Bestselling writer
and speaker Nonie Darwish is author of the compelling autobiography Now
They Call Me Infidel,
about growing up in Egypt and her break from Islam, and Cruel
and Usual Punishment, an
exposé of the stark reality of sharia. Her new book, The
Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle
East, explains what really
lies behind the Arab Spring movement, and it exposes Islam as the belief system
that will inevitably doom those revolutions.
This is the first of
a two-part interview. Part two will appear tomorrow on FrontPage Magazine.
Mark Tapson: Nonie,
you note in your introduction that you have written The Devil We Don’t Know not merely to criticize Islam but as a
challenge, a plea to Muslims. What are you asking of them with this book?
Muslims need to understand that the reason Islam is
highly criticized is because it has assumed the role of government and a warlike
confrontational and oppressive draconian legal system, and thus Islam has
opened itself to criticism. But unfortunately Muslims, as a group, ignore or
are unaware of such an important reason for why Islam is highly criticized.
What Muslims need to understand is that the worldwide rejection, fear and
criticism of Islam is not an unjustified phobia.
The number one enemy of Islam
as it is practiced today is the truth, and thus my plea to Muslims is to
understand that being open to an honest dialogue is best for everyone. Muslims who truly love their religion need to lay down their pride, shame
and guns and honestly acknowledge the challenges of Islam today, not only for
themselves, but also for the rest of the world. Acknowledging historical
atrocities and evolving into a better faith in tune to human rights are values
that apply to everyone, every religion and ideology, if they are to stand the
test of time. Islam and Muslims are no exception. It is Islam’s turn today to
look within, seeking forgiveness and redemption as a first step towards healing
the wounds with the rest of the non-Muslim world. The whole world will stand in
support of a brave movement of cleansing Islam, especially its written books,
from the factors that contribute to its dysfunctional system. There is nothing
to fear for Muslims to let go of their fears and be willing to face reality,
admit their imperfections and their need to change course. That will be the
most positive, constructive and honorable thing Muslims can do today.
These are the questions that Muslim
revolutionaries today must face: are Muslims confident and secure enough in
their faith and its survival without resorting to enforcing it through the
government and legal system under penalty of death? Why do Muslims not dare
remove Sharia from their constitutions? Why do they dread letting go of total
control of every aspect of a Muslim’s life and the institutions that govern
him? What is behind their insecurity and feelings of inadequacy? What is it
that forces them to rely on government and not the freedom of the Muslim
individual to choose?
MT: You
write that the West misunderstood the Arab Spring revolutions by assuming that Middle
East dictators like Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, and others were secular. What were
they really, and how were they perceived by the Islamic fundamentalists?
ND: The
West describes Mubarak, Assad, Hussein and other regimes as secular when in
reality they were not. It is true that many of these dictators did come from a
military background and their wives do not wear Islamic clothes, but at the
same time many of them, in their youth, had been members of the Muslim
Brotherhood; for example, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar El Sadat. Many of the
so-called secular dictators govern under constitutions that state that Sharia is
the primary law of the land. No Muslim leader in the Middle East can get away
with a true secular rule, or even survive one day in office if he rejects
Islamic law. It was during Mubarak’s rule in 1991 that Egypt signed the Cairo
Declaration for Human Rights, which declared that Sharia supersedes any other
law. So even though Sharia is not applied one hundred percent in Egypt, Syria,
Iraq, Jordan or Tunisia, it is officially the law of the land. Mubarak, like
all Muslim leaders, had to appease the Islamists to avoid their wrath.
In fact, according to
Sharia, a Muslim head of state must rule by Islamic law and preserve Islam in
its original form or he must be removed from office. Islamic law leaves no
choice for any Muslim leader but to accept, at least officially, that Sharia is
the law of the land or else be ousted by a mob of Islamists who are commanded
by Sharia itself to remove any leader who is not a true Muslim. Because of that
law Muslim leaders must play a game of appearing Islamic and anti-West while
trying to get along with the rest of the world. It’s a game with life-and-death
consequences and that is why Anwar Sadat was killed for violating Sharia when
he signed a peace treaty with Israel.
