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Why Islam Is a Religion of Peace
In case you missed it, there’s a passage in Abu Bakr Naji’s The Management of Savagery (I posted about here) that goes:
One who previously engaged in jihad knows that it is naught but violence, crudeness, terrorism, frightening [others] and massacring—I am talking about jihad and fighting, not about Islam and one should not confuse them.
I added italics, because that caveat is the key to understanding a lot of what is going on. Bloody jihad is “outside Islam”. Muslims may go and do it, but it is not a part of their faith. They do it despite their faith you see, in order to support their faith, but it’s not within their faith.
Well-known is the idea of taqiya, or the virtue of lying to non-Muslims for the right reasons. This is broken down into “prudential taqiyya,” which is hiding one’s faith or actions such as pretending to convert to (say) Catholicism when in fear for one’s life, as well as “non-prudential taqiyya,” described as protecting deep mysteries of the faith and so forth from non-Muslims.
I’m willing to bet that taqiya underpins the double-talk distinction between jihad and Islam. I mean, it’s obvious once you see it.
It’s similar to the notion of legalistic answers to questions vs. just plain answers. If a crime has been expunged from your record, you are not required to answer “yes” if asked if you have ever been convicted of a crime. See, there’s the actual answer, and then the legal answer.
Moving right past Clintonian whoppers and Obama formulations, there’s another application here, which I suspect, and that is the U.S. Intelligence community. They have clearances so high and so important and in such secrecy that I bet they have internal legal dispensation to answer questions from Congress, from courts, from others in the Executive whom you would think have the right to a straight answer — with stone-faced lies. Vindman O-HO SAY CAN YOU SEE gave the game up when he said, proudly, that his ultimate duty was to the, uh, Interagency Community or something like that. Big Intel. It’s all so much taqiya, for the jihad, for the submission to the state. USlamic G’had.
I see you!
So keep the taqiya-jihad linkage in mind, and how it ostensibly separates the faith from the atrocities which merely support the faith, and check out @Grannydude’s short post introducing the chilling, banal captured jihadi responses to questioning about the attacks on 10/7.
Published in General
I think it helps if you think it means “submission” not “peace.”
Does anyone think Christians or Jews could get away with a whopper like this over evil actions with out their faith being run out of dodge ?
I didn’t think so either.
A friend of a friend is a formerly Muslim Arab who, before accepting Christ, was a self-described terrorist, though he had not yet been called upon to commit savagery.
He is now preaching Christ to other Arab Muslims, and has brought thousands of them to Christ, by preaching in Syria and perhaps elsewhere. He is a true Christian: he has has not rejected the Great Commission, to go out into the world and spread the good news of salvation through God’s grace.
The friend who told me about this man is ministering to Arabic-speaking Muslims in America, spreading the Gospel to them through regular Bible studies. They are longing to hear. Every human heart desires the Gospel truth.
The prayer of everyone who has accepted God’s gift of salvation from sin through Christ, for every Arab Muslim terrorist, should be this, that he also will be saved from sin.
If God has planned for any Ricochet Christian to have an unexpected opportunity to bring one of them to Christ, let’s pray that His Spirit which lives in every Christian will give us the courage that this man (George’s friend) has, and that that Spirit will speak the Word through us.
The subject/concept of Taqiya is interesting. In Islam, one is permitted/encouraged to lie about themselves and their religion in order to further the aims of said religion. In Christianity, martyrs die rather than lie or obfuscate about their religion. Jews simply want to be left alone to practice their religion.
Yes. Because that is indeed what the word means.
It is very important to understand Islamic Vocabulary.
Hear, hear! Exactly.
There are so many immoral aspects to Islam that I have stated that Satan speaks right out of the Koran.
Remember when, before and after 9/11, Muslim propagandists and Western Quislings told us that “jihad” did not mean war but was chiefly about “internal struggle” towards virtue or something like that? Even though “jihad” only means war and violence when it appears in the Koran and Hadith.
I suppose that the word, like many in English is “overloaded” (in the computer programming sense) with multiple meanings. This makes it easy to lie while telling the truth.
I believe that we the enemies of radical Islamists would do well to speak precisely when teaching each other what these radicals are really doing when they do taqiya, so that we don’t assist them in confusing ourselves by adding unintentional double-talk on top of their own deliberate semantic confusion.
