Breaking through the terror of Islam

After the attack on the United States and the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the West launched a massive appeal to Muslims around the world to reflect on their religion and culture. Muslim organizations in their various countries were asked to distance themselves from Islam as preached by the terrorists.

 The plea was met with indignation from Muslims who thought it was inappropriate to hold them responsible for the criminal conduct of the young men who made the attacks. Yet, the fact that the people who committed the attacks on September 11 were Muslims, and the fact that before this date Muslims in many parts of the world were already harboring feelings of resentment toward the West, and it has yet to cease.

Similar to the Christian and Jewish faith, Islam dominates all aspects of family and relations. It’s ideology, political conviction, moral standard, and law creates the identity of the Muslim people. As such, Muslims and their children are taught the meaning of the name ‘Muslim’, which mean they are people who submit themselves to Allah’s will, found in the Koran and the Hadith, a collection of sayings supposedly ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. People are taught that Islam sets them apart from the rest of the world and are chosen by God. All unbelievers are considered to be antisocial, impure, barbaric, not circumcised, immoral, unscrupulous, and above all, unbelievers are obscene in all respects. Those who are unfaithful to Islam are cursed, and God will punish them most brutally in the afterlife.

Christians and Jews also raise their children in the belief that they are God’s chosen people, but among Muslims the feeling that God has granted them special salvation goes further. In the Western world God and His truth are humanized. For the Muslims life on earth is merely a transit stage before the afterlife, but also, the people are allowed to live their lives as mortals, and hell seems no longer to exist, because they have special salvation exclusive only to them, God is love rather than a cruel ruler who punish.

A closer look at Islam shows three important elements.

1.      Muslim’s relationship with God is one of fear. The conception of God is absolute who demands total submission. He rewards you if you follow His rules meticulously. He punishes you cruelly if you break His rules, both on earth, with illness and natural disasters, and in the afterlife with hellfire.

2.      Islam knows only one moral source; the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad is infallible (much like the popes of the Middle Ages), but the Koran says explicitly that Muhammad is a human being. He is a supreme human being, though, the most perfect human being. Muhammad was a military conqueror in many lands. Accounts of what he said and did, and the advice he gave in books written in the seventh century, about how  a Muslim was supposed to live, are daily consulted by devout Muslims, to answer questions about life in the twenty-first century.

3.      Islam is strongly dominated by a sexual morality derived from tribal Arab values dating from the time the prophet received his instructions from Allah, a culture in which women were the property of their fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers and guardians. The essence of a woman is reduced to her hymen. Her veil functions as a constant reminder to the outside world of this morality that makes Muslim men owners of women in the Muslim world, and sometimes brought to the western world by Muslim emigrants, that prevents  their daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts, sisters-in-law, cousins, nieces, and wives from having male contact.

In Muslim countries it is an offence if a woman glances in the direction of the man, brushes past his arm, or shakes his hand. A man’s reputation and honor depend entirely on the respectable, obedient behaviour of the female members of his family.

The primary task of both Muslims and non-Muslims is to face the malicious extremism in the world today. Fanaticism in Islam is a reality, and its following is growing. Westerners and Muslims need to stand together in their shared rejection of fanaticism, instead of cultivating distrust. The Muslims themselves must recognize the importance of enlightenment and realize the importance and urgency of restoring the balance between religion and reason, and work hard at achieving it.

Muslims are a diverse group. Some want to reform their faith. Others want to spread their beliefs through persuasion, violence, or both, while others are apathetic and do not care for politics.  And still others want to leave their faith and convert to Christianity, or become atheist.

Islam, as a set of beliefs unreformed, is hostile to everything Western.

In a free society, Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, as well as Muslims, have their own schools. But how long should we ignore the fact that in certain Muslim schools in the West, students are taught to believe that they should distance themselves from unbelievers and that jihad is a virtue?

In Muslim lands, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants cannot have their own schools, or churches and graveyards. Muslims can proselytize in Vatican City, but, Christians cannot proselytize in Mecca.

In regards to the obsession with subjugating women is one of the things that make Islam so reprehensible. The leaders of Islam know any improvement in the lives of women will lead to the demise of Islam and a disappearance of male power.  This is one of many reasons why they are so desperate to keep women caged in, and why the agents of Islam also hate the west. According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2006); “Please don’t be fooled by the few shrill voices – in or out of the veil-that enjoy the status quo and betray their fellow women. Many western women who don the veil in later life are converts. Highly educated and verbal, they live in free countries where they try to hijack the justice system and force the acceptance of the veil. By doing so, they betray the millions of women in other countries who do not have the freedom not to wear the veil.”