Every single Muslim is responsible. Part 2

Special Series on Apostasy: There's no better time than Ramadan

Part 1, Part 3, Part 4

The Muslims' quest for validation of their increasingly beleaguered faith is difficult enough, having been repeatedly told from early childhood that their religion is perfect (Qur’an 5:3) and that they are “the best of people” (Qur’an 3:110) for having been exclusively favoured by Allah to receive his perfect and final religion. Muslims received the last message that God will ever send, making their prophet the final "Messenger of God", “the seal of the prophets”. No matter how miserable their lives compared to others, Muslims have all these reasons and more to be haughty towards non-Muslims.

“The Jews at Jerusalem ...are liable to be stopped by the lowest fallaah [Arab peasant, AP] of the country, who, if he pleases, may demand money off them as a right due to the Mussulman; and this extortion may be practised on the same poor Jew over and over again in the space of ten minutes."[1]

Apostates from Islam, until not so long ago intimidated into secrecy and silence, however, have become increasingly open and vocal in their critiques of Islam and, to a notably lesser extent, their criticism of Muslims. Many even make it their life’s work to destroy Islam and at the same time put an end to the wider general timidity of forever tiptoeing around Muslims, while others, especially in the West, make it a matter of principle never to criticise Muslims. Some apostates even go so far as to unreservedly defend Muslims, seeing those who comply with all the Islamic commandments as mere aberrant exceptions. Being blind to the faults of Muslims is no mitigation in the Shari'a on apostasy. It is also moral cowardice. "If someone leaves his [Islamic] faith, kill him" is not a matter of opinion. It is not a matter of what percentage believes in it or doesn't believe in it. The Western mind has difficulty comprehending the non-existence of individuals.

Ex-Muslims, as a vocal public phenomenon, have completely blindsided Muslims and sown panic amongst their leaders. Apostates going on the offensive against Islam, which has for fourteen centuries relied for its survival on the killing of apostates, is something their perfect religion has neither anticipated nor prepared them for. Allah, apparently, does not know best.

It both perplexes and irritates Muslims that apostates continue to concern themselves with Islam after having left it. Muslims fail to see, of course, that it is they who have always obsessed over people who have left Islam, wanting to find them and kill them, if they can’t “bring them back” to Islam. As far as Muslims are concerned, they collectively own every Muslim. Islam claims permanent and unrestricted jurisdiction over anyone who is or has ever been Muslim, wherever they may be. Recall the universal Muslim pride and aggressive assertiveness when this jurisdiction was applied from Tehran on a British writer in London. Those non-Muslims who imagine that Shari'a is only for Muslims should take note.

It is with pain and bewilderment in their tone that Muslims object to apostates speaking out against Islam. They say quite sincerely, without any sense of irony at all, that ex-Muslims making their apostasy known drives people away from Islam. It is inconceivable to them that we might have left Islam out of disgust and revulsion, and that we would have no interest in protecting Islam. Of course we want to drive people away from Islam! Where Muslims do not (yet) have the power to kill apostates, such as in the West, they ask of the same people they openly swear to kill as soon as they get their caliphate, to be reasonable and keep quiet about having left Islam. Such is the Muslim's hold on reality.

The same detachment from reality shows when hurt Muslims demand from kafir critics an explanation for why they say such hateful things about Islam, the religion that, quite reasonably, hates the kufaar and is out to convert, subjugate, or kill them, and hold their lives to be less worthy than Muslim lives. They see no connection at all between, on the one hand, their Qur’an and hadith exhorting them to hate, maim and murder the kufaar and their doing so, and on the one hand, the kufaar reacting to defend themselves.

It genuinely baffles Muslims that the kufaar should react in any way other than immediately accepting Islam. In their eyes, for a kafir to turn down a Muslim's ‘invitation’ to embrace Islam is an act of aggression, one that warrants Muslims killing such refusers in self-defence. Muslims are genuinely upset that 400 years of non-stop jihad warfare and piracy that destroyed the Mediterranean economy, slave raids that decimated Europe’s coastal settlements and Christian lands bordering Al-Andalus, and social dislocation that drove their continent into the Dark Ages, should have resulted in Christians finally undertaking Crusades against Muslims.

