The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Issue 28

Issue 28 [@21:08]: Walid Shoebat – What does the verse of the sword say? It is very clear. When the forbidden months are over, kill the people of the book wherever you find them. Lay siege for them. Lay wait for them. Lay ambush for them. Kill them wherever you find them. In fact I converted to Christianity. Muhammad clearly stated that in ends of days, there will be many who will defect from faith. Kill them when you see them whenever you find them. So this is the question that the West needs to understand – What part of kill don’t you understand?”

Rebuttal 28: Mr. Shoebat is a public figure who has made a personal fortune by duping the West. First, by claiming that he was a terrorist for Al-Fatah in Palestine where he bombed a Bank, which has not been proven. Second, he tries to impress the audience that as a remorse and as an atonement, he converted to supposedly peaceful Christianity. What he does not tell everyone is that his mother was American and he used her lineage to come to United States. Then as an Arabic speaking and a “former terrorist” who is now “reformed” has taken it upon himself to teach the West and its security forces the insider scoop on Islam, his former religion and the Middle East, his former abode. And apparently in his “good cause” he has publications and consultation fees with income into hundreds of thousands of dollars from American taxpayer. He has positioned himself as an expert. [The investigative reporting of CNN about Walid Shoebat might be of value to anyone interested – ‘Ex Terrorist Rakes’ in homeland security bucks Part – 1, Part – 2]

Factually, he is an expert on falsehood and Contextomy, the art of quoting out of context to spread disinformation and its subsequent hate.

Contextomy refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning, a practice commonly referred to as “quoting out of context”. The problem here is not the removal of a quote from its original context (as all quotes are) per se, but to the quoter’s decision to exclude from the excerpt certain nearby phrases or sentences (which become “context” by virtue of the exclusion) that serve to clarify the intentions behind the selected words. Comparing this practice to surgical excision, journalist Milton Mayer coined the term “contextomy” to describe its use by Julius Streicher, editor of the infamous Nazi broadsheet Der Stürmer in Weimar-era Germany. To arouse anti-semitic sentiments among the weekly’s working class Christian readership, Streicher regularly published truncated quotations from Talmudic texts that, in their shortened form, appear to advocate greed, slavery, and ritualistic murder. Although rarely employed to this malicious extreme, contextomy is a common method of misrepresentation in contemporary mass media, and studies have demonstrated that the effects of this misrepresentation can linger even after the audience is exposed to the original, in context, quote. [Wikipedia]

With the above in mind, lets take up Shoebat’s allegations about Quran. He insinuates the audience by careful use of certain key phrases. He uses the words “sword,” “lay siege,” “ambush,” “kill” etc. These are the very words that are money generator in his consulting business with the security agencies [see the above CNN videos]

Opponents of Islam have invented the title “verse of the sword” for verse 9:5. They contextomize this verse to win cheap shots at Quran. This verse and its full context has been dealt with Rebuttal 23. Reader, please pay close attention, the same verse has been repeatedly referred to by different “experts” of this documentary, all in the effort to make their confabulations stick in the psyche of the audience.

This propagation of falsehood begets the question that from where is this nonsense of sword creeping in. Obviously, the Christian view is skewed by its historical background where to achieve any “higher purpose” it had to wage a war. Be it crusades, world wars, cold war, war to spread democracy in the Middle East, even to the extent war on poverty by President Johnson in United States. War is more than a word, it is a concept that they cannot dissociate from Christian psyche and in the same spirit is pinned upon Muslims and their history by the West.

It turns out that the above crusader mentality originates from Bible itself where THERE IS ACTUALLY A VERSE OF SWORD IN MATTHEW 10:34 –

10:32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
10:33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
10:38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
10:39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

Besides, using the sword, the above message clearly outlines its other purposes including dissent and hate amongst the family members. It clearly shows that the purpose of “Cross” is to place one on crossroads of life where one has to bow to the egocentricity of the Lord Jesus.

