Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI). CSPI’s goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced a series on its focus. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors.
FP: Bill Warner, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Warner: Thank you, Jamie, and Frontpage Magazine for having me.
FP: I would like to talk to you today about your view that the end of critical thought has arrived. First let me ask you, what exactly do you mean by critical thought?
Warner: Critical thought also can be called analytic thought or scientific analysis. A key element is that all sides of an idea are to be analyzed. There are no forbidden questions in critical thought. There is an appeal to logic and reason. Critical thought is not about feelings, but freedom of ideas.
Critical thought is the opposite of authoritative thought that is delivered fully developed by an “authority.” Authoritative thought is the use of power by controlling thought and ideas. Medieval scholasticism and Communist propaganda are examples of authoritative thought where there is no room in the public forum to disagree with the authority and if you do, you will be punished in some way. Authoritarian thought is the thought process of slavery. Freedom of thought is not allowed.
Two characteristics of critical reasoning are skepticism and humor. Skepticism means that all assumptions can be questioned. Everything is on the table. It may seem odd to have humor as part of critical thinking, but humor comes about as part of skepticism. Skepticism encourages humor because you are able to poke fun at any idea. One reason for the Mohammed cartoon riots was that Islam does not allow any skepticism or critical thought. There are no known Mohammed jokes in the Muslim world. We have jokes about God, Jesus, St. Peter, Moses, Satan and Adam. We can make a little joke at anybody’s expense because we can have freedom of thought. Humor stops at Mohammed’s door, because critical thought stops at Mohammed’s door.
FP: Why is critical thought being abandoned?
Warner: It stands in the way of the power of what I call (with a hat tip to George Orwell) the Newstate. We now live in a world that has brought together the government, universities and the media into one political system. The Newstate power determines what will be taught in schools, put into the news, and what can be discussed at forums and meetings. For instance, the Newstate prohibits our military from studying Islamic war doctrine. The State Department can only use standard political science methods to discuss Middle East and Asian policy.
The Newstate prohibits the study of political Islam in the Universities. The role of Islam in the history of slavery, the dhimmi (unbelievers living under Islamic rule) history, and the annihilation of kafir (unbeliever) civilizations is forbidden. The curriculum of the Universities only includes small samples from the Koran, the Sira (Mohammed’s biography) and the Hadith (his traditions). You can get a degree in Middle East Studies without ever reading the texts of the core doctrine of Islam.
At the Rotary Club or the universities, you can have a speaker who presents dawah or Islamic missionary propaganda, but no one can present a critical analysis of Islam. Any rational/critical/analytic study of their ideology is not given room at the table. Those who know about Islam are called bigots if they try to speak from knowledge. Only Muslims and those who are ignorant about Islam (the dhimmis) are allowed to speak. Ignorance has become the only acceptable point-of-view.
The next goal of the Newstate will be to declare critical thought to be hate-speech. Islam cannot sustain critical examination, so critical thought will be made immoral and evil by our dhimmi Newstate.
FP: Why is critical thought so vital in the study of Islam?
Warner: Up until 9/11, almost all thought in the Universities saw things from the viewpoint of Islam, not from the viewpoint of kafirs. Around 270 million people have died in jihad over the last 1400 years. Yet, according to the universities, Islam just expanded, there was no suffering. That is the Islamic view, not the kafir view. Mohammed laughed when kafir heads were thrown at his feet, but no university professor calls it barbaric.
On 9/11 our universities, who are supposed to be bastions of critical thought, were found to be dishing out Islamic propaganda for our culture, instead of facts. Our leaders—political, religious, and cultural—had all been educated about Islam. What did they learn? Islam was one of the great religions; the Islamic Golden Age was the high point of history and preserved European culture; the Crusades were an exercise in ignorance and bigotry, blah, blah… That was the university propaganda that had infected our civilization. We were blindsided by our own scholars.
The intellectual vacuum created a new breed of scholars—Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Serge Trifkovic, and a host of others who were not trained about Islam in college, but who used critical analysis to tackle the most pressing questions of the day: What is Islam? What does it mean to kafirs? This is the most important question to ask.
FP: Why is the kafir viewpoint so important?
Warner: The only thing that matters to the kafir about Islam is how it treats the kafir. What does it matter to a kafir if a Muslim tries to use the bathroom following the way of Mohammed? What do I care how a Muslim prays? Prayer and bathrooms do not concern me. I care about how Mohammed treated kafirs and that was horrible, terrible and the perfect example of how Muslims are to treat kafirs. Notice that this view is in contrast to how a Muslim sees Mohammed—that is the Muslim-centric view. They are never the same view.
The post-9/11 scholars viewed Islam from the standpoint of the victims—the kafirs and the dhimmis. The new scholars used critical thinking to define a new viewpoint of Islam—kafir-centric.
