“Islamonazis”? No, the Nazis were Islam lite, Part 2

My latest op-ed in Arutz sheva - Israel National News. Part 2 adds significant material to the original.

Part 1

The political economy of Islam

Plunder is a feature of most economies, but only of the Islamic economy is it its explicit basis, and upon which an entire society and political economy are built. The whole system is sanctified in that whatever Muslims steal from non-Muslims, especially after killing them, Allah has already promised to them in exchange for waging jihad in his cause. The Gazan "civilians" who flooded into Israel on October 7 to loot the Jews' houses, did so because they were entitled to do so. They only took what was already theirs. “...Allah has promised you much booty that you will take...” (Qur'an 48:20). They did the same when they drove the Jews out of Old Jerusalem and when they massacred the Jews in Hebron. The pattern has been consistent for more than 1400 years. That's some vacuum.

Despite appearances, Islamic plunder is not chaos. It is hemmed in by law, order and decorum. Shari'a is harsh with Muslims who steal from Muslims in that:

As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise. (Qur'an 5:38).

But there is an important exception:

The Prophet said: "Cutting of hand is not to be inflicted on one who plunders..." (Sunan Abi Dawud 4391)

Plunder is also not a free-for-all. Since plunder contributes the largest part of the ummah's revenue, Shari'a imposes order on it:

AbuLabid said: "We were with AbdurRahman ibn Samurah ibn Kabul. The people got booty and plundered it. He stood and addressed (the people): 'I heard the Messenger of Allah prohibiting getting property from the booty before its distribution.' Therefore, they returned what they had taken. He then distributed it among them." (Sunan Abi Dawud 2703)

This is so proper accounting may secure the revenue required for the ummah's social services. Qur'an 8:41 commands:

And know that whatever ye take as spoils of war, lo! a fifth thereof is for Allah, and for the messenger and for the kinsman (who hath need) and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, if ye believe in Allah and that which We revealed unto Our slave on the Day of Discrimination, the day when the two armies met. And Allah is Able to do all things.

Shari'a even imposes decorum on plundering, by Islamic standards, of course:

The Prophet said: "...but he who plunders conspicuously does not belong to us." (Sunan Abi Dawud 4391)

The source of this revenue was "the people of the towns," Christians, Jews, Pagans, Mandaeans, Zoroastrians, etc., in other words, not the burgeoning tribe of desert marauders that came to call themselves Muslims. Chapter 7 of the Qur'an provides ample religious justification for targeting them. They were, after all, the greatest concentrations of wealth in the neighbourhood, yet have grown unaccustomed to warfare and violence.

Muslims consider themselves superior to the people they attack and plunder not because the Qur'an tells them that they are the best of people, but because they see those who subject themselves to "human law" as inherently weak and unable to defend themselves and what is dear to them. The Father of political economy, Abdurahman Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah, explains it thus:

Greater fortitude is found among the savage Arab Bedouins than among people who are subject to laws. Furthermore, those who rely on laws and are dominated by them from the very beginning of their education and instruction in the crafts, sciences, and religious matters, are thereby deprived of much of their own fortitude. They can scarcely defend themselves at all against hostile acts...

When the Muslims got their religion from the Lawgiver (Muhammad), the restraining influence came from themselves, as a result of the encouragement and discouragement he gave them in the Qur'an. It was not a result of technical instruction or scientific education. (The laws) were the laws and precepts of the religion, which they received orally and which their firmly rooted (belief in) the truth of the articles of faith caused them to observe. Their fortitude remained unabated, and it was not corroded by education or authority. 'Umar said, "Those who are not educated (disciplined) by the religious law are not educated (disciplined) by God." (This statement expresses) 'Umar's desire that everyone should have his restraining influence in himself." (Muqaddimah, Chapter 2.6)

At first this might appear to contradict the Shari'a reputation for strictness, but it must be remembered that Shari'a is the law of a totalitarian system. It is as strict as it is arbitrary. For the identical strictly punishable transgression, one accused can receive the full force of the law, while another can walk free thanks to the judges' discretionary leniency. The facts of the case and legal argument, therefore, become irrelevant. What counts is impressing the judges, whatever that might entail. The same mindset underlines all aspects of their lives. In an argument, the Muslim who yells the loudest or is the first to throw a punch is the one who is right, obviously. This is exactly why hasbara is so damaging to Israel. Ibn Khaldun continues:

Governmental and educational laws destroy fortitude, because their restraining influence is something that comes from outside. The religious laws, on the other hand, do not destroy fortitude, because their restraining influence is something inherent. Therefore, governmental and educational laws influence sedentary people, in that they weaken their souls and diminish their stamina, because they have to suffer (their authority) both as children and as adults. The Bedouins, on the other hand, are not in the same position, because they live far away from the laws of government, instruction, and education.

