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2023 … a new year; a new volume and a new issue of TIPS. I want to thank everyone who has been a part of this ministry as we discover together more of the true meaning of Islam.
This issue marks the one year anniversary of the TIPS e-letter and the five year anniversary of the Institute for the Study of Islam and DiscerningIslam.org, and the eighth year since our little Sunday night group from Estes Park, Colorado enticed me into exploring the depths of Islam. I have learned as much as some of you who started out with me on that Sunday night. Now, I hope to uncover more truths together in this new year.
Discerning Islam … what do we know about Islam? When this venture was started, the plan was to teach others — as well as myself — about Islam — the truth about Islam.
Is Islam really a religion of peace?
Ask the victims of the Muslim rape gangs that roam throughout the U.K., Germany, and elsewhere;
Ask the victims of Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, Madagascar, Tanzania, and other African. nations;
Ask the victims of Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel in Mumbai, India;
Ask the victims of Fort Hood, Texas;
Ask the victims of Washington, DC, Chicago, IL., Los Angeles, CA, Buffalo, NY, San Francisco, CA, the Twin Towers of New York City, NY, and hundreds of other attacks throughout the United States.
Is Islam really one of the Abrahamic religions, and are Muslims really a “people of the book?”
Islamophobia is a problem. A very real problem. People walk around in fear of Muslims. But, Muslims are not the problem; Islam is the problem. Muslims are lost souls in need of Christ like any one else.
However, Islam is billed as one of three Abrahamic religions. This is wrong. Saying that it is only legitimizes an evil cult. To believe that Islam is of Abraham negates Judaism and Christianity. Islam is no more of an Abrahamic religion that Hinduism, Buddhism, or Mormonism.
We know that Satan is a fallen angel. We also know that some people worship Satan. But, we do not call Satanism a biblical religion.
The prophet of Islam, Muhammad, was an illiterate Arab tradesman, who combined the beliefs of pre-Islamic Arabia, Judaism, and Christianity into a blood-thirsty cult which promoted slavery, degraded women, created an unjust legal system, and terrorized the world for the last fourteen-hundred years.
Do not be fooled by thinking Islam is like Judaism and Christianity, Peoples’ of the Book, an Abrahamic religion. If they were a true people of the Book, they would follow the Book, the Bible, not the Qur’an. Islam worships a false god, a deity they have named “Allah.”
A giraffe may claim to be a horse, but that doesn’t make it so.
1 – Jews believe and follow the Bible (OT) and it’s inerrancy;
2 – Christians follow the Bible (OT, NT) and it’s inerrancy;
3 – Islam follows the Qur’an, finding the Bible to be at fault and in error.
I know of no Christian theologian who would call Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses “People of the Book,” and I do not believe Muslims should have that distinction either.
For more on this topic, click here.
Perhaps you have other questions you’d like to explore as well. Send in your questions and I will do my best to answer them is a timely manner: discerning.islam@outlook.com
So, how can we learn more about Islam? How can we learn the truth? One way to learn about something … whether people, a business, an organization … or even a religion, is to observe it. Just simply watch what they do, then compare what they say with the actions they do.
Are you watching … observing … Islam? Are you awake to the atrocities being committed in the name of Islam? If not, could this be your wake-up call?
KNOW: That nearly two billion — 2,000,000,000 — people, Muslims, follow this religion … Islam.
KNOW: That Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.
KNOW: That by the year 2030 — seven years from now — the followers of Islam are expected to total 25 percent of the world’s population.
KNOW: That by the year 2075 Islam is expected to be the largest religion in the world.
KNOW: That Muslims see the world with only one religion … Islam.
KNOW: That Islam sees the world with only one people … Muslims.
KNOW: That Islam teaches there is only one law … Shari’a — Islamic Law.
KNOW: That Islam teaches there is only one god … Allah.
KNOW: That all who are not Muslims are considered infidels — infidels must convert to Islam … or die.
ON AGAIN … OFF AGAIN
Turkey and Israel: ‘On’ Again, Only to Be ‘Off’ Again … Here’s The Story …
ISI/DI: The Turkish and Israeli peace process seems to wax and wain from sun-down to sun-up and back to sun-down again.
But, what are the true aspirations of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the 12th and current president of Turkey? Erdogan makes no secret when it comes to his ambitious desires, although the roadmap he’s following tends to be more murky than clear. He has said he wants to see a second Ottoman Empire, a new caliphate — with himself installed as its new caliph.
