Muslim Whining Doesn't Work With Non-Muslims Who Have Read the Quran

THE CHRISTIAN Science Monitor has the reputation of being an unbiased publication, but in a recent article, Why 'Islamophobia' is Less Thinly Veiled in Europe, I felt compelled to respond to many of Robert Marquand's (the author's) points.
Marquand begins by trying to show that Muslims in Europe are just normal Europeans — except that they are the target of unfair prejudice by non-Muslim Europeans. In other words, Marquand seems to unquestioningly accept the Muslims' standard position as the unfairly persecuted underdog.
The article quotes a Muslim apologist, Edward Mortimer, vice president of the Satzburg Seminar in Austria which helped launch the Muslim professionals network: "Values of national identity and patriotism are starting to take shape over an older argument in Europe about tolerance, plurality, freedom of expression."
This is an absurd and deceptive statement. The values of national identity and patriotism are not in conflict with tolerance, plurality, or freedom of expression, and to imply that they are is a verbal slight-of-hand. The principles for which Islam stands are intolerance, supremacism (anti-plurality), and total submission to Islamic law (anti-freedom of expression). And it is largely for this reason Europeans are asserting their desire to run their own countries and hold onto their Western values in the face of the relentless onslaught from orthodox Muslims pushing for "reverse integration" — the attempt to coerce Europeans to integrate into Islam.
Marquand doesn't know these are the principles for which Islam stands. A simple reading of the Quran would clear it all up.
"Social politeness and taboos on talking about Islam are eroding," Marquand writes, "at a time when Europeans aren't exactly sure what they think about Islam." That struck me as good news, although I'm sure Marquand didn't mean it that way. I hope it will stop being a taboo to talk about Islam. We need to talk about it.
Marquand writes, "The ground zero debate in Europe, for example, has brought a small geyser of anti-Muslim invective, even on websites like Le Monde's. They included an often articulate though sometimes churlish depiction of Islam as a single monolithic form of faith, inherently violent and extreme, and of Muslims as incapable of being moderate."
Muslims can be anything they want to be, but Islam itself is a single monolithic ideology, regardless of the local customs or ethnic origins of the Muslims of the world. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence have a wide range of Islamic principles upon which they agree. Most doctrinal issues in Islam were worked out long ago and are almost universally considered "settled." And all are based on a single, unchanging collection of books, which is, in fact, inherently violent and intolerant.
Are Muslims capable of being moderate? That depends on two things: What we mean by moderate, and do we mean "even when they have the political clout to do otherwise?" For Marquand to understand this would require a couple of hours of Islam 101.
His readers probably don't know much about Islam, either, so they probably read the paragraph without a second thought, with the feeling that it all sounds perfectly reasonable.
Marquand and his readers might assume I'm prejudiced against all Muslims, but I'm not. For any particular Muslim, I don't know how much they accept or reject of Islamic doctrine. But I am definitely prejudiced against the doctrine. What is there for a non-Muslim to like about 527 unabrogated verses advocating intolerance or violence against non-Muslims?
Marquand writes, "They [Muslims] resent the fact that Islam is a subject of derision and reject the stereotype of Muslims as being one uniform, slightly sinister group."
And yet they don't resent it enough to openly reject what non-Muslims understandably object to! Muslims are welcome anytime they wish to speak honestly — to say, "Yes, that stuff is in our doctrine, and we reject it completely." I've never heard a Muslim say this. I've read a couple of people online do it, but of all the Muslims I've heard from and talked to, I've never heard a Muslim speak honestly about the objectionable material in the Quran and Sunna.
So here's the problem: Many non-Muslims have read the Islamic doctrines and we don't like what it teaches about us or about Islam's prime directive. Any idiot could see why a non-Muslim wouldn't like it. And yet, Muslims tend to focus on this "unfair" suspicion as if it's coming out of nowhere. This is hogwash. I don't believe such a large percentage of Muslims could be so dense as to be unable to see what non-Muslims don't like, and they could easily put us at ease to acknowledge it and reject it. But almost unanimously, they don't. Instead they are "resentful" at the "stereotyping."
Marquand writes, "Young second-generation Muslims have high expectations but often feel excluded."
But are they trying to discover why they are excluded? Are they explicitly rejecting the supremacism in Islamic doctrine? No? Then we should emphatically ridicule and dismiss their whining. We need to hold them to higher expectations and quit the coddling. Welcome them to the new era in non-Muslim-Muslim relations.
