History of Jihad Against the Arabs
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How it all began with the Jihad against the Arabs (622-634)
[edit] Introduction
How Islamic Jihad originated 1400 years ago and how the nature and idol-worshipping pre-Muslim Arabs were the first to be traumatized by Islam. The Arabs were the only people who were not given the option of paying Jizyah and remaining non-Muslim, a courtesy that was later extended to all non-Muslims. The only choice for the nature and idol-worshipping pre-Muslim Arabs was between Islam or death. Hence there are no surviving nature and idol-worshipping non-Muslim Arabs today, a point missed by many Arab and Western historians.
[edit] Pre-Islamic Arab Society
The Arabian peninsula can be divided into two contrasting climatic regions. The South along the coast receives regular rainfall and has abundant plant life, while the north consists of an inhospitable desert with few rivers which resulted in its people living lives that were far more isolated than the lives of the southerners. This Southern region is occupied by Sabaeans who developed successful and advanced civilizations, but by the seventh century this region had fallen into disarray.
The North-East is especially inhospitable with little water and little plant life, except for the date palm. It has a barren desert environment with extremes in climate that vary from warm to extremely hot and life is at a subsistence level. Due to its harsh environment this area has been inhabited by Bedouin Arabs who are nomadic pastors that have lived in small tribal groups for most of their history. Further to the West along the coast there existed oases that were occupied by prosperous sedentary Arabs who themselves had once been Bedouins Arabs. Due to the importance of this land, all parts of these oases were possessed by sedentary Arabs thereby forcing the Bedouins Arabs to live in the interior of the peninsula, away from the coasts.
The harsh environment of the Bedouin Arabs has shaped their temperament to be violently hyper-sensitive in their sense of honor, revenge and retribution. Women were dehumanized, and child marriages and female infanticide were common. With life as an on-going struggle against the forces of nature that comprise of desert storms and a bleak and monotonous environment, the mental make-up of the Bedouin Arabs has been shaped by the dictum of kill or be killed, even before Islam was founded.
This has been the psyche of the Bedouin Arabs who inhabited the inner Arabian peninsula. The people who came from the same stock and who lived further north in Mesopotamia had a different geographic and climatic environment. They developed advanced riparian civilizations on the banks of the Farath (Euphrates) and Tigra (Tigris) rivers. The Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations of Hamm-ur-rabi, Assur-bin-ipal and Nabu-chad-nazar, were developed by the same Semitic people who lived in peninsular Arabia. So the temperament of a same ethnic people (the Arabs) could be entirely different, depending on the environment in which they resided.
[edit] Arabian Religions, Mecca, and the Quraysh
One of the most important economic and religious cities in pre-Islamic Arabia was the city of Mecca. Mecca was home to the Ka'bah, a giant cube that was central to pagan worship and which once housed dozens of pagan Gods, the most prominent of which were Allah and his three daughters al-Uzza, al-Lat, and Manat. Mecca's central role in Arabian pagan religion supplied the city with many pilgrims and traders and allowed it to become a prosperous center of trade. The pagan Quraysh tribe was the most prominent and influential tribe in Mecca, and it was to this tribe that Muhammad was born.
Christians and Jews also lived in Arabia. Christians lived around Najran, modern day Yemen, and groups of Christians who had left the Byzantine Empire were scattered around Arabia. The Lakhid kingdom in Norther Arabia and the Ghassanid kingdom in northwestern Arabia were also Christian; and there were powerful and important Jewish tribes in the Khaybar oasis and Yemen. In Medina there were three powerful Jewish tribes: Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah and Banu Qaynuqa.
[edit] Muhammad Comes into the Scene
We are concerned here with the Bedouin Arabs who resided in the Arabian Peninsula. Here our ancestors developed civilization, but only on the coastal fringes, especially in the Southern regions that is today Yemen, and limited settled civilization around the bigger oases of Makkah and Yathrib (later renamed Medina).
Till the 7th century, we did not make any impact on global civilization, till we were united by a charismatic but cruel leader - Muhammad. Muhammad in Arabic means "the praised one", and he is also known as Nabi (Prophet) and Rasul (Messenger). The story of Muhammad is that of a superlative but warped genius who was born in 570 C.E. to ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib and Aminah bint Wahab. Muhammad's father, Abdullah, died almost six months before Muhammad was born and the young boy was brought up by his paternal grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. At the age of six, Muhammad lost his mother Amina and he became fully orphaned.
Muhammad was a genius who combined in himself the role of a military strategist, a psychologist, motivator and commander of men.
[edit] Why Muhammad chose Allah as the only deity in Islam?
His full name was Muhammad ibn Abd-allah which translates as Muhammad the son of Abd-allah. This innocuous statement has deep relevance to Islam and the worship of Allah as the only god. Pre-Islamic Bedouin Arab society was highly matriarchal as is evident from the worship of many goddesses like Allat, Al Uzza, Mannat. But Arab society had strong patriarchal elements too, as evident in the naming tradition according to which every Arab is known by his father’s name, and not his mother’s.
Having lost his father, the posthumous orphan Muhammad wanted to perpetuate his father’s memory. His father’s name Abdallah was conjugated from Abd-Allah which translates as “Slave of Allah”. This is the reason why Muhammad chose Allah among the many pre-Islamic Arab deities to be the only deity to be worshipped by the Muslims. Not many historians have discerned this fact why it was Allah who became the centerpiece of Islam and not any other pre-Islamic Arab male deity like Bēl, Bēl-Šamīn, Abgal, Aglibol, Wadd, and Yaghūth (the last two are in fact referred to in the Qur'an (71:23) as gods of the era of the Prophet Noah).
Even Baal (alternatively known as Hubal) who in fact was the most important deity in pre-Islamic Mecca, found no place in Islam. Only Allah survived in Muhammad’s Islam. So Allah did not choose Muhammad, it was the other way round. Muhammad chose Allah. Allah was chosen by Muhammad as his father was named after Allah! Some historians identify Hubal and Allah to be the same deity. But, to the best of our knowledge, no historians have discerned this fact why it was Allah who became the centerpiece of Islam.
[edit] Muhammad’s Epileptic Fits
With a harsh childhood in which he lost both his parents, Muhammad grew to manhood earlier in life than most kids his age. But the hardships that accompanied his growth from childhood to adolescence also made him an epileptic. His epileptic fits were to play a pivotal role in his later life by creating hallucinations that led him to believe that there was an angel that was conveying the words of Allah to him.
There is an occurrence in Muhammad’s life that is eloquent on this issue of his mental illness. When Muhammad was around four years of age, he and his foster brother were playing among the cattle, close to the encampment. Suddenly, the foster brother came running to Halima, his nurse, and said that Muhammad was sick. When they and his foster father went out, they found a young Muhammad behind the bushes with his clothes turned up. They "questioned him, and he said, 'Two men dressed in white garments came to me, who threw me down, opened my abdomen and searched in it for I know not what.' We returned with him to our tent, and his foster father said to me, '0 Halima! I fear something has happened to the boy. Carry him to his family ere the injury becomes apparent!'"[1] Muhammad's foster brother's account was that "two men dressed in white garments have taken hold of my brother, and have thrown him on the ground. They ripped open his belly, and are squeezing him." It is possible that Muhammad had been sexually assaulted; however, much later a legend was created partially by Muhammad himself that two angels in grey robes came to him and one angle split his chest open and took out the heart and removed a dark clot and then when they weighed him the whole universe weighed less than Muhammad.
The possibility that he was sexually assaulted in his childhood seems to have made him a bitter person and could have accentuated his mental illness, but in spite of this he showed an uncanny ability to manipulate and get the results that he wanted. In most probabilities, his mental illness could have been a wild form of paranoid schizophrenia.
In his later life, during his 'revelations' he was said to have groaned like a she-camel having a baby, which by the way is not a pleasant sound. He had directed his followers to cover him up with a black blanket whenever he suffered his epileptic fits and that is why he carried this black blanket with him at all times. This narration is the kernel of historical truth that has come down through ages of the Arab-Muslim folklore that grew around him.
In his early life the hardships that were bestowed on him by circumstances coupled with the misfortune of being an epileptic made him a fiercely determined man and he nurtured within himself a burning desire to be a leader of men. The caravan journeys that began early in his life gave him an insight into the psychological make-up of the society that he lived in.
[edit] Muhammad's membership to the Quraish clan
His personal misfortune in this kind of a harsh environment had made him bitter since childhood. But this personal misfortune, was set off against his being born into the clan that ruled the pilgrimage town Mecca, where all the Arab tribes came once a year in a ritual called Hajj that centered around an object of worship called the Kaaba, which is literally a cube. His being a member of the Quraish was his first stepping stone to leadership.
The Kaaba is actually a meteorite that fascinated the ancient tribal Arabs who were awe-struck by its flaming rush from the skies to land at Mecca. Since that day a legend grew around it that is reflected in the various versions of the Books of Semitic peoples that are known as the Tureth or Torah (the Old Testament of the Bible), the Bible (the New Testament) and the Quran. The word Quran itself is derived from the Arabic root word Qurrah which means to collect, implying that Muhammad collected the content of the Quran from other sources, viz., the Old Testament of the Jews, the New Testament of the Christians.
To this content Muhammad added the bloodcurdling verses that call for slaying idolaters and in order to give legitimacy to his Quran, Muhammad floated the fiction that the text came from a god (Allah). As a consequence, no man could change the words that had been sent down by Allah.
[edit] Muhammad Grabs a Leadership Role
Muhammad being a member of the Quraish clan, which was in charge of the Kaaba, belonged to a privileged clan, but he did not hold a position of distinction within the clan. The turning event of his life was in the year 610 C.E. when during a dispute within his clan about who would be in charge of the annual repairs to the Kaaba, the clan members decided that the person who at that time walks into the Kaaba first would be in charge of the repairs.
And it so happened that Muhammad came to know of this condition, and he realized that this was his opportunity to thrust himself on a higher pedestal. The next morning, when the Meccans had gathered to see who would be the first to walk towards the Kabba, out came Muhammad walking nonchalantly towards the holiest object of the Quraish of Mecca.
