Monthly Archives: June 2013

Do not have children if they won’t be healthy!

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By Tamara Taubmann

A SHOCKING new study reveals how key figures in the prestate Zionist
establishment proposed castrating the mentally ill, sterilizing the poor and
doing everything possible to ensure reproduction only among the ‘best of
people.’

Castrating the mentally ill, encouraging reproduction among families
“numbered among the intelligentsia” and limiting the size of “families of
Eastern origin” and “preventing … lives that are lacking in purpose” —
these proposals are not from some program of the Third Reich but rather were
brought up by key figures in the Zionist establishment of the Land of Israel
during the period of the British Mandate.

It turns out there was a great deal of enthusiasm here for the improvement
of the hereditary characteristics of a particular race (eugenics). This
support, which has been kept under wraps for many years, is revealed in a
study that examines the ideological and intellectual roots at the basis of
the establishment of the health system in Israel.

In the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) in the 1930s there were
“consultation stations” operating on a Viennese model of advice centers for
couples that wished to marry and become parents. In Austria, with the Nazis’
rise to power, they served for forced treatment. Here the stations were
aimed at “giving advice on matters of sex and marriage, especially in the
matter of preventing pregnancy in certain cases.” They distributed birth-
control devices for free to the penniless and at reduced prices to those of
limited means. In Tel Aviv the advice stations were opened in centers of
immigrant populations: Ajami in Jaffa, the Hatikvah Quarter and Neveh
Sha’anan.

These are some of the findings of a doctoral thesis written by Sachlav
Stoler- Liss about the history of the health services in the 1950s, under
the supervision of Prof. Shifra Shvarts, head of the department of health
system management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They were presented
at the annual conference of the Israel Anthropological Association at
Ben-Gurion College.

The father of the theory of eugenics was British scholar Francis Galton. It
was he who coined the term — which literally means “well-born” — at the
end of the 19th century. The aim of the eugenics movement was to better the
human race. Galton proposed a plan to encourage reproduction among “the best
people” in society and to prevent reproduction among “the worst elements.”

Forced sterilization

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th,
Galton drew many followers and his ideas spread rapidly to other countries
in Europe (among them Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and
Belgium), to the United States and to some countries in South America. In
various countries laws were passed that allowed for the forced
sterilization of “hereditary paupers, criminals, the feeble-minded,
tuberculous, shiftless and ne’er-do-wells.” In the United States, up until
1935, about 20,000 people — “insane,” “feeble-minded,” immigrants,
members of ethnic minorities and people with low IQs — were forcibly
sterilized, most of them in California. The Californian law was revoked
only in 1979.

According to Dr. Philip Reilly, a doctor and executive director of the
Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, in 1985 at least 19 states in the
United States had laws that allowed the sterilization of people with
mental retardation, (among them Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota,
Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Vermont, Utah and Montana).

“Eugenics is considered to be something that only happened in Germany,”
says Stoler- Liss. “Germany was indeed the most murderous manifestation of
eugenics, but in fact it was a movement that attracted many followers. In
every place it took on a unique, local aspect. It is interesting to note
that both in Germany and in Israel a link was made between eugenics,
health and nationalism.”

Stoler-Liss first encountered the eugenics texts of doctors from the
Yishuv when looking for instruction books for parents for a research
project for her master’s degree. “I presented a text at a thesis seminar
and then the instructor of the workshop said to me,

‘But why aren’t you saying that this is a translated text?’ I replied:
‘No, no, the text isn’t translated.’ ‘In Israel,’ he said, ‘there are no
such things.'”

She decided to look into whether there was only anecdotal and non-
representative evidence, doctors and public figures here and there who
supported eugenics — and she found many publications that promoted
eugenics. Supporters of the idea were key figures in the emerging medical
establishment in Palestine; the people who managed and created the Israeli
health system.

One of the most prominent eugenicists of the Mandatory period was Dr.
Joseph Meir, a well-known doctor who acquired his education in Vienna,
served for about 30 years as the head of the Kupat Holim Clalit health
maintenance organization, and after whom the Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava is
named. “From his position at the very heart of the Zionist medical
establishment in the land of Israel in the mid-1930s, he brought young
mothers the gospel of eugenics, warned them about degeneracy and
transmitted the message to them about their obligation and responsibility
for bearing only healthy children,” says Stoler- Liss.

Thus, for example, in 1934 Dr. Meir published the following text on the
first page of “Mother and Child,” a guide for parents that he edited for
publication by Kupat Holim:

“Who is entitled to give birth to children? The correct answer is sought
by eugenics, the science of improving the race and preserving it from
degeneration. This science is still young, but its positive results are
already great and important –

– These cases [referring to marriages of people with hereditary disorders
— T.T.]

are not at all rare in all nations and in particular in the Hebrew nation
that has

lived a life of exile for 1,800 years. And now our nation
has returned to be reborn, to a natural life in the land of the
Patriarchs. Is it not our obligation to see to it that we have whole and
healthy children in body and soul? For us, eugenics as a

whole, and the prevention of the transmission of hereditary disorders in
particular, even greater value than for all other nations! … Doctors,
people involved in sport and the national leaders must make broad
propaganda for the idea: Do not have children if you are not certain that
they will be healthy in body and soul!”

‘Problematic
and dangerous’

In its full version, the article, which was published in the “Health
Guard” section of the now defunct labor Zionist newspaper Davar, the
doctor proposed castrating the mentally ill. Stoler-Liss found many more
examples in the “Mother and Child” books that were published in 1934 and
1935 and in journals like Eitanim, which was edited by Dr. Meir. “The
support of Dr. Meir and other senior people in the health system for these
ideas has been kept under wraps for many years,” claims Stoler-Liss. No
one today talks about this chapter in the history of the Yishuv. In the
mid-1950s Dr. Meir’s articles were collected into a book that came out in
his memory. The article mentioned above was not included in it.
Stoler-Liss found a card file with notes scribbled by the editors of the
volume. They defined the article as “problematic and dangerous.” “Now,
after Nazi eugenics,” wrote one of the editors, “it is dangerous to
publish this article.”

During the latter part of the 1930s, adds Stoler-Liss, when word came out
about the horrors that eugenics in its extreme form is likely to cause,
they stopped using this word, which was attributed to the Nazis. Overnight
eugenics organizations and journals changed their names and tried to shake
off any signs of this theory. Dr. Meir, however, during all the years he
was active, continued to promote the ideas of eugenics. At the beginning
of the 1950s he published an article in which he harshly criticized the
reproduction prize of 100 lirot that David Ben-Gurion promised to every
mother who gave birth to 10 children.

“We have no interest in the 10th child or even in the seventh in poor
families from the East … In today’s reality we should pray frequently
for a second child in a family that is a part of the intelligentsia. The
poor classes of the population must not be instructed to have many
children, but rather restricted.”

“I’m not making a value judgment,” says Stoler-Liss. “Zionism arose at a
certain period, in a certain ideological atmosphere — there were all
kinds of ideas in the air and there were also eugenicist Zionists. Some of
the doctors were educated in Europe, and at that time the medical schools
taught not only medicine but also the theory of eugenics.”

Judaism
of muscle

Dr. Meir was not the first Zionist leader who supported eugenics.
According to studies by Dr. Raphael Falk, a geneticist and historian of
science and medicine at Hebrew University, other major Zionist thinkers —
among them Dr. Max Nordau, Theodor Herzl’s colleague, a doctor and a
publicist, and Dr. Arthur Ruppin, the head of the World Zionist
Organization office in the Land of Israel — presented the ideas of
eugenics as one of the aims of the Jewish movement for national renewal
and the settlement of the land.

Prof. Meira Weiss, an anthropologist of medicine at Hebrew University,
describes in her book “The Chosen Body” how the settlement of the land and
work on the land were perceived by these Zionist thinkers as the “cure”
that would restore the health of the Jewish body that had degenerated in
the Diaspora. In Nordau’s terms, a “Judaism of muscle” would replace “the
Jew of the coffee house: the pale, skinny, Diaspora Jew. “At a time when
many Europeans are calling for a policy of eugenics, the Jews have never
taken part in the ‘cleansing’ of their race but rather allowed every
child, be it the sickest, to grow up and marry and have children like
himself. Even the mentally retarded, the blind and the deaf were allowed
to marry,” wrote Ruppin in his book “The Sociology of the Jews.” “In order
to preserve the purity of our race, such Jews [with signs of degeneracy —
T.T.] must refrain from having children.”

“Many people dealt with eugenics as a theoretical issue,” says Stoler-
Liss. “They even set up a Nordau Club with the aim of researching the
racial aspects of the Jewish people and ways of improving it. What was
special about Dr. Meir and the group that joined him was that for them
eugenics was a very practical matter.” They wanted to pursue applied
eugenics.

The main institution was the advice station. The first station was
opened in 1931 in Beit Strauss on Balfour Street in Tel Aviv. The aim was
to work in “pleasant ways,” through persuasion and choice. As Stoler-Liss
explains:

“Why should people work against their personal interests? It is here
that the connection to the national interest comes in. If I understand
that by having a baby I will harm the national interest, the building of
the land, the ‘new Jew,’ I will refrain from giving birth. But just to
make certain, Meir told the doctors, in the event that a woman comes to
you who is ‘a risk’ for giving birth to a sick baby, it is your obligation
to make certain that she has an abortion.”

“Gynecologist Miriam Aharonova also wrote extensively on the subject of
eugenics,” adds Stoler-Liss. “In articles for parents under headings such
as ‘The Hygiene of Marriage’ she gives a list of eugenic instructions for
parents — from the recommended age for giving birth (between 20 and 25),
to the recommended difference in age between the father and the mother
(the reason for which is the betterment of the race) to a list of diseases
that could infect the spouse or “be transmitted through heredity to their
descendents after them.”

In the diseases, she mentions “syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis,
alcoholism, narcotics addiction (fondness for morphine, cocaine, etc.) and
diseases of the mind and the nerves.” In the volume of “Mother and Child”
published in 1935, says Stoler-Liss, the publication and discussions by
doctors who supported eugenics was greatly expanded. Why, in fact, did
they not use force? The establishment had a great deal of power over
immigrants and refugees.

“The medical establishment’s power was limited at that time. This was an
establishment that developed hand in hand with the system it was supposed
to strengthen and suffered from constant shortages: a shortage of doctors,
a shortage of nurses and a shortage of equipment. It had to examine,
treat, inoculate and so on. Weare talking about the period of the British
Mandate. When at long last there was a state, eugenics theory declined. My
explanation is the change of generations: that generation had come to an
end professionally,and a new generation with more national motivation came
along that was not educated at the European universities during that
period. They had already seen what the Nazis had done with it and the
ideological identification was lower. The ideas themselves seeped in but
they’re not using the same rhetoric.”

Have eugenics really vanished?

The eugenic chapter in the history of Western culture has been closed,
but have eugenics really disappeared?

“Eugenic thinking is alive and well today,” asserts Stoler-Liss. “It is
expressed mainly in the very high rate of pre-natal tests and genetic
filtering [of genetically deviant fetuses]. Mothers are very highly
motivated to give birth only to healthy children and the attitude toward
the exceptional, the different and the handicapped in Israeli society is
problematic.”

At hospitals today future parents are offered a plethora of genetic
tests that diagnose the fetus before birth. Some of them are aimed at
identifying serious disorders, like Tay- Sachs disease, a degenerative
disease that causes a painful death in infancy. Others, however, are aimed
at screening fetuses with conditions like deafness and sterility,
the  bearers of which can lead full and satisfying lives.

US targets own general in Stuxnet attack leak

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June, 2013

America’s illegal activities against other countries as well as its own citizen are being exposed as never before. To Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA’s snooping on all Americans as well as citizens of other countries, must now be added the news that a four-star retired US general, James Cartwright is being investigated by the Justice
Department for leaking information about the US Stuxnet virus attack on
Iran in 2010.

Washington DC, Crescent-online
June 28, 2013, 09:43 EDT

Amid the fury surrounding Edward Snowden’s NSA snooping leaks and
his escape from the US (currently holed up at Moscow airport), another
story has broken out with broad implications for the way the US conducts
itself. James Cartwright, a retired US general is reportedly the target
of Justice Department investigation into leaking secret information
about the US Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in
2010. The attack reportedly damaged 1,000 centrifuges in Iran.

The American channel, NBC News was the first to break the Cartwright
investigation story on June 27 but other media outlets have immediately
pounced on it. The story was too juicy and carried major implications
especially because it involved a top general—the second highest
ranking US military officer—as well as a country—Iran—that
the US has targeted for more than 30 years. Cartwright had served as
vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 2007 and 2011.

President Barack Obama is on record as saying that anyone who leaks
secret information will be punished. He has been fuming against
Snowden’s revelations and demanded that China and Russia hand him
over. Senators and senior administration officials have denounced
Snowden in vicious terms all the while trying to shift the focus from
the government’s illegal activities of snooping on its own citizens
to Snowden’s alleged misdemeanor.

General Cartwright’s story falls under the same category. Cyber
attacks are illegal; it is essentially a declaration of war against
another country. Obama has intensified this war against Iran on the
false allegation that Tehran is trying to make nuclear weapons, a charge
strongly denied by Iranian leadership for many years. No shred of
evidence has been presented to back the allegations against Iran.
Instead, the US and its surrogate, Zionist Israel, have indulged in
cyber warfare that constitutes a war crime.

Why General Cartwright divulged the information is subject to
speculation. At times, American officials reveal information because
they do not agree with government policy. At other times, they feel the
policy is counter-productive and would not achieve American objectives.
Whatever the reason, the targeting of a retired senior general indicates
that some in the military feel the US is conducting itself in a way that
would not advance American objectives.

While Obama has presented himself as different from his predecessor, his
actions have been anything but. In fact, under Obama’s presidency,
illegal acts have intensified. He has authorized the killing of foreign
as well as American citizens; attacks against other countries have
increased and lawlessness borne of US policies has become the order of
the day.

Currently on an African tour where he is touting equality and human
rights, Obama would do well to practice some of it at home. The US is
fast becoming a police state in which everyone is under surveillance and
every individual is considered an enemy. These are sure signs of a
country in decline.

Something someone posted on Fitnah and Striking Necks of Believers

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Ustadh Abdushakur Brooks posted this in one of the online Maliki groups, I thought it was good to share because there is benefit in it. In truth he could have been more explicit, what is happening in Syria is an evil ontop of evils.

