Tacitus, Did He Use Archives or Was His Works Altered?

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNV3wFbHKC6xXhUfL-Xo66mv9Hg76mW8uMZwiaCXkhIWwPZ0mAs0Bwc8l4xNypriet6jgZwx0W8x456751y4OCiP6R-5ktKGp1KAF0kZ4hoBc14vymVP0I2UIyl8Zyrfsy9kzcN9eQDbiG/s1600/rome_tacitus_inscr_mus_thermae.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="600" height="auto" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNV3wFbHKC6xXhUfL-Xo66mv9Hg76mW8uMZwiaCXkhIWwPZ0mAs0Bwc8l4xNypriet6jgZwx0W8x456751y4OCiP6R-5ktKGp1KAF0kZ4hoBc14vymVP0I2UIyl8Zyrfsy9kzcN9eQDbiG/s280/rome_tacitus_inscr_mus_thermae.jpg" width="280" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">TACITUS AND NERO</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christians lie that Tacitus spoke of Jesus and so Jesus existed. That is just their scraping at the bottom of the barrel in a desperate question for corroboration that Jesus lived.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2-bWRpLod-t7l7CTSeVq-3_BAJ9GpriojDpPjDqEDcGz3cq391SZmeJ12ZvmoitM2mHN9BZm8JyWlacp1CP3dtBw4_x_ouEwjbaO7PFm_g0X-wJcPF5b6hrYYoS9qh9FuxHYZXVPyvJe/s1600/tacitus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2-bWRpLod-t7l7CTSeVq-3_BAJ9GpriojDpPjDqEDcGz3cq391SZmeJ12ZvmoitM2mHN9BZm8JyWlacp1CP3dtBw4_x_ouEwjbaO7PFm_g0X-wJcPF5b6hrYYoS9qh9FuxHYZXVPyvJe/s1600/tacitus.jpg" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">TACITUS</span></b><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Roman historian <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTacitus&h=VAQF0blOa&s=1">Cornelius Tacitus</a> who died in 117 AD condemned Christianity. In 115 AD he wrote his <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAnnals_%28Tacitus%29&h=IAQEj5V9i&s=1">Annals</a> and declared that Christ – he doesn’t call him Jesus - had been executed under Pontius Pilate, lived in Judaea and created a new system of pernicious superstition. Christians say he plucked this from the Roman legal records and sceptics counter that he was only taking for granted what Christians were saying which would mean he could not be used as proof for the existence of Jesus. Some historians even today take Christian yarns for granted.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus said, according to some translations of his work, that Christ had the extreme penalty or was executed. There is no reason to believe though some do that extreme penalty means crucifixion. Tacitus did not say that Christ was crucified. He wrote scathingly about the Christians trying to turn his readers against them and if Jesus had been crucified he would have said so for crucifixion was a disgrace and marked the victim as a criminal. It would have repulsed those who had heard of Jesus. The Tacitus Christ is not Jesus Christ.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus said that the death of Christ was a temporary setback for the Christians for Christianity exploded in Judaea and in Rome as if the Christians existed when Christ died. Everybody had turned against Jesus and there is no evidence that any of the handful who stood by Jesus believed in him at that time. They probably did not and proved it when they did not attend the execution. So it was a case of destruction of Christianity rather than a setback. He said that the superstition was “checked for a moment” when Jesus perished and then exploded again – but killing the ringleader and not the supporters is a strange kind of checking and the gospels say the Romans and Jews never went after the apostles even though it was feared that the people might come out in support of Jesus perhaps as a result of the apostles raising the alarm. Tacitus has to be saying that the whole group that followed Jesus was eliminated as well which makes the apostles and the New Testament authors to be serious liars and impostors. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus says the Christian faith was a shameful and evil and dangerous religion during the spread afterwards. If he read that in the records he allegedly had then one wonders how Christians can insist upon the importance and reliability of these records. Why is he is trusted with Jesus who lived decades before and not trusted with his negative history of the Christian Church as a sect full of poison and evil though this history is more recent and the sect was intermingled with his society? Prejudice and wishful thinking are the answers! </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When Tacitus believed the slander – if that is what it was! - about the Christians perhaps he was depending on hearsay for all the information he gave on Christ and Christianity (which Turton admits to believing in his The Truth of Christianity, page 379) or perhaps he never believed that a Jesus existed but just wanted to say he was executed for that was considered to be a one sentence refutation of Christianity in those days as even Paul’s First Corinthians attests. People couldn’t believe that an executed man could be the Son of God. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Obviously, if Christianity was so bad its supporters would have been killed as soon as they opened their mouths which contradicts the book of Acts which has them preaching with impunity for long enough. Tacitus is hinting that it was a secretive religion for only one that keeps its head low could be slandered like that. This makes sense if the Jews and Romans went to such trouble to get rid of Jesus for they would not have let a new cult get off the ground. Nobody trusts secret cults and their stories that much. The secrecy would suggest that it was not the resurrection that was responsible for the conversion explosion – if there was an explosion at that time which nobody apart from cranks believes now. The secrecy was useful if the Church sought to fabricate evidence for a Jesus of history.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus says that the superstition rose in Judaea. It did not. Mark says that Jesus lived in Galilee and launched his cult there in a huge way and went to Judea to preach the good news apparently after John had been jailed. Most of Jesus’ activities took place in Galilee (Galilee, Biblical Dictionary and Concordance, New American Bible). Why would Tacitus try to be accurate in relation to Christianity for it was the dirt, imagined and real, his audience wanted not the facts?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitius never mentions Jesus but just Christ. Tacitus refers to Jesus as Christ thinking that Christ was Jesus’ name but it was only his job description (page 51, Jesus the Evidence). Lots of people were called Christ and were executed under Pilate so could there have been a mistake? Tacitus is depending on hearsay and so he cannot be accepted as evidence for Jesus. When he thinks the Christians are depraved and evil it shows that his source for the religion and Christ was or was probably gossip. It was all he had to go by. It was all anybody could go by in those days in relation to Jesus and his sect. If Tacitus had known about Jesus he would have called him the so-called Christ instead of giving him a royal title that implied that Rome had no business running Jesus’ country when he was crucified.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The gospels say poor Pilate was blackmailed by the Jews to kill Jesus. And why did Tacitus not exonerate Pilate being the whitewasher he was for Rome if Pilate was really forced by the Jews? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And Tacitus calls Christ the founder of the name Christian. Jesus was not. The name started off decades later as a nickname. You don’t say that Jesus was the founder of the name Mormon even though Mormonism is supposed to be true Christianity unless he was there in 1829 when the Mormon Church was established. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus could not have been the only Christ crucified or at least executed under the maniacal Pilate so Tacitus who is writing for those who don’t know anything about this Christ would have named him if he meant Jesus or if there had been any decent reason to believe in the existence of Jesus. It could well be that Tacitus thought that Christ was somebody other than Jesus and the evidence supports that notion. Somebody who perhaps used the Roman name Chrestus and not Jesus. Perhaps it was somebody who had no name but Christ. This would not be Jesus who took the title Christ late in his ministry according to the gospels.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you read Tacitus one thing is very strange. He says Nero cruelly persecuted a class of men called Christians and that Christus the founder of their name underwent the extreme penalty under Pilate and the pernicious superstition was stopped but broke out again in Judea and in the capital probably meaning Jerusalem. He then says the Christians were loathed for their hatred of the human race. He never says it is a religious sect but a superstition started by Christ. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The question is, what superstition does Tacitus have in mind? Some say he meant the resurrection of Jesus. But Tacitus being a pagan would have believed Jesus could have risen from the dead. He could have thought that Jesus was just a wayward god like many of the other wayward gods of Rome. When he says the death of Jesus stopped the superstition for a while only for it to break out again he means the whole corpus of Christian teaching. Tacitus was suggesting that the Christian teaching was religious and full of vice and hatred and in that sense it was superstitious nonsense. Since he condemns the Christians for vices and hatred that is probably the superstition. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The gospels themselves show us that Christianity is vice and encourage the idea that the more you sin the more you will love God when he forgives you. The claim that true Christians hate the human race is accurate for the Bible sees nothing but sin in the world and you can’t hate the sin and love the sinner for if you hate the sin that is personal and involves the sinner being hated. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus came to pretend to hate sin but his real purpose was to reward it by paying the price for it in our place so that we could come to him with weak and nearly useless repentance and still get away with it. But the intensity and ferocity of his condemnation of Christian immorality suggests that he had a dangerous and violent sect in mind. This would suggest that the sect was not that of Jesus Christ which wasn’t that bad. It suggests that he had the wrong messianic sect in mind. In other words, maybe there was a sect of violent zealots following some Christ who died under Pilate and by mistake he thought they were the Christian sect.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus is no help at all in verifying the historical Jesus. All he does is prove that this man’s existence is doubtful.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">TACITUS – DID HE USE ARCHIVES OR WAS HIS WORK ALTERED?</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christians say that since Tacitus was senator that he must have had access to the best records and been using them to back up what he said about Christ. They were not very good records when he did not use more of them and to get Christians despised by accusing Jesus of being a rascal. This suggests that the records were either lost or never existed. What would records about Jesus be doing in Rome? They were probably destroyed in Palestine if they existed at all. But we have reason to believe that Tacitus depended on gossip for his data on Christ. We have no reason at all to think he had records.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Christian hope that the Roman historians like Tacitus had studied the records which the Romans scrupulously kept is a false one. There must have been no Jesus in the records when the Church kept none. And when Christ was the founder of a sect that the Romans hated they would have had records for he was important but only if he had existed.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christians argue that Tacitus complained of conflicts in his sources for other things and that he condemned absurd statements in them and when he reported a rumour he just said things like, “It is said”. So they think then he would have written “it is said” if he had been recording a rumour about Christ’s death. But why would he? It is said can mean a rumour yes but it can also means something the historical sources say. With history it is just a matter of what is said in records and by people who remember. All history books have a pile of rumour in them too. That’s life. Tacitus could not possibly have said its is said before reporting everything he thought was just a story that could be false.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Christian story was more than a rumour by that stage and one can understand a historian taking it for granted that a Christ was crucified by Pilate if some books say so no matter how silly the books are for he would take that as a kernel of truth even if he never saw the books but only got good testimony about them. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is a fact that Tacitus did make records of events that never happened. He only occasionally referred to something as hearsay when he knew for sure that it was. Like all historians Tacitus would have intended to update his work when new information came to light. If he erred on Jesus perhaps he never got the chance. Tacitus made up a story to smear Livia and Tiberius (Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus: Is it reliable?). And if Tacitus had been wrong about Christ it did not matter for he was only writing about Nero’s treatment of the Christians and their origin in Christ. That was the main point and the others including the existence and crucifixion of Jesus were merely incidental. That was why he might never have checked them out. It was too hard in those days to check out everything so it is most probable that Tacitus was just reported what he heard or thought he heard about Jesus and was not consulting any records. He hated Christians and would have written a bit more had he been using records. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The standards of the time made allowances for a certain amount of assumption being incorporated into historical discussions and records. They had to. Tacitus might tell us when he thought something was a rumour but that was only when he knew for sure and it was obviously a false report. He would have taken rumours as true when they were good ones. Since he did make up things to incriminate people he might have been willing to say that Jesus was crucified which was as good as incriminating Jesus because the Romans would have thought, “Gee the wretch must have done something awful to deserve that.” Why would Tacitus investigate the existence of Jesus when it was not an issue in his day? No historian investigates everything. Nobody cared but the Christians if Jesus lived.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus did not like Christians and would have had no interest in the details about their Jesus so he did not go to the records and why would he when he only wrote two or three things about Jesus? You don’t visit the library in the next town looking for the whole life story of John F Kennedy when you just want to write when he was shot and where. Tacitus wrote that Christians were dying for being Christians which Christians use as proof that there was a Jesus but there is no evidence at all that they freely died for Jesus (Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus: Is it reliable?). Moreover, some say that Tacitus’ interest in a man who claimed to be the resurrected Emperor Nero and who had great success in Parthia would have led Tacitus to investigate Jesus (See A Reply to J.P. Holding’s “Shattering” of My Views on Jesus, GA Wells). But this is speculation. Christians are often interested in religion but not in anybody else’s religion so Tacitus being interested in the new Nero does not imply he would have investigated Jesus too. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christians are keen on what he wrote about Christ but not so eager to accept his account of a miracle worked by the divine Emperor Vespasian (His. Lib. IV. C.81, Opp. Ed. Paris, 1819, III, p.490).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus called Pilate the procurator and some believe that this title was too uncommon before the middle of the first century to have been used by a man depending on written records. Wells argued that it shows that Tacitus got his data about Christ from Christian hearsay. He Walked Among Us observed that he called another man procurator and that he even called the Emperor something that was not his proper title (page 51). It says he was only using the layman’s vocabulary for it was for a lay readership. If so then why did he write so little about Jesus? The public would have wanted to know what this Christianity was about and who started it. And to say that using the wrong title for Pilate would mean that it came from hearsay and to say that doing this two or three more times means he wasn’t is simply ludicrous. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If Tacitus were using records he would have said Jesus instead of just Christ. Some say if he had said Jesus Christ then he would have had to explain how Jesus is related to Christ because the followers of Jesus were called Christians! This is a ridiculous argument.