Stop Drinking Now
John E. Portland
Copyright 2006
Distribution Free
If you bought this article it is a sure sign that you sincerely want to stop drinking. If someone gave it to you it is a sure sign everyone wants you to stop drinking. Either way it signals that it is actually way past time to stop, and stop forever.
But, don’t feel alone in your need to stop because every year millions of drinkers go from ‘problem drinking’ to ‘chronic drinking’ and suddenly find them selves feeling lost and inadequate.
The main question here is, are you ready to stop? By ‘ready’ I mean, are you thoroughly sick of drinking and all it has done to you, your family and friends. Truth is you have to be really sick of it to even attempt to stop. A healthy dose of fear can be useful here too.
If you think drinking is not a problem for you then come back after you have a few more bad episodes. The key to stopping is having enough disgust for yourself that you can redirect that hate towards the liquid that is both the cause of the disgust as well as the reason you cannot stop.
I’m sure you are aware that 1 of 3 heavy drinkers die from something stupid they did while drinking, or disease caused by drinking. The other 2 of 3 pay heavily with money wasted or lost from missing work, disgust suffered by loved ones, and jail time spent for DUI and other such stupid offenses. I’ll bet you know several close acquaintances who have had major problems from drinking, even died from it.
All us drunks have a short attention span so I’ll keep this short and sweet. YOU CAN STOP. I stopped 10 or 12 years ago, so you can stop.
Here’s how you do it.
First of all realize and believe that drunkenness is not a disease. There may be something in your brain that really likes the out of control madness, but it is not a disease, so you have no crutch to lean on. Take responsibility for it instead of rationalizing that ‘poor me I just try and try but this disease won’t let me stop’.
Remember the time(s) you slapped your wife or girlfriend around and whined like some pathetic slob how sorry you were? Well that was just the disgust you have for yourself trying to do yourself in. That’s right, you hate yourself so much, but are so cowardly about it, that you will act out violently when drunk in hopes of losing someone you don’t really believe you deserve.
Second, don’t think that only AA or some expensive rehab clinic in the Aspens can give you the cure. They cannot do it. Only YOU can do that. You are responsible for everything, whether it is good or bad that goes on in your life. The last time you got drunk you did something totally out of character didn’t you. It was like you were in some alternate state of reality where you could do whatever the hell you felt like, right? But the next day there was shame and disgust all around.
Multiply that by hundreds of times over 30 years and that is exactly what my life was. After trying AA, Antabuse, and rehab and failing to keep off the stuff for more than a month or two I finally found a way that really works.
How low is your self-esteem? Do you know how it got so low? You told yourself it was low. You have been calling yourself stupid and worthless for a long time. Whatever you think of yourself is what you are. If you believe you are stupid and worthless then you have a great excuse to drink, don’t you. And the more you drink the more you tell yourself how stupid and worthless you are. That’s the definition of a loser. Are you tired of being a loser yet?
Stop drinking now and slowly but surely gain back the self-esteem you have lost.
Stop giving all your time, money, and attention to some bartender or liquor store.
Save your life and make your family proud, if you have not totally alienated them by now.
The truth is you will lose a few friends in the process because they only needed you to be a part of their excuse to drink, just as you needed them. Drinking promotes drinking, while sobriety is looked upon as a weakness.
And you won’t suddenly have more money because it will take most of what you earn to make up for all you squandered while drinking. On the other hand you will not find yourself stealing the kid’s piggy bank to buy a pint of cheap vodka.
Are you ready to stop? I mean REALLY ready?
Here’s what you have to do. You know all that hate and disgust you have for yourself? Redirect it to a place where it will do some good instead of harm. Direct all the venomous bile you can spew towards the hold that liquor, booze, beer, vodka, whiskey, liquor stores, and bars have on you. That’s where it belongs.
You know that stash you have hidden on a top shelf in your closet or the trunk of your car? Take it out and smash it on the ground while screaming every filthy obscenity you can think of at it.
I want you to hate that stuff at least as much as you have hated yourself. More is better. I personally would drive to and from work screaming with windows up at the liquor stores I passed along the way. I knew that if I didn’t actively hate it I stood a very good chance of not surviving another drunken binge.
This process will take quite a long time. And every day does not get better. This is hard as hell to do, but in the end you will respect yourself again and that is all that matters.
After you have been off it for a week, you will not believe how strong you are becoming. The cravings will still be there, but after a month you will know it is really happening. After 6 months you will start becoming cocky and self-assured, but you will also have thoughts that a few sips now and then won’t really hurt. After all you have it under control, right?
Wrong! This will be your first experience with the super demon that booze really is. You have GOT to crank up the hate to even higher levels to get through this. Hate it! Scream at it! Stomp on it! Let every bit of your rage come out against it and then you will start to have a life once again.
The idea, as you can see, is to redirect the energy you spent hating yourself into something worthwhile. It worked for me and it will work for you. Do it!
Some things I learned along the way;
Get a Hobby! You have to re-channel all that time you spent drinking into something useful. I started making jewelry and that worked out real well. Find something to do with your hands and do it all the time.
This should seem kind of like breaking a particularly bad habit. I don’t want to say that’s all it is, but I also don’t want to give it too much weight. We all know habits can be broken, but diseases must be cured. Don’t cop out just break the damned habit.
Look to the future as much as possible. If you start dwelling on the past it will just make things harder. The past is where the evil lies so let it die for now but deal with it later.
Do not make it a point to remember the day or even the time of day you stopped. This thing doesn’t deserve an anniversary.
Everywhere you look there will be people drinking and laughing, taunting you. It is the biggest lie ever perpetrated on you, so hate that too. Eventually you will stop noticing it so much. Much later you won’t believe it ever even got your notice.
Stay off the sauce for the long term by asking yourself, ‘what is the point’? Am I so stupid I would ever go back to that? Why risk your recently regained self-respect for a lousy drink? I quit drinking 3 times, because each time I became closer to suicide. This is life or death. Respect that.
This is a long-term thing. You will never be the same, but you will get better. You will still have the bad dreams but they will get further apart. Many things will trigger bad memories, but in many people’s eyes, as well as your own, you will be some kind of hero.
Big Bonus!
This technique works for smoking too, but I would not advise trying to kill two habits as bad as these at the same time. I waited until I had quit drinking for a full year before having my last cigarette. I have not smoked or even been tempted to smoke since then.
So, put that self-loathing to work where it will earn some dividends, direct it towards the real enemy and finally have a life worth living. Two years after I stopped drinking I took early retirement, found a money making hobby, and began traveling throughout the west and southwest. I have made some long lasting friendships and sleep like a baby at night. There is no more shame or disgust in my life, only satisfaction knowing I have now done the best thing I could possibly do with my life.
You can do it too.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Stop the Insanity
President Bush,
Your more than stupid idea to democratize Iraq while agrandizing yourself has produced the deaths of almost 3,000 American troops, 300,000 Iraqis and reduced a multi billion dollar surplus to a 25 Trillion Dollar deficit.