MT: One of
the new book’s chapter titles is “A Muslim’s Burden: How Islam Fails the Individual.”
How does Islam fail the individual?
ND: The
reason Western civilization achieved its goals of democracy and freedom was
because they had the right moral foundations at the individual level that
produced the constitutions and democratic governments of the West. On the other
hand, Muslim culture failed to equip the individual with the moral foundation
for democracy. The Islamic state has failed the Muslim individual, his morality
and his humanity. For centuries, the Muslim mind believed in values contrary to
those espoused in the rest of the world.
After 17 years in the Egyptian educational system I
was never taught values such as the brotherhood of man, respect for
human rights, pursuing peace and harmony in our relationships with people
outside of our faith and treating our neighbors, including neighboring
countries as we wished to be treated. Such values are never taught in Islamic
culture, not even in a non-religious social setting. It was all about jihad,
martyrdom, paranoia, conspiracy theories and hatred of the other. And the sad thing
is that Muslims as a group have never found anything unusual or bad about this.
How can the ordinary Muslim society achieve democracy when
Islamic clerics promote values such as slavery, beating of disobedient wives,
lying, exaggeration and slander if it is for the benefit of Islam? Under the
title of “Permissible Slander,” Sharia states: “Slander, though unlawful, is
sometimes for a lawful purpose, the legitimating factor being that there is
some aim countenanced by Sacred Law that is unattainable by other means.” (Reliance of the Traveler, r2.16 p. 737.)
That means that the goal justifies the means, encouraging vengeance, hating and
cursing of non-Muslims, especially Jews, taking the law into their hands, all
of which contribute to fear and distrust between Muslim citizens.
Also, the human dilemma of finding a divine clear path that leads man to
safety in God is not clear to the Muslim believer. The only guaranteed path to
heaven for the Muslim is to die in the process of jihad against non-Muslims. Islam
constantly resorts to threat, fear and horrific punishments to prevent
followers from asking questions or thinking for themselves. Islamic scriptures
encourage Muslims to believing in two opposite views or interpretations at the
same time and depending on the situation, they will use the applicable view.
Islam has also burdened the Muslim individual with saving and protecting
Mohammed’s honor and execute anyone who criticizes Mohammed, even if he or she
repents. It is totally opposite to Christianity, where Jesus came to save
humanity on the cross. Islam has neglected the concept of forgiveness and
redemption and thus has increased a Muslim’s feelings of guilt and paranoia, becoming
a burden rather than a healing to the Muslim individual. Instead of healing the
guilt and pain, it has burdened him with vengeance, hate, fear and oppression
and above all saving and protecting their prophet’s reputation with their
lives, even today in the 21st century.
MT: Please
explain how Jews and Israel constitute an “existential problem” for Islam.
ND: Few Muslims ever question why the prophet of
Islam’s final words at his deathbed were not to command his followers to be
holy and righteous or to make the world a better place, but were a commandment
to kill the Jews wherever they went and to continue the genocide for him until
Judgment Day.
One does not have to be a psychotherapist to find it
extremely odd for a prophet of Allah to declare a whole group of people as
illegal to exist under Islam. Nevertheless, Muslims today are unable to see the
wickedness in such a commandment and how odd it is to continue fighting the
unfinished business of Mohammed.
But what could ever drive a prophet to such a
vendetta? A truthful analysis and answer
to these questions will expose an existential dilemma at the heart of Islam. Rejection by the
Jews became an intolerable obsession with Mohammed. Not only did the Jews
reject to convert to Islam, but their prosperity made Mohammed extremely
envious. The Jewish tribes were successful businessmen who earned their living
legitimately, through agriculture, trade and tool making. On the other hand,
Mohammed earned his living and wealth through warfare, attacks on Arab tribes
and trade caravans and seizing their wealth and property. That did not look
good for a man who claimed to be a prophet.
