Tag: Muslims

Taqiyya about Taqiyya

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by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

I was recently involved in an interesting exercise—examining taqiyya about taqiyya—and believe readers might profit from the same exercise, as it exposes all the subtle apologetics made in defense of the Islamic doctrine, which permits Muslims to lie to non-Muslims, or “infidels.”taqiyya1

Context: Khurrum Awan, a lawyer, is suing Ezra Levant, a Canadian media personality and author, for defamation and $100,000.  Back in 2009 and on his own website, Levant had accused Awan of taqiyya in the context of Awan’s and the Canadian Islamic Congress’ earlier attempts to sue Mark Steyn.

For more on Levant’s court case, go to www.StandWithEzra.ca.

On behalf of Awan, Mohammad Fadel—professor of Islamic Law at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law—provided an expert report to the court on the nature of taqiyya, the significance of which he portrayed as “a staple of right-wing Islamophobia in North America.”

In response, Levant asked me (back in 2013) to write an expert report on taqiyya, including by responding to Fadel’s findings.

I did.  And it had the desired effect.  As Levant put it in an email to me: Continue reading “Taqiyya about Taqiyya” →

The Are Slaughtering Us Like Chickens’: Muslim Persecution of Christians, December 2013

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by Raymond Ibrahim // Gatestone Insitute

As happens at Christmas every year throughout the Muslim world, Christians and their churches were especially targeted—from jihadi terror strikes killing worshippers, to measures by Muslim authorities restricting Christmas celebrations.  Some incidents follow: Continue reading “The Are Slaughtering Us Like Chickens’: Muslim Persecution of Christians, December 2013” →

Why ‘Moderate Islam’ is an Oxymoron

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by Raymond Ibrahim // CBN News 

At a time when terrorism committed in the name of Islam is rampant, we are continuously being assured—especially by three major institutions that play a dominant role in forming the Western mindset, namely, mainstream media,

Umar Nasir via Flickr
Umar Nasir via Flickr

academia, and government—that the sort of Islam embraced by “radicals,” “jihadis,” and so forth, has nothing to do with “real” Islam.

“True” Islam, so the narrative goes, is intrinsically free of anything “bad.”  It’s the nut-jobs who hijack it for their own agenda that are to blame.

More specifically, we are told that there exists a “moderate” Islam and an “extremist” Islam—the former good and true, embraced by a Muslim majority, the latter a perverse sacrilege practiced by an exploitative minority.

But what do these dual adjectives—“moderate” and “extremist”—ultimately mean in the context of Islam?  Are they both equal and viable alternatives insofar as to how Islam is understood?  Are they both theologically legitimate?  This last question is particularly important, since Islam is first and foremost a religious way of life centered around the words of a deity (Allah) and his prophet (Muhammad)—the significance of Continue reading “Why ‘Moderate Islam’ is an Oxymoron” →

Why the Media Doesn’t Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians

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by Raymond Ibrahim // The Torch 

“To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting cufiHim to public disgrace”—Hebrews 6:6

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel.  Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched akristallnacht—attacking, destroying, and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests).  Al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised atop churches.  Christians—including priests, women and children—have beenattacked, beheaded, and killed. Continue reading “Why the Media Doesn’t Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians” →

The Incoherence of Western Foreign Policy

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by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

The crisis in Ukraine is just the latest in a long series of foreign policy failures brought about by the incoherence in our thinking about foreign relations. On the one hand, we have championed ethnic-national self-determination as the highest international good, while on the other we have assumed that all these various nations and peoples share the same ideals, principles, and goods, and so can comprise a transnational order that will eliminate war and conflict and create peace and prosperity. Over a hundred years of history reveal these ideals not just to be incompatible, but also to foment and worsen inter-state violence. Continue reading “The Incoherence of Western Foreign Policy” →

Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation

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by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

