Nei til islam: Wold er kanskje hedning, men er preses Fykse Tveit det også?

Sjelden eller aldri har vel en preses i Den norske kirke uttalt seg så desorientert, forbeholdent, nedlatende og autoritært som det Fykse Tveit gjorde på Nyhetsmorgen på NRK radio i morges.

Med Sidsel Wolds «på autopilot»-stemmes velsignelse, (og forførende og duperende barnestemme). Hun har gjort seg til uskyldig alibi og trådfører for islam nå, i lang tid, og lykkes nå svært godt, på NRK, også i den situasjonen som nå er på Gaza og hvor ansvaret kan tilbakeføres til Hamas, «broderskapets» forlengede arm, begge organisasjoner betegnes som terrororganisasjoner av tungtvektige land over hele verden.

Preses begynner sin forkynnelse under Wolds auspinciens med: «Hvis kristensionisme er … så er … «.

Med dette har preses i utgangspunktet gardert seg inntil det pinlige: Han snakker hypotetisk i den tro at det på et senere tidspunkt kan fri ham fra det han sier og mener og redde ham for seriøs og saklig kritikk. Han gjør sin rygg fri med et forbehold, altså. Det vitner om stor usikkerhet, indre spenninger, diskvalifikasjoner for jobben.

Tveit og Wold gjør seg til talspersoner for palestinere og Palestina (et land som ikke fins, men som skal trumfes og manipulers gjennom (til bindende forslag) av bl a FN). De får det til å høres ut som om staten Israel fordriver kristne arabere i Israel – uten å sette nedgangen i antall palestinske kristne i Israel i sammenheng med de strategiene de palestinske organisasjonene har fulgt nå i flere tiår, strategier som i praksis ikke bare fordriver de kristne araberne, men også de ikke-arabisk kristne, som f eks i Betlehem.

Hverken Vold eller Tveit makter å trekke inn islam i dette bildet. Det de tegner er derfor ikke bare et svært utilstrekkelig bilde av situasjonen i sin helhet; de tegner i stedet et bilde som fortegner eller forfalsker virkeligheten og villeder store deler av befolkningen. Særlig den kristne delen av befolkningen, og den delen av kristne som egentlig eller opprinnelig var saklig islamkritiske, men som nå ser ut til å sette ettergivenhet som et kriterium på den høyeste tro og det eneste avgjørende emosjonelle credo, på Den norske kirke befaling, fra øverste hold.

Det er nesten for vondt til å være sant.

Nyhetsmorgen med bla Sidsel Wold og preses Fykse Tveit – en mest mulig ensidig fremstilling av krigen: Tidspunkt: 220124, kl 57. 14:

https://radio.nrk.no/serie/nyhetsmorgen

I går holdt F Tveit en preken i Viktoriakirken på Oljeberget. … Wold: til storstilt bakgrunnsmusikk: Det kalles inn til bønn på Oljeberget. … (prekenen, gjengis delvis, på engelsk … det er halvtomt i den vakre kirken, for det tynnes i rekkene blant de kristne palestinerne, de som ikke orker å leve under israelsk okkupasjon, flytter, og de som er igjen, føler seg forlatt av den kristne verden, spesielt av de evangelikale kristne og kristensionistene, som støtter Israels politikk blindt. … particular here in Palestine has always been against the interest of the christian community … Vestens innblanding i Midt-Østen og spesielt her i Palestina, har alltid virket imot interessene til de kristne her, sier pastor … til Nrk.

Olav Fykse Tveit mener at denne delen av kristendommen er farlig: Ja, hvis kristensionismen betyr at man meina at vi vet ka Gud vil, … hvilken som helst virkemiddel, kan bli brukt, for å oppnå dette, eh, det er fali uansett kaslags tema det er, men det bli særlig falig her for det er en veldig blanding av politikk og religion, og makt, sier Norges ledende biskop, som besøkte palestinske kirkeledere i helgen.

Wold: I Norge, men spesielt i USA, er de kristensionistiske miljøene sterke. De mest fundamnetalistiske ber for dommedag og harmageddon og en storkrig som skal bare vei for en ny religiøs verdensorden – for kristensionistene er jødene en del av guds plan og Det lovede land, mens palestinske muslimer og kristne ikke er det … Tveit: … Eh, det er jo dessverre bevegelsa i USA som endo til sie at ja, vi skal bruke våpen, for å gjennomføre denne kristensionistiske tanken - (kirkeklokker dunder i bakgrunnen her) og da bli det virkelig å bli farlig.

Wold: Også kristensionister bør respektere folkeretten … ?

-Ja, altså, folkerett og den internasjonale orden som vi heldig vis fikk etter annen verdenskrig, med menneskerettar og likeverd, fantastiske uttrykk for det eg meiner er innholdet i min kristne tro, og hvis det kan realiserer i er verden som er mangfoldig … og som har gjennomlevd kriger der man sa at krig er synd, etterpå, kirkene sa det, og …

De norske biskopene uttalte seg om denne retningen innenfor kristendommen for tre år siden … og da var det jo særlig fordi det er en bevegelse som gjer seg gjeldande internasjonalt, og i forhold til di kristne søsken som vi har her og som sier at her kommer det nokre kristne og sie atte vi skal egentlig ikkje bo her, vi skal forsvinne, og da må eg si at nei, vi kan ikkje si det som kristne, det er en en kamp om kristendommens sjel …

Kommentar:

Både Wold og preses begår grove synder her: De tillegger Allah den kristne Guds egenskaper, hvilke Allah ikke har og heller ikke kan ha, se under.

Slik underskriver de på Hamas’s virkelighetsoppfatning, verdisyn og gudssyn. De tilfører Allah egenskaper som islam selv nekter for at Allah har. De forstår ikke at Palestina betraktes som en waqf, gitt alle muslimer som forpliktelser på Allah’s kommando og vilje. De forstår ikke at Allah vil ha kontinuerlig jihad for islam; de tror at Allah kan være en person slik Gud er i den dogmatiske judeo-kristne tro og tradisjon. De forstår ikke at jihad og waqf er en uforbeholden og obligatorisk plikt, et dypere religiøst anliggende, ikke bare et «sekulært» folkerettsanliggende.

De har dermed underlagt seg Allah’s kommandoer, Hamas konstitusjon, som bygger på islam som en alltid overordnet og uforanderlig Konstitusjon. De flytter dermed alt personlig ansvar fra Gud og mennesket over på islam og Allah, en gud som ikke kan være personlig, og som ikke vil vite av Kjærlighet, for da ville han bli bundet, hvilket han ikke kan bli, utover sin vilje, til enhver tid).

Wold og Fykse Tveit snakker nå om «visse kristne» antakelig for å vise at de ikke kjemmer alle kristne over en kam, og for at de ikke vil krenke kristendommen som sådan og per se. De gjør da det samme som mange islamkritikere gjør: De nyanserer, de snakker om «visse muslimer», ikke alle etc. Men det Wold og Fykse Tveit da gjør, når det kommer til kristentroen, er å begå en grov synd, et grovt kategorimistak. De skiller nettopp ikke mellom den kristne gud og islams gud. De vil ha oss alle til å tro at det dreier seg om identiske guder! De tror i tillegg og logisk følgeriktig på «overguden», ikke den judeo-kristne Gud. Det vil si: De tror jo ikke på Gud overhodet. De ser ingen vesensforskjell på kristen-jødisk-tro og islam. De gjør det inkompatible kompatibelt ved fiat, som firdeister, og dermed som hypermagikere med det fundamentale credo at «de servilt betinget korrkete emosjoner» er det hele, og ikke stort mer.

De gjør seg dermed til hedninger, for å «please» Allah og alle muslimer. De sluker alle islamske svisker og selvfølgeligheter, samtidig som de spytter ut hele kristentroen og jødedommen. Et angrep på kritentsionistene, slik de fremstiller og former det, og forutsetter, kan da like gjerne ses på som et angrep på Israel, se link.

Se denne svært opplysende og klargjørende her:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2011/03/den-fataleog-evige-forskjellen.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/12/angrep-bispene-kristensionister-eller.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/10/jagland-listhaug-og-sommerfelt-helt.html

Se hva media skrev, bl a:

«Praying for Armageddon» har upåklagelig timing

Oppsiktsvekkende dokumentar skildrer hvordan amerikanske kristne fundamentalister jobber effektivt for et snarlig Armageddon i Israel, okt. 2023, Sist oppdatert 19. okt. 2023, 12:48

Det er ingen hemmelighet at den evangeliske bevegelsen på ytre høyre fløy i USA bærer på en visjon om en snarlig apokalypse i Jerusalem.

Slik de leser Bibelen, vil det bane veien for det nye kristne tusenårsriket.

https://vink.aftenposten.no/artikkel/y62PVE/filmanmeldelse-praying-for-armageddon-vil-skape-bolger

I Samtiden finer vi dette:

«Praying for Armageddon» går rett inn i blodbadet som utspiller seg i Gaza. Helaftensdokumentaren skildrer ytterliggående evangeliske kristne i USA, og hvilken innflytelse disse nyter i Washington.

– De tolker bibelen bokstavelig og ser det som sitt ansvar at Armageddon-profetien oppfylles, sier regissør Tonje Hessen Schei, med referanse til endetidsforestillingene i Johannes’ åpenbaring.

– Israel spiller en nøkkelrolle, for det er der de mener dommedag vil skje, fortsetter hun overfor NTB.

– De mener de må framskynde verdens undergang. Da vil Jesus komme tilbake, og de vil få evig liv.

B.i.b.l.e.

Strategisk i miljøet er Texas-pastoren John Hagee. Han leder «megakirken» Christians United for Israel (CUFI), som teller over 10 millioner medlemmer. Dette er mannen som definerer «bible» som akronym for «basic information before leaving Earth» – «basalinfo før du forlater Jorden».

