The Truth About Muhammad | Robert Spencer | #SangamTalks

the ayatollah khomeini the famous founder of the islamic republic of iran was 28 years old when he married his bride who was 10 10 years old he also recommended that muslim men marry girls before they reached puberty in other words when they're nine ten years old now this also is an imitation of muhammad as depicted in islamic tradition when muhammad was 51 years old he married a six-year-old girl named aisha and went consummated the marriage or in other words raped her because of course she had no way to refuse consent fifth when he was 54 and she was nine because muhammad is the excellent example as specified in quran 33 21 as i noted before that also is an excellent example and there is considered to be no moral difficulty with seizing a child and raping the child because muhammad did it [Music] i'm very very very happy to receive robert spencer again it's been almost a year that he had his first talk with us he's an author of 21 books two of which are used as fbi training material to name a few of his books the politically incorrect guide to islam and the crusades the truth about muhammad which is the talk today the history of jihad from muhammad to isis and robert spencer has been with us on numerous other occasions in our conferences he's an authority on jihad and islam and the jihadi aspect of islam he's a very clear-headed and a very fearless speaker about the true nature islam so much so that he was banned from the uk in 2013. i think the best way to introduce robert spencer would be to introduce you to his thoughts no he is not an islamophobe he says anybody who is against beheading the stoning as punishment or jihad against unveiled believers or building mosques over race temples or holy places of other religions this is not islamophobia if this is islamophobia then everybody should be an islamophobe so currently robert is a director of jihad watch and you'll be surprised i receive his newsletter every week you will be surprised as to to see that the jihad is continuing it's a continuous phenomena on smaller scale in various parts of the world most welcome robert very very honored to receive you again and today's talk is based on his book the truth about muhammad thank you i'm very honored to be here again it's always good to speak with you when we speak about muhammad of course it is a and a controversial issue not because there is any doubt about what the islamic texts actually teach about muhammad that's quite clear anyone can get them and read them but there is a great deal of misinformation and disinformation about muhammad just as there is about jihad and about the history of islam and jihad and a great deal of other related issues so for example karen armstrong who is a very prominent historian in the united states in england rather she wrote a book several years ago actually two books about muhammad in which she said among other things that muhammad is comparable to gandhi uh in being a man of peace and in striving to bring peace to all those around him she could only have said such a thing to an audience that didn't know anything about muhammad as he is depicted in the islamic text because every bit of what isis the islamic state does or the taliban or the isi in pakistan or any number of other organizations that are dedicated to following muhammad and implementing his teachings everything that they do is based upon islamic texts and isis is actually quite scrupulous in following the teachings of muhammad and the actions of muhammad as exemplary in their actions in what they do around the world even the most horrifying things that they do this is something that is denied or assumed to be false by most of the intelligence and law enforcement authorities in the world as a matter of fact you noted in the in introducing me very kindly that uh several of my books were used in fbi training materials that was up until about 10 years ago and then they dropped them because the obama administration determined that they were going to not have any mention of islam or jihad in connection with counter-terror training because islam has nothing to do with terrorism unfortunately the terrorists would tell you different and they would tell you that islam has everything to do with terrorism and that everything that they're doing is based on islam when we look at the life of muhammad as depicted in the islamic texts we can see that muhammad according to the earliest available islamic sources was born in 570 in arabia in mecca and in the year 610 when he was 40 years old he was praying in a cave on a mountain outside mecca and there appeared to him a being in standard islamic history this is represented as the angel gabriel and uh according to islamic sources it was gabriel the angel who appeared to muhammad to give him the quran over a period of 23 years subsequent to the first meeting however if you look at the earliest records there is no mention of gabriel and the being is not identified muhammad is also depicted as being absolutely terrified by the vision that he had received and not knowing if he was possessed by a demon which is a strange response to having an encounter with an angel he then went home shivering with fear and told his wife khadija to cover him with a blanket because he was trembling and uh he told her what had happened ultimately she took him to her uncle wadaka bin nalfal who was a christian priest and he explained to muhammad and all this remember is according to the earliest islamic sources that he was a prophet and that that was gabriel however there's a very strange aspect to the stories and that is that gabriel is terrifying in their first encounter he it says that he pressed muhammad so hard that he thought he was going to die now ordinarily when one encounters in various religious traditions when there are encounters with spiritual beings when one is terrified and threatened and frightened generally that being is not one that is bringing good and this is the dilemma that is presented to us in the earliest islamic texts this is supposed to be the angel of angel gabriel the messenger of allah the only god and clearly however he's working on the basis of violence and intimidation he's terrifying muhammad into submission and then later there are other strange aspects of the story gabriel starts to visit him regularly and then when he stops muhammad goes to the top of a high mountain he's going to throw himself off and commit suicide this is also a strange reaction to what is supposed to be a benign heavenly being in any case gabriel is thus identified visits muhammad on a regular basis for the next 23 years and gives him what becomes the quran the holy book of islam and in the quran the holy book of islam we see the same violence and intimidation that gabriel first displayed to muhammad in the first encounter that they had it's the same thing all the way through that the prophet muhammad is supposed to submit and be the slave of allah and then the non-muslims are supposed to submit and be the slaves of the muslims and all of the whole the whole superstructure of islam women are supposed to submit and be the slaves to men the whole thing is based on submission and intimidation and fear nowadays of course we see this in the taliban very clearly and the taliban believe that they are carrying out the teachings of muhammad and following the example of muhammad and so muhammad said that allah will pour molten lead into the ears of people who listen to music and so they go and break musical instruments this creates fear and intimidation among people who listen to music and the musicians themselves