Barack Obama's recent inauguration as our 44th President demonstrates the promise and progress of the unique, living American experiment in governance begun when George Washington delivered his inaugural address on April 30, 1789.

Mr. Obama's inaugural rhetoric, and symbolic granting of his first post-inauguration interview to the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyya network, emphasized the importance of the Muslim community in the United States, and a "restored" and "respectful" relationship between America and the global Muslim umma (community). The President felt compelled to tell Hisham Melham of Al Arabiyya that it was his administration's solemn duty, "...to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries." Obama reiterated  the point. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect."

As if to underscore the primacy of this outreach effort to the Islamic world, Obama characterized America itself as a country of  "Muslims, Christians, Jews" -- having in his earlier inaugural address -- disregarding actual US demography (i.e., recent Pew Data  indicating the number of US Muslims are half, or less, the number of US Jews) -- only accorded Muslims second position, after American Christians, but before American Jews, Hindus, and others. 

While several commentators, particularly Charles Krauthammer have noted how Mr. Obama's self-flagellating apologetics distort and sully the actual historical record of US actions vis a vis the Muslim world over the past three decades, I was struck by another alarming incongruity: the complete absence of any comparably expressed concerns by the new President for a much more beleaguered and vulnerable people, worldwide -- the Jews.

This unsavory rhetorical omission will almost certainly be compounded by one of Mr. Obama's looming actions, his now much anticipated (since the December 10, 2008 Chicago Tribune story, "Which Muslim capital will Barack Obama choose?" ) delivery of a "major speech" in an Islamic capital aimed, yet again, at "restoration" of US-Muslim relations.

On the one hand, the fact that Cairo, Egypt is being touted as a potential location for this conciliatory address highlights Mr. Obama's willful blindness to the pandemic of jihadism, intimately conjoined to annihilationist Islamic Jew-hatred, afflicting Muslim communities globally, including those within Europe, Canada, and the United States. Yet Cairo is also a very appropriate potential venue for Mr. Obama's pending speech. The capital of Egypt, the world's most populous Arab Muslim nation, Cairo's 1000 year old Al Azhar University (and its mosque) represents the pinnacle of Islamic religious education. Egypt also receives nearly $2 billion US aid per annum. Such American largesse, one could reasonably argue, should provide Mr. Obama persuasive leverage over our erstwhile Muslim ally -- for example, demanding, under threat of withdrawing this aid, that Egypt actively seek out and destroy the smuggling tunnels through which flow rockets and other munitions from the Sinai peninsula into Gaza, to be fired by Hamas (and its allied) jihadists upon civilian population centers in southern Israel.

But apart from diplomatic threats -- which can be made privately, Mr. Obama should demonstrate courageous moral leadership in his public address, demanding an end to the declarations of Jew-hatred, and even calls for jihad genocide against the Jews, issued regularly by Egyptian clerics, including authoritative Islamic religious leaders at the renowned Al Azhar University.

Preaching this sacralized hatred is endemic in Egypt. A front page New York Times story published January 10, 2009, included extracts from the Friday sermon (of 1/9/09) at Al Azhar mosque pronounced by Egyptian-government appointed cleric Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef. Referencing well-established Antisemitic motifs from the Koran (citations provided, below), Sheikh Youssef intoned,

Muslim brothers, God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at [Koran 1:7] and whom he cursed [Koran 5:78] so he made monkeys and pigs [Koran 5:60] out of them. They killed prophets and messengers [Koran 2:61 / 3:112] and sowed corruption on Earth. [Koran 5:33 / 5:64] They are the most evil on Earth. [5:62  /63]

Earlier, on March 22, 2004, Sheikh Atiyyah Saqr, former head of the Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, who previously issued a fatwa (April 15, 2002) declaring Jews "apes and pigs," was asked the following question in an online chat room: "What, according to the Koran, are the Jews' main characteristics and qualities?" Sheikh Saqr answered by highlighting 20 negative, inveterate traits of the Jews as described by the Koran: fabricating (Koran 3:75; 5:64); listening to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and supporting deception (3:78); rebelling against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); hypocrisy (2:44); selfishness (2:87); wishing evil on people (2:105); feeling pain at others' happiness and feeling happiness at others' afflictions (2:120); arrogance and haughtiness (5:18); utilitarianism and opportunism (4:161); rudeness and vulgarity (4:46); murder of innocents, especially prophets (2:61; 3:112); mercilessness and heartlessness (2:74); breaking promises (2:100); rushing to sin and transgress (5:79); cowardice and greed (59:13; 2:96); miserliness (4:53); and distorting divine revelation (2:79). He prefaced this defamatory litany with an upbeat assurance that the perfidious Jews would be vanquished by the Muslim umma:

We would like to note that these are but some of the most famous traits of the Jews as described in the Koran. They have revolted against the divine ordinances, distorted what has been revealed to them and invented new teachings which, they claimed, were much more better [sic] than what has been recorded in the Torah. It was [because of] these traits that they were not warmly received in all the countries where they tried to reside. Instead, they were either driven out, or lived in isolation. It was the Almighty Allah who placed on them His Wrath and [humiliated] them due to their transgression. Almighty Allah told us that He had sent to them those who would pour upon them rain of severe punishment that would last till the Day of Resurrection. All this gives us glad tidings of the coming victory of Muslims over [the Jews], as soon as Muslims cling to strong faith and belief in Allah and adopt modern means of technology

The continual, monotonous invocation by Al Azhar clerics of such antisemitic motifs from the Koran (and other foundational Muslim texts) is entirely consistent with the published writings and statements of Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi-Grand Imam of this pre-eminent Islamic religious institution since 1996. Tantawi's case illustrates the prevalence and depth of sacralized, "normative" Jew hatred in the contemporary Muslim world. Arguably Islam's leading mainstream cleric, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, embodies how the living legacy of Muslim anti-Jewish hatred, and violence remains firmly rooted in mainstream, orthodox  Islamic teachings, not some aberrant vision of "radical Islam."  