– Idet vi startet produksjonen i 2015, anså vi Hagee som for ekstrem til å være en viktig politisk spiller, forteller Schei (52).

Det endret seg med Trump-inntoget året etter.

– Vi så hvor instrumentell Hagee ble for valget. Så, i 2018, medvirket han sentralt da Trump åpnet den kontroversielle ambassaden i Jerusalem. Da gikk det kaldt nedover ryggen på meg, for jeg skjønte vi sto overfor noe mye større. Det religiøse høyre får stadig mer makt.

https://samtiden.no/notiser/2023/kinoklar-dokumentarfilm-kristenfundamentalister-priser-israels-krigforing

Se denne: Evangelikale kristne bidrar med store penger og politisk påvirkningskraft til støtte for Israel. Men støtten er ikke uproblematisk. Se «Til dommedag» i NRK TV: https://tv.nrk.no/program/KOID28004120

Kommentar: Dokumentaren var lagt opp på gammelt venstreside-taktiske-vis: Man begynner med de uskyldigste ting, for så å sette inn dødsstøtet på slutten: Vil kristensosialister bruke vold? Vil de at millioner skal dø? Etc. Det er som om Mads Gilbert – som type - skulle ha redigert denne dokumentaren, men de som så den, så og hørte jo at det ikke var tilfelle, at man virkelig ville vold, at f eks Israel var nødt for å angripe Iran, osv, selv om en av hovedpersonene i produksjonen holdt seg bokstavelig til Bibelen og profetienes voldsomme språkbruk. Selvsagt var ikke hovedpersonen personlig for en slik kosmisk krig med så mye lidelse som tekstene skulle tilsi – fordi tekstene selv jo er av symbolsk karakter. Men dette tar selvsagt ikke filmskaperne hensyn til, (selv om de lar hovedpersonen gjøre det. Inntrykket som forsøkes skapt er at kristne sionister er voldparate krigshissere og normativt ekstreme).

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2012/11/kristendommen-er-heldigvis-klart.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2012/04/allah-er-ikke-hellig.html

Jeg ber og formaner om å lese følgende: Se denne, fyldige:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/05/om-bispene-og-den-kjnnslige-posering.html

Bør kirken ekskludere?

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/11/den-avgjrende-krigen-om-vare-sinn-og.html

http://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2011/01/islamiseringen-av-det-kollektive.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2010/11/islamiseringen-av-kirken.html

Visse kristne vil brenne ytringsfriheten:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/02/kristenfundamentalisten-eller.html

http://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2022/12/torp-med-egyptisk-ambassadr-i.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/03/islamofobien-som-splitter-kristne-na-i.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2021/09/jan-age-torp-intervjuer-biskop-atle.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/08/mellomkirkelig-rad-et-rad-besatt-av.html

Om «waqf of palestina», om ting media ikke våger å nevne:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/03/bnnerop-og-eiendomsrett-til-landet.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/10/islamkritikk-na-i-en-krigstid.html

Hva har Torp med «bamsegutt-saken» å gjøre?

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/11/bamsegutt-saken-et-symptom-pa-noe-annet.html

Litt mer generelt, men desto viktigere:

Paktene i bibelen gir hverken jøder eller kristne rett til å erobre nytt land og ingen kristen eller jøde kan kreve å bi hørt på at erobret – hvis da erobret i det hele tatt - skal tilhøre religionen til evig tid – og at gud forbyr de troende å si fra seg slikt erobret land. (Jeg skriver religionen, ikke jødene eller de kristne).

Men ikke slik i slam. Ikke slik for Hamas på Gaza-stripen. Og heller ikke slik for noen rettroende muslim.

Hamas formål er få hele Israel ut av Israel, alle jøder. (Og ingen jøde skal finnes på de såkalte muslimske territoriene). Og de som slutter opp om denne målsettingen, som forveksles med et guddommelig gitt faktum en gang for alle, kan smykke seg med at de er muslimske mer enn de fleste andre muslimer, som tenker annerledes (og derfor ikke er sterkt-troende, i islamistenes øyne).

Høres dette kjent ut? Høres det uskyldig ut? Er det ikke slik at de fleste frihetskjempere nettopp ofrer liv, eiendom og lemmer for nasjonen, folket eller ideologien (eller religionen)? Er ikke henvisningen eller begrunnelsen i islam kun «en metode» eller «en strategi» - helt fristilt far religionen og Allah - man bruker for å oppnå i og for seg helt verdslige mål, mål vi kan kjenne oss igjen med, og som vi derfor på alle måter kan støtte – ifølge bare den akk så altfor nøytrale, uguddommelige, objektive og rettferdige folkeretten?

Også nordmenn stolte på og trodde at Gud vil hjelpe Norge til å vinne krigen mot nazismen – og vi var villige til å ofre – alt, om så var. Så hvorfor skulle ikke vi nå la muslimer på Gaza, og Hamas, kjempe for sin tro og religion, med religiøse argumenter og begrunnelser. Også nordmenn tydde til det som ble kalt terror. Fordi det alltid er legitimt for den angrepne part å svare med terror på terror. Terror kan med andre ord være legitimt, (og det er dette Hams skjuler seg bok, i sitt falske, retoriske selv, - dette pluss at religionen eller Allah faktisk ikke bare aksepterer vold, men påbyr den, i kampen for den «evige» og forbeholdsløse kamp for å utbre islam. Slik at hele verden en dag skal underkaste seg islam, og logisk de underkaste seg muslimene.

Var det ikke slik biskop Veiteberg trodde? Hun var en venn av palestinerne. Hun var medlem av komiteen.

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/10/terrororganisasjon-ferdig-snakka-punktum.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2021/04/biskop-veiteberg-overrasker-og-dagen.html

Går det an å inngå pakter med islam? Et eksempel, som følges den dag i dag, og som Arafat brukte under Oslo-forhandlingene og en pakistansk president brukte på for rundt 20 år siden, er:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_al-Hudaybiya

Bare dette faktum i seg selv, burde få noen og enhver til å spisse ørene når det nå settes vilkår for Israel til å godkjenne en to-statsløsning når stridighetene ventelig vil stoppe på Gaza, (og når Hamas forhåpentlig er nedkjempet, hvis mulig å nedkjempe en organisasjon noen gang, da, siden Allah jo ikke kan diskuteres eller gjøres til et aspekt av varig fred og forhandlinger med vantro kuffar.

Og det er dette lille faktum folk ikke vil forstå. Og det i seg selv er jo bare sørgelig og ufattelig. Så lenge folk og bisper ikke lenger forstår at Allah ikke er Gud og at gud ikke Allah, vil det aldri bli fred i Midt-Østen.

There will be a truce between both parties for ten years.
Whoever flees to Muhammad from the Quraysh without the permission of his guardian will be sent back to the Quraysh, but whoever comes to the Quraysh from the Muslims will not be sent back.
Whoever wishes to enter into a covenant with Muhammad will be allowed to do so, and whoever wishes to enter into a covenant with the Quraysh will be allowed to do so.
The Muslims will return to Medina without performing the pilgrimage but will be allowed the following year and would stay in Mecca for three days during which time the Quraysh will vacate the city. The Muslims will carry no weapons except sheathed swords.^[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_al-Hudaybiya

Og nå over til det viktigste:

I jødedom og kristendom er alle pakter eller testamenter bygget på en personlig relasjon. I islam er dette umulig. Det personlige elementet, grunnpremisset i alle paktene, finnes ikke i islam.

I islam er Allah’s vilje det nærmeste en troende kan komme selve guddommen. Allah’s hellige vrede og vilje, blir den eneste personlig relasjonen den troende kan ha til guddommen i islam. Allah betraktes ikke – kan ikke betraktes – som en person, og dermed blir det ikke snakke om denne gudens hellige karakter eller personlighet heller, slik vi ser det i jødedom og kristendom, i den judeokristne tradisjon og teologi, (med sine iboende oppfatninger av det personlige). Det fins intet grunnleggende Jeg-Du-forhold mennesker og Gud imellom i islam. Allah kommanderer, «tha’s all».

Paktene og løftene i jødedom og kristendom bygger på et Jeg-Du-forhold, et forhold mellom to parter, et forhold som utløser ansvar, et forhold som respekterer menneskets frihet til å vurdere, analyser og velge selv. Det er derfor feil når Wold hevder at kristne følger løftene i bla Apokalypsen blindt (og bokstavelig). Det foreligger ingen absolutt plikt til å følge Skriften eller Bibelen blindt eller bokstavelig i alle forhold. I islam, derimot, fratar Allah muslimer muligheten for ikke å følge Allah’s bud blindt, og dette kommer tydelig til uttrykk nå Hamas hevder at hele landet og nasjonen Israel de facto ikke har noen rett til å være der (innenfor internasjonalt erkjente grenser).

Hverken Wold eller Fykse Tveit orker å ense, eller innse, dette aspektet ved og begrunnelsen for Hamas angrep på Israel. De trekker derfor sine konklusjoner på sviktende grunnlag og lar sneverheten gjelde for sannhet, i stedet for å la et videre perspektiv på tingene gjelde for sannhet.

De gjør seg derfor begge skyldig i å bygge på illusjoner og partiskhet i stedet for på et bredere spekter, mer bredspektret syn på virkeligheten – og ideologiene og troene.

Wold og Fykse Tveit later ikke til å ha fått med seg at Hamas hevder en guddommelig rett til Israel, som da anses for å være et waqf, et område som ingen muslim kan avstå eller gå inn for å avstå. Det er som om hverken Allah eller Gud eksisterer for Vold og Fykse Tveit. De må derfor fundamentere seg på egne emosjoner, og tilfeldige samfunnsmoter og tenkemåter, formet via antiamerikanske og antikapitalistiske stemninger spesielt etablert etter 1960-70-årene, ikke på guddommelig juss, slik f eks Hamas gjør. De ser ikke at det her foreligger to fullstendig inkompatible virkelighetsforestillinger.

