Barry Rubin Islam 101

BARRY RUBIN: SOLOMON’S WISDOM ON REVOLUTIONARY ISLAMISM AND TERRORISM……

 

As I see it, while there are many peaceful Muslims who are more often than not, caught in crossfire of terrorism by their coreligionists, it is in fact Islam to blame, not any so called “extremists”, it’s just Islam 101, the fundamental kind that will be the norm if in fact Islam is ever reformed as many have called for.

People are just kicking the can down the road in promoting the mirage called ‘moderate Islam’, which is in fact a Western construct, there’s only Islam. It’s something that I’ve been told, face to face, by the leader of the world’s largest Islamic body, the OIC’s Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu himself.

Are there moderate Muslims? Of course there are, but there isn’t anything called moderate Islam, there is only Islam. All four schools of Islamic orthodox jurisprudence (the only schools any Muslim who wants to be anything in Islam adheres to) offer the most anti-modern world view imaginable.

Just look at the Muslim Brotherhood and their brother Salafists in how badly they want to instill the sharia throughout Egypt. Remember, it’s in Egypt that al-Azhar university stands, the most respected (and fundamentalist/anti-modern/rejectionist) Islamic institution within Islam. Dr.Andrew Bostom accurately labels it: “the Vatican of Sunni Islam“.

Any moderation that exists within Islam has been through Western influence, and that’s a good thing, but don’t make the mistake that many have by concluding it means that basic Islam promotes moderation, on the contrary, any moderation that exists, exists only to the extent of the lack of  fundamentalist influence (Islam 101). Once the long beards set up shop, the trek back to the 7th century begins.

Solomon’s Wisdom on Revolutionary Islamism and Terrorism

By Barry Rubin

Hussein Solomon is a South African professor who is the leading expert on revolutionary Islamist terrorism in his own country and Africa generally. He has just finished a book, Global Jihad: The South African Front. Equally interesting, though, is the background to his work.

In the book he explains why he is so intent on this subject. Solomon describes how he was affected by an August 1998 terrorist attack on Planet Hollywood in Cape Town in which two people were killed and others injured or even crippled.

He writes:

The people who perpetrated such an act of barbarity called themselves Muslim and attempted to justify the act as a blow against the Great Satan–the United States of America. But, the political mandarins of Washington were not hurt by this outrage. It was ordinary men, women and children enjoying dinner and pleasant conversation who were now held in death’s unyielding grasp or maimed. …

I was both angry and sad. Angry that fellow Muslims would perpetrate such an atrocity and saddened that other Muslims would countenance such behavior.

And then he had an experience even closer to home. In December 2006 he took his children to a park in Cape Town for an outing at a waterfront park, only to hear, shortly after leaving, that an Islamist terrorist had been caught carrying three pipe bombs in his car on the way to bomb that very place. “As I watched my children play…realizing that I could have lost them that day I tried hard to fathom the loathing that drove a fellow Muslim to target such a place.”

Read it all here.

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