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Jihad Watch

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

Mehdi Hasan peddles Islam for dummies

Aug 22, 2014 10:38 pm By Robert Spencer

mehdi-hasanUK media darling Mehdi Hasan frequently dissembles about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah to justify hatred, violence and supremacism, and this piece is a particularly clever example, chock full of his trademark diversions and sleights of hand. Here he extrapolates from the apparent fact that two jihad terrorists ordered copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies to argue that “the 1,400-year-old Islamic faith has little to do with the modern jihadist movement.”

He claims, you see, that the fact that these jihadis ordered these books shows that they didn’t know anything about the faith for which they were going to fight. Of course, it doesn’t actually mean that at all. It could mean that, but it could also mean that Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed wanted convenient guides that would help them explain Islam to others, or to explain clearly and simply to friends and family why they had chosen the path they had. They could have wanted these books to send to their hard-drinking, sinful, irreligious cousins, in an effort to recruit them to devout Islam and jihad. They may have ordered these books for any number of reasons; Mehdi Hasan seizes on only one of them and runs with it, larding his thesis with irrelevancies in order to give it more heft.

“What the Jihadists Who Bought ‘Islam For Dummies’ on Amazon Tell Us About Radicalisation,” by Mehdi Hasan, Huffington Post, August 21, 2014:

Can you guess which books the wannabe jihadists Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed ordered online from Amazon before they set out from Birmingham to fight in Syria last May? A copy of Milestones by the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb? No. How about Messages to the World: the Statements of Osama Bin Laden? Guess again. Wait, The Anarchist Cookbook, right? Wrong.

Sarwar and Ahmed, both of whom pleaded guilty to terrorism offences last month, purchased Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. You could not ask for better evidence to bolster the argument that the 1,400-year-old Islamic faith has little to do with the modern jihadist movement. The swivel-eyed young men who take sadistic pleasure in bombings and beheadings may try to justify their violence with recourse to religious rhetoric – think the killers of Lee Rigby screaming “Allahu Akbar” at their trial; think of Islamic State beheading the photojournalist James Foley as part of its “holy war” – but religious fervour isn’t what motivates most of them.

In 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5’s behavioural science unit, was leaked to the Guardian. It revealed that, “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The analysts concluded that “a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation”, the newspaper said.

This was just wishful thinking on the part of British authorities — part of their larger unreality regarding the jihad threat. The one thing that we see again and again is that a devout commitment to Islam is what jihad terrorists all share. This is the same British government, remember, that has worked with Islamic supremacists it mistook for “moderates”; funded liars who exaggerated claims of Muslim victimhood; and for years ignored an Islamic supremacist takeover of public schools for fear of being called “Islamophobic.” It claims that jihad terrorists are generally “religious novices,” but would this clueless and compromised British government, so anxious to appease Islamic supremacists that it banned Pamela Geller and me from entering the country for saying that Islam had a doctrine of violence against unbelievers (which it obviously does), know a Muslim “novice” from a “zealot” in any case? Later on in his article, Mehdi Hasan does his best to obscure precisely that distinction.

For more evidence, read the books of the forensic psychiatrist and former CIA officer Marc Sageman; the political scientist Robert Pape; the international relations scholar Rik Coolsaet; the Islamism expert Olivier Roy; the anthropologist Scott Atran. They have all studied the lives and backgrounds of hundreds of gun-toting, bomb-throwing jihadists and they all agree that Islam isn’t to blame for the behaviour of such men (and, yes, they usually are men).

Robert Pape cooked his data to minimize the Islamic aspects of suicide terror; Sageman likewise ignores mountains of data to arrive at his fantastic claim that jihadis are merely bored youths. The others just offer more of the same: elaborate studies to try to establish that what you’re seeing with your lying eyes — Islamic jihadis screaming “Allahu akbar” as they saw off someone’s head — is really something else altogether, that has nothing to do with Islam. The problem with all such studies is that they necessarily ignore the explicit statements of jihadis and Islamic supremacists themselves to the contrary, such as these:

“Jihad was a way of life for the Pious Predecessors (Salaf-us-Salih), and the Prophet (SAWS) was a master of the Mujahideen and a model for fortunate inexperienced people. The total number of military excursions which he (SAWS) accompanied was 27. He himself fought in nine of these; namely Badr; Uhud, Al-Muraysi, The Trench, Qurayzah, Khaybar, The Conquest of Makkah, Hunayn and Taif . . . This means that the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to go out on military expeditions or send out an army at least every two months.” — Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, Join the Caravan, p. 30

