Osama bin Laden Quotes

Martyrs to most Muslims are people who die when defending Islam, which includes under the definitions of the Muslim Fundamentalists murdering innocent civilians including women and children. In addition to ascending directly to heaven, the male martyr gets 72 virgins in Paradise.

Fanatic Muslims believe that suicide bombers when they blow themselves up have done so to defend Islam and therefore will not only go directly to heaven but will get 72 Virgins when they get there. Most of the suicide bombers are young men with very little or no sexual experience. At the time that Trainor made this remark, there had been an enormous increase in suicide bombers in the Iraq war.

This is a very important quotation as it shows the logic of many Islamic terrorists. To them Jihad is not terror regardless of what means are used. If the cause is just, like driving unbelievers from what they call Islamic land, then the violence is Jihad and is not only moral but is obligatory for a good Muslim. However if the cause is not moral—like invading someone else’s land, then the same actions are terrorism. The rest of the world defines terrorism by the means of the struggle—not the righteousness of the cause. Suicide Bombing which kills civilians shopping or at a wedding reception is terrorism whether the political or other end is good or bad. At the same time, members of the Muslim brotherhood often when they are speaking to Westerners or the media say that they are opposed to terrorism. The terrorism they are opposed to does not include to them does not include the terrorism of 9-11, the kidnapping and beheading of journalists, or bombing innocent civilians. That is why they can fund and support Hamas—the Palestinian component of the Muslim Brotherhood and still say they oppose terrorism. The occupation is the major offence they must rectify. The reality is that every group of people currently in the Middle East, is descended from peoples who occupied land by conquest and then were conquered by others. In Christ’s time, for example, Jerusalem and the area population was virtually all Jewish but the Romans had conquered and controlled the land. Some of the Jews became Christians, and they both shared the land because Christians then considered themselves to be a sect of Judaism. Then there were many conquests and re-conquests. The city has changed hands by force 44 different times. The Israelis were the last to capture it, The Jewish people were also amongst the earlier conquests, and the Palestinians argue that they inhabited the land even before Islam. Compared to Jerusalem, the problem of who has the right to the old Cherokee land in Georgia today is simple.

To modern readers this quotation is surprising in that Bryan is historically viewed as an extreme religious zealot. However, this was his mid-career and the extreme religious identification came later when he was out of office and made his living speaking to religious groups.

The Bull was directed at French King Louis VII. On Christmas Eve the year before Zengi had broken into the city of Edessa and massacred the French inhabitants. This was the Proclamation of the start of the 2nd Crusade. Note that the Pope, in order to raise troops and money for the Crusades, used the remission of previous sins to motivate Pietro dei Paganelli di Montemagno

This sura is interpreted in two ways. For many modern Muslims it means that in discussions and debates on religion with non-Muslims, do not back off, and if you do it is a religious transgression. Defend the faith. For the fundamentalists and extremists, they interpret the same sura in physical warlike terms. So if there is a fight or battle with disbelievers, retreating from the battlefield is not only cowardice and perhaps a crime under military regulations as it is in the West, but it is in Christian terms a mortal sin for which there one will go to hell. So the most religious of Muslims will fight to the death using this sura as their guidance. On the other hand, Muhammad himself as the military and civil leader of Islam made strategic retreats. In the history of almost all warfare between the West and Muslims—especially the Arabs—courage on the battlefield has been lacking and the Israelis, British, French, Americans, and Hindus of India all observe this military weakness and accounting for this is built into their military doctrine.

See {586041} for a Koranic quotation that urges world domination by Islam. In this quotation, The Prophet was talking to his followers at a time when Islam was not even a dominant religion in Arabia. And war was the way in which tribes, groups, and religions and sects, established themselves and grew. Although there are other Koranic passages which tell the faithful that people can only legitimately come to Islam through individual commitment and willingly, this passage not only seems to contradict that but also reflects a desire to punish and disgrace “non-believing” groups. This vengeance motif is also contradictory to much else of the Koran which generally preaches love, forgiveness, and understanding. However, there are contradictions and intellectual inconsistencies within the Koran just as there are within the Old and New Testaments.

See {586039} for a quotation that goes further and seeks to punish and humiliate the non believers. This sura is often used by those wishing to illustrate the intolerance of Islam—especially of other religions. They fail to put this into the context of the Old Testament which proscribed death for heretics or the history of Christianity regarding the murder of nonbelievers. The difference is however, that a very small proportion of Jews or Christians today believe in following Biblical instructions in this respect while the proportion of Muslims who believe in the literal interpretation of scripture on these points is much larger. However there are Islamic modernists and moderates throughout the world who reject this notion of warring on all other religions and there is a struggle going on within Islam itself.

This for many suicide bombers provides much of the motivation and overcomes the prospect of suicide. According to Islamic doctrine, those killed in “the cause of Allah” go immediately to Paradise, unlike those who die a natural death. And when in Paradise, the males get 72 beautiful virgins.

She is a leading American Arab who is a Syrian expatriate.

Hazrat Omar ibn al-Khatab

This sura is one of the quotations that causes major anxiety on the part of the Israelis. If the Arabs ever win a major battle and invade Israel, they are instructed to kill the Israelis who in the view of the Arabs “turned them out” of Palestine. Not doing so would produce “tumult and oppression” which, in contrast to most religions, are considered to be worse calamities than slaughter of human beings. A little later in the sura, the Prophet tells the faithful that the infidels need not be killed if they cease to oppose Islam.

At one level, this statement is typical of Christian theology and practice. Historically, the Christian martyrs were not only presumed to have gone to heaven but many of them were made Saints for their martyrdom. They assumed a type of equivalency of Christian prophets. The problem lies in the different concept of martyrdom. The martyrs of the Christian Church were almost all peaceful and docile people who would not repudiate their Christian faith even though tortured and killed. Martyrs in Islamic tradition included the above but more often were fighters and warriors who died on the battlefield or on a military mission of violence. In that sense, the modern suicide bomber is described as, and perceives him or herself as a martyrs. In Islamic culture, anyone who dies defending the faith, is a martyr. That person immediately goes to Paradise, bypassing all the other potential exclusions that the religion reserves for all others. Further, there are quasi religious beliefs about martyrdom in Islamic nations. One is that the martyr who acends to Paradise is given a bevy of virgins for his sexual pleasure for all eternity. This particular sura is used by suicide bomber recruiters to provide the highest level of religious authority to back up their claims of the advantages of a martyrs death to the would-be suicide bomber. Few of the recruiters however are sufficiently convinced of the martyrdom they sell so well, that they would willingly become martyrs themselves. While many Westerners see this as evidence of a major perversion of a perverse religion, they are usually unaware that in the Crusades, the Pope provided the same immediate ascension to Heaven for any Christian who died while fighting on the Crusades, and this was one of the major recruiting pitches to obtain volunteers to go to the Holy Land.

Odo of Chatillon-Sur-Marne. Westerners who look with horror at the religious promises of Islamic clerics that suicide bombers and other Muslims who die “defending Islam” will immediately pass to Paradise without the usual requirements and judgments which might deny admission because of previous sins. However, this is exactly what the Christians did in the Crusades as this well documented quotation demonstrates. To see the Islamic version, go to {617166}