and in microcosm it is the same phenomenon all over again that the people are terrified into submission and that is the the islamic vision for the world very briefly the career of muhammad started out in mecca with him preaching now this is again a source of a great deal of or the focus i should say of a great deal of misinformation and disinformation because muhammad is preaching he only gathers a small band of followers by the first 12 years of his career as a prophet from 610 to 622 and he's preaching tolerance in the quran in chapter 109 it says say to the unbelievers i do not worship but you worship and you do not worship what i worship you will not worship what i worship and i will not worship what you worship to you your religion and to me mine now that is rather grudgingly put but it's nonetheless a statement of tolerance let's leave each other alone we have different points of view however this was only something that muhammad preached when the muslims were a small band when they grew larger and later on when muhammad went to from mecca to medina another city in arabia he began to preach warfare against unbelievers when the muslims grew in number and gained power now this is very important because in in islam everything muhammad did is exemplary chapter 33 verse 21 of the quran says that muhammad is an excellent example for you an excellent example is not qualified in other words there is no limitation on that excellent example everything muhammad did is good and to be imitated by the muslim consequently when the muslims are a small band and muhammad is preaching tolerance when you have muslims who are a small group in a particular nation they will preach peace and tolerance when they grow in numbers and power then you will find they are preaching a very different message muhammad in the year 622 was invited according to islamic tradition by the people of yathrib which was a nearby city which later on became renamed as medina or medinavi the city of the prophet he was invited to come and be a political and military leader of the city as well as this the the religious leader and they would convert to islam once there he began to preach that allah was giving him revelations about the necessity in the first place to fight defensive wars against the unbelievers and then to fight offensive wars against the unbelievers in order to bring them under the hegemony of islam to convert them to islam or if they refuse to convert to islam than to make them submit to the hegemony of islamic law and to recognize their degraded status in this world as well as in the next as the punishment from allah for refusing to accept islam the quran is full of warnings that the unbelievers will be punished in this world and not just in hell fire and the punishment in this world is to be enforced by the muslims themselves who will terrorize strike terror in the hearts of the unbelievers this is in chapter 8 verse 60 of the quran and bring them into submission to islamic law which guarantees them a second-class status now this is something that muslims have put into practice throughout history in the first era of islam there were the caliphates the caliphs were caliph means successor and the caliphs were the successors of muhammad as the political military and spiritual leaders of the islamic world and just as muhammad did they led offensive wars against the neighboring states in order to bring them under the hegemony of the islamic world when the arabs first came out of arabia after the death of muhammad in 632 islam was actually in an encoded state and was not fully formulated dogmatically as it is today however those conquests in islamic tradition have been ascribed to the imitation of muhammad who called for warfare against unbelievers making the heart of the islamic world the middle east north africa and persia out of what had been christian and zoroastrian areas and they were conquered then according to the quran they were subjugated under the hegemony of the muslims the non-muslims were made to submit this is in direct exemplary imitation of muhammad as being as commanding that muslims must fight against the unbelievers first invite them to accept islam then if they refuse ask them to pay the jizya which is a tax specified in chapter 9 verse 29 of the quran a tax in tribute to the muslims as a sign of one's submission to their hegemony and if they refuse both to go to war against them this is the paradigmatic basis for islamic warfare that conquered a tremendous area of the world by 732 100 years after muhammad died there is a massive islamic empire stretching from spain into india and of course the jihad against india was especially particularly virulent because they were not the the hindus in india were not considered people of the book that is the quran's designation for jews and christians and zoroastrians and they were therefore eve treated even more violently and not immediately given the option to submit although that was later extended to them because the sheer numbers made it impossible for the muslims to kill them all although there were certainly attempts to do so now all of this comes from muhammad's life war the war and the conquest is what he pursued in arabia and then his followers in imitation of him brought it to the rest of the world there are also other aspects of muhammad as exemplary for example in afghanistan in 2003 or when the taliban was toppled supposedly or toppled at least temporarily the uh american aid workers went into refugee camps of the displaced people in afghanistan and they found that half the girls of second grade age were married and all of the girls third grade age and above were married and child marriage is a phenomenon all over the islamic world the ayatollah khomeini the famous founder of the islamic republic of iran was 28 years old when he married his bride who was 10 10 years old he also recommended that muslim men marry girls before they reached puberty in other words when they're 9 10 years old now this also is an imitation of muhammad as depicted in islamic tradition when muhammad was 51 years old he married a six-year-old girl named aisha and went consummated the marriage or in other words raped her because of course she had no way to refuse consent fifth when he was 54 and she was nine because muhammad is the excellent example as specified in quran 33 21 as i noted before that also is an excellent example and there is considered to be no moral difficulty with seizing a child and raping the child because muhammad did it also there is the sexual enslavement of non-muslim women or what we would say in the modern world particularly in india love jihad in various permutations but its roots go back to muhammad also there is a famous story for example of the raid of khaibar khaibar was an oasis in northern arabia where the jewish tribes that muhammad had previously exiled from medina had gone to take refuge but muhammad ultimately went and invaded khaibar and uh incidentally it's worth noting that he arrived there at night but waited to strike until the morning because he wanted to hear if there would be the islamic call to prayer in the morning if there was not he would invade if there was he would not because he was commanded in his own words according to a tradition to fight against the people who until they confess that there is no god but allah and muhammad is the messenger so if the people of khaibar had confessed that there was no god but allah and muhammad was the messenger he wouldn't have fought them he did not hear the islamic call to prayer so he invaded when he invaded he wanted to get the money so he went to the treasurer of the