A nonsensical letter from an Islamophobe in Pakistan, which Sargon of Akkad takes seriously

LETTER TO SARGON

An interesting letter a subscriber from Pakistan sent to me regarding the ideological nature of Islam that is often overlooked in the West.

Hi Sargon  

I wanted to make a couple of points about Islam that I feel should be part of your discourse. I hope they will help you better understand Islam.

The basis of discrimination 

In the Western world discrimination has been largely based on a race. In India it has been based on caste. Those born in a particular category brought the brunt of a prevalent group but in the case of Islam at least in theory discrimination is based on belief, hence harder to grasp and combat.

Islam is a universalist and expansionist religion not tied to any geography or race. You must communicate this crucial difference between the West and Islam loudly and clearly. In Islam, there is a whole taxonomy of delegitimization and dehumanization - pagans and people of the book Muslim but wrong sect Muslim but not pious enough etc.  As it turns out, Western languages don't even have a word for belief based discrimination. In other words, there is no religious counterparts of the words racism and sexism. This is because religion ceased to be an issue in Western societies long ago and now when it is under assault from Islam. It lacks the linguistic weapons to fight religious ascendancy.

Non-muslims might not be much interested in Islam but Islam is very interested in non-Muslims. Much of the Quran is addressed to non-Muslims. Islam actively engages kafir and confrontation. It is not a religion for Muslims but for Humanity. Just like all have the rights to comment on communism, all have the rights to comment on Islam too.

Often Western academia bundles Islam with Christianity and keeps it in the Department of Religious Studies. I believe Islam should be studied in Political Science Departments alongside ideologies like Fascism, Communism and Capitalism. What Islam needs first and foremost is secular comment and secular judgement.

Unfortunately most Islamic Studies Departments in universities are staffed by Muslims making universities little different from madrassas.

Apostasy and Blasphemy 

There are two main issues with Islam that Western audiences should know: you can't leave Islam and you can't scrutinize Islam.  Imagine if during the Cold War criticizing Karl Marx constituted blasphemy. Imagine the fear and paranoia in the West where people would be scared of talking about Marxism and satirizing Marx fearing that a random knife wielding communist might kill them at any time anywhere. When a regressive talks about Muhammad Ali  was also a Muslim he wasn't a terrorist. Just ask if they can imagine any Muslim celebrity leaving Islam and continuing to live their life as normal.

Islam is like a prison for Muslims you can't leave it. Also Muslims go to China, India, Europe America and Africa. They preach their religion freely in seminars, on streets, set up mosques and so on.

Why is the Muslim world closed for non-Muslim preachers? Why can't Christian, Buddhist,  Hindu, atheist missionaries set up shop in Muslim countries and convert people to their view? Muslim lands are essentially locked out of other religions and irreligion, for Islam remains a totalitarian religion allowing no competitor in the Islamic world. The social contract is not between man and society but between Muslims and non-Muslims in society.

The invention of the academic category the Muslim is itself problematic. It locks people up in their religion and this is what Islamists want. The West should identify Muslims with their country of origin: Bengali, Pakistani, Egyptian etc and deal with community leaders of these country based communities rather than one grand "the Muslim community".

Another interesting fact is that Islam has little experience living as a minority. It always seeks power. It ruled India, Spain and Eastern Europe as a minority. Now Muslim minorities find themselves being ruled in India and in Europe hence the anxiety. Many of those Islamists who initially opposed the creation of Pakistan have this in mind that if they are pious enough and organized enough in a united India, they - the minority - can once again rule the Hindu majority of India alike the Mughal times once Britain has left.

One of the reasons Pakistan is so anti-India and anti-Hindu is the quashing of this imperialist dream and, speaking of imperialism, the West needs to understand that imperialism is not always state-based. Non states can also be imperialistic and imperialism is not always cultural and linguistic, it can also be religious.

Assimilation and post-modernism

Post modernists are suspicious and critical of grand narratives. The Enlightenment had humbled Christianity then post-modernism came and humbled the Enlightenment, universalism and deconstructed secularism.

Apparently, the only grand narrative they are afraid of deconstructing is Islam. This is another point worth emphasizing. Why are post-modernists afraid to take on the grand narrative ie Islam? Also they say cultural assimilation is genocide. If so why do they tolerate religious assimilation? Why is Islam allowed to assimilate its converts and to raise the diversity. Isn't that a form of genocide?

Reciprocation

Why don't Muslim majority countries strive for pluralism?  Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Morocco -  these are rich countries. Why don't they open up for non-Muslims and celebrate a difference? Why isn't this liberal generosity reciprocated? Turkey was never colonized. It was itself the seat of the Ottoman Empire which built its beautiful cities by stifling the growth of the Arab world and Eastern Europe. Will Turkey accept pluralism by inviting East European Christian people it once ruled over or is post-colonial guilt only for the West?

Islam and reform

The fight between liberal Muslims  and Islamists is not on equal terms. Isn't misused blasphemy laws and taboos as cover as a shield as a trench from which to attack the opposition. They can talk about anything while liberals have to watch their tongue. Liberals are extremely restricted in their speech. Islamists lace their arguments with Koranic or prophetic authority knowing full well that liberals can't directly contradict or oppose the Koran of the Prophet. So liberals have to work around that obstacle and in this way lose the force and substance of their argument. That is the one and only reason the Islamists are winning everywhere.

