Debunking Myths about Islam
So I was on Facebook recently and saw a post claiming that, “Islam has carried out more than 100,000 terrorist attacks against Americans since 9/11” with no citations what so ever.
Looking at the Facebook group that posted this, I assumed from the fact their profile picture is a stock image of an interracial couple inside of a snipers cross-hairs with the caption “Race mixing and Liberalism is a mental illness but we have the cure” that most people would be able to see this group isn’t the most trustworthy source but despite that, the post had hundreds of upvotes and comments. Not from Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists but from average people.
I saw dozens of comments from people like Susan (A retired school teacher and grandmother from Indiana) who responded by talking about how the liberal media refuses to even acknowledge Muslims are a problem despite them killing thousands of Americans every day and how when Obama finally dies the lord Jesus will send him to hell for him helping cover up the evil deeds of Muslims.
Or people like Gary (A small business owner and NRA member from South Carolina) Who responded to the graph by making a long incoherent rant where he talked about how when he was a kid during Vietnam the liberals tried so hard to go after our soldiers calling them rapists and baby killers and just because they didn’t like the methods didn’t mean someone had to them and because they did what they did we won the war and the Vietnamese realized they could never take over America so they didn’t try and bring the fight to the US.
His post then goes on to argue that we need to put someone with balls in the white house who will let soldiers do what they did in Vietnam and when that happens the terrorism will stop.
Now its very frighting that people like Gary who not only for some reason believe that the U.S won the Vietnam war (which they didn’t) and who thinks that the Vietnamese wanted to take over the United States (which they didn’t) but also ontop of that thinks the reason the US won the war is because U.S soldiers raped women and murdered children and that if the U.S started committing war crimes again the terrorism would stop.
Ignoring the fact of how scary it is that a person like Gary is allowed to own firearms. And the fact that U.S soldiers have raped and murdered children while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main thing I learned from this post is how people just making up numbers can incite hatred and violence.
I looked more into Facebook and found other lists that actually do go through all the Islamic terrorist attacks. Yet these lists will cite things like:
Nation of Islam member robbing a convenient store in 1975
as a terrorist attack. Or
Turkish man who was in prison for bank robbery in New York stabbing a prison guard in 1981
as an “Islamic terrorist attack on law enforcement.”
Going through these lists more many of the examples they give just didn’t happen. They will give a name or a description of an event or a location or a date and when I google the info I don’t find any results for it being real or in many cases it did happen but the perpetrator wasn’t even a Muslim.
Some of these lists all of which are poorly put together and without any real citations circulating on Facebook and other known Islamophobic websites have even been republished by actual news sources such as WorldNetDaily to the response in the comment sections of paranoid delusional rants by people who use obscure biblical passages and sources of Islamic text to falsely claim Muslims truly worship Satan and Islam translate directly into “the religion of the devil”
So I decided to go through the list starting with the World Trade Center bombings in 1993 and create a coherent list of all the successful Islamic terrorist attacks which resulted in at least 1 death that occurred on US soil.
I found soon after that it didn’t take long to make this list. Due to the fact that since 9/11 there have only been 9 successful Islamic terrorist attacks.
2016 Orlando Night Club Shooting
2015 San Bernardino Shooting
2015 Chattanooga, TN Military Shooting
2013 Boston Marathon Bombing
2009 Little Rock Shooting
2006 Seattle Jewish Federation Shooting
2002 Los Angeles Airport Shooting
1993 World Trade Center bombing
Looking more into this I decided to do the same research but on terrorist attacks committed by Right Wing Extremists in the same time frame to see how many terrorist attacks they committed which resulted in one or more casualties.
