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Raymond Ibrahim: The Specifics of Sharia’s Savageries

Jan 7, 2017 8:10 am By Raymond Ibrahim

Although Western media regularly claim no “motive” for many of the Islamic attacks on non-Muslims, many are by now at least vaguely aware that the Muslim perpetrators rely on generic Islamic teachings that foster hostility for non-Muslims.

Yet often overlooked are the very stringent and detailed Islamic rulings behind many terror attacks.

Take the recent attack on St. Peter’s Cathedral in Egypt, which left at least 25 Christian worshippers—the majority of whom were women and children—dead and which ISIS claimed. While many might write it off as just another generic attack targeting Coptic Christian “infidels,” the reality is that ISIS and other Islamic groups and individuals relied on arcane and little known Islamic rulings to justify their violence.

For instance, why was St. Peter’s specifically targeted?  The obvious answer is that it holds a prestigious place among the Coptic Orthodox community, as it stands within the St. Mark complex, the seat of the Coptic Pope in Cairo, Egypt’s capital.

Yet there is another reason. In November 2014, ISIS called on its Muslim followers and sympathizers to attack all churches in Cairo. Then, one Abu Mus‘ab al-Maqdisi, an ISIS leader, said in a statement that “It is necessary to take the battle to Cairo,” and for jihadis to target the Copts: “For targeting them, following them, and killing them is one of the main ways to serve the cause of our virtuous male and female hostages of the tyrants.”

A few months later, one Hussein bin Mahmoud, a jurist of Sharia law for the Islamic State, said in an article published on February 17, 2015, and appearing in various jihadi websites, that all Christian churches in Cairo must be demolished. Titled the “Ruling on Egypt’s Christians,” the article, written like a fatwa, asserts:

The ruling concerning the churches that are in Cairo is that they be destroyed, according to the consensus of the righteous forefathers, because they are new under Islam, and Cairo is a new city whose original inhabitants were Muslim; there were no churches in it previously.

As for churches in Upper Egypt, which may have been in existence before the Islamic conquest of Egypt, these may remain but may never be renovated or fixed.

All this is related to the mainstream Islamic view concerning non-Muslim places of worship: if they existed when Islam’s historic jihadis invaded the land, and if the native people surrendered peacefully, they may continue to exist (though never repaired); if, on the other hand, the native people resisted the invading Muslims, then all existing churches must be destroyed. In both cases, new churches are not allowed to be built.

As it happens, modern Cairo was founded in the 10th century, nearly 400 hundred years after Islam first invaded and conquered Coptic Egypt. Thus, according to the Islamic worldview, under no circumstances should there be any churches in Cairo, since, according to this notion, it was Islamic from its inception.

Hence one of the reasons why St. Peter’s in Cairo was chosen for bombing.

Such are the minute details and rulings that regularly inform the hostile worldview of ISIS and its millions of Muslim sympathizers.

But of course Western analysts may be excused for being ignorant of this arcane ruling. After all, if Sunni militants such as ISIS are zealous over the welfare of Sunni cities, most of them are equally ignorant of the ironic fact that Cairo—even Al Azhar, the world’s most famous Sunni school—were founded by and served the interests of one of Sunni Islam’s greatest historic enemies: the Shias of the Fatimid dynasty.

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Filed Under: Egypt, Muslim persecution of Christians, Sharia Tagged With: St. Mark's Cathedral, St. Peter's Cathedral


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Comments

  1. Larry says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 9:21 am

    Cairo as a city was established on the sight of the muslims military occupation camp for Egypt.

    As far as I’ve been able to ascertain there was never any pre muslim Egyptian settlement on that spot larger than a small village, if at all.

  2. Adrian says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 10:24 am

    This article should be required reading for all media, politicians and citizens

  3. Angemon says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 10:27 am

    While many might write it off as just another generic attack targeting Coptic Christian “infidels,” the reality is that ISIS and other Islamic groups and individuals relied on arcane and little known Islamic rulings to justify their violence.

    Not that, you know, this has anything to do with islam… /sarc. off

  4. ibrahim itace muhammed says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 11:22 am

    mr raymond ibrahim, it is good that you conced,unlike other writers and commentaters in this forum, that isis view or interpretation of islamic jihad is a little known ruling to justify attaks on places of worship belonging to non-muslims,especially christians and jews.that is,the isis holds a perverted and isolated view on islam as far as jihad war is concern.in one of my comments i stated that wahhabism, which yielded isis, is a revival of that rejected khawariji school of literal and perverted interpretation of islam. according to all recognised schools of interpretation of islam,both sunni and shia,christian and jewish places of worship shall not be attacked during jihad military confrontations, and christian priests and jewish rabbis shall not be harmed unless they carry arms confronting muslim fighters.this ruling by majority and acceptable muslim jurists was reached in the light of authentic prophetic tradition to that effect.assuming that isis issued their own fatwa that they are justified to attack churches, it has contradicted clear text of the hadith and therefore null and void with no effect. the question now is,can islam or all other muslims be condemned on the basis of this perverted and isolated teaching by isis?it is universally accepted rule of interpretation that isolated view will not be counted to judge a particular value system.but the policy at this forum insists that the isolated view like the one held by isis counts, and they flood this forum with references to quranic verses and hadiths which they misinterprete to back their stand. mr raymond ibrahim could do them a favor by telling that their misinterpretations are pervert like that of isis. thank you.

