Quotes From The Past

In this article I want to start by looking at some quotes from the past concerning Islam. The idea of Islam being a dangerous ideology is not something that was invented recently. The Islamic terrorist attack on 9/11 did not cause people to suddenly start criticizing Islam because of what “a few radicals have done to distort Islam.” The distortion is being done by the moderate Muslims, the reformed Muslims, and the Muslim propaganda machine.

Most of these quotes come from the eighteenth century. Any spelling or grammar errors you may see in them are in the original quotes.

John Adams

John Adams owned a Qur’an which had the following written in the preface:

This book is a long conference of God, the angels, and Mahomet, which that false prophet very grossly invented; sometimes he introduceth God, who speaketh to him, and teacheth him his law, then an angel, among the prophets, and frequently maketh God to speak in the plural. … Thou wilt wonder that such absurdities have infected the best part of the world, and wilt avouch, that the knowledge of what is contained in this book, will render that law contemptible …

He understood that Muhammad was a false prophet and that his “revelations” were not always consistent with each other. He also said a knowledge of the Qur’an will render its law contemptible.

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams wrote the following about the Islamic prophet Muhammad:

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE. The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

Joseph Blunt (1830), The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9 (New York: E. & G.W. Blunt), 29:269 [emphasis in the original].

John Quincy Adams described Muhammad as a “transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven.” Muhammad claimed to be a prophet of Allah, and the final prophet. He declared war on all who were not submitted to his god, Allah, and to him as the messenger of Allah.

Adams understood that the essence of Islamic doctrine was violence against all unbelievers. Muhammad’s tool for motivating his followers, and probably himself, was lust and greed. Muhammad used the brutal part of human nature to get his followers to destroy those who did not agree with him.

Thomas Jefferson

This following quote from Thomas Jefferson relates to a conversation he had with the Ambassador from Algeria when he was trying to negotiate peace with the Barbary Pirates.

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our Friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1. General Correspondence. 1651-1827, Library of Congress, March 28.

The Algerian Ambassador told him that they were raiding our ships and taking our people captive because their prophet and their holy book commanded them to do so.

Why do our political leaders refuse to listen to what Muslims, themselves, keep saying? One of the co-founders of CAIR said that Islam is not in America to be equal to other religions, but to be the only legal religion in our nation.

George Washington

In a letter to Lafayette, Aug. 15, 1786, Washington said:

Let me ask you, my dear marquis, in such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical states of Barbary? Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind or crush them into non-existence.

The Barbary States were the Muslim nations on the Barbary Coast of North Africa. These were the first countries to declare war on the newly formed United States. From 1783, until the Presidency of George Washington in 1789, the newborn Republic had no strong central authority. The Barbary pirates took advantage of this weakness.

From the time of George Washington’s presidency until that of Jefferson, several treaties were made with the Barbary nations. Each and every time, they were broken by the Muslims as soon as it was convenient. A basic doctrine of Islam is, any treaty with non-Muslims is only good while it is to the Muslim’s advantage. As soon as it benefits the Muslims to break the treaty, Islam teaches that they are not only free to do so, but are obligated to do so.

Alexis de Tocqueville

De Tocqueville was a French diplomat, political scientist, and historian.

I studied the Qur’an a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to  paganism itself.
Source: “The Tocqueville Reader”.by Olivier Zunz, Alan S. Kahan p. 229.

He said there have been few religions in the world as deadly as Islam. He rightly determined that its social and political teachings are to be feared. His opinion has proven to be right over and over again.

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was right about Hitler and Nazism when everyone else was trying to say they were not dangerous. We would be wise to listen to him concerning the dangers of Islam.

Winston Churchill, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan: (Original version)

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund (in active, on the verge of death), Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

Slavery of women will last as long as there is an Islamic faith. It is built into the religion. Muhammad taught that women only have half the value of a man. He also taught that Hell would be mostly populated by women because of their depraved, by his standard, hearts.

Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force

Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men’s passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccinations. But the Mohammaden religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since its votaries (a devout adherent of a cult or religion) have been subject, above all the peoples of all other creeds, to this form of madness.

As bad as some have been in the name of Christianity, and some have been very bad, Islam is worse. Christianity always has a restraining influence on the culture where it is allowed to grow. Islam, on the other hand, always results in the release of the violent passions of a depraved heart.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt saw the problem with a passive attitude toward Islam.

Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight. Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor…

Source: Theodore Roosevelt’s book Fear God and Take Your Own Part (1916) p. 70)

Christianity was the dominant religion in the West because Christians were willing to stand up and fight against Islam. The East was taken over by Islam because the Christians in the East refused to fight to defend their way of life.