Hva innebærer dette? Hvilke konsekvenser har dette gudsbildet, dette gudssynet og slike gudsforestillinger for verdisynet, menneskesynet og virkelighetsoppfatningen generelt?

Vi ser dette tydelig i den islamske oppfatningen av hva erobret land i Allah’s navn vil ha, for all fremtid. Erobret land kalles waqf, et begrep vi har skrevet om tidligere, se linkene. Et waqf kan aldri oppgis, fordi det er Allah som har forordnet det, dvs kommandert det, selve hjemmelen for å erobre land. Ingen kan sette til side en kommando fra Allah og alle muslimer er forpliktet på kommandoen.

Dette i sterkt kontrast til i jødedom og kristendom. Riktig nok kan vi se i jødedommen at Gud, JHWE, kommanderer israelittene til å innta Kaanan-landet, med dette vare en engangsforpliktelse, eller tilskyndelse, basert på en ensidig gitt pakt med israelittene, knyttet til et løfte, den gang. Israelittene ble «evig» forpliktet» en gang, og siden aldri mer. I islam er det omvendt; muslimer er forpliktet ikke bare engang, med alle ganger for alltid.

I jødedommen inngår JHWE en rekke løftespakter med israelittene. De kan være knyttet til forbehold – «hvis dere gjør, så skal …» eller til «ensidig» pakter uten forbehold overfor israelittene. Se vår forrige postering:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2024/01/venstresidens-nye-ateistiske.html

Paktene – som forutsetter to ansvarlige personer – blir i Bibelen beskrevet etter mønster av andre verdslige pakter i Mist-Østen den gang. Disse regulerte forholdet mellom de større og meget mer mektige herskerne eller kongene og de som underla seg disse som vasaller, i den hensikt å sikre seg beskyttelse, og dermed «frihet».

Poenget er bare at Israel ikke kunne og ikke ville betegne sike konger som styrende, over seg, i prinsippet. Jødene eller israelitten kunne ikke underlegge seg som vasall under andre konger enn sin egen konge, nemlig JHWE, dvs Gud. Gud var israels Konge, ingen annen verdslig eller guddommelig kraft eller makt.

Israel hadde dermed en personlig relasjon med et personlig tilbedelsesobjekt å forholde seg til, ikke til en verdslig herre, eller et verdslig prinsipp, men altså til Personen i høyete potens og virkelighet. Den allmektige, allestedsnærværende. Den evig nåderike Frelser som garantert ville innfri sin løfter.

Legg merke til at denne:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2021/11/bislett-game-over-for-denne-gang.html

Se årstall 1000 i denne:

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2022/11/islam-angrep-pa-dar-al-harb-krigens-hus.html

http://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2017/12/eid-id-klesdrakt-og-islamsk-ekspansjon.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2021/08/den-kristne-hypermagi-og-den-vestlige.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2015/01/om-hvorfor-det-gar-sa-galt-om-islam-og.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2019/02/er-du-spr-kan-du-avtale-gud.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2023/03/bnnerop-og-eiendomsrett-til-landet.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2019/10/10-synden-og-syndene-i-islam-og.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/08/mellomkirkelig-rad-et-rad-besatt-av.html

http://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2013/02/vil-du-ha-amnesty.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2012/09/norge-trygghetens-hus-dar-al-amin.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2017/11/terrorangrep-pa-muslimer-av-muslimer-i.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/10/islamske-angrep-pa-vesten-fra-632-til.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/12/angrep-bispene-kristensionister-eller.html

http://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2020/07/kirker-og-katedraler-i-brann.html

http://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2022/11/islam-angrep-pa-dar-al-harb-krigens-hus.html

https://neitilislam.blogspot.com/2015/11/angrepet-pa-paris-og-markedsfringen-av.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waqf

Hvilke guddommelige hjemler – som selvsagt overstyrer Wold og Fykse Tveit - finner vi så i islam?

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/01/jihad-simply-refers-to-a-struggle-muslims-use-the-term-to-discuss-a-spiritual-struggle-against-ones-vices

“Jihad simply refers to a ‘struggle.’ Muslims use the term to discuss a spiritual struggle against one’s vices.” Jan 14, 2023 4:00 pm By Robert Spencer 12 Comments

This “Muslim American” letter-writer is angry that Trevor Bickford’s attack on two cops in Times Square was described as a “jihad.” Zane Chowdhry says that “commentators should avoid co-opting Islamic terms like jihad without nuance.”

However, Bickford himself may have used the word. We know that he left behind a manifesto which was not published in full, in which he calls upon his family members to convert to Islam and refers to his Marine brother as having joined the “enemy.” The term “jihad” may have come from this missive. Also, this writer Zane Chowdhry completely ignores the martial understanding of jihad in Islam’s tradition and history.

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

Of course, there is no caliph today, and hence the oft-repeated claim that the Islamic State (ISIS) and other jihad groups are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes “obligatory for everyone” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: ‘Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until “the final descent of Jesus.” After that, “nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent” (o9.8).

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”

However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”

This is also taught by modern-day scholars of Islam. Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world….The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

Despite the misleading and incomplete nature of this explanation of jihad, it is accepted far beyond the scope of one letter to the editor in one paper.

“Letter: Word ‘jihad’ often misused,” by Zane Chowdhry, The Columbian, January 12, 2023:

As a Muslim American, I was deeply upset to hear about the New Year’s Eve knife attack by Mr. Trevor Bickford in Times Square. In the days following the violence, news agencies began to report that Mr. Bickford was inspired by “Islamic extremism” and wanted to “carry out jihad.”

Contrary to its popular use in the media, jihad simply refers to a “struggle.” Muslims use the term foremost to discuss a spiritual struggle against one’s passions and vices. The physical version of this struggle is limited in the Quran to only defensive measures to “fight in the cause of Allah against those who fight against you, but do not transgress” (2:191). The actions that Mr. Bickford took on New Year’s Eve were far from either of these definitions of the struggles that jihad entails. Commentators should avoid co-opting Islamic terms like jihad without nuance. Cavalier use of these terms distorts their connotations and makes the religion that millions of Muslims practice peacefully seem like a grave threat….

En gang muslimsk, alltid muslimsk land, waqf:

Israel, Saudi Arabia and claim that once land is Muslim, that land is always Muslim

Ira Rifkin Comments, Middle East, Ira Rifkin, Godbeat, Academia, Journalism, Israel, Islam-Muslims

The Jewish state of Israel and the Sunni Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia have a complicated relationship. Official diplomatic relations between the two are non-existent. Yet unofficial contacts not only exist but appear to be thriving

Why? Because for all the bad blood between them, both consider Shiite Iran the greater threat. It's one of those enemy-of-my-enemy hookups.

Israel would love the relationship to play out officially and in public as a grand sign to the world of its desired acceptance as a sovereign Jewish nation in the heart of the Muslim Middle East.

The Saudi monarchy has a more complex agenda, however.

Whatever its political goals, the Saudi royals also must mollify their nation's ultra-traditional religious establishment, the staunch support of which has allowed the descendants of King Abdulaziz Al Saud to rule over the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula since the nation's founding in 1932.

Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam, containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad. Because of the kingdom's centrality to Islam, religious backing is critical to the ruling family's continued reign.

Problem is, those religious leaders show little willingness to compromise their rigid Wahhabi Muslim theology for the sake of earthly political considerations.

Here's an example of how the game is played.

In July, Anwar Eshki, a retired Saudi army general, led a delegation to Israel where he met in Jerusalem with Israel's Foreign Ministry director-general. Not in an Israeli government building, of course, but in a private hotel – making it easier for the Saudi side to deny the meeting was a formal inter-government encounter.

But visits by Saudis, ranked or not, to Israel are extraordinarily rare (and vice versa). Moreover, for a Saudi military figure, even a retired one, to do so without his government's quiet okay invites legal prosecution.

Click here for a backgrounder from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on the visit and its significance. The Washington Institute is sympathetic to Israel and the think-tank's scholars are widely published by Israeli and Jewish diaspora news sites, as well as the mainstream media.

Note the writer's conclusion on what might come next in this Israel-Saudi psychodrama.

The next step may well depend on Arab public reaction (or lack thereof) to Eshki's visit. The response has largely been indifferent so far, though it may be too early to judge.

That was written in late July. Since then, there's been plenty of response, much of it highly negative in the Muslim world, and much of it rooted in a little-known Islamic concept all but ignored, by Western journalists, including those on the religion beat.

To explain further, let me turn to Khaled Abu Toameh, a veteran Jerusalem-based, Israeli Arab Muslim journalist also connected to New York's right-of-center Gatestone Institute. Abu Toameh wrote the following last week:

[T]he outrage the Saudi delegation's visit to Israel has triggered throughout the Arab and Islamic countries points to one conclusion: that for many Arabs and Muslims, the conflict with Israel is not about a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. Nor is the conflict about Palestinian rights and "normal relations" between Israel and the Arab and Islamic countries.

The first to express outrage over the visit were thousands of Saudis, including top Islamic clerics, who took to social media to express their poison and hatred for Israel and Jews. Many reminded their listeners of fatwas (Islamic religious decrees) banning any form of "normalization" with Israel and Jews, who are referred to as "infidels and polytheists." The fatwas also forbid Muslims from giving up any part of "Muslim-owned" land to non-Muslims.

Did you get that? No giving up of "Muslim-owned land" to non-Muslims.

