SAUDIS CONTINUE TO PLAY GAMES

In a fresh turn of events, Saudi Arabia, one of the least charitable nations on the planet has announced it will siphon off a billion dollars of its oil treasure to rebuild Gaza. But Gaza was a thriving stretch of land when the Jews were living there. Enter the Arabs. Well, you know the sad unchanging story.

KUWAIT CITY—The Saudi king says his country will donate $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after Israel's devastating three-week offensive in the Palestinian territory.

King Abdullah criticizes Israel for using excessive force in Gaza and says "one drop of Palestinian blood" is more valuable than all the money in the world.

Congress eliminated aid to Saudi Arabia in 2006 when the House of Representatives voted to forbid US aid to Saudi Arabia, a statement of far more symbolic importance than economic. The 312-97 vote was to eliminate $420,000 from the $21.3 billion Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. The money has financed $20,000 in military training and education and a $400,000 anti-terrorism program.

President George W. Bush considered Saudi Arabia a vital ally in his campaign against terror, which he began after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Bush administration praised the Saudis for cracking down on terror operations within their borders but has complained about women's rights and other aspects of Saudi domestic policies.

For its part, Saudi Arabia has wanted a more active US role in mediating the Arab-Israeli problem. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal complained about the Bush administration's decision to shut off direct aid to the elected Hamas-led Palestinian government.

"American taxpayer dollars should not be supporting Saudi hate and terror," Congressman Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat who sponsored the amendment, said in a statement. "The Saudis have not cooperated with American investigations, they continue to provide financial support to terrorists, and they continue to nurture fanatical Wahhabism."

Wahhabism is the fundamentalist branch of Islam followed by Saudi Muslims. Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida mastermind whose Saudi nationality has been revoked because of his terrorist activities, advocates a particularly austere version of Wahhabism.

In his statement, Weiner said the Saudis have violated assurances that they would stop financing terror organizations that have attacked the United States and Israel, adding that Saudi schools "continue to cultivate hate and intolerance despite claims of a `modernized' education system."

BIG BROTHER'S ISLAMIC SHUFFLE

From Robert Spencer:

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.”
—Islamic spokesman, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu

That sounds like the statement of a victor in a war, dictating terms to the vanquished. And it may well be: free speech is under attack in Canada—the prosecution of Macleans Magazine and author Mark Steyn—and in the United States as well by Islamic governments and groups whose goal is to end free speech when it is aimed at exposing the truth about Islamic terrorism and its roots.

Their goal is positively Orwellian. Replace “Big Brother” with the “Organization of the Islamic Conference” and you have the world the OIC wants to impose on us all.

Apparently Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, believes that his powerful, multinational Islamic organization has already won the battle over free speech. Last week he boasted that “the OIC has become an indispensable player at the international level, in many domains.” Notably, he said, the OIC, which comprises 57 Muslim governments in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, has been actively “defending the image of Islam, and combating the phenomenon of Islamophobia.”

The OIC, said Ihsanoglu, has placed the issue of Islamophobia “at the top of our priorities and preoccupations, while conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront it.”

They’ve already accomplished a great deal. “We have been able to achieve convincing progress,” observed Ihsanoglu, at “the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and the UN General Assembly.”

That is true: Associated Press reported Thursday that “Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticized during debates by the UN Human Rights Council.” Council President Doru-Romulus Costea explained: “This council is not prepared to discuss religious matters in depth, consequently we should not do it.” AP noted that “while Costea’s ban applies to all religions, it was prompted by Muslim countries complaining about references to Islam.” And Ihsanoglu said: “The United Nations General Assembly adopted similar resolutions against the defamation of Islam.”

Now they’re setting their sights on the United States. “We have established an OIC Group in Washington D.C.,” Ihsanoglu explained, “with the aim of playing a more active role in engaging American policy makers.” This will involve agitating for laws restricting free speech: “And in confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film ‘Fitna,’” (which showed Muslims acting on violent passages in the Qur’an), Ihsanoglu continued, “we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” Ihsanoglu says it’s already working: “As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.”

In other words, “irresponsible” speech—which is defined as speech he disagrees with—should be banned.

