Signs

A Baptist minister in Jacksonville, Florida has figured it out, putting up this sign.

A news article about the controversy explains:

The sign may be controversial, but the Rev. Gene A. Youngblood said it is researched and speaks the truth.

"Islam is evil and believes in murder," reads the sign at the entrance of First Conservative Baptist Church and the Conservative Theological Seminary on St. Augustine Road in Jacksonville. "Jesus teaches peace."

References to specific Quranic and biblical verses accompany the statement, which Youngblood said are meant to serve as a warning to society.

"I am of the opinion, based on enormous research of the Muslims' own books, that Islam is the most vile, wicked, evil danger facing the world today," Youngblood said.

Youngblood made his comments during an interview Tuesday in the Mandarin church and seminary, of which he is president. Stacked on a table before him were several hard-bound volumes of the Hadith -- the sayings of the Muslim prophet Muhammad -- two versions of the Quran and a binder containing about 1,000 pages of lecture and research notes on Islam.

Of course, the usual suspects are up in arms:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida released a statement Monday calling on religious leaders to repudiate the sign and declaring its message an example of "hate speech designed to divide our nation along religious lines."

Imam Zaid Malik, spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville, said the sign is based on ignorance about Islam.

The verse cited on the sign -- Surah 9:29 -- is taken out of context, Malik said.

The verse commands believers to "fight against those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, [even if they are] of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Out of context? Looks pretty clear to me. And it accords with history and centuries of islamic jurisprudence and theology, in both theory and practice.

But don't take my word for it, see this analysis in Britain's Spectator:

It is probably true that in every faith ordinary people will pick the parts they like best and practise those, while the scholars will work out an official version. In Islam the scholars had a particularly challenging task, given the mass of contradictory texts within the Koran. To meet this challenge they developed the rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done.

Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away from peace and towards war. For the peaceable verses of the Koran are almost all earlier, dating from Mohammed’s time in Mecca, while those which advocate war and violence are almost all later, dating from after his flight to Medina. Though jihad has a variety of meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed’s own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and torture.

From these sources the Islamic scholars developed a detailed theology dividing the world into two parts, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam, with Muslims required to change Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam either through warfare or da’wa (mission).

So the mantra ‘Islam is peace’ is almost 1,400 years out of date. It was only for about 13 years that Islam was peace and nothing but peace. From 622 onwards it became increasingly aggressive, albeit with periods of peaceful co-existence, particularly in the colonial period, when the theology of war was not dominant. For today’s radical Muslims — just as for the mediaeval jurists who developed classical Islam — it would be truer to say ‘Islam is war’. One of the most radical Islamic groups in Britain, al-Ghurabaa, stated in the wake of the two London bombings, ‘Any Muslim that denies that terror is a part of Islam is kafir.’

A kafir is an unbeliever (i.e., a non-Muslim), a term of gross insult.

They are serious about this. I've often remarked on how the cult-like islam uses the death penalty, officially, against apostates and blasphemers of the religion, meaning anyone who speaks out against its terror tactics, but I've had the sense few really believe it. However,

Mahmud Muhammad Taha argued for a distinction to be drawn between the Meccan and the Medinan sections of the Koran. He advocated a return to peaceable Meccan Islam, which he argued is applicable to today, whereas the bellicose Medinan teachings should be consigned to history. For taking this position he was tried for apostasy, found guilty and executed by the Sudanese government in 1985...

Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd, an Egyptian professor who argued similarly that the Koran and hadith should be interpreted according to the context in which they originated, was charged with apostasy, found guilty in June 1995 and ordered to separate from his wife.

We give Egypt about $2 billion in "aid" every year.

The idea of "reform" and "moderation" in islam isn't helped by recent ravings from muslim leaders, such as:

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia’s top Islamic council issued a religious edict on Friday forbidding any liberal interpretation of Islam in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

“Religious liberalism is haram (forbidden),” said a fatwa, or doctrine, issued by the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) and seen by Reuters.

“This is a reminder for Muslims to follow the religion in a correct way and not to try to deviate from the principles,” Ma’aruf Amin, chief the MUI’s Fatwa Commission, told Reuters.

I recall reading TWICE soon after 9/11, by writers who knew noting, attempting to do profiles on the islamic world to make sure our passions were kept in check and there'd be no "backlash", that the Indonesians "put the 'fun' in 'fundamentalism'!"

Then came Bali and fundamentalism didn't seem so 'fun'.

Or,

The most senior Islamic cleric in Birmingham claimed yesterday that Muslims were being unjustly blamed in the war on terrorism and that the eight suspects in the two bombing attacks on London “could have been innocent passengers”.

Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the city’s central mosque, called Tony Blair a “liar” and “unreliable witness” and questioned whether CCTV footage issued of the suspected bombers was of the perpetrators. He said that Muslims “all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al-Qa’eda”.

Mr Naseem, who was speaking after police seized Yasin Hassan Omar in Birmingham, delivered his unprompted outburst when he was invited to a press conference with West Midlands police and Birmingham city council to help calm fears of racial or religious tension after the arrest. His comments shocked senior police officers. ...

To the obvious embarrassment of council officials and police standing next to him, Mr Naseem said the Government and security services “were not to be relied upon”.

That guy was supposed to be the moderate.