Little did the Quraish realize that the person who was walking towards the Kaaba was not the chosen one, but rather one who who by this petty but powerful act grabbed unto himself an exalted position of being in charge of repairs to the Kaaba, and consequently paved the way for himself to elevate his own position in the eyes of the Meccans. Thus Muhammad grabbed a leadership role, igniting his innate desire to be a leader of men.
This act of Muhammad was to start a trail to bloodshed through Arabia, Persia, Byzantine, Egypt, North Africa, India, Spain, France, Balkans, America and many other lands. And this trail continues to this day.
Till that point in time, Muhammad was any other Arab, any other Bedouin, any other Quraish tribal. But from the moment that he stepped into the Kaaba his stature changed in the eyes of his compatriots, and most importantly, it changed in his own eyes. He began believing that he had to fulfill a mission, an extraordinary mission. His delusion was nurtured by his being an epileptic and he hallucinated that he was in direct communication with an angel who was giving him Allah's messages. He began to rationalize his ideas about his personal grandeur by telling people that god had chosen him as his messenger; his claims were met with ridicule.
[edit] Muhammad's Early Hallucination
Muhammad’s epileptic fits now began to play a pivotal role in making him hallucinate that he was in communion with some god, and his innate ambition to be a leader of men had been fueled by his having managed to be chosen to undertake repairs to the Kaaba. An ambition that he consciously and deliberately nurtured by fibbing that a God was communicating to him during his epileptic fits through the angel Jibril (the Bedouin word for the angel Gabriel) and that this God commanded him to be the leader of all men by asking for their submission. The concept of submission was so overriding, that the faith he founded was also named Submission or in Arabic Islam.
[edit] Islam - The religion of Submission, not Peace
Islam is not a religion of “Peace”, it is a religion of “Submission” to the Muslims. The canard that Islam means “peace”, is a misconception deliberately created by Muslim-apologists to pull wool over the eyes of innocuous Westerners and other non-Muslims. While actually the word Islam comes from and Arabic term for “losing oneself” “submitting” or “surrendering” to the will (of Muhammad). So please, in spite of what Muslims will tell you, do not be deceived by claims that Islam means peace. Islam means “submission”.
The Arabic word for peace is Salam, derived from the same Hebrew word Shalom which also means peace. But “Islam” and “Salam” are two incongruous words that share no common ground either in name or in substance.
We need to know that the root word of Islam is "al-silm" which means "submission" or "surrender." It is not derived from the word “Salam” which means peace, as Muslims will have you believe.
The Quran states: "Oh you who believe, Come, all of you, into submission." (al-Baqara 208). The word “al-silm” in the Arabic original of this verse refers to Islam.
So Islam means "submission to a god" which in the Islamic context meant surrender to Muhammad as long as he lived, and after he was poisoned to death, Islam has meant that we non-Muslims surrender to the Muslims by accepting Islam and along with Islam all of us accept their archaic attitudes, the Arabic language, their hirsute habits of growing beards, their dress code of wearing caps and turbans, long gowns and covering women in the Hijab, polygamy, etc.
We need to realize how effortlessly we are led up the garden path by Muslims, to embrace and spout their bluff that “Islam is a religion of peace”.
[edit] Muhammad’s self-delusion is evident in the first phrase in Islam
His self delusion was evident in the first sentence that he preached "La ilah ilallah, Muhammad ur Rasulallah" "There is no god, but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet."
This way he removed any competition to himself from any other concept of god. He borrowed his idea of God from the main God of the Quraish - Allah, whose image was one of the many that were being worshiped at the Kaaba. But with this first statement, Muhammad also placed himself on a pedestal, that was unique. He made himself the prophet of god and the last prophet at that, so he brooked no competition ever after.
This kind of a flagrant egoism, earned him many detractors. And when he started preaching that all gods other than Allah were false gods, the Meccans panicked. Since the existence of these many gods brought people to Mecca on pilgrimage and earned the Meccans good money. The aristocracy of the Quraish tribe, saw a grave threat to their own position as intercessors between the lay Arabs and the gods in the Kaaba, as with Muhammad's proclamation, it was he alone who was to be recognized as a prophet and intercessor.
[edit] Muhammad - A Part of Muslim Mens' Names
Muhammad has been made immortal and omnipresent by his followers have his name Muhammad as part of their name too. So today we find names like Muhammad Atta, Muhammad Bin Laden, Muhammad Khatami, Muhammad Ali and so on. It is for this reason, that his followers have been termed “Muhammadans” – the followers of Muhammad, although they do not like this appellation.
[edit] Sunnah - Emulating Muhammad's behavior in all respects
In Mecca, Muhammad got the support of his powerful uncle Abu Talib, who never embraced Islam and remained an idolater all his life till his death in 620, but he stoutly defended his nephew Mohammed and his rants against the gods of the Quraish of Mecca. Apart from having his name as a part of theirs, Muslims also are paranoid about each and every one of them being a clone of Muhammad. The ritual of emulating Muhammad in everything is called the Sunnah (or Sunnat). Emulating their founder's traits are for all Muslims an act of faith. So much for individual liberty in Islam.
[edit] Islam’s Abrahamic heritage
Muhammad desperately tried to increase his following and he used threats and subterfuge to convert people. He initially targeted his message towards his relatives who were near to him and who could be easily fall for his pernicious plot. His first convert was his wife Khadija who was followed by his slave Zaid. But even in his family circle, he encountered resistance.
Before her conversion to Islam, Khadija incidentally had been a Christian, and it was she who introduced the illiterate Muhammad to the biblical stories of Abraham, Issac, Sarah, Hagar, Ismael, Moses, etc. This is how Muhammad incorporated a bastardized version of the Bible in his compilation that he called the Quran (from the Arabic word ‘Qurrah’ – to collect). The pre-Islamic pagan Arabs, knew little about the Bible or the Torah. The only link that most of them had with the Jews was the Arabic language that belonged to the Semitic family. Pre-Islamic Arab lore and poetry had no references to Moses, Solomon, Abraham. This, Islam owes to Muhammad’s formerly-Christian wife – Khajida.
His trusted cousin, who later also became his son-in-law, Ali (Abu Talib’s son) was honor bound to defend Muhammad’s life, but he too initially resisted Muhammad’s coercion to give up the worship of the gods of the Kaaba and to embrace Islam. His father Abu Talib forbade him to embrace Islam, as he himself never did till his death. But both of them as they were close relatives of Muhammad, were honor bound to defend Muhammad and prevent the Meccans from harming him.
After Abu Talib died in 620, Muhammad blackmailed Ali by saying that he could not intercede with Allah on behalf of Abu Talib, since he had not given up the worship of the gods of the Kaaba and so Abu Talib was now burning in Hell (Jahannum).
Ali who was then grieving from the loss of his father was emotionally weak as his resistance to Muhammad gradually broke during this emotionally weak phase. He finally fell prey to Muhammad’s blackmail and sought refuge in Muhammad. This was how Muhammad got his first major youthful convert. Ali was then a strong and brave teenager who was to play a major role in the attacks that Muhammad was to launch on the Meccans and later in the Muslim invasions of Persia and Byzantine.
[edit] The Hijra - Flight to Medina
The Meccan Quraish aristocracy, looked upon this as a direct threat to their position and their opposition to Islam increased. This led to the second seminal event in Muhammad's life, his evening flight from Mecca (called migration or Hijra in Arabic) to Yathrib (later renamed Medina by Mohammed ) where lived the rivals of the Meccans. This took place in 622 C.E. (which marks the beginning of the Hejira or Hijra era of the Muslims). In Medina lived two comminutes, the pagan polytheistic Arabs and the Jews. The two communities were often on the warpath and there were innumerable battles between them. We need to note that the Jews were (and are) also of the same ethnic stock as the pre-Islamic Arab tribes. The Arabs were more numerous, but the Jews by virtue of being traders were more prosperous and better organized, they also had built fortresses within and around Medina to defend themselves during their internecine fights with the pre-Islamic Arab tribes around Yathrib (Medina).
In these many battles the Jews were normally victorious against the Arabs. And they used to boast that they would one day wipe out the Arabs when the prophet of god would appear among them.
[edit] The Arabs of Medina embraced Islam
Now at Medina, the people knew that Muhammad had been declaring himself to be the prophet of God, and he was on his way to Medina. The Arabs of Medina decided to outwit the Jews by becoming his followers and seek his help in defeating the Jews, before the Jews could get to him. This is why the Arabs of Medina (Yathrib) welcomed Muhammad, in whom they saw an opportunity to break the monopoly of the Jews as also get back at their other rivals the Meccans. It was this that made them sympathetic to him. The Muslims of today would have you believe that they were impressed by his message of worshipping one god, who's sole prophet he claimed to be. This is untrue.
The Arabs of Medina cared little for what Muhammad preached to elevate himself as a leader of the Arabs. Abdullah-ibn-ubay, the leader of Medina displayed contempt for Muhammad openly and for this was looked upon with disfavor by Muhammad. But he was powerless to act against Adullah-ibn-ubay at that time, but both continued to be rivals for a long time, till Muhammad eclipsed Ubay. Muhammad compelled Ubay to embrace Islam and then declared that Ubay was a Munafqin (hypocrite) or one who had become a Muslim for Munafa (personal gain). In fact all of Muhammad’s followers were in Islam for Munafa, since his promise of plunder and allowance to rape captive women of the enemy was what had attracted all the criminals among the Arabs to join Islam.
At his core, Muhammad was nothing more than a power grabber, who slyly used religion to promote himself. And the people of Mecca as well as those of Medina saw through that. It was only that the people of Medina, saw in him a tool to get back at the Jews and the Quraish of Mecca, so some of them decided to prop him up. He had many opponents among the Arabs of Medina too. Prominent among them were the poets, whom Muhammad got murdered to silence their opposition to his schemes.
[edit] Muhammad begins his Ghazawats (raids) on Meccan caravans
So we see how his following from among the people of Medina, was thus a political ploy of Medina, against Mecca, to add grist to the mill of an already existent rivalry. There was no lofty reason for which Muhammad got his first converts in Medina (Yathrib). Immediately on getting a following among a people who looked upon Mecca as a rival, Muhammad organized them to take his first revenge on the Meccans, and he started regularly raiding the caravans of the Meccans that passed by Medina. He organized 64 such raids from 622 to 630, of which he personally led 27 raids. These raids were called Ghazawats or Razzias.
