(Reader FYI...What I have written here is a compilation of my own thoughts as well as extractions from numerous reference materials and sources. I do not claim sole credit for all of its content. Please note if you read something familiar here, it is not my intention to plagiarize others research, but to simply compile the things I researched out into a short essay.)
Has Islam been perverted? I heard a TV pundit state recently that, "we need to find out when and where this religion got perverted." Yes, indeed. Let's try and figure out when it was hijacked! Has Islam been hijacked? This is the newest mantra that is being repeated ad nausea by many in the media and by the political elite. Personally I am thoroughly sick and tired of hearing this nonsense! Islam has not been hijacked! It simply hasn't been lived out by westernized and cultural secular moderates. Should we make a distinction between Islam and radical Islam? No. There is no such thing as radical Islam. It's just Islam. 'Moderate' cultural Muslims may indeed be benign, but Islam itself is malignant. But isn't Islam fundamentally a 'religion of peace' as we are constantly being assured of? No. It is not. And it never has been. If Islam has been "hijacked", can someone tell me exactly when did this hijacking occur? Since its inception it has been propagated through the use of the sword. Muhammad did not teach “peace and tolerance.” Muhammad was a warlord who led armies, who propagated his religion by the sword, and ordered the executions of his enemies. Leftist, politically correct propaganda notwithstanding, Islam is, and always has been propagated and furthered by the sword. And all that the Islamapologist's really need to do is read history, as well as authorized Islamic sources in order to ascertain the facts. But the facts really don't matter to the leftist progressives or to the politically correct moral cowards! While we witness almost every day the terrorism and the atrocities that these Islamic jihadists engage in, the Islamapologist's are quick to assert that these deeds are merely an aberration, not consistent with traditional Islam. Or, worse yet, they try to affix the blame for them on America and say that it was the American policies that created them. That assertion is pure unmitigated rubbish. American policies did not create Islamic jihad. Muhammad did. Was America around in the 7th century when Mohammed and his band of merry men beheaded 600 Jews in Medina? Was America in existence when within the first 100 hundred years of the founding of Islam the Muslims had conquered almost two-thirds of the Christian mid-east and captured Jerusalem? So tell me again, please, when exactly was Islam hijacked?
Gregory Palamas was a Greek monk and theologian who lived in the 14th century and was imprisoned for a time by the Turks, he testified regarding the Muslims stating, “These infamous people...boast of having got the better of the Romans [i.e., Byzantines] by their love of God…They live by the bow, the sword, and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil…and not only do they commit these crimes, but even—what an aberration—they believe that God approves of them.” So I'll ask again, exactly when was Islam hijacked?
In 1786, Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain. They asked this ‘diplomat’ by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved her citizens and why the Muslims held such hostility toward this new nation, with which neither Tripoli nor any of the other Barbary Coast nations had any previous contact. The answer was quite revealing. Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja (the ambassador) replied that Islam: (the ambassador) replied that Islam: “Was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” So I'll ask again, exactly when was Islam hijacked?
When asked why President Obama and his team refuse to use the term "radical Islam," Denis McDonough, President Obama's chief of staff said no one is denying that the terrorists are Muslim. However, McDonough went on to say, "These are Muslims who claim that their warped view of their ideology is what informed their actions, their hateful ideology in this instance. What we simply do not believe...is that they should somehow be seen as representatives of Islam. They are not. It's one of the world's great religions. It's -- the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not abide by this hateful ideology so we just thought not give them any kind of belief that somehow they deserve that title." However, let me repeat myself, 'Moderate' Muslims may be benign, but Islam itself is malignant! McDonough, along with the rest of the politically correct Islamapologist's could not be more wrong. They are either willfully ignorant, duplicitous, or some measure of the two. The simple fact is that these Islamist's are acting in complete accordance with the clear and unequivocal doctrines of Islam. They are not the extreme, in terms of historical Islam. The Islamist s are simply carrying out its tenets. Those secular and 'moderate' Muslims are only so to the extent that they don't follow the tenets of Islam. Anyone who seriously follows Islam has to have not only, the Koran, the Hadith and the Sirah (the authoritative life of Muhammad) -- but also a copy of the Umdat al-Salik (The "Reliance of the Traveller"). The Umdat al-Salik is the reference guide to what is and what is not part of Sharia -- the Sharia that the good secular Moderate Muslims are so keen to avoid. So, in short, the so called "radical extremists" are radical only to the extent that classic, doctrinal, standard, by-the-book Islam is radical.
