An interesting essay written by our friend Patrick King of the Westphalia Blog
In the following essay, I will be displaying and organizing accounts of Islamic manipulation, extortion, and interpretation and how it effected the order and events of the Middle East and it’s people. Also, it will show numerous accounts of Arab dictators contaminating Islam for numerous reasons.
The first account I will be informing you of, is based around Islamic-Jewish relations.
Up till the early 1940’s anti-Semitism was not as present in the Middle East as it was in Europe. Un-like in the Christian religion, where the Jews killed the alleged son of god, the Islamic religion has no reason to be hostile towards the Jewish religion and it’s followers. In fact it was Muhammad who murdered Jews. As a result of that, anti-Semitism did not develop in the Arab world as it had in Europe. In the east, there were no fears of a Jewish uprising or conspiracy.
Islamic traditionalists saw that the Jews were bringing western ideas and culture to the east. They were scared of modernization and thought it would relinquish their rule over the Arab masses. Muslim traditionalist teacher Rashid Rida stated: “… They [i.e. the Jews] have also spread here their customs and usages that are opposed to our religion and to our whole way of life. Above all, our youth is being morally shattered. The Jewish girls who run around in shorts demoralize our youth by their mere presence.”
This newly found Islamic ant-Semitism was nurtured by the Nazis. With the help of Islamic leaders, the Nazis set up an anti-Semitic radio station called Radio Zeesen. Zeesen broadcasted Nazi propaganda all over the Middle East.
This alliance of traditional Islamic teachers and the Nazis furthered the idea of anti-Semitism. In fact, the Nazis (again with the help of Islamic teachers) distributed a 32 page propaganda filled pamphlet.
In a short passage from the pamphlet: “The struggle between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammed fled from Mecca to Medina… The Jewish methods were, even in those days, the same as now. As always, their weapon was slander… They said that Muhammed was a swindler… they began to ask Muhammed senseless and insoluble questions… and they endeavored to destroy the Muslims… If the Jews could betray Muhammed in this way, how will they betray Muslims today? The verses from the Koran and Hadith prove to you that the Jews were the fiercest opponents of Islam and are still trying to destroy it.”
To sum up: Islamic leaders who were scared of modernization that the Jewish community brought, along with the Nazis who just wanted to exterminate the Jews, bent and misinterpreted Islamic teachings to the whole Arab world.
The second account I will display to you, involves the Lebanese civil war.
To shorten this, since I’m sure you already have a background of the Lebanese civil war if you had read my previous essay, “Lebanon- The Black Sheep Of The East’ in which I explained the differences between Lebanon and other Arab nations, here is a passage from it: “It is through Arab dictators that Lebanon is how it is today though.
Nations such as Syria and Egypt saw how much Lebanon was succeeding through it’s western styled economy and government.
Those nations under tyrannical command were scared of possible uprisings that could take place in their own state. What if their population saw another middle-eastern country living lavishly even with hundreds of ethnicities, while they were in slums?
Countries like Syria and Egypt incited an Islamic uprising in Lebanon. Syria and Egypt used religious propaganda with the help of radical Islamic institutes to spread the ideas of ultra-conservative Islam to Muslims in Lebanon.
The governments of those countries also used the thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to incite a civil war. It is well known that during the civil war Syria and Egypt created puppet PLO factions to attack Lebanese and Israeli forces without actually officially getting involved.
Because certain nation’s governments were scared of their citizens finding out they are being suppressed they went through the great lengths of destroying a succeeding, prosperous country.
Lebanon could have changed the world if it wasn’t for the dictators scared of freedom.”
As you can clearly see, it was through lies the Arab dictators broadcasted across the Arab world, using Islam as a median to move the masses to support the war, which has cause the destruction of a country.
The following is of another account of Islamic fundamentalists manipulating the Islamic masses as aided by Arab dictators. It is also the most current and relevant of the entire essay.
Anti-Americanism is an idea widely supported by Islamic fundamentalists all around the Middle East and is supported by numerous Arab dictators. Again, as it was shown in the Lebanese civil war, Arab dictators are terrified of modernization of local states.
When the U.S, during the first gulf war, invaded and occupied, parts of the Middle East, new ideas and new material items were spread throughout the occupied territory.
Arab dictators, scared of their own population seeing that life can be better in some material ways launched an anti-American campaign.
