those allied with the son of the first caliph. The fourth caliph was murdered in the midst of a conflict with the fifth caliph, who began a 100-year dynasty of excess and debauchery that was brought to an end in a gruesome, widespread bloodbath by descendants of Muhammad’s uncle (who was not even a Muslim).
Muhammad’s own daughter, Fatima, and his son-in-law, Ali, who both survived the pagan hardship during the Meccan years safe and sound, did not survive Islam after the death of Muhammad. Fatima died of stress from persecution within three months, and Ali was later assassinated by Muslim rivals. Their son (Muhammad’s grandson) was killed in battle with the faction that became today’s Sunnis. His people became Shias. The relatives and personal friends of Muhammad were mixed into both warring groups, which then fractured further into hostile sub-divisions as Islam expanded.
Muslim apologists, who like to say that is impossible for today's terrorists to be Muslim when they kill fellow Muslims, would have a very tough time explaining the war between Fatima's followers and Aisha to a knowledgeable audience. Muhammad explicitly held up both his favorite daughter and his favorite wife as model Muslim women, yet they were invoked respectively by each side in the violent civil war that followed his death. Which one was the prophet of God so horribly wrong about?
Muhammad left his men with instructions to take the battle against Christians, Persians, Jews and polytheists (which came to include millions of unfortunate Hindus). For the next four centuries, Muslim armies steamrolled over unsuspecting neighbors, plundering them of loot and slaves, and forcing the survivors to either convert or pay tribute at the point of a sword.
Companions of Muhammad lived to see Islam declare war on every major religion in the world in just the first few decades following his death - pressing the Jihad against Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Buddhists.
By the time of the Crusades (when the Europeans began fighting back), Muslims had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world by sword, from Syria to Spain, and across North Africa. Millions of Christians were enslaved by Muslims, and tens of millions of Africans. The Arab slave-trading routes would stay open for 1300 years until pressure from Christian-based countries forced Islamic nations to declare the practice illegal (in theory). To this day, the Muslim world has never apologized for the victims of Jihad and slavery.
There is not another religion in the world that consistently produces terrorism in the name of God as does Islam. The most dangerous Muslims are nearly always those who interpret the Quran most transparently. They are the fundamentalists or purists of the faith, and believe in Muhammad’s mandate to spread Islamic rule by the sword, putting to death those who will not submit. In the absence of true infidels, they will even turn on each other.
The holy texts of Islam are saturated with verses of violence and hatred toward those outside the faith, as well as the aforementioned "hypocrites" (Muslims who don't act like Muslims). In sharp contrast to the Bible, which generally moves from relatively violent episodes to far more peaceful mandates, the Quran travels the exact opposite path (violence is first forbidden, then permitted, then mandatory). The handful of earlier verses that speak of tolerance are overwhelmed by an avalanche of later ones that carry a much different message. While Old Testament verses of blood and guts are generally bound by historical context within the text itself, Quranic imperatives to violence usually appear open-ended and subject to personal interpretation.
From the history of the faith to its most sacred writings, those who want to believe in "peaceful Islam" have a lot more to ignore than do the terrorists. By any objective measure, the "Religion of Peace" has been the harshest, bloodiest religion the world has ever known. In Islam there is no peace unless Muslims have power - and even then...
Further Reading:
Islam is Tolerant of Other Religions
The Myth:
Religious minorities have flourished under Islam. Muslims are commanded to protect Jews and Christians (the People of the Book) and do them no harm. The Quran says in Sura 109,"To you, your religion. To me, mine."
The Truth:
Religious minorities have not “flourished” under Islam. In fact, they have dwindled to mere shadows after centuries of persecution and discrimination. Some were converted from their native religion by brute force, others under the agonizing strain of dhimmitude.
What Muslims call “tolerance,” others correctly identify as institutionalized discrimination. The consignment of Jews and Christians to dhimmis under Islamic rule means that they are not allowed the same religious rights and freedoms as Muslims. They cannot share their faith, for example, or build houses of worship without permission.
Historically, dhimmis have often had to wear distinguishing clothing or cut their hair in a particular manner that indicates their position of inferiority and humiliation. They do not share the same legal rights as Muslims, and must even pay a poll tax (the jizya). They are to be killed or have their children taken from them if they cannot satisfy the tax collector’s requirements.
For hundreds of years, the Christian population in occupied Europe had their sons taken away and forcibly converted into Muslim warriors (known as Jannisaries) by the Ottoman Turks.
It is under this burden of discrimination and third-class status that so many religious minorities converted to Islam over the centuries. Those who didn’t often faced economic and social hardships that persist to this day and are appalling by Western standards of true religious tolerance and pluralism.
For those who are not “the People of the Book,” such as Hindus and atheists, there is very little tolerance to be found once Islam establishes political superiority. The Quran tells Muslims to “fight in the way of Allah” until “religion is only for Allah.” The conquered populations face death if they do not establish regular prayer and charity in the Islamic tradition (ie. the pillars of Islam).
One of the great ironies of Islam is that non-Muslims are to be treated according to the very standards by which Muslims themselves would claim the right to violent self-defense were the shoe on the other foot. Islam is its own justification. Most Muslims therefore feel no need to explain the ingrained arrogance and double standard.
There are about 500 verses in the Quran that speak of Allah’s hatred for non-Muslims and the punishment that he has prepared for their unbelief. There is also a tiny handful that say otherwise, but these are mostly earlier verses that many scholars consider to be abrogated by the later, more violent ones.
As for Sura 109, any true Quran scholar will point out that the purpose of the verse was to distinguish Islam from the gods of the Quraysh (one of which was named "Allah") rather than to advocate religious tolerance for non-Muslims. At the time that he narrated this very early verse, Muhammad did not have any power, and thus no choice but to be "tolerant" of others. By contrast, there was no true tolerance shown when he returned to Mecca with power many years later and demanded the eviction or death of anyone who would not convert to Islam. In fact, he physically destroyed the cherished idols of the people to whom he had previously addressed in Sura 109.
If tolerance simply means discouraging the mass slaughter of those of a different faith, then today's Islam generally meets this standard more often than not. But, if tolerance means allowing people of other faiths the same religious liberties that Muslims enjoy, then Islam is fundamentally the most intolerant religion under the sun.
Islam and the “Golden Age” of Scientific Discovery
The Myth:
Muslims often claim that their religion fostered a rich heritage of scientific discovery, “paving the way” for modern advances in technology and medicine. On this topic, they usually refer to the period between the 7th and 13th centuries, when Europe was experiencing its “Dark Ages” and the Muslim world was acquiring new populations and culture through violent conquest.
The Truth:
Although there is no arguing that the Muslim world was relatively more advanced during this period than the “Christian” world, the reasons for this have absolutely nothing to do with the Islamic religion (other than its mandate for military expansion). In fact, the religion tends to discourages knowledge outside of itself, which is why the most prolific Muslim scholars are usually students of religion rather than science.
[Note that the country of Spain alone translates more learning material and literature into Spanish each year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the 9th century. As the Saudi Grand Mufti bluntly put it in 2010, "The Quran with its stories and knowledge are sufficient for us... we don't need the Torah, or Gospels, or any other book].
The many fundamentalists and other devotees who dress as Muhammad did and adopt 7th century lifestyles to some degree or another underscore the importance of tradition in Islam. The religion is highly conservative and resistant to change, which is viewed with suspicion. As scholar Bernard Lewis points out, in Islam an innovation is presumed to be bad unless it can be proven to be good.
Beyond this, there are four basic reasons why Islam has little true claim to scientific achievement:
- First, the Muslim world benefited greatly from the Greek sciences, which were translated for them by Christians and Jews. To their credit, Muslims did a better job of preserving Greek text than did the Europeans of the time, and this became the foundation for their own knowledge. (One large reason for this, however, was that access by Christians to this part of their world was cut off by Muslim slave ships and coastal raids that dominated the Mediterranean during this period).
- Secondly, many of the scientific advances credited to Islam were actually “borrowed” from other cultures conquered by the Muslims. The algebraic concept of “zero”, for example, is erroneously attributed to Islam when, in fact, it was a Hindu discovery that was merely introduced to the West by Muslims. In truth, conquered populations contributed greatly to the history of “Muslim science” until gradually being decimated by conversion to Islam (under the pressures of dhimmitude). The Muslim concentration within a population is proportional to the decline of scientific achievement. It is no accident that the Muslim world has had little to show for itself in the last 800 years or so, since running out of new civilizations to cannibalize.
- Third, even accomplished Muslim scientists and cultural icons were often considered heretics in their day, sometimes with good reason. One of the greatest achievers to come out of the Muslim world was the Persian scientist and philosopher, al-Razi. His impressive works are often held up today as “proof” of Muslim accomplishment. But what the apologists often leave out is that al-Razi was denounced as a blasphemer, since he followed his own religious beliefs – which were in obvious contradiction to traditional Islam.
- Fourth, even the contributions that are attributed to Islam (often inaccurately) are not terribly dramatic. There is the invention of certain words, such as alchemy and elixir (and assassin, by the way), but not much else that survives in modern technology which is of practical significance. Neither is there any reason to believe that such discoveries would not have easily been made by the West following the cultural awakening triggered by the Reformation. As an example, consider that Muslims claim credit for "inventing" coffee - in the sense that they popularized an existing discovery by Africans who were caught up in the Arab slave trade. However, it is also true that the red dye used in many food products, from cranberry juice to candy, comes from the abdomen of a particular female beetle found in South America. It is extremely unlikely that the West would not have stumbled across coffee by now (although, to be fair, coffee probably expedited subsequent discoveries).
In fact, the litany of “Muslim” achievement often takes the form of rhapsody, in which the true origins of these discoveries are omitted - along with their comparative significance to Western achievement. One often doesn't hear about the dismal fate of original accomplishments either. Those who brag about the great observatory of Taqi al-Din in [freshly conquered] Istanbul, for example, often neglect to mention that it was quickly destroyed by the caliphate.
At the end of the day, the record of scientific, medical and technological accomplishment is not something over which Muslim apologists want to get into a contest with the Christian world. Today’s Islamic innovators are primarily known for turning Western technology, such as cell phones and airplanes, into instruments of mass murder.
To sum up, although the Islamic religion is not entirely hostile to science, neither should it be confused as a facilitator. The great achievements that are said to have come out of the Islamic world were made either by non-Muslims who happened to be under Islamic rule, or by heretics who usually had little interest in Islam. Scientific discovery tapers off dramatically as Islam asserts dominance, until it eventually peters out altogether.
Islam is Opposed to Slavery
The Myth:
Islam is intolerant of enslaving human beings. The religion eradicated the institution of slavery thanks to the principles set in motion by Muhammad, who was an abolitionist.
The Truth:
There is not the least bit of intolerance for slavery anywhere in the Quran. In fact, the “holy” book of Islam explicitly gives slave-owners the freedom to sexually exploit their slaves – not just in one place, but in at least four separate Suras. Islamic law is littered with rules concerning the treatment of slaves, some of which are relatively humane, but none that prohibit the actual practice by any stretch.
The very presence of these rules condones and legitimizes the institution of slavery. Adding to this is the fact that Muhammad was an avid slave trader. After providing ample evidence of his activities according to the most reliable Muslim biographers, the Center of the Study of Political Islam summarizes its findings as such:
Muhammad captured slaves, sold slaves, bought slaves as gifts of pleasure, received slaves as gifts, and used slaves for work. The Sira is exquisitely clear on the issue of slavery. (Muhammad and the Unbelievers: a Political Life)
Even the very pulpit from which Muhammad preached Islam was built by slave labor on his command!
91 verses in the Quran tell Muslims to emulate the example of Muhammad. As such, the deeply dehumanizing horror of slavery has been a ubiquitous tradition of Islam for 14 centuries, including the modern plight of non-Muslim slaves in the Sudan, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and other parts of the Muslim world.
There has never been an abolitionary movement within Islam (just as the religion produces no organized resistance to present-day enslavement). The abolition of slavery was imposed on the Islamic world by European countries, along with other political pressures that were entirely unrelated to Islamic law.
Although horrible abuses of slaves in the Muslim world were recorded, there has been little inclination toward the documentation and earnest contrition that one finds in the West. The absence of a guilty Muslim conscience often leads to the mistaken impression that slavery was not as bad under Islam - when it is actually indicative of the explicit tolerance the religion has for the practice
So narcissistic is the effect of Islam on the devoted, that to this day many Muslims believe in their hearts that the women and children carried off in battle, along with their surviving men folk, were actually done a favor by the Muslim warriors who plucked them from their fields and homes and relegated them to lives of demeaning servitude.
Shame and apology, no matter how appropriate, are almost never to be found in Dar al-Islam. Caliphs, the religious equivalent of popes, maintained harems of hundreds, sometimes thousands of young girls and women captured from lands as far away as Europe and consigned to sexual slavery. Hungarians were hunted like animals by the Turks, who carried 3 million into slavery over a 150 year period in the 1500-1600's. In India, 200,000 Hindus were captured and transported to Iranian slave markets in just a two year span (1619-1620) by one of the kinder Muslim rulers.
African slaves were often castrated by their Muslim masters. Few survived to reproduce, which is why there are not many people of African descent living in the Middle East, even though more slaves were taken out of Africa in the 1300 years of Arab slave trading than in the 300 years of European slavery. The 400,000 slaves brought to America, for example, have now become a community of 30 million, with a much higher standard of living than their African peers.
There is no William Wilberforce or Bartoleme de las Casas in Islamic history as there is in Christianity. When asked to produce the name of a Muslim abolitionist, apologists sometimes meekly suggest Muhammad himself. But, if a slave owner and trader, who commanded the capture and sexual exploitation of slaves, and left a 13-century legacy of divinely-sanctioned slavery, is the best that Islam can offer in the way of an abolitionist, then no amount of sophistry will be enough to convince any but the most ignorant.
Further Reading:
Islam is Completely Incompatible with Terrorism
The Myth:
Islam is completely incompatible with acts of terrorism. It is against Islam to kill innocent people.
The Truth:
Islam does prohibit killing innocent people. Unfortunately, you don't qualify.
Even though many Muslims earnestly believe that their religion prohibits the killing of innocent people by acts of terrorism, the truth is certainly more complicated. This is why Muslims on both sides of the terror debate accuse the other of hijacking Islam while insisting that they are the true believers. It is also why organizations that commit horrible atrocities in the name of Allah, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, receive a significant amount of moral and financial support from the mainstream.
In fact, the definition of "terrorism" in Islam is ambiguous at best. And the definition of an “innocent person” in Islam isn't something that Muslim apologists advertise when they say that such persons aren't to be harmed. The reason for this is that anyone who rejects Muhammad is not considered to be innocent according to Islamic teaching.
Consider that a great deal of the Quran is devoted to describing the horrible punishment that awaits those who refuse to become Muslim. How then can Muslims say that the subjects of divine wrath are innocent persons?
The most protected and respected of all non-Muslims are the dhimma, the “people of the book.” Specifically , these would be Jews and Christians who agree to Islamic rule and pay the jizya (tribute to Muslims). Yet, the word “dhimmi” is derived from an Arabic root that means “guilt” or "blame." ["...the dhimmi parent and sister words mean both 'to blame' as well as safeguards that can be extended to protect the blameworthy" Amitav Ghosh, "In an Antique Land"].
So, if even the dhimma have a measure of guilt attached to their status (by virtue of having rejected Allah’s full truth), how can non-Muslims who oppose Islamic rule or refuse to pay thejizya be considered “innocent?”
Even within the Islamic community there is a category of Muslims who are also said to bear guilt – greater, even, than the average non-believer. These are the hypocrites, or “Munafiqin,” whom Muhammad referred to in the most derogatory terms. A hypocrite is considered to be a Muslim in name only. They are distinguished from true Muslims, according to the 9th Sura, by an unwillingness to wage (v.81, 86) or fund (v.121) holy war. True believers fight and are harsh to unbelievers (v.123).
The Muslim terrorists who frequently kill "other Muslims" in the name of Allah do so believing that their victims are Munafiqin or kafir (unbelievers). This is a part of Sharia known as takfir,in which a Muslim can be declared an apostate and then executed for their role in hindering the expansion of Islamic authority. (A true Muslim would go to paradise anyway, in which case he or she could hardly be expected to nurse a grudge amidst the orgy of sex and wine).
In addition to the murky definition of innocence, there is also the problem of distinguishing terrorism from holy war. Islamic terrorists rarely refer to themselves as terrorists, but usually say that they are holy warriors (Mujahideen, Shahid, or Fedayeen). They consider their acts to be a form of Jihad.
Holy war is commanded in the Quran and Hadith. In Sura 9:29, Muhammad establishes the principle that unbelievers should be fought until they either convert to Islam or accept a state of humiliation under Islamic subjugation. This is confirmed in the Hadith by both Sahih Muslimand Bukhari.
In many places, the prophet of Islam says that Jihad is the ideal path for a Muslim, and that believers should “fight in the way of Allah.” There are dozens of open-ended passages in the Quran that exhort killing and fighting – far more than there are of peace and tolerance. It is somewhat naïve to think that their inclusion in this "eternal discourse between God and Man" was of historical value only and not intended to be relevant to present-day believers, particularly when there is little to nothing within the text to distinguish them in such fashion.
Combine the Quran's exhortation to holy war with the ambiguity of innocence and a monumental problem develops that cannot be patched over by mere semantics. Not only is there a deep tolerance for violence in Islam, but also a sharp disagreement and lack of clarity over the conditions that justify this violence - and just whom the targets may be.
Even many of those Muslims who claim to be against terrorism still support the “insurgency” in Iraq, for example, and often entertain the allegation that there is a broader “war against Islam.” Although American troops in Iraq were trying to protect innocent life and help the country rebuild, Muslims around the world and in the West believe that it was legitimate for true believers to try and kill them.
Enjoying the sanction of holy war, the Mujahid thus reasoned that it is permissible to attack fellow Iraqis – the ones helping the Americans - even if they are part of a democratically-elected Iraqi government. These non-combatants and combatants alike are believed to be the “Munafiqin” or "Takfir" assisting the enemy “Crusaders.”
Although we use Iraq as an example here, this is the same rationale that is ultimately behind all Islamic terror, from the Philippines to Thailand. Wherever the Muslim religion is a minority, there are always radicals who believe that violence is justified in bringing Islam to dominance - just as Muhammad taught and set by example in Mecca and other places, such as the land of al-Harith.
And what of the so-called “innocents” who suffer from the bombings and shootings? Even in Muhammad’s time they were unavoidable. The much-touted hadith in which Muhammad forbade the killing of women, for example, also indicates that there were such casualties in his attacks on other tribes.
If there is any doubt that he believed that the forbidden is sometimes necessary, it should be put to rest by an incident in which Muhammad's men warned him that a planned night raid against an enemy camp would mean that women and children would be killed. He merely replied “they are of them,” meaning the men.