The undeniable fact of the matter is the jihadists are following the statutes and the precepts of classical Islam to the core! While all those secular and tolerant and peaceful Muslims, are not 'good' Muslims to the extent that they don't follow the precepts of clear Islamic doctrine. The simple truth is, moderate Muslims simply don't practice Islam fully. (Which in any case, is a good thing!) We hear the "moderate" Muslims say that the extremists do not represent Islam. Then we hear the "extremists" say that the "moderate" Muslims do not represent Islam. Who is more correct? Well, find which one more closely adheres to the Quran, the Haditha, and the Um Al-salik and you will find your answer. And a close examination of those books and writings will clearly show that the "extremists" are the true adherents of their religion and their so called holy books. Cultural Muslims are no more representative of their religion then are culturally nominal Christians who don't believe or practice the New Testament, and only attend church once or twice a year, or secular Jews who don't practice the Torah. Rehashing over and over again that, 'not all Muslims are terrorists", doesn't address the issue of what Islam is. Not all Jews eat kosher. Does that have any bearing on what Judaism is? My point is, that it is meaningless to point to a cultural, secularized version of any religion and make that the representative definition of its actual doctrines and teachings. The so called "main-stream" Muslim, is regarded as an apostate by those Muslims who are walking in the way of the prophet of Allah! And much like you have secular Jews, and nominal Christians who don't believe or actually even know what the bible says, even so, the 'main stream', 'peaceful', Muslims in many cases don't know too much about what their so called holy books say either!
Islamic scholar Robert Spencer in his book, 'The politically incorrect guide to Islam', makes this interesting observation, "....a surprisingly large number of those who identify themselves as Muslims have scant acquaintance with what it (the Quran) actually says. Although the media establishment continues to interchange the words “Muslim” and “Arab,” most Muslims worldwide today are not Arabs. Even modern Arabic, much less classical Qur’anic Arabic, is foreign to them. They often memorize the Qur’an by rote without any clear idea of what it actually says. A Pakistani Muslim once proudly told me that he had memorized large sections of the Qur’an, and planned to buy a translation one day so that he could find out exactly what it was saying."
I can relate to that having come from a catholic background, when I was a young boy, Catholic masses were still in Latin, my older catholic relatives said prayers and recited things in Latin by rote, having no idea at all what they were actually saying!
Islam means submission. Submit or die. Criticize and die. Slander the prophet (real or perceived) and die. The difference between 'moderate' Muslim's and Islamist's? The methods may be different but the goals are the same. So as the media-ites, keep banging the drum of, Islam has been hijacked! I keep trying to figure out exactly when that happened. It's intellectual dishonesty at worse, and historical ignorance at best! "There are over a hundred verses in the Qur’an that exhort believers to wage jihad against unbelievers. “O Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (Qur’an 9:73). “Strive hard” in Arabic is jahidi, a verbal form of the noun jihad. This striving was to be on the battlefield: “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly” (Qur’an 47:4). This is emphasized repeatedly: “O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him” (Qur’an 9:123). This warfare was to be directed against both those who rejected Islam and those who professed to be Muslims but did not hold to the fullness of the faith: “Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate” (Qur’an 9:73). This warfare was only part of the larger spiritual conflict between Allah and Satan: “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil: so fight ye against the friends of Satan” (Qur’an 4:76)." (Robert Spencer; The politically incorrect guide to Islam) So, can someone tell me? Exactly, when did this hijacking occur?
I find this following excerpt from an article entitled, "What ISIS really wants" written by Graeme Wood, to be truly enlightening! Wood writes, "Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.” Every academic I asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent me to Haykel. Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States, and when he talks through his Mephistophelian goatee, there is a hint of an unplaceable foreign accent. According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”
All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.” (Graeme Wood - What ISIS really wants)
There are those who are saying that Islam needs a reformation. That it needs to self correct as Christianity did. But here's the problem with that pixie dust and rainbow optimism; Christianity was able to self correct because Jesus's teaching was clear. And once the word of God became more and more available amongst the masses, the more true reformation and self correction came, because the root of Christianity is holy and good. The exact opposite will be found to be true however regarding Islam. Islam can't self correct, because jihad is intrinsic to the sacred Muslim texts and the Islamists are in fact following their teachings and doctrines as taught in the Quran, the Haditha, and the Um Al salik. So those who are hoping that Islam will self correct are clearly misguided and hopelessly wrong because the problem is Islam itself.
However!! For the sake of clarity! Let me be clear! There is a way for individual Moslem's to self correct, and that would be to accept the salvation that is offered to them (and to all) in the gospel of Jesus Christ! I have often said, Muslim people aren't the problem, Jesus died for the sins of the world! But Islam is a major problem. The logical fruit of an adherence to the Quran produces the islamo-fascism that these groups espouse. If the moderate peaceful Muslims would only have their eyes opened to the truth that is in Jesus Christ and His gospel, then truly the Muslim world would have a reformation of its own!
I pray the eyes of their understanding would be opened by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit! Maybe that's when it will finally be hijacked?
Here is the link to Graeme Woods article "what ISIS really wants" - I highly recommend reading this article, it is a bit lengthy but worth the education!
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