Our enemy Islam has revealed all

OPINION:

It has been said that the best predictor of future behavior is always past behavior and that if you want to know what your neighbor is going to do tomorrow, it would be wise to pay attention to what he has already done. In the words of Sun Tzu: “Know your enemy” if you want to avoid the “peril of a hundred of battles.”

In light of recent atrocities, including the massacre of Jews in Australia and the butchery of Christians in Nigeria, as well as the shootings on the campus of Brown University, maybe it’s time we start acknowledging what we know about this enemy that seems so hell-bent on destroying us.

Whether it be the carnage of Oct. 7, 2023, the terrorism of 9/11 or the thwarted threats to bomb Los Angeles and various Christmas festivals across Europe, maybe, just maybe, it’s time we start being honest about what we see clearly before our very eyes and acknowledge that our enemy is telling us exactly who he is, what he believes and what he intends to do to us.

Who is this enemy? Put simply, it is Islam.

Before you shout, “Islamophobia!” you might want to remember that a fear is not irrational or “phobic” if it’s based on facts, and that it’s more insane to ignore someone who says he intends to kill you than it is to take him at his word and conclude he actually means it.

Now, we’ve all been reassured a thousand times over that the word “Islam” simply means submission to God. To those of us with Christian sympathies, that all sounds innocuous enough. Still, shouldn’t we consider how the Quran itself defines this “submission” and what it instructs its adherents to actually do?

Here is just a smattering of Quranic verses to that end.

First, the Quran is clear that all Muslims must work to convert Christians, Jews and all others to Islam — and kill them if they refuse.

Surah 2:191, for example, says explicitly, “And kill [non-Muslims] wherever you find them. … Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.” Surah 9:5 adds, “Kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush.”

No, these verses are not just anomalies; there’s more — a lot more — where this came from:

• Surah 3:28 says Muslims must not take the infidels (any non-Muslim) as friends.

• Surah 3:85 says any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.

• Surah 5:33 says maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam.

• Surah 8:12 says terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Quran.

• Surah 8:65 says the unbelievers are stupid and Muslims must fight them.

• Surah 9:123 says make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.

• Surah 47:4 says do not seek peace with the infidels and behead them when you catch them.

This is all part and parcel of the Muslim worldview. This is what it is. It is right there in black and white.

George Santayana told us, “He who doesn’t learn the lessons of history is doomed to repeat them.” Many of our seminal leaders have learned these lessons and warned us of Islam’s threat to the civilized world and to our Judeo-Christian freedom.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to Congress: “The [Barbary] ambassador answered us that [their right to attack us] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

John Quincy Adams added: “The precept of the Quran is perpetual war against all who deny that Mahomet is the prophet of God. … The command to propagate the Muslim creed by the sword is always obligatory when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike by fraud or by force.”

Winston Churchill, understanding Islam’s history all too well, said this: “How dreadful are the curses which Muhammadism lays on its votaries! … The influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in this world.”

Only those who are blind, foolish and dumb ignore an enemy who says explicitly that he intends to kill you and your neighbors and then proceeds to do it. The lessons of history are clear. It’s not Christians and Jews who are spraying bullets into holiday festivals and shouting, “Death to the infidel.”

Worldviews matter. Some are enemies of life and freedom, and some are not. We ignore the difference at our peril.

• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.