[edit] The Battle of Badr (2 A.H., 624 C.E.)
The Meccans finally got fed up of Muhammad's antics and attacked him in Medina. This led to the first major battle in Muhammad's life - the battle of Badr. In this battle, he realized that the far stronger Meccan army could only be defeated by guile. He ordered all the water springs outside Medina, to be sanded-up, so that the attacking Meccans would be without any sustenance. Now this would have been a legitimate tactic in war, but coming from a messenger of God to contrive to starve people of his own clan of water in order to defeat, betrayed Muhammad's ruthless mentality which showed that he was far from anything saintly.
The Meccans decided to outwit Muhammad and attack Medina during a cloudburst, to obviate the need for water. But the heavily armored Meccan army got trapped in the slushy sands outside Medina and they were thrown in disarray with camels falling over each other in total disorder unable to meet the infantry charges of the Muhammad's highly motivated followers.
Muhammad had instructed his followers not to take prisoners and all the Meccans who fell off their camels were instantly beheaded. The carnage that followed led to a complete rout of the Meccans and the victory of a man whose followers were to carry forward this bloodied legacy across continents, slaughtering millions of people (“Strike of the heads of the non-believers” is the mentality Muhammad instilled into his followers. And this commandment found its way into the Quran whose word is followed by Zarqawi and Al Qaeda even today).
The defeat at Badr stunned the Meccans into disbelief and there was despondency and mourning amongst the populace. They foresaw worse things to come.
[edit] Lust for booty and slaves, spurred the followers of Muhammad
Muhammad spurred his followers with lust for booty and sex slaves. The captured womenfolk were distributed by Muhammad amongst his followers and so was the booty distributed. Thus his followers had greed and lust to motivate them, while the Quraish were fighting a defensive war to protect their caravans from Muhammad's predatory raids.
Muhammad also drilled into his followers the fantasy that if they died, they would reach heaven (Jann'at) where they would be served upon by 72 virgins (Houris) and pearly eyed boys. The motivation of the Quraish was to defend their business and way of life. In this struggle, Muhammad with his promise of booty and slaves along with the fantasy of landing in heaven with its 72 virgins for those who died, was able to ensure that his followers became insanely paranoid in battle.
They had everything to gain, and nothing to lose. While the Quraish were businessmen, fighting to get rid of a menace to their way of life. This difference in the motivation levels led to the defeat of the Quraish and to successive defeats of the many non-Muslim armies that opposed the Muslims first through Asia, then through Africa and finally through Europe. We Americans would do well to remember this today as we fight the War on Terror (Islam).
[edit] Lessons about the Muslim psyche that the Battle of Badr tell us
Badr was the first battle where the paranoid Muslims showed feats of desperate foolhardiness, that paid off and stunned the opposing forces. This was to repeat itself many a time through the course of Muslim history, thus building a false fantasy that Allah was aiding the Muslims. What was aiding them, was not Allah, but in fact it was their lust and greed. Muhammad had worked his followers into a frenzy and as a hungry man knows no law, these people would stoop to any level to defeat an enemy. The world has not yet learnt this fountainhead of Muslim psychology, so cleverly built by the founding father of Islamic terrorism - Muhammad -ibn-Abadallah.
We know that every civilization and culture has built a penal code. Similarly, Muhammad also devised a penal code in such a way that if a Muslim did anything against Islam, he was a Murtad (Apostate) and apostasy had only one punishment in Islam - death. So Islam was, and still is, a one way dead-end street, while you can enter it, there is no safe way out.
[edit] Islam absolves all Muslim crimes committed while fighting non-Muslims
Islamic theology absolved all crimes if they were committed while fighting non-Muslims
One of the cardinal principles of Islam is that when a Muslim commits any foul and heinous deed in order to bring victory to Muslims, Islamic law forgives all those deeds in the name of Muslims waging a Jihad against the Non-Muslims (Kafirs). Muhammad preached contempt for all non-Muslim and told his followers that the non-Muslims were living in ignorance (Jahiliyaa) and that he would lead his followers to enlightenment (Ailm or ilm). This enlightenment forgave all acts of rape, murder, torture, as long as they were committed against the non-Muslims (Kafirs).
In all of Islam's existence of 1400 years very few have been able to recognize this heinous nature of Islam. Today those who are fighting Islam need to get an understanding of what they are up against.
[edit] What the Jihad Signifies
The battle of Badr marked the beginning of the Islamic terror of Jihad. The Jihad was on, and on in earnest. Muhammad gave this name Jihad (from Jahada which in Arabic means struggle) to his war campaign. In reality it was not a struggle, it was in fact genocide against all humanity - since at that time except for the small number of people at Medina led by Muhammad, everyone else was non-Muslim. This defeat of the Meccans in 624, was also the first victory for the forces of Muhammad.
[edit] Lessons from the Battle of Badr
In this battle Muhammad ordered for the water springs to be sanded up in this very first battle. This shows that he would stoop to any level to win a war. This is more appalling, as Muhammad masqueraded as a spiritual person, as a prophet of God. If any military commander like Alexander of Hannibal had used this tactic, it would been looked upon as a legitimate one to secure victory. But for a person who claimed to be the final prophet of God to do this is beyond words. This ruthless mentality is still present within Islam today.
[edit] The beginning of the Jihad and why Allah has no form
Muhammad’s genius was also seen in his decision of saying that Allah has no form. There was no lofty or abstract reason for this. This was purely a military tactic. With the Muslim object of worship having no form or shape, while his followers could go about destroying idols and icons of non-Muslims, the Muslims presented no object to a victorious army to desecrate and destroy, since the Muslim fantasy of Allah has no form and was not to be found anywhere, except in the minds of Muslims.
This was a psychological boost to the Muslims who could not be humiliated, in the way they humiliated others. This was the kind of humiliation which the pre-Muslim Quraish were to learn in a few years when Muhammad captured Mecca.
[edit] The Battle of Uhud (3 A.H., 625 C.E.)
The Battle of the Uhud hill was an extension of the Battle of Badr. The Quraish who were frustrated at Muhammad's continuing assaults on the Caravans, re-organized their forces and attacked Medina once again.
After the defeat at Badr, the Quraish gathered a bigger forces comprising of all able-bodied Quraish men and attacked Muhammad and his followers that was hold up in Medina. This battle took place at a hillock named Uhud near Madina.
In this war Muhammad again promised victory to his followers and told them that as in the Battle of Badr, they would get to plunder the attacking Quraish, who always went to war well stocked with Tents, Carpets, and Cooking Utensils. But this lust for plunder was to make Muhammad taste a military defeat for the first time.
Muhammad had placed a group of archers on the hillock to surprise the attacking Quraish army, while the main portion of the Muhammad’s army would engage the Quraish in the ravine below. It so happened that the Muslim archers who were fighting from an elevation could force the Quraish to retreat. As the Quraish retreated, leaving behind their tents, cooking pots, carpets, the main part of the Muslim army which was facing the Quraish, paused the fighting to collect this plunder left behind by the retreating Quriash. On seeing their comrades helping themselves to the abandoned wealth of the Quriash, the archers left their position on the hillock and came down to share in the spoils of war.
On seeing that the attack of arrows had stopped, the Quraish re-grouped and attacked the Muslims who were by now busy looting the abandoned Quraish Camp. This led to a massacre of the Muslims, and Muhammad himself was hurt by an attack from Khalid-ibn-Walid, the brave Quraish general (who was later to convert to Islam and lend his bravery to the march of Islam).
This way the Battle of the Uhud hill ended in defeat for Muhammad due to the lust of his followers for plunder. Muhammad had to save himself by retreating into the fortified town of Madina. So much for the divine help that Allah renders the Muslims in warfare.
[edit] Lessons from the Battle of Uhud
The first Muslim converts were those hardened criminals who wanted to loot a harried and defeated enemy. So the level of morality among the early Muslims (as also among many of today’s Muslims) was quite low. Their war discipline was pathetic. After all many of them were there to plunder and rape.
The fact that greed could get the better of the Muslims was the lesson for Muhammad from the Battle of Uhud. Henceforth, he made violation of discipline and retreat from a battle an offense punishable with death. A tradition carried by Muslims till today. This shows the ruthlessness of Muhammad, who would be merciless with his own followers if they failed in the objective of defeating an enemy. This coercion played no small role in the successive victories the Muslims had.
[edit] Brave pre-Muslim Arab warriors convert to Islam
How brave pre-Muslim Arab warriors like Khalid-ibn-Walid converted to Islam to continue their careers on the battlefield.
There is another lesson to be learnt from the Battle of Uhud. At Uhud, the Quraish were led by Khalid-ibn-Walid, who was an inveterate foe of Muhammad in those days and he almost had killed Muhammad at the Battle Uhud. But after Muhammad made the Quraish weaker and finally overran Mecca, Khalid saw that he could express his ferocity only if he combined it with the malice and guile of Muhammad and so to continue his military career, he converted to Islam. After his conversion Khalid-ibn-Walid became a very fearsome Muslim general who led the Muslims to victory in the battle of Al Yarmuk against the Byzantines in 12 A.H. (636 C.E.).
Khalid’s conversion and later success itself tells a tale that in the psychology of the Arabs, only if the powerful are also the successful and dangerous, they are respected. Khalid need not have converted to Islam, had he killed Muhammad at the battle of the Uhud hill or had defeated him subsequently at Mecca. But as Khalid could not defeat Muhammad, he decided that the best way to ensure success for himself was to join the Muslims. Before his conversion, Khalid was ferocious like all Arabs, after his conversion, he became malicious too.
Khalid-ibn-Walid’s conversion to Islam has another lesson for those who fight the Muslims, that many Muslims only understand and respect, strength and cruelty. They treat magnanimity, charity and nobleness with contempt.'
