Why Do Islam and Terrorism Go Together So Well?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re 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.

If you are new to the program, you’ve caught us in a transition. We took a brief hiatus from going through Dave Hunt’s book A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy and of course when I use the words “brief hiatus,” our producer, Gary Carmichael, breaks into a wide grin followed by some guffaws. So what was supposed to be a couple of weeks’ break switching over to Dave’s latest book Countdown to the Second Coming actually lasted eighteen weeks. And Dave, I don’t know about you, but I think an extra dozen weeks—they went by pretty fast. Right?

Dave: I think so. When you get as old as I am, time flies.

Tom: Okay. Now, however, we are returning to A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem in Bible Prophecy. And if anyone can remember back that far, we just completed chapter 10. So, Dave, to remind you, chapter 11 is titled “Islam and Terrorism.” And A Cup of Trembling was published in 1995, more than six years prior to [the] September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York City and the Pentagon.

Dave, the point I’m trying to make is that Islamic terrorism has been a fact of modern life prior to 9/11. Even the target of the attack of 9/11 was already targeted and already bombed. Dave: Yeah, that’s right. The World Trade Center had been bombed. That was February 26, 1993. And that would be eight years before—eight and a half years before—they came again to go after it.

Islamic terrorism is not just—we can call it “Islamic terrorism,” but it’s Islam is what it is. You wouldn’t say Muhammad was a terrorist. He was the founder of Islam. Then he’s not an extremist, but he killed plenty of people. He led nearly thirty attacks on villages and caravans. And his men, during his lifetime, did another fifty attacks. So this is Islam, this is not terrorism now. And the purpose of it is, I think we’ve probably mentioned but so far in the past now, no one remembers, but Muhammad said that Allah had commanded him to fight against all people in the world until all people confessed there’s no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

So in this chapter we deal with some of the things, events, in the past, but they didn’t even lay the foundation for what’s happening now—Israel, Pakistan, around the world, the Philippines, and Indonesia. But…

Tom: But, Dave, I find it interesting that you said—this is back in 1995, this is going to take place. Some of the examples that you give, the Achille Lauro, Entebbe, the Munich Olympics, and so on, you said this is the preparation. That’s pretty prophetic isn’t it?

Dave: Well, I wouldn’t claim to be prophetic, Tom, it’s just….

Tom: You know what I mean by that.

Dave: Right.

Tom: Yeah.

Dave: It’s simple common sense.

Tom: Yeah, you just added it up.

Dave: This is what Islam has always done. And I don’t know whether we’ve mentioned—we probably have, but way back, weeks ago—when Muhammad died, much of Saudi Arabia tried to abandon Islam. These were Arabs, these were the first Muslims. They had been forced into it at the point of the sword. They tried to get out of it. And Abu Bakr the first Caliph who succeeded Muhammad, his father in-law, as we probably mentioned, he and his men killed about 70,000 Arabs. These were Arabs being killed by Arabs. Former Muslims being killed by Muslims because Muhammad said, “Whoever relinquishes his faith, kill him.”

Now, that’s well known, and it’s happening all over the world. It’s happening in Sudan. They’ve killed about 2,000,000. Not just those who’ve relinquished their faith, but in order to force the world—the world must be forced into Islam.

So, the bombing of the World Trade Center way back in ’93—that’s part of this project. Why the World Trade Center? Well, it represents the West. It represents the prosperity that we have. When you consider that the Muslim countries have the billions from oil revenue and yet you have a…well, you have 4,000 Saudi princes, because even Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, we are not sure, he had at least 200 and probably 300 wives. In Islam you are only allowed to have four at a time. So he was a good Muslim. He never had four at once. But when she would give him [unintelligible], off she goes and here comes another one. So you have about 4,000 Saudi princes and they live like princes, like kings, multi-millionaires, if not billionaires, some of them. And the rest of the people are pretty ground down. You don’t find the economic advantages that you have in the West in Muslim countries. There’s not one of them is a democracy. You don’t have any freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and so forth. This is Islam, okay?

