Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald considers the particular problems of children born to marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims, and of Muslims confronting the incitements to violence and supremacist imperative contained in the Qur'an, Hadith and Sira:
The question of marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims is vexed and multifaceted. One could write a good deal about the Muslim children of such a couple, once the marriage is over and the mother tries, in every conceivable way, while not wishing to alienate her children, to gently, gently, somehow get them to understand they need not forever remain Muslims. This is extraordinarily difficult given the degree of early brainwashing, the appeal of filial piety, the diseased desire for a system that offers the comfort of Total Regulation, the fear of mental or other kinds of freedom, and the ease with which all the ills of the Western non-Muslims are detected and despised. The child may never fully realize that so much that is good -- including those products of that West, the art, music, literature, that the particular Muslim child may enjoy and appreciate -- are artifacts that could never have been produced by, nor their creators have arisen within, the world of Islam.And then there are those children who, born into Islam, knowing very little about it, deliberately will not learn about it for fear of what they might find out. They don't want to know. "Mom, I'm not going to read it." They will not read Ibn Warraq. They will not go to Ali Sina's website (www.faithfreedom.org). They will not study the history of Muslim conquest or the treatment of conquered non-Muslims. They will not read Bat Ye'or. They will not discover for themselves, if non-Arab, the Arab supremacist ideology within Islam. They don't want to find out.
That is some of them. Then there are the others, who are jettisoning Islam. They are doing so not because they wish to "fit in" with the larger society, but for their own intellectual coherence. It is painful, it is difficult, it is a matter seldom discussed. In many cases they keep secret their own dismay at what they realize Islam is, out of fear of family members, or simply because the whole thing disturbs them. They shouldn't. They should speak out about Islam. They could tell others born into Islam, and tell that impenetrably stupid group of Infidels who will not understand what is wrong with Islam, a few home truths.Starting with: This is Islam. And this is your mind on Islam.
Ibn Warraq has managed to make important contributions to the understanding of Western scholarship on early Islam (see, for example, the shortened version of a longer unpublished essay that just appeared in Die dunklen Anfange, along with contributions by Christoph Luxenberg, Pierre Larcher, Claude Gilliot, Gerd Puin, and others at that level -- so much for the Fred Donners of this world, plowing their way dutifully through the Muslim furrows, never looking to right or left to consider that just possibly a Western scholar who continues blithely to accept the received Muslim version of Qur'anic history just might not be doing the right thing). Ayaan Hirsi Ali is helping to raise consciousnesses in Holland -- with a little help from Muslim murders and Muslim threats that have concentrated non-Muslim minds. She is also a member of the Dutch Parliament. Ali Sina is a one-man multitude, debating endlessly, putting up articles that day after day chip away at Muslim certainties. Azam Kamguian, Irfan Khawaja, and many others, some of whom no doubt do not use their real names, all lead lives in which intelligence has been freed from the mind-forged manacles of Islam. They were their own Houdinis -- they freed themselves.
But not everyone can undo those manacles. Some need to read a bit, to reflect a bit. While the psychically and economically marginal, the prisoners and the Spiritual-Searchers of the John Walker Lindh variant (to say nothing of the Weiss/Schwartz variant) will be the Infidels who convert to Islam, those in Islam who leave it -- for another faith or none at all -- will always be the very best, the most morally and intellectually aware, people born into Islam (through no fault of their own).
Quite a trade. Unfortunately, there are more of the economically and psychically marginal Infidels who are potential converts to Islam than there are those Muslims in the non-Muslim world (which is the only place that jettisoning Islam can take place without fear of retribution) who are sufficiently aware, morally and intellectually, to leave it -- not necessarily for something else, but simply to leave it. And numbers count. More of them have to be appealed to: leave that filial piety. Look steadily at what is in not only the Qur'an but also in the Hadith. Look at Muhammad as a model -- do you want him as a model for yourself, for your children, your grandchildren? Would you, living in Paris or London or New York in exile from the Muslim world, want that world to follow you into that exile? Would you, an Iranian in exile from the Islamic Republic, want to see Los Angeles really become Teheran, Teheran as it is today? Would you want Paris to become Algiers, or Marrakech? Would you, an Egyptian who could not stand Egypt, and read Magdi Allam in the Corriere with understanding and sympathy, want Rome to become Cairo, subject to what the doctors of Al-Azhar have to say? Do you want to live according to a Total Regulation of Life created more than a millennium ago?
Of course you wouldn't. Well, pitch in.
