Let’s Stop Spreading P.C. Lies About Muslims

by Alexander Zubatov

I really wish professional pundits, both on the left and on the right, would stop trying to psychoanalyze and explain Trump — who, despite his many, many flaws, also happens to be a refreshing teller of uncomfortable truths — and start psychoanalyzing and explaining themselves in order to understand why they are so blinded by P.C. dogma that they cannot grapple with those uncomfortable and ugly truths underlying the Muslim threat. So instead of engaging in more nonsensical and useless discussions of how similar Trump is or isn’t to Hitler and Mussolini, let’s talk about how similar we ourselves are to those ancient Romans who didn’t wake up until it was too late and gave their once-glorious empire away to the barbarians. Instead of engaging in more P.C.-influenced self-castigation and unqualified praise of everyone who doesn’t look like us, let’s look, however briefly, at what Muslims actually believe. Here are some facts:

13% of Syrian refugees sympathize with ISIS, which is the same as the average for the overall Arabic populations surveyed, though among Palestinians, that figure is a whopping 24%: http://english.dohainstitute.org/file/Get/40ebdf12-8960-4d18-8088-7c8a077e522e at 19.
Throughout the Muslim world, the vast majority of Muslims would want shariah law, rather than any secular constitution or laws, to be the law of the land. That figure is 99% for the Muslims of Afghanistan, 91% for Iraq, 89% for Palestinians, 86% for Malaysia, 84% for Pakistan, 83% for Morocco and 83% for Egypt. Even in a comparatively secular nation like Russia, 42% of Muslims still would prefer to be governed by shariah law: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/.
51% of Muslims in the U.S. would want the option of being governed by shariah law rather than the U.S. Constitution, and nearly 20% would support the use of violence to make shariah the law of the land: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/06/23/nationwide-poll-of-us-muslims-shows-thousands-support-shariah-jihad/.
Shariah law means punishments like whipping or cutting off the hands of thieves, stoning for adultery and the death penalty for leaving Islam. When asked specifically about those penalties, most Muslims who believe shariah should be the law of the land still support them. In Pakistan, for instance, among those favoring shariah, 88% favor its punishments for robbery, 89% favor stoning for adultery and 76% favor death for apostasy, i.e., leaving the Islamic fold. In Egypt, those numbers are 70%, 81% and 86% respectively: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/. (While the Old Testament also would impose all sorts of barbaric punishments on people, Christianity, unlike Islam, had the New Testament superseding the harsh old laws and also underwent the Reformation. Ask yourself how many Christians actually believe, for instance, in imposing the punishment for adultery called for by Leviticus 20:10: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife — with the wife of his neighbor — both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”)
More than nine in ten of the world’s Muslims believe a woman’s role is always to oblige and obey her husband: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-exec/.
Substantial proportions of the Muslim population believe acts of violence in the name of Islam are sometimes justified. Even when the specific question of killing civilians through suicide bombings is put to Muslims, 40% of Palestinians Muslims, 39% of Afghani Muslims and 29% of Egyptian Muslims support such acts: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-religion-and-politics/.
Among American Muslims, 81% say that suicide bombings in the name of Islam are never justified, which means that the remaining 19% DON’T believe that: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-app-a/. There are about 3.3 million Muslims in America, so that 19% represents about 627,000 people. I’m starting to look over my shoulder right now to see who might be there, and I suggest, so should you.
Muslims around the world overwhelmingly view certain behaviors — including prostitution, homosexuality, suicide, abortion, euthanasia and consumption of alcohol — as immoral. For instance, very, very few Muslims believe abortion is morally acceptable (0% among Palestinian and Pakistani Muslims and 1% in Egypt, for instance), and the figures are similar for how these people feel about sex outside marriage. For homosexuality, the percentages are even MORE extreme. On the other hand, substantial proportions of Muslims (just under half) and an overwhelming majority of African Muslims think polygamy is A-okay: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-morality/.
If you’re a more visual person and want to hear an actual Muslim describing what “ordinary Muslims” believe about things like the punishments called for in the Quran and the moral issues of adultery and homosexuality, you can watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=nA3xN5ptZXM.
Overwhelming proportions of Muslims believe Western-style entertainment — music, movies and television — harms morality in their countries: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-science-and-popular-culture/. (This one actually seems like a reasonable view to me, as undoubtedly most of our music, movies and t.v. shows cater to the lowest common denominator and make people dumb, complacent and fat, but I’ll still take dumb, complacent and fat over a crazed suicide bomber any day of the week.)

If any of these Muslim beliefs were attached to a white American heterosexual Christian male, he would be roundly condemned as a sexist, racist, homophobic, right-wing extremist nut. Yet, put these same beliefs in the mouths of Muslims, and now we fall over each other in a rush to condemn ourselves for being racist against (the race of?) Islam for saying that they believe the things they actually believe. (And I will undoubtedly get called racist and/or Islamophobic for saying these things, though for those who are a bit more open-minded and interested, I discuss in this article, in a more straightforward, no-holds-barred way, the threat posed to Western civilization in the U.S. and Europe by those resentkins in the U.S. and abroad who are using our history of slavery and colonialism to bring us down: https:[email protected][email protected]-98eeea6b6151#.9kh6ja281.) Given the completely schizophrenic and incoherent nature of our beliefs, it is, in short, we, not Trump, who are desperately in need of examination, psychoanalysis and explanation. Trump didn’t create Islam. Like him or hate him, he’s pointing to a real problem our weak-kneed mainstream politicians on both the left and right are too frightened and hypocritical to address. You don’t have to support Trump for President, but let’s not rush to dismiss his ideas out of hand, even if they might initially sound kind of crazy to our P.C.-policed ears. Sometimes, the solitary, grating, insistent voice crying out in the wilderness is telling us a truth we, who have been blind for too long, can no longer afford to ignore.

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Alexander Zubatov is a practicing attorney specializing in general commercial litigation. He is also a practicing writer specializing in general non-commercial poetry, fiction, drama, essays and polemics. In the words of one of his intellectual heroes, José Ortega y Gasset, biography is “a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.”

Some of his articles have appeared in Acculturated, PopMatters, The Hedgehog Review, The Montreal Review, The Fortnightly Review, New English Review, Culture Wars and nthposition.

He makes occasional, unscheduled appearances on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Zoobahtov).