The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS
Page 40
In the British town of Rotherham, Muslim gangs brutalized, sexually assaulted, and raped over fourteen hundred young British girls, while authorities remained extremely reluctant to say or do anything in response, for fear of being labeled racist.110
Yet hardly anything was being said about this. In the summer of 2016, Krystyna Pawłowicz, a member of the Polish parliament, charged German authorities with attempting to “cover up the crimes of their Arab guests, or even shift the blame upon themselves.”111 There was also evidence that migrant crimes were being covered up in the Netherlands and Sweden as well.112
These cover-ups apparently proceeded from a fear that non-Muslims would begin to have negative views of Islam; yet the sexual assaults did have to do with Islam. The Qur’an dictates that a Muslim man may have sexual relations with the “captives of the right hand,” that is, captured non-Muslim women (4:3; 4:24; 23:1–6; 33:50; 70:30). The Qur’an also says that women should veil themselves so that they may not be molested (33:59), with the implication being that if they are not veiled, they may indeed be molested.
The Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, on the forefront of resistance to the jihad for centuries, likewise abdicated early in the twenty-first century. Of course, the Church had not called a Crusade for centuries, and by September 11 no one would have expected it to do so. Not only were the Crusades by then a dim historical memory, ill-remembered and even less understood, among most Catholics, but schools all over the West that had adopted the name Crusaders during the twentieth century began shedding the label. Historical pride quickly gave way to historical shame.
Early in the twenty-first century, the Catholic Church went even farther, not only not sounding the alarm about the advancing jihad, but demonstrating that it had no historical memory of why the Crusades had been fought, as well as no awareness that this jihad, which had historically targeted the Church, was continuing and had found renewed energy. There were to be no reminders from the Catholic Church about how Islam had been set against Europe for fourteen hundred years and that mass Muslim migration into Europe might not be such a good idea.
However, Pope Benedict XVI did touch off a worldwide controversy in 2006 by quoting the fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus’ words about Muhammad’s bringing nothing new but what was evil and inhumane. Benedict at least demonstrated that he was aware that Islam somehow posed a problem for Europe and the free world in general; after the Muslim riots and murders that followed his remarks, and fulmination from Egypt’s al-Azhar over his statements after a jihad mass murder attack in an Egyptian cathedral, Benedict fell silent.
His successor, Pope Francis, was anything but silent. In a November 2013 Apostolic Exhortation, he declared: “Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”113
This statement, remarkable for the dogmatic confidence with which its false claim was made, was not singular. Pope Francis was not just a defender of Islam and the Qur’an but of the Sharia death penalty for blasphemy: after Islamic jihadists in January 2015 murdered cartoonists from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Francis obliquely justified the murders by saying that “it is true that you must not react violently, but although we are good friends if [an aide] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t make a toy out of the religions of others. These people provoke and then [something can happen]. In freedom of expression there are limits.”114
For the pope, it can thus be assumed, murdering people for violating Sharia blasphemy laws was “normal,” and it wasn’t terrorism anyway, for “Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist,” as he said in a speech in February 2017.115 “There are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and religions—and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger because they feed on hate and xenophobia.”116
There was no Islamic terrorism, as far as the pope was concerned, but if one engaged in “intolerant generalizations,” one could “expect a punch.” The pope apparently believed that the problem was not jihad terror but non-Muslims talking about jihad terror; Muslims would be peaceful if non-Muslims would simply censor themselves and self-impose Sharia blasphemy restrictions regarding criticism of Islam.
In July 2017, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar, thanked Pope Francis for his “defense of Islam against the accusation of violence and terrorism.”117 Then, in September 2017, the pope met in the Vatican with Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, the secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL), a group that has been linked to the financing of jihad terror.118
During the meeting, Al-Issa thanked the pope for his “fair positions” on what he called the “false claims that link extremism and violence to Islam.”119 In other words, he thanked the Pope for dissembling about the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which his group had been accused of financing, and for defaming other religions in an effort to whitewash Islam.
Francis’ predecessors Urban II and Calixtus IV would have been astonished. As the jihad advanced in Europe, historically the heart of Christendom, the Catholic Church that had stood against the jihad for centuries now told its people that it was xenophobic and racist to resist mass Muslim immigration, and that even security concerns about the Muslim migrants did not override this.
