Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers a one-week course for all those engaged in combatting the efforts of Islamic jihadists. (And yes, he and I really are available to teach it, and more.)
Islam for Infidels. A one-week course. Instructors: Hugh Fitzgerald and Robert Spencer.
Day One:
Sura 9.29. Read it. Now read all of Sura 9. Now reread all of Sura 9. Let’s discuss. What is an “Unbeliever”? What are “People of the Book”? What is the difference in the treatment of Hindus under Muslim rule and of Christians and Jews? What is a “dhimmi”? Name six disabilities to which dhimmis were subject under Muslim rule. Describe any changes over time in the Qur’an and the Hadith that would lead one to believe that Islam now offers a different view of the non-Muslim than the one that has been filling Muslim minds for the past 1350 years. Remember that Sura 9 has not been abrogated in whole or in part. It is the immutable word of God. Nothing about it can be questioned. How would you attempt to get around what it says?
Day Two:
You will spend today, and tomorrow, reading the Qur’an. Notes have been supplied for particular linguistic difficulties. You have at each desk a sheet which explains the doctrine of “naskh” or abrogation. Read all the Jihad verses assembled in the Calcutta Qur’an Petition.
Day Three:
Read Sura 5.32. Now read Sura 5.33. You have a handout that offers the Muslim view of the meaning of the phrase “There is no compulsion in religion,” which is taken from Sura 2.256. Read it carefully before class discussion.
Day Four:
The Hadith. Isnad. The problem of authenticity. Levels of authenticity. Bukhari. Muslim. The significance of the Sunnah to Muslims.
Day Five:
The life of Muhammad: Sirat al-Rasul. Ibn Ishaq. Other versions: Arthur Jeffery, Sir William Muir, Tor Andrae. The significance of Muhammad: 83% of the Qur’an and Hadith devoted to him; 17% to Allah. Muhammad as the Perfect Man: uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.
Banu Qurayza decapitations. Attack on the farmers of the Khaybar Oasis. Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak. Aisha. Why did the Ayatolah Khomeni, as virtually the first law of his regime, reduce the marriageable age of girls to Iran to nine years?
Day Six:
Muslim websites. Ask Mr. Fatwa. Islamonline. What is a “fatwa”? What does the phrase “And Allah knows best” mean? What is Haram? What is Halal? Why does Islam “command” the doing of certain things and “forbid” the doing of certain other things? What kinds of things are regulated by Islam? Provide a list of what Islam “forbids” and “commands” in the following categories: clothing, facial hair, personal hygiene, food, statuary, music, speech, lying, Infidels, Muslim children of Infidel parents, discussion of Islam with non-Muslims, the duty to spread Islam, instruments of Jihad. Be specific as to whether or not the relevant authority is to be found in the Qur’an, or the Hadith, or in the model of the Perfect Man, Muhammad.
What other sources of authority does Islam possess? Briefly describe them.
Day Seven:
A brief course in taqiyya.
This will consist of a mock-debate between the instructors, followed by a taking of questions from the audience of students, offering the full gamut of devices — highly selective quotation, insistence that non-Arabic speakers cannot “understand” the Qur’an, tu-quoque appeals — that fill those “Muslim-Christian” and “Muslim-Jewish” and other “dialogues” conducted in Muslim outreach sessions. One would go through the whole shtick, as veterans of the Borscht Belt might put it — including the “we all share the one Abrahamic faith” and “we all share monotheism” and “we respect Jesus and Moses as prophets.” Each of these misleading pseudo-statements can be taken apart — beginning, for example, with whether or not the “Jesus” or the “Moses” of Islam has anything to do with the Jesus or Moses of Christianity or Judaism, and pointing out that the inclusion of all the major figures and sites of the two prior monotheisms in Islam was an act of deliberate appropriation.
For Islam itself is a belief-system that was offered to justify and promote conquest by Muslims of much larger, more settled, wealthier, altogether more advanced populations of Christians and Jews in Mesopotamia, Syria, Judea, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. The conquests of Sassanian Persia, and later of the Hindus (and Buddhists) of India required other adjustments — including, in the end, treating the Hindus almost as “People of the Book” because there were simply too many of them to completely wipe out, and besides, the Muslim rulers wanted to keep them alive — as everywhere in the Muslim lands, it was the forced contributions from non-Muslims, the jizyah and kharaj, that paid for the Muslim state.
An hour presentation will be given — using virtually every trick, every bit of misrepresentation, every sly eliding of the truth — including, most obviously, the 1350 year history of Muslim Jihad-conquest and the imposition of dhimmitude.
Another feature of such an effort at mentally preparing INS agents (as well as innocent police, F.B.I. men, and others) would be to explain just how minor are the parts of Islam that get so much attention — essentially, Ramadan — which poses no threat, and is simply an element of individual worship. Because it involves families (Families! Family Values! Good Islamic Family Values!) and seems to be analogous to the observance of Lent by some Christians or the avoidance of pork by some Jews (and Muslim propaganda depends on the use of false but comforting analogies) it gets more attention than it should.
But that’s it. Beyond Ramadan, and those five canonical prayers, there is the whole world of Qur’an Sura 9, and throughout, more than a hundred mentions of Jihad — and 27 of qital, or combat.
There has to be set up, by the INS or the F.B.I. or the Pentagon, essentially an Academy of Muslim Propaganda, where non-Muslims well-versed in the techniques and even the precise plausible phrases (for they are used again and again by Muslim propagandists — or non-Muslims mindlessly repeating the propaganda) that non-Muslims will be exposed to will alert those non-Muslims to what is being done.
One has witnessed, in mosques, the damage that a single well-informed Infidel can do to a whole evening of propagandistic nonsense — simply by referring to Khaybar, or the Bani Qurayza, or Aisha, or mentioning the hadith (usually the hadith are never mentioned, nor the sira — the dumb Infidels are kept from learning about those).
All one has to do is properly inform oneself. And that goes not only for individuals, but for INS agents, F.B.I. agents, local police, journalists, and others. There is no justification, none, for not learning what is in Qur’an and hadith and sira — and learning not from apologists, but from the very best sources of all — including, most obviously, such scholars of Islamic history as Bat Ye’or and such ex-Muslims as Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, and Anwar Shaikh.
Yes, your work will be graded. But not by us.