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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Is fear of Islam unfounded?

Feb 27, 2014 1:34 pm By Robert Spencer

QuranRifle2Reza Varjavand is associate professor of economics and finance at the Graham School of management at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. In this short piece at Iranian.com, he asks a common-sense question that has been obscured by the fog of jihad-enabling propaganda pumped out endlessly by the likes of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Reza Aslan’s Aslan Media. His title, “Is Fear of Islam Unfounded?,” is of course prompted by the use of the term “Islamophobia,” which literally means fear of Islam; however, I think the best response to the atrocities he mentions is not fear, but resoluteness in the defense of freedom and human rights.

“Is Fear of Islam unfounded?,” by Reza Varjavand for Iranian.com, February 26:

Once again, a violent attack by Muslim extremists astounded the world, they murdered a number of innocent students in Nigeria just because they were attending school and learning what their attackers called Western education! Is this the religion whose prophet allegedly said “Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave”? I think the world have seen enough images of atrocities committed under the name of Islam: Blown-up buildings, burning cars, beheading, flogging, arresting innocent people for no reason, butchering of a British soldier in a street of London, Boston bombing, Train bombing in Madrid, fatal shooting of 13 people by army major Nidal Hassan, public executions in street, death threat against, or assassination of, writers or those who express their opinions just to name a few.

Sometimes I ask myself is this what Islam is all about?

In light of all of these, we, Muslims, keep telling others how peaceful our religion is which reminds me of that famed Wendy’s “where is the beef” commercial. Aren’t Muslim influential leaders guilty of implicit complacency by remaining silent and not publically condemning such atrocious acts or taking a firm position against them?

We may not be able to change this madness; at least we can say something about it.

Indeed. Stopping the victimhood manipulation and working for serious, genuine reform would be a good place to start.

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Comments

  1. Christian A. Beltram says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 1:52 pm

    No fear of Islam is not unfounded but I agree that the correct to Islam’s advance by all good people who want to save the world from tyranny should be resoluteness.

    • Graham Turner says

      Feb 28, 2014 at 4:35 am

      I am 75 and confined to a wheelchair. Has anyone any practical advice on what I could do to diminish the threat that militant Islam presents to the UK (where I live), and most of the civilised West? Thank you

      • Mulakush says

        Feb 28, 2014 at 10:40 am

        I am sorry to hear that your are son confined at this age in your life. But, I am so happy to note that you still have that fiery fighting spirit. Here are a few suggestions:
        -Keep pestering your local politicians. Send copies of Jihad watch as proof of your concerns.
        -Keep in tough with local groups who are active in this area.
        -If you can, get help for apostates and abused women of Islam. There are many. Once they are free, get them to write a book about their lives and liberation.

        The real fight is political and in the realm of ideas. It is easier these days if you have internet. Use these tools to develop connections and influence.

      • gravenimage says

        Mar 1, 2014 at 3:17 pm

        Graham Turner wrote:

        I am 75 and confined to a wheelchair. Has anyone any practical advice on what I could do to diminish the threat that militant Islam presents to the UK (where I live), and most of the civilised West? Thank you
        ………………………

        Graham, I’m sorry to hear about your straightened circumstances, but there is a great deal you can do.

        You can comment here and on other Anti-Jihad sites, you can educate people by commenting on Jihad-related stories on mainstream sites, you can run your own Anti-Jihad blog (a number of posters here do), you can write letters to the editor, you can write your PM and MPs and mayors and other leaders about Jihad and Sharia issues that come up; depending on your skills, you might offer to do computer or clerical work for some Anti-Jihad groups. Again depending on your skills and inclinations, you might be able to speak before groups—using a wheelchair should be no impediment.

        There are plenty of older Anti-Jihadists with health or mobility problems—but even the most severe should not prevent you from making a contribution.

        Remember, there are *many* ways to fight.

  2. citycat says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    One thing that “Islam is about” is reinforced peer pressure, generation after generation brainwashed from the cradle.

    What chance do they have?

    Islam is peaceful if you call surrender of one’s being under threat of death as being peaceful.
    A dead cow is peaceful.

    Peaceful?

    Peace is an experience and not the silence from fear.

    Peace? What peace? The peace after your orgasm?

    What peace? What peace?

