His force has now identified at least 10 youngsters – including two 13-year-olds – as “vulnerable” and formally referred them to a programme to wean them away from radicalism. -- from this article
How would they be "weaned away"? Will they be told that these men telling them what they can find in the Qur'an and Hadith are "bad men" and “mustn't be listened to" when the children can see, anyone can see, that the texts they refer to are right there? Will they be told to ignore what Muhammad did in his 78 campaigns, in the Battle of the Trench, in the killing of the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, in all the battles in-between -- the kind of thing so carefully collected in those Books of Battles, such as al-Waqidi's Kitaab al-Maghazi?
Young Christians are, or can be, inspired by the life of Christ, his homilies and parables being the sayings to which what the Prophet Muhammad said, as recorded in the Hadith, is the counterpart in Islam. And what Christ did during his life has as its counterpart in Islam the acts of Muhammad, which include such events, celebrated and not ignored by Muslims, as the killings of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak, the decapitation of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, and the attack on the innocents of the Khaybar Oasis, with its blood and gore, in order to seize their property and their women (and after killing their fathers and husbands).
Perhaps those now in charge of keeping these young Muslims from being "led astray by extremists" are Muslims themselves, with what has now turned into a gig, a job, all over the Western world, to be paid for by Infidel taxpayers. They give "reports" of "progress" that are so very heartening to the apparently endlessly naive, or perhaps, more likely, willfully ignorant, Infidel social workers and police and local officials who might "hail" the results of this "innovative" program.
But why don't they find out what the appeal actually is? We know that in the prisons of Saudi Arabia those Al-Qaeda members who are supposedly "turned" away from terrorism are not turned away at all, but merely made to stop attacking fellow Muslims, while retaining their hatred for real Infidels. And above all those fellow Muslims who are not to be attacked are the symbols of authority of, and even members of, the smiling, daggers-and-dishdasha, dripping-with-gold-and-malevolence, Al-Saud.
We can all imagine what kind of things are being said:
"You should stay away from the extremists" because "they don't help Islam now" and "should do something for Islam" by "working to further the position of Muslims in this society," by "getting into positions of real power" where "you can do far more for Islam" than "someone putting a bomb on a bus."
"Listen, I understand you, I'm you, and you're me, we're all brothers -- ["bruvvers"] -- aren't we, part of the same Community, but we have to think smart, act smart. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), now he was brave, wasn't he? He wasn't afraid of war, was he? He loved war. But he knew when to fight, and he knew when not to fight. Remember how he tricked the Meccans at Al-Hudaibiyya? Well, some people might have thought when he made that treaty that he'd gone all soft? But he showed them, didn't he? And that's he was such a great man, the Seal of the Prophets, because he didn't just receive the Message, but he knew how to spread it, in any way that worked.”
Or, expanding on that same theme:
“Well, we are here aren't we? In Great Britain I mean. And they are paying me and the other brothers to make you stop listening to those ‘extremists.’ And I need you to do that. I need you to see the larger picture. Can you do that? Just because someone tells you to learn how to fight the Infidels with bombs and guns in Pakistan or Afghanistan, or right here, especially right here, doesn't mean they're right, doesn't mean they know what they're doing. And those people telling you to leave school and go off on Jihad -- how great are they? Are they The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)? What would The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, the Perfect Man, tell young boys like you to do today? Remember how he made that "peace" with the Meccans at Hudaibiyyah, the one that was supposed to last for ten years, and his own followers thought he had gone soft, but -- eighteen months later -- he showed them, and he showed the Meccans too. The Prophet Muhamamd (pbuh) said that "war is deception." Well, are we Muslims in a war or aren’t we?
“You tell me, boy, what you think would be wisest for you to do, right now, in order to help make sure that Muslims prevail -- everywhere.”
One solution, forbidding the Coran and the Hadiths ... but it shall be difficult! As the Coran and the Hadiths are considered by a lot of people as a part of their identity.
Or teaching the Coran and the Hadiths to muslim people after having them thaught deeply reasonable values that respect every human being. This is a better way, give them first reasonable values so that they reject naturally the Coran and the Hadiths when they study it. It is time to start this program.
Well their religion is violence, murder, death, rape, and looting of and against infidels. That is the religion of Islam. When compared to other religions which teach human spiritual growth...to bring and end suffering of others and bringing respect and dignity for the weak and elderly. Islam on the other hand teaches raping women, murdering young children and old and looting the lands of other cultures.
I find the whole "weaning" analogy quite telling, as though "radicalism" is the mother's milk that all babes in Islam nurse on. Yes, let's wean them off to more mature sustenance, like taqiyya, demography, stealth jihad, etc.
