My writings on Islam may raise the question: how can I, some pompous Westerner, have the arrogance to call on other countries to relinquish the religion to which they have historically adhered? Firstly, I reserve the right to judge anyone and anything, for any reason. Secondly, I have already named, in previous posts, Western religions which I think should also disappear entirely. Thirdly, this objection ignores the fact that Islam was forced onto those countries by violence in the first place. Even modern-day Saudi Arabia, the religion’s birthplace, was brutalised into accepting Mohammedanism, as Muslim tradition proudly admits. Military historian Raymond Ibrahim chronicles much of Islam’s gory expansion in his expansive volume Sword and Scimitar. Why did the Berbers, for instance, convert to Islam? Because the Arabs had been massacring and enslaving them for being “infidels,” of course. One seventh-century scribe’s comment on Mohammad, which Ibrahim quotes early in the book, keeps coming back to mind as one reads further: “He is deceiving. For do prophets come with sword and chariot?”
How legitimate, for that matter, is a supposed revealed truth which relies on oppression to keep itself in power?
There are many examples of cultural achievements produced within Islamised nations, of a kind Islam is bent on stamping out. Hugh Fitzgerald, for instance, provides a list of poets from Islamically dominated societies who wrote about romance, courtship and sensuality:
“in the very distant past, there were poets in Dar al-Islam who had something to say on these matters. Many were Persians: Hafiz, Sa’adi, Omar Khayyam[…]. Arabic-language poets as well, but in even more distant days. Pre-Islamic [d]ays, for example, or possibly not pre-Islamic at all, depending on when you date the Mu’allaqat[…]. [L]et’s add […] Al-Billanubi, […] or Al-Tubi […] but I won’t mention Abu Nuwas[…]”
This article is in large part directed at those still in the grip of the unfortunate doctrine we have been discussing. All religions I know are false, but some are at least beneficial, and perhaps worth preserving in some de-mystified form, cleansed of the toxin of religious faith. I cannot say the same for the teachings of Islam. I know of no significantly large variant of the religion that does not suffer from the same rotten core. Even Sufism, which has been so romanticized in the West, does not fit the bill. Religious scholar Robert Spencer argues:
“Contrary to popular belief, the Sufis do not reject violent jihad. Their towering figure, al-Ghazali, taught it, and Sufis have been at the vanguard of the Chechen jihad. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn gave birth to Hamas and Al-Qaeda, was strongly influenced by Sufism.”
He goes on. Before, by the way, you lob some ad hominem argument at the much-maligned name Robert Spencer and his publication Jihad Watch, you should at least check whether your accusation is addressed in the FAQs on its website.
Of course, most people born into this religion are perfectly decent. So are most people born into communism. Both creeds belong on the ash heap of history. For centuries, a deplorably large portion of mankind has dwelt beneath the whip and jackboot of Islam. It has not made its lives better. “Muslim-majority nations[…] are typically reluctantly immune to democracy,” concludes one extensive study. Nor is the economic weakness typical of countries and communities possessed by Islam surprising. Another study found “that Christian religions are more positively associated with attitudes conducive to economic growth, while religious Muslims are the most anti-market” of the religious groups examined. Islam also made people more willing to trust governments than Christianity did (how is that working out for, say, the Middle East?) and, of the religions studied, showed the least “negative impact on the willingness to cheat on taxes.” Furthermore, “Protestants, Catholics, and Hindus want more private ownership, while Muslims want significantly less private ownership[ and] are strongly against competition.” In other words, Islam’s teachings are poison to economies.
This is a commonly overlooked way in which Islam ruins societies, but by far not the only one, as this post and my others have shown.