Boreal

Wars Never-Ending

Another day, another headline about Muslims killing Muslims – men, women and children! Will it ever end or is it to be wars-never-ending, even when the world is that of Allah's. War is endemic to Islam, whether it is the never-ending war against unbelievers or believers killing believers in brutal civil wars over leadership and dogma.

Muhammad started it, the war to rid the world of all who refused to submit to the Will of God. The Prophet and his followers, after being run out of Mecca, took refuge in Medina from which they attacked the caravans passing between the Red Sea and the oasis city on their way to and from Mecca, igniting a civil war. The first real battle, of what would become a bloody fratricidal war, was that of Badr.

As an enticement to kill until none was left who did not accept Islam as his or her religion, God's Messenger, after consulting with his Mentor, revealed that the possessions of an unbeliever, including his wives and daughters, belonged to the Muslim who killed him.

His strategy was successful, and in a few short years the entire Arab population of the Peninsula had converted to Islam or had been killed or taken into slavery.

This overwhelming victory was quickly followed, after the Prophet's death, by three more civil wars under the so-called Four Righty-Guided Caliphs (Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali) – the last three assassinated by unhappy believers heralding an often violent tradition of settling leadership issues, benefitting a religion where violence and the threat of violence is pervasive.

Both types of wars, the general war against unbelievers and the bloody pitiless conflicts between believers continue in one form or another to this day, with the second type expected to be with us indefinitely, even if Islam is successful in ridding the world of all of those who refuse to submit to the Will of Allah.

Bernard Payeur