herd of (Milch) camels and to drink their milk and urine (as a medicine). So they went as directed and after they became healthy, they killed the shepherd of the Prophet and drove away all the camels. The news reached the Prophet early in the morning and he sent (men) in their pursuit and they were captured and brought at noon. He then ordered to cut their hands and feet (and it was done), and their eyes were branded with heated pieces of iron, They were put in ‘Al-Harra’ and when they asked for water, no water was given to them.” Abu Qilaba said, “Those people committed theft and murder, became infidels after embracing Islam and fought against Allah and His Apostle.” 52
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OSTRICH ALERT
“If you want to know why ISIS exists, don’t bother searching Islamic texts, or examining Islamic traditions.”
—Salon magazine, February 19, 2015 53
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“This hadith,” the Dabiq article explains, “shows the severity of the prophetic punishment against the treacherous, false claimants of Islam.” The executedSyrians, it asserts, were guilty of a “wicked deed” that called for a punishment similar to that which Muhammad had meted out. 54
There is, of course, no end to the articles assuring Americans that the Islamic State is misunderstanding and misinterpreting Islamic texts, but this message has not gotten through to the thousands of Muslims from the West who have already joined the Islamic State, and the others who attempt to do so every day.
Those who glibly dismiss the numbers of these Muslims as only a minuscule percentage of the billion-plus Muslims worldwide are missing the point. If twenty-five thousand young Christians had flocked from all over the world to join a terror group, no one would wave the phenomenon away by pointing out that there are over a billion Christians in the world.
If the Islamic State is not Islamic, its success represents a massive failure on the part of Muslim authorities. They have failed, and failed spectacularly, to communicate the true, peaceful tenets of their religion—teachings that are so obvious to non-Muslims such as John Kerry and Joe Biden—to tens of thousands of their young people. They are presiding over a catechetical disaster of proportions unknown in the history of the world: never before has such global havoc been wrought by people acting upon a massive misunderstanding of the core beliefs of their own religion.
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OSTRICH ALERT
“The extremism that we see, the radical exploitation of religion which is translated into violence, has no basis in any of the real religions. There’s nothing Islamic about what ISIL/Daesh stands for, or is doing to people.”
—Secretary of State John Kerry 55
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The thing is, those young people can read the Qur’an. They can see what it says, and see that the Islamic State is acting in accord with the plain words of a book that repeatedly tells its readers that it is clear (6:114, 11:1, 16:89, 41:3)—and also with the example of Muhammad and the rulings of traditional Islamic jurisprudence. Articles explaining how the Qur’an really meanssomething quite different from what it seems to say keep appearing, but they have not managed to staunch the flow of foreign jihadis into the Islamic State.
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UNFORTUNATELY, THERE’S A LOT IN THERE FOR MASS-MURDERING SOCIOPATHS TO LIKE
Professor Caner K. Dagli of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains away ISIS’s reading of the Qur’an: “Its members search for text snippets that support their argument, claim that these fragments are reliable even if they are not, and disregard all contrary evidence—not to mention Islam’s vast and varied intellectual and legal tradition. Their so-called ‘prophetic methodology’ is nothing more than cherry-picking what they like and ignoring what they do not.” 56
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It would be refreshing if their authors, instead of devoting their efforts to calming jittery infidels and
Yenthu Wentz
Aneesa Price
Suzanne Weyn
Mary Marks
Craig Johnson
Patrice Michelle
Kate McMullan
Sherryl Woods
Steven Savile
Hallie Swanson