This is the slippery slope opened by the sanction of holy war. What starts out as the perception of a noble cause of self-defense against a supposed threat gradually devolves into a "let Allah sort them out" campaign through a series of logical steps that are ultimately justified by the sublime goal of Islamic rule.
Islam is not intended to co-exist as an equal with other religions. It is to be the dominant religion with Sharia as the supreme law. Islamic rule is to be extended to the ends of the earth and resistance is to be dealt with by any means necessary.
Apologists in the West often shrug off the Quran's many verses of violence by saying that they are relevant only in a “time of war.”
To this, Islamic terrorists would agree. They are at war.
Islam is a Democracy
The Myth:
Islam is compatible with democratic principles. The religion itself is a democracy.
The Truth:
A democracy is a system in which all people are judged as equals before the law, regardless of race, religion or gender. The vote of every individual counts as much as the vote of any other. The collective will of the people then determines the rules of society.
Under Islamic law, only Muslim males are entitled to full rights. The standing of a woman is often half that of a man's - sometimes even less. Non-Muslims have no standing with a Muslim. In fact, a Muslim can never be put to death for killing an unbeliever.
The Islamic state is guided by Islamic law, derived from the Quran and Sunnah. A body of clerics interprets the law and applies it to all circumstances social, cultural and political. The people are never to be placed above the Quran and Sunnah any more than man should be above Allah.
It is somewhat debatable as to whether there are any states in the Muslim world that qualify as actual democracies. There is no denying, however, that the tiny handful that are often held up as democratic nations are ones in which deep tension exists between the government and religious leaders, as the latter often complain that democracy is an idolatrous system imposed on them.
Islam does not facilitate democracy.
Further Reading:
The Quran is the Muslim Counterpart to the Bible
The Myth:
The Quran is to Muslims what the Bible is to Christians (and the Torah to Jews).
The Truth:
The Quran only contains what is presented as the literal words of Allah - as relayed by Muhammad. It can be compared to a manufactured text that includes only the words of Jesus (the so-called "red-letter" verses) extracted from their New Testament historical context and then randomly mixed together (the chapters of the Quran are arranged by size and themes are rarely consistent even within each chapter).
By contrast, the Bible contains history and biographical detail. For example, there is nothing in the Quran that details Muhammad's life, whereas the Bible contains four books that present all that is known about the biography of Jesus. Another distinction is that when the Bible commands violence - as it does in a handful of Old Testament verses - the intended target is explicitly defined within the passage, leaving little doubt that it is a recounting of history and not an open-ended command for anyone else to do the same.
Despite the rhapsody with which Muslims sing the Quran's praises, there is an obvious reason why only a minority have actually bothered to delve deeper than an occasional sporadic perusal through its pages. The random arrangement of verses and near absence of context makes it difficult to understand. For this reason the Quran is rarely printed without the incorporation of voluminous commentary (that usually expresses the personal preferences of the translator).
In fact, the Muslim counterpart to the Bible is the Quran, Hadith and Sira combined.
The Hadith is a collection of anecdotes and historical snippets of Muhammad's life based on the relayed narrations of those who lived with him. Unfortunately, authenticity varies. But the most dependable compilers are agreed by Muslims scholars to be Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, followed by Abu Dawud. It is on the Hadith that Islamic law (Sharia) is based.
The Sira is the biography of Muhammad's life. Again, there are reliability issues which would appear somewhat bewildering to Christians, given that the gospels were well in place within the first few centuries following the crucifixion - which preceded Muslim history by over 600 years. Still, the most reliable biography of Muhammad was compiled by Ibn Ishaq, who wrote about 150 years after his death. His original work survives only in what was "edited" by a later translator (Ibn Hisham, who admitted that he filtered out several accounts that were of a distasteful nature).
A failure to recognize that the Bible is only comparable to the Quran, Hadith and Sira together often leads to faulty accusation and misplaced analysis.
--
And for those looking to tabulate the number of acts of terrorism on U.S. soil by Islamic Fundamentalist, The Religion of Peace also has data for that as well:
People killed by radical Muslims on 9/11: 2,996 Muslim-Americans killed "in revenge": 1 Thankfully, an American jury sentenced Mark Stroman to death. The same cannot be said of many Muslim terrorists such as Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, who not only have sanctuary in Muslim countries, but are often treated as heroes by devout followers of Muhammad.Of course, 9/11 was neither the first nor the last time that Muslims have killed Americans on U.S. soil in terror attacks. In fact, since that day, Muslims have killed at least 61 people in 36 separate acts of terrorism in the United States (by the standards that Muslim-American groups set for hate crimes). Perhaps more importantly, there have been plenty of mass murder plots against Americans by Islamic terrorists that were thwarted by the FBI, law enforcement and overseas intelligence operations both before and after 9/11, as well as several that were simply botched, such as the attempt to blow up Times Square.By contrast, Muslim-Americans do not appear to be in any special danger from murderous (non-Muslim) religious fanatics, even in a nation awash in firearms. Identity groups, such as CAIR, whine incessantly about relatively trivial incidents while turning a blind eye to the horrible violence that is meted out daily in the name of their religion. This distasteful petulance offers insight not only into the character of Islam, but also the America's impressive religious tolerance.For anyone wondering about the history of deadly Islamic terror on American soil in the last 35 years, here’s what we could find:
Date
|
Country
|
City/State
|
Killed
|
Injured
|
Description
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4/14/1972
|
USA
|
New York, NY
|
1
|
3
|
Ten members of a local mosque phone in a false alarm and then ambush responding officers, killing one.
|
1/19/1973
|
USA
|
Brooklyn, NY
|
1
|
1
|
Muslim extremists rob a sporting goods store for weapons, gunning down a police officer who responds to the alarm.
|
7/1/1973
|
USA
|
Bethesda, MD
|
1
|
0
|
An Israeli diplomat is gunned down in his driveway by Palestinian terrorists.
|
7/18/1973
|
USA
|
Washington, DC
|
8
|
2
|
Nation of Islam members shoot seven members of a family to death in cold blood, including four children. A defendant in the case is later murdered in prison on orders from Elijah Muhammad.
|
10/19/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
1
|
Nation of Islam terrorists kidnap a couple and nearly decapitate the man, while raping and leaving the woman for dead.
|
10/29/1973
|
USA
|
Berkeley, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A woman is shot repeatedly in the face by Nation of Islam terrorists.
|
11/25/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A grocer is killed in his store by Nation of Islam terrorists.
|
12/11/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A man is killed by Nation of Islam terrorists while using a phone booth.
|
12/13/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A woman is shot to death on the sidewalk by Nation of Islam terrorists.
|
12/20/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
0
|
Nation of Islam terrorists gun down an 81-year-old janitor.
|
12/22/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
2
|
0
|
Nation of Islam terrorist kills two people in separate attacks on the same day.
|
12/24/1973
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A man is kidnapped, tortured and decapitated by Nation of Islam terrorists.
|
1/24/1974
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
4
|
1
|
Five vicious shooting attacks by Nation of Islam terrorists leave three people dead and one paralyzed for life. Three of the victims were women.
|
4/1/1974
|
USA
|
Oakland, CA
|
1
|
1
|
A Nation of Islam terrorist shoots at two Salvation Army members, killing a man and injuring a woman.
|
4/16/1974
|
USA
|
Ingleside, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A man is killed while helping a friend move by Nation of Islam terrorists.
|
3/9/1977
|
USA
|
Washington, DC
|
1
|
1
|
Hanifi Muslims storm three buildings including a B'nai B'rith to hold 134 people hostage. At least two innocents were shot and one died.
|
7/22/1980
|
USA
|
Bethesda, MD
|
1
|
0
|
A political dissident is shot and killed in front of his home by an Iranian agent who was an American convert to Islam.
|
8/31/1980
|
USA
|
Savou, IL
|
2
|
0
|
An Iranian student guns down his next-door neighbors, a husband and wife.
|
11/6/1989
|
USA
|
St. Louis, MO
|
1
|
0
|
A 17-year-old girl is stabbed to death by her parents for bringing 'dishonor' to their family by dating an 'infidel' African-American.
|
1/31/1990
|
USA
|
Tuscon, AZ
|
1
|
0
|
A Sunni cleric is assassinated in front of a Tuscon mosque after declaring that two verses of the Qur'an were invalid.
|
11/5/1990
|
USA
|
New York City, NY
|
1
|
0
|
An Israeli rabbi is shot to death by a Muslim attacker at a hotel.
|
1/25/1993
|
USA
|
Langley, VA
|
2
|
3
|
A Pakistani with Mujahideen ties guns down two CIA agents outside of the headquarters.
|
2/26/1993
|
USA
|
New York, NY
|
6
|
1040
|
Islamic terrorists detonate a massive truck bomb under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring over 1,000 in an effort to collapse the towers.
|
3/1/1994
|
USA
|
Brooklyn, NY
|
1
|
0
|
A Muslim gunman targets a van packed with Jewish boys, killing a 16-year-old.
|
3/23/1997
|
USA
|
New York, NY
|
1
|
6
|
A Palestinian leaves an anti-Jewish suicide note behind and travels to the top of the Empire State building where he shoot seven people in a Fedayeen attack.
|
4/3/1997
|
USA
|
Lompoc, CA
|
1
|
0
|
A prison guard is stabbed to death by a radical Muslim.
|
3/17/2000
|
USA
|
Atlanta, GA
|
1
|
1
|
A local imam and Muslim spiritual leader guns down a deputy sheriff and injures his partner.
|
9/11/2001
|
USA
|
New York, NY
|
2752
|
251
|
Islamic hijackers steer two planes packed with fuel and passengers into the World Trade Center, killing hundreds on impact and eventually killing thousands when the towers collapsed. At least 200 are seriously injured.
|
9/11/2001
|
USA
|
Washington, DC
|
184
|
53
|
Nearly 200 people are killed when Islamic hijackers steer a plane full of people into the Pentagon.
|
9/11/2001
|
USA
|
Shanksville, PA
|
40
|
0
|
Forty passengers are killed after Islamic radicals hijack the plane in an attempt to steer it into the U.S. Capitol building.
|
3/19/2002
|
USA
|
Tuscon, AZ
|
1
|
0
|
A 60-year-old man is gunned down by Muslim snipers on a golf course.
|
5/27/2002
|
USA
|
Denton, TX
|
1
|
0
|
Muslim snipers kill a man as he works in his yard.
|
7/4/2002
|
USA
|
Los Angeles, CA
|
2
|
0
|
Muslim man pulls out a gun at the counter of an Israeli airline and kills two people.
|
9/5/2002
|
USA
|
Clinton, MD
|
1
|
0
|
A 55-year-old pizzaria owner is shot six times in the back by Muslims at close range.
|
9/21/2002
|
USA
|
Montgomery, AL
|
1
|
1
|
Muslim snipers shoot two women, killing one.
|
9/23/2002
|
USA
|
Baton Rouge, LA
|
1
|
0
|
A Korean mother is shot in the back by Muslim snipers.
|
10/2/2002
|
USA
|
Wheaton, MD
|
1
|
0
|
Muslim snipers gun down a program analyst in a store parking lot.
|
10/3/2002
|
USA
|
Montgomery County, MD
|
5
|
0
|
Muslim snipers kill three men and two women in separate attacks over a 15-hour period.
|
10/9/2002
|
USA
|
Manassas, VA
|
1
|
1
|
A man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas two days after a 13-year-old is wounded by the same team.
|
10/11/2002
|
USA
|
Fredericksburg, VA
|
1
|
0
|
Another man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas.
|
10/14/2002
|
USA
|
Arlington, VA
|
1
|
0
|
A woman is killed by Muslim snipers in a Home Depot parking lot.
|
10/22/2002
|
USA
|
Aspen Hill, MD
|
1
|
0
|
A bus driver is killed by Muslim snipers.
|
8/6/2003
|
USA
|
Houston, TX
|
1
|
0
|
After undergoing a 'religious revival', a Saudi college student slashes the throat of a Jewish student with a 4" butterfly knife, nearly decapitating the young man.
|
12/2/2003
|
USA
|
Chicago, IL
|
1
|
0
|
A Muslim doctor deliberately allows a Jewish patient to die from an easily treatable condition.
|
4/13/2004
|
USA
|
Raleigh, NC
|
1
|
4
|
An angry Muslim runs down five strangers with a car.
|
4/15/2004
|
USA
|
Scottsville, NY
|
1
|
2
|
In an honor killing, a Muslim father kills his wife and attacks his two daughters with a knife and hammer because he feared that they had been sexually molested.
|
6/16/2006
|
USA
|
Baltimore, MD
|
1
|
0
|
A 62-year-old Jewish moviegoer is shot to death by a Muslim gunman in an unprovoked terror attack.
|
6/25/2006
|
USA
|
Denver, CO
|
1
|
5
|
Saying that it was 'Allah's choice', a Muslim shoots four of his co-workers and a police officer.
|
7/28/2006
|
USA
|
Seattle, WA
|
1
|
5
|
An 'angry' Muslim-American uses a young girl as hostage to enter a local Jewish center, where he shoots six women, one of whom dies.
|
2/13/2007
|
USA
|
Salt Lake City, UT
|
5
|
4
|
A Muslim immigrant goes on a shooting rampage at a mall, targeting people buying Valentine's Day cards at a gift shop and killing five.
|
1/1/2008
|
USA
|
Irving, TX
|
2
|
0
|
A Muslim immigrant shoots his two daughters to death on concerns about their 'Western' lifestyle.
|
7/6/2008
|
USA
|
Jonesboro, GA
|
1
|
0
|
A devout Muslim strangles his 25-year-old daughter in an honor killing.
|
2/12/2009
|
USA
|
Buffalo, NY
|
1
|
0
|
The founder of a Muslim TV station beheads his wife in the hallway for seeking a divorce.
|
4/12/2009
|
USA
|
Phoenix, AZ
|
2
|
0
|
A man shoots his brother-in-law and another man to death after finding out that they visited a strip club, in contradiction to Islamic values.
|
6/1/2009
|
USA
|
Little Rock, AR
|
1
|
1
|
A Muslim shoots a local soldier to death inside a recruiting center explicitly in the name of Allah.
|
11/2/2009
|
USA
|
Glendale, AZ
|
1
|
1
|
A woman dies from injuries suffered when her father runs her down with a car for being too 'Westernized.' (10-20-09)
|
11/5/2009
|
USA
|
Ft. Hood, TX
|
13
|
31
|
A Muslim psychiatrist guns down thirteen unarmed soldiers while yelling praises to Allah.
|
12/4/2009
|
USA
|
Binghamton, NY
|
1
|
0
|
A non-Muslim Islamic studies professor is stabbed to death by a Muslim grad student in revenge for 'persecuted' Muslims.
|
4/14/2010
|
USA
|
Marquette Park, IL
|
5
|
2
|
After quarrelling with his wife over Islamic dress, a Muslim convert shoots his family members to 'take them back to Allah' and out of the 'world of sinners'.
|
4/30/2011
|
USA
|
Warren, MI
|
1
|
0
|
A 20-year-old woman is shot in the head by her stepfather for not adhering to Islamic practices.
|
2/7/2013
|
USA
|
Buena Vista, NJ
|
2
|
0
|
A Muslim targets and beheads two Christian Coptic immigrants.
|
3/24/2013
|
USA
|
Ashtabula, OH
|
1
|
0
|
A Muslim convert walks into a church service with a Quran and guns down his Christian father while praising Allah.
|
4/15/2013
|
USA
|
Boston, MA
|
3
|
170
|
Foreign-born Muslims describing themselves as 'very religious' detonate two bombs packed with ball bearings at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and causing several more to lose limbs.
|
4/19/2013
|
USA
|
Boston, MA
|
1
|
1
|
Jihadists gun down a university police officer sitting in his car.
|
***
The greatest, most awesome threat to the security of not just the civil liberties we enjoy here in the United States but throughout the Western world populated primarily with those of Judeo-Christian religious beliefs is no longer confined to just one nation-state or alliance of nation-states, nor does it entail a series of philosophical and ideological spheres of influence such as we faced with the presence of Nazism, Fascism, or Communism between 1917 and 1991. It now resides within the presence of the world's second-largest religion that presides predominantly in Asia in the Middle East in the form of Islam. Islam is a religion predicated in evil, a spiritual institution with 1.57 billion followers comprising 23% of the world's population which pontificates hatred, intolerance, and death to all who are considered infidels: namely, anyone who does not worship Allah and adhere to its religious law known as Shariʻah. Over the past 100 years, the major threats which disrupted world peace were philosophical and political in nature. Today, and for all time until the angels sound the silver trumpets, that baton has been bequeathed to a religion bent on world domination and exerting its fanaticism via the sword. The threat to women, in particular, is paramount, as they are considered in the Koran to be intellectually inferior and more likely to burn in Hell for eternity by dent of their very existence. Thus, a threat to our liberties comes not from a national or an ideology, but a nation of worshipers compelled and dedicated to violence in the name of its deity and prophet -- the religious dogma imbued with the very essence absolutism itself, which no doubt is the greatest the world has ever know and has been in place since its inception 1,390 years ago in 610 when the prophet Muhammad claimed to have been the recipient of revelations sent to him from God via the archangel Gabriel. There are a couple of phrases I wish to re-share with you below by two Islamic scholars and philosophers.
Noted Islamic scholar Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi stated his opinion regarding the Koran's directivve of jihad:
"In the Jihad which you are seeking, you look for the enemy and invade him. This type of Jihad takes place only when the Islamic state is invading other [countries] in order to spread the word of Islam and to remove obstacles standing in its way.
Elsewhere, he notes:
"Islam has the right to take the initiative…this is God’s religion and it is for the whole world. It has the right to destroy all obstacles in the form of institutions and traditions … it attacks institutions and traditions to release human beings from their poisonous influences, which distort human nature and curtail human freedom. Those who say that Islamic Jihad was merely for the defense of the 'homeland of Islam' diminish the greatness of the Islamic way of life."
Ibn Khaldun, one of Islam's most respected philosophers, had this to say about the purpose of jihad that is truly frightening coming from a religion very few moderates ever materialize to claim of its peaceful purposes:
"...the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force...."
In defense of the Right's position on the threat to world peace posed by Islam, noted conservative political analyst Ann Coulter had this to say in a May 29, 2013 article posted on her official website, Ann Coulter.com:
"Apparently, it is considered 'fascist' to oppose actual fascists immigrating to your country."
And Robert Spencer was quoted to have said:
"If the U.S. adopts any kind of law criminalizing criticism of Islam, that would be the end to any resistance to jihad, as we will be rendered mute and thus defenseless against its advances."