Tantawi's  Ph.D. thesis Banu Israil fi al-Quran wa-al-Sunnah (Jews in the Koran and the Traditions) was published in 1968-69, and re-published in 1986. Two years after earning his Ph.D., Sheikh Tantawi began teaching at Al-Azhar. In 1980 he became the head of the Tafsir [Koranic Commentary] Department of the University of Medina, Saudi Arabia -- a position he held until 1984. Sheikh Tantawi became Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1986, a position he was to hold for a decade before taking on his current post, first assumed in 1996, as the Grand Imam.

My book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism includes extensive first time English translations of Tantawi's academic magnum opus, Jews in the Koran and the Traditions. Tantawi wrote these words in his 700 page treatise, rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], [and see Sheikh Saqr's Koranic citations, above] corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness...only a minority of the Jews keep their word...[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, "carefully researched" views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope -- the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 85 to 90% of the world's Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on "dialogue" (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as "enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear. Tantawi's statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Israel's Chief Rabbi, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis:

...anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward.  My stance stems from Allah's book [the Koran], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews...[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah.  I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, cited above]

Unfortunately, Tantawi's antisemitic formulations are well-grounded in classical, mainstream Islamic theology. However, understanding and acknowledging the Koranic origins of Islamic antisemitism is not a justification for the unreformed, unrepentant modern endorsement of these hateful motifs by Tantawi -- with predictably murderous consequences. Within days of the Netanya homicide bombing massacre on a Passover seder night, March 27, 2002, for example, Sheikh Tantawi issued an abhorrent sanction (April 4, 2002) of so-called "martyrdom operations," even when directed at Israeli civilians. And during November, 2002 ("Tantawi: No Antisemitism" Associated Press 11/19/2002), consistent with his triumphant denial, Sheikh Tantawi made the following statement in response to criticism over the virulently antisemitic Egyptian television series ("Horseman Without a Horse"), based on the Czarist Russia forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion":

Suppose that the series has some criticism or shows some of the Jews' traits, this doesn't necessitate an uproar...The accusation of antisemitism was invented by the Jews as a means to pressure Arabs and Muslims to implement their schemes in the Arab and Muslim countries, so don't pay attention to them

Last  January 22, 2008, it was reported that Tantawi cancelled what would have been an historic visit to the Rome synagogue by Ala Eldin Mohammed Ismail al-Ghobash, the imam of Rome's mosque. The putative excuse for this cancellation was Israel's self-defensive stance -- a blockade-in response to acts of jihad terrorism (rocket barrages; attempted armed incursions) emanating from Gaza. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, commenting aptly about these events, observed that the cancellation proved, "...even so called Muslim moderates share the ideology of hate, violence and death towards the Jewish state."  Al Azhar, Corriere della Sera, further argued, which in the absence of a central Muslim authority constituted a "Vatican of Sunni Islam," had in effect issued "a kind of fatwah." The paper concluded by noting that "What the Cairo statement really means is that Muslim dialogue with Jews in Italy is only possible once Israel has been eliminated."

Finally, Egyptian television -- a rigidly controlled enterprise in this authoritarian state -- broadcast on January 26, 2009 a brazen genocidal "commentary" by the cleric Amin al-Ansari, who melded Koranic citations invoking jihad [Koran 8:60] and Jew-hatred [Koran 3:112 and 5:32/ 33], with film footage from Nazi-era World War II concentration camps. Al-Ansari openly expressed this ghoulish desire:

These are bodies, these are dead people, these are skulls. These are the bodies of the Jews being loaded like animals. Watch this tractor clearing away the corpses of the Jews, and these are the refugees awaiting their turn to be killed. A German soldier will come now, and you will see a Jewish woman kissing his hand. Notice what humiliation, fear, and terror have struck her. See how much she is kissing his hand. Watch her humiliation. This is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims. [emphasis added]

The Associated Press reported Thursday February 5, 2009 that members of a Hamas delegation ostensibly in Egypt to negotiate a "long-term" ceasefire with Israel, were discovered to be smuggling some $10 million Euros in cash. This story makes clear that Egypt's connection to Hamas-style jihadism involves concrete financial support, as well as the religious rhetoric of Al Azhar clerics. Even the very dovish Shimon Peres actually read extracts from Hamas' foundational Covenant to the audience at the Davos World Economic Forum (1/29/09), including (in part) the genocidal hadith in Article 7,

...the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah's prayer and peace be upon him, says: "The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)...

and the clear statement in article 13 that Hamas' jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that...There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors.

