The recent massacres in Paris of the staff of Charlie Hebdo and the Jews in a kosher supermarket, and the increasing incidences of butchering young people coming out of pubs have made more people concerned about the rise of terrorism. Tens of thousands have come out to demonstrate.
Since the 9/11 attack on New York and the Pentagon in 2001, there have been close to 25,000 terrorist attacks worldwide, all of which were perpetrated in the name of Islam. That is about 5 terrorist attacks every day. So far two million people have been killed and a similar number are maimed and injured. These attacks are becoming more frequent. Yet something is not changing.
- Immediately after the attack, the president or the prime minister of the country in which the attack has taken place goes on TV and declares that this attack had nothing to do with Islam.
- Right after that the chief of police announces that he has taken all the measures to protect Muslims from any imaginary backlash and nonexistent reprisal.
- In the evening of the same day the mainstream media interviews an imam or a Muslim spokesperson who emphasizes that Islam does not condone violence.
- We are then told that extremists exist in all religions and reminded that some thirty years ago a few Christians killed a few abortionist murderers of unborn babies.
- Then the pundits are called to pontificate that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is not in what the terrorist themselves say, and nothing to do with the Quran (that in hundreds of verses calls on the believers to kill the unbelievers), but in the injustice done to Muslims in other parts of the world, such as in Abu Ghraib prison and particularly in Palestine where half a century ago Israelis defeated the Arab invaders who had vowed to drown them in the sea.
- A few days after that the police and the politicians of the victim country hold meetings with the leaders of the Muslim community where they conclude that more money should be given to the “moderate Muslims” to persuade the “radicals” to not take their religion seriously.
- The experts also conclude that emblems like Christmas and Christmas trees hurt the religious sentiment of Muslims and they should be removed from public institutions, shopping malls and schools, while at the same time Muslims should be given some concessions, like not requiring them to wash their hands before performing operation on patients, designating a room and Islamic toilets for them in public institutions, and allow them to apply for driving license without requiring them to show their face.
- Also, in the spirit of integration and community cohesion, everyone should be forced to eat halal meat, which involves extra cruelty to the animals, without their knowledge, whether they want it or not.
This tune is replayed every time there is a terrorist attack. The narrative never changes, despite the unequivocal assertion of the terrorists themselves who make it clear they are motivated by the teachings and examples of their prophet and his promise of virgins. Methinks, the record of history is broken. How else can we explain that after a repetition of 25,000 times one would not question the validity of this narrative?
While politicians in western countries and the mainstream media are stuck in the above narrative, the truth is not hidden from the Muslims. Al Sisi, the president of Egypt, in his 2015 New Year’s speech in Al Azhar University, addressing top Sunni clerics said, “it is not possible that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world’s Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live.” Sisi did not blame Abu Ghraib, Israel, nor made other silly excuses for Islamic terrorism. He blamed the “ideology” of it. But the ideology—which says, kill the unbelievers so you go to paradise—comes straight from the Quran.
Sisi cannot go further than that. What he said is already too much and if he did not have the military behind him, he would have been thrown into jail. However, if a non-Muslim raises the same concerns raised by Sisi, they will be called racist and denounced as an Islamophobe.
We are told, “You can’t paint an entire group of people with the same wide brush.” But there is a war going on. People are being killed. We have to know our enemy. Who is the enemy?
Of course not everyone is the same. Although each individual is unique we can classify Muslims in three broad categories. In practice, an individual often belongs to more than one category. The proportion of the overlap varies, and just as 18 decillion colors are created by the combination of just three colors and their intensity, the degree to which Muslims belong to each category gives rise to infinite diversity among them. No Muslim exists out of these three categories.
The first category is that of good Muslims. By good I mean true believers—those who follow the teachings of their prophet, the Quran and the Sunnah to the letter, who try to emulate him in every way and are strict and pious Muslims. Since the teachings and the examples of Muhammad are full of violence and terror, the more one follows and emulates him the more radical one becomes. Muhammad raided and butchered people merely because they were not his followers. The good Muslims do the same. All the bombings and terrorism perpetrated by Muslims are replicas of Muhammad’s raids, or ghazwa, as he called them. Taking women as sex slaves, which the Islamic State and Boko Haram practice was also practiced by Muhammad and he sanctioned it in the Quran (33:50; 23: 1-6; 70:30; 4:24; 66:1-2). He ordered the assassination of his critics stoning the adulterers, chopping the hands of thieves and killing the apostates. So, the terrorists are actually good Muslims.
The second category is of bad Muslims. These are those who don’t practice their religion and are often ignorant of it. They may pray or chant the Quran, but have no clue of its content. They read it for thawab (reward) without understanding it. These Muslims are ordinary people we all know. Like everybody else, some are good and some are not so good. Some of them are friendly, but they see themselves as superior, by virtue of their faith, and of “higher morals.”
Morality in Islam has nothing to do with what others understand by this word. Morality for women is to cover their hair lest it arouse sexual feelings in men. For men, it is not to shake hands with Muslim women lest it arouse them sexually, or not to masturbate, etc. Morality in Islam is primarily about genitals and their use. For example, while having sex out of marriage is considered immoral, stoning people caught in such act is not immoral. While looking at bare arms and legs of Muslim women is considered immoral, raping non-Muslim women is not immoral. Homosexuality is immoral, but pedophilia is not.
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