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

Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre survivor: “We need to stop saying Islam is a religion of peace”

Oct 29, 2016 3:10 pm By Robert Spencer

As a secular Muslim, Zineb El Rhazoui is allowed to say in the mainstream what others are excoraited as “anti-Muslim extremists” for saying. The truth is true no matter who says it, but in today’s culture of identity politics, it’s truer when coming from racially and culturally approved voices.

“Zineb el Rhazoui, Charlie Hebdo survivor, discusses why the world needs to ‘Destroy Islamic Fascism,’” by Emma-Kate Symons, New York Times (of all places), October 18, 2016:

She leads a clandestine existence, on the move and under 24-hour guard as France’s most protected woman. Yet Zineb El Rhazoui, the Charlie Hebdo journalist who happened to be in Casablanca on January 7 last year, the day terrorists “avenging the Prophet” massacred nine people at the satirical magazine in Paris, believes she has a duty to defy Islamists desperate to silence her.

Shaken but undeterred by the fatwas and relentless, precise death threats issued via social media to “kill the bitch” since she helped produce the publication’s first survivors’ issue following the attack — and spoke about it in Arabic for the Arab press — the Moroccan-French writer refuses to assume an anonymous identity. Fleeing Paris or abandoning her human rights activism, and her unforgiving critiques of the religion she grew up with, are also out of the question.

“I don’t have the right to renounce my struggle, or to give up my freedom,” says the reporter and sociologist of religion in an interview with Women in the World, during a recent trip to New York, as part of French president Francois Hollande’s delegation when he received the Appeal of Conscience Foundation’s World Statesman Award for 2016. “If the French state protects me it is not little individual me: What is being protected is my freedom to be irreverent, and freedom of expression, so I should exercise this even more because I enjoy this protection.”

“It’s totally crazy. I have done nothing against the law and have nothing to hide, yet I live with security while those who threaten us are free,” El Rhazoui declares with an air of shock and anger that underscores the arbitrariness and brutality visited on a 34-year-old woman condemned to living on the run and mostly in the shadows. “And if you call them by their names you are Islamophobic and racist. I am racist? I can teach them a few things about Arab culture. I can show them how to discover its richness and the diversity of their culture. I believe this culture deserves universality because you can be Arab, Muslim and a free thinker.”…

Detruire Le Fascisme Islamique (Destroy Islamic Fascism), being released in France this week, takes the battle of ideas directly to the ideologically-driven zealots who inspired the assassins of her dear friend Charb (Stephane Charbonnier), late editor of Charlie Hebdo who preferred “to die standing than to live on my knees.”

Obtained exclusively by Women in the World, the book dedicated to “Muslim atheists” is an unapologetic strike against the strict application of Islam by imitating the first Salafists or “pious ancestors.” The Prophet Mohammed and his companions, whose violent exploits are contained in “bellicose texts from a barbaric 7th-century Bedouin tribal context,” exhibited codes of behavior El Rhazoui insists have no place in the modern world and can be directly connected to terrorism. “The most abject crimes of Islamic State are but a 21st-century remake of what the first Muslims accomplished under the guidance of the Prophet,” she writes, noting that sexual and domestic slavery, the massacre of non-Muslims (notably Jews), pedophilia, pillage, polygamy and summary executions were all adopted from pre-Islamic societies. The book is also the journalist’s way of carrying on the legacy of her dead comrades, who reveled in their right to mock established religion and fanatics everywhere — with Islam no exception to their traditional French anti-clerical ridicule — through satire and caricature.

Formerly the magazine’s religion writer, El Rhazoui is in the throes of joining the exodus of staff breaking from the magazine under its new management. Flush with cash from international donations, the fundamentally altered publication, she disappointedly explained, “will probably never again draw the Prophet” out of fear of more reprisals.

“[And] those who think that only a handful of madmen are capable of killing for a cartoon of Mohammed forget that everywhere that Islam reigns as the religion of the state, caricatures and cartoons in the press are repressed”.

El Rhazoui’s book, dedicated to “Muslim atheists,” is an unapologetic strike against the strict application of Islam.

Religion of peace and love?

“We need to admit that Islamism today is applied Islam,” El Rhazoui — who describes herself as an “atheist of Muslim culture” –writes, responding to politicians, religious figures, Islamophobia opponents and media commentators who claim after every jihadist attack that “real Islam” has nothing to do with such terror.

