Islam: The Basics

The most important fact about Islam is that it is a political ideology. The religion is of secondary importance. The religion is based upon the Five Pillars. The politics are based upon jihad, the sixth pillar. Islam divides all of the world into believers and kafirs (unbelievers). When you understand the idea of a 'kafir,' you will understand all of political Islam.

Almost everyone thinks of Islam as a religion, but as you're going to discover, religion is the least of Islam. Islam is an entire civilization. It's a culture, a legal system, a thought system, and an ethical system. Islam is all-encompassing.

First, let's explain some of the basics.

Everything in Islam depends upon Mohammed. Mohammed begins Islam and Mohammed ends Islam. Islamic doctrine is found in three texts: the Koran, the Sira (the life of Mohammed), and the Hadith (the traditions of Mohammed).

Scientific analysis has made these documents very readable, so we can easily understand Islamic civilization.

The religion of Islam is simple. It's based upon the five pillars. The first of these pillars is: there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. If you say that in Arabic in front of other Muslims, you have become a Muslim. It is the most central aspect of Islam, acknowledging the Koran and the Sunna (Mohammed's perfect example).

The next pillar is charity. The 'zakat' is a charity tax, but charity inside of Islam is quite different from what most of us think as charity. First of all, Muslim charity goes to Muslims; it does not go to kafirs (unbelievers).

There's another difference in Islamic charity. Money given to an Islamic charity can support Jihad. It can support the creation of Jihad, and it is also specifically for helping those whose family members have died in Jihad. So, Islamic charity is a little different from ours.

Another of the five pillars is prayer. Of course, Muslims are famous for their attitude towards prayer, which is done five times a day, and even in public places. After prayer, we have the 'Haj.' And that is the pilgrimage trip to Mecca. This is supposed to be done once in every Muslim's life, if he can afford it.

Another religious obligation is to fast every year in the month of Ramadan. Now, fasting for a Muslim means that you don't eat or drink when the sun is up, and you do not eat until the sun goes down. At night, you can eat and drink as much as you wish.

Those are the religious five pillars. Then there is a sixth pillar. The sixth pillar is jihad. The reason jihad is called a pillar of Islam is that, just like the other five, it is incumbent upon all Muslims, without exception. All Muslims are supposed to participate in Jihad. We will have an entire lesson on jihad later, but just because a Muslim is supposed to participate in jihad does not mean that he's actually involved in the jihad of the sword. Jihad can be done with the sword, with the mouth, with a pen and with money...but more about that later.

Jihad is both religious and political. Islam is primarily a political doctrine, not a religious doctrine. For instance, the Koran is more concerned with the unbeliever---the kafir---than it is the believer. It spends 61% of its time discussing the kafir; only 39% of the Koran is about Islam and the Muslim. The Koran spends so much time talking about the kafir that we should address that issue now.

The word 'kafir' is usually translated as 'unbeliever,' but that is not correct, since the word 'unbeliever' is a purely neutral word. For instance, you might be an unbeliever in the Big Bang Theory of the creation of the universe. That makes you an unbeliever about the Big Bang. That is simply a logical statement, it just says 'you don't believe.' If you don't believe the theory of the Big Bang, that does not mean that I can discriminate against you or hurt you. It's just an idea you don't agree with.

But not so in the Koran, with a kafir. The Koran goes into enormous detail about the unbeliever---the kafir. Allah despises the kafir. Allah plots against the kafir. The Koran says that the kafir can be crucified, tortured, kidnapped, abused, raped, stolen from, and punished. There are many, many references to the kafir in the Koran. Remember, 61% of it is devoted to the kafir.

Now let's deal with another fundamental of Islam. A Muslim is forbidden to enter into any religious aspect of life with a kafir. So all of this talk about the kafir is not religious. It is political. That is, Islam treats the kafir as being outside of Islam and has an extensive doctrine with how to deal with kafirs.

As an example of the political nature of being a kafir, there are many, many references in the Koran to Hell, and the kafir is in Hell; but the reason a kafir is in Hell is not because he did anything that was morally wrong, such as theft or murder, but simply because the kafir did not believe that Mohammed was the prophet of Allah. So Islamic Hell is a political prison for intellectual dissenters.

The other basic thing about Islam is that it does not have the Golden Rule. Indeed Islam denies the truth of the Golden Rule. In Islam there is no such thing as humanity. Instead, the world is always seen as being divided into the kafir and the believer. Humanity is not seen as one body.

Once you have that fundamental division, you no longer have the Golden Rule, because the Golden Rule is 'to treat others as you would be treated,' and that means all others. Islam does not work like that. Islam, instead, is based upon a different principle than the Golden Rule, and this is the essence of Islam. Islam is based upon submission and duality. Submission, because the word 'Islam' means 'submission,' and that all others must submit to Islam. Now, all others having to submit to Islam, is a political statement. The political aspect of submission is that the kafir must submit to the Muslim and Islam. If Islam demands the political submission of kafirs, then it cannot have the Golden Rule.

The other principle that Islam is based upon is duality. We will see this in great detail when we study the Koran, but we've already seen duality. There was the Mohammed of Mecca, and the Mohammed of Medina, and those two men are not the same. Duality and submission is what Islamic civilization is based upon.

