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

The Bible is not the Quran, Islam is not a Religion

The Bible? Irrelevant.

The world is not filled with Christians and Jews who enslave women and treat their wives like chattel; who behead people for blasphemy; who throw homosexuals from tall buildings and then stone them if the fall doesn't kill them; who throw their wives and sisters and daughters off balconies (in Europe, no less) for the imaginary crime of "dishonoring" their family; who brutally murder anyone who wants to leave the faith; who flog bloggers for criticizing religion; who imprison atheists and agnostics; who condone child marriage and sex with prepubescent girls; and who call all of this 'moral' and 'divine commandment.'

It is Muslims, and almost exclusively Muslims, who do all these horrible things to themselves as well as to others. Why? Because it comes from their book and they believe in it with every fiber of their being - they really truly do - the way almost no Jew or Christian does about the Bible; else we'd be seeing the same happening in Israel and England and Canada and Brazil.

The Enlightenment and the Renaissance were products of Christian Europe when they had finally had enough of theocracy. The Jewish community has given us gifts of priceless art and scientific discovery of immeasurable importance to human progress. What has Islam given us but death and terror and lies and treachery and fourteen centuries of endless, needless bloodshed?

There was no 'Golden Age of Islam' - this idea is founded on a lie that has persisted throughout the centuries. Ever since the first western scholars who wrote about Islam were cowed into presenting a false, revisionist version of events that had Arabs and Muslims as the oppressed - when every piece of evidence from history tells us the opposite was (and is) true.

The spread of Islam was literally the bloodiest period of human history, laying waste to countless cultures, languages, and civilizations (just ask the Hindus) - taking credit for the work of others and giving nothing in return. Islam was spread by Arab warlords, and those who adopted it took on the same mentality; kill everyone who won't submit, take their possessions, and rape their women. There is no "Islamic Culture" - this is another lie; Muslim conquerors have never, not once in history, brought Art or Science or Music that enhanced a neighboring culture.

Islam is like the Borg Collective; they gain strength by assimilating the works of others, nothing more. And eventually they decline because their parasitic nature has nothing left to feed on. Hopefully, this time around, we don't let them take over Europe and cause centuries of warfare - Europe has seen enough of war.

Islam is desert, Arab, tribal warfare from 1500 years ago that has been allowed to hang around because it calls itself a religion when it is no such thing. Had the Mongols called what they did a religion I promise you a good portion of the world would be practicing Genghis-Khanism or some such nonsense. Islam is the worship of a bloodthirsty lunatic and his warped, sadistic worldview. Believe it.

Call it what it is

Today, people who refer to the likes of the Islamic State and Boko Haram as terrorist groups are easily the majority. Every article you read on the subject of terrorism refers to groups like these as 'fringe' and 'fanatical' which 'have nothing to do with Islam.' While they do engage in terrorism, these are Islamic groups first and foremost, yet no one wants to acknowledge this point.

Two things need to happen in order for this to change. 1) Defenders of Islam, particularly western apologists, need to actually study the religion and what it teaches. 2) Muslims the world over need to acknowledge that everything IS or Al Qaeda or Boko Haram or Shabab does is sanctioned, overtly, in either the Quran or the Hadith.

I understand the defensive nature they take on, "we're not all terrorists." I understand that they feel their values are being misrepresented. What Muslims need to understand is that by pointing out and admitting the flaws in Islam, it shows that their values are superior to what Muhammad taught and how he acted. If you don't condone beheading and stoning, you are morally superior to Muhammad right off the bat.

Stop being defensive. No one is attacking you, we are attacking harmful ideas from a barbaric age which were spread at the edge of a sword by a conquering Arab warlord and his followers. Just admit it, and then we can finally talk about what you think 'moderate' Islam or a 'reformed' Islam would look like. But continuing to insist that the religion, the ideology itself, is without fault is going to do nothing but bolster the likes of IS. "If there is nothing wrong with the religion, then nothing we are doing is wrong." It's as simple as that.

Arab Muslims are particularly defensive, because they can't seem to separate Islam from the rest of their culture. Speaking ill of Muhammad's 7th century ideology is viewed as an attack on all of Arab culture. This is simply not the case. Arabs the world over are known for having a distinct and beautiful language, excellent cuisine, tremendous generosity and hospitality. Why throw all that away to defend ideas which you don't even agree with?

And please, don't shift the discussion to, "well, Christianity has bad ideas, Judaism has bad ideas." We all agree, especially Christians and Jews. They admit it. Ask one. Christians and Jews have long ago learned to laugh at themselves and their books and their 'prophets'. But deflecting the conversation to other religions accomplishes nothing.

