Do Not Be Fooled By Propaganda 1

Do Not Be Fooled By Propaganda

There is an ongo­ing slan­der cam­paign against Islam, claim­ing that it is a reli­gion that pro­motes vio­lence and hint­ing that it seeks world con­quest. Before you buy the malarkey that is being pro­duced by peo­ple with their own agen­das or prej­u­dices or who are just plain igno­ra­mus­es, fol­low these few suggestions.

Com­pare the his­to­ry of Islam with the his­to­ry of Europe, which for cen­turies was called Chris­ten­dom. An objec­tive look will show you that Chris­ten­dom wins by a land­slide when it comes to vio­lence and wars. After all, Europe and its off­spring did not come to dom­i­nate the world, includ­ing the Islam­ic coun­tries, because they prac­ticed the gen­tle virtues of Jesus.

As for the com­mon prac­tice of cher­ry-pick­ing Scrip­ture from holy writ­ings and pre­sent­ing it out of con­text, just check out what Chris­tians call the Old Tes­ta­ment. There you will find God advo­cat­ing a dou­ble stan­dard of moral­i­ty, con­don­ing slav­ery, order­ing the Israelites to com­mit geno­cide and com­mit­ting infan­ti­cide him­self on a mass scale. I don’t believe you will find any­thing com­pa­ra­ble in the Qur’an.

The word jihad,” which is so over-used these days, has, like a lot of words, more than one mean­ing. It means basi­cal­ly to strug­gle, but this can be per­son­al or spir­i­tu­al, or a peace­ful polit­i­cal strug­gle. Only if Islam is attacked are Mus­lims required to defend it. As for that obnox­ious pro­pa­gan­da term Islamo-fas­cist,” just recall that fas­cism is a Euro­pean inven­tion by nom­i­nal Chris­tians. To my knowl­edge, the only fas­cist gov­ern­ments ever to exist on this plan­et were all Euro­pean and nom­i­nal­ly Christian.

Anoth­er canard is that Islam pro­motes forced con­ver­sion. Not so. Even when the Arab empire was expand­ing, rarely were any of the con­quered peo­ple forced to con­vert. The Qur’an even for­bids it, as I recall. Nat­u­ral­ly, once Mus­lims were in charge, a lot of peo­ple decid­ed it was in their own self-inter­est to con­vert, but this is just one of the sleazy aspects of human nature.

I remem­ber when Flori­da elect­ed its first Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of the 20th cen­tu­ry. I saw plen­ty of peo­ple crawl out from under their rocks and con­vert to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, drawn by the smell of patron­age. With some rare excep­tions, human beings always act in what they per­ceive, right­ly or wrong­ly, to be in their self-interest.

It was Chris­t­ian Europe that slaugh­tered the Jews, and noth­ing remote­ly resem­bling the Holo­caust is to be found in the his­to­ry of Islam. In fact, dur­ing the past, when Jews were being per­se­cut­ed by Chris­t­ian Europe, they fre­quent­ly fled to and found sanc­tu­ary in the Mus­lim coun­tries. Until Israel was estab­lished, prac­ti­cal­ly every Mus­lim coun­try had siz­able Jew­ish pop­u­la­tions dat­ing back cen­turies. And there are still Jews and Chris­tians in some Mus­lim countries.

A final sug­ges­tion is that when you hear some indi­vid­ual rad­i­cal Mus­lim being quot­ed, just remem­ber he is one of a bil­lion peo­ple and speaks only for him­self and his small fol­low­ing. And be wary of the quo­ta­tions he uses, for they are often delib­er­ate­ly fab­ri­cat­ed or dis­tort­ed. If Mus­lims real­ly desired to con­quer the world, don’t you think it’s strange that we’ve been liv­ing in peace with them for near­ly a mil­len­ni­um and a half, except for those times when we attacked them (the Cru­sades, the Euro­pean colo­nial move­ment and our inva­sion of Iraq)? Don’t for­get either that some of the coun­tries the Bush admin­is­tra­tion calls allies are them­selves Mus­lim –- Egypt, Jor­dan, Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia, etc.?

You have noth­ing to fear from Islam. The al-Qai­da move­ment is a tiny per­cent­age of Mus­lims and would­n’t be the force it is except for the fact that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has gone out of its way to make all of Osama bin Laden’s pro­pa­gan­da become true.Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Charley Reese, Do Not Be Fooled By Pro­pa­gan­da,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, June 28, 2007, last accessed March 19, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​o​p​-​e​d​/​d​o​-​n​o​t​-​b​e​-​f​o​o​l​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​r​o​p​a​g​a​n​da/

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4 responses to “Do Not Be Fooled By Propaganda”

