Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me (14 page)

According to the Islamic doctrine of
tawhid,
or “Oneness,” every country where even a single Muslim lives must be brought under Islamic rule; Muslims should not be ruled by infidels since, as the Koran says, “You [Muslims] are the best nation.”
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Islam also demands that every country that becomes part of
Dar al-Islam,
the “House of Islam,” remain so forever. Finally, Islam demands that areas without any Muslims be brought under Islamic rule, because it is an insult to Allah that some countries are not ruled in his name.

Hence, Israel is a triple insult to Islam: it should be Islamic because the whole world belongs to Allah, because it has Muslim inhabitants, and because it was conquered by the
Umma
in 636. That last reason was stressed by Osama bin Laden, who demanded that every nation that has ever fallen to Islam return to Islam. In 1994 the al Qaeda leader declared, “The banner of jihad is raised up high to restore to our umma... every stolen Islamic land, from Palestine to Al-Andalus [Spain] and other Islamic lands that were lost.”
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Consequently it is simply impossible for Islam to tolerate Israel’s existence. There can be no compromise or accommodation. Israel is a thorn in the side of the Islamic body that must be destroyed.

Islam also regards Jewish control of Jerusalem as a mortal insult. Although it is claimed that the city is Islam’s third holiest after Mecca and Medina, Islam’s theological connection to Jerusalem is weak. The city is not mentioned anywhere in the Koran, in contrast to the hundreds of references to it found in the Bible. Furthermore, there is no proof that Muhammad ever set foot in Jerusalem, although it’s possible he visited the city in his young, pre-prophetic days when he accompanied his wife Khadija’s trading caravans to Syria.

Islam’s theological claim to the city stems from a Koranic verse and various Islamic traditions relating that Muhammad once traveled from Mecca seated on
Buraq,
a winged horse with a woman’s face, which took him to the
Masjid al-Aqsa,
or “the Farthest Mosque.” From there, Muhammad ascended into heaven for an audience with Allah before the
Buraq
returned him to Mecca. The next morning, Muhammad told the Meccans he had taken a long journey on a winged horse with a woman’s face. Unsurprisingly, the Meccans said he was crazy and complained about the absurd story to Abu Bakr, later the first Caliph, who simply replied that if Muhammad said it was true, it had to be true.

The Koran never specifies the location of the “Farthest Mosque,” but Islamic traditions soon identified it as Jerusalem. However, there were no mosques in Jerusalem in 620, the year of Muhammad’s supposed night visit. In fact, there weren’t any mosques anywhere—the first mosque was built in Medina in 622.
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Nevertheless, when the Arabs conquered Jerusalem in 636, they sought out the mythical “Farthest Mosque.” Failing to find it, they proclaimed that it must have stood on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the first two Jewish temples had been located.

Building the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount along with a shrine (the Dome of the Rock), the Muslims in typical Islamic fashion claimed the Jews’ holiest site for themselves. The mosque was transformed into a church after the Crusaders liberated Jerusalem from Islamic rule in 1099, then back into a mosque after Saladin recaptured the city for Islam in 1187. When the Israelis finally liberated Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967, they left the Temple Mount under Islamic rule, even enforcing a ban on prayer by non-Muslim visitors.
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This, then, is the consequence of Muhammad’s widely disbelieved story of visiting a non-existent mosque on a flying horse with a woman’s face—1,400 years later, Israel prevents Jews from praying at their own holiest site.

Despite Israel’s groveling to Islamic sensitivities in a manner that Islam does not reciprocate toward other faiths (non-Muslims are not even allowed to
enter
Mecca), the Jewish state’s gestures have not made the
Umma
respect Israel. The mere fact that the Temple Mount, and indeed any part of Israel, remains under Jewish sovereignty is considered an unforgivable affront to Islam.

Just as Muhammad’s revelation blamed the Muslims’ loss in the Battle of Mount Uhud on their disobedience to him and their greed for loot, so too Islam attributes its string of humiliating military defeats by Israel to Allah’s anger over Muslims’ sinfulness. The
Umma
can only redeem itself by annulling the defeats with the blood of jihadi martyrdom. A negotiated two-state solution is out of the question.

Islamic regimes want the Palestinians to stay in refugee camps for generations until the agonizing stain of defeat has been atoned for with a final, decisive victory over Israel and the liquidation of the Jews there. I, on the other hand, would like to see these refugees permanently settled in their own homeland, so they can start anew. That’s why I drew up a proposal to consider Jordan as the Palestinian homeland and to allow the “refugees” to voluntarily resettle there.
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My suggestion was condemned throughout the Islamic world, including in Jordan,
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despite the fact that as late as 1981 Jordan’s King Hussein admitted that “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,” and that in March 1971, the Palestine National Council stated that “what links Jordan to Palestine is a national bond... formed, since time immemorial, by history and culture.”
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What Islam demands for the Palestinians is not peace or freedom or opportunity, but
revenge
for the insult of losing to the Jews. Until the international community acknowledges this reality, all their peace proposals are doomed to failure.

