Pro-Hizballah rally near White House

"Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, said Mr. Bush owed Muslims an apology. 'There is no Islamic fascism,’ Mr. Bray said. 'There is no doctrine of fascism in Islam.’"
-- from the article above

Mahdi Bray? Would that be the same Mahdi Bray who brayed against Israel at Lafayette Park some years ago? The same Mahdi Bray who engineers having his picture taken delivering food for the poor round about the Holiday Season, to show all the good works Muslims do -- for fellow Muslims if they are behaving islamically.

But Islam is Fascism from head to toe. See the brilliant article by Ibn Warraq, analyzing Islam according to fourteen critera for Fascism that Umberto Eco had supplied, and finding -- not surprisingly -- that Islam fit perfectly the fascist bill. Islam is totalitarian, after all. It supplies, it imposes, a Complete Regulation of Life and a Total Explanation of the Universe. It has a Leader, the Perfect Man, whom the followers, called Believers, are to emulate in every way -- even if that Perfect Man, uswa hasana, was not by our lights perfect at all, but in so many ways an object of our Infidel, our Unbeliever's, horror and fear. Islam is not interested in the individual. The saving of the individual soul is irrelevant. What counts always and everywhere is the collective, the Umma, the umma al-islmaiyya. The rights of consience of the individual do not matter. A belief-system for those who wish to submit, to acquire the habit of mental submission, and to revel in that mental submission. A slave-religion, for slaves -- slaves perhaps who may also be warriors for Allaha and for Muhammad, but still essentially slaves, not free men. For quite a few people, such self-imposed slavery gives their lives a coherence and a meaning that it not, apparently, otherwise possess. The mentally confused, or overwhelmed, the pscyhically marginal, have a natural affinity for Islam. And so do those who like rabble-rousing, like the group, like the Nuremberg Rally and the massed mob shouting and shouting and shouting. So much easier than thinking.

Mahdi Bray, The country Muslim from Norfolk, Virginia has been here at JW before. He loves to shout, to scream as if at Nuremberg. And yet there is another carefully maintained pose -- the soft-spoken, gentle "I'm-just-a=-country-Muslim-from-Norfolk-Virginia" fakery that Mahdi Bray thinks he flatters himself fools those foolable Infidels. The time for that sort of credulity has passed.

For more on "Mahdi Bray" google "Mahdi Bray" and "Hugh Fitzgerald."

"The crowd erupted periodically in chants, “Israel out of Lebanon now” and “Free, free Palestine.’’

All that Israel is asking is the return of her soldiers.

"asserted that President Bush had given Israel a green light to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon, then “sent cluster bombs to the Israeli Defense Forces to kill Lebanese children.’’

With all those hezbollah terrorists around, the President is thinking that killing kids will solve the problem ? Beautiful.

“There is no Islamic fascism,’’ Mr. Bray said. “There is no doctrine of fascism in Islam.’’

That's true. The doctrine of fascism is not required. Just islam is enough. In fact, more than enough.

This definition of fascism, from Wikipedia, is informative.

Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic. The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality.

I'm not sure if the 'production' aspect of this definition is applicable (what production?), but the rest seems to fit.

The "only" appology owed from the "West" is to our children, that we would allow in our countries such
violent people who would try to impose their cult of
islam if they could. We know what has to be done, and the remedy(s) are being planned.

Here is "A Tribute to Mahdi Bray" posted last year at JW:

"A convert to Islam, Mahdi Bray is not one of those who, like Ibrahim Hooper, has attained national prominence. He is a tireless worker at the local level, however, and in his dual presentation of self, or presentation of dual selves, most instructive. Soft-spoken and smiling and all sweet reason, and with a comfortably American voice, when addressing Infidels, he becomes something quite different for Muslim audiences, where he has been known to chant-and-rant, as in his call of support for Hamas before a crowd in Washington, or whipping up a crowd to show up at a courtroom to mock the proceedings which involved charging a Muslim with plotting to kill the American President. He is also careful, at the local level, to carry out all those carefully-calibrated and well-publicized deeds of supposed charity – to earn Infidel goodwill – that are described as being so useful in the conduct of Da’wa at Muslim sites.
In his last appearance in The Boston Globe, some months ago, he is seen in a photograph (he made sure there would be a Globe photographer handy) helping to lift a box of donated food for the poor, which we are naturally supposed to believe is disinterested Muslim charity, but zakat, of course, can only be given to Infidels for the sake of promoting Islam. Just as Muslim websites carefully offer detailed instructions as to how Muslim parents can get their way, when making special requests (for prayer-rooms and the like) of teachers and school administrators, there are detailed instructions as to how to obtain favorable publicity – and the ostentatious “donation to charity” has been mentioned as the kind of thing local groups can engage in.

Bray, retaining his soft-spoken Virginia ways, seldom fails to remind non-Muslims that he is “just a country Muslim from Norfolk, Virginia”; this Americanizes it, makes it wholesome, familiar, unthreatening. As the director of something called the “Freedom Foundation” at the Muslim American Society. Bray has frequently denounced acts of the American government that are meant to defend American citizens from Muslim terrorism.

The list of those he has chosen to vocally defend is instructive. At least since July, 2004, he demanded the return of Ahmad Abu-Ali from Saudi Arabia:
“MAS Freedom Foundation's Executive Director, Mahdi Bray, called the continued detention of Ahmed Abu-Ali, an American born citizen and an honor student, in a Saudi Arabian jail a "national disgrace and tragedy."
But when Abu-Ali was finally extradited to the United States, presumably fulfilling that demand that he be released from a Saudi jail, Mahdi Bray was still not happy:

“We're deeply grateful to the Almighty for the return of Abu-Ali to the United States of America," said Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation Executive Director Mahdi Bray. "However, I am still greatly troubled and concerned about the manner in which our government has dealt with Abu Ali and his family.
"Nothing short of his release and return to his family is acceptable to us.”

When Abu-Ali, who was eventually charged with plotting to kill President Bush, appeared for his hearing at a courthouse in Virginia, those whom Mahdi Bray had helped urge to come to protest did. Violating court decorum, they entered the court and laughed at the judge as he announced the charges.

Even before he went to bat for Abu-Ali, Mahdi Bray had stood up for Abdurrahman Alamoudi, the man connected to the Boston Mosque which benefited from a sweetheart land deal, arranged by a dangerously ill-informed Mayor Menino. Abdurrahman Alamoudi’s sinister views and connections can easily be found discussed in detail on the Internet, but it was not his hatred for Infidels, or his plans for Islamic dominance, that got him in trouble. In the end, it was his part in a plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that ended in Alamoudi’s receiving a 23-year sentence.

And now, to complete the trilogy, Mahdi Bray bemoans the treatment of Al-Timimi, the Muslim leader in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., who was just found guilty of urging followers to fight the Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But standing up for Abu Ali, and Al-Timimi, and Abdurrahman Alamoudi, are just part of Bray’s activities.

In October 2000 he appeared at a demonstration called in support of Hamas and Hizbullah:

“In American Jihad, [Steve] Emerson notes that when Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who is now serving a 23-year prison sentence for a terrorism financing conviction, encouraged the Muslim crowd at an October 2000 rally cosponsored by MPAC to declare their support of the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah, “MPAC’s Political Advisor, Mahdi Bray, stood directly behind Alamoudi and was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations.” This was just three weeks after Bray “coordinated and led a rally where approximately 2,000 people congregated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.” Emerson reports that “at one point during the rally, Mahdi Bray played the tambourine as one of the speakers sang, while the crowd repeated: ‘Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is calling us, let’s all go into jihad, and throw stones at the face of the Jews [sic].’
Mahdi Bray was at another demonstration in December of that same year:

On December 22, 2000, MPAC's Mahdi Bray organized a rally in Lafayette Park outside the White House to celebrate a "Worldwide Day for Jerusalem." In Arabic, the crowd responsively chanted with the emcee, "Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you!" Posters calling for "Death to Israel" and equating the Star of David with the Nazi swastika were openly displayed and anti-Semitic literature calling for the destruction of the Jews and Israel was distributed. Members of the crowd burned the Israeli flag while marching from the White House to the State Department.
Bray spoke at this rally, along with Imam Mohammed al-Asi, former director of the Islamic Education Center in Potomac, Maryland, who exhorted the crowd to violence in the name of Islam. Al-Asi said, "Now, all our khatibs (speakers), our imams, our public speakers, should be concentrating on militarizing the Muslim public. This is not a time to make a speaking issue out of this ... Muslims have to familiarize themselves with every means possible ... Rhetoric is not going to liberate Al Quds and Al Aqsa. Only carrying arms will do this task. And it's not going to be someone else who is going to carry arms for you and for me. It is you and me who are going to have to carry these arms."

And here is some testimony before Congress about Mahdi Bray:

United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Terrorist Recruitment and Infiltration in the United States: Prisons and Military as an Operational Base.

Statement of J. Michael Waller
Annenberg Professor of International Communication
Institute of World Politics

Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security

Senate Committee on the Judiciary

14 October 2003

Appendix 2: Key Organizations Involved in Muslim Prison Recruitment

National Islamic Prison Foundation (NIPF) – Contact: Mahdi Bray; 1212 New York Ave. NW, Suite 525, Washington, DC 20005. This is the same address as the American Muslim Council (AMC).

• “Specifically organized to convert American inmates to Wahhabism.”

And at www.masboston.org, the website of the Boston chapter of the “Muslim American Society” there are quite a number of items of interest. The first is the listing of the “Trainers” of Muslim activists (“training” in how to talk to Infidels at Outreach Meetings or in the conduct of Da’wa or in dealing with inquisitive media). In fact only one “trainer” is listed: Mahdi Bray

Imam Mahdi Bray is a long time civil and human rights activist. He is currently the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation, and the President of the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO). He also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and the Interfaith Alliance, and also on the Advisory Board of the American Muslim Council and Muslim Public Affairs Council. He is a Washington, DC, Television and Radio Talk-Show Host.

He has served as a major consultant and a political advisor to Bonner & Associates, Washington’s largest grassroots lobbying firm, the National Center for Housing Management, Alexandria City Redevelopment & Housing Authority, Community Relations Department, The City of Norfolk, Virginia, Department of Community Improvement, and the Independent Voter League. He has also served as a Political Advisor and Strategist, to several national, state, and local political campaigns. He is also the author of, ‘The Masjid (Mosque) Voter’s Guide’ and ‘The Political Guide for Masjid (Mosque) Activists.’
Also, Imam Mahdi Bray is one of the main organizers for the No War on Iraq movement.

He has also served as a liaison between President’s White House Faith-Based Initiative Program and congressional affairs on behalf of the Muslim community.