“When we apply Islam to the letter it gives Islamism, and when we apply Islamism to the letter it gives terrorism. So we need to stop saying Islam is a religion of peace and love. What is a moderate Islamist? An Islamist who doesn’t kill?”

The essay-length book is in the grand French polemical tradition of Emile Zola whose J’accuse denounced the anti-Semitism of the French state and establishment during the Dreyfus Affair, on the eve of the 20th century. El Rhazoui, who holds Moroccan and French citizenship, takes aim at a very 21st-century phenomenon: what she abhors as the “intellectual fraud” of Islamophobia, which pretends to be about anti-racism but in her reckoning is used as a weapon to silence all critics of Islam and the ideas behind it as automatically hostile towards all Muslims. Epitomized by the French Collective Against Islamophobia (CCIF), this deliberate strategy vilifies as Islamophobic voices such as El Rhazoui’s who dare question the religion the CCIF and fellow travelers define only through the prism of their own fundamentalism.

The notion of Islamophobia doesn’t even exist in Muslim countries, the author points out, because outside the West, criticism of the religion or Mohammed is officially “categorized as blasphemy.”

“Unable to pass blasphemy laws in Europe, groups like the CCIF employ a dangerous “semantic confusion,” she said. On the CCIF site it is written “Islamophobia is not an opinion: it is an offense.”

“This is very dangerous because it has even entered the dictionary as hostility towards Islam and Muslims. Yet criticism of an idea, of Islam or of a religion cannot be characterized as an offense or a crime. I was born and lived under the Islam of Morocco and live in France and I have the right criticize religion and this dictatorship of Islamophobia that says I have no right to criticize! If we criticize Christianity it doesn’t mean we are Christianophobes or racist towards the ‘Christian race.’”

The widespread pressure to self-censor is severe, El Rhazoui says.

“You can no longer speak about Islam without saying it’s a religion of peace and love. But when you open any book in Islam what do you find? Violence, blood, oppression of women and hate for other religions.

“Of course you can find this in other religions, however we are talking about something written many centuries ago during a barbaric time for humanity. As long as we don’t talk about this, and keep repeating that Islam is a religion of peace and love, many people will continue to believe the Koran is a constitution, and that rather than being a book written 15 centuries ago reflecting a particular context, it is a legal constitution to apply today.”

Zineb El Rhazoui feels she is carrying on the legacy of her dead Charlie Hebdo comrades.

After completing high school in Morocco, El Rhazoui studied languages and the sociology of religion, obtaining a Master’s degree from Paris’s prestigious social science graduate school EHESS. In her twenties she returned to the country of her birth to work as a journalist at Le Journal Hebdomadaire, becoming a campaigner for secular liberties, such as the right to break the fast and even snack in public during the month of Ramadan. This act of non-violent resistance earned her her first fatwa, ahead of her involvement in the movement supporting the Arab Spring in 2011. The wave of personal attacks and threats that came after her collective protest against Ramadan rules prompted her to leave Morocco again for France where she began to report for Charlie Hebdo, bringing her memories of having “vomited up compulsory religious classes” in a country where “being Muslim is not a choice” unless you’re Jewish or Christian.

Extreme personality cult

So-called Islamic fascism, seen in its most extreme form in groups like ISIS, shares characteristics in common with all extreme-right fascisms, El Rhazoui argues, because it combines an intense personality cult around Mohammed as the incarnation of the nation. It also employs widespread systems of suspicion and denunciation, exemplified by “sartorial branding” — for example Burkinis or niqabs — that allow for immediate identification and targeting of non-adherents. There are also familiar fascist tropes of repressive sexism against women and homosexuals, armed militias, adoption of a flag, and a strategy that confers the benign status of ‘Muslim women’ to heavily veiled adherents in the West, and characterizes them, disingenuously, as victimized objects of exclusion.

“The literary corpus of Islam is so stuffed with damning accounts it would be difficult to cleanse it without altering the fundamentals of dogma,” El Rhazoui writes.

“If the terrorists of Daesh [ISIS] behead those they judge to be miscreants, that is because they draw on their legislation in the texts like the 8th surah of the Koran, al-Anfal, verse 12: “Remember what Your Lord revealed to the angels : I am with you, so support those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. You can strike them above the neck and strike off every fingertip”.

