Title: Does Islam Breed Violence? (An Iranian-Born American's View) Source:
FaithFreedomOrg URL Source:http://faithfreedom.org/islam/does-islam-breed-violence Published:Nov 14, 2009 Author:Amil Amani Post Date:2009-12-03 22:32:29 by Liberator Keywords:Islam, Bloody, Muslim, Cult Views:59100 Comments:650
There is a division of the house. On one side are the politically correct in government, the leftist mainstream media, and a raft of Islamist apologists. One and all are tripping over each other in reassuring us that the mass murderers such as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and suicide bombers who detonate their explosive vests in crowded marketplaces and even mosques are individual anomalies and Islam is not responsible for what they do.
On the other hand are those who have been fed up with the numberless daily horrific acts that are clearly committed under the banner of Islam throughout the world. In all fairness, there needs to be a distinction. Numerous criminal acts are also committed, on a daily basis, by non-Muslims. The critical difference is that non-Muslim criminals do not hoist a religious banner to justify their misdeeds, while the Muslims proudly claim that they commit their heinous acts in obedience to the dictates of their religious faith.
Would someone, please, explain what motivated Nidal Hasan who had been, at tax payer’s expense, educated from college all the way through medical school and post medical-school training, to turn his deadly weapons against a nation that gave him everything he had?
If Islam had nothing to do with what Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan did, why:
* had he repeatedly preached the ascendancy of Islam to the U.S. Constitution?
* had he publicly supported Islamic suicide bombing?
* had he proclaimed his highest loyalty to Islam?
* had he been in contact with violent anti-U.S. Islamists and a virulent Yemeni Imam?
* did he distribute copies of the Quran to people the morning of his bloody attack?
* did he keep screaming “Allah-o-Akbar” as he heartlessly sprayed over a hundred bullets, killing thirteen and injuring some thirty innocent men and women?
Here is the truth, as bitter as it may be. Islam is the culprit. Islam is anything but a religion of peace. Violence is at the very core of Islam. Violence is institutionalized in the Muslim’s holy book, the Quran, in many suras:
Qur'an:9:5 "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."
Qur'an:9:112 "The Believers fight in Allah's cause; they slay and are slain, kill and are killed."
Qur'an:8:39 "So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world)."
Qur'an:8:65 "O Prophet, urge the faithful to fight. If there are twenty among you with determination they will vanquish two hundred; if there are a hundred then they will slaughter a thousand unbelievers, for the infidels are a people devoid of understanding."
Qur'an:9:38 "Believers, what is the matter with you, that when you are asked to go forth and fight in Allah's Cause you cling to the earth? Do you prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter? Unless you go forth, He will afflict and punish you with a painful doom, and put others in your place."
Qur'an:47:4 "When you clash with the unbelieving Infidels in battle (fighting Jihad in Allah's Cause), smite their necks until you overpower them, killing and wounding many of them. At length, when you have thoroughly subdued them, bind them firmly, making (them) captives. Thereafter either generosity or ransom (them based upon what benefits Islam) until the war lays down its burdens. Thus are you commanded by Allah to continue carrying out Jihad against the unbelieving infidels until they submit to Islam."
And the Quran is considered by Muslims as the word-for-word literal edicts of the Muslims’ god, Allah.
Right from the start, violence served as the engine of Islam under the command and supervision of Muhammad himself. For one, the Prophet’s son-in-law cousin, Ali, was titled the Commander of the Faithful for his unsurpassed feats of butchery. Ali with the assistance of one or two of his thugs, beheaded some seven hundred captives, most of them Jews, in only one day. This man, highly esteemed by the prophet of Allah, had a sword that had its own name—Zolfaghar. Ali’s portrait, holding the menacing sword, adorns the homes and shops throughout Shi’a’-lands. And this man, Ali, is revered by the Shi’a at the same level as Muhammad.
On the Sunni side, Muhammad’s co-revered is Umar, another unabashed killer of untold numbers. And of course the choice weapon of these champions of the religion of peace was the sword. And to this day, a sword adorns the flag of the birthplace of the religion of peace, Saudi Arabia.
