Is it Islamophobic to call out Ed Husain for his stance on "Islamophobia"? Part 2
Ed Husain does not see that "Islamophobia" is a club with which Muslims, the woke, and communists, together, have been bludgeoning the West into letting Muslims dismantle civilisation. Or perhaps he does.
Those given to supporting the likes of Ed Husain do not look too closely at the claims they makes, similar to Muslims' responses to the claims of their sheikhs. While I am not in any way suggesting that Ed Husain takes advantage of the Muslim privilege inherent in "Islamophobia," it does ensure him a certain shielding from critique. It would be a lot easier for a critic of Ed Husain to be genuinely sympathetic towards his position, if he were honest. In his interview with Fraser Nelson of The Spectator, Ed Husain is billed as “a historian of Islam,” which, perhaps, he is, for a historian does not have to be honest about what he knows. Of course he can make mistakes, but he can also obscure, dissimulate, obfuscate and downright lie. But Husain's historical errors are so many and so crass that one has to wonder. He claims, for example:
Muslims benefit from having a free society that allows for a robust debate and that’s why Muslims are here in the West to the tune of 30 million.
Debate is forbidden to Muslims, they will not engage in it and even if they wanted to, they have no idea how to do so, let alone engage is “robust debate.” I wrote a four-part series on this. Muslims may come to the West for work, education, marriage, family reunion, commerce, hijra or jihad (both forms of Islamic takeover). They may even be fleeing war, persecution or natural disaster, but they do not emigrate from their Muslim lands to debate. They are raised from early childhood to never question and to only hear and obey. Where they genuinely do try to debate, by the normal understanding of that term, they make pitiful displays of extreme rhetorical and logical incompetence.
A person must examine his acts in light of the Koran and sunna, suspending his own inclinations and following what the Prophet has brought. The hadith resembles the word of Allah Most High. (Reliance of the Traveller, Book P75.3. My emphasis)
A Muslim may never contradict the Qur'an or Muhammad, never say or even think anything that brings Islam or Muslims into disrepute, and must necessarily always praise Islam and Muslims. They eagerly comply with these constraints, no matter what. To Muslims, allegiance equals truth. It is simply ludicrous for Ed Hussain to assert that Muslims emigrate to the West in search of robust debate.
There’s a reason why Muslims weren’t here for the past two thousand years. Because blasphemy laws were in place and Muslims were considered to be blasphemers against Christ.
Two thousand years ago, neither the West nor Muslims existed. “Christendom,” the forerunner of what later became "the West," lay centuries into the future. Once Christianity did get going, its concerns were with heretics and the remaining pagan Europeans. When Western Christians eventually did encounter Muslims, they considered them heathens, rather than "blasphemers against Christ." The Jews, who have been in “the West” for longer than Christians, were the ones drawing the ire of various anti-heathen laws, and if anyone is inseparable from robust debate, it is the Jews. For some reason, this aspect of Judaism flourished in the West, despite Husain's claimed "blasphemy laws." If we allow that Husain misspoke and meant two hundred years, rather than two thousand—although one should not be surprised to hear Muslims make claims such as this and mean it—we have more to work with. Husain says:
Now [that] those [blasphemy] laws were brought to an end and allows Muslims to now thrive in the West, because we don’t have blasphemy laws.
Again, Ed Husain is being ahistorical and disingenuous. In 1989, after Salman Rushdie had published The Satanic Verses, thousands of Muslims poured out onto the streets of Britain demanding the blasphemy laws be extended to “protect” Islam, the very laws Husain tells us were repealed and thereby allowed those Muslims to come to Britain. Significant settling of Muslims in Britain started in the 18th century. The blasphemy laws were abolished in 2008. The blasphemy laws did not hinder Muslim immigration for 300 years, as The Satanic Verses demonstrated. To Muslims, “robust debate” meant burning books, hounding publishers and booksellers, and murdering writers, as a Muslim immigrant to the United States attempted with a knife attack on Salman Rushdie in August 2022. The only questions remaining are: why does Ed Husain make these patently ridiculous claims; and why did his Spectator interviewer let him get away with it? It is not only that Husain is a "moderate Muslim" and so must be respectfully listened to, his narrative is one that Western liberals find comforting. Thus, for example:
Denouncing this [Muslim Brotherhood] extremism is a religious duty for most Muslims, because Islamists are destroying the beauty, pluralism and inheritance of classical Islam. Islamists are banned in Mecca but operate freely today in Britain.
