Tag: Islamism

  • Everything in this world was worthless in comparison

    The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain tweeted a striking forum post from a year ago, titled Believing in Jihad and Martyrdom.

    I lived my younger years wanting only one thing: martyrdom.

    I wanted to die in battle, in the name of Allah.

    I wanted the peaceful happy death that martyrs appear to experience with a smile on their face.

    I didn’t care who I fought or why, as long as I was fighting for Allah under Islamically justifiable conditions.

    Everything in this world was worthless in comparison. You die in the name of Allah, and you get a free pass from all the pain and suffering that awaits everyone else on Judgement Day. You go straight to heaven, and all your sins are forgiven.

    There’s a lot to say about that, but one thing that strikes me is how oddly transactional it is. Toona (the author) is describing a bribe, rather than an ideal. The goal as described isn’t doing something good, but getting a big reward. In fact the ideal is explicitly rejected: I didn’t care who I fought or why. It’s not about trying to work toward any kind of good, it’s just about getting an instant one-way ticket to heaven and cancellation of sins.

    It was his father who schooled him in this way of thinking.

    Talking about the worthlessness of this life and the impending destruction that awaits civilization made me lose interest in having a normal life. 

    Now that is one of the things I hate most about the religious view of the world. It always at least risks teaching people that this life is worthless, and thus to lose interest in it. That may be a good thing for people whose lives are shit – because of pain, dire poverty, mental anguish – but for everyone else it’s a terrible cheat.

    Talking about the suffering and torment that awaits the unbelievers in the afterlife made me live in complete terror of losing my faith.

    And finally, talking about the joys of martyrdom made it seem like the only thing in life that’s worth fighting for. 

    That’s a sick little trio of beliefs.

    It doesn’t take a genius to see how extremely fragile the logic of it all is, but I had to believe it. That is how I justified the morality of the Jihadist ideology, but the truth is, the purpose of Jihad is not meant to be mercy. The official purpose of Jihad, as stated in the Hadith, is so that Allah’s word would be dominant.

    The scary thing is that, even though most Muslims don’t think like that, there are traces of this deadly ideology in more Muslims than you’d think, because it is taught in the Quran and the Hadith.

    I’ve seen children talking about murdering unbelievers, and their parents thinking it’s cute. I’ve heard clerics praying for death and destruction upon all unbelievers, as everyone in the mosque says “Amen”. I’ve seen that even level-headed Muslims may go berserk when their religion is insulted, and call for the death of the blasphemer. 

    It’s also worth mentioning that a significant percentage of Muslims would say that they would rather see their children die than apostate, and the extremes they might go to stop that from happening are dreadful.

    Toona, fortunately, escaped, but think how many don’t. It’s tragic for them and threatening for everyone else.

    My worldview only started changing after I left home and became part of a more diverse community, and more so after regular exposure to various non-Islamic cultures through the internet. 

    The more time I spent with people from ‘the other side’, the harder it became to believe the things I did.

    It took about 8 years for me to finally rid myself of all that brainwashing. 

    I could have easily gone a different way had the wrong people stayed in my life. 

    I was lucky to have found my way out of that darkness. It’s not always the case, but sometimes all it takes for a person to recover from such destructive beliefs is to be given the chance to appreciate the humanity of non-believers, and the beauty of life, which is probably why the founders of Islam did their best to discourage that.

    What can one do but hope that more people find their way out of that darkness?

  • Tacit consent

    Nick Cohen ponders the absence of news coverage of the murder of Rafiq Tagi.

    Emin Milli, a liberal Azerbaijani writer, told me that Tagi appeared to be recovering from his injuries in a state hospital and then took a turn for the worse. He wondered how that could be. He was as suspicious about the failure of westerners to take an interest in the murder of a writer, whose “crime” had been to speak his mind. He’d tried the BBC, newspapers… everyone he could think of and no one apart from Index on Censorship was interested. “Why don’t they care?”

    Milli has a touchingly simple belief in the power of free speech, but his question was not as naive as it sounded. He knew from experience how effective democratic opinion can be when mobilised. He was one of the Azerbaijani “donkey bloggers,” whose persecution became a cause celebre in 2009.

    …

    The world did not stand by and say that Azerbaijan was none of its business. Barack Obama, the EU, the media and human rights groups took up the donkey bloggers’ cause and persuaded the regime to free them.

    Milli is now studying in London and cannot understand why those who shouted with such passion about his conviction ignored Tagi’s murder. I tried to explain that Europe was not the brave continent that Tagi imagined. It would defend the victims of political oppression but not of religious oppression. Ever since the persecution of Salman Rushdie, many have been frightened of denouncing Islamism for fear of reprisals. Others were frightened of being accused of orientalism, neoconservatism or some other sinful religious or racial phobia.