On another page, there is an advertisement for a Muslim summer camp where students will experience “Tarbeya”:

“At MAS, the Tarbeya process is considered the most important process and the Tarbeya department is one of the permanent departments in the organization. This belief traces its origin to the teachings of Prophet Mohamed as he -- peace be upon him- --invested a lot of effort doing Tarbeya for his companions. As a result of his effort, he did not only leave a great message, the message of Islam, but also left a great generation that carried the message and spread it all over the land and moved humanity from darkness to light. Islamic history proved that whenever this process was considered, Muslims were able to succeed and Islam prevailed. Imam Hassan Al-Banna, the founder and the leader of a great Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, said ‘Whenever you find the good Muslim you find with him all means for great success.’”

Note the praise of Hassan al-Banna, described as “the founder and the leader of a great Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.” Anyone who does not know what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for can simply google that organization. Hassan Al-Banna (his grandson, Tariq Ramadan, pretending that his own unwillingness to disown Al-Banna is merely a matter of noble filial piety, a filiopietism that compels him not to publicly disown “my grandfather” when in fact the real reason he does not distance himself from his grandfather is that he agrees with the program of the Muslim Brotherhood). Hassan al-Banna not only organized secret cells in Egypt, but would also give public addresses, whipping up his followers. And what better way for those followers to express their ignited enthusiasm, than to go out and attack non-Muslims (Copts and Jews), to beat them, even to kill them, and of course to destroy their small businesses. After one such speech in Cairo, on November 2, 1945, the whipped-up mobs did exactly that.

The next time a smiling plausible fellow shows up at a public gathering, no longer shaking a tambourine, and shouting hosannas to Hamas and Hezbullah, but offering a tone of sweet reasonableness, of more-in-sorrow wistfulness about the mean-minded misunderstanding of Islam, and the terrible victimization of Muslims, see if he manages to describe himself as “just a country Muslim from Norfolk, Virginia” with a smile and an ah-shucks shrug meant to suggest two things – he’s just as American as he can possibly be, and therefore, so to is this wonderful doctrine of Islam that we keep hearing all those untrue and unfair things about. If you hear about Norfolk, Virginia, and the “li’l ole Muslim” routine, you can be sure you are in the presence of Mahdi Bray.

And if he offers an Infidel audience a practiced display of Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque, and a look of wounded innocence, it might help to have this article handy, so that they will know about Alamoudi, Abu-Ali, Al-Timimi, and that tambourine shout-out in Lafayette Park for such terrorist groups as Hamas and Hezbollah. It won’t put a stop to the act, but it will no longer be a hard act to follow.

And remember how another li’l ole country boy, this one from Concord, Massachusetts, named Ralph Waldo Emerson, who famously cautioned wariness:

“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

The more we hear tell about the “tolerance” and “peace” and all-round goodness of Islam, the more we feel the urge to count aloud, not the number of spoons, but the number of victims of Jihad-conquest (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, and the more we feel impelled to count up all the onerous disabilities that those non-Muslims who were not killed or forcibly converted at once but permitted to survive as dhimmis under Muslim rule, suffered through time and space, over 1350 years, from the Iberian Peninsula to the East Indies, wherever Islam ruled and Muslims dominated."

americaningermany,
How many ?

As I said several tims on this site...

They can organize and march when they WANT to.

Notice, they do not organize and march against terrorism?

Muslims reading this site...

SPEAK UP OR SHUT UP

Clean up your communities or we will do it for you.

They don't organize and march against terrorism because they organize and march to support terrorism.

There aren't enough days in the week to do both, and one must prioritize.

I hope that the crowd was extensively videotaped and recorded by the FBI and catalogued for future deportation.

PRCS, interesting definition of fascism: control over life (by state) in all particulars. This defines a fascist as someone who advocates control of life by state in all particulars. In the Islamic state since the mosque is the highest political authority, it too is a fascist state and ideology. My immam right or wrong. My mosque uber alles... uber allah. In this context the word "Moslem" appears equivalent to fascist.

Actually "production" is controlled in the moslem state. The mosque licenses certain activities and forbids many others and takes 2 1/2% of the value of all property on an annual basis forbidding "interest." The mosque monopolizes capital and thereby limits much to those who already have any. Production is further controlled by making women property or instruments of capital rather than labor. Perhaps we should rename "Nazis" as Aryan "Moslems."

Perhaps we should rename the Shia of Iran as Iranian "Moslems." Iranian "Moslems" claim special status because they are ruled by those of the blood of Ali. At first blush blood relation to Ali as a prequisite to rule appears more restrictive as fascist ideology to rule than rule by race as insisted by the Aryan "Moslems." Iranian "Moslem" rule is based strictly on blood while Aryan "Moslem" rule was based on race. However, this distinction may not be of substance because Hitler many times used the words "blood" and "race" interchangeably, particularly in his book Mein Kampf.

Please, can we leave this 'Aryan' stuff alone ?

http://www.torontosun.com/

Here's the Hezbollah rally in Totornto, note in the picture how the Peaceful Pro-Canada supporters get treated by the Police as the trouble makers, just try to think what rallies will be like when these Hezbollah idiots become more powerful as Immigration lets in more Arabs and Muslims.

Canada will soon become a mid-east style hell-hole once the Jihadists start their suicide bombing mission for Peace , Islam is a cancer trying to kill Canada and if we don't fight back we'll get Shariah Law and all non-Islamic icons will be razed or banned like the Taliban did.

The real irony for the Rainbow Flag supporters of Hezbollah in the march is that theur is no room for GLBT's in a Caliphate and the sky-dome will be the execution field for offenders of Allah as the Taliban used a soccer field for.

Pelayo, I totally agree with you. I pray that the White House video tapes them all and plans to deport the Left as well as the Muslim protestors.

Hizbollah are a bunch of little sissy's that fire rockets, then run and hide behind their womens burkas and behind children....too wimpy to come out and fight like real men. Muslim men are cowards.

I also pray that someone implants Brains in these assholes.

I am totally disgusted of the media that was manulipated with photo's that were touched up and with the sheer hatred of Israel.

Remember it was Israel that had its 2 - soldiers kidnapped. This whole mess could of been avoided if the Muslims would of acted like they were part of the human race, but no, lets act like assholes.

Thank you "The Left" you making the Republicans look better and better every day. You absolutly killing the Democratic party! We love it

"If you hear about Norfolk, Virginia, and the “li’l ole Muslim” routine, you can be sure you are in the presence of Mahdi Bray."

OMG. What a clown. Seditionist, traitor, deceptionist, totally used by the enemy. This guy needs is a pitiful attention seeker who is playing into their hands.

The sad news is that the media, and those who know no better give him a stage.

Bill = alert-up-usa
Thanks, Robert!

Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general, drew cheers when he said, “We have a solemn obligation to impeach President Bush.’’ Mr. Clark, who has served on the defense team for Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, also advocated the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

No, Rumfeld, Cheney, Rice, Bush, et al should be deported to Sudan Ramsey!

And I think Clinton, Albright, and their ilk should also be deported!

And YOU Mr. Clark, should also be deported along with your islamic friends who have no business in this country in the first place as far as I am concerned!

"Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, said Mr. Bush owed Muslims an apology. 'There is no Islamic fascism,’ Mr. Bray said. 'There is no doctrine of fascism in Islam.’"
-- from a posting above

Bray appears to believe that "fascism" is a doctrine, and that this "doctrine of fascism" does not exist in Islam. Fascism is both form and content, and Islam exhibits so many, and in such classic form, of the features of Islam as to be immediately recognizable to those who have some experience, or knowledge acquired otherwise, of the phenomenon.

And most telling, too, is the behavior of the shock-troops of Islam, those self-primitivized car-swarming "Palestinians" in Gaza, those lynch-mobs in the "West Bank" kidnapping, and then beating to death or otherwise murdering, any Israeli, especially children naive enough to fall into their hands. Those black-balaclavaed Kalashnikov-clutching goose-stepping bezonians of Hezbollah -- what are they but the heirs to the Waffen-S.S., to the very essence of the Nazis or, for that matter, to that uber-fascist state in North Korea, the only non-Muslim site on earth where the same kind of goose-strut is permitted. The only difference is that the North Korean soldiers are forced to march that way, forced to believe, and their eyes right are focussed on the Great Commander, Kim Chon-Il, son of Kim Il-Sung. The Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, all the other troops and trooplets of violent Islam, on the other hand, have their eyes on a paradisiacal prize, their eyes not on some worldy Great Commander who is alive now, but on one in the past, the one who told them that "war is deception," the one who told them that they are, as Allah told him, the Best of People, the right inheritors of the earth, that one described as "uswa hasana" and "al-insan al-kamil."

A few years ago Ibn Warraq sketched an esquisse, for a longer essay, on Islam and Fascism. Here is that article, which can also be found at www.secularislam.org. It might be just the thing to print out, and to give to doubting friends who, perhaps out of nothing more than hatred of Bush, have so far been unwilling to look steadily at Islam, and to see it for what it so obviously -- despite every conceivable kind of apologetics, some of it very sly and very plausible -- is.

I'll post the article separately below, for easier, neater saving to your own documents.

Islam, Middle East and Fascism

In a speech that he gave at Columbia University, Umberto Eco spelled out fourteen features that he considered were typical of Eternal Fascism (which he also calls Ur-Fascism ); adding however this explanatory detail: " These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it."

Umberto Eco: [1] The Cult of Tradition. "Truth has already been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message."

Islam is the quintessentially tradition-bound religion. First, the Koran is the eternal and infallible Word of God, and contains the whole of God’s final revelation to man, and must be obeyed in all its details. "This day I have perfected your religion for you and completed My favour to you. I have chosen Islam to be your faith." The Koran is immutable, "Say: ‘It is not for me to change [the Koran]. I only follow what is revealed to me. I cannot disobey my Lord, for I fear the punishment of a fateful day." "Proclaim what is revealed to you in the Book of your Lord. None can change His Words. You shall find no refuge besides Him." The Koran is a faithful and unalterable reproduction of the original scriptures which are preserved in heaven.

A Muslim’s wish is to establish a new life in accordance with a religious law willed by God and consonant with the Prophet Muhammad’s intentions. Clearly the Koran by itself (i.e. uninterpreted) did not furnish enough guiding principles to meet the changing requirements of the early Muslims. Thus, in all matters whether civil or religious, the will of the prophet had first to be ascertained and followed as a true guide to practical conduct. The Prophet’s Companions were considered the best source for learning the Prophet’s will ; that is, from people who lived their lives in his company, witnessed his actions, and heard his very words and pronouncements on every single aspect of daily life. After the passing of this first generation, pious Muslims had to rely on the members of the next generation who passed on what they had learnt from the first. Thus, transmission from generation to generation continued down to contemporary periods. Finally, conduct and judgment were accepted as correct and their legitimacy was established if a chain of reliable transmission ( isnad, in Arabic )ultimately traced them back to a Companion who could testify that they were in harmony with the Prophet’s intentions. On the strength of such traditions, certain customs in ritual and law were established as the usage of the authoritative first believers of Islam, and as having been practised under the Prophet’s own eyes. As such, they acquired a sacred character. They are called sunna, sacred custom. The form in which such a usage is stated is hadith, tradition. Sunna and hadith are not synonymous ; hadith being the documentation of sunna.

