Method of Muhammad
repost at will

Mary Habeck, Associate Professor of Yale University and highly respected military historian presented "Jihadist Ideology" on 8/12/04 covered by C-Span. Habeck explained the military strategies based on Islam's holy books, the Quran, the Hadith and the Sira. According to Habeck, the Sira is not well known in the West but very widely known in the Islamic world defining the "Method of Muhammad." Habeck says that in the Sira, Muhammad is the perfect man believed to have the perfect method for applying Islam. Jihadis believe that his successes were so miraculous they could only have been supported by Allah and if they want to experience the same success, they have to follow Muhammad’s footsteps exactly.

Habeck explained how Muhammad began in Mecca which persecuted early Muslims and was at first hostile to his message. Muhammad began the Dawa, the call to Islam. There was no violence allowed at this stage and he created a very small group which was clandestine, meeting in secret for fear of persecution. Muhammad slowly inculcated them into Islam as a way of life. It became a small vanguard or spearhead with an emir (leader).

Habeck explains that the second stage in Muhammad’s life is the Hejira, the immigration away from Mecca, (an unbelieving place), to Medina, a place that was more accepting, more open to the message of Islam. Once Muslims have that dedicated "vanguard," they are to migrate away from the unbelieving society to someplace where there is already an Islamic society or create one, because that’s what Muhammad was forced to do. Using that small vanguard, he created the perfect Islamic society, so the argument is Muslims must do exactly the same thing—migrate away from an unbelieving society under a guise of peace with small cells of true believers to someplace that’s even more open to Muslim ideas to become stronger.

The third stage is Medina, which is the Islamic state Muhammad created once he arrived. Several people believe you must create an Islamic state before you can proceed to the next stage in Medina which is the stage of Jihad [where Muhammad slaughtered 600 to 900 Jews who rejected him as prophet]. So first of all you have Mecca, the Hejira and then at Medina the third stage, you are allowed to take part in violence for the sake of Islam. This is what happened in Muhammad’s life. [That is what is happening in America today.] It was at Medina that Muhammad was allowed to use violence against the unbelievers, those who had been oppressing him, and then gradually he was allowed to carry out this warfare spread to most of the unbelievers in the Arab Peninsula.

After Muhammad overtook Medina, he returned to Mecca and was able to take the city without a fight. Habeck explained the Jihadists belief that once they succeed in other countries, [including violence] Islam will be similarly welcomed.

This explains why the Quran has both "peaceful" verses and verses recited by terrorists as they commit violence. Together with the Sira, the duplicitous method of Muhammad, Islamist terrorism is symbiotic.

Habeck acknowledges that Jihadis are a small number, and even the 9/11 Commission has postulated that the percentage of "fundamentalists" is a fraction of the Muslim population. But these small spearheads of Islam are exactly the belief of Islam played out, the method of Muhammad.

The 9/11 Commission’s recognition of Islamic jihad is clear. When confronted with descriptions of Islam as "faith based upon love, not hate," the Commission wrote,

"Yet as political, social, and economic problems created flammable societies, Bin Laden used Islam’s most extreme, fundamentalist traditions as his match. All these elements –including religion—combined in an explosive compound." 9/11 Commission Report, pg 54.

Bin Laden did not hijack Islam, he’s just taking it seriously. How many more Daniel Pearls, Nick Bergs and Paul Johnsons, (beheaded under the words of the Koran), will it take before we wake up? How many more millions of Christians must die?

Should we persecute Muslims? Never. Islam has been methodically presented as peaceful in Muhammad’s time and today. But teach Islam to our children as a religion to embrace in public school? Ask them to "assume you are a Muslim soldier" as instructed in their textbooks? - -Only if we want our sons and daughters to share a jail cell with John Walker Lindh. Instead of a jail cell, he should receive an "A" in today's American classroom. After all, he could turn in his whole ordeal with the Taliban as an expansive, though late, class project. He did what his teachers taught him. He lived what they told him to assume.