Ex-Muslim Muhammad Syed on the Ideological War Against Islam

The video interview (below) with Muhammad Syed, president of Ex-Muslims of North America, is superb.

Syed, who goes by @MoTheAtheist on Twitter, is essentially correct and heroically frank about the nature of Islam and how to fight the cultural aspect of the war against this murderous creed.

In the interview, which is conducted by Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist, Syed:

• Distinguishes between Muslims who take the tenets of Islam seriously and thus call for sharia law (including all manner of Islamic tyranny, rape, butchery)—and those who don’t take the tenets seriously (or don’t even know what Islamic scripture says) and thus don’t call for such evil;
• Touches on the connection between the violent tenets of Islam and those of Christianity and Judaism, pointing out that Islam was born of these previously established, violence-inciting creeds;
• Explains that the aims and practices of today’s jihadist groups, such as al Qaeda and Islamic State (aka ISIS), are nothing new—such goals and atrocities have been part and parcel of Islam since its blood-soaked founding;
• Makes clear that Islam, far from meaning “peace,” means submission—specifically, submission to the will of “God”;
• Indicates what must be done ideologically speaking to fight against those who genuinely embrace Islam and thus seek to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate;
• Identifies the regimes in Iran and Saudi Arabia as the main sources of funding for the spread of Islam;
• And says, “We need to work to eliminate those sources of funding” (to which I emphatically say, Amen).

We are engaged fundamentally in an “ideological war,” says Syed, and we “can’t win it without a war of ideas, without actually pushing back against the ideas and where they’re coming from.” We need to encourage nominal Muslims—those who do not genuinely embrace Islam and who may be open to reason—to engage in a “critical examination” of the religion. This is what lead Syed himself to repudiate Islam. “The reason I left the religion was because I spent a year studying [it] because I wanted to be a better Muslim,” Syed explains. “And when I studied . . . it was very obvious that this is mythology.”

Syed further observes that when a Muslim chooses to leave Islam, his decision can inspire others—siblings, parents, cousins, friends—to follow suit, and this multiplier effect can be quite significant. Even so, Syed is under no illusion that major cultural change can happen quickly. He makes clear that “this is a long term ideological war. There are no short-term fixes. It’s going to take many years and a lot of us working together.”

Of course, abandoning an irrational, life-throttling ideology is not the equivalent of adopting a rational, life-serving ideology. A person might abandon Islam and adopt something on the order of Christianity or, worse, Pragmatism. But given today’s global context and the fact that hundreds of millions of Muslims take Islam seriously and are working feverishly to convince unserious Muslims to take it seriously, Islam is exceedingly dangerous, and practically any alternative is an improvement. Further, once someone begins a critical examination of his own world view, he is, by that fact, moving in the right direction. And such an examination is precisely what Syed encourages.

Based on a few posts in his Twitter feed, it appears that Syed may be politically on the left. But whatever his political leanings, in this particular sphere of the battle for civilization—in the ideological war against Islam—he is a heroic fighter.

Check out his interview below, consider following him on Twitter, and support his efforts to convince more Muslims to critically examine and ultimately abandon Islam. There’s no such thing as enough of that.

Related:

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Clarion Call for Islamic Reformation
• Islamic Jihad and Western Faith
• The Evil of Whitewashing Islam
• Islam vs. Free Speech