*** MUSLIM LEADER IN INDIA THREATENS VIOLENCE AGAINST AMERICA ***

Contrary to what many are saying, the Muslim religion is not inherently peaceful and harmless. As a rule, wherever Islam is in control of the government, there is persecution and intolerance toward other religions. Christians are being persecuted and even killed in many Muslim lands around the world. Even in Pakistan, a Christian was recently sentenced to death for allegedly speaking against Mohammed. The Pakistan supreme court upheld the death sentence. The intolerance and violence of even mainstream Islamic leaders was witnessed by statements made this week by Syed Bukhari, the religious leader of the largest mosque in India. He warned America not to retaliate for the terrorists attacks and threatened that any retaliation "will be treated as an attack on the entire Muslim world" ("India's Involvement a risk to America?" WorldNetDaily Sept. 19, 2001). This prominent Muslim leader therefore rejects the notion that bin Laden and other vicious terrorists are some sort of aberration who should be rejected by other Muslims. This Muslim leader justified the vicious terrorist attacks against civilian men, women, and children as "just a reaction to the actions of the United States." He is saying that America deserved what it got. Not every Muslim is violent, of course, but to claim that the Muslim religion itself is not part of the terrorist problem is to shut one's eyes to the facts.
[ Friday Church News Notes, September 21, 2001 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org) ]

*** How Peaceful Is Islam? ***

** Is Islam really a religion of peace?

"The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics-a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam," President Bush said in a universally praised speech last night. " [Islam's] teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself." Indeed, if there's one message that's been drilled into Americans' minds since the September 11 attacks, it's that Islam is peaceful, terrorists are not. But today's Washington Times questions that argument. "Scholars differ that Islam requires terror in defense," says the headline, but the plural use of scholars isn't justified by the article text-which notably runs without a byline.

Instead, the article is really an opportunity for the Times to point out an article in London's Daily Telegraph by Patrick Sookhdeo, director of London's Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. He denies that Islam is to blame for the attacks, but he takes issue with those who want to equate the violence of Islamic militants with the crusades or past "Christian" violence. "Many horrific acts have been, and continue to be, perpetrated in the name of Islam, just as they have in the name of Christianity," he wrote. "But unlike Islam, Christianity does not justify the use of all forms of violence. … The trend is to focus on Islam as a religion of peace. … Now that Islam is no longer demonized, it seems it can do no wrong." A similar argument is made at the Barnabas Fund Web site, where Sookhdeo serves as international director (it's unclear if he wrote the piece): "There are clearly two strands in contemporary Islam: the peaceable and the war-like. Islam is not one or the other; it is both at the same time."

** Operation Inoffensive Offensive

Crusade is out for obvious reasons: Muslims (and Eastern Orthodox Christians) are still upset about medieval cities "filled with corpses and blood." So the White House has promised to stop using the word when referring to its "war on terrorism." But now the Pentagon says it's ditching the phrase Operation Infinite Justice. "Is Infinite Justice the name of this operation?" one reporter asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a news briefing yesterday. "Because in talking to several Islamic scholars, they find that name offensive. The only person or thing that can grant infinite justice, according to their religion, is Allah."

"I understand. I understand," Rumsfeld replied, saying he didn't know whether the phrase had formally been adopted. "And obviously the United States does not want to do or say things that create an impression on the part of the listener that would be a misunderstanding, and clearly that would be. … I have heard that someone somewhere in some place selected those words, and in some preliminary aspect of things use them. Whether they will persist, given what you've said and what I was aware of, I just don't know the answer, but I doubt it. I just don't know the answer, but I doubt it."

The Baltimore Sun notes that infinite has been used before in the war against terrorism: "The Clinton administration's limited airstrikes in 1998 against Sudan and Afghanistan, in retaliation for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, were dubbed Operation Infinite Reach."
[Compiled by Ted Olsen for Christianity Today ]

*** A FEW QUOTES FROM THE KORAN ***

** WHAT THE MUSLIMS BELIEVE WHETHER ARAB OR AMERICAN.

There are statements concerning the attitude of Muslims toward those that disagree with them. In the Koran, the believer is the Muslim, the unbelivers are Jews and Christians.

Since the terrorist attack on the WTC, Arab & American Muslims in the U.S. have tried to portray the Muslim, Islamic faith as a loving, peaceful religion...attempting to make bin Laden look like a renegade off-brand Muslim, but the truth is...bin Laden is living out the true faith of the true Muslims. Those who disagree with bin Laden and the Koran ought to quit calling themselves Muslims. They are either ignorant, hypocritical, or liars.

1. [5.51] "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people." NOTE: (1) Jews and Christians are unjust people. (2) Muslims are not to be friends to Jews or Christians.

2. [2.191] And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers. NOTE: (1) Kill the unbelivers wherever you find them....even in the Sacred Mosque if necessary.

3. [4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper. NOTE: Again, Muslims are not to befriend Christians & Jews, but rather seize them and kill them if they will not convert.

4. [4.91] You will find others who desire that they should be safe from you and secure from their own people; as often as they are sent back to the mischief they get thrown into it headlong; therefore if they do not withdraw from you, and (do not) offer you peace and restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and against these we have given you a clear authority.

5. [9.30] And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!

[ Pastor Chris Norris ]

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