community the muslims captured him his name was kinana and he had his his followers build a fire on kenana's chest to torture him until he revealed where the treasury was kenana refused to do so and was ultimately put to death then his wife safiya bin huy was captured and given to muhammad now this is a woman who's who's not only her husband was killed but her father was also just killed by the islamic warriors in kaibar and yet islamic tradition says that muhammad married her consummated the marriage on the spot can you imagine this this absolutely ghastly scene of dead bodies everywhere and muhammad being so consumed with lust that he has to stop in the midst of this these dead bodies and rape this woman but this also is exemplary behavior because muhammad is the excellent example of conduct consequently you have all over europe for example nowadays with the mass muslim migration since 2015 a huge increase in the sexual assaults and rapes of non-muslim women there and you have this of course in india with the kidnapping the abduction of hindu girls sikh girls christian girls and they are to submit subjected to the same treatment this is all because this is something that muhammad did and it's also specified in the quran in chapter 4 verse 3 that you can take uh marry up to four women but also take the captives of the right hand and the captives of the right hand are these infidel girls specified in chapter 33 verse 50 of the quran to be the spoils of war that is seized in battle just like safiya bin huyai and used in this manner all of these things come back to muhammad many years ago you don't hear it so much anymore but many years ago right after the united states got involved in iraq and afghanistan there were many news accounts that actually had muslim pathologists claiming that beheading was completely against islam and it had nothing to do with islam but this was once again as is so wealth in the case based on counting on the ignorance of the audience not to be able to understand that they were being deceived in reality beheading is specified in the quran when you meet the unbelievers strike the next chapter 47 verse 4. consequently the muslims in according to islamic tradition muhammad practiced beheading he beheaded between 600 and 900 of the jews of the quraisha tribe that he claimed had betrayed him and this was in accord with the quran then in accord with the example of muhammad and the quran you have beheading whenever there is a conflict between muslims and non-muslims you see this all the time as a matter of fact just just uh this morning before beginning this program i was reading a news article about the protests in kazakhstan that you may have heard about and uh 12 policemen were killed by the protesters one of them was beheaded and uh when you see a story like that it is absolutely a direct result of the example of muhammad and of course that's just one very small example of hundreds and thousands of such stories from all over the world that can be induced in this connection muhammad also taught that anyone who leaves islam is to be killed whoever changes his religion kill him as a result of that teaching which is also continued and taught by all these schools and the schools of law and the various sects of islam they all still teach whoever changes his religion kill him those who leave islam are under an immediate death threat and you can look at what has happened with wasim rizvi since he left islam and all the in the inundation of death threats that he has received this is because of muhammad every bit of the activity that you can see from muslims in the in the modern world today is attribute it can be traced directly back to the example of mohammed consequently this is the primary responsibility of non-muslim governing officials law enforcement officials and intelligence officials if they want to deal with this problem adequately they have to confront the fact that these values are what are being taught in mosques all over the world because muhammad as the excellent example is still being taught everywhere it's just as a matter of course every religion is going to teach what it teaches and this is what islam teaches but there is tremendous almost universal denial about this and every non-muslim politician in the west uh from from merkel who is no longer chancellor of germany but i'm sure that her successor is just as bad macron in france boris johnson in the uk uh certainly joe biden and all their predecessors with the arguable exception of trump but not the not the complete exception of trump every last one of them teaches and the pope as well and every western authority teaches that islam is a religion of peace that has nothing to do with terrorism i'm sure this is true also in india every non-muslim state seems to be absolutely fanatically committed to the idea that islam is peaceful the first thing that we have to acknowledge is that that's not true that muhammad taught warfare he engaged in warfare and he left an example of warfare and subjugation for his people and that if we do not confront this if we're not realistic about this it's just going to keep going on one thing that could be done by non-muslim states if they had the courage would be to say that muslims are perfectly free to practice their religions that practice their religion in the in these various countries but only in so far as they do not conflict with the law of the land and so efforts to engage in violence against non-muslims to subjugate them to impose sharia would be unacceptable and prosecuted fully for that to happen along with prosecution of child marriage polygamy and so much so much else that comes from ahmed's example the world would be a very different place i can give you one example in closing there was a camp a training camp discovered in the united states a few years ago in new mexico in a remote area and the training camp was actually taking children and training them to be suicide bombers and the idea was that they would go into schools and blow themselves up and kill large numbers of other children this was being run by a man named siraj wahaj siraj who was the son of a very prominent islamic spokesman in the united states siraj wahaj siraj ibn mahaj had several wives he had actually come to the attention of law enforcement previously for leaving one wife without divorcing her and marrying again polygamy is ostensibly illegal in the united states but because the united states is primarily interested in not appearing to be islamophobic nothing was done about siraj ibn lahaj's polygamy and so he went to new mexico and started this jihad training camp if his polygamy had been prosecuted as would be normal because it is illegal then he wouldn't have been free to start the jihad training camp if the united states and other states were consistent in applying their own laws to muslims which they are not doing because they're afraid they're intimidated and they want to accommodate them then there would be a great deal less jihad activity around the world but that is uh unfortunately just the opposite of what is happening on that happy note i will uh conclude and if you have questions we can discuss them now thank you you did not speak about this is a wife of muhammad and it's an interesting story because it coincides in very many ways with the child marriage to aisha and the uh the rape of safiya it's a a license for a certain kind of libertinism and a justification for all sorts of behavior that virtually every culture in the world would declare to be immoral uh zainab was the daughter-in-law of muhammad this is what you asked me about is that correct i just want to make