Islam: The Religion of Peace?

[Gavur]

PA calls for calm after Taybeh "pogrom"

Sep. 5, 2005 0:32 | Updated Sep. 5, 2005 1:23
PA calls for calm after Taybeh "pogrom"
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Taybeh


Efforts were underway on Sunday to calm the situation in this Christian village east of Ramallah after an attack by hundreds of Muslim men from nearby villages left many houses and vehicles torched.

The "pogrom" began on Saturday night and lasted until the early hours of Sunday, when Palestinian Authority security forces interfered to disperse the attackers. Residents said several houses were looted and many families were forced to flee to Ramallah and other Christian villages.

The attack on the village of 1,500 was triggered by the murder of a Muslim woman from the nearby village of Deir Jarir earlier this week. The woman, according to Palestinian security sources, was apparently murdered by members of her family for having had a romance with a Christian man from Taybeh.

"When her family discovered that she had been involved in a forbidden relationship with a Christian, they apparently forced her to drink poison," said one source. "Then they buried her without reporting her death to the relevant authorities."

When the PA security forces decided to launch an investigation into the woman's death, her family protested for fear that the relationship would be exposed. The family was further infuriated by the decision to exhume the body for autopsy.

The attack on Taybeh is one of the worst against Christians in the West Bank in many years. Residents said it took the PA security forces several hours to reach the village. Others complained that the IDF, which is in charge of overall security in the area, did not answer their desperate calls for immediate help. Taybeh is classified as Area B, where the Palestinians have only civilian control.

"More than 500 Muslim men, chanting Allahu Akbar [God is Great], attacked us at night," said a resident of Taybeh. "They poured kerosene on many buildings and set them on fire. Many of the attackers broke into houses and stole furniture, jewelry and electrical appliances."

With the exception of large numbers of Palestinian policemen, the streets of Taybeh were completely deserted on Sunday as the majority of the residents remained indoors. Many torched cars and littered the streets. At least 16 houses have been gutted by fire and the assailants also destroyed a statue of Virgin Mary.

"It was like a war, they arrived in groups, and many of them were holding clubs," said another resident.

"Some people saw them carrying weapons. They first attacked houses belonging to the Khoury family. Then they went to their relatives. They entered the houses and destroyed everything there. Then they tried to enter the local beer factory, but were repelled by Palestinian security agents. The fire engine arrived five hours later."

Col. Tayseer Mansour, commander of the PA police in the Ramallah area, said his men arrived late at the village because of the need to coordinate their movements with the IDF. "The delay resulted in the torching of a number of houses and cars in the village," he explained

Taybeh is the only West Bank village that is completely inhabited by Christians. The village is famous for its Taybeh Beer factory, which was established by the Khoury family in 1994.

The residents of Taybeh consist of Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, or Greek Catholic. The village was originally called Ephraim, and is thought to be the city to which Jesus came with his disciples before his crucifixion. "Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim" (John 11:54).

According to some accounts, Islamic warrior Salah a-Din, who led the war against the Crusaders, was responsible for the name change. He is said to have found the villagers there to be nice and kind – in Arabic, taybeen – and the name stuck, to become Taybeh.

[Gavur]

The Legacy of Jihad

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 9, 2005

Review: The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, edited by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, Prometheus, 759 pp.

It is only fitting that Andrew G. Bostom's massive collection, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, appears in time for the fourth anniversary September 11, 2001, for no other collection since then has so well explained the theology and philosophy behind those Islamic attacks on America.

The leaders of the free world have taken pains since late 2001 to explain that Islam is a religion of peace. But in this far-ranging, 759-page collection of Muslim and non-Muslim eyewitness accounts, scholarly Muslim theological treatises and superb historical surveys, it appears that Islam has actually practiced a grisly jihad campaign against non-Muslims from its earliest days, in the hope of satisfying the Prophet Mohammed's end goal: forcing the “one true faith” upon the entire world.



The somber tone of this monumental work -- graced in its midsection by a chronological summary of the first 500 years of Muslim conquests, including color-coded maps and Islamic art -- is set by the cover, a 19th century-Islamic painting entitled “The Prophet, Ali and the Companions at the massacre of the prisoners of the Jewish tribe of Beni Kuraizah.” As its name suggests, the art depicts the slaughter of 600 to 900 Jewish men, who were led on Mohammed's orders to the market of Medina, where they were beheaded and their corpses buried in trenches dug for that purpose. Their wives and children were then enslaved.



After viewing these accounts, histories and art works, it is hard to continue to believe that radical Islamists are in fact all that radical. Rather, in the most logical way, this collection shows that September 11 was not an aberration, but that Islam at its core seems a faith bent upon the conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.



Indeed, as many commentators here suggest, when one group of Muslims assumes responsibility for jihad warfare -- the only righteous kind of war, in the Islamic view -- the rest of the umma (Muslim community) is relieved of this fard, or religious duty. Thus, if radical Muslims believe they act on behalf of all Islamdom, Islamic traditions also confirm that they do.



Bostom opens with a 124-page survey of jihad conquests and the imposition of dhimmitude -- the sociopolitical subjugation of indigenous non-Muslim peoples vanquished by jihad campaigns. The essay is the book's longest section and serves as an excellent guidepost for readers to determine which parts might most interest them.



Beginning in the time of Mohammed himself, Bostom refers readers to the early 20th century work of the late Columbia University professor Arthur Jeffrey, who belittled as “the sheerest sophistry” attempts in some modern circles “to explain away all the Prophet's warlike expeditions as defensive wars or to interpret the doctrine of Jihad as merely a bloodless striving in missionary zeal for the spread of Islam.... The early Arabic sources quite plainly and frankly describe the expeditions as military expeditions, and it would never have occurred to anyone at that day to interpret them as anything else....”



But it is not just on the say-so of Western scholars that Bostom concludes, in the words of Mordechai Nisan, that the “praxis” of Islam was by the 1990s to “extend the Muslim presence and role into the heart of Western civilization, after having constituted within the Muslim lands themselves a formidable strategic world position.”



His arguments rest on the words, works and deeds of Muslims themselves. America would benefit if our leaders would pay close attention to Bostom's conclusions and the works on which they are based.



According to Maliki jurist Ibn Abi Zayd al Qayrawani (d. 996), “Jihad is a Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may dispense others from it. We Malikis maintain that it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have either the alternative of converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war is declared against them.”



Hanbali jurist Ibn Tamiyyah (d. 1328) also supports the jihad: “Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God's entirely and God's word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”



The Hidayah of Hanafi Shaikh Burdanuddin Ali of Marghinan (d. 1196) intones,

It is not lawful to make war upon any people who have never before been called to the faith, without previously requiring them to embrace it, because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call infidels to the faith, and also because the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the trouble of war....

