Rafsanjani: Israel Will Be Wiped Off The Map....With Nukes Or A Bucket?

Former Iranian President Rafsanjani

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is a former "centrist" Iranian president and is the current head of the country’s Expediency Discernment Council, the advisory body to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. He is known to be a longtime friend of current President Hassan Rouhani.

In an interview with a Hizballah-linked news website yesterday, Rafsanjani reiterated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's infamous 2005 call (and yes, he DID say it) to "wipe Israel off the map". Rafsanjani said he believes that one day “the forged and temporary Israeli entity, which is an alien existence forged into the body of a nation and region,” will be “wiped off the map."

Rafsanjani went on, hilariously, to deny that Iran is after nuclear weapons, despite the fact that the entire world knows that they are.

The statements are also noteworthy because of Rafsanjani's previous statements and activities. In 2001, he delivered a sermon in which he explained that nuclear weapons could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, since “[t]he use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam." Argentinian lawyer Alberto Nisman has also exposed Rafsanjani's culpability in numerous terrorist atrocities, including a bombing in 1994 which killed 85 people (see page 22 of the attached report), as well as multiple assassinations of his foreign political opponents (pp.172-73).

Nisman, incidentally, was himself assassinated - possibly by the Argentinian government - for making these revelations.

But hey, maybe Rafsanjani doesn't really want nuclear weapons. There are other ways to kill Jews, after all. His association with Hizballah is one clue that nukes aren't necessarily his only option when it comes to the "Israeli problem".

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself once said: "If Muslims got together and each poured one bucket of water on Israel, a flood would wash away Israel."

If such an eventually ever arises, I am sure Rafsanjani would be at the front of the queue on his way to the well.

Islam and Blasphemy

Writing in the tenth century, the Tunisian Muslim jurist Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d.996) issued the following sharia legal ruling about what to do with a person who initiates blasphemy against Islam and its Prophet Muhammad:

Whoever abuses the Messenger of God – peace and blessing of God be upon him – is to be executed, and his repentance is not accepted.

If any dhimmi (by 'dhimmi' is meant a non-Muslim subject living in a Muslim country) curses the Prophet – peace be upon him – or abuses him by saying something other than what already makes him an unbeliever, or abuses God Most High by saying something other than what already makes him an unbeliever, he is to be executed unless at that juncture he accepts Islam. (The Risala: A Treatise on Maliki Fiqh, p.359)

This is not simply one man’s opinion. According to Muhammad Hashim Kamali, a prominent Malaysian Muslim scholar, “Islamic law penalises both blasphemy and apostasy with death – the juristic manuals of fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] across the madhahib [legal schools] leave one in little doubt that this is the stand of the law.”  Indeed, the two most detailed Islamic works on the subject of blasphemy – by Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) and Qadi Iyad al-Yahsabi (d.1149) – both conclude that the only appropriate punishment for blasphemy against Islam and Muhammad is the death penalty.

At best, the death penalty has generally been considered a discretionary punishment by Islamic jurists, which can be applied if a sharia judge feels it is the best available option. Reliance of the Traveller, an important manual of Islamic law which carries an endorsement by Egypt’s prestigious Al Azhar University, says that if a subject of the Islamic state “mentions something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet, or Islam,” the Muslim leader has four options: “death, slavery, release without paying anything, or ransoming [the blasphemer] in exchange for money or for a Muslim captive held by the enemy.”

Such rulings stem from a pious desire to emulate the behaviour of a man the Qur’an describes as an “excellent example of conduct” for Muslims to follow (33:21) – Muhammad himself.

The Prophet of Islam is recorded to have had a number of people assassinated merely because they wrote poems that made fun of him and his followers. This included a Jewish poet called K'ab bin al-Ashraf, who, according to Muhammad’s earliest biographer Ibn Ishaq (d.773), “composed amatory [i.e. sexually suggestive] verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women.”  Muhammad asked his followers: “Who is willing to kill Ka'b bin al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” A Muslim volunteered to be the assassin, adding, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Ka’b).” Muhammad gave him permission to use deceit to achieve the murder, and the assassin duly obliged. (Sahih Bukhari v.5, b.59, no.369)

Towards the end of his life, after he had conquered Mecca, Muhammad also ordered the assassination of another Jewish poet, this time a pregnant woman who had written verses attacking Muslims for their blind obedience to the Prophet. She was swiftly killed, along with her unborn child. Before long the assassin began to feel guilty about what he had done. Muhammad reassured him by saying, “You have helped God and his Apostle”, and clearly without guilt or remorse, added, “Two goats won't butt their heads about her.”