In his message for the World Day of Peace on January 1, 2018, Pope Francis declared: “In a spirit of compassion, let us embrace all those fleeing from war and hunger, or forced by discrimination, persecution, poverty and environmental degradation to leave their homelands.” He warned: “Many destination countries have seen the spread of rhetoric decrying the risks posed to national security or the high cost of welcoming new arrivals, and thus demeaning the human dignity due to all as sons and daughters of God. Those who, for what may be political reasons, foment fear of migrants instead of building peace are sowing violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia, which are matters of great concern for all those concerned for the safety of every human being.”120
Yet those security concerns were real. All of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees.121 This followed the Islamic State’s February 2015 boast that it would soon flood Europe with as many as five hundred thousand refugees.122 In September 2015, Elias Bou Saab, the Lebanese education minister, disclosed that there were twenty thousand jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country, waiting for the opportunity to go to Europe and North America.123 That same month, it was revealed that eighty percent of migrants who had come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria were not really from Syria at all.124
Why were they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe, and the U.S. as well? An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September 2015, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, four thousand Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.”125 These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate: “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.”126
On May 10, 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, said that the Islamic State was using migrant routes through the Balkans to get jihadis into Europe.127
But for Pope Francis, concern for all of this was simply “xenophobia.” “It is hypocritical,” he thundered in October 2016, “to call yourself a Christian and to chase away a refugee, or anyone who needs y
our help. Jesus taught us what it means to be a good Christian in the parable of the Good Samaritan.”128 He cited Scripture: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”129
The Islamic State, meanwhile, had its own scripture in mind. With marked ingratitude, in November 2017 it threatened “Christmas blood” at the Vatican and released an image of Pope Francis beheaded.130
A year before that, the same group had explained that, contrary to Pope Francis’ fond imaginings, their struggle was all about Islam. Addressing the free world, the Islamic State declared in an article in its glossy online magazine Dabiq:
We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah—whether you realize it or not—by making partners for Him in worship, you blaspheme against Him, claiming that He has a son, you fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices.…
We hate you because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited while banning many of the things He has permitted, a matter that doesn’t concern you because you [sic] Christian disbelief and paganism separate between religion and state, thereby granting supreme authority to your whims and desires via the legislators you vote into power.…
In the case of the atheist fringe, we hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the existence of your Lord and Creator.
We hate you for your crimes against Islam and wage war against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion.
We hate you for your crimes against the Muslims; your drones and fighter jets bomb, kill, and maim our people around the world, and your puppets in the usurped lands of the Muslims oppress, torture, and wage war against anyone who calls to the truth.
We hate you for invading our lands and fight you to repel you and drive you out. As long as there is an inch of territory left for us to reclaim, jihad will continue to be a personal obligation on every single Muslim.…
What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list.
The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.131
Neither Tariq ibn Ziyad nor Mahmud Ghazni could have said it more clearly. Nonetheless, neither Pope Francis nor other Catholic leaders took any notice.
The Islamic State
The Islamic State (commonly but erroneously known as ISIS, an acronym for its former and rejected name, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [the Levant]) that threatened Pope Francis and the West is best known for its audacious attempt from 2014 to 2017 to restore the caliphate. It declared its caliphate in the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria on June 29, 2014, the same day it issued an explanatory document entitled “This is the Promise of Allah.”
The declaration, similar to so many other Islamic declarations throughout Islamic history, asserted that the caliphate frees human beings from oppression and subjugation: it is meant “for the purpose of compelling the people to do what the Sharia (Allah’s law) requires of them concerning their interests in the hereafter and worldly life, which can only be achieved by carrying out the command of Allah, establishing His religion, and referring to His law for judgment.”132
Before Islam, according to “This is the Promise of Allah,” the Arabs were weak and disunited; once they accepted Islam, Allah granted them unity and power. Then followed success unprecedented in world history. Referring to the jihad victories of the seventh century, it declared: “Our dear ummah—the best of peoples—Allah (the Exalted) decrees numerous victories for this ummah to occur in a single year, which He does not grant others in many years or even centuries. This ummah succeeded in ending two of the largest empires known to history in just 25 years, and then spent the treasures of those empires on jihad in the path of Allah. They put out the fire of the Magians (fire-worshippers) forever, and they forced the noses of the cross-worshippers onto the ground with the most miserable of weapons and weakest of numbers.… Yes, my ummah, those barefoot, naked, shepherds who did not know good from evil, nor truth from falsehood, filled the earth with justice after it had been filled with oppression and tyranny, and ruled the world for centuries.”133
As far as the Islamic State was concerned, nothing had changed—or should have changed: “The God of this ummah yesterday is the same God of the ummah today, and the One who gave it victory yesterday is the One who will give it victory today.”134 Accordingly, “The time has come for those generations that were drowning in oceans of disgrace, being nursed on the milk of humiliation, and being ruled by the vilest of all people, after their long slumber in the darkness of neglect—the time has come for them to rise.”135 The “vilest of all people” is a Qur’anic epithet for the “unbelievers among the People of the Book”—that is, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who do not become Muslims (98:6).
