Islam, we are told over and over again by the self-appointed guardians of right thinking, is not a religion of violence and aggression, but of peace and love. Does not the Koran have at the head of every chapter: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate"? Who could disagree with that? That's the sentiment of all decent people everywhere isn't it? Why, we could even have it as the slogan for the next Labour Party Conference, fetchingly lit in shades of green and rose, with a copy of the Koran given away free to every delegate. This wonderful book is already the Prime Minister's favourite bed time reading, and was ostentatiously flourished on the plane to America in the wake of recent events.

How can people in high office be so naïve and stupid? Very easily it seems, almost a mandatory qualification, since it makes it easier to spout sanctimonious drivel with a straight face. But where are the doubting voices, the posers of awkward questions that might expose this ludicrous charade for the expedient nonsense it is? Certainly not the TV interviewers and ambitious journalists with careers to think about, who in any case know no more about the subject than the people they are interviewing, and are every bit as keen to appear "tolerant" and "understanding" for fear of some- thing nasty happening on their own doorsteps.

Here are a few questions that might be put to Mr. Blair or any other apologist for Islam that appears regularly in the media.

(1) If real Islam is all about peace and love, how did it acquire an empire that stretched from Spain to India, by sweet reason?

(2) When is Islam going to apologise for overrunning the Hellenic-Christian civilization of the Middle East, conquering Constantinople in 1453, and laying siege to Vienna in 1529?

(3) If the Koran is all about peace and love, how are such verses as the fol- lowing to be explained?

K.4:74: "Let those fight in the cause of God who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fights in the cause of God, whether he is slain or victorious, soon we shall give him a great reward."

K.4:76: "Those who believe fight in the cause of God, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil."

K.5:54: "O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends, they are friends of each other. Those of you who make them his friends is one of them. God does not guide an unjust people."

K.9:29: "Fight those who believe neither in God nor the Last Day, nor what has been forbidden by God and his messenger (Muhammad), nor acknowledge the religion of Truth (Islam), even if they are People of the Book (Jews and Christians), until they pay the tribute and have been humbled."

K.47-4: "When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds, then set them free, either by grace or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens."

It is not difficult to see how those who regard the Koran as God's own speech can find in verses such as these the justification for practically any act of terrorism imaginable. When such texts are put to apologists, the usual response is to say that they are bad translations and it is quite different in the Arabic, and, in any case, such verses are balanced or cancelled by other meliorating texts elsewhere in the Koran. Unfortunately, according to the traditional Muslim chronology of revelation, early texts are abrogated by apparently contradictory later texts, and all the above texts are late, or "Medinan," while most of the "compassionate" texts are early, or "Meccan." It has been said that the text at K.9:5, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them," cancels 124 verses advocating mercy and toleration.

There is no Pope in Islam, no ultimate authority able to say what real Islam is, or what is the right interpretation of texts. Rather, there is just an endless spectrum of opinion. Those involved in recent events, wearing red head-bands emblazoned with texts such as those above, have every right to consider themselves real Muslims going about God's work and deserving reward in the hereafter. Indeed, such people probably have more right to consider themselves good Muslims than those Western educated, Western suited, representatives of Muslim institutions expressing sym- pathy and regret, or any benignly smiling Sufi talking about "the heart." The latter are especially nauseating in that they share many of the aims of the militants, such as the restoration of the caliphate, without the courage to do anything about it.

It is important that such things are said loudly and said now, since it is likely that, before long, both the writer and the publisher of these words could be deemed guilty of the crime of inciting religious hatred. This is the dream of yet another expert on Islam, the British Home Secretary, who is so unstinting in his admiration that he thinks anyone suggesting that Islam is anything less than wonderful, and Muslims anything other than wholly admirable, deserves to be prosecuted. So widespread are such sentiments amongst the Liberal Leftist intelligentsia that it is surprising that there have not yet been mass conversions. In contrast, outside such circles, it appears that either Islam is true, in which case we all ought to be Muslims, or it is not true, in which case it is pernicious nonsense and it cannot be criminal to say so.

The fear here of course is of blood on the streets. That there have been physical at- tacks on Muslims arises largely from the fact that they choose to make themselves obvious by their mode of dress, and of course, as we all know, this is prescribed by their religion, especially in the case of women--well, no, actually we don't, and it isn't. Nowhere in the Koran and the Hadith is it laid down that Muslim women must go around wearing head scarves and long shapeless garments. All that is required is modest dress, and there are literally thousands of ways of dressing modestly, many of them indistinguishable from Western dress. The fuss about Muslim women wearing head scarves is quite literally a fuss about nothing. They don't have to wear them.

The fact that some Muslim women choose to make an exhibition of themselves by wearing head scarves is of no more significance or importance than any other affec- tation or fashion statement. With other Muslim women who dress in this fashion, it is simply a result of the ignorance and poor education that is endemic amongst Mus- lims. They have been told by their communities that this is the proper Muslim thing to do, and they have no means of knowing anything to the contrary.

This is especially chilling when it is applied to girls as young as four or five, when the rule generally does not apply until the onset of puberty. But can we imagine any tel- evision journalist putting these points to a female "victim" of prejudice and misun- derstanding?

