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Islam permits Muslim husbands to abandon their wives to rapists in order to save their own lives—so says Dr. Yassir al-Burhami, vice president of Egypt’s Salafi party, the nation’s premiere Islamist party since the Muslim Brotherhood was banned.

Burhami’s fatwa, or Islamic decree, is not altogether surprising. Earlier the Salafi sheikh said that, although a Muslim man may marry non-Muslim women, specifically Christians and Jews, he must hate them—and show them that he hates them—because they are “infidels” (even as he enjoys them sexually).

Indeed, the many fatwas of Dr. Burhami, a pediatrician by training, include banning Muslim cab and bus drivers from transporting Coptic Christian priests to their churches, which he depicted as “more forbidden than taking someone to a liquor bar”; permitting marriage to minor girls; banning Mother’s Day—“even if it saddens your mother”—as a Western innovation; and insisting that Muslims cannot apostatize from Islam—a phenomenon often in the news.

Now in his most recent fatwa—that husbands are permitted to forsake their sexually-assaulted wives in self-interest—Burhami relies on qiyas, or analogy, based on the rulings of a prominent twelfth century jurist: according to Imam ‘Azz bin Abdul Salaam, a Muslim should abandon his possessions to robbers if so doing would safeguard his life.

Based on this logic, Burhami analogizes that the Muslim husband should abandon his wife if defending her jeopardizes his life—as she is just another possession that can easily be replaced.

In the words of a critical Arabic op-ed titled “Manhood according to Burhami!” and written by one Amani Majed, a Muslim woman:

So that which applies to abandoning one’s possessions to thieves and fleeing in fear of one’s life, applies—in Burhami’s view, sorry to say—to one’s wife and daughter. So if the wife is ever exposed to rape, she is seen as a possession. The husband is to abandon her to the rapists and escape with his life. And why not? For if he loses his possessions, he will replace them; and if his wife is raped, he will marry another, even if she remains alive!

The op-ed goes on to consider the ramifications of Burhami’s logic should every Muslim man follow it: if a policeman patrolling the streets sees a woman—a stranger, not his wife or daughter—being gang-raped, should he intervene, as his job entails, and risk his own person, or should he think only of himself and flee? Should the Egyptian soldier stand his ground and defend his nation against invaders, or should he flee to preserve his own life?

Three observations:

First: Salafis like Burhami, who try to pattern their lives as literally as possible after Islam’s prophet Muhammad and his original companions—hence the ubiquitous beards and white robes—deserve attention for they are a treasure trove of information on literal Islam. It’s always the Salafi-minded Muslims who evoke and uphold any number of things deemed absurd or evil in a Western context—from trying to enforce a canonical hadith that compels women to breastfeed adult men (ironically, to protect their “chastity”), to drinking camel urine for good health, to calling for the destruction of all churches.

Of course, even this honesty is contingent on Muslim capability and advantage. Thus Dr. Burhami himself once said that peace treaties with Israel and other infidels should be respected—that is, until Muslims are capable of reneging and going on a successful offensive.

Still, Salafis are much more frank and honest than other, less overt Islamists, namely the two-faced Muslim Brotherhood, which, now that it has been overthrown in Egypt, has shown its true face—terrorism—causing it once again to be banned in Egypt.

Second: To be sure, many Muslims—perhaps the majority—reject Burhami’s latest “cowardly husband” fatwa, in agreement with the aforementioned op-ed. The problem, however, and as usual, is that while they agree that such behavior is unbecoming of a husband, in the realm of Islamic jurisprudence, it is difficult to argue with the Salafi cleric’s logic. He used qiyas, a legitimate tool of jurisprudence; and the imam whose logic he analogized is widely recognized as an authority in Sunni Islam.

Moreover and despite the sneering tone of the op-ed, women are, in fact, often depicted as little more than chattel for men in Islamic scriptures.

This is the fundamental problem facing all moderate Muslims: despite what they like to believe and due to a variety of historical and epistemological factors, they are heavily influenced by Western thinking—protecting women and the weak in general, or chivalry, is a Christian “innovation”—so whenever they come up against Islamic teachings they cannot fathom, they collectively behave as if such teachings don’t really mean what they mean.

Yet the Salafis know exactly what they mean.

Third: This latest fatwa exemplifies the lure of Salafism. This brand of literal Islam does not offer anything profound or spiritually satisfying, but it does offer divine sanctioning for unabashed egoism—in this case, forsaking one’s wife to rape in self-interest.