sure i heard you right yes she was the wife of zaid who was the adopted son of muhammad but at one point muhammad according to islamic tradition went to visit his son zaid who was his adopted son and he did not find him at home he found zainab at home and he was she was not fully dressed when she answered the door and he was overcome the story says by her beauty zade ultimately came to see him and said if you are so taken with her i will divorce her and you can marry her and he said oh no no no keep your wife and fear a lot but then allah always ready to accommodate muhammad told muhammad i why are you refusing what i want to give you i i want you to marry zainab and he emerged from his trance of revelation and he said who will go tell zainab the good news that allah has married her to me and so he married his daughter-in-law there were this was scandalous even then unlike the child marriage and as a result he had to outlaw adoption he said and this is all in chapter 33 of the quran chapter 33 verse 4 and 33 verse 37 he said you you can't have adoption and zade is no longer his son zade was known for years as zaid ibn muhammad but had to go back to being called by the name of his birth father zaideb and haritha no adoption in islam but all this was only because muhammad wanted once again to satisfy his lust in taking this woman who was his daughter-in-law unfortunately this has condemned many many uh children to lives of great misery because they can't be adopted they can't go into a family that's not their own this is yet another example of how the uh the example the exemplary character of muhammad has a extraordinary destructive effect on human beings all over the world i like the way you continue to say the exemplary character perfect character there is a comment by george carlin very famous one he says religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of the day and the invisible man has a special list of some things that he does not want you to do and if you do any of those things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever forever and ever till the end of time but he loves you he loves you and he needs money he always needs money he's all powerful all perfect all knowing all wise and but somehow just can't handle money and in islam i will also say that that invisible man is very interested in your bedroom yes very but it's not just money either uh the quran in chapter 9 verse 14 and 15 it says fight them and allah will punish them by your hands and so to take the the gentleman's very entertaining characterization you have the invisible man who is all-powerful and created everything not able to punish those who displease him on his own and consequently needs to enlist the uh services of other human beings in order to punish those who displease him you see note this this is a very important verse that is often overlooked fight them and allah will punish them by your hands it's chapter 9 verse 14. in other words the muslims are the executors of the wrath of allah they are the ones who are charged by allah to punish the rest of us for not believing in allah and this is a great reason why there's so much of this violence by muslims against non-muslims because that's their job they are supposed to punish us my my question which you have partly discussed in your lecture is why developed countries fail to take notice of islam's narrative that quran mandates muslims to spread their religion by power of soul they don't have political will to support country like india from onslaught of pakistan is it their money power muslims money power and fear and why the examples given by you are not told to the common man non-muslims thank you why the political nations are not siding with india why u.s fails to take an action against pakistan and why is it that common people are not told about the examples that you mentioned there seems to be a very powerful force that does not want these things to be known and it i do believe has a great deal to do with money as you noted that uh the muslim nations are some of them are very wealthy and have close relations with the united states economic relations uh the saudis and their oil and so on and the saudis in particular have spent millions and millions of dollars in american universities and so you have a huge alawi out prince alwaleed bin talal center for muslim christian understanding in georgetown university in washington dc very prominent university in harvard you have another alwaleed center alwaleed is a billionaire a saudi billionaire and he's a hard-line muslim and so when he gives these millions to the american universities he wants them to tow his line and they're happy to do so because all they want is the money and so american universities instead of teaching the truth about these things they will teach that islam is a religion of peace and that the problem is all islamophobes which means you and me who speak terrible things about muhammad and islam and make people dislike it and this is not just the american universities either a few years back it was revealed that uh favorable coverage of various issues had been bought that is the american media cnn and the others were paid money to give favorable coverage to various issues when i saw that i immediately thought well i bet that's the same thing that's happening when it comes to gi because there is nothing but favorable coverage of islam and whenever there's a jihad attack in the west the stories are all about the fear of backlash against innocent muslims and not about the people the victims or jihad at all and so i do believe a great deal of this is that these people are bought that for the sake of money they are not telling the truth about these issues uh as a matter of fact there's been and it is the islamic groups have thought of everything we have to give them credit for planning there is not an issue not not an area of society where they have not entered and turned the narrative in the way that they want it so why do we not speak why are people not told about these things in the schools if you read textbooks in the united states and i'm sure this is true elsewhere also islam is peaceful islam is tolerant islam spread all over the world because it's so wonderful whereas all the other religions are given very negative treatments and this is in american public school textbooks why because islamic groups have targeted the textbook manufacturers and told them we want to help you avoid islamophobia in your textbooks and they've turned them around to make them into essentially instruments of proselytization it's all about the money a question from bhaskar when and how did the ideal of calling islam a religion of peace emerge that's a interesting question it actually comes from the 19th century there was a book published in the 19th century called islam the religion of peace and it was the first effort in a major propaganda effort to fool non-muslims about the nature of islam it's gained particular energy and impetus in the beginning in the 1970s in the west at the very least there was a professor edward saeed who was actually a christian arab not a muslim at all and edward syed wrote a book called orientalism and orientalism was all about how any criticism of the islamic world from the west was just part of the colonial project it was colonialist oppression and as a result if if westerners did not want to be colonialist and racist and imperialist then they could not say anything critical about islam because that would be an imposition of western values onto the islamic world now of course you and i know this is nonsense because we are from very different parts of the