An interview with Henrik Day Poulsen, psychiatrist, Ph.D., translated by Nicolai Sennels for 10news.dk:

Our laws are not geared to understand or cope with the fundamentalist mind. Their perception of reality is completely intact, unlike that of the insane person, whose mind is completely chaotic and who would therefore never will be able to plan a professional attack such as the one we witnessed in Paris Wednesday this week. …

And here we find a very important point where you have to understand how a fanatic thinks. They break all the social norms and rules that we take for granted. Norms like respect and being fair, considerate and trustworthy become secondary to the fight for what the fanatic wants to achieve. The end justifies the means. Untrustworthiness, falsehood, deceit and manipulation are fully acceptable when acting in the name of God. Even though the scripture says that one is not allowed to lie.

Understanding such standards is important when trying to understand a fanatic. And if you understand the fanatic mind, you will know why constructive dialogue is impossible. Obviously, a fanatic will show up and discuss issues with politicians, as we see in the media. But when the camera is turned off and everyone has gone home, they laugh in their beard and prepare the next fanatical deed. In the name of God, of course.

It is well known that psychopaths lie, manipulate, steal and kill for personal gain. The thrill of committing crimes is often also a key motivation. Most people can understand the psychopath mind, and we have great experience in handling them in a democratic society. We have laws, courts and police to lock them up. But if you think that the Muslims in Grimhøjmoskeen (a Danish mosque famous for sending jihadis to Syria) or the terrorists in Paris are “just” a bunch of psychopathic criminals, you make a serious mistake.

The psychology of a fanatic is often quite different, although their tendency to speak with two tongues, lie and distort the truth may look like the usual psychopathic jailbird.

A very good illustration of the difference between a psychopath and a fanatic is the fact that the two French brothers of North African descent … almost in a provocative manner left their identity cards in the getaway car. A normal, experienced criminal would never be so stupid, since this obviously increases the risk of being discovered and caught. This action reads like a suicide bomber who knows that he or she will die with 100 percent certainty. A true psychopath will do anything to escape and will instead hire a “useful idiot” to do the dangerous and dirty work.

The two brothers did the dirty work themselves and are proud of it. They are heroes and are probably already hailed as heroes on various Muslim extremist websites. If they are caught and sentenced to life in prison, they would continue their dissemination of fundamentalist Islam inside the prison, because our prison system does not take into account the danger that such people represent. …

In my opinion we should have special departments for fundamentalist Muslims in prison, so they do not have the opportunity to indoctrinate the paltry jailbird Mohammed or Ismael sentencing for drug crime or violence, and who experience themselves marginalized in society and as treated unfairly.

Our legislation is simply not geared to understand and cope with the fundamentalist mind.

You can be absolutely sure: whenever the mainstream media raises the question of whether or not Islam is a Religion of Peace, it will answer that it is, and claim that Muslims are victims of unjust suspicion. But this CNN piece is particularly grotesque: after Muslims murder twelve people for transgressing Islam’s blasphemy laws, and four more for being Jewish, CNN gives us “Muslims cannot get a break.” Can Infidels get a break? Or will there just be more and more jihad, and then more and more denial, half-truth and obfuscation from the mainstream media?

More below.

“After Paris attacks, 7 questions being asked about Islam,” by Daniel Burke, CNN, January 11, 2015:

(CNN)Paris.Nigeria. Pakistan. Australia. Somalia. Turkey. Iraq. Canada.

All are sites that suffered attacks committed by Muslim extremists in recent months. Expand the time frame, and the list lengthens.

Even as the vast majority of Muslims condemn terrorism, the frequency and cruelty of the assaults have led many people to ask sharp questions about Islam.

Here are some that seem to be on a lot of minds.

1. Does Islam encourage violence?

Many Muslims bristle at mere hint of this idea, noting that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, most of whom live peaceful and productive lives.

Here is another example of the perennial confusion: Burke asks the question, “Does Islam encourage violence?,” and then starts talking about Muslims. The fact that some Muslims live peaceful and productive lives does absolutely nothing to answer the question of whether Islam encourages violence. The only way to answer that is to examine the texts and teachings of Islam. Burke is arguing that most Muslims aren’t violent, therefore Islam doesn’t encourage violence. But human beings have all kinds of motives and influences. The Catholic Church, for example, forbids contraception. Yet surveys show that most Catholics contracept. Would Burke then argue that because most Catholics contracept, therefore the Catholic Church encourages contraception?

Here’s how Muslim human rights lawyer Arsalan Iftikhar responded on CNN after the attack that killed 12 in Paris on Wednesday.