“If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.” — Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

“Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 defendants

“Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfil God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” — Taliban terrorist Baitullah Mehsud

“Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad

“So step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad.” — Little Rock, Arkansas terrorist murderer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

“And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad.” — Texas terrorist bomber Khalid Aldawsari

Instead they point to other drivers of radicalisation: moral outrage, disaffection, peer pressure, the search for a new identity, for a sense of belonging and purpose. As Atran pointed out in testimony to the US Senate in March 2010: “. . . what inspires the most lethal terrorists in the world today is not so much the Quran or religious teachings as a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends, and through friends, eternal respect and remembrance in the wider world”. He described wannabe jihadists as “bored, under­employed, overqualified and underwhelmed” young men for whom “jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer . . . thrilling, glorious and cool”.

Here again, the statements of the jihadis themselves contradict this, but in any case it is not the either/or proposition that Hasan makes it out to be. Jihadis may be motivated by moral outrage, disaffection, peer pressure, the search for a new identity, or the search for a sense of belonging and purpose, as well as by the Qur’an and Sunnah and their exhortations to jihad. Or they may find the answer to their moral outrage, disaffection, search for a new identity, and search for a sense of belonging and purpose in jihad. Hasan sets up a false dichotomy, as if someone who is motivated to go on jihad by the Qur’an and Sunnah must be absolutely clear of other motivations, or else he must not be motivated by the Qur’an and Sunnah at all. The real world doesn’t work this way.

Or, as Chris Morris, the writer and director of the 2010 black comedy Four Lions – which satirised the ignorance, incompetence and sheer banality of British Muslim jihadists – once put it: “Terrorism is about ideology, but it’s also about berks.”

Morris is thus saying that ideology is a factor — but immediately after quoting him in this, Hasan denies exactly that:

Berks, not martyrs. “Pathetic figures”, to quote the former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove, not holy warriors. If we want to tackle jihadism, we need to stop exaggerating the threat these young men pose and giving them the oxygen of publicity they crave, and start highlighting how so many of them lead decidedly un-Islamic lives.

When he lived in the Philippines in the 1990s, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described as “the principal architect” of the 11 September attacks by the 9/11 Commission, once flew a helicopter past a girlfriend’s office building with a banner saying “I love you”.

Human beings are not as one-dimensional as Hasan is implying. I quoted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed above. Here is the quote again: “Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” Does the fact that he was once in love mean that he doesn’t mean this statement? That is ridiculous.

His nephew Ramzi Yousef, sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, also had a girlfriend and, like his uncle, was often spotted in Manila’s red-light district.

Anwar al-Awlaki visited prostitutes as well. Does this mean that KSM, Ramzi Yousef, and Awlaki were not really acting in the name of Islam when they claimed to be? That doesn’t follow at all. The fact that they went to prostitutes either means that they didn’t believe Islam forbade them dalliances with Infidel women, or that they didn’t live up to their religion’s teachings, which doesn’t mean they didn’t believe in those teachings.

The FBI agent who hunted Yousef said that he “hid behind a cloak of Islam”.

Yeah, and Barack Obama’s government classified Nidal Hasan’s jihad murders at Fort Hood as “workplace violence,” and Obama just claimed that the Islamic State had nothing to do with Islam. This is the kind of thing that American (and British) officials say; but repeating it doesn’t make it so.

Eyewitness accounts suggest the 9/11 hijackers were visiting bars and strip clubs in Florida and Las Vegas in the run-up to the attacks.

Sure, because they knew they were going to commit an act of jihad that would outweigh all their bad deeds. KSM, Ramzi Yousef, and Awlaki may have thought something like the same thing when they were out and about on their midnight creeps.

The Spanish neighbours of Hamid Ahmidan, convicted for his role in the Madrid train bombings of 2004, remember him “zooming by on a motorcycle with his long-haired girlfriend, a Spanish woman with a taste for revealing outfits”, according to press reports.

Here again, human beings are just not as one-dimensional as Hasan seems to assume (at least for the purposes of this article). Hamid Ahmidan’s girlfriend liked revealing outfits, and therefore — Hasan would have us believe — Ahmidan was not acting in the name of Islam when he participated in the Madrid train bombings. That simply does not follow.

