Fasaad watch: Spencer on Texas deacon murder
Yet again, a mentally-ill Muslim with a criminal background has murdered someone. It’s not, of course, all that uncommon that somebody with a disturbed mind may imagine that they are doing the “Lord’s work” by committing a murder which any sane person would consider to be just plain murder. It’s only when that person is a Muslim that a journalist (if that’s what you can call him) publicly suggests that his action was, in fact, correct according to his religion.
The Beaumont (TX) Enterprise writes that Frederick Wayne Arnold, a deacon at the local New Covenant Church, was murdered by 36-year-old Kerron Laverne Otis as he fished in a canal near the church in October 2003. Otis allegedly also stole his car, making this capital murder. Otis has a history of mental illness and arrests, and told the police he is a Muslim, leading them to believe he sought out a Christian.
Spencer takes issue with two local Islamic organisations who denied any affiliation with Otis and said he acted in a “totally un-Islamic” way. Perhaps it’s immoral, he suggests, only because he killed Arnold without first inviting him to Islam, in violation of Sahih Muslim 4294, “a well-attested hadith in which [the Prophet, sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam] tells his followers to offer non-Muslims conversion, subjugation, or death?” You can read the hadith in question here and I’m sure you’ll agree that it applies to the Muslim ruler and his capacity to invite non-Muslim rulers to embrace Islam, to pay jizya or to face war. It has nothing to do with private citizens attacking others, of whatever religion, for the purposes of stealing their cars.
The hadith “does seem to assume an Islamic army”, he concedes. But the argument of “one prominent Islamic apologist” who has excoriated “today’s jihadist” because of this “founders, however, on the fact that Islamic jurisprudence stipulates that defensive jihad must be waged by all Muslims, whether or not there is a caliph, whenever an Islamic land is attacked — and that that justification is invoked today by jihadist Muslims around the world”. But Spencer’s argument founders because attacking a lone Texan deacon for his car has absolutely nothing to do with jihad at all, even if he was part of a jihad effort in Texas.
The difference between such an attack, by a mentally-ill serial criminal, and anything to do with jihad, is obvious to anyone. It’s obvious to Spencer too; as I’ve said before, he is not stating honestly-held opinions, but simply lying. He thinks he’s raising “difficult questions” about Islam, jihad and its policies on dealing with non-Muslims (and these issues never were any secret), but there is no difficulty in Islam’s stance on murder and armed robbery. You can read what Islam says about this here, and note that no difference is made if the victim is an unbeliever.
