News flash! Islam does not mean peace!

I know, I know. Many of us grasped this intuitively over the years, despite what President Bush insists, even before September 11, 2001. That is a fair realpolitik position. Islam is as Islam does, in other words. But it also means the same as the Norse word berserk(r) — literally. First, some background.*

There was always, of course, a morsel of truth to the “peace” fib. Both Muslim and dhimmi apologists still trot out the one about how Islam and salaam, of “Salaam alaikem” (Peace be upon you) fame, come from the same tri-consonantal Arabic root, “s-l-m,” which is often translated to peace. Translations being what they are, this allows for a lot of flexibility, especially when one has an agenda other than total accuracy. Any honest Arabic speaker, that is, one not speaking “takiyya” to infidels, will tell you that the proper word for political and military peace, as implied, is “sulh.” Writer Lev Navrozov demonstrates this1 with an Arabic dictionary and a host of examples, like “to sue for sulh” and “to observe the articles of sulh.” A much closer translation of s-l-m is “calmness” or “resignation,” which is similar to the secondary meanings of peace, such as “tranquility.”

Navrozov boils down a host of translations for salaam. Its essential meaning is soundness or tranquility of mind and body. The Arabic greeting “Salaam alaikum,” often mistranslated as “Peace unto you,” is more correctly translated “May you have good mental and physical health.” Nice sentiments, but hardly unique. Its true meaning becomes less sublime, leaving it undifferentiated from many other such greetings and toasts around the world. It equates to the endearingly trite American “Have a nice day!” and the Tibetan “Tashi Delek” (May everything be well), but is less exalted than others such as the Irish “Dia duit” (May God be with you).

Despite the banality of the expression, Islamic scholars forbid Muslims from greeting non-Muslims with it [2], implying that ill health to them would be better. Christian Arabs also use the phrase though, without such limitation. The word salaam also makes more sense in the phrase, “sallahu alayhi wa’alihi wa salaam,” said by Muslims whenever mentioning Muhammad, when translated as “May he rest in peace (tranquilly),” rather than the clumsy and confusing pseudo-literal “Peace be upon him,” as it usually is.

These days, except for the President, not even the mainstream media force the “Islam means peace” whopper on us anymore. The “peace” deal was merely the first attempt to keep the masses firmly on the plantation, illiterate of true Islam, lest they disturb the supranational-elite masters and their fragile relations with the oil sheiks. No, nowadays Islam means “submission,” often tagged with “to Allah” for clarification.

This, the mainstream media learned, is because Islamic scholars now tell us so. Islamic scholars also believe all knowledge before and outside of Islam is Jahiliya, or ignorance, unworthy of study. The Bamiyan Buddhas were symbols of ignorance, as are the pyramids threatened by Islamists, as was the ancient library at Alexandria, said to have been burned by the second “righteous” Caliph Umar. Jewish and Christian texts that pre-date Islam are declared corruptions if they conflict with the tautologically perfect (“it’s perfect because it’s perfect,”) Koran or Hadith, according to the scholars. Of course, they also insist all Islamic scholars must be practicing Muslims, — sorry Mr. Spencer, Ms. Yeor et al. — or at least fawning dhimmis — congratulations Ms. Armstrong and Mr. Esposito!

These days, traditional, as in most, Muslim scholars have a little problem. Past scholars could always hide an inconvenient truth. Today, obscure knowledge is accessible to anyone with a computer and Internet connection. We can now check up on assorted scholars, mullahs, sheiks and imams if we smell a rat.

So, researching but minding the caveat of being wary of much on the Internet, we find that capital “Islam” was actually once small “Islam.” Capital Islam, it turns out, is not the historical term for the religion of Muhammad. According to respected (by Islamists) scholar Carl Ernst, classical Muslims used “iman,3” which translates to “faith.” “The Faith” was what followers called their religion, in the same way, say, crime families have used “the Syndicate” or “the Family” to refer to their organization. The implication of using “iman” is that there is only one faith; the same theory of Jahiliya that destroys non-Islamic temples also excludes the reality of non-Arab religions. Islam was called Muhammadism in much of the West, until Muslims campaigned against the term because of its focus on their messenger, not his message. Interestingly, the term “Muslim,” or “Moslem,” as spelled until recently, is also modern usage for a follower of Islam. Muhammad used “mumin,” or “believer,” for someone who has fully committed to his precepts, while “Muslim” was relegated to those who merely had taken the perfunctory vow, usually under duress or surrender, called the shahadah. [3]

