{"article":{"id":12114,"heading":"STATEMENT BY IBN WARRAQ ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ATROCITY","author":"repost","created":"2001-10-20 23:53:16","modified":"2005-08-15 00:41:57","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:41:57","article":"

We've heard from the non-Zionist Jews - Now a word from the anti-Koran Arabs:

http:\/\/www.secularislam.org\/wtc2.htm

STATEMENT BY IBN WARRAQ ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ATROCITY

Ibn Warraq is the author of Why I Am Not A Muslim

Given the stupefying enormity of the acts of barbarism of 11 September,

moral outrage is appropriate and justified, as are demands for punishment.

But a civilized society cannot permit blind attacks on all those perceived

as \"Muslims\" or Arabs. Not all Muslims or all Arabs are terrorists. Nor are

they implicated in the horrendous events of Tuesday. Police protection for

individual Muslims, mosques and other institutions must be increased.

However, to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist Tuesday is

to wilfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events. Without

Islam the long-term strategy and individual acts of violence by Usama bin

Laden and his followers make little sense. The West needs to understand them

in order to be able to deal with them and avoid past mistakes. We are

confronted with Islamic terrorists and must take seriously the Islamic

component. Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, do not

understand the passionate, religious, and anti-western convictions of

Islamic terrorists. These God-intoxicated fanatics blindly throw away their

lives in return for the Paradise of Seventy Two Virgins offered Muslim

martyrs killed in the Holy War against all infidels.

Jihad is \"a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of

the Prophet Muhammad [the Prophet]. It is an incumbent religious duty,

established in the Qur'an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and

enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil

from Muslims\"1[1].

The world is divided into two spheres, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The

latter, the Land of Warfare, is a country belonging to infidels which has

not been subdued by Islam. The Dar al-Harb becomes the Dar-al Islam, the

Land of Islam, upon the promulgation of the edicts of Islam. Thus the

totalitarian nature of Islam is nowhere more apparent than in the concept of

Jihad, the Holy War, whose ultimate aim is to conquer the entire world and

submit it to the one true faith, to the law of Allah. To Islam alone has

been granted the truth: there is no possibility of salvation outside it.

Muslims must fight and kill in the name of Allah.

We read (IX. 5-6):\"Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may

find them\";

IV.76: \"Those who believe fight in the cause of God\";

VIII.39-42: \"Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their unbelief, what

is now past shall be forgiven; but if they return to it, they have already

before them the doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be

at an end, and the religion be all of it God's.\"

Those who die fighting for the only true religion, Islam, will be amply

rewarded in the life to come:

IV.74: \"Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter the life of this

world for that which is to come; for whoever fights on God's path, whether

he is killed or triumphs, We will give him a handsome reward.\"

What should we make with these further unfortunate verses from the Qur'an:

*Torment to Non-believers->IV.56

*Only Islam Acceptable-> III.85

* No friends from outsiders->III.118

*No friends with Jews, christians->V. 51

* No friends with non believers->IV.144, III.28

* No friends with parents\/siblings if not believers->IX.23

* Fight non-believers->IX.123 * Kill non-believers->IV.89

*Anti Jewish verses->V.82

* God a \"plotter\"->VIII.30

*Killing Idolators->IX.5

* Idolators are unclean just because they are idolator->IX.28

* Forcing non-believers to pay tax->IX.29

* The Torment of Hell->XLIV.43-58

* All except Muslims\/Jews\/Christians\/Sabeans will go to hell->II.62, V.69

* Cast terror in the hearts, smite the neck and cut fingertips of

unbelievers->VIII.12

* Smite the neck of unbelievers->XLVII.4

* Severe Punishment for atheists->X.4 ; V.10 ; V.86

* Severe Punishment for non-believers->XXII.19-22 ; LXXII.23, XCVIII.6

*Punishing non-believers of Hereafter->XVII.10

* Punishing for rejecting faith->III.91

* Non believers go to hell->IV.140 ; VII.36 * Partial Believers go to hell

too->IV.150-1

* Sadistic punishments->LVI.42-43

* Punishment for apostates->XVI.106 ; III.86-88 ; III.90 ; IV.137.

