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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Is Islam Fatally Defective?

Is Islam Fatally Defective?

July 21, 2013

By WILLIAM MAYER

July 22, 2013 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – A language war is being waged at the highest levels of the national security apparatus, throughout government as a whole and in a much more general and all encompassing sense, throughout the West. The non-governmental institutions which have been targeted in this clandestine conflict are those - which define and create our way of life, our civilization.

Realizing that these represent the soft underbelly of a republican democracy they are under furious assault by the neo-Marxist left and their unholy revolutionary allies, the jihadists.

The concept is not a new one, control the language, control the parameters within which dialogue is possible...control the narrative, control the culture..This relationship is widely known within the fields of social science and cultural anthropology.

Antonio Gramsci [a 1930s era Italian Communist theoretician] championed and further developed these theories. His writings reveal extraordinary perceptual insight into how customs, language, religion/belief structures etc., might be forcibly changed, pushed as it were in a direction that the culture would not normally have taken under its own inertia.

In his way of thinking, if the culture wasn't friendly to a particular ideology [in his case, Marxism] then one could employ certain techniques to make the proletariat recognize its existence as an oppressed class and then create an awareness of its supposed role in society and the miserable plight of its status in life. It was thought that the "workers," so indoctrinated would welcome and become foot soldiers in the revolution. The institutions chosen for radical transformation include legal and judicial systems, legislative bodies - especially those at the top rung in the food chain [in America this would be the House of Representatives and the Senate], the entertainment industry, the educational aristocracy, religious organizations and the mass media by way of example.

Metaphorically, this is Texas No-Limit Hold'em being played with the highest stakes imaginable, the future of the U.S., Europe and the democratic Far East which all are at risk - a single misplayed hand having the potential of bringing total, absolute and perhaps permanent obliteration of secular republican democracy..

As we have previously written, please reference, our August 28, 2012 piece:

"…The Italian Communist theoretician, Antonio Gramsci, in the early part of the 20th century, identified the process of cultural transformation, which is entirely what the left is about, as "marching through the institutions," slowly taking over the mechanisms whereby culture is created and molded; the print and electronic news media, the arts, the law, the universities, government, organized religion...nothing that contributes to the nature of a society is left untouched by this process.

When this happens we are bound up in Dostoevsky's contention, a truism it seems, that if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.

This is a rejection of the concept of revealed truth, of immutable moral precepts which originate at a level above man's existence. Under this construction both Judaism and Christianity entirely lose their ability to provide guidance in human affairs.

Why not kill, or covet your neighbor's wife or goods. Why set aside a time of contemplation of things larger than yourself?" [source William Mayer, The Sound of Silence Screaming - The West's Cultural Malaise and its Bearing on Resisting External Threat, PipeLineNews.org]


But what does this have to do with Islam?

Everything…

From the waning days of the GW Bush administration and with a far greater degree of zealotry, bleeding into the years of Team Obama's looming tyranny, no effort has been spared in "sanitizing" the government's bureaucratic language with an eye towards permanent burial of any negative reference to Islam's many defective attributes. In many ways this is an example of a self-imposed Shari'a compliance, keeping in mind that "insulting" Islam or its prophet are grave offenses under Islamic law. In a very concrete way removing Islam from the terrorism equation renders the term meaningless.


We have written extensively regarding this matter, for example, the following excerpt from a 2011 piece:

"…To see how far this mindset of censorship has progressed, consider that on November 9, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on DOJ's now infamous gun running program "Fast and Furious," Senator Dick Durbin [D-IL] directed the following to AG Eric Holder, "we have found that the FBI agents who were given counter terrorism training were unfortunately subjected to many stereotypes of Islam and Muslims, for example FBI agents in training were told..."

"Islam is a highly violent radical religion."

"Mainstream American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers."

"The Arabic mind is more likely to be swayed by ideas rather than facts."