Giulo Meotti, a renowned Italian journalist, wrote this in the Israeli news publication Arutz Sheva with regard to the violent murder of British soldier Michael Adebowale:
"Omar Bakri and the London killers aren't seeking power; they want to change society and the individual in the name of a totalitarian ideology. They divide reality into light and darkness, spirit and matter, Islamic and non-Islamic."
What have some of the world's politicians and theologians had to say about Islam? Here below are just a few quotes (Courtesy of Live Leak):
Wrote Gregory Palamus of Thessalonica, 1354, while negotiating the surrender of Alexandria to the Muslims:
"I am afraid that God has sent these men to lay waste the world."
British theologian and founder of the Methodist movement John Wesley (1703-1791) said this about Islam:
"Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it...have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind."
William Eaton, US Consul to Tunis, wrote this in 1799:
"Considered as a nation, they are deplorably wretched, because they have no property in the soil to inspire an ambition to cultivate it. They are abject slaves to the despotism of their government, and they are humiliated by tyranny, the worst of all tyrannies, the despotism of priestcraft. They live in more solemn fear of the frowns of a bigot who has been dead and rotten above a thousand years, than of the living despot whose frown would cost them their lives…The ignorance, superstitious tradition and civil and religious tyranny, which depress the human mind here, exclude improvement of every kind.…"
From Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America:
"I studied the Koran a great deal... I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammed. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself."
President Theodore Roosevelt said this:
“The Greeks who triumphed at Marathon and Salamis did a work without which the world would have been deprived of the social value of Plato and Aristotle, of Aeschylus, Herodotus, and Thucydides. The civilization of Europe, America, and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization, because the victories stretching through the centuries from the days of Miltiades and Themistocles to those of Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century.
“During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today nobody can find in them any "social values" whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influence. There are such "social values" today in Europe, America, and Australia only because during those thousand years the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do - that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.”
From Winston Churchill:
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."
Churchill also said:
"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
Anglo-Italian anarchist Vernon Richards is quoted to have said:
"The true Islamic concept of peace goes something like this: 'Peace comes through submission to Muhammad and his concept of Allah' (i.e. Islam). As such the Islamic concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is actually a mandate for war. It was inevitable and unavoidable that the conflict would eventually reach our borders, and so it has."
Finally, last but certainly not least when one considers his contributions to the rich history of this great republic, the nation's sixth president John Quincy Adams was a staunch opponent of both the religion of Islam and nation who, at the time of this essay on Islam in 1830 after this defeat in the presidential election of 1828 but just prior to his victory in the congressional election to become U.S. representative from Massachusetts' 1st district, occupied the vast majority of the Middle East, namely the Ottomon Empire, which is would become known as The Republic of Turkey after the Ottomon Turks' final defeat at the conclusion of World War I:
“In the seventh century of the Christian era a wandering Arab, of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combing the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic and the fraudulent spirit of an imposter [sic], proclaimed himself as a messenger from heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth.
Adopting, from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God, he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion.
He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as part of his religion against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust; to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in the characters, a war of more than twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extincture of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute are encouraged to furnish motives to human action, there never can be peace on earth and good will toward men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” John Adams, 1830
–John Quincy Adams, “Christianity—Islamism.” “Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece,” originally published in The American Annual Register for 1827—1829 (New York, 1830), Chs. X-XIV: 267—402.
He also said this in 1829:
"The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force."
The implications here are clear: we have been attacked domestically at least 63 times Islamic extremists in some form or fashion since 1972. Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, the U.S. and its NATO allies fought to protect Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina from ethnic-cleansing at the hands of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. What he did was heinous; it lowered a society largely of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith to the level of the Fascist religion Islam really is. However, could there have been a national security threat at hand, thus prompting a genuine-if-but-ulterior motive? The answer may never be known. Judging by the violent history in the U.S. as well as other Western nations in North America and Europe attributed to Islamic fundamentalist terrorist activities, this scale of "overreaction" may well be, on some grounds, justified. Israel is attempting to this day to fend off national extermination and genocide by combating its openly-hostile Arab neighboring nation-states whose whole system of government is predicated on Sharia. Sadly, President Obama's foreign and, as it turns out, domestic law enforcement policies cater to these types of people, as The Chattanooga Times-Free Press and various other conservative news agencies have demonstrated.
Are we as safe today as we were during the presidency of George W. Bush post-9/11? While the former president deployed troops to Afghanistan in 2001 in retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks and in 2003 to Iraq to curtail the perceived manufacturing and harboring of WMD's, the number of incidents involving Islamic acts of terrorism in the name of the Koran resulting in massive losses of life dropped to nil. There were a few isolated incidents, but nothing to the nature of what we experienced on 9/11. During the presidency of Barack Obama, there have been 12 known incidents of terrorist-like attacks on American civilians ranging from convenience shop murders to a Muslim man murdering his wife or child(ren) for becoming "too westernized," up to the most outrageous act of Islamic defiance to the American way of life: the Boston Marathon Bombing that killed four people. (One including the shooting death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer by the name of Sean Collier, age 26 years.) In 2011, the FBI, having been briefed by the Russian government, passed off Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had been designated as a terrorist threat in his home country, as being fit to return to the U.S. It was also nearly a full month before it became public knowledge of a third suspect involved in the conspiracy with Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, prompting my suspicions that the Obama administration knew something was going on between these three gentlemen that it felt it had to hide; the third suspect, Ibragim Todashev, was shot by an FBI agent in Florida under duress.
Under the Obama administration, the federal government has turned a blind eye to racial, ethnic, and religious profiling with regard to minorities and have reversed the process by discriminating against the WASP's (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) who comprise the vast majority of the U.S. population. While it is cruel to "stereotype" people by the characteristics which dictate who and what they are, in the of law enforcement, and now national security, it is imperative that our government's law enforcement can classify in a clear state of taxonomy potential national security risks as well as those who are more prone to commit felonies and a misdemeanors. While the Left reviles at the thought of the truth behind this establishment of sociological fact, the majority of crimes committed in the U.S. are by lower-income individuals, particularly African-American and Hispanic backgrounds. The same can be said over the past 40 years regarding terrorist attacks on American soil -- the vast majority of them are committed in the name of Allah as stated in the Koran by radical Islamic fundamentalists. If we are to be legally-coerced into recognizing the "surreptitiously-ubiquitous," federally-enforced civil rights laws of domestic residents of the Islamic faith on the basis of the First Amendment's guarantee to the right to the freedom of religion, what legal rights, then, do we, the majority of the population of the Christian faith, regardless of denomination, have that are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Is there one set standard of legal codes and statutes for the "haves" -- which, according to the foreign and domestic policies of the Obama administration, this collective is those of the Islamic faith -- and another for those of us in the majority who are "have-not's"? The Left throughout the Western world condemned the legalized, institutional implementation of Apartheid in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 whereby the ruling Afrikaner white minority of the population under that population demographic's dominance within the National Party (NP) and the Broederbond organizations, but now I see a double-standard in our midst. We are experiencing what is tantamount to an American form of Apartheid with regards to opposition from conservative groups that include Christian evangelicals, pro-Israel Jewish organizations, pro-life and Second Amendment activists, the recent bevy of scandals involving the IRS and the Justice and State Departments, coupled with the attacks on the Second Amendment by the Democrats as a reaction to the Sandy Creek Elementary School massacre being implemented first by attempts to pass legislation in Congress and second through government intimidation. This is a menace to the American way of life, and it must be met head-on with our votes in the subsequent elections of 2014 and 2016.
***
(Above: Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute for Religious Freedom of the State of Virginia, Third President of the United States, and Founder of the University of Virginia. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Finally, I will begin concluding this diatribe into the authoritarian principles practiced by the federal government under the Obama administration by posting what amounts to a prescription for a preemptive strike against tyranny by none other than the most important Founding Father and political philosopher in the history of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, in a statement which he wrote while serving as U.S. Minister to France in 1787 as he observed the events unfolding that would eventually spark the French Revolution:
"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted."
- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787 (Courtesy of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello)
Let it be clear: the two greatest enemies of the Left in both America and throughout the rest of the Western civilized world are these two things:
- Being an educated citizen who is aware of your constitutional rights and what the government is doing to either promote or deny them. Jefferson, the historical figure late-prominent historian Dumas Malone proclaimed to be "The Sage of Monticello," valued this concept to the point that it was a focal point of activity during his later years as a private citizen when he founded the University of Virginia. Some of his quotes point to this dedication to compulsory education, in which he was actually one of the very first political figures in U.S. history to promote (Also courtesy of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello):
- 1782. (Notes on the State of Virginia) "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree."
- 1785 August 19. (to Peter Carr) "An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second."
- 1786 August 13. (to George Wythe) "I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."
- 1786 August 27. (to Thomas Mann Randolph) "Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession."
- 1787 December 20. (to James Madison) "Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."[4]
- 1789 January 8. (to Richard Price) "...wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government..."[5]
- 1810 May 6. (to the Trustees of the Lottery for East Tennessee College) "No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government."
- 1816 January 6. (to Charles Yancey) "If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be."
- 1816 April 24. (to Dupont de Nemours) "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day . . . . I believe it [human condition] susceptible of much improvement, and most of all, in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is effected."
- 1818 January 14. (to Joseph C. Cabell) "Now let us see what the present primary schools cost us, on the supposition that all the children of 10. 11. & 12. years old are, as they ought to be, at school: and, if they are not, so much the work is the system; for they will be untaught, and their ignorance & vices will, in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences, than it would have done, in their correction, by a good education."
- 1818 January 14. (to Joseph C. Cabell) "A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest."
- 1818 August 4. "The objects of this primary eduction determine its character and limits. These objects are To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve by reading, his morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgement; And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed. To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens, being then the objects of education in the primary schools, whether privet or public, in them should be taught reading, writing and numerical arithmetic, the elements of mensuration...and the outlines of geography and history."
- 1820 September 28. (to William C. Jarvis) "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their controul with a wholsome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. this is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
- 1822 October 21. (to C.C. Blatchly) "I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man."
- 1824 March 27. (to Edward Everett) "The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training."
2. The righteous path toward being an educated citizen is paved with the building blocks the lessons of
history teach to us through its infinite wisdom, free and unfettered of the damnable characteristics of
revisionism as is the tool of the "intellectual elite" of the Left.
It is no wonder, then, that the American public education system ranks toward the bottom of the three major categories used to evaluate the quality of a child's education (Courtesy of Geographic):
- In reading, the U.S. ranks 33rd, last on the list of the major industrialized nations of the world.
- In math, the U.S. ranks 27th on the list of the major industrialized nations of the world.
- In science, the U.S. ranks 22nd on the list of the major industrialized nations of the world.
(Above: Dr. John Dewey, an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
And guess which party crafted the concept of the modern-day failure of a national compulsory public education system? The Progressives between the 1890's and the 1930's, crafted the modern-day concept of national compulsory public education by the era's leading educational theorist, Dr. John Dewey. As has been established in my previously-authored articles, the Progressives eventually infiltrated the modern-day Democratic Party beginning with the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency. The Democratic lawmakers over the course of the past 123 or so years have instituted the above-stated culture of revisionism as well as the Dr. Spock-implied use of the biblical phrase "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Such faulty policies have left the schoolchildren of American not properly educated to meet the needs of tomorrow, and this is the reason why a simple majority of the population has turned a blind eye to public affairs since the advents of the welfare state and socialism that were instituted by the Democratic Party that by nature creates a culture of sheep with regards to the directions of government policy.
So, through government-controlled curriculi of the themes which schoolchildren are legally-required to study and learn, unbridled civil rights via the auspices of public school officials who are largely members of the Left are rigorously taught as the unconditionally and unquestioned principle by which this society is governed and by which this government dictates. Sadly, this mentality is tainting future generations of educated children into a blind trust that all people, regardless of faith, are peaceful and trustworthy.
And as the old cliche goes, "The path to Hell is paved with good intentions."
Are we under the governance of the Obama administration becoming an evil theocracy predicated on the virtues of hate, bigotry, and violence named "The Islamic States of America"? Let the recent current events related to the policies of this administration carefully craft and cultivate your opinions which will hopefully lead the majority of voters to voting for Republicans in the comings elections in 2014 and 2016.
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Are we under the governance of the Obama administration becoming an evil theocracy predicated on the virtues of hate, bigotry, and violence named "The Islamic States of America"? Let the recent current events related to the policies of this administration carefully craft and cultivate your opinions which will hopefully lead the majority of voters to voting for Republicans in the comings elections in 2014 and 2016.
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As if we need ask what modern-day Islamic dictators of foreign nations seek to do with regards to the rest of the non-Islamic world, let us read what the Ayotollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989, stated regarding jihad:
“Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world. But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world…. Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers] Islam says Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us Islam says Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender to the enemy Islam says Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Koranic] verses and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”
Below are a series of quotes from President Obama regarding his compassionate support for Muslims and the religion of Islam itself:
"America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings."
"We are not at war against Islam."
"The United States is not, nor will it ever be, at war with Islam."
"I consider it a part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."
These quotes by the president defy logic and common sense when once considers the history of the Islam's militancy that has resulted in mass ethnic cleansing in the Dark and Middle Ages, as well as the terrorism we have come to know from them today. There is no such thing as an acceptance of a nation which preaches the virtues of democracy, nor is there room for people who engage in the free exercise of any religion they so choose. The president is intentionally ignoring the fact that the Free Syria Army slaughtered an entire village of Christians and has all but ignored Israel within the construct of his foreign policy, decided, instead, to focus on his friends, the Islamic nations, which preach violence, hatred, and death to all infidel for failing to comply with the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and obeying the principles of religion's law, Shar'ia. What is his reason? What can he possibly be hiding about his past? Is President Obama a practicing Muslim? Does he wish to create a modern Islamic superstate within the sphere of Western nations? If the answer is "no," then why are we, the people, being subjugated to the whims of people of the Islamic religion in America who speak ill of Christians and Jews? If the president is, indeed, not a Muslim, why can we not speak out freely against those who commit heinous acts of terror against not just Americans and our fellow allies around the world, but against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and other religions? It seems that by virtue of the president's actions of interpreting the First Amendment right to freedom of religion to mean that no one else can speak ill toward Muslims who are not of the Islamic faith, there is a sense of institutional bias akin to those of Islamic nations around the world. The line U.S. Attorney Bill Killian stated, "If a Muslim had posted 'How to Wink at a Christian,' could you imagine what would have happened?" has already taken place around the world, as well as domestically. As I said above, we are entering a stage in our history in which our great nation whose founding was based, in part according to John Adams, on Christianity, along with British liberty and American liberty, are slowly being denied to us.
Throughout the course of history, there have been theologians and such clairvoyants as Nostradamus who have discussed the coming of the Antichrist. According to Nostradamus, two have already lived -- Napoleon Bonaparty and Adolf Hitler. The third one has yet to come to pass.
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So, the greatest question one may be forced to ask is this: Is President Barack Hussein Obama the Twelve Imam -- the Islamic Madhi, or in the Christian world, the Antichrist? Consider the following regarding his characteristics courtesy of The Very Last Days:
THE ANTICHRIST
For anyone who has studied the events of the end times, it will be quite obvious that we are living in the very last days before the return of the Savior. Just as He lived, He will return to reign and rule. One of the signs of the times is that of false Christs walking among us. The scriptures tell us:
- "Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." - Matthew 24:23, 24, 26, 27
- "And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect." - Mark 13:21-22
- "And he said, Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them." - Luke 21:8
The scriptures are very specific about the details of the times and events surrounding the Lord's return, including the fact that there would be false Christs and false prophets. Some of the false Christs are more obvious and their presence more open than others. One such false Christ that is currently walking among us at the present time is "Maitreya". From the website devoted to Maitreya we read, "In all cultures and religions of the world we can find the belief that one person will bring the unification of religions and fulfill the prophecies. This One is known to the Buddhists as the Compassionate (Maitreya) Buddha or Bodhisattva, to Hindus as the Kalki Avatar, to the Jews and Christians as the Messiah, to the Moslems as Mahdi (Mohammed), to the Baha'is as the One Whom God Shall Make Manifest, etc."
But how do we know that Maitreya or any of the other people running around the world today pretending to be the Messiah constitute the false Christs or Antichrists prophesied in the scriptures? How do we know that this is the time and these are the days where these events are supposed to be taking place? Let's consider these questions in light of the following statements:
- "And do not think that these usurpations, intimidations, and impositions are being done to us through inadvertence or mistake; The whole course is deliberately planned and carried out; its purpose is to destroy the Constitution and our constitutional government; then to bring chaos, out of which the new Statism with its slavery is to arise, with a cruel, relentless, selfish, ambitious crew in the saddle, riding hard with whip and spur, a red-shrouded band of night riders for despotism." - J. Reuben Clark, jr., Church News, September 25, 1949
- "Satan has control now. No matter where you look, he is in control, even in our own land. He is guiding the governments as far as the Lord will permit him. That is why there is so much strife, turmoil, confusion all over the earth.One master mind is governing the nations. It is not the President of the United States... it is not the king or government of England or any other land; it is Satan himself." - Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 3, pp. 314-315 (published on or before 1954)
- Concerning the United States, the Lord revealed to his prophets that its greatest threat would be a vast, worldwide "secret combination" which would not only threaten the United States but also seek to "overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations..." (Ether 8:25) - Ezra Taft Benson, Conference, October 1961
Here we have just a small sampling of the modern voices of warning concerning the fact that Satan was and is controlling the world affairs that will soon overthrow the freedom of all lands and nations of the world. We most assuredly are living in the times and days spoken of here and prophesied by the ancients concerning the antichrist.
Satan's final push has been going on for quite some time and is accelerating every day. When I look at the dates of the quotes above, I think back to the times of the relatively innocent social and moral values of the 1940's and 50's. By way of example, one of the most popular TV shows of the times was "I Love Lucy," which ran from 1951-1957 (before many of us on the planet were even born). In those days, the moral fiber of our society was so strong that even married couples getting ready for bed were shown in full pajamas (with only head, feet, and hands uncovered) and sleeping in separate beds. Even when Lucy became pregnant, they did not use the word "pregnant" on the show.
Now, compare that to our modern light porn public television programming that becomes more immoral with each new season. Then apply that same comparison of then-to-now to visualize how much more control Satan must have over the affairs of the world today, especially the world leaders compared to back when we actually had an honorable, moral, God fearing society!
In the past, as I contemplated these scriptures, I envisioned these false Christs to come upon the scene much like Maitreya. He even dresses like what you might expect a returning Christ to look like, complete with robes and sandals. Clearly, he is a false Christ, but very limited in the reach of his message and the sphere of his influence. There are others at the present time that are much more charismatic and hypnotic to their followers than I believe Maitreya to be. However, in saying that it is important to note that there are many globalist, both past and present who refer to the returning messiah as "Maitreya." However, the name may be more symbolic than literal.
