The Devil We Don't Know (7 page)

Lying to those whom Islam accuses of being enemies of Allah makes it necessary to portray them as evil and out to get Muslims. As a result, we find an entire Islamic media industry that promotes lying, slander, and exaggeration about their perceived enemies, the great and little Satans. The dread and fear of such an enemy must be revved up to a maximum level, which is the job of sheikhs and the Islamic media, to justify what Islam commands Muslims to do. Who wouldn't want to lie, rob, and steal from people who embody pure evil? It is hard for the Western mind to comprehend or believe that a religion can demand that from its followers. I have personally witnessed how Muslims are extremely offended when asked about the concept of
taqiyya
—deception in Islam. They accuse those who dare to expose holy lying in Islam of being Islamophobes. For the sake of protecting Mohammed and Islam, practically anything is allowed, and the individual Muslim is taught that protection of Islam is a sacred communal obligation that is more important than family, life, or happiness.

With its commandments to lie, slander, and exaggerate for the sake of Allah and Mohammed, Islam has burdened the Muslim with extreme shame and guilt. Why is one of the ninety-nine names of Allah the “deceiver”? How can the almighty command his creation to lie for him? How can a god sacrifice the healthy conscience of his people for the sake of expanding his influence on earth? Isn't the role of God to save his people? Why, then, is Allah commanding his people to save him? Is God trying to deceive or impress the non-Muslims of the world into believing in him? If Islam's goals are truly godly and good, then why do Muslims need to lie at all? And why is lying specifically mentioned time and again in Islamic scriptures?

Sadly, the great majority of Muslims are not aware of the existence of actual laws in Islam that command lying. I have heard my religious leaders lie, cover up, exaggerate, and define certain concepts in Islam in one way to Muslims and in another to non-Muslims. Islamic slander is perhaps most noticeable against Jews. Simply turn on Arab TV at any time, and you can watch the daily barrage of slander and outright lies, especially about Israel. Yet the commandment to slander and lie does not end there; it eventually spreads like wildfire to reach every corner of Muslim society. The phenomenon of honor killing, in which girls and women are accused of sexual crimes and killed for them, is often based not on reality, but on slanderous rumors.

Because Islam commands that some truths must be covered up, much of Islamic religious education goes unchallenged and remains vague and full of contradictions. Because of the taboos and the Islamists' extreme sensitivity to anything that appeared to go against Islam, we all nodded our heads and accepted what we were taught. The average Muslim is perhaps the number one victim of the lies and exaggerations about his or her own religion, and now leaders of the Salafi movement and the Muslim Brotherhood have united in telling the naive among the Egyptian people to trust them to bring freedom and democracy to Egypt.

Those who see the lies for what they are and dare to expose them are severely punished, and it does not matter whether they are Muslim, Christian, or some other faith. That is why if we dig down to the causes of many Islamic human rights abuses, we will find that the victims uncovered some truths that contradict what Islam states or commands. Journalists, intellectuals, artists, or inventors who refuse to go along with the lies and the sacred cows of Islam and who present new ideas that contradict the status quo are often punished severely, jailed, or assassinated, not necessarily by the government, but more often by Islamists. The bottom line is that Muslims must carry the weight of Islam's burden. The damage to Muslim society because of such laws is far reaching and causes distrust, deceit, and damage beyond our imagination.

The lying game has worked in Islam's favor for a long time, because no one wants to believe that top religious leaders of a major world religion are ordered to lie. Even though lying has benefited Islamic growth and has confused and silenced many, the command to lie, slander, and exaggerate in Islam has far more damaging consequences. It is perhaps most detrimental to the psyche of the Muslim individual, to his interpersonal relationships, to Muslim society, to the Islamic political system, and ultimately to Islam's relationship with the world at large.

Embarrassment in Translating the Koran

Many Muslim men have spent a lifetime learning the art of rhythmically reciting the Koran. The sound of their recitation is haunting and hypnotic. People who do not know a word of Arabic are captivated. That, in addition to the vague and difficult Arabic language in which the Koran was written, helps Muslims unconditionally and ritualistically accept the faith. To this day, even as a non-Muslim, I am moved by the sound of the call to prayer, “Athan.” Yet translating the Koran is a very embarrassing challenge for Islam, because most of the material that is translated for non-Muslims actually condemns them to death, doom, and gloom. This is where Muslims skillfully use the right to exaggerate and lie.

