Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from WorldNetDaily, October 18, 2004, with the headline: “Muslim Martyr’s Music Video.—A music video urging children to become suicide bombers and which was removed from circulation last year, returned to official Palestinian television last week along with the publication of a new school textbook Teaching Children How to Aid Terrorists.
‘‘ ‘The words in the music video are sung by a woman vocalist wearing an Army uniform, and the visuals include children in frenzied war dances, interspersed between scene of children participating in violence in combat zones,’ reports Palestinian Media Watch.
‘The lyrics to the song translated by PMW glorify suicide bombing, the becoming a shahid. ‘You will not be saved, O Zionist, from the volcano of my country’s stones. You are the target of my eyes. I will even willingly fall as a shahid, that is, martyr for Allah. Allah Akhbar, Oh, the young ones.’”
Tom: Dave, you know, sometimes…and I think more and more these days as we see what’s taking place in Iraq, certainly throughout the Middle East—you have no idea…or it seems so incomprehensible that the human heart could be that wicked…that without conscience. Just teaching children about killing. Upholding martyrs, terrorists, who go in and blow themselves up, and take out men, women, and children.
Dave: Well, Tom, this is Islam, and we’ve tried to say that before. And Islam…you know, that it leads these people astray…there’s not just Osama Bin Laden out there. There are probably about a million young boys studying in madrasas in Pakistan. They are taught in various Muslim countries, that the greatest joy, the greatest honor—and their parents tell them this—is to be a shahid, or shahad if you’re a woman—to die in jihad; in the cause of Allah.
Now, first of all, what kind of a god gives you heaven, much less rewards in heaven, for murdering innocent women and children and committing suicide yourself? They’re not martyrs, they’re murderers. What twisted thinking does that?
But this is what they’re taught. This is Islam, and Tom, we have, as you know, we’ve got inscriptions, we have the records going back more than a thousand years. Well, back into the six, seven, and eight hundreds. Muslim warriors…they conquered from France to China, the take over in India, the bloodiest story in history. They killed more than Hitler killed. This was the fastest spreading, longest lasting Empire ever in history. And one of the secrets of success—and they found these inscriptions on stones and so forth. The Muslim warriors, they were not afraid to die. They were fearless. In fact, they wanted to die and they wrote out inscriptions in various places, which we’ve now uncovered, “Allah grant me the privilege of dying in jihad.” Because Muhammad taught, and Islam teaches that this is the only sure way to know that you will be in paradise. And I think we’ve quoted Abu Bakhr, Muhammad’s father-in-law, the first one to whom Muhammad promised Paradise without martyrdom, and yet you would find this in the hadith, where he said, “Even if I had one foot inside Paradise, I couldn’t trust Allah, he might push me out.”
So, the fact is, the only sure way to enter Paradise…and you enter it with great reward. A minimum of 72 dark-eyed houris (virgins) whose virginity returns every time you have sex with them. It’s non-stop sex, and rivers run with wine…what the Muslim can’t have on this earth, and so forth. And there could be hundreds or thousands, because you get one for every day that you have fasted in Ramadan and there’s 30 days of a fast, so if you fasted 10 years, or if you lived to be 60, I mean, you’ve got a lot of these virgins up there. This is the lie. This is what motivates these people. What a tragedy because they do not end up in Paradise, but they end up in hell as murderers to pay the penalty for their sin.
Tom: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Dave: So, Tom, this is the mentality. What are we going to do? There’s not just one Osama Bin Laden. And we used to say to Israel—I can remember it very well, and it upset me at the time—America would say, “Don’t overreact. Get along with these people.” Well, we’re finding out in Iraq it is not easy to get along with these people. And they are very persistent, not just for what they’re trying to do, but to enter Paradise.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful.” The prophet Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked…”
Dave: Right.
Tom: “…Who can know it?” But we also know that God has put a conscience…
Dave: Absolutely.
Tom: …in every heart. Now, when we’re looking at the TV, and we see a terrorist there, holding the severed head, or in one case, in Saudi Arabia they find a severed head in the terrorist’s headquarter’s refrigerator, you know right in the freezer—now, this is so unspeakably evil.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Tom: How is that? Yeah, we know the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, but still…they must be searing the conscience, and they’re starting with children, as we see here, from the cradle on.
Dave: And Tom, there’s not a imam in the world, whether it’s the highest authority at the University in Cairo, or whether it’s an authority in Saudi Arabia, wherever it may be, nowhere in the United States, no imam speaks out against this. In fact, when the Twin Towers came down, what did we hear? You heard from the imams, we heard it from our own leaders, “Now don’t retaliate against Muslims…this is not a Muslim thing, this is not Islam, these were extremists and they were very concerned lest we might throw a rotten egg at a mosque in the United States, or discriminate against someone wearing a Muslim garb. Not one word about the two million they’ve killed in Sudan. Not one word about those that they’re killing in Nigeria and Indonesia and so forth. There is no conscience in this and it is a tragedy, Tom, what is happening, both for the victims as well as for those who think by killing them they’re gaining Paradise.