More on Using Scientology to Criticize Islam

Friday

I'M READING another biography of L. Ron Hubbard, this one entitled, Bare-Faced Messiah. I've mentioned before (in this article) that when you encounter resistance to your criticism of Islam, you can sidestep to talking about Scientology, which has many parallels with Islam. Nobody seems to mind when you criticize Scientology (except a Scientologist, of course).

You can criticize something about Scientology, and then say the same thing about Islam, and if someone gives you a bad time about it, you can ask, "Why is it okay to talk about Scientology but not Islam?"

It is no more racist to talk about Islam than Scientology, for example. And you can make that point very effectively and very reasonably, and thereby greatly reduce the flak you take for doing something everyone in free nations should be engaged in: Religious and political criticism and free discussion. What's the point of free speech if we aren't exercising it?

Anyway, below are eight excerpts from Bare-Faced Messiah. As you read, I'd like you to consider what a conversation might be like if you said, "I was reading something about Scientology today that really surprised me." Then talk about it for a bit. And then say, "It reminded me of something very similar about Islam." And talk about that for a bit. This is received with less resistance than talking about Islam only. Give it a try and you'll see what I mean.

Here are the eight excerpts from the book:

1. While Hubbard (L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology) was skirmishing with the FBI, he was also tightening his grip on the Scientology movement and urging his followers to take action against anyone attempting to practise Scientology outside the control of the 'church'. He derided apostates as 'squirrels' and recommended merciless litigation to drive them out of business. 'The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease,' he wrote in one of his interminable bulletins, casually adding, 'If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.'

In the same bulletin he offered the benefit of his advice to any Scientologists unlucky enough to be arrested. They were to instantly file a $100,000 civil damages suit for molestation of 'a Man of God going about his business', then go on the offensive 'forcefully, artfully, and arduously' and cause 'blue flames to dance on the courthouse roof until everybody has apologized profusely'. The only way to defend anything, Hubbard wrote, was to attack. 'If you ever forget that, you will lose every battle you are ever engaged in.' It was a philosophy to which he would adhere ardently all his life...

2. The same month as the Freedom Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency opened a file, No. 156409, on L. Ron Hubbard and his organization. CIA agents trawled through police, revenue, credit and property records to try and unravel Hubbard's tangled corporate affairs. It was a task of herculean difficulty, for the Church of Scientology was a cryptic maze of ad hoc corporations. The printed notepaper of the Academy of Scientology gave only a hint of its labyrinthine structure — on the left-hand side of the page was a list of no less than seventeen associated organizations, ranging from the American Society for Disaster Relief to the Society of Consulting Ministers.

Agents traced a considerable amount of property owned either by Hubbard, his wife, son, or one of the daunting number of 'churches' with which they were associated, but the report quickly became bogged down in a tangle of names and addresses: 'The Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences is currently engaged as a school for ministers of religion which at the present time possesses approximately thirty to forty students. The entire course consists of $1500 to $1800 worth of actual classroom studies...The public office is located at 1810-12 19th Street N.W. The corporations rent the entire building...

'The Hubbard Guidance Center, located at 2315 15th Street, N.W., occupies the entire building which consists of three floors and which was purchased by the SUBJECT Organization. The center also rents farm property located somewhere along Colesville Road in Silver Spring, Maryland, on a short-term lease. The center formerly operated a branch office at 8609 Flower Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland. In addition to the Silver Spring operation, the center has a working agreement with the Founding Church of Scientology of New York, which holds classes at Studio 847, Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street, New York City. Churches of this denomination number in excess of one hundred in the United States...'

3. While he was still in Melbourne, Hubbard received an urgent telephone call from Washington with some bad news. Nibs (Hubbard's son), he was told, had 'blown'. To Scientologists, 'blowing the org' (leaving the church) was one of the worst crimes in the book: it was almost unbelievable that the highly-placed son and namesake of the founder would take such a step. Nibs had simultaneously held five posts in Scientology's increasingly cumbersome bureaucratic structure: he was Organizational Secretary of the Founding Church of Scientology, Washington, DC; Chief Advanced Clinical Course Instructor; Hubbard Communications Office World Wide Technical Director; and a Member of the International Council.

[Nibs] failed to take into account the fact that his father would automatically view his defection as an act of treachery...

4. Returning to a familiar theme, Hubbard urged his followers to defend Scientology by attacking its opponents: 'If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace...Don't ever defend, always attack. Don't ever do nothing. Unexpected attacks in the rear of the enemy's front ranks work best.'

