Islam: The Religion of Peace?

[Reincarnated Am]

Get out if you want Sharia law, Australia tells Muslims.........

CANBERRA: Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.

Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television. "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching
that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that is false.


If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to
leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked move to the other country.

Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off". "Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off," he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spies monitoring the nation's mosques and agencies.

[Reincarnated Am]

Orthodox Church leader criticizes Turkish policies toward Christians

November 15, 2005

VIENNA -- The head of the Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, on Monday criticized Turkey's policies toward Christian minorities in the country, especially with regard to property rights.

The spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox worshipers worldwide made his comments in Vienna where he is taking part in a conference on Islam.

He called on the Turkish government to reopen the Holy Trinity monastery on the island of Chalki, which he said was "illegally" closed during the crisis in Cyprus in 1971.

Shutting the monastery went against Turkey's desire for closer ties with Europe, the patriarch told Austrian public television.

"Reopening the monastery would be in the interests of the Turkish government," he said.

Turkey last month began talks with Brussels on eventual accession to the European Union.

The Greek government and the Orthodox Church recently denounced Turkey for refusing to recognize the "ecumenical" character of the Istanbul-based patriarch and his position in the Orthodox world.

The Turkish position "is contrary to the European criteria and the demands of the European Union in accession negotiations", the Greek foreign ministry said.

On Wednesday Bartholomew I is to address the Islam conference, which will also be attended by the presidents of Iraq and Afghanistan, Jalal Talabani and Hamid Karzai, and the Turkish secretary-general of the Islamic Conference Organization, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul dates from the Orthodox Greek Byzantine empire, which collapsed in 1453 when the Ottoman Turks conquered the city, then called Constantinople.

[Gavur]

"murder in the name of so-called honor."

Specail Report: For family honor, she had to die

11/18/2005
Chicago Tribune
For family honor, she had to die
European police weren't looking for this kind of violence steeped in tradition. They are now.

By Christine Spolar
Tribune foreign correspondent

LONDON -- They are murders that families whisper about.

Heshu Yones, a West London teen, fought off her father for a frantic 15 minutes. She ran from room to room in her family home one Saturday afternoon until he cornered her in a dingy bathroom, held her over the tub and slit her throat.

The father, a onetime Kurdish freedom fighter from Iraq, told authorities that his only daughter had to die. The 16-year-old had sullied the family name, he said, by dating without his permission.

Hatun Surucu, mother of a 5-year-old, stood at a bus stop near her home in Berlin after a brother phoned to arrange a meeting one night. The Turkish woman, 23 and divorced, was studying to be an electrician. She had argued with her family over her choices but she recently had told friends that she was hopeful for a reconciliation.

Surucu was holding a hot cup of coffee when bullets tore into her. Three of her four brothers, ages 18 to 25, were arrested even as her parents denied family involvement to police. When the murder trial opened in October, the youngest son said he, alone, slaughtered a sister "who lacked morals."

"It was too much for me," teenager Ayhan Surucu said in court.

In other worlds, Yones and Surucu might have disappeared in a hush of family honor. Stories would have been concocted, siblings sworn to secrecy, and the loss of these daughters--victims of so-called honor killings that are tolerated in Southeast Asia and some Arab countries--would stay hidden.

In Europe, police now are realizing that major crimes in some immigrant communities, and particularly those against girls and young women, are often family conspiracies that have long gone unpunished.

Violence in the name of honor, covered up as a private matter among unknown numbers of Pakistani, Kurdish and Arab families, has become a troubling reality for law enforcement working the streets in Britain, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere in Europe.

Such retribution appears to occur in the most insular of communities, and police have sought help from immigrants in the mainstream--the vast majority of emigre families--to understand the crime.

"Had we known what we know now, we would have done a lot of things differently," said Brent Hyatt, lead detective on the Yones case. "We just didn't know what we were looking at in those first days."

Honor killings claim an estimated 5,000 women worldwide every year in overwhelmingly patriarchal cultures. Family honor is a tangible value in these societies, and women are considered family property. Emigres, even far away, can feel bound by such codes.

"No one could believe that it could happen, but we kept giving evidence that honor killings are here," said Diana Nammi, founder of the International Campaign Against Honor Killings, a non-profit group in London.

"We told police: Immigrants come here and they bring traditions--all their traditions," Nammi said.

109 death cases reopened

The Yones case led British authorities to embark on a 10-year review of suspicious deaths from 1993 through 2003. So far, 109 cases across Britain have been reopened. Of 22 cases fully examined, 18 were reclassified or remain suspected as cases of "murder in the name of so-called honor."

