And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him.

—Qur’an 3:85

Then kill the Mushrikun [pagans] wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush.

—Qur’an 9:5

The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.

—Qur’an 5:33

One should accept the Sharia without any question and reject all other laws in any shape or form. This is Islam … By the Sharia of God is meant everything legislated by God for ordering man’s life; it includes the principles of belief, principles of [political] administration and justice, principles of morality and human relationships, and principles of knowledge … It also includes legal matters.

—Sayyid Qutb, Islamic revivalist1

I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform prayer, and pay Zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them.

—Muhammad2

On December 11, 2009, the residents of Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, England awoke to find the words “Islam will dominate the world” spray painted in huge letters across the War Memorial honoring British veterans who had given their lives in defense of their country. A liberal apologist for Islam, Chairman of the East Staffordshire Racial Equality Council Dennis Fletcher, rushed to tell the local newspaper that it was all an act. Someone on “the far right” must have done the vandalism to “stir things up” and defame Muslims.3

DNA evidence found on a discarded can of spray paint led police to the culprit. To Mr. Fletcher’s eternal shame, it was a Muslim named Tohseef Shah who had defiled the memorial. And he had no remorse whatsoever about it. When Shah was brought before a magistrate in April 2010, the unflappable Brits were in for another shock. Prosecutors told the court they had concluded that Shah’s vandalism had no religious motivation whatsoever. It was “politically motivated” they said, and therefore could not be charged as a hate crime. Shah walked out that day with nothing more than two years’ probation and a fine of 500 British pounds.4

Ironically, those prosecutors got it exactly right. Shah’s crime was not religiously motivated, although there was certainly hatred behind it, because Islam is not a religion. It was politically motivated because Islam is an Arab nationalist and imperialist political movement dressed up in occult robes and rituals—a movement hell-bent on establishing a worldwide Islamic political state to dominate the world.5

INTRODUCTION

For the most part, our understanding of foreign cultures is shaped by things that are already familiar to us. Those of us who come from cultures shaped by Christianity look at the Qur’an, at Sharia law, and at the Islamic mosque and see them as roughly equivalent to the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and the church or cathedral, respectively. But making such comparisons hinders rather than advances our understanding—it obscures very radical differences between Islam and Christianity (or other religions, for that matter). The Qur’an, Sharia, and the mosque are not isolated elements of a private religion, they are indivisible and deeply political parts of a whole civilization which is essentially different from our own.

THE QUR’AN

The Qur’an is at its core a political manifesto. It is the declaration of the right way of life for all human beings to follow, and of the initial efforts taken by Muhammad to establish this way of life. It is both a prescription for morality and a description of how Muslims (and Arabs in particular) are supposed to take over the world.

The Qur’an teaches that the Arabs are the actual chosen people, the sons of Abraham chosen to reveal the final word of Allah to the world.6 According to Islamic teaching,Jews and Christians had deliberately altered Allah’s teachings.7 Because of these deliberate obfuscations, the teachings of the original prophets of Allah became lost or misstated.8 Therefore, Allah had to reveal the Qur’an to Muhammad to correct His message.

According to Islam, Allah wants the Muslims to take over the world so that His way of life will be the only game in town. Islam is not only for Arabs, but it is the vehicle by which the whole world will be brought under their control.9 As Islam expands, it will become the only political system in the world as well as the only religious system in the world. To accomplish this expansion, Islam requires all sane adult males to participate in jihad—the conquest of all political and religious obstacles to Islamic domination.10

The Qur’an divides humanity into two groups: those who have accepted its revelations and their prophet (Muslims) and everybody else (kafirs).11 Accordingly, Muslim society and law is multi-tiered, with one level applying to the believers and another to those kafirs who have accepted dhimmi status—that is, who have agreed to pay a yearly jizya tax in exchange for second-class citizenship and freedom from summary execution. A third tier can also be identified: the slaves. A slave owner can do more or less as he likes with his slaves, although he is under an obligation to try to teach them Islam (Muslims cannot be held as slaves by other Muslims).12 Being Muslim is requisite for full citizenship in this world and for Paradise in the next.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia explicitly declares that the Qur’an (along with the Sunna of Muhammad)13 is its constitution.14 This means Saudi Arabia has made the authoritative texts of Islam, which all Muslims are bound to accept as the highest authority on earth, as its founding documents. In a very real sense, the kingdom can claim that all Muslims fall under its government, because its government is based on the Qur’an. Muslims who live outside of the kingdom must nevertheless be loyal to Saudi Arabia—to the extent that they are believers. If push comes to shove, their loyalties will not be with the U.S. Constitution, which originates in human beings, but with the Qur’an, which supposedly originates with Allah.

