Why Muslim Charities Fund the Jihad
The answer is clear, though Obama's commitment to helping Muslims overcome U.S. rules governing charity is not.
From what American schoolchildren are being taught by their teachers to what Americans are being told by their presidents, concepts unique to Islam are nowadays almost always “Westernized.” Whether the product of naivety, arrogance, or downright disingenuousness, this phenomenon has resulted in epistemic (and thus endemic) failures, crippling Americans from objectively understanding some of Islam’s more troublesome doctrines.
A typical seventh-grade textbook, for instance, teaches that “jihad represents the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that are pleasing to God. Muslims strive to respond positively to personal difficulties as well as worldly challenges. For instance, they might work to be better people, reform society, or correct injustice.”
Strictly speaking, this is by and large true. However, by not explaining what it means to be “better people, reform society, or correct injustice” — from a distinctly Islamic, as opposed to Western, perspective — the textbook abandons students to fall back on their own (misleading) interpretations.
Yet the facts remain: In Islam, killing certain “evil-doers,” such as apostates or homosexuals, is a way of “correcting injustice”; overthrowing manmade constitutional orders (such as the United States) and replacing them with Sharia mandates, and subjugating women and non-Muslims, are ways of “reforming society.” Those enforcing all this are, in fact, “better people” — indeed, according to the Koran (3:110), they are “the best of peoples, evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong,” that is, ruling according to Sharia law.
So it is with the Muslim concept of zakat, a word often rendered into English as “charity.” But is that all zakat is — mere Muslim benevolence by way of feeding and clothing the destitute of the world, as the word “charity” all too often connotes?
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Raymond Ibrahim is the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.
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29 Comments
1. Adina Kutnicki,Israel:This article is not only on point, but long overdue. It highlights the dangerous reality US citizens are facing.
The US leadership is Constitutionally tasked with protecting Americans from threats NEAR & FAR, yet it often ends up enabling those they are supposed to be protecting their citizens from.Crazy, huh?
From 2005-2007 I assisted investigative journalist Lee Kaplan with a series of hard hitting exposes, our goal being to expose the hydra-like nexus between the ISM (International Solidarity Movement)and its Islamic terror offshoots, specifically the Holy Land Foundation terror tree, situated at 555 Grove St in a Virginia suburb.
Chiefly, our aim was to prove how Islamic ‘charities’ abuse/circumvent IRS tax exempt status laws not only to avoid paying taxes, but to subvert the US through jihad by the monies thereby exempted.
The upshot is that through these detailed investigations I helped to deconstruct the various methods they utilized through their IRS filings. Going through their ISM IRS 990 filings on a line by line basis, understanding the proper guidelines of a 501 c 3 mandate,(which renders an org qualified as a non-profit)it was patently clear that they were in violation of the guidelines.
These exposes were brought to the attention of the relevant authorities, and it remains to be seen how serious they take their own laws.
It should surprise no one that those who are tasked to advance our laws often turn blind eyes to those who are breaking them, and are more suspicious of the vigilant citizen than the violator of said laws.
Aug 15, 2009 - 5:22 am 2. Adina Kutnicki,Israel:I forgot to mention that these exposes can be found at FrontPage Magazine online in its archives under Lee Kaplan.
Aug 15, 2009 - 5:24 am 3. riccardo italy:No wonder!Every body should remember that mr.Obama during a television program in an apparent slip of tongue or in a freudian lapsus,talked about his muslim religion.I’m afraid this is only the beginning!
Aug 15, 2009 - 6:02 am 4. Calvin Ball:The real problem isn’t that they’re not teaching the truth, but that they’re not teaching the whole truth. This is what you get, intentional or not, when you mix cultural contexts. Multiculturalism, on its face, is untenable for this, among other reasons. A culture is a complete system of interlocking assumptions and understandings. Trying to mix and match pieces like this only assures that the truth can’t be understood.
Aug 15, 2009 - 6:13 am 5. George S.:below is a link to a video clip. taken some time ago but it explains a lot of the things happening around the world of yesterday, today and tomorrow. …the root of the problem is how people are being educated, the topic doesn’t matter.
watch this clip and you will understand why they continue to make the same arguments over and over no matter what they are shown or told.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTmbcyeZ9ic&feature=related
this clip gives great insight into the lefts blind following of an ideology that will bury them at the same time it buries us.
