The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships. The test has been translated into more than 100 languages, and Rotarians recite it at club meetings:
“Of the things we think, say or do”
- Is it the TRUTH?
- Is it FAIR to all concerned?
- Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
- Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
In the 1988 Hamas Covenant Article 17, 22, 28, Rotary Clubs are singled out along with Lions and Freemasons clubs as mere puppets of the Zionists who are running American media, wealth institutions and the source of all evils placed upon Muslims.
This portion of Article 17, entitled the “Role of Women” tells Muslim women in particular to be wary of joining Rotary Clubs;
The Moslem woman has a role no less important than that of the moslem man in the battle of liberation….they consider that if they are able to direct and bring her up the way they wish, far from Islam, they would have won the battle. That is why you find them giving these attempts constant attention through… lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs…these organizations operate in the absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.
In order to be a “true” Muslim, one must repeat the Shahada that says “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” This simple phrase said by all Muslims (five times a day, every day) means that to be a true Muslim one must behave as Muhammad to include his treatment of Muslims and Kafirs, i.e. non-Muslim Rotarians.
Applying the Four-Way Test, how does a “true” Muslim Rotarian answer these questions?
Is it the truth?
A Kafir Rotarian and “secular Muslim Rotarian” would answer yes, unequivocally.
A true Muslim would say, “it depends”. Why?
There are 99 terms to describe Allah. One of those comes from the Quran Sura 3:54 where it says in part, “for Allah is the best of deceivers.”
Thus, the Quran unashamedly calls Muhammad’s god the best liar and deceiver of them all! It even dares to say that ALL deception belongs completely to Allah:
And verily, those before them did deceive/scheme (makara), but all deception/scheming is Allah’s (falillahi al-makru). He knows what every person earns, and the disbelievers will know who gets the good end. Quran Sura. 13:42
Muhammad promoted the concept of “taqiyya”, which under Islamic ideology allows for deception or outright lying. Any statement, which if the truth were told would harm Islam, can become a “lie” in order to do no harm to “Islam”. Sahih al-Muslim (one of the most respected sources by a consensus of past and current Islamic scholars) where Muhammad is granting his approval to have a critic, like the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, killed even if lying is required:
“Allah’s Apostle said, “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” Thereupon Muhammad bin Maslama got up saying, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” The Prophet said, “Yes,” Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab). “The Prophet said, “You may say it.”
It is these “stories” or “hadith” that are taken as examples of behavior other Muslims should emulate,. http://www.alim.org/library/hadith/SHB/369/5
Is it Fair to all concerned?
The west Judeo-Christian heritage has as one of its underlying tenets the “Golden Rule”. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This concept is absent in the Islam that Muhammad preached. The Quran says 91 times to follow the example of the best Muslim who has ever lived and if he didn’t practice this, Muslims are not to practice it either.
Islam has no place for “fairness”. Islam translates to “submission”. The relationship is a “master/slave” relationship as described by Muhammad and Muslim scholars.
A “master” does whatever he wishes with no regard to the “slave” and in Islam/the Quran the same applies to any follower of Allah. Nothing the Muslim can say, do or believe in their heart can garner any since of fairness in how they are chosen on who goes to Paradise, except through Jihad martyrdom. Good deeds outweighing bad deeds is the goal for non-martyrs but even that is no guarantee as Allah determines what is “fair”.
Additionally, men are subservient to Allah, women are subservient to men, and non-Muslims are subservient to Muslims, hardly fair to all concerned.
Under Shariah law, sanctioned by the Islamic scripture, a non-Muslim is never to be put in a superior position over a Muslim.
Rotarians would never support promoting a more qualified individual into a position solely based upon their religious beliefs. Does that occur in the west where Shariah law is not applied? No.
The West has laws against that. But in countries where Shariah law is applied, such discrimination occurs and is sanctioned by Islam. So once again a truly “good” Muslim could never agree in principle to the second statement in the Four Way Test.
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
For an orthodox Muslim the Quran Sura 3:28 determines his response to this statement:
Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security. Allah biddeth you beware (only) of Himself. Unto Allah is the journeying. S. 3:28
Orthodox Muslims are directed by Muhammad to not befriend Christians, Jews and unbelievers. Based upon what has been laid out by Muhammad in the Quran (not some talking head or another Muslim), any Muslim Rotarian who is treating a Kafir Rotarian nicely and with respect is either (1) a “secular Muslim” and not being a “good” Muslim as defined by Muhammad or (2) is practicing deceit and taqiyya. Fortunately most Rotary Muslims fall into the former category versus the latter. The greatest abuser of Muslims are other Muslims and to speak out against the tyranny found in Islam against women, children and non-Muslims as well as Muslims who don’t follow the “true path”, Shariah law, comes at such a cost that most Muslims are silenced out of fear.
The question remains are those “good Rotary” Muslims then practicing some other form of Islam, “moderate” for example, that allows them to pick and choose those Suras that are found in the Quran as well as other tenets of orthodox Islam? Pure Islamic ideology has no room for that variance (see below).
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Treaties, constitutions and other formal agreements would be examples of how two parties settle a dispute and are “beneficial to all concerned”. Do we have examples of Muhammad signing agreements or treaties with others? How did he treat those agreements?