The crux of the challenge comes when the literal
meaning
of what is written is examined. That is why translating the Koran from its original Arabic to other languages became a huge challenge for Arabs. It is not that the meaning is so difficult to translate or is highly intellectual, as some might claim, but that it suddenly forces Muslims to confront what is actually written in the Koran. Translating the Koran and then reading it in other languages brings it to the questioning eye of other cultures. When the rhythmic and the poetic components are removed, we are left with what should be the important aspect of any religion: the meaning. Unfortunately for Muslims, the meaning of the Koran's words is often not as easy to come to terms with as its musical and poetic recitation in Arabic.

Even today, I am very moved when I hear the Arabic recitation of Koran 3:169, which refers to those who die in the jihad for Allah's sake: “Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the Presence of their Lord.” It is not the translation of this verse that brings me to tears, as much as it is the Arabic poetic verse, which reminds me of my father's funeral where it was recited as a way to comfort my mother, my siblings, and me after my father died in the jihad against Israel. Only when I read the English translation did I ask myself what it really meant to die in Allah's way and why we Muslims are guaranteed heaven only when we die in the process of battle against enemies of Allah.

The same thing goes for the verse “The Believers fight in Allah's Cause, they slay and are slain, kill and are killed” (Koran 9:11), which was never described to us as anything other than “it is our pride to die while in battle for the sake of Allah,” meaning in the war against nonbelievers. In Arab culture that did not sound unacceptable, neither in the seventh century nor when I was growing up in the latter half of the twentieth century. Yet when the verse is translated, its meaning does not ring well in the ears of the non-Muslim world.

The solution for Islamic leadership is to water down the meaning, which, in other words, means to lie in the process of translating what Muslims claim to be the perfect holy book given to Muslims directly from God. A second line of defense is to assert that a devout Muslim must first learn Arabic to truly understand the Koran. When questions arise about the meaning and the translation that are not complimentary to Islam, the questioner is always accused of either misunderstanding or being ignorant of the true meaning.

Saudi Arabia has been actively trying to produce new translations of the Koran that water down embarrassing messages. It would be wonderful if the original Arabic text were revised similarly and became the new basis for Islam, but don't hold your breath. Saudis also have no problem adding a word here or there to make things appear less severe to the Western mind; for instance, many translations have added the word
lightly
, which was not in the original Arabic text of the Koran, before the word
beat,
when the Koran permitted the husband to beat the wife.

Vengeance

Vengeance is a major element in Muslim culture, and it adds another dimension to the brutality of life. Not only are Muslims ordered to lie and slander for the sake of accomplishing the goals of their religion, but they are also commanded to do holy vengeance, when the Koran says that it has been prescribed for the individual Muslim believer against those who violate or question the precepts of Islam: “O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you. He who transgresseth after this will have a painful doom” (Koran 2:178). Another verse says, “We shall take vengeance [
muntaquimun
] upon the sinners” (Koran 32:22). The word
muntaquimun
in Arabic has a much harsher and more vindictive meaning than the translation of that word to mean “punishment or retaliation.” Yet another sign of how eager Muslims are to save face about what is in their books is that they actually mistranslate it for non-Muslims.

The message of Islam is clear: vengeance is prescribed for Muslims, and the word
prescribed
leaves no choice to the Muslim but to consider it his duty to be vengeful. Settling scores and inflicting pain against those who hurt Muslim individuals, tribes, or even nations was a strong cultural phenomenon in seventh-century Arabia and remains so today in all Islamic cultures around the world. When bin Laden was killed by the United States, the first thing I heard on Al Jazeerah TV was a cry for vengeance for his death.

