Islam: A Brief History

In the aftermath of 9/11, I was too old to join the military, which I would have done before the smoke cleared, so I decided to find out as much as I could about Islamic jihad.  Sun Tzu said “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” [1] In other words,, to defeat the enemy, you must know the enemy.

One of the first books I read was Islamic Imperialism by Efraim Karsh.  He gave a detailed history of how the “religion” of Islam was founded and what its primary objective is.

In a nutshell, Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad (570 AD – 632 AD) and is based on revelations he received from God while meditating in a cave. They came to him over a period of time beginning in 610 AD.  These revelations resulted in the Qur’an, Islam’s “holy book”, which consists of 114 surahs, or chapters.  It was written a few years after Muhammad died, and the surahs are NOT in chronological order of when/how they were revealed to him.  It’s verses do not necessarily flow from one passage to the next in a typical story and often seem disconnected.  I mention this because the verses quoted here are not to be considered as “out-of-context”, they are pretty much “stand alone” concepts.

In many ways, the Qur’an resembles the Holy Bible, particularly the Old Testament, using similar phrases, preaching obedience and even condoning violence.  I am not a biblical scholar, but I believe the major difference is the Christian Bible preaches that God loves ALL people, whereas the Qur’an demands fealty to Allah, who loves only Muslims and commands them to “fight” all others.  Jews and Christians are specifically called “unjust” and are deemed “non-believers” or “infidels”.

Here are a few verses every Muslim should know:

Qur’an 5:51 – “O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your protectors: they are but protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for protection) is of them. Verily Allah guides not a people unjust.”

Qur’an 2:191 – “And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque, unless they first fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.”  (“faith” meaning faith in Islam, or refusal to convert)

Qur’an 8:39 – “And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; (“everywhere” meaning literally EVERYWHERE ON EARTH).

Muhammad, the so-called prophet, started rambling on in the town square of Mecca in 622 AD.  Most residents thought he was a nut case and paid him no mind.  Seeing that his message wasn’t well received, he took his “act” to Medina with some friends and family members, where he suddenly gathered a following, of about 3,000 Medinans from various tribes and pagan clans.  Then he took his little army of loyal devotees on tour, spending the next 10 years murdering, raping, pillaging, kidnapping, and extorting merchants along the trade routes, on a near daily basis. conducting a “join us or die” campaign, while recruiting their sons and marauding the countryside.  By the time Muhammad died in 632, the “religion” of Islam had grown significantly, and the concept of jihad had been established, which I will explain in a moment.

The reason I placed the term “religion” in quotes is because it is widely accepted that a “true” Prophet must exhibit righteousness AT ALL TIMES.  Considering the behavior that Muhammad himself practiced for 10 years, it’s impossible to call him “righteous”, therefore he must have been a “false” prophet and his early followers were nothing more than criminal gangsters.  It’s hard to imagine them as the founders of a legitimate religion.  I would say it’s more accurate to describe him as a ruthless megalomaniac who brilliantly predicted he could hide his intentions to conquer the entire globe under the guise of religion.  And make no mistake, the primary objective of Islam is to dominate the entire world by literally “slaying” all non-believers.  They’ve been doing exactly that for over 1,400 years, continuously.  There isn’t a single decade in all that time without at least 10 major Islamic attacks, many of them resulting in expanded territory.  It will never stop. When any group conducts war against everyone who refuses to conform to their ideology, all “non believers” are the enemy, and if you are their enemy, they are your enemy.

What is Jihad ?

The method by which Islam spread is known as jihad.  Some call it “holy war”, but it is much misunderstood.  Islamic scholars want you to believe it simply translates to “struggle or strive”, eliciting sympathy from the observer.  They want you to think all the relatively recent terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and the rest of them, are “radical” factions that give Islam a bad name.  They want you to think that all jihadis are radical extremists wielding swords and AK-47s.  They want you to think there are only 100,000, or fewer, radicals waging jihad.  Nothing could be more deceptive.  Deception, by the way, is a Sun Tzu tactic that Islamists use as a fundamental stratagem.