The Shaafi jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058) writes in the Laws of Islamic Governance,

The mushrikun [infidels] of Dar al-Harb (the arena of battle) are of two types: First, those whom the call of Islam has reached, but they have refused it and taken up arms. The amir of the army has the option of fighting them... in accordance with what he judges to be in the best interest of the Muslims and the most harmful to the mushrikun.... Second, those whom the invitation to Islam has not reached, although such persons are few nowadays since Allah has made manifest the call of his Messenger...it is forbidden to begin an attack before explaining the invitation to Islam to them, informing them of the miracles of the Prophet and making plain the proofs so as to encourage acceptance on their part; if they still refuse to accept after this, war is waged against them and they are treated as those whom the call has reached.

And Maliki jurist and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), so often quoted as a peaceful, likewise adopts a warlike tone: “ In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam by persuasion or by force.... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense....Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.”



In addition to this far-reaching opening summary, the book provides the juridicial texts, historical accounts, scholarly analyses and eyewitness excerpts elucidating the jihad rationale as formulated by Muslim sources and highlighting the global consequences of that philosophy for more than 13 centuries.



In part two, for example, Bostom collects many jihadist teachings in the Qur'an, such as Qur'an chapter 9, verse 29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and his apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth even if they are the people of the book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and fell themselves subdued.” These Qur'anic teachings fill two pages of text.



But Bostom does not stop there. He devotes his third chapter to the classical and modern teachings of Qur'anic commentators on Chapter 9, verse 29, some such as Al-Suyuti (d. 1505 CE), appearing in English here for the first time. Al-Suyuti writes:

Fight those who don't believe in God nor in the Last Day [Unless they believe in the Prophet God bless him and grant him peace] nor hold what is forbidden that which God and His emissary have forbidden [e.g. Wine] nor embrace the true faith [which is firm and abrogates other faiths, i.e., the Islamic religion] from among [for distinguishing] those who were given the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians] until they give the head-tax [i.e., the annual taxes imposed on them] (l'an yadinl) humbly submissive, and obedient to Islam's rule.

Also commenting on the Qur'anic chapter 9, verse 29 are al-Zamakshari (d. 1144), al Tabari (d. 923), al-Beidawi (d. 1286), Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) and al-Azhar, al-Muntakhab Fii Tafsir al-Qur'aan al-Kariim, 1985. Let no one say that Bostom has taken these teachings out of context, for the classical and contemporary commentators interpret this passage of the Qur'an in precisely the same way as it appears.



In chapter four, the last in section two, Bostom focuses on jihad in the Hadith, with commentary from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, as translated by the Muslim Students' Association of the University of Southern California.



In Bostom's third, 110-page section, classical Muslim theologians and jurists opine on jihad. These writings span the entire history of Islam, beginning with 8th century commentators and continuing to 20th century contemporaries. Bostom has gleaned writings of Malik B. Anas (d. 795) from the Muwata, for example, Averroes (d. 1198) from the Bidayat al-Mudjtahid, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) from The Muqaddimah, as well as a 1915 Ottoman Fatwa.



Here, too, Bostom includes several works translated into English for the first time. For example, the renowned Sufi master al-Ghazali (d. 1111) writes, “One must go on jihad (i.e. Warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year... one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and drown them.” The marriages of slaves, al-Ghazali continues, are automatically “revoked. One may cut down their trees.... One must destroy their useless books.” This belies the all-too-common notion that Sufism is peaceful.



Similarly, Ibn Qudama (d. 1223), writes, “Legal war (jihad) is an obligatory social duty (fard-kifaya); when one group of Muslims guarantees that it is being carried out in a satisfactory manner, the others are exempted.” Almost everywhere, the author is belligerent. “It is permitted to surprise the infidels under cover of night, to bombard them with mangonels [an engine that hurls missiles] and to attack them without declaring battle (du'a).”



Al-Hilli (d. 1277), likewise, writes on the traditions concerning the tax on certain infidels, who have not been enslaved or murdered. The Persian scholar Muhammad al-Amili (d. 1621) has been translated from Farsi concerning Jihad holy war: “Islamic holy war against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam or pay the poll tax.”



Concerning the jihad warfare in India, Ziauddin Barani (d. 1357) writes in the Fatawa-i Janandari,

The Muslim king will not be able to establish the honour of theism (tauhid) and the supremacy of the Islam unless he strives with all his courage to overthrown infidelity and to slaughter its leaders (imams), who in India are the Brahmans. He should make a firm resolve to overpower, capture, enslave and degrade the infidels. All the strength and power of the king and holy warriors of Islam should be concentrated in holy campaigns and holy wars; and they should risk themselves in the enterprise so that the true Faith may uproot false creeds and then it will look as if these false creeds had never existed because they have been deprived of their glamour.

Bostom turns next, in his 117-page Part 4, to ten Jihad overviews by important 20th century scholars. Clement Huart writes on the law of war, Nicolas P. Agnides on the classification of persons under Islamic law (which appeared in Mohammeden Theories of Finance from Columbia University Press in 1916) and John Ralph Willis on the jihad ideology of enslavement. Several of these works appear for the first time in English.



These writings are no easier to dismiss than the classical Islamic works themselves, for the modern historians also rely heavily on classical jurists and commentators, as indicated in a bevy of footnotes gracing the final pages of each essay. xxxnan's “Jihad or Holy War According to the Malikite School,” published in Algiers in 1908, rests for example on the work of Sidi Khalil (d. 1365-1366), as elucidated by several Muslim commentaries. Edmond xxxnan writes,

The holy war conducted each year on the most dangerous front, even if there is risk of an attack by bandits, constitutes, just like the visit of the Ka'ba..., a duty of showing solidarity, which is incumbent upon every free male who has attained the age of puberty and is of sound mind and body....



In the case of a sudden invasion, holy war becomes a personal duty, even for a woman or for the neighbors [of the believers who are being attacked] if they (i.e. The latter) are too weak, as well as for those who hold the title of imam.

According to Roger Arnaldez, whose essay “Holy War According to Ibn Hazm of Cordova” was published in a French collection in 1962, what interests this Andalusian classicist about the past “is a privileged moment of history at which the law eternally intended by God was revealed in universal and definitive formulations. Despite the most obvious evidence, the commandments given to the Prophet are not, in his view, relative to the Prophet's time.... These commandments, rather, are valid as such for all times.”



