There is nothing particularly new in this statement from the jihadist leader Abu Asaid Al-Iraqi: he rejoices and thanks Allah that he has been able to kill many Americans. However, it was sent to me this morning around the same time that I received the latest round of an ongoing exchange I am having with a prominent moderate Muslim -- which should be published in a few days, once I write my response. The contrast couldn't be more striking: the moderate Muslim excoriates me for not sufficiently appreciating the successes of moderate Muslims around the world.
I confess that is true that I am underwhelmed, and this piece is one example of why. Here is a blood-soaked terrorist commander thanking Allah that he has killed many Americans and Iraqis. Clearly he sees these killings as part of his religious duty. So do the people at Jihad Unspun who posted his message. What headway are Muslim moderates around the world making against such people, to convince them to lay down their arms and adopt a different understanding of Islam? Not bloody much. And the reason for that is one that I have repeated for several years now, ever since I first pointed it out in Islam Unveiled, but I have yet to see more than a handful of self-proclaimed moderate Muslims acknowledge: that the passages of the Qur'an and Sunnah enjoining violent jihad are so many and so clear that a Muslim who argues against their clear meaning is easily refuted as a hypocrite or apostate by the jihadists. This is an enormously important point, as it is the linchpin of jihadist recruitment -- but in the American media, even those who don't blame America for today's global jihad refuse to look squarely at it and examine its implications. Thus they cut off at the knees the prospects for Islamic reform that they profess to support. No reform is likely to come at all, but it certainly won't come when no one is willing to admit what exactly needs to be reformed in the first place.
"The Jihad Market Is Open: Al-Qaida’s Commander In Iraq Responds To Zarqawi’s Call," from the jihadist site Jihad Unspun, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
Sheikh Abu Asaid Al-Iraqi, the Commander of the military wing of Al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers has responded to Friday’s statement released by Abu Mesaab Zarqawi, Amir of al-Qaida’s Iraq operations with a tape recorded statement of his own.In it, he addresses the significant number of successful strikes against the Americans and their collaborations over the weekend. This Arabic tape is also available on the sidebar on the JUS front page under “Uncensored News”.
Sheikh Al-Iraqi’s response explains the sharp rise in attacks following Zarqawi’s statement and addresses him as follows:
“My beloved Sheikh and Amir, I have received your message, in which you asked us not to let night fall on us without having our swords dripping from blood of the enemies of Allah. I have already sent out the best lions of your soldiers to pound the castle of the cross worshippers and their collaborators. Alhamdulillah, the catch was great, American casualties were in the tens, apostate Iraqi casualties were even more, by the Grace of Allah.”...
If you can't understand the modern world, and find your place within it, I guess you can revert back a thousand years or so and find your calling with the Jihadist movement.
If you have the stones to drive yourself up to a group of civilians and blow yourself up, the Jihadist movement is looking for impressionable and completely cowardly followers. It cramps my brain when I try to imagine how much logic gets pushed to the side when someone adopts the Jihadist path. As far as a pure Islamic religious vision, I view it as more of a statement against yourself and your own life.
Someone who commits suicide has given up hope on their own life, a suicide bomber is no different. He simply has been encouraged to follow through with it. Convinced with the sales pitch of many virgins in the afterlife and lots of praise from guys who are ready, willing and able to USE them.
Moose
Gina:
That they are prepared to kill themselves in order to kill as many other people as possible has more to do with psychopathy or sociopathy.
And that most of them, if not all of them, believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife puts the lie to any selflessness that might be attributed to such acts as blowing up a car in the midst of a funeral gathering.
OT
Thomas Haidon:
Lately, several people have responded to your posts but it seems as though you don't check back to answer their responses. I picked this thread as one that you would be likely to read.
Please read my responses to your posts on the JW April 26 "Federal Jury Convicts . . . " and the April 29 "What is 'Islamophobia' . . . " threads.
You know what we call visitors who post comments but fail to reply when those comments are challenged, don't you?
CGW
"What they do takes great courage: this gal isn't flying plane into any buildings anytime soon to make a point. I just don't see many Americans or coalition members or people posting on websites
willing to DO what they DO to thet get their job done."
