Since the Islamist
al-Qaeda terrorists orchestrated a daring attack on the World Trade
Center (WTC) in New York on the September 11th in 2001,
the vocal Muslim community have been in aggressive denial that the
crashing WTC towers has nothing to do with Islam. They claim that
it was an act of a few deviants who have strayed far from the
central ideal of Islam, which is peace. This denial goes on
despite al-Qaeda’s much-publicized repeated claims that their
actions are meant for saving the pride and integrity of Islam.
Does the falling WTC tower have any relevance to Islam? I
will examine this question in the midst of these claims and
denials.
The WTC towers of
New York, that
came down crashing on the 9/11 (2001), were the prime symbol of
capitalism which is an innovation of the infidel west and of the
US, in particular. WTC symbolizes the trades and commerce,
involving usury or interest, which prohibited in Islam.
Those who devour
usury will not stand except as stand one whom the Evil one by his
touch Hath driven to madness. That is because they say: "Trade is
like usury," but Allah hath permitted trade and forbidden usury.
Those who after receiving direction from their Lord, desist, shall
be pardoned for the past; their case is for Allah (to judge); but
those who repeat (The offence) are companions of the Fire: They
will abide therein (for ever). [Quran 2:275]
Allah will deprive
usury of all blessing, but will give increase for deeds of
charity: For He loveth not creatures ungrateful and wicked. [Quran
2:276]
Apart from symbolizing the evil and wicked capitalism, the
WTC was also the central symbol of American power and wealth. In
Islam, Allah wishes all people and entities of the universe submit
to the feet of Islam by hook or crook. The infidel
America is not
only dominated by the disbelieving worst beasts, the Christians
and atheists but also controlled by the Jews, who are the vilest
of all creatures in the eyes of Allah.
Surely those who
disbelieve from among the followers of the Book (Christians and
Jews) and the polytheists shall be in the fire of hell, abiding
therein; they are the worst of creatures. [Quran
8:55]
The worst beasts in Allah's sight are the
disbelievers. [Quran
98:6]
Abu Huraira
reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The
last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against
the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would
hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree
would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind
me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it
is the tree of the Jews.
[Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985]
So the
Americans are the worst people who have formed alliance with
Islam’s worst enemy, the Jews. They have also supported the most
unjust occupation and creation of the Jewish state of Israel in
the Muslim land. It is only because of America that Muslims cannot
destroy the Jewish state. The American CIA, in collusion with the
Mossad of Israel, is engaged in all kinds of the conspiracy and
plots against the Islamic world; thus, keeping the Muslims poor
and with all sorts of problem. The US is keeping a hold on the oil
production of the Islamic world and stealing it away, which is
Allah’s most precious gift to His sole votaries.
How could the
infidel America wield such indomitable power? Where does power of
America’s affront to Allah and his community on earth come from?
It all comes from the America’s power of capitalism. Thus the
towers of WTC, symbolizing the American capitalism, were a peg in
Allah’s scheme of establishing the dominance of His power on the
face of the earth.
So, for the
most valid and pressing cause of Islam, Osama bin Laden
orchestrated an incredible attack on the WTC to teach the satanic
United States a lesson, which Osama claims, ‘he did for the sake
of Islam’. The White House and the Pentagon, which are the other
two centers of American power, were also rightly included as the
targets. Islam’s greatest enemy, the America’s highest symbol of
power and pride, the World Trade Centre, came down crashing on
9/11 with the wailing and cries of those caught in the middle.
However, despite the fact that the Islamic Ummah was overly
delighted on the day of 9/11 attack, this courageous and selfless
adventure of Osama bin Laden in the cause of Islam is vehemently
rejected by many deceptive or ignorant Muslims, calling it
anti-Islamic.
Let us go back
in history to January, 630 CE, the holy month of Ramadan. The
greatest symbol of piety and pride of the pagans of the Arabian
Peninsula was the Ka’ba located in the city of Mecca. The
reverence of Ka’ba reached up to the idolaters of India. A
monolith from the Ka’ba was carried to Somnath in India and was
revered with great piety by the Hindu idolaters. Such was the
piety and pride, which the Ka’ba, the Arab pagans’ sacred house of
God, used to command.
The Prophet of
Islam discarded a 10-year-long treaty of Hudaybiyah of
nonaggression just after two years’ of its signing and marched
against Mecca. He stormed into the city and first rushed to the
greatest symbol of the Arabian religious piety and pride, the
Ka’ba. All power, pride and piety belong to Allah alone. So there
came down the pagan’s sacred house of Ka’ba crashing onto the feet
of Islam. Standing in the middle, the Prophet pointed to the 360
idols one after another and his henchmen smash them into dust. As
the great idol of Hubal came down crashing, the Prophet yelled in
the words of the Koran:
“Truth has (now)
arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature)
bound to perish.
