Please read my comments in this font at the bottom of this article.
What Is ‘Radicalization’?
CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, The BBC, NPR, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and solemn-faced spokesmen for the police and FBI, and political leaders, too, have all been wondering aloud: what, oh what could have caused Shamsud-Din Jabbar to try to kill as many people as he could on New Year’s Day? Jabbar made and posted several videos that make clear his motivation. The first was posted at 1:29 a.m. on the day when he drove his rented truck into revellers in New Orleans, leaving 14 dead and 35 wounded. In that video, he explained that he had at first considered killing his family and friends, but then decided that he wanted his planned killings to focus on the “war between the believers and disbelievers,” FBI counterterrorism official Chris Raia said.
At his home investigators found his Qur’an, propped on a bookcase, and open to a page that contained this:
“Indeed, Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth, because the garden will be theirs, they will fight in the way of Allah and will kill and be killed. It is a promise that is binding on him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’an. Who fulfills his covenant better than Allah? Rejoice then in your bargain that you have made, for that is the supreme triumph.” (9:111)
This verse alone would have been enough instruction for a devout Muslim like Shamsud-Din Jabbar to engage in his killing spree, but there are so many other verses he could also have read, and reread, including these:
Quran 2:191 – “And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And do not fight with them at the sacred mosque until they first attack you there, but if they attack you, then kill them. This is the reward of unbelievers.”
Quran 3:28 – “Let not the believers take unbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoever does that has no connection with Allah unless you are guarding yourselves against them, taking security. Allah bids you to beware of him. To Allah is the journeying.”
Quran 5:33 – “The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and struggle to sow corruption on earth will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be expelled from the land. Such will be their deg- radation in this world, and in the hereafter, theirs will be an awful doom.”
Quran 8:12 – “When your Lord inspired the angels, I am with you. So make those who believe stand firm. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then strike the necks and strike their fingertips.”
Quran 8:60 – “Make ready for them all that you can of force and of warhorses, so that by them you may strike terror in the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside them whom you do not know. Allah knows them. Whatever you spend in the way of Allah, it will be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged.”
Quran 8:65 – “O prophet, exhort the believers to fight. If there are just twenty of you who are steadfast, they will overcome two hundred, and if there are a hundred of you, they will overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they are a people without intelligence.”
Quran 9:5- “Then, when the sacred months have passed, kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and besiege them, and prepare for them every ambush. But if they repent and establish prayer and give alms, then leave their way free. Indeed, Allah is forgiving, merciful.”
Quran 9:29 – “Fight against those do not believe in Allah or the last day, and do not forbid what Allah and his messenger have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth, even if they are among the people of the book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”
Quran 9:123 – “O you who believe, fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty.”
Quran 47:4 – “Now when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks until, when you have subdued them, then make fast the bonds, and afterward either generosity or ransom until the war lays down its burdens. That, and if Allah willed, he could have punished them, but so that he may test some of you by means of oth- ers. And those who have been killed in the way of Allah, he does not make their actions useless.”
In the last few days, I have read or listened to many dozens of reports on the terror attack in New Orleans, on television, on the radio, on social media, all of them mentioning that word “radicalized.” “When did Jabbar become radicalized”? “Was he radicalized in the army?” “Didn’t anyone in his family notice that he was becoming radicalized?” But the one thing that is never asked is this: what does becoming “radicalized” mean? Everyone seems to be afraid to ask, or to have answered, that obvious question. Did Jabbar read a different Qur’an from that read by the 1.5 billion other Muslims, a Qur’an that magically manages to “radicalize” its readers? No, there is only one Qur’an. Did he misunderstand the violent verses in the Qur’an, the ones that call repeatedly — see the partial list of such verses above — upon Muslims to strike at the necks of, to fight, to kill, the “disbelievers”? No, when he ran his truck into a crowd of disbelievers, he was not ignoring those verses of the Qur’an, but dutifully fulfilling them.
Why, then, isn’t every Muslim behaving in similar fashion to Shamshud-Din Jabbar? Most Muslims live in all-Muslim societies and don’t have the chance to smite the disbelievers. Many Muslims living in the West are simply trying to get along; they may smile and smile, and still have murder in their hearts for the disbelievers, but they also want to stay alive and thrive. Many are living on the generous benefits provided to them by the Infidel governments, benefits that they see as a form of jizyah, and don’t want to kill the Infidels who are supporting them in such a generous fashion. They want to remain in the West, and demographically, by slow degrees, take over the countries of dar al-harb.
Still, Jabbar is not a lonely exception. There have been more than 47,000 terror attacks carried out by Muslims since 9/11/2001 around the world. The men of Al-Qaeda, of ISIS, of Hamas, and of dozens of other jihadist groups, and lone wolves such as Jabbar, whom both naïve Westerners and cunning defenders of Islam describe as having been “radicalized,” are simply people who take the instructions in the Qur’an to heart. They are being good Muslims, acting according to its prescriptions. In running people down on Bourbon Street, Jabbar was only doing as the Qur’an instructs: killing the disbelievers. That is all that “radicalization” means though almost everyone is afraid to point that out. Who will be the first in the mainstream media to hold that word “radicalization” up for truthful discussion about what it signifies?
If I may be so bold as to take this argument a little deeper, “I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible…impossible…for any human being to read the biography of Mohammed and believe in it, and then emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person.” - Syrian Psychiatrist Dr. Wafa Sultan
If Dr. Sultan is correct, it could mean that a real believer in Islam is 'radicalized' to the point of being mentally ill. However, I'm not convinced that defines radicalization, I think it is something even deeper. I think it is spiritual!
Christians claim that reading the Word of God may open ones eyes to the reality of Jesus Christ, and those who believe in Him may be born again, that is, the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God can enter into you and create a new you. Born-again Christians are very different from their former selves. Mormons say something similar about the Book of Mormon, which is why I won't read it.
Men and women are clearly open to spiritual influence, and if we go along with that influence, we become susceptible to spiritual invasion whether it be the Spirit of God or a demonic spirit. Have you ever heard of someone committing some horrific atrocity and them claiming God told him to do it. That's demonic invasion.
This is what I believe radicalization is about in Islam, Demonic invasion. Dramatic changes in personality, in likes and dislikes, and a dramatic increase in hatred for Jews and Christians. Hatred so intense they are willing to kill and to die.
Born-again (radicalized) Christians, if genuine, become significantly better people, suddenly full of virtues they never displayed before. Born-again Muslims, on the other hand, become hateful, violent, murderers, and rapists. It takes the antichrist spirit to turn an ordinary Muslim into someone who thinks murder and rape is virtuous.
They will put you out of the synagogues;
yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God
service. John 16:2.
Of course, few will accept this premise because few believe in the reality of demonic beings, of Jesus Christ the Son of God, and Satan the powerful, fallen angel. But they are as real today as when Jesus walked the Earth.
The truth is hard enough to believe when you have an open mind, but when your paradigms are small and rigid, there is little opportunity of ever knowing the truth.
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