On September 25, 2002, a group of armed Islamists entered the office of a Christian charitable organization in Karachi, Pakistan, bound seven workers to chairs and then brutally murdered them. According to Muslim witnesses, the Muslims showed no hurry and took a good 15 minutes to separate the Christians and ensure that each of their goals suffered the most terrible death.
The murder of non-Muslim humanitarian workers by religious followers of Islam often happens. While there is rarely a celebration on the side of other Muslims, there is also not much indignation by a community known for their weakness.
While rumors of a Koran desecration or a Muhammad cartoon produce deadly protests, riots, incendiary fires, and image fires, the mass murder of non-Muslims does not become a real passion. In the eleven years after September 11, nearly 20,000 Islamic terrorist attacks were perpetrated, but all of them do not provoke the kind of indignation on the part of most Muslims, such as the mere mention of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.
This critical absence of the moral perspective confuses many Westerners, especially those who try to reconcile this reality with the politically correct assumption that Islam is like another religion. The Judeo-Christian tradition preaches universal love and selflessness, so it is expected that the pious Muslims will be the most peaceful and least dangerous ... provided that Islam is based on the same principles.
But among the rosy assurances of proponents of Muslim ideologies that Islam is about peace and tolerance lies a much darker reality that better explains violence and deep-rooted indifference. Quite simply, the Koran teaches supremacy, hatred, and hostility.
Consider the elements that define the hate speech:
- Distinguish between one's own identity group and those outside
- The moral distinction to which this comparison is based
- Devaluation or dehumanization of other groups and the personal superiority of one's own
- Advocating the different standards of treatment based on identity group membership
- Call for violence against members of other groups
Unfortunately, and in spite of the best intentions of many respectable Muslims, the Koran qualifies as a hate speech in every respect.
The holiest book of Islam (61% of which refers to non-Muslims) draws the sharpest differences between Muslims (the best people, 3:110) and non-believers (the worst creatures 98:6). The praise is wasted on the former, while the latter are condemned with burning generalizations.
Far from teaching universal love, the Koran continually preaches the inferiority of the non-Muslims, even if he compares them with disgraceful animals and smolks over Allah's hatred against them and his dark plans for their eternal torture. The Muslims are said to be destined to dominate non-believers, against whom hard treatment is promoted.
The Islamic state implements these teachings from the Koran into practice. In Ramadan in 2016 they raided a restaurant. They tortured and killed those who could not recite from the Koran while Muslims were spared.
Polished Muslim scouts in the West love to use the word "Bigot" to describe critics of Islam, but they are rarely challenged about their own view of the Koran. What does the book, which they claim to contain the literal and eternal Word of Allah, really say about non-Muslims?
The pattern of violence and aggressive disregard for human suffering, which is persistent in Muslim history, and the contemporary attitude towards non-believers reflects the message of the Koran, which is a personal superiority and arrogance.
In today's world, Muslim rule is characterized by the oppression and discrimination of non-Muslims, while Muslim minorities in larger societies are distinguished by varying degrees of aggravated demand, discord, and armed rebellion. Only a few Muslims are uncomfortable with this blatant double standard in which Islam, depending on its power position, is either a victim or makes others to a victim - and the reason is obvious.
Islam is a fully dominant ideology in which the role of non-believers is subordinated to the position of Muslims. Those who oppose Islamic rule are to be fought until they are either killed or completely humiliated and forced to acknowledge their subordinate status by committing themselves to Islam or by paying compensation and accepting submission to their own religion.
There is simply no other religion on earth that draws such a sharp distinction between their own members and others. No other religion devotes so much of their holiest text to the condemnation and dehumanization of those who merely decide not to follow their dogma.
So much about Islamic terrorism and the general equivalency of the broader Muslim community against violence makes sense only against this double nature of Islam - as well as the foreign willingness of the followers of Muhammad to tolerate their own subjugation under Ottoman or Arab tyrants such as Saddam Hussein They themselves violently attack other negligent neighbors.
The proponents of Islam do not lie when they say that Islam teaches love and kindness, but they forget to add that this is only for the treatment of those within the Muslim community. Loyalty to one's own identity group is above all appreciated, and empathy for those outside of faith is at best optional - and even explicitly undesirable.
If this is a "misunderstanding" of Islam by modern "radicals", then it is a mistake that the founder of Islam has also made. In Muhammad's time, non-Muslims were killed only for speaking against the new religion and their self-proclaimed prophet. Similarly, the Jews of Qurayza were compelled and killed on Muhammad's orders, even if they had not even fought. Since the life of a non-Muslim is cheap, the actual physical damage to a Muslim is not necessary to justify the murder according to the example of Muhammad.
The Koran fulfills every criterion with which we define hate speech. Not only the message inspires dislike and disregard for others, but the text claims the superiority of Islam, and violence can also be used as a means to achieve the goals.
In his later years, Muhammad directed military campaigns to subjugate other tribes and religions; they were "invited" to Islam with the sword and forced to pay tribute. He launched the aggressive military campaigns that waged war against all five major world religions in the first decades after his death.
Islam involves the ultimate devaluation of non-Muslims by teaching. While a Muslim can be sentenced to death for murdering another Muslim (Bukhari 83:17), no Muslim can be sentenced to death for the murder of a non-Muslim (Bukhari 83:50, 3:111 - Muhammad: "No Muslim can be killed for the murder of a Kafir (unbeliever).") The "law of equality" from the Koran applies only to Muslims. The human values and rights based on gender, religion and status are the exact opposite of equality in the Western liberal tradition in the Koran.
One can always find proponents of Islam who are willing to defuse the hard rhetoric of the Koran with creative interpretation, tortuous explanation or boundless denial. Their words and deeds are almost always a concern for the representation of Islam, which does not extend to the victims of Islam - at least not with the same sense of urgency.
Of course there are also exceptional Muslims who do not agree with the Islamic predominance and sincerely defend secularism and respect for all people. Some even find verses or fragments of it to support their independent beliefs. But for these people, the Koran as a whole will always be a constant challenge as it explicitly teaches the distinctive and subordinate status of non-Muslims.