In Germany, publicity about the Surucu trial has underscored ethnic clefts in Europe's most populous democracy, with 82 million people.

German friends of the dead woman, speaking warily weeks before the trial started, said they were stunned at how the Surucu family--tight-knit and religious--maintained a united front until exposed by an unexpected source.

The brothers were charged when a girlfriend of the youngest son told police she had been told of their plan to kill Hatun. The teenager, a prosecution witness, is under police protection.

Police and researchers of such crimes were not surprised to hear that the youngest son claimed sole responsibility. His testimony fits a pattern, they said.

"My experience is that these murders are not achieved by one person in a family," said Nazand Begikhani, who has tracked honor-related deaths for Kurdish Women Against Honor Killing, a network of activists, lawyers and researchers formed in 2000.

"It's a family decision. They come together, they meet, they discuss and they decide who should do the murder. They choose somebody younger than 18 [to commit the crime] so the sentence will be easier," Begikhani said.

About 2 million Turks live in Germany. Most left Turkey to find work; many remain emotionally tethered to their homeland even as they settle and raise families abroad.

Schools in Berlin were caught up in a particularly nasty clash of values after the much-publicized murder.

At one school near the site of the slaying, sons of Turkish emigres told teachers that Surucu deserved to die for living a Western life.

Principal Dietmar Pagel, whose neighboring school has a 70 percent Turkish population, quickly held class discussions to define the murder as a crime. The veteran teacher in Berlin's Little Istanbul area said his primer on the rule of law was as important as teaching ABCs.

"It's difficult [to educate students and their families] because the Islamic community here has become more closed," he said. "And the Turkish population tends to bring brides from Turkey to marry. So there is a constant reseeding of values from home--rather than real integration."

Six immigrant women from Berlin have been described as victims of honor killings in news reports so far this year, with 45 such slayings noted across the country since 1997. Berlin police caution, however, that their evidence points to only the Surucu case as a clear-cut instance of a planned killing and cover-up.

Corinna Ter-Nedden, a psychologist who works at a shelter for abused women, said girls born and educated in Germany who come from Turkish families suffer the most from family pressure.

Turkey recently changed its penal code to stiffen the punishments for honor crimes--a change seen by many as an attempt to bolster its hope for European Union membership.

That legal change has yet to filter into the psyche of the poor, small-town immigrants who make their way to Germany, Ter-Nedden said.

Loyalty to patriarchal order

"People come to Germany for the privileges of a free society--education, social security--but they don't always want everything else that comes with it. They don't want girls doing whatever they want or women revolting against patriarchal order," she said.

"Nationalities and passports may change, but attitudes don't," Ter-Nedden said.

In England, Heshu Yones' death was a wake-up call for Scotland Yard, where detectives were startled by facts that pointed to a cold, calculated killing--and one that the family, and the Kurdish community, seemed to want to explain away.

The Yones family declined to be interviewed. This account is based on police files, and interviews with police and people who know the family.

Police were called to the Yones' home, in a shabby block of Acton, around dusk on Oct. 12, 2002, when neighbors reported a man, prone and bloody, on the sidewalk. Abdullah Yones, then 48, was thought to have tumbled from his second-story apartment.

When police searched the home, they found Heshu's body wedged between the toilet and the bathtub.

Investigators counted 18 stab wounds across her chest, arms and legs. Slashes inside her hands detailed a death struggle. A deep gouge to her throat severed her jugular vein. A white plastic kitchen knife, its blade bent, was left behind.

The girl's mother and older brother first insisted to police that intruders--in a botched burglary perhaps--must have wreaked the havoc.

The father, who survived grave injuries, later said he and his daughter were attacked by Al Qaeda operatives.

The Kurdish refugee said he fought Saddam Hussein's forces in the 1980s.

Now extremists were after him, he told police.

In that first week, police listened to the Yones' family tale of woe but were barraged with warnings too. Dozens of Kurdish women living in Britain phoned Scotland Yard to urge officers to look deeper into death of Heshu.

Friends told police that Heshu, a good student, had been struggling with her family for more than a year.

In the months before her death, she had run to friends' homes three times to avoid fights with her father and her older brother over whether she could date.

Friends told police that the 16-year-old girl was quietly seeing a boy, a friend of her brothers', and that she was scared to tell her family.

Three months before her death, her family arranged for a long vacation in Sulaymaniyah, a city in a Kurdish region of Iraq. The girl told friends that she feared she could be entrapped in a forced marriage. She sent one friend a copy of her passport; she gave out e-mail addresses so friends could find her even in Iraq.

Heshu returned safely to her London school that autumn but told friends that her father had put a gun to her head and demanded to know whether she had a boyfriend, and then forced her to have a gynecological exam to prove her virginity.

