Mis­sion­ary VS Ter­ror­ist : An Exam­i­na­tion of a Mis­sion­ary’s Men­tal Imbal­ance and Behav­iour­ial Problem

The recent bar­rage of mis­sion­ary demen­tia gives us a mar­velous oppor­tu­ni­ty to expose the char­ac­ter of the mis­sion­ary Sam Shamoun, his men­tal dis­or­der and the extremes he is will­ing to under­take in order to unleash his abus­es and prej­u­dice towards Mus­lims. Indeed, he con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strates that he is a con­firmed Islam­o­phobe. Mus­lims should bear in mind that many mis­sion­ar­ies, who claim to love Mus­lims” and care about Mus­lims”, in real­i­ty hold such prej­u­diced views con­cern­ing them as does this mis­sion­ary. So we should not be fooled by his croc­o­dile tears.

The dis­cus­sion is con­cern­ing the use of the term mis­sion­ary”. The mis­sion­ary claims that we should not refer to him as a mis­sion­ary because even though he is a mis­sion­ary, many Mus­lims nev­er­the­less have alleged neg­a­tive” views con­cern­ing the title mis­sion­ary” accord­ing to his opin­ion. Hence he argues that we are mak­ing an ad hominem attack against him every time we right­ful­ly call him a mis­sion­ary. He claims that his argu­ments will be alleged­ly dis­missed before­hand by Mus­lims when they find out that he is a missionary.

The mis­sion­ary writes :

    Before respond­ing, some­thing needs to be said about […] use of the term mis­sion­ary.” As was not­ed in my response to MENJ, in Mus­lim vocab­u­lary there can hard­ly be a worse insult than call­ing some­body a mis­sion­ary. A per­son labeled a mis­sion­ary will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be dis­missed and not be tak­en seri­ous­ly by Mus­lim read­ers. It is used to cre­ate anger towards that per­son. This is exact­ly what Bra­vo wants to achieve and why he uses this word. Under­stand­ing the Mus­lim use of lan­guage, it is the clas­si­cal ad hominem.

The first point to note is that it is com­plete­ly false and mis­lead­ing to claim that in Mus­lim vocab­u­lary” to call some­body a mis­sion­ary” is an insult. We won­der who duped him to accept such a laugh­able claim. Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary orga­ni­za­tions have a rich and active par­tic­i­pa­tion in a vari­ety of are­nas all over the Mus­lim world, from Pak­istan to the Mid­dle East. A num­ber of Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary schools exist in Pak­istan for instance with the major­i­ty of the pupils being Mus­lims. These schools and orga­ni­za­tions open­ly pro­claim them­selves to be mis­sion­ar­ies. Now, it is true that most Mus­lims look upon the activ­i­ty of the prop­a­ga­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty by way of out­right decep­tion and dis­tor­tions in a neg­a­tive light. How­ev­er, to claim that the word mis­sion­ary” itself is an insult” in the Mus­lim vocab­u­lary” is quite a stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. Most Mus­lims treat any­one who claims to be a mis­sion­ary” with respect. They are not auto­mat­i­cal­ly dis­missed” as the mis­sion­ary has delud­ed him­self to imag­ine, nor does this term cre­ate anger” towards a per­son who claims to be one. As proof, none of us at Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, who are all Mus­lims, are upset” or angry” towards any­one for being a mis­sion­ary”. Amaz­ing­ly he has the audac­i­ty to talk about anger” when he has a very rich his­to­ry of abus­ing and insult­ing Mus­lims in the most vul­gar and vicious fashion !

It should be not­ed that the use of the term mis­sion­ary” is sim­ply because the mis­sion­ary, Sam Shamoun, is indeed a Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary. How­ev­er, he uses terms such as clowns”, pagans”, car­toon char­ac­ter” and claims that we wor­ship a demon-god” not because we are clowns”, pagans”, car­toon char­ac­ters” or do wor­ship a demon god”, but because he wish­es to insult and abuse his Mus­lim oppo­nents and their reli­gion in a low, cheap and vul­gar man­ner when he is angry. Hence, his claim of ad hominem is sim­ply his psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­jec­tion upon us and reflec­tive of his own men­tal disorder.