Sunna intimately reflects the views and practices of the oldest Islamic community, and thus functions as the most authoritative interpretation of the Koran. The Koran cannot answer every single problem that any morally sensitive Muslim is likely to encounter ; and it only comes alive and effective through the sunna. Furthermore the Koran, contrary to what many Muslims realize, is an extremely obscure text ; even Muslims exegetes acknowledge that they do not know the meaning of many words and whole passages. For instance, the exegetes have classified obscure or opaque sentences of the Koran into Zahir ( obvious ) or hidden ( Khafi ). The Khafi sentences are further subdivided into Khaji, Mushkil, Mujmal, and Mutashabih. In Khaji sentences the other persons or things are hidden beneath the plain meaning of a word or expression ; Mushkil sentences are ambiguous; Mujmal sentences have a variety of interpretations , while Mutashabih ones are intricate sentences or expressions, the exact meaning of which it is impossible for a man to ascertain until the day of resurrection. The Koran itself tells us that it contains ambiguous verses, and verses whose interpretation is only known to God ( sura iii.5 p .214 vol.1).

The Sharia or Islamic Law is based on four principles: The Koran; the sunna of the Prophet, which is incorporated in the recognized traditions ( hadith ); the consensus (ijma) of the scholars of the orthodox community ; and the method of reasoning by analogy (qiyas)

Many liberal Muslims ( if that is not a contradiction in terms) get excited by ijma, sensing that somehow therein lies their only hope of modernising Islam. However, historically, the notion of consensus (ijma) has nothing democratic about it ; the masses are expressly excluded. It is the consensus of suitably qualified and learned authorities. The doctrine of the infallibility of the consensus, far from allowing some liberty of reasoning as one might have expected, worked in favour of a progressive narrowing and hardening of doctrine. By the beginning of 900 C.E., Islamic Law became rigidly fixed because Muslim scholars felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that henceforth no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all. This closing of the gate of independent reasoning, in effect, meant the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of established schools and authorities. Islamic Law became increasingly rigid and set in its final mould.

Liberal Muslims think they are more liberated than their "fundamentalist" cousins because they (the Liberal Muslims) believe that by some creative re-interpretation of the Koran they will thereby bring the Koran, albeit screaming and kicking, into the 21st Century. First, it does not seem to strike these misguided liberal Muslims that they are still prisoners to an obscure, incoherent, bizarre mediaeval text, a curious amalgam of Talmudic Judaism, apocryphal Christianity and pagan superstitions (especially in the rites and rituals of the Hajj), full of barbarisms. They have not cut their umbilical cords, and are still trying to make sense of an often senseless text, more than a thousand years old. Second this desire to re-interpret has led to some willful and intellectually dishonest "re-reading" of the Koran. Feminists pretend that the "real Koran" is progressive towards women, human rights activists pretend, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that the « real Koran » is totally compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The reality is that the Koran, and the Sharia derived from the Koran, are totalitarian constructs that try to control every single aspect of an individual’s life from the way he or she urinates and defecates, the way he/she eats, dresses, works, marries, makes love, prays, to the way he or she thinks on every conceivable subject. Finally, while the Koran is open to some re-interpretation, it is not infinitely flexible.

Umberto Eco: [2] "Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism …The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense [Eternal fascism] can be defined as irrationalism."

Umberto Eco: [3] "Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake …. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been symptom of Ur- [or Eternal Fascism ]."

Umberto Eco: [4] " No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism (or Eternal Fascism), disagreement is is treason."

Umberto Eco: [5] "Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-fascism (or Eternal Fascism) grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist movement is an appeal against intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism (or Eternal Fascism) is racist by definition."

I shall show that, mutatis mutandis, Islam also rejects modernism, is hostile to reason, critical thought, fears disagreement, and is terrified of ‘intruders,’ though Islam’s form of exclusion is based on religion and not race.

The revival of modern Muslim thought owes a great deal to the writings of the Indian (later Pakistani) al-Maududi. In works such as Jihad in Islam, Islam and Jahiliyya, The Principles of Islamic Government, al-Maududi was the first modern Muslim thinker to "arrive at a sweeping condemnation of modernity and its incompatibility with Islam, and to formulate a definition of the danger it constituted." Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian thinker, was in part influenced by al-Maududi, and felt that "Domination 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 reestablish the Kingdom of God upon earth …"

Second, let us not forget that all three of the major Abrahamic religions are irrational, that is, they are based on irrational dogma that do not stand up to critical scrutiny. The whole framework of the three religions is historical, in that all three depend on the historical veracity of putative events described in their respective scriptures. But increasing critical inquiry and scientific thought( historical, philological , archaeological ) has revealed the improbability of the historical events described in their scriptures, and traditions. While Higher Biblical Criticism, developed by great thinkers such Spinoza, and further elaborated in Germany in the 19th Century, is well-known to, at least, educated Westerners and intellectuals in general , astonishingly few people even among the Western Islamologists seem to be aware of the shaky historical foundations of the beliefs of Muslims.

Muslims seem to be unaware that the research of the German Higher Critics apply directly to their belief system, which seems impervious to rational thought. For instance, there is absolutely no evidence, archaeological, epigraphic, documentary, that Abraham ever set foot in Arabia, let alone build the Kaaba. Many scholars such T. L. Thompson have even put forward the idea that not only Abraham but Isaac and Jacob never existed. Muslims are also committed to the dogma that Moses wrote the Pentateuch despite research since the 17 the Century of thinkers such as La Preyre, Spinoza, and Hobbes, and in the 19th Century by historians such as Julius Wellhausen who have all argued that Moses could not possibly have written the First Five Books of the Old Testament. No Western scholar believes the apocryphal Christian story of Jesus that is to be found in the Koran. Further it is surely totally irrational to continue to believe that the Koran is the word of God when the slightest amount of rational thought will reveal that the Koran contains words and passages addressed to God ( e.g. the Fatihah; sura vi.104; vi..114 ; xvii.1; xxvii.91; lxxxi.15-29; lxxxiv.16-19; etc.) ; that it is full of historical errors: at sura xl.38, the Koran mistakenly identifies Haman, who in reality was the minister of the Persian King Ahasuerus ( mentioned in the book of Esther ), as the minister of the Pharaoh at the time of Moses ; there is a confusion of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with the Mary who was sister of Moses and Aaron ; at sura ii.249/250, there is obviously a confusion between the story of Saul as told therein, and the account of Gideon in Judges, 7.5; the account of Alexander the Great is hopelessly garbled historically (sura xviii.82).

Finally, Goldziher, Lammens and Schacht, have shown that a vast number of traditions (hadith) accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries. It is simply irrational to go on accepting the "truth" of these traditions.

The history of the Islamic theology can be seen as a struggle between reason and revelation, with the eventual triumph of the dictates of revelation, with a victory for irrationalism and blind obedience to tradition.

It is undoubtedly true that there was at the dawn of Islam, a rationalising tendency as, for example, in the theology of the Mu‘tazilites. But the Mu‘tazilites were nonetheless Muslims, which in itself, as I have tried to argue above, is an indication of irrational beliefs. Second, they were ready to assassinate those who rejected their doctrines and advocated the jihad in all regions in which their dogma did not have the ascendancy. They were responsible for the Mihna or the Muslim Inquisition.

Finally, the rationalism of the Mu ‘tazilites was defeated by the philosophy of al-Ashari (died 935 C.E.) who, while not totally abandoning reason, did essentially subordinate reason to revelation. And the final death blow was given to rationalism by the real traditionists whose views eventually prevailed in Islam. The traditionists had no time for scholastic theology, which, for them was no different from Aristotelian philosophy –both led to unbelief. The traditionists refused to bend to aql, or reason, for them, reason was not required for religious understanding. Religious truth lay in in the Koran and the sunna, both of which had to be accepted without question and doubts. For example, al Shafi ‘i is made to say in true traditionist fashion that people who advocate scholastic theology with its modest amount of rationalism, "should be beaten with whips and the soles of sandals, and then paraded through all tribes and encampments while it is proclaimed of them, ‘Such is the reward of those who forsake the Koran and sunna and give themselves up to scholastic theology ( kalam ). ’" Al-Ghazali was similarly dismissive of reason; he constantly criticizes the Greeks and the Muslim philosophers influenced by them. Al Ghazali finds Greeks the source of all kinds infidelity ; he was totally opposed to spirit of free inquiry; for example in section 7, chapter 2 of his Ihay ulum al-adin, al Gahazali tells us that certain of the natural sciences are contrary to the law and religion, and in chapter 3 he tells us to abstain from free thought and accept the conclusions of the prophets. The great Ibn Khaldun is also suspicious of unbridled reason, which he also finds the source of unbelief. "No," wrote Ibn Khaldun, "one must be on guard by completely abandoning any speculation about (causes)...We have been commanded completely to abandon and suppress any speculation about [causes] and to direct ourselves to the Causer of all causes, so that the soul will be firmly coloured with the oneness of God. A man who stops at the causes is frustrated. He is rightly (said to be) unbeliever ….Therefore we are forbidden by Muhammad to study causes."

The ultimate sign within Islam of the fear of disagreement is surely the law of apostasy, (in Arabic, irtidad, or ridda ; while an apostate is called a murtadd). In the Koran (xvi.106 ff ) the apostate is threatened with punishment in the next world only, but under Islamic law the penalty is death. In the Traditions, Ibn Abbas transmits the following saying of the Prophet : . "Kill him, who changes his religion" or "behead him" ( Ibn Maja, Hudud, bab 2 ;Nasai, Tahrim al-dam, bab 14; Bukhari, Murtaddin, bab 2; Tirmidhi, Hudud, bab 25, Abu Dawud, Hudud, bab. 1; Ibn Hanbal, i.217, 282, 322.)