So the bombing of the World Trade Center was just part of an attack aimed at breaking these Western powers. It wasn’t just the United States. But this is the center of trade for the world and it’s part of their aim. They’re going to intimidate the world. They’re going to take over the world; they’re going to force everyone to bow to Islam. And of course, this has been going on ever since.

Tom: Dave, you quote a man—you gave his name, I don’t remember it offhand—but the man asked Muhammad for the best course of action for a believer and he was told by Muhammad, “Faith in Allah and jihad in his path.” So we are talking about religious war here—jihad. Can you explain that to the audience?

Dave: Well, as I said, Muhammad claims—and there are more than 100 verses in the Qur’an about fighting—fighting to impose Islam on the world; fighting to advance the cause of Allah, the cause of Islam. And the entire world must be taken over by Islam. The whole world is divided into two: Dar al-Islam, the house of peace, Dar al-Harb, the house of war. And there is perpetual jihad against the rest of the world by Islam.

Now there may be times that you would think there’s some relative peace, a cease-fire. There could never be peace—you’ll notice in the Middle East they don’t talk about peace. Arafat doesn’t talk about peace. It’s a cease-fire. You could have a cease-fire for up to ten years and no more. And only because Islam is too weak to press the attack.

In the United States, yes we have Muslims, thousands of them. They seem to be friendly and they wouldn’t engage in these attacks, you know. They wouldn’t engage in jihad. Well, that’s because this is not a Muslim country. Islam does not have the power to enforce itself.

But you go to Saudi Arabia, and you know that anyone who abandons his faith—a Muslim that wanted to convert to Christianity or to Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever—they kill them. This is the law of Islam. So these are not fanatics. And now what are we going to do? You know that in 732 AD at the Battle of Tours in France, the Muslims were turned back. They had taken Spain, they had taken Portugal.

You remember the city of Fatima, where Our Lady of Fatima appeared, and they have a huge shrine there now, visited by millions of Catholics from around the world. You remember it was Our Lady of Fatima who saved the pope’s life, so he said. And he went there and put a bullet that they took out of his body from the assassination attempt and put it in the crown of Our Lady of Fatima. Well, Fatima (that’s an Arab name), it was named after Muhammad’s favorite daughter Fatima when the Muslims were in control. Then they went all the way to China. These were defensive wars, you understand. The Chinese were threatening them.

Tom: Absolutely amazing, because I think it was Will Durant who said there’s been no—I mean what—did the German blitz create the Mongols? Nobody has ever done this. Now, Dave, what was the motivation? Was this a zeal for their religion or did this have something to do with booty or increasing—paying off the troops?

Dave: Well….

Tom: What was it?

Dave: They plundered every city that they went to. So….

Tom: So that’s a way to pay the troops. Right?

Dave: That’s right.

Tom: Keep them in food...

Dave: Right.

Tom: …keep them in….

Dave: But, Tom, you would have to say the other troops, I guess, had plundered as well. Although maybe they were kept under control a little better. The blood just filled the streets. The takeover of Constantinople, or, I mean, the rivers of blood running down the streets—orgies that would last three, four days. So they plundered everywhere they went. Slaughtered the inhabitants.

That was part of it, but, Tom, the major reason why these Islamic warriors were so daring—they wanted to die. We have inscriptions going way back into the 700s, 800s—well, the late 600s—where the Muslim warriors would say, “Allah, please grant me to die in jihad.” Because Muhammad said the only sure way is to die in jihad.

Now he promised Abu Bakr, who was the first caliph who took over and whose men slaughtered about 70,000 former Muslims, he promised Abu Bakr—he was the first of ten, in fact, that Muhammad promised paradise without dying in jihad—and Abu Bakr said, “Even if I had one foot in paradise, I couldn’t trust Allah—he might push me out.” Because there are a number of passages in the Qur’an where Allah says, “At whatsoever time we abrogate a revelation (in other words, we do away with it) we put a better one in its place.” Now in contrast to the God of the Bible, who says, “I, the Lord, change not,” Allah is changeable. You don’t know what he’s going to say next, and he does change his revelations. He does contradict himself. So the only sure way, then—even if you were promised by Muhammad that you would get to paradise, you couldn’t be sure, because Allah is greater than Muhammad. He might shove you out—so the one sure way (and this, of course, is what drives the terrorism today; this is what the hijackers who flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon; this is what the terrorists, suicide bombers, in Israel) this is what they believe: that this is their one sure ticket to paradise. Now when you’re not afraid to die, and in fact you risk your life that your troops are going to win.