There are many lesser false Christs who claim some form or fashion of deity. They can be seen in various aspects of our culture, particularly in the entertainment industry. A couple of the most recognizable false Christs are the singers Jay Z and Beyonce. Jay Z's stage name is "HOVA", short for "JEhova." Beyonce makes similar claims, but I won't spend a lot of time on them, because as I said, they are the "lesser of the evils."
Perhaps the biggest and most recognizable false Christ is Barack Obama. In the following video clip, Hollywood entertainer Jamie Foxx introduces Barack Obama as "our God, our Lord and Savior." Notice the reaction of the crowd when he blasphemes against the true Lord and Savior. True to ancient prophecy, the crowd not only doesn't object to such blasphemy, they clap, cheer, and dance as the false Christ is introduced.
In the following video clip, Oprah Winfrey introduces then Senator Obama to voters in Des Moines. This introduction is identical to introductions given at other political rallies by Winfrey. She begins by relating a story from "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," a 1974 film based on Ernest Gaines' 1971 novel. As she explains to the waiting crowd, an old woman who had survived slavery and the Civil war would ask every newborn child, "Are you the one? Are you the one?"
According to one academic discussion of the book by Christopher Mulvey, a professor at University of Winchester in the United Kingdom, the passage continues to ask whether the child is the one who will "carry part of our cross," a "messianic figure."
Winfrey goes on to tell the audience, "In '08 I have found the answer to Miss Pittman's question. I have found the answer... it is the same question that our nation is asking, "Are you the one? Are you the one?" I'm here to tell you Iowa, he's the one! He is the one!" Again, notice the reaction of the crowd to the blasphemy spewed out of Oprah Winfrey's mouth!
Watch in the following clip at about the 26 second mark and through 38 seconds. You will hear Obama reassure the audience that contrary to the rumors, he was not born in a manager. He goes on to say that he was sent to save the planet earth. These comments along with those of the next video clip will be useful later in this analysis.
Watch the following video clip at about the 10 second mark and through 15 seconds. You will see Obama state that he (and his team) are the one's we've been waiting for. These comments along with those of the previous clip will be useful later in this analysis.
In the following video clip, Louis Farrakhan, head of the "Nation of Islam," declares the he is God and Obama is the Messiah. Notice the reaction of the crowd and the various images of Obama portrayed as the Messiah.
In the following clip, Louis Farrakhan, head of the "Nation of Islam," declares that Obama is the Messiah.
It is also important to understand how the Arab and Muslim world sees Obama. As is evidenced by the videos above, Obama is seen and revered as a Messiah. After Obama's speech in 2009 in which he apologized for America's existence, the Arab world began to see him as the promised warrior, a "Mahdi" who will lead Islam to victory over the infidels (everyone who is not Muslim) in the last days (people all over the world recognize that these are the last days).
The Egyptian press heralded him as "Obama the Awaited" in a giant front page headline, drawing parallels to the Mahdi, who in Muslim eschatology is believed to appear before the end of days as a Savior, as the second coming of Christ.
Iranian Shiite prophecies also are being grafted onto Obama as a Messiah to the Muslim world. According to a Shiite Hadith (tradition) that describes a "Promised Warrior" a tall black man will assume power in the West and herald the fall of the West and the victory of Islam to conquer the world.
The tradition comes from Bahar al-Anvar (meaning Oceans of Light) by Mullah Majlisi, a magnum opus in 132 volumes and the basis of modern Shiite Islam. According to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn-Talib (the prophet's cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the Mahdi, the Ultimate Savior, a "tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West." Commanding "the strongest army on earth," the new ruler in the West will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, whose name was Hussein Ibn Ali. The tradition concludes: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us."
In a curious coincidence, Obama's first and second names - Barack Hussein - mean "the blessing of Hussein" in Arabic and Persian. His last name, Obama, written in the Persian alphabet, reads "O Ba Ma," which means "he is with us," the magic formula in Majlisi's tradition. Obama's rise is seen as another sign of the West's decline and the triumph of Islam.
If I connect those dots, I get "the blessing of Hussein - the Ultimate Savior - he is with us." Isaiah said that the Son of God, the true Savior of the world would be called Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14), meaning "God is with us." If I connect those dots, I get "the Son of God - the True Savior - God is with us." It is hard to miss the unmistakable anti-christ innuendoes and outright blasphemous claims of Obama and his minions to his claim of deity.
On June 4, 2009 Obama gave an unprecedented speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt declaring that he is launching a new era between the United States and the Muslim world. For the first time, Obama was forthright about his Muslim heritage and stated that the United States- which he is on record as saying is "no longer a Christian nation" is now "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." Newsweek editior Evan Thomas followed the president's speech with a declaration reflected in the opinion of many, that "Obama is standing above the country, above the world, he is a sort of God."
Interestingly enough, Obama was not born with the name he currently uses. His birth name (at least that's the name he used as a child, on school records, etc.) was Barry Soetoro. This is evident from the following video from Fox News. Notice the denial of being Muslim at the end of the video.
In the following video the grown up Barry (AKA Barack) refers to his "Muslim Faith" and the news interviewer has to prompt him that he's spinning himself to be of Christian faith. These are the kinds of truths that are revealed when he does not have his teleprompter. I add this video and the one above to add more dots that can be connected to show the deception and lies. Also, there will surely be people who come to this page and will have believed the propaganda that's been spun of him being a good Christian, so it's best to face the facts all at once.
Why would Barry Soetoro need to change his name? The name he changed it to, Barak Hussein Obama, is three distinctively Muslim names. As evidenced by the significance of his new name in relation to Islamic prophecy, it seems to make perfect sense.
But why would he need to cover up his Muslim faith? Well duh! Most Christian Americans and good old boy redneck Americans don't want someone running our country who might be in any way related to the "middle east Arab terrorists!" You can't have a Muslim in the White House! Actually you can and we do! You just have to dupe the naive sheeple into believing otherwise. Actually, the Quran (Muslim Bible) teaches that it is desirable to lie as necessary to infiltrate the infidels in order to establish Islam... believe it or don't!
Sadly, most of what Obama and his handlers portray him to be is a complete fabrication. There has never been another person on the planet that has been surrounded by more allegations of lies and deceit about who they really are. The list includes; (1) his real birth place, (2) his real parents, (3) his real name, (4) his real nationality, (5) his real religious beliefs, (6) his real birth certificate, (7) his real social security number, (8) his real school records, just to name the most publicized items.
His handlers have packaged him for the public, groomed him, and prepared the world stage for his ascent to power. No other person in the history of the world has claimed or been proclaimed to be the Messiah, been so universally accepted by the people of the world, or ascended to such a position of world influence and power, not just politically, but religiously as well. The ultimate pinnacle of that influence and power has yet to be seen, but simply by being president of the United States, Obama assumes the position of the most powerful man on the planet!
Dozens of churches and faith groups including mainline Protestants organized activities to mark Obama's inauguration as a 'spiritual' event. Randall Balmer, professor of religion in American history at Columbia University admitted he had never seen anything like it before.
CNN went so far as to compare Obama's inauguration to Hajj- the journey by Muslims to the holy city of Mecca, an obligatory pilgrimage that demonstrates their dedication to Allah.
In Des Moines, Iowa, an inaugural parade for Obama included a simulation of the triumphant entry of Christ in which a facsimile of Obama rode upon a donkey. As the reproduction made it's way down the streets, palm branches were handed out to onlookers so that they could wave them like Christ's adorers did in the 21st chapter of Matthew.
Consider the unprecedented messianic rhetoric that reporters, politicians, celebrities, and even preachers used in celebrating the 'spiritual nature' of Obama's meteoric rise from near obscurity to US President. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford characterized it as "a sort of powerful luminosity." In Morford's opinion, this was because Obama is a "a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to... help usher in a new way of being on the planet..."
The dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International chapel, Lawrence Carter, when further, comparing Obama to the coming of Jesus Christ: "It is powerful and significant on a spiritual level that there is the emergence of Barack Obama... No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger." Dinesh Sharma, a marketing science consultant with a PhD in Psychology from Harvard appraised Obama likewise: "Many... see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama."
Here are some other comments about the deity of Obama from various news sources:
- "Barack's appeal is actually messianic... he... communicates God-like energy... What if God decided to incarnate as men preaching 'hope and change.' And what if we... let them slip away, not availing ourselves... to be led by God!" - Steve Davis, Journal Gazette
- "This is bigger than Kennedy... This is the New Testament! I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event." - Chris Matthews, MSNBC
- "Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?" - Daily Kos
- "Obama, to me, must be not an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul, come to lead America out of this mess." - Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun Times
- "He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians.. the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century." - Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart, Huffington Post
- "He is not the Word made flesh [Jesus], but the triumph of word over flesh [better than Jesus]... Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves." - Ezra Klein, Prospect
- "Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind." - Gerald Campbell, First Things First
- "Obama was... blessed and highly favored... I think that... his election... was divinely ordered... I'm a preacher and a pastor; I know that that was God's plan... I think he is being used for some purpose." - Janny Scott, New York Times
- "He won't just heal our city-states and souls. He won't just brink the Heavenly Kingdom- dreamt of in both Platonism and Christianity- to earth. He will heal the earth itself." - Micah Tillman, The Free Liberal
- "The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance." - Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Politico
Several ministries including the Christian Devense Coalition and Faith and Action came together to perform what was heralded as a first for US presidential inaugurations- applying anointing oil to the doorposts of the arched doorway that Obama passed through as he moved to the platform on the West Front of the Capital to be sworn in. Congressman Paul Broun (Georgia) was part of the ritual and joined Reverend Rob Schenck, who said, "Anointing with oil is a rich tradition in the Bible and... symbolizes consecration or setting something apart for God's use."
Not content with just using sacred anointing oil to consecrate Obama for God's use, approximately two thousand New Agers, Wiccans and Shamans gathered at Dupont Circle (chosen because it's considered the gay center of Washington DC) to participate in a cleansing ceremony to purge the White House of evil spirits. A shaman officiated the event, lighting bundles of sage, which smoldered and gave off thick blue aromatic smoke.
It's important to note here that not only does Obama and his handlers want you to believe that he is a deity, but the masses around the world believe it also. Many of the pictures above are the result of people who are deceived into believing in his artificial godliness, wherein they actually worship him, as is evidence by the pictures and artwork above.
In the next video clip, you will see globalist Henry Kissinger telling news reporters that the most important thing for Obama is the great opportunity he has to heal the world and unite the country into creating a new world order.
Clearly, Obama is embraced as the God, Savior, and Messiah (literally and/or figuratively) for a large number of people, cultures, and religions around the world. His popularity reaches across social, geopolitical, and religious boundaries, well beyond just the Muslims and blacks. His disciples in the U.S. championed him into a second term as President. He is the globalist's pick for the man to lead the New World Order / one world government. He is clearly a false Christ, but, does all this make Obama the Antichrist?
When we think of the Antichrist, most people visualize the traditional Christian concept of a very evil man with supernatural powers who rules the earth during the years immediately preceding the second coming. He is seen as stern, but very charismatic and has great speaking abilities. Initially, he will be seen as wonderful and benevolent, solving many of the world's problems. Eventually he will become the embodiment of pure evil.
According to "Mormon Doctrine" by Bruce R. McConkie:
- "An antichrist is an opponent of Christ; he is one who is in opposition to the true gospel, the true Church, and the true plan of salvation". (1 John 2:19; 4:4-6.) "He is one who offers salvation to men on some other terms than those laid down by Christ." "Sherem (Jac. 7:1-23), Nehor (Alma 1:2-16), and Korihor (Alma 30:6-60) were antichrists who spread their delusions among the Nephites."
- "Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist." (2 John 7.) "'Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?' John asked. 'He is an antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.'" (1 John 2:22.) Though many modern day religionists profess to believe in Christ, the fact is they do not accept him as the literal Son of God and have not turned to him with the full knowledge and devotion necessary to gain salvation. "Whosoever receiveth my word receiveth me," he said, "and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth those, the First Presidency, whom I have sent, whom I have made counselors for my name's sake unto you." (D. & C. 112:20.)
- "The saints in the meridian of time, knowing there would be a great apostasy between their day and the Second Coming of our Lord, referred to the great apostate church as the anti-christ. 'Little children, it is the last time,' John said, 'and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.'" (1 John 2:18.) "And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." (1 John 4:3.) "This great antichrist which is to stand as the antagonist of Christ in the last days, and which is to be overthrown when he comes to cleanse the earth and usher in millennial righteousness, is the church of the devil (Rev. 13; 17), with the man of sin at its head." (2 Thess. 2:1-12.)
Let's consider the two clips above where Obama specifically states that; (1) he wasn't born in a manger, (2) he was sent to save the planet earth, and (3) he is the one we've been waiting for. What he is really saying is that the one who was born in a manager (Jesus) didn't save the planet earth and the earth is no longer waiting for him (Christ), because Jesus is not "the one" In other words, Obama is denying Jesus as the Christ and proclaiming himself to be the awaited Messiah, just as his disciples (i.e. Foxx, Winfrey, Farrakhan, etc.) have proclaimed!
McConkie also provides an explanation for who the Man of Sin is:
- "Lucifer is the man of sin, spoken of by Paul who was to be revealed in the last days before the Second Coming of our Lord." (2 Thess. 2:1-12.) "He is the one of whom men shall say: 'Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?'" (Isa. 14:12-20.)
- Joseph Smith, by revelation, inserted into Paul's account about the man of sin, these words: "He it is who now worketh, and Christ suffereth him to work, until the time is fulfilled that he shall be taken out of the way." (Inspired Version, 2 Thess. 2:7.) That is, Satan was then committing havoc among men, and he would continue to do so until the ushering in of the millennial era when he would be bound.
- Paul's promise that the man of sin must be revealed before our Lord could return for the millennial era has been abundantly fulfilled. Lucifer's wicked plans, purposes, and works have been revealed or manifest from time to time, from the day of Paul to the present. At a conference of the Church held June 3, 1831, "the man of sin was revealed," in that some of the brethren were overcome by devils whom the Prophet rebuked and cast out. (History of the Church, vol. 1, p. 175.)
As far as mortal men are concerned, all those who become the agents and tools of the devil, who are used by him to further his interests and purposes on earth are, also men of sin.
Clearly, Obama is an antichrist by definition. He also fits the requirements very well for being a man of sin as defined here. But, is he the one man of sin who will lead the church of the devil in the very last days which will be overthrown when Christ returns? While we can't say with 100% certainty right now, Obama certainly has all the credentials, characteristics, and mannerisms necessary to be "The One!" And if he's not "the one," it's highly likely that he's the forerunner to the man of sin.
Make sure to check back often, because if turns out there is someone more evil and powerful who is accepted worldwide more than Obama and it turns out Obama's not the one, I will identify which of the world leaders is the most likely candidate is to assume the role as the man of sin.
***
This perception was confirmed in Forbes in a commentary by Amir Taheri:
Commentary
Obama and Ahmadinejad
Amir Taheri, 10.26.08, 01:33 PM EST
Iran's president and mullahs are rooting for the Democrats.
Is Barack Obama the "promised warrior" coming to help the Hidden Imam of Shiite Muslims conquer the world?The question has made the rounds in Iran since last month, when a pro-government Web site published a Hadith (or tradition) from a Shiite text of the 17th century. The tradition comes from Bahar al-Anvar (meaning Oceans of Light) by Mullah Majlisi, a magnum opus in 132 volumes and the basis of modern Shiite Islam.
According to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib (the prophet's cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the Mahdi, the Ultimate Saviour, a "tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West." Commanding "the strongest army on earth," the new ruler in the West will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, whose name was Hussein Ibn Ali. The tradition concludes: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us."
In a curious coincidence Obama's first and second names--Barack Hussein--mean "the blessing of Hussein" in Arabic and Persian. His family name, Obama, written in the Persian alphabet, reads O Ba Ma, which means "he is with us," the magic formula in Majlisi's tradition.
Mystical reasons aside, the Khomeinist establishment sees Obama's rise as another sign of the West's decline and the triumph of Islam. Obama's promise to seek unconditional talks with the Islamic Republic is cited as a sign that the U.S. is ready to admit defeat. Obama's position could mean abandoning three resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council setting conditions that Iran should meet to avoid sanctions. Seeking unconditional talks with the Khomeinists also means an admission of moral equivalence between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic. It would imply an end to the description by the U.S. of the regime as a "systematic violator of human rights."
Obama has abandoned claims by all U.S. administrations in the past 30 years that Iran is "a state sponsor of terrorism." Instead, he uses the term "violent groups" to describe Iran-financed outfits such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Obama has also promised to attend a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference within the first 100 days of his presidency. Such a move would please the mullahs, who have always demanded that Islam be treated differently, and that Muslim nations act as a bloc in dealings with Infidel nations.
Obama's election would boost President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chances of winning a second term next June. Ahmadinejad's entourage claim that his "steadfastness in resisting the American Great Satan" was a factor in helping Obama defeat "hardliners" such as Hillary Clinton and, later, it hopes, John McCain.***
I never thought I would stoop myself to the level of decrying the president from an evangelical angle. However, in light of some of the extensive research I conducted which, in essence, "took on a life of its own," I felt compelled to reveal some facts involving what at least we know to be true about Obama's Islamic heritage and the religious-like characteristics on which it has taken that borders on a "cult of leadership" such as has been experienced in totalitarian dictatorships such as Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Benito Mussolini's Italy, Adolf Hitler's Germany, and Mao Zedong's China, et. al. Unlike those four despots, however, Obama has, as was stated in the above article from The Very Last Days, been exalted by the media, political pundits, even members of the GOP such as Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell in such a fashion as if he is at the very least a messianic figure of salvation. The concept of the Koran instructing Muslims to infiltrate the infidels (or, in our case, the federal government) which neither preach nor espouse the virtues of Islam in the name of the Prophet Muhammad and Shari'ah is somewhat frightening, and in light of Bill Killian's announcement that the First Amendment is being interpreted by federal law to mean that for people (the implication being, of course, Jews and in particular, Christians) to speak ill or disparagingly of Muslims or people of the Islamic faith is not merely a violation of civil rights laws, it is also to be enforced and met with legal action against those guilty of committing the crime. This goes beyond simply violating the people's rights to free speech, also guaranteed within the First Amendment; this involves an institutional crackdown on Christians and Jews who together make up the vast majority of the American population, which is tantamount to a violation of our civil rights as well.