‘You can be Arab, Muslim and a free thinker’

Drawing on her personal experience and scholarly knowledge of Islam’s core Arabic texts, the politics of the post-Arab Spring Middle East, and the wellspring of reformism and dissidence embraced within the multi-faceted Islamic civilization, El Rhazoui’s book is an impassioned response to all the extremists who want to see her and her fellow opponents of politico-religious repression dead.

The greatest racism is, El Rhazoui argues, the racism of the Islamist ideology that forbids marriage with people who are not Muslims, and that rejects women. “That is the definition of racism and fascism and we must say it,” the writer adds.

“Today Islam in the world only has a role as a civilization. A civilization is defined by many things and not uniquely by religion — but also by its geographical heritage, its artistic, culinary and sartorial traditions and by literature.

“The Muslim religion has its place in the modern world if it submits itself fully to the laws that rule humanity today: universal principles of equality between men and women, sexual and individual freedom, and equality for all, no matter your creed or religion. Until Islam has admitted this and accepted that the freedom of men and women is superior to it, Islam will not be acceptable.”

‘Islamophobia whiners’

Destroy Islamic Fascism aims to puncture the hypocrisy and faux-intellectual “fakery” (the author’s word) of “Islamophobia whiners” and other “collaborationists” from across the political spectrum — particularly the hard left, “Crypto-Islamist” anti-racists on a quest for a new “Muslim proletariat,” certain feminists, cultural relativists and so-called moderate Imams. All these “willing accomplices” do is distort the noble cause of fighting racism to give undeserved legitimacy to an ideology that at its most extreme results in the horrors of Islamic State, the author says, but also makes the lives of millions of Muslims living in Islamic countries downright miserable.

“What do these Islamophobia whiners say to the millions of individuals who live in Islamic theocracies and dream of liberty?” El Rhazoui concludes in her book. “Who speaks about the nightmare of a woman who decides to cross the streets of Algiers, Casablanca or Cairo in a skirt?… those who would like to drink a glass of alcohol in countries where you have to flout the law to do it? … about homosexuals, pariahs of Muslim societies, who often only have the choice of death, prison or exile? Who speaks about this youth born Muslim but dreaming of a normal life, these teens attacked for having had a romance?”

The summer furore over Burkini bans in France agitated the author who deplored the cynical rush of Islamists and their Western sympathizers in the media, academia and politics to celebrate the controversial swimsuit as a form of “liberation” and simultaneously a banal piece of cloth preferred by “Muslim women,” even though most never wear it.

“Western media, in an intolerable readiness to oblige, have defended the Burkini as a ‘freedom’ and a legitimate cultural expression of a part of humanity,” she said, but pointed out that “in Muslim countries the beaches are not filling up with Burkinis, but they are emptying themselves of women. From one year to another, they are disappearing from the public space, because the veil has never been anything except an extension of the walls of their harem to the exterior.”

As for mainstream or moderate Muslim clerics, El Rhazoui tells Women in the World that during the Burkini debate in France not one Imam stood up and said “Hey, wait a minute, you can be Muslim and wear a [regular] bathing suit.”

History will judge those who have monopolized the debate, given a platform to Islamist fundamentalism and even given it a guarantee of acceptability, the author of Destroy Islamic Fascism told Women in the World. “This is just betrayal and it is collaboration with one of the worst forms of fascism that exists today,” she said.

According to the writer, who is repeatedly accused of bigotry, the “Islamophobia ruse” is driven by “great ignorance” and a lack of understanding of the culture of Islam and what Islam with a big ‘I’ is — “they ignore its complexity and that there have always been opposition currents and progressive and liberal pushes from within.”

“The accomplices don’t recognize the struggles playing out today in Arab countries will inevitably be won by the democrats and free people. No fascism or totalitarianism has ever been able to win in the long haul of history. The people who are the allies and collaborators of this totalitarianism today will be judged by history and seen as accomplices to this criminal ideology to which they have given a veneer of respectability.”

For El Rhazoui the true racism emerges from a condescending approach to Islamic culture that decrees an Islamic woman in a burqa is congenitally not free and that her “race” is the burqa. “We present the fundamentalists as being a race and this only shows the contempt we have for this culture. It is absolutely intolerable,” she says.

Survivor syndrome

Women in the World asked El Rhazoui how she manages to keep up her spirits, and continue her struggle for the freedom to dissent after everything that has happened since January 2015.

“It is a question people often ask me,” she said with a perceptible tremor in her voice. “But when you live through these moments in which you are confronted by a reality as cruel and simple as life and death, you realize can put many things in perspective.

