MILESFORTIS

Appears the author is also anti-Semitic, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong about islamism

Islam is Not a Religion

What is Islam?  To answer that question, it’s more important to know what Islam isn’t.  Islam is not a religion.  It is an authoritarian, political ideology that forcibly imposes itself on all aspects of any society unfortunate enough to be under its yoke.  Islam demands complete subjugation by its adherents.  Under Islam, there is no democracy, there is no free speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no minority rights, and there’s no right to love whoever you desire.  Islam allows no dissent.  It is a complete and total way of life that glorifies oppression, slavery, and death.  Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, cultural, and military components.  The religious component is the veil that hides the dangers of its all-encompassing ideology.

Islam was founded in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed.  From its beginnings, Islam never attempted or bothered to convert “non-believers” by friendly persuasion.  Instead, Islam converted non-believers by conquest and forcible conversion, or you were slaughtered.  By the mid-8th century, Islam had conquered all the lands from the Indus River, in the east, across North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, in the west.  During that period of conquest, if subjects didn’t convert to Islam, they were put to the sword.  To this day, most of those lands are still under the control of Islam.  There are few exceptions: Spain and Portugal, which during the 15th century, managed to free themselves from the scourges of Islam, and Israel.

Modern day Islam is just as oppressive and dangerous as was 8th century Islam.  That’s because culturally, Islam still enforces the same tenets they did 1,200 years ago.  What are some of those tenets, practices, and ways of life?  Islam enforces edicts against homosexuality to the point of executing homosexuals.  As for women, of the ten worst countries for women’s rights, seven of them are Muslim.  The Quran clearly states that women are subordinate to men, and men may beat their wives (Quran 4:34).  With Islam, there’s a fine line between oppressing women and enslaving them.  Islam practices female genital mutilation, a barbaric practice (look it up and be disgusted).  Other realities for women in Islamic countries include: women must be escorted in public, largely because it’s too dangerous for them to walk alone (rape and assaults are common); women must cover their bodies from head to foot; and very few education opportunities which result in limited employment opportunities.

Today, in the year 2023, Islam practices slavery (here, and here), the actual commodification of other human beings, and the world stands silent.  It also engages in jihad, rape, and pedophilia—yes, it’s acceptable to rape children (bacha bāzī). Also, see this clip, from CNN no less:

Today, Islam beheads its enemies (Dec 27, 2019 in Nigeria), burns people alive in cages, amputates the hands of criminals, and engages in “honor” killings of female relatives (Texas 2008).  There’s nothing honorable about a father (or a brother) who kills his daughter (or his sister) because he doesn’t agree with her actions.  Adulterers (and even some female rape victims) can be stoned to death, and polygamy is allowed.  Earlier this year, an Iranian couple was sentenced to ten years in prison for dancing in public.  To say that Islam has nothing in common with Western culture is an understatement.  Islam vehemently opposes, and wants to destroy, Western society.  Proof of every vile, barbaric, and evil practice engaged in by Muslims was rolled up into one event—Hamas’s attack last month on Israel.

For much of America’s history, we didn’t concern ourselves with the evils of Islam.  We didn’t worry about it largely because we’re an ocean apart, and Islam’s 12th century society couldn’t much affect or threaten us.  Nevertheless, America’s first foreign war was fought in the early 19th century against the Islamic states along the Barbary Coast of North Africa.  Also, throughout most of the 20th century, our focus was on the evils in Europe—Nazism and communism.  It wasn’t until the 1970’s that most Americans became aware of the dangers of Islam.  That was when the Arabs used world oil markets to achieve their political goals.  Then, in 1979, Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.  Ever since then, the Middle East and Islam have played a central role in America’s foreign policy.

A problem with American foreign policy is that no president, from Nixon all the way through to our current crumbling commander, has properly understood Islam, the best example being Bush’s post-9/11 statement: “Islam is a religion of peace.”  That was an idiotic statement, given that 3,000 Americans had just been slaughtered in the name of Islam.  The United States’ lack of understanding wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t in the 21st century—but we are.  And a 12th century ideology of hatred and death is a huge problem given modern technologies which gives Islamists the ability to wander the globe killing, maiming, and enslaving in the name of their ideology.

You might wonder what I have against Islam, but let me ask this question: Knowing the profoundly immoral nature of tyrants and authoritarian regimes, would you be alright if Nazism or communism ruled over two billion people on the planet?  I’m guessing most people would say “NO” to both, because the evils of these ideologies have no place in a civilized society of unalienable rights.  Well, the evils of Islam are just as bad—perhaps worse—as the evils of any totalitarian form of rule ever devised by man.  Islam doesn’t want peace; it preaches struggle, constant struggle, because it is an ideology that uses religion.