Finally, we come to Islam’s fear of ‘outsiders.’ Islam undoubtedly preached, to its credit, the equality of all free-born, Male Muslims. However Muslim women, and Muslim slaves are of course not considered equal. Thus Islam is not, in theory, racist .However Islam excludes people on the basis of belief. Salvation outside the Islamic faith is impossible. The world is divided between Muslims and Non-Muslims. There are very many sayings in the Koran which preach hatred and ill-will towards non-Muslims , and show a pathological fear of the "other:"

iv.101: The unbelievers are your sworn enemies.

lx.4: We renounce you (i.e. the idolaters): enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah only…

lviii.23: You will not find believers in Allah and the Last day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and His apostle, even though they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred …

ix.7: Allah and His apostle repose no trust in idolaters …

viii.13-14: Thus We punished them because they defied Allah and His apostle. He that defies Allah and His apostle shall be sternly punished. We said to them, "Feel our scourge. Hell-fire awaits the unbelievers."

viii.55: The basest creatures in the sight of Allah are the faithless who will not believe …

xxv.55: Yet the unbelievers worship idols which can neither help nor harm. Surely the unbeliever is his Lord’s enemy.

v.72: … He that worships other Gods besides Allah shall be forbidden Paradise and shall be cast into Hell-fire. None shall help the evil-doers.

ix.23: Believers! do not befriend your fathers or your brothers if they choose unbelief in preference to faith. Wrong-doers are those that befriend them.

ix. 28: Believers ! know that the idolaters are unclean.

xi. 28: Let believers not make friends with the infidels in preference to the faithful ; he that does this has nothing to hope for from Allah – except in self-defence.

iii.118: Believers ! do not make friends with any men other than your own people. They will spare no pains to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is clear from what they say, but more violent is the hatred which their breasts conceal …

v. 14: Therefore, We stirred among them (the Christians) enmity and hatred, which shall endure till the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will declare to them all that they have done.

v.64 … That which Allah has revealed to you will surely increase the wickedness and unbelief of many of them (the Jews). We have stirred among them (the Jews) enmity and hatred which will endure till the Day of Resurrection.

v.51: Believers! take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number. Allah does not guide the wrongdoers.

Christians are marginally better regarded than the Jews, but the Koran still accuses them of falsifying the scriptures.v.75: "They surely are infidels who say, "God is the third of three"; for there is but one God; and if they do not refrain from what they say, a severe punishment shall light on those who are unbelievers."

They are also accused of worshipping Jesus as the son of God, and like the Jews, they have been led astray and must be brought back to the true religion, that is, Islam.

According to the Koran, Jews have intense hatred of all true Muslims, and as a punishments for their sins, some of them had, in the past, been changed into apes and swine (surah v.63), and others will have their hands tied to their necks and be cast into the Fire on Judgment day. The attitude enjoined upon the Muslims towards the Jews can only be described as anti-Semitic, and certainly was not conducive to a better understanding, tolerance or co- existence.

v.51: Believers, do not take Jews or Christians as friends They are but one anothers friends. If anyone of you takes them for his friends,, then he is surely one of them. God will not guide evil-doers."

v.56-64: O Believers, do not take as your friends the infidels or those who received the Scriptures before you [Jews and Christians] and who scoff and jest at your religion , but fear God if you are believers. Nor those who when you call them to prayer, make it an object of mirth and derision This is only because they are a people who do not understand.

Say: "People of the Book: isn't it true that you hate us simply because we believe in God, and in what He has sent down to us, and in what He has revealed to others before; and because most of you are evil doers?"

"Why don't their rabbis and doctors of lax forbid them from uttering sinful words and eating unlawful food ? Evil indeed are their works.

"The hand of God is chained up ", claim the Jews .Their own hands shall be chained up __ and they shall be cursed for saying such a thing ".

Jews are often accused, in the Koran, of perverting the scriptures, and holding doctrines they never held:

ix.29,30: "Declare war upon those to whom the Scriptures were revealed but believe neither in God nor the Last Day ,and who do not forbid that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who refuse to acknowledge the true religion [Islam] until they pay the poll-tax without reservation and are totally subjugated.

"The Jews claim that Ezra is a son of God, and the Christians say, " the Messiah is a son of God ".Those are their claims which do indeed resemble the sayings of the Infidels of Old. May God do battle with them! How they are deluded!"

And they deserve fully any punishment they get:

ii.61: "Wretchedness and baseness were stamped upon them [That is the Jews] and they drew on themselves the wrath of God. This was because they [the Jews] disbelieved the signs of God and slew the Prophets unjustly, and because they rebelled and transgressed ."

iv.160,161: Because of the wickedness of certain Jews, and because they turn many from the way of God, We have forbidden them good and wholesome foods which were formerly allowed them; and because they have taken to usury, though they were forbidden it; and have cheated others of their possessions, We have prepared a grievous punishment for the Infidels amongst them ".

Such are some of the sentiments expressed in the Koran, which remains for all Muslims, and not just "fundamentalists", the uncreated word of God Himself. It is valid for all times and places, its ideas are, according to all Muslims, absolutely true and beyond any criticism.

The treatment of the Jews by Muhammad is certainly not above reproach. The cold-blooded extermination of the Banu Qurayza ( between 600 and 900 men ), the expulsion of the Nadir and their later massacre (something often overlooked in the history books) are not signs of magnanimity or compassion. His treatment of the Jews of the oasis of Khaybar served "as a model for the treaties granted by the Arab conquerors to the conquered peoples in territories beyond Arabia." Muhammad attacked the oasis in 628, had one of the leaders tortured to find the hidden treasures of the tribe, and then when the Jews surrendered, agreed to let them continue cultivating their oasis only if they gave him half their produce. Muhammad also reserved the right to cancel the treaty and expel the Jews whenever he liked. This treaty or agreement was called a DHIMMA, and those who accepted it were known as DHIMMIS. All non-Muslims who accepted Muslim supremacy and agreed to pay a tribute, in return for " Muslim protection," are referred to as dhimmis.

The second caliph Umar later expelled the Jews and the Christians from the Hijaz (containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina) in 640, referring to the dhimma of Khaybar. He is said to have quoted the Prophet on the right to cancel any pact he wished, and the Prophet's famous saying: " Two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs." To this day, the establishment of any other religion in Saudi Arabia is forbidden, many Christians have been executed for simply practising their religion. Here is how Amnesty International describes the situation in Saudi Arabia :

"Hundreds of Christians, including women and children have been arrested and detained over the past three years, most without charge or trial, solely for the peaceful expression of their religious beliefs. Scores have been tortured, some by flogging, while in detention….The possession of non-Islamic religious objects – including Bibles, rosary beads, crosses and pictures of Jesus Christ – is prohibited and such items may be confiscated" (AINO 62 ; July /August 1993).

At least since the Renaissance, one of the characteristics of Western civilisation has been its interest in other lands and societies. "This universal curiosity is still a distinguishing, almost an exclusive, characteristic of Europe and her daughters." Muslims are by contrast profoundly convinced of the finality, completeness, and essential self-sufficiency of their civilisation. For the Muslim, Islam is the one true faith, beyond which there are only unbelievers. "You [ Muslims ] are the best of peoples" the Koran tells Muslims (sura iii.110) It is a remarkable fact that until at least the late 16 th century, when Turkish historians began to show a vague and still faint interest in European history, Muslim historians, with three noble exceptions, and Muslims in general, showed little desire to step outside their civilisation intellectually. The exceptions are just that, exceptions : the geographer Masudi, cultural historian and observer al-Biruni, and historian Rashid al-Din. Until the end of the 18th century, very few European books were translated into Muslim languages, and most of these dealt with useful topics such as medical science. This attitude has continued to this day. No Islamic country has university faculties that study non-Islamic civilisations, with the exception, significantly of Turkey, where, in Ankara, one can study Sanskrit. Even to listen to Western classical music is considered undesirable, and a danger to Islamic civilisation; "the treason of an Arab begins when he enjoys listening to Mozart or Beethoven;" wrote the Tunisian al-Wasiti ( quoted by Norman Daniel, Euro-Arab dialogue, p.88 ) Here is how one political analyst sums up the situation in the 1990s :

"Arabs may be well informed on currency movements and the latest chat on the prospects of the Western economies but know surprisingly little about how Western societies and governments operate. Even those who live in the West or visit it frequently on holiday do not have much understanding of it because, in most cases, when they are there they mix with other Arabs,, principally their own relations, and take no interest in the culture, history or institutions of the countries they are in." Dr.Muhamed Talbi also makes a similar point by quoting Ibn Khaldun and Maryam Jameelah :

"Au VIIIe / XIVe siècle, Ibn Khaldun, dont le génie est pourtant incontestable,écrivait: "Il faut donc se tenir à l'écart des sciences relatives aux religions antérieures à l'Islam et il est interdit d'en discuter". Ibn Khaldun, en cela seulement, fut écouté, ou plutôt il était l'interprète d'une mentalité qui avait preevalu jusqu'à nos jours. "Peu de musulmans, écrit Maryam Jameelah, ont réellement une connaissance profonde de l'Occident. Combien de musulmans, par exemple, maîtrisent - ils le grec ou le latin, et combien sont - ils intellectuellement équipés pour étudier le Judaïsme et le Christianisme aussi bien que les idéologies laïques à partir d'un point de vue musulman? Alors que des générations d'orientalistes occidentaux avaient étudié l'Islam conformément à leurs besoins et à leurs buts, n'est - il pas essentiel que quelques ulémas deviennent des occidentalistes?"

Muslims are certain that Islam is not only the whole of God’s truth, but it is its final expression. Hence Muslims fear and persecute such post-Islamic religious movements as the Baha’is and the Ahmadis. Here is Amnesty International on the plight of the Ahmadis [ ASA :33/15.91]: "Ahmadis consider themselves to be Muslims but they are regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical because they call the founder of their movement al-Masih [ the Messiah ]: this is taken to imply that Muhammad is not the final seal of the prophets as orthodox Islam holds, i.e., the Prophet who carried the final message from God to humanity …. As a result of these divergences, Ahmadis have been subjected to discrimination and persecution in some Islamic countries. In the mid-1970s, the Saudi Arabia based World Muslim League called on Muslim governments worldwide to take action against Ahmadis. Ahmadis are since then banned in Saudi Arabia."

Umberto Eco: [6] "Ur-Fascism (or Eternal Fascism) derives from individual or social frustration."

There has been a demographic explosion in the Islamic world, and the leaders have simply not coped, unable to provide jobs, housing, health facilities, transport, inflation running high, all compounded by human rights abuses (torture, summary justice, executions, and so on ) This failure has been very ably exploited by the Islamists to increase their prestige, to increase their power, which has led, in turn, to mounting demands for increasing Islamization of society. Another essential factor in the current Islamic revival has to do with Islam’s crisis of identity, especially in face of the West’s overwhelming economic and cultural success in contrast to the relative economic, cultural, human rights failures of the post-independence regimes in the Islamic world. These failures have led to an increase of frustration, envy and hatred of the West, and an exaggerated emphasis on their Islamic identity. And "since for Muslims Islam is, by definition, superior to all other faiths, the failures and defeats of Muslims in this world can only mean that they are not practicing authentic Islam and that their states are not true Islamic states. The remedy, therefore, is return to the pure, authentic Islam of the Prophet and his Companions, a rejection and elimination of the accretions and innovations that had debased and corrupted the faith and enfeebled the Islamic society … "

Umberto Eco: [7] " …Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside."