The Messenger of Allah said:
لا ترجعوا بعدي كفارا يضرب بعضكم رقاب بعض

“Do not return back to disbelief; by striking the necks of each other after my demise”. -Sahih Muslim

إن الشيطان قد أيس أن يعبده المصلون في جزيرة العرب، ولكن في التحريش بينهم

The Messenger of Allah said

” Verily Shaytan has despaired from ever being worshipped by those who prayer (meaning Muslims) in the land of the Arabs. However what will remain is fitnah and fighting each other. – Muslim

Imam Tirmidhi’s narration clarifies exactly why this second hadith will take place. The Messenger of Allah said:

إن الشيطان قد أيس أن يعبد في بلدكم هذا أبدا ، ولكن سيكون له طاعة في بعض ما تحتقرون من أعمالكم فيرضى بها

“Verily Shaytan has forever despaired of being worshipped in this land. However there will be some submission to his will [ by you] in those matter in which you will think little of and he will thus be pleased with that.”

So as this narration points out, that amongst the Muslims they will think little of taking the blood of another Muslim. Some will simply not care and others will look for a reason to deem it “Halal”. -Tirmidhi

What confirms that is another narration of Tirmidhi.The messenger of Allah said:

تكون بين يدي الساعة فتن كقطع الليل المظلم يصبح الرجل فيها مؤمنا ويمسي كافرا ويمسي مؤمنا ويصبح كافرا يبيع أقوام دينهم بعرض من الدنيا

“It will occur, during the end of times, a fitnah that will be like the last and darkest part of the night in which a man will wake up as a believer and go to sleep as a disbeliever or go to sleep as a disbeliever and wake up as a disbeliever. People will sell their religion for a piece of worldly life.” -Tirmidhi

Tirmidhi then says after this that when Hasan Al-Basri use to report this hadith he said the meaning is ” A man will wake up deeming the blood of a Muslim and his honor haram to take, but go to sleep considering them halal..and (vice-versa)”

The meaning of “a fitnah that will be like the last and darkest part of the night” is in reference the nature of mass confusion because in the darkest part of the night one can not distinguish between harm and benefit. Likewise in the times of fitnah one can not distinguish between good and falsehood. This is actually what will lead a person to take the issue of spilling the blood and taking the honor of another Muslim as something small. Or that such a serious matter will be something in which a Muslim, due to confusion, will sometimes consider haram and sometimes consider it halal. The fact that states and opinions will vary in such a drastic matter in something as serious as killing a Muslim shows yet another thing which comes in the hadith about the times of fitnah which is “ignorance”.

After all this hadith about the hour of confusion and blood spill amongst the Muslims, Imam Tirmidhi becomes the section describing the approach of the Madhi because with his coming the oppression will cease and confusion will be removed because there is no doubt in his integrity and justice.

Now one can only begin to understand my last post. Like I said “in my home…” . Like it or not. May Allah keep us patient and steadfast until the time comes when oppression is removed and the Just Imam Mahdi appears. Until then maintain your household and benefit others according to your ability at reach, as for those out of reach raise your hands in sincere supplication. These are the times!”

The Risāla al-hādiya by ‘Abd al-Salām al-Muhtadī al-Muhammadī

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Camilla Adang

The present contribution offers, for the first time, an English translation of al-Risāla

al-hādiya, a polemical tract written by ‘Abd al-Salām al-Muhtadī al-Muḥammadī,

a Jewish convert to Islam who lived in Istanbul in the early Ottoman period.

Apart from the information provided by the author himself in the tract—from

which we learn that he converted during the reign of Sultan Bāyazīd II (ruled

886/1481-918/1512)—we find additional data in the well-known bibliographical

survey Kashf al-ẓunūn by Ḥājjī Khalīfa, also known as Kâtib Çelebi (d. 1067/1657).

In this work, which lists books according to the alphabetical order of their titles,

two entries may be found on our author, or rather his tract, one under al-Risāla alhādiya,

the other under al-Hādiya. The tract is described as a short refutation of Judaism

in three parts (whose titles are given by Ḥājjī Khalīfa); the author is named

as ‘Abd al-Salām al-Muhtadī or al-Daftarī, who converted to Islam from Judaism,

and who knew the entire Torah by heart. During the reign of Sultan Selim I (ruled

918/1512-926/1520) he became a daftarī (that is, an official in the Ottoman financial

administration), and he founded a mosque and a number of religious endowments.

2 Unlike other converts to Islam, ‘Abd al-Salām al-Muhtadī does not provide

a detailed explanation of the reasons or circumstances of his conversion to Islam.

As various others before and after him, he suggests that it was the very Torah

that inspired him; if only people would understand it correctly, they would become

convinced of the truth of Muḥammad’s mission, as he himself had. He

mentions the encouragement received from Sultan Bāyazīd, but it is not clear to

what this amounted. An identical claim is made by the author of a very similar,

though less sophisticated tract, who goes by the name of Salām ‘Abd al-’Allām.3

 

In his Künhü l-akhbār the somewhat earlier writer Muṣṭafā ‘Ālī of Gallipoli

(d. 1008/1600), lists a former Jew named ‘Abd al-Salām among the defterdārs

(finance ministers) who served under Selim I.4 The famous traveller Evliya Çelebi

(d. 1095/1684), perhaps taking his cue from Muṣṭafā ‘Ālī, also mentions the Jewish

convert ‘Abd al-Salām as defterdār during the reign of this sultan.5 Although neither

of these sources adds that this official is the author of al-Risāla al-hādiya, it is

very tempting to attribute the tract to him, for how many former Jews named ‘Abd

al-Salām could have been attached to the imperial treasury under the same ruler?

In the Ottoman records, the defterdār ‘Abd al-Salām is mentioned as the owner

of various properties, some of them purchased from Jews in different quarters of

Istanbul and attached to his own waqf.6 Some of these transactions seem to have

benefited the Jewish community,7 and it may well be to this patronage that the

Jewish author Yosef Sambari refers in his Divre Yosef, completed in 1673, when he

describes a talmid hakham in Istanbul who went over to the religion of Ishmael

and changed his name to ‘Abd al-Salīm Efendi. In this position he was able to

help and support the Jews at the time of their sorrow and to cancel a number of

harsh enactments that had been imposed on them. He wrote a letter to the Jews

in which he said, referring to himself: “The Lord has created every thing for its

own end, even the wicked for the day of evil.” (Prov. 16:4).8 Sambari’s statement

suggests that ‘Abd al-Salām enjoined considerable influence with the authorities.

 

According to Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, ‘Abd al-Salām, the author of al-Hādiya,

was not ‘Abd al-Salām the defterdār and property-owner; the latter apparently

hailed from Egypt and came to Istanbul after Selim’s conquest of Egypt. The

Hādiya was written earlier, and dedicated to the previous sultan, Bāyazīd II. However,

İhsanoğlu has another candidate: İlyās b. Abram (Eliahu ben Avraham), a

Jewish doctor and scholar from Spain who came to Istanbul after the expulsion of

1492 and soon converted to Islam.9 Eliahu ben Avraham is the author of a wellknown

Arabic tract about the bubonic plague which he dedicated to Sultan Selim

I after his move to Istanbul. Attractive though İhsanoğlu’s theory may be, there is

no evidence linking Eliahu to ‘Abd al-Salām al-Muhtadī.10 Further research is

needed to decide conclusively whether al-Muhtadī and the defterdār are one and

the same person, but this is beyond the scope of this contribution.

 

The Rightly-Guiding Epistle11

 

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Beneficent, in whom I put my faith.

Praise be to God who in the end of time graciously bestowed upon his servants

the message of his Beloved who was sent from among the Banū ‘Adnān, the illiterate

Hashimite Arab prophet who was sent to men and jinn alike, and by whom

the [sequence of] the prophets was sealed, and whose nation includes the martyrs

and the righteous. May God bless our messenger Muḥammad, and grant him

benediction and salvation–[he] who was exclusively granted six things that the

[other] messengers were not given12–and his family and companions, who strove

in the way of God with their hearts and souls, even if the critics scolded them.13

 

Now then, ‘Abd al-Salām al-Muhtadī al-Muḥammadī,14 the poor soul who is

desirous of the eternal benevolence of Aḥmad15 says: His Eternal Happiness16

supported me and cast into my heart the love of Islam and the Muslim, and hatred

of those who are neither scholars nor students. I perused the books of the Torah,

one after the other, and found therein evidence of how the Jews are thwarting

God, exalted is He, and Moses, peace be upon him, one foul thing after another,

when “trading the grace of God for unbelief. They established their people in the

house of perdition: Gehenna, exposed to its flames; a wretched abode”.17 “They

are content to be with ones who stayed behind. God sealed their hearts, so that

they did not believe”18 until they saw the painful punishment, for they rejected

the prophethood of the Seal of the Prophets, which is tantamount to rejecting the

prophethood of the Kalīm19 and they did not turn to God in repentance, so how

can they say: “We have turned unto you”20. O you who stubbornly oppose the

clear truth, be mindful of that which has been imposed upon you in the Torah, the

truthful words of God, He who hurls the truth against falsehood and shatters it,

for He is the annihilator [of falsehood] who dispenses justice,21 and if you do not,

woe to you from what you ascribe [to Him], and beware, after the establishment

of proof, of the sword of a sultan who walked the path of Jesus in time (?), resplendent

with the gleam of trust and protection; a sultan who accumulated all his

praiseworthy qualities in the rich pastures of sound action, between the sheep and

the wolves, lightning sparking off his sword’s edge. He will deliver you from the

gaping chasm through [his] benevolence and charity, solicitude and graciousness.

 

These are the proofs excerpted from the book of Moses, peace be upon him,

concerning the Seal of the Prophets, Muḥammad the Chosen One. If you repent

and return to belief in [the true contents of] this book22, you will be safe in the

security of Islam from the evil nature of the End that will come upon humanity

in the course of time. But if you do not embrace Islam, you will not be safe from

the edge of the sword of the sultan, son of the sultan, Sultan Bāyazīd Khān, may

God assist him in perpetuating the religion and may He assist his empire in fighting

the unbelievers and the heretics. He who says Amen!, God will save his soul.

 

This call encompasses all of humanity.

 

When I gathered the proofs setting forth the evidence against the despicable

sect, I used it as a means to enter [the sultan’s] service by addressing it to his noble

name, seeking to obtain the greatest measure of his all-embracing grace. I entitled

it “The Rightly-Guiding Epistle”. It is divided into three sections, and on

God we rely for the [just] division.

The first section deals with the invalidation of the proofs of the Jews; the second

with the confirmation of the prophethood of Muḥammad, prayer and peace

be upon him, on the basis of phrases [taken] from the Torah after its alteration by

the Jews; the third section demonstrates that they have altered certain words in

the Torah.

 

As for the first section [on the invalidation of the proofs of the Jews], the exegetes

of the Jews claim that the religion of Moses, peace be upon him, will be eternally

valid, and say: “We have found [certain] sayings in the Torah that demonstrate

the eternal validity (abadiyya) of the religion of Moses, peace be upon him,

such as the words of the Exalted: ‘washāmrū banī Isrāyīl hasha bath ladhūrusam barīth

‘ūlām’,23 till the end of the verse. [In Arabic24] this means: “the nation of the Children

of Israel shall observe the Sabbath throughout their times as an eternal covenant

(‘ahdan abadiyyan)”. Now this verse [so they say] demonstrates the eternal validity

(abadiyya) of [the commandment of] refraining from work on the Sabbath. If

God, exalted is He, would order an end to inactivity on the Sabbath in the Glorious

Qur’ān, this would imply a contradiction in the words of the Creator, far is He

exalted above this!

 

This being the case [so they say], the religion of Moses, peace be upon him,

must be eternally valid, and therefore they say: we shall not obey a messenger

who abolishes this precept.

 

I say: [Our] reply to their claim is that even if the verse which occurs in the Torah

is qualified by something that according to the Hebrew language25 conveys [the

concept of] eternity, namely the expression ‘ūlām, [this] abad has two meanings;

the first is that of a lengthy duration, and the second absence of finiteness. What

is meant by [the expression] abadiyya that is mentioned in this verse is the first

sense, not the second one, and the eternal validity of the religion of Moses, peace

be upon him, is not implied by the second sense, which is what you mean, and

no contradiction is implied either, because every commandment comes down

from God, exalted is He, for a particular period because of a certain wisdom and a

benefit.

 

If these incompetent people among the exegetes of the Jews object, saying: “What

is your proof that what is meant by abadiyya in the verse quoted is the first sense

rather than the second one?”, we say: “You have taken the second sense from the

saying of the Exalted ‘ūlām wā’id, where He says in the Torah: Adhūnay yamlak

‘ūlām wā’id,26 which [in Arabic] means: ‘God reigns forever’. And you say: If ‘ūlām

is combined with wā’id, this combination [of words] means abadiyya in the second

sense, but if ‘ūlām is not combined with wā’id, then what is meant by ‘ūlām is

abadiyya in the first sense. Now, in the above-mentioned verse the saying of the

Exalted: washām rū is not [thus] combined, so know that the intended meaning is

the first sense, not the second one.

 

Similar to this is what you [Jews] object with regard to the Torah, saying: God,

exalted is He, says in the Torah: Kī tiqnah ‘abad ‘ibrī shash shānīm ya’bud wabasabī’at

yaṣā ḥufshī waim yūmar ha’abad aḥabtī adhūnay waishtī wabānay lū aṣā ḥufshī [….]

waraṣa’ adhūnaw udhunū bimarṣa’ wa’abadū l ‘ ū l ām. 27 This means [in Arabic]: If

you buy a Hebrew slave, this slave shall serve for six years, and in the seventh he

shall go free, but if the slave says: ‘I love my master, my wife and my sons; I will

not be set free’, then his master will pierce his ears with an awl and he will serve

him forever (abadan).

 

Elsewhere in the Torah God, exalted is He, says: wa-safart sab’ shānīm sab’a fa’amīm

wa-hayū tisa’ wa-arba’īm sana wa-qadastim thanath hā ḥamīshim aw qarāthim darūr

bāraṣ la-kul yūshabih hiya wa-hā-’abad ‘ad thanath ha-yūbal ya’bud wa-yaṣā ma’imakh

lū ymākhar mim karath ‘abad, until the end of the verse.28

 

This means [in Arabic]: “Count seven years seven times, so that they shall be

forty-nine years, then [in] the fiftieth year you shall hallow and proclaim in the

land, and the herald shall say: After forty-nine years every person shall become

free, and the slave who was in the jubilee year shall go free, and shall not ever be

sold (abadan)”. There is a contradiction between these two verses, because the

purport of the first verse is that if in the seventh year the slave says, “I love my

master, I will not be set free,” he will forever serve his master (abadan), whereas

the meaning of the second [verse] is that in the jubilee year every slave will be set

free, and there is a clear contradiction between these two [statements].