The top priority of Islam is its own self-preservation, i.e., avoiding the Muslims themselves falling prey to plunder by others. All Muslim warfare against non-Muslims is, therefor, jihad, rather than "struggles for national liberation", "anti-colonial struggles" or "resistance to occupation", as it is nowadays described. The best way to secure themselves against plunder is for violence, fighting and killing to be central to Muslim morality, ethics and habits, and their contempt for "man's law" helps to preserve this.

For Islam to persist, Muslims have to be more violent than the non-Muslims around them and have a reputation for brutality, belligerence and ferocity. But Islam must dominate, and to that end it helps to paralyse those that Muslims plan to attack. If targeted infidels are overwhelmingly more powerful than the Muslims, then the psychological state of the infidels is tested by how readily they tolerate persistent "peaceful" aggressions.

These include: public nuisance (praying in the streets, calls to prayer over loudspeakers when everyone else is asleep, demanding special consideration, such as that non-Muslims refrain from eating in the presence of Muslims during Ramadan, etc.); flooding the target population's media with all the "beautiful" things in Islam (Hajj, breaking the fast, weddings, etc); persistent intrusive questioning, by which they gauge the readiness or reluctance of the non-Muslims to put them in their place; demanding that non-Muslims refrain from that which Muslims find offensive (eating pork, drinking alcohol or immodest dress). All this is jihad of the tongue, da'wah, psychologically preparing the target infidels for easy subjugation and dhimmitude. When the overwhelmingly powerful infidels themselves advocates for these measures, then it is time to drop all pretence and go directly on the offensive:

...make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war to threaten the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides whom you may not know, but whom Allah does know. And whatever you shall spend in the Cause of Allah shall be repaid unto you, and you shall not be treated unjustly. (Qur'an 8:60)

By the same token, those non-Muslims who declare that they want to live side-by-side in peace with Muslims will be the first to be attacked, especially the "interfaith dialogue" crowd, while those who visit upon Muslims violence more severe than the violence that Muslims can bring to bear, will be respected and left alone, at least until such time as Muslims feel bold enough to try again. The main reason for Hamas's gruesome violence during the October 7 attack was to paralyse Israelis into not fighting back. In the event, one part of Israel demanded immediate capitulation, while the other part obsessed over obeying rules that did not apply to Hamas. The result is that no one fought back in a way that would actually defeat Hamas.

Nothing in Islam escapes the obligation on Muslims to do violence, not the loving relationship between husband and wife, or even the loving relationship between parents and children. Love is a problem for Islam that it manages to mitigate by channeling all love, if not for Allah and his messenger exclusively, then through Allah and his messenger. Hatred, however, is obligatory. No other emotions warrant religious interest, hence:

Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. (Ayatollah Khomeini)

Or, as Islam's greatest da'wah clown, Dr Zakir Naik, puts it, "There is fun in Islam, so long as the fun is halal fun". All of this begins with the imperative to plunder, to which everything human is a strict utility "in the cause of Allah", thus constituting the Islamic political economy.

The political economy of Nazism is predicated on a work ethic of industriousness and improving the nation’s material conditions. The more is produced today, the longer a society can sustain itself into the future. But the more efficiently they produce, the less they need to work to achieve the same sustenance. The pressure for efficiency is absent from Islamic societies. Far from an intrinsic pressure to do things better, the intrinsic pressure is to not do it at all. This ties back to the Islamic ideal (discussed in Part 1) and its consequence, disdain for this life and distaste for love of life, and hence the proud boast, “We love death more than you love life”. Qur’an 10:107 sanctifies the resulting fatalism:

If Allah afflicteth thee with some hurt, there is none who can remove it save Him; and if He desireth good for thee, there is none who can repel His bounty. He striketh with it whom He will of his bondmen. He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.

A scene in the 1962 David Lean film Lawrence of Arabia, depicts Arab Muslim horsemen armed with swords attacking a Turkish airplane strafing them. They keep on attacking the plane overhead until those not yet mowed down give up in bewilderment, their dead brothers strewn all around them, the plane already a dot in the distance. Allah did not ordain victory for them that day. Perhaps next time, insha-Allah.

The term “Islamonazis” implies that Islam is so bad that it can be likened to Nazism. But this is not comparing like with like. Their industrial society equipped the Nazis to much more efficiently carry out their genocide, that is, they could kill many more in a much shorter time, than the atomised, progress-averse Muslims every could. Over the 1400 years of Islam, jihad is estimated to have killed between 200 and 250 million people.