[edit] The Battle of the Trench (or Ditch)
In the following year the Quraish built and alliance of different Arab tribes to fight the Muslims holed up in Medina. They enrolled the help of many tribes, among them were the Banu Ghaftan. This confederacy of tribes, attacked Medina with a huge army. This time the tactic used by Muhammad was to dig a ditch or a trench around the city of Medina. He did this on the suggestion of Salman Farsi (a follower of his who had returned from Persia). This Salman was an Arab who originally lived in Persia and who had been banished by the Persian emperor for his heretical ideas and the crime of fomenting rebellion against the Persian Empire. To avenge his insult, Salman, returned to his homeland Arabia and played a major role in instigating Muhammad to form an army to attack Persia.
Muslim sources would want you to believe that this Salman came to Arabia to seek spiritual solace in Muhammad. Nothing could be further from the truth. Salman knew that the Persians had this practice of having defensive trenches and moats dug around cities. But the Arabs were unaware of this practice as their battles generally involved attacking and defending passing caravans, and rarely against the few cities that existed in Arabia at that time. And in attacking a moving target like passing caravans, static defenses like moats and trenches played no role.
So when the Quraish confederacy approached Medina, they were confused by the Trench, and they settled for a long siege. Now Muhammad used his third trick of applying pressure selectively on the confederate army and promising the different confederates with friendship if they embraced Islam. Incidentally he did not tell them then that the punishment for anyone leaving Islam was death. An ex-Muslim was a Murtad and had to be killed. At the Battle of the Trench, in the beginning Muhammad's overtures were initially met with scorn. But as the battle became a long drawn one, with the weather turning inclement with sandstorms, hail and rain, some of the confederates decided to withdraw from battle after accepting Islam as a pretext for withdrawing from the battle.
The Quraish had not made the acceptance of Islam a punishable offense, the way Muhammad had ordained death for those leaving Islam. The first of the confederate tribe to fall for Muhammad’s ruse was that of the Banu Ghaftan. After this one by one of the confederates withdrew from the alliance by offering the pretext of embracing Islam.
Finally the Quraish decided that the siege could not continue and lifted it to retreat to Mecca. After the Quraish lifted the siege, Muhammad waylaid those poets and balladeers in Madina who had formally declared themselves to be Muhammad’s followers (and had converted to his creed of Islam), but whom he had suspected of having secretly pledged their loyalty to the attacking Quraish. He ordered that they should be assassinated.
Mind you, these poets were not combatants, they were balladeers, who loved the freedom of worship of the pre-Islamic Arab society, and they decried Muhammad’s tyranny through their poems and ballads. That was enough for Muhammad to order their assassination. And they had to die not in battle, and not because they had picked up arms against Muhammad, but because of his plot to murder them when they least suspected that they would be done to death. The Islamic tradition to putting Murtads (apostates) to death had begun.
[edit] Battle of Mu’tah
Emboldened by the victory at the battle of the Trench, Muhammad began casting his eyes on the rich empires to the north of Arabia, whose prosperous cities he had visited when he was working with Khadija’s (his rich first wife) caravans before 610. Since then Muhammad had always coveted the wealth of Byzantine Syria and Sassanian Persia. He now saw his chance to intimate the kings of these empires so Muhammad sent a Daawat-ul-Islam (ultimatum’s to embrace Islam) to the Roman and Persian Emperors. He sent out an invitation which asked them to find refuge in Islam “Embrace Islam and you will be safe”, these were the exact words which Muhammad addressed to Heracleus, the Byzantine Emperor and Chroses (Khusrav Pervez, or Khusro, called Kisra by the Arabs), the Sassanian Emperor. (This Muslim tradition has not changed. Even today, President Bush is ordered by Zarqawi to embrace Islam and seek refuge to find peace.)
But in the 7th century, both the Persian and the Byzantine emperors were stunned by this affront, and not realizing the kind of menace this invitation represented, both reacted with indifference and hostility. The messengers sent by Muhammad were so arrogant, that Khusro, the Sassanid Persian emperor, exclaimed to them that had you not been ambassadors, I would have sent back your severed head to Muhammad.
Heracleus, the Byzantine emperor, himself did not react with hostility, but a vassal of his Harith, the Governor of Syria, punished one of Muhammad’s messengers by attacking him for having delivered such an insulting message to his Emperor. This was reason enough for Muhammad to declare that it was now the duty of the Muslims to attack the Roman Empire. According to the Byzantines, the actual reason for Muhammad’s expedition was attributed to his desire to convert the Arabs living to the east of Jordan to Islam. According to Theophanes, the Muslim army intended to attack the local Arabs on a feast day (the word that Theophanes used most likely indicates a pagan rather than a Christian holiday).
[edit] Battle of Mu’tah with the Roman Empire in 7 A.H. (629 C.E.)
Muhammad made his personal slave and one of the earliest converts to Islam, Zaid, the leader of this expedition. He gave him an army of 30,000 and also deputed another named Jaffar to accompany Zaid as the leader of the army. Muhammad wanted to win this battle so desperately that he decided in advance that there was to be no retreat, and if Zaid was killed, Jaffar would lead the Army, and if Jaffar was killed, Khalid-ibn-walid was to lead the army. Muhammad was desperate for a spectacular victory, since Mecca still lay unsubdued in the South and the Quraish had started to make overtures to the Persians and Romans to help them defeat Muhammad. So he had to nip these efforts in the bud, by defeating one of the prospective allies of the Quraish.
He also asked Umar, to accompany the army. Later, Umar was to lead the Muslims, as their Khalifa (Caliph) after Muhammad was poisoned by one of his victims and after Muhammad’s successor and father-in-law Abba (Abu) Bakr died leading the Muslims for four years. Incidentally, Umar in turn was murdered by Utman, his successor. But here at the battle of Mu’ta, the disciplined Roman legions and phalanxes caught the Arab Muslim hordes in an impossible position and the result was a massacre of the Arab Muslims.
According to most accounts Muhammad dispatched the troops to the area in Jumada al-awwal of the year 8 A.H. (629 C.E.). Suhrabil, however is reported to have gained word of the expedition and prepared his forces and sent to the Byzantines for aid. Muslim historians reported that the Byzantine emperor Heraclius himself had gathered an army and arrived to camp at Moab where they met up with their Arab allies, while others relate that it was rather his brother Theodorus who did this. In the six days of the battle, all three Muslim leaders fell one after the other as they took command of the force: first, Zayd ibn Haritha who was pierced by a spear, then Jafar ibn Abi Talib, and then Abdullah ibn Rawaha. When Umar faced the phalanxes, he chose to retreat into the desert. After the death of Abdullah ibn Rawaha, the troops asked Thabit ibn Arkan to assume command; however, he declined and offered Khalid ibn al-Walid to take the lead. By the time that Khalid ibn al-Walid took command the ranks were already broken and the Romans were in full pursuit of the Muslims and were devastating them. Khalid-ibn-Walid who was then a new convert tried to rally the Muslims and promised a rich booty. Al-Walid, seeing that it was meaningless to remain in Mu'tah decided to prepare a withdrawal. He continued to engage the Byzantines in skirmishes and avoid pitched battle. He rearranged his troop deployments one night by reshuffling the right and left flanks, as well as bringing forward a division from the rear and made new banners for the army. His intention was to convey to the Byzantines the impression that reinforcements had arrived from Medina. He also positioned the Muslim cavalry behind a hill, and ordered them to advance to the Muslim army the following morning while raising as much desert sand as they could, creating the impression that further reinforcements were arriving. The Byzantines disengaged from the conflict the following morning and the Muslim forces broke ranks and retreated to Medina. When the Muslims force arrived at Medina, they were berated for withdrawing and accused of fleeing. Salamah ibn Hisham is reported to have avoided even going to the mosque to avoid taunts.
Thus ended the first encounter of the Muslims with the Roman legions. The Arabic word Rumi (for Roman) is still a term of derision used by the Arabs to refer to Westerners.
[edit] Missed Opportunites
The cardinal folly of the Romans after their victory at Mu’ta in 629, was preceded by the Quraish after their victory over the Muslims at the battle of Uhud in 625, and was repeated by the Zoroastrian Persians after their victory over the Muslims at the Battle of the Bridge (Al Jisr) in 636, by the Franks after the battle of Tours in 732, by the Hindus after the Battle of Tarain in 1191, by the Mongols after the Battle of Baghdad in 1258, by the Europeans at the battle of Vienna in 1683 and by many others through the fourteen hundred years of Muslim depredations against humankind. After all these defeats, the Muslims came back to vanquish all these victors, causing manifold suffering death and destruction.
The Persians and the Byzantines (Romans) also did not have the vision and foresight to realize the kind of mortal threat both of them faced in the Muslims (As neither do the Americans the Russians, the Brits, the Aussies, the French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Chinese, the Indians, or the Israelis have today – history is being repeated ad nauseam).
In the 7th century, the Romans and the Persians did not unite nor did they help out each other against the Muslims and went down fighting individually against Islam. Had they realized the kind of threat that Islam represented and had they paid heed to the repeated appeals by the pre-Muslim Quraish to the kings of Abyssinia, Persia and Byzantium, the history of the world would have been far less bloody.
It was only the later Christians who belatedly realized the mortal nature of combat with the Muslims and gave a fitting reply to the them at Poitiers (Tours) in 732 and at Vienna in 1683.
We hope the Americans, Russians, Germans, French, Spanish, Chinese, Indians, British, Israelis of today, all realize the gravity and seriousness of the Muslim threat to civilization and they sink their differences to come together.
[edit] The Battle with the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraizah
After losing the battle of Mu’ta with the Romans, Muhammad returned to his familiar quarry, the nature-worshipping Quraish and their allies the Jewish tribes. So after the Battle of the Trench, Muhammad turned on his favorite enemy the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraizah. He had in the inception of his claims to being a prophet, has tried to court favor with the Jews by telling them that he had accepted Moses and Abraham as earlier prophets, he being the last one. He also asked the Kiblah (direction of prayer) to be in the direction of Jerusalem. Later when the Jews refused to accept him as a prophet, he changed this direction from Jerusalem to Mecca (after the conquest of Mecca) and then added Jesus as the recognized apostles of Allah. He had shrewdly till then, to win favor from the Jews, not included Jesus, whom the Jews did not accept.
As the Jews kept resisting his claim as a prophet, he decided to teach them a lesson. He started with the richest of the Jewish tribes the Banu Quraizah who had earlier promised to help Muhammad if the Quraish attacked him. But they gave only half hearted help during the three battles at Badr, Uhud and Trench, so now Muhammad wanted his revenge on the Jews.
