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 Jewish World Review.com June 14, 2007, with a headline:“Baghdad Believers Being Terrorized for Crime of Christianity.”The following are excerpts:An al Qaeda affiliated insurgent group is giving Christians in Baghdad a stark set of options: Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax, or leave with only the clothes on your back.A U. S. military official said American forces became aware of the threats only last month, and now have erected barriers around the largest Christian enclave in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood in an effort to protect its residents.Christians in Baghdad refuse to discuss the threats for fear of retribution. But in Syria where thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled, tales abound of families that were killed or driven from their homes because they either refused or couldn’t afford to pay the jezu tax, a tax usually levied on non-Muslim men of military age that’s been part of Islam for more than one thousand years.Madeline Shuker Usuf, 74, is still shaken by her recent escape to Damascus.She said she didn’t have enough money to pay a monthly jezu of 250,000 Iraqi dinars, about $200.The insurgents were determined to collect their tax, she said.They wanted to kill me and take my gold bracelets, she said, tears filling her eyes at the memory, they tell us, pay or give a daughter in marriage to a fighter.As Iraq has descended into chaos however, many Christians have fled joining an estimated 2.2 million exiles including 1.4 million Iraqis now estimated to be living in Syria.At least 19 thousand Iraqi Christians have registered in Damascus with the United Nations Refugee Agency, and thousands more are thought to have sought shelter there but have yet to register.A Christian Iraq legislator estimated Tuesday that a half million Christians have fled Iraq since 2004.
Tom:
Dave, is this Islam, or is this radical militant, talks about the insurgents, is this an anomaly or is this what Islam is about?
Dave:
The easiest way to settle that question, Tom, we just go next door to Saudi Arabia—well, you’ve got to go across Kuwait but it’s almost next door.Well, Kuwait would be pretty much the same, but let’s go to Saudi Arabia where Islam began.
Tom:
And we’renot talking about insurgents here, we’re talking about the people of Saudi Arabia.
Dave:
It’s holiest sites are their Mecca and Medina, this is where the prophet started this, and what is the situation there?No Jew can set foot in Saudi Arabia.They are not embarrassed about this.You must be a Muslim to be acitizen of Saudi Arabia.This is not a democracy, how are we going to establish a democracy in any Muslim country, I don’t know?They will have to abandon Islam.You cannot have a non-Muslim worship ceremony, even in secret if they find out about it.You certainly cannot build or even rent anything that you would use for a non-Muslim worship ceremony, it’s absolutely forbidden.Any Muslim who converts to any other religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity whatever, off with his head or her head in Chop-Chop Square—that’s what they call it and what I call it.There’s no freedom of press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of conscience, no freedom of religion, although Saudi Arabia has signed the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, saying that all these things are free.Now we don’t have to discuss this, really, just go to Saudi Arabia and there it is!These are not fanatics. This is Islam!Now Tom, another way to put it, I think the simplest way is, well if these are fanatics, then I guess Muhammad was a fanatic because he started the whole thing.There were more than 67 attacks on villages by his new Muslim followers, he led, I think, 28 of them himself.They kill people all across Saudi Arabia, and they took over Arabia, and when he died, 632 AD, the Arabs themselves thought they were free and they tried to leave, I mean, anybody can Google this, Google “Wars of Apostasy”.And they tried to abandon Islam and his followers under Abu Bakar they killed about 70 thousand Arabs, former Muslims, who were just trying to escape and get back to their original life, get out from Islam.It’s called, The Wars of Apostasy, and from there Islam spread, all the way up to the heart of France, all the way to China, the take over of India, called the bloodiest story in history by historians, and these are fanatics?No, this is Islam!This is what the Qur’an teaches, you can look it up in the Hadif, the Sahib-Bukari Hadif.Tom, you’ve got copies of the Hadif.No, so it’s just a lie!Now, I often say, Tom, it’s facetious, it really is good that Islam is such a peaceful religion or we would really have problems, in London, in Paris and around the world.But this is what Islam is, what it always has been!But for while they were not able to do this, but Muhammad said that Allah, let me quote it, “Allah has commanded me to fight against all people until all people confess there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”Okay.So, what they are doing, I mean, they are killing one another, the Shiites and the Sunnis, killing one another, but what they are doing is not fanaticism—Please, it is Islam!This is what Islam has been from the very beginning.
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