With “A religious duty for most Muslims,” Husain conceals from his audience that Muslims like him are the principal class of exemptions from Islam's obligation on every Muslim to wage war against non-Muslims.
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)
This "warfare" that Allah ordains for every Muslim is warfare in the way of Allah, i.e., jihad. The exemptions from the war that Ed's "Islamists" readily engage in, as the Qur'an also ordains also for him, falls under the communal obligations that no "moderate Muslim" ever cares to mention, for they are the Muslims who do not have the stomach for war, yet insist that they are the Muslims.
Ed Husain cannot support his claims that, “Denouncing this extremism is a religious duty for most Muslims,” nor does he attempt to explain the relationship between “most Muslims, on the one hand,” and what he calls “Islamists,” on the other. This is rather crucial, since his religion distinguishes between those who “fight [with their lives] in the cause of Allah,” and those who “sit still.” Islam acknowledges their difference in temperament, and assigns each their specific role in advancing jihad according to their temperament. Husain would prefer the Western kufaar not to know that he, too, has jihad obligations, just not killing. Even so, this "choice" offered in 2:216, as most Islamic choices, turns out to be no choice at all.
Those of the believers who sit still, other than those who have a (disabling) hurt, are not on an equality with those who strive in the way of Allah with their wealth and lives. Allah hath conferred on those who strive with their wealth and lives a rank above the sedentary. Unto each Allah hath promised good, but He hath bestowed on those who strive a great reward above the sedentary. (4:95)
Ed Husain's "Islamists", i.e., those who "strive in the way of Allah with their wealth and lives" are ranked higher in the eyes of Allah, the god that Husain and his Islamists have in common. Exactly how much higher is the rank of the killers above that of those nice Muslims who just sit still? According to a hadith:
By Him in whose hand Muhammad's soul is, a morning or an evening expedition in God's path is better than the world and what it contains, and for one of you to remain in the line of battle is better than his prayers for sixty years. (Mishkat al-Masabih 3849)
Muslims such as Ed Husain deceive not only the feeble-minded kufaar, but also themselves. However, while it might be true that most of Husain's Muslims regard "denouncing this extremism" as a "religious duty," it is, as the above illustrates, quite untrue to say this is a "religious duty" for any Muslims, regardless of whether they take it that way. To begin with, to denounce a commandment from Allah renders a Muslim an apostate. Ed Husain and the "moderate Muslims" escape death at the hands of the "Islamists" for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is a grave matter for one Muslim to declare another an apostate. Also, "moderate Muslims," those who sit still, and "Islamists" the two sides of the jihad coin. The one side does the killing, the other side supports them, such as by, for example, lying about Islam. "He who provides the equipment for a soldier in jihad has himself performed jihad." (Reliance of the Traveller, Book O9.1)
Early on in his Spectator interview, Ed Husain declares:
No intelligent Muslim should place the word ‘Islam’ and the word ‘phobia’ together in a single phrase. This is why the word did not exist until relatively recently. Islamophobia has been largely promoted by Islamists and jihadists, to protect them from scrutiny.
In the very same sentence in which Husain complains about a contrived word, "Islamism", being promoted, he promotes two contrived words:"Islamists" and "jihadists" that are similarly recent contrivances, and that are largely promoted by him, and his Western liberal supporters who need him to be the Muslim. This is so they can deny that "Islamist" and "jihadist" are Muslims, exactly what Ed Husain himself needs. Husain needs to perform this sleight of hand because everything about him depends on a general acceptance of the two words "Islamist" and "jihadist". He turns down Keir Starmer's offer to criminalise "Islamophobia", because "Muslims don’t need the law to patronise us," but he needs the kufaar to patronise him by not challenging the two words "Islamist" and "jihadist," and they do that precisely to avoid "Islamophobia." Ed Husain can make a show of rejecting something he needs, because he knows it will not be taken away.
Ed Husain says that he is the Muslim; not the "Islamist" and "jihadist". So it would be reasonable to assume that Husain is familiar with the Shari'a provision stipulating:
Muslims may not seek help from non-Muslims allies, unless the Muslims are considerably outnumbered and the allies are of goodwill towards the Muslims, (Reliance of the Traveller, Book o9.7. My emphasis).