Police later recovered a videotape--filmed by Heshu and found hidden in her bedroom after her death--that shows the girl weeping aloud one day in Iraq. She said she felt trapped and feared she was a disappointment to her family.

Love letters disappear

Police were told by friends that Heshu had kept a packet of love letters in her room. The letters went missing before the murder, and Heshu told friends she was scared that someone from her family had taken them.

Police pieced together some terrible moments from the last day of Heshu's life.

For hours on Oct. 12, Heshu threw handwritten notes from her bedroom window, pleading for help. At one point in the morning, she left a message on a friend's cell phone asking for money so she could run away. In the late afternoon, she phoned a girlfriend, barely said hello and then abruptly ended the call.

Within an hour, Heshu was dead.

The girl's mother, Tanya, told police that the family was peaceful that day. Tanya Yones said she had left the home at 5:38 p.m. with her younger son in tow. The mother was very precise, according to the police report, about the time she left and the fact that she left the door unlocked. She also was firm about Heshu's state of mind.

"Heshu was laughing," Tanya Yones told police.

The family, in police interviews, was resolute in their support of Abdullah Yones. When the older man broke and finally admitted his crime in court, no one in the family disputed his side of the story. Heshu's death, he said, was Heshu's fault.

Sometime that October, Yones said he had received an anonymous letter that the 16-year-old was a prostitute. He had to kill her, he said, and then he tried to kill himself.

The court sentenced him to life in prison.

A contingent of Kurdish men came to court for the sentencing. Witnesses said the men, young and old, had come to stand by a man undone by tradition.

Two years later, some friends at a Kurdish gathering in the leafy Hammersmith neighborhood of London tried to make sense of the killing.

Kurds in northern Iraq outlawed honor killings a few years ago, but no one believes the crime has disappeared there or in any country that has tolerated the practice for centuries.

Kurds, no matter where they live in the world, can feel bound by the need to preserve family honor, they said.

"The idea of honor is in our cultural backyard. Ethnically and culturally, we believe it," said Mohammed Ahmed, a white-haired man who said he was a peshmerga--a fearsome mountain-fighter--with Yones before they immigrated in 1990.

"Even in court, the father insisted that he was right and that he did the right thing -- and that he'd do it again.

"I mean, I know it's a crime. We all know he's a killer," Ahmed said. "But he was very proud, and what he did . . . well, how could he accept his daughter's behavior?"

[Gavur]

"a campaign of rape"

Double rapist jailed for 14 years


A man convicted of raping a teenager and a 64-year-old grandmother has been sentenced to 14 years in jail.
Haci Tasan, 32, a Turkish asylum seeker of no fixed abode, first struck in April 2003 as his elder victim walked to work in Edmonton, north London.

Eight months later he targeted a 19-year-old woman in the same area as she walked home from work, in what the judge called "a campaign of rape".

Tasan had admitted five counts of rape at Harrow Crown Court in September.

'Appalling offences'

He admitted two counts of rape and indecent assault against the 64-year-old on 4 April, 2004, in Langhedge Lane, Edmonton.

And he also admitted three counts of rape against the 19-year-old woman on 23 December, 2004, in Fore Street, Edmonton.

Tasan had been living in a local authority flat less than half a mile away from where the attacks took place.

The two women involved were incredibly brave and continue to recover from their terrible ordeal

Det Insp Lloyd Gardner

He was sentenced to 14 years for each of the five counts of rape, and five years for the indecent assault - the sentences are to be served concurrently.

"The circumstances of these attacks clearly demonstrate you had begun a campaign of rape that would not stop unless you were identified," said Judge Susan Tapping.

"You have committed the most serious and appalling offences."

After the first attack officers made several appeals for information, including an appeal on the BBC's Crimewatch UK, and also offered a £10,000 Crimestoppers reward for further information.

They became aware that Tasan had fled to Switzerland without any documentation, and with the help of Swiss authorities were able to bring home back to the UK.

'Fear in community'

Det Insp Lloyd Gardner, who led the investigation for Operation Sapphire at Winchmore Hill police station, said he had no doubt Tasan "would have gone on to attack using even more violence had he not been caught".

"Haci Tasan generated fear within the local community following these horrific attacks," he said.

"The two women involved were incredibly brave and continue to recover from their terrible ordeal."

In the second attack, Tasan had grabbed his victim by the throat, dragged her into a service road behind a row of shops and assaulted her.

Her ordeal lasted for 30 minutes until she managed to escape and raise the alarm.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4450238.stm

Haci Tasan would grab his victims by the throat

[Gavur]

Is Haci a Turkish name?

