Douglas Farah

Nov 1, 11:13

Zakat and Jihad from the Words of the Master

There is an extensive campaign by CAIR and other Islamist groups to portray jihad as a purely spiritual struggle a good Muslim wages to overcome personal evil. It is also a point made often by the “moderates” of the Muslim Brotherhood. This has led to confusion in policy and a fear of offending if one calls jihad what it really is.

But as I have said repeatedly, just read what they say themselves to understand what the real agenda is. They tell us what they want to do, and yet we refuse to take them seriously by either understanding and knowing what they say, or acting to stop them.

A 1999 tome titled “Fiqh az-Zakat: A Comparative Study,” by Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood leaves no ambiguity as to the nature of jihad. While often portrayed as a moderate, Qaradawi is one of the modern architects of the Islamist project to re-establish the Muslim Caliphate and then bring Allah’s rule to the rest of the world.

In writing about the use of zakat, the 2.5 percent of every earning and transaction a Muslim is to give to the cause of Allah, Qaradawi writes: “The most honorable form of jihad nowadays is fighting for the liberation of Muslim land from the domination of unbelievers, regardless of their religion or ideology. The communist and the capitalist, the Westerner and the Easterner, Christian, Jew, pagan or unbeliever, all are aggressors when they attack and occupy Muslim land. Fighting in defence of the home of Islam is obligatory until the enemy is driven away and Muslims are liberated.”

This is not a secret document, but a book that Qaradawi published, and he defines the occupied lands: “Today Muslim land is occupied in Palestine, Kashmire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Chad, Somalia, Cyprus, Samarqand, Bukhara, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Albania and serveral other occupied countries. Declaring holy war to save these Muslim lands is an Islamic duty, and fighting for such purposes in those occupied territories is the Way of Allah for which zakat must be spent.”

That is pretty forthright. He offers this conclusion: “The most important form of jihad today is serious, purposefully organized work to rebuild Islamic society and state and to implement the Islamic way of life in the political, cultural and economic domains. This is certainly most deserving of zakat. ”

It seems clear. The money being gathered-to the tune of billions of dollars a year-is to liberate Muslim lands and establish a Muslim state (the Caliphate). The fact that al-Qaradawi is a leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood offers a clue to why the Brotherhood has taken such pains to build up a financial infrastructure that spans the globe, an infrastructure the intelligence community knows almost nothing about, and has shown little interest in understanding.

To me it is akin to someone telling me: “You live in a house my ancestors once lived in, and I am going to save my money buy a gun to come kill you and your family and retake my house. But I am also putting my money away so my entire family can then occupy your block, your town and your city.”

And then I show no interest in what money the person has, how he earns it and how I can stop him because I decide that, even though he has shown a capacity to carry out violent action, he is not to be taken seriously.

Ignorance is not an excuse, especially since we have had five years to learn.

posted by Douglas Farah