Had Orwell but known Islam. Part 1

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

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Many in the West mistakenly conceptualise the dhimmi as a "second-class citizen". This is incorrect on two counts: dhimmis are not citizens of any description; and, there are no citizens in Islam. The dhimmi is a kafir (non-Muslim) whom the Muslims have defeated in jihad, and as such a prisoner of war who, by right, must be beheaded. His life is, therefor, forfeit. If he happens to be a Christian or a Jew, he is given a stay of execution that remains valid while he adheres to a set of extremely oppressive stipulations designed to break the dhimmi until even converting to Islam becomes a better alternative. In other words, his life becomes worse than that of a Soviet non-person. Dr Andrew Bostom captures it well:

[The dhimmi] is commanded to put his soul, good fortune and desires to death. Above all, he should kill the love of life, leadership and honor. [The dhimmi] is to invert the longings of his soul, he is to load it down more heavily than it can bear until it is completely submissive. Thereafter nothing will be unbearable for him. He will be indifferent to subjugation or might. Poverty and wealth will be the same to him; praise and insult will be the same; preventing and yielding will be the same; lost and found will be the same. Then, when all things are the same, it [the soul] will be submissive and yield willingly what it should give. (Tafsir ibn ‘Ajibah. Commentary on Qur'an 9:29. Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn 'Ajibah) (Emphasis original)

George Orwell comes close to imagining this nightmare existence. In his famous 1948 dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the following scene, involving the torturer, O’Brien, and his victim, Winston Smith, plays out:

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
‘Four.’
‘And if the Party says that it is not four but five—then how many?’
‘Four.’
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.
‘How many fingers, Winston?’
‘Four.’
The needle went up to sixty.
‘How many fingers, Winston?’
‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.
‘How many fingers, Winston?’
‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!’
‘How many fingers, Winston?’
‘Five! Five! Five!’
‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?’
‘Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’

It is natural to fortify the veracity of what we observe with phrases like, “I saw it with my own eyes”; “I heard it with my own ears”, “I witnessed…”, etc. It takes severe trauma of some kind to reduce an otherwise healthy adult to a condition where when looking at apples and told they see oranges, they will see only oranges. The scene above plays out over the span of a minute, maybe two minutes. It can also play out over years, or even a decade, in which case it might be achieved without the pain O'Brien inflicts upon Winston; the mere fear of pain can suffice.

All emotion, our entire being, become servants to the singular object of averting pain. In the manipulated mind, especially that of a child, averting pain comes down to pleasing the dispenser of pain. In the manipulated adult, pain generalises into privation, deprivation equals pain. The adult lives to avoid displeasing the imposer of privations, always praising, always eulogising, always thanking, even when kicked. The greatest pleasing is to give yourself over to another, completely, to love. Thus is the torturer's work accomplished.

Muslims love Muhammad.

Loving Muslim parents place their children in madrassas, where men the like of O’Brien break their young minds and remake them into eyes that do not see until they are told what they see, ears that do not hear until they are told what they hear, and minds that do not think until they are told what they think. Later, they will be told to rush into minefields, whereupon will knowingly and with great eagerness blow their own bodies to pieces. They will be told to strap on a explosive vests, even as children, and all their mental faculties will be applied to where, when and how blowing themselves up will cause the most death, changing location or delaying the moment according to careful reading of the situation. They will be told to acquire the highly-specialised skill of piloting aeroplanes so they may fly a fully-laden passenger jet just once, straight into a skyscraper full of people.

Not every child sent to madrassa is going to end up a mass murderer, but without the breaking of the mind that takes place in such institutions, recruits for suicidal mass-murder missions will not be that readily available. So well does this system work that “martyrdom” is the highest aspiration of childhood and youth, proudly and openly acknowledged as such. Their beloved Muhammad, for whose honour they kill themselves, is reported to have said:

“By the One in Whose hand is my soul, I wish that I could be killed in the cause of Allah, then brought back to life, then be killed, then be brought back to life, then be killed, then be brought back to life, then be killed.” (Sahih Sunan an-Nasa’i 3098)

Carefully augmented with other experiences and indoctrination, fear of pain or privation can sublate to omnipresent fear, when privation and pain are neither present nor absent. Fear of saying the wrong thing becomes fear of seeing the wrong thing or hearing the wrong thing. The victim of such indoctrination comes to recoil from the very notion, let alone thought, of displeasing the dispenser of pain or privation, the permitter or prohibiter of what is seen and heard, culminating in the victim actually not knowing what they see or hear until told what they see or hear. A Muslim does not know what he has just read in the Qur’an, even in his own language, plain and straightforward, until a sheikh or “scholar” has explained to him what he has just read. If the sheikh says he read “orange” when he read orange, only then will he know that he has read orange.