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If Tacitus had been using Christian testimony he would have been most likely to have called him Jesus or Jesus Christ. The records would have to be specific so they would have been more likely to call him not Jesus or Christ but Jesus called Christ. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some say that Tacitus would have been likely to use Christ alone for it was common knowledge that a Christ was expected among the Jews and this would incite dislike of Christians. Rubbish. He would have used Jesus Christ in case anybody didn’t know who Christ was if that was his motive. </span></div><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>TACITUS NOT GOING TO THE RECORDS SHOW THERE WERE NO RECORDS EXTANT IN HIS DAY </b>--- Wells stated that Tacitus just got his info from the Christians and was biased towards accepting it for it gave Christianity a recent origin and the Romans hated new religions. He Walked Among Us rejects this on the basis that he reported about Jesus as a historical fact and not as something he heard (page 50). But history is not just about studying written records but also about oral tradition.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The unprofessional historian depends too much on oral tradition but the professional does not turn his back on it. The professional will use it to fill gaps for a lot of history comes from the need to avoid saying nothing. To say that Tacitus would have said if it was hearsay is simply a lie. Then He Walked Among Us says that Justin and others told their readers to research official documents about Jesus. But what has that got to do with Tacitus for we don’t know if he was meant? Who would recommend him when he only wrote a line or two? And besides Justin recommended an Acts of Pilate that sounds like a forgery. Justin said that the timetable of the Quirinius census which is reported in Luke still existed in his day (Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus: Is it reliable?). Justin even went as far as to tell his readers to consult it.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This calls his Acts of Pilate references into question. Justin was not adverse to inventing back-up when he was stuck. He must have lied too that some of his works were written for the Emperor. We know that Pilate’s Acts or records would not have been sent to Rome for Jesus lived in a land that was under Rome but was largely an independent jurisdiction (ibid). It may be that Justin just took it for granted that the Acts existed and put two and two together and came up with twenty. I find the title of the alleged document to be suspect. Why call it the Acts of Pilate? A legal document would be unlikely to get an appellation like that. Justin could not recommend the gospels instead of the Acts of Pilate because the gospels were still being censored by the Church or perhaps still even being edited at the time.</span></blockquote></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some believe that Tacitus could not have used records about Jesus because when Rome turned against Pilate it wanted all trace of Pilate forgotten (Wells Without Water). The references to Pilate in Josephus were probably tolerated for Josephus was very unflattering to him and Josephus’ writing was commissioned by Rome and it would not have tolerated any other for Josephus would have been employed to do away with the need for any other memorial. That would have made Pilate the perfect person for the Jesus mongers to blame for the fictitious crucifixion. </span><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rome of course might not have destroyed all the records of Pilate in Jerusalem for it did not care what the Jews thought. But the likes of Tacitus and the people in Rome would not have been allowed to mention him and there would have been no records in Rome. This would mean both that there were no records and no Christian gospels were tolerated so any gospels would have been kept secret. And above all that somebody interfered with the text about Jesus in Tacitus because it speaks of Pilate. When they went to the bother of putting in an unnecessary reference to Pilate they probably invented the whole thing. A forger would only put in a reference to Christ and his death if there were a need to fabricate evidence that Jesus lived because he didn’t live at all.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The mention of Jesus is of no worth even if we cannot rule out it having come from records – which we can. It would have to come from the ancient records to be trusted. Historians have sometimes mistaken fictitious characters for real ones. Records were sometimes muddled up and altered in the copying and sometimes entries were made too late. Sometimes it was impossible to tell if a record had the right information in it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some believe the data Tacitus gives about Christ was an interpolation because it calls him Christ and seems to say he was executed which is religious dogma. In response to this it is said that stating Jesus’ title and that he existed and was put to death is not religious dogma. Christ was a religious title and to say he was executed when the evidence of Paul indicates that this was revealed through visions means it is a religious dogma. To say it is not is as silly as saying that the existence of Adam and Eve is not a religious dogma. The idea that the Christ material is a statement of dogma cannot be disproved. So its authenticity cannot be proved either. Those who say the Christ material is dogma not history will have to accept that if it is not an interpolation then Tacitus did not access any records for he did not know Christ was a religious title and that the death of Christ was a dogma.</span></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The passage is nearly exactly the same as one in the work of a man called Sulpicius Severus who died in 403 AD. This man was known for his credulity and tall stories. He did not copy from Tacitus because nobody seemed to know of the Tacitus passage in those days. There is no evidence that they knew. It appears then that the copyists copied the passage from Severus’s book into Tacitus. There is no evidence for the authenticity of the Tacitus text on Jesus (The Jesus of History, A Reply to Josh McDowell, Gordon Stein). If it is forged then it is proof that the Christians were manufacturing fabricated evidence for the existence of Jesus. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The argument that Tacitus used records from Jesus’ day is worthless speculation and not only that it makes no sense. We are not sure that Tacitus mentioned Christ at all. Tacitus is no help when you want secular references to the historical Jesus.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">TACITUS AND NERO</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It was because Tacitus was discussing how Nero hated Christians and used them as scapegoats, that he seemed to mention Christ and his death under Pilate. We will see that this calls the reliability of the passage and the legitimacy of saying he said Jesus existed into serious question.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tacitus stated that the Emperor Nero persecuted Christians. There is not a scrap of evidence that Nero did and there should have been tons. Origen the great apologist for Christianity stated in his Contra Celsum (Book 3, Chapter 8) that it was not hard to number the Christian martyrs (The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul; How Did the Apostles Die?). There is no evidence that Nero started the fire in Rome and blamed the Christians. There were plenty of more suitable sects to choose from as scapegoats (see The Jesus of History, A Reply to Josh McDowell, Gordon Stein). </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is no evidence that Nero persecuted Christians and there were only a few Christians in Rome at that time – indicating that there was no point in a persecution. This makes the reliability of the passage doubtful. Perhaps it is an interpolation or a lie. I would be happy enough if the passage was unreliable or doubtful for then you can’t use it to prove Jesus. Whether unreliable or an interpolation it still destroys the evidence for the existence of Jesus. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Skeptic Gordon Stein’s belief that since Christian was not a common term in the first century and that Nero did not care what religions came to Rome is unfairly dismissed as irrelevant by Christians just because it destroys their case. When Tacitus is okay everywhere else except here an interpolation is the most probable implication. It’s the simplest explanation. The pro-authenticity argument is that the record is anti-Christian but it did not do the Christians any harm for it only repeated the gossip that was rife about them anyway. And it would have been too obvious the passage was forged if it was more positive. The way the passage fits the story proves nothing for you can put a new sentence or two in any text so that no awkwardness or anything gives you away.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One thing is certainly true, if Nero did attack Christianity it was for political reasons and not religious ones. The later Christian boast that he hated the Christians he killed because he wanted to destroy their faith just on religious grounds makes no sense for the Empire knew it had to tolerate many widely differing and eccentric cults and there is no evidence that Nero was that bigoted. The early Church liked to turn murdered Christians into martyrs for propaganda purposes. But there is as much difference as day and night as being murdered for your religion and being a martyr.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nothing like persecution happened to the Christians until the time of Diocletian (The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul). And Rome tolerated tolerant religions so if Christianity was persecuted it was because it stressed that other religions were all of the Devil and so the martyrs deserve to be regarded as fruitcakes rather than as heroes of God.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">WORKS CONSULTED </span></b></div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Thomas Bokenkotter, Image Books, New York, 1979 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Asking them Questions, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Belief and Make-Believe, GA Wells, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1991 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1983 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Did Jesus Exist? GA Wells, Pemberton, London, 1988 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Did Jesus Exist? John Redford, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1986 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Early Christian Writings, Maxwell Staniforth Editor, Penguin, London, 1988 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Encyclopaedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books, London, 1995 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Encyclopaedia of Unbelief, Volume 1, Ed Gordon Stein, (Ed) Prometheus Books, New York, 1985 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Handbook to the Controversy With Rome, Volume 1, Karl Von Hase, The Religious Tract Society, London, 1906 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He Walked Among Us, Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, Alpha Cumbria, 2000 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Introduction to the New Testament, Roderick A F MacKenzie, SJ, Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 1965 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus, AN Wilson, Flamingo, London, 1993 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus and the Goddess, The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Thorsons, London, 2001 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus – God the Son or Son of God? Fred Pearce Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham, undated </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus – One Hundred Years Before Christ, Professor Alvar Ellegard Century, London, 1999 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus and the Four Gospels, John Drane, Lion, Herts, 1984 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus Hypotheses, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican, Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1994 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson, Pan, London, 1985 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus the Magician, Morton Smith, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1978 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus under Fire, Edited by Michael F Wilkins and JP Moreland, Zondervan Publishing House, Michigan, 1995 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lectures and Replies, Thomas Carr, Archbishop of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1907 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton, Chick Publications, Chino, CA, 1983 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1969 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nag Hammadi Library, Ed James M Robinson HarperCollins New York 1990 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the True Doctrine, Celsus, Translated by R Joseph Hoffmann, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Putting Away Childish Things, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1994 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Runaway World, Michael Green, IVP, London, 1974 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">St Paul versus St Peter, A Tale of Two Missions, Michael Goulder, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1994 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">St Peter and Rome, JBS, Irish Church Missions, Dublin, undated </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Saint Saul, Donald Harman Akenson, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Bible Fact or Fantasy, John Drane, Lion, Oxford, 1989 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Touchstone Books, New York, 2002. </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Call to Heresy, Robert Van Weyer, Lamp Books, London, 1989 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Case For Christ, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Case for Jesus the Messiah, John Ankerberg Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1989 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1967 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books, London, 1995 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The First Christian, Karen Armstrong, Pan, London, 1983 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, Penguin, London, 1990 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Gnostic Paul, Elaine Pagels, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1975 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Historical Evidence for Jesus, G A Wells, Prometheus Books, New York, 1988 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The History of Christianity, Lion, Herts 1982 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The History of the Church, Eusebius, Penguin, London, 1989 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The House of the Messiah, Ahmed Osman, Grafton, London, 1993 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Jesus Event and Our Response, Martin R Tripole SJ, Alba House, New York, 1980 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Jesus Hoax, Phyllis Graham, Leslie Frewin, London, 1974 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Jesus Inquest, Charles Foster, Monarch Books, Oxford, 2006 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Jesus Mysteries, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Thorsons, London, 1999 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The MythMaker, St Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1986 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Reconstruction of Belief, Charles Gore DD, John Murray, London, 1930 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Search for the Twelve Apostles, William Steuart McBirnie, Tyndale House, 1997 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Secret Gospel Morton Smith Aquarian Press, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1973 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Theodore Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, London, 1876 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Kittel Gerhard and Friedrich Gerhard, Eerdman’s Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 1976 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Those Incredible Christians, Hugh Schonfield, Hutchinson, London, 1968 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Who Was Jesus? A Conspiracy in Jerusalem, by Kamal Salabi, I.B. Taurus and Co Ltd., London, 1992 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Who Was Jesus? NT Wright, SPCK, London, 1993 </span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why I Believe Jesus Lived, C G Colly Caldwell, Guardian of Truth, Kentucky </span></li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[Source: <a href="http://www.christisnotrisen.com/tacitus.html">christisnotrisen.com</a>]</span></div></div>