Islam is the most successful political system on the face of the earth. For 1400 years Islam has slowly expanded. In only two cases in the whole history of Islam has it ever been driven back. Both of those occurred in Europe. One in Spain, and the other in Eastern Europe. Other than those two times, Islam keeps expanding. It expands on a daily basis. Indeed, as we will discover later, the power of political Islam increases every day in Europe and the United States.

We like to think that liberal democracy is the most powerful force on the face of the earth, but liberal democracy is only 200 years old, and is very difficult to implement, whereas political Islam is 1400 years old, and is quite easy to implement. And, once it is in place, it always stays in place. Once a nation becomes Islamic, the only thing that can change it, is force from the outside, as occurred in Spain, where the Moors were driven out of Spain. Otherwise, there has never been a case of a revolution inside of an Islamic country. By 'revolution' here, we mean one that eliminated Islam as the driving political force, not a change of rulers.

Political Islam is very effective. There have been over 270 million people killed by jihad over the last 1400 years. Islam has also been very successful in the business of slavery. For 1400 years, it has enslaved the kafir, and we will have an entire lesson on how Islam has enslaved the European, the African and the Asian. Political Islam is a phenomenally successful political ideology.

Now these lessons are going to be about Islam, not Muslims. That is, we're not going to be describing Muslims, but the doctrine of Islam, and what we're going to be describing is the doctrine of political Islam. The religion of Islam is of a concern only to one type of person. The religion of Islam is for those who wish to go to Islamic paradise, and those who wish to avoid Islamic Hell. Since this series is not directed towards Islamic Heaven or Hell, we will not discuss the religion, nor will we be discussing Muslims as a people. This is important, because it will keep this entire series on an intellectual basis.

We need to talk a little bit about 'kafir' culture or 'kafir' civilization. Twenty percent of the world is Islamic. The other 80% is made up of kafirs. We need to understand that kafir culture includes the Christian, the Jew, the Hindu, atheists and the Buddhist. It includes Chinese. It includes Australians. It includes Africans. It includes the animist---that is, those who believe that the world is a spirit affair. So, kafirs are everybody but Muslims. Now, here's what's important about that: kafirs need to understand that, so far as Islam is concerned, there is not the slightest bit of difference how a kafir is treated, whether he's an atheist, a Christian, a Jew, or a Hindu. It doesn't make any difference. For instance, Christians make a great deal of distinctions amongst themselves, and for that matter, so do Buddhists; but, from the outside, that is, from the viewpoint of Islam, all kafirs are the same. They deny Mohammed. They deny the Sunna of Mohammed; that is, the way of Mohammed; and all kafirs deny the truth of the Koran. Kafirs are all those who don't believe that Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah.

An infidel can only be a Jew or a Christian; therefore the term 'infidel' is a religious term. Another term used by Islam is 'polytheist'---many gods. This, too, is a religious term. 'Atheist' is a religious term. And one last term that Islam uses for the kafir is 'Peoples of the Book'---and this refers again to Christians and Jews. Those terms---pagan, infidel, polytheist, atheist and People of the Book---are religious words. And remember, this lesson series is not at all about the religion. That's the reason 'kafir' is the word to use, because an infidel is a kafir. A polytheist is a kafir; a pagan is a kafir; an atheist is a kafir; and the People of the Book are kafirs, as well. So, we will use the term 'kafir.'

We will be studying the deaths of 270 million kafirs over 1400 years in jihad. That's 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus, 10 million Buddhists and 120 million Africans of varying religions. But now we have to recognize one more thing about the kafir, and that is this: almost all kafirs do not want to know about Islam. We will study in this series why kafirs never refer to the injury of Islam, and why kafir Christians don't know how Turkey and Egypt went from being Christian to Islamic. Why do Buddhists never talk about the fact that Islam has killed 10 million Buddhists? You can find some Hindus who are willing to discuss the destruction of 80 million Hindus, but they're rare. So, one of the things that we will study in this series is, why kafirs fear and dread Islam so much that kafirs refuse to study their own history. We will study why European kafirs never refer to the fact that a million Europeans were taken into slavery. Kafirs and Islam is what this entire series is about. It's all about the politics of Islam.

We will use the term 'ignorance' or 'to be ignorant' in these talks. For some people, the term 'ignorance' is a put-down or a slur, but the term ignorance means not knowing---to be empty of knowledge. It's like 'the glass is empty.' 'Empty' is not negative; it just means that you need knowledge.

Since Islam is a complete civilization, that is to say, since Islam contains everything that it needs within itself, it has no need of the kafir civilization. It annihilates the kafir's civilization. In every case, once Islam rises to political power in a country, the original civilization is annihilated. When you go to Egypt today, you do not see any sign of the original Coptic or Christian civilization that was in Egypt. It is gone. Everything about it has disappeared. Even the names that people use, the names for cities, all change. Islam is a complete civilization and therefore, when a country becomes fully Islamicized, there is no trace whatsoever of the original civilization, and that is one of the marks of Islamic politics.

If we are to save kafir civilization, kafirs must learn about their losses to Islam and why they happened.

The basics of Islam are the Five Pillars, jihad, submission, duality and kafir. Once you understand those words, you can understand how political Islam has annihilated civilizations for 1400 years.

The above is from the website Political Islam: The Basics