W.R. W. Gardner's essay, “Jihad” appeared in the 1912 edition of the acclaimed scholarly journal, Moslem World. He observes,


The question of what jihad is cannot be settled by reference alone to the etymology of the word jihad....The Koran plainly teaches in many passages,..the duty of fighting for the Faith or 'in the way of God,' by using the world qatala, and El Zamakhshary, commenting on 2.186,7, says, 'Fighting in the way of God is jihad for the glorifying of his word and the strengthening of the Religion.' And whatever may be the etymological meaning of the word jihad, there can be no gainsaying the fact that it is sometimes used in the Koran in the sense of warlike actions, a warfare for the sake of the Faith. And when one asks what the teaching of Mohammedanism is concerning jihad, the word is employed in this latter sense.

After presenting a 500-year chronology and maps, Bostom moves on to his final three sections -- on jihad campaigns in the Near East, Europe, Asia Minor and on the Indian subcontinent; jihad slavery and Muslim and non-Muslim chronicles and eyewitness accounts of jihad campaigns. These in many ways outshine everything that the editor presented earlier, for here, he clearly elucidates the ravages of jihad campaigns as experienced by their victims.



The sixth section, on Jihad campaigns, begins with an essay by Demetrios Constantelos, which collects eyewitness accounts of Greek Christian and other early observers of jihad. Damascus fell in 635, Jerusalem in 638, the same year as Antioch, and in 646 Alexandria became an Arab possession. The coastal areas of Palestine, Cyprus, Egypt and Syria swiftly followed. Sophronios of Jerusalem describes “the sword of the Saracens” as “beastly and barbarous...filled with every diabolic savagery.”



Clearly, the Arab conquest was very violent as well as decisive. Constantelos reports on Sophronios: advancing Saracens left behind them “a train of destruction and havoc, with bloodshed everywhere and abandoned human bodies devoured by the wild beasts of Palestine's deserts. He writes of the 'villainous and God-hating Saracens,' who run through places and capture cities, who reap or destroy the crops of the fields, who burn down towns and set churches on fire, who attack monasteries and defeat Byzantine armies, winning one victory after another.” John of Nikiu in about 700 C.E., likewise described the terrors of the Arabic Muslims. The Islamic conquest “put to the sword all that surrendered, and they spared none, whether old men, babes or women.”



But that was only in the beginning. Bloodletting continued on every continent the Muslims touched. Aram Ter-Ghevondian describes the Armenian rebellion of 703, as related by such sources as Ibn-al-Athir and a 10th century Arab author named Muhammad ibn-Abdullah-ibn-Aasam-al-Kufi as well as Byzantine historian Theophanes. In one instance in about 705, the Muslim leader Muhammad “massacred, enslaved and wrote a letter to the nobility (Ashraf) who are called freemen (ahrar), gave guarantees and promised to give honors. Hence they gathered in their churches...and he ordered to encircle the churches with fire-wood, closed the doors on them and burnt all of them.”



C.E. Dufourcq describes “The Days of Razzia and invasion” in a 1978 chapter that first appeared in a French collection on daily life in medieval Europe under Arab domination (another, now in English for the first time). After dominating Iberia, the Arabs transversed the Pyrenees and ravaged lands north of the foothills. In Aragon's Segre Valley, squadrons explored the Ariege River. Before 720 they attacked Narbonne, from which they carried off church riches and many slaves. They were driven back from Toulouse in 721 but in 725 attacked Carcassone. Other targets included the Rhone Valley, Nimes, and Viviers (a place still called Les Sarasins), Macon and Chalon, and Autun (which “has never been able to return to its former state since that destruction”), Dijon and Langres. By 731, the Arabs were 100 kilometers from Paris. They burned all the Bordeaux churches in 732. Fortunately, Charles Martel stopped them not far from Poitiers.



But in 734 or 735 in the Mediterranean, Dufourcq continues, they attacked Arles and Avignon. From Provence and Italy, sailors attacked Ostia on the Tiber, and pillaged the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Marseilles was devastated in 838 and again in 848 and 920. From 857 on, the Roman seaboard was attacked annually. In Syracuse in 878, the Church of the Holy Savior was filled with women, children, the elderly, the sick, the clerics -- all of them massacred. In 934 or 935, Arabs slaughtered all the men in Genoa and loaded the city's treasures onto their ships.



Terrorizing inhabitants was a tool of their trade: As the 17th century Algerian historian al-Maqqari noted, “Allah thus instilled such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants to beg for peace.”



The Muslim invasion of India was similarly cruel, according to K.S. Lal. Throughout more than 500 years in the Indian subcontinent, Muslim invaders killed an estimated 70 million, slaughtering as many as 500,000 to 600,000 at a time. They also took countless millions of slaves, who were transported to Iran, Afghanistan and later to Europe.

[Gavur]

Continued..

In the Balkans, the people suffered equal savagery, according to a 1956 essay by Dimitar Angelov, also in English for the first time. The campaigns of Mourad II (1421-1451) and his successor Mahomet II (1451-1481) in Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, and the Byzantine princedom of the Peloponnisos, were particularly devastating. In 1459, invaders destroyed the entire harvest and leveled the fortified towns. In 1466, the Albanians were forced to retreat and fight from inaccessible regions; whole cities were again ruined. Plundering, arson and repeated attacks reduced the rich agricultural region to wilderness. Famines and epidemics ensued.



All this is to say nothing of the incessant slave-taking and the brutal devshirme tribute; Balkan families were forced to pay a tax in the form of their eldest or most able sons. Bostom devotes 60 pages to slavery alone.



Then we come to the eyewitness accounts, which fill five chapters and nearly eighty pages. According to an 1148 account by Solomon Cohen, for example, the Almohads swept through Tlemcen in the Maghren, killing all those in it. All the cities in North Africa were taken: “One hundred thousand persons were killed in Fez on that occasion and 120,000 in Marakesh.....Large areas between Seville and Tortosa [in Spain] had likewise fallen into Almohad hands.”



Likewise, a 13th century Hindu account called the Kahandade Prabandha tells of the invasion of extensive regions, including Malwa, Gujarat, Ranthamnhor, Siwana, Jalor, Devagiri, Warangal, Ma'bar and Ramesvaram. In Bhinmal,

Orders were issued clear and terrible: 'The soldiers shall march into the town spreading terror everywhere! Cut down the Brahmanas, wherever they may be--performing homa or milking cows! Kill the cows—even those which are pregnant or with newly born calves!' The Turks ransacked Bhinmal and captured everybody in the sleepy town. Thereafter, Fori Malik gleefully set fire to the town in a wanton display of force and meanness.