The first type of “agreement” that Muhammad promoted as “fair to all concern” was the concept of the “dhimmi” contract. In Arabic, dhimmi means “protection”. It was during Islam’s history and is today the legal and social rules Christians or Jews who live under Muslim control must operate under.
They are “allowed” by agreement to practice their religion under very strict guidelines; no repairing of non-Muslim religious shrines without approval, they must walk on the other side of the street if approached by a Muslim, they must provide housing to a Muslim who is traveling and most pay a “jizya” tax per person in the family to the local community for the privilege of living in the Islamic community.
This was practiced during Muhammad’s day and is practiced still today where Muslims are the majority and Christians and Jews are in the minority.
A current example of an agreement that could be “beneficial to all concerned” would be between Israel and the Palestinians. If the Palestinians stopped shooting rockets tomorrow, building tunnels in order to kill Israeli civilians and agreed to the right of Israel to exist as a state, some mutually beneficial agreement could be reached. However, if Israel laid down their arms, no one doubts a second Holocaust would occur overnight. In 1948, 1967 and in 1973 whenever mutually beneficial agreement negotiations occurred, the Palestinian leadership, i.e. Hamas, PLO, Muslims, reiterated its position that is found in the Hamas 1988 Covenant , “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
How do you negotiate with a party that wishes to kill you? How is that mutually beneficial? Muhammad did this in his time with the Constitution of Medina eventually breaking that treaty and either enslaving, killing or making all Jews and Christians refugees from their homes in and around Medina.
These past and current examples are hardly “beneficial to all concern”.
No one is claiming all Muslims are going to lie, deceive, take advantage of others or not apply the ‘golden rule” when conducting their daily affairs. It would be ludicrous to say so.
The Muslims I encounter in my daily life are nice, kind and thoughtful, all traits that would make them on the surface a good Rotarian candidate for membership. A recent picnic with Afghan students, all Muslims, proved that point clearly.
Separating the ideology that expressly preaches against the “golden rule” and is the antithesis to the Four Way Test code should be an issue of honest debate among orthodox, secular Muslims and non-Muslims. Since 60% of the Quran describes relations for Muslims toward non-Muslims, the topic is relevant to non-Muslims and Muslims alike.
Back to the dilemma; can you be a “good Muslim” and believe all the statements below are true?
- “The entire life (not parts of it) of Muhammad represents the example I should follow”
- “I praise his example and declare, like the Quran does 91 times, that Muhammad is the role model for me and all Muslims to follow”
- “I can be a good Rotarian and answer truthfully “yes” to the Rotary Four Way Test!”
As President Erdogan of Turkey said in 2007 when asked about “moderate Islam” during a television interview he replied with the following: “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”
One shouldn’t ask a talking head, another Muslim or even an Imam what a “good Muslim” is or is not. The only basis this judgment can be made upon is Muhammad and it’s all there in black and white to read in the Quran, the Hadiths and the stories of Muhammad. Muslims may answer differently but in the end, their opinions don’t matter, only Muhammad’s example stands as the example they will be judged by.
I’ll ask the question of Rotarians or any service club member;
Rotarians conduct “fireside chats” with prospective new members before voting on them. Who is most likely not to be accepted intoyour service club, Jesus, Gandhi, the Pope or Muhammad based upon the example they set?
Don’t be mislead, I didn’t say Muslims shouldn’t be Rotarians or members of any service group. As for Muslims or non-Muslims, the standard should be the same, one’s character, reputation, one’s trustworthiness, contributions to society, willingness to put service over self and ability to work with others.
Muslims are fine people who operate under the yoke of a “master/slave” relationship that most were born into. Many Muslims do not even know of the facts presented above so it is understandable they maybe offended.
However, not being given the facts doesn’t disqualify those same facts from being true. If one merely discards these new facts or make a less than serious gesture at finding a new truth, the cloak of ignorance can no longer be worn. Two options remain for any Muslim who discovers the truth; complicity in the lie, i.e. a “deceiver” like Allah, or encompassing these new facts toward a different life choice.
The Rotarian Four Way Test encompasses the values I’ve tried to teach my children, that I took an oath to uphold as a commissioned officer in the Air Force and one that my Christian faith holds dear. I suspect that many of the Muslim Rotarians around the world feel the same way as I do. They reject in their heart the violence of Muhammad and Islam. As non-Muslims our best option is to continue to practice the Four Way Test in all the things we think, do or say, particularly toward Muslims.
My statements are not opinions but fact backed upon the Quran, Hadiths and the four major schools of Islamic thought.
For anyone who feels my statements constitute “hate-speech” I pose this question, “Can telling the truth ever be construed as being hate-speech?” If you are looking for an answer, reference the First Amendment.
P.S. For any Rotarian who thinks relating Islam to Rotary violates the Third and Fourth Test, “Does it Build Good Will and Better Friendships” and “Will it be Beneficial to All Concerned” just recall what the Hamas Covenant said, “…The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated”.
When I visited the Rotary Club in Prague, Czech Republic and asked how long one of the members there had been in Rotary, he answered, “since 1989, when the wall came down. It was the first time we were permitted to have Rotary Clubs”.
Defending our freedoms in advance is far less bloody than doing it too late. All Americans, Rotarians included, around the world need to realize that fact. Just ask the Czechs.