The anti-humanity of Islam

The essence of Islam, however, fundamentally contradicts the essence of being human. To answer to the condition of being a Muslim sets one up to contradict one’s human essence and vice versa. To be Muslim is thus to be a walking contradiction. The Muslim, in order to remain a Muslim, must accept without question that the Qur’an is a book about which there is no doubt. The Qur’an, though, is without doubt a book riddled with errors, contradictions, inconsistencies, non-sequiturs, etc., quite apart from its innumerable barbaric commandments that negate all that is human in us. Shari'a, 'Divine Law,' is a code so grotesquely barbaric that it would repel the worst of Nazis.

Muslims maintain that the Qur'an is and always has been perfect, yet at the same time insist that verses "revealed" later, somehow cancel similar verses revealed earlier. This obvious imperfection is deliberately concealed in that the contents of this perfect book is not arranged in the order the supposed revelations "came down" to their prophet. Because the Qur'an is perfect, nothing can be removed from it, even if it is "abrogated", which acknowledges prior imperfection.

The supposed 'perfectness' of the Qur'an ran into its own theological bind early in the religion's formulation. It went something like this (shirk, associating something else with Allah, the gravest of sins):

Allah is perfect above all creation.
Allah created the Qur'an.
The Qur'an is perfect.
Allah and his creation are equal.
Shirk!

No creation of Allah can be equal to its creator,
Allah created the Qur'an.
The Qur'an cannot be equal to Allah.
The Qur'an cannot be perfect.
No shirk.

Solution: Allah and the Qur'an are one and the same.

Christians can make great use of this one. You're welcome.

Despite clear evidence that the Qur'an has been substantially edited down the centuries, including by peckish sheep and an inspired Satan, Muslims cannot help themselves but proclaim that the Qur'an is perfectly preserved from Allah to Gabriel to Muhammad to them. Irshad Manji, another who is too human for Islam, but too Muslim to leave, tries to get around this by saying that the Qur'an is "not divine, but divinely inspired". Those who actually apostatise from Islam, rather than engage in intellectual dishonesty, have more moral courage than Manji.

The human that makes it through to the adult Muslim rebels against the Qur’an, the hadith, the Shari’a. How is a Muslim to live with such inner turmoil? The only way is to close off from reality and remain sealed within himself. As soon as he steps outside himself into his ummah, he must perforce be a hypocrite just to get through the day. This is manageable because all Muslims are hypocrites, necessarily so. But as soon as he steps beyond his ummah, he is in trouble. Muslims are averse to integration with non-Muslims not only because they regard them as filthy lowlife, but because from one generation to the next, they cannot help imbibing kafir norms and values. Initially, they despised the kufaar, now they also fear them. In reality, they fear their own humanity, for their humanity might trip up their hypocrisy.

If the Muslim is to be understood, Muslim thoughts and actions must first be interrogated to ascertain whether the thought or action stems from the Muslim as human being or from the Muslim as adherent of Islam. The charge “not all Muslims…” either ignores or conflates this distinction. The Qur’an itself acknowledges that the contradiction between being human and being an adherent of Islam places the Muslim in an impossible position, and seeks to address the problem head-on:

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 (Qur’an 2:216).

To me this is the scariest and most sinister verse in the entire Qur’an, worse even than the blood-soaked Chapter 9, for it creates the inner conditions for everything we have seen Muslims do down the centuries. What the authors of the Qur’an are saying here is: feel nothing, think nothing, say nothing and do nothing, until I command you or give you explicit permission to do so. A quick peruse of any fatwa website is a depressing experience, laying bare, as these sites do, the barrenness of the Muslim spirit, and the utter lack of personal dignity. The Islamic holy book attempts to smother the Muslim’s inherent humanity with faith: “Allah knoweth, ye know not,” and the sheikhs who answer the fatwa requests reinforce this precept by bookending everything they say with “Allah knows best.”

But prevention is better than cure, and upon the inchoate mind of the four or five-year-old Muslim is imprinted circuitry, to use a modern metaphor, that, if successful, will set the Muslim's thoughts and emotions for life. The word “fear” and its derivatives appear no fewer than 200 times in the Qur’an (Mohammad Picthall translation). Of these, eighty-eight references are to fear of Allah and what Allah will do to the one who does not fear Allah, e.g., fear Allah; fear the Lord; fear a terrible Day; fear a terrible punishment; etc., including “Truly Allah loves the God-fearing” (Qur’an 3:76), thereby making the most highly evolved emotion, love, subject the most primitive, fear. This perversion is the emotional complex of the Muslim.

