Note from Robert Spencer:
Yassin, Rantisi, and now Khaled Abu Shamiyeh. This article doesn't tell you, of course, that Hamas is a jihadist group, dedicated since its inception to the violent destruction of Israel -- not to a peaceful, negotiated settlement. These "militants" are actually mujahedin, ready to kill and die for Allah; their stated grievances are only a pretext upon which to base calls for jihad. From AP

A "peaceful, negotiated settlement" between Arabs and Israel guarantees nothing for the Infidel side (i.e. Israel). Any "negotiated settlement" by Muslims with Infidels is based, must islamically be based, on that the model for all Islamic agreements with Infidels, the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya. Such agreements have a limited life (ten years, though the time may be extended in cases where absolute necessity, darura, can be invoked as an excuse by the Muslim side), be breached -- and not only can it be breached, but it should be breached, it must be breached -- whenever the Muslim side feels it is sufficiently strong to go on the open attack.

"Jihad" is not a synonym for terrorism or even for military combat. There are many ways to spread Islam and subjugate the Infidels. Conquest was the main method, but in what is now the largest Muslim country, Indonesia, the conquest was largely through conversion and subversion. Hadrami traders (from the Hadramaut, in present-day Yemen) went as far as the East Indies (they were also prominent in the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad), but they were not the only ones. What the case of the East Indies proves is that military conquest is not necessary for Islam to spread, and slowly, but surely, come to overwhelm the locals. One often writes admiringly of the "syncretism" and "moderation" of Islam in Indonesia. But that misses the point. For a long time, the methods have had to be those that do not completely alienate what was once the Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian populatons of the East Indian archipelago. The peculiar features of Indonesian Islam becme more undestandable -- and it is quite clear that wherever the non-Muslim populaton has disappeared, the Middle Eastern brand of virulent Islam comes into full flower, on on Aceh. (See C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Acinese).

It is important that the word "Jihad" come into use throughout the Western world -- certainly to replace that idiotic word "terrorism" to describe, and deliberately hide, the fact that the phenomenon is part of a war by Islam against the entire non-Muslim world. But if the word "Jihad" is limited to violent Jihad, even at this website, then the most disturbing examples of the slow takeover of non-Muslim peoples and polities will not even be recognized, for without the proper words, as Confucius says, the "nation does not know where to put its feet and hands. Therefore, disorder in words must not be tolerated."

Jihad can be through combat, qital. (And some Muslims apparenelty allow themselves to believe that "combat" includes blowing up buildings, airplanes, seizing schools and hospitals and killing the Infidels found within, and so on). But it is also carried on through the use of "wealth" (i.e. money used to buy arms, to bribe officials, to hold out the prospect of contracts, and so on), and "pen, speech" (that is, Da'wa and other kinds of propaganda -- both to get others to "revert" to Islam, and to deny, among those whose goodwill one temporarily needs, or whose unwariness one wishes to prolong, the real tenets of Islam, to offer a smog of confusion whenever certain tenets, thoroughly based on Qur'an and hadith, are brought up for discussion by Infidels who have bothered to inform themselves -- surely a curious belief-system where the Believers themselves spend a good deal of time denying, or hiding, some of the very teachings that, among themselves, they find completely unremarkable and even compelling).

And another form of Jihad, the greatest weapon in Jihad, is "demographic conquest." It is not mentioned by name in Qur'an or hadith. But is certainly mentioned in the Muslim press, and one finds it, for example, even in letters to the editor in such a place as the Pakistani English-language newspaper "Dawn."

