MILF: Negotiate or else

This business of a "truce" that one side may violate at will without scruple, while the other must abide by its strictest terms, is a wholly Islamic conception. It doesn't even impede the fighting and dying. And people say the Muslims aren't innovators!

Sounds like an excuse to restart the jihad.

What's wrong with the picture here? Can we not train the Christians in warfare and arm them accordingly?

We armed the Afgahni jihadists against the Russians [big mistake] and we should do the same for the Christians.

If I still believed in the supernatural, I might be inclined to believe in an organized centralized evil which is inspiring all powers, no matter how divergent their interests from those of Islam, to support Islamic causes and suppress all opposition to it. Or is it the fact that we are such a repugnant specie with very little actual moras that we tend to side with evil thugs and support them over the moral and righteous. I believe that if Islam finally triumphs and enslaves all of humanity, then that would be a well deserved punishment.

I am waiting to see when, where, how, in what column by what columnist, in what report by what reporter, in what editorial by what member of what editorial board, the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, will first be mentioned or discussed.

For these reporters, these columnists, these writers of scolding editorials who presume to inform and instruct their audiences, appear to believe, with what might be called, wickedly, a Eurocentric view of things, that everyone in the world accepts the principle of Pacta Sunt Servanda -- the principle that "Treaties Are to Be Obeyed." It isn't true. That concept, which originates in the West, and which seems to people in the West as self-evident (for how, or why, would treaties have any value if one side or both could break them?), is not honored, not even discussed as worthy of being honored, in the Islamic world.

In that world, a different principle obtains. Treaties may be made with Infidel enemies. But those treaties do not bind the Muslim side. They can, whenever they wish, whenever they feel the time is right or ripe, break those treaties. There is no such thing as a permanent "peace" treaty with Infidels. All treaties that are called that, in the West, are merely "truce" treaties or hudnas, and they are based on the model of the agreement that Muhammad made with his Meccan enemies (because they would not yield to his demands) in 628 A.D., at Hudaibiyya, just outside Mecca.

Muhammad is not merely the Messenger of God, the Seal of the Prophets. He is the center, he is the focus, of Islam. He is mentioned far more than Allah. He is the model for Muslims, in all things, and for all times. He is uswa hasana, the Model of Right Conduct, he is al-insan al-kamil, the Perfect Man. What he said, and what he did, as recorded in the Hadith, or retailed in the Sira, constitute the Sunnah, the essential gloss on the Qur'an, and not merely a gloss but something more, for the Sunnah is the guide to daily life, to what is prohibited and what commanded. Some Muslims now talk about "reforming" Islam -- see Mustafa Akyol -- by returning to "the Qur'an alone." They frequently employ the phrase "sola scriptura" -- a phrase appropriated from the Protestant Reformation, for the Bright Young Reformers are still Muslims, and are consumed with an ill-concealed envy, and a desire to liken the Islamic world, as much as possible, to the West whose achievements and liberties confound and attract and scare and repel them.

Those reporters, those columnists, those editorial writers so sure of themselves, without having spent the necessary hours in the library, need to be shamed into study, the study of Islam. They could, for example, be asked why they have not, in their failure to understand the meaning, and relevance, of the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, read such a standard work as Majid Khadduri's "Law of War and Peace in Classical Islam." It's readily obtained. It explains a lot. It explains, for example, the Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya. Shouldn't they be asked, shouldn't they be forced, to start showing that they are actually learning something, are trying to find out about Islam, and not from the usual apologists but possibly, at first, simply by reading the scholars -- not espositos and armstrongs -- who have written about Islam, or have written about Islam at a time and place when they need not worry, and could be truthful? (Khadduri himself later retreated into a more apologetic, less truthful mode about some aspects of Islam, but that is another story).

For example, when Muslims -- when Hamas as one case -- talks about a "truce" that will last ten years, shouldn't those who report on this kind of thing ask themselves why "ten years" was chosen? Shouldn't they inquire further, and realize that "ten years" is always the date given for a hudna? And shouldn't they then ask themselves "why is that?" and then attempt to find out? If they did make the attempt, they would discover that the agreement that Muhammad made with the Meccans at Al-Hudaibiyya lasted for approximately ten years, and so that has, ever since, become the appropriate length of time for a "hudna" with Infidels. It doesn't mean it can't be broken within those ten years; Muhammad broke the treaty within 18 months, and even though, when they speak with Infidels, Muslims will attempt to deny this, will say that it was all the fault of the Meccans, the facts, and also all of the crowing delight taken in Muslim literature, over the very cunning that Muhammad showed in making this treaty when he was weak, and breaking it when he was strong, shows what Muslims really caused that treaty to be broken, and by whom.