A belief in international plots, or, in other words, conspiracy theories are the key to understanding the politics of the Middle East. As Daniel Pipes in his acclaimed study, "The Hidden Hand, The Middle East Fears of Conspiracy" put it : "…Whoever hopes to understand the Middle East must recognize the distorting lens of conspiracy theories, understand them, make allowance for them, and perhaps even plan around them. Conspiracism [the belief in international plots or conspiracies] provides a key to understanding the political culture of the Middle East." Amazingly enough, most of the leading Muslim thinkers and actors of the twentieth century have put forward conspiracy theories to excuse the continuing cultural and economic backwardness of Islamic countries; the prevalence of such theories indicate a refusal on the part of Muslims to take responsibility for their own failures. As Pipes in his brilliant work says, "although grand conspiracy theories surfaced in the Middle East only in the late nineteenth century, their subject matter ranges much farther ; indeed it often extends right back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. More broadly, conspiracy theorists reinterpret the whole sweep of Islamic history, plundering medieval texts to locate instances of conspiracy, especially on the part of Christians and Jews."

The Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian has shown how prevalent the conspiracies are in Iran,, leading often to tragic consequences , as in the mass executions of 1981-82:

"When in June 1981 the [People’s] Mojahedin tried to overthrow the Islamic Republic, Khomeini proclaimed that the CIA was planning a repeat performance of 1953 and that the whole opposition, not just the Mojahedin, was implicated in this grand international plot. In six short weeks, the Islamic Republic shot over one thousand prisoners. The victims included not only members of the Mojahedin but also royalists, Bahais, Jews.

"Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Qashqayis, Tukomans, National Frontists, Maoists, anti-Stalinist Marxists, and even apolitical teenage girls who happened to be in the wrong street at the wrong time. Never before in Iran had firing squads executed so many in so short a time over so flimsy an accusation."

Muslim thinkers premise their understanding of modern history on Western plots against Islam. For example, Muhammad al-Ghazali, a leading contemporary Muslim thinker from Egypt, wrote, "there is a conspiracy against Islam …by Western secularism because it claims that Islam is a dangerous religion.". Khomeini goes further by explaining, "In the interests of the Jews, America, and Israel, we [Muslims] must be jailed and killed, we must be sacrificed to the evil intentions of foreigners." According to such Muslim thinking, Islam made the Muslims great, culturally, militarily, economically , but because of external influence and plotting of the Jews and the imperialists, Muslims have been lured away from the Koran, the Sharia, the Muslim way of life, and hence have lost their moorings. Khomeini saw the Shah of Persia ‘s granting women the right to vote as an "attempt to corrupt our chaste women" and a plot against Islam "perhaps drawn up by the spies of the Jews and the Zionists" intending to destroy "the independence of the state and the economy." Rushdie’s novel, Satanic Verses he saw as a mortal threat to Islam.

As Pipes concludes, nearly all the most influential Muslim thinkers, such as Hasan al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abu’l A’la al-Maududi, accept the premise of anti-Islamic conspiration by Jews and Europeans, as do most of the preachers, scholars , journalists, and politicians. The very constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran refers to plotting, when it describes the White Revolution (the Shah’s land-reform program) as an "American plot … a ploy to stabilize the foundation of the colonialist government [of the Shah] and strengthen Iran’s …ties with world imperialism." This constitution also promises that non-Muslims will be well-treated if they refrain from getting "in conspiracies hatched against the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Muslims of the Middle East fear two main conspirators, Jews and Imperialists. Jews are seen as a threat to the whole of humanity, and are considered responsible for every evil in the world, from assassinations of Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy, to the French and Russian Revolution, and so on. As Robert Wistrich put it, for the Muslim Brethren of Egypt, "Of all the myriad enemies of Islam …Jewry represents the ultimate abomination, evil in its purest ontological form." and as Daniel Pipes adds, and the same applies for many other Muslims, for example, Sayyid Qutb, the very influential Egyptian thinker, wrote, "Through the lengthy centuries – regretfully – [the Jews] poisoned the Islamic heritage in a way that may itself be revealed only with the effort of centuries."

While Mustafa Mashur, another Egyptian thinker sees Jews behind "every weird, deviant principle" in history.

Muslims considered the U.N. International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994 as an international plot to undermine Islam, and to annihilate Muslims. Adil Husayn, a leading Muslim Egyptian thinker argued that the West’s promotion of birth control "is not aimed at developing the poor world. It is a racist plan to designed to continue looting and weakening us in favour of the dominating white race ….The conference is the culmination of a scheme aimed at annihilating mankind and Muslims."

What precisely is the reason for the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the Muslim Middle East. Many analysts are convinced of the role and nature of Islam in the incubation and perpetuation of conspiracy theories. The saying "better a 100 years of repression than a day of anarchy" sums up the fear of anarchy (fitna) that lies deep in Islamic culture, and may be responsible for encouraging the paranoid style of thinking. More commonly, Middle Eastern analysts point to the fatalism inculcated by Islam . Though there, as usual contradictory statements in the Koran on this subject, in the end it was the predestination doctrine that prevailed in Islam .Here are some quotes from the Koran that have led to a kind of fatalism within Islam :

liv. 49 All things have been created after fixed decree.

iii.139 No one can die except by God’s permission according to the book that fixes the term of life.

lxxxvii.2 The Lord has created and balanced all things and has fixed their destinies and guided them..

viii.17 God killed them, and those shafts were God’s, not yours.

ix.51 By no means can anything befall us but what God has destined for us.

( See also, xiii.30 ; xiv.4 ; xviii.101 ; xxxii.32 xlv.26 ; lvii.22 )

Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi political thinker, sees, "extreme fatalism …that may be a characteristic of Islamic culture generally « as a key explanation for conspiracy theories. In his view, this world view undermines the notion of man as responsible to himself. Similarly, Homa Katouzian traces conspiracy theories to an « unimaginable fatalism;" and Jahangir Amuzegar ascribes them to a "fatalistic streak." Others point to the Shi’a tradition of taqiya ( dissimulation – for self-protection and the safeguarding of faith ; and finally some single out the Shia tradition of martyrdom (shihada) that causes Iranians to externalize evil, to seek to put the responsibility for their failures, misdeeds, blunders onto others plotting against them.

Umberto Eco: [8] "The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies ….However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."

The Muslims in the Middle East have been constantly humiliated for centuries, but perhaps at no time more so than since the late 18th century when Napoleon first burst upon the scene with the conquest of Egypt. Ever since then, Muslims have continued to be at once both attracted, and repelled by Western civilisation, and all its material and spiritual wares, which they cannot afford to buy, or emulate for fear of being accused of treason towards Islam. The Six –Day War with Israel totally humiliated not just Arabs, but all Muslims around the world. And as Umberto Eco says, they are condemned to lose wars as they seem incapable of rationally and objectively assessing the strength and weaknesses of the enemy. The enemy is seen as both too strong and too weak . As Field puts it, the paranoid style in the Middle East "is obviously linked to the theorists’ general ignorance of the outside world and this is clearly a disadvantage for any society. The belief in plots, combined with ignorance, leads the Arabs to exaggerate the power of the West and misjudge its motives, making them believe that it is hostile and manipulative when it is more likely to be morally censorious, occasionally concerned with upholding states’ sovereignty and /or protecting its oil interests, generally interested in promoting its exports, and often indifferent to Arab issues – or concerned but unable to see how it can influence events."

For the Middle Easterner, the Jewish or Imperialist conspirator is at once too powerful and too weak. Thus "the conspirator never rests, never falters, never makes mistakes, and never shows fear; word to the contrary is disinformation. He is tireless." "Every day the [enemies of Islam] plot new conspiracies and schemes." The Zionist conspiracy "has enormous resources at its disposal: money, media, industry, technology, oil, military hardware, and the intelligence agencies, led by Mossad and CIA." Gamal Abdel Nasser also believed in the omnipotence of the West, "The Americans know perfectly well what we will say, where we will proceed, and what we will do." While Sattareh Farman Farmaian tells of the servants in her family’s Iranian home that they "believed that the English were so diabolical that they could even cause floods, droughts, and earthquakes. And it was true that to Iranians, the British seemed almost supernaturally clever."

And yet, the enemies of Islam never wins . "The Jews may try, but they will never destroy the [Muslims]." Or as The Baghdad Observer put it, "A savage campaign has been conducted by the U.S. inside the Security Council to hurt Iraq, choke its economy and starve its people. Yet, as the first chapters of the conspiracy have failed to weaken Iraq, the final phase of the enemies’ schemes is definitely going to meet the same fate. The whole conspiracy is doomed to failure."

Umberto Eco: [9] "For Ur-Fascism, (Eternal Fascism) there is no struggle for life, but rather life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare."

Umberto Eco: [11] "…Everybody is educated to become a hero …This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity ; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By, contrast, the Ur-Fascist craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."

Umberto Eco’s feature [9] goes naturally well with feature [11], so I shall discuss them here, and leave feature [10] for later.

The totalitarian nature of Islam is no where 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. It is the sacred duty - an incumbent religious duty established in the Koran and the Traditions - of all Muslims to bring it to all humanity. Jihad is a divine institution, enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam. Muslims must strive, fight and kill in the name of God:

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.12: "I will instill terror into the hearts of the Infidels, strike off their heads then, and strike off from them every fingertip."

viii.39-42: "Say to the Infidels: If they desist from their unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven them; 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."

ii.256: "But they who believe, and who fly their country, and fight in the cause of God may hope for God's mercy: and God is Gracious, Merciful."

It is a grave sin for a Muslim to shirk the battle against the unbelievers, those who do will roast in hell:

viii. 15, 16: "Believers, when you meet the unbelievers preparing for battle do not turn your backs to them. [ Anyone who does ] shall incur the wrath of God and hell shall be his home: an evil dwelling indeed ".

ix.39: "If you do not fight, He will punish you severely, and put others in your place."

Those who die fighting for the only true religion, Islam, will be amply rewarded in the life to come:

iv.74: "Let those 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."

It is abundantly clear from many of the above verses that the Koran is not talking of metaphorical battles or of moral crusades; it is talking of the battle field. To read such blood thirsty injunctions in a Holy Book is shocking.