As Ibn Warraq notes in the forward, Dr. Bostom is the first scholar to have had translated from Arabic into English the works of al-Bayadawi, al-Suyuti, al-Zamakhshari and al-Tabari, as well as works by Sufi master al-Ghazali, Shiites al-Hilli and al-Amili. He also includes representatives from the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence: Averroes and Ibn Khaldun (Maliki), Ibn Taymiya and Ibn Qudama (Hanbali), Shaybani (Hanafi), and al-Mawardi (Shaafi).



Warraq wonders, “Why did it take a non-specialist such as Dr. Bostom, a scholar from another discipline -- clinical epidemiology and randomized clinical trials in medicine -- to discover and have translated for the first time this primary and secondary source material?”



Ibn Warraq continues: As Bernard Lewis points out in his important essay, “Pro-Islamic Jews,” “The golden age of equal rights [in Spain] was a myth.... The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth century Europe as a reproach to Christians.” There are those, he says, who contend that while Dr. Bostom may be right to expose history hitherto simply denied, this was not the right historical moment to express it. But, as Isaiah Berlin once wrote, an ideologue is someone prepared to suppress what he suspects to be true. This disposition to suppress the truth has engendered much evil.



Bostom's work attempts to set straight the historical record. Let us hope that Bostom's monumental survey is read in every corner of U.S. and European government, as well as by the masses who wish to learn the truth on Islamic doctrines.

[Gavur]

A challenge to Islamic correctness

The American Thinker
Sept 9 2005



Book Review

The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims by
Andrew Bostom (Editor); Foreword by Ibn Warraq. 2005. New York:
Prometheus Books. Price $28 (HB).

Jihad is now one of the most widely discussed words in the world's
lexicon. Once regarded as an arcane and academic subject, the 9/11
attacks and the more recent London bombings have brought the chilling
reality of it to every home. Most think it is a form of religious
war, something like the Crusades. This comparison is altogether
inadequate, for the war is only the beginning. Jihad should be seen
as a complete political and economic system that often includes
selective genocide and slavery. All this is presented in exhaustive
detail in The Legacy of Jihad compiled by Dr. Andrew Bostom. It is
the one indispensable source book needed to understand the threat
that the world faces today.

There is no shortage of experts who tell us that Jihad really is an
inner struggle against one's own baser instincts - like yoga and
meditation in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. This `Islamically
correct' explanation - never followed by the Jihadis - is belied both by
Muslim literature and by historical experience. Ibn Khaldun (1332 -
1406), one of the greatest thinkers of Islam, if not the greatest,
saw Jihad as an aggressive war of expansion with the religious
obligation to convert everyone. He calls it Islam's `universal
mission':

`The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the
holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of
defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.'
[emphasis added]

According to Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966):

`...wherever an Islamic community exists... it has a God-given right to
step forward and take control of the political authority... When God
restrained Muslims from Jihad for a certain period, it was a question
of strategy rather than of principle...'

We need look no further to understand the so-called `root causes' of
Jihad.

It is impossible to do justice to such a monumental work in a brief
review beyond noting its main themes. The author begins appropriately
with a hundred-page exposition titled Jihad Conquests and the
Imposition of Dhimmitude. To appreciate Jihad we must understand the
concept of dhimmitude, the state of mind induced by Jihadi terror.
According to The Quranic Concept of War sponsored by General
Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, the founder of Talibanism:

`Terror struck into the hearts of the enemy is not only a means, it
is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's
heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved... Terror is
not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision
we wish to impose upon him.' [emphasis added]

This brings up an important point: terrorism cannot be separated from
Jihad, and Jihad cannot be removed from Islam. This is the reality
that we are dealing with. Every Jihadi knows this; it is time others
did too.

The book gives a comprehensive survey - many from the primary sources
going back the Quran and the Hadits. It shows how the orthodox view
of Jihad has changed not at all. In the section The Law of War: The
Jihad Majid Khadduri makes the important point that Islam abolished
all kinds of warfare except Jihad.

Should one think that all this is in the past and `reform' can change
it, here is a sobering reminder by Bassam Tibi in his War and Peace
in Islam:

`Though the Islamic world has made many cultural adjustments to the
modern international system, there has been no cultural
accommodation, no rigorously critical rethinking of Islamic
tradition.'

According to this worldview:

`World peace, the final stage ...is reached only with the conversion or
submission of all mankind to Islam.'

The book contains a comprehensive discussion of various Jihadi
campaigns spanning the period from the first century of Islam to the
present day - from Spain to the Indian subcontinent. A major bonus is
the set of color-coded maps and other illustrations giving a vivid
picture of the expansion of Islam at the cost of other nations.

Several important documents appear in English for the first time.
These include primary works in Arabic and Persian as well as
neglected modern works in modern European languages by scholars such
as xxxnan, Angelov, and Alexandrescu-Dresca Bulgaru. The work is
particularly valuable in shedding light on the horrific experience of
the Balkan nations under Ottoman rule. This is valuable in
understanding the current turmoil in the Balkans where the Muslims
are invariably cast as victims, while all the blame is placed on the
Serbs and the Croatians.

This raises an important but politically incorrect question: how did
the Hindu civilization manage to survive while the mighty empires of
Eastern Christianity, Zoroastrian Persia and the Buddhist kingdoms of
Central Asia crumbled before the onslaught? Even in India, Buddhism
was all but extinguished, while Hindu leaders rose to defend and
finally defeat Islam, though at great cost.

Genocide is often a direct consequence of Jihad though it is glossed
over by `Islamically correct' historians. The book gives contemporary
and even eyewitness accounts of various genocides from the time of
the Prophet to present day Africa. This includes not only the Turkish
massacre of the Armenians, but also the so-called `ethnic' conflict
in Sudan, which is the direct consequence of the revival of Jihadism.

Like genocide, slavery is also an integral part of Jihad. In fact
most Islamic regimes were based on slave economy. The Legacy of Jihad
has a sixty-page section on Jihad slavery. It makes for chilling
reading. Particularly disturbing is the revival of slavery and slave
trade in Sudan as a direct consequence of the resurgence of Islam and
the emphasis on Jihad.

John Eibner mentions one particular slave raid in 1987 in which more
than a thousand Dhinka civilians were roasted alive in railway box
cars in the town of El Diein in southern Sudan. (This was repeated in
Godhra, India in 2002 when 57 Hindu pilgrims, mostly women and
children, were burnt alive when the two bogies comprising the ladies'
compartments were set on fire.)

What is disturbing in this resurgence of slavery is the attitude of
international agencies, including the U.N. Eibner notes that the U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan has never publicly condemned the revival
of slavery under Jihad. A decade ago, the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot
also received U.N. support until his `Killing Fields' became
impossible to ignore.

