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Luther College “Islamophobia” Professor: Muslims “Aren’t Given Platform in the Media”

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Imagine wasting your life being an expert on “Islamophobia,” a propaganda term meant to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror. But Todd Green, a professor at Luther College in Iowa, does indeed actually bill himself with a straight face as “an internationally recognized expert in Islamophobia.”

In earlier ages, Todd Green would be penning tomes about how opposing the Nazis makes you a bigot who hates all Germans, or opposing the Salem witch trials meant you were soft on the threat of witchcraft. He and other “Islamophobia” “experts” make their living slandering and defaming those who oppose jihad terror, which will only have the effect of enabling more jihad terror. How they can live with themselves, as the body count steadily rises, is beyond me.

Brianna Snyder of the Milligan Stampede at Milligan College in Tennessee recently interviewed the illustrious Green, when he visited there to spread his propaganda about “Islamophobia” to Milligan’s hapless students. “I define Islamophobia,” Green pronounced grandly, “as fear, hostility and hatred of Muslims or Islam that is rooted in racism –”

What race are Muslims and Islam again? I keep forgetting.

“…and that manifests itself in discriminatory, exclusionary and violent practices targeting Muslims and those perceived as Muslims.”

By that definition, my colleagues and I are not “Islamophobes,” despite Green’s routinely libeling us with this label, as we do not support any violence against Muslims or those perceived as Muslims, and support no discriminatory or exclusionary measures against Muslims, but only reasonable measures to protect people against jihad terror and Sharia oppression.

What’s more, I have no fear, hostility, or hatred of Muslims or Islam. There are Islamic tenets that contradict the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of women, the equality of rights of non-Muslims. There are Islamic tenets enjoining violence against non-Muslims. Doesn’t Todd Green oppose those? If so, is he himself an “Islamophobe”? Or does he support all this violence and oppression?

Snyder also asked Green: “Why should we not ask Muslims to condemn terrorism?”

The risible response: “There are three reasons why we shouldn’t ask Muslims to condemn terrorism. The first is that asking Muslims that question wrongly assumes that Islam is the cause of terrorism. That is a false assumption to make.”

Not really. In the first place, terrorists themselves say they are committing their acts of violence because of Islam. A few examples:

“Jihad was a way of life for the Pious Predecessors (Salaf-us-Salih), and the Prophet (SAWS) was a master of the Mujahideen and a model for fortunate inexperienced people. The total number of military excursions which he (SAWS) accompanied was 27. He himself fought in nine of these; namely Badr; Uhud, Al-Muraysi, The Trench, Qurayzah, Khaybar, The Conquest of Makkah, Hunayn and Taif . . . This means that the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to go out on military expeditions or send out an army at least every two months.” — Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, Join the Caravan, p. 30

“If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.” — Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

“Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 defendants

“Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfil God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” — Taliban terrorist Baitullah Mehsud

“Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad

“So step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad.” — Little Rock, Arkansas terrorist murderer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

“And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad.” — Texas terrorist bomber Khalid Aldawsari

All of these, of course, may be dismissed as “extremists,” although they were also all devout Muslims who were determined to follow their religion properly. One finds the same thing, however, when one turns to the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib):

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh “˜Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

Of course, there is no caliph today, and hence the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes “obligatory for everyone” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: ‘Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until “the final descent of Jesus.” After that, “nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent” (o9.8).

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”

However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”

This is also taught by modern-day scholars of Islam. Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad: “The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world….The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.” (P. 51)

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

Then there are the violent passages in the Qur’an itself, and the record of history: how have Muslims throughout history understood those passages? They took them as meaning “My jihad is trying to make ends meet. My jihad is getting a great education,” right? Unfortunately, the historical record is not quite so full of laughter and sunshine: you can find out how Muslims throughout history have actually understood the Qur’an’s exhortations to warfare in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.

Yet Green, ignorant of history or hoping you are, claims: “Most scholars who study terrorism will conclude that a lot of the primary forces driving terrorism are political or social. (Examples include: real or perceived U.S. military occupation or western imperialism, social exclusion/discrimination in Europe or the United States.) Religion might be used as the justifier, but it’s not the cause.”

Green’s argument founders on the fact that Islamic terrorism is far older than “real or perceived U.S. military occupation or western imperialism, social exclusion/discrimination in Europe or the United States,” and in fact can be found throughout 1400 years of Islamic history. The proof, in immense detail, is in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.

Green piles on another falsehood when he says: “The majority of terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe are carried out by non-Muslims.” That isn’t true, either.

But the biggest laugh of the day comes when Snyder asks Green: “Why is it that we don’t often hear Muslims speaking about Islamophobia, but rather members of secular or other religious communities?”

Green answers: “It’s not because Muslims aren’t doing these things. It’s because they aren’t given the platform or the attention in the media in many cases for their voices to be heard.”

In the two days before this interview was published, the New York Times ran two pieces of Islamic apologetics by Muslims. The BBC also ran a piece defending Islam. No platform? That’s ridiculous beyond measure. Every time there is a jihad attack, media reports downplay its Islamic aspects and ascribe it to mental illness, to the extent that few people today know the nature of magnitude of the jihad threat. Does Green? Is he stupid beyond measure, or complicit?

Article posted with permission from Robert Spencer


The Washington Standard

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