Justifying egoism is not limited to preserving the self but also gratifying it—especially in the context of jihad. One can go on and on about the other Salafi fatwas permitting rape, incest, and prostitution for those fighting to empower Islam. Even renowned heroes like Khalid bin al-Walid—the “Sword of Allah”—celebrated in the Muslim world for his jihadi conquests, was, from a less hagiographic perspective, little more than a mass murdering, sadistic rapist.

More generally, Salafi-minded Muslims believe that all non-Muslims can be deceived, cheated, robbed, exploited, enslaved and/or killed—all in the self-interest of the Muslim, seen as one with the self-interest of Islam.

Why do they believe this? Because from a Salafi point of view, all free non-Muslim “infidels” who do not submit to Islamic law, or Sharia—Americans and Europeans for example—are natural born enemies, or harbis, and thus free game.

By Alan Caruba

Canada Free Press

I keep wondering why, here in the United States where three thousand died in a 2001 attack on the Twin Towers by terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda, we continue to be told that we must exercise sensitivity and tolerance for a “religion”, Islam, that worldwide is perpetrating not just violence, but a concerted attack on morality in general and Western civilization in particular.

There are more than a billion Muslims worldwide and surely many of them are personally opposed to what is being done in their name. Unfortunately, Islam has a long history of the violence being perpetrated and the general silence of Muslims must be interpreted as consent or the fear of speaking out. By contrast, anywhere anything is said, written or done that offends Muslims brings cries of outrage and demands for apologies.

Throughout the Middle East, in Africa, in Europe, Russia, India and China, just in recent times the evidence of the Islamic war on the right of non-Muslims to practice their faith is everywhere.

One of the leading authorities on Islam and the author of several books is Ali Sina. In “Understanding Muhammad and Muslims”, Sina bluntly says “The Islamic world is sick. It would be shortsighted to deny that the cause of this sickness is Islam. Almost every crime, every abuse and inhumanity perpetrated by Muslims is inspired by examples set by Muhammad and justified through his words and deeds. This is the inconvenient truth that sadly, so many would rather not talk about.”

In the West we ask how Boko Haram, an Islamist group now famed for kidnapping more than 250 Christian girls attending a school in Nigeria and forcibly converting them to Islam, can do such a crime, but in September it had shot 40 students in their sleep at a Nigerian college and within a week of the kidnapping had set off car bombs that killed at least 118 people in the Nigerian city of Jos. Unable to protect its own people, Nigeria needs an international task force to hunt down Boko Haram and destroy it.

We also must ask why it took so long for our State Department to list Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, adding them to the long list that already exists. As Daniel Henninger noted in a May 22 Wall Street Journal commentary, despite the fact that both the Justice Department and the CIA wanted the group added to the list, “State decided not to designate Boko Haram arguing other tactics were available” to deal with them. Henniger warned that “In matters of national security, the U.S. government “has become hopelessly bureaucratized and the public debate about it (radical Islam) hopelessly intellectualized.”

The U.S. government has been led by a President who made it clear that he was opposed to any criticism of Islam. Among his early promises was to close down Guantanamo and the term, “war on terror”, disappeared as one of the government’s goals. It was replaced by surgical attacks such as the one that killed Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders. It has not, however, slowed the expansion of al Qaeda or other Islamist groups.

On May 21, Raymond Ibrahim, an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum and author of “Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians”, took note of the fact that Sudan had sentenced an eight-month pregnant wife and mother to death by hanging for refusing to renounce Christ and embrace Islam. It also ordered that she be flogged. “Tragic as this story is, it is also immensely commonplace in Islamic countries. Why? Because Islamic law does in fact punish the apostate from Islam—including with death—in accordance with the commands of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.”

Ibrahim cited cases in which Christians were threatened with death or killed for being Christian in Afghanistan, Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Iran, Krygyz, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Tanzania, adding that “The fact is, Muslim converts to Christianity are even under attack in Europe.”

Schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims

Because of the schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the killings continue as they have from the beginning of this split shortly after the death of Muhammad in 632 A.D. There have been periods of peace in which the two sects lived together peacefully, but the violence began again in earnest in Iraq, also largely Shiite after years of Sunni control under Saddam Hussein. Though Shiites are a minority in Islam, Iran is Shiite and a leading supporter of terrorist organizations, particularly those led Palestinians, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Sunni Saudi Arabia, watching the U.S. negotiations with Iran, has begun to move away from viewing Iran as a threat to be resisted, fearful no doubt that the U.S. under Barack Obama will do nothing to protect the Middle East and the world from an Iran seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. In recent weeks the Saudis have opened relations with Iran.