I found they committed 43 successful terrorist attacks
2015 Colorado Planned Parenthood Shooting
2015 Charleston Church Shooting
2014 Las Vegas Police Ambush
2014 Kansas Jewish Center Shooting
2014 Blooming Grove Police Shooting
2012 Tri-State Killing Spree
2012 St. John’s Parish Police Ambush
2012 Sikh Temple Shooting
2011 Pacific Northwest Killing Rampage
2010 West Memphis Police Shootings
2010 Austin, TX Plane Attack
2010 Florida Sovereign Citizen Police Ambush
2009 Minutemen American Defense Hispanic Slayings
2009 Okaloosa County, FL Police Gun Range Attacks
2009 Brockton, MA Black Targeted Shooting Rampage
2009 Pittsburgh Police Shootings
2009 Holocaust Museum Shooting
2009 George Tiller Assassination
2009 Flores Murders, Pima County, AZ
2009 Brockton, MA Murders
2008 Knoxville, TN Church Shooting
2004 Tulsa OK, Bank Robbery
2003 Abbeville, SC right-of-way shootout
Before 9/11 but after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
2000 Pittsburgh, PA Racially Motivated Spree Killing
1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting
1999 Midwest Murder Spree
1999 Redding, CA Arson Attacks & Anti-Gay Murders
1998 Barnett Slepian Assassination
1998 Cortez, CO Watertruck Shootout
1998 Birmingham, Alabama Planned Parenthood Bombing
1997 Aryan People’s Republic Six State Terror Wave
1996 Spokane Phineas Priests Bombing Campaign
1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bombing
1996 Jackson, MS Larry Shoemake murder spree
1996 Aryan Republican Army FBI Shootout
1995 Palo Verde Amtrak Derailment
1995 Oklahoma City Bombing
1994 John Britton Assassination
At this point I thought even though you are 7 times more likely to be killed by a right wing extremist then a Muslim terrorist in the United States and even though Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks in America. This is just one country.
So I decided to look at another country with a significantly higher Muslim Population.
Canada which has well over a million Muslims who make up 3% of its population and instead of doing a small 20 year timeline I decided to look into the entire history of the country to get the most accurate results.
Number of Terrorist Attacks in Canada by motive.
Number of terror attacks: 300+
Number of terror attacks: 64
Number of terror attacks: 10+
Number of terror attacks: 10
Number of terror attacks: 7
Number of terror attacks: 7
Number of terror attacks: 6
Number of terror attacks: 3
Number of terror attacks: 3
Number of terror attacks: 3
Number of terror attacks: 2
Number of terror attacks: 1
Number of terror attacks: 1
Number of terror attacks: 1
Number of terror attacks: 1
So to put this into comparison there are half the number of followers of Sikhism in Canada than Islam.
Yet Sikhs have killed 162 times more people in the name of their religion than Islam has in Canada alone.
Despite this, no one is calling for Sikhs to be deported by the millions.
Now to the people out there saying,
You only look at terrorism, what about all the other crimes muslims commit!
Well lets look at a few places around the world:
The first place I’m going to look at is the city with the highest Muslim population in the United States, Dearborn Michigan.
Dearborn has a population of around 100,000 people half of which are of Arab Decent.
Last year Dearborn had 3 murders and 35 rapes.
Lets look at other cities in the United States with the same population but instead of being populated by Muslims lets look at cities populated by White Christians.
Billings, Montana is a city with a population of around 100,000 people same as Dearborn. 90% of these people are white.
And the city has such a small Muslim population that there isn’t even a mosque in it.
Last year Billings had 10 murders and 72 rapes
Just in case that one example was an outliar I looked up a few cities with the same population as Dearborn to compare the crime rate
I could keep going but I think you get the point.
These examples aren’t cherry picked either. I got them by searching a list of cities by population on Wikipedia just picking the cities next to Dearborn that had around the same population all of them had higher crime rates as anyone can check.
Yet Dearborn Michigan despite having more Muslims living there than anywhere else in the US is below the average national crime rate.
Dearborn is 16% safer than the average city.
And statistically speaking 64% of the people reading this right now are more at risk where they are live currently than if they moved to Dearborn and surround themselves with Muslims.
