A New Jersey group provoked controversy by putting up billboards and setting up a “hot line” to promote Islam in the State.

The Why Islam campaign

The Why Islam campaign is a project of the Islamic Circle of North America, New Jersey chapter. It includes two billboards on the New Jersey Turnpike. One, using an American flag background, says:

Islam? Get the facts.

The other touts Ramadan, the most holy month of Islam. (Ramadan happens to be unfolding now.) It points out that 1.57 billion people celebrate it worldwide.

Both billboards list a toll-free call-in number and a Web address. (See these reports from a local TV station and The Star-Ledgerof Newark.)

Asim Khan, the head of the group, says that his mission is to educate people.

Rather than absorb knowledge from Fox News, we invite people to come hear it from the horse’s mouth. We invite them to ask us what our faith is about. There is a lot of curiosity about Islam, but also misinformation, uncertainty, and a sense of fear in approaching us.

The problem, as usual in such campaigns, lies not so much in what it says as in what it doesn’t say.

What the campaign does not say

The Dome of the Rock. This is now the third holiest site in Islam, but only since the Six-Day War. Photo: CNAV.

The campaign does not say why Muhammad invented Islam. Nor does it even try to say why nineteen assassins commandeered four airliners and flew three of them into buildings. (They tried to fly a fourth into a building, but when passengers laid siege to the cockpit, they crashed it instead.)

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch will say why. Spencer is not a Fox News Channel regular. He offers this primer on Islam, plus a commentary on Islam’s most holy book the Qu’ran.

Two facts, that most people don’t understand, give the key to Islam. One is the Abrogation Principle. It says that when two verses (ayat) of the Qu’ran conflict, the one that Muhammad wrote later in his life takes precedence.

The other is that the Qu’ran does not list all its books in the order of their writing. Aside from the book named “Introduction,” all the other books appear in order of length, from the longest to the shortest.

When one does sort the books in order from the oldest to the newest, and applies the Abrogation Principle, a frightening pattern becomes abundantly clear. The Qu’ran’s “fighting words” take precedence over all its “peaceful words.” Why? Because Muhammad wrote the “fighting words” later in his life, from his headquarters in Medina. He wrote the “peaceful words” in Mecca—out of which the city’s residents chased him.

Fighting words

These “fighting words” make plain that Islam is a political movement bent on world conquest. Surah 9:5 reads:

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (trick in war for deceiving and outwitting the enemy); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

That verse is so sensitive that many Muslim apologists try to deny its meaning. They have two problems:

1. Surah 9 comes very late—perhaps later than all the other surat (books) of the Qu’ran. Thus it abrogates anything else in the Qu’ran with which it conflicts.
2. Islam includes another dangerous principle—taquiyyah. That word, in Arabic, means lying. Thus a Muslim may lie freely, so long as he knows the truth, and his lie will benefit the faith. Thus anything a Muslim has to say about Islam, is suspect without corroboration.

With one exception: when a Muslim follows the Qu’ran as a careful “outside” reader understands it, you can believe him. When someone says that if you don’t follow his way of thinking, he’ll have to kill you, you should believe him.

Featured image: the green crescent moon and star of Islam.