He decreed that the Jews had violated the terms of their agreement with the Muslims, and were guilty of high treason they could no longer be allowed to live in Medina. They were ordered to lay down arms and migrate elsewhere. The Jews ridiculed the proposal. So Muhammad besieged their citadel. The siege lasted for twenty-five days. On the last day, Ali carried the citadel by assault. All the Jews were taken captive. Muhammad’s verdict was that all male adults of the Banu Quraizah should be killed, their women and children should be sold off as slaves and their property distributed among the Muslims. The Jews were then hacked to death, their heads were sawn off and the heads were piled before Mohammed.
[edit] Lessons from the Battle with the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraizah
Here Muhammad’s ruthless nature became evident. He exulted in the mass murder of the Jews and told his followers that appropriating the property and the women of the Jews was a legitimate booty for the Muslims. This was the practice the Muslims carry with them to this day, and any non-Muslim unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the Muslims is beaten to death, as happened with the IDF soldiers of the Israeli army who were lynched at the beginning of the second Intifada of the Palestinians.
[edit] Muhammad's guile in the Treaty of Hudaibiya
After the battle of the Trench in 5 A.H. (627 C.E.), the Quraish did not give battle to the first Muslims that surrounded Muhammad at Medina. So Muhammad decided that it was time for him to launch a Jihad against the Quraish. He disguised his aggression of Mecca as a Hajj (a pre-Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca), that he wanted to perform in the season in the year 6 A.H. (628 C.E.). When he and his band of one thousand followers arrived at Hudaibiya near Mecca after taking an out of the way route, so as to evade being spotted by the Quraish. On seeing Muhammad and his followers at the gates of Mecca, the Quraish got the shock of their lives.
Muhammad, wanting to storm the holiest of holy sites of the (pre-Muslim) Arabs, on the pretext of Hajj. They sent an emissary (Urwa ibn Masud, who was the son-in law of Abu Sufyan, the leader of the Quraish) to Muhammad, asking him to desist from entering Mecca. This emissary went back and reported to the Quraish that Muhammad and his followers were in a rage and would invade Mecca, if they were not allowed into the town. Urwa reported that they were fanatically committed to Muhammad, such that they do not let the water in which he bathes fall on the ground. They collect that water and venerate it. When he cuts his hair they collect his hair and treasure it (in fact strands of Muhammad alleged hair are worshipped - one instance is the Hazratbal Masjid in Indian Administered Kashmir). The Quraish were despondent when their emissary returned to Mecca with these tidings.
Meanwhile Muhammad sent into Mecca for reconnaissance, one of his men named Othman to check the defenses of Mecca. Othman also met the Quraish leaders to negotiate an entry for the Muslims and Muhammad into Mecca, but they adopted delaying tactics. When Othman took long to come, a rumor got current in the Muslim camp that Othman had been killed by the Quraish. Thereupon all the Muslims took the pledge that they would fight against the Quraish to seek revenge for the murder of Othman. When the Muslims were poised to take up arms and attack Mecca, Othman returned to the Muslim camp with Suhail ibn Amr, an eminent citizen of Mecca, whom the Quraish sent to negotiate a treaty with the Muslims. This was the Treaty of Hudaibiya.
The terms of this treaty included that if any Muslim from the Quraish clan renounced Islam and returned to Mecca, then Muhammad would not hold any grudge against him and not ask for his return, but if anyone from the Quraish embraced Islam and went to Medina, Muhammad would immediately return him to the Quraish at Mecca.
Muhammad told Amr and the Quraish, that he bore no malice towards the Quraish and so he had offered this clause. The Quraish were taken for a ride in this clause, as they also believed that because of this clause no Quraish would embrace Islam, but some of Muhammad's followers would leave Islam and return to Mecca. Actually this clause was a ruse to infiltrate his spies into Mecca, while not allowing any spies from the Quraish to enter Medina.
Over the next two years, many of Muhammad's followers pretended to leave Islam and came and settled in Mecca, thus preparing for the eventual invasion of Mecca that was to take place in 8 A.H. (630 C.E.), when on a frivolous pretext, Muhammad abrogated that treaty and invaded Mecca.
The Treaty of Hudaibiya demonstrates in a very telling way, the deceptive genius that Muhammad was. And this character of his has been filtered down to present-day Muslim, a practice popularly known as Taquiyya (also spelt as Taqiyya or Taqiya) which means deception.
Pervez Musharraf the President of Pakistan, referred to this Treaty of Hudaibiya (and to the double-crossing that exists in it), when he announced after 9/11 that he was making a pact with America to fight the Taliban who then ruled Afghanistan and whose guest was that, horror of all horrors, Osama Bin Laden.
[edit] Muhammad’s pretext to abrogate the treaty of Hudaibiya
After signing the treaty, Muhammad started gathering allies for the final assault on Mecca. Alarmed at his moves, the Quraish also started building up their own alliances. In this scenario a tribe named Banu Bakr allied themselves with the Quraish and another named Banu Khuza'ah joined the camp of Muhammad. Incited by Muhammad the Banu Khuza'ah attacked a caravan of the Banu Bakr whereupon the Banu Bakr attacked the Banu Khuza'ah. This pretext was enough for Muhammad to send an ultimatum to the Quraish (whose allies were the Banu Bakr) giving the Quraish three alternatives. The first alternative was that the Banu Bakr and the Quraish should pay blood money for the victims of Banu Khuza'ah. The second alternative was that the Quraish should terminate their alliance with Banu Bakr. The third alternative was that the treaty of Hudaibiya should be considered to have been abrogated. In a fit of desperation, the Quraish replied that they would neither pay blood money, nor terminate their alliance with Banu Bakr. On this pretext, Muhammad abrogated the Treaty of Hadaibiya and made preparations for a attack on Mecca.
[edit] The forced conversion of Abu Sufyan and the Sunni and Shia divide
The Meccans realized that Muhammad had tricked them, by using the conflict between the Banu Bakr and Banu Khuza'ah to abrogate the treaty, as he wanted to attack Mecca, for which he now had adequate strength. Muhammad marched on Mecca and laid siege to the city. He had a large army and we are told that when at night fire was lit in the Muslim camp it appeared as if the whole of the desert was on fire The Meccans realized that they were in no position to beat Muhammad on the battlefield and their leader Abu Sufyan decided to go and meet Muhammad to mediate a peace.
Muhammad had already captured the daughter of Abu Sufyan, when she had gone to mediate a peace with Muhammad earlier, and had included her in his harem, so technically Abu Sufyan was his ‘father-in-law’, Muhammad detained Abu Sufyan and released him only after Abu had embraced Islam. Muhammad had kept Abu’s daughter as a concubine and he now held Abu captive. Muhammad threatened Abu Sufyan with death and his daughter with dishonor. This coercion was the last straw that broke Abu’s Sufyan’s resistance to Muhammad, and he converted to Islam.
[edit] The conversion of Abu Sufyan
The conversion of Abu Sufyan was a seminal event, that is not recognized as such by historians. It was Abu Sufyan, aided by Quraish generals like Khalid-ibn-Walid (before his conversion), who had led the Meccan resistance to Muhammad and his Islam. The Quraish were the ruling aristocracy of pre-Islamic Mecca, and they held Muhammad in contempt as an upstart. They resisted Muhammad as long as they physically could, and even after their forced conversion, nursed a grudge against him.
Herein lay the original root of the schism of the Muslims into Sunnis and Shias that was to come after 661 C.E. Abu Sufyan had converted to Islam, as there was no other way for Abu Sufyan to save his life and honor. As he could not beat Muhammad in the battlefield, he decided to outwit him, from within, by embracing Islam.
Here we need to note that thenceforth the followers of Abu Sufyan, expressed their inherent violent mentality through the medium of Islam, they continued to nurse a personal grievance against Muhammad and bided their time to take their revenge. Muhammad himself died two years later in 632 due to his being poisoned by a Jewish lady of the Banu Quraizya tribe.
[edit] Muslim loyalty
The power struggle between the Muslims and Neo-Muslims after Mohammed’s death disproves the claim that clan or blood loyalties are secondary to the loyalty of a Muslim to his Deen - Islam
Muhammad’s death marked the first power struggle between the original non-Quraish Muslim converts of Medina and the neo-Muslim Quraish of Mecca. The Medina Muslims were called Ansars (helpers) by Muhammad, showing their secondary status in his eyes. He always preserved a preference for Quraish, although they had refused to embrace Islam. This speaks volumes to refute the claim that a Muslim is loyal only to Islam and not to blood or clan relations. Muhammad himself did not observe this principle, as he preferred Meccan Quraish to the Medina Muslims who were the first to embrace Islam. Muhammad knew that the people of Medina had become Muslims to oppose their age old rivals, the Meccans, to whom Mohammed belonged and he made his preference for the Meccans clear, by giving the Quraish a status higher than the Ansars in Muslim society.
[edit] Idol Worship among the Muslims
As soon as the Meccans embraced Islam, he preserved the status of Mecca as a Holy city, continued with the pre-Muslim practice of Hajj, and above all preserved the idol of the Meccan god – the Kaaba, which became the paramount object of Muslim idol worship, in a community that otherwise abhors Idol worship.
