Anti-theists

I grew up and continue to live in a consumerist capitalist society in which most people, when asked in a census or similar research, claim to have religious belief. Most religious writings I have read from all sorts of religions seem to push the idea that enough is plenty, avarice is bad and any true meaning to life comes not from the acquisition of material wealth but from contemplation and compassion. Not bad as a starting point. However, hypocrisy seems too small a word to describe the situation in most of the western developed world.

Why don’t religious leaders really tell it like it is, tell their followers that they really shouldn’t be chasing after that new car, telly, phone etc. because it won’t bring them lasting happiness. Why don’t passers by give to beggars rather than criticising them for being scrounging drunks if the majority of people claim some kind of religious belief?

I have come to find that Anti-theists are those who are sick and tired of watching "faith" axiomatically trump every argument for its mere "virtues" they are also sick and tired of hearing stories about the stoning and persecution of homosexuals and "undesirables" by the followers of a 1st century theology, the murder of people for blasphemy, the ritual mutilation of male and female children, the conflation of sadomasochism to a virtue through a love and fear relationship and to the daily lying to children about the material universe and the evolutionary process. Absolutely disgusted with the contempt all religions hold for women, unbelievers and those who would challenge it and its suborning of the most torturous vile murder and campaigns of genocide throughout our species history and some which continue through to this day.

Now in this modern century it asks us to forget what it has done and tolerate like the good people it claims only it can make through the fear of a tyrannical god and his moral precepts. I can't unknow what the Church and the Caliphs and Mullah's used to do and still do with its martyrdom and "honor" morality where the killing and throwing of acid is tacitly understood along with the murder of apostates and where the death of millions of Africans and others is still being actively implicated through the teaching's of the Vatican. A day will come when religions will have to apologize for what they are doing today. The unbelievers and "heretics" who had to watch as their societies turned into superstitious bloodbaths for a vile idea of perfection.

"Silent Majority" Of Muslims?

At the very core of Islam there are the concepts of martyrdom and jihad. In Sunni Islam many view Jihad as the sixth pillar of Islam (although unofficially). In Twelver Shia Islam, Jihad is explicitly defined as one of ten ancillaries of the faith.

Most people are familiar with the concept of "lesser jihad" i.e. the physical "holy war" against the enemies of Islam. Other problems include followers’ believing that the Quran is the verbatim word of God and combined with the hadiths there are numerous abhorrent explicit references to how homosexuals and Jews are to be systematically slaughtered.

Many liberals who perpetuate the argument that Islamist conflicts/jihads are geo-political causes (Mehdi Hasan) and not the result (or to some degree) of religious inspiration are blindly ignorant to the unequivocal facts. Continually two arguments (that are 100% true) are offered to deflect criticism of Islam:

Terrorism - the numbers game; "It's a small minority committing acts of terror" - Islam has 1.5 billion followers, a minority of this could still be a significant number-how many of the majority support the actions of the minority without taking up arms?

The Quran/hadiths and preachers/scholars - Numerous abhorrent statements and sound bites (I won't list them - just do some research particularly into the hadiths). A "small minority" of preachers/scholars justify the murder of apostates, encourage militant jihad, promote "dhimmi" status for non-believers, murder of homosexuals, sharia law and genocide of the Jews as explicitly stated in the hadith. How large and influential is this small minority?

Journalists who display great intolerance by playing the "Islamophobia" and "numbers game" card are stifling any debate or criticism of a major world religion. All religions should be open to the same level of scrutiny as for example politics, but for some reason (mainly due to fear of offence or reprisals) religion is insulated from the awkward questions that it has a duty to answer. They force us to play a game of Muslim Roulette since we can’t tell which Muslim is going to blow himself up until he does. And their indifference about the evil being committed in the name of their religion is a big reason why their reputation is where it is.

So while I understand that most Muslims are not at war with us, they’ve proven in their silence and inaction against jihad that they’re not on our side either, and there’s nothing we can say or do to change that.

Another problem with Muslims who aren’t very Muslim is that they lead some among us to conclude that they must be practicing a more enlightened form of Islam. They’re not. They’re “practicing” life in non-Muslim countries, where they are free to live as they choose. But their “Islam” is not the Islam. There’s no separate ideology apart from Islam that’s being practiced by these Muslims in name only, there’s no such thing as “Western Islam”.

John "Babbacombe" Lee The man they could not hang

An oft-told tale

The story of how a young Devonshire man cheated the gallows not just once, nor twice, but three times, is one that has been retold many times and in many forms.

John Henry George Lee was born in August 1864 in the village of Abbotskerswell. On leaving school he was employed as a servant by Emma Keyse, a spinster who lived at The Glen in Babbacombe (or Babbicombe as it was known then), a peaceful seaside hamlet near Torquay. A few years later he enlisted in the navy at Devonport but was discharged through injury after three years. He then went into service under one Colonel Brownlow who lived at Ridge Hill in Torquay; in 1883 he was convicted of stealing silverware worth £20 from his master for which he was sentenced to six months hard labour at Exeter Prison after entering a guilty plea.

Murder most foul

Following his release from prison in 1884, Miss Keyse, who had taken a shine to Lee when he first worked in her household, decided to give him a second chance, and he was once again employed at The Glen where his half-sister Elizabeth Harris worked as a cook.

Disaster struck on the 15th November of that year when there was a fire at the house and Emma was found dead with her throat cut. It appeared that the fire had been started by the murderer to incinerate her body, so as to destroy any evidence at the scene. John Lee, then 20 years old, was thought to be the only male in the house at the time and was arrested on suspicion of murder. It was known that he held a grudge against Emma after she had recently reduced his wages, but the evidence against him was purely circumstantial. He was found to have a cut on his arm which he said happened when he broke the window of the dining room to let out the smoke. He was unable to give a satisfactory account of his movements at the time of the murder and following an inquest was sent for trial at Exeter Assizes.

Inquest and trial

An inquest was held before a jury at St Marychurch Town Hall, starting two days after the murder. Twenty-five witness statements were read including those of the cook Elizabeth Harris and the two other maidservants resident at The Glen, the elderly sisters Eliza and Jane Neck. The jury returned a verdict accusing Lee of being responsible for Emma's death and the coroner directed that Wilful murder by John Leeshould appear on her death certificate. Today this presumption of guilt before trial would be regarded as a travesty of justice, but it was normal practice at the time: even if Lee were to be acquitted at his trial, the cause of death written on the certificate would stand.

The trial was held in Exeter Guildhall beginning on February 2nd 1885. Lee was to be represented in court by Reginald Gwynne Templer, a young solicitor who was acquainted with Miss Keyse, making it perverse that he should act for the defence. However, it was claimed that he was known to the Lee family also, and it was Lee's parents who had recommended him. Two days before the trial was due to start Reginald was taken ill and was replaced by his younger brother Charles and the Liberal MP for St Ives, John St Aubyn. Reginald never fully recovered and died on 18 December 1886 from paralysis of the insane - a Victorian medical euphemism usually associated with tertiary syphilis. Adding to the intrigue surrounding Gwynne Templer, there was speculation that he was the lover of Lee's half-sister Elizabeth Harris the cook, who was pregnant by an unknown father at the time of the murder. While he has never been named publicly as the perpetrator, there is a widely held view that he was the murderer, and Lee was only guilty of the subordinate role of covering up the crime.

Lee protested his innocence throughout the trial, but his case was poorly presented with no defence witnesses being called and inadequate cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses. The prosecution case was unconvincing too, amounting to little more than that Lee, a young man with a criminal record, was the only male in the house at the time of the murder and was found with blood on his clothes after the event. It was also suggested that Lee's coat and trousers smelled of paraffin oil, but evidence from the medical practitioner cast doubt on whether this was true of the trousers when he first examined them, suggesting that this exhibit had been tampered with:

The coat smelt strongly of paraffin. I examined a pair of trousers also shown to me and there is a patch of blood on one of the legs, a little to the back. I notice now a smell of oil about them. Did not so notice it when P.C. called upon me at my Surgery. [From testimony by Herber Nicholas Chilcote at Lee's trial]

Although the evidence against Lee was little more than circumstantial, the jury took a mere 40 minutes to find him guilty and he was sentenced to death by hanging. On being asked by the judge as to why he had taken the sentence with such equanimity, Lee replied:

The reason I am so calm, is that I trust in the Lord, and he knows that I am innocent.

