In "Info jihad" in the Tehran Times, Hamid Golpira calls for an "information jihad" against the fiendish Zionist Islamophobia that supposedly dominates the Western media. It makes for ironic reading in light of the fact that irenic whitewashes like this actually dominate the mainstream Western public discourse about Islam:
It has long been said that knowledge is power, but now, in the Information Age, information is power, and the side that best projects information is the victor.Information projection is a new concept modeled on the military concept projection of power. Information projection basically means the ability to disseminate information.
The battle of ideas currently underway in the world has been called information war, and Islam is under siege in this info war.
This, of course, comes from the same mindset that the Washington Post manifested when it assumed that any rise in negative perceptions of Muslims or Islam must be the fault of wicked non-Muslims, and not have anything to do with the actions of Muslims themselves.
This is especially ironic when one remembers that this article was published in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Thus, the Islamic world must step up its information projection in order to win the info war. Muslims must do info jihad.The enemies of Islam control vast media resources such as television networks, news agencies, newspapers, radio stations, Internet sites, magazines, music companies, film studios, and publishing houses. They conduct psychological operations with their media to depict a negative image of Islam and to undermine the Islamic movement.
Yes, these enemies of Islam blow themselves up in mosques, they conduct suicide attacks against civilians, they commit honor killings, they boast about how they're going to take over Western countries and insitute Islamic rule -- I tell you, these Islamophobes are fiendish.
We Muslims must build up and refine the Islamic world’s media in order to counter these psyops.
And from the looks of this article, Hamid Golpira knows a lot about psyops.
We should establish professional satellite television networks, newspapers, Internet sites, and other news outlets. We should also concentrate on educational entertainment such as films and music.Look at how the Zionists dominate the media. They have propagated their message, to the detriment of the Palestinians and the Islamic cause in general, and introduced terms like “Islamic terrorism”.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain -- the one using copious Qur'an quotes and Islamic theological arguments to justify his acts of violence. Don't believe your lying eyes. Just remember: the conccept of Islamic terrorism was invented by the Zionists.
We must get the message out that there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism. A Muslim can never be a terrorist because terrorism is haram, which means forbidden in Islam.A better expression to describe some of the phenomena currently occurring in the world would be pseudo-Islamic terrorism....
In fact, Hamid, people make this argument in the Western press every day. It is taken for granted by the mainstream media and even, to a great degree, by the government. The only people who don't take it as axiomatic are, if you'll pardon the expression, Islamic terrorists. If you can get it across to them that what they are doing is wrong on Islamic grounds and that they should lay down their arms, more power to you. But before I crown you Caliph (or perhaps Mahdi would be more appropriate) of the Moderate Muslims, let me ask you: what's your opinion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, your neighbor there in Tehran? What do you think of his statements of imminent Islamic supremacy? Never mind about terrorism -- tell me what you think of the idea that all must ultimately be subjugated under the rule of Islamic law.
Why does Islam mostly have a negative image outside of the Islamic world? The answer is obvious -- because the enemies of Islam are using expert media manipulation to influence world public opinion. They are conducting a very sophisticated info war against us....
I think it may be useful at this point to repeat my five-point plan for how Muslims can improve non-Muslim perceptions of Islam:
1. Stop committing violent acts.
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when you think no non-Muslims are around.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.
In Iran, Muslims peacefully coexist with Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews, and all three religious minority communities have MPs in the Iranian parliament, but this is usually not reported by Western news outlets.
Yes, and those minorities have it great there in Iran. Here's how great they have it, from the State Department's 2005 Religious Freedom Report on Iran:
The Constitution states that "within the limits of the law," Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians are the only recognized religious minorities who are guaranteed freedom to practice their religion; however, members of these recognized minority religious groups have reported imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on their religious beliefs. Adherents of religions not recognized by the Constitution do not enjoy freedom to practice their beliefs. This restriction seriously affects adherents of the Baha'i Faith, which the Government regards as a heretical Islamic group with a political orientation that is antagonistic to the country's Islamic revolution....Non-Muslim owners of grocery shops are required to indicate their religious affiliation on the fronts of their shops....
By law and practice, religious minorities are not allowed to be elected to a representative body or to hold senior government or military positions; however, 5 of a total 270 seats in the Majlis are reserved for religious minorities....
All religious minorities suffer varying degrees of officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing. The Government does not protect the right of citizens to change or renounce their religious faith. Apostasy, specifically conversion from Islam, may be punishable by death; however, there were no reported cases of the death penalty being applied for apostasy during the reporting period.