This poor piece looks so lonesome without comments, so I will recycle my own thought on it from yesterday. Like Hugh, I encourage Muslims to cast off their shackles. I only offer the following as a caution to those who might be expecting an enthusiastic response from their Muslim friends.
We often hear the term, failure of imagination. Indeed, the inability of an American, or really any Westerner, to understand what goes in inside a Mohammedan's mind, is nearly complete. Nor is it enough to confront the naive with cold reality, as in the case of Phyllis Chesler, cited elsewhere on this site today. She had the moral imagination to recognize what was wrong, and to understand what she could (and could not) do to escape. But then consider all the other Western-born women she went to for help, women who had somehow found a way to live in their cages, and then try to imagine the lies they tell themselves, or the wilfull misinterpretations of what they see and feel every day. People have a tremendous capacity to lie to themselves when necessary, and even those with the strength to not lie to themselves may lack the conceptual tools that allow them to understand something as “other” as the alleged "Islamic way of life."
N.B., I'm not recommending any slack be cut for them, because those who lie to themselves in order to relieve themselves of the necessity of understanding Islam, do so at not only their own peril, but at ours as well.
But in the same breath, recognize the limits of our imagination. We, most of us in the West, cannot imagine what it is like to be reared as a Muslim in their world. Many here have pointed out how truly mind-destroying such a childhood is, and it is. Even among those who emerge relatively sane, able to order their lives without the constant guide of sharia, able to live with the unresolvable contradictions of life, the pressures to never deny Islam are tremendous. To deny Islam is, for most Muslims, to say goodbye to every positive association of their childhood forever, for it means saying goodbye to their parents, their brothers and sisters, their neighbors and schoolmates--to everyone they ever knew. It means saying goodbye to the only holidays they ever knew, the Eids at the end of the Hajj and the end of Ramadan, times of lights and special foods, new clothes--Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled into one. It means giving up their lifelines, and to someone trained to submit to the tribe and the ummah at all costs, that is no small thing. The independent spirit that animates Americans is admired, respected, worshipped, and above all, feared by Mohammedans, who have been trained from the teat that the individual will be destroyed by Allah. Topping it all off is the very real threat of violence. In their homelands, they face imprisonment, confiscation of all their property, and possible death. Even in Europe and America, the murtad is not free from risk of assassination.
I have had continuing discussions with Mohammedans whom I have told, quite bluntly, that they are not muslim, and then cited the acts that I know they have done that are considered by sharia sufficient cause for punishment as an apostate. Sometimes there is a silence, and no response; sometimes there is a weeping acknowledgement of the facts, but there is no further discussion; and sometimes there is an angry outburst full of the most ridiculous stuff I've ever heard outside of the Islamic bulletin boards, and I admit, my jaw drops to hear such patent nonsense suddenly emerge, defensively, from otherwise well-spoken, rational people. The charges, too numerous to list here, are almost always in no way material to the discussion at hand, and are lobbed out to discredit me and therefore my arguments, allowing my disputant to put his nose in the air and walk away feeling superior; or to distract me away from the position the believer is finding indefensible; or to anger me, allowing the Mohammedan to shift the conversation from statements of fact to emotions. Oh, much more, not worth retelling, all of it part of the believer's kit for repulsing any infidel who might actually know where all the chinks in the armor are. If you really want to see the desperation weapons, raise the subject of people who have left Islam. "That never happens," they exclaim, and then they get shown something like Ibn Warraq's book, or Ali Sina's website, and watch out!
All of this is by way of agreeing with the appeal Hugh posts above, but with the clear caution that born Mohammedans will resist the painfully true with all their mental might for many, many reasons, some of them connected with that "painfully" part, some of them connected to wealth and standing, some of them deep and emotional. The appeal seems to clear, so logical, so irresistable to us, and it is anything but to the Mohammedan. All the moreso, this seemingly inexplicable inability to throw off the shackles of Islam should make clear to anyone why the hope that they will "moderate" and become more "Western" by living among us is fantasy, pure wishful thinking.
You are right. My poor piece was feeling lonesome. I know because I asked it. Friendly, intelligent, articulate company is always welcome. Thank you.
Of course the clean, quick and painless removal of doubt is the great lure of Islam...when in doubt, the answer is right there in the books...no more painful moral dilemmas...it’s all laid out for you...just follow the books. And they do...and do and do.
The clear implications and results of "following the books" is to be found everywhere, yet in truth, reality is not always stronger than fantasy.
Hugh asks western Muslims to, "Look at Muhammad as a model -- do you want him as a model for yourself, for your children, your grandchildren? Would you, living in Paris or London or New York in exile from the Muslim world, want that world to follow you into that exile?"
