The only good infidel is a dead infidel

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The only good infidel is a dead infidel

By Zev Chafets

Jihadists murder in cold blood an employee of the most persistent Western voice advocating appeasement with them. Has the world finally learned its lesson?

"Help me. I'm a Muslim."

Those, according to the Agence France Press, were the last words Frank Gardner spoke before collapsing in the street Sunday in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Gardner isn't a Muslim. But, as an experienced Middle East hand, he knew the magic words. At least he thought he did.

Gardner is the Middle Eastern correspondent for the BBC who was out on a story when Saudi gunmen opened fire on him. He took a hail of bullets, then begged for his life before lapsing into a coma.

His cameraman, an Irishman named Simon Cumbers, was killed instantly.

Gardner had a Koran with him, too - part of his Islamic safety kit. He had a reason to imagine that posing as a Muslim might save him. Just a week before, another group of Saudi gunmen rampaged through a foreigners' housing compound in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar.

First, they separated their hostages by religion. Then, they freed the Muslims and murdered the infidels.

Maybe the Saudi shooters didn't believe that Gardner was a Believer. Maybe they just didn't give a damn. Either way, they left him in the street for dead and killed his cameraman.

The Saudi government is, as usual, trying to sell the shootings as an aberration (Crown Prince Abdullah has not yet blamed "Zionists" — as he did after the attack in Khobar - but give him a few days). In fact, the attack on the BBC men was — like Al Qaeda itself - simply the logical outgrowth of venerated Saudi traditions.

The Saudi royal family always has practiced strict image control by judiciously doling out press visas to "safe" correspondents. Al Qaeda's press policy is essentially no different. The jihadis, too, want to impose censorship. Since Al Qaeda has no visas to deny (and no expensive jewelry to bestow on compliant foreign correspondents), it uses bullets and bombs to create its reporter-free zones - in Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia.

Once the Western press is driven away or confined to its hotels, Middle Eastern reality becomes what Al Jazeera and other jihad-friendly Arab "news" organizations portray. That picture will be calculated to further the strategic aim of the holy war: the purification of the House of Islam by ridding it of infidels and their influence.

Since the borders of Islam's house range from Spain to Indonesia and Chechnya to Nigeria, this amounts to a declaration of permanent war.

The Bush administration gets both the indivisibility and the gravity of this threat to Western civilization and international prosperity. The elites of Europe and their American useful idiots still hope to cut a deal.

The BBC has been one of the most eloquent and persistent voices for this brand of appeasement. Unhappily, that didn't matter to the jihadis. Nuance is not their strong suit. To them, Gardner and Cumbers were just a couple of foreigners in the service of the enemy. The body of Simon Cumbers will be sent home for burial. Saudi Arabia doesn't permit infidel funerals (Saudis have been known to dump unclaimed corpses into the sea). Gardner may recover. I hope so.

But from Daniel Pearl's dying "I am a Jew" to Gardner's pathetic "Help me, I'm a Muslim," the holy warriors of Islam have made it plain: There are no magic words. The only good infidel is a dead infidel.

June 10, 2004

Also see: Beslan Child Slaughter
Responses to Ed Barlow of Creating the Future

[Khobar Rampage:] "Don't Be Afraid, We Won't Kill Muslims"

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
June 8, 2004
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1869

After an Islamist rampage in the Saudi town of Khobar on May 29 and 30 that ended in the deaths of 22 people, survivors of that atrocity have recounted how the terrorists went to great lengths to ensure that they would kill only non-Muslims. Their actions raise a delicate but urgent issue: how might non-Muslims best protect themselves if caught in such a situation?

Even as the massacre was underway, the terrorists took pains to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims. Here are some of the survivors' testimonies:

Hazem Al-Damen, Muslim, Jordanian: two terrorists knocked on his door and asked him and others hiding whether they were "Muslims or Christians." On hearing "Muslims," the assailants told them to stay in the room because their purpose was to rid the country of Americans and Europeans.