Chances of being a victim of crime:
But forget about the U.S lets look at cities outside of America. Last time we looked at Canada lets look at the U.K this time.
Birmingham has one of the largest Muslim populations in England.
One out of every 5 people in the city of Birmingham is a Muslim.
It is one of the highest Muslim Populations in the country.
Let’s look at the crime rate there:
Birmingham Crime Rate Per 100 Residents: 5.15
UK Average Crime Rate Per 100 Residents: 6.57
London Crime Rate Per 100 Residents: 42.53
But maybe that isn’t good enough for you lets look at the rest of Europe:
Amsterdam has been cited as having one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe. Pretty soon 20% of the city will be Muslims.
You would think this influx of immigrants would cause the crime rate to sky rocket right?
I myself assumed it would when I was researching this and honestly was shocked to see news articles titled:
AMSTERDAM’S 2015 HOMICIDE FIGURES HIT RECORD LOW
But the fact of the matter is its true that they did.
In 2015 there was 15 murders in Amsterdam
In 2013 there was 22 murders in Amsterdam
In 1998 there was 65 murders Amsterdam
The higher the Muslim population has been getting in Amstredam the lower the murder rate gets.
But how can that be?!?! Multiculturalism is a failure just look at the rape rate in Sweden! What about all those Muslims raping children? I read about on Brietbart and infowars!
Well even if it wasn’t for the fact that many news headlines about Muslin Refugees raping and killing people are fake.
And when I mean fake I mean literally Infowars and breitbart just outright reported lies.
Such as the time them (along with many other right wing news outlets) reported the story about Syrian Muslim refugees gang raping a little girl in Idaho.
Local officials and police even had to have a press conference afterwards to explain not only did the story never happen but there aren’t even any refugees who live in the entire county.
And no, none of the right wing news sites ever apologized for spreading false info or even redacted the stories. They still have them up on their site without even acknowledging it was proven to be false.
Reasons like this are probably why so many media watchdog groups and committees into the ethics of journalism have time and time again ranked Brietbart as one of the most dishonest journalist outlets ever created. And when I say ever created they get a lower ranking than North Korean State Run Propaganda Media.
But for the stories that are true where it turns out a Muslim did kill someone or molest a child, even though these cases are rare they still do happen. The only thing the media never talks about is how they happen at a lower rate than the native born population.
If you were to randomly pick 100,000 American Citizens born in the US and then pick 100,000 Americans originally born in other countries. You would discover that that the number of immigrants who had committed crimes is lower than the number of native born Americans who committed crimes.
The only difference when a Muslim refugee molests a child and when a Catholic Priest does the same thing. Is that when the Muslim does it you don’t see the Catholic Church covering it up.
And Muslim groups aren’t spending millions of Dollars to lobby against sex crime laws like Catholics groups are.
But in response to common claims that multiculturalism is a failure because Sweden has the second highest rape rate on earth and allows refugees in I just want to remind everyone that the rape rate didn’t sky rocket in Sweden after they started allowing refugees into the country. The rape rate skyrocketed in 2005 when Sweden reformed its sex crime legislation to make the definition of rape much much wider. Ontop of that the Swedish police trained to improve the handling of rape cases which led to more victims coming forward to report assaults. This is why the rape rate appears to be so much higher than it is. Even though Criminologists say that the number of rapes that occur in the country aren’t above average and surveys from The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights discovered that instead of being the rape capital of the world Sweden is actually below neighboring countries of Denmark and Finland in terms of the number of rapes.
But the Qur'an is violent!
“If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.”
“If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.”
“You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.”
“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.”
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.”
“If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away.”
Punishing Women for Being Raped
These seem like quotes from a barbaric stone age death cult right?
Well you would be correct because these quotes are from the Bible. The same book the Republicans want to use to govern the country.
But the difference between Christians and Muslims is Christians don’t follow those quotes and would never do that! They don’t have child brides or commit honor killing or any of those evil Muslim things!
