In the wake of the Paris shootings, the horrors visited by ISIS upon Syria and Iraq and the genocide being perpetrated by Boko Haram in North Africa, finally there seems to be an awakening even among the western mainstream media and the politically correct that there could be something endemic to Islam itself that accounts for violence occurring nearly everywhere Muslims abound. As catalogued by the website, www.religionofpeace.com, since 9/11, there have been 25,000 attacks by Muslims worldwide.
In my book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations,( http://larrykelley.com/the-book/) I posit, that if Islam is to undergo a reformation, which many believe is necessary if we are to avoid a coming global conflagration, it will require millions of Muslims, especially women, to stand up, renounce Islam, and proclaim that they will not allow the faith to turn their sons and daughters into jihadists. This will require great courage because Islam is the only major religion which deems apostates be punished by death.
Ali Sina grew up a Muslim in Iran, is now a prominent apostate, and through his website, helps others who are attempting to leave Islam. In his article The Dilemma of Islamic Terrorism, he makes the case that Islam, at its core, is ruthlessly expansionistic and prescribes the violent conquest of the infidel. (See http://www.faithfreedom.org/the-dilemma-of-islamic-terrorism)
Pertaining to the Paris attacks or the genocide going on in Iraq, Sina explains that the mainstream capitulationist media, in their cowardly appeasement, have adopted a formula for dismissing Muslim atrocities. The formula first includes bringing out pundits who are interviewed and who will always say that the root cause of the attacks has nothing to do with Islam (despite what the dead or captured terrorists say). Next they bring out another wave of officials who will advocate for more money to be spent on government-sponsored outreach. Mr. Sina writes:
While politicians in western countries and the mainstream media are stuck in the above narrative, the truth is not hidden from the Muslims. Al Sisi, the president of Egypt, in his 2015 New Year’s speech in Al Azhar University, addressing top Sunni clerics said, “it is not possible that 1.6 billion people
Of course, Sina is correct and moreover, what he and President Sisi are saying should be relentlessly repeated by heads of state around the globe. But other than the King of Jordan, our fearful leaders are neo Neville Chamberlains and will probably not do it. President Sisi heads the world’s most populous Arab/Muslim nation and has lent his voice to those apostates who are crying out for Islam to reform itself. And he did so at great danger to himself and his family.
Sina goes on to explain that there are three camps within Islam which he names as the good, bad, and ugly and he contends, while some are a blend, no practicing Muslim exists outside one or several of these three categories.
The Good
The first category is that of good Muslims. By good I mean true believers—those who follow the teachings of their prophet, the Quran and the Sunnah to the letter, who try to emulate him in every way and are strict and pious Muslims. Since the teachings and the examples of Muhammad are full of violence and terror, the more one follows and emulates him the more radical one becomes. Muhammad raided and butchered people merely because they were not his followers. The good Muslims do the same. All the bombings and terrorisms perpetrated by Muslims are replicas of Muhammad’s raids, or ghazwa, as he called them. Taking women as sex slaves, which the Islamic State and Boko Haram practice was also practiced by Muhammad and he sanctioned it in the Quran (33:50; 23: 1-6; 70:30; 4:24; 66:1-2). He ordered the assassination of his critics stoning the adulterers, chopping the hands of thieves and killing the apostates. So, the terrorists are actually good Muslims.
The Bad
The second category is of bad Muslims. These are those who don’t practice their religion and are often ignorant of it. They may pray or chant the Quran, but have no clue of its content. They read it for thawab (reward) without understanding it. These Muslims are ordinary people we all know. Like everybody else, some are good and some are not so good. Some of them are friendly, but they see themselves as superior, by virtue of their faith, and of “higher morals.”
Morality in Islam has nothing to do with what others understand by this word. For example, while having sex out of marriage is considered immoral; stoning people caught in such act is not immoral.
The Ugly
Here Sina describes the ugly ones as not ignorant of their religion. They know of Muhammad’s raids, rapes, assassinations, genocides, tortures, beheadings, but they deny them, twist the facts and defend him. They accuse the good Muslims of having hijacked their religion of peace but they know they are lying.
These self-styled reformers don’t want to change the Quran. They just want Muslims to practice it less. But how can they convince all Muslims to not take their holy book seriously? This project is doomed from the start. This is either naiveté and wishful thinking, or a ruse to deceive the non-Muslims, to give them false hope so they can buy more time for Islam to take over the world, which is the goal of every Muslim, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Every Muslim falls within these three categories. Just as virtually all colors are combinations of the three primary colors, elements of the three categories of Muslims exist in all of them.
As America’s professor emeritus of Islamic Studies, Bernard Lewis, puts it, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslim.” And a substantial percentage of them that are not active in terrorism condone it. Sina asks—what does it really matter who is and who is not? In just the last five years, the numbers of active jihadists have grown four fold. And As the map above shows, radical Islam now controls more territory than did Hitler’s Germany at the height of its occupation of Europe.
I spoke to Ali Sina and asked him if he had any idea how many people are leaving Islam. He told me that he receives emails from people all around the world who ask him how they should live with their apostasy. But he told me that their numbers are impossible to assess because most leave the faith secretly for fear that they will be ostracized (if they live in the West) or killed if they live in an Islamic country.
In my research over the last decade since 9/11, I have come to see Islam as not simply a religion but as an all-inclusive belief system which is the product of the pitiless creed of primitive warrior cult. But what I believe about Islam carries less weight than what Mr. Sina or President Sisi believe because they and other world-famous female apostates such as Ayaan Hersi Ali, http://theahafoundation.org/ and Nonie Darwish, http://arabsforisrael.blogspot.com/ have lived Islam and are now targeted for death by it.
