Ishmael: Islam
The descendants of Ishamel lived in the dessert in a clan/tribe social structure. There were frequent rivalries, blood feuds, and slaughters between the various tribes. Like Ishmael, they excelled in archery. They were farmers, shepherds, and merchants. And they were idol worshipers. Their religion in south Arabia was astral pagan, having many dieties, the particular pantheon and names of dieties depending on the clan. In Mecca, among the Quraysh, the senior diety was Hubal, the male moon god, and also known as Allah. Others included the Al-Zuhara, the morning and evening star, Venus, who was the winter goddess and the goddess of fertility and also known as Az Zuhra.
venus appears with
a crescent phase.
Their polytheistic pantheon included worship of the sun, the planets Saturn, Mercury, and Jupiter, the stars Sirius and Canopus and the constellations of Orion, Ursa Major and Minor, and the seven Pleiades. The female aspect of the moon diety was known as Allat, who was a triple goddess having three aspects, each corresponding to a different phase of the moon: Q're, the crescent or maiden; Al-Uzza, the full moon or mother; and Manat, the waning moon or wise woman. In different areas, Al-Uzza was also known as the goddess of the planet Venus. It is not a coincidence that the moon diety and venus deity were associatecd: the planet Venus has phases and at times appears as a crescent like the moon does.
Islam was founded by Mohammad, who was born in 579CE in the city of Mecca, which was at that time the central city of the Arabian Peninusla. It is through Kedar, second son of Ishmael that Muslim genealogists trace the ancestry of Mohammed. Of the Ishmaelite tribes, Kedar must have been one of the most important, and thus in later times the name came to be applied to all the wild tribes of the desert.
In the year 610CE, Mohammed began receiving revelations of one God. He began preaching monotheism in 613CE. Conflict began when his preachings denounced the idols who the Meccans considered as dieties, or as intercessors to their main diety. In this conflict, Mohammed and his followers were subject to what today we call persecution. In about 622CE, Mohammed and his followers moved to Medina, where he established a large following. The Moslems of Medina began raiding the Meccan caravans for their livelihood, thus initiating armed conflict between the Moslems and Mecca merchants. In 624CE, there occurred the famous battle of Badr which the outnumbered Moslems won, killing many of the Meccan leaders as well as merchants. Mohammed expelled the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir, confiscating their land and possessions. Later he beheaded the adult member of the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza and sold the females and children as slaves.
In 630CE, Mohammad marched on Mecca with a large force of men. With minimal casualties, Mohammad conquered Mecca. He declared an amnesty for past offences, except for ten men and women who had mocked and made fun of him in songs and verses. Most Meccans converted to Islam, and Mohammad subsequently destroyed all of the statues of the Arabian gods in and around the Kaaba. Mohammed died in 632CE.
After his death, Islam continued to spread by force resulting in an Islam empire that extended from Western Asia to the Mediterranean. With few exceptions, wherever Islam conquered, the main places of worship of the indigenous people were destroyed and a Mosque built in its place. This is what happened extensively in India where the Moslems destroyed Hindu temples and then built Mosques at their locations. Today Hindus are exercising political power to reclaim their ancient temples, asking that the Mosques be moved and they be allowed to resurrect their temples. A similar situation occured when the Moslems built over the Jewish site of the destroyed second Temple.
What is relevant for us in this history of Islam is the cultural memory. Ishmael was rejected by Abraham. When Mohammed tried to influence the Arabs or the Jews of his time, they rejected him like Abraham had rejected Ishmael. To achieve his influence upon those who rejected him Mohammed used force. Historically, wherever Islam, whose name means submission, became the greater military force, Islam, terrorized and forced submission. Depending on the society and time period, those who did not submit and convert were killed, enslaved, or treated as second class citizens, subjected to special taxes and dictatorial deprivation of any legal and human rights. dhimmis.
minarets and domes
of many mosques.
Another aspect of the cultural memory is what today can be seen as a symbol on top of the minarets and domes of many mosques: the moon crescent with a star. In 339 BC the city of Byzantium, (later known as Constantinople and then Istanbul), won a decisive battle under a brilliant waxing moon which they attributed to their patron Goddess Artemis (Diana in Roman mythology) whose symbol was the crescent moon. In honor of this battle the crescent moon symbol was adopted as the symbol of the city. After the founder of the Turkish Ottoman empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, he had a dream in which the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to another. He interpreted this dream as conquering all the earth and so adopted this symbol for what became the Ottoman empire. As this empire ruled over many peoples who practiced Islam, the symbol was incorporated in the architecture of the mosque along with the morning and evening star venus, which also can appear as a crescent. Culturally, this symbol is consistent with the Arabic pre-islamic worship of the moon with the morning and evening star venus, consistent with the lunar cycle which governs the calendar of Islam, and consistent with the ideal of Islam ruling the world through Jihad, holy war.
