The Media Routine When Muslims Kill

We hope you watch Bill Warner's video, The Media and Jihad, and share it with your friends. In his introduction to the video, he wrote:

Every time that there is a major jihad attack, the media responds in the same way. There is now a routine that the authorities tell us:

• Islam is the religion of peace
• Muslims that do jihad are extremists and not real Muslims
• Authorities must watch out for retaliation against Muslims
• All religions are the same. The Christians are as bad or worse
• We have not done enough to welcome Islam
• Concessions will reduce jihad; we need to give Islam more concessions.

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Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
Permalink: http://www.politicalislam.com/the-media-and-jihad/
Use as needed, just give credit and do not edit.
www.politicalislam.com

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Another Liberal Who Criticizes Islamic Doctrine

In a recent Citizen Warrior article entitled, Muslims Are Not What Is Wrong With Islam, a commenter who called himself "Ah Clem" wrote the following:

It's always interesting, and more than a little frustrating, to read and discuss about liberals and Islam.

I am a liberal critic of Islam who switched sides after reading Ibn Warraq's book Why I am not a Muslim. This happened after watching the Egypt revolution on Al Jazeera and noticing that the rape of Lara Logan in Tahrir Square was not covered at all in Al Jazeera, yet was all over the front pages everywhere else. This was especially odd, since Al Jazeera had an office in Tahrir Square back then.

Ibn Warraq is an atheist ex-Muslim born in India, who spent his childhood in Pakistan and was sent to the UK for his education and to learn Islamic Studies. He ended up rejecting Islam and becoming an atheist. At the beginning of his book, he carefully makes the distinction between unfair criticism of Muslims by lumping them together as a monolithic whole, and criticizing the doctrines of Islam. No ideology is above criticism. It took all of about five seconds of thought to understand this, yet I have found it nearly impossible to get this point across when talking to fellow liberals online about Islam.

I'd like to suggest a video about Islam for liberals by one of the co-founders of Ex-Muslims of North America, Sarah Haider. It's called Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique. Please pass it on to your liberal friends.

Read more about liberals who criticize Islam here.

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"Muslims Are Not What Is Wrong With Islam"

"The problem with Islam is the Prophet Muhammad. According to Islamic scripture (in other words, what mainstream Muslims are taught to believe) the Prophet Muhammad was a slave owner, a rapist, committed mass murder, hated Jews with a passion, wanted homosexuals punished, killed his critics, stripped women of all rights and had sex with a nine year old girl, whom he married when she was six, named Aisha."

The above is quoted from an article by Eric Allen Bell, a liberal filmmaker who changed his mind about Islam (read his story here and here). He wrote a great article (read it here) describing what would happen if Muhammad were alive today. He goes into great detail, and I think he is accurate.

Here are a few excerpts:

"If he were alive today," wrote Bell, "Amnesty International would certainly have a problem with his followers obeying his laws, which demand that certain people have their limbs amputated and their nose cut off.

The Huffington Post and Daily Kos would be collecting signatures, to demand that our government do something to stop him. Media Matters would be reprinting all of the outrageous things he said, such as "I have become victorious through terror."

Michael Moore would probably follow the Prophet around, trying to trick him into a "gotcha" question, then win an Academy Award for his latest documentary, "Muhammad and Me."

CNN’s Anderson Cooper would profile the Prophet Muhammad in his “Keeping Them Honest” segment of his highly rated show, because of all the contradictions in Muhammad’s best seller, the Holy Quran (look up “Abrogation”).

The ADL would have an issue with the Prophet Muhammad stating that Jews are all apes and pigs (see Suras 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166), rather than trying to protect the rights of Islam’s female followers to wear black sheets over their bodies, as the Prophet’s laws command. If someone were alive today, calling Jews apes and pigs, while having 1.6 billion followers, the ADL would have something to say about it.

The Daily Show would have more fun mocking the Prophet than taking pot shots at Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. Bill Maher and Sean Hannity would ironically be sharing a Nobel Peace Prize for their brave and pioneering work, in exposing the war crimes of the Prophet Muhammad.

Gay rights groups would be a little concerned about the Mormon Church, but totally freaked out about anyone who follows the laws of the Prophet, known as the Sharia, because Sharia Law calls for homosexuals to be severely punished. Every cult awareness website and organization out there would put out an alert, since the penalty for leaving the Prophet’s religion is death.

After the Prophet Muhammad beheaded an entire tribe of Jews, possibly no one would have a problem with waterboarding anyone who knew where to find him. The Prophet Muhammad had several wives, but the one named Safiyya became his wife after he tortured and killed her father, her brothers, the men in her tribe, told his fighters to take the women of that tribe as sex slaves and then raped Safia that night.

