Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers some ways and means to counter the ongoing problem of jihad recruitment in American prisons:
Members of various Da'wa groups and individuals are busily promoting Islam with what is, of course, a captive population. Already nicely identified by their condition as economically and socially marginal, with an axe to grind (and sometimes with justification), these prisoners are Jihad-fodder. They can be offered spiritual guidance by smiling and plausible souls, who tell them such things, palpably untrue, as that Islam is devoid of racism. But in fact Islam is the most racist of all belief-systems, for it requires complete identification with, and mimicking of, the mores and manners of a particular people: the Arabs, who are "the best of people." Islam even goes so far as to insist that the Qur'an must be read in Arabic (a rule that seems in recent years to have been honored in the breach) and that converts take on new, Arabic names and slough off their pre-Islamic identities, histories, and interests. There has never been an imperialism, a cultural and linguistic imperialism, so successful.That is what Islam is really like. It asks the new convert to strip himself of his identity. It asks him to take a new name. It asks him to give up art -- no sculpture, and no paintings of people or other living things. It asks him to give up music -- no gospel music, no jazz, no nothing. In some Arab countries, this ban is violated -- but the ban is part of Islam, and that should be clear (one has only to consult al-Qaradawi). How many people will be willing to trade in, for example, their music for -- silence? "There is no place for humor in Islam," wrote Ayatollah Khomeini. How right he was. There isn't -- just look not at the hysterical faces of those frenzied mobs in Rawalpindi or Gaza, but simply at the dour hijabbed faces you can see in photographs -- with those Muhammad Atta deadfish eyes. Surely that is worth pointing out. There is hardly any science in Islam and there has not been for a thousand years, that is, not since the gates of ijtihad were closed (for the best "Islamic" scientists, such as ar-Rhazi, were in fact freethinkers and skeptics, and always in danger of being punished, even executed). Science has been thin on the ground in Islam since the pre-existing populations of Christians and Jews, who were the translators of those works of Greek science that quite a few, including converts and those born into Islam give such exaggerated signficance to, were after a few centuries reduced by conversion and dhimmitude to irrelevance. Any histories of science written today devote, on average, 1% of their text (I have checked) to the so-called "enormous discoveries" that Muslims routinely like to cite, and lazy non-Muslims often accept or parrot, because they figure that it is just too time-consuming to go and look up the real significance of "Islamic science." For more on this, one could consult the book by Rodney Stark on why modern science developed in Christian Europe, and not under Islam, nor in China. And for still more, one can find online exchanges on the reasons for the decline of science in Islamic societies between the sober historian of science Toby Huff, and the hysterical George Saliba, eager to protect Islam at all costs. His defensiveness grows ever more shrill and absurd as he attempts to impugn Huff's motives for even considering what is, after all, a major question: why, after a few centuries, did science under Islam (not "islamic science") disappear, save for a handful of astronomers who did not, pace Saliba, anticipate Copernicus. Here again, the confusion of history with self-esteem studies, which so many Muslim and Arab professors seem to make, is quite extraordinary.
No science, no art, no music, no humor. A vehicle for Arab linguistic and cultural imperialism. A long record of enslaving blacks, in the cruelest and most damaging of all the slave trades anywhere in the world.But there are ways to deal with this. It should not be beyond the wit of those who regard the spread of Islam as a mortal threat to our Infidel society, and to ourselves, to figure out how best to appeal, and with what spokesmen, to those who might be attracted not to Islam, but to the highly selective version of Islam, with all the unpleasant or troubling parts left out -- as so many of the contributors to Ibn Warraq's Leaving Islam have noted, and as the Infidel women who have been left high and dry by the Muslim men they married, once they discovered what Islam was really all about and chose not to go down that road, can also testify.
For example, this country has a good many personable "Lost Boys" -- the black African Christians of the southern Sudan such as Francis Bok (and his book should be distributed, gratis, all over the prison system). Such people can offer their own testimony as to how the Arabs treat black people. And so can those rescued from slavery in Mali and Mauritania. And this country also has quite a few Christians from Ethiopia, suffering pressure from the Da'wa campaigns conducted there, which accompany the campaign to islamize Christian Ethiopia and to make sure it does not divert any of the headwaters of the Nile for its own use.
Then there are many Nigerians -- Christian Nigerians, mainly but not exclusively Ibo, because even the Yoruba are split between Christians and Muslims. Some of these people need work. They could perform a very important service simply by explaining, in prisons and schools to the right audiences, what their experience was like, and why Col. Ojukwu referred to the "jihad" that had caused the declaration of Biafra's independence (see the Ahiara Declaration of 1969). The Ibo have been on the receiving end, along with other Christian peoples in southern Nigeria, not only of the Egyptian pilots who killed tens of thousands of helpless villagers during the Biafra War (this should not be forgotten) but by the northerners who consistently, because of their Islam, dominate the southerners, treat them with contumely, and block all sorts of things, even polio vaccinations (said to be an "infidel" plot to kill Muslim children -- in other words, the usual conspiratorial nonsense, but with real consequences as polio has now reappeared throughout the region thanks to Muslim conspiracy theories). They have also blocked the Miss World beauty contest, which had to be moved. Then there was the Christian Nigerian columnist who, having made a joke about something that offended Muslims, had to leave the country after receiving death threats (par for the Muslim course).