But it is the sheer ignorance, or worse, denial of the common ideology of jihad and Jew hatred shared between mainstream Al Azhar religious authorities (see this 1956 Al Azhar fatwa) and Hamas which is most disturbing. Sadly, nothing contained within the odious Hamas Covenant and official Koranic commentary, the vile pronouncements by Hamas political leaders, or even conveyed by the most perverse Hamas media presentations, lacks an Egyptian equivalent. Now, the bitter harvest of this sacralized Islamic hatred-sewn continuously for generations-is being reaped far removed from the battlegrounds of the endless Muslim jihad against Israel. For example, the Global Forum Against Antisemitism described over 250 documented reports of anti-Jewish incidents across the world during the 22-days of Israel's self-defensive Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. As summarized by the Jerusalem Post (1/25/09),

The bulk of the antisemitic incidents took place in Western Europe and were led by local Muslim officials, including 100 in France and Britain each, the [Global Forum Against Antisemitism] report found.

Muslim leaders in the US and Canada organized similar demonstrations rife with rhetorical incitement of genocidal Jew-hatred -- often based upon traditional Islamic motifs -- and prone to intimidation of Jews, or even sporadic acts of anti-Jewish violence (as documented in this video). Following a visit to Newport, RI in August, 1790, and his warm reception by the local Jewish community, represented in a letter by Moses Seixas, George Washington wrote a moving reply to Touro's congregation. Our first President rejected the idea of mere "tolerance" of Jews, embracing them as full, equal citizens of the nascent American nation, with complete freedom of conscience, and the guarantee of their personal security. Washington stated,

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

Contemporary American Jewry has expressed with even greater intensity the "fervent wishes" for President Obama's "felicity," as their forebears did in praise of President George Washington. Will President Obama exhibit George Washington's moral clarity and reassure contemporary Jews he is committed to their liberty and security, which is now gravely threatened by global jihadism?  Mr. Obama, before your planned speech in a Muslim capital, I urge you to address the world's Jewish community, and condemn the jihad-inspired antisemitic violence fomented by esteemed Islamic religious institutions, including notably, Cairo's Al Azhar University. And I can suggest the ideal venue-redolent with American history-where you should make this statement: Touro, America's first Jewish synagogue, located in Newport, in my beloved home state of Rhode Island.

As my colleague Robert Spencer observed, Israeli President Shimon Peres appeared flummoxed by Hamas' intransigence in comments made to Haaretz, reported December 30, 2008. "This shooting has no point, no logic, and no chance," Peres told Haaretz after Hamas' open renunciation of the ceasefire agreement (not to mention its prior extensive violations throughout the course of the so-called "tahdiah"), and brazen resumption of missile and mortar attacks into southern Israel-which has triggered a dramatic, aggressive Israeli military response. Worse still, the elder statesman remains dangerously ignorant of Hamas' intimately related motivations-the genocidal destruction of Israel's Jews, as a prelude to regional, then global jihad conquest. "Nobody in this world understands what are Hamas'goals and why it continues to fire missiles," Peres asserted.

Mr. Peres is tragically emblematic of Israeli leaders and policymaking elites who for generations have ignored how the living institution of jihad war -- conjoined in Israel's unique case to Islamic Jew-hatred -- was always, past and present, the primary motivation for those masses in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world seeking the Jewish State's destruction.

Indeed, what was billed as the first discussion of global jihadism by the Israeli security cabinet even in the current world (not to mention local Israeli) environment was only just held at the end of this past July, 2008.
Contra Shimon Peres et al, and underscoring their corrosive folly, historian David Littman has waged an heroic personal campaign -- in public, at the United Nations Human Rights Commission, The open jihad against Israel waged continuously for two decades by Hamas, since the jihad terror organization's founding in 1988, combined with the astonishing ignorance and/or denial of this phenomenon by Peres (and the lost legions who share his mindset), represents the apotheosis of this alarming trend.since January, 1989 -- to elucidate key aspects of Hamas' genocidal ideology, demonstrating unapologetically how this annihilationist hatred is sanctioned by Islam's foundational texts.  Littman reminded us why it is so critical to focus on Hamas' odious foundational covenant as a binding documentary record of the organization's specific beliefs and goals:

Hitler understood this when he wrote in the preface to Mein Kampf: "the basic elements of a doctrine must be set down in permanent form in order that it may be represented in the same way and in unity." [Hitler, Preface to Mein Kampf (Reynal and Hitchcock translation)]. After his release from an Israeli prison and return to Gaza in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual head of Hamas, declared that Israel must "disappear from the map." He added: "We have an aim and an enemy, and we shall continue our jihad against the enemy. A nation without a jihad is a nation without a purpose."

The following discussion is indebted to David Littman's prescient analyses (summarized here, and here), supplementing and updating his original insights.

Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 20082:61/ explained that the Muslims' blood vengeance against the Jews, "will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times." These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah.

And Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas' foundational Covenant-it is literally part of the very first statement of the document. [Here is the Arberry translation of 3:112: "Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God's anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God's signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors"]

In classical and modern Koranic exegeses by seminal, authoritative Islamic theologians (for details, see here) this central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadithSunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322), "He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘...curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary' ".   
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Salah al-Khalidi (fl. late 20^th century) makes plain how these motifs of Koranic Jew-hatred are interpreted by Hamas in a manner that is entirely consistent with classical exegeses. Extracts (translated from the original Arabic by Dr. Michael Schub in my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) are provided below from Khalidi's  major work Haqa'iq Koraniyya al Qadiyya al-Filastinniya ["Koranic Facts Regarding the Palestinian Issue"] which was first published in 1991 by the Hamas Publishing House Manshūrāt  Filastin al-Muslima, and translated into Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Russian,  and English (formerly available online at www.assabeel.com) due to its international popularity.

