What If Islam Really Is Different?
Friday
The following is the "About Us" page on TheReligionOfPeace.com. It was so good I gained permission to republish it here (and on Inquiry Into Islam).
TheReligionofPeace.com (TROP) is a pluralistic, non-partisan site concerned with Islam's true political and religious teachings according to its own texts. The purpose is to underscore the threat that Islam poses to human dignity and freedom, part of which includes documenting the violence and dysfunction that ensues as a direct consequence of this religion's supremacist teachings.
TROP is not associated with any organization. The site does not promote any religion, but it is not hostile to religion. We generally support the rights of atheists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, homosexuals, women, Muslims and anyone else on the planet to live as they wish without violating the rights of others.
TheReligionofPeace.com strongly condemns any attempt to harm or harass any Muslim anywhere in the world because of their religion. Every human being is entitled to be treated as an individual and judged only by his or her own words and deeds. (see About Muslims).
We also denounce any act of vandalism against mosques or other property, including juvenile attempts to offend Muslims by desecrating copies of the Quran. (The best way of discrediting the Quran is to tell non-Muslims what it actually says about them).
At the same time, we see no use in pretending that Islam is just another religion - which always seems to be the assumption of those preferring not to look too closely.
In fact, Islam is dreadfully unique — and it should be OK to say so.
What other religion's most devoted members videotape themselves cutting people's throats while screaming praises to their god? What other faith has tens of thousands of terrorists across the globe united by an explicit commitment to advance the cause of their religion by pursuing horrific mass murder and mutilation?The list could go on (and does — each day on TheReligionofPeace.com). Islam so routinely produces horrible atrocities in the name of Allah that no one is all that surprised when...
What other religion has clerics lauded as 'moderates', 'bridge-builders', and advocates of 'peace and tolerance' who, at best cannot even bring themselves to condemn suicide bombers or denounce Islamist terror organizations, or at worst actually supportterrorism, wife-beating, female genital mutilation, praise Islamist assassins and justify the killing of apostates and homosexuals?
What other religion kills innocent people over cartoons and teddy bears, burns poets and intellectuals alive and murders humanitarian workers of other faiths who are merely trying to help them?
What other religion childishly brags about its growth while at the same time openly denies other religions equal opportunity to evangelize — and even endorses killing those who leave?
What other religion has prominent PR organizations and charities so closely tied to terrorism - organizations like CAIR, which whine about dress codes and rubber ducks in the West while ignoring the Jihad genocide of thousands in Darfur?
What other religion has verses in its holy book that remind men of their divine permission to beat their wives and rape their slaves?
Adults are tied to a tree or planted in the ground and bludgeoned to death by fundamentalists for engaging in consensual sex...How shocking any of this would be if it didn't involve the Islamic religion. As it is, much of it barely registers in the media. The very fact that the bar of expectation is set so low for "the Religion of Peace" underscores just how different it really is.
A New York woman trying to file for divorce is beheaded by her husband, who also happens to be the founder of a Muslim-American TV channel dedicated to combating "misconceptions" and "stereotypes" about Islam...
One of Europe's largest mosques publicly eulogizes a terrorist who killed for the cause of persecuting Christians...
Religious leaders are charged by authorities with plotting spectacular acts of mass murder in the name of their god...
A Christian woman is arrested, raped and tortured by police who also starve her children in an explicit effort to get her to return to Islam...
Gunmen take time out to pray to Allah in amidst shooting and torturing dozens of innocent people at a shopping mall because they are not true believers as a clericapplauds...
Clerics advocate raping virgins prior to executing them for verbal crimes and political dissent...
Pollsters admit that about 1 out of 3 Muslims worldwide (450 million) view the terrorism of 9/11 as justified...
The most prominent self-proclaimed Muslim "civil rights" group in America (CAIR) bluntly refuses to condemn an organization (Hamas) that kills innocent people specifically in the name of Islam...
