London terrorist Masood was a convert to Islam
And most likely a prison convert. He’s been identified by several possible birth names and aliases, but the bottom line is that he was born in Britain of non-Muslim parents, had a history of violent crime as a younger man, and converted to Islam (perhaps while in prison).
If Masood’s conversion happened in prison, this would fit into a not-unfamiliar pattern. Religious conversions while serving prison terms are so common as to be a cliche, and they are not limited to Islam. But Islamic conversions have been quite common in prisons for decades. And it stands to reason that a person such as Masood who has already proven capable of violence and who then converts to a radical jihadist form of Islam would have a leg up on becoming a terrorist. Now that person’s violent tendencies would be harnessed in a cause that the person sees as especially worthy and not just selfish.
The most unusual thing about Masood, in my opinion, was his age: 52. That’s somewhat old for a terrorist.
It’s never too late to follow your bliss.
Most by age 52, have an increased appreciation for their mortality. Perhaps an Imam informed Masood that the ONLY guaranteed way to get into paradise is in dying for Allah. Understand; devotion is not a guarantee. Even being an Imam or Mullah is not a guarantee. Allah in the Qur’an has declared that only dying while fighting for Allah guarantees entrance into paradise.
Contrast that with an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…
It’s a religion, Geoffrey, that has significant political features, not our Declaration of Independence. DUH.
islam is not a religion, OM. It’s a socio-economic ideology.
Radical Islam, and by that I mean those Muslims who practice Wahhabism/Salafism, (The strict adherence to the literalist reading of the Quran) is a political movement wrapped in religious trappings that is bent on establishing a worldwide theocracy. It will use violence, deception, infiltration, politics, and any other tactic that will further their cause.
When a Wahhabi imam preaches violence against any political system except Sharia law, he is not preaching religion, he is preaching sedition.
The “Golden Rule” is a major teaching of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. Conversely, the Quran commands the opposite:
“Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Be merciful to one another, but ruthless to the unbelievers” (Qur’an 48:29); “Never take unbelievers for friends” (3:28). Furthermore, the commands in the Qur’an to slay the unbelievers wherever they find them (2:191), not befriend them (3:28), fight them and show them harshness (9:123), and smite their heads (47:4)
Not exactly the command to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That alone should disqualify Islam from being a religion, at least as understood by the majority of human kind.
Although 1.5 billion people call themselves Muslims (many of whom don’t know what’s in the Quran and many who are not literal believers in the Quran) sheer numbers don’t necessarily qualify it as a religion. Millions of people accepted the beliefs of Nazism – a social/political movement bent, like radical Islam, on world conquest – yet those beliefs were seen to be a danger to the well being of those who did not accept them. Because Islam is accepted as a religion, many are blinded to the fact that it is a social/political movement “wrapped in religious trappings” bent on world conquest that is a danger to all infidels.
In 1878 the U.S. government reined in the Mormons based on polygamy, ruling that it was not “just” to tolerate polygamy based on freedom of religion. If polygamy can be ruled out, why can’t the teaching of sedition, intolerance of infidels, forced conversion, death to apostates, sharia laws/courts, polygamy (which is allowed in Islam), and other such practices be ruled as injurious to a free and democratic nation and not generally accepted principles of religious practice.
Of course this would be a difficult course and the progressive lawyers would attack with a vengeance. However, if information such as is contained in the essay linked below can be widely disseminated, maybe enough people would wake up:
https://pjmedia.com/blog/is-islam-a-religion/
To all the JTWs and Geoffreys of the world it must be awesome to know what is and what is not a religion; to me you sound foolish. You may loathe the Muslim religion and see it’s manifest flaws, but that is not the same as saying it is not a religion. Who conflates the number of “believers” with the validity of a “religion?”
“If polygamy can be ruled out, why can’t the teaching of sedition, intolerance of infidels, forced conversion, death to apostates, sharia laws/courts, polygamy (which is allowed in Islam), and other such practices be ruled as injurious to a free and democratic nation and not generally accepted principles of religious practice.”
See the Constitution for the answer to your question. Don’t go to the UN, or the EU, or to Great Brittan, or to the third world.
OM, see Reynolds v United States.