From the standpoint of the non-Muslim, the kafir, there is absolutely nothing holy or religious about the book. In this respect, we can compare it with texts from other religious traditions. For example, the Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Buddha. A central idea in Buddhism, one of the “Four Noble Truths” at its heart, is the idea that suffering comes from desire for the things of the material world. Consequently, one of the basic moral principles in the Dhammapada is the doctrine of ahimsa—which teaches that one should avoid offering violence to any living creature, particularly human beings. It teaches its followers to seek to alleviate suffering both in themselves and in their fellow men. Warfare and violence are the antithesis of holiness:

Hatred by hatred has been pacified
Never, in all of creation;
Through freedom from hatred does hatred subside, This law is of ageless duration.15

Followers are encouraged to free themselves of attachment to physical things.16
The contrast with the Christian New Testament is equally stark. The Qur’an commands Muslims to hate the kafir as their enemies. Jesus knew this formula centuries before and

condemned it:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven … For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?17

Jesus teaches his followers to control their sexual urges rather than to indulge in them.18 Most tellingly, he teaches that his followers are blessed when they are reviled and persecuted falsely on his account: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”19 The Qur’an commands its followers to kill anyone who acts this way toward the believers.20 Which document is more holy? Christians are taught to love God and their neighbor as they love themselves.21 The Qur’an teaches that such love is only for fellow Muslims; one must hate the kafir for Allah’s sake. Which teaching is more religious?

The Qur’an is a holy text only for those who believe in what it teaches. For everyone else, it teaches absolute barbarity and cruelty. It is a fundamental principle that Muslims must love the things that Allah loves and to hate the things which Allah hates. Chief on Allah’s hate list is the kafir. Accordingly, the Qur’an teaches that they can be attacked,22 that they can be plotted and schemed against,23 that they can be terrorized,24 that the Muslim should not befriend them,25 and that they are evil.26 The Qur’an teaches that there is glory in killing for the sake of Allah.27

Muhammad plays a central role in the Qur’an primarily as a political and military leader. His book extends his conquests into the social and political sphere by laying down laws and a way of life which is meant to govern over all the people he (and eventually his followers) conquers. In short, Islam is an Arab nationalist and imperialist political movement masquerading as a religion, and the Qur’an is one of its founding documents—a Declaration of Submission rather than of Independence.

The Qur’an as a founding document requires that all previous institutions get a full makeover in the image of Islam. Therefore, it attacks the pre-Islamic bases of Meccan society. The ancestral forms of political and moral order are portrayed as flawed. At the heart of this order, from the Qur’an’s point of view, is the mishmash of polytheistic religions practiced by the individual tribes and clans of the region.28 The solution to salvaging Arabic society lies in abandoning these religions and accepting the divinely revealed social order of the Qur’an.29 Accordingly, the Qur’an is full of new rules. There are rules about warfare, how to incorporate different political communities, and even rules of taxation in the text.

Those who submit must live their lives according to the prescriptions of Sharia (discussed in detail in the next section). Those who do not submit are kafirs. However, as mentioned above, the Qur’an recognizes one special status for kafirs living in Muslim lands: dhimmis. The dhimmi is not a full citizen.30 They are not permitted to publicly proclaim or celebrate or signify their religion. Even praying or mourning too loudly is forbidden, as that could offend Muslims. They cannot testify against or bring a lawsuit against a Muslim in court. They were also forced to wear distinctive clothing denoting their status.31 Later Muslim rulers can abrogate contracts with dhimmi populations, making them vulnerable to pogroms or extermination if their presence is deemed offensive.

Although all Muslims are supposed to be equal, Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh, enjoy a special status within Islam. Before Muhammad was born, this tribe had already controlled the polytheistic pilgrimage industry in Mecca for many generations. The Quraysh initially objected to Muhammad’s teachings, since they threatened to cut into their pilgrimage profits. But a peace was secured after Muhammad made a pilgrimage to Mecca (known as the Hajj) one of the pillars of his faith.

Even today, the Quraysh tribe still controls access to the central shrine in Mecca where all Muslims go to complete their hajj. The arrogance of the tribe, as well as the other inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, is a common complaint among non-Arabic Muslims. Although Muhammad officially taught that Muslims were equal, the later political and religious reality has been that Arabs, and the Quraysh in particular, believe themselves particularly exalted among the faithful. The fundamental sectarian split in Islam between the Sunni and the Shia essentially stems from a disagreement about who should be allowed to guide the ummah—with the Shia arguing that only descendants of Muhammad’s family are legitimate rulers.

At its root, the Qur’an is a written proclamation that society’s ills are to be overcome by replacing existing societies with Islam. This is not truly religious; it is a fundamentally political change, embracing the whole of human life. Ethics, law, family life—everything is to be reordered along Islamic lines. Because the Qur’an is supposed to be eternal and flawless, the human political order described within it is also flawless. The social order it seeks to impose is therefore hostile to change, existing traditions, and popular will. Once imposed, there is simply totalitarian rule by an oligarchic ruling class.