Mankind is divided into two groups - Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslims are members of the Islamic community, the umma, who possess territories in the Dar ul Islam, the Land of Islam, where the edicts of Islam are fully promulgated. The non-Muslims are the Harbi, people of the Dar ul Harb, the Land of Warfare, any country belonging to the infidels which has not been subdued by Islam but which, nonetheless, is destined to pass into Islamic jurisdiction either by conversion or by war (Harb). All acts of war are permitted in the Dar ul Harb. Once the Dar ul Harb has been subjugated, the Harbi become prisoners of war. The imam can do what he likes to them according to the circumstances. Woe betide the city that resists and is then taken by the Islamic army by storm.. In this case, the inhabitants have no rights whatsoever, and as Sir Steven Runciman says in his "The Fall of Constantinople, 1453":

"The conquering army is allowed three days of unrestricted pillage; and the former places of worship, with every other building, become the property of the conquering leader; he may dispose of them as he pleases. Sultan Mehmet [after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 allowed] his soldiers the three days of pillage to which they were entitled. They poured into the city...They slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and children without discrimination.. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets...But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profits."

In other cases, they are sold into slavery, exiled or treated as dhimmis, who are tolerated as second class subjects, as long as they pay a regular tribute.

It is common nowadays for the apologists of Islam, whether Muslims or their Western admirers, to interpret "Jihad" in the non-military sense of "moral struggle," "moral striving." But it is quite illegitimate to pretend that the Koran and the books on Islamic Law were talking about "moral crusades." Rather as Rudolf Peters says in his definitive study of Jihad says, "In the books on Islamic Law, the word means armed struggle against the unbelievers, which is also a common meaning in the Koran." Apologists of Islam, even when they do admit that real battles are being referred to, still pretend that the doctrine of Jihad only talks of "defensive measures," that is, the apologists pretend that fighting is only allowed to defend Muslims, and that offensive wars are illegitimate. But again, this is not the classical doctrine in Islam; as Peters makes clear, the Sword Verses in the Koran were interpreted as unconditional commands to fight the unbelievers, and furthermore these Sword Verses abrogated all previous verses concerning intercourse with non-Muslims. Peters sums up the classical doctrine as:

"The doctrine of Jihad as laid down in the works on Islamic Law, developed out of the Koranic prescriptions and the example of the Prophet and the first caliphs, which is recorded in the hadith; The crux of the doctrine is the existence of one single Islamic state, ruling the entire umma [Muslim community]. It is the duty of the umma to expand the territory of this state in order to bring as many people under its rule as possible. The ultimate aim is to bring the whole earth under the sway of Islam and to extirpate unbelief : "Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God’s entirely." (sura ii.193 ; viii.39). Expansionist jihad is a collective duty (fard ala al-kifaya), which is fulfilled if a sufficient number of people take part in it. If this is not the case, the whole umma [Muslim community] is sinning."

Here are more bellicose verses from the Koran, the words of Allah telling Muslims to kill, murder on his behalf :

ii.193: Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.

ii. 216: Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. But you may hate a thing although it is good for you, and love a thing although it is bad for you. Allah knows, but you do not.

ix.41: Whether unarmed or well-equipped, march on and fight for the cause of Allah, with your wealth and your persons. This is best for you, if you but knew it.

ix. 123: Believers! make war on the infidels who dwell around you let them find harshness in you.

lxvi.9: O Prophet! make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal sternly with them hell shall be their home, evil their fate.

ix.73: O Prophet Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites. Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey’s end.

viii.65: O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight. If there are twenty steadfast men among you, they shall vanquish two hundred; and if there are a hundred, they shall rout a thousand unbelievers, for they are devoid of understanding.

xlvii.4-15: When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly ….

xxv.52: Do not yield to the unbelievers, but fight them strenuously with this Koran.

viii.67: It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he has made slaughter in the land …

What Umberto Eco calls the cult of heroism and the cult of death is beautifully exemplified in the Muslim cult of martyrdom. The Koran promises Paradise with its seductive houris to all those who die in the cause of Islam :

x. 4-15 "...As for those who are slain in the cause of Allah, He will not allow their works to perish. He will vouchsafe them guidance and ennoble their state; He will admit them to Paradise He has made known to them."

ix.111: "Allah has purchased of their faithful lives and worldly goods and in return has promised them the Garden. They will fight for His cause, kill and be killed."

iii.169-171: "You must not think that those who were slain in the cause of Allah are dead. They are alive, and well-provided for by their Lord…. "

iii.157-158 "If you should die or be killed in the cause of Allah, His mercy and forgiveness would surely be better than all the riches that amass. If you should die or be killed, before Him you shall all be gathered."

Bukhari gives the following hadith : "Narrated Anas bin Malik : ‘The prophet said, 'Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world …except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's cause.)'"

Finally, on the obligation of Jihad, I shall quote from two Muslim thinkers greatly admired in the West. First Ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah writes: "In the Muslim community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) covert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."

And now Averroes, a much romanticized figure in the West : "According to the majority of scholars, the compulsory nature of the jihad is founded on sura ii.216: ‘Prescribed for you is fighting, though it is hateful to you.’ The obligation to participate in the jihad applies to adult free men who have the means at their disposal to go to war and who are healthy, … Scholars agree that all polytheists should be fought; This founded on sura viii.39: Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God’s entirely"… Most scholars are agreed that, in his dealing with captives, various policies are open to the Imam. He may pardon them, enslave them, kill them, or release them either on ransom or as dhimmi [non-Muslim, second class subject of the Islamic state], in which latter case the released captive is obliged to pay poll-tax (jizya) ….Sura viii.67 "It is not for any Prophet to have prisoners until he make wide slaughter in the land." as well as the occasion when this verse was revealed [viz.the captives of Badr] would prove that it is better to kill captives than to enslave them. The Prophet himself would in some cases kill captives outside the field of battle, while he would pardon them in others. Women he used to enslave …. The Muslims are agreed that the aim of warfare against the People of the Book …is two-fold :either conversion to Islam or payment of poll-tax –jizya)."

Umberto Eco: [10] "Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party … "

Here, it takes very little substitution to see how Umberto Eco's tenth feature applies to Muslims as well. "Every [Muslim] belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the [Umma] are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a [Muslim] member of the [Umma]."

Islam is the most perfect of religion, and Muslims are the chosen people, as sura v.3 tells us: " This day I have prefected for you your religion and completed My favour to you and chosen for you Islam as a religion." Islam is destined to triumph ultimately, sura ix.33 "He it is Who sent His Messenger with guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religions, though the polytheists are averse" (see also xlviii.28; lxi.9).

The arrogance of Muslims is captured very precisely by Frithjof Schuon, a Western convert to a mystical variety of Islam:

"The intellectual – and thereby the rational – foundation of Islam results in the average Muslim having a curious tendency to believe that non-Muslims either know that Islam is the Truth and reject it out of pure obstinacy, or else are simply ignorant of it and can be converted by elementary explanations; that anyone should be able to oppose Islam with a good conscience quite exceeds the Muslims’ imagination, precisely because Islam coincides in his mind with the irresistible logic of things."

Umberto Eco: [12] "Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality)."

Here are some machismo sayings from the Koran :

iv..34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, & because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them & banish them to beds apart; and beat them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.

v.6... And if ye are sick on a journey, or one of you cometh from the closet, or ye have contact with women & ye find not water, then go to clean high ground & rub your faces & your hands with some of it...

xxxiii. 32-33 O ye wives of the Prophet! Ye are not like any other women. If ye keep your duty (to Allah), then be not soft of speech lest he in whose heart is a disease aspire to you, but utter customary speech And stay in your houses. Bedizen not yourselves with the bedizenment of the time of ignorance. Be regular in prayer, & pay the poor due, & obey Allah & His Messenger...

Equally, in numerous Hadiths on which are based the Islamic laws we learn of the woman' s role - to stay at home, to be at the beck & call of man, to obey him (which is a religious duty,) to assure man a tranquil existence. Here are some examples:

_____ If it had been given me to order someone to prostrate themselves in front of someone other than God, I would surely have ordered women to prostrate themselves in front of their husbands... A woman cannot fulfill her duties towards God without first having accomplished those that she owes her husband.

_____ The woman who dies & with whom the husband is satisfied will go to paradise.

_____ A wife should never refuse herself to her husband even if it is on the saddle of a camel.

_____ Hellfire appeared to me in a dream & I noticed that it was above all peopled with women who had been ungrateful. "Was it towards God that they were ungrateful?" They had not shown any gratitude towards their husbands for all they had received from them... Even when all your life you have showered a woman with your largesse she will still find something petty to reproach you with one day, saying, "You have never done anything for me."

_____ If anything presages a bad omen it is: a house, a woman, a horse.

_____ Never will a people know success if they confide their affairs to a woman.

Al -Ghazali (1058 - 1111), whom Professor Montgomery Watt describes as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad, in his " The Revival Of The Religious Sciences," defines the woman' s role:

"She should stay at home & get on with her spinning, she should not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbours & only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband & respect him in his presence & his absence & seek to satisfy him in everything; she must not cheat on him nor extort money from him; she must not leave her house without his permission & if gives his permission she must leave surreptitiously. She should put old on clothes & take deserted streets & alleys, avoid markets, & make sure that a stranger does not hear her voice or recognise her; she must not speak to a friend of her husband even in need... Her sole worry should be her virtue, her home as well as her prayers & her fast. If a friend of her husband calls when the latter is absent she must not open the door nor reply to him in order to safeguard her & her husband's honour. She should accept what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual needs at any moment "...She should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband's sexual needs at any moment." The great theologian then warns all men to be careful of women for their, "guile is immense & their mischief is noxious; they are immoral & mean spirited." "It is a fact that all the trials, misfortunes & woes which befall men come from women," moaned Al Ghazali.

In his Book of Counsel for Kings, Ghazali sums up all that a woman has to suffer & endure because of Eve's misbehaviour in the Garden of Eden:

"As for the distinctive characteristics with which God on high has punished women, (the matter is as follows): "When Eve ate fruit which He had forbidden to her from the tree in Paradise, the Lord, be He praised, punished women with eighteen things: (1) menstruation; (2) childbirth; (3) separation from mother & father & marriage to a stranger; (4) pregnancy; (5) not having control over her own person; (6) a lesser share in inheritance; (7) her liability to be divorced & inability to divorce; (8) its being lawful for men to have four wives, but for a woman to have only one husband; (9) the fact that she must stay secluded in the house; (10) the fact that she must keep her head covered inside the house; (11) the fact that two women's testimony has to be set against the testimony of one man; (12) the fact that she must not go out of the house unless accompanied by a near relative; (13) the fact that men take part in Friday & feast day prayers & funerals while women do not; (14) disqualification for rulership & judgeship; (15) the fact that merit has one thousand components, only one of which is attributable to women, while 999 are attributable to men; (16)... (17) the fact that if their husbands die they must observe a waiting period of four months & ten days before remarrying. (18) The fact that if their husbands divorce them they must observe a waiting period of three months or three menstrual periods before remarrying... "

The Koran, of course, permits men an unlimited number of women: IV.3 And if ye are apprehensive that ye shall not deal fairly with orphans, then, of other women who seem good in your eyes marry but two, or three or four; & if ye still fear that ye shall not act equitably, then one only; or the slaves whom ye have acquired XXIII.1,5,6. Happy now the believers, humble in their prayers, shunning vain conversation, paying the poor-due,& who restrain their appetites except with their wives or the slaves whom their right hands possess: for in that case they shall be free from blame.