Allah's commandments are consistent with this perversion of the Muslim's humanity. Friendship, a natural loyalty and care between unrelated people of similar temperament, taste and interest, Islam perverts thus:

Let not the believers [Muslims] take unbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoever does that has no connection with Allah unless you are guarding yourselves against them, taking security. Allah bids you to beware of him. To Allah is the journeying. (Qur'an 3:28) (My emphasis)

Ibn Kathir, in his exegesis of Qur’an 3:28, makes clear that Muslims who fear that the kufaar might be onto their deceit:

Are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda' said, “We smile in the face of some people, although our hearts curse them.” Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, “The Tuqyah [Taqiyya, AP] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection,” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, 3:28)

In short, hate them all, even as you smile at them. Hatred towards all whom Allah hates is lavishly promoted in the Qur'an. The sanctity of marriage does not escape. Raymond Ibrahim recounts the response of a popular Egyptian imam, Dr Yassir Burhami, when asked how Islam can allow a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman and yet expect him to hate her. The sheikh responded as follows:

Where’s the objection? Do all men love their wives? How many married couples live together despite disagreements and problems? Huh? That being the case, he [Muslim husband] may love the way she [non-Muslim woman] looks, or love the way she raises the children, or love that she has money. This is why he’s discouraged from marrying among the People of the Book—because she has no [real] religion. He is ordered to make her hate her religion while continuing marriage/sexual relations with her. This is a very standard matter…. Of course he should tell her that he hates her religion. He must show her that he hates her because of her religion, and because she is an infidel. But if possible, treat her well—perhaps that will cause her to convert to Islam. He should invite her to Islam and call her to Allah.

Just in case the questioner is still not clear, Dr Burhami helps with an analogy of rape:

In fact, let me tell you: whoever rapes a woman, does he necessarily love her? Or is he just sleeping with her? He’s sleeping with her for her body’s sake only, and he does not love her in reality, because if he loved her, he wouldn’t have hurt her. Therefore it is possible to have sexual relations [between a Muslim man and a Christian or Jewish woman] without love. This is possible, but as we said, he is commanded to hate her.

Ibrahin goes on to show that Burhami exonerates infidel-wife-hating as consistent with the Islamic doctrine of al-wala' wa'l-Bara', loyalty and disavowal:

Otherwise what do you do with the undisputed texts [of the Qur'an], such as “Thou wilt not find any people who believe in Allah and the Last Day, loving those who resist Allah and His Messenger, even though they were their fathers or their sons, or their brothers, or their kindred…" (58:22), “O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors…” (5:51). What do you do with such a verse? What do you do with all these verses?

To bring this back to those non-Muslims who think they have Muslim friends, Qur’an 3:28 commands your Muslim friends to pretend to be your friend. This ruse is valid till the end of time. The “extremists” perform jihad by the sword; the “moderates” perform jihad by the tongue, otherwise known as da’wah. Let us see how Allah talks about the distinction between “Muslims” and “Islamists” that is so precious to so many Westerners?

The Qur’an instructs, “The Prophet is closer to believers than even they themselves are,” (33:6). The believer has less love, less regard, less humanity for himself than he has for Muhammad. What chance anyone else? South African sheikh Ahmed Deedat makes the point well: “My black brother is nothing. I can sacrifice him for Allah and his Rasool. ...The Prophet is closer to us than our own flesh and blood, than we to ourselves.” Allah claims the deepest, most heartfelt love for himself: “Yet there are some who take others as equals to Allah and love them as Allah alone should be loved; but those who (truly) believe, they love Allah more than all else” (Qur’an 2:165). Allah spares not even a child’s love for its parents.

And your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him. And that you be dutiful to your parents. If one of them or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word of disrespect, nor shout at them but address them in terms of honour. And, out of kindness, lower to them the wing of humility, and say: “My Lord! bestow on them thy Mercy even as they cherished me in childhood,” (Qur’an 17:23-24).

When those same honoured parents transgress against Allah, though, the infamous snitch verse kicks in, commanding the dutiful and loving child to throw his own parents into the flames: “O believers! Stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or close relatives” (Qur’an 4:135). We see the outcome of this monstrous verse in the dysfunctional humanity of Muslims, especially in a mother instructing her son to kill her daughter. Those who grew up under Communism will recognise this madness, but the Western mind cannot fathom that such a mother is not an evil individual; she is merely a Muslim.

In response to a Muslim beheading a teacher for showing a cartoon of Muhammad to his class, one Muslim, Naeem, tweeted, “For us, insulting Muhammad (PBUH) is biggest crime. Even we can forgive our children killer, but we can’t on this issue.” In short, when this Naeem has to choose between the life of his child and the sanctity of his prophet, that will be the end of his child. Social media are awash with sentiments of this kind from Muslims the world over. Their incessant whining over hurt feelings and "Islamophobia" fails to impress.