Yet none of this ever seems to appear, not in The New Duranty Times, not in The Bandar Beacon, not in the newsweeklies, with time on their hands, and one wishes to ask: Why not? What do these people who report from Muslim countries, or who report breathlessly on peace-processing between Israel and various subsets of their Arab and Muslim implacable enemies, not ever bother to find out about what treaty-making means? They have heard the complaints about non-compliance by the Arabs. Why don't they not only take those complaints seriously, and discuss what, for example, Egypt has done to comply with its duty, under the Camp David Accords, to encourage friendly relations and an end to hostilites, at the level of peoples, with Israel? Not important? Too complicated to find out? Really?

And then, why should not journalists - those reporters, those columnists, those editorial writers -- not be held to the duty to explain not only Egypt's failure now, but the failure to honor other agreements, or the failure of other Arab states, or of the "Palestinians," to honor their agreements? And why not ask them to find out when, and where, and why, for example, Yassir Arafat alluded, for Muslim audiences, to the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, such as his speech made in Johannesburg before a Muslim audience soon after signing the Oslo Accords, a speech surreptitiously recorded, in which he clearly makes reference to Muhammad the Treaty o9f Al-Hudaibiyya. And his audience knew exactly what he was saying.

When we read, for example, that Muslims in the southern Philippines, having reached, and having signed, an agreement a year ago with the government, is now attacking, and forcing off their land, non-Muslim Filipino farmers, in direct violastion of that agreement, we should not be surprised. But we deserve, we readers, to be told why what these Muslims are doing is not surprising, but fits into a repeated pattern of Muslim violations of agreements with Infidel nation-states. Of course the Muslims in the southern Philippines have no intention of honoring their agreement. Of course the "Palestinians" of Fatah's Slow Jihad have no intention of honoring whatever agreement the Israelis might be foolish enough to make. Of course the government of the Muslim Arabs in Khartoum have no intention of honoring the peace agreement they made with the non-Muslims of the southern Sudan, or the commitments they have made, with outside Infidels, about not further harming the inferior, because non-Arab, Muslims, in Darfur. And so on.

These are not unconnected, isolated examples. They are all the same example, or all examples of the same thing: the Muslim view, or even the Muslim Arab view, of treaties or agreements made with enemies who are Infidels. These are not agreements about "salaam" but about "sulh." They are not peace treaties but hudnas, truce treaties. The period of their maximum initial length (they can, if circumstances demand, be "renewed" for periods lasting the same length as the initial treaty) is ten years, because that was how long the Hudaibiyya Treaty was supposed to last.

It isn't hard to find out all of this. This is not elementary particle physics or advanced mathematics beyond the ken of mere mortals. You don't have to be P.E.M. Dirac or John von Neumann or Paul Erdos to understand, or make sense, of this stuff. You just have to decide to be a little less lazy, and to apply to yourself the standards that, before you entered journalism, you might have imposed on yourself, or at least learned about, when you were a graduate student, or in college. You have to do the appropriate amount of research. You have to not leave things unexplained. If you are going to report on Muslims on the world of Islam, you had damn well better start learning about Islam. And that includes what Muhammad said, and did, and what he did, in particular, in 628 at Hudaibiyya.

It's not much to ask.

Just a note: the text of 'Fitna' has been subtitled into Tagalog, the main lingua franca of the Philippines...let's hope it's circulating merrily.

havemercy

I understand how you feel. It is awful, awful to watch this stuff happening, and - as an ordinary citizen - to not quite know what one can do to stop it, to warn against it. One writes letters. One talks to people. It seems to make little difference.

You said 'if I still believed in the supernatural'.

But even if you have abandoned faith, I would still advise the following books to feed the soul.

David Bentley Hart, 'The Doors of the Sea', a study of evil in the world, written after the 2004 Tsunami.

And Jacques Ellul, any one, or all, of the following: 'Hope in Time of Abandonment'; 'The Ethics of Freedom'; 'The Betrayal of the West'; 'The New Demons' (the French title is subtly different, literally reading 'the New Possessed/ Those Newly Possessed'); and 'Prayer and Modern Man'.