Many contemporary Western scholars of Islam dismiss that notion – known in Islam as Dar al-Harb (Territory of War) – as having no basis in the Quran or the Hadith, the latter the writings that purport to convey the sayings and actions of the Prophet. Instead, they say it was a legal innovation that arose during Islam's later expansion.

Such scholars, including Georgetown University's John L. Esposito in "The Oxford Dictionary of Islam," also say the idea has no relevance in today's world of fragmented nation-states – that is no relevance outside the extremist realm. They say that when Osama bin Laden invoked reintegration of al-Andalus – the part of Spain once under Muslim rule -- into the Islamic world few took him seriously.

Be that as it may, there are some Muslims, who I'd classify as extremists, who hold firm to the notion that once land comes under Muslim control it must remain so for all time and that it is incumbent upon Muslims to struggle to get it back.

(Yes, some extremist religious Jews express a similar ethos about what they say the Hebrew Bible maintains was given by God to the Israelites. However, Israeli governments have willingly turned over land to the Palestinians out of political considerations; a critical difference in my view.)

As the entire Middle East was under the control of the Muslim Ottoman Empire from 1259-1924, those same Muslim extremists believe that what is now Israel – every inch of it – is rightfully Muslim, and that Israel is but a temporary interloper not to be allowed to remain out of passing political expediency.

Here's one example of that quoted by Abu Toameh:

One of the leading clerics, Dr. Ali Daghi, Secretary-General of the International Muslim Scholars, wrote: "There is a consensus among Muslims, in the past and present, that if an Islamic land is occupied, then its inhabitants must declare jihad until it is liberated from the occupiers."

Abu Toameh provides several similar examples in his essay. If he's correct about the prevalence of such thought you can expect Saudi-Israeli relations to remain maddeningly complicated for the foreseeable future – Iran notwithstanding.

Recently, some opinion columns have appeared in the tightly government-controlled Saudi news media arguing for greater tolerance toward Jews and Israel, if only to benefit Saudi Arabia. Consider them no more than trial balloons, intended once again to gauge the Saudi religious establishment's reaction.

That's what journalists should watch, because the ultra-cautious Saudi monarchy simply won't risk losing the Wahhabi leadership's support, the loss of which also likely means the end of the monarchy's religious and, thus, it's political legitimacy. August 16, 2016,

While the trigger for “Islamic awakening” was frequently the meeting with the West, Islamic-motivated rebellions against colonial powers rarely involved individuals from other Muslim countries or broke out of the confines of the territories over which they were fighting. Until the 1980s, most fundamentalist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan Muslimun) were inward-looking; Western superiority was viewed as the result of Muslims having forsaken the teachings of the Prophet. Therefore, the remedy was, first, “re-Islamization” of Muslim society and restoration of an Islamic government, based on Islamic law (shari’ah). In this context, jihad was aimed mainly against “apostate” Muslim governments and societies, while the historic offensive jihad of the Muslim world against the infidels was put in abeyance (at least until the restoration of the caliphate).

Until the 1980s, attempts to mobilize Muslims all over the world for a jihad in one area of the world (Palestine, Kashmir) were unsuccessful. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a watershed event, as it revived the concept of participation in jihad to evict an “infidel” occupier from a Muslim country as a “personal duty” (fard ’ein) for every capable Muslim. The basis of this duty derives from the “irreversibility” of Islamic identity both for individual Muslims (thus, capital punishment for “apostates” — e.g., Salman Rushdie) and for Muslim territories. Therefore, any land (Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Spain) that had once been under the sway of Islamic law may not revert to control by any other law. In such a case, it becomes the “personal duty” of all Muslims in the land to fight a jihad to liberate it. If they do not succeed, it becomes incumbent on any Muslim in a certain perimeter from that land to join the jihad and so forth. Accordingly, given the number of Muslim lands under “infidel occupation” and the length of time of those occupations, it is argued that it has become a personal duty for all Muslims to join the jihad. This duty — if taken seriously — is no less a religious imperative than the other five pillars of Islam (the statement of belief or shahadah, prayer, fasting, charity, and haj). It becomes a de facto (and in the eyes of some a de jure) sixth pillar; a Muslim who does not perform it will inherit hell.

Such a philosophy attributing centrality to the duty of jihad is not an innovation of modern radical Islam. The seventh-century Kharijite sect, infamous in Islamic history as a cause of Muslim civil war, took this position and implemented it. But the Kharijite doctrine was rejected as a heresy by medieval Islam. The novelty is the tacit acceptance by mainstream Islam of the basic building blocks of this “neo-Kharijite” school.

The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union were perceived as an eschatological sign, adumbrating the renewal of the jihad against the infidel world at large and the apocalyptical war between Islam and heresy which will result in the rule of Islam in the world. Along with the renewal of the jihad, the Islamist Weltanschauung, which emerged from the Afghani crucible, developed a Thanatophile ideology in which death is idealized as a desired goal and not a necessary evil in war.

An offshoot of this philosophy poses a dilemma for theories of deterrence. The Islamic traditions of war allow the Muslim forces to retreat if their numerical strength is less than half that of the enemy. Other traditions go further and allow retreat only in the face of a tenfold superiority of the enemy. The reasoning is that the act of jihad is, by definition, an act of faith in Allah. By fighting a weaker or equal enemy, the Muslim is relying on his own strength and not on Allah; by entering the fray against all odds, the mujahed is proving his utter faith in Allah and will be rewarded accordingly.

The politics of Islamist radicalism has also bred a mentality of bello ergo sum (I fight, therefore I exist) — Islamic leaders are in constant need of popular jihads to boost their leadership status. Nothing succeeds like success: The attacks in the United States gave birth to a second wave of mujahidin who want to emulate their heroes. The perception of resolve on the part of the West is a critical factor in shaping the mood of the Muslim population toward radical ideas. Therefore, the manner by which the United States deals with the present crisis in Iraq is not unconnected to the future of the radical Islamic movement. In these circles, the American occupation of Iraq is likened to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; a sense of American failure would feed the apocalyptical ideology of jihad.

The legality of jihad

These beliefs are commonly viewed as typical of radical Islamic ideology, but few orthodox Islamic scholars would deny that they are deeply rooted in orthodox Islam or would dismiss the very ideology of jihad as a military struggle as foreign to the basic tenets of Islam.

Hence, much of the debate between radicals and nonradicals is not over the religious principles themselves, but over their implication for actual behavior as based on the detailed legal interpretation of those principles. This legal interpretation is the soul of the debate. Even among moderate Islamic scholars who condemn acts of terrorism (albeit with reservation so as not to include acts perpetrated against Israel in such a category), there is no agreement on why they should be condemned: Many modernists acknowledge the existence of a duty of jihad in Islam but call for an “Islamic Protestantism” that would divest Islam of vestiges of anachronistic beliefs; conservative moderates find in traditional Islamic jurisprudence (shari’ah) legal justification to put the imperative of jihad in abeyance; others use linguistic analysis to point out that the etymology of the word jihad (jahada) actually means “to strive,” does not mean “holy war,” and does not necessarily have a military connotation.

The legalistic approach is not a barren preoccupation of scholars. The ideal Islamic regime is a nomocracy: The law is given and immutable, and it remains for the leaders of the ummah (the Islamic nation) to apply it on a day-to-day basis. Islam is not indifferent to any facet of human behavior; all possible acts potentially have a religious standing, ranging between “duty” (fard, pl. fara’id); “recommended” (mandub); “optional” (jaiz); “permitted” (mubah); “reprehensible” (makruh); and “forbidden” (haram). This taxonomy of human behavior has far-reaching importance for the believer: By performing all his religious duties, he will inherit paradise; by failing to do so (“sins of omission”) or doing that which is forbidden (“sins of commission”), he will be condemned to hell. Therefore, such issues as the legitimacy of jihad — ostensibly deriving from the roots of Islam — cannot be decided by abstract morality or by politics, but by meticulous legal analysis and ruling (fatwa) according to the shari’ah, performed by an authoritative Islamic scholar (’alem, pl. ’ulama).

The use of fatwas to call for violent action first became known in the West as a result of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and again after Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the United States and Israel. But as a genuine instrument of religious deliberation, it has not received the attention it deserves. Analysts have frequently interpreted fatwas as no more than the cynical use of religious terminology in political propaganda. This interpretation does not do justice to the painstaking process of legal reasoning invested in these documents and the importance that their authors and their target audience genuinely accord to the religious truthfulness of their rulings.

The political strength of these fatwas has been time-tested in Muslim political society by rebels and insurgents from the Arabian peninsula to Sudan, India, and Indonesia. At the same time, they have been used by Muslim regimes to bolster their Islamic credentials against external and domestic enemies and to legitimize their policies. This was done by the Sudanese mahdi in his rebellion against the British (1881-85); by the Ottoman caliphate (December 1914) in World War i; by the Syrian regime against the rebellion in northern Syria (1981); and, mutatis mutandis, by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to legitimize his peace policies toward Israel.

The fatwas promulgated by sheikhs and ’ulama who stipulate that jihad is a “personal duty” play, therefore, a pivotal role in encouraging radicalism and in building the support infrastructure for radicals within the traditional Islamic community. While one may find many fatwas which advocate various manifestations of terrorism, fatwas which rule that those who perform these acts do not go to paradise but inherit hell are few and far between.

The questions relating to jihad which are referred to the religious scholars relate to a number of issues:

The very definition, current existence, and area of application of the state of jihad. Is jihad one of the “pillars” (arkan) or “roots” (usul) of Islam? Does it necessarily imply military war, or can it be perceived as a duty to spread Islam through preaching or even the moral struggle between one’s soul and Satan? If the former, then what are the necessary conditions for jihad? Does a state of jihad currently exist between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb? And how can one define Dar al-Islam today, in the absence of a caliphate? Is the rest of the world automatically defined as Dar al-Harb with which a state of jihad exists, or do the treaties and diplomatic relations which exist between Muslim countries and “infidel” countries (including the charter of the United Nations) change this?

