Islam and the Survival of the West-Doctrines for Oppression and Deception, Part 3 of a Series by Mike Scruggs.

Muslim theology divides the world into two principal domains: the House of Islam and the House War. The House of Islam is the House of Peace. Those nations that are ruled by Islamic Law (Sharia) are in the House of Islam’s Peace. All others are in the House of War. It is the duty of every true Muslim to bring those nations in the House of War into submission to Islam and government under Sharia Law. Many methods are used in this struggle including emigration, written and verbal argument, economic pressure, and discrimination against and persecution of non-Muslims. These can all be a form of Jihad. The most exalted form of Jihad, however, is military defense or aggression in one form or another, including terrorism. It should also be noted that aggressive Jihad is sometimes termed defensive, because its objective is to rescue people from the depravity of non-Muslim religions and secularism. Islam counts all non-Muslim religion as false and dangerous.

The House of Treaty and the Doctrine of Taqiyyeh

There is a third, transitional domain, however, the House of Treaty. This is the circumstance or period in which Muslims may not have enough power or numbers to show their hand and begin to launch more aggressive forms of Jihad. It is a time for building strength, preparing the believers for Jihad, and for propaganda. According to the Prophet Muhammad’s words, it is permissible to deceive non-Muslims about Islam’s true nature, beliefs, and objectives. This crafty and widespread doctrine of deception is called taqiyyeh and may be found in Sura 16:106 of the Koran.

The Doctrine and Practice of Dhimmitude

Non-Muslims living in Muslim dominated nations are subject to Sharia Law. According to Sharia Law, subjugated or minority peoples are given the choice of conversion to Islam, death, or dhimmitude. Dhimmitude defines the status and special Sharia regulations that “protect” these subjugated non-Muslims. These include paying a special non-Muslim poll tax called the jizra.

The Jizya Tax

Oppression by Taxation

The jizra not only raises funds for Muslims but also has the purpose of humiliating and accentuating the lower status of non-Muslims. The jizra amount has varied but has been so crushing at times that non-Muslims were forced to sell a child into slavery to pay the tax.

The Dhimmi are allowed very few rights or privileges, and religious activities are severely restricted. Their behavior must always be deferential to Muslims, and their lives and welfare depend at all times on the good pleasure of Muslims. Many have converted to Islam rather than bear these nearly impossible conditions. Slavery is also allowed and still practiced in Islam.. Many non-Muslims have fled the Near East. In 1953, about 15% of the population of the Near East was Christian. It is now approximately two percent.

Jihad, deception, and oppressive regulations and special taxes on non-Muslims are not the theology of a small group of fanatics that have distorted the true Islam. The House of Islam, the House of War, dhimmitude, jizra, taqiyyeh, and militant Jihad are all in the mainstream of historical Islam as seen in the Koran and the Hadiths. Furthermore, they are very evident in the history of Islam and its expansion. There have been periods of Muslim history when fervor for these features of mainstream Islamic theology has waxed or waned. Sometimes the pendulum had drifted to less militancy. What we are seeing today and in recent years is a revival of mainstream Islamic theology. Samuel P. Huntington has called this Resurgent Islam, because it is essentially a revival of fundamental Islamic beliefs firmly rooted in the Koran and Sunna. He believes it is partly the result of the Muslim population explosion that is beginning to press upon European nations or nations of predominantly European ancestry whose birth rates have fallen dramatically. The Muslim adherents of Resurgent Islam are according to Huntington typically under 40, well educated, and lower middle class. They are seeking not only identity, but to demonstrate the superiority of their civilization over the West, which they have come to resent. Many in this Resurgent Islam embrace terrorism, even suicidal terrorism, as a means of Jihad.

Suicidal terrorism is more controversial in modern Islam. There is a verse in the Koran that condemns suicide, but this verse seems only to apply to those who commit suicide in despair. Self-sacrifice in the service of Allah is not despair. Quite to the contrary, many view it as the ultimate expression of faith.

There are also verses in the Koran that would seem to condemn the killing of non-combatants, and there are many examples in the Sunna and Muslim history that demonstrate obedience and consideration of this in Muslim warfare. However, this commendable dictum has not always been obeyed. Whole villages of non-Muslims have been slaughtered during the period of expansion, and such incidents continue to this day in the Sudan, Nigeria, and Indonesia. Some Jihadic verses in the Koran are inconsistent enough with this dictum to allow the more strident Jihadists to develop an expanded version of who is a non-combatant. Hence you have some Palestinian Muslims making statements to the effect that there is no such thing as a Jewish non-combatant. This kind of expanded interpretation of the meaning of non-combatants is radical, but tacit approval and sympathy for such interpretations are nevertheless widespread in modern Islam. According to a Hamas spokesman in Egypt, when in early 2002 volunteers for martyrdom in the cause of Allah were called for at the University of Alexandria, over 2,000 responded. Islam is not in its historical and mainstream forms a religion of peace and tolerance. Recent developments have made it even less so. We are dangerously deceiving ourselves to believe otherwise.

However, we must distinguish between mainstream Islamic theology and the actual practice of most Muslims. Many are highly secularized, and most are more cultural than theological in practice. While the old time religion of Islam is making a strong revival and impacting thinking and practice, most Muslims presently embrace a relatively benign life style. They prefer personal peace and prosperity to theology. Still we must realize that with the growing resurgence of fundamentalist Islam, Islamic terrorism finds fertile ground, not just in Arabian Wahhabi radicalism and Egyptian Safist radicalism, but also in mainstream interpretations of the Koran and the teachings and example of Muhammad.

We are not at war with Muslims per se and certainly not at war with Arabs any more than the cold war was a war against the Russian people. It has been rightly said that Muslims are the chief victims of Islam. We must not be so careless, however, as to ignore the nature of mainstream Islam, nor its influence on Muslims in many areas of the world, including the United States.

In 2011, there were already over 2,100 mosques in the United States. This was a 74 percent increase from the slightly over 1,200 counted in 2000. A comprehensive 2011 study by the Center for Security Policy in Washington found that 81 percent of U.S. mosques feature Islamic texts that promote violence. Most of them are operated by Muslim Brotherhood front organizations whose main source of funding has been oil money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Approximately 27% are owned in their entirety by Saudi Arabian front organizations. According to Robert Spencer in Onward Muslim Soldiers, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi Muslim and energetic opponent of radical Islam, told a State Department Forum in 1999 that 80 percent of American mosques were under the control of extremists. He had visited 114 mosques around the country and found that 90 of them were “exposed” to “extreme or radical ideology.” Of course, with the heavy financial influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabian and Qatar oil money, and Wahhabi and Safist clerics from Saudi Arabia and Egypt respectively, why would we expect anything different? In addition, Muslim Brotherhood front organizations using the same financial resources bankroll a considerable public relations effort in the United States with the objective of “correcting American misperceptions of Islam.” In the interest of promoting peace and tolerance, many Christian denominations have naively assisted them in this whitewash of Islam’s true nature. .