In total, the early Muslim sources provide at least ten examples of people who were assassinated – or survived assassination attempts – on Muhammad’s order for writing verses which he considered offensive to the Islamic religion.  According to another hadith, he also had no objection to his followers killing those who criticised him personally: “A Jewess used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood.” (Sunan Abu Dawud, b.33, no.4349)

Historically, this has been the typical fate of those who publicly criticise, mock or insult Islam, its Prophet and its holy book. Even in supposedly “tolerant” Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages, Christians were regularly sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam. In fact, the problem grew to such an extent that a movement of Christians arose who would deliberately criticise Islam in order to defend their own religion, despite the knowledge that they would be executed as a result.

An early example of such a “martyr” is Isaac, a Christian of noble birth who actually rose to an unusually senior administrative position for a Christian under Muslim rule. One day, in front of a Muslim qadi, or judge, he launched into an attack on Islam, saying that Muhammad was burning in Hell for leading the Arabs astray. The qadi was so outraged that he initially slapped Isaac, and then sentenced him to death. For his part, Isaac insisted that the “zeal of righteousness” compelled him to speak out against Islam and that he was prepared to die for his indiscretion. He was eventually decapitated and his corpse hung upside-down for public viewing.

The same week in Cordoba, six more Christians were arrested for blasphemy, pronouncing just before their execution: “We abide by the same confession, O judge, that our most holy brothers Isaac and Sanctius [another martyr killed that week] professed. Now hand down the sentence, multiply your cruelty, be kindled with complete fury in vengeance for your prophet. We profess Christ to be truly God and your prophet to be a precursor of antichrist and an author of profane doctrine.” This brought the number of Christians executed for blasphemy in a single week in Cordoba to eight.

As horrific as such stories are, they unfortunately cannot be described as mere history, for the persecution of “blasphemers” against Islam continues into the modern day, with a disproportionate number of Muslim countries still having laws on the books that impose penalties on criticism of religion.

The West must stand up and rationally call upon Muslims to accept standards of free speech which allow for the criticism and even mocking of their sacred texts and persons. Failure to do so is an unacceptable affront to individual freedom and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Fade To Black

"Life, it seems, will fade away / Drifting further every day"

One wonders what has to happen, how monstrous has to be the violence, before anyone in our Government will be hit by a cluebat, and actually begin to do something about the problem of jihad terror.

First it was David Cameron saying, repeatedly, that Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam - and expecting our intelligence not to be insulted by his words.

Then we hear that there will be a minute's silence this Friday for the victims of the Tunisian jihad shooting - as if these people were just tragically killed by an earthquake, as if they just died because something happened to them and it's all very terrible and sad...as if these people were not savagely murdered by a group that has declared war on us, and wants to kill or subjugate all of us down to the last man, woman and child. This was not a tragedy - IT WAS AN ACT OF WAR. What is David Cameron going to do to win the war?

Nothing, it seems. Nothing at all, except - aptly - remain silent.

Then we see that our security forces have been engaged in a large counter-terror exercise today, revealing that rather than proactive action against the Islamic State and its ideology, we have been reduced to nothing more than simply waiting for the next terror attack to happen, and hoping that it won't be too bad. Maybe only a couple of people will die instead of almost three dozen.

And then we realise that the closest thing to proactive action that is being done is to try to identify school children "in danger of radicalisation", including the enlightening suggestion that "Homophobic views may be a sign that a pupil is at risk of becoming an extremist". We know this is sort of true - ISIS is, after all, famously homophobic. But we also know for damn certain that such an ideological marker will also be used to target Christians who believe that homosexuality is sinful as potential "extremists". In this enlightened 21st century Britain, we acknowledge that those religious types who do condemn gay marriage are ridiculous, ignorant and archaic - but we also know damn well that - unlike Muslims - they are no threat to anybody, and aren't going to do anything to gay people, except perhaps not sell them a wedding cake. And so we know that no useful purpose will be served by this pretense of government action and understanding.

This is the age of willful blindness and capitulation. Relax, infidels, it will all be over soon.

Wrong Questions, No Answers

Sometimes it amazes me that this blog even exists. Why is it that I actually have to run a blog explaining the nature and magnitude of the Islamic jihad threat? Why isn't it already widely known? Especially on a day like the one just past, in which one simply has to turn on the news in order to understand the severity of that threat, with no online commentary needed?

There are a number of explanations as to why this is so, but taken together, they point to the same basic problem: Willful ignorance.