Humiliation is attached to the Jews for their entire lifetime: they were humiliated in Egypt, and when they arrived in [sic] Palestine, and when they were exiled from Palestine, and when they dispersed into the valleys of the earth. What concerns us here-in our discussion of the Jewish character-is to indicate that this humiliation is to be considered as an inveterate Jewish character trait, and a destructive Jewish perversion. Humiliation is one of their historical attributes, a fixed fact of their existence, and a  qaa`ida, basis of their life... (Koran 2:61) The Jews are humiliated because they disbelieved in God, killed His prophets, disobeyed His emissaries, transgressed His prohibitions-all of this is humiliation. They are humiliated-and this is why they search out lustful indulgences, and have become their slaves. All of this is humiliation.

It is impossible that the Jews could not be cursed. How could they not be accursed when they are attributed with such degenerate inveterate character traits, twenty of which we have demonstrated above. (Note: Khalidi earlier states, ‘We have extracted from Koran twenty Jewish traits. The Jews are: liars, perverters (of the Text), envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, humiliated, dastards, misers, avid for (this) life, disloyal to their firm contracts, rush into sinful aggression, concealers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructors in God's path.' For specific Koranic citations confirming his litany see here). They are worthy of eternal curse because of the villainous traits they display and the corrupt evils they have perpetrated.

The Jews are in a condition of  mal`ana, i.e. everyone pours out curses on them; God has cursed them, the angels have cursed them, their prophets have cursed them, the good people among them have cursed them, and everyone has cursed them. They are deserving of this eternal and continual damnation until the day of resurrection when they will encounter God's wrath, fury, and punishment. They were accordingly exiled from God's mercy, and kept afar from His goodness.

Many Koranic verses were revealed emphasizing...the judgment upon them of cursed damnation, and exile from His mercy, e.g.  Koran 5:13: "For breaking their covenant, We curse them, and have made their hearts hard." And Koran 5:60...And Koran 5:64...And Koran 5:78...

The recent annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology], and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant. As characterized in the hadith (the words, deeds, and even unspoken gestures of Muhammad as ostensibly recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions), Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews' supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl -- the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ -- or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews:

...the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah's prayer and peace be upon him, says: "The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

Littman cites an April 12, 2002, Friday sermon delivered by the Palestinian Authority's Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi at the Sheikh Ijlin Mosque in Gaza City, broadcast live on Palestinian Authority television demonstrating how the destruction of Israel's Jews heralds further Islamic conquests.

Madhi quoted from this hadith -- including the curious reference to the "Jewish" Gharqad tree -- and then stated: "We believe in this hadith. We are convinced also that this hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the lands... ‘from the ocean to the ocean...'"

Article 28, which is free of any eschatological references, clearly "widens the circle of hate" towards Jews, as Littman has observed, targeting all contemporary Jews: "Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.'"

Articles 22 and 32 invoke modern conspiratorial themes reminiscent of European (secular) antisemitic motifs, especially the latter (32), which makes explicit mention of the Czarist Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But even these articles are peppered with Koranic citations, including references in both 22 and 32 to Koran 5:64, a sort of ancient antecedent of The Protocols. (Arberry translation, Koran 5:64: "The Jews have said, 'God's hand is fettered.' Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption.")

Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas' foundational Jew-annihilationist ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Once again, this is already suggested in the opening statement before the preamble which includes the following quote by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: "Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it." Hamas, it should be noted, claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood. Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, for example, states: "The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organisation which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times."

But the body of  the Hamas Covenant includes unequivocal statements of Hamas' irredentist commitment to the annihilation of Israel via jihad. Jihad martyrdom is lauded in article 8 "the Hamas slogan," (in fact borrowed from the 1928 Charter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), which states, "Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." Article 13 makes plain that Hamas' jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that...There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors.

And article 15 (subtitled, "Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty") elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad:

The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements...

It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected, for as long as heaven and earth shall endure, to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet's nocturnal journey [from the mosque of Mecca to the Al-Aqsa mosque] and through his ascension to heaven thence. "Being stationed on the frontier for the sake of Allah for one day is better than this [entire] world and everything in it; and the place taken up in paradise by the [horseman's] whip of any one of you [jihad fighters] is better than this [entire] world and everything in it. Every evening [operation] and morning [operation] performed by Muslims for the sake of Allah is better than this [entire] world and everything in it." (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja). "By the name of Him who holds Muhammad's soul in His hand, I wish to launch an attack for the sake of Allah and be killed and attack again and be killed and attack again and be killed." (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)

Unfortunately, Hamas' views on the jihad against Israel, and Islamic Jew hatred, are entirely concordant with those of the most authoritative religious educational institution within Sunni Islam-Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt. Consider a fatwa written January 5, 1956 by then Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma'moun, and signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar, and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. [English translation from State Department Telegram 1763/ Embassy (Cairo) Telegram 1256 D441214] This ruling elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), "fay territory" (booty/spoils), to be governed by Islamic Law. The January, 1956 Al Azhar fatwa's language and arguments are indistinguishable from those employed by Hamas (in its Covenant), revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial Islamic Jew hatred:

Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory.