The answer clearly is no, but when it comes to doing something about it, Muslims are powerless so long as they remain Muslims.
That is the truth we face.
Excellent post. The psychological components of those born into Islam cannot be underestimated. My most direct recent experience with someone who left Islam was an Egyptian male in his 30's who still lives in Egypt and left Islam in 2003, accepted Christ, and was baptized. He is an engineer by training and has a responsible position as well as a wife and children. I met him here in the U.S. as a guest of a family who goes to Egypt from the U.S. at least once a year to perform "low key" aid and personal Christian mission work. He cannot tell any one in his family or community that he has made this life-changing decision for fear of losing everything, even his freedom or life. His discussions were generally open and honest, but he still had reluctance in discussing certain aspects of his decision. He may be one of thousands who have done this in the Islamic world, but we may never really know for sure. As long as this ideology holds sway over so many, our efforts to free those from Islam will continue.
One way it is handled is to declare oneself a "cultural Muslim" (I think this is how Kanan Makiya deals with it), and leave it at that. The problem is that those who continue to identify themselves as Muslims, out of remembered smells and sounds and their pious aunt or uncle or grandmother, are -- precisely to the extent that they themselves are personally charming, attractive, well-spoken -- likely to instill in Infidels a belief that "you know, Islam not's so bad. There's nothing wrong with Islam. Look at so-and-so. You wouldn't trade him in for the idiocy of the Western world would you?" and so on.
These "I'm only a Muslim in the cultural sense" need to be asked, or rather to ask themselves, what precisely it is in their "culture" that can be attributed to Islam (and neither Mughal miniatures, nor Hafiz, Sa'adi, Firdowsi, or Omar Khayyam have much to do with Islam -- rather, they are Persians and poets in spite of Islam)? What is it in the spirit of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira that contributes to the "culture" of the Islamic world, and wat is it that prevents anything like the "culture" or cultural artifacts that one should admire? The fact that there are some beautiful mosques, and Qur'anic calligraphy -- so what? Why is Islam to be thanked for the use of the Byzantine squinch, or for the edifices of Sinan? Has Islam helped to foster art, music, literature, or has it helped to squash or prohibit or channel into the most limited range, any artistic expression? Has Islam been a force for free and skeptical inquiry, or has it been a force working against it, so that even those who managed to produce something in the first few centuries of Islam, such as ar-Razi, were always verging on heresy?
The easy way out -- "I am a cultural Muslim" or "culturally, I am a Muslim" -- should be resisted. So too should the other escape -- I'm not like those crazies, I'm just as skeptical as you are, I'm a "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim. Well, here's an idea. Why not find another way to identify yourself? If "Englishman" or "American" or "Frenchman" won't do, and you really think you have to look back to something, then if you are a Muslim from India, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, why not forthrightly admit that your ancestors were Hindus (or, conceivably, Buddhists), that they were forced to convert either on threat of death, or because they could no longer endure the torment of their status as non-Muslims under Muslim rule. Why not pull a little Alex-Haley "search for roots" and identify, not with the recent generations, but all the generations of your ancestors who were Hindus, and in particular, think back to the precise moment, and the precise conditions, that no doubt led those ancestors to become Muslims. And if you are Iranian, ask yourself what, in the long history of Iranian civilization -- on Cyrus, on Darius, on Kaveh and Blitzen -- has much, if anything to do, with Islam, which has given us the concept of "najis," the forced conversion of Armenians and Jews, the steady low-level persecution of the Zoroastrians (some of whom fled into exile, and became the Parsees of Mumbai), and the Islamic Republic of Iran, with Ayatollah Khomeini, Judge Khalkali, and the latest example, Ahmadinejad. What did Islam have to do with Persian poetry, Persian art, Persian sophistication? Would Iran have been culturally poorer, or richer, had the Arabs never arrived bearing that "gift" of Islam? Ask yourself, carefully, and then choose another identity. Why not Zoroastrianism? Just as a name, a thing to be, if you feel this need to call yourself something.
And, if you have your grave doubts about Islam, yet cannot rock your own psychic boat, or you worry about your family, yet you live in the West, and you are friendly with Infidels, and you attempt to brush off too-insistent inquiries by them into the nature of Islam, don't you realize that sooner or later those Infidels will themselves start to look into Islam, look into Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, start reading about the Muslim conquests and the imposition of dhimmi status on non-Muslims (the work of Bat Ye'or and others), and when they do acquire such knowledge -- well, to quote the son of a St. Louis furrier who liked to quote other people, "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" You might as well face up to what Islam is now, and if you disapprove of the belief-system, admit it to yourself and to others. By so doing, you are not endorsing the decadence and idiocy of the West, examples of which can be found all around us (just turn on television). You are simply permitting yourself mental freedom. It is possible in the West. Take advantage of it. Try to preserve it here, if it cannot be preserved within dar al-Islam.