XXXIII.49-51 O Prophet! We allow thee thy wives whom thou hast dowered, & the slaves whom thy right hand possesseth out of the booty which God hath granted thee, & the daughters of thy uncle, thy paternal & maternal aunts who fled with thee to Medina, & any believing woman who hath given herself up to the Prophet, if the Prophet desired to wed her - a Privilege for thee above the rest of the Faithful We well know what we have settled for them, in regard to their wives & to the slaves...; that there may be no fault on thy part... Thou mayst decline for the present whom thou wilt of them, & thou mayest take to thy bed her whom thou wilt, & whomsoever thou shalt long for of those thou shalt have before neglected, & this shall not be a crime in thee."

The inequality between men & women in matters of giving testimony or evidence; or being a witness is enshrined in the Koran: II.282 "Call in two male witnesses from among you but if two men cannot be found, then one man & two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error the other will remember."

On adultery the Koran says: XXIV.4 Those that defame honourable women & cannot produce four witnesses shall be given eighty lashes. "Of course, Muslim jurists will only accept four male witnesses. These witnesses must declare that they have "seen the parties in the very act of carnal conjunction".

In questions of heritage, the Quran tells us that male children should inherit twice the portion of female children IV.11-12 A male shall inherit twice as much as a female. If there be more than two girls, they shall have two- thirds of the inheritance, but if there be one only, she shall inherit the half. Parents shall inherit a sixth each, if the deceased have a child; but if he leave no child & his parents be his heirs, his mother shall have a third. If he have brothers, his mother shall have a sixth after payment of any legacy he may have bequeathed or any debt he may have owed.

The birth of a girl is still seen as a catastrophe in Islamic societies.. The system of inheritance just adds to her misery & her dependence on the man.... If she is an only child she receives only half the legacy of her father, the other half going to the male members of the father's family. If there are two or more daughters, they inherit 2/3rds. This pushes fathers & mothers to prefer male children to female so that they can leave the entirety of their effects or possessions to their own descendants. "Yet when a new-born girl is announced to one of them his countenance darkens & heis filled with gloom"; Koran XLIII. 15. The situation is even worse when a woman loses her husband - she only receives a quarter of the legacy & one eighth if there are. If the deceased leaves more than one wife, all the wives are still obliged to share among themselves a quarter or one eighth of the legacy.

All Muslim males can at any moment separate themselves from their wives, can repudiate their wives without formality, without explanations, without compensation. It is enough for the husband to pronounce the phrase "You are divorced" & it is done. Up to a period of three months the divorce is revocable. If the husband pronounces "You are divorced" three times, then the divorce is definitive. In the latter case the divorced wife cannot return to her husband until she has been married, "enjoyed", & divorced by another husband. Divorce depends entirely on the will & caprice of the husband - he may divorce his wife without any misbehaviour on her part, or without assigning any cause. As far as the custody of children goes, it is the mother who has the right to keep them. But as soon as she decides to remarry, she automatically loses her right to her children from the previous marriage.... In the case where the husband has the custody of children, if he remarries he does not lose this right to keep his children. Thus the woman is faced with the choice of remarrying & losing custody of her children or keeping her children & not marrying. This of course leads to a total insecurity for the women. Divorce is very frequent in Arab countries; instead of keeping four wives at the same time, which is rather expensive, a man simply changes his wife several

Bray has apparently not read the koran, the most widely published manual for sedition and terror. it is not a holy book. just another book with a sinister cover.

When I read about Samir Kuntar and Nasrallahs attempts to free this animial, I'm no longer able to feel compassion with the (acutal) civilians killed in Libanon. I know, there has to to be real innocent people killed in Libanon right now. That does not help me at the moment.
I honestly can't understand why Israel is fighting this war alone. The whole thinking world should line up behind them. How is it at all possible that people in the US can show support of Hezbollah. The world does not make sense any more.

Islamic Fascism is genuinely fascist.It believes that Islam is the only religion qualified under God (Allah) to live on planet earth. It has contempt for democracy, free speech, and human rights. It is full of hatred for Jews, atheists, homosexuals, and liberated women. It is linked to racist hatred of blacks in Sudan, slave trading of black Africans, and racist hatred of other ethnic minorities in the Islamic world.

Islam teachings suppress the free spirit of man and it leaves them to the will of demogogues,dictators and despots in almost every Islamic country. Its violent, and continuously aggressive actions are being committed in countries all over the world. Just to name a few countries,United States,Canada(recently thwarted),Britain,France,Netherlands,Spain,Russia,India,and the Phillipines,

What part of this Ideology does the free world not understand?

ZenaWarriorPrincess;

Yes, solutions are underway, and being brought up to speed. Following the ideas of your strong suggestions on islam, we will be on our way to rid ourselfs of this evil, for the future of us all.

Cindy Sheehan, post-menopausal media whore and sweetheart of the liberal left, would be proud.

"I honestly can't understand why Israel is fighting this war alone. The whole thinking world should line up behind them. How is it at all possible that people in the US can show support of Hezbollah. The world does not make sense any more".

Marvin,

Exactly.I also feel the same.India too should line up behind Israel and America.

As I said before, don't be too quick to criticize Europe for dhimmi actions. America will have a whole parade of them the more the muslims push their agenda on the nationa's politics. It won't be long before Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton join the party. We've already seen Nation of Islam extremist talking at immigration rallies here in Providence. Hezbollah and its ilk have many friends here wainting to trounce America.

Notice, they do not organize and march against terrorism?

Posted by: The Goobs at August 13, 2006 07:50 AM

Just look at their values and issues and at a cgalce, you will see that the UMMA Al-Islamia has an agenda of overthrowing western Governments. InfZct, taking advantage of the failed plot to blow up airplanes, muslim MPs and other muslim organizations, instead of standing bsides their British brothers and sisters, in these times of high anxiety, stress and alert, tried to blackmail british govt. Does that not say clearly, what side of terror is UMMA Al-Islamia on? Come on, it is no rocket science.

Good observation, Goobs.

No, Rumfeld, Cheney, Rice, Bush, et al should be deported to Sudan Ramsey!

And I think Clinton, Albright, and their ilk should also be deported!

And YOU Mr. Clark, should also be deported along with your islamic friends who have no business in this country in the first place as far as I am concerned!

Posted by: witness at August 13, 2006 09:25 AM

Couldn't have put it better myself, except, isn't treason punishable by death? If not, why not?

Everything they accuse us of i.e. baby killings, are exactly what they are guilty of. They deliberately target women and children and then they say, you guys are killing our civilians. What civilians? Their children are taught to kill from birth. They are all jihadis or supporters of jihad. These fools do not have a clue what is coming. They will figure it out when they see an endless column of men and machines coming towards them, I can hear their whining now. Please. please Mr. UN daddy stop the Infidels onslaught, they do not fight fair, and they will not stop and give us a chance to reorganize. This is not how our leaders told us it would be (boohoo). The jihadis are ruining our country. I can remember the days when you could walk through an Airport and never even see a cop. In those days you could also go to a Sporting Event or even Disneyland and not be searched like a criminal. Innocent until proven guilty is out the window now. All because of whom? I want my country back and when we get it back the Benedict Arnolds among us are going to regret their actions to say the least. Tugging on your heart strings, playing to our emotions, they must have sympathy or they are exposed as the ruthless yet inept killers that they strive to be. Be advised any BAs out there. We are making a list and we will be checking it twice.

What part of this Ideology does the free world not understand?

Posted by: Mackie at August 13, 2006 10:13 AM

All one has to do is to read the first declaration closely to see the hostility toeards other religions. How can a religion declare there is NO OTHER god but Allah? IS that not a direct threat/hostility towards religions that believe in and pray to their own GOD, which they have all the right to. No religion, I know, takes away the right of a human being to pray to his/her belief/faith. Islam is the only one that begins with hostility and ends in death (any wonder Islam has millions of deaths chalked to it's name?)

Come to think of it, Islam is against US Contitution, that guarentees freedom of religion.

Marvin,

Exactly.I also feel the same.India too should line up behind Israel and America.

Posted by: Crows&Cows at August 13, 2006 12:26 PM

Ditto here! At our level, we can start bu boycotting anything to do with Umma Al-Islamia. Speaking for myself, I recently traded my SUV for a hybrid.

Freedom of speech. Gotta love it. Something islamic countries do not have. Give them enough rope to hang themselves by ranting and raving on. The world is watching.

Just a little bit on Ramsey Clark who never met a communist or terrorist that he didnt like.

Ramsey Clark, is a former U.S. attorney general and leftist anti-war activist.
Clark, runs the International Action Center, a front group for the communist Workers World Party.

Clarks short stint as the attorney general in the Johnson administration was brought about by President Johnson because he knew his father Tom Clark would step down from the supreme court. Ramsey's father tom was the attorney general under President Truman and was constantly mired in corruption. Truman admitted to a biographer that "Tom Clark was my biggest mistake." But he insisted: "It isn't so much that he's a bad man. It's just that he's such a dumb son of a bitch."

After leaving the Attorney Generals office Ramsey Clark became the lawyer for anti-war protestor Philip Berrigan, headed a private probe into the FBI killings of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and travelled to Vietnam to condemn US bombing.

In June 1980, with America mesmerized by the Iran hostage crisis, he joined a forum on "Crimes of America" in Tehran.

The '80s saw him globetrotting to schmooze with any dictator who happened to be on the White House shit-list.

After the US bombing of Libya in 1986, he met with Col. Moammar Qadaffi in Tripoli. He went to Grenada to advise Bernard and Phyllis Coard, leaders of the clique accused of murdering Maurice Bishop, who were facing treason charges.

Things started to smell really fishy in 1989, when Clark represented ultra-right cult-master Lyndon LaRouche and six cohorts on conspiracy and mail fraud charges. The LaRouchies had been bilking their naive followers of their savings by getting them to cough up their credit card numbers.

Clark also represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly vacationer who was shot and thrown overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise-ship by renegade Palestinian terrorists in 1986.

Another Clark client was Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in Estonia (where he had overseen the murder of some 12,000 resistence fighters and Jews),

Hugh, your quotation of the Ibn Warraq article about Fascism and Islam seems to end in mid-sentence:

"Divorce is very frequent in Arab countries; instead of keeping four wives at the same time, which is rather expensive, a man simply changes his wife several..."

