There has been much discussion lately of whether or not this or that case has anything to do with “terrorism.” The Salt Lake mall shooter and the Nashville would-be murderer by taxicab spring immediately to mind. The word "terrorism" may not quite fit if the FBI takes it to mean some kind of organized conspiracy, something done by a group. What should be made clear is that Islam supplies a pre-fabricated mental grid or, to vary the metaphor, a prism through which to view the universe. And on that grid, or through that prism, there is always an Identifiable Enemy, and that Enemy is Always the Infidel.
Feeling bad? Feeling blue? Feeling things aren't going right for you? It happens to all of us. We blame our parents, our siblings, our children, The System, Amerika with a "k," Capitalism, fate, the stars, our serotonin level, our cholesterol level. Even, at times, we may blame ourselves. That's if you are an ordinary Infidel.
What if you are a Muslim? You don't have to blame your parents, your siblings, or anyone or anything else except: the Infidel. And you don't need to be part of Al-Qaeda, or Islamic Jihad, or Jaish-e-Muhammad. You don't even have to have been a faithful attender of a mosque. You can be Intel engineer "Mike" (Muhammad) Hawash, married to an American, with Little-League-attending children, earning $360,000 a year. And when the banality and boredom of life assails you, you can return to that Old-Time Religion, that is to Islam, and start reading, and re-reading, with the effects we all know, the Qur'an. Then you can light out for the territories, in this case those territories being Western China, and thence, you hope, to Afghanistan, in order to kill Americans. Yes, you are technically an "American" yourself, but the categories and the loyalties of the Infidel nation-state mean nothing to you: you are a Muslim, and that is the only Category that counts, Muslim as opposed to Infidel.
All that one need have asked in the case of Sulejman Talovic was why he went out to a mall, and not in a sudden mental raptus, and quietly and calmly proceeded to kill as many people as he could. Did he see it as killing Infidel after Infidel after Infidel? No one need have asked if he had a collaborator, to be guilty of violent Jihad. No one need have asked if he wrote it out. All one needed to do was find out what his worldview was: did he, or did he not, see the world as divided, as so many Muslims are taught to see it, between Believer and Infidel? Did FBI agents determine this before they dismissed “terrorism” in this case? The answer to that question is not known.
If FBI agents are still ignorant of Islam, then the country is endangered. Anyone running for President should assure us that he, or she, will make sure that "all of our security services, all of those who are in the army and the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. and the local police, will be fully informed of the nature of the ideology that menaces us, and does more than menace us." If you wish, if you don't dare utter the word "Islam," then call it "Islamism" or "fanatical Islam" or some other such term.
But more and more, those even in government have a duty to approach the truth asymptotically, so that the uninformed or insufficiently informed will come to locate, accurately, the menace for all Infidels in the immutable texts of Islam, not in the teachings supposed invented by the proponents of "Wahhabi" Islam, or of "Islamism," or of "extremist" Islam, but mainstream Islam.
And those who are not in government have no excuse for using terms such as "Islamism." No, those without official positions have a stark and unwavering duty not to add to the confusion that currently prevails among Americans and Westerners in general, but instead to constantly clarify whatever others at the moment may now deem necessary to obscure.
One may hope, of course, that they may deem this obscuring action to be necessary only on a temporary basis, if they are fully aware of the real, disturbing, frightening truth.
Philosophical materialism and Christianity in its various flavors are probably the two predominant worldviews in America, in that order. The presuppositions of both (the inherent pragmatism of the former, the distinction between civil and spiritual authority in the latter) make it all but impossible for both the authorities and general populace to understand the power of a presumed divine text such as the Koran. As Hugh describes here with the Intel engineer, both Christians and Muslims tend to get back to the fundamentals as described in their holy books when the proverbial "rubber meets the road" in their lives.
For this reason, intelligent discourse on these issues must exclude two primary fallacies. First is the idea that all religious texts say the same thing and have the same logical outworkings, which is presumed a priori by western multiculturalists. The second is the Marxian idea that all conflict, in the end, revolves around the lack of economic equality, and once "social justice" in the form of wealth redistribution is accomplished, the jihadists will back away from their religious duties to bask in their newfound material comforts like westerners do.
It's neither religion in general, nor the lack of social justice, but the actual content of the Koran/Hadith that must be addressed here. Unfortunately, that is the very issue that both the Islamic groups and western authorities seem most committed to avoiding.