In Christian Majority Mozambique women can be punished for being raped by being forced to marry their rapists and this is in accordance to the law.
Christians in The Central African Republic execute more people every year for witchcraft in the name of Jesus than all the Muslims in the middle east do according to the UN.
40% of the marriages in Tanzinia involve child brides according to Human Rights Watch.
And honor killings aren’t even an Islamic specific concept.
You can find many examples of cases where a Christian father beat his daughter to death with a metal bar because she wanted to marry her Muslim boyfriend.
Look at India. Where Hindu and Sikhs are some of the highest perpetrators of honor killings on earth today.
Even in places like Brazil it was a big problem until recently. Men could be acquitted for murdering their wives up until 1991 on the basis of them digracing their honor, and because of that you would see 800 recorded murder honor killings in a year. Even after the laws were changed, lower courts still ignored the ruling of the Supreme Court and acquitted people like Joao Lopes for a double homicide.
But women in Somalia aren’t allowed to drive
The idea of showing the treatment of women in Somalia as proof that Islam is evil makes as much sense as showing the treatment of women in the Congo as proof that Christianity is evil.
Lets look at a Muslim nation that isn’t torn by war as see how they treat women:
Kyrgyzsta is a landlocked country located in Central Asia with a population of 5 million people. In this country close to 9 out of every 10 people are Muslims.
In 2010 after large opposition protests caused the President to resign the Muslim majority population voted and elected Roza Otunbayeva as the country’s new leader. Roza Otunbayeva is not only a woman but an atheist.
Why is it that in Kyrgyzsta and Somalia they both read the same holy book The Qur'an but in one country an Atheist woman would be stoned and in the other elected president.
It’s probably the same reason why in both Italy and the Congo they read the same holy book The Bible but in one an Atheist woman would be stoned and in the other elected president.
But still why is the middle east so war torn to begin with? Why can’t you get your stuff together and stop oppressing women?
I wish you could post pictures on reddit but you can’t so I’ll just link them with a description:
Here is a picture of a Muslim woman named Benazir Bhutto she is the former Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Here is a picture from the 1970s of some women in Iran wearing Bikinis on a beach.
Here is a picture of women in Afghanistan studying at Kabul University to become doctors in the 1980s.(40% of doctors in Afghanistan were female at the time. That’s higher than the current presentage of female doctors in the United States today.)
Here are women in the Afgan Military posing with their weapons. (This is 30 years before women were allowed to have active combat roles in the United States Military.)
And that’s not even getting into things like gay rights. Like how Gay relationships were decriminalized in Jordan in 1951. (Two decades before the Gay Rights Movement in the U.S)
Or how in countries like Bahrain with a 99% Muslim population, when the people there are asked if they would be okay with having a gay neighbor or friend, a higher percentage of them said yes. Than in the United States when pollsters asked the same question.
So what changed? To make it the way it is today?
The same thing that changed Latin America to make it a violent cesspool of Drug Cartels.
The same thing that changed Southeast Asia that allows the rise of anti-government rebels.
The United States government came into the region, overthrew their democratically elected leaders and replaced them with Islamic extremist dictators who would sell oil for a cheap price, and denounce the Soviets.
The Middle East didn’t even have Muslim countries before. They were secular nations where people elected leaders.
In Saudi Arabia the monarchy the country has is literally only 60 years old. They didn’t have a King before that they had a President.
March 1949 Syrian coup d'état
1969 Saudi Arabian coup d'état plot
North Yemen Civil War 1968
All of these countries were democracies none of which were run under Shihara Law before the CIA came in and put an Islamic Extremist Dictator in charge.
And this isn’t like a conspiracy on the level of “The US was responsible for 9/11.” It is just a common fact. You can read about it on Wikipedia even. The CIA openly backed and put the groups in power. They would fund drug lords. Remember that picture up there of those women fighting in the Afgan Army?
