By: Mustafa Umar

The False Perception

First, the accusation was: “All Muslims are terrorists.” When the bigots who made this statement realized that no one in their right mind would believe that all 1.6 billion Muslims in the world could be terrorists, they reversed their statement to sound more objective and fair: “All Muslims may not be terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.” Really?

Someone sympathetic to Islam might respond with an example or two about Timothy McVeigh and the KKK. Yet, the average American watches the mainstream media day in and day out and sees the pictures of Muslim terrorists flashed across the screen or spoken about for hours on the radio. Here are some hard facts to make it clear to you that perception is not reality.

The Facts

According to the FBI database, there have been 318 terrorist incidents in the US from 1980-2005. That includes 209 bombings and 43 arsons. Out of those incidents, 42% were committed by Latino groups, 24% by Extreme Left Wing groups, 7% by Jewish Extremists, 6% by Muslim Extremists, and 5% by Communists.

A RAND Corporation [funded by the U.S. government] report titled “Would-be Warriors” reveals some very interesting facts:

1. Not a single U.S. civilian has been killed by Muslim extremists since Sept 11, 2001
2. Only 3 out of 83 acts of terrorism between 9/11 and 2009 were done by Muslim extremists. Most were by animal rights and environmental activists.
3. There was more terrorism in the 1970’s than the 21^st century. There were over 60 terrorist incidents per year on US soil, most of them being bombings. That’s 15-20 times more terrorism than post 9/11.

Europol’s report titled “EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report” showed that 0.4% of terrorist attacks from 2006-2008 were by Muslim extremists. That means 99.6% of terrorist attacks were by non-Muslims, most of which were separatists and leftists.

U.S. Terrorist Organizations

If you were asked to name five major terrorist organizations in the US, how many could you name besides al-Qaeda? Most people couldn’t name more than one. So here are some to help you balance the distorted view that the media feeds you with:

Animal Liberation Front: Known for sabotaging animal testing facilities, etc. The FBI said that ALF is the “leading domestic terrorist threat”.

Alpha 66 and Omega 7: Cuban exiles opposed to anyone who takes a moderate approach to Castro. Responsible for many bombings.

Army of God: Anti-abortion and anti-gay. Known for bombing at least two abortion clinics, a lesbian nightclub, and the Summer Olympics in 1996. They believe that Anglo-Saxons are the only true children of God.

Aryan Nations: A white nationalist, neo-Nazi, Christian Identity group. The RAND Corporation described it as the “first truly nationwide terrorist network”.

Black Liberation Army: Carried out a series of bombings, robberies, and prison breaks.

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord: Another Christian Identity organization.

Earth Liberation Front: Eco-terrorist group. The FBI in March 2001 said that it is the number one domestic terrorist threat.

Jewish Defense League: Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane. Executed at least 15 terrorist attacks in the U.S. [more than al-Qaeda] and responsible for at least 60 bombings.

Ku Klux Klan: A white supremacist, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic group.

Militia Movement: An anti-government movement. One common tactic is to explode pipebombs at government facilities. They have about 20,000-60,000 people in the U.S.

Phineas Priesthood: Another Christian Identity movement against interracial intercourse, homosexuality, abortion, and multiculturalism.

Symbionese Liberation Army: A far left organization.

United Freedom Front: A Marxist organization responsible for at least 20 bombings and 9 bank robberies.

The Weather Underground: A far left organization responsible for at least 45 bombings between 1970-1977.

Ejercito Popular Boricua [Boricua People’s Army] – Demanding independence of Puerto Rico from U.S. imperialism.

New World Liberation Front – A far-left organization responsible for at least 70 bombings in the Bay Area alone.

International Terrorist Organizations

Of course, terrorism is not only an American phenomenon, but exists worldwide. Here are some examples:

Aum Shinrikyo: Japan. A new religious movement responsible for the 1995 Sarin Nerve Gas attacks in the Tokyo subway.

All Tripura Tiger Force: India. The goal is to expel all immigrants of Tripura. 90% of members are Hindu and 10% are Christian.

