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The election of Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, as mayor of London is only the latest example of someone professing the Islamic faith rising to occupy a powerful, influential position in a secular country. So what, some might ask? What does it matter how and where one worships? Public officials the world over belong to many faiths or none of them. So why the fuss over Islam? Isn’t Islam just another religion? After all, it is presented by all Muslims, and many non-Muslims agree, that Islam is one of the great Abrahamic religions, alongside Judaism and Christianity.
That assertion concerning Islam is categorically incorrect, and here is why: Christianity existed for centuries and Judaism for millennia before Muhammad began to proclaim Islam, based on messages he claimed came to him from Allah — the name he ascribed to the One God — that were delivered by the archangel Gabriel. The fact that some of those messages contained references to events and people of the Torah and the Bible is no authentication of the claimed Abrahamic nature of Islam. There certainly is no mention of Islam in either of those holy scriptures, even though Muhammad asserted that Islam, as the only true religion, existed from the beginning of time and all other religions were a distortion of the original true faith.
Far more important is the simple fact that Islam is not just another religion. Islam is drastically different from all other religions, Abrahamic or not. Indeed, Islam is not a religion so much as a political ideology in a similar vein to communism and Nazism, two doctrines with which it happens to have much in common. It regulates the lives of its adherents down to the most minute detail, instructing them how to behave, what to do and what to avoid in order to please Allah and thereby earn the reward of Paradise. These edicts extend even so far as a ban on wishing non-believers “Merry Christmas” and sending Festive Season greeting cards. One of the most important of the instruction is that Muslims must remain true and faithful to Islam at all times, although they are allowed, in fact encouraged, to fake other loyalties when such deception is to the benefit of Islam or to their personal advantage. There are also dire warnings of eternal hellfire for disobedience. The religious element in Islam is simply the means of enforcing the compliance in all matters of believers by constantly evoking the supreme authority of Allah. Reference to “political Islam” as an aspect of the doctrine is a misnomer. Islam is all political and only political.
The vast majority of Muslims, including most of their religious leaders, are not conscious of this — the true nature of Islam — although it was perfectly well understood and acted upon by many notable champions of the faith. It could be fairly said that most Muslims live in innocent ignorance. That, however, does not alter reality.
The next auxiliary question is: What are the dictates of Islam to the believers and should we, the non-Islamic world, be concerned about it? The answer to the second part of the question is a resounding ‘yes’. While much of the instruction are neutral in regard to non-believers, a great many are not.
The Koran is the principle scripture of Islam, the complete collection of the messages Muhammad claimed to have received from Allah. The Hadith, the record of the sayings and deeds of Muhammad, is considered by Muslims, as well as non-Muslims who studied Islam, as an essential aid to understanding and interpreting the Koran. Ominously, the Koran is replete with specific instructions and exhortations to the faithful to perpetrate a range of violent actions against the unbelievers, the infidels or the kuffar in Arabic. In fact, the faithful are to fight the infidels incessantly until all other religions and all disbelief are extinguished and Islam reigns over all mankind. It is prescribed in the Koran that those who refuse to accept Islam are to be either killed or relegated to a lowly status they call dhimmitude, tolerated and allowed to live in return for paying a special tax called jizya and constantly demonstrating humility to their superiors, the Muslims.
The Hadith most certainly is a very appropriate adjunct to the Koran. The latter is the manual for the faithful for the the practising of their faith while the former is illustration to the manual. The brutal, blood-curdling savagery of Muhammad and his cohorts against those opposing Islam or defying his wishes beggars belief. So do his avarice and self-serving duplicitousness. The Hadith is the biography of a tyrannical psychopath, motivated by greed, lust and all the banal pleasures of the flesh, who also happened to “marry” a child and “consummated” the marriage when she turned 9. Islam regards Muhammad as the perfect human being, one whose example all good Muslims must strive to follow.
In the light of all the aforesaid, it is obviously of grave relevance to the non-Islamic world that there are Muslims in sensitive, vitally important public offices in non-islamic countries. Remembering that Islam obliges its adherents to be true and loyal to Islam above and to the exclusions of all else, where does the loyalty of these public officials lie? Is Islam committed to subduing the world or is that goal trumped by loyalty to the country adherents are supposed to be serving? Both cannot be true. Are they practising deception — taqiyya — for the advancement of Islam, as instructed by the Koran, or are they not, in fact, true Muslims? These questions are seldom raised in the West because that would be seen as discrimination on religious grounds. Astute Muslims are keenly aware of such politically correct attitudes in non-Islamic countries and take full advantage of them, enjoying and utilising the support not only of the politically correct and social justice warriors but of the authorities and political leaders wo keep a weather eye on changing demographics and voter blocs. Once, and not so long ago, the Australian labor Party was a supporter of Israel, an attitude exemplified by Prime Minister Hawke. Today, with Muslim voters key in various electorates, that support has dramatically waned.
Bear that in mind as Islamic populations grow in the West and a creed with ambitions to impose its dictatorial edicts on all mankind sees its representatives assume high and influential office.
‘Islam is all political and only political’ writes Bill Martin so directly. Pity that more Australians in authority, immigration departments, defense recruitment, and inter-faith dialogue groups do not comprehend it.
This is an excellent summary of core Medina Islam, Bill.
Sadly it will be carefully overlooked by politicians, media obfuscators and academia/teachers.
Maybe Q subscribers could email it to their local members?
