For those that aren't familiar with the Qur'an, the text below has been extracted from the chapter 'The Cow'.
[2.190] And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits.
[2.191] And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.
[2.192] But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
[2.193] And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.
These are the very passages from the Qur'an that the Islamic Jihadists are using to excuse their murderous, dispicable Holy war (Holy ?) against the Infidels of the western democracies and anyone else for that matter, that doesn't agree with their own warped view of things.
Are they really fighting for Allah? The small minority of might be, you know, the ones who's religiuos mindset is still stuck in the seventh century.
But the rest of them are there because they're simply pissed off that the bulk of the planet has it better than they do and they're to dumb to figure out why that might be. As I said in an earlier post, the rest of the world has well and truly passed them by.
All religions have their lunatic, zealot, fundamentalist fringe dwellers. Christian zealots throughout history, from the Inquisition, the KKK, to the more recent Jonestown People’s Temple and Waco Branch Davidians are no better than the fundamentalists behind the current terror scourge that has permeated our society.
That might be correct. But when did you last hear the Pope lending his and the Vaticans support to the nutters at the KKK or the Waco Branch Davidians?
The Islamic religion does not promote violence and the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people, equally as frustrated and angered by the extremist zealots, as the rest of the world. Innocent Muslins are also suffering and dying.
Yes, again correct. Well nearly. Five individuals from the group handpicked by the PM to educate the rest of the country on the Islamic faith and their beliefs have made it known recently that they support Hezbollah in it's fight against Israel. One wonders what apalling attrocities this terrorist organisation would have to commit before these people who are tasked with the responsibility of leading the Islamic faith into a more enlightened and contempary sphere within the general comminuty, would say 'enough is enough'.
That fact of the matter is, the movers and shakers who pass themselves off as the leaders of the Islamic faith and muslim society here in Australia, aren't doing anywhere near enough to dispell the notion that sometimes they appear to be to aligned with their muslim jihadist brothers in the middle east.
In an earlier post I suggested that some of the regimes (or what pass for regimes in that part of the world) have sat idly by and watched whilst others have done their bidding for them. And I must point out here, that I was refering to regimes and not individuals or ethnic groups.
The one regime/government that I didn't metion, was the one perhaps more responsible than any other for the current situation in Lebanon. It was of course, the Lebanese government itself. AWOL, a gross dereliction of duties. That's being far to kind.
The following article appeared in 'The New Repulic' recently and was written by Michael Behe, a well known and respected journalist from Beirut.
The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon. What they did not know--and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror--is the extent of this phagocytosis.
In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran, and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it: We stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals, on our territory and the firing of such devices, without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon.
We knew that Iran, by means of Hezbollah, was building a veritable Maginot line in the south, but it was the pictures of Maroun el Ras and Bint Jbail that revealed to us the magnitude of these constructions. This amplitude made us understand several things at once: that we were no longer masters of our destiny; that we do not possess the most basic means necessary to reverse the course of this state of things; and that those who turned our country into an outpost of their Islamic doctrine's combat against Israel did not have the slightest intention of willingly giving up their hold over us.
The national salvation discussions that concerned the application of Resolution 1559, and which included most of the Lebanese political movements, were simply for show. Iran and Syria had not invested billions of dollars on militarizing Lebanon in order to wage their war, simply to give in to the desire of the Lebanese and the international community for them to pack up their hardware and set it up back home.
And then, the indecision, the cowardice, the division and the irresponsible behavior of our leaders are such that they had no effort to make to show their talent. No need to engage a wrestling match with the other political components of the Land of Cedars. The latter showed themselves--and continue to show themselves--to be inconsistent.
Of course, our army, reshaped over the years by the Syrian occupier so it could no longer fulfill its role as protector of the nation, did not have the capacity to tackle the militamen of the Hezbollah. Our army, whom it is more dangerous to call upon--because of the explosive equilibrium that constitutes each of its brigades--than to shut up behind locked doors in its barracks. A force that is still largely loyal to its former foreign masters, to the point of being uncontrollable; to the point of having collaborated with the Iranians to put our coastal radar stations at the disposal of their missiles, that almost sunk an Israeli boat off the shores of Beirut. As for the non-Hezbollah elements in the government, they knew nothing of the existence of land-to-sea missiles on our territory ... that caused the totally justified destruction of all our radar stations by the Hebrews' army. And even then we are getting off lightly in these goings-on.
It is easy now to whine and gripe, and to play the hypocritical role of victims. We know full well how to get others to pity us and to claim that we are never responsible for the horrors that regularly occur on our soil. Of course, that is nothing but rubbish! The Security Council's Resolution 1559--that demanded that our government deploy our army on our sovereign territory, along our international border with Israel and that it disarm all the militia on our land--was voted on September 2, 2004.
We had two years to implement this resolution and thus guarantee a peaceful future to our children, but we did absolutely nothing. Our greatest crime--which was not the only one!--was not that we did not succeed, but that we did not attempt or undertake anything. And that was the fault of none else than the pathetic Lebanese politicians.
Our government, from the very moment the Syrian occupier left, let ships and truckloads of arms pour into our country. Without even bothering to look at their cargo. They jeopardized all chances for the rebirth of our country by confusing the Cedar Revolution with the liberation of Beirut. In reality, we had just received the chance--a sort of unhoped-for moratorium--that allowed us to take the future into our own hands, nothing more.
To think that we were not even capable of agreeing to "hang" Émile Lahoud--Al-Assad's puppet--on Martyrs' Square and that he is still president of what some insist on calling our republic. ... There is no need to look any further: We are what we are, that is to say, not much.
All those who assume public and communicational responsibilities in this country are responsible for this catastrophe. Except those of my colleagues, journalists, and editors, who are dead, assassinated by the Syrian thugs, because they were clearly less cowardly than those who survived. And Lahoud remained at Baadbé, the president's palace!
And when I speak of a catastrophe, I do not mean the action accomplished by Israel in response to the aggression against its civilians and its army, which was produced from our soil and that we did strictly nothing to avoid, and for which we are consequently responsible. Any avoiding of this responsibility--some people here do not have the minimal notions of international law necessary to understand!--means that Lebanon, as a state, does not exist.
I think that just about says it all.