Who must participate in jihad, and how? Is jihad a personal duty (fard ’ein) for each and every Muslim under all circumstances or a collective duty (fard kiffaya) that can be performed only under the leadership of a leader of all Muslims (imam, khalifa, amir al-mu’aminin)? Is it incumbent on women? On minors? (According to Islamic law, in the case of a defensive jihad for the liberation of Islamic territory from infidel occupation, “a woman need not ask permission of her husband nor a child of his parents nor a slave of his master.”) May a Muslim refrain from supporting his attacked brethren or obey a non-Muslim secular law which prohibits him from supporting other Muslims in their struggle?

How should the jihad be fought (jus in bellum)? The questions in this area relate, inter alia, to: (a) Is jihad by definition an act of conflict against the actual “infidels” or can it be defined as a spiritual struggle against the “evil inclination”? If it is the former, must it take the form of war (jihad fi-sabil Allah) or can it be performed by way of preaching and proselytization (da’awah)? (b) Who is a legitimate target? Is it permissible to kill noncombatant civilians — women, children, elderly, and clerics; “protected” non-Muslims in Muslim countries — local non-Muslims or tourists whose visas may be interpreted as Islamic guarantees of passage (aman); Muslim bystanders? (c) The legitimacy of suicide attacks (istishhad) as a form of jihad in the light of the severe prohibition on a Muslim taking his own life, on one hand, and the promise of rewards in the afterlife for the shahid who falls in a jihad on the other hand. (d) The weapons which may be used. For example, may a hijacked plane be used as a weapon as in the attacks of September 11 in the light of Islamic prohibitions on killing prisoners? (e) The status of a Muslim who aids the “infidels” against other Muslims. (f) The authority to implement capital punishment in the absence of a caliph.

How should jihad be funded? “Pocketbook jihad” is deeply entrenched in Islamic tradition. It is based on the injunction that one must fight jihad with his soul or with his tongue (jihad al-lissan or da’awah) or with his money (jihad fi-mal). Therefore, financial support of jihad is politically correct and even good for business for the wealthy supporter. The transfer of zakat (almsgiving) raised in a community for jihad fi-sabil Allah (i.e., jihad on Allah’s path or military jihad) has wide religious and social legitimacy. The precepts of “war booty” (ghaneema or fay’) call for a fifth (khoms) to be rendered to the mujahidin. Acts that would otherwise be considered religiously prohibited are thus legitimized by the payment of such a “tax” for the sake of jihad. While there have been attempts to bring Muslim clerics to denounce acts of terrorism, none, to date, have condemned the donation of money for jihad.

The dilemma of the moderate Muslim

It can be safely assumed that the great majority of Muslims in the world have no desire to join a jihad or to politicize their religion. However, it is also true that insofar as religious establishments in most of the Arabian peninsula, in Iran, and in much of Egypt and North Africa are concerned, the radical ideology does not represent a marginal and extremist perversion of Islam but rather a genuine and increasingly mainstream interpretation. Even after 9-11, the sermons broadcast from Mecca cannot be easily distinguished from those of al Qaeda.

Facing the radical Weltanschauung, the moderate but orthodox Muslim has to grapple with two main dilemmas: the difficulty of refuting the legal-religious arguments of the radical interpretation and the aversion to — or even prohibition of — inciting an Islamic Kulturkampf which would split the ranks of the ummah.

The first dilemma is not uniquely Islamic. It is characteristic of revelation-based religions that the less observant or less orthodox will hesitate to challenge fundamental dogmas out of fear of being branded slack or lapsed in their faith. They will prefer to pay their dues to the religious establishment, hoping that by doing so they are also buying their own freedom from coercion. On a deeper level, many believers who are not strict in observance may see their own lifestyle as a matter of convenience and not principle, while the extreme orthodox is the true believer to whom they defer.

This phenomenon is compounded in Islam by the fact that “Arab” Sunni Islam never went though a reform. Since the tenth century, Islam has lacked an accepted mechanism for relegating a tenet or text to ideological obsolescence. Until that time, such a mechanism — ijtihad — existed; ijtihad is the authorization of scholars to reach conclusions not only from existing interpretations and legal precedents, but from their own perusal of the texts. In the tenth century, the “gates of ijtihad” were closed for most of the Sunni world. It is still practiced in Shiite Islam and in Southeast Asia. Reformist traditions did appear in non-Arab Middle Eastern Muslim societies (Turkey, Iran) and in Southeast Asian Islam. Many Sufi (mystical) schools also have traditions of syncretism, reformism, and moderation. These traditions, however, have always suffered from a lack of wide legitimacy due to their non-Arab origins and have never been able to offer themselves as an acceptable alternative to ideologies born in the heartland of Islam and expressed in the tongue of the Prophet. In recent years, these societies have undergone a transformation and have adopted much of the Middle Eastern brand of Islamic orthodoxy and have become, therefore, more susceptible to radical ideologies under the influence of Wahhabi missionaries, Iranian export of Islam, and the cross-pollination resulting from the globalization of ideas in the information age.

The second dilemma — the disinclination of moderates to confront the radicals — has frequently been attributed to violent intimidation (which, no doubt, exists), but it has an additional religious dimension. While the radicals are not averse to branding their adversaries as apostates, orthodox and moderate Muslims rarely resort to this weapon. Such an act (takfir — accusing another Muslim of heresy [kufr] by falsifying the roots of Islam, allowing that which is prohibited or forbidding that which is allowed) is not to be taken lightly; it contradicts the deep-rooted value that Islam places on unity among the believers and its aversion to fitna (communal discord). It is ironic that a religious mechanism which seems to have been created as a tool to preserve pluralism and prevent internal debates from deteriorating into civil war and mutual accusations of heresy (as occurred in Christian Europe) has become a tool in the hands of the radicals to drown out any criticism of them.

Consequently, even when pressure is put on Muslim communities, there exists a political asymmetry in favor of the radicals. Moderates are reluctant to come forward and to risk being accused of apostasy. For this very reason, many Muslim regimes in the Middle East and Asia are reluctant to crack down on the religious aspects of radical Islam and satisfy themselves with dealing with the political violence alone. By way of appeasement politics, they trade tolerance of jihad elsewhere for local calm. Thus, they lose ground to radicals in their societies.

https://www.hoover.org/research/religious-sources-islamic-terrorism

Mawdudi on the Islamic State, Muslim Power and non-Muslim Rights

A Few Quick Blurbs, Who Was Mawlana Abu'l-A`la Mawdudi ?

"It is not exaggeration to say that by the time of his death he had become the most widely read Muslim author of our time, contributing immensely to the contemporary resurgence of Islamic ideas, feelings and activity all over the world." (preface of Towards Understanding Islam, by Mawdudi, p.13)

"Mawlana Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi [1903-79], one of the chief architects of contemporary Islamic resurgence, was the most outstanding Islamic thinker and writer of his time. He devoted his entire life to expounding the meaning and message of Islam ..." (from preface of Mawdudi's Towards Understanding Islam, possibly by Zafar Ishaq Ansari (?) back cover)

Some Bio Info

Born in the "present Hyderabad state of India," "Mawdudi came from a family steeped in the religious tradition of Islam. On his father's side he was descended from the Chishti line of saints; in fact his very name, Abul Ala, derives from the first member of the Chishti silsiah (a Sufi `Order`) ... [He] received religious nurture at the hands of his father and from a variety of teachers employed by him. . . His instruction included very little of the subject matter of a modern school; and European languages, specifically English, were not among the courses he followed ... "

"Significant turning point came for Mawdudi in connection with the murder of a certain Swami Shradhanand by a Muslim fanatic in 1925 ... There were accusations that Islam relies upon the sword for its propagation ... repetitions of the old slander that Islam promises Paradise to those who kill an unbeliever. Mawdudi undertook to answer these charges in the columns of al-Jamiah." (Adams, p.100-101)
(Note: Abul A'la Mawdudi was his given name. "He usually referred to as Mawlana Mawdudi because of his religious learning." (http://www.bookrags.com/biography-abu-i-ala-mawdudi/index.html)

Mawdudi's Islamic State (from Adams)

Mawdudi was the founder of Jama`at-i Islami party/movement in India and Pakistan. (Although it traditionally has not gone above the single digits in vote gathering, it had much success in influencing Pakistani elites and has "managed to exert a political and ideological influence in excess" of its numbers. ..." (Talbot, p.108)

Mawdudi on the Islamic state:

Its sphere of activity is co-extensive with human life ... In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private.` [Ahmad, p.154]

It should be

the very antithesis of secular Western democracy ... In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states [Adams, pp. 119-21]

Muslims in Charge.

It is a dictate of this very nature of the Islamic state that such a state should be run only by those who believe in the ideology on which it is based and in the Divine Law which it is assigned to administer. [Ahmad p.155, quoted in Adams p.121]

Choosing the State's Leader.

Islam does not limit the scope of its possibilities by attempting to lay down exactly how the choice of leader will be made. [Ahmad, quoted in Adams, p.252]

Different methods may be appropriate to different times and circumstances, as is evidenced by the lack of uniformity in the ways of deciding the succession of the first four caliphs ... [Adams, p.123]

Legislature Should not Be a Law-Making Body

In addition to providing a means for the ruler to fulfill the duty of consulting, the function of the legislature is really that of law-finding, not of law-making. . .

Islam

... leaves no room of human legislation in an Islamic state, because herein all legislative functions vest in God and the only function left for Muslims lies in their observance of the God-made law . . The fact of the matter, however, is that Islam does not totally exclude human legislation. It only limits its scope and guide it on right lines.` [Adams p.125, quoting Ahmad, p.77]

 The State must "be controlled and run exclusively by Muslims."