Just one point;
You claim that “Islam is all political and only political”.
That jars with me.
Religion it has in abundance….Heaven and Hell, fighting for and being judged by “Allah”, etc.,
same scary and delusional scenarios used most successfully by other religions.
That is the potent spice that makes Islam much more dangerous than other totalitarian political movements.
IMHO.
Yes one can’t apply Western binary logic to Islam. Dualism is the thing. So it is both religion (albeit a-spiritual) and a political system, a theocracy perhaps. As to the former it is both a religion of peace (towards muslims, those who have submitted) and a religion of violence and intimidation (towards those who have not).
Yes, there is plenty of “religion” in Islam Egil, but it is auxiliary to the ideology. It is the means to an end. The end is political domination.
Mmm, I read all this Islam taking over the world stuff and do wonder. Like this thesis it’s an existential threat to the West. But I just cannot get excited by it. Near all these Islamist militants are Islamic in some way, but they’re also nutcases, disaffected marginal young men (mostly though not all) looking for meaning in life. End of the day still the overwhelming majority of Muslims living in the West are not extremists looking to Islamise the West.
And I still believe Germany taking a million or so is great idea, provided both sides work at it. If it does work it sends an interesting message to the Islamist loonies.
This is precisely the “innocent” ignorance mentioned in the article and it seems it is not restricted to Muslims.
Mass moslem immigration never works, as the moslem population of any country grows so too does their influence.
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30675
Islam is a bad idea what you claim insults the victims of islamic violence the world over.
Both sides need to ‘work’ at it! Seriously! I lived in Germany, still have friends there, their wives, daughters and girlfriends cannot go out without being harrassed, Sweden is even worse.
I don’t suppose anybody has been listening to Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the last few days?
That’s a great BIG “provided”.
Survival of the fittest.
“Fittest” for what, though?
I think we’ve seen enough of ‘master race’ enlightenment ideology. How about survival of the compassionate for a change, the kind of stuff that leads to freedom and security. You know, that obscure ideal that the West was raised on.
An excellent article from Bill Martin. It sums up Islam and the problem confronting western liberal democracy very well.
Sorry, Bill. But you’ve got me started.
Islam began in the 7th C as a military campaign waged by an expanding confederation of Arabian tribes, and the Koran is a warrior’s manual. As with most military organisations, the penalty for desertion is death, and the only halal way out of Islam is in a box: thus the fatwa on Rushdie. Also, the Koran promises heavenly reward for any randy fanatic who kills an infidel, or who dies for the Faith. Thus 9/11 and the enthusiasm registered in the streets of the Islamic world at the news of it.
It should be noted here that there is no Pope in Islam, nor Islamic counterpart to any of the doctrinal congregations of say, the Catholic Church. Moreover, there are no theological colleges for the training of imams. Anyone can set up a mosque. All one needs is a building, a copy of the Koran and of the Hadiths, and a willingness to have a go for Allah. Thus the skylines of Islamic cities are dominated by the towering minarets of rival mosques, from which competing muezzins call their congregations to prayer.
Muslims are simply mostly quite good people who have been born into this creed and who commonly manage to live in peaceful coexistence with western infidels. Relatively few are converts from something else. Their clerics have taken this religion of conquest and have re-badged it as ‘The Religion of Peace’, although doctrinally, Koranically, politically and practically, it ain’t.
Ex-Muslims like Maryam Namaizie (who helped set up the Council of Ex-Muslims of Great Britain) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are a helluva lot braver than their infidel critics, such as Michael Brull, a freelance journalist who writes for New Matilda who choose to snipe at them and from a very safe distance. (A useful political rule of thumb is thus ‘Muslims hooray!; Islam boo!)
Governments of the western liberal democracies have mixed (love-hate?) relationships with the Oil Sheikhs and Oil States of the Islamic World. It’s not rocket science. And a section of the Left in the West has found common cause with Islamism, naively assuming that any enemy of its (American) enemy must automatically be its friend, and choosing to ignore the fact that in Islamic countries the jails and the cemeteries are chockers with leftists young and old, just like themselves. (Those still alive, for now, in large part make up what the late and great Christopher Hitchens referred to as ‘The Pro-totalitarian Left’.)
The enemy of one’s enemy is not automatically one’s friend. He can be an even worse enemy.
.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2016/03/maryam-namazie-vs-sam-harris/
https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
https://newmatilda.com/2016/05/20/ayaan-hirsi-ali-the-acceptable-extremist/
https://newmatilda.com/2016/04/22/beware-the-former-jihadis-with-stories-to-sell/
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/?s=Islam%2C+oppression
Islam and Communism/Marxism are remarkably similar in their aims, methods and even the personalities of their founders. Both , inadequate and hate-filled men, were dependant on the largesse of others for their incomes, both were misogynist and anti-Semitic. Both claimed to be in possession of the higher truth – one from Allah and another from the Science. Both were after political power. Both regarded humanity as divided between believers and non-believers. Both claimed universality of their creeds.
The conclusion is inescapable: until we learn to treat Islam as an aggressive , universalist and self-righteous totalitarian political movement with no moral scruples, exactly the same way we treated the USSR and its allies with their ideology, the West is bound to fail in this struggle.
As to the peaceful nature of the majority of the Muslims of the world – aber naturlich! The peaceful nature of the German and the Russian peoples had no bearing on the decisions made on their behalf.