Holder was apparently ready for the question because as Durbin was framing it, the AG could be seen referring to what appeared to be prepared notes on the matter. His response served to embellish Durbin's clear implication that the civil liberties of American Muslims are under siege:

"The information you just read is flat out wrong."

"[it's]...inconsistent with what we have been trying to do here at the Department..."

"those views do not reflect...the views of the Justice Dept, the FBI.."

"...that person is not being used anymore by the FBI...and we are reviewing all of our materials, our training materials to ensure that kind of misinformation isn't being used anymore because it can undermine...the really substantial outreach efforts that we have made ...that kind of training sets back those efforts...have a process underway to make sure that mistake does not happen in the future..." [source, C-SPAN video of testimony, http://www.c-span.org/Events/Lawmakers-Question-Holder-on-Operation-Fast-and-Furious/10737425323/]

We contacted Mr. Durbin's office on multiple occasions to determine the source of the quotes he used regarding counter terrorism training. As we go to press the Senator's office has not responded, however we did find a potential source for not only Mr. Durbin's query, but his whole line of questions in that matter.

That source is Wired's "Danger Room," edited by Spencer Ackerman. In a Sept blog posting, FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream' Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical' [see, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/fbi-muslims-radical/]. Mr. Ackerman writes, "The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that "'main stream' [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a "cult leader"; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a funding mechanism for combat."

If nothing else, the similarity between Durbin's question to the AG and Ackerman's post is a remarkable coincidence isn't it?

From outward appearances, Mr. Ackerman seems to be in lock-step [alongside Mr. Durbin] with the campaign undertaken since 9/11 by Islamists to attack any statement which reflects poorly on Islam as being Islamophobic. This could easily be a first step in having such declarations classified as "hate crimes," as they are in much of Europe where they are punishable by fines and potential jail time. Unfortunately these police state tactics seem not to be of much concern on the Continent.

Spencer Ackerman, for those not familiar with his bio, was part of the JournoList debacle, wherein it was revealed there existed a group of hundreds of lefty journalists who communicated via a listserv protocol [the "JournoList"] and basically conspired to advance their ideology via news manipulation.

As the Daily Caller, which broke the story, revealed, '...In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama's relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama's conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares - and call them racists.'" [source, http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/#ixzz1dFXQAbL6] So propagandizing under the guise of journalism is second nature to Ackerman.

We find it unsurprising that a Democrat Senator might read the rants of shill journos and then use them to advance the Obama narrative, that under this regime one will not speak ill of Islam or its prophet.

These proscriptions against the denigration of Islam are elemental components of Shari'a, Islamic law, specifically its "blasphemy/apostasy" codes, as Ms. Shea heretofore noted. Therefore the "sanitization" operation that the administration has put into motion, enacting these self-blinding policies, is in a very real sense, advancing Shari'a principles in pursuit of a perverse and divisive multiculturalism." [source, William Mayer, The Obama/Holder War On National Security, November 14, 2011, PipeLineNews.org]

Thus the most illustrative descriptors which might be used to identify and denote the enemy – Ideological Islam, fanatical/literalist/fundamentalist Muslims, Islamic terrorism, jihad, Shari'a based violence, mujahideen etc.,, have been excised from the official lexicon, leaving us willfully blind [as Andy McCarthy has so succinctly put it] as to who or what challenges we face.

In an ideological struggle [and this matter certainly falls into this category] a wise leader first imust identify the enemy. From this his generals and intelligence people should be able develop a threat doctrine and from that a methodology of combating it, though success is by no means guaranteed. The West's successful war against Soviet Marxism proves the value of this strategy. It was no accident that global communism fell before such an onslaught. our response as well as that of our allies was no accident, it was carefully plotted and then executed. This has been a basic strategic theorem going back at least to Sun Tzu's "Art of War," an ancient Chinese manuscript which counsels that without knowing and understanding your enemy any chance of victory is hopeless.

