Benghazi and Willful Sharia Blindness
Libyan “rebel” spokesperson Mustafa Abduljalil, born in 1952 in Al Baida, one of the first cities to rise against Qaddafi, studied law and Islamic jurisprudence in Benghazi before embarking on a legal career that culminated in his appointment in 2007 as Qaddafi’s “minister of justice.” A foreboding Wikileaks memo from February 27, 2010, revealed:
“In the course of the discussion of the Criminal Code, Abduljalil abruptly changed the subject from freedom of speech to the ‘Libyan people’s concern about the U.S. government’s support for Israel.’ He averred that Libya cares deeply about Muslims everywhere, and about Muslim countries. In his view, the root cause of terrorism stems from the perception that Europe and the U.S. are against Muslims.”
By August of 2011, Abduljalil’s “vision” for Libya was apparent in his championing of Libya’s draft constitution whose salient feature was Part 1, Article 1, which stated:
“Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).”
Following Qaddafi’s removal, a Sunday October 23, 2011 pronouncement by Abduljalil, now the leader of Libya’s Transitional Council, reiterated the overarching general role of Sharia, and included this specific example:
“He [Abduljalil] also announced the annulment of an existing [secular] family law that limits the number of wives [a] Libyan [male] can take, contradicting the provision in the Muslim holy book, the Quran (i.e., Koran 4:3), that allows men up to four wives.”
Thus “liberated” Libya appeared bent on reinstituting Sharia-based polygamy, in pious conformity with Koran 4:3.
Simultaneously, in late October 2011 reporter Sherif Elhelwa confirmed that the al-Qaeda flag was aloft on the Benghazi courthouse. Several months later during a trip to Libya in early 2012, Elhelwa noted the al-Qaeda flag was still flying atop Benghazi’s courthouse, but more importantly, he ventured to the jihadist flashpoint of Eastern Libya, Derna, to expose Libya’s Sharia enforcers. Unofficial Derna leader and local al-Qaeda head Abdel Hakim Al-Hasadi proclaimed:
“If you establish the Sharia, we’re with you. We’re your soldiers. We’re ready to die alongside you if you establish Sharia law.”
“Al-Qaeda in Libya: A PROFILE” was an August 2012 report prepared by the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, a Pentagon program office, within a month of the murderous 9/11/12 attacks which left 4 dead: U.S. Libyan ambassador Christopher Stevens, two heroic former U.S. Navy Seals (Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods), and a U.S. Air Force veteran (Sean Smith). The report emphasized how al-Qaeda senior leadership working via a large, powerful, and well-established jihadist infrastructure in Libya – including, prominently, Ansar al-Sharia, the group believed responsible for the Benghazi consulate attack – sought to capitalize on the U.S. and NATO-supported insurrection which toppled the Libyan despot Qaddafi and to fulfill its goal of making Libya part of an eventual transnational caliphate.
A sizable, ominous Ansar al-Sharia public rally during June 2012 was highlighted in the August 2012 Pentagon report, which also noted the unwillingness of Libya’s Sharia-supporting central government to contend with these ostensibly “more radical” avatars of Sharia supremacism. With resigned sobriety, the Pentagon report emphasized how such jihadist/al-Qaeda discourse resonates among a significant swath of the Libyan population. Finally, the Pentagon report’s EXECUTIVE SUMMARY raises serious questions about the callous inattention to security for U.S. diplomatic and ancillary personnel in Benghazi, and more importantly, the abysmal “See No Sharia” failure of imagination regarding overall U.S. policy in Libya, which has abetted the most fanatical jihadist movement extant – al-Qaeda itself. The report concluded:
“Al-Qaeda has established a core network in Libya, but it remains clandestine and refrains from using the al-Qaeda name. … Ansar al-Sharia, led by Sufian Ben Qhumu, a former Guantanamo detainee, has increasingly embodied al-Qaeda’s presence in Libya, as indicated by its active social-media propaganda, extremist discourse, and hatred of the West, especially the United States. Al-Qaeda adherents in Libya used the 2011 Revolution to establish well-armed, well-trained, and combat-experienced militias. … The al-Qaeda clandestine network is currently in an expansion phase, running training camps and media campaigns on social-media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube. However, it will likely continue to mask its presence under the umbrella of the Libyan Salafist movement, with which it shares a radical ideology and a general intent to implement sharia in Libya and elsewhere.”