Religion does, of course, play a role: in particular, a perverted and politicised form of Islam acts as an “emotional vehicle” (to quote Atran), as a means of articulating anger and mobilising masses in the Muslim-majority world. But to pretend that the danger comes only from the devout could cost lives. Whatever the Daily Mail or Michael Gove might have you believe, long beards and flowing robes aren’t indicators of radicalisation; ultra-conservative or reactionary views don’t automatically lead to violent acts. Muslims aren’t all Islamists, Islamists aren’t all jihadists and jihadists aren’t all devout. To claim otherwise isn’t only factually inaccurate; it could be fatal.

Nobody thinks that Muslims are all Islamists, or Islamists are all jihadists. The claim that jihadists are not all devout remains unproven. But what is this about how such thinking can “cost lives” or be “fatal”? Apparently he is suggesting that innocent Muslims could be victimized by the racist, overzealous, Islamophobic police of Islamic supremacist victimhood fantasy. What is much more likely to cost lives and be fatal is the complacent assumption that Islam does nothing to motivate jihad terrorists. That can lead to authorities being blind to jihad threats from sources they assume to be benign — which is just what we see in Britain today.

Consider Four Lions. Omar is the nice, clean-shaven, thoroughly modern ringleader of a gang of wannabe suicide bombers; he reads Disney stories to his son, sings Toploader’s “Dancing in the Moonlight” with his mates and is pretty uninterested in Muslim beliefs or practices. Meanwhile, his brother Ahmed is a religious fundamentalist, a big-bearded Salafist who can’t bear to make eye contact with women and thinks laughter is un-Islamic but who, crucially, has no time for violence or jihad. The police raid the home of peaceful Ahmed, rather than Omar, allowing Omar to escape and launch an attack on . . . a branch of Boots.

It’s only a movie, Mehdi.

Back in the real world, as would-be jihadists buy books such as Islam for Dummies, ministers and security chiefs should venture online and order DVDs of Four Lions. They might learn a thing or two.

Maybe they wouldn’t. They certainly won’t learn anything from listening to Mehdi Hasan.

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Comments

  1. somehistory says

    Aug 22, 2014 at 10:44 pm

    Tried reading the article this guy wrote for the huffingpost, but it’s just too stupid. A waste of time.

    Only Robert Spencer’s comments make sense.

    • Tommy Guns says

      Aug 26, 2014 at 11:16 am

      The book is aptly named, after all, the Koran and Islam, is in fact FOR dummies!!!! LOL!!

  2. No Fear says

    Aug 22, 2014 at 11:04 pm

    One only has to read the Quran and Hadith and Mohammed’s biographies to see where the inspiration for beheading kuffar (non-muslims) comes from.
    Mohammed was a gangster. The Quran is his manifesto.

    • Myxlplik says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 9:11 am

      Islamic apologists keep running into their biggest speed bump, which is the behavior of their Prophet. At this point the mental gymnastics required to explain away all of the sex slavery, genocide, torture, and mutilation as unIslamic is just getting really silly.

  3. Wellington says

    Aug 22, 2014 at 11:26 pm

    Oh, now I get it. Sure didn’t before. Any heinous, barbaric action done in the name of Islam can’t possibly be due to Islam, which is, yeah, are you ready for this yet again, a religion of peace, tolerance, wisdom and nobility.

    Guess all those misunderstanders of Islam out there (e.g., the over 80% in Egypt in the Pew Research Poll of 2010 who asserted that Muslims who convert to another faith should be killed and that adulterers should be stoned to death) just don’t get it. They just don’t get what a wonderful, kissy-face, huggy-bear religion Islam really is. So sad. Extra sad that such wonderful news hasn’t been relayed to, let’s see, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, et al.

    Well, never too late to learn, now is it? Guess all those negative ideas I had about Islam were simply rooted in deep ignorance. Hey, what else could it have been? I certainly am a changed man, now that the likes of Mehdi Hasan has set me straight.

    And I promise that whenever I hear of other Islamic terrorists ordering “Islam for Dummies” or “The Koran for Dummies” it will simply bolster my esteem for that great and noble religion of Islam. Really, I promise. Cross my heart (oops, better forgo the “cross” part, eh?) and hope to——-gee, is it “live” or “die?’ Very confusing which to choose here since Muslims love death and non-Muslims love life—–but wait, I’m probably just ignorantly ascribing something to Islam which really isn’t part of Islam.

