A New Day of Infamy

Tom: Thanks Gary. You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. Now, we’ve been going through Dave Hunt’s book, In Defense of the Faith, and it’s been a source of our topics.

But today, the day that we are recording this program, it is September 12, 2001, and an event took place yesterday, which, as many of the commentators have said, it will be maybe a greater day of infamy than Pearl Harbor. And of course I am referring to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York as well as the Pentagon and others.

Now, Dave, one of the reasons I think this is important to discuss is that this may well have had to do with religious beliefs, and we’ve been talking about these very things—certainly not a terrorist attack, but how religion compels people to do certain things.

Dave: Well, Tom, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Now we are sticking our necks out, but you listeners out there, you try to come up with some motivation for highly skilled, educated, trained pilots—that’s what these men had to be—to kill themselves and their passengers. Why would they do this? I don’t think they would even do it for the Palestinians, because Arabs notoriously have fought one another. They don’t even agree with one another. You know the Sunnis and the Shiites fight one another. You know the war between Iran and Iraq, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Tom: Nomadic tribes down through history.

Dave: Right. There’s only one possibility. They have done this for Allah. They have done this in the name of Allah. They have done this because Islam promises a reward to the martyr who dies in jihad. This is holy war. Jihad is how Islam began. Muhammad killed, literally, thousands of Arabs. These were Arabs that Muhammad killed—thousands of them—in imposing Islam upon the Arabian Peninsula.

After his death, most of the Arabs left Islam. They imagined that they were now free because they had been forced into this at the point of a sword. They didn’t want to believe in Islam. And Abu Bakr, the first Caliph that succeeded Muhammad and his henchmen, killed, literally, tens of thousands of Arabs, former Muslims, forcing them back into Islam. It is the death penalty to apostatize. It’s the death penalty in Saudi Arabia today for a Muslim to follow his conscience, and if he just decides in his conscience that Islam is not true—he has checked out some other things, maybe Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, who knows—it is the death penalty.

Now, Islam then was spread with the sword—jihad, holy war—across North Africa, through the Middle East and up into Europe and so forth. Now, the martyr—the only sure way, in fact, that you can get to Paradise—you have no way of being assured of Paradise. Tom, we need several programs, but Abu Bakr for example, the first Caliph who succeeded Muhammad, one of the ten to whom Muhammad promised Paradise, he said, “If I had one foot inside of Paradise, I still would not trust Allah. He might double-cross me.” (You know, I’m paraphrasing what he said, because you never know in Islam.)

Allah has 99 characteristics—not one of them is love, okay? But you have the promise if you die in jihad as a martyr, fighting the enemies of Allah, then you go to Paradise. And what do you get in Paradise? The martyr is promised a palace of ivory. Inside that palace are seventy mansions; inside each mansion are seventy houses. And in each house a bed on which there are seventy sheets and on each sheet a virgin who renews her virginity every time you have sex with her. The martyr is promised the strength and appetite for food and sex of 100 men, and the rivers run with wine and so forth. Now this dream, fantastic dream, is fed to Muslim children from childhood—to the young boys. You saw on CNN the night before . . .

Tom: Right, third graders. I believe it was on the West Bank. A Palestinian schoolroom, teacher, leading them in, basically, a chant to kill the Jews.

Dave: Right. “Death to Israel! Death to Israel!” Now, you don’t find that in Israel. Israeli children are not trained like that. Israel wants to be left alone. They are attacked. They never attack. They retaliate, but you never hear the threats against the Arabs that you hear from the Arabs against Israel. I mean, it’s in the mosques, it’s on the loud speakers, it’s in the streets, and so forth.

Tom: Dave, I really found it interesting in some of the reports. This was on the 11th, the day of the attack. We had people like Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, and they are referring to—Tom Brokaw referred to cells of Muslim extremists, not in Ethiopia or in Afghanistan, but right here in the United States! Now that’s one of the first times—I know there was a PBS special dealing with that—a documentary on PBS, but to hear it over prime TV is amazing.