The documentation is so profuse, much of it recorded by Muslims
themselves, the reader begins to wonder why all this has been kept
away from the public by Islamic scholars and academics whose job it
is to inform. As the great Islamic scholar and critic Ibn Warraq (the
author of Why I am Not A Muslim) asks in his brilliant Foreword: why
did it take Dr. Andrew Bostom, not an Islamic scholar but a medical
scientist, to bring out this monumental compilation? Where were the
Orientalists, historians, Islamic scholars and other sundry
academics?

The answer: Islamic correctness driven by dhimmitude.

[Editor's note: Andrew Bostom, author of the book, is a contributor
to The American Thinker. Further information on The Legacy of Jihad
may be found here. The book may be ordered here.]

N.S. Rajaram divides his time between Oklahoma City and Bangalore,
India.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4804

[Gavur]

Russia struggles to keep grip in Caucasus

Russia struggles to keep grip in Caucasus

By Fred Weir, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Tue Sep 13, 2005

Murat Zyazikov, the pro-Kremlin president of the southern Russian republic
of Ingushetia, is a hunted man.

Since taking office in 2003, he has narrowly escaped assassination at the
hands of a suicide car-bomber and a sniper, allegedly sent by local Islamic
militants. In the past month alone, insurgents have bombed the motorcade of
his deputy premier and opened fire on his security chief. A year ago,
fighters loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev briefly seized the Ingush
capital of Nazran, killing almost 100 police officers and government
officials.

Mr. Zyazikov, a former general of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB),
shrugs all that off. "Things here are calm and peaceful," he told
journalists at a meeting in his plush, golden-domed presidential palace.
"These attacks against me and my officials are the work of desperate men who
want to destabilize the situation in southern Russia. They hate the fact
that we are building a worthy life for our people."

As the war in neighboring Chechnya grinds into its seventh year with no
resolution in sight, conflicts are metastasizing around the troubled north
Caucasus, which has been a zone of tension since it was conquered by Russia
in the 19th century. The region is a patchwork quilt of warring ethnic
groups and rival religions that makes Europe's other tangled knot, the
Balkans, look tame by comparison.

Many experts say the Kremlin's grip, iron-hard in Soviet times, has slipped
disastrously in recent years. "The Chechen conflict is spilling into
neighboring republics, escalating the process of destabilization," says
Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

Zhairakhsky, a sparsely populated district amid the high, snow-capped
mountains of southern Ingushetia, has remained relatively untouched by
conflict. But, says local administrator Yakhya Mamilov, "if you stand on a
mountaintop here and look around, you'll see wars flaring or brewing in
every direction. It's impossible to build for the future with any confidence
while these conditions last."

Rebel fighters from Chechnya, a few kilometers to the east, often take
refuge among their Ingush ethnic kin in Zhairakhsky, locals say.

Further east is the Caspian Sea republic of Dagestan, with 32 constituent
ethnic groups, where Islamist rebels stage almost daily bombings and
ambushes against Russian security forces.

To the south and west two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia,
are locked in long-simmering wars of independence against the post-Soviet
state of Georgia. Just next door on another side is traditionally Christian
North Ossetia, hereditary enemy of the mainly Muslim Ingush, with whom they
fought a savage border war in 1992.

Moscow has tried to maintain its authority by phasing out "unreliable" local
leaders, and replacing them with loyalists like Zyazikov. "This tactic is
not working," says Alexander Iskanderyan, head of the Center for Caucasian
Studies. "Moscow imagines that exchanging 'bad' officials with 'good' ones
will change things, but the main trend we see is a steady loss of control."

Passions in Ingushetia and N. Ossetia are still seething over the Beslan
school massacre a year ago. On Sept. 1, 2004, a squad of 32 terrorists, most
of them ethnic Ingush, drove from Ingushetia and seized 1,200 hostages in
Beslan's School No. 1, just across the border in N. Ossetia. Three days
later Russian security forces launched a massive assault on the building,
leaving 331 people dead, half of them children.

Zyazikov, and other pro-Kremlin officials, blame the outrage on
"international terrorism." North Ossetia's acting president, Taimuraz
Mamsurov, says the Beslan school siege was a deliberate attempt by "certain
forces" to stir up ethnic war between Ingush and Ossetians. "Tensions have
increased (since Beslan), that's natural," he says. "But I think we've
succeeded in restraining our people from fulfilling that scenario."

Others doubt the danger has passed. "Everyone here is always talking about
getting ready for war with the Ingush, to get even with them," says Madina
Pedatova, a teacher at Beslan's spanking new School No. 8. "I'm terrified of
it, but I'm sure it's coming."

Just across the heavily fortified Ingush-N. Ossetian border thousands of
Ingush refugees forced from their homes in N. Ossetia in 1992 live in a
sprawling, squalid refugee camp. Here the hatred is palpable. "The Ossetians
are like Nazis. They drove us from our homes (in 1992) like cattle, showing
no humanity," says Umar Khadziyev, unemployed, who lives in a small hut with
his wife and three children.

Mr. Khadziyev says he condemns the Beslan attack, with its terrible death
toll of children. But then he adds: "Do you know why the fighters drove past
two Ossetian schools before taking School No. 1 in Beslan? It's because the
Ossetians used that very school as a prison for our people in 1992. Yes, our
women and children were held there, in that same gym, beaten up and denied
food and water. Nobody talks about that, do they?"

For Moscow, the spreading unrest, fuelled by Islamic extremists in some
republics and ancient ethnic antagonisms in others, poses an almost
nightmarish challenge. After Beslan, President Vladimir Putin warned that
the cost of failure could be "the destruction of Russia." Says Khadziyev,
the Ingush refugee: "Our grandfathers told us the USSR would collapse one
day. I'm sure that Russia is going to fall apart too."


Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor

[Gavur]

‘islamophobia’ : The New Pscyho Disease?

By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
MichNews.com
Sep 1, 2005




Ali Sina’s "The Fall of Europe" as posted on FaithFreedom.org reveals that the Council of Europe now protects the only killing religion on the planet — Islam. The means by which to protect Muslim murderers global is a ban on "criticism of Islam."

"Anti-Islamism has been included in the text as a ‘dangerous inclination’ that has to be fought against upon the insistence of Turkey at the summit that 46 Council members attended," Selcuk Gultasli reported on zaman.com.

No wonder Turkey presented itself to the European Union as a totally secular nation not given to any religious preferences, thereby deserving a place in the EU alongside the other countries as a civil people. Turkey, very much Muslim though praising itself as uniquely secular, has now set the scope for criminalizing all who expose Islam for what it is — not so much a religion as a killing cult.