    You know, I’ll bet the real truth is that Valentine’s Day actually originated in the Islamic world and all those misunderstanders of Islam who claim they’re Muslim and hate Valentine’s Day and romantic love are… and are… and are….

    P.S. Oh, btw, please ignore things like Mohammed saying “I have been made victorious with terror” (Bukhari Hadith 4.52.220) or the Koran asserting that believers should “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (Sura 9:5) or the Koran also stating that war should be waged until “all religion is with Allah” (Sura 8:39). These are just distractions which prevent a proper understanding of the great and

    • Jay Boo says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 12:30 am

      I just watch an ISIS drive-by killing video.
      This is the real Islam.
      Dirty dog Muslims.

    • sidney penny says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 4:54 am

      “They have all studied the lives and backgrounds of hundreds of gun-toting, bomb-throwing jihadists and they all agree that Islam isn’t to blame for the behaviour of such men (and, yes, they usually are men).”

      Really Mehdi Hasan

      Nothing to do with Islam?

      How do you explain this?:

      “think of Islamic State beheading the photojournalist James Foley as part of its “holy war”

      Yes, name of one group is Islamic State.

      Obviously THEY think it has to do with Islam.

      How did THEY get that idea?

      Why are Muslims from all over the world going to Iraq and Syria to join them?

      The name of the another group is the Congregation of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad. Obviously THEY too think their group and its deeds have to do with Islam, as Sunnah, Dawah and Jihad are all Islamic concepts.

      How did THEY get this idea?

      Why do people who misunderstand Islam all misunderstand it in exactly the same way?

      Any answers Mehdi Hasan?

    • sidney penny says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 4:57 am

      “So sad. Extra sad that such wonderful news hasn’t been relayed to, let’s see, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, et al.”

      You missed out Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram and a few more in India and Philippines.

  4. Beagle says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 12:19 am

    Saudi Arabia produces thousands of jihadis and shahids because they “lack a well-established religious identity”. Got it.

    Twaddle, but most HuffPo readers will happily buy it. Deny reality until it cuts your head off.

    Nice point-by-point refutation, RS.

  5. Jay Boo says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 12:27 am

    As we watch ever more ISIS drive-by killing videos on the internet and bloodbath butchering of civilians in the name of Allah yet again, let us take a multicultural moment to reflect that despite the disgusting satanic ideology of Islam that was contrived for just this purpose and that all Muslims follow not ALL Muslims are 100% contaminated YET.

    It is hard to believe but true that not all Muslims are shameless disgusting attack dogs without morals or scruples.

    However
    To be a Muslim is to be part of the problem.
    Most Muslims are not ‘peaceful’
    Most are just lying in wait.

    Dirty dogs
    Dirty, dirty, dirty , dogs

    • Wellington says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 12:45 am

      I like the way Robert Spencer has put it, Jay Boo, and that is that if you’re a Muslim and a good person, you have to be a bad Muslim. No one can live Islam to the fullest and be a good human being. It would be absurd to say this about, for instance, a Christian or a Buddhist.

      • Jay Boo says

        Aug 23, 2014 at 3:36 am

        Wellington ,
        In reference to:
        “if you’re a Muslim and a good person, you have to be a bad Muslim”
        It is good that you remember that one. Thanks for the reminder.
        —————————–

        I vaguely remember reading the following — (on Jihad Watch I believe)
        Ask a Muslim if Osama Bin Laden was a ‘good’ Muslim or a ‘bad’ Muslim.
        In term of Islam he was a ‘good’ Muslim.

        The answer one receives might be a clue to the level of vain Islam intoxication vs stealth denial.

        Anyway there is no real separate part of Islam as Radical Islam
        It is all radical in contrast to a peaceful society
        It is merely a matter of degree.

        • Allan says

          Aug 24, 2014 at 1:55 am

          That’s too obvious. They know the non-Muslim world sees Bin Laden as a terrorist, and the Muslim you ask might employ taqqiya in order to protect himself. Instead, ask him what he thinks of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. If he is not historically knowledgeable enough, ask him another less leading question, such as “Which would be a better president of Egypt: Mohammed Morsi or Abdel Fattah el-Sisi?”