“Straight after the attacks, like many of my colleagues I felt guilty for having stayed alive. I said to myself ‘Those who are dead are dead for all our work, and some are dead when it wasn’t even their work. But it was my work because I am a journalist and I am still here.’ And then you understand this is all part of survivor syndrome, which is normal when you survive a massacre like that.

“As you start to heal you say, ‘I am lucky to be alive and if I am still here perhaps that is because I still have something to do.’ I understood long before the attack on Charlie, when I engaged in a struggle for individual liberties and democracy in Morocco, that when you fight against totalitarianism, whether it is political or religious, you should never give your enemies the pleasure of stopping living. We fight so that everyone can have a free and happy life and we must continue to live this same life.

Still a day doesn’t go past when she doesn’t think of her old colleague Charb and their many heated discussions.

“He was someone who was extremely lucid and for whom the concepts were clear. He was a true humanist who didn’t fear being accused of being racist because for him it was absurd.”

El Rhazoui’s deconstruction of Islam is also a defense of Muslims, she reasoned, as “salvation will come when we stop aligning the identity of an entire community with the most fundamentalist people who pretend to represent it.”

“We have to extend a hand to all these Muslims who are free people, who have questioned their heritage, and who are fighters for liberty, battling for the same values as us but in a context controlled by Islamists,” she says….

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", anti-dhimmitude, Featured, free speech, Muhammad cartoons Tagged With: Charlie Hebdo, Zineb El Rhazoui


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Comments

  1. Glenn Wilson says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 3:22 pm

    Welcome to the Cult of War and Conquest.

    • mortimer says

      Oct 29, 2016 at 8:35 pm

      Islam is the political IDEOLOGY of warfare and conquest.

      • Jay Boo says

        Oct 29, 2016 at 10:23 pm

        ‘IDEOLOGY’ is correct.

        Her sentence,
        “We need to stop saying Islam is a religion of peace.”

        can be shortened to:
        “We need to stop saying Islam is a religion.”

        • dipak says

          Oct 30, 2016 at 2:45 am

          Islam means Submission.

  2. JawsV says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 3:26 pm

    People still say that idiocy started by Geo W Bush after 9/11? Then they have IQ’s of 2. In fact, Islam is the antithesis of peace, got that, W? Islam is war and conquest. Maybe you noticed on 9/11???

  3. Don McKellar says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 3:37 pm

    Remarkable that the New York Times would publish something like this. I have a feeling that the writer Emma-Kate Symons is about to be put on a short leash from now on.

    • Jay Boo says

      Oct 29, 2016 at 11:39 pm

      The Extreme Leftist SPLC will put her on a special — short list.

  4. Paula B says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:00 pm

    She’s still coming out with postmodern nonsense that you can interpret and apply ANY text in ANY way. And then goes on to say that the problem with Islam is that its texts are applied in an ancient barbaric fashion. As if it could be applied in a nice way. What she’s saying is pretty incoherent, because she then goes on to apply that if you look at Islamic texts, you’ll see it is not peaceful. I suppose she’s trying to have it both ways, since perhaps she wants to be able to pour scorn on any belief system as well. She also says the problem is not how Islam was 15 centuries ago, so she obviously could not care less about all the millions slaughtered and raped under the name of Islam in the past. What on earth is this woman saying?

    • Mirren10 says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 8:29 am

      Well said, Paula.

      It’s the usual reluctance of many so-called ‘moderate’ muslims to condemn islam **unequivocally**.

      On a purely pedantic note, this journalist describes her as a ‘survivor’ of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. She can hardly be a *survivor*, since she wasn’t there.

      • billybob says

        Oct 30, 2016 at 10:38 am

        She wasn’t there by happenstance, being away at the time. How would you feel if you happened to be off work the day everyone at your workplace was massacred? How would you feel if at last minute you cancel a flight, only to discover later that flight went down and all aboard perished? Though you alone live while people you knew and loved died can be easily attributed to mere coincidence, humans are emotional beings. These happenings evoke the most powerful of emotions that would overwhelm rationality. You couldn’t help thinking that the was some kind of cosmic synchronicity that spared your life alone because you are human, and humans are not entirely governed by logic. If she feels she is a “survivor”, she has every right to feel that way.