This is simple to comprehend. I can't say that I'm surprised. Merely a lowly blogger, I felt the push toward this awful direction heating up about 3 years ago. When I first voiced my concerns over this matter of freedom of speech, friends and family rolled eyes. Interestingly, few of them are rolling their eyes now, but they are still not willing to take any risks or to buck political correctness except over dinner in a hushed whisper even after a few drinks.

Ihsanoglu is right that such a “message” has found a receptive audience, even in the West. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey published in mid-June found that while 88% of Americans support the right to free speech (only 88%?), only 53% oppose banning “hate speech.” Significantly, however, only 11% support bans on “hate speech” when they’re reminded that “hate speech” is in the eye of the beholder, and that the government would be deciding what constitutes hate speech and what doesn’t. That is, the government, or the OIC making the government dance to its tune.

“Hate speech” is also a tool to prevent the dissemination of what have more of a claim to be called “inconvenient truths” than anything Al Gore has ever been involved with. Mark Steyn is on trial in Canada right now for telling the truth. The renowned Canadian journalist and politician Peter Worthington commented acidly about the Steyn proceedings: “Truth is no defence before a Human Rights tribunal. Steyn’s accuracy is not at issue, just his opinions. Under hate legislation, opinions are punishable if they offend a particular group. If you think about it, this is an abomination.”

Indeed it is—and Steyn is not the only victim. The contentious exchange at the UN Human Rights Council that led to the prohibition of criticism of Islam involved a presentation by David G. Littman of the Association for World Education of information about female genital mutilation, the stoning of adulteresses, and honor killings in Islamic countries. The first victims of the ban on such talk at the Human Rights Council will be those who suffer from such barbarities—and will now have no one who is allowed to speak for them without dissembling about the causes and extent of the problem.

It is telling that when Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and the OIC think of “defending the image of Islam,” they don’t mean working in Muslim communities to combat the influence of the jihad ideology or Islamic supremacism among Muslims worldwide. They don’t have in mind developing any large scale initiatives to combat Osama bin Laden’s version of Islam, and to teach Muslims how to resist the jihadist appeal. The organization hasn’t ever acknowledged the obvious fact that it could end “Islamophobia” right away by rejecting Islam’s doctrines of violence, supremacism and conquest and moving strongly against those Muslims who are acting upon those doctrines.

Instead, they have made themselves the enemies of honest men like Mark Steyn who have called attention to this supremacist agenda. They will be working with American policymakers to restrict free speech—that is, honest discussion of the elements of Islam that the jihadists use to justify their actions and gain recruits.

Can honest discussion really be outlawed? You bet it can. As long as free people do nothing to stop it from happening. As the OIC presses American politicians to use anti-discrimination and hate speech laws to “stem this illegal trend,” we need to stand up now with Mark Steyn and all the others who are on the front lines of this battle, and tell them that what they’re doing to Steyn in Canada must never happen here. We must tell our elected officials to stop this outrage, resist OIC lobbying, and reaffirm in no uncertain terms our commitment to free speech—particularly now, when so much depends on our being able to speak with honesty about the nature of the jihadist threat, and so many powerful entities want to make sure we do not do so.

So much depends on this—possibly even including our survival as a free people.

In other news explaining how the Jews and Christians must “feel themselves subdued,” Ibn Kathir quotes a saying of Muhammad: “Do not initiate the Salam [greeting of peace] to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.” He then goes on to outline the notorious Pact of Umar, an agreement made, according to Islamic tradition, between the caliph Umar, who ruled the Muslims from 634 to 644, and a Christian community.

This Pact is worth close examination, because it became the foundation for Islamic law regarding the treatment of the dhimmis. With remarkably little variation, throughout Islamic history whenever Islamic law was strictly enforced, this is generally how non-Muslims were treated. Working from the full text as Ibn Kathir has it, these are the conditions the Christians accept in return for “safety for ourselves, children, property and followers of our religion” – conditions that, according to Ibn Kathir, “ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.”