Babbar Khalsa: India/Canada. A Sikh religious organization that blew up a 747 jet in 1985 killing 329 people [including 280 Canadian citizens].

Communist Party of India (Maoist): Prime Minister Singh said that they are “the single biggest security challenge ever faced by our country”. They have killed over a thousand people.

Provisional Irish Republican Army: Ireland. They have killed over 1800 people.

ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom): Spain/France. They have killed almost a thousand people.

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK): Turkey. A Socialist/Nationalist party demanding independence.

New Peoples Army: Philippines. A Communist organization.

National Liberation Front of Corsica: France. A separatist organization.

Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide: Trying to force Turkey to admit to the historical Armenian genocide. Responsible for at least 23 terrorist attacks.

Notable U.S. Terrorist Attacks

The following is a very brief list of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil to make it clear that terrorism is as American as cherry pie.

1910: Bombing of the L.A. Times Building by James and John McNamara who wanted to unionize the paper.

1920: Wall Street bombing by followers of Luigi Galleani with 100 pounds of dynamite that killed 38 people and injured 400.

1927: Bath, Michigan Bombings by Andrew Kehoe who was angry over taxes. He set off three bombs killing 45 people [including 38 students].

1971: Bombing of the U.S. Capitol Building by the Weather Underground  in protest for the U.S. invasion of Laos.

1972: Bombing of the Pentagon by the Weather Underground in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi.

1975: Bombing of the Department of State Building by the Weather Underground in response to war escalation in Vietnam.

1976: Hijacking of Cubana Flight 455 by CIA-linked Cuban exiles who killed all 73 people on board.

1978-1995: Unabomber Attacks by Ted Kaczynski who sent letterbombs to academics and other influential people.

1995: Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols who killed 168 people.

1996: Centennial Olympic Park Bombing by Eric Robert Rudolph for which President Clinton called “an evil act of terror”. This was the largest pipe bomb in U.S. history.

2001: Anthrax Attacks by Bruce Edwards Ivins.

2007: Virginia Tech Massacre by Seung-Hui Cho who killed 32 people. He likened himself to Jesus Christ and expressed his hatred of the rich.

2010: Austin IRS Attack by Andrew Joseph Stack who flew an airplane into the IRS building because he was mad at the government.

2011: Tucson Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords where Jared Lee Loughner shot nineteen people.

Image is Everything

The only statistics that are missing is the amount of media coverage per terrorist incident or group. It shouldn’t surprise anyone now that Muslims would get the most coverage despite the fact that they are near the bottom of the list when it comes to terrorism.

Now that the facts are clear, do you think anyone would dare to rephrase the statement and say that “almost all terrorists are…” and then fill in the blank with: latinos, leftists, environmentalists, Christians, Sikhs or Jews? I doubt it. That twisted logic is only used for Muslims, not anyone else.

So next time you think of a terrorist, think of the facts, not the images in your mind. If Muslim extremists attempted to copyright the term terrorist, they would be denied. The famous statement goes: “Image is everything.” Indeed, everything but the truth.

By: Mustafa Umar

The Accusation

One of the common, yet groundless, accusations being made against Islam is that it forces itself on others. The picture presented is that if someone doesn’t stop Islam, it will forcefully convert everyone, even at gunpoint.

Here’s one of the verses commonly quoted by those who make their living propagating this idea:

“…seize them and kill them wherever you find them…” [Qur’an 4:91]

This verse is used as evidence that Muslims are required to kill anyone who doesn’t accept Islam. That would mean that any Muslim who doesn’t either forcefully convert or kill every non-Muslim he sees isn’t practicing Islam. This ridiculous idea is childishly easy to refute. But before we do that, let’s do a brief comparison.

A Comparison

Let’s see what the bible has to say about violence:

In Deuteronomy 7:1-3: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land… and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them…”

In Deuteronomy 20:10-17: “When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, then lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.

In Deuteronomy 20:16-17: “However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them…”

In Numbers 31:17-18: “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”

Jesus is reported to have said in Luke 19:27: “But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.’”