Or, right here in the USA,

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — The voice of the new imam at one of the largest mosques on the East Coast rang loud from the pulpit during Friday services: “The call to reform Islam is an alien call.”

People who do not understand Islam are the ones seeking to change it, said Shaker Elsayed, the new spiritual leader at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. “Ignorance comes from outside circles who know nothing about us.”

Oh, we know quite enough now, thank you very much. At this point, what's not to understand?

But it's the familiar refrain. Getting back to imam malik complaining about Rev. Youngblood,

The same problem is with the terrorists, who are interpreting the Quran themselves and taking verses out of context, Malik said.

Malik said he is saddened by the sign but feels pity for Youngblood because he is "ignorant of the true teachings of Islam."

See how he equates Youngblood with the terrorists? Slime. The truth is, both have quite a clear view of things. And others are catching on all the time.

For example, commenter DP111 at LGF makes the following remarks, which I could not have said better myself, equating islamic ideology with slavery:

The nature of Islam is one topic that has occupied us all for sometime now. Islam not as a religion, but its reality. Is it islamosfascism, islamo-nazism, or some other totalitarian ideology? The simple fact is that, none of these definitions, as is obvious by now, are sufficient to merit an immuno-response from the West, as the West regards islam as a religion.

If one examines islam and its practices, it is more akin to slavery. Islam and those who convert to it, effectively become slaves. Islam = submission = subjugation, is not coincidence. Wherever islam dominates, slothful attitudes start to dominate. Free thinking stops, and people become mere cogs, almost children, dependent on the cleric on matters of any substance. Muslims are thus the first victims in this institution of slavery. I would therefore term Islam as the "religion of institutionalised slavery". It is no surprise that muslim countries are intellectual deserts. Free thinking can only occur in Free societies.

Some points worth considering

1. The institution of slavery, crushed the spirit of slaves. They were unable to think originally for themselves as a consequence. A striking feature of islamic societies.

2. Another striking feature of islamic societies is that they blame everyone else for their acts or predicaments.

In what may be consider as a traditional slave society, a similar situation holds. The slave has no power over the direction of his life, and no sense of responsibility to himself, the civic society or the state. This leads, quite naturally in my view, to blame others for his predicaments.

3. The subjugation of women and the view that women were simply chattels, ie slaves.

4. Runaway slaves used to be beaten, and oft executed as a lesson to other would be runaway slaves. The same punishment is koranically sanctioned for the muslim apostate. Is it mere coincidence?

The most public manifestation of our acceptance of institutionalised slavery in the West is the burqa. It is a symbol, that we as a Western society, have recognised the institutionalised slavery of women in islam, as legitimate in the West. This is absolutely absurd. Freedom and slavery are mutually incompatible. One can only expand at the expense of the other. It is a tragedy that we have allowed in, into the domain of Freedom, a society that practices slavery, and worse we give it legitimacy under the guise of multiculturalism.

So here we are, in the 21st century, right here in the domain of Freedom, and we have allowed islands of slavery to become established within this domain. This is absurd.

Freedom and slavery can never co-exist. Islam, in its practice, turns out to be the oldest totalitarian ideology of all - slavery, with just the added but genius touch, that it is divinely sanctioned by allah.

I'm tentatively putting this hypothesis, that islam is really a religion for slavery, and to garner more slaves, is the purpose of Jihad. Slave society can only exist economically, if it continues to grow at the expense of Free societies, and thus get the succour that itself, it cannot produce. We were fooled into letting Islam into the domain of Freedom. Islam avoided the radar that protects Free societies, as it cloaked itself as a religion. (The radars need to be re-programmed).

To fight the cultural and physical war against islam, one needs an identifying cause, a just cause, a righteous cause, as Baron Bodissey put it. Defence or offence on the basis of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or an amalgam of all three, will not work. All three religions are essentially pacifist, and besides, the West is essentially secular. The defeat of the last citadel of slavery on this planet, is most certainly a worthwhile, righteous and secular cause that will unite all.

It is worth remembering that Winston Churchill, as we well know, did identify islam as slavery:

"The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men." --Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

Finally, if Islam can be regarded as really slavery, then whether it is moderate or extremist, is a moot point.

I mean really, what kind of religion not only tolerates but champions slavery? One without a Universal Golden Rule, apparently.

The esteemed Daniel Pipes writes:

Ranking Saudi religious authorities endorse slavery; for example, Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan insisted recently that "Slavery is a part of Islam" and whoever wants it abolished is "an infidel."

The U.S. State Department knows about the forced servitude in Saudi households and laws exist to combat this scourge but, as Mr. Mowbray argues, it "refuses to take measures to combat it." Finally, Saudis know they can get away with nearly any misbehavior. Their embassy provides funds, letters of support, lawyers, retroactive diplomatic immunity, former U.S. ambassadors as troubleshooters, and even aircraft out of the country; it also keeps pesky witnesses away.

Given the American government's lax attitude toward the Saudis, slavery in Denver, Miami, Washington, Houston, Boston, and Orlando hardly comes as a surprise. Only when Washington more robustly represents American interests will Saudi behavior improve.

That's slavery in this country, people!!!

SLAVES!

TODAY!

IN YOUR CITY!!!

We need another Christian hero like John Brown to clean this saudi filth from our midst.

As Ann Coulter presciently said on 9/13/01,

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.

I would just add,

...and free their slaves and take away their oil.