    • Poseidon says

      Feb 28, 2014 at 2:01 pm

      Well, it`s not peace at all, it`s submission. Aggression is weakness, so Islam is not strong. It`s power is the one of hate, so without a real future. The only problem is us. We are far to friendly, caus we think, they behave in such stupid ways, they must be so poor-spirited that we just turn aside out of sheer astonoshment and they proceed…

  3. Champ says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    Yes, we should fear islam …

    In the same way we fear all things dangerous and evil.

    That said, our hearts should not be overrun by fear:

    “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” — Psalm 23:4

    • EYESOPEN says

      Feb 27, 2014 at 5:39 pm

      Champ wrote:
      “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” — Psalm 23:4

      And the slightly modified version:
      Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil – for I am the meanest SOB in the valley!

      Just keeping you on your toes, Champ! {;o)

      • Champ says

        Feb 27, 2014 at 5:43 pm

        lol! EYESOPEN! 😀

  4. King Dave Newsvine says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 2:40 pm

    It’s one thing to hear this from a weathy American Muslim, another from a Muslim whose neighbors are Boko Haram or al Shabab. One is a bit more disingenous. In otherwords, this man would be killed in Boko Haram’s stronghold and other orthodox Islamic regions to numerous to mention.
    But I’m glad he wrote this

    • mariam rove says

      Feb 27, 2014 at 2:59 pm

      yes. you are correct. he would have been killed. M

      • Kado says

        Mar 1, 2014 at 7:35 am

        He still might be.

  5. duh_swami says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    ‘Living in fear of the Religion of Peace’…The Movie…Based on the true stories of millions of victims.

  6. RCCA says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 3:40 pm

    There was a comment by a Muslim on a previous thread explaining all the different groups of Muslims, delineating which ones you can trust and which ones are causing all the problems and you can not trust. He was accusing Robert Spencer of blaming all Muslims for the actions of a few. We’ve heard this many times before.

    It occurred to me that with Christians, Jews, and other religious groups you don’t have to ask what denomination they are, or how religious they are to risk engaging with them or offending them. Regardless of where they fall on the spectrum of observance they are most likely going to be non-violent unless they are very low class, a criminal type or drunk, etc. It’s not hard to figure that out just by looking at the person.

    With Islam you can find doctors, engineers, professors, imams who support jihad terrorism both physically and financially. Clearly that’s a danger and only Muslims can deal with the challenge that Islam presents.

    • Defcon 4 says

      Feb 27, 2014 at 9:35 pm

      “…an only muslims can deal w/the challenge that islam represents.” Yeah let’s leave it up to the muslimes to reform their centuries old death cult of Jew hatred, intolerance, mendacity and fascism. Why don’t you go hug a rainbow, preferably in an islamic state?

  7. London Jim says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 3:42 pm

    That’s Muhammedanism for you, as you well know, duh_swami. ;-(

  8. Wellington says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 4:50 pm

    Trying to rescue Islam from its proclivity for violence and intolerance is rather like trying to rescue Nazism from its anti-Semitism or Marxism from its antipathy towards the upper and middle classes. It’s a fool’s errand for many reasons, not the least of which being that all totalitarian ideologies (and Islam is very much a totalitarian ideology) single out certain groups of human beings for second-class status or death. Nazism does this with ethnic groups. Marxism with socio-economic groups and Islam with non-Muslims (or fellow Muslims who are just not proper enough Muslims). This is the true source of the evil inherent in EVERY totalitarian ideology, i.e., the singling out of certain human beings for subservience or termination in this world. Islam excels at this and for this reason above all reasons is therefore malevolent.

  9. pongidae rex says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 5:23 pm

    Islam wears the shroud of religion like a wolf wears the skin of a slaughtered sheep to stealthily enter the herd and pretend thats its intentions are peaceful. Then…

    Islam is the next wave of national fascism, pure and simple. An extreme opinion? Look at the human rights record of every self-described ‘Islamic State’.

    The failure of the Western news media to call out Islamists for what they are is a disgrace to the profession of journalism.

    • voegelinian says

      Feb 27, 2014 at 6:57 pm

      “Islam is the next wave of national fascism…”

      The next wave of international fascism.

      • Defcon 4 says

        Feb 27, 2014 at 9:40 pm

        Yep that really is the truth of the matter lemon-lime. The ummah doesn’t and never has respected national boundaries. Timurlane/Tamerlane freely killed luke-warm muslimes regardless of the fact that they resided in islamic states.

