slam is a divinely inspired (via the Qur'an) culture of death. In no other cultural construct is death a more revered and desirable part of life. Whether it is the killing of infidels who refuse to accept Islam's supremacy, or dying while endeavoring to kill them, death is fanatically embraced by Muslims. The mujahideen are not brave for their robotic resolution in carrying out their Islamikaze missions. They are merely brainwashed cowards who have come to believe that they are serving God and will be rewarded in the afterlife with pleasures of the flesh. It's really quite sordid if you think about it. They're not courageous. They love death. They're raised from infancy to hold death for God--at any age--as life's highest ideal.
Islam also exaggerates the psychological concept of in-group/out-group bias to an amazing extent. The out-group (non-Muslims) is not only marginalized in the Islamic mind, but is actually seen as an inferior category of subhumans who should be killed if they refuse to convert to Islam or to acknowledge its superiority. It's a hyperxenophobia. We all exercise the mental dichotomy of us/them, but most of us here in the democratic West have come to accept that just because people don't conform exactly to our belief systems, does not mean that they should be exempted from our compassion, empathy, and consideration. Here in America, through much struggling over time, we have built a solid, free society out of a vast, eclectic plurality. The fascistic, intolerant dogma of Islam leaves room only for the second-class citizenship of dhimmitude when it comes to kuffar (non-Muslims/infidels). That's what the book says, and the book is not to be questioned.
This is not to say that all of Islam should be scrapped. Like any religion, it has much of value to offer its adherents and mankind in general. But that's only if it's severed from its central tenets of hateful intolerance, brutal repression and totalitarianism, irrational arrogance, and obsession with killing and dying in God's name. That's not going to happen until Islam undergoes a drastic, fundamental reformation. To achieve that, Muslims will have to abandon the idea that the Qur'an is the infallible word of God, which would be to contravene the very foundation of Islam. And I don't think that's going to happen. As much as I'd like to be proven wrong, I really don't see much reason to hope.
So, in the meantime, we are locked in bitter enmity with people who have as their spiritual inspiration, (literally interpreted) verses like this:
- Of the believers are men who are true to that which they covenanted with Allah. Some of them have paid their vow by death (in battle), and some of them still are waiting; and they have not altered in the least. -Qur'an 33:22
- Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you [infidels] worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says:-- "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master." -Bukhari Vol 4, Bk 53, No 386
- Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur'an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme. -Qur'an 9:111
- I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "The example of a Mujahid in Allah's Cause-- and Allah knows better who really strives in His Cause----is like a person who fasts and prays continuously. Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty." -Bukhari Vol 4, Bk 52, No 46
- Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world's life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward. -Qur'an 4:74
- ...the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Nobody who enters Paradise will (ever like to) return to this world even if he were offered everything on the surface of the earth (as an inducement) except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed ten times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him. -Muslim Bk 20, No 4636
They kill women, children, and the elderly because they think it pleases their God. What sort of monster of a deity would be pleased at such depravity? The Holocaust survivors who are blown to pieces on buses in Jerusalem by Arab terrorist cowards; the Americans who leaped hundreds of feet to their death after Al Qaeda scum flew planes into the buildings they were in; the schoolchildren who were mowed down like so much human grass by the Chechen mujahideen: they all loved life, and I could never believe that any sort of good and just God would take pleasure in their murder.
I well know that not all Muslims engage in these reprehensible acts. I am not condemning Muslims, the people (although I certainly condemn the man who has already killed in his heart or with his hand, in the name of Islam). I am criticizing Islam, the unreformed, violent, and hateful politicoreligious death cult. There's a difference. The very few moderate voices in Islam are always drowned out by the mainstream, or by a bullet, or a knife. Death for blaspheming God's religion.
While we prosecute our soldiers for putting a pair of women's underwear on the head of Saddam's fedayeen to take an immature picture, "God's soldiers" of Islam respect the pride of innocent kuffar civilians they've captured--before sawing their heads off to the empty, droning declaration of "God is great!" While we take great pains on the battlefield to respect our own lives and the lives of noncombatants, the mujahideen love death. Their lives mean nothing to them, nor do the lives of any civilians who get in the way of their mission from God.
We love life. To love life is natural and good. To discount life's worth is aberrant and vile. We've spent enormous amounts of blood, treasure, and mental energy in broad efforts throughout the West's history to preserve and respect life. For those of us who are faithful, life is a precious and irreplaceable gift from our creator. We honor it, cherish it, and look for new ways to improve it and extend it. All of Western civilization is a living testament to how very highly we regard life. And when someone comes along who wants to treat our lives with the same pathological indifference with which they treat their own, we are obligated to destroy them and/or their ability to threaten us; even as we endeavor to minimize that destruction within reasonable bounds.
The mujahideen have come to mock and exploit our love of life, in their perverse delusions of godly purpose. But they have underestimated our willingness to kill them en masse if we need to. They love death. Let them have death.
originally posted at Clarity & Resolve
copyright 2004 Patrick D. O'Brien cannot be copied, published, or otherwise used (except for brief quotes) without express permission of author
We Love Life
So said the voice speaking Arabic, with a Moroccan accent on a videotape retrieved from a waste basket near Madrid's main mosque and morgue (how very apt). This was in the wake of the horrific train bombings in Spain last spring, after a man with an Arab accent called in to TV channel TeleMadrid with instructions on where to look for the tape.
