Month: July 2007

The Sufi ‘moderate’ Al-Ghazali

By Alyssa A. Lappen
American Thinker | July 21, 2007

All Islamic scholars recognize 12th Century Sufi master, supposedly “liberal” Al-Ghazali (d.1111), to have been an orthodox Muslim.

Even the late hagiographer, professor William Montgomery Watt (1909-2006), wrote that Al-Ghazali, “the greatest Muslim after Muhammad,…brought orthodoxy and mysticism into closer contact,” theologians nearer to accepting “mystics as respectable,” and mystics “within the bounds of orthodoxy.”1

But avowed Naqshbandi Sufi Muslim, Suleyman Ahmad Stephen Schwartz, in a July 20 discussion of Islamic “moderation,” stresses Al-Ghazali’s “beliefs of the heart,”—expunging Al-Ghazali’s fierce advocacy of jihad warfare.

In his Wagjiz, dating to 1101 A.D., Al-Ghazali advised on vanquished non-Muslim dhimmi peoples:

…one must go on jihad (i.e., razzias or raids) at least once a year…one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them…If a person of the Ahl al-Kitab [People of The Book – i.e. Jews and Christians] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked….One may cut down their trees…One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they need…

Continue reading “The Sufi ‘moderate’ Al-Ghazali” →


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Uprooting jihad

Letters to the Editor
Washington Times | 11 July 2007

In his letter “The roots of terror” (Monday), Chuck Woolery claims that we misrepresented the “root” causes for Muslim suffering. Yet, “[t]he repression, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of Muslims” does not result from Western or Israeli policies or actions, but from totalitarian, corrupt Arab and Muslim regimes and clerics who confine them to the Dark Ages.

The current Sunni and Shi’ite fight in Iraq exhumes earlier wars, predating the American presence. Palestinians have received more financial aid than any other refugee group in history. They suffer because their corrupt leaders squandered it all, and prolonged the Palestinians’ misery. Bolstered by the Saudi/Gulf and Iranian regimes, the Palestinians advanced a culture of death and destruction, strangling the development of a viable society.

Jihad is an eternal Muslim institution, antedating modern Israel’s creation by 13 centuries. Through this institutional religious mechanism of war and repression, pre-Islamic Jews and Christians of historical Palestine were conquered, massacred, pillaged, enslaved and deported. The survivors and their descendants suffered the brutal Shariah-inspired system of dhimmitude until the League of Nations Mandate in 1918. That the Jewish people are now flourishing in democratic Israel, rather than as dhimmis under oppressive Islam, is still a basic “grievance” to Arabs and Muslims.

Appeasement and “critical and constructive dialogue” with jihadists whose goal is to restore the caliphate by any means, only proves ignorance of the Muslim Brotherhood agenda.

To stop the jihadists and alleviate the suffering of oppressed Muslims worldwide, we should discourage discussions with Islamists. Let the Islamists denounce their incessant attempts to politically enforce a seventh-century religious ideology upon entire nations. Let them also prove their denunciations by dismantling their terror funding networks.

When all jihadists renounce terrorism, al Qaeda stops killing “infidels,” Palestinians no longer indoctrinate children to become suicide bombers, Iran no longer seeks to eliminate the United States and Israel and Muslim nations institute basic human freedoms, only then can Mr. Woolery’s and our hopes for a peaceful world be realized.

Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
American Center for Democracy


All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
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Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

Egyptian roots of hatred

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | Jul. 6, 2007

Had the citizens of Greeley, Colo., been friendlier to the introverted Egyptian student Sayyid Qutb during his studies there from 1948 to 1950, he might not have become the Muslim Brotherhood’s signature ideologue. But the lonesome Qutb resented everything America had to offer, especially individual freedom, capitalism, jazz and women’s “open” sexuality.

Shortly after returning to Egypt, Qutb joined the Muslim Brothers (or Muslim Brotherhood) and committed to paper the dogma of the organization’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, calling on all Muslims to resist modernization and live only according to the Islamic law, a theme Qutb expanded to include the “liberation” of Palestine, in subsequent writings of his own. The seeds of hatred for everything Western, which Qutb sowed half a century ago, have spread around the globe and are now growing like kudzu throughout America and the West.

Using the motto “God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Qur’an our constitution, jihad our way and dying for God our supreme objective,” and armed with al-Banna’s master plan to expand Islamic fundamentalism, the Muslim Brothers began their jihad against the West.

Petrodollars turned the once small Egyptian radical organization into a global jihadist movement, spawning every Islamic terrorist group operating today. These include al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and many other often nameless affiliated groups responsible for terrorist attacks like the latest at Glasgow’s airport and London’s foiled car bombings. Nevertheless the U.S. Department of State is well on its way to legitimizing the organization by accepting the Muslim Brotherhood’s self portrayal as “moderates” and “reformists.” Indeed, this is how some U.S. officials described the MB representatives with whom they engage in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Continue reading “Egyptian roots of hatred” →


All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
All Rights Reserved.
Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.