The Qur’an Test in Dhaka
The final exam is a killer.
July 4, 2016
As Ramadan draws to a merciful close, we have in Bangladesh yet
another Islamic jihad massacre, followed by the now drearily familiar
attempts to obscure the Islamic character of the massacre, and to keep
the public ignorant and complacent regarding the nature and magnitude of
the jihad threat.
But with this particular mass killing it will be harder for the political and media elites to cover up the attackers’ motives and goals, since they subjected their victims to an increasingly familiar feature of jihad attacks: the Qur’an test.
After Islamic State jihadists screaming “Allahu akbar” murdered twenty hostages at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka on the night of July 1, the serially deceptive Islamic apologist Qasim Rashid tweeted: “In #Ramadan’s final 10 days, Daesh has mass murdered dozens in three Muslim majority nations Please tell me more about how Islamic they are.” In another tweet, he included a photo captioned: “So you’re telling me they killed Muslims during Ramadan and you still blame Islam? Are you that incompetent or that bigoted?” To that, Rashid added: “Likewise, how I feel when I hear Islamophobes claim Islam was somehow behind the #DhakaAttack.”
Echoing Rashid was no less illustrious a personage than Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who insisted: “Anyone who believes in religion cannot do such act. They do not have any religion, their only religion is terrorism.”
Unfortunately for Hasina and Rashid, however, the killers themselves made it abundantly clear what they were all about. According to Rezaul Karim, the father of a young man who was held hostage inside the Holey Artisan Bakery for more than ten hours, “The gunmen were doing a background check on religion by asking everyone to recite from the Quran. Those who could recite a verse or two were spared. The others were tortured.”
A Qur’an test for determining who was tortured and who wasn’t? That certainly seems to have something to do with Islam. Nor is this the first time that Islamic jihadis have employed this tactic. In September 2013, Islamic jihadis murdered 68 people at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
According to the Daily Mail, “the attack saw men, women and children slaughtered if they could not recite the Koran or name the mother of the [Islamic] Prophet Mohammed.”
In June 2014, again in Kenya, in the coastal town of Mpeketoni, Muslims murdered people who could not pass an Islam quiz. In November 2014, Muslims hijacked a Kenyan bus and murdered 28 non-Muslims who couldn’t recite Qur’an verses.
Then in April 2015, Islamic jihadists murdered 147 people at Garissa University College, once again in Kenya. The jihadis here again ordered their captives to recite passages from the Qur’an. Then, screaming “Allahu akbar,” they gunned down those who could not.
The practice wasn’t limited to Kenya. In November 2015, Muslims firing guns and screaming “Allahu akbar” stormed the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, and took 170 people hostage. Those hostages who could recite Qur’an verses were freed. Around 27 others who could not expatiate on the glories of Allah and the torments awaiting unbelievers were massacred.
And now this test has come to Dhaka, and its import is plain. Those who insist that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, and that we must look elsewhere to discover the terrorists’ motives and goals, should kindly explain why the textbook for this sinister and murderous little exam is always and everywhere the Qur’an. Terrorists never demand that their captives recite, on pain of death, passages from the Bible, or the Book of Mormon, or the Bhagavad Gita, or Das Kapital.
Not coincidentally, the Qur’an is singular among books that are by some considered holy in containing clear, open-ended and universal commands to believers to kill unbelievers wherever they are found (cf. 2:191, 4:89, 9:5; see also 9:29, 47:4, 8:60, 8:39, 8:12, etc.). What the political and media elites would have us believe is that Islamic jihadis misunderstand the clear import of those passages, foolishly assuming that “kill the idolaters” means something like, say, “kill the idolaters,” when every right-thinking person knows that if only one understands the nuances of classical Arabic, it really means “give the idolaters a hug.” They would further have us believe that any Muslim who actually goes out to kill those whom he deems to be idolaters is gravely misunderstanding the message of the Qur’an and Islam.
The time for these comforting fictions is long past. Sheikh Hasina and Qasim Rashid (to whom Megyn Kelly recently accorded a platform for his slick falsehoods) are just two exponents of a years-long campaign of deception and lies that now must be decisively repudiated. If authorities don’t drop their politically correct fantasies and address the jihad threat realistically, we will be seeing the Qur’an test administered inside the U.S. before too long. Instead of studying to pass, Americans should be making it abundantly clear to those administering such tests, and to the deceivers running interference for them in government and media, that their days of perpetrating their evils unchallenged are rapidly drawing to a close.
