When Muslims throw themselves under the bus to protect Islam

Narrated Abu Sa'eed al-Khudri:

I heard that the people asked the Prophet of Allah: “Water is brought for you from the well of Buda’ah. It is a well in which dead dogs, menstrual clothes and excrement of people are thrown.” The Messenger of Allah replied: “Verily, water is pure and is not defiled by anything…” (Sahih Sunan Abi Dawud 67)

It was narrated from Ibn Abi Sa'eed Al-Khudri that his father said:

I passed by the Prophet when he was performing Wudu' [ritual ablution that includes drawing water deep into the nose and rinsing the mouth, each three times, AP] from the well of Buda'ah. I said: “Are you performing Wudu' from it when garbage is thrown into it?” He said: “Water is not made impure by anything.” (Sahih Sunan an-Nasa'i 327)

Absurd as the explanation, “Water is not made impure by anything,” might be, the point here is that it is precipitated by a questioning of Muhammad, forcing him to justify himself on the spot. It was a quandary that “Allah and his messenger” was never to be subjected to again.

Islam reached fulness after several centuries of accumulating holes in the narrative, with the Shari’a hole-filling “scholars” darting hither and thither, filling in holes. Muslims must now forever eulogise Muhammad whenever his name is mentioned, must never bring him into disrepute, and must emulate him. Nothing about Islam may be disparaged, everything about Islam must be praised. Muhammad, an earthly god, assigned to himself a supernatural god as inseparable partner to establish the eternal duo, Allah and His Messenger, now performing at a venue near you. Crucially, Muslims must obey Allah and his messenger. Led by two gods, one in Heaven and one on earth, never again will Islam be caught having to answer for performing ablutions in water “in which dead dogs, menstrual clothes and excrement of people are thrown”, or any other absurdity or iniquity. Those who follow in the footsteps of Muhammad, the caliphs and the "scholars", likewise, enjoy this immunity.

When the obligations and prohibitions to forever defend Islam and everything associated with it become untenable, the Muslim must end the situation that makes such defence untenable. Hence he or she will change the subject, out-yell, threaten, strike or kill their interlocutor, or run away. If all of this fails, only one thing remains: Muslims will throw themselves under the bus. A clear example of this lemming imperative manifested when French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “Islam is in crisis,” foreshadowed by Irshad Manji a few years earlier claiming,“The problem is us, Muslims,” in an attempt to deflect mounting censure away from Islam.

Khaled Abu Toameh, a regular contributor to the Gatestone Institute website, provides an interesting review of responses to President Macron’s statement. Striking about those respondents who agree with Macron that Islam is in crisis, is that each of them, in his or her own way, manages to shift the blame for the crisis away from Islam and onto Muslims. This includes Toameh himself, who sums up the controversy thus: “We created the crisis in our religion by allowing terrorists and extremists to use Islam as a pretext for their crimes” (My emphasis). In other words, terrorists and extremists have hijacked the peaceful words of Islam that call for violence, terror and killing as an excuse to commit violence, terror and killing.

The Saudi writer Fahad Shoqiran is quoted as saying, “Macron did not blame Islam, as a religion, for the dilemmas of Muslims,” and, “Yes, there is a deep crisis, and all Muslims must face their mistakes and reconsider their ideas.” The Moroccan writer Mohammad Maghouti says:

We all know that radical Islam represents a real threat to democracy and secularism in France and throughout Europe, where some Muslims seek to build “Islamic ghettos” that challenge the laws and create a system parallel to the state system there... Those are [the Muslims] who paint a bleak and bloody picture of the Islamic religion (My emphasis).

Maghouti provides Islam with a second line of defence behind “Muslims,” the ruse of “radical Islam,” further distancing Islam from its crisis. Significantly, Maghouti goes on to say:

Isn’t this a strange paradox that reveals a schizophrenic crisis in the Islamic mindset? The fact is that the biggest conspirators against Islam are the Muslims themselves, specifically those who reproduce the discourse of closed-mindedness and hatred. In this context, there is no difference between those who create, finance or carry out terrorism and those who are silent about it or justify it.