At that point in the countries history the leader of it was a man who liked the Russians a lot more than he liked the Americans.
So you know the the CIA replaced him with?
Before these coups there wasn’t widespread terrorism. Look at Syria in 1948 and look at America. One of those countries had groups of religious extremists going around dragging people from their homes and lynching them solely because of their race.
Those religious extremists were the K.K.K and that country was America.
Look at Afghanistan in 1985 and look at Ireland. One of these countries had groups of paramilitary religious extremists kidnapping and murdering innocent people. Bombing hospitals and public places, killing dozens at a time.
Those religious extremists were the IRA and that country was Ireland.
There isn’t even a counterpart to compare the groups to because none existed in these countries. No one was doing these things before the CIA got involved.
But like you said the CIA did the same thing in Latin America and Africa and South East Asia. So why is it only Muslim countries who become terrorists? Why don’t those countries have terorrism?
In Myanmar Buddhist Terrorists have been targeting religious minorities and killing hundreds of themThough they target all non-Buddists. They have been going after Muslims especially hard massacring dozens in a single attack.
In Israel there are unprovoked and well organized attacks by Jewish Terrorists. Things like the Duma attacks which happened last year where a group of Jewish Terrorists decided to pick a random Muslim home and firebombed it, killing an 18 month old child and two other people. Even outside of Israel in the United States groups like The Jewish Defense League are responsible for acts of terrorism. Whether it be the time they tried to assassinate a US congressman in 2001. Or time one of their members massacred 29 people.
Hindu terrorism is so common that there is even a word for it. It’s called Saffron terror. And not only are there more Hindu extremists than Muslims. but the Indian government considers Hindu Terrorists a much larger threat as well.
For Christian terrorists I could go on and on about this, pointing out examples of groups like The Lord’s Resistance Army who are still active in Uganda and South Sudan and who are still claiming child sex slaves in the name of Jesus. But I’m going to try and put this into numbers. ISIS has killed a total of 18,800 people (almost all were other Muslims) so far. According to the latest UN figures. In that same amount of time Christian Terrorists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have killed a total of 300,000.
Christian terrorists in a single country kill 16 times more people than ISIS has world wide.
Muslims make up 1% of the U.S population and commit 1 terrorist attack every 1.6 years.
Christians make up 1% of India’s population and are committing 800 terrorist attacks a year.
But, why isn’t the media talking about this?
The short reasons is that there isn’t any oil in the Congo and no one cares about India.
According to the Global Terrorism Index: If you look at the top 50 countries with the most terrorism you would find.
21 are Muslim majority countries.
20 are Christian majority countries.
3 are Buddhist majority countries.
3 are Hindu majority countries.
2 are Atheist majority countries.
1 are Jewish majority countries.
That would mean 60% of the Muslim majority nations on earth do not rank in the top 50 countries for terrorism.
Yet 100% of the top Hindu majority nations do.
But back to the main point of this post:
Islam isn’t causing terrorism.
If it did, you would expect to see Muslims in Canada reading the Qur'an and bombing buildings
You would expect that back in the 60s Syria would of had terrorists doing the exact same thing they are doing now.
You would expect Muslims in Kyrgyzsta not voting for a woman as President.
And most of all you would expect that if it did cause terrorism there would be more terrorism and violence in Muslim countries as opposed to the opposite which is the case if you compare Muslim communities in the west with non-Muslim communites and compare the Middle East with 99% population Christian nations in Central Africa.
So what is the reason for terrorism then?
The reason for terrorism is there being nothing to stop it.
If anyone has watched Walking Dead or Mad Max or any post apocalyptic movie then you understand the idea of those raving bands of killers and rapists going around doing whatever they want because there isn’t anyone to stop them.