5. 'It was not really possible to question what was going on,' explained David Mayo, a New Zealander and a long-time member of the Sea Org (the headquarters of Scientology worldwide, which was a small fleet of ships), 'because you were never sure who you could really trust. To question anything Hubbard did or said was an offense and you never knew if you would be reported. Most of the crew were afraid that if they expressed any disagreement with what was going on they would be kicked out of Scientology. That was something absolutely untenable to most people, something you never wanted to consider. That was much more terrifying than anything that might happen to you in the Sea Org.

'We tried not to think too hard about his behaviour. It was not rational much of the time, but to even consider such a thing was a discreditable thought and you couldn't allow yourself to have a discreditable thought. One of the questions in a sec-check (a security check, using a lie detector, which is done frequently throughout the organization) was, "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about LRH?" and you could get into very serious trouble if you had. So you tried hard not to.'

6. Now sixty-two, Hubbard was also beginning to ponder his place in posterity. The Church of Scientology had been swift to make use of the recently enacted Freedom of Information Act, which had revealed that government agencies held a daunting amount of material about Scientology and its founder in their files, much of it less than flattering. Hubbard, who had never been fettered by convention or strict observance of the law, conceived a simple, but startlingly audacious, plan to improve his own image and that of his church for the benefit of future generations of Scientologists. All that needed to be done, he decided, was to infiltrate the agencies concerned, steal the relevant files and either destroy or launder any damaging information they contained. To a man who had founded both a church and a private navy this was a perfectly feasible scheme. The operation was given the code name Snow White — two words that would figure ever more prominently over the next few months in the communications between the Guardian's Office in Los Angeles and the Commodore's hiding place in Queens, New York.

7. At six o'clock on the morning of 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed with search warrants and sledgehammers, simultaneously broke into the offices of the Church of Scientology in Washington and Los Angeles and carted away 48,149 documents. They would reveal an astonishing espionage system which spanned the United States and penetrated some of the highest offices in the land.

8. This is a quote from the government sentencing memorandum on Mary Sue Hubbard and the others, October 1978: "The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No building, office, desk or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials, and any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial schemes. It is interesting to note that the founder of their organization, unindicted co-conspirator L. Ron Hubbard, wrote in his dictionary entitled Modern Management Technology Defined that "Truth is what is true for you." Thus, with the founder's blessings, they could wantonly commit perjury as long as it was in the interests of Scientology."

All of this could be pulled straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood's playbook. Go on the offensive. Attack people who impede your goals. Use the courts to harass. Be merciless until people are apologizing profusely. Invoke "freedom of religion" as a cloak of protection. Create lots of different important-sounding organizations, and make the names seem mainstream and respectable, and try not to use your own religion's name in the title to throw people off your trail and to make it seem like a coalition of many religions. Create a "labyrinthine structure" of organizations to make it difficult for anyone to follow the money. Consider apostates as enemies to be destroyed. Criticism of the religion or the founder is completely forbidden, resulting in unthinking, uncritical (and therefore fanatical) followers. Scientologists use a lie detector. Islam uses Allah, who knows every thought you think and will judge you and punish you accordingly. Infiltrate government agencies in order to protect and promote the religion. And lying is allowed if it is done to further the goals of the religion.

Begin to talk about Scientology and Islam together and your conversations will be more interesting, less contentious, and more productive. With this new strategy, we should be able to reach more people in less time. Our goal is to educate non-Muslims, focusing on the undecided, because whoever is most organized will win.

Read about the Muslim Brotherhood's labyrinthine structure of their organizations
.

Read about Scientology's "Fair Game" policy
.

Read more about Scientology.

There's a biography of Hubbard that I think is the best book to read for an overview of Scientology. The book is called Messiah or Madman?

10 comments:

Gormflaith The Banshee 10:10 AM  

Thank you CW, the Scientology gambit
is actually perfect. I am the lady
who sent you the Glamor Bombing stuff a while back. Actually I have read
everything ever written about LRH
and a lot of Scientology techniques
can be used to let people know how dangerous Sharia is. Recently a lot of people who thought I was nuts on this subject have come around and asked to borrow my books. I have a full library of books and articles and some dvds,
like The Third Jihad that I lend out. America is waking up.

Citizen Warrior 2:50 PM  

I remember you well. How can anyone forget the name, Gormflaith The Banshee?

I have your Glamor Bombing idea on WhatYouCanDoAboutIslam.com.