Your bone headed stubbornness is costing this country more than you and your greed-head cronies will ever be worth.
Many of us knew well before your Supreme Court appointment to the Presidency that your leadership would lead only to disaster, but no one could have predicted what a huge backward step you would force us to take. Your incompetence and arrogance is indescribable.
It is a waste of breath to ask for your resignation, or any of your cabinet members resignation, as none of your egos will allow you to see what a huge amount of damage you have done.
So, I as well as others in this country are doing what we have to do. We are taking our grievances to the ballot box where you will be stripped of all assistance by the most do-nothing congress in 58 years. With only a little luck the Senate will also be wrested from your control.
It will take many generations to repair the harm you have done our country, so we must start now with the healing.
Please Vote! Vote Republican, Vote Democrat, but Vote! Throw the Bums Out!
Your more than stupid idea to democratize Iraq while agrandizing yourself has produced the deaths of almost 3,000 American troops, 300,000 Iraqis and reduced a multi billion dollar surplus to a 25 Trillion Dollar deficit.
Your bone headed stubbornness is costing this country more than you and your greed-head cronies will ever be worth.
Many of us knew well before your Supreme Court appointment to the Presidency that your leadership would lead only to disaster, but no one could have predicted what a huge backward step you would force us to take. Your incompetence and arrogance is indescribable.
It is a waste of breath to ask for your resignation, or any of your cabinet members resignation, as none of your egos will allow you to see what a huge amount of damage you have done.
So, I as well as others in this country are doing what we have to do. We are taking our grievances to the ballot box where you will be stripped of all assistance by the most do-nothing congress in 58 years. With only a little luck the Senate will also be wrested from your control.
It will take many generations to repair the harm you have done our country, so we must start now with the healing.
Please Vote! Vote Republican, Vote Democrat, but Vote! Throw the Bums Out!
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Islam Wants to Conquer the World
Islam wants to conquer the world
by Egon Flaig, FAZ, 15 September 2006 Translation by Diotima
This is the full translation from German of Egon Flaig's article, "Der Islam will die Welteroberung" published by Western Resistance.com .
"For we want the flag of Islam to fly over those lands again, who were lucky enough, to be ruled by Islam for a time, and hear the call of the muezzin praise God. Then the light of Islam died out and they returned to disbelief. Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, Southern Italy and the Greek islands are all Islamic colonies which have to return to Islam's lap. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea have to become internal seas of Islam, as they used to be".
These are not the words of Al Qaeda, they were taken from the programme formulated by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al Banna, in a speech. The Brotherhood today has millions of adherents and spread out far beyond Egypt. Its intellectuals are working in Europe and the United States; they count as "moderates" and are treated accordingly by the media. Re-conquest of "lost" territory according to plan is part of the agenda of states, that is political communities, fighting about territorial power. How can it be part of a religion's programme? Is Islam a religion like any other?
Since the beginning of the classical period between the ninth and the eleventh century Islamic jurists have divided the world into two parts, namely the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". This dichotomy is independent of where Muslims live in large numbers, or even form the majority, but depends on where Islam rules supreme - by applying Shariah - or where it does not rule. So, this dichotomy is not religious in nature, but political. Between these two parts of the world naturally exists a state of war, until the House of War is no more and Islam rules the world (Sura 8, 39 and 9, 41). Thus, according to classical teaching, for the Muslim community there is a duty to wage war against the disbelievers, until those either convert, or submit. This war is called jihad.
While Jesus' missionary call meant to convert all peoples, but to leave their political order untouched, Islam's aim is to submit all non-muslims politically, but to leave their religion untouched, if it is a religion of the book. God's general call to jihad is based on surah 9, 29. It is true though, that minute factions of Islam did not accept this interpretation. The Shiites accept it, but demand that a true imam must be leading the Muslim community (and has been waiting for such a one for more than 13 centuries), so that for the time being they only feel bound to defensive jihad, in the case of attacks on the Muslim community.
On the other hand, the other factions, e.g. the so-called Kharijites, have radicalized the content of Sura 9.29: for them, jihad is an individual duty of each able-bodied Muslim, which counts as a sixth pillar next to the other five cardinal duties. In the consequence of such teachings: when everyone has to either take part in the collective war against the unbelievers, or, should the Muslim community be too weak for the time being, has to wage war alone or in small groups, then assassinations and terror attacks are right. What the Kharijites demand for offensive jihad, most proponents of orthodox Sunnah-teachings demand for defensive jihad: when Islam is being attacked, or islamic territory is being invaded by infidels, jihad becomes an individual duty, e.g. a fatwa of the Grand Mufti of Cairo's Al-Azhar university - against Israel - leaves no doubt about that. Any enemy power that acts according to the Hague rules of warfare and strictly distinguishes combatants and non! -combatants will be in great difficulty. The state of war lasts so long, until the House of War is destroyed, and the world is conquered. This is why Majid Khadduri calls Islam a "divine nomocracy on imperialist foundations". Peace treaties, which Islamic rulers closed with non-Islamic rulers, were only considered as cease- fires; this is why as a rule, they were only closed for no more than ten years. Two schools of jurisprudence permit no more than three to four years of peace. The short deadlines made it possible for the militarily superior Muslims to constantly blackmail their adversaries; this way throughout the centuries huge amounts of money and humans went to the Muslim side. When the paradigm of power shifted, Muslim rulers had to change their practice.
Thus in 1535 Suleiman the Magnificent made a peace with the French king which was to last for the lifetime of the Sultan - a break with tradition. Christian theologians tried to define, in the face of a plurality of states, what could be deemed a "just war" and what could not be deemed such. To wage war just in the interest of faith for the most part was not considered just. For Muslim scholars on the other hand, the "house of Islam" is a political unit, which does not permit internal war, therefore only war for the sugjugation of infidels was considered legitimate and even a duty, as the famous fourteenth-century scholare Ibn Chaldun categorically states: "In Islam the jihad is prescribed by law, because it has a universal calling and is supposed to convert all of humanity to Islam, be it of their own free will, or by force".
The rules of engagement for jihad are flexible. According to Khadduri, anything is possible, from mercy to mass enslavement to mass killing, just like with Greeks and Romans. This is a fundamental difference between the holy war of Islam and of Old Testament Judaism, which prescribed the killing of all males outside of Israel, and the killing of every living thing within Israel (Deuteronomy 20, 10- 20). We usually are outraged at what the Crusaders did in Jerusalem in 1099. Yet, the Crusaders acted in accordance with the ius bellum of the times, Muslim conquerors did the same all the time and everywhere: 698 they hit Carthage, in 838 Syracuse; the notorious vesir of the Cordoban Caliphate, Al Mansur, led 25 wars in 27 years against the Christian realms of northern Spain, enslaving, destroying, laying waste. They hit Zamora (981), Coimbra (987), Leon, Barcelona twice (985 and 1008), then Santiago de Compostela (997).