    • Karen says

      Jan 7, 2017 at 2:04 pm

      ISIS would destroy all Christian churches in one big action. Mainstream Islam would force them to die off slowly.

    • Phil says

      Jan 7, 2017 at 10:57 pm

      Dear ibrahim itace muhamed, You are saying what most of our American Muslims say to us infidels. That we should not worry about the horrific barbarity that is written in your Quran (because there is only one Quran for all Muslims) about us. We should trust you because you and most of the so called (by whose count though) 1.4 billion Muslims in the world do not want to kill and/or conquer us to bring us all under shariah law. If that were really the truth then with your help and all other Muslims that feel like you we would have defeated ISIS both in the middle east and in Europe and North America too. So please excuse me if I do not believe and trust you. If you go to your mosque every Friday then you and your fellow worshipers know of who are the so called radicalized imams and clerics and would side with us infidels to neutralize and/or eliminate them from our civilized spaces.

    • don vito says

      Jan 8, 2017 at 12:13 am

      itace, what you call isolated and perverted, we in the kufr community call a dot, as are you. You are a dot to be connected to all the other Islamic dots. The connecting of Islamic dots started after that pervert you call a prophet of alla, began robbing meccian trade caravans. What would keep a kufr’s blood, life, and property safe from the lying, thieving bloody hands of your filthy pervert prophet?

  5. somehistory says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    Thank you, once again, Mr. Ibrahim, for the in-depth information on the *motives* and *reasons* moslims use to justify the slaughter and destruction.

    Jesus said that satan came to “kill, steal and destroy.” satan uses his human children to do these things in our visible world.

    • Lukas says

      Jan 7, 2017 at 6:47 pm

      Amen

  6. mortimer says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    Ah…the good, old ‘PACT OF OMAR’ which always appears whenever pious MUSLIMS TAKE OVER and of which WESTERN ELITES are ENTIRELY and CLUELESSLY unaware.

    How much longer will our Western elites and Western church leaders remain UNAWARE and IGNORANT of the ‘PACT OF OMAR’ which DIRECTLY THREATENS ALL WESTERN COUNTRIES unless they WAKE UP?

  7. Lukas says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 6:47 pm

    What do you think for any people who assert this attacks were false flag (mostly they will blame the Israeli or the Western countries)?

    • marc says

      Jan 7, 2017 at 7:08 pm

      the muslims who widely spout that crap, but still celebrate the death of any infidel or the neo nazis who blame the joooz for everything regardless and end up siding with muslim who share their supremacist mindset? the later lot I keep well away from, they are poison.

      • Lukas says

        Jan 7, 2017 at 8:54 pm

        Yeah, most people who believe in such were muslims anyway, regardless of education (underlined) or symphatetic with muslims (Henry Makow is the example)

        Several of those so called conspiracy theories were absurd to the core. Example in my country, initially some of muslim clerics and politicians believe the 2002 Bali Bombings were false flag ops. To make it more mind boggling, they claimed the bombs were actually a mini nuclear device!

        • marc says

          Jan 7, 2017 at 10:03 pm

          I don’t think the muslims who call false flag on attacks belive it, just part of the takiya game, the same lot all know the koran and hadiths say mohammed’s first wife was 6, but deny their own scripture when talking to an infidel.
          Never heard that about any “mini nuclear device”, that is a funny one, planted by mossad no doubt.

  8. Kathy Brown, Esq. says

    Jan 7, 2017 at 11:40 pm

    Look: Even if muslims who seek to emigrate to the West were NEVER violent, they still should never be admitted. That is because they oppose the very foundations of our culture, and they are of NO benefit to us.

    Pedophilia, oppression of women, suppression of free speech: These disgusting tenets fly in the face of our system of government. Not to mention cruelty to animals; and a complete intolerance of differences in opinion on religious/political thought.

    Immigration is, first and foremost, supposed to benefit the host nation. Before any individual/group is permitted to come here, the authorities should ask this question: ‘How will this benefit our country?’ There are NO circumstances under which anyone or anything islamic, is a ‘plus’ to us.

  9. ibrahim itace muhammed says

    Jan 8, 2017 at 1:52 am

    mr kathy brown,you are saying muslims should not be in your free christian west so as not disturb your women freedom to have sex like pigs and donkeys, and not clean their private parts after sex, clean blood of menses,for male to have foreskins full of maggots.we are not saying so.you can continue with your beast way of life.note,there are filthy christians doing the same in the muslim world, and not one disturb them not do so except in perverted and isolated isis controlled areas.we are now fighting gallantly to get rid of isis.the principle in islam is that you conduct your own beast way of life and allow muslims to conduct their descent way of life.it will not affect or derail your choice of freedom to behave the way you feel suits you. however, mr brown, you have no right whatsoever to claim monopoly over the soils in the west,because it not you or your foreparents who created the them there.it was created by god.when he created it he did not say you are the only people with beast way of life to stay there.did he tell you that?or did he tell you that no one with descent way of life should stay there?if he did, let us have proof.afterall, your foreparents met the soils there, some uninhabited by humans and some inhabited by humans and your foreparents erased them in compliance with samuel15:3 and other verses of genocide in the bible.

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