 

You reply to this objection that abad has two meanings, that of lengthy duration

and absence of finiteness, but what is meant by abad [in these two verses] is the

first sense, not the second, because the expression ‘ūlām is not combined with

wā’id, so [in the end] your reply is in fact [identical to] our reply.

 

Then [the Jews] say: If the religion of Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon

him, were true, it would be abrogating and the religion of Moses, peace be upon

him, abrogated, because on most issues the precepts of the Glorious Furqān29 differ

from those of the Torah, which would imply regret on the part of the Creator,

exalted is He, and God, exalted is He, is far from that, and highly exalted above it.

 

Moreover, He says in the Torah: Lū īsh al wa-kadhab wa-bani Adam wayatanakham,

30 until the end of the verse, which [in Arabic] means: “God is not a man […]

nor a son of man that he should be regretful”. According to this [verse] the eternity

of the religion of Moses, prayer and peace be upon him, is required [so they

say].

 

In answer to this objection I say: We do not accept that this implies regret on the

part of God, because the meaning of regret is that the one who regrets performs

an act, and then realizes the inappropriateness of this act, and even the appropriateness

of its opposite, and says: ‘If only I had not done that’, and God, exalted is

He, is free from this, because He knows from eternity all that was and all that will

be, and in His hands is the dominion over all things.31

 

At the basis of [their] objection lies a lack of understanding of the meaning of

regret. It is similar to when a doctor says to a sick person, for example: “Do not

eat meat, for it is harmful to you”, then after some time has passed and the condition

of the sick man has changed, the doctor says to him: “Eat meat!” This distinction

is not attributable to the doctor’s knowledge, but rather to the shift in

the patient’s condition and the change in what is beneficial to him, and it is the

same here. Consider this.

 

Then they objected and said: God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: Kī yaqūm baqirbakah

nābī ū ḥūlam ḥalūm wa-nathan alayka ūth ū mūfath lamūr nilkhah aḥarī lūham

aḥarīm wa-na’budum lū tishma’ lū wa-hanabī hāhū yūmath,32 and the rest of the

verse. The meaning of this verse [in Arabic] is: “If a prophet should rise up from

among you, or sees an event, and he brings you proof and evidence but says:

‘Come and worship another deity (ma’būd)’, do not accept him, nor obey him,

nor sympathize with him, but kill him. This verse [they say] proves that not a

single human being must be obeyed, whoever he might be, if he says: “I am a

prophet, so obey me, and worship with another [kind of] worship”, because this

contradicts the Torah. According to this [verse], then, the eternity of the religion

of Moses, peace be upon him, must be accepted.

 

I say in response: this is an abominable error and a tremendous misstep, as will be

clear to anyone endowed with the slightest [degree of] discernment, and you err

with regard to the meaning of “another deity” like someone who lacks any insight

or understanding, because you have taken [the expression] “another deity” [which

occurs in the verse] to mean “another [kind of] worship,” and [in fact] say: “If a

man should claim and say, ‘I am a prophet, so obey me and worship with another

[kind of] worship’,” we do not accept his words and will not obey him, but we

will kill him; we will not sympathize with him at all, because his claims contradict

what is stated in the Torah, as is imagined by the Jews–God’s curse be on all of

them; “surely God’s is upon the evildoers”.33 And know, o Jewish people, that

what is meant by “another deity” is not “another [kind of] worship” as you claim,

but rather another god, as is stated in the Glorious Qur’ān: “Whoever hopes for

the meeting with his Lord, let him do righteous work, and make none the sharer

of the worship due unto his Lord”.34 This being the case, our lord and master, and

lord of the prophets, Muḥammad (may God bless him and grant him salvation)

did not say: “I am a prophet, come and worship another god”, which would allow

you to say: “We do not follow the lord of the messengers, may God bless him

and grant him salvation”.35

 

Then they say: We shall not obey anyone after Moses (peace be upon him) even

if what he says is in accordance with the Torah, as long as he does not produce a

miracle. As for the miracle that [your] prophet, prayer and peace be upon him,

produced, claiming: ‘this is from my Lord’, we have seen it and heard it, and it is

not a miracle and does not constitute proof in our eyes, but it is [just] eloquence

and stylistic beauty, and it is possible that someone more eloquent and more stylistically

gifted will appear after [Muḥammad]. Don’t you see that [in the same

way] Plato, Aristotle, Euclid and Ptolemy [each] appeared [consecutively] at a certain

point in time and that their speech was characterized by eloquence and stylistic

beauty – even if none of them was a prophet?

 

We say: the relation between [these] sages is not like the relation that obtains between

the prophet and others, because even if the sayings36 of the sages are dissimilar,

still one is comparable to the other. As for the sayings that were brought

by the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him salvation, they were not

matched by anyone at any time, and had it been from other than [God] “they

would have found therein much incongruity”37. Their analogy, then, is like an

analogy with a discrepancy.38 Consider!

 

Then they said: We do not obey a single human being as long as we have not

heard the voice of God, exalted is He, even if his precepts should be in agreement

with those of the Torah, because God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: Hadawārīm

ha’aluh dibbar adhūnay al qahalkam qūl jādhūl wāyikdawam ‘al sana lūḥath

ābah nīm wātmr wa-hin qūl adhūnay sama’nu mitūkh hā’ish, and the rest of the verse.39

 

The meaning of this verse [in Arabic] is: “These are the words God spoke to your

congregation with a great voice, and God wrote these words on two tables of

stone, and you said: Here we have heard the voice of God from the midst of the

fire”. Now this verse demonstrates that as long as we do not hear the voice of God

we are not required to obey any prophet, which is indicated by the fact that God,

exalted is He, enjoined [the Israelites] not to obey Moses [until] after they had

heard the voice of God and acknowledged it saying: If we were to hear the voice

of God during the time of another prophet, like we heard it in the time of Moses,

peace be upon him, we would obey, but we did not hear it and therefore we do

not obey him.

 

We say in response: At that time the Children of Israel said to Ḥaḍrat Moses,

peace be upon him: “O prophet of God, beseech God, exalted is He, on our behalf

so that we shall not hear the voice of God [again] or else we shall die at

once”, as God says in the Torah: wa-yūmrū banī Isrāyīl im yūsfīm anaḥnu lsmū’a qūl

adhūnay ‘awd wa-matnu qarab wa-sama’ kul ashir yūmar adhūnay alakhah wa-sama’nu

wa-yūmar adhūnay haṭībū ashar dibarū.40

 

The meaning of this [in Arabic] is: “The Children of Israel said: ‘If we hear the

voice of God another time we shall die. Draw you near [to Him] and listen to all

that God, exalted is He, shall command you, and we shall hear it from you’. And

God said: ‘They spoke well’.” From this it becomes clear that God, exalted is He,

accepted their wish that He, exalted is He, refrain from making His voice heard,

which is why He said, “They spoke well”.

 

Then the Jews said: God, exalted is He, said in the Torah: kl hadāwār ashar anī

maṣaw atkhah lū tūḍif ‘alaw wa-lū tighragh mimanū, and the rest of the verse,41 which

[in Arabic] means: “Every commandment that I shall command you, do not add

to it nor detract from it.” So how can we [possibly] add to it or detract from it?

But if we obey [your Prophet Muḥammad] we are bound to add and detract

[some], because some precepts of [your] Furqān differ from the precepts of [our]

Torah.

 

We say: The answer to this is that the adding and subtracting that is not permitted

is adding to or subtracting from the conditions of the commandments, not to or

from the [essential] commandment itself. It is like the fact that in the Torah there

was just one fast, then afterwards the prophet Jeremiah, peace be upon him, added

four fasts [to that one], and you obeyed him;42 the prophet Solomon, peace be

upon him, added one commandment which in the Hebrew language is called

‘erubin;43 and the prophet Mattathias,44 peace be upon him, added a commandment

called Hanukkah, and you obeyed in all of that, and similar cases are too

numerous to be counted.

 

You objected to [the new dispensation] saying, How can we obey a commandment

not imposed upon us in the Torah, when it is prohibited in the very Torah to

add to its commandments? But you [yourselves] answer that what is meant by [the

expression] “every commandment” is: the conditions of every commandment, that

is, “do not add to the conditions or detract from them”. As an example, you mentioned

the commandment of the priestly blessing (barakat al-imām) which was laid

down in three specific verses, as He has clarified in the Torah,45 and you say that

the blessing of the priest may neither consist of two, nor of four verses. Also, it is

not allowed to exchange these specific verses for other ones, and it is likewise with

regard to every one of the commandments of the Torah. Thus you replied, and

your reply is essentially [the same as] our reply.

 

Then the Jews said: God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: Tūrā ṣiwā lanū Mūsā

hiya mūrāshah qhlth Ya’qūb.46 [In Arabic] this means: When Ḥaḍrat Moses, peace

be upon him, passed on he said, with regard to the Torah, that it became the heritage

of the community of Jacob. This verse demonstrates that it is not required to

obey anything but the precepts of the Torah, and therefore they say: we do not

obey anyone whose precepts differ from the precepts of the Torah.

 

We say: We do not accept that what is meant by the [above-mentioned] saying of

Moses, peace be upon him, is what you mention, but rather [hold] that what

Moses, peace be upon him, meant by these words is that the children of Jacob,

peace be upon him, obeyed the Torah, and that obedience to the Torah is confined

to them [alone]; Moses, peace be upon him, does not mean that the community

of Jacob, peace be upon him, is confined to obedience to the Torah

[alone] or that their obedience cannot be to anything but the Torah.47 As for the

counter-arguments they put forward, they are very weak so there is no point in

mentioning them.

 

Then I say to them: O Jewish people, if you refuse [to acknowledge] abrogation,

this will be refuted as well. Don’t you see that certain commandments that are

laid down in the very Torah have for some reason themselves become abrogated,

such as the daily worship of the prophet Aaron, peace be upon him, inside the

tabernacle; when the sons of the prophet Aaron, peace be upon him, introduced

a foreign [i.e.,unholy] fire [into the tabernacle], God, exalted is He, caused them

to die, and then God, exalted is He, commanded Moses, peace be upon him: Say

to your brother that he should not enter the tabernacle except once a year and

not go in at all times.48

 

Similar things are numerous. So why do you deny that abrogation exists in the

very Torah, and how can you deny that the Qur’ān abrogates certain precepts of

the Torah? This is manifest to whoever contemplates and abandons obduracy.

 

The second section, on the confirmation of the prophethood of

the lord of both worlds, Muḥammad (prayer and peace be upon

him), from the Torah itself , [ even] after the Jews had altered i t

 

The first proof is God’s saying in the Torah: wa-yūmar adhūnay nābī aqīm laham

mi-qarab aḥīhim kāmūkhah wa-nathitī dabaray ba-fīw wa-dabar alīhim kul ashar

aṣawanū wa-hayah hāyish ashar lū yisma’ al baray ashar yadabar bi-smī anūkhī adrūsh

m’amū, and the rest of the verse.49 Now, the meaning of this verse [in Arabic] is:

God, exalted is He, said: “I will raise up a prophet for the Children of Israel from

among their brethren, like you, and I will put my words into his mouth; and the

prophet shall speak to them all the words that I shall command them, and the

man who will not listen to the words that the prophet shall speak in My name, I

will require [it] of him”. There are three aspects to this verse, each of which demonstrates

the truth of the prophethood of Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon

him.

 

The first aspect is that the expression “from among their brethren” points

to the prophethood of Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon him, because the

ones that are meant by the “brethren” in [the phrase] “from among their brethren”

are the brethren of the Children of Israel, who are the Children of Ishmael,

peace be upon him, and there is no one among the prophets of that descent except

our Prophet Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon him, so know that this

verse indicates the truth of his prophethood, peace be upon him.

 

The second aspect is that the expression “like you” points to him, for

“like you” is addressed to Moses, prayer and peace be upon him, and what is

meant by it is that he is “like you” in that he received the scripture containing

commandments and prohibitions, and among the prophets who are acknowledged

by the Jews none rose up who was like Moses in that he was given the

scripture. Know, therefore, that it is Muḥammad [who is being referred to here].

 

No one can say: How do you know that what is meant by the expression “like

you” is “like you” in the sense that he, too, received the scripture containing precepts,

when it is possible that what is intended is that he is “like you” in another

one of his characteristics?

 

For we say: Before this verse God, exalted is He, says something which [in Arabic]

means: “Say, o Moses, to the Children of Israel: Do not obey that which the

masses obey, because they obey sorcerers and astrologers, and you are not like

that; rather, God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brethren like

me, so obey him.”50 This in fact means “obey a prophet like me who shall bring

precepts that contradict the precepts of the sorcerers and the astronomers”. This

verse, now, demonstrates that what is meant by “like” is the likeness that is in the

revelation of precepts to him.

 

The third aspect is that God’s words, exalted is He, “I will put my words

into his mouth” indicate that the scripture will be revealed to this prophet, and

this prophet is [therefore] Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon him, and the

one who is meant by this prophet is not Joshua ben Nun as the Jewish scholars

imagine when applying this verse to him, for these three aspects each indicate that

the one intended is not Joshua, for Joshua belonged to the Children of Israel, and

was not from among their brethren. In addition, he was not “like” Moses, peace be

upon him, because the scripture was not revealed to him. Moreover, [God] did

not put His words into [Joshua’s] mouth, and this is very clear.