Islam’s militant zeal is evident in the jihadi warriors who regard Muhammad’s blood-soaked life as the ideal example for all Muslims to emulate. The instructions they follow about how to wage war and what to do with their defeated enemies are found in the Koran, the Hadith, and the
Sira.
According to these traditions, in jihad the end always justifies the means. Terrorism, atrocities, betrayal, deception, deceit, assassination, and hostage-taking are all
halal
(permitted) because Muhammad himself set the “good” example. All this is explained extensively in the essential book
The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims,
edited by Dr. Andrew Bostom.
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Muhammad and his followers gained many of their victories through deception. The Islamic principle of
taqiyya
—lying for the sake of Allah—allows a believer to conceal his true intentions in order to advance the cause of Islam.
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Islam has used
taqiyya
since the seventh century to confound and confuse unbelievers. In Islamic jurisprudence, the use of
taqiyya
is regarded as a virtue and a religious duty. “None invents falsehoods save those who disbelieve the revelations of Allah; they alone are the liars,” says the Koran.
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Taqiyya
includes lying under oath in testimony before a court. Muhammad told his followers, “If I take an oath and later find something else better than that, then I do what is better and expiate my oath.”
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His wife Aisha recalled “that her father [Abu Bakr, the first Caliph] never broke his oath till Allah revealed the order of the legal expiation for oath.”
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A favored
taqiyya
tactic is persuading the enemy that preparations for war are not aimed at him but at another target. Another common ruse is to deny there is any jihad at all. Yet another ploy is the
hudna
,
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which is a deceptive truce, armistice, or peace agreement. If an enemy proves too strong for Islam, rather than continuing a war and suffering defeat, the
Umma
should conclude a truce with the infidels. The terms of this agreement are unimportant, since the faithful are obliged to violate it and resume hostilities once they have strengthened their forces and are capable of victory. The model is the ten-year truce Muhammad signed with the Meccans after his defeat at Mount Uhud, which he broke two years later when his army was strong enough to conquer Mecca.

Taqiyya
also allows jihadists to take the shape of the enemy or assume whatever identity is necessary to fool the infidels. They are allowed to wear Western clothes, drink alcohol, eat during Ramadan or eat non-
halal
food, or even pretend to be Jews, Christians, or atheists, if the subterfuge is aimed at harming the infidels.

In one shocking, failed attempt at
taqiyya,
in 1986, Nizar Hindawi, a 32-year-old Jordanian of Palestinian origin, planted a bomb in the suitcase of his pregnant Irish fiancee, Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, then sent her unknowingly to blow up an Israeli airline flight from London to Tel Aviv.
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“Though one sickens and unequivocally condemns the method of revenge taking, the hatred and frustration that lay behind it can be understood,” writer Mervyn Hiskett declared in a typical apologia for Palestinian savagery.
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Somehow, I doubt the international media would show as much understanding if it were an Israeli who sent a pregnant woman on a plane to act as a human bomb.

It’s important to understand that Islamic imperatives guide these terrorists’ actions. During his trial, Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo van Gogh’s assassin, argued that van Gogh’s blood was
halal.
“We are talking about the fundamentals of Islam,” he told the court. “There is no doubt that the blood of a kafir [infidel] is halal. That is obvious. It is written in the law [of Islam]. No-one can disagree with that. You will find this in the Koran and the Sunna.... The problem is that you are asking Muslims to disapprove of such an act. That is impossible, because then they would contradict the law.”
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Bouyeri belonged to Hofstadgroep, a group of young Dutch jihadists from the Hofstad borough in The Hague, whose beliefs are exemplified in the following online exchange: “the government, ministries, police, etc., their blood and possessions are halal because they declare war on Islam.... It is now allowed for me to slaughter every policeman, minister, soldier, officer.”
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Hofstad members studied al Qaeda videos of people being ritually beheaded, which they use as recruitment tools.

Hostage-taking is another ancient Islamic tradition. Hostages are seized either for ransom or to be used as human shields in battle. In 624, Muhammad captured prisoners in a raid on a Meccan caravan at Badr. He murdered the men and intended to sell the women back to their families. Muhammad’s men asked permission to rape the hostages, suggesting coitus interruptus be practiced so the women could still be returned in their original condition, thus maximizing the possible ransom. But Muhammad told them not to worry about such trivialities: “There is no harm if you do not practice it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.”
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Thus the Prophet condoned rape as well as hostage-taking.

Enjoying full religious sanction, Islamic zealots throughout history have committed unspeakably heinous atrocities against non-Muslims. “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history,” wrote historian Will Durant. “It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within.”
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Indian historian K. S. Lal calculated that the population of India dropped from 200 million in 1000 AD to 170 million in 1500, with 60 to 80 million Indians dying as a direct result of jihad.
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