To tell truth about Islam in Europe will mean a jail sentence or worse. It’s come to that. This is the open door for the plotted Muslim takeover of all of Europe, while Muslims all along have infiltrated to do just that.

Sina reports the alarming occurrence: "An Italian judge, Armando Grasso, in city of Bergamo, ordered the best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in her book ‘La Forza della Ragione’ (The Force of Reason).

"In it, Ms Fallaci argues that Europe is turning into ‘an Islamic province, an Islamic colony’ and that ‘to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason’.

"Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Quran and said the Islamic faith ‘sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom.’"

Fallaci spoke the truth. These are facts, not her opinion.

"Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, sued the writer, claiming that Ms Fallaci’s book is offensive to Muslims."

What’s happening in Europe via the Muslim Union of Italy, could very well happen in America via the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The truth is that Islam is the chief planetary cult from hell’s fires. Allah is Lucifer. The Koran is not a holy book but an obscene manual instructing devotees to slaughter all non-Muslims. Mosques are meeting places to scheme the overthrow of all non-Muslims. Clerics are henchmen set on destroying all that is not Islamic. Mohammed was a madman who committed all sorts of sexual perversions and murder.

Is not the world to be told of this devilment? Is not the civil community to be informed of what is going on in our midst? Is it not time for political leaders of all freedom nations to stand against this worldwide killing cult?

There is no peace or love in Islam, though just yesterday I read in the Portland Press Herald, Portland Maine, a feature column devoted to Islam as a religion. Quoting a well-known encyclopedia, Islam was presented as a religion teaching its disciples love and peace.

I thought to myself that the metro newspaper, traditionally politically liberal from senior editors to local reporters, has fallen prey to the Islamic lie. How many other newsfeeds have fallen prey?

Any so-called religion that has a murder base must be obliterated. President George W. Bush and those of his executive officialdom must warn America of the Islamic intentions to take over the United States. No longer can Islam be referred to as a "peace religion." It is anything but.

I note that now Mr. Bush has not referred to Islam by "peace religion" rhetoric but called it an "ideology teaching hate." I think the Chief Executive has got the message and at present in code language is changing his nomenclature to convey a more realistic definition of Islam. May it continue — more baldly, more bluntly.

Christians who live by the Bible know how to interpret false teachings. They don’t accept all world religions as truth. They accept Christianity as the only true faith. That is because Jesus is regarded as deity and by His own statements has informed His disciples that no one comes to God the Father but via Him. Therefore, all other religions are false. More specifically, all other religions are plots of the devil to sideline mortals from the true salvation via Christ.

Therefore, biblical Christians, if living in Europe, would never be able to voice their conclusions regarding Islam. They could be hauled into court and sentenced to incarceration or death. The only reason that such insanity that is now present in Europe has not taken over America is because of the biblical believers' presence at the grassroots and in places of political power.

Some of these believers are known as evangelical Protestants or devout Catholics or knowledgeable Orthodox Christians. Others are Jews or persons of no particular denominational persuasion but who know the Bible as the divine revelation and therefore are aware of the false religions’ derivation coming from the devil.

Sina reports: "The conclusion draft of the summit included the notion of ’Islamophobia’. The inclusion of this notion in the European organizations' documents for the first time is described as the success of Turkey.

"The 3rd Council of Europe summit has for the first time mentioned ‘Islamophobia’ in the 9th paragraph of the Warsaw Declaration.

"The Council has reached the following decisions regarding the issue: Condemnation of any kind of intolerance and discrimination based on gender, race and religious beliefs in particular, including Islamophobia. . ., the fight against these within the framework of the Council of Europe and the use of effective mechanisms and rules to combat these problems.

"Thus, anti-Islamism. . .will be dealt with within the framework of legal proceedings. The Council reports will include anti-Islamist movements. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) will closely monitor these movements. ‘The Commission will record in which country anti-Islamism increases or how it is reflected.’"

Now we have detectives going throughout Europe seeking out any mention of anti-Islamic writings or speeches. Europe has been told in no uncertain terms to clam up regarding the frightening reality of Islam.

Islamics will then proceed to kill off the non-Muslims without hindrance. Islam will continue to spread its hellish lies, propagating its deceit machine without hindrance. Mosques will populate the continent while clerics have free swing at spreading their cultic practices.

In short, the murder scheme known as Islam has now been accepted as the means by which to slaughter all Europeans except Muslim immigrants.

This is the most insane move yet. And it’s lifted as high and holy by numerous nations who have stupidly embraced Turkey has an equal among equals.

America: take warning.

Copyright © 2005 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.



For More Information On This Story Visit: truthinconviction.us/weblog.php
Story Submitted By: [email protected]


Copyright© MichNews.com. All Rights Reserved.

[Gavur]

Muslims Teach To Kill: A Testimonial

By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
MichNews.com
Sep 9, 2005




I received this personal testimony of what goes on in Turkey regarding the teaching of Islam. It was in thanks to my post entitled, "Islamophobia: The New Psycho Disease?".

"Well said, Mr Swank.

"As an Armenian who grew up in Turkey, I know for a fact that what you are saying is the truth. I would like to add one of my own experiences in that ‘secular’ country: During the school years 1965-66 and 66-67, I attended a Turkish public school named Mahmut Sefket Pasha elementary school in Ferikoy, Istanbul.

"There was a religion class from which I was naturally excused. However, after standing in the hallway for several weeks, I decided to sit in the class. I continued to sit in until the chapter was about ways a Muslim can get to paradise.

"One way was beyond the reach of the average person: By being extremely wealthy and giving to help the spread of Islam. The other way was by converting or killing a non-Muslim (gavur). It said one and two killing and conversion was good but three would guarantee a space in paradise complete with forty concubines.

"At nine years of age, my face did not betray my feelings and the teacher immediately excused me again, this time permanently, from that class.

"Islam is dangerous because when a Muslim has less then what he desires, he will not hesitate to die as long as he takes the lives or converts the required number of gavurs."

In addition to the above, in worship this morning we prayed for Christians persecuted in Pakistan. Our intercession was informed by a notation in Franklin Graham’s publication, "Prayer Point: A Prayer Ministry of Samaritan’s Purse" (POB 3000, Boone, NC 28607-3000):

"An 8-year-old boy was recently assaulted by classmates at a Pakistani school because his parents are Christians.

"His eyebrows were shaved off to humiliate him. The child’s parents asked the principal to punish the boys involved in the incident, but the principal did nothing, preferring not to draw the ire of local Muslim families.

"Such occurrences are not unusual. Although Christians have been living in Pakistan since the Muslim state was crated in 1947, they continue to endure widespread discrimination, exclusion, and even violent persecution. Treated as ‘untouchables’ by the oppressive caste system, the majority of the Christians (less than 3 percent of the national population) live in urban slums in tent communities.