I think the will and the courage is there with Americans or Coalition members, they just don't share the same method. Don't mistake an act of suicide and murder as act of bravery. Do you believe that throwing a grenade into a tent full of your sleeping squad mates and then opening up on them with a machine gun , "takes great courage"?
If an American hijacked a plane full of Saudi's and crashed it into Mecca, would he be considered brave because he would do anything to get the job done?
Moose
It's easy to confuse bravery with stupidity when you have Allah on your side.
Having Allah on your side is dangerous, as we can see. In history, lots of people have commited suicide for some cause. Often the cause is cowardly escape from earthly retribution for some mis-deed. Such as the sicko's in the US who have shot up some eatery and then kill themselves. Or arrested for some horrendous offense and hang themselves in jail. This is not courageous. It is the final escape for the coward...but if you have Allah on your side it's different...YOUR killing is not a mis-deed, YOUR killing is officially approved, and if YOU do a good job of it, YOU get extra rewards...Dont forget that Allah is most merciful, compassionate and oft forgiving...and generous. Which proves that Allah does not cause muslims to act selflessly, but with the most extreem materialism. Powered by the most extreem, egoistic and selfish motivations possible for humans...Mohammad would have been a great used car salesman...
If folks like Zarqawi, Atta, and other mass murdering manmen with eyes colder than the surface of Pluto, are examples of 'Muslim extremists', then shouldn't Muslims who renounce violence and stand against these butchers want to be called 'radical Muslim liberals' or by some other name that signifies the opposite end of the Islamic religious spectrum, whatever that might be?
Isn't the term 'moderate' a bit underdone given the context? If Hitler is an 'extremist', and you are German, wouldn't you want to be an 'extremist' on the other end of the spectrum? If the KKK are 'extremists', and you are a white American, then don't you want to be put into a category that contradicts the 'extremism' of the KKK? In neither case can one embrace the term 'moderate' with a good conscience.
How can so-called a 'moderate Muslims', like Stephen Schwartz and Spencer's interlocutor above, live with that characterization? Doesn't the very idea of the 'moderate Muslim' betray the existence of 'moderation' given the nature of so-called 'Muslim extremism'?
Moderate Islam is an oxymoron, as anyone who has read the Koran in Arabic (which I have, many times more than once) must acknowledge.
Not only the Koran but the history of Islam is replete with countless events and occassions that refute the existence of a "moderate Islam". No major religion has begun it's history by the forceful conversion (or decimation) to Islam as practiced by Muslims from and including Mohammed's time.The only difference I have been able to discern between "radical Muslims" and the so-called "moderate Muslims" is that the latter don't actively participate in the actions of the former, but do support either financially or/and emotionally those actions of the "radicals". Witness the behaviour of some ordinary Muslims after 9/11, with their dancing on the roofs of their homes, distribution of sweets, etc. etc. at the news that thousands of innocent people were murdered.
I have yet to read in the Arab press (or any press for that matter, ) where Muslims in general denounce the suicide bombings including 9/11, by North American and European Muslims who have little to fear from retribution by those extremists.
Let's face it. If the majority of Muslims denounced the abhorent actions of the radicals, and refused to support them financially or in any other manner, those extremists would be out of business in short order.
The Sharia itself is a good example of the impossibilty of a moderate Islam. What warped culture encourages and makes martys of children who have been brain-washed into blowing themselves up?
Our press does not want to call a spade a spade, and I'm more than troubled, by what appears to be in many cases a rationalization based on political considerations also known as 'political correctness.'
I'm down-right scared.
O.T
CGW
I looked at Thomas Haidon’s web site. I noticed that he advocates a two state idea for the Palestinian problem. What an absolute genius Mr Haidon is. To bad Israel requested that in 1948 and was promptly attacked by all surrounding Islamic Countries. From 1948 until 1967 two Islamic Countries, Trans-Jordan and Egypt I think, held the Gaza strip and the West Bank, yet never once offered to create a Palestinian state, nor did any Palestinian even think about requesting one. Why?
