Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Defeating IS begins with individual Muslims.

The only wars worth fighting are ideological. Every western, civilized nation which purports to represent and defend freedom, whose secular laws are based on human rights and principles of the enlightenment, and who wish for their way of life to continue and flourish should be engaged in an all-out war against Islamic State and its sympathizers.
IS is the ultimate culmination of Islamic doctrine - which is to say the complete negation of everything the west has fought for and accomplished over the last five centuries: science, art, music, freedom (of expression, thought, religion), democracy, separation of church and state and, perhaps most importantly, the emancipation of women and ending slavery.
This all-out war must be a war of ideas every bit as much as a war on the battlefield. Far too many Muslims have a worldview which is completely opposed to everything we know and understand about morality and basic human decency. And while these same Muslims may not be actively joining IS and taking up arms, they are guilty of sharing the same ideas on slavery, stoning, beheading, the treatment of women and infidels, and a host of others.
That these Muslims live in societies which supposedly value freedom above all else is the only thing keeping them from making their neighborhoods look exactly like IS-controlled territories - and western cities are on the losing end of this battle. Go to the Muslim-majority areas of Malmo, Birmingham, Marseille or Rotterdam and you will quickly realize just how unfree these areas are; where the clerics with their loudspeakers rule with absolute authority; where gangs of young men rape and assault women who are not covered; and where even the police fear to enter.
This has nothing to do with racism, and it has nothing to do with a lack of integration efforts on the part of white Europeans. These Muslims loathe westerners and everything they stand for because their religion tells them to do so - they don't want to integrate, they don't want to live in a peaceful society, and they don't share the same values. No other immigrant group causes anywhere near the same degree of friction as with Muslim immigrants. If racism were a factor, then surely Asian and Indian (non-Muslim) immigrants would be feeling the supposed "backlash" that Muslims do - never mind that Islam is not a race.
If Muslims in Europe feel that they are discriminated against it is because of their behavior and their hatred of everything un-Islamic - all of which comes from the Quran and Mohammed. If there are Muslims who don't agree with Quran and Mohammed, who want to integrate, and who want to leave the barbaric ideology behind them, then they have to speak up against the clerics and the loudspeakers in favor of freedom and human rights for all.
Muslims who don't follow Islam think they can have it both ways; they think they can call themselves Muslims and defend Islam while also championing secular values such as free speech and freedom of religion. I'm sorry, you can't have it both ways since they are incompatible ideas. Islam is a totalitarian ideology that actively condones slavery, subjugating women, killing non-Muslims, killing homosexuals, killing atheists and agnostics, and spreading these ideas by any means necessary.
Unlike other monotheistic faiths, Islam has not been reformed largely because its doctrine is the most rigid to begin with - there is no room for interpretation in the Quran and the Hadith. Unless and until Muslims the world over stand up and say, "I reject the barbaric passages of the Quran and most of the Hadith" then I'm afraid this ideological struggle - which reemerged only after western influence in Muslim lands disappeared - has only just begun.
The central figure in Islam is Mohammed - and even a cursory reading of his life and biography show a wholly contemptible individual not worthy of the slightest praise. Mohammed's mantra was dominate others at all costs, rape and pillage, win victory through terror. By contrast, the central figures of Christianity and Buddhism are found to speak of love and kindness and forgiveness - ideas completely foreign to Islamic theology.
Is it any wonder, then, why believing Muslims behave a certain way when compared to the adherents of other faiths? Christians can easily reject the violence and immorality of the Old Testament by pointing to the example of Jesus. Judaism is not a proselytizing faith hell-bent on world domination - and most Rabbis and lay Jews are more than happy to busy themselves with the minutiae of the Hebrew language and Judaic jurisprudence. Not to mention that most practicing Jews fall under the 'Reformed' category.
It is only with Muslims that we find such a strict adherence to the sacred text and the example of its founder. One must reject the morality of Islam in order to embrace true morality and human empathy