Members of religious minorities, excluding Sunni Muslims, are prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and from becoming public school principals. Applicants for public sector employment are screened for their adherence to and knowledge of Islam. Government workers who do not observe Islam's principles and rules are subject to penalties. The Constitution states that the country's army must be Islamic and must recruit individuals who are committed to the objectives of the Islamic revolution; however, in practice no religious minorities are exempt from military service.
University applicants are required to pass an examination in Islamic theology, which limits the access of most religious minorities to higher education, although all public school students, including non-Muslims, must study Islam.
But Hamid Golpira appears to inhabit an alternate universe:
Islam and the Islamist movement are both demonized in the Western media. The West’s media spinmeisters are attempting to create enmity toward political Islam by making it appear that the model of the Taleban of Afghanistan is the Islamist ideal, despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Hezbollah of Lebanon, and most other Islamist groups have very different interpretations of Islam.
How different? Do they renounce the jihad ideology and advocate peaceful coexistence as equals with non-Muslims under non-Islamic governments? I didn't think so.
Muslims lament the fact that the Zionists and other enemies of Islam dominate the world media, but most do nothing in response. Some Muslims even believe that nothing can be done about the situation because they think the enemies have total control of the media....
Yes, that's why you read my articles in the Chicago Tribune, while Islamic apologists like Cherif Bassiouni have to resort to starting blogs to get their message out.
Muslims will surely succeed if we make serious efforts to counter the Islamophobia of the Western media. The Holy Quran says that the truth always triumphs over the lie.Indeed, most of the non-Muslims who currently hate Islam would probably have a change of heart if they had access to the real facts.
I don't hate Islam, Hamid. I hate the institutionalized subjugation of woman (cf. Qur'an 4:1, 4:34, etc.) and non-Muslims. Things like that. Show us the real facts that establish that those things are non-Islamic, Hamid. Show us why we non-Muslims shouldn't be concerned that the Qur'an calls us the "vilest of creatures" (98:6) and directs that we be warred against until we submit to the Islamic social order (9:29). Give us the real facts. Go ahead.
Info jihad can even be used in dawa, which is the Arabic word that describes the efforts to invite non-Muslims to Islam.In light of all this, info jihadis should work hard to get the message out.
Oh, they already are. And, Hamid, you'll be happy to know that they're meeting great success.
"It makes for ironic reading in light of the fact that irenic whitewashes like this actually dominate the mainstream Western public discourse about Islam"
It seems that many Muslims believe that mainstream Western media & opinion are against Islam, when, as Robert points out, the reverse is the case. This either demonstrates how dense Muslims are -- for they should be capitalizing on this prevalent proto-dhimmitude rather than denying it exists -- or it demonstrates how clever many of them are: they know the mainstream West is on their side, but they also know that persistent hammering against alleged "Islamophobia" will help solidify the mythology that is not quite firmly in place and showing signs of dangerous cracks here and there. It's the same paradox one sees from Leftists who sound the alarm about dangerous evangelical Christians when the surrounding culture is overwhelmingly derisive and hostile (when it is not, from its position of secular power, supremely indifferent) to evangelical Christianity. Leftists, however, I suspect, are probably denser and less clever than Muslims.
Robert, they are worried that the truth about Islam is getting out because of people like you.
The mental stamina you exhibit in refuting, point by point, the bizarre representative of a bizarre world, with his bizarre claims that are yet believed by hundreds of millions, is to be admired. One might think it is easy to deal with what would appear to be such crazy claims, but it terms out to be hard, because 99% of the Western world has decided it would rather believe palpalbe nonsense and lies, or at least pretend to, in the hope that by pretending, somehow it would all come true.
