Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Real Victims

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 24, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

17:05

The Real Victims

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	What's the hottest take when a Muslim suicide bomber goes to a concert and pops himself taking out 20 people including women and children?
	Young Muslims are fearful.
	Yesterday I came to the video.
	Sorry, what are they fearful of?
	They're fearful of reprisal and we've already started to see it.
	The real victims of an Islamic suicide bomber are Muslims.
	I've been watching the media, I've been listening to the radio and there's a bit of anger.
	And that's normal.
	It's normal to be angry.
	But who's that anger being directed towards?
	And my fear is to the Muslim community.
	My word, how bigoted the British public are.
	To expect Muslim communities not to produce suicide bombers.
	What a bunch of fucking Islamophobes.
	How dare they be angry that this happens repeatedly, regularly.
	And we are now at a heightened state of alert just in case there are any other Muslims coming out of these communities who want to blow people up.
	And you know, as beautiful as it is that people are together, and yesterday, actually, I was quite surprised.
	I was happy with what Mancunians did.
	We got together, there was a lot of, there was a few arguments within the crowd later on, but everyone got together and dispersed it and shut it down very quickly.
	But I fear for what's going to happen next.
	You and me both.
	I can't wait to find out who the next Muslim man who has spent his youth drinking and carousing and doing drugs and gambling and whatever else is sinful in Islam and decides that there's only one way he's getting into heaven and that's by murdering the unbeliever.
	So this chap was spotted hanging around Manchester looking to be interviewed by the BBC by Stephen Knight, otherwise known as the godless spell checker and he's really good.
	You should check him out.
	Stephen has actually had an encounter with this Islamic apologist before on BBC Question Time.
	Who needs a safe space?
	I think possibly a group that may have a good shout for this is ex-Muslims.
	For instance, they're ostracized by the larger community.
	It can be a great risk to actually their personhood if they come out against Islam vocally.
	So I speak to a lot of ex-Muslim groups and they do a lot of heavy venting.
	I love this guy's expression.
	What do you mean?
	Ex-Muslims are persecuted by Muslims?
	Don't be ridiculous.
	Yes, I know it's the only religion that carries a death sentence for leaving it, but why would we be oppressive to apostates?
	Why would we exile them from the community?
	We're so tolerant.
	I just know at all.
	Well, an ex-Muslim.
	No, because actually at the university I work for, an ex-Muslim group came onto the campus and I was asked to sit in and observe it.
	So this is nonsense.
	That ex-Muslims are somehow scared.
	Okay, that's an interesting opinion you hold.
	But frankly, I do not give a shit about the opinion of a Muslim chaplain to a university.
	I think your opinion might be a little biased.
	I can, in fact, ask the ex-Muslims themselves.
	I'm sorry for hiding my face is because I talked to you from a community which will not tolerate what I'm about to say and I will lose my head because of what I have to say.
	I want to talk about why did I left Islam?
	A lot of people in our community, I know a lot of friends, they're just so scared of the community and what people will think about them.
	If we even say something against Islam, I've left Islam and they've met many like me, but they can't speak up because they will be attacking.
	Even here in Sweden, many ex-Muslims are still afraid to come out.
	Many of them are still afraid of the reaction of their families, whether through violence or maybe they would be excluded or ostracized by their communities.
	It's something that we have to fight.
	It's unfortunate that this kind of intimidating climate inflicted by religious conservatism is still present even here in Sweden for ex-Muslims.
	There are several contributing factors to that.
	One of them is that Islamic conservatism is not really challenged or talked about here in Sweden.
	Sometimes it's even encouraged because of this counterproductive and really dangerous Islamophilia that a faction of the left and many of the so-called progressives engage in.
	This romanticizing of Islam.
	And also I think many ex-Muslims feel demonized and intimidated by the climate of political correctness that surrounds Islam because it's difficult for them to talk about it without people raising eyebrows.
	All religions and all ideologies, including Islam, should not be above criticism.
	And it's important to make the difference between Islam as an ideology and Muslims as people.
	This is something that people in the West are mixing up all the time and it's really dangerous.
	Well look at those fucking Islamophobes.
	Just because you know they're ex-Muslims who realize how awful Islam is doesn't mean that they have an excuse not to be terrorized by their own communities for having an independent thought.
	Jesus, what a bunch of bigots.
	But really, we need to talk about the real victims of Islamic suicide bombers.
	Not like the people who got blown up, obviously.
	Muslims are the most attacked people in the press by everyone.
	You can't open a newspaper, turn the television on without Muslims being attacked.