A Christian is murdered in front of his own family for leaving Islam, and his children are then kidnapped and 'conscripted' by his killers...Muslims express no outrage when an admitted terrorist is assigned by a government to oversee "Islamic Affairs", nor even when unrepentant child killers are invited to make the holy pilgrimage with VIP treatment... 80% of all federal terror prosecutions involve a religion that is practiced by only 1% of all Americans...Each of the top 10 global terrorists in the world happens to share a devout commitment to the same religion...
No other religion has to attach "phobia" on the end of its name in order to bully others into silence - lest they be accused of harboring irrational fear for suggesting that Islam is different. Yet, all other religions combined do not account for even a fraction of terrorism in the name of their god that Islam produces each day. No religion is so demanding of respect while doing so little to earn it.
In fact, Islam is more than a religion. It is a rigid political and cultural system with a mandate to conquer and govern the lives of others via necessary force "until religion is only for Allah." Violence is sanctioned by the Quran, a book which not once tells Muslims to love those outside the faith.
The enemy of this orthodoxy is not just intellectual dissent and free speech, but human freedom. The divine charter of Islam is to impose itself and thus prevent the individual from discovering a different meaning for their own lives.
Islam breeds arrogance and self-absorption, which accounts for the collective petulance and perpetual grievance that characterizes Muslim populations in general — along with the astonishing unwillingness to extend equal moral consideration to those outside the religion.
This disregard for others is rooted in the supremacist ideology of the Quran and Islamic law, which unashamedly draws the sharpest distinction between those within the group of believers and those without - towards whom arbitrary denigration is cast and hatred, harsh treatment and eternal punishment is prescribed.
As a consequence, not a day goes by without someone, somewhere in the world being horribly murdered by devout Muslims in the name of this religion - over ten thousand persons each year. More innocent lives were snuffed out in just two hours by devout Muslims on 9/11 than by the Ku Klux Klan in its entire 145-year history (source). Yet, there was never one massed protest against Osama bin Laden in the entire Muslim world (although many condemned his killing).
Where Islam dominates, there is systematic discrimination and oppression of those of other faiths. Where Muslims are a minority, there is a trend toward peevish self-interest, disloyalty and eventual rebellion and terror when demands for special privilege and entitlements are not met - all part of the eternal jihad to bring about the rule of Islam as Muhammad instructed.
It isn't the victims who need lessons in tolerance and understanding — it is the Islamic world.
Can one name a single country in the West in which the significant influx of Muslims has not been accompanied by severe social strain? Can one name any country affected in the same way by Hindu immigration?
Those willing to open their minds will find that, regardless of the excuse-du-jour, the remarkably wide-spread level of narcissism, repression and violence is deeply ingrained in the teachings, double standards and early history of the Islamic religion. While there is not a single verse in the Quran that commands love for those outside Islam, there are nearly 500 that either promote violence or allude to Allah's hatred for unbelievers - in a book that is largely about how to think of and deal harshly with those outside the "true" faith.
Why rely on rosy platitudes and carefully-edited fragments of Quran verses from apologists when Islam speaks so well for itself? Beyond the whitewashing are obvious reasons why so many devotees do horrible things in the name of Allah, while most of the rest never seem to get terribly upset by it - busy as they are throwing tantrums and demanding for themselves what they explicitly deny others.
How much favor are we really doing Muslims by not challenging them to the sort of self-critique necessary for moral progress? How much favor are we doing ourselves by desperately trying to accommodate that which has no intention of accommodating us, or by continuing to sacrifice blood and budgets for those who hate us in return? Is it really in our best interests to assist the expansion within our own borders of a religion that is consistently incapable of building countries in which even Muslims themselves want to live?
Tolerance is a good thing, but not when we allow it to be used cynically against us by those who have no use for it once they obtain power. We need to back away from the altar of political correctness and throw out our preconceptions. We need to embrace critical thinking.
The truth is that Islam is not a religion of peace and it is not like other religion. Sometimes the truth isn't comfortable. Sometimes the truth offends. But it is far better that we offend others than lose our own freedom.