Aug 15, 2009 - 6:49 am 6. bibio44:#5: “No wonder!Every body should remember that mr.Obama during a television program in an apparent slip of tongue or in a freudian lapsus,talked about his muslim religion.”
And he was born in Iran, y’know. Pass it on!
Aug 15, 2009 - 7:01 am 7. Mark Eichenlaub:I’ve come across this issue a number of time while researching for http://www.regimeofterror.com and Mr. Ibrahim’s work is very serious. Keep up what you are doing and exposing it to the public. The information war is still on as is the economic one and the Treasury Dept. is keeping an eye on these things.
Aug 15, 2009 - 7:47 am 8. George S.:DO NOT FEED THE TROLL
you cannot tiptoe around a bully and hope he will leave you allow. or to be gratefull that the bully isn’t trageting you but some one else. It is this kind of thinking that has reduced the world to dictators and tyrants.
as for the trolls …see below. don’t engage them, don’t reply to them. they for the most part are already lost.
watch this clip and you will understand why they continue to make the same arguments over and over no matter what they are shown or told.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTmbcyeZ9ic&feature=related
this clip gives great insight into the lefts blind following of an ideology that will bury them at the same time it buries us.
Aug 15, 2009 - 8:14 am 9. Sherab Zangpo:Excellent column, thank you.
Aug 15, 2009 - 12:02 pm 10. Moho:What a bunch of blind as a bat bs. There’s another culture that gives charity to a standing jihad as well–one that has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of death this century alone? Who will stop these evil people. Oh wait, that’s us. Most people are capable of extending their insight so that they can see how other cultures mirror theirs. We’re stuck in a decades long war because people listened to your asinine Invasion of the Bodysnatchers narratives, a war we three trillions of dollars into to create a ballooning deficit. Nice work, idiot.
Aug 15, 2009 - 6:26 pm 11. seansarto:Does “zakat” extend itself into intpretations of “putting an infidel out of their misery”? Is this the impetus for health care reform….
Discuss…
Aug 15, 2009 - 7:21 pm 12. Gramps Cane:# 10. Moho:
“There’s another culture that gives charity to a standing jihad as well–one that has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of death this century alone? Who will stop these evil people. Oh wait, that’s us.”
You are talking about abortionists. Right?
Aug 15, 2009 - 9:48 pm 13. Anonymous:Gramps Cane @ 12:
No, couldn’t be abortionists, as they are responsible for millions of deaths (vice hundreds of thousands) worldwide every year. The abortion industry’s barbarity and butchery is similar to that of sub-human jihadists, however, so I see how you could have gotten confused.
Aug 16, 2009 - 7:19 am 14. McBride:I finished Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz today.He spells out the connections between the left and the islamists so succinctly,that even the vacuous neo-commie trolls on this blog could understand the subject.But I doubt that their thoroughly indoctrinated little brains would ever allow them to see,let alone accept, the corollation between the jihadi’s and the far leftist idealogy that they’re so emotionally wedded to.
Aug 16, 2009 - 4:24 pm 15. Joe Six-Pack:The war has been going on far longer than a few dozen years. Try a dozen centuries. “For most of the fourteen hundred years of Islamic history, Jihad has been most commonly interpreted as armed struggle for the advancement or defense of Muslim power”. (B. Lewis)
Warfare is common throught the Islamic world for a number of fundamental reasons. Islam has structural problems that are at the root cause. The nation-state of Islam has been and will continue to wage war against us. Wars are won by the side that raises the violence to a level that the other side either cannot or will not match. This war is comming to us and it is accelerating.
Aug 17, 2009 - 9:06 am 16. Wellington:Muslims play lots of word games, whether it be with the term “innocent,” “jihad,” what they really mean when they say they honor Jesus too (conveniently forgetting to tell Christians what Jesus (Isa) is going to do to Christians at the end of the world), what “People of the Book” can really expect from Muslims, the “no compulsion in religion” phrase and so on. It is imperative that non-Muslims learn about these games because not doing so could prove significantly detrimental, if not lethal.
Aug 17, 2009 - 9:45 am 17. Whoopsiedoo:Well it’s all clear to me now. If these ‘people’ continue in the direction in which they are currently heading, with their jihads and their zakats, they might become like us.
But for now we Judeo–Christians are superior in every way. Not only do we do virtually all of the invading, killing, double crossing, betraying and ethnic cleansing but we blame it all them and get away with it.