It would be utterly wrong to think in terms of “verse of the sword” in Quran, see Rebuttal 26. Its actual source is Bible itself. Shoebat, Trifkovic and Spencer inadvertently drew attention to the “verse of the sword” in Bible which should have been and in fact has been abrogated by Quran as promised by Quran – see Rebuttal 21.

The old adage that falsehood cannot remain covered is proven true by Shoebat’s own words – “In fact I converted to Christianity. Muhammad clearly stated that in ends of days, there will be many who will defect from faith. Kill them when you see them whenever you find them.” [Note – factually this is confabulated Hadith by Shoebat. On the reverse, Muhammad had predicted that in end of times Sun (of Islam) will rise from the West – Bukhari]

Mr. Shoebat, you just admitted that you relied on Muhammad’s prediction, false as it may be, that you consider yourself as fulfillment of his prophecy. Now that is laughable. He converts from Islam because to him Islam is a false religion and Muhammad is a false prophet. But interestingly he uses the alleged quote from none other than Muhammad to prove his point. He clearly believes in Muhammad, otherwise why would he use Muhammad’s alleged phrase “ in ends of days, there will be many who will defect from faith” to justify his conversion. It is almost like he is saying : “See wasn’t Muhammad right?” This person in an effort to kiss-up to the West has lost his own reason and he contradicts himself. Anyone can smell “money” in his words and see “dollar signs” in his eyes. West may after all not need him. Firstly, Al-Fatah paid him, now its the Western Taxpayer.

Lastly, the documentary tries to capture Shoebat’s self-conceited kiss up style and catchy phraseology – “So this is the question that the West needs to understand – What part of kill don’t you understand?”

Wow! The above is the quote of the century – What part of kill don’t you (- the West) understand?

What Shoebat sidesteps is that it is the very “killing” that West knows the best. Using Clintonian phraseology essentially what Shoebat should be saying is that “By the magnitude of killings under their belt, its war machinery, its war budgets, the West and Christianity are the actual inventors of what Killing means, Stupid!” He is trying to scare the actual user of Nuclear bombs on civilian with a firecracker. How silly. Take for example the numbers killed and wounded, both civilians and military, at the hands of the West, in last one hundred years alone:

WW-I – 38,880,500
WW-II – 73,000,000
Korean War – 4,823,875
Vietnam – 7,579,892
Iraq War (2003 – present) – 134,667 plus estimated excess deaths = 392,979-942,636
Soviet-Afghan War – Killed = Soviet 14,453; Afghan govt 18,000; Resistance 200,000 to 1,000,000; Civilians 600,000 to 2,000,000; Wounded = 3,000,000 mostly civilians; Refuges = externally 5,000,000; internally 2,000,000.
Afghanistan – NATO War (2001-present) – 111, 209, excluding civilians casualties.

When Shoebat thinks in terms of Killings, the few killings by ignorant Jihadists is a child play. West believes in killings in millions and has a track record to prove it.

One has to wonder as to what makes Christianity the source of such global massacres? Not for a moment does it take a breather before it launches another killing adventure? Factually, the West cannot help to stay away from killings. Its core ideology actually preaches genocides and subjugation –

“the Bible also contains the horrific account of what can only be described as a “biblical holocaust”. For, in order to keep the chosen people apart from and unaffected by the alien beliefs and practices of indigenous or neighbouring peoples, when God commanded his chosen people to conquer the Promised Land, he placed city after city ‘under the ban” – which meant that every man, woman and child was to be slaughtered at the point of the sword.” [Ian Guthridge (1999). The Rise and Decline of the Christian Empire. Medici School Publications,Australia. ISBN 0958864543, p. 319-320 – as quoted in Wikipedia]

Next time when the documentary makers and its experts try to come up with smear tactics and distortions of history against Muhammad who was forced into defensive battles, they need to look in their own backyard first e.g.