The Christians will not:

1. Build “a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk”;
2. “Restore any place of worship that needs restoration”;
3. Use such places “for the purpose of enmity against Muslims”;
4. “Allow a spy against Muslims into our churches and homes or hide deceit [or betrayal] against Muslims”;
5. Imitate the Muslims’ “clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names”;
6. “Ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons”;
7. “Encrypt our stamps in Arabic”
8. “Sell liquor” – Christians in Iraq in the last few years ran afoul of Muslims reasserting this rule;
9. “Teach our children the Qur’an”;
10. “Publicize practices of Shirk” – that is, associating partners with Allah, such as regarding Jesus as Son of God. In other words, Christian and other non-Muslim religious practice will be private, if not downright furtive;
11. Build “crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets” – again, Christian worship must not be public, where Muslims can see it and become annoyed;
12. “Sound the bells in our churches, except discreetly, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims, nor raise our voices [with prayer] at our funerals, or light torches in funeral processions in the fairways of Muslims, or their markets”;
13. “Bury our dead next to Muslim dead”;
14. “Buy servants who were captured by Muslims”;
15. “Invite anyone to Shirk” – that is, proselytize, although the Christians also agree not to:
16. “Prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so.” Thus the Christians can be the objects of proselytizing, but must not engage in it themselves;
17. “Beat any Muslim.”

Meanwhile, the Christians will:

1. Allow Muslims to rest “in our churches whether they come by day or night”;
2. “Open the doors [of our houses of worship] for the wayfarer and passerby”;
3. Provide board and food for “those Muslims who come as guests” for three days;
4. “Respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them” – shades of Jim Crow;
5. “Have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist” – these are so that a Muslim recognizes a non-Muslim as such and doesn’t make the mistake of greeting him with As-salaamu aleikum, “Peace be upon you,” which is the Muslim greeting for a fellow Muslim;
6. “Be guides for Muslims and refrain from breaching their privacy in their homes.”

The Christians swore: “If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion.”

WISDOM FROM A MODERATE MUSLIM

Jake Nichols of the Planet Jackson Hole rag has conducted an interview of some vital interest and intensity. From his insider understanding of the terrorist mentality, Dr. Tawfik Hamid predicted the destruction of the Twin Towers (9-11), Madrid bombings, and London attacks. Now his stated mission has become to speak out against radical Islam as a cancer that is spreading with frightening rapidity across the globe today. A courageous as well as scholarly initiator of Islamic reformation, Dr. Hamid seeks to build new thinking within Islam to overcome the hatred and violent extremism that have metastasized within his religious tradition as he states: "in order to make LOVE prevail you should defeat Hatred!"

Read on...

Jackson Hole, WY - Dr. Tawfik Hamid, 47, was born in Egypt to an agnostic father and liberal French mother. As a student at Cairo University medical school in the late 1970s, Dr. Hamid joined a radical Islamic group and became, in essence, a budding terrorist.

He has since eschewed violent teachings of the Qur’an and other Islamic texts and has embraced a new and more peaceful interpretation of the Muslim faith which he has developed and encouraged by authoring several books and lecturing worldwide. Dr. Hamid believes changing the Muslim religion from within is the only way to ensure world peace.

“It is the only hope to a long term solution to the problem and not just a recipe approach or a symptomatic treatment for the disease,” the doctor told the Planet during a phone interview from Washington, D.C. “I want to treat the disease from its roots so that we guarantee that it does not come again in the future.”

While Dr. Hamid preaches a peaceful interpretation of the Qur’an, his suggestions for dealing with radical Islamists have been accused of pouring gasoline on the fire. He often defends his position by saying the western world and America is too worried about seeming “Islamaphobic.”

“Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it!” he said. “They’re slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can’t you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want?”

Planet Jackson Hole: You claim you were approached in college by the man who is now considered Bin Laden’s lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He got you involved in a rather radical Muslim group called Jamaat Islamiyah. Describe the process.

Dr. Tawfik Hamid: It was a group inside the medical school itself and it was legal back then. We used to have three masques: One relatively peaceful, another a bit more aggressive, and Jamaat Islamiyah. Approximately 3 percent of the students at the school were members of Jamaat Islamiyah. You go to pray with them. They put your name on some sort of list. You sign and are considered a member. It was a group that prepared you, indoctrinated you, with the violent teachings.

PJH: The indoctrination process has been likened to a “brainwashing.” You, yourself, have detailed stages—Stage I: creating hatred toward non-believers; Stage II: eliminating empathy or sympathy toward the pain and suffering of others; Stage III: accepting or using violence against others. How far did they suck you in … and how?

