Fighting and Dying for Islam

 by Joseph BH McMillan  

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The Iraqi and Afghani constitutions contain the foundations for these states to transition smoothly to Fundamentalist Islamic States, once the American military presence has ended.

The men and women who wear the uniform of the armed forces of the United States of America are the most professional, honorable, and committed human beings one could ever hope to meet.

They are people who risk and sacrifice their lives without question.

Such unquestioning devotion to duty and country puts a terrible and onerous obligation on those who call on these men and women (and their families) to make the sacrifices they so willingly make.

And I am not talking here about the Democratic members of Congress playing a despicable game of politics with the lives of the members of the armed services by threatening to withhold funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am talking about the outcome of the sacrifices that have been and are being made on a daily basis.

Let me say at the outset that I supported the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But, in the case of Iraq, I wrote back in 2002 that “in spite of the President's attempts to make a case for his Iraq policy, his difficulty is that there isn't one, at least not on the quick sand he has sought to build it.” ("The Unspoken Case for War with Iraq.")

The specific wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the general War on Terror, are a direct result of the attacks of 9/11. Those attacks were carried out in the name of Islam. Of course, everyone was quick to point out that those who carried out the attacks were Islamic fundamentalists, or fanatics, or people who had distorted the true nature of Islam. We were told that Islam is indeed a peaceful and tolerant religion, and that the vast majority of the Islamic world deplored the attacks.

I do not know what the vast majority of the Islamic world thinks, and neither do the politicians who make such ridiculous statements. But what I do know is that as this War on Terror continues, it seems absolutely focused on those areas of the world that are Islamic, and those areas of the Western world with high concentrations of Muslims.

Further, we are continually reminded that the War on Terror is likely to continue for decades to come. That seems like a complete contradiction to the claim that the problem lies with a tiny proportion of fanatical Muslims who have distorted the true nature of Islam. Islam is particularly intolerant of those who distort or subvert Islam. So if that were the real problem, I would have expected that we in the West would have little part to play in eliminating these ‘fanatics’ – the Islamic world would have done so quickly, and in its own brutal way.

Clearly, therefore, we are either being misled as to the extent of the Islamic focus in the War on Terror, or the policymakers are naïve in the extreme – or both.

Either way, Islam itself is central to the current conflicts across the world. However the politicians want to dress-up that fact, it still remains a fact. And it is also a fact that the fighting being done in this war is being done primarily by Western forces in predominantly Muslim countries.

But of course, we must always be at pains not to call this a war with Islam, even though pretty much every Muslim sees it that way.

And the source of this conflict, according to the vast majority of commentaries I hear from the Islamic world, is of course Israel – the Jews. The Vice Chair of CAIR (Council for American Islamic Relations) said as much in an article on the Intellectual Conservative titled, "What is After Annapolis?"

But for all the concern expressed for the plight of Palestinians by the Islamic world, the Palestinians are nothing more than hostages to Islamic hatred of the Jews. Palestinian refugees in places like Lebanon have no ‘rights,’ and are confined in ghettos. The Kuwaitis expelled 400,000 Palestinians (30% of Kuwait’s population) after the first Gulf war because Yasser Arafat sided with Saddam Hussein in that war. Palestinians working in most Arab countries are treated as second-class citizens. Yet Palestinians living in Israel are Israeli citizens; they can and do sit in the Israeli parliament; and have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen. In no Islamic country do they posses the same freedoms and rights as they do in Israel. But, of course, if Palestinians were assimilated into Arab or other Islamic countries, there would no longer be a stick with which to beat the Jews. And a Dhimmi state would exist in the heart of the Arab Islamic world.

That, in brief, is the context of the so-called War on Terror. The Islamic world believes it is a war on Islam by the Big Satan (USA) on behalf of the Little Satan (Israel), and we in the West pretend that we are fighting an insignificantly small group of Islamic fanatics who have distorted the true meaning of Islam.

