ISIS: Guided by the Koran

Two weeks ago we posted about the march in Vienna in support of persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Below is a subtitled video of a speech given by Christian Zeitz on that occasion, concerning the Koranic basis for the actions of ISIS and the nature of Islamic law. In addition to his translation of the video, Rembrandt Clancy has provided us with an explanatory introduction.

Introduction
by Rembrandt Clancy

Below is a video of a demonstration against the “Islamic State” which took place in Vienna on 10 August 2014. The speaker is Christian Zeitz, Scientific Director of the Institute for Applied Political Economy in Austria. According to Internet portal unzensuriert.at, where he has published guest commentaries, Mr. Zeitz studies the theory of democracy, monetary theory, Islamology and the sociology of religion.

Mr. Zeitz raises two subjects in the video for which it is perhaps worthwhile to provide some background: the Ridda wars and the Austrian Islam Act of 1912.

The Ridda Wars

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current IS leader and self-proclaimed Caliph, takes his name from Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, who according to tradition was an early friend of Mohammed’s. Upon the prophet’s death in 632, Abu Bakr became the prophet’s “rightly-guided” successor and the first Caliph. It was he who sponsored the Ridda or Apostasy Wars until his death in 634. The aim of the wars was to re-establish Muslim hegemony over Bedouin tribes on the Arabian Peninsula after they had fallen away from the faith. Raymond Ibrahim describes these first jihads this way:

Many Arab tribes were still willing to remain Muslim, but had second thoughts about paying zakat money to the first caliph, Abu Bakr. That was enough to declare jihad on them as apostates; tens of thousands of Arabs were burned, beheaded, dismembered, or crucified, according to Islamic history.

Indeed, Qaradawi himself, while discussing the importance of killing any Muslim who apostatizes from Islam on a live Al Jazeera program, correctly declared that “If the penalty for apostasy was ignored, there would not be an Islam today; Islam would have ended on the death of the prophet.”

The Austrian Islam Act of 1912

Christian Zeitz also refers briefly to the Islam Act (Islamgesetz) of 1912 (English, French and German versions), which the Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) promulgated for the purpose of integrating Bosnia-Herzegovina into the Habsburg Monarchy. In a recent article for Gates of Vienna Mr. Zeitz details the background to the Act and outlines what is at stake:

Austria will soon have to decide whether it wants to establish in orderly fashion the primacy of the secular state versus the aspirations for an Islamic divine state, or intends to allow a further embedding of radical variants of Islam.

The Gatestone Institute has an article “Austria: Muslim Brotherhood’s New European Headquarters” (4 June 2014) which analyses why Austria’s Islam Act of 1912 provides attractive, external legal conditions for the Muslim Brotherhood that do not exist in any other European country.

Video Credits

Henrik Ræder Clausen did the technical work on the original footage. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff supplied the German transcript, without which this project could not have gone ahead. She was also responsible for taking the video footage of the demonstration. Translation and subtitling are by Rembrandt Clancy.

Video Transcript

Speech by Christian Zeitz:

… devote a significant part of their free time in the service of this solidarity.

An outward gesture is very important for Austrians and the people of this city.

But it is also very important to speak truthfully about what is behind these massacres occurring right now in Iraq and in Syria and in the entire Near East.

Dear friends, we know that not only Christians, but also Yazidi, Shiites, and Alevi are affected by it; but that does not change the fact that it is inaccurate to label, as so-called “Islamic terrorists”, those who are acting here with tremendous violence, with bloody violence. They are nothing less and nothing more than people very concretely guided by central passages in the Koran. And we should not forget that ladies and gentlemen.

It is inaccurate what we are continually given to understand: that ISIS and their allies are acting contrary to the Koran and to the teaching of Islam. They are doing anything but that. And it is no accident that he who had himself proclaimed the new Caliph calls himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

You all know who Abu Bakr was. He was the first so-called “rightly-guided” Caliph, the immediate heir and successor of Mohammad. He launched the Ridda Wars, wars in which people who had already partially converted to Islam, but who did not wish to pay tribute, were slaughtered in the most brutally violent way so as to subjugate them: they massacred Christians and Jews, who as dhimmis, were to be subdued. You know, ladies and gentlemen, what is meant by a “dhimmi”: a so called “protected people”, subjugated to a religion of the book; it is someone, who is prepared to recognise the dominance and interdict of Islam for a certain time period and pay the jizyah for it, the protection tax, because otherwise he will have to be killed if he does not pay it.

And it is precisely that which these ISIS people are now doing every day. They present purported unbelievers with the alternatives: either convert to Islam or else choose death. That is what we currently have to witness every day in Iraq. And in that there is nothing which is incompatible with the Koran and nothing incompatible with Islam.

Let it not be said, that Islam and the Koran recognise Christians as believers in a monotheistic religious framework. The Koran states very clearly: “Unbelievers are those who say that God is the third of three”. Therefore unbelievers are those who believe in the Holy Trinity. Unbelievers are those who say that Jesus is the Son of God.