Tom: Dave, you give some examples in the book of head imams, Muslim leaders, who are calling for the assassination of other leaders…

Dave: Right.

Tom: Arabic leaders, even Islamic leaders.

Dave: Of course.

Tom: And we’re shocked in the West by somebody who would have the gall, the nerve, the boldness—well, actually, we’re upset by—this seems to be brutal. Yet, that’s the basis for it. Once you appeal to jihad, they’ve been doing it for hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years, and they don’t see any problem with it. But we’re shocked by it.

Dave: Tom, I just had a phone call from Israel last night. And the Israelis are really at the end of themselves. They don’t know what to do with these people. Here’s the mentality: When they deliberately target civilians, women and children, they get on a busload of school kids, blow themselves up—the world says nothing! The UN has never denounced terrorism.

But when Israel—they take out the head of Hamas—he’s been training these people! He sends them in. He’s responsible for the death of hundreds of civilians. Then the world is in an uproar! “How could you possibly do that?”

Now, right now, Tom, we have an uproar about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by a handful of American service people. Well, okay, we’re outraged. Americans are outraged by that. What do they do? They take a guy’s head off. “We’ll show you how to treat people!”

Now, can you equate taking someone’s head off with abusing a prisoner? And what do they do? What did Saddam Hussein do? What our guys did in his prison, where he tortured and killed people for many years—by the thousands! So you have a rather skewed sense of right and wrong.

So when Israel defends itself, there’s outrage around the world. “How dare you kill this murderer?” But when they kill innocent civilians—so, Tom, I don’t know how to explain it, but this is the mentality that drives Islam. Jihad—there must be perpetual jihad until Islam takes over the world.

Now, Tom, it’s more serious than that. Muhammad said they would take over the world. The Qur’an promises this. Allah has promised, and Allah says that this land there in the Middle East—they call it Palestine now, which it isn’t, and we’ve explained that in the past—that belongs to the Arabs. That belongs to the Muslims. So as long as Israel has one square yard of this land, it’s an affront to Islam. And we’ve mentioned that before. Islam’s a false religion, Muhammad is a false prophet. They must kill the Israelis; they must destroy them because Muhammad said the last day can’t come until every Jew on the face of this earth has been killed.

So the only point I’m trying to make is, Tom, we can go back farther than we do in the book, but you’re making the point that it wasn’t September 11, 2001. That’s not the beginning. It began with Muhammad, okay?

Tom: Right.

Dave: But it is in their religion, and so long as President Bush keeps saying, “Islam is peace,” we’re missing the point. This is their religion, and somehow, Tom, if we could just disabuse them of the idea that you get to paradise by murdering people, that would save a lot of lives.

Tom: Yeah. Dave, this is the way Islam is. It’s been like that for 1,300 years or more. Now, what caused the rise of fundamentalism within the last 50-100 years?

Dave: Well, there were a number of factors. The colonial powers, as much as they have been maligned, and I’m sure there were some abuses—but you want to go to Africa (change the subject slightly for a moment) and see what’s going on. What’s going on in Zimbabwe right now? You’ve got a murderer, a terrorist, slaughtering people. But he’s the head of the government. And when they got rid of the colonial powers, the Africans, the Blacks, went after one another. There’s corruption like you couldn’t believe, and so forth, okay?

So when the colonial powers were there, at least they kept order. They built roads, they had stable governments, and Islam did not have the opportunity to rise. When the colonial powers were taken out, then Islam is on the rise. It’s taking over. It’s catering to the desire of the Africans to control their own destiny, but they’re not going to do that with Islam. They don’t realize that, so in Nigeria, for example, fifteen of the nineteen northern states of Nigeria have adopted sharia, Islamic law. They’ve slaughtered thousands of Christians, burned down hundreds of churches.