The aborted execution

Capital punishment in 19th century Exeter

Prior to 1868 executions in Exeter (and elsewhere in the UK) were public spectacles that drew vast crowds of morbidly curious onlookers. For example, the last public execution of a woman in Exeter was that of Mary Anne Ashford who was found guilty of the murder of her husband. Her hanging outside the County Gaol on 28 March 1866 was watched by as many as 20,000 spectators. Following passage of the Capital Punishment Amendment Act in 1868, executions had to take place inside prisons; apart from the officials responsible for carrying out the judicial killing and the prison chaplain, only accredited members of the press were allowed to witness the event.

The execution method used in Great Britain at the time of Lee's execution was known as the long drop. In this procedure, instead of letting the victim fall a standard distance, the person's height and weight were used to determine an appropriate length of rope to use to ensure that the neck was broken without decapitation occurring during the drop.

John Lee, now condemned, awaits his execution

Lee's execution was set to take place in Exeter Prison on 23 February 1885. He wrote a long letter to his half-sister Elizabeth Harris 12 days before this date in which he questioned the truthfulness of her testimony and that of the other servants at The Glen at his trial.

There is no doubt that the truth will come out after I am dead. It must be some very hard hearted persons to let me die for nothing; they have not told six words of truth, that is the servants, and that lovely stepsister, who carries her character with her.

The night before the fateful day Lee claimed to have had a vision in which an angel told him he need have no fear as he wouldn't be executed because he was innocent.

The scaffold is readied and the drop tested

The scaffold to be used was originally housed in an old prison hospital building. It was removed from this site pending its demolition, and was re-erected in the van-house in 1882. This was to be the first execution to be carried out in the new location. As was the usual practice the drop was pre-tested by the executioner, Yorkshireman James Berry in this instance. This is the procedure that was followed according to the prison governor Edwin Cowtan:

On the morning of Saturday 21st February, the apparatus was by my order thoroughly overhauled, cleaned, and tested by the engineer officer, and a warder carpenter.

On the afternoon of the same day the apparatus was again tasted by the artisan warder and Berry the executioner, the latter, after trying it twice over, reporting to me verbally that he was satisfied with it for the present use.

No further testing took place on the Sunday and the executioner Berry remained in the prison until the Monday when the execution was to begin at 8am.

The notorious execution commences

The Chief Constable of Devon, Gerald de Courcy Hamilton, describes the remarkable events that unfolded during the attempted execution of Lee:

On the prisoner reaching the place of execution he was placed by Berry, the executioner, immediately under the cross-beam, over which was carried the rope; he was faced outwards towards the door, with both feet standing transversely on the junction of the two flaps or shutters which formed the drop. The executioner, with considerable skill and rapidity (as it appears to me) strapped the culprits legs above the ankles, drew the cap over his face, adjusted the noose round his neck, stepped back and pulled the iron handle or trigger, to let fall the foot-boards, to my intense astonishment, however, these latter deflected only about a quarter of an inch and appeared to be tightly jammed together about the centre. The executioner and some of the prison officials standing by endeavoured, by stamping on the boards, to get them to move, but without avail. After some seconds the prisoner's face was uncovered, and he was led away to an adjoining cell or room in the prison.

In the meanwhile, the executioner and the prison officials did their best to ascertain the cause of the machine not working. My own impression was that, the morning being very wet and damp, the foot-boards had become swollen, and were thus unable to free themselves when their top edges came in contact. I consequently urged the use of a plane, and pointed out the spot which I considered caused the impediment. The prison engineer procured a plane and a tomahawk, and we eased the centre of the boards. A prison warder was made to stand on them, holding on by both hands to the rope; the trigger was pulled, and the boards fell. The prisoner was then brought out again, and the execution proceeded as in the first instance, but again the boards refused to fall.

Hamilton went on to say that Lee was subjected to a third unsuccessful hanging attempt, and maybe even a fourth: other eyewitness accounts contradict this, saying that Lee was strung up for the drop no more than three times. After the the flaps failed to open for the third time, following an animated discussion between the officials present the execution was abandoned and Lee was returned to his cell. The prison Medical Officer takes up the story:

That this third attempt having failed, I ordered him to be removed to a cell near, myself attempting to take him into my reception ward through which he had previously passed. That I am reported to have said to the prison officials, "You may experiment as much as you like on a sack of flour, but you shall not experiment on this man any longer".

That he was accordingly taken into a passage near; that presently the Governor informed the chaplain and myself that the apparatus would not work; that I then desired that the man should be taken back and the execution postponed; that the said condemned prisoner was returned to his cell; that I offered the Under Sheriff a certificate, which he was glad to accept. That such certificate was drawn up in my office and signed by the Governor, chaplain, and myself, for the information of Her Majesty's Secretary of State.

The cause of the failure is investigated

The scaffold platform had two sets of hinges. Those at the outer edge allowed the two halves to swing open downwards when the release mechanism was activated; the other hinges ran along the entire length where the two halves met in the middle. These hinges were held in place by draw-bolts at one end which were released by pulling a lever, allowing the hanging prisoner to drop as both halves swung down.

On the morning following the day of execution two clerks of works made a careful examination of the apparatus. Rather than jamming because the boards were too close at the centre, as had been thought at the time, in the Report on the Cause of Failure of the Machinery of the Scaffold the two men concluded that the equipment hadn't been reassembled correctly when it was moved to the van-house.

They discovered that the end of the long hinges was resting on one-eighth of an inch on the draw-bolt at the crank. They then tried to work the lever without any weight on the platform and found that when the lever was drawn quickly the platform fell. If drawn slowly, on one trial it remained fast, and on another trial it fell, but seemed to bind or grate at the end of the long hinge. They were then perfectly satisfied that the cause of the failure to act was due to the fact that one of the long hinges rested on the draw-bolt one-eighth of an inch too much. It is probable that in the re-fixing of the scaffold the two sides were placed one-eighth of an inch nearer than they had been before, or that the long hinge had been very slightly bent in some way at that time.

The aftermath

After the Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt had been informed of the circumstances of Lee's execution he immediately passed an order commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment. In answer to a question in the House of Commons on 23rd February 1885 he replied:

The under-Sheriff of Exeter came up to London afternoon to see me, and told me the facts of this painful case; and after considering them I thought that it would shock the feelings of everyone if a man had twice to incur the pangs of imminent death. I, therefore, this afternoon signed a respite in his case, to continue during Her Majesty's pleasure.

There was much disquiet in the press and in parliament over the affair and the way executioners were appointed on an add hoc basis; on 24 February 1885 The Guardian in its editorial called for more efficient executions. The Home Secretary bowed to pressure and ordered that an enquiry be held into the matter.

Lee was released from prison in 1907 after serving 22 years in Portland Prison. He became a minor celebrity, touring the country giving his own version of the story which he published in 1912 in book form as The Man They Could Not Hang. A silent film of his story was also made in this year. He married a Devon woman in January 1909 with whom he fathered two children. He abandoned his wife for another woman, travelling with her to the USA in 1911. He lived until the age of 80, dying on 19 March 1945 in Milwaukee.

Hadriani Relandi's: Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata

There exists a mountain of mis-information about the Roman named "Palestina", that could be easily cleared by Hadriani Relandi's: Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata, Volume 1, chronicling his trip in the land of Palestina in 1695/6.

The author Relandi, was fluent in, ancient Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, as well as the European languages. He was known as a noted cartographer,geographer, philologist, and scholar, Relandi surveyed approximately 2500 places where people lived, mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, Mishnah or Talmud. His research method was interesting: First, he mapped the land. Secondly, Relandi identified each of the places mentioned in the Mishnah or Talmud, along with their original source. If the source was Jewish, he listed it together with the appropriate sentence in the Hebrew Scriptures. If the source was Roman or Greek he presented the connection in Greek or Latin. Thirdly, Thirdly, he arranged a population survey and census of each community visited.

Prominent conclusions: The land was predominently, desolate, empty;its' inhabitants few, concentrated in the towns of Acco, Gaza, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Tiberius, and Tzfat. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest, Christians. There were few Muslims, and a scattering of nomad Bedouins. Nablus, called Shchem, where approximately 120 people, members of the Muslim Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites, lived. It is interesting and worthy to mention, that Relandi referred to the Muslims as "nomad Bedouins" who arrived in the area as construction and agriculture labor reinforcement, seasonal workers.In the Galilee capital, Nazareth, lived approximately 700 Christians and in Jerusalem approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. Relandi learned that not one settlement in Palestina, had a name that was of Arabic origin. Settlement names originated in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Roman languages.

