At Least 80% U.S. Mosques Promote Violent Jihad
By Greg Hengler
TownHall.com
Three primary points are usually left out of the
Islamic discussion. The central problem with most
Islamic analysis is that it underestimates the
weight of the moral and intellectual chains imposed
on Islam by its founder and his early followers.
First, the most irrational, violent, and intolerant
chapters in the Koran--the "Verse of the Sword" (Sura
9:5), most notably--were "revealed" in Medina, late
in Muhammad's life, after the ones potentially
amenable, and therefore they abrogate the earlier
chapters. Allah's order to "kill the unbelievers
wherever you find them" is an injunction, not a
suggestion. "When we destroy a population," Allah
says, "then we destroy them utterly" (17:16-17).
Such words are as unamenable to rationalist
disambiguation as the order to "fight those who do
not profess the true faith till they pay the jiziya
(poll tax) with the hand of humility."
Second, Islamic debate underestimates the weight of
Muhammad's personal legacy. The problem of Islam
lies to a significant extent in the claim of its
prophet that his words and acts provide the
universally valid standard. The
Hadith--Muhammad's words and deeds, as
supposedly recorded by his contemporaries, which
must be obeyed by every true Muslim--contain huge
stumbling blocks for a would-be Aquinas in Cairo.
The Koran is to be recited, the prophet of Islam
declares, not subjected to analytical study by a
reasoning mind: "Whoever so interprets the Quran
according to his opinion, let him seek his abode in
the fire."
Third, Muhammad invented jihad
in his lifetime; Islam was spread by
jihad in its first century,
and it has been defined by jihad
ever since. Islam had developed a doctrine, legal
system, and historical practice of mandatory
violence against nonbelievers many decades before
the Mu'tazilite thinkers (believed Allah was
accessible to rational thought and inquiry) were
born. Muhammad's early followers adopted bloodshed
and terrorism as a divinely ordained method. The
Jews of the Old Testament exterminated non-Jews in
the name of their God, but they did so on specific
commandment against specified enemies. To the Muslim
warriors, the command was open-ended for the outset.
Attempts to "reform" Islam has been tried before.
Those who attempt to unveil a more rational variety
of the Islamic faith are seen as belonging to Islam
as much as Voltaire belongs to Christianity. A
redirected Islam of a reform nature would no longer
be Islam. For the majority of Muslims in America and
throughout the world, any such attempt is considered
as heretical today as it was at its foundation.
Thus, we have what we got here in this study: strict
orthodoxy to the teachings of Muhammad from the
"religion of peace" here in the good ol' U.S. of A.