There is, at the very least, a very real possibility that because Obama is possibly being a Muslim, his bases of support -- the Islamic nations of the Middle East, the PLO, domestic Islamic factions such as the Nation of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the American Muslim Advisory Council -- are all in on a coordinated effort to end democracy as we know it in America and exterminating all those perceived as infidels -- those who are non-Muslims, who do not practice the law of teachings of the Prophet Muhammad known as Shari'ah -- in an effort to propagate their premise of Islam being "the religion of peace." If there are any questions about the validity of these claims, look no further than the recent scandals plaguing the Obama administration: the IRS targeting conservative tax-exempt groups that included Christian Evangelical and pro-Israel organizations, the Justice Department/media outlet affair, Benghazi (Obama not only did nothing to try to stop the Islamic terrorists from attacking the U.S. Consulate of Libya, he attempted to cover it up and even initially blamed the attack on disgruntled Muslims acting out in retaliation for an anti-Islamic film that was produced by American filmmakers.), the EPA targeting conservative-run businesses, the fresh-off-the-press announcement that administration has been subpoenaing millions of phone recording randomly from Verizon, and the Obama administration's extensive involvement with Islamic organizations domestically that are tied to Islamic terrorist organizations in the Middle East. This is, in essence, an attack on the American democratic political culture.
Islam and democracy cannot coexist in accordance to Shari'ah. To Muslims, the religion is not merely a matter faith, but a system of government as well. Take a look at the following verses from the Koran supporting this claim (Courtesy of The Religion of Peace):
Question:Can Muslim citizens be loyal to a non-Muslim government?
These verses allude to what I said above about Islam and democracy:
Perhaps most frightening of all is what the Koran states about lying:
Muslims are allowed to lie to unbelievers in order to defeat them. The two forms are:Taqiyya - Saying something that isn't true.Kitman - Lying by omission. An example would be when Muslim apologists quote only a fragment of verse 5:32 (that if anyone kills "it shall be as if he had killed all mankind") while neglecting to mention that the rest of the verse (and the next) mandate murder in undefined cases of "corruption" and "mischief."Though not called Taqiyya by name, Muhammad clearly used deception when he signed a 10-year treaty with the Meccans that allowed him access to their city while he secretly prepared his own forces for a takeover. The unsuspecting residents were conquered in easy fashion after he broke the treaty two years later, and some of the people in the city who had trusted him at his word were executed.Another example of lying is when Muhammad used deception to trick his personal enemies into letting down their guard and exposing themselves to slaughter by pretending to seek peace. This happened in the case of Ka'b bin al-Ashraf (as previously noted) and again later against Usayr ibn Zarim, a surviving leader of the Banu Nadir tribe, which had been evicted from their home in Medina by the Muslims.At the time, Usayr ibn Zarim was attempting to gather an armed force against the Muslims from among a tribe allied with the Quraish (against which Muhammad had already declared war). Muhammad's "emissaries" went to ibn Zarim and persuaded him to leave his safe haven on the pretext of meeting with the prophet of Islam in Medina to discuss peace. Once vulnerable, the leader and his thirty companions were massacred by the Muslims with ease, belying the probability that they were mostly unarmed, having been given a guarantee of safe passage (Ibn Ishaq 981).Such was the reputation of Muslims for lying and then killing that even those who "accepted Islam" did not feel entirely safe. The fate of the Jadhima is tragic evidence for this. When Muslim "missionaries" approached their tribe one of the members insisted that they would be slaughtered even though they had already "converted" to Islam to avoid just such a demise. However, the others were convinced that they could trust the Muslim leader's promise that they would not be harmed if they simply offered no resistance. (After convincing the skeptic to lay down his arms, the unarmed men of the tribe were quickly tied up and beheaded - Ibn Ishaq 834 & 837).Today's Muslims often try to justify Muhammad's murder of poets and others who criticized him at Medina by saying that they broke a treaty by their actions. Yet, these same apologists place little value on treaties broken by Muslims. From Muhammad to Saddam Hussein, promises made to non-Muslim are distinctly non-binding in the Muslim mindset.Leaders in the Arab world routinely say one thing to English-speaking audiences and then something entirely different to their own people in Arabic. Yassir Arafat was famous for telling Western newspapers about his desire for peace with Israel, then turning right around and whipping Palestinians into a hateful and violent frenzy against Jews.The 9/11 hijackers practiced deception by going into bars and drinking alcohol, thus throwing off potential suspicion that they were fundamentalists plotting jihad. This effort worked so well, in fact, that even weeks after 9/11, John Walsh, the host of a popular American television show, said that their bar trips were evidence of 'hypocrisy.'The transmission from Flight 93 records the hijackers telling their doomed passengers that there is "a bomb on board" but that everyone will "be safe" as long as "their demands are met." Obviously none of these things were true, but these men, who were so intensely devoted to Islam that they were willing to "slay and be slain for the cause of Allah" (as the Qur'an puts it) saw nothing wrong with employing Taqiyya in order to facilitate their mission of mass murder.The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) insists that it "has not now or ever been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, or supported any covert, illegal, or terrorist activity or organization." In fact, it was created by the Muslim Brotherhood and has bankrolled Hamas. At least nine founders or board members of ISNA have been accused by prosecutors of supporting terrorism.Prior to engineering several deadly terror plots, such as the Fort Hood massacre and the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was regularly sought out by NPR, PBS and even government leaders to expound on the peaceful nature of Islam.The near absence of Qur'anic verse and reliable Hadith that encourage truthfulness is somewhat surprising, given that many Muslims are convinced that their religion teaches honesty. In fact, it is because of this ingrained belief that many Muslims are quite honest. When lying is addressed in the Qur'an, it is nearly always in reference to the "lies against Allah" - referring to the Jews and Christians who rejected Muhammad's claim to being a prophet.Finally, the circumstances by which Muhammad allowed a believer to lie to a non-spouse are limited to those that either advance the cause of Islam or enable a Muslim to avoid harm to his well-being (and presumably that of other Muslims as well). Although this should be kept very much in mind when dealing with matters of global security, such as Iran's nuclear intentions, it is not grounds for assuming that the Muslim one might personally encounter on the street or in the workplace is any less honest than anyone else.
The verse from Bukhari (49:857) is perhaps the scariest of all, and demonstrates what is precisely transpiring currently through the actions of the Obama administration:
"He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar."
There are teachings involving deception such as the above verse, which PJ Media describes below:
Westerners who understand Islamic deception often refer to “taqiyya” as being the tactic of lying in order to guard the faith. Sunni Muslim apologists counter that taqiyya is a Shiite doctrine, while accusing Shiites of being rabblerousers who sanction “mut’a” (pleasure marriage), which is nothing more than prostitution.
Shiites can easily find equivalents to taqiyya and mut’a in the Sunni Muslim world. They are called “misyar”and “muruna.”
While Westerners cringe at the thought of religiously sanctioned prostitution like mut’a, they are less familiar with the Sunni-sanctioned misyar, which literally means “the traveler’s marriage.” It was established to assist with the sexual needs of travelers — a Sunni Muslim male may enter into a contract with a woman in order to gain sexual gratification without the financial obligation necessary to maintain a wife.
As a consequence, the sin of adultery never takes place because the sex contract is an official marriage license. An abundance ofmisyar “middlemen” can seal these interim deals. For internet savvy travelers, there are countless websites like Mesiaronline that allow men to arrange these marriages globally, including in the United States, from the comfort of their hotel rooms.
Misyar was first made legal in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Sunnis who approve of misyar may condemn the Shiite practice of mut’a, which does not require two witnesses as misyar does. Shiites argue that Allah and the Qur’an are the only two witnesses they need.
Arabic translations reveal that Sunnis and Shiites have much more in common than just sanctioned prostitution. Few Westerners are familiar with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood revival of the doctrine of muruna, which literally means “stealth” or “flexibility.” It is far worse than taqiyya, since it sanctions all prohibitions that block Muslim interests, even blasphemous ones.
Muruna allows Muslims to sow division and confusion in the Western world. In a recent sermon, this doctrine was exercised by General Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Muhammad Badei, who laid out his vision for the post-revolutionary era while revealing aspects of a strategy followers should use to deal with secularism in the meantime:
Do not fight the ways of the world because they are overpowering but try to overcome and use them, change their course, and pit some of them against others.
When Badei says to “overcome and use” the “ways of the world”, he is instructing Muslims worldwide on how to overcome Western secularism. It was precisely this purpose for which muruna was prescribed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the main Muslim Brotherhood intellect who initiated it in December 1989 while in the United States during the annual conference of the Association of Muslim Youth Forums. He was with Mohammed Hamadi, a leading rebel in Libya who participated heavily in the “Arab Spring.” Hamadi is also the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Mauritania.
This doctrine and long-term plan should be of great interest to Westerners. In what the forum termed “The Priorities of The Islamic Movement in The Next Three Decades” (from 1990 to 2020), they planned to attain what they described as “the goals of the Islamic Movement.” The plan confirms Badei’s utopian hope for the “establishment of an Islamic state, governed according to Qur’anic law — first in Egypt and eventually in the entire world.” Accordingly, muruna calls for “organized, popular work to return to Islam in order to lead society, all of society … to bring back the caliphate … to announce Jihad either by arms, by pen, or by heart.”
Muruna was designed to catapult and advance Sharia by using Western means. If one thinks that Sharia, with its harsh code, is problematic enough, how about the elimination of the kinder, gentler laws? Muruna is literally accomplished by permitting behavior normally so eschewed by Sharia that Westerners logically assume a more moderate version of Islam when such prohibitions are suddenly permitted. Westerners’ eyes are, in fact, deceiving them. Muruna is about going to great lengths to gain interests through a much deeper level of deception while simultaneously lowering the guard and gaining the support of the infidels.
Note the following quote taken from the series titled Preparing the Atmosphere under the title The Workings of Al-Si’a and Muruna:
"Sharia’s ability to be flexible and inclusive is that it cares for their needs while excusing the burdens Muslims have to endure. For the sake of their destiny, it was made lawful for them to have exceptions from the law that are appropriate for them since these exceptions match their general goals to make it easy for humanity by removing the chains of [Sharia] rules they were made to adhere to in previous Sharia rulings."
By reversing Islamic law, muruna concludes an amazing doctrine that permits all prohibitions:
--"When evil and harm conflict as necessities demand, we must then choose the least of the two evils or harms. This is what the experts in jurisprudence decided … if interests and harms/evils conflict, or benefits conflict with evils, what is then to be decided is to review each benefit and each harm and its consequences, so the minor evils are forgiven for the sake of the greater long-term benefit. The evil is also accepted even if that evil is extreme and normally considered deplorable."
Louis Palmer included muruna in his short list of four Arabic words Westerners should know (Courtesy of Islam Watch:
Rembrandt, Belshazzar’s Feast (1635),
National Gallery, London
In 539 BC, King Belshazzar of Babylon saw a dismembered hand-written four prophetic words on the wall. This "handwriting on the wall" that Prophet Daniel was finally interpreted by the prophet Daniel as predicting the fall of the kingdom. He was right. Babylon fell to the Medes-Persians that very night.
Like the “handwriting on the wall” that Prophet Daniel had interpreted, there are four Arabic words, which could lead to submission of the entire world to Islam, if non-Muslims do not fully understand their meaning and implications. Those words are takiyya, tawriya, kitman, and muruna.
Each of these words describes a different style of deception used by Muslims when discussing Islam or their activities as Muslims. Muhammad famously said, “War is deceit.” (Bukhari, Vol. 4, Book 52, Number 268) The Quran boasts that Allah is the “master of all scheming” (Surah 13:42) and that he is “profound in his machinations” (Surah 8:30). Western civilizations are not accustomed to dealing with people, who have developed deception into an art form. Knowledge is power, and the best way to combat the Islamist agenda is to say, “We are wise to your shenanigans. Knock it off!”
Takiyya
Takiyya is defined as dissimulation about ones Muslim identity. It comes from the verse in the Quran that says, “Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful – he that does has nothing to hope for from Allah – except in self-defense (illaa an-tattaqu minhum tuqah) (Surah 3:28). This “self-defense” justifies dissimulation. Islamic Sharia Law provides, “When it is possible to achieve an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible, and lying is obligatory if the goal is obligatory.” (Reliance of the Traveler, Para r8.2) Examples include lying to protect Islam or a Muslim.
Tawriya
Tawriya is defined as concealing, and it could be called “creative lying”. It is OK to break the intent of the oath, as long as you don’t break the letter of the oath. (Reliance of the Traveler, sections o19.1 and o19.5) How does this work? Suppose someone protests that Surah 1 of the Quran demeans Christians and Jews, because it is a supplication Muslims make to Allah seventeen times a day to keep them from the path of “those with whom God is angry” and “those who have lost their way”. A Muslim might respond, “Surah 1 never mentions Jews or Christians.” He is practicing tawriya, because while Surah 1 does not mention Jews and Christians by name, but he knows full-well that the words “those” refer to Jews and Christians.
Another example would be when a Muslim responds to your greeting of “Merry Christmas!” He might say, “I wish you the best.” In your mind, you think he has returned a Christmas greeting. In actuality, he has expressed his wish for you to convert to Islam; he wishes the best for you which, in his view, is becoming a Muslim.
Kitman
Kitman is characterized by someone telling only part of the truth. The most common example of this is when a Muslim says that jihad really refers to an internal, spiritual struggle. He is not telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, as witnesses are sworn to do in U.S. courts. Often, kitman results in a gross distortion of the truth. In the example given, the Quran uses jihad and its derivatives 59 times. Of those, only 16 (27%) could be considered “internal” with no object as the target of the struggle based on the context of the surah.
Another common form of kitman is to quote only the few peaceful passages from the Quran, knowing full-well that that passage was later abrogated by a more militant, contradictory verse. Here is an example:
“There is no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:256) Early Medina
“Are they seeking a religion other than Allah’s, when every soul in the heavens and earth has submitted to Him, willingly or by compulsion?” (Surah 3:83 Later Medina)
Another example:
“Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those who are attacked, because they have been wronged.” (Surah 22:39 Late Mecca)
“When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them.” (Surah 9:5) Late Medina
Muruna
Muruna means using “flexibility” to blend in with the enemy or the surroundings. The justification for this kind of deception is a somewhat bizarre interpretation of Surah 2:106, which says, “If we abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, We will replace it by a better one or similar.” Thus, Muslims may forget some of the commands in the Quran, as long as they are pursuing a better command. Muslims striving to advance Islam, therefore, can deviate from their Islamic laws in order to cause non-Muslims to lower their guard and place their trust in their Muslim counterpart.
At times, Muslims practice muruna in the same way a chameleon changes colors to avoid detection. Muslims will sometimes shave off their beards, wear western clothing, or even drink alcohol to blend in with non-Muslims. Nothing is more valuable these days to the Islamists than a blue-eyed Caucasian Muslim willing to engage in terrorism.
Another common way of using muruna is for a Muslim to marry a non-Muslim or to behave like a non-Muslim so their true agenda will not be suspected. The 9/11 hijackers visited strip clubs and bars during their off-times while taking classes in the U.S. to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House. Many Americans believe Hillary Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, married Jewish Congressman Anthony Weiner at least in part to burnish her security credentials so she could infiltrate the highest levels of the Administration.
The implications of these highly-honed tactics of deception could be enormous for unassuming Western societies. Twenty years ago, psychologist Paul Ekman wrote an insightful book, “Telling Lies”, which demonstrated that people give off recognizable clues when they are practicing deceit. Their consciences cause them, involuntarily, to sweat or raise their voices or make other recognizable gestures. However, Dr. Ekman’s research was exclusively with people from Western cultures. Muslims, on the other hand, show no discernible signs when they are being deceitful because there is no feeling of guilt. In their minds they are doing exactly what Allah wants them to do to advance Islam. Because any Western person who has raised children knows almost intuitively when someone is lying, so they assume they can do that in all cases. Unfortunately, those same Western people can be easily duped by Islamic deceit because there are no tell-tale signs in the deceiver.
Hopefully, this article will be a wake-up call to the unsuspecting infidels. Trust but verify – as was an old American strategy in dealing with potentially hostile parties – is the way to go in dealing with Islamists.
***
Those in the West are currently experiencing the greatest evil and threat to the peace and liberties of mankind the world has ever known. We are having our constitutional rights confiscated and turned against us to eliminate those of different political and now spiritual persuasions. Enemies of President Barack Obama are being persecuted -- the media, conservative public welfare organizations, and Christian and pro-Israel groups. Obama is a Muslim at war with the infidels who comprise the vast majority of the U.S. population. We know of at least four scandals now; there could be as many as three new ones in a short period of time.
The exact statement by U.S. Embassy in Egypt following the attack on it is as follows (Courtesy of PJ Media):
U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious IncitementSeptember 11, 2012The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
In essence, in the eyes of this evil man, the Americans killed in Libya and who were harassed in Egypt at those nations' embassies got their just desserts because the were infidels.
--
Finally, former PLO Islamic terrorist convert Walid Shoebat wrote a book about the phenomena regarding the Mark of the Beast and Islam's role in the world's End of Days, described here:
Islam and End-Times Prophecy
(February 22, 2010) Is Islam going to be the one-world religion spoken of in End-Times prophecy? Is the Mahdi or Guided One (an Islamic messianic figure) the Antichrist? Is the Mark of the Beast a badge of submission to Allah? Is Jesus Christ returning to earth to wage war against the Islamic nations who treated the Jews harshly? Walid Shoebat thinks so.
Does this image contain the Mark of the Beast to be placed on the arms and heads of the Antichrist's followers?Walid Shoebat declares that most prophecy students are incorrect in their interpretation of many End-Times prophecies. He believes that Western cultural influences have led to a misunderstanding of the Eastern culturally written Bible. He says that he is a former Muslim terrorist born in Bethlehem who converted to Christianity after reading the Bible in order to convince his Christian wife that her beliefs were in error. He also states that he lived in Jericho during the 1967 Six Day War. He wrote a unique and quite illuminating book on End-Times prophecy titledGod’s War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible. I have read this book and I believe it makes many compelling points. The following article is a synopsis of his book and quotes extensively from it. I would recommend any student of biblical prophecy read it for themselves. I will put the relevant page numbers from his book in parentheses throughout the article.