“ [17:81]
The symbol of
the Arabian idolaters’ pride and piety came down crashing in the
midst of immense grief and suppressed wailing of the citizens who
have revered the Ka’ba and the devoted to the idols therein for
ages. The greatest symbol of the false piety of the Arabia thus
was converted into what remains the greatest symbol of the Islamic
piety for all time. All piety and pride is Allah’s alone and the
truth has prevailed.
Apart from the
Ka’ba, there were three great goddesses, the daughters of God in
the Arabia belief, namely al-Uzza, al-Lat and al-Manat. Once the
Ka’ba has been restored to the feet of Allah, the Prophet sent
forth the barbarian Khalid al-Walid to destroy the icon of al-Uzza
at Nakhla. When heard of Khalid’s advance, the guardian of al-Uzza
hung a sword on her and said [Ibn Ishaq, p565]:
O Uzza, make an
annihilating attack on Khalid,
Throw aside
your veil and gird up your train.
O Uzza, if you
do not kill this man Khalid
Then bear a
swift punishment or become a Christian.
Khalid arrived
and brought the temple of al-Uzza down to the ground. The second
greatest symbol of the piety, devotion and pride of the Arabian
pagans came down crashing at the command of the apostle.
The Prophet
then headed towards at-Taif, the home of another great goddess of
Arabia, the al-Lat. Hearing of the prophet’s advance, the
Taif residents fortified their enclave and shower of arrows from
inside repulsed the Muslims. Muhammad laid seize on at-Taif for
twenty days and tried every strategy and weapon available to
overrun the city but failed. Finally he gave up and ordered to cut
down far-famed vineyards surrounding the At-Taif enclave and burn
them to their roots.
However, it did
not take long for the At-Taif citizens to realize that they could
not resist Prophet Muhammad much longer. About ten months later,
they sent a deputation for submission to Islam to Medina in order
to avoid butchery at the hand of the Prophet. While settling the
terms for submission to Islam, they pleaded the Prophet to spare
the idol of goddess al-Lat, greatly venerated by their
people. But Muhammad firmly refused to accept the plea and sent
Abu Sufyan and Al-Moghira to destroy the idol. In the midst of
great wailing and cries of the residents, al-Moghira hewed down
the goddess of al-Lat. There came down the last great symbol of
pride and piety of the Arabian pagans. Praise and piety to Allah
alone prevailed with the falsehood annihilated.
The Prophet of Islam had successfully annihilated all signs of
idolatry from the Ka’ba on the day of capture of Mecca in 630 AD.
However, deceiving the attention and knowledge of Allah and his
messenger, a vestige of the Ka’ba idolatry still survived for
another five centuries in an Indian Hindu temple in Somnath. The
famous goddess of al-Manat (God’s 3rd daughter)
had disappeared from Arabia and found a revered place in Somnath.
It came to the knowledge of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Historian Ibn
Asir writes: “When Yamin-ud-Daulah (Sultan Mahmud) heard this,
he resolved upon making a campaign to destroy this idol; believing
that when the Hindus saw their prayers and imprecations to be
false and futile, they would embrace the faith (Islam)” [Jaffar,
p76]. Ibn Khaldun confirms the same: “From some sources Mahmud
received this information and with a view to extirpate idolatry to
prove the helplessness of man-made gods and to belie the claims of
the Hindus, he mobilized his forces against Somnath” [Jaffar,
p77 ]. Describes Ibn Asir, “Band after band of defenders
(Hindus) entered the temple of Somnath, and with their hands
clasped round their necks, wept and passionately entreated him.
Then again, they issued forth to fight until they were slain but
few were left alive... The number of the slain exceeded fifty
thousand” [Elliot & Dawson, p470-71].
Once overcame the resistance, Mahmud captured great booty from
Somnath and moved onto destroy the sacred idol temple. The people
of Somnath proposed that ‘they would pay several crores (crore
= 10 millions) of gold coins into his treasury’ if he would
spare the mutilation of the idols. Some of his nobles tempted
Mahmud to accept the offer but the devoted fighter of Allah
thoroughly rejected it: “I know this, but I desire that on the
day of resurrection I should be summoned with the words, ‘where is
Mahmud who broke the greatest of the heathen idols?’ rather
than these: “Where is that Mahmud who sold the greatest of the
idols to the infidels for golds” [Elliot & Dawson, p472].
The last vestige of the Arabian idolatry and the greatest symbol
of the Somnath Hindus’ pious devotion, pride and power came down
crashing and were smashed into pieces, according to the example
set by the Allah’s apostle five centuries earlier.