world and yet we encounter islam in the same way and see that it's aggressive belligerent violent expansionist supremacist and so on and this has nothing to do with colonialism it has nothing to do here you're just as much victims of colonialism as any islamic group if you want to speak in those terms it has to do with the nature of islam itself but this was obscured by edward syed to a tremendous degree his his book orientalism had immense influence all over uh western academia and the western intelligentsia now at the same time there was the push to say that islam is a religion of peace that came from george w bush after 9 11 on september 17 2001. he went to a mosque in washington dc and he said islam is peace and we want to emphasize that this attack is nothing to do with islam the idea also comes from the fact that islam really is a religion of peace but not in the way that we understand peace the idea is that muslims must wage war against the whole non-muslim world and subjugate all non-muslims under the hegemony of islam and then there will be peace and so islam ultimately has the goal of peace by conquest and subjugation therefore it's a religion of peace but all this is ultimately just an attempt at deception and it's very effective because most if if you're not a muslim most people would not want to not be interested in reading the quran or reading about the life of muhammad mostly only muslims are interested in such things and so they're able to prey upon the ignorance of the non-muslim and use this lie to foster complacency and to make us think well there's not really a problem because the vast majority is peaceful and my friend ahmed that i work with he's a wonderful fellow he's very gentle he would never hurt anyone so therefore there's nothing to be concerned about regarding terrorism but this is this is a massive extraordinarily successful deception uh why don't women in islam don't speak up i mean they must be reading quran they must be reading all these quotes and you know they must be knowing what exactly it means but then how are they fooled it's a very very small percentage which actually comes out and speaks against islam in order to criticize islam a muslim woman would have to have a moral standpoint separate from islam which a muslim woman is not likely to have in other words when we look at the world and we think about it in terms of what's good and what's evil or what's right and what's wrong we do so based on our own moral assumptions and beliefs and so a muslim woman is taught islamic assumptions and beliefs and so she's taught that she's a secondary human being to to to serve be a slave of the husband to be beaten if she's disobedient to uh have polygamy if the husband wants uh it's in most of the women most of hellfire most of the people in hell fire are women and so on these things are taught to her this is holy writ this is what allah says the only god and the prophet the perfect man and the excellent example so consequently there's no standpoint on which the woman can have there's no standpoint the woman has to judge islam to judge islam is already to to to place yourself outside the fold and that means that allah will punish you in this world and the next so this is a very powerful appeal you take for example the islamic republic of iran and of course previous to 1979 it was a western-style secular democracy and the women did not wear hijab and so a lot of women protested when they said you have to wear hijab and they didn't want to wear it and many women were brought into line by the mullahs telling them that if they did not wear hijab they would be suspended by their hair upside down in hell forever now imagine if you really believed that it sounds ludicrous to us but imagine if you really thought that there's an allah and he's there's a hell and he's going to put you in it upside down by your hair if you don't wear this thing you'll wear it it's it's it only creates a difficulty when you have muslim women move to a non-muslim culture and then they're confronted by a different uh way to live and sometimes that creates difficulty that's actually when you have honor killings and so on in india as well as there's been some that have happened in the united states and elsewhere they uh start to live in a different way and then their brothers and their father they kill them because they have dishonored the family by living in a way that's on islamic and this is something that's based on the quran where a boy is killed and he the the killer says i did it because he was going to grow up to be unrighteous and his parents deserved a righteous child so it's very difficult for a muslim woman without any other way to look at the world to criticize islam uh yes dr spencer wonderful talk as usual uh my question was uh a bit related to the topic that you had mentioned uh so you know the narrative that's been peddled widely through social media that the extreme form of islam is primarily due to the wahhabi ideology propagated by the saudis right because they have funded madrasas all over the world and you have seen even in india wahhabism seeping more in the last 20 years than before so uh there's also this narrative being peddled that that that the saudi prince mohammed bin salman is taking measures to temper the extreme ideology so how much do you uh how much truth do you think there is to that i mean is he making an honest effort or you know is this just media propaganda and the second part of that question is that you know we know that the the leftist stream academic stream in the united states is they're sympathetic to you know the islamic jihadist cause but they seem to be uh you know uh anti-mbs so i really don't understand that dynamic and uh that was the second part of my question thank you yes uh as far as mbs goes of course i don't know whether he's sincere or not but he has to tread very carefully and it's interesting to note there was an interview with him recently where he was speaking about the reforms he was going to make in islam and it was clear as he was speaking about this that he was extraordinarily nervous and as a matter of fact he kept on making a strange uh gesture with his uh with his neck as a matter of fact uh kind of uh jerking it up a little bit like uh and doing this repeatedly throughout this part of the interview uh and yet the rest of the interview which was very lengthy he never did that and i think that that betrayed that he was he's very afraid of what could happen in this regard and maybe it has to do with his neck that he could be beheaded for apostasy if he goes too far because there is a death penalty for heresy a death penalty for apostasy he's treading a very dangerous line trying to limit the power of the wahhabis and then the first part of your question a lot of people say that islamic jihad activity today all comes from the wahhabis there's actually some truth to that but on the other hand if you think about darul alum deo bond right in india you can see that there's jihad activity that has nothing to do with the taliban i mean nothing i'm sorry everything to do with the taliban nothing to do with the wahhabis this is a different school of islamic thought and yet because islam is what it is they come to many of the same conclusions as as the wahhabis the uh history of jihad also shows that islamic jihad activity doesn't come from the wahhabis because long before the wahhabis there was jihad violence and uh the the wahhabis only arose in the 18th century the late latter part of the 18th century but there was a great deal of jihad from the mughals from from the ottomans from all number all manner of islamic entities