Modern Muslim and Western Orientalist scholars, searching for a proper name for Muhammad’s religion, if only for Western consumption, settled on “Islam,” taking a fairly obscure word used only eight times in the Koran. Pretty translations and inking new meanings for old words is a scholarly habit that has effectively helped create a faux Islam, acceptable for Western and secular Arab consumption, while the real Islam still exists widely among the Islamists, ready to seize and hold naive converts with its no exit strategy.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with giving old terms new meaning. For instance, after the introduction of the automobile, it became the dominate definition for the word “car.” The problem Islamic scholars have in ascribing a new meaning to “Islam” is that Muhammad did not use this term to refer to his new religion. “Islam” to him simply meant what it always meant to Arabic-speaking tribes. To Muhammad, “Islam” meant a type of submission, but not to God, who was not yet established among the pagan Arabs, but of submission or surrender of one’s desire to live, in order to become fearless in battle. According to, among others, Father Gnana Pragash Suresh, an expert on Islam with the Society of St. Pius X, Islam “referred to an attribute of manliness and described someone who was heroic and brave in battle” and who would “fight to the death” against “impossible odds.” [4] Ironically, submission to God’s laws is actually a concept developed by Christian monastic orders that Muhammad often railed against. It required moral firmness, while Muhammad’s morals depended on his circumstances, suitably converging with his most recent vision. Islamic morals only firmed once Muhammad had died, having left an often brutal legacy of conflicting statements and actions and the impossible task of sorting them out.

In other words, “Islam,” the word known to Muhammad, pre-dates “Islam” the religion, as written and elaborated upon by later Muslim scholars. Muhammad’s warrior definition of Islam, a very Bedouin concept, springs from the eye-for-an-eye code of his Arab nomadic culture. It is also very useful for spreading an ideology by force.

If further proof is needed, Islamic suicide murders perhaps capture Muhammad’s definition of Islam far better than scholarship can. Not counting confused teens, the mentally retarded, the blackmailed and the kidnapped, all forced to blow themselves up among “infidels,” suicide murders are “true believers.” Harvard-educated Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes coined the term “sudden jihad syndrome,” [5] to describe seemingly modern, normal Muslims suddenly killing kufr (infidels), often with the desire to be instantly transported to paradise. Suicide murders have sublimated their survival instinct to achieve a higher goal--either 72 virgins or a coterie of handsome young boys (Aside: Muslims insist these boys are not “homosexual,” as in, they are strictly “butch.” If unsure what a butch gay is, watch the movie Road Warrior, in which Humongous, “the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla,” issues ultimatums to surrender just before his crew robs, rapes and murders caravans of productive, peaceful people as they travel through the desert (see an analogy yet?). Also, see Taliban rule number 19, “Don’t take pre-pubescent boys into your tent.” You get the idea. A finally example: Founding Nazi Ernst Rohm and his club of violent “ultramale” butch boys.). It seems “resigning” (s-l-m) yourself to an Arab god is not necessarily a good thing.

Segueing back to topic: We owe the word “berserk” to the Vikings, whose most violent and effective fighters were known as berserkers. In their Norse language, going “berserk,” or “bare-chested” had a much more philosophical connotation than the wild, uncontrolled meaning it has in English, which is closer the Malay Muslim loan word “amuck,” originally meaning “a manic urge to murder.”

The berserk ethos gave the Viking warrior an ability to face battle unencumbered by fears of death. Viking berserkers could charge an enemy without hesitation, even sans armor. Of course, most enemies, not nearly as cavalier about dying, would flinch in fear, making them easier to cut down. Or they would simply turn and run, giving the Vikings an easy victory. Incidentally, Viking contemporaries in the Near East, the Muslim Hashashiyyin (root of “assassin”), were specializing in suicide missions against their religious enemies, induced by sexually-charged visions of paradise. Even without a suicide theology, no doubt the sanctioned hording of women, polygamy, by dominant males leaves many mate-less males looking elsewhere, such as toward boys or to the next world via a “quick ticket,” for sexual release. A fair appraisal of countless photos and bios of dork-ish “true believers,”—Mohammed’s Atta and Bouyeri, Richard Reid, et al—amply show Muslim suicide murders are not “dominant males.” It’s a uniquely Islamic form of Dawinism or maybe a “Revenge of the Nerds,” except here the nerds die, while the thuggish cleric “jocks” go on and get the girls.