During Erdogan’s presidency passports, citizenship, and a clear record has been offered to members of Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hezbollah. To what end? Turkey has also pursued terrorists, captured some, and tried them in court. Does Erdogan see these terrorists as his own future private army, outside of Turkey’s military?
And let’s not forget NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded in 1949, with Turkey being admitted in 1952. A long standing relationship that permits Turkey to have and to store certain nuclear armaments.
No, Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not Yet Dead and Russia Is Helping Iran Go Nuclear … Here’s The Story …
ISI/DI: “The Iranian regime is not only sending drones to Russia to crush Ukraine, but other materiel as well. By providing weapons to a major power such as Russia, the Iranian regime is asserting itself as a key player enjoying significant military power on the global stage.
It’s getting so that no one knows what’s going on any more when it concerns some in the international community. Is there peace or no peace; does Iran get the bomb or don’t they? The world is playing a deadly game which can only end up one way if things go badly — Armageddon.
Why is everyone playing so close to the edge? Is Armageddon a reality? According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, Armageddon is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies for a battle during the end times, which is interpreted as either a literal or a symbolic location. The term is also used in a generic sense to refer to any end of the world scenario. In Islamic theology, Armageddon is also mentioned in Hadith (one of Islam’s holy books) as the Greatest Armageddon (the great battle).
For Islam, Armageddon marks the final battle on Earth. It is a time when their savior, al-Mahdi, finally arrives to oversee what could be called a nuclear battle that that puts an end to everything. Muslims kill all infidels (non-Muslims; those who do not profess to believe in Allah and Islam).
Yes, it sounds similar to Christianity. However, if you look closely, you will find that it is in fact, just the opposite of Christianity. Anti-Christian? Anti-Christ?
THE ANTAGONIST
The Islamic Republic of Iran has a two-tier government. The first tier, ostensibly representing the sovereignty of the people, includes a president who serves as the executive of a highly centralized state, a parliament charged with creating and debating laws and a judiciary that vets and interprets those laws. The second tier, representing the sovereignty of God, consists of just one man: the supreme leader, or Faqih.
The Faqih has an absolute monopoly over state power. He appoints the head of the judiciary and can dismiss the president at will. He is the commander-in-chief of the army and he can veto any law passed by parliament. The office is both anachronistic and utterly unique, allowing for the institutionalization of clerical control over all aspects of government.
It is also heretical. Far from being the foundation of Shi’a Islam, as Iran’s clerical regime claims, the concept of the Faqih represents neither the historical consensus nor the current majority view of Shi’a political thought. It is a wholly made-up office, concocted by the man who first claimed the position for himself: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, architect of Shi’a Iran from the time of the takeover of the American embassy in 1979.
Shi’ism, like Christianity, is messianic. Shi’a doctrine posits that the temporal world and all its imperfections will be swept away by the appearance of a figure known as the Mahdi, who will one day rule over the Earth. Until then, all governments are temporary and illegitimate, as any exercise of direct political power would be considered a usurpation of the Mahdi’s divine authority. Thus, for most of the last 1,400 years, Shi’a clergy have refused to interfere in governmental affairs, instead adopting a position of political quietism.
To be sure, Iran’s leading ayatollahs did fight alongside the country’s merchants and young intellectuals to create the first indigenous democratic movement in the Middle East. The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, as it came to be known, resulted in the creation of a progressive Constitution guaranteeing basic rights and freedoms for all Persians, an independent parliament (the National Consultative Assembly), free elections and a clear separation of powers.
But the Constitutional Revolution was short-lived. In 1921, a British-backed military coup established the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran. The Constitution was discarded, parliament was defanged and the state reverted to dictatorship.
The Pahlavis brutally suppressed any political activity by the clergy. While a few prominent clerics participated in Iran’s second revolution of the century, the so-called Nationalist Revolution of 1953, it wasn’t until Iran’s third revolution, in 1979, that the clergy left the mosques and entered government.
That development owed everything to Khomeini’s unprecedented interpretation of the Mahdi. Countering 14 centuries of Shi’a doctrine, he argued that, in the absence of the Mahdi — the sole legitimate leader of the Islamic state — political power should rest in the hands of the Mahdi’s representatives on Earth: that is, the clergy. Put another way, rather than waiting for the Mahdi to return at the end of time to create the perfect society, the clergy should be empowered to create the perfect society for him so that he will return at the end of time. Khomeini called this theory the Valayat-e Faqih, or “the guardianship of the jurist.”