‘Irreligious criminals committing acts of mass murder’ 03:51

CNN is not the only news outlet raising this question, by the way. The New York Times explored the link between Islam and violence in a front-page article on Thursday.

I’ll get to that one soon.

Iftikhar and other Muslims note that almost every faith, from Christianity to Judaism to Hinduism to Buddhism, has produced acts of terrorism.

People of all faiths have committed acts of terrorism. But here again, what exactly do these faiths teach about violence against unbelievers?

Think about it this way: If you were a Jew during the Inquisition in Spain, would you think that Christianity is inherently violent?

Probably. But why is Christian history not full of Spanish Inquisitions? Could it be because such things had no basis in Christian texts and teachings?

Scholars say there is rarely a direct link between religious beliefs and violent behavior. Instead, terrorism is generally caused by a complex web of factors. (More on that later.)

Actually, Islamic jihadists regularly cite Qur’anic texts and Muhammad’s example to justify violence and supremacism.

But there’s no escaping this fact: The number of attacks committed by self-proclaimed Muslims has risen sharply in recent years.

Those attacks have led some critics to argue that Islam is inherently violent. To make their case they point to the so-called “Sword Verse” in the Quran as Exhibit A.

Here’s what the verse says:

“Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way.”

Raymond Ibrahim, an author and frequent critic of Islam, argues that, based largely on that verse, “Islam’s learned officials, sheikhs, muftis, and imams throughout the ages have all reached consensus — binding on the entire Muslim community — that Islam is to be at perpetual war with the non-Muslim world until the former subsumes the latter.”

Burke gives the impression that this whole idea is based on that one Qur’an verse, when in fact there are plenty of other verses that enjoin violence. He also gives the impression that Raymond Ibrahim is the one who came up with this idea, apparently without the slightest effort to determine what “Islam’s learned officials, sheikhs, muftis, and imams throughout the ages” actually say about warfare against unbelievers.

Many Muslims scoff at that argument, noting that the vast majority of Muslims are clearly not warring with other religions. But this verse has been exploited by extremist groups like ISIS, who say that Muslims have a sacred duty to “kill the disbelievers.“

Again: the fact that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t warring against unbelievers has no bearing on whether or not Islam teaches them to do so.

Mainstream Muslim leaders, however, say that both Islamic critics and extremists rip the “sword verse” from its historical context.

“This verse cannot be taken as a carte blanche execution order on all non-Muslims,” Yasir Qadhi, a conservative Muslim-American cleric, explained in a lecture in Memphis last month.

The Quranic passage applies only to pagans in Islam’s Arabian birthplace, he said.

“There’s no sugar-coating it, it’s a threat,” said Qadhi, who has a large following in the United States. “It was meant to scare people, and that’s why paganism disappeared from the Arabian Peninsula.”…

Actually there is a significant tradition in Islam that holds that the Verse of the Sword and other violent verses take precedence over more peaceful verses, and are the ones that are valid for all time, while the peaceful verses are those that have only limited application. Muhammad’s first biographer, the eighth-century Muslim Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.” The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193; cf. also 8:39) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped.

The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”

In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established.” He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.

Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history. According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh ‘Abdullah is referring to Qur’anic verses such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)

3. How do many Muslims feel right now?

In a word: frustrated.

This email from a longtime, Muslim-American source pretty well sums up the sentiment:

“Muslims cannot get a break. Every (expletive) day there must be an event to suggest Islam is inherently violent. Such acts destroy years of goodwill and work about Islam.”

Compounding these feelings of frustration, many Muslims say, is the implication that all Muslims shoulder the blame for terroristic attacks, or aren’t doing enough to denounce them.

Both are wrong. All Muslims don’t bear the blame for terroristic attacks; only those who commit them do. And Muslim denunciations of terror attacks are plentiful; what there are absolutely none of are Muslim efforts to teach other Muslims why they should reject the “extremist” understanding of Islam on Islamic grounds.

Daniel Haqiqatjou, of the website Muslim Matters, wrote one of the wittiest responses to this idea on Friday, sarcastically suggesting that what Muslims really need is an “iCondemn app.”

“With the iCondemn®, Muslims can say ‘not in my name’ at the speed of life!™ And non-Muslims no longer need to wonder whether 1.6 billion Muslims around the world feel the guilt and sincerely apologize for that latest reprehensible crime some idiot carried out while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!'”

On a more serious note, recent surveys show that large majorities of Muslims around the world are increasingly concerned about Islamic extremism.

Large numbers of Muslims around the world also want Sharia, the imposition of which is also the goal of jihad activity.

[Via FrontPage Mag]

On New Year’s Day, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi—the hero of Egypt’s 2013 anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution—made some remarkable comments concerning the need for a “religious revolution.”