[Gavur]

Saddam Allegedly Beaten Upon Insulting Religious Figures

By Cihan
Published: Friday, November 18, 2005
zaman.com


Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is claimed to have been attacked by two court clerks after reportedly making obscene remarks about two greatly respected Islamic figures considered by Shiites as holy imams.

According to Iraqi state television al-Iraqia's report, based on sources close to Iraqi interrogative judges, Saddam was pummeled by two court clerks as he insulted Hussein ibn Ali and Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (respectively the grandson and the uncle of the prophet Mohammed).


Al-Iraqia reported that the incident took place during interrogation over Saddam's crushing the Shiite revolt of 1991 in southern Iraq. The chief prosecutor Jafar al-Musawi contradicted the report; however and also said he did not hear Saddam insult Hussein ibn Ali. Saddam's lawyers had previously maintained that their client had been attacked during an interrogation, but the interrogative judge denied the allegation.


Meanwhile the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) Special Reporter on the Death Penalty, Philip Alston, called on the Iraqi government to launch an independent investigation into the assassinations of Saddam's lawyers. Alston also noted that the claim that Iraqi Interior Ministry itself was involved in the assassinations was quite worrying. Alston said the murder of the defense lawyers was a great danger for the legal process, and that assassination threats endangered the whole process.


Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowafaq al-Rubai asked Iran to use its influence over Syria to prevent the infiltration of the foreign insurgents into Iraq by way of the Syrian border. Al-Rubai said that they wished to have good relations with Syria, "We do not want any further blood shedding in Iraq," he said. Al-Rubai had on Sunday said that almost all of the suicide bombers who detonated themselves in Iraq were Arabs coming from Syria.

[Reincarnated Am]

Egyptian Government Targets Christian as Threat to National Security:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 23, 2005
Contact: The Rev. Dr. Keith Roderick; 202-498-8644, [email protected]

Former Muslim Preacher's Conversion Leads to Imprisonment

WASHINGTON – This week in Cairo, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Egypt's use of emergency decrees. Christian Solidarity International (CSI) is protesting the arrest and continued imprisonment of Bahaa-Eldin El-Akkhad, a former Islamic preacher from Al Talebiya, Giza, in Lower Egypt.

El-Akkad, 46, was arrested on April 6, 2005 under Egypt's Emergency Security Law for endangering national unity by converting to Christianity. Egyptian State Security Prosecutor Tarek Abdelshakour focused his interrogation of El-Akkad on allegations that he had defamed Islam.

After 45 days of incarceration, El-Akkad was transferred to Mazra'at Tora Prison in Cairo where political prisoners are held. Human rights activists have described Tora Prison as the worst prison in Egypt, because of its rampant torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Though Egypt signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which calls for the freedom of religion, the government continues to arrest Christian converts who leave Islam.

"The Egyptian government has pledged to the international community that it will work for democratic reform, yet it continues to violate its own rule of law when it comes to Christians and the free exercise of conscience," says Fr. Keith Roderick, CSI's Washington Representative.

Amnesty International and the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights have provided extensive documentation on the use of torture against those detained because of emergency legislation.

CSI is demanding the immediate release of Bahaa El-Din El-Akkad and an end to the Egyptian government's policy of targeting those who convert from Islam, apostates, as political prisoners.

El-Akkad is married and has three children. Prior to his conversion, he was associated with the Tabligh and Da'wa Committee in Al Telabiya. The movement, known for its propagation and preaching, began in India and was founded by Imam Muhammad Kandahlawey in 1867.

[Hovik]

The Legacy of Jihad in Historical Palestine (Part I)

American Thinker, AZ
Nov 19 2005

The Legacy of Jihad in Historical Palestine (Part I)
November 19th, 2005



[Part II of this article appears tomorrow]

Violent jihad warfare on infidels is the norm, not the exception, in
Islamic history. Once successful, jihad leads to the imposition of
humiliating, degrading, violent, and expensive oppression under
dhimmitude, the institutionalized imposition of lowly status upon
those who refuse to abandon their faith and adopt Islam. Among the
worst victims of jihad and dhimmitude have been the Jews and
Christians who lived in historic Palestine.

Edward Said's ridiculous polemic, The Question of Palestine, quotes
the following observation by a Dr. A. Carlebach published in Ma'ariv
(October 7, 1955).

The danger stems from the [Islamic] totalitarian conception of the
world... Occupation by force of arms, in their own eyes, in the eyes of
Islam, is not at all associated with injustice. To the contrary, it
constitutes a certificate and demonstration of authentic ownership.
[1]

Said cites Carlebach with ostensibly self-evident derision.
Unwittingly, Said thus reveals his own belligerent obliviousness to
Carlebach's acute perceptions about the ugly realities of jihad war,
the resultant imposition of dhimmitude, and their brutal legacy in
historical Palestine and the greater Middle East.

