What the Western World Needs to Know About Islam

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

I was assigned to watch the so called documentary "Islam: What the West Needs to Know" for a theology class. And all I have to say is as soon as I watched the first five minutes, I already knew what I was getting myself into by watching this movie. The fact that Robert Spencer and Bat Ye'Or are in it, well that just further proved my theory that this film was going to be prejudiced and filled with convoluted logics.

This documentary’s basic aim is to “investigate” (or rather seek to disprove) the notion that Islam is a peaceful religion by using twisted Islamic “sources” to make the ridiculous claim that Islam is at core a religion driven by violent ideology that inevitably seeks to conquer all opposing religions, governments, and cultures in the world. It features interviews with several so called experts on Islam and they each build their case against a peaceful Islam throughout the film. This movie portrays Islam as an intolerant and destructive ideology rather than the peaceful, yet misrepresented, religion that both Eastern and Western leaders purport it to be.

The film is fundamentally split into six parts. There is a section on the exclusiveness and intolerance of Islam, a section on what”jihad” means and how the term denotes war fought against non-Muslims in order to bring the rule of Islamic law to the world, a section on the expansion of Islam through violence, a section on the mistakes and misrepresentations of Islamist apologists, a section on the totality of Islam, and a final section entitled “The House of War” that establishes that violence is and always has been a part of Islam.

The movie affirms the belief that Islamic violence is an entirely traditional behavior for Muslims and stems directly from the teachings and example of the Prophet Muhammad along with the Qur’an. The film describes Prophet Muhammad as a violent warlord who killed numerous people and that the Qur’an prescribes violence against non-Muslims. This film also touches on how Muhammad’s successors carried his wars to three continents, fighting, enslaving, and massacring countless Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others. The film also blames the Muslim world for being responsible for the vast majority of conflicts around the world and for almost all international terrorism. This film claims that Islam has a principle of 'religious deception', which enjoins Muslims to deceive non-Muslims in order to advance the cause of Islam. So in other words, Muslim groups in the West will deceive those from the Western world to give the impression that 'Islam is a religion of peace', which according to this film, is fiction.

But to me, what this film does most of all is completely fabricate and twist the facts. It takes the actions of a small percentage of Muslims and judges the entire Muslim population and Islamic religion based off of it. If the bad actions of some members of society are considered to reflect the merits of that entire society as a whole, then wouldn’t Christianity be considered the most evil social and religious system human kind has ever known?

Let me attempt to explain more through example. Catholic priests have continually been proven guilty of child molestation. Does that mean that molestation is a Catholic Christian ritual? Hitler and most of his followers were Christian. So does that mean that Christianity encourages and promotes the acts of genocide? Of course every single one of these imposed questions are stupid and completely extreme, but these generalizations and depictions are very similar to those that this film has made with Islam. It has taken a tiny piece and has created extreme assumptions based off of it, how is that even fair? (One of the interviewees even states resolutely that “there are peaceful and moderate Muslims, but no peaceful and moderate Islam.”)

One of the quotes that really bothered me was: "Islam did not spread through evangelism or through its natural appeal, but through aggressive wars of conquest." From past history classes, I think it is safe to say that Christianity (and most world religions) spread the same way. Religious violence is hardly a new phenomenon in the history of the world. And Christianity is not exactly a peaceful religion and violence can be traced back to the very beginning of its origins with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (which is the center of their religion). Other examples of violence can be traced to the events of the Crusades, when Constantine declared Christianity official religion and started attacking other states in the name of Jesus Christ, Christians using the scriptures against Native Americans, the Protestant and Catholic revolts in Northern Ireland and much more.

This movie also advocates the fact that Islam encourages violence and destruction of other faiths. Anyone who thinks that Judaism or Christianity doesn’t encourage the same thing or subjugation of other faiths, cultures and systems of government obviously doesn’t know what they are talking about. All world religions encourage this, it’s a known fact.

The author of the book, Walid Shoebat, once said that “Like Nazism and Communism, in Islamism the end justifies the means… the whole idea is to promote their way of thinking and to promote their way of life throughout the world.” But this very same view could also be applied to Christianity: often the very same Christians that have the tendency to bash Muslims have: no tolerance for other people's mode of living, a will to dominate and have everything their own way, and last but not least a sort bent way of interpreting the Bible to their own needs. Whether you’re a Jew, Christian or Muslim doesn't matter much. It's whether you are a moron or not, and let me tell you there are quite a few examples of those with this debate.

This film takes quotes from the Qur’an completely out of context. For example, the film quotes the Qur’an as saying "Jews are apes” but doesn’t attempt to cite the passage or context of it. This passage is in fact from the Muslim version of the book of Exodus, and the passage is made in regards to Jews that practiced idolatry while Moses grabbed the Ten Commandments from the top of mount Sinai. So since the Bible tells the exact same story, according to this film they too are implying that Jews are apes. This quote also shows how people verses in the Qur’an are often taken out of context. This is often seen with anti-Islamic propagandists that take mistranslated hadiths or Qur’an quotes so that they can prove a point but don’t bother to look at the entire passage let alone the historical significance of when and for what reason the specific verse or hadith was said. Even translated versions of the Qur’an are inaccurate so people get the wrong meaning.

Oh and if you don’t think this film is biased, here’s a brief background about a few of the interviewees! Robert Spencer runs the website "Jihadwatch” and also wrote the book ” Religion of Peace: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t”, Serge Trifkovic is a spokesperson for the Republic of Serbia that committed war crimes against thousands of Muslims and is also the author of the book “Defeating the Jihad: How the war on terror may yet be won, in spite of ourselves,” Abdullah Al-Araby is an author that wrote "If Islam Ruled America," and Walid Shoebat is a former PLO member that now passionately supports Israel. Point proven.

I think this movie is absolutely ridiculous. All this film does is add fuel to an already skewed fire and just proves the large misunderstanding that the Western world has about Muslims and Muslim beliefs. The worst part about watching this film was thinking about all of the ignorant people out there that have watched this and actually believe it to be factual. If you don’t know anything about Islamic belief, I would not watch this film. I was completely appalled and utterly disgusted by its inaccuracy, one sided view, biased claims, content that was completely taken out of context, misleading and false “facts,” and the entire propagandist against Islam thrown into this film. The people interviewed tried to make it sound as if the ideology of less than 5% of the Islamic population is held by all Muslims which is completely false. I think this film was poorly researched and the research that was done wasn’t done from an academic standing point. This documentary is for people that have already made up their minds that "Islam is evil" and "Muslims are our enemy" or even terrorists without actually studying a single thing about Islam from an objective point of view. This film is completely Christian and Judaist propaganda, if you don’t believe me, do a little research about those on the production along with all of the interviewees.

"History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated." --De Lacy O'Leary, ISLAM AT THE CROSSROADS, London, 1923, p. 8.