Yes, I think our efforts are paying off. America IS waking up.

Anonymous 4:29 PM  

You are clearly an intelligent person. May I share some of my input on how the Muslim community can work together with you on the critical issues raised by your blog?

I wish you would use a term like "Islamism" or "political Islam" or "Islamic extremism" in your criticism rather than the blanket term "Islam". Surely you must know that you're only talking about 3% of Muslims worldwide. Granted the 3% of wacko extremist Muslims is a dangerously HIGH number when you do the math!!

You do know that nearly one quarter of the planet is Muslim, right? And the number is growing. Hajj is a cultural event comparable to 20 Superbowls!

Have you ever hung out or worked together with traditional mainstream Muslims, for instance Sunni which are 90% of the world's Muslims? You will see that they have the same concerns as you about Islamism and about the political tyrants that hurt the lives of both Muslims and non-Muslims in their home countries and in their foreign policy with the West. Look at what happened in Egypt, where regular Muslims, Christians, non-believers, everybody got together. Christians formed chains around their Muslim brothers while they prayed to protect them. I agree that Muslim Brotherhood is a problem. But again this is an Islamist political organization. It does not represent the majority of Muslims any more than some of our own crazy political lobby groups represent all of us.

By making no clear distinction in your blog between Islam and Islamism, you are lumping together a HUGE number of potential allies into the same camp as oppressors, risking offending them by showing you don't even know the difference.

When you use a term like Islam as the subject of your attack, this also misleads uneducated Western readers into thinking you're actually talking about the billions of religious non-extremist non-politicized Muslims around the world who are fighting the same battles against corrupt groups as you.

Just like your average working American has no beef against your average working Afghan dude, if you include the regular peaceful Muslims in your criticisms, you invite them as your enemy instead of your ally in addressing the problem of extremism. You are also adding more fuel in the fire that strengthens the extremists you claim to oppose.

Have you thought about reaching out to local Muslim leaders in your community to work together on the problem? I don't want to believe you are Islamophobic, as many good Muslim people who don't understand your worries might jump to conclude. I think you are just a smart guy who is a bit unexposed to what the colossal majority of Muslims of the world do and don't believe in their day to day lives and cultural realities.

Sophie Hill

Citizen Warrior 5:58 PM  

We've entered A New Era in Muslim-Non-Muslim Relations.

Get on board.

What I am trying to do on this blog is empower educated non-Muslims in educating their fellow non-Muslims about the fact that Islam, as defined by its own doctrine, is not what we would naturally assume it is. And the actual doctrine of Islam is not peaceful. It is intolerant and aggressive.

I've made it perfectly clear throughout this blog that I know many, if not most, Muslims reject part of the Islamic doctrine. That doesn't make the doctrine peaceful.

But if I criticize Islam too severely or give Muslims who reject jihad the impression that I'm criticizing ALL Muslims, will that make those jihad-rejecting Muslims embrace jihad?

See my full answer to this absurd suggestion here.

Manish 1:48 AM  

It is definitely tricky but can be fun game. Yes this religion believes in fun and game play and there will be creative questions and answers. It criticises islamic principles by strength of own religion principles and game rules. if any islamic person critices message can come, "our messenger came on screen and said that its not allowed!" one can't criticise! he/she will be punished!


its brilliant idea.. but just like Citizen Warrior spend his time her.. it needs dedicated time of individuals and groups and may take time to surface as we need to create solid principles and discuss..

it must perhaps be confidential to begin with

Traeh 11:51 PM  

Seems like excellent advice you are giving. By focusing on two cults, rather than just on Islam, one takes a more objective, detached position. If one focuses only on Islam, that can seem like an irrational hating fixation. But if one focuses on two cults (or more), then the starting point is plural, comparative, and seems inherently detached, objective, knowledge-based. It demonstrates that knowledge is the driving force.

Whereas, if you focus on Islam only, it can be an up hill battle to convince people knowledge is what motivates you. Instead, the relentlessness of focus on one group can make it seem that one is trying to drum up a lynch mob, or like you are ringing an emergency bell. We can seem like a drum that never stops. People instinctively or unconsciously ask themselves, why is this drumbeat or emergency bell so relentless? Why can't these people let go even for a second? What will I be driven to if I join this too urgent crowd, or is it a mob? Is this some sort of frenzy? Where will it lead?

But if you shift your focus from one group to more than one, perhaps that sense of a frenzied monomania would be dissipated, and people would calm down and listen to some hard truths about Islam.