It goes on in this vein, but you get the idea. This is obviously a great article to share with your friends and family, but since Bell takes his fellow liberals to task for ignoring this issue, and since his credentials are at the end of the article, I think most liberals would assume the author is a right wing fanatic before they read the first two paragraphs and would stop reading. So if you share the article with your liberal friends, make it clear beforehand that the article is written by a liberal.

You might start with the description you find at the end of the article:

Eric Allen Bell is a writer, filmmaker and Media Adviser living in Los Angeles, California. While making a documentary about the construction of a 53,000 square foot mega mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee he attempted to expose “Islamophobia.” Once he stated that Islam was the biggest threat to human rights in the world today, he was banned from the writing for Daily Kos and MichaelMoore.com, after LoonWatch.com created a petition to silence him. His article, “The High Price of Telling the Truth About Islam” has been widely circulated and has caused several liberals to rethink how they look at the religion of peace.

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Trying Not to Have to Think About It

An insightful young woman said something to me the other day that nails it on the head. She said when she talks to people about Islam, they seem to be trying to find a way of thinking about it that lets them not have to think about it any more. Things like, "But it's just a small number of extremists." Or, "We have the strongest military in the world." Or, "I know a couple of Muslims, and they're some of the nicest people I know."

"People try to compartmentalize it," she said. "They try to brush it off so they can stop worrying about it."

But she also pointed out something I've noticed too: It is getting harder to ignore.

To help you deal with those kinds of responses from people, we have created the Answers to Objections series.

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The Founder of Islam's Crimes Against Humanity

The following was written by F. W. Burleigh, author of the book, It's All About Muhammad.

Muhammad was born and raised in Mecca, and it was in Mecca that he began to believe that he was chosen as God’s messenger. This belief was likely due to epileptic seizures that gave him feelings of communing with the divine. Believing himself to be a prophet, he crafted a monotheistic religion based on ideas he took from Judaism and Christianity, but claimed his source was God. He feuded with the Meccans over their belief in multiple gods. The Meccans, who thought he was demon possessed, ridiculed him and persecuted his followers, leading him to threaten to “bring them slaughter.” Because of the disruptions to their society caused by his aggressive proselytizing, the Meccans finally decided they had to kill him to preserve their way of life. But he learned of their plans and fled to Yathrib, a fertile valley 230 miles north of Mecca, and vowed to make war on them and anyone else who rejected his religion and his belief in himself as God’s messenger. His flight from Mecca took place in A.D. 622.

In Yathrib, he had a mosque built that served as his headquarters — his al-qaeda — for waging war on the Meccans. He began by attacking their caravans. About 18 months after he arrived in Mecca, a battle took place between 300 of Muhammad’s followers and an army of 900 Meccans. This came to be known as the Battle of Badr because of the name of the oasis where the battle took place. It resulted from Muhammad’s attacks on Meccan caravans. They had learned he planned on hijacking a major caravan on its return trip from Syria and sent an army to defend it. But the army was led by merchants who were inexperienced in war, and they were defeated by Muhammad’s zealots. The caravan managed to elude him, but most of the Meccan leaders were killed in the battle, and Muhammad threw their bodies into a well.

One the Meccan leaders — one of Muhammad’s chief enemies — was mortally wounded during the battle, but was still alive when it ended. Muhammad sent a trusted servant to find him. The servant killed the merchant and brought his head to Muhammad, who rejoiced and praised Allah for the death of his enemy.

Of the seventy Meccans who were taken captive, forty-nine were spared and held for ransom. The rest were the Meccans who were hated for one reason or another and were slain. One of them was a man named Nader al-Harith. Muhammad ordered him beheaded because he used to insult Muhammad in Mecca by calling his prophet stories “tales of the ancients” and offering to tell the Meccans more interesting stories about Persian kings and heroes. Nader had lived for a time in one of the Persian provinces and had learned the stories. In Mecca he would follow Muhammad around and interrupt his attempts at proselytizing with such tales. For this he was slain.

Following this battle Muhammad sanctified violence in Koran verses and gave Allah’s stamp of approval for taking plunder, thus turning his aggressions into an organized criminal enterprise. He distributed everything that was captured from the Meccans to the men who had fought at Badr after taking 20 percent for himself, a plunder distribution policy that he followed from then on. “Enjoy what you take in plunder,” he tells the faithful in the Koran, “for it is lawful and good.

This battle marks the beginning of a rampage of killing and plunder that Muhammad engaged in until his death in A.D. 632.

 

F. W. Burleigh is the author of It’s All About Muhammad: A Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet. He blogs at www.itsallaboutmuhammad.com.