I do wish, however, that part of what this perfectly sane (by his Islamic lights) and at the same time perfectly crazy representative of a belief-system who views the universe through the prism of Islam, the Qur'an and the Big Book of Hadith, and the Perfect Man whose perfectness we know all about, were true. When he says that the "enemies of Islam" -- meaning those who look steadily at the actual contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira (which are becoming a tad more difficult to hide from Infidel view) and then begin to take note of the history of Jihad-conquest and subjugation of all non-Muslims -- "control vast media resources such as television networks, news agencies, newspapers, radio stations, Internet sites, magazines, music companies, film studios, and publishing houses" one only wishes it were true. A handful of Internet sites, possibly. But what newspapers? Le Monde? The Guardian? The New Duranty Times? The Bandar Beacon? What radio stations -- the ones such as the BBC that are handmaidens of Al-Jazeera in their coverage? What television networks in the Western world have not bent over backwards in their desire to curry favor with Muslims? What news agencies? Reuters, Agence France Press? What magazines, what music companies, what film studios? In 1942, Hollywood made 300 anti-Nazi films -- with the encouragemtn of the War Office. We are in a war now, a war that is carefully unrecognized -- that is, war is being made on us, and will continue to be made on us by those who take their Islam seriously enough, and possess the wherewithal to conduct Jihad, by whatever means are available. Has there been a single explicitly anti-Jihad movie? Do you know of any that have depicted, say, an agent of Islam burrowing his way deep into the government, possibly with the help of those ex-ambassadors and others who have for so long who have been on the Saudi take, directly or indirectly, or the role of some sinister pseudo-academic figure, with a well-funded operation very much reminiscent of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, run by lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, always ready to offer his lengthy resume designed to show what an authority that authority is, and always ready to set straight members of the government, and the laziest and most unquestioning of reporters who might actually go to him to "find out about Islam."
There's a movie here. Who wants to produce it? I'll write it -- and it won't be a kinder, gentler sort of movie. Let's start that production of war movies soon; it is getting on to 1943, and we need a little more oomph. designed to raise up another generation of ill-informed reporters and others who might be fooled when they go to consult lean, mean, jogging John Esposito. They conduct psychological operations with their media to depict a negative image of Islam and to undermine the Islamic movement.
Mr. Spencer, in his elegant and well written editorial above, sez:
"...I don't hate Islam, Hamid. I hate the institutionalized subjugation of woman..."
Its okay to hate what we don't love, Mr. Spencer.
Its okay to hate the cult and we are here to fight it.
Didn't Oriana Fallaci say something similar?
Keep up the good fight, Robert. I support you 110% at The Dumb Ox.
All the best,
D. Ox
http://thomistic.blogspot.com
Islam IS the enemy. It is a way of life, a idea, and it can be rejected.
BTW, Gitmo is a pretty good place to be and the food is good.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1163436,00.html
Re: Tehran Times calls for "info jihad" to counter "Zionist-controlled media" and "Islamophobia"
It is the media that is the problem for Islam. The Communications Revolution (especially the Internet) is exposing Islam as a religion of intolerance.
The inventions from the Lands of the Infidels: the computers, the Internet, the cell-phones (invented at Motorola-Istael) etc, are the frightining Zionist-Boggey-Man of the jihaddists and an "info jihad" is required to destroy the Infidels whose inventions are exposing Islam as a religion of intolerance.
(BTW, the Moslem charge of "Islamaphobia" is starting to look like Rodney Dangerfield's "I Get No Respect" act. It's like watching Rodney (dressed in a Burka) blow up a Mosque and complain, "I get no respect, no respect at all...")
Mr. Spencer, Television, & Hugh-
Bravo.
Kudos.
And spot on.
Respectively.
This is either reverse psychology from Mr. Mouthpiece from Teheran for the religion of [chop the infidel dogs to] pieces, or greater stupidity than usual from a spokeswhore for the Imamate (the Shi'ite version of the Caliphate).
Maybe characters like this apologist for terrorists think that the all-too-few newspapers which printed the Mo-toons represent real resistence in the Western media to Islam's incessant propaganda lies, instead of an all-too-rare example of the tentative truth-telling about this killer cult detectible in the pansified press and self-blinded visual media.
But let's forward this "psyops" threat to the NSA/CIA/FBI etc., and hope that they respond to it with what is here feared by the ayatollahs: serious anti-jihadist cyber/media efforts to expose this creed of the pedophile "prophet" and its unrepentantly terrorist-spawning texts.
One suggestion I have for Robert's post:
He outlines a 5-point plan:
1. Stop committing violent acts.
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when you think no non-Muslims are around.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.
However, what about the many Muslims who are not doing #1 and #2, and about whom we have no evidence they are doing #3?
I think Robert should create a 5-point plan for these Muslims as well, since I doubt the Muslims who are doing #1 and #2 would heed the above 5 points.
Just who really cares what the mo's think and say any more. I think I wil go to Walmarts in my mo turbin bomb tee.
Part of the Isamaphobia Act at the Wynn Casino (and Rio) in Las Vegas....
"I tell ya I get no respect. I'm so ugly when I open the door during halloween, the kids give ME candy!"
