In another post, some one had put up a warning about a terriorist attact at a major religious gathering. I did not want to put this post there because this one is a little long, and I did not want to bog the other one down. Actually this is a two part. The second part is a conversation, and it is done in red and blue.
I saw this on tv last night. Here is the link if you want to go to the source. http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/news/020318a.asp
The Land of War: Islam’s History of Violence and Conquest
By Paul Strand
Washington Correspondent
March 18, 2002
Islam began waging war nearly from the time of its origin in the 7th century.
Ever since September's terrorist attacks, Americans have bent over backwards to assure Muslims the U.S. does not blame Islam.
Organizers invited Muslims to speak at September 11th memorial services, and President Bush visited a mosque. There he repeated the phrase heard often these days — "Islam means peace."
But does it?
In truth, Islam has an aggressive and violent history that stretches across the centuries. Islam began waging war nearly from the time of its origin in the 7th century. Though many verses in the Koran preach peace, Mohammed himself planned at least 65 military raids, and actually led 27 of them.
Ergun Caner, a former Muslim who teaches world religions, said, "Mohammed was a warrior. A Muslim wouldn't say that he was violent, any more violent than any other person of his time. But he was a warrior, and Islam was bent on conquest, not just conversion."
With promises of instant Paradise if they died in battle, his followers set off on century-long wars of conquest that captured more land faster than anyone ever had before.
Joe Kickasola, a professor of international policy at Regent University, said, "Mohammed had died in 632. Exactly one hundred years later, his armies had conquered all of the Middle East, all of northern India, all of north Africa, had conquered Spain, was in southern France."
But what turned Mohammed from attempting peaceful conversions to all-out conquering?
Mohammed prayed and preached and saw vivid visions. He told his followers Allah revealed to him the one true religion, a fulfillment and correction of the faith-messages already brought by Jews and Christians who Mohammed considered fellow "People of the Book."
He even told of a dream where he was carried up from Jerusalem to heaven for a visit with Abraham, Moses and Jesus. That is why Jerusalem to this day is considered Islam's third holiest site.
Jewish and Christian believers upset Mohammed when they refused to accept his revelations and convert to his religion.
When some Jews in the town of Medina sided with his enemies, Mohammed rounded them up and gave them a stark choice: convert or die. The 600 Jewish men chose death and Mohammed had them all beheaded.
"He ordered their complete slaughtering," explained Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University. "And their women and children sold into slavery," Kickasola said.
And when many of Mohammed's fellow Arabs would not convert from their paganism, he turned to conquering them.
In fact, his Koran is filled with talk of jihad and orders its followers to wage holy war. "And American Muslims are quick to deny this, but martial jihad, military jihad, is taught in the Koran," Kickasola said.
CBN News did ask a number of Muslim groups and authorities to comment for this story, but none would.
Moshe Sharon, who teaches Islamic history in Jerusalem, said, "Every Muslim knows it very clearly that the Prophet ordered fighting for God, fighting and killing in the name of God."
"There are over 120 verses in the Koran that speak of fighting against the infidels," Caner said.
After their wildly successful first century of conquering, Muslims might have marched right on through all of Europe, except the mighty French warrior Charles Martel stopped them in their tracks at the decisive Battle of Poitiers or Tours in the year 732.
"Otherwise, Islam would have spread over the entire known civilized world," Caner said. "You would be speaking in Arabic now."
Muslims continued to hold their Spanish domains for centuries. But Christian knights severely shook that hold when they defeated the Muslims in 1212 at Las Navas de Tolosa — a vicious battle where 150,000 Muslims died in a day.
They finally lost their grip on western Europe altogether when Granada, their last province in Spain, fell in 1492. "They were in Spain for over 760 years until 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue," Kickasola said.
The European response to the centuries of Muslim assaults began in 1095 when they decided to launch their own holy war. That was when the Crusades kicked off an effort to retake the Holy Land for Christendom.
The pope absolved the warriors of the violence they would commit. "’If you die fighting for Christ, He will forgive you and take you to Paradise.’ And thus we had the first declaration of Christian jihad in history," Caner explained.
Kickasola pointed out, "It was nonetheless partly a counter-punch for hundreds of years of Muslim aggression."
Much of the fighting was brutal and the Christian warriors massacred thousands of inhabitants of the Holy Land.
"The siege of Antioch and the subsequent taking of Jerusalem was a wholesale slaughter of Jews and Muslims," Caner said.
It was not a proud chapter in the history of Christianity, and Muslims still smart from it and react to it. "Muslims have never forgotten. They call us the Crusaders because they believe that the jihad that they're acting upon now is in response to a declaration of war that we issued in 1095," Caner said.