Marquand writes, "Some come to escape orthodox Islam while still being devout."
When I read that line, I actually laughed out loud! The Christian Science Monitor is considered a serious magazine. It has a good reputation. How did such a completely moronic sentence get past the editors? Orthodox means "Adhering to the accepted or traditional and established faith, especially in religion." That's pretty much the same as devout: "Devoted to religion or to the fulfillment of religious obligations."
We're talking about jihad. The thing non-Muslims object to most about Islamic doctrine is jihad — the deliberate, merciless intolerance against non-Muslims, the effort to impose their supremacist dominance wherever possible, and the relentless drive to bring all people under the rule of Islamic law. If a Muslim is orthodox, his religious devotion will be applied to this goal. If he is devout, he will be devoted to this goal.
So how is someone going to "escape orthodox Islam while still being devout?"
This is the problem. People like Marquand are completely missing the point and unaware of it. The article was accompanied by a video that equally misses the point, profiling three American Muslims all presenting themselves as normal as can be, all baffled as to why non-Muslims might look at them suspiciously, all equally self-righteous about how silly and misguided that is, and none of them mentioning the supremacism and intolerance at the core of their doctrines.
One of the women in the video even pointed out that believers of other religions don't get this kind of scrutiny or prejudice. I wanted to tell her, "That's right. It's been a long time since anyone worried about the Amish rioting, beheading people, infiltrating governments, threatening violence to silence their critics, or blowing up buses. Ideology actually counts."
We don't have a situation where all these religions are the same but one is being picked on unfairly. We have a situation where most religions share many principles about universal love and kindness, but Islam does not. According to Islamic doctrine, Muslims are the best of people and non-Muslims are the worst of people and deserve to suffer in this life and burn in the afterlife.
One man in the video implied that if only people could get to know him and his family, their suspicions would disappear. I wanted to tell him, "Dude, how you treat your family is the least of their worries. They wonder whether you are a believer in jihad in any form. They wonder if you pay your zakat and thus potentially fund suicide bombers. They wonder if you participate in CAIR or ISNA or any of the other Muslim organizations under the umbrella of the Muslim Brotherhood and if you've aligned yourself with its goal to sabotage our government. They wonder if you believe in reverse integration and if you're striving in the way of Allah to Islamize America. They wonder if you follow the Quranic teachings to never make friends with non-Muslims — to go ahead and fake it, but never actually befriend them or like them."
If he is actively working toward Islam's prime directive, no amount of "getting to know him and his family" will matter. What might matter is if he acknowledged those teachings and rejected them. And told us he rejected them. That would at least be a start. But in this video, which would make any PR hack proud, you hear nothing of the sort.
Marquand writes, "Muslims agree that some younger adherents get radicalized."
In a recent study in Britain, they found second-generation Muslims are more "radical" than their parents. That is, they hold more orthodox views. In other words, they believe in Islam's prime directive. They are more committed to jihad than their first-generation parents.
Why would this be? Because of what I'm harping on: All these perfectly nice Muslims in the PR video are raising their children without ever telling them that supremacist and intolerant teachings are strewn throughout the Quran and Sunna, and without saying, "but we completely reject those teachings." No, they say nothing of the sort. They do just the opposite. They tell them being a Muslim is great, that the Quran is the word of the Almighty, that they are being unfairly persecuted by non-Muslims around the world, and they must band together and "defend" Islam.
So our young Muslim grows up and gets easily recruited by a devout Muslim who simply tells the kid to read the Quran and discover his obligations as a Muslim.
Marquand writes, "In university settings and among some Muslim moderates, frank reappraisals of the Koran are under way, which includes a tougher look at its calls for militancy."
Some Muslims are taking a tougher look? Big deal. These doctrines are clear and easy to find. They don't need to be looked at; they need to be vociferously repudiated, clearly and forcefully. These teachings are imbeded deep in Islam throughout its doctrine and throughout its history. And Muslims are acting on these passages all over the world, killing people, destroying property, and wrecking lives. They're doing that right now, today. Someone will die today because of these doctrines. The situation is urgent. A "tougher look" doesn't cut it. Not even close. Does Marquand really believe that we can all relax now because some Muslims are taking a tougher look? Give me a break.
