Had Orwell but known Islam. Part 2

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

Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Muslims have no rights, because there are no rights in Islam. There are only favours and dispensations, and withholding of favours and dispensations. There are, however, endless commandments and duties. Only as a mindless slave constantly begging for favours is it possible to be a good Muslim. Everyone holds the power of denial over those below them, while everyone must compete for favours from those above them. In the same way as Muslim potentates dole out bank notes when they go walking amongst the poor, Shari’a, strict as it is, leaves all sorts of loopholes through which a judge can dispense pardons. After all, Shari’a mandates leniency towards Muslims and harshness towards infidels.

‘Again,’ said O’Brien.
Perhaps the needle was eighty—ninety. Winston could not intermittently remember why the pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again.
‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. You will kill me if you do that again. Four, five, six — in all honesty I don’t know.’
‘Better,’ said O’Brien.

In this world of subordinate dependence, those in the bottom stratum of society bear the oppressive weight of all strata above them. The lower down you go, the more arbitrary and capricious your fate and especially your punishments. The dynamic outcome of this arrangement is constant competition amongst peers to be noticed by those above in hopes of securing favour. It is a recipe for social atomisation, millennial stagnation and ubiquitous, brutal cruelty.

A needle slid into Winston’s arm. Almost in the same instant a blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O’Brien. At sight of the heavy, lined face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. If he could have moved he would have stretched out a hand and laid it on O’Brien’s arm. He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely because he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that at bottom it did not matter whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy, had come back. O’Brien was a person who could be talked to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. O’Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would send him to his death. It made no difference. In some sense that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other, although the actual words might never be spoken, there was a place where they could meet and talk. O’Brien was looking down at him with an expression which suggested that the same thought might be in his own mind. When he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.

The best you can do for your children is to prepare them to be exactly the same as everyone else, to never forget what they are: Muslim. The Muslim is well aware of the horrible abuse he exposes his child to by placing it under the charge of cruel, ignorant men. These men know nothing about the world and nothing about education. They teach a range of religious subjects. In non-Arab societies, they teach making the sounds that correspond to the Arabic on the page. The do not teach Arabic. When the children are able to produce the sounds fluently, they commence reading the Qur’an. In my madrassa, each pupil read a few lines until the sheikh passed the task to the next child to continue. What mattered was that the sounds be accurate and melodious, which was greatly admired. None of us, not one, understood a single word of it. To me, this was the greatest torture.

Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?’

Parents know very well that they send their children into a black hole. Anything can happen to them in a madrassa. A boy who had played truant for months finally turned up one day. The teacher produced a broomstick, a rope and a cane. He tied the ends of rope to the ends of the broomstick. The boy was made to lie on his back on the floor. The two biggest boys in the class were instructed to thread the truant boy’s bare feet through the gap between the broomstick and the rope. The teacher rotated the broom stick until the rope had tightened around the boy’s ankles. He instructed the big boys to lift the ends of the broomstick so the soles of the boy’s feet were presented, and to hold on tight. By this point, my heart was pounding in my throat. I was transfixed.

Starting with his arm stretched well back and the cane pointing at the floor behind him, the teacher swung his arm high, twisting his body at the same time, bringing the cane to strike fully across the soles of both feet. The howl that came out of that poor boy made me slightly dizzy. And another blow, and another and another… The boys arms flayed and struck the floor. His head and torso twisted this way and that, hitting and bouncing off the floor again and again and again. I do not know how many times that boy’s bare soles were struck, but by the end of it, he wept bitterly. When he was finally released, he was unable to walk, and crawled away. I have no clear recollection of what happened after that, but I vaguely remember that he crawled home.

Now, as an adult, I understand that it is not so much the truant boy who was punished, but the rest of us, his classmates, who witnessed his humiliation. I suffered from having seen such cruelty for a long time, and perhaps I still do. Whom does the Muslim really punish, when he murders his wife in cold blood in front of his children? Cruelty is not confined to the killers, the prison guards and religious teachers. It is everywhere. Muslims know no other way to be.

You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed.’
Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a momentary bitterness. O’Brien checked his step as though Winston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly face came nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.
‘You are thinking,’ he said, ‘that since we intend to destroy you utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can make the smallest difference — in that case, why do we go to the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were thinking, was it not?’
‘Yes,’ said Winston.
O’Brien smiled slightly. ‘You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out.

That Muslims love Allah more than they love themselves or their loved ones is not enough, and Allah is the cruellest of gods. Over and above that, the “scholars” teach Muslims to love death more than life. Yet, they are ready to die for Muhammad. Those who love life more than death will be the undoing of the entire ummah, Muhammad warns in a hadith. Everyone, including their kindly mother and father, will go to Hell because a Muslim, in his heart of hearts, loves life more than death. His apostasy will bring deep shame upon his family. He knows only his own heart, and must bear this burden alone. In this abstract way, an entire society sits in judgement inside the head of the guilt-ridden, pointing an accusing finger. Muhammad ensured that those who left his band of murderers suffered unspeakably cruel deaths in gratuitous physical torment dragged out to the last moment. Terror and guilt, the twin weapons of totalitarianism.

China has surpassed Islam in the weaponisation of guilt. Everyone knows that what looks like regular police vans cruising by could be anything but. What follows is the content of an official Chinese government public information video explaining to the populace the state’s mobile execution facilities, otherwise known as “death vans”:

Inside the death van, the workers have already prepared everything. As the car doors close, the trip officially begins. You will be confirmed dead in 130 seconds. As the car doors open, your body is taken out to be cremated. What exactly happened in the car during these few minutes? If you were a death row prisoner, how would you be executed?