Here's a recent review I wrote for Ali Sina's Understanding Muhammad. Maybe putting "the Prophet" in a more modern American setting will catch people's attention:
Imagine that three individuals were each commissioned to prepare the psychological profile of a self-appointed religious prophet who founded a tightly-knit community in Arizona in the mid-1800’s.
The prophet, soon after the death of his wife of 25 years, began having dreams about the six-year-old daughter of his best friend and persuaded the friend that God had told him to marry her. He later used the same God-told-me-so line to convince his adopted son to divorce his attractive wife so he could marry her as well. The community was polygamous, but the prophet was the only man who could have as many women as he wanted.
The community had few financial resources, so the prophet developed the idea of robbing stagecoaches and trains that passed through the area. Slavery was legal within the community, and the people who were not killed on these raids were used and sold as slaves. Male members of the community had full sexual access to the female slaves.
The prophet’s ambitions were much larger than the few hundred converts he garnered his first few years. He fully expected all the people of the area to accept his prophethood and join the community. When some refused, he turned against them. Eight hundred men were killed in one day, and the rest were driven to outlying regions. When he realized that his people did not have the agricultural and industrial resources to provide for the needs of the community, he came up with a new strategy. He again attacked the people he had recently driven away, this time allowing them to live in exchange for giving him fifty percent of their produce. Shortly before his death, he stated a new ruling that they were to be driven completely from Arizona and never allowed to return.
As often happens with religious and political leaders who see themselves as chosen vessels, the prophet became more intolerant to criticism as he grew older and more powerful. Stories of the murder and assassination of his critics became increasingly common. One of his disciples bragged that he had come across a one-eyed sheep rancher who said he would never join the prophet’s group. The disciple waited until the rancher fell asleep, and then thrust a sharpened stick into the rancher’s good eye so hard it came out the back of his neck. The disciple next captured an associate of the rancher, tied his thumbs together, and led him to the prophet. The prophet laughed so hard at the sight, according to the disciple, that, “You could see his back teeth”. The prophet blessed the disciple when he heard how he had killed the one-eyed rancher.
About the same time a 100-year old poet wrote lines critical of the prophet and his followers. In reference to the many regulations the prophet had established for the community, the poet noted, “You follow someone who divides everything into ‘This is allowed’ and ‘That is forbidden’.” As soon as the prophet heard this, he sent someone to assassinate the old poet.
A second poet, the mother of five children, was courageous enough to criticize the murder of the old man. She wrote, “I despise you people….you who obey a stranger and expect good things from him after he killed all your leaders.” The prophet, realizing he was the “stranger” she was writing about, sent one of his followers to kill her. She was murdered in her bed that night with her nursing child lying by her side. Her murderer, perhaps touched with remorse by the heinousness of his crime, asked the prophet if anything bad would happen to him. The prophet replied that her death was of no more significance than two goats butting their heads together in the back yard.
Some time after the prophet’s death, it was discovered that the Arizona desert underneath his followers’ feet contained the world’s largest diamond resources. Community members became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and began to use their new-found riches to extend the prophet’s vision that the entire world come under the influence of his teachings and principles.
Now back to the first sentence, where “three individuals” are each commissioned to write a profile of the prophet. The first is a university professor who is an expert in the teachings of the prophet even though he has not joined the prophet’s community. He was recently given 25 million dollars by that community to establish a university department where the teachings of the prophet are examined. He is careful to only teach a version of community history appoved by his sponsors. His students rarely learn incidents such as the deaths of the poets and the role of the community in the slave trade as noted above. They know nothing about the world-wide political aspirations of the group.
The second individual is a fully-committed member of the community. She has been taught since her birth that the life of the prophet is the perfect model for all humankind to follow. She doesn’t even know many of the details of that life, such as his treatment of the exiles who did not accept his message. She only knows what she was taught, one side of the story, and is not interested in learning more.
The third individual is an ex-member of the community. He was born and raised within it, similar to individual number two, but at a certain stage began to question the things he had always been ordered to simply believe. His questioning led to doubt, and the doubt resulted in his leaving the community. He now sees himself as free, but his former associates, including individual number two above, view him as a traitor. Even the university professor, individual number one, despises him because he is not sufficiently “academically trained”, according to the professor, to critically examine the community of which he was once a part.
Which of these three individuals might give the most trustworthy profile of the prophet’s life? If your answer is individual number three, I recommend this book.