Minding One's Business

Minding one's business and respecting the privacy of others are rare in Muslim society. The personal life of an individual is constantly under assault; one's business is everyone else's business. What you wear and eat, how you dress, whom you talk to or befriend, and what you say or do are subject to scrutiny, even punishment, by others; such punishment can range from rejection and ruining a person's reputation to physical abuse or even honor killing. This is because Islam entrusted the Muslim individual with the task of monitoring the actions of others in how they conform or don't conform to Islamic law. That can often lead some people to take the law into their own hands.

In Muslim society, a person feels perfectly justified to spy or snitch on others, from relatives to neighbors and coworkers. A Muslim individual is given too much power over fellow Muslims and is told by sharia that he will not be punished for killing apostates and adulterers. That concept of encouraging individual Muslims to police and tell on one another has transformed an Islamic state into a police state, turning brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor.

Reforming Others, Rather than Oneself

Muslims are focused on how to fix the outside world, rather than on fixing what is in their own. The Koran itself sets the example. More than 61 percent of the Koran deals with the sins of those who do not believe in Islam. Most Islamic preaching and Friday sermons dwell on how nonmembers of the religion, the
kafir
, are evil and sinful for having rejected Islam. The Koran is full of horrific descriptions of the kafir: subhuman, inferior, unclean, apes, pigs, and deserving of mistreatment, torture, and death, all at the hands of Muslims. Yet little attention is directed to the sins of Muslims and how to nourish their souls. When things go wrong, the blame immediately is placed on the great or little Satans in the outer world who are out to get Muslims. In the eyes of Islam, Muslims earned their pride and glory, and non-Muslims earned their shame and sin.

The theory of jihad is the ultimate manifestation of a culture that does not mind its own business. Jihad is defined as “to war against non-Muslims,
derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare
, to establish the religion.”
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Muslims will not rest until they reform non-Muslims and make them like Muslims. The fact that others do not want to act like Muslims greatly bothers the core believers of Islam. As a result, the theory of jihad, which is the core theory of Islam, is save non-Muslims from their sins by forcing Islam on them—first through inviting them, then, if that does not work, through war, terror, killing, enslavement, or heaving taxation on them, while humiliating them.

Islam exhorts its people to reform others, rather than to reform themselves, to hunt out people who don't conform to Islam; these nonbelievers are the prey who deserve every evil action. Holiness in Islam is attained by following Allah's jihad commandment, which entrusts Muslims, with their own hands, to rid the world of the sinful nonbelievers or those who reject sharia. It is not Muslim sins jihadists are looking for, but the sins of others.

Blaming Others

Taking it upon yourself to reform others implies that there is nothing wrong with you. This results in a chronic state of blaming others, a state that has reached pathological levels in Muslim society. Because of the severe and humiliating punishment that awaits sinners, Muslims are left without socially acceptable mechanisms to deal with sin, other than to hide it. Whether it is by the Islamic virtue police or vigilante street justice, Muslims are constantly reminded never to admit guilt. As a result of chronically keeping shameful behavior a secret, Muslims have developed a mechanism of denial. Actions that cause embarrassment, shame, or guilt in Muslim society are always blamed on others. “It is they who are sinners, and we are Muslims” is the theme of the Koran, which has resulted in a culture of finger pointing in which people refuse to take responsibility for their actions.

The phenomenon of blaming others is also a necessary mechanism to position Islamic jihad to the world outside Islam. “They are sinners,” and the idea that we must change them and cause them to follow us by whatever means necessary is the fundamental basis of jihad. In following this line of reasoning, the eyes and hearts of Muslims are not focused on themselves but on the sinful non-Muslims. For Islamic thought to change its focus today, from that of the predator jihadist to an ideology that has respect for others and that values coexistence, would shock Islam to its core. It is very hard to imagine Islam making such a huge leap and reconciling itself with what Allah's commandment of jihad has done to humanity at the hands of Muslims. That would be a disastrous self-revelation for Islam and Muslims, so focusing on the sins of others has become the solution for Islam. While America is immersing itself in seeking forgiveness for its history of slavery, not one Muslim intellectual or scholar has admitted to the failures of Islamic doctrine and history regarding slavery, which has never been abolished by sharia.