        • Mirren10 says

          Oct 30, 2016 at 11:22 am

          If one is not present when one’s friends are massacred, one is not a ‘survivor’ of said massacred. A survivor is one who **survives** such an attack, or a natural cataclysm, such as a tsunami.

          ” How would you feel if you happened to be off work the day everyone at your workplace was massacred? How would you feel if at last minute you cancel a flight, only to discover later that flight went down and all aboard perished?”

          I wouldn’t describe myself as a survivor, since I obviously would not be.

          However, it was the *journalist* who described her as a ‘survivor’ ( many ‘journalists’ today have no understanding of what words actually mean), not she herself.

    • Jack Diamond says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 10:50 am

      “Today Islam in the world only has a role as a civilization.” What civilization is that? What is Islam minus Islam? Minus Muhammad, the Qur’an, the shariah? What is there Islamic minus the cultural theft of non-Muslim achievements, except for what the author rejects? This “Muslim atheist” clings to the sliver of a life raft she still calls Islam, floating on the barely moving liberal currents she finds in Islamic history, trying to save Islam from itself, about to be drowned by the tide of Real Muslims for whom words still have meanings, the Qur’an still has meaning, Muhammad still has meaning, one forever dangerous to infidels (and apostates).

      When Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, in prison for his role in the first WTC bombing, was teaching the Qur’an at Al-Azhar University–that “beacon of Islamic learning” according to Barack Obama–he was asked by student Mark Gabriel: “Why is it you teach us all the time about jihad? What about the other verses in the Qur’an that talk about peace, love, and forgiveness?” The Blind Sheikh replied: “there is a whole surah called ‘Spoils of War’, there is no surah called ‘Peace.’ Jihad and killing are the head of Islam. If you take them out, you cut off the head of Islam.” This will always be the answer to the El Rhazouis by the beacons of Islamic learning.

      “The Muslim religion has its place in the modern world if it submits itself fully to the laws that rule humanity today.” In other words, if it ceases to exist, submissive to Allah & Muhammad, and submits to the rule of humanity. Which only happens when the rule of humanity dominates it, weakens it, divides it, isolates it, declaws it, defangs it, ‘cuts off the head of Islam’ as the Blind Sheikh puts it, and the snake crawls back into its hole with inshallah fatalism, that it was meant to be.

  5. Paul N Silas says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:17 pm

    #1 it is not a religion, it’s a political system/cult
    #2 It should be called “The religion of pieces”, because it blow people up!
    #3 The FSB is behind most of it as the cold war never ended, it just went underground.

  6. Charli Main says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:28 pm

    ” I believe this culture deserves universality because you can be Arab, Muslim and a free thinker.”…

    If you believe those things, you are also living in La La Land.

    • Mirren10 says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 8:30 am

      Yep.

  7. Michael Copeland says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:33 pm

    Memo to all interviewers:

    Please read chapter 9 of the Koran.
    It can be accessed online.
    The Koran is not arranged in date order.
    Chapter 9 is the latest complete chapter, chronologically, of the revelations.
    As such it overrides – “abrogates” – ALL the peaceful verses elsewhere.
    The Koran forms part of Islamic rules.
    One who denies any verse is to be killed – vigilante style, penalty-free.

    Tip: there is no love and peace there.

  8. Infidel from Down Under says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:42 pm

    Islam is not peaceful, its not even remotely civilized.

    Its an evil cult started in the dark ages by a mass murdering Arab pedophile named Muhammad intent on committing genocide against Christians,Jews and anyone else who didn’t happen to agree with and be prepared to live according to his barborous beliefs as written in the Koran

    In 1400 years apart from dear old Mo having long karked it and that was about the only good thing in life the maniac ever did , nothing else has changed within Islam

  9. Mr. Farton says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:44 pm

    It’s only a matter of time until the SPLC places this courageous woman on the list of it’s anti-Muslim extremists.

  10. DFD says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 4:48 pm

    The new charli hebdo….

    Since the day of the massacre they published dozens of anti Christian cartoons, even grotesque and obscene ones. Who complained? Who even noted or remarked?

    At least, one thing in her favor, she’s leaving that outfit. Though, believing in what she says about “Arab culture”… Extremely difficult. Well, she can’t go back, can she?

    The Arabs used to have a culture though, 1,400 years ago they were a by-word for tolerance, they had to be, as Pagans and international traders. Then came Islam…

    Sometimes one, that’s me, simply feels sick about it all.