This beautifully illustrated book, contradicts any post-modern theory which claims a "Palestinian heritage," or Palestinian nation. It further strengthens and validates the connection, kinship of this country to the Jewish people, relevance, pertinence, and the absolute lack of Arab ownership, who adopted the Latin name Palestina for their own.

Richard Dawkins is Right

Richard Dawkins recent tweet stating, “All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though” has produced paroxysm outrage among Muslims and other defenders of Islam. Nesrine Malik fulminates, “But this, in its deliberately obtuse (say what you like, but Dawkins is not a stupid man) baiting, was a new low.” She contends that the Oxford don is really trying to say ’that Muslims as a unit throughout history have done nothing since the Middle Ages, and that is clearly attributable to their stupid religion’.

The sad truth is that since the 12th Century, scientific endeavour in the Muslim world has lacked woefully behind that of much of the rest of the world (both East and West), yet in the 300 years 800-1100AD the centre of thinking and academic endeavour in the world was Baghdad. Indeed the names of many of the stars in the night sky are testament to this period, as is algebra and many other mathematical advances. Baghdad also welcomed persons of all faiths (and non) to engage in free-thought and debate. This all ended in the 12 Century when an Imam named Hamid Al-Ghazali enforced the more rigid, orthodox and unquestioning interpretation of the Muslim faith we see globally today. This is what Dawkins was referring to in his tweets, I doubt many of those who criticise him, both Muslim and non-Muslim have ever bothered to educate themselves on this era of Islamic history, they will just engage 'offended' mode and spout the same old nonsense in Dawkins' direction about him being a bigoted angry atheist. It is pathetic. I have not seen one person offer up a rational, educated counter argument to the points he made.

This offence taking and faux-outrage has been whipped up not just by Muslims and other religious folk, but by apologists for Islam and Islamism especially on the left/liberal side of the debate. It seems like all bets are off when it comes to any debate about this single faith, that by criticising Islam (which is a man-made Idea) you are somehow being a horrid bigot, it is censorship by the back door and is a vile trait in many commentators and public figures I usually side with in public debate.

Yes, there is a certain section of the society who hate and discriminate against individual Muslims out of fear and ignorance, but it is intellectually and morally abhorrent to lump in legitimate critics of Islam/Islamism such as Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris with these actual bigots. Dawkins has often shared a stage with and spoken in support of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a female apostate from Islam who has had to go into hiding because of very credible death threats made to her and the murder of Theo Van Gogh, with whom she worked with on the film 'Submission.' Indeed I would say Dawkins writings, speeches, support and tweets have aided more people suffering under religious persecution and dogmatic intolerance than any tweet bemoaning 'Islamophobia' from the likes of Mehdi Hasan, Owen Jones or Mo Ansar.

The Story of ex-Muslim

"Leaving Islam is the greatest challenge to a Muslim".

Born and raised as a Muslim I had studied deep into religion. Muslims want to implement a seventh century system caled khilafa which did not even last for 30 years and three out of four ruler were killed by followers of each others. Muslims are not tolerant and are not open to ideas and a better system we have been brained washed into thinking that we are the only ones right on planet.

I started doubting religion sometime when I a was 17 years old.I was constantly worried that I was losing my faith (and for good reason cause I questioned everything!). I still had some faith going into college, but it was dwindling. I started considering myself as an agnostic. People who leave Islam usually do it because they had some bad experience with it, real-life experience. I have seen it destroy too many people, particularly women. I find it so interesting that Muslims cannot accept that people leave Islam. Something finally hit me and I decided that I was an atheist. The reality is that I really don’t care either way.

My philosophy is to live and let live. We don’t need an organized religion or a book telling us to be good. Good morals are something that we should be able to teach ourselves. I don’t know if god exists, nor do I go around saying that he doesn’t. I just choose to trust in science and the facts laid out before me. I won’t however go around questioning other peoples faith. That is not my place to do so.

First several weeks, there have been days when I’ve walked around with pure rage beating at my chest. I’m angry at myself for falling for an ideology that is so against my very nature. I’m angry at myself for burying my doubts under the curtain of denial and apologia. And so started a depression that would last almost 2 years. I could not allow myself to believe that Christians and unbelievers would go to hell, I kept telling myself 'No!, this can't be true!' And then I would hear the translation of the Quran and that would confirm my fears, I would cry every night, and I began to self harm. I cut myself and then proceeded to hit myself anywhere I could with a closed fist. I almost became suicidal, the only thing keeping me from it was probably the fact that I was scared and then people who commit suicide apparently will suffer in hell for eternity.I began doing this thing, I can't really explain it but I would put pressure on my chest, by squeezing my muscles when I was really hysteric in order to try and stop my heart from working, I often felt I was losing it, I lost all will to live. I would sometimes open the Quran translation and read it, and I couldn't get far because of how often God seemed to mention hell, and punishment. It was like this God of mine, was obsessed with punishment. All these years I was generally taken to a Muslim psychologist, and nothing ever changed, all my problems were still there.

At around the age of 19 I went to see a Christian psychologist and that's when my world began to turn around, he questioned everything and allowed me to feel safe in questioning, I allowed myself to feel angry to God for the first time, and found that that pent up anger was ruining me from the inside. I voiced my pain and I began to heal. Ever since then a whole new way of thought opened to me. I felt the bondage's of Islam loosen it's hold on me, and it was liberating, I have let them fall altogether, and I feel like a new person. Although no one yet knows, I have stopped praying but have chosen to be a humanist, but I still do however believe in God, not because of Islam, but because I found God myself. I may be an atheist, but I guarantee you that I donate money to charity as often as I can. I will buy lunch for a homeless man when I am able. I will go out of my way to help a stranger who is having car trouble in the middle of the road. But those people who represent Muslims will not.

Democrat Scandals

Back when the Shaw of Iran was in power, a dictator to be sure, but an ally of ours for decades, he asked Carter for help against about 500 dissidents who were threatening the stability of Iran. Carter said no, and about the next day, the Shaw was being paraded in the streets, over thrown, our people were hostages. And repression became the fact of life for Iranians, and the regime started on its path to today. The beginning of the present nightmare that is Iran. Under the Shaw, women wore western clothing, went to college, traveled freely, secret police yes, but the Shaw westernized the country. The hostages were released the day Reagan became president. Carter and his fellow democrats like to say it was to embarrass Carter, but Iranians themselves who speak up, say it was because they took Reagan's measure, and figured it would be the prudent thing to do. Think ATC strike and the Russians paying close attention to how Reagan handled that, to see how he would be in the up-coming SALT talks. Clinton took us to war to distract us from his sexual disgraces. And now we have the monster in the White House presiding over a mess he created and encouraged for five years. Allies of ours out of office in several countries, with Obama's encouragement, and radicals in place. Are we going to war, helping Al Qaeda, to save face for the narcissist? Notice how last week it was "A shot across the bow." and now this weeks it is that we need 70,000 troops on the ground. Lies, corruption, and deception surround this horror in the White House. Our enemies respected and feared Bush, and were afraid to test him. Now, the radicals know they have a friend in Obama, and the chaos in the region has his name all over it. The U.S. looks weak and vulnerable, all the while we are being disarmed by Obama, and more vulnerable to attack by the people he enrages. People need to be looking, by the way, at the long time ties between Obama, Jarrett, and the Saudis. (Remember the bow?) Hence his reluctance to go after bin Laden, and hence his lack of involvement in any way, to the attack on the compound. (Thank Panetta and Hillary for getting that done, and telling Obama once it was underway.) When do people realize what a disaster the democrats, especially as presidents, are for our country? And, twice as many troops killed under Obama's five years, that Bush's eight. Twice as many. So far. And, by the way, does anyone notice that all those Syrian weapons will have Iraq's name all over them? Hussein had six months warning, and plenty of time to hide them in Syria.