It is curious that Husain charges, "They [Islamists] specialise in using the [UK government's] equalities agenda to demand the means to pursue, defame and (ideally) prosecute their critics," but when Keir Starmer offers to ban "Islamophobia" and London's Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan expresses his determination to see such a ban imposed, Husain is silent about Khan. Although Sadiq Khan is doing exactly as Husain's "Islamists", namely, "seek[ing] help from non-Muslims allies," Husain turns his ire against the non-Muslim ally, Starmer, rather than against the Muslim, Khan. Even if Husain has not thought it through this far, he is at least consistent in never criticising another Muslim. This works, since he does not consider "Islamist" and "jihadist" Muslims, yet who also, somehow, know when and how Muslims must use non-Muslims.
Sadiq Khan reminded Keir Starmer that he is a prosecutor, something Husain is all too aware of. Ed Husain complains that Starmer "should have learnt by now to distinguish between Islam and Islamism, but he shows no sign of understanding the difference." Yet Husain neither explains the difference, nor does he show that Starmer does not understand that difference.
He has acted on behalf of the Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, and served in the cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn, who once called Hamas his ‘friends’.
Husain takes it for granted that had Starmer understood the difference, he would, naturally, not be supporting the "Islamists". But since Starmer now puts his prosecutorial powers at the disposal of Sadiq Khan, this could just as easily mean that Starmer understands the "difference between Islam and Islamism" very well, and has chosen to support the “Islamist” side. Ed Husain does not come even close to considering the possibility that the two Stalinists, Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn, are merely bringing their lives' work to fruition, and that far from their being ignorant, find cover under Husain's naivety regarding them.
In the campaign video, Sir Keir says that anti-Muslim sentiment has risen since the 7 October attacks. But since it’s Hamas and Islamism that have created antipathy to Muslims, Starmer should be addressing them.
"To bring about what’s called an Islamophobia law," says Husain, "means that it's blasphemy through the back door." Husain leaves unsaid that this "blasphemy through the back door" will benefit "Islamism," as he sees it, and not Islam, though he would be quite happy for Starmer to go after "Hamas and Islamism," since they have "created antipathy to Muslims," in other words, "Islamophobia". So much for Muslims craving robust debate and not needing to be patronised.
Al-wala' w'al-bara', empathy and disavowal, is an Islamic doctrine, practised by Muslims right from the start. It is Muslims who hold enmity, hatred and antipathy towards non-Muslims, and not the other way round, and have never stopped doing so. They poured out onto the streets in their thousands in celebration of 7 October, and in mass-support of Hamas. Oh, never mind the Muslims. "If he [Starmer] did [address Hamas and Islamism], he’d win over many in Britain who recognise that fundamentalism poses a huge threat to our country."
Rather than this being Ed Husain’s criticism of “many in Britain” who are fickle enough to be swayed by such a token gesture from a man who “acted on behalf of the Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, and served in the cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn, who once called Hamas his ‘friends’,” it is, instead, Ed Husain's good advice to Keir Starmer. "Going after the hardliners would be a win-win for Starmer – but does he have the courage?" wonders Husain.
Is this not what the old Stalinists have always done: they use and discard whoever it is expedient to use and discard. If Starmer is not “going after the hardliners,” then this is not the time to go after the hardliners. But there is another way of looking at this that Husain seems not to consider: it might be the hardliners who are not going after Starmer, but are biding their time.
Uprooting Islamists from Britain’s institutions and streets would make the country safer and do more to promote relations between Muslims and non-Muslims than any spurious new law. But neither [the] Labour [Party] nor the Tories [the Conservative Party] will commit to this ideological battle.
It's called capitulation, Ed, and it happened a long time ago. To the "many in Britain" that you dangle like a carrot before Keir Starmer, you are their hoped-for security against the "Islamists", and why they want a ban on "Islamophobia".
Ed Husain is played by "a combination of several Fascisms," to use George Orwell's phrase. Husain sees "antipathy towards Muslims" as intimately related to "Islamophobia", and not that Islamophobia is a club with which Muslims, the woke, and communists, together, have been bludgeoning the West into letting Muslims dismantle civilisation. Or perhaps he does.
The Labour Party policy document says, "There is no single, agreed definition of Islamophobia." This is almost a da'wah statement, because it is true, but it is also highly misleading. It would the whole truth and nothing but the truth had it simply said, "There is no definition of Islamophobia." There are only attempts at definition, and it is about these attempts that there is no single agreement. The Labour party compounds the deceit by then saying, "The Labour Party adopted the APPG definition." There is no APPG definition; only an APPG attempt at a definition. By such fraud shall the next UK government continue the dismantling of what was once a great, civilised country.
