Islamic Extremists and Islamic Fundamentalists: A distinction without a difference

The Muslim Council of Britain reacted angrily to the letter written by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to Muslim religious leaders urging them to do more to combat Islamic extremism and telling them that they had a responsibility to explain to their followers "how faith in Islam can be part of British identity." In responding to the letter, the Deputy Secretary of the Council, Harun Khan, asked if Mr. Pickles was seriously suggesting that "Muslims and Islam are inherently apart from British society?"

Mr. Khan needs to see the 21 minute video that a young British Muslim, Aysh Chaudry, posted on YouTube. Mr. Chaudry is a recent law school graduate employed by the London law firm Clifford Chance. In his video, Mr. Chaudry calls on Muslims to reject Western concepts such as freedom of speech and expression. He explains that it is a mistake for Muslims to become "infatuated with the civilization of the Kuffar* and their beliefs and values... Stop putting freedom on this pedestal. This is a value stemming from secular, liberal beliefs... We don't need a value which stems from a bankrupt ideology." Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's new king, is in complete agreement. He has said that "we can't have democracy in Saudi Arabia," and freedom of expression in the Kingdom, as Raif Badawi, discovered is a crime punishable by 1,000 lashes and ten years in prison. David Cameron has called the fight against Islamist extremism "the struggle of our generation." The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has declared that France is at war with radical Islam. President Obama refuses to use terms like Islamist extremism or radical Islam, and even pretends that the Islamic State (ISIL) is not Islamic. Hillary Clinton has said that "there is a distorted and dangerous strain of extremism within the Muslim world that continues to spread." The Western world has been shocked by the atrocities committed by ISIL. The slaughter of apostates, heretics and nonbelievers, the rape and the enslavement of women and children, and the executions by beheading are viewed by those in the West as horrific acts, but these barbarities are all permitted by Islamic sacred texts. The Qur'an (4:24, 8:69 and 33:50) authorizes Muslim men to take women prisoners of war as sex slaves, and beheading is specified as the form of execution in the hadith narrated by Ali (ra). ISIL takes sex slaves as war booty as is permitted by the Qur'an, and although slavery was officially abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962, it is still widely practiced in the Kingdom. In accordance with Islamic law (Ahkaam al-Sijn wa'l-Sujana' wa Mu'aamalat al-Sujana' fi'l-Islam by Hasan Abi'l-Ghuddah, 256) ISIL may choose to ransom prisoners for money, exchange them for captives held by the enemy, or enslave the women and children and kill the men. When ISIL decides to kills its hostages, they are beheaded as is prescribed by the hadith. Beheading is also the method of execution used in Saudi Arabia which beheaded 87 people in 2014, and another 16 in the first month of 2015.

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ISIL's execution of the Jordanian pilot by burning him alive has sparked outrage, and has been called un-Islamic, but was it? The other prisoners that ISIL had killed were from ISIL's perspective infidels, i.e., non-believers, apostates and heretics. The Jordanian was a Sunni, like the followers of ISIL, a believer, misguided perhaps but a believer nonetheless. As such he deserved a dignified death. Mohammed according to the report narrated by Ahmad (23804), Abu Dawood (3111) and al-Nasaa'i (1846) said that in addition to becoming a martyr by dying for the sake of Allah, a Muslim "who is burned to death is a martyr." As horrific as the video of the pilot's execution was, his immediate burial afterwards gives reason to believe that this was the execution not of an infidel but of an honored enemy who was being offered martyrdom in accordance with fundamental Islamic doctrine. The mistake that Cameron, Valls, Obama, Clinton and all of the other Western leaders make is that they fail to realize that the only difference between the Islamic extremism of the leaders of the ISIL and other Islamist terrorist organizations and the Islamic fundamentalism of King Salman and other orthodox Muslims is methodology and timing. Whether you call it Islamic extremism or Islamic fundamentalism, the goal of all true believers is the same: the submission of all of the world's peoples to Allah. Winston Churchill was the first to warn the world of the danger that Hitler's Germany posed to world peace. In 1899, in his book, The River War, he warned Europe of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism. That prophetic warning is more valid today than when it was first written:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobiain a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman mustbelongto some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine --must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities...all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.

*Kuffar: a derogatory term used to refer to non-Muslims. The thread posted at the Islam Question and Answer website (islamqa.info) states that Allah forbids Muslims from becoming friends with non-believers, and that a Muslim who does take them as awliya (friends, protectors or helpers) "incurs the wrath of Allaah and His eternal punishment, and that if the one who takes them as friends was a true believer he would not have taken them as friends." Because the Muslims who take non-Muslim as friends are not true believers, Allah's wrath will fall upon them, and "in torment they will abide."