I studied Islam for 15 years and am quite certain I could have earned a Masters degree in Middle Eastern studies had I pursued one.  It wasn’t until January 2015, that I saw an article published by the Islamic Supreme Council that was titled something like “Jihad: What it is Not” [2].  In their zealousness to rebuke what many perceived jihad to be, they had a section that revealed what it was.  Specifically, they admitted that jihad takes FIVE basic “forms”; by the sword, by the tongue, by the pen, by the hand, and by the heart.

I have likened these “forms” to the formation of a professional sports team. 

By the sword is anyone who actively fights.  Those jihadis waving swords and AK-47s are akin to the players on the team.

By the tongue is anyone who uses his position to promote Islam.  I liken them to the cheerleaders, local announcers, and former players who go on TV to rally the fan base from “pulpits” with microphones.

By the pen is anyone writing about the virtues of Islam, or Islamic scholars, such as the Islamic Supreme Council.  I compare them to the local sportswriters and columnists who cover the team.

By the hand is anyone who actively provides material support, or goods and services, or by offering their time to make sure jihad continues.  These are the coaches, front office, equipment managers, team trainers, etc., all dedicated to the success of the team.

By the heart, by far the largest group, which is anyone who wants jihad to succeed.  These are a pro team’s fans.

Technically, engaging in jihad by any one of those “forms” is a Jihadi, and clearly there are more Jihadis in the world than the Islamic Supreme Council wants you to believe.  In fact, I once did an analysis and spreadsheet to estimate the influence of jihad among the world’s populations.  You might be surprised to hear that there are not a mere 100,000 or so Jihadis, but actually more like 941 MILLION. 

I arrived at that figure by calculating the Muslim populations of every country in the world and assigning a sliding scale of sentiment based on the percentage of Muslim population in comparison to the total populations of each country.  Without getting too complicated, essentially, I categorized the sympathy for jihad into five percentages based on the degree of Muslim influence in each country    and factored in a degree of fear that is likely prevalent in Muslim dominated countries.  Fear being a very real force because in sharia the penalty for apostasy is death.  So, a truly peaceful Muslim must carefully guard his honest opinions of Islamic jihad.  I conservatively estimated that a fairly significant percentage of Muslims in Muslim dominate countries could be apostates.  Conversely, I estimated that a fairly low percentage of Muslims in so-called “free” countries with low Muslim populations were apostatic, meaning most were actual Jihadis by the heart.  Each country had a scaled section of their Muslim populations with a distribution in each category and the end result was 941 million Jihadis world-wide, out of a total Muslim population of 1.6 billion Muslims, or nearly 2/3rds of all Muslims.  For every “radical” extremist waving an AK-47 and firing rockets at “non-believers”, there are over 9,000 “cheerleaders” celebrating their terrorist attack.  Jihadis are not “radical” extremists.  They are orthodox Muslims. 

But what about all those peaceful Muslims, the ones every woke PC idiot praise as the finest people they ever met ?  Surely being the religious folks that they are, must be aware of this verse: Qur’an 4:95 – “Not equal are those believers who sit at home and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons.  Allah has granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit at home.”

In other words, those “by the sword” Jihadis are first class Muslims; “passive” Jihadis waging the struggle ”by the pen, the tongue, the hand, and the heart” are second class Muslims, and the only Muslims remaining by deduction, those truly peaceful apostate Muslims are LOWER than second class Muslims.  One would think those apostates would denounce Islam if they could.  There’s a good chance the ones you may know who have always acted with civility, are either in denial about how Allah views them, or they are deceptively hiding their jihad “by the heart”.

By the Tongue Barry

The five “forms” revealed by the Islamic Supreme Council also sold me on the notion that Barack HUSSEIN Obama was a Jihadi.  I knew he had to be a Muslim due to the many things he said and the many acts he did to advance the spread of Islam, but I didn’t have the proof I needed to call him a Jihadi.  Now I know he has been waging jihad by the tongue since he came to power.