Anyone running for President should be asked what his relationship with CAIR (or any other Islam apologist group) will be like. Will he continue to allow CAIR to conduct "sensitivity training" at executive agencies?
Frankly, I'm not optimistic about hearing the response.
Hugh wrote:
If anything qualifies as Islamophobia, this has got to be it — the fear of what Islam and Muslims would do to you if you dare to mention the word.
Any presidential hopeful should do some serious research, here are a few websites the candidated could research:
"Some online resources for background information on Islamic teachings:
http://www.apostatesofislam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=661
ISLAMIC SOURCES:
The Koran, in three English translations:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/
Look up 8 Koran translations at the same time:
http://quranbrowser.com/
Audio Recitations & Translations of the Koran, text translations in other languages than English (French, German, Spanish, Indonesian etc):
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/quran/
More Koran:
http://www.road-to-heaven.com/noblequran.htm
http://www.quraan.com/
http://www.muslimaccess.com/quraan/
http://www.free-minds.org/quran/quran.htm
http://www.quran-hadith-index.com/
Transliteration (Arabic words written in Roman letters) of the Koran:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/transliteration/
http://transliteration.org/quran/home.htm
The complete, renowned tafsir (Koran commentary and explanation) of Ibn Kathir:
http://tafsir.com/
More tafsir:
http://tafseercomparison.org/
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/maududi/
About principles of tafsir:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Tafseer/Ulum/
http://www.quran.org.uk/ieb_quran_tafseer.htm
A non-Muslim, critical view of the Koran and Islam:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/quran_teaches.htm
http://www.atheists.org/Islam/mohammedanism.html
http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Text/index.html
http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol6No1/HV6N1PRPhenixHorn.html
http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol3No1/HV3N1Griffith.html
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/AbulKasem41205.htm
http://www.studytoanswer.net/myths_ch1.html
The Koran's 164 Jihad Verses:
http://www.angelfire.com/moon/yoelnatan/koranwarpassages.htm
http://www.secularislam.org/jihad/index.htm
The ahadith (Traditions about Muhammad and his companions) of al-Bukhari and others:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchhadith.html
About hadith collections, Islamic perspective:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/scienceofhadith/brief1/
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/scienceofhadith/atit.html
Letters and Treaties of Muhammad (Islamic translations and presentations):
http://www.islamicresources.com/member/modules.php?name=Sections&op=listarticles&secid=5
The Constitution of Medina, 622:
http://www.constitution.org/cons/medina/macharter.htm
About the Sunna (The example of Muhammad and his companions) and jurisprudence:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/law/fiqhussunnah/
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muwatta/
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sharia
"Sirat Rasoul Allah", The earliest biography of Muhammad, an abridged version:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sira/index.htm
The four Sunni schools of Islamic law (Madhhab):
http://www.uga.edu/islam/shariah.html#law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhahib
About Sufism:
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/Sufism.html
The Islamic calendar:
http://www.muslimaccess.com/islamic_calendar.asp
http://www.islam.com/calen.htm
Some Shia Muslim resources:
A Shi'ite Encyclopedia:
http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/
A multi-media site by Richard Hooker:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/SHIA/SHIA.HTM
Shia Library:
http://al-shia.com/
Sunni website critical of Shias:
http://www.allaahuakbar.net/shiites/word_of_advice_to_shiites.htm
http://www.allaahuakbar.net/shiites/index.htm
http://www.allaahuakbar.net/shiites/KAFI.HTM
Shia ahadith (Traditions about Muhammad and his companions) of Al kafi:
http://hahsim.s5.com/kafi.html
Sayings of Imam Ali (Muhammad's son-in-law, first Shia Imam):
http://www.al-islam.org/nahjul/index.htm
Shia tafsir (Koran commentary and explanation):
http://www.almizan.org/
Other:
http://www.al-islam.org/short/martyrdom/
http://al-islam.org/ashura/
http://www.shiachat.com/
DEFINITIONS OF ARABIC-ISLAMIC TERMS, HISTORICAL INFORMATION:
The Internet Islamic History Sourcebook, a long list of historical and religious resources and texts, from the early days until today:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook.html
Encyclopaedia of the Orient:
http://lexicorient.com/e.o/
Atlas of the Orient:
http://lexicorient.com/e.o/atlas/index.htm
Other historical maps:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/map_sites/hist_sites.html#mideast
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~rs143/map.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbookmap.html
http://www.muhammadanism.com/maps/default.htm
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/maps/maps2.htm
Definitions of Islamic terms:
Thomas P. Hughes' "Dictionary of Islam":
http://answering-islam.org/Books/Hughes/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamic_terms_in_Arabic
http://www.knowislam.info/drupal/mno
http://www.onelook.com/ (Dictionary Search)
Islamic definitions:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/glossary.html
http://muttaqun.com/
Posted by: Ali Dashti at January 5, 2005 07:59 AM
Thank you, Ali Dashti!