Christians then are recognised and accepted by Muslims when they say: “We submit to Allah as the one God, and Mohammad as his most important prophet”; that is, when they recite the Shahada. Christians are recognised when they recite the Shahada and therefore convert to Islam.

Let us not be blinded by that which we hear in the propaganda-media, and by what we hear every day from the diverse propaganda of Muslims. And unfortunately, the mainstream media, the Western media, have done just exactly that [blinded us].

Therefore we must speak the truth.

Once more, dear friends; … dear fellow Christians; … dear sisters and brothers! We must of course take if for granted that many, many Muslims likewise suffer under this regime. Of course many Muslims stand with us in solidarity.

That in no way changes the fact that the teaching of Islam and the teaching of the Koran ensures that people behave as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does every day.

And therefore it is a basic precondition for a regime of dialogue, for a genuine cooperation, that Muslims and their representatives, the Imams world wide, distance themselves from these suras and from these Koran verses. That is the first prerequisite for the existence of justice and peaceful co-existence. Let us tell that to everyone who is unaware of it!

And therefore, ladies and gentlemen, let us demand that the Islam Act [1912] which is currently under review; namely its amendment, contain the disclosure of the tenets of Muslim belief. It cannot be that Islam is a legally recognised religion in Austria, and in truth… And it cannot be that we are up against a legally recognised religion, which, by virtue of its secret language, High Arabic, refuses to disclose itself; and then we say, that the Koran cannot be translated. That cannot be the case in a democratic state, not in the Republic of Austria.

Let us declare our solidarity, with all our might, with all our energy, with our Christian brethren in the Near East; but also let us show solidarity with those in Austria who must ensure that jihad does not reach our country, and that Sharia does not become a component of Western culture, for it does not belong here.

We are all Nazarenes.

All the best!

13 thoughts on “ISIS: Guided by the Koran

  1. “We must of course take if for granted that many, many Muslims likewise suffer under this regime. Of course many Muslims stand with us in solidarity.”

    Sigh. There invariably seems to be at least one or two caraway seeds of PC MC in any pumpernickel slice of a supposedly stalwart Counter-Jihad spokesman, for the discerning eater sticking in between the teeth and then going down hard.

    “We must of course take if for granted that many, many Muslims likewise suffer under this regime.”

    No, we “must” not “of course” do anything of the kind. What we must do is stop worrying about Muslims and concentrate all our thoughts and energies on protecting our own people.

    “Of course many Muslims stand with us in solidarity.”

    No, many Muslim do not “of course” stand with us in solidarity. We must reasonably suspect all Muslims of being our deadly enemy, and assume that any Muslim who seems not to be is lying to us — because what we must do is rationally conclude that even if there exist harmless relatively decent Muslims, their hypothetical existence is of no use to our #1 priority — the protection of our societies from the Muslims that do mean us deadly harm — precisely because we have no reliable way to tell the difference between dangerous Muslims and harmless Muslims.

    As Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has repeated on two different occasions —

    “…a fact that we have pointed out many, many times at Jihad Watch: there is no reliable way to distinguish jihadists from peaceful Muslims…” (November of 2009)

    “…what we have pointed out many times over the years: that there is no reliable way to distinguish between Islamic “extremists” and Islamic “moderates”…” (not sure what year)

    These two quotes from Spencer obviously indicate that he has reiterated this “many times” beyond these two times. If Spencer’s right (and he’s a good judge of this, if anyone is), then the rational conclusion we must draw — factoring in the horrific terror plots that are all too reasonable for us to suppose are in the offing in planning stages in the coming decades from various Muslims inside the West (whom, as we just got through explaining, we will not be able to pinpoint sufficiently to prevent) — is that all Muslims are to be considered our deadly enemy (whether actively in terms of violent jihad, or insidiously and deceptively, in terms of stealth jihad of various forms).

    It has been my dismayed and frustrated experience that Evidently, most in the Counter-Jihad are not ready culturally and psychologically to think this through (due to residues of PC MC still lingering in their hearts and minds, causing them semi-consciously, if not unconciously, to recoil at the irrationally autophobic anxiety that thinking this through will suck them inexorably down the slippery slope to committing genocide, if not sins deemed to be thought crimes as bad as genocide, such as rounding up and deporting Muslims including those in our foolhardy Islamo-illiteracy we consider “citizens”).

    • most in the Counter-Jihad are not ready culturally and psychologically to think this through (due to residues of PC MC still lingering in their hearts and minds, causing them semi-consciously, if not unconsciously, to recoil at the irrationally autophobic anxiety that thinking this through will suck them inexorably down the slippery slope to committing genocide…

      Great term, that: autophobic anxiety. Is my slip showing??