  11. Angemon says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 5:49 pm

    “Muslim Atheists”? Isn’t that like “Carnivore Vegans”, “Drunken Teetotalers”, or “Peaceful BML Protests”? Yo know, one of them oxymora?

    • Charli Main says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 2:57 am

      It would work, if you were a Muslim ” free thinker ” like this woman. LOL

    • Mirren10 says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 8:32 am

      ” “Muslim Atheists”? Isn’t that like “Carnivore Vegans”, “Drunken Teetotalers”, or “Peaceful BML Protests”? ”

      🙂 Nice one, Angemon.

    • billybob says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 10:44 am

      She explained that “she is a Muslim by culture”. I think we can recognize there is a Muslim culture as well as a religion. I understand there are many places in the world where people call themselves Muslims but don’t go to the mosque. These are cultural Muslims only. They may be identified by their dress, dietary habits, folkways, and ancestry.

  12. Steve Klein says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 6:52 pm

    Where is Wellington when we need him?

    ‘The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. … Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war. When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world’.

    Sep 17, 2001
    “Islam is Peace” Says President – the White House

    • Michael Copeland says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 5:13 am

      Follow the hushed voice trail:
      “The Duping of Cameron” at Liberty GB
      http://www.libertygb.org.uk/news/duping-cameron

  13. Paul Clark says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 7:42 pm

    I voted for both Bushes. First, when the media identified the younger Bush as an idiot, I was furious until heard him say, “Islam is a religion of peace.” Then I knew he was an idiot. Islam has never known peace, only “dead silence” of those that they have been murdered. Secondly Jeb lost to Trump. Trump humiliated him and his millions. The silver spoon Bushes, including Herbert Walker, have behaved like the spoiled, petty children that they are. Herbert Walker has said that he will vote for Hillary. He and his sons have put their own country at risk for their petty revenge. Now I am wondering if younger Bush’s motivation for invading Iraq the second time was revenge for his Daddy? It is hard to admit that a scrounge like Michael Moore may be right.

  14. ThomAus says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 7:44 pm

    Comments so far very unfair to this most courageous lady. She has already been through hell and she is one of the few to see reality. I think of her as a heroine, a good deep thinker, a very lucid voice of reason and an experienced person showing others the reality, the core, the stupidity and dangers of islam in its true foul colours. She also gives me a faint hope that we can beat this fascism one day and bring its perpetrators to account. We need a lot more real people Like her and Donald Trump!

    • Jack Diamond says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 1:11 pm

      Everything she says regarding the religion of peace and Islamophobia nonsense, and the attempt to impose blasphemy law on us, is laudable and make her far superior to the dhimmi chorus that dominates the discussion today. But her assertions about the good in Islamic civilization and that “you can be Arab, Muslim and a free thinker” can’t just be given a pass.

      Let me quote a deeper thinker brave enough to actually leave Islam, Ali Sina:
      “Moderate Islam is a breeding ground for terrorism. All terrorists were once moderate… Islam is radical, and once the seed of this faith is sown, it will eventually grow into terrorism. Anyone who believes Muhammad was a prophet of God can become radicalized and even a terrorist.

      Give me a young impressionable secular Muslim and I will transform him into a terrorist in one day. All I will do is to show him the teachings of Muhammad in the Quran and hadith and show him if he wants to be a true Muslim he has to kill non-Muslims. Of course there is no guarantee, because humans are free to choose good or evil. After seeing the truth about Muhammad, he may decide to leave Islam. That was what I did and millions of others have done.”

  15. BLC says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 7:52 pm

    I think Zineb is right. Muslims are taking Islamic texts from the 7th century and trying to literally apply them to civilization in the 21st century. So much has changed, but Islam has remained the same over all this time. Islam is incompatible with any civilization at all.

    • Michael Copeland says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 5:17 am

      “The teachings of the Koran are universal and trans-time.
      They can be applied today just as they were applied 1400 years ago.”
      Ahmad Saad
      North London Central Mosque

  16. The awful truth says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 8:26 pm

    She reminds me of Sophie Scholl who was guillotined by the Nazis for opposing them.

  17. Eric Jones says

    Oct 29, 2016 at 10:44 pm

    Zineb is courageous. May God bless her and protect her. She may come to recognize that there are no atheist in fox holes.

    Eric

  18. Guest says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 12:09 am

    I think the term Islamic Fascism, also used by the excellent Hamed Abdal-Samad, is a really important term to throw in the face of those calling criticism of islam ‘racism’.