So let’s look at the progress made so far in this War on Terror in order to determine what exactly the men and women of the armed services have been fighting and dying for.

We are told that there are two incredible achievements so far: democratic states established in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But when we go to the constitutions of these ‘democratic’ states we find this:

No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam.
– Afghanistan’s Constitution, Chapter 1, Article 3

No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
– Iraqi Constitution, Chapter 1, Article 2(a)

In spite of these provisions, these constitutions are hailed as a great achievement in establishing ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ states in those countries. And the reason, we are told, is that these provisions do not specifically adopt Sharia law (again, in spite of the fact that the Afghan constitution provides that the Supreme Court apply “Hanafi jurisprudence” – one of the schools whose analytical principles elaborate Sharia law).

And there is another odd aspect to this boasting that these constitutions do not adopt Sharia law. So far as I know, there are only a very few countries in the world where Sharia law is the law of the land – Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf states – states with which we have apparently good, or at least cordial, relations.

A provision requiring that no law can contradict the rules of Islam is exactly the same thing as saying Islam, or more properly Islamic Law, shall apply. All the rest of the provisions are nothing more than window-dressing to detract attention from the fact that we have been party to the establishment of two Islamic states. And given the provisions regarding Islam, we have essentially laid the foundations for what would more properly be described as Fundamentalist Islamic States. Pointing to provisions that enshrine liberty, etc., is just silly – all other provisions are subject to compliance with Islam.

Even prior constitutions of these countries would be preferable to what we have been instrumental in establishing.

Afghanistan’s 1976 Constitution had these provisions: “To respect human liberty and dignity and eliminate all forms of torture and discrimination” (Art. 5); “To ever increase the stability and consolidation of the republican order” (Art. 6). And Article 99 provided that the courts apply the provisions of the constitution and the laws of the state. Only when no such laws dealt with the issue at hand could the courts have recourse to “Hanafi Jurisprudence,” and then only “within the limitations set forth” in the constitution.

Likewise, Iraq’s 1925 Constitution would have been preferable to what is now in place. For example, Art. 6 provided that “there shall be no differentiation in the rights of Iraqis before the law, whatever differences may exist in language, race or creed.” Art. 7 said that “there shall be no violation of, or interference with, the personal liberty of any of the inhabitants of Iraq.” Although Art. 13 established Islam as the state religion, it went on to provide this: “Complete freedom of conscience and freedom to practice the various forms of worship, in conformity with accepted customs, is guaranteed to all inhabitants of the country provided that such forms of worship do not conflict with the maintenance of order and discipline or public morality.” And Art. 78 provided specifically for non-Islamic religions: “The spiritual councils of the communities include the Jewish spiritual councils and the Christian spiritual councils. Such councils shall be established, and powers of jurisdiction conferred upon them, by a special law.”

Neither of these constitutions subordinated the constitution to Islam, as both the present constitutions do.

So what we have are American men and women who have been (and are) fighting and dying while some pathetic diplomats and politicians have run around establishing and entrenching Islamic states, and setting the foundations for these states to transition smoothly (through the democratic process, of course) to Fundamentalist Islamic States; states intent on the destruction of Israel and the entire Western way of life. And all this in response to an attack by the very type of Islamic Fundamentalists we have now been complicit in providing with a couple of ‘constitutional homes.’

The ‘fundamentalists’ won’t of course avail themselves of our stupidity immediately. They will bide their time. They will decrease attacks against our forces thus provoking a loud clamor from the chattering classes to leave those countries. We can already see that in Basra, Iraq. It will spread to other regions as well. And we will leave, and leave in our wake precisely the type of Fundamentalist Islamic terrorist states we went there to destroy in the first place.

I just wonder how many of the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice knew that they were doing so in the ‘noble’ cause of helping to establish two fundamentalist Islamic states in waiting.