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ISIS, Islam, and Obedience

The following article was written by UK author Greg Hamilton on his excellent blog, Malsi-Tung:

In the aftermath of WWII people began to ask how the perpetrators of atrocities such as those who ran the Nazi death camps were not restrained by conscience.

Nazis shooting Jews 

One explanation put forward was the “Germans are different” hypothesis. This suggested that Hitler was only able to put his evil plans into operation because Germans had a basic character defect which meant they tended to obey orders without question, regardless of the acts demanded of them.

For the purposes of psychological research, obedience is defined as doing what one is told to do by someone else. In real life, this usually works in conjunction with conformity where the example of others and social pressure also drive behaviour.

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, set out to test the “Germans are different” hypothesis. He set up an experiment in which subjects were told that they were studying the effects of punishment on learning.

The "learner" is connected to the electrodes

When the subjects were taken into the experimental situation they were met by a man in a laboratory coat who introduced himself as Jack Williams, the experimenter. Also present was a Mr Wallace, supposedly another subject, in his late fifties, an accountant.

The subject and Mr Wallace were told that for the purpose of the experiment one of them would be the teacher and the other the learner. Their roles were determined by drawing pieces of paper from a hat. In fact both pieces had “teacher” written on them. Mr Wallace (actually an accomplice of Milgram) always went first and called out “learner” so the true subject was always the teacher.

They all went into an adjoining room where the learner (Mr Wallace) was strapped into a chair with his arms attached to electrodes which would deliver a shock from a shock generator situated in an adjacent room. The subject (teacher) was given a 45 volt shock to convince him that the voltage was real.

The machine had the appearance of being able to deliver a range of shocks from “slight” (15-60 volts) all the way to “danger: severe shock” and “XXX” (450 volts).

The teacher had to read out a series of word pairs (e.g. Blue-girl) and then the first of one pair followed by five words, one of which was the original paired word. The learner had to press a switch to indicate which word belonged to the original pair. This showed up on a light panel in the teacher’s room.

Each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher had to deliver a shock, and each successive mistake was punished by a shock 15 volts higher than the one before.

In response to the shocks, the learner made progressively louder and more anguished groans of pain. At 315 volts he let out a violent scream, protesting that he was no longer willing to participate. After 330 volts there was ominous silence.

So, how many people in Milgram’s study were prepared to take follow orders into the danger zone?

65% of subjects continued to give shocks to 450 volts – beyond the danger level. All subjects continued to 300 volts.

Of course, it was all faked but the subjects believed they were giving electric shocks. Just in case you’re sceptical: many ‘teachers’ showed intense anguish, laughed nervously, twitched and grimaced; three ‘teachers’ had violent seizures.

When the subjects hesitated or questioned the experimenter, Milgram offered the following prompts:

1. ‘Please continue’ or ‘Please go on’
2. ‘The experiment requires you to continue’
3. ‘It’s absolutely essential that you continue’
4. ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’

Why did people obey?

Whilst being told what to do, we can argue that what we are doing is not our responsibility. As Milgram stood beside them and insisted they continue, they assumed he knew what he was doing and who were they to argue with a psychologist?

However, there was clearly for many an intense conflict between what they were being told to do and what their conscience was saying, and indeed how they felt about hurting someone.

In this type of situation, people will often enter what’s known as the ‘agentic state’; that is, a mental state in which they exonerate themselves from all responsibility by submitting themselves totally to the authority figure and doing his/her bidding. “I was only following orders.”

Milgram summed up his findings in this way: “A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.” (Milgram, Obedience to Authority, 1974, summarised from Richard Gross “Psychology: The Study of Mind and Behaviour”.)

So, given Milgram’s conclusion above, what happens when the authority is believed to be the ultimate authority – God?

Within Islam, the chain of command is Allah > Muhammad > Muslims. Between Muhammad and Muslims there are a series of intermediaries in the form of scholars, clerics, writers of commentaries (Ibn Kaldun), Sharia jurists, mullahs, imams etc, who articulate what the ‘orders’ are.

The Koran can be read by anyone and, contrary to what some Muslims say, verses generally mean what they appear to mean and are taken to have those meanings by ‘radical’ Muslims (that is Muslims who go back to the roots – the roots being Muhammad (the Sunna ) and the Koran.).

The Koran contains hundreds of instructions, both plain and oblique, to believe. Read it and you’ll see it over and over again. Many verses begin with, “Oh ye who believe!”; warnings for those who fail to believe are abundant; the rewards for those who do believe equally so. This theme is endlessly repeated.

To command belief is to command a form of obedience. This is the first act of obedience in Islam. The failure to believe (kufr) is one of the worst sins in Islam.

Those who do not believe are denigrated and despised. The central dynamic of Islam is for believers to attack and subjugate non-believers.