Muslim and Christian wins and losses ebbed and flowed for centuries across the Holy Land, but the mighty Muslim warrior Saladin won so many victories, he broke the back of the Crusaders' momentum.
"From that moment onwards, the Crusaders began retreating," Moshe Sharon said. He says that is why Arabs today are still wild about Saladin.
"The Jews are compared to the Crusaders: they came to this country, they took the country. But somebody like Saladin is going to appear and he is going to throw them out of the country exactly as Saladin did," Sharon explained.
Next came a revival of Islam's conquering ways with the Ottoman Turks roaring out of their land to create another gigantic empire. And the barbarity shown by the Crusaders was more than matched by the Muslim Ottomans.
When they met the Serbian army at the Battle of Kosovo, they not only wiped out thousands during the fight, but chopped to death all their thousands of Christian prisoners after the battle.
That opened up five centuries of the Turks ruling and brutalizing the Christians of the Balkans. To this day, Serbia believes Europe does not understand how it stood bravely before the Muslim hordes and was cut down without mercy for defending the Christian faith.
"In just this last decade, of course, the Serbians sought to get even by expelling the Muslims first from Bosnia-Herzegovina and then later from Kosovo," Kickasola said.
In 1453, Constantinople fell to Mahomet the Second; it was the last little bit that remained of the Roman and Byzantine empires. "That brought to an end an empire that had lasted 1,000 years," Sharon said.
After cutting Constantinople's defending army to shreds, Mahomet watched his men massacre some 4,000 civilians while 50,000 were carted off as slaves. The city's fall made Turkey the most powerful nation in Europe, possibly in the whole world.
Suleiman "the Magnificent" — the greatest Muslim conqueror of all — stretched the empire even further. At Mohacs, he brought Hungary to heel in 1526. In just two hours, his army slaughtered 16,000 Hungarians and then beheaded all 2,000 of the soldiers they captured.
The Ottoman rule was so cruel the rest of Europe quaked before the threat of its power.
But European forces eventually stopped the Ottomans. At sea, the Ottomans lost the decisive Battle of Lepanto, where ships mere feet from each other blasted away for most of a day. And on land, Christian armies turned them back at the very gates of Vienna.
Still, they kept their hold on the lands they had conquered until World War One.
Now when most empires meet their end, they depart into the dustbin of history, never to be resurrected. But Islam refuses to believe that its empire days are past.
That is because many Muslims do not believe in any division of religious power and secular power. For religion to rule in the hearts of men, it also must rule over their lives and lands.
So, from this viewpoint, they must continue to conquer, as well as convert. It is part of a worldview in which the planet is divided into two parts: the Land of Peace, where Muslims already rule, and the rest of the planet where they don't, called ominously enough "Dar al Harb," the Land of War.
"One part is the part which is already under the rule of Islam, and the other part of it should be under the rule of Islam in the future," Sharon explained.
That goes hand-in-glove with the belief that any land taken away from Muslims must never be allowed to stay in the hands of infidels: that is a mortal offense.
"If they have conquered land by conquest in the name of Allah because of the martial jihad, then it's Allah's by conquest," Kickasola said. "If a person seeks to regain his territory it's like stealing from Allah."
That would include, if not especially, a land like Israel, where Jews are now in charge.
"It is impossible that a Jew rules over a Muslim," Sharon explained. "Israel is regarded to be a reverse of history. Doesn't make any difference what we do, Israel has to be obliterated from the face of the earth."
The same is true for all parts of the Land of War that will not willingly submit to Islam and become part of its Land of Peace.
http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/Ergun_Caner2.asp
Islam is not a Peaceful Religion
The 700 Club
March 8, 2002
Former Muslim Dr. Ergun Caner, who has written a telling book called "Unveiling Islam", appeared on The 700 Club this week to discuss Islam and give us an inside look at Muslim beliefs.
PAT ROBERTSON: Ladies and gentlemen, a week or two ago I made a statement on this program that I differ with our esteemed president because I didn't think that Islam was a religion of peace. One of those nice people who tapes our program gave it to the Washington Post. And it became a firestorm. It is like saying the earth is round and everybody says how can you say such a thing? All I know is I have studied history and am aware of what is going on around the world. It was like a no-brainer. But somehow, it got to be a matter of grave controversy where people were screaming at each other and saying I was a Nazi. You just say what is the matter? We have a guest who came out of Islam. He's one of only 20 former Muslims who are now preachers. He's one of only eight professors of theology. It is a pleasure to welcome Dr. Ergun Caner back to The 700 Club.
DR. ERGUN CANER: Honor to be here.