Mis­sion­ary” is a term used in ref­er­ence to those Chris­tians whose aim is to con­vert oth­ers to their reli­gion by way of active preach­ing and prop­a­ga­tion. If Shamoun is will­ing to admit that his pur­pose is most cer­tain­ly not the prop­a­ga­tion, preach­ing and defense of Chris­tian­i­ty, and that his mis­sion has nev­er been to con­vert oth­ers to his reli­gion, that he only wastes time author­ing pro-Chris­t­ian arti­cles for no appar­ent rea­son per­haps because he is job­less and there­fore has noth­ing else to do, then we will glad­ly stop refer­ring to him as a missionary.

His next argu­ment” is even more fool­ish than the pri­or one. He argues that since we right­ful­ly call him a mis­sion­ary” since he is a mis­sion­ary, he will there­fore start labelling us as ter­ror­ists” even though we are not ter­ror­ists”! Here his prej­u­dice is quite trans­par­ent for all to wit­ness. In recent years a num­ber of prej­u­diced, racist and Islam­o­pho­bic indi­vid­u­als have start­ed to label all Mus­lims as ter­ror­ists” and poten­tial ter­ror­ists” mere­ly because they hap­pen to be Mus­lims no mat­ter how peace­ful. The missionary?s choice of the label ter­ror­ist” is only indica­tive of his own extreme prej­u­diced and hate-filled mind set towards the Muslims.

What if we start refer­ring to him as a homo­sex­u­al mere­ly because we believe that he is insult­ing” us by right­ful­ly call­ing us Mus­lims”? That a per­son labeled a Mus­lim will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be dis­missed and not be tak­en seri­ous­ly by Chris­t­ian and West­ern read­ers and that it is used to cre­ate anger towards that per­son ? Thus being called a Mus­lim” is an insult even though we are indeed Mus­lims ? We will, as such, refer to Shamoun as a homo­sex­u­al every time he calls me a Mus­lim” as an edu­ca­tion­al device”! This is pre­cise­ly the type of sil­ly, child­ish atti­tude of this Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary, a unique insight into his down­right twist­ed way of thinking.

He writes :

    There­fore, through­out my response I will at times use the term ter­ror­ist in ref­er­ence to Bra­vo. This will be done in order to demon­strate to our read­ers the dis­re­spect intend­ed in the title mis­sion­ary.” If Bra­vo objects to my label­ing him a ter­ror­ist, then he needs to show more respect to the Chris­tians he seeks to refute. This is strict­ly an edu­ca­tion­al device on my part, and should Bra­vo revise his arti­cles accord­ing­ly, I will glady remove this term as well. 

There is no dis­re­spect” intend­ed by call­ing a mis­sion­ary a mis­sion­ary just as no dis­re­spect” is intend­ed by refer­ring to a police­man as a policeman.

In short, we call the mis­sion­ary Sam Shamoun a mis­sion­ary sim­ply because he is a mis­sion­ary where­as he calls me a ter­ror­ist” not because I am a ter­ror­ist, but mere­ly because we hap­pen to be Mus­lims. In oth­er words he is only abus­ing us. He believes that Mus­lims are ter­ror­ists by default for being Mus­lims, or at least poten­tial ter­ror­ists, because they are evil” and the reli­gion they fol­low is evil” and because they wor­ship a demon god”.

Nat­u­ral­ly, those who wor­ship a demon god” can­not be any bet­ter than ter­ror­ists. Hence the only word that entered his mind was ter­ror­ist” to label me because we hap­pen to be Mus­lims. We have already read his state­ment that the Mus­lims wor­ship a demon god” and that they are pagans”, so to call Mus­lim ter­ror­ists” just for being Mus­lims, no mat­ter how peace­ful, does not come as a sur­prise. It only goes on to show the abu­sive, dis­re­spect­ful and high­ly insult­ing behav­iour and atti­tude of this mis­sion­ary towards Mus­lims. These are sim­ply his true feel­ings which get unleashed when he enters a fit of uncon­trol­lable anger.