Tacitus, Did He Use Archives or Was His Works Altered?

TACITUS AND NERO Christians lie that Tacitus spoke of Jesus and so Jesus existed. That is just their scraping at the bottom of the barrel i...

Tacitus, Did He Use Archives or Was His Works Altered?

TACITUS AND NERO Christians lie that Tacitus spoke of Jesus and so Jesus existed. That is just their scraping at the bottom of the barrel i...

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No Evidence Of Jesus

<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWSPLsHcoDVebLXnK72d3k2tPw1QSJKNZWQXWLRdt9-pnO_fPYeICSzjgRP5-0o_3j6L6Z8ws6dp9WlI5SFU_0PB7LUSXNQaMlPUvzCKVaoQz01Ip4KWP4FlPreOtEXk4vOq4ICechEdQ/s0/jesus+the+myth.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 0em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWSPLsHcoDVebLXnK72d3k2tPw1QSJKNZWQXWLRdt9-pnO_fPYeICSzjgRP5-0o_3j6L6Z8ws6dp9WlI5SFU_0PB7LUSXNQaMlPUvzCKVaoQz01Ip4KWP4FlPreOtEXk4vOq4ICechEdQ/s0/jesus+the+myth.jpg" width="100%" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Recently, several fundis have asserted that there is much historical evidence that Jesus actually existed as have alluded to a few round about references by early writers. I can accross the following in a file in America Online Religion library:</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The early Christians, Origin, for instance, in his reply to the rationalist Celsus who questioned the reality of Jesus, instead of producing evidence of a historical nature, appealed to the mythology of the pagans to prove that the story of Jesus was no more incredible than those of the Greek and Roman gods.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is so important that we refer our readers to Origin's own words on the subject. "Before replying to Celsus, it is necessary to admit that in the matter of history, however true it might be," writes this Christian Father, "it is often very difficult and sometimes quite impossible to establish its truth by evidence which shall be considered sufficient" [Origin Contre Celsus. 1. 58 et Suiv.]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is a plain admission that, as early as the second and third centuries the claims put forth about Jesus did not admit of positive historical demonstration. But in the absence of evidence Origin offers the following metaphysical arguments against the skeptical Celsus:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><ol style="padding: 0px 10px 0px 25px;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Such stories as are told of Jesus are admitted to be true when told of pagan divinities, why can they not also be true when told of the Christian Messiah?</li><li style="text-align: justify;">They must be true because they are the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies [Ibid.]</li></ol><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In other words, the only proofs Origin can bring forth against the rationalistic criticism of Celsus is, that to deny Jesus would be equivalent to denying both the Pagan and Jewish mythologies. If Jesus is not real, says Origin, then Apollo was not real, and the Old Testament prophecies have not been fulfilled. If we are to have any mythology at all, he seems to argue, why object to adding to it the myths of Jesus? There could not be a more damaging admission than this from one of the most conspicuous defenders of Jesus' story against early criticism.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Justin Martyr, another early Father, offers the following argument against unbelievers in the Christian legend: "When we say also that the Word, which is the first birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified, died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter." [First Apology, Chapter xxi (Anti-Niacin Library.] Which is another way of saying that the Christian myths is very similar to the pagan, and should therefore be equally true.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pressing his argument further, this interesting Father discovers many resemblances between what he himself is preaching and the pagans have always believed: "For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribe to Jupiter. Mercury, the interpreting word (he spells this word with small w, while in the above quotation he uses w to denote the Christian incarnation) and teacher of all; Aesculapius ... to heaven; one Hercules ... and Perseus; ... and Bellerophon, who, from mortals, rose to heaven on the horses of Pegasus." [Ibid.] If Jupiter can have, Justin Martyr seems to reason, half a dozen divine sons, why cannot Jehovah have at least one?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Instead of producing historical evidence or appealing to creditable documents, as one would to prove the existence of a Caesar or an Alexander, Justin Martyr draws upon pagan mythology in his reply to the critics of Christianity. All he seems to ask for is that Jesus be given a higher place among the divinities of the ancient world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">[Source: WAS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. Mangasrian | Reviewed by Larry Sites]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><ul style="list-style-type: square; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px 10px 0px 25px;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Read also what <strong>Bart Ehrman </strong>said about this issue <a href="http://www.holyblasphemy.net/bart-ehrman-did-jesus-exist-is-there-evidence-for-a-historical-jesus/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">right here.</a></li></ul>

No Evidence Of Jesus

Recently, several fundis have asserted that there is much historical evidence that Jesus actually existed as have alluded to a few round abo...

No Evidence Of Jesus

Recently, several fundis have asserted that there is much historical evidence that Jesus actually existed as have alluded to a few round abo...

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Biggest Apology To Islam?

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg66EDdJUobxsHh4MDxx__CthAu8Z7tJrNX2npMxpYdN2PLMjvz6eXa2RV_D66_DnkeNKIBcIw_iYLCE-ROXLaABAg2EJR5HNQmsMxMk-PK9HMEoHyAJJitcHGPYRkFZmhVsfYaSzVA9Z_C/s1600/benedict+shalat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="575" height="auto" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg66EDdJUobxsHh4MDxx__CthAu8Z7tJrNX2npMxpYdN2PLMjvz6eXa2RV_D66_DnkeNKIBcIw_iYLCE-ROXLaABAg2EJR5HNQmsMxMk-PK9HMEoHyAJJitcHGPYRkFZmhVsfYaSzVA9Z_C/s280/benedict+shalat.jpg" width="280" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Pope Benedict XVI prayed alongside an Islamic cleric in Turkey's most famous mosque Thursday in a dramatic gesture to Muslims after outrage from the pontiffs remarks linking violence and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad" says Associated press.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This mosque was Blue Mosque of Istanbul and today was the hell on Earth. Because of Pope's security, almost all main roads in the historical peninsula are closed by the police and almost 15 million Istanbulians paralyzed. Personally, I walked for 45 minutes to reach the shuttle to my work. It was interesting around with lots of different reactions to the visit: For the city, it was an extraordinary day, like a fest or a war. In the street tram -which we must have stopped 5 stations before the last one- everybody was talking with each other. The people who didn't meet before chatting; a woman with a headscarve said "Well, we should give a lesson to this insolent pope with kindness and sympathy, not with violence. So that he would feel pity. There is no need for such security means." Others, including women without headscarves approved with quite nods. After I hopped off to the station which is the closest one to my destination, streets were full of people and there are no cars around. Some 50 people who were going to a football match are stopped by the police who didn't let them to use the ordinary road. They adapted the newest soccer chant to the current situation in a melodic style and they sang, "Eat my d.ck, Pope!" Then there is a handwritten sign near the bus stop, which says "No buses today. Why? Because of the Pope!!" In Beyazit Square, there was a crowd who was protesting Pope's visit, while the pontiff was visiting Hagia Sofia.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An unfortunate remark from the highest official of Catholicism and all these reactions from Muslims... No apology from the Pope -mostly because of the nature of his office.- "John Paul II was not like that," said one of my colleagues. Well, here it comes: After all, Benedict XVI made a big surprise and a prayed like he's a Muslim in Sultanahmet Mosque!!! The highest religious official of Istanbul province, Muftu, has called everyone to pray and the Pope faced the Kibla, performing the exact stance of a Muslim believer who is praying and his eyes closed, lips moved and here it comes.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Before the prayer, the Pope said in Italian, "Let us pray for brotherhood and for all humanity." And after the prayer, he told to Muftu, "Thank you for this moment of pray." That "thank you" is much bigger than any apology. Benedict XVI didn't officially apologise for his negative remarks about Prophet Mohammed -because he basically couldn't- but this gesture is even bigger than some sapless words. I'm curious about what these people, my coreligionists, who cursed and swore to the Pope think about. After Pope's remarks, I was somehow disturbed too, but this gesture meant a lot to me. I hope that none of my people would say, "Well, he seemed praying, but he was cursing to us from inside. He was not sincere" I hope that each sane person can understand what a powerful symbol it was and forget about any conspiracy theories. Now I also can say it without hesitation: "Thank you, your holiness."</span><br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[<a href="http://istanbulian.blogspot.com/">The Instanbulian</a>, November 2006]</span></div>

Biggest Apology To Islam?

"Pope Benedict XVI prayed alongside an Islamic cleric in Turkey's most famous mosque Thursday in a dramatic gesture to Muslims afte...

Biggest Apology To Islam?

"Pope Benedict XVI prayed alongside an Islamic cleric in Turkey's most famous mosque Thursday in a dramatic gesture to Muslims afte...

