A new form of the Stockholm syndrome?

It concerns me that Western Buddhists may turn and go in the direction of Islamophilia; who have not studied Islam, sufficiently, to at least understand that other than the word “religion” Buddhism and Islam have nothing in common—further I would argue that Islam is a false religion that fits with the expression a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Ask any Western Buddhist how many people were put to the sword by Muslims during Islam’s 1400 years as a religion?  They simply do not know.  It is 270 million people.  Ask them how many verses in the Qur’an call on Muslims to war with non-Muslims?  Again, they have no idea.  The figure is around 109 verses.  Does this sound like the Buddhism they practice?

Islam intimidates and threatens all non-Muslims.  Islam’s history from Medina to Muhammad’s death is a history of horrific violence—not peace.  The seemingly peaceful Meccan Muhammad with his 150 odd followers had not yet succumbed to the poison of violence.  The Muhammad of Medina is another story and one all non-Muslims need to be aware of.  But, apparently, this is not the case—and this is what worries me—especially in the EU and now in the U.S.  As I see it, both are suffering from a new form of Stockholm syndrome. 

Generally speaking, the Stockholm syndrome based on the Normalmstorg bank robbery, expresses both empathy and sympathy with one’s captors in the famous example of Patty Hearst when in 1974, at nineteen, she was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army). Suffering from this syndrome she bonded with her captors as a survival mechanism.  Later on, the same phenomenon occurred with other kidnap victims such as Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, Shawn Horbeck, and Colleen Stan.  But the Stockholm syndrome doesn’t stop here with these kinds of incidents.  A deep-seated fear can also provoke the syndrome on a regional or national scale in the example of the constant fear of Islamic terrorism.  (Just recently a survey conducted by Hungarian think-tank, Szazadveg Foundation, found that 70 percent of Europeans believe Muslim migration poses a serious threat while 86 percent fear a likely terrorist threat in their country.) 

Fearing some kind of retaliation, rather than offend Muslims, EU leaders and police are more and more turning a blind eye to the violence directed at the host culture by Muslims.  One such example are rapes carried out by gangs of young Muslim males in Sweden which, incidentally, has now become the rape capital of the West.  The EU thinks it is in its best interest to be nice to Muslim immigrants which if they had actually spent time studying Islam would be horrified at having opened the EU borders to Muslims. 

An insidious example of this syndrome is even affecting freedom of speech.  This happened when the Danish-born Brandeis professor Jytte Klausen was told by Yale University Press to remove the caricatures of Muhammad from her book if she wished to have her book published. And what was the specific reason?

"The decision rested on the specialists’ warning about “a substantial likelihood of violence,” the Yale University statement explained. One consultant, Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, a world affairs columnist, and CNN host, confirmed that Yale’s press “was confronted with a clear threat of violence and loss of life.” The university’s judgment effectively declared: “We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands,” said Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors. For her part, the author “reluctantly agreed to have the book published without the images” because she believed that no other university press would print them either. Incidentally, her work reveals “a misperception that Muslims spontaneously arose in anger over the cartoons, whereas they were mere symbols manipulated by those already involved in violence” (Anna Geifman, Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia, 163).

One should carefully note that Yale’s reasoning stems from fear.  Yale succumbed to fear as a survival mechanism based largely on an imagined existential threat by Muslims.  Their reaction shows both empathy and sympathy for Muslims.  Yale is, essentially, being nice to their captors.  But this thinking is wrong, misguided and dangerous.  Buddhists should not think like the people at Yale.  The only way for Muslims to adapt to Western culture is for them to eventually give up their religion—see it for what it truly is a religion of the sword.  Personally, I think Western Buddhists are fools who assume things about Islam without first having solid evidence for their claims.  Opinions just won't cut it.  Just recently I was kicked off of a reddit Buddhist forum because reddit has a policy of kicking off anyone who called the Orlando terrorist a Muslim.  The Orlando terrorist attack is no longer being discussed by the MSM (Main Stream Media). It is as if it never happened.  I bet it's the Stockholm syndrome. 

Comments

[thezennist]

D Cripps: Thanks for the heads-up. I live by a major university in the U.S. They have turned into "cultural Marxists" which means, among other things, they are now teaching a mandatory freshman class on Islamophobia! Based on the history of Islam we should fear it as if it were an invading army and take appropriate steps to halt its advance.

[D Cripps]

Brilliant! As a longterm Buddhist practitioner in the UK I have observed with similar concern the apparent ignorance of this religion, and pleading on its behalf, shown by some well-known Western Buddhists.

