Beneath The Olive Trees Of Rome
By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY
Readers of The Wanderer are not likely to be subscribers to the online Islamic journal Rumiyah, but a current issue may be of interest. The June 2017 issue instructs the reader on how to effectively conduct a terrorist attack, what to attack, and how to achieve maximum impact. Each issue opens with a quotation attributed to Abu Hanza al Mahajir:
“O muwahhidin, rejoice by Allah, we will not rest from our jihad except beneath the olive trees of Rome.”
The index to Issue Nine lists articles on “Ruling Belligerent Christians,” “Just Terrorist Tactics,” “Establishing the Islamic State,” “Military and Covert Operations,” and a historical treatise with reference to Jews and Christians, entitled “They Took Their Scribes and Monks as Lords Besides Allah.”
Other articles tell the reader how to acquire prohibited firearms, select a target, and execute a truck attack. Targets that provide the greatest opportunity are identified, such as nightclubs, movie theaters, concert halls, shopping malls, popular restaurants, and university campuses.
“The operation should be initiated at times when the target location is at its busiest…[or when] police and other security forces might be preoccupied with national and other local events.” There is also an article on how children are to be educated for service to Allah.
The would-be jihadist is told that there is no sanctity for Christian churches, for they are houses of idolatry. Their destruction is not only permitted under Sharia but is enjoined as a means of attaining closeness to Allah. “O muwahhidin (monotheists), rejoice by Allah, we will not rest from our jihad except beneath the olive trees of Rome.”
One’s attitude toward Islam is likely to be determined by one’s attitude toward Christianity. Western culture is so bound up with its classical and Christian source that, from a historical perspective, the two are inseparable. Romantic interpretations of Islam speak of its beneficent presence in the West, overlooking its history of conquest, subjugation, and intolerance. From its inception, that is from the teaching of the Prophet, Islam has been willing to use the sword to achieve is ends, subjecting conquered peoples, giving them the choice either to accept Islam or to suffer penalties ranging from taxation to death.
A disposition to look upon Islam as just another religion, somehow occupying a place in the West on par with Christianity or as a component of Western civilization, ignores its adversarial character.
As the West for decades has been confronted by a militant Islam, the political insouciant seems willfully to ignore 14 centuries of conflict between Islam and Christianity, two rival faiths with alternative messages to mankind. For most of the Middle Ages Islam represented a moral danger to Europe. That changed with the West’s successful defense of Vienna and the French occupation of Egypt under Napoleon.
One does not have to subscribe to Rumiyah to understand that Islamic polity defines itself by religion, that is, as a society in which personal identity and allegiance are determined by the acceptance of a common faith. The distinctions between church and state, between the spiritual and the temporal, between ecclesiastic and lay, are a set of distinctions that finds no analogue in Islamic history. In contrast to cosmopolitan tendencies among Western intellectuals, Muslims typically are very conscious of their identity.
As the online journal cited above makes clear, current violence against Christians in the Middle East finds support in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed. The largely fictional ISIS and al-Qaeda are names Western media give to one strand of Islam, but the jihadists so identified find ample support for their activity in the Koran.
Many readers of this essay may have grown up with the “melting pot” image that was once meaningful when immigrants to the United States were mostly of European origin. That image is frequently invoked to suggest we have nothing to fear from a massive influx of immigrants from other cultures.
The truth is that Europeans may have come from different nations and spoken different languages but nevertheless possessed common cultural roots.
Since the 1960s U.S. immigration policy has favored those of non-European origin. The favored newcomers have origins not in what used to be called Christendom but in the Middle East and North Africa. A large majority of these immigrants are Muslims who seemingly have no intent to assimilate to Western ways and use U.S. law to gain exceptions from the common law in support of their traditional ways of life. Their own leaders encourage them to seek elective office whenever eligible.
To get an unbiased account of Islam, there is no better place to start than Ignaz Goldziher’s Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law. Although written in German in the early part of the twentieth century, a reliable English translation was not available until Princeton University Press published one in 1981.