Marquand quotes Ahmet Mahamat, an immigrant from Chad who lives in France. Mahamat said, "Immigrants are linked to criminality or delinquency or fanaticism." He meant "linked in peoples' prejudiced minds." Wah wah wah. I wanted to tell him to suck it up and prove people wrong, just like every immigrant group before him has had to do. Everywhere immigrants arrive on foreign shores, they face prejudice. And if they work hard and prove themselves loyal members of that society, they are eventually accepted and embraced. That's how it goes. You want to be on our team? You had better prove yourself worthy. We don't owe you anything. We've already let you move here — the rest is up to you. If anything, you owe us.
But Mahamat is pursuing the example of Mohammad the Whiner. "I look in the eyes of so many people," he says, "and what I see does not correspond to who I am. They see another me."
I want to tell him, "Look, man, they know the ideology you supposedly believe in. You say you're a Muslim. We naturally assume you believe in Islam. We assume you are an adherent of Islamic doctrine. We assume you believe in the supremacism and intolerance inherent in your ideology. Either stop calling yourself a Muslim or explicitly say, 'I reject jihad, I reject Mohammad's political, supremacist model, and I embrace Western values of freedom, women's rights, religious equality, etc.' It took me all of twenty seconds to say that, so what's the problem? If you can't honestly say those things, then our suspicions of you are correct, so quit your whining and get used to permanent rejection because you do not belong in this society."
When you know something about an ideology, you treat the person differently. And you should. You don't feed a Jain a steak dinner when they come to your house (Jains believe you should not kill any living creature). You don't invite a Buddhist with you on a deer hunt (Buddhists believe in trying to avoid harming living beings).
If you know about someone's ideology, you usually will (and definitely should) treat them differently.
And in the same way, if someone's ideology calls for unrelenting jihad against non-Muslims until the whole world submits to Islamic law, generally speaking, you don't invite them to come live in your country and bring their wives! And if they are already in your country, you usually will (and definitely should) be wary of them until they prove their devotion and loyalty to your country and the principles your society is founded on. In this case, until they forthrightly reject the objectionable precepts of their religious ideology.
This should be common sense. If it doesn't make sense to you, your first step should be to read the Quran. Start here: Take the Pledge to read the Quran.

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A New Era in Muslim-Non-Muslim Relations

I DON'T really care what Muslims would consider a "moderate Muslim." I've got my own definition: A moderate Muslim rejects jihad except in the sense of a "personal inner struggle." That would be a Muslim who rejects 97 percent of the references to jihad in the Hadith. That also means a moderate Muslim must reject much of the sacred example of Mohammad.
It would also include a rejection of the intolerance, hatred, and violence toward non-Muslims in the Quran. And a moderate Muslim would reject the subordinated position of women.
If that person still wants to call himself or herself a Muslim, that's fine with me.
What brought this up was reflecting over the last nine years. We started Citizen Warrior in 2001, about a month after 9/11. And in that time, we've heard from hundreds of Muslims, all of them arguing that we either don't know what we're talking about because "true Islam" is peaceful and tolerant, or arguing that it doesn't help anything to tell non-Muslims about the intolerance, hatred, and violence in the Quran.
And this is the surprising thing that has never occurred to me until yesterday: In all that time, we have never heard from a Muslim — not once — that acknowledged the existence of the immense number of passages in the Quran that non-Muslims find disagreeable — passages that any idiot could understand why non-Muslims would find them disagreeable. And not once have any these Muslims acknowledged the existence of the egregious example of Mohammad (that Muslims are supposed to follow) — an example anyone with the slightest amount of human empathy would understand might be offensive or even frightening to non-Muslims.
What we've heard again and again was that none of this stuff really counts, or it's all taken out of context, and that the terrorists have it all wrong and nobody else except the terrorists believe in or follow those teachings, or the teachings don't exist.
Over the years we've come across a very small number of genuinely jihad-rejecting Muslims, like Tawfik Hamid. And of course, if they genuinely reject the hatred and political ambition and calls to violence in Islamic doctrine, they don't have a problem with what we write about Islam.
Those are the only ones that qualify for the badge "Moderate Muslim." For the rest of them who think my speaking honestly about Islamic doctrine will only drive the "moderates" into the arms of the "extremists," I say "try again," because that nonsense doesn't work around here. If someone rejects jihad, then my speaking even derisively about the passages they reject will not cause them to embrace it.