Listen to what Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid said Iqra TV on July 26, 2007.
This is a nation of monotheism, and this is the Islam that Allah wants to spread throughout the world, and to rule the land it its entirety. Allah wants this. He sent down the Koran and the hadith for that purpose. ...
Humanity can have no happiness without Islam. Humanity can enjoy no goodness, unless the sun of monotheism, the Koran, and the Sunna shines upon it. The world without the sun of the divine revelation is a place of eternal darkness, as we can see today - a world of frustration, collapse, injustice, arbitrariness, and wrongdoing. The world today is a jungle - a world of barbarism of all kinds. People in many parts of the world are not happy, because they do not walk in the path of Allah.
Bay Ye'or writes
This is the doctrine
of Islam.The ideology of Jihad was formulated by leading Muslim theologians and scholars from the 8th century onward. Their voluminous writings make clear the notion of Jihad as a holy war of conquest. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 966), for example, stated,
Jihad is a precept of Divine institution... We Malikis [one of four schools of Muslim jurisprudence] maintain it is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah, except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them.
Jihad ideology separates humanity into two hostile blocs: the community of Muslims (Dar ul-Islam), [house of Islam] and the infidel non-Muslims (Dar ul-Harb) [house of war]. Allah commands the Muslims to conquer the entire world in order to rule it according to Koranic law. Hence Muslims must wage a perpetual war against those infidels who refuse to submit. This is the motivation for Jihad. It is based on the inequality between the community of Allah and the infidels, as was re-emphasized in the Cairo Declaration. The first is a superior group, which must rule the world; the second must submit. The current relevance of this ideology is apparent, and disturbing.
Professor Moshe Sharon writes,
Islam was created to be the army of God, the army of Allah. Every single Moslem is a soldier in this army. Every single Moslem that dies in fighting for the spread of Islam is a shaheed (martyr) no matter how he dies, because - and this is very important - this is an eternal war between the two civilizations. It's not a war that stops. This war is there because it was created by Allah. Islam must be the ruler. This is a war that will not end.
Peace in Islam can exist only within the Islamic world; peace can only be between Moslem and Moslem. With the non-Moslem world or non-Moslem opponents, there can be only one solution - a cease fire until Moslems can gain more power. It is an eternal war until the end of days. Peace can only come if the Islamic side wins. The two civilizations can only have periods of cease-fires. (Moshe Sharon,The Agenda of Islam -- A War Between Civilizations, Dec 24, 2003
The president of Iran said,
We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It's a universal ideology that leads the world to justice. ... We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. (Ahmadinejad, January 5, 2006)
The rule of Islam on mankind is the only way for salvation of human beings. (Ahmadinejad, September 19, 2001)
An Al-Badr spokesman Mustaq Aksari told CNN in an 2007 interview
Islam must rule the world and until Islam does rule the world we will continue to sacrifice our lives.
Consistent with the above statements we note that there are armed conflicts started by Muslims against Christians in Bosnia, Cyprus, East Timor, Ambon Province Indonesia, Halmahera Province Indonesia, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Macedonia, Nigeria, Phillippines, Chechnya, Sudan, and Uganda. There are conflicts started by Muslims against Hindus in India and Kashmir. There are conficts started by Muslims against Buddhists in Thailand. In each of these conflicts, the Muslims have used or are using armed conflict to attain greater power and a more dominant status in the society, all consistent with the Islamic doctrine of ruling the world.
In our times for Islam to impose its rule over the world there has to be a war. The war would be a war of the world.
When one thinks of Islam as a religion, one might think of Islam as a religion of peace. But that thinking would be incorrect. The history of Islam is not one of peace, but of bloody battle. Throughout history, Islam has acted with force to overthrow governments and either kill or forcibly convert those who it calls infidels. The infidels include what Islam calls the Buddhist pagans (those in China and India), Crusaders (those in Europe, the Christians), and the Jews. In 1991 Islam entered a new phase, a phase of terror to politically or economically destablize those countries considered as dominantly non-Muslim. The Twin Tower airplane attack was the first instance of this new phase of this extreme branch of Islam.