This was an astounding assertion and a radical religious innovation in Shi’a Islam. Yet Khomeini went even further, arguing that political authority should rest not with the whole of the clergy but with a single “supreme” cleric. He then insisted that, as the deputy of the Mahdi, the supreme cleric’s authority should be identical not just to the Mahdi’s, but to that of the Prophet Muhammad himself. “When a mujtahid (a qualified jurist) who is just and learned stands up for the establishment and organization of the government,” Khomeini wrote in his political treatise Islamic Government, “he will enjoy all the rights in the affairs of the society that were enjoyed by the Prophet.”
No Muslim cleric had ever made so startling a proposal. The notion that any human being could have the same infallible, divine authority as the Prophet contradicts centuries of Islamic theology. The theory was so plainly heretical that it was immediately rejected by almost every other ayatollah in Iran, including Khomeini’s direct superiors, the Ayatollahs Boroujerdi and Shariatmadari, as well as nearly all the grand ayatollahs in Najaf, Iraq — the religious center of Shi’a Islam.
What made Khomeini so alluring was his ability to couch his radical doctrine in the populist rhetoric of the time. Once his colleagues had been intimidated into silence and Iran’s pious masses had been stirred to action, Khomeini was free to seize control of the post-revolutionary government. Before most Iranians knew what they had accepted, he had injected his interpretation of the Mahdi into the political realm, transforming Iran into the Islamic Republic and proclaiming himself the country’s first Faqih: the supreme temporal and religious authority.
In 1989, Khomeini died and the office of Faqih passed to his hand-picked successor, Ali Khamenei, with little clerical or popular resistance. Even though the Faqih was supposed to be Iran’s most learned religious authority, Khamenei was little more than a mid-level cleric — not even an ayatollah — with thin credentials. Nevertheless, he was given the office largely because practically every other qualified religious authority in Iran — including Khomeini’s first choice as successor, Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri — had decried the doctrine of the Faqih as anathema to Islam.
Now, at 83 and in ill health, Khamenei is widely believed to be grooming his eldest son, Mojtaba — a cleric of even lower rank than when his father was selected — to succeed him as the next supreme leader. That would strip away any last remnant of religious legitimacy the office still maintains, exposing the Faqih for what it actually is: a synonym for Shah … dictator
Should that happen, the protests that would follow could dwarf the uprisings we are seeing today. Already, one of the most frequent chants heard on the streets during the current protests has been “Mojtaba, Bemiri, Rahbari ro Nabini”: “Mojtaba, — We’ll See You Die Before Becoming Leader.”
In Iran, Crowds Chant ‘Death to the IRGC, Death to the Entire System’ Honor the Dead 40 Days After They Were Killed .. Here’s The Story ..
ISI/DI: Another revolution is making history — but will it be squashed? It is continuing to grow, but the length of time is a death sentence. Time is not necessarily on their side of this … the longer it drags out the more time the regime has to recollect its assets. At the same time, if those assets are too spread out, individuals may perceive it to be weak and scatter rather than mobilize. It’s also possible that the regime may splinter apart if others also seek power and it all falls in to a vacuum of sorts.
If the revolutionaries gain outside support, which is what they need ……… but that also has problems because the revolutionaries may not necessarily feel beholden to their benefactor(s) when all is said and done — simply because there is always more said than done. The United States has been on that side for far too any times — Afghanistan, Cuba, China — Google it for more.
AT HOME
JIHAD IN TIMES SQUARE: NYPD Attacked By Islamic Terrorist With Machete on New Years Eve … Here’s The Story …
ISI/DI: The 2018 Muslim population of New York City is estimated to be 750,000 people … a little over 1/10th of New York City’s population … and growing.
Seattle: Muslim accused of planting pipe bomb in public garage has long felony history, judges always released him … Here’s The Story …
ISI/DI: We are a country divided at levels where we need to have unity. National security must trump other areas if our country … or any country … is to survive. The phrase,
“God and country” is meant to express devotion to what many consider the three pillars of traditional society: religion, family values, and patriotism.
NEW POSTS
The 2nd edition of Values In The Marketplace with all 18 chapters is now posted and available by clicking on the link below.
Click or tap ➡️: Values In The Marketplace
Remember …
MUSLIMS are not the problem.
ISLAM is the problem.
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