The worst destruction was wreaked by the jihadis on Byzantine Anatolia, which was then still full of cities; the massacre of Amorium (838) has remained a symbol for a long time; the urban culture of Anatolia never recovered from it. The Seljuk Alp Arslan had entire Armenian cities massacred, the worst being the capital Ani in 1064. Bat Ye'or's evaluation therefore is more than justified: "Its lack of measure, its regularity and the systematic character of the destructions, which Islamic theologians had decreed to be law, make the difference between jihad and other wars of conquest". Certainly, mass enslavement remained the favourite aim of the wars. That was the way in which, as early as the eight century, the biggest slave-holder society developed that world history has ever known; it demanded a permanent influx of new slaves, transformed the African continent into the biggest supplier of slaves, a destiny which Europe narrowly avoided.
The incredible speed, in which in 90 years an Arabian empire spanning from the south of France to India developed, with no single conqueror guiding the expansion, is unique. The world's most successful imperialism was admired by no less than Hegel: "Never has enthusiasm as such done bigger deeds". If "enthusiasm" could do such a thing - what was its source? The answer is simple: martyrdom. Something happening in 963 in Constantinople may illustrate this: the emperor Nikephoros Phokas had just swept the Muslim invaders from Crete; now, he was planning a big war, to liberate eastern Anatolia and northern Syria from Muslim rule. A council should help him: he pleaded with the bishops, to elevate soldiers dying in the war to the status of martyrs. Paradise would then have been assured for those soldiers. The patriarch stood up against the emperor: no church council could be empowered to anticipate God's decision, only God could decide on eternal salvation.
A scene of historical significance. The emperor knew what was at stake. Again and again, the Byzantians had to witness the Muslim troops fighting with a ferocious courage that the Christians could not emulate. Fallen Muslims were considered martyrs of the faith and marched straight to paradise. The concept of a martyr is fundamentally different in the two religions. Christian martyrs imitate the passion of Jesus, passively submit to torture and death; Muslim martyrs are active fighters.
Decisive for the warriors' acceptance of death was the firm promise of eternal salvation for those who die for the faith (surah 4, 74-76). Muslims should withstand a tenfold force (surah 8, 66-67); retreat was judged to be acceptable by later scholars if the enemy was at least double as strong, as Khadduri describes. As the decisive factor in any war is the fighting human being and his readiness to sacrifice himself, being on a par technically with the Arabs and Seljuks - in the long run, they had to succumb, if their morale was not of the same kind. Higher readiness to die is an enormous advantage in a fight- foolhardy operations can be waged and dashing maneuvers to surprise and confuse the enemy; in that way, victory can be forced, that is technically and materially almost impossible, and battles are won, that would be lost under the usual circumstances.
Nikephoros knew about the military consequences of surah 4, 74-76; he was the first who tried to correct the conceptual military disadvantage of the Christian religion. But the bishops of the Eastern Church found themselves incapable of manipulating their theology in a way to create warlike martyrdom. This was it. The Byzantine emperors had to wage their heavy defensive wars against the permanent Saracen and Seljuk aggression without the help of religion, where they needed that help most.
Only the Western Church changed the theological-political situation: when Pope Urban II called the first crusade in 1095, he promised the Christian warriors forgiveness for their sins: fallen crusaders avoided divine judgement and were put on a par with martyrs in that respect, although they were denied that name. The Pope as head of a monarchic church did just that, what the Council of Eastern bishops had not been able to do: he dispensed salvation. The papal church now could have the kind of "holy war" Islam had been waging for centuries. What is the difference between Crusade and jihad? A Crusade could only be called by the Pope, and thus remained a rare occurrence - compared to the countless, never-ending and ubiquitarian jihads of the Islamic world.
And the goals of the Crusades remain precisely defined; in November 1095, Urban II defined reason and aim of the crusade: "it is obvious, we must give help to our brothers in the east as soon as possible. The Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have invaded the realm of Romania (Constantinople) and by invading the lands of these Christians ever more deeply, they won seven battles, killed or captured a huge number of the Christians. If you don't oppose them now, the faithful servants of God in the Orient will not withstand this storm much longer". The first Crusades were meant to either help Christians in need, or to liberate the holy places in Palestine or to liberate Christians that had been subjugated by Muslims. On the other hand, the Muslim scholars always kept firm to their final goal, to conquer the "house of war" and subjugate all infidels.
Urban II was right. Had Constantinople fallen in 1100, the enormous military power of the Turk armies would have plagued Europe four hundred years earlier. Then the manifold European culture probably would never have been: no free urban constitutions, no constitutional debates, no cathedrals, no renaissance, no scientific boom, because in the Islamic world, free - Greek! - thinking was dying just at this time. Jacob Burckhardt's evaluation - "A stroke of luck, that Europe as a whole could ward off Islam" - means, we owe about as much to the Crusades, as to the Greeks' victory against the Persians.
But, have the Crusades not been abused? Certainly. Crusades "derailed" and were "abused", like the one that led to the conquest of Christian Constantinople in 1204. But that happened much more often with jihads. When slaves became scarce, emirs did not merely wage wars against non-Muslim peoples, who had to be enslaved anyway, but more and more often against Islamized peoples, under the pretext, that they were no true Muslims. That happened mainly in Africa and against black Africans, e.g. when first in 1468 Songhay and then the Moroccans in 1552 invaded Mali, or when in the 18th century religious reformers waged their jihad against Muslimized Hausa cities, which led to the creation of the Sokoto-caliphate - containing the third largest number of slaves after Brazil and the American south. Africa to this day suffers from the consequences of this permanent jihad with its genocides and mass-enslavements
Well, and what was the political order that the Muslims waged their holy wars for with such vehemence and success? For Shariah. A political order, which for one strictly separates masters from the subjugated and secondly takes political and social order away from human influence for the most part. Let's talk about the first aspect: According to the Shariah, the Muslims are masters, the followers of other "book religions" - Christians, Jews, Parsees, Buddhists, are subjugated, Dhimmi. These were not religious minorities, but huge majorities, especially in Syria, Anatolia or the Christians of North- Africa.
The subjugated were not allowed to carry weapons, they were unarmed, thus not 'real men'. Christians and Jews had to wear special colors or pieces of clothing (this discrimination was the origin of the "Judenstern") so as to be visibly "dhimmi"; they were not allowed to ride on horseback, only on mules, to remind them of their subjugation; they paid a special tribute (jizyah), that they had to pay personally, while being given a slap on the head. They had to let themselves be beaten by any Muslim, without being allowed to defend themselves; if a dhimmi retaliated, his hand would be cut off, or he would be executed. A dhimmi's witness did not count against a Muslim, who only had to pay half the fine for any crime committed against a dhimmi, and could never ever get executed for any such crime. On the other side, the most cruel methods of execution were reserved for the dhimmie.
