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April 9, 2011

Ann Barnhardt Fights Totalitarian Islam and Its Useful Idiots

By Andrew G. Bostom
Once again a mere flicker -- in this case burning a copy of the Koran in Florida -- has ignited the inferno of deeply seated infidel-hatred that pervades the contemporary Muslim world, precipitating violence, death, and general mayhem amongst our Afghan " allies."

This eruption was hardly pastor Terry Jones' fault. The insane orgy of murderous Muslim violence in Afghanistan was a direct result of Islamic doctrine.  Jones' simple non-violent act effectively administered a diagnostic societal stress test revealing -- yet again -- the pathological mindset engendered by an Islam that remains ossified in its Medieval fortress, defiantly unreformed and unrepentant.

Kansas-born Ann Barnhardt was raised on a farm with a working cow-calf operation. Her formal training includes a B.S. in Animal Husbandry and Agricultural Economics, obtained at Kansas State University. Now a Colorado-based commodity broker, she reacted with singular clarity and courage to the recent carnage by the all too familiar Afghan Muslim mobs, and of equal importance, their witless, morally cretinous American apologists. Her verbal dismembering of Lindsey Graham (in Part 1) is epochal.

Diana West introduced me to Ann's highly informed, if appropriately trenchant videos (in two parts), which can be viewed in full at these links [(Part 1); (Part 2)] Diana's commentary and a subsequent equally insightful blog by Roger Kimball provide valuable context to Ann  Barnhardt's videos seen through the prism of two of our most perspicacious cultural critics.

My focus is on Barnhardt's astute, irrefragable observation (starting at 1:54) that Islam is a "...totalitarian political system masquerading as a religion," and her accurate "exegesis" of Koranic verses, entirely consistent with their interpretation by a classical mainstream Koranic commentary that remains the seminal work introducing Muslims to "Koranic understanding."

First, Ann Barnhardt's view of Islam as an innately totalitarian political system comports with a continuum of modern assessments by great Western scholars dating back to the renowned Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt in the mid-19th century. Bernard Lewis, the eminence grise of contemporary Western scholars of Islam, confirmed Burckhardt's assessment a century later.

Perhaps the initial reference to Islam as a totalitarian system, specifically (Burckhardt used the most comparable 19th century term "despotism"), was made in 1937 by Charles R. Watson, the Cairo-born first head of the American University at Cairo. Watson noted,

In the case of the Mohammedan world, religion has seemingly affected every detail of life with its prescriptions and requirements...[N]o other religion, as it conquered new territory, has so completely and quickly wiped out even the culture of the conquered people and imposed upon their total life new ways and customs, often a new language, as has the Mohammedan religion.

Islam can truly be described as totalitarian. By a million roots, penetrating every phase of life, all of them with religious significance, it is able to maintain its hold upon the life of the Moslem peoples.

Subsequently, in 1950, G.H. Bousquet, one of the pre-eminent 20th century scholars of the Shari'a (Islamic Law), described Islam as "as a doubly totalitarian system," which, via the timeless institution of jihad war,

...claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law...to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer.

Lastly, Bernard Lewis in his 1954 essay, "Communism and Islam" expounded upon the quintessence of totalitarian Islam, and how it was antithetical in nature to Western democracy, while sharing important features of Communist totalitarianism -- in particular, global domination via jihad.

Quite obviously, the Ulama [religious leaders] of Islam are very different from the Communist Party. Nevertheless, on closer examination, we find certain uncomfortable resemblances. Both groups profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and earth; the answers are different in every respect, alike only in their finality and completeness, and in the contrast they offer with the eternal questioning of Western man. Both groups offer to their members and followers the agreeable sensation of belonging to a community of believers, who are always right, as against an outer world of unbelievers, who are always wrong. Both offer an exhilarating feeling of mission, of purpose, of being engaged in a collective adventure to accelerate the historically inevitable victory of the true faith over the infidel evil-doers. The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, two necessarily opposed groups, of which- the first has the collective obligation of perpetual struggle against the second, also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs. There again, the content of belief is utterly different, but the aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as "There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet'" was laying his finger on a real affinity. The call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith-a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy-might well strike a responsive note.

The denouement of Ann Barnhardt's video presentation (Part 2) is her recitation of and brief exegesis upon 17 Koranic verses (from Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation,  by Ahmed Ali Princeton University Press, 2001), bookmarked with strips of bacon, followed by the removal and burning of the individual pages containing these verses, and ultimately, the remainder of this paperbound English translation of the Koran. Harmlessly burning an inanimate object is not only protected by the first amendment, it is irrelevant. The only germane "context" of Ann Barnhardt's presentation is the interpretation of the verses she removed and burned -- verses which, I concur with her, epitomize the misogyny, infidel-hatred, and jihadism that unfortunately, are redolent in the Koran. Simply put, Ann Barnhardt's assessment is consistent with classical, mainstream Islamic understanding.