"Islam the misunderstood Religion"

People always talk about how religion is misunderstood and especially Islam, but it isn’t. When 100% or even 80% of the things coming out of Islam is what we see, then there is no misunderstanding and it was about high time we sat down and connected the dots and saw this religion (like all religions) for what they are instead of sitting here watching another atrocity be committed in the name of Islam and politely nodding out of a false sense of decorum. Islam is not misunderstood. No religion is. The things you see coming out of Islam and countires where Islam is the forced state religion is what you get. There is no grey area, no misunderstood anything, no shades of grey, no in between. Islam is what it is: a hateful, intolerant, violent and militant religion asking subservience and obedience by its followers under penalty and by employing scare tactics. Any abused individual will tell you that “obeying” someone out of fear is not love, it is fear. And there is nothing warm, divine, enticing, great and peaceful about fear and about coercing people by induction of fear. When your religion is in the habit killing those who disagree with you or exerting control over people regarding every aspect of their lives: from what they wear, what they listen to, what they watch, what they say and heck even what they think, you cannot tell me that your religion is a peaceful one that is gravely misunderstood.

A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway. Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.” In 2003, Iraq’s Christian population was at least one million. Today fewer than 400,000 remain—the result of an anti-Christian campaign that began with the U.S. occupation of Iraq, when countless Christian churches were bombed and countless Christians killed, including by crucifixion and beheading. The 2010 Baghdad church attack, which saw nearly 60 Christian worshipers slaughtered, is the tip of a decade-long iceberg. In Egypt, some 100,000 Christian Copts have fled their homeland soon after the “Arab Spring.” In September 2012, the Sinai’s small Christian community was attacked and evicted by Al Qaeda linked Muslims, Reuters reported. But even before that, the Coptic Orthodox Church lamented the “repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes, whether by force or threat.

The problem, and it may be a News Media problem, is that we see few Muslim leaders willing to stand up in a Muslim Nation and speak out against what most of the world looks at as barbaric. Public whippings, beheadings, cutting off hands, terrorist acts, treating children as property, arranged marriages, not educating girls, women not having equal rights as men, honor killings, killing an individual who leaves their faith, killing Christians and Jews, etc., etc. The truth is people, in most of the non-Muslim nations, assume that all Muslims uphold these acts regardless of where they live. We hear Muslim Religious leaders justifying not condemning these acts.The problem for Islam is that the Quran contains countless commands that Muslims kill nonbelievers and apostates, treat women as inferior beings, and stifle free speech to anyone who is critical of this religion. At the same time, the religion teaches that Mohammad is infallible and that the Quran is the indisputable word of Allah. But then, "moderate" Muslims defy literally hundreds of passages of the Quran, so that they will not be terrorists and abusive to women. How do moderate teachers tell Muslims to deal with these contradictions? How do you tell them to ignore Allah's instructions to kill the infidels and commit other brutal and abusive acts? And once a Muslim accepts that his holy books is rife with false and unacceptable instructions, why would he want to continue in this religion?

Why I left Islam

There are no “moderate” Muslims, just “Muslims”.

There are Muslims of varying submission and commitment to Islam. But, those who are not 100% committed in accordance with the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sharia law, are defined specifically in the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sharia law as apostates from the faith and deserve to be killed if they refuse to return.

Those persons who refer to themselves as “Muslims” have a religious obligation to Islam 100%, nothing less. Those “Muslims” who either fail to, or refuse to engage in Jihad to spread Islam throughout the world are apostates, not “moderate” as the term is socially defined.

Islam and Sharia law does not deal equitably with non-believers. Non-believers may not act as witnesses in any legal proceeding involving Muslims. A Muslim woman may not marry a non-believer. Non-believers, in Islamic countries, are treated as inferior beings relative to Muslims. In Sharia law there are distinctly separate laws dealing specifically with non-believers. My family, friends and I left Islam because of the way so many Muslims are pushing their beliefs on society and wanting to change to Sharia law or interfering in the lives of others by praying in the streets, covering faces which is not safe for the rest of us, we need to be able to identify people and because Islam teaches they are the only real faith.

The west welcomes Muslims but Muslim countries are not so welcoming to non Muslims, in fact they oppress or hurt them. We dont want to be a part of such a hateful religion and Muslims are waking up. If Muslims can’t speak out against al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbollah and others like them, then in fact they appear to support them or are indifferent to them or they fear them and then complain when the other countries do something to stop their terrorism. Until you weed out your terrorists and interfere in normal laws and living of other countries there will be more of them not wanting to allow immigration of Muslims.

Truthfully, I think this is best way for Muslims to stay where they are in Muslim countries, because Islam is a culture and a way of life not just a religion (even Muslims say this), thus your laws and beliefs do not fit in other countries who think everyone is equal and where everyone else obeys the laws of the country.

If you leave Islam you are punished, families murder their own, Islam using taqiyya (lies to obtain what you need in Islam), so how can anyone trust many Muslims? I care about you as a person, but I don’t believe this religion accepts others, so I don’t think others should accept it in democratic countries. People around the world need to be kind to Muslims but I think they should reduce the percentage they allow in because in truth, why take a chance on a religion which shows violence in its teachings.

Saudi Arabia's gift to Pakistan and Afghanistan

True Islam I'm afraid is many things! This is one of the problems the true history of Islam in that very region is extremely violent the region was once populated with Buddhist, Hindus and Sikhs were slaughtered en masse to bring Islam to these areas. Historians note that 80-100 million and some suggest up to 120 million were killed by Muslim conquerors in India. Millions were enslaved many shipped off to Baghdad's slave markets many forcibly converted and turned round to go on jihad and bring more of India under Islam. Muslim conquerors recorded that at times 100,000 Indians were slaughtered in a single day. One historian expressed annoyance with Indian Yogi philosophy and argued that although it was okay to seek this inner peace and fulfillment that a country must equally look to protect its borders. And that when the Muslim invaders attacked the first time around the 7-8th century that this should have given them warning. What stopped the wholesale spread of Islam in this manner was partly due to ironically the collection of the Islamic jizya tax which is a protection tax required by all non-Muslims. When Muslim rulers governed areas where the people remained unconverted they were able to profit from the collection of the jizya tax. When other Muslim leaders would pressure them to convert their populations they were often reluctant because the tax allowed them to live extremely lavish lives compared to Islamic rulers governing mainly Muslim or converted populations. They say Hindu Kush also means Hindu blood over the sheer amount of blood spilled during the Islamic attacks. And we know that there are no Buddhists left in Afghanistan / northern Pakistan except at funerals you still see the little flags like those used in the Buddhist ceremony they give you on the way up Mount Everest evidence that they were there. What is driving the current upheaval is perhaps also Pakistan's desire to be like Saudi Arabia and in their view to be more in line with True Islam here's what some of the kids have been learning there. Islam is based on the Quran and hadiths. The Quran itself says 'obey Allah and obey the Prophet (ie his hadiths or sayings). Also what the Prophet did is not open to criticism as he is supposed the most perfect man who ever lived. That is why you will never have Inayat or any Muslim condemning stoning women, because the Prophet did have a woman stoned to death for adultery. Or criticising the Saudis for not allowing the building of churches, because the Prophet said let there be no two religions in Arabia. Moreover Ibn Abd al-Wahhab also repudiated the consensus of the community (Ijma) as he felt that the prevailing social order at his time was itself corrupt. That is why he called for a return to a pure and unadulterated form of Islam closer to the ideals of the Prophet. This madrassa inspired and Saudi financed Wahhabi Islam is destroying indigenous Islam in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Crucially it is imposing a radical creed that represents a distortion and perversion of true Islam. Madawi al-Rasheed in her book A History of Saudi Arabia (Cambridge University Press, 2002) have documented the violent history of the Wahhabis on the Arab peninsula and beyond. That is why their followers today want to create a global Ummah in their own image, composed of only themselves and the other few elect who conform to their standards of purity. Little wonder that so many Muslims around the world are outraged by their lethal injunctions and reject their absolutism and suppression of local traditions including Sufism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So yes, any madrasas that preach this theology should indeed be closed and their proponents excluded from Mosques, preferably by fellow Muslims on religious grounds. This is of course a task for Imams and other religious authorities who have more duties in Islam than only to lead people in prayer. Where this is not possible, the public authorities should intervene and expel hate preachers on legal grounds (incitement to violence)