I think you might find Ellul helpful. He is very bracing. He does NOT deal in anodyne platitudes. He presents our predicament as bleakly as may be; yet he still, in the end, out of the blazing reality of his own encounter with YHWH, refuses steadfastly to despair. You may like to know that he recognised, befriended, supported and mentored Bat Yeor, back when she was a young scholar just starting out.

At the conclusion of his book on Israel, 'Un Chretien Pour Israel', written in 1986, he writes:

'Un chretien pour Israel, que’est ce que c’est? Rien, un roseau qui fremit au vent, un bruissement de feuille, un livre parmi cent mille livres; et qui, dans amertume, sait que ce livre pourra etre utilise par toutes les propagandes, ou incompris par tous les partis pris differents. Tentative qui ne fera pas bouger d’une ligne la marche du temps politique. Et cependant il faut le faire, parce qu’un chretien pour Israel, c’est d’abord un homme qui vit dans l’Esperance du Seigneur, et qui prie.'
- "One Christian supporting Israel, what is he? Nothing: a reed that quivers in the wind, a murmuring of a leaf, of a page, one book among a hundred thousand books; and who knows with bitterness that this book will be used for every propaganda, or not understood by all the other partisans.

'An attempt which cannot shift by one line the march of political time.
'And nevertheless he had to do it because a Christian who stands for Israel is, first of all, a man who lives in the Hope of the Lord, and who prays."

Qui vit dans l'Esperance du Seigneur, et qui prie.
One who lives in the Hope of the Lord, and who prays.

I have read most of Ellul's work. I don't agree with every last thing he says; but it is all thought provoking, and I trust his testimony. And so, like him, I pray; and like him, I dare to disbelieve in the supposedly inevitable, and to try to live in the hope of the Lord.

Jacques Ellul was like Jacques Barzun, and very few others. He was almost never wrong. Read him defending Israel, or warning -- back in the late 1970s, about Islam. But also read his writing on the "Technological Society" or the lieux communs(commonplaces, mental cliches) of the age, which may put some in mind of Flaubert's Dictionnaire des idees recues.

Using the playbook that has worked for the Palestians, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Get land in truce and settlement. Threaten to break truce and settlement for more. Get land in truce and settlement. Continue to repeat until you get it all.

I still have not understood why no one is arming the Christians to fight.

Hugh, you talked about the patterns regarinding Islamic warfare (the violent type and the propaganda type) and this is what the media tries to hide. Once you see the pattern it all falls into place regarding the truth of Islam.

That is why Robert Spencer and those like him who know their shiite, lol, are so important. We, the general pubilc, can put one and one together and pretty much see the truth...but w/o the one who knows about Islam, inside and out, to really put it all together, as far as the meanings and reasons behind the pattern, we are somewhat lost as far as being able to confront and defend our positions.
Anyway, just wanted to add my two cents in that area because it is SO important and I'm glad you brought it up. Keep up your great work!

MILF is as good as FARC as unfortunate acronyms go. Very crafty of them to mislead a whole subculture of guys :)

"...Muslims for decades, protested the government's insistence that any proposal granting the rebels autonomy must adhere to Philippine laws and go before voters as a referendum...."

as usual, Muslims willingly object to the laws of the host counry...everyday in western countries you see Muslims challenging the host countries laws and the rights of the host countries population by constantly demanding special priviledges (footbaths, prayer time during work hours, bathrooms to be relocated to face a certain direction, Muslim doctors only, forced Islamic instruction upon the host countries children, etc), inch by inch some say. The Muslims always threaten extreme violence if their demands are not met. Unless challenged, the Muslims proceed to force the nonMuslims to leave the land never to come back, if you refuse to leave, then the violence soon appears. The Muslim have total disrespect of the host countries laws and customs and people. The more Muslims appear on the scene the bolder they become...They take over "inch by inch"..One day you may wake up with a decision to make.....Fight or die.

In the Philippines, are they Sunni's or Shiites??
Our Armed Forces are on a small Island by Mindanao, how much do they get involved what is going on in Mindanao. Does anybody know?
A Catholic Priest is already saying, let them have it.
That for such a dominant Catholic country.
They have been batling this for a long time.