Ostensibly, this message was a ploy to influence Spain's presidential elections (a ploy that would prove to be successful). But there is a more sinister and profound message in this disembodied warning to the infidels from Islam's holy warriors: it is yet another explicit avowal (we still don't get it, do we?) of Islam's sanguine nature. It is the love of death in God's name, whether it is the ignominious murder of the infidel or the glorious death of the shahid (martyr). It is the spread of God's domain--dar al-Islam--through the violence of offensive jihad. And it is the perverse diminution of what we here in the West hold to be most dear: the sanctity of life.
slam is a divinely inspired (via the Qur'an) culture of death. In no other cultural construct is death a more revered and desirable part of life. Whether it is the killing of infidels who refuse to accept Islam's supremacy, or dying while endeavoring to kill them, death is fanatically embraced by Muslims. The mujahideen are not brave for their robotic resolution in carrying out their Islamikaze missions. They are merely brainwashed cowards who have come to believe that they are serving God and will be rewarded in the afterlife with pleasures of the flesh. It's really quite sordid if you think about it. They're not courageous. They love death. They're raised from infancy to hold death for God--at any age--as life's highest ideal.
Islam also exaggerates the psychological concept of in-group/out-group bias to an amazing extent. The out-group (non-Muslims) is not only marginalized in the Islamic mind, but is actually seen as an inferior category of subhumans who should be killed if they refuse to convert to Islam or to acknowledge its superiority. It's a hyperxenophobia. We all exercise the mental dichotomy of us/them, but most of us here in the democratic West have come to accept that just because people don't conform exactly to our belief systems, does not mean that they should be exempted from our compassion, empathy, and consideration. Here in America, through much struggling over time, we have built a solid, free society out of a vast, eclectic plurality. The fascistic, intolerant dogma of Islam leaves room only for the second-class citizenship of dhimmitude when it comes to kuffar (non-Muslims/infidels). That's what the book says, and the book is not to be questioned.
This is not to say that all of Islam should be scrapped. Like any religion, it has much of value to offer its adherents and mankind in general. But that's only if it's severed from its central tenets of hateful intolerance, brutal repression and totalitarianism, irrational arrogance, and obsession with killing and dying in God's name. That's not going to happen until Islam undergoes a drastic, fundamental reformation. To achieve that, Muslims will have to abandon the idea that the Qur'an is the infallible word of God, which would be to contravene the very foundation of Islam. And I don't think that's going to happen. As much as I'd like to be proven wrong, I really don't see much reason to hope.
So, in the meantime, we are locked in bitter enmity with people who have as their spiritual inspiration, (literally interpreted) verses like this:
They kill women, children, and the elderly because they think it pleases their God. What sort of monster of a deity would be pleased at such depravity? The Holocaust survivors who are blown to pieces on buses in Jerusalem by Arab terrorist cowards; the Americans who leaped hundreds of feet to their death after Al Qaeda scum flew planes into the buildings they were in; the schoolchildren who were mowed down like so much human grass by the Chechen mujahideen: they all loved life, and I could never believe that any sort of good and just God would take pleasure in their murder.
I well know that not all Muslims engage in these reprehensible acts. I am not condemning Muslims, the people (although I certainly condemn the man who has already killed in his heart or with his hand, in the name of Islam). I am criticizing Islam, the unreformed, violent, and hateful politicoreligious death cult. There's a difference. The very few moderate voices in Islam are always drowned out by the mainstream, or by a bullet, or a knife. Death for blaspheming God's religion.
While we prosecute our soldiers for putting a pair of women's underwear on the head of Saddam's fedayeen to take an immature picture, "God's soldiers" of Islam respect the pride of innocent kuffar civilians they've captured--before sawing their heads off to the empty, droning declaration of "God is great!" While we take great pains on the battlefield to respect our own lives and the lives of noncombatants, the mujahideen love death. Their lives mean nothing to them, nor do the lives of any civilians who get in the way of their mission from God.
We love life. To love life is natural and good. To discount life's worth is aberrant and vile. We've spent enormous amounts of blood, treasure, and mental energy in broad efforts throughout the West's history to preserve and respect life. For those of us who are faithful, life is a precious and irreplaceable gift from our creator. We honor it, cherish it, and look for new ways to improve it and extend it. All of Western civilization is a living testament to how very highly we regard life. And when someone comes along who wants to treat our lives with the same pathological indifference with which they treat their own, we are obligated to destroy them and/or their ability to threaten us; even as we endeavor to minimize that destruction within reasonable bounds.
The mujahideen have come to mock and exploit our love of life, in their perverse delusions of godly purpose. But they have underestimated our willingness to kill them en masse if we need to. They love death. Let them have death.
originally posted at Clarity & Resolve
copyright 2004 Patrick D. O'Brien cannot be copied, published, or otherwise used (except for brief quotes) without express permission of author
Posted by Patrick at December 10, 2004 07:29 PM