Hugh, thank you for your kind words. Could you do me the personal favor of elaborating on your last comment in the context of Malaysia? You have commented often on Malaysia in the context of the Bumiputra system, and I have a very real interest in maintaining someone's "Malay-ness" apart from the "a Malay is Muslim" identity. Any help you can offer, especially in terms of sources, would be sincerely appreciated.
Catholics should not marry Muslims, say Italian bishops
In addition the children of mixed marriages tended to be brought up as Muslims and not as Catholics. Such marriages should, therefore, be discouraged. Church officials said that there were 200,000 mixed marriages in Italy, with 20,000 this year alone, an increase of 10 per cent on the previous year.
Markjames, while the Italian Bishops might say that Catholics shouldn't marry muslims, from my contact with Muslims, most of it on the internet, the converts to Islam are predominatly Catholic, and that alone is worth a study (which we will never ever see), and in my opinion and observation the interfaith marriages are mostly Kaffir men and Muslim women.. and the reason for that is or should be obvious. Islam raises women to devalue themselves, they are raised to be submissive and accept without questioning or their own ego needs, the authority of the man..which, for some weak males, maybe a majority, is empowering. For it is a known fact, that one can't feel empowered, dominant, even sexy unless the other party is compliant and submissive.
Men with weak, unformed ego's, and sense of self shop outside the U.S. and Europe for wives in cultures and countries that raise their females to be submissive and compliant.
A huge profitable trade in male order brides from depressed states (Russia) and Asia.., and since a man MUST convert to Islam to marry, then another agent (non Arab, non Iranian, non Asian) is created, and since the mind follows the mouth (cognitive dissonance) the convert (unlike the born Muslim) becomes a fanatic to convince himself and his new Borg, that he is indeed a muslim.
Being more Muslim than a muslim, is proof to self and others, that one is indeed a true Muslim.
regarding: "...you know, Islam not's so bad. There's nothing wrong with Islam..."
Prince Bandar and his unctious ilk in a nutshell...
Non-repudiators of Islam are perhaps more dangerous than their fire breathing cohorts... They make things infinitely harder for the hapless infidel. I equate their denial/obfuscation/lies as a serious betrayal of all non-Muslims, and an aid for their Jihadi coreligionists.
I can imagine certain credulous idiots being cajoled by the benign cuddly looking smiling Prince Bandar. Sitting there in his overstuffed leather chair, complete with blue jeans and cardigan, thumbing through the Wall Street Journal as it drizzles in Washington. "We Muslims are just like you! There is no difference!" The snifter full of cognac, the sincere sounding discussions about football statistics, the friendly golf wagers, all is fair in selling his charade.
Bandar has spent years backslapping and gladhanding Americans -- assuring them -- deceiving them... His and many other's casual-when-in-the-West demeanor may or may not reflect their true orientation towards Islam, but do you think the Prince has ever been truly honest with his American counterparts in admitting that Islam DOES promote hatred and violence towards non-Muslims? Do you think he has ever openly admitted that the Saudi flavor of Islam is especially vicious, and anti-Western, anti-Jew, anti-Christian, and anti-Infidel? Do you think he has ever admitted that UBL is really a pious Muslim? Do you think he has ever admittied that the only reason the Saudis hate Bin Laden is not because he is a perverter of their Faith, but because he refuses to be controlled by them? That he might succeed in taking over the Kingdom. That he is fully correct when he calls the Saudi Royal family idolators, hypocrites, and apostates? Do you think Bandar has ever admitted to his Persidential chums that the real threat from Bin Laden is that he may win -- that he is heroic in the Muslim heart and mind?
Of course not! I doubt he has ever been honest about any of this.
For years he has painted the most distorted and deceptive picture for his American hosts about what Islam is really all about. Our leaders have shamed us by believing any of it. Can we really blame the Arab Muslim? He is simply playing his part! And we have been snookered by these primitive raiders.
It's time to confront the truth: The false picture they project only serves to confuse us, and abet the rabid Muslim enemy lurking in the shadows waiting to draw his sword and annihilate us. All Muslims are enemies.
"The appeal seems to clear, so logical, so irresistable to us..."
That "us" is also still far too lonely in our West.