Now there are many in the West who claim that the real threat is Sharia law, not Islam. In my humble view, that is utter nonsense. The two are intimately related. But Sharia law itself is not a threat to the Western world. It is a tyranny to the people subjected to it, as in Saudi Arabia for example. If people want to live under such a tyranny, as the people in Gaza clearly want to do, that is their concern.

The threat to the West is Islam itself; Islam as set out in the Koran, with its absolute hatred and contempt of Christianity and the Jews. The Islam that now commands the constitutions and laws of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the Islam that is preached in Mosques and schools around the world, including every Western country.

I have set out the verses in the Koran which show this many times, but they are worth repeating here (references are to the Translation of the Koran by A. Yusuf Ali – a translation that few Muslims would take issue with).

The peoples having the strongest enmity to Muslims are the “Jews and Pagans.”
— 5:85

We said to them [the Jews – who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath], ‘Be ye apes, Despised and rejected.’
— 2:65 & 7:166

Miserable is the price For which they [the Jews] have sold Their souls, in that They deny (the revelation) Which God has sent down, in insolent envy that God Of His Grace should send it To any of His servants He pleases: Thus have they drawn On themselves Wrath upon Wrath. And humiliating is the punishment Of those who reject Faith.
– 2:90

You will find them [the Jews], Of all people, most greedy Of Life, - even more than the idolaters.
— 2:96

Taste ye [the Jews] the penalty of the Scorching Fire! for saying Truly, God is indignant and we are rich and for slaying the Prophets.
— 3:181

.. With a twist of their [the Jews’] tongues And a slander of Faith. If only they had said: ‘We hear and we obey’; And ‘Do hear’; And ‘Do look at us’: It would have been better For them, and more proper; But God hath cursed them [the Jews] For their Unbelief; and but a few Of them will believe.”
— 4:46]

There are many more such verses in the Koran hostile to the Jews. But there are also plenty that strike at the heart of Christianity. Here are just a few:

“[T]he Christians [went wrong] in raising Jesus the Apostle to equality with God.” The Koran goes on to deny the Crucifixion [4:157], declare that Christ is not God and it is blasphemy to claim such [5:19], and likewise it is blasphemous to proclaim the Holy Trinity [5:76].  For good measure the Koran calls “God’s curse” on those who “Call Christ the Son of God.” [9:30]

And this is what the Koran has to say about the “deluded” People of the Book [Jews and Christians]:

Fight those who do not “acknowledge the Religion Of Truth [ie Islam], (even if they are) of the People of the Book (ie Christians and Jews), Until they pay the Jizha [a kind of compensation] With willing submission, And feel themselves subdued.
– 9:29

Verses 20 and 38 of Surah (chapter) 9 exhort “those who believe” to fight with their goods “and their persons” in God’s [ie Islam’s] cause. Verse 38 admonishes those who hesitate to sacrifice their lives when “asked [by their spiritual leader] to go forth in the cause of God” because “little is the comfort of this life, as compared With the Hereafter.”

This verse is perhaps the most apt in the present context:

Soon shall we cast terror Into the hearts of the Unbelievers, For that they joined companions With God, for which He had sent No authority: their abode Will be the fire: and evil Is the home of the wrongdoers!
– 3:151

At first blush, it would seem odd that Islam, which draws so heavily on the Old and New Testaments, would be so hostile to Jews and Christians (all the biblical characters feature in the Koran from Adam and Eve, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Noah, Joseph, to Jesus – except that they were all there to proclaim the coming of Mohammed). But the hostility is not that odd when we remember that these verses were added to the Koran after Mohammed was rejected as a prophet by the Jews and Christians (Islam claims that Deuteronomy 18:18 is a prophecy pointing to the coming of Mohammed). And a further verse, added after Mohammed was rejected by the Jews, claims that the Jews “Heard the Word of God, And perverted it knowingly After they [the Jews] understood it.” [2:75] The Commentary to Surah 2 Verses 40 – 86 is more blunt. It claims that the Jews “falsified Scripture.” [C26]

But the one verse we hear quoted most often by Muslim scholars, and also Islamic apologists, to ‘demonstrate’ that Islam is not inherently hostile to the Jews and Christians is verse 62 of Sūra 2 [see also 5:72]. It says this: “Those who believe in the Koran, and those who follow the Jewish Scriptures, and the Christians and Sabians, Any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”

I am always amazed at how Muslims and their apologists can refer to this verse with a straight face when they claim it shows that Islam accepts Judaism and Christianity as on a par with Islam – as just a different route to the same end.