If Islam is all about peace and love and good behaviour, as we are constantly told, such things do not require a peculiar mode of dress, an attention-attracting uniform, to make them manifest. Indeed, such a thing is redolent of a peculiar vanity: Look at me, how modest I am, so virtuous, so beautiful, a veritable living reproach to your wanton ways. I must make a play of hiding myself for your good as well as mine.

We are constantly told that we are not engaged in a war against Islam. But why not a war against Islam? Why not a war against that billion of the world's population bound in benighted ignorance and superstition? Why not a war against a world view dia- metrically opposed to all those secular, individualistic, humane, constitutional, and democratic values that we are supposed to hold so dear? Why not?

Why should the West be a land of inanely grinning, overly tolerant, overly broad- minded, psychotically naive people always willing to turn the other cheek when smit- ten? Why should the West be in denial, ignore reality, and refuse to recognize and effectively cope with the very dangerous vicious, and implascable enemy it faces-- the enemy which manifests itself as militant Islam? Why should the the West not set out not only to defend itself against this enemy but also to completely destroy the enemy?

Because the West, more often than not, is led by nincompoops more than half in love with what, in their muddled minds, they like to think real Islam is, and what, in their dreams, they would like the West to be--a region of peaceful, high-minded, and magnanimous people--people whom the whole world loves because of their peaceful, generous, patient, and forgiving nature.

We are also told that the events of September 11, 2001 were not a clash of civiliza- tions or world views, but that is exactly what they were. It was not by chance that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre were the first to go. In the minds of many Muslims, tall buildings are the ultimate symbol of infidel pride and arrogance and defiance of Allah, especially evident in the end times before the final reckoning. The fact that they were also perceived by the by the Islamic terrorists as temples of usu- ry and symbols of the economic power with which Jews and Christians undermine and exploit the Muslim world can only have added to the satisfaction of bringing them down. That there were Muslims in the building at the time of the attack is of no consequence, since their fate was already sealed by K.5:54 and K.9:29--two of the Koranic verses quoted above.

In justifying the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, we were told that the pur- pose of the war was to bring about "justice." Waging war against militant Islamic religious and political fanatics in order to bring about justice is a concept that is to- tally meaningless and beyond the comprehention of radical Islamic barbarians. It is a concept that can be readily understood and appreciated only by persons reared, ed- ucated, and socialized in Western cultures--persons reared, educated, and socialized in Western families, in Western religious groups and institutions, in Western classes and schools, and in Western peer groups. There is no cross-cultural consensus--es- pecially not between Islamic barbarism and Judeo-Christian Western civilization--on what such a word as "justice" means. There is no Platonic archetypal heaven from which such a word's form can be plucked by be-wigged Western lawyers for the recognition and satisfaction of all "decent" people. The only relevant question to be asked about "justice" is: whose justice, mine or yours, ours or theirs, man's or God's?

As regards the concept of "justice under law," or "justice defined by law," how much shar'ia is there in any Western nation-state's system of laws and courts? How much shar'a is there in socalled "international law"? Where did that law originate, who invented it, with what purpose in mind? What kind of world did it come from, and what kind of world was it intended to bring about? Any Western law defining "jus- tice" certainly was not designed to bring about the world of the ecumenical imperium of the caliphate, where Muslim "justice" held sway for almost 1400 years.

The enormity of the crime--the 9-11 Islamic terrorist attack on New York and the mass slaughter of innocent civilians--can readily be comprehended by the Western mind. But Western expressions of shock, horror, and anger over the attack and massacre are likely to invoke the following response from militant Islamists and other barbarians: Who is not willing to sacrifice the innocent when it suits them? Certainly "Western Civilization" was willing to do so, when, between 1914 and 1945 in Europe alone, it managed to wipe out over one hundred million civilians in the name of one cause or another. Besides, the Islamic terrorists are engaged in a just war against the Satanic, non-believing infidel West to bring about Koranic "justice" --to inflict Allah's just punishment on those arrogant imperialists, exploiters, and blasphemers who forsake Allah and defy His will.

In the world view of militant Islamic fanatics, there is the need for the war they are determined to wage--and are waging--against Great Britain and the United States of America in particular and against the West in general. If God does not supply the Islamic militants with an apocalypse, then they will supply their own. But their lead- ers will insist that the apocalypse that they provided was really supplied by God. "I am become Shiva the destroyer of worlds," as Robert Oppenheimer said. Who was not fascinated, amazed, and entranced by those planes going into those towers? Was it not the most astonishing and exciting thing you have ever seen in your life?

Perhaps Osama bin Ladin and his followers, like many other contemporary barbari- ans, are the true children of Turgenev's Bazarov, whose day may have finally dawned. We shall have terrorism, destruction, and total annihilation of the enemy camp. We will do this fighting war in the cause of Allah and against Allah's enemies. In the immortal words of Pisarev: "Here is the ultimatum of our camp: What can be smashed should be smashed; what will stand the blow is good; what will fly into smithareens is rubbish; at any rate, hit out right and left--there will and can be no harm from it." And shout "Allahu Akbar" while fighting this total war against the West.

Ibn al Rawandi's article is republished here with the permission of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society (ISIS), an organization formed to promote within Islamic society the ideals of rationalism, secularism, constitutional democracy and human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of thought and belief, freedom of intellectual and scientifiv inquiry, and freedom of conscience and religion. The article was originally published on the Institute's website, located at http://www.secularislam.org.

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