What Muslims Owe America

If you listen to the outraged wails of leftists and Muslims, you might reasonably be under the impression that the United States is in the business of persecuting Muslims. The reality is radically different. If anything American policies should have made us the Muslims' best friends.

Before 9/11, the United States had fought two wars on behalf of Muslims, the Gulf War under George Bush Sr. and the Kosovo War under Bill Clinton.

In fact during the second half of the 20th century, the only wars that the United States fought that were not against Communism or Nazism-- were fought on behalf of Muslims.
That is not a fact that you will glean from any of the usual media portrayals of the United States foreign policy as hostile to Muslims. In fact US foreign policy was about as helpful to Muslims as you can imagine.

Until 9/11, the United States had never invaded and occupied a single sovereign Muslim country. The closest it came was the First Barbary War in 1801, in response to piracy against American vessels and the liberation of North Africa from Hitler's Vichy allies in WW2. And of course the misguided attempt at participating in a peacekeeping force in Beirut.

Not only that, America had developed much of the oil wealth that would keep the Gulf States in gold, skyscrapers and slave labor. And when the leaders of the Gulf States seized American oil companies, the United States government did not fight a war, as England did when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, instead the US government paid oil companies to take the loss... out of taxpayer money.

The fear of a Communist takeover helped turn America into one of the biggest patrons of Muslim countries, from the Middle East to Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan. America willingly closed its eyes to Indonesia's genocide in East Timor, and even supplied them with weapons. America provided the weapons and funding that Pakistan would channel into the Taliban. And naturally we ignored Turkey's pesky little genocide of the Armenians and avoided ever discussing the issue.

So by 9/11, not only had America repeatedly sent soldiers to fight and die for Muslims in two wars... but it had robbed its own taxpayers rather than challenge them over the nationalization of the assets of American companies, and had proved willing to aid and even overlook the genocides of Muslim regimes. So naturally by the warped logic of leftists and Muslims... American foreign policy was "oppressive" to Muslims.

The root of the leftist critique of American foreign policy typically rests on two planks. The first blames America for supporting dictators in Muslim countries. This would be a more legitimate critique if there were any free and democratic Muslim countries around. As it was, America simply supported whoever was in power and wasn't allied with the USSR. This might have been an immoral policy, but during the Cold War it was a continuation of the same kind of thinking that caused the US to ally with the USSR against Nazi Germany.

The left's implication was always that by supporting dictators in Muslim countries, the United States was preventing the rise of more legitimate governments. It is not clear where these legitimate governments were or how they were ever supposed to arise. Syria is a dictatorship without us ever supporting Assad. Egypt was a dictatorship when it was allied with the USSR under Nasser. It is still a dictatorship now that it is allied with us under Mubarak. When the Shah of Iran was overthrown, the left wing appeasement corps working for Jimmy Carter decided not to interfere. The result was not a democratic government or even a leftist one, but a radical Islamist one under the Ayatollahs.

The second plank is of course Israel. The United States did decide to finally cultivate Israel as an ally back under JFK in the 60's. This was in sharp contrast to far longer US ties with the House of Saud or the Eisenhower Administration's willingness to destroy England's economy in order to protect Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal.

And the United States has provided Israel with billions in aid. As well as providing billions in aid to Egypt and Jordan. Not to mention the aid given to Turkey and Pakistan. Or the cost of the first Gulf War undertaken to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein.

Read more at Sultan Knish,,,,

H/T: gramfan

Raymond Ibrahim: From Barbary Wars to Somali Pirates, the Water-Jihad has a long lineage

Jihad -- high seas style

In a recent Pajamas Media article, I discuss the doctrinal and historic roots of the sea-jihad. Hyperlinks can be found in the original:

During the recent Somali pirate standoff with U.S. forces, when American sea captain Richard Phillips was being held hostage, Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer confidently concluded that “the good news is that these [pirates] are not jihadists. If it’s a jihadist holding a hostage, there is going to be a lot of death. These guys are interested not in martyrdom but in money.”

In fact, the only good news is that Richard Phillips has been rescued. The bad news is that what appears to have been a bunch of lawless, plunder-seeking Somalis “yo-hoing” on the high seas is, in fact, a manifestation of the jihad — as attested to by both Islamic history and doctrine.