Even the discrimination against the Jews, installed by the Western Church in the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, four hundred years after Islam, and which seems so barbarian to us, did not intend and did not lead to such a degree of humiliation and demeaning of people. A special horror was brought by the Turkish rule: from 1360 up to a fifth of Christian children were abducted into slavery. They were forcefully converted. The number of slaves through four centuries must have been millions; hundreds of thousands of choice boys among those were raised to be fanatical Muslims and elite fighters, the notorious Janissaries: a politic meant to systematically increase the Muslim population and slowly exterminate Christians. It was successful. "Dhimmitude" put non-Muslims in a state of radical "otherness". To call people in this state "second class citizens" is a euphemism.
In the same way national socialism divided humans into master-race and subhumans on racial grounds, so Shariah did it on religious grounds. As the first world-religion, Islam created an apartheid, where Christian or Parsee majorities were colonized and slowly Islamized. Islamic tolerance meant: tolerate the subjugated as humiliated and demeaned. All this is well known via studies about "dhimmitude". But who wants to hear about the millions of victims?
Islam religiously "cleansed" huge territories: the second Caliph made the Hijaz, Arabia except Yemen "judenrein" and "christenrein"; the alternative was either to convert, or to be forced into emigration. Except for some Old Testament cases no religion ever before had done that. In the same way the Almohadis and Almoravids "cleansed" Spain after the breakdown of the Caliphate in 1031: tens of thousands of Jews and Christians had to either convert or flee to the Christian north of Spain, or the Levant. Certainly, English and French kings and the kings of Spain later on did the same - they applied the Muslim recipe in doing it. And the pogroms? Since the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (847-861) waves of persecution again and again hit the Orient and North Africa, where Jews and Christians were forcibly converted, kicked out or massacred. The destruction of churches went on and on right until the century before last. Slowly, the rosy picture of Muslim Spain created by European anti- i! mperialism in the 19th century loses its fake colors. A scrupulous study of documents shows a different picture below that. In 889 in Elvira and in 891 in Seville, there were massive pogroms against Christians. In Moroccan Fez in 1033, 6000 Jews were massacred. 1058 Christian Antioch was forcefully Muslimized with torture and threats of death.
The first large pogrom against Jews on European soil happened in 1066 in Muslim Granada, 1500 Jewish families were killed. In 1135 the Jewish quarter of Cordoba was burnt down, it might be good, not to know the number of people massacred then. In 1159 all the Christians in Tunis had to chose between conversion or death. At this time, the vital Christianity of North Africa was completely wiped out. The pogroms in Christian lands are nothing to be proud of in European history, but their scope lags behind the ones in the Muslim world. We urgently need a comparative study of religious oppression.
Let's talk about integration of the Jews? Nowhere under the rule of Islam, not even in the Spanish Caliphate, were Jews citizens of their own cities, they always remained subjugated. In some German cities - Worms, Augsburg and others - during the high Middle Ages the Jews were citizens, albeit of special legal status. They had the right to carry arms and were better off than poorer Christian people. Right until the 14th century, when their situation got worse, they were far better integrated than Jews in Muslim Spain could ever hope to be. Who thinks highly of political integration cannot but prefer Augsburg to Cordoba. All this has been well known in academic circles for fifteen years. But who wants to hear it?
To ignore the past means to re-live it. He who keeps on spreading the fairytale of Muslim tolerance, stands in the way of those Muslim intellectuals, who seriously work towards a reformation of Islam, which started out so promisingly in the 19th century. He steals away their chance to overcome a past, which threatens to become a horrible present. If the reformers could achieve a radical de- politicization of Islam, the Muslims could become real citizens of their states. That would leave the highly spiritual religion, which fascinated not only Goethe. Hegel called Islam the "religion of the sublime". It could become that.
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by Egon Flaig, FAZ, 15 September 2006 Translation by Diotima
This is the full translation from German of Egon Flaig's article, "Der Islam will die Welteroberung" published by Western Resistance.com .
"For we want the flag of Islam to fly over those lands again, who were lucky enough, to be ruled by Islam for a time, and hear the call of the muezzin praise God. Then the light of Islam died out and they returned to disbelief. Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, Southern Italy and the Greek islands are all Islamic colonies which have to return to Islam's lap. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea have to become internal seas of Islam, as they used to be".
These are not the words of Al Qaeda, they were taken from the programme formulated by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al Banna, in a speech. The Brotherhood today has millions of adherents and spread out far beyond Egypt. Its intellectuals are working in Europe and the United States; they count as "moderates" and are treated accordingly by the media. Re-conquest of "lost" territory according to plan is part of the agenda of states, that is political communities, fighting about territorial power. How can it be part of a religion's programme? Is Islam a religion like any other?
Since the beginning of the classical period between the ninth and the eleventh century Islamic jurists have divided the world into two parts, namely the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". This dichotomy is independent of where Muslims live in large numbers, or even form the majority, but depends on where Islam rules supreme - by applying Shariah - or where it does not rule. So, this dichotomy is not religious in nature, but political. Between these two parts of the world naturally exists a state of war, until the House of War is no more and Islam rules the world (Sura 8, 39 and 9, 41). Thus, according to classical teaching, for the Muslim community there is a duty to wage war against the disbelievers, until those either convert, or submit. This war is called jihad.
While Jesus' missionary call meant to convert all peoples, but to leave their political order untouched, Islam's aim is to submit all non-muslims politically, but to leave their religion untouched, if it is a religion of the book. God's general call to jihad is based on surah 9, 29. It is true though, that minute factions of Islam did not accept this interpretation. The Shiites accept it, but demand that a true imam must be leading the Muslim community (and has been waiting for such a one for more than 13 centuries), so that for the time being they only feel bound to defensive jihad, in the case of attacks on the Muslim community.
On the other hand, the other factions, e.g. the so-called Kharijites, have radicalized the content of Sura 9.29: for them, jihad is an individual duty of each able-bodied Muslim, which counts as a sixth pillar next to the other five cardinal duties. In the consequence of such teachings: when everyone has to either take part in the collective war against the unbelievers, or, should the Muslim community be too weak for the time being, has to wage war alone or in small groups, then assassinations and terror attacks are right. What the Kharijites demand for offensive jihad, most proponents of orthodox Sunnah-teachings demand for defensive jihad: when Islam is being attacked, or islamic territory is being invaded by infidels, jihad becomes an individual duty, e.g. a fatwa of the Grand Mufti of Cairo's Al-Azhar university - against Israel - leaves no doubt about that. Any enemy power that acts according to the Hague rules of warfare and strictly distinguishes combatants and non! -combatants will be in great difficulty. The state of war lasts so long, until the House of War is destroyed, and the world is conquered. This is why Majid Khadduri calls Islam a "divine nomocracy on imperialist foundations". Peace treaties, which Islamic rulers closed with non-Islamic rulers, were only considered as cease- fires; this is why as a rule, they were only closed for no more than ten years. Two schools of jurisprudence permit no more than three to four years of peace. The short deadlines made it possible for the militarily superior Muslims to constantly blackmail their adversaries; this way throughout the centuries huge amounts of money and humans went to the Muslim side. When the paradigm of power shifted, Muslim rulers had to change their practice.