Perhaps it's true that most Muslims don't believe in the literal truth of the Quran, and perhaps it's true that they find much of the ideology barbaric and intolerant. These are all good things. What's not good is insisting, again and again, that Islam is not to blame. Why not? Blame Islam for its barbarism if it is barbaric. Just because you identify with an ideology does not mean that you alone understand it and have to defend it against all comers.

If the majority of Muslims said something along the lines of, "I believe Islam offers some moral guidance and gives many people consolation and comfort, but I do not believe in the literal truth of the Quran as the perfect book," then we could all, Muslims and non-Muslims, actually prevent groups like IS and Boko Haram from popping up. They get their strength and their legitimacy from the fact that Muslims will not condemn the ideology, the same ideology they use, correctly, to justify their behavior. "If Muhammad was the perfect man, and the Quran is the perfect book, and most Muslims agree, then we are doing nothing wrong - in fact, we are doing what God wishes us to do."

Not all equal

Most Muslims are not Arabs. But because we in the west, particularly in America, equate Islam with Arabia, any anti-Islam talk gets shouted down and labeled racist and Islamophobic. Ben Affleck losing his shit on Bill Maher's show recently is a perfect example of this.

Where Islamic Sharia holds sway, you can count on it to be a horrible place to live, particularly if you are a woman or a non-Muslim. This is simply a fact and we should not ignore it in the name of religious tolerance.

How does one tolerate what they don't understand? Apologists for Islam insist on presenting it as just the same as other religions; that the central message is love and kindness, and that the barbarism is contextual as in other ancient religious texts. This, friends, is far from the truth.

The central message of Islam is not in line with the modern, secular values of human rights and civil liberties. Unlike the violent passages of the Old Testament, their equivalent in the Quran are typically open-ended, and therefore not limited to or bound by any historical context.

All this aside, the fact remains that it is overwhelmingly Muslims, not Jews or Buddhists, who are engaged in acts of violence across the globe by using religious justification. Christians, for all their faults and backwardness, are simply light-years ahead when it comes to how they view the world.

Many Christians may be homophobic, they may be bigoted, they may be anti-science and these are all things we should strive to overcome; but the Muslim parallel is all of those things plus acting on them violently. The losing battle Christians are having with modernity is fought on social media, and in businesses refusing to serve gay customers; a far cry from stoning a woman to death for being raped.

The problem is not, as I've said many times, the people - it is the ideology. It is simply too easy to justify barbaric behavior within an Islamic context. Holding a sign that says "God hates fags" is much, much better than torturing and killing anyone who openly admits to being gay. Don't believe me? Try it, try it anywhere from Tunisia to Turkey or Indonesia to Pakistan.

It is no surprise that you hear Christians talking about love all the time when discussing religion. With Muslims you almost never hear about love. Instead, you hear about obedience, respect, honor, jihad (of all varieties), submission - and the absurd level of defensiveness when anyone questions any aspect of the Islamic ideology.

It is also a lie that there are many forms of 'violent extremism' and that we should not single out Islam as the only religion which lends itself to violence. Muslim on Muslim violence, not to mention that of Muslim on Unbelievers, is piled high with bodies every single day. And then we are told by the apologists to consider the example of Timothy McVeigh and the like.

There simply is no comparison. The violence committed every day all around the world in the name of - or as mandated by - Islam simply dwarfs the other examples of extremist violence.

But for me, the worst part of Islam is the treatment of women. The Islamic doctrine has convinced hundreds of millions of Muslim women that they are inferior, that their fathers/brothers/husbands should speak for them, that they should never consider their own sexual desires. This all comes from how Muhammad treated women in general and his wives in particular. Is there misogyny in other religions? Undoubtedly, but it is not practiced to nearly the same insidious level as it is within Islam.

We need to wake up to these facts, and to stop pretending that all religions are equal. The view that they are (equal) is promoted by well-meaning idealists, liberal apologists, or Muslims lying through their teeth; and the people who want Islam and Sharia to utterly dominate the world are happy to let them continue doing so.

Islam is not a religion of peace, and it never will be. The peaceful Muslims of the world have tempered the doctrine of Islam with their own secular morality. The most peaceful Muslims are the ones who don't practice Islam in any real sense, who don't fully understand it, and who impose their own morality from the outside.

The 'Perfect' Book

Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, are the first to proclaim the miracle that is the Quran. How do we know that it is a miracle? Because, supposedly, it is written in the purest Arabic; the style, form, grammar, and eloquence of which has never been matched. We are told that this point in particular is not up for debate.

Fine, let us take it to be true that the grammar of the Quran is without error - but what of its content? Why, when verses or entire chapters are highlighted as being obviously barbaric and misogynistic are we given the run-around? "You're misinterpreting, you don't understand the context, the language is too pure for our simple brains to decipher."