Indeed, the first jihad a newborn U.S. encountered was of a pirate nature: the Barbary Wars off the coast of North Africa (beginning 1801, exactly 200 years before September 11, 2001). Writing in the Middle East Quarterly a year before Somali piracy made headlines, U.S. sea captain Melvin E. Lee — who knows in theory what Captain Phillips may have learned in practice — writes:

What Americans and Europeans saw as piracy, Barbary leaders justified as legitimate jihad. [President Thomas] Jefferson related a conversation he had in Paris with Ambassador Abdrahaman of Tripoli, who told him that all Christians are sinners in the context of the Koran and that it was a Muslim’s “right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners.”

Lee goes on to reflect:

“One of the greatest challenges facing strategic leaders today is objectively examining the centuries-old roots of Islamic jihadism and developing a strategy that will lead to a lasting solution to the Western conflict with it. … This inability to grasp the root of Islamic jihadism is the result of a moral relativism prominent in modern Western liberal thought.”

This last point is especially poignant. While U.S. leadership is capable of mouthing history, so too is it in the habit of distorting history through such “moral relativism.” Hillary Clinton, for example, in a press conference about the Somali kidnapping crisis, put an interesting spin on the Barbary Wars when she said — in between fits of hysterical and inexplicable laughter — that America and Morocco worked “together to end piracy off the coast of Morocco all those years ago, and, uh, we’re going to work together to end, uh, this kind of, uh, criminal activity anywhere on the high seas.”

Historical anecdotes aside, it need be acknowledged that, doctrinally speaking, the jihad has various manifestations; it is not limited to bearded, “Allah Akbar”-screaming mujahidin fighting in Afghanistan and lurking in caves. Along with jihad al-lissan and jihad al-qalam (jihad of the tongue and pen, respectively, i.e., propaganda jihad), one of the most important forms of jihad is known as jihad al-mal — or “money jihad.”

The money jihad is fulfilled whenever a Muslim financially supports the more familiar violent jihad. The Koran itself declares: “Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! That is best for you if you but knew” (9:41).

Several other verses (see 9:20, 9:60, 49:15, and 61:10-11) make the same assertion and, more importantly, in the same order: striving with one’s wealth almost always precedes striving with one’s life, thereby prioritizing the former over the latter, at least according to a number of jurists and mufasirin.

Muhammad himself, according to a canonical hadith (collected by al-Tirmidhi), said: “He who equips a raider [i.e., mujahid] so he can wage jihad in Allah’s path … is himself a raider [i.e., achieves the same status of mujahid].”

Moreover, the seafaring jihadist — or, in Western parlance, the “pirate” — is forgiven all sins upon setting foot in a boat to wage war upon infidels; he receives double the reward of his terrestrial counterpart — which is saying much considering the martyred mujahid is, of all Muslims, guaranteed the highest celestial rewards (see Majid Khadduri’s magisterial War and Peace in the Law of Islam, p. 113).

There’s more. Islamic law (Sharia), what mainland Somali Islamists have been successfully waging a jihad to implement, has much to say about kidnapping, ransom demands, and slavery. U.S. leadership should keep this in mind if and when they consider the plight of the other 200 hostages in Somalia. According to Sharia, there are only four ways to deal with infidel hostages: 1) execution, 2) enslavement, 3) exchange for Muslim prisoners, or 4) exchange for ransom. Those hostages who have not been executed are therefore currently living as slaves to their Somali overlords.

This is clearly the case of Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout, for whom the Somalis are demanding $2.5 million in ransom. Eight months ago, she was abducted, raped, and impregnated by Somali Islamists and is currently “owned” by them — or, in the words of the Koran (e.g., 4:3), she is ma malakat aymankum, i.e., human “property” conquered and possessed by jihadi force:

The term spoil (ghanima) is applied specifically to property acquired by force from non-Muslims. It includes, however, not only property (movable and immovable) but also persons, whether in the capacity of asra (prisoners of war) or sabi (women and children). … If the slave were a woman, the master was permitted to have sexual connection with her as a concubine (Khadduri, p. 119, 131).

Finally, for those readers who refuse to interpret modern-day events in light of “antiquated” history or religious doctrine, here’s an August 2008 Reuters report revealing that what top news analysts are now dismissing as a bunch of random pirates scouring the coast of Somalia are directly related to the mainland, if not international, jihad:

An explosion of piracy this month off the coast of Somalia is funding a growing insurgency onshore as the hijackers funnel hefty ransom payments to Islamist rebels. … According to our information, the money they make from piracy and ransoms goes to support al-Shabaab activities onshore.

Al-Shabaab (”the youth”), of course, are the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists currently taking over Somalia.