As elucidated by Jacques Ellul, the jihad is an institution intrinsic
to Islam, and not an isolated event, or series of events:

.. .it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world... The
conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the
shari'a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the
former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply
change `owners'. [2]

The essential pattern of the jihad war is captured in the great
Muslim historian al-Tabari' s recording of the recommendation given
by Umar b. al-Khattab to the commander of the troops he sent to
al-Basrah (636 C.E.), during the conquest of Iraq. Umar reportedly
said:

Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it
from them, (This is to say, accept their conversion as genuine and
refrain from fighting them) but those who refuse must pay the poll
tax out of humiliation and lowliness. (Qur'an 9:29) If they refuse
this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what
you have been entrusted. [3]

Jihad was pursued century after century, because jihad, which means
`to strive in the path of Allah,' embodied an ideology and a
jurisdiction. Both were formally conceived by Muslim jurisconsults
and theologians from the 8th to 9th centuries onward, based on their
interpretation of Qur'anic verses and long chapters in the Traditions
(i.e., `hadith', acts and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, especially
those recorded by al-Bukhari [d. 869] and Muslim [d. 874] ). [4]

Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), jurist (Maliki), renowned philosopher,
historian, and sociologist, summarized these consensus opinions from
five centuries of prior Muslim jurisprudence with regard to the
uniquely Islamic institution of jihad:

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 either 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.
[5]

Indeed, even al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the famous theologian,
philosopher, and paragon of mystical Sufism, (who, as noted by
W.Montgomery Watt, has been '.. .acclaimed in both the East and West
as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad.. .' [6]), wrote the following
about jihad:

...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/or drown them...If a person of the Ahl al-
Kitab [People of The Book -Jews and Christians, typically] is
enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked...One may cut down
their trees... One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take
as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they
need... [7]

By the time of the classical Muslim historian al-Tabari's death in
923, jihad wars had expanded the Muslim empire from Portugal to the
Indian subcontinent. Subsequent Muslim conquests continued in Asia,
as well as Eastern Europe. The Christian kingdoms of Armenia,
Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and
Albania, in addition to parts of Poland and Hungary, were also
conquered and Islamized.

Arab Muslim invaders engaged, additionally, in continuous jihad raids
that ravaged and enslaved Sub-Saharan African animist populations,
extending to the southern Sudan. When the Muslim armies were stopped
at the gates of Vienna in 1683, over a millennium of jihad had
transpired. These tremendous military successes spawned a
triumphalist jihad literature. Muslim historians recorded in detail
the number of infidels slaughtered, or enslaved and deported, the
cities and villages which were pillaged, and the lands, treasure, and
movable goods seized. Christian (Coptic, Armenian, Jacobite, Greek,
Slav, etc.), as well as Hebrew sources, and even the scant Hindu and
Buddhist writings which survived the ravages of the Muslim conquests,
independently validate this narrative, and ,complement the Muslim
perspective by providing testimonies of the suffering of the
non-Muslim victims of jihad wars. [8]

In The Laws of Islamic Governance al-Mawardi (d. 1058), a renowned
jurist of Baghdad, examined the regulations pertaining to the lands
and infidel (i.e., non-Muslim) populations subjugated by jihad. This
is the origin of the system of dhimmitude. The native infidel
population had to recognize Islamic ownership of their land, submit
to Islamic law, and accept payment of the poll tax (jizya).

He notes that `The enemy makes a payment in return for peace and
reconciliation. ' Al- Mawardi then distinguishes two cases: (I)
Payment is made immediately and is treated like booty, `it does,
however, not prevent a jihad being carried out against them in the
future. '. (II). Payment is made yearly and will `constitute an
ongoing tribute by which their security is established'.

Reconciliation and security last as long as the payment is made. If
the payment ceases, then the jihad resumes. A treaty of
reconciliation may be renewable, but must not exceed 10 years. [9]

A remarkable account from 1894 by an Italian Jew traveling in
Morocco, demonstrates the humiliating conditions under which the
jizya was still being collected within the modern era:

The kaid Uwida and the kadi Mawlay Mustafa had mounted their tent
today near the Mellah [Jewish ghetto] gate and had summoned the Jews
in order to collect from them the poll tax [jizya] which they are
obliged to pay the sultan. They had me summoned also. I first
inquired whether those who were European-protected subjects had to
pay this tax. Having learned that a great many of them had already
paid it, I wished to do likewise. After having remitted the amount of
the tax to the two officials, I received from the kadi's guard two
blows in the back of the neck. Addressing the kadi and the kaid, I
said' `Know that I am an Italian protected subject.' Whereupon the
kadi said to his guard: `Remove the kerchief covering his head and
strike him strongly; he can then go and complain wherever he wants.'
The guards hastily obeyed and struck me once again more violently.
This public mistreatment of a European-protected subject demonstrates
to all the Arabs that they can, with impunity, mistreat the Jews.
[10]

The `contract of the jizya', or `dhimma' encompassed other obligatory
and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim `dhimmi'
peoples. Collectively, these `obligations' formed the discriminatory
system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims-Jews, Christians,
Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists-subjugated by jihad. Some of the
more salient features of dhimmitude include: the prohibition of arms
for the vanquished non-Muslims (dhimmis), and of church bells;
restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches,
synagogues, and temples; inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims
with regard to taxes and penal law; the refusal of dhimmi testimony
by Muslim courts; a requirement that Jews, Christians, and other
non-Muslims, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes;
and the overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims. [11]

It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were
institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or
Shari' a. Again, the writings of the much lionized Sufi theologian
and jurist al-Ghazali highlight how the institution of dhimmitude was
simply a normative, and prominent feature of the Shari'a:

...the dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle.. .Jews,
Christians, and Majians must pay thejizya [poll tax on
non-Muslims]...on offering up thejizya, the dhimmi must hang his head
while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on
the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]... They
are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church
bells...their houses may not be higher than the Muslim's, no matter how
low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may
ride a donkey only if the saddler-work] is of wood. He may not walk
on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an
identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the
[public] baths...[dhimmis] must hold their tongue. [12]

The Great Jihad and the Muslim Conquest of Palestine

September 622 C.E. marks a defining event in Islam- the hijra.
Muhammad and a coterie of followers (the Muhajirun), persecuted by
fellow Banu Quraysh tribesmen who rejected Muhammad's authenticity as
a divine messenger, fled from Mecca to Yathrib, later known as
Al-Medina (Medina). The Muslim sources described Yathrib as having
been a Jewish city founded by a Palestinian diaspora population which
had survived the revolt against the Romans. Distinct from the nomadic
Arab tribes, the Jews of the north Arabian peninsula were highly
productive oasis farmers. These Jews were eventually joined by
itinerant Arab tribes from southern Arabia who settled adjacent to
them and transitioned to a sedentary existence. [13]

Following Muhammad's arrival, he re-ordered Medinan society,
eventually imposing his authority on each tribe. The Jewish tribes
were isolated, some were then expelled, and the remainder attacked
and exterminated. Muhammad distributed among his followers as `booty'
the vanquished Jews property-plantations, fields, and houses-and also
used this `booty' to establish a well-equipped jihadist cavalry
corps. [14] Muhammad's subsequent interactions with the Christians of
northern Arabia followed a similar pattern, noted by Richard Bell.
The `relationship with the Christians ended as that with the Jews
(ended) - in war', because Islam as presented by Muhammad was a
divine truth, and unless Christians accepted this formulation, which
included Muhammad's authority, `conflict was inevitable, and there
could have been no real peace while he [Muhammad] lived.' [15]

Within two years of Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr, the first Caliph,
launched the Great Jihad. The ensuing three decades witnessed
Islamdom's most spectacular expansion, as Muslim armies subdued the
entire Arabian peninsula, and conquered territories which had been in
Greco-Roman possession since the reign of Alexander the Great. [16]

Gil, in his monumental analysis A History of Palestine, 634-1099,
emphasizes the singular centrality that Palestine occupied in the
mind of its pre-Islamic Jewish inhabitants, who referred to the land
as `al-Sham'. Indeed, as Gil observes, the sizable Jewish population
in Palestine (who formed a majority of its inhabitants, when grouped
with the Samaritans) at the dawn of the Arab Muslim conquest were,
`the direct descendants of the generations of Jews who had lived
there since the days of Joshua bin Nun, in other words for some 2000
years...' [17] Jews and Christians speaking Aramaic inhabited the
cities and the cultivated inner regions, devoid of any unique ties to
the Bedouin of the desert hinterlands, who were regarded as bellicose
and threatening, in the writings of both the Church Fathers, and in
Talmudic sources. [18]

The following is a summary of the devastating consequences of the
Arab Muslim conquest of Palestine during the fourth decade of the 7th
century, directed by the first two Caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar b.
al-Khattab [notwithstanding Pervez Musharaff's hagiography of the
latter, in a recent New York City speech].