 Head of state, "the locus of all power and authority," must be a Muslim, adult male who has NOT actively sought the post.

 The Ruler should be the "best" (in terms of piety as well as competency) for the task.

 non-Muslims may hold non-sensitive posts, but must be "rigorously excluded from influencing policy decisions."

 Government must be managed though mutual consultation, the ruler is to be selected, appointed, or elected through a consultative process.

 How the leader is chosen may vary. "Islam does not limit the scope of its possibilities by attempting to lay down exactly how the choice of leader will be made."

 Legislature is a consultative body whose "opinions and judgments are not binding either upon the ruler or the people of the Islamic state." ("Complete power remains with the ruler.")

 deals with four kinds of legislation

interpreting Sharia
where the Shariah has not laid down specific injunctions analogous situations are found. (qiyas)
inference from general principles to derive guidance.
passing "independent legislation" in the `vast range of human affairs about which Shariah is totally silent` (Ahmad, quoted in Adams, p.78)

but where legislation must accord with the spirit of Islam. (Adams p.126)

 because in a pious Islamic society matters would be resolved by consensus, there is "no provision of effective machinery for resolving conflict" in Mawdudi's state.

To restore the unity and righteousness that existed at the time of the Rightly Guided Khalifs, Four principles are needed:

Those who bear responsibility should face the representatives so the public and be accountable for what they do
The party system should be reformed to abolish loyalty to parties
The government should not operate with complex rules
The people elected to office should have the proper qualifications.
(Ahmad, p.259)

Mawdudi on Pakistan

Mawdudi originally preached that Islam should be organized as a party ruled by a system of ideas rather than as a religion and aim towards taking over "the whole of India" rather than seperating from it. (Adams, p.104) But in a reverse of his pro-pan-Islamic position that "was to say the least, surprising," Mawdudi embraced the state of Pakistan (which was enormously popular among Muslims of the subcontinent) despite the fact that he had opposed nationalism of any sort and that the new state did not use the Shariah.

Now that this had become a regularized Islamic state, it is no longer the country of the enemy against which it is our duty to strive. Rather, it is now the country of friends, our own country, the strengthening, construction and progress of which are our duty.
[Adams, p.107]

Mawdudi on Shariah

Directives of the Shariah deal with

family relationships, social and economic affairs, administration, rights and duties of citizens, judicial system, laws of war and peace and international relations. In short it embraces all the various departments of life ... The Shariah is a complete scheme of life and an all-embracing social order where nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking. [Adams p.113, quoting Ahmad p.57]

Mawdudi on non-Muslim Culture

The "cultural aping" by Muslims "of others" (i.e. non-Muslims) has

very disastrous consequences upon a nation; it destroys its inner vitality, blurs its vision, befogs its critical faculties, breeds inferiority complexes, and gradually but assuredly saps all the springs of culture and sound its death-knell. That is why the Holy Prophet has positively and forcefully forbidden the Muslims to assume the culture and mode of life of the non-Muslims. [Maududi, Towards Understanding Islam, p.131]

Mawdudi on non-Muslims Rights (from Short)

.... Abul 'Ala Mawdudi, Qur'anic exegete and founder of the Islamist Pakistani group Jama'at-i-Islami was quite unapologetic about Jizyah:

...the Muslims should feel proud of such a humane law as that of Jizya. For it is obvious that a maximum freedom that can be allowed to those who do not adopt the way of Allah but choose to tread the ways of error is that they should be tolerated to lead the life they like. [Mawdudi, The Meaning of the Qur'an, p.183.]

He interprets the Qur'anic imperative to Jihad as having the aim of subjugating non-Muslims, to force them to pay the Jizyah as the defining symbol of their subjection:

... Jews and the Christians ...should be forced to pay Jizya in order to put an end to their independence and supremacy so that they should not remain rulers and sovereigns in the land. These powers should be wrested from them by the followers of the true Faith, who should assume the sovereignty and lead others towards the Right Way. [Mawdudi, The Meaning of the Qur'an, v.2, page 183.]

The consequence of this is that in an Islamic State -- specifically the Khilafah -- non-Muslims should be denied Government posts, since the state exists for the Muslims, who alone are true citizens, whilst the non-Muslims are merely conquered residents, and the Jizyah signifies this:

That is why the Islamic state offers them protection, if they agree to live as Zimmis by paying Jizya, but it can not allow that they should remain supreme rulers in any place and establish wrong ways and establish them on others. As this state of things inevitably produce chaos and disorder, it is the duty of the true Muslims to exert their utmost to bring an end to their wicked rule and bring them under a righteous order. [Mawdudi, The Meaning of the Qur'an, v.2, p. 186.]

Differences of taxation demonstrate distinctions in citizenship. As a symbol of subjection, it signifies that the state is not really the common property of all its permanent residents, but only the Muslims ...

Mawdudi on non-Muslims Rights (from Roy)

"The two kinds of citizenship that Islam envisions are the following: (1) the Muslims, (2) the Zimmis." (Ahmad p.245, quoted in Roy p.223)

Maududi's Islamic State and "Theodemocracy" (from Ruthven)

In the true Islamic state, for which Maududi coined the term "theodemocracy," the representatives of the people may be co-opted into the national assembly rather than elected, on the grounds that truly virtuous people will not always put themselves forward. As Yousef Choueiri has observed, Maududi's theodemocracy is an

ideological state in which legislators do not legislate, citizens only vote to reaffirm the permanent applicability of God's laws, women rarely venture outside their homes lest social discipline be disrupted, and non-Muslims are tolerated a foreign elements required to express their loyalty by means of paying a financial levy` (i.e. the jizya)
[Choueiri p.111, quoted in Ruthven p.70]

Mawdudi's Islamic State - Ideological, One-Party Rule (from Kramer)

Much of the ideological spadework was done by Mawlana Abu'l-A`la Mawdudi (1903-79), the founder of the fundamentalist Jama`at-i Islami in India and Pakistan. His many writings, translated into every major language spoken by Muslims, provide a panoramic view of the ideal fundamentalist state. In this state, sovereignty would belong to God alone, and would be exercised on his behalf by a just ruler, himself guided by a reading of God's law in its entirety. As an ideological state, it would be administered for God solely by Muslims who adhered to its ideology, and "whose whole life is devoted to the observance and enforcement" of Islamic law. Non-Muslims, who could not share its ideology, and women, who by nature could not devote their entire lives to it, would have no place in high politics. Everything would come under the purview of this Islamic state. "In such a state," announced Mawdudi,

no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states,

although Mawdudi rejected individual dictatorship, instead advocating a variety of one-party rule. Mawdudi was certain about what the Islamic state would not resemble: it would be "the very antithesis of secular Western democracy." (Adams, p.119-21.)
Mawdudi himself never had a sufficient following to make a concerted bid for power in Pakistan, but his writings exerted a wide influence over fundamentalists better positioned to act upon his vision. (Kramer)

Mawdudi - Islamic rule of Hindu India (from Kepel)

Jihad in Islam, was published in Urdu in the late 1920s, roughly coinciding with Banna's creation of the Society of Muslim Brothers in Egypt. From the start Mawdudi was against the project for a circumscribed `Muslim state,` [aka Pakistan] which would give power to the nationalists. Instead, he agitated for an Islamic state covering the whole of India. For him, all nationalism was impiety, more especially as its conception of the state was European-inspired. Apart from this he had nothing but contempt for the ulamas, whom he accused of having collaborated with the British occupiers since the fall of Muslim-held Delhi in 1857. Mawdudi favored what he called `Islamization from above,` through a state in which sovereignty would be exercised in the name of Allah and the sharia would be implemented. He declared that politics was `an integral, inseparable part of the Islamic faith, and that the Islamic state that Muslim political action seeks to build is a panacea for all their [Muslims] problems.` (Nasr, p.7)

For him, the five traditional Pillars of Islam (profession of the faith, prayer, the fast of Ramadan, pilgrimage, and almsgiving) were merely phases of training and preparation for jihad, the struggle against those of Allah's creatures who had usurped His sovereignty. To carry out his jihad, he founded in 1941, the Jamaat-e-Islami, which he saw as the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, on a Leninist model. Mawdudi made explicit references to the `vanguard` of the earliest Muslims, who gathered around the Prophet in 622 during the Hegira, broke with the idolatrous people of Mecca, and departed to found the Islamic state of Medina. His own party was intended to follow a similar course." (Kepel, p.34)

Mawdudi - Jahiliyya and Apostacy - from Sivan

"... The diagnosis set by the Maudoodi school, and further developed by Qutb and his disciples, takes this decadence theory several steps further, crossing, in the process, a crucial borderline: it is no more just a question of decline; Islam - particularly under the new military state - has reverted to a stage of jahiliyya that reflects the situation of Arabia prior to A.D. 622. The elites - and other peddlers of modernity who brought it to that state of affairs, as well as the ruled who tolerate or embrace it, are guilty of apostacy (ridda)." (Sivan, p.65)

http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/mawdudi_gems.html:

Why Muslims See the Crusades So Differently from Christians, Missy Sullivan

It’s often said that winners dictate history. Not so for the medieval holy wars called the Crusades.

Muslim forces ultimately expelled the European Christians who invaded the eastern Mediterranean repeatedly in the 12th and 13th centuries—and thwarted their effort to regain control of sacred Holy Land sites such as Jerusalem. Still, most histories of the Crusades offer a largely one-sided view, drawn originally from European medieval chronicles, then filtered through 18th and 19th-century Western scholars.

But how did Muslims at the time view the invasions? (Not always so contentiously, it turns out.) And what did they think of the European interlopers? (One common cliché: “unwashed barbarians.”) For a nuanced view of the medieval Muslim world, HISTORY talked with two prominent scholars: Paul M. Cobb, professor of Islamic History at the University of Pennsylvania, author of Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades, and Suleiman A. Mourad, a professor of religion at Smith College and author of The Mosaic of Islam.

