WHO WILL BE THE NEXT SULEYMAN?

"IN EGYPT, an extraordinarily important fatwa has been issued by Dr. Imad Mustafa, of al-Azhar University, the world’s most important Islamic university.

He began by stating the well-known doctrine of “defensive jihad,” that is Muslims must go to war against infidels who attack them. Of course, the word “attack” is often spread rather thinly to justify aggression.

But now Mustafa has publicly and explicitly come up with a new concept, one that up until now was supposedly restricted to groups like al-Qaida: “Then there is another type of fighting against the non- Muslims known as offensive jihad... which is to pursue the infidels into their own land without any aggression [on their part]...

“Two schools [of Islamic jurisprudence] have ruled that offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam’s border, to extend God’s religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it, such as the Pharaoh did with the children of Israel, and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula.”

What does it mean about extending “God’s religion,” i.e., Islam? On the surface, “where the governments do not allow it” and the reference to Pharaoh seem to imply the complete prohibition of Islam.

But in the current context, this means that it is permissible to wage jihad against a country if anything “necessary” to Islam according to (hard-line) clerics’ interpretations is blocked (polygamy, child marriage, special privileges at work places, building mosques anywhere, permitting the wearing of head scarves or burkas).

In practice, according to this doctrine, then, any non-Muslim can be attacked anywhere. Thus, mainstream, powerful clerics are now calling for a seventhcentury- style jihad against non-Muslim lands even if the victims cannot be accused of attacking Muslimruled lands. Merely to “extend God’s religion” to others is a sufficient motive. Mustafa says that two of Islam’s main schools have always endorsed offensive jihad, but I doubt if he would have made that argument ten or 20 years ago."
Jerusalem Post

One of the books that I'm reading is called Defenders of the Faith by James Reston, Jr. It's one of those history books that draws me along, more like reading a novel than the normal mind numbing fair I've become accustomed to. Anyway, it's about Suleyman the Great, Charles V, the Catholic Church and her Popes, Martin Luther and the great clash between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The crazy thing is that it reads almost like it was pulled from todays headlines.

The above article, which was linked to by James Mace on Facebook, tells us that a justification for total war against the West has just been issued by a major Islamic University. It codifies the historic Muslim belief that Islam has the right to conquer the world to spread its beliefs. This is the justification for war used by the Ottoman Empire as it swept through Europe and nearly destroyed the Church in the 16th century. Of course, for Suleyman, like any ruler, it wasn't purely a religious undertaking. It was as much about power and revenge as anything else.

Just like today.

And just like today all the West had to offer in defense of this unified Islamic assault was a splintered belief system racked by internal strife and leadership so badly compromised by political infighting that it couldn't focus on the true threat. It was weak and Islam was strong.

All that we're waiting for right now is that one leader to emerge in the Muslim world, the next Suleyman, the one that can take this latest fatwa and run with it. If someone can pull together under one command all these disparate Islamic groups, or at least the majority of them (the Sunni/Shia split was a problem for Suleyman,too), Europe and by extension, the Western world as a whole, is in great danger. The Church will be reduced to a shell and the world will be plunged back to the dark ages.

All it takes is that one leader to stand against Christendom and bring it down. The foundation has been laid, the justification established. The Christian people, for the most part, are weak and unchurched. If enough pressure is brought to bear by another Suleyman they will capitulate quickly rather than face decades of warfare. Only a belief in absolute, objective truth can cause people to fight a force as strong as the new Ottoman Empire. And it doesn't hurt the Islamic cause that the Muslims have become such a force to be reckoned with inside the boundaries of most European states already. When you think about it, the troops are in place, ready to attack from the inside when the Islamic armies are at the gates.

We are faced with the potential rise of a powerful and determined anti-Christ. The two questions that remain are whether he will be THE anti-Christ or just one of the many and when he will show his face. Only time will tell.