The Real War

If the news report from The Australian is accurate (I cannot find the same information in the Jerusalem Post) it suggests that the Israelis are getting serious, deadly serious. Moreover, the European response to the move against Gaza has been muted. In fact, in the midst of the crisis Germany has lifted restrictions on the sale of armored cars to Israel.

Perhaps the West is beginning to understand the reality of Hamas. It is not as if they have worked to keep it a secret. Rather many westerners prefer to bury their heads in the ground. When they see Hamas members of the Palestinain Parliament chanting: “Allah is our target, the Prophet is our model, the Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of our wishes,” they are doing nothing more than repeating the “slogan” of the movement that appears in Article Eight of the Hamas Covenant.

The Hamas Covenant, readily available in English at a variety of locations on the web including the Avalon Project site of Yale University, is worth reading. If you read it you will come face-to-face with the reality of a movement committed to jihad as the means to eliminate Israel. Moreover, the charter provides us with an insight into the mentality of those who give their allegiance to Hamas. For example, the charter repeats an oft-quoted Hadith that demonstrates that hatred of the Jews runs so deep that even trees and rocks are raving anti-Semites.

The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

The Covenant is also clear about Hamas’s view of peaceful solutions, negotiation, and international involvement. Article Thirteen reads:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know."

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. [My emphasis]

Article Seventeen is another eye-opener. In a section addressed to Muslim women and the importance of their role, the Covenant cautions againstmembeship in myriad organizations secretly committed to defeating the Islamic movement. The organizations are filled with “lackeys”:

infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the concepts that would serve the enemy. These organizations operate in the absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.

Perhaps it is just me, but I know some Rotarians and I find it impossible to believe that their organization is a Zionist front. In fact, when I last spoke to the Rotary Club I asked if there was a Jewish member in the audience. There was not. In fact, the president informed me that they didn’t even have a Jewish member.

You do not need the Media to tell you about Hamas. Read the Covenant for yourself. Read the examples of the mindset of the movement. Read about their goals. Read about their commitment to jihad. It is all there in black and white, and in English.

Posted by Mike Palmer at 11:05 | Permalink | Comments   

Yesterday, 29 June 2006, I came across this question posed to the editors of Arab News, the Saudi English language daily (on line edition) under the heading “Baseless Campaign against Islam.” The writer, Sami, asked: “Nowadays Islam is under so much assault with some non-Muslim saying that it is not a peaceful religion. Could you quote some verses in the Qur’an that would convince others of how baseless this whole smear campaign against Islam is?”

As I read on, I fully expected the reply to list what the writer asked for—namely a listing of the ayas (verses) that attest to the peaceful aspects of the Qur’an. But the Arab News response, from Adil Salahi, who writes on religious topics for the Arab News and who is also a biographer of the Prophet Muhammad, took me by surprise. Salahi wrote:

Thank you for your message that shows that you are a person who does not accept what is said without questioning its truth. This is the mark of an intelligent person. What you have been told about Islam and the Qur’an is certainly untrue. It is the word of someone who either does not know what he is talking about, or someone whose grudge against Islam blinds him to the truth. It is as the saying goes: The proof of the pudding is in the eating. You only need to open the Qur’an and read to realize that what it calls for is peace, not war. Besides, the Qur’an is not Muhammad’s book; it is God’s book. A person who wants to know what the Qur’an says should start with an objective outlook and read it, seeking some help where he finds difficulty.

I suppose we would agree that if we have it on highly reliable authority that Beethoven stated that he did not write one of the best symphonies the world attributes to him, we need no further proof to strike it off the list of his musical works. Similarly, if we have a reliable statement by Shakespeare that he did not write Hamlet or King Lear, we can no longer attribute that play to him. The Prophet has always maintained that he did not write or compose the Qur’an, which is universally agreed to be a book of surpassing literary excellence. Yet Muhammad’s own statements, which we know to be his, are also superb. So, how can anyone attribute the Qur’an to Muhammad when he has repeatedly disclaimed any part in its authorship? Besides, the Qur’an provides numerous proofs that its only author is God Almighty. These begin with its style, which is unlike any human writing, and include its subject matter and different statements.

The Qur’an certainly speaks about war and jihad. But when we take all statements in the Qur’an about war, and also take into consideration the circumstances prevailing at the time of the revelation of each, and relate this to the final statements, we are bound to have a firm conviction that war in Islam is a defensive one. But we have to add here that its being defensive does not mean that Muslims must wait until they are attacked before taking to arms. It means that they may take measures to remove the threat of aggression.

I do not wish to go into what the Bible says about war, but you undoubtedly realize that human beings often resort to war without justification. You only need to look at what the US and UK have been doing over the last couple of years to realize this. Hence, a religion that provides a code of living, as Islam does must address the possibility of war. The Qur’an certainly does so, and the code it provides is more civilized than any in the whole history of humanity, even in our modern times.

Perhaps Mr. Salahi did not include the entirety of Sami’s question, because the answer addresses issues that do not appear to have been asked. But what struck me was Salahi’s determination, instead of providing Sami and the Arab News’s readership with a recounting of the Qur’an’s ayas related to peace, to offer instead a justification for jihad. Salahi points out that in Islam war is a “defensive” undertaking, but, he cautions Sami, Muslims do not have to wait “until they are attacked before taking to arms.”

Apparently preemption is not solely a doctrine of the Bush administration.

Posted by Mike Palmer at 16:21 | Permalink | Comments