Also, when I quote directly from Mr. Shoebat’s book I will enclose the quote in black quotation marks using an italicized font. Inside the quotation marks all emphasis, spelling, brackets, parentheses, grammar, and punctuation will be reproduced exactly as it is printed in his book. I will not make any comments or notations inside of his quotation marks. The only exception to this is that quotations he uses from the Bible will be in red.Eastern perspective on prophecy
Mr. Shoebat states that his upbringing in the Middle East and Israel in particular as a former Muslim gives him a different insight into understanding the Bible than his Western counterparts (p.23). He rejects the idea that Islam is a peaceful religion and believes that Western commentators are ignorant and politically correct on this subject. Islam creates Fatwas (legal rulings) against its critics, threatens global stability, infiltrates the West using its oil wealth, and attempts to change laws of non-Islamic countries. He points out that Islam persecutes Christians and Jews and is dominant in lands formerly part of every Biblical empire: Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and much of the Roman Empire (p.26). He asked the following question to a gathering of prophecy authors, “Besides the argument of whether Magog is Russia or not, can you name any literal references in the Bible to a nation that God destroys in the end-times that is not Muslim?” He states that no one has given him a valid response to this question. It is because every biblical portrayal of Christ’s return shows Him fighting against a nation that is currently Muslim. How have Western analysts missed this? As he read the Bible he became increasingly aware of this fact and gave some examples such as God pouring out His wrath on Teman (Arabia), Cushan (Sudan), and Midian (Somalia) in Habakkuk ch. 3 and on Egypt with its idols in Isaiah ch. 19. Mr. Shoebat declares that when He read Isaiah 10:33-34 in 1993 he knew that Hezbollah would take over Lebanon. From his Muslim upbringing he knew that Allah would never come down to earth and that Allah hated the Jews. However, when he read the Bible he realized Jesus would return to earth and fight for His Jewish people and the Temple Mount: “so shall the LORD of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof.” (Isaiah 31:4). Jesus will return to earth to judge nations specifically on how they treated the Jewish people, “I will enter into judgment with them there, on account of My people and My heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations, and have divided up My land.” (Joel 3:2). This led him to the conclusion that this is what Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were doing in Israel today. As he read through the Bible Mr. Shoebat could see God’s plan unfolding through the religion of Islam while the West kept ignoring the dangers of Islam (p.29-32).
Mr. Shoebat critiques Islam
Before laying out his belief that God will war against Islam in the End-Times, he writes concerning Islam and Muslims in the first section of his book. He gives an example by quoting Joel 3:4, “Now what have you against me, O Tyre and Sidon [Lebanon] and all you regions of Philistia [Gaza]? Are you repaying me for something I have done? If you are paying Me back, I will swiftly and speedily return on your own heads what you have done.” He says it is as though “Jesus himself is speaking directly to Hezbollah and Hamas”. “Their fight against Israel is in reality a declaration of war on the King himself.” (p.32)Mr. Shoebat says that as a Muslim he “wanted to destroy Christianity, America and every Jew”. However, it was through reading his enemies’ book, the Bible, which saved him. It was not“land concessions for peace, tolerance, interfaith dialogues, better jobs, secularism, or education”. He couldn’t understand why Jehovah defended Israel in the Bible or why everything “Allah loved, Jehovah hated, and whatever Jehovah loved, Allah hated.” What disturbed him most was that Israel always won. He makes the point that Muslims have an unhealthy fear of Allah because of the threats they read throughout the Qur’an and that even the terrorists are terrorized by the Qur’an! (p.37)He states that Satan is intent on destroying Israel and thereby preventing Jesus’ Messianic Kingdom from occurring. He refers to Allah as “Satan in disguise” and that the Devil uses bits of prophecy for his own agenda. He gives an example from Revelation 16:9, “And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.” How could people experience this scorching heat and still blaspheme God? Most Western commentators think that it is because of mans’ stubbornness and rebelliousness. That is true but it is mainly that“these peoples will be clinging to the satanic Allah, thinking that he is God and begging him for mercy, when instead they should be begging Jehovah, the One True and only God.” Reasoning further, he says that Muslims continue to be defeated by the little nation of Israel yet they keep pleading even harder to Allah rather than praying to Jehovah and asking for forgiveness. He states that Islam is a “barrel of contradictions” and that many Muslims will deny the Holocaust while seeking a new holocaust against the Jews. (p.41-42)Mr. Shoebat points out that Muslims are ignorant to the fact that their Jihad eschatology fulfills Biblical prophecy and that Christians too are ignorant because they don’t see Islam’s role in these same prophecies. Not only does he reject the Muslim belief that Jews and Christians corrupted the Bible but it is the Muslims themselves who have corrupted it. They took portions of the Bible and created their own Bible, the Qur’an, and claim it is the final Word of God.“Like their god, the accuser, the corruptors accuse the virtuous of corruption, the murderers accuse the innocent of murder, the haters accuse the righteous of hate, the warmongers accuse the peaceful of war, the lovers of death accuse those who love life of cowardice, while cowards who promote instant death are given the title of the brave. Murderers are martyrs, their funerals are weddings, and their victims are criminals unworthy of even a funeral. Their heaven is debauchery and their earth is a hell devoid of even the most innocent music or wedding dance. Everything is turned upside down.“ (p.44)The Mahdi, Islamic writings, and the Muslim Jesus
In the next section of his book Mr. Shoebat compares biblical prophecies concerning the Antichrist with Islamic writings about the Mahdi who is to come and set up a Caliphate (a governing Islamic political entity). He begins by saying, “You can’t imagine how I felt when I read the Bible and found so much that describes the Mahdi who I had learned so much about growing up. The shock to me was that, while a character identical to my Mahdi was seen throughout the pages of the Bible, this character was not called “the Mahdi”, but rather “the Antichrist.” Were the prophets of the Bible Islamaphobes? After all, the Mahdi to us Sunni Muslims was “The rightly-guided and awaited One.” Shi’a Muslims refer to him as Sahib Al-Zaman “The Lord of the Age.” This is exactly what the Bible calls Satan: “The lord of the age” (II Corinthians 4:4).” Then laying a foundation for the comparisons he is about to make he explains Islamic writings: “Briefly, the Hadith or Sunna are the records of both the words and the deeds of the “prophet” Mohammed. In other words, the Qur’an is “thus says Allah” and the hadiths are “thus says Mohammed.” He then defines a Caliph as the “supreme political, military, and administrative leader of all Muslims worldwide.” He declares there is an effort in the Muslim world with the mandate to have both seats of the Mahdi and Caliph in one: “Mohammed said “There would be a caliph in the last period of my Ummah…He would be Imam Mahdi.”Lastly, Mr. Shoebat talks about the Muslim Jesus. He calls him the“second most important Muslim end-time character” who name is Isa-Almaseeh or the Muslim Jesus. He states that the Jesus of Islam is different from the historical and biblical Jesus. The Muslim Jesus is merely a prophet sent by Allah and is not a savior/redeemer. Nor will he restore the land of Israel to the Jews. He won’t save his followers from the ongoing persecution of the Antichrist. “In Islam, Jesus comes back as a radical Muslim to lead the Muslim armies, to abolish Christianity and to slaughter the Jews.” (p.52-54)The Mahdi vs. the Antichrist
Mr. Shoebat makes forty-three comparisons between the Mahdi and the Antichrist. In this section of his book he uses the formulaic chapter headings “Both …” I will highlight a few of them:Both Kingdoms Suffer a “Head Wound”
- Revelation 13:2-3 says the beast suffers a head wound. Mr. Shoebat says the beast or the Antichrist’s empire ended with the Ottoman Empire’s demise and the end of the Caliphate on March 3, 1924. He likens the end of the Caliphate with the feeling Catholics would experience if the office of the pope was abolished. Today however, Muslims worldwide are calling for the reinstitution of the Caliphate. The Mahdi will answer their call. (p.81-82)
Both Work False Miracles
- II Thessalonians 2:8-9 says the Antichrist will be in accord with Satan working false wonders and miracles. Mr. Shoebat says the Mahdi will also perform false miracles, “Islamic tradition even confirms this: “Allah will give him power over the wind and the rain, and the earth will bring forth its foliage. He will give away wealth profusely, flocks will be in abundance, and the Ummah [Empire of Islam] will be large and honored…” (p.83)
Both Ride A White Horse
- In Revelation 19:11 Jesus rides a white horse at His second coming. Revelation 6:1-2 speaks of a different rider on a white horse who goes out to conquer and famines, plagues, death, persecution, martyrdom of God’s people, a great earthquake, and the wrath of God follow after him. Mr. Shoebat says that an early transcription of the prophet Mohammed’s Hadith confirms that the Imam Mahdi is the rider on the white horse in Revelation chapter 6. He quotes Egyptian authors who wrote, “It is clear that this man is the Mahdi who will ride the white horse and judge by the Qur’an (with justice) and with whom will be men with marks of prostration on their foreheads. Mr. Shoebat concludes, “Our Antichrist is their Messiah–Muslim scholars open the Bible, read about the Antichrist, and see their Savior. This must be quite ironic, if not entirely prophetic. Now you are beginning to see what I was faced with when I began to study the Bible, the True Word of the Almighty God.“ (p.84)
Both Attempt to Change The Law
- Daniel 7:25 declares, “He [Antichrist] will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and the laws.” Mr. Shoebat says the Antichrist will try to change the times or accepted world calendar and legal systems and constitutions. “He will attempt to invoke Islam’s evil laws worldwide to replace every other law and constitution.” He states that the Mahdi will institute Shari’a Law as much as he can. However, he says that like Nimrod’s unsuccessful attempt to set up a global government with the Tower of Babel, so too God will not allow the Antichrist/Mahdi to set up a one-world government. He believes that Western prophecy students misunderstand when it comes to the Antichrist setting up a global government. Only Jesus Christ will rule over the world when He sets up His kingdom in Jerusalem. As far as changing the calendar he points out that where Islam rules, the Islamic calendar based on Mohammed’s conquest of Medina in Saudi Arabia is in effect. According to him, Isa, the Muslim Jesus, will be in charge of overseeing the changing of the times and laws.
Both Practice Beheadings
- Revelation 20:4 says, “And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God.” Mr. Shoebat relates the long history of Islamic beheadings beginning with Mohammed’s sanctioning of the decapitation of one of his enemies. He also tells of the hundreds of beheadings for crimes, alleged or true, that take place in modern Islamic countries. (p.162-165)
Both Occupy The Temple Mount
- Matthew 24:15 says, “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand.” II Thessalonians 2:4 says, “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” Mr. Shoebat quotes from an Ayatollah’s book on the Imam Mahdi, “Armies carrying black flags will come from Khurasan. No power will be able to stop them and they will finally reach Eela (Baitul Maqdas in Jerusalem) where they will erect their flags.” He says Baitul Maqdas means the holy house and refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He asks could placing flags with the slogan “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Messenger” in the Temple be the Abomination of Desolation? Or possibly that a Black Stone image be set on the Holy of Holies? He quotes other Islamic authors who state that the Mahdi will rule from Jerusalem in a rightly-guided caliphate. (p.174)
Both Enjoy Desecrating Bodies
- Revelation 11 tells of God’s Two Witnesses who will preach in Jerusalem during the reign of the Antichrist. He will be unable to harm them until their ministry is finished. Revelation 11:7-12 declares,“7 Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. 8 Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. 10 The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. 11 Now after the three-and-a-half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. 12 And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them.” Mr. Shoebat gives examples such as the Somalian people dragging dead soldiers through the streets and charred bodies of Americans hung in Iraq. The purpose is to shame the dead and deter others from committing similar acts. He says it is also a “sick celebration of victory”. As far as the gift-giving in Revelation 11, He points out the celebrations that occurred after the September 11, 2001 attack in America. There was dancing in the streets in Arab countries and children were given candy in Palestine.
Jesus Christ will return to wage war against the Muslims
At the beginning of his book Walid Shoebat declares “In every portrayal of Christ’s return to the earth, He is fighting a nation that today is Muslim.” (p.30) In part three of the book he lays out the scriptural evidence for this assertion. He quotes Habbakuk 3:3-4 to illustrate that Jesus comes in person and is found returning from fighting in the land of Teman in Arabia: “3 God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth. 4 His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden.”He then begins his presentation with a messianic prophecy: “17 I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the sons of Sheth. 18 Edom will be conquered; Seir, his enemy, will be conquered, but Israel will grow strong. 19 A ruler will come out of Jacob and destroy the survivors of the city.” (Numbers 24:17-19) He notes that when Jesus returns He will take His scepter and destroy the countries listed here which today comprise the area from Yemen to Arabia. He then writes about the various Muslim countries that Jesus will inflict His vengeance on when He returns. (p.185-187)Saudi Arabia and Yemen
Mr. Shoebat quotes what he calls “a most amazing prophecy, Isaiah 63:1-4, “1 Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson? Who is this, robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save. 2 Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing. 4 For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redemption has come.” He relates Ezekiel 25:12-13 to this passage in Isaiah, “12 Thus says the Lord GOD; Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and revenged himself upon them; 13 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD; I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman; and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword.” Teman is Yemen and Dedan is an ancient city in Saudi Arabia. Jesus will destroy the area from the Red Sea into central Arabia. (p.187-188)Egypt and Lebanon
“See, Jehovah rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt. The idols of Egypt tremble before him, and the hearts of the Egyptians melt within them.” (Isaiah 19:1) Isaiah 11:14-15 declares, “14 But they shall fly down upon the shoulder of the Philistines toward the west; Together they shall plunder the people of the East; They shall lay their hand on Edom and Moab; And the people of Ammon shall obey them. 15 The LORD will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt; With His mighty wind He will shake His fist over the River, And strike it in the seven streams.” Mr. Shoebat states that the Nile River empties into the Mediterranean Sea by seven streams. These passages indicate that Egypt will be largely destroyed. Isaiah 10:34 states, “Lebanon will fall by the Mighty One”. He says though some may say “The Mighty One” is God the Father in heaven and not the Messiah on earth, Isaiah 19:20 is clearly speaking of the Messiah, “He will send them a Savior and a Mighty One, and He will deliver them.” He declares this judgment against Lebanon is also a judgment against the Antichrist, “O My people, who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. He shall strike you with a rod and lift up his staff against you, in the manner of Egypt. 25 For yet a very little while and the indignation will cease, as will My anger in their destruction.” (Isaiah 10:24-25) The Antichrist will be responsible for the destruction of Lebanon,“For the violence done to Lebanon will cover you, And the plunder of beasts which made them afraid, Because of men’s blood And the violence of the land and the city, And of all who dwell in it.”(Habakkuk 2:17} Mr. Shoebat states that “God will punish Islam for what they have done in Lebanon with rape and pillage of Christians in that nation.” (p.188-189)Why did the West miss this?
How come Western prophecy commentators did not see Islam’s primary role in the End-Times prophetic passages of the Bible? Mr. Shoebat believes it is because most discussion amongst prophecy students focuses on the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel. While important, he says that rather than starting with interpreting the visions and imagery of these two books, why not examine the rest of the Bible passages where End-Times prophecy is clear and straightforward. In the next part of his book he does just that.The Battle for Jerusalem and the Rapture
“1 Blow the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; For the day of the LORD is coming, For it is at hand: 2 A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, The like of whom has never been; Nor will there ever be any such after them, Even for many successive generations. 3 A fire devours before them, And behind them a flame burns; The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; Surely nothing shall escape them.” (Joel 2:1-3) Who is this army that devours the land? Mr. Shoebat declares that it is the army of the followers of Jesus Christ who have been Raptured. Concerning the snatching away of the saints he states,“Whether the Rapture takes the believers before the seven years, then prepares them to come down for this battle later, or in the Middle; or we are caught up at the tail end to instantly participate in this, the timing is of no concern to Easterners; I predict that Westerners will wrestle with this issue and with each other until “The Kingdom comes.” To further his point he quotes Psalm 50:3,“A fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous all around Him”; Daniel 7:10, “A fiery stream issued and came before Him. A thousand thousands ministered to Him”; Isaiah 12:6,“Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion, For great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst!”; and Isaiah 13:3-4, “I have also called My mighty ones for My anger–Those who rejoice in My exaltation. The LORD of hosts musters the army for battle.” He states the “mighty ones” must be the glorified bodies of the saints and they are His army. He quotes Joel 2:11, “The LORD gives voice before His army” and declares this verse covers the Rapture and the War:“Western Christians cannot get a grip over this issue–they will be fighting a war against an Islamic invasion–the battle for Jerusalem.” Concerning Jerusalem and Israel, “…there is a land already in the Tribulation.” He makes it clear that it is not yet the Great Tribulation though. Concerning the West’s squabbling over the timing of the Rapture, “When Muslim Fundamentalists take over a Christian society and begin to behead, they never ask what Rapture position any of their victims hold, neither do they ask their denomination. In the case of Islam we all need to unite.”(p.192-199)Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus’ future war against Islam
I am not going to list the various points Walid Shoebat makes in the next part of his book. He begins by illustrating that Isaiah ch. 9 and 14 along with Ezekiel ch. 28 allude to the Antichrist and his connection with Satan. He points out that chapters 13-30 in the Book of Isaiah reference the Muslim nations that God is going to judge. He states that chapters 28-32 in the Book of Ezekiel speak of the Islamic nations that will be cast into Hell. Lastly, he quotes the Psalms, ch. 2, 74, 75, 79-83, 87, and 120 that tell of Jesus Christ fighting against an alliance of these same nations of Islam. (p.226-249)Rosh, Gog, Magog, Armageddon in Ezekiel 38-39
Western prophecy commentators believe that Rosh, Gog, and Magog in Ezekiel 38:1-9 refers to modern-day Russia. They also think that the alliance of nations that invade Israel in ch. 39 of Ezekiel refers to a battle which occurs before the battle of Armageddon mentioned in ch. 16 and 19 of the Book of Revelation. Mr. Shoebat disputes both of these interpretations. He says the word “Rosh” means head or chief and is etymologically unrelated to the modern word Russia. “So even if Rosh is interpreted as a proper noun, it could point to the Ukraine, Chechnya, or Georgia and possibly even Iran.” All of these countries today are Islamic nations. He quotes Ezekiel 38:2, “the land of Magog, chief prince(head or leader of) of Mesheck and Tubal” and declares that since Meshech and Tubal are regions of Turkey then Magog must also be related to Turkey. Thus Gog is a leader from the region of Turkey.“The error of the Russian theory arose from the Scofield Study Bible, which identifies Mesheck and Tubal with the modern cities of Moscow and Tobolsk. The only basis for this interpretation is the somewhat similar sound of the two words.” (p.250-266)The battle of Gog in Ezekiel 38 is the same as the battle of Armageddon in the Book of Revelation. Mr. Shoebat says that the description of Israel as pure is the same description of Israel after the battle of Armageddon: “Then they will know that I am the LORD. Son of man, prophesy against Gog and say: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal…I will make known My holy name among My people Israel. I will no longer let My holy name be profaned, and the nations will know that I the LORD am the Holy One in Israel.”(Ezekiel 38:23-39:1;39:7) Also after this war the Gentile nations will then know God: “And thou [Gog] shall come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 38:16) He asks, “How could these be “heathen?” All these nations in Ezekiel 38 are Muslim nations. Why would the Bible call people who claim to believe in Abraham and Jesus as heathen? To me this is one dilemma I had when I read the text as a Muslim, I realized I must be on the wrong side. Worshipping Allah according to the Bible cannot be the same as worshipping Jehovah.” He also notes that Jesus Christ is present in both the battle of Gog and Armageddon: “And all the men that are upon the face of the earth shall shake at my presence” (Ezekiel 38:20) and “And the heathen shall know that I am Jehovah, the Holy One in Israel.” (Ezekiel 39:7) Here Jesus is in Israel while other passages refer to the Holy One of Israel. “The “in” is crucial. It’s like DNA evidence in a court of law. No serious Bible student can doubt the fact that this event is anything other than the Messiah fighting the Antichrist.” He also points out another parallel between Gog of Ezekiel and the Antichrist at Armageddon in Revelation:“Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Call out to every kind of bird and all the wild animals: Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood. 18 You will eat the flesh of mighty men and drink the blood of the princes of the earth… At my table you will eat your fill of horses and riders, mighty men and soldiers of every kind, declares Jehovah the Sovereign.” (Ezekiel 39:17-20) “17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.” (Revelation 19:17-18) He concludes this section by making other comparisons between the descriptions of the destructions and plagues which occur at both battles. (p.267-274)Western Misconceptions
Mr. Shoebat discusses how the West has tried to insert Europe and the rest of the world into End-Times prophecy when there is no biblical basis for doing so.Prophecy in Middle Eastern context
Every nation will not be utterly dominated by the Antichrist. Phrases such as “all the nations of the earth” in Zechariah 12:1-3 and “will gather all nations to Jerusalem to fight against it” in Zechariah 14 refer to the Islamic nations surrounding Israel. He states that “using hyperbole is extremely common in eastern culture.” There are many times the Bible uses all-inclusive phrases when it was impossible that they pertained to countries in the Pacific and elsewhere. Thus the battle of Armageddon will occur between Jesus and His army and the Muslim armies. Tarshish and Cush of Ezekiel 38 probably refer to Turkey and Sudan respectively, not Europe and modern Ethiopia. The kings of the east of Revelation 16 could refer to the former nations of Babylonia and Persia and not China. The wise men who came from the eastare believed to have originated in these regions. Mr. Shoebat declares that Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Indonesia could field a 200 million soldier army. He relates that reformer Martin Luther and Sir Isaac Newton concluded that Muslim warriors from the previous fourteen centuries were a fulfillment of this prophecy as they conquered formerly Christian nations. (p.282-287)Unlocking prophecy symbolism
- Mountains – Eastern symbolism has a different meaning than the ones the West ascribes to them. Mountains refer to kingdoms or governments such as the one describing Jesus’ future reign over the world: “And it shall come to pass in the Last-Days that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains.” (Isaiah 2:2-4) Many westerners are waiting for the Catholic Church to rise to world power because Rome sits on theseven hills (mountains) of prophecy. Mr. Shoebat quotes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as using his eastern understanding when he declared in a speech, “Do not doubt, Allah will prevail, and Islam will conquer mountain tops of the entire world.” God speaks against the Babylonian Empire in Jeremiah 51:25, “Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the LORD, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.” Jesus refers to governments and kingdoms as opposed to literal mountains, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” (Matthew 17:20)
- Waters – Waters are mixed ethnic groups. Revelation 17:15 illustrates this, “The waters which thou saw, where the whore sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.” He quotes Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire (war), you shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you.” Mr. Shoebat interprets this as saying when the Israelites pass through the waters or face the people against you, you will prevail.