Many people might disregard the dangers of Islam, as we do have Muslims here in America, and we don’t see things like Muslim men buying children, or public beatings by administrators of Sharia “justice.” But, Muslims are a small percentage of our population at this moment. Anywhere Islam is the majority, there is oppression, conflict, and struggle.  Think of the wars and conflicts being fought on this planet; then, think of the countries that have large Muslim populations, and you’ll find those two maps overlay one another.  From Nigeria in Africa, to Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, and to the jungles of the Philippines, Islamic societies are engaged in armed conflicts to suppress and oppress those populations.  And also don’t forget, a small number can be very dangerous: the 9/11 attack was carried out by only 19 Muslims.

In Islamic countries, conflicts, struggles, and oppression have been ongoing for centuries; no end in sight, and it’s important to remember that above all, Islam is an ideology as dangerous and evil as any ideology ever conceived, using religion as a scapegoat.

Why I Am Now a Christian

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.

The year before, I had publicly condemned the terrorist attacks of the 19 men who had hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the twin towers in New York. They had done it in the name of my religion, Islam. I was a Muslim then, although not a practicing one. If I truly condemned their actions, then where did that leave me? The underlying principle that justified the attacks was religious, after all: the idea of Jihad or Holy War against the infidels. Was it possible for me, as for many members of the Muslim community, simply to distance myself from the action and its horrific results?

At the time, there were many eminent leaders in the West — politicians, scholars, journalists, and other experts — who insisted that the terrorists were motivated by reasons other than the ones they and their leader Osama Bin Laden had articulated so clearly. So Islam had an alibi.

This excuse-making was not only condescending towards Muslims. It also gave many Westerners a chance to retreat into denial. Blaming the errors of US foreign policy was easier than contemplating the possibility that we were confronted with a religious war. We have seen a similar tendency in the past five weeks, as millions of people sympathetic to the plight of Gazans seek to rationalize the October 7 terrorist attacks as a justified response to the policies of the Israeli government.

When I read Russell’s lecture, I found my cognitive dissonance easing. It was a relief to adopt an attitude of scepticism towards religious doctrine, discard my faith in God and declare that no such entity existed. Best of all, I could reject the existence of hell and the danger of everlasting punishment.

Russell’s assertion that religion is based primarily on fear resonated with me. I had lived for too long in terror of all the gruesome punishments that awaited me. While I had abandoned all the rational reasons for believing in God, that irrational fear of hellfire still lingered. Russell’s conclusion thus came as something of a relief: “When I die, I shall rot.”

To understand why I became an atheist 20 years ago, you first need to understand the kind of Muslim I had been. I was a teenager when the Muslim Brotherhood penetrated my community in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. I don’t think I had even understood religious practice before the coming of the Brotherhood. I had endured the rituals of ablutions, prayers and fasting as tedious and pointless.

The preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood changed this. They articulated a direction: the straight path. A purpose: to work towards admission into Allah’s paradise after death. A method: the Prophet’s instruction manual of do’s and don’ts — the halal and the haram. As a detailed supplement to the Qur’an, the hadeeth spelled out how to put into practice the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, God and the devil.

The Brotherhood preachers left nothing to the imagination. They gave us a choice. Strive to live by the Prophet’s manual and reap the glorious rewards in the hereafter. On this earth, meanwhile, the greatest achievement possible was to die as a martyr for the sake of Allah.

The alternative, indulging in the pleasures of the world, was to earn Allah’s wrath and be condemned to an eternal life in hellfire. Some of the “worldly pleasures” they were decrying included reading novels, listening to music, dancing, and going to the cinema — all of which I was ashamed to admit that I adored.

The most striking quality of the Muslim Brotherhood was their ability to transform me and my fellow teenagers from passive believers into activists, almost overnight. We didn’t just say things or pray for things: we did things. As girls we donned the burka and swore off Western fashion and make-up. The boys cultivated their facial hair to the greatest extent possible. They wore the white dress-like tawb worn in Arab countries or had their trousers shortened above their ankle bones. We operated in groups and volunteered our services in charity to the poor, the old, the disabled and the weak. We urged fellow Muslims to pray and demanded that non-Muslims convert to Islam.

During Islamic study sessions, we shared with the preacher in charge of the session our worries. For instance, what should we do about the friends we loved and felt loyal to but who refused to accept our dawa (invitation to the faith)? In response, we were reminded repeatedly about the clarity of the Prophet’s instructions. We were told in no uncertain terms that we could not be loyal to Allah and Muhammad while also maintaining friendships and loyalty towards the unbelievers. If they explicitly rejected our summons to Islam, we were to hate and curse them.

Here, a special hatred was reserved for one subset of unbeliever: the Jew. We cursed the Jews multiple times a day and expressed horror, disgust and anger at the litany of offences he had allegedly committed. The Jew had betrayed our Prophet. He had occupied the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem. He continued to spread corruption of the heart, mind and soul.

You can see why, to someone who had been through such a religious schooling, atheism seemed so appealing. Bertrand Russell offered a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people. For him, there was no credible case for the existence of God. Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear: “Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.”

As an atheist, I thought I would lose that fear. I also found an entirely new circle of friends, as different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with them — people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.

So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

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