If freedom, democracy, human rights and respect for the individual are to serve us into the future as the hard-won gains of the Enlightenment, then the first necessity would be to free ourselves of the notion of "Islamophobia". The very concept must be rejected and expunged from our society, along with its Little Brother, "hate speech". Muslims must be subjected to extremely robust debate, which, contrary to Ed Husain's bombast, they fear, rather than want. They are not in the West to be persuaded, but to subjugate and humiliate. "Moderate Muslims" play their part in this. It is worth reminding ourselves of Orwell's warning:
…Against that …world in which black may be white tomorrow, …there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it… The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive. Let Fascism, or possibly even a combination of several Fascisms, conquer the whole world, and those two conditions no longer exist. (George Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War”, essay, 1943. My emphasis)
Muslims are the first victims of Islam. That much is true, but Islam, as we are so often reminded, is just a set of ideas. Without anyone to give effect to ideas, those ideas remain exactly that, ideas. The religion of the Aztecs was also a set of ideas, and in some ways even worse than Islam, but no one gives effect to those Aztec ideas today, so, although the ideas are preserved, they are now harmless. The same cannot be said of Islam, since every single day, Muslims give effect to Islam, a terrible set of ideas. Muslims are, therefor, the victims of Muslims. Stalinism may have officially expired, but it remains very much alive in the walking dead of the legacy Western Stalinist parties. Ed Husain is a victim of them, too.
So where does that leave the critic who tries to give Muslims the robust debate they badly need and more badly do not want? Some will accuse me of "Islamophobia". See how much I care. In all likelihood, bigots will seize upon my words to bolster their dark purposes. I cannot stop them. I expect my readers to see that I will not allow those who would abuse what I write to hold to ransom my telling the truth in as far as I understand it. As my long-time role model, Professor Thomas Sowell, put it:
One cannot predict, much less forestall, all the clever misinterpretations that others might put on one’s words. The most that can be done is to alert honest people to the problem.
I write to warn the world of a terrible mistake it is making. Ed Husain is part of that mistake.
I am sometimes told that by saying what I say, I will never convince anyone, even that I am making enemies out of potential friends. Certainly, I try to write compellingly, even eloquently, but I do not write to convince anyone. Yet, at the same time, I do not set out to preach to the converted. Readers either see what I am saying, or they do not. If they do, then they either have the courage to proclaim it too, or they do not. So long as I can avoid the worst of the Semmelweis effect, I can press on by drawing strength from, amongst others, the physicist Max Planck, who reflected:
A scientific truth does not triumph by converting its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Perhaps Islam got to that new generation before me and others like me, and our warnings are already too late. That would be too bad. But whenever I come across things like this, my hopes rise again.
Picture credits:
Brian from Toronto, Canada - Archbishop of Canterbury, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19950151
https://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7239283.stm
Chabad Lubavitch - https://flickr.com/photos/chabadlubavitch/50704331368/in/photolist-UdWBz5-UuzwhD-Qypzy1-Vvz99B-UVptWb-23Kp6e3-24gz6cw-Zjkdrd-23KpeDu-2hPz6dP-QMZtqZ-VwhrWi-259mcg8-WxVTq6-NuExYa-23NrFs5-PB4kTB-PJQQxE-NB27zY-ZnaJgp-ZnaJDi-2hLDqry-ZnaJzk-ZnaJsX-ZnaJhM-ZnaJev-UGUh46-bnNvb3-UDZ8hN-NZQBWQ-VWqfTX-cLk2rs-QD3rZw-2g8MVqK-N6bMgC-N5SU6V-NApUq3-N6bs1o-2hLHeLr-ZnaJo8-2kfyXcN-2ebRAc5-2iocbeu-WKLMdo-2gzhCx6-2fY7SgD-NHup2D-21vssDN-GDLUtM-GDFdGH, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103873752
© European Union, 2010, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87776543
Chris McAndrew - https://api20170418155059.azure-api.net/photo/X9dwBvuR.jpeg?crop=MCU_3:4&quality=80&download=trueGallery: https://beta.parliament.uk/media/X9dwBvuR, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149792837
Branch of the National Union of Journalists (BNUJ). - https://web.archive.org/web/20080608013945/http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/pics/orwell-unioncard.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2001660
Comments:
On 3 July 2024 at 13:48, Ben Dor A. wrote:
Dear Anjuli Pandavar
You wrote: "Muslims are, therefor, the victims of Muslims."
How many Muslims have been butchered by Muslims since the inception of Islam?
Never compared it to Christian wars or Jesus Wars as it's known.
