U.S.: Only Christ can bring light to the darkness

Here's an excerpt from Tashbih Sayyed's "Israel a state of mind."

Nazism, Communism, Japanese imperialism etc. all claimed to have possessed the absolute truth and tried to impose it on others, causing a great amount of human suffering in the process. Fortunately, none of these philosophies enjoyed the backing of any church and therefore lacked religious legitimacy, making it relatively easy for the civilized world to eventually defeat them.

Radical Islam or Islamism, driven by extremist and an obscurantist interpretation of Islam, is the current face of this evil. Because it has very cleverly managed to hijack Islam, a faith of more than 1.2 billion people, its sway is absolute. Most Muslim societies have fallen under its influence and, as a consequence, have become the breeding ground of terrorism. Events of the recent past have reconfirmed, beyond any doubt, its destructive potential.

Being a totalitarian ideology, radical Islam demands absolute submission. And since it knows that enlightened and informed souls do not make obedient slaves, it is committed to keep Muslims backward and uninformed. Radical Islam, like any other totalitarian ideology that thrives on lies, manipulated Holy Scriptures, fabricated traditions of the Prophet and literalism, and cannot allow its prey to be exposed to an open intellectual environment. That's why it enforces strict censor and does not allow unconditional pursuit of knowledge. This is the only way it can keep the masses in the dark and in its control.

In an Islamist controlled society, debate is forbidden, difference of opinion and dissension is considered a perversion, and modern education a threat. Individual reasoning is forbidden. And expression of doubt about any aspect of the "religiously mandated" social, cultural and political sociology is barred as blasphemy.

Anyone attempting to challenge the status quo is instantly declared an apostate. An Islamist mind is a possessed mind - a condition that compels him or her to live to destroy others. An Islamist does not believe in living side by side with anyone who does not conform to his or her ideology. His life is a constant Jihad (holy war) to overwhelm and eradicate infidels.

No one is more threatened by radical Islam than the Muslims themselves. That's why some of us who have somehow escaped the Islamist control and influence have taken upon ourselves to expose the scourge and by doing so exterminate it. As a Muslim, it is my experience and observation that radical Islam can only be defeated by providing Muslims a basis of comparison - by informing them of the truth about the others. In an Islamist controlled society, Muslims see Jews, Christians and Hindus through a cleric's lens.

Whatever image of the others has been created by a dogmatic and obscurantist clergy has been accepted by the Muslim masses as truth. Nobody is permitted to challenge this one sided propaganda. The result has been that this state of affairs has deprived the Muslim street of the ability to make an impartial and rational judgment.

No Muslim living in this darkness is aware of the light outside. Only a Muslim can change it. Only a Muslim can remove the darkness of hatred.

I respectfully disagree with Tashbih Sayyed on three points.

The first is that Islamism is radical and has hijacked Islam. A brief survey of history would suffice to put this falsehood to rest. Islamism is the true face of Islam and has contributed nothing to that ideology that is not in the Koran and Hadiths. In fact, even before the jihadists came on the scene eleven years ago, Islam has oppressed and repressed Muslims. It has not been by accident that Muslim women are either kept from schooling or are sent to schools where they are prepared only for being "good Muslim women" rather than for productive careers.

Moreover, even non-Muslim scholars who have studied the Koran and Hadiths have concurred that the ideology preached by the jihadis is not radical but is actually very much consistent with the mainstream Islam as practiced by Mohammed (FHATCHRIO) himself and by the adherents down through history. Lest you doubt, read Serge Trifkovic's "Islam's Other Victims: India," and Andrew G. Bostom's "A Modern Jihad Genocide." Also, read Rashad Ali's "Jihad: The Highest Peak of Islam" which explicitly states that in Mohammed's (FHATCHRIO) view, "jihad is qitaal" (Arabic is a Semitic language of the same family as Hebrew. In Hebrew, the triliteral root of qitall is QTL, to kill.). Thus, given the etymology of qitaal, it is fair to say that Mohammed (FHATCHRIO) understood and meant the term 'jihad' to refer to killing and not to any internal struggle. Also read Syed Kamran Mirza's "An exegesis on 'Jihad in Islam'."

The second point is that Islam and Islamism are no different from but much more dangerous than the other false ideologies of Communism and Nazism. What Islam has that Communism lacked is belief in a deity; like the ancient Germanic paganism of Nazism, what Islamism possesses is a deity, the demonic nature of which, nothwithstanding, 1.9 billion people are adherents. That Mohammed (FHATCHRIO) rooted his new ideology in the Judaism and Arian Christian heresy of the ancient world, and that he claimed Abraham as ancestor of the Arab peoples were enough to establish a certain cachet for his ideology; I need not include the spread of this violent new ideology to nations by means of the bloody sword.

I do believe, though, that it is the global regard for Islam as one of the world's "three great religions" that makes it so dangerous because that "religious" imprimatur accords Islamism the status that the Nazi paganism lacked. As such, where many nations would repress Nazism because of the atrocities committed under that ideology, no nation is willing to repress Islam, under which many more millions of genocidal acts have been committed down through history. What Communism, Nazism, and Islam/Islamism have in common is the prolific murder of those who are not adherents.

My third point is that no Muslim is capable of changing the darkness in which he exists. This is so for two reasons: first, because the Muslim is no different from any other man and is, therefore, equally incapable as any other man of lighting his own spiritual path; second, because the nature of Islam is resistant to change. What is Islam without jihad is qitaal? Remove qitaal from jihad and the Muslim spits on Mohammed (FHATCHRIO) and declares that the means by which he promulgated his new ideology were false. What is Islam without Mohammed (FHATCHRIO)? Nothing.

Therefore, unlike Christianity whose Bible includes no doctrine that would support the murder of unbelievers (instead, the Commandment is clear, "Thou shalt not kill") and which underwent the Reformation -- not of the Bible and its doctrines but of the Church Visible and its understanding and teaching of those doctrines, Islam cannot change because an alteration of its teaching requires an emendation of its foundational texts. Moreover, only Christ Jesus can remove the darkness of and from the Muslim mind, heart, and soul because the man who rejects the Sonship and Lordship of Christ is outside of Him and, therefore, in darkness.

Thus, the only way out of the darkness for the Muslim, who, by virtue of his submission to the infernal deity Allah (SOHTIH), is outside of Christ and, therefore, dead and incapable of doing anything to change his condition, is to be preached the Gospel and be converted to Christianity, thus abandoning Islam. If they're willing to blow themselves up for the sake of Allah, then they should be willing to accept persecution for the sake of Christ. Better to be persecuted for the sake of the kingdom of heaven than to murder to reign in hell.

As much as Sayyed appears willing to speak out against what is wrong with Islam, he has missed the point altogether. The problem with Islam is Islam and its Koran. Neither he nor anyone else can bring change to Islam without emending the Koran and so destroying it and its bloody 'prophet'. Unless the Koran is emended, the murderous inclinations of Islam will remain part of the ideology, and the rest of the world will have to deal with bloody and jihadist Muslim hordes repeatedly in the future. That is untenable.

Worse yet, Sayyed perpetuates the old 'hijack' lie in his defense of Islam. It is no hijack to adhere strictly to the tenets of an ideology. The religions Judaism and Christianity both have their conservatives, but these do not advocate murder and destruction. The adherents to the Islamic ideology are akin to those of their Communist and Nazi fellows in their use of murder and bloodshed as a means of expansionism. Therefore, given that the Islamic Koran does not contradict the actions of the jihadis, I conclude that, Tashbih Sayyed is engaging in typical Islamic deception when he speaks of radicals having 'hijacked' Islam.

For more reading on the subject, go here.