Hey there.
I have never disputed that there are real problems in contemporary Islam.
The way that the ideology is currently used both in Muslim countries and beyond is sometimes
very problematic.
I don’t dispute that Muslim populations both migrant and at home have some very real
issues that need to be addressed.
What I do dispute is the idea that there is some special eternal sickness associated with
Islam.
Nobody is engaging with these issues honestly.
One side thinks Islam is Evil.
The other side says nice things, but then acts to perpetuate the issues that create
the problem with Islam.
At the end of the day, the Koran is just an old book.
The issues don’t go back 1400 years.
They’re all about contemporary economics and politics.
Since I started this series a week ago, I’ve heard from a lot of people who want to tell
me what’s wrong with Islam.
They do it In large blocks of text, with a lot of hate and profanity.
These comments all look kind of similar, and they talk about the same issues.
Sometimes they’ve clearly been cut and pasted from the same source.
We all get guys, you don’t like Muslims.
A lot of this stuff can be discounted immediately.
Comparing American and Arabian slavery is not a useful exercise.
Conquests that happened 500 years ago are interesting, but not all that important for
contemporary issues..
Now, as much as it pains me to admit it, these folks do bring up some issues that make sense.
I think it’s true that crimes committed by Muslim migrants in Europe are underplayed
in the mainstream media.
I also think that’s a good thing.
Think about the scale of what’s just happened.
Over a million people have been torn from their homes and thrown into an alien environment.
It’s amazing that there aren’t more problems than there are.
If anything, Islam makes refugees more peaceful rather than less.
Trust me, if Sweden had taken in 190,000 rural Americans, We’d all be talking about the
Swedish civil war right now.
The commenters are also right to point out that some unpleasant things happen in Muslim
countries as well.
Honor Killings, Female Genital Mutilation, Horrifying disrespect for Women’s and LGBT
rights.
The standard response to this is that these things these are problems of development,
and that’s absolutely true.
These problems are about poverty.
You can see similar issues in other poor non-Muslim countries.
As most countries get richer, these problems will fade.
It’s not about which old book they choose to organize their lives around.
In 2017 we’ve actually got genocidal Buddhists, if you can believe that.
But because the mainstream wants to protect Saudi Arabia, they don’t complete the argument.
It’s not just that these countries are poor, it’s that one of them isn’t.
The problem of Islam isn’t just development.
The problem of Islam is Uneven development.
As European countries developed, from the 15th through the 17th centuries, religious
fighting was a big part of the story.
Every power had a version of religion that they were pushing.
But that’s the thing.
There were many, many powers.
They were all competing, and they were pushing very different forms of religion.
No single sect could dominate, and Europe eventually arrived at a kind of tolerance.
I Say Henry, Why don’t we throw over all this religious garbage and see how we do?
But of course!
Hah ha!
Eat our dust!
The More tolerant countries ended up winning.
There’s a reason everybody speaks French and English.
Muslim countries haven’t had a similar opportunity to develop competitively yet.
For 50 years, one Muslim country has been richer than all the others.
And that country, Saudi Arabia, has used its wealth to push one angry, violent version
of the Islamic faith.
Even worse, it’s had the help of the world’s richest and most powerful country working
to amplify the spread of that faith as well.
In Saudi Arabia, this crazy ideology is kept in check by a PR-sensitive royal family, and
a kind of first world level of development.
When it’s introduced in poorer countries, you get chaos.
Once you are aware of this dynamic, the only surprising thing about the problems of Islam
is how small they are.
This is the central truth of Sunni Islam today.
And it’s a truth that nobody else wants to tell you.
If you want to learn more about the true problem of Islam, and how to solve it, I suggest you
check out my essay Everybody’s Lying About Islam.
Also, you may want to consider chipping into my Patreon account.
YouTube just dramatically cut the revenue of all political news channels.
If my Patreon funding doesn’t go up dramatically very soon, I’m afraid this channel may have
to end.
Thanks.