And one of the apparent U.S. avatars of this grossly misbegotten policy is now its most prominent victim cum “martyr” — namely, Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Diana West brought to my attention two profoundly disturbing classified cables written by Stevens during 2008, which capture this warped mindset. Stevens made a pilgrimage to Eastern Libyan Derna, the longstanding, proud hotbed of jihad which was a hub of the aggressive late 18th through early 19th century North African Barbary jihad campaigns against the U.S. Moreover, even in the absence of strict Sharia compliance, anthropologist Evans-Pritchard’s 1949 characterization revealed how the Muslim Bedouin of Eastern Libya “compensated” for their less than assiduous fulfillment of the ritual requirements of Islam by their zealous commitment to jihad. Here is Evans-Pritchard’s description:
“It would [also] be a questionable judgment to assert that the Bedouin of Cyrenaica [Eastern Libya] are not religious because they do not pay the same attention to outward ritual as do townspeople and peasants, for piety and holiness, as we have often been admonished, are not the same. … Perhaps the Bedouin make up for their shortcomings by their enthusiasm for the jihad, holy war against unbelievers. They consider that they have fulfilled their obligation under this head in ample measure by their long and courageous fight, formally declared a holy war by the Caliph of Islam, against the Italians, French, and British. A Bedouin once said to me when I remarked how rarely I had seen Bedouin at prayer: ‘(But) we fast and wage holy war.’”
The 2008 cables reveal a Stevens cavorting with the very Libyan Muslim denizens of Derna who were proudly sending their sons to be homicide bombers, etc., in Iraq attacking, and killing or grievously wounding U.S. troops there, at the highest per capita rate of any location in Islamdom. One memo is more than sympathetic to this hotbed of jihadism, it is almost reverent (Stevens repeats uncritically their self-characterization as being like Bruce Willis in the movie Die Hard — even titling his cable as “Diehard in Derna”) — and one can perhaps see, as Diana West suggests, the germ of the idea for the strategy ultimately employed to overthrow Qaddafi spearheaded by jihadists like Stevens’ “colleagues” in Derna.
The horrific, depressing spectacle of our great nation’s willing exploitation by violent Sharia supremacists brings to mind a remarkably candid assessment by the 18th century Moroccan Sufi “master” Ibn Ajibah from his Koranic commentary, a work I was made aware of by my colleague, Dr. Mark Durie. Describing unabashedly the purpose of the humiliating Koranic poll tax of submission for non-Muslims brought under Islamic hegemony by jihad (who become so-called “dhimmis,” as per Koran 9:29), Ibn Ajibah makes clear the ultimate goal of its imposition was to achieve what he called the death of the “soul,” through the dhimmis’ execution of their own humanity:
“[The dhimmi] is commanded to put his soul, good fortune and desires to death. Above all he should kill the love of life, leadership and honor. [The dhimmi] is to invert the longings of his soul, he is to load it down more heavily than it can bear until it is completely submissive. Thereafter nothing will be unbearable for him. He will be indifferent to subjugation or might. Poverty and wealth will be the same to him; praise and insult will be the same; preventing and yielding will be the same; lost and found will be the same. Then, when all things are the same, it [the soul] will be submissive and yield willingly what it should give.”
Cynically ignoring Sharia doctrines and practices that permanently endanger the life, liberty, and property of non-Muslims, U.S. policymakers — epitomized by the murdered Libyan Ambassador Stevens — have sacrificed U.S. lives, and our nation’s soul.