ROBERTSON: It was said by our President that Islam is a religion of peace. I mean, where does he get that?
CANER: The very word Islam. It does mean peace.
ROBERTSON: Peace in submission?
CANER: It means peace with or submission to Allah. It has nothing to do with the Infidels. It does not mean peace with the Infidels. It means peace with Allah. The Qur’an is very clear about how they feel about you and myself. It says, we are open enemies with the Infidels.
ROBERTSON: What about this jihad? They say jihad is something you fight in your heart and mind. It has nothing to do with real war? What does the Qur’an say about that? It (Caner’s Qur’an) is a big, thick thing.
CANER: It is in English and Arabic. And the reason I brought this is because men such as yourself, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Mac Brunson in Dallas, you guys have come under attack for saying that jihad is founded in the Qur’an. The apologists will say the word was never in the Qur’an. Yes, they have the Qur’an which is supposedly the words of Allah and then the words and teachings of Muhammad. I will cite two verses I had to memorize as a child that are taught to young Muslims. I hope this puts an end to the problem they have. They don't have a problem with you Dr. Robertson. They have a problem with their own Qur’an. There are Muslims who say they don't believe it say if anyone desires a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him. Let me show you:
"If anyone desires a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him."
Surah 3:85
"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book (Jews and Christians), until they pay compensation with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
- Surah 9:29
Muhammad’s last words recorded in the Hadith were ‘turn the Pagans out of the Arabian Peninsula.’ The reason that I and others like me are not well liked in the Islamic community is the belief that anyone who changes the Islamic religion, kill him.
ROBERTSON: Just like that, kill him?
CANER: One word in Arabic. And two word in the English. Kill him.
ROBERTSON: Somehow we are not bringing that out in the religion of peace business. In other words, think about history because for the first hundred years after Muhammad's death, Islam swept like a fire across North Africa and destroyed all of the Christian churches there and caused everybody to be submitted. Tell us about how they started that.
CANER: You understand that Islam is based on conversion. But it is either by conversion by heart or by sword. When someone says Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, first, one must remember that it is biological. You are born to a Muslim family. Your father whispers the Kaleema in your ear and you are a Muslim. Secondly, it is conversion by the sword. Slay them where you will find them. And so it spreads like a wildfire.
ROBERTSON: Slay them where you find them?
CANER: That is directly from the Qur’an itself.
ROBERTSON: Slay them where you find them? How do they say that is peaceful?
CANER: I understand why our president said what he said. He doesn't want us fighting Muslims here in America. And here in America this is a very important point. In America, jihad as it is Holy War, is a doctrine. It is a teaching. But from where I come from in Turkey, Islam is more than doctrine, it is ethic. We live with it day and night. Everyone says Turkey is so advanced and modern yet 26 Christian churches have been closed in the last three months, and a thousand Christians have been slain in the last decade.
ROBERTSON: For example, in Saudi Arabia can there be a Christian church?
CANER: That is a tremendous question. You travel the world so you know this. According to the Pact of Oma, They believe every Islamic State believes in religious toleration not religious freedom. Religious toleration says you can be by yourself but if you win a Muslim to Jesus Christ as we are called to do, you can be put to death on the spot.
ROBERTSON: For winning a Muslim to Jesus you can be put to death?
CANER: As a matter of fact, Hadith 9:50 says no one can be killed for killing an Infidel which explains why they will not turn (Osama) bin Laden over.
ROBERTSON: No one can be killed for killing an Infidel? That is what Muhammad said?
CANER: From the Hadith. That is why everyone becomes so worried when bin Laden comes on television. I am thrilled because the first group that bin Laden speaks to are the other Muslims who have not joined the jihad. And bin Laden quoting from the Hadith and quoting from the Qur’an always says you have been called to jihad. They signed the Fatwa on February 23, 1998. He says, "I have called you. You have been called to jihad." It is one thing to say they don't believe in it. There are Muslims who legitimately don't believe in it. And it is another to say it is not taught in Islam.
ROBERTSON: We have a 1.1 billion Muslims in the world. How many of these people honest to goodness believe in Qur’an and believe in the teachings of Muhammad?
CANER: They would say all of them. How many of them follow it is another question. But right now as we speak there are 300,000 who are like me. They are being trained in jihad. They are being trained in the schools. We memorize the verses of the Hadith, we memorize the Qur’an, and we are holy warriors. You know, they always bring up the question to you … well, Christianity and the Old Testament -- we have Christian militias. But for someone to set up a compound in some state and fire off rounds and say we are doing it in the name of Christ. They have to do so in spite of the teachings of Jesus Christ. But a Muslim who does so, does so because of the teachings of Muhammad. It is not descripted, it is prescriptive in the Qur’an for a Muslim to be called to Holy War.
