A Muslim Soldier Confesses

A Muslim Soldier Confesses

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/23/a-muslim-soldier-confesses/

Posted by Robert Spencer on Jun 23rd, 2010 and filed under FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).

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“One has to understand where I’m coming from. I consider myself … a Muslim soldier.” With these words, would-be Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad made it abundantly clear that when he parked his explosives-laden SUV in Times Square on May 1, he was waging Islamic jihad in accord with Islamic law that makes defensive jihad obligatory upon every Muslim: “I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people,” he declared Monday. “And, on behalf of that, I’m avenging the attack.”

MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer’s hope, expressed on the air, that the Times Square bomber “was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country” has been definitively disappointed. Will she now host an in-depth investigation of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism, explaining the concept of jihad warfare and Shahzad’s real motivations to MSNBC viewers? Don’t hold your breath – but Shahzad’s explanation of his motives once again exposes the dangers of the mainstream media’s ongoing refusal to discuss honestly the jihad against the United States.

Only Islamic theology makes sense of Shahzad’s words and actions. In court Monday, Shahzad said he was retaliating against those who “attacked the Muslim lands.” U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum responded by pointing out that those attackers were “not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who they were?”

Shahzad then explained: “Well, the people select the government. We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit…”

Cedarbaum then interrupted him to ask: “Including the children?”

Shahzad responded: “Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.”

The idea that the allegedly indiscriminate killing done by Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq gives Shahzad a license as a Muslim to kill Americans indiscriminately in Times Square comes straight from the Qur’an: “The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto” (42:40).

Nonetheless, the obfuscation and denial was especially egregious this time: Ezra Klein in the Washington Post led the way into fantasyland when he observed that Shahzad had defaulted on the mortgage on his home in Connecticut and that the property was now in foreclosure: “foreclosures generate an enormous amount of misery and anxiety and depression that can tip people into all sorts of dangerous behaviors that don’t make headlines but do ruin lives. And for all that we’ve done to save the financial sector, we’ve not done nearly enough to help struggling homeowners.”

Will Ezra Klein now issue a retraction, an apology, and an explanation of what it means to be a “Muslim soldier”?

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