Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
Islam means submission, and it demands the submission of all to the Al Lah and his only prophet, Muhammad of Mecca. Mark Durie, a linguistics and theology scholar, writes: “In its original meaning, a Muslim was someone who surrendered in warfare.”[1] Muhammad’s famous phrase aslim taslam means “surrender (i.e. submit to Islam) and you will be safe”.[2] These words were included by him in letters sent to various rulers offering them peace if they surrendered to Islam. The cult of Muhammad means surrender, submission and to be subjugated by his Jihadis.
Muhammad’s equivalent of Mao’s Little Red Book, or Hitler’s Mein Kampf, is the Koran or Recital, meaning to memorise and follow. In Recital Jihad has 2 parts, one is reflection, and the other is to wage war (or lesser Jihad). Waging War to subdue the world for Muhammad is the 2nd pillar of the cult of Submission. It is the most important demand after proclaiming your devotion to follow the Al Lah and his only prophet Muhammad, captured in the daily shahada recitation, wrongly called a ‘prayer’ by the ignorant, given that it is a supremacist declaration and consigns Christians and Jews to enemy status. Nothing in the primary books, or in its history, indicates that Submission is ‘peaceful’. The opposite presents itself. It is fierce, warlike, bloody, vengeful, intolerant and totalitarian. Submission is war not peace.
The Westerners who promote the Islam-is-peace lie, live in countries that are not yet under Sharia barbarism (it is not a ‘law’) and we don’t see them moving to a Muslim state anytime soon. How cheap it is to promote a mendacity when the proponent has never lived in the Muhammadan world of Sharia. How ignorant it is to promote the twisted when the trumpeter is ignorant of history and reality of Jihad and the quite endless Muslim war on the West which started in 636 AD and involved all states in Europe, both East and West. Even the Nordics had troops fighting the Arab and Muslim invasions, aiding the Christian Byzantine empire which suffered from 817 years of ceaseless Muslim warring and aggression. But how many know a thing about Byzantium or the Varaganian guards?
The myth that the earnest, pious, bearded, direct Musulman represented peace and love emanates from the 1930s, when Mahometans in the West marketed their cult and tried to attract followers.[3]
Such a marketing message was false, contravening 1300 years of Jihadic hate, supremacism and war. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was largely agreed upon by historians and those who understood the vicious assault by Musulmans on the rump of Christendom named the ‘West’, which was about 1/3 of the total area under Christianity at the time of Musulman irruption in 636-636 A.D., that the Mahometans created very little as they extirpated far older, sophisticated, and far richer empires.
The entire Mediterranean and Near East stretching through to India and into China was thrown into confusion, chaos and turned upside down by the Mahometans. Ancient civilisations around the Mediterranean were in 636 A.D. a blend of the pagan Roman, Greek, Goth and Christian. They were educated, technologically advanced, dynamic, wealthy, merchant states, many deeply pious even to the point of arguing over the exact nature of Christ’s body, spirit and soul. Emperors became embroiled in heated discussions on the Trinity. Angels never danced on the heads of pins, but there was deep theological and rational debate on what Church creeds and dogma actually meant. There is nothing wrong with that.
Now the largely atheist-agnostic West, which can’t define a woman, terrified of a rounding error trace chemical called plant food which apparently causes the weather, and which believed the Corona fascism was a health imperative, imbibes the dogma, ‘the science’ in modern parlance, to affirm that the Mahometans were simply peace loving goat herders, building enormously advanced societies, whilst the dirty, hairy, stupid Christians in their mud huts, cowered, toothless, shoeless, unable to fathom bathing or maths, suffering through a dark age, worse than those who live at the margins of the last Ice Age. In this theme we have modern bile and bigotry replacing reality.
The Meaning of Jihad
The Arabic word ‘jihad’ means ‘struggle’ or ‘strive’. It is sometimes ambiguous whether this refers to a spiritual or a physical (violent) struggle. The clearest use in a non-violent sense is Q 22:78: And strive (jahidoo) for Allah with the striving (jihadihi) due to him. He has chosen you and has not placed upon you in the religion any difficulty.
However, there are plenty of clear references to jihad as violent struggle. For example, Q 2:216-218: Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you… Indeed, those who have believed and those who have emigrated and fought (jihad) in the cause of Allah – those expect the mercy of Allah. And Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. The claim is sometimes made that there is a distinction between the ‘greater jihad’ and the ‘lesser jihad’. This claim is based on the following hadith:
Some troops came back from an expedition and went to see the Messenger of Allah sallallahu `alayhi wa-Sallam. He said: “You have come for the best, from the smaller jihad (al-jihad al-asghar) to the greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar).” Someone said, “What is the greater jihad?” He said: “The servant’s struggle against his lust” (mujahadat al-`abdi hawah).
This hadith is narrated in Al-Bayhaqi in al-Zuhd al-Kabir, though it is noted that “This is a chain that contains weakness.”[4] It is dated from the first half of the ninth century and is not related in any of the official canonical hadith collections.[5] Most significantly, it is contradicted by the Qur’an itself which says:
Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward. (Q 4:95)
Here it is clear that physical fighting is regarded as the greater endeavour. All four schools of Sunni jurisprudence, as well as the Shi’ite tradition make no reference to a ‘greater jihad’. There are multiple references to jihad in the most trusted hadith collections and with virtually no exceptions, they all refer to physical fighting.
For example:
A man came to Allah’s Messenger and said, “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” He replied, “I do not find such a deed.” Then he added, “Can you, while the Muslim fighter is in the battle-field, enter your mosque to perform prayers without cease and fast and never break your fast?” The man said, “But who can do that?” Abu-Huraira added, “The Mujahid (i.e. Muslim fighter) is rewarded even for the footsteps of his horse while it wanders about (for grazing) tied in a long rope”. (Bukhari 5:52:44)
Leading scholar David Cook argues that attempts to present jihad in purely spiritual terms are completely unsupported by the evidence, and only occur in writings for Western audiences: “Those who write in Arabic or other Muslim majority languages realise that it is pointless to present jihad as anything other than militant warfare.”[6]
In fact, jihad as physical fighting for the spread of Islam is so prominent in the traditional teaching of Islam that it is sometimes referred to as the sixth pillar of Islam. In the earliest hadith collections, sections on jihad immediately follow those on the five pillars.[7]
It is clear that the war-leader Muhammad needed arms, battles and wars to subdue the Meccan tribes, and Jewish-Christian tribes in Arabia. War was the main tool to enforce submission, and this is built into the DNA of the Mahometan cult. The primary meaning of jihad has always been physical fighting. This applies to the Qur’an, the hadith, Islamic history and classical Islamic hermeneutics. Even the standard definition of jihad given in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam admits to this fact: “In law, according to general doctrine and in historical tradition, the jihad consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam and, if need be, of its defence.”[8]
[1] Durie, ‘Is Islam a Religion of Peace?’ 2015
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aslim_Taslam
[3] Durie
[4] www.livingislam.org and sunnah.org (documentation of the hadith of jihad)
[5] Cook, ‘Understanding Jihad’, 2005
[5] Cook, p. 43
[6] Cook, p.43
[7] Qureshi, ‘Answering Islam’, 2016, p. 38
[8] Cook, p.2