HISTORY: Broadly speaking, how do Islamic perspectives on the Crusades differ from those of the Christian sources from Western Europe?
Suleiman Mourad: If we wrote the history of the Crusades based on Islamic narratives, it would be a completely different story altogether. There were no doubt wars and bloodshed, but that wasn’t the only or dominant story. There was also coexistence, political compromise, trade, scientific exchange, love. We have poetry and chronicles with evidence of mixed marriages.

Do Muslim perspectives match Western ones in terms of chronology and geography?
Paul Cobb: Chronologically, Muslim sources differ from the Christians because they don’t recognize the Crusades. They recognize the events we call the Crusades today simply as another wave of Frankish aggression on the Muslim world. (I use “Franks” or “Frankish” to refer to western Christians.) For them, the Crusades didn’t begin in Clermont with Pope Urban’s 1095 speech [rallying crusaders], as most historians say, but rather decades earlier. By 1060 Christians were not only nibbling at the edges of the Islamic world, but were actually gaining territory in Sicily and Spain. And whereas most Western historians recognize the 1291 fall of Acre as the end of the main Crusades, Muslim historians don’t see the end of the Frankish threat until, I would say, the mid-15th century, when Ottoman armies conquer Constantinople.

SM: To say the Crusades started in Clermont in 1095 and ended at Acre in 1291, we are fooling ourselves. History is not that clean cut. What came before and after reflected a lot of continuity and not abrupt change.

And geographically?
PC: Muslims saw the Frankish threat as Mediterranean-wide. It’s not just Franks invading Jerusalem, holding it 87 years and leaving, but a long-term and consistent assault on the most exposed areas of the Mediterranean edge of Muslim world—Spain, Sicily, North Africa, and what is now Turkey—over hundreds of years.

Let’s back up. As the Crusades began, what were the physical boundaries of the Islamic world?
PC: The Islamic world—that is, those lands that recognized Muslim rulers and the authority of Islamic Law—was much bigger than the land of the Latin Christian west. It stretched from Spain and Portugal in the west to India in the east. And from central Asia in the north to Sudan and the horn of Africa in the south.

Portrait of Saladin, the first sultan of Egypt and Syria and the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. While Saladin led Muslim opposition to the western Crusaders, he also befriended some, like King Baldwin III of Jerusalem. (Credit: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

At that time, the core of the Islamic world was divided between a Shi’ite dynasty in Egypt and a Sunni dynasty in Syria and Iraq. But there was eventually a movement toward unification, right?
PC: Saladin, Islam’s most famous counter-crusading hero, was a very astute politician who knew he had to get his own house in order before he could deal with the Franks. He took over Egypt, then set about reconquering Syria and parts of Iraq. He would go on to ultimately recapture Jerusalem from the crusaders and push them back to a thin strip along the Mediterranean.

Tell me about medieval Islamic civilization. Wasn’t there a flowering in the 9th and 10th centuries?
SM: Actually, Islam’s “golden age” goes much longer, from the 9th to the 14th centuries—and it moves around, from Baghdad to Damascus to Cairo. Within that time, there were golden ages of mathematics and astronomy and medicine, with many advances. One example: A physician named Ibm al-Nafis, who lived in the 13th century in Cairo, was the first person to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood—four centuries before the Europeans discovered that.

The main accomplishment was when, on a large scale, Muslims began to creatively engage with the science and philosophy of the classical Greco-Roman-Byzantine tradition—and began to rethink those ideas. For pretty much the whole apparatus of science, mathematics and logic, Muslim scholars, along with others based in the Muslim world, provided corrections to the Greco-Roman tradition.

How would you compare European and Islamic civilizations during this time?
PC: The Islamic world was much bigger and more urbanized, with more wealth and cultural patronage, and more ethnic and linguistic diversity. Whereas the cities of western Christendom had populations measured in the thousands—Paris and London would have had maybe 20,000 each—Baghdad likely had hundreds of thousands of citizens.

So we’re talking about an invasion of peoples from a marginal, underdeveloped region of the world to one of the most urbanized, culturally sophisticated zones on the planet. That accounts for the sense of trauma from the Muslim side. How could people from the edge of the known world invade this divinely protected, culturally sophisticated and militarily triumphant region? There was a lot of soul searching on the part of the Muslims.

If the crusaders’ mandate was to reclaim the Holy Land and regain control of important Christian sites like Jerusalem, what was the importance of this territory for the Islamic world?
PC: Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest cities after Mecca and Medina, was one of its most pious pilgrimage sites. Islamic tradition built on many Christian traditions and revered many of the same figures known from the Bible and elsewhere—including Jesus. So for them, Jerusalem was at the center of a vast sacred landscape that stretched to Palestine and Syria.

SM: There’s a lot of literature that enjoins Muslims to protect the Holy Land and safeguard it as an Islamic space. But many places—in Jerusalem, in Acre, Saidnaya and elsewhere—were claimed by more than one community. These were sacred sites for everyone, not just one group.

Wait. So they were actually sharing sacred sites that, in theory, they were supposed to be fighting over?
SM: Today we have a rigid understanding of sacred sites being for one group, and the others won’t—and shouldn’t—come near it. Back then, there was a more collective approach to sanctity of space. The Islamic theory said, “we should fight these people and protect the Holy Land.” But in practice, they were willing to share. We know for a fact that when the crusaders came, most Muslims did not raise a finger. And to a large extent, the crusaders didn’t interfere with Muslim religious space.

No sooner did the crusaders infiltrate, they were accepted into the political landscape as any others that came: with alliances, wars, treaties, commerce. We have letters from Saladin to the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III, that convey friendship and deep alliances. The relationship wasn’t dogmatic, it was pragmatic.

What did medieval Muslims think of Europeans?
SM: The broad Muslim perception of Europeans was as cross-eyed barbarians. There were clichés that got repeated up until the 19th century—usually about their lack of cleanliness, the fact that they defecate in the street without any sense of privacy. There is a story about crusader medicine, that they blood-let in order to let the demons out. The people who knew the crusaders gave a much more refined understanding, but the positive narratives were not widely disseminated.

PC: Muslim travelers had a hierarchical world view. In the center was the Islamic world. On its margins, the people of Western Europe weren’t on the extreme edge, but were warming their hands on the fires of civilization. Europe was considered cold and dark and surrounded in mist. In ancient medieval ethnography, geography was destiny. It was believed the Franks were hairy, pale and from the dark and unwashed North. The medieval Islamic world’s view of the west is a mirror of today’s view of Islam by the west: exotic and distant, populated by a fanatical warlike population, slow to develop, economically backwards—with nice monuments and raw materials, but otherwise not much to recommend it.

What do specific accounts say?
PC: Most famously there was an Arabic author named Ibrahim Ibn Ya’qub, who traveled around Europe in the 10th century, and his work was quoted by others. He left first-hand accounts of France, Italy and Germany, among other places. We learn, for example, of lushness of the land in Bordeaux, feasting practices in Germany, even whaling practices near Ireland. For all these, he was pleased by the land, but appalled by the people he met. “They do not bathe except once or twice a year, with cold water,” he wrote. “They never wash their clothes, which they put on once for good until they fall into tatters.” What you have is a classic strategy by which one society “others” another society—much as Europeans did to Muslims.

SM: Those who lived with the crusaders at close range sometimes gave a subtler picture. A diplomat named Usama ibn Munqidh went to crusader territories and befriended the leaders. He writes about visiting a court, and being very impressed with it. He liked that it wasn’t fully autocratic.

Jerusalem was one of the holiest places in the eastern Mediterranean—for Muslims, Christians andJews alike. (Credit: Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)

What did Muslims think of Templar knights?
PC: They were aware of the Templars’ special status as elite holy warriors and considered them their most fearsome Frankish opponents. They also saw them as principled, fanatically loyal and unwaveringly fierce. It’s a backhanded compliment that after the battle of Hattin in 1187—the great defeat of the Franks at the hands of Saladin, who was usually magnanimous—he insisted the Templar prisoners be executed because they were seen as such a dire threat.

On the other side, Usama Ibn Munqidh tells the story of a Frank, recently arrived to the Holy Land, who harassed him about how he was praying when he was in a Templar chapel. And the Templars apologized and helped Usama. Hosting him to pray was part of a diplomatic code.

SM: The Templars represented to the Muslims a model blending religiosity and militancy that was novel. To give a modern parallel, they were perceived not unlike the way Muslims today might think of Isis: that they are too fanatic for their taste. They bring to their fighting a kind of religious zeal, and they bring to their religion a kind of militancy.

Are jihad and crusade related?
PC: There is a family resemblance because they share roots in monotheism, where God is a jealous God. And both Crusades and Jihad offered martyrdom to those who die. But while they look alike, they have some important differences. Crusades were directed at the liberation of sacred land considered rightfully Christian, whereas Jihad was about rescuing souls.

SM: I personally don’t find any structural difference between the two. Jihad has an Islamic concept: religiously sanctioned aggression. The Crusades were precisely that.

What was the impact of the Crusades in the Muslim world?
SM: The legacy of the Crusades in the Muslim world is that a lot of Muslims think of where they are today in terms of Western encroachment. For some, the Crusades are seen not just as a medieval threat, but as a present one—a perpetual Western attempt to undermine Islam. It could be physical colonialism or cultural colonialism.

The groups that paid the biggest price of the crusader experience were the local (non-European) Christians. By the time the crusaders were kicked out, the dominant ruling dynasties happened to be Sunni. Many Shi’ites and local Christians felt their best option was to convert. After the crusader period, the Middle East becomes far less Christian and far less Shi’ite.