Islam: Spread by the Sword

Quran! Being a true Islam is modeling after Mohammed himself. Yes Muslims can be peaceful but “true” Islam in its purest is the epitome of violence. I think a more simple answer is “Yes”. When one studies the Quran, Hadiths, and Mohammed’s biography one can clearly see Mohammed’s violent agenda. Bottom line: the purpose of Islam is to spread all over the world as the only religion worshiping Allah no matter what approach: violence or non-violence, and also to imitate Mohammed who is suppose to be the ideal character we all should model after. History doesn’t lie. Islam always used force and fear to get their final word. Mohammed even pridefully admitted that Allah injected fear into the hearts of non-believers. In fact Mohammed also used deception and lies as he said “for war is deceit”. Try leaving Islam in the Middle East. Muslims will persecute you, you will lose your job, status, family, and even be killed. Why? Because the Quran gives specific guidelines on how to handle infidels. And that’s suppose to be peaceful? Fundamentalist claim they are following true Islam. In fact, try to reconcile with fundamentalist now and see how far you’ll go. You’ll probably be killed when you preach your version of Islam. One can examine Mohammed’s life and make that clear distinction. Most Westerners are highly ignorant on Islamic history and Mohammed’s life and only take in what the media makes Muslims out to be whether peaceful or terrorist. But it is impossible to not pick out how violent “fundamental”. Islam is when evaluating Mohammed’s life and I think its sad how you try to justify that. The Islam you purport is foreign because fundamental Islam at its core is true and violent. Here are some of the numerous examples of violence from Mohammed: Before Mohammed got kicked out and boycotted at Mecca, he was a forgiving person. He preached about loving and forgiveness. The Quraysh tribe left him alone at Medina and didn’t try to peruse him. After 3 years they removed the boycott. After Mohammed grew a military power of warfaring tribes his attitude began to change. He now received revelation to command Muslims to fight anyone who rejected Islam (Surah 8:39, Surah 8:65, Surah 8:38) he attacked the Quraysh tribe first! It wasn’t defensive but offensive tactic for Muslims. Another excellent example is through his relationship with the Jews. Mohammed lived among the Jews peacefully in Medina. He did business with them, ate with them, and even faced Jerusalem with them. After 3 years of unsuccessfully trying to get them to convert, Mohammed finally gave up and used excessive force as an alternative, even assassinating a poet there. Why? Because the Jews wouldn’t convert? That’s suppose to be peaceful? What wrong did Jews do to him at first before the Battle of Trench? Even to Christians he said they either had to submit, pay taxes, or be destroyed. (Surah 9:29). Is that peaceful? What wrong did Christians do to him?. Islam attacked Egypt, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Europe even though they did nothing wrong. Unfortunately, this practice itself is the inherent attitude of fundamentals now: to spread Islam by all means. For example: During Mohammed’s last years and the height of his political power he wrote letters to the Roman government, also in Portugal, Spain, and Northern Africa to either receive Islam or pay the price. Now what wrong did those other countries do to him? Nothing! For the first 200 years after Mohammed’s death, millions and millions of Northern Africans were murdered because they didn’t accept Islam! I could spend hours and and days posting surahs and hadiths regarding the use of Islamic violence as the final words of Mohammed: “I descended by Allah with the sword in my hand, and my wealth will come from the shadow of my sword. And the one who will disagree with me will be humiliated and persecuted”. In other words, his final sermon instruct Muslims how to handle non-believers.

Israel, The Only Democracy In The Middle East

For me, one of the least-justifiable world beliefs is Anti-Semitism. For a nation-sized group of people to declare “death” to another nation in the world’s history means its intent is war. For many nations to declare similar intent has, in two major twentieth century instances, resulted in world wars. But for many nations of the Middle East dedicated to Israel’s harassment and destruction, intentionally to declare such hatred against a little nation of almost seven million people is astounding. In each of the seven wars declared upon Israel since 1948, she was attacked first. I know that several ‘Palestinians’ had to (and chose to) move when that small land was voted in Nov. 1947 by the UN for the “Partition of Palestine,” proposing the creation of a Jewish State, an Arab State, and a UN-administered Jerusalem. This was to be a homeland for the world Jews and the Arabs, but the Arabs rejected it. This land had been homeland for many Jews who have lived there for over 3000 years. There are now more Arabs and ‘Palestinians’ within the present borders of Israel than were there on the arrival of the displaced Jews in 1948. In fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have the right to vote, and women enjoy full political rights. Israel also welcomes legal immigration. With only 2 percent of the population of the Middle East and only half that of New York City, this little county has more Nobel Prize winners, PhDs, scientists, physicians, and the largest percentage of its workforce employed in the technical professions per capita in the world. The “lemming” phenomenon used here refers to the millions of Arabs, ‘Palestinians,’ Iranians, Europeans, Russians and too many Americans, who depend upon false, but ubiquitous, media and religious persuasive prodding to “believe” in the ‘evil’ of Zionism and the Jews. They do not know Israel, and they show no discernable interest in learning the realities of this small but dynamic democratic nation. They are willing to accept hatred towards Israel because so many of their religious and political leaders stress it. Their children grow up in it; it is almost mothers’ milk to them.
“Arabs and other Muslims who hate America (and the West)
1. Because America alone (with Israel) prevents the expansion of Islamic rule;
2. Because expansionist totalitarian movements, whether Soviet communism or radical Islam, always hate free societies;
3. Because America is not only strong, it is religious;
4. Because America is not only Christian; it is Judeo-Christian, the two religions the Islamists must overcome to expand globally.”

Hatred, of course, provokes anger, and anger can well cover envy that just might creep into observation of the success of that little country. But ignorant pride will suppress any clear evidence that could produce envy, so that they would be unable to recognize or acknowledge it. They will thus simply continue their hating. They continue to indoctrinate their children with it. However, more than just covering their inferiority, the haters of Israel (and America) loathe everything these democracies stand for; namely, freedom, democracy, individual autonomy and liberty, openness, freedom of religion, and women’s equality. The educated fools and the Israel- and America-haters of the West ignore all this and blame Israel for trying to exist and America for enabling it to do so. The ultimate world intent of the Muslim infiltration of Europe and the US is for the establishment of sharia law and domination of the West. Should they ultimately succeed, then their inferiority would be in the majority and be dominant. Thus by suppression, they could eliminate the superior education, democracy, and standard-of-living of the West. Geert Wilders a Dutch member of Parliament, insists that Islam in its essence is a political ideology and means ‘submission.’ It is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because it strives for sharia. Since the lawful boarding of the blockade-running ship, the Mavi-Marmara, in Israel’s self-defense blockade of Gaza, the UN is moving to set up a kangaroo-court that will rule that Israel has no right to defend itself, and this Obama regime is remaining silent. The US (I should say,” Obama.”) is failing to support Israel. By his actions he also disregards our Constitution. Still, the US Constitution stands for the creation of and protection of private property and national security. By his decisions and misleading speeches, this President is disgracing and weakening our great country. By his actions, Barack Obama has demonstrated that he does not support Israel. He is cold-shouldering most of the United States allies, particularly Israel, which is the only democracy of the Middle East. He is doing it in spite of the will of the majority of the US people. In short, his actions are truly of anti-American interest.

Racism in the Arab world

Arabs in Israel are equal citizens with the right to vote, to protest, to work or to live on Israeli largesse. How many Jews are allowed entry into Saudi Arabia or Kuwait? How many Christians are permitted to show the cross in public on the streets of Yemen? "Jews are children of pigs and donkeys" is a favorite phrase being heard again and again in Mosques all over the world. That is pure racism, isn’t it? And in which Arab country is the Palestinian Arab anything but a second class inhabitant? Racism, is keeping the Palestinian Arabs compressed under the umbrella called refugee, refusing to allow any of them to become citizens so that they be able to vote or become a landowner in Jordan or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. How many Jewish parliament members are there in Egypt? (I forgot for a moment that there is a very slim possibility for a Jew to be elected to the Egyptian Parliament. The Jews were expelled and forced to emigrate so there are very few left.) That is pure racism. How many are there in Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Algeria or Libya? (There I go again forgetting my history. There are practically no Jews left in Algeria or Libya after being robbed, persecuted and expelled.) How many are there in Jordan? None! In the Israeli Knesset there are over a dozen Arab members who were voted in by the Arab population of Israel. Some of these elected Arab Knesset members spy for the enemy, support suicide bombers and rejoice at the murder of innocent Jewish children. They openly abuse their privileges granted to them by the State of Israel, privileges that grant them the freedom to spew the kind of distorted hate and misinformation you are writing about. This is freedom and privilege which they can never have in any of the Muslim countries. Racism is the denial of voting rights to women in countless Muslim countries. Racism is keeping the women as lower class citizens by denying them the freedom to walk the streets unescorted and not allowing them to drive. In Israel, this racism doesn’t exist. Racism is demanding that the American-Jewish soldiers who risked their lives to liberate Kuwait from the maniac Saddam Hussein were forewarned not to pray, not to expose any religious items, not to wear any telling necklaces or other jewelry. Racism is the fatwa which decrees that any Jew who violates this discriminatory Islamic law is subject to severe punishment, perhaps even, death. Racism is Islamic murderers who butcher young men on the streets of England or shoot down soldiers in Fort Hood, USA. It is racism combined with discrimination and coated with a thick dousing of pure hate which drives Muslim mothers to rejoice when their sons blow themselves up amidst innocent people. Racism, is the fact that Islam is inherently racist against every other human being that it is incapable and unwilling to ever create, manufacture, produce, invent or discover anything which will benefit humanity. Racism is when the Muslim suicide killers target for murder the same doctors who saved their eyesight yesterday or their lives last week.