TH: When you are motivated by religious beliefs [they] can be used by some people to suppress your ability to do critical thinking. They did this to me by using certain verses and certain tactics. For example, they liked to use a phrase, ‘If you think, you become an infidel.’ So they use tactics that make it difficult for you to question or think. They say to you, ‘This is the will of Allah. You cannot negotiate with God and you have to just obey blindly whatever he says to you.’

PJH: And the process is subtle?

TH: The process is gradual. One day I prayed with them and they asked us to stand in queues with no separation or gaps in between our shoulders and our feet. This was intentionally done to make us feel as if we were at war. To quote the Qur’anic verse: “God loves those who fight for his cause as if they are one cemented or solid structure with no gaps between them.”

So they put you in the Jihadi mind. You start to feel like you are a soldier, not just someone who is worshipping God. You are a part of a system that is declaring war on non-believers or infidels. In fact, they use the power of hellfire very effectively. The Qur’an describes the hellfire in very poetic and powerful [imagery], with great detail in the torture tactics.

PJH: And I have never heard anyone but you mention this, but there is the use of sexual deprivation on young recruits, adolescent males, at a time in their lives when their bodies are raging with testosterone.

TH: Many students are unable to have any sexual relationships because marriage was very costly and very difficult while they are students. Extramarital relationships are very difficult in this culture and strongly prohibited. So, on one hand you have this sexual frustration, on the other hand you have a description of paradise full of ladies and women waiting for you there. This creates some distortion in our minds and many of the students back then were truly dreaming about going to paradise; dying for Allah as a martyr or shahid, and go to paradise to have these ladies up there.

PJH: How does this apply to women suicide bombers, who are now starting to become more prevalent, where you used to never hear of such a thing? What are they promised, Chippendales and fat-free ice cream?

TH: Look, the dream of going to God and the paradise and to die in martyrdom or shahid is actually in the mind of many women including my wife. She used to dream about dying as a martyr to go to paradise.

But the dream for women is a little different. Women are affected by the fear of hell more than desire in having sexual things in paradise. There are words of the prophet Mohammed which are not Qur’anic but are generally accepted by most Muslims, that says most of the people in hell are women. The women are generally afraid of going to hell because the torture tactics are clearly described in the Qur’an.

PJH: But you got out. You are not hiding in a cave with al-Zawahiri. You are here in the U.S. and a devotee of a kinder Islam.

TH: I reached that level [Stage III] and what happened was a certain event. There was a big party in the medical school. It was an innocent party but the Jamaat Islamiyah saw it as un-Islamic, so they gathered in the hundreds, more than a thousand, actually, and they prayed in the middle of the school showing power and chanting, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and threatening to stop this innocent party by violence. On this day, I was standing beside someone who was the leader of the fourth group of the Jamaat Islamiyah and he was planning with other people to kidnap one of the police officers and bury him alive. To dig a grave beside the mosque and bury the man alive.

And I just thought this was too much for me. It awakened my conscious and I felt there was something fundamentally wrong here and I started to think, which was the opposite of what they told me. And when I started to think, the whole process started backwards and I started to develop a new interpretation for the Qur’an and the Islamic teaching. This was the triggering factor. I found some Qur’anic verses that encouraged me to tell the truth even if it was against my culture.

PJH: You have described al-Zawahiri as a fiercest speaker you have ever heard.

TH: He is a man of great conviction. There is no doubt he believed in what he was saying. He was not doing it to gain money or wealth—he was from a relatively wealthy family. He was a very intelligent person. He had a great future in Egypt if he continued in the Arab world as a doctor.

It’s like Bin Laden, who was a billionaire and left everything to go to live in the mountains of Afghanistan. He left a five-star hotel to live there. So these people are truly convinced in what they are doing. Plus, if they have that charisma, like al-Zawahiri, he can just blow you away and you feel that you are totally captivated by his form of teachings that are very, very inflammatory and very powerful at the same time.

PJH: If we locked the both of you in a room...

TH: [Chuckles]

PJH: … and waited to see whose interpretation of the Qur’an would prevail, what would happen? Who would convince who?

TH: I will tell you, my views can be very convincing but his views are supported by a lot of other scholars and, also, he would use violence against me. So for me to use convincing here would not be very … well, let’s say, I would try to convince him and he would try to kill me.