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The Culture of Islam

<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Qz3Div0lCBWQ9m1-8nqGvo8QSvEJYF-wXgpWf2Os0eAnHmeEakfotwiFn8i3aoAEijdGClAUGPGvdi_RfJ-G5-XAOxi12zJsYbnTS4TO4wcTy5G7unXQrIqBQFPtp58jb2FgrFgP1S8/s1600/pope_mosque11.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608768439687492690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Qz3Div0lCBWQ9m1-8nqGvo8QSvEJYF-wXgpWf2Os0eAnHmeEakfotwiFn8i3aoAEijdGClAUGPGvdi_RfJ-G5-XAOxi12zJsYbnTS4TO4wcTy5G7unXQrIqBQFPtp58jb2FgrFgP1S8/s280/pope_mosque11.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;display: block;margin: 0px auto 10px;text-align: center;width: 280px;height: 186px;" /></a><span style="color: #383838; font-size: x-small;">Pope Benedict XVI prays barefoot at the Blue Mosque</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 85%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-weight: bold;">Earlier this month [December 2006] during his visit to Istanbul, [Pope] Benedict [XVI] backed Turkey’s admission into the EU, prayed toward Mecca in a mosque, and called Islam "a religion of peace, tolerance, and love."</span> <span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></a></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #4d6b8a; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 85%;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="intro"></a></span></div><div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #313d6a; font-size: 130%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 130%;">Introduction</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">For those not familiar with him, Pope Benedict XVI, who calls Islam a “religion of peace, tolerance, and love” (see above quote), is the head of the Catholic Church, a worldwide and influential religious institution. The Catholic Church is not a Muslim sect, and the popes of the medieval past -- who in fact referred to Muslims as ‘heathens’ and ‘infidels’ -- would have called Benedict an ‘anti-Christ’ (an agent of ‘Satan’) and burned him alive at the stake for praying in a mosque toward Mecca while functioning as a priest of the Church.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Some things have obviously changed in the Catholic Church.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">One might say that the Catholic Church is joining the spirit of the times, because Pope Benedict’s assessment of Islam is very common in the Western mass media. This admits of a simple statistical demonstration. On 7 January 2007, I asked the Lexis-Nexis database to give me all appearances, just in the major Western newspapers it archives, of the word ‘Islam’ within 10 words of the phrase ‘religion of peace,’ and it returned 738 results. By contrast, when I asked for all appearances in the same database of the word ‘Islam’ within 10 words of ‘religion of war’ I got only 66 results. This means that Westerners hear in the mainstream mass media that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ more than 11 times more often than they hear the opposite argument. (And many of those 66 results, I must point out, were about how specific individuals <i>got in trouble </i>for saying that Islam was a ‘religion of war,’ so the true ratio is arguably higher.)</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">If we accept the common media representation of Islam, then those Muslims who quite obviously and openly preach war cannot be <i>true </i>or <i> orthodox </i>Muslims (despite the fact that they seem quite numerous), and therefore some qualifier will be needed to label their movements. Thus, we often encounter the terms ‘fundamentalist Islam,’ ‘radical Islam,’ ‘Islamo-fascism,’ ‘Islamism,’ and ‘Islamist terrorism’ when the media makes reference to warlike Muslim movements. By logical necessity, under this interpretation, the term ‘moderate Islam’ will refer to those Muslims who adhere to the traditional, orthodox, and true nature of Islam, which in this view is <i>peace</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Should we rush to accept this common media representation of Islam, now pushed also by the head of the Catholic Church?</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">I think that might be rash. Although Pope Benedict XVI is certainly entitled to his own opinion, he is not a Muslim cleric or scholar. So before we commit ourselves to an interpretation it is probably wise at least to consult the recognized Muslim authorities on what the mission of Islam is supposed to be. If the interpretation of Muslim authorities agrees with Pope Benedict, very well. But if it doesn’t, it would be absurd to privilege the views of the Catholic Pope over the views of those who have defined Islam for millions of Muslims throughout the ages.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="continue"></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">The first thing I will do is contrast the modern media interpretation of the word </span><i style="font-weight: normal;">jihad</i><span style="font-weight: normal;">, the central concept in Islam, with that of a famous 20th century Muslim cleric and scholar. Then I will look at the views of medieval Muslim clerics and scholars, and finally at the views of modern Muslims whom the Western mass media loudly calls 'moderates.'</span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">What does the word <i>jihad </i>mean? These days it is common for the mass media to present us with Muslims who defend the view that <i>jihad</i> -- which is commonly translated as ‘holy war’ -- can have many different meanings, and that its primary meaning has nothing to do with violence (naturally because Islam is ‘the religion of peace’). For example, Riaz Hassan, writing in the <i>South China Morning Post</i>, explains:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“…<i>jihad</i> can be viewed as a revolutionary process in stages, proceeding from the spiritual to the temporal realm of politics. This interpretation is counter to the prevailing conception in the West... which views <i>jihad</i> in terms of destruction and suffering inflicted by religious fanatics on civilian populations.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[2]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">In other words, Hassan is saying that only Muslim “religious fanatics” will use the word <i>jihad </i>to mean ‘terrorism’: “destruction and suffering inflicted…on civilian populations.” According to him, the word really has, primarily, a “spiritual” interpretation.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Western public figures routinely endorse such arguments. For example, in 1993, in a speech at the Sheldonian Theater in Oxford, where Charles the Prince of Wales is a patron of the Center for Islamic Studies, the future King of England said that “The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law, taken straight from the Qur’an, should be those of equity and compassion.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn2a" name="_ftnref2a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue;">[2a]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Strong stuff. Immediately after the terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001, which US president George W. Bush attributed to a self-consciously Muslim terrorist organization, “President Bush join[ed American] Muslim leaders… to defend Islam as a religion of peace, not terrorism.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span lang="ES-MX">[3]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Prince Charles and President Bush obviously agree with Riaz Hassan that any Muslim giving Islam’s central concept, <i>jihad</i>, a terrorist interpretation is a “religious fanatic,” not a mainstream, orthodox Muslim.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">It is true that Bush made his statement surrounded by American Muslim leaders, but in the United States Islam is a minority religion, and in the context of a terrorist attack for which a self-consciously Muslim terrorist was taking responsibility, it was obviously politic for American Muslim leaders to agree publicly with Bush. It will be instructive, therefore, to see what a Muslim cleric and scholar in a majority Muslim country says about Islam. I turn, therefore, to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the creation of an Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979. On this very question of whether Islam is a religion of peace, Khomeini expressed himself with great clarity in a speech entitled <i>Islam is not a Religion of Pacifists</i>, as follows:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and <i> hadiths</i> [sayings of Muhammad, the founder of Islam] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[4]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">It would appear that, concerning the nature of Islam, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini disagrees with the head of the Catholic Church, the future King of England, and the President of the United States. Benedict XVI says that Islam is “a religion of peace, tolerance, and love”; Prince Charles, claiming the authority of the Qur’an, says that Islam is about “equity and compassion”; and George Bush “defend[ed] Islam as a religion of peace, not terrorism.” But Khomeini 1) called Islam a religion of war, 2) he called for killing “all the unbelievers,” and 3) he was a major sponsor of terrorism around the world. Of course, Khomeini has been called a ‘fundamentalist,’ a ‘fanatic,’ a ‘radical,’ and an ‘Islamist,’ which is supposed to mean that he does not represent mainstream orthodox Islam. However, it is worth pointing out that unlike Pope Benedict, Prince Charles, or President Bush, <i>who are not even Muslims</i>, Khomeini was a widely respected cleric and scholar within Islam. And it is worth noting also that Khomeini bases his views on the Qur’an and the sayings of Muhammad.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-weight: normal;">In order to establish whether Khomeini was inside or outside what has traditionally been the Muslim mainstream, I shall now turn to the views of medieval Islamic scholars and see whether they are any different from Khomeini's. Then I will examine the views of modern Muslim authorities whom Western officials and the Western mass media have gone out of their way to praise as great ‘moderates,’ and again test to see whether their views are at all different from Khomeini’s. Done with that, I will examine how much room there is for interpreting Muhammad’s legacy in order to produce that phenomenon we keep hearing about: ‘moderate Islam.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 130%;">Medieval Islam and its understanding of jihad</span> </span><br /><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Medieval Islam, like modern Islam, was not a monolithic religion: there were sharp controversies, and different scholars defended contrasting views on many different points. I make this clear at the outset because whenever one talks about religion accusations easily fly that one has ‘painted with a broad brush’ and ignored the ideological diversity. And sure enough, this sometimes happens. We must indeed be fair to the various views within Islam, but we must also recognize that in a book-based religion the sacred texts will tether the debates around a center of gravity. By measuring the distance that separates the various disputants we can identify the point around which they all circle, thus recognizing the ideological diversity but characterizing also the broad agreement that keeps the disputants in the same intellectual community.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I will examine the views of Abū Muhammad ‘Alī ibn Ahmad ibn Sa‘īd ibn Hazm (or Ibn Hazm, for mercy’s sake), relying on the French scholar Roger Arnaldez, who wrote in 1962 an article entitled</span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><i style="font-weight: normal;"> Holy War According to Ibn Hazm of Córdoba</i><span style="font-weight: normal;">, where he examines the medieval jurist’s views on the topic of </span><i style="font-weight: normal;">jihad</i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> as expressed in his </span><i style="font-weight: normal;">Kittab al-Muhalla</i><span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"> I have chosen Ibn Hazm because he was 1) from a wealthy and politically powerful family in Muslim Córdoba (Spain), 2) advisor to the caliphs of the imperial Ummayad dynasty in the 12 century, and 3) one of the most prolific and influential theorists in Islam. <i>Ibn Hazm was mainstream. </i>Another reason is that Ibn Hazm sought to write a polemic attacking the controversies that existed within Islam in his time. Arnaldez explains that in his writings Ibn Hazm expresses “profound disgust” for the Muslim society in which he lives; his “purpose [is to] jolt and rouse a Muslim community that he considers to have fallen completely into religious decadence.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[6]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"> The mistaken interpretations of other Muslim scholars were, in his view, responsible for the sad state of Muslim society, and Ibn Hazm worked hard to refute these rival views. So by examining his writings we can see what distance separated his views from those of his opponents, and in this way identify the intellectual center of gravity of medieval Islamic civilization.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">In order to follow Roger Arnaldez my readers should know that Islam traditionally divides the world into two regions, <i>Dar al Islam</i>, and <i>Dar al Harb</i>. The first means the ‘House of Islam’: the region where Muslims are a majority and politically dominant; the second, revealingly, means the ‘House of War’: the rest of the world, where Muslims are not yet dominant.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;">What did Ibn Hazm think of <i>jihad</i>? “As for holy war,” Arnaldez explains, “it is clear that we do not find in Ibn Hazm’s writings any attempt to spiritualize the notion. For him, the <i> jihad</i> remains essentially a war waged with arms…”</span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[7]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Summarizing Ibn Hazm’s philosophy, Arnaldez says:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“<i>Jihad</i> is an obligation incumbent upon all Muslims. But when some of them fulfill it, drive back the enemy and bring war (<i>gazwa</i>) to his home territory, when they defend the frontier towns, the others are relieved of this obligation… Nevertheless, in the case of an emergency, every believer who has no serious impediment can be called up to fight. The Muslim in the <i>Dar al Harb</i> who receives orders to fight must obey, unless he has a valid excuse. Ibn Hazm does not mean that the Muslims, even those who are in fact relieved of the obligation, should dissociate themselves from the <i>jihad</i> on the pretext that it is not a personal requirement in the highest degree (<i>fard ‘ayn</i>). The texts that he cites are typical of his concern for keeping [all] the believers [whether or not directly involved in killing infidels] involved. The Qur’an, in many verses, insists on this duty: Offer your help, whether you have little or much weight, wage <i>jihad</i> by enlisting your property and your persons. Now, Ibn Hazm says that this is a ‘general’ command, since there is no one who is not ‘either light or heavy.’ According to one <i>hadith</i>, ‘he who dies without having waged war (<i>wa lam yagzu</i>), or without having harbored the hope of doing so (<i>wa lam yuhaddith bihl nafsahu</i>), dies in a sort of hypocrisy.’ According to another, the Prophet [Muhammad] declared: ‘No abandonment [of the cause] after victory, but <i>jihad</i> and steadfast resolve (<i>niyya</i>). And if you are called, come to their aid.’ It seems therefore, that besides the war, strictly speaking, there is something like a permanent psychological preparedness for war. In this latent form, the <i>jihad </i>must not cease.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[8]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">In other words, for Ibn Hazm <i>jihad </i>is much more<i> </i>than armed combat against infidels to expand the frontiers of <i>Dar al Islam</i>; <i> jihad </i>is the <i>total </i>contribution that every Muslim makes <i> all the time</i>, in <i>every </i>way possible (excepting occasional valid excuses) toward the success of the permanent war waged on the line dividing <i>Dar al Islam </i>from <i>Dar al Harb</i>. Arnaldez cites what Ibn Hazm -- basing himself on the <i>hadiths </i>and the Qur’an -- considers the Islamic obligations incumbent on non-combatants, and then makes the following comment: “This text is interesting because it shows the antiquity of a very broad concept of the <i>jihad</i>, which consists of making a fundamental commitment to obey God in everything.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[9]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> The point of obeying God in everything is to maximize the probability of success for armed combat on the frontiers of Islam: one’s whole life must be oriented toward this goal. As the scholar Jacques Ellul once observed, “<i>jihad </i>is an institution and not an event -- that is, it is part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span lang="ES-MX" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[10]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The key point is this: in the context of what he writes, if Ibn Hazm was “profoundly disgusted” with the Islamic society of his times, then he was upset that Muslims were going soft, distracting themselves from their supreme obligation: war. Since Ibn Hazm was influential, it follows that in medieval Islam moderation was perceived to be <i> heterodox</i>, producing in reaction authoritative accusations of betrayal of Islam.