I went to www.secularislam.org to try to find the article, but did not see it there.

The "only" appology owed from the "West" is to our children, that we would allow in our countries such violent people who would try to impose their cult of islam if they could. We know what has to be done, and the remedy(s) are being planned.

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at August 13, 2006 07:24 AM

Very deep and a thoughtful point. Sometimes I wonder if Americans (I am a freshly naturalized Amerrican) care for their kids at all. If Americans do, all they have to do is think about the black flag on White House, the barbarity they see on TV, the lawsuits by CAIR, ACLU. Islamic education, complete with head scarfs and greetings, traitors like Dougie, Bray and countless other converts, with mnosques, Islamic schools, Islamic cultural centers, Arabic classes with altered maps and cals for Islamix prayers in Dearborn, With Bush holding hands with Wahabis, throwing Iftaar dinners, sensitivity training to FBI, hiring Karen Hughes to appease muslims and Condi declaring 'We know the benevolence in the heart of Islam', I wonder if Americans ever spare a thought about the legacy they want to leave their children? Glad, you spare a thought for them. And YES! Americans have to apologize BIG TIME for unchecked legal, illegal, mexican, muslim and practically all forms of immigration, the hordes of visas (including religious visas to Imams who are later found to support terror), doctored driver's licenses, forged social security cards, kids summer jobs going to illegal immigrants, Bush selling out citizenship and their jobs for a few votes and letting Bin Ladens out to safety, kids will certainly wonder, WHY? Did we (the future generations) not cross our fore-father's minds at all?

But, a telling point, I fully agree with!

Does this not look and sound like pre-WW2 europe and America. God helps us to overcome this before islam conquers the world.

"How is it at all possible that people in the US can show support of Hezbollah. The world does not make sense any more.

Posted by: Marvin

It makes perfect sense, if you read revelations.
As the apocalypse nears, good is bad, and bad is good.

We are witnessing the beginnings of rise of Persia, the gathering of the kings of the east, (which means new alliances are being or soon will be formed) which will suprize some, and also a whole re-alignment of the Muslim world.

According to revelations, Persia (Iran) will become all powerful, and squash the rest of the Muslim world,(south of the euphrates) probably with the help of Russia and other alliances, Turkey perhaps?

But don't worry, lots has to happen before the end of the world comes.

If you are interested in this stuff, here is a good online book.

The last days of Babylon

"I went to www.secularislam.org to try to find the article, but did not see it there.

Posted by: Television

You can find all sorts of simular articles at answering Islam.org, or faithfreedom. (Look at the side menu)

'Several speakers at the rally criticized Mr. Bush for mentioning the religious background of those arrested this week..."

Hmmm...Shouldn't that read religious MOTIVATION?

Darn those typesetters.

"Ditto here! At our level, we can start bu boycotting anything to do with Umma Al-Islamia. Speaking for myself, I recently traded my SUV for a hybrid.

Posted by: Alert

Why? We only get 10% of our oil from them. And if we didn't have so many enviro wienies delaying progress and drilling, we could eliminate that quite easily. We have some of the largest shale deposits in the world, which is extractible much cheaper than what we pay for oil now. Plus Canada is now our #1. supplier, and that is growing as well.
We don't HAVE to import any oil from the ME, we just don't have the political willpower to make it so.

It's Europe and Eastern Asia, Japan and China that imports most of their oil from the ME.
It's their willingness to accept Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and the Mullah Mafia, for oil that is preventing us from doing what should be done.
If Europe got their hands out of the cookie jar, and realized that their oil would be more secure if Islamic "Fundamentalism" were wiped out, We could put a quick end to this BS. But, history always repeats itself it seems. This time, if Europe waits too long, they may not recover. It will become a bunch Islamic Shia dictatorships.
At long last, Islam will regain Spain along with the rest of Europe.

We have a huge problem right here in the USA. I just witnessed on Foxnews a Democrat strategist who said, if we are going to start profiling muslims, we might as well profile all white males that look “Military” because of Tim McVeigh. This vile creature and those other whites that would want us all dead are our greatest enemy. In his world, after the Jones Town massacre, had we just profiled middle aged white businessmen we could have averted how many more such atrocities? The man (loose interpretation) is openly stating that white males pose just as much of a terror related risk as muslims. He is right about one thing. We do pose a risk but the danger does not come from terror related actions. Well now I have named the enemy and it is us. What are you going to do about it?

The more the Muslim activists and their fellow travellers whine and squawk over the naming, the more attention is drawn to Islam.

The more the Muslim activists and their fellow travellers whine and squawk over the naming, the more attention is drawn to Islam.

Posted by: Archimedes

The more homicide bombings, beheadings, hiding behind or even using Infants to bomb civilians, the more hatred we hear from the Islamic community, the more anti-American, anti-Israel chants they scream, the more retarded twisting they do of any rational argument, the more threats they make....

The more INTELLIGENT people will see them for the devil worshipers they are.

Although our politicians (who are only interested in maintaing their jobs/power) will do nothing to stop the growth of this fastest-growing very evil religion, the average American will prepare for the day when they will have to defend their freedom and country FROM a demonic religion AND the phoney politicans who care nothing for this nation.

God help us to be ready.

Hugh,

Thanks for those posts.

TV,

Here's the link for it
http://www.secularislam.org/articles/facism.htm

Folks,

Here some quotes and notes from Koran, Hadith, Sira, and Muslim leaders.

The Goal of Islam

Quotes and notes under other major categories can be found in theseResources
for critics of Islam.

Mackie wrote:

Just a little bit on Ramsey Clark who never met a communist or terrorist that he didnt like.
..................

Mackie gives a really comprehensive rundown on the odious Ramsey Clark above.

A few things to add:

He defended a Hutu pastor who didn't merely stand by while his Tutsi parishioners were slaughtered during the Rwandan genodcide, but actually lured them to their deaths,

He defended Slobodan Milosovic,

He offered legal support to the perpetrators of the first WTC bombings in 1993,

Most recently, of course, he has been defending Saddam Hussein.

This isn't some court-appointed defense lawyer who occasionally winds up with a really nasty client, but represents him anyway because he believes that everyone is entitled to a good defense. This is someone who has consistently sought out, literally, the worst people in the world to represent. Often his rhetoric is obscene--many times he blames his monstrous client's victims.

Truly ugly

I honestly can't understand why Israel is fighting this war alone. The whole thinking world should line up behind them. How is it at all possible that people in the US can show support of Hezbollah. The world does not make sense any more. Posted by: Marvin

I bemoan that Israel is fighting this war alone, but unlike you, I understand why.. it is a just reaction against the Islamolike arrogance, ignorance and self righteous intolerance of those who consider themselves and posit themselves as "conservatives" or right wing and thump their Bibles like Muslims thump their Korans.

Everytime a conservative rants,votes or declares war on "liberals", the elderly, women, pro choice, the poor, etc they create more allies for Islam.

And ranting and demanding that the "wake up" doesn't hack it, because erstwhile open handed liberals (leftists if you wish) see the immediate effects and recognize those immediate threats from their neighbors and co citizens, whereas Islam is far away.

And considering the mean spirited rantings of the right, and their constant kevetching and demonizing of the elderly, poor, gays, women and minorities they of course believe that "Islamophobia" is just another example of the rights penchant for demonizing the other.

The problem Marvin is not liberals or the left, but the Oreilly's, Limpballs, Coulters, Hannity's, and many a JW/DW poster. To the liberal or left, Muslims are just another group that the self righteous, fearful, and mean spirited right wing demonizes.

The Joke is that all of these right wing ideology/religions(Islam, Judaism and Christianity, even Marxism and NAZIsm) are conservative...and they share more in common than not..family values, misogyny, homophobia, end times eschatology, self righteousness, eliteness, self choseness...and fear and hatred of the other, the non believer, the non conformist, the skeptic, the heretic.

Who stepped on the "paranoid rant" button?

Looks like the nurse skipped a bed when she was distributing medication this evening.

Nariz

Whatever support Hizbullah has in the US, other than Jihadist elements in Dearborn, comes exclusively from the Left - in SF, Boston, et al. Pat Buchanan has been out of the GOP for now 6 years, and he, Norquest and Novak don't reflect the bulk of opinion within the GOP.

Left support Muslims because they are just another group that the self righteous, fearful, and mean spirited right wing demonizes? That's a laugh. Ann Coulter was right - the reason the Left supports Muslims is because Muslims hate the US. Normally, social signatures of Islam, such as misogyny, homophobia, religious bigotry, inshallah-philosophy in science, cruelty to animals, slavery, racism... are all things in Islam that Leftists should normally hate, and some do. But because they have replaced Communists as the leading enemy of the West, as well as all things genuinely religious, they are lionized by the Left, despite all the above deficiencies - any of which would be enough to make an Infidel the object of scorn and ridicule.

Pelayo and everyone else-
I am not sure that our governemnts will do anything, I copied this from another blog:

"If this were WW2, we wouldn’t be worrying about the feelings of Muslims, or castigating ourselves as racists for attempting to defend ourselves. We’d be girding our loins to defeat the Ragheads just as we battled the Nips and the Krauts to an unconditional surrender.

Admit it — you winced at my last sentence, didn’t you? That illustrates the depth and breadth of the problem we now face."

It says a lot.

Yesterday there was another rally in Toronto , the Pro-Hezbollah wingnuts not only got a Permit from City Hall but tax-funded Police security to chant death threats outside the Israeli Consulate, then the Jihadists marched to the US Consulate to chant Hezbollah death calls.

What shocked the reporters was that when 3 Israeli flags were set afire by these Peaceful Muslims , the Police actually forced the Media away so they couldn't take pictures or incite the crowd to become violent.

Sounds exactly how the Nazis worked , you strat off small and play the victim, the Police must protect you , and when you spew serious hatred towards others it is the Police that arrest the opposers to the hate.

Hezbollah took land from Lebanon to wage war on a UN Member, and now Hezbollah is a occupier in Canada and must be booted out before they launch missiles into the USA from Canadian borders.

Shame on all those Muslims that have stayed mute on this sick display of fascism , one mother gave her little boy a sign with a Swastika on it , and now I see how easy it is for Arab amnd Muslims to murder theirown babies for Allah's cause.

Robert,
There wasn't any real diversity there, only solidarity.
Some spoke better Arabic than others, but they all have the same thoughts and aims: To embarass America, bring down George Bush, and get us under the thumb of the U.N. and the World Court.
Ramsey Clark and his ilk have never forgiven America for defeating communism. It robbed the liberals of scintillating dinner conversation and fantasizing what it would be like to live in an ideal communist system.