Light Brings Salt
Volume 3, Issue 16 April 17, 2005
Dedicated to the Systematic Exposition of the Word of God
Potpouri
Today we have several articles from newsletters
that I receive. These are presented in order
to keep you aware of what is on going out there and therefore providing
discernment when reviewing the events of the day.
A Magazine for Al-Qa'da
Recently the first issue of the
"Department of Indoctrination" of the Al-Qa'ida
What
is the Al-Qa'ida Organization in
This
is an organization consisting of a group of Muslims from amongst the followers
of the tradition and the community of believers [ahl
al-sunna wa'l jama'a] which tries to please Allah by committing
themselves to keep Allah's orders and proscriptions and to see to it that
others do so [as well]... it has set for itself a number of central goals which
are mutually interrelated and complementary:
"1) Renewing pure
monotheism which was brought by our Prophet Muhammad amongst those whose
monotheism was sullied by the filth of polytheistic elements, and the spreading
of the axiom 'there is no God but Allah' in lands where Islam has not yet
arrived.
"2) Jihad for the sake of Allah, so
that His message be supreme, and in order to recapture all the lands of the
Muslims from the hands of the
infidels and the apostates, and to apply
the Shari'a law, Allah's law, in these areas, without
any distinction [in this respect] between ruler and ruled, and to free the
Muslim prisoners of war, since this is a personal obligation [incumbent] on
every Muslim, as all the ulama agree...
"3) To come to the aid of Muslims
wherever they are and to reclaim the Muslim's dignity, which has been soiled by
the [foreign] invaders and their agents, and his human rights of
which he has been deprived, and to strive to improve his conditions and
circumstances in every respect, both religious and this-wordly
-- material, social, educational, etc. -- in accordance with the teachings of
Islam...
"4) To re-establish the Rightly-Guided
Caliphate in accordance with the Prophet's example, because [according to the
tradition] 'whoever dies without having sworn allegiance to a Muslim ruler dies
as an unbeliever.'
"Our guiding principle with regard to
our great goals is: [to follow] the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet, in
the way of the righteous early generations, and [to follow] the elucidations of
the great ulama from among those faithful to the Sunna [ahl al-sunna] .
"One of the great principles of our
faith is that we should not spill even a drop of Muslim blood unjustly, for the
end of the whole world is less
significant
than the spilling of one Muslim's blood."
(Middle East Media Research Institute,
Will the West Survive?
Walter
Williams
The Muslim world is at war with Western
civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we
have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves
from annihilation?
Their intent is clear, but let's refresh our memories with a bit of history.
At the 1972 Olympic Games in
and
other wanton murders of innocents, including the recent barbaric beheading of
two innocent men? They were all Muslims.
You say, "Williams, you can't make an
indictment of a whole people and their religion!" I'm not, and let me
clearly state: By no means are all Muslims murderers. But on the other hand,
I've never heard broad Muslim condemnation of their fellow Muslims' murderous
acts committed in the name of their god.
If anything, there has been jubilation and
dancing in the streets in the wake of Muslim attacks on Westerners. Contrast
their response to the widespread Western condemnation of the, mild by
comparison, behavior of a few coalition forces in
Muslim atrocities, and the collective
Muslim response to those atrocities, might be better understood knowing their
belief system as spelled out by a few, among many, passages from the Quran: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah"
(Surat At-Taubah 9:29).
"I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above
their necks and smite all their finger tips of them" (Quran
creatures"
(Quran 98:1-8). "Fight against those who believe
not in Allah, and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam), until
they are subdued" (
Phil Lucas, editor of the
My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell observes,
"Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard
themselves as far superior to the 'infidels' of the West, while everything they
see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise." He adds, "Nowhere
have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully
than the peoples of the Islamic world." Sowell adds that few people, once
at the top of civilization,
accept their reversals of fortune gracefully. Moreover, they don't blame
themselves for their plight. For the Muslim world, it's the West who's to
blame.
History never repeats itself exactly, but
we might benefit from the knowledge of factors leading to the decline of past great civilizations.