The second proof : God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: wa-lū qām nābī

‘ūdh bāsrāyīl kamūshīya ashar yad’ū adūnay fānīm alfānīm, and the rest of the verse.51

[In Arabic] its meaning is: “No prophet will rise up from among the Children of

Israel like Moses whom God, exalted is He, knew face to face”. This verse indicates

that someone like Moses will come from among others than the Children of

Israel, and we have not found anyone like Moses, peace be upon him, from others

than the Children of Israel, except Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon

him. As for the leading exegetes of the Jews, they said that the prophet who came

from among others than the Children of Israel was Balaam ben Beor, but this is

an absurd error and a patent lie, for Balaam, even if he would be a prophet in

their view [which he is not], is not like Moses, peace be upon him, for Moses,

peace be upon him, was a messenger [of God] to whom the scripture was revealed,

while Balaam was not a messenger in their view either. In particular, we do

not accept that he was a prophet; rather, he was a governor who was divested of

his position, and in the end he died an unbeliever, so how could he be like

Moses?52

The t h i r d p r o o f : God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: Adūnay mi-sīnā bā’ 

wa-zaraḥ mi-sā’īr lamū hūfīghah mi-har fāran wa-athah marbūth qūdas, and the rest of

the verse.53 [In Arabic] this means: “The might of God came from Mount Sinai

and rose up from Mount Seir and shone from Mount Paran and gave from the

multitude of holiness”. This verse, now, includes [a reference to] four books that

were sent down on the part of God: the first is the Torah, which was sent down to

Moses, peace be upon him, on Mount Sinai, and the Jews followed him; the second

is the Evangel (al-Injīl) which came down to Jesus, peace be upon him, and the

Christians followed him. The Christians, now, were from the lineage of Esau, the

brother of Jacob, and he was king on Mount Seir, as is mentioned in the Torah.54

The third [scripture] is the Glorious Qur’ān which was sent down to Muḥammad,

prayer and peace be upon him, who was from the lineage of Ishmael, peace

be upon him, and Ishmael was associated with Mount Paran, as is made clear in

the Torah.55 Mount Paran is a mountain in the Ḥijāz. The fourth [scripture] is the

Psalter (al-Zabūr), which was sent down to David, peace be upon him, and it is indicated

by the expression “the multitude of holiness” as is clear from the tales of

the prophets56 and the Psalter [itself]. If [the Jews] object that the Psalter should

have been mentioned after the Torah and before the Evangel and the Furqān, according

to the [chronological] order of their revelation, we say: the reply to this is

that the Psalter was devoid of precepts, and therefore [God] put it last and mentioned

the other [books] according to their order of revelation. This verse is the

strongest evidence and the most convincing indication of the truth of the

prophethood of Muḥammad and Jesus, prayer and peace be upon both of them,

because no one rose up from Mount Seir and shone forth from Mount Paran except

the two of them, and here, too, the Jews have absolutely nothing to go on.

 

The fourth proof is the saying of the Exalted in the Torah: wa-yiqrā’ Ya’qūb

al bānaw wa-yūmar ilayhim hāṣfū wa-ajīdha lakum ashar yiqra’ athkam bāḥrīth hayyāmīm

lū yāsūr shabaṭ min Yahūdah wa-maḥūqaq mi-bin rijlaw ‘adh kay yābū Shīlū wa-

lū yiqhath ‘amīm.57 [In Arabic] this means: “Jacob told his sons, saying to them:

‘Gather together and I will tell you what will happen to you in the last days. The

judge will not depart from Judah nor a ruler from between his feet until the coming

of the one for whom and unto whom the nations will gather’”. In this verse

there is an indication that our master Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon

him, will come after the termination of the rule of Moses and of Jesus, prayer and

peace be upon the two of them, because the one who is meant by “the judge” is

Moses, peace be upon him, since after Jacob there was no lawgiver until the time

of Moses except Moses [himself], peace be upon him. The one meant by “the

ruler” is Jesus, peace be upon him, for after Moses, peace be upon him, until the

time of Jesus, peace be upon him, there was no lawgiver except Jesus [himself],

peace be upon him, and after the two of them there was no lawgiver except

Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon him.

 

And know that the one meant by Jacob’s saying “in the last days” is our

prophet Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon him, because in the last days, after

the rule of the judge and the ruler elapsed, no one has appeared except our

master Muḥammad, peace be upon him. [God’s] words “until the coming of the

one for whom …,” meaning the rule, also point to him, as is indicated by the

wording of the verse and by its context. As for His saying, “and unto whom the

nations will gather”, it is an obvious sign and a clear indication that the one intended

is our master Muḥammad, prayer and peace be upon him, because the nations

did not gather except unto him. The only reason why the Psalter is not

mentioned is that it does not contain precepts, and [moreover] the prophet

David, peace be upon him, was [himself] a follower of Moses, peace be upon

him, and the announcement of Jacob [specifically] refers to a [new] lawgiver.

 

The fifth proof: It is clear that most proofs of the Jewish scholars are based

on numerology, that is, the letters of the alphabet. Thus, for example, they looked

for an indication of the length of the continued existence of the Temple in the

letters of the alphabet, and when the prophet Solomon, prayer and peace be

upon him, built the Temple the Jewish scholars gathered and said: This building

will remain standing for 410 years, then destruction will befall it, because they

calculated the word bi-zāt (be-zot) in God’s words in the Torah: bi-zāt yabū Hārūn al

ha-qūdas,58 whose meaning [in Arabic] is “bi-zāt the priest (al-imām)—who is indicated

by the name of Aaron—worships in the Temple,” and they ruled that the

length of its stay and the rule of the priests there is bi-zāt years, that is, 410 years.

Similar proofs of theirs are too numerous to be counted.

Now if it is like that, then I say59: God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: wa-yūmar

Adhūnay li-brāhīm li-smā’īl sama’tīkhah hinah barakti ūthū wa-hirbathī ūthū wa-hifrathī

ūthū bi-mād mād,60 which [in the language of the Arabs] means “God, exalted is

He, said to Abraham: behold I have accepted your plea with regard to Ishmael

and I will bless him and multiply him and make him fruitful bi-mād mād.” Now

when the numerical value of the letters [in the expression] bi-mād mād is calculated,

the outcome is the name of our prophet Muḥammad, prayer and peace be

upon him, because the numerical value of [each of] these two expressions61 is

ninety-two. That which demonstrates what we have said is the phrase “I will bless

him and multiply him and make him fruitful bi-mād mād, “because the blessing of

the children of Ishmael, his multiplication and his fruitfulness occurred only

through [Muḥammad], and there is one word in particular in which God, exalted

is He, mentions the blessing of Ishmael, his being multiplied and rendered fruitful:

[the expression] bi-mād mād which He did not mention in [His] blessing of

his brother Isaac, peace be upon him, and this is a clear proof.

 

They objected to this proof saying that the [letter] bā’ in [the expression] bimād

mād is not an integral part of the word but rather an auxiliary letter that establishes

a connection. If the [numerical value of the] name of Muḥammad is to

result from it, a second bā’ is needed, and it would have to say bi-bi-mād mād.

 

We say: it is well known among them that if two bā’s come together, one auxiliary

and one an integral part of the word, the auxiliary one is elided and the one

that forms part of the actual word remains. This is common among them in

countless places, and there is no need to mention it here, and this is what we reply

with regard to the second bā’ in bi-mād mād.

 

The third section demonstrating the alteration of some words

in the Torah, from a number of respects.

 

The first aspect: We have found in the Torah that they possess that in the

early days there was a king who was associated with Canaan who was called “the

Canaanite”, and Abraham [lived] in his kingdom. It was struck by a famine and

Abraham, peace be upon him, moved from one corner [of the kingdom] to another,

and thus we find in the Torah they possess: wa-ya’būr Ibrāhīm bā ariṣ ‘adh

maqūm Shakham ‘adh Aylun Mūrah wa-ha-Kanā’anī az ba-arḍ.62 [In Arabic] this

means: “Abraham went in the land from the town of Shekhem to the desert of

Moreh while the Canaanite was in the land at that time”. From his words “while

the Canaanite was in the land at that time” one may understand that at the time of

Moses, he was not in the land, but this is untrue, because the Canaanite never

moved away from his place and from his kingdom except in the time of Joshua

ben Nun, because God, exalted is He, says in the Torah: “O Moses, you will not

oust the Canaanite from his kingdom, but [only] Joshua, peace be upon him, will

oust him”. Now if that were so, the expression “at that time” is a mistake which

occurred in the wording of the book of the later [scholars]. The greatest of the

exegetes of the Torah among the Jews, whose name is [Abraham] Ibn Ezra, understood

this alteration and said: “In the expression ‘at the time’ there is a great secret

on which the one with understanding keeps silent”.

 

The second aspect : In the Torah they possess we found: wa-ya’al Musā al

Har Nabū wa-yamuth sham wa-yaqbur uthū wa-yabkū banī Isrāyīl ath Mūsā thalūshim

yūm.63 [In the language of the Arabs] this means “And Moses climbed Mount

Nebo and died there, and he was buried there and the Children of Israel lamented

Moses thirty days”. What is to be understood from these accounts which are presented

in the past tense is that these events took place in the past, but it is well

known that the Torah was revealed to Moses when he was healthy and alive, not

after his life, and it is even said: “He died there and was buried and they lamented

him”, which points to their alteration of the Torah which is found nowadays.

The th i r d a s p e c t : We have found in the Torah: Wa-lū yāda’ īsh qabūr āthū ‘ad

hayūm hadhah.64 [In Arabic] its meaning is: “No man knows his grave, i.e., the

grave of Moses, peace be upon him, until this day”. From its meaning their alteration

is clear, because His saying “until this day” shows that Moses, prayer and

peace be upon him, died before this statement was made. This in turn shows that it

was not revealed to Moses, peace be upon him, and this is obvious, so one should

consider it.

 

Know that the Torah that the Jews possess contains many examples of such sayings.

For this reason the above-mentioned exegete [Ibn Ezra] said: “If you understand

the secret of these words and the like of them, you will distinguish the

truth, and one should look at his interpretation.”

 

Know, furthermore, that we have already found in the most famous interpretation

of the Torah called by them the Talmud,65 that in the days of King Ptolemy (Talmāy),

who lived after Nebuchadnezzar, the king had asked the Jewish scholars for

the Torah, and they were afraid to show it, because he objected to some of its

commandments, so seventy men from among the Jewish scholars gathered together

and altered whatever they wished of the words which this king objected to

out of fear of him. Now, if they admit to the alteration carried out by them, how

can it be believed and how can one rely on a single verse? God is the one whose

help we seek in the search for the truth at which “falsehood cannot come […]

from before or from behind”.66 Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds, and our

perfect prayer be upon our lord Muḥammad.

 

 

1 I use the opportunity to thank the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, which funded the research for

this article. I am grateful also to Judith Pfeiffer, Yaron Ben-Naeh and Yasin Meral for providing

me with bio- and bibliographical details about the author of the tract presented

here (or his namesake), as well as to Sabine Schmidtke for her valuable comments.

2 Muṣṭafā b. ‘Abd Allāh al-Qusṭanṭīnī al-Rūmī, Kashf al-ẓunūn ‘an asāmī al-kutub wa-l-funūn

1-2, Beirut 1413/1992, vol. 1, p. 900; vol. 2, p. 2027. Cf. Moritz Steinschneider, Polemische

und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden. Leipzig

1877 (reprint Hildesheim 1965), p. 64 § 51; idem, Die arabische Literatur der Juden. Ein Beitrag

zur Literaturgeschichte der Araber, großenteils aus handschriftlichen Quellen. Frankfurt am

Main 1902 (reprint Hildesheim 1986), pp. 268f., § 223. Steinschneider mentions the tract,

but does not seem to have been aware of the second entry in the Kashf, under al-Hādiya.

3 See on this tract Joseph Sadan, “A Convert in the Service of Ottoman Scholars Writing a

Polemic in the Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries” [Hebrew], Pe’amim 42 (winter 1990), pp. 91-

104, and idem, “Naïveté, verses of Holy Writ, and polemics: Phonemes and sounds as criteria:

Biblical verses submitted to Muslim scholars by a converted Jew in the reign of Sultan

Bāyazīd (Beyazıt) II (1481-1512),” in O ye Gentlemen. Arabic Studies on Science and Literary

Culture in Honour of Remke Kruk, eds. Arnoud Vrolijk and Jan P. Hogendijk, Leiden

2007, pp. 495-510, which is a somewhat revised English version of the first article, and now

Camilla Adang, “A Polemic against Judaism by a Convert to Islam from the Ottoman Period:

Risālat Ilzām al-Yahūd fīmā za’amū fī l-Tawrāt min qibal ‘ilm al-kalām,” Journal Asiatique

297.1 (2009), pp. 131-151.

4 See Joannes Schmidt, Pure water for thirsty Muslims. A study of Muṣṭafā ‘Ālī of Gallipoli’s

Künhü l-aḫbār, Leiden 1992, pp. 260, 355; Mark Alan Epstein, The Ottoman Jewish Communities

and their Role in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Freiburg 1980, p. 36.

5 Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi seyāḥatnāmesı, vol. 1, Istanbul 1314/1896, p. 345.

6 Ḥājjī Khalīfa mentions the establishment of waqfs, but without naming them. However,

the Defterdar Abdüsselam Camii in Izmit, ca. 100 km east of Istanbul, and the Defterdar

Abdüsselam Bey Medresesi in the Istanbul suburb of Küçükçekmece, both attributed

to the famous imperial architect Sinan (d. 996/1588) and his school, may be associated

with him. If he was able to commission Sinan this must mean that he was wealthy as well

as influential.

7 See Dilek Akyalçın, The Jewish Communities in the Making of Istanbul Intra Muros: 1453-

1520, MA Thesis, Sabancı University, 2003, pp. 60f.

8 Yosef Sambari, Sefer divrei Yosef by Yosef ben Yitzhak Sambari. Eleven Hundred Years of Jewish History

Under Muslim Rule. The full text edited on the basis of manuscripts and early printed

editions and annotated by Shimon Shtober, Jerusalem 1994 [in Hebrew], pp. 389-90.

9 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Büyük Cihad’dan Frenk fodulluğuna, Istanbul 1996, pp. 89-96; see

also Mehmed Süreyya, Nuri Akbayar, Seyit Ali Kahraman, Sicill-i Osmanî, vol. 1, Istanbul

1996, p. 139.

10 On Eliahu ben Avraham and his work, see Ron Barkai, “Between East and West: A Jewish

Doctor from Spain,” in Intercultural contacts in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Benjamin Arbel,

London/Portland 1996, pp. 49-63.

11 The present translation is based on the edition by Sabine Schmidtke in “The Rightly Guiding

Epistle (al-Risāla al-Hādiya) by ‘Abd al-Salām al Muhtadī al-Muḥammadī. A Critical

Edition”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 36 (2009), for which five manuscripts were

used. The relatively large number of manuscripts, dating from different periods, is an indication

of the tract’s continued popularity. No full analysis of the tract is undertaken at this

point; I refer the reader to a forthcoming collection of polemical treatises from the Ottoman

period, three of them by Jewish converts to Islam (edited by Camilla Adang, İlker

Evrim Binbaş, Judith Pfeiffer and Sabine Schmidtke) in which such an analysis is undertaken

and the style, contents and reception of the treatises are discussed.