Because the very next verses refer again to the Covenant on “the towering height of Mount Sinai” which the Jews “turned back” on. It then says this: “And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: We said to them: ‘Be ye apes, Despised and rejected.’ So We made it an example to their own time and to their posterity, and a lesson to those who fear God.” [2:65-66. A. Yusuf Ali’s note 79 to the “apes” verse says this – The punishment would be, not for the breach of the Sabbath in itself (by the Jews), but for their contumacious defiance of the law.]

This is only a small sample of the invective against the Jews and Christians found in the Koran. There are many more. Take this for example. “And when there comes to them a Book from God [the Koran], confirming what is with them . . . when there comes to them that which they should have recognized, they refused to believe in it but the curse of God is on those without faith. Miserable is the price for which they have sold their souls, in that they dent (the revelation) which God hath sent down, in insolent envy that God in His grace should send it to any of His servants He pleases.” [2:89-90. A. Yusuf Ali’s Note (note 95) to these verses says this: “Racial arrogance made the Jews averse to the reception of Truth when it came through a servant of God, not of their own race.”]

So what does the Koran mean when it says that Jews and Christians “shall have their reward with the Lord?”

The Commentaries say that it means that those Jews who obeyed the true Message from God would be ‘saved.’ But by this is meant the Scriptures as ‘corrected’ by God through Mohammed, not the Scriptures which the Jews falsified because, having “heard the Word of God, [a party of Jews] perverted it knowingly after they understood it.” [2:75]

So the ‘genesis’ of the current (and past) ‘divide’ between the Western world and Islam is not some distorted fanatical Islam, nor is it the state of Israel – it is the contempt and hatred of everyone and everything that does not conform to Islamic teaching as espoused in the Koran.

How many of the fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been ‘schooled’ in such verses of the Koran? All have been ‘schooled’ in how not to offend Islamic sensibilities. Apparently they get little booklets telling them how they should behave. But when it comes to sacrificing their lives, I just wonder how many realize that they have been ‘used’ to help establish constitutions which endorse hatred of what I expect they believe they are fighting and dying for. I expect very few have any inkling that they have been fighting and dying for an ideology that has utter contempt for their way of life; an ideology that has utter contempt for Jews; and an ideology that has utter contempt for Christianity. I even wonder whether the Muslim members of the armed forces have much idea about such verses in the Koran.

So my support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has evaporated – my support was not founded on the establishment of Islamic states. But my respect for the men and women fighting to preserve our liberty is at an all-time high, because such is their professionalism that they would do their duty even in the face of betrayal. And that, in my view, is all that they have got – betrayal, so that a bunch of politicians could display their Islamic credentials in the forlorn hope that by appeasing hate-mongers, those hate-mongers may just leave us alone.

But the most tragic result of this messed up affair is that we have boosted the morale of those who would do us harm. Iran is bristling with confidence. Islamic ‘extremism’ is rampant, especially in Western countries. Pressure on Israel to capitulate is at an all-time high.

We have set the stage for a monumental catastrophe. And when it comes, the politicians will again hide behind their mahogany desks while young men and women are called upon to sacrifice their lives to sort out the mess.

Will we ever again, I wonder, have leaders worthy of the people, and worthy of those they call upon to make the ultimate sacrifice? Judging by the contenders in the presidential race, and the rest of the weasels inhabiting high office in the Western world, I doubt it. How tragic!!

Culture: Religion, Foreign Affairs: Iraq War

Read more articles by Joseph BH McMillan