* Threat of punishement for not going to war->IX.38-39, XLVIII.16

*God making someone more sinful so he can be punished more->III178

*Intentionally preventing unbelievers from knowing the truth->VI.25 ; VI.110

* Intentionally preventing unbelievers from Understanding Quran->XVII.45-46

* It is God who causes people to err and He punishes them for that->XVII.97

* God could guide, if he chose to, but did not->VI.35

* Intentionally misguiding those whom he pleases to->XIV.4

* Willfully misguiding some->XVI.93

* God causes human to err->IV.143 ; VII.178

* God deceiving humans->IV.142

It is surely time for us who live in the West and enjoy freedom of

expression to examine unflinchingly and unapologetically the tenets of these

fanatics, including the Qur'an which divinely sanctions violence. We should

unapologetically examine the life of the Prophet, who was not above

political assassinations, and who was responsible for the massacre of the

Jews.

\"Ah, but you are confusing Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. The Real Islam

has nothing to do with violence,\" apologists of Islam argue.

There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. There is

no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism: at most there is a

difference of degree but not of kind. All the tenets of Islamic

fundamentalism are derived from the Qur'an, the Sunna, and the Hadith -

Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct derived by Muslim jurists

from the fundamental and defining texts of Islam. The fundamentalists, with

greater logic and coherence than so-called moderate or liberal Muslims, have

made Islam the basis of a radical utopian ideology that aims to replace

capitalism and democracy as the reigning world system. Islamism accounts for

the anti-American hatred to be found in places far from the Arab-Israeli

conflict, like Nigeria and Afghanistan, demonstrating that the Middle East

conflict cannot legitimately be used to explain this phenomenon called

Islamism. A Palestinian involved in the WTC bombings would be seen as a

martyr to the Palestinian cause, but even more as a martyr to Islam.

\"Ah, but Islamic fundamentalism is like any other kind of fundamentalism,

one must not demonise it. It is the result of political, social grievances.

It must be explained in terms of economics and not religion,\" continue the

apologists of Islam.

There are enormous differences between Islamic fundamentalism and any other

kind of modern fundamentalism. It is true that Hindu, Jewish, and Christian

fundamentalists have been responsible for acts of violence, but these have

been confined to particular countries and regions. Islamic fundamentalism

has global aspirations: the submission of the entire world to the

all-embracing Shari'a, Islamic Law, a fascist system of dictates designed to

control every single act of all individuals. Nor do Hindus or Jews seek to

convert the world to their religion. Christians do indulge in proselytism

but no longer use acts of violence or international terrorism to achieve

their aims.

Only Islam treats non-believers as inferior beings who are expendable in

the drive to world hegemony. Islam justifies any means to achieve the end of

establishing an Islamic world.

Islamic fundamentalists recruit among Muslim populations, they appeal to

Islamic religious symbols, and they motivate their recruits with Islamic

doctrine derived from the Qur'an. Economic poverty alone cannot explain the

phenomenon of Islamism. Poverty in Brazil or Mexico has not resulted in

Christian fundamentalist acts of international terror. Islamists are against

what they see as western materialism itself. Their choice is clear: Islam or

jahiliyya. The latter term is redefined to mean modern-style jahiliyya of

modern, democratic, industrialised societies of Europe and America, where

man is under the dominion of man rather than Allah. They totally reject the

values of the West, which they feel are poisoning Islamic culture. So, it is

not just a question of economics, but of an entirely different worldview,

which they wish to impose on the whole world. Sayyid Qutb, the very

influential Egyptian Muslim thinker, said that \"dominion should be reverted

to Allah alone, namely to Islam, that holistic system He conferred upon men.

An all-out offensive, a jihad, should be waged against modernity so that

this moral rearmament could take place. The ultimate objective is to

re-establish the Kingdom of Allah upon earth...\"2[2]

It is surely time for moderate Muslims to stand up and be counted. I should

like to see them do three things:

1. All moderate Muslims should unequivocally denounce this barbarism, should

condemn it for what it is: the butchery of innocent people,

2. All moderate Muslim citizens of the United States should proclaim

their Americanness, their patriotism, and their solidarity with the families

of the victims. They should show their pride in their country by giving

blood and other aid to victims and their families.