Allah’s love is nothing but an instrument of merciless control, an instrument of fear, like the love Big Brother demands of Winston Smith. Ninety-three times the word love appears in the Qur’an, only twice in Allah’s name The Most Loving. Twelve times he orders believers to love him (in exchange for mercy, forgiveness, etc.). Sixteen times he says he loves those who obey his commandments. But most mentions of Allah’s love are in the negative. Twenty-four times the Qur’an specifies those whom Allah does not love. 200 times the Qur’an mentions fear.

In Islam, fear stands out far more prominently than love, the latter in all instances clearly subordinate to the former, and usually by way of making a different point. Is it then any wonder that Muslims have no problem with public caning, public beheadings, public wife-beating and other public demonstrations of violence and hatred? But let two people show affection in public, or even a hint of the possibility of affection, and rioting mobs will tear down the city and do worse to the offending couple—and these, note, would be "moderate" Muslims.

Everyone fears not showing approval of public hatred and cruelty; everyone fears not showing outrage at public affection. Violent behaviour serves as the best demonstration of both enthusiasm for cruelty and disgust for public affection. In Islam, violence is a medium of expression. To this day, one can encounter Western people who respond with, “But there is violence in the Bible, too.” They will never know how offensive this trivialisation is to someone who has escaped Islam.

The Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh) recognises the socio-historical emergence of the civilised, autonomous individual as an impediment to the revival of the barbarian Islamic empire, which is why it goes to such great pains to reinforce Qur'an 2:216. The most faithful contemporary emulators of Muhammad, ISIS, frequently lamented the reluctance to kill that it observed in so many contemporary Muslims. The Islamic State specifically addressed this point in its operational mouthpiece, Rumiyah, without the obfuscation (taqiyya) of jihad of the tongue that dupes so many in the West:

Many people are often squeamish at the thought of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh. It is a discomfort caused by the untamed, inherent dislike for pain and death, especially after ‘modernisation’ distanced males from partaking in the slaughtering of livestock for food and striking the enemy in war.

An interesting conception of untamed as reluctance to kill in cold blood. To be civilised is to be "untamed".

Of course, the imam delivering the Friday sermon who is as honest as ISIS about “plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh” is liable to be dragged off as an “extremist” and have his mosque closed down. Instead, such imams merely call for following the example of Muhammad, without explicitly stating that Muhammad’s example includes “plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh”. Note, though, that just because a Muslim is not ready to plunge a sharp object into another person’s flesh, does not mean that he is going to interfere with another Muslim whom he knows is on his way to doing exactly that.

Western power defeated ISIS militarily in Syria and Iraq, but ISIS was never a credible force that the ummah would embrace in caliphate-sustaining numbers to begin with, because the humanity in Muslims, in the vast majority of cases, rejected ISIS. Only the ummah’s most barbaric elements, the most sociopathic, including those who wilfully suppressed their own humanity, answered the call and either made their way to Syria, or helped others do so. Notorious British-born, now stateless, ISIS bride, Shamima Begum, in her own words, “was not fazed,” by the sight of bins filled with severed human heads. Many Muslims would be sickened by such a sight, but that does not negate the fact that severing heads is a normal Muslim practise. You do not get around it by invoking “Islamists” and “Islamism”.

The defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq and the simultaneous appearance of scores of micro-ISIS outfits in west, central and east Africa, as well as in central, south and south-east Asia, point to the fact that Islamic revival movements might be militarily defeated, but Islamic revivalism will always resuscitate through new personalities, organisations and movements, even after centuries of dormancy, while Islam continues to be practiced somewhere on earth. The most murderous religion is a hydra on steroids.

The distinction between Muslim as human and Muslim as adherent of Islam forces the Muslim into all sorts of conflicted behaviour that determine how Muslims come across as people. And it is a distinction that has to keep in mind when observing Muslim behaviour. To understand the Muslim, it is critical that not only Islam as religion is criticised, but, crucially, Muslims as people. It is criticism that is long overdue, at least in the Anglophone world, not least for the sake of Muslims themselves.

Part 3/...

Notes:

1. The Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel, Proceedings of the London Society, Vol IX, 1824, p379.

Picture credits:

Screenshot from "Indonesia woman Nur Elita caned in public for breaking Sharia Law in Aceh province", YouTube 31 December 2015 https://youtu.be/9Y-RkT_MFas