Since we’re talking about words here, a word on Arabic: Linguists have noted the serious structural problems and inaccuracy that plague Arabic dialects and scripts. Also noted is the inaccessibility of Koranic Arabic for most Arabic speakers today. Arabic is a language well-suited to poetry and music—ironic since Muhammad condemned both—but less suited to prose; its syntax often hindering accuracy and imagination. The prose of the Koran, some would say, is testaments to this, consisting of spurious retellings of earlier stories often interlaced with repetitive exhortations to brutalize Jews, Christians and “pagans.” The near total absence of original science fiction in Arabic is another clue of Arabic’s weakness. Many frustrated Arabic writers lament the excessively bellicose exaggeration and vagueness virtually “built in” to the Arabic language, as seen when “surrender” is twisted into “peace.” No doubt these factors add to the high illiteracy and intellectual censorship that permeate the Arab world. Indeed, it even undercuts an educated response to this article, other than the pro forma, “non-Arabic speakers mustn’t discuss Arabic,” generally heard whenever others critique the language sealed, in a way, by the purportedly illiterate Muhammad. Sadly, even an Arabic strong point, the classical period of poetry, is demeaned by Islamists as pre-Islamic Jahiliya.

Finishing, it is probably obvious what Arab and Viking warriors (and Humongous) had in common. Theirs was a violent age that, without agrarian skills, required a philosophy for victory and booty for the tribe, if not always for its individuals. Berserk and Islam were different terms for the same thing—looking death in the face and laughing. It is “the love of death,” as Muslim clerics from Abu Bakr (letter to Persia, A.D. 634, Battle of Qadisiyya) to Hezbolla’s Sheik Nasrallah (“We are going to win, because they love life and we love death."—2004) command. Don’t let an Islamist, a Viking, or a President tell you otherwise.

*Important note:

This is in no way an attack on Arabs or Muslims, whom are people, not ideologies, languages or religions. This article makes no assertions that the facts don’t strongly support, and is no more inflammatory than Edward Said, an Arab supremacist and religious dhimmi, or Noam Chomsky, a professional anti-American, both of whom are darlings of the academic left. Both have attacked the hand that fed them, which is the hand of a progressive culture. Here, on the other hand, the only criticism is toward a regressive, fascistic culture that threatens the world, yet the academic left, maybe due to inertia, still tends to support Said and Chomsky, and condemn writings such as this.

The anger of peoples injured by Islam, but who did not convert, is no doubt tempered by recognition of the sorry state most of the Muslim world itself is in due to Islam, leading to the conclusion that Islam is an accident of history for most, and a conspiracy of only a few. This is most clear when considering the fate of millions of cultural Muslims, fearful that “Whoever changes his religion—kill him" (said by Muhammad; Sahih Bukhari 9.57), is ready to be enforced by armed clerics. In other words, Muslims are shackled in religious slavery, powerless to change anything. It falls to us, not bound by Islam, to provide criticism and reject obvious appeasers who give a false front of respectability to Islam, based on a misunderstanding of multiculturalism, or fear of upsetting the status quo, or simple greed, while millions remain enslaved.

And now, to the Islamists: This article is based on a conversation with the archangel Gabriel, who said he wants to set the record straight.

References: With the advent of search engines, all points of fact in this article can be found online on multiple sources, albeit some more authoritative than others. Here is a non-definitive list:

1. “Islam and CNN's Superstar Christiane Amanpour,” by Lev Navrozov

2. a. Muhammad said: “Do not greet the Jews and the Christians before they greet you and when you meet any one of them on the roads force him to go to the narrowest part of it.” - Sahih Bukhari Book 25, Number 5389

b. Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As-Salamu_Alaykum

3. Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim

4. “Understanding Islam,” by Father Gnana Pragash Suresh,
The Angelus, October 2001, Volume XXIV, Number 10

5. “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” by Daniel Pipes

6. a. The Arabic Language, E. Shouby, Thinkers.net, originally in Middle East Journal, 1951.

b.  The Arabic Language, and the Banality of Cruelty

c. “UN Reform and Languages: Strip Arabic from Undeserved Status”

d. “UniPers versus Perso-Arabic”

e. The Almost Complete Lack of the Element of "Futureness," by Achmed A. W. Khammas, October 10, 2006.