Again, Jesus supposedly said in Matthew 10:34: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

The verses in the bible are much more violent than any of the verses that can be found in the Qur’an. Can you find a single verse in the Qur’an which says: “Show them no mercy!” or “Do not leave anything that breathes!” or “Kill all the non-virgin women!”? Yet, ironically, most of the people who quote verses from the Qur’an about violence consider themselves Christians and believe in the Bible. Why do they ignore their own Scripture and apply a double standard of hypocrisy?

However, the fair Christian will say: “These verses must be read in context.” I agree, and the same opportunity of contextualization should be given to the Qur’an as well.

Searching for Context

To understand the context of any verse in the Qur’an relating to violence, you only need to do two things:

1. Identify the pronouns
2. Read the verses before and after the verse in question

This simple technique is so blatantly obvious; it requires a very special ‘education’ to forget to apply it.

Let’s identify the pronouns in the verse we quoted: “…seize them and kill them wherever you find them …” [Qur’an 4:91]. There is only one pronoun, ‘them’, used three times, and it’s pretty clear that it refers to the same group of people. This group of people referred to as ‘them’ can only be identified if we look at the verses before and after.

Looking at the preceding verses we learn the following:

• Verse 88 tells us that the pronoun ‘them’ is referring to hypocrites who pretend to be Muslim on the outside but are actually spies and informants
• Verse 89 tells us that if these hypocrites turn on you to fight you then you are allowed to fight them
• Verse 90 tells us that Muslims are not allowed to touch anyone who doesn’t want to fight

In this example, it becomes crystal clear that ‘them’ is referring to a group of two-faced hypocrites who are trying to harm and kill the Muslims. It would have been sufficient in this case to simply quote more of the verse: “So if they neither withdraw, nor offer you peace, nor restrain themselves from fighting you, then sieze them and kill them wherever you find them: We give you clear authority against these type of people.” [Qur’an 4:91]

Proof from the Qur’an

There is not a single verse in the Qur’an which says to harm another person because of their not being a Muslim. On the contrary, there are several verses which talk about respecting non-Muslims.

To further clarify the matter about forced conversion to Islam, let’s look at these verses:

“ There is no compulsion in religion…” [Qur’an 2:256]

“Had your Lord wanted, all the people on earth would have believed. So will you force people to believe?” [Qur’an 10:99]

“So warn them: your only task is to warn, you’re not supposed to force them.” [Qur’an 88:21-22]

“He does not forbid you to deal kindly and justly with anyone who has not fought you for your faith and driven you out of your homes, God loves the just.” [Qur’an 60:8]

Could the Qur’an be any clearer on this issue?

Proof from the Prophet of Islam

The second source in Islam, after the Qur’an, are the statements made by the Prophet Muhammad. Let’s see what he said about non-Muslims and how to force them to join Islam:

“Whoever kills an innocent non-Muslim will not even smell the fragrance of paradise.” [Source: Bukhārī, K. ad-Diyāt]

How could this statement possibly be compatible with the ridiculous idea that Islam forces itself on others? Instead, it makes it clear that no non-Muslim is allowed to be harmed because of what they believe.

The Historical Evidence

Lastly, 1400 years of Muslim history, from the Prophet’s living example up until now when there are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, where do we find this forced conversion being practiced? Nowhere.

On the contrary, we find throughout history, Muslims being the targets of forced conversion, particularly to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades and to Atheism during the Communist era of the 20^th century.

Conclusion

So the question about whether Islam forces itself on others has been addressed. Now the question remains, what can we do to prevent Muslims from being forced to leave their faith?

By: Mustafa Umar

Arabic is radically different from English, even in its letters. This causes a difficulty in transliteration. For example: the word for prayer is written “salah” while the word for peace is written “salam”. Anyone familiar with Arabic would know that the “s” in salah and the “s” in salam represent two completely different letters. Therefore, it is better to use Unicode characters to clarify this for the reader. Another example is with the word “salam” and “salaam”. Some people write the word for peace with three a’s rather than two to clarify that there is a long vowel near the end. “Salam”, without the long vowel, is also an Arabic word which refers to a type of economic transaction.