- A Head is a Kingdom – Revelation 17:9-10 states, “The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings.” Mr. Shoebat states, “A kingdom is obviously ruled by a king: “They are also seven kings.” One cannot have a kingdom without a king. “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed,” (Revelation 13:3). One of the kingdoms is destroyed but come back to life. One cannot isolate the kingdom from the king. The death of the head is the ending of the kingdom.”
- Woman is a spiritual entity with a literal kingdom and capital –“And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” (Revelation 12:17) “This is the kingdom of Israel with its capital, Jerusalem.” A harlot represents a false religion.
- Beasts are Empires led by kings – Mr. Shoebat says that many consider the beast of Revelation to be a man but that scripture doesn’t necessarily refer to a single entity as a single being. The wife of Jesus Christ refers to the entire church. Just as the briderepresents many nations so too the beast represents a nation or an empire. He says that every mention of a beast in Daniel ch.7 refers to an empire and horns to kings or rulers. Accordingly, a beast always represents a group of people who follow a false religion and a false ruler or horn. He states that when the beast and false prophet are taken it means that the empire and its leader are removed. Therefore, Muslims are waiting for the Mahdi to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Mohammed and thus “we see the beast of Revelation 13:3 waiting and determined to follow the previous beast whose “deadly wound was healed.”
- A Name is a Declaration of Faith – A Creed – Emanuel means God with us and Isaiah ch. 9 gives the attributes of the Messiah. “No one accepts the names of the true God except the ones who believe in his attributes–that Messiah is Almighty God and the God with us.”“Names in the east always regard the creed, attributes, descriptions and the titles of the person they signify. Therefore, the name of the beast in Revelation 13 puts in God’s place someone other than His Son. The harlot of Revelation has names or creeds of blasphemy on her forehead as do the followers of Antichrist. Muslims today have a creed of blasphemy on their foreheads and hands.
- Fish are followers – Jesus refers to potential followers to be drawn out of the waters of nations.
- A Stone or Rock is the Messiah – Daniel 2 refers to the stone or Messiah striking the feet made of iron and clay on the symbolic statue. Jesus is the Chief Cornerstone which the builders rejected.
- Trees and Birds are fallen angels – “3 Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. 4 The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.” (Ezekiel 31:3-4) Mr. Shoebat declares that the Assyrian is Satan and that nations made him great and they streamed to worship him and be ambassadors for him.
- Stars are angels – In Revelation 12 the dragon of Satan takes a third of the angels with him.
- Dragon is Satan – “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called “the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Revelation 12:9) “I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers.” (Ezekiel 29:3) These verses refer to Satan dwelling in the Antichrist. (p.288-295)
Unlocking Prophetic Allegories
Revelation 17
“9 This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.” (Revelation 17:9-11) Mr. Shoebat says that Westerners are misguided in ascribing the seven hills to the seven hills on which the city of Rome sits. This prophecy does not relate to the Vatican or Catholicism. The seven hills or literally mountains refer to seven empires. There will be an eighth empire over which the Antichrist will rule. There have been seven “Beast” empires so far; five before John wrote the Book of Revelation: Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek. The sixth was the Roman Empire during which John lived or as the angel said, “one is”. The seventh Empire will be fatally wounded and then resurrected under the reign of the Antichrist. If the seventh empire is the revived Roman Empire (meaning Euro-centric in Western interpretations) then that means that the sixth, seventh, and eighth empires are going to be Roman. Not only does that seem illogical but all the previous empires were Middle Eastern-centric and included Jerusalem in their domain. Also, each of the first five empires was defeated by the succeeding empire. Mr. Shoebat asks who took control from the Roman Empire. (p.299-308)Jerusalem fell to Islam in 637 A.D. This was the beginning of the Islamic Empire which culminated with the Ottoman Empire and lasted thirteen centuries before its fall in 1924. Thus, the seventh empire was Islamic and according to Mr. Shoebat will be revived under the Mahdi/Antichrist and fulfill the prophetic eighth empire. He points out that the Turkish Ottoman Empire falls in line with Ezekiel’s prophecies that focus on the role of Turkey in the last days. (p.309-315)Daniel 2 and 7
Mr. Shoebat continues the allegorical interpretations from the Book of Daniel which include Nebuchadnezzar’s dream statue, the “Empires” beasts, and the leaders/horns visions. I will not go into detail but he concludes that all these visions point to a Muslim Antichrist ruling over the fourth and final world empire, the Islamic Empire. He does agree with his Western counterparts that the Antichrist will make a peace treaty, rebuild the Jewish Temple and fight wars in and around is Israel during the end times. (p.319-346)Daniel 9
“Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; And the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined. 27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.” (Daniel 9:25-27) This is one of the major prophetic passages that Westerners use to declare that the Antichrist will come out of a revived Roman Empire which would encompass Europe. This prophecy has two fulfillments. Jesus fulfilled the first sixty nine weeks of the prophecy with His first coming. The seventieth week is yet to occur although a type of it was fulfilled in 70 A.D. when the Roman General Titus and his armies destroyed the Jewish Temple after besieging Jerusalem. Since it was a Roman army Westerners believe that the Antichrist will lead a European alliance of armies in an invasion of Israel and enter into the Third Jewish Temple to declare himself God. Mr. Shoebat states that the prince in this prophecy cannot be the Roman General Titus since he did not confirm a peace covenant for seven years? Nor did he set up an abomination of desolation in the Temple. Therefore the title prince refers to the future Antichrist. He also points out that the makeup of the Roman army which destroyed Jerusalem consisted of primarily Middle Eastern soldiers: Arabians, Syrians and Turks. He quotes First Century historians who confirm that this army was drawn from the indigenous people of that region. Thus, a Muslim Antichrist will lead Muslim armies in the future invasion of Israel. (p.347-354)Unlocking the Mark of the Beast
“16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.”(Revelation 13:16-18) From an Eastern perspective, Mr. Shoebat believes his theory on the mark of the beast is more plausible than Western ideas such as a microchip implant or some kind of UPC code tattoo.The Name of the Beast
In the Bible names can refer to a person’s nature, character, and mission. Jesus is prophetically called Immanuel (which means God with us) or King of kings or Word of God yet His name was Jesus or Yeshua in Hebrew. Likewise, the name of the beast or Antichrist is not the literal name of a political figure. Rather, it is a creed or declaration of faith about the nature, character, or mission of the Antichrist. Revelation 13:1 states, “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” This verse declares that the name of the beast or Antichrist is “blasphemy”. Mr. Shoebat defines the biblical meaning of this term: “Blasphemy is an anti-Yahweh or anti-Christ word or deed–to claim the attributes of God, claim to be Messiah, deny the Holy Spirit, deny the trinity, the cross, or even denying God’s edicts and declarations–all are blasphemy. Satan blasphemed when he said, “I will be like the Most High,” (Is. 14:14). Satan has always desired to be like God.” Thus the name of the beast or Antichrist will contain a credal aspect to it that will be anti-Yahweh and anti-Christ and will exalt another one over God.The Shahadatan is the Islamic creed which declares, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is The One sent by Allah [The Messenger of Allah].” This creed alone fulfills the blasphemy requirements by stating there is another God other than Jehovah and that Muhammad supercedes the place of Jesus the Messiah. Mr. Shoebat says, “the Mark, the Name, the Number, and the Image of the Beast–are indicators of allegiance and submission to Beast [sic].” “In the simplest of terms, the Mark of the Beast is essentially the emblem, the symbol, or the identifying mark of the coming Beast kingdom. By donning this mark, people will identify with the Kingdom of the Beast and the values and beliefs that this kingdom represents.” (p.363-366)The Number of the Beast
“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” (Revelation 13:18) A common interpretation of the number 666 usually involves Gematria, “a mystical form of numerology that assigns a numerical value to each letter from any given name. After the sum total of all of the letters is added up, the final result is the number of that individual’s name.” One major problem with this method of interpretation is which alphabet does one use in determining the name of the Antichrist? The biblical Hebrew, the biblical Greek, Latin, English? Mr. Shoebat states that if there is a Gematria interpretation for the number 666 it must correlate with the Name of the Beast which is the anti-Yahweh and anti-Christ creed of blasphemy.After examining the Codex Vaticanus Greek Text of Revelation, Mr. Shoebat says that he noticed the Greek letters Chi, Xi, Stigma, which formed the 666 of Revelation 13:18, resembled “the most common creed of Islam Bismillah (or Basmalah), written in Arabic. Bismillah literally means “In the Name of Allah,”and is followed by the symbol of crossed swords, which is used universally throughout the Muslim world to signify Islam.” He says that only the first two words Bismi (Name of) and llah (Allah) are necessary to constitute the Basmalah. The similarities between the two sets of letters/words led him to the conclusion that it was possible that John, to whom God revealed the visions of Revelation, saw the Arabic writing and recorded them with their Greek letter counterparts. This would fulfill the requirement that the number 666 also depict the Name of Blasphemy or as he pointed out, the Name of Allah. [Note: Others have stated that Codex Vaticanus does not contain an original copy of the Book of Revelation but that Mr. Shoebat may have looked at some other ancient manuscript] (p.367-374)
The Mark of the Beast
The Greek word charagma translated as mark in Revelation 13:16-18 means “a stamp, an imprinted mark”. Mr. Shoebat says that in John’s time charagma was reserved for slaves in what was called“a badge of servitude”. He states Muslims are called slaves of Allah and wear headbands and badges with Islamic mottos, creeds, words, and symbols written on them. These express their subservience and allegiance to Allah and his prophet Muhammad. He relates that when he read these passages in Revelation chapter 13 about a mark on the forehead and hand, he noticed they mirrored the Muslims custom of putting badges on their foreheads and arms. They do this in response to a Qur’anic verse, “And when the word is fulfilled concerning them, We shall bring forth a beast of the earth to speak unto them because mankind had not faith in Our revelations.” In the Bible the Beast is evil but in the Qur’an theBeast has a “holy mission to revive Islam and mark the foreheads of all true Muslim believers.” (p.375-379)The Image of the Beast
“14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” (Revelation 13:14-15) Some Westerners thinks this means that there will be an animated statue of the Antichrist. Mr. Shoebat gives some possible biblical definitions for the image of Revelation 13. Judaism had a Temple with many articles placed inside such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Menorah: “For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or an image.” (Hosea 3:4) Islam too has a Temple for Allah (the Ka’ba) along with Temple articles (the Black Stone). Just as the Jewish Temple articles foreshadowed the coming of God’s Messiah so too Islam’s Temple foreshadows the coming of Satan’s Antichrist. The image could be a national emblem such as a flag of the revived Islamic Empire and caliphate. It could be an idol such as the statue of King Nebuchadnezzar or the meteorite that Paul said was located in the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus or the Black Stone Ka’ba in Mecca. Indeed, the image might be a likeness of the Antichrist.Muslims believe and teach that when the Islamic Jesus returns he will abolish Christianity and Judaism. He will destroy all the cross symbols since Islam declares that he was never crucified. In reality, Jesus will return and destroy the images of Islam. Mr. Shoebat quotes Psalms 82 and 83, which he says speaks of a war between the Messiah and the Antichrist, and compares them with Judges 8:21,26: “Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna.” (Psalm 83:11) “So Zebah and Zalmunna said, “Rise yourself, and kill us; for as a man is, so is his strength.” So Gideon arose and killed Zebah and Zalmunna, and took the crescent ornaments that were on their camels’ necks…Now the weight of the gold earrings that he requested was one thousand seven hundred shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments, pendants, and purple robes which were on the kings of Midian, and besides the chains that were around their camels’ necks.” (Judges 8:21,26) He states that just as David was a typeof the King Messiah and Joseph a type of the Suffering Messiah, so too is Gideon a type of the Warrior Messiah who will abolish Islam and tear down the Islamic symbols from the high places (the minarets).The Hebrew word saharon translated as ornaments in Judges 8:21 means crescent, moon and comes from the root word sahar which is the word used for the name of Satan in Isaiah 14: Hilal ben Sahar.The King James Bible translates Hilal as Lucifer and the full phrase means morning star/crescent moon. The crescent moon and star are Islamic symbols and according to Mr. Shoebat this means that “Islam and the name of Satan are one and the same.” The image of the crescent moon and star are prevalent throughout the Islamic world and may possibly reflect theimage of the Antichrist/Mahdi. (p.380-387)
The Ka’ba (Kaaba) or The Black Stone
“Both Antichrist’s followers and Muslims bow to an image. The great idol of Islam, the Black-Stone and its veneration has been around from time immemorial.” “Everyone knows that Ephesus is the officialguardian of the temple of the great Artemis, whose image fell down to us from heaven?” (Acts 19:35) Mr. Shoebat says that “the image of Artemis is similar to the meteorite stone image in Mecca which Allah commands 1.3 billion Muslims to literally bow down and prostrate themselves toward at least seventeen times during their five daily prayers.” He makes a connection between the meteorite that is located at the Kaaba and Lucifer’s image depicted in Revelation ch. 8 and 9: “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.”(Revelation 9:1) “And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood…And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.” (Revelation 8:8,10) The great star is Satan, the mountain is an empire, and the rivers and waters are the people of the earth. Satan, the fallen star, and the revival of the Islamic Empire will cause one-third of mankind to dies.