Another practice centered around an idol that Muhammad preserved was the pre-Muslim practice of stoning of the pillar that is supposed to be the idol of Satan, which the Muslims continue to do today while performing Hajj or Umrah. The Arab practice of worshiping idols and departed humans is seen even till this day in the way Yasser Arafat is idolized and the Palestinians kiss his photos and even talk to it as if it were a living being. The kissing of the Kabba lies in its origin in pre-Muslim idol worship of the Arabs, a practice that existed before Muhammad, and which he preserved as a token of his clan loyalty to the Quraish of Mecca. After Muhammad’s death the Medina Muslims (Ansars) wanted one among them to be the Caliph, their claims were rejected by the Meccans and Abba (or Abu) Bakr (literally Uncle Bakr) who was Muhammad’s father-in-law was made the Caliph. Abba Bakr was a consensus candidate, since he was one of Muhammad’s first followers who had fled with him to Medina and had never opposed Muhammad, but then he was a Quraish from Mecca, he was not from Medina. He died two years after he became prophet, and again the question of the Caliphate came to the fore. Now again the Meccans ensured that The Caliphate remained with those of Quraish extraction. But Umar too was an original convert, who had fought with Muhammad in the battles with the Meccans. The Meccans ensured that the caliphate did not pass to the Medina Muslims. After Umar began resisting the Quriash, he was murdered, and in his place was chosen Uthman (or Othman), who became the third Caliph. The point to note was that all these three caliphs were from the Quraish, who had followed Muhammad to Medina and had fought against the Meccans, but, after becoming Caliphs, they survived till they did nothing to offend the Quraish. The Quraish remained in control of Muslim polity after their conversion to Islam and bided their time, till they could formally take over the caliphate. When their appointees Umar, and Uthman began to work against the Quraish aristocracy, they murdered both of them. Thus the Meccans ensured that they remained in control, after they embraced Islam, as they had been before Islam. In doing this, they also kept under control their age-old rivals the people of Medina, who were among the first Muslim followers of Muhammad. It is against the background of the murder of two caliphs, Umar and Uthman, that Ali who had been waiting in the wings for long to become a prophet, donned the mantle of Khalifa (Caliph).
[edit] The Murder of Ali
After, Ali became the Caliph, he started efforts to weaken the power of the Quraish aristocracy, by dismissing the governors that they had appointed at various places, like Syria and Egypt. Some of the governors meekly conceded to obeying his orders. But Abu Muawiya ibn Sufyan who was Abu Sufyan’s son and had been appointed as the Governor of Syria under pressure from Abu Sufyan in the time of Caliph Umar, refused to step down, and defied Ali.
When Ali insisted that he step down and sent a force to enforce his decision to sack Abu Muawiya ibn Sufyan, the Quraish clan decided that this was the time to get rid of Ali, and they murdered him while he was at prayer. Ali’s death was followed by the murder of his sons, Husain and Hassan. These were his sons begot from his concubine Shahrbanu, the child princes of the last Sassanid king Yazdgard whom the Muslims captured after the battle of Qadsiyyah and the sack of Ctesiphon.
Thus came to an end a long career of murder that Ali had indulged in as one of the first members of the Islamic faith. Ali was a cruel and hateful man, and died a death in the hands of other who had a similarly murderous motivation.
[edit] The Caliphate returned to the Quraish clan of Abu Sufyan
But now with Ali’s murder, Abu Muawiya ibn Sufyan, who was Abu Sufyan’s son, was proclaimed the caliph, and the leadership of the Arab world that Abu Sufyan had to concede to Mohammed in 630, returned to his clan in 661.
[edit] The Shiite-Sunni divide in Islam
It was this politics that was at the root of the split of the followers of Abu Sufyan who called themselves Sunnis and those of Muhammad through Ali, Hassan and Husain who called themselves Shias. (Arab historians deliberately mislead us when they attribute the motherhood of these two sons of Ali to Fatima, another of Ali’s wives, and the daughter of Muhammad. But the reason for such attribution is to keep the ancestry of Husain and Hasan purely to Arabs and to suppress the Persian element of their ancestry. The historical fact is that Shahrbanu the Persian princess was the mother of Hassan and Hussain. So the descendants of Hussain and Hassan from whom came many of the Shiite Imams had royal Sassanid Persian ancestry. A fact that the Muslim historians try to hide by wrongly claiming that Sharbanu was a young princess of marriagable age when she had been captured by the Arabs.)
[edit] Why are many Persians Shias and most Arabs Sunnis?
At the Persian capital Ctesiphon, among the unfortunate children who were left behind, was Shahrbanu a child princess of the Persian King Yazdgard. When the Arabs came to know about Shahrbanu (who was then three years old) they presented her as a gift to the Caliph Umar, who in turn gifted her to Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali as maal-e-ganimat (slaves obtained by Muslims after a war).
At that time Ali was thirty two years old and he decided to take the three year old child princess as his concubine. In doing this he was following the footsteps of his father-in-law Muhammad, who had married and consummated his marriage with a nine year old girl named Aisha in addition to many other young and beautiful ladies who had been captured by the Muslims in the numerous wars at Badr, Uhud, Trench, Autas in the Arabian peninsula.
It was from this union of Ali to Princess Shahrbanu, that he fathered his two sons Hassan and Husain, who were later murdered in Battle of Karbala in October of AD 680. Ali himself had been murdered in 39 A.H. (661 C.E.). The descendants of Hassan and Hussain were to be the Shiite Imams who founded the Shia sect of Islam that had mixed Persian (royal Sassanid) and Arab ancestry.
We know that the battle of Qadisiyah had been fought in the year 637, and Yazdgard had ascended the throne in the year 634, when his age was 21 - twenty one. So in 637 when he fled his capital leaving behind his daughter he was 24. How could a King aged 24 have a daughter who herself was a teenager or a young lady?
The Muslim historians have us believe that Shahrbanu was honorably married off by Ali to his son Hussain from whom she begot Ali's grandon Ali Zayn al Abidin (the fourth Shia Imam) in 658 CE.
But we know that Shahrbanu was abducted in the year 637, and according to Arab accounts she gave birth to a son in 658. If she was a young lady when she was abducted in 637 then why did she have to wait for 21 years till 658 before she could beget? Especially so considering that many Muslims force their wives to procreate as soon as they can. The Arab and Iranian Muslims are practising their ritual deception taqiya to mislead us and give a veneer of honorablity to the abduction and rape of Shahrbanu by Ali when he took the Persian princess into his harem as his rightful property (maal-e-ganimat) won after a war as per the Muslim custom.
This is the reason why most Persians are Shias. The Persian converts to Islam saw in the Shiite Imams a continuation of their pre-Islamic royal Sassanid lineage as the Shiite Imams were descended from the union of Ali with Shahrbanu (or of Hussain with Shahrbanu in which case too the royal Sassanid Persian element of the ancestry of the Shiite Imams remains). The Zoroastrian converts who yearned for a return to the Sassanid days saw in Ali, Hussain, Hassan and the Shiite Imams, the successors to their Sassanid emperor Yazgard by virtue of Ali (or by some accounts his son Hussain) being the husband of their princess Shahrbanu.
[edit] Abu Sufyan forcible conversion led to his followers becoming Sunnis
Many historians fail to point out that the reason why many Arabs from the Hejaz are Sunnis today was also rooted in the forced conversion of Abu Sufyan to Islam in 630. Now we continue with the story of Abu Sufyan at Mecca in 630.
Coming back to Abu Sufyan, after his talks for a compromise with Muhammad failed and he was forced to accept Islam, Abu Sufyan, the reluctant new convert returned to Mecca and told the Quraish that it was futile to resist Muhammad. On Abu Sufyan’s advise, the Meccans realizing their hopeless plight, made a final attempt to ask Muhammad to lift the siege and resume negotiations. A demand scornfully rejected b Muhammad, who set the condition before the Quraish to surrender and accept Islam. The Meccans surrendered and Muhammad triumphantly marched into Mecca. In fact, it was after the surrender of Mecca that Muhammad chose the Arabic word for submission or surrender “Al Silm” as the name for his militant creed - Islam .
The surrender of the Quraish of Mecca, was to be followed by the surrender of millions of Islam’s victims all across the globe who were to be forced to surrender this way to this creed, whos name itself meant “to surrender”.
For the Quraish of Mecca the game was over, they decided that if you cannot beat the Muslims, join them. Countless others were to be converted this way as Islam began its march across Arabia and then into Persia, Byzantium, North Africa, Central Asia, India, Indonesia, Europe and in our times into America (9/11).
[edit] The Meccans under Muhammad
When Muhammad marched into Mecca itself he promptly proceed to demolish all the images of the gods worshipped by the Meccans. Among them were Allat, Alluza, Mannat who were goddesses and were looked upon as daughters of Allah. He even demolished the image of Allah and proclaimed that Allah has no form. This was a clever ruse to ensure that there is no object that his followers would get demoralized at, if the object of their reverence was demolished by a conquering anti-Islamic army. This is why his Allah has no form.
But for the demoralized population of Mecca which had lost the cream of its warriors at Badr, Uhud and Trench, the only option was to accept Muhammad’s terms. In this he was generous to the Quraish, as he was after all one of them. He decreed that Mecca would continue to be the center of the new creed, the Hajj pilgrimage would continue and all Muslims would perform Hajj (which till then had been limited to the pagan Arabs).
So the Meccans continued to gain economically in the new creed, their city was still the center of the new creed, whose followers were to grow manifold in a few decades. So the Meccans not only accepted Islam, but became its champions. This story was to repeat itself across many continents. As the Muslim Quraish of Mecca (and other Muslims) invaded other parts of Arabia to impose this foreign creed on the pagan Arabs of Tayaef, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and later when all the converted Arabs attacked Persia, Byzantium and other parts of the globe, making new converts, who in turn attacked their neighbors to spread Islam through Jihad. A Jihad that has not and will not stop.
[edit] The Battle of Autas (near Taif alias Tayef)
After the fall of Mecca, Muhammad’s appetite for imposing Islam on the rest of the Arabs was not satisfied, in fact, he became more determined to capture the rest of Arabia. He set his eyes of the town of Taif, which had scorned him, when he had first asked them to convert to Islam in his initial days. Now that he was powerful, Muhammad wanted to take his revenge on the people of Taif. He sent an ultimatum to the tribes of Hawazin and Thaqueef from the town of Taif, inviting them to accept Islam. They rejected the ultimatum and told him that they were not cowards like the Quraish of Mecca.
The two tribes along with their allies mustered in considerable strength at Autas a few miles to the east of Mecca on the way to Taif. With craftiness, the Muslim army trapped the defenders at a pass named Hunain with an attack from the rear preventing their retreat in to the fortified town of Taif. With both armies trapped in the narrow pass, to resolve the issue through single combat, a champion Abu Nadhul who was a very tall and well built man stepped forward from the ranks of the army of Taif and challenged the Muslims to a duel.