Now another factor, of course, was, as we mentioned, the Qur’an, the Hadith—Muhammad said this land belongs to the Arabs, not the Jews, and promised that the Arabs, the Muslims, actually, would conquer them. Well, it hasn’t happened. They are humiliated. In 1948, when the Israeli settlers declared independence, 600,000 of them—they were attacked by the regular armies of seven Arab nations with tanks and planes. And who won? The Israeli settlers defeated the regular armies! That’s humiliating.

And then in ’56, ’73, well, ’67, and so forth—they’ve been defeated every time. Now the imams preach in the mosques: “You know why we’re defeated? Because you are not obeying Allah. You are not memorizing the holy Qur’an. You are not studying your scriptures. And if you will get back to the truth of Allah and of Islam, then you will conquer.”

So this is what Osama Bin Laden is all about. But the humiliation continues. What’s happening? And the Muslims kill Muslims and fight Muslims. So you’ve got Saddam Hussein—he plunders Kuwait, and he’s going to take over Saudi Arabia. They have to call the infidels to come and help them.

Tom: Dave, you have a quote in the book…

Dave: Well, actually, Tom, for example, I’m talking about 30,000 people killed in Algeria—more than 100,000 now. Muslim against Muslim. The Muslims kill, fight one another and kill one another. But go ahead, I’m sorry.

Tom: No, that’s all right.

Dave: But Israel is blamed. It’s always Israel’s fault.

Tom: For all that we’ve been talking about, I think it comes down to this quote with regard to how we in the West should see what’s taking place, how we should understand it. This person writes: “Islam is a distinctly Arabian cultural religion. Unless this is firmly grasped, no real understanding of Islam is possible, and Westerners will never understand why Muslims think and act the way they do.”

This is the seventh century. That’s what it’s all about. And it’s never gotten away from that.

Dave: Right. Well, this is what the Taliban wanted to impose there. This is what is going on, and, Tom, it’s happening. We documented it here in the book. We’re in the process of bringing the book up to date, updating it. I hope we will be able to finish that.

But the double-crosses among them! For example, Kuwait had sponsored Arafat. What did Arafat do? He gave intelligence data—because there were many Palestinians living in Kuwait—he gave intelligence data to Saddam Hussein so Saddam Hussein could plunder Kuwait, because he figured Saddam Hussein was going to take the whole thing over, including Saudi Arabia, and he wanted to be on the winning side. There’s no honor among these people. And you know that the PLO, the Hamas, the terrorism that they have done—and they do it in the name of Allah.

So this is the history from the past, and in this chapter, “Terrorism and Islam,” we’re simply trying to document—we’re laying it out. These are not extremists. These are fundamentalists. These are real Muslims. This is what Islam has been from the very beginning, and the West had better awaken to that fact.

And what can we do about it, Tom? I think about it all the time. I pray about it. And as I have said a few minutes ago, these dear people—they have been lied to. They’re kept in darkness and bondage, and they think that the greatest thing they can do—in PLO territory, you’ve got little children, little boys, and little girls, that want to die as martyrs. But you just had—Tom, you just had an eleven-year-old boy going into Israel. He’s got his book bag on his back. He was told that if he took that into Israel, he would get a lot of money. Well, they were a little bit suspicious of him, and they opened the bag—you’ve got I think about 30 pounds of explosives, with ball bearings and nails and all kinds of other things. They were going to sacrifice this kid. He didn’t know that he had this. He didn’t want to be a suicide bomber. And the only reason they found out about it was because there was a “click” as they were trying to diffuse this thing. It was going to be set off by a cell phone, and in fact, they tried to set it off when they saw that he was stopped. They wanted him to get on a bus, a children’s bus. But something failed in the mechanism—otherwise, they wouldn’t have known.

So here’s an eleven-year-old—Tom, there’s no conscience with these people. Life does not mean anything, but it is all for the cause of Allah, and it is all in obedience to Muhammad and the Qur’an and the Hadith, and we’d better understand that. And my prayer is that somehow we can deliver these dear people from this delusion, thinking they can get to heaven by murdering other people. If we could deliver them from that, we could save a lot of lives.