You are probably familiar with thereligionofpeace.com, politicalislam.com, www.citizenwarrior.com, and other informative websites. Online copies of The Reliance Of The Traveller (a Sunni Shafi'i manual of jurisprudence, translated from the original Arabic by an American Muslim) are rare but still available. The manual shows the self-perpetuating nature of sharia-law, and the mandatory nature of caliphate and offensive jihad in traditional Islamic doctrine (the English translation omits the chapter on slavery and mistranslates details of f.g.m). (Note: Two online websites were obliged to remove their links for translation-copyright reasons after I provided the u.r.ls on a few popular websites: I guess someone reported it. While I appreciate the translator's rights to revenue I also consider that this 'threat doctrine' should be more widely known, so I would ask that you are careful with whom you share the links.)

The manual's introduction states, "The four Sunni schools of Islamic law, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, are identical in approximately 75 percent of their legal conclusions, while the remaining questions, variances within a single family of explainers of the Holy Koran and prophetic sunna, are traceable to methodological differences in understanding or authentication of the primary textual evidence, differing viewpoints sometimes reflected in even a single school".

While some development is possible within sharia-law, not every kind of change would be acceptable -- for example, the change must not be contrary to the basic teachings and objectives in Islam. Under Islamic law, injunctions laid down in the Qur'an and the Sunnah (Muhammad's way of life, as transmitted in traditional reports of his words, actions and approvals) cannot be changed by any human agency. Note also what is written on "scholarly consensus", p. 23>b7.0 - 24>b7.4: briefly "When the four necessary integrals of consensus exist {see manual for definition}, the ruling agreed upon is an authoritative part of [sharia-law] that is obligatory to obey and not lawful to disobey. Nor can [jurists] of a succeeding era make the thing an object of new [independent reasoning], because the ruling on it, verified by scholarly consensus, is an absolute legal ruling which does not admit of being contravened or annulled." Though Islamic law makes allowances for an individual Muslim's circumstances (e.g being in environments unsupported of Islamic law), the only way to 'change' such rulings found in mainstream orthodox Islam as the mandate for caliphate, offensive jihad, and pressing forward for world domination under Islamic law, is to leave Islam or to become a Muslim who rejects the binding nature of these laws (and for some Muslims that, too, equates, with apostasy): the law has painted them into a corner.

See p. 638>o25.0 - 645>o25.6 on caliphate and its obligatory nature; here is a brief excerpt from p. 638: "The investiture of someone from the Islamic Community (Umma) able to fulfill the duties of the caliphate is obligatory by scholarly consensus, though scholars differ as to whether its obligatory character is established through reason or through Revealed Law."

From p. 599>o9.0 - 606>o10.3 on jihad (war against non-Muslims): "Jihad is a communal obligation. When enough people perform it to successfully accomplish it, it is no longer obligatory upon others"; "If none of those concerned perform jihad, and it does not happen at all, then everyone who is aware that it is obligatory is guilty of sin, if there was a possibility of having performed it. In the time of the Prophet … jihad was a communal obligation after his emigration (hijra) to Medina. As for subsequent times, there are two possible states in respect to non-Muslims. The first is when they are in their own countries, in which case {offensive} jihad is a communal obligation … upon the Muslims each year. The second state is when non-Muslims invade a Muslim country or near to one, in which case jihad is personally obligatory upon the inhabitants of that country, who must repel the non-Muslims with whatever they can"; "The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians (provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)) ... until they become Muslim or else pay the [jizya] ... The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim (according to the Hanafi school, peoples of all other religions ... are permitted to live under the protection of the Islamic state if they either become Muslim or agree to pay the poll tax, the sole exceptions to which are apostates from Islam and idol worshippers who are Arabs, neither of whom has any choice but becoming Muslim"; "Whoever enters Islam before being captured may not be killed or his property confiscated, or his young children taken captive. When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman's previous marriage is immediately annulled" (plus p. 932 w37.1 (concerning masturbation), 2nd para.: "whom their right hands own" refers to their slaves; the Arabic chapter on slavery has not been translated); "Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of numbers or materiel, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim … If the Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary … It is not permissible to stipulate longer than that, save by means of new truces, each of which does not exceed ten years." Jihad al-talab (offensive jihad) is the sharia-law-based imperative to subjugate the world: http://www.meforum.org/2767/offensive-jihad.

See p. 607>o11.0 - 609>o11.11 on non-Muslim subjects of an Islamic state.