        • Jay Boo says

          Aug 24, 2014 at 10:16 am

          Allan
          I agree that Osama Bin Laden would seem to be too obvious for Muslims wishing to appear moderate they would hide behind (stealth & denial)
          The other Muslims are so consumed with Islam ‘s vanity intoxication that they would not be able to help themselves.
          Either way it would help sort out these fanatic liars.

  6. Champ says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 1:05 am

    Yeah, and Barack Obama’s government classified Nidal Hasan’s jihad murders at Fort Hood as “workplace violence,” and Obama just claimed that the Islamic State had nothing to do with Islam. This is the kind of thing that American (and British) officials say; but repeating it doesn’t make it so.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Exactly, Robert …we can always count on honest straight talk from you about islam and company. Quite refreshing given the steady stream of BS fed to us by the MSM and guys like Medhi Hasan, et al.

    • Kenny says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 2:30 am

      Repeating the lie does not make it so, is indeed correct.

      However, repeating the lie often, to as many people as possible and the bigger the lie the better does work. It worked in the 1930’s and it’s working now! It’s working because many are to cowardly to see the truth.

      • Champ says

        Aug 23, 2014 at 3:42 am

        True, Kenny, and your comment reminds me of this quote …

        “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

        ― Adolf Hitler

  7. JIMJFOX says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 1:37 am

    The same Mehdi Hasan who literally believes (to Richard Dawkins’ amazement) muhammad rode to the seven heavens on the buraq and met allah; and to the ‘far mosque’ (claimed to be in Jerusalem by muslims) and back to Mecca in a single night.

    His ‘credibility’ should be challenged with these facts EVERY TIME he opens his idiotic pig’s ass of a mouth.

  8. eric coffinet says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 2:54 am

    Those guys read “dummies” but they understood “dhimmies” … I guess it was a gift !

  9. Johnd says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 2:56 am

    This is like a terrible sick joke. How much longer can the West continue in its state of denial. I hear the clock ticking and its getting louder. Islam is evil and the Western realization of this will be a massive thunderclap. Robert Spencers info in this essay is spot on. Truth may hurt, but so sometimes does cure.

  10. Victor Mc. says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 3:07 am

    A serious leader and part of Britain’s fifth column. He should be under house arrest at the very least.

  11. Richard says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 3:15 am

    Mehdi Hassan is a closet Islamic supremacist , who adheres to the Muslim Brotherhood’s manifesto (The Project) from 1982, to the letter. Hassan’s “non-believers live their lives as cattle…” speech, which can be found on YouTube, should have been the last we heard from this deceitful individual.

  12. paddy says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 4:25 am

    Overheard in a bombed out tea house in downtown Mosul between Mustafa Bin Bonkers and Sheik Yer Booti

    M- ‘Did you read this morning’s paper’?
    S- ‘I thought they were all banned’.
    M- ‘No, no…we now have the IS Daily Record’.
    S- ‘Oh really? I can’t read, anyway…you know that Mus’.
    M- ‘Sorry Shay…I keep forgetting that half the islamic world is illiterate and the other half semi-literate’.
    S- ‘So what’s new’?
    M- ‘Well, apparently the entire population of world has converted to..oops..reverted to falafal islam’.
    S- ‘You mean wahabi’.
    M- ‘Whatever..the caliph is in touch with heads of state worldwide to co-ordinate blowing up the planet’.
    S- ‘I’m not sure my seven wives, thirty children or two sex slaves will be comfortable with that…me, neither’.
    M- ‘You doubt the will of allah’?
    S- ‘NO! ALLAHU AKBAR’!
    M- ‘Goodness…is that the time? If we hurry, we can catch the two O’clock crucifixions in Infidel Square….coming’?
    S- ‘You bet’!

    With thanks to Osama Bin Liner for translation.

  13. tpellow says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 4:39 am

    “Who is the greater hypocrite: Mehdi Hasan or the British left?”

    (Oct, 2013).

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2013/10/who-is-the-greater-hypocrite-mehdi-hasan-or-the-british-left/

  14. Islam_Macht_Frei says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 5:05 am

    Ever notice how people NEVER stop having to explain that Islam has nothing to do with violence or terror?? Why don’t we see an unending parade of experts explaining why [fill in the blank] has”nothing to do with violence or terror?”

    Because unless “fill in the blank” is Isla, it probably doesn’t have an ongoing litany of terror and violence associated with it.

    Why does Islam alone have this problem that so many of its adherents, in every corner of the globe, seem to think it has something to do with violence and terror?