[as] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants... Jihad... to restore the country to its people.. is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim.

Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Five decades later, Hamas circa 2008/2009 also reflects the triumphalism of contemporary jihadist movements that openly avow their desire to re-establish a Caliphate, and submit the world to Islamic rule-all in accord with classical jihad doctrine, and popular Muslim sentiment. While voluminous additional evidence could be adduced in support of this premise, three particularly salient illustrations are provided below.
Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita was interviewed July 13, 2008  on Al-Aqsa TV. After reminding listeners that the Koran's opening prayer itself (the Fatiha, at 1:7), which pious Muslims repeat five times daily, declares that the Jews are "those who incur Allah's wrath," (re-affirming the standard exegesis, for example, Suyuti's classical commentary), he declared:

The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God.

Three months earlier Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, had made these more elaborate remarks during a speech which aired on Palestinian Al-Aqsa TV April 11, 2008:

Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs [i.e., Jews, Koran 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166, and other foundational Muslim texts]  in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam - this capital of theirs [Rome] will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe. I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our Jihad...

Even the more staid "analysis" of Sheik Yazeeb Khader, identified in a Washington Times report of May 12, 2008 as a Ramallah-based Hamas political analyst, revealed Hamas' integration with regional pan-Islamic aspirations hardly consistent with mere independent, local nationalisms. Referring to events he believed were set in motion when Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from Mahmud Abbas' Fatah forces, Khader opined,

What happened in Gaza in 2007 is an achievement; now it is happening in 2008 in Lebanon. It's going to happen in 2009 in Jordan and it's going to happen in 2010 in Egypt. We are seeing a redrawing of the map of the Middle East where the forces of resistance and steadfastness are the ones moving the things on the ground.

Khader's remarks underscored the jihadist alliance straddling the so-called Shi'ite-Sunni rift (which is immaterial when juxtaposed to their shared antipathy towards Israel, and the much larger non-Muslim world). Furthermore, as the Washington Times report noted,

The notion of new countries falling under Islamist influence reflects a goal of Hamas' parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, of replacing secular Arab regimes with Islamist governments.

All these words, and the concrete actions they engender-via both political means, and jihad terrorism-debunk widely accepted tropes that Hamas is merely a nationalist movement, albeit religious, desiring a "Palestinian homeland" in the territories of Gaza (which it already possesses), Judea, and Samaria. Hamas' blatantly annihilationist rhetoric towards Jews and Israel within the 1949 armistice borders, indicates that the jihadist organization wishes to replace Israel. Moreover the monotonous rhetoric of Jew hatred espoused by Hamas-which is Islamic, and specifically Koranic, in origin-is seamlessly interwoven with Hamas' unabashed desire to wage global jihad.

Already more than six years ago, David Littman made this plaintive warning:

It will be hard enough to strive for the creation of stable, democratic states in the Middle East even without widespread conspiracy theories and the Hamas genocidal charter - a charter denounced neither by Muslim spiritual and political leaders nor by the United Nations...if Hamas refuses to scrap its genocidal charter and renounce the ideology of jihad-war - there can be no possibility of serious progress toward a Middle East peace, with two states coexisting side by side.

Littman's two decades of appeals and admonitions having gone entirely unheeded, the global community must now grapple with the bloodthirsty, Jew-annihilationist aspirations of an unreformed Hamas, which, on its official website (posted December 31, 2008 at the site hosted by Emirnet, United Arab Emirates) urged Muslims to attack Jews across the world, making the ugly claim that,

...a Jewish adolescent boy in an Australian synagogue, a Jewish minister in the Georgian government, a Jewish businessman at the New York Stock Exchange, and an illiterate Jew from the Ethiopian desert... they all belong to the same gang and the same nation, apart from the rest of humanity.

Israel's ongoing Operation Cast Lead is an eminently just and reasonable response to the unconscionable menace posed by a Hamas the rest of the world, ignores, appeases, or abets.

A report in The Jerusalem Posts suggests that President-elect Obama is quite favorably-inclined towards the electric car program being developed in Israel as a joint venture with Renault-Nissan:

The incoming Obama administration is "closely monitoring" the innovative electric car project being developed by Israel's Better Place company, "and may be adopting it," Idan Ofer, chairman of Better Place, has told The Jerusalem Post.

However, to power the grid required for such a system in the US, now, and into the foreseeable future, we would have to rely upon energy derived from both coal and nuclear plants. That Obama and his designated energy secretary, Mr. Chu, are not favorably inclined toward coal may be an understatement, because, sadly, both are adherents of Climate Scientology. Moreover, Obama has been lukewarm at best about nuclear power and the construction of new nuclear power plants. So how on earth will the US power the grid required for a massive re-tooling of our cars making electric vehicles the predominant mode of car transportation?

I suggest President-elect Obama start by educating himself about the sham science-the "Scientology" of CO2 as a climate changing "pollutant" which is the keystone of the anthropogenic climate change nonsense. He might wish to peruse data such as those presented below (and a mountain of other data which contradict the  flimsy CO2-based anthropogenic warming hypothesis). Is there a chance Mr. Obama and his staff could be convinced by such data?

