“There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent. So beware of the deception of those with the capital. And with your earnest reading about Islam from its pristine sources, you will arrive at an important truth, which is that the religion of all of the Prophets (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them) is one, and that its essence is submission to the orders of Allah Alone in all aspects of life, even if their Shari”ahs [Laws] differ.” — from the speech of Osama Bin Laden
In the crazy hodge-podge that makes up his Invitation to Islam (to be followed by an Invitation to a Beheading) Osama Bin Laden has decided to appeal to the low-tax voters, liberatarians, ronpaulites, admirers of dinesh d’souza. Bizarre, of course.
Muslims traditionally have lived off the non-Muslims in the lands they conquered. Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus paid the Jizyah. In India after tens of millions of Hindus had been killed, the Mughal rulers ceased to engage in such wholesale slaughter. And also, once they had a sufficient local population of Hindus who had been forcibly converted — out of fear, out of a desire to avoid the miserable condition of dhimmi (or zimmi) — they allowed the Hindus to be treated as if they were People of the Book, and remain alive so long as they fulfilled the duties of a dhimmi. In that way the Muslim rulers could continue to live on the Jizyah paid by these “zimmis.”
They also relied, when full-scale military conquest of Infidel territory was no longer possible, on constant raiding parties, up and down the coasts of Europe, even as far as Ireland or, in one case, Iceland. They looted, they killed, they kidnapped non-Muslims and brought them back to be enslaved. In the west, as well as in the east, raiding parties would seize Slavs (hence “slaves”) and also Georgian and Circassian women for the harems.
And now Muslim states exist either on the manna of oil wealth, which they did nothing to deserve and which is merely the result of an accident of geology. Or, where oil is lacking, they exist on the disguised Jizyah of aid from Infidel states (instead of other, but rich, Muslim states). And within much of Dar al-Harb, the Lands of the Infidels where Islam does not yet rule, many Muslims have settled and taken every conceivable advantage, legal and illegal, of the extensive benefits offered by the generous, and innocent, states of Western Europe — and indeed, raise huge families on those benefits paid for by Infidel taxpayers, while those Infidels, given the expense in Western Europe of raising a child, and the widespread unsettlement and unrecognized apprehension over this same growing Muslim population, have fewer and fewer children themselves. And thus demographic conquest by Muslims continues, unopposed and indeed inadvertently supported by Western welfare states.
“No taxes”? Ask once the Infidels cease paying the Jizyah, or that oil ceases to be quite so abundant. Then the Muslim states will undoubtedly return to the condition of wretchedness that they were in when the Infidels did not supply, as they have for the past century at least, good government, stability, encouragement of agriculture (see the Maghreb, see Egypt under Cromer), the rule of law, and all the other things that allowed economic development and that will not take place, cannot take place, under Muslim rule — insofar as those Muslims remain devotees of inshallah-fatalism.
Just look at the Muslim oil states. They have received ten trillion dollars, entirely without any effort on their part, since 1973 alone. What have they done with it? They remain hopelessly dependent on armies of foreign wage-slaves. They have failed to create modern, self-sustaining economies. They live on oil, and on the rents from oil. They produce nothing. They offer no services. They do not share their wealth with other, poorer Muslims, but always expect the Infidels to support those other Muslims — and the Infidels, so far, have been insanely happy to oblige.
“There are no taxes in Islam…”
Osama Bin Laden will apparently try anything. Go ahead. Read His Lips. Give him your vote. Show how impressive you found his campaign speech for the Islam Party, its workers tirelessly treading the True and Shining Path, the sendero luminoso, fi sabil Allah.