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">But Arnaldez explains that for Ibn Hazm “it is not enough to be a mercenary run amok to enter Paradise.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[11]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> The Muslim jurist took pains to clarify how a good Muslim wages <i>jihad</i>, by following the law in everything even as he kills the infidel.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Against those who say that if two Muslims face three or more of the enemy it is legal for them to flee (but not before), Ibn Hazm demonstrates, with asperity, that the Qur’anic verse on which his opponents base their affirmation has been interpreted in a frankly absurd pseudo-literal manner. Islam does not specify any number. The Muslim must always err on the side of attack even when the enemy’s strength is far superior, retreating only when this is tactically advisable to wage a better battle. Ibn Hazm doesn’t go so far as to defend an obligation to ‘martyrdom’ (a suicidal attack), but he does make it clear that martyrdom is positively valued.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[12]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;">Abu Bakr, another Muslim jurist, recommends not to cut any fruit trees or to destroy the cultivated lands of the enemy. Ibn Hazm replies that “in enemy territory it is permissible to burn the produce of the land, the trees and the vineyards,” because the very “Prophet [Muhammad] set fire to the palm groves of the Banu ‘l-Nadir, a Jewish tribe of Medina.” But Abu Bakr is within his rights to make his recommendation, concedes Ibn Hazm, because there is not in fact an <i>obligation</i> to destroy everything, merely a permission to do so, and the decision in each particular case must be made by the commander.</span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[13]</a></span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">The great Malikite and Hanafite currents within Islam allow the killing of all of the domestic animals which the infidels possess because “war should bring destruction upon the enemy, and everything that is not consumed by the Muslim invader must be rendered unusable.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[14]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> But Ibn Hazm replies -- in marked contrast with his views on the destruction of lands and crops -- that this is forbidden, and that the domestic animals of the infidels may not even be harmed (except for the pigs, for these must all be killed). </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Although the foregoing reveals that for Ibn Hazm not everything is allowed in war, he nevertheless agrees that against the infidels themselves practically anything is permitted. For example, as Arnaldez explains, Ibn Hazm maintains that;</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“The lives of women and children must be spared, at least when they are not fighting in the ranks with the men. If they are struck down in the course of a nighttime attack (<i>bayat</i>) or unintentionally in the fray, there is no crime. Apart from these two exceptions, it is permitted to kill all infidels, whether combatants or not: merchants, hired servants or common laborers, old men, peasants, bishops, priests or monks, the blind or the lame, without a single exception. Some authors cite various <i>hadiths</i> in favor of other exceptions: old men, monks, merchants. Ibn Hazm rejects them all. Nor does he admit that the permission to kill is limited to combatants. As a justification for his thesis, he recalls the Prophet’s [Muhammad’s] extermination of all the men in the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza, who were put to death without exception, while the women and the children were sold as slaves.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn14a" name="_ftnref14a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">[14a]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">(<a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/art.htm"><span style="color: #313d6a;">It is worth pointing out that Muhammad had done this with the Banu Qurayza after they had <i>willingly surrendered</i> to Muhammad following his seige of their stronghold</span></a>.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn14b" name="_ftnref14b" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue;">[14b]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">)</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Emphasizing his point, Ibn Hazm affirms that, according to the Prophet Muhammad, it is even legal to kill a very old man whose mind no longer works very well if he never “made</span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> <i style="font-weight: normal;">islam,</i><span style="font-weight: normal;">” which is to say if he never </span><i style="font-weight: normal;">submitted to Allah</i><span style="font-weight: normal;">, thus converting to the true religion (the meaning of ‘Islam,’ in English translation, is usually rendered as ‘submission’).</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">‘War booty’ refers to that property of infidels which the Muslim army takes by force. Many Muslim scholars defended the view that, in many cases, even if the property of a Muslim were found among the war booty (for example, a slave who had escaped to <i>Dar al Harb</i>), this property should not be returned to the Muslim owner but divided among the soldiers. That such an opinion should have been so widespread provokes Arnaldez to comment: “This teaching is interesting because it shows the importance that the Muslims attributed to the division of booty [among the soldiers], over and above any other consideration.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[15]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Division of the booty is obviously a strong incentive for Muslims to wage war. But Ibn Hazm carefully points out that an infidel cannot legally own what was once the property of a Muslim, because he is a dirty infidel, and so the soldiers may not take another Muslim’s property, even should they find it among the war booty. As Arnaldez says, “The very important thing about these indignant reactions is that Ibn Hazm affirms therein that only Muslim law counts, even when it is a question of non-Muslims”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[16]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> It also reveals that Ibn Hazm perceived many Muslim mercenaries to be beyond the pale, but not because they were in the habit of murdering all infidel men and enslaving the women and children (he was in warm agreement with <i>that</i>), but because they took the property of Muslims found in the war booty.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">It is important to see this: <i>the problem was not that Muslim soldiers were genocidal</i> <i>but corrupt</i>. Here lay the decadence of medieval Muslim society that so disgusted Ibn Hazm.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">On the topic of lying to the infidels, Ibn Hazm defends the view that this is not a sin: treaties and oaths with infidels have no validity and are made to be broken.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[17]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> What would be a sin against a Muslim is justified with an infidel because the defeat of infidels is the whole point of Islam.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The jurist Abu Hanifa maintained that if an infidel in <i>Dar al Harb </i>converted to Islam and stayed there until the Muslims conquered his country, he should remain a free man when the conquest happened and keep all of his movable property. His children who were not yet of age would also become automatically Muslims and keep their freedom. But the convert’s land, and the fetus in the womb of his wife, even though Muslim, is part of the war booty (in Islamic law it is permissible for a slave to be Muslim). And if the convert had migrated to <i>Dar al Islam</i>, says Abu Hanifa, then everything he left behind becomes part of the war booty when the conquest happens, and will be divided among the soldiers. The same happens if he first came to <i>Dar al Islam </i>as an infidel and then submitted, with the difference that, in this latter case, his children are not automatically Muslims and form part of the war booty.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Ibn Hazm rejects all of Abu Hanifa's teachings because they do not produce the proper incentive for conversion to Islam: the laws must be designed so that infidels realize that the way to protect themselves from Muslim soldiers is to convert. So Ibn Hazm states that he who submits to Allah may keep his children and all his property regardless of where he finds himself when the Muslims conquer his country. The exceptions are the wife and those children who are already adults: these may legitimately be considered part of the war booty, probably because, being adults, they may prove difficult to indoctrinate and hence it is better to enslave them.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[18]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;">This will suffice. The distance that existed between the very influential Ibn Hazm and his opponents does not allow us to say that any medieval jurist defended Islam as ‘the religion of peace.’ Clearly, they were all agreed that Islam was a religion of war -- and <i>terrorist</i> war at that. This was the ideological center of gravity, based on the actions and sayings of Muhammad, <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/art.htm" target="_blank"> <span style="color: #313d6a;">who was fond of exterminating infidels and in particular Jews</span></a>.</span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn14b" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue;">[14b]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> The disagreements among the medieval Islamic jurists were about just how much terrorist destruction it was lawful to apply, and the specific manner of it. It follows, therefore, that the opinion of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini -- and not that of Pope Benedict XVI, Prince Charles of Wales, or President George W. Bush -- is the one that best matches the medieval Islamic tradition</span></span>.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 130%;">According to Western officials and the mainstream mass media, what is a modern ‘moderate Muslim’?</span> </span><br /><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">You may remember the civil wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. Much of this happened in a place called Bosnia, populated by Slavic Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. One of the main protagonists in the Bosnian civil wars was the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">NATO backed Alija Izetbegovic with force because, NATO officials insisted, Izetbegovic was a moderate Muslim trying to preserve a democratic, tolerant, and multi-ethnic Bosnia against what the same NATO officials claimed were the racist and genocidal attacks of the Bosnian Serbs. The Western mass media by and large repeated this representation as if it were obviously true. Here follow a few samples of how Alija Izetbegovic was represented.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">In an <span style="font-weight: bold;">official statement</span>, the US State Department said after Alija Izetbegovic’s death:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“President Izetbegovic’s personal courage helped the Bosnian people endure one of Europe's greatest tragedies since World War II. His determined leadership was instrumental in Bosnia and Herzegovina remaining a unified multiethnic country.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[19]</span></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Warren Zimmerman, former US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, wrote in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Foreign Affairs</span>:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Izetbegovic was…A devout Muslim but no extremist, he consistently advocated the preservation of a multinational Bosnia.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[20]</span></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Financial Times</span>, in a headline, called him a</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Former rebel with a pacifist cause.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[21]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold;"> <span style="color: #383838;">The</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Observer</span><i> </i>stated:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Izetbegovic is rapidly emerging as an intelligent and moderate mediator in the conflict in Yugoslavia.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[22]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838;">The Independent</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim President of Bosnia, has tried to steer a moderate course.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[23]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838;">The New York Times</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“The Bosnian President, Mr. Izetbegovic, a Muslim Slav regarded by Western diplomats as a moderate.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[24]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838; font-weight: bold;">The New York Times</span><i><span style="color: #383838;"> </span></i></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">again:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“President Alija Izetbegovic, a moderate Muslim Slav…”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[25]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838;">The Washington Pos</span><span style="color: #383838;">t</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Bosnian President Alija IZETBEGOVIC, 70, a moderate Muslim often accused by the Serbs of trying to set up a fundamentalist Islamic state…”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[26]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold;"> <span style="color: #383838;">Newsweek</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> magazine,</span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“The government of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic…has always been committed to a multiethnic society.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[27]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">And <span style="font-weight: bold;">Newsweek</span> again:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“The moderate Muslim-led government of Alija Izetbegovic…”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn28" name="_ftnref28" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[28]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold;"> <span style="color: #383838;">Knight-Ridder News Service</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">, in reference to Izetbegovic’s movement, stated that,</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“The Bosnian [Muslims] are struggling for democracy, human rights, and a multiethnic country.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn29" name="_ftnref29" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[29]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838;">Inter-Press Service</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Izetbegovic, a moderate Muslim intellectual…”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn30" name="_ftnref30" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[30]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838;">United Press International</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim nationalist who is considered a pro-reform moderate”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn31" name="_ftnref31" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[31]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #383838;">Associated Press</span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Izetbegovic, 66, won a reputation as a moderate…”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn32" name="_ftnref32" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[32]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 1in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">You can see from the above why many people got the impression that Alija Izetbegovic was a ‘moderate Muslim’: the media said that he was. But it would be silly to form an opinion of Izetbegovic from media claims when Izetbegovic himself laid out in black and white what he believed. In a book titled <i>Islamic Declaration </i>(sometimes translated as <i> Islamic Manifesto</i>),</span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> and first published around 1970, Alija Izetbegovic wrote:</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Oh Prophet, incite the believers to combat. If there can be found among you twenty who will endure, they will vanquish two hundred, if one hundred can be found, they will vanquish a thousand infidels, because they are people such as cannot understand.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span lang="ES-MX"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn33" name="_ftnref33" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[33]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">And also:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“And combat on Allah’s path those who combat you, and don’t disobey. True, Allah does not love the disobedient! And kill them where you will find them; chase them from where they chased you: association is a graver sin than murder. But don’t fight them near the sacred Mosque unless they fight you there first. And if they fight you there, kill them then. Such is the retribution against infidels. Should they cease, Allah is, surely, forgiving and merciful.