  15. R Cole says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 5:41 am

    That some Muslim jihadists may not have all the information on Islam – has always been the case.

    There was a documentary on obscure world religions – featured a mosque in India – which had a shrine to one of Allah’s Daughters – as they believed that she was important to the Prophet Muhammad.

    We can call that lost in translation!

    It shows that the people who spread out from the Middle East – to places as far away as India and now Afghanistan – were often forcibly converted or converted under duress in order to save their lives. Indeed in the early years of Islamic conquests there was no Koran – compiled.

    That these travelling jihadists bought copies of Islam for Dummies – might have something to do with the fact that they are master marketeers and perhaps feel that – Mehdi’s got something going on!

    As for Mehdi Hasan – in a Muslim only speech filmed referred to non-Muslims as being like animals – is an expert at dumbing down or defanging the Islamic message – for both its scripture and its political extensions . And he is serious.

    :: ::

    The Muslims have a problem. The foundation of Islamic teaching is that Islam makes one superior [their whole identify is staked on it]. And with it they are supposed to be an example for all mankind. But instead they find their holy grail questioned and criticized. Especially since everything they [moderate western Muslims] seek to assure us about is contradicted – by not only the actions of the terrorists [where they could perhaps gain some wiggle room], but more crucially by the laws in the established Islamic nations. [And this is not even looking at the history of Islam.]

    The writing of his books for example – would be a part of a route / strategy to get western individuals to bypass everything they see, and to present Islam as the superior global path. Westerners should instead not believe their lying eyes, but go and drink from the saucer of milk he wants us to lap up from.

    War is deceit and Islam is a garrison religion.

    [That is why when you leave Islam, Muslims believe there should be a penalty – for what would be considered treason.]

    :: ::

    We should also consider that – the wannabe jihadist might feel that because he has sinned – womanized, drank some alcohol – that death as a martyr would free him from penalties he might expect he has accrued. [A few of the 911 hijackers were reported to have done the same]

    Terrorism and the violence committed is for too long looked at in isolation – but these jihadists wish to establish an Islamic State – something landless Bin Laden could only dream of. And in this pure shari’a compliant territory there is protection against the fear of one day arriving in Islamic hell. No doubt all of Mehdi’s many efforts would be further to this end.

    Perhaps he believes he is helping us not to end up there – but while his brothers are making one bloody mess.

    • somehistory says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 2:11 pm

      From your comment: ” Islamic teaching is that Islam makes one superior [their whole identify is staked on it].”

      Their whole identity is staked on it. (That says a lot.)

      Their whole identity…and then Robert Spencer or Mr. Geert Wilders (hope I spelled his name correctly or another outspoken individual who is willing to tell the truth, comes along and tells them and us how very rotten the *teaching* is. Guess that rips the rug right out from under them… unless they silence or kill those saying how rotten the teaching is. Killing takes them back to the superior feeling…with the power of life and death…what could be superior to that?

  16. hammar says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 5:59 am

    Christ said, “What good is it if you can gain the whole world, but lose your soul.”
    Faith is above violence and much more of the heart, something these killers lack.

  17. avi15 says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 7:03 am

    Thing is, the worse the reality, in this case the fact that Islam is the process of destroying western civilisation, the greater the tendency of the British and US governments to ignore it: that’s the way denial works. So the question is: will they wake up in time?

    • voegelinian says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 2:06 pm

      Exactly. We’ve already seen that with every atrocity Muslims perpetrate, the West digs into De Nile further, and the main meme of the PC MC paradigm — the TMOE meme (the problem is only a Tiny Minority of Extremists who have nothing to do with Islam) — is reiterated and reinforced (not weakened, as it would be in a sane world).

  18. jewdog says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 7:12 am

    The book for guys like this would be “Dummies for Islam”.

  19. AfricanChristian says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 7:45 am

    ‘Muslims aren’t all Islamists, Islamists aren’t all jihadists’

    How about this:

    All jihadists are islamists, all islamists are muslims.

    • voegelinian says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 2:07 pm

      Even better: Islam is the problem, and all Muslims enable that problem.

