1. What is the true nature of Islam?
2. Why are we afraid to know about it?
My books have answered the first question and now my new talk answers the second question.
A few months ago a man videoed two talks that I gave in Chattanooga, TN. When he asked if he could post them on You Tube, I said sure and thought that no one would watch a 45-minute talk. Wrong! In two weeks time about 51,000 people have watched the entire talk. Now it is being subtitled in German, French, and Spanish. Who knew?
This talk ties together the rise of Islam, the annihilation of classical civilization, the Dark Ages, the Islamic Golden Age, the doctrine of jihad and the psychology of the Western mind as analogous to the abused wife, all based on two large sets of data. The idea is the result of 10 years of research and it took 6 months to prepare the content and the graphics.
For your viewing pleasure:
Why We Are Afraid
and
A Rational Study of Radical Islam
Bill Warner does excellent work, but I'm not sure I agree with his explanation of why people don't want to criticize or know about Islam and its history. If I understand him, he says the reason is that people are terrified and ashamed about the historical past, and about how millions of our non-Muslim ancestors were enslaved and killed by jihad. So they suppress this knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with that argument is that most people today are arguably not suppressing historical knowledge -- they simply don't know anything about the history of jihad or about how our ancestors fared in the past due to jihad.
No, the reasons people are afraid to talk critically about Islam and jihad are closer to hand: 1): because of Nazi genocide and the Jim Crow evils of the 20th century, plus the great and violent struggles of the U.S. civil rights movement, many people have over the last half century become super-sensitized to the immense social dangers and the ugliness of judging individuals collectively. For many in the West, any movement that, no matter how slightly, looks like it might try to impose collective guilt, whether on Muslims or on any other group, is felt as flirting with vast, genocidal mass murder, immense mountains of murdered dead corpses, and world wars; 2) people are afraid to criticize Islam also because peers may label Islam-critics as bigots, and bosses may fire Islam-critics in order to keep workplace harmony and safety and avoid lawsuits by Muslims or the government over discrimination; 3) people are afraid to criticize Islam because it doesn't take a genius to grasp that some Muslim at one's workplace or neighborhood just might kill one or blow up one's house if one became known for Islam-criticism. If one's criticism should get on the internet with one's face attached, one might have to worry about Muslims from anywhere.
So I don't see a need to propose, as Bill Warner seems to do, that people are afraid to criticize Islam because of some sort of historical trauma buried in the collective mind, some shame and horror of the past people don't want to dig up. Historical awareness of Islam is not suppressed; it is simply non-existent (among most people).
I think Bill Warner is talking about the people who have some historical awareness of Islam. Without research, my best guess is that this is about half the U.S. population.
ReplyDeleteSo, why do most elected pols have talk and no action when it comes to actually doing something to defend the U. S. Constitution and the citizens from Islam. (Thank God for Allen West and a few others.)
ReplyDeleteEveryone fears life. Muslims have raised the bar in pysche of everyone that you can be killed any time if you go anti-Islam. This is the only reason everyone fears.
ReplyDeleteIslam was not successful even after 1000 years rule in India. (they destroyed more than 10000 temples!) but still could not destroy the temple within hearts of everyone. People were ready to die but not sell their conscience, had no fear of death then. But as for everyone base instincts surface and Britishers came in India and worked on this to be successful. But Islam is bogus and so nobody intellectual + 'faithful' as hirstory in India were ready to surrender to Islam and died but didn't get converted or accepted demands.
Traeh, I sent Bill Warner your comment and he answered:
ReplyDeleteThe gentleman is half right. Those are social forces at play today. But why we so ignorant before the 20th century?
There is a historic pattern that spans the previous 1300 years that casts a shadow today.
Along these lines, another factor at work is that during the Enlightenment, influential writers were rebelling against the Christian repression of free inquiry and dominance of the society, and in their criticism, they sometimes used Islam as a contrast, as a way to criticize the European-Christian society, and they were so influential, they had an influence that lasts to this day with their anti-Christian, anti-Western, pro-Islamic point of view.
ReplyDeleteCitizen Warrior, thank you very much for conveying my message to Bill Warner and posting his response. That's an example of what makes your website outstanding.
ReplyDeleteAs for Bill's response, I'll settle for half-right.
Having thought about it, I can see that maybe I was misinterpreting Bill's point. Maybe he was just saying that during the 1400 years of jihad, the West should have been building up centuries of historical knowledge and reflection on jihad. But infidels in past centuries, out of shame and fear over being so beaten and victimized by jihad, have not talked about it or written about it much. And so today we know much less about it than we would if not for the psychological and physical trauma of past centuries' jihad causing past historians not to write much down about jihad.
So while I still doubt the reality of any alleged shame in today's Western infidels as the cause of suppression of knowledge of the past of jihad, I can see how shame may well have been operative that way in past centuries, truncating historical records, and thus leaving us today somewhat blinded for want of historical awareness of jihad.
Also, while I don't thing today's Western infidels feel shame about being beaten centuries ago by jihad, the situation may be different for non-Western infidels around the globe. Perhaps they are more vulnerable than Westerners to shame about past defeats in resisting jihad.