In fact, one little episode basically proves he is both a Jihadi and a traitor.

On October 19, 2011, 57 Muslim organizations signed a letter that was addressed to John Brennan, then Obama’s Chief Counterterrorism Advisor, complaining that Muslims were unfairly profiled by the FBI and Homeland Security.  At the time, both agencies had a terrorist watch list of sorts and the Department of Defense was sending officers about to be deployed to the Middle East to an approved course taught by Lt. Colonel Matthew Dooley at the Joint Forces Staff College, wherein they were briefed on what to expect when exposed to those very different cultures.  Within 6 months, by the Spring of 2012, the FBI, and Homeland Security were both ordered to scrub their lists of Muslim names and the highly acclaimed Lt. Col. Dooley was ordered to cease and desist conducting his course. 

Philip Haney, the former CBP officer who developed the database for Homeland Security, known as Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS, later testified that several terrorist attacks that occurred on U. S. soil, could have been avoided had the watch lists been maintained [3].  It illustrates an instance whereby Obama, Brennan’s only boss and the only man who held direct authority over the DOD, the DOJ, and Homeland Security, deliberately acted to take the spotlight off known terrorists.  To “aid and comfort” an enemy against the United States is treason, as defined by 18 U.S. Code § 2381.      

The Shameless Media Condemnation of Israel

By now, everyone has been exposed to the non-stop coverage in the news media of the attack by Hamas from Gaza into southern Israel perpetrated on Saturday 7th October.  The attack left over 1,300 dead Israelis, many of them women, children and the elderly.  Reports of beheaded babies quickly came out, and may now be questionable, but babies riddled with bullets is confirmed.  Hamas returned to Gaza City with 203 hostages, including about 20 American citizens.  Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas and has been shelling Gaza ever since, preparing for a ground offensive.  U. S. warships have gathered in the eastern Mediterranean under a pledge to assist and rearm the Israelis.

On Monday, 16^th October, an Islamic Jihad missile misfired from a nearby cemetery and crashed into the parking lot of a hospital.  Hamas immediately blamed hundreds of r on an Israeli airstrike.  The mainstream news media, including CNN, and the New York Times, accepted the Hamas story at face value and ran the narrative that Israel had conducted a brutal response.  The Arab world is inflamed with rock-throwing “protesters” at western embassies, American college students are shouting pro-Palestinian slogans, and U. S. Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) took a bullhorn outside the Capitol to incite a crowd into occupying the Cannon Building at the Capitol complex.  To put it in a nutshell, anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head and is at a fever pitch.

In less than 24 hours, Israel had completed their investigation of the incident and discovered the explosion was the result of an Islamic Jihad missile misfire, which was rather common, by reviewing drone footage and intercepting a radio message between the two Jihadi groups wherein they were discussing the misfire from the cemetery.  But the propaganda message had been effective in projecting anger towards Israel, and tarnished their right to defend their own survival.  To conform to the woke culture, you must now sympathize with the “poor innocent” Palestinian civilians, and condemn those evil Israelis.  You’re supposed to ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas. That is a thoroughly DISGUSTING stance.

In 2006, Hamas “won” election to govern the Gaza Strip, supposedly with about 66% support of the voters, unless of course the election was rigged.  There hasn’t been another vote since.  But assuming the election was free and fair, we can say those “poor innocent” Palestinian civilians voted for what they are living through right now.  They brought it on themselves.  This is where I’ll remind you of the enormous influence of jihad, as I explained above.  Nearly 2 out of every 3 Muslims IS A JIHADI.  Sure, I feel sorry for those apostates who do not support this “holy war”, or did not vote for Hamas, but such are the casualties of war.