Opened_Qur'an
el7bara via Flickr

While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in which peaceful and tolerant verses lie almost side by side with violent and intolerant ones. The ulema were initially baffled as to which verses to codify into the Shari’a worldview—the one that states there is no coercion in religion (2:256), or the ones that command believers to fight all non-Muslims till they either convert, or at least submit, to Islam (8:39, 9:5, 9:29). To get out of this quandary, the commentators developed the doctrine of abrogation, which essentially maintains that verses revealed later in Muhammad’s career take precedence over earlier ones whenever there is a discrepancy. In order to document which verses abrogated which, a religious science devoted to the chronology of the Koran’s verses evolved (known as an-Nasikh wa’l Mansukh, the abrogater and the abrogated). Continue reading “Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation” →

The Past and the Future

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by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

Crucified-Again-CoverLast November Raymond Ibrahim was interviewed by Egyptian reporter Sherif Awad.  The interview appeared in several Egyptian magazines and websites, as well as American ones, such as the Westchester Guardian.  The interview follows:

Awad: Can you tell us about your family and their profession and how and why they decided to migrate to the US? Tell us about your childhood and the intercultural elements that shaped it until you decided to select your profession.

Ibrahim: My father and mother, both Copts, one from Cairo the other Alexandria, left Egypt in the late 1960s for America, where I was born.  They left Egypt for a better life.  I grew up speaking both Arabic and English and visited Egypt with my parents often when I was young.  It was natural, then, for me formally to study the region, its languages (primarily Arabic, which I already spoke), its history and conflicts, in college.  Growing up in Egypt in the 1940s-1960s, my parents experienced little by way of direct persecution, but they did experience religious discrimination, and that was one of the reasons they came to America, for better opportunities.

Awad: In regards to your MA thesis and book about the Battle of Yarmuk, can you compare its events to the happenings that led to the ending of Islamic rule in Andalusia? Do you consider researching the Islamic empire in Andalusia? About the Crusades? Continue reading “The Past and the Future” →

U.S. “Chose to Stay Silent” on Muslim Persecution of Christians: November 2013

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by Raymond Ibrahim // Gatestone Institute 

The endemic rise of Christian persecution in the Middle East was noted in November when Pope Francis declared “We will not resign ourselves to imagining a Middle East without Christians” and stressed the importance of “the universal right to lead a dignified life and freely practice one’s own faith” after he met with patriarchs from Syria, Iran, and Iraq, all countries where Christian minorities are under attack. Continue reading “U.S. “Chose to Stay Silent” on Muslim Persecution of Christians: November 2013″ →

The Pentagon’s Bow to Islamic Extremism

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by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

“Caving to pressure from Muslim groups, the Pentagon has relaxed uniform rules to allow Islamic beards, turbans and hijabs. It’s a major win for political correctness and

RaymondIbrahim.com
RaymondIbrahim.com

a big loss for military unit cohesion,” said a recent report.

This new relaxation of rules for Muslims comes at a time when the FBI is tracking more than 100 suspected jihadi-infiltrators of the U.S. military.  Just last month, Craig Benedict Baxam, a former Army soldier and convert to Islam, was sentenced to seven years in prison due to his al-Qaeda/jihadi activities.   Also last month, Mozaffar Khazaee, an Iranian-American working for the Defense Department, was arrested for sending secret documents to America’s enemy, Iran. Continue reading “The Pentagon’s Bow to Islamic Extremism” →

Al Qaeda: The Defender of Christians?

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by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

Muslim persecution of Christians is the “Achilles Heel” of the global Islamic movement’s RTX6E0Timage—the surest way of exposing its supremacist and intolerant elements and one of the main reasons the major media and establishment rarely report or address it.

The logic (fully explained here) can be summarized as follows:

Islamic and jihadi attacks targeting the West or Israel pose no problem to the image of Islam.  No matter how violent or brutal, no matter how many Islamic slogans are shrieked—“Allah commands the subjugation of infidels!”—Muslim violence against the West and Israel will always be dismissed as desperate acts of disempowered, oppressed, and frustrated Muslims—the “underdogs,” which the West tends to romanticize.

And so they will always get a free pass, without further reflection. Continue reading “Al Qaeda: The Defender of Christians?” →