    • Jay Boo says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 10:20 am

      @AfricanChristian
      “All jihadists are islamists, all islamists are muslims.”
      ——————-

      Good one

  20. duh_swami says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 8:09 am

    How about this…Not all Mahoundians are terrorists, but they are all ‘obligated’ to jihad as a ‘duty’ to Allah…If they believe in Quran, and Mahound, no other option is available…

  21. pongidae rex says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 8:17 am

    ‘Magical thinking’ is the norm by all Western governments dealing with Islam, Islamists and Islamic terrorism. Google it. It is a form of insanity.

  22. BC says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 9:42 am

    If Madmo was alive today he would be on trial for war crimes, abuse of human rights and of course let us not forget paedophilia. OK that was probably not a crime in his day but he is the model for millions of Muslim men who like to marry very young girls.
    He would ceratinly be found guilty!

  23. eduardo odraude says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 11:43 am

    Mehdi Hasan and the other Islam apologists are sort of like the good cop to the jihadists’ and Islamic State’s bad cop. It’s one of the oldest interrogation and mind-breaking techniques invented. First the bad cop tortures, terrorizes, and isolates the victim, so that he is desperate for sympathy and compassion. Then bring in the good cop, who pretends to reprimand the bad cop and send him away, and the victim will do anything the good cop asks, because the need for friendship and compassion, when one has been tortured and brutalized and is being held captive, is immense. As long as the good cop asks nicely, pretends to be a friend, and gives the victim a cigarette or a nice meal, the victim will eventually give in and do what the nice cop asks. Very powerful manipulation technique.

    One could also say that Mehdi Hasan is just a sort of anesthetic verbosity to soothe and quiet the infidels, while they are being slaughtered into submission. Mehdi Hasan is just the smoke bomb camouflage the killers need to advance their positions without being noticed. Mehdi Hasan is as much the enemy as the hundreds of millions of jihad sympathizers out there in Islam.

    • voegelinian says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 2:17 pm

      Yes, we must assume it’s a Good Cop/Bad Cop tactic being deployed here, and wherever a Muslim Islamopologist tries to assure us that Islam has nothing to do with the terrorism, abuse of human rights, civil unrest, intolerance, hatred, religious fanaticism, guerrilla & paramilitary instability (if not outright war, e.g., Sudan and Somalia) that roils out of the Muslim world (a world increasingly interpenetrating the free world through mass immigration over the years). Unfortunately, the mainstream West continues to believe that the Good Cop is not in cahoots with the Bad Cop — and that’s what makes the tactic work. Without our ongoing gullibility, the tactic would fall apart.

  24. KrazyKafir says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 12:46 pm

    And this is why I believe people like Hasan are even more dangerous to the freedom of the West than the violent Jihadists. Moderates are carriers of the evil ideology, all the while, putting the kuffar back to sleep, and paving the way for never-ending Jihad.

    • voegelinian says

      Aug 23, 2014 at 2:35 pm

      Yes; but not in some amorphous way — actually in a relatively precise way which we have good reason to suppose is actually going on: I.e., it is reasonable for us to suppose that

      1) innumerable Muslims (whom we cannot pinpoint and discriminate from their surrounding demographic of supposedly harmless Muslims) are laying down terror plots in various places throughout the West calculated to mass-murder a total of perhaps millions of us

      2) these terror plots will likely involve many different methods — not only methods we can surmise, such as chemical, biological, conventional explosives, suitcase nuke, etc. — but also ingenious modes of carnage which we may not be able to imagine or anticipate, which only a mass-murderous fanatic with too much time on their hands could devise

      3) given the nature of our societies (relatively stable, orderly, healthy, sophisticated), these terror plots will require years of elaborate and patient planning, necessitating a degree of infiltration optimally enabled by a society which trusts that most Muslims are harmless (and corollary to that, that any Muslim which does not show obvious signs of “extremism” must therefore be given the benefit of the doubt and assumed to be harmless and trustworthy).

      4) And, of course, the reason why these Muslims want to do this at all is because for complex historical reasons, they are too weak to do what they really want to do: a frank military invasion of the West.

      From #3 we can see a more concrete role played by the non-“extremist” Muslims in the jihad: merely by virtue of their presence in the Enemy Camp (a Camp which, through its own stupidity and gullibility, doesn’t realize it is seen to be an Enemy Camp by these Muslims it has invited in), merely by living here in the West and going about their daily business of seeming to be ordinary participants in our society, they provide cover for the more front-line soldiers among them — and their increasing demographic aggrandizement in our societies (augmented by our stupid gullibility and anxious need to feel better about ourselves through our “tolerance for diversity” and “respect” for Muslims) enables access to certain areas of our societies which is a crucial factor in the successful planning of a major terror attack.