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span lang="ES-MX"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn33a" name="_ftnref33a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">[33a]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">I think this line in particular is quite revealing: “association [with an infidel] is a graver sin than murder [of a fellow Muslim],” because it tells us what the Qur’anic attitude -- and Izetbegovic’s -- is toward Muslims who wanted to get along with non-Muslims.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Now, the above two excerpts are quotations from the Qur’an that Izetbegovic reproduced without any comment or adornment, so he considered them self-evident. Indeed, they are quite clear. It is significant that these Quranic quotes appear in a section with the title: “The Relations Between the Islamic Society and Other Societies” (the entire section consists of similar Quranic quotes, all of them equally chilling, and all of them without comment or adornment). Consistent with this, Izetbegovic affirmed in the same book that “It is not in fact possible for there to be any peace or coexistence between ‘the Islamic Religion’ and non-Islamic social and political institutions.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn34" name="_ftnref34" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[34]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> He also asserted that Muslims were required to take power by coup as soon as they were numerous enough to succeed.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> As far back as 1983, Izetbegovic had been jailed by the government of Yugoslavia for inciting Muslims against non-Muslims in Bosnia.</span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn35" name="_ftnref35" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span lang="ES-MX">[35]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;">Izetbegovic re-released his book -- which was a call to genocide -- as his election platform in the 1990 Bosnian elections, and subsequently recreated the SS Handzar Division. This had been a terrorist army created out of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim volunteers who committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma (‘Gypsies’) in WWII, and launched by Hajj Amin al Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem. Hajj Amin al Husseini was the father of the so-called ‘Palestinian movement’ and the top leader, with Adolf Eichmann, of the German Nazi Final Solution.</span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn36" name="_ftnref36" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[36]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;"> Izetbegovic’s resuscitated Handzar behaved precisely as the original, killing great numbers of innocent Serbs (and the few Jews and Roma that could still be found) during the 1990s. To learn about all this, read HIR’s three-part series:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN BOSNIA?: Were the Serbs the criminal aggressors, as the official story claims, or were they the victims?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 19 August 2005; by Francisco Gil-White.</span></span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija1.htm" target="_blank"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija1.htm</span></a></span></span></div></blockquote></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The views of Alija Izetbegovic, whom Western officials and the mainstream mass media lionized left and right as a great ‘moderate,’ agree perfectly with those of Ibn Hazm and the Ayatollah Khomeini.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><b>He is not an isolated case</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Somebody else who is sold by Western officials and the mainstream mass media as a ‘moderate Muslim’ is Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. ‘Abu Mazen’), the current leader of Al Fatah and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). In a different piece I have analyzed the representation of Mahmoud Abbas in the mass media,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn37" name="_ftnref37" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[37]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> and I will reproduce that analysis here.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">I ran a little test on September 20, 2005, that anybody with access to the Lexis-Nexis Academic database can easily repeat.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">First, limiting myself to “major papers,” I asked the database to give me any newspaper articles that mentioned the word ‘antisemite’ or ‘anti-Semite’ within ten words of ‘Abu Mazen,’ which is Mahmoud Abbas’s nickname. I got nothing. Zip. Then I tried the word ‘terrorist’ within ten words of ‘Abu Mazen.’ This gave lots of results but when I started reading the articles I noticed that the word ‘terrorist’ and the nickname ‘Abu Mazen’ usually did not even appear in the same sentence.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn38" name="_ftnref38" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[38]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> These articles were not saying that Abu Mazen was a terrorist in the least. I was looking for something like, ‘the terrorist Abu Mazen,’ ‘Abu Mazen, the terrorist,’ ‘Abu Mazen, who is a terrorist’ -- anything like that. So I shortened the search to ‘Abu Mazen’ within 5 words of ‘terrorist.’ This time I got only 62 results, and as I started reading the articles I found the same phenomenon: the word ‘terrorist’ would end one sentence and the name ‘Abu Mazen’ would begin the next, as in “...and ceasing the targeted killings of suspected terrorist leaders. Abu Mazen may represent Israel’s best chance...”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn39" name="_ftnref39" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[39]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Or else these were sentences that explicitly alleged that Abu Mazen was not a terrorist, as in “Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said: ‘Contrary to Arafat, Abu Mazen is against terrorist activity...’”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn40" name="_ftnref40" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[40]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">So, according to my test, nobody much seems to accuse Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) of being a terrorist. That’s interesting because Fatah is one of the world’s worst terrorist organizations, and “Abu Mazen is... one of the founders of Fatah, one of the original Arafat band of brothers.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn41" name="_ftnref41" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[41]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Moreover, Fatah is the controlling organ in the PLO, and as early as 1992 the PLO made clear that Mahmoud Abbas would be Yasser Arafat’s replacement.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn42" name="_ftnref42" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[42]</span></a></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">I tried one more search. This time I asked the database for appearances of ‘Abu Mazen’ within ten words of ‘moderate.’ Now I got a grand total of 121 results. Below I reproduce not a cherry-picked selection of these but simply the first five in the chronologically ordered list. You will notice an obvious -- and lightning quick -- progression.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">1) 1992 (<i>Financial Times</i>). “Mr [Mahmoud] Abbas, whose nom de guerre is Abu Mazen and who is regarded as a moderate...”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn43" name="_ftnref43" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[43]</span></a></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Notice the words “who is regarded as.” They seem innocent, but they are not. If some people regard Abbas as a moderate, it should matter to the reader who these people are. Are these people sane or insane? Knowledgeable or ignorant? Impartial or biased? All of these things can potentially be ascertained by the reader if only the identities of those who supposedly consider Abbas a moderate are not withheld. Why is the <i>Financial Times</i> leaving out this vital information? The <i>effect</i> of this prose, at least, will be to make most readers think that it is a scientific and/or widespread opinion that Abbas is a moderate (and the first hypothesis for any behavior ought to be that its actual effects were intended).</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">2) 1993 (<i>Financial Times</i>). “Mr Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the PLO moderate. . .”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn44" name="_ftnref44" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[44]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">3) 1993 (<i>Financial Times</i>). “Mr Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)...a key moderate...”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn45" name="_ftnref45" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[45]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The views at the <i>Financial Times</i> matured quickly in a consistent direction: Abbas began as “a moderate” according to implied but unidentified multitudes, and a year later became “the PLO moderate” (said in passing because it is supposedly so obvious), and also “a key moderate.”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Could Abbas become any more moderate? Yes he could.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">4) 1994 (<i>The Observer</i>). “Abu Mazen, the leading moderate in the PLO. . .”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn46" name="_ftnref46" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[46]</span></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">But with a little effort, who’s to say that Abbas could not become an arch-moderate?</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">5) 1995 (<i>The Guardian</i>). “...the arch-moderate Abu Mazen...”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn47" name="_ftnref47" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[47]</span></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">This is now the ceiling; by 1995, the propaganda had reached its final destination. Abbas had become Gandhi, practically.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Now, here is what ought to be terribly surprising to anybody who was taught by the mainstream media, the US government, and the Israeli government, to think of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as a moderate: After Yasser Arafat died, the Fatah terrorists who publicly cried against ‘peace’ and promised to go on killing innocent Israelis were precisely those most eager to see Mahmoud Abbas succeed Yasser Arafat as Fatah chief.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">An <i>Associated Press</i> wire dated 27 November 2004 reports that:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“. . .in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, about 1,000 Palestinians -- including scores of armed, masked militants affiliated with Fatah -- demonstrated for the continuation of the uprising.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">The demonstrators also declared their support for Mahmoud Abbas, the new head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah’s candidate in Jan. 9 presidential elections.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn48" name="_ftnref48" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[48]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade branch of Fatah was passionate, taking Abbas’s side vociferously when it seemed like Marwan Barghouti, another Fatah leader, might seek the post:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Abbas already has been nominated as Fatah’s presidential candidate, so Barghouti must run as an independent. But as a leading Fatah member, he would likely undermine Abbas’ prospects. . . Zakaria Zubeidi, the 29-year-old West Bank leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a violent group linked to Fatah, said he would back Abbas. ‘Barghouti. . .should resign from Fatah,’ he told the <i>Associated Press</i>.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn49" name="_ftnref49" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[49]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, as <i>Newsday</i> once explained, is “the deadliest Palestinian militia,”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn50" name="_ftnref50" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[50]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> so what we see above is that the most extreme Arab terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza are also the most enthusiastic supporters of Mahmoud Abbas.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><b>Why? Because Mahmoud Abbas is an arch-moderate?</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">As we’ve seen above, Abbas is one of the founders of Fatah. The big force behind the creation of Fatah was the afore-mentioned Hajj Amin al Husseini, leader of the German Nazi Final Solution.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn51" name="_ftnref51" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[51]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> He received the best anti-Jewish training in the world, because <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/cia-fatah.htm" target="_blank"> <span style="color: #313d6a;">Husseini supervised his training by German Nazis who were in Cairo to improve Egypt's intelligence and military apparatus after the defeat of 1948</span></a>.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn51a" name="_ftnref51a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue;">[51a]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> And as historian Howard Sachar explains, “from the outset... the Fatah’s reputation depended largely upon the success of its Moslem traditionalist approach of <i>jihad</i> against Israel.”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn52" name="_ftnref52" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[52]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Mahmoud Abbas is one of the authors of the strategy of promising ‘peace’ to the Israelis in order to divide them and gain a better position from which to exterminate them.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn53" name="_ftnref53" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""><span style="color: blue;">[53]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> This strategy eventually became the Oslo 'Peace' Process, and Abbas's importance to it may be gauged by the fact that the Oslo process resulted from “secret talks conducted [by]...Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, and Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas].”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn53a" name="_ftnref53a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue;">[53a]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> It is <i>Abbas's </i>signature, not Arafat's, that graces the agreement, and not coincidentally he is called the "architect" of Oslo.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn53b" name="_ftnref53b" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue;">[53b]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> The entire strategy follows Al Fatah's “Moslem traditionalist approach of <i>jihad</i>,” because traditionally, from ancient times to the present, Muslim clerics and scholars have defended, as we saw in the case of Ibn Hazm's treatise on <i>jihad</i>, that it is okay to lie to the infidel in order to destroy him. Western governments and the mainstream media assist these lies when they represent Mahmoud Abbas as a supposed "arch-moderate." </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Given their obvious ideology, if Alija Izetbegovic and Mahmoud Abbas are the modern ‘moderate Muslims,’ then we have once again identified what continues to be the center of gravity in the culture of Islam: terrorist war against non-Muslims</span></span>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 130%;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 130%;">Do genuine ‘moderate Muslims’ exist?</span> </span><br /><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">They do, in fact.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">For example, in <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija2.htm" style="color: #313d6a; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Part 2</a> and <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija3.htm" style="color: #313d6a; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Part 3</a> of the above-mentioned HIR series on Bosnia, you will learn that a majority of Muslims in Bosnia voted against Alija Izetbegovic and for the Bosnian Muslim candidate who advocated peace with non-Muslims: Fikret Abdic. This was a <i>very slim</i> majority, however, which helps explain why the moderate Bosnian Muslims did not succeed. In fairness, though, the support for Izetbegovic coming from the NATO powers and the Muslim states played a larger role.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Because a majority of Muslims had voted for the moderate Fikret Abdic, Alija Izetbegovic, supported by NATO and the Muslim states, illegally seized power. When that happened, some of Abdic’s supporters decided to fight rather than be ruled by the racist Izetbegovic, and they liberated the so-called ‘Bihac pocket,’ fighting also alongside the Bosnian Serbs to preserve a peaceful, multiethnic Bosnia.