The duel was to be fought on camel back. But Ali who had accepted the challenge from the Muslim side, bent low from his camel and struck Abu Nadhul’s camel. Now this was a foul tactic according to the rules of Bedouin dueling. The rider had to be attacked and not the camel on which he was astride. As Abu’s camel stumbled from Ali’s blow, Abu fell to the ground. Ali jumped down from his camel and was upon Abu and cut off his head. This made the army of Taif lose heart, but they fought on to the taunts from the Muslim army that Allah has willed their defeat and hence killed their leader.
When the demoralized army of Taif, began to give ground, the Muslims overwhelmed them. The beaten army of Taif tried to regroup outside the Pass at Autas, but could not stem the tide of the Muslims, who had taken the battle by deception. The Army of Taif retreated into the fort of Taif and locked the gates. The Muslim army laid siege to the Fort and the siege dragged on. Wanting to resolve the issue again through deception, Muhammad asked Ali to destroy all the oases around Taif, break the idols and forcibly convert the tribals to Islam.
Once the people of Taif saw that their allies were succumbing one after another to the Muslims, they asked for terms of surrender. The terms were the usual, Islam or war. The hapless Arabs in Taif tried to negotiate with Muhammad and relented by sending a message that they were ready to become Muslims if Muhammad would allow them to continue worshipping their gods for one year. Muhammad flatly rejected their condition, saying all gods are false in Islam, except Allah. The Taifians tried to scale down their condition by asking for six months, three months and finally one month. Muhammad’s reply reveals his mind. He said in Islam they had to accept all that he had enjoined. There could be no compromise in the matter of his injunctions. This laid bare the intolerant nature of Islam.
[edit] Lessons from the battle of Taif
The Battle of Taif exposes the intolerant nature of Islam. There is no room for any adjustment in Islam, Either you accept the terms or die. Countless countries and people were soon to know this intolerant element of Islam.
With the victory over Taif, all the more important Arab tribes had been converted to Islam. The mopping up operations remained to set the stage for the global jihad, the attack against the non-Arab world to make them Muslims. Till now the issue to be imposed on the pre-Muslim Arabs was only Islam. Now another dimension was added to it as the Jihad moved on to non-Arabs lands, the Islamization of those people was half the story, they also had to be Arabized, with the Arabic language and culture displacing the language and culture of the conquered people. The Persians, Byzantines, and the North Africans were soon to get a taste of this new threat of Islam.
[edit] Arabs the first victims of Islam
Arab readers should keep in mind that their ancestors were the first ones to be subjugated and terrorized by Islam. Yes, the founder of Islam was an Arab. But the pre-islamic Arabs, had no place within the tyranny of Islam.
Yes the pre-islamic Arabs were hardy and extreme in their behavior, but this was caused by the environment. Had the Eskimos lived in the Sahara, they too would have evolved a similar temperament. But Muhammad raised this temperament to a level of a creed. The pre-islamic Arabs were also violent and there were internecine and incessant tribal and clan wars. But the honor of womenfolk was never in danger. There are no records in pre-islamic Arab culture, where a victorious Arab tribe violated the honor of the womenfolk of the defeated tribe. The pre-islamic Arabs also did not practice polygamy. Abu Sufyan had only one wife, but Muhammad had sixteen. The pre-islamic Arab womenfolk never wore the Hijab (gown), Niqab (mask), nor were they confined to a women’s chamber (Zenana). All these practices came from Muhammad and became a hallmark of Islam.
Herein lies the seed of Islam. This is how the Arabs themselves were first tyrannized and when they realized that they could not defeat Islam, they decided to join it and advocate it in the same manner that Muhammad ordered them to do.
[edit] The Struggle of the Arabs against Islam
In the foregoing paragraphs we have tried to capture in brief, the struggle which the Arabs put up against Islam. They tried to correct Muhammad when he was in Mecca, before the hijra (‘Migration’ or 'flight' to Medina), after they failed to convince him, they fought innumerable battles with him at Badr, Uhud, Trench, Autas and at many other places. They asked for the King of Persia Kisra (Khushrau Pervez or Chosroes) and the King of Abyssinia to help them to capture Muhammad.
Incidentally, the King of Abyssinia had invaded Arabia some years before Muhammad started Islam, with a view to bringing order to the lawless Bedouin tribes. This invasion took place in what is called by the Arabs - the Year of the Elephant. But in spite of this enmity, the Quraish called upon the king of Abyssinia to help them put a stop to Muhammad. He refused to help. While the King of Persia, not realizing the seriousness of the threat, sent in two armed Persian guards in the year 624 to arrest Muhammad.
Thus both the kings failed to realize the threat and did not help the pre-Muslim Arabs to end the career of this man whose followers were to destroy both Abyssinia and Persia in a few decades after that. Muhammad’s is a lesson for the world leaders of today to realize the threat to all of them in Islam and to unify in a single solid alliance. History should not repeat itself if civilization is to survive the threat of Islam.
[edit] Muhammad institutionalizes the bitter theology of Islam
He encouraged people's devotion towards him, his hair (Hazratbal mosque at Kashmir in India, his spitum, the water gargled by him, his urine, ad nausem) Thus Islam was his own personality cult.
He understood the psychology of warriors and so he lulled them in to loyalty by creating an insatiable desire to win sensual and carnal pleasures on earth if they lived to victimize the vanquished adversary; and in heaven if they died they had the 72 houris and pearly eyed boys. This way he made his followers into paranoid warriors, who disregarded danger and were numb to pain and this brought victory. His no alcohol policy also helped immensely to get a tactical advantage like never before.
Not Alexander not Julius Caesar, not Hannibal, in fact no one before Muhammad’s armies had this paranoid motivation where temporal was mixed with fantasy to motivate an army to victory. Every foul tactic was fair for Allah’s war. No moral scruples existed for any act.
The Muslims were organized as an army, with a command that was inviolable, so only another army with a better and more disciplined command can succeed in defeating them. The Persians were no match, nor were the Byzantines; but the Franks under Charles Martel were, as also were the Mongols under Hulagu Khan.
[edit] Giving Offence (not Pre-emption), a Quranic Principle
The point to be emphasized here is that out of the 28 battles Muhammad fought, 27 were offensive. They cannot even be called pre-emptive, since none of his adversaries had made plans to attack Muhammad. The Quraish had left him in peace after he fled to Medina. The Koran uses the principle of making a Hudna (pretence of making peace) when the enemy is strong, and using that period to making oneself stronger than the enemy.
And after the enemy is weak, then to attack the enemy by giving offense and provoking the enemy. Hitler too did this when he attacked Poland in World War 2, by saying that the Poles has attacked Germany and that the Nazis were defending Germany. Hitler’s strategy bears an uncanny resemblance to the Quranic prescription.
The Quran advocates this policy of giving offense to an adversary and in fact sanctifies such behavior to a holy duty for all Muslims by declaring the faith (Deen) to them and giving them an option of embracing Islam or being prepared for an attack by Muslims. It is following this Muslim custom, that Zawahiri has the temerity to ask President George Bush to seek refuge in Islam.
We need to note that the first battle of Muhammad, the battle of Badr was not defensive as most Muslims would have you believe. Muhammad initiated the fight by waylaying the Quraish caravans. Thus the beginning of the Islamic Jihad was in Muhammad’s actions.
This is what Muhammad did to the Quraish, to the people of Taif, and this is also what the Muslims did to the Sassanian Persians, Byzantines, Visigoths in Al Andalus (Spain), and many others. And this is what the Iranian Mullahs plan to do once they have a bomb.
[edit] The much flaunted austerity and simplicity of Islam
Muslims boast that their religion appealed to new converts since it was austere and simple. This is touted as a plus point with Islam. But Islam's austerity lies in its origins in the barren enviroment of the Arabian desert. In a place where not a blade of grass could grow, how could humans who lived in that environment be expected to be ostentatious?
They had to be simple and austere as dictated by the environment. People from such an environment were hardy and ready to face hardship and when they had the fortune of being organized, into a military force, and who had nothing much to lose if they died in warfare, they could easily throw themselves into the battlefield wanting to die, since they had nothing much to live for. Herein lies the Arab and later the Muslim psyche of fighting to death and seeking death and loving and romanticizing death and martyrdom, since they had nothing to live for anyway in their barren lifeless and featureless desert.
This psychology remained, even after the environment changed with the Arab Muslim conquering richer and well endowed lands of Persia and Byzantine. So even after they conquered the rich empires of the Sassanids and the Byzantines, the Arab Muslims still were seeking death in warfare, that made them desperate and deadly enemies who could win in battles against the refined Persians and Byzantines. Only the hardy Franks under Charles Martel could outmatch the death-seeking Muslims and defeat them at Poitiers (Tours) in Central France. This death-seeking psychology is at work upto our times, in the minds of the suicide (genocide) bombers that we saw on 9/11, 3/11, 7/7 and at many other places like Jerusalem, Bali, Beslan, Amman, Baghdad, Ramadi, etc.
[edit] Moderate Muslims and Allah's help in war
As the war on Islam progresses, there is an increasing clamor that we need to link up with the moderates among the Muslims and thus isolate the lunatic fringe of terrorists who indulge in beheadings, genocide bombings, terror attacks et al. But then all these acts have been sanctioned in the Quran itself, which calls for the slaying of Idolaters (Kafirs), asks Muslim to let the Kafirs find harshness in you, and forbids Muslims from taking Kafirs as friends. All Muslims believe in the Quran, be he/she an unlettered peasant, or a highly educated and qualified doctor, surgeon, software pro, judge, littérateur, or any other accomplished professional.
Ask any educated Muslim anywhere in the world, whether he upholds the UN Charter, the Constitution of the USA, UK, France, where he and his family has settled for generations, or he upholds the Quran with all its injunctions and listen to his answer. He will most likely say, before the Quran everything is null and void. We saw this during the Cartoon vandalism all over Europe, Asia, and Africa
Nothing that is contrary to the Quran's injunctions is acceptable for him, so we can conclude that a true Muslim who follows what his faith actually teaches, can never be a member of a civilized society. Although he may pretend to be one, as Mohammed Atta pretended to be before he flew the airplanes into the Twin Towers.
In Islam, for a Muslim every personal friendship with non-Muslims, oath of citizenship, loyalty to the armed forces, is all transitory and subservient to the Quran. And he would cast off all oaths, promises in favor of the Quran whenever he is in a position of power to do so. Any Muslim who refuses to do this would be deemed a traitor, a Murtad (Apostate) by other Muslims and be done to death. So no Muslim will dare to step out of line.