At any rate, hope springs eternal. Here are some data for Mr. Obama and Mr. Chu to ponder compiled by Climatology Prof. Tim Ball:

Most people don't know that thousands of direct measures of atmospheric CO2 were made beginning in 1812. Scientists took the readings with calibrated instruments and precise measurements as the work of Ernst-Georg Beck has thoroughly documented. Guy Stewart Callendar was an earlier visitor to these records. He rejected most of the records including 69% of the 19th century records and only selected certain records that established the pre-industrial level as 280 ppm. Here is a plot of the records with those Callendar selections circled.

It is clear how only low readings were chosen. Also notice how the slope and trend is changed compared to the entire record.

As Jaworowski notes,

"The notion of low pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv."

Beck recently confirmed Jaworowski's research. A September 2008 article in Energy and Environment examined the readings in great detail and validated the 19th century findings. In a devastating conclusion Beck writes,

Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.

Beck found, "Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm." Here is a plot from Beck comparing 19th century readings with ice core and Mauna Loa data.

Compare the variability of the atmospheric measures with the smooth line of the ice core record. Eliminating extreme readings and then applying a long term smoothing average achieved this. When smoothing is done on the scale of the ice core record a great deal of information is lost. Elimination of high readings prior to the smoothing makes the loss even greater. Also note that as with all known records the temperature changes before the CO2, in this record by approximately 5 years.

Elimination of data is also done with the Mauna Loa and other atmospheric readings, which can vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Beck explains how Charles Keeling established the Mauna Loa readings by using the lowest readings of the afternoon. He ignored natural sources, a practice that continues. Beck presumes Keeling decided to avoid these low level natural sources by establishing the station at 4000 meters (m) up the volcano. As Beck notes "Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2 on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude." (Beck, 2008, "50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa" Energy and Environment, Vol 19, No.7.)

Keeling's son continues to operate the Mauna Loa facility and as Beck notes, "owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2 measurements." Since the young Keeling is a co-author of the IPCC reports they accept the version that Mauna Loa is representative of global readings and that they reflect an increase since pre-industrial levels.

Mordechai Nisan, writing a decade ago, observed that already by the mid-1990s the world's then over 50 Islamic nations had amassed considerable economic and military power-both of which have further increased during the subsequent 10-years:

The Muslim umma  [global community] was by the mid-1990s numbering approximately one billion believers, possessing over 50 Muslim states, and in control of a little less than a third of United Nations membership; moreover, possessing more than 50 per cent of known crude oil resources and a combined military arsenal of conventional and non-conventional weaponry second only to the combined Western bloc of states. The international balance-of-power could not in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War ignore the Muslim civilization and its awesome pretensions to playing a dominant role in global affairs.

Nisan's cogent observations continue to have obvious implications for the so-called "war within Islam" narrative promoted by policymaking, academic, and media elites across the political spectrum, and reaffirmed, vociferously, in the aftermath of the recent jihadist carnage in Mumbai, India. For example, Boaz Ganor-acclaimed as a terrorism expert, and currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Hoover Institution-opined in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 5:

This is not Islam but a cynical, calculated misuse of Islam...It is also not the responsibility of the United States alone to deal with this global growing threat, but rather the obligation of all of Western society and the civilized world, including - and perhaps primarily - the Muslim world itself, which stands revolted and terrified by the ideas and atrocities perpetrated by the jihadists. It is time for moderate Muslims to save Islam from the jihadists.

"Cynicism" and "calculated misuse," versus attacks entirely consistent with the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad war (including jihad terrorism) across a 13-century continuum, notwithstanding, I agree with Ganor's admonition that it is "primarily" the responsibility of "the Muslim world itself" to confront jihadism.  But it was documentary filmmaker Sean Langan's harrowing account (just reported in the NY Daily News ) of his three-month captivity by a resurgent Taliban/Al Qaeda within Pakistan (in the so-called "lawless tribal belt"), along the Afghanistan border, that clarified how a moral, intellectually honest, and concrete "war within Islam" should be waged, without delay. Langan has identified-once again-those who must be the obvious targets of a campaign by Muslims to "reclaim Islam" from radical, barbaric "hijackers" of their faith.

Jailed in the cramped, dark room of a house, Langan heard the constant sound of machine guns, mortars and grenades, accompanied by the steady hum of U.S. Predator drones overhead. "I was in a valley surrounded by training camps, bases and caves. Arabs were having meetings there-Al Qaeda-making plans," Langan told NY Daily News reporter James Meek. One of Langan's captors explained, bluntly "We are meeting and discussing global jihad issues." The captured filmmaker recalled listening to an ex-Pakistani minister on the BBC one day denying Al Qaeda operated camps inside the country. "I had to turn up the radio to hear his denial over the sound of gunfire from all the training camps," Langan, smiling, told Meek. "The world's leading terrorists are there -safe, and with the time to plot and plan attacks," Langan asserted. During his captivity Langan also became convinced of the jihadists' utterly depraved indifference to human life. He was show the photograph of a bomb-laden young child blowing up a U.S. Humvee, and just prior to escaping, Langan was forced to view jihadist sniper and beheading videos with the toddler son of a jihadist.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, in the wake of the Mumbai massacre wrote a December 9, 2008 New York Times op-ed entitled, "The Terrorists Want to Destroy Pakistan, Too." Zardari at least acknowledged the significant presence of Al Qaeda in his country, claimed to be committed to the fight against this jihad terrorist organization-perhaps even more so than NATO-and sought worldwide support for his efforts:

The challenge of confronting terrorists who have a vast support network is huge; Pakistan's fledgling democracy needs help from the rest of the world. We are on the frontlines of the war on terrorism. We have 150,000 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their extremist allies along the border with Afghanistan - far more troops than NATO has in Afghanistan.