So, while it is understandable that for the moment, when we are still stuck in the rut of decrying "terrorism" and talking about a "war on terrorism" it is hard not only to utter the word "Jihad" but also it is tempting to discuss it only as violence. That is, in Western Europe, the least of its methods. "Jihad" is the struggle to spread Islam everywhere, and it is "defensive" in a very peculiar way: any effort by Infidels to attempt to prevent the spread of Islam, can be regarded as an act inimical to Islam and therefore an "aggressive" act justifying all sorts of counter-acts. Thus, if one were to limit mosque-building, or to prevent the building of minarets (an importanht sign of Muslim dominance, as they tower over other buildings -- or did, before the age of skyscrapers came along), to refuse to yield to Muslim demands (hijab, imposition of Sharia, initially only for Muslim familiy law, to be extended to other cases later, demands for prayer-rooms and time off for the five canonical prayers, refusal of women to have their I.D. photographs taken full-face, and so on ad infinitum, for demands can always be multiplied in order to manufacture clashes with Infidel authorities) -- if, in short, anyone stands in the way of the spread of Islam, that justifies attacks against them.

"Jihad" in all of its forms needs to be clearly defined, and understood, by Infidels, and once they have acquired that understanding, they need not only to thoroughly assimilate it, but to conduct a kind of counter-Da'wa of their own, taking every possible opportunity to enlighten others who have not taken the trouble or the time to understand what is going on. Now that so many university departments of Middle Eastern studies have essentially been seized by those who are apologists for Islam (for how else can one describe, for example, departments that do not have their students read, in toto, the Qur'an but rather a deliberately-sanitized version, who explain away all of its troublesome passages and fail to mention the doctrine of "abrogation" (naskh), that hardly touch on which hadith are considered the most "authentic," that hardly mention the sira of Muhammad (his sacralized biography), and never offer the students a serious syllabus about any of this, tiptoing around -- sometimes out of fear of the reaction of Muslim students (this has happened even at Princeton), sometimes out of a secret dislike of one's own culture and civilization, sometimes out of ignorance (what should one make of those who assign Karen Armstrong, or slightly higher on the food-chain, John Esposito, as "guides" to Islam?).

Autodidacticism is necessary here. It is not impossible. The Index Islamicus exists on CD-Rom. Many academic databases provide all sorts of articles. The real books on Islam -- Margoliouth, Fattal, Khadduri, Sir William Muir, Noldeke, Lammens, and so on -- are being reprinted, unstoppably. Many of them, no doubt, will be on the Internet. The students of the origins of early Islam, and of textual difficulties in the Qur'an, such as Christoph Luxenberg, and others, are continuing. Western historians of science are not being bullied into avoiding considering the most obvious question: why did Islamic science simply stop? What was it that explains the sudden disappearance of any achievement in that area (see Rodney Stark, see Toby Huff and the fury he aroused in George Saliba, a professor of Islamic science, in even raising that question). The little matter of the Muslim attitude toward statuary and paintings, or music, is no longer something that can be ignored, if one cares about the fate of certain works in the Uffizi, in the Louvre, in the Prado, and so on.

Dogmatisms always inhibit the free play of the mind. But some dogmatisms offer a more complete view of things, and to the extent that Islam appears to offer a Total Explanation of the Universe, it may be said to be the most thorough-going of dogmatisms. There are many Muslims who simply ignore, or do not fully accept, some of that Total Explanation. But,that Total Explanation is always there, and even skeptical Muslims have to work around it. Some of them, instead of forthrightly declaring their own views, either hide them, or what is worse, participate in the campaign to delude the Infidels. ONe wonders if those in the West who could not, for a minute, exist happily in their own societies, really wish to see a Muslim takeover of Western Europe, or whether, like Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, and thousnads of other articulate people born as Muslims, but who have jettisoned those beliefs entirely, they do not worry at least as much, because they know so much more, about that possibliity. If so, they really should begin to help -- just as, once upon a time, defectors from the KGB (under its various names) provided help in explaining, to Western audiences, governments, and security services, what Joseph Stalin, the Comintern, and the Red Army were all about.

For the amount of mental power, and time, lavished upon, for example, the Isnad chain, there are other places to go. But for now, why not stick with the Qur'an (always keeping in mind "naskh" or the "science of abrogation, whereby many of the earlier and softer verses are simply abrogated by those much harsher verses deemed later -- on precisely the same principle, but hardly with the same result, as Brown v. Bd. of Education reversing, and thereby cancelling, Plessy v. Ferguson.