"A Muslim can never be a terrorist because terrorism is haram, which means forbidden in Islam."
Reminds me that, in medicine, hospital administrators used to say, "We don't make errors, because our policy is not to make any errors." Then they documented that medical errors kill like 100,000 people a year.
To their credit, hospitals recognized this as a problem, even if only a marketing one, and are doing something about it. Can't say the same for the Muslim community.
I won't hold my breath to see "Stop the Muslim-on-Muslim Killing" demonstrations and campaign.
The enemy has a name:
World Islamic Front (WIF)
qaeda, hezbollah, taweed-e-islami,hamas,islamic brotherhood are just local branches of the WIF.
Hamid said:
This very statement of Hamid's is itself sophisticated info war. Why? Because he pretends to be telling the truth, but in writing these words does he give a hoot about their truth really? Or does he care only about prevailing in what he sees as a mere war of wills, a battle that, for him and for his culture, has little to do with truth? Isn't it the closed culture, not the open one, that most often conceives of information only as a tool of war and domination?
Hamid writes almost as if Muslims were innocent of info war, when in fact the suppression of free debate among them makes info jihad -- as in compelled or indoctrinated propaganda -- much more prevalent among them than among non-Muslims in the West.
Hamid's words are the ultimate in info war: to camouflage his own culture's reliance on indoctrination and its crushing of free debate in most countries where Muslims represent a majority of the population, Hamid throws a bucket of slander over his opponent the West, attributing to the West the very things about his own culture that must be shameful and embarrassing to him. So that a bystander to the debate may suddenly have trouble distinguishing the two sides and say to himself: "Perhaps they are both totalitarian? Are they both crushers of free speech who rely equally on info war and equally disdain truth?" By covering the West with the slander of being like his own culture, Hamid gives his own side a cover for the shame of living in a closed spirit of backwardness and violence. And he provides a crutch for the wilful delusion that there is no need to escape that backward culture. - Omar
Hey scroll down a bit for the Ph.D. and J.D. stuff! Duh! Scroll, baby, scroll.
http://thomistic.blogspot.com
I refer readers all the time to Jihad Watch, for good reason!
Spencer is on top of the jihad news. Period.
Dear Islamquest,
Can you get 75% of your fellow believers behind you? Where are the outspoken critics of terrorism?
Do you think we could get Jill Carroll to go over to Teheran and go to work in Hamid's anti-Islamophobe effort? She might have to compromise her loyalty to the Sunni Arabs but Teheran is worth an Ashura. Anyhow, I think she looks better in a burqa.
Thus, the islamic world must step up its information projection in order to win the info war. muslims must do info jihad. In other words, muslims must bullshit until the cows come home.
Hugh,
For those too young to remember, it would be worth reviewing some of those anti-Nazi films of the 1940's to see just how similar the challenges of that information war were--and how skillfully the U.S. deconstructed the enemy. Frank Capra's brilliant series, "Why We Fight," deconstructed this exact same argument the Iranian Muslims are now using, used back then by the Nazis: "[What do the Nazis do?] Propaganda, to confuse, divide, soften up the intended victims:....Scream you're abused! Shout you're oppressed! The world is wrong, you're right. Above all, use their free speech and free press to destroy them." Sound familiar at all?
Back then, we had the enemy's number, we dissected their propaganda and lies and held them up to constant ridicule. But that's because we weren't so "sensitive" to the charge of bigotry back then. We didn't give a damn what the enemy's regimes and chief ideologists thought of us. We were not trying to win the "hearts and minds" of the Nazi Party or Japanese militarists--just get them to surrender. Unlike back then, today we have this hopeful fantasy that if we only put forward the right message and the right "face," then fundamentalist Muslims worldwide will like America. But that can't happen as long as a plausible argument can be made that Western-style democracy and fundamentalist Islam are philosophically immiscible--"fried snowballs," just as Leszek Kolakowski once described Gorbachev's fantasy of "democratic Marxism". And we know how that mixture finally precipitated out--the only way acceptable to Americans: We won. They lost.
Whether or not one is 'phobic' of Islam is irrelevant.
There are two things any lay person need do to comprehend Islam. First read through Kuranic texts. Secondly, talk to someone from a country which has been at war with islamic jihadists (Hindus from India can be especially helpful) and discuss at length Islam's history of violence and mayhem--they'll tell you all about it....unlike the Muslims who won't or else will edit the historical lessons involved .
Anyone who values human life should be absolutely horrified by what they learn about Islam through doing either of the above.