This out­right prej­u­dice, stereo­typ­i­cal abuse and vehe­ment insult is then con­ve­nient­ly dressed up as an edu­ca­tion­al device” as if that would some­how alter its appear­ance or min­imise its intend­ed pur­pose ! How des­per­ate can one get ? Hence if any­thing, he is the only one who is required to revise his papers and offer an uncon­di­tion­al apol­o­gy for heap­ing vicious stereo­typ­i­cal abus­es and lies towards oth­ers mere­ly due to their reli­gious beliefs that he despises.

Our chal­lenge to the mis­sion­ary is to prove his claim that we are ter­ror­ists”, the mean­ing of which is :

Def­i­n­i­tion 1. one who uses vio­lence, tor­ture, or phys­i­cal intim­i­da­tion to achieve one’s ends, esp. one’s polit­i­cal ends.” 

If, how­ev­er, he fails to demon­strate and prove the above, and of a sure­ty he will, then not only does he prove him­self to be a nar­row mind­ed, hate-filled, prej­u­diced, Islam­o­pho­bic and big­ot­ed indi­vid­ual, he also con­vinc­ing­ly proves him­self to be a bold-faced liar.

A few para­graphs lat­er he makes a few more inter­est­ing state­ments that fur­ther shed light upon his stereo­typ­i­cal prej­u­diced mind­set and hate towards the Mus­lim community :

    [Note : Just as ter­ror­ist” is obvi­ous­ly a very neg­a­tive word in the non-Mus­lim world, while for many Mus­lims those who strike ter­ror in the hearts of the unbe­liev­ers” are heroes and should they even loose their life in the process are ven­er­at­ed as mar­tyrs, so the word mis­sion­ary” is despi­ca­ble word in the Mus­lim world, while it is a title of hon­or in the Chris­t­ian church for those who take upon them­selves much hard­ship to bring God’s Gospel of sal­va­tion to the peo­ple who do not yet know it.]

This argu­men­ta­tion is still sense­less and illog­i­cal because even if we assume that the term ter­ror­ist” is very neg­a­tive” in the non-Mus­lim world where­as it is sup­pos­ed­ly very won­der­ful” in the Islam­ic world, the sim­ple fact remains that we are still not ter­ror­ists. How­ev­er, if we were a ter­ror­ist, then we would have argued using Shamoun­ian log­ic” as follows :

    Don’t call me a ter­ror­ist because even though I am a ter­ror­ist this term is very neg­a­tive in the non-Mus­lim world. No one will lis­ten to what I have to say if you call me a ter­ror­ist. But since you still call me a ter­ror­ist even though I am one, I will call you a homo­sex­u­al as an edu­ca­tion­al device”.

Our stand on ter­ror­ism, how­ev­er, is very clear, thus to label any writer at bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org a ter­ror­ist” is still sim­ply a bla­tant lie, stereo­typ­i­cal prej­u­diced insult and vicious abuse. The fact is that no sim­i­lar­i­ty exists between my refer­ring to the mis­sion­ary as a mis­sion­ary because he is a mis­sion­ary and me being labelled a ter­ror­ist” by him when I am not a ter­ror­ist. My state­ment that he is a mis­sion­ary is the sol­id truth where­as his claim that I am a ter­ror­ist” is a cheap lie, stereo­typ­i­cal abuse, prej­u­dice, and insult. He says I am a ter­ror­ist” sim­ply because I hap­pen to be a Mus­lim. This is the basic flaw in the mis­sion­ary’s log­ic”.

The bizarre argu­ment now is that the word ter­ror­ist” is neg­a­tive” in the non-Mus­lim world where­as it is sup­pos­ed­ly high­ly prized, respect­ed and a much adored term in the Islam­ic world. Is there any­thing one can say regard­ing such a sick men­tal­i­ty ? These words speak for itself and are a very good win­dow and indi­ca­tor to view the amount of hate, prej­u­dice and big­otry of the mis­sion­ary towards the Mus­lims and his char­ac­ter. Such is the typ­i­cal men­tal­i­ty of all racist Islam­o­phobes who live in the delu­sion that ter­ror­ist” is a respectable” title in the Mus­lim world.

The sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is that the term ter­ror­ist” is as much neg­a­tive in the Mus­lim world as it is in the non-Mus­lim world. If you trav­el to the Mus­lim word and call any per­son walk­ing on the street a ter­ror­ist”, they will feel extreme­ly offend­ed and high­ly-insult­ed as any human being. Mus­lims are also human beings, some­thing mis­sion­ary Shamoun does not real­ize. No Mus­lim will walk up to you shake your hands and pro­claim oh thank you, you called me a ter­ror­ist, I can’t tell you how proud and hap­py that makes me feel.” Instead, you will receive an extreme­ly hos­tile reac­tion just as you would if you were to label any non-Mus­lim a ter­ror­ist” just for the fun of it.

Unlike the West­ern world, most Mus­lims are hor­ri­fied with the col­lat­er­al dam­age” ter­ror­ism active­ly prac­tised by the West­ern world that has result­ed in the deaths of thou­sands of inno­cent civil­ians in the past 2 – 3 years. Racist Islam­o­phobes fail to real­ize that there are non-Mus­lim Judeo-Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ists in the West­ern world, pro­fess­ing Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish faiths, and that ter­ror­ism is not a unique prop­er­ty of Mus­lims. For instance in Gujarat in sec­u­lar India, hard­ly a few months ago, no less than 2000 Mus­lims, most­ly women and chil­dren, were mur­dered in the most cru­el, grue­some and bar­bar­ic man­ner imag­in­able, with the wombs of preg­nant Mus­lim women cut open and the fetus­es thrown on fire.

But the mis­sion­ary of course does not deem this as ter­ror­ism”. He will prob­a­bly find an excuse to jus­ti­fy this car­nage. They fail to under­stand that Mus­lims take the word ter­ror­ist” as much neg­a­tiv­i­ty as any oth­er non-Mus­lim woul. The men­tal­i­ty of such prej­u­diced, hate-filled, big­ot­ed and racist indi­vid­u­als — such as the mis­sion­ary — leads them to believe that Mus­lims are sub-human crea­tures, bar­bar­ians”, etc., who like” ter­ror­ism because of their genet­ic make-up and because they are evil” and their reli­gion is evil”. In this, their men­tal­i­ty is not much dif­fer­ent from that of the Nazis who held sim­i­lar beliefs con­cern­ing the Jews and their religion.

As for strik­ing ter­ror in the hearts of unbe­liev­ers”, mean­ing those who wage war on Mus­lims, then yes, the mar­tyrs who defend the inno­cent and die while fight­ing the aggres­sors will, insha’al­lah, go to heav­en, unlike the aggressors.

Last­ly, even if we assume that the title mis­sion­ary” is sup­pos­ed­ly despi­ca­ble” in the Mus­lim world (which is a rather huge exag­ger­a­tion), the demand that Mus­lims stop refer­ring to mis­sion­ar­ies as mis­sion­ar­ies” makes lit­tle sense. If it is admit­ted that the title mis­sion­ary” is one of high­est hon­ours in the Chris­t­ian Church”, should he then not be will­ing to suf­fer even more hard­ships and trou­bles for the sake of a title held in immense hon­our” in the Church ? For exam­ple, we will con­tin­ue to refer to our­selves as Mus­lims because we are Mus­lims and will ask oth­ers to address us as such no mat­ter how despi­ca­ble” the word Mus­lim” may be be to them. But to sud­den­ly refer to the oppo­nent as a ter­ror­ist” when he/​she is only call­ing you by your true title, and to dis­guise this bla­tant, abu­sive behav­iour as an edu­ca­tion­al device” is sim­ply non­sense, child­ish and an exam­ple of the men­tal insta­bil­i­ty of one’s own mind. Missionary VS Terrorist: An Examination of a Missionary's Mental Imbalance and Behaviourial Problem 1Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma Team, Mis­sion­ary VS Ter­ror­ist : An Exam­i­na­tion of a Mis­sion­ary’s Men­tal Imbal­ance and Behav­iour­ial Prob­lem,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Octo­ber 15, 2005, last accessed March 19, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​o​p​-​e​d​/​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​a​r​y​-​v​s​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​i​st/

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One response to “Mis­sion­ary VS Ter­ror­ist : An Exam­i­na­tion of a Mis­sion­ary’s Men­tal Imbal­ance and Behav­iour­ial Problem”

  1. shadowofears Avatar
    shadowofears

    Well He minds if we call him MISSIONARY” so what about him call­ing Mus­lims Ter­ror­ists”.

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