	Oh no.
	A religious group is getting a lot of bad press because of all of the suicide bombings that religious group is doing.
	This is clearly Islamophobia.
	The press never reports on Hindu suicide bombers, Sikh suicide bombers, kind of Taoist and Buddhist Mormon suicide bombers.
	They never report the obviously numerous suicide attacks that these religions are conducting against the West.
	It's only the Muslim ones.
	Must be because they're fucking racist.
	I've heard in the last five minutes the word Islamism used by nearly everyone who's spoken so far.
	I want to know who the Islamist people are you talking about.
	Oh, that's just brilliant, isn't it?
	That's even dumber than saying that people who are concerned about Islamic terror attacks are actually just racists.
	Now you are saying that there is no distinction between the politicized, theocratic, totalitarian ideology of Islamism and non-political, liberal Muslims.
	You are saying that these are one and the same.
	What you are saying is that the only interpretation of Islam is conservative and authoritarian.
	And you are doing this because if you don't, you are offended.
	Fuck your feelings.
	Fuck your goddamn feelings.
	I don't care if you're offended.
	Well, I'll take it.
	I have to sit here and take it.
	If you're an Islamist who thinks...
	No, I'm not...
	You don't know how to distinguish between Muslims and Islamists, but you don't consider yourself to be an Islamist.
	And that's a nice little smile there.
	I'm not.
	Little smile.
	You're not an Islamist.
	You can't distinguish between Muslims and Islamists, but you're not an Islamist.
	How would you fucking know?
	If one is an Islamist and you have those certain views on homosexuals, for example.
	And just to give you the statistics on that, it's only about 88% of all Muslims worldwide who think homosexuality is immoral.
	So not exactly a widely held belief or anything.
	If you're LGBT, you might find that very offensive.
	But isn't it better to debate that Islamist, if I may use that term.
	And I'm all for free speech.
	I've had to sit and listen to many anti-Muslim comments and you have to just sit there and fucking deal with it.
	That is your only option.
	To listen and say, well, I didn't like that.
	Because at the end of the day, they are just words.
	That's it.
	You don't have the right to censor people because they say things you don't like.
	That's how free speech works.
	If you have any other response to that, you are not in favour of free speech.
	Some tends to make anti-LGBT comments.
	Not some, most.
	And it's because homosexuality is condemned by Islam.
	Here is a list of Muslim leaders who signed a letter opposing gay marriage in the UK using the exact same rhetoric as conservative Christians from the United States.
	Some of my favourite bits are marriage is a sacred contract between a man and a woman that cannot be redefined and Muslim teachers will be forced into the contradictory position of holding private beliefs while teaching a new legal definition of marriage.
	Okay, so do you want to come back on that?
	Yeah, you made a point about Muslims having to put up with sort of anti-Muslim abuse and things like that.
	Ex-Muslims have to put up with that as well because the same misconceptions about you based on skin colour or your Arabic sounding name or whatever, that's projected onto ex-Muslims as well and then they have the added ostracization from their own communities on top of that.
	I think that's a fair point, but I don't think that Muhammad there gives a damn.
	I think he's already made up his mind.
	I mean his entire career is based on being a Muslim who apparently can't see the difference between Islamists and Muslims.
	But that's beside the point.
	The important thing to remember here is that these communities are producing suicide bombers.
	There has to be a reason for it.
	Now I think these people are trying to redeem themselves, cleanse their souls, and that Islam provides a path to that by killing the unbeliever.
	There is a vast amount of debate on what type of person becomes a suicide attacker for Islam.
	And this is an article from Scientific American from 2015 talking about the psychological profile of the Chattanooga shooter.
	At first glance, the Chattanooga shooter might have seemed like a violent but psychologically normal young man.
	He had been researching martyrdom for at least two years, which could be interpreted as ideological commitment.
	And he was not a social outcast.
	Apparently he fits in as an Arab redneck.
	One friend who spent time with him just two weeks before the attack explained, he was always the most cheerful guy.
	If you were having a bad day, he would brighten your day.
	Similarly, a professor who was with him just six days before the killings recalled, I just saw the same friendly guy.
	But far from being a blind supporter of all radical Islamist causes, he actually told a friend that ISIS was a stupid group and completely against Islam.
	And far from being psychologically healthy, he reportedly struggled with bipolar disorder, depression and substance abuse and expressed suicidal thoughts in his writings.
	The link to give us more information on this goes to a CNN article about the Chattanooga shooting gunman.
	They say that he apparently had a drug problem, which reportedly included party drugs and marijuana.
	His family felt unable to control him and so sent him to Jordan the previous year to get him away from his Chattanooga friends who said that they were bad influences on him.