Al-Suyuti (1445-1505) was born in Cairo, where his father taught Shaf'i law (one of the four major schools of Sunni Islamic Law), and acted as a substitute kadi. He is recognized as the most prolific author in the realm of Islamic literature. A brilliant multidisciplinary scholar, Al-Suyuti was a learned jurist, historian, and biographer. Among his many scholarly contributions are about twenty works of Koranic studies, including seminal Koranic commentaries (Tafsir). Tafsir al-Jalalayn, meaning "The Commentary of the Two Jalals," is named after its two authors, Al-Suyuti, and his mentor Jalalu'd-Din al-Mahalli (1389-1459), who wrote the initial half of this classic work. Al-Suyuti completed Tafsir al-Jalalayn following al-Mahalli's death. These apt comments heralded the appearance of a 1378 pp. English translation of Tafsir al-Jalalayn in 2008 by an accomplished contemporary Arabic to English translator:
The publication of this book is a landmark in the history of Islamic literature in English. With this work, for the first time, a complete translation of one of the great classical commentaries on the Holy Qur'an becomes available to English-speaking readers. For half a millennium Tafsir al-Jalalayn has been considered the essential first step in the study of the meanings of the Qur'an by teachers and students throughout the Islamic world Although it is among the shortest and simplest .of the ‘complete commentaries, it is at the same time both wide-ranging and profound. This translation gives non-Arabic speakers access to one of the seminal works of classical tafsir literature. It is hoped that it will prove a valuable aid to the correct understanding of the Qur'anic Revelation throughout the English-speaking world.

Aisha Abdurrahman at Tarjumana Bewley is one today's most prolific translators of classical Arabic work into English. Aisha Bewley not only understands Arabic but she is also aware of the basic meanings and nature of teachings and history of Islam. Her knowledge is born of experience and direct transmission, not merely academic theory and learning by rote. For more than twenty-five years she has been concerned with making the contents of many classical works in Arabic more Accessible to English-speaking readers for the first time...

What follows are the Tafsir al-Jalalayn  commentaries on eleven verses (2:191; 2:193; 4:24; 4:34; 5:33; 8:12; 9:5; 9:29; 9:80; 9:123; 47:4) illustrating Koranic misogyny, infidel-hatred, and jihadism , as directed to our attention by Ann Barnhardt (Part 2).

Gentle reader, compare the Ann Barnhardt's video presentation to the formal Koranic exegeses, that follow.

Res ipsa loquitur.

2:191 -- "Kill them wherever you come across them and expel them from where they expelled you...That is how (by killing and expelling them) the unbelievers should be repaid.


2:193 -- "Fight them until there is no more fitna (shirk [unbelief]) in existence and the din (worship) belongs to Allah alone and none but him is worshipped."


4:24 -- "...those you have taken in war as slaves...You may have relations with them if they have husbands in the Abode of War after istibra (the waiting period to ascertain when they are pregnant). That is what Allah has prescribed for you."


4:34 -- "Men have charge of women by teaching and taking charge because Allah has preferred the one above the other in terms of knowledge, intelligence and custody, and because they (men) spend their wealth on them (women) in maintenance. Right-acting women are obedient to their husbands, safeguarding their husbands' interests and their private parts in their absence as Allah has guarded them through their husbands when they are there. If there are women whose disobedience you fear, you may admonish them and make them fear Allah, refuse to sleep with them and go to another bed, and then beat them..."


5:33 -- "The reprisal against those who wage war on Allah and His Messenger by fighting the Muslims and go about the earth corrupting it [for example, the Jews, as per the preceding verse 5:32] by committing highway robbery is that they should be killed or crucified, or have their opposite hands and feet cut off -- right hand and left foot -- or be banished from the land...Connected to exile are punishments of imprisonment and the like. That punishment will be their degradation in this world and in the Next World they will have a terrible punishment in the Fire."


8:12 -- "And when your Lord revealed to the angels who reinforced the Muslims, ‘I am with you with help and support so make those who believe firm through the help and good news you bring. I will cast terror (extreme fear) into the hearts of those who disbelieve, so strike their necks (behead them) and strike all their finger joints, cutting off their fingers and toes!' "


9:5 -- "Then, when the sacred months are over -- in other words, at the end of the period of delay granted -- kill the idolaters wherever you find them -- whether they be in the Haram or outside it -- and seize them by capture and besiege them in citadels and fortresses until they either fight or become Muslim and lie in wait for them on every road on which they travel. If they repent of their unbelief and establish the prayer and pay zakat [i.e., become Muslims], let them go on their way and do not interfere with them. Allah is Ever-Forgiiving, Most Merciful to those who repent."


9:29 -- "Fight those of the people who were given the Book who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day -- shown by the fact that they did not accept the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace -- and who do not make unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful -- such as things like wine -- and do not take as their din [religion] the din of Truth, which confirms and abrogates other dins, until they pay the jizya [Koranic poll tax] with their own hands -- meaning the Jews and the Chrtsians who must pay it in submission or directly with their actual hands -- in state of complete abasement -- humble and subject to the judgments of Islam. The jizya is a poll tax that they are required to pay every year."


9:80 -- "You Muhammad, may ask forgiveness for them, or not ask forgiveness for them...Even if you asked forgiveness for them seventy times, Allah still would not forgive them..That is because they have rejected Allah and His Messenger. Allah does not guide deviant people."


9:123 -- "You who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you -- fight the nearest and then the next nearest -- and let them find you implacable and severe towards them. Know that Allah is with those who are fearful of Him with help and victory."


47:4 -- "Therefore when you meet those who disbelieve, strike their necks -- meaning ‘kill them.' Striking people's necks generally results in their death. Then when you have slaughtered them -- killed many of them -- tied their hands tightly -- hold them as prisoners and bind them firmly...Those of you [Muslims] who are killed will go to the Garden and those of them [non-Muslims] who are killed will go to the Fire."
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