Sabbath Message 28/8/29/120
Dear Friends,
A great deal of effort is being put into the question of the War in Iraq and
the question of the control of the radical Muslim clerics.
Many journalists are looking at the process of control over Islam and these radical clerics, and looking to where such control might have existed in the past.
The answer is seen as being in the power exercised by the Caliph of Istanbul prior to the secularisation of Turkey under Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha (1881-1938), a Turkish Army officer and Statesman who was a successful general at the Battle of Gallipoli. The Turkish National Assembly presented Mustafa Kemal with the name "Atatürk" (meaning "Father Turk" or "Ancestor Turk") on 24 November 1934.
During World War I the British and French made a secret treaty to divide the Ottoman Empire. The treaty was hammered out by two bureaucrats, one French and the other British. This agreement came to be known as the Sykes-Picot Treaty named after them. The Middle East was divided and ruled as it suited the West and those two countries in particular. Oil was the major consideration.
The defeat of the Ottomans and the division led to the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk led the Turks to independence. He established the Republic of Turkey and became its first President on 20 October 1923. He made some far-reaching reforms, establishing a democratic and secular state.
In order to achieve those reforms Atatürk abolished the powers of the Ottoman Dynasty, which had ruled since 1218 and he exiled the last members of the dynasty on 1 November 1922. The Ottoman Sultan had held the post of Caliph since 1517. The Caliph of Istanbul being the capital of the Ottoman Empire was also the leader of the Muslim world. This post was abolished on 3 March 1924.
Atatürk then instituted legal reforms which included the complete separation of religion and state and the principle of laicity which has more far-reaching concepts than simple secularism in the Turkish model. The term comes from the term laity and implies complete freedom of religion but removes it entirely from any association with the affairs of state and law.
In order to achieve that goal he enshrined laicity in the constitution. He closed the Islamic courts and replaced Islamic Canon Law (or Sharia Law) with a secular civil code modelled after Switzerland and a penal code on the Italian model. The reforms also recongised equality between the sexes and granted full political rights to women on 5 December 1934, well before a number of European nations.
The mistake that is being made by modern commentators is the assumption that the Caliph had temporal authority to control Imams and could silence them in much the same way as the Pope exercises control over the Roman Catholic Church. They forget that Islam is split into a number of factions, as is Christianity.
The commentators see the loss of the Caliph as resulting in these “wildcat” radical Imams that makes such emotional and irrational, and sometimes very offensive, comments inciting sexism and racism with religious fanaticism and violence.
The problem is that these same radical Muslims see the loss of that system as dealing a fundamental blow to Islam. The radical extremists are trying to implement the same goals that they see as being able to be exercised under the Ottoman Caliphate. The Sunnis look to such a system but they are at fundamental odds with Shi’a Islam, and to a lesser extent with Ibadi Islam.
The real role of the Caliph was as “War Duke” of Islam. He was charged with the moral responsibility to wage war against all non-Muslims and reduce them to subjects of an Islamic state and a subordinate and servile position enforcing ultimate conversion and of Sharia Law. This aim is totally at odds with freedom of religion and with the principles laid down in the Bible and the Koran. The idea rests entirely on the corruption of the tenets of the Koran by the traditions of the Hadith.
The fundamentalists seek to reintroduce the control and direction of Islam as a militarist state aimed at subjugating the nations of the world and enforcing on them the Muslim legal code that is both anti-Bible and anti-Koran.
To do that they must follow the methods, aims and direction of the Maoist leaders, such as Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge. The system, in order to function, must terrorise its populace and eliminate its rational and moderate intelligentsia. Sunni and Shi’a seek to eliminate each other as Christian factions once did.
It is for that reason that Iraq is being reduced to ever-increasing and irrational violence. Order is being broken down deliberately by the terrorists. As the insane inter-Islamic warfare increases, the sects break down into smaller and smaller warring factions over sillier and increasingly smaller goals and slights. Education is being systematically suspended by the assassination of the university lecturers so that no alternative to rational decision-making is possible. Death squads operate from area to area and withhold medical attention on a sectarian basis. Every militant Sunni and Shi’a fanatic is drawn to Iraq as a natural battleground for their factions. Whoever controls Iraq in the long run will control the Middle East and its use for war purposes.
The same methods were employed in all revolutionary struggles throughout the world with varying degrees of intensity and success.
What we are seeing is the deliberate destruction, in modern terms, of the Babylonians and their effective replacement by the Medes and Persians as was played out in the Book of Daniel.
The Medes are the modern day Kurds and the Iranians are the Persians of Elam of old. The Kurds are split over four separate nations at present. However, they will be forced into a union of convenience in the days ahead while Iraq is the Sunni-Shi’a front line.
The current crisis is not a religious problem. It is a political one that is masquerading as a religious conflict. These radical clerics are about as Islamic as Pol Pot.
What we are seeing is the deliberate brainwashing of Islam using Hadithic traditions. The process is resulting in the hijacking of the religion and its population base through misinformation and Nazi hate rhetoric on the same lines that we saw in Nazi Germany under Hitler. Remember that the Mufti of Jerusalem went to Germany to meet Hitler and then raised an entire SS division in Bosnia-Herzegovina from Muslims there who fought for and alongside Nazi Germany as SS. The Jews were the common enemy, as they still are for these hate-mongers. The same methods are in use today. The allies are still the enemy because they oppose them and do not wish to destroy the Jews.
Islam is allowing itself to be hijacked. Its moderate adherents are silent, and that silence will ultimately result in their destruction just as it did in Nazi Germany. However, this time we are looking at the nightmare magnified many times.
The only way it can be resolved in human terms is the same way we resolved the problem in Malaysia during the emergency.
The moderate and majority have to work to the complete and effective control of the means of production, distribution and exchange so that even the daily food rations are handed out under controlled conditions and the radicals isolated and removed from a controlled environment and kept out by aggressive patrolling night and day. That end cannot be achieved by creating a democratic uncontrolled process and allowing the terrorists to function within it. It did not work in Vietnam. The lesson was not learned then and it is still not learned. The US cannot solve the problem by running away either.
Counter-revolutionary warfare requires specific methods and they are not understood by the military commanders in either Iraq or Afghanistan among the Coalition forces. The revolutionary principles are understood only too well by the extremists. What the extremists do not fully appreciate is that they will die and their people will die in millions as this insane war escalates. The so-called “Martyrs” will not go to heaven and they will not be served by any body of virgins. They will lie dead in the grave until it is their turn to be resurrected in just over a thousand years’ time. They will be placed under re-education then for a hundred years and they will learn the faith and plan of God correctly or they will die permanently and there is no way out (see the paper The Resurrection of the Dead (No.143)).
The recent US elections changed the composition of the Congress and the Democrats have a mandate to change the strategy of the war and get out of Iraq, but the generals are telling them that Iraq will collapse if they do. The problem is that unless they change their tactics they will lose and be forced into nuclear war anyway.
The poison chalice is still in the US administration and with NATO. The senior defence administration has just been forced into a timeline by the Senate committee and from their own mouths they have been forced to a four or five-month position for withdrawal. They can delay that and they will do so.
We can pray for their guidance and inspiration. However, the situation will
play itself out as foretold. Next week we will continue on with the development
of prophecy.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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