  10. pdxnag says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 5:27 pm

    See also: Who Is to Blame for “Islamophobia” in the UK? (gatestone.org)

    “So, how can we Muslims blame the British public for fearing for their underage girls when Muslim men keep getting arrested and convicted for grooming white girls into sex rings?”

    I ask, how can the author remain a Muslim?

    • voegelinian says

      Feb 28, 2014 at 2:05 pm

      Some valiantly (but, I’m afraid vainly) try to remind us that a “phobia” is a medical diagnosis with specific signs and symptoms, and that such a technical scientific context rules out its use in political propaganda. Well, in a perfect word, yeah. But the whole problem we face is that public rhetoric (a dignified endeavor as Cicero and Thomas Jefferson knew; indeed the very fact that “rhetoric” has acquired negative connotations in modern times indicates the corrosion) has become hampered by a prevalent neurosis which, for want of a better term, I call PC MC. And in this corrupted atmosphere, terms like “Islamophobia” — piggybacking (pun intended) on an earlier phase in the advancement of mainstream PC MC when all substantive criticism and most witty satire of homosexuality became nearly verboten with the help of the term “Homophobia” — can be bandied about, can exert cachet, and can influence the public discourse on the problem of Islam by enabling the continued Orwellian tendencies to protect Islam under the guise of respecting “human rights” (the rights, that is, of a strong-arming Minority whose suffering must be cause by our “white Western bigotry”). “Homophobia” was probably the first misuse of the clinical psychological term phobia — at least for the purposes of ideological propaganda.

      A much more benign — and cheekier — misuse occurred in 1920, when pioneer jazz saxophonist Rudy Wiedoff (1893-1940) put out an album punning on the clinical term popularized by Sigmund Freud, “sexophobia”: Saxophobia.

  11. nelly2004 says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 5:32 pm

    Someone has to have the guts to go out on the world stage and demand that Islam be reformed. The koran states that Muslims must kill, enslave or convert by the sword all who are not Muslim in perpetuity. No other religion demands this. That is why “moderate muslims” never condemn jihadists because the book that they believe is the direct word of Allah supports jihadists.
    The koran supports the jihadists and if all these cowardly leaders keep feeding the crocodile there will be never ending bloodshed.

    • Wellington says

      Feb 27, 2014 at 5:41 pm

      With respect, nelly 2004, Islam can’t be reformed. Many regular commenters here at JW (myself included) already know this. After all, reforming a totalitarian ideology (e.g., Islam) has a definite oxymoronic element about it.

      • southeuropean says

        Feb 27, 2014 at 6:04 pm

        Islam…what a crime that is. I bet that even if the question of – does afterlife heaven or hell exist,is finally answered by some science,the culture of predator and fascist Islam will still survive on the grounds of common evil political ideology towards the inferior kuffar. This is no religion…this is fascism.

  12. pdxnag says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 5:51 pm

    What are the consequences of rejecting an invitation to accept Islam? Doesn’t it include death, according to Sharia law?

    Can you distinguish the rejection of Islam from a Muslim demand that you answer why you fear Islam? (It is an implicit demand in a charge of Islamophobia.) That is, isn’t this unfounded-fear campaign much like an invitation to Islam, which I believe inherently carries with it a Sharia-sanctioned penalty of death for refusing the invitation?

    I deem the offer itself as a mortal threat.

  13. tjhawk says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 6:43 pm

    I don’t like framing the question in terms of fear.

    Is concern of islam unfounded?
    Is disgust with islam unfounded?
    Is defense of freedom unfounded?
    Is hostility to tyranny unfounded?
    Is rejection of bigoted dogma unfounded?

    I refuse to fear islam

  14. mortimer says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 6:56 pm

    “We may not be able to change this madness; at least we can say something about it.”

    Well, you just did something: you spoke out and admitted there is a problem in Islam that causes violence.

    What can be done to correct Islam? Nothing, because Islam was ‘perfected’ by Allah. The question now is ‘Who is Allah?’ Is Allah real or was he just a figment of Mohammed’s imagination?

    Reza Varjavand now has an opportunity to investigate the origins of Islam and decide if there is any reason to believe in a cult that produces such devastation and carnage. If there is no basis in history to believe in Islam, then it is a damaging hoax that should be abandoned…and that AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

  15. Tommy Peters says

    Feb 27, 2014 at 6:57 pm

    It’s all Gutenberg’s fault. Seriously, religions were oral traditions until then, where the flow was controlled. When their books were replicated, the actions of the founders were in print, curtailing the power of the spoken word. In essence, what the writer (presumably an adherent) missed is juxtaposing the life conduct of the founder, with his.