The answers from kafir-centric scholars about Islam all agree on what Islam and its history is. The kafir-centric thinkers agree as to what the current political situation means. This is remarkable. Note that they do not agree on what to do about it, but they all agree on the nature of the problem and not one of them agrees with the university/media/government, the Newstate, position on Islam.
Every critical thinker reaches the same conclusions. Why should this be a surprise? The very essence of critical thinking is being objective. The result does not depend upon the person. It is not an opinion, but an exercise in logic. Any person who performs the experiments can prove the truth or falseness of, say, Newton’s laws of motion.
It is the same with Islam. Anyone can start with the Koran, the Sira (the life of Mohammed) and the Hadith (his traditions) and they will arrive at the same conclusions as long as they use logic and analysis. Part of the analysis is whether you analyze the doctrine from the standpoint of a Muslim or a kafir. For instance, on the day that Mohammed killed 800 Jews in Medina it was a good thing from the standpoint of a believer, but a terrible day for the kafir Jews. Good from one point of view, but very bad from a kafir point of view.
There is a third view of Islamic scholarship—the dhimmi view. Dhimmis are kafirs that serve Islam. Dhimmis write about the doctrine of Islam just like the Muslims, but without the devotional overtones. The Newstate holds the dhimmi-centric view and wants to outlaw the kafir-centric school of thought.
FP: Why do you think they want to outlaw the kafir-centric school of thought?
Warner: Kafir-centric scholars can kick anybody’s butt in any argument or discussion about Islam. We are a mountain of facts and understand the mind of Islam. We can answer all of the questions with authority. We hold the high moral ground and yet, we are called bigots for our knowledge and labors. We are denied a forum in the public. Only the voice of the authority of the Newstate can speak about Islam.
Notice that when someone who is from the Newstate speaks, they never actual talk about any facts about Islam. Or if they do quote some fact, like George Bush with his half of a Koran verse, or Obama with his Golden Rule spin on one hadith, it is no more than a sentence they parse out of the doctrine.
Since the kafir-centric thinkers can overpower any of the drones from the Newstate, the main goal of the Newstate is to see that we do not get a forum. We are never invited to the party at the university when a dhimmi or Muslim speaks. If there is a multicultural “dialogue” we are never allowed to ask difficult questions. Our voices are not heard in the State department, the Pentagon or FBI. During Mumbai, we were never given any airtime. Face-time with any government/media/university official will not happen, because it cannot happen. At all times the Newstate tries to keep a Muslim brotherhood type around to be a Praetorian guard if they suspect anyone who actually knows Islam might show up.
When the Center for the Study of Political Islam was started, the basic assumption was that once the doctrine of political Islam was laid out in a clear language, kafirs would flock to it. But most of the population is filled with the Newstate platitudes and talks about moderate Muslims, etc. They are desperately ignorant and refuse to engage logical analysis.
I have seen religious leaders grow angry at a lecture about what Mohammed did to other religions. They were desperate not to know, and they remained arrogantly ignorant. So they will tell others about Islam based upon their ignorance. Ignorance is an acceptable point-of-view about Islam. Any dhimmi or Muslim can get a forum at any time; kafir-centric scholars are condemned as bigots and troublemakers and denied a place at the table.
FP: How are the Kafirs doing in the ideological battle?
Warner: We have to face the facts. Kafirs are losing on every front. We now live in a Christian-Muslim nation according to our commander-in-chief-dhimmi. Priests, professors, preachers, politicians, pundits and rabbis all line up in obedience to Mohammed. If placed anywhere near the doctrinal/historical facts about political Islam, they grow tense and tell you about the “nice Muslim” they have met. It seems as though every city has a “nice Muslim” that is passed from dhimmi leader to dhimmi leader, so they can all say they know one.
Actual knowledge about the true history and doctrine of political Islam is not only nil, but the desire to know more is nonexistent. Responses about Islam are denials about what Islam is and what it does. Liberal preachers and rabbis, for instance, are political Islam’s supporters and mouth tales about how well Islam and Judaism co-existed in the Middle Ages and how Jews and Muslims were fellow scholars. They refuse to engage in any sort of rational/critical/analytic discussion about Islam. The rest have different excuses, but they remain in the dhimmi camp.
Critical thinking is being abandoned as fast as Klan robes at an ACLU meeting. One thing is very clear—the enemy is no longer political Islam. The enemy of critical thought is the dhimmi. It is the dhimmis who carry water for Islam and do great damage to our civilization.
FP: Why are the dhimmis desperate not to know about Islam?
Warner: Money is the motivation of one set of dhimmis—the professors. Islam pours a great deal of money into the university system. It is very easy to purchase a professor and a department. Everything from building funds, professorships, trips, and grants purchase the loyalty of dhimmi universities. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. We must also include the dhimmi political types being bribed by the Saudis.
