In the wake of the Paris shootings and the horrors visited by ISIS upon Syria and Iraq and the genocide of Boko Haram, finally there seems to be an awakening even among some in the western mainstream media that there could be something endemic to Islam itself that accounts for violence occurring nearly everywhere Muslims abound. Since 9/11, there have been 25,000 attacks by Muslims worldwide.
I posit in my book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, that if Islam is to undergo a reformation, it will require millions of Muslims to 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 and through his website, he helps others leave Islam. In his article The Dilemma of Islamic Terrorism, he explains how Islam, at its core, is ruthlessly expansionistic and prescribes the violent conquest of the infidel.
Pertaining to the Paris attacks, 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 [reference to the world’s Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live.” Sisi did not blame Abu Ghraib, Israel, nor made other silly excuses for Islamic terrorism. He blamed the “ideology” of it. The ideology—which says, kill the unbelievers so you go to paradise—comes straight from the Quran.
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. He 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 explains that there are three camps within Islam, which, he names as the good, bad, and ugly. He contends, while some are a blend, no practicing Muslim exists outside one or several of these three categories.
The Good
Sina writes that the good are the true believers who follow the Quran, the teachings and the example of Prophet and because they advocate violence against the infidel terrorists are those who are the most pious Muslims. He writes:
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).
The Bad
He he explains that bad Muslims are those who don’t practice their religion and are mostly ignorant of it. While they may pray or chant the Quran, they have no clue of its content. They read it for thawab (reward) without understanding it and they see themselves as superior, by virtue of their faith, and of “higher morals.”
The Ugly
Sina describes the ugly ones as those who are not ignorant of their religion, but rather, know of and defend Muhammad’s raids, rapes, assassinations, genocides, tortures, beheadings, but they deny them, twist the facts. They accuse the good Muslims of having hijacked their religion of peace but they know they are lying.
For Sina, every Muslim falls within these three categories.
As America’s professor emeritus of Islamic Studies, Bernard Lewis, puts it, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslim.”
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. Radical Islam now controls more territory than did Hitler’s Germany at the height of its occupation.
Ali Sina receives emails from people all around the world who ask him how they should live with their apostasy and that their numbers are impossible to assess because most leave the faith secretly for fear that they will be ostracized or killed.
In my research 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, and Nonie Darwish, have lived Islam and are now targeted for death by it.