Thus in 1535 Suleiman the Magnificent made a peace with the French king which was to last for the lifetime of the Sultan - a break with tradition. Christian theologians tried to define, in the face of a plurality of states, what could be deemed a "just war" and what could not be deemed such. To wage war just in the interest of faith for the most part was not considered just. For Muslim scholars on the other hand, the "house of Islam" is a political unit, which does not permit internal war, therefore only war for the sugjugation of infidels was considered legitimate and even a duty, as the famous fourteenth-century scholare Ibn Chaldun categorically states: "In Islam the jihad is prescribed by law, because it has a universal calling and is supposed to convert all of humanity to Islam, be it of their own free will, or by force".
The rules of engagement for jihad are flexible. According to Khadduri, anything is possible, from mercy to mass enslavement to mass killing, just like with Greeks and Romans. This is a fundamental difference between the holy war of Islam and of Old Testament Judaism, which prescribed the killing of all males outside of Israel, and the killing of every living thing within Israel (Deuteronomy 20, 10- 20). We usually are outraged at what the Crusaders did in Jerusalem in 1099. Yet, the Crusaders acted in accordance with the ius bellum of the times, Muslim conquerors did the same all the time and everywhere: 698 they hit Carthage, in 838 Syracuse; the notorious vesir of the Cordoban Caliphate, Al Mansur, led 25 wars in 27 years against the Christian realms of northern Spain, enslaving, destroying, laying waste. They hit Zamora (981), Coimbra (987), Leon, Barcelona twice (985 and 1008), then Santiago de Compostela (997).
The worst destruction was wreaked by the jihadis on Byzantine Anatolia, which was then still full of cities; the massacre of Amorium (838) has remained a symbol for a long time; the urban culture of Anatolia never recovered from it. The Seljuk Alp Arslan had entire Armenian cities massacred, the worst being the capital Ani in 1064. Bat Ye'or's evaluation therefore is more than justified: "Its lack of measure, its regularity and the systematic character of the destructions, which Islamic theologians had decreed to be law, make the difference between jihad and other wars of conquest". Certainly, mass enslavement remained the favourite aim of the wars. That was the way in which, as early as the eight century, the biggest slave-holder society developed that world history has ever known; it demanded a permanent influx of new slaves, transformed the African continent into the biggest supplier of slaves, a destiny which Europe narrowly avoided.
The incredible speed, in which in 90 years an Arabian empire spanning from the south of France to India developed, with no single conqueror guiding the expansion, is unique. The world's most successful imperialism was admired by no less than Hegel: "Never has enthusiasm as such done bigger deeds". If "enthusiasm" could do such a thing - what was its source? The answer is simple: martyrdom. Something happening in 963 in Constantinople may illustrate this: the emperor Nikephoros Phokas had just swept the Muslim invaders from Crete; now, he was planning a big war, to liberate eastern Anatolia and northern Syria from Muslim rule. A council should help him: he pleaded with the bishops, to elevate soldiers dying in the war to the status of martyrs. Paradise would then have been assured for those soldiers. The patriarch stood up against the emperor: no church council could be empowered to anticipate God's decision, only God could decide on eternal salvation.
A scene of historical significance. The emperor knew what was at stake. Again and again, the Byzantians had to witness the Muslim troops fighting with a ferocious courage that the Christians could not emulate. Fallen Muslims were considered martyrs of the faith and marched straight to paradise. The concept of a martyr is fundamentally different in the two religions. Christian martyrs imitate the passion of Jesus, passively submit to torture and death; Muslim martyrs are active fighters.
Decisive for the warriors' acceptance of death was the firm promise of eternal salvation for those who die for the faith (surah 4, 74-76). Muslims should withstand a tenfold force (surah 8, 66-67); retreat was judged to be acceptable by later scholars if the enemy was at least double as strong, as Khadduri describes. As the decisive factor in any war is the fighting human being and his readiness to sacrifice himself, being on a par technically with the Arabs and Seljuks - in the long run, they had to succumb, if their morale was not of the same kind. Higher readiness to die is an enormous advantage in a fight- foolhardy operations can be waged and dashing maneuvers to surprise and confuse the enemy; in that way, victory can be forced, that is technically and materially almost impossible, and battles are won, that would be lost under the usual circumstances.
Nikephoros knew about the military consequences of surah 4, 74-76; he was the first who tried to correct the conceptual military disadvantage of the Christian religion. But the bishops of the Eastern Church found themselves incapable of manipulating their theology in a way to create warlike martyrdom. This was it. The Byzantine emperors had to wage their heavy defensive wars against the permanent Saracen and Seljuk aggression without the help of religion, where they needed that help most.
Only the Western Church changed the theological-political situation: when Pope Urban II called the first crusade in 1095, he promised the Christian warriors forgiveness for their sins: fallen crusaders avoided divine judgement and were put on a par with martyrs in that respect, although they were denied that name. The Pope as head of a monarchic church did just that, what the Council of Eastern bishops had not been able to do: he dispensed salvation. The papal church now could have the kind of "holy war" Islam had been waging for centuries. What is the difference between Crusade and jihad? A Crusade could only be called by the Pope, and thus remained a rare occurrence - compared to the countless, never-ending and ubiquitarian jihads of the Islamic world.
And the goals of the Crusades remain precisely defined; in November 1095, Urban II defined reason and aim of the crusade: "it is obvious, we must give help to our brothers in the east as soon as possible. The Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have invaded the realm of Romania (Constantinople) and by invading the lands of these Christians ever more deeply, they won seven battles, killed or captured a huge number of the Christians. If you don't oppose them now, the faithful servants of God in the Orient will not withstand this storm much longer". The first Crusades were meant to either help Christians in need, or to liberate the holy places in Palestine or to liberate Christians that had been subjugated by Muslims. On the other hand, the Muslim scholars always kept firm to their final goal, to conquer the "house of war" and subjugate all infidels.
Urban II was right. Had Constantinople fallen in 1100, the enormous military power of the Turk armies would have plagued Europe four hundred years earlier. Then the manifold European culture probably would never have been: no free urban constitutions, no constitutional debates, no cathedrals, no renaissance, no scientific boom, because in the Islamic world, free - Greek! - thinking was dying just at this time. Jacob Burckhardt's evaluation - "A stroke of luck, that Europe as a whole could ward off Islam" - means, we owe about as much to the Crusades, as to the Greeks' victory against the Persians.