From the SCOTUS opinion:
“The Court investigated the history of religious freedom in the United States and quoted a letter from Thomas Jefferson in which he wrote that there was a distinction between religious belief and action that flowed from religious belief. The former “lies solely between man and his God,” therefore “the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions.” The court considered that if polygamy was allowed, someone might eventually argue that human sacrifice was a necessary part of their religion, and “to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.” The Court believed the First Amendment forbade Congress from legislating against opinion, but allowed it to legislate against action.”
Preaching overthrow of the government and violence against infidels is an ACTION that leads to barbaric crimes – not practicing your religion. At least that’s the way SCOTUS ruled in 1878. Does precedent mean nothing?
OM,
Is the contrast between liberty and tyranny that hard to grasp? Sad. Or were you just trying to be clever? Lame.
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish!” Euripides, 2450 BC
Any ideology that mandates that disbelievers either be enslaved or put to death is NOT a religion. At best it is a death cult.
J.J.,
A strict adherence to a literalist reading of the Qur’an is mandated by Allah. Muhammad clearly and repeatedly rejects any other ‘interpretation’ but a literal one. To interpret the Quran selectively is to implicitly reject Muhammad’s claim that Allah is the Qur’an’s author. That is implicit because upon what basis can any fallible man ‘correct’ i.e. revise or even ignore infallible Allah’s direct testimony?
G.B.: “A strict adherence to a literalist reading of the Qur’an is mandated by Allah. Muhammad clearly and repeatedly rejects any other ‘interpretation’ but a literal one.”
Yep!. Fortunately, only about 10% (150 million) of Muslims actually try to do that. Most fail because they are not able to maintain the hatred and close observance of the Quran. It is just too demanding.
Here’s an essay I wrote some weeks back that speaks to why Wahhabism has become a major problem in Islam since WWII.
Many people today believe that Islam is un-reformable and that all Muslims are potential jihadis. In many ways it seems that way because the moderate Muslims do not standup against the radicals because the radicals call them apostates and threaten them too. Radical Islam is really Wahhabi Islam. To understand Wahhabi Islam you have to understand its founder.
“Wahhabism is named after an eighteenth-century preacher and activist, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703—1792).[26] He started a reform movement in the remote, sparsely populated region of Najd,[27] advocating a purging of such widespread Sunni practices as the intercession of saints, and the visitation to their tombs, both of which were practiced all over the Islamic world, but which he considered idolatry (shirk), impurities and innovations in Islam (Bid’ah).[9][22] Eventually he formed a pact with a local leader Muhammad bin Saud offering political obedience and promising that protection and propagation of the Wahhabi movement mean “power and glory” and rule of “lands and men.”[28]
The alliance between followers of ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud’s successors (the House of Saud) proved to be a durable one. The House of Saud continued to maintain its politico-religious alliance with the Wahhabi sect through the waxing and waning of its own political fortunes over the next 150 years, through to its eventual proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, and then afterwards, on into modern times. Today Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab’s teachings are the official, state-sponsored form of Sunni Islam[7][29] in Saudi Arabia.” From Wiki.
Prior to the 1940s Wahhabi Islam was mostly restricted to Saudi Arabia and was not widely practiced elsewhere in the Muslim world. Islam, following their defeat at the Battle of Tours in 732 had been a relatively non-aggressive religion. Two things changed that.
The first was a pair of Muslim writers. One was Hassan al Banna, for which see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_al-Banna
The other was Sayyid Qutb, for which see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
These two writers revived interest in the Wahhabist (literal adherence to every word of the Quran) version of Islam and al Banna was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Qutb later joined. The Muslim Brotherhood began as a non-violent movement, but soon decided that armed jihad was just as important as jihad of the heart. However, the Egyptian government repressed it viciously and it changed from kinetic tactics of terrorism back to mostly political tactics.
Qutb was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s. His study of the Quran was heavily influenced by the writings of Wahhab. His most famous work was “In the Shade of the Quran,” a multi volume series that praises the literal reading and observation of the Quran as the “true” Islam, ala Wahhab. His book, “Milestones,” is considered to be the handbook for radical Islamists today.
The Muslim Brotherhood was the organization from which al Qaeda, ISIS, al Shabab, Boko Haram, etc. all sprang. Today the Muslim Brotherhood has temporarily renounced violent conversion or killing of infidels for the less kinetic tactic of immigration, out producing, and taking over politically from within using all the cunning tactics for which Islam is famous.