The entire Gaza region up to Cesarea was sacked and devastated in the
campaign of 634, which included the slaughter of four thousand
Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants. Villages in the Negev were
also pillaged, and towns such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea,
Nablus, and Beth Shean were isolated. In his sermon on the Day of the
Epiphany 636, Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, bewailed the
destruction of the churches and monasteries, the sacked towns and
villages, and the fields laid waste by the invaders. Thousands of
people perished in 639, victims of the famine and plague wrought by
this wanton destruction.

The Muslim historian Baladhuri (d. 892 C.E.), maintained that 30,000
Samaritans and 20,000 Jews lived in Caesarea alone just prior to the
Arab Muslim conquest; afterward, all evidence of them disappears.
Archaeological data confirms the lasting devastation wrought by these
initial jihad conquests, particularly the widespread destruction of
synagogues and churches from the Byzantine era, whose remnants are
still being unearthed. The total number of towns was reduced from
fifty-eight to seventeen in the red sand hills and swamps of the
western coastal plain (i.e., the Sharon).

Massive soil erosion from the Judaean mountains western slopes also
occurred due to agricultural uprooting during this period. Finally,
the papyri of Nessana were completely discontinued after the year
700, reflecting how the Negev also experienced the destruction of its
agriculture, and the desertion of its villages.[19]

Dhimmitude in Palestine During the Initial Period of Muslim Rule

Dramatic persecution, directed specifically at Christians, included
executions for refusing to apostasize to Islam during the first two
decades of the 8th century, under the reigns of Abd al- Malik, his
son Sulayman, and Umar b. Abd al-Aziz. Georgian, Greek, Syriac, and
Armenian sources report both prominent individual and group
executions (for eg., sixty-three out of seventy Christian pilgrims
from Iconium in Asia Minor were executed by the Arab governor of
Caesarea, barring seven who apostasized to Islam, and sixty Christian
pilgrims from Amorion were crucified in Jerusalem).

Under early Abbasid rule (approximately 750-755 C.E., perhaps during
the reign [Abul Abbas Abdullah] al-Saffah) Greek sources report
orders demanding the removal of crosses over Churches, bans on Church
services and teaching of the scriptures, the eviction of monks from
their monasteries, and excessive taxation. [20] Gil notes that in 772
C.E., when Caliph al-Mansur visited Jerusalem,

..he ordered a special mark should be stamped on the hands of the
Christians and the Jews. Many Christians fled to Byzantium. [21]

Bat Y e' or elucidates the fiscal oppression inherent in eighth
century Palestine which devastated the dhimmi Jewish and Christian
peasantry:

Over-taxed and tortured by the tax collectors, the villagers fled
into hiding or emigrated into towns. [22]

[Hovik]

The Legacy of Jihad in Historical Palestine (Part I) continued

She quotes from a detailed chronicle of an eighth century monk,
completed in 774:

The men scattered, they became wanderers everywhere; the fields were
laid waste, the countryside pillaged; the people went from one land
to another. [23]

The Greek chronicler Theophanes provides a contemporary description
of the chaotic events which transpired after the death of the caliph
Harun al-Rashid in 809 C.E. He describes Palestine as the scene of
violence, rape, and murder, from which Christian monks fled to Cyprus
and Constantinople. [24]

Perhaps the clearest outward manifestations of the inferiority and
humiliation of the dhimmis were the prohibitions regarding their
dress codes, and the demands that distinguishing signs be placed on
the entrances of dhimmi houses. During the Abbasid caliphates of
Harun al-Rashid (786-809) and al-Mutawwakil (847-861), Jews and
Christians were required to wear yellow (as patches attached to their
garments, or hats). Later, to differentiate further between
Christians and Jews, the Christians were required to wear blue. In
850, consistent with Qur'anic verses associating them with Satan and
Hell, al-Mutawwakil decreed that Jews and Christians attach wooden
images of devils to the doors of their homes to distinguish them from
the homes of Muslims. [25]

Muslim and non-Muslims sources establish that during the early 11th
century period of al-Hakim's reign, religious assaults and hostility
intensified, for both Jews and Christians. The destruction of the
churches at the Holy Sepulchre [1009 C.E.] was followed by a large
scale campaign of Church destructions (including the Church of the
Resurrection in Jerusalem, and additional churches throughout the
Fatimid kingdom), and other brutal acts of oppression against the
dhimmi populations, such as forcible conversion to Islam, or
expulsion.