    • gravenimage says

      Mar 1, 2014 at 3:05 pm

      Tommy Peters wrote:

      It’s all Gutenberg’s fault. Seriously, religions were oral traditions until then, where the flow was controlled. When their books were replicated, the actions of the founders were in print, curtailing the power of the spoken word. In essence, what the writer (presumably an adherent) missed is juxtaposing the life conduct of the founder, with his.
      ………………………………..

      Tommy, Islam was every bit as vicious before the widespread use of the printed word as after. Muslim conquests both proceeded and followed the availability of mass-printed Qur’ans.

      Moreover, to this day illiteracy is rife in Dar-al-Islam. The truth is that there are multiple ways that the savagery of Islamic texts are disseminated—in the home, in the Mosque, in the Madrassa, among Jihadists, and only additionally via the printed text itself or via the internet.

  16. Bill C. says

    Feb 28, 2014 at 1:59 am

    This gentleman is either willfully blind (in which case he should be dismissed as another faux apologist) or a fool (in which case he should grow eyes in the back of his head).

    Either way, if this is what it took for him to speak, he would be dismissed.

    • Bill C. says

      Feb 28, 2014 at 2:01 am

      Ooops…meant “should”, not ” would”. iPad auto-corrected a typo…

  17. Wally says

    Feb 28, 2014 at 8:20 am

    Islam cannot be reformed because all the violent teachings are in the primary sources of the religion (Quran and Sunnah). And quite frankly there is no reason for the west to try and reform Islam.
    What can be reformed though is our countrie’s attitude towards Islam. Why can’t US protect its constitution? Why does the US give money for the building and restoration of mosques? Why can’t the media be honest about Islam? Not harsh, not favoring, just honest. Why do we allow our children’s history books to be rewritten to make Christianity and Judaism evil and corrupt and make Islam peacefully and profound? Why are we spending billions of dollars in two countries who are setting up Sharia constitutions?

    • Jacksonl03 says

      Feb 28, 2014 at 6:12 pm

      All this talk of reform I think misses the point. Reform or rather change in attitude and conduct will not occur so long as ignorance prevails midst the Muslim hordes and in the West.

      By and large truly educated Muslims would ignore the awful crap in the Koran even if they continued to label themselves Muslim just as the vast majority of Christians and Jews ignore the very similar crap in the bible. There will always be the fringe element in both camps, of course.

      As it stands the Muslim power elite are not interested in change that educates the Muslim masses since lack of education, that is to say ignorance of the real world as known through science, history, the arts, etcetera, etcetera is the source of their power. In the West it is ignorance of the true nature and aims of Islam power clans along with the Progressives notion of “fairness” that prevents rational action to neutralize Islam or to at least recognize and act effectively.

  18. AlhaM says

    Feb 28, 2014 at 9:51 am

    Written for a western audience of course. The good Chicago doctor must know better.

  19. kbrockm says

    Feb 28, 2014 at 12:14 pm

    Islam is entering its final throes of death, which will be violent and contradictory, much like the religion itself.

  20. cheekturner says

    Feb 28, 2014 at 4:23 pm

    Islamophobia… Fear of Islam? Well I’m no Islamophobe! What scares me more are the Islamophobes of Downing St., Fleet St. and aunty Beeb.
    Let the jihadist cowards keep up their rampage, for the more they do the greater the backlash and the swifter their complete demise. They think they can fight? They’ve seen nothing yet! We are gonna get you desert goatherds, and soon.

  21. Smart guy says

    Feb 28, 2014 at 10:12 pm

    Fascism actually means Race and Nation. It does not mean dictatorship but it has come to mean dictatorship.
    Mussolini was a Marxist editor so that Fascism is a form of
    Communism. Fasicsts are atheists and evolutionists they believe that biology trumps religion and philosophy.
    They believe that higher evolved people will choose a higher
    evolved religion or philosophy whereas lower evolved people will choose a lower evolved religion.
    If people wish to evolve they will abandon old time religions
    and choose a higher evolved religion. Civilization is the result of evolution, barbarism is anti-evolutionism.
    The American left are not evolutionsts instead they believe that nature made all people equal. This foolish belief will lead to the disappearence of civilization.

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