PJH: Which leads me to some of the more controversial aspects of your lectures, Doctor. You have said HAMAS must be crushed militarily. Economic pressure must be forced on Saudi Arabia. You encourage western civilization to meet terrorists’ violence with violence. Would that be a fair assessment?

TH: With MORE violence, sometimes.

We have a recent example in history with the Nazis and the Emperor of Japan. We couldn’t change the ideology of the Nazis or the Japanese by peace or love or harmony or mutual understanding. The change in their educational system and their ideology happened only after their military defeat. You give your enemy a powerful military defeat, then you will be able to change their education.

This is what I’m suggesting here with HAMAS. The problem with Israel, for example, is they use what I call ‘a moderate dose of antibiotics’ which does not kill the infection, it just gives the wrong impression that the antibiotics are not working. What I’m saying is if you are going to use power in the military against the violence of barbarians like this, then you have to use sufficient power to suppress them. As long as you are using this moderate dose of power, the problem will remain a chronic problem. This might be viewed as very aggressive but, unfortunately, this is what history teaches us. In [the cases of] Hitler and Japan, the world used sufficient power to devastate them and the war was ended and peace happened after that. It was not peace with Hitler and Japan that brought peace. It was military power.

PJH: A little peace upside their head, eh?

TH: But it has to be devastating. It cannot be moderate military power; otherwise the war can continue forever.

PJH: And in the case of Saudi Arabia, it doesn’t help that, as a nation, we’re hooked on their oil.

TH: Of course. It’s a waste of your time if you try to use military might. What is needed is some type of economic pressure to push them toward modality. I’m not an advocate of sudden change of structure of the system there. Some people advocate immediate democracy or the changing of the government’s mind. My belief is this can create chaos like what’s happening in Iraq.

I believe it would be more wise to use their political leaders, some of whom are relatively pro-American, and cooperate with them and give them expertise and assist them in some way or another and work together to defeat radical Islam, which is also a threat to them. It’s like a chess match—one step at a time. Creating democracy now, before defeating radical Islam, can just invite an Islam which can cause more trouble for the world.

PJH: On Glenn Beck’s television show, you got into it a little bit with CAIR’s (Council on American-Islamic Relations) Ahmed Bedier. What happened there?

TH: It’s something we all need to recognize. You cannot call a person a moderate if he believes he should kill apostates or he allows the beating of women and stoning them to death, or allows slavery to come back again, or uses war against non-Muslims to subjugate them to Islam, or calls Jews “pigs and monkeys.” You can’t consider this a moderate person or organization.

What I am trying to do is propose a real treatment to the problem. To provide a new or alternative interpretation to the Islamic text which is feasible because the Arabic language is very flexible; you can interpret at the literal level or even metaphoric level.

PJH: You have a unique, insider’s understanding of the jihadist, the terrorist. You say you knew America would be hit two years before the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. You saw it coming.

TH: As a simple observer, I saw the growth of Islamism and the violence and I could tell, at the end of this curve, they will start attacking in the West. It was obvious. They declared war against the western civilization and their freedoms, especially the freedom of women, and they hated to their guts any sort of liberal values.

I knew this cancer was growing and it was sure to hit the west but where to hit? You have, in the Arab culture, a proverb that means, “It is better to attack the most powerful, so that the weaker ones become afraid of you.” So they chose America because it’s the most powerful country.

Now, why New York City? Because, based on a Qur’an verse that says, “Whatever they do to tease the infidels or cause them pain, they will be rewarded by Allah for this.” So they chose New York City because they believed it would cause maximum pain to America because it is the capital of money and the symbolism of the twin towers would be most damaging.

PJH: Do salafist or fundamentalist Islam and radical Islam have to mean the same thing?

TH: A fundamentalist is someone who doesn’t want to shake hands with women. He will force his wife and daughter to wear the hijab. They don’t allow TV in their homes. It’s more within. The effect of it is within. Radical Islam is outside. It’s forcing others to believe. It’s using violence against Christians in order to subjugate them to Islam. They are really two faces to the same coin.

PJH: It sounds like a radical is a fundamentalist who takes up jihad.

TH: Yeah.

PJH: Let’s talk about how your views apply to our current political scene and the race for presidency. Barack Obama, for instance, has made no bones about how he would seek face-to-face meetings with leaders in the Arab world that we have struggled with. Will that be effective?