Ignoring serious concerns about the dubious use of some $5 billion in US military aid to Pakistan (via Coalition Support Funds) since 2002-ostensibly to combat Al Qaeda and its allies in the tribal areas-I maintain that Zardari's plaintive appeal for assistance-military and financial-be heeded primarily, if not exclusively by Muslim nations from the now 57 member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).   

After all, the OIC Dakar Declaration of March 13-14, 2008 from the 11^th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference has sworn the 57 Muslim nations to combat terrorism. The OIC statement even highlights a convention assembled for this purpose, along with "other international initiatives by the Islamic geographical sphere," citing this involvement as proof of its unequivocal willingness "...to fight against the heinous phenomenon [of terrorism]," and the global Muslim organization's "total rejection of it [terrorism]." However, in a statement issued December 2 ("Islam, the religion of peace, tolerance and compassion"), shortly after the murderous attacks in Mumbai, the OIC, while mentioning, "...the multiplicity of terrorist attacks perpetrated recently by deviant and fanatic individuals," decried the

...tendency of a section of the media, to interpose the word ‘Islam' in reporting these incidences... maliciously trying to establish conceptual link between such evil and wicked practices and Islam, the religion that condemns, scorns and outlaws them...Those who refer to the perpetrators, as acting on behalf of Islam, help them by offering them justification, anchor and premise that they don't have or deserve. On the other hand, the generalization of the guilt of a few aberrant misguided individuals, to engulf the adherents of a religion of 1.5 billion followers is an outrageous judgment and amounts to an illegal collective punishment on a global scale. Moreover, any attempt to implicate all Muslims in such a wicked and wanton acts goes contrary to the well established principles of international law. It is therefore hoped that media will avoid resorting to any reference to Islam when narrating such events in order not to disseminate erroneous information that might jeopardize the basic human rights of Muslims, the world over.

But the December 2 OIC statement also insisted,

Islam, the religion of peace, tolerance and compassion, that sanctifies the human soul, and whose universal message is one of mutual peaceful coexistence among all the peoples of the world, regardless of their ethnicities, race, religions or languages, and which calls for kind reasoning and dialogue with all their fellow human beings, abhors and despises all such criminal acts and had enacted the utmost severe punishment for their perpetrators. [emphasis added]

I argue that the OIC-currently headed by its Turkish representative Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu-is uniquely suited to marshal the military and economic might to "enact the utmost severe punishment" for Al Qaeda and Taliban "perpetrators" of "anti-Islamic" acts of terrorism. Turkey and Egypt-key OIC member states-have large, modern, well-equipped armed forces (here; here; here), including air forces (here; here), and both nations are believed to have been victimized by Al Qaeda attacks (here; here; here; and here). These Muslim nations-with formal, enthusiastic sanctioning by the OIC-should send large military contingents to reinforce the "150,000" of their Pakistani Muslim brethren under President Zardari already doggedly engaged in combating the "anti-Islamic" terrorists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Finally, there is even an ideal occasion in the offing at which such an ambitious Muslim-led, OIC-sanctioned initiative could be announced-the speech Mr. Obama plans to deliver as US President in an Islamic capital. Talk about a "unique opportunity to reboot America's image ...in the Muslim world in particular...," and express the "unrelenting" commitment to "...create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership"-President-elect Obama's own words, uttered just this past Tuesday, December 9, 2008.

The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries -- from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people -- meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." As described by the seminal mid-19^th century Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane, "Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers." A contemporary definition, relevant to both modern jihadism and its shock troop "mujahideen" was provided at the Fourth International Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research at Al Azhar University, Cairo -- Islam's most important religious educational institution-in 1968, by Muhammad al-Sobki:

...the words Al Jihad, Al Mojahadah, or even "striving against enemies" are equivalents and they do not mean especially fighting with the atheists...they mean fighting in the general sense...

Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him...

"Jihad," the Koranic concept of total strategy...[d]emands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war...Under ideal conditions, Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting.

...the Book [Koran] does not visualize war being waged with "kid gloves." It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war "in toto," that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Koran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of the enemies.

A photograph published in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched.

Yet these same media offered no speculation about Islamic Jew hatred as an obvious potential motivation for the transparently selective attack on Mumbai's Chabad House -- a focal point symbol of the miniscule Jewish community of 5000 (or 0.03%) in a city of some 15 million inhabitants. More egregiously, this neglect of any hateful Islamic motivations for the targeted murder of such innocent Jews -- including a young Lubavitcher Rabbi and his wife -- was accompanied by consistently dehumanizing and demeaning references to these victims as "Ultra-Orthodox," and their entirely false characterization as "missionaries."

Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.

Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs [Hindus] may probably agree to pay jizya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice...The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honor and might of Islam...

Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?...Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims?

