"Are You a Hatemonger? I Don't Believe in Promoting Hatred"

THIS IS another installation in our series, Answers to Objections. When you criticize Islam, you may very well be accused of being a "hater," as if telling people about basic Islamic doctrines means you advocate hatred toward Muslims as the solution. And nobody likes a hater, or wants to be one.

This objection is fairly easy to answer. Here are three possible ways to respond:

1. Hatred is not the answer. If anything, I am anti-hatred. That's why I am trying to expose Islamic teachings: Shari'a law includes a system of legally-mandated hatred. Mohammad is their model, and he expressed hatred toward non-Muslims. He maligned them, robbed them, tortured them, killed them, raped them, and took them as slaves. Muslims are supposed to follow his example. It says so in the Qur'an 91 times.

2. I'm talking about the teachings, not the people. Some Muslims follow the teachings, and some are Muslim in name only. But non-Muslims need to know about the teachings, because many of the most fundamental Islamic teachings are about how to deal with non-Muslims. According to the teachings, we must be subjugated under Islamic law. All of us. Voluntarily or by force. And the tens of millions or hundreds of millions who follow Islamic doctrine to the letter are actively working toward that end. They have gained control over how Islam is taught in American schoolbooks. Devoted followers have set up organizations in the United States and other Western democracies with the express purpose of undermining those democracies from within. We need to know about this stuff. It is affecting us already.

3. If I say the teachings of communism advocate ending economic inequalities, does that make me a hatemonger? If I say Republicans advocate smaller government, does that make me a hater? If I say Buddhists believe in reincarnation, does that make me a hater? But if I say the teachings of Islam advocate striving to institute worldwide Shari'a law, that makes me a hatemonger? That doesn't make any sense. Where did you come up with that?

When you answer these questions, think of the question itself as an earnest request for knowledge, even if the question comes out as an accusation. People don't really know how to understand what you're doing, so they use the only model they can think of to interpret your actions: They think you must be like a racist or a religious bigot or something along those lines.

So a helpful response is to give them a better model to interpret with. What you're doing is much closer to education than hatemongering. Urge them to read the Qur'an for themselves to find out more about it.