The Lord told his disciples there is a time for the sword:

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

The corrupt form of Christianity that wanted to rule by the sword was defeated in America because of Christians who were willing to stand and fight for their freedom. The fight to keep a state church out of America was political. It took courage and had the support of the pulpits of American churches.

Adolf Hitler

As everyone knows, Hitler was for the destruction of the Jews. He aligned himself with Islam because they both had the same goal. He lamented the fact that Christianity was the dominant religion of Europe, especially Germany.

You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness? (Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, pg. 115)

Did you get that? He said that Islam would have been more compatible with his goals than Christianity.

The precepts ordering people to wash, to avoid certain drinks, to fast at appointed dates, to take exercise, to rise with the sun, to climb to the top of the minaret — all these were obligations invented by intelligent people. The exhortation to fight courageously is also self-explanatory. Observe, by the way, that, as a corollary, the Moslem was promised a paradise peopled with sensual girls, where wine flowed in streams — a real earthly paradise. The Christians, on the other hand, declare themselves satisfied if after their death they are allowed to sing hallelujahs! (Hitler’s Table Talk, translated by N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Enigma Books (1953)

Hitler had an obvious disdain for Christianity. He had a love for any religion that would teach its adherents to be willing to die for him so he could dominate the world. He thought that Islam was strong, and Christianity was weak.

These quotes show that we have forgotten, or deliberately rejected, what those who went before us knew. We are listening to those who will lie and distort the truth so Islam can dominate the world. They believe, like Muhammad taught, that lying to the enemy and making treaties to be broken at the earliest convenient time, is right and just.

The years since these quotes were made has shown the truthfulness of the statements and the foresight of those who went before us. It is time we realize the truth, and act accordingly. You can’t defeat an enemy if you refuse to recognize who he is.

The Sharia Law Book

We are often accused by Muslims of taking things out of context or twisting their meaning. To avoid this accusation, I have used the standard book of Islamic law, which is called “The Reliance of the Traveller” (their spelling), to verify everything. This work is a translation of the Arabik Umdat al-salik, and has the stamp of approval of the greatest scholars and organizations in all Islam.

There are different schools of interpretation within Islam. The largest group by far is Sunni Islam. The Reliance of the Traveller is the official textbook on Islamic law for Sunni Islam. The second largest group is Shi’ite Islam. Their differences are mostly about who is the proper successor to Muhammad and Islamic prophecy. The doctrines we will be looking at are agreed on by all schools of Islam.

Muslims are obligated to lie and mislead when it is necessary to attain a permissible goal. Anything that promotes the advance of Islam is considered a permissible goal.

The following is from The Reliance of the Traveller, section r8.2:

r8.2 (The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,

“He who settles disagreements between people to bring about good or says something commendable is not a liar.”

“I did not hear him permit untruth to anything people say, except for three things: War, settling disagreements, and a man talking with his wife or she with him (A: in smoothing over differences.”

This is an explicit statement that lying is sometimes permissible for a given interest, scholars having established criteria defining what types of it are lawful. The best analysis of it I have seen is by Imam Abu Hamid Ghazah, who says: “Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if the goal is obligatory… But it is religiously more precautionary in all such cases to employ words that give a misleading impression, meaning to intend by one’s words something that is literally true, in respect to which one is not lying, while the outward purport of the words deceives the hearer, though even if one does not have such an intention and merely lies without intending anything else, it is not unlawful in the above circumstances.

Islam divides the world into two houses: the house of Islam, and the house of war. Because a Muslim can lie in war, they can lie to any unbeliever. If they can say something that is technically true, but in the context is misleading, they are permitted to do so. When they quote the peaceful passages from the Qur’an they are doing this. The Qur’an says there is no compulsion in religion, but they are not telling us that these passages have been abrogated, or superseded by later passages.

Here are links to documents found in the Sharia Law Book. They are from Islamic scholars and the most prominent university in all of Islam stating that is an accurate portrayal of Islamic doctrine.

Warrant of Sheikh ‘Abd al-Wakh Durbui

Warrant of Sheikh Nuh ‘Ali Salman

Report of the International Institute of Islamic Thought

Certification of al-Azhar

These documents show the reliability of the English translation of the The Reliance of the Traveller. It is very hard for a Muslim to argue against statements with this kind of support by the clerics of Islam. You can use it when witnessing to Muslims with full confidence that it is a true and accurate expression of Islamic teachings.

Next week we will start looking at Islamic doctrine as presented in the Reliance of the Traveller.