The Dark Legacy of Haj Amin al-Husseini

It was known during the war that Jews in Europe were being exterminated. It was known that the ex- Mufti had a hand in the massacres of Jews in the Arab countries. But it was not known until after that war that Haj Amin’s anti-Jewish activities had extended beyond the incitement stage. It has now been established that five million seven hundred thousand Jews in Europe were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. It has now also been established that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, played an active role in that unprecedented massacre of a people. Records found in Nazi archives and evidence produced at the Nuremberg trial reveal in specific terms that the ex-Mufti was a leading henchman of the SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, principal executive officer in the liquidation of European Jewry. It is now established that, but for Haj Amin, the scale of murder might not have been so extensive, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives might have been saved. Suspicions that the ex-Mufti’s voice was not being used for the microphone alone were first aroused in 1942 when the first European Jewish refugees managed to reach Palestine. They brought stories from some of Europe’s ghettoes where German Templars were reported to be in charge of the liquidation of Jews under the supreme direction of Eichmann. Eichmann, who had himself spent some years in Palestine as a Nazi agent, was an expert on Jewish affairs, and he had directed the Gestapo department of Jewish affairs at the Gestapo head office in Berlin since 1936.It was he who before the war had directed the expropriation and dispatch to concentration camps of German Jews. It was he who after the war had started organized the deportation of Jews from Germany and the occupied territories to what eventually became the extermination camps in German, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. It was he who planned the gas chamber method of mass murder. It was assumed that there might be some connection between Haj Amin and Eichmann as soon as it was learned that he had roped in the Palestinian German Templars as some of his key men. This assumption was strengthened bt a Radio Berlin broadcast of 5th October, 1943, which reported that “Haj Amin el Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, has arrived in Frankfurt for the purpose of visiting the research Institute on Jewish Problem. At the time of his visit, Haj Amin declared that the Arabs and the Germans are partners and allies in the battle against world Jewry.” Subsequent German broadcasts showed that the ex-Mufti was a leading figure at most of the anti-Jewish conventions in Germany and the occupied territories. In July, 1943, the Nazis announced that, unable to attend that Nazi conference of journalists held in Vienna, the Mufti had sent them a message “congratulating them on the success of their anti-Jewish campaign and conveyed special greetings to Arab and Indian delegates.” Then came a hint in one of Haj Amin’s broadcasts which was not fully understood at the time. In a Berlin radio speech on 21st September 1944, the ex-Mufti asked: “Is it not in your power, O Arabs, to repulse the Jews whose number does not exceed eleven millions?” Why “eleven millions”? No one outside Germany knew at the time the scale of Jewish extermination. It was known that before the war the Jewish population numbered nearly seventeen millions. The ex-Mufti’s figure was written off at the time as a slip of the tongue, or an error in the script. But now the facts are known. It was no arithmetic error. Haj Amin knew then what only Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann knew: that more than five million Jews had been liquidated.

Iraq’s Kristallnacht

Seventy years ago, on June 1, 1941, the most dramatic and violent pogrom in the Arab Middle East during World War II took place in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Known in Arabic as the Farhūd, this devastating pogrom left approximately 150 Jews dead, hundreds more wounded, and led to the ransacking of nearly 600 Jewish businesses. The grim events of June 1-2, 1941 were the Iraqi Arab equivalent of the mass violence on Kristallnacht, which had taken place some two and a half years earlier across Nazi Germany. The anti-Jewish riots were mainly led by Iraqi soldiers (bitter and frustrated by their defeat at the hands of the British Army), some members of the police and young paramilitary gangs, swiftly followed by an angry Muslim population that went on the rampage in an orgy of murder and rapine.

The pogrom struck at what was the most prosperous, prominent and well-integrated Jewish community in the Middle East – one whose origins went back more than 2,500 years – long before there was any Arab presence in the country. The 90,000 Jews of Baghdad, it should be said, played a major role in the commercial and professional life of the city. However, in the 1930s they already found themselves confronted by an increasingly virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist propaganda in the Iraqi press and among nationalist political groups. This agitation treated the intensely patriotic Iraqi Jews as an alien, hostile minority who had to be ejected from all the social, economic and political positions it held in the Iraqi state.

Iraqi Arab nationalists, like their counterparts in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, had been much influenced in the 1930s by the rise of Nazi Germany. Hitler’s National Socialism attracted them as a spectacular, authoritarian model for achieving Iraqi national unity and a wider union of Arabs in the region. It was no accident that the pro-German ideologue of pan-Arabism, Sati al-Husri, exerted a major influence on Iraqi education after arriving in Baghdad in 1921, or that Michel Aflaq, the chief theoretician of the Iraqi and Syrian Ba’athists had also absorbed German national-socialist ideas while studying in Paris between 1928-1932. The Director General of the Iraqi Ministry of Education in the 1930s, Dr. Sami Shawkat, was another fanatical ideologue, especially active in instilling a military spirit (resembling the German Nazi model) in Iraqi youth. He also developed radically anti-Jewish ideas which were heavily indebted to Nazi anti-Semitism. In a book published in Baghdad in 1939, These Are Our Aims, Shawkat openly called for the annihilation of the Jews in Iraq, as a necessary prerequisite for achieving an Iraqi national revival and fulfilling the country’s ”historical mission” of uniting the Arab nation.

Significantly, it was also in Baghdad that the first official Arabic translations of parts of Hitler’s Mein Kampf appeared in 1934. In order not to offend Arab sensibilities the final translation “edited” out Hitler’s racial theories about inferior “Semites” – making it clear that anti-Semitism related only to Jews, not to Arabs. The Iraqi translator of Hitler’s “magnum opus” was Yūnus al-Sab’āwī, a young Nazi enthusiast and extreme anti-Semite. A close confidant of nationalist officers in the Iraqi army, Al-Sab’āwī came to play an important role in Iraqi politics. From April to June 1941 he even served as Iraqi Minister of Economics. Al-Sab’āwī was indeed one of the architects of the Farhūd in which his anti-Semitic para-military youth group also took part. Al-Sab’āwī had earlier established a close connection with Nazi Germany’s Ambassador to Iraq in the late 1930s, Dr. Fritz Grobba. The latter was a distinguished Orientalist (fluent in Arabic, Persian and Turkish) who eventually convinced Hitler that helping Arab nationalists to throw off British control of Iraq should be part of German strategy. Grobba also contributed much through the networks he had established in Iraq, towards spreading the idea that Iraqi Jews were a “fifth column” of Great Britain – sworn enemies of Germany and of the Arab nation. Equally, Palestinian nationalists, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (who had had fled to Baghdad in the late 1930s), conducted an especially vicious campaign to incite a jihad among the local Arab population against Great Britain, Zionism and the Jews of Iraq. The Mufti – a close ally of Hitler during the four years he spent in Berlin between 1941 and 1945 – would also exert a particularly toxic influence on the pro-Nazi politician Rashid Ali al-Kailani, whose successful anti-British coup had forced the unpopular Hashemite Regent Abd al-Ilāh to flee the country. The coup brought to power on April 1, 1941 some of the most rabid Jew-baiters in Iraq. Anti-British and anti-Semitic propaganda now reached a zenith that greatly contributed to the violence that burst forth two months later.

