Muslims And The Millennium

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from worldpoliticsview.com, January 8, 2008, with a headline:“Hamas and Islamic Millenarianism:What the West Doesn’t Recognize.”The following are excerpts:“Some twenty years after its founding, the Palestinian organization Hamas remains little understood in the West.The most common error made by observers in considering contemporary Islamist movements – and notably, Hamas – is that of attempting to grasp them in terms of concepts and modes of thought that are proper to the West.Most Western analysis of the phenomenon of Islamism tend to underestimate or even obscure a fundamental element that is common to all the various Islamist currents and organizations, namely, the role of specifically Muslim religious beliefs and more precisely of Islamic eschatology.It is impossible to understand the success enjoyed by Hamas, notably since the Palestinian elections, nearly two years ago, and the persistence of Islamism in general, if one fails to take into account the beliefs held by the members of Islamist movements.What are the goals of Hamas?The preamble of the Hamas Charter…clearly affirms the centrality of the ‘struggle against the Jews,’ which is supposed to be carried on ‘until the enemies are vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized.’[T]he role of eschatological or millenarian beliefs within [Islam] cuts across all the divisions within the Muslim world:between Sunnism and Shism, between traditional Islam and contemporary Islamism.As the French historian Pierre Lory explained…, ‘The imminence of the end of time and of the final judgment is one of the oldest and most constant Quranic themes and is found throughout the sacred text of Islam.’Inasmuch as Muhammad is the last prophet (bearing the ‘seal of prophecy’), his advent inaugurates the last period of universal history: i.e. the eschatological period. Hamas is a radical Islamic movement whose worldview is marked by an Islamic eschatology in which the Jews occupy a central place.Its apocalyptic vision of a final confrontation with Israel excludes every possibility of coexistence or ‘moderation.’The hatred of Jews expressed in the Hamas Charter and conveyed in the discourse of its officials is not simply a religious anti-Judaism or an imported anti-Semitism of European origins.It is, as the French scholar of anti-Semitism Pierre-Andre Taguieff has put it, a ‘millenarian and redemptive anti-Semitism,’ [i.e.] ‘the Muslim world can only be saved by the extermination of the Jews.’”

Tom:

Dave, this is rather lengthy but very important because one of the reasons I selected this is that it really supports what you’ve been saying for years, what you wrote about in Judgment Day, and people, certainly the press, you find little bits and pieces, they’re starting to “get it” but not quite yet, and I think this individual, who is French by the way, this is a French translation and these are just excerpts from a longer article, but he’s saying it the way it is, this is it.

Dave:

Tom, let me quote Muhammad, and I quote him, of course, this is from the Sahih Bukhari Hadith, I quote him in Judgment Day and we’ve said it on the program a time or two, but not in a while, so let’s get it clear again.Muhammad said:THE last day—now, he’s not saying the last days, that’s what Christians believe in; this is what the Bible talks about.THE last day is one of the five pillars of Islam that every Muslim must believe.What is THE last day?That’s when Muslims are raised from the dead to see whether their good deeds outweigh their bad.Okay?So now, understand that no Muslim can be resurrected to face this final test until, what happens?Here’s Muhammad:“THE last day shall not come until the Muslims confront the Jews and the Muslims destroy them.In that day, Allah will give a voice to the rocks and the trees, and the rocks and the trees will cry out, Muslim, oh Abdullah, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”So that was the last statement by this man is very accurate.He says, in other words, “The Muslim world can only be saved by the extermination of the Jews.”I’m glad he said that, you don’t hear people saying that.I think I was one of the only ones, there were very few saying that.You can’t understand what is going on in the Middle East unless you understand that until Islam controls, until they’ve wiped out Israel!They must wipe out Israel, but they must wipe out all Jews all over the world.Until you understand that, you don’t understand what’s really happening over there.

Tom:

And Dave, it’s really interesting because the secular press, it’s not that they are just oblivious to it, but they’re looking for other reasons.They are always trying to find out why, and they say, well, it’s an economic struggle, and so on.But many of the terrorists, the martyrs so-called, have come from middle-class families, and so on.This is really….

Dave:

Some of them from wealthy families.

Tom:

Yes, this is not just ideological, this is a religious belief that’s at the core of what we are seeing and it’s not going to go away until this has changed.

Dave:

Now, let’s just take it one step further.Muhammad also said, “Allah has commanded me to fight against all people until all people confess there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet” or his messenger.Now if you want to talk about eschatology, there it is.The consummation will be when Islam, not only wipes out all Jews, but has conquered the world.This is what they must do. Now if you’re going to fit that in to some peace plan, President Bush’s “Road Map to Peace” and how they can naively continue with this pursuit—well of course, because, as we have pointed out in the past, Condoleezza Rice, she believes in Replacement Theology.So, Israel is finished, they have no place in God’s plan, and that’s a lie, and that is exactly what Islam wants to bring to pass.

Tom:

Dave, I don’t have it in front of me, but as I said, this is from a lengthy article, and one point the writer of the article makes is that Muhammad’s last words were, we’re going to take Constantinople, and then we are going to take Rome.Now, I’m paraphrasing it because I don’t have it in front of me, but certainly, they took Constantinople, Istanbul now, but Rome was also on Muhammad’s mind.

Dave:

His last words were, “May Allah curse the Christians and the Jews,” and the Qur’an, of course says, do not make any friendship with Christians….