This is the second segment of a four-part interview with Rev. Elijah Abraham. (To see the first segment click here.) Rev. Abraham was born and raised as a Muslim in Iraq, but converted to Christianity when he found that Islam did not answer his most pressing religious questions. He was interviewed for The New American by James Heiser.
The New American: Abdul Rauf, the Imam at the center of the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, wrote the book, What’s Right with Islam is Right with America. How would you respond to the central contention of his book?
Rev. Elijah Abraham: He is the epitome of the peaceful Jihad. Its like going to Dearborn, Michigan and listening to an imam in a public forum: He [says] one thing in English, and translates it as something entirely different in Arabic. Just like what Yasser Arafat did in 1993: He shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin about peace, then [went] back to the Palestinians and he said, Jihad, Jihad, Jihad. We will not stop until we throw the Jews and all those pigs into the sea. And he had just signed a peace agreement. So with Rauf, I don’t believe anything he says. You go to the Cordoba website, and you’ll see that their goal is to advance Sharia law in America.
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There is an unholy alliance between Rauf and the United States government, because the State Department is paying his way to go to the Middle East to raise money. Hes there to raise $100 million. At the same time, that mosque most likely will qualify, and will receive, government funding for that building. Mayor Bloomberg, the State Department, and Obama [are coming] full force against the American people’s wishes to say, We want that mosque to be there. And even Obama says he doesn’t regret the comments he has made. It is very clear to me that our current administration is for this agenda, and that really scares me. It tells me that the Islamic agenda has gone so far, so deep, to have so much influence on the American government, and yet they are only four to six million out of 300 million Americans.
TNA: What is the highest legal authority for a Muslim?
Rev. Abraham: You’ve got the Koran, and under it is the Hadith, which are the Islamic traditions of Mohammed’s deeds and sayings. The Islamic Sharia law really comes out from within the schools of thought of the Hadith to interpret what the Koran says. The Koran is a little vague on certain issues, and Mohammed elaborated a lot on what the Koran says, and as a result youve got different schools of thought of what the Islamic law is. So Sharia law dictates every aspect of the typical Muslims life: how you wash your hands, how you eat, how you sleep, how you have sex with your wife, etc. Its a mess.
TNA: Can someone be a true Muslim without adherence to Sharia law?
Rev. Abraham: An orthodox Muslim will tell you no. But at this time, they are not going to make a big issue out of it, because they brag about numbers that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and its not. Its the fastest growing religion or ideology in the West. In the rest of the world, Christianity is kicking butt, and I like that. In 2001, an Islamic scholar on Al Jazeera television was lamenting the loss of six million Muslims in Africa to Christianity per year.
TNA: Since September 11, 2001, there has been a great deal of talk about moderate Islam and moderate Muslims. Is there such a thing as a moderate Islam that Mohammed would have recognized as genuinely Islamic?
Rev. Abraham: There is no such thing as moderate Islam. You mentioned moderate Muslim and you need to define what a moderate Muslim is. But lets go back to moderate Islam: There is no such thing. Islam is locked on a seventh-century Arabian religion.
Let me redefine Islam: Islam is not really even a religion. That’s a key point. Its a socio-political system that uses a deity to advance its agenda. Why do you think Islam is doing what its doing in the West, and being allowed the freedom to do what it is doing without being confronted? Because Islam passes itself off as a religion and thus, under the Constitution of the United States, has the protection of freedom of religion and therefore the protection of a religion to exist. If the United States finally comes to its senses and acknowledges that Islam is a socio-political system not a religion, so we need to reclassify what Islam is then the fight is on. Then we will address Islam just like we addressed Naziism, fascism, communism, and all these ideologies.
TNA: Is there such a thing as a moderate Muslim?
Rev. Abraham: There are two types of moderate Muslims. First, let us talk about an American. You’ve got a moderate Muslim who really doesn’t know anything about Islam. All hes doing are the five pillars of Islam the best he can. He prays five times a day. Its a memorized, repetitive prayer. When I was four years old, my father prayed, and I heard his prayer. We brought him to the United States, and I heard him pray and it was exactly, word for word, what I remembered from when I was a child. All hes doing is the five pillars of Islam to appease Allah. Hes doing his duty. Now, if he decides to be faithful, and be serious about Islam, and really dig deeper into Islamic theology and history and the life of Mohammed, then hes got two choices to make. He either becomes Osama bin Laden, or leaves Islam for another religion or becomes agnostic. I have some friends who are former jihadists. They used to work for PLO, Hez-bollah, Hamas, and so on. The deeper they dug into Islam, they realized there was something wrong, and they started looking into really spiritual things. They left Islam and became Christians.