For an in depth analysis of proven methods for defeating totalitarian ideologies of all stripes, please refer to [William Mayer, Review: Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies from Communism to Islamism, June 26, 2012, PipeLineNews.org], as the piece clearly identifies the ideological aspects of Islam.

In 2003 the widely respected Middle East scholar Dr. Daniel Pipes wrote about the dangers inherent in being abstemious when describing who or what the enemy is:

"...If the government is unwilling to state what its goal is or who its enemy is in a war you cannot effectively deal with it. I mean who are we looking for, who are our allies, what are the methods to be pursued?...My view is that our war is not a war on terror, but it is a war on militant Islam, or more specifically a war on Jihad. I think militant Islam is an Islamic version of the radical utopian movements that took roots and became strong in the West about a century ago in the 1920s..." [source, Dr. Pipes' views on Islamic Terrorism and Turkey].


Pipes analyzes what Dr. Samuel P. Huntington termed The Clash of Civillzations, in a more global manner, instead using the terminology clash between civilization and barbarism [please reference, It's Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the Civilized World and Barbarians ]

Thus he cleverly cuts through the intellectually and politically charged clutter often associated with Huntington's thesis, while retaining the power of this key distinction.

Know thyself, know better thy enemy.

Under Obama and his hand-puppets - the dull witted now-ex Department of Homeland Security's Janet Napolitano for example - this war against the truth and logic has been extended right down to the American war colleges, where instructors [including FBI field intelligence agents] who do not follow the official line are banished.

Additionally, instructional materials casting Islam in a negative light have been redacted to the point of multicultural idiocy...all for the single purpose of not riling the oh so excitable "radical" Muslims. The question arises that what harm might that do given the fact that these folks are already at war with us?

So with this as prologue, let us proceed to develop our initial query - is Islam itself so defective internally, i.e. theologically, that it is irredeemably warlike and expansionist?

Judaism and Christianity have had to grapple with this question thereby allowing their excesses to have been ground away over the millennia; Mosaic law is no longer enforced in anything resembling a harsh manner and it remains the basis of Western law. Yes violation of much of the Mosaic law – thou shalt not murder, steal and plunder are indeed punishable; in the case of murder in a capital manner, but Western secular law is in no way simply a reiteration of Jewish and Christian "religious law." This is as it should be, as these moral truths are the core of our civilization and recognized to a greater or lesser degree in all other cultures.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share the ancient sense of justice "an eye for an eye," but the similarity stops there, Islam being the outlier, often taking an "eye for an eye" literally.

In contemporary Christianity, pacifism and "turning the other cheek, " are counseled and therefore many Christians believe that intentional killing is still killing regardless of the circumstances and thus capital punishment is strongly opposed.

Much the same can be said for Judaism, violence against human beings is abhorred.

Islam differs however, where according to both the historical as well as contemporary interpretations, in some cases it is literally and eye for an eye, Note the barbaric sentences still being meted out in Saudi Arabia where every Friday those deemed guilty of violating the Shari'a have a rendezvous with Islamic justice which is delivered at the edge of a blade.

We have and continue to reject the contention that all three are related under the umbrella of being "Abrahamic faiths." That claim is made one two counts. One, the Muslim claim that Islam in essence sprang from the loins of Abraham's son Ishmael is utterly absurd and two, neither Judaism nor Christianity in scripture or tradition support the use of religious warfare simply to extend the reach of those respective faiths, while the Qur'an is replete with exhortations to religious violence.and sadistic torture of infidels.

Even the Jesuits had no theological basis for proceeding with their mad project [the Inquisition].The actions of these men were evil, period.

Additionally, the twin forces of the Reformation and Enlightenment, broke the back of whatever theocratic notions remained, leaving Europe and America secularized.

Islam has three major components, the Qur'an [believed to be the revealed word of Allah], the Hadith [the way of the prophet] and the surrounding case law/ juristic rulings/fatwas interpreting and defining the Shari'a.