To understand the broken mind, we need to understand that approved reality does not mean that you see A, but are told that you see B, which you accept despite having seen A. In this case the mind is not yet broken; it chooses what is in its best interest at that moment. It denies what it sees as a matter of expediency. The broken mind does not know what it sees until it is told what it sees. Even looking straight at A right in front of you, you do not know that you see A until you are told that you see A. This is the condition of the Muslim.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

“I love Allah”, declared folksy “moderate Muslim” Irshad Manji. Love is the emotion in which the human being makes him- or herself most vulnerable to another, gives themselves over to the absolute trust of another. It is also the mind manipulator’s mother lode. Soviet citizens wept, genuinely wept, when Stalin died.

Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization.

When Irshad Manji says, "I love Allah," she is lying. Like all Muslims, she loves Muhammad. Allah is the guise in which Muhammad chooses to exhibit himself to the world.

Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O’Brien who would save him from it.
‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.
‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’
‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

Up till recently, it was generally a sign of severe intellectual impairment to hold that two plus two equals anything other than four. Fortunately, we have a mathematics professor to thank for the arrival of sanity. On 3 August 2020, Brooklyn College’s esteemed Professor Laurie H. Rubel, tweeted the following social good:

‘of course math is neutral because 2+2=4.’ Rely on that supposed axiom to then target ppl (& especially women) for coordinated ridicule/harassment. …reeks of white supremacist patriarchy. i'd rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet.

The Qur'an doesn't say anything until the sheikh says it says. In China, 2+2 does not equal 4 or 5 or anything; it equals whatever the Communist Party says it equals. If it equals 4, then that is not because it objectively does, but because the Party says it does. This process begins with tainting reality with the mark of the condemned: “2+2=4 reeks of white supremacist patriarchy,” Professor Rubel informs us. From there it is but a small step to 2+2= whatever the architects of Rubel’s mind decide it is today. The same holds true for Islam. “We hear and we obey,” Qur’an 24:51. What your sheikh tells you is the absolute truth. If he tells you the exact opposite tomorrow, that will be the absolute truth. The sheikhs have always said that there is only one Qur'an across the world, identical "letter for letter". When this was publicly shown to not be the case, the Muslim mind fell into an acid bath. The same holds for Russia, where a war is not a war, and to say otherwise is to be insane.

No doubt, protecting a planet is an extremely time-consuming undertaking, which is a shame, because had Prof. Rubel managed to spare just two minutes here and two minutes there, she might have started with four minutes in which to read Dr Joseph Goebbels proclaim, “If the Führer wants it, two and two make five!” And with the extra Nazi minute, she might have had time to read the white supremacist patriarch George Orwell describe how 2+2=5 arises in a mind broken under torture. If Hamas says 30,000 Palestinians died, then 30,000 Palestinians died. If Hamas says Israel bombed a hospital, then Israel bombed a hospital.

Former Muslims, especially those from the Islamic world, for they have real Islam as their point of reference, have an intellectual responsibility to tell not only those who are still Muslim, but those who are not Muslim, what Islam is and what it has in store for them. They also have a moral responsibility to, firstly, make lay Muslims see the gross affront to life, humanity and civilisation that they perpetuate by remaining a part of, and secondly, to warm non-Muslims, especially Jews, especially Jews, of the insanity of giving Muslims the benefit of the doubt.

Western ex-Muslims, mostly sentimentalists who have never known Islam, are largely useless in this regard. The exceptions stand out as beacons and are generally shunned by the rest as “too extreme” (for their tastes). They even think that people apostatise from Islam “to join ex-Muslims”! For them, truth and loyalty remain identical, for loyalty to their "community" is truth, just as it was when they were Muslim, and as has in parallel matured into political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity-equity-inclusion and full-blown wokeness. This is why such ex-Muslims find it so difficult to stand alone on their convictions, unable to be without a "community." They will fein independence, but make sure their utterances carefully track their chosen community's party line.

Former Muslim Wafa Sultan wrote her autobiography A God who Hates, a modest but powerful book. Hatred drives everything in Islam and is perhaps its most prominent feature. But I would contend that it is in its manipulation of love that Islam is far more dangerous than in its urging of hatred. Allah hates those who do not love him, and to not love him (and his messenger) more than anyone or anything else is a sin. “We verily created man and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.” (Qur’an 50:16).

While the modern equivalent would be a bugging device inside your head, Orwell’s omniscient Big Brother could watch you only through hidden cameras and microphones, such as from inside a television screen. For the rest, the Party’s eyes and ears could only infer your thoughts, expert as they might have been at it. If the Muslim believes that Allah is watching him from under his jugular vein, then it makes no difference whether Allah is truly there or not. This is a thought the Muslim dares not have.

But there is more to this “closer to you than your jugular vein” business. Allah is closer to you than you are to your own life. You must take your own life before you even think of harming Allah. Muslims are proud to declare just how much they love Allah. These are not fanatics, fundamentalists or extremists, these are regular Muslims. Love of Allah negates the self and inverts humanity. Muslims love what Allah loves and hate what Allah hates. Allah hates those who do not love him. Allah hates the kufaar; they do not submit to Allah, they are not Muslim. This has profound implications, such as subjecting the distinction between good and evil to the distinction between love and hatred.