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The details of all this are in the above-mentioned HIR series on Bosnia, but consider here just the following wire from <i>Agence France Presse</i>, entitled “Bihac refugees defy Izetbegovic plea to return home.” The Muslim refugees -- refugees from Izetbegovic’s slaughters against dissenters within his community -- obviously did not trust his promises that they would be given amnesty, and chose to go on fighting. I have placed the key paragraph in italics.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">[<i>Agence France Presse</i> wire begins here]</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Some 10,000 refugees from Bosnia’s breakaway Bihac enclave remained entrenched here Saturday between Croatian army and rebel Serb forces, ignoring appeals from Sarajevo authorities for them to return home.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Izetbegovic on Friday offered fresh guarantees for the refugees’ safety if they returned from the UN-controlled neutral zone between Croatian army lines and rebel Serb forces to the western enclave of Bihac, the former stronghold of routed rebel Moslem leader Fikret Abdic.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">But there were no signs that the refugees, many wearing military uniforms, were ready to go back to Bihac.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“We will only return home if (Bosnian President Alija) Izetbegovic’s army withdraws completely from the Bihac pocket,” said one of the refugees, Dzenad Seferic. None of his fellow refugees nearby contradicted his sentiments.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Seferic added that the refugees would stay put until Bihac was “placed under the control of the UN Protection Force and [Fikret] Abdic returns as our head of state.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><i> <span style="color: #383838;">Another refugee, Sefer Adic, 43, said he would rather die than return home.</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><i><span style="color: #383838;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><i> <span style="color: #383838;">“The world has not understood that Izetbegovic is an assassin, a (Moslem) fundamentalist who represents a danger for the whole of Europe,” he charged. “Of course we are Moslems. But we are moderates, not like those in Sarajevo.”</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><i><span style="color: #383838;"><br /></span></i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The Bosnian president had asked European Union officials in the zone Friday to assure the refugees that an amnesty for “soldiers and civilians” in the enclave had been “extended indefinitely.”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Sarajevo said the amnesty covered Abdic’s routed troops, provided they surrendered to government forces [i.e. to Izetbegovic’s illegal government] within seven days.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Croatia has refused entry to the refugees, who fled Bihac fearing reprisals after Abdic’s defeat last week by the Bosnian government army [i.e. Izetbegovic’s illegal ‘government’ army, made up significantly of foreign mujahedin terrorists sent by Iran (<a href="http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/deja.htm" style="color: #313d6a; text-decoration: underline;">see here</a>)], and a dozen Croatian armored vehicles were deployed Saturday to prevent them from moving beyond the UN-controlled zone.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftn54" name="_ftnref54" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title="">[54]</a></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">[<i>Agence France Presse</i> wire begins here]</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">There were lots of moderate Muslims in Bosnia, and, as we see above, they were concerned about the impact of Izetbegovic’s terrorism on the rest of Europe: they cared about their fellow human beings, even when these fellow humans were non-Muslims.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">What I wish to impress upon you, however, is the position of a moderate Muslim in the ideological context of Islamic culture. As far as orthodox Islam is concerned, a moderate Muslim <i>is a heretic</i>, and there is precious little support for his position in the Muslim texts. Thus, moderate Muslims can easily be attacked by Muslim clerics and scholars such as Ibn Hazm and the Ayatollah Khomeini for deviating from what the Qur’an demands: the slaughter of infidels. The position of ‘moderate Muslims’ within the culture of Islam is therefore quite fragile, because the trend among Muslim clerics and scholars, taking their cue from the Qur’an, is to preach terrorist war. The moderate Muslim who wishes to live in peace with non-Muslims will thus be told that he is a traitor to Islam. You may think the solution is simple: moderate Muslims, who are obviously uncomfortable with their own religion, should convert to a different religion or become atheists. But this, you see, is punishable by death: one has become an infidel. And since Western governments turn out to be assisting Muslims who advocate terrorism against infidels, it is obvious that moderate Muslims cannot succeed.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">From this point of view, the spread of Islam must be understood as a danger to world peace, notwithstanding the fact that moderate Muslims indeed exist.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">But why do Western leaders and the media completely misrepresent Islam as ‘the religion of peace’? As you may recall, we began with quotes showing the president of the United States, and the Catholic Pope, to be defending the view, <i>to the millions of Westerners whom they influence</i>, that Islam is a religion of peace. What is the problem, here?</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">That will be the subject of a future HIR piece on the topic of Islam.</span> </span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><img border="0" height="50" src="http://www.hirhome.com/logo-HiR.gif" width="60" /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> <span style="font-weight: 400;"> <span style="color: #383838;"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">The next piece in this series is:</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">"Dhimmitude: The fates of non-Muslims in Islamic society"; from THE CULTURE OF ISLAM; Historical and Investigative Research; 9 September 2007; by Francisco Gil-White</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;"><u><span style="color: #4d6b8a;"> </span></u></span></a></span><span style="color: #4d6b8a; font-size: 100%;"><u><span style="color: #4d6b8a;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture02.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture02.htm</span></a></span></u></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> <span style="color: #313d6a;"> _____________________________________________________</span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0pt;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> <span style="color: #313d6a;">Footnotes and Further Reading</span><span style="color: #313d6a;"><br /></span><span style="color: #313d6a;">_____________________________________________________</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> </span> </span></div><div id="ftn55" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Christians in crisis, The Jerusalem Post, December 24, 2006, Sunday, OPINION; Pg. 13, 712 words</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn2" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> The Pope was wrong on jihad, too, South China Morning Post, September 23, 2006 Saturday, NEWS; Pg. 13, 1014 words, Riaz Hassan</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref2a" name="_ftn2a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="color: blue;">[2a]</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span></span> <span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Prince Charles of Arabia”; by Ronni L. Gordon and David M. Stillman; Middle East Quarterly; September 1997.</span> <span style="color: #4d6b8a; font-size: 100%;"> <u> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">http://www.meforum.org/article/356</a></u></span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn3" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="line-height: 150%;"> [3]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bush goes face to face to build anti-terror alliance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 18, 2001 Tuesday, Home Edition, Pg. 1A, 1015 words, SCOTT SHEPARD [nota de fotografía].</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn4" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bostom, A. G. 2005. <i>The legacy of jihad</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (p.226)</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn5" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez, R. 1962. "La guerre sainte selon Ibn Hasm de Cordoue," in <i>Études d'Orientalism dediees a la memoire de Levi-Provençal</i>, vol. 2, pp. 445-59. Paris: Masionneuve and Larose.</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Reproduced in: Bostom, A. G. 2005. <i>The legacy of jihad</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (pp,.267-81). Translation by Michel J. Miller.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn6" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[6]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.281.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn7" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[7]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.268.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn8" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[8]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez, R. 1962. "La guerre sainte selon Ibn Hasm de Cordoue," in <i>Études d'Orientalism dediees a la memoire de Levi-Provençal</i>, vol. 2, pp. 445-59. Paris: Masionneuve and Larose.</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">Reproduced in: Bostom, A. G. 2005. <i>The legacy of jihad</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (pp,.267-81). Translation by Michel J. Miller.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn56" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[9]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.271.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn10" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="line-height: 150%;"> [10]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Les Chretiens d'Orient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude: VIIe-XXe siecle. (1991).</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"> Translated to English in: Ye'or, B. 1996. <i>The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam.</i> Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (pp.18-19).</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn11" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[11]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.271.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn12" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[12]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), pp.272-73.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn13" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[13]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), pp.273-74.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn14" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[14]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.274.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn15" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref14a" name="_ftn14a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="color: blue;">[14a]</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.275.</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref14b" name="_ftn14b" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="color: blue;">[14b]</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bostom, A. G. 2005. <i>The legacy of jihad</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (pp.17-19).</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/art.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;"> </span></a></span><span style="color: #4d6b8a; font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/art.htm" target="_blank"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">http://www.hirhome.com/islam/art.htm</span></a></span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[15]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.277.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn16" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[16]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), p.278.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn17" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[17]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), pp.278-79.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn18" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[18]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Arnaldez 1960 (<i>in </i>Bostom 2005), pp.279-80.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn19" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[19]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> M2 Presswire; October 21, 2003; Headline: US Dept Of State - Death of former President Alija Izetbegovic - Press Statement - Adam Ereli</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn20" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[20]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> ‘The last ambassador: a memoir of the collapse of Yugoslavia.’ By Warren Zimmerman; Foreign Affairs March-April 1995 v74 n2 p2(19) (8919 words)</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn21" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[21]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Financial Times (London), March 7, 1992, Saturday, Pg. 6, 1108 words, Man in the News:</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn22" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[22]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bosnia dragged into the bloodbath: Serbia continues its march to the Adriatic, The Observer, September 15 1991, Pg. 13, 957 words, NICK THORPE, BANJA LUKA</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn23" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[23]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Defiant Bosnia heads for showdown, The Independent (London), January 23, 1992, Thursday, FOREIGN NEWS PAGE; Page 10 , 649 words, By STEVE CRAWSHAW, East Europe Editor</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn24" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref24" name="_ftn24" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[24]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bosnia Calls Up Guard and Reserve, The New York Times, April 5, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition - Final, Section 1; Part 1; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, 681 words, By CHUCK SUDETIC, Special to The New York Times, SARAJEVO, Yugoslavia, April 4</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn25" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[25]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bosnia's Besieged Government Near Disintegration, The New York Times, May 8, 1992, Friday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 10; Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1058 words, By CHUCK SUDETIC, Special to The New York Times, SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 7</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn26" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref26" name="_ftn26" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[26]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD; How the wars began and how the world hopes to end them, The Washington Post, December 17, 1995, Sunday, Final Edition, A SECTION; Pg. A34, 991 words</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn27" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[27]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Newsweek, December 18, 1995, United States Edition, National Affairs; Pg. 32, 1240 Words, Sarajevo On The Spot, By Russell Watson And Rod Nordland</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn28" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref28" name="_ftn28" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[28]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Last Rites for Bosnia, Newsweek, May 10, 1993 , UNITED STATES EDITION, SPECIAL REPORT; Crisis In Bosnia; Pg. 30, 1207 words, By Charles Lane</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn29" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref29" name="_ftn29" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[29]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Bosnia suffers genocide as the world - and America - remains silent. (Originated from Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service) Jennifer Scarlott; Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Dec 21, 1993 p1221K5689 (696 words)</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn30" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref30" name="_ftn30" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[30]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> YUGOSLAVIA: FUTURE STILL UNCERTAIN, IPS-Inter Press Service, February 22, 1991, Friday, 621 words, by Svetislav Maksovic, BELGRADE, Feb. 22</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn31" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref31" name="_ftn31" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[31]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Officials of two republics apparently seek foreign support, United Press International, March 17, 1991, Sunday, BC cycle, International, 749 words, BY NESHO DJURIC, BELGRADE, Yugoslavia</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn32" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref32" name="_ftn32" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[32]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Moderate President No Stranger to Captivity, The Associated Press, May 3, 1992, Sunday, AM cycle, International News, 346 words, AP Photo FRA1, SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn33" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref33" name="_ftn33" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="line-height: 150%;"> [33]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Izetbegovic, Alija. 