Taken as a whole, the evidence now is clearly to the contrary that despite [imam?] George W. Bush's pronouncement that Islam as a "religion of peace," looks more foolish and dangerous in hindsight than it did at the time he made the statement. Yes, W was and remains an honorable man, but his good nature was repeatedly taken advantage of by those who still mean us great harm. Despite its obvious religious aspects [some of which are lifted directly from both Jewish and Christian theology and tradition] Islam is functionally a warlike ideology of domination and triumphalist in nature.

If Islam is in practice an ideology - sharing kinship with Soviet communism, Fascism and other totalitarian variants – then it hardly should be afforded the kid glove treatment that it currently receives in the West.

It's undeniable that jihad has been near the core of Islam since its founding and was officially locked into its jurisprudence since at least the tenth century. As commonly understood by most Muslims, jihad is simply fighting in the way of Allah to extend the reach of Islam - warfare justified by "religious" dogma. This is of course the jihad with which we are all unfortunately familiar with and which continues today.

Consider the historical record regarding what changes take place under an Islamic system.

The ancient Egyptian and Babylonian cultures [circa 3,000 BC] were highly advanced. From those pre-Islamic cultures, we got the scientific and mathematical basis of our society, the idea of a written language and many of the aspects of what is today seen as high culture. This while Europe was largely Neolithic. Egypt and Babylon were the centers of learning, experimentation and the like. However this advanced cultural direction became increasingly stultified upon the advance of Islam, which swept before it Christian Northern Africa, up the Iberian Peninsula and to the center of Europe, Spain [Andalusia to the jihadist] was occupied by the Islamic Moors for nearly a thousand years. To the East much the same occurred. Though still open to contention, it's clear that the great Library of Alexandria was most likely burned as result of the great Muslim conquest of North Africa. Some try to blame library burning on the "teachings" of "Pope" Theophilus of Antioch. However Theophilus was merely a bishop in the Coptic Christian church and claiming that he was the Catholic Pope is without substance. Thus it appears that since its very early history Islam has been not only warlike but also anti-intellectual, despite claims by modern Muslim apologists to the contrary.

Islam must additionally deal with another blight - slavery. – though far more prevalent during its earlier period, it remains an issue of concern with 300,000 Saudi Arabian slaves counted as recently as 1962. Though these slaves were, de jure, manumitted at about the same time. [source, John Laffin, Case studies on human rights and fundamental freedoms: a world survey". Willem Adriaan Veenhoven, Winifred Crum Ewing, Stichting Plurale Samenlevingen (1976). p.452. ISBN 90-247-1779-5] the practice of Saudis keeping low wage foreign workers as slaves endures today.

Defining the slave in terms of being sub-human is indispensible because if he is not Muslim such behavior is justifiable, non Muslims always being second class citizens at best. Normative Islam divides the world into two parts, Dar al Islam [the House of Islam] and Dar al Harb [the House of War]. Thus you were either Muslim or a perceived threat and therefore an enemy. There appears to be little in the way of middle ground here.

Undoubtedly early Islam proved to be an irresistible force, however one borne on the wings as persuasively argued by Dr. Pipes [who has generously offered this work in a downloadable .pdf format here, Slave Soldiers and Islam] of slave soldiers and a cadre of slave administrators and public servants. Without this slave led onslaught, Pipes suggests that Islam might not have survived. Though under the Islamic system, slaves could and did distinguish themselves and rise to high power, sometimes just below the Caliph himself. [differing markedly from the Western slave holding experience, which simply treated these unfortunate human beings as chattel] this shouldn't be understood as a justification. These people were still slaves often forcibly taken from their families [especially in what is now Eastern Europe] at a very young age whereupon they were winnowed into the structure of Islamic culture. The brightest and bravest having the capability of advancement, with the proviso that many of these people were pressed into military service to expand the Islamic dominion.

