The Quran is illegal

DANDENONG, AUSTRALIA – For obvious reasons, incitement to murder is a serious crime. In the U.K., we prosecute those (Muslim or not) who incite each other to murder, and lock them up for a long time if they are convicted. In the U.S., Mr Obama, in the intervals between bombing various Muslim nations, is prone to say Islam is a "religion of peace."

We are both right. The great majority of Muslims, wherever they are in the world, do their best to live in peace with their neighbors. It is our Christian duty, and our delight, to love them. However, such a sufficiently large minority of Muslims is turned to violence against unbelievers that the world has a problem it cannot any longer ignore.

Nearly all acts of terrorism perpetrated throughout the world in the past quarter of a century were carried out by Muslims in the name of Allah. Why? One does not need to look any further than their "holy" book, the Quran.

I am in Australia at present, preaching a Christian mission on the same platform as pastor Danny Nalliah of Melbourne, who is launching his Rise Up Australia Party throughout the state of Victoria.

Danny is no wimp. Born in Sri Lanka amid the violence of the separatists there, he moved to Saudi Arabia, where he smuggled illegal Bibles into the country and narrowly avoided being captured with 400 Bibles in his house when soldiers knocked at his door (penalty: death for him and his entire family).

He bravely confronted the king to whom Mr. Obama once cringingly bowed, and persuaded him to issue a royal decree removing the medievally savage penalties on Christians who worshiped in their own homes.

Danny moved to Australia and established his ministry in Dandenong, a colorful, multi-ethnic, working-class suburb of Melbourne. He had to endure five years of costly court proceedings when the Muslim Council of Victoria pursued him for allegedly "causing offense."

His "crime"? At a seminar about Islam in his own church, he had read out passages from the Quran. The totalitarian judges in Melbourne scandalously found against him, but he did not give up. He appealed to the Supreme Court of Australia, where his Muslim detractors told the judges that "in this court, truth is no defense."

He won his case by telling the judges that if the Quran was offensive even to followers of Islam, then it was not he but the Quran that was causing offense. He was later personally congratulated by John Howard, then Australia's prime minister, for having preserved free speech for all Australians.

When you read some of the verses from the Quran that formed part of Danny's seminar, you will see why the Muslim Council of Victoria was so very anxious not to let Christians give those verses any further publicity.

For instance: "Fight and kill those who join other gods with Allah wherever you find them; besiege them, seize them, lie in wait for them with every kind of ambush" (Sura 9, Verse 5).

Or: "Make war upon such of those to whom the scriptures have been given who believe not in Allah, or in the last day, and who forbid not what Allah and his apostle have forbidden, until they pay tribute" (9.29).

Or: "When you encounter the infidels, strike off their heads, until you have made a great slaughter among them" (47.4).

On national radio here in Australia a few days ago, I happened to mention that these "sword verses" plainly constituted the crime of incitement to murder. The switchboard lit up with Muslim callers protesting at what I had said.

The first caller said there were no such verses and demanded that I should cite sura and verse. I disposed of him quickly. The second, adopting a subtler and less mendacious approach, said these verses were not relevant today.

Here is my difficulty with that explanation. These and the 1,000 other hostile references to the unbeliever in the Quran (a book little longer than the four Gospels) remain unaltered in the text. How is the reader to tell that they are now out of date? And, if they are out of date, why are they still there?

If I were an imam preaching jihad to the young and impressionable, I should need to do no more than allow the Quran to fall open at just about any page and begin reading. For, according to Danny's estimate (which I have not yet checked), 62 percent of the Quran consists of often vicious hate speech against unbelievers.

For instance: The infidel are "deserving of wrath upon wrath" (2.90); are "the unjust" (2.254); are "the wicked" (80.42); are "deaf, dumb, blind and stupid" (2.171); "their guardians are Satans" (2.257; 7.27); "shall have a drink of boiling water because they disbelieved" (6.70; 10.4); "are the vilest of animals in Allah's sight" (8.55); are "liars" (16.39, 16.105; 29.12; 59.11; 85.19; 6.110); are "losers" (29.52; 35.39; 39.63; 47.3); are "blind" (6.110).

Allah "puts his curse upon the infidel" (2.89; 33.64; 16.106); "is the enemy of the infidel" (2.98); Allah "does not love or guide the infidel" and "deprives him of blessings" (2.264, 3.32, 3.141, 9.37, 9.80, 30.45); "will gather together the hypocrites and the infidel all in hell" (3.176, 4.140, 9.68); "is displeased with those who befriend the infidel" (5.80); "lays uncleanness on the infidel" (6.125); "will cut off the infidel by the roots" (8.7); "weakens the struggle of the infidel (8.18); "destroyed the infidel" (8.52); "will bring disgrace to the infidel" (9.2); "has cursed the infidel and they shall have lasting punishment" (9.68); is with those who fight their neighbours who are infidel (9.123); "has promised the fire to the infidel" (22.72; 48.13); will "shackle the infidel" (34.33); will "render the words and deeds of the infidel ineffective" and "bring down destruction on the infidel" (33.19; 47.1-2, 10; 47.8).

And so on, and on, and on. Given the venom on every page of this extended incitement to murder anyone who does not follow Islam, it is surprising that there is not more Islamic terror than there is.

Craven public authorities have failed to act against the circulation of the Quran in its present form because they fear a violent backlash.

How, then, is this manifestly illegal text to be dealt with? It is not our custom to ban books, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution.

However, it is our custom to prosecute for incitement to murder. And the fact that incitement is on every page of what is said to be a holy book does not diminish, still less extinguish, the offense.

A bill should be brought before Congress identifying all passages in the Quran which, whether in isolation or taken together, constitute incitement to murder.

The bill should specify that anyone who reads any of these passages out loud is to be charged with that crime and, if convicted, subjected to the usual penalty for it – a long prison term.

The bill should state that, after a grace period of a year, every copy of the Quran must clearly identify by emboldened and different-colored text the passages that constitute criminal incitement to murder, together with a clearly printed warning on the first page that reading any of these passages out loud anywhere within the jurisdiction of the United States may result in prosecution.

The prominent part played by the Quran in the radicalization of young Muslims so that they become willing to murder their own fellow-citizens demands that we act at once, before its dangerous influence incites the loss of any more innocent lives. The Quran as it now stands is illegal.

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