Yes there could be many Muslims who think in their heart of hearts that Islam is savage. But they will never say that openly. We would deem such Muslims as ex-Muslims. There are Muslims, ex-Muslims and non-Muslims. There are no moderate Muslims. A Moderate Muslim is like a lady being partially pregnant! This is fiction, either you are pregnant or you are not. So you are either a Muslim (and a follower of Muhammad) or you are an ex-Muslim. You cannot be both a Muslim and a moderate. This is a contradiction in terms.
[edit] Islam, Fanatic Islam and Islamic Terrorism
Today many the world over are innocent of how Islam was founded, how it grew and what Islam implies for the future of Humankind. So there are endless debates that Islam is a religion of peace, that all Muslims are not fanatical, and that we need to differentiate between Muslims and terrorists.
The reading of the story of Islam so far should be enough to dispel the notion that Islam differs from Islamic fanaticism, or that Islam is a religion of peace and that the Terrorists have hijacked a peaceful religion. No it is not. It is Islam which gave birth to Terrorism, which started from the mind of its founder Muhammad and has filtered down to his followers (Muslim) today. Islam is Fanaticism, it is high time we woke up to this reality.
[edit] How Islam prevents Muslims from leaving Islam - Murder
Muhammad was a shrewd man who knew that there was always a danger of Muslims deserting Islam and reverting to a more humane religion, so he made it an offense punishable with death for anyone leaving Islam, having once accepted it. According to the Shariah, a Murtad (Muslim Apostate) has to be killed, and it is the duty of a Muslim to kill any other Muslim who leaves Islam.
Islam was spread with this use of death threats. The defeated non-Muslims were given the choice of Islam or Death. After having been forced to accept Islam through such terminal coercion, the converted people had no way of renouncing Islam. If they did so, they were targeted as Murtads (apostates) and were killed. It is mandatory in Islam for Muslims to kill anyone who leaves. So the converts were forced to remain Muslims. And as this was their fate, then the best bet for them was to imbibe the murderous attitude themselves and impose it on others.
Today although "Islam or Death" is not possible openly, unless you live in Muslim ruled countries of the Islamic crescent like Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan or in areas contiguous to Muslim majority areas like Malaku in Indonesia, Southern Sudan, Kashmir, North Nigeria.
[edit] The Quran is the inviolable word of God
There can also never ever be any discussion on the commands of the Quran, since they are supposed to be the word of Allah, the one true God, or so Muhammad told his followers.
[edit] Assemble five times a day to swear your loyalty to Islam
To be doubly sure that his flock remains together, he decreed that it was compulsory for all Muslims to come together and pray five times during the day. So there wasn’t any chance for his followers to leave Islam and emancipate themselves.
[edit] The innumerable wives of Muhammad
With his innumerable wives, some of whom were under-aged, Muhammad himself set the example of behavior for other Muslims to emulate. His marriage to Khadija, the rich widow with whom he lived for 20 years, was the only normal marriage, as it had taken place before he started using his ecliptic fits to declare himself as a prophet of Allah, using which he started Islam.
After this first normal marriage with Khadija, he started his spree of marriages with his marriage of Aisha who was the daughter of his follower Abu Bakr. Aisha was just six years old when Muhammad married her and she was only nine years old when he conjugated this marriage. This is the inspiration for the Arabs of today to pick up child brides.
Muhammad did not stop at this marriage, after marrying his second wife, the child Aisha, his third wife was Hapsha, the widowed daughter of Omar, who was another of his followers. His fourth wife was Zinab. His fifth wife was another widow. His sixth wife was Zainab (not to be confused with the earlier wife Zinab). Now Zainab was the wife of his adopted son Zaid. So Muhammad could cast his lustful eyes on a girl who was his daughter-in-law and he told Zaid that he had received a commandment from Allah, that Zainab was meant for him. He asked Zaid to divorce his wife and himself married her. His seventh wife was Ziora, eight was Habiba and the ninth was Saphia, and on and on it goes.
[edit] Getting into Islam was a one way street
Islam was a dead end, where you could enter, (in fact you were forced to enter at the pain of death) , but could never leave, since you would be killed. In fact such was the indoctrination and mass hysteria that Muhammad started, that in a generation or so, the new converts forgot that their forefathers were not Muslims, and in fact in North Africa, they even forgot that they were not Arabs. They forgot that their forefathers were made to submit to Islam at the pain of death.
This sealed the fate of all those who were forced to embrace Islam. Only the total destruction of non-Muslim heritage and slaughter of non-Muslims has got the Muslims Victory.
With every Muslim military victory, there was not just a change of ruler, but a slaughter of those who refused to convert or pay Jizya. There was also a total destruction of the pre-Islamic culture, educational institution, libraries, etc. The planned and deliberately implemented slaughter of the non-Muslim priestly and warrior class was done to enfeeble the conquered populace so much that they would forget who they were their national and cultural identity be subsumed under a newly imposed Arabized Muslim identity.
This kind of tyranny was never known to the human race, with any other conqueror, like Alexander, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, or even those who came after the Muslims like the British Colonialists, or the Spanish Conquistadors. Yes the Spanish Conquistadors were ruthless, but in spite of all they did to the native Americans, the naïve Americans still have preserved their memory of they being a people different from the Spanish Conquistadors, not so with the Egyptians, North Africans, Berbers, et al.
Ask any Egyptian who he is, he will say he is an Arab, were the Pharaohs Arabs? Were the builders of the Pyramids, Arab? Ask any Libyan, Sudanese, Algerian, Tunisian, Somalian, who he is he will say he is an Arab. These are people, whom the conquering Muslim Arab, so Arabized that they have forgotten who they are, their national identities have completely been submerged into the Arab Muslim Ummah.
This has not happened with the native Americans or the Maoris or the Africans, in spite of the fact that apartheid was practiced in South Africa. The Arabs as conquerors totally brainwashed at the point of the sword all the conquered people, Arabized and Islamized them at the pain of death.
The Retrograde Negative Spirit of Islam pervades all across that Islamic civilization. Negativism permeates all through Islam, its attitudes towards all non-Muslims, its use of dishonesty to portray itself as a victim, its intent towards all those who refuse to convert to Islam, its use of any level of cruelty to Islamize entire humankind.
[edit] Modern day Muslim converts
Many Muslim converts today are either women who have been coerced by Muslim partners or convicts/psychological wrecks like Jose Padilla and Richard Reid.
But the Muslims have devised a methods to reach those best suited for Islam, so they evangelize in Prisons, where they can appeal to the dregs of society, or those come from broken families, those who have gone through divorces, or those who have had some heart-breaking personal experience.
It is on the emotions of such unfortunate wrecks and irredeemable convicts that these Muslim missionaries prey. Richard Reid, the Shoe bomber, Jose Padilla are specimen of those who become Muslim today.
The cardinal fact is that across the fourteen centuries of Islam’s existence, it has been its death threat that made people Muslim and it was the same death threat that kept them Muslim. The same death threats are used today to intimidate Ayan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie and many others like them to keep them from speaking the truth about Islam.
[edit] The Paradox of the death seeking psychology of Islam
This very death seeking psychology of Islam is also behind their wanting to become suicide (genocide) bombers today. Islam is a psychology of perpetual war. A psychology that had existed among the pre-Islamic Bedouin Arabs. But then, before Islam, this psychology was not a global problem, since the Arabs fought amongst themselves. With Islam this psychology was inbuilt into religion and infused with a zeal to impose this psychology on all those who were weak enough to fall before Muslim swords. As long as Islam has other religions on this globe, the war Jihad, will go on till the whole world is Islamized. But in the unlikely event of the entire world being Islamized, will this violence stop? No Never. Then in that global Dar-ul-Islam, Muslims would fight amongst themselves Shias against Sunnis, Iranians against Iraqis, Arabs against non-Arabs and so on. Herein lies the paradox of Islam. As long as Islam is surrounded by other religions, there will be violence, but even after, and if at all, Islam is alone on this globe, there will still be endless violence.
In the following pages we trace the march of Islam across the different countries and the story of those hapless people who were given the choice of Islam or death. We start with the Jihad against the Zoroastrian Persians of Iran, Baluchistan and Afghanistan (634 to 651).
[edit] Select Bibliography
- Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict, by Obadiah Shoher
- Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries (Hardcover) by Paul Fregosi
- The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World by Srdja Trifkovic
- Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer
- Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam) by David Cook
- Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq
- Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer
- Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye'Or
- Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Yeor
- What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary by Ibn Warraq
- Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches About Christianity, Violence and the Goals of the Islamic Jihad by Mark A. Gabriel, Mark A. Gabriel
- A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden
- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
- The Great Divide: The failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West by Marvin Olasky
- The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims by Robert Spencer
- Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer, David Pryce-Jones
- The Koran (Penguin Classics) by N. J. Dawood
- Don't Keep me Silent! One Woman's Escape from the Chains of Islam by Mina Nevisa
- Christianity And Islam: The Final Clash by Robert Livingston
- Holiest Wars : Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden by Timothy R. Furnish
- The Last Trumpet: A Comparative Study in Christian-Islamic Eschatology by Samuel, Ph.D. Shahid
- Unleashing the beast: How a fanatical islamic dictator will form a ten-nation coalition and terrorize the world for forty-two months by Perry Stone
- Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Religion and Politics) by David Cook
- Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle by Mark A., Ph.D. Gabriel
- The Challenge of Islam to Christians by David Pawson
- The Prophetic Fall of the Islamic Regime by Glenn Miller, Roger Loomis
- Prophet of Doom : Islam's Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad's Own Words by Craig Winn
- The False Prophet by Ellis H. Skolfield
- The Approach of Armageddon: An Islamic Perspective by Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
- The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel
- Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry
- Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left by David Horowitz
- Unveiling Islam : An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs by Ergun Mehmet Caner
- Perfect Soldiers : The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott
- Islam Revealed A Christian Arab's View Of Islam by Anis Shorrosh
- Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out by Ibn Warraq
- The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book by Ibn Warraq
[edit] References
- ↑ Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasoul Allah, Chapter 1