The Muslim chroniclers al-Baladhuri (in Kitab Futuh al-Buldan) and al-Kufi (in the Chachnama) include enough isolated details to establish the overall nature of the conquest of Sindh (in modern Paksitan) by Muhammad b. Qasim during 712 C.E. These narratives, and the processes they describe, make clear that the Arab invaders intended from the outset to Islamize Sindh by conquest, colonization, and local conversion. Baladhuri, for example, records that following the capture of Debal, Muhammad b. Qasim earmarked a section of the city exclusively for Muslims, constructed a mosque, and established four thousand colonists there. The conquest of Debal had been a brutal affair, as summarized from the Muslim sources by the renowned Indian historian R.C. Majumdar. Despite appeals for mercy from the besieged Indians (who opened their gates after the Muslims scaled the fort walls), Muhammad b. Qasim declared that he had no orders (i.e., from his superior al-Hajjaj, the Governor of Iraq) to spare the inhabitants, and thus for three days a ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter ensued. In the aftermath, the local temple was defiled, and "700 beautiful females who had sought for shelter there, were all captured". The capture of Raor was accompanied by a similar tragic outcome.

Muhammad massacred 6000 fighting men who were found in the fort, and their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoners. Sixty thousand slaves, including 30 young ladies of royal blood, were sent to Hajjaj, along with the head of Dahar [the Hindu ruler]. We can now well understand why the capture of a fort by the Muslim forces was followed by the terrible jauhar ceremony (in which females threw themselves in fire [they] kindled...), the earliest recorded instance of which is found in the Chachnama. 

Something no doubt depended upon individual rulers; some of them adopted a more liberal, others a more cruel and intolerant attitude. But on the whole the framework remained intact, for it was based on the fundamental principle of Islamic theocracy. It recognized only one faith, one people, and one supreme authority, acting as the head of a religious trust. The Hindus, being infidels or non-believers, could not claim the full rights of citizens. At the very best, they could be tolerated as dhimmis, an insulting title which connoted political inferiority...The Islamic State regarded all non-Muslims as enemies, to curb whose growth in power was conceived to be its main interest. The ideal preached by even high officials was to exterminate them totally, but in actual practice they seem to have followed an alternative laid down in the Koran [i.e., Q9:29] which calls upon Muslims to fight the unbelievers till they pay the jizya with due humility. This was the tax the Hindus had to pay for permission to live in their ancestral homes under a Muslim ruler.

He [Sikandar Butshikan] invited from Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia learned men of his own [Muslim] faith; his bigotry prompted him to destroy all the most famous temples in Kashmir-Martand, Vishya, Isna, Chakrabhrit, Tripeshwar, etc. Sikandar offered the Kashmiris the choice [pace Koran 9:5] between Islam and death. Some Kashmiri Brahmans committed suicide, many left the land, many others embraced Islam, and a few began to live under Taqiya, that is, they professed Islam only outwardly. It is said that the fierce intolerance of Sikandar had left in Kashmir no more than eleven families of Brahmans.

His [Sikandar Butshikan's] contemporary the [Hindu] Raja of Jammu had been converted to Islam by [Amir]  Timur [the jihadist, Tamerlane], by "hopes, fears, and threats."

When Kashmir was under Muslim rule for 500 years, Hindus were constantly tortured and forcibly converted. A delegation of Kashmir Brahmans approached Guru Teg Bahadur at Anadpur Saheb to seek his help. But Kashmir was Islamized. Those who fled to preserve their religion went to Laddakh in the east and Jammu in the south. It is for this reason that non-Muslims are found in large number in these regions. In the valley itself the Muslims formed the bulk of the population.

We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine.

...verse 112 speaks of the general condition of the Jews. They played the most virulent role against the Holy Prophet [Muhammad] and the movement of Islam. It was not strange that they were the most malignant against the Holy Prophet because they had played a similar role against the Prophets before the advent of Islam. They had slandered Jesus Christ, they had plotted to kill him, they had slain so many Prophets before Jesus Christ. They had earned the wrath of Allah before the Holy Prophet by killing the Prophets and the Saints and by their vociferous opposition to the Divine Commands. This wrath increased when they deadly opposed the Holy Prophet and made treacherous and surreptitious plans to kill Muhammad and defeat Islam. They tried to harm the Muslims and prevented the common men from Islam. These activities enhanced the wrath of Allah, and curse became their eventual fate. The wrath of Allah manifested itself in conditional abasement, but permanent poverty. Their abasement could be suspended if they could cover a bond of Allah or they should be covered by a bond of the people. But the poverty and the general wrath of Allah was pitched without any suspension. Bond of God means adherence to some remnants of the Torah. Bond of men means either becoming the subjects of some Muslim State or some Christian State or some other constitutional State; or becoming a satellite or a protectorate of some powerful people, whoever they may be either Muslims, or non-Muslims, by means of some agreement, treaty, or merely political support. Their separate individual existence enjoying an inviolable sovereignty or commanding a good respect in the Comity of Nations is not implied in this verse because of the extreme wrath of Allah which is significant of their superlative Kufr [infidelity] against Allah and their extremely tremendous enmity against the Holy Prophet as compared to other non-Believers. For example, the modern State of Israel cannot survive if the Americans and Russians, etc., give up their support. [note: this commentary was written beginning in the 1960s] This is the bond of the people which has outwardly suspended their abasement. But so far as wretchedness (poverty) is concerned it is pitched on them permanently and the general wrath and anger of Allah surrounds them forever. Inner wretchedness can be reconciled with outer opulence. The Jews may have become billionaires but the wretchedness and poverty of hearts cannot leave them any moment. Parsimony has become a part and parcel of their internal self.

Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamites, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat [Sharia; Islamic Law]. This is the lesson for the living history.