Really? And yet it is this very same language which is used to establish the truth and perfectness of the Quran in the first place, is it not? Why is it that a verse which says to give alms to the poor is decipherable, while a verse which stipulates beheading, slavery, and stoning are acceptable practices needs to be looked at 'in context.' What context? Did early Muslims spread Islam by killing and enslaving people or didn't they? History tells us this is undoubtedly true.

I don't care, and neither should you, that the Quran stipulates slave girls can be freed or even married to their masters, which apparently proves God's goodness. "Take slaves, sure, but after a while it's okay to free them or even marry them (against their will)." The point is that the book clearly condones slavery and numerous other actions which today are universally considered human rights abuses.

It's time to stop making excuses. Nothing will change until Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds admit, openly, that the Quran is NOT the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

Don't hold your breath.

Islamaphobia 2.0

How many groups like ISIS do you want to see pop up around the world before you start taking the issue of religion seriously?

Spare me your half-assed attempts to rationalize. "This is not religion." Sure it is, it just isn't your interpretation of religion. This is a direct result of the 'tolerance' you speak of. It is a direct result of the fallacy known as 'Islamophobia.' There is no such thing. Every time we allow these religious types to cow us into submission (be it Danish cartoons or forcing young girls to wear Hijab) we are giving up ground. Tolerance is not one group being allowed to walk all over another in the name of religion. Multiculturalism does not mean you are forced to tolerate an idea or a group for fear of violent backlash.

The idea of 'Islamophobia' is a new one, and it has been used by Muslims (whether you agree with their interpretation of Islam or not is immaterial, they see themselves as good, practicing Muslims) as a way to silence any perceived criticism or slight as 'racist' or 'intolerant.' There is nothing racist or intolerant with not wanting little girls covered head to toe, and forced down our throats as 'dignity' or 'cultural/religious values'; there is nothing racist or intolerant with caricaturing an ancient Arab warlord; there is nothing racist or intolerant with wanting women to be literate and to have control over their reproductive cycle.

No, intolerance is imposing your cultural or religious values on others by force or the threat of violence, and this is exactly what is happening in almost every major secular, democratic society by Muslim groups whose worldview would be pleasing to the likes of ISIS.

'Tolerating' religious moderation is not the answer. As I've said before, if you grant it for one group you must allow it for all; or we will forever be hedging our bets and arguing about who is allowed to claim they are following their religion and who isn't. Never mind that some Saudi sheikh condemned the beheadings; it was Saudi-style fundamentalist Islam that midwifed the birth of this group and countless others like it. And how dare Saudi Arabia claim the moral high ground? Theirs is a nation where women are not even allowed to leave the house, let alone drive, without male supervision.

No, friends, I will not have it. Groups like this would not exist without religion, and it is past time we realize it and do something about it. I invite you to join me in doing so.

Cognitive dissonance, logic, and protecting our children

Cognitive dissonance presents a very salient problem with which many of our brother and sister humans are faced every single day. There is also the problem of not understanding why it is important to value logic, reason, and evidence.

As Sam Harris puts it: "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what possible logical argument could you invoke to show the importance of logic?"

This is, to put it mildly, quite the conundrum. I am not willing to give up on someone who makes faith claims and engages in mental gymnastics in order to reconcile their beliefs with the nature of reality; I would be lacking in my obligation to fellow members of my species were I to do so.

The only way we are ever going to rid ourselves of baseless supernatural claims is by relentlessly pointing out how ridiculous these ideas are and how delusional are those who hold them to be true. We must shame people, if we have to, into letting go of these beliefs.

What's more, we need to protect the children of our species. Here is something the faithful do not seem to understand: Your children are not your property. You don't, in fact, have the right to teach them whatever you want; you are simply custodians of their fragile, growing minds. And while you have considerable leeway in choosing how to raise them, forcing them to believe as you do, about things which you cannot possibly know, is a most egregious infraction on their personal and psychological integrity.

You are hijacking the mind of a child to conform to a worldview which is patently false. Is it not obvious from their incessant questions that your answers and circular logic are grossly inadequate? If you teach a child arithmetic, the child will question until he or she receives a sufficient answer. You can see for yourself that two and two make four; it is a fact, based in reality.

Children need to know as much about reality and the way things work in this reality, the only reality we know of. It is detrimental to confuse them with supernatural claims based on no evidence. You don't need religion to teach your children morality. In fact, religion is probably the worst way ever thought up to teach morality.

Please, stop lying to your children; we need them. We need them for the next great discovery, to keep moving humanity forward, and to ensure that all we've accomplished isn't lost. I implore all of you to think on these things.