This is War

Yes, this is WAR.  This is not a law enforcement operation where Israel is attempting to capture the militants and place them on trial.  This is an all-out fight for survival.  This tiny democracy of about 7 million people is surrounded by Arab nations vowing to wipe them off the face of the Earth.  They are justly entitled to defend themselves by ANY MEANS NECESSARY.  Not only are they trying to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, but as I write this, they are under fire on the northern front by Hezbollah from Lebanon.  28 Israeli communities near the border are being evacuated amid sporadic rocket fire.  This is Iran’s proxy war and Israel has been warned by Iran that an invasion of Gaza will bring them into the conflict.  They are funding it.  They have trained the Jihadis and they have supplied the Jihadis with weaponry.  If Iran enters the fray, Israel will have no choice but to launch a devastating bombardment of Iran, and they will be justified in doing it.

Do I want to see this conflict escalate ?  No, but I’m afraid it’s not going to resolve itself easily.  Let’s hope it doesn’t evolve into an even bigger involvement. 

The Gaza Operation

Israel has been conducting an air campaign in Gaza since the first days after the Hamas attack.  That is Phase One of the operation, to be followed by a ground attack into the city.  Urban warfare is extremely dangerous to the troops clearing the streets, door-to-door and floor-to-floor.  There will be booby traps, mines, and IEDs all over the place.  There will be snipers on upper floors shooting at platoons, abandoning their positions, before being located, and moving to another armed location to shoot more troops.  Such is the nature of close quarters combat. 

How can Israel minimize their own casualties and effectively eradicate Hamas ?

It’s actually easier than the abovementioned ground campaign.  In order to save as many of their own as possible, they should be levelling all buildings in a wide path to the sea to eliminate sniper nests, clear an avenue through the rubble for armored personnel, protect the perimeter, and haul in massive pumps, then flood the tunnel system where Hamas is supposedly harboring with sea water.  Any gas that could be exploded is not advisable.  The resource is right there at the edge of the city.  Unless their 300 mile tunnel system is divided by water-tight bulkheads, water will do the trick.  Those that surface from the manholes, and access shafts should be shot on sight.  The rest will drown in their own filth.  The key is to pulverize the city beforehand in a wide swath, leaving them no good places to lie in ambush.  In other words, decimate the enemy with overwhelming force and extreme prejudice.

I hate to say it, but there can be no concern for 200 hostages.  Many of them are probably dead already, or wish they were, and with my deepest respect for those families, the hard truth is they are expendable in order to protect IDF soldiers.  I cite the Israeli father who said he would rather know his daughter was dead than find out she had been gang raped and tortured. No matter how it plays out, it’s not going to be pretty.

War is HELL.  Expect a lot of casualties by collateral damage.  It’s virtually necessary to send the message, “phuk around and find out”.  Maybe the next militant Islamic jihadi group will think twice before launching such a heinous attack.  Yeah right.  1,400 years and counting.  There will ALWAYS be a next time.  Pray it doesn’t come to your neighborhood.

COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME

FOOTNOTES

[1]  Tzu, Sun ; The Art of War ; IXIA Press ; 2019 ; Chapter Three: Attack by Strategem, p. 40 ; an unabridged republication of the edition originally published in 1944 by the Military Service Publishing Company, Harrisburg, PA.  The English translation of the text was made by Lionel Giles, first published in 1910 by Luzac and Co., London.

[2]  Islamic Supreme Council ; Jihad: A Misunderstood Concept From Islam

I cited this website at the time, but you won’t find the original article because a few months after I saw it, the Council had edited out the revealing portion of the five “forms”, then deleted most of the content.  It isn’t available at all now.

This website now has Archives dating back to 1996 but the last month available is April 2011.  They now offer a few paragraphs under the titled referenced in this FOOTNOTE that claim Islam is “more accurately described as establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth”.  Is that non-threatening enough for you ?  Remember, Muhammad himself urged his followers to use deception as a critical tactic.

http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/understanding-islam/legal-rulings/5-jihad-a-misunderstood-concept-from-islam.html

[3]  Haney, Philip & Moore, Art ; See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad ; WND Books ; 2016