Questions immediately arise. How many could Muslims have killed, if they had an industrial society? How much would the Nazis have killed, equipped only with horses and swords? How long would the Nazis have been able to keep it up? Was every Nazi as gleeful in killing as every Gazan was on October 7? Did all of Germany break out in spontaneous celebration when they learnt of the death camps? Was it a triumph that nothing could ever take away from them?

The truth is that at the end of a hard day’s killing, the Nazis had to get blind drunk in order to be able to sleep at night. The Nazis were barbaric, no question about it, but they did not have a patch on Hamas. To call Hamas “Islamonazis” is to downplay their horrors.

Still, like everyone else, Muslims have to live, and if they do not produce the means of life, then they have to get it somewhere else. Both the Qur’an (Chapter 8, “The Spoils of War”) and the Shari’a deal with this problem. Islamic political economy is predicated on the Muslims living at the expense of the non-Muslims. Islamic economy plunders the economies of the non-Muslims in several ways: raiding the “people of the towns”, murdering whoever they could not capture, seizing their property and taking the women and children as slaves (the most recent example being the October 7 raid into Israel); extorting tribute from vassal states (the Arab League syphoning the European Union); raiding caravans and merchant ships (Somali pirates); and extracting jizya, “protection money”, from Jews and Christians. A contemporary proleptic jizya is Muslim immigrants bleeding Western welfare coffers dry, and extorting money from Hindus in India, Jews in Israel’s “mixed” cities and Christians across the Middle East.

While those plundered continued producing, they continued to be plundered, forcing them into steady decline until their condition became so dire that it became preferable to convert to Islam and at least earn part of the spoils of plundering others further afield. If Muslim immigrants get their way, this will be the fate of every Western country naïve enough to welcome Muslim immigrants.

There is no migration, but Jihad (for Allah's Cause). Go and offer yourself for Jihad, and if you find an opportunity for Jihad (stay there) otherwise, come back. (Sahih Bukhari 4309)

They stay because the countries they invade give them plenty of opportunities for jihad. This parasitic form of economy is by its nature incapable of supporting social improvement. Islamic society consumes not as it produces, but as it plunders, obviating any need for human development of any kind, save the ability to fight, plus whatever is needed to raise the next generation to fighting age. Thus the impoverishing of Western Europe.

Mosul Eye recalled the tense early days of ISIS rule on campus—and the debate over Shakespeare. ISIS wanted to ban the Bard. “One professor argued that’s how we teach English,” Mosul Eye told me. “ISIS asked us, ‘But what could Shakespeare teach Muslims? He can’t teach them how to fight [in the cause of Allah, AP].’” (“Mosul’s library without books”)

Those Muslims with an aptitude for converting money into capital find themselves hemmed in on all sides by a myriad of obstructive laws (prohibition on interest, liquidatory inheritance laws, exclusion of half the workforce from the economy, prohibition on Muslim subordination to non-Muslims, etc.) that make such conversion well-nigh impossible, and ensure that plunder remains the principle form of economy, the essential skills for which are deceitfulness, ruthlessness, quickness to violence and obsequiousness, thus perpetuating the atomised nature of tribal culture. If Muslims need their money to become capital, then they need to invest it outside of Islam. Systemic corruption is a natural part of a parasitic economy, especially where law enforcement is arbitrary.

The late eighteenth century saw a revitalised Europe, and the appearance on the scene of the United States, bring effective resistance to Muslim raids and an end to the ability of the last caliphate, the Ottomans, to continue expanding as it exhausted ever-widening circles of lands through over-plunder. The misery that had been more or less confined to the peasant farmers of the Middle East and what remained of the dhimmis, started creeping up the social scale towards the nobility centred on the Court and the upper echelons of the military and the bureaucracy. The Sublime Porte had been set on its way to becoming the sick man of Europe, while a deformed middle class began emerging in Constantinople, later to become the nucleus of the Turkish nation-state.

Insult was added to injury when infidel Europe not only started hiving off chunks of “Muslim land” as colonies, but forced the Muslims, both in those colonies and in the declining Ottoman Caliphate itself, to abolish the Dhimma, the contract and institution of dhimmitude, and slavery. These were affronts to every level of Muslim society, especially the poorest, who till then had been able to maintain their supremacism by abusing and robbing Jews and Christians.

