From: FutureQ (futureq@attbi.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 16:08:28 MDT
Christopher Whipple wrote:
> ...and on that note I think I'll stop.
>
> These quotes were found from previously underlined passages and margin
> notes. The point being, I don't believe there's a quote in the Koran
> that states "find non-believers and kill them" - but like any set of
> written rules, it's all in the interpretation and implementation.
>
> -crw.
Yes interpretation aaaand who's doing it. It may be more informative to
listen to the latest prophet. From Bloom's article.
[begin quote]
However, Allah issues many a darker order as well. And the percentage of
modern Islamic adherents who have focused on Allah's calls to combat is
dismaying. Today, the descendants of the Persians who fought the Greeks in
480 BC are devout Moslems. In the '30s, one of them labored diligently to
become an Islamic scholar. He pored over the Koran for years. As he
demonstrated his superior knowledge of Allah's pronouncements, he rose in
the ranks of Iranian holy men. Finally he achieved the penultimate
title--ayatollah (roughly equivalent to a Catholic cardinal).
His name was Ruhollah Khomeini, and he wrote books, pamphlets, and even
taped and distributed his speeches to inspire the citizens of Iran with
sacred virtue. The ayatollah's words roused Iranians to overthrow the shah
and usher in a government based on strict Islamic doctrine. What did the
ayatollah's pronouncements say- Among other things, that infidels are like
dogs. Their existence is an affront to Allah.
Here's how the ayatollah himself put it: "...Moslems have no
alternative... to an armed holy war against profane governments. ...Holy
war means the conquest of all non-Moslem territories. ...It will ...be the
duty of every able-bodied adult male to volunteer for this war of conquest,
the final aim of which is to put Koranic law in power from one end of the
earth to the other. "The leaders of the USSR and of England and the
president of the United States are ...infidels....
...Every part of the body of a non-Moslem individual is impure, even the
hair on his head and his body hair, his nails, and all the secretions of
his body. Any man or woman who denies the existence of God, or believes in
His partners [the Christian Trinity], or else does not believe in His
Prophet Mohammed, is impure (in the same way as are excrement, urine, dog,
and wine)[sic]."
Concluded the Ayatollah, "Islam does not allow peace between... a Moslem
and an infidel." Though many of us imagine that the promotion of harmony is
a prime objective of every major world faith, the ayatollah disagreed.
"The leaders of our religion were all soldiers, commanders and warriors,"
he wrote, "...they killed and they were killed."
The concept of a peaceful prophet was so alien to the ayatollah that he was
convinced Christ's message had been deliberately distorted by Westerners.
Said Khomeini, "This idea of turning the other cheek has been wrongly
attributed to Jesus (peace be unto him); it is those barbaric imperialists
that have attributed it to him. Jesus was a prophet, and no prophet can be
so illogical."
Khomeini's dicta may seem irrelevant now that he has long been dead, but
his words have actually gained in influence since his demise. Early in the
'90s, Iraq's humiliation in the Gulf War undermined the credibility of the
secular Moslem regimes, leaving a power vacuum into which Fundamentalism
leaped. There are currently roughly one 100,000,000 Islamic
fundamentalists (rechristened "Islamic revivalists" by some scholars ).
Activists among them, employing the slogan "Africa for Islam," are making
diligent--and often violent--efforts to seize power in numerous sub-Saharan
states. They have gained sufficient favor with South Africa's ANC that
Nelson Mandela, in a 1992 visit to Teheran, told the Iranians that Africa
must be reshaped along the lines of the Iranian revolution.(Ironically,
when South African leader Bishop Desmond Tutu gave a speech to a
Palestinian crowd in 1989 lauding Palestinian interests, he failed to
realize that the Arabic banners carried by his listeners read "On Saturday
We Will Kill the Jews, on Sunday We Will Kill the Christians!")
Khomeini's works advocate vigorously converting or murdering all those who
do not embrace Allah's holy meme. Then they urge a holy war on the nations
of the West.
The ayatollah wrote, "Any nonreligious [i.e. non-Islamic] power, whatever
form or shape, is necessarily an atheistic power, the tool of Satan; it is
part of our duty to stand in its path and to struggle against its effects.
Such Satanic power can engender nothing but corruption on earth, the
supreme evil which must be pitilessly fought and rooted out. To achieve
that end, we have no recourse other than to overthrow all governments that
do not rest on pure Islamic principles, and are thus corrupt and
corrupting, and to tear down the traitorous, rotten, unjust, and tyrannical
administrative systems that serve them.... If Islamic civilization had
governed the West, we would no longer have to put up with these barbaric
goings-on unworthy even of wild animals....[Western governments are] using
inhuman laws and inhuman political methods... Misdeeds must be punished by
the law of retaliation: cut off the hands of the thief; kill the murderer
instead of putting him in prison; flog the adulterous woman or man. Your
concerns, your 'humanitarian' scruples, are more childish than reasonable."
Khomeini had a prescription for such problems: "All of humanity must strike
these troublemakers [the governments of the West] with an iron hand....
Islam has obliterated many tribes because they were sources of corruption
[i.e. sources of non-Islamic influence]...." Judging from the Ayatollah's
rhetoric, the next tribes he would have liked to see obliterated were those
in Europe and America.
Allah is rapidly providing Khomeini's followers with a sword to carry out
their master's wishes. He has offered Islam the fire in which the Koran
says those who follow false faiths are destined to burn: nuclear weaponry.
He has also provided the long range missiles needed to use it. According
to the late imam's logic, there may be only one just and righteous thing to
do: employ this technology to wipe out recalcitrant heathens like you and
me.
[end quote]
Dang that's just about the whole article! Whatever it takes to get people
to read it I guess.
FutureQ
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