long before wahhabism as far as the american universities go uh i do believe that they are compromised to a tremendous degree by the very forces that mbs is trying to limit and that might explain their hostility to him how much of this narrative control to protect islam is because of communist market marxists who have taken control of who have taken control of every part of american and european society what is in it for them to defend islam for they know that islam finally will not let them survive even if they make it win a great deal of the islamic activity is because of the communists there's no doubt about this they are close allies and a lot of people are puzzled by this but it's because actually they have a shared authoritarian worldview uh they islam is against freedom islam is the slavery of the human being and communism is the slavery of the human being they are both utopian philosophies they both are going to create a paradise on earth the communists want to create the paradise of the workers ruling and the withering away of the state but what that means in practice is draconian punishments for any kind of descent and the gulags the massive prison camps in which millions of people who anybody who steps out of line is uh are anybody who's stepped out of line are held in these camps so the idea is that you have a paradise created by a reign of terror that's islam also sharia islamic law is supposed to be the perfect law of allah and so you implement it in a society you have a perfect society it's utopia but at the same time it is enforced by the beheadings the amputations the stonings the reign of terror so both the left and islam they love authoritarianism and they want to establish a paradise on earth created by a reign of terror and enforced by a reign of terror also the left in trying to take over the west and destroy the united states they love islam because islam lends itself to authoritarianism if you look in islamic history there's no history of democracies or republics islam has a history of all over the world only turkey was a secular democracy but old turkey was created in the atmosphere of a rejection of political islam and now turkey of course is re-islamizing so there's no democracy there's no freedom it's all just obey the authoritarian ruler as a matter of fact muhammad said it in a tradition obey a ruler even if he is an ethiopian with a head like a raisin most people quote that to deal with the racism of the of the statement but even aside from that it's just a blanket statement to obey the ruler that's just what the communists want obey the authorities submit do whatever we tell you you refer to some author if i heard you correctly who compared muhammad with gandhi yes karen armstrong karen armstrong is a former nun a catholic nun who left the monastery and became a very enamored of islam and wrote hegeographical biographies too of muhammad and a history of islam which is highly misleading and apologetic would you be able to share some comparisons which she made between muhammad and gandhi just curious yes she claims that muhammad taught peace and tried to make peace and that one of the reasons why he conquered arabia was to pacify it and keep the various tribes of arabia from warring against each other but she plays fast and loose with the facts she ignored a great deal of what is taught in islamic tradition about uh what muhammad did and said and she actively misrepresents the data for example she actually reviewed my book that is the subject of this lecture the truth about muhammad and in her review of it she said spencer never mentions that the quran says warfare is an awesome evil she did not give the citation and i've read the quran dozens of times i know i couldn't think of where on earth does the koran say warfare is an awesome evil and finally i found it actually in uh chapter 2 verse 217 which i will find if you will bear with me for a moment and then i will read it to you uh what she's what she was quoting was the passage that actually said they ask you about warfare in the sacred month say warfare during it is an awesome evil but to turn people away from the way of allah and to disbelieve in him and expelling his people from the sacred mosque is more serious with allah now you have to understand see this passage is talking about whether it is allowed to fight during the four sacred months that were in the arab calendar before islam there were four months in which it was forbidden to wage war and they ask you about warfare in the sacred month say warfare during it is an awesome sin but to turn people away from allah and to disbelieve in him and expelling his people from the sacred mosque is more serious with the law so what it's saying is yes warfare is bad but these things are worse when these people are persecuting you it's worse so therefore you can fight them during the sacred month that's what the passage is actually saying and she took a little piece of it to to give the impression that islam says that warfare is evil islam never says warfare is evil all it was saying was warfare during this particular period is evil however there are worse evils in these people who are persecuting the muslims so warfare during the sacred month is okay she's a liar in other words you are described as anti-muslim author what is your response to that and again my question that with your being banned from the united kingdom and all these did you also get death threats and all because we have a few speakers who have kind of completely gone off the media oh yeah i get many death threats dev actually tried to kill me twice uh i was the focus of two assassination attempts one was in texas in 2015 when a couple of isis gunmen from arizona actually came out of their car and they were going to they drew their guns and they were going to come in and shoot me and a number of others but they were shot by our security forces outside our event uh and then i was poisoned in iceland in 2017 uh by someone who slipped some things into my drink in any case the uh i also actually just got some death threats quite recently on twitter um a fellow was writing me in direct messages with all these videos of beheadings and then saying he was looking for my address in any case i'm not worried about that you know it's not like i'm going to live forever if people don't speak about these things then they're just going to continue so we have to stand up at a certain point but in any case i was banned from britain actually for teaching that islam has doctrines of warfare against unbelievers that's actually what the letter to the from the uk home office to me said you can find it online at my website ghodwatch and read the whole thing uh it's really just saying in other words because you say unwelcome truths you are not welcome in the country as far as being anti-muslim i reject that uh very strongly i am not anti-muslim that would be against some human beings and i'm not against any human beings i'm against this ideology to say that i'm anti-muslim would be to say that opponents of the nazis in europe in 1940 were anti-german and that would have been ridiculous they were fighting for humanity against a great inhumanity and that is what i'm doing there is one uh one question here that is quite important i think um so you um mr spencer you have done great work about the life of muhammad as for the islamic sources but also about the genesis of islam as per other sources of history and these two are quite in conflict now given the more recent knowledge uh by scholars like um christophe luxembourg and so on um about about the alternative the non-islamic history of islam the historicity