And we non-Muslims need to stop coddling the so-called moderates. We need to be forthright and say, "you either stridently reject jihad or we will assume you embrace it." It's not up to us to bend over backwards trying to prove how tolerant we are. If Muslims want to be welcomed into this society, they had better start standing up and making their voices heard. They had better openly acknowledge and reject the hatred, misogyny, and violence in their core doctrines, or we must assume they don't.
Many of us are reading their source books. We know the doctrine. We would be foolish not to assume a Muslim believes in Islamic doctrine. So it is up to Muslims to tell us they do not believe in that doctrine, and to say specifically which parts of the doctrine they do not endorse.
What got me thinking about this was an article by Christopher Hitchens in which he mentioned that Governor Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, firmly stated "that he did not regard the prophet, or head of the Mormon church, as having ultimate moral and spiritual authority on all matters. Nothing, he swore, could override the U.S. Constitution."
Now why did Romney feel he needed to say that? Because quite a few of us are aware of Mormon doctrine. So he openly reassured us as to where his loyalties lay.
Have you ever heard a Muslim do this? Neither have I. And yet Muslims are in a worse situation. They experience more suspicion and hostility than Mormons. But rather than doing what Romney did, what do Muslims do? Usually they blame us for it, make us wrong for it, and imply the problem is our lack of "tolerance."
So here's the situation: We've become aware of Islamic doctrine and we don't like it, so we naturally wonder where they stand, and instead of Muslims saying, "We acknowledge the intolerance and violence of our core doctrines, and we reject them totally," they open up with hostility, and in essence, deepen our suspicions. The hostility and finger-pointing are exactly what we would expect from someone who believes in the supremacist, intolerant teachings of Islam.
And weak, vague assurances are not good enough. "We reject the killing of innocents" doesn't work any more because too many of us know already that nowhere in the Quran does it imply non-Muslims are innocent. It implies just the opposite.
Muslims need to be clear and explicit, and we need to demand that of them. Anything less will not do, and if they want to whine and complain about it, too bad.
We need to make it clear what they must do to be welcome in this society. And we need to be clear that our "tough-love" attitude toward them is a sane response to what we know of their ideology.
Imagine you were putting an avowed communist in charge of the Federal Reserve. You wouldn't do it without very firm assurances from him that he completely rejects the economic model of communism. You have to demand that assurance because you know what the communist ideology is. You have to assume when someone says he's a communist that he believes in the communist ideology. It's an assumption we can take for granted. Otherwise, what does it mean to say you're a communist? That's what it means: That you believe in the communist ideology.
Same with Islam: You say you're a Muslim. That means you believe in Islam's ideology. Fine. I have studied the Quran, the Hadith, and the Sira. I know what your teachings consists of. And no, I don't want you running the country or involved in law enforcement or teaching my children or writing textbooks or working in counterterrorism or joining the military, unless you can assure me of what parts of that ideology you reject. This is simple common sense.
And making a big stink out of it only makes you look like you don't reject it. What other conclusion can we come to?
I think others are coming to the same conclusion, and I've seen much more direct challenges to Muslims who say they are moderate. They are being asked direct questions like, "Do you repudiate what Hamas is doing?" and they're asked to sign the Freedom Pledge and when they don't sign it, they are asked why they won't. These are steps in the right direction.
But more interviewers need to become educated about Islam so they can ask stronger, more specific questions. And this challenge needs to become incessant and intense from all of us, everywhere. Muslims must feel the heat. They must realize they have to come right out and say, "Yes, there is a political agenda in Islam, and I completely reject it" or they will not be welcomed or trusted or invited to any "interfaith dialogs for peace and understanding."
For someone who is unfamiliar with Islamic doctrine, all this sounds terrible and unfair, but it isn't. We would do the same for any group who openly declared their membership in a seditious or treasonous or intolerant or violent ideology and who wanted to live among us as equals.
I've been collecting "tests" for moderate Muslims that have been used or proposed by someone. So far I've found four: Tests for Defining Moderate Muslims.
We call on all non-Muslims in the free world to join us in this stand — to put the onus on each individual Muslim (not just "Muslim organizations"). We must make this clear to every Muslim: If you do not openly reject jihad in all its forms, we must assume you abide by it and believe in it, and we will have to treat you accordingly.

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