1999 [1980]<i>. Le manifeste Islamique</i> (original title<i>: Islamska deklaracija</i>). Beyrouth-Liban: Éditions Al-Bouraq (pp. 118-19).</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn34" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref33a" name="_ftn33a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">[33a]</a> </span></span> <span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> <i>Le manifeste Islamique </i>(p.118-19).</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref34" name="_ftn34" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[34]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> <i>Le manifeste Islamique </i>(p.81).</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn35" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref35" name="_ftn35" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="line-height: 150%;"> [35]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> “...The court found the accused guilty because it held that their activity had been directed against brotherhood and unity, and the equality of our nations and nationalities with a view to destroying Bosnia-Hercegovina as a Socialist Republic and thus of undermining the social order of the SFRY.</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">For the criminal act of association for the purpose of enemy activity and counter-revolutionary threatening of the social order Alija (Mustafa) Izetbegovic was sentenced to 14 years'...”</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: Copyright 1983 The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC Summary Of World Broadcasts, August 22, 1983, Monday, Part 2 Eastern Europe; B. Internal Affairs; Yugoslavia; Ee/7418/B/1; , 372 Words, Muslim Nationalists Convicted, (A) Yuqoslav News Agency 1555 Gmt 12 Aug 83 Text Of Report Belgrade Home Service 1700 Gmt 20 Aug 83</span></div></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn36" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref36" name="_ftn36" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[36]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> "How did the 'Palestinian movement' emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US"; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT, An HIR series, in four parts; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.</span> <span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm</span></a></span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn37" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref37" name="_ftn37" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[37]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> The analysis is borrowed from the section entitled “Is Mahmoud Abbas a moderate?” from the piece:</span></span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“WHAT IS SEEDS OF PEACE?: Does this US Intelligence operation groom young Arab leaders who want peace with Israel, or who wish to destroy Israel?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 21 September 2005; by Francisco Gil-White.</span> <span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/seeds.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">http://www.hirhome.com/israel/seeds.htm</span></a></span></span></div></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn38" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref38" name="_ftn38" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[38]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Here are three examples of the common pattern:</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“It is clear, however, that Arafat only acts on his own commitment to crack down on Palestinian terrorism when it is too late -- after a massive terrorist attack. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) admitted as much to the New Yorker, stating ‘until March (after the suicide bombings) we weren’t serious.’”</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: Get serious, The Jerusalem Post, December 13, 1996, Friday, OPINION; Pg. 4, 824 words</span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“Until now, Sharon, the architect of Israel's 1982 war against the PLO in Lebanon, has not softened his rejection of the PLO, calling it a terrorist organization and Arafat himself a ‘war criminal.’ The Sharon-Abu Mazen meeting was indeed a watershed event, in that it symbolizes the recognition of the PLO by the right-wing of the Likud.”</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: The Sharon watershed, The Jerusalem Post, June 30, 1997, Monday, OPINION; Pg. 6, 850 words. </span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“(b) Abu Mazen, longtime deputy to Yasir Arafat; (c) Marwan Barghouti, head of the terrorist Tanzim faction.” </span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: Office Pool, 2002 , The New York Times, December 27, 2001 Thursday, Late Edition - Final , Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 19, 705 words, By WILLIAM SAFIRE; E-mail: safire@nytimes.com, WASHINGTON</span></div></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn39" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref39" name="_ftn39" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[39]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> AN ALTERNATIVE TO ARAFAT, The Boston Globe, March 23, 2003, Sunday, ,THIRD EDITION, Pg. H10, 472 words</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn40" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref40" name="_ftn40" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[40]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Israel in warning on Arafat deadlock, The Australian, April 23, 2003 Wednesday All-round Metro Edition, WORLD; Pg. 7, 500 words, Robert Tait</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn41" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref41" name="_ftn41" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[41]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> THUS FAR AND NO FATAH FOR MR PALESTINE; Resistance is growing within the PLO over Yasser Arafat and the Israeli peace process, The Guardian (London), November 12, 1993, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 24, 1204 words, DAVID HIRST</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn42" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref42" name="_ftn42" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[42]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> “The PLO leadership has agreed that Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, will be Yasser Arafat's successor, Palestinian sources in East Jerusalem said yesterday. However other Palestinians were skeptical of the report. </span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">According to the sources, Abu Mazen, a PLO executive committee member, and two other leaders will serve as a senior committee to take some of the pressure off Arafat in light of his current health problems. </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">The Israeli Arab newspaper, published in Jerusalem, reported that the other two committee members will be Farouk Kaddoumi and Khaled al-Hassan. </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">According to the paper, Abu Mazen, 59, was born near Safed and was one of the PLO's founders. He was responsible for making contacts with Israeli leftists and supporting the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks. He studied in Moscow and has a degree in Zionist history. Abu Mazen is known to support the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, believing that such a state would eventually absorb Israel.”</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: Abu Mazen is Arafat's heir, sources say, The Jerusalem Post, June 11, 1992, Thursday, News, 464 words, Jon Immanuel and Itim</span></div></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn43" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref43" name="_ftn43" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[43]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> PLO crisis talks as Arafat is reported missing, Financial Times (London,England), April 8, 1992, Wednesday, Pg. 20, 437 words, By TONY WALKER</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn44" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref44" name="_ftn44" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[44]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Peres joins direct talks with PLO, Financial Times (London,England), September 4, 1993, Saturday, Pg. 3, 448 words, By JULIAN OZANNE and MARK NICHOLSON, JERUSALEM, CAIRO.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn45" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref45" name="_ftn45" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[45]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> How the secret deal was hatched: Only Peres' private coterie knew of talks with PLO, Financial Times (London,England), September 4, 1993, Saturday, Pg. 3, 485 words, By JULIAN OZANNE.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn46" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref46" name="_ftn46" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[46]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> THE PEACE BROKERS, The Observer, January 16, 1994, Sunday, THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE PAGE; Pg. 20, 3200 words</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn47" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref47" name="_ftn47" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[47]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> THE AXE IS SHARPENED FOR ARAFAT; He once carried the hopes of his people. Now Yasser Arafat faces their bitterness as the peace process stalls and allegations of corruption, incompetence and even collaboration dog him. In the first of three articles, DAVID HIRST looks atthe slow collapse of the latest Palestinian dream of freedom., The Guardian (London), April 15, 1995, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21, 3747 words, David Hirst</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn48" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref48" name="_ftn48" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[48]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Associated Press Online, November 27, 2004 Saturday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 991 words, Palestinian Security Unit to Be Disbanded, IBRAHIM BARZAK; Associated Press Writer, GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip.</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn49" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref49" name="_ftn49" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[49]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Barghouti Seeking Palestinian Presidency, Associated Press Online, December 1, 2004 Wednesday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 836 words, MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH; Associated Press Writer, RAMALLAH, West Bank</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn50" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref50" name="_ftn50" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[50]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Newsday (New York, NY), September 8, 2002 Sunday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION, Pg. A05, 1333 words, WEST BANK; Inside the Crucible; An occasional series on te Israel-Palestine conflict; Militia Goes More Quietly; Al-Aqsa changes tactics after losses, By Matthew McAllester. MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn51" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref51" name="_ftn51" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[51]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> "How did the 'Palestinian movement' emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US"; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT, An HIR series, in four parts; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.</span> <span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm</span></a></span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref51a" name="_ftn51a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="color: blue;">[51a]</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span></span> <span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">Al Fatah's Nazi training was CIA-sponsored; Historical and Investigative Research; 22 July 2007; by Francisco Gil-White.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/cia-fatah.htm"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;"> </span></a></span><span style="color: #4d6b8a; font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/cia-fatah.htm" target="_blank"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;"> http://www.hirhome.com/israel/cia-fatah.htm</span></a></span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn52" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref52" name="_ftn52" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[52]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> Sachar, H. 1982. A history of Israel: From the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Knopf. (pp. 698)</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div id="ftn53" style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref53" name="_ftn53" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[53]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"> 2005 -- Mahmoud Abbas, who will soon have total control over Gaza, is the one who invented the strategy of talking ‘peace’ the better to slaughter Israelis. The US ruling elite loves Mahmoud Abbas. ( This piece written before Gaza was turned over to the PLO ); from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.</span> <span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#2005"> <span style="color: #4d6b8a;">http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#2005</span></a></span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref53a" name="_ftn53a" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="color: blue;">[53a]</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span></span> <span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">THE PEACE BROKERS, The Observer, January 16, 1994, Sunday, THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE PAGE; Pg. 20, 3200 words</span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref53b" name="_ftn53b" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="color: blue;">[53b]</span></a><span style="color: blue;"> </span></span> <span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;">“Mr Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the PLO moderate who initialed last week’s draft Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in Norway”</span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: Peres joins direct talks with PLO, Financial Times (London,England), September 4, 1993, Saturday, Pg. 3, 448 words, By JULIAN OZANNE and MARK NICHOLSON, JERUSALEM, CAIRO.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">“Oslo could, perhaps, have worked. But its architect, the arch-moderate Abu Mazen, warned from the outset that it would lead ‘either to a Palestine state or the liquidation of the Palestine cause.’”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #383838; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;">SOURCE: THE AXE IS SHARPENED FOR ARAFAT; He once carried the hopes of his people. Now Yasser Arafat faces their bitterness as the peace process stalls and allegations of corruption, incompetence and even collaboration dog him. In the first of three articles, DAVID HIRST looks atthe slow collapse of the latest Palestinian dream of freedom., The Guardian (London), April 15, 1995, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21, 3747 words, David Hirst</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.hirhome.com/islam/culture01.htm#_ftnref54" name="_ftn54" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" title=""> <span style="color: blue;">[54]</span></a></span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Bihac refugees defy Izetbegovic plea to return home, Agence France Presse -- English, August 27, 1994, International news, 414 words, Sonia Bakaric, TURANJ, Croatia, Aug 27<br /><br /><br />[From <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/">Hirhome.Com</a>]</span></span></div>

The Culture of Islam

Pope Benedict XVI prays barefoot at the Blue Mosque Earlier this month [December 2006] during his visit to Istanbul, [Pope] Benedict [...

The Culture of Islam

Pope Benedict XVI prays barefoot at the Blue Mosque Earlier this month [December 2006] during his visit to Istanbul, [Pope] Benedict [...

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