Mohammed accused the Jews of having broken a treaty and Allah himself
agreed with Mohammed in the Koran. One Jewish tribe after another was subjected
to siege, execution and confiscation of property. Islamic books
documented in detail how he and his followers beheaded 600 to 900 Jewish men
from one tribe. Mohammed was very keen on not slaughtering Jews without
convincing his reluctant followers that all the decisions to kill the Jews were
made jointly with the counsel of others. The bloody massacre took about two
days to be completed. However, the mass
genocide committed by Mohammed was reported in Muslim scriptures not as a sin
or something to be ashamed of, but as justifiable deeds. Mohammed and his followers
then seized the massacred men’s properties, businesses, homes and their women
and children as slaves. Many of the women became sexual slaves of Muslim
fighters and Mohammed himself had the first pick, Rayhana d. Amr b. Khunafa,
and she remained as his sexual slave until she died.
One does not have to be an authority on human behavior to see how
tormented Mohammed must have been after this massacre to empower and enrich
himself and his religion. To reduce his torment he needed for everyone around him
to participate in the genocide against the Jews, the only people whom he could not control. An enormous number of
verses in the Koran encouraged fighting as an act of obedience and even worship
of Allah, while those who refuse to fight and flee instead are condemned. Allah
himself said in the Quran: "Fight them, Allah will punish
them by your hands and bring them to disgrace” [9:14],
meaning those who kill are innocent of any crime since it is Allah who is using
their hands. The persistent message in Islamic scriptures is that Muslims, like their
prophet, are destined for war and vengeance.
Muslims today must continue fighting the unfinished
business of Mohammed and the cover-up of Islam’s bloody shame. What
Mohammed did to the Jews of Medina has become the unspeakable cover-up of Islam
– actions that no prophet, or human being for that matter, should commit
against his worst enemy. No prophet documented in the history of man ever
committed mass genocide except Mohammed. But Mohammed never got over his anger,
humiliation and rejection by “the people of the book.” By
asking his followers to continue the genocide for him until the Day of
Judgment, he had expanded the shame to cover all Muslims and Islam itself. He
was not going to sin and go down alone.
Mohammed’s failure with the Jews of Arabia became an
unholy dark mark of shame in Islamic history and that shame, envy and anger
continues to get the best of Muslims today. That has developed into Islam’s
existential problem. To justify the genocide that Mohammed waged against the
Jews, Muslims had two choices: (1) Either the Jews are evil, subhuman, apes,
pigs and enemies of Allah, a common description of Jews in Islamic scriptures,
or (2) Mohammed was a genocidal warlord and not fit to be a prophet of God, a
choice that would mean the end of Islam. The choice for Mohammed and Muslims
then and now was clearly the first, and any hint of the second must be severely
punished. Jews must remain the evil eternal enemies of Islam if Islam is to
remain legitimate. There is no third solution to save the core of Islam from
collapsing; either Mohammed was evil or Jews were evil.
Thus, nothing shakes Islam’s confidence in
itself like Judaism and the idea of making peace with the Jewish people. Making
peace with the Jews is equivalent with treason to Mohammed and Islam itself. Whether
it is the Arab Spring, the current revolution, the previous revolution, Arab
kings or presidents, Islamists, Arab socialists, moderates or radicals, any new
leadership that refuses confrontation with Israel and the West will be
considered to be committing treason against Islam and will not last.
Islam’s fears of democracy, freedom of religion and human rights are
closely tied to its fears of being exposed. Allowing freedom of religion will
end Islam as we know it. Muslim nations go through one cycle of revolution
after another, they spin and spin and come back to where they started. Islam
must continue the slander, lies and hate propaganda against their number one
enemy, the Jews and then the Christians and any non-Muslims, or else the
Islamic existential problem will cause it to collapse.