But, have the Crusades not been abused? Certainly. Crusades "derailed" and were "abused", like the one that led to the conquest of Christian Constantinople in 1204. But that happened much more often with jihads. When slaves became scarce, emirs did not merely wage wars against non-Muslim peoples, who had to be enslaved anyway, but more and more often against Islamized peoples, under the pretext, that they were no true Muslims. That happened mainly in Africa and against black Africans, e.g. when first in 1468 Songhay and then the Moroccans in 1552 invaded Mali, or when in the 18th century religious reformers waged their jihad against Muslimized Hausa cities, which led to the creation of the Sokoto-caliphate - containing the third largest number of slaves after Brazil and the American south. Africa to this day suffers from the consequences of this permanent jihad with its genocides and mass-enslavements
Well, and what was the political order that the Muslims waged their holy wars for with such vehemence and success? For Shariah. A political order, which for one strictly separates masters from the subjugated and secondly takes political and social order away from human influence for the most part. Let's talk about the first aspect: According to the Shariah, the Muslims are masters, the followers of other "book religions" - Christians, Jews, Parsees, Buddhists, are subjugated, Dhimmi. These were not religious minorities, but huge majorities, especially in Syria, Anatolia or the Christians of North- Africa.
The subjugated were not allowed to carry weapons, they were unarmed, thus not 'real men'. Christians and Jews had to wear special colors or pieces of clothing (this discrimination was the origin of the "Judenstern") so as to be visibly "dhimmi"; they were not allowed to ride on horseback, only on mules, to remind them of their subjugation; they paid a special tribute (jizyah), that they had to pay personally, while being given a slap on the head. They had to let themselves be beaten by any Muslim, without being allowed to defend themselves; if a dhimmi retaliated, his hand would be cut off, or he would be executed. A dhimmi's witness did not count against a Muslim, who only had to pay half the fine for any crime committed against a dhimmi, and could never ever get executed for any such crime. On the other side, the most cruel methods of execution were reserved for the dhimmie.
Even the discrimination against the Jews, installed by the Western Church in the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, four hundred years after Islam, and which seems so barbarian to us, did not intend and did not lead to such a degree of humiliation and demeaning of people. A special horror was brought by the Turkish rule: from 1360 up to a fifth of Christian children were abducted into slavery. They were forcefully converted. The number of slaves through four centuries must have been millions; hundreds of thousands of choice boys among those were raised to be fanatical Muslims and elite fighters, the notorious Janissaries: a politic meant to systematically increase the Muslim population and slowly exterminate Christians. It was successful. "Dhimmitude" put non-Muslims in a state of radical "otherness". To call people in this state "second class citizens" is a euphemism.
In the same way national socialism divided humans into master-race and subhumans on racial grounds, so Shariah did it on religious grounds. As the first world-religion, Islam created an apartheid, where Christian or Parsee majorities were colonized and slowly Islamized. Islamic tolerance meant: tolerate the subjugated as humiliated and demeaned. All this is well known via studies about "dhimmitude". But who wants to hear about the millions of victims?
Islam religiously "cleansed" huge territories: the second Caliph made the Hijaz, Arabia except Yemen "judenrein" and "christenrein"; the alternative was either to convert, or to be forced into emigration. Except for some Old Testament cases no religion ever before had done that. In the same way the Almohadis and Almoravids "cleansed" Spain after the breakdown of the Caliphate in 1031: tens of thousands of Jews and Christians had to either convert or flee to the Christian north of Spain, or the Levant. Certainly, English and French kings and the kings of Spain later on did the same - they applied the Muslim recipe in doing it. And the pogroms? Since the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (847-861) waves of persecution again and again hit the Orient and North Africa, where Jews and Christians were forcibly converted, kicked out or massacred. The destruction of churches went on and on right until the century before last. Slowly, the rosy picture of Muslim Spain created by European anti- i! mperialism in the 19th century loses its fake colors. A scrupulous study of documents shows a different picture below that. In 889 in Elvira and in 891 in Seville, there were massive pogroms against Christians. In Moroccan Fez in 1033, 6000 Jews were massacred. 1058 Christian Antioch was forcefully Muslimized with torture and threats of death.
The first large pogrom against Jews on European soil happened in 1066 in Muslim Granada, 1500 Jewish families were killed. In 1135 the Jewish quarter of Cordoba was burnt down, it might be good, not to know the number of people massacred then. In 1159 all the Christians in Tunis had to chose between conversion or death. At this time, the vital Christianity of North Africa was completely wiped out. The pogroms in Christian lands are nothing to be proud of in European history, but their scope lags behind the ones in the Muslim world. We urgently need a comparative study of religious oppression.
Let's talk about integration of the Jews? Nowhere under the rule of Islam, not even in the Spanish Caliphate, were Jews citizens of their own cities, they always remained subjugated. In some German cities - Worms, Augsburg and others - during the high Middle Ages the Jews were citizens, albeit of special legal status. They had the right to carry arms and were better off than poorer Christian people. Right until the 14th century, when their situation got worse, they were far better integrated than Jews in Muslim Spain could ever hope to be. Who thinks highly of political integration cannot but prefer Augsburg to Cordoba. All this has been well known in academic circles for fifteen years. But who wants to hear it?
To ignore the past means to re-live it. He who keeps on spreading the fairytale of Muslim tolerance, stands in the way of those Muslim intellectuals, who seriously work towards a reformation of Islam, which started out so promisingly in the 19th century. He steals away their chance to overcome a past, which threatens to become a horrible present. If the reformers could achieve a radical de- politicization of Islam, the Muslims could become real citizens of their states. That would leave the highly spiritual religion, which fascinated not only Goethe. Hegel called Islam the "religion of the sublime". It could become that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyday, American Congress for Truth (ACT) is a 501c3 non profit organization on the front lines fighting for you in meeting with politicians, decision makers, speaking on college campuses and planning events to educate and inform the public about the threat of radical Muslim fundamentalists to world peace. We are committed to combating the global upsurge of hate and intolerance.
To continue and bolster our efforts, we need your continued solidarity, activism and financial support. We are only as strong as our supporters. We thank you for helping us carry on this important work.
ACT, P.O.Box 6884, Virginia Beach, VA 23456
Email: info@americancongressfortruth.com
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Suicide Bombers Follow Quran
Suicide bombers follow Quran,
concludes Pentagon briefing
Tasked with pinpointing motivation, analysts find
terrorists 'rational actors' following 'holy book'
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
With suicide bombings spreading from Iraq to Afghanistan, the Pentagon has tasked intelligence analysts to pinpoint what's driving Muslim after Muslim to do the unthinkable.
Their preliminary finding is politically explosive: it's their "holy book" the Quran after all, according to intelligence briefings obtained by WND.
In public, the U.S. government has made an effort to avoid linking the terrorist threat to Islam and the Quran while dismissing suicide terrorists as crazed heretics who pervert Islamic teachings.
"The terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder," the White House maintains in its recently released "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" report.
But internal Pentagon briefings show intelligence analysts have reached a wholly different conclusion after studying Islamic scripture and the backgrounds of suicide terrorists. They've found that most Muslim suicide bombers are in fact students of the Quran who are motivated by its violent commands - making them, as strange as it sounds to the West, "rational actors" on the Islamic stage.
In Islam, it is not how one lives one's life that guarantees spiritual salvation, but how one dies, according to the briefings. There are great advantages to becoming a martyr. Dying while fighting the infidels in the cause of Allah reserves a special place and honor in Paradise. And it earns special favor with Allah.