Upon reading Hugh's post above respecting when Muslims should make war or hold their fire, always with the model man, Mohammmed, in mind, I couldn't help reflecting yet again what a vast distinction exists between the teachings of Jesus and those of that seventh-century Arab merchant who founded the faith which is such an onus to all of mankind. Jesus. Mohammed. One could hardly find a bigger difference in all of history.
ed: Excellent review. My compliments. Verisimilitude can be a powerful teacher at times, as you amply demonstrated.
Is it possible that someone, somewhere - anyone, anywhere - is saying "For us verses like that of the Sword are to be understood as fierce, old, seventh century expressions of belief, and not to be taken literally; likewise the campaigns of the Prophet were necessary for him, because of what he faced, but they are not necessary for us. Allah is merciful, compassionate, and so we are enjoined to be. We are not to be warriors."
Could anyone be saying this to young Muslims? Would it be irreligious to say this? I'm asking.
To "ed": it is a nice and interesting story that you have written.
Novalis,
A couple of points. Firstly, there are muslims who take a non literal approach to the Qur'an, so your scenario is certainly possible. However, as Mr Spencer has noted many times, this approach cannot be shown to have much support in traditional Orthodox Islamic Jurisprudence. If you believe to the contrary, then provide your evidence here.
Secondly, it is rather difficult for the Qur'an to "not be taken literally" by Muslims, when in Islam, it is considered the literal word of God.
Thirdly, given that the UK Government doesn't know exactly who is "weaning away youngsters from radicalism", and how, shouldn't they be trying to find out, instead of just assuming that everything is fine, given its responsibility to protect the UK from the Jihad in all of its guises?
The UK Government is making one very big, and one very flawed assumption here. And it is one that cannot afford to be made.
For 'weaning them away from radicalism', read 'teaching them a change in tactics'. Back under cover! Pop that sheepskin back on over the wolf ears!
The Muslims, I think, have begun to realize that, in western lands at least, their attempts at military jihad of the ultraviolent kind have made a lot of kafir both wary and cranky.
Here's a guess at what's happened.
The Muslims had an early victory, their first true victory since the collapse of the Caliphate at the end of WWI: they were able to seize the regions now known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, and they were able to push the French out of Algeria. Jacques Ellul pinpoints these two events as sources of Muslim confidence in this latest Jihad, the Third Expansion of Islam.
Then Khomeini got hold of Persia.
Russia, perhaps prudently, let go of the Muslim-majority southern states (which Muslims would see as a 'victory') and then, after invading Afghanistan, was pushed out (the muslims, of course, giving no credit to any help from the USA, nor to Russia's simply deciding that the whole thing was a waste of time after all and cutting their losses, see it as a great victory).
However: the major military attacks on Israel were repelled. Indonesia has been, for the moment, pushed out of East Timor. The Thais and Filipinos have not yet been pushed out of their southern provinces. India is still fighting for Kashmir.
Overall: one presumes the Muslim world, feeling its oats after all that oil money, and the fun and profit obtained from splitting the camp by playing off one Cold War side against the other, overreached and took the hot war right inside the Infidel lands. New York. Bali bombing (in a Hindu-majority province of Indonesia, and aimed at non-Muslims). Beslan. Madrid. London. Huge, horrible, spectacular acts of mass murder.
Down came bombs upon their heads. Millions of ordinary kafir citizens started researching Islam and not liking what they found. Levels of surveillance ratcheted up, despite all the mirrors and smoke, and jihad plots were found and squashed.
So now the Muslims are changing tactics, back to lying low for a bit - but let's not forget they have been after nuclear weapons since at least 1982 when Ben Bella told a French interviewer that nuclear weapons should be obtained by Arab (Muslim) states and used to finish off Israel. Persian Muslims are going after nuclear ICBMs as fast as they can go. Let's not be distracted from that fact by any apparent lull in, or ostentatious drawing back from, the 'jihad of the sword', by other Muslims.
Wilders was surprised by the low level of response to 'Fitna', from Muslims in the Netherlands. In his speech to the Danish parliament on 1st June he said, "the reaction of the Muslim community in the Netherlands was in general a lot more mature than the Government's, which led me to issue a sincerely meant compliment to that community".
He might have reserved the compliment. If the Dutch government was doing what the Muslims wanted (as it was), they didn't *need* to kick up a stink. The less aggressive Muslim response, in the Netherlands, may also simply signify that for the moment they have decided to change tactics.
Unfortunately for the Muslims, some Kafir are onto this move in the game, also, already. Mr Spencer's 'Stealth Jihad' is coming out soon.
Some of us, at least, do not intend to be fooled.