No one can lie while telling the truth. Taqiya is lying while lying.
Please work to understand English as it is used, not as you wish it were.
Thanks for the advice.
But…no work needed. I already understand perfectly (surprisingly to you, it seems! ;-) that English is not always used precisely, and I recognize that you were using it imprecisely for ironic effect in this case, believing that your true meaning would be clear to most if not all of us readers.
I also already know that you are right about that: many if not all Ricochet readers will recognize that that’s what you did here, if they take the time to think about it.
I only mention the obvious truth above in this special case as a reminder to all that when we are dealing with people who deliberately use language to deceive, we would do well to respond by speaking clearly.
I used a rhetorical device and you understood it perfectly, but have chosen to police language. Again.
I’ve written this on Ricochet over the years, so I’m repeating myself. Moderate Muslims claim that Jihad in their scriptures (Koran, Hadith) is a metaphor for striving. Literalists take it it to mean exactly what the words say. The problem is that Mohammed, who Muslims are supposed to imitate, was an actual warlord. He actually killed, had people killed, beheaded and actually had people beheaded. When the central person in your religious texts brutally killed people, it’s hard to believe that the calls to terrorize and kill as the word of Allah are a metaphor. They are not. Moderates would like to change the original meaning, or claim the original meaning no longer applies, but clearly worldwide Muslims do not buy into that.
In Christianity, Jesus is essentially a pacifist. Some denominations take it as total pacifism (Quakers I think) while most would qualify it to being appropriate for self defense and for appropriate levels of justice. Nonetheless, Jesus never killed anyone nor commanded anyone be killed. He died without resistance, even though it was unjust execution. While Christians are not always very good at it, their call per the example of Jesus is to not kill or do violence.
It comes down to this: Jesus died to start Christianity; Mohammed killed to start Islam. The difference is stark and has had implications through the centuries even to our current times.
Yes, that’s just what I am saying.
I am just reminding people not to forget the truth, when reading ironic comments. The Islamists use semantic confusion to lie. When addressing them, we should always be untangling the lies with clear language.
If you feel that my reminding people of that is excessive caution in this case, it would be appropriate simply say so, rather than use snide insulting language.
In response to your #16, I refer you back to your #13, excerpted here:
The underlined portion is demonstrably not true, or we would not be having this conversation — again.
It is not my intention to be snide and insulting, although I may have been so. That seems to be the threshold for comments which actually get through, as previous iterations of this conversation seem to demonstrate to me. I am trying to phrase this delicately.
It’s not lying if the people you’re lying to aren’t really people.
Yes, there are lies of commission and of omission, but beyond that there is deflection, distraction, half-truths, manipulations — pretty much everything and more of what wikipedia calls informal fallacies on its List of Fallacies, if done deliberately is lies. There are something like 48 of them.
You had me right up to the end. Jesus gave His life for others. Muhammed killed to start islam.
How is that different from “Jesus died to start Christianity?”
I’m with KE on this. That’s just alternative semantics. But ok. Maybe your version is a shade more complete.
He didn’t start Christianity. “Christian” is a term started by those deriding Jews and gentiles who believed the Christ who is the fulfillment of Judaism. It was not a new religion.
He established the New Covenant (Lk 22:20, Heb 8:6-13). That’s language of a new religion, though granted an outgrowth religion to Judaism. I know some Christians consider Christianity another form of Judaism. I know no Jews who think that. I think Christianity abolishing the Jewish rituals becomes a new religion.
Oh and here’s another quote which I should have thought of first:
”And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”. (Mt 16:18)
His language says He’s building something new and it’s “My” thing that is new. Not any rabbi’s.
No, Christians are grafted into the cultivated olive tree (Jews and Judaism) of which Christ is the Root.
“17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree;
18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bears not the root, but the root thee.
19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in.
20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou stands by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:
21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.“
There’s more to it than the parts I bolded, but they do not exalt the gentile believers (of which Paul boasts he is one). But it’s all about Jesus, the Jews, and the Gentiles. All who are saved are saved according to the covenant God made to Abraham.
I’m certainly not going to argue.
Changing gears — here’s a genuine glimmer of sunshine:
I’ll follow by posting the text over a few comments — it’s long. The next comments are the text from this tweet.