"Suicide in defense of Islam is permitted, and the Islamic suicide bomber is, in the main, a rational actor," concludes a recent Pentagon briefing paper titled, "Motivations of Muslim Suicide Bombers."
Suicide for Allah a 'win-win'
"His actions provide a win-win scenario for himself, his family, his faith and his God," the document explains. "The bomber secures salvation and the pleasures of Paradise. He earns a degree of financial security and a place for his family in Paradise. He defends his faith and takes his place in a long line of martyrs to be memorialized as a valorous fighter.
"And finally, because of the manner of his death, he is assured that he will find favor with Allah," the briefing adds. "Against these considerations, the selfless sacrifice by the individual Muslim to destroy Islam's enemies becomes a suitable, feasible and acceptable course of action."
The briefing - produced by a little-known Pentagon intelligence unit called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA - cites a number of passages from the Quran dealing with jihad, or "holy" warfare, martyrdom and Paradise, where "beautiful mansions" and "maidens" await martyr heroes. In preparation for attacks, suicide terrorists typically recite passages from six surahs, or chapters, of the Quran: Baqura (Surah 2), Al Imran (3), Anfal (8), Tawba (9), Rahman (55) and Asr (103).
CIFA staffs hundreds of investigators and analysts to help coordinate Pentagon security efforts at U.S. military installations at home and abroad.
The Pentagon unit is especially concerned about a new wave of suicide bombings hitting Afghanistan.
Suicide bombings have killed more than 200 people in Afghanistan this year, up from single digits two years ago. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest and killed 18 outside an Afghan government compound. Last week, a suicide bomber riding a bike killed at least four NATO soldiers. And earlier this month, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing 16 people, including two American soldiers.
500 suicide bombers in reserve
The U.S. command in Afghanistan now warns that a suicide bombing cell is operating inside the Afghan capital. Meanwhile, the Taliban's top military commander told ABC News he has 500 suicide bombers at his disposal.
"We have so many of them that it is difficult to accommodate and arm and equip them," Mullah Dadullah Akhund said. "Some of them have been waiting for a year or more for their turn to be sent to the battlefield."
The emergence of a suicide cell in Kabul troubles military analysts because suicide attacks are the most effective weapon Muslim terrorists can use against the West. The Rand Corp. predicts they'll pose a serious and constant threat to the U.S. for years to come.
The U.S. intelligence community is growing increasingly worried, as well.
"Most jihadist groups will use suicide attacks focused primarily on soft targets to implement asymmetric warfare strategy," warns the just-declassified executive summary of the National Intelligence Estimate on the global terror threat. "Fighters with experience in Iraq are a potential source of leadership for jihadists pursuing these tactics."
Many scholars and media pundits, however, insist Muslim suicide bombers are not driven by religion.
"Beneath the religious rhetoric with which [such terror] is perpetrated, it occurs largely in the service of secular aims," claims Professor Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago. "Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism."
He says U.S. foreign policy is more a factor than faith.
"Though it speaks of Americans as infidels, al-Qaida is less concerned with converting us to Islam than removing us from Arab and Muslim lands," Pape said.
But what about the recent video by Adam Gadahn, the American al-Qaida, warning fellow Americans to convert to Islam before al-Qaida attacks again?
"He never mentions virgins or the benefits Islamic martyrs receive in Heaven," Pape asserted.
In fact, Gadahn notes 36 minutes into his speech that Allah reserves the highest rewards - "honors and delights" - for martyrs in Paradise.
"[He] promised the martyr in his path the reward over and above the reward of the believer," Gadahn said. "He has promised them honors and delights too numerous to go into here."
The 9/11 hijackers and the London bombers made martyrdom videos. In their last testaments, they recite the Quran while talking of their "love of death" and "sacrificing life for Allah." Seven martyrdom videotapes also were recovered by British authorities in the foiled transatlantic sky terror plot.
Before the 9/11 attacks, the hijackers shaved and doused themselves with flower water in preparation for their weddings with the beautiful virgins in Paradise. "Know that the women of Paradise are waiting, calling out 'Come hither, friend of Allah,'" according to a four-page letter circulated among them titled "THE LAST NIGHT." "They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing."
But are the virgins scriptural or apocryphal? French documentarian Pierre Rehov, who interviewed the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it, says it's not a myth or fantasy of heretics.
He says there's no doubt the Quran "promises virgins" to Muslim men who die while fighting infidels in jihad, and it's a key motivating factor behind suicide terrorism.
"It's obviously connected to religion," said Rehov, who features his interviews with Muslims in a recently released film, "Suicide Killers." "They really believe they are going to get the virgins."
He says would-be Muslim suicide bombers he's interviewed have shown him passages in the Quran "in which it's absolutely written that they're going to get the girls in the afterlife."
Muslim clerics do not disavow the virgins-for-martyrs reward as a perverted interpretation of the Quran.
And even Muslim leaders in the West condone suicide bombings. British scholar Azzam Tamimi recently told 8,000 Muslims in Manchester, England, that dying while fighting "George Bush and Tony Blair" is "just" and "the greatest act of martyrdom." Earlier, he said it's "the straight way to pleasing Allah."
And the founder of an allegedly mainstream Muslim group in Washington - the Council on American-Islamic Relations - also has given his blessing to suicide bombings.
Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine's annual convention in Chicago, CAIR founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who "kill themselves for Islam," according to a transcript provided by terror expert Steve Emerson's Investigative Project.
"Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide," Ahmad asserted. "They kill themselves for Islam."
Osama bin Laden has encouraged "Muslims brothers" to defeat the U.S. and U.K. with suicide attacks.
"I tell you to act upon the orders of Allah," he said in 2003, "be united against Bush and Blair and defeat them through suicide attacks so that you may be successful before Allah."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyday, American Congress for Truth (ACT) is a 501c3 non profit organization on the front lines fighting for you in meeting with politicians, decision makers, speaking on college campuses and planning events to educate and inform the public about the threat of radical Muslim fundamentalists to world peace. We are committed to combating the global upsurge of hate and intolerance.
To continue and bolster our efforts, we need your continued solidarity, activism and financial support. We are only as strong as our supporters. We thank you for helping us carry on this important work.
ACT, P.O.Box 6884, Virginia Beach, VA 23456
Email: info@americancongressfortruth.com
concludes Pentagon briefing
Tasked with pinpointing motivation, analysts find
terrorists 'rational actors' following 'holy book'
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
With suicide bombings spreading from Iraq to Afghanistan, the Pentagon has tasked intelligence analysts to pinpoint what's driving Muslim after Muslim to do the unthinkable.
Their preliminary finding is politically explosive: it's their "holy book" the Quran after all, according to intelligence briefings obtained by WND.
In public, the U.S. government has made an effort to avoid linking the terrorist threat to Islam and the Quran while dismissing suicide terrorists as crazed heretics who pervert Islamic teachings.
