Storm Track Disinformation: Muslims - Soul Searching or Mental Illness?

Storm Track Disinformation: Muslims - Soul Searching or Mental Illness?

http://the-gathering-storm.blogspot.com/#links

At a recent debate over the battle for Islamic ideals in England, a British-born Muslim stood before the crowd and said Prophet Mohammed's message to nonbelievers is: "I come to slaughter all of you. We are the Muslims," said Omar Brooks, an extremist also known as Abu Izzadeen. "We drink the blood of the enemy, and we can face them anywhere. That is Islam and that is jihad."

But in the same debate, held on the prestigious grounds of Dublin's Trinity College in October, many people in the crowd objected. One dissenter said: "These people, ladies and gentleman, have a good look at them. They actually believe if you kill women and children, you will go to heaven," said one young Muslim who waved his finger at the radicals.

"This is not ideology," one young Muslim man said waving his finger at the radicals. "It's a mental illness."

But a Michael van der Galien at the Moderate Voice took issue with that dissenting opinion.

Sadly, it is not an 'mental illness' at all and calling it like that denies the very real danger this ideology poses to non-extremist Muslims and to non-Muslims. It is not a mental illness, it is a very dangerous ideology, that appeals to quite some young Muslims for different reasons....There is a battle going on for the soul of Islam (in Europe), so much is clear.

Well, Mr. van der Galien, I disagree. That battle over Islam today is not over its soul - but its mind.

I've written quite about Islam and mental illness. The struggle between the Islamists and those moderate Muslims of Islam is not over Islam's soul - but over its mind.

Here's just one sign of why I think Islam is a mental illness and produces bizarre perceived offences. A Muslim Indonesian group attacked a century-old 'mystical' tree to propagate Islam.

Muslim hardliners chopped up a 100-year-old banyan tree in Jakarta to halt a rumor about its special powers from spreading, officials in the Indonesian city said Tuesday. "Surely, no one can believe that a tree is more powerful than a human," Zainal Arifin, the leader of the Muslim group that admits to attacking the tree, was quoted as saying by Detik.com news website. "We did this to propagate Islam.". Arifin said the fact that nothing supernatural happened to the Muslims who attacked the tree proves that it has no mystical powers.

So they had to cut down the tree to prove it?

Here's another. This time from the mouth of Muslim psychiatrist.

Palestinian psychiatrist Iyad Al-Sarraj, cited in a recent Reuters report entitled "Palestinians find ready supply of suicide bombers," said both religion and the humiliation of life under occupation were the key motives for suicide bombers bent on starting a better life in paradise.

"It is no wonder that some people are doing it. We should wonder why everyone isn't doing it," Sarraj said.

In an interview with Gulf News, former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's intelligence dealing with external security, says that there is a need to understand the Muslim mind, and engage in a constant dialogue with the community.

"Contemporary jihad is not a matter of politics at all (of 'occupation, of 'grievances,' of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and Zionism), but a matter of Gnostic faith. Consequently, attempts at dealing with the problem politically will not even touch it. Aspirin is good, and so is penicillin, but they are of little avail to counter maladies of the mind. I am emphatically not saying here that the jihadis are "crazy." I am saying that they are possessed of a disease of the mind, and the disease is the political religion of modern Gnosticism in its Islamic version."

Again, Islam for the Islamists is a form of mental illness and the current struggle in Islam is not so much a battle over its soul than a battle over its mind.

Here's another sign of why I think Islam is a mental illness and clouds a Muslim's better judgment. Dhimmi Watch reports that mullahs tell aid groups in Pakistan to fire women or "face violent protests"

"Muslim clerics in earthquake-hit Azad Kashmir have told aid agencies to fire all local women employees or face violent protests, officials and religious leaders said on Thursday."We have told the administration that we will not allow NGOs to exploit our women and asked them to give a date suitable to them for removal of all female workers," Syed Atta Ullah Shah, prayer leader of the Bagh central mosque, told Agence France Presse."