      • KrazyKafir says

        Aug 23, 2014 at 4:40 pm

        Well said, naturally.

  25. DavidE says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 1:32 pm

    All of their sins can be absolved by killing people for Allah! The ordering of books doesn’t prove or show anything.

  26. voegelinian says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 2:42 pm

    “The fact that they went to prostitutes either means that they didn’t believe Islam forbade them dalliances with Infidel women, or that they didn’t live up to their religion’s teachings, which doesn’t mean they didn’t believe in those teachings.”

    The other thing about this is that jihadists may well be taking Koran 4:24 to heart here: the warrior Muslim is encouraged by Allah to take sex slaves from among the enemy population. That’s exactly what the 911 hijackers were doing, on the night before they put Koran 9:111 into bloody practice.

    Closely related to this, Diana West has shown that many of the al-Qaeda-related mujahideen in Libya (pre- and post-revolution) frequently violated supposed strictures of Sharia — believing that the one thing they could not violate is the obligation to wage jihad against the “enemy”.

    • Jay Boo says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 10:26 am

      Islam is built upon self-serving abrogation loopholes.
      Allah is just a politically useful prop.

    • Jack Diamond says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 3:34 pm

      Kafir women are certainly understood as spoils of war during jihad and the business of “taking precautions” while in enemy territory–concealment, disguising oneself, not drawing attention to oneself as a pious Muslim- can excuse a multitude of “sins”, even taking false oaths (2:225) let alone going to bars and drinking and carousing for the Soldiers of Allah. Concealment and protecting Islam at all costs, absolving it of all blame, is the job of lying liars like Hasan, and is yet another form of jihad.

  27. Beagle says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 7:26 pm

    The more I think about Mehdi Hasan I realize the most damning thing about him is his target audience. All he’s concerned about is Islam’s reputation with the pool of potential converts to Islam. If his heart and head were in the right place by our standards he would spend every waking hour communicating his true peaceful Islam to the jihadis he supposedly does not support.

  28. David says

    Aug 23, 2014 at 8:43 pm

    “Muslims aren’t all Islamists, Islamists aren’t all jihadists and jihadists aren’t all devout. To claim otherwise isn’t only factually inaccurate; it could be fatal.”

    How could claiming that all Muslims and Islamists be fatal? How could claiming that all Islamists are devout be fatal? Any one can make those claims. What have those claims got to do with fatality? The only way that could be so is to argue that ‘if you make these claims, then you could wind up dead’–and that sounds like a threat.
    No wonder he is a darling of the far-left media in Britainistan.

    • voegelinian says

      Aug 24, 2014 at 4:26 pm

      Aside from the veiled threat, there’s another logic to that: if too many people keep equating Islamic devoutness with dangerous extremism, it may lead to “backlash” against innocent Muslims. This irrational anxiety seems to be quite a prevalent and important factor in the psychology of PC MCs (and we sometimes see it — albeit in somewhat attenuated form obscured by distracting peripheral anti-Islam verbiage — among even many otherwise no-nonsense Jihad Watchers).

  29. pumbar says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 4:15 am

    Islam is for dummies; anyone with half a brain wouldn’t go anywhere near it…

  30. sidney penny says

    Aug 24, 2014 at 4:48 am

    “They have all studied the lives and backgrounds of hundreds of gun-toting, bomb-throwing jihadists and they all agree that Islam isn’t to blame for the behaviour of such men (and, yes, they usually are men).”

    Really Mehdi Hasan

    Nothing to do with Islam?

    How do you explain this?:

    “think of Islamic State beheading the photojournalist James Foley as part of its “holy war”

    Yes, name of one group is Islamic State.

    Obviously THEY think it has to do with Islam.

    How did THEY get that idea?

    Why are Muslims from all over the world going to Iraq and Syria to join them?

    The name of the another group is the Congregation of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad. Obviously THEY too think their group and its deeds have to do with Islam, as Sunnah, Dawah and Jihad are all Islamic concepts.

    How did THEY get this idea?

    Why do people who misunderstand Islam all misunderstand it in exactly the same way?

    Any answers Mehdi Hasan?

  31. Champ says

    Aug 25, 2014 at 1:27 am

    He peddles evil islam AND he isn’t very photogenic …wow he has so much going for him. NOT.

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