On May 25, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the regimes’s Fars News Agency, said that one of that nation’s goals remains the destruction of America. He told a meeting of members of Iran’s parliament that “Battle and jihad are endless…”, a classic Islamic point of view. As for the negotiations with the P5+1 world leaders, permanent members of the U.S. Security Council, plus Germany, they were entered into by Iran to secure a reduction in economic sanctions.

The U.S. resisted the threat of Soviet Communism from 1945 to 1991 until the Soviet Union collapsed, but it has signaled the world that it will not lead resistance to militant Islam.

The threat of Islam has been noted from its earliest years throughout history. It has no restrictions on slavery. It relegates women to a subservient class. It shares no moral resistance to murder, kidnapping and other crimes so long as they are committed in the name of “jihad”—holy war.

Today there is no greater threat to mankind than Islam. As far as Islam is concerned, you are the enemy, to be converted, enslaved, or killed.

By Tom Burgum

Longboat Key News

The United States seemingly has a new foreign policy strategy. When danger threatens in the world, simply tweet it away. Russia invades the Ukraine: have a State Department official appear on Twitter with a sign of support for the Ukraine. Kidnapping in Nigeria: show the first lady on Twitter holding a sign that reads, “Bring back our girls.” She, of course, was referring to the 276 predominantly Christian school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram who plans to sell them into slavery.

The tweeting caught on and hundreds of thousands of people have joined the first lady in demanding the return of the girls. Even Boko Haram decided to tweet a bit: “To Hate is Human, To Bomb Is Divine. We hate western inventions including twitter: however, we feel the necessity to use it to reach out to our fans.” [Sic]

Whether it is the tweeting, or maybe reality has finally sunk in, but the scales seem to have finally fallen from the administration’s eyes about Boko Haram and their reign of terror in Nigeria. Michelle Obama, in her weekly radio address on May 10, said, “My husband and I are outraged and heart broken. In these girls we see our own daughters.”

Hillary Clinton, our former Secretary of Sate who isn’t yet running for president, got in first with – what else – a tweet: “Access to education is a basic right and an unconscionable reason to target innocent girls.” Secretary of State, John Kerry added his voice to the chorus: “The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime, and we will do everything in our power to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice.”

Frankly, our leaders’ outrage is a bit late. In May 2013, Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members. According to Raymond Ibrahim in Front Page Magazine, Kerry didn’t congratulate the Nigerian government, instead, quoting Reuters, “U.S. Secretary of State Kerry issued a strongly worded statement [to the Nigerian president] saying: ‘We are . . . ‘deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human right violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism from Boko Haram.”

At this point, the Nigerians were likely confused. Genocide Watch, according to Greenfield, “describes Boko Haram as a Jihadist organization seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law on Nigeria and has placed it at Stage 6 of the 8 stages of genocide. Their people were being killed, churches and schools were being burned and according to Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, “In February, Boko Haram killed 59 boys aged 11 – 18 in a boarding school in Bani Yadi, slitting their throats or burning them alive.“ It was then the Nigerians were summarily informed that shooting back was a violation of Boko Haram’s human rights. What were Kerry and the State Department thinking? Too late to tweet about the boys who had their throats slit or who had been burned alive. Those kids aren’t coming back.

Hillary Clinton, who is now outraged by the abduction of the girls, repeatedly refused to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization despite the group killing thousands of Nigerians and destroying hundreds of schools and churches. The State Department justified the refusal by claiming that it was poverty and anger at “poor government delivery,” not Islamic extremism that was behind the murder and violence.

Ms. Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State, David Adams went so far in a letter to congress as to allege that, “Similar to the United States, Nigeria’s diversity is a sovereign strength.” Similar to the United States? Have the Baptists and Catholics been burning Mosques recently?

Mr. Obama once again did not see, or admit he saw, the hand of Islamic terrorism in all this. As David Greenfield wrote in Front Page Magazine, “Obama blamed the upsurge of terrorist groups on the fact that ‘countries are not delivering for their people and where there are sources of conflict and underlining frustrations that have not been adequately dealt with.”

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. According to Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton, if the welfare check doesn’t come, maybe a pothole hasn’t been fixed, or the mail is late, it’s OK to slit some throats, burn a few folks alive, and kidnap several hundred girls. Well, I can see how that might relieve frustration for some people.