The discriminatory edicts al-Hakim imposed upon the dhimmis beginning
in August 1011 C.E., included orders to wear black turbans; a five
pound, 18-inch cross (for Christians), or five pound block of wood
(for Jews), around their necks; and distinguishing marks in the
bathhouses. Ultimately al-Hakim decided that there were to be
separate bathhouses for the dhimmis use. [26] During the early
through the mid 11th century, the Jews, in particular, continued to
suffer frequently from both economic and physical oppression,
according to Gil. [27]

Muslim Turcoman rule of Palestine for the nearly three decades just
prior to the Crusades (1071- 1099 C.E.) was characterized by such
unrelenting warfare and devastation, that an imminent `End of Days'
atmosphere was engendered. [28] A contemporary poem by Solomon
ha-Kohen b. Joseph, believed to be a descendant of the Geonim, an
illustrious family of Palestinian Jews of priestly descent, speaks of
destruction and ruin, the burning of harvests, the razing of
plantations, the desecration of cemeteries, and acts of violence,
slaughter, and plunder. [29]

The brutal nature of the Crusader's conquest of Palestine,
particularly of the major cities, beginning in 1098/99 C.E., has been
copiously documented. [30] However, the devastation wrought by both
Crusader conquest and rule (through the last decades of the 13th
century) cannot reasonably be claimed to have approached, let alone
somehow `exceeded', what transpired during the first four and
one-half centuries of Muslim jihad conquests, endless internecine
struggles for Muslim dominance, and imposition of dhimmitude.

Moreover, we cannot ignore the testimony of Isaac b. Samuel of Acre
(1270-1350 C.E.), one of the most outstanding Kabbalists of his time.
Conversant with Islamic theology and often using Arabic in his
exegesis, Isaac nevertheless believed that it was preferable to live
under the yoke of Christendom, rather than that of Islamdom. Acre was
taken from the Crusaders by the Mamelukes in 1291 by a very brutal
jihad conquest. Accordingly, despite the precept to dwell in the Holy
Land, Isaac b. Samuel fled to Italy and thence to Christian Spain,
where he wrote:

...they [the Muslims] strike upon the head the children of Israel who
dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force.
For they say in their tongue, ...'it is lawful to take money of the
Jews.' For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as
open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes
they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed
against that of a Jew. For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory
have said, `Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that
of Ishmael. [31]

Passage Omitted (NOTES)

Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine, and author of the
recently released, The Legacy of Jihad, on Prometheus Books.

[Reincarnated Am]

Saudi books aim to divide U.S. Muslims, ‘infidels,’ Congress told

By William Matthews
Times staff writer

The government of Saudi Arabia is distributing books and pamphlets across the United States in an effort to recruit American Muslims to an international struggle against Christians and Jews, the director of a religious freedom organization told the Senate Judiciary Committee Nov. 8.
In one instance, a booklet distributed by the Saudi Embassy in Washington offers instructions on how to “build a wall of resentment” between Muslims and infidels, said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom.
Among the book’s directives: “Never greet the Christian or Jew first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never befriend an infidel unless it is to convert him. Never imitate the infidel. Never work for an infidel,” Shea quoted during a committee hearing.
The booklet and more than 200 others containing similar anti-Western diatribes “demonstrate the ongoing efforts by Saudi Arabia to indoctrinate Muslims in the United States in the hostility and belligerence of Saudi Arabia’s hard-line Wahhabi sect of Islam,” Shea said.
She said hate literature, booklets, text books and other material was gathered from mosques and Islamic centers in cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Washington and New York. Some of the material was published by the Saudi Education Ministry, Shea said.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he is concerned that Saudi Arabia is promoting Islamic extremism, and in doing so is aiding Islamic terrorists that the United States is fighting in the global war on terrorism.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee’s senior Democrat, said that President George W. Bush has “an obvious blind spot when it comes to Saudi Arabia.” Leahy said that although Bush has condemned Islamic radicalism in other Arab nations, the president praises Saudi Arabia: “a monarchy that has done more to promote Islamic extremism and discourage the emergence of moderate Muslim leaders than any nation.”
Another witness, Steven Emerson, told the committee that the Saudi government has not done as much as it could to crack down on a network of charities, foundations and Islamic propaganda centers that export Islamic extremism worldwide from Saudi Arabia.
Emerson, who is director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, said the current U.S. policy of not publicly confronting the Saudi government on the problem has not paid off.
In the Saudis’ defense, Anthony Cordesman told the committee that the Saudi government has made some progress toward clamping down on Islamic extremists, and that the United States should not expect “instant progress.” Nor should the United States focus on Saudi Arabia alone. Money and support for radical Islam also flows from Qatar, Egypt and other countries, said Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cordesman told committee members that radical Muslims aren’t the sole practitioners of hostile rhetoric. “U.S. clerics, intellectuals and members of Congress have discussed Islam and Arabs in equally regrettable terms,” he said.