Anti-Freedom

“In fact, Muslims are obligated to raid the lands of the infidels, occupy them, and exchange their systems of governance for an Islamic system, barring any practice that contradicts the sharia from being publicly voiced among the people, as was the case at the dawn of Islam.”Raymond Ibrahim, trans., The Al-Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 51.

“The appropriate and most suitable response from the [Saudi] intellectuals’ declaration to the Crusaders [should have been] that we will rise up individually and collectively in order to support jihad and the mujahidin, and we will support and increase martyrdom operations. It is incumbent upon us to respond to them by transferring the battle from the military realm to the political and economic realms, and the cultural, intellectual, and social realms, and all of life’s realms… the good of the people is found in Islam; and Islam is spread with the sword alone, just as the Prophet was sent forth with the sword… and everything they [Western intellectuals] evoked in [their] declaration [to the Saudi intellectuals]—freedom, justice, mercy, and rights—is in complete accordance with the notions of the infidels, not the notions of Islam.”Raymond Ibrahim, trans., The Al-Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 46-47.

“Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue—one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice—and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, through physical though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die.”Raymond Ibrahim, trans., The Al-Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 42.

“[T]he religion can never possibly honor the Western man who rejects Allah Almighty.  Indeed, He describes him as a cow; and He has cursed him and prepared the everlasting Fire for him.”Raymond Ibrahim, trans., The Al-Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 40.

“Muslims, and especially the learned among them, should spread sharia law to the world—that and nothing else. Not laws under the ‘umbrella of justice, morality, and rights’ as understood by the masses… And whoever openly and clearly repudiates these issues, we consign him to the infidels…”Raymond Ibrahim, trans., The Al-Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 33.