"The men are forced into menial, low-wage jobs such as garbage collection, while the women work as servants in private homes where it is common for them to be abused. Their children receive limited education due to prohibitive costs and harassment in the schools."

"Despite these challenges, Christian churches are growing in Pakistan. Samaritan’s Purse has partnered with the National Baptist Church to build six churches in the inner-city slums and in rural villages. Construction is planned for two more churches this summer Many lives are already being changed.

"After several visits by the pastor of a church in Islamabad, a gang leader finally agreed to go to a service. Stirred by the Gospel message and the love shown by the congregation, he began attending Bible studies. Now a believer, he is enrolled in a seminary and plans to become a minister.

"’Most people say miracles don’t happen. They are wrong,’ he said. ‘Now I can say that miracles do happen — by God through His people that He loves.’"

Yet there are still non-Muslims who believe Islam to be a "peace religion." It is a killing cult.

There are many Muslims who do not know the truth about Islam. They are called "moderate Muslims." They write articles and send emails defending their "peace religion" because they are in denial about Islam or because they are a part of the propaganda machine or because they are simply ignorant of their killing cult.

Islam is not a religion among world religions. It is a murdering agenda set to wipe out all non-Muslims from the globe. That is what Allah requires in the Koran.

--------
Email: [email protected]


Copyright© MichNews.com. All Rights Reserved.

[Gavur]

Christian women have to wear the veil?

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The patriarch of Baghdad for the Chaldeans has told Iraqi officials about Catholic bishops' fears that the draft constitution "opens the door widely" to discrimination against Christians and other Non-Muslims.

In his meeting the president and prime minister of Iraq, Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly urged a last-minute change to the constitution, which the bishops say contradicts itself on the key question of religious rights for minorities.

In the Sept. 18 meeting, the patriarch discussed a statement agreed by the country's 12 bishops in which they stressed their fears for the future of the Christian community.

The prelates -- from the Chaldean, Armenian, Latin and Assyrian Churches -- praised Articles 2.1(b) and 2.2 which defend freedom and religious rights but attacked Article 2.1(a) which states: "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."

The bishops' statement concluded: "The bishops' conference expressed a grave concern and fear … about Article 2.1(a). This opens the door widely to passing laws that are unjust towards non-Muslims. The conference insists that this clause be amended or deleted."

Releasing the statement to the international charity Aid to the Church in Need, Auxiliary Bishop Andreas Abouna of Baghdad said: "We are definitely not against the fact that in Iraq Islam is the religion of the state.

"We know that the majority in Iraq is Muslim but the problem is that the constitution is not clear. There are parts of the constitution that are good but what about the other parts? For example, would Christian women have to wear the veil?"

The bishops worry that should the Iraqi government become less tolerant, Christians would not be protected by the "vague" constitution, as it now stands. The constitution will be put to the vote in a referendum Oct. 15.

https://www.zenit.org

[Gavur]

Pakistan Prosecutes More Minorities for 'Blasphemy'

WASHINGTON, DC -- Citing recent arrests and attacks on religious minorities in Pakistan under that country's draconian blasphemy laws, Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom called on the U.S. State Department today to add Pakistan to its forthcoming list of "Countries of Particular Concern" (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act. The list is due to be released shortly.

"Human rights violations, religious intolerance and hate crimes are on the rise in Pakistan. The misuse of blasphemy law against the minorities is increasing day by day," says Shahbaz Bhatti, Chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance - a nongovernmental organization providing legal representation for Younis Masih.

The All Pakistan Minorities Alliance reported to the Center that Younis Masih, a 27-year-old Christian, was brutalized and arrested in the Sidhu province of Lahore, Pakistan on September 10, 2005. A day after he asked a neighbor to turn down some loud religious music, he was beaten unconscious by a stick-wielding mob. When his wife Meena tried to intervene, she was also beaten and her clothes torn.

After he tried to file a complaint with the police, some local mosques claimed he had blasphemed against the Prophet, inciting several hundred Muslims to attack and loot Christian homes and forcing over 100 Christian families to flee. The mob then surrounded the police station, refusing to leave until the police eventually charged Younis Masih with blasphemy. He is currently held in Kot Lakhpat jail and has reportedly been tortured.

On September 16, Islamic extremist organizations at a conference in Lahore, urged Muslims to wage jihad on non-Muslims and declared, specifically naming Younis Masih, that "the blasphemers should be killed on the spot."

This follows a mob attack on and subsequent arrest of a Hindu couple on September 2, 2005 in the North West Frontier Province for allegedly desecrating the Koran.

In July, the Center raised the case of Pakistani Christian Yousaf Masih, who was also arrested for blasphemy and is awaiting trial; Yousaf Masih was released on bail after receiving death threats in prison.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws can carry the death penalty. Under the country's sharia law code, the testimony of a Muslim can equal the testimony of two non-Muslims, thus non-Muslims, or disfavored groups such as the Ahmadis, can be convicted on the testimony of a single Muslim. Currently some 80 Christians are imprisoned on blasphemy and over six hundred - Muslim and non-Muslim - have been arrested under blasphemy laws since 1988. Some have been killed while awaiting trial or following acquittal.

"Since 1986, Pakistan's blasphemy laws have given legal cover for Islamic radicals to persecute Christians, Ahmadis, Hindus and dissenting Muslims in Pakistan," said Center Director Nina Shea. "The government has refused to end this tool of repression and we call on the U.S. State Department to designate Pakistan a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) in its forthcoming report on religious freedom."

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which is charged with monitoring violations of religious freedom abroad, has recommended that Pakistan be designated a CPC for systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom. Currently Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Vietnam are designated as CPCs.
Center For Religious Freedom

© 2005, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved

[Gavur]

The past is the past, but justice has no time frame.

Published: Monday, September 26, 2005
Bylined to: Kenneth T. Tellis


History can not be fooled around with, because it might come back to haunt us

Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 18:16:16 -0400
From: Kenneth T. Tellis [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Arab and Turkish conquests and slavery

“History can be always be distorted or manipulated to suit the ends of those who want to put forward their erroneous viewpoints”

Oscar Heck’s story of the conversation with an Haitian Taxi-driver and his call for reparations by the White or European colonial powers needs a rebuttal, which will at at the very least brings to the fore all of the issues concerned.

That story of President Hugo Rafael Chavez of Venezuela being in real danger and the overthrow of President Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, got me thinking enough to do my research and point out the many facets of the issue.