Thus, in the words of Krauthammer, whereas “these guys are interested not in martyrdom but in money,” the facts remain: this money funds the greater jihad; and those “pirates” slain by U.S. (”infidel”) firearms are indeed being portrayed as martyrs, as having achieved the highest pinnacle of paradise.

Does this mean that all pirates who happen to be Muslim are funding the jihad and fervently seeking after “martyrdom”? No. But it is a reminder that what may appear to Americans as “um, criminal activities” (in the memorable hilarities of Hillary) have a long pedigree and, within an Islamist context, have much method to their madness. From Muhammad’s 7th-century caravan raids (which were also motivated by plunder), to modern-day Somali piracy, so long as jihadi doctrines continue providing the base proclivities of man with a veneer of respectability, indeed, piety, so long will such behavior be endemic to the lands — and waterways — of the jihad, irrespective of true motivation.

Source: Jihad Watch

Piers Akerman: Let the cannonball fly and hang them high

DESPITE the popularity of successive Pirates of the Caribbean films, real pirates are not cuddly criminals.

Nor are they members of an oppressed minority group suffering from low self-esteem. They are murderers and kidnappers who live by the gun and understand only one thing - force.

Sunday’s successful rescue of American sea captain Richard Phillips, after US President Barack Obama authorised the use of force against the Somali pirates who held him captive, emphasises that reality.

A team of US Navy SEALS aboard the USS Bainbridge freed Phillips after shooting his captors from their position about 30m away, a ridiculously easy shot for trained marksmen.

This followed an earlier rescue of a French yacht crew by French commandos, during which a French yachtsman was killed, possibly by the French rescue team.

A photograph of the French crew taken before their rescue shows an anguished woman held at gunpoint by a young pirate armed with an automatic weapon. Anyone who doubts the ruthlessness of the pirates should use that image as a reality check.

The US effort marked Obama’s first authorisation of force against a group hostile to Americans, and it is reported that he received news of the successful rescue 11 minutes after it was completed, and spoke with Phillips shortly after.

To date the Obama administration has attempted to fudge its commitment to fighting forces opposed to the US.

While it has rebadged the “war on terrorism” as “overseas contingency operations” and terrorist attacks are now to be called “man-caused disasters”, piracy remains piracy. The US is revisiting a sea-borne scourge that has existed since the 14th Century.

Somali pirates still hold about 300 captives and 17 ships but, as few are Westerners, there remains little international indignation about their plight. It was not always so.

When Britain ruled the waves, pirates weren’t tolerated. If captured alive, their trials were short and their sentences terminal. Hanging was the norm.

With American independence in 1776, the US navy’s first major achievement was cleansing the entrance of the Mediterranean of the Barbary pirates who operated out of north Africa.

Using swift galleys rowed by slaves, these pirates enslaved their captives, sent any women captured to harems, and were known for their brutality. They were so successful that they were able to demand tribute from the nations which traded into the Mediterranean, until Thomas Jefferson became US president and deemed the annual ransom had to stop.

In 1801, Jefferson launched a war against the Barbary pirates which eventually saw the US flag fly over Derna, Libya’s second-largest city, a feat which is remembered in the line in the Marine hymn: “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.”

The war ran until 1812 when president James Madison sent Captain Stephen Decatur into action against Omar the Terrible, the ruler of Algiers.

Within 16 days of entering the Med, Decatur triumphed with a treaty he said was “dictated at the mouths of our cannon”. Mediterranean piracy was dead.

In the shallow waters around South East Asia however, piracy was in the ascendancy. The narrow straits which ran through the many archipelagoes proved ideal for opportunistic pirates.

The British navy was sent in to deliver justice and accounts published at the time show how successful they were.

In one dispatch published in The Hobart Courier of February 20, 1850, Captain Hay of the Columbine reported that in an action on October 2, 1849, 23 “piratical junks averaging 500 tons, mounting from 12 to l8 guns, three new ones on the stocks, and two small dock-yards, with a considerable supply of naval stores, have been totally destroyed by fire; and of 1800 men who manned them, about 400 have been killed, and the rest dispersed without resource”.

In the same newspaper, there was an account of the destruction of Shap-ng-tsai’s pirate fleet by a Royal Navy squadron under the command of a Captain Hay. In all 1700 were killed.

The West has forgotten some hard-learnt lessons on dealing with pirates.

They are worth revisiting.

Source: The Daily Telegraph