Ironically enough, it was the decisive victory of the British and the return of the Regent on June 1 that immediately provoked the pogrom, an act of unparalleled revenge by the Muslim masses against the Jews of Baghdad that expressed their deep disappointment at the fall of the popular Rashid Ali regime. The British Army, now encamped on the outskirts of Baghdad, could easily have intervened but it chose not to do so, dubiously claiming this would have damaged the prestige of the (pro-British) Regent in the eyes of his own people. The British behaved in a similar fashion on several occasions in Mandatory Palestine, in Libya (November 1945) and in Aden (December 1945) – standing by as Arab mobs killed defenseless Jews. In fact, for most Iraqi Muslims in 1941, the British were perceived as oppressive colonizers, the Jews as their “agents” and the German Nazis as “anti-imperialist” saviors! But German military assistance, when it finally came, was too little and too late to save the Rashid Ali regime.

The Farhūd has been incomprehensibly ignored or downplayed both in Zionist historiography and even more in general histories of the Middle East. Arab historians have been silent or else falsified the facts and there are even Israeli and Jewish writers who have unconvincingly tried to dismiss its importance. Yet this traumatic event was indeed of seminal importance. It proved beyond reasonable doubt the strength of Arab nationalist anti-Semitism and of Nazi-style incitement on a Muslim population that had come to see in its patriotic Jewish minority “the enemy within.” The Jews of Iraq, seventy years ago, suddenly found themselves in the crossfire of three converging forms of murderous anti-Semitism – that of the German Nazis, the Palestinian exiles in Baghdad led by Amin el-Husseini, and Iraqi pan-Arab nationalists. Ten years later, the government of Iraq under the pro-British Nuri es-Said, expropriated, dispossessed, disenfranchised and brought about the forced emigration of nearly 120,000 Iraqi Jews, thereby cruelly terminating the oldest of all Diaspora histories. This was not only a crime against humanity but an insufficiently acknowledged part of the history of the Holocaust. The Farhūd exposed with shocking clarity just how vulnerable the Jews in Arab lands really were and what their fate was likely to be under any decolonized Arab regime in the future, especially if there was a breakdown of law and order.

Despite the “Arab Spring” not much has changed for other minorities in the Middle East in the last 70 years. As for the Jews, from Morocco to Iraq and Iran they would be “ethnically cleansed” after 1945 by their Muslim rulers. The Farhūd already represented the writing on the wall for those willing to read it. The reinforcement of a strong Israel was and still remains the only viable long-term answer to the repetition of such horrific atrocities in the future.

The Grand Mufti War Crimes

That the former Grand Mufti was responsible in large part for the Nazi program of the extermination ot the Jews was revealed by Edgar Mowrer and confirmed by Bartley Crum in the course of his investigations as mebmber of the Anglo-American Committee. Discussing his examination of the archives of the Allied Tribunal at Nurnberg, Mr Crum says:

I saw another document a deposition of Dr. Rudolph Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew, who conducted negotiations with the Nazis in attempt to ransom Hungarian Jews. Many of this dealings were with Albert Einchmann, the Gestapo specialist in Jewish affairs, who had been the confidant of the Mufti. During his negotiations Dr. Kasztner spoke frequently with one Dieter von Wisliczeny. Von Wisliczeny was at this moment held in a cell in Nurnberg as a war criminal and important witnes. "The Grand Mufti" he said, "has repeatedly sugessted to the Nazi authorities-including Hitler, von Ribbentrop, and Himmler-the extermination of Eurepean Jewry." The Mufti told Wisliczeny that the "considered this a comfortable to the Palestine problem." And Nazi records show that, accompanied by Eichmann the Grand Mufti, incnognito, visited the gas chambers of Auschwitz, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were exterminated. Hitler had instructed that in any ransoming concetration-camp inmates no Jews were to be included because an agreement had been reached with the Mufti that all Jews be exterminated. I also learned that the Hitler-Muftu agreement included relegation of Ibu Saud to secondary impotance by making the Mufti the supreme head of a new Pan-Islam. This became cleare as I read one.It was the Muftu who insisted to the Nazi leaders that no matter what deals were made, no matter what moneys were paid for the ransom of the Jews, no Jews should be permitted to go to Palestine. Negotrations were under way at that time for the ransom of the Jewish community of Bratislava. These negotiations broke down because the Mufti refused to countenance their being ransomed, and a result the entire community was liquidated. Other letters of the Mufti showed that he encouraged the deportation of European Jews to Polish extermination camps on June 5, 1943, he prosted to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria against a plan by the Bulgarian government allowing emigration of 4.000 Jewish chldren.These children he argued,presented "a degree of danger to Bulgaria whether they be kept in Bulgaria or be permiteed to depart from that country." Instead, he said, they should be sent to a place in which they would be "under stringent control-as, for instance, Poland. "The Muftis protest was sueccessful".

Turban and Swastika

National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood appeared at about the same time in the 1920s and shared a central ideological imperative the extermination of the world’s Jews. The National Socialist dream ended in a Berlin bunker in 1945, but the Muslim Brotherhood dream never died. After the military defeat of Nazi Germany the center of radical Jew-hatred shifted from Europe to the Arab Middle East. The foundation for an Islamic version of Nazi eliminationist anti-Semitism had, in fact, already been created in Egypt and Palestine, right under the noses of the British colonial administration. The Muslim Brotherhood emerged from the war as the largest mass movement in the Arab world, with over one million followers and an armed paramilitary cadre of 40,000. The charismatic preacher Hassan Al-Banna launched the Brotherhood in 1928 as a vehicle for a religious awakening, calling on all Muslims to return to the purity of early Islam by rejecting the corrupting influence of Western political ideas and social customs. By the 1930s, Al-Banna had found much to emulate in the western totalitarian movements in Germany and Italy. Like the Fascists and Nazis, the Brotherhood claimed to speak for the oppressed working class and the unemployed against predatory Jewish capitalism and British imperialism. To the Koranic narrative depicting the Jews as treacherous enemies, Al-Banna appended the modern Nazi doctrine that “international Jewry” was the spearhead of a worldwide conspiracy to enslave the German Volk as well as the Muslim Umma. Al-Banna arranged for the translation and distribution of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while elements of the Brotherhood’s paramilitary wing volunteered for active duty with the nascent Nazi war machine. Hitler’s most effective Islamic messenger to the Arabs, however, was the Palestinian Haj Amin el-Husseini. In 1921, the British appointed Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (charged with overseeing the Islamic holy places). He soon became the preeminent Arab leader opposing the British mandatory administration. Some Arab nationalists were drawn to an alliance with Nazi Germany based on the political calculus that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But, for Husseini, it was a matter of deep ideological affinity. Even before Hitler came to power the Mufti expressed his admiration for the Nazis and their solution for the “Jewish problem”—at the time, expulsion from Germany—and sent delegations of young Islamists to Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. Eventually the Mufti took up residence in Berlin, where he played an active role in the wartime extermination of European Jewry. By all rights Husseini should have been tried and executed as a war criminal. In June 1946, however, the postwar French government allowed him to escape to Egypt, where he was given asylum by King Farouk. Al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood and other nationalist groups welcomed him as a returning hero. Al-Banna called Husseini a hero who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

