What Makes Islam Different

Kent Ekeroth, the international secretary of the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna), recently wrote an important essay rebutting his critics on the issue of his “Islamophobia”. Our Swedish correspondent Henrik W. has kindly translated the article for Gates of Vienna.

The translator includes this introduction:

Kent Ekeroth, Party Secretary of the officially immigration-sceptical Sweden Democrats, recently had a exchange with critics, namely Ann-Louise Trulsson and Helen Törnkvist, who had accused him of various Islamophobic stances while trying to downplay the differences between Islam and other religions. In this article, Kent Ekeroth takes on their criticism and gives his view of what makes Islam a unique challenge to Western secular civilization.

The translated article from Newsmill:

Trying to equate Islam and other religions is wrong
by Kent Ekeroth

Törnkvist tries to find excuses for Islam by claiming that it is a religion and that “it is a private issue for each and every person”. Trulsson excuses Islam by trying to establish an equivalence between it and Christianity in the spirit of relativism. Neither of them seems to understand what this issue is about.

Törnkvist does not understand what multiculturalism is about. She seems to be labouring under the impression that multiculture happens whenever someone drinks coffee. The “Kebab argument” seems to be her strongest card, which is telling.

The interesting thing is that she writes about religion being “a private issue of each and every person”. That may be true, but it does not save her argument. A religion is a whole series of opinions, and opinions can, and often should, be criticised. It does not suffice to refer to a “God” to gain protection from criticism or denunciation. Had she bothered to read my first article, she would have definitely discovered that I’ve already covered these issues. Surely not even Törnkvist can deny that religious opinions, like political opinions, can cause the exact same acts in reality. It does not matter if the marching orders come from Allah or from some politician — it’s wrong no matter whether the command is handed down from God or from a human being.

If you realise this simple fact, you also realise that no protection may be extended just because something is a religion. A society, a political organization, or an individual has the same right to fight a religious ideology as we all have to fight political ideologies.

In another article concerning the same issue, Trulsson writes that all religions are equally good or bad — a relativist position. In her article she asks how SD can stand behind a “secular society where religion is a private issue” since that norm is unique in “a global perspective” where religion is a “collective issue for the majority of Earth’s population”. This might come as news for Trulsson, but we don’t care about what “a majority of the Earth’s population” thinks is the rightful place of religion in society. The Western model with secularism and religion as a private matter is clearly superior when you consider how far the West has come compared to the majority of Earth’s population. What Trulsson says is that most people in the world do not approve of secularism, which is, indirectly, to support this majority when used as an argument. Thus, she supports collectivism and abandons Western secularism.

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Trulsson then tries to equate Christianity and Islam, always a symptom of the apologist for Islam. Should this succeed, the public understanding of the nature of Islam might well be delayed since people might imagine that Islam will bring the sort of society that Christianity has. But there are clear differences between Islam and other religions.

Trulsson dwells on the errors and atrocities of Christianity, but does not even mention that the Muslim world was practicing slavery long before the Transatlantic (Western) slave trade started, and that Muslim slave trade was much longer-lived — indeed, it is not an entirely closed chapter even today. The Muslim slave trade affected more people than the Transatlantic ever did, and to this day the Muslim world has not dealt with this part of its history — nor with any other Muslim atrocity. In fact, it was Christians who were the driving force behind the abolition of the slave trade — no such movement ever existed under Islam. Furthermore, slavery was practiced by Mohammed himself — and he is considered by Muslims to have been a man with no faults. It is hard to imagine a bigger difference when comparing to Christianity’s founder Jesus, and thus between the two religions.

Apartheid is found and practiced today in the Muslim world by giving non-Muslims dhimmi status in Muslim societies. Both the Koran and the Hadith support this, which again is a huge difference as compared to Christianity. Dhimmi status, a form of apartheid, is directly supported by Muslim ideology. Apartheid, however, finds no support in Christianity, no matter what Trulsson tries to insinuate.

In addition, she seems unaware of the fact that “the colonial expansion”, by which she means the Crusades, was a war of defence against Islam after 400 years of Muslim expansion and aggression, including in Europe. This expansion is a central part of Muslim doctrine, whereby Mohammed spread Islam by the sword and had critics and prisoners of war murdered. His successors, the first Caliphs, militarily conquered lands spreading from Spain in the West to India in the East. Holy War has an entirely different role in Islam than it has in Christianity, and to this day Jihad — war of conquest in the name of Allah — is preached by Muslim theologians and imams all over the world.

When Trulsson writes that “the Church was wrong and theology had to be changed” she misses a central difference between Islam and Christianity. The founding documents of the two religions are different insofar that the Bible was written by people while the Koran is considered by Muslims to be Allah’s own word. The laws of the Koran are immutable; they cannot be changed. The same applies to Sharia, for which new interpretations are forbidden about all issues where consensus, called “Ijma”, is considered to have been established. Once a issue has been settled, when “Ijma” is established, it may not be opened for debate again. It is writ in stone and has to be followed by the faithful. “Ijtihad”, or a personal, autonomous interpretation of Islamic law may not be practiced where “Ijma” has been established. Unfortunately, Sharia covers rules of war, and the rules concerning Holy War — Jihad — are set; they are subject to “Ijma” in all the Muslim law schools and require all Muslims to practice wars of conquest to force non-Muslims to live under Sharia. This, too, is taught today, for instance by Al-Azhar in Cairo, the Sunni Islamic equivalent of the papacy, which still publishes texts that teach the classical Jihad doctrine.

To try to equate Islam and Christianity, like Trulsson does, is to showcase ignorance about Islam. When violence was committed in the name of Christianity, it was contradicted by the teachings of Christ. But wars of conquest to spread Islam, dhimmi status, and other travesties have direct support in Islamic dogma and were all practiced by Mohammed himself. Since Islamic violence springs from the Koran, Mohammed’s Sunnas and the Islamic law schools, the Muslim religion cannot be reformed in any meaningful way. This is why challenging Islam as any other expansive political ideology is justified — because Islam contains all this, along with many other things. Islam is both a religion and a political ideology and has to be challenged on those terms.

— Kent Ekeroth