There are other sections of similar interest to non-Muslims (e.g p. 652>p1.0 - 653>p1.3 (on "shirk"); 664>p17.0 - 665>p17.3 (on homosexuality); p. 846>w4.0 - 851>w4.7 (on religious supersession, unbelievers, finality of Islam: for example, "Previously revealed religions were valid in their own eras ... but were abrogated by the universal message of Islam … {I}t is unbelief (kufr) to hold that the remnant cults now bearing the names of formerly valid religions, such as 'Christianity' or 'Judaism,' are acceptable to Allah Most High after He has sent the final Messenger … to the entire world … This is a matter over which there is no disagreement among Islamic scholars, and if English-speaking Muslims at times discuss it as if there were some question about it, the only reason can be that no one has yet offered them a translation of a scholarly Koranic exegesis (tafsir) to explain the accord between the various Koranic verses, and their agreement with the sunna"; "The Prophet … said: 'By Him in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, any person of this Community, any Jew, or any Christian who hears of me and dies without believing in what I have been sent with will be an inhabitant of hell.' This is a rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith"); and others; note that non-Muslim Arabic-reader Mark Durie has stated that p. 59>e4.3 on circumcision has been mistranslated and should read "Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris" (Christian apologist David Wood has recently produced an informative video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qle_4qiH4tU).

(For translation on slavery: https://mdharrismd.com/2015/03/03/translation-of-the-manual-of-islamic-sacred-law/)

Traditional Islamic doctrine does not teach certainty of paradise for Muslims (non-Muslims are consigned to hellfire) but dying in jihad (waging war on non-Muslims) is praised in it as a sure ticket to paradise and for reserving future seats for family members. If a person believes they have a list of ‘fails’ against them in Allah’s eyes, they may choose jihad as a form of ‘redemption’.

Stockholm Syndrome also seems to be at work in people's submission to traditional orthodox Islam as Muslims. Whatever conscience they might have had concerning their own attitudes and behaviour (though perhaps some do approve of an Allah created in their own image), it seems some fall into believing that it is OK for someone else to be cruel if they are all-powerful.

[Avalon]

The man in that video referred to this book.

The People vs Muhammad - Psychological Analysis
by J.K Sheindlin

----

Is Islam a "religion of peace"? Was Muhammad the true and final prophet of God? Is the Quran the fulfilment of the Bible, and legitimately continuing the traditions of the Judeo-Christian scriptures? Perhaps one of the most audacious, shocking, unthinkable and highly controversial ideas to ever be conceived, The People vs Muhammad places the founding father of Islam on trial for crimes against humanity, and to challenge his self-proclaimed authority. With the growing threat of home-grown Muslim jihadist terrorist attacks and the ominous cataclysm of a global holy war, there's no doubt Islam has become a burdensome issue which has our own western governments perplexed. This book series intends to investigate the true ideology of Islam, to ascertain with reason and logic the legitimacy of Muhammad's claim and core teachings of his cult. Throughout this series, author J.K Sheindlin carefully analyses the Quran and the Islamic texts legalistically to expose the shocking truth pertaining to Muhammad's advocation for: Pedophilia, honor killings, sex slavery, prostitution, racism, extortion, murder, psychological indoctrination, intellectual terrorism, censorship, grand larceny, racketeering, domestic violence, gender inequality, and much more! In this powerful series, the first installment Psychological analysis delves deep into Muhammad's past and uncovers disturbing facts which undoubtedly prove to be the origins of his multiple psychopathological disorders. Using entirely the Islamic sources in reference to contemporary psychiatric-medical archives, J.K Sheindlin details Muhammad's extensive catalogue of mental illnesses which include: Psychopathy, Gynophobia, Napoleon Complex, Schizophrenia, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Messiah-God Complex, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Athazagorophobia, Oedipus Complex, Sex-addiction, Pedophilia, and Necrophilia. Furthermore, the author also hypothesizes a convincing argument based on medical science, which debunks Muhammad's first revelation. These external factors being: Volcanic gas inhalation, sensory deprivation, starvation, dehydration, brain damage and Syphilis. Written to provoke a rational response from both Muslim and western readers, the verdict is ultimately decided by the public to determine if Muhammad's claim to prophethood is legitimate.

[Avalon]

This "religion" of a basically insane self-proclaimed prophet putting together an-obey-the-will-of-my-moon-god-or-perish-by-the-sword, was originally aimed at creating complete deception of the youth by either promise of a heaven of desires, or by threat of death, is starting to collapsing under the weight of its own immeasurable heap of compunded atrocities through the centuries.

Lately, and much thanks to the Internet, and modern technology where people are able to swiftly exchange information, many former "muslims" have stepped forward and question the origin of this "faith".

One of the most bombastic declamations is this guy who in live arab tv dared to condemn the socalled prophet and his entire religion that has caused so much misery and suffering through the ages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5foN-2ucZc&feature=youtu.be

I can understand his anger and frustration and explosion in TV. To stand up and condemn a heap of deceptions and lies baked into a religion of endless wars, misery and utter suffering is not an easy thing. That was a really brave soul.