The London and Glasgow terror attacks have highlighted the prominent role played by Muslim physicians during the global resurgence of jihad witnessed over the past four decades. Although such violent actions targeting innocent life were openly sanctioned by Osama bin Laden's Muslim physician mentor, Abdallah Azzam, (and indeed the London/Glasgow plots may have been approved by Bin Laden himself), they represent the most profound violation of basic medical ethics, and what it means to be a physician.

Canadian-born physician Sir William Osler, MD (1849-1919) revolutionized the teaching and training curricula of North American medical schools. Within 7-months of his death on December 29, 1919, Osler delivered a lecture entitled, "The Old Humanities and the New Science" celebrating the strong humanistic aspirations of modern medicine even in the face of the tragic carnage of World War I. He observed that,

The dynamo replaced the steam-engine, radiant energy revealed the hidden secrets of matter, to the conquest of the earth was added the control of the air and the mastery of the deep. Nor was it only an Age of Force. Never before had man done so much for his brother, the victory over the powers of Nature meant also glorious victories of peace; pestilences were checked, the cry of the poor became articulate, and to help the life of the submerged half became a sacred duty of the other.

The fulminant recrudescence of jihadism during the latter half of the 20th century through the present, has been accompanied by a grotesque distortion of Osler's vision: a burgeoning cadre of Muslim physicians--epitomized by those linked to the recent London and Glasgow terror plots --lacking the most basic professional and personal ethics, have adopted a warped credo, albeit consistent with the doctrine of jihad war, which has been aptly characterized as "terror is healing". Indeed, even the much lionized "progressive" Muslim theologian Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, who was hanged (1985) as an "apostate" in a transparent act of political oppression by the Sudanese government, and recently hailed by journalist George Packer as the "anti-(Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid) Qutb", made the following hideous analogy between jihad war, and the surgical instrument of healing, a physician's lancet/scalpel:

Islam used persuasion for thirteen years in propagating its clearly valid message…When the addressees failed to discharge properly the[ir] duties…the Prophet was appointed as their guardian…once they embraced the new religion [i.e., by coercion]…the sword was suspended…and [they] were penalized according to new laws. Hence the development of Islamic Shari'a law…

In justifying the use of the sword, we may describe it as a surgeon's lancet, and not a butcher's knife…We [the Muslims] have enacted fighting with the sword in order to curtail the freedom of those who abuse it, so the sword brings them to their senses, thereby allowing them to earn their freedom and benefit from their life [note: "freedom as perfect slavery to Allah", the Sufi notion of Ibn Arabi, perhaps?]

Suffering death by the sword in this life is really an aspect of suffering hell in the next life, since both are punishments for disbelief…for the disbelievers the law of war, and hardship of iron

Seminal jihadist ideologue Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian Muslim physician, and Osama bin Laden's primary religious instuctor, represents the apotheosis of this modern jihad terrorist "healer" as murderer mentality. But Azzam is merely representative of an entire genre of like-minded Muslim physicians, as catalogued briefly by the indefatigable lawyer and investigative journalist Debbie Schlussel:

• Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri--Al-Qaeda mastermind and number two man, reportedly a surgeon and/or psychiatrist;
• Dr. Mohammad Rabi Al-Zawahiri--Ayman's father and a Muslim Brotherhood enthusiast, pharmacologist and professor at Ain Shams Medical School;
• Dr. "Abu Hafiza"--Al-Qaeda master planner who was the brains and commander of the Moroccan cell that provided logistics for the 9/11 attacks, and he recruited Qaeda insurgents for battles in Fallujah, Moroccan psychiatrist;
• Dr. Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi--Late HAMAS leader, pediatrician;
• Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar--HAMAS co-founder and leader, surgeon and lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza;
• Dr. Fathi Abd Al-Aziz Shiqaqi--Late founder of Islamic Jihad and active in Fatah, physician;
• Drs. Laila Al-Marayati and Riad Abdelkarim--Both work with and/or are top officials of KinderUSA (son of the Holy Land Foundation), which Al-Marayati voluntarily shutdown before the FBI did, as it was openly funding HAMAS "martyrs." Abdelkarim went to "Palestine" in May or so of 2002 with Dr. Dallel Mohammed (not an MD). They took monies collected at an April 2002 fundraiser and were caught by Israeli security handing over the funds to a HAMAS operative. They were detained in an Israeli jail, and a large orgy of publicity ensued. The two came back to the U.S. as Muslim "martyrs" used it to raise money for more.
• Dr. Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha--a 26-year-old neurologist who was arrested and is in custody as a suspect in the attempted London bombings, foiled Friday. He was born in Saudi Arabia, is of Palestinian origin, and has a Jordanian passport. His 27-year-old wife, a medical assistant, was also arrested for the foiled bombings;
• Dr. Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla--an Iraqi from Baghdad who was also arrested and is in custody as a suspect in the attempted Glasgow International Airport bombing, foiled Saturday. He was reportedly in the Jeep that drove into the airport, and is suffering from third-degree burns;
• Dr. Mohammed Haneef--an Indian Muslim arrested in Australia on Monday night in custody as a suspect in the attempted British terrorist bombing plots of last week; and the remainder of the eight London/Glasgow terror suspects.

Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Ohio chapter board chair Dr. Mobin-Uddin in her deceitful and treacly apologetic, "Betrayal of Our Faith", ignored this ugly living legacy of Muslim physicians serving as leaders of murderous jihad terror organizations, and expressed "outrage" with those she maintains only "profess" to be Muslims. To support this latter dubious claim she trotted out a disingenuously redacted summary of Koran 5:32, which according to her, "equates saving one life with saving the lives of all of humanity."

The entire verse Koran 5:32 , quoted in full context, with the intimately related verse, Koran 5:33 comprises a dire warning to Jews, admonishing them "Behave, or else".

(5:32) Therefore We prescribed for the Children of Israel that whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he has given life to mankind altogether. Our Messengers have already come to them with the clear signs; then many of them thereafter commit excesses in the earth. (5:33) This is the recompense of those who fight against God and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement

Thus Koran 5:32/33, as Ibn Warraq has noted , do not abjure violence, instead they aggressively make clear that anyone opposing the Muslim prophet Muhammad will be killed, crucified, mutilated, or banished. These Koranic verses are in fact a perversion of the noble sentiments expressed earlier in Mishna, Sanhedrin, IV, 5:

Thus was created a single man, to teach us that every person who loses a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he has lost the entire world, and every person who sustains a single soul, it shall be written, about him as if he has sustained the entire world.

The ugly and dangerous contemporary phenomenon of Muslim physician-jihadists represents a complete distortion of Sir Wlliam Osler's noble early 20th century vision. This phenomenon is but a particularly heinous manifestation of the jihad ideology wreaking bloody havoc across the globe. Intellectual honesty, not continued Muslim denial and deceit, offer the only hope for initiating a long and difficult recovery from the fully recrudescent scourge of jihad. The late Sudanese leader John Garang posed for all mankind the apposite existential question:

Is the call for jihad against a particular people a religious right of those calling for it, or is it a human rights violation against the people upon whom jihad is declared and waged?

By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com

Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and occasional contributor to Frontpage Magazine. He is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (2005), and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (2007), which can be previewed here.