Today it is legal in different countries to end the life of a prisoner. There are several ways according to China’s relevant laws and regulations. The death penalty is carried out by shooting or injection. Compared to firing squad, lethal injection is more civilised and humane. It reduces the pain of death row prisoners. Fixed beds, heart rate monitors and a series of other equipment are in the Injection Room. To build a fixed execution ground like this in the Intermediate Court, costs 2 million yuan (US$277,850). On the other hand, a death van only costs 700,000 yuan (US$97,250), and not many people are executed every year[1] The death van can also be mobilised and used in other places to save execution costs.

Death vans are modified from the chassis of medium-sized buses. The length is 7-8 metres. Inside, it’s about 1.7 metres wide. The cockpit is basically the same as an ordinary cockpit, equipped with a variety of sophisticated monitoring equipment, which can monitor a situation within a few kilometres range. The execution area is the place where the executions are carried out. It’s two metres long. The entire area is curtained. There is more than just the execution bed in front of you. It can also monitor the heartbeat of prisoners. Medical equipment for respiratory and other physiological indicators.

After verifying the identity of the prisoner, the bailiff will use four safety belts. You are fixed to the execution bed. Then [they] connect the electrocardiograph and electroencephelograph. In the observation area separated only by a glass, the execution officer will have a panoramic view of everything in the execution area, communicating through devices such as phones, computers, cameras, etc., and issue the execution order to open the injection valve. Finally, a medically qualified bailiff will then insert the needle into your vein. The other end of the needle is connected to the automatic injection pump in the observation area.

It’s not one shot in the arm. Instead, it’s four. After the button is pressed, four pharmaceuticals are injected into the prisoner’s veins at 30ml/minute. The first one is sodium chloride. This is to verify that the needle is not blocked. At this time you still retain the last consciousness before death. Memories from the past start to attack you. You think of your family’s expectations. You think of the promises you never kept. You think of your indifference to other people’s lives when you committed crimes, and the regret when you stood in front of the judge. But with the second injection of medicine, the memories gradually fade away from you. You start to feel numb. You will slowly lose consciousness. Everything in front of you freezes into a circle of light. What’s working is a barbiturate called sodium theopental. This is a very fast-acting anaesthetic drug. It will reach the brain within seconds. Thus you enter the first stage of death, which is loss of consciousness. After a moment, the third injection is given. Muscle relaxants will be injected into the vein, usually pancuronium bromide. The purpose is not to cause death, but to paralyse ventilation. The drugs work by preventing contraction of the respiratory muscle fibres, which puts a person into a state of suffocation. Even though you can no longer feel this, your heart is still making its final struggle. The heart beats faster. It’s working hard to transport blood and nutrients to the brain. But when the fourth injection enters, potassium chloride rushes into the blood. Large doses of potassium can cause electrical conduction disorders in the heart. The heart suddenly stops beating and shuts down. So, the body’s own functions are completely interrupted. The brain dies rapidly and the EEG begins to show a straight line. Finally, the doctor will see you have stopped breathing and your heart has stopped. The pupils are dilated and fixed on both sides. When the three conditions are met at the same time, you are declared dead. You have left this world.

The bailiff will detach your body. The execution bed automatically rises. Your body slides into a stretcher. You are carried away and cremated by the staff of the funeral home. From your getting into the death van to getting off, it only took a few minutes.[2]

There seems to be an air of stoic resignation about condemned Chinese. Whether this is generally the case with people about to be executed in China, or whether these images are specially selected, I am unable to tell. They may be relieved that their lives under the boot are finally at an end, but it is unlikely that they "love death more than they love life." The death van public information quoted above is not a vindictive punishment for "wrong thinking" or some other "crime against the people", it is a deterrent that compounds the condemn's guilt, yet at the same time offers them the redemption of at least saving the state a few bucks. In fact, it mocks them. The truant boy was punished, but we, his classmates, were all implicated. Our gaze made his humiliation complete. The strong boys holding his bare soles aloft will be conflicted for the rest of their lives, unless they fully embrace Islam and own their deed, or leave Islam and find healing.

I hated madrassa not because I was punished (I was not) and not because of the punishment I witnesses, but because I was made to read something that I did not understand. Everything about me militated against doing this and every day I burst into tears after a few words of this farce. I was the only one who could not bear this. Everyone thought I was stupid and felt sorry for me. I begged my parents to remove me from madrassa, but they would not. This was not because they were cruel or indifferent, they loved me very dearly and were gentle about it. My father even asked the teacher to go easy on me, which he did. They simply could not conceive of a Muslim family not sending their child to madrassa. I was already an adult when I learnt that in some countries, parents seek out cruel madrassa teachers to send their children to, to ensure that they learn. This horrible Dark Age practise needs to end. If you cannot find it within yourself to leave Islam, at the very least, you owe it to your children to spare them this dehumanising experience.

Notes:

1. “In the more than 20 years up to 2007, at least 12,000 people were executed every year [in China]. At least 8,000 people have been executed every year since 2007,” about 90% of the world total. (“The Status Quo of China’s Death Penalty and the Civil Society Abolitionist Movement,” World Coalition against the Death Penalty, https://worldcoalition.org/2022/02/15/china-death-penalty-2022/). Of the next nine countries with highest executions, all but one are Middle Eastern Muslim countries.
2. “Inside China’s Disturbing Death vans”, Laowhy86, YouTube, 29 February 2024 https://youtu.be/MI8cOvGX_Nw

Picture credits:

https://zamane.ma/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/04/La-falaka.jpg

Screenshot from “Inside China’s Disturbing Death vans”, Laowhy86, YouTube, 29 February 2024 https://youtu.be/MI8cOvGX_Nw

Screenshot from "Minor Kept in Chains at Aligarh Madrasa; Owner, Father Arrested", DNAIndiaNews, YouTube, 29 September 2021 https://youtu.be/_JqMy5D9Te8