The Arafat Enigma

Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, “our hero”. Arafat referred to “our hero Al Husseini" as a symbol of withstanding world pressure, having remained an Arab leader in spite of demands to have him replaced because of his Nazi ties. This he compared to Palestinian withstanding of world pressure for reform of the Palestinian Authority today, which includes the American demand to replace Arafat.Background: “Hajj Amin Al Husseini (1895-1974) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He supported the Nazis, and especially their program for the mass murder of the Jews. He visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the "Final Solution" to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine. In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.”In the modern pantheon of terrorists, no other figure has had the resilience of Yasser Arafat. His anti-Semitic career spans from the 1940s to the present. No other major terrorist has survived this long much less continued to mastermind increasingly more deadly terrorist attacks while at the same time become recognized as a world statesman. Even though he is an evil man, his life is the stuff of which legends are made. Arafat has a long history of cheating death. He has survived assassination plots, an air crash and several bids to unseat him during more than 30 turbulent years of rule. Arafat's murderous career actually began in Cairo, the city of his birth. Beginning there as a teenager in the late 1940s, he has ordered the murder of thousands of civilians while waging war against the Jews. He first came to international prominence after Israel defeated the combined Arab armies during the June 1967 Six Day War. His Fatah terrorist organization led guerrilla attacks against the Israelis from bases in Jordan.He rose to chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1969.His first "great escape" came in 1970 when, after Palestinians hijacked three airliners to Jordan, King Hussein ordered his forces to attack Palestinian strongholds. After nearly two weeks of heavy fighting, the PLO withdrew and he left Amman in disguise. During the decade of the 1970s, Arafat formed a "state within a state" in southern Lebanon. He took advantage of the country's bitter civil war and set up a network of hardened thugs who bullied the native Lebanese, especially the Christians. His ruthless reign came to a bloody end when Ariel Sharon, then Israel's Defense Minister, launched an invasion of Lebanon that ended with the siege of Beirut. With Arafat and his military surrounded, the United Nations-led international community once again came to his rescue. Defiant as ever, he survived numerous attempts by the Israelis to kill him and eventually was allowed to leave Beirut in 1982 with his men under a deal brokered by Washington. Interestingly, during the siege of Beirut, an Israeli sniper actually had Arafat in his sights, but Sharon decided not to have him shot. Within a year, in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, the Palestinians were forced out once more by Syrian forces. Arafat continued to rule in exile from Tunis and survived several attacks launched by Israeli agents who managed to get close enough to assassinate Abu Jihad, his long-serving deputy in 1988. In 1993, Arafat decided upon a new strategy. He pretended to opt for diplomacy instead of guerrilla warfare. This led to the signing of a peace agreement with Israel at the White House by the year's end. He was rewarded with a hero's welcome in Gaza the following year. Several years later, after being offered an almost unbelievably generous peace deal at Camp David, Arafat revealed his true intentions. He launched the most vicious terrorist campaign to date against Israel as a response. Arafat showed that nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel will satisfy him. From where did Yasser Arafat get such enduring hatred of Jews? Even more important, where did he get such expertise in killing Jews? Certainly there is an endemic hatred of Jews perpetuated within Islam. But Arafat is a breed apart even among the Islamic radicals. Mr. Arafat's mentor, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, indoctrinated him with hatred toward Israel. The grand mufti led Palestinian Arabs from 1920 until Mr.Arafat succeeded him in 1967. The mufti encouraged Arab terrorism against Jewish immigrants to Palestine between the two world wars and, like Mr. Arafat the mufti piously disclaimed any responsibility for terrorist acts committed by his followers.

Arab Slave Trade

In the 7th century A.D., the Arabs, having conquered Egypt, proceeded to enslave numerous peoples of Nubia, Somalia, Mozambique, and elsewhere, during the first Islamic expansion. The Nubians had been harshly dealt with in the fierce attacks by Arab forces. They defended themselves courageously, but faced with superior numbers and the determination of the soldiers of the jihad and the repeated assaults by Arab jihadists, the Nubians preferred to negotiate peace, concluding in 652 the treaty known as Bakht. This treaty committed the vanquished African monarch to turn over annually a supply of 360 captives to become slaves in the Arab-Muslim world. Thus it was that a large-scale Negro slave trade was for the first time invented by Arab-Muslims. I use the term Arab-Muslim because after the Bakht, this trade became trans-Saharan and Eastern, implicating more and more peoples and regions and extending far beyond the Arab world. The traders who took part were also Berbers from the Maghreb, Turks of the Ottoman Empire and Iranians, hence Persians. Many African captives were sold by the Arabs as far away as India, since the king of Bengal possessed about 8000 slaves in the 15th century. The majority of men deported at the start of this trade came from the population of Darfur. It all began there, and apparently it has never ceased.- Because the misery, the poverty, the long demographic stagnation and the current developmental delays of the black continent, are not merely the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade, as many imagine. The transatlantic drain is well known and has been debated for decades. Studies and syntheses on this slave trade are legion. And yet, even though one cannot speak of degrees of horror or a monopoly on cruelty, it is possible to declare that the Negro slave trade and the wars provoked by the Arab-Muslims were, for black Africa through the centuries, much more devastating than the transatlantic trade. Likewise the Islamization of many Negro-African peoples and all that it engendered, such as jihad, were no less the source of innumerable implosions. But to this day, only the genocide of black peoples by the Arab-Muslim nations has not been clearly acknowledged by those who research the responsible parties. Even though this crime is historically, juridically and morally forbidden.- I do indeed find the word "genocide" suitable for this unprecedented enterprise. It must be stated that the disdain of the Arabs towards Africans was also a catalyst. The famous Arab historian of the 14th century, Ibn-Khaldum, wrote: "The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, because of an inferior degree of humanity, their place being closer to the level of animals." The question then was: how to see to it that these "animals" did not reproduce in Arab-Muslim lands. For from the outset of the slave trade, the traders wanted to prevent them from becoming rooted. Since there was nothing metaphysical about it, castration appeared to be a practical solution. And so, in this effort to abase human beings, if the Arabs sent most black women to harems, they mutilated the men, using rudimentary procedures that caused a terrifying mortality. The figures on this slave trade are quite simply harrowing.

Convert or Die

The early history of Muhammad and his ceaseless Islamic conquests are horrifying he presided personally over 100 raids and deadly battles. In his "safe-haven" of Medina he ordered the beheading of all males (as many as 900) of one of the Jewish tribes that lived there, the Qurayza, which had fought many battles for Muhammad but had reached their limit. Even though they had surrendered this slaughter was carried out. Two other Jewish tribes in Medina had earlier been offered a choice convert or be exiled. Lucky for them they had choice. If there's any doubt as to the butchery of early Islam, any amout of research into Khalid ibn al-Walid, the so-called "Sword of Islam", a crony of Muhammad, will help you see the dark. Muhammad's letters to regional kings have been well preserved. The overall message convert or lose everything. Within a century the bloodbath started by Muhammad had spread well beyond the Arabian Peninsula in the form of a Muslim Empire that stretched from the borders of China and the Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, Persia, North Africa, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. Centuries of Islamic military campaigns into India killed untold millions. Centuries of trying to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church from Constantinople finally succeeded in 1453. The history of Islam is at once fascinating and sickening. The Q'uran taught Muslims to fight in the way of Allah until all of humanity submits. That mindset is alive and well today even "peaceful" Muslims will admit their mission is to convert the world. But there are plenty of "old-school" Muslims who feel the use of force is more effective. They are the ones responsible for the estimated 21,439 terror attacks aross the globe since 9/11. Muslims have long decried that Islam is a peaceful religion. I have studied this for a long time and I don't see the facts to back this up. The fact is that is only one Q'uran yet, different interpretations of the same are practiced. All share the same verses calling for death and destruction to unbelievers. With so many Muslims in the world, why isn't there any opposition to that message?. The reason is that they know and understand full well what the Q'uran says about unbelievers and they apologise that it not how they practice Islam. Well, again the Koran is said to bed Gods words. God said Kill all unbelievers do you not follow his literal message? To compare Islam to all of the other large religions of the world is an insult to these other religions. Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism do not have the history of violence that Islam has. It is a matter of degree to say the least. The first half of the Q'uran may sound peaceful enough, but the second half spells out the true violent goal of Islam. Spread Islam to engulf the globe. Those who do not convert are either killed or "tolerated". Islamic toleration consisted of anything from higher taxes, career retardation, sectioned off ghettoes, boy tribute to man the Janissaries, to raiding parties for women, and to outright enslavement. When Islam was strong its neighbors rightfully fear it. From Iberia, to France, to Italy, to the Balkans, to the Greek Isles, to the Caucases, to the Indian subcontinent, to Subsaharan Africa and anywhere else Islam attacked they slaughtered, annihilated, and exterminated. It took many centuries for the "Border" countries to fight off the Islamic onslaught. But this has all been forgotten. Today Islam is flexing its petrodollars. They are once again showing their true colors. If they cannot win at first with brute force then they will infiltrate and colonize by emigration. Beware the moderate Muslim. Are they a wolf in sheep's clothes? Will they enjoy the freedoms of progressive countries only to fall back into fundamentalist line once their new homes are dominated by Islam? Is the glass half full or half empty? The optimists in the progressive countries believe that Moslems will come and be quickly assimilated. But will they convert to Judeo-Christianity or will they grow in numbers so great that politicians will do whatever it takes to receive their votes? When a Global Calafate dominates the middle east, based on the literal word of God all unbelievers will be hunted down by the very same religion of peace. Their message convert or die.