ROBERTSON: We have a last slide that says seize them and slay them wherever you find them. It says:
Seize them and slay them wherever you find them: and in any case take no friends or helpers from their ranks."
- Surah 4:89
Tell us about this one.
CANER: They call the Christians people of the book and Jews people of the book. So the idea for a Muslim, who is an apologist this is a nightmare. For someone to quote the Qur’an on national television and around the world because they say it is passive and always is in response. You are taking it out of context. There are over 120 verses that call Muslims to Holy War in the Qur’an not withstanding the Hadith which has all of the protocols by which bin Laden operates.
ROBERTSON: Didn’t Muhammad say in one of his writings, speaking that the last days wouldn't come until the Jews were all killed by the Muslims?
CANER: Isn't it interesting that during our former administration they were offered over 80% of the Holy Land and they turned it down. They don't want part of Israel. They want all of Israel. I find it interesting when I am talking to Jewish friends, I say were it not for Jesus Christ we would be across the line for one another.
ROBERTSON: We have questions that have been sent in to us on the Internet. Peggy asks, "Thank you for presenting an informed Muslim-based perspective on Islam. Can you tell us what part Jesus plays in Islam?"
CANER: Well, I teach this at my college, at Criswell College. Muslims say they believe in Jesus, they say sometimes they believe more in Jesus than we do. But to a Muslim, Jesus is a prophet and nothing more than a messenger of Allah. They think he will be sort of like the angel coming and getting us at the end of times but that Muhammad is the final prophet and the seal of the prophets. And Jesus was just among one of 25.
ROBERTSON: The word Ayatollah, is that spirit of the Lord? Prophet of the Lord?
CANER: Depending the sect, you have the spirit of the Lord and in some sects there is a Mullah.
ROBERTSON: But that is spirit of Allah. So, the Ayatollah Khomeni would be deeply venerated if he was the spirit of Allah. Is that not correct?
CANER: Here in America, Muslims are different. I tell people all of the time that Muslims in America were genuinely shocked by the bombing of September 11th because again, here, they have gotten used to our country. You came under incredible heat for saying they have come as missionaries and many of them do. So here I am as a former Muslim and I say Dr. Robertson, you and Dr. Mohler, and Dr. Brunson are speaking the truth and getting beaten up for no reason. But the reason is we are in a culture now that is so synchrotistic. They want us all to have a big group hug and to light a candle, sing a theme song, and have an Oprah (Winfrey) love affair. The thing is, the only thing they believe, the only absolute, that they don't accept is that there are no absolutes. We as Christians and Muslims make this point as well. The culture wants everybody to be the same. Muslims say we are not the same as the Christians. Christians say we do not worship the same God.
ROBERTSON: One last question. This one says, "I am thinking about becoming a Muslim. Before I do that, however, I would like to ask why you changed from being a Muslim to being a Christian?"
CANER: Well, I love that question. I get that in the secular media all of the time. I didn’t change anything. I got saved. I was made righteous with Jesus Christ. I am not religious by nature. You look at me, I don't particularly look like a professor or a pastor. I look like a motorcycle guy. I was saved and it was the preaching of two things. Mercy and grace. As Muslims, we live in fear of the scales their entire life. Fear to get to paradise you must be 51% good.
ROBERTSON: You never know?
CANER: Even Muhammad didn't know. In the Hadith he said, ‘I don't know where I am going. Only Allah knows.’ When someone told me that grace, Christ’s death on the cross and atonement would free me from the fear of scales and what Jesus did for me that I could not do myself. That was a brand transforming new day.
ROBERTSON: So the man who wants to be a Muslim, what do you tell him?
CANER: I tell him that Jesus Christ didn't come to be a way, Jesus Christ came to be THE way. And Jesus Christ came to do for this man what he cannot do for himself regardless of how religious he is. People ask me all the time, do good Muslims go to hell? Yes, and you know what? Good Baptists go to hell, too. It is not your denomination, it is what you did with Jesus Christ.
[blue]ROBERTSON: This book "Unveiling Islam" by our guest is available to you. Get it from http://www.cbn.com or you can call us at 1-800-759-0700 and we will tell you how you can get a hold of it. We appreciate you for your stand. And we hope, brother, they don't get you. So far so good.
CANER: You face the same type of heat I do. You are much higher profile than little old me.
[blue]ROBERTSON: They are after me but we'll trust the Lord for his protection. God bless you and thank you for being here.
The truth can never be hurt by a lie,
but a lie can be exposed by the truth.
