Statement in Regards to Alleged
Anti-Islamic Web Sites on the Internet
10 May 2004
by William Welty, M.Div.
Publisher,
The Islam Commentaries
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Fullerton, CA—We are aware that in
the years following the events of 11 September 2001, a number of web
sites have arisen that pro-Islamic organizations such as the Council
on American Islamic Relations, and others, are characterizing as
anti-Islamic in nature.
The Islam Commentaries
web site is not, strictly speaking, anti-Islamic in nature, content,
or intent. We do not consider The Islam Commentaries to be
anti-Islamic in the sense that CAIR, and others, may characterize
anti-Islamic.
As a matter of historical fact,
The Islam Commentaries were published for a year (all of
2002) from offices owned and operated by Muslims, several of whom we
came to appreciate on a deep level.
The intention of The Islam
Commentaries web site is clearly stated on the site's main
page: it is an academic resource web site, the purpose of which is
to equip people to defend themselves against threats posed from
conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Muslims who have targeted the
West for conversion to their way of thinking, behaving, and living.
Accordingly, The Islam
Commentaries web site claims First Amendment rights of freedom
of speech as the basic framework upon which our web site is crafted.
The Islam Commentaries
web site began about a year after the death in Afghanistan of Johnny
Micheal Spann, the husband of Shannon Spann. CIA intelligence
officer Spann was killed in November 2001 as the first hostile
action casualty of Operation Enduring Freedom, America's
first military response to the attack on the World Trade Center's
Twin Towers, the attack on the Pentagon, and what appears to have
been an attempted attack on the US Capitol building that crashed
short of the probable intended target of the fourth airliner.
Mr. Spann's wife Shannon is a
long-time acquaintance of ours. We met her in early 1996 when she
was the acting president of Simon Greenleaf University, located in
Anaheim, California—well before she joined CIA in mid-1999.
Following the events of 11
September 2001, it took us about a year to research thoroughly the
teachings and intents of conservative Islam so that The Islam
Commentaries web site could be started.
As most Americans know, the events
of 9-11 were orchestrated by 14 Saudi Arabian citizens, as well as 5
other Muslims who held to the teachings of the Wahhabi sect of
Islam. Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and Al-Qaida are among the most
well-known members of this group of conservative Muslims.
The Islam Commentaries
web pages do not oppose those tolerant, more liberal Muslims that
characterize much of modern Islam in America.
The Islam Commentaries
web site does not promote or advocate personal violence against
individual Muslims who have renounced the kind of violence that
attends the behavior and teachings of conservative, Wahhabi-type
Muslims.
On the other hand, The Islam
Commentaries web site has, on more than one occasion, warned
these liberal, non-combatant Muslims that they themselves are a
target for attack by conservative, Wahhabi-type Muslims who deem
their more liberal American counterparts to be heretical apostates
that are worthy of death, should America become ruled by Sharia, the
theocratic justice system of Islam.
The Islam Commentaries
web site
has advocated active opposition
against radical, Wahhabi-type Muslim organizations such as
Al-Qaida, their leaders, and their disciples when
and only when they are involved in active acts of
belligerency, war, or attacks on the West or on the people of
Israel.
Accordingly, The Islam
Commentaries web site advocates and will continue to advocate
that the West in general—and the President as Commander-in-Chief of
the United States of America in particular—recognize that the
current international struggles in which our nation is engaged is
not, strictly speaking, a war on "terror" and against "terrorism".
The Islam Commentaries
web site holds to the position that the current struggle is against
conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Islam, not generic "terrorism".
After all, the world's airport security departments do not erect
their bomb detection equipment in order to uncover bombs placed by
Israelis. They are in place to stop Muslim extremists who are
determined to utilize their violence to help bring about the
creation of a world-wide caliphate.
In simple terms, the agenda of
these conservative, Wahhabi-type Muslims is the subjugation of what
conservative Islam calls Dar al-Harb, the realm of the
unbelievers in Islam, under the rule of what they call Dar
al-Islam, the realm of those who submit to the rule of Sharia,
which is Islamic law.
To sum up, then, the United States
and the West (including Israel, of course) is in the midst of an
ideological war that is similar in scope and extent to America's war
in the Pacific theater of World War II. In that theater, Japan's
emperor was considered the son of Shinto's sun goddess, and many of
the Japanese armed forces considered themselves to be kamikaze,
or suicide-martyrs for their incarnated god, the Emperor Hirohito.
So also the modern mujahideen,
like the kamikaze that America had to fight during World
War II, intend to give their lives for the sake of Allah. They are
just as dangerous to the world today as Japan's kamikaze
were to the world of the 1940's.
The Islam Commentaries
web site serves to equip people to refute—in the realm of academic
argument—the tenets of conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Islam.
Its op-ed columns provide timely editorial observations in support
of this task.
The Islam Commentaries
web site
supports America's active acts of
war against conservative, Wahhabi-type, radical Islam on a national
level, utilizing the war powers granted under the United States
Constitution, and not on a
personal level, except for acts of personal defensive response when
and if an individual, a friend, or his family is attacked on a
personal level.
Absent personal attacks or the
threat of personal attacks (such as the more than 14,000 death
threats via a computer-generated denial of service attack that
occurred against the Islam Commentaries as a result of a
libelous statement that appeared on the islammemo.com web site), our
position is that the best and highest form of warfare that can be
waged, and that should be waged, against conservative, Wahhabi-type,
radical Islam is to enter into dialogue with them, demonstrating by
logical argument the fallacy of their belief structure and the
sinfulness of their violent behavior.
As Christians, our hope at The
Islam Commentaries web site is that conservative, Wahhabi-type
Muslims will embrace the salvation that is offered to all men
through Jesus Christ, whom the New Testament declares to be the only
mediator between God and Man, and the only Savior who can be trusted
for eternal life.
Absent their embracing Jesus
Christ, our secondary hope is that conservative, Wahhabi-type
Muslims can be persuaded to abandon their published intentions to
destroy Israel and the West and live in peace with their global
neighbors.
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