    We oppose Islamic Fascism, and this view is supported by Zineb and Hamed – people who know all about islam and also can’t be accused of ‘racism’.

  19. K. says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 2:07 am

    It’s all great and she’s a courageous woman, but she, too, conflates culture and race.

  20. Alpo Yksikivi says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 3:57 am

    Islam is a traitorous mixture of a cult and brutal regime. Dreamed up by a bandit chief Mohamed, intended to be a tool/asset for his benefit. And still today it is an easy tool for whoever bandit in the least developed parts of the world who wants to step on to power in some remote village in a jungle or a sandy desert.

  21. mach37 says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 4:41 am

    The only way Islam could be called a “religion of peace” is if several hundred verses of the Quran are expunged and declared officially stricken (abrogated) from the teachings of the Apostle of Allah. Any guesses as to which Imams will do that?

    • David says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 8:23 am

      Mohammed was NO PROPHET. But was an actual Demon possessed PSYCOPATH. Just read the history. Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dommer look like choir boys beside the like of big Mo!
      The only “Perfect Man” to ever walk this Earth was JESUS !
      Let our muslum readers chew on THAT!

      • Mari Forever says

        Oct 30, 2016 at 3:17 pm

        Exactly

    • billybob says

      Oct 30, 2016 at 11:04 am

      I like to think what if the Quran was redacted, just like the FBI is redacting the Clinton emails released to Judicial watch? Only instead of redacting words that would reveal top secret information as in the case of the Hillary emails, all references in the Quran to violence and oppression, justifications for rape and slavery, hatred, etc, where blacked out. What would remain?

      I present a beginning below on the new sanitized Quran…

      Quran (2:191-193) – “And —- them wherever you find them, and —- —- — from where they have turned you out. And fitnah is worse than ——-… but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And —– them until there is no more Fitnah and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression —— ——.

      Quran (2:244) – “Then —– in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah Heareth and knoweth all things.”

      Quran (2:216) – “——– is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”

      Quran (3:56) – “As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with ——– —– in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help.”

      Quran (3:151) – “Soon shall We cast —— into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”.

      Quran (4:74) – “Let those —– in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso ——– in the way of Allah, be he —– or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.”

      Quran (4:76) – “Those who believe —– in the cause of Allah…”

      Quran (4:89) – “They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, —– —- — — —- wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks.”

      Quran (4:95) – “Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and —– in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and —– with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home).Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and —–, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward ”

      Quran (5:33) – “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be ——– or ——— or their hands and their feet should be — — on opposite sides or they should be ———-; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a ——— ———–”

      Quran (8:12) – “I will cast ——- into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore —– — their heads and —– — every fingertip of them”

  22. Dacritic says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 10:48 am

    “We have to extend a hand to all these Muslims who are free people, who have questioned their heritage, and who are fighters for liberty, battling for the same values as us but in a context controlled by Islamists…”

    If I as a Muslim, know that Islam is not a religion of peace, know that Islam is different, know that Muhammad was the one who influenced the behaviour of “extremists” such as ISIS, in fact set the example for these “extremists” to follow….. then why in the world would I remain a Muslim?

    • Paul Ashley says

      Oct 31, 2016 at 5:22 pm

      That is my question. The author claims to be what she calls a Muslim atheist. HOW then does she define a Muslim? Is it dress? IT is skin color? Is it geographic and ethnic? Is it praying to some generic and benign higher power five times a day and not eating pork? Why not just be a secular humanist? Why retain the term Muslim at all? There either is an Islam or there is not.

  23. billybob says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 11:38 am

    Robert laments, “The truth is true no matter who says it, but in today’s culture of identity politics, it’s truer when coming from racially and culturally approved voices.”

    That statement in itself is true, aside from Robert’s frustration of the fact that the NYT would never dream of publishing anything from him.

    Let me tell you of my own “awakening” that led me out of ignorance about Islam to being the proud Islamophobe I am today. It began with a seminal article in the Atlantic on ISIS entitled

    “What ISIS Really Wants”
    by GRAEME WOOD in MARCH 2015.
    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

    The article itself was an eye opener and a shock, but what was even more educational for me in the end was the comment section where knowledgeable “Islamophobes” made their compelling case. I participated in those comments as I began researching their veracity at a furious pace while the full horror of what Islam is broke upon me. My research led me all over the internet. I could hardly believe what I was reading. I became obsessed with the topic and spent hours every day studying and reading and posting comments in that thread that has now reached a stunning 17,000 comments.