      That anxiety makes face-to-face conversation difficult…though not with our lower middle class white neighbors – they are anxious only until they find out that YOU are not a p.c. moral midget. On discovering that you’re ‘safe’ they visibly relax…these are not people who spend a lot of time on political discussions or airy-fairy excuses for behavior. If they had their way the border would be closed. Period. Thus, not a lot to discuss.

      They don’t know what the mosque “situation” is in the next town – mosques aren’t on their radar yet. But the towns both to the north and south of them are already infected. I plan to let them know, and give a little information about the mosque study that David Yerushalmi did, and let nature take its course. That course will be slow but sure because their first motive will be to keep their children safe.

      IOW, I have no idea what plans will eventuate, but I am certain they won’t wait for the govt, either local or national, to create steps to insure their families’ safety. The local govt ‘peacekeepers’ are “boys” they went to school with so there ‘s not a lot of awe expended in that direction. Their views of state and federal government is that those folks are beyond disgust.

      The people who are watching and waiting may not have begun to define concretely their plans for the long term, but as one of them said to me recently, “we sure ain’t stupid”.

      Too bad the people in charge think they are.

    • Deportation, as stated here before, would likely result in massive riots, among other unintended consequences.

      • It’s not like the metastasis of Islamic revival is going to eventuate in any other scenario (viz., destabilizing civil unrest) and give us an unmessy option, anyway… The West will be forced to deport. All I’m saying is that such a major project would be better done with at least a little more deliberation, planning & intelligence, rather than after the Shi’ite hits the fan with our pants around our ankles; so to speak.

    • I have learned how to distinguish a ‘moderate’ Muslim from a ‘radical’ one. The ‘radical’ Muslim has a knife, and is going to use it. The ‘moderate’ Muslim is simply looking for a knife.

      This pseudo-religion is, in fact, NOT a religion at all. It is a cult, a ‘shadow-government’, and a violent, fascist, anti-God ‘philosophy’ that serves to bind ignorant people to an eternal bondage of grief, sadness, and despair.

      When intelligent people begin to compare Christianity to Islam, there is NO comparison in the sense of civilization vs. a culture of hopelessness. The only REAL alternative is to somehow BAN this terrible and despicable travesty that dares to call itself a ‘religion’.

      Only in the last 50 years has Islam begun to escape the Middle East where it bred its black hatred of anything Western for the last seven hundred years. Because of ‘oil money’, Muslims have suddenly been elevated to civility, and a culture that is lenient and tolerant – the exact opposite of what it had become.

      Not content to integrate, the DNA of Islam demands that EVERYONE recognize and bow to THEIR way of faith, and THEIR way of belief. To FIGHT that, is to become the enemy of Islam, and the ‘persecutor’ of the Muslim.

      Now, slowly, the West is beginning to see what this ‘exodus’ of the Muslim pilgrim into our society will cost us. And, slowly, they will begin to fight back until two things happen: MILLIONS of Muslims WILL indeed either integrate, or change their minds about their religion – or, the war will heat up, and many will die. It’s as simple as that.

      • “Because of ‘oil money’, Muslims have suddenly been elevated to civility, and a culture that is lenient and tolerant – the exact opposite of what it had become. ”

        Correction (with my correctives in italics):

        “Because of ‘oil money’ and because of the profound legacy of Western Colonialism which interfered (i.e., tried to ameliorate the grotesquely ghoulish rough edges of Islam) in the Muslim world for over 200 years, Muslims have suddenly been elevated here and there to a semblance of civility, and a culture that here and there superficially seems to approach leniency and tolerance – the exact opposite of what it had become.

  2. Of course they are guided by the Kuran. What else could it be? The Gita or the Sermon on the Mount? For God’s sake, let’s get some basic clarity. This is PURE ISLAM on display for us.

    But to more practical things. A few hours back, ISIS took over the large (and last remaining) Syrian airforce base in Raqqa province. This means Syrian government no longer has any bases in Raqqa, and also that ISIS now has “dozens of warplanes, helicopters etc.”

    OBAMA, ARE YOU LISTENING? While you play golf, this org has taken over an entire country, and now has a capable airforce. Please step down you weakling! You are not fit to be a president of the great USA.

    (I am a Hindu Indian btw., not a tea party supporter)

    • Not to be complacent, Yog, but I’d be surprised if IS had people able to fly military jets; helicopters possibly.

  3. So what if you were a tea party supporter? Do you think that they aren’t aware of what is going on halfway around the world? Is there some kind of law now that says that no one can criticize the US government without being slandered? What next? Do we have a Senator Reid asking US citizens “Are you now , or have you ever been a tea party member or in any way shape or form someone who was critical of the exalted one, President Obama?” Geez louise, the MSM has done a great job turning the tea party into “extremists” more so than ISIS. Get a grip, dude. And, BTW, I am not a member of the tea party.

  4. @yog, thanks for slapping him upside the head. No doubt he won’t listen. He’d rather golf.

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