and attenuate the life details of muhammad are a bit problematic so this is a very wide topic i have many questions about it but in general you see where is your thinking going in reconciling these two uh views of history i don't believe thank you that's a very important question and uh i'm honored by your being present here in any case there is no reconciling those two uh i uh ins many people actually say that i have contradicted myself by writing the truth about muhammad and then writing did muhammad exist and questioning the historicity of the islamic texts actually these are two separate inquiries when we are discussing what muslims believe which is very important to know because they are acting upon those beliefs every day around the world then we have to know what is the content of the quran the hadith and the seerah literature the biography biographical literature about muhammad however as a separate issue we can look at whether those various sources have any historical value and they have very little historical value the traditions about muhammad's words and deeds although they are normative for islamic law and behavior they have they actually date from around 200 years generally after muhammad is supposed to have lived and there is no record of muhammad in contemporary sources from the 7th century when he is supposed to have lived so it's rather like discussing the shakespeare play macbeth we could have a discussion we could have a show like this about macbeth and we could say macbeth plotted to kill duncan and macbeth said uh is this a dagger i see before me uh it's handled toward my hand and so on and discussed all of macbeth's motivations and his goals and his activities but that still would be it's just a play it's not history and so while we can discuss what macbeth said and did that does not give it any historical value what we have with islam is rather as if there were a large group of people who thought that the play macbeth was wholly writ and that macbeth was absolutely a historical figure and were imitating it and then it would be two inquiries one would be what macbeth said and did which would be very important to know to deal with these people and second is this really actual history or is it just a play and in the case of muhammad there is no evidence that any such person existed he is a creation of various factions that created the arab empire for their own goals and purposes unfortunately one of their primary goals was to create a warrior group that would preserve and expand and strengthen their empire and so they sanctified warfare and conquest as being pleasing to allah and this is why we are discussing this today and why it remains a problem but there is no historical value to these stories so we have a question any your views about the deoban their bandies well of course they're the inspiration they're the uh the source for the taliban the uh islamic theology that the taliban hold comes from the darum dayaban comes from the deubandi point of view it's very it's it's essentially identical to the wahabis but it's not the wahabis and the reason why two islamic groups that are distinct like the deubandis and the wahhabis have essentially the same point of view is because the islamic texts are very clear and they do teach warfare against unbelievers they do teach the subjugation of the unbelievers under the hegemony of islamic rule there there is no sect of islam that does not teach this people speak about the ahmadiyya or the ismaili shia in this connection as being peaceful these are very small groups that do not have influence in the wider islamic community we're talking about less than one or two percent of islam worldwide the mainstream the large groups of muslims both sunni and shiite all teach this warfare and conquest and subjugation we have a question that barring fears and threats what could be the reasons why some people voluntarily convert to islam people are taught a lot of nonsense to convert to islam uh there have been many converts to islam as a matter of fact who become disillusioned i uh was in uh contact several years ago with a man who was a very prominent convert to islam in the united states at one time as a matter of fact he won several awards from islamic groups for his writing about islam but he ultimately left islam and he told me that the islam that he was taught was not the true islam he was taught that islam was all about peace and brotherhood and as a black american he was very interested in it because it was a rejection of racism then he became a muslim and he said he had only read a little bit of the quran before he became a muslim this is very common and it's the same thing with many women they are told that islam teaches dignity and modesty and that's the reason for the covering that a woman has her own dignity and is not just a a tool for men of course it's just exactly the opposite and the covering is all part of that mindset but many of these converts do not do not see this until they get in and then it's too late because you have the death penalty for leaving islam so many converts become all the more fanatical as they embrace the new religion fully and there are many converts as a result who have been involved in jihad terror activity all around the world but there are also some converts who become disillusioned and they leave islam after a short period because the dawah the proselytizing that's that is done to bring them in is often quite different from the reality of islam and they only find out about these things like the prohibition of music the subjugation of women all these things once they're in i also have a view that uh any uh why we are attracted not just to islam but to all the abrahamic religions is the kind of support group that we find in the church in the community is the kind of support group that we find in the community because in other religions you're not largely left on your own here they will you know the the the or the church or the mosque the your local area mosque will take care of you if you're not doing well in life there's no doubt about that and that's very attractive particularly in the west today where there's no religion and p there's a radical individualism that least people often atomize and isolated and they feel alienated from the entire world then they can convert and suddenly they have a group of people who love them and care about them and so i think the importance of that cannot be underestimated it only becomes a problem when you have uh people who love them and care about them tell them now in order to please allah you need to do violence to unbelievers and uh how about the psychological condition where people like to be told what to do they like to be subjugated well that can't be underestimated either this is extraordinarily important and people don't like to discuss it but the fact is that there are many many human beings who would prefer slavery to freedom and they prefer to have a worldview that everything is set out for them and they don't have to make any difficult choices because it's all there already done and so islam as a total explanation of everything in life and they have laws and rules for every aspect of human behavior it can be very comforting for some people because they like having a rule for every aspect of human behavior and then they can know exactly what they should put they should do every day ah good evening wonderful uh to listen to you never heard so many aspects of uh movement earlier now this victimhood seems to be a very special characteristics of muslims all over the world and how much of it is really inherited from the christian forebears