But with this particular mass killing it will be harder for the political and media elites to cover up the attackers’ motives and goals, since they subjected their victims to an increasingly familiar feature of jihad attacks: the Qur’an test.
After Islamic State jihadists screaming “Allahu akbar” murdered twenty hostages at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka on the night of July 1, the serially deceptive Islamic apologist Qasim Rashid tweeted: “In #Ramadan’s final 10 days, Daesh has mass murdered dozens in three Muslim majority nations Please tell me more about how Islamic they are.” In another tweet, he included a photo captioned: “So you’re telling me they killed Muslims during Ramadan and you still blame Islam? Are you that incompetent or that bigoted?” To that, Rashid added: “Likewise, how I feel when I hear Islamophobes claim Islam was somehow behind the #DhakaAttack.”
Echoing Rashid was no less illustrious a personage than Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who insisted: “Anyone who believes in religion cannot do such act. They do not have any religion, their only religion is terrorism.”
Unfortunately for Hasina and Rashid, however, the killers themselves made it abundantly clear what they were all about. According to Rezaul Karim, the father of a young man who was held hostage inside the Holey Artisan Bakery for more than ten hours, “The gunmen were doing a background check on religion by asking everyone to recite from the Quran. Those who could recite a verse or two were spared. The others were tortured.”
A Qur’an test for determining who was tortured and who wasn’t? That certainly seems to have something to do with Islam. Nor is this the first time that Islamic jihadis have employed this tactic. In September 2013, Islamic jihadis murdered 68 people at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
According to the Daily Mail, “the attack saw men, women and children slaughtered if they could not recite the Koran or name the mother of the [Islamic] Prophet Mohammed.”
In June 2014, again in Kenya, in the coastal town of Mpeketoni, Muslims murdered people who could not pass an Islam quiz. In November 2014, Muslims hijacked a Kenyan bus and murdered 28 non-Muslims who couldn’t recite Qur’an verses.
Then in April 2015, Islamic jihadists murdered 147 people at Garissa University College, once again in Kenya. The jihadis here again ordered their captives to recite passages from the Qur’an. Then, screaming “Allahu akbar,” they gunned down those who could not.
The practice wasn’t limited to Kenya. In November 2015, Muslims firing guns and screaming “Allahu akbar” stormed the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, and took 170 people hostage. Those hostages who could recite Qur’an verses were freed. Around 27 others who could not expatiate on the glories of Allah and the torments awaiting unbelievers were massacred.
And now this test has come to Dhaka, and its import is plain. Those who insist that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, and that we must look elsewhere to discover the terrorists’ motives and goals, should kindly explain why the textbook for this sinister and murderous little exam is always and everywhere the Qur’an. Terrorists never demand that their captives recite, on pain of death, passages from the Bible, or the Book of Mormon, or the Bhagavad Gita, or Das Kapital.
Not coincidentally, the Qur’an is singular among books that are by some considered holy in containing clear, open-ended and universal commands to believers to kill unbelievers wherever they are found (cf. 2:191, 4:89, 9:5; see also 9:29, 47:4, 8:60, 8:39, 8:12, etc.). What the political and media elites would have us believe is that Islamic jihadis misunderstand the clear import of those passages, foolishly assuming that “kill the idolaters” means something like, say, “kill the idolaters,” when every right-thinking person knows that if only one understands the nuances of classical Arabic, it really means “give the idolaters a hug.” They would further have us believe that any Muslim who actually goes out to kill those whom he deems to be idolaters is gravely misunderstanding the message of the Qur’an and Islam.
The time for these comforting fictions is long past. Sheikh Hasina and Qasim Rashid (to whom Megyn Kelly recently accorded a platform for his slick falsehoods) are just two exponents of a years-long campaign of deception and lies that now must be decisively repudiated. If authorities don’t drop their politically correct fantasies and address the jihad threat realistically, we will be seeing the Qur’an test administered inside the U.S. before too long. Instead of studying to pass, Americans should be making it abundantly clear to those administering such tests, and to the deceivers running interference for them in government and media, that their days of perpetrating their evils unchallenged are rapidly drawing to a close.
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