So you’ve got that side of the moderates, who are just doing their thing, just as we have a lot of Christians in our churches who know nothing about the Bible. You see somebody who comes to church, does his thing, but then something happens in his life and he says, You know, I need to seek God. I need to be more serious about Christianity. And he starts reading the Bible and God starts speaking to him, convicting him, and he becomes excited about what God is saying and he starts talking about how God is taking care of him and his family. So he becomes a more active Christian and more faithful to God. Hes no longer just a nominal Christian sitting in the pew keeping that seat warm. Its the same thing with Islam. So you’ve got that one side of the nominal Muslim.
Then you’ve got the other side, the second kind of moderate Muslim. People like Dr. [M. Zuhdi] Jasser from Arizona, who was featured in a documentary, “The Third Jihad.” He is a Muslim medical doctor of Syrian heritage who is speaking out against the jihad and the violent side of Islam. He wants to reform Islam, but he cant. Hes a reformed Muslim, as a human being. He likes the Constitution, and he was in the Navy for about four years. He served this country faithfully. I like him. Hes a reformed Muslim, but he cannot reform the religion, or the ideology. The ideology is locked.
TNA: Cannot a Muslim simply relegate Sharia law to his personal or private life while he adheres to the law of the land?
Rev. Abraham: Because we adhere to the Constitution, we want to give the Muslims their rights, as well, so they can keep their Sharia law, as long as it is pertaining to spiritual things. You step out of bounds to the socio-political honor killings, for example then its against the law. So can it be merely private? No, as far as Islam is concerned.
TNA: How should Americans view the mosques that are springing up all over our country?
Rev. Abraham: When you look at a mosque, and lets define what a mosque is, please don’t look at it as you would look at a church or a synagogue or Buddhist temple. This is not just a house of worship. You need to go back in history and look at the first mosque (which Mohammed established in Medina) and look at its function. Yes, they prayed, but it was also a base of political operation where Mohammed issued a lot of rulings and launched jihads and launched wars and administered Sharia law in every aspect. But it was also a storage place for weapons. The best example I could give you is from the battle for Fallujah in April 2004 when the Marines went into a mosque and killed everyone in the mosque. The liberal media and the Muslim community in the West cried out and even our politicians, like John Kerry and others, said, How dare they? This is what Americans do, they go and kill the worshipers. They were just worshiping there. If those are honest worshipers, what are they doing with bazookas and other weapons? And they and the Marines were shooting at each other. Nobody talks about that.
Lets look in the United States. Every mosque, every Islamic center, school, library, whatever, is a missionary training center to convert Americans to Islam.
TNA: Would you contend that most mosques in the United States are also serving as weapons repositories?
Rev. Abraham: Sure! Now, are there any weapons right now if I go to the mosque down the street? Do they have them? Maybe, maybe not. But that does not mean they would not have them.
TNA: And, of course, the question would be absurd if we were talking about a synagogue or a church?
Rev. Abraham: Right. The best example is why the FBI is allowing 30 to 34 terrorist training camps in the United States. I mean, if Im the average guy and I go to YouTube and find videos of Islamberg in upstate New York, which is a training camp, why hasn’t the FBI shut it down? I do not understand how the American government allowed this to happen and to go this far with the military actions of the jihadists in America. Just imagine if during the Second World War the United States government allowed Nazi training camps and Fascist Italian camps and Imperial Japan training camps within the continental U.S.A. to practice how to kill Americans.
Perhaps the government is allowing this to know who are the terrorists and you want to chase after them. I sure hope thats the case. But if that’s the case, why are most of these guys ending up in Pakistan and Afghanistan fighting our own army?
Related articles:
Idealized Islam: Interview With Rev. Elijah Abraham, Part I
Idealized Islam: Interview With Rev. Elijah Abraham, Part III
Idealized Islam: Interview With Rev. Elijah Abraham, Part IV