Dave: Right. Tom, the amazing thing is that all of these people, all of the leaders, the congressional leaders . . . Tom Clancy, the author, for example, said, “Well we have fanatics—Catholic fanatics—in Ireland, but you don’t judge the Catholics by their fanatics, and these are just fanatics, so don’t judge Islam by these fanatics.” Leader after leader said we must be careful to distinguish between Islam, a peace-loving religion, and these few extremists. That is not true!

This is Islam! There are more than 100 verses in the Qur’an about using violence to spread Islam. In the Qur’an, Muhammad says, “Make no friendship with a Christian or a Jew. You pursue the infidels [that is all non-Muslims], you pursue them with a sword. You kill them. They either submit to Allah or you kill them. Now the goal of Islam is to take over the world. This is what they have to do, and every Muslim theologian admits—in fact they probably say it is the religious duty of every Muslim, everywhere in the world and every age, to use violence to spread Islam until it takes over the world.

Now what about your Muslim neighbor? A peace-loving person, he doesn’t agree with terrorism. Well, then, he ought to face the fact that: A) He is disobedient to Muhammad. Muhammad said the failure to fight jihad is hypocrisy of the worst sort and you have failed Islam unless you fight in jihad for Islam, for the spread of Islam!

Tom: Dave, along that line, there are people out there who are saying, “Whoa, wait a minute! I know lots of people who wouldn’t have anything to do with that. They are (as you said) neighbors, Muslims, wonderful people, loving people, and so on.” Yet there are a lot of people who just take a cafeteria approach to their religion. There are little bits of pieces here. I mean, “I believe that, but I don’t believe that.” I had that in Roman Catholicism. That’s what we called ourselves—cafeteria Catholics. But what you are referring to is pure, fundamental Islam.

Dave: Right. I’m not ashamed to be a fundamentalist Christian because Christ did not advocate killing people. In fact, He said we are to love even our enemies, so as a fundamentalist I can follow the Word of God and not be engaged in this sort of thing but in love and in spreading the gospel, preaching the gospel, and telling people that Christ loves them and He died for their sins. Islam—if you are a fundamentalist in Islam, which you are compelled to be, then you must fight. You must use the sword, you must use violence any way that you possibly can in order to spread Islam.

Now, the peace-loving Muslims (and there are many), they have to recognize a couple of things. Number one, they have failed Islam. They are not being true to what the Qur’an (this is not some new idea that some Muslim imam has come up with), this is the Qur’an, this is the hadith, which is tradition, which the Muslim says is on a par with the Qur’an. In fact, you can’t understand the Qur’an without the hadith. This is the tradition of the extra-Qur’anic sayings of Muhammad, which all of the Islamic scholars attest to as being authentic.

So you have failed Islam, you have not lived up to it. You are professing a religion that you don’t really accept. You don’t really accept its tenets; in fact you are embarrassed by the violence. You would be embarrassed, for example, to see the Palestinians dancing in the streets and shouting in joy because of the attack on the United States. That would embarrass many Muslims.

Well, then, face the fact that this is Islam. Furthermore, face the fact that you are the followers of a religion of violence. You are following a man named Muhammad that you claim to be your prophet, and this man was a murderer. He led twenty-seven invasions. He planned sixty-five before his death. He made peace treaties with people, promised them safety, and then he slaughtered them to drive people into Islam by the sword! Okay? Now this is Islam! This is not a dream.

Now, Tom, you mentioned this video that was made sometime ago. Excellent video!

Tom: On PBS.

Dave: Right, PBS did it. It surprised me! It was really excellent except in one respect, and I’ll mention that. It was called Jihad in America.  It was made by Steven Emerson, who produced it for PBS. Its cameras, amazingly—I don’t know how they did this, but they went right inside meetings where eager young Muslims were being recruited for jihad against the United States, and, as you said . . .

Tom: Right here.