Now that’s smart!
Aug 17, 2009 - 11:40 am 18. \Micawber:Since “zakat” is intended mainly to fund Jihad, and since Jihad is the tactic by which the world is brought under Islam (submission) and Sharia, as the way of life, but also the jurisprudence, is made supreme and abolishes all others, then it seems to me that “zakat”, and concrete financial support for it, is an act of sedition against the US, its Government, its Constitution and its People.
I doubt if a man, born into a Muslim milieu and raised and educated in his formative years in it, would be ignorant of “zakat” and its intended main purpose.
Aug 17, 2009 - 12:31 pm 19. Dax:“But for now we Judeo–Christians are superior in every way. Not only do we do virtually all of the invading, killing, double crossing, betraying and ethnic cleansing but we blame it all them and get away with it.”
Whoopsiedoo, please give examples of your claim. When did “we” blame Islamic jihadists for something they didn’t actually do? Or are you just a raving idiot?
Aug 17, 2009 - 2:00 pm 20. Dax:It’s a matter of historical fact that Islam is a militant imperial ideology that’s been invading and killing infidel lands since the 600s. Whatever bad things folks did in the name of Christianity, they pale in comparison and are specifically against the tenets of the Bible.
Aug 17, 2009 - 2:15 pm 21. salah ali:What in Islam called Zakat, takes various form in the West. Churches fleece people of their money in the form of donations. Jihad in Arabic has diverse meanings (See Bernard Lewis) on some of these meanings. It means struggle and patience. It also means perseverance. It could mean restrain practiced by oneself towards discipline and self-control. Ignorance of the West of Arabic is thecause of so much misunderstanding
Aug 17, 2009 - 10:22 pm 22. Anonymous:Hi Dax,
“Whoopsiedoo, please give examples of your claim. When did “we” blame Islamic jihadists for something they didn’t actually do?”
Well let’s see?
Muslim Iraq is a terrorist state that was involved in the 9/11 attack on the USA.
Muslim Iraq is a threat to the USA because of it’s ties to Al-Qaeda. (Sure is now but not then.)
Muslim Iraq has WMD’s.
Muslim Iraq is developing a NUCLEAR BOMB and it will be ready in SIX MONTHS. OMG!
That blew your whistle, didn’t it Dax. I think the figure now is nervously hovering around one million dead.
“Whatever bad things folks did in the name of Christianity, they pale in comparison…”
Oh oh, I feel a Moral High Ground approaching.
Take heart Dax I have some good news that will make you feel much better. You see, in reality, it’s incredibly handsome, white, alpha buck males like myself who’ve been doing the lions share of the killing maiming, etc., etc. We blame it all on them (hey, take a look at Gaza) and we get away with it. It’s hilarious and it’s been that way since the crusades.
If you have a moment Dax, perhaps you could oblige me with a loan of your definition of ‘Terrorism, I seem to have misplaced mine?
Aug 18, 2009 - 7:32 am 23. Chenoweth:Jihad: Bukhari and Muslim (the main Hadiths in Islam, part of the ‘holy’ texts with the Koran and the Sira – biography of Mohamad) have over 600 references to Jihad, as the publisher of Bukhari’s Hadiths states:
“Jihad is holy fighting in Allah’s Cause, with full force of weaponry. It is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its Pillars. By Jihad, Islam is established, Allah is made superior and He becomes the only God who may be worshipped. By Jihad, Islam is propagated and made superior. By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that), Islam is destroyed and Muslims fall into an inferior position, there honor is lost, their lands are stolen and Muslim rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim. He who tries to escape this duty dies as a hypocrite.” (”For Allah’s Cause” in Zakat, for the Jihadists)
Jihad can take many forms although the violent means is the most honored according to Mohammad; Jihad of ‘pen, heart (mouth) and wealth.’ There’s legal Jihad to keep books about Islam (especially ones about funding Islamic terrorists) from being published; there’s Jihad through phony ‘inter-faith dialogs’ (da’wa) and using taqiyya and kitman (lies, obfuscations, or not giving all the details), there’s Jihad in getting everyone to accommodate and accept all those ‘cultural’ bits of Islam (treatment of females, clothing, segregation of sexes), and then…we come to Shariah-compliant finance and Zakat.