9:29 Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

9:5 And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

9:14 Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people.

The first act of obedience is encapsulated in the saying of the shahada: there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.

Upon this premise further claims to obedience are built.

64:12 So obey Allah, and obey His Messenger: but if ye turn back, the duty of Our Messenger is but to proclaim (the Message) clearly and openly

8:24: O you who believe! Answer Allah (by obeying Him) and As His Messenger (obeying him) when he calls you to that which will give you life.

9:24 And Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people.

The following verse commands that what the believer does not like must still be followed. Even those acts which would arouse moral revulsion in a morally healthy person should be carried out.

2:216 Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not.

IS shooting captives

Mark Durie reports an account of an ex-Salafi from Egypt who told him that a great deal of effort is expended getting believers to do things they find repulsive, thereby erasing their natural conscience.

The psychological study of obedience has also found that people suppress their consciences when obeying instructions that they would otherwise reject on moral grounds. They abdicate personal responsibility.

Having submitted to the first act of obedience and committed to the proposition that Islam is the true religion, the believer finds himself in the position of determining what he must do. The whole edifice of Islamic scripture and the example of Muhammad supplies the answers. The believer must obey these instructions as he has committed to the premise that they are God’s instructions, otherwise he ceases to be a believer and is deemed to be an apostate. There are also clear instructions for the believers on what to do with apostates: “Whoever leaves his Islamic religion, kill him.” - Bukhari 9.84.57 (considered by Islamic scholars to be an authoritative hadith)

Commands to kill are very common in Islam.

Unlike Milgram’s subjects, Islamic believers are under pain of death to believe and therefore comply with the instructions given. The parallels with Nazi Germany are obvious. If anything, Nazi Germany was less totalitarian than Islam.

Where Milgram prompted his subjects with a gentle, “Please continue” or “You have no other choice, you must go on”, Islam has the full weight of God and accusations of apostasy for non-compliance. The common tendency among all of us to follow the orders of authority figures is greatly amplified in Islam where the religion and the cultures dominated by it are heavily authoritarian.

Muslims are brought up in an environment where there is no alternative to Islam – only persecution and death. Non-Muslims are generally vilified and instances of persecution are common. How does a person wrest themselves from such a state of submission and obedience?

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the current situation in Iraq and Syria is the fact that millions of Muslims are actually drawn to Islamic State rather than repelled by what is being done. Apart from psycho-pathological reasons, the explanation for this is that Islamic State are fulfilling Allah’s will. They believe (and their scriptures and imams have given them every reason to believe) that what Islamic State is doing is the will of Allah and they too wish to obey his will. To do otherwise is disobedient.

Such people must be well down the road of erasing their conscience in full submission to Islamic authority. The beheading of four Christian children in Baghdad is all the evidence one needs to realise that these devout followers of Islam have jettisoned their consciences in favour of obedience to Allah’s will. To become a mindless instrument of His will is after all the goal of Muslim devotion.

In summary, Islam builds on a common human tendency to obey authority. Muhammad claimed to have the authority of God. He instituted a religion in which submission and obedience are key. The obedience demanded of Muslims by Islam conditions them to erase their conscience and submit to instructions to kill, persecute and dominate.

We must always count on the obedience of Muslims to the doctrines of Islam because the doctrines of Islam are principally about obedience. That which should not be done and that which must be done are defined down to the tiniest detail.

Unless Muslims are prepared to abandon Islam and thereby reject that first obedience, we must assume that they will “follow orders” when the time comes.

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It is perhaps those four brave children from Baghdad who have shown us what is needed. Faced with the demand to submit to Allah or face a gruesome and cruel death, these four brave souls responded with, “no, we love Yesua; we have always loved Yesua; we have always followed Yesua; Yesua has always been with us”. They thereby demonstrated both great love and great courage. It is these qualities that we all need. They don’t have to be expressed in a Christian context but they do have to be expressed.

They are the qualities which distinguish those who are faithful to their humanity from those who are not; the qualities needed to rise above obedience and submission.

Author: Greg Hamilton

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Counterjihad Heavy Hitters Struggle to Reach People Too

Do you sometimes have trouble getting through to people about Islam? Do you sometimes wonder how it's possible not to understand very basic things about this issue? You're not alone. In the video below, two of my favorite counterjihadists — Jamie Glazov and Raymond Ibrahim — have a discussion about how hard it is for them too:



It's important to keep up with the news. It's important to understand the principles of the Islamic ideology. But the limiting factor preventing an understanding of Islam from becoming widespread and mainstream is breaching this listening barrier. The biggest issue among counterjihadists should now be how to get through to our fellow non-Muslims about the problem of Islam.

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