Dave: Yes, and as you said, these meetings were not some secret location in the Middle East somewhere. They were in Lawrence, Kansas, and Brooklyn, New York, and places like that. And you hear it. We’re getting a translation of the Arabic, but you hear—the camera is right on these Muslim leaders—they are making blood-curdling statements such as the following. Now this is from Fayiz Azzam in Brooklyn in 1989. This was the first conference on jihad in the US. He says, “Blood must flow. There must be widows and orphans. Hands and limbs must be severed and limbs and blood must be spread everywhere in order that Allah’s religion stand on its feet.” Okay?

“Allah’s religion.” I don’t think anybody can forget Ayatollah Khomeini who declared, “The purest joy in Islam is to kill and be killed for Allah.” Now, this is what this is all about, and there’s no question that Allah’s religion, Islam, is a religion of violence. In Kansas, 1988, another leader recruiting Islamic holy warriors against the United States exalts, “Oh brothers, after Afghanistan . . . ” What does he mean by that? Well, this is where the Muslim “freedom fighters” (who do not believe in freedom—there’s no freedom in Islam) . . .

Tom: Yeah, there’s no democracy within an Islamic state. There’s no . . .

Dave:  Freedom is anathema to Islam and, in fact, President Bush talked about freedom. He said it was an attack on our way of life and the freedoms . . .

Tom: A serious attack yesterday.

Dave: . . . and the freedoms and the democracy that we stand for. Indeed it was. An act of war? Yes, holy war! Jihad! Against democracy and freedom? Yes! Freedom and democracy are anathema to Islam. In Saudi Arabia, no Jew is even allowed to set foot there and what Jew would want to? You must be a Muslim to be a citizen. The death penalty for changing your religion. You can’t carry a Bible on the street. You can’t have a Bible study in the privacy of your own home. They’ll put you in jail.

It’s not just the extremist Talibans who, you know, they have people under arrest now. Probably sixteen of those Afghanis will be killed. But this is the law in Islam. This is everywhere. There is not an Arab democracy in the world. There is not an Arab nation in which we have freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, because this is anathema to Islam.

Tom: Dave, when you were speaking earlier about “This is Islam, this is the Qur’an” . . .

Dave: Tom, let me interrupt just a moment. In the video that we just finished, “Israel, Islam, and Armageddon,” (and, by the way, we have footage and comments on this latest attack in our video) after showing terrorism, I make the statement, “Take a good look. This is Islam.” And my concern is that the bleeding hearts are going to continue to say, “Oh, this is not Islam. These are some extremists,” and it will be counterproductive! The world has got to acknowledge what Islam is, and Muslims must acknowledge what Islam is as well. I am sorry.

Tom: No, that’s okay. It really underscores my point here, because people are out there thinking, Well, wait a minute! What about the Crusades? What about the Inquisitions? I mean Christianity; it’s a bloody religion as well.

Dave: That was not Christianity, as you know.

Tom: Well, again, that’s my point. The things that you’re addressing—this program is called ”Search the Scriptures”—we would say to someone objecting to this, search the Qur’an, search the hadith. You are quoting from these sacred books and books of tradition of Islam.

Dave:  Right, and “Search the Scriptures.” You see what the Muslim terrorist is doing—he is doing it in obedience to the Qur’an, obedience to Allah, obedience to Muhammad, and following the example of Muhammad. What the Crusaders did, although they had the cross on their shields and waved it on their banners, they were doing it in disobedience to Jesus Christ, His teachings, and the Word of God.

Now, Tom, I guess I got off here—I was right in the middle of quoting another Muslim leader. In Kansas, 1988, remember? He says, “Oh brothers, after Afghanistan” [well that’s where the Muslim freedom fighters, funded by the CIA, drove out the Soviets and installed the brutal Taliban, okay?] He says, “After Afghanistan, nothing in the world is impossible for us anymore. There are no superpowers or mini-powers. What matters is willpower that springs from our religious belief.”