1/2
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour @HusseinAboubak
Some time ago, I wrote that one day, I was going to share some of my criticisms of Israel and the Zionist communities. And I guess today is as good as any.
It is almost undeniable that Israel and its supporters became comfortable subduing and dominating the Palestinians and maintaining a low-intensity conflict rather than attempting to solve the conflict. On this point, Israel’s critics are correct, and the Israeli society and state did incorporate into themselves the principle of open-ended military control, regulated violence, and coercion of the Palestinians as the only alternative to peace. The disagreement then lies in the ascription of motives: Israel’s critics insist that Israelis do so as a matter of preference and will. That is, Israel is a racist state and society that wants to oppress and dominate the Palestinians and keep their land. Here, the entire situation becomes very relevant to the theoretical leftist models of Saidiain Orientalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, etc. On the other hand, Israelis insist that this is not what they want, but it is a difficult choice forced on them by the corrupt, murderous Palestinian leadership, strong hatred, antisemitism, social unrest, and, quite literally, an undying popular culture of terrorism indoctrinating every Palestinian since their childhood in textbooks, poetry, religion, arts, etc. Thus, the Israeli elaborate system of social control and military coercion is a tragic necessity for the physical security and the survival of Jewish citizens of Israel and not a preference.
The battle then between the Palestinians and the Israelis happened entirely inside the ideological sphere of the left, that is, most of both sides have invested their moral legitimacy in the left and are contesting the axiological identity of their efforts vis-à-vis the left’s political categories: who represents real justice? Who is the real racist? Who is the oppressive? Who is the indigenous? Which violence is terrorism, and which is decolonization? etc.
I’m not going to comment on the inter-ideological Palestinian-Israeli conflict within the left, for as far as I’m concerned, I hope the ship of the left sinks to the bottom of the ocean with all its passengers. I will, however, comment on the first question of reality and motive.
While the reality of Israeli subjugation and domination of the Palestinians is unquestionable, when it comes to motive, I wholeheartedly agree with Israel. Israelis, in general, did not choose this, do not want this and hate the situation which was forced on them by the Palestinians. Most Palestinians do not want peace, at least in the way Israelis understand it in terms of letting them keep their heads above their necks.
[continues]
2/2
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour @HusseinAboubak
[… continued]
Most Palestinians do not and will not, as a matter of guide, accept the existence of Israel on any part of what they believe to be historical Wakanda and prefer continuous armed struggle rather than mutual recognition. On top of this, the historically corrupt, criminal, and irresponsible behavior of Palestinian leadership, which repeatedly prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state and preferred supporting terrorism, doesn’t provide any political opportunities for the possibility of peace. These conditions have created a toxic popular Palestinian national culture that is militant and antisemitic and glorifies terrorism with constant outbursts of murderous violence by both Palestinian militants and civilians against Israeli civilians, women and children included.
This very difficult reality seems to many people unsolvable, and thus, Israelis as a state and society structured themselves in a way that allows it to continue their lives (Yes, no one will or should wait for Wakabda to acquire a brain) with minimal disruption and maximum security: occupation. With time and with worsening and deteriorating Palestinian conditions slipping deeper and deeper into insanity along with the wider Arab and Muslim world, the occupation grew into an elaborate and sophisticated administrative and military system of social control with the objectives of securing the lives of Israelis, preventing disruption of Israeli lives, and allowing the Palestinians to go on with their lives as normal as possible as long as it doesn’t interfere with the first two objectives. The core of this system is the interdependence of the three objectives in a way that creates a system for rewards and punishments for the Palestinians; the less secure Israelis are, the harder the lives of Palestinians will be. It is important to mention that the PA, starting from the Second Intifada, decided to coopt and turn the system around as a reward and punishment for Israelis; the longer we don’t have a normal state (As the corrupt PA understand that), the less secure Israeli lives will be. The PA foolishly didn’t understand that it wasn’t really pushing against a system but digging it in. That is, Palestinian violence only enforced the premise of the system.
For Hamas in Gaza, the rise of the genocidal terrorist organization led to the Israeli policy of blockade, which was, for the Israelis, the only response to the ultimate threat. And none of this starts even to capture the larger regional and international dynamics and power struggles (Arabism, Cold War, Islamism, Iran, etc.) to which the conflict is central.
So far, none of this is controversial. Where is the criticism?