Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "There is indeed a clash of civilizations . . ."

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum

MEMRI

From MEMRI comes a report that "Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum of Jordan's Tahrir Party Discusses Jihad," Middle East Research Institute (Special Dispatch No. 4354, December 12, 2011):

"[Jihad] is in order to remove obstacles . . . . When we declare Jihad against . . . [a] state, for refusing to allow Islam to spread to the people . . . . [w]e give them a choice: Either to convert to Islam, or to pay the jizya and submit to the laws of Islam. The jizya is the . . . tax paid by non-Muslims . . . . We should fight the states and the armies . . . . [I]f a certain state insists on preventing the spread of Islam on its soil, we will fight that state . . . . [Samuel Huntington was right.] There is indeed a clash of civilizations . . . . If not for Jihad, Islam would not have reached us and all the other places. Within a quarter of a century, Islam reached most of the ancient world by means of Jihad . . . . [T]his is Islam's way of spreading . . . . [R]uling positions . . . are exclusively for Muslims. Anyone who is part of the rule –- the head of state, who is the Caliph, the empowered official, the executive official, the wali, or the governor –- must be a Muslim. Moreover, he must be a man . . . . The future belongs to Islam. The Islamic caliphate is bound to come, as was foretold by our Prophet Muhammad . . . . [T]here will be a caliphate following the path of the Prophet Muhammad."

When queried about the West's advantages by a political activist, Omar Abu Rassa, the sheikh retorted, "European countries live in prehistoric, pre-human times." When the activist pressed a bit further and asked about the West's "scientific accomplishments" and "freedom of thought," the sheikh asked, "What scientific accomplishments?! We [Muslims] brought them there." The report does not say if the sheikh also insists that Muslims brought freedom of thought to the West, but I assume that the sheikh's Tahrir Party is the same as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Party of Liberation, a Sunni pan-Islamic organization that has spread around the world, doubtless to bring true liberation of thought, i.e., submission to Islamic law.

I therefore infer that the good sheikh would also insist that Muslims bring authentic freedom of thought, the freedom to think whatever one wants to think so long as that thought remains a thought.

No freedom of speech, however . . .