I mean I can quote one after another of these men just off of this video inside these cells. Religious motivation to spread Islam is the continuous theme from the mouths of all the terrorist leaders shown in this powerful documentary. Yet world media and religious and political leaders deny that Islam is behind the violence against innocent civilians. Again, Tom, I would have to say, ask yourself the question, what could possibly motivate a trained pilot to take over an aircraft, get behind the controls, and fly it into the Pentagon, or the World Trade Center? Nothing but the belief [that] he is doing this for Allah. He is a hero in Islam. In Islam, what do they do about these people that blow themselves up in Israel and kill innocent civilians? They name streets after them! They name holidays after them. They dance in the streets for them, just like they were dancing in the streets for these people. Tom, there is no other rational explanation.

Tom: Dave, based on the attacks yesterday—(now I know this is going to air maybe a week or two weeks later, so if people are wondering what’s going on here, this is not a live broadcast)—however, the three planes, based on the information we have right now, there were probably three terrorists on each plane. So we have twelve right there. So this isn’t just one person. If you go back and look at all the terrorist attacks, they’ve been suicidal missions. This is like the kamikaze—that was a very religious thing as well. But, Dave, for all of that, why are we addressing this? We’re not interested in rattling the sabre, or revenge, or anything like that, but we want people to understand and to pray for Muslims.

Dave: That’s right. So long as Robert Schuller is given credibility when he says, “Islam is a peaceful religion”; he makes a speech in Damascus in the mosque there, the Grand Mufti is holding his hand, and he said he had never felt such a unity of purpose and spirit with anyone. As long as we have our leaders—you know the Clintons—every Ramadan they would praise Islam as a peace-loving religion.

Tom: Tony Blair . . .

Dave: Tony Blair—what he says is synonymous with peace, love, and brotherhood, and so forth.

Tom: So what are we encouraging people to do?

Dave: Well, Tom, first of all, I’m concerned that the lie will continue. I’m concerned—I think this is a moment for truth. I think this is a moment for the world to recognize what Islam is, and for Muslims to recognize and acknowledge what Islam is. I would love to see the Islamic curtain come down; I would love to see the lies exposed. We give them freedom in America. They can practice their religion, they can build their mosques. You do not have a comparable freedom in any Muslim country and they do not ever intend to give it to you! Islam is imposed by force, and, indeed, as the president said, it’s an attack on our way of life of democracy. It’s an attack on our freedoms, and if America became a Muslim country, it would be like Saudi Arabia—it would be like Afghanistan, where Islam then totally controls.

But, Tom, here’s the thing that amazes me. Steven Emerson, I mentioned, made this terrific documentary. He studied terrorism and he followed it for more than ten years. At the beginning of this video, he reports on “networks of Islamic extremists” (well, I guess they are extremists because most of the Muslims don’t have the time or the courage to do what they do) inside the US. He accurately warns that “for these militants, jihad is a holy war—an armed struggle to defeat nonbelievers or infidels, and their ultimate goal is to establish an Islamic empire worldwide.”

But then he backpedals! It’s incredible! And he says, “Islam as a religion does not condone violence. The radicals represent only themselves an extremist and violent fringe.” This is simply not true, Tom!

Tom: No, not according to the hadith; not according to the Qur’an, as we’ve been saying.

Dave: Not according to history. Not according to what they have done century after century. When will this lie be exposed? It’s my prayer that the lie will be exposed finally. You know, we’ve had very little sympathy for Israel. Oh, “They’re overreacting against terrorism.” You know that Israel faces . . .

Tom: Well, not us personally.

Dave: Well, no, not you and I, but the world. Israel faces the possibility of the threat of this every day, twenty-four hours a day. Maybe we’ll have a little different perspective on that. But we need to get the gospel to Muslims. As long as there is an Islamic curtain of lies, and the world embraces it, we can’t get the gospel to these people. I’m just praying that somehow that will come down, the eyes of the world will be opened, the truth about Islam will be known, and we will have the opportunity to present to Muslims—and they will have the opportunity to believe in—Jesus Christ, who loves them and died for their sins.