“The Black Stone of Mecca owes its reputation to the tradition that it fell from the “heavens”.” Mr. Shoebat declares that the Black Stone of Mecca is “clearly an “image” of Satan”. According to authenticated Islamic tradition Muhammad said the following concerning the animation of the image in Revelation 13:15, “Allah will raise up the stone [the Black Stone] on the Day of Judgment, and it will have two-eyes with which it will see and a tongue which it talks with, and it will give witness in favor of everyone who touched it in truth.” One Islamic author noted that many years ago the Black Stone was, “whiter than milk; it was only later that it became black as it absorbed the sins of those who touched it.”During the Hajj or pilgrimage to the Kaaba, Muslims circle the Black Stone in a counterclockwise movement and are thereby cleansed of their sins. Mr. Shoebat says there is a prophecy that is rarely understood by Western analysts yet alludes to the Islamic Hajj: “3 Behold, the Assyrian (the Antichrist, Satan in the flesh) was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. 4 The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.” (Ezekiel 31:3-4) He says that applying the key of interpreting symbols leads to the following interpretation: “Behold, Satan, a beautiful angel clothed in beautiful covering, an angel with high status. Peoples and multitudes from every nation made him great, and the underworld set him up high with the multitudes running round about his idol and sent out all the people to all the idols that were set for him.” He points out that the phrase “shadowing shroud” in this verse could refer to the black cloth (the Kiswa) which covers the Kaaba. He quotes Jeremiah 51:44, “And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.” No longer will the nations stream to honor Satan and walk around his idol. (p.388-392)Mystery Babylon, the Mother of Harlots
The next to last section deals with the Harlot or Prostitute John saw and wrote about in Revelation ch. 17:1-6: “1 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” 3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5This title was written on her forehead: MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.” Western prophecy commentators use to focus on Rome and the Catholicism as the fulfillment of the prophetic Harlot. Looking from an Eastern perspective the Harlot is associated with Arabia and Islam.The Harlot’s connection to Arabia
Isaiah 21:9 states, “And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.” This verse is related to Revelation 18:2:“And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” Mr. Shoebat says that passages which are connected to Mystery Babylon in Isaiah 21, Jeremiah, and the Psalms speak of regions and cities in modern Arabia which was part of the Babylonian Empire. He further surmises that Isaiah 21:16 mentions the “glory of Kedar” which could be a reference to Mecca. Also the phrase “desert of the sea” refers to Arabia which is surrounded by the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and the Persian-Arab Sea. Thus Mystery Babylon is speaking of the region of Saudi Arabia. (p.395-399)The Harlot’s connection to a desert
“Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.”(Revelation 17:3) Mr. Shoebat makes a connection between the Harlot in the desert and the subject of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:26, “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.” He says that the Beast is the governmental aspect of the Antichrist’s empire while the Harlot is the spiritual aspect of it. Some Westerners suggest that Mystery Babylon could be New York, Rome, or America yet none of these sit in a desert. Conversely, Saudi Arabia fits this prophetic scenario perfectly. (p.400)The Harlot’s connection to Oil
“1 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” (Revelation 17:1-20) Mr. Shoebat states, “There are two very important descriptions of the Harlot that stand out: First, she exists geographically in a desert region. And secondly, we see that the “kings of the earth”figuratively commit adultery with her in order to obtain her “wine”in exchange for betraying God’s people. What desert “wine” intoxicates the earth, and causes this desert region to grow rich? What false religion teaches that the blood of Christians and Jews should be shed? What desert nation today is the geographical womb from which this false harlot religion was birthed?” The answers, according to Mr. Shoebat, are oil, Islam, and Saudi Arabia.He quotes Joel 3:1-3 which mentions the wine and harlot: “1 For behold, in those days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, 2 I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land. 3 They have also cast lots for My people, traded a boy for a harlot and sold a girl for wine that they may drink.” He declares that most Christians don’t know the main reason Jesus comes to judge the nations is because they“divided up My land” and their treatment of “My People” the Jews. You can see that modern-day politics have resulted in the carving up of the land of Israel in order to create an Arab Palestinian state. Nations will sell out (they “traded a boy for a harlot and sold a girl for wine that they may drink”) Israel “in order to coddle the Harlot and obtain her wine.” He states that the Harlot will use both Islam and oil as her “wine” through which she “seduces the nations of the world into committing spiritual adultery with her and compromising Israel.” (p.401-408)The Harlot’s connection to a false religion
Mr. Shoebat writes, “The Beast is a coalition of ten kings representing the seven kingdoms in the past, under the authority of the Antichrist. The Harlot is a distinct and separate geographically definable entity that represents the primary religious source of the Antichrist’s religion. The Harlot is sitting atop the Beast.” He restates his belief that the Beast is the revived Islamic Empire and mentions the similarities of the scarlet coverings of both entities and that just as the Beast Empire will behead God’s people so too the Harlot is drunk on the blood of the saints. Furthermore, the phrase “Mother of all Prostitutes and Abominations” is an Eastern way of expressing a superlative such as the biggest, the worst, unmatched, and most significant. In this context he says the purpose of this phrase is “to portray the Great Harlot as the greatest manifestation of spiritual infidelity against the God of the Bible that has ever existed throughout the history of the world.” The mystery of the Harlot’s false religion is that unlike any other pagan religion “it sprouts from a mixture of a heretical Christian cult and a pagan Moon-god religion that has attempted to cloak itself with certain Jewish and Christian elements in order to appear as a Biblical faith and the rightful successor of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” Paul’s letter to the Galatians illustrates this when he writes concerning two covenants: “22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. 24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. 25 For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. 26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. 28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. 29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. 30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” (Galatians 4:22-31) Some consider Hagar’s son Ishmael the father of Arabs. From him came a religion of bondage (Islam means “submission”) out of “Mount Sinai in Arabia”.The Prostitute is adorned with costly, royal robes and jewelry. The scarlet color is the “red” sinfulness of her corrupt and murderous religion. Mr. Shoebat asks, “What Islamic desert nation is governed by a Royal Monarchy that is known throughout the earth as being fabulously wealthy and utterly corrupt? What place is decked with gold, silver, and precious stones?” Saudi Arabia.The Harlot is described as a great city that rules over the kings of the earth. This means that she is a politically and geographically entity. This great city is in contrast to the Holy City of Jerusalem where Jesus will reign from. Islam started out with its adherents praying while facing Jerusalem. Now when they pray, Muslims face Mecca where the Kaaba is located. (p.409-412)Turkey
In the last section of his book Mr. Shoebat makes the case for the nation of Turkey playing a prominent role in the revived Islamic Empire and the rise of the Antichrist.Seven Scriptural proofs that Turkey is the Antichrist Nation
- Ezekiel ch.38 lists eight locations in the Gog prophecy. Five of them (Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Togarmah, Gomer) are located in Turkey.
- The first Islamic Empire (which culminated with the Turkish Ottoman Empire whose capital was Istanbul, Turkey) is the fatally wounded seventh Biblical Beast Empire of Revelation ch.17.
- Daniel ch.9 declares the people of the prince will invade Jerusalem. The first part of this prophecy was fulfilled when the Roman army led by the Tenth Legion destroyed the second Jewish Temple in 70 A.D. This legion consisted of primarily Turkish and Syrian soldiers.
- Daniel ch.11 prophesies of a “king of the north” as a type of the Antichrist. Antiochus Epiphanes IV ruled the Seleucid Empire which encompassed Turkey. He blasphemously sacrificed a pig on the Jewish Temple altar and was a forerunner of the Antichrist.
- Isaiah and Micah prophesied of The Assyrian who is the Antichrist. Assyria’s domain included a large part of Turkey.
- Zechariah ch.9 lists Yavan/Ionia (Turkey) as playing a role in the Last Days. They are translated with the word “Greece” in this passage but are actually located on the Western coast of Turkey.
- Revelation ch.2 mentions that the throne of Satan is located in Pergamum, Turkey. (p.421-425)
The Antichrist nation must be a mediator
Daniel ch. 9 indicates that the Antichrist will confirm a covenant or peace treaty. Since it also indicates a Jewish Temple will be built in the Last Days it appears that the Antichrist will have political influence in Israel and with the Arabs that may result in some kind of treaty.Turkey fulfills the mediator role. It is geographically situated between the East and the West. It is culturally situated between Europe and the Middle East. It is politically situated between Israel and the Muslim world. It is politically situated between moderate Islam and radical Islam. Turkey has been an ally of Israel and the United States and has reached out to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries in the region. Turkey has mediated and offered to mediate various issues between Muslims countries and involved itself in the Hamas/Israel and Hezbollah/Israel conflicts. The Israeli Prime Minister allowed the Turkish Prime Minister to inspect Israeli construction at the Temple Mount. Israel’s President and the Palestinian President along with leaders from other Middle Eastern countries have spoken before Turkey’s parliament. (p.429-435)Turkey’s Military Might
Western commentators believe the Antichrist must come from a European nation/alliance because he has a powerful military supporting him. Amongst NATO countries Turkey has the second largest army behind the United States. It is strategically located to control the Suez Canal and other vital areas of the Middle East. (p.436)Turkey the Hater
Mr. Shoebat states that Anti-Semitic and Anti-Christian attitudes are on the rise in Turkey. Beginning in 1915 Turkey embarked on a genocidal campaign which resulted in the deaths of more than 1.5 million Armenian Christians. Recently, Turkey has increasingly distanced itself from America who considered Turkey a moderate nation. One point of contention has been over the Iraq War. The arrest of eleven Turkish soldiers in Iraq by American troops further alienated the Turkish population. A very popular 2006 movie concerning this incident further revealed the growing Anti-Semitic and Anti-Christian attitude amongst the Turkish people. Mr. Shoebat points out that sales of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf have soared in Turkey. (p.437-439)Turkey falls to the Islamists
Turkey had been the longest standing secular government in the Muslim world. The recent 2007 elections saw the Islamic party AKP take control of Turkey’s government. Mr. Shoebat quoted the outgoing President of Turkey after the election, “Turkey’s political regime is under unprecedented threat…Political Islam is being imposed on Turkey as a model.” Although current Prime Minister Erdogan has stated he is “pro-democracy, pro-European Union, pro-America, pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-Global-unity,” He quotes him saying the following, “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you get off.” (p.440-442)Turkey in Islamic prophecy
Mr. Shoebat tells of an Islamic prophecy which says there will be aGreat War with the Turkish city Constantinople/Istanbul playing a prominent role: “The flourishing state of Jerusalem will be when Yathrib (Medina) is in ruins, the ruined state of Yathrib will be when the Great War comes, and the outbreak of the Great War will be the conquest of Constantinople and the conquest of Constantinople when the Dajjal (Antichrist) comes forth. He (the Prophet) struck his thigh or his shoulder with his hand and said: This is as true as you are here or as you are sitting.” He writes,“When searching for the Antichrist, one must never look to the Ahmadinejads or Usamas of the world, but instead to someone with a moderate mask–at least in the beginning. His sinister, rabid hatred for Jews and Christians will not be revealed until he lures the sheep into his den.” (p.443-444)The Reality – The Muslim cry for the Mahdi and the Caliphate
President Ahmadinejad of Iran opened his 2005 United Nations address with a prayer: “From the beginning of time, humanity has longed for the day when justice, peace, equality, and compassion, envelop the world. All of us can contribute to the establishment of such a world. When that day comes, the ultimate promise of all Divine religions will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being who is heir to all prophets and pious men. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace. O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.” President Ahmadinejad is not the only one calling for the return of Al-Mahdi. According to Mr. Shoebat, the Iranian Hojjatieh Society (considered a lunatic fringe by mainstream Shi’a Muslims) believes they can hasten the return of the Twelfth Imam (The Mahdi) by creating a period of chaos on earth. He says they are so extreme that the Ayatollah Khomeini banned them in 1983. He quotes Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu as saying the cult of Mahdi in Iran is why it will be very dangerous if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. The cult of Mahdi is not limited to Iran alone as Mr. Shoebat states there are several Mahdi sects in Iraq. He believes that many Muslims will rise up as claimants to the position of Mahdi in fulfillment of Jesus’ last days warning, “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many…23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time. 26 So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.” (Matthew 24:4-5,23-26)There is also a call in the Muslim World for the reinstitution of the governing entity called the Caliphate. The worldwide community of Muslim believers is called the Ummah. Their sense of loyalty to Muhammad is above their familial ties as evidenced by their willingness to kill family members who leave Islam. Islam’s sacred traditions cause Muslims to believe that in the future Islam will rule the world. Muslims long for the former glory of the Islamic Empire that was a superpower for thirteen hundred years. All this came to an end in 1924 when Turkey’s first President, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, abolished the Caliphate. The West became prosperous and technologically advanced while the Muslim world regressed into poverty and dictatorships. Muslims blame the West and Israel for their current predicament and want to restore the Caliphate and punish the Western Nations. Thousands of Muslims have had various gatherings around the world to call for a new Caliphate. In 2006 an Islamic leader of the Guiding Helper Foundation in Israel called for the restoration of the Caliphate to a gathering of the Muslim faithful on the Temple Mount. One Islamic group in particular, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, is growing in influence with many of the other pro-Caliphate groups throughout the world. A University of Maryland poll of more than four thousand Muslims from various Islamic countries revealed that 65.2% of them want the Caliphate restored and a similar number want Shari’a Law to be imposed in every Muslim country. Mr. Shoebat says this illustrates that the majority of Muslims are not moderate and are a threat to the West. He says concerning the West’s naïveté about Islam, “It is time to get real.” He also quotes a 2004 U.S. National Intelligence Council report that states a global Caliphate is a real possibility by 2020. With events in the Middle East changing yearly it could occur sooner than that. (p.445-453)Gog and Magog coalition forming
Although other Muslim nations will be part of the prophesied Gog and Magog war of Ezekiel ch.38, five will play a prominent role in the coalition of countries that will invade Israel: Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Turkey. The Muslim world is divided into two camps. These camps are led by the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran although there are some Sunni nations that follow Iran. This division is defined by those Muslim nations that are considered friendly to the West and its ally Israel and those opposed to the West.In 2007 an Arab summit took place in Saudi Arabia. Because Iran and Syria were not invited to this meeting Libya boycotted it by refusing to attend. Mr. Shoebat says that a military alliance has been formed between Syria and Iran along with an exchange of military information. Western and Israeli Intelligence declared that Syria and Shi’a Iran influenced the election of the Sunni Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip. In 2007, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad visited Sudan and strengthened ties between the two countries while at the same time blaming the West for the troubles in the area. These events along with the Islamization of Turkey indicate that the alliance of Muslim nations listed in the Gog War of Ezekiel ch.38 may lead to the invasion of Israel in the not too distant future. (p.454-460)Islam’s Explosive Growth
According to Mr. Shoebat, Islam’s growth rate is four times that of Christianity. Adherents to the Muslim faith constitute one-fifth of the world’s population. One main reason for the explosion of the Muslim population is that their birth rates far exceed those of the Western World. It is estimated by some that in less than twenty years one-third of Europe will be Muslim. Mr. Shoebat declares that“well within this century–the Western world as we know it will cease to exist. For this reason and more, I say that Islam is the future, albeit only temporarily so.” There have been reports that converts to Islam have increased around the world, including America, since the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Shoebat says this could be part of the “great apostasy” that the Bible says will take place before Jesus’ return. He also recognizes that millions of Muslims are converting to Christianity around the world, some as a result of a spiritual vision or dream. However, because of the Muslim birth rates Islam is spreading faster than Christianity. (p.461-467)Walid Shoebat concludes his book with a note of urgency, “The time is shorter than most think. Let us all hasten; therefore, to do the work of God.”
Walid Shoebat like any prophecy commentator has his critics. One criticism all students of prophecy receive is that they take Bible verses out of context. Other criticisms concern his personal testimony. If nothing else I believe Mr. Shoebat has presented a very plausible framework for the interpretation of End-Times prophecy. As stated above, Islam is called the fastest growing religion in the world, claiming one-fifth of the earth’s population as adherents to the Muslim faith. Earlier in his book Mr. Shoebat made a declarative statement that he agreed with Western prophecy students on End-Times teachings concerning the “Rapture, Tribulation, Millennium, recreation of Israel, 144,000 witnessing Jews in Israel, the Falling Away, the coming of the Antichrist, the coming two witnesses, their death on the streets of Jerusalem, and so much more. In fact, western interpreters agree that Islam is involved. The question I am presenting, though, is: “Does Islam play the main roll [sic]? Or a major roll [sic]? At least we all agree on the latter.” (p.353) After reading his book it would seem that the answer to Walid Shoebat’s question is the former. Islam will be prominent in the fulfillment of End-Times prophecy. Again, I would recommend that any student of Bible prophecy purchase Mr. Shoebat’s book and read for themselves the plausible alternatives to some of the prophecy teachings that have been around for quite a while. I don’t believe he is putting forth any radical or unbiblical theories of End-Times prophecy. He is trying to illustrate that Islam has a main role in the fulfillment of End-Times prophecy and he may very well be correct in that assertion.
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It is not hate nor bigotry to oppose evil forces seeking to destroy not just your social and political culture or the free exercise of practicing Christianity, Judaism, or any other rival religions favored by the federal, which now appears to be Islam; it is imperative toward achieving survival from a barbaric faith bent on world domination and the institution of a New World Order. As I have demonstrated through rigorous research and laborious writing and conceptual analysis, Islam is the single greatest threat mankind has ever known -- greater than Nazism, Fascism, and Communism during the 20th Century. Over the course of the past 1390 years, Islam is espoused in the name of its deity disguised as the same as the one of Judeo-Christian lore, its Prophet Muhammad, and the law which governs through a totalitarian approach known as Shari'ah. I am not one who traditionally relies upon religious superstition to derive my ideas on how our government and societal norms should behave, but I believe it to be at the very least a strange series of coincidental facts about the etymology behind the Islamic names "Barack Hussein Obama" being Barack Hussein, meaning "the blessing of Hussein" in Arabic and Persian, and his family name, Obama, written in the Persian alphabet, reads O Ba Ma, which means "he is with us," the magic formula in Majlisi's tradition; and that "according to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib (the prophet's cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the Mahdi, the Ultimate Saviour, a "tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West." Commanding "the strongest army on earth," the new ruler in the West will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, whose name was Hussein Ibn Ali. The tradition concludes: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us."
The description of what he has done while in the White House also fall in line with that of Masih ad-Dajjal, Arabic for "false messiah":
The Ahmadiyya teachings interpret the prophecies regarding the appearance of the Dajjal (Anti-Christ) and Gog and Magog in Islamic eschatology as foretelling the emergence of two branches or aspects of the same turmoil and trial that was to be faced by Islam in the latter days and that both emerged from Christianity or Christian nations. Its Dajjal aspect relates to deception and perversion of religious belief while its aspect to do with disturbance in the realm of politics and the shattering of world peace has been called Gog and Magog. Thus Ahmadis consider the widespread Christian missionary activity that was 'aggressively' active in the 18th and 19th centuries as being part of the prophesied Dajjal (Antichrist) and Gog and Magog emerging in modern times. The emergence of the Soviet Union and the USA as superpowers and the conflict between the two nations (i.e., the rivalry between communism and capitalism) are seen as having occurred in accordance with certain prophecies regarding Gog and Magog. Thus, Ahmadis believe that prophecies and sayings about the Antichrist are not to be interpreted literally. They have deeper meanings. Masih ad-Dajjal is then a name given to latter day Christianity and the west.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad writes extensively about Dajjal in his book Essence of Islam, therein he states:
- "The Holy Qur’an then specifies that in the latter days the Christians will dominate the earth, and they shall be the cause of all kinds of mischief running rampant. Waves of calamities will rise on all sides and will race down from every height…. They will possess great material strength and dominion, against which all other powers and states will seem powerless. They will also enjoy supremacy in all kinds of knowledge and sciences and establish new and wonderful industries. They will also be dominant in their policies, projects, and good administration, and will show great resolve in their worldly enterprises and will also excel in their endeavour to spread their faith. They will leave behind all other nations in their social, agricultural and commercial policies, as indeed in everything else." Essence of Islam Volume 3, page 283
Thus, essentially the, Dajjal is not believed to be a physical person or an individual as mentioned in the hadith but as representing a collectivity of people who would pose a great challenge to Islam, it is essentially, a name given to the European nations of the latter days. The purpose of Jesus coming means that a man from among Muslims shall appear who will establish the truth of Islam to the world as against western scientific and philosophical ideals. Thus Ahmadis believe the founder of the movement Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to have fulfilled this who by representing Islam in its pristine form. As such they believe that the ''Gate of Lud'' mentioned in certain Hadith refers to Ludgate where St Paul is thought to have preached the perverted message of Christianity according to the Sonnini Manuscript of the Acts of the Apostles.
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This could be what your new flag looks like: the official flag of "The Islamic States of America," or known by other conservative-libertarians concerned with the direction in which this nation is heading as "The Islamic Republic of America," if President Obama--proclaimed by many Christians as a messianic figure to liberals and by Christians to be the Antichrist and by Muslim nations to be the Mahdi--gets his way.
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