The other answer is laziness and fear, with fear in the lead. Everyone starts off at less than zero. The universities taught us that Islam was good, Golden Age, yada, yada or at worst—benign. The Newstate loves Islam just like they love illegal immigrants. Just watch CNN, read the NY Times and listen to the President. Islamic life is good, and where it is not good, it is our fault—colonialism and Bush. So if you float downstream, why would you want to learn anything?
The Newstate making the learning process difficult also helps laziness. Islam deliberately made the Koran, the Sira and the Hadith hard to understand and the professors went along with the Islam-is-hard propaganda. The Koran is notorious for never being read, much less understood. Why? The universities did not want to make it simple.
But we come to the big one—fear. Everyone has a clue that Islam’s dualistic nature contains unlimited violence, but that clue remains in the background. Saying you are afraid of Islam is like a white woman saying she is afraid of black males. Expressing your fear is proof of your racism and bigotry.
There is a larger fear—what if the boogieman really is underneath the bed? What will we do? People are desperately ignorant. Otherwise intelligent people believe the most contradictory things, but wind up with—Islam must be good, it just has to be good, because if it is not good, I cannot imagine what we will do. There is fear. Desperate fear.
What if the preacher or rabbi who attended the interfaith dialogs finds out that the imam was a liar? His congregation does not want to hear it. What if the politician finds out about the true nature of Islam? The media and the Moslem voters rule him. The media is so intellectually corrupt that they are past discussion.
If you don’t know, you don’t have to deal with it. Ignorance is good. All the leaders are ignorant, they are rich and powerful, and so they must be right. Turn off your mind and float downstream. Dhimmis are floaters.
FP: How can we educate these dhimmis and change their point of view?
Warner: It turns out that there is one aspect of Islam that even dhimmis will pay attention to—the history of the victim, in particular, their own victims. Our Tears of Jihad project teaches about just that—the history of the victims of jihad.
Based upon victim history, we have created a new idea in newsletters. The idea is not to present any facts about Islam. Facts about Islam produce panic, denial and fear. We decided to present the suffering of a group without the doctrine that causes it. Our goal is to show religious leadership and individuals what suffering is visited upon their group.
The first one of these was the Bulletin of Jew Hatred (the term Jew hatred comes from Bostom’s wonderful Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism). We have added the Bulletin of Christian Persecution and the Bulletin of the Oppression of Women. The Bulletin of Cultural Annihilation and the Bulletin of Asian Annihilation are in the works. The Bulletins give a summary with a link to the original article. We only report actual events, not blogs, editorials or comments. The Bulletin has the motto: Facts without comments—we collect the dots; you connect them.
Each Bulletin gives a very short summary of each of the actual events—who, what, when, where, but no why. The no “why” makes it easy for everybody to read, even the left, since all comments that relate to the actual doctrine or history of political Islam are called right wing or conservative. It is peculiar, but to have knowledge about the actual doctrine and history of political Islam is being conservative. That leaves ignorance to be the official policy of the progressives/liberals/left. Knowledge is considered to be the basis of bigotry, ignorance is considered to be virtue, according to the ethics of the Newstate.
The Bulletins come out weekly. It is like a drumbeat—each week the events roll on and the steady stream of news tells another story that is not told by the Newstate media.
FP: How has the Bulletin of Jew Hatred been received?
Warner: I have been told by one of the first readers of Jew Hatred that she thought herself to be well informed, but every event in the Bulletin was new to her. A reader of the Christian Bulletin said that he never knew that this was happening to Christians. This is the story that the Newstate refuses to tell. It is the story you have to decide not to see and not to report.
We are finding that people are receptive. Since we don’t have any comments, this means that they can’t throw up the barrier of partisan politics or those comments are bigoted opinions. A liberal rabbi said that he liked the no comment, just the facts.
So, we have created a stealth weapon that flies under the PC, multicultural radar. But in designing it, we realized that critical analysis was not a good general approach. People don’t want to hear anything bad about Islam, but they will examine their own battle causalities.
The key word is here is their “own.” This is the reason we have a Bulletin for every group. Hopefully, this idea will educate and illuminate the problem with political Islam. If you are interested in our newsletter or Bulletins, go to politicalislam.com and sign up.
I’d like to take this time if I could to make a pitch for help. We are looking for an editor for the Hindu bulletin.
We need bird dogs, people who can help get the Bulletins to relevant organizations and groups. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, women, intellectuals, artists, pagans, gays, free people everywhere—the bulletins document your suffering on a weekly basis. Help us educate groups that directly influence these people.
If you want to participate in any way with the Bulletins, please email me at: bw@politicalislam.com.
FP: Bill Warner, thank you for joining us.
Warner: Thank you Jamie for this opportunity to speak to your readers.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine’s editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