Al Qaeda, ISIS, etal still believe in forceful conversion or killing of infidels using kinetic tactics of which their current favorite is terrorism.
The second factor that has revived Wahhabi Islam is that after the Saudis nationalized their oil fields in the early 1980s, they set out on a program of establishing Wahhabi mosques guided by Wahhabi imams worldwide.
The march of Wahhabism through the Muslim world in the last 75 years is depicted in the pictures in this linked article which shows how it has devastated Muslim culture, especially for Muslim women.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2017/02/26/wahhabi-islam-destroys-culture/
Wahhabi Islam is not a real religion, but a death cult with a goal of a worldwide, intolerant theocracy. Everyone who believes in democracy, separation of church and state, and freedom of religion should recognize the threat as serious and existential. Our first goal should be to challenge the worst tenets of Wahhabism (Forced conversion, intolerance of other beliefs, and worldwide theocracy based on sharia law are the most problematic ones) and join with moderate Muslims who do not accept those tenets.
Hundreds of millions of Muslims are illiterate and have no idea what is in the Quran except what their imams tell them. The Wahhabi imams must be challenged. Wahhabism is bereft of tolerance, joy, happiness, freedom, or common humanity. To challenge them will not be easy, but it, IMO, is necessary unless we are prepared to kill and subjugate all 1.5 billion Muslims in the world to defend our way of life.
A lot of weird superstitions/ideologies have been accepted as legitimate religions in the USA, from Mormons through Alabama snake-handlers and strychnine-drinkers to Reverend Moon’s Unification Church, to the manifestly absurd Scientology (invented by a hack science-fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard). Wicca is even given tax-exempt status, I believe. That’s witches. America has been very easy on all of these irrational creeds so as not to examine rationally the irrational beliefs of the devout.
The above may make it sound as though I am a “devout” atheist. I am not.
J.J.
President and stare decisis mean whatever the current Supreme Court wants it to be. They make up stuff too, penumbras, and so forth. Going down that path to decide what is a valid religion and what is not is pretty complicated and risky. But if Geoffrey and JJ and Blert want to ban all Moslems from the US or declare the Moslem faith is not protected by the First Amendment, well they can dream of their own theocracy. Although they will soon be at daggers drawn. And yet I am the fool? Nothing like a good sectarian civil war to up the body count.
OM: I’m certainly not talking about banning Muslims.
I’m talking about taking on the Wahhabi/Salafi branch of Islam. They are pushing a doctrine that is very similar to that of the Nazis. Sharia law can never be compatible with our form of government. Violent forced conversion or death sentences for those who leave the religion are against good order and safety in society. There are moderate Muslims who don’t adhere to the Wahhabi beliefs. The Kurds are one well known large group. In the U.S we have moderate Muslims like Zhudi Jasser who are standing up against Wahhabism, but the Obama government completely ignored him and his organization.
“The American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s (AIFD) mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.
AIFD is the most prominent American Muslim organization directly confronting the ideology of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism). We stand firmly for universal human rights — including gender equality, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech and expression. Founded by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD envisions a future wherein Muslims never feel a conflict between their personal faith and their commitment to individual liberty and freedom.”
If the West is going to put a stop to Islamism, they have to confront the doctrine that exhorts the jihadis to take up the sword in the name of sharia law and theocracy. Trump needs to begin recruiting moderate Muslim leaders who will stand up with him in public forums and denounce the tenets of Wahhabism. To call moderate Muslims to stand with us against the Wahhabis.
The other choice is to kill or subjugate 1.5 billion Muslims. Or do you have another solution? Or maybe that is your preferred solution. Are you willing to continue to live your life in a world where a small group of deluded barbarians controls so much of how we have to conduct our lives? Come up with a solution.
J.J.
Find and recruit “moderate Muslim leaders who will stand up with him in public forums and denounce the tenets of Wahhabism. To call moderate Muslims to stand with us against the Wahhabis.”
The more extreme state with utmost conviction that there are no moderate Muslims (Geoffrey for instance). That isn’t my belief, but I’m not Muslim of any sect or creed, So no I’m not an advocate of killing them all and letting God sort out the innocent. You deal with them when they cross the line from religious belief and practice that is protected by the Constitution and actions that are not. Quick easy solution, no. There isn’t a quick, easy solution.