12 The authoritative ḥadīth collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim contain traditions according

to which the Prophet listed not six, but five things that were exclusively granted to him

among God’s messengers: He was sent to all of humanity rather than to any particular nation;

the spoils of war were made lawful for him, which had not been the case for his predecessors;

the whole earth was made pure for him and a source of purification (namely

with sand in the absence of water), as well as a suitable place for prayer; God had rendered

him victorious by instilling fear in his enemies, even those at a month’s journey’s distance;

he had been given the right of intercession.

13 Possibly a reference to the Shī’ites who are known for their hostility to those of the

Prophet’s Companions who did not support the candidacy of ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib for the

succession to Muḥammad.

14 These names were not chosen fortuitously: al-muhtadī means the one who has been rightly

guided viz. to Islam, in other words, a convert, while al-Muḥammadī seems to be a name

that is common for converts, like al-Islāmī. Perhaps the translation “the Muslim convert”

might be justified. We do not know what the author’s original, pre-conversion name was.

15 I.e., Muḥammad.

16 The sultan.

17 Qur’ān 14:28f.

18 Cf. Qur’ān 9:87, 94.

19 I.e., Moses, the one who was addressed by God and conversed with Him.

20 See Qur’ān 7:155. The verb hāda/yahūdu of course echoes the word yahūd, Jews.

21 Cf. Qur’ān 21:18.

22 I.e, the Torah.

23 Exod. 31:16.

24 Wa-ma’nāhu bi-lughat al-’Arab.

25 All the manuscripts consulted actually read lughat ‘Imrān, which would mean “the language

of Amram”, who was Moses’ father. Since this is a highly unusual way to refer to the Hebrew

language, which is obviously what is meant here, preference is given to the reading

lughat al-’ibrān, the language of the Hebrews.

26 Exod. 15:18.

27 Cf. Exod. 21:2-6.

28 Cf. Lev. 25:8, 10, 40-42.

29 I.e., the Qur’ān.

30 Num. 23:19.

31 Cf. Qur’ān 23:88.

32 Cf. Deut. 13:2-6.

33 Qur’ān 11:18.

34 Qur’ān 18:110.

35 The point made by the author is that while the Torah condemns the worship of another

god, this does not apply to a different way of worshipping the same deity, who is the one

and only God worshipped by Muslims and Jews alike. There is no reason not to accept

Muḥammad, since he never called to worship another god; on the contrary.

36 All manuscripts have kamāl here instead of kalām, which is obviously required by the context,

as is shown also by the Qur’ānic verse in the next sentence.

37 Qur’ān 4:82. According to Muslim belief, the Qur’ān is God’s word and neither the

Prophet nor any other person had had a hand in its composition; it is inimitable and no

one will be able to match it, unlike products of the human mind. The inimitability of the

Qur’ān is regarded as a miracle.

38 In Islamic legal theory this is regarded as a faulty and invalid type of reasoning by analogy;

see Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence. Third revised and

enlarged edition, Cambridge 2003, pp. 273f.

39 Cf. Deut. 5:22-24.

40 Cf. Deut. 18:16-17, Deut. 5:24, 25, 27, 28 and Exod. 20:19.

41 Cf. Deut. 12:32.

42 It is Zechariah rather than Jeremiah who is credited in the Hebrew Bible with the institution

of four additional fasts; see Zech. 8:19.

43 See the Talmudic tractate Eruvin.

44 The text has Mathiyā’, but the context makes it clear that Mattathias is intended, the father

of the Maccabee brothers who revolted against Seleucid rule in Judea in the 2nd century

BC. Cf. 1 Macc. 4. Neither in Judaism nor in Islam is Mattathias regarded as a

prophet.

45 Cf. Num. 6:24-26.

46 Cf. Deut. 33:4.

47 The point is, of course, that Jews may, or rather should, also accept other laws, viz. that of

Muḥammad. Apparently a critique of particularist tendencies within Judaism.

48 Cf. Lev. 10:1-2; 16:1, 34.

49 Cf. Deut. 18:18-19.

50 Cf. Deut. 18:14-15.

51 Deut. 34:10.

52 For the enigmatic figure of Balaam, the “gentile prophet”, see Num. 22-24.

53 Cf. Deut. 33:2.

54 Cf. Gen. 33:16.

55 Cf. Gen. 21:21.

56 Arabic qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’; probably the biblical books of the prophets are intended, rather

than the popular islamicized accounts known under that name.

57 Cf. Gen. 49:10.

58 Cf. Lev. 16:3.

59 Meaning: If they can use numerology to argue their point, so can I.

60 Cf. Gen. 17:15, 20.

61 I.e., of bi-mād mād (Hebrew: bi-me’od me’od) on the one hand, and Muḥammad on the other.

62 Cf. Gen. 12:6; 13:7.

63 Cf. Deut. 34:1, 5, 6, 8.

64 Cf. Deut. 34:6.

65 Cf. Babylonian Talmud, tractate Megillah 9 a-b. The reference is to the production of the

Septuagint; see Abraham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint.

From Classical Antiquity to Today, Cambridge 2006.

66 Qur’ān 41:42.

A comic book conspiracy

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Rachel Summers is a telepathic comic book character who first appeared in the well-known X-Men franchise. Uncanny X-Men issue #189, published in 1985 — written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by John Byrne — featured this prescient panel in which the heroine “remembers” the future. Seeing the New York skyline of 1985 causes Summers to visualize a future tragedy. Eerily enough, that future came to pass in the real world on September 11, 2001.

Coincidence?

Before you leap to that conclusion, consider the sheer number of these “coincidences” that one can find in popular culture — especially within the pages of the often-despised comic book medium. As we shall see, the creators of this imagery often have very interesting backgrounds.

Before we look into those resumes, let us examine further examples. And don’t scoff. The FBI isn’t scoffing.

This page on the official website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation draws our attention to another eerie “coincidence.”


Dan Cooper was a popular comic book in France throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. This issue, featuring Cooper in a high-altitude skyjump, was published shortly before the infamous “D.B. Cooper” incident in 1971.

Seattle Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the Cooper case two years ago, believes it’s possible the hijacker took his name from the comic book (the enduring “D.B.” was actually the result of a media mistake). That’s important because the books were never translated into English, which means the hijacker likely spent time overseas. This fits with Carr’s theory that Cooper had been in the Air Force.

Legendary artist Jack Kirby (co-creator of The Fantastic Four, Thor, The Hulk, Captain America and a host of others) has offered quite a few glimpses of things-to-come. Perhaps the most uncanny image he ever produced is this one (click to enlarge)…


This page was published in September, 1958, in the second issue of the Harvey comic book series Race For the Moon. Obviously, that date precedes NASA’s publication of photographs displaying what appears to be a massive face on the red planet. As this world-renown scientist notes:

…how did Jack Kirby know about “the Face!?

The answer’s obvious: He was simply told.

By “who” is the key question, isn’t it? As well as “why”…

Let me be clear on one point: I remain skeptical of all theories positing the existence of a Martian civilization. In all likelihood, the “face” in those photographs is an artifact of light, shadow, and geography. Still, no-one can deny that the Martian sphinx has become a cultural artifact, deeply embedded into our awareness.

Somehow, Jack Kirby seemed to know that this image would fire up our collective imagination.

“King” Kirby displayed predictive powers on other occasions. Before 9/11, he offered these remarkable images (click to enlarge):


He even predicted a popular recruiting slogan for the United States Army:


In the same1958 science fiction comic book referenced above, Kirby offered a story which prefigured the plot of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Arthur C. Clarke’s novelization, we learn that the moon artifact is named Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1. No evidence suggests that either Clarke or Kubrick had any awareness of Kirby’s story, in which a magnetic anomaly is found on the Moon:

Jack Kirby did not draw the following page from a 1952 comic book called T-Man, which offered an advanced glimpse of the neocon foreign policy agenda. I have discussed this forecast in this blog before, although I could previously only hint at the implications. (Click to enlarge the image, or go here.)

In the black-and-white horror title Creepy — issue #75, published in 1975 — writer Jim Senstrum and artist Neal Adams offered “Thrillkill,” about a high school student who goes on a shooting rampage — an unnervingly exact forecast of Columbine, Virgnia Tech and other school shootings.

It is said that the designs on the shooter’s print shirt include the Chinese characters for “spring” and “field,” perhaps in reference to this event.

In a now largely forgotten series called Captain Action — issue #5, published in 1969 — artist/writer Gil Kane depicted the bombing of a U.S. federal building — a chillingly precise forecast of the 1995 Oklahoma City event.

Later in that issue, we learn that the explosion was set by the leader of an extreme right-wing paramilitary group. This story reminds us not only of the Clinton-era “militia madness” but also of more current events. It’s hard to deny the similarities between Kane’s “Matthew Blackwell” character and Chuck Norris, who has recently called for armed insurrection.

In the following sequence from 1963, our hep-cat protagonist is magically propelled thirty years into the future. There, he stumbles onto a world of advanced consumer electronics. Some of these devices now look quite familiar:

An issue of Howard the Duck, published in February of 1978, predicted a wave of terrorism against American interests committed by suicide bombers. The secret leader of the attack turns out to be an American, wearing a symbol now commonly associated with Wal-Mart.

One could cite hundreds of similar examples, including this weirdly accurate 1953 prediction of the Charles Manson murders, along with the 1983 discovery of an underground Nazi encampment near Loch Ness, as predicted by issue #3 of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., published in the summer of 1968.

One of the few comic book creators to discuss the phenomenon in public is artist John Byrne, perhaps best-known for his work with Chris Claremont on the X-Men:

Chris Claremont and I did a story about a blackout in NYC. The week it came out, there was a blackout in NYC.

We did a story about an earthquake in Japan. The week it came out…

Okay, so those are no big deal, as such things happen all the time. But on my own I…blew up a Space Shuttle in the second issue of MAN OF STEEL (and hastily redrew it as a “space plane” before it came out.

…named an aircraft carrier after a former Canadian Prime Minister (against the tradition of only naming ships after dead folk). He was dead by the time the book came out.

…and killed Prince Diana (Wonder Woman) in a book (replete with fake newspaper cover) that shipped week before the Saturday that…

It is no coincidence that writer Chris Claremont had an involvement with so many of these predictive sequences, including the startling image of the fallen Twin Towers.

At this point, we must come to the crux of the matter. Claremont was heavily involved (through his former wife) with the occult scene swirling around New York’s Magickal Childe bookstore.

A room in the back of the store served as a temple and classroom for the various strains of wicca that began to gravitate to the place.

That temple also served as the launching pad for the explosive growth of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) in the city in the late 70s and early 80s.

Herman had vigorously encouraged and supported the creation of the Schlangekraft Necronomicon, edited by “Simon.”

The Necronomicon was a team effort. Herman provided the sponsorship, while the design and layout were the work of Jim Wasserman of the OTO, a raving cokehead from Jersey named Larry Barnes whose daddy had the production facilities and a fellow who called himself Khem Set Rising (who also designed the sigils). The text itself was Levenda’s creation, a synthesis of Sumerian and later Babylonian myths and texts…Structurally, the text was modeled on the wiccan Book of Shadows and the Goetia…

The above-quote text, from an important expose in the New York Press, offers a rare public admission of a fact known to many cogniscienti: Many comic book creators — as well as other popular culture luminaries — are heavily immersed in the world of the occult. On this page, we find another brief (but important) reference to this phenomenon:

Marvel comic artist Marie Severin says the Kabala (Cabala –Jewish Mystical System) was a source of material for certain issues of Dr. Strange that she worked on.

At the time (the mid 1960s) there were few published popular works on the cabala. Even so, Jack Kirby (Bohemian Grove) and Gil Kane (32nd degree Freemason) were known to have mastered the wisdom contained with the Sefer Yetzirah, the key cabalistic text.

They were far from the only adepts. Wonder Woman creator Charles Marston (Order of Wicca) belonged to a cult that advocated female supremacy and lesbianism. In the 1970s, comic book writers Steve Engelhart (Skull and Bones) and Steve Gerber (Loyal Order of Moose) introduced Crowleyan and Theosophical concepts into the Marvel Comics “universe.” As artist Frank Brunner (Engelhart’s frequent collaborator) explains,

YES, I was already studying the occult…both the old stuff, including Aleister Crowley and the “Golden Dawn Society” to modern books like “Real Magic” by P.I.E. Bonewits, and the writings of Carlos Castaneda! (Who mixed ancient indian magic with drugs!)

Filipino comic book artist Alfredo Alcala is said to have learned various magical disciplines within a fraternity known as SinagAraw. The wildest story holds that he learned a method to create doppelgängers of himself, effecively tripling his productive capacity.

Today, the most noteworthy comic book professional to admit his occult involvement is famed British writer Alan Moore (New and Reformed Palladium; Book & Snake). Many have opined that the finale of his 1986 Watchmen series offers a forecast of the events of 9/11. Since that time, Moore has “come out” as a disciple of such notorious occultists as Aleister Crowley.

Indeed, Moore’s magnum opus Promethea can be considered a transparently-disguised initiatory text. The series introduces readers to the techniques of Goetic evocation, Tarot divination, and Qabalistic meditation. Aleister Crowley himself puts in several appearances at various points in the series.

As one reviewer notes:

Promethea reads like he’s saying, “Here’s everything I’ve learned about the Occult.” And boy, you would not believe how much Alan Moore knows about the occult. There are long stretches where the plot (except in the loosest sense of the word) gets pushed to the side completely so he can tell you more about magic. As a result, it’s one of the smartest and most explanation-heavy comics in recent memory.

As Moore himself confesses:

I wanted to be able to do an occult comic that didn’t portray the occult as a dark, scary place, because that’s not my experience of it. I don’t thinks it’s the experience of many occultists. Why would we want to be occultists if that meant that we had to spend our lives in a dark, scary place?

Utilizing my occult experiences, I could see a way that it would be possible to do a new kind of occult comic, that was more psychedelic, that was more sophisticated, more experimental, more ecstatic and exuberant… So Promethea is about as perfect an expression of the occult as I could imagine doing in a mainstream super-hero comic book.

All of which brings us to the bottom line: The predictive imagery so prevalent in comic books is not accidental or coincidental. Those images represent the careful and scientific recording of impressions received during rituals designed to bring out innate psychic/paranormal abilities.

