RELIGION OF PEACE?

I suggest that you look at my blog of October 8, 2012 before reading the rest of this blog.  It explains how I became very familiar with Islam.

Today the news shows tell us that the USA is closing down 22 embassies in Muslim nations due to threats of violence.  We are also issuing a world wide warning for all Americans who travel overseas.  What is going on?  The reason given is that our security forces have discovered real threats from Islamic extremists.  But, ever since 9/11, haven't we been told over and over that Islam is a religion of peace?  On June 4, 2009, President Obama spoke at al-Azhar Univ. in Cairo declaring that it is part of his responsibility as President to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam.  He proclaimed that Islam is part of America and share common principles.  He said there are nearly 7 million Muslims in the USA. He also said Thomas Jefferson kept a Holy Koran in his personal library.  He also quoted President John Adams speech of 1796 where he expressed his desire for peace with Islam.  He said Morocco was the first nation to recognize the USA.  All of these statements are in error.

The Pew Forum, in 2010, reported that there were 2.6 million American Muslims in the USA. In 1801 Jefferson waged war against the Islamic Barbary states of north Africa in order to stop the pillaging of ships and the enslavement of more than a million Christians.  He had been told by our ambassador that the pirates justified their actions by the "Law of the Prophets" and the Koran.  Jefferson kept a copy of the Koran in order to understand the hostile nature of Islam, not because he admired it.  John Adams did not write the words Obama attributed to him.  His son, John Quincy Adams did write at length about Islam.  He said that war had been raging between Christianity and Islam for 1200 years and the conflict could not cease but by the extinction of Islam, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man.  He said that as long as the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet (Mohammed) shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon the earth.  By the way, Morocco was the 7th nation to recognize the USA.

Other American leaders have had similar thoughts.  Teddy Roosevelt wrote, "As generations of Americans past, our time has come to  defend the beliefs and values that made this nation great, such as equality before the law... there are such social values today in Europe, America, and Australia only because during those thousand years the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do--that is, to beat back the Moslem invader."

The Nazi leadership understood that Islam was a totalitarian system aiming for political domination of the world and viewed them as kindred spirits.  Hitler deplored the fact that the Franks had defeated the Muslims in Tours in 732.  "Had Charles Martel not been victorious, we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and opens up the 7th heaven to the bold warrior alone.  Then the Germanic races would have conquered world.  Christianity alone prevented them from doing so."  Hitler also said, "It's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion.  Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"  The Nazis admired Islam's zeal for dehumanizing and slaughtering Jews.  They knew the Koran called Jews swine and apes.  In 1941, Mohammmad Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, visited Hitler and Himmler in Berlin.  Adolf Eichmann gave him a tour of Auschwitz and the gas chambers.  Eichmann's deputy revealed at the Nuremberg Trials, "The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of european Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan.  He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.

Winston Churchill did not have such a positive attitude toward Islam as did Hitler.  Churchill spent time in what is now Pakistan and in the Sudan as a soldier and correspondent.  He wrote,"Besides the fanatical frenszy...there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.  The effects are apparent in many countries.  Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods  of commerce, and insecurity of property exist where the followers of the Prophet rule of live...Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities--but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.  No stronger retrogade force exists in the world."

The influential twentieth-century Islamic spiritual leader Abul Ala Maududi acknowledged that "Islam is an ideology" because it demands that the state be regulated according to Islamic law. Islam's most important goal  is the establishment of a worldly state, a global political empire: the Caliphate, to whose autority all of mankind are subjected.  I agree with Abul Ala Maududi.  My time spent inside Islam convinced me that Islam is not primarily a religion.  It is a governmental system with a religious component and it should be treated as such, not as a religion.