In continuation of this legacy of bringing down the symbols and
centers of infidel’s power, pride and piety to the feet of Islam,
world’s second greatest power, the Sassanian Persian empire, came
down crashing at the feet of Islam in 636 CE. The same year, the
greatest power in the world, the Byzantine empire’s pride and
glory got a beating when Heraclius lost major part of the
Palestine and Syria to the Muslims. Christian Byzantine glory and
pride suffered a terrible blow in 637, when their greatest prize,
the holy city of Jerusalem, fell to the conquering army of caliph
Omar. In 642, the great ancient civilization of Egypt fell on to
the feet of Islam. Each of these conquests accompanied with great
pillage and looting of wealth, sacking of great palaces and
destruction of churches and temples of non-Islamic piety. For an
example,
Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem (634-638), who surrender
Jerusalem to the Muslims, described the Muslim invaders as “godless
barbarians” who “burnt
churches, destroyed monasteries, profaned the Crosses and
blasphemed against Christ and the church.” The
following year, thousands died of famine resulting from the
destruction and pillage by the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem.
[Ibn Warraq, p. 219]
From the
prophet’s iconoclastic actions and their follow-through by his
companions and later Muslim conquerors, let us turn attention to
the holy Quran, which is the encyclopedia of perfect guidance to
all mankind from Allah and is the store-house of all knowledge of
the universe. Nothing in the world has been excluded from the
Koran and everything has been explained in detail by Allah to make
it easily understandable by every human being:
There
is not an animal (that lives) on the earth, nor a being that flies
on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you. Nothing
have we omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be
gathered to their Lord in the end. [Q 6:38]
In
their histories there is certainly a lesson for men of
understanding. It is not a narrative which could be forged, but a
verification of what is before it and a distinct explanation of
all things and a guide and a mercy to a people who believe. [Q
12:111]
Shall
I seek a judge other than Allah, when He it is Who has sent down
to you the Book fully explained? ... [Q 6:114]
So,
when Koran is the mine of all knowledge descended directly from
the Lord of the universe, Who knows every detail and every mystery
of the world, anything outside the Koran is either false,
misleading and unnecessary. So Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam and
the Prophet’s trusted friend and son-in-Law, had said: ‘extra-Islamic
documents or books that contain information absent in the Koran
are false and misleading, while others that contained knowledge
already in the Koran are unnecessary’.
When the 3rd caliph Omar, also a great companion and a
father-in-law of the Prophet, conquered Egypt in 641, he came face
to face with the vast library of Alexandria. This library was the
symbol of intellectual power and pride of the glorious city
founded by the great heathen Alexander the great around 322 BCE.
All true knowledge and intellectual glory solely belongs to Allah
and Islam, which is all vouchsafed in the Koran. The vainglorious
symbol of false and erroneous Jahiliya learning and knowledge must
be destroyed in order to preserve the integrity, sanctity and
purity of Allah’s true and complete knowledge on earth. And there
went the glorious library of Alexandria burned into ashes.
|
About six centuries later in India, Bakhtiyar Khalji, the
general of Alauddin Khalji, headed eastward and came face to
face with the famous
Nalanda Univerity in modern-day Bihar, world’s first
resident uinversity founded in 427 CE, with 10000 students and
2000 teachers.
The university was an architectural and environmental
masterpiece in itself, and a
peerless centre and pride of the paganic Buddhist learning,
knowledge and science. Such centers of false and erroneous
Jahiliya learning and education must not stand with its usual
glory in the domain of Islam. It must fall to the feet of
Islam. There went Bakhtiyar killing the teachers of the
university. When faced with giant nine-story library of
Nalanda, Bakhtiyar asked if there was a Koran inside. The
Koran, the ultimate source of all knowledge and guidance for
mankind must be saved and prevail. And there went the
library’s vast treasures burned into ashes. |
A
view of the ruins of Nalanda University (Wiki) |
In the days of Prophet Muhammad, there were no such sky-touching
towers like the WTC of New York, neither were there airplanes to
bring them down. But prophet Muhammad brought down every symbol of
pride, power and piety of the infidels of his time that came
within his power. The legacy of the Prophet was perpetuated by his
trusted companions and later Muslim conquerors and rulers.
Striking at the heart of the infidels’ great symbols of power,
pride and piety has been a ceaseless legacy of Islam, initiated by
the Prophet himself and perpetuated through the later centuries.
The United States of America is not only a great infidel power,
similar to the Persian and the Byzantine empires of the time of
Prophet Muhammad, but also, in alliance with the vile Jews and
Israel, constitutes the greatest enemy of Islam in today’s world.
The attack and destruction of the Word Trade Center, America’s
symbol of pride and power, by Osama bin Laden, falls perfectly
into the iconoclastic scheme set forth by the Prophet of Islam in
the early 7th century. Hence, the falling WTC towers of
New York is not at all alien to Islam but is a part and parcel of
Islam’s iconoclastic legacy. And definitely, this is not the last.
References
1.
Ibn Ishaq,
Sirat Rasul Allah (trs A Guillaume), Oxford, Karachi (2004)
2.
Ibn Warraq,
Why I am not a Muslim, Prometheus Books, New York (1995)
3.
SM Jaffar, The Ghaznawids, Delhi (1972)
4.
HM Elliot & John Dawson, The History of India, Vol 1, Kitab
Mahal; Lukhnow (1964)