Similar experiments in ESP and precognition have been conducted by such scientists as J.B. Rhine. But the question remains: Why place this material before the public in a popular format? For the answer, we must return to the afore-cited New York Press article on the Magickal Childe milieu, which included X-Men author Chris Claremont.

At last, we come to the intelligence/espionage connection:

Not all of us took Simon’s hints of dabblings in intelligence work all that seriously, but apparently the Feds did. An agent infiltrated the OTO with the apparent intent of getting close to Simon, who was doing a great deal of consulting for the local lodge and seemed to be flirting with affiliation. As the noose tightened, Simon became more and more critical of the OTO, finally denouncing it as “fascist” and vanishing, some said to Singapore. Other reports placed him in Hong Kong or Shanghai. The truth is, no one knew.

“Simon,” you will recall, was actually Peter Levenda, later famed for his brave attempt to infiltrate the Chilean Nazi cult Colonia Dignidad, as described in his book Unholy Alliance.

He cultivated an elusive, secretive persona, giving him a fantastic and blatantly implausible line of bullshit to cover the book’s origins. He had no telephone. He always wore business suits, in stark contrast to the flamboyant Renaissance fair, proto-goth costuming that dominated the scene. He never got high in public.

In short, he knew the signifiers and emblems of authority, and played them to the hilt. He hinted broadly of dealings with intelligence agencies and secret societies operating at global levels of social influence.

Over the course of several decades, one faction of the American intelligence community attempted to infiltrate — and manipulate — the occult underground.

Unlikely as that assertion may at first seem, it has been documented in many books and articles. See, for example, this site:

Military funded academic research from 1964 included, “witchcraft, sorcery, magic and other psychological phenomena and their implications on military and paramilitary in the Congo”.

The 1969 CIA ‘Operation Often’ was an exploration of Black Magic and the supernatural.

E. Howard Hunt’s espionage novels often discuss the CIA’s strange dealings with occult secret societies. Much of this research was conducted in conjunction with Project MKULTRA.

On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said:

The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an “extensive testing and experimentation” program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens “at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.” Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to “unwitting subjects in social situations.”

In such social situations, the field operative would likely abstain from using the test drugs while making them freely available to others within the group. (It is not yet known whether Moore became involved with the program during his period as an LSD distributor in the U.K.)

“Operation Eel” — MKULTRA subproject 131 — was a program designed to disseminate the results of this psychic/occult research to the public, in a carefully-circumscribed and disguised fashion. (Please note: Some sources make reference to “Project Eel.” This terminology is incorrect.)

The leaders of this subproject hoped to test an intriguing hypothesis: By using popular media to imprint these images on the public, one might actually increase the likelihood of the forecast coming true.

The predictive images were first culled from various receivers. An image recorded by two or more independent participants was considered to be of particular significance. The images were then randomly assigned to the “public” and “private” categories. “Private” predictive images were never revealed in any media, and remain closely held within the case history files; these images constituted the control group. “Public” images were worked into fictional narratives, which appeared in media likely to appeal to the young and the imaginative — comic books, animated films and so forth.

The subproject leaders soon discovered that public forecasts had a 65% success rate, while those forecasts kept private came true at a rate of 35%.

Although Project MKULTRA was shut down shortly before the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Operation Eel continues under another rubric. Later project cryptonyms remain unknown. Most of the participants in the operation were mere dabblers in occultism, and thus unwitting of any agency involvement. A few of the participants (Moore, Kirby) are considered psychic “super-receivers,” and thus may in fact be witting (or were witting), although this point has not yet been confirmed.

Qatari Military Officers Supplied Chemical Weapons to Syria Insurgents. Turkey was Informed.

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Average’s comment:: The rebels are DOGS. They are NOT Muslim.

Christof Lehmann (nsnbc),- Chemicals, which were used in a chemical weapons attack against Syrian civilians in the Khan al-Asal district of Aleppo in March 2013, have been delivered to the insurgents by two Qatari military officers. The Qatari officers transported the chemicals through Turkey. Turkish authorities had foreknowledge and approved of the operation. The chemical weapons attack in Khan al-Asal killed at least 25 and injured more than 100 Syrian civilians.

Ming airfieldThe information was published by the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, which states that the intelligence is part of security information from “a certain regional state”. nsnbc international received independent confirmation of the information´s validity from a Palestinian citizen, resident in Turkey, who entertains close ties to Palestinian intelligence services and Syria.

The two Qatari officers Major Fahd Saeed al-Hajiri and Captain Faleh Bin Khalid al-Tamimi, have reportedly transported the chemical substances from Qatar through Turkey, with the foreknowledge, approval, and direct help of Turkish authorities who have covered over the transfer of the substances to the terrorists.

Turkish security services were, according to the information, also involved in covering up evidence that transpired after the arrest of 12 members of Jabhat al-Nusrah, who were in possession of two metal cylinders with 2 kg of the internationally banned nerve agent Sarin. Only days after the confiscation of the 2 kg Sarin in Turkey, Syrian authorities secured 2 kg Sarin from insurgents in Syria.

The security information also stresses, that al-Hajiri and al-Tamimi were subsequently killed in a suspicious explosion in Mogadishu, Somalia on 5 May. Reportedly, both Russian, Syrian and other intelligence services are speculating whether the death of the two Qatari officers is part of a cover-up, to prevent that higher Qatari and Turkish officials could become implicated in the war crime that was committed with the chemicals in Aleppo.

The chemical weapons attack in the Khan al-Asal district of Aleppo in March 2013, killed at least 25 and injured more than 100 civilians. Although both France, Britain and the U.K. continue accusing the Syrian government and the Syrian armed forces for having used chemical weapons, and despite their repeated claims of “evidence”, all available physical and circumstantial evidence exonerates the Syrian authorities and points toward, what members of the anti-Syrian alliance euphemistically generalize as “The Opposition”.

The Syrian government has repeatedly pointed out that chemical laden rockets were being fired from locations which were held by insurgents. In some of the cases Turkish military officers were present at these locations when the weapons were fired against Syrian civilians.

Syria, backed by Russia continues demanding a full investigation of each single case of chemical weapons use, by an independent expert commission. So far, the USA, UK and France have sabotaged comprehensive and full investigations of chemical weapons use by demanding Iraq-style, sweeping searches for chemical weapons throughout Syria.

Related articles:

Syrian Military seizes Sarin Gas from ” rebels “

Chemical Weapon Attack kills 25 and injures 100 in Aleppo. Syria Crisis Explodes International Law into Anarchy and Barbarism

The U.S. is Channeling Chemical Weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria, Obama is a Liar and a Terrorist

Western – Russian Stand-Off over Syria Intensifies as “Rebels” suffer Decisive Defeat

Turkey likely to have used Chemical Weapons in Syria

NSA and JEWS

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Average’s comment:This is a fluff piece. ALL jews are comfortable with the fact that us GOY are being surveilled. A dog will always bark. A jew will always make sure we are under the gun.

By Rob Eshman

If you ever needed a sign that Jews feel fully integrated and accepted by society, consider this: Not one major Jewish group made a peep over the revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance.

We, who throughout the modern era have been followed, spied on, singled out, labeled, rounded up, tortured and killed at the hands of the state, are officially just fine with our government tracking our every word.

It’s one thing for non-Jews to say, by way of accepting the NSA actions, “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” We Jews remember, say, 1932 to 1945. Deserving has nothing to do with it.

Yet even those Jews who wield power through politics or the media Mavenocracy have sided not with the outraged civil libertarians who have called on the NSA to stop mass-harvesting the phone and Internet records of every American citizen.

“Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened,” Tom Friedman wrote in his June 11 New York Times column. “But I worry even more about another 9/11.”

The Times’ David Brooks called Edward Snowden, the Booz Allen Hamilton contract employee who leaked the fact of NSA tracking, a “traitor.” Richard Cohen of The Washington Post said he’s not worried because, as he put it, “Safeguards were built in.”

Even Jeffrey Goldberg, a columnist as clearly, comfortably Jewish as Dan Savage is out, counseled mere restrained concern.

“It isn’t incompatible to argue for a culture of rigorous civil liberties and acknowledge simultaneously that terrorism poses actual and unique challenges,” Goldberg wrote in his June 12 Bloomberg View post.

It is perhaps no surprise that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has accused Snowden of treason. But consider Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who liberal Dems once hailed as Ralph Nader with a laugh track. He dismissed the revelations as unsurprising. In other words, as his “Saturday Night Live” Stuart Smalley character once said, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”

The anti-Snowdenites don’t necessarily reflect the sentiment of all the Jews-on-the-street. Many people I’ve spoken with consider Snowden a hero, and they wonder how we, as Jews, can be OK with a government that can track our movements, phone calls and keystrokes, then swoop in and grab us whenever some bureaucrat decides we’re a threat.

It has happened, you’ll recall.

“Liberal Jews are completely hypocritical on this,” a friend of mine mused. “They’re not saying anything because Obama’s in charge. But what if it were Bush, or the Koch brothers?”

So why is it that we Jews, who have a healthy, history-certified paranoia and an abiding concern for the civil liberties of all, have not been marching on Washington over this latest news?

Here’s why: Much of this NSA tracking began under George W. Bush, as Feinstein pointed out. Most of us were OK with it then. The issue, then as now, is what safeguards are in place. Or, as the now well-used phrase has it: Who’s watching the watchers? It is up to us citizens to make sure those legal controls are in place, and that the bureaucracy, always addicted to overreach, is transparent and accountable.

That’s crucial, because the fact is, the technology of surveillance is only going to get cheaper and more widespread. My come-to-Moses moment on this happened three years ago, when I entered my home address on Google Maps. In a split second I had a nice view of my backyard. A four-letter word leapt from my mouth and I realized: Game Over. How much longer before technology allows a satellite to stream that image live 24/7 — or see inside my home?

For me, it’s not too burdensome to act as if my every e-mail, text and phone conversation could be heard and assessed by an all-seeing judge — I am the son of a Jewish mother, after all. And that’s the trade-off I’m prepared to make. Give me the benefits of a digital life and I’ll live with some of the costs.

Those benefits, by the way, include the ability to monitor and watch the government as well — it cuts both ways. We need to develop and fund more groups like OpenSecrets.org — as well as support great digital journalism — to open government up like never before.

Finally, yes, we Jews also have to admit we’re not reflexively opposed to the NSA tracking, because most of the people they’re tracking are on a jihad specifically against us. The ideologies of hatred have gone from print to pixel. It’s the ideology, not the technology, we have to hold in check. On the Internet, you can find pages for “Burn a Jew Day” and “Kill a Jew Day,” which, by the way, is July 9. When it’s your kids, your community center, your shul at risk, you tend to give the good guys a longer leash.

Just make sure they stay good

Epidemic of Birth Defects and Cancer in Iraq: America’s Toxic Legacy

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2fallujah4.jpg

 

by Stephen Lendman

 

America’s Gulf War, intermittent bombings in the 1990s, the 2003 war, and aftermath left a toxic legacy.

 

Children born with two heads reflect it. Some had only one eye. Missing sockets look like the inside of an oyster. They’re milky and shapeless.

 

Some children had tails like a skinned lamb. One or more had a monkey’s face. Girls had their legs grown together. They were half fish, half human.

 

Miscarriages are frequent. Hundreds of newborns have cleft pallets, elongated heads, overgrown or short limbs, and other malformed body parts. Some are too gruesome to view.

 

Deformed Iraqi newborns are commonplace. So are virtually every known illness and disease. They’re inordinately frequent. They range from severe headaches, muscle pain and debilitating fatigue, to serious infections, cardiovascular disease, brain tumors and numerous type cancers.

 

They include leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease and multiple myeloma. Others affect the bile ducts, bones, brain, breasts, colon, prostate, esophagus, gall bladder, liver, lungs, pancreas, pharynx, ovaries, salivary glands, small intestine, stomach, thyroid, urinary tract, and pelvis.

 

Cancer’s been around a long time. In October 2010, Nature.com headlined “Cancer: an old disease, a new disease or something in between?”

 

It said a “striking rarity of malignancies in ancient physical remains might indicate that cancer was rare in antiquity….”

 

University of Illinois School of Public Health/Cancer Prevention Coalition Chairman/Professor Emeritus Samuel S. Epstein titled his 1978 award-winning book “The Politics of Cancer.”

 

Twenty years later, he updated it. It’s called “The Politics of Cancer Revisited.”

 

He’s an internationally recognized cancer expert. He calls it a growth industry. Over recent decades, the incidence of numerous types skyrocketed.

 

He referred to doing so in modern societies. Iraq and other US war theaters are different. Iraq perhaps is in a class of its own. Vast parts of the country are irradiated.

 

On May 21, Science Daily headlined “Cancer and Birth Defects in Iraq: The Nuclear Legacy,” saying:

 

Ten years after the 2003 war, Mosul-based scientists “detected high levels of uranium contamination in soil samples at three sites in the province of Nineveh which, coupled with dramatically increasing rates of childhood cancers and birth defects at local hospitals.”

 

Iraq’s a toxic wasteland. Scores of pollutants include dangerous chemicals and metals, oil, gasoline, pesticides, bacteria, other poisons, and irradiation. Widespread depleted uranium use caused it.

 

US bombs, missiles, shells and bullets use solid DU projectiles or warheads. They’re de facto nuclear bombs. Their widespread use is more harmful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

Inhaled or ingested DU particles or dust is highly toxic. They’re designated illegal weapons for good reason. America prioritizes their use. Iraqis suffer horrendously.

 

Radioactive contamination is virtually everywhere. DU’s half-life is 4.5 billion years. Contamination is permanent. According to Helen Caldicott:

 

America’s two Iraq wars “have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people, particularly children, are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity.”

 

From 1991 – 2008, the incidence of birth defects and childhood cancer spiked sevenfold. Over one-third of US Gulf War vets are dead, seriously ill, or permanently disabled.

 

Science Daily said widespread “carcinogenic material across Iraq suggests the public health legacy of the two Gulf Wars is only going to get worse.” It does so annually.

 

In October 2012, London’s Guardian headlined “The victims of Fallujah’s health crisis are stifled by western silence.”

 

Four new studies link “one of the most severe public health crises in history” to America’s two November 2004 assaults on the city. Cancer rates and birth defects spiked dramatically.

 

Cancer expert Dr. Chris Busby studied conditions. He called Fallujah’s crisis “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.”