SHARIA LAW

Sharia law is the social mechanism by which the Islamic order is imposed. It is founded on the three books or groups of books which together comprise the teaching of Islam. In first place is the Qur’an, which Muslims regard as an expression of divine will and more perfect than any man-made law.32 Equal in importance, in influence, and authority is what is called the Sunna, which contains the Sira (accepted biographies of Muhammad) and the Hadith (collected sayings and doings of Muhammad).33 The Sunna is of binding authority on Muslims when it comes to the question of how the principles of the Qur’an should be administered in an Islamic society.34

On some issues, neither the Qur’an nor the Sunna offers much guidance. Here, the development of Sharia has relied on secondary sources. The two most common secondary sources are the ijma, which is a consensus of scholarly opinion, and the quyas, which are analogies drawn between contemporary legal issues and a principle or example found in the Qur’an or the Sunna. Only quyas made by the most highly respected Islamic scholars are acceptable. When it comes to quyas, no two Islamic groups are exactly alike on which ones they accept and which they do not. This is a key factor behind the enormous real- world variety of Sharia law.35

Over more than a thousand years, Islamic scholars have been interpreting and applying the principles and examples of the Qur’an and the Sunna to real-world situations.36 As a result, Sharia is not one clear code but a patchwork of makeshift and often ad hoc law. Nevertheless, some core principles are almost universally accepted and practiced, even if these core principles are not always officially recognized or even referred to as “Sharia.”

The principles of Sharia have enormous political implications, because wherever Sharia is established it seeks to regulate all aspects of human life. Many aspects of American life would require “correction” according to Sharia:

1. Sharia forbids freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Only certain speech is allowable under Islam. No criticism of Islam itself or its founder is permissible. Anyone, even an Islamic leader, may be punished by death for such criticism.37 Sharia is diametrically opposed to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
2. Sharia forbids freedom of religion. There is lip service and limited tolerance for non-Islamic religions, but history proves conclusively that in actual practice Islamic “tolerance” means non-Muslims at best accept second class citizenship (dhimmi status) and pay discriminatory taxes (jizya).38 Free exercise of religion is permitted only to Islam. Here too, Sharia is diametrically opposed to the First Amendment.
3.  Sharia forbids trial by jury and the right to due process. Anyone accused in a Sharia court will be tried by one or more Islamic jurists, who will decide the fate of the accused based on their understanding of Islamic law and how it applies to the situation. There is no jury, and certainly no protection against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Sharia recognizes punishments such as chopping off limbs, hanging, beheading, and stoning as normal because they were all approved of by Muhammad.39 Sharia is diametrically opposed to the Fifth and Eighth Amendments.
4.  Sharia sanctions slavery. Muslims themselves are described as slaves of Allah in Islamic tradition, and Sharia law commands them to obey the orders of their Islamic leaders. Although Muslims may not own other Muslims as slaves, kafirs may be enslaved. Sharia contains guidance for how Muslims should treat their worldly slaves, including captured women. Sharia is diametrically opposed to the Ninth and Thirteenth Amendments.
5. Sharia does not recognize the federal system of government employed by the U.S. Instead, an absolute central government is insisted upon for the purpose of instituting and enforcing Islamic laws and traditions. Sharia is diametrically opposed to the Tenth Amendment.

Sharia also denies the equality under the law which is fundamental to American and western societies. In the words of the European Court of Human Rights, the tenets of Sharia are simply “incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy.”40 Non- Muslims are unequal to Muslims. The Qur’an clearly directs Muslims to enact humiliating penalties on their conquered enemies so that they “feel themselves subdued.”41 Non- Muslims are made subject to jizya (only external political pressure has led to most Muslim countries abandoning this practice in recent times).

Most notably, women are not equal to men under Sharia law. The Qur’an mandates that men be placed above women.42 A woman’s testimony in court is worth only half that of a man’s.43 Men may initiate a divorce for almost any reason, while women are limited to very specific complaints only. Spousal abuse is permissible, though “only” to a mild degree.44 In Saudi Arabia, where Sharia governs the law of the land, we can see this law in action in the “blood money” murderers are required to pay to the families of their victims. A Muslim man’s life is worth $26,000 there, while a Muslim woman is only worth $13,000. Hindu women are a comparative bargain on this meat market, worth only $888.

In about half of Muslim-majority countries, Sharia law governs at least some aspects of the legal system. Additionally, 12 nations in which Muslims are a minority population allow Sharia courts for their Muslim inhabitants. The expectation among Muslims is that these distinctions will vanish as a worldwide brotherhood of Islam emerges, producing a single culture.

The presence of Islam in the West is part of a long-term struggle to impose Sharia, whether or not individual Muslims are actively engaged in this struggle. As a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations put it:

Islam is not in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.45

This is the real aim behind efforts to impose Sharia.