And Islam, by the nature of its very doctrine, appeals to man’s base nature. It promotes intolerance, hatred, discrimination, and much more:
Qur'an:61:2 "O Muslims, why say one thing and do another? Grievously odious and hateful is it in the sight of Allah that you say that which you do not. Truly Allah loves those who fight in His Cause in a battle array, as if they were a solid cemented structure."
In reality, Islam is like a deadly contagious disease. Once it invades the mind of its victim, this debilitating disease is capable of transforming him to a helpless pawn that has no choice but to execute what he is directed to do.
Of the reported 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, millions are already trapped in the terminal stages of this affliction while millions of others are rapidly joining them. The people enslaved with the extreme cases of Islamic mental disease are highly infectious. They actively work to transmit the disease to others, while they themselves engage in horrific acts of mayhem and violence to demonstrate their unconditional obedience to the dictates of the Islamic cult of violence.
The savagery and variety of the actions of these Islamic captives are seen daily around the globe. Many of these acts, committed under the banner of Islam, have become so commonplace that the world has come to view them as the normal part and parcel of a troubled humanity. And, from time-to-time, the world is shocked into a passing and momentary realization of the evil deeds these Islamist robots commit and quickly gets over it and does nothing to seriously address this affliction of humanity.
The recent dastardly mass murder at Fort Hood, committed by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be forgotten by the public before very long. Life will continue on its deadly course, pushed along in a variety of ways by agents of death, Islamists. Only the families who lost their loved-ones and those who survived the bullets have to live the rest of their lives with incapacitating injuries, in the main, won’t be able to put the episode behind them.
The mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan did not riddle people with bullets under the pressure of momentary insanity. The insanity, ironically, in a man who was trained to help people with sanity was introduced in him from the moment of birth and from the very early years when he prostrated himself five times daily toward Mecca in expression of total submission to the dogma of hate called Islam.
Islam is a mental retrovirus that has mutated into numerous varieties and degrees of severity, over the past 1400 years. Everyone born in a Muslim family, as well as those who convert to Islam, contract a particular mutation of the Islamic Virus. As is the case with all retroviruses, the Islamic Virus burrows deeply in the person and erupts, from time-to-time with potentially devastating consequences.
The Islamic Virus first divests the person of his most fundamental human attribute. It takes away his right to make decisions himself and absolves him, in return, of any responsibility for his actions rendered in blind obedience to it.
A true Muslim does not and cannot believe in freedom of choice. In the religion of Islam—Submission—everything is up to Allah, as clearly and repeatedly stipulated in the Quran .The Raison d'être for the Muslim is to be an unconditional submissive to the will and dictates of Allah. Everything that a “good” Muslim does is contingent upon the will and decree of Allah, he is indoctrinated to believe.
Humanity is facing a deeply troubling dilemma. On the one hand is the desire of enlightened people whose aim it is to forge a world of diverse people into one universal society ruled by peace and justice for everyone while, on the other hand, Islamists are hell-bent on imposing their stone-age system on everyone. Tellingly, the Muslims themselves are at one another’s throat regarding which of dozens of Islamic sects’ dogma should rule.
For now, Islam is busy with what it did from the time of its birth, fighting the non-Muslims and infighting.
Truth be told: Violence is the animating force of Islam. Islam is a religion born through violence, raised by violence, thrives on violence and dies without violence.
Author's Bio:
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He and his family escaped Iran after the radical Islamic revolution.
I suspect that the debate could continue forever and never be settled.
Whether Islam breeds violence as an intentional meme or not, one thing is certain. A lot of very violent people use Islam to justify their own violent tendencies. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of passages that they themselves may cite on occasion which back up their own violent tendencies.
I suspect however that any large group of unemployed young men sitting idle in the desert most of their lives, under the reign of despots and tyrants, who cannot find a good purpose in life due to denied opportunity, will turn to the best port in the storm so to speak. In this case, it's Islam. The problem is that being unemployed, poor, hungry, unable to control your fate and generally screwed societally leads most young men to some kind of embrace of violence. Were Christianity the prevalent religion in the middle east, I suspect that the violence levels would be the same, if all other factors were the same.
There were no shortages of recruits for the first few Crusades during the Dark Ages after all, where young European men suffered along the same lines.