According to the historical record many of the African slaves were sent to their fate by Muslim slave traders [as depicted in the lead image] often using captives supplied to them as a result of African inter-tribal warfare. It is also undeniable that as Islamic domination congealed, the spirit of inquiry - scientific advancement - strangled to the point where today it's of little consequence. By way of example one need only compare the huge imbalance of patents issued to the West as contrasted against the paucity of such coming from the Muslim world where the Qur'an is all that matters.

Thus the West progressed and prospered while Islamic culture became frozen in time. Art, music, the sciences are all tertiary to the ideological imperative - expanding the reach of Allah.

In this sense Islam is an ideology operating under the guise of religion.

Indeed, Islam can be and is observed in a secular manner by millions of devout Muslims. The kicker here, and it's an important one, is that this is really possible on a large scale ONLY in the liberal West. Secularity is indeed the rule...but it only can take place within a secular non-Islamic culture.

Try to bring a Bible into Saudi Arabia if you doubt this.

The manhandling of Western Muslim reformers is unfortunate in the extreme because it is only these reasoned voices that can authentically speak to the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the world outside the West.

As codified by 10th century Islamic law, Islam is operatively an ideology, corrosive, warlike and incompatible with our version of a modern world. It differs not at all from Fascism and other totalitarian forms of political organization. As so defined, it's impossible to afford an ideology the protection of the First Amendment,

Domestically the jihadists have been elevated by the MSM to the status of official spokesmen for the Muslim world. The jihadists to which we refer include the largest Muslim political organization which represent the American wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Examples would be, the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR] and the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] etc. We can reliably make this claim since it reflects the judicial rulings in and around the U.S. vs. Holy Land Foundation prosecution, which proved that the phony Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundtion for Relief and Development channeled at least $12 million dollars to the terrorist group HAMAS.

These and similar groups are national security risks - the tip of the jihadist spear in North America. We daily bear witness to the result of Muslim Brotherhood "democracy," one person, one vote, one time

So we come full circle…is the problem Islam itself or is it anomalous? Is Islam fatally and internally defective as to render it irreconcilable with our republican democracy?

Perhaps Steven Emerson [The Investigative Project on Terrorism] stated it best in a recent interview on KSFO radio, where he drew attention to a recently issued statement from the terrorist group, Ansar-al-Shari'a in which it was declared that, "change comes by the bullet alone, not the ballot."

To the extent such an interpretation is practiced, Islam is indeed fatally flawed, and that interpretation is now dominant.

At this point it becomes dangerous to dismiss the mass of evidence which indicates that the soul of Islam might well be corrupted beyond redemption. While Catholics no longer burn heretics, the same cannot be said for an alarming proportion of the Islamic world where such brutality is the norm and backed up by a long historical record, endorsed by all 5 [Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, Hanbali and Zahiri] of Islam's major schools of jurisprudence.

To the West one question remains elemental - will the devout Muslim secularists triumph in their attempt to formulate grand Islamic Reformation? It seems unlikely, though of course we remain hopeful.

According to Islamic jurisprudence, "the gates of ijtihad are closed." The great Islamic scholar, al-Bukhari, upon close examination determined [circa 850] that even at that early point in the intellectual development of Islam, the process of ijtihad had already been abusive, excessive and produced inauthentic rulings. Hence from that point onward Islam was locked into an ideology of jihadistic expansionism.

If these gates of change remain closed, then normative or extant Islam can't be afforded protection under Western law. Whatever happens, the process of redefinition must forever remain out of the West's hands. If the reformers - who are suppressed by the Obama administration - do not triumph, then Islam remains irrevocably linked with jihad.

In closing, much hangs in the balance.

It's beyond argument that the warriors – the mujahideen – who fly upon this expansionist ideology are in no way apologetic, they defiantly quote the Qur'an in support of their barbarism. They can do this in authentic manner because their sacred book is replete with such references.

To reiterate, any thought of granting the ideological aspects of Islam which have now risen to the fore, the protection of our foundational document, courts cultural suicide.

© 2013 PipeLineNews.org LLC. All rights reserved. Beila Rabinowitz contributed to this piece.

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