The Muslim Left

All leftists in the West should ask themselves what happened to the Muslim Left. Who exterminated them? Which ideology erased their existence? Only by answering this question can we think about reviving Left Internationalism.

"The Muslim Community"

The regressives divide  the wider society to Far Right, Right, Left and Far Left so why not supply these same divisions to Muslim communities? Why do they suddenly suspend their judgement and identify Western Muslim population is merely "the Muslim community".

Conclusion 

Apostasy and blasphemy are too closed valves that needs to be thrust open if Islam is to be compatible with Western values. Islam needs to move from a paradigm of coercion to a paradigm of choice. If we need any diversity, it is within Muslim communities in the West.

1. "The ideological nature of Islam" - It appears to be news to Sargon that any religion could be ideological. Islam is a religion and is therefore SHOCK HORROR "ideological". All religions with rules that its adherents follow would inevitably be "ideological".  
2. "The basis of discrimination" - the majority will always press their advantage against the minority. If Christians do that, it is the way of the world. If Muslims do that, it is SHOCK HORROR.
3. "Islam is a universalist and expansionist religion" - SHOCK HORROR. But Christianity is not? Hark at Western imperialists being frightened at the very idea that there are other universalist and expansionist ideologies apart from their precious Christianity and liberal democracy sharing the same planet with them! How very dare they! 
4. The West lacks the "linguistic weapons" to fight the "religious ascendancy" of Islam. No "linguistic weapon" is required, merely the will to keep out Muslim migrants through achieving Brexit. If the West were a society of married fathers in control of their families, Western men wouldn't be constantly complaining about being exploited by Jews and invaded by Muslims. As it is, the West is a matriarchy. A patriarchy is a society that prioritises the preferences of married fathers. A matriarchy is a society that prioritises the preferences of unmarried mothers where all men are lower than the immoral unmarried mother. Women tend not to mind immigration as much as men whose interests are more directly affected. Britain has been a matriarchy since 1974 when Keith Joseph stuck his neck out by criticising the morals of unmarried mothers and found a woman taking what everyone thought would be his place as leader of the Conservative Party.  telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2285670/Most-children-of-British-mothers-born-out-of-wedlock.html
5. The letter writer says Islam should be studied in Political Science Departments. What would be the point other than for the Islamophobic pleasure of equating Islam with Fascism and Communism?
6. The letter writer also seems to think that it is unacceptable that Islamic Studies Departments are staffed by Muslims. Perhaps he wants them staffed by Islamophobes like himself. 
7. While it is true that some Muslims treat apostasy as treason and deserving of death, the Koran does not prescribe death as the penalty for apostasy. Secular Koranism will not treat ex-Muslims as apostates deserving of death and instead guarantee their freedom of belief with quran.com/2/256
8. The letter writer complains about Muslim countries not allowing non-Muslims to proselytise openly. This actually seems fair enough to me. What would be the point of allowing Christians to convince Muslims to believe in the absurdity that an executed revolutionary is the co-equal of the Abrahamic God?  
9. The letter writer has the idea of dividing British Muslims into groups based on their Muslim country of origin, but what would be the point of that? To divide and rule? 
10. One of the reasons why Pakistan is anti-India is because the military caste of Pakistan wish it to be so.  
11. It is laughable that current neocon and neoliberal Western imperialists of this day and age are complaining about the Muslim of imperialism of the Mughal empire, which was dissolved in 1857.
12. It is not clear how the Islamophobic letter writer wants Post-Modernists to "take on the grand narrative of Islam". 
13. Do Post-Modernists really say "cultural assimilation is genocide"? Which ones?
14. It is not clear what the Islamophobic letter writer means by "religious assimilation". 
15. How does Islam "assimilate its converts"?
16. How does Islam "raise the diversity" of what?
17. How does the letter writer want Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and Morocco to "open up for non-Muslims and celebrate the difference"? Is he suggesting that there are currently no foreigners living in these countries?
18. What "liberal generosity" is the letter writer referring to that he wants Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia to "reciprocate"?
19. Turkey has 320,000 Christians, but the letter writer is suggesting that it should invite East European Christians to come and live in Turkey for no particular reason at all. Just because the West is stupidly self-destructive because it is now a matriarchy, there is no reason why Turkey would wish to follow suit.
20. The Islamophobic letter writer says Muslims are winning the argument against liberals. But that is because liberals are stupid and degenerate, hence the term libtard.
21. What is Left Internationalism? Is it World Communism? Why would we want to revive it?
22. Who and what are the Muslim Left?
23. Who are these "regressives" referred to?
24. What would be the point of dividing Muslims into Far Right, Right, Left and Far Left? And on what basis would they be identified and categorised?
25. Since apostasy does not incur the death penalty according to the Koran, it seems a little hysterical to fear Islam and Muslims in the West on this basis, especially when none of them are asking for the death penalty for apostasy.  
26. Blasphemy is not an Islamic concept but a Christian one and it used to mean denying that Christ is the co-equal of the Abrahamic God. 
27. It is not clear what is meant by diversity being needed in the West for the Muslim community. It seems he wants to divide them into national groups for the purpose of divide and rule. 

The whole letter, written probably by an undergraduate or sixth former, was nonsense from beginning to end.