in europe oh victor mode oh uh you know i don't i don't know the provenance of victimhood uh except i do suspect that it comes from actually not christianity but the uh struggle against racism in the united states uh racism of course is the national trauma of the united states and it uh has created the idea that there are people who are victimized who need special assistance and special accommodation the islamic groups in the united states and now also in europe have made very skillful use of this portraying themselves as victims of racist islamophobic counter-terror measures and necessary and and thus needing special treatment and accommodation because they are so discriminated against in the society this is just playing on the uh historical controversies in the united states but in terms of islam it doesn't have any substance there haven't even been muslims in the united states until relatively recently and they have not suffered and do not suffer widespread discrimination and harassment the problem is that the society is now constituted in a way that victimhood is prized and valued and is essentially currency the gain to gain power and influence and so the more of it you have the more power and influence you can get and so they're playing the game very skillfully that of course we see this incredible obtuseness of governments all over the world leaving aside a couple of governments like japan and maybe poland who are very clear about how the islamic population has to be managed so to speak but somehow the entire liberal world and even india for that matter as much as people glorify the modi government fact remains the same kind of obtuseness and um if i may say muleishness on persisting with according them this legitimacy in the name of liberal democracy continues and what is the way out that you see from here because i mean this is really um i mean this seems to be no end to it no matter what muslims do what they they even express themselves clearly against the very governments that the very nations where they live and they find they find refuge they speak against them yet i mean governments all over i mean they refuse to change their outlook it's a liberal democratic trap if i may put it that way i do believe that certainly the response of virtually all the governments around the world to islam is based on falsehoods and that consequently it cannot stand i don't know when or how it will fall but i do know that the fact that it's refuted on a more or less daily basis is a sign of hope that eventually i think it will become impossible for governments in india in europe in north america everywhere around the world to ignore and deny this problem unfortunately probably the jihad will have advanced a great deal more before it becomes impossible to ignore or deny i learned farsi for a while uh persian and my teacher was a shia and he used to say that this um he had a very clear distinction he says shias are the one who gave us literature and arts and culture and sunnis were arabs they were tribes and he gives the example of how persia was captured initially he said that it was the center of culture in the ottoman empire all over asia in fact and then these arabs they came on their camels they had the muscle car they subjugated iran and so it's like a phd professor being a slave and the unkowt illiterate servant becoming the master suddenly and this situation could not go on for very long so when ali came a successor of muhammad he he saw that it is very difficult to like continue this kind of an arrangement so he asked them that okay you accept islam but you can continue your own uh traditions yeah well there's no doubt there's a lot of anti-arab sentiment in in iran uh and that iran persia had a tremendous history and tradition long before islam which is unlike arabia or other areas of the islamic world and so there is resentment to a tremendous degree against sunni islam because it's identified with the arabs and against the arabs among many persians uh at the same time of course we can see from the islamic republic that there are some shiite persians who are quite fanatical in islam and there there's a phenomenon it's also true in pakistan that a lot of non-arab muslims tend to become even more fanatical than the arabs to try to prove that they're just as good muslims as the arabs and so they're they're all these things happening but there's tremendous discontent with islam itself in iran today because of the islamic republic and because people who have lived under the islamic republic since 1979 have seen what islam is all about and they don't like it and so there is a resurgence of zoroastrianism the worship of the fire in iran because they are many persians in secret are recovering their ancestral religion and a tremendous falling away from iran from islam as a matter of fact there was a poll in the islamic republic of iran quite recently within the last few years where uh the number of people who professed islam was in the 30s the percentage about 35 percent of people in iran said they were muslims which is extraordinary because officially 99 of the people in iran are muslims but a tremendous number have uh left islam for various other things including fire worship one of the things the american forces in afghanistan found was an american who had become a taliban john walker yeah and so one would think that people would be interested in following up with him and you know whether his views have changed or not but nothing is heard about him do you have any idea what he's doing now and what his music yes i do uh he was freed from prison uh last year i believe it was or maybe two years ago and he uh wrote an article recently about islam jihad afghanistan the taliban making it very clear that he hadn't changed his views at all he has only been reinforced in islam in his islamic views it's noteworthy that he's a convert and that he came out of the rootless and traditionless individualism of society in southern california and the materialism of it and embraced islam as being an all-encompassing answer now because he has waged jihad against the united states and served time in prison he's a hero to some muslims and i think we will likely be hearing more about him more from him in the future robert what do you think it will take for all these ex-muslims um in iran for example to come out together what can be done to encourage them coming together you know the islamic republic was in very bad shape just last year uh the trump administration had placed sanctions on iran that were creating great difficulty for the iranian economy and uh people warned against this and said this will just turn people more away from america and make them embrace the islamic republic but it had actually the opposite effect and the people were demonstrating in iran as they are again now saying you're giving our money to syria and lebanon to hezbollah and to assad and you should be giving it to the iranian people and so it's possible of course now the biden administration has given the islamic republic a reprieve and removed the sanctions and is going to restore the nuclear deal but it may have been quite close to the toppling of the islamic republic just last year and it still could happen you

Channel: Sangam Talks

Views: 984,678

Keywords: Muhammad, Prophet, Islam, Zainab bibi, Ayesha, Jihaad, Islamic terrorism, Violence inn Islam, Violence in Quran, Exemplary behaviour of Muhammad, Beheading sanctioned in Quran, Deobandis, Sexual enslavement in Islam, prophet muhammad, prophet muhammad story

Id: oiVFGmCKEAA

Length: 73min 50sec (4430 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 02 2022