    Eventually, fairly early in the process, my research led me to Jihad Watch. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Everything Robert wrote seemed to be backed from quotes from the Quran, Hadiths and Sunna, but I wondered – was he quoting things out of context perhaps?

    As I returned again and again to Jihad Watch, it began to be a daily habit. I felt like I was sort of sneaking around like maybe I was doing something bad. After reading an article, I would almost feel like I should wash my hands or something, because what I was reading seemed to condemning a quarter of the planet’s population. It really made me feel uncomfortable, because I was well raised up to respect other cultures and races and not be prejudiced.

    Let me cut a long story short because I have to go out…

    In the end, my salvation was reading critiques of Islam from ex-Muslims. For me they had the most authenticity, the most authority. I became a big fan of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and many others. Each time, I came back to Jihad Watch with a little more confidence.

    Finally, today I have arrived at certitude. I fully trust Robert to be honest with me, and have no more doubts, but the process I went through wasn’t at all easy. I fully understand the NYT giving this women space when they wouldn’t do the same for Robert. Robert needs to be patient a little longer. His day will come.

  24. Cliffhild says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 4:38 pm

    ‘Islam’ looks much like the word ‘Salaam’ which means Peace, whereas Islam means subjections. I think this has caused confusion.

  25. mach37 says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 4:47 pm

    el Rhazoui: “But when you open any book in Islam what do you find? Violence, blood, oppression of women and hate for other religions.
    “Of course you can find this in other religions …”

    WHAT other religions?!? Islam must not be excused with a blanket ambiguous claim that other religions are “just as bad.” The NPR article on Jenkins equates the decisions of popes of the crusader era with words of the Christian Bible, but the Bible does not tell Christians to destroy; Jenkins: “popes declared the Muslims Amalekites.”
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124494788

  26. Ali Bey says

    Oct 30, 2016 at 5:29 pm

    Salaam looks much like Salami, but don,t greet a Muslim with this last word of offer it to him in a sandwich. When you say that somebody is “moderate” that means always that the source, the stem or the corpus from where he comes is violent, immoderate , anti-democratic or simply criminal.

  27. Cretius says

    Nov 1, 2016 at 8:43 am

    The 1,400 year history of Islam is written in blood. Islam is an aggressive supremacist system of government that glorifies pedophilia, sexism, barbarous Sharia Law, killing, slavery, rape and pillage. There is nothing peaceful about Islam.

    Koran 2:191 “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them”
    Koran 3:21 “Muslims must not take the infidels as friends”
    Koran 5:33 “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam”
    Koran 8:12 “Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran”
    Koran 8:60 ” Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels”
    Koran 8:65 “The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them”
    Koran 9:5 “When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them”
    Koran 9:123 “Make war on the infidels living in your neighbourhood”
    Koran 22:19 “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies”
    Koran 47:4 “Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them”.

    Western leaders are committing cultural suicide. Just look at what is being let into the U.S. and Canada and the chaos in Europe caused by the Muslim invasion. The vast majority of ‘refugees’ are Muslims with token numbers or persecuted Christians and Yazidis.

    This is social engineering, not a genuine response to a refugee crisis. Ten percent of Syria was Christian before the war, and the Christians have been particularly brutalized, often by Obama-backed jihad groups. The refugee population should thus be at least 10% Christian. Instead, Christians accounted for less than one percent of the refugees admitted into the U.S. Obama is clearly pursuing a strategy to increase the Muslim population of the U.S. He may be doing this out of the confidence that they will vote Democrat.

    In Canada Justin Trudeau is following the same policy hoping to capture the Muslim vote for the Liberal Party Of Canada. Such ignorant ‘leadership’ poses a threat to the survival of democracy in North America in the long run.

  28. Cretius says

    Nov 1, 2016 at 8:50 am

    “Just because you continue to ignore the reality of Islam, doesn’t mean that the reality of Islam will continue to ignore you. The Christians in the Middle East and Africa are the canaries in the coal mine.”

  29. Ray M says

    Nov 9, 2016 at 3:33 am

    THUMP Wins for the world. The scum should run.

  30. Ray M says

    Nov 9, 2016 at 5:11 am

    Islam is history. Trump Won

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