Afghanistan Terror Episode III

The Boston bombings, the Fort Hood shootings, events of September 11, and frequent Islamic terrorist activities, as is the case in Afghanistan for the last 20-years, and exists again today, are only new to uninformed people, or to those who have a limited sense of history. Our earliest founders in 1805 were familiar with radical Islamists. Thomas Jefferson, Ambassador to France, and John Adams, Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Abdurrahman, Tripoli’s Ambassador to Britain, in an effort to negotiate a peace treaty. Peace for many Islamist means, “Surrender to Islam.”

Everlasting peace would cost $160,000 plus the mandatory commission. Moreover, this only applied to Tripoli. Other Muslim nations would also have to be paid. The total amount came to $1.3 million (big money at that time). There was no assurance that the treaties will actually be honored. In vain, Jefferson and Adams tried to argue that America was not at war with Tripoli. In what way did the United States provoked the Muslims? They asked. Ambassador Abdurrahman explained the finer points of Islamic jihad to Jefferson and Adams. In a letter to John Jay, Jefferson wrote, “The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who [did] not acknowledge their authority were sinners. It was their right and duty to make war upon them, wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Abdurrahman was paraphrasing the Koran’s “rules of engagement” found in the Koran’s Surah 47: “Whenever you encounter the ones who disbelieve [during wartime], seize them by their necks until once you have subdued them, then tie them up as prisoners, either in order to release them later on, or also to ask for ransom, until war lays down her burdens.”

Unless a nation submits to Islam, that nation is, by definition, at war with Islam. Jihad means, “to submit.” A non-aggressive nation is still at war with Islam as long as it has not embraced Islam. Islam’s goal is to conquer the world, either by the submission of one’s will or by the Sword of Allah.

When President Jefferson refused to increase the tribute demanded by the Islamists, Tripoli declared war on the United States. A United States navy squadron, under Commander Edward Preble, blockaded Tripoli from 1803 to 1805. After American soldiers from Tripoli, led by the Marines, captured the city of Derma, the Pasha of Tripoli signed a treaty promising to exact no more tribute.

Jefferson, embroiled in a war with Islamic terrorists in his day, wrote, “Too long, for the honor of nations, have those Barbarians been suffered [permitted] to trample on the sacred faith of treaties, on the rights and laws of human nature!”

Political and violent Islam goes back to Muhammad, in the seventh century, who massacred the Qurayzah tribe and the Jews of Khybar. In Medina, he started waging war against non-Muslims, and he explained to his followers that they should offer non-Muslims three choices: [1] to convert to Islam; [2] submit as inferiors to Islamic rule, paying the tax and accept the discrimination that Islamic law mandates for non-Muslims in the Islamic state; or [3] die.”

Understanding Islam

In Arabic, Moslem means “submission” to the will of Allah. The five key pillars of Islamic (hadith) religious beliefs and obligations are:

1.?Admission ‘there is no God but One God, and Muhammad was his last Prophet and Messenger.’

2.?Daily prayers, five times facing Mecca.

3.?Payment of Zakat (alms-tax).

4.?Fasting during Ramadan.

5.?Pilgrimage to Mecca (if financially and physically possible).

Muhammad preached and promoted the virtues of mercy, justice, integrity, fear of God, and self-restraint to a pagan tribal society. The oral Koran (about 78,000 words in Arabic), with seven Arabic tribal dialects, became their inspiration, their law and guide for their entire society, and centuries later, was strictly followed by most Muslims.

Koran or Qur'an:

This the so-called Holy Book of Allah’s revelation to Muhammad, allegedly came from the Angel Gabriel, which became the basis for all Muslim doctrine. Within a century of the Prophet’s death, Islam (practiced by Muslims), spread throughout the world, from Spain and Morocco, to the Near East, including Central Asia and Afghanistan. Muslim leader Uthman (644-656), the 3rd Caliph, proclaimed the Book of the Koran ‘official,’ about fourteen years after Muhammad died and purportedly went to paradise in 632 AD. (Uthman burned all other books)

British scholars have suggested that fragments of the world's oldest known Koran, which were discovered [in Aug 2015], may predate the accepted founding date of Islam by the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The Times of London reported that radiocarbon dating carried out by experts at the University of Oxford says, the fragments were produced between the years 568 and 645 A.D. Muhammad is generally believed to have lived between 570 A.D. and 632 A.D. The man known to Muslims as The Prophet founded Islam sometime after 610 A.D., with the first Muslim community established at Medina, in Saudi Arabia, in 622 A.D.

Quoting Keith Small, of Oxford's Bodleian Library, who told the Times: "This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis; like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence, and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven."

Simplicity of Islam:

The huge masses of Middle-East people did not have to do anything to prepare for, or accept the Islamic faith. Islam requires one to believe that: “There is no god but God (al-Lah). It has no Catechism, no Baptism, no Bible study (the Koran they believe is the “Word of God,” in Arabic only), no Apostles Creed, no Sacraments, and (allegedly) no clergy or saints, and no redemption from sins; therefore, no need for salvation.

In The Crisis of Islam?Bernard Lewis?wrote: Islam is not only a matter of faith and practice; it is also [a source of] identity and loyalty—for many an identity and loyalty that transcends all others. In a time of intensifying strains, faltering ideologies, jaded loyalties, crumbling institutions, an ideology expressed in Islamic terms offered several advantages: an emotionally familiar basis of group identity, solidarity, and exclusion; an acceptable basis of legitimacy and authority; an immediate intelligible formulation of principles for both a critique of the present and a program for the future. By means of these, Islam could provide the most effective symbols and slogans for mobilization, whether for or against a cause, or a political regime.

Islamic Schisms:

Factional disputes (schisms) eventually developed between the Shiites (representing about 15%, or the minority Muslim sect) primarily in Iran (Persians), and the Sunni Arabs. Sunni’s are the majority, or about 85% of the Muslims, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia. There is no unified Islamic nation! However, the faith of the masses survives every coup and dynasty. Unlike the Sunni, Shiites believe that the Imams or Mullahs are the divinely inspired, infallible spiritual leaders, such as the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.

In summary, today’s 1.5 billion Muslims are diverse in history, ethnic background, language and political experience, as to defy generalization. Islam (appears to) offer solace in a world of seemingly injustice, continuity in a world of upheaval, brotherhood in a world of strife, and extremely limited free expression in a world of oppression.

Muslims take up arms against each other (Iraq Sunni vs. Shiite conflicts) at least as often as they take up arms against unbelievers. The vision of a global Islamic community, unified in faith that overrides ethnic, economic, and linguistic differences, is illusory. It has been since Uthman (644-656) was third Caliph (he was the leader who proclaimed the Book of the Koran ‘official,’ about fourteen years after Muhammad’s death.

?Americans must ask this vital question: Who is really controlling the administration’s essential decisions in Afghanistan? Most (80%) of the major players are from the Obama administration, including the president.

?Please see my not-for-profit books, such as Consequences, Culture Battles, and the new historic novel, Sword of Allah, which covers this topic more fully at www.fertigbooks.com

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