 

In some respects, Basra replicates it. Its neural tube defects (aka “open back”) incidence is unprecedented. Numbers keep rising.

 

Hydrocenphalus (water on the brain) cases among newborns are sixfold higher than America. US munitions bear full responsibility.

 

In September 2012, the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (BECT) headlined “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities.”

 

Evidence it reported was damning. From October 1994 – October 1995, congenital defects per 1,000 live births in Basra’s Maternity Hospital was 1.37.

 

In 2003, it was 23. It represented an “astonishing 17-fold (increase) in the same hospital.” From 2003 – 2011, annual evaluations were conducted. Congenital birth defect occurrences and types were reported.

 

Metal levels in hair, toenails and teeth were provided. Children with birth defects had nearly three times more lead in the enamel portion of deciduous teeth than others living in unimpacted areas.

 

Parents were abnormally affected. Pregnant mothers and growing fetuses are especially vulnerable. Exposure to toxic air, water, and soil pollutants assures trouble.

 

Following US bombings, contamination increased dramatically. Cancer, other diseases and birth defects followed. They’re at epidemic levels. They keep rising.

 

Populations in war zones suffer horrifically. Radiation-affected theaters compound it. BECT said nationwide Iraq ill health reports suggest greater crisis ahead.

 

“News of increases in childhood cancers, of perinatal and infant morbidity and mortality, and of unusual increases in congenital birth defects, have continued to emerge from across Iraq.”

 

Data from central Iraq’s Al-Ramadi corroborated Fallujah findings. Basra’s seriously affected.

 

“Present knowledge on the effects of prenatal exposure to metals, combined with our results, suggests that the bombardment of Al Basrah and Fallujah may have exacerbated public exposure to metals, possibly culminating in the current epidemic of birth defects.”

 

Internal pre-Gulf War data showed cancer incidence at 40 per 100,000. By 1995, it was 800. By 2005, it doubled to 1,600. Annually, numbers increase.

 

They understate the problem’s severity. Cancer and birth defect rates are likely much higher. Reporting falls short of what’s needed.

 

Iraq’s a cauldron of disease, malformed newborns, pain, suffering, misery, deaths and despair.

 

Daily violence, extreme poverty and unemployment, malnutrition, repression, dysfunctional infrastructure, permanent occupation, and other imperial priorities compound other problems.

 

Media scoundrels don’t explain. US ones hail an Iraq success story. In August 2008, The New York Times called “Iraq a remarkably safer place than it was when” Petraeus arrived.

 

Violence “plummeted” significantly. Streets “are flourishing with life. The worst, for now, has been averted.” America’s toxic legacy was ignored.

 

Violence then was more than acknowledged. Today it’s out-of-control. Resource theft, ecocide, human misery, and health crisis conditions go unreported.

 

News most fit to print is suppressed. Official fabrications substitute. It’s standard scoundrel media practice.

 

Most Americans don’t know what’s been done in their name. It’s true in all US war theaters. They don’t ask. They’re not told. It happens every time.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

 

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

The truth about Ahmadinejad

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Tehran – Outgoing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been treated like a pariah by the West, but is he a genuinely bad guy, or simply misunderstood?

 
In March 2007, 15 Royal Navy personnel strayed into Iranian waters where their boat, HMS Cardiff, was seized by the Iranian Navy. On April 4, they were released by order of then President Ahmadinejad, as “a gift” to the British people.

 

This was clearly an olive branch; at that time, relations between Iran and the West generally were cool, to put it mildly.

 Contrast this noble behaviour by our “enemy” with the calculated act of mass murder perpetrated by the Israeli Government – a “friendly” nation – in the Flotilla Massacre three and a half years later.
 
A close examination of Iranian foreign policy during the tenure of President Ahmadinejad shows no belligerence towards the West, although it does show a consistent pattern of fabrication by his and Iran’s enemies, the crowning lie of which was his claim that Iran would “wipe Israel off the map”.
 

A number of sovereign nations have developed nuclear weapons, including rising super-power China, belligerents India and Pakistan, Israel, and most of all the United States, the only country that has ever used them in anger. If America can have “the bomb”, surely any nation can. Not Iran, apparently. In fact, Iran is not to be permitted to develop anything in the nuclear field.

Facing this mindset, and at times veiled and not so veiled threats to strike at his country, Ahmadinejad kept his cool. On accepting an invitation to speak at Columbia University, he was treated like a pariah instead of being afforded the courtesy an ordinary foreigner should have received. At times the denunciation of the then President and his country has been hysterical.

 

Many Westerners, especially our self-styled elites, don’t like the way Iran conducts its business at home much less abroad, but what business is Iran’s domestic policy of the USA, Britain or anyone else?

 

Iran is an Islamic Republic, so alcohol is banned. Is that any business of ours? Moslems have a different mentality; there are no drunk drivers on their roads. Earlier this month, the BBC broadcast a documentary which related, inter alia, how a young woman in Manchester had got so drunk that she was raped by not one but two strangers in an alleyway. She had no recollection of one of these assaults, she was so far gone. In Iran this wouldn’t have happened because a) women don’t get drunk, at least not in public, and b) because aggravated rape, when proven, attracts an exemplary sentence which can include whipping or even execution.

The Iranian penal system has been much criticised, but it is not Iran that has locked up men unconvicted indeed uncharged for a decade and more. It is not Iran that uses extraordinary rendition. It is not Iran that is currently at the centre of a storm over warrantless searches and spying on a colossal scale, it is us. What right has the West to attempt to impose its brand of democracy, its brand of freedom on a nation of over 70 million people?

The real crime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that rather than being a Western lapdog he stood up for his country and acted in what he believed was the best interests of Iranians. Whatever he does now he has left office, and whatever scorn and vitriol is poured on him today, he will be judged more kindly by history than many of his contemporaries, including without doubt Tony Blair, George W. Bush and the still in office Binyamin Netanyahu.

MUHAJIREEN AND ANSAAR- POLITICAL PARTIES OR ASABIYYAH

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Bismillah Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem.

Alhumdulillah. Peace and blessings on Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam), his Noble Companions and Family.

Dear, committed brothers and dear committed sisters…

 It’s raining out here so I’ll try to be as short as we can.

 Audio on http://www.islamiccenterdc.com/apps/podcast/podcast/308092 (06-07-2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3gDNI5hLFU

 MUHAJIREEN AND ANSAAR- POLITICAL PARTIES OR ASABIYYAH

Once again we place ourselves in the shades of the Qur’an as Allah guides us and cares for us. The ayah around one hundred in Surah AalImran.

Oh you who are securely committed to Allah guard against Allah as is due to Him in the full measurement of this guard and do not die except in a state of submission to Him. And hold firm to Allah’s binding matter all of you- no exceptions- and be not divided; and bare in mind Allah’s provision, favour and privilege upon you when you (who are now Committed Muslims), were once enemies of each other and then He reconciled your hearts and familiarized and acquainted you with each other and then, due to this provision, favour and privilege you became brethren of each other; you were on the edge of a pit of fire and Allah saved you from it; it is with this is mind and with understanding these dynamics and factors that Allah is going to guide us. (Surah Aal Imran verse 102-103)

This ayah which we have been referring to and then taking the meaning of this ayah and seeing how it is behaved by the first Muslims around the Prophet is the way we have been doing it in the past few weeks. Before we continue our journey back into those formative years we think, at this moment, we should consider what this ayah is saying- not all of the sentences in these ayaat but a peculiar or a particular statement that says

… and bare in mind Allah’s provision, favour and privilege upon you when you (who are now Committed Muslims), were once enemies of each other… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

Allah is speaking to those Muslims who were listening to Allah and His Prophet. You can go back home and read it at your own pace- theayah says

… and bear in mind (or) be conscious of the fact (or) remember Allah’s blessings (and) Allah’s bounties upon you… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

OK- now what is this ni’mah from Allah that came upon these people in Makkah, the people in Al Hejaz and the people in Al Madinah. What is this ni’mah? The step forward in this ayah says

… you were enemies of each other, you were at war with each other… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

Of course the wars in that society were not at the magnitude of wars today; at times they were skirmishes, at times they were clashes, at times they were conflicts and at other times they were battles but still there were people killing other people. Why? Because they were enemies.

… remember, recall (or) reconscientize yourself as you were in the past enemies of each other and so here Allah… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

What did He do?

… He reconciled your hearts with each other… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

OK- this ayah was revealed before the day of saqifah. Remember we are inviting ourselves to the body of information that we have concerning that day when the Prophet passed away and the committed Muslims who were with the Prophet, now that he is absent, began to express themselves. There was a meeting of hearts.

… you have become, because of this ni’mah of reconciliation and this ni’mah of the meeting of hearts from Allah you’ve become brothers to each other- that is how close you are… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

You is who here? In al yawm as saqifah, (we are breaking it down), we are saying these are the Muhajirin (radi Allahu anhum) and these are the Ansar (radi Allahu anhum) and then later on maybe at the end of this khutbah we will realize that there is Al Hashimiyin (radi Allahu anhum). You’re all right now in a togetherness, solidarity, amicable relationships (and) friendly contact with each other. The ayahsays this. We’re not here imposing something on history that wasn’t there.

… in previous generations before the Prophet, before the Qur’an before Islam you were on the edge into falling into the abyss of the fire and so Allah saved you from falling into it… (Surah Aal Imran verse 103)

These were the people at as saqifah. Now they begin to express themselves and we went through the different statements and the different words that were used between Al Muhajireen and Al Ansar. We began with Al Ansar (and) we reminded you

And remind them, because a reminder is of benefit for those who continue to be committed to Allah ( Surah Az Zaariyaat verse 55)

Be conscious of what happened, not only knowledgeable… There’s many individuals that stash their heads with information but adh dhikrais not just stashing your head with information; adh dhikra is when that information touches base with your conscience. So here we are trying not only to recollect the information pertaining to what happened but also to have that information filter down into our conscience so that we don’t repeat the mistakes or we don’t fall into the traps that some individuals during that time may have fallen into. We mentioned what Sa’d ibn Ubada (radi Allahu anhu) said we mentioned what Al Habbab ibn Al Mundhir (radi Allahu anhu) said- (both of these belonging to Al Ansar and Al Ansar had their own pre-Islamic disagreements and divisions, Al Aws and Al Khazraj- (we mentioned all of that and there’s no need right now to go all over it again. It’s all recorded also for the benefit of those who missed out on it you can refer back to the recordings). So now what we have in the as saqifah Bani Saa’ida when the major decision makers or the influential decision makers or personalities of that time and of that society were assembled, the Muhajireen- remember, they are the ones who were forced out of Makkah and now were living in Al Madinah. The Muhajirun were not back in Makkah (in) their own homes, their own territory (among) their own folks. They’re still living among the Ansar. Remember that- everyone; because you run across very simplistic Muslims who don’t make the effort to look into the social dynamics that were at work. The Muhajirun now in this saqifah were something like, (we know this is a little strong word but it has to deliver the shades of the meaning), strangers. In the context of Islam and Imanthey weren’t strangers, these were like the ayah said ikhwana but in the residual from the past because this iman didn’t penetrate deep down into the hearts of every single human being living in that community, in that society (and) in that state. There were residuals (or) leftovers from the past that were beneath the surface of society lodged into the psychology of certain people. So now in this saqifah,(which we think all Muslims should revisit- get your hand on any facts (or) reliable books; you don’t want to get into some because there were orientalists and there were enemies of Muslims who threw themselves into this day and then they wanted to collect information to make problems for us. No, no. Go back to the books that all of us, Muslims, go back to to try to make sense out of the issue like this speaker of yours is trying to do on this day of taqwa in this khutbah.) What eventually took place was a bai’ah, a pledge of allegiance- this is ideological, political, social allegiance to a person to lead them and what happened is this bai’ah went to Abi Bakr (radi Allahu anhu).

 