Aug 18, 2009 - 8:59 am 24. Salah Ali:To Anonymous: All lies. Muslim Iraq was not a rhreat to the USA. But if you mean Israel by USA you are right. Revolutionary Iraq was a threat to all cowards and aggressors. WMD, USA says does not exist in Iraq.
Aug 19, 2009 - 7:02 am 25. Whoopsiedoo:Iraq, USA also confirms has no link to Al-Qaeda. Who should we believe? YOU Doxy or rather foxy, the USA? True Iraq was developing Nuclear bomb with a handful of chemicals. But Europe and the USA helped Iraq developing these projects.Needless to mention details that everybody knows..But again, a word on Jihad: Jihad is a must on all nations in case their countries are occupied. This happened everywhere in the world. However, here the USA consider the Iraqi Kurds heroes struggling for democracy and independence while helped Turkey capture Abdullah Ojlan branding Turkish Kurds as terrorists. The USA used Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, supports the Saudi Wahhabis, Chinese fascists, and wants to expel Mujahideen Khalq to satisfy Iran…And is this a form of democracy or whorish midwifery?
(note to 23 aboove :Taqiyya is a Shiite principle motivated by the represssion they suffered under the Abbasides..This is history and you should not jam history with politics.) Back to hooligans:Today, there has been destruction in Baghdad..this was not the scene during Saddam whom the USA supported against Iran. During that glorious rule women used to enjoy their natural freedom to walk without hijab in public, young people were free to drink beer or speak English in public…German, French and Czech tourists roam Babylon, Baghdad and Nineveh without fear. Now fundamentalism replaced secularism and women are forced to wear hijab or have their heads cut off. no one can walk safe anywhere in Iraq, and Iran is given the upper hand. Several mullah are preaching wrongly interpreted Islam on Tv dictated by Iran…fanatics now rule Iraq while Saddam was the only secular ruler who kept Iraq in one peace..One would wonder was it really the USA who waged this dirty war or Israel or is there any use addressing idiots and aggressors as you?!
Salah Ali
My comment above somehow is posted as ‘Anonymous’
Aug 19, 2009 - 9:05 am 26. Salah Ali:I think you might have missed my point. Perhaps read the thread again.
Sorry, I really thought you on enemy camp. Anyway, could you kindly make your point much clearer. What is Dax? I should write again. I wish no more misunderstanding takes place. And, pardon me again…
Best regards,
Salah
Aug 19, 2009 - 1:28 pm 27. Whoopsiedoo:Salah Ali
Aug 19, 2009 - 4:34 pm 28. veritas:No problem.
Dax was just some poster I was responding to.
Peace.
Re No 24’s comment: The contention that Taqiyya (lies, dissimulation, obfuscation) is only a tactic that is employed by only one sect of Islam (the Shi’ite) is…Taqiyya. The practice of Taqiyya is sanctioned many times over in the Koran. In Islam a Muslim may lie, bear false witness, give false testimony, commit actions which are otherwise disapproved of or not allowed (consume alcohol, eat pork, “befriend” a non-Muslim, even deny his Islamic faith) if, in so doing, this is done by way of the Muslim ‘protecting’ himself or to further the cause of Islam itself,or to encourage conversion to Islam, and so long as the Muslim remains ‘true’ in his heart to Islam.
Aug 20, 2009 - 12:38 am 29. penpol:Re No 24’s comment that Jihad is employed by all nations as ‘defense’ and that Muslims are simply ‘defending’ themselves against aggression, is not supported by Islamic jurisprudence or scholarship. On the contrary, scholars of Al-Azhar University, the foremost in Islamic scholarship, state when speaking of the Sword Verse (Ayt al-Sayf), Koran 9:5 (”Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war”) and of the fact that this verse abrogates hundreds of other verses in the Koran, state:
“The Verse (Koran 9:5) does not leave any room in the mind to conjecture about what is called ‘defensive war.’ This Verse asserts that holy war, which is demanded in Islamic law, is not a ‘defensive war’ because it could legitimately be an offensive war. That is the apex and most honorable of all holy wars. Its goal is the exaltation of the word of God, the construction of Islamic society, and the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth regardless of the means. It is legal to carry on an offensive holy war.” (Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti, Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 2001), pp 323-4)
Not much ‘inner struggle’ going on there! And let’s not allow that to deflect our attention from the main purpose of Zakat which is to fund that ‘holy war’— Jihad, in all its forms.
Aug 20, 2009 - 3:03 am