Posted by: Mike at January 5, 2005 10:11 AM "
An uninformed president will get you killed....
From Hugh's dissertation above:
"...If FBI agents are still ignorant of Islam, then the country is endangered. Anyone running for President should assure us that he, or she, will make sure that "all of our security services, all of those who are in the army and the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. and the local police, will be fully informed of the nature of the ideology that menaces us, and does more than menace us." ...."
CAIR sensitivity classes for the FBI, CIA, etc., have hamstrung agents and police at the working level since their bosses condone this training and want it implemented, on orders from the top. This is another manifestation of Bush's ignorance of Islam and Grover Norquist's infiltration of enemy agents into the White House and throughout the security apparatus("Infiltration", by Paul Sperry).
Fer crying out loud! You guys just dont get it! You must not be too dumb, you are typing on a computer, you signed in, so what could be your problem people!
If you are still waiting for this Government to bail you out and protect you we are in DOOMED! Stop looking up at the sky there chicken little, we've got work to do.
There is only one way to break up this threat. Only one way to save our Nation, and we all know what it is, we just need to get busy.
If you are still waiting for this Government to bail you out and protect you we are in DOOMED! Stop looking up at the sky there chicken little, we've got work to do.
There is only one way to break up this threat. Only one way to save our Nation, and we all know what it is, we just need to get busy.
Posted by: QuadoLama
I agree with your analysis. Please spell out what needs to be done AND how do we do it?
One thing to do is vote in the primaries!
The quickest way to find out if there is a specifically Muslim phenomenon of violence against infidels in Western countries is statistical analysis based on a frank appraisal of the perpetrators' religious backgrounds. Unfortunately this is information that governments are often reluctant to collect. Anyone thinking of doing their own rough and ready guesstimate is reduced to trying to work out someone's religion from their name, which is all the information that the self-censoring news media is willing to divulge.
Apparently these outbursts of extreme violence are a national institution in Malaysia.I don't know if the problem pre-dates the introduction of Islam to that country but I'm sure all those violent injunctions in the Koran don't help.
amok, amock, amuck
1. In a murderous frenzy as if possessed by a demon.
2. In a murderous frenzy.
3. Wildly; without self-control.
4. In a frenzy of violence, or on a killing spree; berserk.........................................
................................................
Etymology: from Malay amuk, "attacking furiously". Earlier the word was used as a noun or adjective meaning "a frenzied Malay"; originally from a Portuguese form amouco or amuco.
Today anyone who wantonly shoots people is said to have run amuck (run amuck is the usual phrase to use); and so it denotes mental derangement, a madness to do violence or to kill indiscriminately.
and from New Straits Times, 8th Oct 2000:
"KUALA LUMPUR, Sat. - Thirteen amok cases were reported in the country over the past two years during which 11 people were killed and 29 wounded.
Seven cases occurred in the first nine months of this year.
Three of the attackers were also killed in the incidents - two shot dead when they tried to attack police and the other beaten to death by a group of angry villagers."
Allahfanculo:
Hi Allen.
We in the USA have 2 things that no other people have, brains and money, it is the only tools we have left to fight this enemy. First we need to move Americans into Dearborn, and they need to be the parents on Service People. That will make the 'home of record' for them as well. 10,000 Americans moving to Dearborn will be the same as 50,000 votes, and that in its self will be a force to be reckoned with. I for one would go there, as I was raised there and have 2 sons in the US Army, in addition to myself, I have asked others to do the same, and I have found a good reception to the idea., as most of my high School friends were pushed out of there as well as myself. Rep. John Conyers can then be voted out of office. Recall that he is the one that introduced a bill that made it illegal to make fun of Islam. In all the US we need to repatriate Americans into the areas where the muz have taken over. If we fail to do this ASAP, we will soon see our Nation in the same fix as Britain.
OK, but just how to do this, that is where our surplus of brains comes into play, someone else’s brains that is.