Now if we put that into a real life scenario what happens is you get ISIS, you get the The Lord’s Resistance Army and the Catholic Drug Lords in Honduras with their own Patron Saints and the Atheistic Rebels murdering missionaries in Thailand for being Christians and so on…
If you are upset about terrorism here is a way you can stop it that way isn’t harassing Muslims on the street and uploading the video to Instagram. The way is actually helping to stop the destabilization of these countries by telling the U.N to do its job.
But I heard that X% of Muslims want to murder infidels and kill innocent people? And force Islam on everyone.
Anyone who is reading a poll that claims things like:
80% of Muslim Americans told us they want to take over the country.
I urge you to actually find out who did this poll and look into their sample size and methodology because the weird thing is the people who are putting out these polls are always the same people. They are groups like the Gatestone Institute which has been discredited time and time again as an Anti-Islamic propaganda mongerer. They are people like Frank Gaffney who was literally banned from all of the other conservative think tanks for being to racist and crazy even for them.
And always these polls are never Primary Sourced or Peer Reviewed. How about we look at some actually well established and cited polls.
Here is one such example below:
Some people think that for the military to target and kill civilians is sometimes justified, while others think that kind of violence is never justified. Which is your opinion?
No religion/Atheist/Agnostic
Keep in mind that the question was not asking about “collateral damage” but rather targeting civilians.
http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/njiym7x7nkuh2cnawawxka.gif
Gallup analysis suggests that one’s religious identity and level of devotion have little to do with one’s views about targeting civilians. According to the largest global study of its kind, covering 131 countries, it is human development and governance - not piety or culture - that are the strongest factors in explaining differences in how the public perceives this type of violence.
While the majority of world citizens agree that military attacks targeting civilians are never justified, a decade after 9/11, there is a wide range in the level of support for this view. A clear majority in Asia and MENA find military attacks against civilians unacceptable. This is not surprising considering the acute conflicts raging in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East.
In contrast, regionally, residents of the U.S. and Canada are most likely to say that military attacks against civilians are sometimes justified. Americans are the most likely population in the world (49%) to believe military attacks targeting civilians is sometimes justified, followed by residents of Haiti and Israel (43%).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/157067/views-violence.aspx
One of the most cited anti-Muslim statics I see was performed was done by Pew Forums in 2013.
Now this poll and many like it have been picked apart by numerous people for the lazy methodology and lack of diversity in the countries they poll.
And I could show those detailed arguments or compare the surveying they did to basically if a group of researchers went to a single small town in Texas and polled 10 people on social issues. Then used that to claim, “9 out of 10 Americans are against gay marriage.” but I’m just going to explain this in the exact terms of what happen.
In 2013 Pew Forums put out ads in the local newspapers in either a single city or either the top two or three largest cities in the country, for 39 different countries. These ads basically said, “Are you a Muslim and you wanna make 10$? Then come out to the offices of this survey polling company we subcontracted to get data for us and fill out forums for 6 hours then you can get your 10$.”
And in each one of these countries between 500 and 1,500 people showed up for that 10$ and 4 hours into filing out the surveys when they got to the question on page 243 where it said, “Do you think all non Muslims should be killed? Yes or no?” around 1/3 of them just checked the yes box.
That does not mean that 1/3 of Muslims think the 6 billion non-Muslims alive should be killed.
I find it especially ironic though that same people who are touting methodology like this to justify bigotry are the same people who try and debunk the surveys that claim ¼ women have been victims of sexual assault as “feminist propaganda.”
Now if you do find polls that are well cited saying:
X% of Muslims in this country want Sharia Law
Then I would encourage you to find out what percent of Christians in that country want Biblical Law.
Because if its the United States the number would have to be over 57% to beat the Republicans.
Since 57% of Republicans want Christianity to be the national religion of America according to a national survey done by Public Policy Polling
Looking more into disproportionate representation of Muslims I found that despite Muslims making up 23% of the worlds population they account for 5 out of the past 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners. (Which is 42 percent.)
Just a curious note on how Muslims are earning Nobel Prizes at twice the rate they proportionally should.
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