All this raises a central question. How long is this administration going to deny the reality that is there for all to see? How long will events such as the Fort Hood massacre be called “work place violence?” Following that logic, the Christmas shoe bomber wasn’t a terrorist, just a crazy Muslim with a foot problem. The Manhattan bomber wasn’t part of any terrorist group, just a Muslim guy upset about parking regulations. When two Muslim brothers decided to blow up a bunch of people at the Boston Marathon, it wasn’t terrorism, just two immigrants we hadn’t been made to feel real welcome.

So, until the government calls Islamic terrorism by its real name, the rest of us can tweet on like a bunch of twits.

By E. Jeffrey Ludwig

Arutz Sheva

Raymond Ibrahim in a recent article titled, “Islam: ‘Appalling and Abhorrent’ in the Eyes of a Blind World,” asserts that Islamic countries have a long history of Koran-sanctioned despicable behavior towards Christians and women.

Does he not know that Muslims are peace loving people who just want to own cell phones, eat soft tacos, get a good education, and live eternally in fraternal peace and joy with their neighbors throughout the world? I personally know a peace-loving Moroccan man who owns a restaurant with great take out. When told that Egypt and North Africa were converted to Islam at the point of the sword, not by spiritual conviction, he became quite angry.

Another Egyptian in a Palestinian grocery store in New York (an engineer by training, but forced by circumstances to work as a store clerk), however, communicated his outrage at the West because of the Crusades of 1095 AD. "Getting even" for that historical outrage is not good enough. There will never be peace in the world according to this man until the outrage of the Crusades is avenged (even though, after the first Crusade, the Muslims in the Middle East defeated the Christian invaders within 100 years).

You people from the West, you critics of Islam and of Muslims, do not, will not, and cannot understand that Islam is the religion of peace. It wishes well to all people. The murderous rampages against non-Muslims and against females and against converts all over the world must be aberrations, not representative of the true intent of Islam.

Is it not obvious that among a religion that numbers over one billion followers, there are going to be some malcontents who are giving their heritage a bad name? Are you going to smear the dear, warm-hearted, tolerant, loving, family-oriented, kind, intelligent, neighborly, women-cherishing, sincere, motivated, forward-looking Muslim people with a broad brush of accusations and incendiary statements?

Do you not realize there could be a comparable book about Christian atrocities to women? What about all the battered wives and abused children in the USA alone?

Is not Mr.Ibrahim just another Pharisee throwing the first stone at Muslims? Is it not hypocrisy and distortion to portray the kind Islamic population of the world, (salaam alaikum to you) to portray this family-building tradition and culture based on the rights of all people to enjoy freedom and happiness (although the words freedom and happiness nowhere appear in the Koran) as hideously sadistic at its core?

It is and must be an exaggeration to portray Islamics as hateful, terroristically-inclined misogynists.

Why is it wrong to portray Islam this way? Because, well, because if it were true, then it would mean that the very survival of Western Civilization as a force for good in the world is being threatened, and that we are in a cultural, political, and military crisis that is comparable to the first wave of Islamic militancy that took place in the seventh and eighth centuries, and has recurred (albeit with less success) over many centuries up to the present.

How can that be? The Billboard Awards were on TV just the other night, and then Dancing With The Stars, then the final night of American Idol.

A culture war of the magnitude such as that depicted by Raymond Ibrahim or Robert Spencer or Daniel Greenfield or Steve Emerson or Daniel Pipes or scores of other lesser lights?.....No…. They are hysterical.

No, we must not succumb to the temptation to see Islam as a vile threat..... The Golden Globe awards are coming up. So are the Oscars and the Emmies..... So are the Country Music Awards and the Soul Train awards.... We are in the midst of a media orgy of glitz, music, competition, smiles, and hip-swaying joy.

How can anyone think that we are undergoing a threat to Western Civilization at the same time? It is gloom and doom, an out-of-proportion negative fantasy. It is a version of reality generated by bored intellectuals. It is insulting to the masses of happy, justified Americans.

Lindsay Lohan's Rolls just got a flat tire, and, is she upset! She has returned to rehab from the stress.Justin Bieber is awaiting his next contact with the police, as is Alex Baldwin. Madonna signed a three year contract with her Kabbala teacher. Solange just punched and kicked Jayzee in an elevator.

Are we then expected to worry about Islamic hatred of women, of infidels, of Jews, of Christians, of Buddhists, of Chinese communists, of Hindus, of Sunnis, of Shi'ites, of Al-Qaeda, of Muslim women going shopping with their kids in bazaars in Iraq?

Come on, you must be kidding me. Mr. Ibrahim, you say Islam is hostile towards Christianity and towards women – you must be kidding.....