There are many examples of this, but one that struck me recently, and which gets to the heart of why the Muslim world has such a problem, comes from a recent BBC article entitled "Me and Abu Taubah", by Nina Arif. It demonstrates the utter inability that moderate Muslims have to successfully convince their co-religionists that they are wrong about their "perverted" understanding of Islam, and bring them back to the true peaceful, loving teachings of the Qur'an. (#sarc)

The article documents Arif's six-month period of online and mobile conversations which an ISIS jihadist calling himself Muthenna Abu Taubah. After describing how she tried to learn about his ideology, and admitting that she agrees with his "grievances about Muslims having their freedoms curbed", she goes on to ask an absolutely unbelievable question:

But why had Taubah (Arabic for "repentance") chosen the path of jihad as a response to injustice?

This is unbelievable because the answer is in the question.

Taubah is not just Arabic for "repentance" - it is also the name of a chapter of the Qur'an. Chapter 9 - Surat al-Taubah - is without question the most violent chapter in all of the Qur'an, and contains the key war proclamations that sanction "jihad against injustice" (i.e. non-belief) in Islamic thought and law. These include, among others, the following:

“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” (9:5)

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya [non-Muslim poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (9:29)

“Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth...” (9:111)

O Prophet, fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination. (9:23)

O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness. And know that Allah is with the righteous. (9:123)

Could it be that Muthenna Abu Tauba named himself after this sura because it reflected his devotion to jihad? If she was honest, Arif would ask the question, since if she knows what Taubah means in Arabic, she must also know that it is the name of a Qur'anic sura. But if she does know that, she gives no sign of it in this article.

Her dishonesty shows itself up again right at the very end of the piece, when she observes:

Aside from a lesson in scripted jihadi responses, our exchanges brought me insight into an individual who perhaps lacked the absolute conviction he first tried to project. It left me wondering how many others in the seemingly impenetrable Isis army could also be having doubts.

Read the entire article for yourself. See how many times she describes Abu Taubah as having rejected her claims that Islam is a religion of peace, and insists that what he is doing is Islamically correct and morally justified. Then ask yourself whether her claim that he is "having doubts" about anything remotely resemble the conversation you have just read about.

One of the most significant reasons "moderate Islam" has failed so miserably to curb so-called "extremism" within the faith is because it has demonstrated itself time and time again to be completely incapable of challenging the jihadis on ideological grounds, and in complete denial about the gruelling and searingly self-reflective work that needs to be done in order to undertake that task.

That is why, as much as I wish more than anything for Islamic reform in the sense championed by the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I also remain entirely pessimistic that such a thing will ever even begin seriously in my lifetime.

Sharia: The Numbers

There is an abundance of disturbing polling data from across the Muslim world that strongly suggests that the desire to implement sharia in its draconian entirety is still a very strong driving force around the globe today.

For example, according to a 2007 World Public Opinion / University of Maryland poll, 71% of Muslims – hardly a fringe minority – surveyed in four major Islamic countries (Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia) openly declared that they wanted to see the resurrection of the Caliphate. 74% also wanted strict (that word was emphasised) application of sharia law in every Islamic country.  In early 2009, a follow-up poll by the same team achieved similar results.

Similarly, a 2010 survey by the respected Pew polling organisation found that about eight in ten Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan (82% each) endorse the stoning of people who commit adultery, while 70% of Muslims in Jordan and 56% of Nigerian Muslims share this view. Muslims in Pakistan and Egypt are also the most supportive of whippings and cutting off of hands for theft; 82% in Pakistan and 77% in Egypt favour making this type of punishment the law in their countries, as do 65% of Muslims in Nigeria and 58% in Jordan.

Pew has repeated these results many times. For example, another poll of Pakistani Muslims, specifically, found that 78% favour death for those who leave Islam; 80% favour whippings and cutting off hands for theft; and 83% favour stoning adulterers. Most recently, a large report published by Pew in 2013, compiling data from four years of research in almost forty countries, found that in ten of twenty countries where there were sufficient samples for valid statistical analysis, the majority of Muslims surveyed supported amputating the limbs of thieves and stoning adulterers to death. The highest rate of support (89%) was in Pakistan, with Afghanistan (85%) and the Palestinian territories (84%) close behind. The lowest rate of support, recorded in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was still 21%, or almost one in four.

Now imagine what might happen to a non-Muslim country when people with this mindset are allowed to settle and live in it in unprecedented numbers. You don't need to be a mathematician to know that the cultural sums don't compute.

The Antidote

Please go here to watch a short video by Dutch MP Geert Wilders, which will be aired on television in Holland next week, in which he stands up for freedom of speech by showing Muhammad cartoons.

In a world where our political leaders are generally less honest and courageous about Islam than David Cameron (and I don't mean that as a compliment to Dave), it is wonderful to see that there is a Western politician out there who gets it - even if it really is only one.

"What is not allowed by Islam and the violence of terrorists, we will do it anyway. And we call that: Freedom of speech."