Click here to watch the video with English subtitles orclick here to read.

Sisi made his remarks during a speech celebrating the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad—which was ironically held on January 1, 2015 (a day not acknowledged or celebrated in the Muslim world as it is based on a Christian calendar)—and he was addressing the nation’s top Islamic authorities from among the Awqaf Ministry (religious endowments) and Al Azhar University.

Although Sisi’s words were directed to Islam’s guardians and articulators, they indirectly lead to several important lessons for Western observers.

First, in just a few words, Sisi delivered a dose of truth and hard-hitting reality concerning the Islamic world’s relationship to the rest of the world—a dose of reality very few Western leaders dare think let alone proclaim.

“It’s inconceivable,” he said, “that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!”

What a refreshingly honest statement to come from not only a political leader but a Muslim political leader who has much to lose, not least his life!  Contrast his very true words with the habitual reassurances of the Western establishment that Islamic world violence and intolerance is a product of anything and everything but Islam.

Even after the appearance of the head-chopping, infidel-crucifying Islamic State, politicians like U.S. President Obama and U.K. Prime Minister Cameron insisted that the “caliphate” is not Islamic,despite all the evidence otherwise. Yet here is Sisi, the pious Muslim, saying that the majority of the terrorism plaguing the world today is related to the holy texts of Islam themselves:

That thinking [that is responsible for producing “anxiety, danger, killing and destruction” around the world]—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world!

As a Muslim, Sisi will not say that Islam, the “religion,” is responsible for “antagonizing the entire world,” but he certainly goes much further than his Western counterparts when he says that this “thinking” is rooted in an Islamic “corpus of texts and ideas” which have become so “sacralized.”

Recall that here in the West, Islamic terrorists are seen as mere “criminals” and their terrorism as “crimes” without mention of any Islamic text or ideology driving them.

The Egyptian president further invoked the classical Islamic teaching—the “thinking”—that divides the world into two warring halves: the Muslim world (or in Islamic/Arabic parlance, Dar al-Islam) which must forever be in a struggle with the rest of the world (or Dar al-Harb, the “abode of war”) till, in the Koran’s words, “all religion belongs to Allah” (Koran 8:39).

“Is it possible,” asked Sisi, “that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live?”

Sisi made another important point that Western leaders and media habitually lie about: after affirming that Islamic “thinking” is “antagonizing the entire world,” he said that “this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

In other words, Islamic terrorism and chaos is not a product of grievance, territorial disputes, colonialism, Israel, offensive cartoons, or anything else the West points to.  It’s a product of their “own hands.”

Again, one must appreciate how refreshing it is for a top political leader in the heart of the Islamic world to make such candid admissions that his Western counterparts dare not even think let alone speak. And bear in mind, Sisi has much to lose as opposed to Western politicians.  Calls by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists that he is an apostate are sure to grow more aggressive now.

The critic may ask, “All well and good, but words aside, what has Sisi actually done to help bring about this “religious revolution”?  In fact, one popular journalist, Ibrahim Eissa, recently said just this on live television in Egypt:

Five months have passed since he [Sisi] became president, after his amazing showing at elections.  Okay: the president has, more than once, indicated the need for a renewal of religious discourse….  But he has not done a single thing, President Sisi, to renew religious discourse.  Nothing at all.

Yet it seems that Sisi has an answer for this, too: it is not his job as president of Egypt to reform the thinking of the Islamic world; rather, that role belongs to the ulema—which is precisely why he addressed them with such candid words.  Indeed, he repeatedly stressed that it is the ulema’s job to lead this “religious revolution.”

Thus, “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move…. I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.”

Meanwhile, while Sisi was making these groundbreaking if not historic statements, the Western mainstream media, true to form, ignored them and instead offered puerile and redundant headlines, most critical of Sisi, like:

• “Egypt President Sisi urged to free al-Jazeera reporter” (BBC, Jan 1; to which I respond, “Why, so Al Jazeera can continue lying and misleading the West about Sisi and Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution?”)
•  “Egyptian gays living in fear under Sisi regime” (USA Today, Jan. 2; to which I respond, “Homosexuals live in fear in all Islamic nations, regardless of Sisi.”)
•  “George Clooney’s wife Amal risks arrest in Egypt” (Fox News, Jan. 3; to which I respond, “Who cares?  Only her innocence or guilt matter, not her husband’s fame”—which is the only reason Fox News chose the story in the first place.)

Whether concerning the true nature of Islam or the true nature of Sisi, here is the latest example of how unfathomably ignorant all those millions of people who exclusively follow the so-called “mainstream media” must surely be.

Last night on Fox.