Islam as a faith seems rather revolting to me, and it certainly doesn't preach much of a peaceful message. I believe it was Hitler himself who lamented that he had to whip up a mostly Christian society into a war fervor and wished he had Islam to work with instead (I'll need to find that quote, sure I've seen it though).
Dunno. Again, seems like poverty, oppression and young male testosterone is a dangerous combination regardless of the tenants of faith one follows.
I suspect however that any large group of unemployed young men sitting idle in the desert most of their lives, under the reign of despots and tyrants, who cannot find a good purpose in life due to denied opportunity, will turn to the best port in the storm so to speak. In this case, it's Islam.
Actually the most notorious jihadists, including the key leaders of the 911 hijackings, were upper middle class and well-educated.
And if we were talking about the hijackers, you'd have contributed to the conversation I was having. I suspect that the hijackers were not the only knuckleheads to engage in violence for Islam. Please try to stay on topic.
I suspect however that any large group of unemployed young men sitting idle in the desert most of their lives, under the reign of despots and tyrants, who cannot find a good purpose in life due to denied opportunity, will turn to the best port in the storm so to speak. In this case, it's Islam.
Actually the most notorious jihadists, including the key leaders of the 911 hijackings, were upper middle class and well-educated
And if we were talking about the hijackers, you'd have contributed to the conversation I was having. I suspect that the hijackers were not the only knuckleheads to engage in violence for Islam
What you "suspect" is not borne out by statements of people who actually have knowledge of the situation.
Anybody from Saudi Arabia ("the desert") who wants to participate in jihad must travel hundreds of miles to another country, and someone needs to pay these expenses. Furthermore Saudi Arabia imports workers like Filipinos and Shi'ites to do the more menial work because the Saudis think it's beneath them. If Saudis are unemployed it's by choice, and even those are from families who are not impoverished.
...it would be wise to hold off on enshrining as common wisdom the belief that madrassas are the main producers of nascent mujahideen. The first lies in some recent academic work. Marc Sageman, in his excellent book Understanding Terrorist Networks (Philadelphia, 2004), and Robert Pape, in his equally outstanding study Dying to Win (New York, 2005), demonstrate that few of the non-indigenous Islamist fighters the West is encountering in the Iraq and Afghan insurgencies are the products of madrassas. Both Sageman and Pape show that these fighters are, more often than not, young men educated in areas beyond the strictly religious studies that dominate the madrassas' curriculum. Many have studied sciences and engineering and hail from stable, middle-class families. In short, Sageman, Pape and a few other analysts have concluded after extensive research and statistical study that the largest number of foreign fighters who travel to participate in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are not madrassa graduates. (NB: The exception to this conclusion is Pakistan, where it seems likely that madrassas produce the majority of Pakistanis who join the Afghan insurgency.)
You're creating an argument out of thin air in order to argue (we used to call that creating a straw man).
The question was about Islam. I answered fairly and it reflects the situation for the average, in my estimation. You're trying to drum up a straw man about hijackers. I'm talking about the average guy sitting on the dust road in the desert. Two different scenarios. Of course religious fundamentalism can occur at any social strata, which was never in question.
Or is criticism of anything Islam forbidden now? Not that I offered much criticism of it, more rather, of the situation of a lot of guys sitting in the middle east.
If you want to make the case that Islam is inherently violent and evil, that's your issue, not mine.
The question was about Islam. I answered fairly and it reflects the situation for the average, in my estimation. You're trying to drum up a straw man about hijackers. I'm talking about the average guy sitting on the dust road in the desert. Two different scenario
I think you will find with most belief systems that people who are struggling to survive are too busy trying to survive to play major roles in the group's activities. People who are comfortable, but have higher aspirations take the leadership roles, and their followers are those who have just given up.
Maybe that's what you were getting at anyway.
Or is criticism of anything Islam forbidden now? Not that I offered much criticism of it, more rather, of the situation of a lot of guys sitting in the middle east.
A number of different studies have concluded that the profile of an international jihadi is a fairly well-educated young male, for what that is worth. People joining activities in their own back yard may come from a wider social strata than the internationalists.
If you want to make the case that Islam is inherently violent and evil, that's your issue, not mine.
It certainly has militant elements to it, however I consider that is in reaction to things that were done to certain people before Mohammed even existed.