Qur'an 101

Qur’an 101

(Part Two of Islam Series)

Dr. Jay Worth Allen

The Warrior is loose, the Zealot, the Extremist, running fast and loud on the TV News, ridding low in the saddle, hotfootin’ it through the heartland at ninety miles an hour down the center stripe of America’s religious freedom . . . Billy the Kids in Jubba jackets and kufiyas, monster Jinns with fiery tongues, no quarter asked and none given; the ill omen of our time is here. Wake up America, Islam’s at our door!

America’s climate is perfect for these holy Warriors, as well as convertibles, swimming pools, blondes and abulia. Most Muslims are harmless, weekend-type worshipers, no more dangerous than skiers, skin-divers or Southern Baptists. But ever since the middle of the 7^th century, the world has been plagued by gangs of wild men waving sabers, roaming the byways in groups of thousands and stopping whenever they get thirsty or road-cramped to suck up any and all commerce and peoples they encounter. They are Islamic Jihad Holy Warriors! And they want the world! The hell-broth of publicity over plans to build a thirteen-storey mosque near Ground Zero has, once again, concentrated attention on the fact and nature of Islam - the Jihad Warriors are getting what they want.

In the ranks of the modern Jihadists, there were those who insisted that the Islamic outlaw scene (so needed for victory) went way off the hump in the early-nineties, when the original faces of Islam began drifting off to Western marriages, mortgages and time payments. And that had to be stopped! So they blew up the World Trade Center.

But why all this ruckus? Why roughhouse the infidel, when we could all live in peace? Because the Qur’an tells ‘um so!

Most good Westerners have never seen a Qur’an, still fewer have read the thing. So let’s start with a little Qur’an 101, to help the unlearned become educated and the more knowledgeable better convey the facts.

First off, according to Islamic teaching, the Qur’an (their bible) came down as a series of celestial revelations from Allah (their god) through the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, who then laid down the law to his followers. Muhammad’s acolytes memorized fragments of his teachings and wrote them down on whatever was at hand, which were later compiled into book form (the Qur’an) under the rule of the third Caliph (chief civil and religious leader), Uthman, some years after Muhammad’s death.

The Qur’an is about as long as the Christian New Testament, comprising 114 Suras (chapters or sections) and is in no Western-eyed order. According to Islamic doctrine, it was around 610 AD in a cave near the city of Mecca (southwest Saudi Arabia) that Muhammad received his first revelation. Over the next twelve or so years, other revelations came to Muhammad for the inhabitants of Mecca, ordering them to forsake their pagan ways and turn in worship to the one Allah. The revelations that came later in Muhammad’s career, after his emigration to Medina, reshaped Islam from a relatively benign form of monotheism into an expansionary, military-political ideology that America is just now catching a glimpse of.

As an example of the Qur’an’s lock-horns ideology, Sura 9:5, commonly referred to as the “Verse of the Sword”, states:

“Then when the Sacred Months (the 1^st, 7^th, 11^th, and 12^th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun (unbelievers) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat - the Islamic ritual prayers), and give Zakat (alms), then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

Looking for labels, it is hard to call a fundamental Islamist anything but a pious mercenary. Most are urban outlaws with nomadic ethics and a new, improvised style of self-preservation. Their image of themselves derives mainly from folklore, mythology and “Lawrence of Arabia” movies and two-fisted Mideast TV shows that have taught them most of what they know about how societies should live. Very few, middle-of-the-road Mideast Muslims, read books, and in most cases their education ended in early adolescence. What little they know of mankind’s history has come from Shi'a Ayatollah’s and Sunni Sheikh’s irate tirades . . . so if they see themselves in terms of the past, it’s because they can’t grasp the terms of the present, much less, the future. They are sons of the poor man and the drifter. As people, they are like millions of other people: unschooled and ill-informed. So when an unimpeachable Islamic Cleric declares that a thief’s hands are to be chopped-off, no one objects. “As to the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands: A punishment, by way of example, from Allah for their crime: and Allah is exalted in power” (Sura 5:38).

This punishment was carried out in August 2010 by the Chieftains of Iran.

Is Islam, as its adherents claim, a “religion of peace,” a bringer of benefits to mankind, a harbinger of a better world, a faith which, according to President Obama, accentuates “the dignity of all human beings”? Or, on the contrary, is it something entirely different, not so much a religion as a political ideology, grounded in rabble-rousing, seditious arsenals of mish-mashed jambalaya texts from ancient Warriors and Warlords; the theological opinions of Islamic ideologues and jurists from primeval times to the present, who want nothing more than to imprison the world?

Next week: The Islamic woman’s fate in the mystical musings of Muhammad’s manual.

Qur’an 101
Article written: 4-10 September 2010 / *not yet published on Freed In Christ! blogsite.

Published: 16 September 2010 in The County Journal.
(Part Two of the author's ISLAM SERIES)

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