Therefore, to make things easier for readers of Arabic transliteration, special Unicode characters should be used. The word for prayer is written “ṣalah” [with a dot under the “s”] to specify that the letter is a ص and not a س. The word peace is written “salām” to clarify that we are referring to prayer and not an economic transaction.

To enable this feature in MS Word, download this file: Diacritic.dot

By double clicking on the file, MS Word will open and you can start typing the Unicode characters. Hold Alt and press “a”. You will see an “ā” with a line over it appear. There are six letters in Arabic which resemble six others, therefore, they should be differentiated in transliteration. Long vowels can be written as “aa”, “ii”, or “uu”, but it is much neater to use a line on top of that letter instead. Here is a table of options:

Alt + a = ā	Alt + Shift + a = Ā	Long vowel with alif
Alt + i = ī	Alt + Shift + i = Ī	Long vowel with yā
Alt + u = ū	Alt + Shift + u = Ū	Long vowel with wāw
Alt + d = ḍ	Alt + Shift + d = Ḍ	ض
Alt + h = ḥ	Alt + Shift + h = Ḥ	ح
Alt + s = ṣ	Alt + Shift + s = Ṣ	ص
Alt + t = ṭ	Alt + Shift + t = Ṭ	ط
Alt + z = ẓ	Alt + Shift + z = Ẓ	ظ
Alt + ` = ʿ		ع

You will find it a hassle to have to load the Diacritic.dot file every time you want to transliterate, especially if you do it frequently. Here is how you can permanently load the file every time you open MS Office 2013 under Windows 7:

1. Open “Windows Explorer”
2. Go to “C:”
3. Go to “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)”
4. Go to “Microsoft Office” or “Microsoft OfficeXX” [where XX stands for the version you have]
5. Go to “root”
6. Go to “OfficeXX” [where XX stands for the version you have]
7. Go to “Startup”
8. Copy the “Diacritic.dot” file into this directory

Now every time you load Word, it will automatically load the Diacritic.dot file for you.

By: Mustafa Umar

Enabling Arabic Input in Windows 7
To be able to type in Arabic, do the following:
1. Click on the Start Menu
2. Click on Control Panel
3. Click on “Change keyboards or other input methods”
4. Click on “Change keyboards”
5. Click on “Add”
6. Choose “Arabic (Saudi Arabia)” [the country doesn’t matter too much]
7. Check “Arabic 101” and click “Ok”
8. Click “Ok” again to return to the “Region and Language” menu
9. Click “Ok” again to save changes
You will now see on the bottom right hand of your screen an icon which either says “EN” or “AR”. To change languages, you can click on it, select a different language, and start typing in that language. You can also toggle languages by holding Alt and pressing Shift [you will see the icon change].
On-Screen Keyboard
Now, you can either buy/make stickers with Arabic letters for your keyboard so you know what you are typing or you can use the on-screen keyboard built into Windows. To enable that keyboard:
1. Click on the Start Menu
2. Click on “All Programs”
3. Click on “Accessories”
4. Click on “Ease of Access”
5. Click on “On-Screen Keyboard”
6. Toggle the language to Arabic [by selecting “AR” or Alt-Shift] and the keyboard will automatically change as well
7. Click in the program where you want to type and click keys from the on-screen keyboard

To get certain Arabic programs, like the priceless Maktaba Shamila, to display correctly on Windows 7, you must change a setting on your system:
1. Click on the Start Menu
2. Click on Control Panel
3. Click on “Change keyboards or other input methods”
4. Click on the “Administrative” tab
5. Click “Change system locale”
6. Select the Arabic language that you chose for your keyboard, i.e. “Arabic (Saudi Arabia)”
7. Click “Ok”
8. Click “Ok” again
If you fail to do this, some programs that are supposed to be displayed in Arabic will display strange characters and question marks instead.