David Cameron Continues to Speak Both Truth and Falsehood About Islamic Jihad

Not for the first time, David Cameron has shown that he has the cajones to say some things that most other British politicans dare not say - and once again he has shown that despite the courage of his convictions, he has very little understanding of what he is talking about.

In a speech at a security conference in Slovakia on Friday, the Prime Minister warned of the dangers posed by those who "quietly condone" Islamic State's jihadist ideology. He said the police and intelligence agencies were not responsible for people deciding they wanted to go to fight for IS in Syria, and that recent cases show how young people from Britain are at risk of sliding towards "violent extremism".

Mr Cameron said: "The cause is ideological. It is an Islamist extremist ideology, one that says the West is bad, that democracy is wrong, that women are inferior, that homosexuality is evil.

"It says religious doctrine trumps the rule of law and Caliphate trumps nation state and it justifies violence in asserting itself and achieving its aims. The question is: How do people arrive at this worldview?"

Here we have both the good and the bad of Cameron's analysis of the problem. On the one hand, he summarises more succinctly than most of our political class will dare the basic ideological tenets of the enemy. But then he flaps his hands in the air and wonders how anyone could come to believe these kinds of things.

Yes, how could those who are described by those who know them as "devout Muslims", and who do things such as holding evening classes on the Qur’an and creating websites where they share lectures from Islamic scholars, ever get the idea that "religious doctrine trumps the rule of law and Caliphate trumps nation state", and that violence is necessary in "asserting itself and achieving its aims"? Could it have anything to do with...Islam?

Cameron and his ilk don't just answer this question in the negative - they refuse to allow anyone to ask the question in the first place. For them, Islam is a religion of peace, and the vast majority of Muslims condemn and reject the "extremist" interpretation of it, so that even when people are devout Muslims, who read the Qur'an and know it intimately, and then seem to get the idea that violence and hatred is not condemned at all in the Qur'an, it must somehow not have anything to do with Islam. If it did, then their initial presuppositions might not be true - and that's just inconceivable. The truth shouldn't be defined by the facts, but rather by what makes us feel better.

And so Dave has to resort to blaming "questions of national identity", and suggesting that "making sure young people in our country feel truly part of it" will solve the problem. I'm sorry, but why isn't Dave asking why it is only Muslims who are answering questions of national identity in this insanely barbaric way? There are Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Africans, Jamaicans, Koreans, and many other groups in this country, all of whom must at some point have to grapple with questions of national identity, and none of them have formed international groups that have declared war on the rest of the world, and behead, immolate, enslave, rape and kill people on a daily basis. None of them have alarming numbers of British residents travelling overseas to join such groups. Why is it only Muslims who need to take a "British values" short course in order not to be induced to go out and join a barbaric death cult?

The PM's oversights are even more inexcusable considering that in the same speech, he did show some understanding, however limited, of one of the most serious problems of all. He mentioned that some British Muslims "don't go as far as advocating violence, but do buy into some of these prejudices". This "paves the way for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent", and to "go from listening to firebrand preachers online to boarding a plane to Istanbul and travelling onward to join the jihadis".

Whether he knows it or not, Dave has made an extremely important observation here. Poll after poll in the Muslim world has shown that while the majority of Muslims reject terrorism and murderous violence to advance the cause of Islam, that majority also endorse the imposition of sharia law in the Muslim world, in all its draconian glory.

In the UK specifically, following the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, the ComRes polling agency carried out a widely publicised survey of British Muslims and their attitudes towards blasphemy and extremism in the UK. Despite mainstream media attempts to present the results of the poll as somehow encouraging,  what they actually showed was that 27% of British Muslims (over a quarter) said they have some sympathy for the motives behind the Paris attacks, while 24% felt that violence against those who publish images of Muhammad can sometimes be justified. This would seem to explain why there have been a number of public Muslim demonstrations in the UK – often attended in the thousands or even tens of thousands – advocating the criminalisation of criticism of Islam,  and not a single one in support of freedom of speech.

And so we can see the problem as Mr Cameron has summarised it. Many Muslims will never go to join Islamic State, and disapprove of their actions for a number of reasons. And yet, they still have a cultural mindset that sympathises with any attempts to enforce sharia, no matter how brutal and savage, and which instinctively feels a degree of hesitation over engaging in any form of self-reflection that might lead to serious reform and meaningful action to tackle the worldwide serial "misunderstanding" of Islam that we see on the news every single day.

This is what we have in Britain in 2015: a Prime Minister with enough common sense to understand a good part of what we should do about the problem, but who systematically closes down all the avenues towards dealing with that problem, by denying its root causes, applying poor, inconsistent logic, and shutting down those who attempt to inject realism into the debate.

This is Britain in 2015. It doesn't make one too optimistic about what Britain will be like in 2025.