To spread the idea of anti-Americanism, Arab dictators used the only thing they knew that could move the Arab masses. Islam. With the help of radical Muslim fundamentalist groups like al-Qaeda, they quickly spread the propaganda.
To sum up entirely the point I am trying to convey is that, many tyrannical Arab rulers are suppressing their entire population and extorting Islam to get the masses behind them so that they may have further their power.
Islam itself, in its pure form, is not how it is displayed today. Power hungry villains who vicariously used Islam as a means of propaganda have contaminated it with messages of hate.
3 responses so far ↓
Moishe3rd // November 12, 2007 at 3:58 am
The above essay appears to be positing that particular Arab and/or Muslim leaders are manipulating “dar al-Islam,” specifically in regards as to attitudes towards Israel; the Jews; and the West, for their own nefarious and apparently “hidden” purposes. The article also suggests that this “manipulation, extortion, and interpretation” did not begin until the 1940’s.
I would suggest that “Islamic fascism” and hatred of Jews and the West (or dar al-Harb, the House of War) began in earnest far before the Nazi rise to power.
allied with Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and twice tried to violently take over all of the Arabian peninsula, sacking and looting Mecca in the process, before being crushed by the Ottomans and the Egyptian Sultanate.
Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab at-Tamimi, the founder of the fanatical intolerant cult that is today the official State religion of Saudia Arabia and much of the rest of the Sunni world, began preaching in 1744. The Muslim scholar from whom al-Wahhab derived much of his teachings of Jihad and radical intolerance was Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah, who died in 1328 after being imprisoned for his extreme puritanical, anti government, violent viewpoints.
The tribe of al-Saud (later to become the “House of Saud”
The third time the Saudis succeeded, in the late 1800’s, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of mostly Shia Arabs and finally overthrowing the Hashemites and annexing the Hijaz, which included both Mecca and Medina.
All through this time period the Wahhabists have preached hatred of “the other;” the West; the Jews; and, finally, of course Israel.
The Saudi Arabia has managed an uneasy truce with its own Wahhabist fanatics and has had, twice, to used the private army of Saudi bodyguards to crush Wahhabist rebellions. They now use their oil wealth to export the hatefilled Wahhabist philosophies to other countries around the globe, including the United States of America.
(In addition, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the British appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was preaching total hatred and annihilation of the Jews from 1921, which happens to coincide with the foundation of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, until his death. He incited hundreds of thousands of Arabs to murder Jews and he was responsible for the assassinations of hundreds of “moderate” Muslim leaders who were looking to accommodate both the British and the Jews.)
I would suggest that rather view the present day troubles as a deliberate manipulations by countries such as Syria or Egypt or even Saudi Arabia, that one should view the entire trend toward terrorist chaos and self destruction by the Arab and Islamic world as being akin to the Christian Reformation in Europe from the 1500’s through the 1700’s.
Just as the Christian world then beat itself to death, murdering millions; destroying entire economies of various countries; attacking and destroying vast swaths of countryside, cities and towns until all of Europe was totally spent, so has the Muslim world been involved in its Islamic Reformation since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, with its attendant new integrations of the secular Republic of Turkey and the Muslim Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Were the entire West to submit to Islam, including Israel and the United States, it would not change a single terrorist or self-destructive act by individual Muslims or the Muslim world at large.
They are undergoing their Reformation.
Each tribe or country or sect or individual has a new “revelation” on how to to establish their Imaginary Caliphate and destroy dar al-Harb. And, dar al-Harb, the House of War, is all those, particularly Muslims, who do not believe in the same way as whatever particular group or individual believes.
This Reformational orgy of death and destruction will not stop until the Arab/Islamic world becomes physically and financially exhausted.
This is not a matter of “manipulation” and “suppression,” but one of intense belief in the “new way” of establishing the Great Caliphate. And, just as Christianity had a new, radical religious cult aborning every minute during the Reformation, so does Islam. And they are willing to murder a planet just to justify their particular beliefs….
Hell's Handmaiden // November 12, 2007 at 4:20 am
Interesting post… shouldn’t there be a hotlink to the original at Westphalia? Or was this never posted there?
A Muslim Manipulation? - Political Hotwire // November 12, 2007 at 5:09 pm
[...] A Muslim Manipulation? I wrote it, so all views are mine- Muslim Manipulation: From The Westphalia Blog Epat [...]
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