If we go back in biblical times and even before that, slavery has been the normal attitude of conquerors. If we go back to beginning of the Islamic period, we will note that slavery began in earnest after 632 A.D. When an Arabian Caliph sent an agent named Mohammed Ali to Africa to capture and bring back slaves to Arabia soon after the 7th century. The Arabs did not consider Africans as humans, but only as chattel

The beginnings of slavery date back to the period of the Muslim conquest and forced conversion of Assyrian Christian Mesopotamia, Zoroastrian Persia, the Christian Kingdoms in Aram (Lebanon and Syria), Asia Minor, Jewish Palestine, Coptic Christian Egypt, Christian Nubia (Sudan), Algeria, Morocco, Christian Carthage (Tunisia) and Libya, and reached into the heart of darkest Africa, through the lands of the Tauregs and into Timbuktu, Nigeria, Musabenbeque (Mozambique), Zanzibar (which came under the Al-Busaid dynasty of Oman till January 1964), Somaliland, Cote d’Ivoire and into Uganda.

If we go even further, the countless Muslim invasions of Hindustan (India), the first by Mahmud of Ghazni from Afghanistan into the territory of Raja Dahir, followed by the Moghal (Mongol) invader Taimur-the-Lame into Hindustan where they forced the conversion to Islam of thousands upon thousands of Hindus there, does not speak well of Islam.

It was in Africa that all the big Arab slave markets began, and they traded with Portugal, Spain, Holland, France and Britain. On the South-East African coast the biggest slave trader was a Principe Henri of Pondoland, an African Christian who traded in slaves with the Portuguese. The U.S. came into the slave trade much later after its independence in 1783. Even in the case of New France, the Governor Louis de Buade, sieur de Frontenac, comte de Palluau et Forest was the first to bring African slaves to far North America in November 1689, which was considered a great triumph of France. In most of Africa Tribal Chiefs did big business by capturing neighboring tribes and selling them as slaves to Arabs or Europeans. This has been the bugbear of the unknown Africa, and has been denied by many of today’s Africans themselves, but there is historical data that can prove all of this to be true. Arab Dhows can still be found hugging the East African coast in search of slaves in this very day and age.

There never has been any doubt that Spain created the Amerindian slaves in the Americas, and later brought in African slaves to work in the gold mines of the Spanish colonies in America.

Nor is there any doubt that the British and other colonial powers brought African slaves to the Americas and the Caribbean, having bought them from Muslim (Arab) slave-traders on the West African coast, but the British also brought in indentured slaves from India.

These were people who were kidnapped and brought to Demarara (later British Guiana) and Trinidad & Tobago. Go to Java, and other parts of Indonesia and see the many Buddhist Temples, which are now derelict because of the Islamic conquests and forced conversion to Islam. It should be noted that no history book on Asia and Africa blames the Arabs outright for their enslavement of the African people. The reasons are evident. Many of the African and Asian countries are Muslim, or have alliances with Islamic states and it would not serve their interests to expose it.

Thus the blame for slavery is conveniently laid at the feet of the European colonial powers.

It was Islamic conquests after the 7th century that brought about a great influx of slavery. Of course it was Salau-ud-Din (Saladin) the Kurd who captured 20,000 Christian men, women and children pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land and sold them into slavery. Salau-ud-Din also invaded Nubia and forced Christian monks to convert to Islam or die. While most converted, one named Maurice would not, and he was skinned alive on orders of Salau-ud-Din that is the Black St. Maurice whose statue graces the Cologne Cathedral. Is this not the great Salau-ud-Din who Muslims think of as an Islamic warrior?

Remember along the coasts of the Maghreb (North Africa) the Corsairs did a thriving slave trade by attacking European and American shipping, capturing the crews, which they then sold as slaves. But it was Stephen Decatur of the U.S. Navy that foiled the Corsair raiders and soundly defeated them. Then there is the Othman Turks whose fleets attacking the Mediterranean coast of Europe captured and sold thousands of Europeans into slavery. There was a big slave markets in Tripoli, Libya, in Meknes, Morocco, in Tunis, Tunisia (Carthage), Algiers, Algeria, all countries conquered and colonized by Arab from the Islamic invasion of the 7th century. Also the capture by Muslim pirates of the niece of the Empress Josephine (Beauharnois) of France, who was returning from a convent in Martinique who later sold her to the Sultan of Othman Turkey. Slavery was part and parcel of Islamic society and we cannot get away from it. A perfect example of this, is the Holy City of Meknes in Morocco, within whose walls were buried alive some 20,000 white Christian slaves.

Neither Islamic society nor those who support them want these truths to be known.

There are still slave markets in Arab countries, where one can bid and buy a slave of any nationality. The present forced conversion Christians to Islam in the Sudan by the Arab regime in Khartoum is an on-going affair. In Marseilles, France alone every year almost 4,000 girls disappear. This is where there are gangs operating the slave markets from Arab and African countries. To talk of European colonialism of the past and forget the slavery of the present is to be duplicitous.

We can only deal with the present, because there is not much of the past that we can really remember.

We see no cry for justice and reparations asking Muslim countries to make reparations for their enslavement of Europeans and others, from those that now expect the former European colonial powers to pay for their past sins. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other Islamic states are just as guilty of the enslavement of millions of people, if not more so than all the European colonial powers put together. Are we to overlook Arab slavery, while we only make it a point to remember the sins of Europe? No country conquered by an Islamic force can ever remember its history beyond the Islamic period. This is the religious brainwashing that has gone on for centuries in the Middle East, Maghreb (North Africa), darkest Africa and the Balkans.

Perhaps it is worth remembering that even the Othman Turks were past masters at religious brainwashing, more so than all the communists in Europe.
It is time to take serious overview of past history to get an honest judgment of its reality vis-ŕ-vis the Moors in Spain, the Arabs in all of the present day Middle East and Africa, the Othman Turks in the Balkans. Of course the Turks were in occupation of Bulgaria, Rumania, Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary for centuries and forced people to convert to Islam or die. Why do think there is a Muslim Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina today, but by Turkish Islamic conquest centuries ago.

Do not forget the Turks still occupy Constantinople, which is part of the Greek nation. Let’s not forget the Armenian genocide of 1915 –21 by Othman Turkey in which 1,500,000 people died. There is also the Abyssinian genocide carried out by Italy in the mid1930s, both of which have been conveniently forgotten by historians.

We cannot therefore judge the European colonial powers, if we do not include Islamic invasions and slavery.

If we do not, then we cannot arrive at an honest judgment of all the issues involved. We can deliberately pretend forgetfulness or omit the facts that expose the reality of our time by selective amnesia, but sooner or later it will catch up with us.

History can not be fooled around with, because it might come back to haunt us.

Kenneth T. Tellis
[email protected]