By Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com - 9/19/2021
Devout Muslims are not surprised by our defeat in Afghanistan. They see it as proof that Islam is destined to rule the world, something foretold many times in the Koran, every word of which is direct from God.
My favorite example is verse 33 in chapter nine, which says God gave Muhammad the true religion, Islam, and directed Muhammad to make it prevail over all other religions, "howsoever those who associate others with Allah might detest it." In other words, like it or not, you despicable infidels, Islam is going to rule the world.
About now, some of you are thinking, "C'mon Burro, Afghanistan is hardly 'the world.'" No, but it is an ominous defeat because it took them only 20 years. When the Muslims fought the Byzantine Empire, it took them 738 years to conquer Constantinople. That was 647 years ago and I notice the Muslims are still in charge there.
It won't take that long for America to fall. It took only 19 Mujahideen, warriors for Allah, to take down the Twin Towers, kill thousands and entice the Great Satan to invade Afghanistan, where we suffered thousands of casualties and left behind great piles of booty. Allah, the Great Deceiver, has turned the tables on us and now we are the ones being invaded by thousands of Mujahideen, a.k.a. refugees.
They will join some four million other Muslims at over 3000 mosques, where they will pray for Islam to someday rule America, which shouldn't take very long by Muslim standards. There were just 1200 mosques in America at the time of their Twin Tower victory, and only two million Muslims. If they continue to double every 20 years, they will reach a critical mass in less than a hundred years. Allahu Akbar!
Allah has directed his followers, "the best of people ever raised up for mankind," to wage a Holy War until His religion prevails, and Allah will help by casting "terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved." (See verses 3:110 and 8:12 in the Holy Koran.) The last revelation Allah gave to Muhammad leaves no doubt:
"When comes the Help of Allah and Victory, And you see the People enter Allah's Religion in crowds, Celebrate the Praises of your Lord, and pray for His Forgiveness: for He is Oft Returning (in Grace and Mercy)." (Chapter 110, verbatim from the Yusuf Ali translation.)
For many years, I thought Chapter 110 was simply meaningless platitudes, but Afghanistan has me trying to rethink it from a Muslim's point of view. For help, I consulted the Tafsir of Ibn Kathir. A Tafsir is a Koranic exegesis and the most respected is that of Ibn Kathir, a fourteenth-century Muslim scholar and jurist.
Ibn Kathir confirmed Chapter 110 is the last revelation and, surprisingly, that the chapter is "equivalent to one fourth of the Qur'an," which means I was wrong to think it was "meaningless platitudes." In the context of the time, Chapter 110 was recognition of the massive conversion to Islam in the wake of Muhammad's conquest of Mecca, and since the Koran is an eternal guide with no context, it is also Allah telling Muslims what will happen when Islam conquers the rest of the world.
While that's a very important message for Muslims, I was surprised at Ibn Kathir's assertion that it was "equivalent to one-fourth of the Qur'an." However, I was a helluva lot more surprised at what he reported Muhammad had said to another Muslim about Chapter 110: "Verily, the people have entered the religion of Allah in crowds and they will also leave it in crowds."
There must be Muslim scholars who dispute the provenance of that quote, but the fact that it has survived for over 700 years in Islam's most respected tafsir is a powerful endorsement. Since the Koran asserts that Muhammad and Allah were always on the same page, something obvious to non-Muslims since we think Muhammad and Allah were one and the same, it would appear that Muhammad had doubts about Islam's eternal appeal.
Ibn Kathir, understandably, doesn't explore that possibility. While I think Muhammad was a brilliant psychopath who drank his own Kool Ade with gusto, I also think he had moments of clarity, moments when the con man couldn't con himself. This sounds like one of those moments.
Hopefully, the Afghan victory will mark the beginning of just such an exodus from Islam, thanks to the Taliban. Their eagerness to implement sharia law could prove Islam's undoing. Wishful thinking? Maybe. See my next article.