No. It is the opinion of those with more expertise on the Koran than either of us. Entire BOOKS have been written by ex-Muslims on the subject citing chapter and verse.
The response from your side amounts to handwaving.
Most Muslim people aren't violent and just want to live. But they cower in fear of the radical elements.
The following is gathered from several sources written mostly in 2005 and 2006, some of which was claified and verified in 2010:
Mustafa Saied, the Floridian who left the Brotherhood six years ago, recalls how he was
recruited in 1994 while a junior at the University of Tennessee. After Saied attended numerous prayer sessions, a fellow Muslim student took him to a quiet corner of a campus cafeteria and asked him to join.
"It was a dream, because that’s what you’re conditioned to do - to really love the Ikhwan," Saied says, using the Arabic term for Brotherhood members.
After he joined, he learned the names of other local members.
"I was shocked," he says.
"These people had really hid the fact that they were Brotherhood."
Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Koran and discuss events of the day.
But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well.
Saied says he found out that the U.S. Brotherhood had a plan for achieving Islamic rule in America: It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office.
"They’re very smart.
Everyone else is gullible," Saied says. "If the Brotherhood puts up somebody for an election, Muslims would vote for him not knowing he was with the Brotherhood."
Saied says he left the group after several years because he disliked its anti-American sentiments and its support for violence in the Middle East.
The U.S. Brotherhood was influential from its beginning - in 1963 it helped establish the Muslim Students Association, one of the first national Islamic groups in the U.S.
The Islamic Society of North America, the umbrella group for the Muslim Youth of North America and the Muslim Students Association, says Brotherhood members helped form those groups but that their overall influence has been limited.
As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported in 2009, ISNA's Warith Deen Umar’s remarks during a “meet the authors” panel included claims that Jews controlled the world, used the Civil Rights movement for their own gain and suffered the Holocaust as a punishment for being “serially disobedient to Allah.”
Umar’s radicalism and anti-Semitism were easily discoverable to anyone who bothered to look. A simple Google search for Umar and his book titles turns up this 2003 article on Umar’s opinion that the
9/11 hijackers were martyrs; this excerpt from his book Judaiology, which describes “the inordinacy of Jewish power” and calls Jews “an amazing people who can steal you blind as you watch; and this audio recording from a 2004 speech in which Umar endorses violence: (
LINK)
Likewise, ISNA had nothing to say about a second speaker on the authors’ panel, who argued that
Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group second only to Al Qaeda in the number of Americans it has killed, serves as a protective force for Lebanon. Cathy Sultan’s remarks ignored Hezbollah’s role as an Iranian proxy and its campaign of violence. (And ignore thier horrid genocidal campaign against the Christians of Lebanon, aided by 35 years of occupation by Syria during which man thousands of young Christian men were arrested during the middle of the night, shipped off the the dungeons of Syria, never to be heard from again.)
All sorts of hate speech literature is available at ISNA conventions in America, much of which is directed at college age attendees.
Groups that the Brotherhood helped form printed Islamic books, many of which were distributed at mosques and on college campuses. They included Sayyid Qutb’s "In the Shade of the Koran" and "Milestones," which urge jihad, martyrdom and the creation of Islamic states. Scholars came to view his writings as manifestos for Islamic militants.
The al-Qaeda paradigm can be traced back to an earlier model normally associated with Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb. In his last book, Milestones on the Road (1965), Qutb argued that the Koran presented a blueprint for the establishment of a 'true' Islamic State. Allah, said Qutb, had deliberately revealed this model in sequential stages (milestones).
Bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam wrote that "Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward . . . this vanguard constitutes al-qaeda al-sulbah (the solid base) for the expected society" and during the Carter administration they were able to practice their jihad with US support in Afghanistan.
The new paradigm associated with Azzam and bin Laden developed against the background of the war in Afghanistan. The Afghan-Arab mujahideen believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Afghan communist regime resulted from their correct implementation of Qutb's Koranic blueprint and gave birth to the Taliban. The al-Qaeda paradigm therefore bases the 'milestones' of its theory of revolution on the sequence of events in Afghanistan.
Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader who became bin Laden's second in command, said, "the road to Jerusalem passes through Cairo".
Yet Zawahiri and many other Islamist ideologues altered their line in Afghanistan,
seeing the destruction of America (and Asia's 'regional superpower', Australia) as the precondition for the overthrow of nominally Muslim regimes. Thus terrorist 'raids' against Western countries are a means to an end in a struggle within the Muslim world, not a reaction to specific actions by America or Australia.
This is why rather than discouraging terrorism, acts of 'appeasement' are likely to add credibility to the al-Qaeda model.
The extremely ambitious attacks of 11 September 2001 demonstrated the success that bin Laden's group enjoyed in applying this new model of jihad. Radicals trained at hijra in Afghanistan had infiltrated the lands of the unbeliever and struck the superpower at its heart.
These attacks heralded a leap in the activity of Islamic terrorist groups, and affirmed bin Laden and Zawahiri's status as the most successful practitioners of Qutb-inspired terrorism to date. (The term 'hijra' literally means immigration and it's tradition goes back to Muhammed who found himself in trouble in Mecca, migrated to Medina, conquered it by trickery, treachery and in the end slaughtering all who didn't surrender and join islam or pay a heavy infidel tax, thus from this power base he was able to return to Mecca and conquer it by force of arms.)