The first reprieve came in the early twentieth century with the discovery of oil in the Middle East. The only problem was that the Middle East was still Islamic, its peoples still Muslim. Their only possible response to their newfound wealth was to plunder it, and that is exactly what they did. They plundered their own vast oil resources, rather than turn it into capital and develop their societies.

In other words, spectacular oil wealth allowed Arab Muslims to gild their sewerless cities and pay someone else to build the highest skyscrapers for them (still without sewers), while laying the basis for plundering the very Western Europe and United States that had arrested their plunder around the turn of the nineteenth century. They bought the capitulation of the policy-making organs of the European Union, while in the United States, they bought politicians, major cogs in the economy and entire universities, thereby enabling the resumption of the spread of Islam to subjugate the entire world. The reason the Arab League panicked when the EU announced its expansion into Eastern Europe was because the Eastern European populations had not been zombified in readiness for Islamic takeover and could cause problems, as indeed, is turning out to be the case.

We can now revisit "Without jihad, there is no Islam," and restate it as without plunder, there is no Islam. A hadith of the highest grade, sahih, not only equates Islam with plunder, but reinforces the Islamic contempt for Muslims working:

Ibn Umar narrates: I heard the Messenger of Allah saying, “If you trade in each, and follow the tails of cows, and became content with being farmers, and ignored jihad, Allah will impose on you a humiliation that would not be taken away until you go back to your religion.” (Sunan Abi Dawud 3462) (My emphasis)

A hilarious joke circulating amongst Muslims in Germany a few years ago ran:

An African went up to an Arab in the street and said, "I'm so grateful to you Germans for taking me in. Thank you," to which the Arab replied, "I'm not German. I'm Arab." "Oh, sorry," said the African. He went up to an Albanian and said, "I'm so grateful to you Germans for taking me in. Thank you," to which the Albanian replied, "I'm not German. I'm Albanian." "Oh, sorry," said the African. Next he approached an Afghan and said, "I'm so grateful to you Germans for taking me in. Thank you," to which the Afghan replied, "I'm not German. I'm Afghan." "Whoa," said the African, "then where are all the Germans?" "No idea," said the Afghan, "working, probably."

Islam is a religion of barbarians, by barbarians, for barbarians, which is why it appealed to the plundering Turkic tribes and the Mongols, who embraced it freely, and were then enabled to plunder all the more effectively. The more far-sighted contemporary Arab leaders see the problem: with Islam, there can be no development, but have no idea either of where they need to end up, or of how to get there. What they do know, is that Israel offers them their best chance of solving it. That the Arabs embracing the Abraham Accords seek a bulwark against Iran is secondary to their seeking deliverance from Islam and its destructive political economy of plunder. As for the Nazis, they were simply not barbarian enough to plunder everyone around them and themselves into penury.

Conclusion

Describing Hamas as “Islamonazi” or “Islamofascist” shares with describing them as “barbarians” that they are all expressions of rage. Hamas are barbarians, but if those who described them as such on October 7 had any idea of what they were talking about, then every horror and sadistic cruelty Hamas has since inflicted on Israelis would have been anticipated as to be expected of barbarians. Instead, every subsequent barbaric act elicited the same shock, the same surprise, the same revulsion as if such acts were taking place for the first time. In their psychological war, Hamas carried out exactly the same attack on the Jewish psyche every time, gruesome cruelty, achieving the same success every time for fourteen months straight.

This is not all Hamas’s doing. The Arabs knew how to add a force multiplier to Israel’s social dislocation in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and the frenzied efforts to undermine successive Israeli governments after Menachem Begin had become Prime Minister. The Arabs saw how eagerly Israelis fell for the Oslo Accord and how they clung to it despite the intifadas. They were on their best behaviour while Jews ethnically cleansed themselves from Gaza, echoing Napoleon’s dictum: never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. They see how desperate Jews are to have Arabs in their Knesset and how good that makes them feel about themselves. Those Arab MKs can openly support “the Resistance” inside Israel’s Knesset and the Jews will do nothing to them. Subhanallah. All of this is ammunition for their psychological war on the Jews.

The term “Islamonazi” seems in the ascendant. It issues from the union of outrage and ignorance. It misleads as to the nature of reality and misguides in the formulation of policy and the determination of action. “Barbarians” is the only accurate term. Israelis, however, have no idea how accurate, and hence useful, this term is. If you want the world to know how you feel about Hamas, then call them barbarians, rather than “Islamonazis,” take your terminology seriously, and then get ready to fight back in ways that are effective against barbarians.

Picture credits:

Screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBx7EJbtxkY

John Roy Carlson, Cairo to Damascus, Lib Congress number 51 11068, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7352362