I wonder whether it would be good after Hubbard, to build up to including knowledge of other cult leaders in one's repertoire to explain Muhammad and Islam.

Ali Sina occasionally compares Muhammad to other famous cult leaders.

Unknown 12:41 PM  

Messiah or Madman? is available as a free PDF download. Get it here.

Zümrüd-ü Anka 5:53 PM  

I am a Muslim, and would be pleased to learn why Islam is not a peaceful religion according to you. If you mean jihad by "not being peaceful", then I may say you are definitely wrong. Jihad is an ideologized practice in Islam, not a practice of Islam, a practice of Islamism. In Koran it is strictly forbidden to use coercive practices to proselytize the religion. Basic tenets of Islam is about growing up spiritually. However I agree that the picture of Islam today is a picture of deterioriation, and it is true that not religious fanaticism, but religious ignorance in the name of religion is high on the ride.

If you've reached that conclusion after reading the history of Islam, about the conquests of Umayyads or Abbasids, or Ottoman emperors then you are definitely mixing the political and geopolitical moves with the tenets of the religion, because these conquests were legitimated in the name of "jihad".

However, if you read the history of Christianity you may see that more people were forcefully converted to Christianity in Spain after 1492, and Europe has lived enough of a bloodshed because of wars in the name of religion. And every history of every religion I think contains some of this human misery.

Islam recognizes all the prophets, and it is one of its tenets to do so. However does not accept some parts of Christianity, basically Trinity. Because it says God cannot be a father, the logic of this is simple: According to Islam, God is one, and it is the ultimate creator, though its light, its breath is in humans, though the human has its reflection, a human can only reach God, become one with God, but cannot become God, or God cannot possess a human feature like being a father. Islam sees Trinity a distortion of true Christianity as revealed to Jesus. And we may say that the history of Christianity gives enough material to support this view. But Jesus and all the other prophets are dear to Muslims, though they recognize Mohammad as the last one.

(to be continued)

Zümrüd-ü Anka 5:55 PM  

(continued)

Whatever people do today in the name of shariah, Islam says shariah is Koran. It is the ultimate source of religion. And nobody's interpretation could trascend it. If some does so, even in the name of Islam, it is the most severe sin in Islam: "To see yourself a match of God." And in Koran it is not written "kill your daughters if they want to be educated." What happens today in Muslim countries is a combined reaction of underdevelopment and consequent societal problems, and a constant state of war imposed on them by geopolitical agendas.

There might have been no Bin Ladins or Ayetullah Homeynis if USA did not want them to be. USA pomped up religion in Muslim countries at the time of Cold War, to create a Green Belt around the then USSR. We have been through it. In 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran happened, then one year later a military intervention in Turkey, in the meantime USSR has led into a war in Afghanistan with moujaheedeen, nourished by USA, through Pakistan, where also a military intervention took place. These were not accidents. In Turkey Islam was not arisen after being repressed for many many years, as the current government is now presenting. It WAS pomped, with seemingly small moves, people are encouraged to engage in Islamic activities, instead of reading books which were supposed to indoctrinate them, religion has come to forefront.

It is always better to form informed opinions. If in Muslim countries people are stating their dissent about their governments, about foreign interventions in terms of religion, it is not because the religion in itself is not peaceful. It is because people look for legitimating themselves, their dissent in terms of religion, because after all it is a common point of rallying. Does Islam provide enough material to wage war against enemies? Koran openly says "Do not submit the cruel." This could be something of that kind of material.


I see that religious fanaticism, be it in the name of Islam, or in the name of Thatism, or Thisism is extremely dangerous. And every religion has the potential to turn into the tool of a fanatic. It is about people. According to me all the religions are in fact to cure this fanaticism, but here we are, this is the point we've come, it is a shame.

Citizen Warrior 12:19 AM  

In an interesting article on Salon.com, the author says this:

The church adopted its scorched-earth policy toward critical journalists back when Paulette Cooper published “The Scandal of Scientology” in 1971; she was subsequently slapped with 19 lawsuits, as well as subjected to a harassment campaign with the stated intention of seeing her “incarcerated in a mental institution or jail.”

Read the rest: Going Clear

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One of the most unusual articles on CitizenWarrior.com is Pleasantville and Islamic Supremacism.

It illustrates the Islamic Supremacist vision by showing the similarity between what happened in the movie, Pleasantville, and what devout fundamentalist Muslims are trying to create in Islamic states like Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (and ultimately everywhere in the world).

Click here to read the article.


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