The Egyptian Farouk Youssef wrote, “‘Islam is in crisis’ is not an anti-religious phrase. There is a phenomenon called political Islam and the world is experiencing the brunt of its violence.” In a propaganda hit piece against Geert Wilders, Koen Damhuis takes for granted that the term “political Islam” is something distinct from Islam: “[Wilders’s] confrontation with political Islam became more and more a confrontation with Islam itself.” Youssef’s “political Islam” plays the same distancing role here as Maghouti’s “radical Islam,” to dissociate Islam from its own crisis. Youssef does it because Islam is perfect; Damhuis does it because Islam is peaceful. Youssef rather blames Muslims, consistent with the other Islamic apologists:

The crisis that Islam is suffering from was made by Muslims with their own hands when they allowed a handful of them to adopt violence as a language for dialogue with the other... Muslims have greatly offended Islam when they showed it to be a religion that incites violence and spreads chaos in stable societies that received them as refugees and provided them with protection. …Islam is in crisis because it has been distorted, mutilated, and destroyed from within.

The Egyptian columnist Khaled Montaser describes Muslims as “The biggest exporters of terrorists. …before and after each beheading, killing or torching, Muslims find justifications that allow and encourage such atrocities,” (My emphasis). Some Western critics of Islam, too, are guilty of peddling this particular obfuscatory rationale. Most interesting amongst the Muslim apologists, though, is the quoted comment of the Egyptian Dr Nervana Mahmoud:

The emotional reactions will not benefit Muslims in the West, but rather confirm the negative vision they suffer from... The words of the French president …carry a message to us, Muslims, to search for our faults, not to blame others and play the role of victims and the oppressed. We are the mirror of our religion.

While Dr Mahmoud seems as self-critical as the best of them, “the words of the French president” are that Islam is in crisis, not Muslims. She plays a subtler intellectual game than her fellow apologists. The apparent call for Muslim critical introspection, “to search for our faults, not to blame others and play the role of victims and the oppressed,” has all the trappings of intellectual honesty, while being nothing of the kind. It is she who blames “others,” read: Muslims, for the crisis in Islam, drawing the search for faults towards Muslims, and ensuring no search for faults in Islam.

Everything these writers accuse Muslims of sullying Islam’s name with, is nothing less than what Islam itself commands of Muslims. Dr Mahmoud’s “mirror of our religion” means the opposite of what she seems to be suggesting. The schizophrenic mindset that Maghouti mentions is nothing but that of these commentators themselves. The implication of all these views, that Islam has nothing to do with it, Toameh does not mention, let alone challenge. But at least they appear to be free of the intellectual paralysis of “I don’t criticise Muslims,” which so many Western Islam critics needlessly impose upon themselves.

By refusing to criticise Islam and shifting all blame onto Muslims, these Arab commentators are as intellectually questionable as those in the West who refuse to criticise Muslims and shift all blame from Muslims, a multicultural imperative, and onto “Islamism” or “political Islam.” Their game is the hardest since they can blame neither Islam, nor Muslims. Nonetheless, intellectually, these two groups of critics find themselves in the same position. The Arab critics, however, coming as they do from unfree environments and uncritical traditions, deserve praise for their boldness, whereas their Western counterparts, who pride themselves on their freedom of speech and critical thought, deserve censure for their timidity, even if both sets of critics are saying exactly the same thing: Islam is not to blame.

To accomplish such a Muslim chorus of “the problem with Islam today is Muslims,” every Muslim has had to become a fusion of slave, automaton and zombie. It follows a process of self-negation that begins with the Muslim being a slave of Allah and the corruption of the word friend. Mark Zuckerberg’s facebook did not start this corruption; shari’a got there centuries earlier. The process ends with the Muslim programmed to take the hit for Islam.

Yet, it is us, Western free people, who help to keep Islam from imploding for the simple reason that we do not know what a Muslim is. When Western people challenge Muslims over their absurd certainties about Islam, the free person presses the Muslim with, “But do you believe that? Do you really believe that?” and incredulities of that nature. We in the West understand a human being to be an autonomous individual capable of making his or her own choices and wanting freedom. This is the only human being that the Western mind is capable of imagining. We consequently insist that, in their core, all human beings are like us and want the same things as us. It is a fatal conceit.

The Qur’an tells (lay) Muslims that they are “the best of people”, while Shari’a negates Muslims, exactly as the “scholars” intend. It is a negation so thorough that even in the grave, the poor lay Muslim does not escape. Shari’a stipulates that:

It is offensive to place an inscription on it [the grave], whether it is the name of the deceased or something other, on a board at the head of the grave or on something else; unless the deceased is a friend of Allah or religious scholar, in which case his name is written so that he may be visited and honoured, it then not being offensive. (Reliance of the Traveller, Book G5.7(4))

And what is a “friend of Allah”? Let Allah speak:

Lo! verily the friends of Allah are (those) on whom fear (cometh) not, nor do they grieve. Those who believe and keep their duty (to Allah). Theirs are good tidings in the life of the world and in the Hereafter - There is no changing the Words of Allah - that is the Supreme Triumph. (Qur’an 10:62-64) (My emphasis).

