On Islam · Liberty Politics Discussion

On Islam

I was recently on a business trip in Toronto and chatted with a guy in the hotel, forget his name, from Dubai. Lovely guy, very friendly. I'd call him a nominal Muslim. The best kind.

I recently put together a pamphlet just quoting from the Quran, with a little of my sometimes spicy commentary. Maybe I'll post it here. It's called Know Thine Enemy. The idea is to dismantle the notion that jihad isn't central to Islam, or the attempt to redefine it, obfuscating its paramount feature of violent conquest. Showing that at the core, Islam is a violent, aggressive religion. Even Chat GPT has lied about these matters, and I had to run the system in loops before I could get it to admit that defensive war includes the Muslims inviting the non-Muslims to accept Islam, and the non-Muslims telling them to bugger off. Then it's "defensive jihad."

At first it felt weird: here I am, chatting with this guy for half an hour, really liking him, but wondering how he would react if I told him what I really think about Islam. I mean, the guy drinks alcohol, does other "haram" things, but his whole cultural background is Islamic. Is it like someone insulting the football team of your city even if you don't watch all that much football, but you still feel team solidarity?

Then there's the Iranian Uber driver who hates the Iranian regime with a passion. The guy got an advanced degree in mechanical engineering, and left because no jobs. He said that he and 80% of the population were cheering Israel on during the recent war (which will flare up again, almost undoubtedly). I don't know how religious the guy is personally, and we didn't talk about that, but my impression was he's also a nominal Muslim.

I recently realized: I HATE Islam. I don't hate many things. I think Islam is a demonic system that needs to be dismantled, root and branch. I think the biggest problem in the Islamic world is Islam. And yet, I find myself liking individual Muslims, mainly the nominal Muslims.

There will be more and more of these. Part of this is the information pipeline, so that you have thousands of young people in Pakistan listening to David Wood and others. Muslims have been insulated against challenges to their religion, to the virtuousness of their prophet, to the inerrancy of the Quran ("perfectly preserved"). This has broken down, and it is a good thing.

I suppose- just musing- that I particularly hate something when there's a well-oiled propagandistic mechanism to try to gaslight you that it isn't so, to ignore that which is plain and true and right before your eyes to see. That's why I have a special animus against trans ideology, or the pro-abortion tack that asserts that a fetus is just a clump of cells. And Islam: it's obvious that this is a violent, aggressive religion at its core.

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