  1. AmericanMuslim Avatar
    AmericanMuslim

    hey Richard. u said Mus­lims cant live with out their reli­gion. well if u only knew that Islam cov­ers all aspects of life. not just the spir­i­tu­al aspect but eco­nom­i­cal­ly. polit­i­cal­ly and social­ly. hav­ing said that good chance that those Mus­lims u saw are not prac­tic­ing Islam the right way because if u knew any­thing about Islam u would know that when Prophet Muham­mad peace be upon him was get­ting per­se­cut­ed in Mec­ca he and his fol­low­ers did not run around protest­ing instead they prac­ticed their reli­gion and increased their faith. Now. u say that we need to real­ize a bunch of things well friend that com­ment just says it all, u have no idea of Islam, its prin­ci­ples, its teach­ing, its beau­ty and per­fec­tion. For­get his­to­ry ? ha ! u cant run away from the past, u have to learn from it and look for­ward to a bet­ter future. By the way The Quran is per­fect no one i mean NO ONE has found a sin­gle mis­take, Muham­mad is the per­fect exam­ple for human­i­ty and before u start accus­ing the Holy Prophet of pro­found things read his authen­tic biog­ra­phy if u are sin­cere. Islam has with­stood the test of Time, The Roman, Byzan­tine, Per­sian empires and has with­stood all crit­i­cism, attempts wether mil­i­tar­i­ly or diplo­mat­i­cal­ly to wipe out Islam. It has with­stood The Chris­t­ian onslaught of Cru­sades, Jew­ish Attempts from with­in the cap­i­tal of Islam to assas­si­nate the Prophet, Idol­tars attempts to crush the mus­lims when they were 1,000 heav­i­ly armored well trained against 300 mus­lims with the shirts on their backs. and friend i guar­an­tee u there is noth­ing that u peo­ple throw at us that we have not already over­come. and on that i say Peace be upon u.

  2. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    I read your com­ments here how islam is not want­i­ng to take over the world or to cre­ate dominance.

    I live in Aus­tralia and whilst islam­ic sup­port­ers are in a minor­i­ty, it is dis­turb­ing to see how mus­lims can’t live with­out their reli­gion and are com­plete­ly dom­i­nat­ed by it…almost like a bunch of kids fol­low­ing some unin­tel­li­gent leader.

    Chris­tians are more accept­ing. We don’t run amok when some­one critizes the pope. Not even when a turk tried to assas­si­nate him. Imag­ine this in the mus­lim world when we look at the mad­ness with­in that was cre­at­ed when some­one dared pub­lish some cartoons.

    It is time mus­lims stop being oppressed from with­in. It is time mus­lims start­ed think­ing for them­selves. It is time mus­lims real­ize they can think for them­selves and can enjoy a won­der­ful life with­out being told what to do…it is called freedom.

    For­get his­to­ry. That has happened…gone!!!! Start liv­ing in the real world and you might shake the rep­u­ta­tion of being con­sid­ered the most despised and dis­gust­ing group that ever walked this earth.

  3. M.A.RAWOOF Avatar
    M.A.RAWOOF

    It was hap­pened to see the AHLI ZINA’s site while Iam search­ing for some infor­ma­tion about Islam, Though Iam Mus­lim By birth, I Always try to get more knowl­edge about Islam, Inthat search it is hap­pened to see that pig com­ments in his site, I even don’t know until now such pigs are prepar­ing anti Islam­ic sites, and pour­ing such offen­sive words Agan­ist MUHAMMED SALLALLAHU ALAIHI WA SALLAM AND ISLAM . No Mus­lim will for­give that bas­terd who made such comments,What I believe is if Ahli zina see his own hiso­ry of his fore­fa­thers and moth­er he will come to know def­i­nite­ly he is a prod­uct of zina.He is not to that reach to see the his­to­ry of Islam, Islam is Far supe­ri­or than one can nar­rate its good­ness and true­ness Islam is a true reli­gion, And MUHAMMED SALLALLAHU ALAIHIWASALLAM IS THE TRUE MESSENGER OF ALLAH JALLA JALALAHU.

    Regards,
    M.A.RAWOOF

  4. Abi Avatar
    Abi

    Yes ! Anti Islam­ic peo­ple vig­or­ous­ly build an opin­ion to the whole world that all crimes ever occurred in mankind his­to­ry for the last 1000 years should be imposed upon Mus­lim and Islam.

    Like in my coun­try Indone­sia, although, Chris­tians coun­try, such as Nether­lands (we call it Belan­da) ever col­o­nized us, robbed our wealths, raped our women, killed our ances­tors for 350 years. But after we got our free­dom day at 17 august 1945, nei­ther Mus­lim polit­i­cal par­ties ever indi­cat­ed to dri­ve away native or for­eign Chris­tians peo­ple from Indone­sia nor there was a sin­gle peo­ple who poured their angers to Chris­tians peo­ple by cut their throat off.

    But, Chris­tians peo­ple live hap­pi­ly and safe­ly and enjoy the free­dom that they nev­er fought for in Indone­sia. But what Indone­sia Mus­lim get from sev­er­al of them now ? Their filthy words in the Indone​sia​.faith free­dom forum of A(h)li (Z)ina.

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