Two Islamic “scholars” elaborate on a sahih hadith by clarifying “friend of Allah”: “The knower of Allah (arif billah) who is constant in obedience to Him and sincere in his acts of worship,” (‘Abd al-Ra’uf Munawi) “He who is close to Allah by his devotion to Him through obeying His commands and shunning the acts He has forbidden.” (Muhammad ibn ‘Allan Bakri) (Quoted in Reliance of the Traveller, Appendix w33.2)

Their clarifications of “friend of Allah” is to elaborate on their exegeses of a hadith negating the Muslim:

The Prophet said:

Allah Most High says: "He who is hostile to a friend (wali) of Mine I declare war against. My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory for him, and My slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks. If he asks Me, I will surely give to him, and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely protect him." (Sahih Mishkat al-Masabih 2266; Sahih An-Nawawi 38, 40)

In other words, no one becomes a “friend of Allah” unless he is first a slave of Allah, i.e., a Muslim. Being a slave is a prerequisite. Still, a “friend of Allah” does not have Allah’s love, but must strive tirelessly to earn his love, which is by no means certain. Merely fulfilling the obligations that Allah imposes on the Muslim is not enough for a slave of Allah to become a friend of Allah and maybe earn Allah’s love, maybe. With “voluntary works”, the friend of Allah goes over and above the obligations that Allah imposes on him. Such a Muslim, such a friend of Allah, if finally favoured with love, is elevated to become the sensory organs and motor appendages of Allah. "I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks." It is not clear whether, on the one hand, the best way to earn Allah’s love is by becoming the sensory organs and motor appendages of Allah, in short, become Allah's automaton, or on the other, once having earned Allah’s love, Allah turns his beloved friend into an automaton. Either way, finding affirmation first in slavery, then in Allah’s loveless “friendship” and finally in loving transformation into an automaton, the Muslim attains the exulted state of becoming the instrument of his own negation: he becomes impatient to die in the cause of Allah, to die in jihad.

By this point, the Muslim is ready to “slay and be slain in the cause of Allah,” having exchanged his life on earth for reward in the Afterlife, indeed, loving that Afterlife more than this life. “We love death more than you love life,” Muslims proudly proclaim. The Muslim who cannot become a scholar, therefore, in order to earn Allah’s love, must disavow life and seek death. With his eyes now lifeless, dead, all that is left for him is to become a shaheed, a “martyr”, something we otherwise know as a zombie.

If “friend of Allah”, automaton and zombie are the exalted states available to the lay Muslim, and slave of Allah is the default status of every Muslim, then it is reasonable to enquire into what, exactly, a “slave of Allah” is. Here, again, Shari’a is clear:

Surrender to Him gives you relief in the present life from having to plan, while He does, triumph in the next life through the supreme favour, and safety from the idolatry of contention,[1] for how should you contend with Him for something you do not own with Him? Cast yourself amidst His kingdom, meagre in its plentitude and insignificant in its vastness, and He will plan for you as He does for it. Do not leave the slavehood that is yours for claims to a lordship that you have no claim to. To plan and choose for oneself are enormities [serious sins, AP] with respect to hearts and inmost souls, as you find in the Book of Allah Most High, where Allah says:

“Your Lord creates whatever He wills and chooses, and they do not have a choice. Glory be to Allah above what they associate with Him” (Qur’an 28:68). (Reliance of the Traveller, Book T2.2) (My emphasis)

To choose, is to go against your nature as a created being. Your creator has created you, and so chooses for you. His will for you is his choice for you. Your role as slave of Allah is only to obey him, worship him and praise him. You are completely dependent on his favour and as your almighty creator, he can do with you absolutely whatever he wants. It therefore makes no difference whether the water you drink is pristine rain directly from the sky, or filled with “dead dogs, menstrual clothes and excrement of people,” if Allah wills you to drink that water, you will drink it; if Allah wills you to die from drinking it, you will die; if Allah wills you to not come to harm, you will not come to harm. For a creation of Allah to be certain of accomplishing anything is to anticipate the will of Allah, in other words, to tell Allah what to will. This is the meaning of insha-Allah. Muslim promises tend to be bombastic, hyperbolic, fantastic, ridiculous, over-the-top, acknowledging Allah's arbitrary fate over a Muslim's plans.