Abu Hashem, 45, Muslim, an Iraqi-American engineer (also called "Mike" in some accounts): The terrorists demanded his residency card, which documented his religion (Muslim) and nationality (American). That combination provoked an argument between two terrorists. "He's an American, we should shoot him," said one. "We don't shoot Muslims," replied the other. The two went back and forth until the latter decided it: 'Don't be afraid. We won't kill Muslims, even if you are an American." With this decision, the terrorists turned polite, even apologizing for breaking into Abu Hashem's home, searching it, and leaving blood stains on his carpet.

Abdul Salam al-Hakawati, 38, Muslim, a Lebanese corporate financial officer: He and his family hid upstairs in their house after hearing gunfire. Downstairs, they heard the terrorists break in and rummage around before one apparently noticed framed Koranic verses on the wall and announced to the others, "This is a Muslim house." When a heavily armed terrorist came upstairs, Mr. Al-Hakawati confirmed his identity by greeting the assailant with "Assalamu 'Alaykum," the Muslim greeting.

Nizar Hajazeen, Christian, a Jordanian software businessmen: He hid with another Jordanian in a room but they opened the door when two armed young men banged violently on it. The terrorists asked the identity of the Jordanians, Arab or Westerners. "We're Arab," came the response. Each was then asked, "A Christian or a Muslim?" Both claimed to be Muslims and showed a Koran as proof.

Taking care to kill only non-Muslims appears to be in response to widespread Saudi criticism of Islamist terrorism directed against Muslims; Saudis seem to agree that murder is a tool suitably directed only against non-Muslims, as two quotes suggest:

Abdelaziz Raikhan, a maintenance man for the Saudi security forces, responded to the suicide bombing of a police headquarters in Riyadh that killed 5 people and wounded 148 on April 21, accusing the perpetrators of being "mentally ill. … There's not one American in this entire area. Not one! What kind of jihad is this?"

Mohsen al-Awaji, a Saudi lawyer, suggests that terrorists should be encouraged by the authorities to go to the many "occupied territories that require resistance," such as in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, and Chechnya. "If someone decides to go, we wish him luck. He's going to die anyway, so let him die there while achieving something, not die here and kill innocents with him."

Nor is this the first time Islamists have specifically targeted infidels. In Malaysia in 2000, for example, jihadists purposefully killed two non-Muslim hostages and spared two others, both Muslims. In Pakistan in 2002, a police chief noted killers "took a good fifteen minutes in segregating the Christians and making sure that each one of their targets gets the most horrific death." The murderers separated Christians from Muslims by requiring each hostage to recite a verse from the Koran. Those who could not were shot.

In all these cases, non-Muslims facing jihadists could have saved themselves by passing as Muslims.

There are several ways they could have done this. They might have greeted their potential murderers with Assalamu 'alaykum (which, ironically, means "peace be with you"). They might have recited in Arabic the Shahada, the Islamic statement of faith. Or they might have recited in Arabic the first sura (chapter) of the Koran, the essential prayer of Islam called the Fatiha ("Opening").

In the past, such knowledge would have saved lives. It could probably do so again in the future.

Shahada and Fatiha

Here is the text of the Shahada, the Islamic statement of faith, in a Latin-letter transliteration of the original Arabic and in translation:

Ashadu an la ilaha illa-llah
Wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul-Ullah

There is no divinity but God
And Muhammad is the prophet of God

Here is the same for the Fatiha, the opening sura (chapter) of the Koran and the essential prayer of Islam:

Bismillah arrahman arraheem
Alhamdulillah, rabb al'alameen
Arrahman arraheem
Malik yawm addeen
Iyyaka na'budu wa'ayyaka nasta'een
Ihdina assirat almustaqeem
Sirat allatheena an'amta 'alayhim ghayri
almaghdubi 'alayhim waladaalleen

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.
Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds;
The merciful, the compassionate;
King of the Day of Judgment.
You we worship and Your aid we seek.
Guide us on the straight path,
The path of those You have blessed, not those
who incurred wrath, nor those gone astray.

Theo van Gogh and Education By Murder in Holland
Click here to find out about the Danish Cartoon Jihad

Theo Van Gogh Murder and Islam

Also see: Beslan Child Slaughter
Responses to Ed Barlow of Creating the Future

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