TH: That will never work. In fact, it will actually aggravate the problem. I’ll give you an example. In the cartoon [depiction] of the prophet Mohammed, for example. When the cartoon was published, it was the 30th of September, 2005. Until four months later, January 2006, there were no violent demonstrations, okay? On the day when the Danish magazine [Jyllands-Posten] apologized—this was the 30th of January, 2006—within 48 hours, violent demonstrations erupted throughout the world.

That is the phenomenon; that you show weakness and withdrawal with these people and they actually think of attacking you more. They attacked you in Kenya and Tanzania on your embassies in 1998. Your reaction was weak. This weakness encouraged them to attack you again.

So in trying to negotiate with the jihadists or radicals without losing your freedom is [impossible]. [Both] al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden said to you, “Convert to Islam or we will declare war on you.” This is a simple, clear issue that has been stated by the leaders of al-Qaida and has been repeated over and over. So why don’t you believe them? It is crystal clear; they are not ready to negotiate. They just want your submission.

[Obama] might be interested to negotiate but they are not. And you cannot negotiate with yourself. It’s just dreams. And I can see some people in the political field, especially, in my view, some of the liberal left; they live in dreams rather than reality. This approach, these politicians, I believe, will just bring more catastrophes to the world.

THE AL QAEDA READER

Orginally published by Jihad Watch

Given that war, as both Sun Tzu and Mohammed preached, is deception, it behooves us to understand accurately the enemy's motivations and not be fooled by his deceiving propaganda. Yet in the current war against Islamic jihad, the West has stubbornly refused to take seriously what the jihadists tell us, believing instead what Thucydides called the "pretexts" with which an enemy rationalizes his aggression. Osama bin Laden and his theorist Aymin al Zawahiri in particular have provided us with numerous texts outlining the Islamic foundations of their war against the West. A few of these pronouncements and manifestoes have long been available, but now thanks to Raymond Ibrahim's The Al Qaeda Reader, writings previously unavailable in English can be studied and analyzed. Such study will provide powerful evidence that contrary to the deceptions of apologists and the naïve delusions of some Westerners, the bases of the jihadists' actions lie squarely within Islamic tradition, not in the alleged Western crimes against Islam.

Fluent in Arabic and trained as a historian in the ancient Middle East, Ibrahim is currently a technician in the Library of Congress' Near East Section, where he discovered al Qaeda documents that had not been translated into English. He has organized these writings into two sections: theology, writings intended for fellow Muslims that ground al Qaeda's war against the West in the traditional Islamic doctrine of jihad; and propaganda, writings meant for Westerners that cast bin Laden's war as a just response to the depredations of Western powers.

The documents in the first section make a sustained, coherent argument for offensive jihad based on the Koran, the Hadith (the traditions of the words and deeds of Mohammed), and the Ulema (past and present scholars of Islam). Indeed, as Ibrahim notes, "Zawahiri's writings especially are grounded in Islam's roots of jurisprudence; in fact, of the many thousands of words translated here from his three treatises, well more than half are direct quotations from the Koran the Sunna [words, habits, and practices] of Mohammed, and the consensus and conclusions of the Ulema." This extensive grounding weakens the "highjacking" charge apologists use to explain Islamic jihad. On the contrary, al Qaeda's arguments are unexceptionally traditional—which is why, of course, millions of Muslims accept them.

In these writings addressed to fellow Muslims, bin Laden and Zawahiri argue against the notion of "moderate" Islam; the compatibility of Sharia (laws governing Islamic society) with democracy; the idea of accommodation with the enemy; and the prohibition against killing women and children. In other words, they meticulously attack as distortions of Islam all the popular assertions about Islam's nature promulgated by apologists, Westernized Muslims, and even many Christians. As bin Laden himself writes in "Moderate Islam Is a Prostration to the West"—a letter written to the Saudi theologians who in 2002 publicly advocated coexistence with the West—such moderation necessitates the adoption of Western values: "They [the Saudi theologians] first acknowledge their [Westerners'] values and ideologies in their entirety, while shying away from evoking the truth valued by the Religion [Islam] and its foundations."