And all of these people can remind African-Americans who might otherwise be susceptible to the siren-song of the Da'wa-men that the greatest slave trade in Africa was conducted not by Europeans, but by Arabs. It began centuries earlier and ended centuries later (indeed, has not really ended at all) than the European slave trade. It claimed far more victims, for the Arab slavers wanted, above all, young boys, whom they castrated when they were captured. That is why by the time they reached the Muslim slave markets of Jeddah, and Damascus, and Baghdad, and Cairo, and then Constantinople and even Smyrna, fully 90% of them had died -- a fantastic death-rate, about which more can be found in The Hideous Trade by Jan Hogedoorn, and also in the book on the Arab slave trade by J. Willis.
The greatest slavers in world history, the Arabs and Muslims, have gotten off scot-free. They continue to exploit, enslave, and even murder blacks -- and precisely because they are blacks, as anyone who reads the ample testimony from either the southern Sudan (where for 20 years a slow-motion genocide has been taking place) and then Darfur, where even fellow-Muslims have been mass-murdered because they are not Arabs.
And once that has been thoroughly understood, and booklets prepared with that information, and both Sudanese and Nigerian and possibly other black African anti-Da'wa campaigners are ready to spread not Islam, but the word on what Islam and Muslims have really done in black Africa, there is yet another line of self-defense against Da'wa, an instrument of Jihad and, with demography, the most dangerous.
It can be done. After all, everything I have written above has one supreme virtue: it is all true. Unlike those conducting Da'wa, we who wish to bring the theory and practice of Islam to public attention do not have to omit or obfuscate. It is those conducting Da'wa who have to do that.
Cults demand one's previous identity be completely shed for the new. Patty Hearst becoming Tanya readily comes to mind. Let us also not forget that cults demand complete submission without reservation to its leader, as Donald DeFreeze aka General Field Marshal Cinque also comes to mind. (Did I just date myself?)
"Donald DeFreeze aka General Field Marshal Cinque.."
-- from the posting above
And why didn't D. DeFreeze add "First Lord of the Admiralty of the Cinque Ports" while he was at it?
Hugh makes a good point about humor. It may seem like a trivial item, but fanaticism and a lack of humor go together.
Of course Hugh would have intimate knowledge of the Cinque Ports, first mentioned in a Royal Charter just 90 years following the commemoration of a well known comet in a well known tapestry of Flemish origin.
According to the original Charter, the members of the Cinque Ports had the right to
just your basic medieval rape, pillage and plunder engaged in by all fine gentlemen of the day.
W. W. Skeat, here I come.
It would seem that the surest way to stop Islam, or at least to "out" it for what it is, is to directly attack its scriptures.
Given all its calls for murder, discrimination, slavery, sexism, and other criminal acts, why couldn't the Koran be banned from prisons, schools, army barracks, public libraries, and the like?
Sure, if adults want to pursue these perversions in the privacy of their homes (no doubt rent-free HUD Section 8 abodes all), then let 'em crack open the Koran and have at it.
Two governmental actions are needed:
1) Strip Islam of its designation as a religion (and its tax-exempt status) and specify it to be an anti-American nationalist political movement, much like Communism or Naziism.
2) Attack its scriptures as promoting criminal and seditious behavior and limits its distribution and use.
When the lawsuits start over number 1 above, counter offer for the nation of Islam to remove its nationalist components, such as Jihad, Jizya, Dhimmmitude, Sharia, and other explicit governmental forms.
Excellent Article! Has anyone ever had a debate about inherent racism in Islam with an African-American Nation of Islam person? How do they reconcile Islam's racist history?
Considering that being "mocked" one of Mohammed's favorite reasons for having people killed, is it any wonder his followers have a difficult time with humour?
"Excellent Article! Has anyone ever had a debate about inherent racism in Islam"
No, but if one's being organized, I nominate Malik Zulu Shabazz to take the podium for the Moslems.
Hugh: most timely erudite and reasonable.Many thanks.
When the weltanschauung in and out of prison is fully targeted there will be minimal recruitment
I concur, another great piece, as is the Huff/Saliba non-contest. Regarding the latter, I couldn't help but laugh at some of the points brought up by Mr. Saliba. I actually went back and reread Mr. Huffs essays thinking I had missed something. One thing to be said for Islam, it must be, despite the dire cosequences for joy, laughter, mirth, and wit, a light and airy existance to be so unshackled by truth and logic(probably the only unshackling to be found).
Saliba undoubtably never broke a sweat when he so profoundly and haughtily argued against points Huff never made and crossed the literary street to avoid points Huff DID make. Ah, the freedoms of islamic debate.
On a serious note, despite the very real personal danger of going into prisons to counter the islamic recruiters, this may well be a crucial strategy that needs to be implemented to prevent a wave of radical, grudge-bearing converts from pouring out of the prison systems of the country to blend into, or disappear amongst populations that have no incentive to give them up, or assist in identifying them, and who, upon welcoming them home, may be more receptive to receiving "The Word" from a friend or family member than from some unknown or alien stranger.
Would this require an unholy allience with Aryan Nation or Latin Kings members, prison populations being so polarized?
How about mentioning to "African Americans" the number of Eunuchs in Arabia and other Moslem countries in the past and even today. They are captured as boys and then castrated.