To plan “in the present life” is to trespass on the prerogative of Allah. The proper thing to do is to hope for Allah’s favour, insha-Allah. To a Muslim, the question, “But do you believe that?” makes no sense at all. The only conceivable answer that a Muslim can give is, “I am a Muslim.” And in those four words alone, the Muslim says all you need to know, provided only that you know what a Muslim is. This profound failure on the part of Western non-Muslims manifests in countless instances of ships passing in the night. An example would be concerning the nature of God.

This is the one core aspect of being Muslim that non-Muslims simply do not comprehend. To challenge a Muslim about the injustice and unfairness of Allah, e.g., sending Muslims to Hell for their sins at the same time as leaving them no choice but to commit those sins, or logical impossibilities, such as hurling stars down onto earth, is to meet with the disarmingly simple retort: “Allah is almighty; he can do anything he wants.” This being so, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the mother of Jesus being the sister of Moses, because Allah can do whatever he wants. Only the kufaar have a problem with such things.

When Christians insist that “God is just”, they offer an extremely rare instance of Muslims being honest and Christians not. Both hold God to be almighty, but Muslims, unlike Christians, accept that almighty means exactly that, almighty. To impose a constraint on God by insisting that he be just, is to make him no longer almighty. God is then subject to the will of his creation and so, by definition, not almighty. Muslims are correct about this. There are no degrees of almighty. You either are almighty or you are not. The Christian God is not almighty, because Christians are powerful enough to demand of him that he be the way they want him to be, i.e., just. The Muslim acknowledges Allah’s almighty power by being a willing slave of Allah, ready to be done with as Allah wills, whatever he wills.

Furthermore, Christians perceive themselves as just and subject to the justice of a just god. They made God in their own image. Their God thus ends up as a just god. But God being a just god already concedes that there are other gods and they might not be just, even if some Christians insist that Allah cannot be God because God cannot be unjust. What the Muslims hear is the Christians admitting there is something their God cannot be. This is enough to confirm Allahu-akbar, and confirm Muslims in their superiority since, as slaves subject to the arbitrary whim of Allah, the slave master, they are congruous with Allah, hence the Muslims' comprehensive fatalism, insha-Allah. For a Muslim to doubt, let alone not accept, that Allah can do absolutely anything to him is to inveigh against the power of Allah, and thus to make yourself a god alongside Allah. Therefore, the Muslim affirms, and constantly reaffirms, that there is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and I am the slave of Allah.

When non-Muslims treat Muslims as if they were free individuals who make free choices, who have opinions and who choose their leaders, they allow slaves of Allah, who strive to be friends of Allah, automatons of Allah and zombies of Allah, and care not one jot for the fate of anything but Islam, to run amok through our civilisation, our society, our ethics and our women, which brings us to where we are today. Muslims will not tolerate anyone failing to acknowledge them as the best of people, slaves of an almighty Allah. Allah’s religion, Islam, is better than Muslims could ever be and there are no circumstances under which this can be reversed. From one generation to the next, Muslims grow ever weaker, while Islam can never change. Therefore, they will do anything and everything to defend Islam, including, if it came to it, throw themselves under the bus.

Notes:

1. Note that questioning, disputation and debate, in short, thinking for yourself, are “idolatry”. See also: “Muslims must not debate, will not debate, cannot debate,” on this website.

Picture credit:

Unknown Martyrs-Iran Qom City-Pardisan City-Photojournalism-Shia Muslim 2010-Mustafa Meraji (12) http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Comments:

On 5 May 2024 at 10:21, Ben Dor A. wrote:

Dear Anjuli Pandavar 

Thank you for posting this detailed mindset of Muslims and Islam.

I will share it whenever required to open people's eyes.

You certainly master that religion exceptionally well.

I read books and many articles about Islam but never really delved into the intricate way that Islamic scholers manipulate the minds of Muslims from childhood. (BTW, I have compiled many examples how the PLO/PA, Hamas and UNRWA have succeeded to do it for decades.)

What baffles me is how this religion can attract so many Western regressive useful idiots, to throw themselves under the bus for the cause of Muslim terrorists, contrary to their declerative leftist "progressive" ways of treating minorities (BLM/Queers/Latinos) except for Jews, as we have seen in the past several months in US, Canadian and European universities.

Please read the attached report by WSJ.
Best Regards 

Ben Dor A.