www.stand4islam.blogspot.com: The New "It" Word: Islamism

About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

15 May 2011

The New "It" Word: Islamism

The latest developments on Osama bin Laden's death have ignited a great debate whether or not the war on terrorism is finally over. This has many top-ranking officials and policymakers vehemently objecting. Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security, said to the Washington Times "We killed the man but not the ideology." Is it back to square one for the Pentagon? The latest battle has emerged against Islamism. What is Islamism? What is the difference between Islam and this Islamism?

Islamism is political Islam and Islamists are those who work towards applying political Islam as a comprehensive system including the economic, social, and other aspects of Islam in today's time. The Western foreign policy advisors view Islamism as the ideological battle between Islam versus the other western ideologies. A World Almanac of Islamism has been created as a new initiative by the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. According to their website, "the Almanac is a comprehensive resource designed to track the rise or decline of radical Islam on a national, regional, and global level." Islam, if researched, results in numerous terms ranging from radical, fanatic, fundamental, militant to Islamist. Islamism is the latest "it" word to describe a certain form of Islam.

The battle is against the ideology of Islam and the race to squash its rapid political spread across the world particularly MENA and south Central Asia. The West has evidently trampled over their basic creed trying to extinguish the call for Islamism. Going as far as ignoring or sidestepping the very foundation their creed was built upon. This indeed is a more dangerous and elusive war waged against Islam; far more obscure than the wars waged by the Crusades because those wars were tangible and the enemy was a clear target to the Europeans. On the contrary, the Crusades have yet to cease their battle against Islam. The occupations and killings of Muslim lands are a modern day extension of the Crusades.

Tom Ridge, previously holding a key position in high-ranking government, spoke with carefully chosen words to describe the current situation with precision, "This is the battleground on which the current war of ideas is being fought." They know that this battle needs to be fought with counter-ideas yet they fail miserably when challenging the ideas of Islam against their own ideas. Therefore relying on tanks and guns to try to win this battle only to be defeated.

The West desires for Muslims to shed their Islamic identity to permanently erase their core culture but to their dismay, Islam is inherent of their very identity making it difficult if not impossible to detach Islam from the Muslim. So this translates into centuries of foreign culture, missionaries, and trillions of dollars wasted by Western efforts. Muslims will never be defeated because the West can not understand the intrinsic source of their strength. Islam's ideology is not a man-made ideology but from the Creator so the power possessed by the people comes from within this source. Therefore it is neither capitalism nor democracy that Muslims seek.

When will Muslims recognize that the reality of democracy and liberties contradict Islam? Ridge further states, "Individual liberty, freedom of thought and faith, respect for women, democratic government and capitalism are fundamental to contemporary western life but abhorrent to the Islamist creed... Islamism and the American way of life cannot peaceably coexist." If a Western policymaker fully understands the tenets of Islam and therefore Western so-called liberties violate the Islamic ideology, then Muslims must stop calling for these false principles since they are un-Islamic and part of Western values. It would be naive to think that Muslims alongside non-Muslims can bridge together religious and cultural differences in order to make the world a better and more peaceful place to live. Or that only a handful of people are prejudiced towards Muslims when in fact it is western ideology and their policymakers that rival Muslims along with their ideology.

وَدُّوا مَا عَنِتُّمْ قَدْ بَدَتِ الْبَغْضَاءُ مِنْ أَفْوَاهِهِمْ وَمَا تُخْفِي صُدُورُهُمْ أَكْبَرُ
"They wish you would have hardship. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater." [al-Imran: 118]

The West is truly in a whirlwind trying to employ various tactics against the Muslim ideology. Tom Ridge stated "....there is a lot of work to do." This is a clear and decisive declaration that the West is never going to surrender until they are defeated. Manifesting into increased occupation of Muslim lands and the continued killing of Muslims. They will do whatever it takes to control the people in their own lands. They will take all preventive measures to ensure that Islamism will not prevail once again.

Yes indeed the US is revealing their apprehension of political Islam which they refer to as Islamism as demonstrated by various policy think tanks. Seeing and feeling the Muslims' growing eagerness for Islam to be applied upon them as the only comprehensive way to lead their lives. All throughout the Muslim lands; they see the mass prayers, the thousands that demand the end of their current agent-regime, the open effort exhibited in trying to gain the nusrah from the people of power and rank. Indeed it paints a grim picture for the West; Muslims worldwide have finally realized that capitalism and democracy have only brought disastrous consequences to all of humankind. Rather they want Shariah law implemented.

All the manoeuvres employed by the West are only stalling the emergence of Islam as its nearness is within arms reach. The fact that the West is arrogantly stubborn in realizing that Islam comes from the Creator, unlike their man-made system, poses a great problem for them. This places major obstacles for them in trying to defeat the undefeatable system. No longer fighting against other people, this will essentially lead them towards their destruction. There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

[Written by Manal Bader, May 2011]

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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”

[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]

"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"

[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]

"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."

[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]

"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."

[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]

"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."

[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]

“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”

[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]

"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."

[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]

"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."

[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]

“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”

[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]

"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"

[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]

"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."

[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]

"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."

[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']

"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"

[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']

"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.

[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]

"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"

[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]

"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"

[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]

“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”

[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]

“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”

[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]