    To put it another way: there are no “communities” of corrupt officials living in neglected corners of Bradford or Birmingham, so it doesn’t feel like bullying to give support to their critics. The same cannot be said of “communities” of Muslims. It’s a mistake to think that resisting political Islam is a way of bullying Muslims, but it’s a mistake that a lot of people make. It would be nice if those people could learn to make the necessary distinctions.

  • Why firebomb Charlie Hebdo?

    Because they published the Motoons, and because they were about to publish more Motoons. Therefore boom.



    www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYhOIa_CQeo

  • The bill was not ‘male-friendly’

    Pakistan’s parliament last year passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, but then

    it was rejected by the Senate, reportedly because of the objections of one senator, preventing it from becoming a law.

    According to insiders, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam – Fazl  senator Maulana Muhammad Sherani (presently the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology) had objected that the bill was not ‘male-friendly’ and was contradictory to Islamic law.

    Later, the Council of Islamic Ideology also termed the bill “unnecessary”, adding that the implementation of this law would increase the rate of divorce in the country.

    In other words, the law might make it possible for women to divorce men who beat them up, and that would be bad, so the law must not be passed, because women have to stay with men who beat them up.

    It’s interesting that the Council of Islamic Ideology wants to go on the record as thinking that women should not be allowed to leave men who beat them up.

  • Submission, abject

    Just a little more about Sholto. It doesn’t seem to have gone very well for him – the comments at the New Statesman are scathing, and Google blogsearch turns up only more scathe, no pleased cries of “At last somebody talking sense about sharia.” He must be feeling sadly disappointed in the multicultural broadmindedness and flexibility of – of – well of everybody but himself, I guess. There’s one comment at the NS that looks favorable at first blush, but when you read on it becomes obvious that it’s a parody. So Sholto is 0 for 0 with the “let’s look at the good side of sharia” enterprise.

    Back to the article for a moment.

    The example of Saudi Arabia undoubtedly has much to do with this [distaste for sharia]. Yet it is important to stress that to look at that country and then assume that its version of sharia is the only one, or the one to which Muslims all secretly aspire, would be akin to holding up a vision of Torquemada’s Inquisition and concluding that this was what real Christianity was.

    So the Saudi version of sharia is not the only one; so what other version is there? He never says. He says that in Malaysia non-Muslims are allowed to ignore it, but he doesn’t point to some other kind of sharia that is benign and fair and reasonable and just the right kind of thing. Actually he doesn’t even say that the Saudi version is not the only one, he just says what it would be like to assume that it is. Maybe that’s because even he doesn’t actually believe that there is a different one, he just wants his readers to think so. Tut tut, Sholto.

    He commented only once, and concluded with something really silly when he did:

    There are plenty of atheists and anti-religious writers who appear in the NS – surely you don’t object to the debate being a bit wider than that?

    Yes, I damn well do, when “a bit wider” means “pro-sharia.” The NS is supposed to be a left-wing magazine and there are some things that are not left-wing by any definition. Sharia is right-wing; it’s savagely, harshly, vengefully right-wing, and there is nothing left-wing about it. Nothing at all. The New Statesman is a disgrace.

  • Sholto Byrnes is “rethinking Islamism”

    Oh jeezis – the New Statesman is telling us to love sharia now – at least Sholto Byrnes is on the NS blog, and he wouldn’t be doing that if the NS didn’t approve. If you see an article in the Nation telling us to love Nazism you’re entitled to conclude that the Nation has lost its mind and is endorsing Nazism. Same with sharia – and yes they are pretty similar. They at least share a ballpark.

    But the very concept of sharia has been so oversimplified by scaremongers that in the popular imagination it is inextricably linked with the punishments of beheading, flogging and amputation for crimes such as theft and adultery, and for which Saudi Arabia has long been notorious.

    Yes, that’s right, along with stoning to death, and rules of evidence that mean men accused of rape can just say “I didn’t do it” and get off while the women who make the accusation are then automatically convicted of adultery because after all they have admitted to fornication by accusing the man of rape and the man said he didn’t do it (and the woman forgot to bring along the requisite four men of good character to watch, without whom she has no case), so she must be flogged or perhaps stoned to death. And similar items of limpid justice and fairness.

    Then Byrnes quotes Tariq Ramadan saying it’s all a misunderstanding, then Byrnes says it’s all a misunderstanding some more, without ever actually managing to offer a particular example of sharia being a good thing. He says in Malaysia it’s not so bad because it applies only to Muslims (which is dubious itself), but he still doesn’t say why it’s actually good. Then he concludes with a great burst of powerful argument:

    Of course, there are plenty who will object to any legal system or way of life that has a religious basis, regardless of how it operates. But the one word that is, above all, associated with sharia, stressed by Ramadan in his writings, Mahathir in his interview with me, by Bernard Lewis in his latest book and by countless others, is “justice”. I think we can agree that it is not just Islamists who are in favour of that.

    Lots of people say sharia has something to do with “justice,” therefore…

    Oh, god. It’s too depressing.