Why are the Crusades still relevant today in the Middle East?
PC: It’s a bit like what Mark Twain said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.” Modern ideologues might draw on the Crusades to justify contemporary conflict as part of some millennium-long continuum. But the truth is, crusaders and Muslims fought for their own goals, not for the ones that motivate us today.

SM: Three words: politics of religion.

Why Jews and Muslims Both Have Religious Claims on Jerusalem

The U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital—despite a dueling claim from Palestine.

Becky Little

The matter of Israel’s capital city has long been a source of dispute. Although nearly all foreign embassies in Israel are located in Tel Aviv, the country considers Jerusalem to be its capital. Jerusalem, which is one of the oldest cities in the world, has been formally divided between Israel and Palestine for nearly 70 years, yet changed hands many other times throughout the course of its over 5,000-year history.

Israel and Palestine’s dueling claims to the city are steeped in decades of conflict, during which Jewish settlers pushed Muslim Arabs out of their homes and established the state of Israel on their land in the middle of the 20th century. But the claims are also tied to the religions of Judaism and Islam, both of which recognize Jerusalem as a holy place.

On December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump broke with previous U.S. foreign policy and announced that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, effectively endorsing Israeli control of the city. On May 14, 2018, the U.S. relocated its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. (Credit: Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are strongly tied to the ancient city, and followers of each of these religions have controlled all or part of the city over the past few thousand years. In 1,000 B.C.E., King David established Jewish control over Jerusalem. The city fell in and out of other hands during the next couple of millenia; particularly during the crusades, when Christian crusaders fought competing Christian and Muslim factions for control of the city. And between 1517 and 1917, the Ottoman Empire—whose official religion was Islam—ruled the city.

Jerusalem features prominently in the Hebrew Bible. In the Jewish tradition, it is the place where Abraham, the first Patriarch of Judaism, nearly sacrificed his son Isaac to God thousands of years ago. Later, Abraham’s grandson Jacob (who took the name “Israel”) learned that Jerusalem is “the site that the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes, as a place established in His name,” according to the Book of Deuteronomy.

Jerusalem was the capital of King David’s Israel in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the city where David’s son Solomon built his temple. In biblical times, Jewish people who could not make a pilgrimage to the city were supposed to pray in the direction of it.

According to the Quran, Jerusalem was also the last place the Prophet Muhammad visited before he ascended to the heavens and talked to God in the seventh century. Before that, he was flown from Mecca to Jerusalem overnight by a mythical creature.

Both this miraculous night journey and his communion with God are important events in Islam. During the night journey, Muhammad was purified in preparation for his meeting with God. Once in heaven, God told Muhammad that he should recite the salat, or ritual prayer, 50 times each day. However, Muhammad begged God to reduce the number to five times a day, which is the current standard for Muslim prayer.

TURKEY – APRIL 08: Walls of Constantinople (first half of the 5th century AD) and the city, Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Muhammad saw his mission as an extension of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, the first Qibla, or direction in which Muslims should pray, was Jerusalem (today, Muslims bow towards Mecca). In addition, Islamic tradition predicts that Jerusalem will play an important role in the future, naming it as one of the cities where the end of the world will play out.

Though the world doesn’t appear to be ending there right now, Trump’s announcement has increased tensions in the region. The president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital drew praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and condemnation from Palestinian allies who worried that this move would make it more difficult to negotiate a long-sought peace treaty between the states.

And in fact, hours before Trump’s announcement, the Palestinian general delegate to the U.K. stated that if the U.S. president recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he would effectively be

Special 26: Here are the verses in the Quran that Waseem Rizvi wants to delete

Here is a comprehensive list of the verses, removed by Waseem Rizvi for the 'new Quran.' The English translation from Arabic of the Quranic verses has been done by Saheeh International and has been sourced from the Islamic website quran.com.

29 May, 2021,

https://www.opindia.com/2021/05/list-of-26-quranic-verses-that-waseem-rizvi-wants-to-remove/

On Saturday (March 29), former Shia Central Waqf Board Chairman Waseem Rizvi informed that he has created a new Islamic Holy book, after ommitting 26 verses from the Quran. He has argued that the 26 verses promote terrorism and has requested PM Modi to authorise the use of his ‘new Quran’ in all madrasas and Muslim institutes in the country.

It must be mentioned that Rizvi had earlier filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court of India, seeking the removal of the said 26 verses of the Quran. In his PIL, Rizvi stated that these verses are allegedly used by Islamist Terrorist Groups as justification for attacks on non-believers and civilians. However, his petition was dismissed for supposedly being “absolutely frivolous” and fined ₹50,000.

Here is a comprehensive list of the verses, removed by Waseem Rizvi for the ‘new Quran.’ It must be mentioned that the English translation from Arabic of the Quranic verses has been done by Saheeh International and has been sourced from the Islamic website quran.com. In Arabic, the word ‘Surah’ or ‘sura’ is considered equivalent to a chapter in the Quran.

Surah 2 (Al-Baqarah)

Verse 191:

And kill them [in battle] wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah¹ is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al-Ḥarām until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

Surah 3 (Ali ‘Imran)

Verse 151:

We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve for what they have associated with Allah of which He had not sent down [any] authority.¹ And their refuge will be the Fire, and wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers.

Surah 4 (An-Nisa)

Verse 56:

Indeed, those who disbelieve in Our verses – We will drive them into a fire. Every time their skins are roasted through, We will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in Might and Wise.

Verse 89:

They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away [i.e., refuse], then seize them and kill them [for their betrayal] wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper,

Verse 101:

And when you travel throughout the land, there is no blame upon you for shortening the prayer,¹ [especially] if you fear that those who disbelieve may disrupt [or attack] you.² Indeed, the disbelievers are ever to you a clear enemy.

Surah 5 (Al-Ma’idah)

Verse 14:

And from those who say, “We are Christians” We took their covenant; but they forgot a portion of that of which they were reminded.¹ So We caused among them² animosity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection. And Allah is going to inform them about what they used to do.

Verse 51:

O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.

Verse 57:

O you who have believed, take not those who have taken your religion in ridicule and amusement among the ones who were given the Scripture before you nor the disbelievers as allies. And fear Allah, if you should [truly] be believers.

Surah 8 (Al-Anfal)

Verse 65:

O Prophet, urge the believers to battle. If there are among you twenty [who are] steadfast, they will overcome two hundred. And if there are among you one hundred [who are steadfast], they will overcome a thousand of those who have disbelieved because they are a people who do not understand.

Verse 69:

So consume what you have taken of war booty [as being] lawful and good, and fear Allah. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

Surah 9 (At-Tawbah)

Verse 5:

And when the inviolable months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakāh, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

Verse 14:

Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts [i.e., desires] of a believing people.

Verse 23:

O you who have believed, do not take your fathers or your brothers as allies if they have preferred disbelief over belief. And whoever does so among you – then it is those who are the wrongdoers.

Verse 28:

O you who have believed, indeed the polytheists are unclean, so let them not approach al-Masjid al-Ḥarām after this, their [final] year. And if you fear privation, Allah will enrich you from His bounty if He wills. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Wise.

Verse 29

Fight against those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah¹ willingly while they are humbled.

Verse 37:

Indeed, the postponing [of restriction within sacred months] is an increase in disbelief by which those who have disbelieved are led [further] astray. They make it¹ lawful one year and unlawful another year to correspond to the number made unlawful by Allah² and [thus] make lawful what Allah has made unlawful. Made pleasing to them is the evil of their deeds; and Allah does not guide the disbelieving people

Verse 58

And among them are some who criticize you concerning the [distribution of] charities. If they are given from them, they approve; but if they are not given from them, at once they become angry.

Verse 111

Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’ān. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment.

Verse 123:

O you who have believed, fight against those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness. And know that Allah is with the righteous.

Surah 21 (Al-Anbya)

Verse 98:

Indeed, you [disbelievers] and what you worship other than Allah are the firewood of Hell. You will be coming to [enter] it.

Surah 32 (As-Sajdah)

Verse 22:

And who is more unjust than one who is reminded of the verses of his Lord; then he turns away from them? Indeed We, from the criminals, will take retribution.

Surah 33 (Al-Ahzab)

Verse 61: Accursed wherever they are found, [being] seized and massacred completely.

Surah 41 (Fussilat)

Verse 27:

But We will surely cause those who disbelieve to taste a severe punishment, and We will surely recompense them for the worst of what they had been doing.

Verse 28:

That is the recompense of the enemies of Allah – the Fire. For them therein is the home of eternity as recompense for what they, of Our verses, were rejecting.

Surah 48 (Al-Fath)

Verse 20: Allah has promised you much booty that you will take [in the future] and has hastened for you this [victory] and withheld the hands of people from you – that it may be a sign for the believers and [that] He may guide you to a straight path.

Surah 66 (At-Tahrim)

Verse 9: O Prophet, strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.

Waseem Rizvi bats for removal of 26 verses from the Quran

The former Shia Central Waqf Board Chairman had emphasised that due to the extreme interpretations of the 26 verses of the Holy book, Islam was identified with militancy, fundamentalism, extremism, and terrorism. He has been the subject of several FIRs and death threats. The National Commission for Minorities also demanded an unconditional apology from Waseem Rizvi. On March 20, hundreds of Muslims gathered at the Jama Masjid in the National Capital to protest against him.

In his own words, Waseem Rizvi added, “These verses are like poison in the raw mind of young children in the name of the message of Allah, which leads him to a radical mindset and from his early age when they become young, they hate people of other religions because of their mindset, and many youths get involved with terrorist organizations in some way under this mentality, the wrong messages of Allah Has been filled in the name of Islam.”

Nei til islam

mandag 22. januar 2024

Wold er kanskje hedning, men er preses Fykse Tveit det også?

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