Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Islam: What We Are Really Up Against
The following letter, written in Hebrew, has been widely disseminated through social media in Israel. I have taken the liberty of translating it below.
Shalom,
My name is Professor Aryeh Eldad.
Years ago, I established a skin bank (for burn victims) in Israel that is the largest of its kind in the world. The skin bank is set up in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem where I am head of the plastic surgery department.
The skin bank is in constant use, but even more so in times of war.
Once, I was asked to provide skin for a Moslem woman from Gaza who was hospitalized in critical condition in Soroka Hospital in Beersheba (in southern Israel) after family members had set her on fire.
Such horrors are common among Moslem families when they suspect a woman of an improper romantic relationship.
We supplied all the skin cells needed for her treatment. She was treated successfully by my colleague, Professor Lior Rosenberg, and released to her home in Gaza.
For follow-up treatment, she made regular visits to the hospital’s outpatient clinic.
One day, while crossing the border from Gaza into Israel, she was caught wearing an explosive belt.
Her mission was to blow herself up in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where her life had been saved.
Upon interviewing the woman, it was revealed that her family had promised her that she would be forgiven if she succeeded in this mission.
This is only one example of what’s really at stake in the war between Moslems and Jews in the Land of Israel.
This is not a territorial dispute.
This is a confrontation between cultures or, more precisely, a war between civilization and barbarity.
I have never written a letter before requesting that it be copied and forwarded.
But this time I am asking that you pass this letter along — to everyone you know — in order that the world should understand what radical Islam is all about and, should it not be stopped, what awaits us all.
Thank you for listening,
Professor Aryeh Eldad, Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem
Note: My only reservation about this letter is the use of “radical Islam” — which I see as a nod to the PC tyrants — instead of just plain “Islam.” As Robert Spencer has demonstrated time and again, there is ultimately no difference between the two.
Published in General
This idea that you can’t translate Arabic is bogus. There are translations of diplomatic and legal documents every day. This notion that of not translating the Koran is a question of sin. It is sinful for Muslims to translate or read translations of the Koran.
Oh, I agree. But that’s what they’ll tell you: any translation of the Koran and the Hadith is invalid.
Let me add to that. The reason is that the Koran was not written by Mohammed but were the transcribed words of allah to him. They are holy words and can’t be altered. This is also why most moderate Muslims don’t have a full understanding of what is written. Most Muslims don’t come from Arabic speaking countries, so it’s in a foreign language to them. Sometimes the only criteria for being an Imam is that you have some reading ability in Arabic.
Isn’t part of the problem also that many of those who follow or seek to follow Islam, are illiterate and cannot read their holy books themselves. So they rely on others – often radical imams – to tell them what their own religion teaches.
Didn’t Golda Meir also (supposedly) say (something like) “We can forgive you for killing our children. We cannot forgive you for making us kill yours.”
If you want to know what a religion means to believers then ask the believers. Muslims tell me there’s nothing in the Quran telling Muslims to kill infidels. The only exception is in self defense. Making war is only permitted in the cause of self defense. They say that Islam was never supposed to be spread by aggression, that when this was done it was not true Islam, and that the result was that the empire so established collapsed. By the same token ISIS was not true Islam, and their efforts came to nothing.
Of course, different Muslims may have different interpretations at different times and depending on circumstances, as is the case with different sects of Christians regarding the Bible. But many if not most Muslims don’t think Allah is telling them to kill all the infidels.
What the radicals are usually doing in a situation like that is creating a situation in which there is no room for neutrals. If they can provoke an unjust, over-reaction on the part of non-Muslims, it might drive the more “normal” Muslims into their camp of violence. It has worked in the past in many religious and non-religious conflicts that have nothing to do with Muslims.
Some Muslims in the US say that the conflicts that Mohammed fought were in self defense and that Allah has forbidden aggression. Islam was never supposed to be spread by aggression, and when this was done, e.g., the Ummayad Dynasty, it was not true Islam and the empire so established collapsed.
How laughable. Look up the slaughter of the Qurayza Jews. Never supposed to be spread by aggression? Ha! I don’t know what it was supposed to do, but it certainly did a fine job of brutal conquest from North Africa across the west to the far reaches of east Asia. Look up how they slaughtered millions of Hindus in their conquest of India.
Roderic,
This is simply not so. The doctrine of Jihad, which is as old as Mohamed’s move from Mecca to Medina, allows conquest of all non-believers in the name of Islam. Conversion by the sword, meaning that conquered people are given the option of converting or being instantly killed, is part of the doctrine. From its very inception, Islam started a military conquest. First, the Arabian peninsula, next across north Africa, then into Spain…etc.
Obviously, many modern followers of Islam aren’t at all interested in the actual doctrine of Jihad. The problem is that there is no large-scale movement within Islam that specifically rejects the doctrine of Jihad. Thus Jihad sits like an unexploded bomb in their society. If things don’t work out the way they hope then some may start proselytizing in the name of Jihad and start sending out armies. ISIS was exactly this.
There is nothing about ISIS that is not the true Islam. Not as long as modern Islam does not specifically reject the doctrine of Jihad.
Regards,
Jim
That’s revisionist nonsense they’d like to believe. Islam has always been a supersessionist religion — the one true faith meant to replace Judaism and Christianity. It’s why it teaches Abraham took Ishmael (not Isaac) to the mountain in obedience to Allah. It’s why they’ve made a theological claim to the Temple Mount long after Mohammed’s passing by fabricating the dream scenario in which a winged horse took him to the “Dome of the Rock” to hear from Allah. They really just wanted a foothold in the Holy Land. Muslim scholars use abrogation to resolve conflicting texts, and always favor the later entries which call for killing infidels.
These may be good people, but they’re not “good” Muslims. They should change faiths, and they might if the penalty for Muslim apostasy wasn’t death.
Did you ask Osama Bin Laden, a pretty learned scholar of Islam, what Islam means? Almost two years ago I posted on an article from Andrew McCarthy on his epiphany on Islam. You should read it.
Well said. ‘Nuff said.
Very powerful McCarthy report that you link. It leaves no doubt about the core beliefs of Islam, which are a mortal threat to all of us.
I can’t remember who summed the situation as “Islam is a psychotic, totalitarian political ideology doing business as (dba) a religion”. But I recall that Bernard Lewis insisted that “radical Muslims” are completely orthodox in their theology, in complete accord with the non-jihadist masses (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Went_Wrong%3F).
Islam also has ontological similarities with that other global, revolutionary scourge, Marxism:
There are more points of similarity here.
We should not rule out mass conversion to Islam in the West. Already, more than 100,000 French have converted to Islam.