In recent years,
the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society.
Former member Mustafa Saied recalls how he gathered with 40 others at a Days Inn on the Alabama-Tennessee border. Many members, he says, preferred secrecy, particularly in case U.S. authorities cracked down on Hamas supporters, including many Brotherhood members.
When the leaders voted, it was decided that Brotherhood members would call themselves the Muslim American Society, or MAS, according to documents and interviews.
If the topic of terrorism were raised,
leaders were told to say that they were against terrorism but that jihad was among a Muslim’s "divine legal right" to be used to defend himself and his people and to spread Islam.
FWIW islamic writings define jihad as 'inner struggle over one's self less than a dozen times, jihad is defined as violence against infidels (kaffirs) over 120 times.
MAS describes itself as a "charitable, religious, social, cultural and educational not-for-profit organization." It has headquarters in Alexandria, Va., and 53 chapters nationwide.
But he says that
MAS, like the Brotherhood, believes in the teachings of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, which are "the closest reflection of how Islam should be in this life."
MAS says it has about 10,000 members and that any Muslim can join by paying $10 a month in dues.
But to be an "active" member - the highest membership class - one must complete five years of Muslim community service and education, which includes studying writings by Brotherhood ideologues al-Banna and Qutb.
Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler.
Al-Banna was so persistent in his admiration of the new Nazi Party that in the 1930s Al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood became a secret arm of Nazi Intelligence and who was affiliated closely with the islamic mufti of Jerusalem who fielded three SS divisions for Hitler's Nazis and instigated several masacres of Jewish people in the towns of Israel. (To the muslims and important Obama appointees, Jerusalem is known as al-Quds, thus the Hamas al-Quds brigates which is sworn to kill every jew in Jerusalem and conquer that city.)
One of the main voices behind the Muslim Brotherhood was Sayed Qutb. With time, Qutb would eventually become the organization's ambassador in the 1950s in Syria and Jordon, as well as being the editor of the Brotherhood's official publication. While in prison following an assassination attempt on Egypt's Nasser, Qutb wrote his treatise, Milestones, that advocated overthrowing Arab governments that refused to be run by anything other than the law of Islamic Shariah.
For Qutb, all non-Muslims were infidels - even the so-called 'people of the book', the Christians and Jews - and he predicted an eventual clash of civilisations between Islam and the west.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned in Egypt since 1954. When Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1955 they initially moved headquarters to London and Geneva. Incidentally, the head of the Geneva offices was Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of al-Banna. In Geneva, Ramadan launched the Institute for Islamic Studies -- to become the civilized face of the Muslim Brotherhood, even having the distinction of dining with US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 at the White House.
In recent months Akef, the international Brotherhood leader, repeatedly has praised Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, called for the destruction of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that al-Qaida was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Qutb and Pakistan's Syed Abul Ala Maududi inspired a whole generation of Islamists,
including Ayatollah Khomeini, who developed a Persian version of their works in the 1970s.
Jimmy Carter was a devotee of Khomeini, calling him a good religious man and maitains an Ayatollah Khomeini room in his Carter Center in Atlanta. The Ayatollah Khomeini issued the 1989 fatwa calling for the killing of Salman Rushdie.
Author and journalist Robert Dreyfuss also claims that the groundwork for the Ayatollah Khomeini was done by an Iranian by the name of Ali Shariat who was influenced by the Brotherhood.
When the Ayatollah Khomeini and his mullahs estabished their muclim theocracy after the fall of the pro-American government of the Shah, perhaps as many as 30,000 were executed within the first year, most were tortured before being murdered.
Today's Iran, as well as trying to develope nuclear bombs for the purpose of being a world power, gives harbor to al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists who target American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and perhaps other places, also providing sophisticated high explosive roadside bombs that kill and maim American troops.
According to a special fatwah or "religious decree" issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, virgin women prisoners
must be raped before execution to prevent their going to heaven. Members of Iran's feared Basij militia forcibly marry female virgin prisoners the night before scheduled executions, raping their new "wives" and making it religiously acceptable to execute them. A Guard conducts the rape the night before execution. The next day, a marriage certificate is issued by a mullah, who sends it to the girl's family, along with a box of chocolates as a wedding gift.
Concerning the
rape of male prisoners the Iranian iman Mesbah-Yazdi: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and
say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed."
"If the judgment for the female prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala."
As a sidenote, with respect to Hezbollah, it is widely reported that the organization got its beginnings in Iran.
Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr of Iraq was also very influential in advancing the islamo/fascist Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.
MAS collected $2.8 million in dues and donations in 2003 in America -
more than 10 times the amount in 1997, according to Internal Revenue Service filings.
Spending often is aimed at schools, teachers and children, the filings show. It also set up Islamic American University, largely a correspondence school with an office in suburban Detroit, to train teachers and preachers.
Until 18 months ago, the university’s chairman was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent cleric in Qatar and a spiritual figure of the Brotherhood who has angered many in the West by praising suicide bombers in Israel and Iraq. The U.S. government has barred him from entering the country since late 1999.
Some of the
propaganda passed to teenagers states; "Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful." Another one says that Western secularism and materialism are evil and that Muslims should "pursue this evil force to its own lands" and "invade its Western heartland."
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