Even the notion of "co-existence" is a Western idea contrary to Islam: "As if one of the foundations of our religion is how to coexist with infidels!" Quite the contrary: the traditions and foundations of Islam urge believers to "wage war against the infidels and the hypocrites, and be ruthless against them" (Koran 66:9), a verse Zawahiri quotes along with the commentary of al Qurtubi, 13th-century author of a 20-volume exegesis of the Koran: "There is but one theme—and that is zeal for the religion of Allah. He commands the waging of Jihad against the infidel by use of sword, sound sermons, and the summons to Allah."

So too with other Western notions such as tolerance and "dialogue," which bin Laden correctly asserts are "built on Western conceptions, which themselves rest upon the most loathsome, secular principles." Indeed, bin Laden has a strong case, for he appeals for evidence to the life and practices of Mohammed and his companions—along with the Koran the Muslim's guide to every aspect of life—and asks sarcastically, "What evidence is there for Muslims for this [dialogue and shared understanding]? What did the Prophet, the companions after him, and the righteous forebears do? Did they wage jihad against the infidels, attacking them all over the earth, in order to place them under the suzerainty of Islam in great humility and submission? Or did they send messages to discover 'shared understandings' between themselves and the infidels in order that they may reach an understanding whereby universal peace, security, and natural relations would spread—in such a satanic manner as this?"

History shows that bin Laden has the better understanding of Islam than do Western apologists; as Ibrahim summarizes the argument, "'radical' Islam is Islam—without exception." In this same vein, Zawahiri argues in his "Loyalty and Enmity" that the only relationship one can have with the infidel is enmity. Zawahiri buttresses this argument with numerous quotations from Islamic theology, the most important coming from the Koran 60:4: "'We disown you and the idols which you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah alone.'" On this authority comes the necessity to wage jihad against the infidel.

Perhaps the most important document in Ibrahim's collection is Zawahiri's "Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents." For years, we have been told that terrorism is un-Islamic because Islam forbids suicide and the killing of non-combatants. Zawahiri, however, teases out from Islamic tradition a perfectly rational and coherent argument in support of terrorism and suicide bombings.

Zawahiri starts by repeating Islam's acceptance of deception in war as justified, thus legitimizing suicide bombings, which are deceptive by nature. Next, he builds his argument on selected hadiths, which as Ibrahim notes requires some interpretive stretching. Zawahiri gets around this difficulty by resorting to analogy, "a legitimate tool of Islamic jurisprudence," as Ibrahim reminds us. Zawahiri focuses on intention, why the Muslim kills himself, not who kills him: "Thus the deciding factor in all these situations is one and the same: the intention—is it to service Islam [martyrdom] or is it out of depression and [despair]?"

As for killing women and children, Mohammed himself provides a precedent during the siege of Ta'if, where he used catapults. The Prophet's response to the question of killing women and children, which of course catapult missiles would do perforce, was "They [women and children] are from among them [infidels]." Again, the ultimate intention is the key: referring to al Shafi' and the Hanbalis, two schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Zawahiri argues that it is permissible "to bombard the idolators even if Muslims and those who are cautioned against killing are intermingled with them as long as there is a need or an obligation for Muslims to do so, or if not striking leads to a delay of the jihad."

Zawahiri's reasoning in defense of suicide bombing may be ultimately unconvincing to many Muslims, or unsustainable by more careful exegesis. But the mere fact that such a case can be made—something impossible to do in the Christian, or Hebraic, or Hindu, or Buddhist traditions—and that millions of faithful Muslims accept the case, speaks volumes about the "religion of peace."

These leftist bromides appear over and over in subsequent speeches and manifestoes, and testify to bin Laden's shrewd recognition of the West's Achilles heel: the appeasing proclivities of its elite intellectuals who, riddled with self-loathing guilt, are incapable of defending their way of life and its highest goods.

The Al Qaeda Reader, simply by letting our enemies speak in their own voices, explodes the popular delusion that Western crimes and policies are responsible for the "distortion" of Islam that al Qaeda represents. As Ibrahim writes, "This volume of translations, taken as whole, prove once and for all that, despite the propaganda of Al Qaeda and its [global] sympathizers, Radical Islam's war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances—real or imagined—but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith."

This means that the fight will be long and hard, that leaving Iraq or creating a Palestinian state will not buy peace, and that the side that accurately understands its enemy and has confidence in its own beliefs will ultimately triumph. Thanks to Raymond Ibrahim's The Al Qaeda Reader, we have the means for achieving that understanding.