The Muhajirun who were there in the saqifah were of the frame of mind, (generally speaking), that the Prophet did not categorically- (we want some people here to slow down a little because some people run through this area at a hundred miles an hour; slow down and realize these people who were in the saqifah who are having this of discussions were. The people who were not in this saqifah were later called the Hashimis by certain books, the Alawis by other books- these were not participating in this discussion. When the Muhajirun and the Ansar, with the exception of the Hashimiyin were discussing this whole affair and we tried to quote for you what Sa’d ibn Ubada (and) what Al Habbab ibn Al Mudhir said (and) what Abu Bakr As Siddiq said (and) what Umar (radi Allahu anhu) said, (and we’ll cross this area here now insha’Allah in the coming minutes), we could not detect that there was a social asabiyyah. When these individuals as close as they were and as much as they were taught by Allah and His Prophet they did not come out with what we may call a social or an operational asabiyyah. They may have been statements that indicated that they were afraid of this asabiyyah coming into their nascentIslamic society. So these Muhajirin were of the mindset that the Prophet did not categorically (state) which means the Prophet never made a statement that could be understood by absolutely everyone that a particular person is a leader after him therefore these people began discussing who’s going to be the leader after the Prophet. We know this is going to be a matter of contention by certain individuals but we know why. We say this with humility and with a sense of responsibility and brotherhood because if the Prophet had made it beyond the shadow of a doubt clear who the successor to him is we wouldn’t have had the history we had and we’ll get to that when the time comes. So these Muhajirin sensing that there is an asabiyyah beneath the surface first of all they realized that this matter has to be concluded without extending for weeks and months or even days because if this matter extends further into the future it has the potential of igniting the asabiyyah that’s been dealt with during the time of the Allah’s Prophet and no one wanted that to happen. So the way theseMuhajirin- here’s where we begin to sense that there’s a formation of a party. Now there’s a difference between a party and anasabiyyah. Here is where we begin to sense this is an Islamic partisan issue in which some people will take one side and others will take another side but there’s no asabiyyah involved at this point. So some person can get away with saying that Al Muhajirin appear now to become a political party Al Ansar appear to be at this point in the formation of a political party and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can have Islamic political orientations or political movements or political trends in the House of Islam- there’s nothing wrong with that. What becomes wrong with partisan Islamic politics is when a political party is infected with asabiyyah. That’s when things begin to go wrong! But at this point there is no asabiyyah in the coalition of Al Muhajirin and the Ansar. Don’t let anyone, whoever that person is, try to convince you at this point and time that the Muhajirin and the Ansar were behaving with asabiyyah. It simply was not there! If someone comes to you saying “there was an asabiyyah here in this context amongst these individuals” you tell him or her present your evidence because this is the area that the trouble makers of today are instigating Muslims against themselves. We can go back- this is not the history of Yahud, this is not a history of Zionists and Imperialists. This is our history. We can go back to it and we can think through it provided obviously we are not in-chained by this asabiyyah because anyone who is going to enter this area and in themselves have thisasabiyyah they are going to try to use any information they get to feed their own asabiyyah. We can’t do that! You have to enter this area with an open mind and an objective one- that’s the way it’s done. So what we begin here to sense is a sort of political party called AlMuhajirin. In the moments of leading to the bai’ah to Abi Bakr they used as an explanation for themselves doing that the fact that, (and this is stated in these books), Abu Bakr led the final prayer, the night prayer the day the Prophet passed away. They said if the Prophet of Allah was satisfied with Abi Bakr leading the prayers we are satisfied with him leading our society. Remember at this time there is no asabiyyah around, it’s beneath the surface and the Muhajirin also had the impression that they were more or less of a peculiar feature that others didn’t have, meaning Al Ansar in this context and that is what they called as sabaq wa al qaraba, they were the pioneers (or) they were the first to become committed to Allah and His Prophet. That’s true and they were his relationship. They were related to the Prophet so they were pioneers or they were the Islamic firsters and they were also the ones who were related to him. You see- when they think of themselves as related to Allah’s Prophet we’re talking about blood relationship here. Al qaraba here means family relationships with the Prophet. In this sense the Muhajirin thought of themselves as that even though there was noasabiyyah expressed by them. As sabaq is understood. Any one (or) any Muslim with any background will tell you and submit to the fact that they were the pioneers of Islam, they were the first to carry on the responsibilities of iman and Islam. Everyone knows that but when the Muhajirin come and say we are the qaraba of the Prophet or we are the family relationship to the Prophet then you begin to sense here this really doesn’t fit into the Qur’an and into the Sunnah- but that’s basically how they thought. When Abu Bakr spoke to Al Ansar in as saqifah part of what he said discloses this, (we quote), he said they meaning Al Muhajirun were the first to conform to Allah on earth. Of course, he’s not speaking about previous prophetic history, he’s speaking about the history that began with the Prophet. So Al Muhajirun were the first to conform and to comply with Allah and His Prophet. They were the first to commit themselves to Allah and to the Messenger. They were his first supporters and they were his folks. Ashira are the people within which a person dwells, (i.e.). the lively and the living individuals or peoples among whom a person lives. Then Abu Bakr goes on to sayand they deserve more than anyone else to carry these responsibilities to lead the Muslims after the Prophet and it can only be someone who is doing injustice who is trying to rival them for this matter of leadership. (Remember because some people take these statements out of context we’re trying here to put these statements in context); in this exchange between Al Muhajirin and AlAnsar when Sa’d ibn Ubada was speaking and Al Habbab ibn Al Mundhir was speaking among others from the Ansar we had Abu Bakr andUmar speaking from the Muhajirin. Umar said who is it who is rivaling us for the authority of Muhammad and his command being that we are his awliya’ and his ashira? Anyone who is trying to take issue with us is trying to present a batil, and skirt an ithm and get involved in a calamity. This is what Umar said to Al Habbab ibn Al Mundhir the Ansari who said, (if you can recall in the previous khutbah), if it comes to it let there be from us meaning Al Ansar an Emir and from you meaning the Muhajirin an Emir.This was trying to reach a middle ground between the Muhajirin and the Ansar. The reply to that was quoted just now in the words of what Umar said to him. Remember the Hashimiyun, (for some of you out there) or the Allawiyun were not involved in this discussion. They were busy preparing the Prophet of Allah’s funeral. They weren’t in the saqifah so this is not a peculiar issue like the simpletons say“this was a difference or a division or a conflict” some of them say different things between Umar and Ali (radi Allahu anhu). Brothers and sisters- whoever says something like that is basically writing off all of these details in our formative historical years. Then Umar goes on and says for the Ansar to hear, he says, (for those who go to extremes in reading history let me respond to them). They say “Umar was more or less taking this affair from Ali.” When Umar is standing up and responding to the Ansar that the Muhajirin deserve to be in this position of leadership he was defending Ali because Ali was from the Muhajirin, he wasn’t from the Al Ansar. But you’ll not find this type of understanding in the sectarian minds! So Umar says to Al Habbab ibn Al Mundir, (these are his words and we’ll try to translate this as best as we can; it’s like saying- this is a translators license here), you can’t put two arms in one sleeve. Umar is speaking to Al Habbaband the Ansaris saying by Allah the Arabs are not going to accept that you the Ansar become their decision makers when their Prophet is not one of you. Now you can sense here, first of all, Umar did not use the word Al Muslimun or Al Mu’minun because if he had used the word Al Muslimun or Al Mu’minun are not going to accept you, Al Ansar as their leaders, he would have been wrong because why can’t the Ansar lead? We went through their virtues. We went through their supportive roles. We went through their sacrifices. Most of the sahaba (radi Allahu anhum) were from them. Most of the Prophet’s wives (radi Allahu anhum) were from them. So what disqualifies the Ansar? That’s not the case. Per Islam nothing disqualifies them. Umar knows that, the Ansar know that, the Muhajirunknow that, the Hashimiyun know that. Everyone knows that but Umar is saying to them- he is looking at the larger society. Islam had grown into all of the Arabian Peninsula and he is saying to everyone else who is listening these other people who are out there- (it’s) true they are Muslims on the surface of it. Most of them became Muslims- but they still remained these Arabians who they are in fact. There’s an ayah that refers to this fact.

The A’rab came and said that we are committed Muslims too; say to them: you haven’t committed yourselves to Allah but say that you are Muslims … (Surah Al Hujurat verse 14)

These Arabians, who Umar is referring to, are not going to accept you the Ansar to become their leaders. So these are surface Muslims. Beneath this surface there’s an asabiyyah and this asabiyyah gets confused because some people say “certain individuals had this asabiyyah and they climb all the way up and they say Abu Bakr and Umar have this asabiyyah.” Where? Brothers and sisters who say that, where is the proof that they have this asabiyyah? Then it goes from asabiyyah to becoming a conspiracy! Where is this conspiracy? So the inference is here- when Umar is speaking to the Al Ansar in saqifah Bani Saa’ida he is telling them all of these Arabians out there are not going to be satisfied if you Ansar assume this role and they know that the Prophet was not from among you becauseArabian public opinion out there still have the hundred of years that they carry with them from their culture, from their history, from their habit from their customs. It’s all in there even though on the surface they say ash hadu an laa Ilaha illa Allah wa ash hadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah but when it is going to come down to it they are not going to accept you. Then he continues you see these Arabians won’t object if the leaders come from the same people that the Prophet came from. This was the general impression that was out there. This is what the successors to Allah’s Prophet had to deal with. What do you want to do at this point? You want to begin an internal civil war among the Muslims? That was the other option and it was inferred in these words. He goes on but unfortunately we’re not going to have the time that is required to continue but you get the gist of it at this point and that’s what is important.

 

The result of this exchange of expressions and statements that even though they were referring to an asabiyyah did not in themselves indicate that those who were speaking from the Ansar and the Muhajirun themselves were asabiyeen. They weren’t but they were referring to the fact that al asabiyyah was there. So as a result of this Al Ansar went silent. They didn’t add to that especially when they heard Abu Bakr saying the leaders are from Quraysh. Now this statement has different meanings for different people. Our concern at this point is not to try to develop a khutbah about this sentence, the Imams or the leaders are from Quraysh. So it took this back and forth to have the Ansar acquiesce at this point. They didn’t object to the fact that from here on someone from Muhajirin is going to be the leader for the Muslims. In other words, what was done at this point was to smother a fitnah before this fitnah could take shape in that Islamic community. When the bai’ah was performed people went up to Abi Bakr and shook his hand and express fealty to his leadership, he said I found no other alternative and I feared for the Ummah of Muhammad to be divided. Some people say Aliaccepted this because he wanted to maintain that togetherness of the Muslims and Abu Bakr said the same thing but why do people pick and choose? They had the same understanding of this asabiyyah beneath the surface. You see this asabiyyah beneath the surface in that community and in the Arabian society at large was the issue that was troubling the internal thoughts of everyone. How are we going to keep this issue together? How are we going to stay together? It wasn’t some conspiracy- we’ll get to that.

 

One of the indicators that even coming to this working decision was influenced by historical precedent- because before Islam when a tribal chieftain was to pass away the decision to replace that tribal chief was done by the elders, the seniors, the most influential and the most experienced in the tribe. This had nothing to do with the Qur’an and the Sunnah, it had everything to do with the way society arranged itself. So even the way society right now began to arrange itself had an input from pre-Islamic traditions and customs. It’s not the ideal but it’s the operational. One of the statements you will find is that in saqifat Bani Sa’ida Abu Ubayda (radi Allahu anhu) who was fromMakkah, he was a Muhajir, said to Ali after the bai’ah to Abi Bakr you are still a young person and these are the seniors of Quraysh. This is in reference to the rest of the Muhajirin; we’re speaking about Abu Bakr, we’re speaking about Abdur Rahman ibn Awf (radi Allahu anhu) and we are speaking about the others who were older than Ali. These are the seniors from your own people. You have not accumulated the same range of their experience and their knowledge pertaining to these matters and I can only see that Abu Bakr is going to be able to handle this with more input or with more vigor than you are. Abu Bakr was an elder person. Physically speaking Ali was in his thirties or his early thirties and Abu Bakr must have been in his early sixties, so if you come to understand what Abi Ubayda is saying when he uses the word stronger doesn’t mean physically- physically Ali was more qualified than Abi Bakr;what he meant was the social clout that Abu Bakr has will help him manage this affair than what you have. The social clout thatAli had- if we go back to pre-Islamic times and the asabiyyah beneath the surface- wasn’t that much because he was very active in the frontline of Badr and Uhud and Al Khandaq and Al Ahzab, Hunayn (and) all of these battles; so Abu Ubaydah is telling Ali I see the social clout that was needed for this togetherness more in Abi Bakr than I see it in you. This is not a divisive statement. This was not meant to cut down Ali at all. What was meant here was to try to give it a sense and a spirit of co-operation amongst everyone so that this asabiyyah doesn’t burst out. Then there are others who will come along here and who will quote the ayah in the Qur’an and they try to suggest “don’t try to knock down a fair person.” (With) Abu Bakr there was no malice here. There’s no trick that is going on. The ayahin the Qur’an as these people would quote it would divulge as much. When the Prophet was on his way from Makkah to Al Madinah when he began his hijra the ayah says

… the second of two, (this is in reference to Abi Bakr), as they are in the cave (or) then cavern, the Prophet is saying to his companion don’t grieve, Allah is with us… (Surah Tawbah verse 40)

The only thing we can say at this time because we’ve come to the end of the time is remember the ayah as these individuals were remembering the ayah in times where al asabiyyah lurks just beneath the surface.

Oh you who are securely committed to Allah guard against Allah as is due to Him in the full measurement of this guard and do not die except in a state of submission to Him. And hold firm to Allah’s binding matter all of you- no exceptions- and be not divided; and bare in mind Allah’s provision, favour and privilege upon you when you (who are now Committed Muslims), were once enemies of each other and then He reconciled your hearts and familiarized and acquainted you with each other and then, due to this provision, favour and privilege you became brethren of each other; you were on the edge of a pit of fire and Allah saved you from it; it is with this is mind and with understanding these dynamics and factors that Allah is going to guide us. (Surah Aal Imran verse 102-103)

 

Dear brothers, dear sisters, dear fervent committed Muslims…

This togetherness that those of us who are sincere and devoted to Allah who have done our best and who understood in a practical meaning the lifetime of Allah’s Prophet and who look at what the Prophet accomplished during his lifetime and the Muslims who continued to hold on to whatever they could of that accomplishment in a very positive sense- now that doesn’t mean that the weren’t trouble makers and all of the rest of the negative types around, there were; but we never went into a consuming civil war that obliterated us or any part of us from existence. That never happened and that’s something that we should be thankful for because there’s more good in us than there is this strain of evil among us. This strain of evil among us, this fitnah, that is beginning to show its ugly face is something that everyone who has a score or a grudge or hostilities against us from inside of us and from the outside are trying to make happen. You have crazies, loonies, fanatics. Remember, if you look at measured, amicable and friendly exchange of words in as saqifah– because everyone or anyone who thinks enough refers their whole difference with the other Muslim to the day and the people that we are speaking about. We haven’t sensed or seen or read any thing from these individuals that say that they are fanatics (or) that say that they are intent on killing each other (or) that say that if you disagree with someone you become a Kafir. You can’t find any of that! So how come you have people who disagree with other Muslims and because of that disagreement they equate that other Muslim with a Kafir? Where did this come from? It doesn’t exist. You had some fanatic, absolutely out of his mind type of individual on the internet from Kuwaitbecause of what’s happening in Syria and Iraq, particularly what’s happening in Syria, (we’re forced to say this because we have to contrast these types of quasi-Muslims who even though we disagree with them and even though we know they are wrong we’re not going to say they are Kafirs. A Muslim doesn’t say that pertaining to another Muslim.), but this type of individual comes out and he says something like this, (the best that we know is he has no type of position, he’s not a decision maker; just some person from the average pedestrian Muslims), “if you find any member belonging to Hizbullah slaughter him.” That’s what he says and he goes on. You can tell the type of raw hatred that spews out of such individuals. You can’t generalize. Just because there’s an individual like that don’t go and say“all the Muslims who perform their rituals like him are like that.” To break that down for you, this person is a Sunni and if he said something like that don’t go and say “look how the Sunnis think.” He goes further and he says, (we want you to compare what he says, obviously, he’s hostile, he’s an enemy of Hizbullah and all of this- that’s obvious, but the way he expresses himself has no justification and no foundation in the words of Allah or in the behavior of Allah’s Prophet, none whatsoever), “if you can capture ten members of Hizbullah, reserve them for me so that I can personally slit their necks.” If this person knew his history and if he knows his background he’d never ever utter anything coming close to the words that he said. But it goes to show you the asabiyyah when it surfaces and the twist and the spin of information when it takes it’s course on certain individuals- these are the types of characters that come out. We wouldn’t be surprised if someone else having a counter asabiyyah having heard these types of things said or answered and responded to them with similar statements because asabiyyah feeds asabiyyah. Fanaticism feeds fanaticism and this doesn’t exist in the Qur’an and it doesn’t exist in the Sunnah.