The antithesis of Allah is, therefor, not the Devil, but the kufaar. Muslims hate the kufaar more than they hate Satan, a minor character in Islam. This says something about the relationship between Islam as religion and Islam as totalitarian system. The kufaar are filthy, najis, unclean, not just ritually, but physically, such that wearing their clothes and eating from their vessels are offensive to the Muslim. “Fight those who believe not in Allah,” The madrassa teacher tells the children so. Shari’a tells the adults so. Muslims learn from a very early age that they must fear Allah and love Allah, that they are the best of people, yet Allah can do anything he wants with them, including send them all to Hell regardless.

While some Christian thinkers anguish over ultimate justice, the concept is meaningless in Islam, because it trespasses on the prerogative of the Almighty. It is only possible to reconcile with such a religion as Islam if you accept that you are a slave of Allah, for only in the mind of a slave, a self-negating being, can such a cauldron of contradictions keep bubbling.

The pain flowed into Winston’s body. The needle must be at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew that the fingers were still there, and still four. All that mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain lessened again. He opened his eyes. O’Brien had drawn back the lever.
‘How many fingers, Winston?’
‘Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am trying to see five.’
‘Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?’
‘Really to see them.’

In this world, where four finger are five finger, can Allah be the perfect, omnipotent being, the creator of all else, and at the same time, "He who obeys Allah obeys the Messenger, and he who obeys the Messenger obeys Allah". Allah's creation, Muhammad, is as powerful as Allah. And yet, this Messenger, Muhammad, is more powerful than Allah. Offend against Allah and you can still be pardoned; offend against Muhammad, even to the slightest degree, and you must be killed. "No repentance is sought from him."

In this feature, Islam, a system fashioned in late antiquity out of nomadic barbarism, towers over modern totalitarian system such as Nazism or communism. Modern totalitarian dictators abolish supernatural deities as the dispensers of life and death, to themselves assume the role of paramount controllers of the means of life and, by mob lynching, arbitrary execution and engineered famines, dispense death. For a few decades, they can, indeed, be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent, but they cannot credibly claim immortality, even if they try.

Islam retained Allah and fused its mythical leader, Muhammad, with the deity (the "Allah and His Messenger" coupling is ubiquitous in the Qur'an). Because Muhammad is mythical, he never lived and so can never die. He was constructed as the ideal barbarian warlord endorsed by a diety. The totalitarian system of Islam thus derives its immortality from the immortality of the deity itself.

Scientists do not describe viruses as living or dead, but as viable or unviable. Islam, too, is best described as either viable or unviable. Many, especially in the West, dream of a reformed Islam. Islam has a built-in self-correcting mechanism that ensures it cannot be reformed, for to reform Islam is to render it unviable. Whole treatises can be written on this. It is a curious thing that the very people who assert that Islam is a religion like any other, also advocate for Islam to be reformed. While many in the West in a position to know better yearn for Islam to shed jihad and the violence that permeates its order, this was not always so prevalent. Sir William Muir, speaking in 1881, was refreshingly free of such delusion:

Some, indeed, dream of an Islam in the future, rationalised and regenerate. All this has been tried already, and has miserably failed. The Koran has so encrusted the religion in a hard unyielding casement of ordinances and social laws, that if the shell be broken the life is gone. A rationalistic Islam would be Islam no longer.[1]

By advocating tampering with Islam, the reformers find the devout throwing Qur’an verse 5:3 at them: “This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed my favour upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion.” As Imran ibn Mansur, a man not widely renowned for his intellect, but in this case nonetheless correct, curtly points out to those deluded enough to want to reform Islam:

Allah closed that door when he revealed that ayah [5:3]. You cannot add to, nor can you subtract from, nor can you change [anything that Allah has revealed]. If you even try to open that discussion, it’s like you’re trying to say that you can do a better job than Allah, [that] Allah missed something out.

When a large number of Western intellectuals and cultural figures put their names to a letter urging prominent Islamic leader to remove the violent verses from the Qur'an, they got a somewhat more forthright response, "Go to Hell!"

Islam, it would be fair to say, is the ultimate totalitarian system with interlocking future-proof mechanisms. One can only wonder at how George Orwell's genius might have worked Islam into his superb understanding of totalitarianism, and how much richer our Western civilisation might have been for it.

1. Quoted in A. H. Keane, Asia, v2, Edward Stanford, London, 1912, pp458-9. Also, https://archive.org/stream/asiakeane00kean#page/458/mode/2up

Picture credits:

Screenshots from "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?" Higher Quality Uploads, YouTube, 20 Jan 2021 https://youtu.be/EoDOazaijYY

Screenshot from "Muslims Lose Their Minds When 26 Different ARABIC Qurans Return to Speakers' Corner!", Hatun Tash DCCI Ministries, YouTube, 4 Jul 2017 https://youtu.be/9y7eWEjBBw4