	According to the family representative, his parents sent him to Jordan to stay with family in hope of getting him away from his life of depression and drug use in Tennessee.
	Some relatives and friends told investigators that they detected changes in his behavior after he returned from Jordan.
	He sent a text message to a friend before the attack that included an Islamic verse that says, Whoever shows enmity to a friend of mine, then I have declared war against him.
	I'm finding it very difficult to believe that this person, whatever mental disorders he had, was not operating under an ideological influence that he had reasoned himself into by using verses from the Quran and Hadiths as justification for his shooting.
	And we have interviews with other potential jihadis who are arrested before they get the opportunity to blow themselves up, such as this one from 2015 in New Delhi.
	An arrested Pakistani suicide bomber said that he wanted to blow himself up because 72 virgins are waiting for him in heaven.
	Interestingly, militant groups like ISIS also quote Islamic scriptures in order to point out that a suicide bomber will get 72 virgins in heaven.
	According to him, a man who is a jihadi is a true follower of Islam, whereas others are not.
	If that's not ideological, I don't know what is.
	The suicide bomber said that there was literally no logic in only marrying one woman here.
	Question.
	Will you take revenge from all?
	Yes, I will, as much as I can, even if it includes my family.
	If I go out for suicide bombing and I see my family there, even then I will blow myself.
	Question.
	In suicide bombings, innocent Muslims and even those who hate America are killed.
	Answer.
	No.
	Those who are not taking part in jihad are not innocent.
	Only those are innocent who are taking part in the jihad in Miran Shah, etc.
	We have no repentance, no sorrow for killing.
	If our leader orders us to kill two people and hundreds are killed in this process, even then we will do.
	Question.
	How many brothers and sisters do you have?
	Answer.
	9 including me.
	Question.
	Your family supports you for this?
	Do your family know about you?
	They tried to stop me, but I don't care.
	Question.
	Are you married?
	Answer.
	No.
	Question.
	Do you wish to marry?
	Answer.
	No.
	72 virgins are waiting for me in heaven, so why should I prefer only one here?
	Question.
	Are virgins waiting for those as well who are killed at your hands?
	No.
	They will be treated there, the hereafter, as per their intentions.
	If they support government, then they will be answerable accordingly.
	Our leader has told us that you will not be responsible for the killing of those who are killed other than your target.
	No one in Pakistan is innocent.
	Whoever is outside Waziristan is not innocent.
	They will be innocent if they go and support the Taliban in their fighting.
	It really doesn't matter if this man is actually mentally disturbed, because his rationale for being a suicide bomber is entirely ideological.
	He has reasoned himself into this position, by reason of the fact that why would I even bother?
	If I know that I actually have 72 virgins waiting for me in heaven, why have a wife here?
	What's the point?
	Especially when you can guarantee your entrance to heaven through martyrdom.
	Which brings us back to the Scientific American article.
	They say, unfortunately, martyrdom has become a dangerous loophole.
	It is the only way Islamic suicide attackers believe they can guarantee their own death and yet go to heaven instead of hell.
	In the Middle East and Asia, they typically commit suicide bombings.
	In the United States, they tend to use firearms instead of bombs and plan on dying via suicide by cop.
	In both cases, these attack methods help disguise their suicidal motives.
	It is commonly claimed that they do not want to die.
	They just care more about harming the enemy than they do about their own survival.
	But we know that's not true.
	They actually do want to die, because they believe in the afterlife they will have an eternal reward, and that they will be guaranteed an entrance into heaven.
	The author also says, as I have argued elsewhere, the key to deterring Islamic suicide attackers, both in the United States and around the world, is to expose their suicidal motives and close the martyrdom loophole once and for all.
	Until suicide attackers are widely seen for the desperate, traumatized, and mentally ill people they are, instead of psychologically normal altruists, America will continue to suffer Islamic mass shootings who seek glory and heavenly rewards through death.
	I don't really know what we can do to prevent people from being mentally ill, but I do know that while this interpretation of Islam exists, these mentally ill people will persuade themselves ideologically that killing people to get into heaven is just and right because it's in the literature.
	While it can be credibly believed that Islam actually does give rewards to people who martyr themselves in the name of Islam and actually will get to heaven and actually can get these rewards, while that is a premise that any Muslim believes, you will always get Muslim suicide attackers.
	And the thing is, it's not like there's a shortage of Islamic scholars who say things like, suicide bombers will go to hell.
	And I'll be honest, I don't know why their arguments are failing to persuade jihadis.

▲