See also:
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
How We Feel about Muslims
Our Case Against Race
What to Do about the Islamic Threat
6 comments:
Any discussion of Islam must start with addressing the origin of the Quran. If it is the verbal word of Creator of the Universe, aka God (Allah), then no man has the authority or knowledge to criticize or refute it. Furthermore, it would be timeless -- with no chronology or historical context. On the other hand, if it was compiled from human sources (mainly a self-appointed prophet named Muhammad), then every word can be challenged, as well as the historical context and the chronology of the contradictory statements.
While apologists for Islam may parse certain texts or claim that a passage here and there cannot be fully understood, they are obsessed with sanctity of the Quran. Bookstores and libraries must place it on the highest shelf, people riot and kill when the Quran is damaged or disrespected, some Muslims won't even touch a Quran until they have ritually cleaned themselves, and (apparently) the Quran is the only book that cannot be translated into other languages. All of these actions place the Quran beyond reason or analysis.
But the Quran itself establishes the standard by which it should be judged: "Will they not ponder on the Quran? If it had not come from God, they could have surely found in it many contradictions." (Surah 4:82) Yes, we must tell the truth about Islam -- beginning with the Quran.
Blogger.com suddenly has a warning page for accessing Citizen Warrior. Apparently you have been flagged for "objectionable" content or something. Were you aware of this? I check here about twice a month and just started seeing it this week.
Yes, we know about it. Thanks for saying something in case we didn't. Probably some Muslims or uneducated non-Muslims complained that it's offensive, and Blogger added the warning. I don't like it, but I don't want to go to all the trouble of moving my site to another carrier. The same thing might happen there anyway. I just hope enough people will ignore the warning.
I think the warning page is *hilarious*, ZM!
It's a case of "the truth (about Islam) hurts!" Well - it hurts a few snowflakes and maybe a few Muslims too, but it's the truth nonetheless..... :)
Keep up the great work!
This is a terrifying essay. We may need laws directed specifically to forcefully dealing with islam in order to survive but our constitutions won't allow it, %50 of our populations will side with islam to obstruct us, and our govts. are so incredibly far from even acknowledging what the problem is. The daily carnage gets our attention but out of sight is the enormous security costs that bleed our prosperity. This is not sustainable for usPart of a real solution would probably be an adequate number of supermax prisons and very harsh sentences for anyone engaging in islamic sedition. I'm talking 25 year sentences with no parole for members of the muslim gangs that block streets in paris and elsewhere during prayer time. That is islamic sedition. Possession of an Al-Qaeda flag: 25 years to life. Come within 3 degrees of separation of a muslim mass murderer: 25 years to life. Advocate for sharia law: 25 years. Raping non-muslim women and even a faint indication of any sort of muslim grooming gang activity: you die in supermax prison. No associating with other jihadists in prison, %98 solitary lockdown, no koran, no halal, no islam except in your head. These are dire thoughts but it is in the abstract as our societies will never do this. It's nonetheless interesting to think about what level of force would need to be brought to bear to put an end to this grave islamic threat to human civilization.
This is a terrifying essay. We may need laws directed specifically to forcefully dealing with islam in order to survive but our constitutions won't allow it, %50 of our populations will side with islam to obstruct us, and our govts. are so incredibly far from even acknowledging what the problem is. The daily carnage gets our attention but out of sight is the enormous security costs that bleed our prosperity. This is not sustainable for us. Part of a real solution would probably be an adequate number of supermax prisons and very harsh sentences for anyone engaging in islamic sedition. I'm talking 25 year sentences with no parole for members of the muslim gangs that block streets in paris and elsewhere during prayer time. That is islamic sedition. Possession of an Al-Qaeda flag: 25 years to life. Come within 3 degrees of separation of a muslim mass murderer: 25 years to life. Advocate for sharia law: 25 years. Raping non-muslim women and even a faint indication of any sort of muslim grooming gang activity: you die in supermax prison. No associating with other jihadists in prison, %98 solitary lockdown, no koran, no halal, no islam except in your head. These are dire thoughts but it is in the abstract as our societies will never do this. It's nonetheless interesting to think about what level of force would need to be brought to bear to put an end to this grave islamic threat to human civilization.
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