3. All moderate Muslims should take this opportunity to examine the

tenets of their faith; should look at the Qur'an, recognize its role in the

instigation of religious violence, and see it for what it is, a

problematical human document reflecting 7th or perhaps 8th Century values

which the West has largely outgrown.

While it should not be too difficult for moderate Muslims to accept the

need to denounce the violence of Terrorist Tuesday, I am not at all

optimistic about their courage or willingness to proclaim their love for

their chosen country, the USA, or examine the Qur'an critically.

Too many Muslims are taught from an early age that their first allegiance

is to Islam. They are exhorted in sermons in mosques, and in books by such

Muslim intellectuals as Dr Siddiqui of the Muslim Institute in London, that

if the laws of the land conflict with any of the tenets of Islam, then they

must break the laws of the infidels, and only follow the Law of God, the

Shari'a, Islamic Law.

It is a remarkable fact that at the time of the Gulf War, a high

proportion of Muslims living in the West supported Saddam Hussein. In the

aftermath of the WTC terror, it is now clear from reports in the media that

many Muslims, even those living in the West, see these acts of barbarism as

acts of heroism; they give their unequivocal support to their hero, Usama

bin Laden.

Few Muslims have shown themselves capable of scrutinising their sacred text

rationally. Indeed any criticism of their religious tenets is taken as an

insult to their faith, for which so many Muslims seem ready to kill (as in

the Rushdie affair or the Taslima Nasreen affair). Muslims seem to be

unaware that the research of western scholars concerning the existence of

figures such as Abraham, Isaac and Joseph or the authorship of the

Pentateuch applies directly to their belief system. Furthermore, it is

surely totally irrational to continue to believe that the Qur'an is the word

of God when the slightest amount of rational thought will reveal that the

Qur'an contains words and passages addressed to God (e.g. VI.104; VI.114;

XVII.1; XXVII.91; LXXXI.15-29; LXXXIV.16-19; etc.); or that it is full of

historical errors and inconsistencies.

Respect for other cultures, for other values than our own, is a hallmark of

a civilised society. But Multiculturalism is based on some fundamental

misconceptions. First, there is the erroneous and sentimental belief that

all cultures, deep down, have the same values; or, at least, if different,

are equally worthy of respect. But the truth is that not all cultures have

the same values, and not all values are worthy of respect. There is nothing

sacrosanct about customs or cultural traditions: they can change under

criticism. After all, the secularist values of the West are not much more

than two hundred years old.

If these other values are destructive of our own cherished values, are we

not justified in fighting them both by intellectual means, that is by reason

and argument, and criticism, and by legal means, by making sure the laws and

constitution of the country are respected by all? It becomes a duty to

defend those values that we would live by. But here western intellectuals

have sadly failed in defending western values, such as rationalism, social

pluralism, human rights, the rule of law, representative government,

individualism (in the sense that every individual counts, and no individual

should be sacrificed for some utopian future collective end), freedom of

expression, freedom of and from religion, the rights of minorities, and so

on..

Instead, the so-called experts on Islam in western universities, in the

media, in the churches and even in government bureaus have become apologists

for Islam. They bear some responsibility for creating an atmosphere little

short of intellectual terrorism where any criticism of Islam is denounced as

fascism, racism, or \"orientalism.\" They bear some responsibility for

lulling the public into thinking that \"The Islamic Threat \" is a myth. It is

our duty to fight this intellectual terrorism. It is our duty to defend the

values of liberal democracy.

One hopes that the U.S. government will not now act in such a way that more

innocent lives are lost, albeit on the other side of the globe. One hopes

that even now there is a legal way out in international courts of law. The

situation is far more delicate and complex than a simple battle between good

and evil, the solution is not to beat hell out of all Arabs and Muslims but

neither is it to pretend that Islam had nothing to do with it, for that

would be to bury one's head in the Sands of Araby.<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/www.secularislam.org\/wtc2.htm","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"We've heard from the non-Zionist Jews - Now a word from the anti-Koran Arabs:","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/10\/statez7sppz.txt","filesize":"13.9 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/10\/12114.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}