CIVILIZATION AND MOSQUES
By Mordechai Nisan
American Thinker
on_and_mosques.html
April 14 2009
It is late in the global game of confrontation with Islamic Jihad. The
lines of conflict have been drawn and the ground-rules for Muslim
victory are in place. Yet many among the targeted governments and
peoples have yet been incapable or unwilling to identify the enemy,
at the gates and within the walls.
Now the entire globe is Islam’s religious ambition and field of
conquest. Bombings and attacks in New York and London, Madrid and
Moscow, Bali and Mumbai, Jerusalem and Balsan, are not isolated
or discrete instances of local theatre low-intensive assaults, but
components of a pattern of coordinated and executed warfare of a very
singular kind.
Mentioning Bali and Istanbul, and adding Casablanca and Aden, Sinai
and Tizi Ouzou, contributes confusion and paralysis to the policy
equation in the West. Why would Muslim terrorists carry out violent
attacks in Muslim countries and against fellow-Muslims?
For Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden and his second-in-command Ayman
al-Zawahiri, not only infidel countries like Hindu India, Jewish
Israel, and the Christian Philippines, constitute legitimate prey and
victims, but Muslim-ruled countries as well. Theologian Ibn Taimiyya
(d. 1328) defined Muslim-governed societies not conforming to Islamic
law and tradition as ignominiously reflecting the pre-Islamic jahaliyya
period of history – thus the legitimate target of Islamic subversion
and overthrow.
Islam’s Will to Power
In confronting Islamic terrorism, governments around the
world and specifically under the leadership of the United
States have concentrated on the improvement of relevant security
apparatuses. Although intelligence surveillance has enhanced domestic
security with preventive arrests and early-warnings of imminent attack,
such measures cannot eliminate a threat whose origin and rationale are
not especially those of weaponry, battalions, and conventional warfare.
The manual of Islamic jihad is canonized in the sacred Koran. The
believers, and only Muslims are dignified by the term mumin’in
(believers), are enlisted to go ‘in the way of Allah’ and
fight and kill the enemies of Islam. The Koran opens with the
exordium declaration that God is compassionate and merciful,
but He is eminently cruel against those who reject Him and His
messenger-prophet Muhammad. With piercing insight Frithjof Schuon
elucidated three essential and successive principles of Islam:
Truth-Victory-Generosity. The genius of Islam and that of the Arab
race converge, he wrote, as the collective embodiment of the soul
of Mohammad.[i]
Islam is not a private spiritual experience but a public campaign
of conquest, colonization, and conversion. In the Muslim East,
governments and mobs persecute, outlaw, and hound the Christian
faith and faithful. Christians flee in fear from Iraq and Egypt, and
churches are closed down in Algeria. Christianity is prohibited in
Riyadh – Saudi convert Hamoud Bin Saleh was reported arrested in early
2009. Christianity is dwindling in the East: consider holy Bethlehem,
Aleppo in Syria and Tripoli in Lebanon – while Islam flourishes in
the West.
The Mosque
The mosque is the locus of religious faith and jihadic
indoctrination. It is a place of prayer that serves as the barracks
for gathering the soldiers. In the early days of Islam the mosque was
a center for forging military preparedness, awaiting the spiritual
command to go out and fight the enemy. The Muslims would line up in
prayer "as in a battle formation."[ii] Mosques serve, as defined
by Samuel Huntington in his book Who Are We?, ‘as a base and a
cover’.[iii]
Tawfiq Hamid, an Egyptian doctor, related his nightmarish experience
as a former believing Muslim fanatic. He recalled how the local imam
positioned the believers tightly together in their prayer positions,
assuring close contact, while teaching that ‘God loves those who
fight for Him as a solid wall’.[iv]
In the mosque a niche (mihrab) in one wall indicates the direction of
prayer toward the holy city of Mecca. Appropriately, Saudi Arabia as
the sacred keeper of Islam’s most sacred site is today one of the great
promoters of jihad and Islam around the world. It is to Arabia that
Muslims world-wide face five-prayer times daily, looking for religious
inspiration and financial sustenance to continue their global struggle.
The history of Muslim warfare was traditionally crowned with
mosque-construction in lands conquered and occupied in the name
of Islam. Atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem the new rulers adorned
aggression with a cultural symbol and built the Aqsa Mosque in 705. In
late September 2000, the Palestinians launched their Al Aqsa Intifada
against Israel, ending their rabble-rousing Friday public prayer in
the Aqsa mosque by raining rocks on Jews praying below the Mount at
the Western Wall.
A yet more arrogant practice was to either destroy churches, in
Nazareth in 661, or to transform existing churches into mosques,
in Damascus in 637 and the Greek Orthodox Church of Hagio Sophia in
Constantinople (renamed Istanbul) in 1453. When the Muslims seized
Hebron in 637, they desecrated while redesigning the Cave of the
Patriarchs into the Ibrahim Mosque. A notorious Muslim practice in
the theatre of warfare was to massacre Christians in their churches:
Armenians in Nakhjavan in 705, Greeks in Thessaloniki in 904, and
Lebanese in Ayshiyyah in 1976.[v]
Muslims build hundreds of mosques, madrasa schools, and cultural
centers throughout Western countries. Some have come to recognize
the insidious danger, sensing that the Muslim goal is power and
not freedom, conquest and not integration. Congressman Peter King
(R-NY), former Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee,
publicly stated that ‘Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this
country’. Meanwhile, it was reported in January 2009 that the FBI
was using planted agents to conduct surveillance in mosques in America.