These women are there to help the Muslim victims but it seems the non-Muslim female aid workers are a 'bad influence' on the saintly Muslim women in the earthquake devastated region that the non-Muslim women are there to help. The mullahs are afraid that some female infidel behaviors like wearing normal clothing, makeup and showing a bit of skin might rub off on their pious women.

Here's another.

A British Muslim declared: "I'm going to bring this country down" over Allah ice cream. Harper's Magazine recently posted "I'm Hatin' It," a September 2005 interview with Rashad Akhtar, "a twenty-seven-year-old British Muslim, who alleges that the graphic used on the lid of Burger King ice-cream cones resembles the Arabic spelling of 'Allah.'"

And called it the "defining moment of his life".

"I feel humiliated. I want to humiliate the person who did this to an extent that he never works again. I'm going to make him see that it was the biggest mistake in his life. I want to meet the guy. I want to ask the guy, "What does this mean to you?" then never see his face again."

Now add these to the growing struggle over the mind of Islam.

• Resistance to polio shots.
• Muslim cabbies refusing to carry passengers with Seeing Eye dogs.
• UK Muslim hospital workers refuse to wash their hands.

Isn't it obvious, Mr. van der Galien that the battle over Islam is not a problem with its soul, but with its mind?

Let's get clinical.

Are Muslims mentally ill? Or perhaps the very beliefs of their religion makes them so?

Consider this. You're a psychiatrist speaking with a Muslim. The Muslim claims:

1. He is compelled to repeat the same action every day
2. He overacts to criticism, no matter how minor
3. He thinks everyone hates him

If you were that psychiatrist you would immediately put him on drugs because he was showing signs of obsessive-compulsive behavior, paranoia, and a persecution complex.

Now, let's look at these metal illnesses as they apply to the practitioners of Islam.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is manifested in a variety of forms, but is most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive compulsions (tasks or rituals) which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.

Muslims: Are compelled to pray 5 times a day, everyday, for the rest of their lives.

Paranoia is the belief that others are exploiting, or deceiving them, that others may not be loyal or trustworthy, believes there are threats or attacks on their character, bears persistent grudges, sees others as having malevolent intentions toward them, and has a constant habit of blaming others for their problems.

Muslims: The West is waging a Crusade against Islam and they are the cause of their self-made problems.

Persecution complex is when someone is convinced of the validity of their delusions and cannot tolerate criticism of their ideas. Questioning of their beliefs, no matter how trivial, is met with evasiveness, defensiveness, irritability, and hostility.

Muslims: From the triviality of the Mohammed cartoons to books by authors like Robert Spencer, just to list a few, a Muslim's response is to claim persecution.

The followers of Islam are Schizophrenic. And like schizophrenics, they are not aware of it.

Let's first look at the definition of Schizophrenia and then just two recent news items that prove my point. A composite definition would include this.

• People with schizophrenia show grossly disorganized behavior. Symptoms include hallucinations like hearing voices or seeing visions (it's a faith based belief system like any religion), delusions (false beliefs about commonly held views of reality - the Mohammed cartoon controversy and Muslim response) and bizarre thought patterns. Schizophrenia is accompanied by marked impairment in social or occupational functioning (Islamic states can not function well in the 21st century), extensive withdrawal from other people and the outside world and the investment of it in his own (Islamic fanaticism in its beliefs) - a form of psychosis.

Here are two news items from Google News that supports my point of the Muslim world's schizophrenic disorganized behavior.

Islam has nothing to do with terrorism: British delegation
A delegation of prominent British Muslims (read intelectuals), currently visiting India, Thursday said that Islam had nothing to do with terrorism and acts of violence by some individuals could not be termed 'Islamic terrorism'.

Muslim 'Intellectual' Says Arab Elite Must Die
Sa'id ibn Nasser Al-Ghamdi wrote "deviation from the Faith as Reflected in Arab Thought and Literature on Modernity as a three-volume publication based on Al-Ghamdi's doctoral dissertation. It is gaining popularity within the Muslims world. The author names over 200 "modern Arab intellectuals and authors whom he accuses of heresy-thus making it permissible to kill them.

We are dealing here with a very sick puppy. To repeat - the struggle inside Islam today is not over its soul - but its mind.