Andrew, and a few others, understands what is at the core of the barbarism from Benghazi, and all over the Muslim world. It is committed in the name of Allah, shored up by Shariah Law. There is no getting around this fact, regardless of its PC toxicity.
Those who study the issue know the facts, and its inherent truths. But others – who still value their freedom & liberty – would do well to catch up to speed -faster….faster…
‘Islam & Blood’http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/13/islam-blood-a-groundbreaking-policy-paper-contained-herein-the-world-stands-on-a-precipice-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki-109/ tells the gory tale.
There is no way to spin oneself out of the above truths.
One advantage that we have is the knowledge of the deep hatred between the various islamic factions (primarily sunni/shiite). Our failing is not using it to our advantage.
Rather than trying to appease the muslims, we should be fomenting the discourse between the groups and let them kill each other. In Syria (and soon Jordan) rather than condemning and trying to stop the killing, we should be encouraging it in every form.
When they are killing each other, they are leaving the rest of us alone.
Sadly our sense of humanity that they don’t share even for themselves, prevents us from taking the correct course for our own survival.
It’s not about imperialism, it’s not about capitalism, or freedom or any of those other excuses we tell ourselves, it’s about the koran telling them to kill or subjugate us.
“It cannot be denied that Communists and their sympathizers object not only to a denunciation of Communism but also to a calm and critical examination of its principles and practices.”
“World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them–all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis…. The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct–also laid bare by Shafarevich–these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach…. The author also convincingly demonstrates the diametrical opposition between the concepts of man held by religion and by socialism. Socialism seeks to reduce human personality to its most primitive levels and to extinguish the highest, most complex, and “God-like” aspects of human individuality. And even equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity…. It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been “socialist.” But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
I think this whole Sharia Law business is an outstanding idea for us men. As an older male who was never that popular with the ladies (think of me as an old Sheldon, or maybe Leonard), I welcome the opportunity to become master of a beautiful harem as soon as Sharia Law becomes State Law of the US.
In fact there are 3 female Hollywood movie celebrities whom I have already picked out to be my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th wives, and I will immediately demand that they become my slave-wives when our Muslim-in-Chief declares Sharia Law supreme. I won’t mention who the lucky ladies are yet, so they can all fantasize on becoming my slaves. Good luck ladies.
“He [J. B. Matthews] captures the shared reactions by both advocates of, and apologists for, two totalitarian ideological systems which are eerily similar: modern Communism and still unreformed, pre-modern Islam.”
Islam is similar to Communism because both attain power through collectivization of the “little people’s” property, guns and information, and because both are systems of unequal rights and inequality before the law. Under Communism the Marxist leadership class (and temporarily the lazy government-dependent so-called proletariat class) is superior in rights and superior before the law compared to the government-oppressed laboring middle class. Under Totalitarian Islam Muslims (especially Imams and Caliphs) are superior in rights and superior before the law compared to non-Muslims. Under both systems of tyranny there is a superior class of the saved and an inferior class of the damned. Both Communism and Totalitarian Islam aim to destroy any nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
“[The dhimmi] is commanded to put his soul, good fortune and desires to death. Above all he should kill the love of life, leadership and honor. [The dhimmi] is to invert the longings of his soul, he is to load it down more heavily than it can bear until it is completely submissive. Thereafter nothing will be unbearable for him. He will be indifferent to subjugation or might. Poverty and wealth will be the same to him; praise and insult will be the same; preventing and yielding will be the same; lost and found will be the same. Then, when all things are the same, it [the soul] will be submissive and yield willingly what it should give.”
This sounds like hell on Earth.
Thank you for this important essay.
By their fruits you shall know them.
How do you survive the desert experience?
Deuteronomy 8:3
New International Version (NIV)
3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Jesus after his 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness without food or water gave his answer to Satan the devil in Matthew 4:4
“By their fruits you shall know them” applies to more than just the populace of San Francisco.The ignorant, the cowardly and the amoral prevail amongst us and will never be mobilized to destroy Islam. We need to start all over again and do it right this time.