Muslims Are Fomenters of Political Rebellion Who Favor Modern Democracy III

Prophet Muhammad With The Body Of A Dog

The following is a short history of the Mohammedan political rebellion against the Divinely Ordained Authority of the Holy Roman Emperor by Marsiglio of Padua in his work De translatione Imperii, chapters 3

For after his great victory over the Persians, Heraclius oppressed the Persians and the other Eastern nations with too savage a rule, because of which they unanimously seized on the opportunity for revolt. But so as to set aside their obedience to the Roman Empire irrevocably, following the advice of Mahomet, who at the time was allied with rich and powerful Persians, they adopted a different religion, so that on account of different beliefs and faiths or sects they would not return to this first lordship from the other one. In this they followed the example of Jeroboam , who converted the ten tribes that followed him to a different religion so that they might not return to their old and rightful allegiance.

The Greeks took the same or similar action, for wishing to be separated from obedience to the Roman Church; they adopted a different religion or a different ceremony in their ministration, and so fell knowingly into diverse errors. For all their splendid priests, who defend and foment schisms, are Nestorians or Eutictites or Arians or Jacobites or Hebionites. That, then, is what happened in regard to the peoples and nations of those regions in which the insurrection and disobedience already mentioned occurred. For in order that such insurrection would last they induced their followers to break away and leave not just the Roman Empire but Christianity itself, while accepting certain elements common to the law of Moses and top the Gospel, as is made plain in the Koran. For this reason, it may be noted that certain heretical sects were very friendly towards Mahomet and the laws of the Saracens, which are based on the Koran, for instance, the Nestorians, whom Mahomet orders to be treated with honour. For this reason, Richard relates in his chronicles that a certain monk by the name of Sergius, who was a Greek and a Nestorian, gave Mahomet instruction for a long time and hence it arises that the Nestorians have large monasteries under the dominion of the Saracens.

The Muslim News

Are Western democracies really democratic?

12-05-2006

By Buthaina Shaaban

The Daily Star:

"Say work, for God, His Prophet and the believers shall see your work." My inner mind was repeating this verse from the Koran while watching Friday's news last Friday. I listened to the latest British news on the initial defeat of Labor and their consequent Cabinet reshuffle and images of British citizens protesting the war on Iraq blurred my sight. I thought of the British men and women who came from all over Britain to London carrying their baby children on their shoulders to tell the British government that war is destructive to childhood and humanity at large.

It was hard to believe that those intense public demonstrations failed to change the government's course of action. I asked myself what "democracy" was, when the government's political decision is hostage to one or a few politicians' opinion. The public in Spain, Italy, the United States, as well as in many other European countries, stood firmly against the war. Yet their "democratically elected" governments went to war.

It is quite hard today to define the extent of the disaster that has befallen Iraq. The war has set it at least a couple of hundred years. A byproduct of the war has also been letting the Israeli government go unrestrained with land confiscation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who have been there for thousands of years.

Who could possibly compensate the Iraqis and the Palestinians for what they have been going through when international legitimacy is continuously violated in both countries? The United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel's apartheid wall in found its way into the drawers along with Resolutions 194, 242 and 338.

Since those days, and up to May 5, 2006, the Spanish people have succeeded in forcing their government to pull the Spanish forces out of Iraq. The Italians followed suit by voting for anti-war Italian politicians. The American public continues to say its word against the war, even when their government is not paying heed.

The resignation of Porter Goss, head of the CIA, is one timid step to alleviate the crisis in the U.S. instigated by the great losses suffered by so many American and Iraqi families in the war. There is increasingly more American awareness and determination to stop the war, which only resulted in tragedies for both Americans and Iraqis.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch released its report on the American torture of prisoners, stating that "most torture and abuse have directly resulted from officially sanctioned procedures and policies, including means of torture approved by the American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," which only revealed the feebleness that plagued American "democracy."

Torture in Israeli prisons has been the model followed by the American forces in Iraq. Similar to what happens in Israeli courts, a five-month imprisonment is the sentence imposed on an American soldier who tortures or kills an Iraqi prisoner, equal to the sentence imposed on an American who stole a bicycle in the United States.

While almost every official of some international status turns a blind eye to the crimes committed against Iraqi and Palestinian civilians, none hesitates to condemn any statement by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hizbullah or the democratically elected Palestinian government. No one would even meet with the democratically elected Hamas government. Lieberman, in the meantime, can publicly call for "executing Arab-Israeli Knesset members who made any contact with Hamas."

One can only stand amazed at these models of "democracy" and "civilization" sent to us by Western governments. It might be a good time for the West to rediscover the messages of democracy sent by Arabs and Muslims to the West. Fourteen-hundred years ago, the Prophet Mohammad ordered his followers: "No priest shall be driven out of his church. No Christian forced out of his Christianity. No traveler out of his way. No minister out of his monastery." This is the "democracy" preached by the Prophet a millennium ago, far much more civilized than the distorted model of the West.

Bouthaina Shaaban is the Syrian expatriates minister