Moderate Moslems practice jihad with the pen while extreme Moslems practice jihad of the sword, both have the same goals and work as a team to establish Mohammadanism as the dominant religion. Moderate Mohammadanism has to many excuses for their terrorist brothers. Mr Haidon advocates that America negotiate with terrorist like former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, which does nothing but reward these lawless individuals for their barbaric actions.
Moslems killing Moslems - because that hate non-Moslems. The Relgion of what....?
"...That they are prepared to kill themselves in order to kill as many other people as possible has more to do with psychopathy or sociopathy..."
Posted by: waterdragon52 at May 2, 2005 09:15 AM
Waterdragon, it is unfortunate that psychiatry got rid of the term "sociopath" some years ago, and that the dictionary now equates the two. If I didn't think the old uses of "sociopath" wouldn't be useful to you in thinking about the murderous acts of suicide of Muslims, I wouldn't bother you with it now.
In the good ol' days, the use of the term "psychopath" was limited to those with a diagnosable personality disorder. It was often called an "antisocial personality disorder." They weren't psychotic, but their personality characteristics were clearly outside the range of normal, so much so that they routinely interfered with their ability to function on a day-to-day basis, with their relationships, with their ability to hold a job, etc. It comes as no surprise that they were often in difficulty with the law.
The term "sociopath" usually referred to someone who's loyalty was to a group or a system whose fundamental values did not correspond closely with those of most people in society, particularly in the sense of the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have others do unto you"). In our society, members of the Mafia serve as an example of sociopathy.
Certainly, psychopaths could also be sociopaths; their frequent hostility to the average citizen often made them more comfortable in a sociopathic environment, where murder and mahem were par for the course.
The point is this: The psychopath was a mental disorder; the sociopath was a moral disorder.
Here's how that goes: A moral code is based on values which are chosen to guide our thinking and behavior. No one in the world can tolerate feeling immoral. It is as uncomfortable for people to feel immoral as it is for them to feel nauseated, depressed, or in pain.
Moral codes vary, depending on what values you hold. If "life" is your "standard of the good" then you will regard those thoughts and behaviors that tend to support life as "good."
If it is something other than life, then your moral code will be something else.
If you are a Muslim, for example, you have been taught literally from birth that the most valuable thing in all the world is the establishment of Islam as the world's sole belief system. You can be perfectly sane, but if your moral code tells you that any thought or action which tends to result in the establishment of Islam as the world's sole belief system, and that if you need to kill infidels to do it, then killing infidels is a good thing. Since you want to be good, you kill infidels.
The same thing happened in Germany; there were perfectly sane men and women who had been convinced that killing Jews was a good and moral thing to do, and they believed it. So they killed Jews.
It happened in the Soviet Union, in Communist China, and in various places throughout history and all around the world.
That's why it is absolutely crucial to understand morality. One must be able to derive it; one must to be able to understand and correctly derive the fundamental value which is chosen to be the "standard of the good."
Islam hasn't even come close to correctly deriving the "standard of the good." Its moral code is not valid. It's because of their invalid moral code that Muslims are able to kill people and feel good about it.
They aren't insane, or psychopathic, or sociopathic. Their defect lies in their moral code.
This defective moral code will exist as long as Islam exists.
Oops.
Correction: "...if your moral code tells you that any thought or action which tends to result in the establishment of Islam as the world's sole belief system is good, and that if you need to kill infidels to do it, then killing infidels is a good thing."
Cubed:
Thanks for the discourse on psychiatric thought. You are doubtless aware that there are psychiatrists who don't believe that suicide bombers are suffering from any psychiatric disorders. Yet, so far as I am aware, personality disorders do fall under that rubric. (Of course significant numbers of the psychiatric community have bought into a lot of dangerous, crackpot theories.)
To buy into the utopia described by tolitarians, whether secular or religious, and be prepared to commit murder and mayhem or aid and abet it in any way suggests some kind of deep flaw.
Cubed -- Add to your argument that the extremist strain of Islam believe that the world its inhabitants are flawed and deserving of destruction. Thus the killing of millions or even billions will only rid and cleanse the world of those that are unworthy polluters, making the world good in the eyes of Allah. For some the end of the world is even an acceptable consequence to achieve this goal.