THE MOSQUE

Unlike other temples or places of worship, the Islamic mosque is used for much more than religious ceremony. From the very beginning, the mosque was also a “political and administrative base.”46 This practice remained in place for later Muslims even as their community grew beyond just a few hundred. Important political affairs such as military planning and swearing allegiances would take place at the mosque. The implementation of Sharia law also often took place there, with hearings, imprisonment, and even the execution of some Islamic punishments taking place within the walls of a mosque.47

Today, mosques are still used for much more than religious worship—most notably, they serve as front-line bases in civilizational conquest. Gavin Boby, an Englishman who has being trying to stem the creeping tide of Islamism in his native Britain, has described the process. A mosque will be built in a neighborhood in a working-class district, where the people are unused to dealing with zoning ordinances and officiousness. The neighborhoods might not even have much of a Muslim population at all. The mosque will rarely be called a “mosque,” it will be called an Islamic center or a community center or something innocuous-sounding. Once the building is up, life around it changes forever for the local residents. Members of the “community center” will park so as to block in or crowd out vehicles used by local residents. Anyone walking around the area may be told to leave or that the area is now under Islamic control. Homes and buildings in the neighborhood may be vandalized. Eventually, those who are able to do so move away.48

Mosques are one of the primary means by which Saudi Arabia spreads its particularly virulent brand of Islam, known as Wahhabism, around the world. Between 1979 and 2006, Saudi Arabia has spent tens of billions of dollars on the building of mosques, madrasas (Islamic schools) and Islamic centers worldwide.49 This money wasn’t simply given away. In the words of a Muslim leader in France, “When Saudi Arabia gives you one million Euros in one hand, with the other they give you a list of what you must or must not say.”50

A prime example of Saudi Arabia’s “beneficence” is a 75-acre Islamic complex currently under construction in Kabul, Afghanistan. Once finished, the complex will have a mosque that serves 15,000 and housing for 5,000 students at the madrasa which will also be on- site. A Saudi spokesman says the purpose of the complex is to “ensure good relations between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.”51 Since the school will train thousands of students in Saudi religious doctrine over its lifetime, the complex is clearly an investment in the future.

The Afghanistan complex is only one of many the Saudis have planned. In 2005, the kingdom announced plans to build 4,500 madrasas across south Asia.52 Although the announced goal of these mosques is to promote “modern and liberal education with Islamic values,” the Islamic values Saudi Arabia holds are Wahhabi.53 They do not mean what we mean when we say “modern” or “liberal.”

Of course, the Saudis have also exerted enormous influence on one of their top trading partners—the United States. More than 80 percent of mosques in America today are funded by Saudi Arabia, either directly through their government or indirectly through Islamic charity foundations.54 Much more concerning than the funding, however, is the content of what is taught at these places. A study by Freedom House looked at the free literature provided by the Saudis at 15 large mosques around the country. What they found was over 200 books and pamphlets full of virulent opposition to anything that deviated from Wahhabi Islam (including other forms of Islamic practice).

All of these works were published in Saudi Arabia by a variety of government agencies there. Some of the texts were products of the Saudi school system. All are disseminated by the Saudi government through the mosques they fund. Central to these texts is the same fundamental division we noted above between the Muslim and the kafir. All non-Islamic lands are regarded as Dar al-Harb, the “House of War.” Muslims living in such lands are taught to behave as if they are behind enemy lines. They must either actively convert kafirs, acquire knowledge or money which can be used in jihad against them, or else return to Islamic lands at once. Above all, they must understand that Allah commands them to harbor animosity for kafirs and all their ways.55

The Freedom House study uncovered texts which call it a religious duty for Muslims to cultivate enmity between themselves and the kafirs. Hatred becomes “proof that the believer has completely dissociated from [the kafir].”56 The same text makes clear that interfaith harmony is a bad outcome because it means the end of jihad: “it breaks down the wall of resentment … so that there is no loyalty and enmity, no more jihad and fighting to raise Allah’s word on earth.”57

Throughout the texts, the most frightening element is the constant demand for jihad. One Saudi Arabian high school textbook teaches: “To be true Muslims, we must prepare and be ready for jihad in Allah’s way. It is the duty of the citizen and the government.”58 Jihad means fighting for the spread of Islam “until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments.”59 Resisting this call for jihad is called sinful.

What mosques around the world represent is so many little embassies of Islam. If the mosques are funded by Saudi money, they are embassies of Saudi Arabia’s version of Islam. If the funding comes from Iran, it is a revolutionary Shi’ite version. Those who receive their funding from other sources in turn promote whichever brand of Islam those sources advocate. In all these cases, however, the goal is essentially the same: to displace all native governments and all native traditions in favor of Qur’an-based Sharia law. The mosque is a military outpost in an ongoing war against the freedom of the mind.