"The terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder," the White House maintains in its recently released "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" report.
But internal Pentagon briefings show intelligence analysts have reached a wholly different conclusion after studying Islamic scripture and the backgrounds of suicide terrorists. They've found that most Muslim suicide bombers are in fact students of the Quran who are motivated by its violent commands - making them, as strange as it sounds to the West, "rational actors" on the Islamic stage.
In Islam, it is not how one lives one's life that guarantees spiritual salvation, but how one dies, according to the briefings. There are great advantages to becoming a martyr. Dying while fighting the infidels in the cause of Allah reserves a special place and honor in Paradise. And it earns special favor with Allah.
"Suicide in defense of Islam is permitted, and the Islamic suicide bomber is, in the main, a rational actor," concludes a recent Pentagon briefing paper titled, "Motivations of Muslim Suicide Bombers."
Suicide for Allah a 'win-win'
"His actions provide a win-win scenario for himself, his family, his faith and his God," the document explains. "The bomber secures salvation and the pleasures of Paradise. He earns a degree of financial security and a place for his family in Paradise. He defends his faith and takes his place in a long line of martyrs to be memorialized as a valorous fighter.
"And finally, because of the manner of his death, he is assured that he will find favor with Allah," the briefing adds. "Against these considerations, the selfless sacrifice by the individual Muslim to destroy Islam's enemies becomes a suitable, feasible and acceptable course of action."
The briefing - produced by a little-known Pentagon intelligence unit called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA - cites a number of passages from the Quran dealing with jihad, or "holy" warfare, martyrdom and Paradise, where "beautiful mansions" and "maidens" await martyr heroes. In preparation for attacks, suicide terrorists typically recite passages from six surahs, or chapters, of the Quran: Baqura (Surah 2), Al Imran (3), Anfal (8), Tawba (9), Rahman (55) and Asr (103).
CIFA staffs hundreds of investigators and analysts to help coordinate Pentagon security efforts at U.S. military installations at home and abroad.
The Pentagon unit is especially concerned about a new wave of suicide bombings hitting Afghanistan.
Suicide bombings have killed more than 200 people in Afghanistan this year, up from single digits two years ago. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest and killed 18 outside an Afghan government compound. Last week, a suicide bomber riding a bike killed at least four NATO soldiers. And earlier this month, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing 16 people, including two American soldiers.
500 suicide bombers in reserve
The U.S. command in Afghanistan now warns that a suicide bombing cell is operating inside the Afghan capital. Meanwhile, the Taliban's top military commander told ABC News he has 500 suicide bombers at his disposal.
"We have so many of them that it is difficult to accommodate and arm and equip them," Mullah Dadullah Akhund said. "Some of them have been waiting for a year or more for their turn to be sent to the battlefield."
The emergence of a suicide cell in Kabul troubles military analysts because suicide attacks are the most effective weapon Muslim terrorists can use against the West. The Rand Corp. predicts they'll pose a serious and constant threat to the U.S. for years to come.
The U.S. intelligence community is growing increasingly worried, as well.
"Most jihadist groups will use suicide attacks focused primarily on soft targets to implement asymmetric warfare strategy," warns the just-declassified executive summary of the National Intelligence Estimate on the global terror threat. "Fighters with experience in Iraq are a potential source of leadership for jihadists pursuing these tactics."
Many scholars and media pundits, however, insist Muslim suicide bombers are not driven by religion.
"Beneath the religious rhetoric with which [such terror] is perpetrated, it occurs largely in the service of secular aims," claims Professor Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago. "Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism."
He says U.S. foreign policy is more a factor than faith.
"Though it speaks of Americans as infidels, al-Qaida is less concerned with converting us to Islam than removing us from Arab and Muslim lands," Pape said.
But what about the recent video by Adam Gadahn, the American al-Qaida, warning fellow Americans to convert to Islam before al-Qaida attacks again?
"He never mentions virgins or the benefits Islamic martyrs receive in Heaven," Pape asserted.
In fact, Gadahn notes 36 minutes into his speech that Allah reserves the highest rewards - "honors and delights" - for martyrs in Paradise.
"[He] promised the martyr in his path the reward over and above the reward of the believer," Gadahn said. "He has promised them honors and delights too numerous to go into here."
The 9/11 hijackers and the London bombers made martyrdom videos. In their last testaments, they recite the Quran while talking of their "love of death" and "sacrificing life for Allah." Seven martyrdom videotapes also were recovered by British authorities in the foiled transatlantic sky terror plot.
Before the 9/11 attacks, the hijackers shaved and doused themselves with flower water in preparation for their weddings with the beautiful virgins in Paradise. "Know that the women of Paradise are waiting, calling out 'Come hither, friend of Allah,'" according to a four-page letter circulated among them titled "THE LAST NIGHT." "They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing."
But are the virgins scriptural or apocryphal? French documentarian Pierre Rehov, who interviewed the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it, says it's not a myth or fantasy of heretics.
He says there's no doubt the Quran "promises virgins" to Muslim men who die while fighting infidels in jihad, and it's a key motivating factor behind suicide terrorism.
"It's obviously connected to religion," said Rehov, who features his interviews with Muslims in a recently released film, "Suicide Killers." "They really believe they are going to get the virgins."
He says would-be Muslim suicide bombers he's interviewed have shown him passages in the Quran "in which it's absolutely written that they're going to get the girls in the afterlife."
Muslim clerics do not disavow the virgins-for-martyrs reward as a perverted interpretation of the Quran.
And even Muslim leaders in the West condone suicide bombings. British scholar Azzam Tamimi recently told 8,000 Muslims in Manchester, England, that dying while fighting "George Bush and Tony Blair" is "just" and "the greatest act of martyrdom." Earlier, he said it's "the straight way to pleasing Allah."
And the founder of an allegedly mainstream Muslim group in Washington - the Council on American-Islamic Relations - also has given his blessing to suicide bombings.
Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine's annual convention in Chicago, CAIR founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who "kill themselves for Islam," according to a transcript provided by terror expert Steve Emerson's Investigative Project.
"Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide," Ahmad asserted. "They kill themselves for Islam."
Osama bin Laden has encouraged "Muslims brothers" to defeat the U.S. and U.K. with suicide attacks.
"I tell you to act upon the orders of Allah," he said in 2003, "be united against Bush and Blair and defeat them through suicide attacks so that you may be successful before Allah."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyday, American Congress for Truth (ACT) is a 501c3 non profit organization on the front lines fighting for you in meeting with politicians, decision makers, speaking on college campuses and planning events to educate and inform the public about the threat of radical Muslim fundamentalists to world peace. We are committed to combating the global upsurge of hate and intolerance.
To continue and bolster our efforts, we need your continued solidarity, activism and financial support. We are only as strong as our supporters. We thank you for helping us carry on this important work.
ACT, P.O.Box 6884, Virginia Beach, VA 23456
Email: info@americancongressfortruth.com
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