The case of the Islamic Society of Boston, in constructing the
largest mosque in New England, was revelatory of the infiltration
strategy. The mosque project had proven links with the Texas-based Holy
Land Foundation, known to fund Islamic terrorism, specifically the
Palestinian Hamas movement. Moreover, the Boston mosque is connected
through the Muslim American Society with the powerful Egyptian-based
Muslim Brotherhood whose definitive goal in America is, as defined in
a document from late 2008, "Grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying
Western Civilization from within."[vi]
A revelatory connection between mosque and jihad characterized Hamas
practices in the Gaza Strip. When Israel initiated its military
operation in late December 2008, its air force bombed the Gazan
neighborhood Tel el-Hawwa mosque, and other mosques in Jabaliyya, which
served as secret storehouses and launching pads for Qassam rockets and
Grad missiles fired by Palestinians against Israeli civilian targets.
Jihad And America
Jihad is a stimulating and turbulent myth, while the mosque offers
a space for mental transcendence, a headquarters for mobilization,
a vision of conquest.
The muezzin call to prayer in Detroit and Manhattan, where mosques
are disingenuously named ‘Islamic Centers’, is a manifest violation of
public space and private comfort for many. Muslims are determined to
set the social rules by segregating classrooms, gyms, and swimming
pools; promoting Muslim prayer in public schools; probing social
resistance with women’s head-covering scarves and non-alcoholic
taxis; and enticing conversion through out-reach programs in prisons,
religious discussions in mosques, and extensive internet missionary
propaganda. For the Koran categorically states (3:18): "The only true
faith in God’s sight is Islam."
In America, the Muslim goal is not to earn acceptance but to acquire
ascendancy in the mosaic of society. Omar M. Ahmed, former chairman
of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told a crowd
of California Muslims in July 1998 (though he later denied this)
that ‘Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to
become dominant’.
For Italian philosopher-novelist Umberto Eco, writing a month after
the 9/11 trauma, the freedom of religion was a sacrosanct principle. He
wrote about the West with these words: "We are a pluralist civilization
because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not
going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into
prison in Kabul. If we did so, we too would become Taliban."[vii]
And he hoped that, if we allow mosques in our countries, then one
day there will be Christian churches in their countries – or at least
Buddhas won’t be blown up.
America Disarmed
Islam, engaging in archaic religious warfare, is committed to change
the political order by a sweeping and fundamental transformation
of society, culture, and morality. Rules and restrictions as in
Saudi Arabia would strangle America; personal and public morality
– concerning men and women – would be chiseled into form by the
likes of Iranian ayatollahs and Egyptian muftis, though they speak
American home-grown English. The individual happiness principle –
just holding hands at the amusement park – would be smothered; and
the intoxicating fragrance of individuality and creativity would be
crushed in Islamic America.
The Muslim replacement strategy for America is on track. It took a
few centuries following the death of Muhammad until Zoroastrian Iran
and Byzantine Egypt overwhelmingly Islamicized. Even if it takes
one or two hundred years, the final triumph is considered by the
believers in Tehran and Cairo, but also in Houston and Minneapolis,
a historical certainty. Veiling their intentions and women, the Muslim
conquest advances.
Indeed, the method of indefatigable religious propaganda, rather
than terrorism, is what can assure Islam’s ultimate success. CAIR
spokesman Ibrahim Hooper admitted in a 1993 interview that he wants
to see America become a Muslim country; not by violence, he admitted,
but ‘through education’.[viii]
In the end, who will be blamed for the cataclysm? Politicians who
failed their constituents, the media who misconstrued the victim,
clerics who preached dialogue rather than disclosure, intellectuals
who betrayed national values; and those who stood by watching the
exploitation of democracy rather than guarding its inner poise,
its light and sweetness, for the free and brave people of America.
Dr. Mordechai Nisan resides in Jerusalem and lectures on Middle East
history and politics. Email contact
—————————————– —————————————
[i] Frithjof Schuon, Dimensions of Islam, London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1970, p. 15.
[ii] Khalid Yayha Blankinship, The End of the Jihad State: The Reign
of Hisham Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994, p. 15.
[iii] Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s
National Identity, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004, p. 363.
[iv] James G. Zumwalt, "Dead Man Talking," The Washington Times,
August 4, 2007.
[v] See Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War
and the Fate of Non-Muslims, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometeus Books, 2005.
[vi] Immediate Release, "Citizens for Peace and Tolerance," Boston,
December 3, 2008.
[vii] Umberto Eco, "The Roots of Conflict," Guardian Unlimited,
October 13, 2001.
[viii] Art Moore, "Did CAIR founder say Islam to Rule
America?" WorldNetDaily.com, December 11, 2006.