Even Muhammad himself butchered another Arab tribe to take Mecca by breaching his hudna when he gained power.
So if the West passes laws that will protect Muslim Islamists or "moderates" from criticism or debate, then these radical Muslims can continue to subjugate and slaughter the "moderates", if actually there are "moderate" Muslims!
Best Regards
Ben Dor A
On 3 July 2024 at 19:18, Anjuli Pandavar wrote:
Dear Ben Dor A.,
It'd be impossible to tell how many Muslims have been killed by Muslims since the inception of Islam. The following might give some idea:
- Muslims are supposed to kill anyone, Muslim or kafir, who dishonours Muhammad. No exceptions, no mitigation, no apologies nor retractions sought or accepted, just kill. No doubt, Muslims have both fallen foul of this rule, and been set up to fall foul of it.
- The Muslims who go out to kill Muslims are convinced in their own minds that their targets are not Muslims, such as the Baha'i, the Ahmadi, the Shi'a, etc. The Shi'a also go after the Baha'i and have a long history of pogroms against other strains of Shi'a. Hence the frequent news of Muslims blowing themselves up in packed mosques or markets belonging to the wrong kinds of Muslims. This has been going on forever.
BTW, the Arab tribe Muhammad deceived and butchered to take Mecca was not Muslim. The point about that story is the deceit. There's a story that Muslims find highly entertaining: a Muslim was doing da'wah to a Jew. The Jew said, "No thanks. If I become a Muslim, I'll no longer be able to drink wine." The da'i assured him that he would be able to drink wine. The reassured Jew then converted to Islam. "Ah, that calls for a drink," said the Jew. "Wine is haram," said the da'i. "But just a minute ago you said I'd be able to drink wine!" objected the convert, to which the da'i replied, "A minute ago, you were not a Muslim." - At times there were up to three warring caliphates: Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid. At other times the caliphates disintegrated into rival principalities (Emirates), with frequent wars between them.
- Any civil war in any Muslim country almost always means Muslims killing Muslims. That the black African Darfuris were Muslims did not stop the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum from perpetrating a genocide against them. Somalia is something like 99.9% Muslim. It has been ravaged by civil war, with short respites, since 1988. There are only Muslims to kill. The same goes for the Pakistan army in the then East Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Independence War. In this conflict, the Muslim religious authorities declared the Bengalis to be non-Muslims, thereby giving the Pakistani soldiers the right to rape Bengali women, setting off one of the biggest genocidal mass rapes of recent times. Then there's Algeria, Chad, Yemen, Afghanistan...
- I think I am correct in saying (haven't checked) that caliphal succession always involved a Muslim murdering his father, brother(s) or son(s), or having them murdered.
- One of the abiding features of Muslims is that they kill their "wayward" daughters, who are, of course, also Muslim. They stone adulterers to death (somehow, this is mostly happens to the women) - when those who do da'wah are confronted with this, they are quick to point out that only married adulterers are stoned to death. Sex between unmarried Muslims is fornication and only punished with 100 lashes. So please don't say that Muslims stone adulterers to death. That's just Islamophobic!
- According to the Religion of Peace website, Muslims are known to have carried out at least 45,504 separate jihad mass-murder attacks since 9/11. Note that this is not the number of people killed, which is usually between six and ten times higher, over the first sixteen years since 9/11 standing at well over a quarter million. These killings take place all over the world, but the greatest number of them by far are perpetrated in Muslim countries and their victims Muslims.
- Not to be left out are all the killings between feuding clans and tribes for such grievous offences as, for example, turning down a marriage proposal, failing to show the expected level of deference to a member of another family, or a family being accused of having married off a daughter who was not a virgin.
- If Muslims kill Muslims unintentionally, such victims go to Heaven anyway, so there's no problem there. That's why it doesn't faze them when there happens to be Muslims amongst the passengers when they blow up a bus in Israel.
- About "radicals" slaughtering "moderates," they tend not to do this, because they do not necessarily see the moderates as apostates, but rather as Muslims who have "strayed from the path". They will do da'wah to such Muslims to "bring them back to the straight path". The "moderates" don't have a theological leg to stand on, and often make good by helping the "radicals" carry out the killings, e.g., by hiding them from police, pointing out to them where the Jews, Christians or Buddhists may be found, giving them a ride to where the killing will take place, etc.
- But let just one kafir kill a Muslim and all Hell breaks loose. Globally.
- I'd better stop there, before I slip into Islamophobia. We couldn't have that now, could we?