The Catholic Church in the US were in support of both World War I and World War II. In April 1917, two weeks after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany, Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, the de facto head of the U.S. Catholic church, issued a letter that all Catholics were to support the war. As an example of the position US Catholic bishops took to the war against Germany, here is a quote from William Manning [Bishop of New York]:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ does not stand for peace at any price…Every true American would rather see this land face war than see her flag lowered in dishonor…I wish to say that, not only from the standpoint of a citizen, but from the standpoint of a minister of religion…I believe there is nothing that would be of such great practical benefit to us as universal military training for the men of our land.

If by Pacifism is meant the teaching that the use of force is never justifiable, then, however well meant, it is mistaken, and it is hurtful to the life of our country. And the Pacifism which takes the position that because war is evil, therefore all who engage in war, whether for offense or defense, are equally blameworthy, and to be condemned, is not only unreasonable, it is inexcusably unjust.” [Wikipedia]

In summary, Trifkovic, Spencer and Shoebat expect every other nation to act like the mythical Jesus, but themselves.

In the light of blatant distortions presented by this documentary which will leave hate and fear with the audience on either side of the aisle, it is necessary to clarify the causes of failure of a faith preached by a docile Jesus. Essentially, Christianity as an ideology has utterly failed. Science succeeded in spite of Christianity. Christianity abetted colonization and slavery. Christianity failed against Fascism, Nazism, Communism, Atheism and now Capitalism that is teetering on failure. Muhammad Ali captures the essence of this failure in his book The New World Order, published in 1942. Of the many reasons he states …

“The other reason for the failure of Christianity was that it was only a creed that concerned itself with salvation in the next life. It was not a system or an order dealing with this life; all the interest that it took was in ultra-mundane questions.” [The New World Order, p 5].

Muhammad Ali further tries to reconcile the misgivings of Christianity towards the Islamic world…

“Islam can thus supply to Europe the two great moral forces a living faith in God and an order based on the oneness of humanity – which can restore peace to it. Unless European society is willing to receive these two heavenly gifts from Islam, its disasters will not end. Let Europe diagnose its disease with a cool mind and apply the remedy with a brave heart. Let it not repeat the mistake of earlier days and look upon its real friend as its foe. Europe sought to destroy Islam with sword in the Crusades, but it failed. The opposition after this has taken a subtler turn. Not only did the European soldier go back to his home filled with false conviction that Islam was Europe’s enemy, and a frightful one, because he met him only on the battlefield, and that conviction was left as an inheritance from sire to son, but the Europe’s leaders in political and religious thought – past masters in the art of propaganda – augmented this hatred by drawing a picture of Islam which was the very opposite of reality. Islam was, in the turest sense of the word, a message of peace for the whole world, but it was misrepresented as the most tyrannical and intolerant faith. Islam not only recognised in the clearest words the Divine origin of all the great religious systems of the world, laying it down that there was not a single nation on the face of this earth to which a warner or a guide had not been sent to draw it closer to God [“And there is not a people but a warner has gone among them” (35:24); “And for every nation there is a messenger” (10:47); “And every people had a guide” (13:7)]; it went further and required everyone who entered the fold of Islam to believe in the prophets of all other nations, just as he believed in the Prophet of Islam [“And who believe in that which has been revealed to thee and that which was revealed before thee” (2:4)]. But the political leaders and the religious leaders of Europe actually drew a picture of the Prophet Muhammad as going about with the sword in one hand and the Quran in the other. And not withstanding the clear light that has been thrown on these topics recently, European writers still represent Islam to be the religion of the sword [“The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general” (D.B. MacDonald, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Art. “Djihad”)].” [The New World Order, p 18-19]

References:

‘Ex Terrorist Rakes’ in homeland security bucks Part – 1, Part – 2 – Anderson Cooper 360 – CNN
Matthew – BibleGateway.com
Fallacy of quoting out of context – Wikipedia
WW-I – Wikipedia
WW-II – Wikipedia
Korean War – Wikipedia
Vietnam War – Wikipedia
Iraq War – Wikipedia
Soviet-Afghan War – Wikipedia
Afghanistan – NATO War – Wikipedia
Christianity and Violence – Wikipedia
Just War – Wikipedia
The New World Order – Muhammad Ali