The Islamic State also announced: “The sun of jihad has risen. The glad tidings of good are shining. Triumph looms on the horizon. The signs of victory have appeared.” It made its case for embodying the caliphate based on the fact that in its domains, the Muslims were exalted, and the infidels were humiliated, paying the Qur’anic tax (jizya) and submitting in humiliation to the Muslims, as specified in the Qur’an (9:29)—in the process, sketching out a chilling picture of non-Muslims subjugated under the supremacy of Islam:
Here the flag of the Islamic State, the flag of tawhid [monotheism], rises and flutters. Its shade covers land from Aleppo to Diyala. Beneath it, the walls of the tawaghit [rulers claiming the rights of Allah] have been demolished, their flags have fallen, and their borders have been destroyed. Their soldiers are either killed, imprisoned, or defeated. The Muslims are honored. The kuffar [infidels] are disgraced. Ahlus-Sunnah [the Sunnis] are masters and are esteemed. The people of bid’ah [heresy] are humiliated. The hudud [Sharia penalties] are implemented—the hudud of Allah—all of them. The frontlines are defended. Crosses and graves are demolished. Prisoners are released by the edge of the sword. The people in the lands of the State move about for their livelihood and journeys, feeling safe regarding their lives and wealth. Wulat [plural of wali, or governors] and judges have been appointed. Jizyah [a tax imposed on kuffar] has been enforced. Fay’ [money taken from the kuffar without battle] and zakat [obligatory alms] have been collected. Courts have been established to resolve disputes and complaints. Evil has been removed. Lessons and classes have been held in the masajid [plural of masjid] and, by the grace of Allah, the religion has become completely for Allah. There only remained one matter, a wajib kifa’i [collective obligation] that the ummah sins by abandoning. It is a forgotten obligation. The ummah has not tasted honor since they lost it. It is a dream that lives in the depths of every Muslim believer. It is a hope that flutters in the heart of every mujahid muwahhid [monotheist]. It is the khilafah [caliphate]. It is the khilafah—the abandoned obligation of the era.136
Consequently, all Muslims now owed allegiance to this caliphate: “We clarify to the Muslims that with this declaration of khilafah, it is incumbent upon all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the khalifah Ibrahim and support him (may Allah preserve him). The legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the khilafah’s authority and arrival of its troops to their areas.” And “the khalifah [caliph] Ibrahim (may Allah preserve him) has fulfilled all the conditions for khilafah [caliphate] mentioned by the scholars.”137
Thus, the Islamic State exhorted all Muslims to join it and give it allegiance, as the Mahdi in Sudan and so many other Muslim revivalists had throughout Islamic history:
Less than a week after declaring itself the caliphate, the Islamic State gave the world a look at the new caliphate, releasing a video on July 5, 2014, of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi speaking in the twelfth-century Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul.139
He said that after the fall of the last caliphate, “the disbelievers were able to weaken and humiliate the Muslims, dominate them in every region, plunder their wealth and resources, and rob them of their rights.” They did this by “attacking and occupying their lands, placing their treacherous agents in power to rule the Muslims with an iron fist, and spreading dazzling and deceptive slogans such as: civilization, peace, co-existence, freedom, democracy, secularism, baathism, nationalism, and patriotism, among other false slogans. Those rulers continue striving to enslave the Muslims, pulling them away from their religion with those slogans.”140
The warriors of jihad should not worry about the formidable military might of the infidels, because just as at the Battle of Badr, success would come through obedience to Allah, not by means of weapons: